BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: September 2020

Wednesday, 30 September 2020

Dr. Ibram Kendi, Amy Coney Barrett and Evangelical Adoption

Transracial adoption doesn't make you non-racist. But it doesn't make you racist either.

Over this past weekend, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, drew attention for his bold tweets in response to a since-deleted tweet of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s sister holding two Black children. Amy Coney Barrett herself has adopted two children from Haiti. He stated, in multiple tweets:

Some White colonizers “adopted” Black children. They “civilized” these “savage” children in the “superior” ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.

And whether this is Barrett or not is not the point. It if a belief too many White people have: if they have or adopt a child of color, then they can’t be racist.

After receiving pushback from other users on the platform, he further clarified his position:

I’m challenging the idea that White parents of kids of color are inherently “not racist” and the bots completely change what I’m saying to “White parents of kids of color are inherently racist.” These live and fake bots are good at their propaganda. Let’s not argue with them.

I am nowhere near the first person to critique his comments, but I would like to re-examine them in the light of the wider relationship between evangelical Christians and adoption, as well as my own personal experience as a transracial adoptee.

Does adoption make you “non-racist”? The short answer is no.

Dr. Kendi’s remarks are not about evangelicals in particular, but it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that his critique may have something to do with a religious movement that has unfortunately ...

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After the Allegations Against Ravi Zacharias

A look inside CT’s reporting and what this means for Christian witness and evangelism.

This week, Christianity Today published an in-depth report on allegations of sexual misconduct by popular apologist Ravi Zacharias:

Three women who worked at the businesses, located in a strip mall in the Atlanta suburbs, told Christianity Today that Ravi Zacharias touched them inappropriately, exposed himself, and masturbated during regular treatments over a period of about five years. His business partner said he regrets not stopping Zacharias and sent an apology text to one of the victims this month.

RZIM denies the claims, saying in a statement to CT that the charges of sexual misconduct “do not in any way comport with the man we knew for decades.” The organization has hired a law firm “with experience investigating such matters” to look into the allegations, which date back at least 10 years. RZIM declined to answer any further questions about the inquiry.

This week on Quick to Listen, we discuss this story with Daniel Silliman, the journalist who wrote it. He joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how he went about reporting this story, what makes this story unique from other stories of other fallen Christian leaders, and why CT reports bad news on Christian leaders, even after they have passed away.

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Follow our hosts on Twitter: Morgan Leeand Ted Olsen

Why we report bad news about leaders: A note from the editors on the Ravi Zacharias investigation

Follow our guest on Twitter: Daniel Silliman

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Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Leeand Matt Linder

The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola

Highlights from Quick to Listen: Episode #232

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Making Your Church Manlier Won’t Make It Bigger

History tells us that denominational growth has nothing to do with sex ratios in the pews.

“There’s a crisis of men in the church.” You’ve undoubtedly heard this said in various iterations at various times. Mark Driscoll, former pastor of the now-disbanded male-dominated Mars Hill Church in Seattle, often made claims like “The problem with the church today … it’s just a bunch of nice, soft, tender, chick-ified church boys,” or “sixty percent of Christians are chicks and the forty percent that are dudes are still chicks.”

The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson has also tapped this nerve among Christian men. Most recently, Owen Strachan, director of the Center for Public Theology, kicked up this perennial conversation with a podcast and related tweet on the nature of manhood.

As the argument goes, “Where men go, churches grow,” or, alternatively, “Where men lead, women follow,” both implying that having a large number of women is bad for church growth. Scores of articles and books on the demise of Christian masculinity have cropped up, from David Murrow’s Why Men Hate Going to Church to Leon Podles’ The Church Impotent, creating a veritable industry advancing the idea that Christian manhood is under threat. The book sales have been impressive, so the ideas must be sound, right?

Wrong. It turns out that Christianity is no more “feminized” today than it was 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 300 years ago, a thousand years ago, or even in the first century of the church. Those who argue that church growth depends on special, male-focused activities—or especially “masculine” programming—mistake the historic record of the church and also imperil the church’s historic teachings on sex.

Ancient ...

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Should Christians Join Burkina Faso’s Militias Against Terrorism?

As Mali experiences a coup amid sputtering West African campaign against jihadist threat, Burkinabe citizens join the fight themselves.

What should Christians do when their government cannot protect them from terrorism? As the world’s first post-coronavirus coup shakes Mali, nearby Burkina Faso is experimenting with a controversial lesson in self-defense.

Last month, a cohort of army officers deposed Mali’s president following widespread protests against economic and security conditions. While the coup has been condemned by regional leaders—placing the West African nation under sanctions—initial indications suggest Christians have been respected and consulted in the majority-Muslim nation’s transitional process.

Coup leaders have stated they will respect the fraying peace deal reached with local rebels in 2015, but will also continue to work with the multinational efforts dedicated to stamp out the terrorist threat.

Back in June, former colonial leader France formalized an agreement to unify forces under a single command with troops from Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Last week, the United States announced $150 million in humanitarian assistance for 4 of the 5 Sahel republics (excluding Chad) to address mass displacement and food insecurity caused by the conflict.

To gain perspective on Burkina Faso, CT interviewed Joanna Ilboudo, secretary-general for ACTS Burkina, a nonprofit Christian association dedicated to helping the nation’s widows and orphans without religious distinction. She in turn took the pulse of local Christian leaders and laity on behalf of CT.

Located in West Africa’s volatile Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert, the Colorado-sized Francophone country of 20 million had been home to one of the continent’s model nations for peaceful coexistence. Around 60 ethnic groups divide ...

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LifeWay Sues Former President Over Tyndale Partnership

Thom Rainer led the Southern Baptist publisher for 13 years before retiring in 2019.

LifeWay Christian Resources has sued its former president, Thom Rainer, for allegedly breaching his severance agreement by publishing with a competitor.

Rainer claims he received “a written and amicable release from publishing” with the Southern Baptist Convention entity in October 2019, he discussed his publishing activities with LifeWay’s attorney and he “assumed all was well” until receiving notice of the lawsuit Monday.

Amid apparent disagreement among LifeWay trustees over the lawsuit, the board has called an emergency meeting Wednesday, Baptist Press has confirmed.

In a statement, Todd Fannin, chairman of LifeWay’s board of trustees, said board officers believe Rainer “has violated his Transition Agreement” and want him to honor it. But Jimmy Scroggins, the immediate past chairman who still serves on the board, told the board in an email he is “formally requesting for Todd [Fannin] to please withdraw our legal action.”

The lawsuit, filed Monday in Williamson County, Tennessee, chancery court, cites an agreement between Rainer and LifeWay upon his 2019 retirement that precluded him from having any business association with LifeWay competitors until October 31, 2021.

The agreement specifically listed Tyndale House Publishers as a LifeWay competitor. In August 2020, Tyndale announced a multibook publishing partnership with Rainer, which also includes video curriculum.

At issue is whether the Tyndale partnership violates Rainer’s noncompete clause.

In addition to his transition agreement, Rainer had signed a contract in 2018 with LifeWay to publish a book titled The Church Attendance Manifesto. LifeWay and Rainer agreed several months later to terminate the contract, ...

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Tuesday, 29 September 2020

Evangelical Vote Once Again Split on Ethnic Lines

And far fewer plan to vote third-party in 2020, LifeWay finds.

Evangelicals seem ready to cast their ballots in the 2020 election. Nine in 10 evangelicals by belief are registered to vote, and few are undecided about their presidential choice.

A new survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research conducted September 9–23 finds President Donald Trump with a sizable lead over Democratic nominee Joe Biden among likely voters with evangelical beliefs. Deep divides, however, persist among evangelicals across ethnic lines.

Overall, 61 percent of evangelicals by belief plan to vote for Trump and 29 percent for Biden. Other candidates garner around 2 percent combined. Fewer than 1 in 10 (8%) are undecided.

Evangelicals by belief are also twice as likely to identify as a Republican (51%) than a Democrat (23%). One in five (20%) say they are independent.

“Voting for or against an incumbent president is a more certain situation for voters,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. “Fewer Americans, including those with evangelical beliefs, are on the fence than at this same point in 2016.”

Presidential preferences

Voting plans for Americans without evangelical beliefs are almost the mirror opposite of their evangelical counterparts, with Biden holding a commanding 56 percent to 33 percent lead over Trump.

President Trump’s advantage among evangelicals, however, comes primarily from white evangelicals, among whom he leads Biden 73 percent to 18 percent.

African Americans with evangelical beliefs overwhelmingly plan to vote for Biden (69% to 19%). Among American evangelicals of other ethnicities, however, Trump has a 58 percent to 32 percent lead.

Compared to a previous LifeWay Research survey conducted in the months leading up to the 2016 election, more ...

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The People of Praise, Charismatic Catholics, and Fringe Religious Groups

A brief introduction to the charismatic Catholics and People of Praise, in the news now due to Amy Coney Barrett's nomination.

People of Praise. You may never have heard of it before the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett––who is said to be a part of the group––to the Supreme Court.

You will probably hear that they are a far-right fringe group, but they are actually part of the charismatic movement, and a bit of history may help us to understand them better.

The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements

Charles Parham founded the tiny Bethel Bible School in the heartland of Topeka, Kansas, in 1900. While he invited "all Christians and ministers who were willing to forsake all, sell what they had, give it away, and enter the school for study and prayer," he surely had no idea that 120 years later to the month of its founding, the Pentecostal movement would have 600 million adherents and be arguably the strongest global expression of Christianity across the twentieth century.

Growing out of the larger eighteenth-century holiness tradition, that obscure beginning––including a watch night service December 31, 1900, where Agnes Ozman reportedly began speaking in Chinese–– was soon followed by manifestations in Houston, Texas, and the more publicized Azusa Street Revival in southern California. Soon, the movement spread across the nation and overseas. Denominations were formed: Church of God, Assemblies of God, Apostolic Faith, Church of God of Prophecy, and the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

And, these Pentecostals were also evangelicals. In 1943, American Pentecostal churches were accepted as members of the National Association of Evangelicals.

In the mid-twentieth century a new movement arose called the charismatic movement. In this movement, such Pentecostal practices as speaking in tongues ...

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