Oak Initiative South Carolina Fort Mill Chapter

01/19/2026

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Minnesota is the perfect example of why we need an Electoral College for State level elections. Hennepin and Ramsey Counties which houses Minneapolis and St. Paul dominate everything about Minnesota, even though the vast majority of the state is red. It shouldn't be about pure population because the big city leftists will always win. Big cities don't represent the culture of 95% of the state. Our Founding Fathers called it “The Law of the Land” for a reason.

01/19/2026

01/19/2026

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The Times Examiner - Your Upstate Conservative Voice in South Carolina.

01/19/2026

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New calculator looks at impact of a House-approved plan to reshape income taxation in South Carolina

01/13/2026

📩We sent a demand letter to Santa Fe Public Schools (SFPS) on behalf of parents who withdrew their daughter from school after district policies normalized sexual misconduct from a gender-confused male student.

➡️When the parents met with school officials about the boy’s history of publicly exposing and touching his ge****ls and the emotional distress it caused their daughter, SFPS dismissed their concerns and labeled the boy’s behavior “normal.”
➡️Under SFPS’s policies, teachers also must keep secrets from parents about gender confusion. However, students are required to uphold another child’s perceived gender identity, share restrooms and locker rooms with gender-confused students, and must tolerate inappropriate sexual behavior—a clear violation of parental rights and Title IX anti-discrimination law.
➡️We are requesting SFPS protect all students by disciplining students engaging in sexual misconduct, eliminating its policies that encourage gender “transitions” and secrecy, and reinstating sex-based privacy restrictions and protections for restrooms, locker rooms, etc.

If we do not receive the requested responses, we intend take additional action to prevent continued harm and to protect the rights of students and their families.
https://vist.ly/4mmjp

01/13/2026

The State Department designates the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels

01/13/2026

01/13/2026

We are aware of the Walk for Peace event. We are coordinating with the organizers to determine the safest route for them as they walk through our community.
They are currently walking along Hwy 21 in Fairfield County, SC. The estimated time of arrival in York County will be Tuesday evening. They are expected to walk through York County all day Wednesday.
Our goal is to ensure the safety of both the participants and our citizens. We will share information about their route through York County and provide updates on any potential schedule or route changes, as well as traffic safety. You can follow their path on their page 👉 https://www.facebook.com/walkforpeaceusa .

01/13/2026

11/21/2025

Artificial intelligence (AI) has come a long way, but one thing it will never be able to do is replace the core functions of the church, which unites individual Christians together into the body of Christ. Although it can be a useful tool in certain situations, AI lacks the one critical ingredient necessary for Christian growth and discipleship: a human soul that reflects the image of God.

This topic grows increasingly relevant as a new generation of apps employs AI technology in increasingly creative ways. A new app called “Text With Jesus” invites users to “embark on a spiritual journey and engage in enlightening conversations with Jesus Christ,” or engage in conversation with other chatbots mimicking other biblical characters, from Mary and Joseph to Judas and Satan.

As a gimmick to sate idle curiosity, the app may meet with some measure of success. As an attempt to impersonate the incarnate, resurrected Son, it will fail.

One major disadvantage the app faced from the outset was the lack of Christian input in its creation. The app was designed by Los Angeles-based Catloaf Software, whose CEO Stéphane Peter (a French emigrant) describes himself as “not particularly religious at the moment.” Nor did Peter consult with any pastors during the app’s development.

As a result, “AI Jesus is less concerned with fulfilling the Law and the Prophets [Matthew 5:17] than providing answers palatable to the itching ears of 21st-century users,” argued D.L. Moody Center President James Spencer, based on his experimentation with the app.

This should come as no surprise to Christians. No one would expect a non-Christian businessman to take as much care fine-tuning the theological accuracy of a chatbot for Christians as a sincere believer. Even an unusually scrupulous unbeliever would have difficulty navigating the many theological nuances that even Christians debate.

In fact, the non-Christian stands at a double disadvantage, both because he is an outsider, and because he lacks the indwelling Spirit of God, which “will guide you into all truth,” Jesus told his followers (John 16:13).

“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned,” Paul explains. “The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. ‘For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?’ But we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:14-16).

“Text With Jesus” has quickly branched out with less hazardous features, such as AI-powered pastors and counselors. These have “quickly become a popular part of the app because they give people a safe, approachable way to ask questions about faith, scripture, or life that they might hesitate to raise elsewhere,” Peter claimed.

But here, Peter is usurping the church’s role, hoping to corner the market through ease and anonymity. Admittedly, the church is not (or should not be) known for either.

But the church provides a superior context for safely asking important questions, for two reasons. First, it is animated by supernatural love, something you will never encounter in a chatbot.

Second, the church is entrusted with preserving authentic Christianity, both the practice and the teaching, that leads to eternal life (1 Timothy 4:16). In the church, authentic Christianity is transmitted through personal example from generation to generation. As Paul instructed the Philippian church, “Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us” (Philippians 3:17). Thus, the church has greater authority to define and demonstrate what Christianity teaches than an app invented yesterday.

Peter’s is not the only app bringing AI technology to Christianity. Axios reports the creation of apps to analyze congregational data to tailor outreach, apps to write personalized prayers, a $49-per-month app for “1-on-1 personalized interactions” with a bot version of prosperity preacher Ron Carpenter, and apps used to create sermons. An organ of the Episcopal Church has created an AI-powered chatbot to respond to spiritual inquiries.

However, given the astonishing breadth of technology encompassed by the term “artificial intelligence,” not every use of AI is wrong, per se. Some churches also use AI for administrative functions, like answering questions about service times and event details. Reverend Louis Attles, of La Mott A.M.E. Church in Elkins Park, Pa., created a chatbot that accelerates his sermon research (which is far less problematic than AI writing the whole sermon).

The problem comes with using AI in a way that reduces Christianity to simply a secular business, which is exactly what some people are trying to do. “Every church or house of worship is a business,” declared AI church consultant Chris Hope. “There are absolutely opportunities to generate AI bots to evangelize.”

But the church is not a business. It is a holy community of believers indwelt with the Spirit of God (1 Corinthians 3:16). The Holy Spirit works supernatural change in their lives, so that they present a compelling witness to the world by the way they love, serve, encourage, counsel, bear with, and sacrifice for one another. In fact, God often uses the labors of their fellow believers as his instruments to change his disciples’ lives.

If churches begin to adopt electronic tools to replace the core functions of their members, then believers will feel less need to change, and their spiritual growth will likely be impoverished in the long run. If believers turn to chatbots for counseling, they will certainly lose out on the spiritual wisdom God has given to their fellow church members (1 Corinthians 2:6-7). They will also lose out on the prayers of other believers, because an app or a chatbot cannot pray for you.

The church is also entrusted with the responsibility to guard the message of the gospel and witness of the church, to the point of dissociating from those who persist in unrepentant sin (Matthew 18:17-20; 1 Corinthians 5:4-5). No AI program is a trustworthy guardian of these precious gifts from God — and many AI tools floating out there today are prone to make elementary mistakes quite regularly.

Most importantly, artificial intelligence does not have Jesus’s promise to the church that he will continue to build her against all the opposition of hell (Matthew 16:18), leading her on to victory until his triumphant return.

Technological advances often benefit the spread of the gospel, and churches will eventually find productive ways to use AI as a tool — not as a crutch. But while they might be able to outsource some administrative tasks, “You can’t outsource your morality,” Attles argued. “It cannot keep a covenant for you.”

𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝐽𝑜𝑠ℎ𝑢𝑎 𝐴𝑟𝑛𝑜𝑙𝑑. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑.

11/21/2025

A pair of identical bills would require Florida schools to teach cursive in grades 2-5, with an evaluation in 5th grade. 🔗⬇️

08/03/2025

America is addicted to screens. It’s not a difficult fact to uncover. Just ride the D.C. metro. As they’re travelling to their various destinations, most commuters will likely be staring down at their mobile devices. Walk into a restaurant. Whole families are sitting around the table waiting for their food, but they’re not talking with each other. They’re staring at their phones. More likely than not, you have personally experienced the dopamine you get from scrolling social media or watching a video. Perhaps you have struggled with wasting hours on Instagram reels or YouTube shorts.

According to Reviews.org, 81% of Americans admit to reaching for their phones within 10 minutes of waking up in the morning. Seventy-eight percent refuse to leave their homes without a phone. Forty percent reported feeling anxious if their phone battery dropped below 20%, and 66% even admitted using their phones on the toilet. NBC reported that the average American picks up their phone 205 times a day. Back in 2023, scientists from the University of Surrey discovered that Americans ages 24 and under averaged six hours a day online. Those over the age of 24 tended to average four hours.

In a recent article, Optimum, a telecommunications company, surveyed 2,000 Americans who have any sort of home internet subscription. They found that on average, these people spent around 10 hours online during any given day. Only half that time was spent on work. The other half of those 10 hours respondents spent entertaining themselves, streaming videos, or watching TV shows.

Our culture-wide screen addiction has led to organizations creating rehab programs for those addicted to social media, the internet, their phones, and even online shopping.

“[Screen addictions] can lead to a wide array of physical and psychological problems, including eye strain, muscle strain, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, and social isolation,” stated Addiction Center.

But if everyone addicted to screens went to rehab, most likely the rehab system would be overrun. Stanford Lifestyle defined an excessive amount of screen time as over two hours of screen usage apart from that which is necessary for work. Now compare that to the five hours Optimum found an average American spends on entertainment alone.

The same Stanford Lifestyle study discovered that increased screen usage caused the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for memory and problem-solving, to thin in adults ages 18-25. It also correlated with loss of gray matter in the brain, which is necessary for every daily action a human being performs.

This culture-wide screen addiction has effects that run far beyond just harm to individuals. It harms families, too. Children are at an increased risk of screen addiction. Their brains have not yet fully formed, which means they’re more susceptible to dopamine dependence. As screen addictions tend to lead to isolation, as well as mental health problems like depression and anxiety, children may find themselves struggling in their relationships with their friends, their siblings, and their parents. That struggle is exacerbated by exposures to po*******hy, which often follow from excessive internet use.

As technologies attack families, they harm the basic building blocks of society. Neil Postman warned about these societal harms coming from an entertainment culture in his book, “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” in 1985, before the smartphone was even invented. But he nevertheless predicted the impact of the internet on the disintegration of society.

“To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple,” Postman warned. “When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; a culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Not only is it a clear possibility, but our culture is deteriorating further every day. Every aspect of our daily lives has become part of entertainment culture. News is found on social media and TV with sensational headlines to draw an emotional reaction from the reader. Politicians gain more support through how hard they can verbally destroy the other side.

“Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice,” Postman noticed. “The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.”

This is a dire and extremely discouraging prognosis, especially as our culture does not seem to be addressing the serious problem literally staring them in the face. The first step we must take to address this addiction is to acknowledge it exists, and second, to recognize to what extent it has already harmed society. And it must begin in the family, the foundation of society. We can’t fix a problem until we’ve acknowledged it exists. So, let’s educate ourselves on the harms of the internet so we can avoid amusing ourselves to death.

𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦 𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑙𝑦𝑛 𝐸𝑙𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑡. 𝑃𝑢𝑏𝑙𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑎𝑠ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑛 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑.