by | Jun 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
The first female artist on Lecrae’s label, Wande talks to CT about being a woman in Christian hip-hop and how the genre can be an entry point for learning gospel truths.
Five years ago, when Yewande Dees became the first female artist with Reach Records, it was a milestone for the Christian hip-hop label and for all of Christian hip-hop. The 28-year-old Nigerian-born rapper, who currently performs as Wande, is one of only a handful of women on the scene.
Wande began as a reporter covering Christian hip-hop online, then took a job in artist development for Reach, the independent label cofounded by Lecrae and Ben Washer.
In 2019, she signed a deal with the label, and since then, her lyricism, charisma, and energy have helped her carve a new path that she hopes other women will be able to follow. Reach recently signed writer and artist Jackie Hill Perry, in another move toward gender parity in a decidedly male-dominated segment of the music industry.
Now based in Atlanta, Wande is bringing her lyrical creativity and flow to collaborations with artists such as Maverick City Music (“Firm Foundation (He’s Gonna Make a Way)”), Lecrae (“Blessed Up”), and TobyMac (“Found”). She has built a loyal following online, connecting with fans through comical send-ups of biblical characters and “get ready with me” videos.
She sees her job as a calling and her music as an opportunity to lead people to worship. Tracks like “Found” showcase her ability to shift between melodic lines and rapped lyrics. Her latest single, “Send That,” featuring Lecrae, is an anthemic declaration of confidence in prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s unapologetically victorious. “If God is for me, who can come against me? / Send them prayers up and watch him move,” she raps, leading into the first chorus.
Wande spoke with CT about …
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by | Jun 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
Over two years of new state-level restrictions, younger Christians, Hispanics, and megachurch attendees are more likely to say their congregation supports their community’s alternative to abortion clinics.
Two years ago, the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and the right to an abortion. In the aftermath, many churchgoers say they’ve seen their congregations involved in supporting local pregnancy resource centers.
On June 24, 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court opened the door for states to pass laws restricting abortion. In the aftermath, local pregnancy centers have received increased attention. A Lifeway Research study finds 3 in 10 US Protestant churchgoers (31%) have seen at least one type of congregational connection with those local centers since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“In a survey of Americans conducted days before the Dobbs decision was leaked, almost two-thirds of Americans agreed churches and religious organizations have a responsibility to increase support for women who have unwanted pregnancies if their state restricts access to abortion,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.
“According to those who attend, the majority of Protestant churches in the US are not supporting a pregnancy resource center that exists either separately or as part of their church.”
More than 1 in 8 churchgoers say their church has supported a local pregnancy resource center financially (16%), encouraged those in the congregation to support a center financially (14%) or encouraged the congregation to refer those with unplanned pregnancies to the center (14%).
Another 11 percent say their church has encouraged the congregation to volunteer at a local pregnancy resource center, and 7 percent say the church has had a leader from the center speak at the church. Among those who say their congregation is involved with pregnancy resource centers …
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by | Jun 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
A new book steers between full condemnation and “men of their time” dodges.
How should white evangelicals think about slavery and past evangelical heroes who affirmed its practice? A new book by historian Sean McGever, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield, helps us process these matters with historical accuracy and Christlike humility.
For many white American evangelicals, the issue of slavery is not much of an “issue” at all. After all, we live in a day where every country in the world outlaws the practice (at least on paper). We are rightly repulsed by practices reminiscent of slave ownership, like human trafficking and sweat shops. And we celebrate past evangelical leaders, like William Wilberforce, who tirelessly campaigned against the institution. Our denominations no longer split over slave ownership as they did prior to the American Civil War. Slavery, we thankfully conclude, lies in the rearview mirror of history.
Without denying the truth in these claims, there are two problems with this assessment. First, slavery, broadly construed, is still a live issue for a significant number of Americans, many of whom are believers in Christ. Just like Jews and Muslims carry with them a historical sense—a “communal memory,” if you will—of atrocities done to their ancestors by Christians (like pogroms and the Crusades), many Black Americans carry a remembrance of their ancestors’ subjection to slavery, segregation, and other forms of injustice. Consequently, they experience slavery and its aftereffects as painfully present realities.
Second, many of our white evangelical heroes have a complex relationship with slavery, a fact that can complicate our contemporary witness. What are white evangelicals saying when we honor …
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by | Jun 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
Why the life and death of disgraced culture warrior Paul Pressler should serve as a warning to all of us.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
A man named Paul Pressler warned us that a wrong view of authority would lead to debauchery and downgrade. He was right. What he didn’t tell us was that his vision for American Christianity would be one of the ways we would get there.
News did not break about the death of the retired Houston judge, the co-architect of the “Baptist Reformation” that we called “the conservative resurgence,” until days after his demise, probably due to the fact that he died in disgrace.
My colleague Daniel Silliman explains excellently the paradox of Pressler’s public and private life. According to multiple serious and credible allegations by named people, with corroboration from multiple others and over a very long period of time, Pressler was a sexual molester of young men and boys. As reporter Rob Downen of The Texas Tribune summarizes in his thread, the nature of the corroborating evidence against the late judge is the size of a mountain.
It’s fair to say that most people—certainly most people in Southern Baptist pews—did not know about these reports of such a villainous nature for a long time. But it is also fair to say that almost everyone, at least those even minimally close up, could see other aspects—a cruelty, a viciousness, a vindictiveness—that displayed the means of Machiavelli, not the ways of the Messiah. His defining virtue—for all of us who retold the “Won Cause” mythology of the reformers who “saved the convention from liberalism”—was not Christlikeness but the fact that he was willing to fight.
And fight he did. At a meeting …
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by | Jun 20, 2024 | Uncategorized
A new movie from Deaf Missions tells the gospel story in American Sign Language.
Bible translation is as old as the church—older, even, when you take the Septuagint into account. From Jamaican Patois to Filipino Taglish and New Zealander Māori, translators today are still seeking to faithfully render Scripture for particular communities and cultures.
Subtitling is a kind of translation too. There are whole ministries devoted to dubbing and creating captions for Bible movies and TV shows, including The Jesus Film and The Chosen.
But what if you’re trying to reach people who communicate primarily not through spoken words, but with their hands and facial expressions? How can that act of translation bring new aspects of Scripture to life?
These are the questions behind Deaf Missions, a 50-year-old organization that began its ministry by making VHS tapes of American Sign Language (ASL) New Testament translations and distributing them in the mail. In 2020, Deaf Missions finished the first-ever complete translation of the Bible into ASL. In 2018, they put out a dramatic film, The Book of Job, now available for free on the Deaf Missions app.
Now, Deaf Missions has released Jesus: A Deaf Missions Film. The movie premiered at the Deaf Missions Conference in Texas last April and will be playing in theaters across the US on June 20.
Jesus was produced by a Deaf cast and crew for a primarily Deaf audience. That’s evident in ways aside from the use of ASL. Peter sees rather than hears the rooster crow. There’s a tight close-up on the ear cut off of the high priest’s servant.
Some of the film’s scenes put a uniquely Deaf spin on the biblical story. Jesus gives Simon the fisherman a “name sign” meaning Peter. When Jesus is crucified, the loss of his hands effectively means the …
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