At McLean Bible, Mike Kelsey Is Reimagining the Multiethnic Church

After trials and turmoil, the first Black lead pastor at the DC-area megachurch will be commissioned with a nod to his heritage.

Weeks before his installation as the first Black lead pastor at one of the most influential churches in the Washington, DC, area, Mike Kelsey came across a dissertation written by a distant relative, theologian and social ethicist George D. Kelsey.

His great-great-great-uncle detailed the clashes around race and integration among Southern Baptists half a century ago. A professor at Morehouse College, he wrote about how racism was especially problematic within Christian communities, disrupting the neighborly love that was supposed to draw together the body of Christ.

As the younger Kelsey steps up to lead McLean Bible Church, he represents an exceptional case in today’s US evangelical landscape—perhaps the most prominent example of a Black minister rising to the top position at a historically white megachurch. But he’s also lived through a contemporary version of the faith and justice fights chronicled by his forebear.

Over Kelsey’s 16 years preaching and pastoring at McLean, he watched the nondenominational congregation and its leadership grow more diverse as DC did. Across five locations, McLean counts members from over a hundred countries now. There were answered prayers, lessons learned, and moments of unity along the way, but it didn’t come easy. His wife remembers that even just a handful of years ago, people were saying Kelsey could never lead the church.

From the start, Kelsey experienced the culture shock of the megachurch setting. He felt the sting of congregants who dismissed Barack Obama’s election to the White House, the pressure of preaching boldly amid a string of high-profile Black deaths and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the tension from internal church conflict spurred ...

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Long a Tribal Lifeline, Borneo Mission Hospital Now Needs Its Own

As foreign doctors left, funding dropped, and local healthcare improved, Bethesda weighs its future.

Growing up in the coastal city of Singkawang in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan province, Samuel Junaedi remembers that whenever he got sick, his parents would drive him to Bethesda Health Ministries, a missionary hospital in the remote village of Serukam. The 30-mile journey could take more than two hours due to the rough and bumpy road.

“But when we met with Dr. [Wendell] Geary and his team … we felt as if half of our illnesses were already cured,” the 61-year-old recalls. In a region on the island of Borneo where witch doctors have long required payments in animal sacrifices to heal the sick, the practice of Western medicine was similarly seen as transactional. Those with money, connections, and prestige would get help, while the poor and lowly were out of luck.

Yet Bethesda was different. No matter a patient’s class, ethnicity, or ability to pay, the doctors would see them. “They serve us not only with their expertise but also with their hearts. This has differentiated Bethesda from other health centers,” Junaedi said.

Today, although he has much closer options, Junaedi still drives more than an hour to get to Bethesda when he or his family members suffer from serious illnesses. “I prefer to come to Bethesda because of the professionalism, good communication, and loving care offered by the staff here,” he said.

Despite support from locals like Junaedi, the hospital may need a miracle to continue operating. Founded by the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society (CBFMS) about six decades ago, Bethesda was once a lifeline for members of the indigenous Dayak people as well as residents of major cities in West Kalimantan seeking high-quality care.

Yet things have since changed. ...

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Netflix’s ‘Leo’ Is About a Talking Lizard—and Learning from Your Elders

Adam Sandler’s new kids’ movie is an entertaining musical with an unlikely lesson in intergenerational discipleship.

A recent conversation in my Bible study turned to how we interact with people who are different from us. I assumed we’d talk about differences of ethnicity or religion, but the discussion focused on generational differences instead. The group is all recent college graduates, and we considered how we talk about boomers and millennials—but also how they talk about us as members of Gen Z.

There are tensions in those differences, but believers of older generations have also discipled and prayed for us. And soon after that conversation, I was reminded again of the deep value of those relationships in a place I least expected: Adam Sandler’s new Netflix kids’ movie, Leo.

Leo centers on a class pet lizard (voiced by Sandler) who suddenly learns he has just one year left to live. The realization forces him to consider what he wants to do with his remaining time, and his initial idea is to escape the classroom and explore the world. His bucket list includes hunting a fly, seeing the Everglades, and showing his moves to a lady lizard.

Leo’s escape plans are thwarted when the teacher decides he’ll be sent home with a different student each weekend. Soon, he finds himself less focused on flies and ladies and more interested in counseling the kids in his class, talking them through social dynamics, grief, and even early puberty.

Some of this happens in song—Leo is an entertaining musical with songs both satirical and thoughtful. The animation style varies throughout the film, distinguishing flashbacks and hypotheticals from the primary narrative. (A family member of mine was an artist on the film, but that relationship did not influence this review.) For younger viewers, the plot is easy to follow—a ...

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Chinese Christians Use Zoom for Church. The Government Is Making That Harder.

Pastors are looking to new options as technical difficulties plague their go-to video conferencing platform.

On a hot night in August, Yong Shao, a small group leader of a house church in a major city in northern China, was about to start the weekly Zoom Bible study when he started receiving a barrage of messages from his small group members with an unexpected problem: Zoom wasn’t working for them.

An IT professional, Yong went into troubleshooting mode. He suggested they update the Zoom app and switch to using cellphone data instead of Wi-Fi. In the past, these tricks worked when Zoom was down—but this time, nothing. As a backup, they decided to switch to an audio-only group call on WeChat, which Yong’s church typically avoided due to government surveillance and censorship on the app. (CT has changed all names of people in China in this article due to security concerns).

Thankfully, the group didn’t face any interruption or abrupt termination even as they mentioned sensitive religious words like Christ and eternal life. Yet the app limited the number of participants to 15 people, so some were unable to join, and the group’s worship leader was unable to share the audio of the worship songs they planned to sing.

Since that night, Yong and the small group have continued to face problems with Zoom and have no choice but to continue to use WeChat.

Other Christian ministries in China have faced similar issues using Zoom in the past three months, according to interviews CT conducted with nine Chinese church leaders and ministry workers. While the company has not made any official announcement of being kicked out of China (Zoom’s service status website states it is operational in China), users on Reddit and Zoom’s website have also complained about the outage as well. Zoom did not respond to CT’s ...

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The Pink Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

The Evangelical Theological Society has its first female president. But what about intellectual life for women in the pews?

The scandal of the evangelical mind is pink.

Or to put it less dramatically, there’s another scandal of the evangelical mind—beyond the widely recognized one, introduced by Mark Noll’s landmark book and rightly the topic of conversation for 30 years since—that has yet to receive the attention it requires. This is the scandal of the intellectual life of Christian women, and it is only becoming more acute, even alongside milestones like the election of the first female president of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS).

After all, the conversation about women in the ETS, while significant, pertains to very few women—those in academia and, therefore, in attendance at this kind of conference. But what about the vast majority of Christian women, those whose primary calling is outside the ivory tower?

It would be easy to turn this conversation into a lament over the doors closed to talented women scholars who would have made excellent academics, had that path been open for them. We can consider Dorothy Sayers as a particularly famous example. She solved her own scandal of the evangelical mind with a brilliant intellectual career outside of academia. She also found herself in a lamentable situation where she felt forced to choose this career over motherhood.

Still, her story reminds us that at any point in world history, only the tiniest fraction of Christian women could be academics. The average woman had to figure out a different way of loving God with all her mind.

What I have not seen acknowledged sufficiently to date is this important reality: Women, whether married or not, mothers or not, face a different intellectual scandal than men. Yes, God commands all of us to love ...

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Have Yourself a Bluesy/Lo-fi/Choral/Global Little Christmas

CT picks 7 new holiday albums to add to your favorites.

The biggest holiday music release of the season has been Cher’s new album, Christmas, featuring guests like Stevie Wonder (whose charming rendition of “What Christmas Means to Me” deserves a place on your Christmas playlist).

But this year’s crop of new Christmas music from Christian artists offers more than covers of the old standards. There are thoughtful folk ballads, carols sung over lo-fi beats, and choral arrangements with vibrant brass accompaniment. As you celebrate, prepare, wait, and pray this season, the latest songs from musicians on this list might make apt additions to your seasonal soundtrack.

As usual, I’m having a hard time getting my family to listen to new Christmas music. My four-year-old is only interested in Relient K’s 2007 Christmas album, Let It Snow Baby … Let It Reindeer, which I don’t mind. A pop-punk arrangement of Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus is always a spirit-lifter.

Every Christmas, Michael W. Smith

If your yearly Christmas playlist still includes tracks from Michael W. Smith’s almost-cinematic 1989 album, Christmas, you’ll be glad to know that his latest album, Every Christmas, features new music that encompasses an array of choral arrangements (“Caroling, Caroling” and “How Great Our Joy”), fully orchestrated anthems (“Here with Us,” “God with God”), and contemporary ballads (“Freeze the Frame”).

Smith has a knack for incorporating dramatic orchestral arrangements into contemporary songs, and a Christmas album is the perfect place to flex that ability. “Here with Us” begins with a brass fanfare and swelling strings that fall away as Smith sings: ...

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Should Gaza’s Christians Flee South, Evacuate East, or Stay in Church Shelters?

Sick, hungry, and weary, Palestinian Christians are urged by IDF to leave the northern strip, while outside advocates debate a West Bank escape. Temporary cease-fire offers window of opportunity to decide.

Two weeks ago, two Christian women sheltering at the Catholic church in Gaza received phone calls from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The soldiers told them—and by extension the rest of their Christian community—to flee their places of shelter within five days. They must go south, like the rest of Gaza’s civilian population.

Today is Day 15, and a four-day temporary cease-fire has now been extended.

An IDF official told CT there was no specific directive given to Gazan Christians. Those who remain will not be targeted, but their safety cannot be guaranteed.

But despite the calm of the last six days, most are choosing to remain in the two largest churches that shelter Gaza’s roughly 1,000 Christians. Some believers briefly returned to their homes to gather supplies and warmer clothes, according to CT sources. Several found their homes destroyed.

Both Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church and Holy Family Catholic Church are located in the north end of the strip, in its capital of Gaza City.

Under original terms of the truce, 50 Israeli hostages will be traded for 150 Palestinian prisoners. Israel stated a one-day extension is possible for every additional 10 hostages released—but that it will continue its military pursuit of Hamas once the truce expires.

Despite the danger—in fact, because of it—one Christian leader in regular contact with Christians in Gaza wants them to stay put.

“The body of Christ all over the world should work hard on maintaining, providing for, protecting, and helping the Christians inside the Gaza Strip,” Nashat Falamon, director of the Palestinian Bible Society, told CT prior to the truce. “I don’t think they should be encouraged to leave, ...

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How Can Older Believers Better Support Gen Z?

The next generation values open-mindedness and is highly skeptical of religious institutions. But they haven’t given up on God.

In 2021, Springtide Research Institute put out a report on the “State of Religion and Young People.” From the data, the institute identified a trend they called “faith unbundled.”

• 53% of young people said, “I agree with some, but not all, of the things my religion teaches.”
• 55% of young people said, “I don’t feel like I need to be connected to a specific religion.”
• 47% of young people said, “I feel like I could fit in with many different religions.”

These figures weren’t a surprise to me. Gen Z is at once the most racially and ethnically diverse and the least religious age cohort in American history. In 2019, the polling firm Barna Group found that, among practicing Christians, millennials “report an average (median) of four close friends or family members who practice a faith other than Christianity; most of their Boomer parents and grandparents, by comparison, have just one.” I’d presume this figure is even higher among my Christians peers, as we find ourselves in community with those of other faiths and with “nones.”

Data also shows that members of Gen Z are wary of traditional religious spaces. From the Springtide report:

• 55% of young people said, “I don’t feel like I can be my full self in a religious congregation.”
• 45% of young people said, “I don’t feel safe within religious or faith institutions.”
• 47% of young people said, “I don’t trust religion, faith, or religious leaders in those kinds of organizations.”
• Almost 50% of young people told Springtide they don’t turn to faith communities due to a lack of trust in the people, beliefs, and systems of organized religion.

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Canadian Evangelical Scholar Fired Following University Investigation

A Christian college terminated John G. Stackhouse after an independent report alleged a pattern of inappropriate remarks to students. The professor challenges the findings.

Canadian evangelical scholar and commentator John G. Stackhouse lost his job as a religious studies professor following a six-month investigation into accusations of inappropriate behavior toward students, spurred by an online campaign.

Students said Stackhouse made sexist remarks and unacceptable jokes in the classroom, according to an independent investigator commissioned by Crandall University, the Baptist college in New Brunswick where Stackhouse had taught since 2015. The investigator also said the professor’s email exchanges with a female student amounted to sexual harassment.

A statement from Stackhouse’s legal counsel to CT said he “categorically disagrees” with the report’s findings and disputes the university’s decision to publish them online, “turning a private matter into a public spectacle.”

The summary of findings, released last Wednesday, also noted unanswered questions about sexual harassment complaints against Stackhouse from before he worked at Crandall. Regent College in Vancouver, where Stackhouse was on faculty for 17 years, declined to comment, citing privacy law; a CBC news program reported Sunday that Regent and Stackhouse agreed to a settlement following a 2014 investigation.

When asked about allegations at other institutions, Stackhouse told the investigator, “I do not see how it’s in my interest to answer that question,” the report said. Stackhouse said there had been no open complaint at the time he left Regent, but the investigator concluded that, whether directly or by omission, he misled Crandall prior to his hiring about the circumstances of his departure.

Stackhouse has been a voice calling for accountability at evangelical institutions ...

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Africa’s Wall Street Quiets Christian Worship

In the commercial capital of Malawi, Pentecostal pastors and churches face fines or removal for making a joyful noise.

Loud Pentecostal worship is part of the soundtrack of Africa’s major cities. From Johannesburg, South Africa, to Lagos, Nigeria, booming preaching and boisterous worship rings through the alleys, apartments, and street corners.

But in Blantyre—the commercial capital of Malawi—church noise is conspicuously absent.

Though located in one of the poorest nations in Africa and the world, Blantyre’s central business district contains one of the largest concentrations of investment banks, hedge funds, insurance companies, and posh restaurants on the continent.

Banks like National Bank of Malawi tussle for space in the district with foreign behemoths like Standard Bank Group (Africa’s richest by assets) and the domineering skyscraper of the Reserve Bank of Malawi, the country’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve.

“It is a Wall Street of the Southern Africa region. The city is just artificially too clean, too smart, and designed for banks,” said Susan Mani, one of a few highly regulated mobile chefs who serve suited bankers and hedge fund managers rice and chicken during a two-hour lunch window.

“The thinking of the city fathers is, ‘Do you want some noisy, prayerful African church beating drums in the basement when hedge fund investors from Singapore or Dubai are meeting in the boardroom of a bank atop?’”

City officials have made it clear their answer is no. While quieter Anglican and Adventist congregations dot the streets of Blantyre, noisy African-initiated churches are unwanted. They face fines or possible removal from the district for their traditional style of worship.

“It’s costly to be caught leading a church where bass drums, loud prayers, and the ...

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The Christian Liberal Arts Tradition Can Appeal to Christians and Non-Christians Alike

Its main rivals seek truth without transcendence, or justice without redemption. And both flatten the meaning of human existence.

College and university professors in the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) are almost entirely left-leaning, liberal, or progressive, and this is especially true among faculty in the humanities and social sciences. The trend is even more pronounced in certain selective schools.

Students who attend liberal arts colleges or universities often adopt more liberal or progressive points of view as a result of their education. Th­ere are many great literary depictions of this transformation and the ensuing alienation that often results when such students return home from college. (My favorite is in Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation,” where a young woman in a doctor’s office throws her human development textbook at the unenlightened, uncouth, hometown character Ruby Turpin.)

Is this phenomenon accidentally related to the demography of the professoriate or somehow intrinsically related to the craft and content of the liberal arts themselves and the culture and atmosphere of the campus? ­

The terms “liberal” and “progressive” represent different political traditions in the West, and, when applied to the liberal arts, represent different approaches to education.

“Liberal” liberal arts education represents a modern vision of an Enlightenment-style view of objective truth pursued by rational and empirical methods. The “progressive” model, on the other hand, is often associated with postmodern visions of education, ones suspicious of privileged categories such as knowledge, truth, and understanding. It aims at dismantling systems of illegitimate power, ensuring equal outcomes, and achieving other goals connected to ...

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The Whole Family Flees to Egypt: How a Gaza Pastor’s Wife Left Church Shelter

Harrowing journey with three children and wheelchair-using grandmother reunites family with separated husband. In lieu of peace, increasingly desperate Christians also want out.

Janet Maher is out of Gaza.

The Palestinian wife of the Egyptian former pastor of Gaza Baptist Church had been sheltering in the Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church with her three children and 350 others—but not her husband. Two weeks before the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, Hanna Maher had traveled temporarily back to Egypt, where he had to remain after the war broke out.

Despite the horrors of suffering 43 days of bombardment by herself, as CT reported, the family separation is the reason why Janet and her children are now safely in Egypt, reunited with Hanna. But first they had to undergo a harrowing journey that began with tearful goodbyes to a hallowed community.

“I spent weeks with these people and am broken by the experience,” Janet said. “But everyone pleaded: If you get out, tell the world about our situation.”

The death toll in Gaza exceeds 11,000, including more than 5,000 children, according to statistics released by the ministry of health in the Hamas-run enclave and last updated November 10. But save for the shrapnel and scattered remains of human carcasses flying over the walls of the church compound, little of this was known to the Christians inside.

With no television, internet, and only intermittent connection to the cell phone network, Janet and her fellow sheltering Gazans knew only the daily reality of war. Most of the day was spent trying to figure out how to procure food, with the young men tasked with trips outside to the local market.

Most often, the day would begin with bombing—sending the people scurrying away from windows and doors to the center of the room. Three times a week, the priest would lead morning prayers. Frequently, they would gather for ...

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Christmas Celebrations Canceled in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Jordan

Gutted by Gaza, Holy Land Christians exchange holiday cheer for a hallowed Christmas Eve in solidarity with suffering neighbors.

There will be no Christmas lights in Bethlehem this year.

In solidarity with the suffering in Gaza due to the Israel-Hamas war, last week Christian leaders and municipal authorities in the West Bank city decided to cancel all public festivities. For the first time since modern celebrations began, the birthplace of Jesus will not decorate the Manger Square tree.

It is “not appropriate,” stated local authorities.

But the Bethlehem decision is only the most recent. One week earlier, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem asked Christians in the Holy Land to refrain from “unnecessarily festive” Christmas activities. Catholic churches in Galilee requested the same, as did the Council of Local Evangelical Churches in the Holy Land.

“Due to the thousands killed—and in prayer for peace,” said its president, pastor Munir Kakish, “we will only hold traditional services and devotionals on the meaning of Christmas.”

The initiative, however, came first from Jordan, home to the world’s largest concentration of Palestinian refugees—many of whom have become citizens. On November 2, the Jordan Council of Church Leaders (JCCL) announced the cancellation of Christmas celebrations.

Christmas is a public holiday in the Muslim-majority nation, with many city squares and shopping malls feted with seasonal decorations. But congregations throughout the country will now forgo the traditional festivities of public tree lighting, Christmas markets, scout parades, and distribution of gifts to children.

Religious services in all locations will continue.

“In our homes we can celebrate, but in our hearts we are suffering,” said Ibrahim Dabbour, JCCL general secretary and ...

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Metal-Detecting Brits Unearth Medieval Church Artifacts

Archaeologists are using over a million amateur finds to study pilgrimage sites, the Black Death, and the Protestant Reformation.

Much has been written about religious life in the medieval era, but thanks to the British fancy for metal detectors, archaeologists are hopeful about gauging just how much more has gone unwritten.

Earlier this month, the University of Reading announced that it has been awarded a million pounds ($1,245,330) by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council to study the role of religion in medieval life, for which the university will employ a unique source of data: the findings of hobby metal detector users that have been logged in the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme.

The museum’s scheme was founded more than 20 years ago, in part to quell archaeologists’ fears that hobby metal detector users were disturbing the historical record.

“At the time, there was this boom in metal detecting, with lots of archaeological findings being discovered, and not really any mechanism to record them at all,” Michael Lewis, the scheme’s director, told Religion News Service. “So the Portable Antiquities Scheme was set up to provide a mechanism, on a voluntary basis, to record all the other sorts of discoveries that have been found.”

Since then, metal-detecting hobbyists in Britain have had more than a few minutes of fame thanks to a BBC show, Detectorists, that debuted in 2014. Detectorists wasn’t their only time in the limelight; three shows about the hobby specifically in Britain made it onto Detect History’s list of its 10 “Best Metal Detecting TV Shows.”

Though archeologists once worried that the fad would hamper their work, they are now seeing it as another way to further understand our past.

“The reason that we’re interested in this is that sources ...

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Chapter 9: Beauty from Ashes

Stories from the pandemic remind us that hope abounds even in the most difficult circumstances.

Without question, the pandemic was one of the most difficult seasons the modern church has ever faced. Even though COVID-19 brought an immeasurable amount of pain, grief, and anxiety to churches and pastors, there was beauty to be found. In the face of all that the church endured, the theme of beauty from ashes remained constant throughout our interviews with pastors and leaders. It was a tangible reminder that for people of faith, there is always hope, no matter the circumstances.

Across focus groups, interviews, community case studies, and survey responses, pastors pointed to a number of unexpected blessings that would not have occurred had they not endured the adversity of the pandemic. In addition to cultivating a new unity in many local congregations, the pandemic also revealed the character of many churches, either highlighting a beauty that is easily taken for granted or providing the refining fire that transformed their congregation into a more Christlike image. For some, the pandemic pause allowed for breathing room and for the Holy Spirit to take control.

Based on chapter 9 of the report, in this episode host Aaron Hill (editor of ChurchSalary) sits down with two researchers from the Arbor Research Group, Ebonie Davis and Jon Swanson, to talk about the theme of “beauty from ashes.” This episode also features an interview with two amazing pastors, Daniel Shmitz and Demetries Edwards, located in Oakland, California, who started a new partnership during the pandemic in order to reach and bring healing to their community.

Hosted by Aaron Hill, editor of ChurchSalary

“COVID and the Church” is produced in conjunction with the Arbor Research Group and funded by the Lilly Endowment Inc. through a grant ...

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I’ve Been a Prosperity Gospel Parent

As a young mom, I tried to do everything right. The longer I parent, the less I seek “success” and the more I rely on God’s grace.

We did everything right. As Christian parents, we scan the checklists of steps to bring up a child in the Lord. We teach them right from wrong. We tell them about Jesus. We bring them to Sunday School. We make it to church.

Of course, none of us parent perfectly. But watching a child go through deep spiritual struggles can be disorienting when we’ve done everything in our power to prevent it—often with a fervor fueled by our own humbling spiritual history. We’ve learned painful lessons with God, and we want to keep our children from having to learn them too.

Except that’s not how it works. We can’t keep our children from struggling—and if we try, we risk instead keeping them from the full truth and beauty of the gospel.

I grew up in what’s often dubbed a “broken home”—though I would also call it happy. My mom worked hard, and my grandparents lived with us for some of those years. Still, with that background, when my husband and I first started having kids, we set out to do it perfectly, as many new parents do.

With a confidence on the scale of first-year seminary students, we proof-texted all the verses in the Bible about parenting, order, and discipline, and we plugged it into an equation for perfect parenting. Our kids were going to be awesome because we were going to be awesome parents. We were parenting by the Book.

There’s nothing like the arrogance of the young and inexperienced—though, in hindsight, our problem was more than youth and pride. We had taken a prosperity gospel view of family life, moving principles of “health and wealth” into the process of parenting. More than money or physical wellness, family was ...

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First Woman Steps into Leadership of Evangelical Theological Society

Wheaton professor Karen Jobes becomes president a decade after a study found “hostile and unwelcoming” atmosphere.

The Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) has instated its first female president in 75 years. Karen Jobes, emeritus professor of New Testament Greek and Greek exegesis at Wheaton College, will lead the professional society of evangelical Bible scholars and theologians in 2024.

Her election marks a significant step for an association that has faced criticism over the years for the marginalization of women. In 2014 a qualitative study of women’s experiences at ETS gatherings, commissioned by Christians for Biblical Equality, found “an atmosphere that feels hostile and unwelcoming.”

Jobes, who joined in 1989, recalled uncomfortable experiences of her own at ETS.

“My earliest recollections of coming to ETS is that there were very, very few women. And most of the men who attended would ask, ‘Well, whose wife are you?’” Jobes told CT at ETS’s annual gathering, held this year in San Antonio. “A lot has happened in the church and in our world since the 1980s.”

Other women share similar stories.

“In some sessions, I was the only woman attending. Very few women presented papers,” said Carmen Joy Imes, an Old Testament professor at Biola University. “Men would ask me, ‘Where does your husband teach?’ assuming that I was there as a spouse rather than as a scholar.”

This year’s conference, held in San Antonio in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature, saw some of the highest levels of women’s participation in the society’s history.

Two of the three plenary speakers were female, which has happened only once before at ETS. University of Notre Dame professor Abigale ...

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What Dallas Pastors Preached After JFK’s Assassination

Sixty years later, their sermons calling for change and greater civility still resonate.

Less than a year before the US presidential election, pastors took to their pulpits to decry a culture of hate, extremism, and vile politics.

“Much of the hate and discord that has been poisoning our nation has been preached in the name of Christ and the church,” Charles V. Denman declared.

In a different sanctuary, William Dickinson proclaimed, “Hate knows no political loyalty and is as deadly and as vicious in the heart and minds of liberals and those to the far right as to the far left alike.”

Those sermons were delivered not during the current race for the White House—but in the aftermath of the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

To mark the 60th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, a leading scholar on faith and politics sees lessons in the decades-old messages for Americans today.

“One overarching theme emerges again and again: a call for civility, a call for condemnation of extremism and a call to end the divisions and polarizations … that they think provided the climate in which this assassination could occur,” said Matthew Wilson, director of Southern Methodist University’s Center for Faith and Learning. “That is really striking because so much of what they say seems to apply to our current moment.”

Library archives at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology include sermons preached to overflowing crowds on November 24, 1964—the Sunday after the shooting.

The transcripts, mostly from Methodist churches, are in the papers of the late William C. Martin, a Methodist bishop and president of the National Council of Churches.

“He reached out to Dallas clergy … asking for copies of the sermons preached after the assassination,” ...

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Pharaoh Did You Know?

How the shepherds upended Egyptian power.

Those familiar with the Bible know how to imagine Pharaoh of Exodus: heart-hardened as he heard from Moses and Aaron, “Let my people go.” However, we don’t often think about how some words spoken centuries later may have been even more repulsive to him:

There were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them. (Luke 2:8–9, ESV throughout)

Maybe what we need to understand about the Christmas story is how it would have rattled the pyramids.

The Joseph we think about this time of year is Joseph of Nazareth, the adoptive father of our Lord Jesus. But a much earlier Joseph lingers in the background of the familiar scene in Luke 2. In Genesis 46, this Joseph—a key figure in Pharaoh’s court—brought his long-lost, now-found family to Egypt to save them from famine. Joseph told them,

When Pharaoh calls you and says, “What is your occupation?” you shall say, “Your servants have been keepers of livestock from our youth even until now, both we and our fathers,” in order that you may dwell in the land of Goshen. (vv. 33–34)

Joseph seemed to be coaching them to reassure Pharaoh that they were coming not to take over, but merely to carry out their occupations without disrupting Egyptian life. The Bible tells us why: “Every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians” (v. 34).

This lowly occupation that was an abomination to the Egyptians becomes a recurring theme in the biblical story. Later, Moses (who, like Joseph, had been an insider in Pharaoh’s court) fled for his life and, before his encounter with God in the burning bush, spent extended time ...

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Flashes of Glory—and Brutality

A conversation with artist Kieran Dodds and academic Christian Gonzalez Ho on their new exhibit, ancient pilgrimage sites, and the church of the future.

This interview is a special collaboration with Ekstasis, CT’s imaginative NextGen project, and originally appeared in the Ecstatic Newsletter, an extension of Ekstasis on Substack. Together, we’re building a digital cathedral that offers space to ponder and lift our eyes to Christ in wonder.

As you scroll through this story, you are embarking on a form of pilgrimage.

We tap incessantly at our phones for the same reason our forebears traveled repeatedly to the Holy Land, says art historian Christian Gonzalez Ho: to commune with something greater than ourselves, to express a “longing to go to another place, or to have another place reach [us].”

Gonzalez Ho and photographer Kieran Dodds are the creators of a new exhibit, “Heading Home: Glimpses of New Jerusalem,” running this fall and winter at the Ahmanson Gallery in Irvine, California. Featuring Dodds’s photographs of pilgrimage sites on the route between London and Jerusalem, placed in an interactive gallery space designed by Gonzalez Ho, “Heading Home” asks us to revisit the ancient practice of pilgrimage and consider its relationship with contemporary Christianity.

Images of stops along the pilgrimage route—the Florence Duomo, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—are paired with sound installations and physical structures that reinterpret the experience of interacting with each site. Christianity Today spoke with Dodds and Gonzalez Ho about the possibilities and challenges of interpreting these sites for modern believers.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Let’s start with the origins of this exhibit. Why did you two choose to focus on this topic for this moment?

Kieran Dodds: I was invited on this ...

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Loaves and Casserole Dishes: Will Church Cookbooks Survive?

The spiral-bound tomes guarding the secrets of the best sugar cookies, sheet cake, and seven-layer salad are disappearing–but not completely.

Did someone say Jell-O salad?

This is the time of year when families pull out their stained recipes to make crowd-pleasing casseroles, cakes, and cookies. Some of those favorite recipes come from church cookbooks, compiled by women over the decades since the 19th century.

These spiral-bound collections of recipes have been a staple in church culture, documenting the tastes and traditions of their communities over the years. But now, as cookbook enthusiasts age, the victual volumes are disappearing.

Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston used to print cookbooks filled with recipes for sheet cakes and soups, and members would make the dishes in a potluck to share. But it’s been eight or nine years since their last edition.

“The people who were dedicated to the project are no longer with us, and no one has thought of doing another cookbook,” said Joy Cryer, a church librarian at Tallowood.

It only takes one enthusiastic person in a church to compile recipes from members, but the internet has changed the way people cook and gather recipes. And Americans of all socioeconomic statuses generally cook less than they used to.

Though the church cookbook tradition has declined, it might be too early to declare it over. CT surveyed 22 church librarians, and more than a third said they knew of churches that were still printing cookbooks.

In Oshkosh, Wisconsin, 84-year-old Mona Schultz attends Plymouth Church, a nondenominational church of about 250. She wasn’t sure if anyone cooked much anymore, or if there would be interest in doing a church cookbook. She asked a young women’s Bible study at her church what they thought of the idea.

“I’m 84, I’m out of touch,” said Schultz, who has been going ...

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As Philippines’ Drug War Rolls On, Christians Continue Their Work

Duterte tried a hardline policy. Marcos is prioritizing rehab. Christians point to Jesus.

While running for office last year, Philippines president Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. promised to seek a new path to curb illegal drugs: Catch the “big fish” and rehabilitate drug users.

“Let’s educate the younger ones,” Marcos said in a Taglish interview. “And those who are already involved [or already addicted], we should treat them. … We’re trying to formulate … the best way for the rehabilitation.”

It’s a starkly different approach from his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who outraged Filipinos and the international community with his brutal war on drugs, giving police blanket authority to kill anyone found using or dealing drugs.

During Duterte’s six-year presidential term, government data reported around 6,000 drug-related killings. Human rights groups, however, peg the number much higher, estimating that up to 30,000 people were killed.

“I will never, never apologize for the deaths,” Duterte said in January 2022. “Kill me, jail me, I will never apologize.”

Since taking office, Marcos has established more than 100 community-based drug rehab centers that provide drug users with temporary shelter and reintegrate them into society. Today there are nearly 500 of these centers, called Balay Silangan Reformation Centers, in the Philippines.

However, during the first year of Marcos’s presidency, the number of drug-related killings actually increased from the last year of Duterte’s term, according to a recent report by the Dahas Project at the University of the Philippines’ Third World Studies Center. They counted 342 killings from Marcos’s inauguration in July 2022 until June 2023, 40 more ...

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American Christians and the Anti-American Temptation

Christians can love America—with all of its flaws and failures—precisely because we don’t expect it to be the kingdom of God.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

If any political idea in American life has proven itself over the past several years, I can’t think of a better candidate than the “horseshoe theory”—the notion that, at their extremes, Left and Right bend toward each other, sometimes as to be almost indistinguishable.

One of the ways we can see this is in a bleak and darkening view of the United States of America. The question is not so much whether extremists of the Right or Left seem to hate America these days as much as it is the question of why.

Over 15 years ago, then-candidate for president Barack Obama’s campaign was rocked by a videotape of sermons from Obama’s pastor, Chicago preacher Jeremiah Wright, in which Wright spoke of the September 11 attacks in language reminiscent of that of Malcolm X after the John F. Kennedy assassination, as “chickens coming home to roost.”

Wright denounced the idea of “God bless America,” replacing it with instead a call of “God damn America.” The controversy proved to have no staying power—not because most Americans would agree with Wright but because almost no one really believed that Obama himself held to such views. In fact, Obama repudiated his pastor and left the church.

Wright’s bleak view of America was not unusual for a specific strand of the further reaches of the American Left, at least since the Vietnam era. Counter-culture protesters, after all, once burned American flags and referred to the country as “Amerika,” equating the United States with an imperialist dictatorship.

In more recent years, some initiatives such as the 1619 Project have gone beyond ...

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Displaced from Israeli Border, Lebanese Presbyterians Wrestle with Whom to Blame

As limited clashes with Hezbollah threaten to expand Israel’s war against Hamas, local evangelicals suffer a battle not of their making.

Rabih Taleb looked out from the pulpit at the 30 nervous believers gathered at the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, located less than one mile from northwest Israel. One day earlier, Hamas terrorists had killed 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis 125 miles south on the Gaza border.

That Sunday morning, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia designated as a terrorist entity by the United States government, fired rockets into the disputed Sheba Farms enclave occupied by Israel but claimed by Lebanon. And as Israel began its massive bombing campaign against Hamas in Gaza, it also shelled Hezbollah positions 35 miles east of Alma al-Shaab.

A few families immediately fled, including the elder who leads worship, forcing the hymns into a cappella. The rest of the congregation pressed Taleb for a shortened service, all eager to return home and prepare for the worst. But the sermon topic—the second in a series on distinctives of Reformed faith—appeared divinely appointed. Little adjustment was needed to discuss original sin, suffering, and pain.

“They ask me: Why are we always facing these difficulties?” Taleb said. “We are believers. Why is there always war, war, war?”

Sources said this was their seventh displacement in the last 50 years.

Alma al-Shaab, one of about a dozen entirely Christian villages near the Israeli border, has a year-round population of about 700 people, Taleb said. Today only about 20 remain, including the Maronite Catholic priest who conducts services—now welcoming all sects—when there are lulls in the fighting.

Taleb and his family left Alma al-Shaab on October 9 when a bomb fell in a field only a three-minute drive from his church, ...

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Skeptical of Politicians and Parties, Gen Z Isn’t Pumped for the 2024 Race

But on Christian campuses, first-time voters are still trying to find their own ways to engage the issues.

Gen Z Christians are creating their own playbook when it comes to the intersection of faith and politics.

Whether they’re growing more cynical of partisan politics or finding hope in the power of political change, this generation sees itself branching out beyond the issues that have long driven the Christian Right.

Younger believers are quicker to name creation care, prison reform, and immigration as the political causes most influenced by their faith, rather than abortion or sexuality. But even those who seek to get involved in politics don’t align as closely with the two major parties in the US and aren’t excited at the prospects for 2024.

At Calvin University, Micah J. Watson has noticed a shift amongst college students.

“I do think there has been a weariness among Gen Z in some of the ways their parents and grandparents did politics in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s,” said Watson, associate professor and director of the politics, philosophy, and economics program. “Some of the culture war practices have been seen as problematic.”

For young Christians who have the chance to vote in their first presidential election next year, the milestone comes with trepidation, knowing the political polarization that surrounded the races in 2016 and 2020.

“Having gone through COVID and Trump and Biden elections, students have seen parents’ relationships going down the tube,” Watson said, “and there’s a fear of expressing one’s views and being canceled.”

Growing up, Rachel Smith remembers her mother adorning the family car with political bumper stickers to reflect both their party affiliation and their Christian values. But Smith, ...

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Christians Can’t Fix the Israel-Hamas War

Jesus could end this crisis. His followers almost certainly can’t.

The way to resolve the Israel-Hamas war is very simple, journalist Matt Yglesias recently explained. We could do it in just five steps:

It’s great, right? I love it! Only—well, that third step seems a little tricky.

And that’s the point, as Yglesias wrote at greater length on Substack. Obviously, the five-step plan is a joke. But it gets at something that so much commentary on this subject seems to miss—certainly in America, and probably elsewhere—which is that Israeli political leaders (to say nothing of the murderers in Hamas) are not ignorant of what we outside observers believe is the right and prudent way forward.

“They just disagree,” Yglesias notes, and they are unlikely to stop disagreeing, and we are unlikely to shift their thinking much, if at all. By “we,” I partly mean the US government, which, for all its power, is objectively limited in its capacity to shift the behavior of combatants who believe, quite rightly, they are in an existential fight. But I also mean you and me specifically—as well as our fellow Christians in America and around the world.

We cannot fix this crisis, no matter how faithful, factual, and fervent we are.

This bears saying, I think, for two reasons. One is our modern habit of “awareness,” as in, I am posting this article on Facebook because I want to raise awareness.

On many issues of great import, the reality is most of us can do very little to effect significant change. Sometimes we can give money to a relevant cause. Always we can pray (1 Thess. 5:17) and take care we do not sin in our hearts or our speech as we react to the news (Matt. 5:21–30). ...

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Chinese House Churches Find Hope for Gospel Growth Amid Post-Pandemic Turmoil

As China deals with economic woes, religious restrictions, and mass exodus, ministries see an opportunity.

Christians in China have had a difficult several years. The Chinese government kicked missionaries out of the country, tightened restrictions on religion, and cut off access to the world with its aggressive “zero COVID” policies. After a growing discontentment prompted unprecedented protests last year, the government finally dropped its pandemic restrictions.

Solomon Li, an overseas ministry leader who has served the Chinese church for the past 30 years, finally had a chance to return to China this year for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020. (Li’s name has been changed due to security risks.)

He met with 150 pastors within one urban house church network and shared with CT about the new challenges and opportunities that Christians face in this post-pandemic era. The interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.

China’s “zero COVID” policy, which aimed to keep cases as close to zero as possible with strict lockdowns and mass testing, only ended last December. How did the pandemic impact the house church leaders that you met with?

In general, it became more difficult for them to hold Sunday services, but many of them still tried to meet in person as much as they could. It also made things more difficult for fellowships and house visitations. People feared that they were spreading germs by gathering together. These were some really tough years.

One reason these churches wanted to continue meeting offline is that they were concerned about intentional ecclesiology: What is the doctrine of the church? Can online or Zoom services be acceptable in the long term? Their answer, based on the Bible, was no. Online church is the exception to the rule. If we can go out shopping, then ...

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The Dangers of a Psychedelic Gospel

Psychotropic drugs are often marketed as a gateway to spiritual encounters. But what are the risks to believers?

We have now had years of headlines talking about new research into using psychedelic drugs for therapy and, along with it, an increase in spiritual seekers.

Studies about the use of psychedelic drugs for therapy have been growing for years, with increased institutional involvement from universities, Congress, and the US Department of Defense to name just a few.

Outside of clinical trials, psychedelic use among young adults has nearly tripled in the past decade. Religious leaders—including hospital chaplains and religious psychotherapists—are also exploring the use of these drugs, as recently reported by NPR and Esquire. Ordained clergy are even conducting underground retreats that blend psychedelics with Christian worship with an emphasis on “healing.”

While I believe there are likely legitimate-use cases for psychedelic therapy that will bear out in time, I want to raise awareness of the many psychological risks of psychedelics that are often underemphasized in the research. And as a pastor, I feel an urgency to inform Christians of the serious spiritual risks of psychedelics—including the idolatry of spiritual experience.

I’m not speaking about this as an outsider. More than a decade ago, psychedelic experiences felt more real to me as a young ex-Christian than God did. For years, I was a recreational psychedelics user who became involved in the movement to medicalize psychedelics, also working for their use in non-Christian religious contexts. I promoted the healing potential of psychedelics, but I was even more interested in their spiritual power.

Over time, however, I grew deeply disenchanted and ultimately left the movement behind.

The psychedelic industry is plagued with many of the same ...

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The Imprudence of ‘Dump Them’

Online pop psychology has a simple solution to every relationship problem. Love and prudence call us to something messier—and better.

Everyone on social media is asserting their boundaries. Everyone is cutting toxicity out of their life. Everyone is prioritizing their own healing journey and giving up on one-sided relationships. Everyone is disarming the narcissist, protecting their space, deleting that number, going no-contact. Or at least, it feels that way.

There is a mode of self-help, overwhelmingly generated and reinforced online, that I call the “dump them” school of thought. It solves every problem with an elegant, unified simplicity of which physicists can only dream: Just dump them. Whether it’s your mother failing to respect your child-rearing rules, your boyfriend who said something hurtful, or your friend who flaked on you twice in a row, you know what you need to do: Dump them. Cut them off.

“Dump them” conversations online are rarely about the church, but the church—universal, if not always a specific local congregation—is a highly dump-able target. The universal church is filled with sinners, and particular churches bring otherwise disparate people together in the work of governing a community and discussing profoundly sensitive and important topics; they often comprise a complex emotional landscape where quotidian frustrations mingle with histories of power abuses (or worse). It would be surprising if the “dump them” school of emotional hygiene had not made its way to the church.

It’s not difficult to see why this school of advice has gained traction. For one thing, it’s extremely well-suited to the internet, where we encounter the interpersonal problems of others at a far remove. Without being deeply embedded in the real-life context of the problem ...

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God’s Astonishing Announcement Scheme

A different view of a glorious arrival

The birth of Christ astonishes us.

And not only the birth itself but the way in which God decided to present his Son’s birth to the world. With no big-budget marketing plan, social media campaign, or paid TV spots during the Super Bowl, the Lord chose an unsuspecting group of shepherds to introduce good news of great joy that will be for all people. Imagine how overwhelmed these poor shepherds must have been as a multitude of otherworldly angels appeared in the dark of night, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (ESV). We are caught in the throes of wonder when we consider the scale of this spectacle that God arranged for so few people so lacking in cultural influence.

But then we remember Mary, Joseph, a manger, and some animals. A scene that would make most parents shudder if they had to contemplate a birth this simple and obscure. As we grasp to envision these things, we remember that God’s idea of his Son’s divine childbirth did not include the extravagance and excess that we insist on to illustrate influence and importance.

In God’s transcendent economy, lowliness is how he wants us to understand godliness, to understand his Son. As Philippians describes, “Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (2:6–7, ESV).

God’s astonishing announcement scheme will not likely be featured in leadership books, strategic seminars, or influencer videos for how to boost your brand, gain more followers, and advance your platform. God does something far more bewildering. He sanctifies our comprehension and unravels our ...

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Nashville Pastor Scott Sauls Resigns After Apologizing for Harsh Leadership

Sauls spent a decade leading Christ Presbyterian Church and had been on leave since May.

Scott Sauls, an influential pastor and author, has resigned from the Nashville megachurch he had led for the past decade.

Members of Christ Presbyterian Church (CPC) voted to accept Sauls’s resignation during a congregational meeting on Sunday night.

Sauls had been on an indefinite leave of absence since May after apologizing for an unhealthy leadership style. A group of church leaders known as the session had asked the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation to accept Sauls’s resignation.

In addressing the congregation, Sauls apologized to those he had hurt and said that he and his family would continue to serve Jesus.

“We had hoped to continue forward and help with CPC,” Sauls told the congregation during the meeting, according to The Tennessean, which first reported the news of Sauls’s resignation. “But we now believe the most merciful thing to do is step aside so the church can seek new leadership and we can seek the Lord’s will for whatever comes next as well.”

The church declined to comment on news of Sauls’s resignation.

Sauls’s tenure at the church began with great promise and was marked by growth. A protege of the late Tim Keller, Sauls promoted a Christianity marked by kindness and grace, rather than culture war politics, in books like A Gentle Answer: Our “Secret Weapon” in an Age of Us Against Them, Befriend, and Irresistible Faith.

Sauls admitted earlier this year that he had been harsh with church staff and used the power of the pulpit as a weapon against those who disagreed with him.

“I verbalized insensitive and verbal criticism of others’ work,” he said in an apology to the congregation earlier this year. “I’ve ...

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Keeping—and Learning—the Peace

An American Christian’s view of US-Taiwan-China relations and what to do in the event of war.

This article is published in collaboration with Campus, a Taiwanese evangelical magazine.

In the summer of 2021, American public opinion reached a new milestone: Just over half the country, per a survey by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, supported sending US troops to defend Taiwan if China were to invade.

Since then, as cross-strait tensions have heightened and the US began supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression, American opinion has wavered. Though increasingly likely to say Taiwan-China tensions are a very serious problem for the United States, Americans are not of one mind on what our country’s policies toward Taiwan and China ought to be.

Our disagreements on this subject don’t follow clear partisan or religious patterns. Though Democrats and Republicans are strongly polarized on many issues, when it comes to Taiwan, polling shows mixed views across partisan lines.

Americans increasingly view China as an enemy and are increasingly worried Beijing will choose to invade. But ambiguity isn’t just an official US strategy; our national thinking on this subject really is ambiguous, and American Christians generally and evangelicals specifically aren’t distinct from our compatriots here.

What if China attacks Taiwan? What the United States should or would do is a truly open question in American politics, and what Taiwanese Christians should do is an even more complex question.

The last two years of escalation in tension in US-Taiwan-China relations are worrisome—most of all in those cases where such escalation could have been avoided. Careless rhetoric from US president Joe Biden and provocative but ultimately unnecessary US political visits have ...

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As Erdoğan Goads on Gaza, Turkish Christians Prefer Peace

Amid centenary of the secular republic, Erdoğan inaugurates a significant new church as local believers navigate Muslim society’s stance on Palestine.

Defending Hamas, Turkish president Recep Erdoğan upstaged his own nation.

One day prior to last month’s 100th anniversary of the modern state of Turkey (now formally called Türkiye), an estimated 1.5 million people gathered for a pro-Palestinian rally October 28 and heard their Islamist-leaning leader denounce Israel as a “war criminal.”

“Hamas is not a terror organization,” Erdoğan had previously stated October 25. “It is an organization of liberation, of mujahedeen, who fight to protect their land and citizens.”

Observers noted that immediately after the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas that killed 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis and took 240 hostage, Erdoğan had struck a cautious tone. Reports circulated—denied by Ankara—that Turkish officials quietly asked Hamas leaders to depart the EU candidate country. And in advance of the rally, the president reiterated that he could never excuse acts that target civilians.

Then something changed.

Despite efforts over the past year to heal a diplomatic rift with Israel, Erdoğan now questioned its existence.

“What was Gaza and Palestine in 1947, what is it today?” he asked rhetorically, in reference to the establishment of Israeli statehood in 1948. “Israel, how did you get here? How did you get in? You are an invader.”

And widening his scope, the head of the NATO-member nation impinged his allies in religious terms, calling the Gaza attack “revenge” for the 15th century fall of Constantinople.

“Oh, West, I cry out to you, do you want to start your crusade against the Crescent again?” Erdoğan asked. “If you are making such efforts, know that this nation is not dead.”

The ...

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It’s Tempting to Rely on the IDF. But My Hope Is Messiah Yeshua.

Amid chaos in Israel, I will trust in the Lord.

What’s the time? The room was dark, but I was awake. I reached over to my phone and saw that it was too early. It was Saturday, October 7, a little before 7 a.m., and I was hoping to sleep in.

But as I looked at my phone, I noticed an unusual number of messages waiting to be read on WhatsApp and iMessage. As I began reading of what was happening in Israel, my stomach dropped and my eyes teared.

In a shocking and devastating turn of events, the terrorist group Hamas had launched a highly coordinated attack on Israel—what the world now calls Israel’s 9/11, a surprise strike by more than 3,000 rockets as well as by ground forces from the land and sea. In less than 24 hours, this evil attack left hundreds dead and injured, mostly Israeli civilians, but also some tourists and visitors. Scores more were kidnapped by Hamas.

It would be two weeks before my wife and I would be able to travel to Israel to be with our family, friends, and staff at Jews for Jesus, where I am the chief operating officer, during these unimaginably difficult days.

Stepping off the plane, we sensed a deep sadness and grief. You can feel it in the air and see it on people’s faces. Tel Aviv’s bustling and energetic nightlife is gone. Instead, there are constant memorials and gatherings to mourn. You must stay near known, safe locations so you can take shelter if a siren sounds.

Now, a month later, the numbers have tragically increased: more than 8,500 rockets have been fired from Gaza, more than 1,400 innocent Israelis have been murdered and over 4,500 injured, and more than 240 hostages are being held in Gaza. And, since arriving in Israel, I have found time to reflect on the reality of this war.

It is impossible ...

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I Do Belong; Help My Unbelonging

Making disciples in a secular age requires retrieving an old catechetical pattern: belonging, believing, behaving.

Christians, wrote Tertullian in the third century, “are made, not born.”

The African church father, in chapter 18 of his Apology, was reflecting on the Great Commission of the risen Christ, who challenged his followers to “make disciples” by “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything [he had] commanded” (Matt. 28:19–20).

The challenge of making Christians today is the same as it was in the third century. As a pastor once shared with me about his congregation’s ministry, “We are doing a pretty good job of evangelizing and baptizing people, but we are falling short in our obligation for teaching them to obey everything that the Lord commanded.”

The task of teaching everything Jesus commanded is not a matter of conveying a checklist of beliefs and behaviors necessary to belong to the church. Christian formation has always presupposed that believing, behaving, and belonging constitute a holistic approach to disciple-making. But over time, Christian catechetical practice settled into a pattern that prioritized believing as primary, while behaving and especially belonging were emphasized less.

Basic catechetical instruction in this traditional pattern started by learning the creeds and the basic teaching of Scripture, followed by baptism and reception into the membership of the church, followed by participating in the worship and practices of the faith. The content of catechesis in this traditional pattern varied depending on one’s particular denominational doctrine, but for centuries the order was consistent across Western Christianity.

If you were a Protestant in North ...

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Nepal Earthquake Destroys Rural Churches, with Believers Pleading for Immediate Relief

More than 300 Christian families have been affected, says a local pastor.

Nepali Christians are mourning the loss of many of their own after a series of devastating earthquakes in early November.

On Friday, November 3, a 5.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the mountainous Nepali villages of Jajarkot and Rukum West just before midnight, burying people under layers of rubble as they slept. A subsequent earthquake occurred on Monday, November 6, this time measuring 5.2 magnitude.

Many rural churches planted in the districts of West Rukum, Jajarkot, and Kalikot were “flattened,” Hanok Tamang, chairman of the National Churches Fellowship of Nepal, told CT. “It is true [that] many pastors, leaders, and Christians have died.”

Nepal’s current population is 31 million and is divided into seven states and 77 districts. The earthquake-hit areas are located in the midwestern region of the country.

The overall estimated death toll is more than 150 people so far, including more than 80 children, according to the non-governmental organization Save The Children. Villagers have taken to sleeping outdoors in freezing conditions for fear of continuing aftershocks, but also because their homes have been destroyed.

The 2023 earthquakes are the “deadliest” occurrence since the devastating 2015 quake near the city of Kathmandu when believers were attending church on a Saturday, as Sunday is a work day. “Many Christians were buried while they were worshiping on Sabbath and died,” the president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Nepal, Umesh Pokharel, told Adventist Review at the time.

Nepal’s Christians make up between 1 to 3 percent of the population, and Protestants were disproportionately affected in the 2015 disaster, said one Catholic leader.

Preliminary reports ...

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A Leader of India’s ‘Untouchables’ Considered Christianity and Found It Wanting

Why B.R. Ambedkar, a Dalit himself, ultimately embraced Buddhism as the faith best for him and his community.

Last month marked the 67th anniversary of India’s most famous Dalit’s conversion to Buddhism.

“Though I was born a Hindu untouchable, I shall not die as a Hindu,” wrote Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, who devoted his life to abolishing the caste system and who embraced his new faith just two months before his death in 1956.

The Dalit community cherished the activist and politician so much that half a million of his followers followed him to Buddhism. But Ambedkar was not always certain he would leave Hinduism for this other Eastern faith and he spent years engaging with the Bible and Christian leaders. A friend who served as a Methodist bishop later said that Ambedkar had twice asked to be baptized, and when in Delhi, he attended an Anglican church and was friends with its vicar.

“I have had a great impact on my mind of two great personalities, Buddha and Christ,” he said at a Christian gathering in 1938. “I want a religion which could teach us to practice equality, fraternity, and liberty.” But though he admired Jesus, Ambedkar was disappointed by the blind spots church leaders appeared to have toward his community and ultimately found numerous tenants of Buddhism that spoke to the Dalit condition.

Today, while many Dalits have rejected Hinduism for Christianity, millions more have converted to Buddhism. On April 14 of this year, 50,000 Dalits and individuals belonging to tribal communities participated in a Buddhist mass conversion ceremony on Ambedkar’s 132nd birthday.

Christians seeking to reach those in this community today would do well to remember Ambedkar’s praise of Buddhism—and his critiques of the church. Many of these feel sadly still true today.

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Pray for the Persecuted Church. But First Learn About It.

Amid rising persecution to Christians in the world, here are some stories that can guide your intercessions.

Christians around the world are praying for their 360 million brothers and sisters in Christ who live in countries with high levels of persecution and discrimination, as part of the International Days of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, which fall on Sundays November 5 and 12.

One in 7 Christians worldwide—including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 15 in Latin America—suffer greatly for their faith, according to the 2023 World Watch List (WWL). That’s up from 260 million in the 2020 report.

Among believers who live under threat of violence, in Latin America, Colombian Christians are most at risk, followed by Mexican. In Asia, Pakistan ranks first, closely followed by India and Myanmar, while Nigeria ranks first in Africa and worldwide.

The hardship affecting the greatest number of Christians is displacement, with 124,310 Christians forced to leave their homes or go into hiding for faith-related reasons, in addition to 14,997 Christians who were forced to leave their countries.

While persecution is on the rise, however, the number of Christians coming to the United States from countries on WWL dropped from 32,248 in 2016 to 9,528 in 2022—a decline of 70 percent.

In 2021, President Biden set the refugee ceiling at 15,000 before raising it to 62,500 after faith groups protested. This past year, the ceiling was set at 125,000—however, the US resettled only about 60,000 refugees in fiscal year 2023.

At CT, we seek to report on the news affecting the global church and share stories of how God is at work in the world. As the body of Christ cries out in pain, we can cry out to the Lord on their behalf. We can extend ...

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from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/mEiPklT