May 9, 2026 — Red Square, ABC's Free Speech Fight, and a Question About the Black Church

This is The Gospel Briefing. I'm Charles King. Today... Russia rolls tanks through Red Square while a fragile ceasefire holds in Ukraine. The Trump administration picks a fight with ABC over a daytime talk show. And a Christianity Today piece asks a hard question about why some Black Americans have walked away from the church. Headlines... Heartbeat... Hope. Let's get into it. [TRANSITION] Moscow. Victory Day. May ninth. President Vladimir Putin stood in Red Square today and watched the tanks roll by. It was a scaled-back parade this year. Fewer troops. Fewer vehicles. But the speech was vintage Putin. He denounced NATO. He defended what the Kremlin still insists on calling a special military operation in Ukraine. And he stood beside foreign leaders who came to lend him legitimacy. Here's the wrinkle. The parade happened under a three-day ceasefire... brokered by President Trump... agreed to by both Kyiv and Moscow. President Zelenskyy confirmed it. So did Putin's foreign affairs adviser. Three days of quiet. A prisoner exchange. And then... we'll see. I want to be careful here, because Christians of good conscience disagree about how the United States should be involved in this war. That's a real conversation. But the deeper thing I keep coming back to is this. A man stood in a square today, surrounded by weapons, and tried to make the case that his power is permanent. That his cause is righteous. That history is bending his way. Scripture has seen this before. Proverbs 21:1 says, "The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever He will." Putin is not the exception to that verse. Neither is Zelenskyy. Neither is President Trump. The parade in Red Square is loud. The God who sits in the heavens is not impressed. He has watched empires rise and fall on a Tuesday afternoon. A three-day ceasefire is not peace. But it is a window. And Christians should pray into that window... that it would widen... that prisoners would come home... that the killing would stop. Not because we are naive about Putin. But because we serve a God who actually answers prayer. [TRANSITION] Closer to home now. ABC News has filed a legal response accusing the Trump administration of trying to chill constitutionally protected free speech. The fight is over "The View." That's the daytime talk show where five women sit around a table and argue about politics. The administration is reportedly pressing whether the show should be subject to equal-time rules — the kind of regulations that govern political broadcasts. ABC says no. ABC says it's a news and opinion program, fully protected by the First Amendment. And ABC is now arguing the administration's pressure is itself the problem. I'll be honest with you. "The View" is not where most of my listeners go for spiritual nourishment. Probably not where most of you go for news, either. But the principle here is bigger than the show. The First Amendment protects speech we like and speech we don't. It protects pulpits and podcasts and panel shows. When any administration — Republican or Democratic — uses regulatory pressure to punish a network for its viewpoint, that should make all of us nervous. Because the tool that silences them today is the tool that silences us tomorrow. Proverbs 18:17 says, "The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." A free society needs cross-examination. Christians should want a country where bad ideas can be spoken... and answered. Where the gospel can be preached... and questioned. Where the answer to speech we disagree with is more speech, not government muscle. That's not a partisan principle. That's a biblical instinct about truth. Truth doesn't fear examination. Only lies do. [TRANSITION] Our third story comes from Christianity Today, and it asked a question I haven't been able to shake. The piece is called "The Lies and Truths That Keep Some Black People Out of Church." The author writes about joining an evangelism team in two predominantly Black neighborhoods. Hundreds of conversations. Many objections. But one came up again and again. People told him they found it hard to reconcile their Blackness with the Christian faith. They had been told — sometimes by family, sometimes by culture — that Christianity is the white man's religion. That it came on slave ships. That it was used to justify the unjustifiable. Now... part of that history is real. Slaveholders did twist Scripture. Segregationists did sit in pews on Sunday. That's not a lie. That's a wound. But the deeper claim — that Christianity belongs to one race — collapses the moment you open the New Testament. The first convert recorded outside Jerusalem in the Book of Acts is an Ethiopian official, reading Isaiah on a desert road. The faith was in Africa before it was in most of Europe. Augustine was North African. The Coptic church is older than nearly every Western denomination. Revelation 7:9 describes the throne room of God this way. "A great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb." Every nation. All tribes. The gospel didn't come on a slave ship. It came on a cross. And it belongs to no race because it belongs to every race. That's worth saying clearly... in a moment when so many forces are trying to convince us our identity is found anywhere but in Christ. [TRANSITION] A few quick briefs. The Defense Department has released decades of UFO files. Cold War reports of rotating saucers. Recent reports of metallic elliptical objects. The military calls them unidentified anomalous phenomena. Whatever's out there, Psalm 24:1 still applies. The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. Canvas — the learning platform half of North American universities run on — is back online after a ransomware breach. Some schools are warning students not to log in yet. Final exams are a mess. Pray for stressed students this weekend. A small Georgia town reinstated its entire police force this week, days after the mayor fired the whole department. The community spent several days with no law enforcement at all. A reminder that Romans 13 calls civil authority a gift — fragile, imperfect, and easy to take for granted until it's gone. And the national political mood is rough for Republicans heading into the midterms... but new redistricting maps in several states may soften the blow. Power in this country shifts. The throne in heaven does not. [TRANSITION] In a moment you'll hear today's verse. What you do with it after — that's where Bible Copilot comes in. It's an inductive Bible study app — open any verse, ask anything about it, and it walks you through it: observe, interpret, apply. One rule: Scripture interprets Scripture. No outside commentary. No agenda. Free — no ads, no account, no data collection. Pro is five dollars a month for unlimited studies and guided reading plans. Search "Bible Copilot" in the App Store. Link's in the show notes. Today's verse is Psalm 46, verses ten and eleven. "Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our fortress." Parades in Red Square. Lawsuits in Washington. Old wounds in the church. None of it surprises Him. None of it threatens His throne. He will be exalted among the nations. Including this one. Including yours. Thanks for listening to The Gospel Briefing. If today's episode helped you think more clearly, send it to one friend who needs the same. Share the load. I'll see you Monday. Until then... be still. He is God. And He is not worried.