This week’s Weekend Plug-in provides five takeaways from the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting in New Orleans. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) Pat Robertson avoided blunt faith language when facing the press during that high-wire political campaign. However, he kept blending subtle biblical references into remarks about economics, foreign policy and hot cultural issues. He knew fans of his daily “The 700 Club” broadcasts could break the code.
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(OPINION) There’s no evidence that hanging the Ten Commandments on school walls curbs rowdy youthful hormones. As a tool for improving schoolkids’ behavior, that’s a zero. If you absolutely felt compelled to post something Christian, why wouldn’t you post something straight from the lips of Jesus himself?
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(OPINION) Given the insistence of this party that it is based on Christian values, it is worth exploring what those values are, is there a coherent set of ideas that this party stands for, and how these values and ideas relate to something we could meaningfully call Christianity.
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(OPINION) Joseph Henrich credits the Catholic Church for our WEIRD culture: Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic. But he’s not Catholic. He’s an agnostic. He’s simply describing how we became WEIRD.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in covers the death of Pat Robertson at age 93. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) Members of religious minorities — especially Ahmadi Muslims, Sufis, Baha’is and converts to Christianity — may be accused of fomenting “sectarian strife,” spreading “misinformation,” “insulting a heavenly religion” or threatening “national security.” In regions controlled by Sunni Islam, rival Shia Muslims may face similar accusations, with that equation being reversed in lands controlled by Shia clerics, such as Iran.
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(OPINION) There’s obvious news potential in a poll about religious attitudes that covers 26 nations and with fresh data (collected between Jan. 20 and Feb. 3). Media chart-makers could have fun with the many numbers in the 40-page “Global Religion 2023: Religious Beliefs Across the World,” issued May 11 by Ipsos, the noted international market research and polling firm.
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(ANALYSIS) The International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance (IRFBA) earlier this month released a significant statement on the current worldwide persecution of Christians. It’s essence: Religious freedom is still comparatively neglected as a human right, and the ongoing persecution of Christians is relatively unknown.
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights testimony in the death penalty trial in the Tree of Life synagogue massacre. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(REVIEW) “Flamin’ Hot” portrays faith as a central part of Richard Montanez’s life and depicts his faith as real and important. Whether it’s his abusive father clinging to faith to cover up his previous alcoholism, or the strength that his wife gains from her faith, or Richard eventually acknowledging God’s hand in the good that has happened to them and praying together with his wife, Richard’s faith matters.
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(REVIEW) “The Secrets of Hillsong” uncovers Hillsong culture, abuse and Carl Lentz. The four-part documentary dropped on May 19th. Since Carl Lentz’s fall from grace due to his affair with Ranin Karim, many celebrity gossip and media voices have chimed in to tell Lentz’s story. For the first time since the scandals, both Carl and Laura Lentz tell their own stories in the documentary.
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(OPINION) Starting with a band of Anglicans landing at Jamestown in 1607 and then Pilgrim dissenters at Plymouth in 1620, various forms of Protestantism collectively dominated what became the United States. But the Religious Landscape Study from the Pew Research Center tells us the U.S. population is now only 46.6% Protestant.
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(OPINION) An extensive new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute finds that only 16% of Americans say religion is the most important thing in their lives. But what could 50 million gracious, merciful disciples do for this country today, if they really got focused on loving their neighbors and making peace and preaching good news instead of gloom and despair?
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This week’s Weekend Plug-in highlights the faith of the two newest candidates to declare for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Plus, as always, catch up on all the best reads and top headlines in the world of faith.
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(OPINION) Only 1% of New York City was “evangelical” when Keller arrived in 1989, and homicides hit 2,245 during his first full year of ministry in the tense city. Yet there was a “cracking in the ice” as immigrants from a variety of faiths poured into the city’s boroughs. Soon, many new churches were born.
Read More(OPINION) For generations, Indigenous people have been asking for objects taken during colonization of their traditional homelands to be returned. Some of the objects are sacred, but also many items are human remains. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples said human remains and funerary objects should be returned to the individual tribes.
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(OPINION) Because a key tenet of Quakerism is continuing revelation, Quakerism has become a safe place to explore spiritual journeys and learn what your own Inner Light is saying to you. It was the echo I saw between the early Quakers and the current seekers and the need I saw for an in-flesh community that led me to advocate for a workshop to explore those ideas.
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(OPINION) Many years ago as a consultant, I joked with colleagues about our tongue-in-cheek disclaimer for final reports: “We have not succeeded in solving your problem. We are still confused, but we are confused at a much higher level.” Generative artificial intelligence (the kind behind chatbots) has the ability to confuse us all at much higher levels!
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(OPINION) Lonnie Frisbee may have been largely airbrushed out of the Jesus movement history by some of his former colleagues because his personal story was inconvenient. On separate occasions, Frisbee was fired by Chuck Smith and John Wimber, and afterward was regarded as an outcast by the movement he’d largely started.
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