April 16, 2026

The church is asking today whether it still knows what it's looking at — whether it can recognize Christ when someone else is doing the pointing. Christianity Today broke the story that drew the most reaction: Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus, and evangelical leaders are alarmed. The piece doesn't bury the lede. This is not a metaphor problem. It's a worship problem. And it lands differently because First Things ran a piece this week arguing Trump falls short of genuine greatness precisely when crisis demands it — almost great, not actually great. Put those two pieces next to each other and you have a church that knows something is wrong but hasn't fully said what. Michael Wear, writing in Relevant, says the answer to political homelessness isn't withdrawal — it's better politics. That's a harder argument to make when the image circulating is a president styled as the Messiah.

Mere Orthodoxy is working a different angle, but it connects. One piece on tech addiction argues that virtue and policy both matter — neither alone is enough. A second piece on civility tells the story of two grandfathers and says Christian civility isn't just manners. It's witness. Both pieces are about formation in an environment that actively degrades it. That question hasn't gone away — on March 30 we were watching the same tension: whether our minds are even capable of wanting the right things anymore. The AI Jesus story makes that question concrete. Christianity Today also ran a historical piece on Billy Graham's theology drifting left over time, set against evangelicalism's rightward political march — a quiet reminder that the movement has never been as stable as it remembers itself. World Magazine has a medical ethics podcast asking whether image-of-God theology shows up in clinical settings, not just pulpits. Small story. Real stakes.