• In Algeria, after 100,000 died in Muslim-on-Muslim violence, 10,000 Muslims turned their backs on Islam and were baptized as followers of Christ. This movement has tripled since the late 1990s.

• At the time of the 1979 revolution in Iran, about 500 individual Muslims were following Christ. Garrison projects that today there may be several hundred thousand Christ-followers, mostly worshipping in Iranian house churches.

Can an institution with an historic evangelical identity be divided on an issue as central as marriage and family and still be evangelical? Related to this discussion are questions about the authority and interpretation of Scripture, cultural engagement, and institutional power. All sides of the debate recognize that the definition of evangelical is at stake, which is why some are now publicly casting off the term altogether.

The crisis of worship and the crisis on moral teaching in churches today are not separate issues. I do not think it is an accident that the churches that have preserved forms of worship that can be traced back over 2000 years are also the ones that have kept the same teachings on sexual ethics. I will only speak for myself, but what drew me to the Orthodox Church was its sense of having preserved something that can be traced all the way back to the Apostles.

I think many liberal Christians, but certainly not all, would agree with me that the Church exists to mix things up a bit. She is not in the business of making anyone feel comfortable. However, it is true of revolutionary movements everywhere, that there is always lurking in the background some ‘committee of public safety’ deciding which establishments we are to mix up and which we are to keep.