Transubstantiate

The city some dismiss as “The Swamp” is fertile ground for evangelicals.

The District Church could be a Baptist church. The lead pastor, after all, grew up as a Southern Baptist missionary kid and still has a lot of ties to that denomination.

It could also be Anglican, with the way it leans into liturgy and the church calendar. Or a social justice church, with its focus on the inequality so visible in Washington, DC, or charismatic, with its emphasis on prayer and sensitivity to the Spirit.

Instead, the church is a little bit of all these things. It is nondenominational, pulling together different Christian streams to minister effectively to the young white professionals who have moved to work in the capital, as well as the upwardly mobile Nigerians and South Koreans who’ve emigrated to the seat of the United States government.

“The strength of being nondenominational is there are fewer barriers,” said Aaron Graham, who planted the church with his wife, Amy, 13 years ago. “It allows you to lead with a brand that is more city-focused and seeker-focused. We respond to the questions people are asking. ‘Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the Bible? Do you believe God is at work in the world today?’”

Nondenominational churches like The District Church have been multiplying across America, according to the 2020 US Religion Census. Their numbers today dwarf the mainline churches that once dominated American public life. There are six times more nondenominational churches than there are Episcopal congregations, and five times more than Presbyterian Church (USA). If nondenominational were a denomination, it would even be larger than the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination in the US.

The popular image of these churches skews suburban. People …

Continue reading…

Decades ago, converts thought the country would be a refuge from the caste system. Today, they risk criminal charges and remain largely relegated to sanitation jobs.

Two Christian Pakistani teenagers, one 18 and another 14, were arrested in their homes in Lahore in May 2023 on charges of blasphemy after a policeman claimed he heard them being disrespectful of the Prophet Muhammad.

Among Muslim-majority countries, Pakistan has the strictest blasphemy laws. People jailed under these laws risk a sentence of life in prison and worse still, even death. Christians and other religious minorities make up a mere 4 percent of Pakistan’s population, but they account for about half of blasphemy charges.

As if navigating blasphemy laws weren’t hardship enough, Christians who live in major cities like Lahore are often relegated to poorly paid and hazardous jobs like sanitation work. The nation of Pakistan was created 76 years ago but during this time the lives of its Christian citizens have grown ever more difficult.

As a scholar of world religions, I have studied how the evolution of a hardline version of Islam in Pakistan has come to shape this country’s national identity and contributed to the persecution of its Christian minority.

Hindu converts to Christianity

Many Christians in Pakistan trace their religious affiliation to the activities of missionary societies during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the Punjab region of what was then British-ruled India.

Early evangelization efforts by both the British and Americans in Hindu-majority India focused on upper-caste Hindus. The evangelizers assumed that these elites would use their influence to convert members of the lower castes. However, this approach led to few converts.

The caste system is a tiered socioeconomic system that consigns people to a particular group, or caste. In Hinduism, this system is part of its religious worldview. …

Continue reading…

Rebekah Naylor, 79, is stepping down from International Mission Board.

The first time she retired, in 2002, Dr. Rebekah Naylor, a longtime missionary surgeon, came home to Texas after 35 years in India to care for her mother, who was ailing.

Along with doing that, she joined the faculty at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where she taught surgery for eight years. She later became a consultant for Southern Baptist global relief and development work, taught at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and helped her church start a health clinic in Fort Worth, Texas.

This fall, the 79-year-old Naylor will retire again, stepping down from her role at the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, where she’s helped promote medical missions around the world.

Now, for the first time in 50 years, she plans to take a proper break.

Not bad for someone who, as a teenager, never wanted to leave home and who was overwhelmed when she felt God’s calling on her life.

“Even going to college seemed like a mountain to me,” said Naylor in a recent interview, looking back over her career. “So how could I be a medical missionary?”

But once she makes up her mind—especially about something she believes God wants her to do—almost nothing stands in her way. That combination of faith and tenacity has served her well. Following that call to missions, Naylor, the daughter of a Baptist preacher turned beloved seminary president, graduated from Baylor University, then went to medical school at Vanderbilt, where she was told that women were not welcome in surgery.

But a missionary surgeon in Thailand, whom she met while visiting that country as a medical student, believed in her. While the faculty at the medical school thought her …

Continue reading…

Nigerian American Christian Yemi Mobolade went from pastor and community organizer to city leadership.

Yemi Mobolade moved to Colorado Springs to start a church. Thirteen years later, he became the city’s mayor.

Even though his position isn’t a pastoral one, his faith is central to his platform, as well as his experience in local ministries, nonprofits, businesses, and economic development. Mobolade ran a campaign on hope and optimism, taking his core values from Micah 6:8: “Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.”

“I want to disrupt and confuse this whole experience we call politics,” Mobolade said. “I want to call God’s people back to doing it well.”

A Nigerian American, Mobolade was sworn in last month as Colorado Springs’ first Black and first immigrant mayor, telling residents, “As your mayor, I pledge to live courageously, lead with empathy, and remain humble. As your mayor, I pledge to lead by example and create a city government that is transparent, accessible, and proactive. As your mayor, I will work tirelessly to ensure our city government represents the aspiration and needs of its residents.”

His new position builds on years of community involvement and unity-building in Colorado’s second-biggest city.

He also quoted Chris Tomlin’s “God of this City,” saying, “Greater things are yet to come, greater things are still to be done in this city.”

Before he landed in the evangelical hub that’s home to Focus on the Family, the Navigators, Young Life, and Biblica, Mobolade grew up in a family of faith in Nigeria. Both his parents were pastors, and he came to know the Lord at a young age.

“I am really proud of the work that they did with …

Continue reading…

My worries for my child’s physical health shouldn’t surpass my concern for his spiritual well-being.

The past few years have seen groundbreaking advances in biotechnology—particularly in the areas of human cell therapy and gene editing.

In March, experts gathered for the third global conference to discuss the ethical dilemmas involved in their work—less than five years after a Chinese geneticist announced he had performed “gene surgery” to prevent a set of twins from inheriting their father’s HIV disease. Currently, related research on screening embryos for polygenic disease, including type 1 diabetes, is hotly debated.

Some are concerned this capacity could someday lead to a kind of “techno-eugenics” and “designer babies,” where prospective parents could pick and choose their future child’s genetic traits—or simply edit out their child’s genetic disorders to set up for the best life possible.

As a mother with type 1 diabetes (T1D), I understand the underlying impulse to protect my child, even as I know he was created in God’s image. I live in a constant state of awareness and worry that my son might develop my own chronic illness.

Type 1 diabetes is a life-altering autoimmune disease with no cure. The most current research on its cause points to a strong genetic factor—complex and polygenic—which increases the risk of diabetes in children whose parents have T1D. In my own family, I was diagnosed 14 years after my sister, cementing the genetic link behind what felt like an otherwise random diagnosis. Today, if my son developed T1D, that link would be obvious: He inherited it from me.

Knowing my child’s inherited risk of T1D, I pray against it daily, asking the Lord to keep my toddler healthy. I’m eager to do anything that might …

Continue reading…

Phrases like “rejoice in the Lord” and “to live is Christ” in Mandarin reveal the wisdom of Paul’s exhortations.

As I was growing up in Malaysia, my parents would send me to Mandarin lessons after school. Despite their best efforts, I was particularly resistant to learning Chinese. Consequently, most Mandarin lessons went in one ear and out the other, particularly the ones about chengyu (成语).

The four-character idioms called chengyu are a popular way in Mandarin to state a meaning, moral, or teaching. Part of their appeal lies in their ability to express powerful ideas in a concise, proverbial manner.

In theory, each chengyu I labored to remember should have pressed the collective wisdom of our ancestors into my reluctant heart. But it was a lost cause. After all, how could a child reared on American cartoons and comics possibly value esoteric phrases like meng mu san qian (孟母三迁), which extols how Chinese philosopher Mencius’s mother moved to different neighborhoods three times to improve her child’s chances of success? My family’s move abroad when I was 10 years old ended further hopes of progress.

Now, pastoring a Chinese church in New Zealand and rediscovering my mother tongue as an adult, I still struggle to memorize chengyu. But when my virtual Mandarin-language teacher, who is based in China, brings up these idioms, his eyes brim with excitement as he shares not only their vernacular use but also their fascinating backstories.

Chengyu sum up stories, principles, or lessons from Chinese history. Some retell humorous folktales as proverbs for daily life. Others connect China’s 3,500-year-old written history, including pre-Qin dynasty writings like Confucian poetry classic Shijing (诗经), to our present-day hopes and anxieties.

Both ancient and modern chengyu are used in written conversations and taught in classes …

Continue reading…

Christians have always been called to love place and neighbor over the power of state.

In sixth grade, I won my first college scholarship in a local Veterans of Foreign Wars essay contest on the question “What does it mean to be patriotic?” My winning entry fetched $50, enough for at least half a textbook. The essay is long lost, but I vaguely recall being inspired by a trip to Virginia’s Colonial Williamsburg, where I’d been enthralled by the commercialized mythology of American founders like Thomas Jefferson, tried my first limeade, and left clutching an etiquette book penned by George Washington himself.

The question isn’t so easily answered now. What does it mean to be patriotic, and should Christians even want to be? What does it mean, as an American evangelical, to mark July 4 after January 6, when supporters of our former president—many of them professing evangelical Christians, many clad in red, white, and blue—overran the US Capitol in attempted sedition?

My Anabaptism always has me treading lightly here, but I think Christians can be rightfully patriotic. The crux of the matter is what that patriotism entails: Is it love of our place and neighbors, or love of the state and its power?

American patriotism is too often the latter. It frequently indulges in jingoism, pride, militarism, and idolatrous civil religion. It is competitive, aggressive, and offended by even constructive criticism: “Love it or leave it” is the familiar refrain. It takes words Jesus used for the people of God—the “city on a hill” language drawn from Matthew 5:14 by Presidents John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama—and exploits them for political ends. It is, as C. S. Lewis put it in The Four Loves, “a firm, even prosaic belief that …

Continue reading…

The megachurch, known for its popular Elevation Music, has voluntarily withdrawn two weeks after the recent Southern Baptist annual meeting.

Elevation Church, a North Carolina megachurch known for its popular music and charismatic pastor, has left the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC).

In a letter sent to the SBC’s Executive Committee in Nashville and to the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, Charlotte-based Elevation Church said it was “withdrawing its affiliation with the Southern Baptist Convention effective immediately.”

The letter was published by Baptist Press, an official SBC publication. A spokesman for the North Carolina Baptist Convention confirmed receiving the letter.

“We have no plans to make a public announcement on this decision—we have too much to do in reaching a world that needs the love of Jesus,” the letter reads. “Should your Credentials Committee decide to make this decision by Elevation public, we will only respond with a copy of this letter to anyone inquiring about the notification.”

Elevation did not respond to a request for comment.

The SBC’s Credentials Committee is charged with determining if churches are in “friendly cooperation” with the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. That cooperation includes giving to SBC causes and closely following the SBC’s doctrine.

Earlier this year, five congregations—including Saddleback Church, which was one of the largest SBC churches in the country—were expelled from the SBC for having women pastors.

The SBC’s statement of faith says only men can hold that office.

During their recent annual meeting, Southern Baptists passed a proposed constitutional amendment that would bar churches that have women pastors of any kind. That amendment must be ratified in 2024.

By some estimates, about 2,000 SBC churches …

Continue reading…

Formerly Nyack College, the school was in bad financial shape for several years. The loss of accreditation earlier this week forced a reckoning.

Alliance University, a 140-year-old Christian & Missionary Alliance (CMA) school in New York City, will close on August 31 after years of financial struggles.

Known for much of its history as Nyack College, Alliance is the latest casualty in the financial crisis in Christian higher education . At least 18 Christian colleges have closed since the pandemic. But Alliance is also unique among US evangelical schools as one of the most ethnically diverse, with a student population that this year was 34 percent Latino, 30 percent Black, 11 percent international, and 9 percent Asian.

The parent denomination of the school, the CMA, began in New York City in 1880, and Alliance was founded not long after as an educational institution for missionaries and those in ministry. Alliance graduates like pastor A. R. Bernard lead many New York churches.

The CMA provided significant financial support to the school when it was in trouble in recent years. It is considering continuing the programs of Alliance Theological Seminary, which is part of the university.

The school’s board voted on Thursday night to shut down Alliance University’s operations, and school leadership informed staff, faculty, and students on Friday and began layoffs. Alumni, even knowing the financial straits of the school, used the same word over and over in interviews: “shock.”

“This is very sad,” said Chris Smith, who graduated in 2010, worked on staff at the school in various capacities, and served on the school’s alumni board. “The texts, calls, FaceTimes, DMs [direct messages] I’m getting is a lot.”

“They had something so special,” said alumna Heather Beers-Dimitriadis. “That school changed …

Continue reading…

Ruling: Colorado can’t “force all manner of artists, speechwriters, and others whose services involve speech to speak what they do not believe.”

The US Supreme Court delivered a First Amendment victory Friday to a Christian designer who objects to creating custom websites for same-sex weddings.

The high court ruled in a 6–3 opinion the state of Colorado would violate the free-speech rights of Lorie Smith by requiring her to design a website for a ceremony that conflicts with her conscience. The decision provided an important legal win for the rights of Christians and other faith adherents in a series of cases involving the intersection of religious freedom and same-sex marriage.

In the majority opinion, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch said the state “seeks to force an individual to speak in ways that align with its views but defy her conscience about a matter of major significance.”

As the Supreme Court “has long held, the opportunity to think for ourselves and to express those thoughts freely is among our most cherished liberties and part of what keeps our Republic strong,” he wrote. “The First Amendment envisions the United States as a rich and complex place where all persons are free to think and speak as they wish, not as the government demands.”

The high court’s decision broke along ideological/political lines. Nominees by Republican presidents made up the majority, while justices nominated by Democrats were in dissent. Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Gorsuch in the majority. Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

The head of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) applauded the justices’ action.

“If the government can compel an individual …

Continue reading…