Don’t miss Nick Kristof’s generous tribute to John Stott in Sunday’s The New York Times. He sees Stott as a kind of kinder, gentler evangelical. Given their diametrically opposed worldviews, Kristof’s words come as a bit of a surprise (at least to me). It is not often that you hear a liberal columnist at a secular bulwark like The Times giving honor to an evangelical. But what is perhaps even more surprising about this article is Kristof’s generous tribute to evangelicals in general (at least some of them), which he bases on interactions that he has been having with them over the last several years. He writes:

The situation of Iranian pastor, Yousef Nadarkhani, is getting more dire. Right now, he is facing one of two outcomes. Either he must face execution or be forced to become a Muslim. Here’s the latest: A pastor in Iran found guilty of leaving Islam is awaiting the outcome of a judicial investigation into his spiritual background to see if he will be executed or forced to become a Muslim, according to Christian groups with ties in Iran… The court’s ruling, which took a month to reach Christian and human rights groups outside of Iran, said that according to Islamic Republic Criminal Law, the matter must be “further investigated to prove…

From ChristianityToday.com: From 1973 to 2010, the General Social Survey (GSS) has asked Americans if they think sexual relations between same-sex couples are wrong. Up until 2008, a majority of Americans have answered that such behavior is ‘always wrong.’ But the latest GSS, conducted in 2010, finds that only 46 percent of Americans hold this position.

Christianity Today is reporting that John Stott passed away this afternoon at the age of 90. His death comes after “complications related to old age.” In his final hours, family and friends gathered to him to listen to Handel’s Messiah one last time. He passed away at 3:15pm London time. It is be difficult to overstate the influence that John Stott has had on generations of evangelicals. He combined a pastor’s heart with an academic mind and was prolific in both his preaching and his books. In the coming days you will hear testimonials from evangelicals worldwide who have been shaped by his ministry.

Contrary to early reports, Anders Behring Breivik is not a Christian. In fact in his 1,518 page manifesto, the perpetrator of the atrocities in Norway has specifically disavowed any real commitment to Christ. In his own words:

Frank Schaeffer blames the tragedy in Norway on conservative evangelicals and warns that evangelicals will be perpetrating similar attacks in the U.S. in days to come. He writes: In my new book “Sex, Mom and God” I predicted just such an action. I predicted that right wing Christians will unleash terror here in America too. I predict that they will copy Islamic extremists, and may eventually even make common cause with them… The rise of the “Tea Party,” the refusal by far right Republicans to authorize a the debt ceiling extension, the extremist anti-government words of people like Michele Bachmann, all these things are predictors of the violent Christian, white,…

All of us are sinners, and we all are prone to cover our works in darkness so that our deeds will not be exposed (John 3:19-20). But we can’t hide our own faults from ourselves, so we have a tendency to rebrand our faults so that they are not faults after all. In other words, our hearts tend to suppress what they know to be true so as to salve our guilty consciences (Romans 1:18). But sometimes, there’s no getting away from the guilt. Even after we do our best to deny the evil of evil, it nevertheless haunts us at a visceral level.