Winter 2018: Other Significant Articles

Jeff Oliver, “Why the Church May Be Ignoring the Powerful Significance of Pentecost” Charisma (May 9, 2017).

James F. Linzey, “The New Year that Ushered in a World War” Assist News Service (December 28, 2017).

Douglas Groothuis, “Learning to Say Hello Again: A New Year’s resolution that could make a big difference” Christianity Today Online (January 5, 2018). |

“Throughout the day, we can pronounce a silent blessing on many we encounter. I often pray, ‘May God bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you, and give you peace.’ The Bible is packed with blessings and benedictions for our discovery and use. Thinking and praying this way opens us up to greeting people with heartfelt good wishes and without fear.”

Alec Ryrie, “Beyond the Reformation of Politics” Modern Age (Fall 2017).

In an age when Western societies think most problems are susceptible to political solutions, what can we learn from the apolitical heritage of people like Martin Luther, Pietism, early Pentecostals, and South Korean Christians? “Protestantism is not, in any of its forms, a political movement. It is about God, and it is about human salvation. The centrality of those spiritual concerns has often been exasperating to secular politicians who want to make Protestants their allies and are frustrated by all the wearisome Jesus-talk, but it is unavoidable. Naturally, Protestants’ spiritual preoccupations have political consequences, sometimes dramatic ones. When an overwhelming encounter with God has turned your whole world upside down, nothing, politics included, will be quite the same. Yet if we misread these secondary effects as primary, we will not be able to understand their impact.”

Marshall Shelley, “What Christians in the US Can Learn from Immigrant Pastors: For those who met Christ elsewhere, Americanized Christianity can look a bit strange” Christianity Today Online (January 2018).

“The temptation there is hypocrisy, to appear more spiritual than you actually are. But in the US I pray less than I did in Korea. No one checks on my discipleship; we don’t talk about it. It’s all left up to the individual. Here we’re not hypocrites; we’re just lazy.”

Kate Bowler, “Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me” The New York Times (February 13, 2016).

Did you miss this insightful 2016 article by a historian of the prosperity gospel?

Dorothy Littell Greco, “Pastoring the Victims of #MeToo: Four steps your church can take to minister well” WomenLeaders.com (January 21, 2018).

“Escalators to heaven: Evangelicalism is spreading among the Chinese of South-East Asia” The Economist (January 4, 2018)

“Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity is growing more quickly in Asia than most parts of the world, with over 200M adherents in 2015, up from 17M in 1970. The largest congregations are in South Korea and the Philippines, where dazzlingly large mega-churches hold tens of thousands of people. But Christian zeal is also increasing in other parts of the continent, including Indonesia and Malaysia, where proselytising among the Muslim majority is well nigh impossible, but where Buddhists, Confucians and Christians of other denominations, almost all of them ethnically Chinese, are proving receptive.”

William Spencer, “We Saw Trees Walking: Our Stories of Eye Healings” Applying Biblical Truths Today (December 27, 2017).

John Lathrop writes: “Here is a healing testimony by one of my former seminary professors. Dr. William Spencer.”

Shawna Songer Gaines, “How to Make Finding a Mentor Less Awkward: Three shifts in the way I thought about mentoring freed me” WomenLeaders.com (January 24, 2018).

Craig S. Keener, “What Is the Mark of the Beast?” Zondervan Academic (January 5, 2018).

Ernest Cleo Grant II, “Looking for Ancient African Religion? Try Christianity: The African religious imagination already anticipates Christ” Christianity Today (January 18, 2018).

Micah Mattix, “Milton’s Morality: Fallen man and the fallen stature of Paradise Lost” The Weekly Standard (January 21, 2018).

William De Arteaga writes, “Another important legacy of Western civilization disdained by modern secularism.”

Roger Olson, “A Few Words about ‘Slain in the Spirit’ as a Spiritual Experience” Patheos (January 26, 2018).

“Don’t blaspheme the sacrament you don’t understand. That doesn’t mean criticism is always inappropriate. But remind yourself that whatever form of life you live in—secular or religious or whatever—probably has some practices and experiences that outsiders would consider very abnormal and even extremely weird.”

Craig S. Keener, “Why I Almost Left Evangelicalism: I almost distanced myself from the label years ago, but I’m glad I stayed” Christianity Today Online (January 24, 2018).

When the article published online, Keener wrote on Facebook, “I understand why some friends have become uncomfortable being associated with ‘evangelicals,’ given the way some have used the title. Here is why I am still comfortable with it, though why I also understand their feelings very well.”

Glenn T. Stanton, “New Harvard Research Says U.S. Christianity Is Not Shrinking, But Growing Stronger” The Federalist (January 22, 2018).

The subtitle of this article reads, “Is churchgoing and religious adherence really in ‘widespread decline’ so much so that conservative believers should suffer ‘growing anxiety’? Absolutely not.” Thanks to Brigada for recommending this article. | Stanton references this paper: “The Persistent and Exceptional Intensity of American Religion: A Response to Recent Research” by Landon Schnabel and Sean Bock. Abstract: “Recent research argues that the United States is secularizing, that this religious change is consistent with the secularization thesis, and that American religion is not exceptional. But we show that rather than religion fading into irrelevance as the secularization thesis would suggest, intense religion—strong affiliation, very frequent practice, literalism, and evangelicalism—is persistent and, in fact, only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States. We also show that in comparable countries, intense religion is on the decline or already at very low levels. Therefore, the intensity of American religion is actually becoming more exceptional over time. We conclude that intense religion in the United States is persistent and exceptional in ways that do not fit the secularization thesis.”

Eddie L. Hyatt, “Black History, Racial Healing and the Great Awakening” BiblicalAwakening.blogspot.com (February 2, 2018).

Festus Iyorah, “Why are young Nigerians abandoning the Church for Pentecostalism?” Catholic Herald (February 2, 2018).

The subtitle reads, “Young Catholics are being drawn away from the Church. Can anything stop the exodus?” Thanks to William De Arteaga for mentioning this article.

Craig S. Keener, “Weighing T.J. Weeden’s Critique of Kenneth Bailey’s Approach to Oral Traditions in the Gospels” Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism 13 (2017), pages 41-78.

Craig Keener comments: “Kenneth Bailey contended for a model of oral tradition behind the Gospels based on Middle Eastern practices of passing on tradition. James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright and others developed his basic model. Theodore Weeden, however, severely critiqued the model, noting some significant problems in Bailey’s data. Some scholars, such as Eric Eve at Oxford, have taken a nuanced view, acknowledging some of Bailey’s weaknesses but showing from other scholarly work that Bailey’s proposal resembles what studies of oral history also suggest. | In this new article in Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism, I respond to Weeden’s critique of Bailey. Although some of his observations are correct, Bailey’s model still has a great deal to offer, and Eve (and Dunn, Wright and others) have been right to point this out. (I should note: although most of my posts on this site are at a more popular level, this one is more academic.)” The article will be available online for a limited time.

Craig S. Keener, “Strategies and Reasons for Writing” The Logos Academic Blog (January 25, 2018).

Gary Tyra, “Karl Barth and the Phenomenon of Prophetic Preaching: There is a need for Spirit-empowered sermons that are transformational in their effect” Preaching Today (Feb 2018).

John P. Lathrop, “Prophecy: A Gift With Multiple Uses” Berita Mujizat (February 21, 2018).

Remembering Billy Graham, Christianity Today (Special Edition, February 21, 2018).