Author: Chris Boyd

Executive Committee decision comes after weeks of heated debate and division.

It took three weeks of scheduled meetings, at least three law firms, dozens of statements, hours of closed-door briefings, and extensive back-and-forth debates across boardooms, social media, and Zoom calls for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee (EC) to agree to the terms of a third-party investigation into its response to abuse. But on Tuesday, it did.

The EC voted 44–31 on in favor of waiving attorney-client privilege in the investigation, after a half dozen members resigned and several switched their position in favor of the waiver. For a moment, it felt like the conclusion of a long and heated process, though the decision is only the start of a long investigative process.

EC chairman Rolland Slade, who oversaw the proceedings, expressed his relief after the tally was announced. Then he remarked, “I want to express sorrow over the conduct we have displayed as Southern Baptists.”

For the EC—the denominational body tasked with Southern Baptist business outside the annual meeting—the debate pitted the desire to open fully to the investigation against concerns that such transparency would threaten its financial solvency, insurance coverage, and other fiduciary duties to protect the entity.

As the clash played out, Southern Baptist voices including seminary presidents, state convention leaders, and thousands of pastors spoke out to put pressure on the EC to comply with the requirement to waive attorney-client privilege, which had been approved when the denomination called for the investigation at its annual meeting in June.

“Taking steps towards honesty, transparency, repentance, those are great things. Those are worthy of celebration,” said Georgia pastor Griffin …

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The writer’s new memoir sheds light on an upbringing steeped in bigotry and a lifetime of “useful” pain.

Philip Yancey knew he would write a memoir the day he lay strapped to a backboard, not knowing if he would live or die. This was in 2007, after he had already written numerous books and won global acclaim as a journalist spotlighting issues of faith in the stories of other people. Yet it took a careening Jeep, five rolls down an embankment, and a broken neck to persuade him irrevocably to write the full truths of his own story.

I saw Yancey four years ago as he was writing it. We sat over lunch in an earthy café in Colorado sharing the challenges of writing memoir. How do we account for the span of our life? When do we break our silence? How much truth is enough?

Since then, I’ve been anxiously awaiting how Yancey would answer those questions for himself. Here’s my report: Where the Light Fell is in many ways a classic spiritual autobiography tracing one man’s conversion from cynic to believer. But it’s more. It’s a searing family story as revelatory as gothic Southern fiction. It’s an exposé. It’s a social critique. It’s a tragedy. It’s a tale of redemption. More than anything, though, it’s a story few could have imagined.

Unmaking and remaking

Not everything in this memoir will come as a surprise, especially for readers familiar with Yancey’s prolific writings on matters of grace, the problem of evil, and the author’s Southern fundamentalist background, particularly its role in justifying racism and segregation.

Although such themes are recognizable in Yancey’s memoir, the stories have a different feel. No longer do they serve mainly as anecdotal ramps onto larger explorations of doubt, grace, prejudice, and pain. Instead, we stay inside …

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The outspoken host and pioneering Christian broadcaster has been the face of CBN since its founding 60 years ago.

After decades of offering Christian viewers his commentary on natural disasters, 9/11, AIDS, pot, divorce, diplomacy, plastic surgery, homosexuality, Islam, secular colleges, the end of the world, critical race theory, and a range of other moral issues, Pat Robertson has signed off as host of The 700 Club.

On the 60th anniversary of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), its 91-year-old founder announced that he would be stepping down and that his son, Gordon Robertson, would take over as full-time host of its flagship talk show.

Robertson, also the founder of Regent University and the Christian Coalition, has been a pioneer in evangelical broadcasting. He launched CBN as the country’s first Christian network in 1960, and CBN has grown to air in 174 countries and 70 languages. It added a 24-7 news channel in 2018.

At the helm of the Virginia-based network, Robertson was ambitious and creative, believing that CBN could grow to a place alongside major channels and thus have a greater impact for the kingdom.

As CT reported in 1982, “CBN began replacing pulpits and King James English with Johnny Carson-style sofas and soap-opera vernacular. Its anchor show, The 700 Club, assumed an upbeat, magazine format, complete with news spots from Washington, D.C. Other programs resemble familiar TV Guide lineups, with a top-quality soap opera, early morning news and chatter, a miniseries on pornography, Wall Street analyses, and entertainment for children.”

But particularly in the past couple decades, the long-running host became known for controversial declarations on politics and prophesy, which stirred even fellow evangelicals.

When Robertson called on the US to assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez 15 years ago, …

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Apocalyptic fiction writer Joel Rosenberg’s new book describes his behind-the-scenes interactions with crown princes and presidents in search of peace and religious freedom.

Fans of Joel Rosenberg’s Middle East apocalyptic fiction can now read his real-time account of real-world peace.

Through behind-the-scenes meetings with kings, princes, and presidents, the Jewish evangelical and New York Times bestselling author had an inside scoop on the Abraham Accords.

For two years, he sat on it.

His new nonfiction book, Enemies and Allies: An Unforgettable Journey inside the Fast-Moving & Immensely Turbulent Modern Middle East, released one year after the signing of the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), finally tells the story.

During an evangelical delegation of dialogue to the Gulf nation in 2018, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), told Rosenberg of his groundbreaking and controversial plans—and trusted the author to keep the secret.

Named after the biblical patriarch, the accords were Israel’s first peace deal in 20 years. In the five months that followed, similar agreements were signed with Bahrain, Sudan, Kosovo, and Morocco.

Might Saudi Arabia be next? Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) comments to Rosenberg remain off the record. But asked if his reforms might include building the kingdom’s first church, the crown prince described where religious freedom falls in his order of priorities.

Enemies and Allies provides never-before-published accounts of Rosenberg’s interactions with these leaders, in addition to Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Included also are exchanges with former president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence.

CT interviewed Rosenberg about navigating politics and praying in palaces and about whether he would be willing to lead similar evangelical …

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But like the CCM industry, it speaks an insider language.

I have a memory of being five or six years old and helping my mom prepare for a party with Amy Grant’s album Heart in Motion playing in the background. I knew (and still know) all the words to “Baby, Baby” and “Good for Me.” When I got married, my three sisters sang a parody of her song, “Lucky One” at the reception.

I know every song on Steven Curtis Chapman’s Speechless by heart. I saw DC Talk in concert at eight, tagging along with a friend whose parents led youth group. In high school, I worked in the music department of a Christian book store.

In other words, I grew up on Christian Contemporary Music (CCM).

The Jesus Music, a new film directed by Jon and Andrew Erwin about the rise of the genre, was made for me and for people like me—whose musical and spiritual worlds were formed and influenced by the music, musicians, and subculture of CCM. I enjoyed revisiting the music my parents and I played on repeat during the ’80s and ’90s, and I suspect that many viewers like me will as well. Viewers like me.

“This music,” musician Joel Smallbone (of the band For King & Country) says in the opening line of the trailer, “offers people a sense of hope and a sense of togetherness and a sense of joy, maybe that they’ve not experienced.”

That’s a sweeping claim, one echoed on the film’s website, which refers to the “universal power of music from these artists.”

Is this music really for anyone and everyone? Can everyone find in it a sense of hope, joy, or togetherness? No. Music isn’t a universal language, and the music featured in The Jesus Music comes from a brief fifty-year window and a small group of artists …

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Let’s swap “sloppy wet kiss” for “break the arm of the wicked man.”

In 2018, an unusual Bible made national news. Published in 1807, the so-called “Slave Bible” offered Caribbean slaves a highly edited edition of the KJV. The editors presumably cut out parts of Scripture that could undermine slavery or incite rebellion.

If you want a pro-slavery Bible, it’s unsurprising you’d get rid of the exodus story or drop Paul’s declaration that in Christ “there is … neither slave nor free” (Gal. 3:28). But why did the creators of the “Slave Bible” cut out the Book of Psalms? After all, the portions that tend to be well known and well-loved draw our minds toward well-tended sheep sitting by quiet waters.

Yet upon closer inspection, Psalms is obsessed with the Lord’s liberating justice for the oppressed. And because the book offers us prayers and songs, it doesn’t just tell us how to think about justice—it offers us scripts to practice shouting and singing about it.

But when I recently took a quick look at the lyrics of the first 25 songs listed in the “CCLI Top 100” worship songs reportedly sung by churches and compared them to the way the Psalms sing about justice, I realized that we don’t necessarily follow that script. Here’s what stood out:

There is only one passing mention of the word justice in the Top 25. By contrast, just one of the Old Testament’s words for justice (mishpat) shows up 65 times in 33 different psalms. The oldest title for the Book of Psalms is simply “Praises.” When you ask what the Psalter says we should be praising God for, though, the Lord’s justice stands at the top of the list. The Psalms shout for joy to the “Mighty King, lover of justice,” …

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How Christians can respond to their own dread about the last years’ uptick in violence and property damage.

When I was born, violent crime in America was historically high. Starting around 1960, crime rates climbed, and three decades later, violent crime had quadrupled from its mid-century low. Our pop culture looks back on the 1970s and 1980s with nostalgia, envisioning a suburban idyll of kids biking around the neighborhood at twilight hour. There’s truth there, but also a lie: At the national scale, I was born at the crest of a crime tsunami.

Then the wave broke. After 1991, violent and property crime alike began to fall sharply. My generation has the unusual distinction of having spent our entire conscious lives in a country becoming measurably safer. Safer, that is, until the past couple of years. The year 2020 saw a 25 percent increase in homicides compared to 2019. Now it may be, as an Atlantic headline declared in March, that “America’s Great Crime Decline Is Over.” To my thinking, it’s too soon to say, and 2020’s crimes rates remained far below that 1991 peak.

But suppose for the sake of discussion that the headline’s right. How should Christians respond if crime really is on the rise again? The simplest step we can take is to keep informed about crime rates. Polling shows Americans persistently believe crime is worse than it is. Unfortunately, evangelicals are “far more likely than the general American public” to make this mistake, according to research by Barna Group for
Prison Fellowship.

That false belief is an open door to panic, demonization of higher-crime communities, and introduction of heavy-handed laws that mainly serve to comfortably assure us we’re “taking action.” We’re called to invest in the good of our communities here and now …

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How polarizing narratives corrupt our hearts and redefine our faith.

After touring the United States in the early 1830s, the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville concluded that “the organization and establishment of democracy among Christians is the great political problem of our time.”

Nearly two centuries later, the problem in the United States has evolved from establishing to sustaining democracy, but the underlying challenge for American Christians remains unchanged. As citizens of a democratic republic, we are called to think Christianly about democracy, respond rightly to it, and live faithfully within it. Among other things, this means figuring out what to make of the populist wave currently transforming American politics on the left and the right.

Before we can do so, however, we must first define what we mean by “populism,” and that turns out to be more complicated than you’d think. At first glance, the term seems so malleable as to be useless. Populism can appear among Democrats and Republicans, socialists as well as capitalists. Since 2016, the two best-known populists in the United States have been Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. Think about that for a moment. What kind of phenomenon can bridge such a great divide?

All-consuming urgency

The answer begins to take shape once we shift our attention from policy to strategy. What unifies populism is its consistent rhetorical approach—its distinctive way of framing political issues, appealing to voters, and justifying the exercise of power once in office. Psychological research suggests that fact-based political arguments play a minuscule role in influencing the votes that we cast. The most persuasive political arguments come packaged as stories. They are narratives that help us to situate our lives, …

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Top denominations and thousands of churches are reconsidering whether to keep hosting scout units.

Amid the Boy Scouts of America’s complex bankruptcy case, there is worsening friction between the BSA and the major religious groups that help it run thousands of scout units. At issue: the churches’ fears that an eventual settlement—while protecting the BSA from future sex-abuse lawsuits—could leave many churches unprotected.

The Boy Scouts sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020 in an effort to halt individual lawsuits and create a huge compensation fund for thousands of men who say they were molested as youngsters by scoutmasters or other leaders. At the time, the national organization estimated it might face 5,000 cases; it now faces 82,500.

In July, the BSA proposed an $850 million deal that would bar further lawsuits against it and its local councils. The deal did not cover the more than 40,000 organizations that have charters with the BSA to sponsor scout units, including many churches from major religious denominations that are now questioning their future involvement in scouting.

The United Methodist Church—which says up to 5,000 of its US congregations could be affected by future lawsuits—recently advised those churches not to extend their charters with the BSA beyond the end of this year. The UMC said these congregations were “disappointed and very concerned” that they weren’t included in the July deal.

Everett Cygal, a lawyer for Catholic churches monitoring the case, said it is unfair that parishes now face liability “solely as a result of misconduct by Boy Scout troop leaders who frequently had no connection to the parish.”

“Scouting can only be delivered with help of their chartered organizations,” Cygal told The Associated Press. …

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Multilevel marketing isn’t a hobby. And its workers need discipleship.

When LuLaRoe leggings showed up in my small community a few years ago, a farmer in our church dubbed them “tight britches.” Colorful and comfortable, the style quickly became de rigueur for women and girls in our area. But the trend took off for a much simpler reason too: network marketing.
Sometimes known as direct or multilevel marketing, network marketing leverages established social circles to sell directly to consumers through local representatives. Companies like LuLaRoe do particularly well in communities that have thick relational networks, which is likely why they flourish in churches, homeschooling co-ops, and mommy groups.
But despite its growing presence (and generating over $40 billion annually), network marketing rarely shows up in evangelical theologies of faith and work. We might address the toll it takes on relationships, how it affects women’s formation, or whether it makes good financial sense, but few of our conversations take multilevel marketing sales seriously as work. And if we don’t, we won’t take the motives, questions, and dilemmas of those involved in this work seriously either.
This was especially clear to me as I viewed the recent Amazon documentary LuLaRich, which chronicles the woes of the aforementioned apparel company. Following a meteoric rise, LuLaRoe became the object of a spate of lawsuits, claiming damages for everything from poorly crafted merchandise to an incentive program that looked a lot like a pyramid scheme. Independent representatives were left with mounting debt, and some even found their relationships and marriages—the very things that had propelled them into the work in the first place—collapsing.
While watching the docuseries, …

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