Category: Articles

You can learn a lot about the relationship between American religion and sports from journalist Tom Krattenmaker. You can also learn a lot about Tom Krattenmaker from his personal story with American religion and sports. Tom serves as a member of USA TODAY’s Editorial Board of Contributors and writes regularly for the paper’s “On Religion” commentary page. Tom recently authored Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers, a provocative book on American Evangelicalism and sports. Cultural Encounters editor, Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, recently met Tom for an interview to discuss his journey into the realm of American religion and sports as well as his own faith journey. What makes Tom especially interesting is that he is a reporter who positions himself as a member of the religious and cultural left, who engages American Evangelicalism fairly, openly, and insightfully—bringing an uncommon and insightful perspective to the midst of the media’s seeming preoccupation with the ‘culture wars’.

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In this article, Josh Butler argues that Revelation 4’s classic depiction of worship around God’s throne presents a picture of prophetic political challenge. Butler proposes that the scene’s location in heaven places it over the public life of the world, through examination of the heavenly throne’s Old Testament roots as a symbol of God’s kingdom reign over the earth. In orienting worship around God’s throne, John confronts Roman imperial ideology in the first century, with its claims to autonomous rule over the earth. Likewise, John’s vision in Revelation 4 provides resources for today’s Church to counter the privatization of its faith: reclaiming worship and heaven as political categories and framing the church’s vision for and participation in the public life of the world around the kingdom reign of God.

With the demographic center of Christianity shifting from the continents of North America and Europe to the continents of Africa, Asia and Latin America, Dr. Soong-Chan Rah asserts that there is now a corresponding shift from a Euro-Centric American evangelicalism to a multiethnic American Christianity. While there has been a noticeable decline among the population of white evangelicals, the influx of Christian immigrants has helped to sustain and grow the American church in the ethnic minority and multiethnic communities. Despite these changes in the demographics of American Christianity, Rah argues that there is still a Western, white cultural captivity of the American evangelical church, which prevents progression towards the ‘next evangelicalism’. The power dynamic of American Christianity needs to be addressed in order move towards a more multicultural expression of the church.