Quick to Listen

In 2013, IBT Media purchased the acclaimed American magazine Newsweek. This acquisition had immediate positive effects for the floundering publication when its new owners announced a return to print. But some wondered about the identity and desired endgame of its new owners. “Who’s Behind Newsweek?” asked a 2014 Mother Jones report. “Why are the new owners so anxious to hide their ties to an enigmatic religious figure?” The article went on to identify the true owner of the publication as Korean religious figure David Jang, whom CT had profiled two years earlier. “The Second Coming Christ Controversy” explained that Jang and his followers had founded a number of media outlets including The Christian Post, Christian Today, and the International Business Times. In addition, they’d started a Christian college in California known as Olivet University (no relation to Olivet Nazarene University) and were key influencers in the World Evangelical Alliance. But the group wasn’t just a Korean evangelical ministry expanding its ministry to the West. Sources also alleged that the group had encouraged the belief that Jang was the “Second Coming Christ.” In the years since CT and Mother Jones’s reporting (much of which revealed illegal work arrangements for Olivet’s primarily immigrant students), IBT Media (now known as Newsweek Media Group) has experienced a number of controversies. Last week, three editors were fired after fighting with management over what they believed had been a breach of journalistic ethics in this story, “Why is the Manhattan DA looking at Newsweek’s ties to a Christian university?” Ben Dooley, who authored Mother Jones’s piece, joined associate digital media producer and former Christian Post reporter Morgan Lee and editorial director and co-author of CT’s 2012 Jang report Ted Olsen to discuss the group’s bizarre theological claims, how their media properties relate to their desire for influence in the evangelical world, and whether this latest controversy will change anything about how they operate.

Evangelist Billy Graham died this week. Christianity Today published more than two dozen articles on our site as part of our special commemorative coverage. But when you lived 99 years it can be hard to capture a life, even with this volume of pieces. This week on Quick to Listen historian and author of America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation Grant Wacker joined associate editor Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to talk about the regrets, paradoxes, and surprises of the life of the most prolific religious people our time.

Is suffering from mental illness the result of personal sin? Last week, many Christians felt two prominent evangelical ministries affirmed that this was the case. At last week’s evangelical women’s conference the IF Gathering, speaker Rebekah Lyons, in telling about her daughter’s anxiety attacks, suggested that mental illness could be healed through prayer. The incidents at IF occurred several days after John Piper’s Desiring God ministry tweeted “We will find mental health when we stop staring in the mirror, and fix our eyes on the strength and beauty of God.” Nearly 500 people responded to the tweet, saying that the message implied that counselors and medication were unnecessary to cure mental illness. Both ministries later distanced themselves from these comments. IF Gathering founder Jennie Allen later clarified that the ministry supports counseling/medication and doesn't think mental illness is sinful. Desiring God apologized for “leaving off the link that gives the context quoting Clyde Kilby from more than 40 years ago when ‘mental health’ didn’t have the same technical connotations as today.” This link between mental illness, sin, and spirituality “isn’t really a Christian or religious idea,” says Amy Simpson, the author of Troubled Minds: Mental Illness and the Church’s Mission. “It’s really rooted in superstition and a misunderstanding of what mental illness is,” said Simpson. In the 20th century, psychiatry and psychology were heavily secular practices and Sigmund Freud saw religion itself as a form of neurosis. “Many people responded to that, distancing themselves from psychiatry and psychology and thinking they’re anti-God, they’re anti-religion, they’re anti-faith, therefore we don’t want to have anything to do with them,” said Simpson. Simpson joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss spiritual oppression and mental illness in the Gospels, how our understanding of the brain has transformed in the past 50 years, and where sin fits into this discussion.

The ancient Olympics lasted more than a millennium before they were stopped by—you guessed it—Christians. It’s true: In AD 390, Emperor Theodosius I criticized the games as pagan and banned them. Ironically or not, faith also played a role in the beginning of the modern Olympics. One of the theologies undergirding the resurrection of the Olympics was “muscular Christianity,” a philosophy of “developing leaders with moral integrity and grit while also being physically strong,” said Nicholas Watson, a professor of sport and social justice at York St John University in the United Kingdom. “[Modern Olympics father] Baron de Coubertin’s vision and philosophy for the Olympics came by welding together ideas from the philosophy of the ancient Olympics in Greece and muscular Christianity that was birthed in the UK,” Watson said. This week on Quick to Listen, Watson joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss Western Christian beliefs about exercise in the 19th century, why world peace was a goal sought by the Olympics’ creators, and the countercultural narrative presented by the Special Olympics.

Last week, the US Senate confirmed Sam Brownback as America’s next ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. The appointment came six months after President Trump had nominated the former Kansas Republican governor. Brown’s position is part of the Office of International Religious Freedom (IRF), a State Department office which monitors persecution and discrimination on a global scale. Created during the Clinton administration in 1998, the IRF exists as part of a larger American foreign policy strategy of promoting international religious freedom. “It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do,” said Melissa Rogers, who previously served as the executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Obama administration. “We find that when societies embrace religious liberty for all, they reap all kinds of benefits like building a more peaceful, just, stable, and more productive society. It makes the world a more peaceful and productive place.” Rogers joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the US strategies for advocating for religious freedom, why Western Christians’ speaking up for religious minorities in their own nation helps the persecuted church overseas, and if this office is just another way America imposes its values on other countries.

Writer Rod Dreher’s recent comments on poverty and immigration have sparked intense criticism by Christians and non-Christians alike. In a recent post, Dreher wrote about his conflicted feelings on Trump’s derogatory remarks about African countries by drawing a comparison to immigrants from these countries and public housing: Let’s think about Section 8 housing. If word got out that the government was planning to build a housing project for the poor in your neighborhood, how would you feel about it? Be honest with yourself. Nobody would consider this good news. You wouldn’t consider it good news because you don’t want the destructive culture of the poor imported into your neighborhood. Drive over to the poor part of town, and see what a s---hole it is. Do you want the people who turned their neighborhood a s---hole to bring the s---hole to your street? No, you don’t. Be honest, you don’t. Russell Jeung has lived with his family for more than two decades in one of Oakland, California’s most dangerous neighborhoods. While Jeung loves his community, living in the Murder Dubs hasn’t always been easy. When he was a graduate student, his laptop was stolen. He’s also witnessed shootings and knows sex traffickers work out of his neighborhood. “Do we want the poor’s ‘destructive culture’? No, of course not. The poor don’t want the destructive culture in their own communities,” said Jeung, who is also the chair of Asian American studies department at San Francisco State University. “Nobody wants murder, violence, or theft...All God’s children long for his wholeness, long for life to be lived under his rule and to have that peace and justice.” Russell joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss our tendency to overly romanticize or stigmatize the poor, the best and worst times of life in Murder Dubs, and how Christians should decide where they live.

“This is Your Brain on Trump TV,” is the title of a recent piece at The American Conservative published in between the president’s incendiary tweets about North Korea and his leaked disparaging remarks about those from African countries and Haiti. While the former comments caused concern, the latter led to what has now become a routine cycle of debate, criticism, analysis, and pushback. “Trump fascinates all Americans, it seems,” wrote Gracy Olmstead. “We hate him or love him, fear him or idolize him.” Christians are not immune to these reactions, a state that can often leave news consumers exhausted, burned out, and unclear about how to separate inflammatory but ultimately unsubstantial reports from stories reporting on news with severe or dire consequences. “The style of Trump’s comments are like something you’d expect to see out of a soap opera or something on TV and yet they’re happening in the real world, so how are supposed to react to something that in essence seems too incendiary or sensational to take seriously but could threaten nuclear war?” said Olmstead. “What’s the wise and measured stance to take as a media person? As a citizen?” Olmstead joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss how to avoid news burnout, the media’s particular challenge in the Trump era and internet age, and the extraordinary prescience of Neil Postman.

In 2001, a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck El Salvador, killing nearly 1,000 people. In the wake of the humanitarian disaster triggered by the natural disaster, the United States welcomed nearly 200,000 Salvadorans to live and work legally. (Undocumented Salvadorans already in America could also apply for status.) For more than 15 years, this population has existed under temporary protected status. This week, the Trump administration announced that this program will end in fall 2019. “We’re in 2018, 17 years on, and the country has in fact largely recovered from the earthquakes. The Trump administration at least on that point is absolutely correct,” said Stephen Offutt, an associate professor of development studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. “What’s not been taken into account is the fact that El Salvador is still a dangerous place.” While Salvadorian churches at times offer the only options for gang members hoping to leave that life behind, “that’s not the whole story,” said Offutt. Instead, as CT reported last year, pastors and other religious leaders have been kidnapped or extorted by the gangs. “One of the reasons I respect pastors in these communities so much is because they stay there,” he said. Offutt joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and guest host, managing editor Andy Olsen, to discuss how US immigration policies may defund Salvadorean churches, the intensity of the violence in the country, and how pastors instruct their congregations to interact with gangs.

For more than a week, thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets to protest their government. Spurred by anger over a weak economy and increasing fuel and food prices, their grievances accompany frustration that loosening economic sanctions have had little effect on their everyday lives. Nearly all the protesters are Muslims—no surprise in a country where 99 percent of the population adheres to Islam. Despite Muslims’ numeric dominance, some researchers say there’s no country in the world where Christianity is growing faster than in Iran today, according to David Yeghnazar, the executive director of Elam Ministries, a nonprofit that serves Iranian Christians. “Iranians have become the most open people to the gospel,” said Yeghnazar. Unlike in other parts of the Middle East, the country’s historic churches have increasingly taken on an evangelistic role and committed themselves to praying for nonbelievers in their country, he says. Yeghnazar joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss how Iranian Christians feel about the latest protests, how recent political history has opened the country to the gospel, and how long Christianity has existed in Persia.

This episode previously aired in January 2017 and showcases some of what we believe Quick to Listen does best. Enjoy and see you next year! --- So, fake news. In recent months, these two words have been used as a weapon by the president to discredit the media (e.g., CNN) or describe the fabrication of a bogus report on Clinton voter fraud. Fake news isn’t new—nearly a decade ago, people started sharing reports of Barack Obama’s alleged Muslim faith as fact. Further, Christians have at times been responsible for spreading these false reports. (“I think it’s really important for your readers to know that I have been a member of the same church for almost 20 years, and I have never practiced Islam,” Obama told CT back in 2008.) But at least one Christian can take credit for challenging the church and society to take the information age much more seriously. Twentieth century French Christian philosopher Jacques Ellul thought deeply about the impact of mainstream media. Ellul was particularly interested in the century’s obsession with efficiency, says Lisa Richmond, who recently translated his Presence in the Modern World from French. When this was concept was applied to communication, Ellul referred to it as a propaganda. “Propaganda, to Ellul, is a way of using language and images to accomplish a particular objective. It is the most effective way to achieve the outcome that you want to get,” said Richmond, paraphrasing Ellul. “Ellul would argue that for the propagandist, truth is simply a tool to be used when it is the most effective way to accomplish your goal. If it is not the most effective way, then you use falsehood.” Our society has largely learned to communicate within this framework, says Robinson. “Once propaganda is at work in society, it forces other people to engage propaganda,” she said. “That can be contrasted with an ethical true desire to communicate in which our hope is that we understand truth more fully. That’s not the objective of the propagandist. It is to accomplish a certain outcome. If truth serves that outcome, great. If not, discard it.” Robinson joined assistant editor Morgan Lee and editor-in-chief Mark Galli to discuss how propaganda gives us a sense of belonging, why Christians are complicit in our culture of information overload, and whether journalists can ever escape bias.

Once a year, many Christian international anti-poverty nonprofits release Christmas catalogs filled with items they hope you’ll purchase—only the gifts aren’t for anyone you know. Instead, most catalogs sent by groups like World Vision, Heifer International, and Compassion International boast items like livestock and other agricultural products that they’re hoping you’ll buy for those in need overseas. But is the strategy the best model to fight poverty? Why not give cash? “We tend to trust our family members with cash gifts,” said economist Bruce Wydick. “But in the past, at least, we’ve had much less trust for how people spend cash.” In CT’s December cover story, Wydick explores research that suggests giving cash may be one of the best ways to fight poverty. “One of the things that’s liberating about this system is that people are accountable to themselves for how they use the money,” he said. “No one is holding their hand, telling them they should do this or that.” Wydick joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the biblical tension between generosity and accountability, fighting paternalism in development work, and how cell phones connect to fighting poverty.

Last week, President Trump announced that the United States would be moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While many Middle Eastern Christians have been critical of this decision, some American evangelical leaders have praised the move. “I think a lot of evangelicals support Israel for a sense of justice,” said Gerald McDermott, the author of Israel Matters: Why Christians Must Think Differently about the People and the Land. “They see Israel as a light of freedom and democracy in a Middle East that is filled with the darkness of tyranny.” McDermott, who has traveled to Israel more than a dozen times, acknowledged that the move can make things complicated for Palestinian Christians. “They’re rightly afraid that anything the United States does will be used again them by their Muslim cousins,” said McDermott. “They’re often considered subversives because they’re Christians, the United States is considered a Christian country, and anything the United States does that the Palestinian leadership doesn’t like must be supported by Palestinian Christians.” McDermott joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss whether Christians should care about the location of the American embassy, the divide between Middle Eastern and American Christians over Jerusalem’s recognition as Israel’s capital, and where biblical prophecy fits into this discussion.

Earlier this week, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM) released a statement addressing its namesake’s credentials, which have recently been under fire. “In earlier years, ‘Dr.’ did appear before Ravi’s name in some of our materials, including on our website, which is an appropriate and acceptable practice with honorary doctorates,” stated RZIM. “However, because this practice can be contentious in certain circles, we no longer use it.” From CT’s report: "According to the biography currently posted on RZIM’s website, Zacharias received a master of divinity degree from Trinity International University and 'has conferred ten honorary doctorates, including a Doctor of Laws and a Doctor of Sacred Theology. "Up until earlier this year, the RZIM bio had not used the phrase 'honorary doctorates;' instead, it had stated that Zacharias had been 'honored with the conferring of six doctoral degrees.' The site also previously referred to him as 'Dr. Zacharias' through 2014, as did multiple press releases, news features, and event postings." Apologist and religious studies professor John G. Stackhouse wasn’t surprised by the news. “There’s a long and not very edifying tradition of Christian evangelists and speakers inflating their credentials,” said Stackhouse. Stackhouse says that he personally confronted two RIZM employees about problems he saw with Zacharias’s credentials but that no changes were made after the conversation. “Ravi Zacharias is the biggest name in apologetics currently,” said Stackhouse. “As he goes, so goes apologetics so it’s really important that he be scrupulous in everything he does.” Stackhouse recently joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss the temptation for Christian leaders to inflate their credentials and achievements, what responsibility the church has in encouraging that sort of behavior, and how we might better hold each other accountable.

Pope Francis’ trip to Myanmar this week has highlighted its small but inspiring Christian community. Less than 10 percent of the population, Christians are most likely to be represented in the country’s minority ethnic groups, communities that have long clashed with the Buddhist-influenced federal government. Despite this decades’ long violence that’s persisted even as the country has transitioned to a constitutional democracy, the Christian community has remained passionate about their faith, says Steve Gumaer, the founder of Partners Relief & Development, a ministry that has long worked with Myanmar’s minority ethnic communities. “These young guys were running around in a war zone where people were getting raped and killed and beaten to death and they were out there starting churches among these displaced people,” said Gumaer, who first traveled to the country in the 1990s. “I was completely inspired and blown away.” Gumaer joined associate digital media producer Morgan Lee and editor in chief Mark Galli to discuss Burmese Christians support of the persecuted Rohingya, how Christianity first traveled to Myanmar and why the Pope’s visit has disappointed him.

We asked you to write us reviews and ask us questions. Many of you did! This week on Quick to Listen, hosts Morgan Lee and Mark Galli offer you their thoughts on changing people’s minds, where evangelicalism is headed, and their favorite music of the year. Also, Morgan shares another secret talent! Thanks everyone for listening and happy Thanksgiving!