There is a lot of craziness out there, but it’s hard to persuade people they need renewal, even repentance, if the primary thing they hear from you is that they are wicked, crazy, or stupid. It was a truism in the evangelicalism I grew up in, but like many truisms, it circulated for a reason: they won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. One of the knocks on Moore from his co-religionists to his right is that he curries favor with cultural elites at the expense of his less sophisticated co-religionists. Even though Moore remains robustly pro-life and traditional on sexual ethics, critics will point to his New York Times columns and his upcoming appearance in a Rob Reiner–produced film that lambastes conservative Christians. I wish this book did more to counter this criticism.

If there is a primary fault in Losing Our Religion, it is that Moore’s understandably personal and near-gobsmacked account of what went sour between him and his church compromises his standing to appeal to his brothers and sisters to choose a more excellent way. Having read and listened to Moore for some time, I believe he loves the evangelical church, and even still the SBC; but at times, the book runs the risk of conveying a contempt that former American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks warned us about.

This risk is truly unfortunate, for in addition to elements of memoir, jeremiad, lament, and indictment, the book includes several counts of Moore’s wisdom and counsel for persevering through a challenging season. Under subheadings like “Rekindle Awe,” “Cultivate Loyalty in Community,” “Believe and Share the Gospel,” and “Pay Attention to Means, Not Just to Ends,” Moore’s pastoral voice takes center stage and points his readers toward healthier ways of cultivating peace of mind and engaging our neighbors and society. And Moore’s conclusion, relating his childhood profession of faith in Christ to where he is now in 2023, is a wonderful stand-alone meditation that reminds me of the best of evangelical faith and fervor.

Read it all.

It’s hard to persuade people they need renewal, even repentance, if the primary thing they hear from you is that they are wicked, crazy, or stupid. It was a truism in the evangelicalism I grew up in, but like many truisms, it circulated for a reason.https://t.co/m1c61pyMKw

— Public Discourse (@PublicDiscourse) January 17, 2024

In an expansion of hostilities rippling out from the Israel-Hamas war, Pakistan said on Thursday that it had carried out strikes inside Iran, a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the country’s forces had conducted “precision military strikes” against what it called terrorist hide-outs in southeastern Iran. The Iranian state-owned television network Press TV said that seven foreigners were killed in the strike.

A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan had struck at least seven locations used by separatists from the Baluch ethnic group about 30 miles inside the border. The official said that air force fighter jets and drones were used in the Pakistani retaliatory strikes.

Read it all.

Aha – Pakistan und Iran sagen, sie beschießen belutschische Separatisten in jeweils dem anderen Staatsgebiet.

Das scheint das Muster zu sein: Wir greifen nicht dich an, sondern Terroristen auf deinem Staatsgebiet. https://t.co/YFcMWEmeqY

— Marcus Ewald (@maewald) January 18, 2024

Almighty Father, who didst inspire Simon Peter, first among the apostles, to confess Jesus as Messiah and Son of the Living God: Keep thy Church steadfast upon the rock of this faith, that in unity and peace we may proclaim the one truth and follow the one Lord, our Savior Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Today, we celebrate the Blessed Feast of the Confession of St. Peter. pic.twitter.com/ail53NJzZB

— Gage C. Garlinghouse 🦬 (@Acolyte_1) January 18, 2023

O Thou, who givest to thy children liberally and upbraidest not: Preserve us from all envy at the good of our neighbour, and from every form of jealousy. Teach us to rejoice in what others have and we have not, to delight in what they achieve and we cannot accomplish, to be glad in all that they enjoy and we do not experience; and so fill us daily more completely with love; through him in whom thou hast promised to supply all our need, our Saviour Jesus Christ.

#LincsWolds #LoveUkWeather #Winter #Sunshine pic.twitter.com/l5YdDxwOx0

— ianW (@IanW1985) January 18, 2024

Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Ba’bel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

–Genesis 11:1-9

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

Learn more: https://t.co/EGLZAYAij4 pic.twitter.com/sENG5i8rAC

— Ancient Origins (@ancientorigins) December 18, 2022

A homeless shelter has warned it may have to close because it only has enough money to run for another “four to five months”.

Churches in Reading Drop-In Centre (CIRDIC), a shelter based in St Saviour’s Church Hall in the town, says it costs £100,000 per year to run, and it currently only has about half of that.

Manager Mabel Gregory said it would be “dreadful” for the community if the centre had to close.

She said rising prices had made running the shelter “very, very difficult”.

“Our gas bill has gone up to £1,000 a month,” she said.

Read it all.

It would be beyond terrible were CIRDIC to close. It's been providing vital services for Reading's homeless for many years.https://t.co/dZDISP2hyP

— Karz From The 'Ding 🙄💙🦆☕🍺🍷🥃🦉🐧🧀 (@FFSKarz) January 17, 2024

The truth is that I was and am looking for something—ultimately, Someone. We all are. “There is a religious feeling,” writes Romano Guardini in The Wisdom of the Psalms, “which seems to be very rare, although it really should arise very strongly from the depths of man’s being; that is, the longing for God.” As Augustine’s ever trenchant image of the restlessness of the human heart implies, God “has created us in such a way that our created nature is an urge toward Him.” Yet, as Guardini notes, “this urge of longing” can be “choked by life’s commonplaces.” The world “reaches out for us, draws our attention, our feelings and desires toward itself. This covers the depths, drowns out the basic voice.” Guardini captures what YouTube and other similar platforms do: They cover the depths. That is, they hijack yearnings, most significantly the primordial human yearning for God. They numb the longing as they proselytize on behalf of the god of distraction.

I think, therefore, that obsession with various social media platforms and screens both evinces and exacerbates what I would call misplaced eschatology. In this regard, I have in mind Guardini’s revelatory depiction of the human condition in The Word of God: On Faith, Hope, and Charity: “Deep within man there lives the consciousness that something must happen to him, that this present existence is not the real and true one, that it must become new and different and so attain to its proper reality.” Man waits for this “with a hope that he perhaps does not admit even to himself.” Then comes the crucial piece: “This hope is often mistaken about its own meaning.”

When hope is “mistaken about its own meaning,” it is misplaced. So man hopes “that his next work will be more successful than the last, that he will rise to success and power or will find the person whose love can wholly rouse and fill him.”

Read it all.

Mindless entertainment is distracting in the worst possible way. It deludes us into thinking we are looking for nothing at all. The hijacking stupefies yearning.https://t.co/OlXSkPe4bq

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) January 17, 2024

International trade is constrained by eight primary maritime chokepoints, hard realities imposed by immutable geography. The United States has long recognized a vital national security interest in ensuring freedom of navigation through each of them. This strike helped protect those interests.

Half of these eight global chokepoints are dispersed widely. Only one each can be found in Europe (the Strait of Gibraltar), in Africa (the Cape of Good Hope), in East Asia (the Straits of Malacca), and in the Americas (the Panama Canal). Unfortunately, the other half of these critical chokepoints are all concentrated in a relatively small region where southwestern Asia meets Europe and Africa: the Bosporus Strait, the Suez Canal, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the Strait of Hormuz. This area also happens to be the most important single source of the energy required to sustain global economic growth. Those two facts explain why US presidents keep rediscovering the need to focus disproportionately on the Middle East, despite their often-heartfelt desires to do otherwise.

Today, the greatest threat to these chokepoints is Iran and its proxies. The regime in Tehran has long threatened to shut down Hormuz and repeatedly attacked shipping in the area. Most recently, it even threatened to shut down Gibraltar. The Houthis, Iran’s partner and proxy in Yemen, had repeatedly attacked ships transiting the Bab. The Biden administration recognized the threat, laid the diplomatic predicate, assembled the multilateral coalition, deployed the assets, issued clear warnings, and then took action. This is what professional policymaking looks like. One hopes that the right lessons will be learned in both Sanaa and Tehran.

Read it all.

The US can no longer afford to underestimate the threat posed by the Houthis, much less the threat posed by the wider network that supports Iranian malign behavior, writes @ACMideast’s @WillWechsler.

Read more. ⬇️ https://t.co/OX8fyHaik7

— Atlantic Council (@AtlanticCouncil) January 12, 2024

It is notoriously tricky to synthesize data from all the world’s weather stations into one measure of global warming, but all of the major efforts to do so for 2023 are now in, and they are also all in distressing alignment: Last year was the warmest recorded in modern history, and it broke that record by an exceedingly large margin, one that conventional climate science has not yet managed to adequately explain.

The big data sets are now all in, and one of them, published by Berkeley Earth last week, contained what counts as an eye-popping assertion even against the backdrop of the record-setting year: The global average temperature was more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level. (Other models had it just below.)

When climate scientists and advocates talk about the risks of breaching 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming — as they have somewhat obsessively at least since it was established as the ambitious climate goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement and since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change described the consequences of exceeding it in its 2018 Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C — this isn’t exactly what they mean. That threshold describes a long-term average rather than a single-year anomaly. But because it describes a multidecade average, the measure will always be backward-looking, with the precise moment the world crossed the 1.5 mark clear only in retrospect. This year a handful of prominent scientists have suggested that when we do look back to mark that time, we may well circle 2023.

Read it all.

How hot was it last year?

Read: https://t.co/zfXKwLBnE2

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) January 18, 2024

O God, who by thy Holy Spirit didst enable thy servant Antony to withstand the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil: Give us grace, with pure hearts and minds, to follow thee, the only God; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Today's the feast of St Anthony of Egypt, a 3C desert hermit monk who was popular in medieval England. He's usually shown with his little belled pig as on the early 16C screen at Westhall Suffolk. The prophet Elijah stands on the left. 1/2

Westhall: https://t.co/R68FK1zAlF pic.twitter.com/blSUe3AjkX

— Simon Knott (@SimoninSuffolk) January 17, 2024

Almighty God, the giver of strength and joy: Change, we beseech thee, our bondage into liberty, and the poverty of our nature into the riches of thy grace; that by the transformation of our lives thy glory may be revealed; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Guten Morgen ☕️🌺 wünsche euch einen traumhaften Tag 🌷
⭐️Idylle am Rhein ⭐️ pic.twitter.com/5zu9iAj26a

— Renate Kleine (@RenateKleine) January 17, 2024

Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt. For land which has drunk the rain that often falls upon it, and brings forth vegetation useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed; its end is to be burned.

Though we speak thus, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things that belong to salvation. For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

–Hebrews 6:1-12

Incoming snow clouds! (No colour added!). pic.twitter.com/8flylXMjrZ

— Steve Carter (@HighlandRampage) January 17, 2024

Norman looked at us sympathetically. “I don’t know how else to tell you this but bluntly,” he said. “There are still many good individuals involved in medicine, but the American medical system is profoundly broken. When you look at the rate of medical error—it’s now the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—the overmedication, creation of addiction, the quick-fix mentality, not funding the poor, quotas to admit from ERs, needless operations, the monetization of illness vs. health, the monetization of side effects, a peer review system run by journals paid for by Big Pharma, the destruction of the health of doctors and nurses themselves by administrators, who demand that they rush through 10-minute patient visits, when so often an hour or more is required, and which means that in order to be ‘successful,’ doctors must overlook complexity rather than search for it … Alana, the unique thing here isn’t that you fell down so many rabbit holes. What’s unique is that you found your way out at all.”

I had barely started processing this when Norman moved to change the subject: “Now, can I ask you two something? How come so much of the journalism I read seems like garbage?”

Oh, God.

David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was … Was everything in America broken? Was education broken? Housing? Farming? Cities? Was religion broken?

Everything is broken.

Read it all.

Alana Newhouse in Tablet "Everything Is Broken: And how to fix it". https://t.co/TF0xr1olos Will be interested to see if anyone does not agree that it is very significant

— Edward N Luttwak (@ELuttwak) January 15, 2021

A great topic–“Speaking the Truth in Love:The Church and the Challenge of the New Morality”

You may find the list of speakers there and the conference schedule here.

Run, don’t walk, to register for the 2024 Mere Anglicanism Conference! We have an incredible lineup of speakers: D.A. Carson, John Dickson, @RebeccMcLaugh, @amyorrewing, Vaughan Roberts, @calvinrobinson, and Carl Trueman, and more! Register and learn more https://t.co/HMhInevD1D!

— Constantine (@SinnerSaved45) July 26, 2023

Every religion has offered people a hope for a life after death. Our secular culture, in radical contrast, is the first in history to tell its members that both individuals and world history will end in ultimate oblivion. In the end, we go to nothing, both as a civilization and as persons.

Other religions are ultimately “spirit-ist” in the sense that they believe matter is unimportant and in the end all that will exist is spirit. Secularism, of course, is materialist in its belief that there is no soul or supernatural reality, that everything has a scientific, physical cause.

Christianity differs from both. It does not merely offer the prospect of a wholly spiritual future in heaven. The resurrection of Jesus, to cite the Greek New Testament, is arrabon, a down payment, and aparche, the firstfruits of a future physical resurrection in which the material world will be renewed. It will be a world where justice dwells, every tear will be wiped away, death and destruction are banished forever, and the wolf will lie down with the lamb; these are lyrical, poetic ways of saying that this world will be mended, made new, liberated from its bondage to death and decay (Rom. 8:18–23).

This is the fullest possible hope. The resurrection of Christ promises us not merely some future consolation for the life we lost but the restoration of the life we lost and infinitely more. It promises the world and life that we have always longed for but never had.

Read it all.

Tim Keller: Hope for a Better World Starts with the Resurrection https://t.co/O0Ere25Hfa @CTmagazine op-ed says that the Christian message is far more grounded, and realistic, than secular baseless expectations of continual progress pic.twitter.com/wx452aAEDU

— Jayson Casper (@jnjcasper) April 5, 2021

Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Americans are encouraged to volunteer to honor the legacy of the late civil rights leader. The federal holiday was officially dedicated to volunteerism in 1994 under the King Holiday and Service Act in a bid to motivate the public to do good in their communities.

While the holiday is a popular time for civic service, the volunteering rate across the US is at record lows, following a steady decline since at least the 2010’s.

The latest official data on community service, released last year by AmeriCorps through the Census Bureau, revealed a particularly steep decline during the pandemic. Less than a quarter of Americans age 16 and older said they formally volunteered through an organization between September 2020 to September 2021, down from 30% in 2019 and the lowest rate recorded since the organization began the survey in 2002. The decline is prevalent across various states and demographic groups, according to the data.

Read it all.

Americans are volunteering less than ever, as service work rates hit a record low https://t.co/8zvV1SOtTc via @citylab

— Bloomberg (@business) January 15, 2024

Advanced artificial intelligence models can be trained to deceive humans and other AI, a new study has found.

Researchers at AI startup Anthropic tested whether chatbots with human-level proficiency, such as its Claude system or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, could learn to lie in order to trick people.

They found that not only could they lie, but once the deceptive behaviour was learnt it was impossible to reverse using current AI safety measures.

Read it all.

AI can easily be trained to lie – and it can’t be fixed, study says
https://t.co/r5rx8DNJUA

— Brendan Tierney (@brendantierney) January 15, 2024

In a dispiriting sign of the times, barely more than a quarter of Americans say the American dream still holds true — about half as many as said so 13 years ago.

Defined as “if you work hard you’ll get ahead,” just 27% in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll say the American dream still holds, down sharply from 50% when the question first was asked in 2010. Eighteen percent now say it never held true, up from 4%.

The rest, 52%, say the promise used to hold true but no longer does, up 9 points. Taken together, 69% say the American dream does not hold true today, up 22 points. And that’s in comparison to a poll taken in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

Read it all.

In a dispiriting sign of the times, barely more than a quarter of Americans say the American dream still holds true — about half as many as said so 13 years ago. https://t.co/M7SfeWawOA

— ABC News (@ABC) January 15, 2024

O Lord Jesus, who by thy first miracle didst manifest thy glory, so that thy disciples believed on thee: Give us in our measure that faith which dwelt in them. Fill us with the riches of thy good Spirit; change thou our earthly desires into the image of thine own purity and holiness; and finally give us a place at thy heavenly feast; for the glory of thy holy name.

Frosty morning views in Salisbury ❄️ pic.twitter.com/b7qA70JkPD

— Salisbury Cathedral (@SalisburyCath) January 16, 2024

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not condemned; he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.

–John 3:16-21

🌞❄🧡 Guten Morgen 🧡❄🌞 pic.twitter.com/85vVZy78xb

— Brigitta Neurauter (@BrigittaNeurau2) January 16, 2024

I also came to see that liberalism’s superficial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin. The more I thought about human nature the more I saw how our tragic inclination for sin causes us to use our minds to rationalize our actions. Liberalism failed to see that reason by itself is little more than an instrument to justify man’s defensive ways of thinking. Reason, devoid of the purifying power of faith, can never free itself from distortions and rationalizations.

In spite of the fact that I had to reject some aspects of liberalism, I never came to an all-out acceptance of neo-orthodoxy. While I saw neo-orthodoxy as a helpful corrective for a liberalism that had become all too sentimental, I never felt that it provided an adequate answer to the basic questions. If liberalism was too optimistic concerning human nature, neo-orthodoxy was too pessimistic. Not only on the question of man but also on other vital issues, neo-orthodoxy went too far in its revolt. In its attempt to preserve the transcendence of God, which had been neglected by liberalism’s overstress of his immanence, neo-orthodoxy went to the extreme of stressing a God who was hidden, unknown and “wholly other.” In its revolt against liberalism’s overemphasis on the power of reason, neo-orthodoxy fell into a mood of antirationalism and semifundamentalism, stressing a narrow, uncritical biblicism. This approach, I felt, was inadequate both for the church and for personal life.

So although liberalism left me unsatisfied on the question of the nature of man, I found no refuge in neo-orthodoxy. I am now convinced that the truth about man is found neither in liberalism nor in neo-orthodoxy. Each represents a partial truth. A large segment of Protestant liberalism defined man only in terms of his essential nature, his capacity for good. Neo-orthodoxy tended to define man only in terms of his existential nature, his capacity for evil. An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.

Read it all.

“Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.” #MLK #MLKDay2024 #MLKDay #MLK95 #ShiftTheCulture pic.twitter.com/F6UhkDNqcI

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 15, 2024

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, “Wait.” But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: “Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?”; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading “white” and “colored”; when your first name becomes “nigger,” your middle name becomes “boy” (however old you are) and your last name becomes “John,” and your wife and mother are never given the respected title “Mrs.”; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Read it all.

I wouldn't be where I am today without the dedication, vision, and sacrifice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I honor him for being a voice for equity and what is right.

Dr. King is an inspiration! I am dedicated to continuing his legacy through my work in underserved communities.… pic.twitter.com/i6FDnx7wzk

— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) January 15, 2024

As a white evangelical Christian who is also an academic historian, I face three questions as I think about King: (1) How should I understand King as a historical figure, in the context of his own time and place? (2) How should my understanding of King affect my own understanding of Christian theology and the Bible? and (3) How should my understanding of King and Christian theology affect my response to issues of racial justice today?

The first question is the easiest to answer: King was a complicated figure, but it seems clear that his theological and political views differed substantially from those of white evangelicals both then or now. To understand King’s views, we have to understand the history of the Black social gospel, as theological historian Gary Dorrien has argued.

The second question is more uncomfortable: Does white evangelicalism’s resistance to the ethics of King show that we’ve gotten our theology wrong, and should we therefore become converts to the Black social gospel?

We need to choose our Christian theology based on our understanding of biblical truth, not merely on our attraction to a particular way of life or our admiration of a Christian principle in action. But whenever we find evidence that our own theological tradition hasn’t adequately rejected a given sin, like racism, we should identify the theological blind spots that kept our tradition from seeing that evil. We should adopt instead a theological corrective that includes not only our own understandings of the Bible but also whatever biblical truths we find in other Christian traditions, including King’s theology and the theology of other Black Christians.

Regardless of our understanding of King, we also need to answer the question of how we should respond to racial injustice today—and whether we should appeal to King’s words when we do so.

Read it all.

An insightful reflection from Daniel K. Williams on the relationship of evangelicals to MLK, Jr. and how it has shifted over the years.

One takeaway: get better at seeing people from history in all their messy glory, not rushing to instrumentalize them.https://t.co/ypXy4T0dBF

— Trevin Wax (@TrevinWax) January 15, 2024

You can find the full text here.

I find it always is really worth the time to listen to and read and ponder it all on this day especially–KSH.

Almighty God, who by the hand of Moses thy servant didst lead thy people out of slavery, and didst make them free at last: Grant that thy Church, following the example of thy prophet Martin Luther King, may resist oppression in the name of thy love, and may strive to secure for all thy children the blessed liberty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

🧵 On his 95th birthday, I wanted to share some color photos of Daddy. It wasn’t that long ago… #MLKDay #MLK95 #MLK pic.twitter.com/DRNoVDEhbT

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) January 15, 2024

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

Guten Morgen ☀️☕ ☀️☕ ☀️☕ pic.twitter.com/M9iHvDuO4Q

— Brigitta Neurauter (@BrigittaNeurau2) January 15, 2024

To thee, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in thee I trust,
let me not be put to shame;
let not my enemies exult over me.
Yea, let none that wait for thee be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

Make me to know thy ways, O Lord;
teach me thy paths.
Lead me in thy truth, and teach me,
for thou art the God of my salvation;
for thee I wait all the day long.

–Psalm 25:1-4

on #LundiFleuri à toutes et à tous depuis #Antibes pic.twitter.com/WVp3DlL4f8

— Brigitte B ♡♡ (@BrigitteB55) January 15, 2024