by | Aug 30, 2023 | Uncategorized
Special legislative session ends without measures to prevent mass shootings at schools.
They hoped the Tennessee legislature would listen to them. They hoped the elected representatives would do something—something—to make their kids safer.
But at the end of the special session in Nashville on Tuesday, The Covenant School parents’ hopes were dashed. The legislature didn’t even vote on the bills that the families of children who survived a Nashville school shooting in March wanted to see made into law.
Wearing matching black T-shirts with the words “Get Used to Seeing These Faces,” the cofounders of Covenant Families for Better Tomorrows wept at the Capitol. And at a press conference after, some of them spoke of how hard it was going to be to explain all this to their children.
“We will go home and we’ll look at our children in the eyes,” said Mary Joyce, whose daughter was best friends with one of the girls murdered at the Presbyterian Church in America school. “They will ask what our leaders have done over the past week and a half to protect them.
The parents vowed this defeat would not be the end of their activism. Melissa Alexander, whose fourth-grade son stood silently against a wall while a shooter killed three of his classmates, addressed elected officials directly.
“The shooter confronted our children with guns,” she said. “Now you are stabbing our families and all Tennesseans in the back.”
There have been 477 mass shootings in America so far in 2023. Gun violence is the leading cause of deaths for children over the age of one, surpassing automobile accidents and cancer. Tennessee has had 17 mass shootings this year, leaving 32 people dead and 59 wounded.
One of those shootings happened in March, when a person identified as …
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by | Aug 30, 2023 | Uncategorized
My spiritual loneliness brought me back.
Faith and church have been tough for a lot of people coming out of the pandemic. I’m one of them. The last three years ushered my wife and I through two job changes, a cross-country move, and months spent hunkered inside, trying to keep our young children healthy and ourselves sane. By the time the world began to reopen, so much felt different.
Until recently, I could count on one hand the number of times I’d physically attended a church service since March 2020. I could give many reasons for our absence—a toddler and a newborn, disillusionment with a church tradition that was once home, enjoying a second weekend morning, sheer exhaustion, and more.
But if I’m really honest, one reason stands out: The further I get from church, the less Christian faith makes sense to me. The physical drift begets an intellectual one.
Although I might sound like a Christian upstart, I’m something of a thoroughbred. I was born and raised in what is now an evangelical megachurch. I graduated with a degree in religion and philosophy from a prominent Christian college, and I finished a seminary degree at another. I got chops.
But when it comes to believing my faith, it’s always been the same. During any season of life when I’ve been separated from like-minded Christians, my faith starts to feel as alien to me as it does to my non-Christian friends. Wait, you believe a man was God? That he actually rose from the dead? Like, his blood and guts cooled and then his heart just started beating again? It’s ludicrous, isn’t it?
Part of my experience of faith—and part of my constitution—is that I’ve always sought out the best arguments against my own positions. …
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by | Aug 30, 2023 | Uncategorized
New report examines the challenges of measuring religion among Chinese Protestants, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, and other beliefs.
Christianity’s growth in China has stalled since 2010.
That’s according to a new Pew Research Center report measuring religion in China published today. In 2010, approximately 23.2 million adults in China self-identified as Christian. In 2018, 19.9 million adults did so, which Pew researchers say is not a “statistically significant gap.”
Among Chinese Christians, the percentages of zongjiao (Mandarin for “organized religion”) activity have also stagnated. Nearly 40 percent (38%) of Christians said they engaged in such activities once a week in 2010, but that figure dipped slightly to 35 percent in 2018.
“Some scholars have relied on a mix of fieldwork studies, claims by religious organizations, journalists’ observations and government statistics to suggest that China is experiencing a surge of religion and is perhaps even on a path to having a Christian majority by 2050,” the Pew report stated.
But more than a decade’s worth of data from surveys conducted in China provide “no clear confirmation of rising levels of religious identity in China, at least not as embodied by formal zongjiao (宗教) affiliation and worship attendance.”
Pew published its previous report on religion in China in May 2008 ahead of the Beijing Olympics. While that study did not touch on the rate of growth of the Christian faith in the country, it acknowledged the presence of “indirect survey evidence” that suggested a “potentially large number of unaffiliated, independent Christians.”
Its latest report highlighted statistics from the Chinese government that appeared promising at first glance as the number of Protestants in the country jumped from 700,000 to 38 million …
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by | Aug 29, 2023 | Uncategorized
According to a recent Barna report, nearly 75 percent of Brazilian teenagers say they want to learn more about Christ.
At just 14 years old, Lavínia Fernandes competes with the other young people in her church, located in Recife, Pernambuco, northeast Brazil, to see who can bring the most friends from school to the Saturday services. There are now more than 10 people from her class at school who started attending church through her.
“My friends comment that I became kinder and happier after I became a Christian and that they can see God in my life,” said the teenager.
Like Fernandes, millions of other Christian teenagers throughout Brazil and other Latin American countries are experiencing something special in their journeys of faith. Recent research by the Barna Group reveals that Latin America is home to a “connected, digitally enabled generation” that is committed to their faith, engaged with the Bible, and hungry to learn more about Jesus.
Barna surveyed 3,320 young people, ages 13 to 17, from July 21 to August 24, 2021, in Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, and Colombia. Young people in all four countries revealed an enthusiasm and passion for their faith consistently higher than the global average. (Barna polled 26 countries around the world for this survey.) Brazilian teens, in particular, showed an especially heightened awareness of Christ and the Bible.
When asked what they really think about Jesus, 74 percent of Christian Brazilian teenagers said they believe he offers people hope, and 60 percent said Christ makes a real difference in today’s world.
Just over half (55%) of Brazilian teenagers, however, believe that Jesus was God in human form.
Brazilian teenagers are more likely to believe in Jesus’ miracles and his return.
Barna classifies …
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by | Aug 29, 2023 | Uncategorized
Illinois pastor Stephen Lee was back in church on Sunday, thanks in part to fundraising help from a Christian advocacy group.
Living Word Lutheran Church in suburban Chicago had expected to be without its pastor on Sunday since he surrendered to authorities in Georgia days before.
Chaplain Stephen Lee bought a one-way ticket to Atlanta and turned himself in Friday on charges related to election interference, the last of 18 people indicted along with former president Donald Trump. He wore a clerical collar in his booking photo.
Prosecutors allege that Lee went to the home of a Georgia election worker in an attempt to sway her testimony.
Lee ended up being released on bail, backed by the prayers of his congregation and financial support from a Christian advocacy group.
“I just have to say this. I am just so proud of you folks. … We were planning on possibly my absence today, but you didn’t skip a beat,” Lee told the congregation in Orland Park, Illinois, where he has been serving for three and a half years amid a pastoral vacancy.
Last Sunday morning, he preached from Isaiah and Romans, and the church lifted up his family with “prayers of guidance and blessings as they work through their current struggles, and a prayer of thanksgiving for support.”
Part of that support came from the Illinois Family Institute, which set up a legal defense fund to help cover 10 percent of his $75,000 bond for release. The Christian group has partnered with a company called Make Honey Great Again, which agreed to donate a portion of sales. Its honey comes in bottles shaped like Trump’s head.
“You may like or dislike the bottle design, but it’s filled with healthy, pure, raw honey and we hope the uniqueness of the packaging will generate awareness, prayers, and donations for Chaplain Lee,” the Illinois Family Institute …
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