Richard Pierard – Four Changes Evangelicals Must Make (in the United States)

Baptist historian Rchard Pierard suggest in a recent article in Religious Dispatches, four changes that American evangelicals need to make in order to restore their credibility after their desperate attampt to remove Obama from office and replace him with Romney.

Here they are:

1) The Southern Baptists need to get rid of the discredited Dr. Richard Land immediately, not wait for his announced retirement as President of the denomination’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which won’t be effective until October 2013. Dr. Frank Page, the President and CEO of the Executive Committee, needs to act summarily and forcefully. He certainly must understand that Land’s (and by implication the Southern Baptist Convention’s) endorsement of Mitt Romney undermined the Southern Baptist witness. He and his office are an embarrassment to the convention, attract unnecessary criticism, and contribute to the public image problem that hinders the ministry of the SBC.

The convention could channel the money expended on its tarnished reputation to the International Mission Board where it could do some real good in reaching men and women for Christ. Proclaiming a political gospel will never achieve this noble goal. Also, there’s no need to jump aboard the “religious freedom” bandwagon when Southern Baptists could contribute funds to aid in the task of fostering religious freedom around the world through the respected and well-managed Baptist Joint Committee on Religious Liberty.

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This Is Our City

(2) This Is Our City.

I think this is a great project. Follow it HERE.

A project of Christianity Today magazine seeking to spotlight ways Christians are contributing to the flourishing of their cities, exploring the neighbors we are and the neighbors we ought to be.

David Neff – An Interview with Mark Noll on the Foundation of the Evangelical Mind

In 1994, Wheaton College historian Mark Noll published The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind—”an epistle from a wounded lover” that decried the anti-intellectualism of evangelical religious culture. Noll’s newest book, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, released in August), devotes far less space to criticism and offers instead a foundational vision: The basic truths of Christian faith are the key to Christian scholarship. Christianity Today editor in chief David Neff recently spoke with Noll (now teaching at the University of Notre Dame) about the book.

Although it’s not the main subject of Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, most people will want to know: Are you more optimistic today about the state of the evangelical mind than you were 17 years ago?

I am more optimistic, though not overwhelmingly so. The problems endemic to modern Western culture undercut Christian thinking the same way they undercut every other kind of serious intellectual life. The tendencies among evangelicals that undercut serious reflection are also still pretty strong—for example, the populism and the immediatism, the idea that if there is a problem, we have to solve it right away.

John Stott | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

John Stott | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

You will find collected at the link above Christianity Today’s coverage of Stott’s life and ministry.

Michael Horton on Holy Texts, Holy Land, Holy War

Michael Horton

Cultures are the most dangerous when they invoke holy texts for their defense of holy land through holy war. However, Christians have no biblical basis for doing this in the first place. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus clearly abrogated the ceremonial and civil law that God had given uniquely to the nation of Israel. Now is the era of common grace and common land, obeying rulers—even pagan ones—and living under constitutions other than the one that God gave through Moses. As Paul reminds us in Romans 13, secular rulers are given the power of the temporal sword—finite justice—while the gospel conquers in the power of the Spirit through that Word “above all earthly pow’rs.”…

Michael Horton is Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster Seminary California.

Quotes HERE by Scot McKnight. From an article in Christianity Today that can be found HERE.

Christianity Today on the troubled Christians in Kyrgyzstan

A few days ago I was receiving a phone call from an editor of Christianity Today, asking for Christian contacts in Kyrgyzstan.

Yesterday the American Evangelical journal published a short article on the situation of Christians in Kyrgyzstan after the recent ethnic trouble in Osh, west of the country. The author is William Yoder, the CT correspondant in Moscow. Here is a fragment:

World Vision in Coreea de nord

Tim Stafford, editor la Christianity Today, a publicat recent în această revistă un articol despre vizita făcută în luna iunie a acestui an, în Coreea de nord, împreună cu Dean Hirsch, Preşedintele World Vision International.

Relatările sale ne amintesc de cele mai negre vremuri din România lui Ceauşesscu. Citiţi AICI acest text. El nu este recomandat celor slabi de inimă.

Geneticianul crestin Francis Collins la conducerea NIH

Geneticianul creştin Francis Collins a fost numit la conducerea National Institute of Health, cea mai importantă agenţie federală de cercetări medicale din Statele Unite (citiţi AICI anunţul Associated Press despre această numire şi AICI articolul corelativ din Christianity Today). Preşedintele Obama l-a descris pe Collins drept “unul dintre cei mai importanţi oameni de ştiinţă din lume”.

Brandul Isus Cristos?

Amatorii de cafea vor recunoaşte faptul că sigla ingenioasă de deasupra (aflată pe coperta ultimului număr al revistei Christianity Today) nu este altceva decât o variaţie pe tema semnului distinctiv al lanţului american de cafenele Starbucks. Ea sugerează faptul că Isus în particular, şi creştinismul în general au devenit încetul cu încetul, în lumea contemporană, un brand şi o marfă promovate cu toate mijloacele economiei de piaţă.