Though I spent a good deal of my childhood in the red-backed pews of a Southern Baptist church in rural Illinois, I can recall only a handful of memorable sermons. None sticks in my mind more than one from a traveling evangelist who kept referring to Bible-believing Christians in the United States as a “remnant.”
The prophet Isaiah frequently used the word to describe a small group of Israelites who would survive foreign invasion and oppression, but would eventually return to the land of Israel and fulfill the promise God gave to Abraham (Isa. 10:20–22; 11:11–16; 37:1–38).
That preacher drew a line between the remnant of Jews who survived the Assyrian army, and American evangelicals who are constantly pressed by the forces of culture to change their beliefs and become more mainstream. Tales of oppression in the 21st century were woven in and through the oracles of Isaiah as the evangelist pounded the pulpit.
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Evangelism is a moral good and a key expression of our faith. York Moore Image: Canva
Before all-things streaming, when television was simpler and there were only 3 options at a time (at best), one of my favorite shows was the original ‘Let’s Make a Deal,’ with Monty Hall. The game show concept is simple: offer audience members prizes over and over again to entice them to keep choosing to risk what they have in hopes of something even better. The catch is that at any moment, the prize that they’ve already won can be lost to something with little to laughable value, like a goat or a bag of rocks. The game show has also spawned a philosophic and mathematical problem known as the ‘Monty Hall Paradox.’ The Paradox has to do with
Faith, race, and politics were front and center in Georgia’s US Senate runoff. Raphael Warnock, the current pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s home church, won a historic election, during which his sermons and social activism were called into question. White evangelicals were appalled by Warnock’s pulpit rebukes of police brutality and militarism. Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted a snippet of a sermon and said, “Warnock’s radical, anti-American views are disqualifying” and that he should withdraw from the race. Conversely, while many black Christians wouldn’t defend his pro-choice platform (among other secular progressive stances), a lot of us certainly agreed with the assertion that the Bible has something to say about racial injustice. In his book
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A yellow banner that reads JESUS SAVES stands out in the pro-Trump mob outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Updated on Friday at 3:02 p.m.
As the pro-Trump mob stormed up the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, a big yellow banner stood out among the blue Trump flags carried high by the throng: JESUS SAVES. Nearby was another, with an even stranger message JESUS 2020 as if the Lord himself had been a candidate in the disputed election.
Christian nationalism was one of the underlying themes of the nearly all-white insurrection at the Capitol, which also featured symbols of the Confederacy. For Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, the event represented an unholy amalgamation of white supremacy and Christianity.