Craig S. Keener, “Apostles Today” YouTube (October 18, 2025).

Pastor John Lathrop says: “At the link you can hear Dr. Craig Keener speak about apostles (about 42 minutes long). In part of his teaching he shares the names of people in church history that he thinks qualify as apostles using Paul’s criteria for apostles.”

James F. Linzey, “International Pentecostal Leaders Minister in Coffeyville, Kansas: ORU Scholars Step into a Century-Old Prophetic Stream in Coffeyville” Christian Newswire (November 12, 2025).

Gordon Govier, “10 Striking Biblical Archaeology Stories of 2025: Research and natural disaster uncovered exciting finds from the ancient world” Christianity Today (December 23, 2025).

Craig S. Keener, “Yes, there IS a Christian genocide in Nigeria” Bible Background (December 28, 2025).

Craig Keener introduces this 26 minute video: “I am not interested in defending the partisan right or left, and that’s not what this is about. The suffering in northern Nigeria didn’t start recently—it’s been going on for decades. I have interviewed many friends from northern Nigeria, plus I depend on reports I received already when I taught there in the 1990s. In some places, there is ‘religious cleansing’ taking place, alongside other terrorist activity.”

Image: Filip Bunkens

Craig Keener, “Differing with John MacArthur on 1 Cor 14” Bible Background (January 5, 2026).

Joy Ren, “Influential Chinese House Church Faces New Crackdown” Christianity Today (January 16, 2026).

Updated on January 21, 2026: “Two of the detained face charges of ‘inciting subversion of state power.’”

Frank Viola, “50 Things the Holy Spirit Does” Frank Viola Unfiltered (January 25, 2026).

Bonnie Kristian, “Protesting in Church Is Wrong. So Is Immigration Theater” Christianity Today (January 20, 2026).

The subtitle of this opinion piece by Christianity Today deputy editor Bonnie Kristian reads: “Demonstrators should not disrupt worship services. ICE should be competent, cool-headed, and constrained by the Constitution.”

Craig Keener, “A charismatic view of suffering?: Suffering and baptism in the Spirit in Mark’s introduction” Bible Background (March 2, 2026).

Carey Nieuwhof and James Sells, “Reclaiming the Church’s Role in Mental Health: We have a holy opportunity to return to our roots—a chance to recover the kind of care that once marked every aspect of the early church” Leadership Journal (Fall 2025).

This article is from CT Pastors, Volume 38 of Leadership Journal.

PR

As usual, the writing of Matthew Schmitz, senior editor of First Things, is clear and cogent—and courageous. He fearlessly tackles daunting topics such as, in this case, immigration. It is a genuine pleasure to follow his almost seamless integration of personal testimony, social environment, rational investigation, and theological articulation. I particularly appreciate Schmitz’s compatible juxtaposition of Protestant ethical and social theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s realism and Catholic natural theologian Thomas Aquinas’s political theory. Well done!

I will confess up front that I am in a position of a high level of agreement with what I take to be Schmitz’s primary assertions. Liberal idealism is an impractical and unworkable assumption about the world in which we live. It arises out of an over-realized eschatology rooted in an inaccurate assumption that utopia has already been achieved if people will just act like it. Further, liberal Christianity’s idealism has an anemic hamartiology. It simply does not realize the depth and extent of human sinfulness.

I am in something of a shock over the intensity of Schmitz’s insistence that outright contempt is behind liberal attitudes toward American citizens in general. Indeed, religious elitists do often ascribe ignorance and inferiority to their opponents (John 7:49). But I wondered if Schmitz overstated his case here. I fear not. I know liberal Christians of whom contempt for others would not be an accurate description. Yet I must admit in my own dealings with liberal Christianity I have often encountered an arrogance and animosity toward conservative Christians that is nothing short of contemptuous.

Nevertheless, although my journey and that of Matthew Schmitz have much in common, they have different starting points—and that affects their direction. Schmitz initially assumed the need for open borders and viewed with contempt those who thought otherwise. His life experiences and development eventually changed his direction toward a more closed border mindset. I had the opposite experience. I initially assumed the dire need for strictly enforced closed borders. My familial background is Pentecostal Christian. Pentecostals are very conservative, both religiously and politically. Furthermore, my first jobs included construction work, working in a truck stop, and factory labor. Immigrants were frequent rivals for scarce resources. My brother-in-law lost his job as a sheetrock hanger because he could not compete with the low wages undocumented immigrants were constrained to endure. Secure borders were a matter of economic survival for us … even before 9/11 and another whole set of security concerns.

The kind of book Evangelical Christians need to be reading on navigating Christian-Muslim relations today is the kind of book Matthew Kaemingk has written in Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear. So then, I am beginning this review with a positive recommendation right up front. Please let me explain why.

Matthew Kaemingk is assistant professor of Christian ethics and associate dean at Fuller Theological Seminary. Kaemingk earned his Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and holds doctoral degrees in Systematic Theology from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and in Christian Ethics from Fuller Theological Seminary. Kaemingk is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church. He presently lives in Houston with his wife Heather and their three sons Calvin, Kees, and Caedmon.

Matthew Kaemingk

Kaemingk’s research and teaching focus is on Islam and political ethics, faith and the workplace, theology and culture, and Reformed public theology. Thus Christian Hospitality and Muslim Immigration in an Age of Fear comes rather directly out of his primary expertise. And it shows. The Foreword by Jamie Smith, quite the heavy hitter himself and a Charismatic Calvinist on top of that, not only testifies to the credibility of Kaemingk’s work and frames it for readers but helps connect it with Evangelical Reformed readers as well as Pentecostal/Charismatic readers.

Matthew Kaemingk faces several pressing questions head-on. How can diverse people live together? How should Western Christians respond to their new Muslim neighbors? Can Islam and Christianity peacefully coexist? Are there limits to religious freedom and tolerance? How much religious diversity can a single nation withstand? He believes the far left’s unqualified concessions and the far right’s reflex aggressions are both mistaken. Yet he does not simply draw a line down the middle between the two. He proposes another option: “Christian hospitality” or, as he (cover aside) more often puts it, “Christian pluralism”. Yet before prematurely dismissing him at this point readers should note that he does not mean by “pluralism” what may be the first thought which comes to many minds (i.e. he is certainly no John Hick). Kaemingk is firmly committed to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the one and only Savior and Lord. He is also firmly committed to loving neighbors—even enemies, if so they be—of other faiths.