WASHINGTON (RNS)—A new study estimates about 30 percent of Americans are open to the ideas associated with Christian nationalism. However, the study’s authors say those who adhere to or sympathize with the ideology are a more complex group than media portrayals and even other studies have found.

“Christian Nationalism: A New Approach” is the work of Neighborly Faith, an organization founded to help evangelical Christians build stronger relationships with people from other religious groups.

In a Dec. 18 webinar, Neighborly Faith researchers said they took a more detailed look at Christian nationalism than previous efforts, beginning with the criterion typically used to identify Christian nationalist leanings. Where most surveys ask six questions, the Neighborly Faith survey asked 14.

The six-question rubric, Neighborly Faith Director Chris Stackaruk said, makes it “very difficult to differentiate what is Christian nationalism versus what is socially or theologically conservative Christianity.”

In addition to the original six questions, Neighborly Faith asked respondents whether they believed America has a “special God-ordained purpose,” whether U.S. culture is “fundamentally Christian” and whether “Christian values” should be “solely and explicitly endorsed by the government.”

Neighborly Faith split respondents into six categories: Christian nationalist “Adherents” (11 percent) and “Sympathizers” (19 percent); Christian “Spectators” (18 percent) who sympathize with “traditional Christian views” but are less likely to engage politically; “Pluralistic Believers” (19 percent) who are more religious than the average American but oppose government endorsement of Christianity; “Zealous Separationists” (17 percent) who “strongly oppose” commingling of church and state; and “Undecideds” (16 percent).

‘A more nuanced look’

The researchers acknowledged some of their data closely matches a 2023 PRRI/Brookings survey that estimated 10 percent of Americans are Christian nationalist adherents and 19 percent are sympathizers.

But Neighborly Faith’s methodology, its researchers said, allowed for a more nuanced look at Christian nationalism using a definition calling it “a movement advancing a vision of America’s past, present, and future that excludes people of non-Christian religions and non-Western cultures.”

Kevin Singer, Neighborly Faith’s president, said its study showed Christian nationalists often “romanticize Christianity’s influence on America’s development” and believe the U.S. benefits from “God’s special favor.”

Other definitions of Christian nationalism take a harder line. Samuel Perry and Andrew Whitehead, authors of Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States, defines Christian nationalism as “a cultural framework that blurs distinctions between Christian identity and American identity, viewing the two as closely related and seeking to enhance and preserve their union.”

Amanda Tyler, of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, has charged that it “carries with it assumptions about nativism, white supremacy, authoritarianism, patriarchy and militarism.”

But Singer noted the Neighborly Faith study revealed adherents of Christian nationalism show surprising levels of support for some pluralistic ideals. While adherents were less likely overall to support the idea that the United States should take in refugees “even if I do not share the same beliefs as them,” for instance, more than half (51 percent) nonetheless supported welcoming refugees at some level.

What’s more, Christian nationalist adherents and sympathizers were roughly as likely as any other group (around 50 percent to 55 percent) to say they are moderately or very likely to participate in or attend events encouraging interfaith dialogue or understanding.

In a virtual panel discussion about the study, Kaitlyn Schiess, author of the forthcoming book The Ballot and the Bible: How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here, framed those findings as a hopeful sign for critics of Christian nationalism.

They point to “real inroads,” she said, for pastors and others concerned about the ideology to tap into a shared “desire to work across lines of religious belief for the common good.”

Troubling trends among Christian nationalists

Even so, Singer was quick to note troubling trends disproportionately are present among Christian nationalist sentiments and adherents.

“Our study is, by no means, saying that Christian nationalism is a preferable worldview to have or to endorse,” said Singer.

Christian nationalist adherents, researchers found, were the most likely to express the highest preference for a “strong leader who does not have to deal with Congress and elections” (37 percent), and more than half said the opposing party “lack(s) the traits to be considered fully human—they behave like animals.”

According to the study, adherents and sympathizers also “exhibit a tendency to dislike many outgroups, and prefer their government to favor Christianity over other faiths.”

Adherents in particular favor the idea of having Christian clergy review and advise on laws (59 percent) and having “America’s Judeo-Christian founding explicitly established in the Constitution” (49 percent).

The study also offers an unusually detailed profile of Christian nationalists. Adherents are 70 percent non-Hispanic white, for instance, and have the largest concentration of evangelical Christians (71 percent).

Among those who sympathize with Christian nationalist ideas, 60 percent say they are evangelicals, and adherents were also more likely to be married than others in the survey, by 62 percent to 49 percent.

Nonreligious individuals—those who said they were atheists, agnostics, nothing in particular, spiritual but not religious or “something else”—were the best represented among the Zealous Separationists—those who oppose fusions of church and state—comprising 65 percent of that group. Separationists also exhibited comparatively high levels of political participation, whether in protests or voter registration drives.

Political participation and voting patterns

Christian nationalist adherents and sympathizers, however, were only a few points behind separationists in political participation and collectively outnumber them. Adherents and sympathizers collectively represent 30 percent of the population nationally, whereas separationists represent 17 percent.

Roughly half of adherents also reported having shifted their buying habits due to a social or political issue, the highest of any group.

Christian nationalist adherents and sympathizers were also the most likely to say they voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and also more likely to have voted at all (67 percent and 68 percent, respectively) compared to other groups.

Separationists voted at 64 percent, however, and showed the highest support for any specific candidate (61 percent said they voted for President Joe Biden).

As for party affiliation, around 17 percent of the Republicans or those who lean Republican were classified as Christian nationalist adherents, with an additional 30 percent marked as sympathizers and 21 percent Christian Spectators.

On the Democratic side, 30 percent were Zealous Separationists, 25 percent Pluralistic Believers and 15 percent were Christian Spectators.

Neighborly Faith partnered with Technites for the survey, which was conducted between June 16 and June 21. It polled 2,006 U.S. adults and an oversample of 303 evangelical youth ages 18 to 25 for a total of 2,309 respondents.

Anson Rainey Nash Jr., school administrator and longtime executive director of Corpus Christi Area Baptist Association, died Dec. 11. He was 83. He was born Sept. 11, 1940, to Anson Rainey Nash and Clara May Nash in Wharton and grew up in Eagle Lake. He graduated from the University of Corpus Christi and Texas A&I University in Kingsville. He was a classroom teacher in the Corpus Christi Independent School District six and a half years before becoming a school principal. He was asked to start the Chula Vista Academy of Fine Arts and became the school’s first principal in 1977. He served as music minister, youth director or associate pastor for several churches, including Padre Island Baptist Church and Lexington Baptist Church. He was executive director of Corpus Christi Area Baptist Association for 15 years. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Linda Nash; daughter Rhonda Tumlinson and husband Gary of Corpus Christi; grandson Kaiser Creek of Corpus Christi; and sisters Mary Stoddard of Frisco and Claire McNair of McKinney. Memorial gifts can be made to Sammy Tippit Ministries, P.O. Box 700368, San Antonio, TX 78270 or to Stark College and Seminary, 7000 Ocean Drive Corpus Christi, TX 78412.

Nona Ruth Mosley, minister’s wife and longtime children’s choir leader, died Dec. 12. She was 85. She was born to Leonard and Theo Little in Billings, Okla., on April 16, 1938. After her family moved to Abilene, she made her profession of faith in Jesus at age 9 and was baptized at First Baptist Church by Pastor James Sullivan, father of her childhood best friend, MaryBeth. She attended Hardin-Simmons University, where she met her future husband Tom. They married Sept. 2, 1960. During her husband’s more than 50 years of service as a minister of music at multiple churches—including Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, Westbury Baptist Church in Houston, First Baptist Church in Abilene, Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston and First Baptist Church in Houston—she led second-grade choirs and was the “best alto” in every church choir. They also served together on music mission trips in Great Britain, Europe, South America and Central America. Later, she served alongside her husband when he became founding pastor of a church in South Carolina and as campus pastor at Howard Payne University and Houston Baptist University. She is survived by her husband of 63 years, Tom; their twin children, Marcus and Melinda; and five grandchildren. A memorial service is scheduled at 1:30 p.m. on Dec. 20 at Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston.

Over the course of two weekends earlier this month, about 6,000 people attended outdoor live Nativity presentations in downtown Round Rock—including some who said they learned about the events surrounding Jesus’ birth for the first time.

“I’m always amazed when people say they had seen Nativity scenes all their lives, but they didn’t know the story behind it,” said Janis Reeder, who has coordinated Christmas on the Corner since First Baptist Church in Round Rock launched the program in 2017.

This year, those who received their initial introduction to the story of Jesus’ birth included a young man from Punjab, India, who had come to historic downtown Round Rock to see the Hometown Holiday Christmas light display, Pastor Dustin Slaton said.

The young Sikh was so intrigued by what he saw and heard at Christmas on the Corner, he brought his father with him the next night.

The 19-minute dramatic musical program—presented three times a night two weekends in early December—involves about 100 volunteers from First Baptist Church, said Slaton, who has served the congregation since January 2021.

“That includes the cast, the people involved in building sets and the ladies who made cookies,” he said.

This year, the church gave away 3,292 cookies to guests who attended Christmas on the Corner—not counting the ones eaten by the volunteers.

Called by God to ‘tell his story’

Reeder has been involved 18 years in leading drama for Christmas presentations at First Baptist Church. For more than a decade, the church presented traditional Christmas musical pageants in the church sanctuary.

When a sanctuary renovation in 2017 made the space unsuitable for the annual Christmas program, Reeder initially thought it meant the end of a beloved tradition.

Then, while waiting in the drive-through lane of Lone Star Bakery to buy Round Rock Donuts, she looked at the nearby church parking lot. She felt sure God was opening a door for the congregation to take the Christmas story outside the four walls of its building.

“When my creative juices get going, it’s kind of scary,” she said.

With the exception of a one-year interruption due to the COVID pandemic, the church has presented Christmas on the Corner every December since then, and the number of attendees has increased every season.

Volunteer builders in the church constructed a 40-foot-wide platform for the outdoor presentation.

“The first year, it was a pretty expensive proposition with no money in the budget, but I was astonished at how many people contributed,” Reeder said.

The drama uses prerecorded music and narration—using a script Reeder wrote—and incorporates live animals into the presentation.

“I’ve become quite a camel aficionado,” she said.

Each performance ends with a gospel presentation in both English and Spanish.

“We’ve had people tell us they’ve never heard the Christmas story before. And we’ve had people join our church as a result of it,” Slaton said. “They’ve said, ‘We want to be part of a church that does something like this.”

Reeder views Christmas on the Corner as an expression of God’s calling on her life “to tell his story,” and it’s become a passion project for her.

“I can’t not do it,” she said.

KYIV, Ukraine (BP)—Baptist, Ukrainian Orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches will celebrate Christmas in unison Dec. 25 for the first time, the latter two abandoning their traditional Jan. 7 observance.

But despite a new law establishing Dec. 25 as the nation’s official observance, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate is expected to observe the holiday Jan. 7 according to the Julian calendar, a Baptist leader there told Baptist Press.

“This year will be very unique to us, because finally all Ukrainian churches will celebrate Christmas together on Dec. 25,” said Igor Bandura, vice president of the All-Ukrainian Union of Associations of Evangelical Christian-Baptist.

“Before that, evangelical churches celebrated on Dec. 25, but Ukrainian Orthodox Churches and the Greek-Catholic Church celebrated on Jan. 7.”

The Baptist Union encouraged the united observance for years without success, Bandura said, but the idea only gained popularity after Russia waged war against Ukraine in February 2022.

“That was one of the final signals that helped people to make this tremendous step to change their church calendar. And now, we will celebrate Christmas in unity, and focus together with the rest of the world,” Bandura said.

“We hope that during these days Russia would not attack us by missiles and kamikaze drones, and we will share time to come together as churches in different places, and glorify Christ and share the message … of the one who brought peace to all the world.”

Some Orthodox Christians observed Christmas on Dec. 25 in 2022 to distance themselves from Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky officially changed the national observance to Dec. 25 in July, distancing the country from the Russian Orthodox Church’s Jan. 7 celebration. Worldwide, about 12 percent of Christians mark Christmas on Jan. 7, Time Magazine reported

The law included an explanatory note, Time reported, stating a goal to “abandon the Russian heritage” of celebrating Christmas Jan. 7, and noting Ukraine’s “successful” struggle for its identity and Ukraine’s desire to preserve its own traditions.

Christmas comes as Ukraine’s Parliament continues to consider a law that would criminalize Ukrainian Orthodox churches supporting Russia’s war effort.

Bandura, who follows the law’s development as a representative for the Baptist Union, said Parliament carefully is drafting the law to maintain religious liberty while also protecting national security.

The bill passed Oct. 19 the first of two required procedural votes in Ukraine’s lower house of parliament and is subject to a second draft, which must also pass Parliament and be signed by Zelensky before becoming law.

Before the 2022 war began, Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate congregations numbered 12,000 in Ukraine, but about 1,500 of them had voted to join the independent Ukraine Orthodox Church as of September, National Public Radio reported. Ukrainian Orthodox churches number about 7,600.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Bobby Gruenewald might know more about how Americans read the Bible than anyone else in the country.

For the past 15 years, Gruenewald, an online entrepreneur turned pastor, has run the popular YouVersion Bible app—a free application that has been downloaded more than 700 million times in the United States and around the world.

When people log on to the app, they don’t generally want to know what the Bible thinks about politics or hot-button social issues, Gruenewald said. Instead, they are usually looking for some reassurance that things are going to be all right.

“People are turning to Scripture and using it and looking at it in a way that reminds them of God’s faithfulness or hope,” Gruenewald said.

That search for hope is reflected in a list of the top 10 verses users searched for in 2023. The No. 1 verse for the third year running was Isaiah 41:10, which begins, “So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God,” in the New International Version.

Other popular searches included familiar verses like John 3:16, Jeremiah 29:11—which speaks of God having plans to prosper his people—and Philippians 4:6, which reads, “Do not be anxious about anything.”

YouVersion is also one place where Americans aren’t arguing about God and politics. Gruenewald said the app—which includes hundreds of Bible translations in multiple languages, Bible reading plans, devotionals and a place to share prayer requests—tried to steer clear of politics or culture war feuds.

That’s in part because the app has an international audience and in part because the app’s developers want to draw people into engaging with the Bible, not drive them away.

“We didn’t want the Bible app to be a battleground for those issues,” said Gruenewald.

The YouVersion app has evolved dramatically over its lifespan. Gruenewald, a pastor on staff at Life.Church based in Oklahoma City, first came up with the idea for YouVersion while waiting in a security line in Chicago O’Hare International Airport in 2006.

YouVersion launched first as a website, where people could look up Bible verses online, and then morphed into an app with the proliferation of smart phones.

Focus on engaging with Scripture

In the early days, the app was focused on giving access to information about the Bible, Gruenewald said. Now the focus is also on engagement with the Bible.

In recent years, the popular Verse of the Day function has expanded to include devotionals and more of a daily experience with the Bible, Gruenewald said. The app also now includes guides on how to pray and ways to let people share prayer requests and get reminders to pray.

“You can ask your friends to pray for those requests, and you can be notified every time someone indicates that they pray for you,” said Gruenewald.

Much of the app’s more recent growth has come in places like India, Latin America and Africa. Of the more than 100 million downloads in 2023, according to YouVersion, more than 80 percent were outside the United States, where a lite version of the app for less-robust smart phones has become popular.

The success of the YouVersion app comes with a great deal of responsibility, Gruenewald said. YouVersion has collected data on tens of millions of users, which requires them to have powerful data security. That data would have great value to advertisers and other outside groups.

But it’s not for sale, Gruenewald said.

“We have been approached by everybody on the planet that wants to buy data,” he said. “We don’t even entertain the conversation. We don’t monetize the data.”

Instead, the app is funded by donors both inside and outside the church. The app is owned by Life.Church, which runs YouVersion as a distinct operation. The church also started a second nonprofit, YouVersionINC, in 2023 to support the app, according to IRS documents.

Given the troubles of other popular social media websites—most notably X, formerly known as Twitter, and TikTok—Gruenewald said the YouVersion team feels a responsibility to keep the app true to its mission and to honor the trust users have put in them.

“There are millions of people that are depending on the app to work,” he said. “And that’s not a trivial matter.”

HOUSTON (RNS)—Seven months after the Texas Legislature passed a bill allowing public schools to hire school chaplains, Dave Welch’s work has just begun.

The longtime conservative Christian activist has a two-pronged plan for what comes next.

“Number one is winning over the leaders currently in the school system, the school boards—or changing them,” said Welch, who runs the Houston Area Pastor Council. “Number two is persuading and winning over enough pastors to see this as a mission field.”

Strident rhetoric is nothing new from Welch, a seasoned veteran of the culture wars who was once a national field director for the Christian Coalition, a conservative advocacy group.

It also echoes the messaging of the National School Chaplain Association, the activist group that helped push SB 763—the controversial school chaplains bill—through the Texas Legislature earlier this year and now is primed for a nationwide push.

“As NSCA officers engage state legislators we are energized to know that this school chaplaincy bill will pave the way for spiritual care, support, and biblical guidance for children, teachers and staff in public schools throughout many states,” read an email to NSCA supporters, according to the Texas Tribune.

War of words waging in school boards

But the idea that public schools could turn into spaces of overt religious recruitment has worried church and state separationists across the Lone Star State ever since Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law.

Despite objections from outnumbered Democrats in both chambers of the Legislature, the chaplains bill was approved without outlining a chaplain’s role or mandating any specific training requirements.

Instead, lawmakers required the state’s 1,200-plus school districts to define those details themselves as they each vote on whether to allow chaplains in their schools by March 2024.

The result has been a heated war of words waged in one of America’s most well-trodden political battlegrounds—school boards.

According to locals, the fight over school chaplains has tapped into ongoing power struggles over public education and has pit religious voices against each other, with supporters framing the policy as a way to assist student mental health and detractors blasting it as a Christian nationalist attempt to convert children to a specific form of faith.

To Cameron Samuels, a 2022 graduate from a school in the Katy Independent School District, the chaplains debate is part of a broader faith-fueled fight over local education that began in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Samuels asserts early conservative pushback against mask mandates slowly transitioned into other political efforts, such as opposition to critical race theory, an academic ideology that became a target of conservative ire in 2021.

Social conservative influence on boards

The trend eventually snowballed, opening the floodgates for an influx of conservative voices on school boards statewide, said Samuels, who heads the activist group Students Engaged in Advancing Texas.

Samuels recalled attending a November 2021 Katy ISD school board meeting in which Victor Perez approached the microphone to rail against CRT, decrying it as “a fundamentally racist worldview.”

A few months later, Perez, after endorsements from local Christian magazines, was elected to the Katy ISD board, which he now leads as president.

A year later, three more conservative candidates backed by Texans for Educational Freedom—a conservative PAC dedicated to opposing critical race theory and “other anti-American agendas”—were elected to the seven-member board.

Formed in 2021, Texans for Educational Freedom already has spent more than $500,000 on school board races across the state, often running negative ads against opponents, part of what a recent Texas Observer investigation concluded was a broader push by a constellation of conservative PACs to impact Texas school boards.

“We’re seeing a Christian nationalist extremism takeover of our school district because of these interest groups,” Samuels said, noting a measure the Katy ISD board passed in August that requires school staff to inform parents if their children identify as transgender or choose to use different pronouns at school.

During a debate over that measure, Amy Thieme, one of the PAC-backed board members, suggested schools could enlist chaplains—which the board has yet to approve—as a mediator to inform parents.

“This is one avenue that we could use,” Thieme said.

Pushing back against the religious right

But some Texans have begun to push back, with the new chaplains bill serving as a galvanizing force. Three hours away, in an area encompassed by San Antonio’s North East ISD, Cameron Vickrey, a Cooperative Baptist minister who works for Fellowship Southwest, is one of several parents who have spoken out against chaplains in their children’s schools.

“It just baffles me that it feels like a good idea to anybody,” said Vickrey, who has three children in North East ISD. “It feels to me like an infiltration of the religious right—the conservative, Christian religious right —into our public schools, which is a trend we’ve been seeing in almost every area.

“I would absolutely call all of this Christian nationalism,” she added, noting her church recently hosted a panel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State that included discussions of the chaplains bill.

The sentiment is shared by Lisa Epstein, who heads the public affairs arm of the Jewish Federation of San Antonio.

She said her umbrella organization, the Jewish Community Relations Council, has been fighting the chaplains proposal ever since it appeared alongside a slate of religion-related bills at the Legislature. They include efforts to mandate the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools and to require campuses to set aside time for staff and students to pray and read religious texts.

When the chaplains bill passed, Epstein said, her group organized Zoom discussions with members across the state, detailing the bill she and others see as negatively impacting Jewish students.

“Our community members,” she said, have been “absolutely appalled that the school districts would even consider doing this.”

And while supporters have pointed out that chaplains could be from any faith, Epstein said her group opposes all public school chaplains on principle, whether Christian, Jewish or otherwise.

“From the Jewish perspective, we feel like public school should be a place where kids of all sorts of religions are welcome,” she said. “If you feel like your child needs clergy to counsel them, there are so many clergy in town—and frankly, that’s up to the parent to make that decision.”

Pushback has increased over the past few months, as more school districts vote on the school chaplains measure. In August, more than 100 Texas chaplains—professionals who work in the military or in health care—signed a letter organized by the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and others decrying the idea of chaplains in public classrooms, arguing it could be “harmful” to students.

A number have appeared at school board meetings to testify against the policy. The issue has also sparked heated debates among board members—with at least one resigning mid-debate over the chaplains policy in early December.

Acceptance of school chaplains subdued

But if conservative Christian advocates envisioned a sweeping embrace of school chaplains across Texas, the reality has been more subdued. While some districts have endorsed the idea of paid school chaplains, many have rejected it outright. Others have approved chaplains to serve area schools in a limited volunteer capacity.

Katy ISD board members had a preliminary discussion of the bill earlier this month, and while some of the PAC-backed members still seemed supportive of the measure, other board members made faith-based arguments against the bill.

“As a mom, I don’t want a chaplain who doesn’t speak and know and study my faith,” said board member Rebecca Fox​, whose official bio lists her as volunteering at Second Baptist Church nearby.

Perez, the board president, also appeared concerned about the work crafting a full-throated chaplains policy would entail.

“The board has to really, from scratch, create the policy,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot of work over the next few months if we go forward with it.”

Even Welch, who participated in an NCSA event hosted at a Houston-area church celebrating the passage of the chaplains bill, said he is uncomfortable with the idea of chaplains initiating a religious conversation with students.

But Welch, who rejects the term “Christian nationalist” in favor of “Christian patriot,” said if a student pursues “the spiritual side” of a conversation with a school chaplain, “the chaplain should not be hindered from providing that to them—and that’s what this whole program can do.”

With the March deadline looming, locals opposed to the measure are increasingly anxious about the fallout. Vickrey said she expected North East ISD to ultimately oppose school chaplains, but the division will remain.

“I’ve always had so much faith in our school board, and now it feels like there’s no agreement,” she said. “It makes me a little bit more concerned about our direction—it’s been so tense.”

Vickrey misses the debates of just a few years ago, she said, when school funding was the topic of the day.

“Now I just feel like those issues are so low on the priority list, and it’s all culture wars and Christian nationalism,” she said.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The Conference of National Black Churches has called on African American congregations to embrace a list of priorities—from “government-sponsored reparations” to improved access to health care—as they move out of a pandemic era and into an election year.

“We believe Black life must be valued and the humanity of all descendants of African descent must be affirmed,” said the conference’s board in a statement approved Dec. 12.

The listed priorities also call for a constitutional amendment to protect and guarantee the right to vote and for community policing policies that will prevent “stop and frisk” activities.

Approval of the statement highlighted the opening day of the organization’s national consultation, titled “Coming Out of Darkness, Finding Light: The Black Church Responding to the Continuing Pain of the Pandemic.”

“The Conference of National Black Churches presents ‘Ten Black Faith and Justice Ideals’ for uniting and mobilizing to push for reparative justice, freedom, global healing, empowerment and flourishing,” the statement said.

The consultation, held in Orlando, Fla., included speeches from Mandy Cohen, director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Brandi Waters, senior director of African American studies in the College Board’s Advanced Placement Program. About 300 people attended.

The Conference of National Black Churches is a coalition of leaders of historically Black denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, Church of God in Christ, Progressive National Baptist Convention and National Baptist Convention, USA.

“The Black Church, and this entire nation, find themselves still at a pivotal crossroads as it relates to our future,” said CNBC Chair W. Franklyn Richardson. “There are so many pressing issues, from the future of COVID-19 and mental health to gun violence and voting rights, that must be addressed.

“The CNBC board of directors entered this consultation committed to adopt a common set of principles that provide practical steps for our congregations to act on social justice issues from a civic and personal standpoint.

“We are showing that the Black church stands as a single unit against threats to our health, our vote, or our future.”

In a keynote speech at a consultation dinner, Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, announced a new joint get-out-the-vote initiative with the CNBC that will start training clergy and other organizers early next year.

Other specific concerns among the CNBC principles included economic equity, Black maternal health, a criminal justice system “driven by restoration rather than retribution,” and equitable funding for public schools and historically Black colleges and universities.

The CDC has partnered with the CNBC to address vaccine hesitancy in the Black community and to increase vaccination access, with some denominational leaders appearing in public service announcements to dispel misinformation.

Cohen, who became the new CDC director in July, thanked the Black church leaders for developing more than 600 vaccine sites at churches and helping get more than 1 million vaccines administered.

Cohen told consultation attendees she learned firsthand when she was North Carolina’s top health official that faith leaders thought the initial response to African American communities at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was insufficient. She said lessons from that time, when the state started to work to enhance equitable vaccinations in communities of color, will guide her in her new role.

“Truly improving and protecting health requires connection and collaboration—across public health, health care, social services, education, religion, business and others,” she said in her speech. “This work to protect health can only be accomplished if we do it as a team.”

During her remarks, Waters described the revised framework of the Advanced Placement course on African American studies that has been offered as a pilot program in hundreds of schools prior to its official launch in the 2024-25 academic year.

She noted students learn about the Black church and Black faith traditions, including the Christian history of Africans prior to the transatlantic slave trade; gospel music; and newspapers published by denominations.

“We know that Black churches have been foundational for our communities in terms of building leadership, giving us a chance to express ourselves, political organizing, and also sustaining our spirits,” Waters told consultation attendees. “So this comes up in every unit of the course.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The last time Kenneth Smith was slated for execution, he was strapped to a gurney for an hour while workers repeatedly attempted to insert intravenous lines in his chest, hand, arm and neck to execute him by lethal injection. His was the third botched execution in Alabama last year.

Smith, who was convicted in 1996 for his role in the 1988 murder of Elizabeth Sennett, is scheduled again for execution on Jan. 25, this time via nitrogen hypoxia. If it occurs, it will be the first time a person is executed by this method in the United States.

But in a lawsuit filed Dec. 13, Smith’s spiritual adviser, Jeff Hood—an activist priest in the Old Catholic Church who has Baptist roots—argues the restrictions imposed on him via waiver would violate his right to the free exercise of religion.

That waiver, which is included in the lawsuit, informs Smith that “in the highly unlikely event that the hose supplying breathing gas to the mask were to detach,” free-flowing nitrogen gas could create a “small area of risk.” The waiver therefore instructs Hood to remain 3 feet from Smith’s mask.

These instructions not only demonstrate the risk posed to witnesses of the execution, Hood’s lawyers argue in the lawsuit, but inhibit Hood’s right to minister to Smith by forcing him to stand apart from Smith during the execution. The lawsuit names the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections and warden of Holman Correctional Facility as defendants.

“Here, the ADOC’s (Alabama Department of Corrections) actions are not neutral,” the lawsuit says. “They are hostile toward religion. Indeed, they deny a prisoner his chosen spiritual advisor’s touch at the most critical juncture of his life: his death.”

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Ramirez v. Collier that a spiritual adviser is permitted to touch prisoners during execution.

In a news conference, Hood said Smith, whom he described as a “follower of Jesus” with a “deep love for God,” comes from a tradition where the laying on of hands “is a means by which a deeply spiritual moment happens.”

“I don’t think it’s our place to question the value of certain religious exercises,” Hood added. “I think it’s our place as a free society to protect them.”

Hood, who opposes the death penalty, isn’t alone in speaking out about Smith’s case. A petition opposing “the introduction of the gas chamber as a form of execution” had been signed by nearly 12,000 Jewish community members as of Thursday afternoon.

Hood’s lawsuit asks the District Court for the Middle District of Alabama to issue declaratory judgments that the defendants’ actions to inhibit the plaintiff from having contact with Smith in the execution chamber violate Hood’s First Amendment rights.

It also asks for a preliminary injunction that stalls Smith’s execution until it can be performed in a way that provides for Hood’s safety and allows Hood to have contact with Smith during the execution.

During Thursday’s news conference, Hood recalled that when Smith first requested him as his spiritual adviser, Smith asked, “Are you willing to die to do this?”

“This is what I do. This is what I feel called by God to do. I think that the message of Jesus is very clear,” Hood said. “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me. We are called to be in these spaces. So, I felt like I couldn’t say ‘no.’”

The Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty and Fellowship Southwest are among more than 250 faith-based organizations in Texas that urged Congress to pass a robust Farm Bill that includes strong support for nutrition programs.

They joined the Feeding Texas network of food banks and church-based and community-supported food pantries from around the state—including at least 20 affiliated with Baptist congregations—in signing the Dec. 13 letter to members of Congress from Texas.

Specifically, the groups called on Congress to support the nutrition section in the Farm Bill that reauthorizes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and The Emergency Food Assistance Program.

“The level of need is far too great for food banks and the faith community to tackle alone. We need support from lawmakers. Together, the Feeding Texas network and faith-based organizations across the state are urging elected officials to reauthorize a bipartisan Farm Bill package that strengthens SNAP and TEFAP while protecting investments already made in these critical hunger-fighting programs,” said Celia Cole, CEO of Feeding Texas.

In November, Congress passed a short-term budget deal that included a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, which expired Sept. 30. Members of Congress already are negotiating what will be included in a new Farm Bill.

“Our various faith traditions are united in the belief that providing food for the hungry is a moral imperative. Our faith also calls on us to extend daily support to those pushed to the margins by ensuring that everyone in our communities has enough to eat,” the letter stated.

While faith-based organizations regularly provide food and other assistance to meet the urgent needs of individuals and families, the government also has a responsibility to address the problem of food insecurity, the organizations noted.

“Without a strong network of publicly funded nutrition programs, the philanthropic resources that support our work are not enough to allow us to help those in need overcome crisis and transition to stability,” the letter stated.

The faith-based groups noted a Map the Meal Gap study by Feeding America showing more than 4 million Texans—including 1.35 million children—live in food-insecure households.

Food insecurity refers to the inability of households to acquire food, at times, for one or more household members.

A recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report revealed Texas has the second-highest rate of food insecurity in the nation.

“The 2023 Farm Bill offers a critical opportunity to address food insecurity and poverty in Texas,” the letter to Congress stated.

Strengthening programs such as SNAP and TEFAP can “help more families put food on their tables and prioritize equitable food access for all,” the letter continued.

“TEFAP enables our state’s food banks and pantries to keep their shelves stocked with nutritious foods while also supporting our farming communities. SNAP empowers Texas families to stretch their food budgets, particularly during times of food price inflation and when they are facing tough circumstances,” the letter stated.

After almost two months of providing meals in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war, Texas Baptist Men feeding teams are returning home as the ministry’s Israeli partners can now meet the needs of people caught in the conflict.

The third TBM volunteer team returned from Israel Dec. 12. TBM will continue supporting its Israeli partners as they serve.

“The need for mass feeding in Israel has declined to the point where our Israeli partners can meet the need on their own with TBM-designed equipment,” said Mickey Lenamon, TBM executive director/CEO.

TBM has worked several years building relationships with Israel’s Emergency Volunteer Project. It involved training TBM volunteers in preparing for specific dietary needs in Israel and using TBM designs to develop mass feeding mobile kitchens and processes.

TBM volunteers headed to Israel shortly after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. About 40 volunteers from Texas, supplemented by Kansans and North Carolinians, worked alongside Israeli workers to meet the food needs caused by displacement during the first two months of the war.

The end of the TBM deployment is “great news, because it means the number of people in need of emergency food is dropping and is not expected to rise again,” said John-Travis Smith, TBM associate executive director and coordinator of Israel ministry.

“There is much suffering still taking place in the region, as we all know, but our partnership with Israel’s Emergency Volunteer Project is confined to the nation itself,” Smith said. “We will continue to communicate with EVP and other TBM partners in the region to determine if any needs arise that TBM can help address.”

During TBM’s response to the war, Lenamon sent a weekly Israel Prayer Update email. He sent the final one this week.

“You have been one of our consistent prayer warriors during this crisis, and that has been essential,” Lenamon said. “This will be the last Israel update but not the last TBM prayer update. I will send you specifics for prayer anytime our volunteers are deployed or if we learn of a special need.”

Lenamon encouraged people to give three prayers of thanks:

• For raising up Israeli volunteers to handle the food needs in Israel.
• For enabling TBM to come alongside the people in Israel as a testimony to Christ’s care for all people.
• For allowing TBM to bring together other Christian groups in the United States for this coordinated work.

And he asked for three continuing prayers:

• God to bless and strengthen the Israeli volunteers who will continue to provide meals for those in need.
• God to help more people to return to their homes.
• God to move among the millions of Israelis and Palestinians to bring peace to the region.

Training of TBM volunteers continues to be an important part of the partnership with Israel’s EVP. Trips to Israel are scheduled each month in 2024, and seven are already filled. Visit tbmtx.org/israel to learn details.

ABILENE (RNS)—Abilene Christian University is revisiting its sexuality policy after more than 2,000 students, alumni and friends of the university voiced concerns about Holy Sexuality Week, claiming the school event on relationships and sexuality included one-sided, exclusionary messages about LGBTQ people.

“You gave a public platform to people who denied the lived reality of LGBTQ+ Christians, claimed inaccurately that homosexuality lacks a genetic basis, and made the ludicrous and hateful statement that ‘the opposite of homosexuality is holiness,’” said a Nov. 16 letter written by Wildcats for Inclusion, a new alumni group formed in the wake of Holy Sexuality Week.

In an email to the group, university President Phil Schubert said the board of trustees plans to review the school’s Sexual Stewardship Policy in January.

But in an interview with Religion News Service, Schubert said that while he can’t speak for the board, he doesn’t expect the policy to change, largely because the board dedicated extensive time to researching, praying over and developing its policy in 2017.

That policy calls for “chastity outside of marriage between a man and a woman” and for the university “to create an inclusive environment for all students—even those who disagree with ACU’s beliefs—so long as they refrain from sexual activity outside of marriage between a man and woman.”

“We don’t have a neutral position on this,” Schubert said in response to concerns about one-sided messaging at the event. “We’re a faith-based institution of higher learning that is governed by a board of trustees that is deeply faith committed. And so, they’ve chosen to provide some guidance on this.

“So, I understand that some would like there to be equal representation of affirming and traditional views of marriage, but that’s not where the university sits today. And it’s not what we feel is the responsibility we have to teach and mentor students according to what we believe the Bible instructs.”

From Nov. 6-9, the school, affiliated with Churches of Christ, hosted a handful of speakers who addressed topics related to sex and sexuality. Ninety percent of those speaking events, Schubert said, were not focused on same-sex relationships.

Speaker describes ‘sin struggle’

Speakers included Christopher Yuan, an author who has taught at Moody Bible Institute, who used to identify as gay. In his chapel session, Yuan emphasized God’s unconditional love but added that love doesn’t include unconditional approval of a person’s behavior.

“The opposite of homosexuality is holiness,” said Yuan. “In fact, the opposite of every sin struggle is holiness.”

Just as people who struggle with depression shouldn’t make their identity about being depressed, people shouldn’t make being gay their identity, Yuan said.

He went on to compare identifying as gay to identifying with watching pornography or committing adultery.

“None of us should put our identity in our sin struggle,” he said.

Wildcats for Inclusion said in a Dec. 5 letter posted online: “By our count, Christopher Yuan alone compared homosexuality to two mental illnesses, a horrific disease, and a majority of the so-called ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ from Proverbs. Even as he rightly and admirably condemned the bullying of queer people, he perpetuated the conditions that allow bullying to occur.”

In response to a request for comment, Yuan directed RNS toward Luke 9:23, which says “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” He also pointed to the conclusion of his chapel lecture, where he said that rather than summarizing his story by saying he is no longer gay, his story is really about finding Christ.

“I once was lost and now I’m found. I once did not believe and now I believe in the Son of God and his name is Jesus,” he said.

‘Spirit of kindness and compassion’

Schubert said each of Holy Sexuality Week’s sessions, including Yuan’s, effectively balanced truth and love and was pervaded with a “spirit of kindness and compassion.” Schubert said he would not characterize any of the speakers’ remarks as “hateful.”

While society often interprets disagreement as hateful, he said, Abilene Christian University strives to have effective conversation about a host of relevant topics, “and even in our disagreement, reflect love and compassion that is from God.”

Some students, including over 100 LGBTQ students who signed the Nov. 16 Wildcats for Inclusion letter, said they felt the series didn’t allow room for complexity or discussion.

In addition, the Dec. 5 letter from Wildcats for Inclusion included testimonials from students who said that in the wake of Holy Sexuality Week, they were “harassed online,” experienced panic attacks and heard a student joke that “all gay people deserve to die.”

“The topic was presented as if it were to be discussed as a conversation with multiple viewpoints. Instead there was only one viewpoint: Don’t be gay and if you choose to be so, you have to stay celibate,” Brinkley Zielinski, a first-year student at the university, told RNS.

“I was also appalled to hear homosexuality be compared to depression, but also an eating disorder,” Zielinski said, noting that one of the other speakers had argued that supporting homosexuality is the same as someone supporting an anorexic friend starving herself.

Zielinski said since Holy Sexuality Week, she has also been more concerned about her safety as an openly queer student.

“I feel in the establishment’s eyes, I’m a sinner, but to a larger degree than the rest of the population,” she said.

In response to Holy Sexuality Week, Wildcats for Inclusion has made three requests: Reopen discussion about ACU’s Sexual Stewardship Policy; incorporate human sexuality in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’s efforts; and revise the school’s approach to future series on human sexuality to include diverse Christian perspectives.

Promised a ‘safe and welcoming atmosphere’

Paul Anthony, one of the 15 alumni organizing Wildcats for Inclusion, noted support for the group’s letter shows that a large cross-section of the ACU community agrees that what happened at Holy Sexuality Week was a significant problem the school needs to address.

“We’re obviously grateful that the board is going to discuss again the sexual stewardship policy in January, but then the president has been on local television this past week saying he doesn’t expect the policy to change. So we’ll see what happens,” Anthony said.

“We’re obviously not going to stop pushing, because we think it’s important that queer students be given the safe and welcoming atmosphere they were promised when they enrolled at ACU.”

Schubert confirmed the board is planning to revisit the policy in the new year, describing the move as a “routine activity” that was “somewhat influenced by Holy Sexuality Week and responses to it.” Wildcats for Inclusion has also requested to meet with him, and while the details are still being sorted, Schubert told RNS he is “very open” to the meeting.

“I don’t think the university is going to change its policy, but would we be willing to host thoughtful conversations that might include varying perspectives? I think that’s something worth considering,” Schubert said.

As far as bullying is concerned, Schubert said the university has a clear zero-tolerance policy.

As the board anticipates revisiting the school’s sexuality policy and the school considers whether to make Holy Sexuality Week a regular event, Zielinski called on the ACU administration to take time to reflect on how Holy Sexuality Week impacted queer students like her.

“Your queer students took a leap of faith coming to this school, I took a leap of faith choosing to study here,” Zielinski wrote in an email to RNS. “Many queer students including myself were told by you that ‘we belong here.’ After Holy Sexuality Week, I can assure very few of us feel that that is still the case.”