The Center for Youth Ministry Training has a lengthy, informative review of Kenda Creasy Dean’s provocative book, Almost Chrsitian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers Is Telling the American Church. Here’s an excerpt:

Four characteristics tend to accompany consequential faith in teenagers

Dean names four characteristics (or cultural tools) that occur with regularity in those whom the NSYR found to be highly devoted. First, teens with consequential faith tend to have “a creed to believe” and were able to articulate their beliefs about a God who was both personal and powerful (71). Second, teens with consequential faith tend to have a “community to belong to”—they find identity within their congregations and have a significant number of adults with whom they can speak about issues of faith and life (73). Third, teenagers whose faith makes a difference in their lives evidence a “call to live out”—they understand their lives as being oriented by a divine vocation on behalf of others rather than being oriented to pursuit of self (75). Fourth, consequential faith seems to come attached with a “hope to hold onto”—a belief that their lives are caught up in a larger story that’s “going somewhere” because it is guided by God (77).

Read the whole thing. Or check out Michael Horton’s audio interview of Professor Dean (she’s a professor of Youth, Church, and Culture at Princeton Theological Seminary).

Bad news from Krista Kapralos, writing for Religious News Service:

A German family seeking asylum in the U.S. so they can home-school their children lost their appeal in federal court on Tuesday (May 14), but their lawyers say they’re prepared to petition the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case.

This decision came from the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. For more on the history and what comes next for this case , see Karpralos’ article.

HT: Sarah Stanley

The ground-breaking work on Intelligent Design by Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, is currently available for only $2.99 in the Kindle store. Not sure how long the deal will last. The description and a blurb: 

The opening of my guest post on the Desiring God blog:

The regular use of our minds — thinking, reading, studying, analyzing — is a necessary means to loving God in this world. God gave us a Book, and he ordained that insight into its message be given by means of focused mental effort (2 Timothy 2:7; Ephesians 3:4; Acts 17:11–12) combined with supernatural illumination (2 Corinthians 4:4–6; 1 Peter 1:23). We should become attentive readers even if only to see the glory of God in the pages of Scripture and to be equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

But the use of our minds is a critical means to loving God in a wide variety of secular occupations, too. Intellectual effort can take many forms. Some read books, others “read” equations, still others “read” historical, financial, or scientific data. But the goal for Christians is the same: Using the mind to fan the flame of worship toward God and service towards neighbor (Luke 10:27).

Read more at their site.

They work in higher education—80% of them in athletics.

For the record – I work for a private university.

HT: American Enterprise Institute

Edward T. Welch writes:

“There is nothing wrong with wanting love. It would be positively inhuman not to want it. The problem comes when we desire it too much–when our desire for love becomes the center of our life–which, when you think about it, makes us the center of our own lives. The problem is when we want to be loved more than we want to love. If only life could be a little bit less about us.”

This book is thematically similar to Welch’s When People Are Big and God is Small and ideal for 15-25 year old readers. Check out the endorsements, table of contents, and introduction.

If you’re still looking for high school graduation gifts, particularly for students interested in philosophy, theology, apologetics, or global studies, a classic book you might consider is The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, now in its 5th edition (with over 300,000 units sold). While this book was first published in 1976, many updates have been made along the way (including new chapters on postmodernism and Islam). If you’ve seen a previous edition, note that this 5th edition, released in 2009, is considerably longer than previous versions.

Author James W. Sire does a masterful job explaining some of the common worldviews in our day — fairly assessing each of them, first explaining their appeal and then their flaws. After a preface to the 5th edition and an introduction, Sire explains Christian Theism in chapter 2, Deism in chapter 3, Naturalism in chapter 4, Nihilism in chapter 5, Existentialism in chapter 6, Eastern Pantheistic Monism in chapter 7, New Age Spirituality in chapter 8, Postmodernism in chapter 9, and Islamic Theism in chapter 10, followed by a conclusion.

Here’s an excerpt from Sire’s critique of naturalism (p. 93):

“The problem was coherence. Did naturalism give an adequate reason for us to consider ourselves valuable? Unique, maybe. But gorillas are unique. So is every category of nature. Value was the first troublesome issue. Could a being thrown up by chance be worthy?

Second, could a being whose origins were so “iffy” trust his or her own capacity to know? Put it personally: If my mind is conterminous with my brain, if “I” am only a thinking machine, how can I trust my thought? If consciousness is an epiphenomenon of matter, perhaps the appearance of human freedom which lays the basis for morality is an epiphenomenon of either chance or inexorable law. Perhaps chance or the nature of things only built into me the “feeling” that I am free but actually I am not.”

The Universe Next Door is the first book I’d pick up to understand what people throughout the world believe and why they believe it. It’s excellent.

From a May 6 Alliance for Defending Freedom announcement: 

At the government’s own request, a federal appellate court Friday dismissed the Obama administration’s appeal of an order that stopped the president from enforcing his abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher. The administration’s retreat marks the first total appellate victory on a preliminary injunction in any abortion pill mandate case.

Why? They write:

“Bible publishers should be free to do business according to the book that they publish,” said Senior Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. “The government dismissed its appeal because it knows how ridiculous it sounds arguing that a Bible publisher isn’t religious enough to qualify as a religious employer. For the government to say that a Bible publisher isn’t religious is outrageous, and now the Obama administration has had to retreat in court.”

“We will continue to argue that the administration cannot disregard the Constitution’s protection of religious freedom for all family business owners and must offer a comprehensive exemption to the mandate,” Bowman added.

Read the whole thing.

The short answer is that it depends on what you mean by an evangelical. Christianity Today has a nice infographic on this oft-quoted figure. Three take aways:

1.  If you call yourself an evangelical but don’t go to church or hold evangelical beliefs, you’re also unlikely to stay chaste.

For more, check out the infographic.

If you’ve benefited from Crossway resources over the years, please take a moment to listen to this urgent message from Crossway’s President, Lane Dennis:

A flood recently swept through Crossway’s headquarters. About two feet of water poured into our 32 first-floor offices due to unrelenting rains. The damage was extensive and repairs and rebuilding will take five or six months. More important, however, is the impact this could have on major ministry projects that we have planned.

As a not-for-profit ministry, Crossway is not only committed to publishing the ESV Bible and gospel-centered content, but also to providing God’s Word to hundreds of thousands of people overseas, either free or at a substantially reduced cost. Because of the recent flood, however, some of these international ministry efforts are now at risk.