Boomers: Serve Like Your Whole Life Is Ahead of You

by | Sep 6, 2024 | Uncategorized

Not long ago, I visited my 99-year-old father and 97-year-old mother. My dad had just passed his driver’s test again, and a year before that, he published yet another book. He told me he wants to take up painting again. Then, with a mischievous look in his eye, my dad turned to me, a 60-something baby boomer, and said, “Son, what are you going to do with yourself? You’ve got your whole life ahead of you!”

A hundred years ago, this kind of comment would have seemed nonsensical. But the fact is, a massive demographic shift is taking place in our country, and Americans today are living longer than ever.

Life expectancy in the US increased from 47.3 to 78.7 years between 1900 and 2010. Sixty-five and older happens to be the fastest-growing age group in the US population today. In fact, the US Census Bureau predicts that by 2034 the US will have more people over 65 than under 18. Think about that: For the first time in US history, older people will outnumber younger people.

This is partly due to the size of the baby boomer generation and the declining US birth rate, but it’s also because advances in health care, public health, and nutrition have increased lifespans beyond historic norms.

US hospitals and universities are now referring to the 65-plus life stage as the period of “late adulthood,” which they divide into three stages: the young-old (65–84), the oldest-old (85–99), and the centenarians (100+). The young-old stage is considered the “golden years” of adulthood with fewer responsibilities, relatively good health, and meaningful social engagement.

Though Gen Zers may soon pass them in number, boomers continue to make up a growing number of the US workforce. In 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 10.8 million people, or 19 percent, of those 65 and older were still employed. In popular culture we are hearing some suggest that 60 is the new 40 and 80 is the new 60. People are talking about the 60-year career instead of the traditional 40-year career.

This is due, in part, to employers’ desires to retain experienced workers and many boomers’ desire to keep working. For others, it may be a matter of financial necessity—they may want to retire to spend more time with family, travel, or serve in ministry, but they can’t afford to. Whatever the reason, older people today are working longer than in previous generations, which could have far-reaching consequences on the workforce and economy.

This also impacts the political realm, where most politicians today are older than their predecessors have been. In this election season, we almost had a rematch between a 78-year-old Republican nominee and an 81-year-old Democratic nominee, who responded to public pressure and stepped down.

Of course, this trend is not always appreciated by the younger generation, who sometimes criticize boomers for not passing the baton or relinquishing their positions of control. But the fact is, most of my peers are struggling to determine the right age to retire. Many still see retirement as something that happens in our 60s, while some anticipate another 20-plus years of full-time employment ahead.

But regardless of when we decide to stop full-time work, we dare not neglect the new opportunities for ministry in our families, communities, and churches in the latter years of our lives. If we are wise, we must consider how we can serve the Lord and his kingdom in the extra years he has graciously given us.

For one, our schools, churches, and ministries will need to adjust to this new reality. Christian colleges and seminaries would do well to rethink their educational tracks and start favoring the nontraditional adult learner. Perhaps our concept of education should be reconceived as not simply a one-time initial infusion but a lifelong endeavor.

In recent decades, many churches have focused their outreach efforts on reaching the young at the expense of losing older congregants. But perhaps pastors should instead be helping older members by finding meaningful outlets for them to serve and utilize their gifts and experience.

Recent research shows that 1 in 4 pastors plan to retire before 2030. Yet perhaps churches should think differently about ministerial retirement—providing pathways for older clergy to re-deploy and remain fruitful in a new capacity that is more appropriate for their stage of life.

For some boomers, the 40-year ministry is expanding to a 60-year ministry. Think, for instance, of some of the most prominent evangelical leaders of recent history.

Carl F. H. Henry (1913–2003), the well-known theologian chosen to be the founding editor of Christianity Today, retired from teaching at age 85 but continued to write, lecture, and serve on boards until his death at age 90.

Vernon Grounds (1914–2010), Baptist pastor and theologian from Denver Seminary, also served as a contributing editor of Christianity Today. He had an amazing 70 years in ministry as an academic dean, president, and chancellor of the seminary before dying at 96.

John Stott (1921–2011), the well-known Anglican preacher and Bible scholar and cofounder of the Lausanne movement, began his ministry in 1945 in the church of his childhood, All Souls Langham Place, in downtown London. He served at that same church for more than 60 years as curate, rector, and rector emeritus, ending his public ministry at age 86 before passing away at 90 years old.

Billy Graham (1918–2018), one of the most important Christian leaders of the 20th century—whose vision led to the founding of Christianity Today—began his ministry with Youth for Christ in 1944. He kept serving well into his 90s, preaching his last sermon at age 96 and holding his last official crusade in 2005 when he was 97. He died at the ripe old age of 99.

J. I. Packer (1926–2020), the evangelical Anglican theologian and author who was an executive editor at Christianity Today, had a ministry that lasted 62 years before his death at 93.

And most recently, Charles Stanley (1932–2023) was the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Atlanta for nearly 50 years and continued to preach in the pulpit until he passed away at the age of 90.

My own father, George Sweeting (b. 1924)—who for years was associated with The Moody Church and the Moody Bible Institute as pastor, president, and chancellor—continued to serve part-time at his local church, leading the senior adult ministries into his 80s and early 90s.

All these great evangelical leaders have something in common: They loved God and kept serving, exemplifying the new longevity of a 60-year career. By contrast, Thomas Aquinas died at the age of 49. John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards passed away at 54. George Whitefield only lived to age 55 and Charles Spurgeon to age 57. Martin Luther and Dwight Moody were gone by age 62.

While we rest in the sovereignty of the God who numbers our days, we are also called to be responsible as good stewards of the bodies and minds he has given us by cultivating good habits.

A recent Boston University study reports that 70 percent of longevity is driven by our “health behaviors.” These include things like staying physically active, avoiding destructive habits like smoking and excessive drinking, maintaining a healthy weight and diet, staying intellectually active, sleeping consistently, and having a strong social network.

When Vernon Grounds was asked about the secret of his longevity and long-term vocational ministry, he often talked about what he called “the three Gs”: God, genes, and the gym. He began with God because the Bible makes it clear that our lives—and every year we have on this earth—are entirely gifts from God. He didn’t buy the common American retirement narrative of work till 60 and then spend the rest of your life near a golf course.

Grounds did not believe in retiring from active service. He said he already had a great retirement plan called heaven. He cherished scriptures like Psalm 92, which speaks about the righteous who “flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. … They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green” (vv. 12, 14, ESV).

While the Bible does not say much about retirement specifically, there are plenty of examples of people who never retired from serving God—those who flourished and bore fruit late in life. Think of Abram, whom God called at the age of 75. Moses was 80 when he led the Israelites out of Egypt, and Caleb was 85 when he entered the Promised Land. Or think of Anna, the 84+-year-old prophetess who finally saw Jesus, and Simeon, whom God promised would meet the Messiah before he died.

None of us knows how long we will live—as only the Lord knows the length of our days (Ps. 37:18). But the proposal I make to my fellow boomers and to the generation that follows is that we need to adjust our thinking. We should plan to live wiser, serve longer, and retire later. Why? Because God has providentially given us the gift of extra years and, as my dad said, “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you!”

Donald Sweeting serves as chancellor of Colorado Christian University.

The post Boomers: Serve Like Your Whole Life Is Ahead of You appeared first on Christianity Today.

Take Me Out to Something Bigger Than a Ballgame

by | Sep 6, 2024 | Uncategorized

In 1929, a Kansas preacher named Charles Sheldon had to get something off his chest.

Best known as the author of In His Steps (1896)—a novel that encouraged Christians to ask, “What would Jesus do?”—Sheldon reflected on a recent experience during a stormy winter night in Topeka. Most of the town was shut down that evening. But there was one exception: the local college’s basketball arena. There, the scheduled game took place, and fans packed the gymnasium to the rafters.

“I couldn’t help wondering,” Sheldon mused in an article for Christian Herald, “how many church members would be in the fifty different churches at a prayer meeting on a night like that, and paying a dollar apiece for the privilege of going.”

Sheldon’s question was less a rallying cry for change than a sigh of resignation. This was simply the way it was. Sure, plenty of Americans still attended their local congregations on Sundays. But given a choice, Americans were more interested in the thrill and excitement of sporting spectacles than the weekly activities of church life.

Historian Frank Guridy makes no mention of Sheldon in his remarkable new book, The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play. Still, he fills in the contours of the new reality that Sheldon seemed to recognize: In the 20th century, sporting spaces were increasingly central to Americans’ shared life together, emerging as sanctuaries where people could form bonds of community, express their identities, and experience something close to the feeling of transcendence.

They were, in other words, the sort of places where people would brave blizzard conditions on a wintry December night, just to enter the door and be witnesses.

‘Palaces of pleasure’ and ‘arenas of protest’

A professor of history at Columbia University and director of the Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights, Guridy did not begin his career as a sports historian. His first book, the award-winning Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow (2010), established him as a leading scholar of the Black Freedom Movement in the United States and the Caribbean.

With his second book, he turned his attention to sports, producing The Sports Revolution: How Texas Changed the Culture of American Athletics (2021). His background and expertise gave him a vantage point to see and understand sports as a cultural phenomenon, with an eye toward the broader social and political meanings bound up in the games we play.

In The Stadium, Guridy continues this line of inquiry, weaving sports history with economics and politics, culture and geography, race and class, gender and sexuality. “Stadiums,” he writes, “make possible the spectacular staging of a society’s ideologies and self-perceptions.”

Guridy sweeps through American history as he explores those “ideologies and self-perceptions” from the late 19th century to the present. Throughout, he emphasizes a core tension at the heart of the stadium’s presence in American culture. “Elites have constructed stadiums as monuments to affluence, technological wonder, and exclusivity,” he writes. “Yet, America’s marginalized groups have transformed them into venues to express their desires and discontents, and to proclaim a more inclusive vision of American society.”

While Guridy’s narrative is soaring in scope, he also shows a careful eye for granular detail. He describes the physical landscape and the shifting architecture, aesthetics, and design of stadiums. He explores the human experience of the stadium too, including the sights, sounds, and smells that Americans would have encountered when they clicked through the turnstiles. And he identifies particular places in specific cities as anchor points for his narrative—symbols of the broader themes he tries to illustrate.

He begins with New York City, where he describes the evolution of stadiums and arenas from temporary wooden structures to permanent buildings like Madison Square Garden, made of concrete and steel and designed for mass spectacles. Although often created to be “palaces of pleasure” owned by the rich and wealthy, by the 1920s these sites drew fans across classes and from immigrant populations, serving as “arenas of protest” where people could articulate competing visions of American identity.

From there he moves to New Orleans, where Tulane Stadium, host of college football’s Sugar Bowl from the 1930s to the 1970s, served as a “monument to white supremacy.” Guridy shows how the annual Sugar Bowl spectacle helped to project and protect the South’s system of segregation and racial hierarchy until the civil rights activism of the 1960s finally brought it down.

Next, Guridy goes west to California, focusing on Los Angeles Coliseum. Guridy’s attention turns to the ways stadiums helped to nurture Black identity and expression, with African Americans helping to “make the stadium into a semipublic square where they could voice their aspirations for justice and equality.” The chapter culminates with a vivid description of the Wattstax concert held at Los Angeles Coliseum in 1972—an “unapologetic expression of black politics and black pleasure.”

Guridy’s chapter on Los Angeles marks a turning point in his narrative. While the first two chapters tend to highlight exclusion and hierarchy, chapters 3 through 6 generally portray mid-century stadiums as more democratic spaces that promoted greater inclusion. To Guridy, this change occurred, in part, because of a gradual shift in stadium and arena ownership from private to public hands. As a result, he argues, stadiums became more responsive to the demands of activists and people on the margins seeking to claim a place of belonging.

Of course, the stadium remained contested terrain for competing visions of society. Inclusion for some did not necessarily translate to inclusion for others. Guridy emphasizes this point in a chapter on Washington, DC, where the construction of DC Stadium in the 1960s—publicly financed and governed—cultivated a more diverse fanbase while also forcing Washington Redskins owner George Marshall to end his practice of segregation. Yet, as Guridy shows, this did not eliminate the team’s use of racist Native American stereotypes and tropes in its name, mascot, and rituals.

Even while giving attention to these ongoing examples of exclusion, Guridy still sees the mid-century stadium as a place of surprising democratic possibility, including for gender and sexuality. One particularly fascinating chapter explores the “gendered geography” of the stadium, with a focus on the locker room and press box as sites of male dominance. Guridy traces and analyzes the efforts of female sportswriters to claim a space within the stadium for carrying out their work and having a voice in the story of sports in America.

He also spends a chapter on LGBTQ inclusion, using the Gay Games, held in San Francisco in 1982 and 1986, to highlight the efforts of gay and lesbian communities to make their presence felt and voice heard in American society.

The good vibes of the mid-century stadium, in Guridy’s telling, did not last. With chapter 7, his narrative takes another turn, with stadiums transformed from an “institution that largely accommodated America’s marginalized peoples between the 1960s and the 1980s” into a “corporate temple of exclusion.”

Guridy sees Oriole Park at Camden Yards, completed in 1992 as the home for the Baltimore Orioles, as emblematic of the new era. Unlike multipurpose stadiums designed for both baseball and football and managed by the public, the ballpark at Camden was designed for a single sport and placed in Baltimore’s downtown area. It was supposed to have a “retro” look and feel, evoking feelings of nostalgia while helping to revitalize neighborhoods and communities near the stadium.

Instead, the new craze for stadiums patterned after Oriole Park led to greater social stratification and further gentrified inner-city neighborhoods. The best seats and luxury experiences were set aside for corporate partners and affluent fans, who could drive in from wealthy enclaves, while working-class people who lived near the stadium were priced out of actually enjoying the game day experience.

“Commerce and consumption,” Guridy laments, “displaced the stadium’s historic role as a venue of public recreation and civic engagement.”

An additional final chapter highlights another worry for Guridy: the rise of militarized patriotism at the ballpark. Guridy charts the response after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when the stadium quickly moved from serving as a space for collective mourning to hosting a proliferation of patriotic rituals (some paid for by the US government) that glorified the military and law enforcement. As part of this trend, the national anthem became more entrenched as an essential part of the spectacle and experience of sporting events. 

Yet Guridy notes that the potential for contested meanings remained. Protests for racial justice during the national anthem, represented most dramatically by NFL player Colin Kaepernick, challenged the enforced conformity expected during the patriotic stadium rituals. Guridy sees the rise of athlete-activists like Kaepernick, as well as the use of stadiums as voting sites in 2020, as signs that the “historic civic function” of the stadium is still in play today.

A surprising omission

As a work of history, Guridy’s book is truly impressive. The breadth and depth of his research and analysis shines through, and his writing is compelling—and also full of surprises shaped by his curiosity. Guridy writes not as a detached academic, but as a sports fan too, someone who truly understands the religious-like allure of the stadium. He gives his attention not just to splashy moments and events but also to small, behind-the-scenes details, like the history of the ballpark organist. In this book, the stadium comes alive, sparkling with fascinating details and soaring ideas about its meaning and significance in American life and culture.

At the same time, readers of Christianity Today will rightly wonder where they fit in the story Guridy tells. For as much care as he takes looking at the meaning of the stadium from a variety of angles, his narrative can at times fit too easily into a simple binary: Those on the side of progressive politics are the good guys, and those with conservative politics are the bad guys.

The biggest gap, however, is the lack of attention to religion. Other than scattered references here and there to religious figures (like Jesse Jackson) or movements (like the Christian Right), there is no sustained analysis about how religious groups have made use of the stadium.

This strikes me as a surprising omission, given how central religion has been as a source of identity for Americans and how important the stadium has been to religious movements and groups throughout American history—including Catholics, Jews, Latter-day Saints, and, yes, evangelical Protestants.

For evangelicals, the stadium is an especially important place. For Charles Sheldon, it may have been a competitor for time and attention. But from Billy Sunday to Billy Graham, it has also served as a site for revival, where Americans have been urged to receive new life in Christ—not just for their sake, evangelists have claimed, but for the sake of the nation itself.

It has also provided a backdrop to prove the cultural relevance of the evangelical faith. The spread of stadium revivals across the United States in the 1940s and 1950s—often featuring sports stars offering their testimonials—helped to “mainstream” a movement that saw itself on the margins of cultural respectability. In the decades since, stadiums have helped to nurture and cultivate an evangelical movement within sports that has turned the playing field into one of the most evangelical-friendly spaces in American popular culture today.

Stadiums have also been a space where evangelicals have sought to promote particular visions of gender and race. In the 1990s, the Promise Keepers movement, founded by a football coach, swept through stadiums across the country, urging men to embrace leadership roles in their homes while also encouraging racial reconciliation.

No doubt Guridy encountered examples like this throughout his research, and every author has to leave important themes on the cutting room floor. But it’s precisely because of Guridy’s skill as a historian that I would have loved to see him explore the religious side of the stadium experience in more depth.

Even so, The Stadium remains an essential read and a book of lasting importance for anyone interested in exploring the deeper social meanings of American sports. Guridy shows with clarity and insight that stadiums are “inextricable parts of American social, political, and cultural life”—and that they will continue to mirror and reflect the debates, tensions, and developments in American society in the years ahead.

Paul Putz is director of Truett Seminary’s Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University. He is the author of The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports.

The post Take Me Out to Something Bigger Than a Ballgame appeared first on Christianity Today.

Public School Can Be a Training Ground for Faith

by | Sep 6, 2024 | Uncategorized

Depending on your circles, mentioning “public school” may elicit strong reactions. Many Christians in America avidly allege its degeneracy, while many others fiercely defend its merits. And although this debate isn’t new, it has come back to the foreground of our public life in recent years.

Last month, for example, a video went around in which actor Kirk Cameron described Christian parents who send their children to public school as “subcontract[ing their] parenting and discipleship out to the government,” warning them to expect “little Marxists, little statists, little atheists, drag queens, strippers, drug dealers … you name it.”

By contrast, writer Jen Wilkin has made faith-led arguments in favor of public education, citing benefits for children including a more diverse socialization, a healthy exposure to different worldviews, and fulfilling the call of being a Christian witness in the world. “Our participation in the public school system was directly related to loving our neighbors,” she said in a Gospel Coalition debate on the issue.

As a new school year starts with an election underway, I think the Christian case for public schooling is worth revisiting—not only because it’s a pressing conversation right now but because it prompts us to examine how we think about education, discipleship, and the faithfulness of God.

First, though, I want to recognize this is a practical question as much as a theoretical one.  We ultimately make our decisions based on the actual situation, options, and children before us. That means we’re not talking about “public school” in general, but the specific public schools in our districts—and the specific private, Christian, and/or homeschool resources in our areas. And we’re not talking about kids in general, but our specific kids—and we all know that every child has different needs. So, take all that follows with the recognition that it may not be possible for you to make the same decision I would.

Our daughter is just a toddler, so she’s not in school yet, and it’s possible something in the next few years will lead us to change our minds. But, for now, my husband and I have decided to send her to public school.

One of the most important considerations for me in making that choice is that studies show there are more important elements for building and safeguarding our kids’ faith than the school they attend. As I’ve previously reported for CT, research suggests that taking children to church regularly matters more than finding the “right” school.

In fact, as I discovered two years ago in my interview with Christian public health expert Tyler VanderWeele, director of Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, childhood church attendance is one of the highest predictors of overall wellbeing as an adult. Though homeschooling provided some unique benefits, researchers found, there was very little difference, across a host of outcomes, between public and private school kids.

Another major consideration is that I would rather most of my child’s first close encounters of the worldly kind happen while she’s still under my roof, not after she leaves home. That preference is informed by my own unique educational background.

Growing up, my parents’ ministry positions moved our family around a lot. I started in public school for kindergarten and first grade, switched to a private Christian school for second and third grade, was homeschooled from fourth through sixth grade, and then returned to public school for middle and high school. Then I chose to attend the private Christian university where my parents worked at the time.

While researching this piece, I asked my parents how they had made their schooling decisions each time they moved. They said they’d weighed the quality of available education against the influence of the local atmosphere—pretty much as most parents do. And it wasn’t until I was approaching high school, they said, that warnings against the “dangers” of public education really started to influence their Christian circles.

Looking back, my experience at Christian school was mediocre, whereas I enjoyed homeschooling and saw its benefits. That said, it set me up for a massive culture shock when I went from homeschooling in Miami to public school in Washington State. We moved halfway through my sixth grade—possibly the worst time to transition from one end of the country to the other, from a Christian homeschool bubble to a secular outpost, from a setting of urban diversity to suburban homogeneity. Most of my time in middle school was spent figuring out how to fit in.

By the time we moved to Northern California, where I began high school, I was faring far better socially, culturally, and academically. But, there, a new obstacle arose, one I’d only gotten a taste of in middle school: I was bullied for my faith at school.

There was a group of boys, and even a couple teachers, who often mocked me for my faith. Once, for example, we were reading a passage from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and came to this line: “Or you may be such a thunderingly exalted creature as to be altogether deaf and blind to anything but heavenly sights and sounds.” My teacher interrupted to say, “Like you, Stefani.” The same teacher signed my yearbook, “You have a great brain. Don’t be hindered by dogma.”

Now, I know I did myself no favors in how I responded—due to my strong personality, deeply ingrained convictions, and ministry upbringing—but it was bullying all the same. It was, at times, rather miserable. But it was also motivating.

I look back on that time now as pivotal for my spiritual formation. Until then, I’d mostly been living under my parents’ faith; it was something I just took for granted. I didn’t know how to articulate my beliefs because I’d never had to defend them.

Once I was regularly provoked at school, I had to learn why I believed what I believed. I had to make my faith my own. With my parents’ guidance, I began reading apologetics books so I would know how to respond when someone attacked my views. That decision began a trajectory that led to who and where I am today, serving as theology editor at CT.

It’s worth noting that I attended high school from 2003 to 2007, near the height of fervor around New Atheism. That context, especially in California, made it socially acceptable in my school to openly mock Christianity and anyone who identified with it. But children in most public schools probably wouldn’t have the same experience today. New Atheism has fallen out of style, and some recent research has shown that vitriol toward religion generally and Christians specifically has significantly declined over the last decade or so.

And though bullying is terrible, and no parent wants their children to experience it, keeping children out of public school doesn’t guarantee they’ll never be bullied—while putting them in public school may give you the opportunity to guide them through this and other early challenges to their faith. You can remind them of what is true about themselves and what God says about them.

Think of it like strength training: Your children need to build muscles of faith, and public school can provide weight to lift while you’re around to spot them. Let them wrestle with worldly counternarratives to God’s truth while they’re still under your care. That may feel risky, but the alternative—keeping them sheltered, then letting them be exposed to everything all at once when they leave home for work or college—is risky too. 

Christians are called to be “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation” (Phil. 2:15), and we also know how seriously Jesus takes harm against children and how gravely he judges those who fail to treat them with the proper dignity. Anyone who despises a child or causes one to stumble is better off drowning in the depths of the sea (Matt. 18:1–6) than facing the wrath of God for their actions.

As parents, we can’t permanently protect our children from the world and its influences; and at the very least, they’ll encounter the worldliness of our own sin. Nor can we protect them from the inevitable and necessary struggle to truly understand and claim their faith for their own. The only question is when they’ll face that challenge and who will be around them when they do. As a mother, I want to be there—in person, every day—when those questions first come up for my kid.

That presence isn’t just about talking apologetics or exploring Scripture together, which we could do over phone or email after my daughter leaves home. It includes many other things we as parents can do to help our kids and their faith flourish: maintain a good marriage, attend to their physical and emotional needs, raise them in a healthy church environment, and practice the faith we preach.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still worried about what could happen to my daughter at public school. But my worries are more about her physical safety than her exposure to people and ideas that might cause her to wrestle with her faith, values, or sense of self—even at a young age. And that’s not only because I know I’ll be there to guide her through the pitfalls of our fallen world. It’s because I trust God’s sovereignty far more than my control over my daughter’s future.

Much of the rhetoric urging Christian disengagement from public education in America has to do with the larger question of how Christians should interact with the broader culture—with what it means to be “in the world but not of it.”

That saying is a paraphrase from Jesus’ high priestly prayer at the Last Supper: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:15). It comes after his warning to his followers that “in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (16:33). And it’s not the only time he said  the world would be hostile to Christians. “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves,” he said when commissioning his 12 disciples for ministry. “Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Be on your guard” (Matt. 10:16–17).

That hostility is the reality in which we parent as Christians, and that tension of witness and holiness, shrewdness and innocence is what we must faithfully navigate, whatever schooling decision we make. It’s a dance of both entrusting our kids to God and knowing that God has entrusted them to us. And it’s a dance we don’t undertake lightly, for at the end of all days, we will be held accountable for how we performed.

Stefani McDade is the theology editor at Christianity Today.

The post Public School Can Be a Training Ground for Faith appeared first on Christianity Today.

Evangelical Broadcasters Sue Over IRS Ban on Political Endorsements

by | Sep 4, 2024 | Uncategorized

A group of evangelical broadcasters who hosted Donald Trump at their national conference earlier this year are suing the Internal Revenue Service over the so-called Johnson Amendment, a tax law that bars nonprofits from supporting political candidates.

Lawyers for the National Religious Broadcasters, along with two Baptist churches and a conservative group called Intercessors for America, argue in their suit that the ban on engaging in politics restricts their freedom of speech and freedom of religion. They further argue that the IRS ignores the politicking of some charities, while threatening to punish others.

In particular, lawyers for the groups claim that newspapers and other news outlets that have become nonprofits in recent years, such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, endorse candidates. Why can’t churches or other Christian groups, they want to know, do the same?

“Plaintiffs believe that nonprofit newspapers have a clear constitutional right to make such endorsements or statements,” read the complaint filed Wednesday in the United States District Court of the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division. “Plaintiffs simply contend that they should also have the same freedom of speech.”

The lawsuit is the latest challenge to the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law that has long been the bane of conservative groups and, in particular, preachers seeking to become more involved in politics. The ban on taking sides in campaigns—including endorsements or campaign contributions—applies to nonprofits that fall under section 501(c)(3) of the IRS code.

For years Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group, organized “pulpit freedom” Sundays designed to have preachers violate IRS rules by endorsing candidates from the pulpit. As president, Donald Trump signed an executive order designed to give more leeway under IRS rules.

The current lawsuit pitches its argument toward similar religious freedom principles. “For too long, churches have been instructed to remain silent on pressing matters of conscience and conviction during election season or risk their 501(c)(3) status,” said NRB President Troy A. Miller in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 

But the growing number of nonprofit newsrooms has added a new twist to the arguments over the Johnson Amendment that has to do with fairness. Those newsrooms, the complaint argues, should be required to abide by the same rules as other charities.

“Hundreds of newspapers are organized under § 501(c)(3), and yet many openly endorse political candidates,” lawyers for NRB and its co-plaintiff argued in their complaint. “Others make statements about political candidates that constitute forbidden statements under the IRS’ interpretation of the statutory prohibition against supporting or opposing candidates.

The Institute for Nonprofit News, with about 450 member organizations, including RNS, does not accept members that endorse candidates.

“Nonprofit news organizations do not endorse candidates and, under IRS guidelines, should not favor any candidate for public office in coverage or other action,” the INN’s guidelines for members state.

Karen Rundlet, the CEO and executive director of the INN, told RNS in an email that grants made to nonprofits often bar those funds from being used for political activity.

The complaint points specifically to the Inquirer’s candidate endorsements, as well as articles critical of candidates in other nonprofit publications from 2012 to the present, claiming all violated IRS rules with impunity.

While nonprofit newspapers such as the Salt Lake Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times no longer make political endorsements, the Inquirer does, in part because it has a different ownership structure.

“The Philadelphia Inquirer is owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism, but the newspaper remains a for-profit public-benefit corporation,” Jim Friedlich, CEO of the Lenfest Institute for Journalism, told RNS in an email. “As a for-profit entity, The Philadelphia Inquirer is permitted to publish political endorsements, as it has for decades. It does so following thoughtful research on candidate policy positions, qualifications, integrity, and track record.”

In their complaint, lawyers for the NRB and its fellow plaintiffs said that, despite the Inquirer’s structure, dollars from a nonprofit are funding political endorsements.

A spokesman for the IRS declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. The NRB did not respond to a series of questions from RNS about the lawsuit.

Darryll K. Jones, a professor of law at Florida A&M University who blogs about nonprofit law, agrees that the IRS is allowing the Lenfest Institute to “have its cake and eat it too,” he said by email. 

“Other exempt charities can farm out their political speech to subsidiary organizations without diminishing their tax-exempt efforts,” he said. “Churches cannot do so because farming out political activity necessarily diminishes or even precludes the accomplishment of the church’s tax-exempt and (oh, by the way) constitutionally protected effort.”

If the IRS refused to bite on ADF’s pulpit actions, said Jones, it is because the IRS likely knows the Johnson Amendment would not hold up on constitutional grounds. On their part, many nonprofits appreciate the rule, Jones said, because the restriction keeps them out of politics.

“They can say, look, we’re not going to be involved in that. We’re not going to be involved in politics. We are out here to do our charitable deeds, and we don’t want to be on one side or the other,” Jones said.

Jones believes courts are likely to dismiss most of the NRB’s claims, especially its due process and equal protection assertions, which he said obscure the main point of their lawsuit.

But, he said, “Once you get through all the unnecessary weeds, the complaint makes a legally irresistible argument, the logic of which can’t possibly be avoided.”

He added that politicking by nonprofits would likely have negative outcomes. “Everybody’s going to do it, and then there’ll be sort of a race to the bottom,” he said.

A 2019 survey from Pew Research found that Americans would prefer to keep religion and politics separate. Nearly two-thirds (63%) want houses of worship to stay out of politics, while three-quarters (76%) say churches and other congregations should not endorse candidates.

The NRB hosted Donald Trump at its annual convention in Nashville this past February, where the former president promised to return Christians to power if elected for a second term. Before Trump spoke, Miller told those in the audience that the group was hosting a presidential forum and that the speakers did not represent the official views of the NRB.

The former president appealed to religious broadcasters to join his side. 

“If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” Trump told a gathering of National Religious Broadcasters at Nashville’s Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center.

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