Today’s Briefing
A controversial Brazilian pastor who founded a surfer church movement died Sunday after crashing his motorcycle on the way home from a bikers’ Bible study. He had been ousted from church leadership in June on domestic violence charges.
A new album from the Irish band Rend Collective, released after a season of doubt and grief, sings of the joy that comes in the morning.
Dark jokes—the kind that can make you want to laugh and cry—can save us from cynicism.
A deer hunter hears God’s “still small voice” in the quiet woods.
Black women have long been America’s most churched demographic, but now they’re slipping away.
Behind the Story
From news editor Daniel Silliman: Sometimes you don’t notice how much things have changed until you do some historical work and dig around in the archives.
Consider this three-person Q & A that CT ran in 1996. Tony Campolo, who died yesterday, joined Ralph Reed and Chuck Colson to talk about evangelicalism and politics. It was an election year, and Campolo was actively supporting Bill Clinton; Reed was head of the Christian Coalition and backed Newt Gingrich’s “Republican Revolution”; Colson believed in culture war but was also wary of the ways political operatives could co-opt pious people (one of his specialties when he worked for Richard Nixon before his conversion). They were coming from really different places. From the vantage point of 2024, the fact they sat down together to chat on the record kind of boggles my mind.
And the conversation is so strange by today’s standards. The liberal gives credit to the Religious Right for politicizing Christians. The Religious Right leader speaks about the urgent moral concern of … tobacco. And gambling. And child tax credits. Then there’s general philosophical talk about the purpose of law.
I remember 1996, and it was not, by any stretch, a golden era. There are also things each of these men say that could legitimately raise eyebrows, if not hackles. It’s not impossible to see how we got from there to here. But I’m most struck by how different things were and how different evangelicals sounded not that long ago.
In Other News
- Texas officials approved an alternate elementary school curriculum that weaves the Bible into reading lessons.
- The Amish are appealing the rejection of religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccines in New York.
- The Church of Scotland is selling off hundreds of church buildings at discounted prices.
- A Baptist church is getting its community involved “in about the most western Oklahoma way imaginable”: frog hunting.
Compassion International helps Christian parents build bridges between their children and God’s global family. Learn more about raising kids who care for the least of these. When Jesus taught us…
Today in Christian History
November 21, 235 (traditional date): Anterus is elected pope, a position he would hold for only a few weeks. According to the Liber pontificalis, he was martyred for ordering the “acts of the martyrs” to be written down and put in the church library.
in case you missed it
Tony Campolo frequently started his speeches to Christian audiences by telling them three things. First, he would tell them how many children had died from hunger or malnutrition-related diseases the…
“There are a lot of big feelings in this room,” a friend whispered to me a couple of days after the election as the women of our church gathered for…
Fifteen years ago, scholar Stephen Haynes mapped out the many interpretations of the life of 20th-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a conservative who sought to restore Germany—or perhaps…
In A Prairie Faith: The Religious Life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, historian John Fry invites readers into a detailed exploration of the celebrated author of the Little House on the…
in the magazine
As this issue hits your mailboxes after the US election and as you prepare for the holidays, it can be easy to feel lost in darkness. In this issue, you’ll read of the piercing light of Christ that illuminates the darkness of drug addiction at home and abroad, as Angela Fulton in Vietnam and Maria Baer in Portland report about Christian rehab centers. Also, Carrie McKean explores the complicated path of estrangement and Brad East explains the doctrine of providence. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt shows us how art surprises, delights, and retools our imagination for the Incarnation, while Jeremy Treat reminds us of an ancient African bishop’s teachings about Immanuel. Finally, may you be surprised by the nearness of the “Winter Child,” whom poet Malcolm Guite guides us enticingly toward. Happy Advent and Merry Christmas.
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