by | Aug 15, 2024 | Uncategorized
A number of high-profile Christians have converted to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Why should we stay?
In recent decades, there has been a significant and sustained trend of Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The most notable figure recently is J. D. Vance, the vice-presidential running mate of former president Donald Trump.
But he’s not alone. Vance is just one name in the growing list of high-profile, theologically conservative Christians who have made public shifts away from their Protestant backgrounds (often evangelical) to these more liturgical or “high church” traditions.
Earlier this year, Candace Owens, a controversial conservative voice, announced on the social platform X that she had “made the decision to go home,” in reference to her return to Roman Catholicism. Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity, a prominent YouTube channel, reportedly became a Catholic in 2022, and Hank Hanegraaff (the “Bible Answer Man”) of the Christian Research Institute converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2017. Another, Joshua Charles, joined the Catholic church in 2018 and has since become very vocal about both his conversion and his defense of Rome’s doctrines.
Of course, there are always exceptions to every trend, as is the case with former Eastern Orthodox priest Joshua Schooping, author of Disillusioned: Why I Left the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood and Church, and Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo—a Catholic turned Protestant—who together published Why Do Protestants Convert? last year.
This perceived trend also does not appear to be the case in nondenominational churches, since, according to a previous article from CT, former Roman Catholics have gone from comprising 6 percent of nondenominational congregations to 17 percent in the past 50 …
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by | Aug 14, 2024 | Uncategorized
Broken bonds and burned bridges can’t be mended by imaginary networks of relationships.
This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.
I don’t know how to say, ‘I’m lonely,’ without sounding like I’m saying, ‘I’m a loser,’” a middle-aged man said to me not long ago. “And I don’t know how to say it without sounding like I’m an ungrateful Christian.”
After all, this man said, he’s at church every week—not just there, but active. His life is a blur of activities. But he feels alone. In that, at least, he’s not alone.
Repeatedly, almost all of the data show us the same thing: that the so-called “loneliness epidemic” experts warned about is real. We all know it’s bad, and we sometimes have a vague sense of why it’s happening. The answers that some come up with are often too big to actually affect any individual person’s life. Smartphones aren’t going away. We aren’t all moving back to our hometowns. We see a kind of resigned powerlessness to change society’s lonely condition. So why can’t the church fix this?
The answer lies partly in a book published a near quarter-century ago: political scientist Robert Putnam’s famous Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Earlier this summer, The New York Times interviewed Putnam, asking him whether, since he saw the loneliness crisis coming, he saw any hope of it ending.
Putnam reiterated that the answer is what he calls “social capital,” those networks of relationships needed to keep people together. Social capital comes in two forms, Putnam insists, and both are necessary. Bonding social capital is made up of the ties that link people to other people like themselves. …
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by | Aug 14, 2024 | Uncategorized
Global Christian organizations scour the world in search of the best conference sites.
This September, about 5,000 Christians will assemble in Incheon, South Korea, for the Lausanne Movement’s Fourth Congress on World Evangelization. Some of them wish Lausanne had picked a location with a better exchange rate and lower hotel prices near the conference venue.
However, local costs are just one of many considerations when global Christian organizations select a conference site. Beyond the common refrain about the shift in Christianity’s center of gravity, numerous other factors have pushed most major global events toward the Majority World, especially Asia.
CT asked leaders of prominent Christian international entities to talk about their site selection process. Their answers depict the complex logistical, diplomatic, and interfaith issues involved in bringing Christians from all over the world together in one place.
For most conference organizers, the single most important concern is choosing a site that everyone can come to. Due to complicated international relations and many affluent countries’ concerns regarding visa abuse, this is a major challenge.
“Whether people from Global South countries could get visas was our number one question,” stated Samuel Chiang, deputy secretary general of the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), who planned the Future of the Gospel Forum in Istanbul last year. “Canada and the United States accept visitors from about 70 countries without a visa, which sounds like a lot until you are trying to bring people from 200 countries.”
Difficulties in obtaining visas were a key reason why Africans were underrepresented at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, this year. Their absence affected the vote that …
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by | Aug 14, 2024 | Uncategorized
How Jesus and the Powers, cowritten with Michael F. Bird, calls Christians into the political sphere.
In a year seeing over 50 countries at the polls—half of which could shift geopolitical dynamics—the timing of Jesus and the Powers’ release was no accident.
A few years ago, N. T. Wright (author of Surprised by Hope) and Michael F. Bird (Jesus Among the Gods)—who had collaborated on The New Testament in Its World—realized there was a lack of biblical guidance on how Christians should engage with politics, and they decided to do something about it.
“We both had the sense that most Christians today have not really been taught very much about a Christian view of politics,” Wright said. “Until the 18th century, there was a lot of Christian political thought, which we’ve kind of ignored the last 200–300 years—and it’s time to get back to it.”
The “gateway” to political theology, Wright believes, is the idea that, until Christ’s return, “God wants humans to be in charge.” And while all political powers have in some sense been “ordained by God” according to Scripture, he says, Christians are called to “take the lead” in holding them accountable.
“The church is designed to be the small working model of new creation, to hold up before the world a symbol—an effective sign of what God has promised to do for the world. Hence, to encourage the rest of the world to say, ‘Oh, that’s what human community ought to look like. That’s how it’s done.’”
And as the global church becomes “a community worshiping the one God and doing justice and mercy in the world,” this is a “sign to the caesars of the world that Jesus is Lord and …
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by | Aug 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
A number of high-profile Christians have converted to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. What is driving them away?
In recent decades, there has been a significant and sustained trend of Protestants converting to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. The most notable figure recently is J. D. Vance, the vice-presidential running mate of former president Donald Trump.
But he’s not alone. Vance is just one name in the growing list of high-profile, theologically conservative Christians who have made public shifts away from their Protestant backgrounds (often evangelical) to these more liturgical or “high church” traditions.
A previous president of the Evangelical Theological Society, Francis Beckwith, became a Catholic in 2009, and former Anglican Bishop Nazir Ali, has lately returned to the Catholicism of his youth. Other recent Catholic converts include Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity (a popular YouTube channel), historian Joshua Charles, and John Richard Neuhaus, founder of First Things journal. Past prominent converts to Eastern Orthodoxy include Hank Hanegraaff (the “Bible Answer Man”), Lutheran scholar Jaroslav Pelikan, and English bishop Kallistos Ware.
Of course, there are always exceptions to every trend—as is the case with former Eastern Orthodox priest Joshua Schooping, author of Disillusioned: Why I Left the Eastern Orthodox Priesthood and Church, and the Catholic-turned-Protestant Chris Castaldo, who published Why Do Protestants Convert? with Brad Littlejohn last year.
This phenomenon appears less notable in nondenominational churches, since a previous CT article reports that former Roman Catholics have gone from comprising 6 percent of unafilliated congregations to 17 percent in the past 50 years. Also, a 2014 Pew Research Center study highlighted a reverse trend of Catholics converting …
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