===Evangelicalism===
Report: 31% of Evangelicals Did Not Give to Church or Charity in Previous Year
Charitable giving is down among evangelicals, according to a new report from Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts. According to the report, evangelicals’ financial generosity is down in every metric measured in a similar survey conducted three years ago. In 2021, Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts found that the average evangelical gave away only 3.2% of their household income to either church or charity, and 19% had not made any charitable gifts in the previous 12 months.
(Church Leader 1/3/24) READ MORE>>>>>
Charitable giving is down among evangelicals, according to a new report from Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts. According to the report, evangelicals’ financial generosity is down in every metric measured in a similar survey conducted three years ago. In 2021, Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts found that the average evangelical gave away only 3.2% of their household income to either church or charity, and 19% had not made any charitable gifts in the previous 12 months.
(Church Leader 1/3/24) READ MORE>>>>>
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is a sequel of sorts to Tim Alberta’s 2019 book American Carnage: the first covered the Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party after 2016; this new book details the Trumpian takeover of parts of white evangelicalism. Some stories might be familiar because of Alberta’s work as a staff writer for the Atlantic, including the bookending story about his father’s church and its new pastor, Chris Winans, who took over after Alberta’s father passed away in 2019. Alberta wrote a powerful article about politics poisoning churches in Michigan back in 2022 and recently published an excerpt of this book. While The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory joins a growing post-2016 shelf populated with books like Kristin Kobes DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne, Jon Ward’s Testimony, and Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion, Alberta brings a distinctive and necessary voice to the conversation about white evangelicals in the age of Trump, thanks in no small part to skillfully merging his journalism background with his insider status as an evangelical preacher’s kid. These two angles means that Alberta can interview evangelical subjects well, using questions that stretch without alienating or antagonizing—he includes most of his political and scriptural commentary in the book rather than within his interviews —while also writing with a nuance that eschews the conflation of evangelicals or conservative Christians with MAGA supporters or Christian Nationalists.
(Reformed Journal 6/26/24) READ MORE>>>>>
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory is a sequel of sorts to Tim Alberta’s 2019 book American Carnage: the first covered the Trumpian takeover of the Republican Party after 2016; this new book details the Trumpian takeover of parts of white evangelicalism. Some stories might be familiar because of Alberta’s work as a staff writer for the Atlantic, including the bookending story about his father’s church and its new pastor, Chris Winans, who took over after Alberta’s father passed away in 2019. Alberta wrote a powerful article about politics poisoning churches in Michigan back in 2022 and recently published an excerpt of this book. While The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory joins a growing post-2016 shelf populated with books like Kristin Kobes DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne, Jon Ward’s Testimony, and Russell Moore’s Losing Our Religion, Alberta brings a distinctive and necessary voice to the conversation about white evangelicals in the age of Trump, thanks in no small part to skillfully merging his journalism background with his insider status as an evangelical preacher’s kid. These two angles means that Alberta can interview evangelical subjects well, using questions that stretch without alienating or antagonizing—he includes most of his political and scriptural commentary in the book rather than within his interviews —while also writing with a nuance that eschews the conflation of evangelicals or conservative Christians with MAGA supporters or Christian Nationalists.
(Reformed Journal 6/26/24) READ MORE>>>>>
“Evangelicalism has long had an individualistic strain that resists the idea that personal faith requires church attendance,” Graham and Homans tell us. And, in their minds, those they profile serve as evidence that Donald Trump has helped these new evangelicals carve out terrain in the legitimate and long-established non-church-going wing of evangelicalism. |
A new kind of “evangelical”?
As any grandmaster of Pointless Online Theological Fisticuffs can tell you, the less clearly you define your terms, the more pointless the debate will be. If, for example, a Roman Catholic and a Southern Baptist debate whether baptism saves without sharing a common definition of both “baptism” and “saves,” both sides will end up barking slogans at each other and neither side will win any converts. Likewise, if you wish to argue that Donald Trump “is connecting with a different type of Evangelical voter”, you won’t make a terribly convincing argument if you have no clear definition of “evangelical.” Unfortunately, that’s precisely the path Ruth Graham and Charles Homans take in their recent New York Times article. (Hans Feine/World/The Stream 1/23/24) READ MORE>>>>> |
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Prove You're Not 'Easily Led,' Evangelicals!
In 1986, The New York Times described evangelicals as "more easily led than other kinds of voters." Then in 1993, The Washington Post reported that evangelicals were "largely poor, uneducated and easy to command." (The Washington Post issued a correction; the Times did not.)For the past week, the media have been trying to prove the truth of those characterizations, gleefully reporting on the comical reasons Iowa evangelicals give for their stalwart support of Donald Trump.(Ann Coulter/Townhall/Sight 1/10/24) READ MORE>>>>> |