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I thought I needed to try harder at meditation. What I really needed was the Holy Spirit to enlighten me.  I’ve always wanted to be spiritual, but I have trouble believing things,” I said, smiling nervously at the robe-clad Zen Buddhism teacher. We were sitting together in a small room for a one-on-one conversation about my Zen meditation practice. He chuckled. “So, I guess Zen is perfect for you.” The year was 2011, and I was 36 years old. I had been practicing Zen Buddhism for three years and had traveled to Kentucky to attend my first meditation retreat, a weekend event held at a Zen center near Lexington. The retreat schedule was tough. We sat in meditation from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., broken up by short periods of walking meditation, meals, and chores. Everything was to be done in silence. Zen was the latest chapter in my lifelong spiritual quest. That quest had begun during my teenage years, when I realized that my Hindu ancestry—passed down by Indian immigrant parents—need not dictate my own faith. As I became aware of alternative belief systems, I realized that I was an agnostic: I honestly didn’t know what to believe. So I dropped the Hindu label and committed to discovering for myself the ultimate truth. Growing up in Houston, I learned the basics of Christianity through friends and neighbors. I also spent part of my childhood in the United Kingdom, where Christian prayer, hymns, and sermons were part of regular school activities. My Hindu parents always spoke respectfully about Christian beliefs. They would go (and encourage me to go) to church with friends when invited. But it wasn’t until I got to college that I came to know Jesus through my evangelical Christian friends. I observed how their faith gave them peace and strength during difficult times. And every time I heard about ... His engagement announcement reflects the complications of grief and celebration that Christians experience with second marriages.  Tony Evans stood before his Dallas congregation last week—with keyboards playing softly in the background and his four adult children standing behind him—to announce that nearly four years after losing his wife Lois, he was engaged to remarry. “God, in his sovereignty, has brought someone into my life,” the 74-year-old told the crowd, which broke out in applause. He introduced Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship to his fiancée Carla Crummie, a widow who had lost her husband around the same time as Lois’s passing. The announcement came with a sense of both somberness and celebration. “Pray for us,” he asked the church, calling it a “sensitive” and “tender” time. Evans had been married to Lois for 49 years before she died of cancer at the end of 2019, and the famous preacher described how she had been his partner in life and ministry. He told his church, “This may evoke some grief in some people, which I can understand, because we’re reminded about the fingerprints”—the legacy of his late wife. Christians who have lost their spouses know firsthand the mixed emotions that come with remarriage. “I’m more aware than most people of the reality of joy and grief that need to coexist in the life of a godly person,” said Jonathan Pitts, who attended the service along with dozens of ministry colleagues to celebrate Evans’s birthday. Pitts lost his wife of 15 years, Wynter, in 2018. She was Evans’s niece. “I was there to grieve with those who grieve but also rejoice with those who rejoice—to rejoice with Dr. Evans that he’s found love again and companionship, knowing that that tension is not a problem to ... As humanitarian aid—and Azerbaijan’s attacks—return to the Caucasus enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, religious freedom advocates debate the merits of emphasizing religion.  It was almost a good news story. After nine months of blockade, humanitarian aid finally reached the Armenian Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday. But almost immediately, ending three years of tense ceasefire after a 2020 war, Azerbaijan renewed on Tuesday its military assault on the mountainous Caucasus enclave. And following today’s surrender and promised disarmament of local separatist forces, the region will almost certainly revert to the sovereignty of a neighboring nation that Armenians fear—and a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warns—is preparing a genocide. Thousands massed at the airport in the capital of Stepanakert, preparing to leave. Advocates for Armenia are at a loss. But of the three aforementioned adjectives—humanitarian, Armenian, or Christian—which ones were most effective in pressing for humanitarian aid? And now in a new phase of the conflict, which will be the most crucial in mobilizing further support? CT spoke with six religious freedom experts about best practices in Christian advocacy. What compelled this week’s minor breakthrough? One week before the initial agreement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Aliyev to express “concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation.” According to the official State Department readout, however, neither the word Christian nor Armenian was spoken by the senior diplomat. Religion and ethnicity were completely ignored. But one CT source stated that Blinken’s outreach to Azerbaijan “ticked up” following the June visit to Armenia by Sam Brownback, former US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. And at a congressional human rights hearing on ... Christian aid organization says it is not and defends former director sentenced to prison in Israel.  Senator Chuck Grassley is concerned that World Vision International may have funded terrorism with US taxpayers’ money. The long-serving legislator from Iowa sent the Christian humanitarian aid organization a letter last month asking for answers to a number of questions about funding, current programs, and accountability. World Vision received $491 million from US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2022. “Congress and the American people deserve transparency with respect to the steps World Vision has taken to ensure taxpayer money is used as intended and not for illegal activity,” Grassley wrote. “Please provide answers.” The humanitarian organization told CT that it sent a reply to Grassley on September 9. On the larger point, the group is unequivocal: “World Vision does not support any form of terrorism.” The senator’s inquiry comes a year after a World Vision employee was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Israel. According to prosecutors, the former director of aid to Gaza diverted $50 million meant for hungry children and farmers to Hamas, which the US State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Little of the evidence used to convict Mohammed el-Halabi was made available to the public, beyond a confession that Halabi’s lawyers say was coerced. Four United Nations experts raised concerns about what they called “egregious” violations of Halabi’s right to a fair trial. World Vision continues to defend the former Gaza aid director. The organization says his conviction was unjust and the Israeli court’s ruling is “in sharp contrast to the evidence and facts of the case.” In 2016, the humanitarian aid organization ... Music experts say we don't need more "manly songs," but we do need to help lower voices find their place  The 1910 edition of the YMCA songbook, Manly Songs for Christian Men, has no foreword or introduction, just a brief explanation on the title page: “A collection of Sacred Songs adapted to the needs of Male Singers. For use in Adult Bible Classes, Y.M.C.A. Meetings and all gatherings of men for religious work and worship.” The first song is “For the Man of Galilee,” which opens with these lines:
The song alternates between accented, march-like sections in unison and four-part harmonies. The music gives tenors the chance to project at the top of their range, and the basses get to land on a resonant low A-flat at the end of each verse. It’s a rousing march in the tradition of 19th-century men’s choirs, once fixtures of many European and American communities. But today, if you ask leaders and pastors about the status of congregational singing in their churches, most will confirm that many men just don’t participate. Some blame musical style, some blame lyrical content, and others blame generalized “feminization” of the American church. Recent interest in the state of masculinity, explored in a raft of op-eds, books, and podcasts, has reinvigorated a perennial discussion about why so many men don’t sing in church. While there has been plenty of speculation about the “effeminacy” of contemporary worship music and its effects on men in churches, most men’s reasons for singing are not so ideological. The lower rate of musical participation among men likely has little to do with a dearth of manly marches in today’s churches. ... Even with his new faith coalition and bolder pro-life convictions, few evangelicals are stepping away from the former president and GOP frontrunner.  Ron DeSantis is putting his Christian convictions forward as he tries to gain ground with evangelical voters, who continue to favor former president Donald Trump. “I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God,” the Florida governor told hundreds gathered for the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit on Friday in Washington, DC, repeating one of his favorite Bible lines about putting on “the full armor of God.” “When you stand up for what’s right in this day and age, that is not going to be cost-free. … And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition. It gives you the foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you, ultimately doesn’t matter because you are aiming higher.” The summit came one day after DeSantis, who is Catholic, launched his Faith and Family Coalition. The group features endorsements from 70 pastors in the early primary states of Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. The coalition invites supporters to back DeSantis through “faith and prayer.” Trump still leads the GOP race by a wide margin—a straw poll of over 500 in attendance at the DC summit had the former president over DeSantis, 64 percent to 27 percent—but a slice of evangelical voters are being swayed by what they see as stronger character and tougher stances on pro-life issues from other candidates. “Former president Trump, despite all the merits and many good things he did, is relatively weak in comparison to other candidates, and especially governor DeSantis, on these issues, which are core issues for social ... Why the call to good works goes hand in hand with the free gift of grace.  I recently had a gospel conversation with an agnostic woman who is seriously considering the claims of Christ. On a purely intellectual level, she finds the Christian worldview compelling. She admits that Christian theism offers a better rational explanation of the natural world and a better grounding for moral virtue than the more rigid brand of atheism she formerly espoused. But a deeper, more existential issue bothers her still. Some years ago, when she went through a very public personal crisis, none of the people in her life who professed to be Christians said or did anything to minister to her. “I was very clearly crying out for help,” she said, “but none of the Christians I know offered to lift a finger—or even an encouraging word—to help me in my time of need.” Like many others in our secular age, this young woman grew disenchanted with a version of the Christian faith that is often talked about, but rarely lived out in practice. Like the apostle James, she could ask, “What good is it … if someone claims to have faith but does not have works?” (James 2:14, CSB). Unfortunately, many within American evangelicalism practice what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace.” Since Christ has “paid it all,” they act as if nothing is owed: no repentance, obedience, or service to neighbor. The authors of The Doctrine of Good Works: Recovering a Neglected Protestant Teaching seek to expose the flawed theological assumptions behind this type of negligent Christian witness. “Good works,” the authors insist, “are actually integral to the Good News.” Jointly written by a renowned systematic theologian (Thomas McCall), a New Testament ... The early church elevated females for their faith witness, not their fertility. We should do the same today.  Single women are having a rough go of it lately. Their growing numbers are blamed for the rise of “woke” politics, millennial selfishness, and even incel culture. In some Christian circles, single women are reminded (in case they forgot) to marry and have children, even with a gender imbalance among unmarried Christians, and even though they’re discouraged from dating outside the faith. It’s a numerical bind causing anxiety all around. Meanwhile, the single Christian women I know are trying to make the best of a complex reality. They seek to serve God with their daily work, invest in friendships and the church, and pursue creative and educational opportunities as they arise. Many of them also try to meet Christian men, dabble with dating apps, and pray. Their lives are both rich and imperfect. They experience cycles of hope and frustration. For most singles I know, their status is not for lack of trying, or for lack of honoring marriage as such. As sociologist Lyman Stone notes in a recent CT piece, when you ask unmarried Christians today, most of them say they want to get hitched. Even shakshuka girl said as much. You don’t have to be a Calvinist to affirm that God is present to every person wrestling with unmet desires and quiet griefs, and that God is working out his plans in times of social stability as well as upheaval, decline, and unprecedented change. Far more, people worried about the future of Christendom—or perhaps Western civilization and its declining birth rates—are called to remember the primary way the church will be preserved through the centuries. In sum: It’s baptism, not just babies. After all, Jesus taught it’s not enough to be ... The Biden administration and the global church can do more to help the Chin people in Myanmar.  On Monday, we will hold a congressional briefing at the Senate offices about the worsening situation facing Christians in Myanmar, particularly the Chin people. We hope that the US government will determine the attacks on Christians in Myanmar as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that American Christians will speak out for their brothers and sisters in the country. Christian ethnic minorities in Myanmar (also known as Burma) have long faced religious persecution and ethnic discrimination due to Buddhist nationalism in the country. This has only worsened after the military overthrew Myanmar’s democratically elected government on February 1, 2021. Since then, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has steadily ramped up violence against its own citizens, firing on unarmed protesters in the streets of Yangon. By the end of 2021, it was waging an all-out war against civilians in the countryside. Historically, Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities have been the targets of the most horrific military atrocities. In 2017 and 2018, the Tatmadaw committed a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people that killed thousands and forced 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh. The Biden administration rightly labeled the Tatmadaw’s actions as genocide and crimes against humanity. Today, the Tatmadaw specifically targets Christians from ethnic minorities such as the Chin, Kachin, Karen, and Karenni. The Baptist World Alliance, World Council of Churches, Open Doors, and other Christian leaders have called for action on the military junta’s persecution of Christians. It is past time for the Biden administration to ensure accountability, protect Myanmar’s persecuted Christians, and provide support ... Their faith unrecognized by the government, local believers serve displaced neighbors seeking shelter and the will of God.  Local and foreign Christians have joined in relief efforts following last week’s massive earthquake in Morocco. Nearly 3,000 people have died, with more than 5,000 injured. Registering 6.8 on the Richter scale, it is the North African nation’s most powerful quake since 1969 and its deadliest since 1960. But far from the epicenter near the historic city of Marrakesh, gathered believers all had the same question. “No one ever asks of disasters, ‘Why did it happen to them?’” said Youssef Ahmed, a senior member of Tangier Northern Church, 350 miles away. “But when it hits you, everyone wants to know God’s will.” The house church service went much longer than usual. Although Morocco only recognizes Islam and Judaism as domestic faiths, local believers generally say the government permits them to worship quietly in their homes—under a protective but thorough surveillance. Alcohol and pork, forbidden by sharia, are also freely available in the country. About 15 percent of citizens declare themselves nonreligious, while only 25 percent express trust in clerical leadership. “We are not restricted in Morocco,” said Ahmed. “Just don’t be a nuisance.” The latest US State Department report on Morocco indicates that, while “undermining the Islamic religion” is punishable with up to five years in prison, there are no known cases of Christians running afoul of the law. But that Sunday, the former Muslims had other concerns on their mind. “Why did it happen? We cannot know. Was it because of sin? We cannot know. Was it a test, like with Job? We cannot know,” said Ahmed, who led the lengthy discussion. “All we know is that God allowed ... |
