Transubstantiate

The cross calls us to sacrificial community, especially during a divided age.

In the August heat of 1965, widespread violence and bloodshed tore through the Watts area of Los Angeles. There were more than 30 deaths. Most of those were perpetrated by the police. There was fire and looting and vandalism.

At the invitation of Black social groups, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. entered Watts. He later described the protests that followed as “disorganized,” though that was a major oversimplification.

“However, a mere condemnation of violence is empty without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many of its members,” he said. “The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as intensely as the violence of the club.”

King wrote about his interaction with a couple of young men in the wake of the weeklong eruption that destroyed many Black businesses that had been the heart of the community.

“We won!” King remembers hearing one exclaim.

He looked at the rubble. The ash. The broken buildings. He tallied the dead bodies.

“What does winning look like?” he asked the youth.

The devastation people are experiencing today is like a wall so high none of us can see the sunlight anymore. Businesses are crumbling. Churches are dividing. A pandemic is raging.

“What does winning look like?” King and those with him asked the youth in Watts. And it is a question we must also ask ourselves today.

Today, America as a country is at war with itself. And we aren’t just at war with people of other races, and we aren’t just at war with Christianity; our divide seems to be a tribalism so strong that it is separating people of the same family and origin.

We are living in a country where Americans feel their political affiliation …

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After a powerful quake hit the island of Java this week, a network of local Christians raced to help.

When Denny Tarigan arrived in the remote village of Gasol, the earthy smell of wet soil assaulted his senses.

The sound of ambulance sirens permeated the air. Cars and motorcycles filled the narrow dirt roads. As the Indonesian Christian aid worker looked around, he saw blue makeshift tents lined with mats and blankets that were full of earthquake survivors, including children and the elderly.

What he also saw: smiles on the villagers’ faces.

“The people are strong enough to survive this,” said Tarigan, who took a 10-hour car ride from his hometown of Yogyakarta to Cianjur, the regency where Gasol is located, on Wednesday.

“Most of them just don’t know what to do after this,” he said. “For now, they think that they need help from the government and other [disaster relief] agencies.”

While it is common in the United States for churches to engage in disaster relief, in Indonesia most humanitarian aid is provided by government agencies, international NGOs, and Muslim aid groups.

It is only in the past several years that Indonesian churches have started to engage in disaster relief, said Effendy Aritonang, the Indonesia country director for Food for the Hungry and secretary of the executive team of Jakomkris, the Christian Community Network for Disaster Management in Indonesia.

Engaging the aftermath

When the 5.6-magnitude earthquake occurred on Monday morning, Aritonang, Tarigan, and other members of Jakomkris kicked into action.

Made up of Indonesian nonprofits and churches, the team called for a coordination meeting to begin identifying needs and figuring out who could provide assistance.

A Mennonite group showed up to provide clean water. About 10 doctors and 20 nurses from a Christian …

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Daily devotional readings for Advent 2022.

During Advent, we prepare our hearts to celebrate the arrival of this child—the infant Jesus, laid in a manger, loved by Mary and Joseph, worshiped by shepherds and wise men. But Advent—which means “arrival”—invites us to prepare for much more than the holy night of his birth.

Throughout church history, Advent has been a season of anticipation. It began in the early centuries of Christianity as a penitential period in preparation for Epiphany—the celebration of Jesus’ appearance and the manifestation of his identity, which was also a day set aside for the baptism of new believers. Soon Advent began to focus on the anticipation of another appearance: the second coming of Christ. By the Middle Ages, the themes we tend to associate with Advent today had become part of the church’s observance, as Christians included celebratory anticipation of Christmas alongside their contemplation of Jesus’ return.

Each of these historical themes interweaves throughout Advent’s traditional Scripture readings, as the Bible’s promises and prophecies speak expansively about Jesus’ identity and purpose. As we delve deep into these truths, our worship of the babe in the manger is enriched, for we kneel before the one who would make his identity manifest through miracles of great power. We bow before the one who will one day come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Isaiah contains some of the most compelling prophecies pointing to Jesus. We read of a promised son who would be called Immanuel—God with us (7:14). We learn of a light that will dawn upon people living in darkness (9:2). And we encounter this resounding promise:

For to us a child is born, to us a son …

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The words I say every Sunday guide me toward gratefulness.

I grew up doing sword drills. The Sunday school teacher or youth group leader would yell out a passage, chapter and verse, and we would scramble to find it first. It was important to the churches I grew up in and the evangelical subculture I was raised in that we were “Bible people.”

Years later, when I began a doctoral program in political theology, I joined a church in a different tradition than the one I’d grown up in. My new church was still fairly “low church” in many ways—no smells or bells or vestments and a plain church building. But in this context, I encountered sword drills of another sort in the form of liturgy—words meant to engrain God’s Word in our hearts.

After the reading of Scripture, the pastor says, “This is the Word of the Lord,” and the congregation responds, “Thanks be to God.” In those two short phrases, I have found a rich theology of Scripture that directly addresses our anxieties about how to use the Bible in a theologically and politically fraught world.

As theologian Brad East writes in his book The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context, the liturgical designation of a text as “the word of the Lord” alerts the gathered community that what they hear is “for them the living speech of God.”

This miracle of human and divine words is possible because God delights in using humans for redemptive purposes beyond themselves. While people are “like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field,” as 1 Peter 1:24–25 says, “the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Our familiarity with this miracle might conceal how incredible it is. While the books …

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A growing body of research backs the benefits of divine gratefulness, in good times and bad.

For many, 2022 has been a difficult year, and the perception of blessings are hard to come by. Once again, we find ourselves in the seeming contradiction of believing in an unconditionally loving, all-powerful God and experiencing the reality of the global crises facing humanity.

How might gratitude—and gratitude to God specifically—be vital for flourishing and resilience in today’s world? Amid pandemics, climate change, addiction, political extremism and polarization, financial collapse, crime, inequality, international conflicts, nuclear threat, and forced migration, is there a healing power in gratitude to God?

For a while, people relied on personal testimonies and scriptural admonitions to “give thanks” to answer these kinds of questions. Scientifically, research had little to say about being grateful to God since gratitude had largely been studied on a horizontal, human-to-human level. New projects funded by the John Templeton Foundation have theologians, philosophers, and psychologists like us exploring gratitude to our supreme benefactor.

Already, these researchers have discovered that believers who experience and express gratitude to God report feeling more hope, higher satisfaction, more optimism, fewer depression episodes, and greater stress recovery. Their studies suggest that gratitude to God magnifies and amplifies the effects of gratitude toward other people.

Grateful believers aren’t just happier because they’re better off, either. We see people experiencing gratitude to God in the midst of adversity.

Jason McMartin, a theologian at Biola University, in a paper not yet published, contends that suffering intensifies our encounters with God, reframing the experience of gratitude …

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Carol Wimber-Wong and eight former members accuse Dwelling Place pastors of $62 million fraud.

The widow of a legendary Vineyard leader is suing the pastors of a Southern California church for fraud and the alleged misappropriation of $62 million.

Vineyard Anaheim, the “mother church” of the Vineyard movement since it was planted by John Wimber in 1977, left the charismatic denomination without much explanation in March. The current senior pastor, Alan Scott, told the church that the Holy Spirit just led them to split. There were no big disagreements with the national organization, no disputes about direction, and no personal conflicts.

“We don’t really understand why,” Scott said in a recording of a Sunday service obtained by CT. “I wish I really could sit before you today and say, ‘Here are the six reasons,’ ‘Here’s our issues,’ ‘Here are our grievances,’ or whatever. … We don’t always know what’s on the other side of obedience.”

But Carol Wimber-Wong, who cofounded the church with her late husband John Wimber and remained an “active and tithing member” until the church left the Vineyard, has a simpler explanation for what happened. There were not six reasons, she and eight other former members and leaders allege, but 62 million.

The former members claim Alan and Kathryn Scott knew they wanted to leave Vineyard USA but lied about it when applying for the leadership positions at the Anaheim church so they could take control of the $55 million mortgage-free building and $7 million in the bank.

“The Scott Defendants concealed their true intentions,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendant Scotts sought the position as Senior Pastors of Vineyard Anaheim with the deceitful motive of controlling tens …

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In March, we published on harassment reports at CT. Here are the steps we’ve taken since then.

One of our deepest prayers and most important objectives over the past year has been that Christianity Today should provide a work setting where the intelligent and kind and immensely talented women who serve this ministry could flourish.

Women and men at Christianity Today should be treated with equal dignity and professionalism. They should know they are respected and cared for and should have every opportunity to unfold their gifts for the glory of God and the good of the world.

After I came to the ministry in May 2019, it became progressively clear that our organization had work to do on this score. We are deeply grateful for the faithful labors of the men and women who came before us and put us in position to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God all around the globe.

Yet many women at our ministry did not find that CT provided a healthy environment. When two women in September 2021 shared about their experiences of harassment by former employees, we lamented with them, asked their forgiveness, and sought to respond with wisdom and love. The employees they named had not been on staff for some time at that point, but their narratives stretched back many years and made it clear that our ministry had done less than love requires of us.

Earlier this year, we published an editorial on what we were learning, alongside an independent assessment of our culture and practices we had commissioned from Guidepost Solutions. In the interest of radical transparency, which we felt especially important for us as a journalistic institution, we also published an article in which one of our own reporters examined our ministry and released a podcast episode in which we responded to questions.

Our intention throughout has been to …

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US Religion Census finds independent congregations have surged in the last decade.

Call it the rise of the nons.

Not the “nones,” who have commanded attention for years, as the number of Americans who don’t identify with a specific religious tradition has grown from just 5 percent during the Cold War to around 30 percent today. This the nons—nondenominational Christians, people who shake off organizational affiliations, disassociate from particular tradition, and free themselves from established church brands.

Over the course of a decade, the number of nondenominational churches has surged by about 9,000 congregations, according to new decennial data released by the US Religion Census. Nondenominational churches have been quietly remaking the religious landscape.

“The two biggest stories in American religion are the nones and the nons,” said Ryan Burge, professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and an expert in religious demographic data. “We are in a transitional period for Protestant denominations.”

There are now five times more nondenominational churches than there are Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations. There are six times more nondenominational churches than there are Episcopal. And there are 3.4 million more people in nondenominational churches than there are in Southern Baptist ones.

If “nondenominational” were a denomination, it would be the largest Protestant one, claiming more than 13 percent of churchgoers in America.

Nondenominational Christians don’t show up in the polls that sample and survey American religion, though, because people don’t think of “nondenominational” as an identity. They are more likely just to say “Christian,” or perhaps “Protestant.” If prompted, …

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Chinese Christian posters boldly proclaimed salvation, freedom, and hope amid a tumultuous political period.

Between 1927 and 1949, millions of Christian posters appeared on the streets of China.

These posters challenged, co-opted, and subverted political messages in circulation and daringly portrayed an alternative vision of national salvation.

Chinese Christian artists used familiar techniques and symbols to proclaim that the kingdoms of this world, whether Nationalist or Communist, would fade before the kingdom of Christ.

From clocks and masks to roads and floods, Christians deployed common propaganda symbols of their day to point people toward Jesus Christ, China’s only true hope for salvation.

A clarion call

The Chinese Nationalists bulldozed their way to power in 1927, rumbling north to Beijing behind a phalanx of pamphleteers. Their leader, Chiang Kai-shek, and his lieutenants preferred posters and handbills over bullets and bombs. They placarded the country with posters of the Nationalists liberating China from calamity and exploitation. The Nationalist Party wanted to win the heart of the nation, not merely browbeat it into submission.

J. Sidney Helps, the general secretary of the Religious Tract Society for China (RTS), a major producer of Christian literature and evangelistic tracts, watched in amazement as the revolution was achieved “using our means and improving upon them.”

Propaganda established the new masters of the Middle Kingdom, he concluded. Could not Christians use the same tactics to inaugurate the kingdom of God?

“Do propaganda work for [your] Lord and Master,” Helps challenged fellow believers that same year.

Christian publishing houses across China heeded his call.

Millions of Protestant propaganda posters entered the Chinese market. Copied onto the cheapest paper and plastered on walls …

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Those who lived through the racially motivated attacks are focusing on the local to see progress.

Driving to the East Side of Buffalo, to the Tops grocery store, you take “the 33,” a highway built in the 1950s and 1960s that wiped out a Frederick Law Olmsted–designed green space and cut through a Black neighborhood.

Before construction of the 33—also known as the Kensington Expressway—a schoolteacher whose house was a few blocks from where the Tops would eventually open wrote to the local newspaper, mourning what the highway would do to the neighborhood and the Olmsted park land.

“Only a complete materialist could ride the mile-and-a-half of this street without being thrilled by its beauty,” Cornelia Metz said.

But much more was lost than scenery. The highway isolated the East Side of Buffalo economically and racially, segregating Black families. Today the East Side has zip codes with poverty rates almost double that of the region and a low Black homeownership rate compared with white homeownership in the region.

The racial isolation was evident on May 14, 2022: Authorities said the white supremacist shooter who went to Tops that day chose the store because he was looking for a place with a high concentration of Black residents. He killed 10 and wounded three. After the shooting, the economic isolation was evident when Tops closed and the neighborhood was left without a grocery store.

Six months later, it would be easy for a violence-weary nation to forget about what happened at Tops. There have been at least a dozen mass shootings in America since. The problem can seem as large and intractable as a concrete freeway, a new reality simply to be endured.

But in Buffalo, some Christians do not see it that way. A handful of Black leaders on Buffalo’s East Side have decided they do …

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