Discovering Jonny Lang

I just downloaded Jonny Lang’s latest release, Turn Around (A&M Records). He camps out on the funk side of rhythm and blues, with some urban gospel mixed in as well. He sings a duet with Michael McDonald on “Thankful,” and other well-known artists join him at points: Buddy Miller, Sam Bass, Nickel Creek violinist Sara Watkins, and Steven Curtis Chapman, five- time Grammy winner and GMA's most awarded artist.

Now if we can just get Lang and Joss Stone together for a duet. Oh my. (I stand corrected: A quick Google search put Stone and Lang together for U2’s “When Love Comes to Town” on Herbie Hancock’s Possibilities. Too bad it’s only available for download when you buy the whole album.)

Regarding Turn Around, Lang told ModernRock.com, “Outwardly, I wouldn't consider it a Christian album. But a lot of songs are about my relationship with the Lord. Because of those changes in my life, they brought about restoration and healing to some things that were going on in my life and really made me a new person.”

Jonny Lang burst onto the mainstream music scene in 1996 at the age of 15, capturing critical acclaim with two million-selling albums for A&M -- 1997's Lie to Me and '98's Wander This World. He also toured with the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith and Sting and had a role in the movie Blues Brothers 2000.

Lang disappeared for a while, in part because of changes at his record label, and in part because of problems with drugs and alcohol. In 2002, Lang had a spiritual transformation, reflected on his 2003 release, Long Time Coming.

Now, three years in the making and ten years into his recording career, Turn Around is getting some real praise. “Nobody has sung soul with this much passion and energy since James Brown was at his peak in the sixties,” says The Phantom Tollbooth. “The title track ‘Turn Around’ alone is worth the price of the CD. There is an extended guitar solo by Lang that ranks up there with anything you have heard from Bonnie Raiit and Eric Clapton.”

I missed his Austin concert on his current tour. But I didn’t miss out on getting the album. You shouldn’t either.

You can listen to songs at his website and his MySpace page. ChristianMusicToday.com has a good review here.

Waiting on "The Perfect Righteous Human Being"

The writers at GetReligion.org critique the news media for their coverage of religious issues. It's worth a review at least once a week. On Monday, September 25, they posted comments about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address at the United Nations: "Waiting on the perfect righteous human being ." To introduce you to this important story and to GetReligion, I'm going to copy the entire post here:

Here is your first assignment as we start a new week. It has to do with the most amazing quotation from last week.

First, open Google. Now, insert — in direct quotation marks — the phrase “perfect righteous human being.” Search in the News category.

Now, what did you find? Not much.

This phrase is, of course, taken from the final act of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dramatic address at the United Nations. Click here for the full text, but here are the crucial quotes:

“I emphatically declare that today’s world, more than ever before, longs for just and righteous people with love for all humanity; and above all longs for the perfect righteous human being and the real savior who has been promised to all peoples and who will establish justice, peace and brotherhood on the planet.

“O, Almighty God, all men and women are your creatures and you have ordained their guidance and salvation. Bestow upon humanity that thirsts for justice, the perfect human being promised to all by you, and make us among his followers and among those who strive for his return and his cause.”

Does that sound familiar? Did you see this passage played over and over on the evening newscasts and debated on the niche-market shows on cable?

You didn’t?

To grasp the importance of what is happening in these paragraphs, please head on over to The New Republic (that right-wing rag to which we link quite a bit) and read the fairly recent cover story titled “Ahmadinejad’s Demons: A child of the revolution takes over” by Matthias Kuntzel.

Now, back to the United Nations. Try to imagine what would have happened if President George W. Bush had ended his U.N. address with a call for the second coming of Jesus Christ and pledged that he would strive to see this event come to pass, sooner rather than later. Imagine the mainstream media response. Do you think this would be mentioned in major media? Do you think journalists would jump to cover that topic (as well they should)?

Andrew Sullivan states the obvious, quite well, beginning with an appeal for readers to read the quotes in question a second time:

Ahmadinejad is calling upon God to bring about the coming of the Twelfth Imam (“the perfect human being promised to all by you”), who heralds the Apocalypse. He is also saying that he will “strive for his return.” It is the most terrifying statement any president of any nation has made to the U.N. We have a dictator on the brink of nukes, striving to accelerate the Apocalypse. Think of the Iranian regime as a nation-as-suicide-bomber. And anything serious we can do to prevent it may only make matters worse. No wonder Ahmadinejad smiles. Paradise beckons.

So why have newspaper readers and television viewers not been swamped with coverage of this part of this address? Why is that Google News search so wimpy?

Here is what Joel C. Rosenberg has to say over at National Review. I think you will not be surprised to learn that his argument, when boiled down to its essentials, is this: Too many people in the mainstream media simply do not get religion. But, beyond that, there is a good chance that many journalists are simply afraid to dig into the details of Ahmadinejad’s beliefs and his own unique faith journey (which includes some literal minefields).

It is, you see, much, much easier to stick to writing stories about the Left Behind novels. Saith Rosenberg:

American journalists aren’t asking Ahmadinejad about his Shiite religious beliefs, his fascination with the coming of the Islamic Messiah known as the “Twelfth Imam” or the “Mahdi,” his critique of President Bush’s faith in Jesus Christ and encouragement of President Bush to convert to Islam, and how such beliefs are driving Iranian foreign policy.

Time’s cover story and exclusive print interview with Ahmadinejad never broached the subject of his eschatology. Nor did [Brian] Williams. Nor did [Mike] Wallace. Nor does a just-released book, Confronting Iran: The Failure of American Foreign Policy And the Next Great Crisis in the Middle East, by British Iran expert Ali M. Ansari. Nor does almost any of the saturation coverage Ahmadinejad is receiving.

Journalists aren’t typically shy about asking tough, probing questions about the religious views of world leaders. President Bush has been grilled at length about being an evangelical Christian and how this informs his foreign policy, particularly with regards to Israel and the Middle East. Clearly the pope’s views of Christianity and Islam are now under fire. Why such hesitancy when it comes to the religious beliefs of a leader who has called for the Jewish state to be wiped off the planet and urges fellow Muslims to envision a world without the United States?

Good question. Of course, you knew that’s what we would think here at GetReligion.

Control the Definitions, Control the Debate

“We find ourselves mildly bemused by those benighted people who respect science but refuse to bow down to its unassailable authority.”

Okay, you won’t find that exact quote from Scientific American’s October editorial, “Let There Be Light.” But you’ll find that tone.

The editors say, “Science and faith can coexist happily as long as neither tries to take on the functions of the other.” Where is that dividing line? “Scientific research deals in what is measurable and definable,” they say, and “it cannot begin to study what might lie beyond the physical realm or to offer a comprehensive moral philosophy.”

With the theory of evolution being applied to why we have a longing for God and why we have the particular moral framework we have, I’d say that science has crossed that line time and again. Indeed, when they reach the end of their editorial, they refer to “the fault line between science and religion” as “illusory.” So, scientists like Francis Collins who have written books expressing their Christian belief “are not expressing a strictly scientific perspective,” the editors say. “Rather, they are struggling, as people always have, to reconcile their knowledge of a dispassionate universe with a heartfelt conviction in a more meaningful design.”

Read the carefully-chosen words of that last line again: it’s a “struggle” when you have to “reconcile” knowledge and heartfelt conviction. From the realm of “knowledge” we see a “dispassionate universe”—cold, meaningless, and unmindful of human existence. If one wants “a more meaningful design” to the universe, one has to stir it up with “heartfelt conviction.”

These are loaded words that express a strong bias: a meaningless view of the world equals “science” equals “knowledge.”

C.S. Lewis addressed this issue nearly sixty years ago in his important little book, The Abolition of Man, where he complained that our world is removing concepts of beauty and virtue and loyalty from the realm of what is objective and instead assigning the concepts to the wooly world of what is merely subjective. As a result, we a building “men without chests”--people without the moral backbone to sustain civil societies.

But it doesn’t take “heartfelt conviction” to fill the world with purpose. Instead, it just involves a decision to quit suppressing the evidence. Paul wrote in Romans 1:19-20 that people “suppress the truth.” Indeed, “what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. From the creation of the world His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse.”

In Chapter Five of my new book, The Anchor Course, I outline five realities about the natural world that will open our eyes to God once stop ignoring them. Attend Hillcrest during our current sermon series and receive a free copy (one per household), or order online.

Death for a Christian Convert

Ali Mustaf Maka'il is dead, and we should remember his family in prayer. Ali was a 22-year-old Somali college student and cloth merchant who converted from Islam to Christianity 11 months ago. A news report says he was shot in the back September 7 after he refused to join a crowd in Mogadishu that was chanting Quran verses in honor of the lunar eclipse.

Somali leaders are committed to implementing Sharia, or Islamic law, in the governance of the country. According to Sharia those who leave Islam for another religion are "apostates" and must be killed. Ali is the latest casualty in what observers fear is a growing persecution of the tiny Christian minority in Somalia.

There are complicated issues that transcend a simple religious explanation for persecution. Somalis look upon Christianity as the "mark" of their Ethiopean enemies and their former colonial masters, the Italians and the British. Thus, for a Somali like Ali to convert to Christianity is as much an act of disloyalty as it is apostacy in the eyes of his countrymen.

Still, the death of a Somali Christian convert who refused to participate in the community's Islamic prayers is reminder of how dangerous it is to be a Christian in much of the world.

In the 20th century, millions of Christians were killed in the name of atheistic communism (in fact, more Christians were killed in the 20th century than in the previous 19 centuries of Christianity). Communism has come and gone, but it looks like the 21st century will be just as bloody for many Christians because of Islam--the "religion of peace."

New Missionaries from Hillcrest

When the International Mission Board appointed 87 new missionaries on September 13 (read the story here), the ceremony included two members of our church. Daniel and Tiffany Kilcoyne will soon move to France to work with university ministry. We'll have our own commissioning service for them Wednesday, September 20, 6:30 p.m. in the Worship Center.

A Way to Wash Our Sins Away

In the article, "Washing Our Sins Away -- Literally?" ABC News reported on the linkage between moral guilt and the felt need to wash.

"Showering — a simple everyday activity — is linked to morality in a way we never knew," said study co-author Katie Liljenquist of Northwestern University.

Liljenquist and her colleagues asked a group of 60 college students to concentrate on either something ethical or unethical that they had done in the past. The researchers discovered that students who remembered their own unethical behavior were more likely to act as if they felt unclean.

For example, the students were given the word "W_ _ S" and asked to complete the letters. Students who reflected on an unethical memorywere more likely to say that the unfinished word was "WASH" instead of "WISH."

Again, when given the word "S _ _ P" they completed the letters as "SOAP" instead of "SOUP" or "STEP."

In another similar experiment, after students were asked to remember some ethical or unethical action from their past, each student was given a choice of two free gifts: a pencil or an antiseptic wipe. Sixty-six percent of the students who said they had recalled an unethical memory took the antiseptic wipe. It was as if they wanted to wipe themselves clean of the recollection.

It's a common impulse, universal across the cultures. "Wash away all my iniquity," King David called out to God in confession of his adultery, "and cleanse me from my sin" (Psalm 51:2). It's good to know God responds to that kind of heart cry.

In the New Testament, baptism symbolizes the cleansing power of Christ's sacrifice. After Ananias explained the gospel to Paul, he said, "And now, what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name" (Acts 22:16). It reminds me of a story of old Sam Houston. At 61, he became a believer and submitted to baptism in Rickey Creek. Cynical friends asked the dripping-wet Texas hero if he felt his sins had now been washed away. "Yes," said Houston, "and God help the fish down below!"

It' s been my privilege to officiate at this cleansing ceremony called baptism for numerous people across the years. If you live in the Austin area, let's talk about scheduling your baptism.

Islam and Forced Conversions

Ted Olsen often has some insightful commentary on daily news items at ChristianityToday.com's Weblog. In today's "Top Five," he complains about "Compulsion in Religion." It's worth reading his comments:

"There is no compulsion in religion," says the Qur'an. "We were forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint," says Steve Centanni, the Fox News correspondent who was kidnapped with cameraman Olaf Wiig. "Don't get me wrong here. I have the highest respect for Islam, and I learned a lot of good things about it, but it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn't know what the hell was going on," he said.

Hard news coverage of the forced conversion—which echoes the Jill Carroll kidnapping—has been limited. Discussion has been mostly limited to conservative columnists, op-ed writers, and bloggers. That's unfortunate, since it places the debate in a "neo-conservatives" vs. "Islamofascists" narrative instead of a larger
discussion of human rights.

Perhaps the reporters already feel defensive on the subject—The New York Times, among others, took much criticism for its initial headline, "2 Kidnapped Journalists in Gaza Freed Unharmed," before it changed it to "Fox News Journalists Free After Declaring Conversion on Tape."

And perhaps the wind was taken out of reporters' sails by Centanni's apparent enthusiasm for Islam (leading some to accuse him of Stockholm Syndrome) and his shrugging the conversion off as a minor inconvenience on the way to freedom.

But the compelled conversion story has moved on and grown beyond kidnapped reporters. Almost every day, of course, religious liberty watchdogs like Compass Direct and AsiaNews.it report stories of Christians forced to convert to Islam or punished for converting out of it. For whatever reason, those rarely attract mainstream news attention. But politics stories do attract mainstream news
attention, so it's a wonder that few reporters have tied the forced conversions to the new Al Qaeda video calling for Bush and non-Muslims in the United States to convert to Islam or "suffer the consequences."

"If the Zionist crusader missionaries of hate and counter-Islam consultants like … the crusader-in-chief George W. Bush were to abandon their unbelief and repent and enter into the light of Islam and turn their swords against the enemies of God, it would be accepted of them and they would be our brothers in Islam," Californian Adam Yahiye Gadahn said in the video (which identified him as "Azzam the American"). "To Americans and the rest of Christendom we say, either repent (your) misguided ways and enter into the light of truth or keep your poison to yourself and suffer the consequences in this world and the next."

But, you know. No compulsion and all that.

How about some real reporting on forced conversions? Nationalist Hindus in much of India claim that Christians are "enticing" or forcing people to convert, and they have passed anti-conversion laws in four states. Indian Christians respond that the allegations are baseless, and that it's the Hindu nationalists who are forcing their religion on others, often violently so. The U.S. government's religious freedom reports tend to agree with the Christians, but some serious reporting is needed to clarify the reality.

And what can we learn about forced conversions to Islam? Some of them do "stick," but how many? How do moderate Muslims respond when conversion is professed at the point of a gun? What about Muslim political leaders? What does "moderate" Muslim evangelism look like?

And how about a historical perspective on forced Christian conversion? Does Scandinavia's current lack of enthusiasm for Christianity have anything to do with how the faith came to the country a millennium ago, with King Olaf Trygvesson's command, "Be Christian or die"?

There are hundreds of other stories that can and should be done on forced conversions. This isn't a "conservative" issue. It's a human rights issue that gets to the core of what it means to be human. This subject belongs on the front page, not just the op-ed page.

Becoming Pro-Life

In "Choosing Life," Fred Barnes explains how five people changed their mind on the issue of abortion and became pro-life: Ronald Reagan, Henry Hyde, Ramesh Ponnuru, Wesley Smith, and Barnes himself. He writes:

HOW DO PEOPLE BECOME PRO-LIFERS? What turns people into passionate foes of abortion and related issues like euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research? I'm not referring to those who supported the pro-life position because of their family upbringing or religious faith or because of a political requirement as, say, a Republican candidate in a red state. I'm talking about people who, as adults or mature teenagers, were either pro-abortion or basically indifferent to the issue. Then something changed their mind, prompting them to take up the anti-abortion cause. Perhaps they began defending the pro-life position without realizing they'd flipped. In any case, what caused the change? What happened?

It's worthwhile to read his answers to this question. Click here to read the article.

A New Missions Generation: Good News and Bad News

ChristianityToday.com gives us good news and bad news about what they're calling "The New Missions Generation."

The good news: some of the most significant advancements in the history of world missions happened when college students caught the vision for taking the gospel to unreached nations, and it looks like a passion for missions is on the rise among students again. "There's a growing confidence that 2006 could be a marker year for the rebuilding of the student missions movement," Ryan Shaw says in the article. He's the director of Student Volunteer Movement 2, a network of churches and agencies promoting student involvement in world missions. And Paul Borthwick says, "Students these days have grown up with a global church consciousness. They have an empathetic understanding of different ethnicities and cultures. Their global consciousness and their own histories of brokenness enable them to humbly relate to people in different countries and from different cultures." Students seem to be particularly passionate about addressing issues of social justice and getting involved in pragmatic actions to alleviate poverty.

Now for the bad news. According to the article:

Unfortunately, many students today exhibit theological confusion. "Too many college students are not convinced about the exclusive claims of Christ and the eternal lostness of humanity," says Terry Erickson, InterVarsity's director of evangelism. "Students today are more grace-oriented than truth-oriented." Erickson notes that young people on missions trips today may not be articulating the gospel's promise of eternal salvation through Christ's death on the Cross as clearly as they are demonstrating their concern for social justice and compassion for the poor.

We have to pay attention to the word God speaks as well as the world God loves. When it's God's call students are responding to, it's this dual duty students will respond with.