by | Jun 14, 2023 | Uncategorized
It’s easy to celebrate or critique based on partisanship, but Christians can model a better way.
Donald Trump has always been a bit of a history maker.
In 2016, he was the first person elected US president without prior government or military service. His three Supreme Court appointments in four years were the most in half a century. He was the third president to be impeached, and the first to be impeached twice. And this month, Trump became the first president to be indicted on federal criminal charges.
To be clear, these charges are different from those announced in March by New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg. That state indictment centered on Trump allegedly paying an adult film star to keep their relationship secret during the 2016 presidential campaign, and then effectively laundering the payment as a business expense.
The New York Times’s David French—hardly a Trump apologist—cast doubt on the wisdom of Bragg’s prosecution, describing that legal process as “one that [Bragg’s] predecessor didn’t choose to seek and that relies on federal criminal claims that the Department of Justice declined to prosecute.”
The federal indictment, on the other hand, is based on Trump’s handling of classified documents after leaving the White House. Specifically, federal prosecutors allege Trump took a trove of documents with him from the White House to his estate in Florida.
Some of these documents, they charge, contained classified and sensitive information—including about military readiness and possible attack plans. When asked to secure and return these documents, the indictment says, Trump refused and obstructed government officials’ efforts to reclaim them.
Make no mistake: These charges are serious.
Compared to the New York indictment, these federal charges are not just …
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by | Jun 14, 2023 | Uncategorized
Dones and “umms” are leaving the sanctuary or loitering outside the door. But when have they actually left?
I have a friend who faded away from church during his undergraduate years. First, his church involvement became sporadic. Then he stopped attending events that featured worship or fostered Christian community. For a while, he continued to claim he was a Christian. A year later, he dropped the label.
Some may think he’s still a Christian because he once “got saved” and was baptized. He doesn’t. I don’t either. Regardless of one’s theory of salvation, it’s clear that, although God hasn’t given up on him, he has quit church.
My friend is not alone. He’s among the many convinced there may be something to this whole Jesus business but who’ve disconnected from Christian community.
“People who say they don’t have a religious identity—though many still embrace some Christian beliefs and engage in various spiritual practices—are projected to rise from about 30 percent today to as much as 52 percent in 50 years,” writes CT reporter Daniel Silliman in response to recent Pew Research Center data.
The pandemic is also part of the faith picture in America. In “Rise of the Umms,” CT writer Mike Moore suggests that, just as COVID-19 exposed weaknesses in our systems and relationships, “this same accelerated unveiling has descended on the church, revealing a major decline in congregational involvement.”
“Recent data shows a majority of churches are below their pre-pandemic attendance,” he writes. “A study released early this year reveals that church attendance is down by 6 percent, from 34 percent in 2019 to 28 percent in 2021.”
For whatever reason—busyness, laziness, fatigue, …
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by | Jun 14, 2023 | Uncategorized
The move to disfellowship churches with female pastors in top positions has spurred a larger debate.
Nobody expected Rick Warren’s appeal to be successful—not even Rick Warren. But he still stood up in front of 13,000 Southern Baptists gathered in New Orleans to make his case.
“No one is asking any Southern Baptist to change their theology! I’m not asking you to agree with my church,” he insisted, reading from a printout at a microphone on the floor of the convention hall during a three-minute speech. “I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist, who have historically agreed to disagree on dozens of doctrines, in order to act on a common mission.”
For messengers at the SBC annual meeting, employing women pastors was not an agree-to-disagree issue. A vast majority—88 percent—voted to uphold the decision made back in February to disfellowship Saddleback.
The vote concludes two years of scrutiny and criticism toward the California megachurch for ordaining female pastors from its stage, welcoming a female teaching pastor to preach on Sundays, and naming a female campus pastor. This was the only chance to appeal.
After the vote, Warren said he wasn’t counting the appeal to succeed. Instead, “I wanted to push the conversation that’s been stagnant for years.”
Warren, who founded Saddleback and led the church for 43 years until his retirement last September, did not leave quietly. In the weeks before the meeting, the fourth-generation pastor launched a campaign in his church’s defense, with dozens of tweets, a website, three videos, an open letter, and a four-page messenger’s guide arguing that removing Saddleback violates the fellowship’s belief in church autonomy.
“I wanted to speak up for millions of Southern Baptist women … …
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by | Jun 13, 2023 | Uncategorized
Women thought the PCA, with its robust system of governance, might provide some accountability. They found that was not the case.
With a robust governing structure and a 400-page Book of Church Order (BCO) that requires strict standards for those in church leadership, the Presbyterian Church in America should be a denomination that’s good at handling abuse.
“I told friends I picked the PCA because I know I have somewhere to go if something goes wrong,” Kristen Hann, a former director of women’s ministry at Surfside Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, told CT.
She and other women in the denomination have found that was not the case.
The denomination meets for its annual general assembly this week and is marking its 50th anniversary. Over those decades, it has not experienced the reckoning with abuse that has occurred in the Southern Baptist Convention or the Catholic Church.
But survivors within the PCA say the denomination’s problems with abuse are just unaddressed. The denomination has not commissioned an investigative report like the SBC on its response to abuse cases.
At its denominational meeting in Memphis this week, PCA elders will consider a significant number of overtures (church legislation) related to abuse. Among them are two different proposals allowing anyone to be a witness in church courts for abuse cases—currently only those who believe in God, heaven, and hell are allowed to be witnesses. Another overture would require criminal background checks for new ministers and ministers transferring presbyteries or denominations.
Ordained male elders vote at the PCA meeting, while SBC messengers can be men and women.
The PCA, with its ostensible system of leadership accountability, may demonstrate how every denomination needs to have a reckoning with abuse from the outside. The denomination has the structure for …
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by | Jun 12, 2023 | Uncategorized
Occupied, liberated, and now underwater, Kherson remains on the frontline of fighting—and faith, as a local seminary president explains.
For eight months, the Ukrainian city of Kherson endured Russian occupation.
Now—along with at least seven churches—it is underwater.
Experts estimate that the collapse of the Nova Kakhovka dam, 44 miles upstream, released an amount of water equal to the Great Salt Lake. A new wave of evacuations is underway in southern Ukraine, with 25,000 people in Russian-controlled areas and 17,000 in Ukrainian-held territory advised to leave.
An estimated 2,000 houses have been flooded, with 16,000 people made homeless. A lack of drinking water, electricity shortages, and floating land mines have contributed to the humanitarian and ecological disaster.
The dam’s reservoir contributed 2,600 tons of fish to the local economy. Wheat prices have spiked, as 94 percent of Kherson’s irrigation system has lost its supply. And 150 tons of machine oil have been carried toward the Black Sea.
But that is just the physical damage.
Tavriski Christian Institute (TCI) in Kherson is a spiritual casualty. Liberated from Russian occupation last November, the seminary’s riverside properties suffered a new blow with the deluge. Early in the war, TCI president Valentin Siniy evacuated west with his wife, two children, and much of the student body. Today he continues education from Ivano-Frankivsk as he oversees relief efforts over 500 miles away.
CT spoke with Siniy about the state of the seminary campus, the emotional impact of the flood, and the rising challenges to faith that have led to newfound spiritual insights:
What is the situation with your seminary?
When the Russian military descended upon our cherished seminary, it was an emblem of knowledge and spiritual growth. They stripped it of its essence. Equipment from our printing …
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