by | Oct 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
In 1983, biblical scholar Robert Gundry was ousted from the Evangelical Theological Society.
Gundry, in his lengthy commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, had suggested that Matthew tailored stories about Jesus to his specific audience, sometimes in nonhistorical ways. Theologian Norman Geisler, who spearheaded the ouster, believed this “undermine[d] confidence in the complete truthfulness of all of Scripture.” Gundry disagreed with this assessment—he affirmed the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and argued the authors of Scripture were using accepted literary standards of their day. But he was expelled nonetheless.
Thirty years later, New Testament scholar Michael Licona found himself embroiled in a similar controversy. Licona had questioned the literal historicity of Matthew’s reference to saints rising from the grave after Jesus’ resurrection (Matt. 27:52–53). Here, too, Geisler led a campaign against the perceived threat to biblical inerrancy. As a result, Licona voluntarily resigned from Southern Evangelical Seminary and left his position at the North American Mission Board. (Today, he teaches at Houston Christian University.)
The doctrine of inerrancy may be a historically recent development, but some consider it essential to the faith. In fact, Geisler believed the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture was “the foundation of all other doctrines.”
But what happens when cracks appear in that foundation? I can tell you: It’s unsettling.
During my transition from high school to college, I deconstructed the Catholic faith of my upbringing but eventually reaffirmed my belief in God and converted to Protestantism. One of the foundational building blocks of my reconstructed faith was the authority of Scripture—including my idea of inerrancy.
But then that idea was contested. Though Christians have been dealing with the topic of biblical contradictions since there was a Bible, I started earlier this year. My exposure to contradictions occurred on TikTok, where I found clips (like this one) of critical biblical scholars challenging my beliefs about what the Bible is and how it works. I learned about the two different lists of animals on the ark (Gen. 6:19–20 and 7:2–3), the potential discrepancy between 1 Chronicles and 1 Samuel about who killed Goliath, and the differing genealogies of Jesus Christ. In my high school apologetics class, I was taught that there are only apparent contradictions in the Bible, not real ones. But what if there actually are real ones?
Licona takes up this question as it relates to the Gospels in his new book, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently—a shorter and more accessible version of his 2016 academic book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? From the beginning, he’s clear where the problem lies: “Contradictions offer a challenge to the historical reliability of the Gospels and to some versions of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.” Yet he argues that they “do not necessarily call into question the truth of the Christian faith.”
The rules of ancient biography
The most skeptical position on inerrancy, as advanced by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, treats contradictions between Gospel accounts as a reason for doubting their accuracy altogether. If the authors can’t get the minor details right, why trust them at all?
On the flip side, attempts at harmonizing the Gospels have been a popular (though not unanimous) Christian response. While some harmonizations may be legitimate, others seem far-fetched (like Peter denying Jesus six times, not three) and risk “subjecting the Gospel texts to a sort of hermeneutical waterboarding until they tell the exegete what he or she wants to hear,” as Licona put it in his 2016 book. Harmonization in the wrong place may very well lead us astray—and damage our credibility.
A third camp sees Gospel differences as grounds for rejecting the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. This was my initial reaction as I wrestled with the biblical scholarship. The Bible, I believed, was the very Word of God, his speech in written form. But if God cannot err and the Bible has errors, then how could the Bible be divinely inspired at all? I began to think this collection of books by human authors might be just that: human.
Worse, the doubts spread. If what I had been told about the Bible was untrue, what else about Christianity was untrue? My conception of inerrancy and inspiration put my faith on shaky ground. But Licona lays out an alternative to this inflexible view of the Bible, hopefully preventing a good many Christians from falling away when they encounter contradictions too.
According to Licona, there’s a better way to handle Gospel differences, and it starts with understanding why they’re there in the first place. Licona provides a plausible explanation: Most of the differences between Gospels are due to literary conventions common to the genre of Greco-Roman (or “ancient”) biography and thus are not really contradictions or errors at all.
Importantly, ancient biography is not modern biography. Ancient biographies are playing by different rules and have different purposes. “Ancient biographers,” Licona explains, “sought to narrate sayings and deeds of the biographee that illuminated his character.” They’re portraits, not legal transcripts. The “essence” and “life” of a person are what matter, not precise details. Therefore, “Imposing modern expectations on ancient texts and authors is anachronistic since it assumes a standard not aligned with their objectives.” In ancient historiography, facts can be “reported with some elasticity.”
Matthew’s genealogy is a case in point. Luke and Matthew both contain genealogies for Jesus, but they don’t match. A popular explanation (though, as Licona points out, not among scholars) is that Matthew’s genealogy applies to Mary while Luke’s applies to Joseph. However, Matthew’s math suggests this is the wrong approach.
Despite claiming to include all the generations from Abraham to Jesus, Matthew omits multiple generations and uses “Jeconiah” twice (1:11–12). Why? He may be using a rhetorical device called “gematria,” where numbers are assigned to letters in the alphabet. In the Hebrew alphabet, the letters in “David” yield the number 14. By listing three sets of 14 generations, Licona argues, “Matthew appears to have arranged his genealogy artistically in order to communicate to his Jewish readers that Jesus is the Son of David, the Messiah.”
Understanding the rules of the game is essential to understanding what’s going on in the Gospels. Licona draws from ancient Roman compositional textbooks and Plutarch’s Lives to demonstrate six rules (or “compositional devices”) common to the genre:
Compression: presenting an event as occurring over a shorter time frame than its actual duration.
Displacement: removing an event from its original context and placing it in a different one.
Transferal: taking an action done by (or to) one person and attributing it to someone else.
Conflation: combining elements of two or more events but narrating them as one.
Simplification: omitting or altering details to abbreviate a story.
Literary spotlighting: only mentioning the person(s) in focus while being aware of others present.
When read in light of these compositional devices, many of the apparent contradictions between the Gospels disappear. Take the story about Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead: Is she about to die (as in Mark and Luke) or has she already died (as in Matthew)? While those with a preference for harmonization might posit that Jairus said both, this is more likely an example of Matthew compressing a story, as is his tendency.
For instance, in the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s servant, Luke records the centurion sending emissaries on his behalf (7:1–10), while Matthew cuts out the middlemen and has the centurion go himself (8:5–13). Likewise, Matthew compresses Mark’s account of the events following the triumphal entry (compare Mark 11:1–23 and Matt. 21:1–21). In Matthew’s version, Jesus appears at the temple once rather than twice, and the fig tree he curses withers immediately, not on the next day.
We find other examples of compositional devices at play in the Resurrection narratives. The Gospels differ in recording the number of women who visited the tomb, the number of angels at the tomb, and the number of male disciples who visited the tomb afterward. Are these errors, or merely examples of literary spotlighting?
The human element
While compositional devices clear up apparent contradictions and “errors”—calming concerns that differences between the Gospels undermine their historical reliability—they also raise issues for how we understand Scripture. They introduce a distinctly human element. The Gospel authors use sources. They paraphrase. They modify words and actions, even those of Jesus. Matthew and Luke improve upon Mark’s grammar, and Luke exhibits “editorial fatigue” (where he changes a story, but leaves leftover portions from the original, as with the parable of the talents).
Patterns like these flatly contradict the “divine dictation” view of inspiration—that the evangelists were heavenly stenographers taking down every word they received from the Holy Spirit. And though most evangelical Christians who affirm the inspiration and total inerrancy of Scripture would deny “divine dictation,” this model remains influential.
For example, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that “the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration” (emphasis added). The glaring question is “How?” While the authors concede, “The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us,” their view of inerrancy implies a very small role for the human authors themselves.
There’s a danger in holding such a rigid view of inerrancy. If you cannot square what you believe about Scripture with what you read in Scripture, something has to give. And if you put this view of Scripture at the foundation of all your beliefs—as Geisler recommended—then the whole edifice might come tumbling down.
Licona calls his alternative “flexible inerrancy.” Under this view, “the Bible is true, trustworthy, authoritative, and without error in all that it teaches” (emphasis added). Whereas traditional inerrancy says the Bible cannot err in any way, including in the details, flexible inerrancy says the message of God is preserved despite human involvement in the composition and preservation of the biblical texts.
How is Scripture divinely inspired then? Licona proposes a theory:
God, having foreknown all possible worlds, chose to actualize the one in which the biblical authors would write what they did. On some occasions, God may have planted ideas, concepts, perhaps even the very words they would write. However, the human element is present throughout and includes imperfections.
This view isn’t entirely original. In 1999, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argued that God orchestrated the circumstances whereby the biblical authors would write what they did, and in that sense guided the process. Similarly, Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield thought inspiration looked like “[bringing] the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them.”
The Bible doesn’t spell out how inspiration works, and we can only speculate, but such statements at least don’t contradict Scripture. For example, Licona conducts a word study of theopneustos (the word for “inspired” or “God-breathed” found in 2 Timothy 3:16) and finds, “Perhaps the closest way of describing the meaning of theopneustos is to say the thing it describes derives from God or that God is its ultimate and special origin.”
Due to the Bible’s ambiguity regarding inspiration and inerrancy, we ought not demand conformity to the most rigid conceptions of either. There should be room to question. And we should remember that there were followers of Jesus before there was a New Testament. If believing in traditional inerrancy is a litmus test for being a Christian, then Jesus’ disciples wouldn’t pass. Nor would Paul, or any members of the early church.
The Gospels as we have them accomplish what their authors intended. Though they may supply tinted windows into Jesus’ life and teachings, what we see is true and compelling. They show us who Jesus is, what he was like, and what he taught. They establish his authority and the beauty of his way of life.
If the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels had contradicted the living memory of Jesus, it’s unlikely they would have found such broad acceptance across the early churches. They were preserved because they taught readers how to be disciples—and they can do the same for us today, no matter our view of inerrancy.
Noah M. Peterson is a philosophy of religion graduate student at the University of Birmingham and the editor of a think tank based in Washington, DC.
The post The Bible Contains Discrepancies. That Doesn’t Make It Untrustworthy. appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Oct 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
The success of “In Christ Alone” established Keith Getty as one of the leading songwriters in what he refers to as the modern hymn movement. The popular breakout song—which has remained on Christian Copyright Licensing International’s Top 100 list for over 15 years—has come to represent the musical priorities and values of Getty Music, the organization founded by Getty and his wife and collaborator Kristyn.
Their team has since developed 38 of the 500 most-used songs in US and UK churches, and Getty Music draws thousands of music-minded Christians to its annual Sing! Conference.
At the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville last month, attendees could purchase tumblers and tote bags printed with “In Christ Alone.” The song’s singable, soaring melody, simple four-verse form, and lyrics that reflect on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ have made it the model modern hymn.
“The Gettys don’t mince words about what Christ did for us,” said Jim Ouse, a repeat Sing! attendee. The 82-year-old grandfather from Wilmington, North Carolina, came with his daughter and three of her six children. “The music is theologically rich.”
For some, the Gettys and their emphasis on modern hymns represent a countermovement in the mainstream contemporary worship music industry, which is currently dominated by worship artists from megachurches like Hillsong and Elevation. Attendees of Sing! talked about their preference for hymns because of their tendency to include text that covers a lot of theological ground, and they sometimes made a comparison to more repetitive, lyrically simple, or ambiguous contemporary worship music.
The crowd at Sing! was noticeably multi-generational; babies babbled throughout the conference sessions, school-age children stood on their chairs to see the stage, and a substantial percentage of the crowd was over the age of 65. Older and younger attendees milling around the conference center spoke of the importance of singing and having access to music that explicitly conveys Reformed theology. This year’s conference theme, “Songs of the Bible,” appealed to those who prefer songs with text that they can confidently trace to the Word of God.
“If we’re going to sing, I want to sing something from Scripture,” said Karen Pederson, a retired teacher and choir director from Tioga, North Dakota.
“This music is scripturally based,” said Derrick Bridges, a musician and worship leader in Nashville. “And it’s not too complicated; it’s easy to sing.”
The perception that the Gettys operate outside or on the fringe of the mainstream worship music industry is occasionally encouraged by Keith Getty, who jokingly refers to the “dumb six-line songs” to which he offers an alternative. Fans of the Gettys see their music as a needed antidote to shallow praise and worship in their churches. The lyrical density of the Gettys’ modern hymns is a signpost of depth, and many say that their commitment to “singing theology” is what brings them to Sing!
“The theology in the music is sound, Reformed, and historically rooted,” said Daniel Troy, a software developer and volunteer at the conference. “And it’s truly congregational. It’s singable.”
Sing!’s Reformed identity comes from the Gettys’ roots in Irish Presbyterianism, as well as the relationships they have forged with influential Reformed evangelicals like John Piper, Alistair Begg, and John MacArthur. The Gettys’ popularity has grown over the past 20 years alongside the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement, and the emphasis on singing the “songs of the Bible” is consistent with the Calvinist practice of psalm-singing, tracing back to the 16th century.
But a scan of the event’s sponsors and partners reveals a relatively ecumenical supporting ecosystem: The Voice of the Martyrs, Crossway, Cedarville University, Planning Center, and Museum of the Bible, to name a few.
The Gettys split their time between Northern Ireland and Nashville. Their first Sing! Conference was hosted in 2017 at Brentwood Baptist Church in Music City. The now-annual event at the Opryland convention center draws thousands for three days of congregational worship, preaching, and networking. This year, over 6,500 people attended in person, representing 50 US states and 32 countries. According to Getty Music, over 30,000 viewers tuned in to the conference livestream.
The Gettys’ emphasis on text-focused hymnody and incorporation of musical characteristics and genre markers from folk music, traditional Irish music, and bluegrass have helped them carve out a unique niche in the landscape of contemporary praise and worship music. Their varied style has also attracted devoted fans who are willing to travel to participate in an annual worship conference.
Graham Ellis, an 83-year-old concert organizer from Wales, said he came to volunteer at Sing! because he believes that the Gettys’ music is part of a project that all Christians can get behind: enriching the worship of the global church through music that teaches the Bible in a Bible-illiterate world.
“I want people to come and hear the Bible and to be ministered to,” said Ellis. “The Gettys’ goal is to teach the Scriptures, evangelize the world, and reach whole families.”
Elaine Koester, a retired Reformed minister from rural Indiana, said that the Gettys’ “excellent music with excellent theology” is what drew her to the conference. “The music and worship is all shaped by the Word of God.”
A recurrent feature of this year’s conference was the forthcoming Sing! Hymnal, which the Gettys are publishing with Crossway in 2025. A small prototype of the hymnal was provided to each attendee at this year’s conference, and when Keith Getty addressed the crowd at the opening of the first session, he said, “Please turn to number four in your hymnal.”
Thousands stood and turned to the hymn “All PeopleThat on Earth Do Dwell” (the final verse of the hymn is recognized by many as “The Doxology”) as a synthesized organ played the opening chords.
Baton in hand, Getty conducted the conference congregation, eventually joined by an orchestra. In addition to the hymnals in their hands, singers had access to the written notation and text on the projection screens. The second selection was “How Great Thou Art,” which the congregation sang with equal gusto.
Historically, “How Great Thou Art” and the tune “Old Hundredth” (to which “The Doxology” and “All Creatures That on Earth Do Dwell” are both set) are separated by centuries. The former took shape across the 19th and 20th centuries, eventually popularized in the US by Billy Graham’s crusades. The latter is a hymn tune first published in the 1551 Genevan Psalter.
At Sing!, these beloved hymns of the faith from different eras of church history are part of the same cultural project. They support the modern hymn movement by providing both a model and a musical lineage for new songs that are conceived of as “hymn-like” rather than as additions to the digital songbook of contemporary praise and worship music.
While most people on the platform at Sing! didn’t openly criticize contemporary worship music or its most popular creators, many attendees agreed the music of the Gettys and the songwriters on their team is a welcome departure from what they perceive as more “mainstream” worship music. Some of the endorsements in the sample Sing! Hymnal suggest that the Gettys are reviving a better or truer form of musical worship.
The Gettys “have been used by the Lord to provide theologically rich, singable music for the church in this generation,” wrote John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in California and Chancellor of Master’s Seminary, a prominently featured sponsor of the conference. “More than anyone else they have led in the long-awaited revival of hymns which have always been the true music of the church.”
In his endorsement, Alistair Begg, pastor of Parkside Church in Ohio (where the Gettys once served as worship leaders), called the hymnal “theologically sound and melodically enlivening.” Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of the Joni and Friends International Disability Center, wrote, “This hymnal will be a timeless collection of theologically rich songs that will set your heart soaring!”
Despite the implication that modern hymns have a monopoly on “theological richness,” the distinction between the modern hymn movement and the broader world of contemporary praise and worship is blurry, even at Sing!
The cohort of performers and cowriters gathered by the Gettys is not an exclusively modern hymn-focused group. On the second night of the conference, recording artist and author Andrew Peterson staged a performance of his selections from his concept album, Behold the Lamb of God. Sandra McCracken, a singer-songwriter who has collaborated with numerous popular worship artists like All Sons & Daughters, is also on the Gettys’ writing team.
On the final evening of the conference, special guest and contemporary Christian music giant Michael W. Smith appeared for a short on-stage conversation with Keith Getty followed by a performance of Smith’s “Agnus Dei.”
In many ways, “Agnus Dei” is a quintessential contemporary worship song, featuring two simple sections, “Alleluia, for the Lord God Almighty Reigns” and “Holy, holy are you Lord God Almighty / Worthy is the Lamb, Amen,” that can be repeated and varied in intensity.
The vocal line stretches the first syllable of “Alleluia” over multiple notes, a contrast to the text-focused, syllabic writing (one syllable per note) of the Gettys’ music. The song’s lyrics are from Revelation chapters 4 and 5, making it an easy fit for the theme, “Songs of the Bible,” but the selection was, nonetheless, a contrast—perhaps a nod to the potential for the modern hymn movement to act not as an antagonistic contrast to other popular worship music but as a partner.
In his sermon during the first plenary session, John Piper spoke at length about the relationship between heart and mind in musical worship. The influential pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis affirmed the importance of theologically sound text, with a caution against treating it as a goal in itself.
“I don’t want anyone to assume that Scripture is an end in itself, that truth is an end in itself, that lyrics are an end in themselves. They are servants of Godward emotions,” Piper said. “The mind exists to serve the heart … right thinking is never an end in itself.”
Singing words that expound theology, in Piper’s view, ought to be in service of turning one’s heart and affections toward God. At a gathering where so many in the crowd spoke of their commitment to “theologically rich” text, Piper’s sermon seemed directed against putting particular songs in a spiritual hierarchy.
For attendees like Stan Fitzenrider, the Gettys’ music isn’t appealing because he believes it’s “better” in some way but because it speaks to his emotions. The form and characteristics of hymns are more familiar to him and closely associated with his own faith journey.
“When my wife died a few years ago, this music really touched me,” said Fitzenrider, 73. “It brought me closer to God and helped me heal.”
The post The Gettys’ Modern Hymn Movement Has Theological Pull appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Oct 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
Gen Z evangelicals don’t want to be known for their faith.
Instead, they want their talents, interests, hobbies, and education levels to be the ways they make a name for themselves.
They see their faith as a support during challenging times. Prayer is the second most common way that they cope with stress, tied with distracting themselves by watching or reading something.
And while they may often be regarded as an “anxious generation,” they are optimistic about the future. Four in five Gen Z evangelicals believe that they can make a meaningful impact in the world for succeeding generations.
Young Life offered CT an exclusive look at these evangelical breakouts from its recent release of The Relate Project, a study which examined the beliefs and aspirations of 7,261 young people between 13 and 24 years old.
The study covered eight countries: the US, the UK, Mexico, India, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. It surveyed adolescents of various faiths in July and August 2023. The sample of Christians from the study included those who identified as Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or other.
Overall, it found that belief in God is integral in boosting Gen Z’s sense of purpose and well-being.
“Young people can experience flourishing apart from faith, but our research found that those without a faith frame (e.g., atheists, agnostics, and nones) report lower levels of flourishing,” the report stated.
Researchers also noted that cultural differences might account for variations in responses. For example, focus groups found that young adults in the four East African countries and India are generally more hesitant to talk to older adults because they fear incurring their disapproval.
For this story, “global” refers to the eight countries surveyed by Young Life.
Reputation and recognition
At least half of young evangelicals in the US and UK said that they wanted to be known for their talents (54%), as well as their interests or hobbies (52%).
Only around 1 in 3 (32%) wanted to be recognized for their religion or beliefs.
Survey results were similar in East Africa, India, and Mexico. Just under half (43%) of Gen Z evangelicals in these countries preferred to be known for their educational qualifications, while 2 in 5 (40%) wanted their talents to be recognized first.
The desire to be identified by their religion or beliefs ranked fourth (27%).
These findings are consistent with what Alexis Kwamy has observed about Gen Z believers in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where he is based.
“This shift suggests a new way of integrating faith into daily life, where religious identity isn’t always openly expressed but is instead intertwined with personal achievements and social contributions,” Kwamy told CT.
Chris Agnew, a Pioneer Mission leader at Coastal Church in Portrush, Northern Ireland, agreed. “Religion is either a dirty word, or it’s a private thing,” he said. “Spirituality would be more warmly received, but it’s easier to say to someone [that] you’re good at singing or playing football than having a faith or engaging in church.”
Other leaders think that the survey findings are debatable.
“Young people introduced to Christ at an early age appreciate [being known for their] religious beliefs,” said Patrick Barasa, general secretary of campus ministry Focus Uganda. “It’s those that tend towards secularism that live according to interests.”
The traditional format of church participation may also contribute to how Gen Z evangelical identity is being formed, said Mary Olguin, general secretary of student ministry Compa (Compañerismo Estudiantil) in Mexico.
There is a perception that “a Christian is excellent based on how they serve (for example, by showcasing their talent in worship), rather than by their fruits,” she said.
Raychel Sanders, 21, is an avid runner and rock climber. But she has learned to also be comfortable building a public Christian identity.
As a freshman at Mississippi State University, she commented on the beauty and intricacy of creation during a conversation with an agnostic professor at school. She remembers he gave her a funny look.
Since that incident, however, Sanders has answered her professor’s questions about Christianity and shared her faith with him several times.
Beyond being recognized for her outdoor pursuits, she wants to be known for “having compassion on people for the sake of winning them to Christ, but without compromising on what is true,” she said.
Other young adults, like Ananya Rachel Mathew from Uttar Pradesh, India, asserted that one’s abilities can be used to represent and honor God.
“All our talents come as a gift from our Father above,” said the 21-year-old, who enjoys singing, dancing, and painting. “The Father who has bestowed our talents upon us [would] be pleased if we employed them to praise and glorify his name.”
Prayer and stress
Globally, prayer ranks second (43%) among Gen Z evangelicals as a coping mechanism for stress and is tied with distracting themselves by watching or reading something (43%). Listening to music is ranked first (62%), while reading or meditating on Scripture is ranked fifth from last (19%).
Gen Zers tend to lead a fast-paced life and may not make time for individual prayer, says Olguin in Mexico. “This dynamic often causes prayer, which is often perceived as a passive practice or not directly linked to their immediate achievements, to be relegated to the background or performed quickly and mechanically,” she said.
Yet Olguin noticed that more students attended Compa’s prayer meetings after the pandemic and believes this is because they enjoy praying in community.
Though public prayer may come naturally to young Mexican evangelicals, that’s not the case with the teenagers Bruce Campbell works with at his Northern Ireland–based youth ministry, Exodus.
“The most common fear I hear young people expressing in terms of prayer is their fear of praying out loud in a group setting,” he said.
Campbell has noticed a rising interest in listening to worship music among young Christians in his region, which he surmises may be linked to their increasing desire to seek emotive experiences.
“Although I see this as largely a positive thing, I am sometimes cautious of how this trend can lead to a less than costly discipleship,” Campbell said. “It’s much easier to chill to a Bethel album than to read the minor prophets or tell your friend about Jesus.”
Mental health concerns
Caring for their personal mental health and their communities’ mental well-being was a top priority for Gen Z evangelicals across the eight countries surveyed, ahead of other concerns like adequate job opportunities, climate change, and religious tensions.
In the UK, poor mental health “has reached almost pandemic proportions,” said Sonia Mawhinney, Young Life’s regional director for the UK and Ireland. The lack of professional help available has also placed “a heavy strain on both full-time and volunteer youth leaders to try to help young people in this mental health crisis,” she said.
At present, the ministry is exploring ways to partner with schools, churches, sports clubs, and government agencies across the region to provide support and care for young people.
“The thrust towards self-help and wellness in society at the moment can be confusing for young people,” said Agnew, one of the Northern Ireland–based leaders. He noted that it’s hard for Gen Z believers to figure out where Jesus comes into the picture.
“The challenge is to gently accompany people on their journeys, but also not allow anyone’s own struggles to remove the divine invitation to partner with God [in] what he’s doing in the world,” he said.
Building stronger intergenerational relationships is another important factor in addressing the mental health struggles that Gen Z believers face, leaders told CT.
“The silence around the topic of mental health from older generations is creating distance from our next generations,” said Tanita Maddox, Young Life’s associate regional director in Spokane, Washington. “[We ought to] be Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, even though Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus again.”
In March, Olguin and her team finished work on a manual titled Salud mental en la pastoral universitaria (mental health in campus ministry) that equips leaders working with Gen Zers in Mexico.
The manual, which covers topics like the theology of emotions and burnout syndrome, was created in collaboration with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students’ (IFES) Logos and Cosmos Initiative. A second edition is currently in progress and is slated to publish next February.
Young Life Mexico, meanwhile, is conducting a study to examine the mental, physical, and emotional health of leaders and kids involved in the ministry, according to its regional director Pratt Butler.
Future impact
More than 4 in 5 (83%) of Gen Z evangelicals believe they can change the world for good.
Gen Zers with a religious affiliation feel more empowered to effect change, the Relate Project found. “Protestant and Orthodox Christians have the strongest sense of agency, while it is lowest in atheists, agnostics, and ‘nones,’” the report noted.
Evangelizing “to as many people around as possible” is how Mathew, the 21-year-old in India, envisions creating a meaningful impact on successive generations. “We are his people who have been ordained to carry out a very specific task—which is to spread his word to others who don’t know about our Lord,” she said.
Some leaders, however, think that one’s faith may not necessarily boost one’s level of influence, particularly if faith is merely regarded as a private, personal relationship with God.
“For our young people, action to make the world a better place is fragmented or disconnected from their Christian faith,” said Maddox, the Young Life US associate regional director. “[But] our relationship with God should push us to bring the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth by caring about the things God cares about, and acting on those things.”
This generation is very compassionate, said Mawhinney, the Young Life UK and Ireland director. “Young people are pleasantly astonished when they encounter what the Bible has to say about their passion for justice and creation care,” she said.
“When we teach them the full meta-narrative of Scripture and how God’s redemptive vision includes the necessity for love of neighbor and the world he made, young people are both surprised and inspired to see that their passion is in sync with God’s.”
Additional reporting by Surinder Kaur
The post Gen Z Evangelicals Want to Be Famous for Their Hobbies and Talents appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Oct 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
When Jimmy Carter spoke about his faith in Christ while campaigning for president in 1976, many evangelicals were ecstatic.
No previous presidential candidate had claimed to be “born again” or spoken so openly about his relationship with Jesus. Nor had any welcomed journalists to his adult Sunday school class, which Carter continued to teach even while running for the White House. But then again, no other presidential candidate was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church.
The United States needed a “born-again man in the White House,” Oklahoma pastor Bailey Smith told the crowd gathered at the SBC’s annual meeting in June 1976. Then he added, in case anyone missed the hint, “And his initials are the same as our Lord’s!”
But only a few weeks later, Third Century Publishers, an evangelical publishing firm cofounded by Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, released a book that sharply criticized Carter’s evangelical bona fides. The book, What about Jimmy Carter?, was written by a young evangelist named Ron Boehme.
When he first heard about Carter’s candidacy, Boehme said, he was “thrilled” that a born-again Christian was running for president. Yet as he learned more about Carter’s beliefs, his opinion of the Democratic candidate quickly soured. Carter, he discovered, had embraced neo-orthodox views of the Bible, and he supported liberal abortion policies as well as gay rights.
Perhaps Carter wasn’t really an evangelical at all, Boehme decided, or not even a believer. “When a man promotes or goes along with immorality and ungodliness in his political campaigning and lawmaking, he is not a true follower of Jesus,” he wrote. Appropriating one of Jesus’ statements in the Sermon on the Mount, Boehme doubled down: “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit.”
Boehme was hardly alone in this conclusion. Although Carter won approximately half the white evangelical vote in 1976, many evangelicals echoed Boehme in their questions about his faith during the weeks leading up to the election. Carter’s interview with Playboy magazine disturbed many conservative Christians, and so did a few of his policy positions.
By 1980, some evangelicals who had once supported Carter (such as the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson) were at the forefront of the movement to defeat him at the polls. Carter, they decided, had promoted “secular humanism” through his promotion of a feminist agenda and his refusal to oppose gay rights. Indeed, it was largely a reaction against Carter’s presidential policies that prompted the political mobilization of the Religious Right and the strong evangelical support for Ronald Reagan in 1980.
After Carter left office, the rift between him and the increasingly conservative leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention continued to grow. Carter eventually left the Southern Baptist Convention to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a denomination that ordained women and rejected some of the SBC’s conservative political stances.
But Carter continued to call himself an evangelical Christian. He continued to speak of reading the Bible daily, praying constantly, and teaching weekly Sunday school classes at his Baptist church. His volunteer work through Habitat for Humanity became legendary. And he frequently shared his faith with others, including with non-Christian international leaders while he was president.
He also wrote several books about his faith. “I am convinced that Jesus is the Son of God,” he said in his final book on the subject, published in 2018. Jesus is his “personal savior,” he declared, as well as “an exemplary personal guide for a way for me and others to live. … The basis elements of Christianity apply personally to me, shape my attitude and my actions, and give me a joyful and positive life, with purpose.”
After consulting the description of evangelicalism provided in a Wikipedia article and supplementing it with information from one of his Bible commentaries, Carter concluded in the book that not only was he a Christian, he was an “evangelical Christian.” He had been born again; he shared his faith with others; and he loved Jesus as his Savior. What could be more evangelical than that?
But clearly there was a difference between Carter’s understanding of the faith and the views of his evangelical critics. His born-again experience of conversion may have resembled theirs, and his devotion to prayer and Bible reading may have been just as strong, but on two issues Carter parted ways with conservative evangelicals of the late 20th century and beyond: biblical inerrancy and politics.
Those were the very issues at the heart of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that began while Carter was in office. For many conservative evangelicals of the 1970s—Harold Lindsell, Francis Schaeffer, and the leaders of the conservative faction within the Southern Baptist Convention—biblical inerrancy was central to the evangelical identity. Without an inerrant Bible, Protestant Christians would have no fixed, transcendent source of authority, they argued. The Reformation principle of sola scriptura, combined with an understanding of God’s perfection and sovereignty, demanded an inerrant scripture.
Many of these evangelicals also argued that the American government needed a fixed, transcendent moral standard based on Christian principles. Legal abortion and a new public celebration of sexual immorality were the result of politicians and judges who had forgotten God’s law, they said.
Their vision of Christianity as an influence in the public sphere primarily meant championing Christian moral principles in the face of growing secularization. They thought that the sexual revolution, along with second-wave feminism, was perhaps the greatest threat that the American family had ever experienced. And they were determined to stop that threat by electing godly people to office, people who would be guided by God’s law, not contemporary cultural trends.
But Carter did not share any of these views. His political and religious ideas were shaped not by a reaction against the sexual revolution but by experience of the civil rights movement. Like other white southerners of his generation, Carter grew up amid racial segregation and inequality, and he concluded that the white evangelical churches of his region were mostly on the wrong side of Black Americans’ struggle for justice.
Carter’s own Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, was officially segregated until 1976. The congregation voted in the 1960s against accepting Black people as members, and Carter opposed that decision but did not immediately leave the church. Yet, as he recalled years later in his book Faith: A Journey for All, he was inspired by the examples of other Christians who took the countercultural stance of reaching across the color line in the segregated South. Only a few miles from his home in Plains, for example, Millard and Linda Fuller started an interracial Christian communal farm named Koinonia—then later founded Habitat for Humanity.
Encounters with people like the Fullers convinced Carter that what the country needed was not a public campaign to take America back for God. It was a practical emulation of the ethics of Jesus. This, after all, was how African American Christian advocates for civil rights had gained the support of previously oppositional white Christians, who were moved by the activists’ example of Christlike love.
Carter was so impressed by that example that he framed his entire Christian faith around this principle rather than around any specific doctrinal statements. But the more that he read Scripture, the more impressed he was by the ethics of Christ and the more he wanted to have Jesus as his “constant companion” by grace through faith.
For Carter, then, biblical inerrancy was a non-issue. Perhaps the Bible did contain some internal contradictions that could not be harmonized, he decided, and perhaps parts of the Bible did need to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science. But that really didn’t matter as long as the general narrative of Jesus’ life was historically correct.
And the Christian Right’s political priorities were misguided, Carter likewise determined, because they were centered not around the ethics of Jesus but around an erroneous notion that family values could be imposed through law. As an Arminian Baptist, Carter opposed creeds, believed in the priesthood of all believers, and strongly insisted that faith must be freely chosen to be true. It could not be dictated by legislation, he argued in multiple books, including Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis and Faith: A Journey for All.
Following Jesus in public office, then, could not mean imposing Christian standards through law. For Carter, it had to mean acting with integrity and with concern for all people. And if the nation turned to God, the fruit of this conversion would not necessarily be laws against same-sex marriage or abortion. It would be a dedication “to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means” and a commitment to “freedom and human rights” for others, including especially the rights of women, which he believed too many conservative evangelicals ignored.
Functionally, Carter’s faith had more in common with mainline Protestantism than with late 20th- or early 21st-century American evangelicalism—and evangelicals weren’t incorrect when they observed that difference. But Carter was also a lifelong Baptist who believed in born-again conversion, a personal relationship with Jesus, and the need to share one’s faith with others. He always spoke of faith with an evangelical accent, and despite his differences with more conservative Christians, he cherished a love for the same Savior.
With the perspective of history—thanks to the longest post-presidency in American history—those commonalities are perhaps easier to see now than they were in 1980. Carter’s determination to extend the love of Jesus was a better reflection of the Sermon on the Mount than his evangelical critics realized.
Daniel K. Williams teaches American history at Ashland University and is the author of The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship.
The post The Evangelicalism of Jimmy Carter appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Oct 1, 2024 | Uncategorized
My neighborhood, just outside of Washington, DC, has a strong sense of local community. I know the people on our block, and I love bumping into folks—at PTA meetings, sports outings, or the grocery store. My neighborhood has quaint traditions: We celebrate holidays with cookie exchanges. Local groups play music on front lawns in the summer. On these lovely nights when people are walking the block, I don’t see the divisions and divides that worry me when I read the news.
So I was surprised a couple of months ago to find out that I didn’t actually know many of my neighbors. One of my kids was collecting items for a service project. On a Saturday morning, we slowly walked the block, placing a flyer at each door. With half a stack of flyers left, we continued to the next block—a block I walk or drive often.
But the slowness of the task caused me to pause, to stop at each door, to see each place where people live. I noticed the numbers on the walls, the color of the doors. And I was surprised at how many homes I had never “seen” before. I was surprised, just one block away, how few of the people I knew. Before that day, I would have called these folks my neighbors. In reality, I didn’t know my neighbors.
Throughout the Gospels, we see the exhortation to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31). But who is my neighbor (Luke 10:29)? And what does being a neighbor look like in a time of such polarization?
When I try to make sense of what it means to love my neighbor, I think of Acts 1:8. In this passage, Jesus exhorts his followers to bear witness to the power of his resurrection in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was essentially the disciples’ city. Judea was the larger region that contained their local city. Samaria was a region just next to Judea—a place that was adjacent and had a different ethnic group. And the ends of the earth were, well, everywhere else.
I use these categories of Jerusalem (the city where I am), Judea and Samaria (the region I’m in and the one next to it), and “the ends of the earth” (everyone else) to help me think about whom I consider my neighbor. I try to make sure I have neighbors in each of these groups.
Jesus’ invitation to his first followers to bear witness is extended to us today—to be people who bear witness to Jesus “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
When I’m trying to navigate tricky issues, expanding my definition of neighbor like this helps. I try to use these three categories of people to stretch me to care about people just beyond my natural inclination—people in the place where I am, the place just next to me, and a place farther away.
How does an issue affect people like me? Or people who are adjacent to me—nearby, but perhaps affected slightly differently? And how does it affect people with whom I don’t have much in common, people who seem far from me? And what response to this issue would bear witness to God’s character and love to each of these different groups?
That final group, the ends of the earth, seems like a catchall: Did I miss anyone? Well, reach out to them too. One of my favorite insights about missions comes from an Indigenous Christian theologian who pointed out to me that North America might be part of what the early church imagined as “the ends of the earth.” It’s humbling to think that I am someone else’s “ends of the earth.” And at the same time, it nudges me to do the extra work of caring about someone different, perhaps even at odds with my group.
With each of these circles, I try to think, How can I love this group of neighbors as myself? How can I learn more about the realities of their daily life, their priorities, and their cares? And how can I carry that perspective with me as I think about my role as a Christian committed to social action? Are there places where I can journey alongside, add my voice as a support, and function as a neighbor in this diverse and dynamic place where we live?
Caring only about the people nearest to us or most like us doesn’t bear witness to our God, who cares for all people and calls people from all nations to become part of his family. Only seeking the good of those who live near us or live like us can lead us to perpetuate economic, racial, ethnic, or other divisions. That lifestyle doesn’t bear witness to Jesus’ power to be a peacemaker who is able to remove dividing walls and bring unity to groups separated by hostility (Eph. 2:14–15).
Our current political system encourages a self-serving posture. It leads us to ask, “How do I accumulate power and use it to push through my demands and center my priorities for my own well-being?” This perpetuates a game where there are winners and losers.
In a world like this, one of the most compelling ways we Christians can bear witness is by being generous with our hearts, passions, and interests and by using our voices, votes, and energy on behalf of our neighbors. We can love our neighbors as ourselves and love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
My hope is that Christians would not play politics the way the world does, but rather—filled with an abundance that comes from being unconditionally loved, repeatedly forgiven, and embraced by a caring, powerful, and compassionate God—feel generous with our love, hope, and faith.
We can not only love the neighbors who have commonalities with us but also love the neighbors who are just over and beyond our reach. In this way, we can be people who bear witness to and live in the reality of Jesus, the peacemaker who removes walls of hostility and offers reconciliation generously.
Nikki Toyama-Szeto is the executive director of Christians for Social Action.
Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.
The post Who Is My Neighbor? appeared first on Christianity Today.
