by | Jul 8, 2024 | Uncategorized
Survey finds that evangelical voters are motivated by care for those in need.
The United Kingdom elected a new prime minister in a landslide win for the Labour Party, a significant shift of political power after 14 years of Conservative-led government.
Neither party secured the majority of the country’s evangelical vote, but evangelicals of varying affiliations will be following how the new Labour government addresses areas of concern for the church, including the treatment of refugees, the beginning and end of life, and policies around sexuality and gender.
In the July 4 election, Sir Keir Starmer garnered the second-largest parliamentary victory since World War II, just short of the margin Tony Blair won by in 1997. Research from our team at the Evangelical Alliance found that 42 percent of evangelical Christians said they would vote Labour while 29 percent would vote Conservative. (The survey was conducted in late 2023 before a new party, Reform UK, increased in popularity.)
Just over half of evangelicals said they want to vote for a party that represents biblical values, but there is no consensus on what party that might be. A significant minority in our polling do not see that as a top issue in determining how they vote—probably because they do not see any party as offering that option.
When asked whether a commitment on certain issues would increase their likelihood to vote for a party, evangelicals wanted parties to protect free speech, stand for global religious freedom, reduce term limits on abortion, oppose assisted suicide, support safe routes for refugees, and promote marriage in the tax system.
The only issue evangelicals were polled on that has had any salience in the UK election is reform of laws that protect single-sex spaces on the basis of biological sex. Many non-Christians …
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by | Jul 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
Acoustic sets, recorded tracks, and alternative setups can offer volunteers a break and invite congregants into new spiritual practices.
When you imagine the summer attendance slump at church, you probably picture empty pews, not an empty stage.
But with around 20 percent lower turnout during the vacation months, the seasonal slump also affects the availability of the volunteer musicians that many churches rely on for worship each week.
In the midst of vacations, camps, conferences, and other activities, assembling a worship band—especially over a holiday weekend like Memorial Day, Independence Day, or Labor Day—is harder when more people head out of town.
In Owosso, Michigan, it’s not uncommon for folks to spend almost every weekend between May and September at cabins on the Great Lakes.
“Many of our volunteers either go up north, or just don’t want to commit,” said Glenn Rupert, pastor of worship and creative arts at GracePointe Church, a Wesleyan community of roughly 200. “If we don’t have significant depth on our team, certain times of year are hard. Sometimes it’s just me and a piano.”
Megachurches with multiple bands or large teams of musicians can usually make it through the summer without any noticeable interruptions, but small and mid-sized churches like Rupert’s can find themselves scrambling to put a band together or to find an alternative—maybe even skipping corporate singing altogether.
On Memorial Day weekend this year, when Rupert went out of town, GracePointe opted to skip live worship and play instrumental music (William Augusto’s album Soaking in His Presence) during a “Come and Go Communion” service.
Members could come and participate in a written guided meditation on Joshua 3–4 (the story of the Israelites crossing the Jordan River and building a stone …
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by | Jul 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
A new book argues that early Protestant thinking helped fuel an anti-supernatural worldview. But that worldview retains more Protestantism than it cares to admit.
Where did our modern secular age come from? What was the source of the Western idea that belief in God is optional or irrelevant?
A decade ago, Notre Dame history professor Brad Gregory argued that it came from the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther and John Calvin certainly didn’t intend this result, as Gregory argued in The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society, but their rejection of ecclesiastical authority led to an individualism that ultimately undermined the entire Christian project. If people could interpret Scripture on their own, maybe they could rely on their own reason to understand everything. And if that was the case, should it be surprising that many contemporary people would come to disavow any need for God at all?
Peter Harrison’s Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age accepts some of Gregory’s findings but pushes them in a new direction. Yes, he concedes, modern Western secularization was the product of Protestant thinking. But even if Protestantism led people to reject the supernatural, it’s worth asking how much of the Protestant worldview modern secular people have unwittingly retained.
Quite a bit, argues Harrison, an emeritus professor of the history of science at the University of Queensland in Australia. In fact, the modern secular worldview is so strongly dependent on unspoken Christian assumptions that it’s incoherent without them.
Justifying belief
To take one example from the book, scientific methods of investigation depend on assumptions about the regularity and comprehensibility of nature. No one in the ancient pre-Christian pagan world held these beliefs. Christian faith, however, led believers to expect that …
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by | Jul 5, 2024 | Uncategorized
He “made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” I dread admitting I don’t have a fancy new job.
This past spring, I finally finished my master’s program—adviser emailed, final submitted, graduation forms signed. But instead of relief or accomplishment, the primary thing I’m feeling is dread. After 50 applications and multiple interviews, my job offer total is zero.
The source of my dread is not just my lack of employment, I’m realizing. It’s the feeling that I lack status. I’m reminded every time small talk takes the inevitable turn: So, what do you do? Finishing up a master’s is great, yet I feel like I’m in an awkward spot—falling behind my peers, not quite where I should be, not quite measuring up.
I’m not alone in my craving for status. Psychological r esearch indicates that humans are widely driven by this desire for esteem, respect, or affirmation based on social rank. Psychologists have described status as a fundamental human need alongside safety, love, and meaning. While there’s debate about how deep this need goes, it’s hard to deny that the way others perceive us influences our beliefs and behaviors. Even if we tell ourselves we don’t care about status, our brains typically do.
And it’s not just status in some absolute sense but status compared to other people. For example, a Harvard and University of Toronto study about “air rage”—passengers erupting in angry fits mid-flight—suggested status comparisons were a major factor. The most common factor in some 4,000 cases of air rage wasn’t delays, fees, or lack of legroom. It was whether the flight had a first-class cabin. Economy passengers were eight times more likely to burst into air rage when they had to pass through the …
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by | Jul 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
God’s rule is inherently true and doesn’t require that we force it on anyone.
A liberal acquaintance told me recently that while he generally dislikes evangelicals, he doesn’t find me to be as bad as the rest: “At least you don’t rant about wanting to establish a theocracy!” I decided to accept what he said as a compliment, even though I regretted not coming clean with him about theocracy.
Truth be told, my wife and I do belong to a pro-theocracy organization. Indeed, we attend its meetings every week. In those gatherings, we learn about what it means to support a theocracy, and we sing songs that are meant to strengthen our theocratic commitments. The organization I am referring to, of course, is our local church.
Theocracy literally means “the rule of God,” and Christians believe that while our churches do have human leaders, those leaders know that they are directly accountable to God for what they think and do. They keep reminding us that we Christians belong to “the kingdom of God,” which means that our ultimate allegiance is to Jesus, whom we often refer to as “ruling” over us.
The idea of the church as a theocracy, however, is part of a much larger theocratic picture. The universe itself in all its complex glory is a theocracy. The Jewish community’s shabbat prayer captures well the Bible’s theocratic perspective when it begins with “Blessed are you, Lord our God, King of the universe.”
Everything that exists is under God’s rule. It is this theocratic arrangement—defining the very nature of reality—that gives believers meaning and hope in our lives. But does that mean that believers like me should try to turn the United States into a theocracy? I think not. God does not want me to force my theocratic …
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