Wheaton in the News highlights Wheaton's appearances in newspapers, magazines, and other online publications.
Understanding who we are and why we have suffered so much in this country is something like existential questions that wax and wane, coinciding with the peaks and valleys of anti-Black racism. Are we more than the identities and labels people have given us? Is there more to our narrative than the whip and the chain?
King believed that too many Americans, especially those in its churches, were also snoozing through a time ripe for transformation. They needed to wake up to the injustice all around them and make demands for change.
When I decided to write an essay about the spirituals sung every Christmastime in Black churches, I was startled to discover that “Sweet Little Jesus Boy” was written not by an African American during slavery but by a white man named Robert MacGimsey in 1934. Rather than working on a plantation, MacGimsey grew up on one.
The Virgin of the Passion, also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help, has been called the most popular Christian icon of the 20th century. I would argue the same applies to our own century as well. As an art history professor, I’ve been chasing her around the globe for nearly two decades (and have now collected those studies in my recent book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon).
My appeal is simply that no one should bully you by insisting that Christmas somehow does not mean to you what it in fact does mean to you or that what it means to you is somehow illegitimate. Christmas, for you, is what you decide it will be—religious or secular; pagan or Christian; commercial or part of the Buy Nothing movement. There are many true meanings of Christmas.
While we know far more than we did even just a year ago about the impact of COVID-19 on society and churches, the truth is that we will still be unpacking its legacy decades from now. One common thread was that many churches were stepping up to serve their communities in the midst of uncertainty. ... At their core, many churches and Christians rightly understood the pandemic as a unique opportunity to commit to God’s mission in new and exciting ways.
People in customer-facing professions, such as driving for ride-hailing apps, often strike up conversations about life and its challenges, said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center.
I find kids decked out in the clothing of action heroes and book characters charming. The endless stream of social media posts from friends and family brings a smile to my face every year. Nonetheless, there is something fleeting about the holiday. Costumes that are funny one year feel dated by the next. That is why I’m drawn to the original and more weighty purpose of Halloween: It was meant to be a day set aside to remember the saints.
The man moved on to the next bedroom and the next before finding and kidnapping his cousin — Emmett Till.
It was the last time he saw his best friend alive, Parker, now in his 80s, told a packed concert hall Tuesday night (Oct. 25) at Wheaton College, the evangelical flagship school in the Chicago suburbs.
At Wheaton College, an evangelical school in the Chicago suburbs, Chief Enrollment Management Officer Silvio Vazquez says he does often encounter folks who assume Wheaton is liberal or conservative. But he hopes students won’t draw too many conclusions without experiencing the school firsthand.
Kaitlyn Greenidge and Esau McCaulley discuss why America's schools can't get on the same page about required reading lists.
It was the 1950s. Clyde S. Kilby, then an English professor at Wheaton College, had a feeling about a British author he’d been reading named C.S. Lewis — that he was “probably going to be famous one day,” according to Crystal Downing, co-director of Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center.
Green’s story is about efforts in the second half of the nineteenth century to find an alternative to Christianity. Churchill once quipped that democracy is the worst form of government “except for all the others,” and one lesson I came away with is this: One should not be so hasty to get rid of what seems to be an old clunker of a faith that they don’t take the time to examine the new model replacing it.
As a pastor-theologian, I have thought a great deal about this game. It’s not the theology inside the fantasy worlds that interests me. Rather, I find the practice of playing D&D—and its theological and ethical dimensions—far more interesting.
Often when something awful happens to us or those whom we love, we find ourselves asking, Why me? Why now? Why this? Suffering disrupts our lives, seeming to violate the way life should be. This can m
Through the power of radio—which was then a novel mass medium—they reached millions of listeners and ultimately reshaped the trajectory of conservative religion in America. Their story is told in Kirk Farney’s compulsively readable dual biography, Ministers of a New Medium: Broadcasting Theology in the Radio Ministries of Fulton J. Sheen and Walter A. Maier.
A post-Roe movement must promote a “womb to tomb” ethic, one that values the God-given value of life regardless of age, ethnicity, class or apparent contribution to society. We value life simply because it is life that God has given, and that means in the womb and until death.
The language of evil and hearts often rises to the fore in the context of mass shootings. ... What are we to make of this language of evil? On one hand it is an articulation of a basic teaching of Jesus.
With the news of 19 children and two others killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, religious leaders from across the spectrum express their sorrow, with many saying now is the time for a new approach to gun control.
Payton Gendron’s violence was not an isolated incident but one thread in a web of anti-Black hatred.
A college student with an eye for art hit the jacket pot when he bought a Yoshitomo Nara ashtray at a local Goodwill store for $10 and flipped it on eBay for $2,800.
I sat down with two of the women from Truth’s Table to hear about their struggle to build a new space that is unapologetically Black, female, and Christian.
Despite what you might have seen on social media, the Christian faith is not about a political party or a particular nation. In reality, the Christian faith is rooted in a cosmic story throughout history of a God who creates and redeems.
Her suggestions call for leaders to carefully examine both individual and systemic sources of potential unfairness. “It’s important to stay attuned to those unconscious behaviors rooted in bias, and how these behaviors can result in unfair treatment,” says Lee.
Jesus's story does not end with his the crucifixion. Similarly, racism will not have the final word.
Dr. Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, says the research also shows that many people have a positive view of Jesus himself. “The hope of the ‘He Gets Us’ campaign is they might actually dig a little deeper,” he said.
I struggle with how we as a culture — and I understand this is part of what you have to do — but how we use the lives and traumas of people as talking points.
But the real Mary is no shill for war. As much as the Virgin might appear to be a helpless hostage of nationalism, she is also its opponent. Vladimir Putin may pose with Mary's belt to bolster Mother Russia, but Mary's protective garments also failed the Byzantine emperors who Putin appears to be emulating.
In his article, Daniel Master looks at archaeological and biblical evidence for the Philistines’ origins. He considers the accounts at Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. In the 12th century B.C.E., during the reign of Ramesses III, a confederation of tribes from the “islands” of the “northern countries” attacked Egypt—several times, both on sea and land.
Two-thirds of Muslims, half of Jews, and more than a third of evangelical Protestant Christians experience workplace discrimination, though in different ways, according to a new study.
Hundreds have died and millions have fled as Russia steps up its attacks on Ukraine. Author and Director of Humanitarian and Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College Kent Annan shares his thoughts on what's happening.
Black history should be a challenge to our republic and its core narrative.
The greatest mystery of Agatha Christie’s novels is why we keep returning to them. It’s not, it goes without saying, that the stories aren’t any good. The mystery rather is why our insatiable interest continues when the primary pleasure of the stories is completely dependent on not knowing the ending.
Watch Night began as an event celebration the Emancipation Proclamation and has become a way to honor the past and look to the future.
Christmas is the grand miracle that makes space for all the smaller miracles.
I wish that we had never met Ms. Young. In a perfect world, those police officers would have never entered her home. But they did, and now that wrong must be righted.
My children do not understand my world, and I do not understand theirs. I do not know what it’s like to be a child waking up in a home with two college graduates at the helm.
A webinar about the facts, falsehoods, and theological implications of critical race theory—and the way forward for the church.
Over the years, I have noticed at least three different kinds of evangelistic contexts we may encounter when engaging in personal evangelism.
Esau McCaulley, a professor of the New Testament at Wheaton College, pointed out to me that praying aloud reflects the nature of the relationship between God and his creations in the Christian faith.
While “post-traumatic growth is real,” says Jamie Aten, founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, “it doesn’t always present the way we hope it does.”
America has spent 20 years vowing for revenge for terrorism. There's a better path.
Conversations about equality often lack goodwill. Part of the problem is a newfound fear of common grace.
All these changes that people are embarking on during the pandemic make me think that we weren’t that happy before the pandemic.
I'm going to call Christians to a better way and implore the media to resist making them representative of the Christian faith. They are not.
Twitter can actually be a platform where you can learn and grow. You can follow faith leaders like pastors, authors, speakers and humanitarians who extend their work to the Twittersphere, and you’ll quickly find your social feed doesn’t stress you out.
It was deeply jarring for me and other Christians to hear Isaiah 6:8 used by President Biden in his recent address.
America has tended to lean so much into the value and dignity of work that it has neglected—and in many cases even disparaged— the value of rest. "Hebrews 4 develops this idea of rest eschatologically," says Dr. Andrew Abernethy, associate professor of the Old Testament at Wheaton College.
First, according to Stetzer, we must be able to name the challenges before us. The two dragons of culture–polarization and commercialization–lurk alongside three dragons inside each church–politicization, abuse, and moralism.