by | Jun 18, 2024 | Uncategorized
From embracing Western styles to preserving cultural heritage, how female leaders in six states navigate competing perspectives on appropriate attire.
While Christianity in India is as old as the early church itself, it was the modern missionary movement initiated by William Carey that caused the faith to take root. But colonial rule also caused Christianity in India to become associated with foreigners, despite the tradition that it originated with the apostle Thomas as early as 52 A.D. and historical evidence that the East India Company actively opposed missionary activities.
The growth of the Indian church, however, imparted new Indian converts not only a religion but also a culture. Mahatma Gandhi was critical, saying these converts had “imbibed the superficialities of European civilization, and have missed the teaching of Jesus.” He was not alone. Christian evangelists such as British missionary E. Stanley Jones and the wandering ascetic Sadhu Sundar Singh also took issue with the conflating of Christianity and Western culture. This impulse emphasized the need to “give the water of life in an Indian cup.”
Although India gained independence from British rule in 1947, many urban and semi-urban Indian churches continued to embrace the Western heritage they inherited. This included using pews instead of sitting on the ground; embracing a liturgy of hymnals, creeds, and doxologies; constructing cathedral-style church buildings; and the practice of wearing “white” bridal gowns or saris. Yet Western attire has not displaced the colorful traditional clothing for weekly worship, and church communities remain diverse in their dress.
CT spoke with seven female Christian leaders from six regions of India, all either married or above age 30, about their understanding of “Sunday best” clothing in India. The answers are arranged from …
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by | Jun 18, 2024 | Uncategorized
This Juneteenth, the life of unsung civil rights hero Fred Shuttlesworth should be a clarion call to the biblical activism we still need to advance racial justice in America.
In February, I preached one of the Black History Month sermons at Zion Baptist Church, a traditional Black church in Cincinnati. After the service, Judge Cheryl Grant, a longtime congregant, thanked me for delving into the legacy of civil rights advocate Fred Shuttlesworth.
Grant had been very close with the Shuttlesworth family after they moved from Birmingham to Cincinnati in 1961, and she was working on a documentary about him with filmmaker Mark Vikram Purushotham and biographer Andrew M. Manis. Her personal testimony about Shuttlesworth and his story of redemptive action has been more than inspiring for me, and now I’d like to share his story with a wider audience.
Shuttlesworth is an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. A cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he faced and ultimately outwitted Birmingham’s infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance racial justice in one of America’s most obstinately segregated environments.
What’s been most interesting to me about Shuttlesworth is how he personified the mixture of Christian orthodoxy and freedom fighting that characterized the primary stream of the Black church’s social action tradition. As a pastor and leader, he called himself a biblicist and an actionist, meaning he had a devout faith in the authority of Scripture while believing right doctrine compelled the Christian into social action.
Shuttlesworth knew preaching against white supremacy wasn’t enough. The church also had to get out of their seats if they wanted social change (James 2:14–26).
His biography, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, by Manis, recalls Shuttlesworth’s excitement …
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by | Jun 18, 2024 | Uncategorized
Pastors counsel believers with sak yant tattoos to let go of animistic beliefs and trust in God’s provision.
Chalolemporn Sawatsuk was a teenager in Kamphaeng Phet Province, in upper central Thailand, when he got his first tattoo.
The tattoo artist, a Buddhist monk, inked a pair of lizards onto the inside of his forearm, the same tattoo Chalolemporn’s father had. As he worked, the monk chanted blessings intended to imbue the tattoo with spiritual power that would increase Chalolemporn’s charisma and attractiveness. He also recited rules based on Buddhist moral teachings that the teen would have to follow to keep the power alive.
The tattoo seemed to take effect almost immediately, Chalolemporn said: Later that day, he convinced a woman to sleep with him.
Chalolemporn later received two more spiritual tattoos. Over the years, however, the enchanted images proved ineffective in keeping his life on course. In fact, his involvement in the world of illegal drugs resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment, before his talent in martial arts won him an early release and an encounter with a Christian friend led to his life transformation.
Sak yant tattoos, which date back centuries in Southeast Asia, were initially a way to enlist the help of local animistic spirits, but they later became tied to the Hindu-Buddhist yantras, or mystical geometric patterns, used during meditation. Sak yant adherents believe the tattoos secure specific benefits, including physical or spiritual protection, popularity, or success.
The intricate designs and patterns of sak yant have become popular with Thais and foreigners looking for a cool tattoo, but Christians are concerned about their spiritual implications. Thai pastors encourage new converts with sak yant tattoos, like Chalolemporn, to recognize that God has greater power than any spirit.
“[Sak …
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by | Jun 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
The Texas judge behind the political strategy for the “conservative resurgence” molested and assaulted teenage boys, according to allegations eight men made in court.
The things that Paul Pressler did in private changed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) radically and irreversibly.
In private, in a French café in New Orleans in 1967, Pressler planned the takeover of the largest Protestant group in America with Baptist college president Paige Patterson. He came up with the political strategy for the “conservative resurgence.”
In private, in an airport hotel in Atlanta in 1978, Pressler and Patterson gathered a group of ministers and established an informal network. They instructed those men to organize messengers to go to the SBC’s annual meeting and elect a president committed to using the position’s appointive powers to wrest control of the convention away from leaders they considered too liberal, too bureaucratic, and insufficiently committed to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
When a reporter with the Baptist Standard asked the Texas appeals court judge at the time if he was meeting with groups of clergy as part of a hardball campaign to elect the next SBC president, Pressler adamantly denied it. Then he questioned what would even count as a “meeting,” given the many possible ways you could define that word.
Then he allowed he was, in fact, doing some things in private.
In private, in a sauna at a Houston country club in the late 1970s, Pressler touched a young man’s penis, according to sworn testimony given in a lawsuit that was settled last year.
And in private, around the same time, Pressler started to molest and rape a 14-year-old, telling the teenager he taught in his Southern Baptist youth group that he was “special” and their “relationship” was special but needed to be kept secret because “no one …
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by | Jun 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
(UPDATED) Pew survey of more than 10,000 adults in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam examines Christians’ and Buddhists’ beliefs, practices, and affinity to other traditions.
The rate of religious conversion in East Asia is among the highest in the world: Half of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea have left the religion they were brought up in for another religion or no religion.
Among Christians, substantially more adults in those two places left the faith than those who converted to Christianity.
The region also has the highest levels of deconversion. More than a third of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea say they now no longer identify with any religion.
Yet at least 4 in 10 adults in East Asia and Vietnam who are religiously unaffiliated still believe in unseen beings or a god.
And about 80 percent of Taiwanese and Japanese adults say they burned incense to honor their ancestors in the past year.
These are among the findings of “Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies,” a massive report released today by Pew Research Center. While few people in the region pray daily or say religion is very important in their lives, many “continue to hold religious or spiritual beliefs and to engage in traditional rituals,” said Pew researchers.
Surveys of 10,390 adults in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—defined here as East Asia—and Vietnam were conducted between June and September last year.
Although Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia, Pew included the nation in this survey due to its adoption of Confucian traditions, its historic ties to China, and its embrace of Mahayana, a branch of Buddhism common across East Asia. (Last September, Pew released an in-depth survey on religion in Southeast Asia, highlighting six nations.)
Researchers acknowledged the complexity of measuring “religion” in the region, as this word often denotes organized, …
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