Word&Way News: Feb. 23
Here’s the weekly roundup from Word&Way. In addition to a review of a book on the cultural impact of Contemporary Christian Music that is free for anyone to read, paid subscribers to A Public Witness received a look at the political power of public mourning.
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Top 5 at wordandway.org
For Lent, Faithful America Offers Tools to Counter White Christian Nationalism. Jeremy Fuzy reported on a webinar featuring Randall Balmer and Jemar Tisby.
Texas Baptist Church to Host Michael Flynn and QAnon Promoters. Brian Kaylor reported on a Southern Baptist church promoting a conference with conspiracy theorists.
Review: Wounded Pastors. Robert D. Cornwall reviewed Wounded Pastors: Navigating Burnout, Finding Healing, and Discerning the Future of Your Ministry by Carol Howard Merritt and James Fenimore.
Belarus Cracks Down on Clergy Who Supported Protests of Its Authoritarian Leader. Yuras Karmanau reported on the persecution of Christians by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.
African Methodist Episcopal Church Leaders Call for Halt to All US Funding of Israel. Adelle M. Banks reported on the push for peace in Gaza by a prominent Black denomination.
Dangerous Dogma
This week: Janet Kellogg Ray on the God of Monkey Science
Other noteworthy podcasts this week:
On Straight White American Jesus, Brad Onishi interviewed Dan Partland, director of the new God & Country documentary.
Good Faith Media created Doctrine of Christian Discovery, an eight-part podcast series exploring Christianity’s role in colonization.
by Brian Kaylor, Word&Way Editor-in-Chief
Tomorrow (Feb. 24) marks the second anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The imperial vision of Vladimir Putin has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people over the last 24 months. Adding to the tragedy, the Russian Orthodox Church has blessed the war as godly.
Ahead of the war’s anniversary, more than 100 Orthodox clergy and scholars (along with other religious leaders) released an open letter to global religious leaders calling on them to do more to hold Russian Orthodox leaders accountable. Those addressed in the letter include the Orthodox archbishop of Constantinople, as well as global leaders like Pope Francis, the head of the Anglican Communion, and the general secretary of the World Council of Churches. (Back in March of 2022, we called on the WCC to suspend the membership of the Russian Orthodox Church, but they have not done so).
The new letter notes the pro-war position is the official Russian Orthodox ideology, meaning that “the sins of justification and benediction are not solitary deeds of individual bishops or idiosyncratic priests but institutional transgressions.” And the letter highlights the problem of silence from “the rest of the institutional Christian world” about such pro-war theology.
“They have repeatedly twisted the sacrament of Christian benediction into a sanctioning of murder of the citizens of a neighboring Christian country,” the letter adds about Russian Orthodox leaders. “A church that only outwardly remains ‘Christian’ but has lost its evangelical spirit cannot be a sister to those churches and communities that follow the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Thus, the letter writers urged the global communion leaders to not only condemn Russian Orthodox leaders but also create a process to hold accountable clergy “whose statements, testimonials, sermons, communications, and fabrications have sanctioned and bestowed divine approval upon violence, war, and aggression against the people of Ukraine.”
This is indeed the work of peace. Global Christian leaders, like the World Council of Churches, must not value fellowship over justice.
Other News of Note
Tess Owen of Vice reported on a California church popular with members of the far-right extremist group the Proud Boys.
Mike Hixenbaugh of NBC News reported on the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who ruled that fertilized frozen embryos are people and has publicly promoted a charismatic theology that Christians should rule society.
Speaker Mike Johnson gave a religious report to his fellow Republican lawmakers, but it led to some of his colleagues complaining about it as a bad sermon (and it sounded like some of the sermons first reported on by A Public Witness).
According to a report from Politico, allies of Donald Trump are planning ways to infuse Christian Nationalism in government if he wins his November.
Chauncey DeVega of Salon spoke with political scientist Paul Djupe about violent and apocalyptic rhetoric among Christian Nationalist supporters of Donald Trump.
“Every single individual carries the dignity of God’s image. … By democratizing the image of God, by removing it from the power structure of the king and the royal propaganda of the king, this is not just a bland theological proposition. This was a revolutionary statement — a prophetic challenge to society.” —Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, during a talk at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary.
Rev. Jeff Hood, who served as the spiritual advisor for Kenneth Smith as Alabama killed Smith with nitrogen hypoxia, wrote for USA Today about the horrific experience. Hood previously spoke on Dangerous Dogma about serving as a spiritual advisor for other people who were executed.
Mennonites in Virginia gathered for public worship and advocacy against genocide in Gaza.
Laura Bauer and Judy Thomas of the Kansas City Star reported on concerns about a Christian boarding school in southwest Missouri after multiple children recently ran away from it.
The Washington Post told the story of an isolated Amazon community torn between their historic Catholic church and a new evangelical one.
Photo of the Week
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