Vancouver – ARK – The Faith Driven Marketplace and Christian tech startup, continues to experience accelerated new registered retailer growth around the globe pre-launch with unique and beautiful Christian gifts and product listings from some of the most anointed and successful Christian retailers and sellers worldwide.

ARK is expected to launch in Q1 2026.

ARK has several hundred Faith Driven retailers and sellers on 6 continents and 59 nations to date to serve a global US$15B Christian retail market. The Faith Driven Marketplace will launch with Christian gifts and products in multiple industry verticals which includes but is not limited to:

• • Christian Retailers & Sellers
  • Mainstream Retailers & Sellers
  • Food & Drink Retailers & Sellers
  • Media & Magazine Retailers & Sellers
  • Christian Music Singers & Bands
  • Christian Book Authors
  • Christian Service Providers
  • Amazon Retailers & Sellers
  • eBay Retailers & Sellers
  • Etsy Retailers & Sellers
  • Shopify Retailers & Sellers
  • Largest Christian Retailer in the UK

Christian Gifts & Products: US

In North America, the United States is the largest country of registered retailers for ARK which trends exactly the same as Amazon, eBay and Etsy. Here is a beginning selection from sixteen different American Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Apparel 
• Christian Wall Décor 
• Skin Care
• Food & Drink
• Christmas Home Décor
• Smartphone Accessories
• Christian Pillow Décor
• Christmas Apparel
• Pet Supplies & Accessories
• Christian Holiday Décor
• Custom Wall & Sconce Décor
• Christian Vinyl Pack
• Wedding Décor
• Christian Media

Christian Gifts & Products: UK

In Europe, the United Kingdom is the second largest country of registered retailers for ARK which trends exactly the same as Amazon, eBay and Etsy. Here is a beginning selection from eight different British Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Bibles Hardcover & Paperback
• Bible Chapter Tabs
• Christian Digital Art
• Christian Greeting Cards
• Christian Fixtures
• Christian Drinkware
• Christian Acrylic Gifts
• Christian Pillow Décor

Christian Gifts & Products: Canada

In North America, Canada is the second largest country of registered retailers and fourth largest country of registered retailers overall for ARK. Here is a beginning selection from eight different Canadian Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Apparel 
• Christian Children’s Books
• Christian Music
• Handmade Wooden Photo Frames
• Network Hardware Equipment

Christian Gifts & Products: Israel & Palestine

From The Middle East, here is a beginning selection from three different Israeli and Palestinian Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK. The sellers from Palestine represent Palestinian Christians from Jesus’ birthplace in the West Bank of Bethlehem. The challenges Palestinian Christians face are numerous. ARK is strategically serving Palestinian Christians to bring their products to market worldwide so they may raise their families in peace and prosperity and be blessed according to John 10:10 to live a life of victory. The categories covered here are of:

• Christian Toys
• Christian Toys Crochet
• Christian Wood Nativity
• Kitchen Dinnerware Décor

Christian Gifts & Products: Australia & New Zealand

In Oceania, the countries of Australian and New Zealanders are registered retailers on ARK. Here is a beginning selection from three different Australia and New Zealand Faith Driven Retailers registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Women’s T-Shirts
• Christian Thanksgiving Décor
• Christian Smartphone Wallpapers
• Christian Scripture Cards

Christian Gifts & Products: South Africa

In Africa, South Africa is the largest country of registered retailers and fifth largest country of registered retailers overall for ARK. Here is a beginning selection from three different South African Faith Driven Retailers and one South African Faith Driven Service Provider registered on ARK covering the categories of:

• Christian Real Estate Services  
• Christian Drinkware
• Christian Apparel
• Christian Jewelry

ARK Retail Strengths & Social Impact

Ministry Partner FAITHx

ARK is a socially responsible marketplace and will donate 10% of all annual net-profit to it’s official ministry arm at FAITHx. You can learn more about FAITHx and it’s strategic outreaches here. FAITHx first ministry event, FAITHx Vancouver 2026, is tentatively scheduled for late December 19, 2026.

Follow FAITHx on X (Twitter).

Connect with ARK on Social Media

Connect, subscribe and follow ARK on all their social profiles via Linktree.

ARK’s New Branding Trailer

ARK uploaded their newest branding trailer for their World Premier videos and Digital Parables on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and X.

For the uninitiated, Tim Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, a successful confessional church in a place many Christians regard as the heart of darkness. Keller is also a best-selling author who does not shrink from dipping his toes into political waters as so many ministers do. He is something of an unofficial pope to a large segment of the evangelical Christian population. His influence on this demographic is vast, and he leverages it in books, interviews, and a robust social media presence. For our purposes, the question is this: is it a good influence?

Over the course of his career, Tim Keller has been a light for the Christian faith in the pulpit. He has also written several helpful books. Yet, bizarrely, he has recently embraced the so-called social justice movement. In a series of articles and tweets this year, Keller, confusing Christianity with the Democrat presidential platform, pronounced authoritatively on issues ranging from “systemic racism” to the “corporate guilt” of white America. All of this, of course, was simply a precursor to his inevitable conclusion:

When it comes to taking political positions, voting, determining alliances and political involvement, the Christian has liberty of conscience. Christians cannot say to other Christians “no Christian can vote for … ” or “every Christian must vote for … ” unless you can find a biblical command to that effect.

Such a position would seem reasonable in, say, the 1916 presidential election between incumbent Democrat Woodrow Wilson and Republican Charles Evans Hughes. But in 2020, a year when Democrats represent all that is unholy? I can think of several biblical commands that made the choice for any Bible-believing Christian absolutely clear in this election. I mean, would Jesus endorse a radical pro-abortion and pro-infanticide policy; every sordid sexual agenda, even the sexualization of small children; a complete disregard for the rule of law; and open hostility toward His followers? I don’t think so.

Unfortunately, Keller is not an evangelical anomaly. While he was giving theological justification to those who would betray their faith and defect to the opposition with their votes, popular Baptist pastor John Piper was encouraging Christians not to vote at all. In a recent blog post, he maintained that Republicans aren’t morally rigid enough. Whipping out the ultimate tool in the pastor’s mystification toolbox, he employed biblical Greek to add authority to his case against President Trump. (Some pastors love to do this. It is their way of saying, “Don’t try this at home.”) Piper says the president is guilty of “unrepentant sexual immorality (porneia), unrepentant boastfulness (alazoneia), unrepentant vulgarity (aischrologia), [and] unrepentant factiousness (dichostasiai).”

One wonders how he knows Trump is unrepentant and why he is the one to blame for factiousness. Did the president concoct a Russia collusion narrative? Did he spy on Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Did he illegally use the FBI to push false evidence? Did he do anything justifying impeachment? Did he support the looting, burning, and rioting in our streets? Did he take money from China through a family member serving as a proxy? No. As for his vulgarity and boastfulness, I suggest Piper get out more. Trump is fairly typical of the chest-beating, plain-speaking businessmen one finds in places like New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia.

I am reminded of a quotation attributed (perhaps inaccurately) to George Orwell: “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Orwell or not, the sentiment is true. Like many of those who do violence on our behalf for the sake of our freedom, Trump is a rough man. That’s too much for Piper. Oddly, Piper represents a segment of the evangelical population that demands his president bear the characteristics of a Mother Teresa. Does he make the same demands of his barber, his mechanic, his accountant, or his surgeon? One suspects not.

In July 2012, I was speaking at a youth retreat in the mountains of Tennessee when I received a call from CNN. It seemed that Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy had publicly commented on the issue of same-sex marriage, and now the gay mafia was lining up to do both him and his restaurant chain as much harm as possible. Would I, asked CNN, be willing to offer the orthodox Christian perspective on homosexuality and defend Chick-fil-A in this controversy? After reviewing Cathy’s remarks and concluding that they were neither outrageous nor biblically incorrect, I agreed to the interview, and later that day I defended the Christian position on the network as vigorously as possible.

Shortly thereafter, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called for Christians to mobilize and show their support for the embattled fast food restaurant with “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day.” They did. Lines at the restaurant stretched for blocks. This event marked the first time in modern memory that Christians fought back rather than meekly submitting to the media and special interest bullies.

But not all evangelical Christians were supportive of the Home of the Chicken Sandwich. In an article for WORLD magazine, Barnabas Piper, son of John Piper, wrote that he was against Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day because, he said, it “clearly promote[s] an ‘us versus them’ mentality.” Thus, taking a stand was too divisive.

At the time, I was stupefied by these remarks and wondered how the elder Piper, whom I respected, felt about his son’s views. Now I know the apple does not fall far from the tree. Perhaps it had escaped the young Piper’s notice, but it is us versus them. Besides, Huckabee wasn’t asking Piper or other Christians to die for their faith. He wasn’t asking them to take to the streets and destroy property as protesters on the left so often do. He was asking them to do nothing more than eat a chicken sandwich and some waffle fries for Jesus. Has any protest in history been easier or tastier?

A generation ago, pop star Bonnie Tyler famously asked the question, “Where have all the good men gone?” Since then, the situation has only gotten worse, Bonnie. As C.S. Lewis noted, men in the Western world have largely been emasculated, and men in the Church are seldom an exception to this decades-long trend. To stand strong for one’s faith in Jesus Christ and push back at a culture that, in the words of Isaiah 5:20, “call[s] evil good and good evil” is today seen to be “divisive,” “unloving,” “bigoted,” and “intolerant.”

This is because evangelicals in the English-speaking world have confused Christ’s command to love others with being civil as if that were an attribute of God. (It isn’t.) As a consequence, a superficial, self-righteous, good-for-nothing pietism that prefers tone to truth and style to substance has displaced authentic Christianity in many of the roughly four hundred thousand churches in America. This doctrinal malpractice has given us a generation of men, Christian and otherwise, who are what Lewis called “men without chests.”

Don’t know the sort of Christians I am talking about? I’ll give you a hint. They are the sort who will, upon reading this article, take great offense at what I have written here and waste no time in letting me know it, but are not particularly offended by the sixty-one million children murdered in the holocaust of abortion since 1973, by universities that are incubators of radicalism, by Democrats who are compiling a “hit list” of Trump supporters, or by the godlessness of the Marxism they openly advocate, which has killed no less than 125 million people in the twentieth century alone.

Too many Christians today are risk-averse. They prefer the safety of the family life center to engaging the culture in any way that might cost them something. God forbid they might sacrifice their wealth or comfort, endure the social media mob, or be excluded from the neighborhood barbeque. To such Christians, the “woke” messages of pastors like Tim Keller and John Piper et al. are a justification to do what they were inclined to do anyway: nothing.

But that doesn’t strike me as Christian at all. C. S. Lewis called Christianity a “fighting religion.” Think on that. These days, such a statement strikes a somewhat absurd note with a generation that has never known war, privation, or suffering in defense of anything, much less of noble ideals. For them, Jesus has been reinterpreted to meet a lifestyle preference. One might wonder if they truly know him. Because when Jesus said to turn the other cheek, he did not mean to turn a blind eye. And the highest calling of a Christian is not to be civil; it is to be salt and light.

The shroud is located in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Turin, Italy. It depicts the image of a crucified man, and scientists and experts have studied it for a long time in an attempt to determine if it could have been the burial cloth of Jesus Christ.

More Accurate Than Carbon Dating

The recent findings by De Caro contradict a well-known 1988 carbon-dating study which suggested that the cloth is around 700 years old.

He said the carbon-dating method isn’t great for fabric, explaining there are several possible reasons why the 1988 carbon-14 study may have been mistaken in its conclusions.

“Fabric samples are usually subject to all kinds of contamination, which cannot always be controlled and completely removed from the dated specimen,” De Caro explained to NCR.

“If the cleaning procedure of the sample is not thoroughly performed, carbon-14 dating is not reliable,” he explained. “This may have been the case in 1988, as confirmed by experimental evidence showing that when moving from the periphery towards the center of the sheet, along the longest side, there is a significant increase in carbon-14 (radiocarbon dating).”

A website called Aleteia reports that De Caro further explained there’s greater accuracy when data is obtained by using the WAXS method. He said the technique was used on various samples of historical fabrics that date from 3000 BC to 2000 AD.

The new X-ray analysis is said to be more accurate and less destructive than radiocarbon dating. https://t.co/y20d1eav6l

— Aleteia (@AleteiaEN) April 22, 2022

The scientist compared the Shroud of Turin with those samples and discovered that it best matched a piece of fabric from the siege of Masada, Israel, in 55-74 AD.

“The technique of dating linen by X-ray is non-destructive,” De Caro noted. “Therefore, it can be repeated several times on the same sample. It would be more than desirable to have a collection of X-ray measurements carried out by several laboratories, on several samples, at most millimetric in size, taken from the Shroud.”

The Shroud Also Contains Mideast Pollen 

Lastly, De Caro pointed to factors that could trace the shroud’s migration from the Middle East to Europe. He said analysis of the shroud showed samples of pollen from the ancient region of Palestine, which could not have developed in Europe, according to Aleteia.

That discovery implies that the Shroud of Turin spent extensive time in the Middle East.

Religious faith in America is going the way of the Yellow Pages and travel maps, we keep hearing. It’s just a matter of time until Christianity’s total and happy extinction, chortle our cultural elites. Is this true? Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in “widespread decline” so much so that conservative believers should suffer “growing anxiety”?

Two words: Absolutely not.

New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the “secularization thesis,” which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.

Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy “persistent and exceptional intensity” in America. These researchers hold our nation “remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.”

What Accounts for the Difference in Perceptions?

How can their findings appear so contrary to what we have been hearing from so many seemingly informed voices? It comes down primarily to what kind of faith one is talking about. Not the belief system itself, per se, but the intensity and seriousness with which people hold and practice that faith.

Mainline churches are tanking as if they have super-sized millstones around their necks. Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere. Because of this shifting, other very different kinds of churches are holding strong in crowds and have been for as long as such data has been collected. In some ways, they are even growing. This is what this new research has found.

The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today. These authors describe this continuity as “patently persistent.”

The percentage of such people is also not small. One in three Americans prays multiple times a day, while one in 15 do so in other countries on average. Attending services more than once a week continues to be twice as high among Americans compared to the next highest-attending industrial country, and three times higher than the average comparable nation.

One-third of Americans hold that the Bible is the actual word of God. Fewer than 10 percent believe so in similar countries. The United States “clearly stands out as exceptional,” and this exceptionalism has not been decreasing over time. In fact, these scholars determine that the percentages of Americans who are the most vibrant and serious in their faith is actually increasing a bit, “which is making the United States even more exceptional over time.”

This also means, of course, that those who take their faith seriously are becoming a markedly larger proportion of all religious people. In 1989, 39 percent of those who belonged to a religion held strong beliefs and practices. Today, these are 47 percent of all the religiously affiliated. This all has important implications for politics, indicating that the voting bloc of religious conservatives is not shrinking, but actually growing among the faithful. The declining influence of liberal believers at the polls has been demonstrated in many important elections recently.

These Are Not Isolated Findings

The findings of these scholars are not outliers. There has been a growing gulf between the faithful and the dabblers for quite some time, with the first group growing more numerous. Think about the church you attend, relative to its belief system. It is extremely likely that if your church teaches the Bible with seriousness, calls its people to real discipleship, and encourages daily intimacy with God, it has multiple services to handle the coming crowds.

Most decent-size American cities have a treasure trove of such churches for believers to choose from. This shows no sign of changing. If, however, your church is theologically liberal or merely lukewarm, it’s likely laying off staff and wondering how to pay this month’s light bill. People are navigating toward substantive Christianity.

The folks at Pew have been reporting for years that while the mainline churches are in drastic free fall, the group that “shows the most significant growth is the nondenominational family.” Of course, these nondenominational churches are 99.9 percent thorough-blooded evangelical. Pew also notes that “evangelical Protestantism and the historically black Protestant tradition have been more stable” over the years, with even a slight uptick in the last decade because many congregants leaving the mainline churches are migrating to evangelical churches that hold fast to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

When the so-called “progressive” churches question the historicity of Jesus, deny the reality of sin, support abortion, ordain clergy in same-sex relationships and perform their marriages, people desiring real Christianity head elsewhere. Fact: evangelical churches gain five new congregants exiled from the liberal churches for every one they lose for any reason. They also do a better job of retaining believers from childhood to adulthood than do mainline churches.

The Other Key Factor: Faithful People Grow More Children

There is another factor at work here beyond orthodox belief. The University of London’s Eric Kaufmann explains in his important book “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?” (he says yes) that the sustaining vitality, and even significant per capita growth, of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism. Globally, he says that the more robust baby-making practices of orthodox Jews and Christians, as opposed to the baby-limiting practices of liberals, create many more seriously religious people than a secular agenda can keep up with.

The growth of serious Christian belief is as firmly rooted in fertility as it is in faithful teaching and evangelism.

Fertility determines who influences the future in many important ways. He puts it bluntly, “The secular West and East Asia are aging and their share of the world population declining. This means the world is getting more religious even as people in the rich world shed their faith.”

Fertility is as important as fidelity for Christianity and Judaism’s triumph from generation to generation. Kaufmann contends, “Put high fertility and [faith] retention rates together with general population decline and you have a potent formula for change.”

It comes down to this: God laughs at the social Darwinists. Their theory is absolutely true, but just not in the way they think. Those who have the babies and raise and educate them well tend to direct the future of humanity. Serious Christians are doing this. Those redefining the faith and reality itself are not.

This why Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart proclaimed in First Things, long before the proposal of the Benedict Option, that the most “subversive and effective strategy we might undertake [to counter the culture] would be one of militant fecundity: abundant, relentless, exuberant, and defiant childbearing.” The future rests in the hands of the fertile.

What About All the Millennial Ex-Christians?

But what about our young people? We are constantly hearing that young people are “leaving the church in droves,” followed by wildly disturbing statistics. This also requires a closer look at who is actually leaving and from where. Pew reports that of young adults who left their faith, only 11 percent said they had a strong faith in childhood while 89 percent said they came from a home that had a very weak faith in belief and practice.

It’s not a news flash that kids don’t tend to hang onto what they never had in the first place. Leading sociologist of religion Christopher Smith has found through his work that most emerging adults “report little change in how religious they have been in the previous five years.” He surprisingly also found that those who do report a change say they have been more religious, not less. This certainly does not mean there is a major revival going on among young adults, but nor does it mean the sky is falling.

Add to this Rodney Stark’s warning that we should not confuse leaving the faith with attending less often. He and other scholars report that young adults begin to attend church less often in their “independent years” and have always done so for as long back as such data has been collected. It’s part of the nature of emerging adulthood. Just as sure as these young people do other things on Sunday morning, the leading sociologists of religion find they return to church when they get married, have children, and start to live a real adult life. It’s like clockwork and always has been. However, the increasing delay among young adults in entering marriage and family is likely lengthening this gap today.

More Americans Attend Church Now Than At the Founding

What is really counter-intuitive is what Stark and his colleagues at the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion found when looking at U.S. church attendance numbers going back to the days of our nation’s founding. They found that the percentage of church-attending Americans relative to overall population is more than four times greater today than it was in 1776. The number of attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.

The number of church attendees has continued to rise each and every decade over our nation’s history right up until the present day.

People are making theological statements with their feet, shuffling to certain churches because they offer what people come seeking: clear, faithful, practical teaching of the scriptures, help in living intimately with and obediently to God, and making friends with people who will challenge and encourage them in their faith. To paraphrase the great Southern novelist Flannery O’Connor, if your church isn’t going to believe and practice actual Christianity, then “to hell with it.” This is what people are saying with their choices.

Or as Eric Kaufmann asserts, “Once secularism rears its head and fundamentalism responds with a clear alternative, moderate religion strikes many as redundant. Either you believe the stuff or you don’t. If you do, it makes sense to go for the real thing, which takes a firm stand against godlessness.”

If your Christianity is reconstituted to the day’s fashion, don’t be surprised if people lose interest in it. Few are seeking 2 Percent Christianity. They want the genuine deal, and the demographics on religion of the last few decades unmistakably support the fact.