Author: Shalem John

“We’d rather be free than have it be fair.” Laura Gideon, a Christian homeschooling advocate, repeated the line from the rotunda of the Iowa State Capitol, where parents sat in rows of chairs alongside school-aged kids and babies sleeping in strollers. Homeschool Iowa’s annual Capitol Day, held in early April, invites families to Des Moines to hear speakers, tour the Capitol, and talk with legislators.   Gideon, director of public relations for Classical Conversations, a Christian homeschool program, argued that parents should be “left alone to shoulder the God-given responsibility to train up their children in the way they should go.”…

Most Canadian evangelicals have not heard their pastor speak about medical assistance in dying (MAID), even as the legal bar for euthanasia has been lowered and the number of deaths has rapidly risen to nearly 5 percent of all deaths annually. “The silence has been deafening,” Heidi Janz, a disabilities ethicist who has tried to rally churches against the law, told Christianity Today. “We’re just collectively shrugging our shoulders.” The rapid acceptance of MAID and the sharp increase in the number of deaths from about 1,000 in 2016 to more than 13,000 a year caught many clergy by surprise, according…

Outreach-minded evangelicals have often argued that church buildings need to be less “churchy” to draw in would-be seekers. But that might not actually be true, according to recent research from Barna Group and Aspen Group asking a representative sample of 2,000 Americans questions about the architecture of sacred spaces. When Americans close their eyes, they can picture a church. Even if they rarely or never attend one, they have an idea of what a church should look and feel like—and a preference. That preference is quite traditional.  Nearly 90 percent of Americans say a church should be “easily identifiable,” and…