Herschel Walker and the Platform of Cheap Grace

Christians believe in mercy amidst moral failing. But how then should we vote?

A recent campaign ad for Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate candidate in Georgia, is titled “Grace.”

Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is “a preacher who doesn’t tell the truth. He doesn’t even believe in redemption,” Walker says about his opponent in the clip. “I’m Herschel Walker, saved by grace, and I approve this message.”

The messaging, leaning on Christian language around forgiveness, is part of Walker’s campaign among Christian conservatives in Georgia. And it came two days after the former NFL and UGA football star dismissed a Daily Beast report that he urged a then-girlfriend to get an abortion after he impregnated her in 2009.

It’s a neat trick: I didn’t do it, Walker’s overall messaging says, but if I did it, you should forgive me if you believe in God’s redemption. You should give me grace.

He insists the receipt from the abortion clinic, the bank image of his signed personal check, and the signed “get well” card she presented as evidence “haven’t shown anything.” He brushes off the New York Times report in which the same woman alleged he pushed her to get a second abortion in 2011 and, after she refused, became a distant father, rarely present in the life of their now 10-year-old-son. He’s sworn to sue the Beast for defamation over its “flat-out lie.”

Maybe Walker is telling the truth, in which case I hope his suit succeeds (even though, full disclosure, I regularly write for The Daily Beast). To be falsely subjected to an accusation like this in the national press would be a great wrong.

But unlike some other years-old accusations of candidate wrongdoing to which the Walker allegations …

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The Pandemic Destroyed My Certainty—Or Was It God?

Ongoing disruption exposed my ministry idols, helping me see the work of the kingdom.

This fall marks my 24th year of leading Imago Dei Community in Portland, Oregon, and my 34th year in ministry. I thought I had seen all that ministry could throw at me, from the early days of fighting over pews versus chairs to the seeker-sensitive movement, which some translated as selling out the Bible. I’ve watched pastors fall; ministries fail; and the worst scandals that money, sex, and power can bring occur in the bride of Jesus. Still, the pandemic and all that’s followed have been by far the most tension-filled, challenging years of my ministry. And I know I’m not alone.

The pandemic revealed the inadequacies of many tried-and-true ways of measuring our ministry health. I had thought I was driving a Jet Ski but realized I was steering a barge. Regardless of how quickly I wanted to change directions, the thing just wasn’t built to do so. The pressure and stress of this unprecedented time also exposed the condition of my soul and emotional life as a leader. I realized to my shame that I had strategized too much and prayed too little.

In the midst of these moments of pain, I began to see how desperately I needed a dramatic disruption in my leadership. Please don’t hear me saying I am thankful for the pandemic, because I am not. It was awful for many people and ministries on a number of levels. But in the same way God redeems our pain and uses it for good, I can see ways he is using the disruption caused by this crisis to move me and others closer to where we should have been pastoring all along.

Competition to collaborate

In Imago’s earliest days, when I was planting the church out of my living room, few ministry thinkers formed me as deeply as Eugene Peterson. I read all his books, listened …

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Where the Unborn Are People

Churches are bearing better witness to life beyond its “potential.”

The thing itself cannot be praised,” Cicero said. “Only its potential.”

He was talking about young children. Such was the view in the empire where Jesus arrived as an infant. “The child,” said Plutarch, “is more like a plant” than a human, or even than an animal.

But Jesus and his followers had a different view of the moral status of children. To follow him, Jesus said, you had to become like a child. Even babies, Christians said, are fully human and fully bear the image of God. As the African bishop Cyprian wrote, “God himself does not make such distinction of person or of age, since he offers himself as a Father to all.” And if that’s God’s view, then “Every sex and age should be held in honor among you.”

The church even extended that honor and protection to the unborn. “Thou shalt not murder a child by abortion nor kill them when born,” says one of the earliest Christian documents, known as the Didache.

Rules like this one created not a precinct of prohibitions but a community of care. Pagans like the Greek physician Galen begrudgingly acknowledged that the Christians’ “contempt of death is patent to us every day. … And in their keen pursuit of justice, [they] have attained a pitch not inferior to that of genuine philosophers.”

Throughout the Roe regime, contemporary Christians have similarly demonstrated their “contempt of death,” their pursuit of justice for the unborn, and their love of children and pregnant women. But as many women and couples can attest, even pro-life Christians can too quickly treat the unborn as merely “potential” human life when a child is lost to miscarriage.

Sometimes …

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How Kanye West’s Breakdown Makes Sense of Our Social Crisis

Evangelicals are part of the shock culture ecosystem that exploits celebrities.

This past week, the artist formerly known as Kanye West—who now goes by “Ye”—was suspended from Twitter after an unhinged rant. He posted comments using antisemitic tropes about the “influence” of Jewish people, followed by an almost incomprehensible threat to go “death con 3” on Jewish people.

Twitter and Instagram, too, were right to take these comments seriously. We’ve seen how antisemitic threats of violence can incite terror—in the Tree of Life synagogue shooting and beyond. The lead-up to the suspension, though, followed a kind of publicity tour punctuated by deliberate controversy.

West appeared at an event with the contentious media figure Candace Owens wearing “White Lives Matter” T-shirts. During an interview with Tucker Carlson, he spooled out conspiracy theories to such a degree that he stopped to ask if he’d landed in Alex Jones territory yet. Then Vice posted additional video of him being even more explicitly antisemitic and even more open about bizarre conspiracy theories.

Instability from this artist is hardly surprising. Several years ago, I noted that I was worried for the rapper—not because of his mental health challenges but because of what American evangelicals often do to celebrities who profess faith. Too often we claim them as, at best, mascots for “our side” and, at worst, as trophies from the culture wars.

Over and over, the church has expected things from these figures that they do not have the maturity, wisdom, or even stability to handle.

The issue is in part that a celebrity is saying something insane (and highly offensive). But it’s equally problematic that we have an …

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Faith on the OpenSea: Christians Launch NFT Fundraisers

The Bible-based video game company TruPlay and the charity Compassion International step into the crypto world.

With big green eyes, Maple the bunny dons a bright orange tiger costume. A character in the Christian video game world called RhymVerse, her loyal and courageous personality carries her through her heroic adventures. She and her friends must face dark forces in games like Maple and the Forest of Words.

Last month, designs of Maple and six other characters were sold as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by TruPlay, a Christian entertainment company that offers a variety of family-friendly mobile games.

NFTs like Maple are digital art pieces that can be bought and sold. When they are bought, the rights to that unique piece of art are transferred to the new owner, said TruPlay CEO and founder Brent Dusing.

In the case of the RhymVerse characters—which TruPlay says represent the first and biggest NFT release from a Christian tech company—the NFTs are a way for families to back their video game venture. Dusing said it’s “like a next-generation way to get the community involved in helping to build and support financially things they want to see.”

From South Africa to the Philippines, Christians purchased TruPlay’s first 6,650 Genesis NFTs within 10 minutes of their release, according to the company’s press release.

While TruPlay sold the NFTs for free, consumers then sold, bought, and traded them after that, with the company earning 10 percent of these transactions. The secondary sales of the NFTs yielded more than $200,000 in volume on OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace. In the first 24 hours of sales, the company placed in the Top 10 on OpenSea globally.

Dusing said he was amazed by the response and thanked God. To him, offering NFTs as a Christian company follows a long tradition …

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Celebrity Funeral Becomes Thailand’s Largest Christian Outreach

Millions of fans in the Buddhist country heard the gospel at actress Tangmo’s memorial service

After Pimduan “Duan” Nagaviroj heard about the drowning death of 37-year-old Nida Patcharaveerapong in February, she joined millions of other Thais in watching the livestream of the funeral honoring the famous TV actress, better known as Tangmo.

Duan, who works as a consul of the Royal Thai Consulate General in Penang, Malaysia, was intrigued by the gospel message presented in the three-day memorial.

“I paid attention to everything said and was most impressed by the message that Christians do not fear death,” she said. “I learned that God loves everyone, and I decided that I wanted to know him.”

After the third night of the service, she messaged the church contact listed on the livestream to learn more about Christianity, and the church staff encouraged her to find a local church. She visited Wesley Methodist Church in Penang and joined the church’s online Alpha Course, an evangelism program. “After only a few lessons, I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and I wanted to be baptized,” she said.

Pastors in Bangkok say Tangmo’s memorial service in March was the largest evangelistic outreach ever put on in Thailand, where 93 percent of the population is Buddhist and only about 1 percent Christian. While Tangmo was known for her appearances in Thai dramas and her tabloid-headline exploits, she also stood out as an outspoken Christian.

The livestream of the memorial brought in 12 million views, and Thai pastors say that afterward, they saw an increase in newcomers interested in learning more about Christianity.

“God opened a door through the death of a woman who loved God immensely,” said Thongchai Pradubchananurat, who pastors Bangkok’s Church of Joy and …

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Should Christians Own Guns for Self-Defense? A Global Snapshot

Leaders in nine nations explain how they think theologically and biblically about personal safety as mass shootings plague the world.

Last week, a former police officer killed 36 people, many of them very young children, at a daycare center in northeastern Thailand. The massacre, which was carried out through stabbing, vehicle ramming, and shooting, came several weeks after a gunman shot and killed 17 people at a school in Central Russia. In, July, terrorists launched a gun and bomb attack at church in southwest Nigeria on a Sunday, killing an estimated 70 worshipers.

The United States has experienced several high-profile mass shootings this year including a July 4 shooting outside of Chicago where seven people were killed, a grocery store in Buffalo where 10 people were killed, and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas where a gunman killed 21 people.

In the US, white evangelicals are more likely than members of other faith groups or the average citizen to own a gun; 41 percent do, compared to 33 percent of white mainline Protestants, 32 percent of the unaffiliated, 29 percent of black Protestants, and 24 percent of Catholics. A majority of white evangelicals who own a handgun carry it with them (65%, versus 57% of all gun owners) because they view it as a safety precaution, according to these 2017 numbers from Pew Research Center.

Additionally, Americans who attended religious services weekly were less likely to own a gun than those who attend less frequently (27% vs. 31%), the study also found. And Americans with a high level of religious commitment were less likely to own a gun than those whose commitment is low (26% vs. 33%).

Earlier this year, CT reached out to church leaders from nine different countries to learn more about gun ownership and their thoughts on this subject as Christians. Answers to the following questions are arranged from those who …

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Self-Proclaimed Messiahs and Other Southeast Asian Heresies

Misconceptions about the Trinity and the exclusivity of Christ prevail.

American evangelicals are moving away from orthodox understandings of God and Scripture. This year’s State of Theology survey revealed the top five misconceptions that US evangelicals hold:

  • Jesus isn’t the only way to God.
  • Jesus was created by God.
  • Jesus is not God.
  • The Holy Spirit is not a personal being.
  • Humans aren’t sinful by nature.

CT polled three Christian leaders in the Philippines, Singapore, and Cambodia to find out if these modern heresies are also widespread in their respective regions, how believers can address them, and what heresies may be more common in their contexts.

Timoteo D. Gener, president, FEBIAS College of Bible, Valenzuela, Metro Manila, Philippines

With Catholics making up 80 percent of the Philippines’ population and Protestants, including evangelicals, making up around 10 percent, these five heresies are not common among those who call themselves Christians, especially evangelicals who are part of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches (PCEC).

There remains high regard for the authority of the Bible—as well as belief in the Trinity—among these Christ-followers. There are, however, indigenous non-Trinitarian heretical groups like Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ), Ang Dating Daan (The Old Path), and the more recent “Kingdom of Jesus Christ,” whose pastor-founder Apollo Quiboloy claims that he is the “Appointed Son of God.”

Many years ago, Benigno Beltran’s Christology of the Inarticulate (1987) revealed the prevalence of modalism, the belief that God is a single person who reveals himself in three forms, among folk Catholics. Countering modalism in faith and practice remains a continuing challenge for biblical Christians in the …

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Should Hispanic Churches in the US Preserve Spanish in Their Services?

Worship flows in the language of your heart.

When Job González was 21, he felt God’s calling to dedicate his life to worship ministry. Raised in a Spanish-speaking family and church in Texas, he thought he would always sing the praises of the Lord in Spanish.

Since 1980, more Christians have spoken Spanish than any other language. Thanks to the growth of the church in Latin America, over 413 million believers have Spanish as their mother tongue today, compared to 250 million with English, according to the World Christian Database.

But Hispanics born in America have continued to prefer English over Spanish for worship. To González’s surprise, he ended up serving at a Hispanic Baptist church that moved away from the language.

In his hometown in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, “Baptist Temple McAllen is a Hispanic church that, with the passing of generations, transitioned to have all its services only in English,” said González. “When the Lord called me to serve there it was pretty scary, because I had never led worship in English before.”

In Southern states with established Hispanic populations, spanning four or more generations of descendants born in the US, it’s more common to see Hispanic churches like the one in McAllen hold services in English only. Among newer arrivals, congregations stick to Spanish. Other churches offer a spectrum of bilingual, multilingual, and multiethnic worship, either with simultaneous translation or separate English and Spanish services.

Hispanic church leaders differ on whether the church has a role to play in preserving Spanish worship as a distinctive of their culture. Some believe worshiping in Spanish is central to their faith and services, while others believe it’s a …

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Moral Middle Candidates Want to Save America (But They Keep Losing)

Christians concerned about division, disinformation, and democratic norms are straining to reestablish the political center.

Phil Heimlich didn’t throw a party the night of the primary election. The Republican candidate didn’t gather his volunteers to watch the results come in, toast each other’s hard work, and crack inside jokes one last time as they waited to see how badly they’d lose to the incumbent congressman who props up election conspiracies.

He just went home.

He watched a movie with his kids and checked the vote tally on his phone as the ballots in Ohio’s Eighth Congressional District were counted.

His defeat didn’t surprise him. That didn’t make it taste less bitter.

“The problem, frankly, is that most evangelicals are on the wrong side,” Heimlich told CT.

Heimlich, a former Cincinnati city councilman and the son of the doctor who invented the Heimlich maneuver, was once a proud representative of the Religious Right. He still considers himself a conservative. And he’s still an evangelical. He attends Crossroads, a multisite megachurch.

But he’s not part of the Religious Right anymore.

Heimlich—along with a mostly unorganized group of candidates, activists, and operatives across the country—is straining to establish a religious middle. He likes the phrase “radical middle,” a term he learned from a Vineyard pastor.

Whatever it’s called, these are Christians who want to defend democratic norms against the partisanship that warps people into election deniers. They’re against the polarization that helps politicians win gerrymandered districts but doesn’t prioritize solving problems. They want the country to work. And they’re tired of toxic, trolling, apocalyptic politics.

Heimlich ran on support for Ukraine and the January 6 hearings and …

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