Author: Chris Boyd

Ralph Ellison’s novel depicts the quest for personal dignity in a society determined to deny it.

“I am a man.” On February 12, 1968, over two hundred Black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, bore this revolutionary message written on signs and embodied in their protest against the work conditions that had led to the death of two fellow workers. The strike drew the support of Martin Luther King Jr., who would give the last days of his life to this cause. “You are here,” King proclaimed to those on strike, “to demand that Memphis will see the poor.” One of the sanitation workers described the motive and message years later: “We felt we would have to let the city know that because we were sanitation workers, we were human beings.”

Christianity is no stranger to the importance of “I am” statements. God’s self-disclosure declared him to be I am (Ex. 3:14). Through seven “I am” statements, John’s gospel explains who Jesus is, the eternal Word made flesh. There is, then, both theological origin and depth to the “I am a man” declaration of those workers. The declaration is a demand to be recognized and seen as fully human and made in God’s image.

The image of God is like a doctrinal diamond, refracting multiple truths about humanity. Yet much standard Protestant theological reflection does not account for the doctrinal elephant in the room: What does it mean to live as an image bearer when other image bearers try to limit your existence?

Read through a theological lens, the classics of Black literature, like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, can point us toward a rich and profound answer. Ellison’s attention to the embodied experience of invisibility pushes us into a deeper recognition that the imago Dei is a visceral …

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Why you shouldn’t skip over the R-rated parts of Genesis.

This is the second article in a short “Genesis January” series to help people explore the complexity of the Bible at the start of a new year.

So you’re starting a Bible reading plan in Genesis? Well, buckle up, because Genesis might be the most sexually wild book in the Old Testament. Of course, that’s not how we tend to think of Genesis, but the sex scenes are there. From the slightly cringey to the extremely upsetting, sex appears with and without euphemism in these origin stories of Israel.

I still remember the first few times that I read the book of Genesis as a new Christian. I didn’t know much about it beyond some vague notions of a flood and a guy named Abraham. I was a blank-slate reader. I never expected to find scenes that couldn’t have been shown on broadcast television—as salacious as the first few episodes of an HBO series. But of course these are not scenes of erotic titillation designed to hook the audience. Something much stranger is happening. Sex, we learn from the first book of our Scripture, is central to our participation in God’s work.

The topic arises ordinarily and early in the book of Genesis. Both creation accounts end with sexualized humans. In Genesis 1, we read, “In the image of God he created them, male and female he created them” (v. 27, NRSVue throughout). The male-female image of God already contains the potential for sex. And the two sexes have at least one purpose: procreation. The second creation account ends with man and woman becoming “one flesh” (2:24).

After their exile from the garden of Eden, the couple produces three sons. But the narrator does not merely tell us that they had three sons. Instead, Genesis 4 is punctuated …

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Revision of John 3:16, John 1:14, Romans 1:1, and other texts prompt controversy in the largely secular Scandinavian country.

In a country where only 2 percent of the population regularly attend church, one doesn’t expect to find a national debate about the correct translation of John 3:16. And yet, across Norway, news that a forthcoming Bible translation will replace gå fortapt (get lost) with gå til grunne (perish) has roused strong feelings.

“Why change something that is completely understandable?” said one woman in Alta, a town on a fjord on the northern coast.

“Such judgment day and sulphur speeches do not belong in a modern, inclusive church—at least not during funerals,” said an Oslo woman on Facebook. “It adds stones to the burden for relatives.”

But the editors of the forthcoming Bible—commissioned by the Norwegian Bible Society and scheduled for publication in 2024—say they are not surprised. Receiving criticism is part of the process.

“It’s always a controversial thing to translate the Bible,” said Jorunn Økland, a biblical and gender studies scholar on the editorial team. “Whatever you do, it’s going to be controversial.”

The Bible was first translated into Norwegian in the 13th century, when it was published in parallel editions with the then-more-dominant Danish. The first full translation was not released until 1858. And yet, just as with English and German Bibles, the words of Scripture became part of the poetry of the language, a storehouse of images, widely seen as a cultural inheritance. Even those who identify as secular can feel protective of the words of the Bible.

“It still provides many of the symbols and metaphors that create meaning,” said Jenna Coughlin, a professor of Norwegian at St. Olaf College …

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You’re part of the story of this dysfunctional family. And that’s a good thing!

This is the first of a short “Genesis January” series helping people explore the complexity of the Bible at the start of a new year.

My wife’s college roommate would sometimes tell people, “I’m a descendant of George Washington!” It was an interesting way to start a conversation at a party, but more than that, I think, she was claiming a connection to the founding father as a way of writing herself into the history of America. Her story was America’s story, through this somewhat dubious lineage.

We do something similar when we read Genesis. The best way to read the first book of the Bible, with its sprawling story of a dysfunctional family, is to read ourselves into the text. We need to find ways to find ourselves as part of the narrative.

It is natural for most of us to feel a strangeness, reading Genesis, because we come to this story as outsiders who have been invited in. We are, as the apostle Paul said, grafted in through Jesus (Rom. 11:17–24). We have been adopted into this narrative about God’s family, and become children of Abraham, so that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:3, ESV).

If you’re reading it for the first time, or the first time in a while, you’ll see pretty quickly that the story of Abraham is a story of profound family dysfunction. We find our place in the narrative easily, because that family is so fractured. But then it is also the story about a promise of restoration—a story where we can be re-storied, re-narrated, restored. That’s the power and promise of Genesis.

But as we read, we really have to prepare for the dysfunction. Consider perhaps the most upsetting bit of parenting in …

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Theology should produce the fruit of the Spirit, not the works of the flesh.

What is the matter with theology today? Far from being described by the string of virtues that make up the fruit of the Spirit, much of what is labeled “theology” is insecurity and fury disguised as dialogue or thoughtfulness. Even the most cursory scrolling of social media could lead you to the conclusion that you must be angry in order to do theology. In our day, it is not uncommon to see theology used as a weapon and not as a well of joy.

Maybe you’ve seen theology weaponized as an instrument of division. In this malpractice of theology, Christian truth is used to pit brothers and sisters against one another. Points of doctrine become the boundary lines in which an “us versus them” war plays out. And while there are indeed good and right times to draw lines in the sand, there are also those whose theological boundaries are so ever-shrinking that only they and a handful of their followers are seen as those who possess the truth.

Discord arises as theology is used to break unity with those fellow image bearers with whom we ought to be marching arm in arm toward the Promised Land.

Maybe you’ve seen theology weaponized as an instrument of pride. In this malpractice of theology, the accumulation of knowledge amounts to ever-inflating egos and the search for truth is but a grasp for self-importance. When the streams of arrogance flow from the source of ill-used theology, the goal becomes the applause of our neighbors instead of the good of our neighbors.

Instead of bending our intellectual life toward the pursuit of others, we bend others toward the observation of our intellectual capabilities in hopes of praise that ought to be rendered unto the Lord. In this way, theology can become a show; …

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They were extremely into religion without being extreme.

Having grown up in a non-Christian home, Jenny-Lyn de Klerk didn’t discover theology until college. At first, she struggled to understand theological concepts, but everything started making sense after she encountered the Puritan writer John Owen. Her subsequent research on Puritan spirituality helped pave the way for a new book—5 Puritan Women: Portraits of Faith and Love. Author Catherine Parks, an editor with Moody Publishers, spoke with de Klerk about what believers today can learn from these women.

When people learned you were writing a book about Puritan women, what were some of their reactions?

Most fell into two categories: Either people had no idea who I was talking about, or they expressed negative stereotypes about the Puritans. At least on a popular level, people still view the Puritans as fun-killers—and Puritan women as extremely patriarchal. I’m hoping my book can move readers past such stereotypes by helping them get to know a range of real individuals.

Some suggest that the poet Anne Bradstreet departed from Puritan ideals because she wrote about things like intimate love with her husband. How would you respond?

There are all sorts of crazy interpretations of Bradstreet out there. To understand her place within the Puritan movement, we need to start with an accurate definition of Puritanism and then see who fits.

Puritans, for starters, wanted to bring further reform to the Church of England. Though some ministers sought change from within while others felt compelled to leave, they all wanted to go further in replacing certain vestiges of Roman Catholicism with biblical worship practices. And secondly, they emphasized a personal communion with God—a genuine, vibrant relationship …

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Some of us are working to change the unhealthy evangelical church culture we helped create.

In the last couple of decades, American Christian boomers (myself included) have been given an advance peek at the kind of obituary the church and the world has already begun to write about us.

Countless think pieces, podcasts, and online conversations have issued well-founded concerns and questions about the failures, flaws, and foolishness of evangelical church culture. These critiques are a magnifying mirror for baby boomers, since most of them speak directly to church cultures we helped create and support.

Not all these critiques are made in good faith—whether they’re from political scientists, sociologists, op-ed writers, exvangelicals, or from the generations born before and after us—but a surprising majority of them are.

For example, CT’s Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast details the leadership failure and organizational implosion of the church franchise led by Mark Driscoll. And while Driscoll himself was a Gen X pastor, Mars Hill was nourished in the soil cultivated by boomer megachurch leader culture.

Beyond the cavalcade of prodigal leaders exposed with predictable regularity for their abuses of power, boomer Evangelicalism has often been characterized in the broader culture by who and what we oppose, instead of whom we claim to serve.

As a result, our kids and grandkids are vacating the churches we built and inhabited with the goal of passing on our faith to the next generation. But they’re not the only ones leaving.

In my ownwriting over the past decade about spiritual formation in midlife and beyond, I’ve heard from hundreds of people my age who have been wounded by the very faith systems our generation created. Some boomers were chased away, while others quietly drifted out the …

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Closure of corridor to Nagorno-Karabakh by Azerbaijani activists stretches into third week.

There are no oranges in Artsakh for Christmas.

Celebrated on January 6 according to the local Orthodox calendar, holiday festivities will be curtailed this year in the disputed Caucasus enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Demonstrations by reported environmental activists from Azerbaijan have closed the one road connecting the mountainous territory to Armenia, and Russian peacekeeping forces have failed to intervene.

Over 100,000 Armenians depend on daily imports of 400 tons of food and medicine to the enclave they call Artsakh. With the blockade of the Lachin corridor now in its third week, local officials are warning of a humanitarian disaster as they implement price controls and ration remaining goods.

But the Christmas tree is lit in the central square of the capital, Stepanakert.

“People will carry on with the traditions as best they can,” said Aren Deyirmenjian, country representative for the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA). “But we will reflect the love of a God who stays by your side, even when all goes wrong.”

During a 44-day war with 6,500 casualties in 2020, Azerbaijan recaptured three-quarters of its internationally recognized sovereign territory, before Russia engineered a ceasefire. The indigenous Armenian inhabitants controlled the enclave for the previous 30 years, claiming the right of self-determination in an unrecognized 1991 independence referendum.

Following its defeat two years ago, Armenia pursued peace treaties with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey, which had backed their Turkic Azeri kin with decisive drone technology. But these were interrupted by further clashes in which Azerbaijan seized more territory in Nagorno-Karabakh and even along Armenia’s border.

And …

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“Nones” take a more prominent place in the pro-life movement.

Monica Snyder gave up her childhood faith. But she never stopped being pro-life.

She opposes abortion for different reasons than her Catholic parents. Snyder doesn’t believe fetuses are made in the image of God. She doesn’t think they have eternal souls. Though her arguments differ, as an atheist with a master’s degree in forensic science from the University of California, Davis, her conclusions are the same: Human life begins with the zygote, and abortion is almost always wrong.

“Pro-choice people act as if they are morally neutral,” she said. “But abortion is not amoral.”

The executive director of Secular Pro-Life is one of a growing number of nonreligious people joining the pro-life cause. Historically, the pro-life movement has been almost exclusively religious, predominantly made up of Catholics and evangelicals. Nonreligious people—including the rising number of younger Americans who tell pollsters “none” when asked about their religious preference—generally defend a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy.

But a 2022 Gallup poll found that 21 percent of the nones say abortion is morally wrong.

And as the pro-life movement celebrated the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in June and then scrambled to fight abortion in 50 states, religious activists are increasingly finding themselves working side by side with secular allies. They welcome the support.

“The fact that these nonreligious groups are really coming alongside faith-based organizations is really significant and makes a powerful statement about where the movement is right now,” said Diane Ferraro, chief executive officer of Save the Storks, a Christian nonprofit that partners …

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Wellness culture has infiltrated the church. Scripture casts a different vision.

Seventeen years ago, I was 20 weeks pregnant with our first child, and my husband and I learned through an ultrasound that we were having a healthy baby girl. When Penny entered the world, she scored 8 out of 10 on her Apgar test, an immediate measure of infant health. She nursed and made eye contact and slept and pooped and cried. She came home from the hospital two days later.

But the doctors also told us they suspected Penny had Down syndrome. We wondered whether she was a healthy baby girl after all. As we took her to regular checkups, we learned Penny was so small she didn’t show up on the growth charts, and she rarely achieved developmental milestones “on time.”

She had a little hole in her heart that needed surgical intervention. She needed glasses. Her ears were filled with fluid. She had a greater risk of childhood leukemia, celiac disease, and autism. She also was learning, growing, and smiling. She loved us and we loved her.

We live in a world that measures health by a lack of illness, injury, and disability. The multitrillion-dollar global wellness movement tries to expand our understanding of health through proactive efforts to promote human flourishing. Yet neither health nor wellness as we define them in contemporary society makes room for people with disabilities.

Moreover, despite the trillions spent on wellness and health care, we are experiencing an epidemic of loneliness, pain, depression, and other mental health concerns, not to mention the ongoing challenges of COVID-19 and an epidemic of chronic pain.

We need more than medical interventions and wellness retreats in order to heal. A biblical understanding of health offers us a holistic experience of peace and connection within our bodies, …

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