News, Opinion, Research, Books |
|
|
1. "Why Black Christians are bracing for a 'whitelash'" Newbell said she is optimistic about the possibility of change, but is carefully guarding her heart. In the past, she's been told her interracial marriage is an affront to God, witnessed frustrated Black friends leave predominantly White churches, and -- too many times to count -- been expected to prove that anti-Black racism persists in America.
"It is so detrimental to someone's faith when your experience, your reality, is squashed because it's not the other person's reality," Newbell said. "I have experienced that time and time again." ... "If they have made all of these gestures in the wake of George Floyd's murder, only to go back to voting for a man who embodies racial bigotry," said Tisby, the historian, "it will do more damage than if they had just remained silent." 2. "Kanye’s running for president — and his platform has a lot of God in it" “Let’s see if the appointing is at 2020 or if it’s 2024 — because God appoints the president,” West told Forbes. “If I win in 2020 then it was God’s appointment. If I win in 2024 then that was God’s appointment.” |
|
|
1. "Roger Stone is saved" When I called Roger Stone early Friday evening, he was in the midst of doing an online interview with an evangelical Christian leader. He let me listen in. It was, shall we say, a revelation. Until recently about as un-devout as a lapsed everything could be, he earnestly recounted for an equally earnest interviewer how he’d been saved by Jesus Christ at a Franklin Graham rally. “I stood up,” Stone said. “I accepted Christ as my savior. I felt like a cement block had been lifted from my chest.” His newfound faith had given him a ticket to eternal salvation and, perhaps, a stay-out-of-jail card. When Stone finished, he got on the line with me. “I know there is a lot of skepticism,” he said in the audial version of a straight face. “Who knows? A year from now you may be calling me Reverend Stone! What else am I going to do with all these white suits I own?” Like God, President Trump was merciful, Stone said. Trump was a man of “enormous fairness and compassion” and would lift the burden Stone was facing. “I had 29 or 30 conversations with Trump during the campaign period,” he reminded me. “He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t. They wanted me to play Judas. I refused.” 2. "Now is the Time to Stand with Dreamers: Evangelicals want Dreamers to be allowed to stay lawfully in the United States. The President should listen to them." DACA is not primarily a political issue for evangelical Christians: Dreamers are us. There are estimated hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients that are faithful members of evangelical denominations that comprise the National Association of Evangelicals. Dreamers are students on scores of Christian colleges, university and seminary campuses represented by the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. They contribute richly to churches and academic communities, and are indispensable to the educational communities they study in. 3. "Will Trump's Weakness Threaten White Evangelical Support?" When Donald Trump appeared on the political stage, he stood firmly in this tradition of militant white masculinity. Evangelicals knew he didn’t share their religious beliefs, but he embodied many of the characteristics they had come to equate with strong leadership. Within the framework of militant white masculinity, Trump’s crassness, misogyny, racism, his repudiation of political correctness and unwillingness to play by the rules paradoxically signified his fitness for the job. 4. "4 Reasons We Left the SBC" Although the SBC represents a diverse array of churches across the political spectrum, the denomination conducts itself in a manner that is extremely partisan. (i.e. Influential churches vocal about pulling funding from the SBC when Russell Moore spoke out against basic human decency issues regarding President Trump in 2016; Pence’s invitation and subsequent address at the SBC in one of the most polarizing political cycles of my lifetime; Al Mohler, the President of the largest SBC Seminary and apparent incumbent President of the SBC, using his public platform at T4G to endorse President Trump and reaffirm his personal lifelong allegiance to the Republican Party…and the list goes on and on). Hear this, the only people that don’t believe the SBC has a partisan problem are those who have some allegiance to the favored party. Everyone in the world looks and associates the SBC with the Republican Party. The minorities among you believe it to be true. |
|
|
1. "CLOSED DOORS: Persecuted Christians and the U.S. Refugee Resettlement and Asylum Processes" However, as the statistics and stories within this report demonstrate, the number of persecuted Christians to whom protection is available through the U.S. refugee resettlement program and the application of asylum laws has still been dramatically curtailed. With further restrictions on the near horizon, our aim with this report is to raise awareness and call the American Church both to prayer and advocacy for the persecuted. We also hope Congress and the administration will strengthen U.S. commitment to the persecuted through the refugee and asylum processes. 2. "Has Support for Donald Trump Hurt Christian Witness" When we zoom in and ask about support for Trump among “my friends,” the picture changes. The partisan split is still there, of course, but the efficacy of Christian witness changes based on friendships. More Trump-supportive friends nudge the respondent to disagree that Christian witness has been affected. It’s especially strong for Republicans, but even Democrats show some movement in that direction. The opposite is true as well – perceiving opposition to Trump among friends leads to greater agreement that Christian witness has been damaged. Opposition to Trump among their friends puts Republicans on the fence. 3. "New research suggests large families have made socially conservative views more prevalent" “People with conservative attitudes about how the family should look tend to have larger families (more children, more siblings), which makes these attitudes — like opposition to abortion and gay marriage — more prevalent across generations. New ideas can spread rapidly within a generation, as they have for gay marriage over the past two decades, but demographic forces push back against them.” |
|
|
U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom Hearing, Technological Surveillance of Religion in China, Wednesday, July 22, 2020, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM ET, Virtual Hearing, Watch Live |
|
|
"The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump – Feature Review" Published before this event, The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity is both fortuitous and prescient for our times. Organized in three parts (On Trump; On Evangelical Support of Trump; and, On Theological, Historical, and Constitutional Issues Regarding Trump), across 25 chapters, thirty evangelical leaders, representing Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, and voices from around the globe, examine, discuss, and analyze Donald Trump’s proclivity to place himself before the Lord as a man without blame, sin, or scruples of any kind. (And while there are certainly essays that also call out specific evangelical leaders for encouraging and supporting the behavior of Trump, the essays in this collection focus on the president.) No longer able to be viewed as a warning, the circumstances examined in this collection either happened just before the election of President Trump or during his current term in office. |
|
|
Sign up for this newsletter. |
|
|
|
|
