State-registered religion is puzzling because it can be portrayed as both an opponent and a partner of the state. While registered religions need to be receptive to the rules of the government, they also need to satisfy the needs of their congregants. In light of the Communist Party’s increasing repression, I investigate how this complex positioning between the government and the congregation has influenced the content of sermons in state-approved Protestant churches. Using computational text analysis on sermons from a state-approved Protestant church in China between 2009 and 2021, I analyze the pastors’ degree and composition of self-censorship in their receptiveness to changes over time, as well as to politically and religiously sensitive dates. By focusing on sermons shared in state-approved churches, I shed light on the complex positions in which these Party-registered pastors maneuver. This research also contributes to the broader discussion of civil rights and state-society relations in the context of a strong authoritarian state.

Mark Noll famously began his 1994 book, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” Through the narrative of author Rachel Held Evans’s life, this article explores the intellectual state of the evangelical tradition during her lifetime, 1981–2019. Evans, a prolific author, blogger, and social media voice, was raised in conservative evangelicalism in Birmingham, Alabama, and Dayton, Tennessee. Her intellectual journey and abundant reading led her to challenge conservative evangelical views of gender and sexuality, creation, and hell, while holding to historic Christian beliefs. After experiencing rejection in-person and online from conservatives, especially Reformed Protestants associated with New Calvinism, she eventually renounced her beloved faith tradition of origin, evangelicalism. I argue that Evans’s faith trajectory illuminates the intellectual weaknesses of evangelicalism that Noll identified in 1994 and suggests that these weaknesses did not ameliorate in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The intellectual state of evangelicalism, and its attendant political dimensions, was a key factor in Evans’s reluctant separation from evangelicalism, as it was for many of her contemporaries.

Traditional narratives of the origin of Andover Theological Seminary and theological education more broadly in the United States focus upon the theological and intellectual justifications for the creation of this first form of graduate education in the United States. Such narratives, however, obscure the political motivations behind Andover’s founding. Jedidiah Morse, one of the primary architects of Andover, designed the school to support his religious, nationalistic, and imperialistic ambitions for the young nation. Morse drew upon his knowledge and experience as a geographer and his antagonism toward democracy to construct a new educational institution with the capacity to support the United States through the production of clergy. This article draws upon Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the spatial humanities to help understand both the establishment and political influence of Andover Theological Seminary. In so doing, it contends that Andover was far more than a theologically focused institution. Instead, it sought to shape the nation through a network of educated clergy committed to settling the North American geography and beyond. Andover was established as part of an evangelical infrastructure designed to undergird the co-constructed projects of religious nationalism and imperialism in the first half of the nineteenth century.

This paper examines the transformation of Anglican identity during a particularly intense period of decolonisation and political activism in Aotearoa New Zealand: 1970s to 1980s. Particular focus is given to the Revd Dr George Armstrong, an icon of Anglican activism in this era. Being at the forefront of demonstrations against nuclear warships, the apartheid-era Springbok Rugby Tour, and racism against Māori, Armstrong redefined his priestly role and the place of liturgy through public resistance. I argue that Armstrong’s emergence as the nation’s foremost priestly activist is best understood within the context of a decolonising New Zealand with implications for how the broader Anglican Church was renegotiating its role with the nation. This paper explores the key events and theological influences shaping Armstrong’s witness, including the role of protests, liturgy, and shifting assessments of settler colonial Anglicanism.