Politicians, business leaders, and activists from around the world are meeting this and next week in Glasgow, Scotland, to make commitments and urge others to do the same to keep the planet from overheating more than it already is. Earth’s global temperature has risen 1.1 C and as the planet has warmed, fires have raged in Australia and California, heatwaves and floods have killed hundreds around the world. So what can be done to keep the temperature from rising .4 or more degrees?

Christians have been actively petitioning God for prayer. Believers in Asia, Europe, and North America gathered monthly from spring to fall to offer intercessory prayers ahead of the United Nations climate change conference, in an event organized by Lausanne/World Evangelical Alliance Creation Care Network, A Rocha International, Youth With A Mission England, Christian Missionary Fellowship International, Tearfund, and Young Evangelicals for Climate Action.

The Young Christian Climate Network organized about 2,000 people to walk between the southwestern tip of the UK to Glasgow to raise awareness about climate change and the current practices leading the earth’s rise in temperature.

Philip Summerton is a full time missionary worker with YWAM in Scotland and a marine and terrestrial conservationist who has done work on the restoration of coral reefs in the Seychelles.

Summerton joined global media manager Morgan Lee and news editor Daniel Silliman to discuss the goals of COP26, what’s impeding us from reaching them, and why the climate movement needs Christians.

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On August 29, as American troops were accelerating their pullout from Afghanistan, the U.S. military ordered its last drone strike in the 20 year war. The missile destroyed a parked car that military officials said was operated by an Islamic State sympathizer, and contained explosives for a suicide attack on the Kabul airport, where American forces and civilians had gathered for evacuation. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley told a news conference, “We think that the procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.”

Last week, separate investigations from The New York Times and The Washington Post questioned those assertions, reporting that the driver was Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime engineer for the California-based aid group Nutrition and Education International. The supposed explosives, said the Times, were canisters of water Ahmadi was bringing home to his family because Taliban’s takeover of the city had cut off his neighborhood’s water.

The Times also reported that 10 members of the Ahmadi family were killed in the Hellfire missile attack, including seven children.

General Milley told reporters, “We went through the same level of rigor that we've done for years. Yes, there are others killed. Who they are, we don't know. We'll try to sort through all that.”

The British-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted that the US military conducted more than 13,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan over the years, with at least 4,126 people killed, including at least 300 civilians and 66 children. Drone policies changed over the years under during different presidencies. As did the way the US counted civilian deaths by drone strikes. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan has a dramatically higher count for civilians killed in Afghanistan by drones: more than 2,000, with more 785 of them children. If accurate, that would mean that about 40 percent of civilians killed by drones in Afghanistan were children.

It appears that drone warfare will continue to play a major role in Afghanistan. Earlier this month, President Biden promised Islamic State—or ISIS-K, “We are not done with you yet. … We will hunt you down to the ends of the Earth, and you will pay the ultimate price.” But without troops in the country, that hunting will almost certainly be done mostly through unmanned aircraft.

Back in 2011, CT ran a story asking “Is it wrong to kill by remote control?” This week, we want to revisit that question.

Our guest this week is Paul D. Miller, is professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He earlier served in the US army, the CIA, and on the National Security Council staff as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

These days, in addition to his post at Georgetown, he is a research fellow with the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and is author of Just War and Ordered Liberty, published earlier this year from Cambridge University Press. Among that book’s chapters is one one on the ethics of drone warfare. Quick to Listen listeners may also remember Dr. Miller from our January episode on Christian Nationalism.

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This Tuesday, Amazon founder and the richest man on the planet, Jeff Bezos, entered space for the first time. This was the virgin flight for Blue Origin, the space travel company that Bezos founded, and lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds.

Bezos's trip came just days after billionaire Richard Branson reached the edge of space on board his Virgin Galactic rocket plane. The company currently has more than 600 reservations, a trip that costs his commercial passengers, $250,000 apiece. The company hopes to launch to the public next year.

While the White House called Bezos’s flight a “moment of American exceptionalism,” others have been less than thrilled to see the wealthiest in the country head into the heavens. 

“Watching the coverage of the billionaires going to space and the notion that it may pave the way for all of us to go in the future. Can I just ask why they think everyone would want to go to space for 8 minutes? And how is this a good use of millions of $? How bout curing cancer?,” wrote former World Vision head Richard Stearns in a series of tweets. “It is estimated that Bezos spent $5.5 billion to achieve his space flight. That same amount of money could have brought clean water to 110 million people who currently have no access. It could also have given a $4000 raise to every one of Amazon’s 1.3mm employees.”

After his flight, Bezos thanked “every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer. Because you guys paid for all this.” Bezos says he funds Blue Origin by selling $1 billion of Amazon stock annually.

Mark J. Shelhamer is former chief scientist of NASA’s Human Research Program. He is professor of otolaryngology, head and neck surgery, at Johns Hopkins University, where he is also director of the Human Spaceflight Lab. He most recently also became the director and founder of the Bioastronautics@Hopkins initiative. Shelhamer has been involved in human spaceflight research since the 1980s and serves as an adviser to commercial spaceflight federation.

Shelhamer joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss whether Christians should celebrate billionaires in space, why not everyone was a fan of spaceflight when it first took off, and and how working in this industry has affected his relationship with God.

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Half a dozen Canadian churches have been set on fire or burned down this summer. This arson has come at a time when multiple mass graves have been found across the nation on the grounds of now-defunct residential schools. Operated by multiple churches, including the Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, and United, the Canadian schools were part of a 20th-century government program to assimilate its First Nation community.

The government forced students to attend, separating them from their families at a young age. Once there, they were forbidden from speaking their native language and punished severely if they ran away. Many died at the school from disease and suffered from hunger and physical abuse.

The trauma brought on by these schools has carried on for generations. Much of it was shared during a Truth and Reconciliation Commission where survivors told stories of their time.

Jimmy Thunder teaches indigenous ministry at Horizon College and Seminary in Saskatoon and is the founder of Reconciliation Thunder, a nonprofit focused on helping leaders respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 Calls to Action.

Thunder joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to discuss the Christian history of Canadian residential schools and learn how many First Nation people regard Christianity today.

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Christians should be afraid of critical race theory. That’s the message that a number of conservative Christian leaders have shared in recent months. Last fall, the presidents of the five Southern Baptist seminaries issued a statement saying that “affirmation of Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality and any version of Critical Theory” is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message, the denomination’s core beliefs. This anxiety made CRT a main focus at the denomination’s recent gathering.

In recent years, some evangelicals have identified critical race theory as an ascendent ideology in the church that is fundamentally at odds with Christian faith. This anxiety has been mirrored by many conservatives at large and the debate over this ideology has moved from the previous president’s public disgust of the ideology to state legislature measures that would ban it in schools. All of this comes months after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have once again spurred both conversations about how the church ought to respond to racial injustice but also how the church should discuss this reality. One recurring concern for some Christians: that their fellow believers have adopted the worldview and talking points of critical race theory and Marxism.

Over time, these charges have been lobbed by Christians at Christians, the latter of whom often feel like this language mischaracterizes the movement, miscasts their efforts, or unfairly shuts down conversations without a hard look at the issues actually at stake.

D.A. Horton directs the intercultural studies program at Cal Baptist and serves as associate teaching pastor at The Grove Community Church in Riverside, California. His 2019 book, Intensional, presents a “kingdom” view of ethnic divisions and reconciliation. Horton has written a four-part series on Ed Stetzer’s blog, The Exchange, about CRT and Christian missions.

Horton joined global media manager Morgan Lee and senior news editor Kate Shellnutt to discuss what critical race theory is, why it unnerves some Christians, and what can be done to help Christians stop talking past each other when it comes to addressing the reality of racial injustice.

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Across the country, American cities are unsuccessfully grappling with how best to address homelessness. This month, Austin criminalized sitting, lying, or camping in public. Sausalito, an upscale community in the Bay Area canceled its annual art festival when its location conflicted with the proposed place to relocate the homeless population that is currently living on the city’s waterfront. Los Angeles is considering moving forward with establishing a government-funded tent encampment.

Nationally, here’s how The New York Times summed it up in March of this year."Homelessness in the United States rose for the fourth straight year, with about 580,000 people living on the streets or in temporary shelter at the start of 2020, according to an annual nationwide survey that was completed before the pandemic.But the report, which was released on Thursday, almost certainly underestimates the spread, depth and urgency of the crisis, and not by a little, federal officials warned.Beyond the myriad factors that leave people on streets, expiring COVID-19 moratoriums on evictions mean that millions may soon find themselves without housing.

For decades, Christian ministries have served food and offered temporary housing to people experiencing homelessness. Whose needs have these organizations traditionally met? And how successful have they been?John Ashmen has served as the CEO of Citygate Network since 2007, previously known as the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions and is the author of Invisible Neighbors. Before he went to what’s now Citygate, he served in the COO role of the Christian Camp and Conference Association.

Ashmen joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen to talk about why homelessness is getting worse, why Christians don’t always agree on the solutions, and what it means for the church to love its neighbor when trying to consider what is best for those on the street, local businesses, and the safety of all.

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For the past two weeks, the world has had its eyes on the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Each day, new headlines emerge of Hamas launching rockets from Gaza and Israel bombing the strip in return. More than 200 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis have died in the attacks. But before the aggression escalated into direct action, tensions had been simmering for weeks.

Thirteen Palestinian families from a neighborhood in a disputed area of East Jersualem were facing potential eviction. Many Israeli families have already moved into this neighborhood. Israeli settlements on land Palestinians believe to be theirs has consistently been a wider source of grievance between the two communities.Then, two weeks ago, police raided the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem during Ramadan. The third-holiest site in Islam is also located on the same land as the Temple Mount, a location sacred to Jews.

After 11 days of fighting, a cease-fire has been announced, which will likely halt the rockets and shelling for now. But it’s unlikely to heal the long term rifts between the communities. What’s more: hundreds of people now grieve loved ones, including more than 50 children, who were killed in the past two weeks.

Salim Munayer is the executive director and founder of Musalaha Ministry of Reconciliation, which has been bringing Israelis and Palestinians together since 1990. Munayer is a Palestinian-Israeli who received his PhD from the Oxford Center of Mission Studies in the UK and has published several books on reconciliation, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Christians in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. He is also the peace and reconciliation network coordinator for Middle East and North Africa for the World Evangelical Alliance.

Munayer joined global media manager Morgan Lee and executive editor Ted Olsen on Quick to Listen to discuss the roots of the violence, the role and responsibility of American Christians in this crisis, and what the ongoing conflict between Palestinians and Israelis can teach us about the racial division in the church.

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One third of San Francisco public schools will be renamed in the coming months following a decision by the city’s school board to remove the names of individuals who had owned slaves, actively participated in segregation, or were colonizers.

The decision, which includes 44 school sites, attracted national attention as it includes schools named for Thomas Jefferson Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.The decision has drawn scorn from conservatives who see the decision as yet another example of liberal hysteria but also from other liberals. Last week, The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner grilled Gabriela López, the head of San Francisco Board of Education who refuted some of the historical claims that had been made by the committee which had investigated the named figures. (Read the interview.)

But the government isn’t the only actor wrestling over questions of renaming institutions. As Ravi Zacharias’s misdeeds have been exposed in recent months, the ministry named after him has wrestled with whether or not it should continue to bear his name.Of course, renaming places, and people, for that matter is not new. Throughout the Old Testament, God renames places and people. But why? That’s what we wanted to get into on the podcast this week.

Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament and program coordinator of Bible and theology at Prairie College in Three Hills, Alberta and the of author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters and its forthcoming sequel, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters. She also joined Quick to Listen in 2020. (Listen to “When Those in Power Get Sick.”)

Imes joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss Old Testament precedent for renaming people v. places, what it means for humans to have the ability to name, and whether or not churches should bear people’s names.

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Last week the Trump administration carried out its 9th and 10th federal execution of 2020. On Wednesday night, the state executed a 40-year-old man, Brandon Bernard.

According to the AP, “when Bernard was 18 he and four other teenagers abducted and robbed Todd and Stacie Bagley on their way from a Sunday service in Killeen, Texas, during which Bernard doused their car with lighter fluid and set it on fire with their bodies in the back trunk.”

Bernard’s death comes several months after the Justice Department surfaced a proposal to “reintroduce firing squads and electrocutions for federal executions, giving the government more options for administering capital punishment as drugs used in lethal injections become unavailable.”

Last Friday, the government executed Alfred Bourgeois, who has an intellectual disability, whose should have meant he could not have been up for the death penalty. But Bourgeois’s trial lawyers did not present evidence of his intellectual disability to the jury. He was the 17th person executed in the united states this year, and the country’s last scheduled execution for 2020.

This week on Quick to Listen, we wanted to discuss how to wrestle with the death penalty, accountability, justice, and forgiveness from someone who has straddled many sides of this situation. 

Jeanne Bishop, a felony trial attorney in the Office of the Cook County Public Defender in Chicago. She is the author of Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer and Grace From the Rubble: Two Fathers’ Road to Reconciliation After the Oklahoma City Bombing. Bishop joined global media manager Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss how her work and sister’s murder have impacted how she views the death penalty, what accountability and justice look like outside of the death penalty, and how to pray for those in the criminal justice system during the pandemic. 

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The Navajo Nation continues to be hit hard by COVID-19. The community has reported nearly 7,000 cases and more than 330 deaths. Leaders have ordered businesses closed on weekends in a community that is spread across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. The Navajo Nation’s preexisting conditions like poverty, limited running water, and close living situations make it extra vulnerable to coronavirus.

The lockdowns have made it challenging for people to access the resources they need, says Donnie Begay, who along with his wife, Renee, directs the Nations Movement, a campus ministry that’s part of Cru.

“On the Navajo Nation, there are only about a dozen food grocery stories that cover 27,000 square miles that is the Navajo reservation,” said Begay, who lives in Albuquerque. Many on the reservation live at least an hour away from the border of the reservations and these lockdowns cut them off from the businesses on the other side.

“These lockdowns can be very cumbersome to people who need to drive an hour or more just to buy groceries or necessities and food during the pandemic,” said Begay.

Begay joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editorial director Ted Olsen to discuss the community’s complex relationship with Christianity, why they’re uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19, and how Navajo millennials are making their faith their own.

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Super Tuesday is upon us. After a primary here and a caucus there, Tuesday is when the greatest number of US states hold primary elections and caucuses. As the Democratic field narrows down, what type of success have candidates had in reaching out to Christians?

The AND Campaign’s Justin Giboney and Michael Wear joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and CEO and president Tim Dalrymple to discuss the efforts that the Democratic field has made to reach religious voters, why white evangelicals vote so consistently for Democrats, and if Republicans will ever court black Christians.

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Last week, a California couple’s two-year-old daughter stopped breathing and died. In the wake of the tragedy, the parents, Andrew and Kalley Heiligenthal, had an unusual response: 

"We are asking for bold, unified prayers from the global church to stand with us in belief that He will raise this little girl back to life. Her time here is not done, and it is our time to believe boldly, and with confidence wield what King Jesus paid for. It’s time for her to come to life,” Kalley, a worship leader and songwriter at Bethel Church, wrote on Instagram, where she has more than 250 thousand followers. In response to her words, hundreds of people posted under the hashtag, #wakeupolive.

Reaction to the Heiligenthal’s actions has been polarized. But according to apologist Lee Strobel, the family’s belief in miracles is similiar to that of many others. In a Barna study about prayer and healing that he commissioned for his recent The Case for Miracles, Strobel asked a sample of American adults if there was anything in their life they could only explain as being a miracle.

“Thirty-eight percent of American adults said yes,” said Strobel. “Now if you extrapolate that number that would mean that there would be 94 million miracles just in the United States!”

Strobel joined digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss what is unique or interesting about Jesus’s miracles, how the Protestant Reformation changed Christians’ understanding of miracles, and whether or not Christians should pray for their loved ones to come back to life. 

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Though one can argue that evangelical religion has been in crisis from the beginning, starting in November 2016 and the election of Donald Trump, it exploded afresh. Not only did the nation wake up to discover a chasm dividing in the country, so did evangelicals--especially when it became clear that white evangelicals voted for and then supported the new president, depending on the poll, in the range of 75 to 81 percent. The evangelical left was shocked and horrified by this, and the evangelical right was mystified by their outrage. Many Black, Asian, and Hispanic evangelicals—if they still identified with the term at all--looked at white evangelicals left and right and just shook their heads, wondering if either side really got it.

We now have a cacophony of voices shouting at one another, and much of the shouting is about two questions: “So, what is an evangelical Christian anyway?” And more to the point, “Does it even matter?”

To help explore those questions, we invited Thomas Kidd, the Vardaman Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University, to speak with us. He is the author of many important history books, including The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America ; George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father and most recently, Who Is an Evangelical? A History of a Movement in Crisis. What is “Quick to Listen”? Read more

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Today's episode of Quick to Listen is brought to you in part by Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, where Kingdom-minded women and men are equipped to follow their callings. By learning to think theologically, developing ministry skills, cultivating a community of support, and engaging in spiritual formation, Truett students are uniquely prepared to make an impact in the Church and the world. Learn more at baylor.edu/truett.

This episode of Quick to Listen is also brought to you by Focus on the Family’s Bring Your Bible to School Day powered by students nationwide October 3rd. When you sign up to participate, you’ll also be entered to win a trip to the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

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Elections often call attention to white evangelicals whose votes and voices play a significant role in national elections. But their attitudes and values don’t necessarily represent those of evangelicals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Case in point: Latino evangelicals. According to data from the Billy Graham Center Institute at Wheaton College and LifeWay Research, 41 percent of Hispanics with evangelical beliefs voted for Trump in 2016. What were the issues that most influenced their vote? According to the same survey, 19 percent said improving the economy, 14 percent said helping those in need, and 14 percent said a candidate’s position on immigration. “Most Latinos will tend to be socially conservative on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage but will tend to be social liberals on issues like education and immigration, so we’ve tended to be divided on how we spread the vote,” said Juan Martínez, who currently serves as professor of Hispanic studies and pastoral leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary. “This isn’t new; it just stands out more because we’re a larger percentage of the voting block. Those of us who have voted have struggled with this for years because the Democrat/Republican way that this is broken out doesn’t fit us well.” Martínez joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the history of Latino evangelicals and what unifies and divides the community.

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In 2011, The New York Times profiled several church plants in New York City trying to make it in Manhattan: "In recent decades the number of English-speaking evangelical churches south of Harlem has grown tenfold, to more than 100, said Tony Carnes, a researcher ... who has studied New York churches since the 1970s. Without fanfare, the newcomers have created networks to pay for new churches and to form church-planting incubators, treating the city as a mission field." That was seven years ago. More recently, these church plants are moving into Harlem and into boroughs and neighborhoods less financially well off as center-city Manhattan. These characteristics of New York church planting are part of a larger tension across the country, as dozens of churches increasingly open up in some of the urban area’s most disinvested communities. As they launch, the neighborhoods they inhabit often begin to change—begging the question: Are these churches drivers of changes in the community or merely swept up into economic and social forces outside of their control? José Humphreys is a pastor and was part of a team that founded a church in one of these neighborhoods. “Church plants need to be more is a little more mindful, discerning and self-critical. Look at the different ways they show up. What does your incarnational presence communicate to the community around you? “What do you bring in your embodied presence, in your body, skin, class, your education?” said Humphreys, the author of the forthcoming "Seeing Jesus in East Harlem: What Happens When Churches Show Up and Stay Put." “My wife and I realize that just because her last name is Lopez and my first name is José doesn’t necessarily mean we automatically identify with people in East Harlem.” Humphreys joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and associate theology editor Caleb Lindgren to discuss the catalysts behind church plants entering under-resourced neighborhoods, what separates church plants from the storefront churches, and if people should move into the neighborhoods in which they worship.

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Last month, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions vowed to enforce a “zero tolerance” policy when it comes to immigration. Here’s one way he described how this would look: "If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law," he said. "If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border." Months before he made this promise, Sessions had already started making good on it. Three weeks prior, the The New York Times had reported that since October, more than 700 children have been taken from adults claiming to be their parents, including more than 100 children under the age of four. As Sessions’ immigration policies have drawn national attention, evangelical leaders have been increasingly speaking out. A letter from the Evangelical Immigration Table said this to President Trump: While illegal entry to the United States can be a misdemeanor criminal violation, past administrations have exercised discretion in determining when to charge individuals with this offense, taking into account the wellbeing of children who may also be involved. A “zero tolerance” policy removes that discretion—with the effect of removing even small children from their parents. The traumatic effects of this separation on these young children, which could be devastating and long-lasting, are of utmost concern. Other Christian female leaders also started a #notwithoutmychild campaign in which they wrote a letter with more than 2,500 signatures to Sessions and Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Sister Norma Pimental, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley on the border of Mexico, has seen most of this situation unfold firsthand. “We need to look at our laws and make sure we protect our laws and country, but at the same time, we cannot overlook that we are talking about human beings,” said Sister Norma. “Our laws can be humane and can be a process that can address things correctly without ignoring that these are human beings, and we must listen to their story and understand why they’re here.” Sister Norma joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the reality of what’s happening on the United States–Mexico border, her relationship with border control, and what impact the attorney general’s words have on those traveling north.

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Nigerian Christians have had enough. Thousands took to the streets this week after an attack during a church service left nearly two dozen dead last month. Among the victims were two priests, spurring Catholic leaders to protest the government for failing to do enough to protect the Christian community. Divided between a predominantly Muslim north and a predominantly Christian south, the country is home to some of the world’s most vicious scenes of religious conflict. Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a spate of attacks on Christian in the last decade. But, in recent years, the community faces another enemy known as the Fulani Herdsmen, the group behind the most recent attacks. Nigerian Christians need the support of their brothers and sisters in Christ, said Gideon Para-Mallam, the former regional secretary for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, the international version of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. “It’s important that believers all the world pray for us,” said Para-Mallam. “It’s also really important that the governments of the world really, really look closely and critically at what is happening in Nigeria. Just look at the sequence, from the systemic to the frontal attacks, to the killing of Christians, and now you’re beginning to ask Christians to move away from their ancestral homes. It’s pointing somewhere and I think we need to discover that.” Para-Mallam joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the history behind the country’s Muslim-Christian conflict, why the government has been so ineffective at fighting Islamists, and why there may be a bigger threat to the church than extremism.

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Over the past two months, authorities have closed more than 7,000 churches across Rwanda for failing to comply with health, safety, and noise regulations. As CT has previously reported: President Paul Kagame welcomed the shutdowns but was stunned at the scale: “700 churches in Kigali?” he said during a government dialogue in March. “Are these boreholes that give people water? I don’t think we have as many boreholes. Do we even have as many factories? This has been a mess!” The government isn’t clamping down only on what it deems to be issues of physical safety. Current laws allow Rwandans to open churches without requiring pastors to go through any training. A new law specific to faith-based organizations will require potential pastors to get a theology degree before they plant a church. Many Christian leaders aren’t bothered by these increased regulations, including Charles Mugisha, the founder and chancellor of Africa College of Theology. “The government gets irritated when you start preaching the type of American prosperity gospel which many African preachers are learning from American television and YouTube,” said Mugisha, who also is also a pastor and the leader of the nonprofit African New Life. “The government becomes protective of its citizens if a church or preacher begins to manipulate it.” Mugisha joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss why he believes the government is closing churches for good reasons, how Rwanda’s excruciating genocide affected its faith, and how he became friends with Saddleback pastor Rick Warren.

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Last week, China announced that it would drop presidency term limits, effectively allowing current president Xi Jinping to serve indefinitely. The leader is currently concluding his first five-year term, one not particularly positive for the country’s Christians. During his time in office, a provincial government engaged in a multi-year campaign to remove crosses from the tops of churches and Xi suggested that religions that inadequately conformed to Communist ideals threatened the country’s government, and therefore must become more “Chinese-oriented.” Last fall, the Communist party reportedly visited Christian households in Jiangxi province, forcibly removing dozens of Christian symbols from living rooms and replacing them with pictures of Xi. In February, the government hit the faith community with another set of restrictions. Under these regulations, religious groups must gain government approval for any sort of religious activity, including using one’s personal home for a religious practice, publishing religious materials, calling oneself a pastor, or studying theology. The government accepted the “worst possible version” of the restrictions, said Fenggang Yang, the director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. The government could have been more pragmatic in its approach and treated this as a “social management issue.” “But these [restrictions] are not,” he said. “It’s going to be very difficult or impossible to implement or enforce the restrictions.” Yang joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the roots of the government’s anti-religion attitudes, how Christians are speaking out against the recent term limits, and the fledgling Chinese missions movement.

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This episode previously aired in January 2017 and showcases some of what we believe Quick to Listen does best. Enjoy and see you next year! --- So, fake news. In recent months, these two words have been used as a weapon by the president to discredit the media (e.g., CNN) or describe the fabrication of a bogus report on Clinton voter fraud. Fake news isn’t new—nearly a decade ago, people started sharing reports of Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim faith as fact. Further, Christians have at times been responsible for spreading these false reports. (“I think it’s really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam,” Obama told CT back in 2008.) But at least one Christian can take credit for challenging the church and society to take the information age much more seriously. Twentieth century French Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul thought deeply about the impact of mainstream media. Ellul was particularly interested in the century’s obsession with efficiency, says Lisa Richmond, who recently translated his Presence in the Modern World from French. When this was concept was applied to communication, Ellul referred to it as a propaganda. “Propaganda, to Ellul, is a way of using language and images to accomplish a particular objective. It is the most effective way to achieve the outcome that you want to get,” said Richmond, paraphrasing Ellul. “Ellul would argue that for the propagandist, truth is simply a tool to be used when it is the most effective way to accomplish your goal. If it is not the most effective way, then you use falsehood.” Our society has largely learned to communicate within this framework, says Robinson. “Once propaganda is at work in society, it forces other people to engage propaganda,” she said. “That can be contrasted with an ethical true desire to communicate in which our hope is that we understand truth more fully. That’s not the objective of the propagandist. It is to accomplish a certain outcome. If truth serves that outcome, great. If not, discard it.” Robinson joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor-in-chief Mark Galli to discuss how propaganda gives us a sense of belonging, why Christians are complicit in our culture of information overload, and whether journalists can ever escape bias.

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