Month: February 2018

The Trust Protocol | Book Review


How much do you trust an institution to do what is right? Not much, according to the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer.

“The U.S. is enduring the worst collapse ever recorded in the history of the [report],” writes Daniel Edelman. “This is led by a decline in trust in government, which is down 30 points among the informed public and 14 points among the general population, while for the informed public trust in each of the other institutions sank by 20 or more points.” The “other institutions” are business, media and nongovernmental organizations (such as charities and churches).

Though Edelman fingers “fake news” as a chief culprit in the decline of trust in U.S. institutions — and it certainly is a problem — the simpler explanation is that we distrust institutions because they have become untrustworthy. One need only read the morning newspaper to see institutions acting badly, and it doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about politics, business, media or nonprofit institutions. Those institutional bad acts would be distressing news leading to increasing distrust even if “fake news” didn’t enter the picture.

There’s only one way for institutions to regain trust, and that’s by acting in a trustworthy manner. Or, to make things more personal, the only way you and I as leaders within those institutions can make them more trustworthy is to act trustworthily ourselves. How to do that is what Mac Richard’s The Trust Protocol is about.

Richard is the pastor of Lake Hills Church in Austin, Texas. He writes from an explicitly Christian point of view. And while some of the examples he cites are drawn from church life, the principles he enumerates have broader application. As his book’s subtitle puts it, trust is “the key to building stronger families, teams, and businesses.”

So, what is this Trust Protocol? A protocol is a “predetermined procedure or set of rules.” For Richards, the Trust Protocol entails “forging credibility through integrity and action” (emphasis in original). Later in the book, he writes, “Building trust happens on two parallel tracks: character and competency.” These are the inward (integrity, character) and outward (action, competence) dimensions of trustworthiness, respectively. Leaders need to develop these dimensions in tandem.

From the outset of the book, Richard states then reiterates four themes:

  1. The Trust Protocol works.
  2. The Trust Protocol is hard work.
  3. The Trust Protocol will get messy.
  4. The work, the mess, the pain and uncertainty along the way — all of it — is absolutely worth it.

In short, becoming trustworthy, whether as an individual or as an institution, is not easy work that proceeds smoothly. But it is nonetheless worth the effort. “No matter where you are right now,” Richard writes, “You have a choice to make … the opportunity to make a difference in someone’s life, today, right now.”

The Trust Protocol is a short, simple but radical book — radical in the sense of going to the root (Latin, radix) of a matter. We in the U.S. suffer from a deficit of trust in our institutions. This has many causes and many negative effects. But in each case, that deficit can be reversed by leaders — whether in politics, business, media or the church — who earn credibility with their followers through the combination of character and competence.

Are we the kind of leaders who can restore trust in a distrustful era in our nation’s history?

Book Reviewed
Mac Richard, The Trust Protocol: The Key to Building Stronger Families, Teams, and Businesses (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2017).

P.S. I wrote this review for InfluenceMagazine.com. It appears here by permission.

P.P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

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Leadership Lessons of the Apostle Paul | Influence Podcast


In this episode of the Influence Podcast, I talk to Ryan Lokkesmoe about leadership lessons we can learn from the New Testament church. Lokkesmoe is lead pastor of Real Hope Community Church in Houston, Texas. He has a Ph.D. in New Testament from the University of Denver, and he is author, most recently, of Paul and His Team, published in 2017 by Moody.

Here’s my review of his book:

Ryan Lokkesmoe is the lead pastor of Real Hope Community Church in Houston, and has a Ph.D. in New Testament studies. In Paul and His Team:What the Early Church Can Teach Us About Leadership and Influence, he brings his pastoral and academic experiences into fruitful dialogue about what the apostle Paul teaches concerning influencing others for the sake of the gospel.

“Many leadership books address the mechanics of leadership and primarily focus on what and how questions,” Lokkesmoe writes. “This book will be more concerned with who and why questions. Who are we as influencers, and why do we lead the way we do?”

Among the leadership traits of Paul and his team that stand out most are these: (1) “Their singular focus was Christ.” (2) “They treated others as equals.” (3) “They were agents of reconciliation.”

Paul and His Team is a good reminder that “our leadership within the church should always have that distinctive tone and posture when compared to any other leadership context.”

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America’s Pastor: Billy Graham (1918-2018)


The Rev. Billy Graham passed away this morning at his home in Montreat, North Carolina. For decades, Billy Graham was the face of evangelical Christianity, not merely in the United States, but around the world. His death is an occasion for mourning, but his life is an instructive example to Christian ministers today. In August 2015, I wrote the following book review of Grant Wacker’s excellent book, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. Rereading it more than two years later, it strikes me as a good summary of the lessons we can learn from the life and ministry of this great man.

*****

America’s Pastor is not a conventional biography of Billy Graham. It does not narrate Graham’s life in chronological order, in other words. If you’re looking for such a book, read Graham’s memoir, Just As I Am, or William Martin’s magisterial biography, A Prophet with Honor.

Instead, America’s Pastor is a biographical study that centers around three questions:

  • How did Billy Graham become the voice of American evangelicalism?
  • Why did evangelicalism become so pervasive in the second half of the twentieth century?
  • And what does it say about the relation between religion and America itself?

To each of these questions, Grant Wacker, a noted evangelical church historian at Duke University Divinity School, offers a single answer: “From first to last, Graham displayed an uncanny ability to adopt trends in the wider culture and then use them for his evangelistic and moral-reform purposes.”

Wacker goes on to say that Graham “possessed an uncanny ability to speak both for and to the times.”

Graham’s “uncanny ability” explains why ministers would do well to read this book. We, too, need to speak for and to our times. And Graham’s life and ministry presents us with both an inspiring example … and a cautionary tale.

The inspiring example is what Christian pastors know best. In his personal life and public ministry, Graham and his evangelistic team set the gold standard of integrity. Much of this arose from a commitment to the so-called “Modesto Manifesto” of 1948, in which the Graham team set out rules of personal and organizational integrity.

Building on this integrity, Graham traveled the globe, using every available media to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. He preached large evangelistic crusades, wrote a spiritual advice column, spoke on radio, appeared on television, produced evangelistic films, and stayed in the public eye. In addition, he helped found institutions that continue to shape evangelicalism: Christianity Today, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and the Lausanne Movement, among others. Graham was so involved with, and so central to, the postwar American evangelical revival that it is difficult to imagine it without him. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine postwar American history without him.

This doesn’t mean Graham’s ministry — or the mainstream evangelicalism he represented — was without flaws. The most glaring was his penchant for partisan politics. Perhaps nothing discredited his ministry more in the eyes of many than his too-close relationship with, and post-Watergate defense of, President Richard Nixon. And we might also ask how America would have been better off had he cooperated more closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and led white evangelicals in a greater support for African-American civil rights.

Historical counterfactuals such as this are interesting to ponder, but we cannot change the past. We can only learn from the past in order to do better in the future.

Grant Wacker has penned an interesting, informative, and, in many ways, authoritative interpretation of Billy Graham’s influence on American Christianity and the American nation. Those of us who, like Graham, are called to minister the gospel would do well to use the book as a mirror of self-reflection, asking questions such as these:

  • Do we conduct our lives and ministries with integrity, and is this integrity obvious to all?
  • Do we lament the baleful effects of contemporary media — television, film, social media, etc. — or do we leverage them to produce better effects?
  • Do we exercise a prophetic ministry within our society, or have partisan interests captured us?
  • In an increasingly secular society, do we cooperate with as wide a circle of fellow Christians as possible, or do we retreat into small circles of like-mindedness?
  • Most importantly, do we preach through our words and demonstrate with our lives the good news of Jesus Christ, calling nonbelievers to faith in Him, and believers toward a closer following of Him?

America may never see another Billy Graham — an evangelist who has influenced both church and society. It will see us, however. Are we, like him, speaking both for and to it in our own, much smaller circles of influence?

 

Book Reviewed
Grant Wacker, America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2015).

P.S. Republished with permission from InfluenceMagazine.com.

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When Harry Became Sally | Book Review


“America is in the midst of what has been called a ‘transgender moment,’” writes Ryan T. Anderson in When Harry Became Sally. “Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of transgender identity, but within the space of a year it became a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights.”

The inflection point was probably Diane Sawyer’s April 2015 interview with Bruce Jenner, in which he said, “for all intents and purposes I’m a woman,” taking the name Caitlyn a few months later. A judge legally approved Jenner’s name and gender change in September of that year. In October, Glamour magazine named Jenner a “Woman of the Year.”

Jenner’s transition put a well-known face on America’s transgender moment, but actions by the Obama administration gave the moment legal muscle. In a series of “Dear Colleague” letters, first the Department of Education (2010) and then the Department of Justice and Department of Education jointly (2016) redefined the word sex — i.e., biological sex — to include “gender identity.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (2016) similarly proposed expanding the meaning of sex to include “gender identity.” Various federal laws ban discrimination based on sex (e.g., Title IX), but Obama administration actions required schools and hospitals to act as if there were no legal difference between a biological female and a biological male who identifies as a woman. (The Trump administration reversed many of these executive actions.)

Popular culture and political action may have normalized transgender identity, but Anderson reminds readers how radical it is. “At the heart of the transgender moment are radical ideas about the human person — in particular, that people are what they claim to be, regardless of contrary evidence. A transgender boy is a boy, not merely a girl who identifies as a boy.” This is a metaphysical claim, one that needs to be subjected to more scrutiny than it has been. When Harry Became Sally offers a multidisciplinary critique of transgender identity.

Chapters 1 and 2 describe our transgender moment and the ideology of transgender activists, respectively.

Chapter 3 then turns to the personal narratives of transgender people who subsequently detransitioned to their birth sex. Anderson argues that these stories “tell us, at minimum, that transitioning is not the ‘only solution’ to gender dysphoria.”

Chapter 4 examines “what science tells us about the biological basis of sex.” Anderson writes, “The fundamental conceptual distinction between a male and a female is the organism’s organization for sexual reproduction.” Indeed, he argues that “sex is a coherent concept only on the basis of that organization.”

Chapter 5 then explores the nature and treatment of gender dysphoria. Anderson understands it as “incongruence between biological sex and experienced gender.” How one defines gender dysphoria determines how one treats it. “The central debate in treating people with gender dysphoria is whether therapies should focus primarily on the mind or on the body.” Anderson argues that treating the feeling of incongruity between biological sex and gender identity has better therapeutic outcomes than gender reassignment.

Chapter 6 examines gender dysphoria among children. Experts agree that between 80 and 95 percent of kids who experience gender dysphoria naturally resolve those feelings in favor of their biological sex. Because of this, Anderson argues, “We need medical professionals who will help them mature in harmony with their bodies, rather than deploy experimental treatments to refashion their bodies.”

Chapter 7 outlines a view of gender that Anderson believes is preferable to transgender identity theory. It is a “nuanced view of gender.” It avoids rigid gender stereotypes, even as it acknowledges that “gender norms” are not merely “social constructs.”

Chapter 8 concludes the book by examining transgender identity from the standpoint of public policy. Anderson’s primary concern is that “commonsense policies regarding bodily privacy and sound medicine are now being labeled discriminatory.”

In my judgment, When Harry Became Sally makes a persuasive case against the idea of transgender identity, as well as the medical and public policy practices that flow from that idea. Five or ten years ago, Anderson’s arguments would have been noncontroversial. Today, however, as popular culture and presidential politics have mainstreamed transgender identity, those arguments have become a matter of great controversy.

The value of When Harry Became Sally lies in its multidisciplinary arguments. If you’re looking for a book about what to do if you personally experience gender dysphoria, or how to help a friend or family member who experiences it, this is not the book to read.

Similarly, it is not a religious book. I read it from the perspective of a Christian minister interested in how the Church should respond to transgender persons. Though Anderson is Catholic, his arguments are secular in character, depending on biology, psychology and philosophy, not Scripture and theology. He helped me understand the nature of transgender identity, but he didn’t outline a uniquely pastoral response to it.

In sum, When Harry Became Sally is the reasoned judgment of a public intellectual on an important matter of current controversy, well worth reading.

 

Book Reviewed
Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New York: Encounter, 2018).

P.S. I wrote this review for InfluenceMagazine.com. It appears here by permission.

P.P.S. If you found my review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

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Thoughts and Prayers Are Not Enough | Influence Magazine


Note: The following column will appear in the March/April 2018 issue of Influence magazine. I wrote it prior to yesterday’s deadly shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Its purpose is to encourage local congregations to respond holistically to people’s needs when tragedy strikes their community.

*****

The deadliest mass shooting in the United States took place the night of October 1, 2017, when a gunman opened fire on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, leaving 58 dead and 851 injured. In the aftermath of that shooting, people across America took to social media to offer “thoughts and prayers” for the victims. Their sentiment was heartfelt, but was it enough?

According to the Bible, the answer is no.

James 2:15–16 says, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?”

No good at all.

Similarly, 1 John 3:17 says, “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”

It can’t be. So, John exhorts us, “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (verse 18).

Words are insufficient responses to a tragedy, crisis or need unless we pair them with deeds.

By the same token, however, deeds also are insufficient responses to a tragedy if we fail to pair them with words and prayers.

Why? Because we have minds as well as bodies. We need to know that our lives have meaning, that our pain has a purpose. According to the apostle Paul, being at “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” enables us to make sense of our suffering. We can “glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:1,3–4).

Consequently, an authentic Christian response to tragedy combines deeds and words, action and prayer, help and hope. It’s a both/and effort, not an either/or choice.

Let me close by suggesting three concrete needs victims have that your church should provide if — God forbid! — tragedy strikes your community.

First, victims need shelter, a safe place where their immediate physical and material needs are met. Providing shelter is a Matthew 25:34–36 ministry to the hungry, thirsty, homeless, naked, sick and imprisoned.

Second, victims need shoulders to cry on, a community that affirms their emotional response to loss. Responding with empathy is a Romans 12:15 ministry: “Rejoice with those who rejoice,” Paul teaches us; “mourn with those who mourn” (emphasis added).

Third, victims need shepherds. Helping people find meaning in their suffering is a Psalm 23:2 ministry. It leads them to the “green pastures” and “quiet waters” of faith in God.

When tragedy hits, people’s immediate needs are for shelter and shoulders. Over the long term, though, as they mentally and emotionally process their experience, they increasingly need shepherds. Your church will do a great service to the community if it’s prepared to respond to people’s needs holistically in times of tragedy.

 

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Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet | Book Review


Today is the bicentennial of the birth of Frederick Douglass. Born a slave in 1818 on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Douglass escaped slavery in 1838, fleeing to New York but eventually settling in Massachusetts. Three years later, he began his lifelong work as an abolitionist and civil rights activist.

There are many excellent biographies of Douglass, including three autobiographical works. D. H. Dilbeck’s Frederick Douglass is valuable because it is a “religious biography,” the goal of which is “to explain the substance of Douglass’s faith and show how it shaped his public career.” In Dilbeck’s judgment, Douglass was “the most significant spokesman of his day” for “black prophetic Christianity.”

This prophetic Christianity involved both judgment and hope. “Throughout his long public career,” Dilbeck writes, “Douglass ardently denounced slavery, racism, and bigotry in all its forms.” His opposition to slavery and Jim Crow are well known, but Dilbeck reminds readers that Douglass was an early advocate of women’s suffrage, as well as the rights of Chinese immigrants.

Even so, Dilbeck writes, “if Douglass pursued any single calling that tied together his entire life, it was simply to force Americans to confront the disjuncture between the Christianity they professed and practiced and ‘the Christianity of Christ.’” White Southern Christianity drew particular scorn from Douglass throughout his life, for its defense of white supremacy and the practices of first slavery, then Jim Crow. But he also critiqued Northern Christian complicity and Black Church passivity in the face of injustice.

Douglass had an evangelical conversion in his teens, and he never repudiated the Christian faith, which in fact undergirded his civil rights activism. But the injustice, complicity and passivity of Christian churches led Douglass away from formal affiliation with any congregation or denomination. It also led him to criticize churches that cultivated doctrinal orthodoxy and personal piety, but never engaged in struggle against the great injustices of the day.

After Douglass’ death, Christian Recorder, the leading black Methodist newspaper, summarized his understanding of Christianity this way:

His religion was not a religion of creeds, churches, hymnals and prayer books, but he believed in precept, the life and practice as taught by the Master of “doing unto others as we would have others to do unto us.” It was the “cups of cold water in His name,” “feed the hungry,” “clothe the naked,” not in professions of church phraseology and beautiful song, but in the example with love to our fellows and our neighbors as ourselves, which, after all, is the greatest and only evidence of our love to God.

And yet, alongside the prophetic judgment, there was prophetic hope. Throughout his career, Douglass held the settled conviction that God was on the side of justice; therefore, justice would ultimately prevail. “I recognize an arm stronger than any human arm,” he told an 1853 American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society meeting, “and an intelligence higher than any human intelligence, guarding and guiding this Anti-Slavery cause, through all the dangers and perils that beset it.”

Divine providence did not excuse human beings from taking action, however. Waldo Martin argued in The Mind of Frederick Douglass that by the time of the Civil War, Douglass had replaced his “traditional God-centered religious philosophy” with a “liberal human-centered religious philosophy.” Dilbeck disagrees. He explains:

…the apparent changes in Douglass’s later theology had less to do with some new understanding of God and far more to do instead with the new social and political challenges confronting African Americans after emancipation. Douglass feared that a certain passive spirit might spread among African Americans, especially slaves, if they embraced too-simplistic notions of providence.

“The Lord is good and kind,” as Douglass put it in 1893, “but of most use to those who do for themselves” (emphasis in original).

Douglass’ optimism in the postbellum Reconstruction period — with the abolition of slavery and the passage of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution — was tempered in the post-Reconstruction period because of the recrudescence in the South of the power of white supremacy, which expressed itself by disenfranchising black voters, segregating Southern society and lynching black males.

“I have seen dark hours in my life,” Douglass said in an October 1890 speech. He had just outlined the injustices mentioned above. Yet, he went on to say: “I have seen the darkness gradually disappearing and the light gradually increasing.” Most importantly, “I remember that God reigns in eternity, and that whatever delays, whatever disappointments and discouragements may come, truth, justice, liberty, and humanity will ultimately prevail.”

It is easy, more than 100 years after Douglass’ death, to lionize the man, and there is good reason to do so. He was right on fundamental issues of justice and equality, when so many Christians in his day were wrong. That is a historical fact that all now acknowledge.

As a Christian reader, though, I cannot help but think that D. H. Dilbeck’s religious biography poses an implicit challenge to American Christians today: Are we in fact on God’s side? Are we working to ensure that “truth, justice, liberty, and humanity” will prevail? That is, it seems to me, an open question.

Book Reviewewed
D. H. Dilbeck, Frederick Douglass: America’s Prophet (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2018).

P.S. This review was written for InfluenceMagazine.com and appears here by permission.

P.P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

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Five Resources on Generation Z*


Generation Z is the demographic cohort that follows the millennials. Demographers disagree on the year this generation was born, but common estimates run from as early as 1995 to as late as 2015. Depending on how you count it, Generation Z constitutes nearly 25 percent of the American populace.

Every generation presents unique challenges and opportunities for ministry, so understanding the forces that shape each one is a pastoral necessity. The August/September 2016 issue of Influence magazine featured an award-winning cover story about Generation Z by Tim Elmore: “Homelanders: The Next Generation.” I recommend that you start there if you want to understand Generation Z.

For further research about Generation Z, I recommend the following five books, the first three written by Christian authors, the final two from a secular, academic perspective.

1. Gen Z (2018) by Barna Group
Gen Z is the newest report from Barna Group. Barna has a demonstrated ability to synthesize generational data with reflection on effective ministry practices. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative research with youth (ages 13–18), youth pastors and Christian parents, the report offers insights about the “culture, beliefs and motivations” of Generation Z. Noting trends that alternately clash and resonate with biblical Christianity, the report nevertheless ends on a hopeful note: “The pace of cultural change may feel overwhelming, but don’t be discouraged. Even the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church — and that promise is for God’s people in Generation Z, too.”

Bonus Material: For more on Gen Z, check out “Understanding Generation Z,” Episode 126 of the Influence Podcast with David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group.

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

2. Meet Generation Z (2017) by James Emery White
James Emery White is senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. In Meet Generation Z: Understanding and Reaching the New Post-Christian World, White looks at demographic information about Generation Z from a pastoral perspective. Part one “details the new realities facing the Christian church,” the post-Christian realities that shape Generation Z. Part two “turns the corner toward response, including the importance of truly becoming countercultural as a church.” White ably summarizes research about Generation Z, but the pastoral response he outlines is the true value of the book.

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

https://www.amazon.com/review/R10F98NWRRVDDB/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8

3. Growing Young (2016) by Kara Powell, Jake Mulder and Brad Griffin
“Multiple studies highlight that 40 to 50 percent of youth group seniors … drift from God and the faith community after they graduate from high school.” Kara Powell, Jake Mulder and Brad Griffin cite this statistic at the outset of Growing Young. Whether you are a pastor or a parent, this statistic should alarm you and move you to act. If you want to make a difference in the spiritual lives of young adults, including your own, this book outlines six “essential strategies to help young people discover and love your church.”

  • Unlock keychain leadership
  • Empathize with today’s young people
  • Take Jesus’ message seriously
  • Fuel a warm community
  • Prioritize young people (and families) everywhere
  • Be the best neighbors

Bonus Material: For more on Growing Young, check out “How to Keep Youth in Church,” Episode 47 of the Influence Podcast with Kara Powell, executive director of Fuller Youth Institute at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Additionally, check out this profile of Powell, a longer review of Growing Young, and this excerpt from the book: “10 Qualities Your Church Doesn’t Need in Order to Grow Young.”

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

4. The Happiness Effect (2017) by Donna Freitas
Demographic researchers all agree that the internet, smart devices and social media exercise a distinctive influence on Generation Z, the first generation to be truly digitally native. Donna Freitas’ The Happiness Effect examines what social media use is doing to this generation of users. “Simply put,” Freitas writes, “because young people feel so pressured to post happy things on social media, most of what everyone sees on social media from their peers are happy things; as a result, they often feel inferior because they aren’t actually happy all the time.” Though written from a secular, academic perspective, The Happiness Effect is a must-read if you want to understand “how social media is driving a generation to appear perfect at any cost,” in the words of the book’s subtitle.

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

5. iGen (2017) by Jean M. Twenge
Jean Twenge is a professor of psychology with a well-earned reputation as a generations researcher. iGen identifies “ten important trends” shaping Generation Z, all of which begin with the letter I: They (1) are “in no hurry” to grow up, (2) spending a lot of time on the “internet,” (3) conducting relationships “in person no more,” (4) “insecure” emotionally, (5) “irreligious,” (6) “insulated but not intrinsic” in terms of safety and community, (7) motivated by fear of “income inequality,” (8) “indefinite” with regard to marriage and children, (9) “inclusive” regarding ethnicity and sexuality and (10) “independent” politically. iGen is written from a secular, academic perspective, which colors some of the author’s practical advice, but it is well worth reading.

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

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*This review was written for InfluenceMagazine.com and appears here by permission.

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The Creed of Abraham Lincoln in His Own Words


Today is Abraham Lincoln’s 209th birthday, in honor of which, according to the custom of my blog, I re-post this post about Lincoln’s religious beliefs, such as they were. Enjoy!

*****

In 1920, William E. Barton published The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, a now classic study of the development of Lincoln’s faith. “Lincoln’s religious was an evolution,” Barton wrote, “both in its intellectual and spiritual qualities.”

Lincoln’s religious identity seems to have moved through three stages: (1) a Calvinist Baptist in childhood; (2) a skeptical, freethinker in young adulthood; and (3) and a not-altogether-orthodox Christian in mature adulthood.

“Too much of the effort to prove that Abraham Lincoln was a Christian,” Barton wrote, “has begun and ended in the effort to show that on certain theological opinions he cherished correct opinions.” Lincoln didn’t. For example, he evidently believe in evolution and universal salvation, and he had doubts about Christ’s virgin birth.

“Abraham Lincoln was not a theologian,” Barton went on to say, “and several of his theological opinions may have been incorrect; but there is good reason to believe that he was a true Christian.” By this, Barton meant that Lincoln had “a right attitude toward spiritual realities and practical duties.” (In my opinion, Lincoln was neither an infidel nor an orthodox Christian, but something in between.)

Barton concluded his study with “a series of short quotations [of Lincoln’s] from documents, letters, and addresses, certified authentic and touching directly upon points of Christian doctrine.” He organized these quotations into what he called “The Creed of Abraham Lincoln in His Own Words.”

In honor of Lincoln’s birthday—he was born on February 12, 1809—I’ve posted that creed below, adding footnotes that link individual phrases to their sources in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. This is the online version of Roy P. Bassler’s authoritative series of the same name.

The Creed of Abraham Lincoln in His Own Words[1]

I believe in God, the Almighty Ruler of Nations,[2] our great and good and merciful Maker,[3] our Father in Heaven, who notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads.[4]

I believe in His eternal truth and justice.[5]

I recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blest whose God is the Lord.[6]

I believe that it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit; to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.[7]

I believe that it is meet and right to recognize and confess the presence of the Almighty Father equally in our triumphs and in those sorrows[8] which we may justly fear are a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our reformation.[9]

I believe that the Bible is the best gift which God has ever given to men. All the good from the Saviour of the world is communicated to us through this book.[10]

I believe the will of God prevails.[11] Without Him all human reliance is vain.[12] Without the assistance of that Divine Being, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail.[13]

Being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, I desire that all my works and acts may be according to His will; and that it may be so, I give thanks to the Almighty, and seek His aid.[14]

I have a solemn oath registered in heaven[15] to finish the work I am in,[16] in full view of my responsibility to my God,[17] with malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives me to see the right.[18] Commending those who love me to His care, as I hope in their prayers they will commend me,[19] I look through the help of God to a joyous meeting with many loved ones gone before.[20]

 

Notes

[1] William E. Barton, The Soul of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 300. This book is a reprint of the 1920 first edition published by George H. Doran Co. Chapter XXIII is titled, “The Creed of Abraham Lincoln.”

[2] “First Inaugural Address—Final Text,” March 4, 1861.

[3] “To John D. Johnston,” January 12, 1851.

[4] Ibid.

[5] “First Inaugural Address.”

[6] “Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day,” March 30, 1863.

[7] Ibid.

[8] “Proclamation of Thanksgiving,” July 15, 1863.

[9] “Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day.”

[10] “Reply to Loyal Colored People of Baltimore upon Presentation of a Bible,” September 7, 1864.

[11] “Meditation on the Divine Will,” [September 2, 1862?].

[12] “To the Friends of Union and Liberty,” May 9, 1864.

[13] “Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois,” February 11, 1861.

[14] “Reply to Eliza P. Gurney,” October 26, 1862.

[15] “First Inaugural Address.”

[16] “Second Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1865.

[17] “Message to Congress,” March 6, 1862.

[18] “Second Inaugural Address.”

[19] “Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois.”

[20] “To John D. Johnston.”

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The Lost History of Christianity | Book Review


“Religions die,” writes Philip Jenkins in The Lost History of Christianity. “Over the course of history, some religions vanish altogether, while others are reduced from great world faiths to a handful of adherents” (p. 1). While contemporary Christians might like to think that this statement applies to other religions—after all, who worships the Greek pantheon today?—the sobering truth is in history, Christianity has experienced reduction in the historic heartlands of its faith. As Jenkins shows, for a thousand years, Christianity was the dominant religion in the Middle East, North Africa, and western Asia, but now it is at best a minority faith in those lands, if it survives at all. The Lost History of Christianity is a narrative of its rise and fall, as well as a richly textured explanation of why this happened. A valuable, insightful book!

Book Reviewed
Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died (New York: HarperOne, 2008).

P.S. If you found this review helpful, please vote “Yes” on my Amazon.com review page.

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