NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS)—While the smoke that hung over the Westgate Shopping Mall has dissipated, a quiet tension still lingers in the air throughout Kenya’s capital.

Last month’s attack by al-Shabab militants on a mall frequented by Westerners in Nairobi left at least 67 dead.

A helicopter hovers over the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi during the terrorist attack. (Wikipedia image)Arson at a Christian church in the majority-Muslim city Mombasa just two weeks later suggests the nation is on the precipice of more conflict between Christians and Muslims—a particularly dispiriting development in a country that has enjoyed relative peace between the two religions that dominate the region.

“I am afraid that now, Muslims will attack more, and the Christians will arm themselves and fight back,” said Paul Komu, a truck driver and Christian who was driving near Westgate when the attacks occurred.

Kenya is predominantly Christian, with Muslims making up about 11 percent of its population, mostly along the Somali border, its coastal region, and in cities such as Mombasa.

John L. Allen Jr., author of The Global War on Christians, wrote that just as Africa is the pacesetter for Christian and Muslim growth, it also has become one of the primary fronts for Christian-Muslim conflict, although not always in Kenya. For years, Kenya has been a refuge for people fleeing strife in other parts of the continent.

Christians from throughout Mombasa gather to support the Salvation Army church after it was set on fire during riots Oct. 4. (Salvation Army Mombasa Central Band Facebook Photo)But Christian mission agencies such as the Mission Network report incidents of persecution pouring over the Kenyan border with Somalia. Mombasa is a flashpoint for conflict, and foreign militants and terror groups have wreaked havoc in the past—as was the case with the 1998 al-Qaida bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi.

To a large extent, day-to-day relations between the Muslims and Christians have been amicable.

“For a long time we have had peace with Christians in this country,” said Jamal Faroole, a Somali Muslim living in Nairobi.

Likewise, David Ongwaye, a Lutheran pastor in Kebirigo, Kenya, said while there has been more political correctness than practical cooperation, “There was no thought that Muslims were plotting to cause mayhem.”

Now, sentiments have shifted.

“The human mind gets suspicious,” Faroole said. “People were already suspicious of Somali Muslims, and now I fear it will only get worse.”

Targeting non-Muslims in the mall attack was particularly unsettling, Ongwaye said. During the siege, the attackers demanded Muslims identify themselves and leave the scene.

“The incident at Westgate has, in my opinion, rendered Christians more vulnerable to the Muslims, and as such, any future ecumenism will be met with caution. It was very clear that those hostages who would recite the shahada were saved from the bullet,” he said, referring to the Muslim profession of faith.

Newton Kahumbi Maina, an expert in Christian-Muslim relations at Kenyatta University, said competition for converts, education and politics have exacerbated and preserved a centuries-long conflict.

Notwithstanding history and the fact that suspicion and outright trepidation grip the country, most Kenyans on both sides said they do not want to see escalating violence. Some even struck a hopeful tone.

“Somali and Kenyan Muslims are still our cousins,” Komu said, “Borders can divide us, but we are still extended family.”

Ongwaye, who said he was going to visit a Muslim friend on the coast, said from his Christian perspective, the mandate of Jesus to love one’s neighbor—which both Muslims and Christians can embrace—becomes more relevant than ever.

Malaysian court says only Muslims can call God ‘Allah.’ A court in Muslim-majority Malaysia unanimously ruled only Muslims are permitted to use the Arabic word “Allah” to describe God, overturning a lower court’s 2009 decision that allowed others to use the word. Chief Judge Mohamed Apandi Ali said use of the term by non-Muslims “will cause unnecessary confusion within the Islamic community and is surely not conducive to the peaceful and harmonious tempo of life in the country.” The ruling was aimed primarily at a Catholic newspaper, The Herald, which had been printing the word in its Malay-language stories to describe the Christian God, until the government deemed it illegal in 2008. When The Herald sued, a lower court ruled in favor of free speech in 2009 and allowed the paper to use the word. That decision resulted in clashes between the two religions, including arson attacks against dozens of churches and a few mosques. Editor Lawrence Andrew said he would appeal to Malaysia’s highest court. Christians in Malaysia had used the word “Allah” for decades in churches and Malay-language Bibles, but the government decided a judicial ruling was needed to determine if the terminology should be legal.

Nazi SS captain denied church funeral in Rome. Catholic churches in Rome joined government officials in three countries to deny a public funeral for Erich Priebke, the unrepentant Nazi war criminal who died at age 100 in Rome Oct. 11. Erich Priebke (Wikipedia image)Priebke, an SS captain accused of war crimes for his role in the execution of 335 men in 1944 near the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome, was refused burial space in Rome, his adopted country of Argentina, and his hometown of Hennigsdorf in Germany. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, Pope Francis’ cardinal vicar of Rome, prohibited any church in Rome from hosting Priebke’s funeral. Paolo Giachini, Priebke’s lawyer, lobbied to hold a private funeral in some Rome churches but reportedly was rebuffed. Newspapers reported the funeral probably would be held in an apartment Giachini owns behind the Vatican, where Priebke lived under house arrest the last 15 years. It remained unclear where he will be buried, but Italian television reported a Sicilian town near the city of Messina would allow Priebke to be buried in its municipal cemetery.

Christians motivated by compassion for the poor need to make sure both mercy and justice guide their actions, said Robert Lupton, based on his four decades of experience in urban ministry.

Robert Lupton“Mercy without justice degenerates into dependency and entitlement, preserving the power of the giver over the recipient. Justice without mercy is cold and impersonal, more concerned about rights than relationships,” Lupton writes in Toxic Charity.

Lupton, founding president of Focused Community Strategies Urban Ministries, has proposed what he calls an “Oath for Compassionate Service,” inspired by the Hippocratic Oath of physicians.

He suggests ministry among the poor be guided by the following six-point pledge:

• Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.

• Limit one-way giving to emergency situations.

• Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.

• Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served.

• Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said—unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.

• Above all, do no harm.

Giving money to a person begging on a street corner may enable substance abuse or at least encourage dependency, many Christians conclude. Instead, they choose to contribute to a local food pantry or benevolence ministry.

Author Robert Lupton insists Christians never should do anything for the poor that they have the ability to do for themselves.But many of those ministries also struggle with the question: How can Christians meet needs in ways that really help the poor?

Some preach tough love.

“Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people,” said Robert Lupton, founding president of Focused Community Strategies Urban Ministries.

Lupton, author of Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It), insists Christians never should do anything for the poor that they have the ability to do for themselves.

“For disadvantaged people to flourish into their full, God-given potential, they must leave behind dependencies that impede their growth,” he writes. “Initiatives that thwart their development, though rightly motivated, must be restructured to reinforce self-sufficiency if they are to become agents of lasting and positive change.”

Lupton insists “one-way” giving should be limited to emergencies such as natural disaster—and then only for a short time. He encourages micro-lending and investing to encourage small business initiatives, urging that grants be offered sparingly.

David Cosby, pastor of First Baptist Church of New Orleans, couldn’t disagree more.

David Cosby“True love is never toxic,” he wrote in a November 2011 column for sbctoday.com. “The very idea of toxic love attacks the foundation of Christian ethics and the central truth of human experience.”

The New Testament Greek word agape means “one-way, unconditional love,” and that is the kind of love Christians are commanded to show, Cosby insists.

“If I expect something in return for my supposed ‘charity,’ that is not charity at all but an economic exchange,” he wrote.

Cosby acknowledged Lupton’s point that “efforts at social activism may indeed harm the recipients instead of helping them.” But he fears acceptance of the concept of “toxic charity” could result in “the justification of evil attitudes and motives that were never true charity in the first place.”

Even some ministry providers who agree in part with Lupton’s call for empowerment insist they cannot become full-service employment agencies or experts in community renewal. Their ministry may be able to focus only on one need, such as providing food for families or individuals who need help.

Toni Medina, coordinator of the food pantry at First Baptist Church in Elgin, recognizes without the help her church provides, some families in her community east of Austin would suffer.

First Baptist Church’s food pantry helps many of the single-parent households headed by women, which comprise more than three-fourths of the poor families in Elgin.In 2009, 27 percent of Elgin residents lived below the poverty line, compared to a state average about 23 percent. More than 11 percent of Elgin residents reported income below 50 percent of the poverty line. Single-parent households headed by women comprised more than three-fourths of the poor families in Elgin.

“There’s great need in Elgin, and we don’t want to turn people away,” she said.

The food pantry, which receives support from the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering, has safeguards and systems in place to avoid abuse.

The Elgin food pantry lacks the resources to provide job training or placement for the unemployed, but workers do their best provide referrals and link people in need to available services, Medina said.

Still, she wishes volunteers could do more to develop meaningful relationships with the people they serve.

“That weighs heavy on my heart. We’re first of all a ministry of the church, not just a program,” she said.

That desire to minister to people as individuals, not just maintain a benevolence program, reflects an important step for any Christian ministry to the poor, said Gerald Davis, community development strategist with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

“Seek the Lord’s direction in putting in place a wholistic strategy that goes beyond the handout,” Davis suggested.

He recommends churches develop benevolence strategies with input from recipients. Churches need to understand the causes of poverty and implement effective ways to respond to the specific needs in a community, he said.

“Seek ways of entering into the lives of those you are assisting—or needing to assist—and develop ministries or partner with other agencies that wholistically meet the needs of those who continue to come to the benevolence door,” he said.

Joshua and Jessica HearneJoshua and Jessica Hearne understand what it means to enter into the lives of the people they want to help. The Hearnes serve as self-funded Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries living and working with Grace and Main—an “intentional Christian community” among the poor in Danville, Va.

They open their home to provide overnight lodging for homeless people, and they offer meals, medicine, substance abuse recovery ministries and the gospel.

Hearne firmly believes Christians should build communities and congregations that cultivate relationships among the marginalized.

“Social programs don’t change lives. Relationships change lives,” he said. “As such, we should fill our meals, homes and lives with those least able to pay us back and cultivate the kind of equal and dignity-preserving relationships that allow us to struggle together toward a common goal. If we do that, enabling and dependency fade in the light of love.”

WACO—In one of northern Philadelphia’s most-dangerous neighborhoods, a 20-person Christian group thrives, embracing a lifestyle of radical community.

Shane Claiborne, leader at The Simple Way, speaks to participants at the No Need Among You conference.Shane Claiborne, leader of the 10 households in the Kensington neighborhood, helped found The Simple Way in 1995 as a faith community that lives and serves among the poor.

“We are not a church plant. We are a community plant,” Claiborne, author of The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical, told the No Need Among You Conference, sponsored by Texas Christian Community Development Network and Mission Waco.

Members of The Simple Way community commit to alleviating poverty by living among the poor and sharing individual resources with them.

New Monasticism

The Simple Way has birthed and connected many other radical Christian communities around the nation. The New Monasticism movement values living among the poor in dangerous parts of cities abandoned by the affluent.

Most Christians want to help the poor but refuse to invest in their world, Claiborne said—a distinction he doesn’t consider biblical. The gospel propels Christ’s followers toward people who are hurting, he insisted.

“It takes us to the pain, the poverty and those in need,” he said.

Volunteers work with members of Claiborne’s community to clean up Phoenix Community Park in Philadelphia.The community lives simply and communally. Members share lawn mowers, washers and dryers, cars—and even their paychecks. Each member of the community gives 10 percent of his or her income to a common emergency fund. A medical collaborative can cover up to a $150,000 incident for Claiborne’s community.

“We share stuff because we have community,” he said. “We don’t have community because we share stuff.”

Discipleship and submission to the larger body of Christ serve as unifying threads of the New Monastic community. The communities are eclectic in faith, with no single denomination ruling the intentional community. Members are encouraged to participate in a local church but do not attend together.

Prayer

Lamenting and praying for social and racial injustice also are central to the heartbeat of The Simple Way community. Claiborne’s community meets every weekday morning to pray for the neighborhood and the injustices of the world.

“I think prayer is a really beautiful thing,” he said. “For some of us involved in social justice, we forget to pray.”

Rather than giving to an organization, community members are encouraged to give only to those with whom they have a direct relationship.

The Simple Way has transformed a formerly dark and dreary neighborhood into a creative display of the beauty of God, he said. Creativity has been restored through inspirational murals and artwork spread across Kensington buildings.

Gardening and the Gospel

Furthermore, the community has taken initiative in gardening and landscaping projects to care properly for God’s earth, a value essential to the community.

“To us, it has everything in the world to do with the gospel, because this is a part of how we see God,” he said. “We are connecting with God through creation and the miracle of life. … It’s hard to believe in a God of resurrection if we see a lot of death and a lot of suffocation. So, part of what we do is free up some of that debris.”

Claiborne recognizes other forms of intentional community can thrive, but he yearns for the people of God to come together in unified community with the sole purpose of connecting people to God.

“I can’t help but think it makes God smile when the church comes together and challenges the patterns of this world,” he said. “In the end, it’s not about us. In the end, all of this is to point toward a good and wonderful God that is transforming hearts and streets in the world.”

DALLAS (RNS)—Reviews of the new hit movie Gravity note it’s an unusually fine science fiction film. What they don’t mention is that the main character represents an increasingly common theme in American religion—the spiritual “none of the above.”

Yes, the special effects are splendid. And I’ll take the word of astronauts who say the visuals capture amazingly well what it’s like to work in the microgravity of near-Earth orbit.

But there are moments where spiritual and philosophical themes take center stage.

An accident in space brings spiritual and philosophical themes to center stage. (Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)(Spoiler alert: If you really want to know nothing about the movie, see it first.)

There’s precious little dialogue in this relatively short film devoted to anything but technical details. So it’s perhaps a bit surprising that a significant chunk of it is about faith—or the lack thereof. Ryan Stone, a researcher-turned-newbie astronaut played by Sandra Bullock, is eventually alone and probably facing imminent death, stuck in a damaged tin can zipping through shrapnel-loaded airless space.

‘No one will pray for my soul’

So she starts a monologue. “No one will mourn for me,” she muses. “No one will pray for my soul. … I’ve never prayed. … Nobody has taught me how. …”

But she sort of prays through action. Stone is one Right Stuff space jockey once the early panic wears off. And then she sort of gives up. And in a way, the answer to her prayers shows up in the person of the experienced astronaut played by George Clooney—sort of.

George Clooney as Matt Kowalski in Warner Bros. Pictures’ dramatic thriller “GRAVITY.” (RNS Photo courtesy Warner Bros.)(As a friend of mine told me: “I mean, he’s my answered prayer, but seriously?”)

Central questions of existence are raised: “What’s the point of going on? What’s the point of living?”

Why, indeed? Stone, we’ve learned, has been emotionally adrift since her 4-year-old daughter died in an accidental fall. But somehow, somewhere, she comes up with an answer that she doesn’t monologue to those existential questions. She does talk about her daughter as an angel and asks the spirit of one of the characters who hadn’t made it to give the kid’s spirit a hug.

And when she finally ends up safely—we assume—on a beach somewhere on Earth, she grabs a handful of sand and murmurs, “Thank you.”

But who is she talking to?

The ‘Nones’

And that takes us to the “nones,” the religiously unaffiliated who make up one in five Americans these days. If they’d all sign up on a list, only the Catholic Church could claim more members in the United States. The whole point of being unaffiliated, of course, is that they don’t want to sign on to any constraints. When asked to identify their faith on a list, they’ll choose “none of the above.”

Sandra Bullock portrays Ryan Stone in “GRAVITY.” (RNS Photo courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures)But there’s pretty good survey evidence most of the nones, like Sandra Bullock’s Dr. Ryan, aren’t “nothings.” Some embrace the title “spiritual but not religious,” and even some who say they’re atheists retain some religion-ish trappings.

A 2008 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report found about half the unaffiliated surveyed said they believed in some kind of life after death—including 18 percent of the atheists and 35 percent of agnostics. About 40 percent of the unaffiliated believe in heaven—including 12 percent of the atheists and 18 percent of agnostics. And on the big question, only 30 percent of the unaffiliated said they were pretty sure there was no God.

As for prayer, the issue raised by the fictional Dr. Stone? Almost half the unaffiliated said they pray at least occasionally. And while this survey didn’t probe it, I’ll bet the likelihood of interest in prayer goes up when confronted with imminent death.

The few details we get about Bullock’s character don’t suggest an open hostility toward religion. Just a lack of contact—and a personal tragedy of the sort that pushes even some of the devout into doubt.

So where does she find the spiritual strength and internal fortitude to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds? Maybe the same place that so many other Americans are looking these days: To overcome her peril in the sky above, Dr. Stone turned to “none of the above.”

Most American Catholics agree with pope about church’s obsession. Pope Francis rocked the Catholic world last month when he gave a wide-ranging interview in which he declared the church had become “obsessed” with a few hot-button moral issues and needed to find a “new balance.” A new poll indicates American Catholics think he’s right. The survey, released by Quinnipiac University, shows two in three (68 percent) adult Catholics questioned said they agreed with the pontiff’s observation the church has become too focused on issues such as homosexuality, abortion and contraception. Just 23 percent disagreed, and the breakdown was virtually the same across age groups and among both weekly Mass-goers and those who attend church less frequently. The national poll—conducted the last week of September—also showed American Catholics have a favorable (53 percent) or very favorable (36 percent) opinion of Francis, and just 4 percent view him negatively.

Yale’s humanists lose bid for campus recognition as faith group. A newly formed humanist group at Yale University suffered a setback when the school’s broader religious community declined to grant it recognition as a faith organization. The Yale Humanist Community, founded last year to support humanists, atheists, agnostics and other nontheists on the campus in New Haven, Conn., was denied membership in Yale Religious Ministries, an umbrella group of religious groups that serve the university’s students, faculty and staff. The group was denied membership because it is explicitly nonreligious. Yale Religious Ministries includes Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim and other organizations. Chris Stedman, the Yale Humanist Community’s coordinator and assistant humanist chaplain at Harvard University’s well-established humanist community, said the Yale group wanted to officially join the campus’ religious community because its members share many of that group’s values, including fostering compassion and morality and working for the greater good.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—A couple of weeks after the Breaking Bad finale aired, the ending of the megahit cable series continues to gratify, infuriate and above all fascinate the moralists—professional and amateur—who constitute the audience’s fanboy core and who always framed the most vigorous debates about the show.

That’s understandable. The series at its dark heart is a study of good and evil, and more specifically about how good people can do bad things, how they become bad, or whether we all have a seed of evil within us that can germinate and run amok under the right conditions.

Further proof that the series’ drama is a profoundly religious one is the fact theologically minded people still are fiercely disputing exactly what the ending meant, and what the series—and its anti-hero, Walter White—stood for in moral and metaphysical terms.

Skyler White (Anna Gunn) in a scene from the final episode of “Breaking Bad.” (RNS Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC)Is the chemistry-teacher-turned-meth-cooker an irredeemable monster? Or maybe he is just one of us—a struggling, middle-class worker bee who gets a diagnosis of lung cancer and, hearing how profitable the drug trade can be, uses his talents to concoct premium-grade drugs to make a quick score that will support his wife and children long after he’s dead.

Certainly the ending was inevitable and unsurprising: White dies, as he had to. The show’s creator, Vince Gilligan, made it clear “this story was finite all along. It’s a story that starts at A and ends at Z.”

But how Walt died, who he would take down with him—or spare—and whether he ended in a state of grace were burning questions for devotees of the series, as they are for all believers.

Eschatology, the study of our ultimate fate, is what all religious exploring points to. So do TV dramas.

“I want to believe there is some sort of cosmic balancing of the scales at the end of it all,” Gilligan said last year. “I’d just like to believe there’s some point to it all. I’d like to believe that there is. Everything is just too random and chaotic absent that.”

Not surprisingly, many who watched the finale saw a light at the end of the series for Walt. One genius of the show is that it co-opted viewers into rooting for Mr. White—as Walt’s co-conspirator Jesse Pinkman always called his onetime high school teacher—no matter how low he sank.

So despite the trail of carnage and ruined lives Walt left behind, the hope that he would find grace at the end and his death would somehow sanctify was overpowering.

Critics as varied as Emily Bazelon in Slate and Allen St. John in Forbes declared Breaking Bad ultimately a “love story” because White managed to do what he set out to do in the first season: He found a way to provide for his family, and at the end, he finally confessed his original sin in becoming the drug kingpin dubbed Heisenberg.

“I did it for me,” as he tells his devastated wife, Skyler. “I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really … alive.”

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in a scene from “Breaking Bad” – Season 5, Episode 16. (RNS Photo courtesy Ursula Coyote/AMC)Writer Sonny Bunch even saw Gilligan slyly turning White into Jesus Christ—the wounds in Walt’s hand and side, his reference to the view of the Sangre de Cristo (Blood of Christ) mountains, his “sacrificing himself to save the people he loved,” his cruciform death pose. White also “made peace with those who had wronged him and those he had wronged (one way or another) so as to prepare himself for the afterlife.”

Well, “making peace” may be pushing it. White actually used his intellectual gifts one last time to build a Rube Goldberg killing machine and orchestrate a bloody—if improbable, without divine aid—denouement that destroyed all his enemies.

“His moment of clarity at the end doesn’t make up for all the hubris of Heisenberg,” Bazelon wrote. “But it did mean I could wholeheartedly root for his scheme of revenge.”

And that’s the theological problem. White used evil to the very end to accomplish something good. But Walter Wink would not approve. Wink, a theologian who died last year, called this rationale the “myth of redemptive violence”—the very antithesis of the Christian message but the “dominant religion” of the modern world.

“The belief that violence ‘saves’ is so successful because it doesn’t seem to be mythic in the least. Violence simply appears to be the nature of things. It’s what works. It seems inevitable, the last and, often, the first resort in conflicts,” Wink wrote. “The gods favor those who conquer. Conversely, whoever conquers must have the favor of the gods.”

Moreover, Walt’s “confession” at the end hardly was repentance. He did not give himself up to the authorities or allow himself to be publicly humiliated. He died the way he wanted, caressing the cold steel of the meth lab cookers the way Gollum—the creepy, corrupted creature of The Lord of the Rings series—fondled the magical golden ring.

“He’s patting his Precious, in Lord of the Rings terms,” Gilligan said after the finale. “He’s with the thing he seems to love the most in the world, which is his work and his meth lab, and he just doesn’t care about being caught because he knows he’s on the way out. So, it could be argued that he pays for his sins at the end or it could just as easily be argued that he gets away with it.”

Even if White does get away with it by cheating earthly justice, his ending can be seen as instructive—as long as it is viewed as a cautionary tale rather than a model for living, and dying.

And you have to appreciate that Gilligan ended the show so clearly and cleanly.

Other television anti-heroes have faded to an ambiguous black, like Tony Soprano, or suffered a premature demise at the hands of network executives before we could learn their true destiny. And many viewers still await the fate of compromised characters like Nucky Thompson in Boardwalk Empire, Don Draper in Mad Men and Frank Underwood in House of Cards—not to mention most of the cast of Game of Thrones.

We all find ourselves rooting for them. But rooting for them to do what, exactly? The moral logic White used to engineer the ending of Breaking Bad is the same rationale he used to start his meth business. And we saw where that led.

NASHVILLE (BP)—Regret weighs down many Americans, and according to a new study from LifeWay Research, almost half feel the weight of a bad choice from their past—even though a vast majority believe God gives second chances.

When asked to respond to the statement, “I am dealing with the consequences of a bad decision,” 47 percent of respondents agree.

Wrong decisions

While self-defined Protestant or nondenominational Christians are less likely to agree (42 percent), a majority (51 percent) of those who said they are a born-again, evangelical or fundamentalist Christian agree they still are dealing with a wrong choice from their past. 

Recognizing a sizeable percentage of people suffer consequences from past mistakes allows Christians to show grace, said Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research.

“Christians minister grace out of grace,” Stetzer said. “Caring for those dealing with pain and regrets is not about fulfilling obligations or relieving guilt, as all of that has already been taken care of by Christ.”

The study, sponsored by Bible Studies for Life: Do Over, a group study from LifeWay Christian Resources, also found the vast majority of Americans believe God gives second chances for those who have made a bad decision.

Overall, 84 percent believe so, while 94 percent of Protestants and 98 percent of evangelicals agree God gives second chances.

Second chances

Nearly one in five Americans believe God gives a second chance when a person depends only on God (19 percent), followed closely by when a person makes restitution (18 percent), does enough good (15 percent) or promises not to repeat the mistake (11 percent). Fewer than one in six Americans say they are not sure why God gives second chances.

“In all, some 44 percent of respondents believe God’s offering of a second chance depends on some kind of human action,” said Ronnie Floyd, general editor for Bible Studies for Life.

For Floyd, this viewpoint creates unneeded issues. “The problem with trusting in one’s self to gain a second chance from God is that we cannot trust ourselves to get it right,” he said.

“Why put extra pressure on ourselves to fix things?” Floyd asked. “We shouldn’t. The most scriptural response to a failure is to ask God to intervene to accomplish his will.”

Bible Studies for Life commissioned the study to demonstrate the need for a better understanding of what the Bible teaches about past mistakes and God’s grace in providing second chances.

MIDLOTHIAN—Although Christian recording artist Jimmy Needham did not grow up singing hymns in church, he wants to make up for lost time while also encouraging young worshippers to latch onto timeless truths.

“I wasn’t raised in a church and hadn’t heard most of these hymns until college,” Needham said. “When I heard some of these hymns for the first time, it was such an eye-opening experience for me. Over the past few years, I’ve been exposed to more of these great hymns, and they have had a huge impact on my walk with the Lord.”

His latest album, The Hymns Sessions, Vol. 1, available through digital outlets and at his upcoming concerts, brings a distinctive twist to classic hymns including “Great is Thy Faithfulness,” “Rock of Ages,” “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” and “How Great Thou Art.”

By adding a modern approach and updated style, Needham hopes to attract young worshippers and help them find new meaning in traditional hymns.

As Needham travels across the country, he maintains a busy schedule performing concerts and leading worship for ministry events. He especially enjoys ministering to youth and college students.

“I never heard the gospel until I was a sophomore in high school,” Needham said. “A friend took the time to share what it meant to have Jesus as your Savior. It was then that God opened my eyes to his truth, and I’ve been walking with Christ ever since.”

After graduating from Texas A&M University, Needham planned to become a history teacher. However, after receiving a phone call from Inpop Records, Needham felt God leading him to share the gospel through songs.

“God really changed the plans and the direction where I was heading,” Needham said.  “I’m incredibly grateful for what God has done and his faithfulness.”

In addition to performing concerts and writing songs, Needham serves as the artist in residence at Stonegate Church in Midlothian, a Baptist General Convention of Texas-affiliated congregation. This fall, he will promote the hymns project on his national “The Guy, Guitar & Gospel Tour.”

“Today, I’m more aware of my desperate need for Jesus in everything that I do and in every circumstance that’s thrown my way,” he said. “That’s why I really want people to realize a relationship with Jesus is so satisfying and fulfilling. Every other pursuit or effort trying to make our lives better seems dull compared to life in his presence.”

American Jews’ identity more cultural than religious. In the most comprehensive study of American Jews in 12 years, six out of 10 said being Jewish is mostly about ancestry or culture, not the religious practice of Judaism. “A Portrait of Jewish Americans,” released by the Pew Research Center, shows strong secularist trends most clearly seen in one finding: 62 percent of U.S. Jews said Jewishness is largely about culture or ancestry; just 15 percent said it’s about religious belief. In a related finding, more than one in five self-identified Jews—22 percent—told Pew researchers they had no religion, a proportion that mirrors the roughly one in five Americans who claim no religious affiliation. A strong majority of Jews—69 percent—call themselves very or somewhat emotionally attached to Israel—a proportion that has held fairly steady at least a decade. Pew interviewed 3,475 Jews in America to produce its 213-page report, which pins the number of adult American Jews who say Judaism is their religion at 4.2 million. That number rises to 5.3 million if cultural Jews are included. The survey, which cost more than $2 million and was funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Neubauer Family Foundation, was conducted between Feb. 20 and June 13, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Billy Graham’s grandson says evangelicals worse than Catholics on sex abuse. The Christian mission field is a “magnet” for sexual abusers, Boz Tchividjian, a Liberty University law professor who investigates abuse, told the Religion Newswriters Association conference. Boz TchividjianMission agencies, “where abuse is most prevalent,” often don’t report abuse because they fear being barred from working in foreign countries, said Tchividjian, a grandson of evangelist Billy Graham. Abusers will get sent home and might join another agency, and of known data from abuse cases, 25 percent are repeat cases, he said. While comparing evangelicals to Catholics on abuse response, ”I think we are worse,” he said, insisting too many evangelicals had “sacrificed the souls” of young victims. “Protestants can be very arrogant when pointing to Catholics,” said Tchividjian, executive director of Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment—GRACE, which has investigated sex abuse allegations. Earlier this summer, GRACE spearheaded an online petition decrying the “silence” and “inattention” of evangelical leaders to sexual abuse in their churches.

Former popes due to be canonized in April. Popes John Paul II and John XXIII formally will be declared saints April 27. Pope Francis made the announcement during a meeting with cardinals gathered in Rome. John Paul, who was pope from 1978 to 2005, and John, who reigned from 1958 to 1963, are considered two of the most influential religious leaders in the world in the last century, and they represent two poles in Roman Catholicism—John XXIII, who convened the Second Vatican Council, is a hero to liberals, while John Paul II is hailed widely by conservatives. Francis said in July he planned to canonize them together, the first time two former popes will be declared saints at the same time.

It may not feel like it to number-crunchers huddled around a Sunday school classroom table, fine-tuning annual financial proposals for an upcoming church business meeting. But church budgets are moral statements that reflect ethical priorities—and may be key indicators of a congregation’s passions.

David Gushee“All budgets reflect embedded choices that are morally significant, whether that budget is personal, familial, ecclesial or governmental,” said David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. “Jesus says, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’ Budgets reflect what we treasure and therefore where our hearts are.”

“Everything has a moral and ethical dimension about it,” said Bill Tillman, director of theological education with the Baptist General Convention of Texas. “There are moral and ethical values both explicit and implicit in church budget operations.”

Money possesses power in itself, and it represents how power and influence are exercised, he added.

“Where we spend our money shows what we think about other people and what we think about ourselves,” said Tillman, who formerly held the T.B. Maston chair of Christian ethics at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary.

Jason Edwards, senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Mo., said a congregation’s priorities may reflect past choices—often important ones—about ministerial staff and commitments to a geographic location.

“Those items are a part of ministry-fixed expenses for a congregation,” said Edwards, a graduate of Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. “And, by the way, providing health insurance for staff does reflect the ethics of the church in a positive way. These are needed ministry expenses.”

But he added, “Beyond these basic expenses, I think what a faith community does with its discretionary funds can be very telling in regard to their ethical and moral character.”

Roger Olson, theRoger Olson Foy Valentine professor of Christian theology and ethics at Truett Theological Seminary, agreed.

“For a Christian, everything is—or should be—a matter of ethics. Nothing’s neutral. Unfortunately, many churches have adopted a business model that tends to downplay issues of faith and morality,” Olson said.

Some observers find churches’ moral and ethical commitments in the balance their budgets achieve between administration and ministry. Others say that distinction isn’t always easy to make—and may be a false choice.

The average American congregation allocates about 80 percent to administration and facilities, according to a study this year by the Evangelical Christian Credit Union. Staff salaries represent about 58 percent of that amount, the ECCU found, although earlier studies by Christianity Today cited a figure just below 40 percent.

But those percentages tend to reduce a church’s mission engagement, said church consultant George Bullard, president of the Columbia Partnership.

“The total combined cost of staff and buildings should be no more that 70 percent of the congregational budget,” Bullard blogged last year. “When it is higher, funds available for missional formation and mission engagement are too small to creatively carry out these essential areas of ministry.”

When funding of personnel and facilities reaches 75 percent of a church’s budget, “the congregation is strangulated in its ability to do missional formation and missional engagement, and is making brick without straw,” he wrote. “At 80 percent for staff and buildings, the real work of a congregation—missional formation and missional engagement—must be altered, limited or funded from other sources.”

Church budgets are not just about supporting the organization of the church, Bullard emphasized in an interview. “They are about serving as a vehicle for the generosity of the people connected with the congregation. There they need to honor the need for a high priority on spiritual formation and missional engagement,” he said.

Amy ButlerBut Pastor Amy Butler believes so-called “administrative functions” are in fact “frontline, on the ground, where-the-rubber-meets-the-road kind of ministry.” That assessment reflects a society shift, she wrote in a recent blog.

“In the past, we churches thought of ourselves as the backbones of society, places where good, moral and faithful people gather to pool resources so we can go out into the world and feed the homeless and convert people in order to save their souls,” said Butler, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. “Keeping administrative costs as low as possible would help us to help the needy.”

But that role has altered, Butler said.

“We are islands in a world full of increasingly adrift people. We are places of solace and hope, community and hospitality for people who are too smart to believe in God and pretty convinced they don’t need the church—until they do.”

That requires substantial investment of resources in administration, she said.

Churches need to consider their purpose as they consider how much money to spend on building maintenance and how much to devote to missions and ministry, Olson said. “The church exists to participate in the mission of God to the world and not perpetuate itself comfortably,” he said.

Tillman likewise emphasized the importance of churches understanding their reason for being.

“The primary focus is the Great Commission,” he said, citing Jesus’ command to go into all the world to make disciples. If a church recognizes the Great Commission as its purpose, then “Great Commission values should mark the means to that end,” he added.

At the same time, churches should recognize the missional and educational value of their facilities, Tillman insisted.

“Recognize there is theology in the architecture,” he said, noting the facility may communicate to the community and to church members messages about what the church believes and values.

Congregations need to seriously confront how much they spend on their own comfort.

“Churches should ask, ‘What is there about it that makes this conducive to worship and makes it teachable and educable space to learn about and become acquainted with God?’”

As churches make budget decisions, they should listen to voices both inside and outside the congregation to determine what people perceive. Tillman noted when he taught seminary classes, he advised ministers to keep in mind “the view from the pew.”

“It may be that the Spirit of God has found residence in the people of God more firmly than in you,” he recalled telling his classes.

Likewise, if a church wants to reach its community, leaders must ask people in the community to determine what draws people to church or drives them away. “And they must be ready to hear the answer,” he added.

Churches should pray for wisdom as they seek a reasonable balance between the amount spent on program and ministries for members and how much they dedicate to missions and ministries beyond the congregation, Olson said.

“I don’t think there’s any formula that fits every church,” he said.

“I don’t think lattes in the church foyer is a big issue. But spending millions on luxurious accouterments should be.”

Congregations need to seriously confront how much they spend on their own comfort, Edwards said.

“We should wrestle with this. If we’re not wrestling with the dichotomy between our American bent toward luxury, consumerism and entitlement, we’ve probably stopped taking Jesus too seriously,” he said. “However, I also think that coffee shared within community is a way of connecting and offering hospitality. I’d say that’s part of our mission, too.”

Finding balance

Finding a balance is key, Gushee said.

“I think that sometimes practical and missions-minded Baptists forget that the mission of the church does include worship, theological reflection, Bible study, moral formation of disciples and other ‘inner’ directed work,” he said. “It also includes mechanisms for pooling resources for care for the needs of those in the family of faith. So we should not feel guilty for spending money on these priorities, sometimes congregationally and sometimes through shared collective efforts.”

That said, essential components of congregational life need not be expensive, Gushee added.

“I am convinced that the most important work the church does costs very little money—gathering in community to proclaim gospel truth, study Scripture, worship, love and care for one another, and be equipped for living out Christ’s love in the world,” he said. “Budgeting should begin by asking whether we are doing this basic work well. Then we ask what resources might be needed, including paid professional staff, to help equip us more adequately for this work.”

How much a church spends on ministries beyond its doors is a fair indicator of a congregation’s “mission-mindedness,” but not the only one, Bullard said.

“The time and energy of volunteerism is also a characteristic,” he said. “The Christlikeness of congregational participants to all demographics of people is also a characteristic. The social actions and political philosophies and actions of congregational participants—in terms of Luke 4:18-19—is also a characteristic.”

Mission-mindedness

Edwards agreed indicators of a church’s “mission-mindedness” should be broad.

“A missional Christian community also is a worshipping community,” he said. “A missional Christian community must value discipleship. Our communal worship and discipleship are necessary not only for faithfulness and effectiveness, but they distinguish us over time from an NGO. As we go out to serve, we go as a people who follow and worship Jesus.”

That doesn’t diminish the importance of missions and ministries beyond the congregation, Gushee said.

“That’s why Baptists had—and have—it right when they saw the benefit of pooling their resources for well-considered collective social and evangelistic ministries which develop ‘best practices’ with proven track records,” he said. “These are worth funding, and every local congregation has its share in that funding responsibility.”