BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: October 2021

Friday, 29 October 2021

A Year After the Election, Trump’s Effect on Evangelical Churches Lingers

Political tensions in the pews have calmed, and another survey shows leaders’ Trump support yielded more positives than negatives for evangelicals.

Political polarization has subsided in most American churches a year after the 2020 presidential elections. But there are notable exceptions to that trajectory, and new research has found lingering effects of evangelical support for former president Donald Trump.

The remnants of tension are evident at congregations such as Seattle’s Downtown Cornerstone Church, where pastor Adam Sinnett has been surprised “at how challenging it is to really cultivate unity amidst [our] political differences.”

In the youthful, mobile, and tech-savvy church, members who “leaned more toward the far left and the far right tended to have the most difficult time in this last season,” Sinnett said, “and they also were the ones that gravitated away from the church.”

The Seattle congregation’s experience aligns with data released this week by Heart and Mind Strategies, a research and consulting organization. A survey of 1,000 US adults conducted in August found some remaining sources of political strife for evangelicals.

Around half of Americans believe evangelical leaders’ support of Trump hurt the church’s credibility. One in four say evangelical support for Trump reduced their desire to participate in religion. And among evangelicals, 33 percent say their leaders’ support of Trump made personal witness to friends and family more difficult.

The political strife the church has endured in recent years “shows the world that Jesus doesn’t really unite people like we say he does,” Sinnett said.

At Downtown Cornerstone, the political differences show up “in three primary spheres: personal relationships, small groups, and most pointedly around decisions ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3pTMykP

The Contentious Literary Family That Explains Global Anglicanism

How the dilemmas driving "The Brothers Karamazov" resemble those confronting the world’s third-largest Christian communion.

C. S. Lewis envisioned Christianity as a house with “a hall out of which doors open into several rooms.” The rooms are ecclesial traditions that offer disciples a fire for warmth, a chair for rest, and a meal for nourishment and fellowship, whereas the hall is “mere” Christianity, a place where disciples greet and gift each other with riches from their respective rooms.

Against tradition without tradition (nondenominationalism), Lewis encouraged Christians to find themselves in a room because “the hall is a place to wait in, a place from which to try the various doors, not a place to live in.” He adds, “I am sure God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do get into your room you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise.”

Lewis’s analogy has organized the shape of my Christ-life with remarkable clarity. My childhood and adolescence were spent in the hall, oblivious that it was a hall and unsuitable for the long haul. Only when I studied abroad and worshiped in the Church of England did I find a room—or it found me, satisfying questions that Lewis advises in our search: “Are these doctrines true: Is holiness here? Does my conscience move me towards this?”

The journey I made from generic evangelical to Anglican fits a recent pattern narrated by American theologian Robert Webber in his 1985 book, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail. The Anglican room welcomed Webber and other evangelicals, including myself, with six areas of orthodoxy that were “not adequately fulfilled” in our Christian experience: mystery and awe, liturgical worship, sacramental ...

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In Plain Prayer: Why Missionary Families Are Showing Love to Haiti Kidnappers

Response of Christian Aid Ministries and supporters reveals three Anabaptist distinctives that other Christians should find both familiar and thought provoking.

Like many others, we have been following the story of the 12 adults and five children associated with Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) who were kidnapped in Haiti on October 16 and are being held for ransom. The situation is difficult to contemplate, and we join countless individuals around the globe in praying for their release.

Unfortunately, circumstances in Haiti have allowed kidnapping to become all too common, routinely placing the lives of locals—and sometimes those of foreigners—at risk. But although the CAM abduction story fits a sad pattern of sorts, the official response has provoked queries from both religious and secular observers.

The nature and tone of CAM’s public statements and the prayer requests from the captives’ families have surprised many people because they have included prayer for the kidnappers and a desire to extend love and forgiveness to the gang members holding the 16 Americans and one Canadian captive.

Yet these responses did not surprise us. To be clear, we do not personally know any of those being held captive by the gang known as 400 Mawozo, nor are we privy to the private conversations of their relatives. However, the content of the public prayers and the calls to pray for the captives reflect deeply rooted Anabaptist dispositions that we believe the wider Christian community would find both surprisingly familiar and thought provoking.

From Ohio to the world

CAM is a relief and service organization supported by many churches on the more conservative side of the contemporary Anabaptist spectrum—plain-dressing traditionalist Mennonites, Amish-Mennonites, Dunkard Brethren, and not a small number of Old Order Mennonites and Amish. Along with Mennonite Central Committee ...

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Should Christians Participate in the Day of the Dead?

The Mexican holiday is more prominent than ever. Three evangelicals who’ve seen Día de los Muertos up close weigh in.

El Día de los Muertos, translated as the Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday also celebrated in many US communities. It has roots both in the Catholic observances of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days and in indigenous Mexican beliefs about the dead.

According to the ancient religion of Mexico, Day of the Dead traditions help the spirits of the dead return to their families, keeping them happy and forestalling the difficulties the dead could inflict on the living. Celebrations vary by region, but they have much in common: altars with offerings to dead relatives, skull-shaped sugar candies, marigolds, incense, votives, and food; candlelit cemeteries; tissue-paper cutouts; and calaverita (“little skull”) decorations everywhere.

CT asked Christians who’ve been in ministry in places where the Day of the Dead is celebrated, “Can Christians participate in good conscience? If so, how?”

Sally Isáis (Mexico City, Mexico): Christians shouldn’t participate at all, given the nature of the holiday.

Every mid-October before the Day of the Dead, my parents would receive a note from my Mexico City school saying, “If your daughter does not bring her part for the classroom offering, she will flunk civics class.”

My mother would say, “I am sorry, but as evangelical Christians, we cannot be part of this celebration, even if it means Sally will not pass the course.” She would then ask the teacher if there was any way that I could make up for not participating. Some years I flunked the course, and other years I was allowed to present another project. My peers were always upset that I would not do my part to decorate the class altar to the dead. My children had similar ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3BvHoO6

Should Christians Participate in the Day of the Dead?

The Mexican holiday is more prominent than ever. Three evangelicals who’ve seen El Día de Los Muertos up close weigh in.

El Día de los Muertos, translated as the Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday also celebrated in many U.S. communities. It has roots both in the Catholic All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days and in indigenous Mexican beliefs about the dead.

According the ancient religion of Mexico, Day of the Dead traditions help the spirits of the dead return to their families, keeping them happy and forestalling the difficulties the dead could inflict on the living. Celebrations vary by region, but they have much in common: altars with offerings to dead relatives, skull-shaped sugar candies, marigolds, incense, votives, and food; candlelit cemeteries; tissue-paper cutouts; and calaverita (“skull”) decorations everywhere.

CT asked people who’ve been in ministry in places where the Day of the Dead is celebrated, “Can Christians participate in good conscience? If so, how?”

Sally Isáis (Mexico City, Mexico): Christians shouldn’t participate at all, given the nature of the holiday.

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/3Gzk7yv

Thursday, 28 October 2021

We Need a Savior More Than a State

A Christian nation is not worth giving up Christ himself.

Years ago, a Roman Catholic friend lamented to me that he had to go to an evangelical church to hear “good old blood hymns.” He found it inconceivable that a church structured around the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Mass would be so reluctant to sing about blood.

He shared, though, that it was getting harder even at evangelical churches to hear bloody music. “Your churches get successful enough where they find it gauche to sing about being washed in blood, so they go with songs more spiritual and abstract,” he said. “But when you find the poor and the hurting evangelicals, that’s where you hear it: power, power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb.”

He said, “I know you all want to reach people—but it seems to me, when you’re choosing between comfort and blood, too many of you are making the wrong choice.”

I think of that conversation often when I think of the way many of us have grown alarmed by what’s sometimes called Christian nationalism—either in its more common and less virulent strain of “God and country” civil religion, or in the more explicit and terrifying ways we have seen Christian symbols co-opted by demagogic and authoritarian ethnocentric or nationalist movements.

Yes, this degrades the credibility and witness of the church. It grants delegated legitimacy to what the Bible itself denounces, and it turns the church into a captive servant to what can only be called an idol. What we often miss, though, is that what these nationalistic movements trade away is blood.

There’s a reason we see an American church riven apart by resurgent heresy trials. These inquisitions are far less likely ...

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How Ireland Legalizing Abortion Changed the Country’s Pro-Life Movement

Three years after repeal, evangelical leaders navigate pandemic politics to advocate for a more holistic approach.

On the first cold autumn evening in Dublin’s City Centre, more than 200 people gathered for a pro-life rally in front of Leinster House, the home of Ireland’s parliament, Dáil Éireann.

In the three years since a national referendum legalized abortion in the country, Christian engagement around the issue has shifted and divided, particularly in the midst of clashing responses to COVID-19.

Now, the country’s abortion law is being reviewed by the Irish government.

Megan Ní Scealláin, a leader with the nondenominational Life Institute, which sponsored last week’s Rethink Abortion rally, said it sent a “message to the Dáil to say that this review must examine the actual facts of the abortion regime. We don’t want a whitewash of reality, and the Irish people deserve an honest appraisal.”

The group is calling for a full assessment of the number of abortions which have taken place since the 2018 law: 13,243, according to official government reports. A mandatory three-year review of Ireland’s abortion laws is set to begin before the end of the year, with some politicians and abortion rights groups advocating for extended access, including the removal of the current three-day waiting limit.

Holding electronic candles and pro-life signs highlighting current abortion rates, demonstrators heard from Christian leaders, politicians, workers at local crisis pregnancy centers, and even the muffled pulse of a heartbeat in utero, through the help of a fetal monitor and microphone.

“It really does my heart good to see everyone out there on this cold night,” Ní Scealláin told the crowd. “We’re not for turning, we’re not for ...

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