Transubstantiate

Festival of Lights marking the Hindu new year brings invitations to Jesus followers in India, Nepal, and neighboring nations.

Rivaling the scale of Thanksgiving or Christmas in the United States, Diwali has become India’s biggest holiday season.

The Festival of Lights (also known as Deepavali) marks the start of the Hindu New Year and is the faith’s most important festival, celebrated for five days by more than a billion people in India—not only by Hindus but also by Jains, Sikhs, and some Buddhists—as well as across the Hindu diaspora.

The festival symbolizes for its devotees the triumph of good over evil, light over darkness, and knowledge over ignorance. Diwali is marked by feasts, lighting clay lamps outside the house to banish evil spirits, decorative lights, prayers, family gatherings, exchanging gifts, burning firecrackers, and doing charity, besides worshiping at homes or visiting temples.

Each year the holiday falls on different dates in the Hindu lunar calendar determined by the position of the moon, usually between October and November. This year, the festival is observed from October 22–26 with Diwali falling on October 24.

CT interviewed Christian leaders in the majority Hindu nations of India and Nepal—as well as neighboring Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan—in order to better understand what South Asian followers of Jesus do during the festival, whether they think Christians should join in Diwali celebrations, and whether churches conduct outreach to Hindus during the holiday.

India — Anil Kant, pastor, gospel singer-songwriter, and executive director of Trinity Sounds, Mumbai:

We as Christians celebrate only Jesus, so we do not celebrate Diwali in our homes. But we connect and engage with Hindu friends during Diwali. We live in a community with different religions and orientations and …

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Churches across the country are reclaiming theological education to make it available to everyone.

For years, Caleb Bartel wanted to deepen his understanding of the Bible and theology.

“There’s really not a way to get that from just a Sunday morning sermon or just Sunday school,” said Bartel, who attends Central Church in College Station, Texas. “You can grow on your own, absolutely, but you’re not getting seminary-level teaching.”

Bartel never felt called to become a pastor. He’s a home remodeler and a married father of five, which makes seminary impractical. But the 33-year-old is now getting the chance to study theology thanks to a program at his church.

Congregations across the country are implementing in-house theology programs, designed to engage members like Bartel who aren’t pursuing professional ministry but still want to study theology, church history, and the Bible. Some programs, like Central’s, are designed to replicate formal theological education, just without the seminary setting or the tuition bill—which can easily run up to $16,000 per year. Others aim to be more accessible.

That’s the kind of thing Tyler Johnson at Redemption Church in Phoenix started doing 20 years ago. He wanted to make the gospel understood and applicable among people who might never read the Bible in Greek or know how to pronounce exegesis. Along with fellow church planters, he launched a one-year theology program called Surge, open to anyone who would commit to about a school year’s worth of weekly meetings.

“It just feels like a lot of the deeper theological stuff gets outsourced to Bible schools,” he said. The church planters wondered, “Could we do this inside, at communal levels, at tables?”

The church planters started with a list of books …

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In a world of fear and turmoil, the story of Noah brings baptismal hope.

A few weeks ago, a commentator identified what he believes to be the dominant mindset of our time. He calls it “ark head,” borrowing from the biblical account of Noah and the flood.

“Ark head,” argues Venkatesh Rao, happens when we give up on solving our big global problems and look instead for an “ark” in which to ride out the storms of this age of anxiety.

Rao points to the numbness with which most people see the “snowballing global problems and crises we’re hurtling towards,” whether the prospect of a nuclear World War III, another global pandemic, or a collapsing economy. He speculates that even news of an alien invasion would be greeted with a What can you do about it? sort of bored acceptance. This, he writes, is a coping mechanism for people in a new dark age.

The point of an ark, after all, is to “survive a cataclysmic flood while preserving as much of everything you care about as possible,” Rao writes.

For some in the tech sector, the ark could be cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, or the metaverse. Others seem to be scaling down to their narrow subcultures of work or interest or personal life.

“If you can retreat within it, and either tune out or delusionally recode the rest of reality, it works as an ark,” Rao says.

If “flood geology” is the view advocated by some creationist groups to explain phenomena such as the Grand Canyon, I suppose one could call Rao’s thesis a kind of “flood psychology.”

His metaphor caught my attention because I’m currently teaching through Genesis 1–11 (which includes the Noah narrative) in a Sunday seminar at my church. I stopped to wonder if his metaphor might actually …

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Syriac-Aramean Christians, fewer in number than similarly suffering Armenians, assert their Ottoman-era plight deserves separate recognition.

In the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, evangelicals laid down their lives for their Lord. Living in Nusaybin, once home to the ancient theological school of Nisibis, they were among the firstfruits of the Sayfo (“sword”) martyrs.

Overall, modern estimates posit half a million deaths of Syriac-Aramean Christians at the hands of Turkish and Kurdish soldiers, concurrent with the Armenian genocide that claimed 1.5 million lives. Today this Christian community, still speaking the language of Jesus, seeks its own recognition.

In June 1915, the Muslim-majority city—now located on Turkey’s southeastern border with Syria—had about 100 Syrian Orthodox families, and an equal number belonging to other Christian sects. The Protestants were rounded up with Armenians and Chaldeans, marched to the front of town, and shot dead.

The Orthodox families were promised peace by the local leader, but 30 men fled and sought refuge in the rugged mountains. A monk, trusting authorities, led soldiers to their hideout seeking to reassure the frightened band.

According to reports, along the way they turned on the monk, demanding he convert to Islam. Upon his refusal, they cut off his hands, then feet, then head. Returning to Nusaybin, the soldiers assembled the remaining Christians, leading them out of town. In joyful procession the believers sang hymns of encouragement: Soon we will be with our Lord Jesus Christ.

Refusing conversion, one by one they were shot, and then dumped in a well.

In 1919, then-Syrian Orthodox Archbishop Aphrem Barsaum filed a report to the prime minister of Britain, after the Allied powers displaced the Ottomans. Similar massacres had been repeated in 335 other villages in the archbishop’s jurisdiction, …

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In the wake of “Dobbs,” federal prosecutors have filed more than a dozen federal indictments against protestors obstructing access to abortion clinics.

In the past month, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicted more than a dozen pro-life protestors across the country for obstructing access to abortion clinics.

Such prosecutions have been rare historically, with just a case or two annually for the past decade. But after the US Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade this summer, the DOJ announced a task force to pursue more enforcement against anyone obstructing access to abortion clinics. Many of those protestors facing charges are Christian.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE Act, prohibits obstruction of access to, threats toward, and destruction of clinic property. In these recent charges, protestors face up to 11 years in prison. Pro-life activists say the recent prosecutions seem politically motivated; some are now facing charges for incidents that date back more than a year.

An October 5 indictment of 11 protestors in Tennessee was about an abortion clinic blockade in March 2021. One case filed October 14 against a pro-life protestor concerned an incident from two years ago, when a group of protestors allegedly tied themselves with ropes and chains inside a clinic, blocking access.

Edward Mechmann, a former federal prosecutor who now is the director of public policy for the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, told CT it was “strange for the feds to go searching for old cases, especially for relatively minor crimes that would usually be dealt with by local prosecutors.”

Mechmann said he was surprised by “the heavy hand” in the blockade indictments. Though blockading a clinic is a violation of FACE, he thinks the DOJ could have pursued civil remedies without going straight to criminal prosecution.

“My suspicion is that a directive …

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Christian advocate: The uprising in Tehran coincides with the rising disillusionment with Islam and the growth of the underground church.

Growing up in a home with a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Iranian American Shirin Taber had a special appreciation for being able to choose what she believed. When she told her dad that she wished everyone back in Iran could have the same freedom, he—knowing the harsh reality of the regime—said it would never happen.

Since then, Taber has worked on the cause of international religious freedom, hoping to see the trajectory change in one of the most restrictive countries in the world. And with the current uprising of Iranian women and young people, the American advocate is more optimistic than ever.

In Iran, Generation Z—whose grandparents lived through the revolution—has become particularly emboldened, creative, and strategic, inspired by the impact of movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

“Millennials did their part, Gen X did their part, their parents, but this generation is very unique,” Taber said, referencing the viral impact of young activists, including the move to dye Tehran’s fountains blood-red. “Gen Z is no-nonsense. They’ll just go out tough. The girls, they’ll cut their hair, and they’ll jump on cars.”

Iranians eager for reform have held out hope that they could work within the Islamic government, but Taber believes the country has reached a tipping point.

It’s been a month of protests, spurred by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. The viral videos of women cutting their hair symbolize longstanding grievances beyond dress code regulations to women’s unequal status in inheritance, marriage, custody, and travel.

The political pushback, Taber says, correlates with a …

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Here’s what I’ve learned as a Christian doctor receiving requests for physician-assisted dying.

When the hospital staff called me to my patient’s bedside, I could see her distress was severe. She was agitated and breathless, her face etched with discomfort and frustration. “I can’t take this anymore,” she cried.

She had suffered for years with chronic illness and had been admitted to my intensive care unit with acute complications. She was debilitated and exhausted, and her grief and frustration had come to a head. “I just want to die,” she wept.

Her friend was standing next to me at the bedside, and he was clearly upset by her distress. “Just ask for MAID,” he told her, using the popular acronym for medical assistance in dying, often referred to as physician-assisted death. “Then you can end it all now.”

I was startled by his statement. Though physician-assisted death is available in Canada, where I live, I had not expected the conversation to move in that direction. Yet I saw that he was feeling desperate and helpless at the sight of her distress.

After some gentle exploration, we quickly realized that the patient didn’t really want to die; rather, she needed relief from her pain and anxiety and to understand her acute illness and what it meant for her future. She still wanted time with her loved ones. We worked to address her symptoms and concerns, and she soon felt calmer and more comfortable. Watching her rest and converse with family made it hard to believe she was the same person who only hours earlier had cried out to have her life ended.

What is more unbelievable is that the ability to have one’s life ended on short notice is an increasingly acceptable option for Canadian patients—with implications that will reverberate around the globe. …

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This election season, love your neighbor by supporting voter results, a free press, and a peaceful transfer of power.

The midterms election season is not the easiest time to feel good about American democracy.

We’re inundated with negative campaign ads that often distort the records of opposing candidates and portray them in the worst possible light. Each side warns that the election of the other party means disaster for the United States on an apocalyptic scale.

Can Christians really defend a democracy like this? Yes. We can and we should. And there’s no better time to do it than now.

Democracy is currently facing an unprecedented crisis, both in the United States and around the world. According to V-Dem Institute, the world’s leading research group for tracking democratic progress, there are only 34 liberal democracies in the world, the fewest since the mid-1990s. And only 13 percent of the world’s population lives in one of those countries—down from 18 percent 10 years ago. (V-Dem ranks the United States No. 29 in the list of liberal democracies, and its score is rapidly falling.)

Democracy allows for journalistic independence, free and fair elections, and peaceful transfer of power, but those attributes are fragile and easily lost. It’s currently much more common for a democratic country to become autocratic than for an autocratic country to become a democracy.

Some countries that lose their democratic status fully autocratize and become military dictatorships. But V-Dem’s recently released 2022 report suggests that the much more potent threat to democracy is not dictatorship but rather what the institute calls “electoral autocracy.”

Under that system, elections continue to be held, but the government rigs the political process by controlling the media, harassing critical journalists, …

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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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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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