Why the Admissions Scandal Is Every Parent’s Problem

College bribery cases point to a common idol.

The recent college admissions scandal has all the elements of a sensational, headline-grabbing story: Rich and famous parents paying bribes. Coaches encouraging fabricated athletic success. Prestigious colleges caught in the crosshairs. And now the potential of class action lawsuits brought against some of our nation’s most elite universities.

While it’s easy to criticize the parents implicated in the scandal, my hunch is that most of us with kids under 30 have taken at least a few steps down the trail of overparenting. Our excessive parenting may not be as obvious and hopefully isn’t illegal. But a recent national study of over 1,100 parents of 18–28 year-olds showcases the common parental tendency to step in to improve our kids’ options.

According to the study, over three-fourths (76%) of parents remind their adult children of upcoming deadlines. Almost that many (74%) are scheduling doctor’s appointments for their 20-somethings, 15% have called or texted their child to make sure they don’t sleep through a class or test, and 8% have contacted a professor or administrator to discuss their child’s college performance or grades. No wonder colleges today are allocating personnel and developing policies to help extricate parents from their students’ daily rhythms and routines.

Over-involved parents of every stripe tend to focus on two outcomes—academic success and economic success, presuming the former leads to the latter. “Getting ahead” easily becomes an idol. For Christian parents, however, success is not the end goal (even if it is the outcome). Instead, we’re called to a simple-but-challenging counter-narrative: to help our kids grow in Christ, ...

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Missionary Opponents Misunderstand the Waorani Mission. So Do Evangelicals.

Some revere Jim Elliot and his friends as martyrs. Others revile them as oppressors. Both sides have an incomplete picture.

When news broke in November 2018 that missionary John Allen Chau had been killed while trying to contact the isolated Sentinelese tribe off the coast of India, debates about his methods and motivations erupted across the media landscape. Some critics argued that Chau behaved unethically in trying to contact an isolated people who clearly resisted interaction with the outside world. Some Christians wondered whether Chau had gone about his goals in the best way. But for many evangelicals, Chau’s death called to mind the 1956 deaths of Jim Elliot and four other missionaries after they had tried to bring the gospel to the remote Waorani people in Ecuador. Indeed, Jim Elliot had been one of Chau’s heroes.

Perhaps more than we realize, these reactions emerge from longstanding patterns in Western culture. American evangelicals have often celebrated inspirational stories of missionary sacrifice, while mission critics tend to revert to dark stories of colonialism and cultural imposition. Both narratives have been deeply embedded in American culture for more than two centuries. And both, for different reasons, are incomplete and sometimes misleading.

This is why we need Kathryn Long’s book, God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador. Long, a retired professor of history from Wheaton College, gives us the most thorough account yet written of the aftermath of the deaths of Jim Elliot and the other four missionaries. Mission critics may discover that missionary engagement with the Waorani was not quite what they had imagined. For different reasons, evangelicals may discover the same.

The Defining Missionary Narrative

A fascinating, complex, and thoroughly researched work, God in the Rainforest ...

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One-on-One with Jonathan Merritt on ‘Learning to Speak God from Scratch’ : Part 2

“Missionaries would do well to spend more time learning from their newfound communities as they spend trying to teach them.”

Ed: You talked a lot about the importance of learning to speak of God, particularly as you went from the South to NYC. How did that change impact your relationships in NYC?

Jonathan: When I moved to New York City, I encountered an unexpected language barrier. I could still speak English, but I could no longer speak God. I couldn't have free-flowing conversations on spirituality and faith because I was encountering people who practiced different faiths or none at all.

And even many of my Christian friends didn't quite understand my religious jargon. The result was that my friendships became more shallow. We might talk about the weather or sports or maybe politics, but questions of meaning and purpose and the inner-life were largely avoided.

This is actually the experience many Americans are having. According to a study I conducted for the book with Barna Group, only seven percent of Americans say they have a spiritual or religious conversation on a regular basis. That's shocking given that nearly 71 percent of Americans claim to be Christian. The vast majority of our citizens do not often speak about the spirituality they claim is important to them.

Ed: You tied these things into research and missiology, so those parts interested me. What points or research are most important to you?

Jonathan: I was surprised that so few Americans talk about faith for sure. But a lot of us are nominally religious, as you know. I figured that most "practicing Christians," which is to say those who attend church regularly, would buck the trend. But I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Only 13 percent of practicing Christians—that's 1 in 8—say they have spiritual or religious conversations on a regular basis.

I was also ...

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One-on-One with Jonathan Merritt on ‘Learning to Speak God from Scratch’ : Part 1

“Most Christians who speak God do so passively.”

Ed: Jonathan, you are (to quote Churchill) a “riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” When we first met, you were a teaching pastor at an evangelical megachurch, but I’ve seen you call yourself a “liberal Protestant” online. So, are you an evangelical, a mainline Protestant, or what?

Jonathan: Speaking of Christian words, you've used a lot of them here. As a result, answering your question requires a little bit of conversation and context, which I'm happy to provide.

I don't remember labeling myself a "liberal Protestant," but in many ways, that would be accurate. I've always been a part of the Protestant tradition, although I have a deep respect and fascination for the Roman Catholic Church and my spiritual director is a Jesuit priest.

Additionally, I'm somewhat liberal in many regards. I do not think that being a Christian means I have to dismiss the claims of science about issues like climate change or the origin of life, for example.

I wouldn't describe myself as "mainline Protestant" because that implies alignment with a church in a mainline denomination. I actively attend Trinity Grace Church in Tribeca in New York City, which is a Protestant church but not a mainline church.

People have also called me an "evangelical," and I've even called myself that on occasion. Defining what that means exactly is increasingly difficult. The meaning of a word has two parts: definition and connotation. The connotation of the word is synonymous with theological fundamentalism and uncritical Republicanism. I'm not evangelical if that's the case.

But by the best definition of "evangelical," which I argued at The Atlanticis Bebbington's ...

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Interview: Across the Globe, Contemporary Worship Music Is Bringing Believers Together

More and more, says scholar Monique Ingalls, it permeates nearly every sphere of evangelical life.

Contemporary worship music, as a distinct genre, has come into its own over the last 50 years. Monique M. Ingalls, assistant professor of music at Baylor University, studies this phenomenon as an ethnomusicologist, looking at the intersection of different social and musical trends. In Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community, Ingalls identifies five distinct types of “congregations” that worship together in song. Constance Cherry, professor of worship and pastoral ministry at Indiana Wesleyan University, spoke with Ingalls about how contemporary worship music has reshaped our understanding of worship itself.

Can you describe the different “singing congregations” you studied?

Contemporary worship music has a global profile, but it’s performed in a variety of local contexts, which means that it permeates many different spheres of evangelical life. In the book, I mention five distinct “modes of congregating”: local congregations, concerts, conferences, praise marches, and worship on screen. I try to emphasize how these forms of worship are interconnected and influence each other. Contemporary worship music bridges public and private devotional practices. It connects online and offline communities. And it brings a variety of personal, institutional, and commercial interests into the same domain.

For many believers, this music and the experience of participating in it have come to define what worship is. This is the music they sing during a Sunday church service. It’s what they belt out in a crowd of thousands at traveling worship concerts. It’s what’s on their lips as they progress down the street in a Christian praise march. ...

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One-on-One with Brianna Parker on African-American Millennials and the Church

The pressing questions shaping African-American millennial faith are issues of injustice.

Ed: How would you describe the state of Christianity and the church among emerging adults—18 to 29-year-olds—today? What are their biggest questions, concerns, or motivations?

Brianna: It is an exciting time in the church and Christianity for emerging adults. It’s not an easy time, but it’s exciting. The church has, far too often, been bandwagoners who have followed trends as opposed to blazing cultural trails. I’m hoping to see believers begin to invest in the work of entrepreneurs who want to lead and trail blaze in the tech world.

It’s also exciting because we are engaging millennials with unprecedented courage to help us to lead from their lens. The biggest faith question is “why?”. Why does my faith walk matter? Why can’t my relationship with God look different than others in the past? Why can’t I engage God and others in new ways?

I believe the biggest concern is authenticity. This is difficult for many to hear because it shines a light on the dusty corners of our closets, showing the parts we did not expect to be unveiled.

Millennials are motivated by the unknown; they plunge into mystery and paradoxes. The lack of limits and ceiling breakers are motivating and will benefit the kingdom.

Ed: You founded Black Millennial Café in part because you saw a glaring need for substantive research on the religious lives of African-American millennials. Talk a little about how your research meets this need. What are the pressing questions or challenges that are shaping African American millennial faith and relationship to the church?

Brianna: My research allows African-American communities, organizations, and churches, along with those interested in healthy millennial ...

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An Admonition from Chuck Colson: You Are A Symbol of Hope

The Charles W. Colson Scholarship was designed to equip former inmates for ministry. Here is Colson's message to the 2006 recipients.

Hi. I'm Chuck Colson. I'm glad to have this opportunity by way of this video to bring a message to all of you who are Colson Scholars at Wheaton. It's a great honor that you have been chosen to have this scholarship at one of the great institutions in America. I might just tell you a little bit of background on how the Colson Scholarship came to be.

Many years ago, a couple of friends of mine who were on the board here at Prison Fellowship got together and decided it would be a wonderful thing if they set up a scholarship fund just for ex-offenders to come to the premier Christian institution, Wheaton. And so they started this fund and it was unnamed. They came to me and asked if I would let my name be used with it and I said no, because I really was against this idea of Christian celebrities having things named for them. What it does is to exalt man instead of exalting God. And so I really resisted. Then when the program got started, Ken Wessner, who was really the guiding force behind this, and Jack Eckerd, who was a member of this board, very successful businessman, between them they made this possible.

Wessner came to me, and he said, "You know, it would be a lot easier for those young men and women coming out of prison to be respected on the Wheaton campus if they had your name. So I thought about that and prayed about it for a good period of time. And I finally came back to Ken and said, "Yeah, if something's going to be named for me, rather than a builder or rather than something that exalts the individual, I would like these men and women to be known as Colson scholars, because that means they've come from the broken background I came from. That means they know what it is to be broken ...

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