by | Jan 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
In the ’60s, white evangelicals condemned Martin Luther King Jr. In the ’80s, we lauded a convenient, hagiographic version of his life. How should we remember him now?
As the white editors of Christianity Today surveyed Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent civil disobedience on behalf of civil rights in the summer of 1964, they were not impressed. “For preachers to argue that ‘civil disobedience’ is justified helps to encourage those who would resort to violence,” CT declared that August.
A half century later, CT formally apologized for its opposition to King and the civil rights movement. By then, the magazine had published numerous pieces lauding King as an example of Christian love whose words and actions offered a needed call to repentance for white evangelicals.
But King remains an awkward figure for those of us who are both white and evangelical—two things that King was not. Many of us would like to herald him as a prophet, but when we do, we risk co-opting King for our own purposes rather than understanding him on his own terms.
White American evangelicals have typically reacted to King in one of three ways: (1) criticizing his Christian practice as heretical or hypocritical; (2) heralding him as a prophet of love whose teachings can heal our racial divisions and cleanse us of the sin of racism; or (3) highlighting his commitment to nonviolence and an alleged colorblind American ideal as an alternative to more militant forms of Black nationalism.
There is at least some truth in every one of these three reactions to King—but in each case, white evangelicals have frequently gone too far. In each case, we have too often tried to fit King into our own evangelical categories instead of understanding him on his own terms.
King’s non-evangelical Christian theology
King was not an evangelical. Evangelicals have traditionally seen the answer to the …
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by | Jan 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Traditional melody suggests it is only when Christians realize the holiday comes with “hard realities” that the spirit of Nativity dwells in their hearts.
This past holiday season—like many before it—the Arab world’s favorite Christmas carol spoke directly to war and suffering.
With Orthodox Christians observing their 12 days of Christmastide from January 7–19, their churches in the Middle East were the latest to sing “Laylat al-Milad” (On Christmas Night). Written in the 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war, the song has been performed by classical divas, worship leaders, and children’s choirs alike. It has offered comfort during the regional conflicts since, from the Syrian civil war to ISIS’s reign of terror to the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
Its haunting melody and lyrics speak less about a baby in a manger than the life that baby demands that we live. And also of the life that baby makes possible:
Chorus:
On Christmas night, hatred vanishes
On Christmas night, the earth blooms
On Christmas night, war is buried
On Christmas night, love is born
Verse 1:
When we offer a glass of water to a thirsty person, we are in Christmas
When we clothe a naked person with a gown of love, we are in Christmas
When we wipe the tears from weeping eyes, we are in Christmas
When we cushion a hopeless heart with love, we are in Christmas
Verse 2:
When I kiss a friend without hypocrisy, I am in Christmas
When the spirit of revenge dies in me, I am in Christmas
When hardness is gone from my heart, I am in Christmas
When my soul melts in the being of God, I am in Christmas
The Christmas season in the Middle East can be a double blessing. Advent begins one month before the Catholic and Protestant holiday on December 25, while festivities continue weeks further until the Orthodox celebration on January 7 and its Epiphany …
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by | Jan 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Satellite congregations are popping up wherever a critical mass can be found, from Florida to Portugal to Kazakhstan.
The Florida Center neighborhood is the place to go in Orlando if you are a Brazilian immigrant missing home. From Guaraná sodas to brigadeiro candies, all kinds of merchandise from the South American country are available in stores and restaurants. Today you can also find there Alcance Orlando, a satellite church of a congregation in Curitiba, a city of nearly 2 million in southern Brazil.
The main pastor, Paulo Subirá, moved to Florida with his wife and three school-age children in 2017.
“When I came to Orlando, we met in small groups with family and some friends, as we previously had in Brazil,” he says. After a while, the gathering grew to include friends of friends.
The group became too large to meet at a home and then outgrew meeting at a hotel. “We then understood we should start a church from that group,” Subirá said.
Alcance Orlando now has two Sunday services that meet in a 300-seat auditorium. On weekdays, members gather in 31 small groups spread across the Greater Orlando area. Subirá, whose brother Luciano leads Comunidade Alcance in Curitiba, is currently preparing a young pastor to start a new community in South Carolina with some Brazilian families that left Florida.
Brazilian immigrant church plants in Europe and North America—usually started by well-known local ministries that exist apart from denominational bodies or missionary agencies—are new for Brazilian Christianity. These church plants are the result of the confluence of two phenomena: the growth of the evangelical population and emigration.
The rise of the evangelical faith in Brazil is well-documented. In a 1980 census, 6.6 percent of Brazilians self-identified as …
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by | Jan 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
Evangelicalism’s historical emphases on personal renewal and church revival shine precisely in dark days like these.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
Just before Christmas, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat responded in his newsletter to the continuing controversy about the Francis papacy in a surprising way.
What was surprising here is not that Douthat, a convert to Catholicism, would write about the church’s stormy politics; he does so all the time. Also not surprising is his almost-despair about the Francis papacy; he is almost surely the most widely read Roman Catholic critic of the pope.
Surprising, though, was his conclusion: that there’s never been a better time to be a Roman Catholic. Over the past year, I’ve come to a similar conclusion: that there’s never been a better time to be an evangelical Christian.
Douthat gets to his conclusion the long way around. He writes about his own conversion into a church led by Pope John Paul II and then Benedict XVI, when the Catholic future seemed to be trending toward even more of the kind of conservative Catholicism that drew Douthat in the first place.
He had come to the Times expecting to be a defender of the church—but then the terrifying scope of the sexual abuse crisis became clear. Then the pope resigned, followed by all of the ambiguity as to where the church would now be headed on matters such as marriage, family, sexuality, and even the authority of the papacy itself.
Douthat poses the anguished question, “Who would choose to be a Catholic at a time like this?”
In this, Douthat argues that conservative Catholics such as himself are perhaps sympathetic to the plight of the more liberalizing Catholics during the John Paul II era, who were often asked, If you don’t like the direction of the church, …
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by | Jan 11, 2024 | Uncategorized
Leaders reflect on what YouVersion’s list of the most-shared Scriptures in their region includes—and misses.
Below are Africa’s top verses of 2023 as determined by YouVersion. With the help of Langham Partnership, Christianity Today asked three local Bible scholars for their analyses on what the findings suggest about the state of Christianity on the continent.
Elizabeth Mburu, Langham Literature regional coordinator for Anglophone Africa, Langham Partnership, Kenya:
What is your overall reaction to this list?
The top ten in Africa did not surprise me. Some of them are my go-to verses!
What might the verses more unique to Africa convey about Africa’s spiritual needs or level of biblical literacy/engagement?
It is likely that these verses feature prominently in Africa because of the challenging socioeconomic and sociopolitical circumstances in many African countries.
Many Christians are enduring hardships and they resort to God’s promises to provide security, provision, prosperity and protection. We struggle against many societal ills, such as corruption, as well as other issues, including spiritual oppression and false teachings. We generally have a transactional relationship with God, and most of these verses would be taken as promises—rewards for good religious conduct.
Most do not know how to interpret the Bible for themselves and so rely on what they hear from pastors. Given the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in Africa and the reality that approximately 85 percent of pastors do not have formal training, the popular verses would include those on this list. Unfortunately, this means that biblical literacy tends to be shallow in many contexts, and the “harder” truths that lead to spiritual maturity tend to be ignored since they are not meeting a felt need.
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