When Song of Songs Uses a Word, It Doesn’t Always Mean What We Think It Means

Aimee Byrd is correct that the book diagnoses flawed understandings of human sexuality, but her interpretative choices are open to question.

Standing outside a Coptic church in Cairo, I saw a mosaic that sent me back to a college hermeneutics class. In the image’s foreground, a man lay slumbering as an angel hovered over him, pointing. I followed the finger to a horizon dotted with pyramids. And I recognized the Bible’s second “Joseph and Egypt” story, which recounts the holy family’s flight from Herod’s persecution.

The image reminded me of how I’d wrestled with a passage from Matthew’s Gospel: “Out of Egypt I called my son” (2:15). The passage was suggesting that when the toddler Jesus returned from the land of pyramids, he had “fulfilled,” in Matthew’s words, a vision from the prophet Hosea: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (11:1). Yet Hosea, for his part, wasn’t issuing a prediction about the coming Messiah. He was thinking back to an event he knew from Israel’s history: God’s deliverance of his people from Pharoah’s yoke.

For years I struggled to see how the holy family’s return from Egypt truly fulfilled Hosea’s prophesy. But then my hermeneutics professor explained that Matthew was using “fulfilled” to mean something closer to “epitomized,” or “filled to the full in meaning.” In modern parlance, we might imagine Matthew saying, “Talk about calling your Son out of Egypt!”

When we try shoehorning a prediction into our reading of Hosea’s vision, my professor said, we end up distorting it. Instead, he argued, we should treat Matthew’s choice of language as an exercise in literary layering. In other words, he was drawing on earlier biblical …

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How Russian Christians View the ‘Special Military Operation’ in Ukraine

Torn between “pro-Putin” and “pro-prayer,” only a minority have spoken out publicly against the invasion. Ukrainian seminary leaders call for repentance.

Russian sermons—to the extent legally possible—reflect the national mood.

“Honor the tsar!” preached Alexey Novikov of Land of Freedom Pentecostal church in Moscow two days after the February 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, quoting from 1 Peter 2:17. While not pro-war, it was certainly pro-Russia. Once a lawfully elected president commits troops, he said, it is a Christian’s duty to support them.

One month later, Mikhail Belyaev of Source of Living Water Baptist church in Voronezh, Russia, asked, “Why are the churches silent?”

Many Ukrainian evangelicals are fuming at their cross-border colleagues for failing to speak out against the war. They also cite the apostle Peter, placing priority on the same verse’s earlier command: “Love the family of believers.”

But Belyaev’s sermon was not pro-Ukraine. His congregation 320 miles south of Moscow provides a different answer.

The churches are not silent, he said. They are preaching the gospel and praying for peace.

“Russians take the Ukrainian complaint seriously,” said Andrey Shirin, associate professor of divinity at the John Leland Center for Theological Studies, a Baptist seminary in Virginia. “But they put God before the nation—and think many Ukrainians put too much stock in their nationality.”

Shirin left Russia 30 years ago and said that, then as now, most believers are wary of politics. And while some pastors have criticized the war, a pro-Ukraine sermon would be hard to find.

Throughout the war, polls have shown strong support for what Russia has legally mandated be called a “special military operation.” Between 65 percent and 89 percent have signaled approval; 71 percent …

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Why We Fight About Football Prayers

The moral authority of high school coaches raises First Amendment questions the Supreme Court will have to consider in “Kennedy v. Bremerton.”

For nearly as long as there have been football coaches, there have been praying football coaches. And praying football coaches have frequently been at the center of the rough-and-tumble, back-and-forth debate over the place of religion in American public education.

Joseph Kennedy, a high school coach from the Seattle area, is the latest to take the field. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on Monday. His lawyers will argue that the First Amendment protects his right as an American citizen to bend a knee and say a prayer after high school games.

The opposing counsel will also invoke the First Amendment, arguing that because Kennedy is paid by the public school, his prayers infringe on the rights of players, who shouldn’t be pressured to pray by a government employee.

But why football coaches? Why not praying principals, drama teachers, shop class instructors, or crossing guards? The football coach, it turns out, has a special place in the American struggle over the meaning of the freedom of religion.

We can trace the story back to one of the first men to turn coaching into a full-time profession, Amos Alonzo Stagg. He trained to be a minister before deciding, as he wrote in his autobiography, he “could influence others to Christian ideals more effectively on the field than in the pulpit.” From 1892 to 1932, Stagg built a college football powerhouse at the University of Chicago—and prayer was absolutely part of the program.

In Stagg’s day, American football was just developing as a sport. Key to its appeal and growing acceptance was the idea that it was more than a game, that it offered a space for young men to build character and develop the moral virtue …

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Fragmentation Is Not What’s Killing Us

False unity resolves division, but real unity involves holding diversity in tension.

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

I’m quite sure that I’ve never interacted with one article for two weeks in a row here, but few issues are as important as those raised by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his Atlantic essay on the Tower of Babel and the fragmentation of American life.

The essay uniquely summarizes the fractures facing virtually every church, denomination, business, think tank, neighborhood association, and family I know. And in almost all those settings, someone will inevitably ask, “How did we become so divided?” followed by “How do we get back to unity?”

Those are important questions, but there are good and bad ways to answer them.

As I mentioned in my conversation with Haidt on the podcast this week, I agree with him largely on where he identifies the problem and with many of his proposed solutions. At the same time, we should pay careful attention to how we interpret the text that holds together his thesis: the Tower of Babel account in Genesis.

The analogy works, even for people who (like Haidt himself) aren’t believers. Technological hubris leads to an inability to communicate—which leads to a society breaking apart into little pieces. That does indeed sound like now. But the lessons we learn will be wrong if we don’t see the primary point of the Babel story:

The problem wasn’t the fragmentation. The problem was the unity.

As I noted here last week, Haidt is right in saying that American culture is facing a loss of social capital, of a shared story, of healthy institutions. That has grave implications for the future of democracy and—more importantly in my view—of …

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Report: 26 Million Americans Stopped Reading the Bible Regularly During COVID-19

Sharp decline may be connected to drop in church attendance.

When researchers for the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report saw this year’s survey statistics, they found it hard to believe the results. The data said roughly 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year.

“We reviewed our calculations. We double-checked our math and ran the numbers again … and again,” John Plake, lead researcher for the American Bible Society, wrote in the 2022 report. “What we discovered was startling, disheartening, and disruptive.”

In 2021, about 50 percent of Americans said they read the Bible on their own at least three or four times per year. That percentage had stayed more or less steady since 2011.

But in 2022, it dropped 11 points. Now only 39 percent say they read the Bible multiple times per year or more. It is the steepest, sharpest decline on record.

According to the 12th annual State of the Bible report, it wasn’t just the occasional Scripture readers who didn’t pick up their Bibles as much in 2022 either. More than 13 million of the most engaged Bible readers—measured by frequency, feelings of connection to God, and impact on day-to-day decisions—said they read God’s Word less.

Currently, only 10 percent of Americans report daily Bible reading. Before the pandemic, that number was at about 14 percent.

Plake thinks the dramatic change shows how closely Bible reading—even independent Bible reading—is connected to church attendance. When regular services were interrupted by the pandemic and related health mandates, it impacted not just the corporate bodies of believers but also individuals at home.

“The elephant in the room is COVID-19,” he …

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Reasons to Hire Moving Companies

Moving to a new place or a city is a normal thing. A lot of people are relocating and they need to move their belongings to a new place. If you are moving to another house, you need to pack your things carefully and transport them to the new place.

If you have a car you can carry some stuff with you, but what about the furniture and other big things? You need a moving service for that. These services are reliable, as they will not only move your stuff, but they will help you pack the things carefully. Let’s check out the benefits of hiring such services.

Door-to-door service: When you hire moving companies in OKC, they will provide you door-to-door service. You will not feel lost as they drop the stuff at the bottom of the staircase of your new building. They will never do that. The movers will carry the things into your room, and any other places you need to place them. You will happily pay them after they have transported all of your stuff to your new house.

Long-distance moves: No matter where you intend to move, a good moving company will help you with that. If you are moving out of town or state, you can easily rely on them for the best services. Even if you are moving out of the country, you have to hire an international mover and they will let you relax as they will do their job precisely.

Save your money: Hiring movers will save money. Why? The first thing you have to think of is the expenses you have to bear. If you are planning to move things without a moving company, then you have to pack the things all by yourself. Then, if you have a car you have to load things and transport them. You have to come back again, and pick up stuff, and move. This will be a continuous session. Also, when you are not able to move the furniture, you have to hire help. It’s too much fuss to handle when you can hire a mover and get things done in one go. This way you will save money and time.

Safety when moving heavy items: You won’t have to worry about moving heavy things with Oklahoma City moving companies. They will make sure that your furniture or any other heavy item is packed properly and handled with care. If you have heavy appliances or a piano, you need to contact the moving company beforehand. Once they have they have the information, they will come with extra preparation.

Best packaging material: When you buy things online sometimes you get bad packaging. Also, other times you receive packaging that’s hard to open. With reputed OKC movers, you won’t have to worry about bad packaging ever. They will pack your stuff in sturdy cases and materials. If you have lots of fragile items to move, they will make sure nothing gets damaged.

If you hire a reputed company, they will provide you with insurance on the move. So if anything gets damaged they will pay you back due to the insurance.

Resources: https://www.twidloo.com/united-states/oklahoma/oklahoma-city/73109/home-services/city-moving-storage

Contact Us:

City Moving & Storage

Address:815 SW 2nd St Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 73109

Phone: (405) 25-21155

Our Pulpits Are Full of Empty Preachers

Tens of thousands of pastors want to quit but haven’t. What has that done to them?

Seven years ago, First Presbyterian Church of Deming, New Mexico, had to replace the rope hanging from its bell tower. After 75 years of regular use, it had finally unraveled. The bell has been ringing since the Pueblo mission-style building was constructed in 1941, and the church itself dates back further, to the turn of the 20th century.

Not much else has endured like the bell. Today, the church building’s original adobe walls are covered by white paneling and a powder-blue roof. Out front, the steps leading to the entrance have been replaced with a wheelchair ramp. There was a time when the congregation nearly filled its 200-person sanctuary. On a recent Sunday, five people showed up.

“That’s the lowest it’s ever been,” Liv Johnson said. In the three decades since she started as secretary at First Presbyterian, Johnson has watched a slow trickle of people leave. “When I first came here, the average attendance—because I had to do that report—was 82,” she said. “I remember having 35 kids for Sunday school, and now we have none.”

Still, Johnson doesn’t despair. She believes strong, stable leadership could turn things around. But recently, consistent leadership has been difficult to come by.

In 2018, First Presbyterian’s pastor, Adam Soliz, passed away after a short battle with lung cancer. A new, younger pastor took over the congregation just as the COVID-19 pandemic decimated church attendance. The new pastor reconsidered his vocational trajectory, and in August of 2021, he accepted a better-paying job and left.

Unfortunately, replacing a pastor is far more difficult than replacing a bell rope. And the longer it takes, the more it costs.

To make its …

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Hungarian Evangelicals Thank God for Viktor Orbán Victory

Despite some misgivings, most supported him as a conservative Christian who would stand up for their values.

Szófia Boros voted for Victor Orbán. The young evangelical mother of two has her misgivings about the man who has been accused of undermining democracy—curtailing press freedom, undercutting the independent judiciary, and changing election rules to give an advantage to his political party, Fidesz.

But in the end, it was pretty simple to support him for reelection on April 3.

“Evangelical Christians support the majority of Orbán’s policies and positions, even if we don’t really admire the way he goes about his politics,” she said. “I voted for him because he is a conservative Christian standing up against a liberal Europe.”

Evangelicals aren’t a big or politically organized voting bloc in Hungary. Only a few evangelical groups are established enough to achieve recognition from the national government, including the Baptist Union, the Hungarian Methodist Church, the Hungarian Pentecostal Church, the Church of the Nazarene, and the charismatic Faith Church, whose pastor endorsed Orbán during a Sunday service.

About half the people in the country consider themselves Catholic, a quarter has no religious affiliation, and 16 percent—including Orbán—identify with the Reformed Church in Hungary, which is part of the mainline World Council of Churches and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Eighty percent of the country identifies as Christian, but only about 15 percent of Hungarians attend church on a weekly basis.

But a lot of Hungarians, it turns out, feel like Boros. They wanted a conservative Christian prime minister committed to defending what they see as a Christian culture and its Christian values.

“The Fidesz campaign …

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Jesus Is Risen! Now What?

We’re quick to affirm the Resurrection, but we often miss its full meaning.

It may sound a little strange or morbid, but I enjoy preaching at funerals. Of course, I hate seeing friends, family, and church members leave us behind. But some unchurched family members and friends may hear about God’s love and the reasons for the hope that is in us. In these raw moments, mourners tend to consider their own mortality and give serious thought to the claims of Christ.

Jesus expressed a similar sentiment when Lazarus died and his disciples saw the resurrection and the life in action: “Lazarus has died. I’m glad for you that I wasn’t there so that you may believe” (John 11:14–15, CSB). We cannot know the joy of resurrection without experiencing the pangs of death and loss.

Funerals are opportunities to rehearse the drama of our eschatology, to practice the experience of hope before others. When I stand before a coffin or an urn, I proclaim that the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of our own future resurrection. Jaroslav Pelikan’s aphorism always comes to mind: “If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.”

Books on the Resurrection typically emphasize questions about the historical credibility of the Gospel accounts, and with good reason. The apostle Paul staked everything on this one event happening in time and space: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17, CSB). Academic studies usually try convincing readers that Jesus was raised from the dead while having little to say about why we should care.

Regent College theology professor W. Ross Hastings flips this script in his newest release, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Exploring …

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Jesus Is the God of Ground Zero

In grief, he is our consolation.

Right after September 11, 2001, theologian Calvin Seerveld told singer-songwriter Michael Card: “The church has no such songs (of lament) to sing.” Our contemporary praise music does not seem to account for such a national tragedy as 9/11 or even for funerals, no dirge or lamentation appropriate to express loss beyond words.

As a survivor of 9/11—my family lived three blocks away from the World Trade Center and I was trapped in a subway stop underneath the collapsing towers—I can testify to this lack. Today, we may similarly pause to ask, “Do we have songs to sing during a pandemic?”

There was one piece of music that was played over and over during the period after 9/11 on classical music radio stations. It was Lux Aeterna by Morten Lauridsen. In this choral piece, the overwhelming cascade of voices coalesces and moves deeply into our lament, yet the music rises above the nadir of our common despair and somehow reframes our hopes.

Several years after 9/11, I had an opportunity to reflect on Lauridsen’s composition and honor him. I was appointed to the National Council on the Arts by president George W. Bush and worked on the nominations for the 2007 National Medal of the Arts. The council selected Lauridsen as one of the award recipients. I was the table host designated to welcome him to the list of great artists and arts advocates including the likes of Andrew Wyeth and Henry Steinway. Lauridsen’s legacy will be known with other great composers who’ve received this high honor, such as Aaron Copeland and John Williams.

As Lauridsen looked around the room, he said, “What am I doing here?” I responded: “Sir, millions of people sing your songs; I think you …

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