Quick to Listen

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported on multiple allegations against Willow Creek Community Church founder and longtime pastor Bill Hybels. “The alleged behavior included suggestive comments, extended hugs, an unwanted kiss, and invitations to hotel rooms. It also included an allegation of a prolonged consensual affair with a married woman who later said her claim about the affair was not true.” Hybels and his church have denied the allegations reported by the Tribune. Hybels, is of course, not the first megachurch pastor, or even pastor, to be embroiled in allegations of adultery and sexual misconduct. Throughout the years, Christianity Today has reported on a number of high-profile ministry leaders who lost their jobs after they confessed to sexual sin. (In fact, news that Southern Baptist leader Frank Page resigned from ministry over a “morally inappropriate relationship” broke right after this podcast was recorded.) Most pastors who have been guilty of inappropriate relationships aren’t in a great place spiritually, says Jim Wilhoit, a professor of Christian formation at Wheaton College who has counseled church leaders who have confessed to sexual misconduct. “No one that I’ve talked with that has had an affair has had what I would say at that time a vital and well-developed relationship with Christ,” said Wilhoit. “I’m just not very sanguine about the spiritual life of many American pastors.” Wilhoit joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why pastors commit sexual sin, when congregations should know about allegations against ministry leaders, and how the expectations of the modern pastorate may make it hard for a pastor to maintain a grounded spiritual life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oklahoma politician James Lankford became a US Senator in 2015, the year before Donald Trump officially became the Republican Party’s candidate. Lankford didn’t support Trump in the GOP’s primary but ultimately backed him during the election. “What I really look for in a presidential candidate is someone who is a great role model, and I didn’t get that this time,” said Lankford. “I was very frustrated. I didn’t have a good option. I didn’t have that person who I would say is a great role model for my daughters and for my family.” Lankford has served nearly a decade in Washington, DC. But before that, the Southern Baptist thought he had found his calling as a Christian summer camp director. When he decided to transition, he found peace in his change in calling after observing the Bible’s attention to politics. “There are about 36 and a half books in the Old Testament that are written to, by, or about a political leader. It was often the prophet going to a king, King David writing in a psalm, or Solomon writing in Proverbs,” said Lankford. “A third of the New Testament was written to a political leader: the Book of Luke and the Book of Acts.” Lankford joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why he started a bipartisan Bible study, what he thinks of the president’s tweets, and why he’s challenging white people when it comes to race. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past decade, hundreds of Muslim migrants in Europe have encountered Christianity and embraced the gospel. In 2012, CT reported on the dozens of Iranian Muslims who had converted after moving to Germany. David Cashin, who has worked in ministry in Sweden and Bangladesh and taught courses in Islamic history, theology, and Muslim-Christian relations, believes something similar is also happening in Sweden. “The largest revival in the last 100 years is going on right now, and it’s primarily Muslims becoming Christians,” said Cashin, a professor of intercultural studies at Columbia Biblical Seminary. In recent years, as refugees have arrived in Western Europe from Iraq and Syria, some members of these communities have in turn become Christians. Yet, Christian communities in Germany and Sweden, comprising both those from the historic Middle Eastern church as well as recent converts, have been subject to abuse and harassment from radical Muslims. In 2017, Open Doors surveyed 123 Christian asylum seekers in Sweden. According to the report: More than half of all participants in the survey (53%) reported that they have been affected by violent assaults at least once, due to their Christian faith. Almost half of all participants (45%) in the survey reported that they have been threatened to death at least once and 6% reported that they have been a target of sexual assaults. Cashin joined associate editor Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why Iranian migrants, more than any others from the Middle East, are drawn to Christianity, whether or not all these conversions are bona fide, and what the Western Europen governments must do to better protect migrant religious minority communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, China announced that it would drop presidency term limits, effectively allowing current president Xi Jinping to serve indefinitely. The leader is currently concluding his first five-year term, one not particularly positive for the country’s Christians. During his time in office, a provincial government engaged in a multi-year campaign to remove crosses from the tops of churches and Xi suggested that religions that inadequately conformed to Communist ideals threatened the country’s government, and therefore must become more “Chinese-oriented.” Last fall, the Communist party reportedly visited Christian households in Jiangxi province, forcibly removing dozens of Christian symbols from living rooms and replacing them with pictures of Xi. In February, the government hit the faith community with another set of restrictions. Under these regulations, religious groups must gain government approval for any sort of religious activity, including using one’s personal home for a religious practice, publishing religious materials, calling oneself a pastor, or studying theology. The government accepted the “worst possible version” of the restrictions, said Fenggang Yang, the director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. The government could have been more pragmatic in its approach and treated this as a “social management issue.” “But these [restrictions] are not,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult or impossible to implement or enforce the restrictions.” Yang joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the roots of the government’s anti-religion attitudes, how Christians are speaking out against the recent term limits, and the fledgling Chinese missions movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2013, IBT Media purchased the acclaimed American magazine Newsweek. This acquisition had immediate positive effects for the floundering publication when its new owners announced a return to print. But some wondered about the identity and desired endgame of its new owners. “Who’s Behind Newsweek?” asked a 2014 Mother Jones report. “Why are the new owners so anxious to hide their ties to an enigmatic religious figure?” The article went on to identify the true owner of the publication as Korean religious figure David Jang, whom CT had profiled two years earlier. “The Second Coming Christ Controversy” explained that Jang and his followers had founded a number of media outlets including The Christian Post, Christian Today, and the International Business Times. In addition, they’d started a Christian college in California known as Olivet University (no relation to Olivet Nazarene University) and were key influencers in the World Evangelical Alliance. But the group wasn’t just a Korean evangelical ministry expanding its ministry to the West. Sources also alleged that the group had encouraged the belief that Jang was the “Second Coming Christ.” In the years since CT and Mother Jones’s reporting (much of which revealed illegal work arrangements for Olivet’s primarily immigrant students), IBT Media (now known as Newsweek Media Group) has experienced a number of controversies. Last week, three editors were fired after fighting with management over what they believed had been a breach of journalistic ethics in this story, “Why is the Manhattan DA looking at Newsweek’s ties to a Christian university?” Ben Dooley, who authored Mother Jones’s piece, joined associate digital media producer and former Christian Post reporter Morgan Lee and editorial director and co-author of CT’s 2012 Jang report Ted Olsen to discuss the group’s bizarre theological claims, how their media properties relate to their desire for influence in the evangelical world, and whether this latest controversy will change anything about how they operate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evangelist Billy Graham died this week. Christianity Today published more than two dozen articles on our site as part of our special commemorative coverage. But when you lived 99 years it can be hard to capture a life, even with this volume of pieces. This week on Quick to Listen historian and author of America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation Grant Wacker joined associate editor Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to talk about the regrets, paradoxes, and surprises of the life of the most prolific religious people our time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Is suffering from mental illness the result of personal sin? Last week, many Christians felt two prominent evangelical ministries affirmed that this was the case. At last week’s evangelical women’s conference the IF Gathering, speaker Rebekah Lyons, in telling about her daughter’s anxiety attacks, suggested that mental illness could be healed through prayer. The incidents at IF occurred several days after John Piper’s Desiring God ministry tweeted “We will find mental health when we stop staring in the mirror, and fix our eyes on the strength and beauty of God.” Nearly 500 people responded to the tweet, saying that the message implied that counselors and medication were unnecessary to cure mental illness. Both ministries later distanced themselves from these comments. IF Gathering founder Jennie Allen later clarified that the ministry supports counseling/medication and doesn't think mental illness is sinful. Desiring God apologized for “leaving off the link that gives the context quoting Clyde Kilby from more than 40 years ago when ‘mental health’ didn’t have the same technical connotations as today.” This link between mental illness, sin, and spirituality “isn’t really a Christian or religious idea,” says Amy Simpson, the author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. “It’s really rooted in superstition and a misunderstanding of what mental illness is,” said Simpson. In the 20th century, psychiatry and psychology were heavily secular practices and Sigmund Freud saw religion itself as a form of neurosis. “Many people responded to that, distancing themselves from psychiatry and psychology and thinking they’re anti-God, they’re anti-religion, they’re anti-faith, therefore we don’t want to have anything to do with them,” said Simpson. Simpson joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss spiritual oppression and mental illness in the Gospels, how our understanding of the brain has transformed in the past 50 years, and where sin fits into this discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ancient Olympics lasted more than a millennium before they were stopped by—you guessed it—Christians. It’s true: In AD 390, Emperor Theodosius I criticized the games as pagan and banned them. Ironically or not, faith also played a role in the beginning of the modern Olympics. One of the theologies undergirding the resurrection of the Olympics was “muscular Christianity,” a philosophy of “developing leaders with moral integrity and grit while also being physically strong,” said Nicholas Watson, a professor of sport and social justice at York St John University in the United Kingdom. “[Modern Olympics father] Baron de Coubertin’s vision and philosophy for the Olympics came by welding together ideas from the philosophy of the ancient Olympics in Greece and muscular Christianity that was birthed in the UK,” Watson said. This week on Quick to Listen, Watson joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss Western Christian beliefs about exercise in the 19th century, why world peace was a goal sought by the Olympics’ creators, and the countercultural narrative presented by the Special Olympics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, the US Senate confirmed Sam Brownback as America’s next ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The appointment came six months after President Trump had nominated the former Kansas Republican governor. Brown’s position is part of the Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF), a State Department office which monitors persecution and discrimination on a global scale. Created during the Clinton administration in 1998, the IRF exists as part of a larger American foreign policy strategy of promoting international religious freedom. “It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do,” said Melissa Rogers, who previously served as the executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Obama administration. “We find that when societies embrace religious liberty for all, they reap all kinds of benefits like building a more peaceful, just, stable, and more productive society. It makes the world a more peaceful and productive place.” Rogers joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the US strategies for advocating for religious freedom, why Western Christians’ speaking up for religious minorities in their own nation helps the persecuted church overseas, and if this office is just another way America imposes its values on other countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writer Rod Dreher’s recent comments on poverty and immigration have sparked intense criticism by Christians and non-Christians alike. In a recent post, Dreher wrote about his conflicted feelings on Trump’s derogatory remarks about African countries by drawing a comparison to immigrants from these countries and public housing: Let’s think about Section 8 housing. If word got out that the government was planning to build a housing project for the poor in your neighborhood, how would you feel about it? Be honest with yourself. Nobody would consider this good news. You wouldn’t consider it good news because you don’t want the destructive culture of the poor imported into your neighborhood. Drive over to the poor part of town, and see what a s---hole it is. Do you want the people who turned their neighborhood a s---hole to bring the s---hole to your street? No, you don’t. Be honest, you don’t. Russell Jeung has lived with his family for more than two decades in one of Oakland, California’s most dangerous neighborhoods. While Jeung loves his community, living in the Murder Dubs hasn’t always been easy. When he was a graduate student, his laptop was stolen. He’s also witnessed shootings and knows sex traffickers work out of his neighborhood. “Do we want the poor’s ‘destructive culture’? No, of course not. The poor don’t want the destructive culture in their own communities,” said Jeung, who is also the chair of Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University. “Nobody wants murder, violence, or theft...All God’s children long for his wholeness, long for life to be lived under his rule and to have that peace and justice.” Russell joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss our tendency to overly romanticize or stigmatize the poor, the best and worst times of life in Murder Dubs, and how Christians should decide where they live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices