Transubstantiate

At Wednesday’s sentencing hearing, family members quote Scripture and evoke God’s vengeance and mercy.

Kimberly Salter stood in court to face her husband’s killer for the first time on Wednesday. With a hand on her heart and wearing red that she said represented her husband’s shed blood, she simply read three passages from the Bible on God’s love and his vengeance.

“You will reap what you sow,” she said, quoting Galatians 6:7.

Salter was among a string of family members who shared Scripture in statements to Payton Gendron, the 19-year-old who killed 10 Black people and wounded three others at Tops grocery story in Buffalo last May. Police detained him before he could kill more.

Gendron made his racist motivations clear. He had posted a manifesto saying he wanted to preserve white power in the US, and he drove three hours to Buffalo to target a majority Black neighborhood. During the shooting, which he live-streamed, he apologized to one white person whom he shot and wounded by accident.

He pleaded guilty to murder and hate-motivated terrorism state charges in November last year.

The East Buffalo neighborhood where the mass shooting took place has exponentially more churches than grocery stores and a thick Christian community. Many of the victims, like security guard Aaron Salter, were believers and active in their churches.

At the sentencing hearing in New York state court, Kimberly Salter stated that “God is love, and he offers love to each and every one of us.” The widow recited John 3:16, but then she read the entirety of Psalm 35, an imprecatory prayer:

“Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor who seek after my life. Let those be turned back and brought to confusion who plot my hurt. Let them be like chaff before the wind and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let …

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Executive director Collin Hansen: In a post-Christian context, the church is challenged to collaborate—and humbly pray—for new strategies in its witness.

When Tim Keller arrived in New York City in 1989 to plant Redeemer Presbyterian Church, about 30 percent of Manhattan residents claimed no religion.

In 2023, about 26 percent of people in Indiana identify with no particular religion. The numbers are around the same or higher in states across the US—Nevada and New York, Colorado and Wisconsin.

The country’s disaffiliation and apathy to faith underscores the urgent need for cultural apologetics, according to Collin Hansen, editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) and executive director of its new initiative named for TGC cofounder Tim Keller.

The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, which launched last week, isn’t out to replicate the 72-year-old pastor but to equip leaders to also think deeply about how to present the gospel to the post-Christian context they find themselves in.

“This is not about teaching everyone to think what Tim Keller thinks, but this is about helping people to think the way he learned to think about his culture and applying that to our own day,” said Hansen.

This next generation of ministers and apologists have a big challenge before them. The Keller Center has gathered 26 fellows to collaborate and generate resources for the church. Among the first is Hansen’s spiritual biography on Keller—Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation—which released last week.

TGC says it has also commissioned “the largest-ever survey of people who have left the church” and plans to share the results through its forthcoming book The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? The book is written by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan Burge. …

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Pastors and church leaders who stayed behind serve as if every day might be their last.

James offers so many prayers in a day, they puff from his mouth like vapor in Ukraine’s bitter winter.

For the senior pastor of a large church in Kherson, prayer is not only an occupation. It is a lifeline. He prays aloud when Russian missiles shake the walls of his church and his four-year-old son cries. He prays aloud before driving to nearby villages to deliver bread. He prays aloud when he’s scared to death, which is often.

And so, on a frigid Tuesday morning in December, James, who asked to be identified by his English nickname, gripped the wheel of his dusty yellow van and prayed in Ukrainian. He turned toward a bridge leading to a manmade island along the muddy Dnipro River that locals simply call “the island.” Russian shelling had shattered several windows of a small church there, and James was carrying plywood to board them up.

The island is a frequent target of Russian attacks. Directly across the river is the eastern part of Kherson Oblast that’s still under Russian occupation. Every day since November, when tens of thousands of Russian troops fled Kherson, the province’s capital city, in a hasty retreat, they have flung rockets, grenades, tank shells, and mortars across the river as if in vengeance, killing at least one person a day.

Today, would it be him?

But a church’s windows needed fixing. Of the island’s original population of 30,000, only about a quarter of residents remained—mostly those too old, too disabled, or too stubborn to evacuate. The church is the only one on the island offering shelter and supplies. So James gritted his teeth and crossed the bridge.

Ukraine’s Christians no longer see “the last days” as some far-off, eschatological …

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Why I’m hopeful about the revival breaking out in our chapel and its implications for the campus and beyond.

Most Wednesday mornings at Asbury University are like any other. A few minutes before 10, students begin to gather in Hughes Auditorium for chapel. Students are required to attend a certain number of chapels each semester, so they tend to show up as a matter of routine.

But this past Wednesday was different. After the benediction, the gospel choir began to sing a final chorus—and then something began to happen that defies easy description. Students did not leave. They were struck by what seemed to be a quiet but powerful sense of transcendence, and they did not want to go. They stayed and continued to worship. They are still there.

I teach theology across the street at Asbury Theological Seminary, and when I heard of what was happening, I immediately decided to go to the chapel to see for myself. When I arrived, I saw hundreds of students singing quietly. They were praising and praying earnestly for themselves and their neighbors and our world—expressing repentance and contrition for sin and interceding for healing, wholeness, peace, and justice.

Some were reading and reciting Scripture. Others were standing with arms raised. Several were clustered in small groups praying together. A few were kneeling at the altar rail in the front of the auditorium. Some were lying prostrate, while others were talking to one another, their faces bright with joy.

They were still worshiping when I left in the late afternoon and when I came back in the evening. They were still worshiping when I arrived early Thursday morning—and by midmorning hundreds were filling the auditorium again. I have seen multiple students running toward the chapel each …

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As the Super Bowl pulls in record wagers, more people are seeking help for problem gambling. Christians can pull lessons from the opioid crisis to help with treatment.

Americans are gearing up to bet billions on the Super Bowl, but the quick expansion of gambling is leaving a trail of addiction in its wake.

Troy Adams is one of those in recovery. When he was a 22-year-old US Marine, Adams went with some other Marines to a Las Vegas casino the weekend before they deployed to Iraq. They played baccarat and won a lot of money. The casino offered them all free rooms and other comps.

“We were young and dumb and didn’t realize why they were doing these things,” he remembered. Years passed without him going to casinos again, but that feeling of winning stuck with him.

Years later, in 2016, he craved that feeling again when a lot of crises piled up: Massive flooding hit his home in southern Louisiana, his brother’s wife died unexpectedly, and his dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“I started going to the casino as an escape,” he told CT. “It became my safe haven and my refuge.” Like any other addiction, he said, “you physically cannot stop. You can’t see a way out.” It began to take over his life.

The science of gambling addiction works similarly to addictive substances. The American Psychiatric Association added gambling to its category of behavioral addictions in 2013, based on research that it is similar to substance abuse in “clinical expression, brain origin, comorbidity, physiology, and treatment.”

It was the first non-substance behavioral addiction to be classified this way, but Americans still don’t see gambling as a potential problem like drugs or alcohol. And churches often don’t see the moral hazards of gambling or the need for recovery ministry for gambling.

Kentucky is one of the few holdout states …

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As a militant Muslim, I never expected to have any dealings with Christians, much less to befriend them.

I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia as part of a devout Muslim family. Growing up, I considered myself a devoted follower of Islam, one who applied its teachings to every aspect of his life. I believed that Islam was the only true religion and that those who didn’t accept Allah as their God and Muhammad as his messenger were doomed to hell.

I had nothing but contempt for Christianity. I believed that Muslims were superior to all others, that all non-Muslims were infidels, and that Jesus was a prophet sent by Allah, not the divine Son of God. As far as I was concerned, he had never been crucified, never died on a cross, and never been resurrected. I believed he had ascended into heaven, but only to be saved from his persecutors before coming back at the end of times to restore Islam as the true religion of Allah. All in all, I grew up harboring intense hatred for Christians, Jews, and all who refused Islam.

By age 12, I had memorized half of the Qur’an, and my goal was to memorize all of it—all 114 chapters, all 6,236 verses. At age 15, I was prepared to die on behalf of Allah, like so many young people who were journeying to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union alongside Osama bin Laden. (He was a hero to us at that time.)

Were it not for my mother, who pleaded with me to stay behind, I would have joined this “holy war.” I believed that the rewards awaiting Muslims who died in the name of Allah were greater than any other a Muslim could receive. I was certain that by sacrificing my life in this manner, I would make it to paradise with all my sins forgiven.

Interacting with Christians

The more I grew up, however, the more notes of doubt began to creep in. As I gained a greater familiarity with …

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Churches also find that having them in community with older members and answering their “whys” help them stay in the church.

Since Heart of God Church in Singapore started more than 20 years ago, it’s succeeded in attracting a hard-to-capture demographic: The average age of its congregants has remained steady at 22 years old.

Today, about 5,000 people attend Heart of God Church each Sunday. Cecilia Chan, the church’s co-founding senior pastor affectionately known as Pastor Lia, noted their strategy: “Youths need to be invited, included, involved, before they can be influenced and impacted.”

That means teens as young as 12 are given responsibilities like designing slides, filming church livestreams, running the soundboard, or even helping coordinate Sunday services. At the same time, they are mentored by others a few life stages ahead of them.

Churches in Singapore face similar struggles as their counterparts around the world in keeping Gen Z engaged, as the digital natives are bombarded with distractions and noise from the rest of the world. Many young people’s views on issues like sexuality or what comprises a family unit are no longer defined by Asian societal norms. A 2020 census found that a growing number of young people (ages 15-24) say they have no religious affiliations: The number rose from 21 percent in 2010 to 24 percent in 2020.

Singaporean students, who are known for their chart-topping test scores, also experience high levels of anxiety and stress about doing well academically. With pressure from their parents as well as their peers, students spend afterschool hours in tutoring and enrichment classes. In their remaining free time, many spend it on their phones. Activities that provide opportunities to interact face-to-face and don’t focus on schoolwork are a breath of fresh air.

Christianity Today spoke …

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While a former leader hopes for change, women who sought refuge in biblical counseling at John MacArthur’s church say they feared discipline for seeking safety from their abusive marriages.

Last year, Hohn Cho concluded Grace Community Church had made a mistake.

The elders had publicly disciplined a woman for refusing to take back her husband. As it turned out, the woman’s fears proved true, and her husband went to prison for child molestation and abuse. The church never retracted its discipline or apologized in the 20 years since.

As a lawyer and one of four officers on the elder board at Grace Community Church (GCC), Cho was asked to study the case. He tried to convince the church’s leaders to reconsider and at least privately make it right. He said pastor John MacArthur told him to “forget it.” When Cho continued to call the elders to “do justice” on the woman’s behalf, he said he was asked to walk back his conclusions or resign.

It’s been 10 months since Cho left Grace Community Church, and he has not been able to forget the woman, Eileen Gray, whose experience was described in detail last March in Julie Roys’s news outlet, The Roys Report.

Though Cho stepped down quietly, he continued to hear from other women from his former church. They had also been doubted, dismissed, and implicitly or explicitly threatened with discipline while seeking refuge from their abusive marriages. Even at his new congregation, Cho began to meet visitors with connections to Gray’s case, which he saw as a sign of God’s providence.

No, he couldn’t “forget it.”

The more he learned, the more people he talked with, the more the injustice weighed on his conscience and the more concerned he grew about the church’s biblical counseling around abuse.

As Cho wrote in a 20-page memo to top leaders at Grace Community Church last March, “I genuinely believe …

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Using sports to market Christ has a long history, but Sunday’s iteration might skip the muscles for heart.

This year during the Super Bowl, all eyes will be on Jesus—at least during the two ads sponsored by the He Gets Us campaign.

Aiming to make Jesus more relatable through a massive public relations campaign, He Gets Us has already received plenty of attention and criticism. What fascinates me, as a historian of American sports and Christianity, is its continuity with the past. By choosing the Super Bowl as the moment for its “largest splash” to date, the He Gets Us campaign is standing in line with Christian marketing efforts that date back a century, while also attempting to chart something new.

One hundred years ago, American Christian leaders worried about polarization and irrelevance in a rapidly changing culture. Division threatened to split churches, with modernists and fundamentalists battling for control of denominations. A surging white Christian nationalism, embodied in the second coming of the Ku Klux Klan, wedded a white supremacist understanding of American identity with Christian language and symbols. Meanwhile, many young Americans opted out of formal religion altogether, showing more interest in baseball games and prizefight boxing than church.

Into this moment of crisis stepped a leader in the advertising industry named Bruce Barton.

The son of a preacher, Barton looked at the Christian anxieties of his age through the eyes of his marketing expertise and saw a public relations problem. The image of Jesus had gotten tied up in narrow controversies and outdated modes of understanding. Americans, particularly men, did not find him compelling; Christ did not speak to their needs.

Barton’s solution? Write a book that could demonstrate the human Jesus’ relevance to a changing culture. Focus …

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With one pastor dead, another saved, and churches of all denominations destroyed, local believers race to the frontlines of emergency response.

Local Christians were among the first responders to the massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria that left more than 5,000 people dead and more than 20,000 injured. They just don’t know how to make sense of it.

“God have mercy on us, Christ have mercy,” said Gokhan Talas, founder of the evangelical Miras Publishing Ministry in Istanbul. “This is our only spiritual reflection right now.”

His first instinct was to go. But as reports came in of deep snowfall and damaged roads, he shifted gears. His wife stayed up all night making phone calls to believers in Malatya, trying to coordinate aid. And with members of his church and Protestant congregations throughout Turkey, they bought blankets, medicines, baby formula, and diapers to send onward to the afflicted areas.

“From this side of eternity, nothing is clear,” Talas said. “But our sweet Lord is suffering with us.”

He warned of scams preying on the outpouring of generosity from around the world, even among the small Turkish evangelical community of roughly 10,000 believers.

Their own supplies are being donated through İlk Umut Derneği—in English, First Hope Association (FHA), a Turkish Protestant NGO working closely with the local Red Crescent and AFAD, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority.

Officials said more than 5,000 buildings have been destroyed by the 7.8 magnitude quake. More than 13,000 search and rescue personnel have been deployed, supplying 41,000 tents, 100,000 beds, and 300,000 blankets. Almost 8,000 people have been rescued so far.

This includes pastor Mehmet and his wife Deniz in Malatya, longtime friends of Talas, who spent half the day freezing under the rubble until neighbors succeeded …

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