A theology professor says there are three ways in which Christians’ religious beliefs should influence how they engage in politics.

Vincent Bacote, director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics at Wheaton College in Illinois, was one of the speakers at the Just Gospel 2020 conference at Del Ray Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.

The first thing one must do, according to Bacote, is recognize that “a Christian is a citizen of God’s Kingdom,” which means “Jesus is their King.”

“Now, if Jesus is their King,” he explained, “that means that they have their ultimate allegiance to Jesus as their King, which makes all other obligations relative. All other commitments relative.”

“If I have ‘non-negotiable political commitments,’ am I willing to have those ‘non-negotiable political commitments’ questioned by this King to whom I have an ultimate allegiance? Can He ask me, ‘hey can we revisit that?’”

Bacote challenged those gathered by stating that “if Jesus is your King,” then “let Him interrogate us all the time,” including on political stances.

The second concept is the Christian process of sanctification and recognizing that no Christian sees the world “with perfect clarity” as they grow in faith, which means they “can miss things.”

Bacote sought to apply this sanctification process to political engagement, saying that “when it comes to your politics, you recognize ‘you know, I might be missing something.’ Which means then that whatever you’re doing with their political commitments you need to have a posture of humility, because you have not arrived,” Bacote continued.

“If a Christian is in a process of becoming holy, holy in position but in a process of living up to what that position is, then we ought to be people of humility when it comes to how we are articulating and pursuing our political commitments.”

The third concept he shared is the Christian belief in the resurrection, which shows that Christians have “the greatest hope of all” and thus should not act as “a peddler of fear.”

Bacote spoke against Christians who openly act like “we’re going to lose it all” if “political fortunes” do not go their way, something that the professor labeled as “Easter amnesia.”

“Did you just go to church? Did you just hear that God conquered death? Because if you believe He conquered death, why are you acting like, ‘but He can’t deal with this?’” he asked.

Bacote also focused on how he believes many Christians form their political views, arguing that most do so because of secular concerns that were made immediate to them through others.

As an example, he noted that African Americans tend to vote for Democratic candidates even though they are usually more socially conservative than the overall party.

Source: Christian Post

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As America begins to settle into the new norm of uncertainty amid the coronavirus outbreak, church life as we know it is changing.

Many churches across the American landscape are temporarily closing their doors. Dunwoody Baptist Church is located on the outskirts of Atlanta, Georgia, and like most churches, they’re having to deal with what Sunday will look like.

Christian Headlines sat down with church leaders Allen Taliaferro and Robert Comeaux, to discuss the new changes that their church members will see on Sunday. As soon as the interview begins, one glance at Taliaferro’s face reveals that for this executive pastor this has not been a normal week. He currently has 48 voicemails and text messages that need returning. When asked when he started preparing response protocols, he’s quick to point out the teamwork of the staff and church members.

“One of our members on our leadership team called me last week to ask what our plan would be. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but by the end of the week we had a plan ready to go,” Taliaferro said.

Comeaux, who is the church’s worship pastor, jumped right in, explaining, “We are in a new season of church life in America as we know it.”

Dunwoody has a plan in place for Sunday and practical directives for its members. Taliaferro shared that everything from who holds the door to the Lord’s supper will look different. “Our plan for Sunday will be, for example, only a few people will hold the door open with lots of hand sanitizer.”

The church will also refrain from passing the offering plate and the Lord’s supper will be individually wrapped, compared to the typically shared community of partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

Source: Christian Headlines

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The nation’s largest church said Wednesday it would not hold its upcoming weekend services due to the coronavirus threat, as churches across the country – big and small – grappled with how to respond to the outbreak.

Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston said it would not hold public in-person services in light of an emergency health declaration by Mayor Sylvester Turner, as well as “the fact that Lakewood draws such large numbers of international visitors each week.” Instead, church services will be broadcast online only this weekend. It is the largest church in the United States.

The number of U.S. cases has multiplied in the past week. On March 4, there were 129 confirmed cases in the U.S. That number grew to 554 on March 8 and to 1,215 on March 12.

The Episcopal dioceses of Washington and Virginia are closing or canceling services at more than 250 churches in the region.

Meanwhile, congregations across the U.S. are facing similar tough choices – and in some instances, are being ordered or strongly urged by government officials to cancel.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s public health officials on Wednesday said “non-essential gatherings” of more than 250 people should be postponed or canceled “to protect public health and slow the spread of COVID-19.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference Thursday he is recommending that “local municipalities and private entities to strongly consider limiting or postponing mass gatherings in the state of Florida.”

Source: Christian Headlines

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Craig Bowron is a physician and writer in St. Paul, Minnesota. He can be reached on Twitter at @billcarlosbills.

As a Christian living in a northern climate, I find it unfortunate that none of Jesus’ teachings directly speak to our cold weather situation, such as “The Parable of the Neighbor Who Never Shoveled Her Sidewalk” or “The Parable of Black Ice.”

Likewise, although Jesus called us to care for the sick, the weary, those in prison, etc., he didn’t give specific guidance about how to do that in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic. And so we’re left to think that through.

When it comes to the COVID-19 panic, our overriding principle might be from “The Parable of the Good Samaritan Who Tried to Help the Man Who Fell Through the Ice,” in which would-be rescuers are advised to first call for help. As the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources cautions, one should “resist the urge to run up to the edge of the hole. This would most likely result in two victims in the water.”

In trying to help others who are stricken with, or on lockdown from, the novel coronavirus, we should first be careful not to behave in a way that promotes further spread of the virus. The virus moves most efficiently person to person, via kerchoo-powered respiratory droplets, and so the more distance we can keep between persons, the harder that will be. If you’re moving through the community helping others as you’re “just finishing getting over a little cold,” you might be spreading the thing that everyone is trying to avoid.

With that in mind, what to do for those who need our help?

You need to find them first, of course. Our efforts are probably best focused on helping those who are at the highest risk of a serious corona infection: older people and those with chronic medical conditions, as well as those who may have a difficult time living through a period of self-isolation, which includes, in addition to those already mentioned, those with disabilities.

Remember, much of this can be done — and might best be done — via a phone call.

The more they stay home, the less likely they are to become infected.

Make sure they have the food, medication, toiletries, etc., that they need, and if they don’t, see if you can get it for them. Leave these items on their doorstep if necessary.

Do they have a plan if they do get sick? As a physician, I’ve seen it many times: For older folks who are still living independently but under suboptimal or marginal conditions, even a simple bladder infection or a medication mix-up can send them tumbling.

For example, an upstairs bedroom might work OK until they get sick and weak. Then what? Can things be decluttered a bit so that pathways to the bathroom are clear? Could a spare bed be moved downstairs so they can live on that level for a while? Do they have an accessible and functional bathroom?

Source: Religion News Service

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Question:  There was a recent New York Times Magazine article about conman Paul Skalnik and how his false testimonies sent dozens to jail and 4 people to death row.  In Florida, where death sentencing was/is popular, there have been 29 death-row inmates exonerated by the time of the article’s publication.  There was also a study that estimated 1 in 25, 4.1 percent, of inmates sentenced to death are innocent.  Even if the state kills one innocent person, isn’t that too much?  As Christians who talk about killing innocent babies, how can we then go and support capital punishment when there are many instances where the judicial system have been wrong?

I am frequently asked this question both by fellow Christians as well as non-Christians. The short answer is that the Bible clearly authorizes and teaches capital punishment. During the Mosaic Covenant capital punishment was mandated for a variety of offenses. However, the death penalty both pre-dates and post-dates the Mosaic Law and Covenant. As far back as Genesis, God told Noah, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man” (Gen. 9:6). Here, God reveals the foundational reason why capital punishment is appropriate at least for the murder of a fellow human being — each of is us created in God’s image, and thus human life must be uniquely reverenced in comparison to the respect due the rest of creation.

The New Testament also affirms the government’s right to employ capital punishment as one of the options available to fulfill their divinely ordained responsibilities. The Apostle Paul, writing under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, speaking of the civil magistrate, declares, “For he is the minister of God to thee for good, but if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil” (Rom. 13:4). The use of the word “sword” in verse four is a reference to the sword used to execute Roman citizens found guilty of a capital crime.

For nearly two millennia now, this passage has been seen by most Christian faith traditions both as authorizing governmental authority and authorizing their right to use lethal force to punish evil doers, domestically through the criminal justice system and internationally through the military in “just war” conflicts with other nations.

But what about Jesus’ commands to love and forgive your enemies? Just the other day I was discussing this issue with a Christian colleague who immediately objected to my reference to the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, responding, “Well, capital punishment may meet the standards of Holy Scripture, but it doesn’t survive an encounter with the supreme ‘love ethic’ of Jesus who commanded us ‘to love and forgive our enemies.’”

I responded that there was no conflict. He was making the mistake of succumbing to the “red letter” fallacy of elevating the “very words of Jesus” above the rest of the New Testament. As one of my other colleagues once said, “All the words of the New Testament are important, but the very words of Jesus take precedent.” Such logic mistakenly has led many Christians to set up a false dichotomy between Jesus and the Apostles Paul, John, and Peter in the rest of the New Testament.

In fact, if you really give the “very words” of Jesus precedence, then you will reject all such false dichotomies. In the Gospel of John, Jesus preparing His disciples for His departure into Heaven after the Resurrection, says, “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever; even the spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him, but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John 14:16-17 emphasis added).

SOURCE: Christian Post, Richard Land

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The news this week about COVID-19, known as the coronavirus, has certainly, to understate it, escalated: New infections, grimmer projections, lots and lots of cancellations (including — can you believe it? — March Madness).

The news changes so quickly day by day, even hour by hour, that it’s hard to keep up, much less know, really, what to think about all of this.

C.S. Lewis once said that we should read three old books for every new one. I think we should read three C.S. Lewis books for every new one. He never faced the coronavirus, of course, but in the late 1940s, the world was coming to grips with another threat: nuclear annihilation.

The bomb was only a few years old, and in the hands of sworn national enemies. The uncertainty of what exactly could happen, not to mention what might happen, was palpable. In that context, C.S. Lewis wrote an essay titled, “On Living in an Atomic Age.”

I’m grateful to one of my BreakPoint colleagues, Ashlee Cowles, for reminding us of this essay along with some sage advice: Whenever you hear “atomic bomb” in this essay, think “coronavirus.”

“We think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb,” Lewis begins. To those who wonder how it’s possible to go on in the face of such a threat, Lewis recalls that theirs was not the first generation to live under a threatening shadow. In fact, if we’re honest, we all live under a sentence of death, and for some of us, that death could even be “unpleasant.”

The important question, says Lewis, is not whether or how we will die but if in the meantime we will be doing “sensible” and “human” things like “praying, working … reading, listening to music, bathing the children.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera

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Seldom does a week go by that I don’t learn about a church leader who has fallen. I want to be merciful toward those who fall, but we also need to know how much pain such a fall causes. Perhaps remembering these realities will help all of us fight harder for holiness.

Here are eight reasons the fall of a church leader hurts so badly:

SOURCE: Christian Post, Chuck Lawless

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The European Court of Human Rights has refused to take up the case of two Swedish nurses who were denied midwife jobs because they were not willing to perform abortions. A Christian law firm called it a “dangerous departure from the Court’s purpose in protecting fundamental freedoms.”

The court said the case of the nurses, Ellinor Grimmark and Linda Steen, who were retrained as midwives but were not given jobs due to their religious beliefs against carrying out abortions, was inadmissible to be heard by the EHRC, according to Reuters.

The Christian midwives had claimed that authorities violated the European Convention on Human Rights by refusing jobs to them.

The court’s decision cannot be appealed.

“We are very disappointed by the Court’s decision not to take up the cases of Ms. Grimmark and Ms Steen,” Robert Clarke, deputy director of Alliance Defending Freedom International, said in a statement, according to Premier. “A positive judgment from the Court would have been an important step in the protection of the right to freedom of conscience.”

Clarke added, “Medical professionals should be able to work without being forced to choose between their deeply held convictions and their careers. Although freedom of conscience is protected as a fundamental right in almost every other European country, the decision today marks a missed opportunity to uphold this important protection in Sweden. In its short written decision, the Court agreed that Sweden had interfered with the rights of these midwives.”

A Swedish pro-choice group, RFSU, celebrated the rejection of the case. “It is not a human right for nursing staff to refuse to provide care,” said RFSU’s Hans Linde. “This is an important decision that in the long term will help to protect women’s health, right to good quality care and to be treated with respect when seeking an abortion.”

However, Grimmark said she chose to become a midwife “because I wanted to help bring life into this world.”

“I cannot understand why the Swedish government refuses to accommodate my conscientious convictions,” she said. “I am now working in Norway, where my conscience is respected, but no one can explain why Sweden cannot do the same.”

SOURCE: Christian Post, Anugrah Kumar

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