Author: Caleb Campos

By Caleb Campos — Rigoberto Hidalgo Alpízar was more than a church kid. He was on the worship band. But at age 20, he decided to become an atheist. He went to college and researched big questions. He examined philosophies. He weighed science. He thought a lot. Then he came back to God. His new book, The Circus of Atheism: Unmasking the Spectacle of Unbelief (available only in Spanish for now), is deliberately provocative. The people who make atheism sound convincing and coherent are putting on a show for popular audiences, he alleges. Their real arguments are shallow. “If you…

By Caleb Campos — People of faith overcome addictions and grief easier than people who have no faith. So says Andrew Huberman, associate professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “When we’re talking about breaking bad habits, overcoming immensely difficult scenarios that normally would throw people into complete self-destruction, when people hand that over to God, it seems as if they get some relief from the process,” Huberman said. “It’s very effective.” Normally the scientists like Huberman don’t get into speculations about faith. They’re too busy with the hard science of neural structures and neural…

By Caleb Campos — The last country in the world to abolish slavery, Mauritania, still has 149,000 people living in descendent slavery (according to an estimate), and human rights advocates themselves get hampered and arrested by police. Critics of Islam say that slavery is deeply embedded in the Muslim scriptures. The Qur’an says that a man may keep a concubine as part of the spoils of war. Her children are automatically slaves. The Hadith says Mohammad was a slaver. “The reason slavery persists in places like Mauritania is because classical Islamic law explicitly codifies it as an ongoing and permissible…

By Caleb Campos — In sub-Saharan Africa, rampaging jihadists are killing thousands of Christians, burning churches, kidnapping girls, displacing entire villages — and yet Christianity is NOT EVEN CLOSE to being stamped out. To the contrary, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to the world center of Christianity by the year 2050, dethroning Europe AND America. Pew Research predicts 1.1B Christians in the more than 45 countries south of the Sahara Desert. That’s a growth leap of 131% from 2010. This does not mean we can be unconcerned about the ongoing mayhem being produced by Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province,…

By Caleb Campos — To Martin Luther’s Christian Germany, it’s been one secularizing smackdown after another: Higher Criticism, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hitler, communist East Germany and then the hardest slam of all — prosperity. Germany became desolate wilderness uninhabitable by faith. But don’t count Germany out. Just when you thought church closures, declining membership, retiring clerics augured an irreversible slide, Jesus moved, bringing the beginnings of renewal out of the ashes of atheism. That’s why Chris Goldswain, pastor of Every Nation Church Berlin, can tell of a youth who went on a weekend retreat, got saved and then baptized…

By Caleb Campos — A Portland man – released on bail thanks to a leftist group springing suspects from jail – strangled and stabbed to death his ex-girlfriend in front of their two children. “The Portland Freedom Fund, thinking it knew better than law enforcement professionals, decided to bail him out,” senior prosecutor Melissa Marrero said at his sentencing hearing Tuesday. “It cost her her life.” The Portland Freedom Fund was a Leftist project to help poor defendants who, it alleged, were discriminated against because of their inability to make bail. After Racheal Abraham’s death, the Fund apparently has shut…

By Caleb Campos — Poonjo Meghwar borrowed money to pay a hospital bill 23 years ago, agreeing to pay off the debt by working in the lender’s brickyard in Pakistan. Being illiterate, he “signed” with his thumbprint. Today, Poonjo, his mother, wife and son are still paying off the loan. For a crushing quota of 1,500 bricks a day, they get paid $3, half of which is used supposedly to make payments on the loan. The interest on loan is a mysterious calculation, unregulated by the government, making them essentially permanent bond servants. “I don’t remember life before the brickyard,”…

By Caleb Campos — In the water at a beach, Buddhist Alice Tran was struck by lightning. Her boyfriend and little sister moved to rescue her. “They noticed me face down in the water come over to me and pulled me out and they realized that I had been put in cardiac arrest,” Alice says. ”Some good Samaritans came and they started performing CPR” Alice Tran came from a family of devout Buddhists, and they would regularly go to temples to offer sacrifices, as well as in their house where they had shrines. She was born and raised in California…

By Caleb Campos — He brought the world Brave Heart, Pearl Harbor, Hacksaw Ridge, We Were Soldiers, Heaven Is for Real and Secretariat. Now screenwriter Randall Wallace is bringing “the Mount Everest of all stories,” The Resurrection of the Christ, which just ended filming in Italy. “Common people, these disciples, fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes, tavern owners followed this man Jesus and believed in him,” Wallace says. Then “he’s gone and they’re terrified. Three days later it doesn’t matter what you do to them, they will not stop saying they’ve seen him alive.” Scheduled for debut in two parts, first on…

By Caleb Campos – He’s short, with a noticeable stoop, with diminutive hands and missing fingers. But mobility impairment doesn’t stop Erickson Mugo from driving – or from preaching. “I pray earnestly to God that throughout my ministry, I will always be a bridge to others toward blessings,” says the coordinator for the Anglican Diocese of Mount Kenya South – Differently Abled Department. “At all times, we should endeavor not to be barriers to other people’s blessings, but to be enablers.” Disability should not limit your calling or service, Mugo says, even if you live in Africa where challenges for…