by | Jan 10, 2024 | Uncategorized
As police arrest a pastor for an alleged murder in a lurid crime of passion, young people question how they can trust the church.
When 19-year-old Giona Melo heard that police had arrested the pastor of the largest Baptist church in the Philippine island of Mindanao for allegedly murdering his romantic rival, a male beauty pageant contestant, all she could do was laugh.
“I used to get really angry, but now I laugh because it’s just absurd,” said Melo, who grew up in Cagayan de Oro, a city in northern Mindanao, and is now a student at North Park University in Chicago. “I have peace because I trust in God more than the church.”
Dimver Andales, the 51-year-old head pastor of Lapasan Baptist Church in Cagayan de Oro, was accused of masterminding the murder of 24-year-old Adriane Rovic Fornillos, a candidate for Mister Cagayan de Oro. The police have called the case a crime of passion because Andales, a married man, was allegedly in a romantic relationship with Fornillos’s girlfriend. He was arrested along with his associate pastor, who is said to be an accomplice of the crime.
Around the time the news broke, another pastor, Jennifer Cobarrubias of Dream Life Church in Quezon City, went viral for a TikTok video in which she and her church members mocked former congregants who had left her church. She quickly faced backlash on social media: “This is why I stopped going [to church],” read one tweet. “Religious people are the most judgmental ones.” Another read: “These types of people are using religion to control people’s lives. … Shouldn’t you be praying for them instead of mocking them [on] TikTok?”
“It is sad to see Christian leaders fail to be good representatives of Christ,” said Micah Bacani, a recent graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, …
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by | Jan 9, 2024 | Uncategorized
Bob Vander Plaats wants Christian voters to move on from Trump. Are they still listening?
In the lead-up to the first caucus in the presidential race, GOP hopefuls barnstorm Iowa, turning up at town halls, cornfields, schools, the state fair, and Bob Vander Plaats’s house.
He and wife Darla have welcomed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and entrepreneur and political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy. DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Sen. Tim Scott (who has since suspended his presidential campaign) also visited his church, Soteria Des Moines, a Baptist congregation in the state’s capital.
Vander Plaats is head of The Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative Christian nonprofit with ties to Focus on the Family. He has built up a winning streak picking out the past three GOP caucus winners in his state—Mike Huckabee in 2008, Rick Santorum in 2012, and Ted Cruz in 2016—and holds one of the most-coveted Republican endorsements.
“Bob Vander Plaats is a kingmaker,” said Jim Tillotson, president of Faith Baptist Bible College in nearby Ankeny. “I would think his endorsement carries a lot of weight.”
Vander Plaats, though, tends to downplay his influence. “It’s not my endorsement,” the 60-year-old told Christianity Today. “It’s more that I’ve had a front-row seat to this entire process.”
In the lead-up to the caucuses, when he wasn’t brushing shoulders with candidates or hosting them during The Family Leader events, Vander Plaats was working from a nondescript office park in Urbandale, Iowa, where the ministry is headquartered.
His office is crowded with traces of his Iowa roots: a card with “I heart basketball” recalls his days on Northwestern College’s Red Raiders team, and a flip calendar …
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by | Jan 9, 2024 | Uncategorized
We often credit the early church with heroic faithfulness. But it was hardly innocent of accommodation and compromise.
Martyrdom lurking around every corner. Christians fervent in prayer morning, noon, and night. Bold declarations of “Christ is Lord” in Roman arenas.
This describes a few Christians, at a few moments, in the first few centuries of the church. Despite popular depictions, this was not the norm for every person bearing the Christian name. In fact, the norm was less heroic than we might realize.
In Cultural Christians in the Early Church: A Historical and Practical Introduction to Christians in the Greco-Roman World, historian Nadya Williams proposes that many Christians in the church’s first five centuries may have been more closely aligned with their surrounding culture than with Christ. This is not to deny the authenticity of their faith, only to say that Christians have always been tempted to adapt to cultural conventions.
This more nuanced and historically consistent portrait erodes notions of “golden-era Christianity.” Like a microscope revealing cancerous cells, Williams shows readers how Christians are too often infected by the culture around us rather than influenced by Christ in us. From Christian nationalism to love of wealth to Christian “celebrity culture,” there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to how Christians have acclimated to cultural norms.
Straddling fences
Beginning in the New Testament, Williams shows how some Christians took cultural priorities more seriously than biblical ones. The standout case in the Book of Acts is the episode of Ananias and Sapphira, affectionally dubbed by Williams as the “first cultural Christians.”
This couple, seeing the sacrificial generosity of early believers, sought to make a similar statement, albeit with different …
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by | Jan 9, 2024 | Uncategorized
Church homelessness is lonely and exhausting. And the only antidote is Christian community.
When my family moved from Washington State to California, my parents braced my brother and me for a church search that could take some time. But after just one Sunday, we fell in love with a congregation, and my family still attends there more than 15 years later.
In leaving home for college, I hoped for the same narrative. Instead, I found it to be the complete opposite. In fact, up until about six months ago, I had been going on six years without a home church—which is a familiar reality among many Gen Z Christians.
Roughly one-third of young people are attending church less often today than they did before the pandemic. A 2022 study from the Survey Center on American Life found that the pandemic appears to have caused those who already had the weakest commitments to regular religious attendance—including young people, single folks, and self-identified liberals—to stop attending church altogether at a much higher rate than other Americans.
Throughout my church search, I struggled with thoughts of self-doubt, wondering if I was the problem: Was I just being too picky in my expectations? Was I discounting churches for superficial reasons? In my mind at the time, the reason I had not yet found a church home was a mix of equally valid contributing factors over the course of my college career.
In my first year, I visited what felt like hundreds of churches by bus, since I didn’t have a car. And when the pandemic hit during my sophomore and junior years, I began tuning into my beloved church from back home. By senior year, I was determined to find a community and released any expectation of finding a one-to-one comparison with my home church.
I began commuting 40 minutes into the …
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by | Jan 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
Is the Islamic nation’s inclusion—the State Department’s only change this year—driven by its treatment of Christians, Muslims, or ethnic Armenians displaced from the Artsakh enclave?
For the first time, the United States has recognized Azerbaijan as a violator of religious freedom.
Inclusion on the State Department’s second-tier Special Watch List (SWL) subjects the oil-rich Shiite Muslim–majority nation to the possibility of economic sanctions.
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called for the Caucasus nation’s censure each year since 2013. Created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), USCIRF’s bipartisan yearly report evaluates “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations independent of US foreign policy concerns and tracks government implementation of its recommendations.
Complicating any consequences, Azerbaijan aligns with US foreign policy in certain areas: It cooperates closely with Israel, is aligned against Iran, and agreed to increase oil exports to Europe in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In a brief statement, US secretary of state Antony Blinken kept unchanged all other 2022 designations mandated by the IRFA. Azerbaijan joins Algeria, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam on the SWL, cited for “engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom.”
Twelve nations—China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Myanmar, Nicaragua, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—again received designations as first-tier Countries of Particular Concern (CPC).
USCIRF “welcomed” the designation of Azerbaijan. But it stated there was “no justification” for failing to follow its advice to also label India and Nigeria as CPCs.
India was first recommended from 2002–2004 as a CPC, from 2010–2019 for the SWL, and …
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