Its main rivals seek truth without transcendence, or justice without redemption. And both flatten the meaning of human existence. College and university professors in the liberal arts (humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences) are almost entirely left-leaning, liberal, or progressive, and this is especially true among faculty in the humanities and social sciences. The trend is even more pronounced in certain selective schools. Students who attend liberal arts colleges or universities often adopt more liberal or progressive points of view as a result of their education. There are many great literary depictions of this transformation and the ensuing alienation that…
Duterte tried a hardline policy. Marcos is prioritizing rehab. Christians point to Jesus. While running for office last year, Philippines president Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. promised to seek a new path to curb illegal drugs: Catch the “big fish” and rehabilitate drug users. “Let’s educate the younger ones,” Marcos said in a Taglish interview. “And those who are already involved [or already addicted], we should treat them. … We’re trying to formulate … the best way for the rehabilitation.” It’s a starkly different approach from his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who outraged Filipinos and the international community with his brutal…
Christians can love America—with all of its flaws and failures—precisely because we don’t expect it to be the kingdom of God. This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here. If any political idea in American life has proven itself over the past several years, I can’t think of a better candidate than the “horseshoe theory”—the notion that, at their extremes, Left and Right bend toward each other, sometimes as to be almost indistinguishable. One of the ways we can see this is in a bleak and darkening view of the United States of America. The question is not…
Jesus could end this crisis. His followers almost certainly can’t. The way to resolve the Israel-Hamas war is very simple, journalist Matt Yglesias recently explained. We could do it in just five steps: It’s great, right? I love it! Only—well, that third step seems a little tricky. And that’s the point, as Yglesias wrote at greater length on Substack. Obviously, the five-step plan is a joke. But it gets at something that so much commentary on this subject seems to miss—certainly in America, and probably elsewhere—which is that Israeli political leaders (to say nothing of the murderers in Hamas) are…
As limited clashes with Hezbollah threaten to expand Israel’s war against Hamas, local Presbyterians and Baptists suffer a battle not of their making. Rabih Taleb looked out from the pulpit at the 30 nervous believers gathered at the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Alma al-Shaab in southern Lebanon, located less than one mile from northwest Israel. One day earlier, Hamas terrorists had killed 1,200 mostly civilian Israelis 125 miles south on the Gaza border. That Sunday morning, Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia designated as a terrorist entity by the United States government, fired rockets into the disputed Sheba Farms enclave occupied…
Thousands of majority believers lost homes and churches in India’s worst ethnic conflict this year. Yet they feel “overlooked and despised” by both sides. On May 3 of this year, Koireng (identified only by his first name) first heard reports that an unidentified group had lit a famous war memorial on fire. As a Meitei pastor in Churachandpur, a district in the Indian state of Manipur, Koireng grew alarmed by the news that the arson had escalated into widescale property destruction. Tensions had been steadily increasing for weeks between the Kuki-Zo, a predominantly Christian tribal community, and the Meitei, Manipur’s…
New Pew survey of 7,000 adults explores the beliefs and practices of Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims and their affinity to Confucianism and Daoism. Christians comprise the largest faith group (34%) among Asian Americans. But since 2012, Christianity has declined by 8 percentage points. Meanwhile, the share of religiously unaffiliated people has increased from 26 to 32 percent over the same period. This is according to a new Pew Research Center survey of religion among Asian American adults who self-identified as Asian, either alone or in combination with other races or ethnicities. Pew conducted surveys between July 5, 2022, and…
The example of Jesus, the teachings of the just war tradition, and Hamas’s own words make this clear. By now you will have heard of slaughtered Israeli babies, seen the graphic video of a kidnapped Jewish teenager being pulled by her hair with what appears to be blood between her legs, read of the 85-year-old grandmother taken to the Gaza strip without her medicines to die alone and in great pain. By now you will know that Hamas terrorists have shot children, raped women, snatched infants from their families. By now you may have heard the account of one survivor…
Jackie Hill Perry, Sean McDowell, and others explain why they appear alongside speakers with different stances and when they’d refuse to join a lineup. These days, Christian speakers have to carefully consider not just what they say—but those they say it alongside. From packed-stadium conferences and denominational events to church retreats and ministry webinars, evangelical audiences pay attention to the names and faces getting platformed. These lineups can serve as organizational endorsements and offer followers an introduction to new voices worth paying attention to. But today’s evangelicals are also sensitive to theological shifts among the leaders they follow. If they…
Leaders want a seat at the table. Not all are sure about changing the Constitution. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia were not granted citizenship until 1963. And they were not counted in the census until 1967. To Brooke Prentis, the former CEO of the Christian social justice organization Common Grace, these numbers aren’t just dates and statistics. As a woman from the Wakka Wakka people of southwest Queensland, they’re a part of what she calls her “living memories.” Australia’s upcoming Voice referendum will be yet another milestone etched in Prentis’s mind. On October 14, the country will…
As terrorism leads to thousands of deaths, Palestinian evangelicals and Messianic Jews share astonishment, grief, and prayer for peace and justice. With at least 1,200 Israelis and 1,100 Palestinians slain, it is not simply the Israel-Hamas war’s stunning casualty total that has outraged the world, but also the brutality of Hamas. More than 200 youth were killed at a concert festival, villages and farms were raided and terrorized, and an estimated 150 hostages have been threatened with death if Israeli air strikes on the coastal strip do not cease. With such cessation unlikely, casualty numbers will most assuredly increase. Israel…
While we pray for peace, we need moral clarity about this war. Americans awoke this morning to reports of war in the Middle East, as the terrorist group Hamas attacked the state of Israel in unspeakably brutal ways. As our screens fill with imagery of fire raining down from the skies, of families grieving the kidnapping and murder of their loved ones, we know that—just as for our own country in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks—this evil day is just the beginning of what is to come. As we pray for peace at the beginning of this war,…
Three historic Arab theologians show how to explain the Trinity to Muslims and remind modern Christians not to jump straight from Augustine to Reformation Europe. When did Arabs become Christians? When I visit the United States and introduce myself as a seminary professor, I am often asked, very politely, about the circumstances of my conversion from Islam. As an Arab, they assume I must also be a Muslim. I answer politely, but poignantly, that I have been a Christian since the day of Pentecost. The Book of Acts details how Arabs were present to receive the Holy Spirit, along with…
From Istanbul to Marrakesh, disaster relief can help Muslim-background believers legitimize their faith. But first, say Turks, the church must be united. Help for Morocco is coming from Turkey. While humble in scope, the biggest impact may be on the church. First Hope Association (FHA), a Turkish Christian disaster relief agency that provided aid after the massive earthquake that struck southeast Turkey in February, was granted permission to assist in Morocco after its own devastating quake. A four-person team arrived in Marrakesh last week. Consistent with its Turkish policy, FHA serves all victims without discrimination, in cooperation with the local…
Believers weigh what the latest postcolonial name change discussion would mean for religious freedom and pluralism in the Hindu-majority nation. This month’s G20 summit in New Delhi gave rise to a controversy about a possible name change for the host nation, after the Indian government denoted the country as “Bharat” instead of the usual “India” on official guest invitations. This was a clear departure from political convention, and the ensuing debate focused on the need for a name change as well as the possible cost. The constitution of India, meanwhile, contains both names and uses them interchangeably. While the opposition…
The Kuki share ancestry with the Chin in Myanmar and the Mizo in India’s Mizoram, all of whom have a history of Christianity and turmoil. The ongoing attacks against the minority Kuki tribe by violent mobs in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur has brought attention to this mostly Christian people group. Since May, more than 180 people have been killed, hundreds of churches have been destroyed, and thousands have been displaced as the Hindu-majority Meitei people, who live in the lowlands, violently retaliated against the Kuki’s peaceful protests over efforts to give Meitei access to the hill land where…
The Biden administration and the global church can do more to help the Chin people in Myanmar. On Monday, we will hold a congressional briefing at the Senate offices about the worsening situation facing Christians in Myanmar, particularly the Chin people. We hope that the US government will determine the attacks on Christians in Myanmar as war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that American Christians will speak out for their brothers and sisters in the country. Christian ethnic minorities in Myanmar (also known as Burma) have long faced religious persecution and ethnic discrimination due to Buddhist nationalism in the…
[UPDATED] New religion survey of 13,000 adults across six nations examines conversion, karma, and compatibility with national identity. Among its neighbors, Singapore is a spiritual anomaly. Surrounded by deeply religious countries with overwhelming Muslim or Buddhist majorities, the island city-state is by some measures the world’s most religiously diverse society, with no faith composing a majority. Today, two out of three Singaporeans don’t see religion as very important. Yet the country has the region’s highest rate of conversions—including to Christianity—according to a special Pew Research Center study on religion in South and Southeast Asia released today. Singapore’s lack of a…
A Nigerian pastor refuses to live his life by this framework—and he wants to help the African church get there too. Godwin Adeboye saw something interesting where residents of Ibadan, a city in southwest Nigeria, were dumping their garbage. At one location where people left trash, the government had posted a sign saying, “Do not drop your refuse here. If you do so, the government will charge you.” In another spot, someone else had written a different message: “If you put your dirty material here, I curse you in the name of my family god.” “If somebody says, ‘If you…
Tribal hospitality demands feeding the 500. But believers pinched by poverty call for cultural changes that still preserve honor. To honor the dead in Jordan, one must feed the living. But in solidarity with the poor, leading Jordanian Christians are calling for a change in funeral customs. Shared with wider Muslim society, certain Christian practices are similar to Western norms. Upon the announcement of death, the bereaved family makes arrangements through the church to conduct a memorial service. The casket is then conveyed to the cemetery, where hymns are sung and the traditional “dust to dust” is prayed over the…
“I think there’s a theological argument there that we’re doing what God designed us to do by taking care of animals.” Three quarters of pet-owning Christians (75%) in the US have dogs, while less than half (43%) possess cats. That’s according to a Pew Research Center report released this summer. In religious breakouts provided to CT, figures showed that twice as many Christian pet owners (53%) only own dogs while less than a quarter (21%) exclusively own cats. About 1 in 5 (22%) own both. The numbers track with what veterinarian Nancy Moore has observed anecdotally at Christian vet conferences….