Perhaps the most well-known Baptist distinctive is believer’s baptism.

Baptists did not invent the conviction people should be baptized only once they have been converted. Other low-church denominations also observe this practice. Nevertheless, it stands at the heart of what it means to be a Baptist and is the reason I find it hard to imagine myself in any other denominational context.

This peculiar conviction is not without its detractors, however. Though few churches in North America would defend infant baptism on the same grounds they might have four centuries ago, many Christians still see it as a preferable or even necessary part of their own faith.

The back-story of baptism

There is no immediate precedent for baptism in the Old Testament. Certain purification rituals in the Law involved sprinkling people (for example: Exodus 24:4-8; 29:19-21; Numbers 19:17-19) or objects (for example: Leviticus 4:1-35; 14:48-51; 16:15), but no water-based or blood-based ritual performed the precise function baptism would take up later.

By the first century, though, baptism was a recognized ritual in Judaism, and rituals of a similar sort were performed in pagan religions, as well.

Within its Jewish context, baptism was an initiation ritual. It marked the transition of a person out of “the nations” and into the people of God. In the ministry of John the Baptizer, it also enacted a person’s repentance and preparation for the coming of the Lord (see Mark 1:1-8 and parallels).

Baptism retained these functions in Christianity, but scholars also have described it as a “death to life” ritual (see Romans 6:1-14).

Baptism proclaims a person’s faith in Christ and initiates her or him into his body. But it also symbolizes (and some would say enacts) that person’s transfer from the hegemony of sin and death into the service of Christ—a service that produces righteousness, holiness and eternal life (see Romans 6:15-23).

Baptist convictions

For Baptists, these functions point inexorably to one conclusion. Baptism is an act of obedience (see Matthew 28:19) that publicly proclaims an individual’s commitment to Christ as Lord and Savior and that symbolizes the transformative work Christ has done in the believer’s life.

It is the natural consequence, Baptists believe, of a person’s acquiescence to Christ’s rule and a prerequisite to church membership.

As the Reformed scholar Ligon Duncan has pointed out, not everyone reads the biblical evidence the way Baptists do.

For example, Duncan sees in 1 Corinthians 10:1-11 a precedent for understanding the church more broadly than Baptists do, and he rightly asserts both the Reformed position on this issue and the Baptist position are attempts to account for the nominal faith of many who claim church membership.

Moreover, those in the Restoration tradition—such as Churches of Christ—believe the overall teaching of Scripture, and specific texts like 1 Peter 3:20-22, teach baptism is a prerequisite for salvation.

Nevertheless, Baptists have rejected the idea baptism has regenerative power and have held firm to the symbolic significance of the ritual.

The coming of the Spirit on Peter’s Gentile hearers in Acts 10 strongly suggests baptism is not a prerequisite for salvation but is its outworking.

Moreover, Paul’s construal of the church as a fictive family—that is, a network of believing individuals bound together by God’s Spirit—suggests baptism should be seen as the marker of those who have been genuinely converted, not of those who are related to the church by bonds of blood or marriage but who have not undergone the rebirth (John 3:1-15) or adoption (Galatians 3:26-4:7; Ephesians 1:3-14) facilitated by the Spirit.

Contributions and questions

I am basically satisfied with the Baptist consensus in favor of believer’s baptism. It reminds the church of the personal nature of salvation, and it serves as an important theological foundation upon which other Baptist distinctives are built.

Though I recognize evangelicals in general, and Baptists in particular, sometimes have put too much emphasis on discerning the exact moment of conversion, believer’s baptism has testified rightly to the importance of a person’s transition into the people of God and the necessity of commemorating the public, intentional quality of that transition.

Nevertheless, there still are questions related to baptism worth asking. Such questions might clarify the reasons Baptists hold the convictions they do and provide grounds for further conversation with non-Baptist Christians. These questions include the following.

• Is baptism a sacrament, and if so, what exactly does that mean?

Baptists typically describe baptism as an “ordinance,” not a “sacrament.” The word sacrament could refer simply to a “mystery,” thus signifying something of a spiritual nature is taking place during the ritual.

But the language of sacrament has a lot of theological baggage, and Baptists want to be clear we perform this ritual because Christ commanded it, not because it has any bearing on a person’s standing before God.

• If baptism is merely an ordinance, and if baptism has no functional effect on an individual’s soul—thus resulting in salvation—then why is it commanded by Jesus?

As Baptists, we do not take the symbolic significance of the ritual lightly. Still, some may wonder why we should perform the ritual if it does not accomplish anything.

Likewise, have Baptists imbibed too deeply a culture that has been thoroughly disenchanted? In other words, are we too rationalistic in our understanding and practice of baptism?

• Is the mode of baptism—immersion rather than pouring or sprinkling—really as important as many Baptists allege, or are there ways in which these alternative methods of performing the ritual better symbolize what is taking place when a person is converted?

It is clear the Old Testament contains a lot of imagery related to sprinkling (see above), and scholars in other denominations may prefer other texts as models for how baptism is to be conducted. Moreover, there are practical considerations that sometimes make immersion impossible or unwise.

Should an individual’s baptism be considered invalid if they were not immersed?

• Should Baptists prohibit those who have undergone infant baptism from partaking of the Lord’s Supper on the grounds they have not been baptized properly, and should they prevent from partaking in the Lord’s Supper those whose post-conversion baptism is thought by their denomination to have a greater significance than Baptists allow?

This is the question of “open” or “closed” communion, and Baptist doctrine would suggest communion ought to be closed.

Nevertheless, at the church I pastor, we have chosen to leave our communion open. We see it as an opportunity to acknowledge our kinship with other believers and to cultivate theological humility.

Other Baptists may disagree, arguing baptism is such an important topic, we cannot compromise. We must, by our practices, model to other believers what we believe the Bible clearly teaches.

You may have other questions as you think abut baptism. Talk them over with your pastor. Acquaint yourself with current and historic Baptist confessions. Ask your non-Baptist friends why they believe what they believe about baptism. And approach all these activities and conversations with a curious, humble heart and a prayer for unity in Christ’s body.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and has been resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

“I was hungry, and you said it’s because I’m shiftless and lazy.”
“I was hungry, and you told me to get a job.”
“I was hungry, and you said it’s not your problem.”
“I was hungry, and you looked the other way. Literally.”
“I was hungry, and you fed me.”

Hunger is in the news, whether we’re talking about 42 million Americans eligible for SNAP benefits or 500,000-plus Gazans suffering from famine. By the way, the two situations are not equivalent.

One reason hunger is in the news is because the current political wrangling in the U.S. capital has the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits 42 million Americans rely on in its crosshairs.

This editorial is not about the politics involved, politics I consider cynical. This editorial is about clear biblical teaching on addressing hunger. In short, hunger should not exist among Christians, but it does. When Jesus asks us about that, he’s not going to ask which political party is to blame. He’s going to ask what you and I did about it.

What does Scripture say?

Most reading this already know what Jesus said about the sheep and goats. But I’m going to paraphrase it anyway.

“When the King arrives, he will sit on his throne and separate the blessed from the cursed.

“The blessed will be those who, when the King was hungry, fed him; thirsty, gave him something to drink; was a stranger, welcomed him; was naked, gave him clothes; was sick, took care of him; was in prison, visited him.

“The cursed didn’t do any of that.

“The blessed will say, ‘When did we do all of that?’

“And the King will say, ‘You did it to me when you did it for one of the least of these my brothers and sisters’” (Matthew 25:31-46).

I tell you, this passage haunts me and always has.

When Isaiah recorded God’s description of proper fasting, he wrote:

“Is this not the kind of fasting I have chosen …
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6a, 7).

Twice in Leviticus, God’s law forbids harvesting every bit of food from the land. Instead, God’s people are to leave some for the poor and foreigner (Leviticus 19:9-10; 23:22).

The earliest church sold what they had “to give to anyone who had need” and “shared everything they had” so “there were no needy persons among them” (Acts 2:45; 4:32-35).

Scripture also instructs us to feed our enemies when they are hungry (Proverbs 25:21; Romans 12:20).

This is just a sampling of how Scripture says God’s people are to respond to hunger.

And hunger is all around us.

Hunger in the United States

If we look at just one number—42 million Americans—we do not have to look far to see a person needing food assistance. Forty-two million translates to roughly 12 percent of the U.S. population, or more than 1 in 10 Americans—or more than the entire population of Texas and Michigan combined.

We have among us in the most prosperous nation in history more people qualifying for food assistance than the population of each of 196 of the world’s 233 countries—including: Canada, Ukraine, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Australia, Somalia and many more.

Let that sink in.

The United States, at roughly $30 trillion, is the world’s largest economy by more than $20 trillion. By itself, Texas is the world’s eighth largest economy, at more than $7 trillion. How can we be so prosperous and so hungry at the same time?

Come on, y’all!

Add to this the fact the United States is so closely identified with Christianity, a faith built on Scripture like I quoted above, that we must face the charge we’re not putting our money where our mouth is.

Thank goodness that’s not true of all of us.

What is expected of us

This editorial isn’t about politics, but I am going to say a word about politics.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s home page this morning, Oct. 29, stated: “Bottom line, the well has run dry.” The bold announcement at the top of the USDA home page placed full blame on Senate Democrats for the stoppage of SNAP benefits effective Nov. 1.

Christians, we cannot allow ourselves to be sucked into the current blame game and name-calling between Republicans and Democrats. We as Christians are commanded to live beyond and better than that.

Part of living beyond and better than that is being concerned about hunger without political footballing, being concerned about hunger even when it’s not in the news, being concerned enough about hunger to do something about it ourselves.

Examples we can follow

One thing we can do is fast from feeding our consumer economy so we can feed our neighbors. We Christians spend a lot of money on entertainment, creature comforts and the latest greatest, while criticizing our government for how it spends our tax dollars. We can do better.

A food truck in the Four Corners area of New Mexico posted on Facebook, Oct. 27: “Starting Nov. 1st We will be offering a 4pc boneless wings to kids 15 and under on us! No purchase and no questions asked. Kids must be present and limit 1 per child. Just ask for the ‘Kid Special’ and we’ll take care of you” (emphasis added, because Jesus didn’t ask questions either)!

A follower responded: “Alright-this is our sign to take care of businesses that take care of community. Let’s FLOOD their food truck with support!!!”

Christians have restaurateurs among us. Surely, we can help them help others like that.

When my wife and I were seminary students 25 years ago, we went through a period when money was tight. This is a common experience among seminary students. Thanks to the Sutherland family’s feeding ministry, we were able to fill in some food staples. That ministry still operates today. May their tribe increase.

I am thankful for food banks, food pantries, feeding ministries and others doing their part to alleviate hunger. They need our help.

And we need to do more than make feeding the hungry a weekend project. We need to include it in our budgeting, our earning and our spending. We need to make it our way of living.

*******

To learn about hunger and its effects, view this fact sheet. To learn more about ways you can help alleviate hunger, view this information from the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty or visit the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering website.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

Letter: Faith misused in Gaza’s destruction

Whose God do you look to when you seek to justify starvation and mass slaughter?

Watching Gaza’s devastation, many have appealed to religion or history to rationalize what cannot be defended. Some cite ancient suffering to excuse new atrocities, as if pain sanctifies more pain.

In Peter Beinart’s powerful 2025 book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, he observes that sacred texts and memories of persecution have been weaponized to legitimize the destruction of another people.

It is not only some Jewish voices doing this. Many American politicians have invoked faith and moral duty while supporting policies that have starved children and flattened homes.

If your faith demands silence before injustice or obedience to cruelty, perhaps it is not God you are following, but power cloaked in holiness. If your God blesses hunger and rubble, then your prayers rise only to human authority, not to heaven.

Terry Hansen
Milwaukee, Wisc.

My journey with Christ has been deeply personal and profoundly shaped by my life in Palestine.

Growing up among a Christian family in Ramallah, I learned early that faith can endure through hardship. Yet, it was only when I questioned everything and rediscovered Jesus for myself that I truly understood what it means to follow him.

Early years

I was born in Ramallah, a city in the hills of central Palestine, about 20 minutes north of Jerusalem. My family, like many Christian families here, carried its faith through generations of trials and displacements.

We were among what some call the “Living Stones,” the indigenous Christians of the Holy Land, heirs of the first believers who heard the gospel firsthand.

We preserved the faith of our ancestors, protected the holy sites, and witnessed to the power of Jesus through endurance, love and steadfast hope. We also were the salt of the earth among our fellow Palestinians.

In my family, Christianity was not just a faith, but also tradition, culture and loyalty to our ancestors who had kept the faith through empires and persecutions. Leaving it would have felt like betraying both Jesus and my heritage.

My grandfather often told me how his father, a stonemason, had built many churches across the Holy Land, including our own in Ramallah and Jerusalem. My grandparents taught me to pray before meals and before bed.

My parents and extended family were devout, rarely missing Sunday Mass. Church life shaped our rhythms: weekly worship, a Christian school, youth Bible studies and Scouts run by the parish.

Most of our neighbors were Christian, and the few Muslims I knew were classmates from mostly secular families. My childhood revolved around school, church and family.

Hometown

Ramallah itself changed drastically over the last century. Once a small, fully Christian town, it is now a major city more diverse, politically charged and socially tense.

After the 1948 Nakba, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and their homes and towns destroyed to make way for new Jewish immigrants and the creation of Israel, refugees—both Christian and Muslim—fled to Ramallah.

Many local Christians feared occupation and emigrated, and the Christian population declined, leaving the remaining community caught between Israeli occupation and cultural erosion.

When Israel occupied Ramallah in 1967, the exodus accelerated. Today, Christians make up roughly a quarter of Ramallah’s 40,000 residents.

Yet, the “American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine,” representing the Ramallah diaspora, counts about 45,000 Palestinian Christian members, making it the largest Palestinian organization in the United States.

Going to university

University life in nearby Birzeit—a small, largely Christian town—opened my eyes to the broader Palestinian society. There, I met Palestinians from across the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jerusalem, and even from Israel, Jordan and the diaspora.

For the first time, I realized how limited my upbringing had been. I had lived in a predominantly Muslim society without really seeing it.

As I grew older, my faith faced questions I could not answer easily: Why are we Christians becoming a minority in our own city and land? Why are we Palestinians being occupied by the Israelis? Why did God allow suffering, injustice and confusion, especially here in his Holy Land?

Seeking guidance

During this period, I turned to Christian media for guidance, watching Arab and international channels such as SAT-7, TBN, CBN and God TV, and following preachers and ministers like Paul and Jan Crouch, Joyce Meyer, Benny Hinn, Joel Osteen, Hal Lindsey, Pat Robertson, Andrew Wommack and T.D. Jakes.

I prayed with these preachers and ministers from home, read their books, received their newsletters and grew spiritually, yet I was deeply unsettled.

Many of these preachers and ministries glorified Israel politically while ignoring, dismissing or even vilifying Palestinians. Their sermons often replaced compassion with ideology and faith with politics.

It was painful to see those I admired celebrating symbols of occupation while remaining silent about our suffering. That silence, and at times hostility, made me feel invisible, unloved and unwanted within the global body of Christ.

I began to question everything. If this was Christianity, did I still belong? Their message, instead of bringing me closer to Jesus, drove me into doubt, spiritual loneliness and depression.

Seeking the truth

I decided to seek the truth for myself. I began to study other religions systematically. I met with Muslim clerics—one at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem to learn about Sunni Islam, another in a northern West Bank village to study the Ahmadiyya movement, a sect separated from Sunni Islam. I admired much in Islam but could not embrace it fully.

I then turned to Judaism, studying with an Israeli Jewish rabbi from Jerusalem and at the same time learning from the Palestinian Samaritan community, descendants of those mentioned in the Bible who still live in Nablus and number about a thousand today. Again, I found wisdom but not the fullness of truth.

I even explored briefly other religions such as the Bahá’í faith, Raëlism, Eckankar, Hinduism and Buddhism, gaining insight but not conviction.

After years of searching and questioning, I found myself drawn once more to the faith of my childhood.

Returning

I returned to Christianity with a renewed hunger to understand it deeply and started studying the Bible with new eyes.

Ramallah, remarkably, has nearly every major denomination: Orthodox, Melkite, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Evangelical, Baptist, Lutheran, Quaker and Coptic. At first, attending different services felt awkward, but over time, I discovered beauty in each. Through their diverse prayers, traditions and liturgies, I encountered Jesus in new and profound ways.

Eventually, I came to accept Jesus as my Lord, Savior and companion.

I felt his presence everywhere—in the stones of our streets, the olive trees, the mountains and even the sea. He became my guide, my moral compass and my constant friend. I imagined him walking where I walked, resting where I rested and eating the same fish from the Sea of Galilee.

Gaining discernment

Looking back, I now understand my disillusionment with Christian media was not the end of faith but a test of discernment. It helped me recognize what Jesus warned about false prophets and religious leaders who twist God’s word for power or profit.

Like the Pharisees of Jesus’ time, they used religion to serve their own agendas. Yet, even through the teachings of these preachers and ministers, I learned something vital: The gospel must be separated from politics, Christ’s truth stands apart from every empire and ideology, and my faith must rest not in institutions, but in the living Christ himself.

Being a Palestinian Christian

Being a Palestinian Christian shapes everything I do. It calls me to love my Muslim and Jewish neighbors and even our enemies, including the Israeli occupation and settlers who oppress us. Loving them does not mean accepting injustice. It means praying they, too, will encounter Christ and turn from evil.

My identity is bound to my people’s history of suffering and resilience. Living under Israeli military occupation has deepened my understanding of Jesus’ teachings on justice, compassion and perseverance.

To be a Palestinian Christian is to carry Christ’s light into darkness, his peace into fear and his justice into oppression. It is to live resurrection amid crucifixion and to follow Christ not because of heritage or tradition, but because he alone is the truth that redeems, forgives and gives hope no power on Earth can take away.

Jack Nassar is a Palestinian Christian based in Ramallah, Palestine. He holds a Master of Arts degree in political communications from Goldsmiths, University of London, and brings professional expertise across multiple sectors, driving positive change. He can be reached at: jacknassar@aol.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

In Part 1 of this series, I distinguished between Christian nationalism as ideology and Christian nationalism as instinct or mood. I also differentiated the church’s mission and the state’s mission.

In Part 2, I examined the six main arguments for Christian nationalism and how they hold up against the gospel, William Stringfellow’s insights on the “powers and principalities,” and the cruciform love of Jesus.

Here, I will outline what our response should be to Christian nationalism.

Smashing idols

Christian nationalism has some noble desires: order, morality, identity, witness. But like the bronze serpent that became the idol called Nehushtan, those desires become dangerous when they get lifted to the height of the cross.

That’s why Hezekiah had to smash Nehushtan. That’s why we must smash the idol of Christian nationalism. America is not the kingdom of God. The cross stands above every flag.

Christian nationalism promises life, but it cannot heal the poison of sin. Only Christ lifted on the cross can do that. Only his kingdom lasts.

Smashing idols doesn’t mean walking away

It’s easy to hear all of this and think: “So, should Christians just abandon politics altogether? Should we throw up our hands and say: ‘Forget the nation. Only Jesus matters?’”

Not at all. Smashing the idol of Christian nationalism doesn’t mean walking away from public life. It means engaging it with clear eyes and a cruciform posture.

Hezekiah didn’t destroy the bronze serpent Nehushtan because healing was bad. He destroyed it because the people were worshiping it. In the same way, we don’t abandon civic responsibility because nations are prone to idolatry. We just refuse to worship them.

So, what does that look like?

What smashing idols looks like

• Love, not dominance. We engage in politics not to secure power for “our side,” but to seek the good of our neighbors—especially the vulnerable. Voting, advocacy and policy work are legitimate ways of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

• Service, not survival. The powers teach us to fight for survival and supremacy. The gospel frees us to give ourselves away, even when it costs us. We don’t cling to control. We pour ourselves out in service.

• Resistance, not retreat. Sometimes the most faithful thing we can do is say “no.” No to systems that dehumanize. No to policies that harm the poor. No to fear-driven rhetoric that scapegoats the outsider. Resistance isn’t retreat; it’s active fidelity to Christ’s kingdom.

Living for the gospel kingdom

Smashing Nehushtan doesn’t leave us empty-handed. It clears the way for us to lift up the cross—the only true source of life. That’s where our witness lies. That’s where our hope rests.

America will rise and fall like every other nation. But Christ’s kingdom endures forever. So, let’s live, love and even vote with that in mind—not to baptize the nation, but to embody the gospel.

Returning to state’s mission vs. church’s mission

My great-grandfather, Leonard Cranford Baxley, was a lawman in the early 1900s. Family stories describe him as a peacekeeper—someone who carried pearl-handled pistols and enforced the law with such reputation that people would rush to turn themselves in rather than face him. He was good at what he did: keeping order, restraining violence and protecting his community.

That’s what peacekeepers do. They use the threat of force to hold the line against chaos. And that’s the state’s calling: to keep the peace. It’s a limited but necessary mission. Peacekeeping can stop a thief, but it can’t turn him into a generous neighbor. It can punish a murderer, but it can’t transform a violent heart into one that loves its enemies.

The church’s mission is different. We are called to be peacemakers. Peacemaking doesn’t just restrain evil; it overcomes evil with good. It doesn’t just enforce order; it creates new life. Peacemakers embody the Sermon on the Mount, carry the cross into places of hostility and show the world what it looks like when heaven breaks in.

Christian nationalism confuses these two missions. It asks the state to play the role of the church—imagining laws can disciple or national power can bring the peace of Christ. But laws can only keep peace. Only the cruciform love of Jesus makes peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus said—not the peacekeepers. When the church forgets this, it trades the scars of the cross for the sword of the state. And when that happens, Nehushtan rises again.

Nick Acker, a native Texan, is co-lead pastor of Grace Ventura Church in Ventura, Calif., adjunct faculty member at Stark College and Seminary and a resident fellow at East Texas Baptist University’s B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary, and author of Exegeting Orality: Interpreting the Inspired Words of Scripture in Light of Their Oral Traditional Origins. He finds his greatest joy in his wife and three children. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

On Aug. 8, 2024, I woke up to find my wife Ashley unresponsive. No one expects this in their 30s. I didn’t know it at the time, but she was suffering from a cardiac arrest event.

Those moments are hard to describe—calling 911, performing CPR (Ashley endured around 90 minutes of CPR), watching first responders do all they could do to save my wife.

When she was transferred to a hospital in Plano, I remember praying over her with two close friends: “God, I am praying for my wife to be healed. But you love her more. May you use her life for your glory.”

Unknowingly, God had been preparing me for this season.

What’s next?

In August 2023, I graduated with my second degree—a doctorate in ministry—from Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. It was an amazing experience and renewed my sense of calling to the local church.

After five years at First Baptist Church in Eastland, I began to ask a question familiar to many pastors after a season of completion: “What’s next, Lord?”

What I didn’t realize was God already had been answering that question long before I asked it.

In fall 2022, a church member approached me one day and asked if I had any books on prayer. He recently had retired and was praying through what God had in store for him in this new season. He informed me he was going on a prayer retreat in Colorado with a ministry called Strategic Renewal.

When he made it back to Eastland, he simply told me, “I know what I’m supposed to do.”

Over the next year, he and three others committed to praying every Sunday evening for their pastor, his family and their church.

A year later, on a Sunday evening, after Ashley had made homemade pizza, I told her I felt an urge to go and join these men in prayer. I left home, arrived late and planned to attend this one time to show my support for them.

The Lord, however, had other plans for that night. I didn’t know it then, but God brought me to this prayer gathering exactly one year after these men began praying faithfully for me and our church. In that moment, praying with them, my perspective on the importance and power of corporate prayer was changed.

A burden for corporate prayer

That fall 2023, I began reading about pastors and churches that had committed to making prayer central to their church.

To be honest, I believed in prayer and prayed as a pastor. I knew my prayer life could improve, but praying corporately with other believers was not part of my life.

I soon realized how prayer easily can become one ministry among many, rather than the foundation of all ministry. Prayer is not just the responsibility of a few while others “do” ministry. Rather, prayer is the power from which ministry flows.

At a Strategic Renewal conference that September, a speaker quoted Jesus’ words from Matthew 21:13: “My house shall be called a house of prayer.”

In that moment, conviction filled my heart. I had led in many areas but not in this one. I could not say I was a praying pastor or that I was leading a praying church.

Our Sunday evening prayer gathering remained small, but we prayed for vision and clarity on next steps.

While attending church during a Christmas trip to Oregon, I sensed God’s leading. Our church was to gather every Sunday evening for one hour of prayer. Since then, we’ve built a rhythm of corporate prayer that shapes everything we do.

I often tell our congregation our Sunday evening prayer gathering is my favorite hour of the week.

What does our Sunday prayer gathering consist of? Our entire hour is filled with Scripture-based prayer and worship. We spend half our time in praise and thanksgiving before we ever get to requests, and you always must pray your requests.

Creating a culture of prayer

Creating a culture of prayer doesn’t mean prayer is the only thing we do, but we want it to be the first thing we do.

We seek to spend half our time in prayer before committee meetings, and we have started praying in small groups during our Sunday morning worship service. Our ministerial staff is weaving corporate prayer into the rhythm of their ministries.

We are a long way from where I want us to be as a church, but I’m thankful for the Lord’s faithfulness.

When Ashley was in the hospital, she was on the most critical life support. On Saturday, Aug. 10, doctors wanted to bring her out of sedation. Two days prior, our music minister Mandi had called our church to pray corporately on Saturday, Aug. 10.

More than 200 people gathered to pray for Ashley that morning. Thankfully, Ashley would be spared and healed through the power of God in response to the prayers of God’s people.

Vision for the future

We still are striving to be a praying church, and I’m still striving to be a praying pastor. We haven’t arrived.

I’m often encouraged to hear how other pastors and churches are making corporate prayer the foundation of their churches. In these places, prayer is not a strategy, but it is woven into the culture of that congregation.

Over the past three years, the Lord has done something special in my life and in First Baptist Eastland. It’s our story, but it is a work God alone has done through the power of corporate prayer.

I tell my congregation this regularly: Even if God never answers another prayer you pray, he still is worthy to be praised because of the hope we have in Jesus.

My desire is to see co-laborers in the kingdom—especially those in rural churches like mine—seek the face of God through corporate prayer and, in doing so, become a house of prayer.

Kevin Burrow is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Eastland. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

How can Baptists pursue a rigorously biblicist witness in a rapidly changing world? Can such a methodology help us build more effective, more resilient institutions, and might it light the way for us as we seek to shed our captivity to toxic ideologies and cults of personality?

These are vital questions to address, not only for Baptists, but also for the larger evangelical community.

My hope is the following discussions will shed light on how the Bible can help Baptists navigate the turbulent waters of cultural change and socio-political polarization. I also hope to suggest how we might achieve this goal without descending into interminable conflict.

What Scripture is—and is not—for

What is the Bible for? Have you ever shut out whatever controversies dominate the day’s headlines and wrestled with this question? If you have, your mind likely turned to 2 Timothy 3:14-17. Here is how I translated these words from the Apostle Paul.

^“But, as for you, remain imbedded in what you have learned and in what you have believed, since you know from whom you learned it, and since, from childhood, you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness, in order that the person of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Paul wrote these words to his protégé Timothy as the venerable apostle reflected upon the opposition and suffering he endured for Christ. The Scriptures helped him understand God’s purposes, shape the identity of his congregations and equip members for the ministry Christ had given them (see Ephesians 4:11-13).

Notice, the Scriptures provide both positive and negative feedback for believers, and in so doing not only give them the “wisdom” that leads to “salvation,” but also mentor them in “righteousness.”

Another way to put it is the Scriptures draw us into the narrative of God’s redemptive activity on behalf of the universe he created.

This story is, in one sense, all-encompassing, since the whole created order awaits the consummation of God’s work (Romans 8:19-22). And yet, as New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III has pointed out, the Scriptures that tell this magnificent tale are focused on matters of “history, theology, and ethics.”

This means many domains of human investigation lie outside the scope of the Bible’s revelatory work, and many others are explained only partially by appeals to Scripture.

God’s Spirit wields God’s word (see Ephesians 6:17) to shape the thinking, feeling, perceiving and acting of God’s people, but that does not mean the Bible tells us all we need to know about quantum mechanics, macroeconomics, the human genome or public health.

Rather, the church must raise up experts in these and other fields of interest, facilitate the Spirit’s work in shaping their character and commitments, and trust them to shape the church’s witness and lead the church’s ministries.

Theology is complicated but not impossible

As the imminent theologian Roger Olson demonstrated in his recent article on the Wesleyan tradition, speaking responsibly about God requires us to consult a variety of resources.

Other than Scripture, these resources are not authorities. They should not be used, in and of themselves, to dictate how individuals and churches wrestle with the gospel’s many demands.

Nevertheless, these resources can—and should—influence: (1) how we interpret individual biblical texts, (2) how we configure the various emphases of Scripture to create a coherent presentation of the Bible’s teaching, and (3) how we construe, express and apply the good news proclaimed by the Bible in our current context.

Moreover, it is not simply tradition, reason and experience that should be taken into account when we interpret the Bible and explicate its meaning for our time and place. Factors such as history, technology and, especially, culture also must be considered.

Indeed, the most dangerous biblical interpreter or theologian may be the one who is unaware of her or his temporal, geopolitical, social and intellectual location, for such a person risks confusing her or his own, unexamined presuppositions with the convictions of those who are, by virtue of their life and testimony, the foundation of the church (see Ephesians 2:20).

Worship, Scripture and creeds

What are Baptists supposed to make of creeds? Creeds are statements of doctrine intended to summarize the faith Christians must affirm. They play a vital role in forming the self-understanding of many denominations. Iin some more liturgically oriented traditions, the recitation of the creeds is a regular, and even mandatory, aspect of every worship service.

I confess, I have mixed feelings about the creeds. One of my fondest memories of singing in church was when my music minister allowed me to perform Petra’s “Creed” for our congregation. Believe it or not, he kept his job, and he is still in ministry today.

All kidding aside, that event still means a lot to me.

It was an opportunity to introduce my congregation to one of the oldest Christian professions of faith through one of the newest genres of music. It was an opportunity to build an emotional, and maybe even spiritual, bridge between my tiny, provincial life and the beautifully expansive work of God, a work that stretches across time, geography, ethnicity and culture.

On the other hand, I am deeply troubled by the role creeds play in some worshiping communities.

I understand the impulse to bind a worshipping community to the universal church through the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed.

Nevertheless, granting these documents such a central role in a congregation’s worship risks excluding otherwise orthodox believers from fellowship simply because they refuse to endorse a humanly generated statement of Christian conviction.

Moreover, the creeds, too, must be interpreted, and forgetting this fact may lead to a misidentification of their nature and function.

So, what should Baptists do? To promote unity across denominational lines, we should affirm the essential truthfulness of the two creeds mentioned above without committing ourselves to every detail.

Beyond that, I would advise us to make the reading of Holy Scripture the indispensable element of our worship, and I would urge us to maintain our conviction that Scripture alone defines whether our congregations are orthodox.

Universal buy-in required

As has always been the case, this way of doing church can work only if we all commit to it. No one can opt out because interpreting the Bible is hard or following Jesus is unpleasant. Likewise, no individual or institution can exempt itself from scrutiny based upon its mission or rights. If we are to be a “people of the Book,” then we all must be people of the Book.

Orienting our lives—and not just our disagreements—around Scripture will do much to tamp down the conflicts that inevitably flare up when humans get together. But we cannot deny one of the reasons our disagreements often become acrimonious is the very biblicism we rely on to defuse conflict.

Moreover, even the most heretical and destructive of ideas can be defended if we twist the Bible hard enough.

So, we must double down on our efforts to cultivate biblical literacy and exemplify Christian character. We must teach people the commitments and competencies needed to read the Bible accurately, sympathetically and obediently, and we also must model those commitments and competencies in our teaching, in our discourse with those who disagree, and in our lives.

Good character does not prevent bad hermeneutics, but bad character almost guarantees it.

We may need to return to the issues I have broached above when we talk about the priesthood of all believers and soul competency. For our next discussion, however, I will shift our attention to the distinctive that has kept me in the fold even when I felt the most out-of-step with my fellow Baptists. That distinctive is believer’s baptism.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and has been resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

I’m about to preach.

A few million people participated in No Kings rallies and protests on Oct. 18.

President Donald Trump responded to them with a video posted on his Truth Social profile.

Christians do have a King, and Trump isn’t him.

Our King—Jesus—is plenty clear about how we are to respond to those who oppose us.

We Christians need to follow our King’s lead, not our president’s.

We begin by remembering we do have one King. He is Jesus, and he has expectations of us.

Our King’s example

King Jesus said, “If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also” (Matthew 5:39b).

When Jesus’ hometown crowd became furious with him, “drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill … to throw him off the cliff … he walked right through the crowd and went on his way” (Luke 4:28-30).

When Judas came to betray Jesus with a kiss, “Jesus replied, ‘Do what you came for, friend’” (Matthew 26:50a).

When Jesus was about to be arrested, one of his followers cut off the right ear of a man there to arrest him. “No more of this,” Jesus said and healed the man’s ear (Luke 22:49-51).

When they arrested him, Jesus did not resist.

When the guards beat and mocked Jesus, he did not curse them.

When Pilate questioned him, he did not lash out.

When Herod needled him and “the chief priests and the teachers of the law were … vehemently accusing him,” he said not a word (Luke 23:9-10).

When Herod and his soldiers “ridiculed and mocked him,” he did not retaliate.

When Jesus was spit on, he did not spit back.

When the crowd called for his execution—a most horrid execution—he said nothing.

As he was hung, exposed, on the cross and was insulted mercilessly, he asked God to forgive the people doing it (Luke 23:34).

Jesus died on that cross. Jesus was buried. And after three days, Jesus rose to life again.

After Jesus rose from the dead, he did not seek revenge.

I tell you, we have one King, and Trump is not him.

Our King’s command

The religious authorities were always trying to trap Jesus.

“One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?’

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’” (Matthew 22:35-40).

In his famed Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught: “In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).

In that same sermon, Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44).

Jesus also said we will recognize true prophets of God by what they produce (Matthew 7:15-20), and the wise put Jesus’ words into practice (Matthew 7:24-27).

Jesus’ last instruction before returning to heaven was to “go and make disciples of all [people] … teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

I’ve quoted a lot of Scripture in this editorial, and that’s because we do have one King, and Trump is not him. Our King is Jesus.

I told you I was going to preach.

So, what are we going to do?

Every good sermon—or editorial—ends with practical application. I’m not saying I’ve preached a lot of good sermons or written a lot of good editorials. I’m just saying the good ones end with practical application.

Trump ran on grievance and revenge, and he was elected—twice. He owes his first presidency and his second to the votes of millions of Christians. I am not pointing a finger at you. I am saying Christians have a responsibility in this moment.

Our responsibility is to obey our King, and he is Jesus.

We obey our King by guarding how we talk about those who don’t think or vote like us. In keeping with what Jesus taught in his most famous sermon, we even must guard our thoughts against fantasies of revenge. The video Trump posted on Truth Social indulges in a vile fantasy of revenge.

In our speaking about our perceived opponents, we must not denigrate or dehumanize them. Even harder, we must not even think about them in dehumanizing ways. What is a dehumanizing way to regard opponents? Airdropping feces on them is a clear example.

The other side of what we shouldn’t do—dehumanize others—is what we should do. Here, we can take a cue from Jesus and a cue from Paul. Not from me. I don’t offer myself as an example here.

When we find ourselves surrounded by hostility aimed at us, we can walk through the crowd without a word. If Jesus didn’t see the need to defend himself with equal hostility, then we don’t need to either.

When others curse us and mock us—what we might loosely call “persecution”—instead of cursing those who curse us, instead of repaying evil for evil, we can bless them (Romans 12:14, 17). And, yes, this goes both ways.

It won’t be easy, but we’ve never found it easy to bow to a king.

Eric Black is the executive director, publisher and editor of the Baptist Standard. He can be reached at eric.black@baptiststandard.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

As I noted in my previous opinion article, the unique and unrivaled authority of Scripture is the starting point for most Baptists when they want to understand their tradition. Indeed, this is the lens through which they view all theological and moral issues.

Unfortunately, it also has been the axis around which some of our most ferocious and acrimonious disagreements have revolved.

Moreover, there always have been Christians who doubt the Bible can or should bear the load Baptists place on it when they start talking about Christian doctrines or practices.

Here, I will enumerate some of the challenges to a Baptist theological methodology, standing as it does on the single pillar of Scripture. I hope to help Baptists understand the reasons our theology feels so brittle, and I hope my reflections will help Baptists be more patient with one another—as well as with those from other Christian traditions.

A doctrinal challenge

An initial challenge to the theological methodology of Baptists comes from the doctrine of revelation.

In brief, many Christians believe God reveals himself both through “his works” in nature and through “his words” in Scripture. A more detailed summary of how Christian theologians have understood the interrelationship of nature and Scripture can be read at BioLogos.

Affirming that God reveals something of himself and his activities through nature—something Romans 1:18-32 seems to take for granted—does not necessitate the treatment of natural revelation as equal to special revelation.

We don’t have to see science as equal to biblical interpretation to take seriously the idea we can learn about God and his ways from our experience of the universe he created.

Nevertheless, if God speaks to humanity through nature, then we cannot dismiss human endeavors to understand the natural world as antithetical to our faith and unimportant for our intellectual and spiritual growth. Rather, it is entirely possible we must look to disciplines like science, history and philosophy to make sense of what God is doing.

A hermeneutical challenge

Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation. Interpretation is a means by which we mentally assign meaning to texts, experiences or other data provided to us by our senses.

For example, is an extended finger a command to go in a particular direction, or is it an insulting expression of animosity?

The Bible is like any other document in that its meaning is not always self-evident. It must be interpreted.

The problem is not just that we disagree about how to interpret the Bible. It is that, too often, we assume our interpretation of Scripture carries the same authority as Scripture itself.

Alternatively, we assume the lines we have drawn from the specific text we want to interpret to our rendition of that text’s meaning are clear and incontrovertible.

On the other hand, erecting an impermeable barrier between text and interpretation would rob the Scriptures of any meaning—much less any authority.

Complicating matters significantly is the fact the journey from text to meaning varies wildly in length, complexity and difficulty from one text to another.

For example, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13) seems easy enough to understand, but what about the commands God gave to the Israelites to annihilate their Canaanite neighbors? John 3:16 seems to be pretty straightforward, but the equally simple clause “this is my body” (Mark 14:22 and parallels; 1 Corinthians 11:24) inspired a controversy between Luther and Zwingli that endures to this day.

All of this means Baptists forever are fighting with one another over what constitutes a reasonable disagreement about how to interpret the Bible and what constitutes a violation of biblical authority.

Since there are no creeds to resolve the conflict and no ecclesiastical structures that can mediate disputes, Baptist institutions constantly feel under threat from those who do not understand their work or share their values, and individuals feel like they have no ability to hold the institutions they support accountable for apparently aberrant teachings.

A philosophical challenge

The Baptist theologian Stanley Grenz raised a related problem for how Baptists use Scripture. He argued modernity has conditioned people, including Christians, to work from an ostensibly infallible foundation to whatever truth they are trying to unearth.

This methodology is problematic because it assumes the universality of the truth uncovered and ignores the contextuality of the interpreter. For Christians, the methodology is also problematic because it ignores the Spirit’s role in shaping theological discourse.

Grenz preferred a dialogical model for theological reflection. He argued we ought to begin with the Scriptures, since they are the instrument the Spirit uses to communicate with the church.

He also argued tradition provides an important resource for understanding how the Spirit spoke through Scripture in times and places other than our own. That tradition, of course, is not infallible, so we always must return to the Scriptures in light of what we learn from the church.

But Grenz denied any knowledge derived from our engagement with Scripture can be anything more than provisional, since God is still at work in the church through the Spirit to reveal Christ and his will. As Paul observed in 1 Corinthians 13:8b-12, ultimate knowledge awaits the consummation of all things.

Grenz was a controversial figure in his day, and he came under continued attack after his untimely death. But I raise his concerns precisely because he was a Baptist.

Despite his opponents’ protests to the contrary, his writings demonstrate he was sympathetic both to evangelical concerns for doctrinal truth and Baptists’ affinity for Scripture. But he rightly understood the Spirit is the one responsible for teaching Christ’s body (John 14:26; 16:12-15), and his insights call into question whether a “hard foundationalism” really can sustain theologically robust discipleship.

A historical challenge

As Willard Swartley demonstrated in his book Slavery, Sabbath, War, and Women, the challenge of constructing a universally accepted interpretation of the Bible’s teachings on even the most important of moral issues has been frustratingly difficult.

Even readers who seem to share many contextual factors—time, culture, ethnicity and more—can read the Bible in very different ways due to the particularities of their social location, psychological makeup, conceptual and social intelligence, and other factors.

These differences in hermeneutical approach and doctrinal outcomes cannot be described as trivial. They contributed mightily to the bloodshed wrought by the Civil War, for example, and that bloodshed may have led to a substantial decline in Scripture’s credibility as a shaper of individual and community life.

As people turned away from the bible, they turned to other sources of authority and, not surprisingly, constructed new matrices of belief to guide their lives. And the dirty secret that often goes unacknowledged in our pulpits and seminary classrooms is many have found these alternate authorities to be more honest, more sympathetic and less demanding taskmasters than the Scriptures that were supposed to give them truth, freedom and life.

An ecclesiological challenge

A further challenge to the way Baptists handle the Bible can be seen when the church as a whole pursues unity and a coherent self-definition.

One of the things creeds provide is self-definition. “This is what we believe,” the church says, “and you have to believe this to really be one of us.”

Baptists, of course, always have written confessions of faith. Confessions even have been used as a mechanism for establishing and maintaining fellowship between churches. Nevertheless, Baptists traditionally have understood Christian identity really is found in fidelity to Scripture, not in fidelity to any particular construction of what Scripture means.

Moreover, Baptists have sought to plumb the depths of Scripture to resolve doctrinal and ethical disputes rather than resorting to a heavy-handed dependence on a creed, confession or ecclesiastical authority structure. This emphasis on Scripture, when coupled with other Baptist distinctives, has been a source of disunity rather than unity.

It is all too easy for individual believers to set themselves up as the final arbiter of what the Bible means, thus cutting themselves off from any accountability to the church. But as Baptists have sought to address this problem by making their institutions more accountable to specific enumerations of accepted doctrines, they have made it easier for the power-hungry to use confessions to promote their own interests.

What does it all mean?

Are these challenges fatal for Baptist identity? Do they require Baptists to relinquish their dogged determination to settle every matter through absolute submission to and sustained engagement with Scripture?

In my next article, I will argue Baptists not only can double down on their commitment to Scripture, but they must do so if they are to be a vibrant community of believers in an increasingly secular and frighteningly polarized country.

While we may need to reframe some of our convictions about the Bible in order to be more faithful to Jesus, Scripture still is indispensable for shaping who we are and for infusing our witness with the authenticity, fidelity and power it needs.

Wade Berry is pastor of Second Baptist Church in Ranger and has been resident fellow in New Testament and Greek at B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

On Sept. 27, the Israeli government filed a FARA request with the United States government.

A FARA request—Foreign Agents Registration Request—is simply a request to lobby the citizens of the United states on behalf of a foreign government.

This particular FARA request was filed so the Israeli government could have the right specifically to lobby evangelical Christians regarding their opinions about the state of Israel and their opinions about Palestinians.

My concerns

Foreign influence

The first reason I find this troubling is any foreign government requesting permission to influence specifically Christians, specifically churches, and then the United States government granting that is troubling.

It doesn’t matter if it is Israel, who is an ally of the United States. It is really troubling that a foreign government would want to be involved in lobbying evangelicals at all, and that our own government would allow it. It sets a really bad precedent.

Involuntary

Second, if you read the filing, I’m worried about it, because it’s involuntary.

They use geofencing. Geofencing is a technology where, if you drive onto a church campus, one of those listed in the filing, and your phone is then picked up, you will be served up targeted messages.

One could call those messages propaganda designed to get you to have a different opinion regarding the nation of Israel and/or the Palestinians.

I mentioned this because you don’t get to opt in.

So, the pastors of these churches don’t get to decide if they want to be part of this program. The leadership of these churches, the membership of these churches, don’t get to decide. They’re just targeted, because the government has given permission to a foreign actor to target the phones of these particular groups.

Dangerous precedent

The next reason I’m really worried is it sets a really dangerous precedent.

If we allow a foreign government to request and get permission to lobby our churches, what might happen next?

Now, I don’t want to act like churches have been political neutral zones, but I really do think this is a step that is a little dangerous, where we allow a foreign entity to begin to lobby and to do so openly.

I really worry about it opening Pandora’s box here, specifically with political influence on churches, specifically when pastors and church leaders don’t have the opportunity to reject that.

What to do

If you’re worried about this and you’re wondering what you can do, you can read through the filing and see if your church is listed. There are a lot of churches listed in Texas. There also are some in California, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada.

If you see your church listed, you might want to make your church leadership aware they’re being targeted. They might want to think about how is best to handle that in whatever way is appropriate in your particular church setting.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The full list of targeted churches begins on p. 34 of the FARA filing. An interactive map of targeted churches is available here. Numerous Texas Baptist churches are included.

Steve Bezner is associate professor of pastoral theology and ministry at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary and has served churches throughout Texas. This opinion article is an edited transcript of Bezner’s Facebook story posted Oct. 21 and used by permission.

Contrary to the belief of a lot of church-going folks, pastors are not hired servants.

They are servants, for sure, just as police officers and firefighters and nurses. But they are servants of God and, as such, are here to help each of us to garner a better understanding of how we can glorify God and please him.

The pastor is not there to wait on us. The pastor is not there to unplug our toilet or change our flat tire. The pastor is there to help with our spiritual needs the same as a nurse helps with our medical needs or a police officer with our legal issues.

Pastoral salaries

Pastors have families and need downtime. Our churches must require our pastors and their families to take vacations and time off. They cannot be treated as robots to hop and jump for our pleasure.

Is your congregation aware of the salary being paid to your pastor? Is it enough for the pastor to live on? Is the pastor stressed due to financial worries? If we get stressed over money issues, have we ever thought our pastors might have the same problem as well?

What can we or our church do to help them?

Our churches give millions of dollars annually to various ministries across the globe, but look at that 15-year-old car our pastor is driving around in. What can we do to make driving safer for the pastor and the pastor’s family?

Weddings and funerals

While we are at it, what days off does our pastor have?

Let’s see, weddings usually take place on Saturdays, with rehearsal dinners on Friday nights. Funerals often are on Saturdays, as well. These are scheduled for the convenience of the families, to allow for their family members to travel for the event.

While these might be joyous in the case of weddings or sad in the case of funerals, the pastor may not know the participants and probably doesn’t feel the same emotions as the families, especially if the pastor has lost a day off.

There’s also the matter of paying pastors an honorarium for services rendered. In many cases pastors receive little or nothing for performing weddings and funerals on their days off.

Of course, weddings and funerals are part of any clergy’s duties and responsibilities, but the timing of these events should be considered in relationship to the pastor’s working schedule. Events scheduled outside of normal working hours should be compensated.

Churches could give out a pamphlet explaining how funerals and weddings work and that payments for these services are appreciated, even suggesting customary amounts. At a minimum, a pamphlet can explain the pastor’s responsibilities during weddings and funerals.

At my age, I might die at any time. Do you think it is going to matter to me who presides over my funeral service? I am not going to be there. I don’t care if some associate pastor or someone else takes charge of my service.

Weddings and funerals are significant rituals of our lives, but let’s get real and consider what it takes for a minister to officiate at these events.

The pastor’s family

Our pastor has a family. Our pastor may have kids who go to school, play in sports, perform recitals, have roles in drama programs. They also have birthdays and anniversaries and may be taking care of their own parents.

When our pastors’ daughter stars in a play at school on the night we want our pastor to attend a rehearsal dinner for our daughter’s wedding, how do we think our pastor’s daughter is going to feel? Is she going to be happy or resentful? We know the answer to this.

Is our event so important and so special we couldn’t consider the church providing us with some other staff member to perform our service?

Pastors have the same stresses and problems we do. They can’t complain about their issues. They certainly can’t discuss their issues with members of the church, and they certainly can’t afford to offend their largest “donors” who want them to perform some special function.

In short, they are not free or at liberty to use a truly short word: “No.”

Our church’s largest tither wants the pastor and only the pastor to perform the marriage service for his only daughter on the weekend the pastor had scheduled a trip to Paris for the pastor’s wedding anniversary.

Tickets are paid for, passports secured, hotels booked, and now Mr. Warbucks comes and tells the pastor his daughter must be married on such-and-such date because it has major significance for one reason or another. No other date will do.

What the pastor wants to do and what the pastor feels has to be done probably don’t match.

But that’s not the question. The question is what are we going to do?

Are we going to be inconsiderate Christians demanding things that give rise to resentment, or will we be Christlike and realize our pastor has feelings and needs like all the rest of us?

The choice is ours and ours alone.

Peary Perry is an author and husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. To learn more about him, you can visit www.pearyperry.com or email him confidentially at pperry@pearyperry.com. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.

In Part 1, I distinguished between Christian nationalism as ideology or as instinct or mood. I also distinguished between the mission of the church and that of the state.

Now, I will look at the six main arguments for Christian nationalism and see how they hold up when measured against the gospel, William Stringfellow’s insights on the “powers and principalities,” and the cruciform love of Jesus.

1. God’s sovereignty extends to nations

Christian nationalists often start here: Jesus is Lord of all. If he’s King of kings, then rulers and nations must answer to him. And that’s true. Scripture makes it clear no authority exists outside God’s sovereignty.

But here’s the problem: God doesn’t relate to nations the same way he relates to people. He speaks to rulers and communities inside nations. He calls them to justice, truth and humility. But he doesn’t “save” or “convert” a nation like he does a person. Nations aren’t people; they’re powers.

And when a nation tries to “be Christian,” it usually ends up baptizing its own agenda with God-language. Rome claimed to bring peace to the world—Pax Romana. America claims to spread freedom and democracy. Both end up demanding devotion that should belong to Christ.

Now, many ordinary folks who lean toward Christian nationalism aren’t making a philosophical argument here. They just want to see their leaders honor God in some way, like how a family prays before dinner. That instinct comes from a good place.

But here’s the danger: An ideal household is bound by love and personal devotion to Jesus, while a nation is bound by law and force. Parents can demonstrate the love of Jesus and ask their kids to pray with them. A government can mandate only outward conformity. That’s not faith; it’s performance. At worst, it becomes persecution.

Yes, Jesus holds governments accountable. Yes, he cares about justice. But accountability isn’t the same as anointing. When the state claims to be “Christian,” it starts speaking in God’s name. That’s not worship; that’s idolatry, like the serpent Nehushtan, as I referenced in Part 1.

2. Biblical precedent for nations honoring God

Here’s another Christian nationalistic perspective: In the Old Testament, Israel was a nation under God. Doesn’t that mean nations today should aim to honor God the same way?

It sounds convincing—until you remember Israel was unique. Israel wasn’t just one nation among many. It was God’s chosen covenant people, set apart for a season to prepare the way for Jesus. No modern nation holds that role.

Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.”

But that blessing was for Israel, not a blank check for any state that sprinkles Bible verses over its constitution. When Jonah preached to Nineveh, they repented, but that didn’t make them a covenant people. They simply humbled themselves before God’s sovereignty.

In the New Testament, the “holy nation” language gets transferred. And it doesn’t get transferred to Rome, or to America two millennia later. It gets transferred to the church (1 Peter 2:9). A transnational community made up of every tribe, tongue and people group—that’s the holy nation of God living as ambassadors of the eternal kingdom of heaven.

This is where nuance matters. Many who quote verses like Psalm 33:12 aren’t trying to create an idol. They just long for God’s blessing on their country. That’s understandable. But blessing doesn’t come through fusing gospel and government. Blessing comes when the people of God live faithfully as the church, no matter what nation they inhabit.

When America—or any other modern country—claims biblical Israel’s mantle, it’s not submitting to Scripture. It’s using Scripture to crown itself. That’s not blessing; that’s taking God’s name in vain.

3. The common good requires moral foundations

Now, this point deserves real attention. Christian nationalists argue: Laws never are neutral. Every law reflects someone’s morality. If we don’t base our laws on Scripture, they’ll be based on something else.

That’s true. But it overlooks something vital—the difference between the state’s role and the church’s role.

The state’s job is “rough justice”—restraining evil, protecting the vulnerable, maintaining order through force. It can’t form saints. It can’t disciple hearts. That’s the church’s job.

Here’s the danger: When the church outsources moral formation to statute, both church and state deform.

The state tries to become a moral tutor it never was meant to be. The church becomes a lobbying group, measuring success by political wins instead of faithfulness to the cross.

And let’s be aware: The powers are happy to baptize “morality” when it helps them survive. “Law and order” sounds good, but it’s also been used to justify segregation, deny civil rights and silence dissent.

This is where instinct and ideology diverge again. For some, Christian nationalism as instinct simply means: “We need guardrails in society, so things don’t collapse.” That’s fair. But those guardrails aren’t the gospel.

The common good indeed is moral, but gospel morality is cruciform. It takes up the cross for enemies and the vulnerable, moves toward the least, and embodies generosity that law can’t compel.

Statute can prohibit theft. Only the Spirit forms a people who share possessions (Acts 2; 2 Corinthians 8–9). Statute can punish fraud. Only the church can cultivate truth-telling that refuses propaganda. Statute can regulate violence. Only the Eucharistic community can break cycles of vengeance by forgiving 70-times-seven.

The law can restrain harm. Only Christ can transform hearts.

4. Historical roots in America

Christian nationalists often appeal to America’s history—the Mayflower Compact, references to God in founding documents, the Bible on the lips of early leaders. They argue we’re just “returning” to our roots.

But here’s the problem: America’s history is complicated. Yes, there were moments of biblical influence. There also were centuries of slavery, genocide of Indigenous peoples and systemic racism—such as Jim Crow. To highlight one side and ignore the other is what William Stringfellow called “bombast”—puffing ourselves up with half-truths.

And notice this: Even the founders who referenced God in public documents also enshrined disestablishment. They didn’t want a state church. They knew what happened when governments took on the role of religion.

It’s worth remembering: Not everyone who appeals to America’s roots is trying to worship the nation. Sometimes they’re just proud of their heritage. That’s not inherently bad. Gratitude for one’s country is good. Patriotism in moderation is healthy. But allegiance belongs to Christ alone.

The creed is not the pledge. The sacraments are not the founding documents. The church’s story is not America’s story. When we confuse them, we end up bowing to Nehushtan.

5. Protecting families and future generations

This argument tugs at the heart: We need Christian nationalism to protect our kids from moral confusion, to safeguard families from collapse. Who doesn’t want their kids safe?

But here’s where the powers sneak in. The powers and principalities, the politicians and lobbyists cry out, “Think of your children!” It sounds holy, but it can be used to justify almost anything—wars, censorship, even oppression. And in the end, what they really are crying out is: “Empower us to protect your children! Put your faith and your children’s lives in our hands.”

The gospel calls us to protect families, yes, but in the way of the cross, not the sword. The family is God’s institution, and we never should diminish our Christ-centered devotion to our spouses and children.

It’s also important to remember Jesus’s radical words on family: “Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother and brothers.”

The state can pass laws protecting its current definitions of “family.” The church literally is a new household itself. Our mission isn’t only to preserve traditional family structures. It’s to embody a family where the lonely find belonging, where the poor are provided for, where the vulnerable are sheltered.

Now, many who gravitate toward Christian nationalistic instincts are afraid—afraid their kids will grow up in a culture where truth and stability are eroded. That’s a sincere concern. The answer isn’t to dismiss it, but to redirect it.

The state can restrain harm. It can outlaw abuse and provide basic protections. But it can’t raise disciples. It can’t transform hearts, so parents pray with their kids. Only the Spirit-filled church can do that.

The early church transformed family life in Rome, not by changing laws, but by adopting abandoned infants, caring for widows and treating marriage as covenant instead of contract. That kind of witness changes culture more than any political program.

Here’s the bottom line: When we put our hope in the State to save the family, we end up losing both, and the church loses her witness as the household of God. Families are protected when the church steps up in sacrificial love, not when the state waves a Bible over its policies.

6. Witness to the nations

Finally, Christian nationalists say: A Christian nation could shine as a light to the world, just like Israel was supposed to.

But Jesus never called America a be city on a hill. He gave that title to his disciples—to the church. A community bound not by borders or constitutions, but by baptism into Christ.

When nations try to take on that role, the result is civil religion—a shallow witness that confuses national pride with gospel truth. That’s not light; it’s smoke and mirrors.

But let’s be fair: Many who long for America to be a “light” don’t mean to idolize it. They just want their nation to be a place where goodness and justice shine. That desire can be affirmed.

But it must be clarified: The true witness of the church is cruciform love—forgiving enemies, caring for the poor, living in unity across dividing lines, telling the truth when lies are easier, worshiping a King who laid down his life. That’s what shines.

If a nation wants to “shine,” its best move is to get out of the church’s way. Protect freedom of worship. Ensure justice. Safeguard peace. Then, let the church be the church—free, bold and holy.

The light of the gospel doesn’t come from the flag. It comes from the cross.

Nick Acker, a native Texan, is co-lead pastor of Grace Ventura Church in Ventura, Calif., adjunct faculty member at Stark College and Seminary and a resident fellow at East Texas Baptist University’s B.H. Carroll Theological Seminary, and author of Exegeting Orality: Interpreting the Inspired Words of Scripture in Light of Their Oral Traditional Origins. He finds his greatest joy in his wife and three children. The views expressed in this opinion article are those of the author.