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The Doorpost · Issue 56 · Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Prayer and Action Are Not Either/Or
“But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” (Acts 6:4)
Father, today’s three stories all ask the same question in different ways: what is the Church willing to do when the pressure is real and the cost is visible? In Brazil, a Christian couple has been sentenced to prison for homeschooling their daughters and refusing to teach them gender ideology. In Jerusalem, a new report documents a record pace of anti-Christian harassment, and advocates are pressing Israeli police to stop looking the other way. And in New York City, Mayor Mamdani’s endorsed candidates swept yesterday’s primaries, knocking out two sitting incumbents, a result that tells a story about what happens when one side is organized and the other is not. Lord, prayer is the beginning, not the end. Give us the courage to pray and to act, to gather in Your name and then to walk out the door and do the work that living in a free country makes possible. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Today’s issue covers the Brazilian couple sentenced to prison for homeschooling without gender ideology, the rising pattern of anti-Christian harassment in Israel and the advocates pressing for accountability, and yesterday’s New York primary results and what they mean for the Church’s engagement in the public square. Go well.
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Top Stories
Three Headlines to Watch
1) A Brazilian Court Sentenced Two Christian Parents to Prison for Homeschooling Their Daughters Without Gender Ideology
Audato and Ieda Denardi of São Paulo, Brazil, were sentenced in April by a lower court to 50 days in prison after a judge convicted them of intellectual neglect for homeschooling their daughters, Alice, 15, and Lorena, 11, without including state-approved content on gender and sex education and cultural diversity. The judge also cited the fact that the girls did not enjoy trap music as evidence of inadequate cultural exposure, despite the fact that both daughters speak multiple languages and are accomplished pianists. The prosecution recommended acquittal after examining the girls and finding no evidence of neglect. An independent educational psychologist reached the same conclusion. The judge convicted the family anyway. The Denardis began homeschooling in 2020 after COVID-era remote learning allowed them to observe the shortcomings of the public school system firsthand. ADF International is representing them on appeal to the state’s highest court. The sentence is suspended pending that appeal.
The Denardis are the first parents in Brazil to be criminally convicted for homeschooling their children. Brazil’s Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that homeschooling does not violate the constitution, but required a federal law to regulate it. That law has not been passed, leaving an estimated 70,000 homeschooling families in legal uncertainty. Julio Pohl of ADF International said the judge convicted not because the parents had failed to educate their children, but because they educated them according to their own values rather than the state’s. Ieda Denardi said she could not conceive of a more dictatorial state than one that wants to jail a mother for choosing the best education for her daughters. Read the full story at The Christian Post →
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Doorpost Reflection
The state of Brazil sentenced a mother and father to prison for refusing to expose their daughters to gender ideology. The prosecutor said do not convict. The educational psychologist said the children are thriving. The judge convicted anyway, because a 15-year-old said she finds some music lyrics morally questionable and because the family’s curriculum was shaped by their own values rather than the state’s. That is not a close call. That is a government deciding that parents do not have the right to direct the moral formation of their own children. Deuteronomy 6:7 commands parents to teach God’s words to their children diligently. The Brazilian state is now treating that command as a criminal act.
Pray for Audato and Ieda Denardi and their daughters Alice and Lorena as the appeal moves forward. Pray for ADF International and Julio Pohl as they make the case before the state’s highest court. And pray for the 70,000 homeschooling families in Brazil who are living in legal uncertainty, and for the Brazilian Congress to pass a law that protects what their own Supreme Court has already said is constitutionally permitted.
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Scripture: “You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” — Deuteronomy 6:7
2) Anti-Christian Harassment in Israel Is at a Record Pace in 2026, and Advocates Are Pressing Police to Stop Looking Away
The Religious Freedom Data Center, a Jewish-Israeli organization that operates a hotline for Christians experiencing harassment in Israel, has documented 88 anti-Christian incidents in 2026 through early June, including 63 in the second quarter alone. At that pace, 2026 will exceed last year’s total of 181 documented cases, which itself was up from 107 in 2024. Founder Yisca Harani, who is Jewish, said the center has already surpassed all its numbers and it is not yet the end of June. The incidents include spitting and verbal abuse against clergy, vandalism of Christian graves and crosses, defacement of signs, and arson at holy sites in northern Israel. Most cases have occurred in Jerusalem’s Old City, on Mount Zion, and near the Armenian Patriarchate. A violent April 28 attack on a French nun near the Cenacle was captured on CCTV and made international headlines. A priest from the Latin Patriarchate reported being spat on by three young Jewish men just days before the RFDC presented its report on June 4.
Israeli authorities have characterized the incidents as isolated pranks by a small minority of mainly underage youth. Christian clergy on the ground describe them as an everyday occurrence. Harani says the government’s tendency to treat this as a minor issue has emboldened perpetrators. Of 25 complaints filed by the Israel Religious Action Center between 2012 and 2021, 19 were closed without result. The Religion News Service published a new report on June 23 drawing on the latest data and the testimony of Christian residents, showing that for those living there, the harassment is not occasional. It is routine. Harani noted that transparency in publishing the data carries risk since videos of incidents can be used as anti-Semitic propaganda abroad, but she said that will not stop her from publishing the statistics. Read the full story at Religion News Service →
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Doorpost Reflection
The Church must be able to hold two things at once. The State of Israel has the right to exist and to defend itself against those who seek its destruction, and that conviction does not change. At the same time, a French nun being knocked to the ground and kicked near the Cenacle, priests being spat on in the streets of Jerusalem, and Christian graves being vandalized are not minor administrative matters. They are wrongs, and they deserve to be named as wrongs regardless of who commits them. Yisca Harani, who is herself Jewish, has spent three years documenting these incidents and pressing police to act. She is doing the right thing, and the wider Church should support that kind of civil society work rather than ignore it because the situation is politically complicated.
Pray for the Christian communities living in Jerusalem and the Holy Land who are experiencing this harassment as a daily reality. Pray for Yisca Harani and the volunteers who are showing up to accompany clergy and document incidents. And pray that the Israeli government would take this seriously not only when an incident goes viral, but consistently, as the matter of basic human dignity and religious freedom that it is.
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Scripture: “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” — Isaiah 1:17
3) Mamdani’s Candidates Won Yesterday’s New York Primaries, Unseating Two Incumbents. The Church Needs to Understand Why That Matters.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the avowed democratic socialist who took office January 1, spent the weeks before yesterday’s New York congressional primaries actively campaigning to unseat two sitting Democratic members of Congress and install far-left replacements. All three of his endorsed candidates won. Brad Lander defeated incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in the 10th District. Darializa Avila Chevalier ousted Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in the 13th District. Claire Valdez won the open 7th District seat. The wins represent a clean sweep for Mamdani and send a pointed message to establishment Democrats in Washington, including House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who campaigned against Mamdani’s candidates and lost. Both Lander and Avila Chevalier are members of the Democratic Socialists of America, the same organization that helped elect Mamdani himself.
The results matter well beyond New York. Mamdani has been openly promoted by Bernie Sanders as a model for the national Democratic Party. He called AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying organization, a “monster” and used the language of the pro-Palestinian movement to generate turnout. It worked. His movement is organized, disciplined, and understands that elections are won or lost in primaries, in school board races, in city council seats, and in congressional districts that most Christians never pay attention to. Three far-left candidates just won congressional nominations in the nation’s largest city by knocking off incumbents, and the movement that produced them is not done. The Church in New York and across the country must understand what is at stake in local elections and show up accordingly. Prayer gatherings matter. They are not enough on their own. Read the full story at CBS New York →
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Doorpost Reflection
Mamdani’s candidates won because more people voted for them than voted against them. That is how it works, and the Church in New York City needs to sit with that for a moment. Large prayer gatherings have filled stadiums and streets in the city in recent months, and those gatherings are right and good. But Nehemiah did not just pray when Jerusalem’s walls needed rebuilding. He prayed and he organized, he obtained permits, he assigned workers to sections of wall, and he stationed guards. The prayer and the work were not in competition. They were the same response to the same problem.
Iran was a free country in 1978. Within two years, a revolution had replaced it with a theocratic regime that has imprisoned and executed Christians ever since. It did not happen because the people who valued freedom were outnumbered. It happened because they were outorganized. The United States is not Iran, and the comparison should not be overdrawn. But the principle holds: freedom is not self-sustaining. It requires people who understand what they have, who are willing to participate in the institutions that protect it, and who show up when it matters, not just in churches and prayer gatherings, but in polling places and school board meetings and city council chambers. Yesterday, a socialist movement that is openly hostile to biblical values swept three congressional primaries in the nation’s largest city. The Church that gathers to pray should also register, inform itself, and vote. Both matter. Only one happened yesterday.
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Scripture: “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” — 2 Chronicles 7:14
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Daily Scripture
Verse of the Day
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“But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.”
Acts 6:4
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Acts 6 records a practical crisis in the early church. Widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food, and the apostles were being pulled away from preaching to manage the logistics. Their response was not to stop caring about the widows. It was to appoint capable people to handle the practical work so that those called to prayer and the Word could stay focused on that. The point of the passage is not that prayer is more important than action. The point is that both are necessary and that a healthy church structures itself to do both well. The apostles did not say prayer and the Word are all that matters. They said we will not neglect the Word in order to manage every practical problem ourselves, and they immediately organized a system to handle the practical problem.
Today’s three stories each press on this same tension. The Denardi family did what Deuteronomy 6 says parents are supposed to do, and the state of Brazil charged them with a crime for it. Christians in Jerusalem are being harassed daily, and a Jewish woman has spent three years building the civil society infrastructure to document it and push back. In New York, a prayer movement is growing and a socialist mayor is organizing, and what happens next depends in part on which group is more willing to show up in the places where decisions actually get made. The apostles’ answer in Acts 6 applies today: prayer and action belong together, not in competition, but as parts of the same faithful response to the same world.
Father, we pray for Audato and Ieda Denardi, that their appeal would succeed and that the judges and leaders who have used legal ambiguity to punish parents for raising their children in the faith would be replaced by those who will uphold what the constitution already guarantees. We pray for the Christians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land who are living with daily harassment, and for Yisca Harani and the volunteers standing with them. We pray for the Church in New York and across this country, that we would be a people who pray without ceasing and who understand that living in a free country comes with the responsibility to use the freedoms we have been given. Help us to do both. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
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