by | Aug 4, 2023 | Uncategorized
Six months after disaster, the biblical Dorcas raised from the dead by Peter inspires Protestant generosity—just as she modeled for the early church.
Exhausted and emotionally spent at the end of a full week surveying the damage from Turkey’s massive earthquake last February, Ali Kalkandelen needed hope. As chairman of his nation’s Association of Protestant Churches (TeK), he felt the weight of responsibility to help his colleagues in 27 affected congregations.
Eventually, he found a template for moving forward in the biblical figure of Tabitha.
Scattered over 11 cities in a geographic area the size of England, local Turkish Christian leaders had already launched into service, supported by the larger body of 186 affiliated churches with aid, funds, and volunteers.
Kalkandelen set out from Istanbul, encouraging colleagues in Antakya, Adiyaman, and three other cities. He traversed ruined highways, lamented collapsed buildings, and tried to take stock of the task of relief.
Last on his list was Kahramanmaraş, for a personal visit. His father’s home had been destroyed, and he went to check in on his many relatives there.
And there in the rubble flitted a small piece of paper.
Upon inspection it was a page from a Turkish Bible, from 2 Corinthians 1. He read verse 3–4: Praise be to … the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble.
The slip of paper was all the more moving because, among the population of half a million people, the city had no church and no known Christians.
“I read it with my wife, and we started weeping,” said Kalkandelen. “God was talking to his church in Turkey.”
Six months later, alongside trauma counseling and spiritual care, TeK provided 7,500 tents, 27,000 outfits of clothing, and over one million meals to those displaced by the earthquake. And to …
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by | Aug 4, 2023 | Uncategorized
Six months after disaster, the biblical Dorcas raised from the dead by Peter inspires Protestant generosity—just as she modeled for the early church.
Exhausted and emotionally spent at the end of a full week surveying the damage from Turkey’s massive earthquake last February, Ali Kalkandelen needed hope. As chairman of his nation’s Association of Protestant Churches (TeK), he felt the weight of responsibility to help his colleagues in 27 affected congregations.
Eventually, he found a template for moving forward in the biblical figure of Tabitha.
Scattered over 11 cities in a geographic area the size of England, local Turkish Christian leaders had already launched into service, supported by the larger body of 186 affiliated churches with aid, funds, and volunteers.
Kalkandelen set out from Istanbul, encouraging colleagues in Antakya, Adiyaman, and three other cities. He traversed ruined highways, lamented collapsed buildings, and tried to take stock of the task of relief.
Last on his list was Kahramanmaraş, for a personal visit. His father’s home had been destroyed, and he went to check in on his many relatives there.
And there in the rubble flitted a small piece of paper.
Upon inspection it was a page from a Turkish Bible, from 2 Corinthians 1. He read verse 3–4: Praise be to … the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble.
The slip of paper was all the more moving because, among the population of half a million people, the city had no church and no known Christians.
“I read it with my wife, and we started weeping,” said Kalkandelen. “God was talking to his church in Turkey.”
Six months later, alongside trauma counseling and spiritual care, TeK provided 7,500 tents, 27,000 outfits of clothing, and over one million meals to those displaced by the earthquake. And to …
Continue reading…
by | Aug 3, 2023 | Uncategorized
Researcher Deborah Birx, former head of the now-embattled Bush program, thinks US churches can fight diseases like African churches fought HIV/AIDS.
Physician Deborah Birx has led the US government’s effort against HIV/AIDS for decades. An army colonel who worked on HIV/AIDS and vaccine research, she went on to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s arm of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). She later led PEPFAR itself as the US Global AIDS Coordinator.
Starting at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, she served as the head of the US coronavirus response under President Donald Trump. Through her many White House briefings, she became famous for her variety of scarves. Birx is a graduate of Houghton College, a Wesleyan school in New York that is part of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
CT interviewed Birx in June, before the current political fight over PEPFAR’s reauthorization became more heated. The program’s five-year renewal now faces pro-life opposition. As a senior fellow now at the nonprofit Bush Center, Birx can’t argue for or against particular legislation. But she shared what she thinks US faith communities can draw from the success of PEPFAR.
PEPFAR is credited with saving 25 million lives from HIV/AIDS, and is perhaps the most successful global health program in US history. From your 19 years working on PEPFAR, do you have specific ideas from the program that are translatable to the US?
HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis are the deadly diseases in Africa. But America has its own deadly diseases—diseases of despair and loss of hope. And that’s where the church plays such an outsized role in bringing hope back to the community.
I think we could learn a lot from PEPFAR in the United States on how to do our healthcare delivery better. With HIV/AIDS, we have to remember …
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by | Aug 3, 2023 | Uncategorized
The Christian gospel is meant to transform our whole person—our emotions as much as our thoughts.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
Once when I was preaching in a church that’s more on the “decently and in order” side of Christian liturgy, my host warned me that one woman there was a lot more demonstrative than the rest of the congregation. “There are certain songs we sing that make her start crying and waving her hands,” he said. “And that’s fine. We just want to make sure that we don’t move into a kind of emotionally driven worship.”
I know what he meant. I wonder, though, whether that woman’s “emotionalism” might just be closer to biblical application than the to-do list of action items at the end of the Bible study she’d just attended.
Whether it means starting out at a new church or Bible study or signing up for a gym membership or yoga class, most people at some point sense a need to change their lives. Most of us in ministry want to see “changed lives” or “transformed” people. The question is, How do people actually change?
That question has lingered with me since I read an article by Simeon Zahl in TheMockingbird magazine on the reigning “theories of change” at work in American church life. Zahl outlines several of these theories. Most start with an assumption about where the actual problem is before offering a way to “fix” that problem.
The theory Zahl sees as most typical in evangelical congregations is a “Christian information” approach. Some would question just how widespread this model is, given the constant (and real) concerns about anti-intellectualism and the “scandal of the evangelical mind” in American Christianity. …
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by | Aug 3, 2023 | Uncategorized
If it’s done right, it can actually make it easier for us to live together.
Americans support religious liberty—in general. But they are deeply polarized about how far the natural and constitutional right of individuals to respond to their conceptions of the divine should extend. And unfortunately, Americans tend to be reluctant to extend religious liberty broadly to views they find unsympathetic.
I think that’s sad. Religious liberty is for everyone and should be cherished by all. It’s also ironic, as I argue in my new book, Religious Liberty in a Polarized Age, because historically, the central social purpose of religious liberty was to reduce the fear and anger people feel when they’re threatened with penalties for living according to their religious commitments.
Fear and anger produced cycles of violent retaliation in 16th and 17th century Europe among Protestants and between Catholics and Protestants. In response, Americans embraced principles of religious liberty. The founding father James Madison called it the “true remedy” for the “disease” of religious conflicts and their threat to “the health and prosperity” of the nation.
Today’s conflicts between progressives and conservatives are, thankfully, less violent. Yet we also see cycles of coercion, fear, resentment, and retaliation. We also live in an age when people’s response to “ultimate concerns” vary greatly and are often understood in opposition to each other. Progressives sometimes seek to compel conservative religious people or groups to support same-sex marriages or transgender procedures, in violation of their consciences. Conservative Christians sometimes seek to secure privileges for Christianity, forcing acknowledgements from those who aren’t …
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