Single Christian Women Are Much More Than Their Wombs

Single Christian Women Are Much More Than Their Wombs

The early church elevated females for their faith witness, not their fertility. We should do the same today.

Single women are having a rough go of it lately. Their growing numbers are blamed for the rise of “woke” politics, millennial selfishness, and even incel culture. In some Christian circles, single women are reminded (in case they forgot) to marry and have children, even with a gender imbalance among unmarried Christians, and even though they’re discouraged from dating outside the faith.

It’s a numerical bind causing anxiety all around.

Meanwhile, the single Christian women I know are trying to make the best of a complex reality. They seek to serve God with their daily work, invest in friendships and the church, and pursue creative and educational opportunities as they arise. Many of them also try to meet Christian men, dabble with dating apps, and pray.

Their lives are both rich and imperfect. They experience cycles of hope and frustration. For most singles I know, their status is not for lack of trying, or for lack of honoring marriage as such. As sociologist Lyman Stone notes in a recent CT piece, when you ask unmarried Christians today, most of them say they want to get hitched. Even shakshuka girl said as much.

You don’t have to be a Calvinist to affirm that God is present to every person wrestling with unmet desires and quiet griefs, and that God is working out his plans in times of social stability as well as upheaval, decline, and unprecedented change. Far more, people worried about the future of Christendom—or perhaps Western civilization and its declining birth rates—are called to remember the primary way the church will be preserved through the centuries.

In sum: It’s baptism, not just babies. After all, Jesus taught it’s not enough to be …

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Myanmar’s Christians: As Our Churches Burn and People Flee, We Need the US’s Help

Myanmar’s Christians: As Our Churches Burn and People Flee, We Need the US’s Help

The Biden administration and the global church can do more to help the Chin people in Myanmar.

On Monday, we will hold a congressional briefing at the Senate offices about the worsening situation facing Christians in Myanmar, particularly the Chin people. We hope that the US government will determine the attacks on Christians in Myanmar as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that American Christians will speak out for their brothers and sisters in the country.

Christian ethnic minorities in Myanmar (also known as Burma) have long faced religious persecution and ethnic discrimination due to Buddhist nationalism in the country. This has only worsened after the military overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government on February 1, 2021. Since then, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has steadily ramped up violence against its own citizens, firing on unarmed protesters in the streets of Yangon. By the end of 2021, it was waging an all-out war against civilians in the countryside.

Historically, Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities have been the targets of the most horrific military atrocities. In 2017 and 2018, the Tatmadaw committed a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people that killed thousands and forced 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh. The Biden administration rightly labeled the Tatmadaw’s actions as genocide and crimes against humanity.

Today, the Tatmadaw specifically targets Christians from ethnic minorities such as the Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Karenni. The Baptist World Alliance, World Council of Churches, Open Doors, and other Christian leaders have called for action on the military junta’s persecution of Christians. It is past time for the Biden administration to ensure accountability, protect Myanmar’s persecuted Christians, and provide support …

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Morocco Earthquake Moves Marginalized Churches to Christian Charity

Morocco Earthquake Moves Marginalized Churches to Christian Charity

Their faith unrecognized by the government, local believers serve displaced neighbors seeking shelter and the will of God.

Local and foreign Christians have joined in relief efforts following last week’s massive earthquake in Morocco.

Nearly 3,000 people have died, with more than 5,000 injured. Registering 6.8 on the Richter scale, it is the North African nation’s most powerful quake since 1969 and its deadliest since 1960.

But far from the epicenter near the historic city of Marrakesh, gathered believers all had the same question.

“No one ever asks of disasters, ‘Why did it happen to them?’” said Youssef Ahmed, a senior member of Tangier Northern Church, 350 miles away. “But when it hits you, everyone wants to know God’s will.”

The house church service went much longer than usual.

Although Morocco only recognizes Islam and Judaism as domestic faiths, local believers generally say the government permits them to worship quietly in their homes—under a protective but thorough surveillance. Alcohol and pork, forbidden by sharia, are also freely available in the country. About 15 percent of citizens declare themselves nonreligious, while only 25 percent express trust in clerical leadership.

“We are not restricted in Morocco,” said Ahmed. “Just don’t be a nuisance.”

The latest US State Department report on Morocco indicates that, while “undermining the Islamic religion” is punishable with up to five years in prison, there are no known cases of Christians running afoul of the law.

But that Sunday, the former Muslims had other concerns on their mind.

“Why did it happen? We cannot know. Was it because of sin? We cannot know. Was it a test, like with Job? We cannot know,” said Ahmed, who led the lengthy discussion. “All we know is that God allowed …

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Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism

Wheaton College Releases Report on Its History of Racism

Task force and trustees call for community repentance, starting with a change to the name of the library.

Wheaton College embraced racist attitudes that “created an inhospitable and sometimes hostile campus environment for persons of color,” according to a 122-page review of the school’s history released by trustees today.

Though the flagship evangelical institution was founded by abolitionists, over the next century and a half it turned away from concerns about racial equality. Even when the school’s leadership knew what was right, they frequently lacked the courage to “take a more vocal role in opposing widespread forms of racism and white supremacy,” the report says, and too often “chose to stay silent, equivocate, or do nothing” about racial injustice.

“We cannot be healed and cannot be reconciled unless and until we repent,” the task force concluded at the end of an 18-month study. “These sins constituted a failure of Christian love; denied the dignity of people made in the image of God; created deep and painful barriers between Christian brothers and sisters; tarnished our witness to the gospel; and prevented us from displaying more fully the beautiful diversity of God’s kingdom.”

President Philip Ryken told CT he believes the report is important and he’s glad the college will be making it publicly available.

“The record of the people of God, in so many ways, is a record of their failures as well as their successes,” he said. “I think we can be more effective in living for Jesus Christ today if we’re aware of the challenges that our brothers and sisters have faced in the past and how they have responded to the challenges and opportunities of their day.”

The historical review was conducted by a 15-member task force …

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Church Is Life Together or Not at All

Church Is Life Together or Not at All

It’s time for evangelicals to rediscover Bonhoeffer’s best-known work on the nature of Christian community.

Dechurching is upon America, and everything from religious abuse to apathy to digital media have been named as culprits. This conversation has created many hypotheses, and as many implausible solutions. But most of the analyses of evangelical dechurching miss the deeper problem: an anemic church theology taught and modeled to churchgoers. The call to dechurching may, in fact, be coming from inside the building.

Daniel Williams wrote recently for CT that many evangelical luminaries were rarely consistent churchgoers themselves, and this was accompanied by a weak ecclesiology. Williams says the problem of dechurching today is not due simply to the poor precedent set by evangelical leaders. The problem is also the bedrock evangelical assumption that the Christian life is ultimately an individual adventure, fundamentally between God and the soul.

Within evangelical circles, whether intentionally or not, church has frequently been treated as an optional facet of the Christian life, primarily as a means to helping each of us live out a personal faith. Church is something that exists to assist one’s individual growth or spiritual experience. But this understanding misses the point, which is that church, as the body of Christ, is intrinsic to the life of faith.

Trying to address the crisis of dechurching by appealing to the practical benefits of the church to the individual is thus to try to revive the very problems which led us here to begin with. Appealing to individual experience is not the way forward. Sin is, from the beginning, a work of division and separation, a turning of a people into scattered individuals, and God’s cure cannot take the form of the disease.

As Gerhard Lohfink has put it, God will have a people, …

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