In case you missed it: Nik Ripken, “Trauma and Tragedy on the Mission Field” NikRipken.com (September 19, 2023).

“In this deeply personal episode, Nik Ripken reflects on his journey through trauma, health crises, and confronting deeply ingrained racism in his life and ministry. From growing up in a broken home to battling malaria on the mission field and dismantling racial prejudice, Nik shares how God has redeemed his struggles, transforming them into opportunities for reconciliation, humility, and Kingdom work.”

Dhimas Anugrah, “Schadenfreude: A Misplaced Joy” Our Daily Bread Ministries.

Dhimas Anugrah, “Freudenfreude: Finding Joy Even When the Good News Isn’t Mine” Our Daily Bread Ministries.

“Should We Bring AI into the Church?: Interview by Bonnie Kristian” ChristianityToday.com (May 28. 2025).

The tagline for this interview is: “A church-tech skeptic talks values with technologists from faith-aligned AI company Gloo.”

Craig Keener, “Video course on Acts” CraigKeener.com (July 9, 2025).

Dr. Craig Keener writes: “Although I have 23 hours of free lectures on Acts on my YouTube channel, a newer, more official course with Seminary Now is launching with much better video graphics, based on my 4-volume Acts commentary.”

Andrew Gabriel, “Tales of my First Visit to a Church of God (Cleveland) Pentecostal Church” AndrewKGabriel.com (March 17, 2025).

“Archbishop Benjamin Kwashi on genocide against Christians in northern Nigeria” CraigKeener.com (July 30, 2025).

“Craig interviews retired Anglican Archbishop Ben Kwashi on his experience and on the massacres of Christians in northern Nigeria. Archbishop Kwashi has long worked for peace, reconciliation, justice, truth and is always centered in the gospel of Christ. He and his wife Gloria have adopted more than seventy children, many of them orphans because of the massacres in the north. Archbishop Kwashi also is current on both the events in the north of Nigeria and their wider global context.”

“Cultural Intelligence vs. Personality: What’s the Difference” Cultural Intelligence Center.

A white paper from the Cultural Intelligence Center. How is personality different from cultural intelligence? CQ is a skillset.

Image: Anastasia Zolotukhina

“Interview with the Author—Michelle Van Loon” Eerdword (August 4, 2025).

Eerdmans Publishing interviews the author of Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials.

In case you missed it: Keith Simon, “When My Sermon Riled Our City: Preaching on sex and gender led to local uproar and national headlines. Here are seven things I learned” Christianity Today (June 25, 2024).

“The Forgotten Etowah Revival” Cup & Cross Ministries (August 20, 2025).

PR

A challenge to church leaders about social justice, a guest article about Hariette Beecher Stowe and William Wells Brown.

Even though William Wells Brown and Harriet Beecher Stowe speak from widely divergent backgrounds (black/white, slave/free, male/female, richer/poorer), their concerns unite when they speak about the pivotal role which Christian Education assumed for itself in the lives of antebellum slaves. As will be seen in this short essay, Stowe and Brown recognize not just the Bible hermeneutics of the oppressor, but also the application of the same through catechesis to the lives of the oppressed. Brown’s chapter “The Religious Teacher” appearing in his novel Clotel, Or the President’s Daughter; and Stowe’s, chapter “Topsy” located in her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; reference a very common practice amongst slave holders, the use of catechisms.[1]

As regards the narrators’ perspective in these passages, Stowe looks especially from without to within with full compassion, but with the limited access of a non-slave. Her narrator voice, naturally different from Brown’s, is a voice affected by looking across the Ohio River. Biographer Noel Gerson explains how

In 1833 … Harriet Beecher Stowe first became aware of the slavery as a living institution. In New England she had politely deplored slavery as an abstraction and remained untouched… But no one who lived in Cincinnati could ignore the challenge of slavery which existed across the Ohio in Kentucky. (Harriet 36)

Even as narrator Stowe sees an enslaved community by looking across the Ohio, Brown looks at and within his community, looking across to the oppressed. As a slave participant, Brown certainly sees what an antebellum white normally cannot; Stowe as an abolitionist white woman sees many times what a White man won’t. What antebellum Whites cannot or will not see concern both Stowe and Brown.

Specifically, in Brown’s “The Religious Teacher”, social control shapes a Bible hermeneutic favoring those who tower above, the slave owners. Human owners of other humans equate their words with God’s words, establishing oppressive norms to become the locus of authority. Twice in the catechetical moments of this chapter, Brown represents how religious slave owners read the New Testament to slaves who, interestingly, cannot read for themselves: “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh, not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart fearful, fearing God” (an isolated quotation of Colossians 3:-23); and, “He that knoweth his Master’s will, and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes” (a quotation of Luke 12:47, a phrase removed for social expediency from its original New Testament context). Furthermore, Brown unites these catechetical questions and answers, the call and response, with a then commonly held belief. Africans bear in their persons the curse of Ham: “The Lord intended the Negros for Slaves” (“The Religious Teacher”). For Brown, masters do more than speak for God. They speak as god.

With comments by Pauline Parham, daughter-in-law of Charles Parham, who passed away at the age of 94 on December 22, 2003

He has been called a “rabid racist” and a “white supremacist.” He has been vilified as the progenitor of racial prejudice in the Pentecostal movement. Some believe that any traces of racism among modern Pentecostals can be traced to him. In a recent reconciliation gathering, repentance was offered and forgiveness asked for his sin of racism.¹ In the minds of many, Charles Parham is an embarrassment to the Pentecostal movement and does not deserve recognition as one of its founders.

On the other hand, it was Parham who first reached across racial lines to both African-Americans and Mexican-Americans and included them in the fledgling Pentecostal movement. It was Parham, a native of Kansas, who offended southern whites by preaching in black churches and allowing a black pastor to enroll in his Bible school in segregated Houston, TX. It was Parham who did the “unheard of” and invited a black woman, Rev. Lucy Farrow, to preach in his Apostolic Faith campmeeting in south Texas in 1906. And it was Parham who, until his death in 1929, maintained cordial relations with the black community in his hometown of Baxter Springs, KS, often preaching in the local black Pentecostal church.

So, how are we to reconcile these conflicting views of Parham and his racial stance. Is there more than one Charles Parham? The problem seems to be context, or lack of it. Historical events occur within a context and the historian must not ignore the context. When Parham’s life is evaluated within the social-legal-religious context of his time, what emerges is neither a saintly crusader for racial equality nor a rabid racist. What does emerge is an individual who, in many ways, reflected the times in which he lived—when racial apartheid was generally accepted and practiced throughout the land. But what also emerges is an individual who, at critical times, was willing to break with cultural mores and reach across racial lines when it was not the popular thing to do. It is for this reason that Charles Parham deserves credit for setting the tone for the inter-racial openness and harmony that prevailed for a time in early Pentecostalism.

The Historical Context

Parham (1873-1929) lived and ministered during a time when racial segregation was accepted and practiced throughout America. The 14th amendment to the constitution had included a “Separate but Equal” clause, recognizing segregation but requiring that all citizens be treated equal under the law. In the 1896 case, “Plessy vs. Ferguson,” the United States Supreme Court upheld the “separate” part of this clause when it ruled that a law in Louisiana requiring blacks and whites to ride in separate railroad cars did not violate the constitution.

It was obvious, however, that the “separate” part of the clause was upheld far more vigorously than the “equal” part. Public facilities for blacks were inferior and fewer in number than those for whites. Blacks were commonly required to sit on the back seats in trains and buses and to eat in dilapidated, back rooms in restaurants. The best hotels were for whites only and even professional sports was for whites only.

And the Church? In the 1960s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. declared 11 a.m. on Sunday morning to be the most segregated time in America. It was even more so fifty years earlier. A black person in a white church or a white person in black church was considered strange and even inappropriate. Most professing white Christians believed the white race to be superior and that racial segregation could be defended with Scripture.