The Uneasy Conscience of Christian Nationalism

Instead of worldly control of society, Christ calls for renewed hearts.

Illustration by James Walton

Too many of us assume that Christian nationalism promises a road map to a New Jerusalem or a New Rome or a New Constantinople. That’s understandable, given the triumphal and martial rhetoric of would-be theocrats. But what if the actual road map is to none of those places?

What if the new Christian nationalism wants to take us not to the rebuilt shining city on a hill of Cotton Mather’s Massachusetts Bay Colony but just to double coupon night at the Bellagio in Las Vegas?

Journalist Jonathan V. Last noted years ago, when staying at a Vegas resort and casino, how momentarily moved he was by the hotel’s commitment to help their guests save the earth. Last noted the card on his bathroom sink asking guests to conserve water by using each towel multiple times. On the bedside table, he saw another card asking visitors to safeguard natural resources by opting not to have bed linens changed.

Then he looked out at the front of the hotel, where two massive fountains stood “spewing precious water into the arid, desert air.” That’s when, he wrote, “it struck me that the … concern for the environment might simply be an attempt to save on laundry costs.”

The stakes aren’t very high at one Vegas hotel, but it’s a deal that reveals an impulse in fallen human nature, in a way that’s a win for all the parties involved. The guests get to feel like they’re doing something virtuous, and the house gets to keep more of the chips. It’s a microcosm of what Martin Luther identified as the psychological game behind Johann Tetzel and others selling indulgences to medieval Christians.

Paying the money helped ease the consciences of those fearful of purgatory while at the same time helping to raise money for building St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The indulgence hawkers could tell themselves they weren’t in the business of nonprofit fundraising or commercial real estate but in the mission of saving souls. And the indulgence buyers could reassure themselves with penance, which was, and is, much easier than repentance.

Tossing a coin is easier than carrying a cross. Actual contrition, confession, and surrender are intangible, internal, spiritual realities that require entrusting one’s forgiveness to the promise of an invisible God. Indulgences, on the other hand, come with receipts.

For Luther, the crisis of it all was not just that the church was corrupt but, more importantly, that the reassurance bought with this type of indulgence actually kept people from seeing what really can overcome sin and wipe away guilt—personal faith in Christ and him crucified.

“Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter’s church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep,” Luther asserted in the 50th of his theses.

In our time, the indulgences are more akin to a hotel’s green initiative than to the construction of St. Peter’s. The new Christian nationalism—like the withered old state churches of Europe and the secularized old social gospels of mainline Protestantism—defines Christianity in terms of reforming external structures rather than of regenerating internal psyches. Unlike the older theological liberalisms, though, Christian nationalists seek solidarity not in the actual mitigating of human suffering but in the mostly symbolic boundary markers of taking the right amount of theatrical umbrage at culture war outrages, at having the right kind of enemies, at “owning the libs.”

The uneasy conscience of Christian nationalism pretends that our problem is the opposite of what Jesus told us: that by calling ourselves an orchard we can bring fruit from diseased trees (Matt. 7:15–20), that by controlling what is on the outside of us we can renew what is inside (Matt. 12:33–37).

This message is popular in all times; prosperity gospels and fertility religions always are. An extrinsic religion enables people to claim Christianity without following Christ and enables powerless, prayerless, porn-addicted culture warriors to convince themselves that they are goose-stepping to heaven. By assuaging our guilt with our political choices, we can convince ourselves that what we find in our new Bethel is Jacob’s ladder to heaven when it is really just Jeroboam’s calf of gold (1 Kings 12:25–31).

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Philip Yancey, a longtime columnist here at CT, along with other Christians, met with the disillusioned Communists of the regime, including the propogandists at the Kremlin newspaper Pravda. The Bolshevik experiment, of course, had subordinated personal ethics, much less personal faith, to the collective cause—to the supposed “worker’s paradise” of the future, which would justify every lie told, every dissident exiled, every life extinguished along the way.

What Yancey found most poignant was not just that Soviet communism had failed, but the particular way it failed. As he mused:

Humans dream of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good, wrote T. S. Eliot, who saw many of his friends embrace the dream of Marxism. “But the man that is will shadow the man that pretends to be.” What we were hearing from Soviet leaders, and the KGB, and now Pravda, was that the Soviet Union ended up with the worst of both: a society far from perfect, and a people who had forgotten how to be good.

We should not pretend that we could not see the same thing with a lifeless, politicized dystopian Christian nationalism as we saw with a hollowed-out Soviet empire. What a tragic end it would be to wind up with a society as debauched as ever and a people who have forgotten how to be saved.

The way forward is what it’s always been. As Luther said in his Heidelberg Disputation, “The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. The theologian of the cross calls a thing what it is.” Sometimes that means nailing a word or two to the castle door. Sometimes that might mean letting goods and kindred go. The whole of the Christian life is about repentance. That repentance must be about the renewing of our minds and the renovation of our hearts, not just the laundering of consciences that are no longer bound to the Word of God.

Now, as always, every day is Reformation Day.

Russell Moore is CT’s editor in chief.

Onward: A column by Russell Moore

Culture

Humility in the Age of Cancel Culture

Mike Cosper and Frank Bruni

Mike Cosper is joined by Frank Bruni for a conversation about the root of polarization.

Illustration by Ronan Lynam

In a special episode of The Bulletin, Christianity Today’s senior director of CT Media, Mike Cosper, interviewed New York Times columnist Frank Bruni about his book The Age of Grievance. Where polarization has split churches, families, and friendships, Bruni suggests that the root of this polarization is grievance, an animating impulse in our culture that focuses on scarcity instead of abundance. This conversation offers a way forward for Americans or anyone who looks at the culture and wants something better.

Frank Bruni and Mike Cosper

Mike Cosper: There was one element in the book that I was a little surprised by, and I’m curious for your thoughts on this.

A notion that’s missing from the book is the idea of forgiveness. And I don’t mean that in a religious sense but in the interpersonal sense, in the cultural sense. I remember years ago reading Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition. She makes the claim at one point where she says we can’t have a culture without forgiveness.

She says vengeance encloses both the doer and the sufferer in this relentless automatism of action, which will never come to an end. In contrast, forgiving is the only reaction which doesn’t merely react but acts anew and unexpectedly. And the idea is that forgiveness is this moment where we can start fresh.

I’m curious: Is there a role for forgiveness in our culture to do the constructive kind of things you talk about in the book to move things forward?

Frank Bruni: I do think there’s a role for forgiveness.

It’s one of the things we must work our way back toward. It’s the opposite of cancel culture. In various passages, I do talk about how we must get away from this tendency to judge people too quickly. In the last chapter of the book, the concept I explored at great length is humility. I think forgiveness and humility are more than kissing cousins. I think they’re conjoined twins.

MC: I love the idea of how we carry ourselves into forgiveness. In public conversations—whether it’s online or face to face—when we think about our politics, can we carry ourselves, our positions, our convictions in a way that we’re humble enough about them that we don’t have to react so viciously when we encounter an idea that’s different than our own?

That comes back to the fundamental issue—maybe it’s a shrinking appetite. Certainly, it’s a shrinking space for a kind of vision of pluralism. It seems you’re saying we must try to carve out this space that says we have to live in a world where people are fundamentally opposed to many things that you might think and believe. We still must find a way to live at peace with them. We don’t talk or think like that; the tendency is to think in terms of winning and losing.

FB: There are even aspects, I think, of modern child rearing. Certain economic groups send the message that you deserve a world precisely to your liking. You deserve a world purged of offense and insult.

It’s not an accident that Jonathan Haidt and his coauthor titled their book about this The Coddling of the American Mind. They were talking about a generation of students being led to believe that they should never encounter anything that unsettles them or complicates their lives.

When I talk about humility, what I mean, in part, is recognizing that we do not get circumstances that are always exactly to our liking. Other people’s dissenting views have as much right to exposure and discussion and oxygen as yours do.

We have somehow come to a political culture right now where people believe the minute we say, “Maybe you have a point,” we’ve lost the argument. We have too many actors in our politics and outside of our politics who think that impassioned equals virtuous, everything is overwrought, everything is all or nothing; and in fact, they end up doing damage to their own cause as they also do damage to the fabric of public life and the fabric of our culture.

MC: In the church, we often talk about first-order and second-order issues. First-order convictions are things like the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed—our fundamental sets of convictions. And then second-order issues are the things that divide Christians from one another, like the way we think about baptism or church polity or women in leadership versus men in leadership.

One of the things that is frightening in our moment is the way infighting in the church over second-order issues is rising to a first-order level. We are becoming a people who are saying, “This is the hill I must die on.”

FB: Whether it’s in churches or other segments of society, we really don’t seem to value and recognize the importance of coming to some sort of truce and having the collective peace that we used to. In some ways, it’s individualism run amok.

We’ve not only evolved into being a surprisingly and depressingly pessimistic people, but we’ve also turned into a surprisingly and depressingly narcissistic society. As I said, we don’t get circumstances that conform exactly to our liking. At no point in our lives should we be told to expect that.

We should be told to absolutely work toward justice. While we’re doing that, we also have to recognize dissenting opinions and not automatically see those people as evil.

Often, if you met them and talked to them, you would understand there’s a life story. There are reasons why they believe what they believe, but we’ve become extremely and toxically individualistic. In most cases, the price of waging this fight within the church or the public square is not worth it.

MC: You give a lot of space toward the end of the book to some visions for how we solve this. A lot of it comes to education, and the two things that struck me were the way you talked about civic education and the way you talk about media literacy, which I think is a huge issue in our moment.

The underlying question that I found myself asking after reading it is, Are you optimistic that solutions like that could be adopted and work? Could those kinds of things really be transformative? And what does a road map for that kind of transformation look like?

FB: I don’t think those two things can save us on their own in and of themselves, but I think that they can be part of a much longer recipe of getting to a healthier place as a country.

What’s so difficult about this is we have the tools to improve in all the ways we need. But one of the daunting things about it is it’s not just one thing. It is political reforms coupled with educational reforms coupled with spiritual investigation coupled with a whole lot more.

But I do think that it should not be that difficult to do something. One thing I do with my students at the university level is talk about where they get their information. We talk about what they’ve bookmarked, who they followed, what they like. And then we discuss where that has led them.

Some questions I ask them include:

Did you set that up intentionally, or did you make a couple of decisions and then the algorithms kicked in?
Does your media diet represent what you really intended?
Is it aligned with your values? And if the answer is “not exactly,” how about taking a moment right now and rearranging the pieces a little bit?

I’ve had this conversation with every class of students I’ve taught. It needs to begin when they’re much younger, and I think it needs to happen at the kitchen table as well as in the classroom. If we’re going to solve this, we all must look at how we behave in our private lives. We must ask if we are living as we would like other people to live, if we’re modeling the behavior to which we want young people to aspire.

Frank Bruni has been a journalist for more than three decades, including more than 25 years at The New York Times as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic.

Mike Cosper is the senior director of CT Media, host of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, and cohost of The Bulletin.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Guest Appearances".

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Ideas

The Soul of MAGA

Mike Cosper

The loves and desires that draw evangelicals to Donald Trump.

Illustration by Anthony Gerace

Donald Trump stands wrapped in the arms of Secret Service agents—their dark sunglasses and suits blending like a many-armed, many-eyed modern seraphim. Blood streams from his right ear, and his face is contorted with rage, determination, and pain. He thrusts his fist skyward. Behind him, the Star-Spangled Banner yet waves. You couldn’t pose a more iconic image if you tried.

In the months before the assassination attempt, I watched dozens of old Trump speeches and read a stack of his biographies, trying to understand the unique charisma that enabled him to transform right-wing politics in the US and that coalesced in a movement to Make America Great Again—or what we simply call “MAGA.”

Enough ink has been spilled on this subject to turn the ocean black, and most of it has been decidedly negative, attributing the movement’s success to “white rural rage,” “racism,” “white supremacy,” or various forms of Christian or ethnic nationalism. Some have pointed to the economic turmoil of the past two decades as the force that galvanizes MAGA—the dot-com boom and bust, the gig economy, the economic crises of 2007 and 2008, and the looming specter of AI and automation, which threaten the middle class and the manufacturing economies. But here again, the conclusions tend to be negative: grievance, discontent, and economic anxiety.

While I see truth in these diagnoses, I’m not convinced they get at the root of what compels MAGA. As Augustine put it, a people is “united by a common agreement on the objects of their love.” Which is to say that people’s affections—their loves, desires, and longings—tell us far more about them than their grievances, their discontent, or for that matter their policy positions.

Any political movement would be expected to rally to their candidate after an assassination attempt. But Trump’s bond with his voters is unique in American culture, and that bond was formed via the larger-than-life images, stories, and portrayals of him in pop culture. The post-assassination-attempt photo—in the context of stories cultivated for decades—propped him as not just a politician but a symbol of the good life.

And that’s why MAGA loves him.

Since riding down his gilded escalator in 2015, Trump has held the attention of Americans in a kind of vise grip, making our politics reactive to him, what he said at a rally, on The Sean Hannity Show, or on social media.

The power Trump wields comes from the status he secured long before he ran for office—not as a politician or a real estate tycoon but as a celebrity.

Ever since his foray into public life in the 1970s and ’80s, Trump was eager to make headlines. According to his niece Mary Trump, Donald not only craved that attention personally; it was part of what his father, Fred, expected of him—the primary benchmark of his success for the family business.

By the end of the 1990s, despite multiple bankruptcies and a variety of personal scandals, he firmly established his place as an avatar of the rich and powerful. In 1999, Rage Against the Machine recorded a music video for the song “Sleep Now in the Fire” featuring day traders with signs that read, “Trump for President.” A year later, the same idea was a punch line in an episode of The Simpsons.

On its own, that kind of fame eclipses what most presidential contenders could achieve in long and illustrious careers of public service. It would pale in comparison to the fame that was to follow the advent of reality television.

The Apprentice featured Donald Trump on 14 seasons between 2004 and 2015 and was a ratings smash. With Trump starring as a real estate mogul in search of his next protégé, each season featured a dozen contestants competing in games and stunts meant to prove their entrepreneurial savvy, loyalty, and leadership ability.

The show came at a moment when Trump desperately needed an infusion of good publicity and—for the first time in his life outside of the Trump organization—a steady paycheck. As Maggie Haberman describes in Confidence Man, “The disparity between the world created on the show—a commanding businessman flying from one site of luxury to another—and Trump’s reality was jarring for those who worked on the show.”

The series concocted a jet-setting lifestyle of luxury and success that starkly contrasted Trump’s reality, a “crumbling empire” of “well-worn carpets” and “chipped furniture.” Producers masked the worn and beaten state of the executive offices they leased from him at Trump Tower and the seedy vibes of his rundown New Jersey casino. And while a string of bankruptcies, bad deals, and financial disputes were a matter of public record, Trump wasn’t running for public office in 2004. What harm could there be in NBC propping him up as a mastermind and mogul?

It wasn’t the first time a benefactor subsidized Trump’s mythos for self-interested reasons. In 1990, he was drowning in bad investments and debt. Newspapers in June of that year reported that creditors would be providing him with a personal spending allowance of $450,000 a month—a move that both constrained his spending and enabled his lavish personal brand, which they saw as critical to the marketing strategy for their investments in his properties.

Fred Trump himself was a successful and cutthroat developer, with the sense of thrift, scarcity, and urgency typical of first-generation immigrants. His financial success bankrolled many of Donald Trump’s business ventures and floated him when he teetered on the brink of failure.

But as Mary Trump recalls, “Fred didn’t groom Donald to succeed him. … Instead, he used Donald, despite his failures and poor judgment, as the public face of his own thwarted ambition.” In Donald, Fred Trump saw someone who could make the Trump name great among Manhattan developers, extending his success into social and political circles he’d never been able to break into.

Many trace Trump’s turn to politics back to 2011, when he became a loud and harsh booster of the “birther” conspiracy theory suggesting Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen. But his foray into presidential politics was more than two decades earlier, in 1987, when he took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe. “The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help,” it read.

The talking points were co-crafted by Roger Stone, a Nixon-loving political consultant who was part of Trump’s 2016 team and was later convicted of obstruction of justice, false statements, and witness tampering during the probe into Russian interference in that election. (Trump pardoned him in December 2020.)

In 1987, Stone, as Haberman describes him, was already known as a bit of “a schemer,” someone willing to play dirty in politics in order to win. In Trump, Stone saw a charismatic figure with the bravado to say and do anything to generate attention and headlines.

Stone gave Trump a taste of political life, helping him meet with donors and politicians and give speeches in New Hampshire. Trump ultimately decided not to run in ’88, but he attended the Republican National Convention. Haberman describes the scene: “Trump was mesmerized, enraptured by the display around him. It was like a giant sporting event, except in honor of one man. ‘This is what I want,’ Trump said.”

The presidential debate of 1960 has long been seen as a turning point in American democracy. It was the first televised debate, and John F. Kennedy appeared young and energetic on screen, with a breezy, calm, and in-command demeanor. Richard Nixon looked tired, unkempt, and uneasy in the studio lights. We know what happened next.

Half a century later, Trump’s media savvy connected with an electorate who spent a lifetime watching, on average, six hours a day of television. Such consumption isn’t without effect. As David Foster Wallace once said, “Television, from the surface on down, is about desire.”

The goal of network (and social media) executives isn’t to challenge or confront or even entertain us; it is much more simply to keep us watching. They achieve this by entertaining and even challenging us, but they mostly achieve it, Wallace says, by presenting us with a world of people who are more beautiful than us doing things that are more interesting than we do. Wallace writes:

We gaze at these rare, highly-trained, unwatched-seeming people for six hours daily. And we love these people. In terms of attributing to them true supernatural assets and desiring to emulate them, it’s fair to say we sort of worship them.

This liturgical quality in media is like that of religious iconography in the Orthodox Christian tradition. It’s not so much that the icon is worshiped or prayed to; rather, it is prayed through. The image provides a glimpse of the good life—and the worshipers engage in acts of prayerful imagination, envisioning their lives caught up in this vision of the good.

Your favorite television shows offer something similar: a vision of life with deep friendships, meaning, and purpose. Reality television invites viewers to imagine themselves finding true love, home sweet home, or an unimaginable windfall of wealth. Trump was part of the iconography of The Apprentice: a successful power broker, beloved by his kids, married to a supermodel, wealthy beyond most people’s imaginations.

Those who entertain us aren’t merely journalists, personalities, or actors, Wallace says. They’re “imagos, demigods.” For a populace whose spiritual and moral imagination was formed by decades of immersion in television, Trump didn’t descend an escalator when he announced his run for the presidency in 2015; he descended Mount Olympus. To be hit by a bullet and rise again, undeterred, fist in the air, shouting, “Fight, fight, fight” was proof, once again, that he was larger than life.

Augustine’s great political work, The City of God, was written after the sacking of Rome by a horde of barbarians. The defeat was devastating to the Romans, including many of its great Christian thinkers. Jerome, writing from Bethlehem, wondered, “If Rome can perish, what can be safe?” Some began to wonder if the empire’s turn to Christianity a century earlier had been a mistake. Why hadn’t the Christian God protected them in their war? Would they have fared better by staying loyal to Jupiter?

In response to these concerns, Augustine urged his fellow Christians to reject the paganism that imagines God (or the gods) as orchestrating world events according to their own hierarchy of power or, worse, according to a hierarchy of human righteousness:

For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke … so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked. And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise. So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

What distinguishes the gold from the chaff, Augustine says, is not primarily what people believe but what they love. If their affections were rooted in the greatness of Rome, the city’s fall was cause for despair. But if their affections were elsewhere, if what they loved and longed for was the heavenly city, then suffering ought to refine and concentrate their faith and make their testimony more beautiful.

“Two loves have made the two cities,” he wrote. “Love of self, even to the point of contempt for God, made the earthly city; and love of God, even to the point of contempt for self, made the heavenly city.”

As James K. A. Smith puts it, “There’s no ‘city limit’ sign to the earthly city precisely because the earthly city is less a place and more a way of life, a constellation of loves and longing and beliefs bundled up in communal rhythms, routines, and rituals.”

In ancient Rome, a robust civic tradition of storytelling, mythology, and philosophy carried these rhythms, routines, and rituals from generation to generation, shaping the affections of the Roman people for Rome itself. Our experience is no different. Smith says you can be assured that when someone asks you to “pledge allegiance” to anything, they’re asking for your heart.

But the quest for our affection spreads far beyond the overtly political. Throughout our lives, we’re confronted by stories and habits meant to seduce in one form or another—whether they’re seeking our votes, our attention, or our credit card numbers.

Evan Vucci captured the iconic photograph just moments after President Donald Trump’s ear was injured during the attempt on his life on July 13.

For many, this accounts for the unique affection and bond followers feel for Donald Trump. Their common love isn’t just Trump the televisual demigod who descended from Trump Tower to make America great again; it’s also the world that gave us Trump and shaped his own imagination: the world of television. It’s a world that offers the grandiose and immediate, a world where complexity is flattened, suffering has a clear purpose, and conflicts are resolved by the top of the hour. It’s a dreamworld, a utopia—and utopia is the perfect word to employ, since it actually means “no place.”

When our moral imaginations have been shaped by what is both idyllic and unreal, it leaves us vulnerable to all manner of demagoguery. We long for a good life and sense that it’s just out of reach; the demagogue gives us someone to blame.

Along with Augustine’s way of understanding the role of affections in politics, The City of God offers another interesting reference point for our moment. Many Christians—myself included—shared a sense that in 2016 the barbarians were at the gates. Christianity was being pressured in the public square in new and alarming ways. Same-sex marriage became the law of the land in a blink, and bakers and florists who conscientiously objected to participating in those weddings went to court to guarantee that. So did nuns who didn’t want to buy birth control. The first bathroom laws and accompanying culture wars were just beginning.

Donald Trump’s promise to “make America great again” seemed to dangle the possibility of a return to an era with a different moral and spiritual ethos, and an anxious political coalition greeted him as a modern Horatius, the legendary soldier who stood alone on a bridge to defend Rome from the Etruscans in the sixth century BC.

As Trump amassed delegates in the primaries, and as other candidates dropped from the race, conservatives—and conservative evangelicals in particular—found themselves at a crossroads: They could either join this coalition that had declared war on a common enemy or find themselves politically homeless. Some declared “never” and stuck to this conviction. Others, fearing the progressive barbarians at the gate and further social alienation, allied themselves with Trump.

When November came and Trump delivered a stunning Electoral College victory, his disruption of the Republican Party became a wholesale realignment. There would be no return to the Republican Party of the past, no 2016 postmortem to consider how the party could have nominated someone like him. Instead, there were judges to nominate, a legislative agenda to pursue, and a new leader in the White House shaping the national discourse in ways that were, at various turns, shocking, funny, confusing, and terrifying.

From the Trump supporter’s perspective, it was the opposite story of Augustine’s Rome. The faithful had rallied and defended the nation from the pagan hordes. And yet, eight years later, it’s worth questioning if that was the right take.

Yes, Trump delivered three US Supreme Court justices who delivered a judgment that ended Roe v. Wade and returned abortion rights to the states. But since then, abortion rights at the state level have expanded radically, the actual number of abortions in the country has gone up, and the pro-life cause disappeared from the Republican Party platform.

In the case of progressive sexual and gender ideology, there has been a reactionary turn in recent years, particularly evidenced by the rollback of “gender-affirming care” for minors and new rules against biological men competing against women in nearly all levels of sports. But before one credits that rollback to Trump, it’s worth noting that most of it began after he left office, during the Biden presidency, and that it was more the result of slow, scientific review and of liberals who were “mugged by reality” (to use Irving Kristol’s phrase) when they saw transgender male athletes showering in women’s locker rooms.

Trump’s supporters may counter that he’s better than the alternative, that he’s a check on progressive overreach, or that we ultimately needed someone willing to fight, even if he is rough around the edges. His evangelical supporters simply haven’t yet noticed the devastation around them.

Seeing through this lens, that iconic image of a bleeding Trump is far more disturbing. In it, I see something other than the courage and resilience of a man who avoided an assassin’s bullet—though I do see that aspect of the photo. I’m grateful he survived, grateful a murderer couldn’t rob Americans of their choices at the ballot box, and grateful the Trump family still has their husband, father, and grandfather.

But as a milestone in American politics, it breaks my heart. It is not the first act of political violence since Trump descended the golden escalator in 2015—a period when violence has come to our nation’s Capitol, members of Congress, and the Supreme Court. I fear it won’t be the last.

I lament that rather than offering words of peace or patriotism, Trump expressed the most visceral sentiment of his movement: “Fight, fight, fight.”

And I lament that such a moment was captured so artfully, so perfectly, so iconically. It’s fuel for the flames of disordered love. I pray for the day when Christian affections will see the picture as tragic rather than triumphant, a cause to weep rather than a catalyst to rage, a call to repentance rather than a vision of the good life.

Mike Cosper is the senior director of CT Media, host of The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, cohost of The Bulletin, and author of Land of My Sojourn and the forthcoming The Church in Dark Times.

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News

The Christians Trying to Restore Our Faith in Elections

Harvest Prude

In the wake of unprecedented public distrust and safety threats, officials and volunteers are committed to protecting the vote.‌

Illustration by Tyler Comrie

Christine Johnson is the type of American who kisses her ballot and thanks God whenever she votes.

Johnson has volunteered as a poll worker in Minnesota for over 20 years; she currently serves as an election judge in a blue district.

“I love being a part of the process,” Johnson said. “I love helping my neighbors vote.”

One of her favorite sights is when parents bring their children to learn about the voting process. It’s touching to see the reverse as well, she said—adult children helping their elderly parents who are determined to vote in person navigate the polling site.

To Johnson, Election Day feels like a holiday. She knows what this November 5 will look like for her: She’ll start the day before the sun rises, getting dressed and packing a change of shoes, “because you know you’re going to be in a church basement or a bad chair or a bad cement floor all day long.”

She will brew a thermos of coffee to get her from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., when she and her Democratic counterpart will drive the completed paper ballots from their polling site—sometimes a school gymnasium or house of worship—to city hall.

There may be 15 or so election workers, mostly volunteers, working at her site. They set up the machines, post signs directing voters where to go, and go through a checklist of their duties. Then comes another special moment. The group will get in a circle, raise their right hands, and recite an oath “to be impartial and to follow the law and to get it right,” Johnson said. “I get kind of choked up when I do that oath every election.”

Her civic involvement stems from her faith. Shortly after becoming a Christian as a teen, Johnson started taking more interest in the world around her. In college, she was the lone freshman subscribing to periodicals to learn about political theory and systems of governance.

“This is such a rare and precious thing that we get to choose our leaders, and I don’t take that for granted at all,” she said. “I feel for people who … don’t have a constitutional republic or any form of say [in their government]. That just hurts my heart.”

The US election system relies on hundreds of thousands of volunteers like Johnson. But the role she has long seen as an opportunity to serve is now the target of a maelstrom of suspicion from a vocal segment of Americans, including some of her fellow conservatives and fellow Christians.

Partisan attacks on election administration methods, election results, and election officials are not new, but they have become a defining feature of today’s political landscape, with the “stop the steal” rhetoric and claims of election fraud that emerged after Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in 2020. It seems harder than ever for election workers trying to keep the process fair and trustworthy.

In a recent poll of election officials, more than one-third said they experienced threats, harassment, or abuse due to their work. Half voiced safety concerns for their staff, and nearly all have been forced to improve their safety measures.

“It has become more normal, if you are a public servant, to endure threats of intimidation and harassment at pretty significant levels,” Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at the Department of Homeland Security, told CT.

Even formerly innocuous roles—city council, county clerk, election workers, or volunteers in civic service “as retirement jobs”—have “these horror stories of [getting] voicemails of somebody threatening to kill their grandchildren,” she added.

Christians called to serve in these roles have found some comfort in their convictions—but they’ve also felt the sting of neighbors and churchgoers demonizing their work.

Kentucky secretary of state Michael Adams recalls his wife and daughter peeling his campaign sticker off their cars after dealing with public confrontations in the parking lots of grocery stores, pharmacies, and even their church.

Secretary of state was supposed to be a relatively boring office. Wonky. Administrative. At least that’s what Adams told his wife, Christina, when he was eyeing the position after years as an attorney working in election law.

He was elected in 2019. He took office weeks before a global pandemic turned routine questions of election administration into fraught public health and safety concerns. Misinformation and deepening institutional distrust inflamed the country’s partisan tensions.

“What used to be a very boring office, and what he assured me was going to be just a very boring term, turned out not to be,” Christina Adams told CT. “It was definitely not what he pictured going in.”

Michael Adams worked across the aisle with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear during the early months of the pandemic to give voters more time and options to vote. With bipartisan support in the state legislature, Kentucky expanded absentee and early voting access and opened countywide polling centers. Turnout was up, with three-quarters of voters in the June 2020 primary voting absentee.

Some Republicans criticized the changes. Social media trolls did their worst. Hate mail arrived in Michael Adams’s inbox and at his house. Even a false alarm by his new home security system had the family initially terrified that one of his online attackers had decided to follow through on the barrage of death threats.

“We were on edge, a bit more than I’ve ever been in my entire life,” Christina Adams said. “That was the first time I was actually nervous for our safety.”

It was hard for Michael Adams to watch all the politics around his job—a job that was supposed to be boring, a job that was supposed to combine his legal expertise with his Christian calling to public service—disrupt his family’s life.

The controversies around the tight presidential vote in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia in 2020 are well-known. But even in deep red states, and even in the years since, the work of state and local officials continues to be shaped by election-related conspiracy theories brought by concerned voters.

Adams said it used to be that only a handful of secretaries of state faced intense pressure and controversy, often because they were in purple states with close races. “The rest of us kind of thought, Well, there but for the grace of God go I,” Adams said. But by the 2022 midterms, “We all felt that way.”

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, has found 1,546 proven cases of election fraud. These include anything from mailing an absentee ballot for someone who has died to voting despite being ineligible to tampering with or damaging ballot drop boxes.

More than 1,313 of the cases tracked by Heritage resulted in criminal prosecution, while the rest led to civil penalties, judicial findings, or other actions. That tally spans over a decade of elections—meaning in any given state, in any given year, there could be up to a handful of illegitimate ballots in a particular race, nowhere near the level needed to swing an election.

The think tank notes that the database is nonexhaustive. But even based on Heritage’s numbers, “the amount of proven election fraud is miniscule,” the Brookings Institution wrote.

Yet it seems like there’s more distrust than ever around the election system. Americans hear more about suspected or alleged fraud. In Colorado, former county clerk Tina Peters claimed she was “called” to expose election fraud in 2020 by revealing voting machine data; she lost her job and faced 10 charges of official misconduct and tampering with the election.

Former president Donald Trump’s allies filed 62 lawsuits following the 2020 election, mostly in battleground states that Biden won. All but one of the lawsuits, including those that reached the Supreme Court, failed, according to one USA Today analysis.

The outlier was a case in Pennsylvania where a judge ruled that voters could not return and “cure” their ballots in the days following an election if they had failed to provide proper identification at the time of voting. The ruling did not affect the outcome in the state, where Biden won by over 80,000 votes. But that hasn’t always slowed the suspicion and vitriol.

Claims of a rigged election have continued to feature prominently in Trump’s reelection bid. And the lawsuits, allegations of wrongdoing, and misinformation have convinced a sizable share of the GOP that Trump’s loss was illegitimate: In a poll from last year, only 57 percent of Republicans believed Biden legitimately won.

Threats to poll workers and election officials have gotten so bad that the Justice Department launched a task force to deal with them. Workers have reported more than 2,000 threats in the past three years. Around 100 are being investigated.

One prominent case from 2020 involved two officials in Georgia, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss. They were accused by Trump ally Rudy Giuliani of committing election fraud. Freeman received over 400 threats and had to move from her home. Last year, they won a $148 million defamation case against Giuliani. But as for all the threats, only one person ended up facing charges.

Freeman, who is a Christian, said upon winning the lawsuit that “my friends say that God knew who to give this assignment to because ain’t no way we could do this. God chose me to go through this because he knows that I would tell everyone whose path I cross about Jesus.”

In Kentucky, Michael Adams also found faith to be a lifeline.

“I can’t imagine doing this job, or any job, without having faith,” Adams said. He described one incident where people marched outside the state capitol with AR-15 rifles during a protest over COVID-19 restrictions. “I do think a lot of people have prayed really, really hard for me the last several years.”

While he was in the thick of the online hate, several people from his family’s church reached out, even a few who were on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

“I felt like that was probably the Spirit encouraging us,” Christina Adams said. “It was actually encouraging to know how many homes were open to us, should we need to leave ours. That’s what really touched me. I mean, maybe five or six said, ‘You need a place to stay, come on over.’ … That meant the world.”

When Adams ran for reelection, Republicans recruited two challengers for the primary, both of whom campaigned on claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Adams won 118 out of 120 counties in 2023. In the months since, things have settled down—somewhat. As a keepsake of more turbulent times, in one corner of his office he keeps a red posterboard sign: FIRE MICHAEL ADAMS.

Adams said he’s worried less about threats than about whether his office will have enough poll workers or polling locations. It takes 15,000 people to run a statewide election. Adams’s staff is around 35.

“You do the math. I have to rely on volunteers, thousands and thousands of volunteers,” he said. “I think it’s healthy for our system that it’s, number one, primarily citizen operated, volunteer operated. And, number two, that it’s citizens from both sides of the aisle.”

But that means relying on people’s willingness and civic-mindedness to step up to the plate and volunteer. This becomes harder in a fraught atmosphere. After Kentucky voted to allow abortion protections in the state constitution in 2022, some Kentucky churches serving as voting locations faced enough scrutiny that they decided not to do it again.

Church doors are still open to voters in Glendale, Kentucky, population 2,227.

Mike Bell—called Brother Mike Bell by congregants and townspeople alike—dreamed of being the mayor growing up. He’s as close as you can get in his tiny unincorporated town. He’s on steering committees, chairs the Hardin County Water Board, is chaplain to the chamber of commerce, and is also probably one of the most famous voices in town.

Bell calls basketball and football games, trading his preacher cadence for drawn-out vowels—“Te-e-rrrrry Buckle!” he demonstrated at his office—and rhythmic cheers. Kids love it so much they use clips of his voice as their ringtones.

Bell’s office at Glendale Christian Church is dotted with references to It’s a Wonderful Life: Behind a coffee cup with a picture of George Bailey on it is a certificate of Bell’s baptism, very faded, along with a few dollars—the first $15 he ever made from preaching.

“Glendale is kind of like Bedford Falls,” he said. “And I’ve lived a wonderful life. You know, sometimes I wonder if God’s already given me heaven.” (He added with a chuckle, “But then the next day he gives me a little hell, so I know it’s not.”)

Bell’s life demonstrates one of his core beliefs: that Christians are called to serve their neighbors and communities, not exist apart from them. “To be a real preacher, you got to be down there with them,” he said. “Jesus walked among them. You got to walk among them.”

So he’s opened the church’s doors to the Lions Club, the town’s business association, a local quilting group—and, again this November, to voters.

The church has served as a polling site on and off for over three decades, a commitment that costs them about a week with all the setup and teardown of equipment. Bell would bring doughnuts and coffee for poll workers.

“It’s a great opportunity, because you’re being a part of the community,” he said. He wants to see more Christians be active in politics—not necessarily talking politics from the pulpit but serving at the ballot box and taking the time to vote.

Hardin County clerk Brian Smith agrees. Being a Christian in public life is his way of trying to make his community better. When concerns around election processes or results come up, he says his faith motivates him to respond to people’s concerns with respect, try to get things right, and be transparent about mistakes and human error when they are made.

But when he’s not buried in records or working on election-related duties, he can often be found chatting with people lined up to renew their license plates or update their driver’s licenses.

In his office, he keeps packs of water bottles to hand out when the line gets long.

Smith believes addressing election-related tension and regaining trust will require more civic involvement. And he’s starting early, wheeling the county’s voting machines into elementary schools for mock elections.

Second graders voting for superhero candidates—say, Hulk for sheriff—vote on the machines, print their ballots, and scan them in. Officials go through the process with them as if it’s Election Day.

When kids filled out the wrong spot, Smith’s staff showed them how to document a spoiled ballot. When characters like Wonder Woman and Captain America tied for county clerk, they double-checked the results and went on to a coin flip (in Kentucky, tied races are decided by the casting of lots).

“It was a great lesson that every vote counts. If a vote can end in a tie, you better believe that your vote counts,” Smith said. “We used that same equipment and then we hand-counted the results, and it matched our machine results. The kids got to see from a very early age what election integrity is all about.”

The civics lesson was such a hit that a nearby middle school invited the clerk’s office to operate their student council election.

“I gotta tell you, those kids took their jobs seriously,” Smith said. “They made sure everybody got just one ballot.” After ballots were counted, Michael Adams made an appearance to certify the results.

In Minnesota, Christine Johnson also wants to repair the rifts in trust, for the sake of poll workers’ safety and for the sake of democracy.

When people accuse the process of being rigged, Johnson recalls the checklists volunteers follow, how they make sure people from different parties tag-team on all the key tasks, the layers of audits, and the way the paper trail is double- and sometimes triple-checked.

“I can’t speak for every state,” Johnson said, “but when it comes to the care for the ballots and the process where the voter is having their input, it’s like, oh my gosh, our city clerk, she just runs such a tight ship.

“I just tell people, well, my experience is that you have nothing to worry about.”

Johnson has found that her firsthand experience is rarely convincing.

“They’ll say, ‘Well, maybe that’s okay there, but how do you know it’s good everywhere else?’ Or they’ll bring up other states. Or they’ll go, ‘Well, you know, they would be able to trick you too. They’re going to do it secretly behind the scenes and you wouldn’t even be aware of it.’”

She’s not sure what election officials can do to combat the distrust. “Sometimes I’ll even say to some of the more skeptical friends, ‘You know what, you should sign up. You should have your own experience.’

“And you know,” she added, “no one’s ever taken me up on that.”

Harvest Prude is Christianity Today’s political correspondent.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Election Interference".

- More from Harvest Prude

Ideas

Women Agree: Alcoholism Is a Big Concern in Their Circles

CT Editors

Responses to our May/June issue.

Illustration by Christianity Today

When we shared Ericka Andersen’s essay on Christian women and alcohol, “The Secret Sin of Mommy Juice” women shared their stories with us.

“I’ve been sober for 13 years!” wrote one social media follower. “By the grace of God. The glamorization of alcohol is REAL until you have a ‘problem’; then it’s straight-up judgment and gossip.” Another said, “I just lost a Christian friend to [alcohol abuse] who is a mother, and it’s been so heavy on my heart. This is such an important conversation.”

Readers lamented the societal pressures, gender inequities, and marketing ploys encouraging women to drink. “Masking hardship with substances as a coping mechanism and then making it a joke is one more way we let women (moms in this case) down,” one commented.

Recent data shows middle-aged and older Americans, namely women, are drinking more aggressively and more often. At the same time, no-alcohol beer sales are up and creative mocktails are increasingly featured on bar menus. Recent poll data shows young adults in the US are drinking less than in prior decades; daily marijuana users outnumber daily drinkers for the first time. Substance use trends are shifting, and the church will need to listen and care for women who struggle with alcohol as well as other substances.

Kate Lucky, senior editor, culture and engagement

Was Paul a Slave?

My Acts commentary does suggest that Paul was likely descended from freed slaves (likelier than not in Rome, after Pompey’s conquest, since only slaves of Roman citizens became libertini, as in Acts 6:9, at their emancipation). But that Paul himself was born a slave would conflict with the widespread understanding of Acts 22:28, where Paul was born a citizen.

Craig S. Keener, Wilmore, KY

It is more than early church historians who record that Onesimus was bishop of Ephesus, for a bishop of the same name is mentioned in Ignatius’s letter to the Ephesians in AD 107 as he was to be martyred in Rome. And he evidently borrows from language found in Philemon. Clearly the letter meant much to Ignatius and to the first Christians who incorporated the letter into the New Testament.

T. C. Schmidt, Fairfield, CT

The article seems to defend the probability that Paul was a slave by a negative tactic: casting aspersions on English-speaking scholars who by ignorance ignore the possibility that Paul was a slave.

There’s another viable explanation of Paul’s interest in slavery, servanthood, bondage, and liberty. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor points to an undisputed aspect of Paul’s background that radically influenced his writing and self-understanding: his thorough knowledge of the Septuagint—the Greek version of our Old Testament.

In the Septuagint, doulos, meaning “servant” or “slave,” is mentioned over 300 times. Approximately 70 refer to the respectful relationship to a person in authority, usually a king (e.g., David to King Saul); and at least 150 refer to the title God gives to those who serve him. This leaves less than 30 percent referring to actual slaves or servants.

Making this connection, it becomes clear that Paul saw himself in the same lineage as the great leaders of God’s ancient people, speaking not under the authority of a king whose rule would lead to slavery, but under the authority of the rightful king, Jesus.

One does not need to speculate that Paul had been a slave to see why Paul would use this language for himself: Called into God’s service on the Damascus road, he could do nothing else. All of us, no matter what our background, have been called to the same role—allegiance and eternal liberty as servants, indeed, slaves, of Jesus Christ.

David Renwick, Washington, DC

How to Pray with ADHD

I only figured out I have significant ADHD at 64 years old. Suddenly I understood so many issues, concerns, behaviors, and relationship pain over my life. It’s a condition that affects many Christians, and having it discussed in articles in CT is so affirming. I completely understand the struggle to read the Bible and pray daily; I have struggled with this my entire life and felt so guilty! Now I have some new strategies for it.

Rebecca Clark, Tucson, AZ

As a spiritual director, I ran into this with clients who had ADHD. I wasn’t familiar with how much that can affect people’s ability to concentrate. I scrambled to understand, and the Lord led me to some practices that enabled them to develop a quiet time they could do, the way God created them.

Chris Taylor (Facebook)

The Struggle to Hold It Together When a Church Falls Apart

Even the smartest, kindest, most well-meaning people are human. The reason we need a Savior is the same reason we have conflict in our churches. And we all bring different perspectives with us. If there’s no clear, uncontested right and wrong, it may be best to remain faithful, humble, and understanding of others as much as we can, and trust in the Lord when we can’t.

Dave Porter (Facebook)

I’ve been through it, and it really shapes the way you think of church involvement. It was 45 years ago, and some of my friends still haven’t found a church. It took us a long time to become members of a church again.

Debbie Garber Billman (Facebook)

Yes, Charisma Has Its Place in the Pulpit

The guardrail that often gets overlooked is the New Testament’s bias for team leadership. The Twelve recommended the Seven in Acts 6, and wherever Paul established a church, he left elders, plural. A team could bring their charismas to the table, share the load, watch over one another to keep their personalities in check, and honor God as the strong, singular leader of his people.

Paul Allen, Michigan City, IN

Criticizing Critical Race Theory—and Its Critics

The last sentence sums up the integral misconception held by critics of CRT—thinking evangelicals have been commissioned to change secular worldview and believing that is our purpose. A worldview cannot be changed until the heart has transformed. Our influence should witness to the lost, not impose our view on an unbelieving society.

Linda F. Howelton, San Antonio, TX

Can a Secularizing Nation Have a Christian Soul?

No one is a ‘secularist’ even if they think they are. Everyone has a spiritual religion with doctrines. It’s just a matter of what religion you practice.

Tim Aagard (Facebook)

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Responses to Our May/June Issue".

- More from CT Editors

History

There’s Always Been ‘Extra Stuff’ in the Bible

Interview by Daniel Silliman

New Testament scholar Garrick V. Allen explains the long history of paratext.

WikiMedia Commons

Every Bible includes some non-Bible parts. There are chapter and verse breaks, maps in the back, and dedication pages at the beginning. No one thinks those things are divinely inspired. But they’re in there.

Sometimes Scripture is also printed with an introduction, commentary, cross-references, and a concordance. Bibles can have reading instructions—such as specific verses to turn to for comfort in a time of crisis—or carry a presidential endorsement.

Scholars call this extra stuff “paratext.” For the most part, everyone ignores it unless some controversy sparks debate over the appropriate packaging of Scripture. But New Testament scholar Garrick V. Allen wants to call our attention to the parts of the Bible that are not part of the Bible.

Allen, the author of the new book Words Are Not Enough, says all that extra stuff shapes our reading. Poking at the paratext, looking at what it does for us and has done for Christians historically, can help us become better Bible readers.

He spoke to CT by Zoom from Scotland.

Daniel Silliman: There was a big controversy earlier this year when former president Donald Trump endorsed the God Bless The USA Bible, which includes historical documents that are not part of Scripture. But is paratext a recent phenomenon?

Garrick V. Allen: Paratext exists in the earliest manuscripts we have. For example, the earliest copies of Paul’s letters have things like titles, which were not written by Paul himself, and notations that give you the number of lines in each letter. They are giving a structure to the text.

The Bible is an ancient text, so some basic framing, mapping things for readers, is really helpful, especially when it’s done by someone you trust. That way of helping people read starts very early and expands dramatically over time.

DS: When does that expansion happen? Does that come with the advent of the printing press or modern publishing?

GA: No, much earlier. It starts in the fourth century. We can go back to Eusebius, who was a bishop in Syria Palaestina and is mostly known now as the “father of church history.”

Eusebius creates this system where he numbers passages of the Gospels, so instead of chapter and verse, there’s just one number, from 1 to 300 or whatever, for each passage of each Gospel. Then he takes the numbers and creates a table so people can find the parallels between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You can flip back and forth, making comparisons between the Gospels. It gives you 1,000 different ways to read across the Gospels and ask questions and think about things in new ways.

This exists in almost all of the Greek manuscripts that we have. It becomes a central part of the tradition, part of how people are reading the Bible.

There really is no Bible without paratext: Paratext makes the different texts into a book.

DS: Are there other notable early paratexts besides the one developed by Eusebius?

GA: Staying in antiquity, there’s something called the Euthalian Apparatus, attributed to a person called Euthalius, though we don’t know anything about this person. The apparatus is a really complex system of lists, cross-references, and lists of quotations for Acts, Paul’s epistles, and the epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude. This is in the fifth, sixth century.

Moving to the modern era, we see a dramatic change in the Victorian period with the advent of family Bibles in Europe and North America. You get these heirlooms where you can record your genealogy or make note of significant events in family history. People would also often put mementos in the pages, connecting their family in a way with the sacred text.

More recently, there’s been an explosion in the last 30 or 40 years of new Bible editions that repackage the same translation with new audiences in mind. You get the women’s Bible, teens’ Bible, military Bible, fisherman’s Bible. You can select the paratext that fits your identity. There’s an audience for these things, and it’s always about framing Scripture and helping people do a particular thing with the sacred text.

DS: Some paratext is very obvious, very visible to Bible readers. But are there examples of paratext we might just miss?

GA: I think there are a few things we think are part of the Bible that are really paratextual. The first is chapters and verses. These are inventions of the 16th century. They segment the text, and we often take those interventions for granted.

Another example is subtitles and section titles. This tradition goes back to the beginning, but most of the ones we see when we read our Bibles are made up by modern editors. Mark didn’t stop and write, “Garden of Gethsemane.” That’s an anonymous editor who has done that to try to help you read the Gospel, but it’s not part of the Gospel.

A lot of good paratexts are hidden in plain sight.

DS: Are there places where this impacts interpretation? Where our understanding is shaped—rightly or wrongly—by an apparatus that’s not really part of
the Bible?

GA: Many modern versions have paratext that points out parallels in the Gospels. So you’re reading Matthew, and you’re told where a similar story occurs in John, Luke, or Mark. Those are made on the assumptions of modern editors.

If you compare that to what Eusebius was doing, Eusebius had a much broader view of parallels in the Gospels and what counted as a parallel. Modern editors tend to have a narrower understanding of how the Gospels speak to each other, and that shapes the reading of Christians today.

Another example, which I think is more dangerous, is putting the US Constitution in the Bible, giving it a sacred status.

DS: Would you want a Bible without paratext? Could we just get rid of all of it?

GA: Why not? People have been playing with the paratexual apparatus since the beginning. If you want to try to pare it down, you can.

There’s a cool 15th-century manuscript that’s just a small little pocket version of the Gospel of John and the only paratext it has is page numbers—and those were added by a modern librarian. It’s as close as I’ve seen to no paratext.

DS: Is there one example of a paratext from an ancient apparatus you’d like to see people bring back?

GA: There are some really innovative lists that we could bring back. Like lexical lists. In some Gospel manuscripts there’s a table of Hebrew words and their meaning in Greek. Lists of quotations. You have these kinds of helps today, but they’re rarely part of the text itself.

Another really interesting one would be to include the alternative chapter breaks embedded in there. Not that our modern chapters are better or worse, but the option to break up the text in different ways would be interesting and I think opens up interesting questions about the text.

I think we should be open to experimenting with paratexts. If it helps you read the Bible, if it pushes you to read the Bible in a different way, and that seems good to you to read it that way, go for it.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "In the Bible, but not of it".

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Christian Media Company Apologizes for Stolen Election Lie

Daniel Silliman

And other news briefs from evangelicals around the world.

Illustration by Blake Cale

Apology for false claims of stolen election

Salem Media Group, the company behind thousands of Christian radio stations, apologized to a Georgia man who was falsely accused of “ballot harvesting” in 2000 Mules,the debunked documentary it distributed. The film made by former Christian college president Dinesh D’Souza and a group called True the Vote grossed $1.5 million in theaters promoting the conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. True the Vote acknowledged in court that it couldn’t back up the claims made in the film. Salem settled the defamation suit for an undisclosed amount.

Businesses commit to religious diversity

More than 85 percent of Fortune 500 companies now name religious diversity as a company value, more than double the number that included faith in their diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in 2022.

Puerto Rico: Church of the Brethren split

All six Church of the Brethren congregations in Puerto Rico separated from their Anabaptist denomination, historically known as “Dunkers.” They then joined the Covenant Brethren Church, which is made up of congregations that split away in 2020 in a dispute over how a tradition opposed to all coercion should exercise authority over those who deviate from official teaching on homosexuality. Forty of the Church of the Brethren’s roughly 1,000 congregations are affirming. Denomination leaders said they were disappointed not to be included in the Puerto Rico churches’ discernment process.

Italy: Roman church is not a place of worship, court rules

Italy’s supreme court has ruled that an evangelical church in Rome is not a place of worship. The church’s pastor, Leonardo De Chirico, says this is an example of the struggle evangelicals face in Catholic-majority countries. Tax officials, reviewing an application for a religious exemption for Breccia di Roma (Breach of Rome), noted the storefront did not have the “intrinsic characteristics” of a religious building, such as an altar or icons. It is in fact a multifunctional space, with offices, a library, and a missions training center. The church successfully argued in two lower courts that the “intrinsic characteristic” standards were not objective before losing at the supreme court. De Chirico plans to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

United Kingdom: C. S. Lewis poem found

A previously unknown C. S. Lewis poem has been discovered. It celebrates hospitality, whiskey, warm blankets, and Beowulf and reveals developments in Lewis’s understanding of Old English poetry. The work was written under the pen name “Nat Whilk,” which is a sly reference to the Old English word for “anonymous.” It was given to medievalists Ida and E. V. Gordon after Lewis visited them in 1935. The Gordons left a note with the poem that said, “Another unusual thank you from C. S. Lewis.” Their daughter sold their papers to the University of Leeds archives in 2014.

Algeria: Pastor in prison for illegal worship

An appeals court upheld the conviction of Youssef Ourahmane, a pastor found guilty of “illegal worshipping.” Police have kept all 43 Église Protestante d’Algérie (Protestant Church of Algeria) congregations in the country closed since 2019. Alliance Defending Freedom International hopes to convince the country’s supreme court to hear an appeal of the case.

Kenya: Evangelical alliance wants politicians out of pulpits

Kenya’s evangelical alliance called for churches to stop allowing politicians to campaign during worship services. Philip Kitoto, chairman and Assemblies of God bishop, said Christians need to maintain “sanctity in the pulpit.” The statement came after supporters of the United Democratic Alliance clashed with supporters of the Orange Democratic Movement when leaders from both parties spoke in a Pentecostal church in the southwestern city of Kisii. Police broke up the fight with tear gas.

Ivory Coast: 1 million Methodists leave the UMC

Ivory Coast Methodists convened a special session and voted to leave the United Methodist Church (UMC) after the denomination lifted its ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages. The Église Méthodiste Unie Côte d’Ivoire (United Methodist Church of Ivory Coast), which joined with the UMC in 2004, said the denomination now “distances itself from the Holy Scripture” and is “based on sociocultural and contextual values that have consumed its doctrinal and disciplinary integrity.” The Ivorian church has more than one million members and was the largest jurisdiction of the UMC outside the US. The church has not yet decided on a new name or whether or not it will affiliate with another denomination.

Israel: Christians flee war

As many as half of the Christians who lived in Gaza before the Israel-Hamas war have fled, according to International Christian Concern. Exact numbers are impossible to determine because many have been displaced from their homes but remain in the territory. To leave Gaza completely, the only option is Egypt. The border, however, is tightly controlled, and crossing is facilitated by one tourism company, which charges about $5,000 per adult, more than 10 times the monthly minimum wage. The Christian community in the territory was already beleaguered. In 2006, churches were attacked by mobs angry at comments Pope Benedict XVI made about Islam. The manager of the only Christian bookstore was murdered in 2007. A Catholic school was bombed in 2008. Now, Israel Defense Forces occupy Gaza’s only Baptist church and Palestinian Christians say they are not sure what will be left when the fighting ends. One Baptist said those who remain are “too tired to suffer.”

Bahrain: Evidence of early Christian community excavated

The first physical evidence of historic Christianity in Bahrain was uncovered in an archaeological dig on the northern coast. The identity of the building is unmistakable: It is marked by three crosses and the Chi-Rho symbol for “Christ.” The building appears to have been used from the fourth to eighth centuries before it was abandoned at a time of widespread Islamic conversion.

Pakistan: Christian woman first to be named general

Helen Mary Roberts was promoted to general in the Pakistani military, becoming the first Christian and the first woman from a religious minority to earn that rank. Roberts is a doctor who has served in the army’s medical corps for more than 25 years. She worked to improve medical protocols and build pathology labs to bolster the army’s diagnostic abilities. Her promotion is seen by some commentators as fulfillment of a promise of pluralism in Pakistan.

South Korea: Pastor faces charges in handbag scandal

A pastor is being prosecuted after he secretly filmed himself giving a luxury handbag to the first lady. Choi Jae-young said he was doing undercover journalism to show the public that President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, Kim Keon Hee, are corrupt. Now Choi faces charges of graft, defamation, and trespassing. In the video published online, Choi and Kim talk about their common hometown and Choi asks for advice on political advocacy before giving Kim a Christian Dior purse worth 3 million won (about $2,200 USD). No charges have been filed against the first lady.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Briefings".

- More from Daniel Silliman

Church Life

A Dating App Dilemma at Church

Beth Moore, Kevin Antlitz, and Kiara John-Charles

CT advice columnists also weigh in on fellowship and finances and a kid who hits.

Marcos Montiel

Q: A group of us used to go out to eat after church, but we realized some can’t afford it—not even cheaper options. We started doing bring-your-own (BYO) picnics, but that requires more planning and work, especially in colder months. It feels impossible to talk about this openly. What should we do? —Nervy in New York

Beth Moore: I’m a big proponent of fellowship meals with other church members! Keith and I often have lunch with friends after worship service, and it somehow enriches our entire church experience, so I hope you will keep trying options until you find one that works. Here are a few ideas:

Do you have a shopping mall food court in proximity to your church where you could pull tables together? It would provide multiple price ranges and wouldn’t impose restrictions on BYO.
Have you looked into restaurants where kids eat free? This would be particularly helpful for larger families.
Have you thought about rotating houses for BYO lunch? Or the host could provide a very simple sandwich, chips, and cookies meal. With even four couples or families, each would host only once a month, so the burden wouldn’t be especially heavy. You could also make a pact for a hard stop (perhaps an hour?) so hosts are not overwhelmed. (At my house, we lost our mood if we lost our Sunday afternoon nap.)
Last, have you thought about gathering only on the first and third Sundays of each month, cutting the cost or hosting effort in half?

Hang in there until you find something that works. Fellowship with other church members is such a large part of what makes church feel like family!

Beth Moore and her husband, Keith, reside outside Houston. She has two daughters and an armful of grandchildren. Beth leads Living Proof Ministries, helping women know and love Jesus through Scripture.

Q: One family in our church doesn’t seem to discipline their young son effectively. He’s hitting other kids at church, and while the parents say they’re dealing with it, nothing has changed. We and other families want our kids to stay away from their son, at least until he stops hitting. What should we do? —Frustrated in Florida

Kevin Antlitz: If I’m understanding you correctly, it sounds like a group of parents are talking about this frustrating situation and, essentially, colluding to ostracize this family. If that’s right, then I think this is wrong.

Look: I like the Puritans as much as anybody, but this feels way too Scarlet Letter-y for me. Though I’m sure you all don’t intend it this way, that approach could feel passive-aggressive, even cruel.

Rather than shunning them, I’d encourage a different approach. I’d start by trying to imagine what it feels like to be them. If my kid were the hitter, I’d feel embarrassed, ashamed, and frustrated. Then think about what might be helpful for you.

Why not try to have a gentle, compassionate, and direct conversation with the parents? Try to empathize with them. I’m sure you know parenting is hard, and it’s not always clear what to do. Share your concerns. Maybe even share what’s worked for you. (When our kids hit, we remind them that hands are for helping, not for hurting.) Even if you’ve already done this, why not give it one more go?

The children may also figure things out on their own. In my experience with my own kids, hitting has natural consequences. Kids don’t like to be hit. If a kid is a hitter, my kids will try to avoid being in the swing zone.

This all may end up with you needing to draw a clear boundary with the family. But this is a much better way to do it than collective ghosting.

Kevin Antlitz is an Anglican priest at a Pittsburgh church positively overflowing with kids. He and his wife have three children under ten, whom they pray will never know a day apart from Jesus.

Q: I’m in my church’s young adults group, which isn’t very big. I recently matched with one of the women in the group on a dating app, but it’s been a few weeks and the app hasn’t connected us, so I’m wondering if she didn’t want to match with me. Should I say something? We see each other weekly. —Apprehensive in Alabama

Kiara John-Charles: The wonderful world of dating apps can be both intriguing and challenging. It can create confusion as we interpret every single stroke of the keyboard—or lack thereof.

I can’t help but wonder why, if you were genuinely interested in this young woman from your young adults group, you didn’t ask her out in person. It raises the question of whether your interest is genuine or influenced by the dating app context. Would you have considered pursuing her if you hadn’t come across her profile on the app?

With that in mind, consider that several scenarios might have unfolded here: It’s possible that the dating algorithm worked against you, that she never saw your profile and is still unaware of the match. Alternatively, she might have seen your profile and felt awkward about encountering a familiar face, opting to swipe left out of sheer embarrassment or personal preference.

To gain clarity, consider expressing your interest in getting to know her; it will provide insight into where you stand with her. If you are genuinely interested in dating this woman of God, take a chance and make your intentions clear.

The worst-case scenario is that she declines, leaving you with a bruised ego. However, taking a leap and asking her out for coffee could lead to a deeper connection within your young adult community. Whether it turns romantic or develops into a new friendship, it’s an opportunity to explore and discover shared interests.

Kiara John-Charles is an LA native with Caribbean roots and a love for travel and food. She works as a pediatric occupational therapist and serves at her local church in Long Beach, California.

Got a question for CT’s advice columnists? Email advice@christianitytoday.com. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Qualms & Proverbs".

Qualms & Proverbs: Got a question for CT’s advice columnists? Email advice@christianitytoday.com. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Church Life

We Can’t Worry Our Way to Peace

Steve Cuss

Guest Columnist

When we take matters into our own hands, we forget the Lord.

Illustration by Keith Negley

I was on an early morning flight after spending the prior afternoon and evening staring at a screen of delayed flights. I was sleep deprived and a little on edge after a long time away from home.

That is no excuse for what happened next.

The plane landed, and the seat belt sign went off. The family behind me jumped up to rush down the aisle, their teenager skipping in front of me. In the Cuss family, no one skips the line. I stuck my arm into the aisle to block the rest of the family from passing, like I was Gandalf. None shall pass.

“We’re all trying to get off this plane,” I said to the family. “Let’s wait our turn!”

They had words with me that I cannot publish here and pushed past my arm in spite of my immense triceps strength. I was fuming. My seatmates were visibly upset. As I got off the plane, the flight attendant pulled me aside and told me that the teen girl was having a panic attack and that I blocked the family from helping her.

The family was not rude; they were desperate.

How did I, a former chaplain trained to notice physiological signs of stress, miss that this young lady needed help? How did I let my core value of courtesy block my capacity to see what was really going on?

It is remarkable how fragile we can be when something triggers us. Sometimes, we’re triggered when our core values get violated. More often, we get triggered when we don’t get what we think we need.

Lack of courtesy is obviously a trigger for me, but so is being misunderstood, disappointing someone, not knowing the answer when I should, and about 400 other things. Some of our triggers are legitimate, but most of them are based on false assumptions and a false sense of need, so we spend much of our time in a triggered or reactive state.

When we don’t get what we think we need, we become disconnected from ourselves, from others, and from awareness of God’s presence. After that young lady ran up the aisle, I was flooded with reactivity because my false need of courtesy was not being met.

Reactivity is generated by assumptions we make that are not true. I was operating out of assumption and unable to see reality. Rather than see that this young lady needed help getting off the plane, all I could see was This family is rudely skipping the line, I must intervene.

Jesus ran into assumptions all the time in his ministry. I am struck by his words in Luke 7:44 to Simon the Pharisee: “Do you see this woman?” Just as I couldn’t see the woman on the plane, Simon couldn’t see the woman in his house who anointed Jesus’ feet. He couldn’t properly connect to her or to the God who was in the room with him, because he was operating out of assumption. He was reactive, and when we get reactive, we take matters into our own hands. We forget the Lord.

How often is God calling us to relax into his presence so we can see what is really going on—and see people for who they really are? It is difficult to do.

I am struck that one of the most frequent commands in Scripture is “Remember the Lord.” How hard can it be to remember that God is with us?

Some people in the Bible completely miss God even when he is right next to them. “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it,” says Jacob after a surprising and intense encounter with God (Gen. 28:16).

Later, in the New Testament, we have Cleopas and his unnamed companion walking toward Emmaus on what would become known as Easter Sunday. They are literally walking right alongside Jesus, but Luke records that “they were kept from recognizing him” (Luke 24:15–16). Some explain their lack of recognition as divine orchestration. I’ll add another interpretation: They were reactive and didn’t know it. It is nearly impossible to notice God’s presence when you are filled with reactivity.

When we are reactive, we no longer feel safe to be ourselves. We protect ourselves from outside threats. After I preach a sermon, I tend to feel vulnerable, and like a golden retriever, I crave a pat on the head. It is quite pitiful, but is a real challenge for many preachers. If someone comes up after a sermon with criticism, I will say or do whatever the person wants in order to get past the situation.

This isn’t always about being quiet. Sometimes we flatter or don’t fully share our thoughts with someone. In those moments of self-protection, I don’t see God as my refuge and strength; I see myself in that role.

Whether we move toward self-righteousness or self-protection, the common denominator is self. This is what Jacob and Cleopas and every follower of God has in common: We get caught up in ourselves, we get triggered, and we forget the Lord.

How might you relax into the Lord’s presence? It isn’t difficult, but it takes intentionality. Here are some ways you can not only notice but also diffuse your reactivity and be aware of God’s presence:

Open your calendar and look for the next meeting that is likely to generate reactivity in you. Edit your calendar title and add, in all caps, “GOD WITH ME, GOD AHEAD OF ME, GOD WITH US” to it. Set your calendar event to remind you within an hour of the event. When the alarm prompts you, pause, pray, and remember the Lord.

Later, as you enter the room to meet the person, remember that God is already in the room ahead of you. God is also with that difficult person. This simple prayer of awareness has done wonders for my reactivity. I use it before I walk out to preach, when I start a staff meeting, and when I find myself trying to worry my way to peace.

You can also get clear on what is yours to carry, what is God’s, and what is someone else’s. Sometimes we get reactive because we overfunction. We carry more than God asks of us. A proper self-examination can put to order the reactivity and confront me when I try to do God’s job.

Just as God did not need me to be the courtesy police on that flight home, you also might be carrying a burden that God is inviting you to entrust to him—or at least you might need to be reminded that you are his colaborer. It isn’t all on you.

Steve Cuss is the host of CT’s podcast also called Being Human.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "We Can't Worry Our Way to Peace".

Being Human: A column by Being Human’s host, Steve Cuss.

- More from Steve, Cuss

Church Life

The Man Who Made Global Methodism Possible

Daniel Silliman

Keith Boyette prepares for retirement as the denomination gathers formally for the first time.

Keith Boyette at the Wilderness Community Church in Spotsylvania, Virginia, on July 24, 2024.

Photography by Stephen Voss for Christianity Today

You just don’t expect the pastor to be a lawyer.

Rusty Dennen didn’t know a lot about church. He didn’t grow up religious and was generally pretty skeptical of Christianity. He only showed up at Wilderness Community Church one Sunday in 1999 because his wife and daughter wanted to go.

But he thought he understood a few things. Like ministers are ministers. And lawyers are lawyers.

Then he met Keith Boyette, a pastor-lawyer in Spotsylvania, Virginia, who had actually argued a bunch of cases before the state supreme court, and he had to reconsider.

“He’s got a laugh that shakes the building,” Dennen said. “He’s got this really, really crazy sense of humor that he uses in his sermons, and he’s lawyerly—he’s got that lawyer experience—and he uses that to really make his points.

“I’m thinking, There’s something about this funny, rotund, lawyerly pastor. It’s a special gift.”

Boyette’s gift would be transformative for Dennen, who is today a committed Christian and a member of the Global Methodist Church (GMC).

It would be transformative, in fact, for all Global Methodists and for Global Methodism itself. The pastor-lawyer played an essential role in the founding of the new denomination, which is today the 16th largest Protestant church in America and convenes its first General Conference in September.

Boyette’s legal expertise and pastoral commitments built the bridge for traditionalists who wanted out of the discord and chaos of the United Methodist Church (UMC).

“I don’t think anyone can fully appreciate all of the details and behind-the-scenes decisions and structures that have to be put in place for a new denomination,” said Cara Nicklas, chair of the Global Methodist transitional leadership council. “I don’t see how it could have been done without Keith.”

There were, of course, many faithful Methodists involved. Pastors shepherded their congregations through hurt and confusion. Organizers nurtured networks of connections. And theologians raised a flag for orthodoxy and rallied people around the core values of Methodism.

But what the new denomination absolutely had to have to come into existence was a legal expert. It needed a minister who was also a lawyer.

“I don’t think they could have pulled it off without Keith,” said Jim Holsinger, a retired US Army reservist and expert in public health who once served on the UMC’s top court. “You had to have Keith. He brought that unique combination of being a deep man of faith but also an exquisite legal mind. He was the catalyst.”

At 71, Boyette is ready to retire. He says that as soon as the GMC votes to ratify the denominational structure that the transitional leadership put in place, he can step down.

“I think I was called by God for a specific role,” he told Christianity Today. “God has given me certain abilities and gifts and graces—the abilities and gifts and graces to navigate a dysfunctional system—and they were appropriate to a specific moment.”

The story of that calling started at another specific moment: February 4, 1991, on Interstate 195 in Richmond. Boyette was driving home from his downtown office at Hirschler, Fleischer, Weinberg, Cox, and Allen, where he was an up-and-coming litigator specializing in corporate law.

The 37-year-old wasn’t thinking about contracts, claims, lawsuits, depositions, mediations, or trials though. Boyette was praying.

He had been a Methodist since childhood. He was baptized as a baby, and his first memory was watching his sister get baptized when he was three. The following year he professed his faith in Jesus at vacation Bible school, during a flannelgraph lesson about the shepherd with one lost sheep.

More recently, however, Boyette had become convicted that there were areas of his life where he didn’t trust Jesus. He had sort of said to God, Thanks, but I got this. He was working on that, praying about it during his daily commute.

“Increasingly, I surrendered different parts of my life to his lordship and trusted him more,” Boyette said. “John Wesley would call that sanctification.”

On this day, something happened.

“The Spirit of the living God filled the car,” Boyette recalled. “And I heard an inner voice that said, I want you to leave the practice of law, and I want you to be a pastor. My spirit immediately responded to his Spirit with a yes, and I was filled with a joy that I cannot put into words.”

One of the partners at the law firm said Boyette should see a psychiatrist. A bunch of his colleagues said it was a midlife crisis.

“I thought he was kidding,” said John Vaughan, who worked at the firm with Boyette. “People wouldn’t just quit. There were always people who were changing firms. Or people would decide they didn’t want to be litigators and they’d practice a different kind of law. He was the only person I ever saw leave the law and go to seminary.”

It was clear to Boyette that he had heard from God, though, so he quit. And with the support of his wife, Pamela—which astounds him to this day—he left his promising legal career and moved his family to Wilmore, Kentucky, so he could enroll at Asbury Theological Seminary.

His first church assignment was Fletcher’s Chapel, a rural congregation outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. Boyette found he had a gift for reaching unchurched people, and the congregation grew from about 80 to around 200 in four years.

At the same time, Boyette grew concerned about the state of Methodism—the spiritual health of the denomination. Many UMC churches reported membership of three or four times the actual attendance, he said, and no one was going after those people like a shepherd who’d lost a bunch of sheep.

“Everything was focused on institutional preservation. ‘Are you checking the boxes?’” Boyette recalled. “There was no sense of commitment to the primary calling of the church to witness to people, to bring them to faith in Jesus, and then disciple them.”

The UMC at the time was shutting down about 150 congregations every year. Going against the trend, Boyette asked his bishop for permission to plant a new church. In 1999, he opened Wilderness Community Church at an elementary school in Spotsylvania.

Wilderness attracted people like the skeptic Rusty Dennen; a lapsed Catholic named Larry Welford; and Janet Ayers, whose family had no church background at all.

“I liked Keith’s message,” Ayers told CT. “He’s earthy. You can tell he’s really smart, but he also talks to you in a language that makes sense. And there’s some humor in it too.”

Church members said Boyette approached everything with a creativity developed through years of crafting arguments and negotiating settlements. Welford remembers working with the pastor on the budget for a new church building. They had to figure out how to cut construction costs by about $300,000, but Boyette didn’t seem stressed, Welford recalled.

“He’s like, ‘Let’s look at that a little bit,’ and then he comes up with ways to do it,” Welford said. “Unconventional solutions are pretty standard for Keith.”

While Boyette was coming up with solutions to the good problems of a growing church, he was also getting a crash course in the complexities of the Methodist legal system. In 2000, he was elected to the UMC’s Judicial Council, the church’s highest court.

He was soon the UMC’s leading conservative expert on Methodist church law. He continued pastoring Wilderness week by week, while across the country traditionalists in the denomination started relying on him for advice.

“Keith just knew the Book of Discipline. He knew it as well and oftentimes better than anyone else,” said Walter Fenton, former director of strategic resources for Good News, a traditionalist caucus in the UMC. “He was among a handful of people who really understood some of the key rulings from the Judicial Council.”

After Boyette finished his term on the council, he was tapped to join and then lead the board of Good News. The pastor-lawyer also returned to the Judicial Council as an advocate for traditionalists, making the legal case against the election of a lesbian bishop.

Karen Oliveto was made bishop over 12 western states in 2016—even though she was married to another woman and the Book of Discipline said that “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” couldn’t be ministers. An attorney representing the Western Jurisdiction argued that a same-sex marriage was not an “avowal” of homosexuality and that the word should only be understood to mean a direct confession to church authorities.

Boyette opposed that argument, successfully. But then Oliveto wasn’t removed from office.

Boyette disagreed with progressive, LGBTQ-affirming theology. But he was especially dismayed by what he saw as a rejection of church authority and the defiance of the agreed-upon systems of Methodist government.

“People who wanted to change the church’s position tried to do it through legislative means, and they were repeatedly defeated,” he told CT. “Then they turned to the judiciary. They wanted the judiciary to order the changes. Then they turned to what I would call ecclesial disobedience: ‘We’re no longer submitting.’”

In the spring of 2017, Boyette accepted a position as president of the newly formed Wesleyan Covenant Association (WCA), an alliance of churches committed to contending for traditional, orthodox Methodism and preparing, if worst came to worst, for the division of the UMC.

WCA leaders appreciated Boyette’s legal knowledge and felt he had the right character to become the national leader of the traditionalist movement. He was a strategic thinker, they told CT. He also wasn’t a bomb thrower and wouldn’t let conflict fester in his heart and turn into animosity.

“I never sensed in him a spirit of war,” said Carolyn Moore, one of the WCA leaders who hired Boyette. “He wanted to minimize pain. He wanted to minimize drama. He was just looking for solutions—pragmatic and extraordinarily intelligent.”

Boyette also wanted to retire.

He had served 19 years as pastor at Wilderness, and 20 seemed like a nice round number to finish on.

“I fought kicking and screaming not to become president of the WCA,” he said.

Boyette sat in front of his computer praying and arguing in his head with God about whether to submit his application for several hours before he hit send. Ultimately, his sense that he was called to the role was not as dramatic as when God told him to stop being a lawyer and become a minister, but it was a calling nonetheless. He had to be obedient.

As president of the WCA, Boyette was asked in 2019 to join leaders from the conservative, progressive, and centrist factions to negotiate a plan for UMC separation. A bishop from Sierra Leone thought the continued fights over sexuality and denominational order could not go on. A number of American bishops agreed. They said the loudest voices could be given an exit and that would calm the controversies that had long roiled the UMC.

Traditionalist leaders, however, saw this as the beginning of the end. And it was, for them, possibly a good end—an amicable separation.

“There has to be a way Christians can disagree and separate,” Boyette told the WCA. He pointed to biblical examples of good division that they could learn from and even emulate. “We can be like Abraham and Lot, Paul and Barnabas, going different ways,” he said.

In the room with a professional mediator and 15 leaders representing the spectrum of Methodist views, however, the traditionalists didn’t need a biblical scholar. They didn’t need a theologian. They needed a lawyer.

And they had one.

“No matter which side of the issues you fall down on, Keith’s one of the best people who could have been in that position,” said Vaughan, Boyette’s lawyer colleague. “He’s not like a lawyer on TV. They get aggressive and ugly. He’ll be unfailingly courteous, and he’ll try to understand your side. He’ll stay calm. He’ll listen. And he’ll fight for what he thinks is right.”

Boyette first negotiated for a waiver of the UMC’s trust clause. Congregations that wanted to leave—whether progressive or traditionalist—shouldn’t have to pay the denomination for buildings they’d already paid for with years of passed collection plates, he said. After two days, everyone agreed.

Then he negotiated a division of denominational assets.

Finally, they had a big argument about the vote that would be required for a church or conference to exit the denomination. The traditionalists wanted a simple majority. The other side said two-thirds. Boyette proposed they make it 57.5 percent.

“If that isn’t a lawyer talking—‘Let’s split the baby, 57.5 percent’—I don’t know what is,” Boyette said.

His gift, combining pastor and lawyer, made him a successful advocate. At the end of negotiations, the group agreed to legislation they would propose at the General Conference. They called it the Protocol of Reconciliation and Grace through Separation.

Then COVID-19 happened. The Methodists did not meet to vote on the plan in 2020. The meeting the following year was also canceled. Traditionalist leaders told pastors and churches to be patient and hang on—they’d get a chance to approve the separation terms at the next General Conference.

But then that one, in 2022, was also canceled. UMC authorities cited issues with international visas and put a vote on the protocol off until 2024.

“When the protocol came out, I was so hopeful,” Nicklas, also a member of the WCA council, told CT. “I felt like the traditionalists had compromised more than was fair, but this was our chance to show the world that we could separate amicably. Then when support of the protocol was winning, the postponements started coming.”

Traditionalist leaders decided they didn’t believe the stated reason for the delay and couldn’t accept that denominational leaders were acting in good faith. In 2022 they announced the formation of a new denomination: The Global Methodist Church.

Boyette, still president of the WCA, took on another role: chair of the GMC’s transitional leadership council. Here again, he was asked to use his training as a lawyer. Congregations and conferences started to look at leaving without a protocol and realized they would have to go through multiple complicated legal processes, involving both Methodist rules and state regulations.

They’d have to arrange disaffiliation votes and payments for their properties, figure out how to change their names legally, change them on all their documents, and then deal with issues like pastors’ pensions.

“How do you navigate a church in a denomination that looks like it’s going to fall apart? You call Keith,” said Fenton, the Good News director who joined the staff of the GMC as deputy connectional officer. “Keith functioned as a pro bono attorney, coaching a half dozen churches a week. I lived in fear he’d get sick and I’d have to do it; and I’m not a lawyer.”

With the first General Conference of the GMC this September, the end of the pastor-lawyer work is in sight for Boyette. It’s time, he says, to pass the responsibilities of leadership on to other people. It’s time for a change.

Some things will stay the same, however. When Boyette is no longer leading the traditionalist Methodists, he’ll continue attending Wilderness Community Church, sitting in a pew on one side, saying good morning to people whose lives were changed by that church plant. He will still think the church should be making disciples.

“He’ll be at the men’s group,” said Rusty Dennen, who was surprised so many years ago that a pastor could be a lawyer too. “We will talk about our lives and God, and Keith has these questions from John Wesley—I think there are 22—and he’ll ask us, ‘How did you encounter God this week?’”

Daniel Silliman is news editor at CT.

This article appeared in the September/October 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "Pastor’s Heart, Lawyer’s Mind".

- More from Daniel Silliman

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