Transubstantiate

Legal experts worry that ruling in landmark workplace discrimination cases can’t provide the nuanced exemptions evangelicals have advocated for.

The United States Supreme Court was debating the meaning of the word sex on Tuesday when Chief Justice John Roberts brought up religion. He called it “that other concern”—religious liberty.

Roberts asked: How can the government protect the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender employees in the workplace and the rights of religious groups to employ people who agree on issues of sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity?

Three current cases before the court all raise this question—but might not answer it. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia; Altitude Express v. Zarda; and Harris Funeral Homes v. the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

In all three, the court is considering whether the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects LGBT people from getting fired. Title VII of the law says employers cannot dismiss people “because of sex.” The court has to decide whether sex includes sexual orientation and gender identity.

The defendants—Gerald Bostock of Georgia, Don Zarda of New York, and Aimee Stephens of Michigan—say it does.

Bostock was a child welfare services coordinator for the Clayton County, Georgia, juvenile court system, who said he was fired for his sexual orientation after his employer learned he joined a gay men’s softball league. Zarda—who died before his case got to the Supreme Court—was a skydiving instructor who lost his job after he told a female student he was gay. Stephens was a funeral director for R.G. and G.R. Harris Funeral Homes and got fired after coming out as a transgender woman. Stephens’ employer said she was in violation of the dress code, which requires men to wear suits. …

Continue reading…

Why Christians read the diversity within the canon as a unified whole.

Well over a decade ago, I was doing postgraduate work at the University of St. Andrews and the place was abuzz with exciting news. Robert Jenson was coming. A close friend of mine was writing his dissertation on Robert Jenson. He was excited. I was too. Jenson, who passed away in 2017, was by this time already established as one of America’s premier theologians, so this was a momentous occasion.

We crammed into College Hall, a small, boardroom-style meeting space, to hear from the living legend. From the back wall, Samuel Rutherford’s puritan portrait gazed down on our gathering, as it does on every gathering in that room. Truth be told, he might not have been so excited to hear from this ecumenical, Lutheran theologian. But he couldn’t go anywhere. So, he listened too.

At some point during the conversation, someone asked a snarky question. “Who wrote the Bible?” The ability to ask good questions in these kinds of settings is a learned skill (I’m still learning). I didn’t think this duck had any wings. Even the tone of the question seemed off: a kind of awkward jab at simple profundity. But Jenson took the question seriously and turned the moment from an awkward jab into one of, well, simple profundity.

“Years ago,” Jenson answered, “I would have pulled my historical critical commentaries off the shelf and talked about the theology of the Jahwist, the various communities of the early church behind the gospels, etc.” In other words, Jenson would have given the best critical answers of the day about the human authorship of Scripture. “But now,” Jenson concluded, “I just say God.”

Non-Repugnant Reading

If what Jenson says is true, and I believe …

Continue reading…

How the American pastor handled a crisis of faith during his Turkish imprisonment.

Many of the Christians we admire most have been imprisoned for the cause of Christ. Believers like Corrie ten Boom and Richard Wurmbrand are remembered as giants of faith and perseverance, blessed with a peculiar sense of God’s power and presence even in the midst of extreme suffering. In God’s Hostage: A True Story of Persecution, Imprisonment, and Perseverance, pastor and missionary Andrew Brunson provides a raw account of his own experience as a prisoner of the Turkish government. Yet his is a story of doubt as well as faith, of depression as well as hope. Writer and former missionary Jaclyn S. Parrish spoke with Brunson about suffering, growth, and dependence on God in the face of despair.

Can you give some of the background of why you were imprisoned?

My wife, Norine, and I were missionaries in Turkey for 23 years, and we never tried to hide our work. We were surprised when we were detained. There was an attempted coup in 2016, but that didn’t change the views of the government leaders. I think it just gave them an opportunity to do many things they’d wanted to do before. It had nothing to do with our arrest; it just created a very tense environment.

When they called us in, we thought we were getting our residence permits. But then they said, “No, you’re being arrested for deportation.” Norine was released after 13 days, but they kept me. There are several reasons, and they changed over time, but the big thing is that they wanted to make an example of somebody, of a missionary, to intimidate other missionaries so that they would self-deport. And they also wanted to intimidate local believers. At some point, the government decided to keep me as a political pawn, a bargaining chip. …

Continue reading…

Brazilian Christians divided over rainforest blazes and President Jair Bolsonaro’s response.

Fires in the Amazon come every year during dry season, but reports indicated that this year’s were particularly severe, some saying the worst in a decade. While international attention turned toward the burning rainforest in August, the Christian community in Brazil was divided in its reaction.

Now, the Catholic Church will revisit its environmental concerns in the region as 100 bishops meet at the Vatican’s Synod for the Amazon, starting Sunday.

Amid rising global climate concerns, the fires have drawn scrutiny toward Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, whose pro-business policies were said to be responsible for spurring an uptick in farmers’ and loggers’ slash-and-burn efforts across the world’s largest rainforest.

The conservative, populist politician initially dismissed the outcry before political pressure led him to declare a 60-day ban on land-clearing fires in late August—but not before Catholic authorities in Brazil criticized Bolsonaro’s leadership on the issue, and the Ecumenical Forum ACT Brazil, a blend of Protestant and Catholic leaders, blamed the administration’s policies for “a surge in devastation of the environment.”

Yet many evangelicals, who make up about a quarter of the country’s population, have come to the president’s defense, dismissing the fires as normal rather than the crisis international officials and media have made them out to be. (Bolsonaro, a Catholic, is married to an evangelical and attended a Baptist church for a decade.)

While Catholic leaders assert pressure on Bolsonaro’s regime to bolster protections of the Amazon jungle—one archbishop called the scorching a “true apocalypse”—and the papal …

Continue reading…

The anonymous gift—the largest for an evangelical liberal arts college—will dramatically increase student aid.

A record-setting $75.5 million donation stands to change the trajectory of Gordon College by boosting scholarship funds to make the school more affordable and expanding opportunities for non-traditional students.

The anonymous gift—the largest in the school’s history and among the largest ever given to a Christian college—is an answered prayer. And it comes just at the right time. Higher education faces looming questions about its future, and Gordon began to implement major academic changes around a realigned budget last spring.

The recent donation “was as a sign of God’s redemptive love for Christian education in the context of great challenges and opposition,” said Gordon president (and CT board member) D. Michael Lindsay. Lindsay spent four years asking God to bring a “transformational donor” to the evangelical liberal arts college. This summer, it finally happened.

Lindsay shared the news with the student body Friday at the Boston-area college’s homecoming and 130th anniversary celebration. The gift, which is designated for Gordon’s endowment, puts the school more than halfway to a campaign goal of raising $130 million over the next couple years. Right away, students enrolling in 2020 will receive an additional 15 percent in financial aid.

Donations this big tend to go to Ivy League schools and state research universities. According to data compiled by the Almanac of Higher Education, only a handful of evangelical colleges—including Regent University, Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, and Westmont College—have ever received gifts over $70 million.

“The number one reason why donors make big gifts, like extraordinary gifts, to a Christian …

Continue reading…

Let’s not distort the gospel by elevating one family member’s words over the other.

Brandt Jean’s response to his brother’s murderer helps us see the gospel.

But so does Allison Jean’s.

Did you miss hers? Only one response was widely shared on social media after the conviction and sentencing of Amber Guyger, a former Dallas police officer who entered 26-year-old Botham Jean’s apartment and fatally shot him. On Wednesday, Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The Jean family was given the opportunity to make a victim impact statement. Brandt used his time to directly address the officer who killed his brother.

He said, “If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself, I forgive you.”

Brandt told Guyger that Botham would have wanted her to give her life to Christ. He asked to give Guyger a hug, and after State District Judge Tammy Kemp gave her okay, Brandt offered a long embrace. In the video, you can hear Guyger’s loud sobs.

Most have probably seen this footage. Brandt’s offer of forgiveness and hug has been shared and praised widely across social media.

But many have likely missed footage from the rest of the family, including these words from Botham’s mother, Allison Jean.

“Forgiveness for us as Christians is a healing for us, but as my husband said, there are consequences. It does not mean that everything else we have suffered has to go unnoticed,” Mother Allison told the court.

What went unnoticed? According to Botham Jean’s mother, the crime scene was contaminated by Dallas police. High-ranking officials deleted evidence. Police officers turned off body cameras and vehicle cameras.

“You saw investigations that were marred with corruption,” Mother Allison said. “While we walk as Christians, we still have a responsibility …

Continue reading…

Those who come have very little. But they have everything they need.

From my knees, I’m startled as I turn around and see that Sigs has joined me on this flat spot. He’s breathing hard but has a smile on his face. “This is a good place to stop,” I tell him as I get up, reflecting on the time I’ve just spent with God. “You can get some great pictures here as well. I’ll let you have this rock.” I pick up my pack and slide it on my back and say, “I’ll see you at the top.”

“For sure,” he answers, still catching his breath and grabbing his water bottle. “Maybe I’ll even pass you—I won’t be here long.”

“Yeah, right,” I answer. We both smile, because he knows how competitive I am—with a head start, there’s no way I’ll let him catch me!

I step out on the last half of the hike up the mountain. Buoyed by rest, I find new momentum on the trail. I can now average about 20 steps per intermittent pause, and it ends up taking about another hour to finally reach the crest. Aaron is waiting (he’s been there a while), and he’s already found a teahouse in a village that overlooks several valleys.

“This is where we’ll stay for the night,” he says, “and the timing is perfect.”

“What do you mean?”

“The only church that exists in these villages is meeting here tonight, and it looks like we’re going to be able to worship with them. Would you mind encouraging them with a message from the Word?”

“I would love to!”

“Great. For now, go ahead and put your pack down in a room,” Aaron says. “Then rest for a bit. We’ll have dinner in about an hour. Later, once it’s dark, the church …

Continue reading…

How the pastor of a small, nondenominational Bible church ended up in Kanye’s circle.

In between Kanye West’s sets during an impromptu, sold-out show in Detroit last week, a lean figure with a blonde pompadour took the stage and preached the gospel.

“I’m here to tell you that while our God is the judge over the universe, he’s also a God of mercy and he’s a God of love, and he sent his Son to die on a cross because he loves you,” said Adam Tyson, a graduate of The Master’s Seminary and the pastor of a small Bible church. “He wants to be exalted in your heart today.”

His 12-minute sermon focused on the prophet’s vision in Isaiah 6. It’s weird to hear a sermon at a Kanye concert, but then again not that weird if you’ve been following Kanye’s Sunday Services. These gospel music and fellowship gatherings that started among his family, friends, and elite guests at his Calabasas, California, estate, grew into a type of concert experience for the Jesus-seeking artist.

On the road with the rapper as he performs Sunday Services to promote his next album, Jesus is King, Tyson believes God is “being exalted and people are being moved.” The audience is receptive to his sermons, he said, and he has received positive feedback after the shows.

“I came to hear Kanye,” one fan told Tyson. “But then I heard the message of forgiveness from the Bible.”

From Yeezus to Jesus

Tyson’s ministry career took an unexpected turn the day Kanye happened to visit his congregation, Placerita Bible Church in Santa Clarita, California. The 43-year-old pastor has found himself not only discussing the gospel with Kanye, but thrust into the hip hop artist’s circle, flying to Cody, Wyoming, for Bible study with him and his employees, …

Continue reading…

When the path to formal church leadership is blocked, they’ll naturally look for other ways to reach an audience.

Tish Harrison Warren lit up the internet with an essay for Christianity Today that asked, “Who’s in Charge of the Christian Blogosphere?” In her piece, Warren addressed “a crisis of authority” resulting from so much de facto discipleship occurring on social media rather than in the church—a phenomenon that, for a variety of reasons, women have experienced most acutely.

Even before Warren’s essay was published, Kate Bowler, associate professor of the history of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School, was compiling years of research on the conditions within modern American evangelicalism that helped lead to this state of affairs. She discovered that evangelical women, denied traditional means of authority within the church (and sometimes the culture), were becoming increasingly adept at tapping into newer forms of authority brought about by the age of mass media and the cult of celebrity it has wrought. In The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities, she examines how Christian women—within both conservative and liberal church traditions—have exploited the power of beauty, therapy, family, and pop art to exert authority of their own. Author and Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior spoke with Bowler about her book.

One of the unique qualities of your research and writing is that you bring the sort of personal experience to your subject that many scholars, particularly in the field of religion, lack. You have roots in a conservative Christian tradition—but you’re not mad about it. Can you talk about that?

I grew up among the Mennonites in the plains of Manitoba in a broadly evangelical tradition, …

Continue reading…

The political forces in the region also pose an existential threat to the church.

The people of Hong Kong have protested for greater freedoms for years, but the latest demonstrations represent a historic outcry.

Since 1997, July 1 has marked the anniversary of Hong Kong’s return as a territory of China after 150 years of British colonial rule. Beginning in 2003, it is also the date of annual protests by Hong Kong residents calling for increased democracy.

These demonstrations have been generally peaceful—until this summer, when a group of protesters stormed the Legislative Council parliament building. They were angry at what they saw as China’s most recent, and most egregious, effort to weaken the freedoms of Hong Kongers.

In April, Carrie Lam, the chief executive of Hong Kong, had introduced a bill that would allow Hong Kong to detain and transfer people wanted in countries and territories with which Hong Kong has no formal extradition agreement, including mainland China and Taiwan. The bill, she argued, was necessary to send a Hong Kong man wanted for murder to trial in Taiwan. It specifically included exemptions for political crimes, religious crimes, and certain white-collar crimes.

The Hong Kong public, though, saw the bill as a thinly veiled ploy to give China additional power over the semi-autonomous territory. The bill has kicked off nearly four months of protests that have, at times, had as many as 1.7 million participants—a remarkable number for a city of 7.4 million people.

Even as the extradition bill was suspended by Lam, and then withdrawn altogether, the protests against Chinese overreach have continued, with turnout spiking leading up to another anniversary: National Day. October 1 marks the 70th annual commemoration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. …

Continue reading…