by | Mar 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
Ill-defined talk about Christian nationalism misses a more serious threat: Christian leaders neglecting the real concerns of the laity.
The GOP’s presidential primary is functionally finished, even before Super Tuesday arrives this week, and the 2024 general election is all but underway. Christian voters are once again faced with a pressing question of how to “vote our values” in an increasingly secular and hostile public square.
Unfortunately, many prominent Christian voices offer little help. Their focus tends to be an ill-defined Christian nationalism and/or narrow policy issues. They sound uncertain, if not obtuse, about what Christian political action in America should look like. Sometimes they even seem to suggest—maybe inadvertently—that Christian political engagement itself, not just Christian nationalism, is a threat to our country, or that there’s no necessary relationship between Christianity and democracy.
These pundits and public intellectuals may have good intentions. But their advice doesn’t answer the questions of people in the pews who are viscerally experiencing a decline of Christian influence in America. Rather, the overarching message to evangelical voters is that they’re wrong about their political theology and there’s little to nothing to worry about in American democracy—or, at least, nothing Christian engagement with politics could improve.
We are evangelical political scientists at Biola University, and we believe such misguided thinking insults lay evangelicals’ intelligence and fails to address their real and important concerns. In fact, the average evangelical voter’s intuition is correct: American democracy is in trouble; it does need an engaged Christian church to correct course; and there is ample evidence to support that claim.
To …
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by | Mar 4, 2024 | Uncategorized
New listening options allow Christians to maximize their time in the Word.
The Word of God never returns void—even if you listen to it in traffic, at the gym, or while folding laundry.
A growing number of Bible resources give listeners the chance to engage with Scripture through their headphones, with new platforms and audio versions making it easier to access Bible reading throughout the day.
Creators and fans say that even without putting eyes to the page, they’re able to read more Scripture and be spurred to deeper study.
“What’s special about [listening] is it makes it easier to just marinate on those big themes of Scripture,” said Jonathan Bailey, cofounder of Dwell, an app for listening to the Bible. “It makes it easier to have the Scriptures wash over you and just be in a posture of soaking or dwelling.”
Dwell launched in 2018, back when Bailey said most Scripture resources were still focused on reading. The app, funded through Kickstarter, now has 2 million downloads.
The YouVersion Bible app added 43 new Bible audio versions in 2023 alone and reported that audio chapter plays were up by 47 percent over the past year. The English Standard Version (ESV) has recently released several new audio versions as well, featuring a range of different voices and accents, including Irish singer Kristyn Getty and Bible teacher Jackie Hill Perry.
The rise of audio Bible resources corresponds with a broader listening trend as people increasingly rely on their smartphones for information and entertainment. Americans are three to four times more likely to listen to podcasts than they were a decade ago, according to Pew Research Center.
While listening to Scripture can maximize time in the Word since it can be done while multitasking, people may …
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by | Mar 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Abigail Shrier’s critique of childhood therapy mixes a needful corrective with ideological hyperbole.
One of my four-year-old twins has a thing where he pretends he can’t do something he’s done many times before. “I can’t find my sweater,” he says of the sweater on the floor in front of him—the sweater he does not want to wear. “I have no sweater. I don’t know how to put it on. My arms don’t work. Ugh! Ugh! I can’t pick it up with my arms!”
The other twin is in a whiny era. He responds to minor setbacks—difficulty snapping his jeans, getting the wrong jam on his toast, inability to find his water bottle after approximately 1.25 seconds of looking—with loud, tearful cry-whines. His life is over, you understand. The bottle is gone forever.
There is nothing wrong with either twin, and I wouldn’t share these stories if I thought there were (or if there weren’t two of them, giving both plausible deniability). This phase they’re in is deeply annoying, but it’s not diagnosable. It’s nothing that won’t go away with a little discipline and time. They will mature. They will learn to like sweaters and find bottles. They will grow up.
But too many American children “aren’t growing up,” as journalist Abigail Shrier says in the subtitle of her new book. Bad Therapy argues that several factors have combined to ruin American childhood: overhasty diagnosis and medicalization of normal growing pains, the decline and abdication of parental authority, expert and institutional overreach, and—of course—smartphones.
As has become widely recognized in the last half decade or so, children, teenagers, and young adults are growing more anxious, unhappy, lonely, and afraid to pursue what were once commonplace marks …
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by | Mar 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
What happens when a savior chooses not a cross but a sword?
Faith and power clash at the core of Dune: Part Two. The film is the second of a trilogy adaptation of the beloved novels by Frank Herbert, a mystical tale of wars between noble families in the vastness of space and the rise of a messianic figure named Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet).
This middle film picks up the story after a brutal massacre of Paul’s family line. Heir of a noble house and the subject of prophecies, Paul wrestles with his apparent destiny as savior and leader. His mother, Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson), a clairvoyant priestess of the matriarchal religious order Bene Gesserit, tries to maneuver him toward that destiny. But his love, Chani (Zendaya), wants only a simple life together. Amid this relational drama, Paul leads a desert tribe in guerrilla warfare against brutal imperial forces who want to hoard his planet’s precious element called spice.
Dune: Part Two is a lush adaptation of dense source material. It’s a busy 2 hours and 46 minutes, packed with plot and subplots and the constant threat of ravenous, man-eating sandworms. The space battles are an impressive mix of tension and spectacle, and the desert sand is almost its own character, functioning as both shield and weapon for the warriors Paul leads. Though combatants are armed with spacecraft and atomic weapons, many fights come down to hand-to-hand combat with swords, choreographed to be quick, powerful, and exciting.
These elements make for a fun and engaging adaptation, with solid performances and beautiful cinematography. But Dune: Part Two owes its intellectual interest to Herbert’s books. Is faith merely another resource to be exploited in the quest for power? Is it another drug, like spice, that the powerful …
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by | Mar 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
Darlene Cunningham: “We have not seen a tragedy of this magnitude in all of [our] history … [leaders’] deaths create a massive vacuum” for Youth With a Mission.”
Days after a bus accident claimed 11 of its missionaries in Tanzania, leaders of Youth With a Mission (YWAM) are “devastated” but rallying prayer and support to aid medical evacuations, repatriations, and funeral arrangements expected to total hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The Christian missionaries, seven of whom were from other countries, including one from the United States, died in the Ngaramtoni area near the city of Arusha in the eastern African country’s north.
Authorities say a construction truck hit one of two mini-buses carrying the missionaries. The participants in an “Executive Masters in Leadership” course were returning from a field trip in Maasai land when the truck lost its brakes, smashing into the bus.
“We have not seen a tragedy of this magnitude in all of YWAM’s history and we are all devastated,” stated YWAM cofounder Darlene Cunningham in a letter dated February 26. She explained:
The individuals involved in running the Executive Masters were key YWAM leaders in the region—some leading flourishing YWAM bases; others giving leadership in the field of education and other spheres; others ministering in restricted-access locations where no one else would dare to go—and seeing the hand of God upon their ministries in amazing ways. The students attracted to the Executive Masters were the same caliber of people—life-long committed YWAM missionary pioneers. So their deaths create a massive vacuum in this part of the world for YWAM as a missionary movement.
On Wednesday (Feb. 28), members of YWAM in the region held prayers and send-off services for their departed colleagues.
“The mood is very sad,” Bernard Ojiwa, an official of YWAM …
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