Meet the Evangelical Expats Staying in Lebanon

Brent Hamoud, Emad Botros, and Daniel Suter

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty / Courtesy of Brent Hamoud, Emad Botros, and Daniel Suter

The warning issued by the American embassy on October 14 could not have been clearer: US citizens in Lebanon are strongly encouraged to depart now. But this message, coming as Israel increased its attacks on Hezbollah, was only the latest in several weeks of diplomatic efforts to reduce the American presence.

Back on July 31, already fearing an escalation of violence, the embassy was discouraging would-be tourists with its highest of four alert levels: Do Not Travel. For those inside Lebanon, it urged: The best time to leave a country is before a crisis, if at all possible. Major airlines had already canceled flights to and from Beirut, leaving only the national carrier to facilitate evacuation—and its outbound flights were booked weeks in advance.

Ever since Hezbollah—a Shiite Muslim militia designated by the US as a terrorist entity—launched missiles across the border in support of Hamas’s attack last October, foreigners have lived under a cloud of uncertainty that Israel might eventually bomb the airport, as it did in the month-long war in 2006 that left many expats stranded. Americans would have little hope of leaving through Syria, and Lebanon has no official relationship with Israel to permit crossing the southern border.

And then Hezbollah pagers exploded throughout the country.

With dozens dead and thousands injured, the next day, September 18, the embassy warned of a reduction in routine care at hospitals. On September 21, it told citizens the Lebanese government could not ensure their safety, mentioning the possibility of increased crime, sectarian violence, or targeted kidnapping.

And on September 28, one day after a massive Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the embassy sent its nonessential personnel home and opened registration for US citizens to request assistance in leaving.

Several US citizens paid thousands of dollars to place their families on private yachts to nearby Cyprus. Others frantically called Middle East Airlines (MEA) to secure embassy-reserved seats to anywhere else. And among the missionary community, the chatter was incessant: Are you leaving? What are your contingency plans? Will your organization make you go?

Some decided to stay.

CT interviewed four Christian foreigners to learn how they made the decision to remain in times of war.

Each had already endured the constant hum of Israeli drones hovering over their neighborhoods. They learned to distinguish between the noise of warplanes deliberately breaking the sound barrier and the similarly ear-popping sound of a missile strike bringing down a Beirut apartment complex. And some have wondered if they might become a target of random Shiite anger or if the Islamist kidnappings of foreigners during Lebanon’s civil war decades earlier could be repeated.

The sources represent different categories of Christian workers.

A Swiss family living in the foothills outside Beirut believes that angels closed their ears of their children at night, allowing for consistent sleep even when explosions—slightly muffled by the distance—woke the parents consistently at 3 a.m. An Egyptian with Canadian citizenship said the blasts were so loud he sometimes thought they had happened just across the street—only to look out the window and see smoke plumes rising across the valley two miles away, not far from his church outside Beirut.

An American married to a Lebanese woman said that while the bombings did not threaten him directly, he was deeply troubled as each missile resulted in more deaths and displaced families. And a single American woman raised in urban poverty amid gang warfare stated casually, “I grew up rough, but gunshots and bombs are not the same thing.”

A Shared Resilience

This woman, a Black millennial from Ohio, has been granted anonymity because her organization works in other Middle East nations where witnessing to Muslims is illegal. But she was eager to tell her story as an “anomaly” in the missions world.

Her agency, she said, prefers to stay put during a crisis—and pray.

She had been in Lebanon for only six months when the war in Gaza began. Within her circle of 30 foreign Christian friends, only she and her teammates, a couple with two young children, did not evacuate. Most returned to Lebanon, as the war did not initially expand beyond the southern border, and perhaps the time away helped to induce greater calm. Amid the current escalation, several still remain.

Her work is to promote a “tent of praise” movement in collaboration with local churches, emphasizing prayer and worship. But as the violence increased, she bought just-in-case plane tickets for October 15 and remained in daily communication with her organizational leaders in the US. A few days before that date, as MEA shuttled thousands to safety, her American mentors boarded a nearly empty plane to Lebanon to check in on her. The visit strengthened her commitment, which solidified further as she joined 200 Lebanese in worship during a 50-hour vigil. Some spoke in tongues; others, exhausted from dancing, banner waving, and intercessory prayer fell asleep in the pews.

The theme, planned months in advance, was “Rise up, Esther.” And it was “for such a time as this,” she realized, that she was in Lebanon, to stand with the people and petition the King for an end to the war. Inspired by their resilience, she identified with the struggles of the Lebanese—a people exploited by regional powers and valued only for their role in advancing a political agenda. The situation resonated with her Black experience, as she recalled that the history of transatlantic slavery gave her people a similar ability to endure difficult circumstances and yet find hope.

But she stated that many get this war wrong.

“Gen Z is almost completely pro-Palestinian,” she said. “And in Lebanon, I’ve never seen such hatred toward Israel that people will not even speak its name.”

As a child of 9/11, she is amazed at how quickly US attitudes have flipped: One generation was overtly anti-Muslim, the next widely receptive to Palestinian propaganda. Few of her friends in America know that Israel is saving civilian lives by issuing evacuation orders for most of the buildings it then bombs. And fewer, she contended, understand the eschatological place of the Jews in God’s end-times agenda.

Israel is not a godly nation, she said, and God will judge it for its excessive violence in Gaza and Lebanon. But the love of Gentile Christians for Jews must provoke them to jealousy, per Romans 11, for their coming salvation and the peace of Israel.

“Lebanon is entering a new season,” she said. “But my view is not common among believers here.”

Fix What Is Broken

More in line with Lebanese sentiment, another American also remains.

“Israeli aggression threatens our well-being,” said Brent Hamoud, programs officer at Tahaddi, a community-based organization engaged in poverty alleviation. “They will not force us to leave, and staying is a small act of resistance.”

He never even looked up flight schedules.

Tahaddi is located on the edge of Dahieh, the Shiite-majority southern suburb of Beirut where Hezbollah held political and social control. The Israeli bombing campaign targeting militant leaders and infrastructure disrupted the charity’s operations, though its network continues to serve the neighborhood and those displaced from it with food and medical aid.

But Hamoud’s commitment to Lebanon runs much deeper than solidarity and service. His grandparents were missionaries at the evangelical Dar El Awlad orphanage for over three decades, and his father was raised in its care. Hamoud returned in 2007 to follow in their legacy, serving at-risk children for the next 12 years. And Ruth, his Lebanese wife, whom he married in 2012, made it known early in their friendship that her future was in Lebanon.

By 2019, Hamoud felt uncomfortable with the traditional missions model and broke ties with his sending agency. Taking on a local salary was not difficult, as the value of the Lebanese lira enabled a middle-class lifestyle not very different from that in America.

But only a few months later, the failed Lebanese popular revolution against a corrupt political class was followed by the near total depreciation of the currency. Ruth effectively lost her life savings as the lira crashed and banks prohibited the withdrawal of funds. After that, they navigated COVID-19, the 2020 Beirut blast at the nation’s main harbor, and shortages of medicine, fuel, and electricity.

When the bombs dropped across Lebanon, the couple asked themselves, What is one more crisis to endure?

Friends and family back home in Minnesota worried about them, and Hamoud and Ruth took these concerns to heart. But their core needs were provided for, and their children, ages 7 and 9, were emotionally stable. Had the children been experiencing severe trauma, that would have forced them to consider leaving more seriously.

“Our kids know that explosions happen here while there is ice cream in every freezer in America,” Hamoud said. “But we discuss the situation and why this is home, and where God wants us to be.”

Ruth is additionally tied to another 250 children as the early childhood education coordinator for Beirut Baptist School, overseeing dozens of teachers and staff. Their departure from Lebanon would impact many beyond themselves.

Yet the impact of the war is substantial. Hamoud applied the words of Jesus to militant groups anywhere in the Middle East—those who live by the sword die by the sword (Matt. 26:52)—and noted the sabers and AK-47s on their various emblems. He has little sympathy for their plight.

A ceasefire in Gaza, he believes, would have kept the war out of Lebanon—and foreigners here. Prior to the war, neither Hezbollah nor other local actors made their evacuation necessary.

“Stop the fighting,” Hamoud said. “It will open up pathways to fix what is broken—which characterizes so much in the region.”

This Is Our Home

Amid such brokenness, Emad Botros said, is the freedom of Lebanon.

As an Egyptian, Botros values the nation’s open spirit and religious liberty, in comparison to the land of his birth. Much of it rests on what he called the “Christian culture” anchored by historic Christian presence. Botros fears it will be lost if the chaos of war further stimulates Christian emigration; instead, he will stay to strengthen the church.

But as a Canadian citizen, his first impulse was to evacuate.

“Better to leave for six months and come back than to risk the trauma that might prevent you from ever returning,” said Botros, a global staff worker with Canadian Baptist Ministries. “God wants us to serve here but not to be a martyr.”

Botros first came to Lebanon in 2000 as a student at Arab Baptist Theological Seminary (ABTS), where he met Almess, his Iraqi wife. They married in 2004 and spent two years together in Egypt. Over the next decade, they emigrated to Canada when Almess was granted refugee status, they had two children, and they ministered among the local Arab population.

In 2014, Botros returned to ABTS and today is an assistant professor of Old Testament. But in 2020, the seminary transitioned primarily to online education; he could do his job remotely. Botros thought of Almess, who had lived through the Iran-Iraq war and US invasions, and feared another conflict experience might incapacitate her. His teenage sons might suffer long-term trauma. The family spent a few weeks this summer in Egypt just to rest from the stress and sound barrier reverberations.

His older son hated being away. The family returned to Lebanon before the full outbreak of violence, but he yearned to be back with his friends. It would be shameful to leave, the 19-year-old told his father, reflecting a Middle Eastern mentality. We have to show solidarity, said the younger son, a social justice–oriented 17-year-old. Over the past ten years, each had merged their various identities ever more closely with Lebanon.

His wife’s voice was decisive.

“Almess told me Lebanon is our home,” said Botros. “I realized she was right. It was no longer just a mission field—friends were now family, and you don’t leave your family in times of trouble.”

ABTS has since welcomed over 150 displaced individuals onsite, a mix of Christians and Muslims known to its community. Botros’s apartment is a five-minute walk from campus, and he regularly wanders through its gardens, interacting with and encouraging those who have lost their homes.

Many of these are from Resurrection Church of Beirut, where he serves on the pastoral staff. Its building is near the line dividing the Christian and Shiite sections of Hadat, separating Dahieh from the presidential palace. Although the church is undamaged, bombing in the Muslim area has been intense.

“The war is terrible,” Botros said. “I have little mental capacity to work.”

His dissertation on Jonah has fallen by the wayside. But three weeks ago, Botros preached on the wayward prophet, whose preferred solution to the evil of Nineveh was its destruction. God, however, wanted its repentance. Similarly, rival parties in the Middle East speak of wiping each other out. A more biblical perspective, he said, seeks justice with mercy and forgiveness of sins.

“Hamas and Hezbollah militants are still human beings, even though we condemn them—and Israeli actions as well,” Botros said. “Continued destruction will only create a new generation of enemies.”

The Country We Love

Daniel Suter, a missionary from Switzerland, encounters both sides. His Lebanese friends blame Israel for every bad thing that happens; his friends in the West reflexively support everything Israel does. But with tears in his eyes, he said that 2,350 Lebanese had died since the war began, some of whom were relatives of his close friends.

“It breaks my heart,” Suter said. “This is the country we love. It hurts.”

The Youth With A Mission (YWAM) building he served in—until the roads became too dangerous for the 30-minute drive from his home—displays a sign proclaiming Jesus in English and Arabic, with a picture of a cross and a heart in between. It is located in Damour, a Christian village on the coastal highway from Beirut to Sidon, yet every route he could use to get there has been bombed.

Damour was the site of an infamous massacre by Palestinians during the Lebanese civil war. The next village over is still home to some Palestinian refugees, and few Christians will ever set foot there, Suter said. Syrian migrants work the banana groves that stretch from the road to the seashore, resented for receiving aid from international agencies that is less forthcoming for disadvantaged citizens.

YWAM’s community center somehow brings everyone together.

When the war in Gaza began, the YWAM Lebanese leader asked Suter, Is this where God called you? If so, stay. Another foreign missionary left abruptly, citing the mental health of his children. Don’t Lebanese have kids, too? one staffer retorted. The challenging conversations strengthened Suter’s commitment, and he said his local friends were “chill.” They had lived through war before.

His wife Bettina, however, was tightly integrated in the Christian expat community and its constant conversations about whether to stay or leave. They had moved to Lebanon in 2015 and had lived through its many crises with their three young children already. But war was different—I didn’t come to Lebanon to die, she said—and the worry was paralyzing her.

Prayers for guidance brought no clear word from God for either of them, Suter said. So the couple agreed to separate temporarily, as Bettina and the children returned to Switzerland. As the situation stabilized with war concentrated in the south, they came back three weeks later.

Ministry continued normally, and the family spent this past summer in Switzerland for ordinary church visits and vacation. But while they were away, Israel assassinated two adversaries: a top-level Hezbollah militant in Beirut on July 30 and the leader of Hamas as he visited Iran the next day.

Their sending church urged the family to delay their return by a month.

It was a month well spent. Bettina had an encounter with God, Suter said, who asked if she was willing to surrender everything. The experience was gut-wrenching but profound—and it made her ready to return.

Suter also realized he had been rash. He had sent his family away with naive optimism that the airport would not be bombed. Looking back, he said he would not have managed well a separation of months or longer. Contingency planning was necessary, and he prayerfully engaged in it in consultation with Swiss leaders.

The pager attack, one week before their return, only strengthened their resolve. And as they waited at the airport gate on September 23, they received reports that the widespread Israeli bombing had begun. Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese were displaced, now also from Tyre, the Bekaa Valley, and the southern suburbs of Beirut. The war was no longer only in the south.

The family moved into guest housing at the Damour center and joined in caring for the 300 people taking shelter at the village school. Their kids worked as hard as the parents, Suter said, learning the impact of war while still sleeping soundly at night. But when school started, they received the local YWAM office’s blessing to return home and shift their service to another center in Burj Hammoud, a Christian neighborhood in the capital city with many Syrian refugees and displaced Shiites.

And in consultation with their church, they adjusted their evacuation trigger. When Israel began its ground invasion of Lebanon on October 1, local analysis suggested they would remain safe in their home in the foothills; however, if Israeli forces headed north toward Beirut, then the Suters would evacuate to Switzerland.

“Now, I am assessing risk; before, I was ignoring it,” said Suter. “You can cowardly leave or cowardly stay. I want to be here for the right reasons, not the thrill of adventure or fear of boredom back home.”

He hopes his story will encourage prayer for Lebanon, perhaps inspiring others to come and serve. Meanwhile, the missionary from Ohio anticipates the arrival of three new teammates who are already preparing to join her. Hamoud wants Gaza’s Palestinians to have their basic right to life restored. Botros wants concerned Christians, instead of just sending funds for emergency aid, to address the root cause of displacement and lobby their governments to end the war.

None saw themselves as heroes, nor did they blame anyone for leaving.

“The old missions paradigm was to move overseas and die there—I loved that as a youth, and it inspired me to serve,” said Suter. “But staying does not automatically bring God glory. What matters most is faithfulness to God’s leading. There can be phases in our calling.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Church Life

Shout to the Lord in a Foreign Language

Jaewoo Kim

Worshiping God with words we don’t understand may seem strange. But I consider it a spiritual practice.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Wikimedia Commons

Several years ago, my team led the Congolese worship song Yezu Azali Awa at a live album recording in South Korea. No one in the worship team or the congregation was from the country, and no one spoke the language.

But the song’s simple refrain and uplifting melody was easy to grasp.

“Jesus is here with us,” we sang over and over again in Lingala and then later in Korean.

I didn’t choose this tune to make worshiping in another language feel novel or, worse, gimmicky. Instead, I wanted to sing it because of how the song communicates the nearness of God’s presence and our unswerving trust in his faithfulness.

Leading worship and singing in languages I am unfamiliar with is something I have practiced for over two decades. I have done so in a house church, at conferences held by seminaries and mission agencies, and in various cities around the world, like Seoul and Wau, South Sudan.

As a worship leader, I understand the complexity and vulnerability of effectively leading songs in a language you don’t know. Often, these worries arise: What if I mispronounce a word and bring dishonor? What if people think this is cultural appropriation? What if they just can’t engage in authentic worship?

Some people may also scoff at the idea of singing in a language that the majority at church don’t understand. It might not seem helpful or edifying to do this. Singing becomes harder when we don’t know the pronunciation of words, and we may feel tempted to zone out if we have no idea what we’re singing. We can wonder whether we’re really worshiping because we feel so distant from the songs.

But there are certain merits to worshiping in a language that we don’t comprehend.

Worship in a foreign language allows us to gain a glimpse of how every culture and every language illuminate and express God’s attributes in distinctive ways that we’ve never encountered or imagined.

When I first heard the soulful Arabic worship tune Anta ’Atheemun (“You Are So Awesome, O Lord”), I felt uncomfortable with singing “Allah” in its lyrics because of the word’s associations with Islam. But after learning that Arab Christians use this word to refer to God, I was struck by how God’s greatness and abundant grace have been praised for ages in a language and musical scale I was ignorant of.

Worship is not always about singing and experiencing music that we are comfortable with, agrees Jo-Ann Richards in a recent email conversation.

“If we love each other, we will create space in the corporate worship service for our brothers and sisters to express their worship to God in ways that they can relate to on a heart level,” wrote the founding director of CREW 40:4, a Jamaican nonprofit that creates culturally relevant expressions of worship.

Singing in a language you do not know also honors the breadth and depth of the church.

Global student exchanges, immigration, refugee influxes, and labor migration are making many Western congregations increasingly diverse. This presents an opportunity not only to worship alongside believers from other parts of the world but also to learn from their unique forms of cultural expressions in worship.

Over the years, people have approached me after worship services to thank me for singing in their mother tongues. I remember multiple instances of believers saying to me with tears in their eyes, “Thank you for singing in my language. I never expected to hear it used in worship here. I was deeply moved.”

The church, while existing locally, is a globally and historically connected community. Even if no one present speaks a particular language, singing it can provide an opportunity to emphasize the unity of the global church. We can venture out to sing in unfamiliar languages, with the option of providing translated lyrics in a common language.

When we do so, we build empathy and solidarity with believers in other parts of the world who are suffering. This is an embodied expression of rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep (Rom. 12:15).

Some of the worship songs I lead at various events are in Karen, the language of a stateless people group in Myanmar and Thailand. Their plight often does not receive much media attention. When I led the Karen song See-P’truh-Nah (“God Is Good”) last year at a church in Seoul, a group of Karen refugees were present and expressed surprise that I knew a song in their language.

I have also introduced songs in Arabic and Farsi, such as Abaan alla- dhi fi (“Our Father in Heaven”) and Roohol Ghodos (“Spirit of God”), at multiple churches in North America for their Sunday services or mission events. This provides a way for them to stand with Christ followers in the Middle East whose voices often seem to be missing in evangelical spaces.

Nevertheless, I recognize that singing in a language no one knows has its challenges, especially for very large-scale gatherings.

The Fourth Lausanne Congress in Incheon, South Korea, this year had more than 5,000 Christians from over 200 countries attend in person and around 2,000 participate online. Throughout the weeklong gathering, Korean band Isaiah 6tyOne led most songs in English, singing some verses in Spanish and Korean and one song in Chinese. Northern Irish worship leaders Keith and Kristyn Getty sang in English and Spanish. The songs chosen were also predominantly written by Western or English-speaking composers.

“We acknowledge that we were not able to achieve the same level of diversity in our times of worship through music,” Evi Rodemann, the Congress’s event coordinator, told me in an email. “Given the logistical and organizational considerations, we focused on integrating two bands into the program to ensure a high-quality and cohesive musical experience.”

As a worship leader, I can imagine how arranging for songs to be sung in a foreign tongue at a large international conference might be hard. Learning an unfamiliar song and making it engaging for the congregation takes effort and intentionality. Honoring the song’s cultural origins through ensuring good pronunciation, while aiming for musical excellence at the same time, might require more hours of practice.

If the song lacks readily available charts, recordings, or licensing, creating such resources from scratch and integrating them into existing worship planning and media platforms may also be time-consuming.

Despite these challenges, lifting praises to God in a language we don’t know can be a meaningful spiritual practice that deepens our awareness of the all-encompassing and steadfast love that Christ has for his bride, the church.

To do this well congregationally, we can begin by adopting an attitude of humility and curiosity.

Before I introduce a song in an unfamiliar language, I make sure to check with a native speaker to ensure the words I want to articulate are said correctly. “My pronunciation won’t be perfect, and if I mispronounce anything, please forgive me and teach me so I can do better next time,” I often confess.

We can also choose to broaden the sources of the music we select for communal worship.

Every song is born out of a specific context. When we sing a song from another part of the world, we not only bring a particular culture’s language into our congregation but also welcome that country’s story and its lived theology in word and melody.

This is an exercise in mutuality: It moves us away from a posture that reflects a need to “sing our songs” to one that demonstrates greater openness, saying “Let’s sing each other’s songs,” argues Ian Collinge, a UK-based musician and intercultural worship trainer, in the book Arts Across Cultures: Reimagining the Christian Faith in Asia.

My organization, Proskuneo Ministries, and Songs2Serve provide ready-to-use songs in languages such as Arabic, Korean, and Spanish. The Calvin Institute of Christian Worship has a multilingual hymnal, Psalms for All Seasons, and a Spanish and English bilingual hymnal, Santo, Santo, Santo. The Global Ethnodoxology Network offers a large collection of Christian songs written by artists around the world. And the Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) is also making its songs searchable by language.

My multiethnic, multicultural worshiping community in Clarkston, Georgia, has immigrants and refugees from Myanmar, Syria, and South Sudan. We sing songs and take turns reading each verse of Scripture in Arabic, Burmese, Korean, and Spanish. We pray out loud, simultaneously, in our primary languages. And we have chicken shawarma, japchae, and mac and cheese casserole together.

Doing church in these ways might sound messy, even unappealing. But it’s a wholly intentional approach, even when cultural and linguistic differences may make interactions frustrating and cause misunderstandings to arise.

While we need more time and effort to clarify and over-communicate so that we can better understand one another’s intentions and create more-inclusive liturgies of worship, my church has tasted, seen, and experienced the joys of worshiping in languages we don’t understand with Jesus followers from around the world. For the young people in my community, doing so has become the norm.

When we witness to the diversity of the church in our rhythms of worship, we hear Christ’s prayer—“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10)—being answered. We get a foretaste of the nations bringing their beauty and honor into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24, 26). We contribute to an aural depiction of Scripture’s declaration that every tongue will acknowledge “that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:11).

However we may fumble or feel uncomfortable when singing in a language we do not understand, we yield the entirety of our human faculties, especially our capacities for comprehension and speech, in loving surrender unto God when we do so.

And with one voice, no matter how discordant or incomprehensible, we join with our siblings in Christ to declare, Yezu azali awa. Yesu woo-ri-wa-ham gge. “Jesus is here with us.”

Jaewoo Kim serves in public relations and ministry development at Proskuneo Ministries and is the author of Willingly Uncomfortable Worship.

- More from Jaewoo Kim

Ideas

Jesus Is Still Right About Persecution

David Platt

Nine truths believers need to understand to pray well for the suffering body of Christ.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Getty

I recently sat with a Nigerian church leader who showed me a chilling video that I cannot get out of my mind. Militants from Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has brutally attacked churches in this region for years, filmed themselves standing over a small group of Christians and telling everyone who would listen that they intended to kill all Christians until they submit to Islam. Then they beheaded our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Horror like this has moved me to pray and work for years on behalf of those suffering for their faith. As part of my ministry with Radical, I’ve had the opportunity to speak to Christians who have faced violence, social pressure, or jail for evangelism, church planting, or merely holding fast to their faith.

At the same time, I recognize that for many Christians, examples of persecution can feel distant, abstract, unrelatable, or overwhelming. Many persecuted Christians live in countries we have never visited and places we may struggle to pronounce. We also live in a 24-hour news cycle that inundates us with stories of war and terror, numbing us to the cost of following Jesus for our church family around the world.

But starting the next two Sundays in November, designated by the World Evangelical Alliance as the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, and beyond, I want to invite you to join other believers around the world in interceding for those who claim Christ and suffer for doing so. I also want to dispel some myths about persecution and help you understand what persecution means and how it plays out in the world. In light of God’s command for us to remember and pray for those who are persecuted as though we are physically with them (see Heb. 13:3), I hope that learning more about persecution will help us be the global body of Christ he has called us to be.

Persecution is harassment or opposition for following Jesus. In the Sermon on the Mount, the term Jesus uses for “persecuted” means “pursued with hostility.” He goes on to describe how this can mean everything from people ridiculing, shaming, excluding, or lying about you to people arresting you, imprisoning you, driving you out, or destroying your life (see Matt. 5:10–12; 10:16–33; Luke 6:22–23). Notably, persecution is when these forms of resistance come specifically because someone is following Jesus. In Matthew 5, Jesus says to expect this hostility that occurs “because of righteousness” and “because of me.”

Persecution is not anything hard that happens to a Christian. Followers of Jesus face all sorts of tribulation in this world, just as Jesus promised (John 16:33). Often, such suffering is common to the experience of non-Christians as well. Believers and unbelievers alike receive cancer diagnoses. Believers and unbelievers alike experience suffering due to conflict or war. Believers and unbelievers alike walk through emotional distress and relational strain.

But hardship is not the same as persecution. Just because you’re a Christian and you’re feeling the effects of a fallen world doesn’t mean you’re being harassed or opposed for righteousness’ sake.

Persecution happens underground and above ground. Many Christians envision our persecuted family meeting in secret house churches. Many years ago, Radical started an event called Secret Church. This is based on times with Asian believers when I have been snuck into locations where everyone else in the room faces almost certain imprisonment if they are caught together.

But many Christians don’t realize that persecution also happens in countries where our brothers and sisters gather in open (and even large) church buildings where they are led by seminary-trained pastors. I just met with a pastor in West Africa whose church compound regularly filled with over 500 worshipers and was suddenly attacked one day by militants who began burning buildings, cars, and people. Just because Christians gather in public doesn’t mean they’re doing so without peril.

The reality of persecution can vary within countries. Take India and Indonesia. Christians may comfortably gather on Sunday mornings in the southern India state of Kerala. Meanwhile, mobs burned more than 200 churches in the eastern state of Manipur last year. A couple hundred miles southeast in Indonesia, Christians may be protected on one island and opposed on another. Just like the country where you live, safety and security can vary from region to region.

Persecution may come from the top down, from the bottom up, or from both directions. Some governments around the world forbid citizens from following Jesus and gathering together as a church. But persecution isn’t always initiated by ruling authorities. When my friend Zamir became a Christian, his brothers nearly beat him to death, and his father kicked him out of his home. Other friends of mine, whom I’ll call Samil and Aanya, were disowned by their family for following Jesus. When the couple went back years later to try to share the gospel with their parents, Aanya’s dad poisoned her to death. In some countries, political forces and family and friends work together to persecute Christians. For example, the North Korean regime prohibits Christianity, and authorities rely on family members, friends, or neighbors to report Christian activity to them.

Persecution can mean death—or discrimination. As I shared earlier, the stories of persecution in Nigeria are horrifying. For several decades now, militants have kidnapped, raped, and killed many of our brothers and sisters. At the same time, persecution of the church is not always this severe. Based on conversations I have had with brothers and sisters around the world, a Christian entrepreneur in a Middle Eastern country may lose the right to run a business—or the customers to support one. A new follower of Jesus high up in the Himalayas may lose the right to water or electricity in his or her village. A church in a Southeast Asian city may be forced to pay extra (and sometimes exorbitant) fees to rent or own a building.

In Europe and the Americas, believers often preface any mention of persecution in their lives by saying, “It’s not near as bad as what our brothers and sisters around the world are experiencing,” and that is unquestionably true. But that doesn’t mean it’s not still persecution when a British Christian is arrested for praying silently outside an abortion clinic or an American Christian is fired from his job for expressing his views on biblical sexuality.

Persecution follows identification and proclamation. From the beginning of the church in the book of Acts, persecution has occurred whenever people have professed or propagated faith in Jesus. The Greek word for “witness” in Acts 1:8 is martus, from which we get the word martyr. As long as my friend Halima stays private and quiet about her faith in Somalia, then she can avoid persecution. But as soon as she communicates that she has turned from Islam to follow Jesus, she will likely be killed. Depending on the Indian state, sharing the gospel with someone else could land you in jail, while leading someone to Jesus and baptizing them could mean a decade of imprisonment.

The purpose of persecution is to silence witness. When persecution first broke out against the church in Acts 4, Jewish leaders commanded Christians “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.” Peter and John responded by saying, “We cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (vv. 18–20). After gathering to pray, early Christians were “all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly” (v. 31).

This is important to remember when Christians in freer parts of the world often say things like “I witness by being a good person or by doing good works.” This may sound good to us, but it’s not what the Bible means by witnessing. In many parts of the world, our brothers and sisters in Christ are fairly safe if they are no more than good people doing good works. But when they speak of what they have seen and heard, they suffer.

Persecution is guaranteed not just for other Christians but also for us. In light of all of the above, it’s a matter of obedience to God to pray specifically for our brothers and sisters in parts of the world where persecution is fiercest (Heb. 13:3). This cannot be overstated: We have a biblical and familial responsibility to pray and work for our brothers and sisters, particularly in countries like North Korea, Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Iran, and Afghanistan. At the same time, God also makes clear in his Word that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). Notice the words “everyone” and “will.” Persecution is not a “maybe” for “some” Christians.

If you are not experiencing persecution to some degree, you need to ask the question “Am I professing and propagating faith in Jesus?” In other words, are you clearly and uncompromisingly identifying with Jesus; humbly and boldly proclaiming Jesus; telling people about his life, death, and resurrection; and calling others to repent and believe in Jesus because their life now and forever in heaven or hell hinges on their response to him?

If we are not professing faith in Jesus like this, then we need to realize as we pray for the persecuted church that our lives are actually sympathizing with their persecutors. That may sound like an offensive overstatement, but consider this: If the purpose of persecution is to silence witness, and you or I are silencing our own witness, then we are reflecting the persecutors, not the persecuted.

But if we boldly identify with Jesus and testify to him, then we are identifying with the persecuted church as we pray. And according to 2 Timothy 3, we can be sure that persecution is coming for us. The more we give our lives to following Jesus and making him known in our neighborhoods and all nations, particularly in places where the gospel has not yet gone, the more we will experience persecution. Let’s intercede for our persecuted brothers and sisters in Christ around the world to be faithful to the end, knowing that every Christian needs similar intercessors to do the same.

David Platt serves as a lead pastor for McLean Bible Church and is the author of books including Radical and Don’t Hold Back. He is also the founder of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.

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Argentina Moves to Officially Celebrate Its Evangelicals

Sofía Castillo

Leaders are grateful for the government recognition but hope for further progress.

Vice president of Argentina, Victoria Villarruel, delivers remarks during a celebration for evangelical and Protestant churches in Buenos Aires on Monday, October 28, 2024.

Photo courtesy of ACIERA

Today, October 31, Reformation Day, evangelicals in Argentina have an extra reason to celebrate, as their country officially recognizes the National Day of Evangelical and Protestant Churches.

A bill calling for this recognition was approved by the lower Congreso de la Nación chamber, the Chamber of Deputies, last year. In April, the bill was unanimously approved in the Senate Chamber and then signed by president Javier Milei.

“Today we are not celebrating a religious holiday,” said Christian Hooft, who leads ACIERA (Alliance of Evangelical Churches in the Republic of Argentina), at an event celebrating the day last Monday. “We are celebrating the historical identity of the faith of millions of Argentine citizens.”

Argentina’s evangelicals have long sought this recognition. The country’s Supreme Court has ruled that the country has no official or state religion, and its constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but it also states that “the federal government supports the Roman Catholic apostolic faith.”

For Renata Viglione, a Christian psychologist who coauthored the current bill, the new law recognizes religious freedom rights. “We were the only faith community that did not have its own commemoration, unlike other religions. It is not a law out of gratitude for the social work [that evangelicals do in the country], but a human right as citizens,” she said. Commemorative days for Catholicism and Judaism were established in 1995 and one for Islam in 1996.

Being added to the calendar of official commemorations constitutes an evangelistic opportunity to make the church and Jesus Christ known and to proclaim the gospel, Viglione stated.

Last Monday, ACIERA celebrated the National Day of Evangelical and Protestant Churches at the Palacio Libertad building in the city of Buenos Aires. The celebration was attended by more than 1,600 people from all over the country, including Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim leaders. Tango dancers performed along with 40 musicians and 100 singers.

“On Monday, the Lord was glorified,” said Chris Swanson, senior director of crusades and development at the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which will hold a Franklin Graham festival in Buenos Aires in 2025. “This event represents the new value that the evangelical church in Argentina has in the eyes of authorities, which I believe will open doors, God willing, for there to be even greater freedom, and outreach for the gospel.”

At the event, Argentine Vice President Victoria Villarruel, who is Catholic, acknowledged the evangelical community’s work in “helping the most vulnerable communities” and highlighted the social and spiritual character of the work that both Catholics and evangelicals do in the country, a task “inspired by Christian love and understanding, [which] is the fundamental pillar for building a more just and unified Argentina.”

The country’s evangelical community represents 15 percent of the country’s population according to the latest CONICET survey conducted in 2019, an increase of 9 percentage points over 2008. The same survey showed that evangelicals make up 20 percent of Argentinians between 18 and 29 years old and 26 percent of those with only a high-school education.

This bill was not the first one proposed at the Congress to honor evangelicals. Rather, it was the culmination of a 10-year process involving multiple political parties and expressions of faith, dating back to deputy Pablo Tonelli’s proposal in 2014.

Dina Rezonivosky, a deputy from the Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change) party who herself is evangelical, introduced bills in 2020 and 2022; in the latter year, deputy Vanesa Massetani (of the Unión por la Patria party) presented her own proposal.

In 2023, three more deputies from the Unión por la Patria offered additional bills. The various versions were eventually unified in a consensus bill that passed the Chamber of Deputies. Approval by the Senate and the president’s signature followed this year.

“[The National Day] is a recognition of the tireless work of pastors, leaders and Christians who anonymously visit schools, hospitals, prisons, and police stations and work for the peace of the nation,” Amilcar Matosian, who is part of the Buenos Aires Pastoral Council, told CT. “Our values for the common good, dignifying work, families and development are not seen in any event, but they are part of our culture expressed in every family and believer.”

Viglione added that the new law is the result of ten years of tireless outreach to government officials, pastors, and the community as a whole, and that it opens up greater opportunities for evangelization at the national level. “It shows us that it is not necessary to hold a political office to have a law approved. It is enough to be obedient to the Lord’s calling for each one, and to present petitions to the authorities as a citizen. We have all been called to proclaim the gospel, and that is the main objective of this law,” Viglione stated.

Leaders say there is still work to be done.

For starters, outside the city of Buenos Aires, the government does not legally recognize non-Catholic churches as churches.

“This is a first step toward the still pending modification of the Law of Worship or the creation of a new Religious Freedom Law that recognizes evangelical entities as what they are: churches,” deputy Rezinovsky told CT.

In the city of Buenos Aires, churches have achieved a more favorable legal status thanks to the modification of the Civil and Commercial Code through the Supervisory Board of Companies this year.

“In practice, we are a foundation, civil association, or development society, but nothing is further from reality,” said Matosian.

ACIERA leaders noted that another needed step is establishing evangelical chaplains in the security forces, hospitals, schools, and prisons in all Argentine provinces.

This year, the Ministry of Security of Buenos Aires created its first general evangelical police chaplaincy section, which will report to the chief of police, and invited the city’s council of evangelical pastors to appoint a representative as chaplain. Other provinces that already have evangelical chaplains are Misiones, Neuquén, and Chaco.

At Monday’s celebration, speakers highlighted the role of the evangelical church in Argentine society, including their work in rehabilitation centers and prisons and their anti-addiction and food bank ministries.

Felipe De Stefani, ACIERA’s vice president for management and planning, acknowledged that progress in these areas has been long overdue for the church in Argentina. Historically, the associaiton focused primarily on the city and province of Buenos Aires. Since Hooft became president in 2021, ACIERA has broadened its work by adding representatives from other provinces to its board of directors, as well as organizing annual meetings and other gatherings across the country.

“These factors have contributed to a deeper nationwide reach in ACIERA’s actions and have helped increase the unity of the Argentine evangelical church,” De Stefani told CT.

In his remarks on Monday, Hooft called on the church to exercise forgiveness towards those they have felt wronged by and abandon positions that cause division, which “paralyzes and inhibits us as a nation.” He added, “We must perceive and call things as they are, not get distracted, speak the truth, and leave euphemisms aside.”

Hooft also highlighted the important role of the evangelical church in seeking positive change while lamenting the poverty rate and the cultural and moral degradation Argentina is facing.

Evangelical leaders hope that Argentina is on the verge of spiritual awakening.

“Today we see a church united as never before. It engages in debate and discussion, but it works in unity for the extension of the Kingdom of God,” De Stefani said. “This portends a time of real revival in Argentina. It is coming.”

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Steven Curtis Chapman Joins Country Music Royalty

Interview by Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The Christian music star is the first in the industry to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry.

Jason Kempin/Getty Images

Five Grammys. Sixty Dove Awards. Fifty No. 1 radio hits.

Steven Curtis Chapman is not lacking in industry honors. But this week the Christian music veteran is getting a little extra special recognition. On Friday, he’s going to be inducted into the membership of the Grand Ole Opry.

After nearly 40 years in the industry, Chapman’s entry into the country music institution is a full-circle moment. He first performed on the storied Nashville stage as a 19-year-old aspiring musician, just starting his career. Now, he will have a permanent place there.

The Grand Ole Opry, a live radio program broadcast from Nashville since 1925, has a rich history, featuring some of the biggest names in country and popular music—artists like B. B. King, Mahalia Jackson, and The Beach Boys have all appeared as guests. Membership is a lifetime invitation to be part of the regular roster of Opry performers. There are currently only 74 members, including Dolly Parton, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, Luke Combs, and Lainey Wilson.

Country artist Ricky Skaggs surprised Chapman with the membership announcement during a live show at the Opry in July. Chapman will be the first contemporary Christian music (CCM) star to become a member.

Fans know Chapman as a prolific CCM artist—the writer and performer of “Dive,” “The Great Adventure,” and “Cinderella.” But he has deep roots in country music, owing much of his musical formation to hours spent listening to broadcasts from the Grand Ole Opry as a child in Paducah, Kentucky. Chapman’s father, who was also a guitarist, dreamed of performing at the Opry.

Chapman said that the experience of singing in church with his family as a child gave him a love for faith-forward music that has kept him squarely in the Christian music space, despite opportunities over the years to cross over into the mainstream. But he has also always loved and appreciated country music.

He spoke with CT about his upcoming induction and the career trajectory that he never dreamed would lead him there.

There are a lot of awards on your shelves—5 Grammys, 60 Dove Awards. How is membership in the Grand Ole Opry different?

The Grand Ole Opry is part of this world of country music, and country music is a unique international language. I’ve been to China to talk with government officials about adoption advocacy with Show Hope, and when we do those kinds of things, I’ve learned that if I’ll just sing “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” suddenly the room is friendly and everyone is singing along.

Being a member of the Opry is being part of a very special family. You can look back at the history and all of the legends who have been there, and now you’re part of it. My dad had a dream of being on the Grand Ole Opry. That was the music he grew up with, Hank Williams and Bill Monroe. My dad played acoustic guitar, his best friend was a banjo player, and they played in a group together. He made trips to Nashville as a songwriter and was never able to afford a ticket to go to the Opry. He would sit in his car in the parking lot of the Ryman Auditorium and roll his window down to listen.

My dad laid that dream down when he gave his life to Christ. He knew he couldn’t chase this dream of making it as a country music star and be a good father. He had grown up without a father in his life, and he didn’t want that for me and my brother.

Being inducted as a member in the Grand Ole Opry, as the first Christian artist to be included, is a really cool “taste and see that the Lord is good” moment. It feels like God is honoring and blessing us in a really specific way—my dad’s still alive; so is my mom. So it’s a sweet moment for us to see the goodness of God in this journey.

You started your career at the Grand Ole Opry, but most of your fans think of you as a Christian artist, not a country artist. Did you ever consider trying to make it as a mainstream country artist?

I’ve always loved all kinds of music. The first song I learned on the guitar was “Folsom Prison Blues” by Johnny Cash. I was six years old and singing about going to prison. But gospel music, Christian music, became so important in my life and in my family’s life when I was about seven years old. My parents had a transformative conversion experience at a revival that came to our church, and we began to pray together, go to church, read the Bible, and sing together. I truly saw my family change.

We would sing Bill Gaither’s “He Touched Me,” and I would see the tears in my dad’s eyes as we sang, “Shackled by a heavy burden / ’Neath a load of guilt and shame / Then the hand of Jesus touched me / And now I am no longer the same.” I knew this wasn’t just a song. It was really true, and I love music that talks about that. I still loved rock-and-roll. I wore out my Eagles and Doobie Brothers records, and I would listen to country and bluegrass. And all of that is part of my DNA.

But when I sat down to write my first song, “Well Done,” it was based on the story from Jesus’ parable about the servants entrusted with the master’s talents. It must have been something we were talking about in youth group or I was reading on my own. This was the kind of music I was most drawn to, and it wasn’t because I thought I could have a career in it. It was just what came out of me when I sat down to write.

Over the years, there would be occasions when people would say, “You know, if you just left God out of a few songs or made it a little more subtle, man, you could really go big in the mainstream.” And I always had the same response. I was never opposed to it. I have always been open to performing in different spaces and with artists working in different genres. I’ve played shows where I played before artists like Kiss and Ted Nugent. I’ve always loved those kinds of moments. Obviously, I would love my music to have as much success as it can. But if I have to leave out the truth of what makes my songs what they are, I’m not really interested. My goal from the beginning was to tell my story and the story of God’s love and how it transformed my life.

Storytelling has always been one of your hallmarks as a songwriter, and it’s such an important part of the country music tradition as well. What draws you to musical storytelling?

Well, that very first song I learned, “Folsom Prison Blues,” it was a story. I also loved Glen Campbell when I was a kid. He recorded all these great songs written by Jimmy Webb, like “Wichita Lineman.” It’s just a song about a guy who checks telephone poles and power lines, but somehow I felt the sadness, I felt his longing to go home. A great storyteller with a song can do that—make you feel something.

There was a songwriter named Dallas Holm who was probably my biggest Christian music influence early on. He didn’t write churchy songs. They were really just stories of his life, and they were really honest. You felt like he was sitting down and telling you his story.

And think about the role of story in Scripture. Jesus was a masterful storyteller. He presented the kingdom of God to us through story so many times. “The kingdom of God is like this.” It makes it so much more understandable and real.

When you think about the songs you haven’t written yet, what kinds of stories are you anxious to tell in the next chapter of your career?

You know, I think the question I’ve wrestled with secretly is “Does the world really need another Steven Curtis Chapman song?” I’ve given the world a lot of songs. But the truth is, as long as I’m breathing and experiencing life, I’ll probably be writing. Songs will keep popping up, and I’ll keep wanting to sit down and do the best I can.

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The Antidote to Election Anxiety

Carrie McKean

Contributor

My community is the kind you see in articles hyping the threat of political violence. Reality is more mundane—and hopeful.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

If you look at a heat map of the last presidential election’s results, my West Texas home is fiery red. In my precinct here in Midland in 2020, former president Donald Trump beat President Joe Biden by a 72-point margin—and that made us one of the more politically diverse areas in our region.

Nearby precincts had margins as high as 92 points in Trump’s favor. In one rural precinct, 100 percent of the 36 voters chose Trump. I’d have to drive more than five hours to find a spot where Biden had a strong foothold, and on the trip, I could count on one hand the number of precincts that tipped even slightly his way.

I share all this because in these final days of the race, election anxiety is palpable and electric. Heart rates are elevated on the left and right alike, and plenty of Americans are afraid of the people in communities like mine. And no wonder—headlines shout all the ways Election Day could plunge us into full civic meltdown, especially if Trump loses, as he’s already setting the stage for a quest to reverse a result unfavorable to him.

“There’s people that are absolutely ready to take on a civil war,” a recent article warned. Given where I live, you’d expect me to know quite a few of them.

I don’t. And I think it’s important to say that out loud in these fearful and fractious days.

I’m not denying the potential for political violence, including among my impassioned neighbors. The truth is, our town had a handful of locals participate in the January 6 riots in 2021. Our most famous January 6 insurrectionist owned a flower shop at the time, a strange enough image to merit a feature in The Atlantic.

But she’s not revered as a local hero. She ran for mayor in 2019 and lost, garnering just 16 percent of the vote after being dismissed by most voting Midlanders as too “out there” and conspiracy-minded. In fact, she got so little local support after January 6 that she sold her flower shop and moved out of town. That ending might not make for a compelling article—but it does throw some cold water on the doomsaying dominating our collective storytelling right now.

I don’t know how the vote will go next week, but here’s one thing I can guarantee: Most Americans will feel unhappy, unrepresented, and unheard. I’m counting everyone who voted for the losing major-party candidate, everyone who voted third party, and everyone who was too discouraged by the choices put before us to vote at all.

Even millions who vote for the winner won’t be thrilled. Polling shows three in four Americans are part of the “exhausted majority,” those who hold dissimilar policy views but also think “our differences aren’t so great that we can’t work together.” Exhausted majority members aren’t raging partisans, and we make up a significant part of the population in every state. We’d all do well to remember that.

Last year, I met a left-leaning political organizer who was visiting Midland. At lunch, she confessed that she was surprised by how welcome and comfortable she felt in our town. I found it kind of amusing—even privately scoffed a little at how she’d so easily accepted stereotypes—until I went to California a few months later and found myself similarly taken aback by how normal everyone seemed. Hello pot, meet kettle, I thought, bemused and a little embarrassed by my own stereotyping.

In the months since, I’ve thought a lot about why that organizer and I both thought as we did—and how that same pattern repeats every day at every level of our national discourse. We’d each taken the bait offered to us by the loudest voices on our side, which portray fringy outliers across the aisle as representative of their side.

That kind of storytelling makes for good click-through rates on social media and offers a nice ego boost, like the boastful Pharisee praying, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector” (Luke 18:11). It also deceives us about the stakes in our politics, needlessly heightens tensions, rips us apart, and blinds us to our own sins.

A couple of years ago, an editor at a prominent left-leaning magazine (given the “most liberal” ranking by AllSides) reached out to me to ask if I’d be interested in writing for them. This editor sincerely wanted to seek out more diverse perspectives for his publication. He asked me to send him some article ideas.

We emailed for months on topics ranging from clean energy developments to migrants to evangelical behavior in the voting booth. Though the exchanges were always cordial, we never could come to an agreement about an angle for an article. The stories I offered didn’t confirm his prior assumptions; they wouldn’t scratch the itch for his outlet’s subscribers. Fundamentally, I think he wanted a writer who said in a different accent all the things he and his readers already thought to be true.

This is not a problem unique to the left. Last week in The Atlantic, Elaina Plott Calabro told the story of how Sylacauga, Alabama, a small town near where she grew up, captured the national media’s attention for a short time this fall due to the hordes of Haitian migrants who had come to town.

Except, when she went to find those migrants, she couldn’t. Nor could anyone else. The “hordes” turned out to be a handful of people living quiet lives and working legally at an auto plant. “But that didn’t stop people from insisting that an invasion was already under way—the lull of narrative more compelling than a desire to reckon with things as they were,” writes Calabro. Right-leaning media had all but fabricated a crisis.

Reckoning with things as they are is demonstrably less exciting than indulging in our unfair stereotypes. It’s certainly not the stuff of the campaign trail. But for Christians living in this day, it’s exactly the path we must undertake as we get through this election, regardless of who wins.

Indeed, reckoning with the way things are is a profoundly spiritual undertaking. It requires discernment. It asks us to do the hard work of recognizing where love has been driven out by fear (1 John 4:18). It requires radical honesty—confession of our fears and all the ways we’ve knotted up our trust in God’s faithfulness with the outcome of an election.

A counselor once taught me a thought experiment for when I went spinning down the path of terrible what-ifs. He’d ask me, “What if the worst does happen? What then?”

So what if the worst happens next week? What if _____ wins the election?

Well, many people won’t trust the outcome, and there might be riots or violence. It could be worse than last time. But even if that happens, it’s incredibly unlikely America would descend into the sort of chaos we see in in other parts of the world.

Still, let’s go further and say that does happen. What then?

We might lose our freedoms. My kids might not enjoy the same hope for a future that I’ve always had. Another country might become more powerful. Our country might fundamentally change its culture or governance.

I don’t think that’s where we’re headed. But Scripture tells us nations rise and fall (Job 12:23) and yet God’s Word remains (Isa. 40:8). So even if the worst does happen, what then?

Well, God’s people have lived with much less in many times and places, including right now, all around the world. It would be difficult, no doubt, and that is not the future I want for America.

But for Christians, no matter how far we follow our worst fears in this thought experiment, we will find we are always met by the tender presence of God, who promises to be our ever-present help in times of need (Ps. 46:1). As David wrote:

If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you. (Ps. 139:8–12)

This moment calls for proper perspective, not disinterested disengagement. Vote with your conscience, by all means. Pray as specifically as you feel called to pray for the outcome of the election. But as those who are allegiant first to the King of Kings, we also must ask God to reveal to us any places we’ve turned our political opponent into our spiritual enemy, trading a wild, uncontainable, not-fully-knowable God for a little wooden talisman that fits neatly in our pocket and looks remarkably like ourselves.

We must ask God to meet us in the place of our deepest fears and remind us that there is nowhere we can go to outrun his presence and no earthly ruler who can undermine his authority. Even if we live under unjust powers and principalities, God’s story carries on.

In an ancient and brief letter composed during a time of great persecution of Christians sometime between the apostles (AD 30) and the age of Constantine (AD 337), the unknown writer to Diognetus described the peculiarity of Christians. “With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign,” the author said. They’re ordinary. But he continued:

They pass their days upon earth, but they are citizens of heaven. Obedient to the laws, they yet live on a level that transcends the law. Christians love all men, but all men persecute them. Condemned because they are not understood, they are put to death, but raised to life again. They live in poverty, but enrich many; they are totally destitute, but possess an abundance of everything. They suffer dishonor, but that is their glory. They are defamed, but vindicated. A blessing is their answer to abuse, deference their response to insult.

As followers of Jesus living in the United States of America, practicing both discernment and radical honesty ought to move us to a place of collective repentance. We are too far from this early description of the church. Instead of echoing the Pharisee, we should sound like the tax collector, who “beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’” (Luke 18:13).

No matter our politics, as followers of Jesus living in an age of contempt and despair, God may be giving us an opportunity to become peculiar again. I do not think the worst will happen, but if it does, his command for us remains the same (2 John 1:5).

A few weeks ago, I was exchanging texts with a reporter friend of mine who lives in New York City. In many ways, we come from different worlds. We often disagree politically, but our conversations are based in mutual curiosity and are always thought-provoking and civil. On that particular day, I was feeling fearful about the risk of coming unrest. “Rarely does the world come crashing down,” he texted back. “Things tend to just deteriorate until we don’t recognize or feel represented by them anymore.”

My first thought was that for many Americans, we might already be there. Plenty of people I know and love feel left behind and forgotten. And there is sadness in that, but also a strange comfort.

Regardless of what happens in this election, babies will still learn to walk. We’ll still take meals to our friends who are suffering. We’ll still assemble crews to clear rubble-strewn roads in the aftermath of devastating floods. We’ll still stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon dumbstruck with awe. It may feel like God is bringing us to our knees—and maybe that’s exactly what we need to be more faithful disciples—but somehow life carries on.

I don’t know what will happen on and after Election Day. What I do know of my red-state neighbors and blue-state friends suggests to me that the worst is far less likely than frightening headlines have led us to believe. But I also know we can be faithful followers of Jesus under any president or earthly power.

The morning after my text conversation, I woke up thinking about my reporter friend’s words in another light. What if we’ve been thinking about the wrong worst-case scenario? What if, for Christians, the worst is not political violence but the church becoming unrecognizable as ambassadors of Christ? What if we choose to pursue worldly power at the cost of our own souls? What if our witness is what slowly deteriorates until we no longer represent the one whose name we claim?

In that sense, maybe it’s true: The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Carrie McKean is a West Texas–based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Texas Monthly magazine. Find her at carriemckean.com.

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All Saints Die

L. S. Dugdale

Our yearly reminder for Christians neither to run from nor to leap toward death, but to learn the art of dying well.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Wikimedia Commons, Pexels

November 1 marks All Saints’ Day on the church calendar, when many denominations remember the communion of all believers of all time, including the faithfully departed.

That the church instituted this holy day should come as no surprise. We Christians have rehearsed our belief in “the communion of saints” since the institution of the Apostles’ Creed in the fourth century. Yet the concept of a fellowship of the living and the dead has an eerie ring to it, a feeling not assuaged by what All Hallows’ Eve has become in Halloween.

One liturgical prayer says God knits together his elect in “one communion and fellowship in the mystical body” of Christ. The haunting image of sewing together the faithful living and dead members of Christ’s mystical body leaves us with a lot to unpack. But since the phrase is tucked into a longer liturgical script, we usually don’t think about it much.

In fact, apart from Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and the occasional funeral, the Western church tends to remain relatively close-lipped about death and the relationship between the living and the dead. Unlike our brothers and sisters in much of the world, people in the United States usually die in institutions, not at home in the care of family.

A lack of exposure to dying and death both in the church and at home has led to the emergence of two kinds of responses to death—people who run away from it and people who leap toward it. Yet a third way is to learn the life-giving art of dying well.

Some of the most agonizing and tragic deaths I’ve faced as a doctor are those of patients who adamantly refuse to acknowledge their mortality. They desperately latch onto every bit of available technology to delay the inevitable, regardless of whether it causes more harm than good—often causing further medical complications to snowball.

Years ago, I recall attempting to resuscitate the same elderly, cancer-riddled man three times in the same night. After his heart stopped and he died the first time, I discussed gently with his daughters how sick he was and how his heart likely would not keep beating for much longer. But they wanted us to attempt CPR again. His eldest daughter told me that they are Christians who believe Jesus can heal. She said that they believe in miracles and that we doctors should do whatever we can to keep him alive. He died twice more that night, and our third attempt at resuscitation failed.

In his dying process, my patient was subjected to painful medical interventions with no meaningful benefit apart from a couple more painful hours of life. He was placed on a breathing machine, which meant he couldn’t speak, and was transferred from the cancer ward to intensive care. His family spent their final moments in a harried state of crisis instead of sharing their last moments sitting, talking, and praying together.

Later reflecting on that situation, I wrote in my book The Lost Art of Dying, “This has always struck me as something of a paradox. It seems curious that the people who believe most fervently in divine healing also cling most doggedly to the technology of mortals.”

Data shows this to be a widespread phenomenon. A study by researchers at Harvard University found cancer patients with high levels of support by their religious communities are more likely to die in intensive care on advanced life support. They are also more likely to refuse hospice and palliative care.

And although religious people often seek guidance from their clergy on medical care at the end of life, a subsequent study found that clergy know very little about palliative and other care at the end of life. They are prone to overstate the benefits and underestimate the risks of medical interventions in an effort to encourage faith in God.

Most people wish to die at home surrounded by loved ones, but highly medicalized dying usually requires a high-tech hospital. What’s more, overmedicalizing the dying process rarely reflects the resurrection hope of all saints. Although medical technology is indeed a wonderful gift from God, we must guard against making it an idol. The fact is, all of us will die. From dust we came, and to dust we will return (Ecc. 3:20).

Not everyone runs from death, however—some leap toward it. Death anxiety or inexperience or a penchant for control prompts “leapers” to determine how they can choose the timing and manner of their death. Some end their lives through conventional suicide, while others do so through physician-assisted suicide (usually lethal pills) or euthanasia (usually lethal injection). It is critical that the church understand these terms and the differences between them.

In Canada, where medical killing is now the fifth leading cause of death, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide were absorbed by the term MAID, or medical assistance in dying.

The language is quite clever. Who doesn’t want assistance in their dying? I certainly do. I want someone to bring a hot cup of tea or an extra blanket if I’m cold. If I’m feeble and frail, I hope for someone to help me out of bed to the bathroom. If I’m bedbound, I hope for someone to turn me regularly and give me sponge baths. I would love for people to read or sing to me while I’m on my deathbed.

But MAID is not about flourishing while dying, nor is it about nurturing life and community. Rather, it is about control and leveraging the goods of medicine to inflict death. It ends suffering by ending the life of the sufferer, and in the meantime, it relieves people of their responsibility to care for dying family members. It releases communities from their duty to address social isolation and absolves health care systems of their obligation to provide support services to the dying or those living with disabilities.

Canada’s MAID began in 2016 for terminal patients and expanded in 2021 to anyone with irremediable suffering. Let’s be clear about what this means. No longer must a person have a terminal diagnosis to be euthanized in Canada. If your doctor agrees your suffering is bad enough, then you, like an old dog, can be “put down.”

According to the government’s most recent annual report, 35 percent of MAID-seeking Canadians in 2022 said they wanted to die to avoid being a burden on family and caregivers. Another 17 percent said they sought MAID because of loneliness. Imagine: 2,264 people choosing death in one year simply because of loneliness! Still hundreds more may choose death because they can’t access or afford adequate palliative or disability services.

The line between prolonging life and delaying death is a very fine one. It takes wisdom and some medical knowledge and a good clinical team to know when enough is enough. But the line between caring for the dying and hastening death is a bold one.

The latter goes directly against the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” And to obey God’s law in this context is quite literally to choose life. “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life,” the Lord said, “so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years” (Deut. 30:19–20).

What do running from and leaping toward death have in common? They both fail to grant dying humans the reverence they deserve. The sad fact is that most people—especially Christians—aren’t prepared for death. This is a growing problem that pastors and other church leaders can’t afford to ignore in their congregations.

As Meagan Gillmore reported for CT earlier this month, one Canadian pastor said, “I think one of the strongest reasons why MAID has a lot of traction generally in our society is that nobody wants to talk about death.”

For years, I’d wondered how we could change the conversation and equip our patients to walk toward the inevitable. Then one day, in my reading of various books on the subject, I came across a concept known as the ars moriendi, which is Latin for “art of dying.”

I discovered an entire genre of literature—500-years’ worth of ars moriendi handbooks—on how to die well. The earliest version developed in the early 1400s after the bubonic plague, or Black Death, swept through Western Europe, leaving half the population dead.

The central theme of this genre was that dying well is very much wrapped up in how we live. If we want to die well, we have to live well. That includes cultivating a life of virtue, nurturing our communities, and attending to questions of salvific and eternal importance.

The ars moriendi handbooks became wildly popular and were translated into many different languages, circulated widely throughout the West and into the Americas. They were also adapted by a variety of religious and nonreligious groups. The genre remained popular for more than half a millennium.

It started to lose its cultural prestige about a hundred years ago in the wake of the First World War and the influenza pandemic, when it seems people grew weary of thinking about death. Also, as medicine advanced and hospitals proliferated over the 20th century, the need to prepare for death gradually withered away.

In my work, I have attempted to revive the ars moriendi for our modern, pluralistic context. I wrote the book for my patients, many of whom do not belong to religious communities. Yet we are all mortal, so we must all consider the status of our human relationships and the value we place on the medicalization of life and death.

All of us must answer questions about what it means to be human, about life’s purpose, and about what happens when we die. In our polarized world, where people increasingly approach the end of their lives by either running from death or leaping toward it, we must seek the wise path. Along with the psalmist, we should pray, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12).

How might we cultivate a heart of wisdom with our mortal end in view? Across the ars moriendi genre, several themes emerge for how to practice living well to die well.

First, we must acknowledge our finitude, or finiteness. All the ars moriendi handbooks started from the premise that death is inevitable. That doesn’t mean we have to fixate on death, obsess about it, or grow overly morose. Nor does it mean we celebrate and glorify it. But it is precisely by numbering our days—by recognizing that life is limited—that we begin to understand how we might live well.

Second, we must nurture relationships and cultivate community. The ars moriendi handbooks all assumed that dying was a community affair. Yet communities today are fractured, and loneliness affects about a quarter of the world’s population.

I often encourage my patients to picture who they’d like at their deathbed and consider the state of those relationships now. If you know you’d like your children with you when you’re dying, and you’re currently estranged, then you’d best commit yourself to relational repair before it’s too late. Not only will your dying be better, but your living will improve, too.

Third, we must learn the benefits and burdens of medical interventions and seek guidance on using them prudently. I often encourage clergy to ask medical personnel to educate their congregations. Health professionals can also volunteer to share wisdom on clinical care at the end of life through classes, workshops, or even health fairs.

Churches already draw on the talents and skills of their members across many different industries—why not let clinicians teach congregations practical insights on dying well?

Finally, we cannot gain hearts of wisdom without considering the ultimate questions of human purpose and destiny: What is life for? Why am I here? What happens when I die? When it comes to answering these, Christians have a wealth of resources. Yet this is also where summaries like the Apostles’ Creed can bring our core doctrines into focus.

Do we believe, as the last line of the creed says, in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic (universal) church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting? As we gain confidence in our answers to these questions, we gain our greatest wisdom.

In the case of the ars moriendi handbooks, martyrs were seen as exemplars of faithful Christian living and dying. Illustrated versions even included images of martyred saints—Steven holding his stones, Catherine with her execution wheel. The idea is that all of us have much to learn from their lives and witness.

All Saints’ Day is the perfect time to reflect upon the living and dying of those who’ve gone before us—that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us (Heb. 12:1)—and to consider what we can learn and apply to our own lives and deaths.

L. S. Dugdale is a professor and ethicist at Columbia University in New York City and the author of the book The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom.

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Culture

Exorcism Movies’ Terrifying Truth

Paul Marchbanks

These films are far from theological treatises. But at their best, they depict the reality of evil—and the power of Jesus’ name.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

As an uprooted sixth grader in the early ’80s, I was willing to try anything to make new friends—including attending my first horror film. The low-budget B movie about a resurrected mummy who plagues college students now seems quite tame, but it scared me out of my seat (and into the theater lobby) twice. A few years later, the adaptation of Stephen King’s werewolf-filled Silver Bullet so unsettled me that for long afterward I had to gird my loins each time I ventured into our neighborhood’s shadowy woods.

Should I have averted my eyes altogether? Or did my terror—detached from an actual, immediate threat—prepare me for real-world trauma? Can believers who have received a spirit not of fear but of “power, love and self-discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7) possibly justify toying with trepidation, even in imaginary spaces?

The poet Samuel Coleridge threw down the gauntlet in the early 19th-century culture wars when he declared that reading about “giants and magicians and genii” as a child granted his mind “a love of the Great and the Whole.” C. S. Lewis echoed these sentiments a century later. He held that the fear engendered by certain types of adventure and fantasy fiction could ennoble readers of all ages, teaching us that “immemorial comforters and protectors, the radiant ones” exist to combat evil. Instead of tossing scary, supernatural stories into the bottomless pit, both writers contend that such tales prepare the mind to embrace deep truth.

Fictional threats—zombies, vampires, and hostile extraterrestrials—are one thing. Thrillers about real terrors—kidnappings, torture, serial killings—hit harder, having stolen their dramatic force from real-world crimes.

Tales dramatizing spiritual warfare, however, are another species entirely. For the believer, they can feel too scary—not equipping us to combat evil but overwhelming us with their power.

Exorcism movies are experiencing something of a renaissance. Several recent titles—The Pope’s Exorcist (2023), The Exorcist: Believer (2023), The Exorcism (2024), The Deliverance (2024)—coincide with the 50th anniversary of The Exorcist (1973), which splattered the silver screen with the foulest language and images imaginable. Such cinematic offerings seek not to subtly disrobe that dark expert at angelic disguise (2 Cor. 11:14) but to blazon the depredations of a leonine prowler seeking someone to devour (1 Pet. 5:8).

The boy who fled into the theater lobby now draws others toward films as a vocation. (I’m a literature and film professor.) And though I don’t teach classes that focus on horror, I do incorporate the occasional exorcism tale into my introductory film course. Features like Scott Derrickson’s The Exorcism of Emily Rose (a personal favorite) take our struggle with “this dark world” as seriously as the early Christians did (Eph. 6:12).

Revisiting such fare, particularly in late October, reminds us that the “spiritual forces of evil” identified by Paul should be treated more seriously than Halloween’s flippant displays of gore and ghoulishness would suggest.

Though far from theological treatises, each of these exorcism movies does pose questions about the nature of demonic possession—about good and evil, free will and fate. If submission to God ensures that Satan will flee when resisted (James 4:7) and believers can resist any temptation they face (1 Cor. 10:13), then do demons only gain entry when invited—like the vampires in old creature features? Once they acquire a foothold, does removal require outside intervention? What role does the host play in their own emancipation?

Hollywood would have us think the answers as numerous as the directors tackling the subject. The Pope’s Exorcist configures possession like a mousetrap that springs once a vulnerable, already-traumatized innocent enters its domain. Exorcist: Believer places a little blame on its possessed adolescents for attempting to contact a deceased parent with candle and pendulum in hand but similarly avoids censuring them for the havoc they wreak once possessed. Instead of beginning in medias res, with each possession already in motion, both stories spotlight their victims’ childlike before to throw their monstrous after into greater relief.

Scripture itself provides no single pathway into possession. Readers are left to imagine how the seven demons cast from Mary Magdalene (Luke 8:2) entered her in the first place and whether any particular sins committed by the superhumanly strong tomb-dweller in Gerasenes granted Legion entry into his mind (Mark 5:1–20).

There is, however, a clear escape from demonic influence, always involving either the person or name of Christ. Whether Jesus himself casts out the demon or his disciples do so in his name, the message is the same.

Fortunately, films involving exorcisms often not only acknowledge the reality of supernatural evil but also point to the one who is able to overcome it. The question is “Who can access his power?”

Rescue traditionally rides in on the cassock of a priest armed with Scripture, holy water, and an enviable supply of conviction. In the 1973 original, faith and experience fail to prevent Father Merrin’s untimely death; he only saves young Regan by committing suicide once he’s drawn the demon into himself. The Pope’s Exorcist grants Christ a bit more power, its priestly duo effectively wielding the Word of God (Eph. 6:17) after confessing to one another those sins Satan will otherwise use against them. Once again, a priest saves an innocent via demonic absorption—but this time his partner’s invocation of Jesus’ name prevents any fatalities.

The Exorcist: Believer kicks precedent to the curb. A swelling musical score marks Father Maddox’s dramatic entrance, feigning deliverance via priest. But his efforts are abruptly interrupted when his neck is telekinetically snapped. The script’s effort at inclusivity (with help from cowriter and CT podcast guest Scott Teems) demands that salvation arrive with the help of assorted neighbors, four ideologically contrary parents, a nurse, pastors from different traditions, and a motivational speaker who vaguely invokes “the name of all holy beings” and equates “faith in each other” with faith in God.

Lee Daniels’s The Deliverance shares standard features with its forebears, including a haunted house and a couple deaths to signal the demon’s power. But it takes a hard right toward the unexpected idea that a laywoman’s faith is enough to repel the Evil One. The pastor who attempts the “deliverance” of young Dre dismisses the need for a professional intercessor, proclaiming that one need only act with the authority of Christ to drive out a demon. When she fails in her own attempt, she explains with her dying breath that she faltered due to fear.

It is left to her listener, a single mother who has long spurned religion as a “fix” every bit as addictive as the alcohol she regularly imbibes, to prove the adage that “perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18) and to drive the demons from her own children. Carrying the burdens of sexual assault, emotional abuse, divorce, and financial strain has long impaired Ebony Jackson’s ability to parent her three kids. Stressed, snappish, and regularly drunk, she reacts to her children’s plights with either aggression or slurred speech. She is the last hero one would expect in an exorcism movie.

Could she also be the perfect hero? When her possessed children’s inexplicable behavior drives her to her knees for the first time in her life, the prayer that follows is dragged from the depths of her soul, just as the tortured cry “Jesus” later bursts from a frame contorted by the demon’s onslaught.

And it is enough.

Scripture offers a number of direct alternatives to fear and its maverick cousin, anxiety, including confidence (Ps. 27:3), courage (Josh. 1:9), peace (John 14:27), and delight (Ps. 94:19). Fitted together, a beautiful tableau emerges of the equipped, stalwart Christian. The Christian’s virtues are akin to a stained-glass window, translating the blinding sunlight of the Spirit into colors we can bear.

But in every rose window, lines of lead help delineate the design. Contrasting darkness makes adjacent colors pop. In the same way, fantastic, disturbing dramatizations of sin and suffering accentuate the virtues extolled by Paul in Philippians 4:8. “Whatever is true” comes into greater relief when juxtaposed against the enticing deceit of the Adversary.

Victory doesn’t require a demonology expert or priest, holy water or magical incantations. At their best, exorcism movies remind us of the Spirit-filled power available to every believer. With Christ before us, we can ourselves become the “immemorial comforters and protectors.” There’s no need to hide in the lobby.

Paul Marchbanks is a professor of English at Cal Poly State University. His YouTube channel is “Digging in the Dirt.”

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Ideas

Digital Sloth in the Online Arena

Scott Gustafson

How our internet use is prone to the ancient vice of akrasia.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Pexels

The Stoic philosopher Seneca once wrote of the gladiatorial games in Rome, “Unhappy that I am, how have I deserved that I must look on such a scene as this? Do not, my Lucilius, attend the games, I pray you. Either you will be corrupted by the multitude, or, if you show disgust, be hated by them. So stay away.”

Technology has afforded us many innovative tools in recent decades. But it has also created a new amphitheater that beckons us through culture wars, politics, and election cycles. This digital spectacle hosts all things immoral and illegal—radical groups, bots with immense power, outrage entrepreneurs, and a flood of misinformation. And we clamor for the show. Seneca’s “multitude” is an omnipresent legion, and its gate of entry is in our pockets.

The ancient vice akrasia is a lazy inclination toward base desires that we know are bad for the soul. Among other woes, Jesus blasted the pharisees for their akrasia and hypocrisy (Matt. 23:25). Akrasia is prominent today in the digital spaces: We know better than to scroll and click, to trust the algorithms, to believe everything.

But we are too lazy to turn off the flood of information. We love it too much. The online world with its cultural and political drama is the new amphitheater, and our akrasia is leading to consequences beyond entertainment.

One of these consequences is that our world is shifting toward extremes as politics, celebrities, and ideological groups—from Islamic jihadists to leftist anarchist movements to militaristic white nationalist groups—shape us online toward hostility and violence.

The online mob has the ability to sort us and shape us. Digital platforms profit from algorithms that serve up stimuli making us fearful or anxious. Screens warp our conception of reality: everything is performed, cropped, and filtered. Media outlets and political parties shape reality according to alluring but reductive dualisms, false gospels that proffer empty redemption.

A repeated liturgy molds us and curates our heart one email, post, or news headline at a time, and we can’t look away. We are growing cold toward other human beings and being pulled toward radicalization.

Even politicians now are using synthetic media and deepfake audio, images, and videos: all stunningly real compilations of things that never happened. Once primarily the purview of the porn industry, now some bad actors use artificial intelligence tools to target public opinion and elections and stir general chaos. Domestic disinformation accounts propagate an increasing amount of junk and conspiracies, deliberately flooding digital spaces with material designed to overwhelm and create confusion.

Lest we blame everything on bad actors, these systems work so effectively because of our psychology, vices, sociology, and desires. Technology serves us what we want. Human systems are extensions of our collective heart, which cannot be trusted and is inclined toward evil. Algorithms and their masters amplify the dissatisfaction and clamoring of our souls. Indulging, we ignore cognitive bias and the inherent dangers of a polluted space, letting the amphitheater shape us.

Seneca was not alone in avoiding the spectacle. In the early years of the church, Tertullian wrote from Carthage in AD 200 on the ethics of Christians attending the “games.” Tertullian’s treatise De Spectaculis (“On the Spectacles”) implores Christians not to attend because the spectacles were steeped in idolatry and elicited powerful “mass emotions” toward violence and bloodlust.

Tertullian dissuaded Christians because the games had an insidious, indoctrinating effect that would push them into the ways of Rome. After all, he implored, if something is not permissible to say or to do, why would we listen to or watch it? The coliseum was where demons lurked, Christians were executed (like Perpetua and Felicity in Carthage), and temptations were celebrated. There—under the guise of entertainment—power, might, and violence were elevated. The amphitheater was a place of anti-God worship.

Our amphitheater feeds and amplifies cultural lusts, hostility, and vice. It cultivates desires and directs worship. At the amphitheater in the ancient world, you might have seen friends or enjoyed play-acting, but you also might have witnessed Christians being torn apart by lions or the guileless run through by highly trained gladiators. The results are similar in our day; the colosseum has simply modernized into a heretical online mob with AI-enabled gladiators.

Ancient philosophers encouraged enkrateia, or self-discipline, to fight the vice of akrasia. Paul wrote of this same self-control as a fruit of the Spirit, a power to proactively curates desires and affections instead of passivity. Augustine implored us to turn our restless hearts toward the Creator. Tertullian encouraged Christians to think about the greater “spectacle” of the Second Coming, the New Jerusalem and the Last Judgement.

For Christians, who are called to emulate Christ’s virtues, to spend their mental energy on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy” and “think about such things” (Phil. 4:8), the old amphitheater and our current spectacle is not just counterproductive; it malforms.

The earliest Christians avoided the amphitheater. They abhorred violence, worship of the emperor, spurious mobs, and debauchery. Instead, they cultivated an alternative community that gently protested power politics and pagan Rome and patiently bore witness to the coming kingdom. Ancient philosophers, early theologians, and the witness of early Christians suggest we do the same.

Scott Gustafson is a researcher with the Extreme Beliefs group at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam and the Ambassador Warren Clark Fellow at Churches for Middle East Peace.

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Theology

Biblical Beasts and Where to Find Them

Paulo Nogueira

What do scriptural accounts of monstrous beings like Leviathan and Behemoth tell us about our experience of the sacred?

Edits by CT / WikiMedia Commons

When I started reading the Bible as a teenager, I was shocked to read the Revelation of John for the first time. I had no idea that Scripture, a book that had an image of such a loving God—I had started with the Gospel of John—could have so many violent scenes and so many monstrous beings in its last book.

Then I discovered that the presence of monsters is not exclusive to the Apocalypse. The attentive reader of the Bible has already noticed the number of beings in the Old and New Testaments that do not correspond to the conventional forms of humans and animals that we find in the world on a daily basis.

The Bible makes references to sea monsters, such as Leviathan, or land monsters, such as Behemoth. The celestial world is also inhabited by unusual beings, such as the seraphim or the cherubim, not to mention the hybrid beings, the “living creatures,” which we find in the Book of Ezekiel.

However, it is in apocalyptic texts that these beings are most frequent and are the best known. This is the case with the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John. The presence of these strange beings surprises us and makes us ask, Why are there so many beings in the Bible that do not have counterparts in the real world? What role could they have in Scripture?

The response to these questions holds significant value for readers of Scripture, as these monstrous beings potentially promote violent actions, some of which are in divine service. Because of their presence and powerful actions, monsters must be incorporated into a broader view of biblical interpretation.

Biblical interpretation in history has dealt with these strange beings in various ways. One way was to interpret them allegorically. Each part of them would correspond to a doctrinal or moral element. This was the preferred view of the ancient and medieval church.

Then, in modern research, it has become more common to understand these beings as metaphors for historical elements. In fact, the monsters of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature are ways of representing imperial powers, such as the Seleucid or Roman empires.

However, this approach solves the problem only superficially, the question remaining as to why these powers are described in such bizarre ways. Nor does the political interpretation of monsters explain all the monsters in the Apocalypse, much less the violence promoted by divine agents at the end of time.

More recently, some interpreters have begun to ask new questions about these strange beings. They have come to the conclusion that it is not enough to list monsters and acknowledge their presence; a proper approach is needed to understand them.

I argue that monsters are, fundamentally, cultural creations through which we express our tensions toward society and ourselves. They inhabit the mythology of peoples and the depths of our psyche, emerging within our dreams. Therefore, an experience of the sacred also passes through the articulation of monsters, both internal and cosmic. This perspective has a clear consequence in the interpretation of the Bible: As Scripture addresses the fundamental dramas of the human soul and of creation, it also manifests the actions of monsters in all their power and ambiguity.

The theory of monstrosity, as this approach has been conventionally called, seeks a complex understanding of culture by formulating the following proposition: It is possible to study a culture based on the monsters it creates. This perspective began to be considered in the 1990s in cultural studies, gaining applications in literary research as well. I will focus on three of its central ideas.

The first is that cultures often depict what they perceive as external to themselves as threatening, dangerous, destabilizing, animalistic—that is, as a monster. They do so not only through concepts but also and above all through hybrid and grotesque images.

The beings on the edges of the world—think of exotic peoples or imaginary beings from outside the known world—are the other, a threatening other.

None of this is new. After all, we know very well that human groups tend to define themselves with positive, “civilized” characteristics, attributing to people outside their group a character that is not only threatening but also destabilizing. We are aware of the devastating effects of this position in multicultural and multiethnic societies like ours.

The novelty of the theory of monstrosity is its second emphasis, inspired by psychoanalysis: The monsters we identify as external actually reflect internal ruptures and traumas. What I project onto the other as monstrous in some way refers to myself.

It is no wonder, theorists of the monstrous would say, that in 19th-century Victorian England, literature began creating monsters. Confident in science and progress and holding a key position among imperial powers, the British faced threats that emerged from within.

Think of Count Dracula, a vampire and undead from the East, who visits London in search of a woman who will free him from his solitude. Or the creature of Frankenstein, a monster in whom the most forbidden and fascinating fantasy of science is realized, creating life by usurping the divine place.

By creating monsters, people point to something threatening that is “out there” but also to a danger that is “here,” within themselves and their culture.

The third element of the theory of the monstrous guides us to pay attention to monsters’ forms: Monsters are frightening because they are aberrant images and as such must be seen and imagined not just as mere allegory. After all, these images provoke emotional reactions. Monsters are hybrid beings, malformed, gigantic, grotesque. This is society’s way of questioning the world and its categories, considered normative.

I return to my question, now focused on the biblical world: “Why are there so many monsters in the Bible?” This is a delicate issue that affects our beliefs and sensibilities. After all, we always think of the God of the Bible as a loving Father and the story told in the Bible as the story of salvation.

The fact that divine agents present themselves as monstrous and violent is the critical point of our reflection. I am of the opinion that this question, even if it does not receive quick and easy answers, should be on the agenda of a critical theological reflection.

After all, Christianity, a religion that should spread the message of God’s love for humanity, has also manifested itself as a religiosity of violence and hatred, promoting war, slavery, oppression, and death. Facing the monstrous aspects within our traditions and especially in the Bible is a way for us to vigilantly deal with this potential for destruction and violence that exists alongside love and solidarity.

The monsters in the Apocalypse of John offer insight to the master narrative of early Christianity about the future of the world governed from the divine throne. The book of Revelation is about the eruption of divine power over the cosmos, including society and the powers that govern it. In this sense, the Apocalypse offers a total narrative of a radical ecology. The plagues executed by the angels affect not only people but also the stars, the waters, the plants, and the empires of the earth.

In this vindication of the suffering of the righteous, all levels of the cosmos and all expectations of power are shaken. However, the execution of divine judgment and the establishment of the reign of God cannot take place in the outdated categories of the society that it is seeking to supplant. The “I am making everything new” (Rev. 21:5) also applies to the language and categories used to narrate this “end of times.” Therefore, nothing in the Apocalypse is narrated in everyday language; everything is presented for the first time in its depth, in an unveiling (apokalypsis) of reality.

The monsters are the agents of this narrative. The oppressive Roman Empire is revealed in all its demonic power in the monsters presented in chapter 13, whose strength comes from the red dragon with seven heads and ten horns—another monster, presented in chapter 12. This dragon, in turn, opposes the “woman clothed with the sun” (v. 1), causing chaos and trying to devour her son.

The Roman Empire, which conceived of itself as the guarantor of an era of peace (the Pax Romana), is presented in terms of cosmic, demonic chaos, destabilizing the world’s order and challenging God himself. Presenting the Roman Empire’s oppressive power in the form of a monster serves to reveal its true identity.

But the monster described as external also refers to the internal. God and the angels are also presented with violent and disruptive characteristics. In the first vision of Revelation, Jesus appears as the apocalyptic Son of Man—dazzling and exalted, holding stars in his right hand and carrying the key to Hades. A sword emerges from his mouth. This powerful figure of the cosmic Christ rules both the celestial and lower worlds.

But in chapter 5 at his enthronement, Jesus is presented as “the lion of the tribe of Judah” (v. 5) and then as a slain lamb. Here he passes from the image of one animal (victor) to another (victim), without any reference to his humanity.

These presentations of Christ, at the same time as a cosmic being and as a slain animal victim, so far removed from each other, connect him with the experience of humiliation and the hope of exaltation of his followers, the readers of the book. Christ’s followers experience the empire as demonic and themselves as vindicated victims, but neither of these views uses historically situated categories.

Only the monstrosity of external and internal images allows them to imagine this world of inversion of positions and of radical experience of the sacred. Without monsters, the language of the Apocalypse would have lost all its power. The suspension of common-sense categories allows for a full religious experience, even if it is often violent.

In a world of extreme violence and internal violence, the violence that is suffered and the violence that is imagined (or desired) must also be visited. The reader of the Apocalypse—and of the entire Bible—is invited to a radical experience of God, in which the reader’s and his ways of naming the world do not occupy the center.

This destabilizing experience, though shocking and uncomfortable, removes the reader from the role of a powerful interpreter. It challenges the idea of controlling or viewing the sacred as something entirely external and objective. The encounter with God is an experience that causes us fear—not a reverent and formal “fear” but an experience that theologian Rudolf Otto called a “tremendous and fascinating mystery.”

There are authors who insist that the origin of religion—and in Judaism and Christianity it would be no different—is in an experience of the sacred perceived as powerful, disruptive, and violent. In this sense, reading Scripture is not the reproduction of a position of power, equated with Western projects of civilizing culture.

The Bible, with its monstrous beings, leads us to an experience of radical otherness, which is reflected outside and inside us, inserting us into a radical ecology in which God manifests himself, destabilizing categories and creating new worlds that were previously unimaginable.

Monsters strip us bare, pushing us beyond the comfort of self-centered interpretation, allowing us a radical experience of God amid the drama of his creation.

Paulo Nogueira holds a PhD in theology, is a lay member of the Anglican Episcopal Church of Brazil, and is a professor of religious studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas in Brazil.

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