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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There Is No Such Thing as a ‘Safe Space’

Our culture values self-protection. But true love demands that we move toward each other.

One particular argument will figure in our family lore for generations: the adults upstairs, lancing one another with loud accusations, while the children downstairs slowly realized the holiday movie, planned for the afternoon, would not be.

Years later, I can’t remember the reasons for our conflict among extended family members. I only know the conditions were right. The “most wonderful time of the year” was upon us, and expectations were at a fever pitch.

It’s a risky business, this thing we call love. Unfortunately, in our cultural environment today—when personal safety is prized so highly—I fear we grow less and less tolerant for the normal bruising that happens in the contact sport of human relationships. We will love insofar as we are never hurt.

A quick swipe through social media reveals a lot of relationship advice centered on self-protection. We are taught to be vigilant against injustice, to repudiate toxicity, and to avoid situations that make us feel unsafe. The law of no trespass has become inviolable.

To be clear, I celebrate the growing emphasis on accountability. It is good and right to protect victims from abusers, and I welcome the more precise ways we’ve come to name the violations of human trust. Importantly, the Christian gospel never diminishes the trauma of sin and the necessity of repair. With a crucified Messiah at its very center—a scapegoat made to suffer for the sins of the world—it is a story that upholds the necessity of justice.

Still, I worry we are growing unrealistic in our expectations for human relationships. We seek safety, by which we often mean invulnerability. We imagine that incurring wounds in a relationship signals reasons to quit, ...

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Former Southern Seminary Prof Sues SBC Leaders for Labeling Him an Abuser

David Sills admitted to misconduct but claims he has been “falsely attacked” by Southern Baptists and their investigative firm.

A former seminary professor and missionary who admitted sexual misconduct has sued a group of Southern Baptist Convention leaders and entities, claiming they conspired with an abuse survivor to ruin his reputation.

In a complaint filed November 21 in the Circuit Court of Mobile, Alabama, David Sills, a former professor of missions and cultural anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, admits he lost his job in 2018 due to what he called “morally inappropriate consensual intimate” conduct with a student.

Sills claims the situation was consensual and alleges that SBC leaders, including Southern’s president, Albert Mohler, turned his confession against him, labeling him as an abuser.

They did so, according to the complaint, as a public relations stunt, aimed at improving the SBC’s reputation during a national sexual abuse scandal. That public relations effort, according to the suit, included an investigation by Guidepost Solutions into SBC leaders’ handling of alleged abuse cases, which was made public earlier this year.

“David Sills was repentant and obedient to the rules of the SBC,” the complaint alleges. “Defendants saw him as an easy target; a bona fide scapegoat.”

The complaint names Southern seminary and Mohler, as well as the SBC’s Executive Committee, SBC President Bart Barber, and his predecessor Ed Litton as defendants, along with several other leaders. Also named as a defendant is Lifeway Christian Resources, a research and publishing arm of the SBC, and Guidepost Solutions.

It also names Jennifer Lyell, a former seminarian and vice president for Lifeway, who has repeatedly alleged that Sills was abusive, an allegation Mohler has also made on social ...

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Died: Jason David Frank, Power Ranger Who Pointed to Christ’s Power

He trusted in God's strength because “Jesus didn’t tap.”

Jesus didn’t tap.

It wasn’t a joke to Jason David Frank. It wasn’t just a T-shirt or the first Christian line of mixed martial arts apparel or just the cool, multicolored tattoo he bore prominently on his forearm.

It was a statement of faith: We are weak, but he is strong; people are frail and fail and succumb to sin, but Christ bore all human weakness and conquered sin; dying he destroyed death. His love never fails. Jesus doesn’t tap.

“To me, he’s the true champion, he’s the only champion,” Frank told the Houston Chronicle in 2010. “There’s really only one true champion who’s been through, like, enduring pain, and that’s Jesus.”

Frank—who became famous for playing the Green Ranger and the White Ranger on the kids’ TV show Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, developed and taught his own form of martial arts called Toso Kune Do, and launched the Jesus Didn’t Tap line of apparel—died on Saturday, November 19. He was 49. It has been widely reported that he died by suicide.

Fans reacted to news of his death with anger, disbelief, empathy, bitterness, sarcasm, and sadness.

“[I’m] in shock and sad and don’t know how to take this. … jesus didn’t tap remember jason? why did you tap out like this????,” one fan wrote on Twitter.

“That’s sad man!” another said. “He’s been fighting for a min[ute].”

Fans gathered on Frank’s official Facebook page on Monday morning after the Thanksgiving holiday to celebrate his life and share how much he meant to them. They talked about watching Frank on the Power Rangers and meeting him at comic-con events, and shared how he encouraged ...

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Indonesian Churches Organize to Aid Earthquake Survivors

After a powerful quake hit the island of Java this week, a network of local Christians raced to help.

When Denny Tarigan arrived in the remote village of Gasol, the earthy smell of wet soil assaulted his senses.

The sound of ambulance sirens permeated the air. Cars and motorcycles filled the narrow dirt roads. As the Indonesian Christian aid worker looked around, he saw blue makeshift tents lined with mats and blankets that were full of earthquake survivors, including children and the elderly.

What he also saw: Smiles on the villagers’ faces.

“The people are strong enough to survive this,” said Tarigan, who took a 10-hour car ride from his hometown of Yogyakarta to Cianjur, the regency where Gasol is located, on Wednesday.

“Most of them just don’t know what to do after this,” he said. “For now, they think that they need help from the government and other [disaster relief] agencies.”

While it is common in the United States for churches to engage in disaster relief, in Indonesia most humanitarian aid is provided by government agencies, international NGOs, and Muslim aid groups.

It is only in the past several years that Indonesian churches have started to engage in disaster relief, said Effendy Aritonang, the Indonesia country director for Food for the Hungry and secretary of the executive team of Jakomkris, the Christian Community Network for Disaster Management in Indonesia.

Engaging the aftermath

When the 5.6-magnitude earthquake occurred on Monday morning, Aritonang, Tarigan, and other members of Jakomkris kicked into action.

Made up of Indonesian nonprofits and churches, the team called for a coordination meeting to begin identifying needs and figuring out who could provide assistance.

A Mennonite group showed up to provide clean water. About 10 doctors and 20 nurses from a Christian ...

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3 Popular Misconceptions About Advent

Christian leaders from Brazil, Colombia, France, and the Philippines weigh in on mistaken beliefs about the season.

For liturgy-loving Christians, Advent is a season of anticipation, marked by a posture of hopeful and expectant waiting.

But for many evangelicals, it may pass by almost unnoticed and unobserved, whether due to an unfamiliarity with the church’s liturgical calendar or a cynicism toward Catholic practices.

Advent means “arrival” or “appearing” and comes from the Latin word adventus. Each year, the season begins four Sundays before Christmas and lasts until December 25. It is divided into a period that focuses on Christ’s second coming and another that focuses on his birth. (Orthodox Christians observe a similar event, the Nativity Fast, from November 15 to December 24 before the Nativity Feast on December 25.)

Advent began in fourth- and fifth-century Gaul and Spain as a season intended to prepare believers’ hearts for Epiphany (January 6), not Christmas. Epiphany is a day to commemorate the Magi’s visit after Jesus’ birth (in the West) or Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan River (in the East).

Today, Advent customs may include reading and praying through an Advent devotional and lighting one of four candles inside an Advent wreath each Sunday, corresponding to four weekly themes: hope, love, joy, and peace. Most wreaths also include a centrally placed candle to symbolize Jesus, the Light of the World.

Yet, in parts of the Majority World and in countries where Catholicism is the dominant religion, evangelicals do not typically observe Advent.

French evangelical churches ignore Advent as part of “a gut reaction against anything that is liturgical, because it smacks of Catholicism,” said Gordon Margery, a Baptist lecturer at the Nogent-sur-Marne ...

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The Seed of Korean Christianity Grew in the Soil of Shamanism

An awareness of the spirit world was a crucial component in missionary efforts to spread the gospel.

Protestant missionaries arrived in Korea in the 1880s with a burning desire to share the gospel to the locals.

This was the golden age of Protestant missions, and missionary records captured detailed impressions of Korea’s political, social, and spiritual atmosphere.

The missionaries were perplexed to find almost no evidence of religious life there. Some even defined Korea as a nonreligious country where Confucianism merely served as a philosophical and moral guide for living.

They were wrong.

As they settled into their new lives, the missionaries soon realized that shamanism was a core religious belief in Korea. American missionary Homer B. Hulbert used the term “spirit-worship” for the animist, nature-worshiping practices he observed there, while fellow missionary George Heber Jones opined that Korea was rich in religious phenomena that comprised a mix of shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

Shamanism “appealed” to the Korean person’s soul and “inspired him with fear,” while “Buddhism appealed to his heart and inspired him with admiration and Confucianism appealed to his mind and inspired him with respect and veneration,” Jones wrote in The Rise of the Church in Korea.

These missionaries also grew to recognize how influential shamanism was in shaping and contextualizing the Christian faith in the Korean context.

Shamanism provided a deep awareness of the spirit world, which cultivated fertile space for evangelism. The female shamans’ spiritual power and authority also proved instrumental in growing a network of “Bible women” in the country.

How Christianity arrived in Korea

Korean scholars were the first to introduce Catholicism in the country. In the ...

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Love in a Time of Social Conflict

The cross calls us to sacrificial community, especially during a divided age.

In the August heat of 1965, widespread violence and bloodshed tore through the Watts area of Los Angeles. There were more than 30 deaths. Most of those were perpetrated by the police. There was fire and looting and vandalism.

At the invitation of Black social groups, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. entered Watts. He later described the protests that followed as “disorganized,” though that was a major oversimplification.

“However, a mere condemnation of violence is empty without understanding the daily violence that our society inflicts upon many of its members,” he said. “The violence of poverty and humiliation hurts as intensely as the violence of the club.”

King wrote about his interaction with a couple of young men in the wake of the weeklong eruption that destroyed many Black businesses that had been the heart of the community.

“We won!” King remembers hearing one exclaim.

He looked at the rubble. The ash. The broken buildings. He tallied the dead bodies.

“What does winning look like?” he asked the youth.

The devastation people are experiencing today is like a wall so high none of us can see the sunlight anymore. Businesses are crumbling. Churches are dividing. A pandemic is raging.

“What does winning look like?” King and those with him asked the youth in Watts. And it is a question we must also ask ourselves today.

Today, America as a country is at war with itself. And we aren’t just at war with people of other races, and we aren’t just at war with Christianity; our divide seems to be a tribalism so strong that it is separating people of the same family and origin.

We are living in a country where Americans feel their political affiliation ...

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Liberty U. Dean Claims He Was Fired for Whistleblowing

John Markley says he raised concerns about fraudulent management, enrollment rate misrepresentation, and “compensation schemes.”

A former dean at Liberty University has sued the university, alleging he was fired in retaliation for his whistleblower reports to Liberty leadership and law enforcement.

The lawsuit, filed in the Lynchburg Circuit Court last Thursday, claims that over the past four years John Markley made “repeated good faith reports of disturbing violations” of state and federal law at Liberty, only to be terminated from his role as administrative dean for academic operations in June.

The university says that he was let go as part of a reorganization and that his allegations are without merit.

Markley’s suit lists 15 “improper activities” he said he raised concerns about, including potentially fraudulent management of Liberty charitable organizations and corporate subsidies; the intentional misrepresentation of acceptance rates and enrollment numbers for financial gain; and a compensation scheme for LU business executives.

“The improprieties witnessed by Dr. Markley were numerous,” the suit says. “Dr. Markley’s position provided an eye-opening perspective on the inner workings of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise that operated to maximize profits without ethics and at the expense of truth and those willing to fight for it, and to the detriment of the students, and professors.”

Liberty spokesman Ryan Helfenbein said in a statement that Markley’s termination was “wholly unrelated” to any misconduct allegations and that the school did not learn about his communication with a federal agency until after he left.

The recent lawsuit, which alleges “retaliatory actions taken against employees of LU” is similar to one filed in October 2021 by Scott Lamb, Liberty’s ...

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Lawsuit: Vineyard Anaheim Exit Was About Money, Not Holy Spirit

Carol Wimber-Wong and eight former members accuse Dwelling Place pastors of $62 million fraud.

The widow of a legendary Vineyard leader is suing the pastors of a Southern California church for fraud and the alleged misappropriation of $62 million.

Vineyard Anaheim, the “mother church” of the Vineyard movement since it was planted by John Wimber in 1977, left the charismatic denomination without much explanation in March. The current senior pastor, Alan Scott, told the church that the Holy Spirit just led them to split. There were no big disagreements with the national organization, no disputes about direction, and no personal conflicts.

“We don’t really understand why,” Scott said in a recording of a Sunday service obtained by CT. “I wish I really could sit before you today and say, ‘Here are the six reasons,’ ‘Here’s our issues,’ ‘Here are our grievances,’ or whatever. … We don’t always know what’s on the other side of obedience.”

But Carol Wimber-Wong, who cofounded the church with her late husband John Wimber and remained an “active and tithing member” until the church left the Vineyard, has a simpler explanation for what happened. There were not six reasons, she and eight other former members and leaders allege, but 62 million.

The former members claim Alan and Kathryn Scott knew they wanted to leave Vineyard USA but lied about it when applying for the leadership positions at the Anaheim church so they could take control of the $55 million mortgage-free building and $7 million in the bank.

“The Scott Defendants concealed their true intentions,” the lawsuit claims. “Defendant Scotts sought the position as Senior Pastors of Vineyard Anaheim with the deceitful motive of controlling tens ...

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Thanks Be to God for Scripted Gratitude

The words I say every Sunday guide me toward gratefulness.

I grew up doing sword drills. The Sunday school teacher or youth group leader would yell out a passage, chapter and verse, and we would scramble to find it first. It was important to the churches I grew up in and the evangelical subculture I was raised in that we were “Bible people.”

Years later, when I began a doctoral program in political theology, I joined a church in a different tradition than the one I’d grown up in. My new church was still fairly “low church” in many ways—no smells or bells or vestments and a plain church building. But in this context, I encountered sword drills of another sort in the form of liturgy—words meant to engrain God’s Word in our hearts.

After the reading of Scripture, the pastor says, “This is the Word of the Lord,” and the congregation responds, “Thanks be to God.” In those two short phrases, I have found a rich theology of Scripture that directly addresses our anxieties about how to use the Bible in a theologically and politically fraught world.

As theologian Brad East writes in his book The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context, the liturgical designation of a text as “the word of the Lord” alerts the gathered community that what they hear is “for them the living speech of God.”

This miracle of human and divine words is possible because God delights in using humans for redemptive purposes beyond themselves. While people are “like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field,” as 1 Peter 1:24–25 says, “the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Our familiarity with this miracle might conceal how incredible it is. While the books ...

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Cambodian Spies Were Watching Me. So Was Someone Else.

After escaping the Khmer Rouge with my siblings, I learned who had been protecting me all along.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” The first time I heard those words, I was 14 years old. It was a cold, still night at the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp in Thailand.

I’d only been there for a few weeks, and the sensation of safety was still new and surreal. It was hard to really believe I could close my eyes and sleep without fear of being captured, of being found out, of waking to find that a loved one had been dragged away in the night. We had worked hard to get here, to cross the border from Cambodia and find a place where we could live again.

I was lying in my bed when “Amazing Grace” came rippling in through the window. I couldn’t make out the words, but the melody woke something in me. With it came a presence, at once unnamed and familiar. I’d felt it before.

Praying for help

I’d been raised Buddhist in Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Each morning, my mother would set out a plate of fresh fruit for our ancestors and light incense so that a tendril of smoke would rise like our prayers to them. We sometimes went to the temple, bowing before statues of earth, water, fire, and rain. I remember the great statue of Buddha towering over me. But I never lingered in the temple. As a child, I didn’t have the patience or decorum to sit still so long.

When the Khmer Rouge came, it changed everything. I was ten years old at the time. Like everyone else in Phnom Penh, my family was forced from our home and sent into the countryside to work in labor camps.

The name of God was erased from our world, just like the colorful clothes and the lively city streets of life before communism. No one spoke of him now, except in hushed tones. When the Khmer Rouge split ...

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Making a Better Christianity Today: An Update

In March, we published on harassment reports at CT. Here are the steps we’ve taken since then.

One of our deepest prayers and most important objectives over the past year has been that Christianity Today should provide a work setting where the intelligent and kind and immensely talented women who serve this ministry could flourish.

Women and men at Christianity Today should be treated with equal dignity and professionalism. They should know they are respected and cared for and should have every opportunity to unfold their gifts for the glory of God and the good of the world.

After I came to the ministry in May 2019, it became progressively clear that our organization had work to do on this score. We are deeply grateful for the faithful labors of the men and women who came before us and put us in position to advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom of God all around the globe.

Yet many women at our ministry did not find that CT provided a healthy environment. When two women in September 2021 shared about their experiences of harassment by former employees, we lamented with them, asked their forgiveness, and sought to respond with wisdom and love. The employees they named had not been on staff for some time at that point, but their narratives stretched back many years and made it clear that our ministry had done less than love requires of us.

Earlier this year, we published an editorial on what we were learning, alongside an independent assessment of our culture and practices we had commissioned from Guidepost Solutions. In the interest of radical transparency, which we felt especially important for us as a journalistic institution, we also published an article in which one of our own reporters examined our ministry and released a podcast episode in which we responded to questions.

Our intention throughout has been to ...

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This Giving Season, Offer the Poor a Pew

Church structures and schedules often make it hard for the working class to participate. Let's change that.

As the holidays come around, with them comes a particular generosity and care that’s often expressed through charity initiatives. For the next month, this spirit will give rise to toy collections, food poundings, and coat drives. A lot of local churches will act as points of access and distribution.

But what if what the poor need something more from Christian communities? What if the gift that churches can uniquely offer them is a place to worship and belong?

One of the most discussed religion stories of the past decade is the rise of the “nones,” or those who don’t affiliate with a specific religious community. Today, that number stands at 29 percent of the American populace, up 10 percentage points in as many years. Pew Research predicts that if current trends hold, nones will be a majority by 2070.

But the data reveals an even more startling picture among the poor and working class. According to Ryan Burge, author of The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, and Where They Are Going, 60 percent of nones make less than $50,000 a year, while only 21 percent have a college degree.

In a word, church affiliation is increasingly the purview of the educated professional classes.

To some, this data might suggest a correlation between religious commitment and the kinds of choices that lead to wealth, based on the theory that faith and local church attendance bring about social success. Others may note that marriage correlates with socioeconomic status, and that adult children of continuously married families are 78 percent more likely to attend church than those from divorced, never-married, or widowed homes. Perhaps those who commit to spouses also end up in more stable places in society.

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The Science of Giving Thanks to God

A growing body of research backs the benefits of divine gratefulness, in good times and bad.

For many, 2022 has been a difficult year, and the perception of blessings are hard to come by. Once again, we find ourselves in the seeming contradiction of believing in an unconditionally loving, all-powerful God and experiencing the reality of the global crises facing humanity.

How might gratitude—and gratitude to God specifically—be vital for flourishing and resilience in today’s world? Amid pandemics, climate change, addiction, political extremism and polarization, financial collapse, crime, inequality, international conflicts, nuclear threat, and forced migration, is there a healing power in gratitude to God?

For a while, people relied on personal testimonies and scriptural admonitions to “give thanks” to answer these kinds of questions. Scientifically, research had little to say about being grateful to God since gratitude had largely been studied on a horizontal, human-to-human level. New projects funded by the John Templeton Foundation have theologians, philosophers, and psychologists like us exploring gratitude to our supreme benefactor.

Already, these researchers have discovered that believers who experience and express gratitude to God report feeling more hope, higher satisfaction, more optimism, fewer depression episodes, and greater stress recovery. Their studies suggest that gratitude to God magnifies and amplifies the effects of gratitude toward other people.

Grateful believers aren’t just happier because they’re better off, either. We see people experiencing gratitude to God in the midst of adversity.

Jason McMartin, a theologian at Biola University, in a paper not yet published, contends that suffering intensifies our encounters with God, reframing the experience of gratitude ...

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Solving Spiritual Abuse in the Church Is Simple and Straightforward—at Least in Theory

None of Michael Kruger’s proposals are earthshaking, but they require time, effort, and vigilance.

Spiritual abuse is far from new, but recent scandals involving high-profile leaders have drawn renewed attention to this reality. Michael J. Kruger’s Bully Pulpit: Confronting the Problem of Spiritual Abuse in the Church brings a new resource to the conversation, rich with biblical foundations and practical applications.

Kruger isn’t the first name you might expect to see on the cover of a book about spiritual abuse. He’s a well-respected scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yet, in his role as a professor and seminary president, he has witnessed several recent cases that compelled him to address the issue of spiritual abuse. “Sometimes,” he points out, “you do things not because you want to but because they need to be done.”

Bully Pulpit isn’t aimed primarily at abusive leaders. The book is directed first toward Christian leaders, churches, and parachurch organizations that may be hiring and enabling leaders whose practices are opposed to the ideals described in Scripture. Such leaders may embrace orthodox theology even as their habits of leadership distort or ignore the New Testament’s witness.

What spiritual abuse is—and isn’t

Early in the book, Kruger acknowledges potential misunderstandings related to the term spiritual abuse. He is careful to point out that not every sin a leader commits is spiritual abuse; nor is every slight that a member feels. Spiritual abuse can be confused with calling out someone’s sin, initiating church discipline, and engaging in other legitimate practices of pastoral care.

So why use the term spiritual abuse at all, given the possibility of such ...

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Candace Cameron Bure Has a New Home for the Holidays

The evangelical actor faces recent pushback for her decision to leave Hallmark for Great American Family, whose Christmas movies will center on “traditional marriage.”

The Hallmark Channel turned holiday movies into a festive, feel-good, and always snowy empire. But this year, the network lost one of its queens of Christmas to new competition.

Candace Cameron Bure left Hallmark for Great American Family, founded in 2021 by former Hallmark executive Bill Abbott.

“I knew that the people behind Great American Family were Christians that love the Lord,” she said. “And [they] wanted to promote faith programming and good family entertainment.”

Bure—an outspoken evangelical with her own line of DaySpring Bible devotionals, a son at Liberty University, and a brother who also brings faith to Hollywood—was drawn to the new network’s focus on faith and family programming.

The switch comes just as Hallmark gears up to launch its first Christmas rom-com centered on a same-sex couple, but Bure said her departure was not a response to the LGBT representation on the network. She stated that her contract at Hallmark was up and that Great American Family presented a new opportunity for her.

When Bure recently told the Wall Street Journal that she thinks the new network “will keep traditional marriage at the core” rather than feature same-sex couples, she received a wave of criticism from celebrities like dancer JoJo Siwa and country singer Maren Morris.

“I have a simple message: I love you anyway,” Bure responded to critics in a post on Instagram this week. “To everyone reading this, of any race, creed, sexuality, or political party, including those who have tried to bully me with name-calling, I love you.”

Her “traditional marriage” comment sparked deeper discussion about the two networks. Abbott had left the Hallmark Channel’s ...

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Kanakuk Sued for Alleged Fraud in Abuse Settlement

Survivor claims the camp misled his family by withholding prior knowledge of his predator’s pattern of misconduct.

Logan Yandell is one of a string of young men who attended Kanakuk Kamps in the 2000s, who were groomed and abused by a popular counselor, and who later signed confidential settlements, adding a layer of legal restrictions to the anguish they suffered in the aftermath.

Their accounts of being sexually abused by a trusted leader who cloaked nudity, masturbation, and molestation in camp fun and Christian teachings have slowly come to light more than a decade after serial abuser Pete Newman went to prison. Some victims have opened up in recent news coverage and survivor testimonies; others revealed details in anonymous “John Doe” lawsuits.

Yandell and his family did not know all these stories when they settled back in 2010—not that at least dozens of Kanakuk campers had been through the sexual abuse he had and not that others had reported Newman’s inappropriate behavior to the camp years earlier, raising concerns about sleepovers, skinny dipping, and naked four-wheeling.

Now, 27-year-old Yandell believes the settlement he and his parents agreed to is fraudulent. In a lawsuit filed this week in Missouri, Yandell claims Kanakuk misled his family.

“Neither Logan nor his parents would have agreed to the settlement terms if not for the Defendants’ false statements,” said Brian Kent, one of the lawyers representing the family in the suit. “The Yandells were told that Kanakuk had no prior knowledge of Newman’s sexual exploitation of children. The representations made by Defendants regarding prior knowledge of Newman’s patterns of sexually abusing minors were blatantly false.”

This is believed to be first abuse lawsuit to bring fraud allegations against the Branson, Missouri, ...

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Interview: Where Angels Fear to Tread: Writing A TV Show About Jesus

The screenwriters for “The Chosen” wanted a main character who is not like Superman.

Ryan Swanson and Tyler Thompson, along with director Dallas Jenkins, write the hit show The Chosen, a drama about Jesus’ life through the eyes of his disciples that has millions of views and has been translated into more than 50 languages. The show’s third season premieres November 18, with four more seasons planned.

Jenkins is usually the public face of the show, but CT spoke with Swanson and Thompson at the show’s production location in Midlothian, Texas, this summer when they were shooting their version of the biblical story of Jesus feeding the 5,000 for season 3. The thousands of extras were all fans of the show who contributed to the crowdfunded show or who won a raffle (see our coverage of the shoot here).

You have some experience in Hollywood. How does it make you feel that the Hollywood gatekeepers like Variety haven’t acknowledged the show much?

Tyler Thompson: I don’t take it personally that they haven’t. They have good reason to be suspicious of it, because it doesn’t really make sense—the whole business model, the app of it all. It hasn’t been a large acknowledgment in the Hollywood press, but we do know it’s being discussed in the boardrooms.

Ryan Swanson: If it was blowing up, it doesn’t feel like it would hit us for a while.

Tyler Thompson: Yeah, there’s the show, and then there’s all the noise around the show. The Bible study booklets, calendars, and documentaries—we stay isolated from the social media hype.

Ryan Swanson: It has been nice in a lot of ways to grow at our own pace.

Tyler Thompson: We have our very tight writers’ room of three. And there are many outside forces speaking into it, but it’s really just us. ...

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Everything You Need to Know About the Respect for Marriage Act

The law approved by the US Senate doesn’t deny religious liberty to those who support traditional unions.

This week, the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA) passed the Senate. It tries to balance the unquestionable goodness of traditional marriage with America’s changing views on same-sex relationships. Some conservatives will undoubtedly treat the act as a loss. But others will take the view that, in a morally pluralistic society, a few concessions yield a win for the common good. I’m one of them.

The history of RMA goes back to late June, when the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overruled its predecessor Roe v. Wade. Buried in a concurring opinion by justice Clarence Thomas was his suggestion that the court make a clean sweep of things by reconsidering the 2015 Obergefell decision finding a constitutional right to gay marriage. That comment unsettled the tens of thousands of Americans who had entered same-sex unions, which in conservative states are dependent on Obergefell remaining good law.

In response, the US House passed the Respect for Marriage Act, or H.R. 8404. But it failed to safeguard religious liberty for churches, universities, and other institutions that believe in traditional marriage.

Rather than just say no to RMA, a small collective of faith groups moved quickly in the Senate to see if the act could be brought into balance. A few senators from both parties who were keen on doing just that helped. After adding in a measure of religious liberty protections, the Senate substitute of the House bill passed the higher chamber earlier this week, 62–37.

In order of significance, here’s what you need to know about the Respect for Marriage Act:

Section 6(b) of RMA recognizes that religious nonprofits and their personnel have a statutory right to decline any involvement with a marriage solemnization ...

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A Requiem for the Twitter I Once Knew

The social media platform has birthed key movements and conversations. Here’s what I’ll miss if it dies or changes form.

When billionaire Elon Musk assumed leadership of Twitter in late October, I was ambivalent. When top executives left almost immediately and Musk made dramatic layoffs, I began to feel nervous. But then came a new verification system that quickly failed and cost companies like Eli Lilly billions of dollars.

Now, two weeks later, I find myself deeply saddened by the chaos he continues to unleash. Unlike the entrepreneur’s other ventures (Tesla or SpaceX), Twitter is not a tech company. It’s a community.

Twitter Inc. may own and maintain the land on which we live, but users are what make it great. And leading that kind of community means understanding how people—not just systems—work. It means learning how to cultivate space to let people thrive.

When I first joined Twitter ten years ago, I was a stay-at-home mom to small children, a pastor’s wife in a rural community, and a hobby blogger. My tweets reflected my life: comments about my kids, the church, gardening, and sometimes the latest evangelical controversy. (In late 2012, it happened to be Rachel Held Evans’s A Year of Biblical Womanhood.)

While other moms gathered on Facebook and Instagram, I found a home on “the bird site.” There, I discovered ideas and debates that were shaping culture and the church. Had these conversations transpired in person, my place, age, socioeconomic status, educational status, and domestic life would have limited my ability to engage. But Twitter’s digital public square invited me in to them.

As Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei put it in 2010, “Twitter is the people’s tool, the tool of the ordinary people, people who have no other resources.”

Soon enough, I found myself ...

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Died: Michael Gerson, Speechwriter Who Crafted Faith-Inspired Language for George W. Bush

The one-time theology student believed politics should have “heroic ambition,” and speeches should be written, on occasion, for the angels.

Michael Gerson, an evangelical columnist and speechwriter who believed politics could have noble and moral purpose, died on Thursday at the age of 58. He was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2013.

Gerson crafted the language of faith-inspired politics for president George W. Bush from 1999 to 2006. He fused a theological vision of moral purpose with a practical policy agenda—and in the process produced some of the era’s most memorable phrases, including “armies of compassion” and “axis of evil.”

He gave Bush’s speeches about compassionate conservatism and moral internationalism their rhetorical framework: starting with the “inexorable” call of the historical moment, adding the demands of duty and conscience, naming the various temptations that could lead the American people astray, and ending with a clarion call to do the right but difficult thing, forging forward with “confident hope.”

Even when key lines or the bulk of a speech was written by someone else in the White House, a colleague recalled, “Mike’s conceptual architecture was always indispensable.”

In the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Gerson was described as “the man whose words helped steady the nation.” A few years later, Time magazine named him one of the country’s most influential evangelicals.

He believed the work of writing speeches was a high calling.

“On most days,” he once said, “you are writing for the next day’s headlines. In a few moments, you are writing for American history. … And then there may come a time, once or twice, when you are writing for the angels.”

Gerson was born into an evangelical family in New Jersey ...

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Trump Won’t Divide the Church This Time (and That’s Not Necessarily Good News)

Cynicism and cruelty are even worse than division.

After Donald Trump announced this week that he’s running for president in 2024, many of my fellow evangelical Christians started bracing for more upheaval in their congregations and denominations. The situation is especially troubling because many of us haven’t yet recovered from the first Trump era.

But what if this time around, we don’t see the same levels of contention and division? And what if the potential quiet isn’t actually good news?

Upon hearing about Trump’s announcement, a contact of mine told me about the trouble in his own family. “We’ve already fought about this for seven years,” he said. “How much more can we take?” (I’m not even sure whether this person is a Trump supporter or opponent.)

Y’all know where I stand on this issue. But even many of those who disagree with me lament the fact that families are estranged, churches have split, denominations have been ripped apart, and friendships are gone—all because of politics. And now here we go again.

I wonder, though, whether the most dangerous thing might not be the arguments themselves but rather the absence of arguments.

After all, one of the most traumatic aspects of 2016 to 2021 was the sense of betrayal felt by people on almost every side of the divide. One Black Christian told me that the Sunday after Election Day in 2016, she left a church service in tears because she knew most people in her predominantly white evangelical church had voted for Trump.

“How can they say they are for me and my family and yet be for that?” she asked.

Much of the heated personal conflicts over Trump and Trumpism were caused by the vertigo that happens when people ostensibly ...

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‘Nondenominational’ Is Now the Largest Segment of American Protestants

US Religion Census finds independent congregations have surged in the last decade.

Call it the rise of the nons.

Not the “nones,” who have commanded attention for years, as the number of Americans who don’t identify with a specific religious tradition has grown from just 5 percent during the Cold War to around 30 percent today. This the nons—nondenominational Christians, people who shake off organizational affiliations, disassociate from particular tradition, and free themselves from established church brands.

Over the course of a decade, the number of nondenominational churches has surged by about 9,000 congregations, according to new decennial data released by the US Religion Census. Nondenominational churches have been quietly remaking the religious landscape.

“The two biggest stories in American religion are the nones and the nons,” said Ryan Burge, professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University and an expert in religious demographic data. “We are in a transitional period for Protestant denominations.”

There are now five times more nondenominational churches than there are Presbyterian Church (USA) congregations. There are six times more nondenominational churches than there are Episcopal. And there are 3.4 million more people in nondenominational churches than there are in Southern Baptist ones.

If “nondenominational” were a denomination, it would be the largest Protestant one, claiming more than 13 percent of churchgoers in America.

Nondenominational Christians don’t show up in the polls that sample and survey American religion, though, because people don’t think of “nondenominational” as an identity. They are more likely just to say “Christian,” or perhaps “Protestant.” If prompted, ...

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The Real Miracle on the Set of ‘The Chosen’ Is Christians Coming Together

People around the world have found a passionate community in the hit show about Jesus. With a new season, can it keep navigating fan, investor, and religious demands?

Andrew Cheng and Catherine Williams had their impromptu wedding near craft services, right before shooting a scene in The Chosen of the feeding of the 5,000. The extras­—like so many Christians on the set and so many viewers around the world—were surprised at the close community they found in the hit show.

“It was just bonkers,” Cheng told CT after his wedding to Williams. “Everything was great, except Jesus wasn’t there to turn water into wine.”

In June, The Chosen wrapped filming the scene for its third season that premieres Friday, with about 10,000 fans serving as extras for the multiday shoot in Texas.

Maybe not since Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ has there been a biblical hit like this. Other Hollywood projects like Noah or The Young Messiah flopped with Christian audiences for various reasons. But because this show is financed through fans, it has a following unlike any studio project.

The first season debuted in 2019 as a massive crowdfunding success, raising $10 million. Now it has a devoted following all over the world and has been translated into more than 50 languages. The showrunners are planning seven seasons and fundraising $100 million. People often encounter the show with low expectations of didactic Christian content and are surprised to find something more compelling.

The distributor, Angel Studios, is trying to continue The Chosen’s success in other projects. The first season of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga will begin streaming in December. It also drew millions in crowdfunding. The Chosen producers, brothers Jeff and Neal Harmon, have describedThe Chosen as their House of Cards, the show that launched Netflix.

The show still operates ...

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On The Streets of China, The Cross Shone Bright

Chinese Christian posters boldly proclaimed salvation, freedom, and hope amid a tumultuous political period.

Between 1927 and 1949, millions of Christian posters appeared on the streets of China.

These posters challenged, co-opted, and subverted political messages in circulation and daringly portrayed an alternative vision of national salvation.

Chinese Christian artists used familiar techniques and symbols to proclaim that the kingdoms of this world, whether Nationalist or Communist, would fade before the kingdom of Christ.

From clocks and masks to roads and floods, Christians deployed common propaganda symbols of their day to point people toward Jesus Christ, China’s only true hope for salvation.

A clarion call

The Chinese Nationalists bulldozed their way to power in 1927, rumbling north to Beijing behind a phalanx of pamphleteers. Their leader, Chiang Kai-shek, and his lieutenants preferred posters and handbills over bullets and bombs. They placarded the country with posters of the Nationalists liberating China from calamity and exploitation. The Nationalist Party wanted to win the heart of the nation, not merely browbeat it into submission.

J. Sidney Helps, the general secretary of the Religious Tract Society for China (RTS), a major producer of Christian literature and evangelistic tracts, watched in amazement as the revolution was achieved “using our means and improving upon them.”

Propaganda established the new masters of the Middle Kingdom, he concluded. Could not Christians use the same tactics to inaugurate the kingdom of God?

“Do propaganda work for [your] Lord and Master,” Helps challenged fellow believers that same year.

Christian publishing houses across China heeded his call.

Millions of Protestant propaganda posters entered the Chinese market. Copied onto the cheapest paper and plastered on walls ...

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Samaritan’s Purse Gives Away 200 Millionth Christmas Shoebox

Operation Christmas Child spokeswoman recalls the power of a yo-yo she received in a Ukrainian orphanage.

God’s love entered Elizabeth Groff’s life in the form of a yellow yo-yo packaged inside a shoebox.

She remembers the feeling of light—in sharp contrast to the darkness that surrounded her for so much of her childhood.

At the time, she didn’t know anything about Samaritan’s Purse or Operation Christmas Child, which sends shoeboxes of gifts to children in need around the world. Groff was born in a small town in Southern Ukraine. Both of her parents were alcoholics and her father was killed in an alcohol-related accident when she was just a year old, she said.

Her mother wasn’t able to properly care for her on her own, so they went to live with her grandparents. While there, her mother gave birth again to a little girl named Tanya. Their mother was rarely home, so even though she was just a child herself, Groff took on much of the responsibility of caring for her little sister.

“I kind of had to grow up and become the head of the household at a very young age,” she told CT.

Her mother gave birth to a third girl and Groff’s load increased.

Then tragedy struck. Groff’s mother fed the new baby alcohol instead of milk and the little girl died at seven months old.

“That was really hard for me. I was taking care of her,” Groff recalled. “I felt like I did something wrong.”

Although she was only seven, Groff decided in that moment that she needed to find a better life for her sister Tanya. She impulsively decided to run away with the four-year-old.

“I just took her by the hand and got on the bus and we left,” she said.

They didn’t get very far, but it would turn out to be the gateway to a better life for both of them.

The police spotted the ...

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Ukraine’s Prison Fellowship Extended to Russian POWs

Chuck Colson–linked ministry has long served Ukrainian inmates but is pushed to the limit by wartime realities—and gospel requirements.

Vyacheslav Kogut was so angry he could spit.

The Russian invasion once again drew him out of his normal ministry as executive director of Prison Fellowship Ukraine (PFU) and into relief work. The military counterattack had just liberated another village on the eastern front, where several civilians had been shot.

The source of his ire, however, was his summons back to prison.

“We have Russian prisoners of war who need clothing,” informed the warden.

“I’ll bring them skirts and dresses,” Kogut shot back, grumbling.

Internally seething at having to leave his injured compatriots, he then remembered his Bible: If your enemy is hungry, feed him—as well as, I needed clothes, and you clothed me.

He went into the storehouse that collected goods for displaced Ukrainians and took the best of its donated items. Security guards at the prison were amazed at the quality. And in addition to the regular food and supplies they offer to Russian POWs in ongoing weekly visits, his team now adds candy and sweets.

“It is a way to show many people, besides these prisoners, that God is love,” said Kogut. “And when they go back to Russia, they can never again return with guns and hatred.”

Affiliated with the international network of the Chuck Colson–founded ministry, PFU began work in Ukraine in 2002. The nation is home to a prison population of 48,000 in 85 still-surviving jails, and Kogut says his team ministers in all of them.

It was not always so. Despite its ecumenical approach from the beginning, PFU’s evangelical orientation worried some prison officials. But consistent ministry to inmates and guards alike won favor, as did the scope of entertainment options presented.

Soccer teams ...

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Wiser than Solomon: Can Evangelicals Lead the Middle East Toward Creation Care?

As Egypt hosts COP27, a few pioneering believers struggle to transform the region most at risk of climate change yet demonstrating the least concern.

“Wisdom,” said Jesus, “is proved right by all her children” (Luke 7:35). But sometimes it takes generations to judge, as demonstrated by a new research study that threatens to tarnish the reputation of a legendary biblical paragon.

According to archaeologists at Tel Aviv University, King Solomon disregarded the environment.

Today, his spiritual descendants largely follow in his footsteps.

“We have so many working in evangelism, church planting, and leadership development,” said Michael El Daba, the Lausanne Movement’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). “Almost no one is working in creation care.”

Evangelicals are not alone. According to a 2021 report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, the MENA region demonstrated the least concern for climate change, including 10 of the 20 lowest-scoring nations. Only 18 percent of those surveyed in Egypt, for example, recognized it as a “very serious threat”—even as it exacerbates food insecurity.

Arab Barometer, a regional pollster, found that 68 percent of Egyptians reported running out of food before being able to get more. In half of the other MENA countries surveyed, majorities stated the same. And in 9 out of 10, majorities worried it might happen to them.

Temperatures in the region are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to a study published last June in the Reviews of Geophysics. At current rates, Egypt will be nine degrees hotter by the end of the century. Iraq has already increased three degrees in the last 30 years.

Some of the damage is self-induced. The study identifies MENA as a “dominant emitter” of greenhouse gases, overtaking Europe and India. ...

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Should We Cancel Luther and Calvin?

The Reformers believed in burning heretics. Making sense of that grave mistake means looking first at ourselves.

Cancel culture knows no bounds, even historical ones. Based on some un-Christlike writings by Protestant reformers John Calvin and Martin Luther—along the lines of burning heretics—there have been some recent discussions about “canceling” these paragons of church history. The debates sound similar to conversations we’ve had about secular historical figures being canceled for owning slaves, for example.

Unfortunately, it seems every generation of Christian leaders and teachers has had its own problems and blind spots. We should seize these opportunities for self-reflection, to determine if we ourselves might have similar weaknesses.

In 200 or 300 years (if there are still 200 or 300 years of history left ahead of us!), what are we going to look back on as seriously problematic? It’s only recently that most Christians I know have given up smoking, for instance.

There have been great social changes since the 16th century, a time when most Christian leaders considered burning heretics an acceptable practice. In their view, heresy on key issues of the faith was such a serious problem that genuine apostates could not be allowed to live and had to be put to death as a lesson to others.

I live in the middle of Oxford, a few hundred yards down the street from the Memorial to the Martyrs Ridley and Latimer, who were burned at the stake in the 1550s. Those were terrible times. We look back and say, “How could they possibly have done that out of misplaced zeal and loyalty to God and the gospel? What was that about?”

From their point of view, burning heretics was about trying desperately to keep the church and society pure from the devastating, corrupting influence of heterodox teaching. Now ...

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Gen Z Evangelicals Vote More than Millennials or Gen X Did

New study finds believers aged 18 to 25 more likely than peers or previous generations to get involved in civic engagement.

Lydia Franklin says the leaders of her church don’t talk much about politics. But they do talk about Jesus, his commands to love your neighbors, and the importance of Christians helping others.

So when the 18-year-old went to the polls for the first time this election, those are the values she took with her into the voting booth.

“To be evangelical is to follow Jesus Christ and to do as he teaches in the Bible,” said Franklin, who lives in Oklahoma. “I feel that as Christians, we are called to help people. What better way to help than to vote for people that will get the job done?”

Franklin was part of the estimated 27 percent of Gen Z that voted in the midterm election—a notably higher turnout rate than millennials and Gen Xers when they were between the ages of 18 and 29.

The turnout doesn’t surprise Kevin Singer, president of nonprofit Neighborly Faith (NF). He has been looking at younger evangelicals’ civic engagement and the influences on their politics.

A recent NF study, done jointly with Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement and Springtide Research Institute, surveyed nearly 2,000 people ages 18 to 25, oversampling those who identified as evangelical (24%) and born-again (54%) and asking questions about their views of Jesus and the Bible. They wanted to see how faith shapes civic engagement for Gen Z. What they found is that Gen Z evangelicals are activists.

More than half say it’s important for them to vote, but about 45 percent say they also get involved in community service and fundraising. They are more likely than their nonevangelical, non-Christian, and nonreligious peers to say they believe in advocating for a cause, engaging with local government, and even ...

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Interview: The Growing British Concern for Religious Freedom for All

Bishop of Truro continues advocacy after groundbreaking UK government report on the persecution of Christians wins wide acceptance.

The American government has long committed itself to supporting religious freedom worldwide.

In 1998, the International Religious Freedom Act obliged the State Department to compile an annual report and designate offending nations as Countries of Particular Concern. It established an ambassador-at-large, created an independent bipartisan commission, and placed a special advisor on the National Security Council.

What about the British? Three years ago, the UK government asked itself the same question.

The answer was delivered by Philip Mounstephen, the Anglican bishop of Truro, within the province of Canterbury. The UK’s foreign secretary tasked him specifically to study persecution of Christians, and the 22 recommendations of the Truro Report were accepted in full by the government.

That does not mean they were all implemented.

This past summer, an independent review found good progress, with five points suffering “constraints” and only three with “no substantial action.” As it was released, London hosted the third in-person ministerial which gathered governments and civil society around the cause, following two ministerials hosted in Washington and an online-only one hosted by Poland amid the pandemic. (The UK event used the European nomenclature of “freedom of religion or belief” (FORB) instead of the Americans’ “international religious freedom” (IRF).)

Last month, Mounstephen visited Lebanon to deliver a lecture entitled “Why Our Religious Freedom Matters.” Hosted by the Middle East Council of Churches, the Bible Society, and Saint Joseph University, he presented an outline of Truro Report findings, broadened to include the persecuted of all religious traditions. ...

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Ethiopia-Tigray Peace Agreement Contains Biblical Mandate

Two-year war ends with the African Union’s first test of transitional justice, as believers continue to debate the rights and wrongs of each side.

The Ethiopian war in Tigray is over.

On November 2, federal forces and rebel authorities agreed on a “cessation of hostilities,” ending a conflict believed to have killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions. All sides committed abuses, as documented by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and other international observers.

“No one has been clean in this war,” said Desta Heliso, a visiting lecturer at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology. “As Christians, we have to feel sorry about this.”

The peace agreement, however, provides for a biblical mandate.

Most negotiations concerned military realities. The two-year conflict in the Horn of Africa nation’s northernmost region—home to 7 million of Ethiopia’s 120 million people—vacillated in advantage between the two sides and between hostilities and humanitarian truce.

The United Nations stated 5.2 million Tigrayans need assistance.

But as federal forces pressed deeper into Tigray, peace talks sponsored by the African Union (AU) in South Africa concluded with an agreement for complete disarmament of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) within 30 days. National troops may enter the regional capital of Mekele; assume control of all borders, highways, and airports; and expedite humanitarian aid.

Both sides agree to cease defamation campaigns, and the central government will ensure restoration of communication, transportation networks, and banking services.

But long-term peace may depend on the outcome of a minor clause included among the 15 measures. The federal government agrees to conduct a “comprehensive transitional justice policy” consistent with the AU framework.

Ethiopia will be the first ...

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Pope Francis in Bahrain: A Royal Reminder of Religious ‘Freedom of Choice’

The pontiff esteemed the welcome given to Christian migrants in the Gulf’s island kingdom, while discreetly calling for wider application.

After greeting Pope Francis last week with a red carpet, a 21-gun salute, and a contingent of horses to accompany his humble vehicle, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa highlighted one document to characterize his realm:

The 2017 Kingdom of Bahrain Declaration.

“[Bahrain is] a cradle of mutual coexistence between followers of different faiths,” he said, “where everyone enjoys, under our protection after that of God Almighty, the freedom to perform their rituals and establish their places of worship, in an atmosphere of familiarity, harmony, and mutual understanding.”

With Bahraini flags flying side by side with the Vatican banner, Francis was profuse in his praise. Enduring severe knee pain, he noted the country’s centuries-old “Tree of Life,” a 32-foot acacia that somehow survives in the Arabian desert.

The tree honors its roots.

“One thing stands out in the history of this land: It has always been a place of encounter between different peoples,” said Francis. “This is in fact the life-giving water from which, today too, Bahrain’s roots continue to be nourished.”

In the island nation the size of New York City, flanked on either side by Iran and Saudi Arabia, from November 3–6 the pope visited its 160,000 Catholic migrants—primarily from the Philippines and India—living among a population of 1.5 million, evenly divided between foreign workers and citizens.

From 111 nationalities, 30,000 gathered this past Saturday at the national stadium for Mass.

Bahrain is a Sunni Muslim monarchy ruling over a narrow majority of Shiites. Christians comprise 10–14 percent of the population, with up to 1,000 Christian citizens originally from Iraq, Palestine, ...

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The Forest Underground: How an Australian Missionary Regrew the African Sahel

Evangelical farmer takes his technique from Niger to COP27 in Egypt, pitching a project in which “everything needed, God has already provided.”

After 18 grueling months fighting desertification in Niger, Tony Rinaudo was near despair. As manager of a small reforestation project for SIM in 1983, he knew few of the 6,000 trees the missions agency had planted yearly since 1977 had survived the arid Sahel climate.

Locals called him the “crazy white farmer,” not wishing to waste valuable agricultural land on more failed efforts. But, trudging on, he loaded another batch of saplings into his pickup truck, struggling to fulfill his childhood prayer.

Years earlier in the threatened Ovens Valley of southeast Australia, Rinaudo lamented the bulldozing of hilly bushland and the killing of fish by drift from insecticides sprayed on tobacco plants—while children elsewhere went to bed hungry.

“God,” he cried out, “use me somehow, somewhere, to make a difference.”

Soon thereafter he stumbled upon I Planted Trees by Richard St. Barbe Baker. One line impressed itself upon Rinaudo, becoming his eventual life work.

“When the forests go, the waters go, the fish and game go, herds and flocks go, fertility departs,” he read from the 19th-century English botanist’s book. (The quote is attributed elsewhere to Scottish science journalist Robert Chambers). “Then the age-old phantoms appear stealthily, one after another—Flood, Drought, Fire, Famine, Pestilence.”

In 1981, Rinaudo settled in Maradi, 400 miles east of Niger’s capital, Niamey. The West African nation’s economic center, on its southern border with Nigeria, hosted SIM’s agricultural project, a hospital, and a local Bible school. Present since 1924, the mission—together with Catholics—established Niger’s largest concentration ...

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Orissa’s Christian Widows Struggle to Survive

Nearly 15 years after a brutal massacre, victims struggle to overcome trauma and poverty.

This story contains depictions of graphic violence.

August 26, 2008, was the worst day of Asmita Digal’s life and the last day of her husband’s.

Digal lived with her husband, Rajesh, a pastor, and their two young daughters in Kandhamal, a community in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, then called Orissa. Christians and Hindus had lived as neighbors relatively peacefully in the area for years.

The majority of Christians in Kandhamal were Dalit converts who demanded that the government continue to pay them reparations even though the law discriminated against them, only allowing Hindu scheduled caste members to get funds. But Hindutva groups used the Dalit converts’ actions as a justification to instigate tensions between the local tribes and the Christian majority-Dalit community of the area.

In December 2007, Hindu nationalists had burned down churches and Christian houses. But the worst yet came the following August.

Rajesh Digal was returning home when a mob surrounded him. Finding a Bible in his possession, the mob assaulted him and buried his body, leaving only his head above the ground.

“They kicked Digal’s head like a football,” said Asmita, who learned of the graphic details of her husband’s last moments from his Hindu friend, an eyewitness to the atrocities whom the mob set on fire after they rejected his religious claim. (The friend jumped into the river to extinguish the fire.)

When Rajesh asked for water to drink, one of the Hindu extremists urinated in his mouth. After intense torture, the mob covered Digal’s face with mud and buried him alive.

Asmita Digal reported the matter to the police, but when they searched for the body, they couldn’t find it, leading her ...

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Republicans Win on Inflation but Lose on Abortion

Prayed-for midterm “red wave” fails to materialize.

Mayra Flores thought the full moon, which looked red as it passed through the Earth’s shadow in the early hours of Election Day, was a good sign.

The Latina Republican who declared she was “taking Jesus to the halls of Congress” when she won a special election in South Texas in 2021, hoped and prayed for “a red wave” to carry her to reelection on Tuesday.

“The moon controls the tide,” Flores tweeted. “Bring on the red wave!”

But as votes were counted late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning, it became clear the moon meant nothing. Flores, a conservative with a lot of evangelical support in the Rio Grande Valley, lost by about 11,000 votes. She blamed her defeat on the people who didn’t turn out.

“Republicans and Independents stayed home,” she wrote on Twitter. “DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT THE RESULTS IF YOU DID NOT DO YOUR PART!”

Votes were still being counted Wednesday morning, but Republicans looked like they were going to win a slim majority of congressional races, taking control of the House away from Democrats. They were not on track to win the sweeping victory that so many had hoped for.

The rapid rise of food and fuel costs was the top issue for voters, according to CNN’s nationwide exit polls. Three out of four people casting a ballot said they were unhappy with the economy. Roughly two-thirds said gas prices were causing them hardship.

Seventy percent of the voters who said inflation was their top issue voted Republican.

Roughly a quarter of the electorate identified as white evangelical or born-again Christian, according to the exit poll. The vast majority of them voted for Republican candidates, but CNN did not share data on the ...

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