Praising God Is an Act of Political Defiance

The Book of Psalms reminds us that worship demands our unequivocal devotion and allegiance.

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

The Psalms capture the full range of human experience. Personal and collective, sorrowful and rejoicing, remembering God’s faithfulness and wondering what has become of it—the biblical book, prayed by generations of believers, invites us to enter God’s presence with piercing honesty.

For those of us weaned on the positivity of American evangelicalism, the psalms of lament can take us aback. The authenticity of their angst pushes the boundaries of what we have witnessed in corporate prayer. It calls us to reject toxic positivity and embrace godly grief. And while this wake-up call to embrace the psalms of lament is still badly needed, I suspect we need a similar reckoning when it comes to the psalms of praise.

The claim of the praise psalms is startlingly unique in its context and powerfully relevant in ours, especially in an election year that is charged with political energy. As candidates vie for our votes, Christians hotly debate which contender best reflects our values and which issues most deserve our attention. On top of this, as Jared Stacy noted in a recent article for CT, we are experiencing a rise in politically motivated violence.

While lament is surely appropriate in times like these, maybe the best thing we can do is engage in audacious praise!

I’ve often felt about the praise psalms the way a mom feels about getting a store-bought Mother’s Day card proclaiming in all caps that she is the “BEST MOM EVER.” We know the company has printed thousands of these cards—and I’m the only mom my children have ever had, so how would they know any better?

But when Israel exclaimed, “Praise the LORD!” they were making far more audacious claims than that of a generic greeting card. As Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann points out in his excellent book, From Whom No Secrets Are Hid, “an act of praise is not an innocuous ‘spiritual’ act. It is rather a taking of sides for this God against all other gods.” He explains that “hymns of praise are acts of devotion with political and polemical overtones … [and] acts of defiance of the world that is in front of us.”

One reason we often fail to appreciate the power of praise presented in the Psalms is that most English translations render the unique divine name, Yahweh, as LORD (in all caps). Lowercase “Lord” is not a name, but a title indicating a person of status. Most Bible readers miss the distinction. And so, in our attempt to honor God’s name by calling him Lord, we inadvertently erased his divine name, Yahweh. So, the phrase “Praise the Lord” ends up sounding like a Hallmark card—or a Christian version of the “live, laugh, love” creed.

A second reason the impact of the Psalms’ invitation to “Praise Yahweh” is often watered down is that in monotheistic contexts, where many of us grow up being (rightfully) instructed that there is only one God, praising the Lord can seem like stating the obvious. Of course he’s the only one worthy to be praised—because what other creature could compete?

But Israel’s psalms were far grittier than we realize. Every time they sang a psalm, they were making a bold claim that was simultaneously for Yahweh and against other gods.

This is significant, because the Israelites lived in a world crowded with other possible deities to worship. Several thick books on my office shelves catalog these gods alphabetically, explaining what each one was known for. In Egypt, there was Re, the sun god; Isis, the goddess of protection and healing; Hathor, goddess of fertility; Osiris, whose bloodstream was thought to be the Nile; and many dozens more. In Canaan, Baal and Asherah, the god and goddess of fertility, were worshiped, along with El, the supreme God, and a whole pantheon of other options. The gods of Mesopotamia included Marduk, Isis, Ashur, Enlil, Ea, Tiamat, and Adad, to name a few.

More than that, ancient cultures did not worship these deities to express affection but as a matter of necessity. They believed the gods were responsible for the success of their crops and the survival of their children. They believed kings ruled under divine patronage, and that the rulers’ task was to do the bidding of the gods and to maintain order in their realm. Most ancient Near Eastern gods were not absolute but had a particular specialty or a specific jurisdiction.

When we read the praise psalms against that backdrop, a whole new world opens up to us—a world with the potential of reshaping our own. Let’s consider Psalm 96 as an example. I’ve quoted from the NIV here, but replaced “LORD” with the divine name Yahweh to help us experience the power of the original Hebrew in its context:

Sing to Yahweh a new song;
sing to Yahweh, all the earth.
Sing to Yahweh, praise his name;
proclaim his salvation day after day.
Declare his glory among the nations,
his marvelous deeds among all peoples. (vv. 1–3)

Psalm 96 is not generic. It cannot be used in just any worship context, but only to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. But that’s what makes this psalm so radical: It calls “all the earth” to praise Yahweh, not just the Israelites! All the nations must hear the story of “his salvation.”

Yahweh’s salvation is not something that Israel looked forward to in the future but something they had already experienced when Yahweh defeated Pharaoh at the sea and brought them to safety. The salvation of Yahweh does not offer merely an individual sense of reassurance but the decisive defeat of Egypt and its gods on the world stage (Ex. 12:12; 15:2). Psalm 96 continues:

For great is Yahweh and most worthy of praise;
he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols,
but Yahweh made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and glory are in his sanctuary. (vv. 4–6)

The smackdown of this psalm is deliberate and obvious, once you know to look for it. To exalt Yahweh is to demote any other claimants to divine prerogative. Yahweh has all the splendor, while the gods of the nations are nothing more than mute objects. To sing this is to deny the validity of the foundation myths of all of Israel’s neighbors.

Ascribe to Yahweh, all you families of nations,
ascribe to Yahweh glory and strength.
Ascribe to Yahweh the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come into his courts.
Worship Yahweh in the splendor of his holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth.
Say among the nations, “Yahweh reigns.”
The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved;
he will judge the peoples with equity. (vv. 7–10)

What’s remarkable about these verses in Psalm 96 is that they call for the nations to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. It’s not enough for them to admit Yahweh’s power from afar. Their acknowledgment ought to translate into action of the most humbling variety—to make a pilgrimage to a foreign land overseen by another ruler and occupied by another people.

To say that Yahweh reigns not only undermines the authority of every other god in the ancient pantheons of Israel’s neighbors but also calls into question the legitimacy of every human monarch other than the one Yahweh anointed. Since no king ruled except by divine appointment, one of any king’s first priorities was to establish the legitimacy of his rule by showing how the gods had selected him. If those gods were unseated from their heavenly thrones, then the kings who identified with them were also illegitimate. Psalm 96 concludes with these words:

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let the sea resound, and all that is in it.
Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them;
let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
Let all creation rejoice before Yahweh, for he comes,
he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world in righteousness
and the peoples in his faithfulness. (v. 11–13)

Israel’s neighbors depicted their gods using the symbols of animals and saw divine representation in trees and oceans—whereas Psalm 96 portrays every created thing as celebrating Yahweh’s rule and standing before him as the ultimate judge. In the end, all will answer to Yahweh. These are fighting words!

Perhaps an illustration will help us appreciate the audacity of praise psalms. The 1965 classic film The Sound of Music offers an analogy. Captain von Trapp is a retired naval officer in Austria raising his seven children with the help of one governess after another. The children are hard on these substitute mothers, so the captain turns to a nearby abbey for help—maybe a nun can keep his children in line! The abbey sends him a novitiate, Fräulein Maria, who wins over the hearts of the children as well as that of their father.

Captain von Trapp and Maria’s romance is set against the backdrop of a growing threat of occupation by Nazi Germany in 1938. They return home from their honeymoon to see a Nazi flag flying over their front door, along with a summons to serve in Hitler’s navy and an (unrelated) invitation for the musical family to perform in the Salzburg Festival. Attempting to escape to neutral Switzerland that very night under the cover of darkness, the family is caught in the act. But thinking quickly, they pretend they are heading to perform in the music festival instead.

That joyous evening of music is strained by the presence of Nazi soldiers guarding the exits. In the front row sits the officer who was sent to escort Captain von Trapp to his new post in Hitler’s navy. While the judges evaluate the results of the competition, Captain von Trapp sings alone in the spotlight, regaling the waiting crowd with a simple song about a white alpine flower native to Austria.

The lyrics are not in themselves seditious, but sung in this context, his audacity is plain. The lilting melody of “Edelweiss” evokes for the crowd a longing for Austrian independence from Nazi Germany. The captain is overcome with emotion and finds himself unable to finish the song. Maria, the children, and the entire audience join him for the final few stanzas, which end with a hopeful prayer: “Bless my homeland forever!”

The Psalms are much like the captain’s song. On their own, they don’t sound rebellious, but set against the backdrop of Assyrian or Persian rule, they represent a form of spiritual insurrection—a kind of active protest to the powers that be. Psalms of praise exalt Yahweh above all human rulers and rival gods, diminishing their right to sovereignty. As we read them today, they call us to reimagine our ultimate citizenship—reminding us that even our elected government officials must one day bow the knee to Yahweh and that all our allegiance belongs only to him.

During this election year in the United States, or wherever we find ourselves, let us re-engage the Bible’s psalms of praise with eyes wide open—recognizing their unyielding summons to bow to our sovereign king.

Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University and author of Bearing God’s Name and Being God’s Image. She’s currently writing her next book, Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters.

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Theology

Can Christian Publishing Survive in a Country Where Few Still Read?

Hendro Suwito

As smartphones steal potential readers in Indonesia, booksellers are looking to new ideas.

People use smartphones at a cafe in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Yasuyoshi Chiba / Getty

Only 1 out of every 1,000 Indonesians is an avid reader, according to UNESCO’s 2012 reading interest index. The country also ranks second to last in a list of the world’s most literate countries, which examined tests as well as “literate behaviors” such as the number of libraries and newspapers and the availability of computers and years of schooling in a nation.

In such a challenging climate, can local Christian publishing survive?

Indonesian pastors and publishers say yes, although it might look different from the golden years of the early 2000s. It may include collecting donations to give away books to the impoverished, drumming up excitement over book releases with Zoom talks, or polling local seminaries and churches to determine which books they should translate into Bahasa Indonesia.

Indonesians can also learn from one of Indonesia’s most prolific Christian writers, Andar Ismail, whose 33-book Selamat series sold tens of thousands of copies in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Even as reading falls out of the zeitgeist, Christians believe it has an important role in spiritual maturity.

“Congregations should not rely only on weekly sermons to strengthen their faith,” said Susanto (who goes by one name), a pastor and current chairman of Gloria Foundation, which oversees two Christian publishing companies. “They need to develop their spiritual journeys themselves, such as through quality books.”

An industry in crisis

The low interest in reading points to Indonesia’s strong oral culture, where stories and knowledge were traditionally passed through spoken rather than written word. Researchers also point to underfunded libraries, expensive book costs, and an education system that doesn’t encourage reading books outside of the classroom. Casthelia Kartika, president of Amanat Agung Theological Seminary in Jakarta, noted that in the past, education was not a top priority in the country as families struggled to make ends meet. As the economy improved, especially in the cities, parents started focusing more on their children’s education, which led to an improvement in literacy. However, the recent rise of smartphone usage is pulling Indonesians toward watching videos or playing games instead of reading.

“Although the awareness of the importance of reading has started flourishing, teachers still need to further develop the passion to read books among their students,” Kartika noted.

This is apparent at Indonesian seminaries—including her own—where some professors struggle to teach classes where few students complete the required readings. At the same time, some of the lecturers themselves aren’t readers either, which keeps them from writing books and sharing Indonesian theology with the rest of the world. “There are actually a lot of smart theologians in Indonesia, but it is so hard to encourage them to write books,” she said.

In addition, the economic slowdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of brick-and-mortar bookstores and a plunge in book sales. In 2010, Indonesia had about 600 bookstores across the country. Now the number has dwindled to 100, according to Susanto.

Odessa Diaz Krisdiyanto, coordinator of Literatur Perkantas Jatim (East Java InterVarsity Literature) said that before the pandemic, the publishing house printed about 15 titles a year, all of which were translated from English, and it took about six months to sell out the print runs of roughly 2,000 copies. Last year, they only printed 8 titles, and selling the copies took a year.

During COVID-19, sales slowed as “customers shifted their reading habits to online media and their spending priority to the health of their families,” Krisdiyanto said.

Still, Literatur Perkantas has a leg up on other Christian book publishers, as they have been selling books online since 2017. This year, Perkantas may be able to publish as many titles as they did pre-pandemic, although with a smaller number of copies in print.

Other Christian publishers are not as lucky. Susanto said both publishing houses under Gloria, Katalis and Graffa, suffered substantially from the recent downturn. Katalis publishes discipleship books, while Graffa publishes popular Christian titles.

Started in the 1980s, Gloria initially only printed Our Daily Bread in the Indonesian language, presented in a simple format and distributed free of charge. Several years later, the booklets were printed more professionally and sold for a slight profit. Not long afterward, Gloria also started printing foreign and local Christian books.

“During the rosy years of the early 2000s, we could print and sell up to 150,000 copies of Our Daily Bread each month and about 100 book titles,” Susanto recalled. “Today, we can only print around 24,000 copies of the monthly edition and 10,500 of the quarterly editions.” In total, Katalis and Graffa only managed to publish 8 book titles in 2023.

The slump in sales has led Gloria to rent out some of their office space to other firms in their Yogyakarta building.

Kartika, meanwhile, is mildly optimistic that Christian publishers will be able to survive in the years to come. “They might not perish, but they might not flourish either,” she said. “The demand and need for books will continue to exist, but it will not be as massive as in the past.” The rise of the Selamat series

One Christian book series that has seemingly defied the dominance of Indonesia’s oral culture is Ismail’s Selamat, published over the past four decades. A former pastor of the Samanhudi Indonesian Christian Church in Jakarta and a professor of theology and pedagogy at Jakarta Theological Seminary, Ismail is unique in that he can present difficult doctrinal topics in a down-to-earth way. This set his books apart from other Christian books at the time, which were mainly targeted to intellectuals.

In the Indonesian language, the word selamat is used for greetings or congratulations, and it can also mean “safe from harm” and “salvation.” Each of the approximately 130-page books includes 33 short stories covering a wide range of topics like the biographies of well-known Christian figures, morals gleaned from traditional Javanese wayang puppet shows, profiles of faithful “no-name” pastors, and vignettes from Ismail’s own spiritual journey. Some stories are funny, while others are thought-provoking, inspirational, or even tear-jerking. Their common denominator is Ismail’s portrayal of the matchless love of Christ.

Ismail published the first two books in the series, Selamat Natal (Merry Christmas) and Selamat Paskah (Happy Easter), in 1981 and 1982. After a decade-long break where he focused on studying overseas, he published his third book, Selamat Pagi Tuhan (Good Morning, Lord). From then until 2022, he published a new book every year.

For two decades, Selamat books were bestsellers for the Christian publishing house BPK Gunung Mulia, according to former CEO Stephen Z. Satyahadi. Selling more than 10,000 copies of a Christian book is considered a rare achievement in Indonesia, and scores of Ismail’s books have sold up to 70,000–80,000 copies over the years, with earlier editions reprinted more than 30 times.

“Through the easy-to-understand yet deeply meaningful stories, Ismail could help nurture the spiritual understanding of readers from all levels of educational backgrounds,” said Ismail’s close friend Sunoko Nugroho Samiadji. He noted that Ismail wrote many of the books by hand before Samiadji helped type them up on a computer.

One of Samiadji’s favorite short stories in the series is Ismail’s analysis of Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son. The pastor also wrote about Muslim figures who painted or wrote about Jesus, including journalist Goenawan Mohamad and poet Chairil Anwar, and how their unique viewpoints draw out different aspects of the Savior.

To acknowledge Ismail’s significant contribution to the Christian community, Indonesia’s Christian Art and Literature Festival awarded him the Tokoh Inspiratif (Inspirational Figure) award in August 2018.

After completing the series, Ismail went on to publish Tukang Antar Selamat (Courier of Salvation) in 2023, another collection of 33 stories. Now 84, Ismail plans to publish yet another book this year.

Finding new ways to attract readers

Yet even the sale of Ismail’s books have been affected by the recent downturn in reading. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Gunung Mulia has halved the number of first printing copies of Ismail’s new books to 5,000. (Ismail, so far, has refrained from selling his series as e-books, as few Indonesians read electronic books.)

As a result of the bearish climate, publishers are looking for ways to increase interest and to tailor what they publish to local demands.

Graffa has started to hold online book discussions and reviews. For instance, following the release earlier this year of an Indonesian translation of the book When Children Come Out: A Guide for Christian Parents by Mark Yarhouse and Olya Zaporozhets, they invited Dwidjo Saputro, a local pastor and expert on child psychology, to give several talks about the book over Zoom. Hundreds of people joined in.

Literatur Perkantas, meanwhile, has been communicating with seminaries and other Christian institutions to figure out which foreign books they want translated for their students and members. In the past, Perkantas mainly based translation decisions on a book’s popularity overseas. Since 2021, Perkantas has also started publishing books by local authors, such as Leadership Reformed and Menghidupi Injil & Menginjili Hidup (Living the Gospel & Evangelizing Life) by Sen Sendjaya, a professor of management and leadership at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia.

Kartika believes that churches can help spur book sales by encouraging small-group book studies. She cowrote a series of Bible study books called Life Expedition , which sold more than 10,000 copies after small groups at several churches and high schools started using them.

Yoel M. Indrasmoro, pastor of Javanese Christian Church in Jakarta and former director of Literatur Perkantas Nasional, has a different approach to increasing reading among Christians.

During the pandemic, he started sharing a daily reflection and reading materials with more than 1,600 people through WhatsApp. As he developed closer personal ties with his readers, he asked them for financial support to send books to those in need, including pastors in impoverished areas and prison inmates. This developed into Tangan Terbuka Media (Open Arms Media), which publishes books by foreign and local authors.

In the past two years, Indrasmoro and Open Arms Media have sent 800 packages of books to pastors, priests, and nuns in Papua; more than 1,000 packages for pastors in East Nusa Tenggara; 650 packages for prison inmates in and around Jakarta; and almost 900 packages for teachers in Halmahera Island in North Maluku.

To distribute books to teachers, he worked with a council for Christian education in the province. Each package costs donors 164,000 rupiah ($10 USD) and consists of the books Sekolah Kristen dan Jalan Turun Yesus (Christian Schools and the Way of Jesus’ Descent) by Tyas Budi Legowo and Jujur Melangkah: 307 Renungan Kitab Amsal (Honest Steps: 307 Reflections from Proverbs) by Indrasmoro.

Indrasmoro urged other Christian publishers to build closer relations with their communities so that they could also raise support to distribute free books to those in need.

“So many church leaders and teachers in remote areas, and also prisoners, badly need books to enrich their lives,” he said. “But they don’t have the resources or access to get inspirational reading materials.”

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News

ERLC Retracts Announcement Firing President Brent Leatherwood

Kate Shellnutt

UPDATE: The chair of the board of trustees, Kevin Smith, has resigned.

Brent Leatherwood

Josselyn Guillen / Baptist Press

The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) announced Monday evening that its president Brent Leatherwood suddenly lost his job—only to retract the statement the next morning.

The board of trustees stated on Tuesday that the decision had been made without an authorized meeting or vote and that Leatherwood “remains the President of the ERLC and has our support moving forward.”

The chair of the ERLC board of trustees, Kevin Smith, took responsibility for the unilateral move and has resigned.

In remarks to Baptist Press on Tuesday, Smith said he believed there was consensus to remove Leatherwood, and “in an effort to deal with it expeditiously, I acted in good faith but without a formal vote of the Executive Committee.”

“This was an error on my part, and I accept full responsibility,” he said.

The initial statement from the ERLC had given no reasoning for Leatherwood’s termination but came a day after he issued remarks applauding President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 race.

“I deeply appreciate everyone who has reached out, especially our trustees who were absolutely bewildered at what took place yesterday and jumped in to set the record straight,” Leatherwood wrote on X on Tuesday. “More to come.”

Leatherwood has been on staff with the ERLC—the public policy and advocacy arm for Southern Baptists—for the past seven years and has been president of the entity since 2021. Just a few hours before his termination was announced Monday evening, Leatherwood was still working and sharing ERLC resources on social media.

In a press release sent out around 8 p.m. Monday, the ERLC announced the executive committee of the board of trustees had removed Leatherwood “in accordance with our bylaws.”

The bylaws allow the executive committee to remove officers without a full trustee vote, so ERLC staff members went ahead and issued the press release when directed to, assuming “they were acting under the appropriate authority of the board,” they later said.

Once the news was out, it was clear people within the ERLC were learning about Leatherwood’s removal for the first time, and Smith had acted on his own.

On Tuesday morning, Smith apologized in a since-deleted post on X:

The trustees of the @erlc steward the entity on behalf of Southern Baptists. In leading them, I made a consequential procedural mistake. The exec cmte and other trustees are Christ-honoring volunteers, who give much.

The mistake was mine; I apologize.

Smith, a pastor in Florida and former executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware, had served on the ERLC board since 2018. He told Baptist Press, “I love the SBC. I love the ERLC. And I trust the Executive Committee to take the best course of action moving forward.”

After the retraction, the executive commitee of trustees clarified the reasoning for the “destabilizing” “flurry of activities” this week:

To be clear, this retraction was about following the procedures laid out in the bylaws of the ERLC, not about responding to pressure from outside organizations. As people who must give an account to God and Southern Baptists for how we have stewarded this commission, we have worked to ensure that every action taken follows the appropriate procedures affirmed by Southern Baptists.

An increasingly vocal minority of Southern Baptists have called for the defunding of the ERLC year after year. Some of their ire has been directed at Leatherwood for his unwillingness to endorse an abolitionist pro-life stance that would criminalize mothers who abort and for his calls for gun reform after his children survived the 2023 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.

Yet Leatherwood also has a reputation as an effective and respected leader for Southern Baptists in Washington, DC. At an ERLC luncheon last month, former vice president Mike Pence recognized Leatherwood in particular, saying it was only with his advocacy and partnership that the previous Trump administration was able to advance certain pro-life and religious liberty measures.

The announcement regarding Leatherwood’s removal had pleased some critics but mostly confused Southern Baptists since it came suddenly, outside of a scheduled meeting, and without explanation.

The last time—and only time in recent memory—that an SBC entity president was fired by trustees was in 2018, when Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s board ousted Paige Patterson after a 13-hour-long meeting.

Several Southern Baptist pastors had called for prayer and clarity, affirming the work of ERLC, while others saw the removal as a justified response. The Center for Baptist Leadership—an ultra-conservative group calling for “institutional revitalization within the SBC”—accused Leatherwood of failing to represent their interests and called out his recent comments on Biden.

Over the weekend, Leatherwood had been quoted in Baptist Press as saying, “Despite what some partisans will say, to walk away from power is a selfless act—the kind that has become all too rare in our culture.” He also wrote an article for the publication calling it “an astonishing moment for American history.”

At the SBC annual meeting in June, Founders Ministry president and Florida pastor Tom Ascol made a motion to abolish the ERLC for becoming “increasingly distant from the values and concerns of the churches that finance it.” The motion—like previous proposals to abolish or defund the entity—failed to receive a majority vote on the floor, though a significant minority raised their ballots.

The ERLC received over $3 million from the SBC’s Cooperative Program last fiscal year, about 1.6 percent of the $191.8 million in Southern Baptist giving that was distributed to denominational entities and activities.

In Leatherwood’s address to the annual meeting, he said, “The work of this Commission is not just rooted in this Convention, it is responsive to this Convention,” bringing up ERLC resources addressing gender confusion and political engagement as well as its advocacy around pro-life policies, international aid, and conscience rights.

“While the executive committee recognizes a wide range of opinions on the work of the ERLC, most visible in a recent attempt to abolish the organization at the 2024 SBC annual meeting, the executive committee does not believe that this discontent rises to the level of a dismissable offense,” the executive commitee said in a clarification on Tuesday.

“Further, any insinuations that the events of the previous days are the result of a moral failing on Brent’s part are wholly false. We find Brent Leatherwood to be a man of utmost moral and ethical integrity.”

Leatherwood succeeded Russell Moore, who led the ERLC until his resignation in 2021.

Moore also faced backlash for his advocacy and messaging, particularly around Donald Trump. He now serves as editor in chief of Christianity Today.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

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Books

African Bible Colleges Don’t Have Enough Books

Christina Stanton

In an absence of resources, leaders struggle to train pastors.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

When Samuel Ndima was a student at a Bible college in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, he struggled to complete assignments in his theology courses. Though he grasped the material, he had to scramble when it came to anything requiring research.

Ndima’s seminary fees included only a few textbooks, but many papers required research from books, journals, and commentaries. Like most of his classmates, Ndima could barely pay tuition and had no money to buy additional books. The few copies of essential texts were perpetually checked out of the seminary’s small library, and online access required a credit card, which few students possessed. Ndima and his classmates were forced to share books, which often made it difficult to finish assignments on time.

Despite these obstacles, Ndima graduated in 2010 and now pastors a congregation of 200 people in Delft, in the Western Cape. But he remains frustrated that theological training on the entire continent of Africa is too often complicated by a lack of books.

“A lot of Africans want to study, but we can’t afford theological education, we lack knowledge of the Bible, and we need access to books,” said Ndima, who faced a similar situation at a seminary in Cape Town where he earned his honor’s degree in 2013. He would like to return to school to study for advanced degrees but worries about the continuing lack of resources in African seminaries.

With more than 700 million Christians, Africa is home to more believers than any other continent in the world. Yet up to 90 percent of African pastors are not formally trained, and the lack of theological books and resources is undercutting the efforts of seminaries, divinity schools, Bible colleges, and other preparatory programs.

“Libraries are the engine of a school,” said Emmanuel Akatukunda, academic dean of Kampala Evangelical School of Theology (KEST) in Kampala, Uganda.

But a seminary without enough books to create a decent library might struggle with accreditation and will be less effective in training would-be pastors. Libraries in US seminaries often contain at least 100,000 books, while the average Bible college in Africa has about 5,000 volumes and an annual book budget of less than $500, according to Langham Partnership.

“Without an equipped and well-organized library, a school cannot achieve its vision, mission, and objectives,” said former KEST librarian Ivan Niyongabo, adding that the library “is a home of knowledge for academic excellence.”

Craig Stoll, director of Christianbook International Outreach (CIO), has seen more than one African school library like Ndima’s. A 100-student Nairobi seminary library, for example, possessed only one copy of a book needed by multiple students at the same time. “They tell each student they can borrow the book for one hour and then must let someone else use it for one hour, and so on. How much can you even learn from a book in one hour?”

Many seminaries, including Uganda Baptist Seminary (UBS), keep just enough textbooks on hand for current students. Anthony Shelton, principal and professor of theology at UBS, says his school allows students to check out a textbook for the term and then return it when the course is completed. This process allows the school to reuse its stock of textbooks for the more than 200 courses it offers annually.

This arrangement helps current students but hinders graduates. “Students [ought to] receive textbooks that they keep when they graduate,” he says. “Really, every pastor should have some kind of personal library to help [them] study and prepare sermons.”

Graduates from Justo Mwale University in Lusaka, Zambia, do get to retain a few of their books, thanks to a “book basket” program that provides seven books each student can keep, including Greek and Hebrew textbooks. This program, funded from a grant through the Christian Reformed Church’s Resonate Global Mission, helps alleviate some resource problems, but students must rely on the university’s library for other books they need during their education.

It remains a challenge to find Christian books of all types in many parts of Africa because publishing, printing, and distribution companies are extremely limited, driving costs far higher than the average person can afford. The publishing industry in Africa today is similar to the US publishing industry of more than a century ago: Most books get a single printing of 500 to 1,500 copies that are distributed only in the city where it was published, according to Gary Flokstra, director of 4 the World Resource Distributors (4WRD), a library resourcing organization.

Some theological texts are sold in Africa, but not in the quantity needed for the number of students in class or for the amount of schools in Africa, says Flokstra, whose organization has the goal of “enhancing theological education worldwide by strengthening theological libraries.”

Importing books from the US is difficult and expensive, notes Flokstra. Import rules change frequently, and the costs of shipping, customs, and taxes can cause book prices to escalate exorbitantly. And transporting books from one African country to another can sometimes be even more expensive and difficult than shipping from the US.

In some of the poorest countries, a book or Bible can cost two to three times more than it does in the US, and the kinds of books needed for Bible study can be even harder to find and even more expensive.

Even if you could find a comprehensive study Bible in a Ugandan bookstore, “it would cost the equivalent of at least $100 USD,” said Ugandan Christian leader Richmond Wandera. “This is a whole month’s rent for a family. Most people can never afford this.”

Despite their lack of shipping costs and comparatively low expense for students, e-books present their own challenges, says Stoll. Certain countries may not have the rights to specific titles, and even those e-books that are available at libraries may come with limited access, dependent on facility equipment or prone to being withdrawn by the provider. Further, not all students have consistent access to the internet, computers, or tablets.

Facing such challenges, many African schools take advantage of opportunities to help stock their libraries through organizations like Resonate Global Missions, CIO, Crossway, 4WRD, and Mission Cry.

In its 70 years of ministry, Mission Cry, formerly known as Christian Resources International, has provided Bibles, books, and seminary materials worth upward of $450 million to more than 175 countries. The Michigan organization fills shipping containers with books from donors across the US and distributes them worldwide through libraries at Bible colleges and other places. “We currently have a container on the water to Malawi to establish another pastor and seminary library,” said Jason Woolford, Mission Cry’s president.

Similarly, Stoll at CIO is currently trying to organize a donation of 30,000 books to send to Central Africa Baptist University (CABU) in Kitwe, Zambia. Americans have been asked to send new or gently used books to the CIO headquarters in Massachusetts, and the ministry will pay for the costs of filling and delivering a shipping container with the donations to the university. The container for CABU is expected to be launched in August, and the library should be displaying its new titles by the end of the year.

CIO is the nonprofit arm of Christianbook, one of the world’s largest distributors of Christian products. It expects to ship 15 to 20 containers of donated books to international schools and seminaries this year. Stoll said Christianbook supports CIO by supplying office and warehouse space and by paying employees.

Philip Hunt, the founder of CABU, an accredited seminary that opened in 2006, is excited about the anticipated CIO shipment, which will bring the school’s library book count from 16,000 to over 50,000—a massive collection for an African seminary.

“A container costs $14,000,” he said, noting that the shipment will be “a huge gift” for a school that charges about $4,500 per year in tuition. The library serves roughly 200 current students and almost 1,000 alumni, and Hunt says it will be open to any Christian in the city for classes or personal study.

CIO also helps stock the library at Africa Reformation Theological Seminary (ARTS) in Kampala, Uganda. About 90 percent of the textbooks at ARTS comes through its relationship with CIO, says principal David Eby, and the books are given to students or supplied at a very nominal cost.

“In a perfect world, there would be no need for what CIO does,” said Stoll. “But for most of the schools we work with, there is just simply no way given present conditions that they could obtain the books they need without some sort of outside partnership and assistance.”

As difficult as it is to find Christian books in English, it can be even harder to obtain resources in Swahili, Portuguese, French, and Arabic. Langham Partnership is one of several organizations trying to meet that need, particularly with Francophone African materials.

According to librarian Fiderana Rasoabao of the Institut Supérieur de Théologie Évangélique (ISTE) in Antananarivo, Madagascar, the school obtained many of its 5,000 volumes through Langham or from other donations from international seminaries.

Organizations like CIO and Langham Partnership are part of a long precedent: For well over a century, donations and discounts from Western ministries have helped fill the libraries of African Bible schools and seminaries. (In 1900, American evangelist John R. Mott published The Evangelization of the World in This Generation, which emphasized Africa’s desperate need for theological books and Bibles for pastoral training.) But an overreliance on such efforts has left African students studying primarily from American and European resources—and sometimes from authors with dubious theological credentials.

“I have heard some African leaders complain that they often receive many unhelpful books—for example, books promoting the prosperity gospel, or books that are really old and not up-to-date on current theological discussions,” said Anthony Sytsma, who has mentored and taught pastors in East Africa for over a decade.

A dearth of African authors is a further cause for concern. In 2014, an article in Christianity Today noted that African Christian authors were rarely represented on the shelves of African Christian libraries or bookstores. The situation has changed little in the past decade, leaders say.

“The continent of Africa is 54 countries with six time zones and more than 3,000 ethnicities. … That diversity bleeds into theological diversity, so there is tremendous complexity in leading movements on this continent,” said One Mokgatle, network director of Acts 29 Africa.

The lack of African voices in Christian materials can be frustrating for educators as well as pastors. “It was extremely difficult to teach courses in hermeneutics, theology, and even biblical studies because of the disconnect between the Western-centered approaches and the African worldview,” said Elizabeth Mburu, a professor at Africa International University in Nairobi, Kenya. “In general, Africans lack an audible voice in the theological conversation taking place across the globe.”

Ndima, the South African pastor, aspires to create theological resources that deal with specifically African cultural issues. “We have few black authors who have written about theology from the perspective of our context,” he said, while noting that, for the present, his duties to his ministry and family make it challenging to devote the necessary time to research or write.

None of the efforts to provide more Christian resources to Africa are perfect, says Flokstra of 4WRD, but they are all important. “The capacity for training leaders in Africa has not kept up with the growth of the church. It’s important to understand that in many places of the world where the church is growing the fastest, the resources are the scarcest.”

Christina Ray Stanton writes regularly for several publications and is an award-winning author of two books.

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Homelessness Hits Record High, Straining Rescue Missions

Emily Belz in New York

It’s not migrants. Christian shelters are seeing more single moms who can’t shoulder the cost of living.

Philadelphia police began clearing a homeless encampment in May.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

It was 2:45 p.m., and people were lined up around the block in Tribeca, Manhattan, for the 3 p.m. intake at the emergency shelter of the Bowery Mission, a Christian nonprofit that has served New Yorkers since 1879.

“Am I on the list?” one woman called out to Lea Burrell, the Bowery manager. The woman had to get in a standby line. Just inside the doorway, a security guard, new to the job, started to cry when she saw the people lined up—she felt like she could have been in that line too.

Even though the shelter had a standby list, this was a light day. In January, the mission saw a 40 percent surge in people seeking shelter and food. Busloads of migrants were being dropped off on its doorsteps over the winter, and the organization had to pivot quickly.

It found a way to squeeze 16 more beds into its shelter, and now has a total of 148 beds for men and women. It has separate recovery programs and transitional housing. But staff have seen the migrant arrivals level off, while the heightened demand for shelter remains.

Other homeless ministries around the country said the same in interviews with CT: They are seeing big increases in those seeking shelter, but not from migrant arrivals.

“Nationally, what we’re seeing is that the highest area of homelessness is single moms and children,” said Tom De Vries, the CEO of Citygate Network, which represents more than 300 faith-based shelters across the country.

Asylum seekers are not as much of a factor in the increases, he added. He attributes the rise in single moms seeking shelter to inflation—and to a lack of thick community support a mom could lean on when she needs to work more or take care of her kids. He said more missions in the Citygate Network are opening shelters for women and children now—in Baltimore; Nashville; and Fort Myers, Florida.

Nationally, homelessness numbers are at their highest level since the US Department of Housing and Urban Development began using a yearly “point-in-time” metric in 2007.

Homelessness rose by 12 percent last year to 653,000 people who needed shelter, up from 554,000 in 2017. Christian organizations serving the homeless, in interviews with CT, think the number is higher.

About 75 percent of emergency shelter beds in the US are in faith-based facilities (between Salvation Army and Citygate Network), according to a former official at the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, who said the federal agency had to calculate the number to allocate resources during the pandemic. A study from Baylor University put that number at 60 percent. Either way, faith-based organizations are providing most of the emergency shelter beds in the US.

That means the increase in homelessness has put a particular strain on Christian nonprofits’ staff and budgets. They’re seeing high churn rates among staff and trying to find space for more beds—a tough endeavor in places like New York City but also difficult anywhere, when most communities do not want a new homeless shelter next door. The organizations say they could use volunteers, donations, and prayer.

Ministries are also preparing for even more of an influx after the US Supreme Court’s decision this year in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, allowing local laws that criminalize sleeping in public spaces.

St. Matthew’s House, a Christian nonprofit in Florida, has a regular waitlist of more than 100 for its shelter beds and has seen a 52 percent increase in those seeking shelter since 2022.

CEO Steve Brooder said the rise in numbers has not been from migrants but from people struggling with the cost of living. This year, the organization saw a 33 percent increase in women seeking shelter in Fort Myers compared to 2023.

“Moms with kids, senior women, female veterans, single women—it’s up dramatically,” said Brooder. “Substance abuse and mental illness is often a part of it. … That’s always there, it’s probably a constant. The inflation effect is what we’re seeing as an additional driver.”

Seniors on fixed incomes are also struggling with climbing costs, and Brooder recalled that St. Matthew’s recently sheltered an 80-year-old woman. Brooder said Hurricane Ian in 2022 drove up insurance premiums, for example, which made housing even more expensive.

The government numbers show an increase in people becoming homeless for the first time and a rise in family homelessness—which had been trending down for more than a decade. The survey also shows the number of shelter beds is up, but not up enough to meet the increase.

New York City accounted for some of the largest growth in homelessness in the federal government survey, with a 42 percent upsurge in homelessness last year—representing 26,000 more people needing shelter in the city. Migrants arriving in New York, often bussed from Texas or Florida, were a factor in that increase. Denver also saw a large increase in homelessness related to migrant arrivals.

As a result of those arrivals, Bowery staff have encountered a lot of languages—Russian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Nepali, and Turkish—and have translators available by phone. At Thanksgiving last year, the organization’s kitchen staff prepared 350 turkeys to meet the bigger numbers. But Bowery Mission staff say they are seeing the migrant arrivals drop off, with migrants finding jobs and moving on to areas with family or other connections.

“I think they’re being absorbed now,” said Julie Ramaine, a longtime staffer at the mission.

“We’ve seen a lot of migrants leave the city,” agreed Brian Ourien, spokesperson for the mission. “They typically come in and out really quickly.”

Instead, like other ministries around the country, Bowery is seeing a general homelessness increase, driven by the higher cost of living as well as by mental illness. Bowery has mental health services to offer, but it has to make referrals for severe psychiatric cases. And their referral partner is also overwhelmed, according to Ourien.

De Vries at Citygate noted one factor in the growth of national homelessness: The number of psychiatric beds in the United States has dropped by more than 90 percent since 1955. There are now ten times as many severely mentally ill people held in prisons as in hospitals.

He thinks another big factor is the lack of community and relationships to support people who become homeless. And he thinks that’s something that Christians can address: “We’re looking for the power of the gospel to ultimately bring transformation.”

In the past, Christian rescue missions were mostly focused on providing food and emergency shelter; now, they usually offer more “wraparound” services like mental health treatment, addiction recovery, job training, and general health care.

“The shelters are like the emergency rooms at the hospital,” said Bruce Butler, CEO of Union Gospel Mission Dallas. “The real long-term work to heal people happens in the main hospital.”

Dallas is one rare city that has seen a decrease (3.8%) in homelessness, according to government numbers. It has a more affordable cost of living than other cities. But Butler says the key to the decrease is the full-life transformation offered through wraparound services, not having a “housing first” attitude that simply puts a roof over someone’s head.

He also said organizations and the local government in Dallas have been collaborating more, which has been fruitful.

But even with the overall decline in homelessness in the city, Union Gospel Mission Dallas feels like they are staying busy. Between its two main facilities, the mission is providing shelter to between 400 and 500 men and women a night. Butler said they too have seen a lot of single older women needing shelter.

“We’re seeing a decrease … but new people keep coming up,” he said. “Just because things are so expensive—it’s more your average people that are just struggling.”

After the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Grants Pass, a law forbidding outdoor sleeping will go into effect in Florida in October. That will affect St. Matthew’s House, for one.

Brooder from St. Matthew’s House said the organization is working with the local county to find a solution for more people needing beds when the new law takes effect, but he added that it is “a strain.” He’s not sure where funding will come from for the people needing shelter.

Despite the national “not in my backyard” attitude toward homeless shelters, this fall, St. Matthew’s House is opening a new shelter for women and children with 39 beds on the property of a church, where there is also a health clinic.

“It’s obviously needed,” said Brooder, who was encouraged by “great synergy with the church.”

At Bowery’s intake, the main desk is a pile of forms, hot sauce packets, and pouches of Narcan, the overdose reversal drug. A staff member said they use a pouch about once a month.

Calming music plays in the intake room, an effort to create good headspace for people coming in off the street. Upstairs, women began settling into bunk beds and picking up fresh towels from a laundry basket to go take showers.

Women have dinner at 5:30 p.m., men at 6:30—then chapel, and bed at 9 p.m., with wakeup at 6 a.m. People can stay for a week, during which time Bowery staff hope they might be convinced to enter longer term “life transformation” programs. At the end of seven days, the guests must cycle out and get back in line for a bed.

Even though the Bowery Mission has strict rules and hours for its shelter, it has a waitlist because it is safer and cleaner than city shelters. In the past, when Bowery didn’t have beds to offer, it would suggest guests go to another shelter, MainChance, but that recently closed.

“We’re not ending homelessness,” said Burrell, as the phone at the intake desk rang and a walkie-talkie buzzed. “But we can transform lives, so they come here and don’t leave the same.”

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Canadian Christian Colleges Hit Hard by New Immigration Restrictions

Adam MacInnis

International undergraduates were part of many schools’ plans for sustainability. A new government rule changes that.

SDI Productions / Getty

It seemed like a door had opened.

Providence University College and Theological Seminary in Manitoba started an associate’s degree program that could be marketed to international students. To president Kenton Anderson’s delight, the two-year degree attracted a significant number of applicants eager to study in Canada. Several hundred students enrolled.

For the private evangelical school, that generated significant revenue and helped further fulfill the mission of spreading the gospel around the world.

Providence made plans to grow the program—could they attract 500 international students? 600? 700?—and bought an apartment building in nearby Winnipeg to provide increased student housing.

Then, a single government decision closed that door.

Canada’s federal government announced new restrictions on undergraduate international students in January 2024. When the rules take effect this fall, the total number will be reduced by about 35 percent.

Providence was anticipating several hundred new international students. Now, when the semester starts the first week of September, the school will only greet about 20.

“It’s many millions of dollars of revenue just gone,” Anderson told CT. “And, of course, as a private tuition-funded Christian school, it’s not like we have a lot of that money lying around.”

According to the Canadian government, there are several reasons to reduce the number of international students at Canadian colleges and universities. Officials said they were concerned that lax admissions were diminishing the quality of the country’s education.

“We want to ensure that international students are successful and to tackle the issues that make students vulnerable and hurt the integrity of the International Student Program,” Julie Lafortune, a spokeswoman for the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told CT in an email.

The government was also concerned about the strain that the influx of internationals puts on the already stressed housing market. Many cities across Canada have seen housing costs skyrocket in recent years. Experts estimate 5.8 million new homes would have to be built by 2030 to bring prices back down to affordable levels.

“While international students are not responsible for the challenges that communities are facing in housing, health care, and other services, the growth in the number of international students is unsustainable and has added significant demand for services that all Canadians must be able to access,” Lafortune said.

The new rule sets limits on international students for each province. The provinces will then determine the allocation of that limited number of students—how many will go to one school, how many to another.

In Manitoba, the government decided to prioritize permits for international students attending public universities. Providence was allowed just a small amount.

Anderson said the combined decisions of the federal and provincial governments were enough to threaten the existence of the evangelical university. But Providence isn’t alone, he said. Many institutions of higher education are going to suffer.

“That was a very popular move politically for them to make, but it was a bit of a blunt instrument,” he said. “It just kind of like hit everybody.”

Kingswood University in New Brunswick will notice the hit.

In its 80-year history, the Methodist-affiliated school has come to rely on the flow of enrollments from abroad. Sometimes as much as 40 percent of the student body has been international. The majority have come from the United States, but many have come from further away as well, reflecting Kingswood’s Methodist ties and its missions-minded identity.

“It’s impossible for us to do what we were chosen and funded to do because of this new rule,” president Stephen Lennox told CT.

In the rural community of Sussex, where the university is located, housing is not a major problem, according to Lennox. He understands the government concerns about education quality and housing stock, but neither issue actually applies to Kingswood. So the rule doesn’t solve anything but does seriously hurt the school.

Christian Higher Education Canada sent a letter to Marc Miller, minister of immigration, refugees, and citizenship, asking him to reconsider. Lennox, who is on the board, is one of the leaders at 22 Christian schools in Canada who signed the appeal.

“Our schools provide theological education, preparing individuals to fill positions as pastors and other religious professionals,” it said. “Limiting the number of international students restricts us in our mission to help alleviate the pastoral leadership deficit in churches around the world.”

One major issue that will impact Kingswood is the change to the process of admitting US students. Americans who want to study at evangelical schools in Canada will find it’s a bit more difficult than it was before.

“They’ve always been allowed to enter by a door that’s a little easier to pass through than a typical international student. Now they all have to come through the same door,” Lennox said. “A student two hours away in Calais, Maine, has to go through the same process that someone coming from Swaziland has to go through. And to me, that just doesn’t seem to make any sense.”

Some evangelical schools in Canada have seen problems with housing. The government concern about people having places to live is relevant to their context. But they were already figuring out solutions.

“Finding housing in Moncton can be a challenge,” said Darrell Nevers, marketing and communications manager at Crandall University, a school associated with the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. “However, our student network is strong; most students can find suitable housing before arrival or soon afterwards. We also work with community partners to help students find safe and affordable housing.”

Crandall, which is also in New Brunswick, typically recruits between 400 and 450 international students each year to the Moncton campus—just under 50 percent of overall enrollment. The largest numbers of students come from India, Nigeria, Colombia, Ghana, and Bangladesh. The majority are enrolled in graduate programs, however, which are exempt from the new restrictions for now.

That reduces the impact but doesn’t entirely eliminate it. Crandall is welcoming only 8–12 international undergraduate students this fall but 140 additional students are enrolled in graduate programs.

“While we are certainly concerned that these changes will impact our undergraduate student enrollment, we believe that our provincial government has been incredibly fair in how they have allocated numbers to New Brunswick schools,” Nevers said.

Faced with the new restrictions, some universities have chosen to pivot.

“We feel like the Lord has definitely closed a door for this season. We hope that it opens again, either with a change of government or just because they see there is a better way. But we also feel like, ‘Hey, the Lord wants us to exist. What other options are out there for us?’” said Lennox at Kingswood.

Currently, the school has plans to offer a one-year master’s in leadership starting in January 2025. Those students will be exempt from the new restriction, and Kingswood hopes to recruit enough of them to offset the losses in undergraduate enrollment. Since it’s a one-year program instead of a four-year program, however, they will have to recruit at a faster rate.

Providence has also taken steps to expand its graduate offerings. Anderson said it was incredibly difficult for faculty and staff to get a new program in place as quickly as they needed to, but it was essential to the future of the institution.

“It was just one of those things where you do or die, so to speak,” the president said. “We’re doing a lot of things to strengthen our work and our sustainability as an institution and what we offer to the kingdom of God, to the church, to our communities.”

New graduate programs will bring about 300 international students to Providence this fall. That alleviates immediate financial concerns, but school officials have a new awareness of how easily that could change. Recruiting more international students no longer seems like a key piece of a solid plan for sustainability.

“The international work was good in that it was helping buy time, essentially,” Anderson said. “Now, we’re going to have to dig a little deeper.”

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‘This Is the Day’ for Filipinos to Develop Their Own Worship Music

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

In a country known for loving Western praise music—Hillsong’s second-biggest market—a grassroots movement is singing new tunes.

Courtesy of Gloryfall

Arnel Cadeliña, a pastor and worship leader in Manila, remembers when his parents called their only “born again” relative for help. It was 1983, Cadeliña was 12, and his family was convinced that his teenage sister was possessed by a demon.

“He showed up with two guitars and two singers,” Cadeliña recalled. “Then he said, ‘Let’s not mind her, let’s mind the name above all names,’ and they led us in worship songs.”

Cadeliña remembers singing simple praise choruses like “This Is the Day” and praying. He says he witnessed two miracles that day: the deliverance of his sister and the conversion of his family.

“We didn’t know the Bible, we didn’t understand God, but he showed up in the power of our music, in the power of our worship.”

Contemporary praise and worship music from the United States, Australia, and the UK has been a part of Cadeliña’s faith journey since its beginning.

Like many Protestant Christians in the Philippines, he grew as a believer while singing songs from direct-to-consumer cassette tapes by Integrity’s Hosanna! Music in the ’80s and ’90s, passed along by missionaries and within grassroots networks of churches. (“This is the Day,” the song Cadeliña remembers singing, was administered and distributed by Integrity.)

With the influence of Western worship music, Filipino leaders like Cadeliña are trying to balance local music with popular hits coming from the US-dominated worship music industry.

Cadeliña now leads FIJ (Faith in Jesus) City Church in Manila with his wife, Jessica, the church’s worship leader. The church is an independent Protestant church, with an auditorium that looks a lot like one you would find at a nondenominational church in the US: mostly black, with a stage lit by intelligent LEDs, outfitted with a high-end sound system and band instruments.

The Cadeliñas are both musicians, writing and recording original songs for their church and leading training workshops for church musicians in their region. Arnel loves the Western praise and worship music that has shaped his faith, but is determined not to let it dictate the musical practices of his church. For each service, they try to program two songs in Tagalog and two songs in English (the two official languages of the Philippines).

“We’ve had weeks when a team lined up a bunch of songs by Hillsong and Planetshakers,” he said. “If we don’t make a decision to do local songs, we would be overwhelmed,” he continued, by the global options and influence.

Because Christianity came to the Philippines through colonization, the Filipino church has always been deeply influenced by Western culture. Today, the Philippines is second only to the US in its 17 percent share of Hillsong Worship’s global audience, according to Chartmetric (the US audience is 28%). And the Philippines is the primary audience of the Australian group Planetshakers (33% of its listenership).

In metro Manila, most Filipino churches that use contemporary music sing a blend of English and Tagalog on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, congregations sing a single song in both languages (with the verses in Tagalog and the chorus in English, for example) and hear preaching in a blend of the two languages, Taglish.

Worship leaders can rarely find official worship song translations in Tagalog (or in any of 150-plus other native languages spoken in the Philippines), so some local musicians are working to develop their own repertoire.

Gloryfall, a collective of worship leaders around Manila, has been working on translations of popular worship songs since the pandemic. They have received approval from original recording artists to produce translations of over 30 hit songs, including “King of Kings” and “Who You Say I Am” from Hillsong.

“We’ve gotten a lot of feedback from local Christians who say that it’s been really meaningful to have these songs in Tagalog,” said drummer Harald Huyssen, a former missionary kid and a faculty member at the University of Santo Tomas Conservatory of Music in Manila.

“Singing the last chorus of a song in Tagalog rallies the congregation,” said Chester Elmeda, Gloryfall’s keyboardist. “I always look forward to the end of ‘King of Kings,’ when everyone starts singing in my language. That’s the power of your own native tongue.”

Gloryfall records its own music and runs a studio for other local musicians to use. The group has seen a growing enthusiasm for grassroots music in Tagalog.

“It’s easier for Filipinos to access the doctrine and theology in our native tongue,” said Rye Pecardal, the group’s bassist.

The growth of the Philippine market for worship music has caught the attention of the global music industry. In 2021, Sony Music Philippines launched a new Christian label, Waterwalk Records. Gloryfall was one of the first bands to join.

“I appreciate that the industry sees the value of Filipino Christian music and that a major label is supporting this work,” said Huyssen. “Why wouldn’t there be a Christian label? It’s interesting that it took so long. Sony is a business, it sees the value.”

On a global scale, the exchange of music is still relatively one-sided.

“With the current state of the industry, it would be almost impossible to send music the other way,” said Huyssen. “The rest of the world aspires to the level of production coming out of Nashville, for better or worse. It’s not a level playing field.”

Many Filipino worship leaders and church musicians see questions of provenance as distracting or counterproductive, while acknowledging that the dominance of music from one segment of the global church falls short of “on earth as it is in heaven.”

“We have to begin with a kingdom mindset, as opposed to a hemispheric mindset,” said Elmeda. “The best themes always come from the Word of God. There’s no competition. ‘How Great Is Our God’ takes the ‘me’ out of it.”

When a song coming from the US doesn’t resonate, they don’t use it. Huyssen said certain Western songs that deal with trials and struggles don’t strike the right tone in English lyrics written by a famous American artist.

“An American’s material struggle does not exactly relate to a Filipino’s material struggle,” said Huyssen. “But the more vertical songs, like ‘How Great Is Our God’ or ‘10,000 Reasons,’ have a universal theme. God’s using these songs powerfully here.”

Filipino leaders are very plugged into the broader worship music industry, and there is a lot of variation in how church leaders are choosing to deal with questions of music selection, similar to the US.

“Sure, there are churches here that will ban songs by Bethel or Hillsong. People pay attention,” said Jessica Cadeliña. But at their church, decisions about a particular song are made based on the merits of that particular song. “It’s not about the group, it’s about Jesus.”

“You have a culture in each church,” said Arnel Cadeliña. “You have to tailor your music to your congregation and your musicians. We’d love to play music by Israel Houghton—he’s so good. But the music is so difficult to play!”

The Cadeliñas’ worship music ministry has grown since they started leading training sessions and workshops in 2003. They are known as “Malayang Pilipino” (“Free Filipino”). It’s the name of the title track of their first album, written in 1998 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of the Philippines’ liberation from Spain.

The name stuck, completely by accident. “Malayang Pilipino” has continued to resonate as the Cadeliñas, Gloryfall, and other leaders navigate music ministry, balancing the freedom to embrace or reject outside influences with a commitment to the celebration of Filipino identity in the church.

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Historic First Baptist Dallas Sanctuary Burns in Four-Alarm Fire

Baptist Press

The 134-year-old landmark, now a nearby secondary meeting space for the church, went up in flames in downtown Dallas.

Courtesy of First Baptist Dallas

The historic sanctuary at First Baptist Church Dallas burned Friday evening, July 19. The cause of the blaze is not yet known. The Victorian-style, red brick sanctuary building was erected 1890 and is a recognized Texas Historic Landmark.

According to media reports, Dallas Fire and Rescue received a call at 6:05 p.m., Friday evening regarding a building on fire in downtown Dallas.

Firefighters responded and within 15 minutes of the first call, a second alarm was requested. Then around 7:30 p.m., the scene was upgraded to a three-alarm fire. A fourth alarm was called in around 8:15 p.m. The Dallas Morning News reported that “more than 60 units were dispatched to respond to the structure fire.”

The church released a statement on X at 9:34 p.m. saying the primary fire was extinguished but firefighters were still working at the scene.

First Baptist Church Dallas has an indelible history within the Southern Baptist Convention having been pastored by former SBC presidents George W. Truett and W. A. Criswell. Currently led by Robert Jeffress, First Baptist Dallas reported a membership of nearly 16,000 in 2023.

The church currently worships in a state-of-the-art facility, which opened in 2013, adjacent to the historic sanctuary.

Jeffress posted on X Friday night asking for prayers for the church, saying, “We have experienced a fire in the Historic Sanctuary. To our knowledge, no one is hurt or injured, and we thank God for His protection. He is sovereign even in the most difficult times.”

The historic sanctuary was home to First Baptist Dallas’s contemporary service each week, called the Band-Led Service. There was a special VBS service scheduled for this Sunday, June 21. The church hosted its annual Vacation Bible School this week.

“We are grateful that no life has been lost that we know of even though we just had 2,000 children and volunteers on campus for Vacation Bible School earlier in the day,” Jeffress said in a statement to Baptist Press.

“As tragic as the loss of this old sanctuary is, we are grateful that the church is not bricks and wood but composed of over 16,000 people who are determined more than ever before to reach the world for the gospel of Christ.”

The church campus consists of multiple buildings across a six-block footprint in downtown Dallas. At this time, it is unknown if any other buildings were damaged in the fire.

According to a statement from the church, “The Historic Sanctuary was a significant landmark in Downtown Dallas. It was the site of visits from Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush. President Donald Trump visited the new worship center of the church in 2021.”

Jeffress, who has served as senior pastor since 2007, grew up at First Baptist Dallas and had been mentored by Criswell. The church stated that “he was baptized in the Historic Sanctuary at age 9, ordained there when he was 21, and holds many memories of the church.”

“We thank the Dallas Fire Department and Dallas Police Department for their quick action, courage, and ongoing aid,” Jeffress added.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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News

In Pennsylvania, Locals Remember Corey Comperatore’s ‘Greater Love’

Harvest Prude, with Megan Fowler in Sarver, Pennsylvania

Communities surrounding Trump’s rally site feel the shock of the tragic shooting.

Matt Slocum / AP

Corey Comperatore loved reading Romans.

His pastor at Cabot Methodist Church, Jonathan Fehl, recalled how much Comperatore drew strength from the book. It was the first thing he’d recommend to new believers.

But it may be that Comperatore is remembered by another portion of Scripture, John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Comperatore was the kind of church member who showed up every Sunday, took part in small groups, became a member of the congregation’s board of trustees, and helped with building projects. He was an Army veteran, volunteer firefighter, and proud “girl dad”—a guy who did everything with “a heart of service to the Lord,” Fehl wrote.

His final act of love and sacrifice came on Saturday, when he yelled, “Get down!” before diving in front of his wife and daughters to protect them from a bullet intended for former president Donald Trump.

The 50-year-old died on the scene from a gunshot wound to the head.

Comperatore was thrust into national news, the single fatality of a shooting that has left his community in Western Pennsylvania in grief, shock, and trauma.

“There’s just a lot of sadness,” Brandon Lenhart, senior pastor at North Main Street Church of God in Butler, told CT. “That somebody lost their life in the event, that that happened in the small town of Butler. It’s not a way we wanted to be put on the map, quite frankly.”

His church is on the other side of town from the Butler Farm Show, where Trump’s rally was held. It’s a conservative area—“you see pro-Trump signs everywhere,” Lenhart said—and people drove in from surrounding towns to cheer on the Republican candidate.

Comperatore and his family came from Sarver, just 16 miles southwest of the Farm Show. It’s small, with a population of 8,486, and was once just a tiny milling village. Its Wikipedia page lists only two notable figures: a pageant winner, and now, Comperatore.

The drive from Butler and Sarver winds through hilly farmland, a patchwork of corn, soy, and wheat fields, pastures filled with grazing livestock, and hay bales dotting the horizon. Many of its residents find work at nearby manufacturing facilities. Comperatore had been an engineer at a plastics plant.

At the Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, hundreds gathered on Wednesday for a vigil in remembrance of their friend and neighbor. Many were dressed in red, white, and blue. They sat on slippery bleachers around the racetrack, wet from an afternoon downpour, to hear pastors, friends, and firefighters pay tribute to “one of the best men” they knew.

Members of Sonrise Community Church, another congregation in Sarver, offered prayers and sang before the crowd of 300. They repeatedly referenced Corey’s “greater love” and how he was willing to lay down his life for others. As his daughter Allyson wrote in tribute, “He truly loved us enough to take a real bullet for us.”

“You’ve heard about who [Corey] is. … We’ve also heard the most important part, about whose he is,” said Fehl, Comperatore’s pastor. “He knew that he belonged to Jesus Christ. That’s the reason he lived a life of service the way he did. He was a witness to the grace of God at work in his life.”

The crowd bowed their heads for the Lord’s Prayer and then lifted glowing candles and iPhone flashlights while MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine” played over the speaker.

One attendee, Bonnie Waldenville, came to the vigil because her husband graduated from high school with Comperatore. “It really hurts here,” Waldenville pointed to her heart, “for his wife.”

Adam Salinas, a local chaplain and pastor in the Pittsburgh area, came to offer support. He has prayed several times with the staff of local nursing homes in the wake of the rally. “It has been very sad for our whole community,” he said.

A private funeral will be held for Comperatore on Friday at Cabot Church, followed by a procession of fire trucks.

At every church in the area, you find people who knew Comperatore, who were at the rally themselves, or who are still feeling the ache of the shooting and the scare of what could have been.

“Jesus, we are at a different place than we were 24 hours ago,” David Janz, pastor of Butler First Church, a Methodist congregation, prayed on the Sunday morning after the rally. “Violence is all around us, but it seems to have come home a lot more strong and evident because of what happened last night.”

He prayed for Trump, the Comperatore family, and the two other individuals, David Dutch and James Copenhaver, who had suffered injuries during the shooting. He also prayed for the family of the shooter.

“We pray for them. We pray for our community. It doesn’t feel as safe as it used to,” he said. “Help us, Lord, to take these moments to fix our eyes again on Jesus.”

When Lenhart and his wife, Saralee, who is worship pastor at North Main Street Church, heard about the shooting, they were having a rare date at an Italian restaurant in neighboring Zelienople. They knew members of their congregation had been at the rally.

But getting back to the flock wasn’t so easy. The area had morphed into a crime scene: Choppers scouted the air and law enforcement shuttered roads near the rally location and the hospital where they’d taken Trump. “It turned a 15-, 20-minute drive into a 45-minute drive to take all the alternate routes back into town,” Lenhart said. “It was a bit surreal.”

They made it to a house around a mile from the Butler Farm Show grounds.

One of their congregants had fled there with around 20 other rally goers who couldn’t make it home. She’d gotten a VIP ticket and had been in the stands behind Trump. Less than ten feet away, one row behind her and down the bench a little, had sat the Comperatores.

“Bullets were coming through that section of the stands. She’s pretty traumatized by what she saw,” said Lenhart, who prayed and spoke with them, also suggesting further resources of counseling and therapy.

The next day, he addressed his congregation before worship.

“It’s a traumatic event,” he told them. “So what do we do with all of this? We don’t react. We become proactive. And you know what the believer in Christ does when there’s a crisis? Can I show you?”

Lenhart dropped to his knees and clasped his hands in a posture of prayer. The church applauded.

“I wanted to make sure people understood our response is not social media, our response is not vitriol, picketing, protesting,” he said in an interview with CT. “As believers in Christ, our first response is always to seek the Lord.”

Nearby churches are rallying to help the community process and heal. On Saturday, North Main Street Church is hosting a free crisis response event with the Christian counseling agency it shares offices with. Christian Counseling Associates will speak to attendees about the shooting and the fallout, then break into small groups for discussion.

Last weekend, Lenhart had stayed up wondering whether to scrap his sermon. Instead, he shared some reflections and quoted from Ecclesiastes and the book that happened to be Comperatore’s favorite, Romans.

“Regardless of what side of the aisle you sit on, violence is never warranted. And I think we can agree, hopefully as the body of Christ, that this is not only an abhorrent thing that happened in our local community, it’s something that, as believers in Christ, we should never celebrate on one side or the other,” he said. “We are told in Romans chapter 12 that we are not to overcome evil with more evil, but to overcome evil with good.”

- More from Harvest Prude

Books

Your Party Will Not Win This Election

Russell Moore

And that’s a good thing—because how we think about victory is not only delusional but damaging.

Republican presidential candidate and former US president Donald Trump (L) looks at US president Joe Biden during the CNN Presidential Debate.

Andrew Harnik / Staff / Getty

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

With Election Day 2024 in sight, I can make one bold prediction: Your party is not going to win.

You might challenge me on this, saying, “But, RDM, you don’t know what party I, the reader, support.” That’s true—but I stand by my forecast. That’s because no matter what party wins the presidency, the Congress, or the state houses this November, no one is going to win.

I do not mean, of course, that one party or other won’t see its candidate in the Oval Office come January, or that we won’t see people being sworn in as members of Congress, senators, governors, and all the rest. That kind of winning will happen, as it always does. What I mean is that no one is going to win the way too many of us define winning in this strange era.

In his new book American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again, Yuval Levin points out a dangerous illusion of the present: the notion that after one decisive victory, whoever is “on the other side” will go away and will not need to be accommodated.

In truth, Levin argues, American life is pulled in two directions: toward what could be called “conservatism” in one direction and “progressivism” in the other. Those visions look different in different times—and, often, the two sides swap out on specific policy positions—but the basic tension is always there.

This is because, Levin writes, any group of human beings is going to have disagreements. A constitutional order doesn’t eradicate those disagreements but instead structures a careful balance between majority rule and minority rights.

Levin argues that one of the reasons—with some exceptions, of course—that local and state politics tend to be less toxic than national presidential elections is that, usually, those debates tend to be about issues more immediately recognized as practical—what roads get paved, what hospitals get funded—and thus “lend themselves better to bargaining and accommodation.”

At the national level, though, our candidates and our parties aren’t as much about specific issues as they are about tribal identity. Even when motivated by grievance and resentment, as national politics now are, the grievances and resentments are about far different things than, say, the issue of free silver in the William Jennings Bryan era or corporate monopolies in the Theodore Roosevelt era. What this leads to, Levin contends, is the current situation—in which presidential elections become about “political expression” rather than “civic action.”

When we peel down below issues of national scope, we often find that the fundamental problem is not that the “other side” isn’t going to accomplish what we want but that the other side exists at all. With that in mind, we can assume that this one election will put all that aside, and that those people, whoever they are, now permanently defeated and humiliated, will go away. But this is not true.

In his book Democracy and Solidarity, political scientist James Davison Hunter identifies this very dynamic as a culture logic that seeks not specific policy goals but something much bigger: recognition and status and identity.

When that isn’t achieved, we poison ourselves with fantasies that one day—maybe right now—we will finally enact revenge on those who have injured us by not conferring the status we believe we deserve. We want to find our own identity in the kind of “negative solidarity” that unites against a common oppressor. We start, then, to assume that every election is working toward a post-election reality where, as the old hymn puts it, “every foe is vanquished.”

In that kind of world, Hunter argues, in which the sense of status cannot ever be wholly fulfilled, the injury must be constantly emphasized. “Take away the injury, take away its cause, take away the revenge it seeks, and both meaning and identity for the aggrieved dissolve,” he writes.

If what we are seeking is not civic action but status, then outrage becomes authority. This quest for moral worth, status recognition, and self-esteem lends itself to precisely the kind of reality-television identity politics that we see right now.

This becomes a cycle. The more we expect of our politics to express who we are, the less we expect our politics to actually do. That kind of politics, after all, is going to result every time in what we’ve seen over the past 15 years: narrow majorities that teeter back and forth between the parties. Big goals—a New Deal, a Cold War victory, a moon landing—seem out of touch, so we replace those goals with what Hunter calls “millennialism.”

Millennialism is, of course, not a political doctrine but a theological one, rooted in the Book of Revelation’s language of a thousand-year reign of Christ and his people. From the very beginning, Christians have argued about what that means—is it a present reality in heaven or a future expectation after the reign of Christ, or something else? History shows that when those sorts of messianic expectations bubble up without the presence of the actual Messiah, they lead, at worst, to bloodshed—and, at best, to disillusionment and disappointment.

If Joe Biden (or whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be) wins, the Trumpists and whatever passes for the “right” these days will still be here. If Donald Trump is elected president, the “left” will still be around. Whatever your political views, you can’t have your millennium unless half the country is Raptured.

In his forthcoming book One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, CT news editor Daniel Silliman looks at the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon through the grid of Nixon’s lifelong quest for approval.

Nixon’s father, Silliman recounts, ran a general store in what used to be a church, hollowing out the steeple so he could sit and survey the store from there, yelling criticisms at his son to work harder, do better. Silliman demonstrates how Nixon sought security throughout his life in the approval of the voters who would send him to office, in Dwight Eisenhower as a father figure, and in his own triumph over the “elites” from Harvard and Yale who had looked down on him.

Silliman argues that the reason we even have the Watergate tapes is because of that drive for approval. Who, after all, would record the audio of every single moment in the White House? Silliman compares Nixon’s motivation to the old Jack Chick tracts, “This Was Your Life,” in which, before the judgment seat, the sinner sees his entire life replayed in front of everyone (this tract terrified me as a child).

“Nixon had a similar fantasy—a complete recording, everyone on tape from his time in the White House,” Silliman writes. “But in his version, he thought, he would not be condemned but justified.” With a record of his accomplishment as president, he could prove that he had done a good job, that he was worthy of existing, that he was a great man.

The tapes, of course, did the opposite. They showed him to be exactly what he feared people would think he was: crooked, dishonest, a failure—the first president in history to be forced to resign.

Nixon was driven by the wrong things. He expected too much, and public opinion could never love him back. Politics could never be a judgment seat that could justify his life. In this moment in history, we expect something very similar out of our politics: a vindication of who’s right and who’s wrong, a separation of the sheep from the goats, a final and definitive victory.

If that’s what we think winning is, none of us will win. We will just descend more and more into resentment and outrage. We will turn on those we counted on to give us what they never could, or we will seethe in our fantasies of “next time,” when we (this time for sure!) will get that ultimate win.

That’s not what winning is. Until we lose that expectation, we will keep losing—not just as a republic but as people whose lives are meant to be about much more than keeping score.

No one will win this election, ultimately. No one will lose this election, ultimately. Maybe we should ask whether we are seeking something where it can never be found, and ask ourselves whether we should be looking Somewhere else.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

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