Evangelical Pastors Research Articles

Preaching the pandemic: COVID-19 specific theodicies among Iranian evangelical Christians in the diaspora

ABSTRACT Given its roots in Christian theology, the usage of theodicy as an analytical tool in the study of religions can easily become controversial. This notwithstanding, several scholars in the field have instructively drawn upon the term to conceptually frame reactions to human suffering among religious actors in diverse contexts. This article aligns with this strand of scholarship and studies Persian-language sermons delivered in Iranian evangelical exile churches during the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. It discusses four major theodicic interpretations advanced by Iranian evangelical pastors, who viewed the pandemic either as divine retribution, a ‘wake-up call’ for humankind, an opportunity for spiritual growth, or a theological lesson. Arguing that theodicies are shaped by the immediate context they emerge in, rather than by static theological paradigms, this article highlights the ex-Muslim identity and the exilic status of Iranian evangelicals in the diaspora as key factors shaping theodicy-making among them.

Vocal Fatigue, Dysphonia Risk, and Associated Factors in Male Brazilian Evangelical Pastors

ObjectivesTo identify the presence of vocal fatigue and dysphonia risk in evangelical pastors and to verify associations of vocal fatigue with dysphonia risk and other factors. Study DesignCross-sectional observational study. MethodsNinety-two evangelical pastors, professionally active, answered an on-line questionnaire divided in three steps. The first step consisted of data for the characterization of the sample. In the second stage, participants answered the vocal fatigue index questionnaire (VFI). Finally, they answered to the Brazilian Dysphonia Screening tool. A descriptive analysis of the data was performed along with Spearman’s Correlation test between VFI factors and the three possible decision rules for the Brazilian Dysphonia Screening tool. A linear regression model was designed to verify predictive variables associated with the outcome “vocal fatigue”. ResultsNinety male individuals were included. The average sample was off the threshold scores of tiredness and voice impairment, physical discomfort, improvement of voice symptoms with rest, and the total score of VFI. The dysphonia risk was low and was weakly negatively correlated with the improvement of voice symptoms with rest. The linear regression indicated that the presence of a current vocal complaint increases about four points in the VFI. ConclusionEvangelical pastors present symptomatology of vocal fatigue and low risk for dysphonia. However, the greater the improvement of voice symptoms with rest, the lower the risk for dysphonia. Furthermore, the presence of a current vocal complaint is associated with increased symptoms of vocal fatigue.

When to Preach About Poverty: How Location, Race, and Ideology Shape White Evangelical Sermons

AbstractSocial scientists have long been interested in how intergroup contact or elite messaging can reduce or eliminate racial biases. To better understand the role of religious elites in these political questions, we show how a church location's income and racial characteristics interact with racial and economic ideologies to shape the political content of sermons. Testing our theories through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of an original data set of more than 102,000 sermons from more than 5200 pastors, we show that contact is only effective as a means of decreasing prejudice to the extent that actors—in our case, pastors—are ideologically capable of reconciling their potential role in economic inequality. White Evangelical pastors rarely preach about issues of poverty or racial justice overall, but the context of the preaching matters. We find that the greater the share of Black population there is in a church community, the less likely White Evangelical pastors are to mention issues of poverty or racial justice, and when they do mention it, they hold to ideological commitments that avoid blaming systems for racialized economic inequality.

The room where it happened: How evangelical leaders used a Closed‐Door meeting to change sentiment for Donald J. Trump

The embrace of Donald J. Trump as a presidential candidate in 2016 was not a given for evangelical voters. The thrice married, one‐time advocate for abortion, who prided himself on his ability to attract beautiful women did not seem like someone for whom evangelicals would enthusiastically show up to vote. Understanding the need to excite the tepid Evangelical base, evangelical leaders planned a meeting of 1000 pastors on 21 June 2016 in New York City. Mike Huckabee moderated this carefully planned question‐and‐answer interview with Donald J. Trump. Well‐known politically engaged evangelical pastors, including James Dobson, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Tony Perkins and David Jeremiah, asked planted questions to which Donald J. Trump responded. I learned from ethnographic interviews with evangelical advisors to President Trump in 2020 that this meeting was the moment that they, and many other evangelical pastors, moved from scepticism to support of Donald J. Trump. In this article, I will analyse the 2016 meeting to understand how it helped propel Donald J. Trump into the White House. Specifically, I will use the lens of diffusion theory to understand how this meeting served as a rupture and tipping point of change for evangelical pastors' support.

Freedom As and Against Democracy

Freedom As and Against Democracy

De la Iglesia a Servir el Pueblo

Without initial resources and support in place for newcomer immigrant families, municipalities and service providers in new destination communities struggle to address social, economic, and educational needs of Latino immigrants and their families. The present study explored the role of churches and religious leaders in addressing the social, economic, and educational needs of Latino families in an emerging immigrant destination community. The study draws from in-depth interviews with five Latino religious leaders (e.g., Catholic priests and evangelical pastors) and Catholic laity. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes in the narrative data. Results illustrate Latino churches and religious leaders provided religious social capital (e.g., information, social and spiritual support) and served as cultural and language brokers (e.g., interpreter of language and culture). This study provides important implications and recommendations for social workers on how they can partner with religious leaders to serve Latino immigrant families in a timely, effective, and culturally sensitive manner.

The Protestant Church and Military Mobilisation in Prussia during the Wars of Liberation in 1813

The author analyses the political sermons preached and published by Evangelical pastors during the War of Liberation against Napoleonic France in 1813. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the contribution made by Evangelical clergy to the modernisation of the Prussian military system at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The study is a case study as it analyses the interaction between religion and politics taking the Kingdom of Prussia as a specific example. An analysis of the sources shows that the idea of mass mobilisation in Prussia was disseminated by means of religious reasoning, with preaching being the key tool of military propaganda. Drawing on biblical quotations, Prussian pastors presented the campaign against Napoleon as just, fair, and holy, as it was being waged in the name of God for the sake of all mankind. German national and patriotic values were also declared sacred and worth dying for, although preachers clearly emphasised local religious and dynastic Prussian patriotism. Through sermons, Prussian pastors encouraged the willingness of the population to make material and immaterial sacrifices to save the Prussian/German Fatherland as well as all mankind from Napoleonic tyranny. Thus, the mass mobilisation in Prussia in 1813 went hand in hand with an increase in religiosity. The author concludes that both religion and the church could make a significant contribution to the modernisation of European states and societies in the early nineteenth century.

A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and the Virus

A Pantheology of Pandemic: Sex, Race, Nature, and the Virus

Daddy Issues

Daddy Issues Bethany Moreton (bio) Don't look it up, because you cannot unsee it: a blanched and scowling Trump strides through a lurid flood scene, a bawling white baby under each arm. Behind him, a shadowy band of skeletons and hooded reapers looms on a receding shoreline. Pastor Jeff Jansen, the founder of Global Fire Ministries International in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, posted the image to his Facebook and Instagram accounts on May 6, as the news of his firing for "unbiblical behavior" (he left his wife and children "to pursue his own desires") went viral. Jansen had been among the evangelical pastors and self-described prophets confidently predicting a Trump re-election in 2020. In April he had denounced the modern church as "so neutered and so turned effeminate, almost homosexual" that it was cruising for a bruising from the Heavenly Father. "Where are the men?" he demanded of an audience in Oregon. "Where's the maleness? Where is the: 'I will defend the children, I will protect the family?'" This demented crypto-Christian phallus-worship is to Reagan-era family values what the Charlottesville tiki-torch brigade was to the Docksiderwearing Orange County Young Americans for Freedom of the 1980s. QAnon-fueled fantasies of white child rescue and the once-and-future king have drained any nuance from the ideology of white possession and domestic dominion. The murderous hysteria over white patrimony—"blood and soil," anchor babies, the birther movement that launched Trump into political life—is inseparable from the private capture of both economic opportunity and political authority. In his surprise best-seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, economist Thomas Piketty demonstrated that inherited wealth is almost as decisive a factor in current levels of inequality in the United States as it was in the Gilded Age. The gains in equality that marked the middle decades of the twentieth century have almost completely been undone by the policies pursued since the 1980s. These developments were born of a union of neoliberal economics and neoconservative traditionalism. [End Page 64] For all their incompleteness, the social investments of the New Deal and Great Society definitively broadened access to healthcare, education, stable housing, and secure retirement, thus dampening the advantages of inherited wealth. The wartime federal investment in production, followed by the postwar boom and alongside the decriminalization of collective bargaining, meant that more productivity gains were retained by those workers who made them. Young white men of modest backgrounds who lacked a significant patrimony in property could nevertheless expect to advance beyond their parents' standing. These public benefits, however, depended on a different form of private patrimony: the inheritable property of whiteness. In deference to the profoundly unrepresentative legislative power of the Dixiecrats, New Dealers ratified and extended the link between property in whiteness and other forms of property. They did so in a legal regime equipped to restrict that inheritance through miscegenation and immigration laws and the policing of sexuality. White men begat many a child across the color line both before and after slavery, but those children didn't automatically receive the status of "free" or "white"—categories with clear-cut economic meaning. When a segregationist debating James Baldwin on television objected to Black men marrying his daughters, Baldwin made the implicit meaning clear: "You don't want us marrying your wives' daughters," he corrected his opponent. "We've been marrying your daughters since the days of slavery." Through the 1930s, most miscegenation cases brought in court were intended to invalidate a longstanding interracial relationship in order to prevent property from passing to or through a non-white wife. When the overtly eugenicist immigration restrictions of 1880 and 1924 became an embarrassment on the international stage of the Cold War, U.S. law dropped the explicit language of racial preference; the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952 declared race an inappropriate tool for policing the biological basis for national belonging. But it maintained its racial restrictions in part by shifting preferences to family unification: entry was denied to homosexuals and adulterers, twin threats to the purity of America's imagined bloodline and the legitimacy of the heirs to its patrimonial property. The debate when the laws were...

Racial Reconciliation as a Suppressive Frame in Evangelical Multiracial Churches

ABSTRACT This article analyzes interviews with evangelical multiracial church pastors from the Religious Leadership and Diversity Project (RLDP), drawing on the framing literature from social movements. While a small number of evangelical pastors in the sample utilize a racial justice frame to understand and address racial issues, consistent with prior research, the data indicates that most evangelical multiracial church pastors use a racial reconciliation frame. This frame holds that racial conflict can be eliminated through shared faith, which allows churches to avoid politics and prioritize internal unity. However, findings reveal that the racial reconciliation can function as a suppressive frame that precludes discussions about racial inequality and discourages collective action to promote racial justice. The article discusses the implications of this for social change and cross-racial solidarity.

The Message of the Twelve: Hearing the Voice of the Minor Prophets

The Message of the Twelve: Hearing the Voice of the Minor Prophets

Médias 2.0 et Églises chrétiennes au Burkina Faso

La diffusion progressive d’Internet au Burkina Faso a entraîné récemment un foisonnement de l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux, principalement Facebook, par les Églises catholique et évangéliques. Cette utilisation est toutefois fortement conditionnée par un nombre restreint de gatekeepers qui exercent un contrôle souvent strict sur l’utilisation des réseaux sociaux. S’en dégage ainsi une diffusion fortement uniformisée par laquelle les organisations néo-pentecôtistes et charismatiques urbains tirent le plus grand profit en faisant circuler des contenus susceptibles de favoriser les conversions ou de souder virtuellement la communauté des adhérents. Les hiérarchies des Églises tendent plutôt, quant à elles, à utiliser ces médias comme relais de leur communication officielle sans investir dans le potentiel interactif des médias sociaux. Cette dynamique favorise également l’insertion des chrétiens burkinabè dans les réseaux chrétiens transnationaux, surtout pour certains pasteurs évangéliques inscrits dans les réseaux francophones internationaux.
 

Evangelical Christian Crisis Responses to Same-Sex Sex Scandals

ABSTRACTThis research examines the crisis responses of four evangelical leaders (Paul Crouch, Ted Haggard, Lonnie Latham, and Eddie Long) involved in same-sex sex scandals by comparing their responses against those recommended by the situational crisis communication theory (SCCT). Using a quasi-case study approach to add context and richness to the SCCT, this research examined the leaders’ strategies and the response to them and found that the evangelical pastors generally adhered to the recommended strategies of the SCCT, thus reinforcing the broad applicability of the SCCT when handling a crisis, even in a religious context. Despite reinforcing the validity of the SCCT, this article also recommends the inclusion of additional categorical considerations for the SCCT for situations where a crisis inflicts spiritual or emotional harm, particularly for crises occurring in a religious environment.

Análise perceptivo-auditiva e autopercepção da voz em pastores evangélicos

Objetivo: verificar a associação entre a qualidade da voz e queixa vocal com as variáveis, gênero, idade, tempo de ministério, horas de trabalho, parâmetros vocais e autopercepção vocal em pastores evangélicos. Método: estudo descritivo, analítico de delineamento transversal. Amostra de 52 religiosos, entre 20 a 69 anos; 38 homens e 14 mulheres, média de 8 horas de trabalho, entre 1 a 32 anos de ministério. Foram incluídos pastores ou pastoras, entre 20 a 69 anos, em exercício ministerial e excluídos pastores gagos ou que estivessem resfriados. Procedimentos: gravação das vozes dos participantes, com a emissão da vogal sustentada /a/, dos dias da semana e a leitura de um trecho aleatório do livro de salmos da Bíblia Sagrada. Em seguida, três fonoaudiólogas especialistas em voz, e por consenso, realizaram análise perceptivo auditiva da voz. Houve também aplicação de um questionário com identificação dos dados sociodemográficos e autopercepção da voz e de aspectos da fala em público. Foi realizada análise descritiva dos dados e os testes de associação Qui Quadrado de Pearson e Exato de Fisher. O nível de significância adotado foi de p≤0,05 (5%). Resultados: a qualidade vocal foi avaliada como alterada em 47,2% da amostra, com grau de alteração leve 41,5%. Os demais parâmetros vocais pitch, articulação, loudness, ressonância, velocidade de fala foram considerados adequados na maioria da amostra. 78,85% dos pastores mostrou uma boa autopercepção da fala em público, 52% autoperceberam a voz como razoável e a maioria, 76,9%, relatou queixas vocais de cansaço e rouquidão após o uso da voz; quase todos os pastores (92,5%) disseram que são capazes de manter a atenção e influenciar o ouvinte ao falar em público. Houve associação das queixas vocais com o gênero masculino (p<0,001), faixa etária de 39 a 58 anos (p<0,001) e com profissionais que utilizavam a voz de 5 a 8 horas por dia (p<0,001). As demais variáveis não se associaram com as queixas. Houve associação da qualidade vocal alterada (p<0,034) com a faixa etária de 39 a 58 anos, grau de alteração vocal leve (p<0,001) com a ressonância alterada (p<0,001), pitch (p <0,003) e autopercepção da fala em público (p<0,001) adequados. Conclusão: a maioria dos pastores evangélicos apresenta relato de queixas vocais de cansaço vocal e rouquidão após o uso da voz profissional, mais incidente no sexo masculino, entre 39 a 58 anos, nos pastores que usam a voz de 5 a 8 horas por dia. Quase metade deles apresenta qualidade de voz alterada, associada a esta mesma faixa etária, com alteração da ressonância. Pitch e autopercepção da fala em público adequados.

Work-home boundary limits: a study of evangelical pastors’ daily lives

Abstract The aim of this research is to analyse the mutual influence in the process of negotiating work-home boundaries and personal and social identity or, in other words, to study the method of adapting and managing domestic and professional conflicts which interfere with the harmony of evangelical pastors’ work and personal lives. We conducted a qualitative study in order to achieve the proposed aims, involving an interpretative approach with the pastors of a specific ecclesiastical institution: The Assemblies of God in Brazil. A total of 20 interviews were held, and, following coding procedures, boundary-work tactics, whose taxonomy falls within physical, behavioural, temporal and communicative dimensions, were found. The results revealed that the sharp distinction seen was that the subjects were more likely to mingle interactions in work-home boundaries. The boundary-negotiation tactics were shown to be multi-functional, as they have dual function techniques, used both to segment and integrate the work-home boundary.

Konflikt katolicko-ewangelicki w Osiecznej w latach 1656–1769

Osieczna, niewielkie miasto leżące 10 km od Leszna, w XVII i XVIII w. była areną konfliktu dwóch wyznań chrześcijańskich – katolików i ewangelików. Głównym powodem niepokojów wyznaniowych i w konsekwencji upadku gminy ewangelickiej był potop szwedzki (1655–1660) i związane z nim zaburzenia natury polityczno-religijnej wśród mieszkańców regionu leszczyńskiego. Była to także konsekwencja różnic doktrynalno-eklezjologicznych wyznań i nasilającej się tzw. kontrreformacji. Pierwsze prześladowania osieckiej gminy ewangelickiej miały miejsce w latach 1656–1666. Wypędzono wówczas z miasta pastora Joachima Wüstehube. Kolejna fala prześladowań nastąpiła już w 1668 r. i jej następstwa (wygnanie pastora Paula Clapiusa i utrata świątyni) trwały formalnie do 7 marca 1769 r., gdy właściciel Osiecznej, hrabia Mikołaj Skoroszewski, wydał list tolerancyjny dla miejscowych innowierców, co przyniosło odrodzenie się gminy (budowa kościoła, powołanie pastora) dopiero 13 stycznia 1793 r. W trakcie badania wykazano, że pierwszymi osobami biorącymi udział w analizowanych sytuacjach konfliktowych byli duchowni katoliccy i pastorzy. Według historiografów niemieckich z przełomu XIX i XX w. pastorzy byli pierwszymi ofiarami postępowania katolików. Natomiast autorzy katoliccy i współcześni badacze wskazują na przemilczaną przez historiografów niemieckich kwestię pozytywnego i antypolskiego stosunku luteran (szczególnie leszczyńskich) do skandynawskiego najeźdźcy podczas polskiej ofensywy wiosną 1656 r. Osieckie niepokoje religijne XVII–XVIII w. są kwestią złożoną, której badania nastręczają trudności i są naznaczone pewną dozą przypuszczeń. Powodem tego stanu jest brak dostatecznej liczby zachowanych materiałów archiwalnych dla Osiecznej z omawianego okresu. Kwestie społeczne, w tym relacje międzywyznaniowe w mieście, wymagają dalszych badań.

Self-Disclosure and Spiritual Well-Being in Pastors Seeking Professional Psychological Help

Pastoral mental health is a topic that has only rarely been researched empirically in the psychological literature, yet a pastor’s mental health can have a significant impact on churches, communities, and even nations (Royal and Thompson, Journal of Psychology and Christianity,31(3), 195–204, 2012). One of the thoughts prompting this research is that evangelical pastors might be expected to resist the findings of psychological research and lack understanding of specific mental illnesses they are potentially facing. Combined with historical and cultural dynamics that could influence resistance to professional psychological help, evangelical pastors have personal, internal factors that could also strengthen resistance, including the researched issues of self-disclosure flexibility and spiritual well-being. A correlational research design with multivariate regression was used to determine potentially significant or predictive relationships between the relevant factors. Among evangelical seminary students (N = 251) preparing for parish-based pastoral ministry, this research determined that no significant relationship, predictive or otherwise, existed between self-disclosure flexibility, spiritual well-being, and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Implications include a shift in focus toward external factors influencing pastors’ help-seeking attitudes, such as the need for the mental health community to develop connections with evangelical pastors and the development of more support for Christian mental health professionals in the larger evangelical community.

Gypsy leadership, cohesion and social memory in the Evangelical Church of Philadelphia

Nowadays, although throughout Europe the Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Protestant denominational identities remain among Roma, the conversion rate would suggest the number of Roma Pentecostal will have numerically overtaken all the others in just a few years’ time. The uniqueness of Spanish Gypsy Pentecostalism contradicts some of the stereotypes of global Pentecostalism and resides in its organisational complexity and hierarchical structure, its rapid institutionalisation as a sole church, the thorough theological training of its leaders, and its autonomy both from the State and from the European and Latin American Pentecostal Roma Movement. This article is structured around a life history and two concerns: (a) the role of the constant circulation of the gypsy evangelical ministers as regards charisma and leadership; (b) the growing transfer of prestige from the respected gypsy elders to the young evangelical pastors and their role in wide pacification processes involving ethnic cohesion and kinship.

„To jest owczarnia onego Dobrego Pasterza”. Pojęcie „prawdziwego” Kościoła w polskich szesnastowiecznych katechizmach

The article discusses how the notion of the Church was understood and explained by authors of sixteenth-century Polish Catholic and Evangelical catechisms. Teaching of the constitution of a church was a basic pastoral duty and part of the rudimentary knowledge provided to the faithful. Six Catholic catechisms of the years 1553 to 1600 and thirteen Evangelical ones, which were published between 1543 and 1609, constitute the main source base, the latter manuals being penned under the influence of Luther, Melanchthon as well as South-German and Swiss theologians. Following the Tridentine programme, the Catholic authors present their Church as unified under the Pope’s authority and the only inheritor of the works of the Apostles. The veracity of its teaching is testified to with God’s unnatural interventions. The Protestant authors explain the basically coherent, relevant ideas of the Reformation’s protagonists. They teach about “the visible and outward Church”, which is manifested by all those congregations that are fed by God’s pure Word, and where the sacraments are duly administered. There is also “the inward and invisible Church”, which the faithful confess in the Credo. It comprises all disciples of Christ, who is the only head of His Church. Thus the teaching on the Church presented in the Evangelical sources that are employed belongs to the mainstream of sixteenth-century Protestantism and aptly illustrates the reception of Evangelical theologies in the Kingdom of Poland and in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the analysed sources, arguments for the veracity of Church are always supplemented with the refutation of contradictory standpoints through reference to the Bible and the Church Fathers, mostly to Augustine. Despite strong polemical tone, the Biblical grounds of the Church could contribute to communication and understanding between Christians of antagonistic denominations, and this could sometimes result in conversion. The explanation of ecclesiological rudiments was easier for Catholic clergy, who referred to tradition and emotions, while Evangelical pastors could not ignore the abstract concepts of the “veracity” and “spiritual connectedness” of Christians, which were more difficult to render to the laity.

“This Is Our Jerusalem”: Early American Evangelical Localizations of the Hebraic Republic

This paper examines how evangelical pastors applied Protestant notions of a Hebraic Republic for their parishioners as America transitioned from a colonial frontier to a new republic. As the American constitutions took shape during and after the Revolution, many evangelical pastors argued that America emulated or was inspired by the Israelite polity as described by the Old Testament. America and its institutions thus became a reincarnated Hebraic Republic, a new “city on a hill”, and a new Jerusalem. Originally these pastors drew on a broader, global movement that was shaping republican attempts at reform in Europe, but as they localized the biblical model to their own particular experiences, they brought new meaning to it and exported the transformed model back out to the world.