Evangelical Christians

In late winter and early spring 1947, Reinhold Niebuhr visited Europe and wrote short editorials for Christianity and Crisis as he traveled. In the following correspondences, the first coming from Scotland and the second coming from somewhere in the United Kingdom, he offers brief reflections on different current events.

No amount of general exhortations about the fallacies of secular philosophies, or about the actual or potential contribution of the Church to the life of the world can be of much use in the long run unless men and women come into the Church, not primarily because the Church is good for the world, but primarily because its faith is for them the deepest truth about life, about their own lives, because in its worship they find their God.

Last month, a disturbing headline from The Times of Israel proclaimed, “Support for Israel among young US evangelical Christians drops sharply — survey.”

In 1946, Reinhold Niebuhr visited an evangelical church for an Easter worship service in a movie theater. He did not entirely enjoy the experience. Here are his reflections.

The Color of Compromise ostensibly promotes a radical new way of approaching politics that rethinks everything about evangelicals and political engagement. But if you can look past Tisby’s critique of conservatism, all of the fundamentals of popular evangelical political thinking in the post-war era are still at work.

We comfort ourselves, saying, “This is not who we are.” But without deeper reflection, such pat answers are lies, strengthening the “vulgarized knowledge” that allow us to ignore the chasms that threaten to consume us.

The insurrection on Epiphany reveals essential tasks—for America to prevent another attack and for the church to respond properly to the misuse of its symbols.

The manger scene these days really is the face of Christmas for most people and, perhaps not surprisingly, it is one of the aspects of the season that keeps causing trouble.

Eugene Cho’s “Thou Shalt Not Be A Jerk” has major shortcomings as an introduction to political engagement, even as it has significant contributions to make in coaxing believers to be more self-reflective about whether they are more loyal to their chosen political party than God’s Word.