A Whole New World?
This is where World Opinions seeks to situate itself: precisely in that Protestant commentary market gap where incisive cultural analysis and neighborly love intersect, and the cultural falsehoods that lead our neighbors astray are clearly exposed for what they are. This is certainly my own goal as a contributor. It is precisely because not all Christians have the disposition or the calling to be culture warriors that wise volunteers are so needed. This is necessary work, and further, it is work that can be undertaken “objectively”—not because there is a Bible verse for everything, but because God has revealed himself by the light of nature as well as Scripture.
Evangelical magazine news rarely draws mainstream attention. Last year’s New York Times coverage of the split between Marvin Olasky and World was a notable exception. It was a well-worn narrative: The magazine had been “conquered by Trump.” The launch of World Opinions, a new section on the magazine’s website, by co-editors Nick Eicher and R. Albert Mohler was ostensibly a manifestation of this hard right turn.
As usual, the facts are more complicated than the story suggests. Senior reporter Sophia Lee resigned in Olasky’s wake, but she also contradicted the Times narrative on her way out, tweeting that despite the “terrible” headline, World magazine “had not gone MAGA.” It was further confirmed at the time that funds were not being diverted to the opinions page from the magazine’s straight reportage arm, which Olasky was deeply concerned to preserve.
Nevertheless, in a new retrospective essay, Olasky maintains that the past year has borne out his concerns. He laments the shift in priorities between the “old World” and the new “Culture-War World.” Where old World covered scandal around a figure like Madison Cawthorn, new World hasn’t touched his latest shenanigans. Where old World toed an establishment line on the pandemic, new World has run stories that Olasky frames as playing to evangelicals’ “anti-vaccine prejudice.” And stylistically, where old World prided itself on “understated prose,” new World columns “toss hand grenades” at the left. Old World was “conservative on some issues,” but it also covered topics such as homelessness and poverty, which Olasky implies would be intrinsically out of place in “Conservative World.” Given that Olasky himself writes compellingly on homelessness for the Discovery Institute—the conservative think tank where anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo first got his start documenting the gamut of homelessness and poverty issues—it’s not clear why he thinks this.
But the whole conceit of an op-ed page contradicts Olasky’s framework for “biblically objective journalism.” He defers to the Bible as the only “objective” source on matters it directly addresses. But on those topics the Bible does not directly address, he believes any human opinion is automatically “subjective.” Hence, he concludes that op-eds in these spheres are not the purview of Christian journalism.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t directly address a plethora of topics, including economics, immigration, gun control, contemporary American race relations, and pandemic protocol.
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Church Courts Aren’t Fun, but They Teach Us About God’s Goodness
Written by Andrew J. Miller |
Friday, June 23, 2023
Even when we disagree with how a case was settled, we must trust that God is working through his church. Even when the courts of this world leave us still crying out for justice, Christians find joy and peace in the gospel truth that God will never summon us to face his wrath and judgment. When Christ died for our sins and was raised for our justification (Rom. 4:25), we had our day in court. No matter what the verdict of any earthly court holds, God’s court will never put us in double jeopardy (8:33–34).Have you been hurt in the church?
The church isn’t always a safe space, as much as we’d like it to be, because it exists (for now) in a sinful world and sinners still inhabit the pews. Ecclesiastes 5:1 says, “Guard your steps when you go into the house of God,” and adds in the next breath that there are sometimes fools offering sacrifices inside.
Thankfully, many churches are concerned to redress the wrongs God’s people suffer from other churchgoers and the errant decisions of church leadership. I encourage you to find and join a local church that takes seriously church discipline, which the reformers understood to be one of the marks of a true church.
Justice demands that those hurt have the right to complain to the church and that those disciplined receive due process, including an impartial appeal of their case. I once heard it said that rightly ordered church discipline is like a fire extinguisher—you don’t give it much thought until a crisis, and then you’re glad it’s there.
Ecclesiastical discipline is theological. I’m a pastor, not a lawyer. How the church listens to and adjudicates appeals and complaints is shaped by theological and ministry principles. It’s Christian discipline; whether we’re pastors and elders hearing appeals and complaints or a church member making an appeal or complaint, we do well to consider how these matters relate to God.
God Hears Appeals and Complaints
Theology begins with God and extends to all things in relation to God. Church practice seeks to faithfully reflect God’s practice. The church hears complaints because God hears complaints.
David, on the run from Saul and separated from the visible church, raised his voice to God: “With my voice I cry out to the LORD; with my voice I plead for mercy to the LORD. I pour out my complaint before him; I tell my trouble before him” (Ps. 142:1–2).
If you’re crying out to God because of unjust treatment in the visible church, you’re in good company: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Heb. 5:7).
Christ entrusted himself to “him who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2:23), a reminder our practice derives from God’s character.
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The Challenge Of Christian Celebrity
Written by J. Warner Wallace |
Thursday, March 24, 2022
All of us struggle with the allure of notoriety. How many people liked my last post on Instagram? How many subscribers do I have on my YouTube Channel? How many followers on Facebook? Am I liked? Am I popular? Am I politically correct? Am I acceptable? Everyone wishes they had more likes, views, friends, or responses, whether we are willing to admit it or not. It’s even more disproportionately important to young Christians struggling to find their identity in Christ in a culture that applies its own labels and affirmations.In a year punctuated by the moral failings and faith departures of superstar pastors, famous Christian musicians, and renowned apologists, it might be wise to examine the one thing all of them had in common: celebrity.
I write this as someone who has struggled with celebrity in my own life as an outspoken, public Christian. I leveraged my national reputation as a Dateline featured cold-case detective to write several books and eventually played a role in the movie, God’s Not Dead 2. As my “celebrity” increased, so did my opportunity to share Jesus with people across the country and around the world.
I rationalized the pursuit of notoriety like many other public Christians. Fame, after all, provided the opportunity to share the truth of Jesus with others, right? But at some point, as I pondered the effect celebrity had on my own life as a Christian, I began to examine my own shifting motivations. Was I leveraging celebrity for the purpose of sharing Jesus, or sharing Jesus for the purpose of establishing my celebrity?
If there was one thing I’ve learned as a homicide detective, it’s the motivation for bad behavior. Every killer I’ve investigated committed his or her crime for one of three reasons: financial gain, sexual lust, or the pursuit of power. As the Apostle John described nearly two millennia earlier in 1 John 2:15-16:
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.
Here’s the most important thing I learned about these three motivations for misbehavior: they are usually connected. That’s right. If you begin to chase one, you may eventually chase the other two. The pursuit of power (described by John as “the boastful pride of life”) is often nuanced. The quest for celebrity is one expression of this pursuit, and although it can seem benign, it’s often perilous. Well known Christian pastors, Christian musicians and Christian celebrities sometimes find themselves in sexual or financial scandals.
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Revivalism Isn’t a Dirty Word
If we tell ourselves we are not revivalists, then we won’t be self-aware enough to critique our own revivalism. In fact, each subsequent generation tends to adopt some of the ‘new measures’ that were controversial in a previous generation, as if they are an ordinary part of everyday ministry.
People sometimes tell a story that begins with the truly spiritual and often Calvinistic ‘revivals’ of the Great Awakening and Evangelical Revival in the eighteenth century, to the increasingly emotionally manipulative, tightly-managed and often Arminian revivalism of the nineteenth century, which gave way to both the industrialised mass evangelism and the full-blown experientialism of Pentecostalism in the twentieth century. This story, and its distinction between (true) Revival and (counterfeit) revivalism, is one you are likely to be taught it in church history lectures, read in books and hear in discussions of mission and evangelism.
However, I don’t think the distinction is a clear or effective one.
I believe it is much better to use the term ‘revival’ to describe an outcome: the phenomenon of massive growth in spiritual seriousness and evangelistic fruitfulness, whether it appears to be almost entirely spontaneous or not.[1] ‘Revivalism’ (and ‘revivalist’, ‘revivalistic’ and so on) should describe activities, ideas, people and organisations that aim at Revival, whether or not Revival takes place, whether or not the ideas or activities are considered biblically legitimate or not. That is, rather than speaking of Revival vs Revivalism, I think it is more helpful to speak of Biblical Revivalism vs Unbiblical Revivalism.[2]
Most Revivals Are Revivalistic
If you pay close enough attention, you will notice methods and techniques that played a part in even the most remarkable, miraculous and theologically Calvinistic of revivals. For example, the publication of sermons and accounts of revivals were common at the time of the Evangelical Revival. These served as a model to other ministers and sowed seeds of expectation in congregation members. Mark Noll describes various skills which contributed to the Evangelical Revival and Great Awakening:
They were, however, unusually gifted men: one of the greatest public orators of the century (Whitefield), one of the most effective organisers for one of the longest period of effectiveness (John Wesley), one of the pioneers in the management of publicity (William Seward), one of the most compelling popular troubadours (Charles Wesley), one of the most powerful thinkers (Edwards), several of the critical forerunners of printed mass communication (John Lewis, Thomas Prince, William McCulloch), and then scores of others who in their local spheres were sometimes even more memorable as preachers, networkers, hymnwriters, theologians and communicators.[3]
More, circumstances that aren’t deliberately engineered and practices that aren’t adopted with the intention of triggering a revival also usually play a part in revivals too. If we are to be critical of so-called revivals engineered by human effort, we should also show enough discernment to realise that less self-conscious forces can also bring about something which looks like revival. Just because it wasn’t deliberately planned doesn’t mean it is therefore of God!
To insist that a true revival must be almost entirely spontaneous and surprising is neither biblical nor historical.
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