by | Mar 6, 2024 | Uncategorized
On the other side of disaffiliation, traditionalist congregations pursue prayer, revival, and revitalization.
June Fulton felt weird sitting in the third pew.
At every service since she joined the choir when she was 12 years old—her whole life, basically—she has sat with them on the stage behind the pulpit at Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church (UMC), in Trinity, North Carolina.
But there was no singing at the disaffiliation vote. So Fulton, now one of the matriarchs at Mt. Vernon, took a spot in the pew next to a friend.
“Everybody filled out their piece of paper, a ballot, and they had to sign it,” Fulton told CT. “Every person went up and put their paper in the basket and then we sat there quietly. So quietly. It was so strange to sit there so quietly as we waited.”
Representatives from the denomination collected the ballots. They went into a back room and counted the votes to see whether the small rural church would be one of the thousands to exit the UMC over LGBTQ affirmation, fidelity to traditional Christian teachings on sexuality, the authority of the Book of Discipline, and years of bruising ecclesial conflict.
Fulton leaned over to her friend and said how sad it all was. She said this was not something you ever wanted to do.
Her friend said, “I just wonder what it’s going to be like. I think we’ve made the right decision. But I just wonder what it’s going to be like,” Fulton recalled.
Fulton wondered that too. She hoped the congregation would soon put it all behind them—the debates; the acrimony and the weight of it; the sorrow; and the endless, complex process of disaffiliation.
“We can go forward,” she said, “and go back to doing the things we always did do: caring for people, looking after people, and being the church.”
Mt. Vernon …
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by | Mar 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Preston Sprinkle’s Exiles is a bracing call to return to Scripture, but some of his specific political applications are dubious.
It’s not news that modern American Christians are deeply divided over politics—to the point that it may seem we have more in common with people who share our political beliefs than with our siblings in the faith. That division raises the question: If we’re all reading the same Bible, how do we end up with such conflicting and conflict-prone politics? Is our political engagement actually shaped by Scripture?
Preston Sprinkle’s new book, Exiles: The Church in the Shadow of Empire, challenges American Christians to recenter our politics on the Bible rather than on American culture and to found our political identities on our faith rather than on our partisanship. Some of his applications of Scripture are questionable, but his altar call is welcome and necessary for the American church.
A longtime Christian writer and public intellectual, Sprinkle has made a name for himself as an orthodox evangelical with some uncommon positions, including his commitment to Christian nonviolence, his annihilationist view of Hell, and his approach to issues of sexuality and gender identity. In Exiles, Sprinkle first uses his training as a biblical scholar to take readers through what Scripture says about how God’s people should live politically, then considers how Christians should apply these lessons in modern-day America.
The strongest feature of Exiles is its call for Christians to challenge our own political views with a careful reading of the Bible. Sprinkle is exactly right on this: It’s far too easy to assume our politics are an outgrowth of our faith without ever giving them serious scrutiny. Sprinkle challenges Christians on the left and right alike to see how Scripture both affirms and runs against …
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by | Mar 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Immigrants from South America are a growing force in churches on the other side of the Atlantic. But their electoral initiative is viewed with reservations.
As Portugal goes to the polls this Sunday, a transatlantic group of Christian leaders has come together to campaign for the National Democratic Alternative (ADN).
Founded in 2014, the small party has never held a seat in the Assembleia da República, Portugal’s parliament, and has drawn national attention for downplaying COVID-19 and blaming the US for the war in Ukraine. But its pro-life, religious liberty, and anti-drug legalization stances have drawn significant evangelical support, much of it coming from Brazilian immigrants and nationals who are eager to bring their political playbook against their former colonizer.
“I want to call on all evangelical leaders in Portugal, as well as all Christians, to support and vote for the ADN in the elections on March 10,” said Brazilian representative and Pentecostal pastor Marco Feliciano in a YouTube video by ADN adherents several weeks ago. “It’s time for people who love the Holy Bible to arise and to make a decision for a better country, a country that protects and promotes Jewish-Christian values.”
Feliciano is one of numerous Brazilian lawmakers who have made their evangelical identity integral to their politics. The founder of Catedral do Avivamento, a neo-charismatic church loosely affiliated with the Assemblies of God, he makes up one of 204 deputies (out of the 513 in the lower house of the Brazilian parliament) in the evangelical caucus Evangelical Parliamentary Front.
This coalition supports keeping abortion and drugs illegal and backs other issues that are important to the evangelical public. Not all in the group profess the evangelical faith; about half are there to signal these stances to their constituents. Though the bloc has …
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by | Mar 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Despite disappointment over the vote, churches see opportunities to love and serve.
In a rare joint session at the Palace of Versailles on Monday, lawmakers voted 780 to 72 to enshrine abortion access in the constitution, making France the first country in the world to do so.
While abortion is already legal in France, the parliament acted in response to the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022 as well as the rightward political swing in countries around the world. The French government wanted to shore up its existing laws ahead of any potential gains by the political right in France’s next presidential election in 2027, even though none of the political parties are advocating an end to abortion.
The vote easily exceeded the threshold of three-fifths of the senators and deputies needed to amend the constitution, which now states there is a “guaranteed freedom” to abortion in France. While many people cheered the decision, pro-life voices within the country’s small evangelical population (making up about 1 percent of the population) expressed concern. A group of around 2,500 demonstrators, rallied by the organizers of the annual Marche pour la Vie (March for Life), gathered in Versailles on Monday as members of parliament arrived for the vote.
“I think it is really important to witness that many French do not agree with the inscription of abortion in the constitution,” said Nicolas Tardy-Joubert, president of Marche pour la Vie. “This [demonstration] is key to showing that there is an alternative mindset to public life in our country. … We should protect life, and we cannot add a guaranteed liberty in our constitution to kill somebody.”
Tardy-Joubert noted that while it was a day of sorrow, “it should also be a day for hope, because …
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by | Mar 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Their Chinese pastor prayed and shared pulpits with Black and white pastors and volunteered to deliver packages to know the multicultural surroundings better.
Chinese churches scattered across the globe hold immense potential within the universal Christian mission, but that potential often remains untapped. One persistent challenge is the deep-seated racial discrimination prevalent among Chinese people, as well as their indifference to, or even their tendency to avoid, the diverse races, cultures, and language groups that surround them.
In May 2023, pastor David Doong, general director of the Chinese Coordination Center of World Evangelism (CCCOWE) and host of the Missional Discipleship podcast, conducted an interview in Mandarin with pastor Qian Bin of the Evangelical Chinese Church of Seattle (ECCS). What follows is a translated and edited excerpt from that conversation.
David Doong: In the United States, racial issues are a sensitive topic. It’s no longer just a Black-and-white issue; all ethnic groups seem to be drawn into the fray. As a Chinese church pastor in Seattle, when did you begin to take notice of racial issues?
Qian Bin: When our church was established in 1960, the congregation consisted primarily of ethnically Chinese individuals from Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, with shifts in immigration patterns, immigrant families from China, Southeast Asia, North America, and even Europe gradually became part of our congregation. Consequently, our church has become a melting pot of multiple languages, multicultural backgrounds, and diverse traditions. We even have multiple congregations, all shepherded by the same group of pastors and elders.
Our church comprises Mandarin-, English-, and Cantonese-speaking congregations, each with significant cultural and background differences (they are from different places geographically). Everyone within the same church must confront …
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