McDONOUGH, Ga. —As the lead singer for Casting Crowns and student pastor at Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church in McDonough, Ga., Mark Hall sees his life as a constant balancing act. But reaching as many people as possible for Jesus Christ provides the driving force for all he does.

“We have a purpose and calling, and that’s to be a light. That begins by reaching out to the person next to you, whether it’s at school or at work, and sharing Christ’s love with them,” Hall said. “Once you have a walk with the Lord, you begin to see the world the way Jesus does. You begin to see the hurt in people’s lives, and you feel compelled to act on that.”

For Hall, telling teenagers about the hope and assurance found through a relationship with Christ is top priority. He has worked in student ministry 18 years and has served Eagle’s Landing First Baptist Church since 2001.

Each of the Casting Crowns band members serves a church in the Atlanta area. But students at those churches are unfazed by their leaders’ achievements, such as being the five-time Dove Award-winning Group of the Year and winning Grammy and American Music Awards.

What impresses students and parents is seeing firsthand the band members’ commitment and passion to reach students for Christ.

“Our music is discipleship set in songs,” Hall said. “The Apostle Paul said the same thing to every church he went to: ‘You need to walk with Jesus. You need to love people.’ That’s what our message is.

“All of our songs come from being in student ministry. The songs come from what we’re teaching and what we’re experiencing in our ministry with students. I love having the songs connect with people. Our commitment to youth ministry and to the local church keeps us in tune with the heartbeat of God and what he’s doing in churches today. It’s our priority, and we schedule our tours around those responsibilities.”

On and off the stage, band members focus on sharing three important messages with students, Hall noted.

“We want to see people come to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. We share the gospel at all of our concerts,” he said.

“The next goal is that we want to see believers have their own walk with Jesus and not rely on having their youth pastor or pastor around so they can feel close to God. They have to establish their own relationship with Jesus. 

“The third goal is that we want to see people discover their spiritual gifts, their talents and ministry. We want them to take action—start serving, helping and start seeing Jesus change people’s lives.”

In addition to reaching students, Hall tries to help parents understand the challenges students face—especially the need for parents’ involvement and monitoring time spent online.

“Technology is a great tool that they can use, but it’s also hurtful at the same time. Ultimately, it all comes back to mom and dad,” he said. “I think that parents are still the most important influence in their kids’ lives.”

This fall, Casting Crowns is on tour promoting a new album, Until the Whole World Hears. Hall has a full schedule of events planned for the student ministry at Eagle’s Landing. In addition, Hall and his wife are adopting a child from China.

“A lot of the things that God’s teaching me now, he’s been trying to teach me for a long time. The area in my life that I’m struggling with the most and where I’m learning the most—not because I’m sharp, but because I’m learning the hard way—is that God is in control,” Hall said.

“God reminds me daily that if he wanted someone else, he would have called someone else. That lifts a weight off my shoulders, because I know that if he’s called me, then he’s also equipped me to get the job done.”

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Three Baptist leaders said it would be a mistake to ban Muslims from service in the United States military based on the Nov. 5 mass shooting that killed 12 soldiers and one civilian and wounded more than 40 at Fort Hood in Texas.

Amid speculation that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder, may have been motivated by religious hatred, several conservative leaders have suggested banning Muslims from the military as a security measure.

Brent Walker

Writing for the On Faith blog of the Washington Post, however, three high-profile moderate-to-progressive Baptists said such a move would be an overreaction and an unconstitutional infringement on soldiers' religious freedom.

"Religion should only disqualify someone from active military service if the religious beliefs and practices would substantially impair the performance of one's duties in the military," wrote Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for religious liberty.

Both a lawyer and an ordained Baptist minister, Walker said the government is responsible not only to protect a soldier's free exercise of his or her faith, but sometimes to accommodate soldiers' religion through supplying chaplains. He said the military, along with prisons, is one of the few settings where the Constitution allows for a chaplain to be financed with public money.

"Recent events at Fort Hood should not cause us to look askance at the accommodation of religion in the military or to condemn Islam in particular," Walker said. "One deranged soldier should not overshadow the thousands of faithful Muslims admirably serving in the U.S. military."

Welton Gaddy

Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance and pastor for preaching and worship at Northminister Church in Monroe, La., described the Fort Hood shooting as "a national tragedy perpetrated by an individual clearly motivated by hatred and possibly even by a bastardization of his own Muslim faith." Backlash in the form of anti-Muslim rhetoric, he observed, "deepens the tragedy and its repercussions."

"Using this incident to instill a hatred and mistrust of Muslims proudly serving in our military damages its integrity and ignores the religious freedom assured in the Constitution that the men and women serving in our armed forces are sworn to defend," wrote Gaddy, a former president of the Alliance of Baptists also active in early leadership of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Gaddy said disqualifying someone from service because of his or her religious affiliation "would be a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution and a broadside to the nation's historic respect for religion."

"The fitness and effectiveness of a soldier cannot be determined by the soldier's religion or lack of thereof," he wrote.

The U.S. military has worked hard to recruit Muslims since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon sets the official count of Muslims on active duty at about 3,400 — out of a total force of 1.4 million. The military doesn't require personnel to disclose their religion, however, and some estimates place the actual number of Muslims serving as much as 10,000 higher than the Department of Defense number.

When he endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008, former Secretary of State Colin Powell mentioned the death of a Muslim soldier, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan of New Jersey, who was killed in Iraq in 2007 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Powell said he brought it up because he was troubled by false intimations that Obama is a Muslim and that even if he were, there is nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America.

Robert Parham

Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, said constitutional and moral arguments or pointing to the loyalty of people from other faith traditions do little to sway some conservative Christians fed on anti-Islamic rhetoric from talk radio, blogs and pulpits.

"About the only viable counterforce is for the majority of Christian ministers to stand up for goodwill American Muslims and to speak continuously for the separation of church and state," Parham wrote in an On Faith article that also appears on BCE's EthicsDaily.com website. "American Christian leaders need to get off the fence and face those on the fringes of faith."

In an earlier editorial Parham said the Fort Hood shootings present Americans with two choices. One is to view Hasan as representative of American Muslims and the other is to refuse to project the harmful acts on one individual on an entire faith group.

The Baptist Center for Ethics, a partner organization of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship founded in 1991, has been working a year on an hour-long documentary titled "Different Books, Common Word: Baptists and Muslims," set to air on ABC television stations beginning in January. 

Produced through an arrangement with the Islamic Society of North America and the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission, the film will also be available on DVD.

Other voices, meanwhile, pushed back at arguments they described as apologetics for Islam. Radio show host Rush Limbaugh complained that President Obama and liberals blame everything but Islam for the Fort Hood shootings. He objected in particular to labeling people who act as Hasan did as "extremists."

"They are not extremists," he said.  They are mainstream in their sect of Islam. They are mainstream. There are hundreds of millions of them. They are not extremists."

Randy Wallace is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Killeen, Texas, the city adjacent to Fort Hood. Noting that Killeen was also the site of a shooting rampage at a Luby's Cafeteria that killed 24 people in 1991, Wallace said it was statistically improbable that such a relatively small town would experience two mass murders within 20 years.

"If this was a Muslim terrorist thing, to not call it that is an insult to people who know different," Wallace said, according to the New York Times.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

Faith leaders urged to take lead on environmental issues. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon told religious leaders they are uniquely equipped to pressure secular leaders to combat climate change. Speaking at a three-day conference on faith and the environment in England, Ban told about 200 leaders representing nine of the world’s major religious communities the major faiths have established, run or contribute to more than half of all schools worldwide, compose the third-largest category of investors in the world, and produce more weekly magazines and newspapers than all the secular press in the European Union. “Your potential impact is enormous,” he said. “You can—and do—inspire people to change.”

Christian prison proposed in Oklahoma. A small town in Oklahoma is throwing its support behind a push to build a privately run, faith-based prison that would employ only Christians and attempt to rehabilitate inmates using biblical concepts. Wakita, with 380 residents, hopes to welcome 600 more if the $42 million proposal is approved by the state Department of Corrections. A 150-acre site near the edge of town has been selected and the appropriate paperwork filed, said Bill Robinson, founder of Corrections Concepts, a Dallas-based nonprofit ministry. The facility would house men who have 12 to 30 months of their sentences remaining. Jerry Massie, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the state doesn’t have the funds to help support the bond-underwritten proposal, nor is he sure it can succeed if approved. Oklahoma operates three correctional facilities that incorporate faith- and character-based curriculum into their educational programs, he said.

Missouri taxes yoga studios. Missouri has begun exacting a 4 percent sales tax on what many see as a spiritual pursuit—the practice of yoga. The debate between Missouri’s yoga community and the state centers on whether yoga is a constitutionally protected spiritual practice that should not be taxed or if it’s just exercise—and a new revenue source for the state’s cash-strapped budget. South Dakota and West Virginia already enforce a sales tax on yoga studios. Yoga teachers insist the service they provide is not just recreation, but represents a form of physical preparation for meditation, based on ancient Hindu texts, with the ultimate goal of spiritual enlightenment.

Purpose Driven magazine moves online. Megachurch pastor Rick Warren and the Reader’s Digest Association will stop copublishing their quarterly magazine, the partners announced. Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California, will move the magazine online. The partners unveiled The Purpose Driven Connection in January, a slick publication that featured spiritual guidance from Warren and a DVD for small-group discussions. “Our biggest discovery was learning that people prefer reading our content online rather than in print, because it is more convenient and accessible,” Warren said. The last print edition of the magazine will be published in mid-November.

NASHVILLE, Tenn.—As the four-time Dove Award winning female vocalist of the year, most-played female artist on Christian radio and the top-selling adult contemporary female solo artist in Christian music, Natalie Grant is one of the genre’s biggest names.

All the while, she balances ministry and motherhood while bringing up twin 2-year-old girls—and seeking to make a difference in the world by raising awareness about eating disorders and by fighting modern-day slavery. 

“I think God is really showing me what it means to live a life that’s daring and in relentless pursuit of him and the things he’s called me to—thinking about: What did Jesus do? How did he live? And how can I model the time I have on this earth after his example?” she said.

Grant has been a featured speaker on the Revolve Tour, a nationwide conference for girls in grades 7 to 12, discussing self-esteem issues and sharing more about her own past struggle with bulimia. She has written The Real Me: Becoming The Girl God Sees, a book that addresses those issues from a spiritual perspective, encouraging girls to accept God’s view of them and his purpose for their lives.

In addition to her music, she has become an outspoken advocate for victims of international human trafficking—thanks to a TV drama.

Natalie Grant

After watching an episode of Law and Order, Grant’s life was changed by a story “ripped from the headlines”—a fictionalized version of the harsh reality of human trafficking, where children often are exploited as cheap labor and many as sex slaves. 

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing—10-, 11-, 12-year-old girls in cages, shipped over to America to be used as sex slaves by being forced into prostitution,” she recalled. “As I sat there in my comfortable home, sipping my tea, I thought to myself: ‘There is no way that is true. I mean, maybe somewhere else in the world, but not here in America.’ I had never even heard the term ‘human trafficking.’”

Grant began researching the subject and was horrified to learn that each year, more than 600,000 people are sold and abused worldwide, with at least 14,000 shipped to America.

While researching this issue, Grant found an organization devoted to rescuing children from prostitution and giving them a home, an education and the skills to make a living on their own.

She called the organization’s office and expressed her desire to help. Within a matter of months, she and her husband, Bernie Herms, traveled to India to visit the red-light districts, witness human trafficking up close and see what is being done to stop it.

“I was walking down the street in Mumbai, in broad daylight, when my eyes locked on a little girl, maybe 6 or 7 years old, peering out of a cage, looking at us on the street below. I’ll never forget that moment. That was her life. Every day people walked by, and they didn’t even notice her.”

Grant subsequently established the Home Foundation, which helps organizations educate people, builds shelters and orphanages and provides medical equipment for doctors ministering to the victims of trafficking. She chose the name “Home Founda-tion” because she wants to help provide a way for children to feel safe.

“As a little girl, I was given many comforts. I lived in a suburb with two parents. I had everything I could want and more. And here, I look at these girls who have nothing familiar: no mother or father, no playground, sports, school—all the things we take for granted that are a part of a normal childhood. No matter who we are, we need a place where we belong and where we feel safe,” she said.

“These girls have none of that. It has been ripped away from them. Home is where they should be able to discover who they really are.  We ask the relief organizations what they need—food, clothing and whatever resources they need to keep building relationships. I want to do whatever we can to help them be able to become kids again and to give them their childhood back. I see some innocence still intact.

“Every day, I’m amazed how God is opening doors for me to share about  this. What I thought was going to be my life all along, playing music, is now my platform to encourage the church to get involved beyond their four walls—to do something that Jesus has taught us: to love your neighbor as yourself.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—When cartoonist Johnny Hart died more than two years ago, many feared his strips of spiritually probing prehistoric cavemen and talking animals would become extinct.

But recently, the Hart family bound his religion-themed B.C. comics into a new collection, bringing the artist’s stone-age pals back to life.

And they’re still causing controversy.

The book, I Did it His Way, collects some of Hart’s best-known religious cartoons, tries to explain one of his most controversial and pays tribute to the man who was both loved and loathed by his 100 million readers. The book is packed with Christian crosses, theological debates and Hart’s unique wit.

“He wanted people to know that God had a sense of humor,” said his daughter, Perri Hart, who produced the book with Johnny Hart’s widow, Bobby.

“He really always felt that this was what he was called to do,” she said.

Throughout his 51-year career, Hart spread his gospel of God-inspired cavemen in more than 1,300 newspapers. These “holy” sketches were scattered among the secular gags throughout the year, but Hart was not always welcome on the funny pages.

Perri Hart purposefully did not include a cartoon that enraged Islamic groups in 2003, saying that the comic was not intended to be religious and certainly not meant to insult Muslims.

“A number of his cartoons seemed to poke what he would consider to be fun, but Muslims took offense,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “When it crosses the line into bigotry and intolerance, that’s when we have to speak up.”

The council chastised Hart for drawing a crescent moon, an Islamic symbol, on an outhouse in a cartoon where a stone-age man said: “Is it just me, or does it stink in here?” The cartoon was published during the holy month of Ramadan.

Hart said, “I am not smart enough to think of that,” said his daughter, Patti Hart.

Michael Peters, creator of the popular comic strip Mother Goose & Grimm, and a close friend of the Harts, praised Johnny Hart for preaching with his puns.

“He stuck to his guns, God love him,” he said. “John was getting persecuted for printing in those papers.”

The Hart family did include what they called “one of the most controversial B.C. strips that Johnny ever produced,” in the collection. The Easter Sunday cartoon from April, 2001, depicts a Jewish menorah transforming into a crucifix. The seven candles of the menorah are extinguished by the seven last utterances of Jesus Christ and fade into a cross and an empty tomb.

The book includes a disclaimer explaining Hart intended to honor both faiths by showing that Christianity is rooted in Judaism.

Yet Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the Hart family should have left out cartoons that offend Jews—especially those that might infer Christianity replaces Judaism.

“If you want to be sensitive, don’t repeat. Don’t give it further life,” he said. The book “makes it worse. It gives it permanence. Daily cartoons are a lot more fleeting. A book stays forever.”

Hart’s cartoons offer insight into the life he led and the life he urged his readers to follow, his family said.

Hart would animate the Three Wise Men on the blackboard of the local Sunday School class he taught. He even sent a simple tracing of his hand to Dik Browne, creator of Hagar the Horrible, when his fellow cartoonist was diagnosed with cancer. Hart told Brown to place his hand on the paper so that they could pray together.

For the past two years, Hart’s grandsons and daughters have taken over the production of B.C.

“It was strange seeing the first cartoon in the paper with my name on it and not his,” said Mason Mastroianni, Hart’s grandson who took over the drawing of B.C. “It was just kind of a quiet day.”

They adopted Johnny’s menagerie of insightful cavemen, turtles and ants with less controversy, but also with less religion. Their most prominent religion-themed comic featured a caveman “signing-up” for Jesus since he has “everlasting” health-care.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—In the world of faith-based social networking, evangelical Christian leader Mark Oestreicher commanded a huge chunk of cyberspace.

Known as “Marko,” the technological hipster amassed 4,000 Facebook friends, 1,500 Twitter followers and 2,000 daily readers of his blog. But then he decided he’d had enough—and unplugged from his online circle of friends.

“It’s not that I don’t think online connections are real. It’s just that they are perpetually superficial,” said Oestreicher, former president of Youth Specialties in El Cajon, Calif.

In an age when many religious leaders embrace the latest technology and even “tweet” from the pulpit, some—like Oestreicher—are re-assessing the potential negative impact of online overload.

“Unplugging has become essential to my spiritual journey and truly hearing God,” said Anne Jackson, an author, speaker and volunteer pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tenn. “For me, all the noise can drown that out if I’m not careful.”

Jackson, author of the book Mad Church Disease: Overcoming the Burnout Epidemic, maintains a church leadership blog at Flower-dust.net that draws 150,000 page views a month, by her estimate.

She has 6,700 Twitter followers. But earlier this year, she closed her Facebook account—saying goodbye to 2,500 friends—and committed to spend less time on Twitter and her blog. She finally acknowledged what her husband had hinted for a while: She had become a little obsessed with her online persona.

“I don’t believe everyone should quit using Facebook, or be afraid of it if one hasn’t started,” she said. “We just need to be aware of the ways any form of media can interrupt our time with God or those closest to us.”

Balance is the key, said Peggy Kendall, an associate professor of communication studies at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minn., who has researched the impact of technology on society.

She bristles at the notion that online connections are “perpetually superficial.”

“While there are certainly limitations to online communication, there are also significant benefits to communicating online that one can only rarely experience face to face,” said Kendall, author of the forthcoming book Reboot: Refreshing Your Faith in a High-Tech World.

In the old days of youth ministry, a pastor might endure years of junior high gym nights and overnight lock-in retreats before a student would feel comfortable enough to share deep hurts and uncertainties and ask authentic questions, she said.

But in an age of texting and instant messaging, a student might divulge “intensely personal things” within days of getting to know the youth pastor, Kendall said.

Students “have found that the hyperpersonal nature of online communication provides them a safe place to be real and communicate freely,” she said.

Rather than unplug entirely, Kendall advocates that people of faith periodically “fast” from technology—to assess what’s helpful about their online activities and what’s simply distracting.

This concept has become a “huge conversation” in the classes theology professor Dillon Burroughs teaches at Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“I call it ‘digital fasting,’ although I recommend short breaks since it is like asking someone my parent’s age to stop using a phone or reading a newspaper,” said Burroughs, a former pastor who networks extensively with ministry leaders and has more than 38,000 Twitter followers.

In Oestreicher’s case, he’s not suggesting everyone delete online profiles and stop using the Internet. Rather, he said, he made a personal decision to choose “best over good” and stop constantly checking his PDA for updates.

Trying to maintain hundreds—and even thousands—of online connections distracted from his real-life relationships with his family and colleagues, he said.

Months after unplugging, he voiced surprise at how little withdrawal pains he experienced.

“I think that was primarily because I so immediately saw a return of four things I was hoping for—time, presence, focus and creativity,” he said.

“My family could tell the difference, and my co-workers also. It was rather astounding, actually.”

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Science and faith often may clash, but a new survey suggests most American doctors believe religion and spirituality can help patients.

Published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, the survey found 90 percent of physicians are satisfied with spiritual services provided by hospital chaplains to their patients.

While most doctors in the survey acknowledged religion and spirituality help patients cope with illness, the study found at least one-third of U.S. hospitals do not have chaplains, and many of those that do have chaplains don’t have enough to address all patient needs.

Consequently, doctors play a crucial role in ensuring that patients have access to chaplains, the study said. But most doctors have little training in connecting chaplains to patients and instead rely on their own spiritual values and experiences.

About 5 percent of referrals connecting patients with chaplains come from physicians, while the rest come from nurses or patient family members, said George Fitchett, a chaplain at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and the study’s lead author.

“Things are changing a little,” Fitchett said. “There’s a lot of education to help physicians become better at making referrals, but it’s still not systematized.”

Fitchett said an ideal ratio of chaplains to patients is hard to pinpoint and depends on what type of patients a hospital treats. For example, hospitals specializing in cancer patients or with emergency rooms have a greater need for chaplains than hospitals specializing in joint replacements or cosmetic surgery.

The survey also found physicians in the Northeast and those with negative views of religion’s effects on patients were less likely to be satisfied with chaplain services.

Those who were satisfied tended to be physicians who worked in teaching hospitals, practiced medical subspecialties, such as cardiology, oncology or emergency medicine. Half of the physicians surveyed said it was appropriate for them to pray with patients if circumstances warranted.

Of the 1,102 physicians surveyed, 59 percent identified themselves as Christian, 16 percent Jewish, 14 percent other affiliations, and 10 percent reported having no religious affiliation.

Some observers of religion assert a socially transforming spiritual movement is sweeping the globe, resulting in 82,000 conversions to Christianity a day. But only 6,000 of them are in Europe and North America.

"I believe we are in the midst of a great spiritual awakening. But when it’s mentioned in the United States, it’s generally met with blank stares, because it’s not happening here,” said Jim Denison, president of the Center for Informed Faith, based in Dallas.

Denison, theologian-in-residence with the Baptist General Convention of Texas, believes “there is a Fifth Great Awakening occurring in our world today.”

Some historians debate whether two, three or four awakenings have occurred previously, and Denison has no interest in splitting hairs over the number. He’s more concerned about why it’s happening now in the developing world and not in Western Europe and North America.

Common conditions

In a nutshell, he sees two conditions common to previous awakenings—concentrated prayer and a tremendous sense of desperation.

“In the United States, we’re not desperate enough—at least, not yet,” he said. “We live in a culture that views God as a hobby.”

Spiritual awakenings “always seem to start in small groups,” church historian Alan Lefever observed, noting the spiritual movements often begin in Bible study groups or small prayer groups.

But the groups of Christians don’t stay small. When the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s swept through colonial America, altars filled with penitent sinners who responded to the appeals of George Whitefield and to sermons such as Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Some historians assert up to 80 percent of the colonial population became identified with a Christian church.

During the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s, Baptists and Methodists in the United States doubled in size, Lefever noted.

“The numbers say something significant happened,” said Lefever, director of the Texas Baptist Historical Collection. Spiritual awakening results in increased religious interest, and that is reflected in numerical growth, he said.

Social transformation

Although Sunday worship services at Sharon Baptist Church in Pampierstad, South Africa, have ended, church members do not stop their praise and worship. Rebecca Niogotsi (center) and other members of the Sharon Baptist congregation sing and dance outside while others meet and fellowship.

Positive societal change also marks genuine spiritual awakening, Lefever noted.

“In the Second Great Awakening, bars closed, and houses of ill repute shut their doors,” he said, adding the change in moral climate generally was not legislated. “People quit going to those places.”

Denison similarly points to two marks that distinguish spiritual awakening from localized revival: “Awakening is an enduring movement, as opposed to a single specific event. And awakening is a spiritual movement that produces social transformation. It’s across society, not just in a single community.”

Clearly, the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening met both criteria. Beyond that, historians and students of spiritual awakening lack consensus.

Some church historians trace the beginnings of a Third Great Awakening to the businessmen’s prayer movement that produced 1 million Christian converts in 1858. During the Civil War, about 100,000 soldiers came to faith in Christ.

Others claim the Third Great Awakening began in the late 1800s and ushered in the progressive era and the Social Gospel Movement. Social reforms such as child labor laws and the temperance movement grew out of that atmosphere.

An evangelical church in Nairobi, Kenya, attracts thousands of worshippers every Sunday.

The spiritual movement that swept through Wales in 1904 may have been a continuation of that awakening. Or, according to some experts, it may have been a Fourth Great Awakening.

Other observers assert a Fourth Great Awakening occurred in the mid-20th century, beginning with the youth revival movement after World War II and continuing through the rise of the Jesus Movement and charismatic renewal.

Hunger for justice

Count evangelical social activist Jim Wallis among that group. And he believes the time is ripe for another socially transforming spiritual movement in the United States.

“I regard the black church’s leadership of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s as another ‘great awakening’ of faith that changed politics,” he writes in The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.

Wallis stresses the link between spiritual renewal and social justice.

“Two of the great hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice,” Wallis writes. “The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.”

Members of a Messianic Jewish congregation in Almaty, Kazakhstan, worship at a Saturday evening service.

Wallis points out during 19th century American evangelist Charles Finney’s altar calls, when new converts expressed their faith in Christ, he also enlisted them to work for the abolition of slavery.

Justice Revivals

Wallis hopes “Justice Revivals” can recapture that marriage of spiritual dynamism and social justice. The first citywide event involving more than 40 churches in Columbus, Ohio, birthed church-based employment services in areas plagued by poverty and unemployment, he noted.

Another Justice Revival scheduled Nov. 10-12 in Dallas has been endorsed by churches across the theological and political spectrum, including leaders of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Dallas Baptist Association and Dallas Baptist University.

Organizers hope the event will inspire at least 200 churches to create partnerships with public schools and advocate for 700 new permanent housing units for the city’s homeless population.

Both aspects—spiritual grounding in prayer and worship, along with concrete acts of social justice—are essential, Wallis noted.

“Apart from the accountability of a commitment to social justice, spirituality can too easily become narcissistic. It can become spirituality as a commodity serving only me,” Wallis explained in an interview.

“On the other hand, social activism that exists without it being grounded in spiritual soil can degenerate into despair that leads to frustration, anger, hatred and even violence.”

Reflecting on Denison’s observation about prayer and desperation being conditions common to previous awakenings, Wallis suggested desperation exists in the United States, and prayers have been offered, but the two have not been wedded.

“Maybe we haven’t been praying about the things we ought to be desperate about,” he said.

No easy recipe

While students of awakening believe certain conditions lead to genuine spiritual movements, they emphasize great awakenings cannot be manufactured.

In the United States, nothing in the 20th century—or so far in the 21st century—matched the early great awakenings, Lefever observed. He believes in part the tendency of over-analysis—“dissecting how the Lord is moving”—may have played a role.

“No one in the middle of a spiritual awakening ever says it is a spiritual awakening,” he said.

But in recent decades, some Christians have been so quick to try to replicate results and find a formula for spiritual success that they may have squelched genuine renewal, he asserted.

“We want cookie-cutter everything. If XYZ works in one church, we think anybody who does it will have the same results,” Lefever said.

Different cultures

Perhaps even the way spiritual awakening is defined should be reexamined.

The social transformation that accompanies renewal in one part of the world may look totally different on the other side of the globe, Baptist World Alliance General Secretary Neville Callam said.

The “ripples are easier to see” in some societies than in others, he noted.

“We cannot tell God how to operate,” Callam said.

Whether they ultimately will be seen as great awakenings may best be judged in hindsight, but unmistakably, the church is “on fire” and experiencing tremendous growth in parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, he noted.

In Argentina and Brazil, young people have been the first to embrace the movement of the Holy Spirit, he pointed out, suggesting perhaps they feel less apprehension than their elders about the negative baggage of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.

“We do not need to fear the Spirit,” Callam said. “After all, is he not the third person of the Trinity?”

Evangelical progressive activist Jim Wallis believes the United States is ripe for another socially transforming spiritual awakening. But as Christians become energized to change the world, they need to avoid the temptation to politicize the gospel, he warns.

In The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, Wallis outlines seven guiding principles for Christians as they seek to bring about societal change:

• God hates injustice. “The injustice of this world cries out to heaven, and God gets angry over it,” Wallis writes. “When we do, too, it is a sign of the image of God in us.”

• The kingdom of God is a new order. Conversion is more than a “private religious experience,” Wallis writes. It is “the prerequisite for joining a new and very public movement”—God’s kingdom. The call to follow Christ “is an invitation to a whole new form and way of living, a transformation as radical as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It is far more than a call to a new inner life, or a rescue operation for heaven. It is an announcement of a new order of life that is intended to change everything about the world, and us with it.”

• The church is an alternative community. The church should create “a countercultural community living by different values than the surrounding society and providing a real evangelistic model of the healthier and more human way of life that the gospel offers,” Wallis emphasizes. “The church must therefore offer an alternative view of the world, an alternative narrative of cultural values, an alternative model for human existence and an alternative vision for politics.”

• The kingdom of God transforms the world by addressing specific injustice. “Rather than seeking to construct perfect social orders, which are impossible, we should instead seek concrete reforms of the actual social situations and circumstances in which the church finds itself,” Wallis writes. For instance, the Nov. 10-12 Dallas-area Justice Revival Wallis helped organize challenges churches to reach two tangible goals—involve at least 200 churches in creating 25 partnerships with public schools and advocate for 700 new permanent housing units for the homeless.

• The church is the conscience of the state, holding it accountable for upholding justice and restraining violence. The Bible teaches the state should protect the innocent, punish the guilty and protect the rule of law, Wallis notes. But the church should insist the government exercise its use of force only within clear and reasonable boundaries. “Although it is unrealistic to expect nation-states not to use force to protect their citizens and uphold the law, we can insist that governments seek to resolve conflicts with the least violence possible.”

• Take a global perspective. Christians’ primary loyalty should be to the kingdom of God; loyalty to the nation in which one is a citizen is secondary, Wallis insists. “Nationalism doesn’t go well with the kingdom of God. … To take a global perspective on politics, to value other countries’ interests as much as our own, and, perhaps most critically, to count all the world’s children equally as important as our own—all will significantly alter our political views.”

• Seek the common good. Hebrew prophets proclaimed a vision of “shalom”—peace and wholeness—and urged their fellow Jews to “seek the welfare of the city” where they lived, even as exiles. “The idea of the common good is a direct challenge to the rampant individualism that shapes our society in every way,” Wallis writes. “The common good begins with respect for the individual, but places each person in the context of his or her social relations.”

PLANO—Persian praise songs resonated through the meeting hall at First Baptist Church in Plano as about 150 worshippers raised their hands and opened their hearts. They rejoiced in the way God’s Spirit is moving among Iranians, and they fervently prayed, asking God to encourage Christians living under religious persecution in Iran.

Some who attended the event—called Iran’s Great Awakening—have dedicated their lives to reaching Iranians around the world with the gospel while others came to learn more about the movement of Christianity in Iran.

But two things are true for all who came—they learned Iranians are open to the gospel, and they discovered ways to join this movement, said Karen Hatley, director of global connections with Texas Baptists and organizer of the event.

“You just don’t get news reports about what’s going on with the church in Iran,” Hatley said. “Iranians are hungry for spiritual things, so they are open to Christianity more than we realize.”

Roland Worton, worship pastor at Sojourn Church in Dallas and former worship leader of the Iranian Christian Fellowship in London, began the night by leading worship songs in the Farsi language. Some songs were unique to Iran; others were praise songs familiar to American churches.

The goal was to give the group a taste of what it is like to worship as an Iranian, Worton said.

“Iranian worship is very rhythmic, and it’s very free,” Worton said. “For them to come to Christ, it means they can praise and worship. I think there is just a lot of freedom in worship particularly because of the oppression that has been there. They are coming out of an oppressive religion where they are not allowed to sing and dance. It’s a very emotional experience.”

Malcolm Steer, keynote speaker for the night and former missionary to Iran, described Christianity in Iran, challenging the crowd to put aside political fears and see what God is doing in the country.

“The purpose of tonight is to give you a big picture,” Steer told the group. “It isn’t Iran itself, but Iranians around the world. I have good news for you. Today, the God of Daniel is alive and moving. He still works through signs and wonders, and if there is a country that demonstrates that, it is Iran.”

Although there still is physical oppression toward Christians in Iran, Steer said Iranians are choosing to follow Christ. He believes this stems from a discontent with the Islamic religion forced on the country in recent decades.

“It causes many people to question where they belong, and the Lord has opened up an opportunity,” he said.

Some of the open doors have come through Christian programs placed on the Internet, radio and three satellite television channels, as well as God giving men and women dreams and visions about him.

Joseph Hovsepian, founder of Hovsepian Ministries, is one of the Iranian believers who uses mass media to reach his fellow Iranians. Hovsepian, who now lives in California, produces television shows that are broadcast in Iran and are focused on evangelism and discipleship. He and his brothers also provide tools through the Internet to train Iranians in leading worship for house churches.

“There is almost no day passing by that we don’t receive e-mails or phone calls of Iranian people giving their lives to Christ,” Hovsepian said.

“All I know is that I do have such a passion for Iran that sometimes I can’t sleep. Muslims are looking for the truth, and God has put us in a place where we do have something to share with them. It makes me very excited and proud but at the same time responsible because the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few.”

Hovsepian also travels to churches and conferences showing A Cry from Iran, a movie he and his brothers produced about the life and martyrdom of their father—a Christian Iranian leader, desiring to mobilize American believers to pray for the Iranian church, as well as see Iran through God’s eyes.

“Our lives after my father’s martyrdom were completely challenged to define and question God’s existence and justice,” Hovsepian said. “But at the same time, he—being the healer—used his hands to do a surgery in our hearts. He took away that hatred and replaced it with his peace, and it gave us a way to reach out to the Iranians.”

Steer challenged believers to engage Iranians across the globe, mentioning that large pockets of Iranians now dwell in Turkey, Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, North America and the United Kingdom.

“God is working among the exiles, whether it is in London or Dallas,” he said. “Disillusioned Iranians are seeking truth. In these days when people are looking for truth, pray that they will find the reality that Christ is the way, truth and life.”

Christians can make an impact on Iranians living in the West by just sharing life with them, taking a friendship evangelism approach, Worton said.

“Iranians are relational. It is very important with Iranians that you invite them to your home and you are relational,” he said. “Love them. Ask Christ for love for them and begin to display love. Eat with them. They are people with a culture that revolves around food. Invite them to your home. That will open doors.”

Lutherans ask Anabaptists’ forgiveness. Lutheran World Federation leaders plan to apologize for their ancestors’ 16th-century persecution of Anabaptists, religious reformers whose direct successors include Mennonites and the Amish and who influenced Baptists. The apology unanimously adopted by the federation council now is recommended for formal adoption by the highest governing body, its assembly, meeting in Stuttgart, Germany, in July 2010.

Dobson announces retirement from radio. Religious broadcaster James Dobson will end his hosting of the Focus on the Family program in February, a final step of resignation from the organization he founded more than 30 years ago. The Colorado Springs, Colo., ministry announced Dobson’s plans Oct. 30. Dobson resigned the presidency of the ministry in 2003 and stepped down from its board, along with his wife Shirley, in February. Focus spokesman Gary Schneeberger said in an interview the radio show will continue without Dobson, 73, and the decision did not relate to his health.

Congregations keep giving. Despite the economic recession, a plurality of congregations reported an increase in donations in the first half of 2009, according to a new study. More than two-thirds of 1,500 congregations surveyed said fund raising has increased (37 percent) or held steady (34 percent). Congregations where attendance and finances have been growing over the past five years are more likely to have a growth in fund raising than “survival congregations,” churches where attendance and finances have dropped by more than 10 percent over the past five years, the report showed. While many congregations are growing, there are indicators the recession has taken a toll. One-third of responding congregations reported making budget cuts in 2009 and another 25 percent kept their budget the same, without allowing for any increases in the cost of living. The study was part of a joint project between the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, a program of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, and the Alban Institute on congregations and the economy.

Repeal of blasphemy laws in Pakistan sought. A petition calling for the repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws—which impose the death sentence on a person found desecrating the Quran—has been delivered to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The signatories say the law is used to settle scores with non-Muslims and has been exploited to incite hatred and attacks against Pakistan’s minority Christian community in recent times. Rory Mungoven, head of the Asia-Pacific unit of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, received the petition from a delegation of the London and Pakistan-based Center for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement. Blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad is punishable by death under the law of Pakistan, although nobody has been executed for it. However, some lawyers have said that non-Muslims they defended, including Christians, had been killed while awaiting trial.

SOUTH HAMILTON, Mass. (RNS)—Repentant for having spent a generation bowing at the altars of church growth and political power, concerned evangelicals gathered recently to search the soul of their movement and find a new way forward.

That evangelicals, who compose a quarter of the American population, must refocus on shaping authentic disciples of Jesus Christ has garnered wide support for a long time. But how to do that in a consumerist society with little appetite for self-denial is fueling internal debate.

The state of evangelicalism drew the scrutiny of intellectuals as 500 people attended a conference at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on “renewing the evangelical mission.” Leading thinkers called fellow believers to repent for a host of sins, from reducing the gospel to a right-wing political agenda to rendering God as a lenient father who merely wants “cuddle time with his kids.”

“We are seeing the very serious weakening of American faith, even among people who profess to be believers,” said Os Guinness, senior fellow of the EastWest Institute in New York and author of The Case for Civility. “Yet an awful lot of people haven’t really faced up to the true challenge and still think they can turn it around with things like political action.”

Speakers earned applause for highlighting where evangelicalism, which began as a Protestant renewal movement, ironically has come to need its own renewing. At one point, participants sang a new hymn that’s setting the tone for a new era: “We spurned God’s way and sought our own,” they sang, “and so have become worthless.”

“The church in a sense has lost its mission to go out and love the people,” said Steven Mayo, pastor of Elm Street Congregational Church in Fitchburg, Mass. “We’ve become useless in a society that desperately needs us.”

How to become useful again, however, is a matter without consensus.

Calvin Theological Seminary President Cornelius Plantinga urged pastors to talk less about fulfilling personal potential and offer more from the likes of Old Testament prophet Joel, who warns God’s people to wail and repent before the Lord scorches the earth. But church leaders responded to Plantinga’s prescription with a reality check.

“For pastors, it’s very easy to lose (a) job by taking your advice,” said Rachel Stahle, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Carteret, N.J., after Plantinga’s 45-minute lecture. “It’s even harder to find another one by taking your advice. So, what wisdom do you share with us to take what you’ve said back to the churches?”

Some evangelicals are taking little comfort these days in successes of the past two decades, which included hundreds of mushrooming megachurches and the advancement of a socially conservative agenda under former President George W. Bush. Too often, they say, Christians came to display un-Christian behavior in the public square and did their disciple-making cause a disservice.

“Beware the escalation of extremism,” Guinness said. “Christian sayings such as, ‘Love your enemies’—they’re forgotten. People are attacking their enemies, (but) they’re certainly not on the side of Jesus in this.”

For some, the solution lies in re-emphasizing Reformation doctrines. This approach resonates with the growing ranks of “New Calvinists,” who profess such teachings as man’s total depravity, God’s complete sovereignty and predestination of souls to heaven and hell.

Some church leaders feel the drift away from traditional teachings has led evangelicals to neglect such biblical mandates as ecumenism and organize around lesser principles, such as political preferences.

“We (evangelicals) have moved from a church grounded in solid theology to a church grounded in personal relationships,” said Neil Gastonguay, pastor of Bath United Methodist Church in Bath, Maine. “We don’t have a message anymore.”

But others say evangelicals have worried too much about doctrinal differences when they’ve needed to be joining forces on larger issues.

Richard Alberta, senior pastor of Cornerstone Evangelical Presbyter-ian Church in Brighton, Mich., said preoccupations with doctrinal purity help explain why he struggles to round up fellow evangelicals to join him at anti-abortion events.

“When you get evangelicals among themselves, instead of addressing the social and moral issues, they get backwatered into some debate about dispensationalism or Calvin or Charismatic Renewal,” Alberta said. “There’s lots of suspicion, and those (worries) seem to act as filters that keep evangelicals from getting together.”

Similar frustrations beleaguer Travis Hutchinson, pastor of Highlands Presbyterian Church in Lafayette, Ga. He routinely gets a cool response from fellow evangelicals, he said, when he asks them to show courage and join his efforts to minister among undocumented immigrants. The problem, as he sees it, is that the doctrine-obsessed have lost touch with the heart of Jesus Christ.

“The missing ingredient is not the primacy of the mind and doctrine,” Hutchinson said. “It’s the willingness to suffer.”

Although renewal strategies may vary in the years ahead, evangelicals agree their calling is to be found in their bedrock source—Scripture.

Theologian John Jefferson Davis of Gordon-Conwell, for instance, said today’s Christians “need a high-intensity experience of God” and should seek it through meditative readings of Scripture. Still, he conceded, even Bible-based worship will need to be “more attractive and more enjoyable than a trip to the shopping mall.”

“Unless we can experience God (in a way) that is as real and as appealing as what we see on a 60-inch, high-definition plasma home theater screen, we are in trouble,” Davis said.