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When is Christmas? That depends on the person asking

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When is Christmas? That depends on the person asking

On church calendars, parents and grandparents circle this December event with red ink.

The problem for clergy is simple: When do they schedule that special Christmas service, or that concert full of Christmas classics?

"Evangelicals, and especially Baptists, tend to be rather pragmatic about these decisions. We want the most bang for our bucks and we want as many people as possible" in the pews, said Joshua Waggener, professor of church music and worship at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

One thing is certain: "You have to have those little kids up there singing 'Little Drummer Boy.' It's pragmatic. For most people, I don't think theology has anything to do with" the timing.

This reality affects when churches schedule special events, especially in December -- when their members wrestle with school calendars, travel, office parties, family traditions and, yes, worship services. Meanwhile, civic groups, shopping malls and mass media offer "The Holidays," a cultural tsunami that begins weeks before Thanksgiving.

In churches with centuries of liturgical traditions, the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ is Dec. 25, following the quiet season of Advent (Latin for "toward the coming"). This year, Christmas falls on Sunday and, for Catholics, Anglicans and others, the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass is one of the year's most popular rites. This opens a festive season that continues through Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. Many Eastern Orthodox Christians follow the ancient Julian calendar and celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7, after Nativity Lent.

In the United States, some kind of Christmas Eve service remains the big draw, according to almost half (48%) of Protestant pastors contacted in a new study by Lifeway Research. The frequency of high-attendance church events builds until Christmas Eve, then declines sharply.

In this survey, mainline Protestant clergy (60%) were more likely than evangelicals (44%) to say Christmas Eve rites drew the most people, with Lutherans (84%) being the most likely to worship on Christmas Eve. In general, evangelical pastors (30%) said their high-attendance events came during the third week of December (30%).

Some churches fared better than others with events earlier in December.

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Latest empty tomb, inc., numbers: Do churches still have funds for charity and missions?

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Latest empty tomb, inc., numbers: Do churches still have funds for charity and missions?

Back in the heady church-growth days of the 1980s and 1990s, researchers John and Sylvia Ronsvalle began hearing caution creep into their interviews with church leaders.

Denominational leaders were especially uncomfortable when asked about declines in giving to overseas missions and projects to help the poor.

Sylvia Ronsvalle said the leader of one large congregation gave this blunt response: "Ah! No! We can't promote missions because there won't be enough for our seminaries." She responded: "Well, I think people would be more interested in your seminaries if you were actually impacting global needs in Jesus' name."

That encounter, and many others, ended up in "Behind the Stained Glass Windows: Money Dynamics in the Church," one of many publications the Ronsvalles have produced while leading empty tomb, inc. Their center also serves as a hub for missions in Champaign, Illinois, their home for 50 years.

Danger signs began decades ago. Giving to religious groups -- defined in terms of potential donations based on after-tax incomes -- peaked in 1960 and then began to decline, even as church membership numbers and budgets kept rising.

This trend "pre-dated many of the controversial issues that were to emerge by the end of the 1960s," noted the 31st annual empty tomb report, based on 2019 numbers. In mainline and evangelical denominations "per member giving in current dollars, as well as in inflation-adjusted dollars and as a portion of income" was lower in 2019 than the year before.

Then COVID-19 hit. But the pandemic's impact in pews only made an ongoing charity funding crisis more obvious, said Sylvia Ronsvalle, in a telephone interview.

Membership and worship attendance numbers plummeted in recent decades in mainline churches and are now declining or plateaued in many evangelical groups. Meanwhile, marriage and birth rates keep falling, while the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans -- the so-called "Nones" -- keeps rising.

The result is a survival mindset in which religious leaders focus on the "bottom line," leading to fewer efforts to support mission work of all kinds.

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Olasky flashback: Back to the evangelical clashes over character and two-party politics

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Olasky flashback: Back to the evangelical clashes over character and two-party politics

It was totally logical for the Southern Baptist Convention to pass its "Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials" in 1998.

Consider this "whereas" clause: "Some journalists report that many Americans are willing to excuse or overlook immoral or illegal conduct by unrepentant public officials so long as economic prosperity prevails." This was followed by: "Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in God's judgment."

Thus, the SBC urged American leaders to "live by the highest standards of morality both in their private actions and in their public duties."

Yes, this resolution passed soon after the infamous claim by President Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist, that "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

It was easy to predict who thought Clinton should exit the White House, noted conservative writer Marvin Olasky, who was writing "The American Leadership Tradition: Moral Vision from Washington to Clinton" at that time.

"In poker, you really don't know what cards someone has," said Olasky, reached by telephone. "You can't tell, with certainty, the character of a politician. … In that book, I argued that the state of a man's marriage was a strong tell. If he's faithful in his marriage, he's likely to be faithful to the nation."

Olasky's fellow religious conservatives praised the book. But things changed when he wrote a World magazine essay in 2016 entitled, "Unfit for power," arguing that Donald Trump should step aside as the Republican nominee.

"Clinton had denied having a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but her stained blue dress bearing Clinton's DNA was proof that he had used his power for adulterous purposes, and then lied about it," wrote Olasky. Then there was the videotape showing "Trump making lewd remarks about groping women's genitals. While many opponents … have criticized Trump's character, the video gave us new information about how Trump views power as a means to gratify himself."

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2022 update: Catholic doctrines on sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven have changed?

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2022 update: Catholic doctrines on sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven have changed?

For centuries, Irish Catholics heard priests deliver sermons about sin, hell, repentance, grace and heaven.

Times have changed and an 80-year-old priest in County Kerry didn't get the memo.

"How will people know that God wants to forgive them if we don't tell them?", said Father Sean Sheehy, preaching as a substitute priest at St. Mary's Church, Listowel. "How will people who are lost, be found, if we -- as God's people -- don't call them and say, 'Look, God loves you. He has come to call sinners. But he wants you to have life, and to have it to the full'? …That's what he wants. He wants you to live life to the fullest."

The problem was that Sheehy's October 30 sermon stressed ancient Catholic doctrines on behaviors many modern Catholics refuse to call "sins."

This caused a media storm, including this Irish Times headline: "Fr Sheen Sheehy's Listowel sermon was an uncomfortable reminder of who we really were." Also, Kerry Bishop Ray Browne apologized, after 20-plus parishioners walked out of the rite, and barred Sheehy from saying Mass until the parish priest returns to the altar.

During his sermon, Sheehy fiercely condemned core doctrines of the Sexual Revolution, while defending Catholic teachings on marriage and sex.

"What is so sad today is you rarely hear about sin but it's rampant. It's rampant," he said. "We see it, for example, in the legislation of our governments. We see it in the promotion of abortion. We see it in the example of this lunatic approach of transgenderism. We see it, for example, in the promotion of sex between two men and two women.

"That is sinful, that is mortal sin and people don't seem to realize it. … And we need to listen to God about it -- because if we don't, then there is no hope for those people."

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Do American believers really want to sit in pews surrounded by their political clones?

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Do American believers really want to sit in pews surrounded by their political clones?

Just over half of churchgoing American Protestants went into the tense midterm elections believing that the people in the pews around them would vote the same way they did.

A Lifeway Research online survey in September found that 50% of those in its national panel agreed with the statement, "I prefer to attend a church where people share my political beliefs, while 55% agreed that "My political views match those of most people at my church." At the same time, 10% were not sure about the first question and 22% the second.

"What we are seeing is a pretty complex situation," said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research. While churchgoers are divided on the need for political uniformity in their pews, there are enough believers who take that stance to prove that "this is not one or two people that pastors need to talk to and try to understand. This is a GROUP of people in most of our churches and that's something pastors have to deal with now."

This new survey began with questions used in 2017, he noted, and while the results are similar some new trends are clear. In the earlier survey, 51% of the respondents felt their church was politically homogenous, with only 11% "strongly" agreeing. Now, 21% strongly agree. Also, a rising number of believers assume they can predict the politics of others in their churches. In 2017, 30% were unsure if they shared the views of others in their congregations, but that number dropped to 22% this time.

In a survey result clashing with a popular stereotype, those with evangelical beliefs (44%) were less likely than non-evangelicals (54%) to say they wanted a church in which believers shared their political views. The survey defined "evangelical" in doctrinal terms, stressing beliefs such as, "The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe" and "Only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God's free gift of eternal salvation." Other significant results included:

* Methodists (88%) and those attending Restorationist movement congregations, such as the Churches of Christ, were more likely (80%) to seek political unity in the pews. Among other flocks, Baptists (47%), Presbyterians (47%), Lutherans (38%) and nondenominational believers (38%) were less likely to do so.

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LGBTQ Catholic voices rising as Vatican's Synod on Synodality gains momentum

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LGBTQ Catholic voices rising as Vatican's Synod on Synodality gains momentum

The "Chain of Discipleship" image showed five Catholics celebrating at a church, including a woman in priest's vestments and a person in a rainbow-letters "pride" shirt who is shouting, "We are the young people of the future and the future is now."

This art from the Philadelphia Catholic Higher Education Synod rocked Catholic social media -- especially when it appeared on the Synod of Bishops Facebook page, linked to the ongoing Synod on Synodality that began in 2021.

Catholics at the local, regional and national levels are sending the Vatican input about the church's future. A North Carolina parish submitted testimony from "Matthew (not his real name)," who had been recognized as his Catholic high school's most popular teacher. While "hiding his homosexuality," he married "his partner elsewhere."

"They decide to foster, love and adopt young children internationally," said this report. "Matthew's greatest sadness is that he has to hide his sexuality in order to keep his job in a church institution and that he does not feel welcome in the Catholic Church precisely because of his sexuality which he considers God-given, and this despite his attempt to love the poor and destitute through his pro-life decision to adopt."

Case studies of this kind recently led Belgian bishops to approve a document -- "On Pastoral Closeness to Homosexual People" (.pdf here) -- containing a rite for priests blessing same-sex couples. The bishops appointed a gay layman as inter-diocesan coordinator for LGBTQ care in a land in which 3.6% of baptized Catholics attend Mass on an average Sunday.

Meanwhile, it's important that a Vatican working document includes the term LGBTQ and even LGBTQIA in discussions of topics once considered forbidden, said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, a Catholic gay-rights network pushed aside during the Pope St. John Paul II era.

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Why fairy stories still matter, in an age of secular myths and marvels

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Why fairy stories still matter, in an age of secular myths and marvels

Demons appear on movie screens all the time, but poet Richard Rohlin is convinced he has actually seen them at work when counseling young people whose search for meaning has driven them deep into experiments with sex, drugs and the occult.

"The stories that I can't tell would curl your toenails," he said, speaking at the Eighth Day Institute in Wichita, Kansas. "If you think that these spiritual realities are not still with us, you are deluding yourself. ... The magic is coming back into the world. Something is happening and it is not an unqualified good."

The young people he works with in Dallas are not interested in sermons and detailed descriptions of why their lives are broken. But they are open to fantasies, myths and tales -- ancient and modern -- about unseen, spiritual realities that interact with their lives.

Millions of Americans know where to find stories about angels, demons, warriors, seers, giants, demigods and heroic kings and queens. They head straight to movie theaters and cable television, where they find entire universes of content offering visions of fantastic worlds. The last place they would seek inspiration of this kind is in churches.

The irony is that some of these works draw inspiration from the fantasy classics celebrated in the ecumenical Eighth Day Institute's annual fall celebration of The Inklings, a mid-20th Century circle of Christian writers in Oxford, England, that included C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others.

This year's lectures focused on Scottish writer George MacDonald, often called the "grandfather of the Inklings," who is best known for "Phantastes," "The Golden Key," "Lilith" and many other works. The festival included Celtic and folk musicians, along with workshops on topics such as "The Art of Making Mead" and "Publishing for the Moral Imagination."

The goal of MacDonald and The Inklings, noted Rohlin, was to reclaim an older vision of life in which physical realities corresponded to spiritual realities and nothing was considered purely material. The real divide was between "the seen and the unseen," not between the "spiritual and the material."

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Apostasy? That word led Bishop FitzSimons Allison out of the Episcopal Church

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Apostasy? That word led Bishop FitzSimons Allison out of the Episcopal Church

It has been three decades since the Rt. Rev. C. FitzSimons Allison took his first step away from his life as one of the Episcopal Church's strongest evangelical voices.

That tentative move took place in a small-group discussion during an Episcopal House of Bishops meeting in Kanuga, N.C., during his final year serving as the 12th bishop of the historic Diocese of South Carolina. The topic that day was, "Why are we dysfunctional?"

Allison attacked Episcopal priests and seminary professors who were openly proclaiming their faith in an ancient, erotic, divine spirit "older and greater" than the God of the Bible. There was, Allison said, a clear, ancient word for that -- "apostasy."

Other bishops said they had no problem accepting clergy who were testing the boundaries of ancient Christian doctrines.

After that clash, Allison remained in his pew and declined to share the consecrated bread and wine during a Holy Eucharist with the entire House of Bishops. He didn't publicly discuss this act of broken Communion for several years, but his silent protest was a poignant symbol of early cracks forming in the global Anglican Communion.

Now the 95-year-old bishop has officially resigned his status as an Episcopal bishop, making his departure official. Two weeks ago, he wrote U.S. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry to clarify that he had been received into the Anglican Church in North America -- a body recognized as valid by many Anglican bishops in Africa, Asia and the Global South, but not by the Archbishop of Canterbury or leaders in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

"Some people said that I didn't need to do this, because everyone knows where I stand," said Allison, reached by telephone. "But I felt, the way things have been going, that I still needed to make things official. That's just the way I am."

Allison was ordained as a priest in 1953 and then received a doctorate from Oxford University.

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Loretta Lynn's art put rhinestone feminism and Gospel truth in the same package

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Loretta Lynn's art put rhinestone feminism and Gospel truth in the same package

On many Sundays, Loretta Lynn sent her social-media followers a thought for the day from Scripture.

Two days before her death at her ranch in Hurricane Mills, Tenn., the 90-year-old country-music legend posted two verses, repeating the second verse to stress her point.

Lynn's final Instagram post said: "Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. John 3:20-21"

The feisty superstar experienced plenty of darkness and light and shared the gritty details in a career that changed the role of women in Nashville. Lynn was raised poor in the Kentucky hills and spent years in church pews before she started singing in honky-tonks. Her husband Oliver "Dolittle" Lynn struggled with alcoholism, but they stuck together in a union that inspired songs about love and loyalty, as well as break-ups and fist fights, such as "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind)."

Lynn vowed to tell the truth about both sides of her life. She loved to sing hymns and gospel music, while critics hailed the rhinestone feminism of her hits such as "You Ain't Woman Enough," "The Pill," "Rated X" and "You're Looking at Country."

In her "Coal Miner's Daughter" memoir, Lynn described her faith journey: "I believed it all, but for some reason I was never baptized. After I started in music, I got away from going to church and reading the Bible. I believe I was living the way God meant me to, but I wasn't giving God the right attention."

In that same 1976 memoir, she added: "I'm trying to lead a good Christian life, especially since I got baptized two years ago. So there ain't too much spicy to tell about me -- just the truth." Christian Chronicle editor Bobby Ross, Jr., noted that she later added a strong kicker to that: "Nobody's perfect. The only one that ever was, was crucified.”

Anyone who explored the details of Lynn's life and music knew that she wasn't a good fit in the "elite feminist establishment" or among advocates of a "status-quo idea of domesticity," noted Russell Moore, Christianity Today's editor in chief.