books

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Lottie Moon's Christmas legacy: Hope and pain in the suffering church in China

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Lottie Moon's Christmas legacy: Hope and pain in the suffering church in China

The news reports shocked Christians worldwide, as Chinese police units demolished the giant Golden Lampstand Church in Shanxi Province early in 2018.

It was just the beginning, as state officials continued to level sanctuaries, destroy crosses, topple steeples and harass clergy. After another megachurch was destroyed last summer in Funan, in the Anhui region, authorities arrested two pastors for "gathering a crowd to disturb Social order."

But there was a different kind of news this fall, as the State Council of the People's Republic of China designated the Wulin Shenghui Church of Penglai, in Shandong province, as a historical site. For millions of Baptists this sanctuary is famous as the church home of the missionary Lottie Moon, who died on Christmas Eve in 1912.

"There's no way to know why China choose to do this," said Keith Harper, a Baptist Studies professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. He edited the book "Send the Light: Lottie Moon's Letters and Other Writings."

"Maybe we can be hopeful. Maybe the Chinese government sees this as some kind of positive gesture. That's what I pray for," he added. "Only time will tell why this happened and what it says about the church in China. … I do know this -- Baptists will care because this is connected to Lottie Moon."

Baptist historian Justice C. Anderson put it best when he wrote: "If they had a Pope, Southern Baptists would surely insist that he beatify Charlotte Digges Moon."

Lottie Moon died at the age of 72 on board a ship in the harbor of Kobe, Japan. She was trying to return to America for treatment of a variety of ailments, some linked to a near-starvation diet during famines in remote northern China.

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Phil Vischer of VeggieTales tries to tell the whole Bible story -- to kids

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Phil Vischer of VeggieTales tries to tell the whole Bible story -- to kids

The ancient Christian leaders who wrote the Nicene Creed never produced a scroll explaining the mysteries of the Holy Trinity to children.

This is not the language found in cartoons.

"I believe in one God, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of light, true God of true God, begotten not created, of one essence with the Father, through whom all things were made. … And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. …"

There is more, of course. Phil Vischer of VeggieTales fame knew that he couldn't tell the whole Bible story without discussing the Trinity, somehow. Thus, he put this puzzle at the start of "The Laugh and Learn Bible for Kids," his new 52-chapter Bible storybook targeting ages 6-10.

In whimsical Vischer-speak, that sounds like: "In the beginning, there was God. Just God. Nothing else. No trees, no hummingbirds, no whales, no bats, no kids, no grown-ups, no grandmas or grandpas, no caterpillars, no lakes, no oceans, no horses, no elephants and no frogs. Not even tiny ones. Just God."

Wait for it: "There is one God, but there are three persons in God. God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit. … I told you it was tricky."

Vischer chuckled, trying to explain this challenge -- sounding a bit like the Bob the Tomato character loved by millions of video-watchers.

"You can't do it justice. There's just too much," he said. "You can't say what needs to be said, but you can tell kids something like: 'This is a mystery that we can't completely understand, but that's OK. This is part of a big story."

Vischer knew that he wanted to produce a book that would be rather strange, in terms of bookstore sales options.

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

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How do some young Americans remain believers while living in 'digital Babylon'?

Soon after the Internet boom in the 1990s, the Christian consulting firm WisdomWorks obtained software that could run automated chat groups -- allowing anonymous teens to ask candid questions.

Mark Matlock and his team called the project "Wise Intelligent Guide (WIG)."

Tech-savvy young people were careful, often repeating easy questions over and over to determine if the "bot" was truly autonomous, as opposed to being operated by hidden adults. A typical user would then probe with relatively safe questions -- like "Does God exist?"

Finally, there would be the "actual question the teen wanted to ask, usually about sex, depression, suicide, or abuse," noted Matlock and Barna Group President David Kinnaman, in their new book "Faith for Exiles." Typical questions: "How do I know if I am gay? What does God think about masturbation? What happens to people who commit suicide? I had sex with my boyfriend; what should I do?"

That was two decades ago. Today, most teens would use their omnipresent smartphones and take these personal questions straight to Google -- a secular oracle offering guidance on topics that religious leaders often avoid.

"The church has bubble-wrapped itself in an attempt to avoid thinking about the truly disruptive forms of technology that are everywhere in our world," said Kinnaman, reached by telephone. "Most church leaders think they can just use technology as a way of reaching people. … They aren't looking at the real impact of all this on their people. It's easier just to look the other way."

Meanwhile, practical decisions on tough lifestyle and religious questions often have long-term consequences.

Religious leaders have been forced -- after waves of Pew Research Center polling -- to acknowledge the surge in Millennial Americans (born 1981-1996) who now identify as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular" when asked about religion. In a 2019 update, Pew noted that 40% of Millennials are "nones."

The goal of the "Faith for Exiles" study was to find patterns among young Americans (18 to 29 years of age) who were raised as Christians.

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Law professor Phillip E. Johnson -- A rare Christian apologist from Cal Berkeley

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Law professor Phillip E. Johnson -- A rare Christian apologist from Cal Berkeley

Phillip E. Johnson was doing what a University of California at Berkeley law professor was supposed to do during a mid-career sabbatical.

The former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren had punched the academic clock -- hard -- and earned tenure. Now it was time to pause and look ahead after a divorce and his disappointing failure to land a judicial appointment. He had also converted to Christianity.

Visiting a London bookstore, he purchased "The Blind Watchmaker" by atheist Richard Dawkins of Oxford. Blitzing through that book led straight to another, Michael Denton's "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis." Johnson was no scientist, but he was fascinated by the rhetoric being used to crush debates about Darwinism.

"As a student of legal argument, I knew that how you state questions almost always determines the answers that you get," Johnson told me, during a 2002 conference at Palm Beach Atlantic University (where I was teaching at that time). "I knew that if I jumped into this fight it would take over my life. I would have people firing at me from all sides. It would cause incredible complications for me at Berkeley. 

"It would change everything. That was irresistible, of course."

Johnson found these kinds of debates irresistible, right up until his death on Nov. 2 at age 79, after years of struggles caused by two strokes.

Through it all, his goal was to "united the divided and divide the united, especially when the united were smug elites who felt no need to defend what they claimed to believe. … Christian elites of that kind bothered him just as much, if not more, than all the others," said philosopher John Mark Reynolds, president of The Saint Constantine School in Houston.

"We once joked that if all of the causes we were backing ended up winning, he would probably change sides -- since the odds were good we would become insufferable, like everybody else."

As a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, Johnson had zero insecurity about his skills in intellectual combat. He was an academic samurai brave enough to air his heretical ideas about Darwin in a faculty-lounge forum a year after his London sabbatical. His Berkeley colleagues were not amused.

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After wrestling with sorrow and cancer, Anne Graham Lotz inches back into ministry

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After wrestling with sorrow and cancer, Anne Graham Lotz inches back into ministry

Anne Graham Lotz has done her share of thinking about the past, present and future of evangelism -- which is understandable since her father Billy Graham liked to call her the "best preacher in the family."

But in recent years, Lotz has had other serious issues to think and pray about, while caregiving for her husband before his death in 2015 and then her own surgery and a year of treatments after being diagnosed with breast cancer. 

At this point, Lotz believes "that the Lord has healed me." Thus, she is inching back into public life. 

She has been doing lots of thinking about the health of the modern church in an era of strained family ties, a rising tide of loneliness and legions of online demons lurking on digital screens. Consider, for example, a sobering dinner conversation she had with the president of a major seminary, as described in "Jesus In Me," her new book about the Holy Spirit.

"As we conversed, he confided that the number one problem that he faced with students at his school was pornography," wrote Lotz. She was shocked and asked him to repeat his statement. "Was he talking about the men and women who were studying at his seminary in preparation for Christian ministry as pastors, youth leaders, music directors, Bible teachers, seminary professors and other leaders in the church?"

Yes, the seminary president replied. The problem surfaced when staff examined the online search files on computers in a hidden corner of the campus library that students assumed was private.

Lotz is still struggling with that image and all that it symbolizes. 

Thus, when asked about the future of evangelism -- such as the "Just Give Me Jesus" revivals she led from 2000-2012 -- she stressed that she needs to focus her AnGeL Ministries work elsewhere, at least for awhile.

"The key is whether people are actually trying to live Christian lives and touch other people," said the 71-year-old Bible teacher, in a recent telephone interview. "People need something larger and more authentic than having more social-media followers on some website. ...

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Define 'evangelical,' please (2019 edition)

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Define 'evangelical,' please (2019 edition)

There is no record that political pollsters in ancient Rome even knew that Jesus of Nazareth told a Jewish leader named Nicodemus that he needed to be "born again" in order see the Kingdom of God.

Germans in the Protestant Reformation embraced that "born again" image and called themselves the "evangelisch." Then in 1807, English poet Robert Southey was one of the first writers to turn the adjective "evangelical" -- think "evangelical" preaching -- into a plural noun "evangelicals." There was no earthquake in European politics.

But America changed forever when Bible Belt Democrat Jimmy Carter shocked journalists by saying that he had been "born again." That firestorm led Newsweek editors to grab a phrase from pollster George Gallup and proclaim 1976 the "Year of the Evangelical." Lots of politicos noticed, including a rising Republican star named Ronald Reagan.

The rest is a long story. 

"The news media and polling agencies realized that the 'born again' vote was a seminal political factor," noted historian Thomas Kidd, in a recent address at Wheaton College, the alma mater of the late evangelist Billy Graham.

"The Gallup organization," he added, "began asking people whether they had been 'born again.' The emergence of EVANGELICAL as a common term in news coverage of politics was a major landmark in the development of the contemporary evangelical crisis. … The media's frequent use of 'born again' and 'evangelical' connected those terms to political behavior."

More some evangelical insiders relished this attention, while denominational leaders and other mainstream evangelicals failed to realize that "they were losing control of the public's perception of their movement," said the scholar from Baylor University.

But one thing would become crystal clear, according to Kidd's new book, "Who is An Evangelical?" His bottom line: "The gospel did not make news. But politics did."

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A 'disruptive' new leader takes a powerful job in the Southern Baptist Convention

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A 'disruptive' new leader takes a powerful job in the Southern Baptist Convention

It's a long way from Storyline Fellowship in Denver's western suburbs to downtown Nashville and a publishing-and-ministry operation the locals have long called the "Baptist Vatican."

That's 1,165 miles, on a map. The cultural gap between the Colorado Rockies and Tennessee seems bigger than that.

Storyline Fellowship is the congregation that the Rev. Ben Mandrell and his wife, Lynley, started in their living room in 2014, helping it grow into a modern evangelical flock with 1,600 members in a revamped Walmart facility. That's the kind of challenge church planters accept when working as missionaries outside the Southern Baptist Convention's heartland in the Bible Belt.

Now the 42-year-old Mandrell has jumped from the SBC frontier into one of the most high-profile jobs in America's largest Protestant flock -- serving as the new president and CEO of LifeWay Christian Resources. That's the complex publishing, research and media company, with about 4,000 employees, that in simpler times as called the Sunday School Board.

Bible classes remain on the agenda, stressed Mandrell. But so are many other ministries that symbolize a new reality that all religious leaders will have grasp, one way are the other: The good old days of safe, predictable church work are gone.

"Not that we're not doing what we used to do" in terms of publishing materials used for Sunday Bible classes and other familiar forms of outreach, said Mandrell, in a telephone interview.

"But we're have to do so much more because America is getting so complex and diverse. … We have to keep asking our church leaders, 'What do you need us to provide for your tool boxes to do the work that you now know that you have to do?' "

This era of rapid change led to obvious changes -- including the series of explosions on January 6, 2018, that leveled the 12-story LifeWay tower, with its iconic giant stone crosses, that loomed over one corner of downtown Nashville. LifeWay moved to smaller, modernized facilities close to the Tennessee State Capitol.

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Karen Swallow Prior reflects on patience, suffering and books -- after being hit by a bus

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Karen Swallow Prior reflects on patience, suffering and books -- after being hit by a bus

While finishing her book, "On Reading Well," Karen Swallow Prior wrote a reflection on patience, suffering and the virtues of one of literature's less celebrated heroines -- Anne Elliot of Jane Austen's final novel, "Persuasion."

The link between patience and suffering, she noted, can be seen in the word "patient," as in someone who is under medical care.

"Suffering is not something that we do well in the modern age," wrote Prior. "It's certainly not something I do well. … Since suffering is inevitable in this world, it might seem silly to consider the willingness to endure it as a virtue. But while suffering is inevitable, we can choose how we bear it. Patient character has everything to do with our will, as opposed to our circumstances."

Days after finishing that book, the Liberty University English professor visited Nashville for work on another project. At the same time, she was involved in a national news story, speaking out as a Southern Baptist on #ChurchToo controversies swirling around Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Walking to an editorial meeting, Prior stepped into a Nashville crosswalk and was hit by a bus. That was a year ago.

This wasn't a story about a fictional character, with mental images and lessons that could be filed away. This suffering was real, with stabbing pains and scars linked to fractures in her spine, shoulder, ribs and pelvis -- now steadied by a large titanium screw.

But the point of "On Reading Well" -- including her meditation on patience and suffering -- is that great books soak deep into readers, providing wisdom and strength during life's twists and turns. In that book, Prior linked specific books to specific virtues. Prudence, temperance, justice and courage are "cardinal" virtues, while faith, hope and love are "theological" virtues. Finally, there are the seven "heavenly" virtues -- charity, temperance, chastity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility.

"Reading well adds to our life -- not in the way a tool from the hardware store adds to our life," she wrote, but "in the way a friendship adds to our life, altering us forever."

This is why Prior remains convinced that -- in an age of noise, confusion and intolerance -- it's more important than ever for families and congregations to help believers learn to enjoy and absorb great stories from great books.

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Hey preachers: Can you spot the God-shaped hole at heart of the 'Avengers' universe?

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Hey preachers: Can you spot the God-shaped hole at heart of the 'Avengers' universe?

As most occupants of Planet Earth know, last year's "Avengers: Infinity War" ended with the genocidal demigod Thanos using six "infinity stones" to erase half of all life in the universe.

It would have been logical to assume the sequel, "Avengers: Endgame" would start with lots of funerals, with pastors, priests, rabbis, imams and other shepherds working overtime to answer tough, ancient questions.

That assumption would be wrong.

"People are mourning, but they're going to therapy and support groups," said film critic Steven Greydanus of DecentFilms.com, also a permanent deacon in the Catholic Archdiocese of Newark. "What we don't see are grieving people in church or even at funerals. … We don't hear anyone asking, 'Where is God in all of this?' "

It's rare to hear the theological term "theodicy" in movies, but people who frequent multiplexes often hear characters suffer tragic losses and then ask, "Why did God let this happen?" The American Heritage Dictionary defines "theodicy" as a "vindication of God's goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil."

This God-shaped hole at a pivotal moment in the "Avengers" series offers a window into the soul of the Marvel Comics universe and the minds of executives who shaped most of the 22 movies in this giant pop-culture mythology, said Greydanus.

"We are talking about a major fail, and not just from an artistic point of view," he said. "This shows a stunted view of how most people on Earth live their lives. Even people who are not religious tend to cry out and ask the big spiritual questions when faced with tragedy and loss. That's part of what it means to be human."

Not that many consumers are complaining. In it's first 11 days, "Avengers: Endgame" pulled in $2.19 billion at the global box office -- the fastest a film has reached $2 billion. Many insiders now assume it will eventually break the $3 billion barrier, passing the current No. 1 movie, the environmental-fantasy epic "Avatar," at $2.78 billion.

Truth is, global-market realities now affect how many blockbusters handle explicitly religious and even vaguely spiritual questions.