by | Jun 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
Native American Christians, involved in both their tribes and in child placement situations, know the complexity of these cases better than most.
Native American tribes will retain priority for placement in the adoption of Native American children after a US Supreme Court ruling on Thursday.
The high court rejected all challenges to the federal Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) in a 7–2 ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
An evangelical couple, along with two other adoptive couples, had challenged the law on multiple grounds, one being that it hinders non-Native families from fostering and adopting Native American children.
The court rejected every argument and defended the fundamental constitutional principles behind ICWA.
“This case is about children who are among the most vulnerable: those in the child welfare system,” wrote Barrett in the decision. She shared a comment from a Choctaw chief who testified in Congress in 1978, when ICWA became a federal law: “Culturally, the chances of Indian survival are significantly reduced if our children, the only real means for the transmission of the tribal heritage, are to be raised in non-Indian homes and denied exposure to the ways of their people.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who handled many cases involving Native American affairs out West before coming to the high court, wrote a concurring opinion that detailed the history of the federal government forcing child removal from Native American families through boarding school initiatives, including through some missionary-run schools. He noted that surveys showed “approximately 25–35 percent of all Indian children [were] separated from their families” by 1974.
The court avoided the thorniest issue in its ruling: whether ICWA’s rules for child placement were unconstitutionally race-based. …
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by | Jun 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
The NYC founders of Pray March Act want church-led activism to outlive news cycles and divisive politics.
James Roberson III scaled a ladder in downtown Brooklyn on June 2, 2020, with a megaphone in his hand, as protestors converged below him. He had expected a few hundred; thousands showed up.
One week earlier, Roberson—a married father of three and pastor of Bridge Church NYC—had watched the infamous video of George Floyd dying. He couldn’t believe the “total disregard for humanity.”
As a Christian, a pastor, and a Black man in America, he felt compelled to say something. Beyond the crowd in New York, his remarks have been viewed more than 19,000 times on Facebook Live.
“Anyone whose heart doesn’t break when you see that video, don’t ask me to explain why my heart breaks,” Roberson says, crying. “If your heart doesn’t break when you see something like that, please … don’t make me explain my rage.”
Roberson had spent decades explaining—particularly to his white evangelical friends—why the killings of Black men and women at the hands of law enforcement officers or white vigilantes were so painful and so personal.
He and a group of fellow local pastors and believers soon grew their grief and activism into a movement: Pray March Act (PMA). Their marches in Brooklyn, Long Island, and Minneapolis drew media attention in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.
Their language was not filled with violent or hateful rhetoric but aimed at advocating for police and other enforcers of the law to regard and treat Black citizens with the same dignity and respect as their white counterparts.
“We wanted the protest to be deeply Christian,” Roberson said. “The cops are made in the image of God, just like George Floyd was made in …
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by | Jun 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
Was the Hillsong founder covering up sexual abuse or trying to care for a survivor?
Update: The court will rule on Brian Houston’s guilt on August 16.
Sydney court magistrate Gareth Christofi has been presented with two very different portraits of Hillsong megachurch founder Brian Houston.
According to the Crown prosecutor, making his final argument in court on Thursday, Houston is a liar. He did everything he could to conceal his father’s sexual abuse and protect his own reputation and power.
The defense, on the other hand, depicts Houston as an imperfect human doing his best in a difficult situation. Among other things, he sincerely believed that the survivor of his father’s abuse, by then a grown man, did not want him to go to police.
The survivor, Brett Sengstock, was present in the tiny courtroom in Downing Centre Courthouse in downtown Sydney for the closing arguments in Brian Houston’s trial. He sat just a few meters from Houston as two attorneys debated what the megachurch pastor should have done in 1999 when Sengstock told him what Frank Houston did to him when he was a boy in the 1970s.
Crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison said Brian Houston had “no reasonable excuse” for not reporting his father to the police.
“The Crown submits that the reason was that the accused was trying to protect the reputation of the church and his father,” Harrison said.
Harrison argued there was a culture of cover-up in Hillsong. The church insisted on dealing with everything in-house—including scandals. Houston was so confident in this protective culture, the prosecution argued, he told several people at his two churches explicit details about what his father did to a 7-year-old boy, knowing they wouldn’t report it to the police either.
At the same time, the prosecutor …
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by | Jun 15, 2023 | Uncategorized
Missionary Henry Breidenthal taught generations of Thai pastors as a doctor, Bible college founder, and evangelist.
On a warm Sunday morning in March, about a dozen Thai Christians sit quietly in Grace New Life Church in Chiang Mai and wait for the service to begin. As the worship leader warms up on his guitar and the pastor makes last-minute adjustments to his slides, a frail 91-year-old Caucasian man with bifocals shuffles to a chair and sits down.
The worship leader stands and asks maw (Thai for “doctor”) to lead a prayer. Retired missionary Henry Breidenthal slowly rises from his chair and walks to the front of the room. There, with his gray head bowed and sunken eyes closed, he addresses God softly, his Thai mumbled with age. His prayer complete, he returns to his seat as the music begins.
When the worship set is finished, Breidenthal and the other congregants listen to the day’s message on tithing from Pastor Patompon Kong. Kong was once Breidenthal’s student at the Bible college he founded. Now, in the twilight of the older man’s life, Kong is his pastor.
For the past 60 years, Breidenthal has called Thailand home. His longevity calls to mind an earlier era of overseas service. Today, many missionary recruits hope to see quick, tangible results before returning home just a few months or years later. Breidenthal’s ministry shows the potential for the compound growth of a missionary’s impact over the long term.
That type of ministry comes at a cost. Breidenthal had to forgo the doctor’s salary he could have earned back in the United States, perhaps the chance to marry and start a family (Breidenthal has remained single), and definitely a “normal” life of comfort and ease.
Yet as he spoke with me in his home about his life in Thailand—treating leprosy patients, ministering …
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by | Jun 14, 2023 | Uncategorized
With the female-pastor debate getting the most attention, the slow work to address abuse plods on.
The issue that once dominated Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) annual meetings—sexual abuse in churches—almost receded into the background at this year’s gathering, which was overrun by debates around women serving as pastors.
Only a year after they voted to move forward with initial steps to address abuse in the wake of a major investigation, the SBC’s reforms have been slow, complicated, and not without controversy.
A task force overseeing its abuse response—including a new website to track known abusers—asked for more time to complete their task, and the convention overwhelmingly approved the extension. They’re still waiting for permanent funding and permanent staffing to oversee the process. Ahead of the meeting, some Southern Baptists spoke up with critiques over cost and legal ramifications.
“They’ve acknowledged it and kind of want to move on,” said Jules Woodson, who came forward with her story of abuse by her youth pastor in 2019. “I want them to know I’m still fighting … I’m not walking away.”
Sexual abuse survivors including Woodson had rallied around the annual meetings, holding posters and press conferences in 2019, wearing T-shirts in 2021, passing out teal sexual-abuse-survivor ribbons in 2022. Last year, the topic of abuse came up in prayers, sermons, and resolutions, with leaders going as far as thanking survivors by name and applauding them from the stage.
In New Orleans this week, Woodson and a few other SBC abuse survivors met in a room in the convention center set aside for them to decompress. They quietly celebrated the progress the denomination had made, shedding tears together as the shell of the Ministry Check …
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