Allie Beth Stuckey (0:01)

Headlines circulated last week that claimed that a young woman in Texas committed suicide because of Trump's deportations and the bullying that she had endured because of his immigration policy. But it turns out there was much more to this tragic story. And really good news. Christianity seems to be on the rise. I will talk about what is behind that, what we have to be careful about and what we should also be unable bashedly celebrating. We've got all that in much more on today's episode of Relatable. It is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com code ally that's good ranchers.com code ally hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Thursday. Hope everyone has had a wonderful week. All right. There's so much that I want to get to today. These are stories that we have been hoping to talk about for the past couple weeks. But so many things have come up that we just haven't been able to get to them. And finally, we are. First, I want to talk about this amazing trend that we are seeing that has been chronicled by Pew Research, a pretty trustworthy research center, certainly not right wing, supposed to be nonpartisan, middle of the road, objective. I would even say in some of the language that they use that, that they're actually on the left side of things. Probably their principles and the guidelines that they follow follow kind of left wing language when it comes to gender, when it comes to race. And so when you see something like this that has anything positive to say about Christianity or conservatism, I would say it's pretty trustworthy, especially when you look at their methodology, no matter what language they use, that's really what matters. And the so this seems to be accurate. And that trend is the decline of Christianity in the United States has slowed or leveled off. So for decades, we have been seeing that Christian affiliation in the United States is going down. A new study from Pew Research, however, has found that the number of people identifying as Christians is ticking up just slightly. The same is also true for the share of Americans who attend religious services monthly. That's all kinds of religious services. While the percentage has decreased over the last 18 years, the rate of monthly service attendance has remained about the same since 2020. And so we'll pull up this graph right here. You can see back in 2007, really not that long ago, 78% of United States adults identified as Christians, 78%. It drops off by 2014. Seven years later, 71%. That's pretty significant, 1 percentage point a year. And then it goes down quite a lot by 2019, there's a pretty significant dip just five years later. And then 2020, it goes up just a little bit. Then, man, it really goes down in about 2022 and then back up slightly to 63%. And that is really the first time we have seen a steady rise, even if it's small, a steady rise for years in a row of affiliation with Christianity. So from about 2021, it looks like, to 2024, we have seen this slight uptick. Now it is still significantly down 15% down from where we were in 2007, which is troubling for a variety of reasons. But the fact that it's trending up when there is such an assault on the Christian faith, such an assault on truth, when progressivism, secularism is ubiquitous, it's almost seen as a given, especially in academia, it's seen as the smarter, more sophisticated option. This really is stunning. Against all odds, against the media onslaught, against the prince of the power of the air, as Ephesians 2 describes Satan, there is an uptick in Christian affiliation. Now, the religiously unaffiliated, this group, religious nones, they're typically called N o N E s, has increased also since 2007, from 16% identifying as this to about. It looks like 30% in 2021 again doubled in this pretty short amount of time. But then it went down in about 2022, went up just a little bit in 2023, and it went down again to percent in 2024. So again bigger than it was in 2007. Things have shifted so much, and yet it does seem to be decreasing, this unaffiliation and leveling off, really. If you look at any graph from Pew Research I used to, back in 2017 18, when this study was new, I would point to this partisanship polling that Pew Research had published around this time that showed the shift in perspectives on a variety of issues between the left and the right, Republicans and Democrats. And what you saw is that Democrats have shifted to the left. And I know this study that we're talking about is not really about Republicans and Democrats. And what I'm saying really isn't either. It's simply talking about the shift in perspective and our move to the secular left over the past 20 or so years. When it came to immigration, when it came to gender, when it came to a social economic policy, the left, the Democratic Party significantly shifted to the left during the Obama years on everything from marriage to immigration, all of that. Guns shifted to the left, whereas Republicans really stayed Steady. There was barely any movement on any of the significant issues. On some things they actually shifted to the left just a little bit. Like on immigration for example, Republicans kind of shifted to what would probably be called more like of a center position in some ways. Now I don't know if there's an update on this. I would say that the right has probably shifted back over to the right a bit in the past few years and the Democrats have probably stayed over to the left. But you heard so much when Trump was in office the first time that it was, it was Republicans, they were the ones who became extreme, they were the ones who adopted these fascist far right policies. It's not, it's really that Republicans remained the same and as Democrats moved to the left, normal common sense, conservative and even center right policies became extreme to them because they had changed. And really that marked, I think signified a significant cultural change. From Barack Obama's first term to the end of his second term. Everything changed in the culture morally. The sexual revolution quickened. We went from President Obama saying in 2008 that he believes in one man and one woman in marriage for life like he believed in the biblical definition of marriage. He said that in 2008 on the campaign trail to Saddleback Church in California. I mean California in 2008 passed Prop 8 which protected the sanctity of marriages between one man and one woman. California in 2008 and obviously now that is the hotbed of the gender insanity where you can literally lose custody of your children because they say that they are identifying as the opposite sex. Things have changed and moved so quickly in the past 15 or so years and certainly the loss of Christian affiliation plays into that. But what I think has happened is that things moved so quickly. The sexual revolution, the moral revolution, the degeneracy has moved so quickly over the past 15 years that the younger generations especially have started to see the consequence of that, have started to see how this chaos and confusion, this godlessness, this purposelessness in their friends lives actually leads to a lot of misery. I mean they Gen Z the most over medicated, over therapied generation in existence. They've really seen the destitution that this aimless, morally relativistic God of self ideology brings people to. And I wonder if this swing is in response to that. Now obviously in the spiritual sense, like this is the Holy Spirit. Now we can't see the hearts of the people who answered this poll and whether they are truly on fire for Jesus or if they're just identifying as Christian. But the reason why I am comforted by this, even if we don't know all the details of the spiritual lives of the people answering this poll, is that in 2007 it was simply more popular to be a Christian, like cultural Christianity still existed. And I'm not knocking cultural Christianity. It's not salvific to just call yourself a Christian. But there are benefits to it. There are benefits to when as a culture we share basic Christian values. There are benefits to the law, there are benefits to the most vulnerable in the social contract that we have, in the interactions that we have. It's better to have cultural Christianity than no Christianity at all. And so that could explain why almost 80% of people identified as Christian back in 2007. Again, benefit to that. But you do wonder how much of that is genuine, how many of those people are actually going to heaven because they truly believe that Jesus is the way of truth and the life that no one comes to the Father, except through Him. Now, it is not convenient to be a Christian. No one has to identify as a Christian to get a job, to be popular, to be accepted by society. In fact, it's the opposite. You might end up like Jack Phillips or Laurie Smith, losing your business or your business being threatened, your livelihood being threatened, simply because you stand up for the basic tenets of Christianity seen in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible that God made us. Male and female definition of gender in marriage answered right there. It's not popular. It actually comes at a cost, at the very least a reputational cost, if not a very real cost to your safety. I mean, we saw that Pizzeria and Chattanooga Cortile, I think is how you pronounce it, that they wouldn't cater a gay wedding. It's not that they won't serve gay people. They just said, look, we're not going to be a part of this, of a celebration of a union that God calls abominable. Those are my words, not their words. They very politely declined and they were threatened and they were lambasted. And they had people protesting outside of their restaurant, trying to literally cancel their restaurant, trying to take away their livelihood. This is a family owned company, small children, their safety, their lives threatened by people who were very angry that they were simply being Christian and dared to be Christian in the public square. So it's not convenient. So the fact that there are more people now than there were a few years ago willing to say against the tide, yeah, I'm a Christian, means to me probably that there is a level of sincerity here because of the sacrifice required that maybe we didn't see all the way back in 2007, 15 years ago. So I don't know. I am, actually, I'm. I'm really optimistic about this. And look, at the end of the day, like, God is going to do what he does and God is totally sovereign and he is going to find his sheep. He will leave the 99 every time in search of the One. And he knows who the One is. God is not sitting there waiting and wondering who is going to get saved, because he's outside of time and space. He's all powerful. He's all knowing. He knows who his people are. And there is nothing, no cultural movement, no social, sexual, moral revolution that can stop him. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. God will gather his flock. And so I'm never worried. I don't let my happiness or my hope, my optimism rise and fall on Pew research or any polling. But I love to see God's eternal plan of redemption bear out in statistics. And I love to see, to see statistics and science catching up to God and what Christians have always known. And so I wish it hadn't taken the full effect of the grossness of the sexual revolution, the promiscuity, the devaluation of marriage, the rampant divorce, the gender deception and mutilation. I wish it hadn't taken the elevation of all of those things to get people, especially young people, to say, yeah, I don't know what's right, but it's not that. And, oh, maybe Jesus was onto something. Like, maybe this good book. Maybe the, Maybe the guy by whom we still tell time is significant. Like, I wish it hadn't taken the worst to get to the best. But again, God uses all things to work all things together for the good of those who love him, that are called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28. So I'm, I'm just very. I'm happy about this. I'm happy to see this, and I love to see what's going on on college campuses. I love to hear stories of you guys. I think 2020 was a really big turning point for a lot of Christians who just, again, just saw the chaos of the world and said, I need a respite from that. I want to be led by the shepherd who promises to lead us by still waters, even as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, that he will be with us. And some people have to get to our lowest. Maybe the country as a whole had to get to a very low point to see the goodness and the truth of God. There's been a lot of testimonies that have echoed that. Like, we see Nicole Shanahan. We see. We've seen Russell Brand, we've seen several others. It seems like even if we don't agree on everything they say or where, they are different points in their doctrine that they've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. They've tasted the world. It's not good. They've tasted and seen that the Lord is good. So let us pray for this. Let us pray for this continued continued growth. When we break it down, we do see that, like Christians, that the affiliation with certain sects of Christianity, subgroups of Christianity have gone down. So, for example, all Christians, 78% again to 62% Protestant, went from 51% affiliation to 40% affiliation, Catholic 24% to 19%. And so really, the subsets of Christianity there are all kind of. And those are the two main ones. I mean, if you look at, like, any other people outside of those two, maybe like Orthodox, it's very small. So these are the two main ones. And so, I mean, we're seeing the same kind of decline, but also the same kind of trend of stability and even increase. What I also thought was interesting is that for other religions, the share of Americans who identify with a religion other than Christianity has been trending upward, though still in the single digits. So it was 4.7 in 2007 is. And it's now up to 7.1%. This includes Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hindu. I guarantee you that uptake of about 3% is almost all Islam because of mass immigration that has occurred, especially from the Middle east over the past few years. I mean, a lot of people feel that. A lot of communities feel that, that, oh, I have these Islamic centers that are now like, across the street from this church or that are close to our neighborhood that I did not have before. And Also, like the HB1 program, you got a lot of people from India who practice Islam, who are coming over here, the boom in tech and corporate America, trying to get that cheaper labor over here that will shift the demographics, which shifts the culture and the values of your country. And I just want to say it's okay for you to care about that. It is much better for a country to have shared values, a shared belief in where truth comes from, what right and wrong is, basic definitions of reality and morality. It is okay for you to want that. This pie in the sky idea of diversity being our strength and Us living in this, like, beautiful mosaic of pluralism. Yes, of course, that can work to a degree, but only if you agree on some basic fundamentals, like we were all created by a God who gave us inalienable rights, among them being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I mean, basic Western democratic principles. And if you don't believe that which are founded upon the Bible and biblical principles, then we're going to have a hard time. We're going to have a hard time having a cohesive country and a cohesive community. So anyway, it's a good thing. It's a good thing for everyone, no matter what your belief system is, that Christianity is on the rise. Because Christianity has been the greatest force for good for in all of history. I mean, Christians changed the world, forged Western civilization, conceptualized human rights. The Imago Day has been the most positive force, I think civilizational force, for all of time. And so we praise God for that and we hope for its continuance and we do our part in that. God has ordained us to use prayer and evangelism to accomplish his will. He doesn't need it, he chose it. And we get to play a part in that. So praise God. All right, I've been wanting to get to that story for so long and so many of you have sent it to me. So I just wanted to let you know that it's on my radar, give you my thoughts about it, and just praise God for it. All right, we've got some more things to talk about. Let me pause and tell you about our first sponsor for the day, and that is accu, America's Christian Credit Union. I love this company and what they're about. They're not just any bank or credit union. They are a grassroots movement of believers that pull resources together to support each other and a God glorifying worldview. ACCU offers financial solutions that empower Christians to reach their financial goals. Plus, when you bank with them, you support causes that align with your faith, like Christ centered education ministry, building better lending rates for borrowers and returns for depositors. And so you're working with Christians who share your values. And that is really great in comparison to what we're seeing, which is these large banks that are sometimes debanking people for what they buy, for what they believe in. President Trump has called this out. You don't have to worry about that with accu. This is a company that was started by pastors for the benefit of their congregants, and now they have thousands of branches worldwide. They also have amazing opportunities for you to save money. Right now, they are offering a new member certificate with amazing and competitive rates. It's one of the best ways to grow your savings with your faith in the driver's seat. So you can start with as little as a thousand dollars or as much as a hundred thousand dollars. You can get that new member certificate. There's a high rate that is locked in for a full 12 months. Plus, your money is federally insured for up to $250,000 through NCUA, with additional coverage for qualifying accounts. So check all of this out@americaschristiancu.com Ali America's Christian Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA. Okay, let's move on to this story. It's a horrifying story, but it's got a lot of lessons in there for us when it comes to ensuring that we are not allowing the media to whip us up to determine our reactions to anything. So this is about a young woman. You probably heard about her a couple weeks ago. I shouldn't say young woman, a little girl, she's 11 years old, and she committed suicide. And we were told this. The reason why this became national news, because unfortunately, we have young people that commit suicide consistently. The reason that this went viral is because her parents said that she committed suicide because she was bullied over her immigration status. And of course, this was blamed on Donald Trump and Republicans because Donald Trump is deporting these criminal aliens, many of which are actually violent criminals, literally child rapists and murderers, that because he's doing that, there are Hispanic children in the United States that are being bullied to the point of suicide. Perfect example, very sad example of toxic empathy. So hoisting up a purported victim, creating a story around that to get you to ignore everyone on the other side of the moral equation. And so when we have two sides of the moral equation that are equally sad because Lake and Riley's, Lake and Riley's life counts just as much as this young girl's. When you've got two stories that are competing for your empathy, that's when your discernment has to kick in and you ask the important question in all issues, but what is true? What is factually true? What is biblically true? What is morally true, historically, scientifically, all of those things. But what is true? And whenever a story, this is a good rule of thumb. Whenever a story sounds too good or too bad to be true according to your own perspective, this sounded too good to be true for Democrats, too bad to be true for Republicans. In this case, you Ask yourself, what am I missing here? What's really going on? What are the details here and how do we know? That's always really important when you hear things like, oh, transgender kids are killing themselves because they can't, you know, get on cross, sex hormones or something like that. The question is, how do you know? How do you know that? I mean, is there a note that is left for, like, by these children that are doing this act? Do the stats actually bear that out when the Trevor project says that you have to affirm kids who say that they are the opposite sex or else you're going to have a dead daughter, a living son, that kind of thing? There are no stats that actually bear that out because we don't actually know always the reason why people kill themselves. And that was my first question that I had when I saw this horrifying headline, these stories going around that this young girl killed herself because she was bullied. How do we know that? How do we know that that's the case? And so I waited. I didn't say anything. I got some messages from you guys saying, can you respond to this? And, you know, I'm sure your Democrat friends are sending it to you saying, don't you think this is too far? I know you said you're for deportations and enforcing the border, but don't you think that this is too far? And it's so tempting because we are compassionate people, because as Christians, we want to be loving to say, okay, yeah, you're right, it's, it's too far. We shouldn't do that without even getting into specifics like what exactly, what policy is too far? What's going on here? So I waited. I didn't say anything. And obviously I'm very glad about that because it seems like we have more details. So this is. According to the New York Post, the family of an 11 year old girl in Texas who committed suicide claimed the girl was being bullied over her immigration status, while other children came forward to say the girl had also confided in them that she had been inappropriately touched. So sexually molested by a family member. So Jocelyn Rojo Carranza was found unresponsive. This is so sad. So sad. Unresponsive in her family's Gainesville home on February 3rd. Died in the hospital after five days in the ICU. The girl's mother claimed her daughter was being bullied by students over the family's immigration. Immigration status and the school district investigated confirmed that a student was making comments about ICE and deportation. And the Girl was close to that. It said the girl was an earshot, didn't say that the girl, that this was directed at the girl. The girl was in earshot. We also don't know what comments the student was making if it was actually bullying. These things can really spiral out of control and snowball. We don't know what the kid was saying. He could have just said I saw this on the news or my parents were talking about this. He might not have been mocking anyone, we have no idea. But somehow the snowballed into this idea, I guess via her mother and her family that she was being directly bullied for this. After Karanza's hospitalization, students came forward to school. Officials said that the girl had been victims of bullying. But then multiple students told administrators that Jocelyn had been sexually abused and that she had been telling them to keep that a secret. The district also found that the girl had previously expressed thoughts of self harm to her cousin. So before Donald Trump was in office, before any of this happened, she had been talking about hurting herself. Then this person allegedly whom she confided in told the girl's mother, but the mother claimed that was not true. So let me just show you and we'll put up some of these headlines how the media and the left framed it. So CNN an 11 year old girl in Texas died by suicide after she was bullied about her family's immigration status. Her mother says even after, even after. I just want to note this. The investigation showed sexual, the sexual abuse allegations. Cnn the headline doesn't mention it. School district confirms bullying occurred after investigation following Texas girls death by suicide. And again, at least from what I see, that's not, that's not actually what was confirmed. It wasn't even confirmed that the bullying happened. Joaquin Castro, he is a politician from Texas, a Democrat. I think he ran for president also maybe in 2020, ran in the primary. He was talking to Jim Acosta, RIP Jim Acosta, he no longer has a show on CNN. So Joaquin Castro said this. 11 year old Jocelyn Rojo Carranza endured months of bullying about her family's immigration status at her Dallas area school before she took her own life. As I said to Jim Acosta, Trump has created a culture of cruelty and meanness that is infecting American society and our kids. My staff and I are reaching out to San Antonio schools to ask them how they're protect against bullying in his hostile environment. I guess he represents San Antonio. Okay, so here's what we made the jump here. First of all, we have facts that are apparently not True. At the very least, they're unsubstantiated, uncorroborated. And you are using this girl's body, which isn't even fully cold yet, this tragedy, to point fingers at Trump. I mean, this is the cruelest and worst thing that you can possibly do. These are the same Democrats that locked kids inside, kept them out of school for months, that it was for their own good. You know what we saw during that time period? Child abuse go up. Child neglect go up. Suicide, depression and anxiety among these same kids go up. This post went viral. 10.1 million views on this post. 340,000 likes. This person says a sixth grader in Texas took her life because she was getting bullied by kids, telling her that they're going to call ice on her parents and that she would end up alone. Y'all are raising hateful children. So none of these people, by the way, Joaquin Castro is not going to correct himself. I hope that I'm wrong. If I am wrong, that he will not correct himself. I will happily correct the record on that next week. But they don't care. They want to put it out there. We see this over and over again with every single instance that they can use for their own purposes. They actually are glad and giddy when something like this happens. I truly think, in a way, now, maybe you think that's too harsh, but truly, they love leveraging dead people in tragic situations to point fingers at Trump and Republicans and try to whip people up to inflict violence against the Republicans. But again, the reality is that simply wasn't true. Here is a short clip of a local news report interviewing Jocelyn's mom.