CT’s Top 20 Stories of 2022

Heresies, harassment, and Her Majesty’s death: Here are the stories Christians engaged with this year.

This year was all but predictable. With the war in Ukraine, historic court cases, and civil unrest around the world, Christianity Today’s readers came to our site for timely, faithful reflections and church-centered reporting.

The top article of 2022 was written by our own editor in chief, Russell Moore. His raw response to the SBC’s third-party investigative report was read by over 500,000 people and translated into six languages.

In addition to our SBC coverage, CT wrote about fantasy role-playing, Bono’s career and its connection to his faith, and pandemic fallout in the pews.

Our 20 most-read stories of the year are listed below in descending order, starting with No. 20 and ending with No. 1. You can find these and other top CT stories of the year here, many of which are also offered in CT Global translations.

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Check out the rest of our 2022 year-end lists here.

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Why Educators Shouldn’t Be Worried About AI

AI Apps like ChatGPT are a wake-up call to redefine the holistic nature of education.

Technology and machinery have long exceeded human strength, speed, and efficiency. But OpenAI’s recent release ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that—unlike previous technological advances—seems to mimic human intellect in a manner rivaled only by science fiction.

In general, ChatGPT can transact much of the work done in modern educational settings. This has led to a spate of articles with alarming titles like “Freaking Out About ChatGPT,” “Will Everyone Become a Cheat?” “The End of High School English,” and “The College Essay is Dead.” A recent article opened with this ominous forecast: “Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years.”

In response to its unnerving capacity to disrupt core fixtures of education like homework and essays, many are quick to point out the limitations of ChatGPT in order to prove human brainpower is still greater than increasingly intelligent AI. Yet while dialogue models like ChatGPT still have glitches and quirks, they will undoubtably get “smarter” and more adaptive with time.

ChatGPT’s capacity to arrange information and knowledge is a challenge to educational assessment from elementary to graduate school. More accurately, AI’s threat is proportionate to how we have come to define education.

As Amit Katwala writing for Wired put it, modern education is structured to teach people a single skill: how to collect and transmit information. And in this sense, alarm is warranted. To the extent education is reduced to absorbing and regurgitating information, AI like ChatGPT and other adaptive dialogue models will continue to surpass humans and radically ...

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In Britain, There’s More to the Day After Christmas than Boxing Day Sales

Churches observing St. Stephen’s Day retain the charitable roots of December 26.

Among the carols filling the air in Britain at Christmastime is the story of a 10th-century king braving the snow—“deep and crisp and even”—to help a poor man gathering firewood.

“Good King Wenceslas” sets out to deliver food, wine, and logs, and the shivering servant who accompanies him finds that the king’s very footsteps are warm. “Ye who now will bless the poor shall yourselves find blessing,” the final verse promises.

The carol begins with the king looking out “on the Feast of Stephen.” St. Stephen’s Day falls the day after Christmas and honors the first Christian martyr, whose story can be found in the Book of Acts. John Mason Neale, the 19th-century Anglican priest who composed the words to “Good King Wenceslas,” was alluding to a long history of charitable giving on the day.

Yet for the vast majority in Britain today, December 26 is simply Boxing Day. If there’s a tradition covered in the press, it’s that of the Boxing Day sales, when bargain-seeking crowds descend on the country’s malls, akin to Black Friday in the United States.

Francis Young, a UK-based historian of religion and belief, points out that even the idea of shops opening the day after Christmas is a recent development. “It would have been known as St. Stephen’s Day certainly right down to the middle of the 19th century,” he said in an interview with CT.

The name Boxing Day can be traced to around 1830, but “Christmas boxes” associated with the holiday date back to the 17th century. These were clay containers with a slot for coins, like piggy banks. At Christmas, the collected money was distributed to servants as well as tradespeople ...

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To Dust We Will Return

In the New Year, we must view our time through a divine lens.

A month after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, a debate raged about the responsibilities of those of us turned safely inside. For those privileged enough to find their calendars suddenly cleared, what should we do with all this newfound time? Should we perfect our baking skills? Learn another language? Launch a business?

But in her article for Wired, writer Laurie Penny took issue with those “lucky enough to be able to shelter in place” who were “using that time to launch podcasts and personal projects and life-hack [their] way to some cargo-cult pastiche of normality.” In her essay, Penny defiantly opposed the idea that we were most optimized when we were most productive.

“‘Productivity,’” she argued, “is not a synonym for health, or for safety, or for sanity.”

In theory, I might have agreed with Penny. But busy had always been the most recognizable version of me. Like almost everyone, I counted motion as meaning. While I was getting things done, I felt useful to the world—even to God.

So, in the spring of 2020, I doubled down on time-management strategies. I read more books. I made longer lists. I cleaned every closet in the house, all in the effort to stem the tide of time-anxiety, a word to name the panic attached to modernity’s scarcest resource.

I felt worse and worse and worse.

Of the many traumas the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted on the world, its disruption to our experience of time is certainly one. Years have been entirely eclipsed from memory, time now cleaved into the before and the after. If for one brief and hallowed moment, we gained a sense of time as something to receive, not manage—perhaps ...

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Hillsong Founder Awaits Verdict in Cover-Up Case

An Australian court is weighing whether or not Brian Houston had a “reasonable excuse” not to report his father's sexual abuse to the police.

The trial of Brian Houston ended on Wednesday after 13 days of testimony, evidence, and cross-examination in courtroom 2.5 in the vast Downing Centre courthouse in downtown Sydney, in the faded splendor of a converted department store.

The founder of Hillsong Church answered question after question about what he knew about his father Frank’s pedophilia, when he knew it, whom he told, whom he didn’t tell, and why. He admits he failed to report his father to police in 1999, as required by the law, but argues he is not guilty because he has a reasonable excuse.

Houston told the magistrate in the bench trial he didn’t go to the authorities because the grown-up survivor of his father’s sexual abuse told him not to.

He testified that the victim said, “I don’t want to be a big part of the church conversation. You know how gossipy they are. … You are not to go to the police. If anyone is going to the police it will be me, and I won’t be doing that.”

Houston’s legal advocate, Phillip Boulten, pointed out the victim never did file a report. He argued that, in fact, many people knew about and did not report the sexual abuse, including other church leaders, a Sydney Morning Herald reporter, and police who attended the church. Tens of thousands of people knew of Frank Houston’s offence, Boulten argued.

“You have to be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that [Houston] did not act without a reasonable excuse,” Boulten told the court. “The Crown”—how Australian courts refer to the prosecution—“has to prove that there is not a reasonable excuse that could be raised.”

Crown prosecutor Gareth Harrison argued, on the other hand, that ...

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‘Carol of the Bells’ Is More Than a Christmas Favorite. It’s a Ukrainian Cry of Independence.

Composed during World War I, “Shchedryk” folk song has survived the Nazi, communist, and now commercial eras to remind and revive the ties of hearth and home.

Adapted from A Ukrainian Christmas (Sphere 2022):

The war between Russia and Ukraine has been described in different ways, but here is the definition we offer: The country where Christmas is one of the most significant holidays of the year and is celebrated twice, honoring both Eastern and Western traditions, was attacked by the country where Christmas has lost all meaning.

But as Ukrainians bear the onset of winter cold, hearts are warmed by their millennia-long participation in the caroling tradition. And while “Shchedryk”—better known as the popular “Carol of the Bells”—has become one of the gems of world culture, many Ukrainian carols have a distinct trace of sadness to them.

One illustration is “Ne Plach, Rakhyle” (“Don’t Weep, Rachel”), one of the oldest in Ukraine. Referencing the Old Testament tragedy enacted by King Herod, the carol has comforted us in our many times of suffering. And today its lyrics tell the modern history of the Russia–Ukraine war: Ukrainian children are dying due to “Love for Ukraine—is all their fault, all their fault.”

Yet music has a special ability to create an atmosphere and transfer a feeling across space and time. For Christians, it is also the instrument through which God expresses the unspeakable, and a few chords can give us a glimpse of Paradise. No wonder the shepherds received the news of the newborn Messiah through angels singing!

The first mention of a Christmas carol dates back to 129, a time before Christmas existed as a holiday. In that year, the then-Bishop of Rome announced that “in the Holy Night of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, all shall solemnly sing the Angel’s Hymn.” ...

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Christmas Is a Myth (The Good Kind)

How the fact of the Incarnation fulfills the hopes of every culture.

On All Saints’ Day, my wife and I often tell stories about the saints who have most impacted us. This year, I shared with my family the story of C. S. Lewis’s conversion.

For some time, he had been teetering on the precipice of faith, unable to resolve his intellectual difficulties with Christianity. On a late-night walk around Oxford with his friends Hugo Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien, he voiced his essential objection.

Everything that matters, Lewis said, belongs in the realm of myth.

Lewis had a great fondness for Norse mythology that went all the way back to his youth in Northern Ireland. For him, however, myth was about meaning making , whereas history was about unrepeatable facts, collected and analyzed in an empirical way. The great tragedy of human existence was that myth and history did not and could never intersect.

Like the German thinker G. E. Lessing before him, Lewis described the “ugly ditch” between history and theology. Irrespective of how radiant his life was, a man named Jesus who lived 2,000 years ago could never be anything more than an inspirational figure.

Dyson’s and Tolkien’s responses were electrifying: In this instance, they said, myth had become fact. Everything eternal and mystical—the deep magic of the world—was real and incarnate in the person of Christ. He was not simply a historical person but the Creator God enfleshed to save the human beings he had created.

With that riposte, Lewis was suddenly able to put the pieces together. As he wrote later to his friend Arthur Greeves, “the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really ...

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Remember the Murdered Babies of Bethlehem at Christmas

Herod’s massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2 challenges us to participate in the “groans” of God’s world.

I detest the Christmas season—not so much for the commercialism that, after all, runs through all of modern life, but for the nauseous sentimentalism.

The story of Jesus’ birth has absolutely nothing to do with cuddly babies, exchanging gifts, or celebrating family togetherness, let alone snow, reindeer, mistletoe, and Santa Claus.

It is about imperial control, social prejudice, unwed mothers, political refugees, pagan astrologers, violence, bereavement, and murderous dictators. As such, it opens a window into our own contemporary world.

Take the Gospel of Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, where horrific murders take place amid this momentous event. In Matthew 2:14, Jesus, like Israel under the first Joseph, is taken to Egypt. And Herod, like Pharaoh before him, orders the slaughter of Israelite male children (v. 16).

Jewish readers of Matthew would also have picked up parallels with some nonbiblical Jewish traditions about the birth of Moses. The narrative presents Jesus, typologically, as a new Moses but especially as the true Israel who embodies God’s vocation to be a light to the nations as God’s obedient Son, a theme that is developed in the rest of Matthew’s gospel.

Sobering paradoxes abound in these infancy narratives. The Word to whom the universe belongs has no place to lay his head, let alone count as home. The pagan Magi turn out to be servants of Israel’s God and are led to recognize the true king of Israel, while Israel’s ruler is worse than any pagan tyrant.

When cruelty reigns

Herod was king of Judea from approximately 37 to 4 B.C. He is credited as a “prodigious builder” who established sprawling fortress-palaces, the entire ...

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Our Lady of Everywhere

5 questions about the global icon you see every Christmas.

The Virgin of the Passion, also known as Our Lady of Perpetual Help, has been called the most popular Christian icon of the 20th century. I would argue the same applies to our own century as well. As an art history professor, I’ve been chasing her around the globe for nearly two decades (and have now collected those studies in my recent book, Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon).

Here’s what you need to know about her.

1. Where does the story of the icon start?

The first surviving instance of the image appears on the island of Cyprus, where the icon was painted as an Eastern Orthodox response to Western Crusaders occupying the island—specifically King Richard the Lionheart of England and the Knights Templar. After the Knights slaughtered the Orthodox population on Easter morning of 1192, the image was offered as a prayer of lamentation. The angels flanking Mary traded their scepters of triumph for instruments of defeat: the cross, the spear, and the sponge.

Jolted from their onetime position of power on Cyprus, the island’s Orthodox inhabitants were forced back to the original political conditions once faced by Mary and Jesus. As the Byzantine Empire slowly crumbled, the Virgin of the Passion emerged. From the crags of the Balkans to the caverns of Mediterranean islands, this icon surfaced wherever Eastern Christian political power lost its ground.

Given those origins, the icon is relevant to Christians anywhere in the world who may be losing the power and influence they once enjoyed. The image tells us that sometimes the loss of power is not an end but a beginning.

2. What are some contemporary examples of this image?

Well, there are too many to count. The Virgin of the Passion shows up in The ...

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Francis Sunderaraj, India Evangelical Fellowship Leader Who Encouraged Education

His popular Sunday school curriculum was translated into 32 languages and dialects.

Francis Sunderaraj, an evangelical leader in India who prioritized spiritual education and ministry to lay Christians, died last month at 85.

As head of the Christian education department of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), Sunderaraj developed the most popular Sunday school curriculum in India. It has been translated into 32 languages and dialects.

He believed that “training laypeople to be the Lord’s workers in society at large is a greatly productive ministry,” said longtime friend Saphir Athyal.

The curriculum is also credited with fostering a sense of unified evangelical identity in India. It distinguished evangelicals from liberal Christians and gave them direction and focus.

“Education is absolutely vital for the growth of the Church,” Sunderaraj wrote. “Our focus must always be building up the Kingdom of God.”

Sunderaraj was born to a middle-class Anglican family in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, on April 7, 1937. He sang in the choir and served as an altar boy but struggled to live out his faith as seriously as he wanted.

When Sunderaraj was 17, he attended a Youth for Christ meeting where a visiting priest from England shared the gospel. Sunderaraj was convicted and gave himself to Christ, believing Jesus “could make my life meaningful in this world, if only in faith I surrendered myself to him.”

Despite his conversion experience, Sunderaraj continued to struggle into his 20s.

“Though I was outwardly participating in the worship service, deep inside I was in a desperate condition,” he later wrote. “Desperate because of the frustrating inconsistency I was going through in my spiritual life and the sense of lack of direction concerning my future.” ...

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A Tale of Two Books, One Podcast, and the Contest over Christian Nationalism

Answering Stephen Wolfe’s arguments for blood, soil, and sedition.

Earlier this year, just months apart, two books on Christian nationalism hit shelves. Both were written by veterans of the US Army with PhDs in political science. Both books define nationalism as an effort to use the government to preserve a people’s cultural particularity, founded on a felt sense of affinity and similarity with one another. The main difference is that one book argued that these are good ideas and the other that they are bad.

The first book was Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism. The second was my own, The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism. Our books do not cite each other, yet it is remarkable the degree to which they speak to the same issues from opposite perspectives.

Sacralizing tribalism

Wolfe argues that we have a natural affinity for similar people and that, since God is the author of nature, this natural affinity is good. He believes, therefore, that we should affirm our desire to be with similar people, working to preserve what makes us culturally distinct and using government power as part of that effort. Wolfe’s argument is refreshingly clear, honest, and forthright about the foundations and implications of nationalism.

That we have natural affinities is clear. As I argue in my own book, we are tribal creatures, naturally drawn “to the people and places that feel familiar and in which we see ourselves reflected.” That’s a simple observation of human reality. But that doesn’t mean such loyalties are reliably good. Which leads to my first major difference with Wolfe: We cannot simply take human experience as an infallible guide, because human experience is corrupted by sin. As theologians in the natural ...

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Christians Respond to Nationalists’ Call to Boycott Christmas in China

Chinese believers reflect on the relationship between faith and culture and rethink their seasonal evangelism.

On Christmas Eve in 2018, media technology researcher Su Lun experienced a sense of depression while walking on the campus of Nanjing University. It was like walking into Narnia in the middle of a hundred-year-long winter “surrounded by few people and silence, and not feeling any semblance of a Christmas atmosphere.”

On the same day, he received a notice in a college students’ WeChat group that read, “Today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, it is forbidden to post pictures or words about Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, or holiday celebrations in this group. We only celebrate Chinese holidays. We don’t need foreign holidays!”

That year, several Chinese universities and secondary schools banned students from celebrating or talking about Christmas on social media. And governments in several cities in the provinces of Hebei, Guizhou, and Guangxi issued bans on businesses putting up Christmas decorations. The Chinese government also implemented new regulations governing religion, kicking off a harsher round of persecution against Chinese house churches.

As Christmas approaches this year, just weeks after the Chinese government revised its pandemic policies, Christians feel the weight of suspicion and persecution. They wonder what the holiday—and the evangelistic outreach that typically goes with it—will look like in the changing political context.

For more than a decade, intellectuals have called for a boycott of Christmas because they view it as “a foreign holiday.” In 2006, ten scholars from Peking, Tsinghua, Nanjing, Wuhan, and other universities wrote an open letter advocating a boycott against Christmas and the “Christianization” of Chinese people. They ...

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Is Christmas a ‘Western’ Holiday in Asia?

Theologians and church leaders around the region share how December 25 is perceived in their contexts.

Christmas is widely celebrated in Asia. But is it seen as a secular holiday imported from the West or a religious one?

CT spoke with seven theologians and church leaders from Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam to find out how Christmas is regarded in their contexts, the unique traditions that take place, and how evangelicals celebrate the birth of Christ there.

Responses range from people who acknowledge and accept the Westernized, commercialized nature of Christmas in their countries to those who rally against such misconceptions and others who see it in a more religious light.

Taiwan: Wen-Chuan Lin, assistant professor of church music at Taiwan Graduate School of Theology

Christmas is known as a Western holiday to the general public in Taiwan. Because it is heavily influenced by its highly commercialized image from Western media and enterprises, such as the Black Friday sales, Christmas has been celebrated here as a holiday that comes with grand shopping events and fancy meals at fine restaurants.

Christians in Taiwan observe Christmas differently by viewing it as an opportunity to share the gospel. Theologically speaking, the celebration of the birth of Jesus should surely not be labeled as a “Western” event. However, when considering the historical development of liturgy and how this festival was introduced to Taiwan by missionaries from the West over a period of time, the “Western” image of Christmas seems indelible.

Personally, I do not mind using or improvising some Western elements for Christmas celebrations, whether in musical presentations, vigils, or caroling. However, I always suggest that churches ought to remove or downplay elements that have nothing to do ...

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We Three Kings? Interpretations of the Magi ‘Traverse Afar’

Q&A with religious studies scholar Eric Vanden Eykel on the history, mystery, memes, and meaning of the wise men in the Book of Matthew.

How many Magi visit Jesus in the Bible? Where do they come from?

The answers, for many, are as easy to recall as the first line of the beloved Christmas hymn: “We three kings of Orient are.” And yet, in the Gospel of Matthew, there are not three of them. Nor is a region specified beyond the very general “east.” Also, they’re not kings.

The wise men have become essential to the iconography of Christmas, but as religious studies scholar Eric Vanden Eykel argues in his new book The Magi, the difference between the accepted imagery and the text of the gospel is instructive. We can learn something about biblical interpretation by looking at all the ways people have read the Magi’s story. CT spoke to Vanden Eykel about the biblical account of Matthew 2:1–12, the many interpretations and creative retellings, and the gifts the Magi can give an attentive reader today.

How would the Christmas story be different if we didn’t have Magi? What would we lose if they weren’t in the Gospel of Matthew?

They’re there as witnesses—the Magi provide that in Matthew, and the shepherds provide that in Luke.

In Matthew, without the Magi, Joseph and Mary are just at home.

When the Magi come into the story, they validate that the birth has taken place and that a specific type of person has been born. This is not just a baby. The Magi’s interest is in the king of Judeans, so Matthew has them recognizing that not only has this person Jesus been born, but he’s been recognized as a king.

My reading is that this is very political.

How is the biblical account of the Magi political?

Contemporary readers, we have been conditioned to read this as a story about people seeking God, but I just ...

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Should Christians Support Indonesia Criminalizing Cohabitation and Extramarital Sex?

Local leaders weigh in on the Muslim-majority nation’s new penal code and whether governments should legislate morality.

Last week, Indonesia’s parliament approved a new penal code that received backlash from the United Nations and human rights groups inside and outside the Southeast Asian nation.

The new code, which replaces a colonial-era code enacted while the archipelago was under Dutch rule, includes the criminalization of cohabitation and sex outside marriage, bans insulting the president, and keeps in place blasphemy laws that have been used at times against religious minorities, including Christians. The law will go into effect after a transitional period of three years.

Home to the world’s largest Muslim population, Indonesia places a high value on religious harmony—known officially as Pancasila—among its 277 million citizens, and its constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Christians, who make up about 10 percent of the population, have mostly kept quiet on the new code.

CT asked five Indonesian Christians for their thoughts on the new criminal code’s article on cohabitation and extramarital sex, as well as other articles on blasphemy and criticizing the president. They explained how enforcement matters and why many Christians share the same stance on morality but disagree with the government’s attempts to legislate it.

Ihan Martoyo, director of the Center for Research and Community Development, Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH) in Tangerang:

Many reports in Western media found the Indonesian new criminal law controversial, especially the point related to sex outside marriage. But only a few explained that the offense regarding extramarital sex is in fact a complaint offense (delik aduan), which does not apply unless a close family member—a spouse, a parent, or a child—reports the offense ...

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Have Popular Carols Lost Their Sense of Worship?

Even with today’s nonstop Christmas soundtrack, churches can still embrace the storytelling and nostalgia that comes with seasonal hymns.

“Once a year,” wrote Brennan Manning in Reflections for Ragamuffins, “the Christmas season strikes both the sacred and secular spheres of life with sledgehammer force: suddenly Jesus Christ is everywhere.”

It’s true. When I walk through the grocery store, trying to remember if I have vanilla extract in the pantry, I hear Nat King Cole crooning, “O Come All Ye Faithful” in the background. My daughter comes home from preschool singing, “Joy to the World” (they have been practicing for next week’s school Christmas performance). On Sunday mornings, the hymns include “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus.”

Christmas music is the soundtrack to my life in December. Yet those of us who try our best to center the Incarnation throughout the season experience both joy and exasperation as we hear rich carols shuffled together with “Santa Baby” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

We worry that the saturation of Christmas music in everyday December life has watered down the meaning and worshipfulness of spiritual carols. It’s hard not to wonder: Has the singing of Christmas carols become an exercise in sentimentality and nostalgia? Do they still have a place in congregational worship?

During the first week of December this year, the most popular songs used in US churches, according to Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI), were all Christmas carols. The top five were “O Come All Ye Faithful,” “Joy to the World,” “O Come O Come Emmanuel,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Joy to the World (Unspeakable Joy)”—Chris ...

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World Cup Showcases Christian Athletes and Actions in Qatar

Remembering the heroics and good works of athletes, coaches, and fans.

This third Sunday of Advent, millions of Christians will be at church. But millions will also be glued to a screen, anxious to find out if the Argentinian GOAT will at long last claim a World Cup title. Though past his prime, the 35-year-old team captain Lionel Messi has been sublime in the competition, with five goals and three assists under his belt, and is leading the golden boot race in his fifth World Cup.

Although the reserved Messi, whose right arm bears a tattoo of Jesus crowned with thorns, has not expressed his faith openly beyond pointing to heaven after his goals, this World Cup has featured numerous heroics of confessing Christians.

Leading the freewheeling French attack against Argentina will be 36-year-old striker Olivier Giroud, who has Psalm 23’s “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want” tattooed in Latin on his right arm. During this World Cup, Giroud became the all-time top scorer for France with four magnificent goals.

While the team’s talisman Kylian Mbappé has lived up to the hype with his blistering speed and lethal shooting, Giroud has provided a reliable focal point in offense and his selfless play has created openings for his teammates. “I try to speak about my faith whenever I can,” he said after winning the World Cup in 2018. “I feel I have to use my media profile to talk about my commitment to Jesus Christ.”

During most of the past decade when Giroud played for two clubs in London, he attended St. Barnabas Church in Kensington, which belongs to the evangelical wing of the Church of England. During France’s quarterfinal against England, when he netted a header ...

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Gordon College Settles with Professor it Said Was a Minister

State judge says the school’s legal strategy was a mistake.

Gordon College has a reached a settlement with a social work professor who alleged discrimination when she was denied promotion. President Mike Hammond and board chair Carrie Tibbles notified faculty and staff in an email this week.

“We are pleased to finally reach a resolution of this dispute,” the email said. “This has been a protracted legal journey through the judicial system which we did not seek out but were compelled to pursue, and one which we know has been at times uncomfortable for Gordon as a strongly relational community.”

Margaret DeWeese-Boyd claimed the administration punished her for critiquing the school’s sexuality policies and arguing those policies hurt her LGBT students. She also said the school treated her more harshly than male colleagues who took similar stances.

The prominent evangelical college disputed the facts of the case but spent most of its time in court arguing DeWeese-Boyd should legally be considered a minister, and thus not protected by federal laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace. Gordon’s lawyers said the “ministerial exception”—first articulated by the Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission—should apply to Christian college professors.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected the ministerial exception argument in 2021. The US Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 2022.

A few months later, as the discrimination case moved forward in state court, judge Indira Talwani told Gordon’s lawyers they had messed up by trying to make too big of a move too quickly.

“If I was sitting in your client’s position, I’d be sitting ...

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For Your Next Nativity Scene, Add a Dragon and a Baptismal Font

In the story of the Incarnation, symbols of death and danger remind us of God’s renewal.

The next time someone wants a good Advent book, Fleming Rutledge recommends Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which deals with the total breakdown of society. There is no hope in sight, only cruelty. Like voices crying in the wilderness, a father and son travel through the ravaged wasteland of what used to be the United States, stewarding the one thing they have left: tender love for one another.

“Advent,” Rutledge notes, “is not for sissies.”

What can apocalyptic bloodbaths teach us about Christmas? How can they prepare the way for Christ’s coming?

Stories like The Road invite us into the stark realism of what Mary and Joseph faced under the cruel inflexibility of Roman rule and the hopelessness that all of humanity has faced to varying degrees over time. Their literary genre confronts us with death, judgment, apocalypse, and hell—just as Scripture does.

Exhibit A: The Book of Revelation, known in the King James era as the Apocalypse. Some scholars place John’s writing of the book as prior to the Gospels. That would mean his “nativity” would have been the first one told.

His Spirit-inspired perspective on the birth of Jesus might surprise us: “The dragon stood in front of the woman,” he writes, “who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born” (Rev. 12:4).

The dragon of Revelation has indeed invaded our nice, tame Nativity scenes. Perhaps we need The Road or its sequel, Blood Meridian to shake us out of our stupor and remind us that we too have been faced with a spiritual desolation of apocalyptic proportions. Or perhaps we need the literal voice of one calling in the wilderness.

John the ...

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Christmas Grafts Us into God’s Nontraditional Family

After losing my father as a child, I learned to see the Incarnation as my true lineage.

As a kid, I loved combing through the Christmas cards my family received each year. In the days before social media, those annual pictures in the mailbox helped me feel connected to long-distance friends and family.

After my father died, however, Christmas cards served as a reminder of what I’d lost. Photos of smiling, intact families and their cheerful greetings were like salt in a wound. Holidays are always hard for the bereaved. But for me, they added a layer of shame to the grief I carried year-round. As a hurting child, I intuited: My siblings and I were no longer Christmas card material, because our family was no longer whole. For that reason, we never sent another holiday greeting after my father’s death.

Our cultural fixation with the nuclear family takes on a religious tone around Christmas. We conflate Mary, Joseph, and Jesus nestled in the crèche with our own sentimental notions of family togetherness. We invite families up to light the Advent candles in church. We gather around extended family tables to celebrate. In all the hype, it’s easy to assume that “peace on earth” comes exclusively in the form of a whole and healthy family in front of a Christmas tree.

To be clear, family is a gift from God worth celebrating and supporting. God created the family in part to teach us how to love and be loved. The world needs to see families doing the hard and holy work of togetherness. But as New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley writes, “Our image of family at Christmas—well-decorated, wealthy, happy, and intact—actually sits uneasily beside the gospel of the first [Christmas].”

Jesus’ own family was not exactly Christmas card material. His first “Christmas” ...

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Unitarians and Episcopalians Created American Christmas

But evangelicals have rightly made it more gospel centered.

Conservative evangelical Christians have sometimes been eager advocates of the modern campaign to “keep Christ in Christmas” and preserve the traditional religious meaning of the holiday.

There’s one major problem with this campaign: The original religious message behind the American Christmas was not evangelical at all.

Instead, it was the creation of Unitarians, Episcopalians, and other liberal Protestants who had little interest in several key tenets of the evangelical understanding of the gospel.

Those of us who are evangelical in our faith can still have a merry Christmas. But if we want to do so in a way that foregrounds the gospel, we may have to discover a new approach to the holiday that does more than simply preserve the old.

Here’s the story.

Among the 17th- and 18th-century American colonists, the Christians who most closely resembled modern evangelicals uniformly refused to celebrate Christmas. The New England Puritans were strong opponents of Christmas, not only because of its connections with Roman Catholicism but also because, in 17th-century England, it had become a day known more for excessive drinking and gaming than for any religious observance.

Even at the beginning of the 19th century, long after the Puritan religious fervor had largely dissipated in New England, Congregationalists in the region continued the Puritan practice of not observing Christmas in their homes or their churches. Massachusetts, which in the Puritan era punished those who dared to celebrate Christmas, did not recognize it as a state holiday until 1855.

Though perhaps slightly less hostile to Christmas than the Puritans, the major American evangelical denominations of the late 18th and early 19th century likewise ...

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Apathy Used to Be a Virtue. But It’s Our Culture’s Hidden Vice.

How acedia became the enemy of our souls.

The concept of apathy has a long history in the Western world. We are not the only culture to treat it as “cool.” The great philosophers of the past debated its meaning and value. In fact, among certain Greek philosophers, apathy was one of the greatest things one could aspire to. The Greek term apatheia means “without pathē” (passions), and in the thought of some philosophers, passions often referred to violent emotions such as love, fear, grief, anger, envy, lust, pain, or pleasure that arise as responses to the outside world.

According to the Stoics, for instance, the wise—those who desire a life of flourishing—are totally free from passions. In other words, the wise are not vulnerable to the ups and downs of life in this world. They are self-sufficient; the external happenings of life “merely graze the surface” of their minds, as Martha Nussbaum observes in The Therapy of Desire. The goal of life is what we might call “equanimity,” or a calmness of soul. Even great non-Stoic philosophers such as Aristotle acknowledged the value of limiting the passions, for the good life was thought to await the apathetic.

Early Christian thinkers were well aware of the ancient philosophical tradition of thought that valued apathy. Interestingly, like their philosophical forebears, they sought to apply the concept of apatheia not only to human beings, but also to God.

Those who have taken an introductory course in theology might have encountered the term impassibility in discussions about God’s attributes. Impassibility is a Latin translation of the Greek term apatheia, and it was a concept much discussed among the church fathers.

According to theologian Pavel Gavrilyuk, to ...

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Christianity Today’s 2023 Book Awards

Our picks for the books most likely to shape evangelical life, thought, and culture.

When my alarm buzzes on the morning of an especially busy day, I often respond with a strange lack of urgency. A low rumble of dread builds as I ponder all the chores, errands, or work tasks that need completing. But instead of resolving to get up and get cracking, I linger in bed, nearly paralyzed by the weight of responsibility. I know what I need to do, but for some reason I can’t summon the willpower to do it.

Something similar plays out in the lives of many Christians, according to Uche Anizor, a professor at Biola University’s Talbot School of Theology. They know they’re supposed to love God, study Scripture, and pursue a life of holiness, but they can’t escape the clutches of spiritual indifference. In Overcoming Apathy: Gospel Hope for Those Who Struggle to Care, Anizor appeals to lukewarm believers, not with an accusing glare or a motivational speaker’s bullhorn, but with the compassion of someone who has fought this battle himself.

It’s a worthy choice for CT’s Book of the Year. Across the board, the judges who read and evaluated it commended Anizor for putting his finger on a problem that routinely flies under the radar, even as it sinks so many of God’s people into a spiritual quagmire.

Like Overcoming Apathy, all of our Book Awards winners have the capacity to awaken slumbering souls, whether they ring out with theological wisdom, literary beauty, pastoral warmth, or everyday encouragement. Don’t sleep on any of them. —Matt Reynolds, CT books editor

Apologetics & Evangelism

The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality

Glen Scrivener | The Good Book Company

The Air We Breathe is a book for this moment. Western ...

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State Finds ‘Substantial Evidence’ of Retaliation at Illinois Church

A firing at Dane Ortlund’s Naperville Presbyterian Church spurred a rare legal determination that could be a useful case study for churches.

A 2021 firing of a female staff member from a Chicago-area church led by pastor and author Dane Ortlund was determined to have “substantial evidence” of retaliation, according to an investigation into alleged discrimination by the state of Illinois.

The former director of operations at Naperville Presbyterian Church, Emily Hyland, said her termination came days after privately complaining to two elders about gender discrimination from Ortlund. At the time, she had worked at the church for eight years, and he had been senior pastor for six months. After her firing, she filed charges over gender discrimination and retaliation at the state agency.

The Illinois Department of Human Rights (IDHR) did not find evidence that the church or Ortlund discriminated against her based on her gender. Evidence shows that “Ortlund … never made any discriminatory remarks directly related to [Hyland’s] sex,” the report said, nor was there evidence of discrimination that rose to the level of a “hostile work environment.”

But the agency found “substantial evidence” that she was fired “in retaliation for having engaged in prior protected activity.”

Even if there is no “actionable” discrimination found, employers cannot retaliate against an employee for making a report, said employment lawyer Ed Sullivan.

Ortlund, a pastor in the Presbyterian Church in America, is the author of Gentle and Lowly, a bestseller. A longtime member of the Naperville congregation, he became its pastor in October 2020, with Wheaton College president Philip Ryken leading the installation.

Ortlund declined to comment to CT on the allegations, but in the state filing, the church said that Hyland ...

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Facing Challenges, Chinese Churches in Europe Look to the Future

Ministries are starting to reach out beyond the diaspora community and pass the faith onto the next generation.

It’s early morning in the small tourist town of Cordoba in Spain. Eugenio Peña, a 76-year-old local, arrived at the Good News Charity Service Center at Platero Pedro de Bares and Carlos III Avenue, ready for his volunteer work at the “Charity Cafeteria” that offers free breakfast to refugees and homeless people. The Center is a ministry established and run by a small Chinese church in Cordoba.

Christian charities run by Chinese churches are extremely rare in Europe. Chinese churches only occupy a small fraction of Europe’s Christian landscape. Ivan Tao, a missionary who has served in the region for two decades, estimated that while there are three million Chinese immigrants in Europe, there are only 350 Chinese churches (including Bible study groups and Christian fellowships) and 200 full-time Chinese preachers.

The lack of churches to worship at isn’t the only problem that Chinese Christians are facing. Many Chinese churches in Europe are also trying to overcome challenges such as a “hometown association” mentality, a commercialist attitude toward church life, and difficulties in transmitting the faith to the younger generation.

Where your treasure is

In Spain, 90 percent of Chinese Christian immigrants are businessmen who have moved overseas with the primary goal of making money. Most hail from Wenzhou and Qingtian in Zhejiang Province and other cities in Fujian Province, which are cities well-known for their local peoples’ tendency to choose immigration over poverty.

The Chinese immigrant church community typically functions as an extended social network for Chinese Christians outside of their families. Even the leadership team of the church has geocentric characteristics: ...

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King Solomon’s Advice to Americans in 2023

Thirty proverbs on power, justice, and politics.

The Book of Proverbs can be a humbling or even humiliating read. For every verse that lulls us into self-satisfaction of our righteousness comes another that aims its arrows at our own hearts too.

That incisive wisdom is particularly sharp when applied to election-year politics and our personal habits of political engagement. It’s uncanny enough to make us wonder whether King Solomon had foreseen cable news and Twitter. With another presidential election already underway, here are 30 proverbs for American politics in 2023.

On power

Proverbs doesn’t often directly address the subject of power, which is especially surprising for writings largely attributed to kings. Its authors envisioned a divinely appointed monarchy, a form of government far afield from our system, in which “many rulers” is not the result of rebellion (as in Proverbs 28:2) but constitutional design.

Yet that’s not to suggest the book has nothing to say of power as it works in our political context—far from it. Proverbs cautions us to be humble about our resources and abilities, to avoid grasping at power, and, if we find it in our hands, to remember it is often fleeting. Power can corrupt those who wield it, so we must take care to wield it justly.

Proverbs 16:32

Better a patient person than a warrior,
one with self-control than one who takes a city.

Proverbs 27:1, 24

Do not boast about tomorrow, and a crown is not secure for all generations.

Proverbs 31:4–5

It is not for kings, Lemuel—it is not for kings to drink wine, not for rulers to crave beer, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed, and deprive all the oppressed of their rights.

On tricks and transactions

We tend to think of political debates as arguments ...

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Hallelujah! ‘Messiah’ Sing-Alongs Turn Audience into the Choir

The centuries-old tradition has returned to community theaters after a pandemic hiatus.

If you attend this year’s performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Des Moines Community Orchestra, you’ll walk into the sanctuary of Grace United Methodist Church and notice the orchestra, of course. But there’s no choir.

Isn’t Messiah famous for the exhilarating “Hallelujah” chorus? What about “For Unto Us a Child Is Born”?

This time, the choir is you—the audience, that is. You can borrow a score, and there are even markings among the seats to divide the audience by vocal part—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, though sitting in your section is optional.

Messiah sing-alongs, also known as “Scratch Messiahs,” are a long-standing tradition in the United Kingdom and United States, dating back to the first half of the 19th century. Attendees get to step in and cocreate a centuries-old musical work that tells the story of Christ’s life from incarnation to resurrection.

For the Des Moines orchestra and many other community groups and ensembles around the country, this year is bringing a return of the tradition after a two-year pandemic hiatus.

“There’s nothing like conducting it,” said Carl Johnson, the conductor of the Des Moines Community Orchestra for the past 20 years. “It’s so big and powerful. And you look out at the audience, the looks on their faces … that’s worth it.”

Handel’s Messiah premiered in Dublin on April 13, 1742, as a charity concert benefiting two hospitals and prisoners’ debt relief. Although the work is now associated with Christmas, it is historically linked to Easter: Handel conducted annual Easter performances of Messiah at the Foundling Hospital in London beginning in ...

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Taiwan’s False Hope for Hong Kongers Disillusions Fleeing Christians

How a church is enduring uncertainty and disappointment as many struggle to find a home.

Since Wong Siu-yung opened a church for Hong Kong Christians in Taiwan last year, it attracted more than three dozen attendees. But in that time the only Cantonese-speaking church on the island has faced significant turnover.

A few congregants returned to their previous residence. But most of the 10 who departed moved to the United Kingdom.

“I watched them all give up and leave Taiwan,” Wong said. “Relocating for the second time in such a short period of time is very difficult.”

This week, Wong himself joined the exodus. The 48-year-old pastor boarded a flight Thursday to Nottingham, England, hopeful about making a new home more than 6,000 miles away. This wasn’t a journey Wong had anticipated when he left Hong Kong for Taiwan in July 2020. At the time, his involvement in the 2019 pro-democracy protests had made him a potential government target, so he decided to leave his homeland immediately.

Taiwan initially promised to provide “settlement and care” to thousands of Hong Kongers like Wong. But in the months since, the government has made it increasingly difficult for Hong Kongers to gain permanent residency, preventing many from working and settling on the island. Government officials fear that allowing Hong Kongers to resettle in Taiwan could provoke China and open the door to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) infiltrators.

Wong and his congregation have faced roadblock after roadblock: After selling their homes in Hong Kong, quitting their jobs, and pulling their kids out of school, they arrived in Taiwan to find the requirements to gain residency changed and their cases stuck in limbo. “Hong Kongers have fallen for [the Taiwanese government’s] great scam of the century,” ...

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Come Thou Long Expected Judgment

Advent prepares us for the Incarnation, but also for the gift of God's final justice.

A few days ago, I walked into a New Age, vegan grocery store in my Austin neighborhood and noticed something strange: an Advent calendar for sale. As far as I can tell, the store owners have not suddenly become interested in readying their customers for the feast of the Incarnation.

The awkward presence of the Advent calendar in a store devoted mostly to the healing power of mushrooms and crystals is part of the larger secularization of the season of Advent, now purring along to the same commercial hum as secular Christmas. The plethora of Advent calendar themes—from Legos, bath bombs, and teas, all the way up the price scale to Tiffany jewelry—indicates that the season has been overtaken in the long consumerist march from Black Friday to Christmas Day.

I’m not opposed to Advent calendars per se . Of the three “comings” of Christ—the Incarnation, his arrival by the Holy Spirit in the church, and his final coming as king and judge—Advent calendars can help us with the first two. But not the third. Yet, as Fleming Rutledge and others have written, it’s precisely Christ’s third advent that has always been the primary focus of this season of the church calendar. He will return “to judge the living and the dead,” as the Apostles’ Creed says.

When the early Christians began to pray, fast, and give alms in the four Sundays before Christmas, they were mostly preparing themselves to receive in glory the One who had first become their savior in the manger.

From the fourth century onward, hope for the coming judgment of Christ was embedded in the shape of the season. Advent hope is preeminently about hope for the return of Jesus. Even now, ...

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5 Signs of Christian Revival in Europe

As a missionary to this “prodigal continent,” here's how I see church planting, the prayer movement, and diaspora churches making a difference.

Post-Christian. Secular. A prodigal continent. These are some of the words often used to describe Christianity in Europe.

Yet, a growing number of voices believe God is not done with Europe.

“Renewed spiritual hunger, new stirring of prayer, fresh expressions of the church, [and] migrant churches restoring faith” are signs of hope in our continent today, writes former Europe YWAM director Jeff Fountain.

Could it be that, in the midst of this spiritual desert, God might be springing new streams of living waters, or even seeds for revival?

It would certainly not be the first time that God changes the narrative of a continent.

Only decades ago, Protestants described Latin America as a mission field. Today, it's become a mission force, and the Brazilian church sends the second most missionaries in the world. In 1900, Africa was home to about nine million Christians. Who could ever have imagined that by the 2020s there would be half a billion Christians on the continent?

But the missional challenges for Christians in Europe are overwhelming.

“Europe is one of the toughest regions in the world in which to bear witness to Christ. The combination of the three-headed monster of secularism, pluralism and materialism make Christian witness difficult across the Continent,” says Lindsay Brown, former general secretary of IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students).

The old continent has a complex and unique history with the Christian faith.

“No other continent has been exposed to Christianity for such a prolonged period and in such an extensive way,” wrote Jim Memory, the Lausanne Europe co-regional director, in the Europe 2021 Missiological Report. “Yet just as Europe was the first continent ...

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US Commission ‘Outraged’ By Omitted Offenders of Religious Freedom

USCIRF protests Nigeria and India not being included among nations added to State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern.

The United States has expanded its list of the world’s worst violators of religious freedom.

Two new nations—Cuba and Nicaragua—were added on Friday to the State Department’s list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC). Two others—Vietnam and the Central African Republic (CAR)—were added to its Special Watch List (SWL). And one new organization was added to its list of Entities of Particular Concern (EPC): Russia’s mercenary Wagner group, due to its cited offenses in CAR.

“Around the world, governments and non-state actors harass, threaten, jail, and even kill individuals on account of their beliefs,” stated Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State. “The United States will not stand by in the face of these abuses.”

His own watchdog, however, is unconvinced.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) tweeted its “outrage” over the non-inclusion of Nigeria and India. It is “inexplicable,” the independent bipartisan organization continued, given the State Department’s own reporting.

In June, Blinken released the US government’s annual Report on International Religious Freedom. Mandated by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the report chronicles violations in every nation of the world, whether by governmental or societal actors, measuring also the local legal frameworks.

The sections on Nigeria and India were particularly lengthy.

“They each clearly meet the legal standards for designation,” stated Nury Turkel, USCIRF chair. “USCIRF is tremendously disappointed that the Secretary of State did not … recognize the severity of the religious freedom violations.”

This past ...

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Matt Chandler Restored to Ministry After Three Months

The Village Church offers few details about process it says was successful.

Matt Chandler returned to the pulpit of The Village Church on Sunday, restored to ministry by the Texas church’s elders a little more than three months after he took a leave of absence to deal with what one elder called “some challenges that arose.”

A few minutes later, 48-year-old Chandler started preaching about sin.

“It is my understanding that I have fallen short of the glory of God and he has met me with grace,” he said. “It is my understanding that I am inconsistent and I do have spots that are hypocritical, and there are parts of me I don’t even understand.”

Quoting Ephesians 2:13–17, Chandler urged the congregation to see that the true promise of Christmas is reconciliation with God. But that can only start, he said, if people acknowledge their sin, as he himself had done on that same stage in late August.

“To humble ourselves before a living God gives us a shot at peace,” he preached. “I’ve got a part of this I’ve got to own. It might just be 1 percent, but that’s my 1 percent. Forgive me. Now we’ve got a shot at reconciliation.”

While he acknowledged his sinfulness again on Sunday, Chandler didn’t offer any more details about the situation that led to his leave of absence. In late August, he confessed to an inappropriate online relationship with a woman he was direct messaging on Instagram. Chandler said at the time that the ongoing exchange was neither sexual nor secret—his wife knew about it—but the church’s elders were nonetheless concerned “about frequency and familiarity,” and specifically “a familiarity that played itself out in coarse and foolish joking.”

A statement ...

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A Southern Baptist Pastor’s Plea: Please Listen

Why Johnny Hunt’s “restoration” convinces me we don’t have ears to hear.

I have seen this before.

As I watched four pastors (two of them belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention) declare former convention president Johnny Hunt restored to ministry—six months after he was put on leave when a third-party investigation found he was “credibly accused” of sexual assault—I realized I knew what I was seeing. I hadn’t watched this exact 14-minute video, of course, with four men offering assurances of repentance, but I had seen it.

I’d seen it at the church where leaders gave their assurances that a young man would not abuse any more girls. “We gave him a stern talking to,” they said. “This won’t happen again.”

I’d seen it when a pastor told a woman whose husband had created a psychologically and spiritually abusive home that she shouldn’t leave. “Let the pastors work with him,” he said. “We’ll be like watchdogs.”

And here it was again.

The most terrifying thing about these scenes is that these leaders are not bad men. I don’t know Johnny Hunt’s quartet of supporters, but I know the leaders of the church where abuse took place. And I know the pastor who gave that bad marital counsel: It was me.

So as eager as I was to go online and denounce all that was appalling about this video—the misuse of Scripture, treating the abuser as the victim, and failing to even mention the real victim—I realized I couldn’t train my sights on this group of men. No, for a Southern Baptist pastor like me, the video is not a target but a mirror.

It is a mirror that shows us what happens when our convictions about complementarity rot into misogyny. It is a mirror that shows us how the can-do, ...

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A Southern Baptist Pastor’s Plea: Please Listen

Why Johnny Hunt’s “restoration” convinces me we don’t have ears to hear.

I have seen this before.

As I watched four pastors (two of them belonging to the Southern Baptist Convention) declare former convention president Johnny Hunt restored to ministry—six months after he was put on leave when a third-party investigation found he was “credibly accused” of sexual assault—I realized I knew what I was seeing. I hadn’t watched this exact 14-minute video, of course, with four men offering assurances of repentance, but I had seen it.

I’d seen it at the church where leaders gave their assurances that a young man would not abuse any more girls. “We gave him a stern talking to,” they said. “This won’t happen again.”

I’d seen it when a pastor told a woman whose husband had created a psychologically and spiritually abusive home that she shouldn’t leave. “Let the pastors work with him,” he said. “We’ll be like watchdogs.”

And here it was again.

The most terrifying thing about these scenes is that these leaders are not bad men. I don’t know Johnny Hunt’s quartet of supporters, but I know the leaders of the church where abuse took place. And I know the pastor who gave that bad marital counsel: It was me.

So as eager as I was to go online and denounce all that was appalling about this video—the misuse of Scripture, treating the abuser as the victim, and failing to even mention the real victim—I realized I couldn’t train my sights on this group of men. No, for a Southern Baptist pastor like me, the video is not a target but a mirror.

It is a mirror that shows us what happens when our convictions about complementarity rot into misogyny. It is a mirror that shows us how the can-do, ...

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Missionary Pilot Imprisoned in Mozambique

MAF’s Ryan Koher and two South African volunteers have been detained since November 4 on suspicion of helping Islamist insurgents in Cabo Delgado.

An American missionary pilot has been detained for nearly a month in Mozambique on suspicion of supporting insurgents in the southern African nation.

Ryan Koher, 31, serving with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) through its Mozambican partner Ambassador Aviation Ltd. (AAL), had been due to fly vitamins and other supplies to church-run orphanages in the Montepuez district in the troubled Cabo Delgado Province in the far north.

But he was detained November 4 along with two South African volunteers in the coastal city of Inhambane, far to the south.

The two South Africans, 77-year-old W. J. du Plessis and 69-year-old Eric Dry, had brought in the supplies but police stopped them from being loaded aboard Koher’s Cessna aircraft.

Koher has now been moved to a maximum security prison in Maputo Province, southern Mozambique.

MAF says Koher is innocent. Its president and CEO, David Holsten, called today on the Mozambican authorities to release the pilot so that he can be reunited with his wife and two sons before Christmas.

“I urge Christians around the world to pray for Ryan’s safety and swift release, and call on those in power both in Mozambique and here in the US to do everything they can to resolve this wrongful detainment,” said Holsten in a statement.

“Ryan is a caring and gentle individual,” he added. “Over the last couple of years, he and his wife have worked hard to learn the language and culture of Mozambique to better serve those who rely on our service.”

A profile of the family on MAF’s website says the couple takes inspiration from Matthew 12:21 by wanting “to share the hope of Christ with isolated people.”

Koher’s wife, Annabel, and two sons, Elias and ...

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God Doesn’t Use the Elf on the Shelf Method

It’s not the threat of divine surveillance but the extension of divine love that changes our hearts.

Around this time of year, some people argue about whether the baristas at their local coffee franchises should say “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” Others argue about whether their churches should hang Christmas wreaths before the end of Advent. Still others focus on more hotly debated points—such as whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or whether Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is festive or annoying.

All the while, we are leaving unattended a debate that might tell us something about the state of American religion. I’m referring, of course, to the Elf on the Shelf.

Sold alongside a book of the same name, first published in 2005, the Elf on the Shelf is a plastic figure, bedecked in a long cap, that perches on the mantles (and various other spots) of some American homes. The elf is said to be a scout for Santa Claus, helping him determine who’s naughty and who’s nice. For some, the elf is uncannily eerie—the way creepy children in horror movies can be.

A decade ago, journalist Kate Tuttle argued in The Atlantic that the Elf on the Shelf is “a marketing juggernaut dressed up as a ‘tradition.’” She listed many reasons she hated the practice, but her most pointed one was the conceit behind the whole thing: teaching children that it’s all right to be spied on. The elf, after all, sits on his perch from Thanksgiving to Christmas to see whether kids keep the rules and behave.

While Tuttle might be right that there’s “something uniquely fake about the Elf,” the idea of controlling behavior with the notion that someone “sees you when you’re sleeping” and “knows when ...

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Hark! It’s CT’s 2022 Christmas Music Playlist

Our festive favorites this year span from kids’ carols to hard rock.

It’s that time of year again—I’ve removed the decomposing pumpkin from my front porch, my family has watched The Polar Express several times, and my kids ask to walk through the “forest” of lit Christmas trees when we’re shopping at Target or Home Depot.

It’s time to build our Christmas 2022 playlists. This year brings new albums from prominent artists like Joss Stone, the Backstreet Boys, Michael W. Smith, and Switchfoot. After listening through the latest holiday releases, I’ve put together a list of seasonal tunes that spans multiple genres and styles and highlights albums that you might have missed.

The seven albums on this list include music that is festive, worshipful, traditional, sentimental, merry, and heavy (metal, that is).

December Songs, Resound Worship

December Songs from Resound Worship is a set of four theologically rich, thoughtfully arranged original songs, written with the congregation in mind.

The first track, “Do Not Be Afraid,” is a contemplative refrain that builds slowly, adding instrumentation and voices to each repetition of the phrases “Do not be afraid, God is here. / Do not be dismayed, O my soul, / For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” It’s a beautifully meditative and simple song that so perfectly expresses the posture of waiting in the darkness for the Light we know is coming.

December Songs is intended to be a resource for worship leaders. Resound Worship makes lead sheets and chord charts available for free. Full scores, videos, and backing tracks can be purchased as well.

Appalachian Christmas, Chosen Road

Chosen Road has a strong track record of reimagining favorite songs of the church for their albums ...

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Amid China’s Rare Protests, Christians Wrestle With Their Role

Chinese church leaders hold differing views on political participation but stress the need for prayer and evangelism 

During the unexpected protests in China last weekend, a student approached Zhu Jianshe with concerns that a classmate who had posted a protest slogan on campus would be severely punished. Zhu, a professor at a university in Shanghai and a church elder, comforted her and vowed to do his best to protect the student.

“I have been preparing in my mind for the past two days that I may have to sacrifice something to protect the students if the situation calls for it,” said Zhu. (CT has changed all of the names in this article for their security)

As demonstrations in several cities around the country have made international news, Zhu has been thinking through how Christians can engage with the current moment. One area where he knows he can help: using his position to help those unable to speak for themselves.

It’s a question Christians in China are now grappling with as the country experienced the largest protests in 33 years since Tiananmen Square. While typically the Chinese government quashes any nascent movement, a deadly fire in an Urumqi apartment building led to a national outpouring of frustration over China’s “Zero Covid” policy. In major cities like Shanghai, Beijing, and Chengdu, hundreds of people took to the streets. At times, calls expanded to freedom of speech and even an end to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s rule.

Christians in Chinese house churches have long faced government persecution but historically tended to stay away from politics, focusing on shepherding believers and evangelism. Yet especially among the urban house churches influenced by Reformed theology, this attitude is changing.

This past weekend, members of a banned house church in Chengdu held up paper signs scrawled ...

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Evangelical Giving Goes Up, Despite Economic Woes

Report: Nonprofits saw a sizable increase in donations, while many megachurches struggled.

Needs rose last year. But so did giving to evangelical ministries.

The annual State of Giving report from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) found giving to ministries increased more in 2021 than it had any year out of the last 10. Inflation and the pandemic both raised real concerns for ministry leaders trying to make ends meet, but evangelicals responded to the crises with generosity.

The ECFA survey of about 1,800 members found they received more than $19 billion in donations in 2021. Adjusting for inflation, giving went up by about 3 percent. In the last 10 years, the increase has been closer to 2 percent.

“Contrary to what many expected, giving during the pandemic to ECFA members was strong,” Michael Martin, ECFA president and CEO, wrote in the report. “The findings we unveil emphasize the good work that ECFA members are doing to serve and expand their services in the face of inflation and other challenges.”

If Christians are excited and optimistic about the work of parachurch organizations, though, the numbers reveal a different story when it comes to megachurches. The ECFA surveyed 87 churches that belong to the financial accountability organization. Giving to those congregations dropped by 6.6 percent in 2021, following a decline of 1.1 percent the year before.

Jake Lapp, ECFA vice president of member accountability, attributed the decline to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some churches have reported that they are still only at 50 percent of pre-pandemic attendance.

“One of the big impacts is with churches not being able to meet or maybe meeting with limited capacity again,” Lapp said. “Congregants had been slow to return to the pews.” The decline in giving ...

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In England and Wales, Christianity Falls Below Half the Population

Analysis: The rise of the nonreligious raises questions for the faithful in a new era of pluralism and diversity.

Remember those math puzzles you used to do as a kid? What’s the next number in this sequence: 2, 5, 11, 23, … ? Or maybe try this one: 2, 4, 10, 28, … ?

Well, I’ve got another one for you: 71, 59, … ?

I’ll admit this one is trickier as you’ve got only two numbers to get going, but if you said “47,” you’d be on the right track.

The true answer is, in fact, 46—that being the percentage of people in England and Wales who, in the 2021 census, ticked the Christian box. Having been 71 percent in 2001 and 59 percent in 2011, it’s now 46 percent. Anyone want to take any guesses for 2031?

The decline in the proportion of adults in England and Wales (and in Scotland and Northern Ireland too) calling themselves Christian should shock no one who hasn’t been on Mars these last two decades.

Nor should the rise of the nonreligious category, reaching 37 percent this time and set to become the biggest single group in the country next time.

The demographic and cultural trends have been pointing in this direction for over half a century. What the census has done is clear up some of the uncertainty that always swirls around polling data, while also giving us a level of granularity that reveals how minority religious groups—Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Sikhs, and others—have all increased in numbers over the last decade.

At this point, the usual lines of argument from the usual suspects will go forth and multiply. Some religious groups will try to claim that the nonreligious are actually, in fact, religious; they just don’t know it. That won’t wash. People tick the no-religion box for a reason. Nonreligiosity may be complex—but ...

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