Author: Chris Boyd

Human dignity is not an earned right but a signpost to God.

In less than a month, the Supreme Court will take up arguments on a Mississippi case that could conceivably spell the end of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion as a constitutional right. At the same time, the justices sent signals that they were perhaps dubious of a recent Texas law that sought to restrict abortion through civil liability measures.

For the first time in a while, it seems that abortion is at the forefront of conversation in the United States. And yet, some surveys suggest that abortion is not the motivating factor for evangelicals that it once was.

Those who disagree with me on abortion may feel it is good news that evangelicals are lessening their priority on the pro-life issue—thinking perhaps that a cooling down in the culture wars might lead to a less polarized America. But such people would be wrong. As a matter of fact, if this trend continues, it could be bad news for everybody.

Political scientist Ryan Burge collected polling data this summer from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and compared that with recent data gathered from the Association of Religion Data Archives. The poll asked respondents how they would rank their relative priority on various sociopolitical issues. Burge noted that, over time, the abortion issue has decreased in priority among white evangelicals and other issues, like immigration, have increased.

Most of this data was aggregated before critical race theory and COVID-19 dominated the public square. But many pollsters and activists say they see far more energy spent discussing race, masks, vaccines, and other topics. Abortion is low on the list.

Some argue that this has always been the case. For example, in his book Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious …

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The largest Baptist and Methodist schools are among the first to challenge the requirements for employees as unauthorized and unconstitutional.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary are among the first major Christian institutions to legally challenge COVID-19 vaccine requirements issued by the Biden administration.

The two Kentucky schools, representing the largest seminaries in the Southern Baptist and Methodist traditions, filed a petition Friday against a policy mandating employers with 100 or more workers require COVID-19 vaccination or weekly testing, which President Joe Biden announced the day before.

“This seminary must not be forced to stand in for the government in investigating the private health decisions of our faculty and employees in a matter involving legitimate religious concerns,” said Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary in Louisville. “We are glad to join with Asbury Theological Seminary in taking a stand against government coercion.”

According to the rules issued Thursday, private-sector employers with 100 or more workers must require COVID-19 vaccination or weekly testing. These requirements will take effect January 4 under an emergency temporary standard from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Several states with Republican governors have also vowed to challenge the OSHA regulations in court, calling them an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

“The Biden administration’s decision to mandate vaccines through an OSHA emergency rule is unlawful and compels employers like our clients to intrude on their employees’ personal health decisions and divert resources from their important mission of training future ministers,” said Ryan Bangert, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the two …

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(UPDATED) The Justice for Janes movement has brought forth allegations of mishandled abuse cases and coverup and challenged the university to improve its response.

Liberty University students and alumni prayed and protested in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault as they called on the school’s board of trustees to authorize an independent investigation into its response to reports of abuse.

On Thursday evening, more than 100 people gathered behind a barrier along a traffic circle on campus—Lynchburg’s fall foliage aglow behind them—to hear from victims’ advocate Rachael Denhollander; former Liberty professor Karen Swallow Prior; and representatives of “Justice for Janes,” named for the Jane Does who have come forward with claims that their abuse cases were mishandled by Liberty.

They wore teal clothing and ribbons and held signs reading “We’re with the Does” and “Independent Audit Now.” Students plan to continue to rally on campus Friday afternoon.

With momentum around the movement and coverage of Liberty building for months, advocates have seen some signs of hope this week. The school announced plans to install surveillance cameras and blue-light call boxes on campus and may be moving toward an outside audit of the school’s Title IX and human resources offices.

“While Justice for Janes is grateful for the steps being taken, we understand that there is way more to be done,” Liberty senior and Justice for Janes founder Daniel Harris told the Liberty Champion. “That investigation needs to happen.”

After students struggled to secure university permission to hold Thursday night’s event on campus, interim president Jerry Prevo ended up attending and spoke with organizers and the media.

On Friday, a day …

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The pandemic intensified existing economic challenges for churches—and catalyzed new ones.

Salem Baptist Church of Chicago got creative with ministry funding in 2020. The predominantly Black megachurch served 15,000 meals to needy Chicagoland residents during the COVID-19 pandemic, funded in part by government grants received through a nonprofit organization affiliated with the church.

Giving from church members held strong, said pastor of ministries Shaun Marshall, but increased ministry necessitated new funding streams. Now with the pandemic continuing to fluctuate, Salem has realized its new funding model probably is here to stay.

Among COVID-19’s lessons: “The church cannot be dependent upon just one stream of revenue,” Marshall said. That is one of several economic changes financial experts see on the immediate horizon for churches. Pastors, they say, should prepare for unique financial challenges over the next two years, driven in large measure by the global pandemic.

Shifting Funding Models

Churches will need more capital over the next two years. Average church size in the US has declined steadily for 20 years, according to new research by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). “As attendance goes down, per-capita costs go up,” said Warren Bird, ECFA senior vice president of research and equipping.

Additionally, many churches face deferred maintenance because they focused limited resources in 2020 on keeping staff employed. New technology costs abound too, Bird said, “as almost every church has added an online campus or otherwise increased its digital presence.”

These financial needs have led churches “to get creative and innovative” with money, Marshall said. Some congregations have explored how to run businesses as a second stream of …

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In a town in the Chin region, government soldiers burned and looted homes and churches.

More than 160 buildings in a town in northwestern Myanmar, including at least two churches, have been destroyed by fires caused by shelling by government troops, local media and activists reported Saturday.

The destruction of parts of the town of Thantlang in Chin state appeared to be another escalation in the ongoing struggle between Myanmar’s military-installed government and forces opposed to it. The army seized power in February from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, but has failed to quell the widespread resistance.

The Chin state is a heavily Christian area in the otherwise majority-Buddhist country. Over 90 percent of the ethnic Chin people identify as Christian, many of them Baptists after the history of Baptist missionaries in the region.

A government spokesman denied “nonsense allegations being reported in the country-destroying media,” and blamed insurgents for instigating the fighting and setting the fires.

Human rights groups and UN experts recently warned that the government is planning a major offensive in the country’s northwest, including Chin state, along with the regions of Magway and Sagaing. Residents of the rugged area have a reputation for their fierce fighting spirit, and have put up stiff resistance to military rule despite being only lightly armed with single-shot hunting rifles and homemade weapons.

There were no immediate reports of casualties from the fire, which started early Friday and burned through the night, according to reports.

Dave Eubank, head of the Christian humanitarian service movement Free Burma Rangers, said the attacks against Christian homes and businesses in the area are due to resistance to the regime, rather than targeting a particular faith.

“I …

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After losing shift work and blue collar jobs during shutdowns, Christians are thinking more carefully about the work of their hands as they reenter the marketplace.

No one dreams of seeking work after retirement, but sometimes a pension isn’t enough. West Virginian Henry Shinn, 61, found himself there last year as the COVID-19 pandemic wracked the nation.

With nothing but an unlikely product design brewing in his mind, he approached Crea Company—a faith-based organization that works with creators to bring their ideas to life.

Within months, Crea Company had helped him formulate a plan and secure the machines and materials necessary to launch West Virginia Trail Chips. The company produces durable wooden tokens in the form of unique, collection-worthy business cards. Shinn now earns a steady income from his part-time business, working from home and creating his products in the Crea workshop for an affordable monthly fee.

Crea’s mission-based framework to provide a “future that inspires hope” for West Virginians is one example of how Christians are helping one another through unsteady economic times and job difficulties.

Bonus? It comes with the perk of built-in coworkers. Fellow creators, who also believe in the Christian mission of the local “makerspace,” are there to ask questions, give advice, and offer direction.

“You are just more apt to be friendly and helpful in that kind of environment,” Shinn said in an interview with Christianity Today.

Crea cofounder Travis Lowe, who also pastors Crossroads Church in Bluefield, West Virginia, saw interest rise soon after the pandemic spawned. After starting Crea in 2019, its purpose shifted to meet the community’s needs as the pandemic hit.

“Our original model,” said Lowe, “was to offer community groups [the opportunity for] maker classes—like, come make a doormat …

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How the dilemmas driving “The Brothers Karamazov” resemble those confronting the world’s third-largest Christian communion.

C. S. Lewis envisioned Christianity as a house with “a hall out of which doors open into several rooms.” The rooms are ecclesial traditions that offer disciples a fire for warmth, a chair for rest, and a meal for nourishment and fellowship, whereas the hall is “mere” Christianity, a place where disciples greet and gift each other with riches from their respective rooms.

Against tradition without tradition (nondenominationalism), Lewis encouraged Christians to find themselves in a room because “the hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.” He adds, “I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise.”

Lewis’s analogy has organized the shape of my Christ-life with remarkable clarity. My childhood and adolescence were spent in the hall, oblivious that it was a hall and unsuitable for the long haul. Only when I studied abroad and worshiped in the Church of England did I find a room—or it found me, satisfying questions that Lewis advises in our search: “Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this?”

The journey I made from generic evangelical to Anglican fits a recent pattern narrated by American theologian Robert Webber in his 1985 book, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. The Anglican room welcomed Webber and other evangelicals, including myself, with six areas of orthodoxy that were “not adequately fulfilled” in our Christian experience: mystery and awe, liturgical worship, sacramental …

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Political tensions in the pews have calmed, and another survey shows leaders’ Trump support yielded more positives than negatives for evangelicals.

Political polarization has subsided in most American churches a year after the 2020 presidential elections. But there are notable exceptions to that trajectory, and new research has found lingering effects of evangelical support for former president Donald Trump.

The remnants of tension are evident at congregations such as Seattle’s Downtown Cornerstone Church, where pastor Adam Sinnett has been surprised “at how challenging it is to really cultivate unity amidst [our] political differences.”

In the youthful, mobile, and tech-savvy church, members who “leaned more toward the far left and the far right tended to have the most difficult time in this last season,” Sinnett said, “and they also were the ones that gravitated away from the church.”

The Seattle congregation’s experience aligns with data released this week by Heart and Mind Strategies, a research and consulting organization. A survey of 1,000 US adults conducted in August found some remaining sources of political strife for evangelicals.

Around half of Americans believe evangelical leaders’ support of Trump hurt the church’s credibility. One in four say evangelical support for Trump reduced their desire to participate in religion. And among evangelicals, 33 percent say their leaders’ support of Trump made personal witness to friends and family more difficult.

The political strife the church has endured in recent years “shows the world that Jesus doesn’t really unite people like we say he does,” Sinnett said.

At Downtown Cornerstone, the political differences show up “in three primary spheres: personal relationships, small groups, and most pointedly around decisions …

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Response of Christian Aid Ministries and supporters reveals three Anabaptist distinctives that other Christians should find both familiar and thought provoking.

Like many others, we have been following the story of the 12 adults and five children associated with Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) who were kidnapped in Haiti on October 16 and are being held for ransom. The situation is difficult to contemplate, and we join countless individuals around the globe in praying for their release.

Unfortunately, circumstances in Haiti have allowed kidnapping to become all too common, routinely placing the lives of locals—and sometimes those of foreigners—at risk. But although the CAM abduction story fits a sad pattern of sorts, the official response has provoked queries from both religious and secular observers.

The nature and tone of CAM’s public statements and the prayer requests from the captives’ families have surprised many people because they have included prayer for the kidnappers and a desire to extend love and forgiveness to the gang members holding the 16 Americans and one Canadian captive.

Yet these responses did not surprise us. To be clear, we do not personally know any of those being held captive by the gang known as 400 Mawozo, nor are we privy to the private conversations of their relatives. However, the content of the public prayers and the calls to pray for the captives reflect deeply rooted Anabaptist dispositions that we believe the wider Christian community would find both surprisingly familiar and thought provoking.

From Ohio to the world

CAM is a relief and service organization supported by many churches on the more conservative side of the contemporary Anabaptist spectrum—plain-dressing traditionalist Mennonites, Amish-Mennonites, Dunkard Brethren, and not a small number of Old Order Mennonites and Amish. Along with Mennonite Central Committee …

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Their middle-class salaries now worth peanuts, evangelicals struggle to maintain a faithful presence amid debate over serving God elsewhere.

In 2019, as Lebanon witnessed an unprecedented uprising against its entire political class, evangelical sermons grappled with applied theology:

Whether to join in for justice or honor the king.

Two years later, amid an economic collapse the World Bank says is the worst in 150 years, Lebanese Christians face an even greater pastoral challenge:

Whether to stay and help or escape abroad.

The nation has largely made up its mind.

Estimates indicate as many as 380,000 people have left Lebanon. Every day witnesses another 8,000 passport applications. Food prices have increased 557 percent since the uprising, as the inflation rate has now surged past perennial basket cases Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Once featuring an economically vibrant middle-class, Lebanon now has a poverty rate of 78 percent. The minimum wage of $450 per month has devalued to almost $30.

“Ask first, ‘Where can I love the Lord, obey the Lord, and serve the Lord—me and my family?’” Hikmat Kashouh, pastor of Resurrection Church Beirut, preached in his recent sermon. “Praying faithfully, we may come up with different decisions.”

Kashouh urged people not to emigrate easily, to seek counsel with church leaders, and to help the suffering whether they stay or leave.

Fellow evangelical pastor Walid Zailaa, however, was blunt in his assessment.

“Your presence is important. How can we enact God’s will if you are not here?” preached the pastor of Faith Baptist Church in Mansourieh. “If you want to search for a better life for yourself and your children, it is your right. But it says to God, ‘You are not able to provide for me in Lebanon.’”

Even the lions and tigers are leaving.

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