by | Oct 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
Nowhere on its website or in its founding documents does the new Global Methodist Church call itself evangelical.
Perhaps the term is too controversial, too divisive and political.
Or perhaps the Methodists are just out of practice.
“You know, as Methodists, it’s okay to say we’re born again,” said Asbury Theological Seminary professor Luther Oconer, preaching to the more than 900 people gathered in San José, Costa Rica, last week for the denomination’s first General Conference.
“Tell the person next to you, ‘I’m born again.’”
Around 900 people turned and said, “I’m born again,” laughing at themselves as they did.
The convening General Conference looked and sounded evangelical, with charismatic tinges. There was talk about evangelism, missions, the Great Commission, discipleship, and revival. People spoke unselfconsciously about the presence of the Holy Spirit, words from the Lord, what God is doing among them right now, and their love for Jesus. They read aloud from Scripture, taking the words as personal promises. Delegates raised their hands, singing “Oceans” and other contemporary worship songs, and lifted their voices with camp-meeting fervor when the band struck up “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”
Oconer, who is originally from the Philippines and described himself as a third-generation Global South minister, ended his sermon with an altar call. He asked people to come forward to give themselves and their new denomination to Christ, committing to the biblical vision of a New Testament church.
“Let us be a church of Pentecost first,” he said. “We must be a church of Pentecost first. We are a people born of the Spirit, first and foremost.”
People streamed forward, kneeling, praying, crying, singing. Steve Beard, editor in chief of Good News, described this as “old-time Methodism,” a religious movement unconcerned with the propriety of mid-century mainline Protestantism, a movement of field preaching, circuit riders, conversion experiences, and testimonies about freedom from sin.
In the midst of resurgent evangelicalism, however, some Global Methodists are worried about preserving Wesleyan distinctives. They expressed concern that the denomination might slide into a kind of generic evangelicalism.
The religious landscape is increasingly dominated, after all, by nondenominational churches that reject the importance of distinctives. Even churches that have affiliations often downplay their differences. Many evangelical churches feel about the same, whether they’re Southern Baptist or Evangelical Free, Independent Christian or Christian and Missionary Alliance. They sing the same songs, talk about the same Christian celebrities, listen to similar sermons, and practice mostly indistinguishable liturgies.
Roughly half the congregations that left the United Methodist Church have not joined the Global Methodists. Some are waiting to see what happens. They have said they might join, depending on the shape the new denomination takes, its authority structure, and the guarantees put in place to prevent the repetition of their bad experiences. But others are just done with denominations—liberal or conservative, mainline or evangelical. Hanging on to Methodist connections isn’t that important to them.
Mark Tooley, president of The Institute on Religion and Democracy and a lifelong Methodist, said the new denomination is going “against the headwinds of current American religious preferences.” As they embrace an evangelical style, Global Methodists will be forced to answer the question, “Why should Christians be specifically Wesleyan?”
In Costa Rica—as delegates passed a constitution, established the process for nominating bishops, and dealt with the legislative business of founding a new denomination—they also worked informally to articulate a Wesleyan charism, the unique spiritual gift that the Global Methodists could offer to evangelicals and the whole church.
“I think what we have to offer as a movement is the ‘heart strangely warmed,’ which is hearts changed, sanctification,” said Emily Allen, an Asbury seminary student and a delegate to the General Conference. “There’s a line I love from the Methodist communion liturgy: freed for joyful obedience. That is such a joyful thing! We need to have our hearts transformed.”
Jeff Kelly, pastor of the largest Global Methodist church in Nebraska, said he sensed the Holy Spirit changing hearts during the legislative sessions in Costa Rica.
“I’m seeing an injection of grace—that Wesleyan gift of grace,” he said.
It made him think that the new denomination might put an emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification, Kelly said. That idea could be reclaimed as the key Wesleyan distinctive.
“I think John Wesley called it the Methodist depositum,” he said. “After you’re saved, you’re not done. God is still bringing change.”
Seedbed, a publisher specializing in Wesleyan literature, currently lists two books on sanctification among its best-selling titles.
The publisher also released a hymnal specifically for the convening General Conference. Editor Sterling Allen, a Global Methodist minister at a church in Houston, called it “a curated renewal of Charles Wesley’s most beloved hymns” that he hoped would serve as “a catalyst for repentance and renewal, a celebration of the joyous proclamation of the gospel, and an outpouring of the Spirit.” It includes 58 hymns on sanctifying grace, including “Spirit of Faith, Come Down,” “What is Our Calling’s Glorious Hope,” “Lord, Fill Me with a Humble Fear,” and “O Joyful Sound of Gospel Grace!”
Seedbed is also reprinting Methodist texts as pocket-sized tracts. One is John Wesley’s On Perfection. Another is The Character of a Methodist, where the founder of the movement writes that “Methodists are continually offering their whole selves to God … holding back nothing but giving all to increase the glory of God in the world.”
On the final day of the General Convention, the Global Methodists voted to change their mission statement to put more of an emphasis on sanctification. The original mission statement, put in place by transitional leadership, said the church’s goal was “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”
David Watson, New Testament professor at United Theological Seminary and lead editor at Firebrand, said it seemed too generic to him. That mission statement would work for any evangelical megachurch—but wasn’t specifically Wesleyan.
With input from Paul Lawlor, a pastor in Memphis, and Jason E. Vickers, a professor at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor, Watson proposed an alternative. The new mission statement said, “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.”
It passed overwhelmingly.
“What I’ve tried to do is keep us theologically grounded so we don’t lapse into mere pragmatism but stay Methodist,” Watson said. “What’s at stake is our identity as Methodists. … For us, the heart of it all is sanctification.”
The post ‘It’s Okay to Say We’re Born Again’ 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.
by | Sep 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
Devastating hundreds of miles from the Florida Gulf Coast to Georgia to the mountains of North Carolina, Hurricane Helene has created a complicated equation for Christian organizations that are on the frontline of disaster response.
“In my more than 20 years of disaster experience, I can’t think of a time when such a large area was at risk,” Jeff Jellets, the disaster coordinator for The Salvation Army’s work in the South, said in a statement.
Samaritan’s Purse chief operating officer Edward Graham told CT that the organization had to call in equipment and volunteers from its Canadian arm for its hurricane response and even had to adjust some of its overseas work. Just for this disaster, Samaritan’s Purse is operating in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.
“We’re running at max capacity for our domestic response,” Graham said. But he added, “Logistically, God has given us the resources and the talent to navigate.”
Still, Christian relief organizations—partnered with local churches—were working on bringing help to the most difficult-to-reach places. In western North Carolina, where record-setting flooding destroyed roads and other infrastructure, mountain communities, including the city of Asheville, were difficult to access.
On Monday, Samaritan’s Purse was setting up an emergency field hospital in North Carolina’s Avery County, a rural area in the Appalachians where search and rescue teams were conducting operations in mountain towns and remote valleys.
The field hospital will function as an emergency room alongside the local hospital in anticipation of an influx of patients from rescue operations. More than 100 have died in the storm.
Graham also said a Samaritan’s Purse helicopter dropped food and water to stranded students at Lees McRae College in the mountains of North Carolina. He said he alerted the North Carolina National Guard that the school would need Chinook helicopter evacuations, and the military airlifted students out on Sunday.
The disaster had engulfed Samaritan’s Purse’s own headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, and its staff were reeling from losing homes in the storm.
The disaster also hit personally for the Graham family in Montreat, North Carolina, where evangelist Billy Graham raised his children. Edward Graham, Billy Graham’s grandson, serves on the board of Montreat College, a Christian college in the same area which also suffered significant damage. Graham said he didn’t know the state of the family home, but he couldn’t give that his attention: “My grandfather lives in heaven.”
“It’s not that there is a lack of supplies and desire to help,” said Amanda Held Opelt, an author and songwriter who worked for Samaritan’s Purse for a decade. She lives in a rural area near Boone called Meat Camp and has family in the surrounding Appalachian hollers.
The only road into Meat Camp is gone, and Opelt knows a pregnant woman who is due soon and stranded. “What we need is a thousand engineers with bridge-building capabilities to get here,” she said.
Graham noted that flooding in a flat plain is one thing, but they were seeing “the power of water in a valley.”
Opelt noted the resilience of people in Appalachia and the small local churches there, cut off from the world but checking on each other and bringing water for the sick and elderly. She was able to navigate into the small Appalachian community of Bakersville, North Carolina to check on her two aunts.
“They were sitting there eating saltines and vegetables from their garden and washing their bloomers in the creek,” she said. “I started crying when I saw them.”
The most extensive death and destruction is in North Carolina, but communities in Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida are also dealing with destroyed homes and infrastructure.
After the storm, some churches in heavily hit areas met outside to worship on Sunday, locals reported. But some church members and leaders couldn’t communicate with each other at all because of compromised cell service. And others focused on distributing water and food from their properties, which became natural community gathering points.
The Salvation Army quickly deployed 14 mobile units to provide thousands of meals in Florida and Georgia.
Send Relief, the disaster response arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has 23 response sites set up in six states to respond to Helene, providing food and organizing debris removal and hot showers.
Convoy of Hope, a faith-based disaster response organization that partners with local churches, arrived with supplies in Perry, Florida, on Sunday. Three hurricanes have hit Perry in the last year. The organization was sending supplies on Monday to Morganton, North Carolina; Tampa Bay, Florida; and Augusta, Georgia.
Local organizations and churches have gotten to work as well. Baptist churches in western North Carolina were distributing water, the biggest need in the area.
Evangelical climate scientists warn that local churches and relief organizations will have to adjust to a new normal of these types of super-charged weather events in unexpected places.
Jessica Moerman is a climate scientist and the CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network. She’s also from Knoxville, Tennessee, near the areas devastated. Her family members lost a home in the 2016 wildfire in nearby Gatlinburg.
“What we’ve seen over the last few years is that we’re just in a new normal,” she said. “We’re seeing it across the Southeast and across Appalachia—small towns saying, ‘This is like nothing we’ve seen before.’”
Moerman explained how seawater warming due to climate change made these storms worse. With Helene, warmer gulf waters meant the storm held more water in the atmosphere and had the strength to go further inland and dump historic rain on western North Carolina—a place so far inland that few would expect it to be vulnerable to hurricanes.
The warm seawater is “rocket fuel that makes these storms stronger and more intense,” she said. “The hurricane has so much more energy, it can travel farther … It’s really, really heartbreaking.”
Christian disaster relief organizations will have to prepare for a situation “where we are expecting worse storms than we’ve ever experienced in the past and expecting to experience them again.”
Organizations responding now are focused on people are still missing from the storm, and staff noted that first responders in these areas are still having issues with communication and are battling their own fatigue.
Graham said Samaritan’s Purse would stay in the disaster areas for the duration.
“This is going to be a very long recovery,” he said. “We do not leave the community till it’s done.”
The post Widespread Helene Misery Stretches Christian Relief Groups appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
The high season of American politics is here. Stomachs are knotted. Electoral trend lines undulate. Betting markets tremble.
And what of the American church? Many of us are trembling too: with fear, with rage, with anticipation of whatever may be in store for us in Washington—and in our own kitchens and sanctuaries.
A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine here at CT wrote an article pertaining to politics, and the online backlash was furious. The social media responses crossed every prudential line in Proverbs; they would have made Martin Luther blush.
And it didn’t come from social media bots, machines programmed to automate inhumanity. The names of many respondents were familiar. They weren’t computers; they were Christians. It was us.
When I say “us,” I don’t mean that you are personally sniping on social media; I know I’m not. Rather, I mean that the precepts I offer below are not—cannot be, if they’re of any use—reflections and guidance loftily directed at those people, the Christians who embarrass and frustrate and confound us.
The way we get through this next month and the months to come with any semblance of Christian love and unity is to copy Paul in 1 Timothy: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1:15). And not just to say it, but to mean it.
To that end, here are 25 precepts for an election year:
A Christian’s opposition to Candidate X does not entail her support for Candidate Y. It does not entail it by implication or in practice. To insist otherwise against the protests of your sibling in Christ is to embrace dissension and slander.
You can critique a fellow Christian’s politics without questioning his faith, and both of you should be able to hear the difference.
Your critique of a fellow Christian’s politics may well include reminding her of the commitments and obligations of her faith.
Your critique of a fellow Christian’s politics may never persuade him. At a political impasse with a sibling in Christ, mutual forbearance and grace is usually a better way forward than ongoing argument. What better things could you each be doing with your time?
There is a line across which a Christian’s politics might justifiably cast doubt on her profession of faith. The line may not be where we assume it to be.
That line may even be different for different Christians in different times, places, and stages of sanctification, for God does not address our every sin, error, and weakness at once.
Some of us may need more courage of our convictions, especially if we find ourselves a religious, political, or cultural minority in our churches and wider communities.
But most of us, in this brash and hasty culture, are more likely to need forbearance and grace for those we believe to be less spiritual, moral, intelligent, or knowledgeable than ourselves.
Forbearance isn’t tolerance. Grace is not condescension.
Nor are forbearance and grace indecision and cowardice.
Remember 1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.”
Lasting political disagreement among Christians is not by itself evidence of sin, unbelief, or any other dysfunction. Reasonable, faithful Christians may in good faith reach different conclusions. They may all have solid biblical support for their views; they may all seek the common good; they may all seek to love their neighbors; they may always disagree.
Your voting choices are constrained by the realities of our electoral system. You can vote third party or write in a name, but don’t pretend these are politically viable candidates when they are not.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide to only seriously consider viable candidates.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide that viability is less important than ethical and policy alignment.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide not to vote: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help” (Psalm 146:3, KJV).
Hope is a Christian virtue; wishful thinking is not.
Wisdom is a Christian calling; cynicism is not wise.
No candidate is owed your vote. Not even if you believe you have a duty to vote. Not even if you’re registered to one party or another. Not even if you live in a swing state.
With some exceptions, down-ballot votes—especially for state and local officials, judges, and ballot initiatives—will have more frequent and more tangible effects on your life and those of your neighbors than votes for president.
This is probably not the most important election of your lifetime. If it is the most important election of your lifetime, you can’t know that in real time. You may be able to make that assessment 5 or 10 or 20 years hence, but you cannot know now.
Your vote is not passed along to the candidates with an explanatory note. The candidates do not know you felt conflicted or were strategically voting to change the direction of the opposing party. They only know they have won with the support of however many thousands or millions of Americans, and they will act in those voters’ name—that is, in your name.
What you do in the privacy of the voting booth is your own business and may be kept secret. But if you find yourself hesitant or ashamed to share how you voted, ask yourself why.
All told, your individual vote is of negligible import in determining the electoral outcome or the future of the country. It may be of substantial spiritual import for you.
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–9).
Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.
The post 25 Precepts for This (and Every) Election appeared first on Christianity Today.
by | Sep 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
For a time when I was a child, I wanted nothing unless it was grilled cheese—without the bread. My loving parents accommodated me by placing a special order when we went to restaurants. Eventually, I became a vegetarian after making the connection between the animals I professed to love and what was on my plate.
By the time I was a teenager, I ate a greater variety of dishes. But pickiness had given way to something more sinister. A friend and I ate burgers and fries, then guiltily pooled our money to buy a diet product called Trim Gum. My problematic relationship with food escalated after I left home for boarding school, an ocean away from my family. I went to great lengths to mask the fact that I had started throwing up after every meal.
Many factors contributed to my bulimia. I was a mixed-race girl who had grown up in Hong Kong, where grown-ups pinched children’s cheeks and openly body-shamed others. Supermodels reigned supreme in ’90s pop culture, enforcing waifish beauty standards. It didn’t help that I aspired to be a ballerina. Decades later, I’d learn of the link between disordered eating and neurodivergence; it’s common for autistic people like me to struggle with food in one way or another.
Into all this reached the loving arms of God. My illness was interrupted by amazing grace and a youth group full of new friends who provided me with the community I craved. It was a beautiful but sadly temporary reprieve: Eating disorders are resilient. They can morph and return like the unclean spirit in Matthew 12. And this happened to me in the guise of fasting.
Scripture contains dozens of references to fasting. The psalmist fasts (Ps. 69:10); the prophets fast (Ezra 8:23; Dan. 10:3; Neh. 1:4). Jesus went without food and water for 40 days in the wilderness (Matt. 4:2). In fasting, we give something up in order to deepen our dependence on God; we remove a meal or a drink and fill the space they leave behind with prayer.
But there are physical, mental, and social implications to fasting that can add up to major problems for anyone who has struggled with disordered eating. “When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen,” instructs Jesus, “and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:17–18). For those with eating disorders, however, secrecy can derail recovery.
As a relatively new Christian in my early 20s, I took to fasting with zeal. It was mid-summer; I was training for a marathon and also undergoing a 40-day “Jesus” fast. I ran miles in the heat, then came home to shower and study the Bible, collapsing in an exhausted heap. I drank clear liquids but I did not eat. I don’t remember what I prayed for; I was simply interested in proving that God’s sustaining power was better fuel than food.
There’s no limit to the ways in which good things can, without care and community, distort into chaos and destruction. Neither the body nor the brain works as God intended unless they are cared for as God intended.
As a fit young person, there would be a delay before I felt the long-term physical consequences of this extreme deprivation. It was the psychological effects that first became apparent. Research shows that the quality and quantity of nutrition directly affect our brain’s neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers responsible for every facet of functioning. I was starving and dehydrated, and I quickly lost my grip on reality.
My descent into irritability and paranoia lasted a few short weeks; it ended when I landed in the local ER after a serious self-inflicted injury. The recovery process since has been an uphill slog. It’s taken years—and it’s taken supernatural levels of loving support from others.
For the first 15 years of my eating disorder recovery, I agreed with my husband: I would not fast. Not during Lent. Not during special times of prayer. I’d come to God in other ways: by reading the Bible and books on theology, listening to podcasts, and taking walks in nature.
On one hand, this wasn’t difficult. People tend to afford fasting (or its absence) some privacy.
On the other hand, it was difficult. The desire to fast never left me. I battled faulty logic, wanting to blame life’s troubles on my failure to give up food and drink. It was hard to shake the idea that if fasting could bring about a breakthrough, then not fasting could be the reason behind any number of problems. As a matter of survival, I had to hold this tension.
My fixation with fasting was more than an eating disorder running into hyper-religiosity. It was what the poet John Keats called an “irritable reaching for certainty.” If fasting could make my prayers more powerful, then there was something I could do to get the outcomes I wanted from God. Not fasting meant giving up a measure of control.
Grappling with this, I stumbled upon the essence of faith. I remembered that the cross was an unearned gift. God’s loving salvation is unconditional. I was loved, even if I never fasted another day in my life.
You’re still here even though I didn’t fast? My prayers assumed a playful tone. Responding in kind, God proved himself as I completed my doctoral studies, a miracle I’d previously thought impossible without fasting. I got on with my life, banking all my faith in a grace that exists in spite of failure.
Instead of fretting about eating or not eating, I allowed God to engage me with art and music. He nourished me with words of life from the Bible and great literature. He drew my family to a healthy church community where we contributed what we could while feeling safe to say no when needed. If the topic of fasting came up, I willed myself to disengage. When thoughts of spiritual discipline came with feelings of obligation, I sensed the Holy Spirit: I love you, don’t do me any favors. My recovery was centered on God’s unmerited grace.
That said, complete freedom around food is an ideal I haven’t yet reached. Instead, I struggle on, remembering Paul with the thorn in his side and the Lord’s words to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
This could be the end of the story: I opt out of fasting due to my complicated history with food. For two decades, this was my safe and appropriate stance. There is no shame if the same is the case for you or someone you know.
But in recent years, I’ve felt ready to revisit fasting. There is no overstating the importance of time, which has allowed for gradual healing and greater maturity. Twenty years on, my genuine desire for spiritual formation now grows safely alongside a stubborn commitment to mental and physical health.
This season unfolds under the watchful eyes of my husband, doctors, and therapist. Now, I compare fasting to exercise: It’s not compulsory, but it is beneficial when done for the right reasons and with proper care. People with physical injuries or disabilities might require special accommodations and should use them without shame. I have learned to afford myself the same grace in fasting.
Through experimentation, I’ve found some strategies that work for me. I abstain from solids only; my fasts are shorter; I use nutritional supplementation; I break fasts guilt-free if I feel my motivation veer. I try to let my hunger serve as a call to prayer.
There are new challenges too, such as feeding my family on fast days and being honest with my teens, who are still in their formative years.
I am on track for the 40-day fast I was interested in all those years ago, but the 40 days aren’t consecutive; I’ve been at it for two years already. I have faith that this is fine.
Fasting as a spiritual practice can bring numerous benefits as we heed the call in 1 Corinthians to glorify God in body and spirit. But access to these benefits is complicated for some of us. As we Christians press into spiritual formation, my hope is that we hold space for the community around us, made up of stories and recovery journeys that we might never know.
Jacinta Read is a writer, artist, and neurodiversity advocate. She serves as the Connections Pastor at Vintage Church Pasadena.
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