Author: Chris Boyd

Christian efforts to protect the body often fail to protect women.

As the abuse crisis roils American evangelicalism, church leaders are finally paying attention, if only because the accretion of cases is now impossible to ignore.

Commentators on the Left have eyes on it too. Among the various cries, some progressives are calling out Christian conservatives for policing the issue of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) while simultaneously dismissing abused women in their own midst.

“Youth leaders were fondling us and raping us and shaming us into silence,” said Julie Rodgers at the beginning of the #ChurchToo movement. “Meanwhile, we heard the gays were the greatest threat to the church and society.”

“If the SBC hated abusers as much as they do gay people … we literally wouldn’t be having this conversation today,” tweeted Matthew Manchester in response to the recent Southern Baptist Convention report revealing widespread abuse and coverup. Others have voiced similar concerns about “a perverse double standard.”

Although the Left’s view of sex is misguided, their critique still carries weight. Christians should not complain about the sexualization of culture while simultaneously ignoring the sexualization of women inside the church.

We’re looking at “the largest crisis of institutional religion in the United States,” according to Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, and that crisis has been caused in part by Christians losing sight of the fundamentals.

While biblical sexual ethics most definitely apply to SOGI—as well as marriage and singleness—they start with the simple act of protecting women and men from exploitation. Everything else follows from that.

Put another way: Abuse prevention …

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How US homebuyer woes can reorient us toward the eternal.

I refresh my email compulsively, stealing moments between toddler snacks and sunscreen reapplications, cracking open a LaCroix as I scroll through my inbox. When my real estate agent’s name pops up, my heart skips a beat. Each email from her, or rather from the automated home listing search she set up for us under her name, is bursting with possibility: Would it be brick? Stone? Would there be a butler’s pantry, or a mudroom for catching our family’s wellies and coats and dog leashes and backpacks?

The longer I wait, it seems, the more elaborate my imagined forever home becomes. A big tree fit for a tire swing! A kitchen garden! A soaking tub!

But time and time again, the home in my inbox underwhelms. It is overpriced or ugly or in need of more repairs than financially sensible—or more often than not, all three. When something within our (reluctantly stretching) budget finally catches our eye, we call our agent immediately—only to find the property is already under contract. Sight unseen. All cash.

The real estate world calls this a “seller’s market.” I call it the slow death of my forever-home dreams.

We sold our first home, nestled in a quaint and desirable neighborhood just outside Washington, DC, in the summer of 2020. The offer we accepted for the small craftsman, where we brought home both of our babies, was well above asking price (all contingencies waived). We were flying high.

Armed with the confidence that comes from a great investment and a wad of cash to put toward our next down payment, we traded a walkable coffee shop and innumerable takeout options for a rental home in the country with wide-open green spaces and a farmer’s market down the road. The plan was …

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The author and new director of Theos offers a look at the race and faith conversation from the other side of the pond.

They didn’t teach her about James Cone at Cambridge.

Chine McDonald says she came late to the Black theologian but wishes she had been reading him at university. Lately, more Black American authors have stacked up on her book shelf: Esau McCaulley, Austin Channing Brown, Dante Stewart.

McDonald—the new director of the London-based evangelical think tank Theos—is one of the most prominent Black evangelical voices in Britain, but she has one eye gazing across the pond as she considers the dynamics of race and faith in her home country.

“I think one of the differences is that in the UK we have fooled ourselves to thinking we’re not like [America],” she told CT. “The past few years are showing us that actually we haven’t moved as forward as we would have liked to in terms of race and racial justice in our country.”

For one, “there’s almost this unwritten understanding in the UK that you can never be British if you’re not white,” she remarked.

Yet, Black Christians like McDonald represent one of the most vibrant and growing segments of the British church. Black-majority churches, filled with third- and fourth-generation immigrants, are responsible for boosting church attendance and growth in London as Anglican parishes shrink. McDonald spoke with CT in 2019 about how the growth of African and West Indian Christianity is changing the UK.

Both in England, where she grew up, and in Nigeria, where she was born, McDonald’s faith came through a British cultural lens. It wasn’t until her 20s that she began to rethink the expectations that came with it. Last year, she wrote a book called God is Not a White Man: And Other Revelations.

“I write about …

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Hip hop artists Lil Mike and Funny Bone got their start performing at churches. Now they’re acting on FX’s critically acclaimed television series.

When Lil Mike and Funny Bone (who perform as the hip-hop duo Mike Bone) auditioned for the television show Reservation Dogs, they never expected the series to gain much attention outside the Native American community.

Co-created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, the show follows the lives of four Native American teens in Oklahoma and finds humor in some of the dark realities of reservation life. Now in its second season on FX, the critically acclaimed series received a Peabody and has been nominated for numerous other awards.

Fans of the show may not know that Lil Mike and Funny Bone—who appear as Mose and Mekko, respectively—have been Christian hip-hop artists for nearly 25 years. Using a style that draws together rap, dance, and comedy, they got their start performing at churches and house parties and eventually appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2013.

CT spoke recently with the duo about using music to fight Satan, throwing pajama parties for Jesus, and working on Reservation Dogs.

Some of our readers will be familiar with you through the show Reservation Dogs, but they may not know about your musical work and careers up to this point. How long have you been making music as Mike Bone, and how did you get started?

Lil Mike: So I started making music in 1992, and it was a form of therapy. I had anger issues. I would black out and try to hurt people. So, they told me, write out your problems instead of acting out. In 1997, we joined together. Funny Bone came and got in and did some comedy.

Funny Bone: Yeah, I would jump on stage and do something funny while he was switching out songs. And then I slowly started to write my own rhymes. I got some skits on different tracks where I’m like slapping Satan, …

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Roger Olson sympathizes with liberal leavers, but he draws the line at liberal theology.

In the preface of Roger Olson’s new book, Against Liberal Theology, we meet a particular type of exvangelical all too familiar in this age of disillusionment and deconstruction. As Olson describes this tribe, “They grew up in fundamentalist churches, found them stifling, anti-intellectual, legalistic, whatever, and rushed past the middle ground to the opposite end of the Christian spectrum, to liberal Christianity.”

These people haunt him. Olson fully sympathizes with their desire to escape the militant dogmatism of churches on the far-right fringe. But he is baffled by the flying leap they have taken from one extreme position to its opposite. It is a leap that carries them over the broad fields of Christianity itself, skimming lightly past every actual position of any churches along the entire scale of theological possibilities.

Why not touch down somewhere before the antipode? Olson is vexed by this quantum leap. But he is more vexed by the actual landing point: the position known as liberal theology, against which he has written this short book.

Cutting the cord

The book’s title is admirably clear about its main goal. Olson’s thesis is “that liberal Christianity has cut the cord of continuity with the Christian past, orthodoxy, so thoroughly that it ought to be considered a different religion.” But the book also has a secondary goal, indicated in the subtitle: “Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity.”

About this thing called progressive Christianity—“whatever that means, exactly,” as Olson mutters in one aside—the book has very little to say. He is not sure that the phrase has any specific meaning, and he suggests that it is “simply …

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Success for the church looks different depending on your discipline.

On March 1, the Chinese government enacted wide-ranging restrictions on religious communication, teaching, and evangelistic efforts conducted online. Now, only religious groups with government approval can carry out such activities.

Various media outlets around the world shared this news, which is unsurprising. When we think or talk about Christianity in China, its social impact and implications for issues such as human rights and China’s international relations—rather than its pastoral and theological developments and challenges—have received disproportionately large attention in the Western press in the recent decades.

There are many methods and approaches we can apply in observing and interpreting Christianity in China. But this leads to a larger question: How do we read Christianity in general? Religion is a complex social phenomenon, and different disciplines can draw varying—even opposite—conclusions about it. More issues arise when scholars in one discipline begin to cross the boundaries of other fields of study and claim universal applicability for their conclusions.

Church and state relations in the West

A good example of this is how differently theologians and sociologists approach and evaluate the establishment of classical Christendom in the West.

Traditionally, theologians have viewed the church’s transition from a persecuted minority to the state religion as a great triumph. However, in recent decades, they are increasingly considering it a tragedy and betrayal of the vision of the early church.

On the other hand, certain sociologists’ growing interest in early Christianity has led to assessments of the church’s transition from minority to …

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My kids ask the darndest theological questions—putting my seminary degree to the test.

I was six months pregnant when I walked across Fuller Seminary’s commencement stage in 2012. Underneath the cap and gown, my mind and body felt full: the former with all the theology I’d read to complete my master’s degree, and the latter with anticipation for my forthcoming life as a mother.

After graduation and before my first daughter was born, I had a dream of propping her up on my lap to look at an ABC board book that began with Augustine and ended with Zizioulas. This was, I think, my psyche’s way of creating some continuity from one chapter of life to the next. But as all new parents can attest, babies don’t work like that.

Arriving a little past her due date at just past 3 a.m., my firstborn was a healthy, pink tornado that ripped through my orderly and cerebral life. Then three years later, my second daughter, Olivia, was born.

For an exhausting decade, my husband and I have juggled two kids and two full-time jobs with little time between sending emails and changing diapers (and then Pull-Ups and big-girl britches) to read theological texts.

I’ve got what many call the “mommy brain”—I’m a whiz at detangling bedhead hair, getting slime out of the carpet, and making Razzle Dazzle Berry Smoothies, but I’d be hard pressed to describe the variety of atonement theories I learned about in Systematic Theology II.

Yet even if I had remained in tiptop intellectual shape, explaining the Christian faith to my daughters would likely be just as mind-bending as it is now.

Why? Because children make for a unique audience, quite unlike what you’d find in most seminary classrooms—they are simultaneously “religious” and “secular.” …

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Historically, evangelicals have been ahead of the curve in women’s education and also way behind it. My pursuit of an MDiv is now part of that mixed legacy.

This week I’m packing up my 18-year-old daughter as she heads off to college. In a twist of providence, I’m also returning to the classroom after 21 years away. While she’s navigating the firsts of freshman year, I’ll be navigating the firsts of a master of divinity.

These last few months of applying to schools, securing funding, and planning out our schedules have been a sweet time for us. In God’s wisdom, he’s decided that we’ll share these milestones. But this time has also made me wrestle with how the evangelical church both facilitates and impedes women’s academic development.

My education story doesn’t begin with me and my daughter. It starts with my maternal grandmother, who left home at 16 to attend college—not because she was drawn by academics or a career but because she felt called to a life of Christian service.

She came of age during the post–World War II years, when a great youth revival was sweeping the nation. As my grandmother’s best friends settled into lives of factory work and marriage, she moved 800 miles away to study for church work. There she eventually met my grandfather, who was funding his own ministerial training through the GI Bill.

Ironically, my grandmother never considered herself much of a student and even decades later carried a sense of “imposter syndrome,” despite her college degree. But her brave steps established a norm for her daughters, who all pursued higher education—at least higher Christian education.

The same evangelical culture that called my grandmother, mother, and aunts to higher education also reminded them of the importance of home and family, and the balancing …

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At 70, Frederick Buechner looks back on his ministry in letters. (From 1997)

Frederick Buechner died today (August 15, 2022) at age 96. Christianity Today has covered his books extensively over the years, and published several profiles of the beloved writer. Our sister publication Books and Culture was also enthusiastic; among its many reviews and pieces on Buechner was this 1997 profile by Philip Yancey.

Frederick Buechner has met Christians who remind him of American tourists in Europe: Not knowing the language of their listeners, they speak the language of Zion loudly and forcefully, hoping the natives will somehow comprehend. They seem cocky with faith, voluble with their theology, and content with a God who resembles a cosmic Good Buddy. Their certitude both fascinates and alarms him. “I was astonished to hear students at one Christian college shift casually from small talk about the weather and movies to a discussion of what God was doing in their lives. If anybody said anything like that in my part of the world, the ceiling would fall in, the house would catch fire, and people’s eyes would roll up in their heads.”

Buechner himself has gained a reputation as a writer who speaks of his faith in more muted tones. Apart from a few childhood encounters, he hardly gave church a thought until he wandered into one in Manhattan as a young novelist whose star had flared brightly but briefly on the New York literary scene.

For him, faith was a pilgrimage undertaken voluntarily as an adult, a journey fraught with risk. Buechner’s chronicles of that journey have, almost uniquely among modern writings, managed to attract readers from two polarized worlds, the Eastern elite and conservative evangelicals. His work divides evenly between fiction (14 books) and nonfiction (13 books), and …

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The late writer’s books upended the way I think about almost everything.

After I heard the news of the death of Frederick Buechner this week, I walked over to a bookcase in my study that I visit more than any other.

These shelves are filled with what seems too small to say are my “favorite” authors. These are the ones who kept me Christian, who upended the way I think or feel about everything. The Buechner section of that bookcase seems like a disorganized chaos. There’s no coherent genre. Here’s a novel, there’s a Bible study, here’s a dictionary, there’s not just one but several autobiographies.

And there’s no coherent chronology, either. They are stacked not in the order they were written but in the order that I found them. That’s because, when I look at each one, I am retelling myself a story—of when I discovered each one of them, and what it was like to read each for the first time.

When I stand in front of those shelves, I’m doing what Buechner asked us all to do. I am listening to his life, and to my own.

The first book on the shelf is an old copy of A Room Called Remember, a collection of essays that I discovered as a teenager while rifling through the discard table of a public library. When I started reading, what caught my attention was a serious Christian who seemed to see what I could feel but couldn’t really articulate: that life is a mystery, a mystery that’s a plotline, a plotline that connects us with the story of Jesus.

These stories, he wrote, “meet as well as diverge, our stories and his, and even when they diverge, it is his they diverge from, so that even by his absence as well as by is presence in our lives, we know who he is and who we are and who we are not.”

A …

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