Holy Hip-Hop Grows Up

But I’m still grateful for CCM’s golden era.

If you wanted to trace the roots of Christian hip-hop, I'd tell you all about dc Talk.

At age 13, following a Geoff Moore and the Distance concert, I stood up to commit myself to Jesus, despite the voice inside my head that said the boys in my youth group would think I was a dork for doing so. Riding home in the backseat that night, I felt my heart "strangely warmed," and I've been a Jesus freak ever since.

Soon after that concert in 1996, I naturally wanted to listen to music about Jesus—and being a teenager in the mid-'90s, I had plenty to choose from. This was arguably the golden era of contemporary Christian music (CCM), when you could hear Jars of Clay's "Flood" and Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" on secular radio, and Tooth & Nail Records and bands like MxPx and Starflyer 59 made it possible to be both cool and Jesus-y.

dc Talk's Jesus Freak album had recently gone double platinum, debuting at 16 on the Billboard charts. Mixing rock, pop, and hip-hop, it was a derivative of Nirvana and A Tribe Called Quest, calling American Christians to stand up for truth when debates about prayer in public schools threatened to silence them. (Then again, we always had See You at the Pole.) I listened to the CD nonstop.

That dc Talk copied secular artists for evangelistic ends fit them neatly into the history of ccm, a subgenre born in the late-'60s that often takes the best of non-Christian music and baptizes it with biblical lyrics. But the Christian hip-hop scene has evolved. As this month's cover story suggests, a new crop of artists—including the one on our cover, Lecrae—is transcending CCM's copycat ways by mixing beats and rhymes that would hold up in any Kanye West comparison. And they're doing so, argues theologian Russell Moore, in ways that return hip-hop to its very roots and infuse the gospel with renewed edge. Call it "W.W. Jay-Z," which starts on page 22.

Back to dc Talk. In their early days—I mean Nu Thang early, 1990—they released a song called "I Luv Rap Music." A sampling: "Ya know, I asked Christ to come into my heart / And he gave me a brand new start / And on top of dat, he gave me my dreams / Doin' hip-hop music with a Christian theme." It goes without saying that "hip-hop music with a Christian theme" has grown up, thankfully. But I'd also challenge any reader to a word-by-word recount of all the verses in "Jesus Freak," which nearly 20 years ago helped more deeply plant this once-new Christian into the Word. Word.

Next issue: Economist Bruce Wydick examines why child sponsorship is so effective; Leslie Leyland Fields looks at the church-based fitness trend; and Steven R. Guthrie explains why our souls need more singing.

News

Good News for Christians in India’s Most Persecuting State

Melissa Steffan

After nearly a decade, Hindu nationalist party finally loses power in Karnataka.

Indian Christians are celebrating the result of recent elections in Karnataka, a southwestern state known for having the highest rates of violence against Christians. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party which supports extremist groups, has finally lost power “after nine years of unchallenged rule.”

“The BJP is decimated,” reports AsiaNews. “Its defeat is good news especially for social and religious minorities of Karnataka, victims in these years of violence and persecution of the Hindu ultranationalist groups, openly supported by the BJP.”

There were more anti-Christian attacks in Karnataka in 2012 than in any other Indian state. (It surpassed notorious Orissa in 2010.) And in the days leading up to the May 5 election, Christian leaders had warned that allowing the BJP to remain in power would only lead to increased violence.

But now Sajan K. George, president of the Global Council of Indian Christians (GCIC), says Karnataka is sending “a great message to all parties, in view of the general elections of 2014: We must stop the political use of religion, protect minorities and work for the common good.”

An election in 2001 rattled the BJP somewhat, and CT reported that a subsequent defeat in 2004 “sent shock waves across the nation.” That significant defeat came after the BJP introduced an anti-conversion law to prevent conversion among Dalits, the lowest members of Indian society, without the approval of India’s parliament.

But even as the BJP consolidated its state-level power in 2005, CT reported that increased violence and repression wasn’t stopping church growth.

Violence against Indian Christians reached its worst point in 2008 in the southeastern state of Orissa, following the assassination of Hindu leader Laxmanananda. However, Christians were encouraged when the BJP lost control of Orissa in elections the following year.

Meanwhile, seven Christians in Orissa remain in prison after a judge postponed their trials–again. They are accused of assassinating Laxmanananda in 2008, even though Maoists already claimed responsibility for the attack.

- More from Melissa Steffan

News

Prominent Pastors Combat Church Stigma of Mental Illness

Bob Smietana - RNS

Efforts increase during National Mental Health Awareness Month.

Editor’s note: President Barack Obama recently proclaimed May 2013 as National Mental Health Awareness Month.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) – Frank Page, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was getting ready to work in the yard in the fall of 2009 when the phone rang. His daughter was on the line.

Daddy, I love you, she said. Tell Mama and the girls I love them, too.

Then she was gone.

Melissa Page Strange, 32, took her own life just after hanging up the phone with her dad.

“I do not want you to imagine what that is like,” Page said.

For years, Page did not share the painful details of Melissa’s death, fearing that some Christians might speak ill of her if they knew. Mental illness and suicide were taboo topics for many churches, seen as a kind of spiritual failure.

But that may be starting to change.

Page and several other Baptist leaders plan to meet in Dallas this spring to address mental illness. The meeting was prompted by the Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting and has gained more urgency since the suicide of Matthew Warren, 27-year-old son of California megachurch pastor Rick Warren.

Matthew Warren’s suicide last month has prompted a number of evangelical leaders to talk about how churches can better help those dealing with mental illness in their congregations.

Page, now president of the convention’s Nashville-based executive committee, is telling his daughter’s story in a forthcoming book called Melissa.

He hopes the book will help other families who are grieving from suicide. He also hopes to take away some of the stigma and shame that surrounds mental illness.

“There is a sense that everything you have tried has failed,” he said.

The Rev. Bill Ritter, author of Take the Dimness of My Soul Away: Healing After a Loved One’s Suicide, said people affected by mental illness often steer clear of church. Some feel ashamed and others are just overwhelmed.

“For as much as we talk about the church as the place you turn when life is falling apart–the reality is that people often stay away from church when life is falling apart,” he said.

Ritter was pastor of First United Methodist Church in Birmingham, Michigan, in the early 1990s when his 27-year-old son, Bill, took his own life. A few weeks after the funeral, Ritter talked about his son’s struggles in a sermon.

Sharing his story made it easier for other people in the church to talk about how mental illness had affected their own families, he said. “You can’t heal what you can’t name,” he said.

Ed Stetzer, president of Nashville-based LifeWay Research, wants to see more churches discuss mental illness openly. A longtime friend of Warren’s and Page’s, he knew of Matthew Warren’s struggles with depression, which resisted treatment.

In a blog post after learning of Matthew’s suicide, Stetzer wrote about how mental illness has affected his own family. Several of his relatives have taken their lives, as did a parishioner in a church that he served as a young pastor.

“We need to stop hiding mental illness,” Stetzer said.

Stetzer said some evangelical Christians think that if they pray enough or become more spiritual, then their mental illness will go away. But they don’t look at other health issues the same way.

“People who become a Christian and have a broken leg will still have a broken leg,” he said. “We tend to think that Jesus fixes what is in our heads, and medicine fixes what is in our body. Sometimes what is in our heads needs medicine.”

David McKnight agrees.

A physician by trade, McKnight leads the Celebrate Recovery support group at Belle Aire Baptist Church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. The group, which is about 10 years old, draws between 35 and 60 people to the church on Tuesday nights.

The program is part of a national movement, first started at Warren’s Saddleback Church. Some members are dealing with addiction, while others have depression or other mental illness. Some had been told that faith could solve their problems, said McKnight–but it’s not that easy.

“We would never tell someone who is nearsighted that it’s because they don’t have enough faith,” he said. “We do that with people who deal with depression.”

McKnight helped start Celebrate Recovery at his church because of a personal meltdown about 10 years ago. At first he was resistant, thinking his troubles weren’t as bad as those of people dealing with drug addiction or other issues.

Then the light bulb came on, he said, and he realized that he, too, had struggles and it was OK to admit to them. McKnight said that growing up in church, he’d learned to keep up appearances, even when life was difficult.

“Too often in churches there is this belief that you have to be perfect–that you have to keep a smile on your face when your world is falling apart,” he said.

David Thomas, director of men’s and boys’ counseling for Daystar Counseling Ministries in Nashville, hopes churches will discuss the issue in church services as well as support groups. He said many churches have started talking about finances in recent years because of the economic downturn. Thomas thinks churches need to do the same for mental illness.

“We have very defined resources for families that are struggling financially,” he said. “We don’t have defined resources for families who are struggling emotionally–and we need them.”

(Bob Smietana writes for USA Today and The Tennessean.)

- More from Bob Smietana - RNS

News

Same-Sex Marriage Now Legal in One-Third of U.S. States

Melissa Steffan

(UPDATED) Utah and New Mexico follow in recent footsteps of Hawaii and Illinois, but via judges not lawmakers.

Update (Dec. 20): Today a judge struck down Utah's 2004 ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional. If the ruling stands, Utah would become the 18th state to permit gays and lesbians to wed.

The Associated Press reports:

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby issued a 53-page ruling Friday saying Utah's law passed by voters in 2004 violates gay and lesbian couples' rights to due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment.

Shelby says the state failed to show that allowing same-sex marriages would affect opposite-sex marriages in any way, and the state's unsupported fears and speculations are insufficient to justify deny allowing same-sex marriages.

—–

Update (Dec. 19): New Mexico has become the 17th state (plus D.C.) to legalize same-sex marriage, after the state's supreme court ruled today that denying marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples is unconstitutional.

The Washington Post notes:

Many counties in New Mexico had already been issuing marriage licenses to gay couples, setting up the state Supreme Court to decide whether it was legal or not. The state didn't explicitly ban or allow same-sex marriage, leaving the issue in limbo.

—–

Update (November 14): New Jersey became the 14th state to legalize same-sex marriage last month, while Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed his state's bill yesterday, beating out Illinois to become the 15th state to do so. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said he will sign the bill November 20, raising the number of states allowing same-sex marriage to 16, plus the District of Columbia.

—

Update (May 14): The New York Times reports that the Minnesota state Senate has approved a bill to allow same-sex marriages, making Minnesota "the first in the Midwest to take such a step outside of a court ruling."

––-

With congressional votes less than a week apart from each other, Rhode Island and Delaware both have legalized same-sex marriage. According to The New York Times, the decisions represent the "latest in a string of victories for those working to extend marital rights to gay and lesbian couples."

Rhode Island came first, following what the Associated Press called "a 16-year effort to extend marriage rights in this heavily Roman Catholic state." Just days later, Delaware became the 11th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Similar votes will soon take place in Minnesota and Illinois, where the GOP chair recently resigned over the issue.

As more states extend marital rights to same-sex couples, the protection of clergy who object to performing same-sex marriages remains a concern. The newly passed laws in both Delaware and Rhode Island specify that "no religious leader is obligated to officiate at any marriage ceremony and no religious group is required to provide facilities or services related to a gay marriage."

However, those who provide wedding-related services do not have similar conscience protections. A florist in Washington state–where voters approved gay marriage last November–is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union after she refused to sell flowers to a gay couple for their wedding. She says her "Christian beliefs prevented her from selling the flowers for the same-sex wedding."

In spite of these recent victories for supporters of same-sex marriage, the NYT notes that "short of a sweeping decision by the Supreme Court that same-sex marriage is a right, change could come more slowly in the coming years. Thirty states have adopted constitutional amendments limiting marriage to a man and a woman–measures that can be reversed only with public ballots."

- More from Melissa Steffan

Pastors

Friday Five Interview: Russell Moore

Daniel Darling

Are conservative evangelicals rethinking their political engagement? We asked the newly elected president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

For today’s entry in the Friday Five interview series, we catch up with Russell Moore, the recently-elected president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, replacing the recently retired Richard Land. Prior to accepting this position, he was the Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Moore is a popular author and speaker. His latest book is Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ. He is a widely sought-after commentator and public speaker, frequently quoted in leading religious and secular publications.

Today we chat with Moore about the changing face of evangelical activism, his relationship with President Obama, and what he means by “convictional kindness.”

-Daniel

You were recently elected as President of the Southern Baptists’ Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. How do you feel your life experience has prepared you for this moment?

From the very beginning of my Christian life, I have felt a tension between two callings: to the pulpit and to the public square. I sensed a call to ministry early in my teens, but veered away from it for some time, pursuing a life in the political arena. My wife and I dated on the campaign trail, as I was working for U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor. She was with me from county fair to fundraiser to seafood festival in our congressional district in south Mississippi, drumming up support for Gene.

While gearing up for a political life, I sensed a renewed call to the ministry, and here we are. It always seemed to me that those years of political preparation weren’t wasted time, but that God was afoot, getting me ready for something.

In my years in academia, I have spent most of my attention on the subject of the kingdom of God in Christ, which is the consuming passion of my life. This issue is central to the questions I’ll be addressing as president of the ERLC.

Your election comes at a time when Southern Baptists (and evangelicals in general) seem to be reexamining their public engagement. Does your election signal new messaging?

I hope my election signals a commitment to the priority of the gospel in our public engagement. I want to address the outside world with what I call “convictional kindness.” This means a refusal to capitulate to the patterns of this age, which is what I think we’ve done, for instance, with the divorce culture. Evangelical Christians are as counter-cultural as we want to be, and it is clear that we are slow-train sexual revolutionaries, embracing the assumptions of the outside culture a few years behind everybody else. This has had disastrous consequences.

This conviction is rooted in kindness, which in the Bible isn’t equated with passivity but with spiritual warfare. We love and care about our neighbors because they aren’t our enemies. We wrestle with accusing demons, not with their prey.

I was recently on a lesbian feminist talk show on the West Coast. The host wanted to hear what evangelical Christians believe about same-sex marriage, and why. She easily could have caricatured me and used me as an ideological piñata to score points with her base, but she didn’t. She listened to me and shared her concerns with me. We were able to have a civil dialogue because we respected each other. She sought to persuade me that I was wrong, and I sought to persuade her to consider the Christian vision of sexuality and, ultimately, of the gospel behind it.

If I really believe the gospel, and I do, then I know that the ultimate issue isn’t my rightness. This lesbian feminist talk-show host is made in the image of God, and she is loved by God. Jesus died for her and offers her a queenship in his kingdom. How can I not respect her and treat her with kindness? And if I really believe what I say I believe, then she is just a sinner’s prayer away from being my sister in Christ. This lesbian feminist talk-show host could be the next Corrie Ten Boom.

I am not here to represent the Bible Belt’s political interest to a post-Christian culture. I’m here to help equip churches to signal the coming kingdom of God. The message of that kingdom isn’t a cranky “Hey you kids, get off our lawn.” Our message is “Make way for the coming of the Lord.”

Younger evangelicals seem to favor a broader portfolio of issues of concern, adding issues like immigration reform, human trafficking, and racial reconciliation to the traditional issues of life and marriage. Is this a good thing?

It is a good thing. The issues you mentioned are interrelated because they have to do with human dignity. The perpetual satanic temptation is to dehumanize or to depersonalize persons. This often shows up first in language. The N-word wasn’t just rude; it was a way for idolatrous white supremacists to rob human beings of their natural dignity as God’s image-bearers. When a person is thought of as an “embryo” or a “fetus” or an “anchor baby” or an “illegal,” it is easy to quiet the conscience into seeing that person as a problem rather than as a person.

A holistic view of the human person means that we care about human life and human flourishing in all their complexities, regardless of whose political program this impedes. We oppose abortion and sex-trafficking and the harassment of immigrants and racial bigotry because Jesus identifies himself with the marginalized, and we will give an account for caring about those he sees and knows.

We advocate for natural marriage not because we want some special privilege but because we believe marriage is creational not political. The state can’t redefine it but can only confuse it. And if marriage isn’t safeguarded, women and children will be the ones who are hurt because the permanent one-flesh union of a man and a woman isn’t just a cultural icon. Having both a mother and a father is what is best for children and for families and communities.

The temptation, of course, is for Christians to pick and choose our issues so that the biblical witness becomes a prop for our political aspirations. Conservatives then could easily talk about family matters but never about the poor and the sojourner. And progressives could easily talk about environmental stewardship and immigration reform but ignore one of the most pressing issues of the day: the denial of personhood to millions of orphaned, unborn children.

When we speak as Christians, we speak with a complexity that stands over and sometimes in judgment of the binary political polarizations of the day. That frustrates our allies, sure, but we’re not working for them.

Christians seem to swing the pendulum between pietistic disengagement and hard-boiled partisan politics. Should pastors and church leaders advocate a third way?

The church of Jesus Christ isn’t a political action committee, affixing Bible verses to already-existing political programs. The church is a colony of the kingdom of Jesus Christ. That has social and political implications, but these implications are as much about the next trillion years as they are about the next four.

You are right that the evangelical community seems to swing between partisan occupation and pietistic disengagement. Neither fits the biblical pattern. The errors of the last generation, in politicizing everything, can result in a dangerous over-correction by the Millennial generation into a hyper-libertarianism that reduces the gospel to the question “Who is my neighbor?” and avoids moral discourse as a defense against legalism.

Ironically, this form of disengagement itself becomes a kind of Pharisaism, building hedges around the point of temptation in order to avoid falling into it.

We must tie everything we do explicitly to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the mission of Christ. This means we speak to the whole of human existence, including what it means to live together in civil society and as citizens. We do so recognizing there are some areas where the church speaks with clear authority, because of a clearly revealed truth in Scripture, and other points at which we speak with a more nuanced voice. There is not a Christian position on a balanced budget amendment or gun control legislation, for instance, although there are certainly Christian principles that inform our motivations and goals on such things. On the means to those ends, we can agree to disagree.

The primary aspect of this third way though is the priority of focus. The state is important. The culture is important. But the church is the focal point of Christ’s reign in the present era. We must be in all the areas of cultural and political influence. Decisions made there flow backward into our communities and congregations with all sorts of implications. But I think the first step of Christian engagement with the outside world is a gospel-driven, counter-cultural, Bible-disciplined congregational life.

The change I seek isn’t moral majoritarianism or isolationist libertarianism, but an engaged communitarianism that not only advocates for justice but demonstrates it in lived congregational reality.

You’ve had the opportunity to meet with President Obama and his staff on a number of issues. Will you continue that dialogue?

I have disagreements with President Obama on some crucially important things, such as matters of life, marriage, and religious liberty. I have respect for him as a leader and as our president, and I like him as a person. When you pray for someone every day, it is hard not to love that person, even when he disappoints you in some area or another.

He and his Administration have always treated me with kindness and respect, and I have friends I love in the Administration. We don’t have to agree on everything to work together sometimes, and to seek to understand one another when we don’t agree.

I hope to honor and to pray for the President, as the Bible commands us to do, even when we disagree, and to work with his Administration when we have points of mutual concern for the common good.

I have learned a lot by watching the example of Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) in his friendship with the President. In a profile of Sen. Coburn in TIME Magazine, written by President Obama himself, of all people, the senator is quoted as saying, “What better way to influence someone than to love them?” I recognize the Spirit of Christ in that statement, and I hope to live up to it.

- More from Daniel Darling

The Good, the Bad, and the Terrorist

Marlena Graves

Searching for an explanation for evil.

Craig A Michaud / Flickr | FBI

In the weeks since two bombs went off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, we've learned much about the two young men first introduced to us as "Suspect 1" and "Suspect 2" in blurry images released by the FBI. The ongoing investigation into the lives of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his now deceased brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, have revealed detail after detail about their family, friends, education, hobbies, travels, religious practices, politics, and personalities. But no degree of in-depth reporting or FBI investigation will be able to answer our biggest question: What makes someone commit such unimaginably evil acts?

That's what we really want to know. What terrible things could've burrowed deeply into Dzhokhar's soul? What horrors drove him and Tamerlan to unleash a nightmare reality upon the innocents of Boston? The questions loom larger for Dzhokhar, the surviving younger brother, now in a prison medical facility. By all accounts, he was a good guy, and his friends never dreamed that he'd be involved in this kind of crime. High school teacher Larry Aaronson notes:

There is nothing in his character, in his deportment, in his demeanor that would suggest anything remotely capable of any of these things that he is now suspected of doing. He was so grateful to be here, he was so grateful to be at the school…he was compassionate, he was caring, he was jovial.

Is it any wonder that Dzhokhar's mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, refuses to believe that her sons are the jihadist kind, repeatedly telling the media they were framed? While we may shake our heads in utter disbelief over her refusal to face reality, I suppose that it's hard for any of us, at least initially, to believe that those we know, and maybe even love, could be guilty of bold-faced evil.

Maybe we forget that evil, like the devil, can come disguised as an angel of light. We've all been shocked—and perhaps denied it possible—when friends, acquaintances, relatives, and even Christian leaders do something unthinkable. It's hard to reconcile their good public behavior with the evil deeds that eventually become public. Maybe we forget how quickly each one of us can become ugly. We doubt our own depravity often thinking that the evil person is always the other person, someone we don't know.

During the week of the bombings and police chase, Dzhokhar alternated between criminal behavior and good-guy demeanor, killing and maiming innocent strangers one day and partying with college friends and working out at the gym the next.

We wrack our brains to make sense of his actions, evil and good so close together. Did Tamerlan brainwash him into terrorism? Did a feeling of being left out motivate them to hurt others? Could a deep sense of place and strong communal ties have prevented this horrific tragedy and others like it? Or was it purely vengeance for the wrongs they believe America has committed against Muslims across the world?

I should be quick to point out that self-proclaimed Muslims aren't the only ones who have engaged in terror. Self-proclaimed Christians have been terrorists, guilty of abominable crimes. We need only recall President Andrew Jackson and his Indian removal policies, our history of slavery and segregation, and the Christians who flocked to the Nazi Party during World War II. If only we could claim that terror, genocide, and the abominable treatment of our fellow human beings were the results of atheism, something that atheists inflicted upon others, it'd be a lot easier for us to explain away. But it isn't.

Like others, I seek answers in hopes of wrapping my mind around the horror. Maybe I believe that comprehending what makes someone do evil will enable me to assert some sort of control over it. Terrorism is linked to anger and hatred, which give birth to disillusionment and the deluded idea that the actions we take against another are actually fair and just. On a smaller scale, when we act out of sins such as anger, hatred, jealousy, or malice, we convince ourselves that the objects of our contempt are receiving justice. By dehumanizing others, every one of us becomes capable of the worst atrocities.

So are Dzhokhar and I really any different? That depends. In his insightful book, People of the Lie, psychologist M. Scott Peck explains the difference between "ordinary" sins and evil.

It is not their sins per se that characterize evil people, rather it is the subtlety and persistence and consistency of their sins….the central defect of evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it…. Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their motives….evil…is committed by…the Pharisees…the self-righteous who think they are without sin.

Even so, we must remain careful not to resort to overly simplified explanations for terror or other forms of evil, just because it's easier for us to understand. As Jennifer Bryson explains, "Complex causality is what we need to grasp if we are to understand how the interaction of multiple factors can escalate individual and group actions to the point of international terrorism." Terror can't be the result of religious beliefs alone. The majority of Christians, Muslims, and others who've suffered at the hands of one another do not terrorize humanity.

J.R.R. Tolkien, in the Return of the King, reminds us that we may not be able to fully comprehend and control evil, both in the abstract and in the individual cases that we encounter in our lives:

It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after us may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Even if we get our answers about the Tsarneav brothers' motivations, the explanations can't absolve Dzhokhar and Tamerlan from responsibility. The "whys" can't bring back lives destroyed or dull the suffering that the victims and their families endure.

"Any explanation of suffering, no matter how solid or reasonable, fails in the face of a person's deepest pain," Ellen Painter Dollar said in a comment thread about suffering. "In those moments, we need to simply be present, offering kindness, helping to tip the balance toward the good."

This article was originally published as part of Her.Meneutics, Christianity Today's blog for women.

- More from Marlena Graves

News

Christian Converts in Morocco Fear Fatwa Calling for Their Execution

Morning Star News

House church leaders worried whether fatwa will change laws.

A recent Moroccan fatwa calling for the execution of those who leave Islam has left many Christian converts in turmoil.

There is still much debate over how the fatwa, which only recently came to light after the government’s top authority on Islam issued it last year, could change laws in Morocco. But a Moroccan Christian convert active in the house church movement said many former Muslims who are now Christians fear for their lives.

“The fatwa showed us that our country is still living in the old centuries–no freedom, no democracy,” he said. “Unfortunately, we feel that we aren’t protected. We can be arrested or now even killed any time and everywhere.”

The Marrakech resident, who requested anonymity, said many Moroccan converts feel the same way.

“The majority of the Christian Moroccan leaders have the same feeling,” he said. “We are more followed now by the secret police than before. Only the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ gives us courage and peace.”

The governmental High Council of Ulemas, the highest religious authority in Morocco, issued the ruling last year, but only released it in April upon request of the government’s Delegation for Human Rights of Morocco, according to Arabic-language daily Akhbar al-Youm. The human rights delegation was seeking clarification on the Islamic stance on freedom of religion. But Mahjoub El Hiba, a senior human rights official in the government, denied there was any such request to the Moroccan Press Agency, Morocco’s official government news service.

In a publication explaining its ruling, the high council said it based its decision in part on verses from the Koran, and in part on verses from the Hadith–one that quotes Muhammad, Islam’s prophet, as saying, “If somebody [a Muslim] discards his religion, kill him.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 3017)

Islamic scholars use the Hadith, also known as the “Sayings and Deeds of the Prophet,” along with the Koran as a basis for determining sharia (Islamic law).

Members of the high council are appointed by the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs, which is led at least in theory by King Mohammed VI. But the high council is essentially an advisory body, has no connection to Morocco’s criminal judicial system and cannot enforce its ruling. Whether the fatwa will have any effect on Moroccan criminal law remains to be seen – there are too many variables, said a representative of Middle East Concern, an advocacy group for persecuted Christians.

“A fatwa doesn’t automatically become part of the criminal law,” the representative said. “The fatwa doesn’t all of the sudden become an amendment or an addendum to the penal code; that’s why we don’t actually know what it’s going to look like in practice or principle. We can’t say it’s actually going to affect people, because we don’t know.”

Laws in Morocco

Still, the ruling could represent a major shift within the government–currently apostasy isn’t against the law in Morocco.

According to Christian converts in Morocco and some advocacy groups that help them, even if the ruling never becomes law, it sets a dangerous precedent for how converts and Christians in general will be treated in Morocco. If leaving Islam is seen as an act worthy of death, then “proselytizing”–which is illegal–could then be treated as a much more serious issue. Article 220 of the Moroccan Penal Code bans proselytizing, which carries a penalty of between six months and three years in prison and a fine of up to 500 dirhams (US$60). Part of the code forbids using material incentives to persuade someone to change their religion.

In addition to a possible crackdown on sharing their faith, Christians fear law enforcement officials who may be uncertain about how to deal with apostates may opt for harsh treatment of converts because of the fatwa. Christian converts in Morocco say police already harass them.

“It will give the secret police a tool to persecute Moroccan Christians,” one European Christian missionary said. “It will certainly increase persecution–I’m sure.”

He added that he thinks the fatwa will be used to discourage converts from being able to express their faith to others.

“For those who are already Christian, it can increase their burden, but it will really put the threat on any type of outreach and evangelism,” he said.

Apostasy in Morocco is complicated by the fact that Islam is the official religion of the state, and the king of Morocco, whose titles include, “The Defender of the Faithful,” is seen as the leader of Muslims in Morocco. With politics and religion thus essentially united, spiritual quests can be seen as an act of political dissent or even treason.

Punishment for Leaving Islam

Experts say it is difficult to make across-the-board generalizations about how converts are treated in Morocco. The way they are treated depends on factors such as age, economic standing, whether they live in rural or urban areas and, most importantly, how outspoken they are about their faith.

According to the MEC expert, older Christians who are economically secure, live in a large city and are mostly private about their faith will be persecuted less than other converts. The representative said persecution comes in many different forms, much of it harassment from family members humiliated that someone in their family became a Christian.

The European expatriate, a pastor, said almost all converts experience some sort of harassment by police as well. It is known as a second baptism of sorts for new Christians.

“When a Moroccan comes to Christ, sooner or later, they are going to be confronted by the police,” he said. “It’s what they call ‘police baptism.’ Police baptism is what happens when someone gets confronted by the secret police.”

The purpose of interrogation is to intimidate Christians into abandoning their new-found faith, the pastor said. In some cases, police have been successful.

There have been several public instances of harassment and persecution of converts that have gone beyond police interrogation. On Dec. 28, 2005, Christian convert Jamaa Ait Bakrim was sentenced to 15 years in prison for proselytism and for destroying the goods of others by burning two abandoned telephone poles touching his property. He remains in Kenitra Prison.

In March 2010, the government expelled at least 33 Christian foreign residents from the country. Among them were 10 adult Christians, along with their children, who were running The Village of Hope, a foster daycare center for orphans. The foster children were turned over to the care of people they did not know.

In addition to the expulsions, roughly 81 people were declared “persona non grata” for alleged proselytizing. None have returned. As recently as February, one of those blacklisted tried to gain reentry but was detained and then deported.

There are about 8,000 Moroccan Christians out of a population of almost 35 million people, according to the 2012 International Religious Freedom Report published by the U.S. Department of State.

Moderate Morocco

Morocco has taken pains to maintain its image as a moderate Islamic country. Any deviation from that image could cost Morocco in foreign trade, tourism revenue and international prestige, but observers believe the laws against proselytizing and the recent fatwa threaten the country’s reputation as religiously moderate.

“It is imperative that they are seen in alignment with Western standards of freedom of religion,” the MEC representative said. “This would be a very significant step away from standards that Morocco has agreed to in the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights. It would go against the progress that Morocco has made over the past 10 years.”

The expatriate pastor sees the fatwa as part of the region’s tide toward “political Islam” and a bid to silence hardline Islamic critics of the regime.

“Arab Spring has become Christian winter,” he said.

- More from Morning Star News

News

American Pro-Life Leaders Take Expertise to Italy

Alessandro Speciale - RNS

Italy’s March for Life is part of a wider movement that has seen European anti-abortion movements become bolder in recent years.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) American anti-abortion leaders will be in Rome on Sunday (May 12) to participate in Italy’s third March for Life and lend their expertise to the nation’s small anti-abortion movement as it tries to learn from its American counterpart.

Jeanne Monahan, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, and Lila Rose of Live Action will be among those who will march through central Rome on Sunday morning, from the Colosseum up to Castel Sant’Angelo, a few hundred meters from the Vatican.

While the annual March for Life in Washington — which celebrated its 40th anniversary in January — attracts hundreds of thousands of people and heavy media coverage, in Europe anti-abortion movements have often kept a lower profile and haven’t been able to shape social discourse as in the United States.

Polls regularly show high levels of support for abortion rights throughout Europe. A January poll by Eurispes found that 64 percent of Italians favor legalizing abortion pills.

In Italy, abortion is currently legal in hospitals up to the third month of pregnancy.

Last year, Italy’s March for Life was held for the first time in Rome. In 2011, the very first march wended through the small northern town of Desenzano del Garda.

Around 15,000 people took part in the 2012 March, according to organizers who predict significantly larger attendance this year.

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, praised the initiative in a letter.

The march is a way of “reawakening consciences” and “mobilizing men of good will” against abortion, he wrote.

Italy’s March for Life is part of a wider movement that has seen European anti-abortion movements become bolder in recent years.

In 2012, anti-abortion groups from 20 different countries launched a petition asking the European Parliament to recognize that life begins at conception. They aim to collect 1 million signatures from each of at least seven of the 27 countries of the European Union by November.

In an interview with Religion News Service, Monahan said that while some of what makes the March for Life successful in the U.S. can be exported to Italy, “each culture is unique,” and this must be taken into account when trying to replicate the American model overseas.

Monahan, who will be honored by the organizers of Rome’s rally, said that what the American experience can teach Italy’s and Europe’s anti-abortion movements is “getting the grass roots together” to “put a little bit of bully pressure on our legislators.”

“We can do something through our legislators and really feel results; it really makes the difference,” she said.

For Virginia Coda Nunziante, chief organizer of Italy’s March for Life, the idea for an Italian rally came from her several years of participation in the Washington march.

“We saw how it really mattered for (American) civil society, and we decided to try to fill this void,” she said.

Coda Nunziante said Italy’s anti-abortion movements want to learn from their American counterparts’ success in “creating a culture of life, mobilizing youth and getting across to the wider public that abortion really kills innocents.”

But she acknowledges that funding for Italy’s march falls far short of that for the American anti-abortion movement.

“We have been able to get some politicians on board. We want to pressure politicians, because they are the ones who change the law,” she said.

For Monahan, American and European anti-abortion movements “can help each other and learn.”

Her main advice for the organizers of Italy’s March is to avoid trying to “twist people’s arms” in getting their messages across: “We don’t have to manipulate people or convince them. Truth is very attractive and our role is only to bring it into the light.”

- More from Alessandro Speciale - RNS

News

Should Churches Have Buried the Boston Marathon Bomber?

G. Jeffrey MacDonald - RNS

(UPDATED) Debate over what to do with Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body finally resolved.

Update (May 10): In an exclusive interview with the Boston Globe, Richmond resident Martha Mullen describes how she helped end the burial protests by arranging a burial for Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev at Al-Barzakh Cemetery, in Doswell, Virginia.

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Update (May 9): Tsarnaev’s body has been buried at an undisclosed location.

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BOSTON (RNS) – Soon after the Boston Marathon bombings, local Christian leaders stepped swiftly into the public eye, convening vigils and urging peaceful healing in the wake of senseless violence.

But their public voices have fallen mostly silent as noisy resistance grows to the prospect that suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev could be buried in local soil.

Cemeteries and even some mosques have refused to take his body. His city, Cambridge, has urged family members to bury him elsewhere. Republican U.S. Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez and local talk radio host Dan Rae want him dumped in the ocean, like Osama bin Laden. Clergy have largely kept mum.

“The only signs of people who are showing some sort of moral conscience are those few who stand with a card near the funeral home saying (burial) is a corporal work of mercy,” said James Keenan, a moral theologian at Boston College. “To say, ‘we won’t bury him’ makes us barbaric. It takes away mercy, the trademark of Christians. … I’m talking about this because somebody should.”

The Christian silence is notable, observers say, in part because death rituals are typically the domain of the faith community. In matters of death, religious figures are primary sources for guidance in what to do — but not in this public episode.

“I’ve not heard a lot from the Christian community” on this issue, said Joel Anderle, senior pastor of Community Covenant Church in West Peabody, Mass., and president of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.

“This is one of those curious areas where Christianity, and in particular Protestant Christianity, has come to believe that it doesn’t have a voice.”

The issue isn’t theological uncertainty. Believers of all stripes would say Tsarnaev should be buried — in local soil if necessary, perhaps in an unmarked grave — as a matter of respect for personhood, for the human body and for God, according to Laura Everett, executive director of the MCC. She notes Christians are known for burying even pariahs, including those executed for heinous crimes or left to die in the streets, as acts of faithful witness.

Why then today’s reticence? Some blame the media. Christian leaders would love to tell why even a killer should have a burial, but reporters aren’t giving them a platform to weigh in, according to the Rev. Suzanne Wade, priest-in-charge at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Westford, Mass.

“We have a moral imperative to say yes to the burial,” Wade said. “But I wonder if the voices of those who would speak peace are being muted because the conflict is a much better story.”

Others suspect reticence serves particular purposes for faith leaders who must walk a delicate line in the aftermath of a devastating disaster. These purposes might be lofty and pastoral, or part of something less holy, depending on one’s perspective.

Because the bombings left more than 260 people injured and dozens maimed, pastors across the region are ministering to parishioners who were hurt or know victims and still feel the sting of the attacks. Such pastors might be too upset or angry to champion mercy and respect for a man responsible for their people’s misery, according to Wade.

“It’s much easier for me to be that public voice than it is perhaps for people who have somebody very close to them who was affected,” Wade said. “Distance allows a perspective that you can’t get when you’re living in the middle of it.”

What’s more, the best pastoral outcome would probably be for a burial to take place with consent from Tsarnaev’s family and with minimal fanfare, Everett said. In their reticence, faith leaders might be trying to keep the debate from escalating, she said, since no one is served well by a heightened, emotional spectacle.

“There’s deep consternation in the religious community and deep desire for this to be resolved,” Everett said. “Religious leaders are weighing how best to be useful in that.”

Some observers wonder whether something less charitable might be unfolding. Christian leaders in past centuries called for burning witches at the stake and having criminals buried at crossroads, where vehicles would run over them, said Gary Laderman, a historian who studies death rituals at Emory University.

Laderman said he sees “echoes from previous eras” in calls from the general public for burials to be denied to an enemy such as Tsarnaev. He warns that religious leaders can contribute to desecration by what they sanction, encourage, say or don’t say.

“There’s a way in which religious leaders and cultures can inflame the passions even more about wanting to desecrate (the bodies of) the most vile people on earth,” Laderman said.

Christians beyond the Boston area are taking steps to see that Tsarnaev gets a burial. The group Evangelicals for Social Action has collected 44 signatures for a new petition calling on Christian cemeteries to accept Tsarnaev’s body. Paul Keane, originally of Hamden, Conn., has offered the Tsarnaevs a plot beside his late mother in a church cemetery. It would be in her memory, Keane said, since she “taught me to ‘love thine enemy.'”

Boston Christians, meanwhile, worry some of their peers are cowed into silence by vocal opponents, such as those who’ve targeted funeral director Peter Stefan for saying he will find a burial site for Tsarnaev, perhaps in Russia if not the United States.

When Anderle said on his Facebook page that Christians should be “utterly scandalized” when a burial is blocked, others say he’s taking a risk.

“There is this sense of, ‘I really appreciate what you’re saying, but that sure seems a dangerous thing to point out in a society that’s hell bent on retributive justice,'” Anderle said. “We can’t engage without fear of being … vilified and attacked. That’s sad.”

- More from G. Jeffrey MacDonald - RNS

Theology

How Dallas Willard Befriended Rookie Pastor Richard Foster

Richard Foster

He taught me to live into the rhythms of the Spirit.

Editor's note: Dallas Willard died May 8 at age 77, days after being diagnosed with cancer.

It was 1970, and I had just received my seminary degree and been appointed to a small church plant in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. The church, I am sure, would probably rank me as a marginal failure on the ecclesiastical scoreboards, but I was excited to convert the world–at least by tomorrow!

Included in this little congregation were Dallas and Jane Willard and their children, John and Becky. Even before I met Dallas, I knew of his reputation as a world-class philosopher. (This was before the publication of his monumental Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge. Dallas' enormous philosophic work is the great area of his writing and thinking that is least understood, but which might in time prove to be his greatest contribution.)

In our small fellowship, Dallas was simply the person who led the singing (what we today would call the worship leader).

However, in our small fellowship, Dallas was simply the person who led the singing (what we today would call the worship leader) and Jane played the organ (remember those days!).

Early on I observed the love and care that Dallas shared with Tony, another member of our fellowship. Tony was a construction worker with a third grade education. Tony could not possibly have understood Dallas' philosophic work, but no matter. There was between them a bond of love and fellowship in Christ that was astonishing for me to watch. Dallas and Tony would gather once a week, just the two of them, to study the Bible and pray together. It was for me a vivid example of Christian koinonia.

That was my early introduction to Dallas and our friendship grew quickly. He would join me and a small group of men weekly to share and pray together. One young man, Bob, who was just as rough as a cobb, would also join us. He would often blurt out startling things. One night he was telling us about how he had gotten a hold of a bunch of habanero peppers and stuffed them into his mouth.

"They were so hot," he declared, "that they would burn the hell out of ya!" Dallas turned and said with that serious wit of his, "Give me a thousand of them!"

Dallas and I would trade off teaching at the church. I have often explained that when I taught folks might show up, but when Dallas taught they brought their tape recorders. Me too.

He taught many courses. One of the early ones was an astonishing series in the Book of Acts. That is where his now famous sentence was born: "The aim of God in history is the creation of an all-inclusive community of loving persons with God himself at the very heart of this community as its prime Sustainer and most glorious Inhabitant." He also taught a course on the classical disciplines of the spiritual life, which broadened our horizons to encompass the whole people of God throughout history. What wonderful sessions. Little did I know then that, years later, these ideas would lead to the writing of Celebration of Discipline.

But nothing compared to the series Dallas taught our little fellowship on the Sermon on the Mount. As a teenager, I had read Detrich Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship over and over again so taken was I by Bonhoeffer's analysis of The Sermon on the Mount. When Dallas immersed us into this most important of Jesus' teachings on virtue ethics, I was absolutely captivated. I knew the literature in the field; I knew the varying approaches and interpretations of the text. So I recognized immediately that what Dallas was teaching us was stunningly creative and life giving, and at the same time deeply rooted in classical thought. The material was essentially what we today have in The Divine Conspiracy.

Our little group hung onto every word. We are onto something big, I thought to myself, something really big. Such teachings completely transformed our little fellowship, especially in terms of substantive character formation. Friends and neighbors saw these changes in the people, and our fellowship grew.

But it was not all sweetness and light. One dear lady who was absorbing the teaching like a sponge latched onto the words of Paul about Christ, "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Phil. 4:13, ESV). She, however, turned this biblical concept into a wooden literalism, inviting a homeless drug addict into her own home to minister to him, thinking, I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. After peppering her with questions for 48 hours straight, he raped her and burglarized her home. We found her a day later under the kitchen table in a fetal position. She required six months of intensive therapy to recover. The next Sunday Dallas spent the entire time tenderly teaching us on our human limitations.

Sometimes Dallas could help us as an entire congregation with a simple comment of accumulated wisdom. One Sunday morning, I was preaching on how Moses had to learn to do the work of the Lord in the power of the Spirit. He, of course, had tried to do God's work in the flesh by killing the Egyptian, and it had failed miserably. So God had to put Moses into the desert for forty years to learn to do the work of God in the power of the Spirit.

In the context of Quaker worship, it is perfectly appropriate for any person in the congregation to speak a timely word from the Lord. So, as I was beginning to wax eloquent, in my enthusiasm I said something like "We want to learn these lessons so that it won't take us forty years like it did Moses." Dallas in his great wisdom simply spoke up so everyone could hear, "I doubt it."

We were learning the delicate balance of not running ahead of the Spirit, nor lagging behind. We were learning the cosmic patience of God and how to come into the rhythms of the Holy Spirit.

Of course his comment stopped my sermon right in mid-sentence–and it needed to be stopped! His remark forced us to consider the hidden preparation through which God puts his ministers. It deeply influenced the manner in which we did ministry from that day forward. We were learning the delicate balance of not running ahead of the Spirit, nor lagging behind. We were learning the cosmic patience of God and how to come into the rhythms of the Holy Spirit.

I could continue with story after story, but allow me just say that I will always treasure the love and friendship of Dallas Willard. When we were ministering together I would often go to his home study, and we would sit together discussing and praying for the people in our fellowship. The grace and love and care that he carried for each person was so moving to me as the pastor of this little fellowship. Then, often we would slip into complete silence–a listening silence of course. Sometimes the phone would ring or someone would knock on the front door, but Dallas would never flinch. He was present to me and present to the Lord. I will always cherish those times of silence, for we had not only come together, but we were gathered together in the power of the Lord.

I was with Dallas and Jane just a few days before Dallas was ushered from this life into greater Life. I had come to say goodbye to my friend. I solemnly read to him the poetic words of Charles Wesley:

If death my friend and me divide,
Thou dost not, Lord, my sorrow chide,
Or frown my tears to see;
Restrained from passionate excess,
Thou bidst me mourn in calm distress
For them that rest in Thee. I feel a strong immortal hope,
Which bears my mournful spirit up
Beneath its mountain load;
Redeemed from death, and grief, and pain,
I soon shall find my friend again
Within the arms of God. Pass a few fleeting moments more
And death the blessing shall restore
Which death has snatched away;
For me thou wilt the summons send,
And give me back my parted friend
In that eternal day.

Dallas sat listening quietly. Then with trembling voice, I said, "We may not see each other again . . ." Our conversation was interrupted as we needed to take Dallas to the hospital for hydration. Once we arrived, the customary flurry of doctors and nurses and medical staff went on so that we were not alone again until that evening back at his house.

As I was preparing to leave, Dallas quietly spoke as if to continue the conversation of the morning. He smiled and said ever so kindly and firmly, "We will see each other again!" And so we shall.

"Well done, good and faithful servant…. Enter into the joy of your master" (Matt 25:23, ESV).

Richard J. Foster is the author of the now classic Celebration of Discipline and a number of other books. He is the founder of Renovar é, a community of Christians seeking continual spiritual renewal in Christ.

- More from Dallas Willard

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