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Have you watched your church become divided in recent years? Friends and family torn apart by culture wars, politics, or pandemic policies? You're not alone. We've heard similar stories over and over again. This is why American Values Coalition has created a new resource to help churches with some of the major drivers of division.
Mending Division Academy (MDA) is a set of six courses for church small groups. They are titled:
When Polarization Divides Us: Confronting the Perception Gap
When Conspiracies Divide Us: Confronting Misinformation
When Social Media Divides Us: Confronting Our Internet Habits
When Journalism Divides Us: Confronting Our Media Consumption Habits
When Politics Divides Us: Confronting Political Idolatry
When Crises of Faith Divide Us: Confronting Deconstruction
Each course offers 3-5 sessions. For each session a small group will watch a 30-40 minute video together and process the information together with provided discussion questions.
For the next six newsletters, I'll highlight one of these courses and post a clip so you'll get a better idea of what these courses are like. For this newsletter, let's talk about, "When Politics Divides Us: Confronting Political Idolatry."
Political involvement is important for us to be good citizens of a democratic nation, but when our political identity surpasses our identity in Christ, it becomes an idol. How do we avoid that temptation and heal the divides caused by political idolatry in our churches?
These issues are addressed by David Ritchie, lead pastor of Redeemer Christian Church in Amarillo, Texas, and author of Why Do the Nations Rage? The Demonic Origin of Nationalism (2022). I saw David last week at Denver Seminary's "The Church and Christian Nationalism" conference where he spoke on the same topic. He'll also present at our upcoming Orlando Pastor Conference on February 15-16.
Watch this clip from David's MDA course where he talks about the need to courageously and lovingly confront political idolatry in our churches.
Go to Mending Division Academy and use the code “Oct50” to get 50% off for the month of October.
What Else We're Reading
"A flood of misinformation shapes views of Israel-Gaza conflict"
While social media has been a critical tool for disseminating wartime information in recent days, a barrage of images, memes and testimonials is making it difficult to assess what is real. Activists in the region warn that viral horror stories that turn out not to be true may lead people to further distrust authority figures — and could spark hate, violence and retaliation against innocent people.
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"How the conspiracy-fueled Epoch Times went mainstream and made millions"
Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count. (Unlike most major newspapers, The Epoch Times isn't audited by the two major independent collectors of circulation data.) The nonprofit has amassed a fortune, growing its revenue by a staggering 685% in two years, to $122 million in 2021, according to the group’s most recent tax records.
Its editorial vision — fueled by a right-wing slant and conspiracy theories — is on display in recent reports on how “Jan. 6 Capitol Hill Security Footage Challenges Key Narratives” and “Meteorologists, Scientists Explain Why There Is ‘No Climate Emergency.’” Its video series include a documentary-style film alleging widespread vaccine injury and death and an exposé of an alleged world government agenda to harm farmers, cull the population and force survivors to eat bugs.
What The Epoch Times lacks in standards, it makes up for in style and form, mirroring the aesthetics of journalism — a feature that’s attracted subscribers and big-name supporters.
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