Author: Chris Boyd

These Tennesseans are finding ways to live without adding to the landfill. But they aren’t finding a lot of “zero waste” company.

Zach and Sadie McElrath’s six-year-old daughter saw something at a store that caught her eye: a slingshot. But they didn’t buy it for her because it would have ultimately produced landfill waste. Instead, their daughter is figuring out how to make a slingshot with a stick and rubber bands from around the house.

The McElraths, based in Chattanooga, Tennessee, live a “zero waste” life. What they do throw away is compostable, except for the rare cases when they end up with items that have to go to the landfill, such as an Amazon envelope or a bag from frozen berries. They take their trash to the curb once or twice a year, even as a family of five with children ages 9, 6, and 2.

Both parents work—Sadie as a nurse practitioner, and Zach as a software engineer at a start-up. Even with their full life, they find the zero-waste life doable and even freeing, not having to think about buying things like slingshots.

“Other people might not be as extreme as we are,” said Sadie. “But everybody can do something.”

The McElraths have been living this way since 2017, and they haven’t found many other Christians interested in zero waste over the years. They find more zero-waste efforts coming from faith groups like the Unitarian Universalists. But they have been seeing more interest among Christians in their circles in doing things like composting.

This tracks with national data on evangelical attitudes about the environment compared to other faith groups. Evangelicals are the religious group least likely to see climate change as a serious problem, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey. And a University of Florida study found a generational divide among evangelicals over that …

Continue reading…

The particularities of people groups can aid the work of understanding and proclaiming the gospel.

The worldwide growth of Christianity has brought about a flowering of theological perspectives. Yet many Western theologians have little familiarity with theologians working in non-Western contexts. Stephen T. Pardue, a professor at the Asia Graduate School of Theology, addresses this problem in a new book, Why Evangelical Theology Needs the Global Church. J. Nelson Jennings, editor of the journal Global Missiology, spoke with Pardue about the blessings of engaging with majority-world theologians.

You grew up in the United States, but you’ve spent many years living and teaching in the Philippines. How has that background shaped your thinking on theology and the global church?

Like most culturally hybrid people, I couldn’t possibly trace all the intricacies of how I’ve been shaped. One of my joys in writing the book was getting to reflect on these complex realities, which often get either ignored or oversimplified in theological books. In my own book, I try to move beyond these simplifications—for example, speaking of “Eastern” and “Western” theologies as if all theologians within these categories think the same way. I hope readers will feel invited to consider how the cultural plurality of God’s people helps us hear the Good News more fully.

Why, to invoke your book title, does evangelical theology need the global church?

We need the input of the whole church to thrive. This means not just celebrating the church’s growing diversity for vague reasons of politeness or political correctness, but developing a coherent framework for how culture can inform our theology without undermining its primary focus: the triune God revealed in Scripture.

One of my big themes is that …

Continue reading…

As the toll of overdoses continue to rise, congregations provide recovery, medical care, and redemption.

It was the prayer requests that caught the new minister’s attention. Not long after Lisa Bryant arrived at the Madam Russell United Methodist Church, a historic congregation named for one of the original pioneers in Saltville, Virginia, she began to notice the repetition. The same underlying problem kept rearing up in the needs she heard.

“I got phone calls from some members: ‘Please pray for my grandson, he’s on drugs again,’” she said. “Or someone’s niece would get arrested again.”

Drugs—methamphetamines, oxycontin, heroin, fentanyl—were hiding everywhere in the prayers of the people.

The town of just 2,000 people in southwestern Virginia had almost nothing to help those struggling with addiction. The nearest recovery group was an hour’s drive away. Residential rehab facilities were even farther—out of reach of anyone without a decent income and reliable transportation, which is a lot of people in that part of the country. So Bryant believed that the church, in the Wesleyan spirit of doing all the good you can for all the people you can, could start a recovery group.

It shouldn’t be too hard, she thought. Churches have been hosting 12-step meetings across the country for decades.

She brought the idea to the church council: They should launch a program to help people in Saltville deal with the opioids crisis ravaging the region.

“Everybody was quiet,” Bryant told CT, recalling the moment from five years ago. “Then one guy spoke up and said, ‘We don’t really have that problem here. That doesn’t pertain to us.’”

“Really?” she asked, stunned to tears. “It’s all around us. You …

Continue reading…

More than half of MLB teams offer an annual post-game program with worship and testimony from Christian players.

At 8:15 p.m. on a recent Saturday, Texas Rangers catcher Mitch Garver swung and missed at an 86-mph slider from San Diego Padres closer Josh Hader.

Garver’s strikeout secured a 4-0 victory for the home team in front of 42,677 fans at Petco Park. Three minutes later, an electric guitarist and keyboardist from The Rock Church—an evangelical megachurch in San Diego—stirred on the Gallagher Square stage behind center field.

The church’s pastor, Miles McPherson, sported a pinstriped Padres jersey as he grabbed a microphone.

“What’s up? What’s up? Y’all ready to worship the Lord?” said McPherson, a 1980s-era San Diego Chargers football player who developed a cocaine habit before dedicating his life to Jesus Christ during his NFL days.

About 3,000 men, women and children—almost all clad in Padres hats and attire—bought special tickets for the team’s annual Faith and Family Night.

On a 74-degree evening, in the shadow of statues honoring Padres greats Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman, attendees listened to praise music, heard testimonials from Padres and Rangers players and lifted their hands toward heaven in prayer.

“It’s very nice to be able to celebrate our faith in public without criticism,” said one of the fans, Nicole Soto, who is not related to Padres star Juan Soto.

Roughly 19 hours later—and 125 miles to the north—a similar scene played out at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Except that the Dodgers lost their Sunday afternoon home game, 9-0, to the Cincinnati Reds before a disappointed crowd of 45,936.

Still, thousands of fans stuck around for a special postgame program on Christian Faith and Family Day, highlighted by a performance …

Continue reading…

Popular new programs focus on the power of storytelling and the potential for evangelism.

Across the years—and gaming systems—Christians have engaged the realm of video games. They’ve played, discussed, and developed games, but they haven’t always had formal training in the theology of video games.

Now, more than a dozen Christian colleges offer video game majors, minors, and concentrations, giving students called to game design the chance to learn in settings that integrate their faith.

Messiah University students in the mobile application and game design concentration are “bringing a Christian perspective to bear on the digital world they will be helping to create.” Abilene Christian University students learn from Christian instructors in the field of digital entertainment technology and are challenged to “change the game” as they dream and create.

At Oklahoma Christian University, class enrollment in the gaming and animation program has tripled over the past seven years. Biola University’s degree in game design and interactive media began as a concentration in its cinema program in 2019 but quickly became its own major the following year.

The program equips students to see the growing medium as a mission field and a platform for compelling storytelling.

“Anywhere where there’s a powerful means of communication, it makes sense for Christians to be in that space,” said Michael Steffen, who heads the Biola program and owns Lantern Tower Games.

While Biola teaches video game majors about programming, the primary focus is gameplay: storyline, characters, world-building, and the themes and messages embedded within. A video game allows its audience to interact with the work and be impacted by it in an experiential way, rather than exclusively through …

Continue reading…

Photography played a key role in 19th- and 20th-century Christian outreach and missions.

In the early years of the 20th century, Jacob August Riis was spotlighting the squalid New York City neighborhoods where hundreds of thousands were packed into dank and dangerous tenements. Half a world away, Alice Seeley Harris was working to expose the brutal regime terrorizing millions in the Congo Free State. In their quests to capture attention and inspire action, Riis and Harris each discovered a secret weapon: photographs.

A reporter who immigrated to the US from Denmark when he was 21, Riis turned to new techniques of flash photography to illuminate the conditions of impoverished New Yorkers crammed into shoddy, windowless apartment buildings. Meanwhile, Harris and her husband John, both British Baptist missionaries in the Congo, smuggled out photos documenting the shocking atrocities being committed under the colonial rule of King Leopold II of Belgium.

Using the still-novel craft of photography, both Riis and Harris spurred national and international efforts that helped change the lives of millions of people. More than a century later, their efforts are honored in books, plays, and exhibitions and also remembered on World Photography Day—August 19—which pays tribute to the history of the craft and its power to influence people.

Neither Harris nor Riis would have described themselves as photographers. Riis was a writer and lecturer who implored the public to rise up and fight the misery he witnessed in the slums of New York City. He published articles describing how people lived like “vermin” and “inmates” in decrepit buildings that lacked ventilation and basic plumbing, but his message took on new power when he realized how flash photography could shed light on those issues. Riis …

Continue reading…

A Republican lawmaker called a Christian tweet “bigoted.” Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar came to religious liberty’s defense.

It started with a post on X (formerly Twitter)—an expression of Christianity with the brevity the site’s format demands: “There’s no hope for any of us outside of having faith in Jesus Christ alone.” The poster in question was Lizzie Marbach, whose X bio describes her as a Republican political activist who lives in Ohio.

Marbach’s post easily could have gone unnoticed outside her own following. But then a member of Congress decided to share it—and not just to share it but to dunk on it, hard, to an audience nearly ten times the size of Marbach’s own.

“This is one of the most bigoted tweets I have ever seen,” the congressman wrote. “Delete it, Lizzie. Religious freedom in the United States applies to every religion. You have gone too far.”

As angry replies accumulated under both posts, another, better-known member of Congress came to Marbach’s defense.

“No! Stating the core beliefs or principles of your faith isn’t bigoted,” the congresswoman tweeted, rebuking her colleague. It’s “religious freedom and no one should be scolded for that. It’s also wrong to speak about religious freedom while simultaneously harassing people who freely express their beliefs.”

If you’re already imagining these latter two characters, my guess is you’re imagining incorrectly—just as I probably would if I didn’t know the details here. The representative who dunked on Marbach is a fellow Ohio Republican, Rep. Max Miller. He’s a Marine veteran who served as a special assistant to former President Donald Trump—and he told 50,000 people that Marbach was a bigot for believing Jesus is the only hope of …

Continue reading…

“Rich Men North of Richmond” is disdainful towards people on welfare. Christians shouldn’t be.

As a native of Appalachia, I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of the plight of blue-collar Americans. Mine is a region shaped by the struggle for fair pay and safe working conditions. To this day, “coal country” for many is synonymous with hard living and generational poverty.

So when I heard about Oliver Anthony’s viral hit, “Rich Men North of Richmond” (a reference to powerful elites in Washington, DC), I was excited for a song in the tradition of Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie—music that names the inherent dignity of the poor, lodges a protest against establishment excess, and echoes Old Testament calls for justice, like God’s condemnation in Jeremiah 5:28 of those who “have grown fat and sleek” yet “do not promote the case of the fatherless” or “defend the just cause of the poor.”

Then I heard these lyrics:

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat
And the obese milkin’ welfare
Well, God, if you’re 5-foot-3 and you’re 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Immediately, I was transported back in time.

I’m a 30-year-old mother of three again, standing in the checkout line of our local grocery store. Rhonda, the organist from the church that my husband pastors, has cued up directly behind me. She says hello, and I nod back.

Normally, I would ask about her grandbabies or garden, but instead, I mumble an excuse about having forgotten bread and navigate my cart out of line toward the aisles stocked with food. But I haven’t forgotten anything. It’s a charade, a charade brought about by the shame I feel because my family is on …

Continue reading…

The newly accredited school promotes a theological education that’s not at odds with culture.

Much of Terry LeBlanc’s adult life has been driven by one question: Can you be fully Indigenous and fully a follower of Jesus?

His answer has been a resounding yes.

Over the past three decades, he and others have built a seminary to offer theological education to Indigenous people in the United States, Canada, and the world, so that they can answer yes too.

NAIITS, previously known as the North American Institute of Indigenous Theological Studies, was founded in 2000 with a vision of seeing “men and women journey down the road of a living heart relationship with Jesus in a transformative way which does not require the rejection of their Creator-given social and cultural identity.” In 2021, it became the first Indigenous school to receive full accreditation from the Association of Theological Schools. NAIITS can now offer accredited master of arts, master of theological studies, and master of divinity degrees, as well as doctorates in Indigenous Christian theology.

Last year, NAIITS received two grants worth $6 million from Lilly Endowment to do just that. The school will use $1 million to develop a master’s program in trauma-informed spiritual care. The other $5 million will go toward creating the Canadian Learning Community for Decolonization and Innovation, a collaborative project with four other universities.

LeBlanc, who is Mi’kmaq-Acadian and holds a PhD from Asbury Theological Seminary, said NAIITS teaches people how to reimagine the relationship between faith and culture. The academic term is decolonization, which LeBlanc said doesn’t mean diminishing the power of Jesus or the gospel, but making space for Indigenous perspectives and learning to see Indigenous identity and culture as …

Continue reading…

The late pastor sought to glorify God in his devotional life, his marriage, and his ministry. How he did so in his illness was no different.

It was June 3, 2020. The subject line of the email from Kathy Keller made my heart sink: “Tim’s got pancreatic cancer.” The diagnosis was stage IV. With current therapy, life expectancy is less than a year. There is no stage V. Thus began a three-year journey that explored the cutting edge of experimental cancer therapeutics—but more significantly, the courageous approach to terminal illness by a man of deep faith.

Tim had been my friend for a decade. In the early years of BioLogos, he agreed to cohost intensely interesting and productive meetings in New York, where deep discussions about the complementarity of science and Christian faith took place. Though we didn’t completely agree on everything, Tim became my most significant spiritual mentor.

But now I was in a different role. As a physician-scientist and the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I reached out to help him and Kathy sort through the options for interventions. Chemotherapy can sometimes help pancreatic cancer, but only for a time. On the horizon, however, are new approaches called “precision oncology”—characterizing the unique DNA mutations in the patient’s cancer in exquisite detail and then teaching the body’s immune system to recognize the masked intruders.

Tim and Kathy, his partner in life, love, and faith, weighed the pros and cons and elected to sign up for an NIH clinical trial that had shown some initial promise for advanced breast and gall bladder cancers but for which there was so far very limited experience with pancreatic cancer. Tim was clear-eyed about the likelihood of benefit, but he wanted assurance that whatever happened, the medical research team would learn from …

Continue reading…