That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

I wrote about Ethiopian Pentecostals like the new Nobel Peace Prize winner and debates in this country over religious liberty for Christian colleges. Elsewhere:

Uyghur musicians in Xinjiang – Creative Commons (travelingmipo)

• For a more serious case of a religious group being persecuted by the state, read this firsthand account of life for Uyghur Muslims imprisoned in Chinese “reeducation” camps.

• According to a new religious landscape survey from the Pew Research Center, 65% of Americans identify as Christian — down twelve points from 2009.

• While meeting at Bethel this week, the National Association of Evangelicals elected its first Asian-American president, a Presbyterian pastor who majored in history before getting a PhD from Harvard.

• A conservative Southern Baptist scholar wondered “if the efforts to swing the SBC theologically to the right had the consequence — unintended or otherwise — of resurfacing our DNA: asserting power for our own gain over other humans made in God’s image.”

• Why don’t Christian contemporary music stars use their platform to criticize Donald Trump?

• If Mitt Romney helps bring about the impeachment of Trump, will he have fulfilled Mormon prophecy?

• Why do so few white parents talk about race with their children?

• Has Ta-Nehisi Coates misunderstood the nature of Christian hope in rejecting it?

Rep. Elijah Cummings in 2016 – Creative Commons (Edward Kimmel)

• Rest in peace, Elijah Cummings.

• I’m always interested in the ways that Canadian politics is like and unlike what happens on this side of the 49th parallel. Case in point: the Conservative leader hoping to unseat Justin Trudeau.

• Rather than learning “lessons” from history, should we instead take away the tragic truth that “there will always be situations that we cannot avoid and, if we try to exploit, will have unintended consequences”?

• Is it possible to reverse the trend away from empathy?

• A new study finds that women in academia “have disproportionately fewer Twitter followers, likes and retweets than their male counterparts on the platform.”

• An NPR reporter spent time at Calvin CollegeUniversity and found that younger evangelicals are less wedded to Donald Trump than their elders. (Bonus: interview snippet with Kristin Du Mez!)

• New strategy for Bethel: move to a cool city like Nashville.

• I’ve long thought that there’s a pastoral dimension to the work of professors, but I’ve never put it nearly as well as Melissa Borja, in her poignant post on teaching in the midst of the opioid crisis.