Died: KODA, the Ghanaian Gospel Star Who Sang Hits Rebuking Pastors

The highlife musician challenged the materialism and extortion he encountered too often in the church.

Illustration by Christianity Today

Kofi Owusu Dua-Anto, a Ghanaian gospel musician who challenged church leaders with his catchy songs, died last month at the age of 45. Known professionally as KODA, the artist passed away suddenly on April 21 after a yet-undisclosed short illness.

KODA won awards for his vocal and musical finesse and production skills, but he used the platform his music offered him to speak out against the materialism and self-promotion he believed had overtaken his country’s church leaders.

“What is being preached from the pulpit? If it’s just the aesthetics of Christianity … the flashy things of how the man of God has visited 20 churches in the UK or the US and how he stood in T. D. Jakes’s church … if that’s the vision … then that’s what [Christians will] chase,” he said in 2021.

In 2013, KODA put these concerns to music when he released “Nsem Pii” (Many Issues).

“Fifteen ways to be successful, 13 ways to make much money, but the one way to make to heaven, preacher man, you don’t preach about it,” he sang in both Twi, a Ghanian local language, and English. “Listen, last Sunday I heard you preach; I must confess, I was confused, was that church or GIMPA?” (GIMPA or Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, is a prestigious public university in Ghana.)

The track surprised many in the local Christian community, one that traditionally practiced unquestioned reverence toward pastors and church leaders, and the gospel music industry, which generally only sang about God and commented little on culture.

KODA credited the Bible as his inspiration for his lyrics.

“I was reading the Acts of the Apostles from [chapters] 1 to 4 and realized some churches are veering off their godly activities,” he said. “As for the song, it is a great song and he who has ears should listen and listen carefully before judging.”

‘A Miracle’

KODA was born on December 15, 1978, in Takoradi, a city in western Ghana considered to be the home of highlife, a West African musical genre that mixes local sounds with pop, rock, hip-hop, and jazz. Raised in a Catholic home, he never forgot a visit he made at an early age to an Assemblies of God church, where he saw a musician playing a bass guitar.

“There was this old man that would pluck a string. … It was like, ‘What is the man playing?’” he said. “That is my first memory of being in church and being in love with music.”

It was a couple more years before KODA began playing music, an event he later referred to as a “miracle,” and one that occurred around age 10, when a new music teacher arrived at his church. When KODA told him that he wanted to play the guitar, the man told him that he wanted to pray for him.

“He put his hands on my head and said, ‘God, give this young man a double portion of what I carry,’” KODA said.

After receiving this blessing, which KODA believed came true in his life, his mother soon enrolled him in guitar lessons.

KODA’s musical education continued when he attended the prestigious all-boys’ Mfantsipim School in central Ghana as a teenager. There, he met future Ghanaian gospel singer Nii Okai, who offered the junior student musical opportunities and leadership positions—and something far more lasting.

In Okai, KODA saw someone who “you could tell God was with.”

“I said, ‘If I’ll get what this senior has, I want to give my life to Christ,’” he said.

After graduating from secondary school, KODA continued his education at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), one of Ghana’s leading universities. Despite the STEM focus of the school, KODA continued to seek out the arts, serving as his university’s choir director and as a music director and instrumentalist for a campus ministry and joining a jazz troupe.

‘Why can’t we care for each other?’

While in university, KODA joined Da Project, an acclaimed Ghanaian contemporary gospel group, and later won Male Vocalist of the Year from the Ghana Music Awards, the country’s equivalent to the Grammys. He later released several gospel jazz albums, produced instructional DVDs on lead and bass guitar, and collaborated with world-renowned Nigerian trumpeter Nathaniel Bassey.

Back in his home in Takoradi, KODA opened a state-of-the-art studio and wrote, produced, and played music that often became commercially successful. Though his songs often focused on Christians’ relationship with God or Christ’s victory over Satan, several interactions left him wondering if his music might be a good place to challenge the church.

At one point, a friend told KODA that he had resorted to alcohol because he was too poor to buy food, and he took food from public funerals he attended to give to his family. At another point, a woman from his church stopped KODA as he was leaving and told him she didn’t have money to buy food. KODA gave her the money he had.

“She bought just a sachet of water with some … short biscuits that they give you when you are on the plane,” he said. “It broke my heart. … Why can’t we care for each other like the way that the first church cared for each other?”

These experiences helped stir KODA to release “Nsem Pii,” his musical critique of pastors who made their congregants “the target for the next harvest.” “For how else can we buy the preacher’s dream car?” he sang, noting that many of those attending couldn’t even afford to eat three meals a day.

Three years later, KODA doubled down on this message by releasing “Adooso” (Too Much), writing this time about pastors extorting money from unsuspecting Christians seeking prayer. He later criticized church leaders for telling their congregations that they had to “sow a seed” (or financially contribute) before they could access deliverance.

“That almost sounds like extortion in the name of Jesus. Freely have we received; freely should we give,” he said, referencing Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:8.

Despite the sober messages, KODA’s songs found a wide audience.

“He told his message in a manner most musicians will not have the courage to, with an accompaniment of world-class tunes you just can’t resist,” wrote GhanaWeb.

Some dubbed KODA the “Preacher’s Preacher” after releasing songs with messages that “most preacher men have shuddered to mention from their pulpit in recent times,” wrote Harvest Praise Official.

“God gave me the gift of songwriting. … If I’m not careful, I can write a song without even praying because I studied songwriting,” KODA said. “So now, I’m careful what to write. I’m careful to wait till I hear before I write. … I’ve been so gifted; I need to be careful I don’t run ahead of the Holy Spirit.”

KODA is survived by his wife and fellow gospel singer, Ewurama Dua-Anto, and their three children.

- More from Akosua Frempong

Theology

Would Tim Keller Care If We Weren’t Still Talking About Him? Probably Not.

Benjamin Vrbicek

For all his greatness, we should most seek to imitate the late pastor’s humility and indifference to fame.

Tim Keller

Photography by Arianne Ramaker / Courtesy of Redeemer City to City

In spring of last year, many of us saw a photo of the late Timothy Keller sitting on a park bench. The photo was used on the cover of Collin Hansen’s biography of Keller, and it circulated around the internet in May when he passed away—on social media, blogs, and even Keller’s personal website.

What most of us didn’t see, however, was the banana peel lying on the bench only a couple feet from Keller. The peel has been cropped from most versions of the photo, and understandably so. Who wants to see an ugly brown bit of organic waste in an author’s photograph?

I confess that if I were a world-famous pastor and best-selling author having my picture taken by a professional photographer, I would most certainly have moved the banana peel before someone took my picture. Who wouldn’t? But Keller didn’t seem to care.

I believe this points to a deeper character trait of Keller’s, which many observed during his lifetime of ministry: an indifference to fame and to curating an image—something many of us struggle with in the social media era. This is also part of why, I believe, he finished his race so well.

Finishing well in life and ministry has been historically difficult for believers, especially for those in positions of leadership. Think of Gideon or Solomon in the Old Testament, Demas in the New Testament, or, of course, the many church leaders today who have infamously failed to persevere.

The esteem that leaders receive from the Christian community can allow for hidden flaws to grow like rust on the hull of a ship, unnoticed and unaddressed at first. But as these leaders reach greater influence, greater weight is placed on these flaws—which can reach dangerous levels of corrosion—and can often be enough to sink the whole ship of their character and legacy. Yet Keller’s neither corroded nor sank.

As Keller wrote in his best-selling booklet on self-forgetfulness, “Friends, wouldn’t you want to be a person who does not need honor—nor is afraid of it? Someone who does not lust for recognition—nor, on the other hand, is frightened to death of it?” As someone who seemed neither to lust for recognition nor to be frightened by it, this description seemed to fit Keller well.

Arianne Ramaker, who took the original image in Paris while photographing Keller for an article, wrote in our email correspondence, “Because the theme of the article was ‘being a Christian in the city’ and because I like documentary photography, I didn’t change anything about the environment. … To me, such a banana peel makes it real and unpolished, as life is.” She added, “I am … totally surprised that my photo has been used so much.” I think Keller probably felt the same surprise about the success of his own ministry.

In our day of fracturing alliances and shifting loyalties—particularly with respect to how Christians should best engage culture—it’s no surprise that a Christian leader like Keller, who often spoke about cultural engagement, had critics who wished he was stronger on one issue or another. Yet people rarely condemn his character, which remains generally acknowledged as inimitable.

“You won’t find leaders close to Keller who idolize him,” Collin Hansen writes in his biography. “But they do admire him for his character.”

When Jesus noticed how religious and political leaders in his own time often “chose the places of honor,” he told a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast,” he said, “do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited. … But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place.” He added, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:7–11, ESV).

Francis Schaeffer comments on this parable in his famous sermon “No Little People, No Little Places.” He writes,

Jesus commands Christians to seek consciously the lowest room. All of us—pastors, teachers, professional religious workers and non-professional included—are tempted to say, “I will take the larger place, because it will give me more influence for Jesus Christ.” Both individual Christians and Christian organizations fall prey to the temptation of rationalizing this way as we build bigger and bigger empires.

The rationale that bigger is always better, Schaeffer argued, was taking Jesus’ words backward. “We should consciously take the lowest place,” he said, “unless the Lord himself extrudes us into a greater one.” This idea of “extruding” comes from manufacturing: “Picture a huge press jamming soft metal at high pressure through a die so that the metal comes out in a certain shape,” Schaeffer said. “This is the way of the Christian: He should choose the lesser place until God extrudes him into a position of more responsibility and authority.”

This was Keller’s way. Although he stood well over two feet taller than Frodo Baggins, the beloved character in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy—books he never stopped reading—Keller remained just as unlikely and unassuming of a character on an important quest. No one who starts his first pastorate with a rural church of just 90 people in Hopewell, Virginia, could be expected to become a household name among confessing evangelicals only a few decades later.

Even when Keller moved to Manhattan in 1989 to start Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Collin Hansen notes, “he deliberately avoided publicizing the church, especially to other Christians.” Why? Because “he wanted to meet skeptics of religion in the Upper East Side more than he wanted to sell books in Nashville.”

I’ve never been to Nashville, but in the same way I would have moved the banana peel, I confess my heart too often feels more excited to sell books in Nashville than to love the people God has placed around me. These temptations with ministry ego go back some time. Unchecked, I’m more of a Boromir than a Baggins.

Tim Keller sitting next to a banana peel.

When I interviewed for my current ministry role, I remember standing in the basement, chatting with the pastoral search team. It would be an understatement to say the kitchen looked more dated than I would have preferred. Ditto for the whole building. And the neighborhood hadn’t aged well either. For context, I was leaving a large church with a brand-new building in a growing part of the city. That church kitchen had a giant stainless-steel commercial dishwasher. I didn’t know how to use it, but it sure looked cool.

To use Schaeffer’s word, when I came to our church, I felt the Lord extruding me—but downward, not upward.

Over ten years have passed since then, and I’m still here. I’m not famous, and I doubt I’ve sold many books in Nashville because I haven’t sold many books anywhere. But I can testify in a hundred ways to the kindness of God. In the words of Jesus, our church has experienced good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, in our lap (Luke 6:38). The temptation to seek great things still lingers, but I continue to learn that the way of life is found in dying to our sin.

In Keller’s last video message to his church before passing away, he spoke to this, reflecting on Jeremiah 45, a lesser-known passage about a scribe named Baruch who, evidently, began to think too highly of himself. “Do you seek great things for yourself?” God asks rhetorically. “Seek them not” (v. 5).

Keller used quoted his passage as he told his church, “Ministers very often come to New York to make a name for themselves.” After living 34 years in the city, I’m sure this was not a hypothetical scenario for him. He continued, “Ministers, don’t make your ministry success your identity. … Hallowed be Thy name. Forget yourself, forget your reputation.”

This advice came from someone who had a stellar reputation—as a pastor, theologian, evangelist, and author. And I’m thankful that God extruded Keller to a place of prominence. I’m thankful for the church-planting empire that the Lord built through him and for the many resources he’s published that continue to help people like me and churches like mine today. But had Keller not finished well the race marked out for him (Heb. 12:1), none of that would have mattered.

Which is why I’m most thankful for the reminder left by Keller’s legacy—one that so many church leaders need today—that humility and self-forgetfulness are godly virtues that ensure the impact of our ministry far outlasts our lives.

Benjamin Vrbicek is the lead pastor at Community Evangelical Free Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the managing editor for Gospel-Centered Discipleship, and the author of several books.

Books

Review

Pascal Is More Than His Most Famous Argument

Gregory E. Ganssle

The wager only scratches the surface of his relevance to a post-Christian era.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

It is a common lament that we live in a post-Christian era. This fact raises challenges to our witness to the world. Most of our audience thinks that, in G. K. Chesterton’s words, Christianity has been tried and found wanting (rather than found wanting and left untried). It is not considered a live option. How do we bear witness well in this cultural context? We might do well to reconsider one of the most enigmatic thinkers in Christian history, Blaise Pascal.

Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal

Douglas Groothuis (Author)

224 pages

$19.63

Pascal suffers from a public relations problem. As the source of Pascal’s wager, he is often considered a gambling man. He urges the non-believer to bet that God exists. What does one have to lose? In Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal, philosopher Douglas Groothuis shows that there is more to Pascal’s life and thought than his most famous argument. Groothuis demonstrates that we have much to learn from this brilliant thinker. Pascal, he argues, is a crucial thinker for our time.

Essential writings

Pascal came on the scene in the 17th century, during the early years of the Scientific Revolution. Several of his works contributed to this movement, including treatises on the geometry of conic sections, theories of probability, and conclusions to extensive experiments he had done to test the possibility of a vacuum. He invented the first functional calculator, which he had built to help his father with his work of assessing taxes.

His best-known works, however, focus on Christianity. In the Provincial Letters, Pascal defends the Jansenist movement, which was condemned by the Catholic church, against the Jesuits. The Jansenists emphasized that the depth of human sinfulness required a work of God for our salvation. The Christian life required sincere faith and obedience. His commitment to the Jansenists reveals the depth of his devotion to Christ.

The Pensées consisted in notes that were left unpublished at Pascal’s death. He was aiming to write a book on the defense of Christianity. These fragments include his criticisms of natural theology, reflections on other religions, insights about the condition of the human soul, and his famous wager.

Groothuis unpacks the breadth of Pascal’s work in 13 chapters. He adds a conclusion and an appendix with a delightful fictional dialogue between Pascal and Descartes (often credited as the father of modern philosophy) that takes place as they meet in heaven.

As one would expect, Groothuis devotes a chapter to Pascal’s wager. He places the wager in the context of Pascal’s broader project and answers a variety of objections. He also devotes chapters to Pascal’s thoughts on Judaism and Islam, political and social matters, and skepticism of faith. Central to Pascal’s thought, and to this book, is the “excellence of Christ.” Although this phrase is the title of chapter 10, the theme permeates the entire book. Groothuis has provided an excellent introduction to Pascal the man, his world and thought, and his importance for today.

Three kinds of knowing

Three themes in Groothuis’s presentation are worthy of specific mention. The first is the “three orders of being and knowing.” Each of these orders concerns what we can know and how. Pascal agreed with Descartes that the mind is distinct from the body. While Descartes thought that all knowing was due ultimately to the mind, Pascal held that we know physical things through the senses, and the senses are physical capacities. Thus, the body is the first order.

The second, the order of the mind, “concerns rational principles and calculations,” writes Groothuis. This order focuses on rational calculation that is often expressed in deductive arguments. The third order is that of the heart. There are things that cannot be grasped by reason and senses alone. According to one of Pascal’s better-known sayings, which comes from the Pensées, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

The order of the heart is not opposed to reason or experience. It is a reliable path to knowledge. It is in this way that we know the first principles of things like arithmetic, space, and time. In addition, it aids our knowledge of God. Groothuis makes clear that the apologetical method of Pascal involves each of the orders of existence. Reason, experience, and the heart all have roles to play in displaying the compelling nature of the gospel.

The three orders lead to a second theme that the book develops well: Pascal’s criticisms of natural theology. This branch of theology involves attempting to establish the existence of God through rational arguments. Most such arguments begin with observations from the world around us.

Pascal rejected this project for a variety of reasons. First, the conclusions of the very best arguments in natural theology leave one far from the kind of knowledge that brings saving faith. The God of the philosophers turns out to be something less than the God revealed in Scripture. In a poem sewn into the lining of his jacket and found after his death, Pascal wrote, “‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob,’ not of the philosophers and scholars.”

Another concern with natural theology is that the knowledge it produces may also produce pride. In Groothuis’s words, even a successful theistic argument could “lead one to think that a sufficient knowledge of God is available apart from the work of the mediator.” It is a dangerous thing to try to reach God on our own terms without an awareness of our need for repentance and forgiveness.

Pascal’s rejection of natural theology leads to a third major theme in Beyond the Wager. Pascal’s own apologetic method focused largely on what Groothuis calls “the anthropological argument.” This argument highlights the plight of human beings. We are both wonderful and wretched. We are, to cite one of Groothuis’s chapter titles, “deposed royalty.”

The state of humanity is one of paradox. Even a quick skim through the Pensées shows Pascal juxtaposing our exalted status as divine image bearers and our miserable condition as fallen rebels. This paradox cries out for an explanation. Only the Christian story, with its beginnings in Creation and the Fall, has the resources to make sense of the human condition. Only the work of Christ in the Incarnation and Atonement can rescue human beings from this predicament. Once a person embraces her own condition, she is ripe to experience her need for a savior.

Throughout the Pensées, one finds passages reflecting on the futility of life. Some commentators have taken these passages to indicate that Pascal was actually a kind of a skeptical existentialist. Groothuis argues, wisely in my view, that Pascal was developing dialogues for his apologetic work. These passages, then, were likely being prepared to issue from the mouth of a skeptic. Apart from the saving work of Christ, the human condition is one of futility.

A thinker for our time

Groothuis is not afraid to part ways with Pascal along the way. One area of disagreement is with Pascal’s wholesale rejection of natural theology. I agree with Groothuis that there is a place for the use of traditional arguments for God’s existence. I also agree that Pascal teaches us that there is much more to our defense of the gospel than establishing the fact that God is real.

Pascal is a thinker for our time. A new horizon in apologetics is emerging that reflects the distinctives of Pascal’s own methodology. This horizon begins with the human condition. It aims to raise questions about the place of goodness, truth, and beauty in human life and to point to the Christian story as the most compelling answer. This approach takes up Pascal’s notion that the heart, too, has its reasons.

Beyond the Wager is simply an excellent book. It is a well-written, compelling introduction to an outstanding, but often overlooked, thinker.

Gregory E. Ganssle is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology. He is the author of Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspiration.

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Culture

‘Young Sheldon’ Is Ending. So Is Its Idea of Science Versus Religion.

Joseph Holmes

For seven seasons, the show has offered a clichéd (and nostalgic) vision of how atheists and believers relate to each other.

Pictured (L-R): Iain Armitage as Sheldon Cooper and Zoe Perry as Mary Cooper.

My mom was the one who told me to watch The Big Bang Theory. It was a show about nerds—and I was a nerd. She thought I’d enjoy it. A friend had already mentioned that the main character, Sheldon Cooper, was “exactly like” me. After I watched the show, at Mom’s encouragement, I joked that I had mixed feelings about the comparison.

The Big Bang Theory was extremely popular and not just with my mom; at its height, it averaged 20 million viewers a night. But it never really resonated with actual dweebs. Its audience was largely Gen X women—not people who were Sheldon but people who “knew a Sheldon,” not the geeks themselves but their mothers and friends.

It’s fitting, then, that the even-more-popular Big Bang spinoff would be Young Sheldon, a prequel about the title character’s childhood in East Texas—and that Sheldon’s relationship with his mom, Mary, would be at the heart of the show. Young Sheldon sits at the top of the prime-time rankings; one recent week, the show (which streams on Netflix, Max, and Paramount+) topped all streamed content across US household televisions.

As Young Sheldon comes to an end (its series finale airs May 16; a spinoff starring two breakout characters—Georgie and Mandy—has already been announced), so too does the onscreen dynamic between Sheldon and Mary. So too does a nostalgic vision for how the “science vs. religion” debate plays out in our families.

Mary is Sheldon’s opposite in nearly every way. He’s a logical atheist physicist with no people skills; Mary is a warm, folksy conservative Christian. In many ways, she serves as an audience surrogate. (For what it’s worth, Mary was my mom’s favorite character on TBBT; she stopped watching when she felt like the writers disrespected her faith by making her violate her Christian sexual ethics.)

Brainy Sheldon loves comic books and doesn’t believe in God; his working-class family includes not only his deeply religious mom but also a football-coach dad, an eye-rolling sister, and a charmingly slow-witted brother. They don’t understand Sheldon; he doesn’t understand them. Therein lies the fun. Like many sitcoms, Young Sheldon makes comedy out of clichés. Jokes abound about how emotional and unreasonable women are, how lazy and dumb men are, how annoying kids are, and how out-of-touch parents are.

The portrayal of Mary’s faith is just as stereotypical, if lighthearted. In season 7, she attempts to secretly baptize her granddaughter at her Baptist church out of fear her daughter-in-law Mandy’s mother will make her a Catholic first. She temporarily gets duped into giving money to a televangelist. She pushes her son and daughter-in-law, who are “living in sin,” to get married.

These scenes are played for laughs. But Mary’s faith is also an obvious sticking point in her relationship with Sheldon. In season 7, episode 1, when Sheldon asks whether everyone in the family is okay after a natural disaster, Mary says, “Thank God, yes.” “You’re thanking the Deity who sent the tornado?” quips Sheldon. “I’m not in the mood for this!” she retorts.

“I don’t need to seek help from an invisible man,” her son says in episode 4, rejecting Mary’s offer to pray for him. “You’re right. You’ve got your invisible strings,” she replies.

Young Sheldon’s portrait of the Christian-atheist divide conforms to old clichés about these two groups. We still associate religion with less education and secularism with more education; faith with emotion and atheism with logic; faith with women and atheism with men. Religious people are backward and narrow-minded, though wholesome and grounded. Atheists are smarter and arrogant. We laugh at Sheldon’s mom—how silly she is to care so much about which church a baby is baptized in! But we also cheer for Sheldon’s humiliation; he constantly brags about how much smarter he is than the rest of his family, and that’s annoying.

Some of these clichés are partially grounded in reality—at least, they used to be. More women than men have long been dedicated churchgoers. Post-Enlightenment, intellectual life in the West has been largely synonymous with secularism and science, while religion has been the domain of the non-college-educated working class.

But today, these demographic realities are flipping. Gen Z is the first generation in ages where men outnumber women as regular churchgoers. Statistics show that the higher education you have, the more likely you are to be religious.

Young Sheldon’s portrayal of the atheist vs. Christian divide might be familiar, understandable, even funny—but it’s no longer entirely accurate.

Today, someone like Sheldon might have more in common with his mom than not. Like many young men, he might listen to Jordan Peterson; he might agree that Christianity is at least metaphorically true, if not literally accurate. He might appreciate how Christians stand up against various strands of “woke” ideology, which is increasingly rejected by young men and their married mothers alike.

As Young Sheldon comes to a close, Sheldon and Mary haven’t reconciled their disagreements. But they have learned to appreciate each other. Sheldon recognizes that his mother’s love has given him what he needs to thrive; he’ll miss her when he leaves for Caltech. Mary acknowledges her son’s brilliance; she knows that he needs to leave to access greater opportunities than she or his family can provide. They don’t understand each other. But they love each other. (Loving despite differences also defines Sheldon’s relationship with his father, George, whose shocking death in the pre–series finale changes how Sheldon thinks of the family patriarch.)

The sitcom trope of an atheist young man and Christian older woman might be outdated in a few generations. But the vision of a family amicably “agreeing to disagree” is already old-school. For all the Sheldons aligning with their conservative Marys, there are plenty more parents and children experiencing estrangement over political, theological, and cultural debates.

“I’ll go [to church] with you, Mom,” Sheldon says in an earlier season. His sister replies, “Why are you going? You don’t believe in God.” “Nope,” Sheldon agrees. “But I believe in Mom.” “I’ll take it,” Mary says.

Can we imagine a similar scene playing out today?

Christians and atheists, men and women, older and younger generations—Young Sheldon doesn’t take these conflicts too seriously, or at least, it sees them as less important than love. No wonder the show’s been so successful; since 2017, it’s provided relief from the rancor of a particularly angry time in American life. Grace may be unpopular at the level of today’s culture wars. But for seven seasons, audiences have found it worth watching.

Joseph Holmes is a Christian culture critic and host of the weekly podcast The Overthinkers.

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Theology

In the Beginning, Did God Make ‘Sky Father’ and ‘Earth Mother’?

William Chong in Auckland, New Zealand

Māori Christians in New Zealand bristle at newly translated portions of the Bible that use the names of local deities.

Fiordland National Park, New Zealand

Jade Stephens / Unsplash

Last year, Bible Society New Zealand (BSNZ) released a 109-page booklet with 10 Bible passages published in a contemporary Māori translation for the first time. The version used the names of atua Māori, or Māori gods and deities, in place of words like heaven, earth, land, and sea. Genesis 1:1, for example, says that in the beginning, God made Rangi-nui (Sky Father) and Papatūānuku (Earth Mother) instead of rangi and whenua respectively.

The changes, meant to appeal to younger Māori, stirred debate. While some readers praised the changes (“The terms are more relatable,” wrote one respondent in a BSNZ survey), many, including Māori theologians and church leaders, decried the use of atua Māori in the Scriptures as “twisted” and “blasphemous.”

The aim of publishing He Tīmatanga (A Beginning) was not to present a final translation but to offer a draft for feedback, said Clare Knowles, translation coordinator at BSNZ. Publishing these passages was part of an effort that began in 2008 to “retranslate the entire Bible into Māori [in] today’s language.”

While Māori speakers in New Zealand have a Bible translation in their language, it was last revised in 1952. The most recent edition in 2012 mainly focused on reformatting the text with updated paragraphs, spelling, and punctuation, but the content has largely remained the same since missionaries first translated the Bible into Māori in the 19th century.

“Imagine if the only English translation we had was the King James Version. … This is a bit like the situation with Te Paipera Tapu, the Māori Bible,” Knowles wrote in an article promoting He Tīmatanga.

In New Zealand, about 8 percent of the population speak Māori, which has made a resurgence as more students attend full-immersion Māori language schools. At the same time, the percentage of Christians among the Māori between 2006 and 2018 dropped from 46 percent to 30 percent, which some attribute to the legacy of colonialism (see sidebar). As Māori language and culture have become more infused with daily life, more young people have started using atua Māori to describe the natural world.

These changes reveal the need for a fresh translation of God’s Word, said Matua Hakiaha, who served on the translation committee of the 2012 reformatted edition of the Māori Bible.

But, he added, “we’ve got to get it right.”

Concerns of syncretism

Christianity was formally introduced to the Māori people in New Zealand in 1814 by Samuel Marsden, an Anglican minister who traveled from Sydney at the invitation of the Māori leader Ruatara. Before the establishment of a mission in Ruatara’s home village of Rangihoua, Māori beliefs centered around a pantheon of gods and spiritual forces. As Māori embraced Christianity in large numbers, they moved away from a complex spiritual and social world mediated by tohunga (priests) and tikanga (customs).

Jay Mātenga, executive director of the World Evangelical Alliance’s Mission Commission, noted that the earliest Māori Christians saw atua Māori not as mere symbolism but as gods who had real power. “So reviving knowledge of spiritual deities flippantly, without the means to navigate the relationship as the tohunga did, is spiritually ignorant and risky,” he said.

For several months after He Tīmatanga’s release, BSNZ encouraged Christians to read the booklet—which includes Genesis 1–11, Ruth, 1 Samuel, Amos, Jonah, Acts 1–11, Philippians, and 1–3 John—and to complete an online survey to share their feedback.

The questions asked readers whether they preferred individual translators using their regional dialects, how best to render the divine name YHWH, and if readers preferred a “word for word” (formal equivalent) or “thought for thought” (dynamic equivalent) translation. The vast majority of feedback centered around the appropriateness of using atua Māori in place of natural features in several passages in Genesis.

Hakiaha was “mortified” when he read Genesis 1–2 in He Tīmatanga.

“Here was the Word of God based on Hebrew culture, and here we are dragging Māori words into the Hebrew and Greek worlds,” he said. “No, no, no! You’re tampering, interfering with their worldviews!”

Author and historian Keith Newman, who moderated several online debates on his Facebook page regarding He Tīmatanga, shared similar concerns. He said that although “Māori creation legends and atua Māori can stand on their own for individual comparison and metaphorical unpacking, [they] should never be included as if they are the same thing.” Otherwise, it would leave readers with “a recipe for confusion.”

Debates about He Tīmatanga also took place in formal gatherings. In June 2023, Māori Christians took part in a hui (a meeting conducted with Māori customs) in Rangiotū to discuss the translation. Six months later, the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Biblical Studies devoted a full day of its annual conference to discussing the contents and issues raised by He Tīmatanga, with proceedings to be published in a special issue of Religions journal. (Note: The author was present as a contributor.)

Te Waaka Melbourne, the translator responsible for Genesis 1–11 in He Tīmatanga, explained to CT his choice of words: “All I’m saying [in the translation] is how I think Māori see it. Rangi[-nui] is the name given to the sky. The earth is Papatūānuku. I cannot see why we shouldn’t use this terminology. It’s very common with the kids and the kōhanga reo generation,” or children raised in full-immersion Māori schools.

In a BSNZ written statement, Knowles emphasized that the translations in He Tīmatanga were offered “in a spirit of generosity, recognising the need for a new Māori translation that speaks to younger generations.”

At the same time, she noted that translators were not employees of BSNZ and did not necessarily represent their views. On whether or not a future translation would include atua Māori in Genesis, Knowles told CT that BSNZ “wouldn’t want to dilute the interpretation of [the] Scriptures.” She acknowledged that, as with projects into other languages, final decisions regarding translations are best left to Māori Christians.

Revitalizing the Māori language

The spirited discussions around He Tīmatanga have occurred amid wider societal shifts in attitudes regarding Indigenous language and culture in New Zealand.

“Like cultures, every language is dynamic,” said Mātenga. “From the 1970s, te reo [the Māori language] has undergone what is perhaps one of the most successful language revitalization processes in the world.”

While in previous generations the use of Māori was banned in schools, a growing number of children are now being raised and educated in full-immersion Māori language environments. National survey results in 2021 found that the number of New Zealanders improving at using Māori in day-to-day conversations continues to grow.

In 2024, Christians established Te Wānanga Ihorangi , a language school to equip the church to better express its beliefs in the Māori language. The school is also working with BSNZ to create the first Māori audio Bible.

This revitalization has led to significant shifts in the Māori language, with thousands of new words officially documented since the 1980s. It has also caused an increased emphasis on Māori spirituality. While this has historically included the use of Christian prayers, in recent years, Māori have been increasingly drawn toward the use of pre-Christian Māori folklore.

For instance, in 2022, when the New Zealand government made Matariki a public holiday to celebrate the Māori New Year, official resources outlined ceremonies that involved honoring the deceased and presenting food offerings to the stars in the Pleiades star cluster.

It is in this changing culture that Christians in New Zealand are searching for ways to engage Māori speakers with the Bible. Wayne te Kaawa, a Māori theologian from the University of Otago and part of the wider reference group for BSNZ, noted that many younger Māori in his theology classes favored bringing atua Māori into the Bible as it validated their identity and worldview.

“Essentially, [Genesis 1–2] is a Middle Eastern creation story,” he said. “We didn't want to try and match the two stories. We just wanted them to come into conversation with each other.”

Hakiaha, who grew up in a community fully immersed in Māori language and culture, noted that as his children and grandchildren learn Māori in school, he is concerned that their teachers are “teaching Māori gods to them.” Unlike the older generation, “our young Māori are saying there’s no place for Christianity.” Thus, the need for a new Bible translation.

Strategies to gather translation feedback

To produce the translations in He Tīmatanga, members of the translation committee were assigned different texts to translate, followed by a peer review process. For example, for Genesis 1–11, Melbourne worked primarily from English translations, with other committee members with linguistic and biblical language skills giving feedback.

Some committee members objected to including atua Māori, but they all agreed to present the issue to the public for discussion. Knowles expressed confidence in how the translation was handled, yet in hindsight wonders if laying out He Tīmatanga more like a draft could have better communicated that this was a work in progress. “When you publish something [in print], it looks final, [but] if it was just published online, people wouldn’t make that assumption.”

As an outside observer, Mātenga was less convinced that releasing He Tīmatanga was the most effective way to gather helpful feedback. “The mechanism used has not generated much two-way dialogue,” he said. “The conversations … have been quite reactionary.”

Instead, a more time-intensive yet culturally appropriate strategy would have been to host in-person forums with respected Māori language and cultural experts to discuss the proposals. Knowles noted that in future efforts, BSNZ would aim to consult and engage with Māori in face-to-face meetings.

“There is a boundary where contextualization becomes syncretism,” Mātenga said. “Translators must walk that line very carefully, honoring the original text.”

Finding the right translators

Hakiaha noted that most Māori Christians agree the project still needed to happen. “There’s definitely a need for an updated version … [but] the group who steers this needs to be broader and bigger.” He suggested future translation committees include not only academics and theologians but also Christians and non-Christians who are fluent in Māori language and culture.

Clare Knowles, translations coordinator at Bible Society of New Zealand

Knowles acknowledged some of the challenges ahead for the Māori Bible translation project. The pool of Christians who are fluent in both Māori and biblical languages is extremely small.

In addition, those with time to join the committee are often retired and outside the target audience of young adults. In contrast, Knowles observed that younger Māori proficient in their native language often disqualify themselves out of reverence for their elders.

Currently, BSNZ is in ongoing discussions with Don Tamihere, archbishop of the Māori Anglican church who previously chaired the translation committee, in hopes of establishing an interdenominational translation group that can move forward with translating the whole Bible. Knowles is hopeful there will be a committee by the end of the year so that BSNZ can fall into the support role. “We want Māori to take the lead,” she said.

For future generations of Māori, Hakiaha hopes the Bible will be made accessible and acceptable “from the cradle to the grave.” This will require more than just a new Bible translation but concordances and dictionaries, as well as Bible literacy and engagement efforts. He sees Māori as having a positive role in leading the way for other Indigenous peoples around the world to revive their language and culture.

Yet when translating God’s Word, Hakiaha calls for Christians to remember: “Waiho te ao Māori ki te ao Māori; waiho te ao Karaitiana ki te ao Karaitiana. Leave the Māori world to the Māori world; leave the Christian world to the Christian world.”

Is the Māori Bible complicit with colonialism?

The Bible is not always perceived positively among contemporary Māori. Academic Ranginui Walker described Christianity as “total colonisation” and a “cultural invasion,” with the Māori Bible used to pave the way.

Hatred over government land seizures even contributed to the rejection of the Bible Society’s 1887 revised edition of the Māori Bible, as Māori Christians declared: “Take your bibles away. They do not contain God’s word, for the Ministers and pakehas [European settlers] and the Government have altered that Bible and added words of their own to it; but the old Book contains only God’s words and we want that.”

For Jay Mātenga, however, this anti-Christian narrative is only partially right. Before the large-scale colonial settlement that arrived after the establishment of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, New Zealand’s founding document, pre-settlement missionary work among Māori was largely positive. Earlier missionaries were respectful of the Māori language and sought to learn it to spread the message of the Bible. Rather, it was the influence of later settler Christianity that dominated the New Zealand church. Mātenga argues that this latter form of Christianity “suffocated Indigenous theology and practice … judging it as errant.”

Hirini Kaa, a Māori Anglican minister and historian, agrees that the first Māori who engaged with the 1868 publication of the Māori Bible experienced freedom rather than oppression. “Māori saw stories of oppression and liberation, of an intensely spiritual world,” he wrote in an article. “To get this story across, the missionaries were forced to cross into our world, choosing language that would resonate with us and speak to our hearts as much as to our heads.”

- More from William Chong in Auckland, New Zealand

Books

Review

Can You Serve Christ and Confucius?

Geethanjali Tupps

Asian Christians must navigate ethical dilemmas in everyday life. This recent book can help.

Confucius (left) and Christ (Right)

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

There are rules to follow in every culture, particularly in Asia, where many children must bear the responsibility of maintaining harmony within the home and familial structure. To deviate from the norms or traditions of any Asian society requires a bold willingness to try to demonstrate to one’s fellow citizens what is and is not working in their culture. As a Christian living or ministering in an Asian context, how can one manage these complex situations?

Asian Christian Ethics: Evangelical Perspectives (Foundations in Asian Christian Thought)

Aldrin M Peñamora (Editor), Bernard K Wong (Editor)

378 pages

$30.70

The contributors to Asian Christian Ethics, an anthology published in 2022, grapple with the challenges Asian Christians face in their particular social contexts, often characterized by strictly defined societal ranking and hierarchy, religious violence against Christians, or suffering among marginalized groups. The theologians, pastors, and missiologists who authored this volume come from the Philippines, Malaysia, China/Hong Kong, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Korea, plus one perspective from Palestine. The writers, many of whom studied in the West and are familiar with Western ways of thinking, provide valuable insight into Asian mindsets.

Each chapter begins by examining what Scripture teaches on a particular social issue. Then the writers draw on their expertise to address the ethical challenges surrounding that issue within a specific cultural context.

Marriage and divorce

In “Water Is Thicker Than Blood,” Bernard Wong offers insights on the changing views of traditional marriage. He notes that divorce has become more prevalent in Asian society (though not yet as normalized as in Western cultures) and that young adults are waiting longer to get married, with over 90 percent of 20-to-24-year-olds still single in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore.

While Wong shows how Scripture forbids divorce, he notes that Asian Christians still get divorced and argues that the church should approach this subject with grace, not purely with condemnation. Wong is sympathetic toward the push by Christian missionaries for greater gender equality but also observes that it can sometimes put more strain on the bonds of marriage, as evidenced by a higher divorce rate. Asian Christians still tend to observe a subtle but deeply ingrained patriarchal hierarchy that has historically been present in their societies; however, young people are no longer following the traditional script regarding marriage. Wong urges the church to resist reverting to a patriarchal form of marriage and focus instead on a moral vision for the family while also upholding biblical values—which are largely consistent with Confucian ideals.

In Taiwan, the only Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage, the church must seek to understand and reconcile the differences between how Christians and the surrounding culture view marriage and the church. Shang-Jen Chen’s essay “Homosexuality in Twenty-First Century Asia” explores the nature of Scripture in light of homosexual behavior and interprets how Taiwan evolved toward approving same-sex marriage. Chen discusses related social factors such as a declining birth rate, young people’s tendency to stay single longer, changes in sex education methods, and the effects of marriage laws and equal rights for minorities on Taiwanese society.

While Chen acknowledges there is no easy solution, he encourages the church in Taiwan to strengthen its internal unity, show deeper compassion and love to those with same-sex attraction, and move forward with discernment in a society that is rapidly changing its views on marriage. One major challenge is that many pastors lack understanding of the LGBTQ+ movement. Therefore, they focus on communicating with like-minded Christians and not necessarily on expressing themselves in a manner that demonstrates sensitivity to the LGBTQ+ community.

Filial piety

Anyone seeking to do ministry in Asia must also understand the importance of filial piety, highlighted in a chapter titled “Honor Your Father and Your Mother” by ShinHyung Seong. As Seong explains, obedience and filial obligation go hand in hand with Confucian teaching, which emphasizes subservient and dutiful relationships between children and parents, spouses, and family members. This approach to filial piety, which parallels the message of the Fifth Commandment, facilitates an orderly and harmonious society—something that is highly valued throughout Asia.

As they learned about Confucian thought, missionaries to China, including Matteo Ricci and William Carey, strove to contextualize the Christian message. Whereas Ricci viewed Confucian values such as honoring parents as aligned with Christianity, Seong points out the ethical dilemma between them: Confucianism endorses ancestral worship, in which parents or relatives are revered like gods, which is not compatible with Christian discipleship. However, Seong affirms that in the Old Testament, honoring one’s father and mother is closely connected to having a “blessed life” and that it remains a high priority in New Testament discipleship.

Caste system

As an Indian, I found the chapter on “Human Dignity” by Kiem-Kiok Kwa helpful because it develops the societal intricacies around status and position. She uses our nature, created in the image of God, as a pathway toward viewing all humans as of great and equal value, in contrast to worldly views of class or social position. Kwa, who is from Singapore, suggests a countercultural practice of having domestic helpers or household servants sit with their employers during meals as a means of affirming everyone’s dignity within the household.

Another theologian, Nigel Ajay Kumar, traces British classism and the influences the British left on the caste system. The continued existence of this system has far-reaching consequences for the church, especially because of how it maintains the divide between rich and poor. Building relationships across castes remains highly countercultural in India, but doing so is an obligation for believers, who know that Christ binds all Christians together without regard for social status.

Kumar explores Gandhi’s view of self-denial and renunciation and its relationship to the suffering, poverty, and oppression that the caste system perpetuates. Gandhi advocated for better treatment of the lower castes and untouchables, but he did not support abolishing the caste system. Although caste discrimination was officially outlawed in 1955, it still exists in practice in India today. Kumar insightfully contrasts Gandhi’s and Christianity’s views of suffering. For Gandhi, suffering must take place for one to find truth; it is a part of everyone’s life journey. But for Christians, redemption is available because someone else, Jesus Christ, suffered on our behalf. This concept is hard for Hindus within the caste system to understand because society tells them that the lower caste is required to suffer due to their ancestral position and the social status into which they were born.

Meaningfully communicated and lived out

Having lived most of my life in Hong Kong, I am deeply aware of how colonial history shapes our understanding of specific Asian contexts. Early missionaries who brought the gospel to Asia wrapped it in Western cultural features. Over time, however, Christian teaching has become much more contextualized in both its presentation and its application to daily living. Both Asian Christians living in Asia and families of Asian heritage living all over the world confront similar ethical issues.

When Christianity flourishes in Asia, it does so by engaging with its society in positive ways, such as Kumar’s example of two pastors from India who empowered each other even though they were from opposite ends of the caste system. This book will push anyone doing ministry in Asia or among Asians to reflect thoughtfully on Confucian philosophy, the lingering caste system, social hierarchies, and familial relationships that entail dutiful respect for elders. The authors’ contributions develop an awareness of what each country is struggling with ethically and show how the gospel can be meaningfully communicated and lived out in Asian contexts.

While Asian Christian Ethics does not offer easy solutions to ethical problems, it reminds us that Christ’s message must be at the forefront of our decisions and actions. This book encourages all Christians to engage with difficult societal issues in thoughtful and biblical ways, whatever cultural context we may inhabit.

- More from Geethanjali Tupps

News

Died: Nguyen Quang Trung, Mennonite Who Led Church Through Dark Days in Vietnam

Daniel Silliman

From 1978 to 2008, he fought for legal recognition and freedom to worship for the Anabaptist denomination.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: Eastern Mennonite Missions

Nguyen Quang Trung spent 30 years trying to get the Mennonite church recognized and registered by the government of Vietnam so that believers could meet and worship legally. When he finally succeeded, he celebrated the triumph with the words of the apostle Paul: “If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord” (Rom. 14:8).

Nguyen, a pastor and two-time president of Hội Thánh Mennonite Việt Nam (Vietnam Mennonite Church), died on March 23 at age 84. He was known for his “patient persistence” and “tireless efforts to promote and legally confirm a Mennonite presence in Vietnam,” Gerry Keener, former head of Eastern Mennonite Missions, told Anabaptist World.

Nguyen was born in Gia Dinh, an industrial area outside Saigon. His mother died when he was five. His father was a committed Christian who raised him in the Evangelical Church of Vietnam, part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

In his 20s, Nguyen found himself drawn to the Mennonites, spending a lot of time in a reading room established by the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities. He took classes on English and the Bible and learned the Anabaptist teachings about nonviolence.

“The same Spirit that empowered Jesus also empowers us to love enemies,” the missionaries taught Nguyen, “to forgive rather than to seek revenge, to practice right relationships, to rely on the community of faith to settle disputes, and to resist evil without violence.”

Nguyen embraced the idea that Christians should “follow Christ in the way of peace” and practice “nonresistance,” even if they faced persecution and death.

The Vietnam War was ramping up at the time. The US government falsely claimed that two destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin were attacked by Communist forces from North Vietnam in August 1964, and Congress authorized President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

In the following year, the American president increased the number of troops in Vietnam from about 23,000 to nearly 185,000. Nguyen started working in the student reading room that same year and joined an effort to establish a Mennonite church in Saigon.

When the Communists won the civil war in 1975 and the US troops withdrew and the government of South Vietnam fell, Western missionaries were forced to leave the country, even if they were pacifists opposed to the war. As they left, Nguyen was asked to take leadership of the Mennonite church.

The church’s legal status was precarious, according to a history of Mennonites in Vietnam. At one point a revolutionary committee shut the congregation down and confiscated the building—only to return the property and allow the church to reopen two days later. Another time, a Communist official took up residence in the building and his security team would not allow worshippers on the property.

In 1978, officials in the renamed Ho Chi Mihn City required all churches to register with the government. The Mennonites did not manage to complete the process by the deadline and were shut down permanently. Some church leaders were denounced as counterrevolutionaries and interrogated. And some were ordered to leave their homes and relocate to rural areas that the government wanted to open to agricultural development.

Nguyen encouraged people to attend any evangelical church they could, sending Mennonites to Baptists and Christian and Missionary Alliance congregations that had successfully registered. He continued to minister to them one-on-one, though, meeting and praying with about 70 Mennonites in the area.

In 1983, the church tried to start meeting again. Sometimes as many as 70 came to a worship service, though often only a few believers gathered to pray.

Nguyen attempted to register his home as a church and was also required to register each gathering with the government. The requests were not always granted. Even when they were, police often interrupted and broke up services. Nguyen was frequently detained and interrogated.

He consistently maintained that the Mennonite church was not a threat to good order and not seeking to undermine the Communist government. He quoted the church’s motto: The Mennonites were “living the gospel, serving God, and serving the nation and the people.” He argued that the church taught and encouraged people to live a good life, be at peace with their neighbors, and work for the good of all.

Mennonites were “beautiful and pious,” Nguyen said, and wanted to help Vietnam become “more civilized, prosperous, and beautiful.” He translated the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective into Vietnamese and gave it to officials to review.

“The church is the spiritual, social, and political body that gives its allegiance to God alone. As citizens of God’s kingdom, we trust in the power of God’s love for our defense,” the confession says. But “governing authorities of the world have been instituted by God for maintaining order in societies. … As Christians we are to respect those in authority and to pray for all people.”

The Mennonite church organized several humanitarian operations in cooperation with the government during this time, including flood relief in the Quang Ngai province and the Dong That province in the Mekong Delta.

Nguyen nevertheless struggled to get legal recognition for the church. In 1995, officials told him that he could not have any more worship services in his home and that if he tried, they would seize his house.

Through all that harassment, the Mennonite community continued to grow. Nguyen personally baptized about 150 people into the Mennonite congregation in Ho Chi Mihn City and nearly 300 in Quang Ngai.

The Mennonites were finally allowed to meet again in Ho Chi Mihn City in 2006 and, with support from Canadian Mennonites, recognized as a legitimate religious body throughout Vietnam in 2008.

Nguyen was named the denomination’s president. At the first denominational gathering, he thanked God for protecting the church throughout its difficult history.

“Now we can open a new church,” he said. “We can organize a Bible training school.”

Within four years, the Mennonite church had grown to 90 congregations with about 6,000 baptized believers. The church had 138 ordained ministers in the major cities and 15 serving in rural areas. Nguyen, who retired in 2016, said whether the Mennonite church in Vietnam was persecuted or allowed to flourish, it would live or die to the Lord.

He is survived by his wife, Ngo Thi Bich, and their three children.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Christian Billionaire Goes on Trial for Major Wall Street Fraud

Emily Belz in New York

Federal prosecutors are trying to prove that Bill Hwang committed massive market manipulation through his investment firm Archegos. His defense says he was trading like anyone else on Wall Street.

Investor Bill Hwang arrives at federal court in Manhattan on Monday.

Stefan Jeremiah / AP Images

Bill Hwang brought a book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer to court to read during jury selection.

And during opening arguments on Monday, his Christian connections from New York packed out a courtroom to support him.

He had given his investment firm a Christian name, held Wall Street Bible readings, and distributed millions to evangelical charities.

But federal prosecutors at Hwang’s highly anticipated criminal trial are accusing the billionaire of being a mob boss mastermind rather than a humble evangelical investor following his convictions.

Hwang has been charged with tens of billions of dollars’ worth of securities fraud. In a packed courtroom in lower Manhattan on Monday, the prosecution claimed his investment firm Archegos Capital Management was an “organized criminal enterprise,” like a mob operation. Hwang faces decades in prison.

The blockbuster trial is expected to last eight weeks and will include witnesses from the Christian world in New York. Andy Mills, the former president of The King’s College, who also served as CEO of Archegos and as chairman of Hwang’s foundation, will testify for the defense.

Hwang and his wife, Becky Hwang, are the sole backers of the $528 million Grace and Mercy Foundation, which supports ministries in New York and around the world.

Many of Hwang’s former employees at Archegos are Christians—like Jensen Ko, who, after the collapse of Archegos, started a new investment fund called AriseN. And Archegos was named for a Greek word used to describe Christ as the “author” of our salvation (Heb. 2:10) and the “prince” of life (Acts 3:15).

Archegos fell apart in March 2021. It bought up massive positions in a few companies using borrowed funds from banks, with the goal of pumping up the prices of those stocks, prosecutors allege. But when the prices came down, Archegos couldn’t pay its losses to the banks, and in a matter of days, it defaulted on billions. Investment bank Credit Suisse lost $5.5 billion to Archegos and wound down its operations in the fallout.

When Archegos collapsed, it evaporated $100 billion in market value, according to prosecutors, including about $36 billion of Archegos’s own funds. The question the trial will try to answer is if this was fraud or normal trading that went badly, as the defense argues.

Hwang “had it all, but it wasn’t enough,” said federal prosecutor Alexandra Rothman in her opening statements on Monday. Rothman said Hwang was “rigging the game to keep winning on Wall Street … lying to dozens of banks.”

Rothman said Archegos had a “corrupt core, a small group of people who did whatever Hwang wanted, including lie and cheat.” Their market manipulation left a “path of destruction,” she said.

Defense attorney Barry Berke, in his opening statement, began to tell the story of Hwang’s humble origins—Hwang is the son of a Korean pastor and immigrated from Korea to the US when he was a teenager—but Judge Alvin Hellerstein cut him off for ranging too far away from details of stocks and trades.

Still, Berke in his opening arguments wove in mentions of Hwang’s charitable foundation as well as a Grace and Mercy Foundation project called the Just Show Up Book Club. Berke emphasized that Hwang didn’t live the flashy life of a billionaire.

In court, Hwang appeared calm and coiffed, and milled in the back of the courtroom during breaks shaking hands and embracing friends. He’s currently free on a $100 million bond.

Outside the courtroom, in the same building, the corruption trial of Sen. Bob Menendez was beginning. Across the street, the trial of former president Donald Trump was continuing. TV cameras blanketed the sidewalks, adding to the sense of frenzy around the trial.

Hwang has often spoken about how his faith informs his investing, saying that setting a “fair price” for stocks is work that honors God. That was a central pillar of his defense attorney’s opening argument, that Hwang bought and held these massive positions because he sincerely valued the companies he was investing in.

“He had the courage of his convictions,” said Berke to the jury. “He believed in these companies.”

Continuing the idea of Hwang’s “fair price” argument, Berke said that Hwang believed the select companies that Archegos put billions into were victims of negative misinformation from short sellers, who would profit off of declines in stock prices.

“He believed prices were pushed artificially down,” he said.

Another detail from Hwang’s past got little mention on the first day of the trial: a 2012 civil settlement of $44 million over insider trading charges. Hwang didn’t admit fault in that settlement, but his hedge fund, Tiger Asia, pleaded guilty to a criminal fraud charge. In 2013 he converted Tiger Asia to Archegos and made it a family office to manage his wealth.

Archegos shared offices with Grace and Mercy in Manhattan, and some employees worked with both entities doing investments. In a 2020 email the prosecutors shared in the trial, Hwang discussed his investment strategy during the pandemic, addressing both Grace and Mercy and Archegos employees.

After Archegos folded, some Archegos employees took on Grace and Mercy titles. Some former Archegos employees will testify, as well as top staff from Grace and Mercy, like chief operating officer Diana Pae.

Two top Archegos employees, William Tomita and Scott Becker, have pleaded guilty and will testify for the prosecution.

Jurors spent the first day of the trial on Monday hearing explanations of terms like swaps, liquidity, and margins. Ninety-year-old judge Hellerstein, who has overseen other federal financial crimes cases, jumped in with clarifying questions when testimony seemed confusing for the average person and poured himself cups of coffee from the carafe on his bench.

In previous pre-trial hearings, Hellerstein has wondered aloud why Hwang did what he did: “What did he want to achieve? … He lost his money.”

After opening arguments, the prosecution called its first witness, Bryan Fairbanks, the longtime head of prime brokerage risk for investment bank UBS. Fairbanks testified that UBS lost $860 million through Archegos’s defaults on borrowed funds, not knowing Archegos had similar investments with other banks.

“All the information they shared with us was made up,” Fairbanks said. If he had known what Archegos’s true market position was, he said he would have “hit the panic button.”

The trial will continue Mondays to Thursdays during the coming weeks.

- More from Emily Belz

News

Christian Women in India Lack Inheritance Rights. Could Hindu Nationalists Help?

Surinder Kaur

The Uniform Civil Code seeks “one nation, one law” to govern citizens’ personal lives, but religious minorities fear hidden costs.

Christian women pray at an Easter service in Phulbaney, India.

Daniel Berehulak / Getty / Edits by CT

In February, the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand passed a Uniform Civil Code (UCC), which aims to implement a common set of rules governing crucial aspects of life, including marriage, divorce, inheritance, and adoption.

This code would supplant existing personal laws that religious groups in India currently ascribe to. Personal laws cover family-related matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, adoption, property rights, and inheritance.

If the ruling Hindu-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has its way, a UCC will eventually be implemented across all of India. (At present, Goa is the only other state with a UCC, derived from the Portuguese-era Civil Code of 1867.)

The BJP’s push to implement a national UCC may bring relief for Christians in India, especially in terms of women’s inheritance rights. Under existing personal laws, Christian mothers cannot inherit their deceased children’s property. The UCC proposes to eliminate discriminatory provisions that favor male inheritance, potentially leading to more equitable inheritance rights for Christian women.

But few of India’s religious minorities trust the BJP, whose policies have often been more harmful than helpful to Christian communities. In Assam, Christian leaders protested the passing of a bill banning “magical healing” as it unfairly impacted their custom of praying for the sick. Ministries including World Vision and the Evangelical Fellowship of India recently lost government authorization to collect foreign donations. Nine states now have anti-conversion laws in place, and believers have borne the brunt of religious unrest in these areas as a result.

As this year’s general elections seem likely to strengthen the BJP’s hold over India and give prime minister Narendra Modi his third term, religious leaders all over the country may soon have to grapple with the reality now playing out in Uttarakhand.

“This is going to be a milestone in the history of India as far as the life of a citizen or resident is concerned,” said Vachan Singh Bhandari, director of the nonprofit Agape Mission in Uttarakhand.

Women’s inheritance rights

Each religious group in India has its own set of personal laws. Most of them are holdovers from colonial rule and were established by the British after consultation with religious leaders. Religious leaders do not have the power to effect changes to personal laws. “Permitting religious communities to observe their own laws of marriage, inheritance, adoption, or divorce was the British Raj’s way of maintaining social stability, thwarting rebellion, and even earning the favor of a religious community,” said a Times of India commentary.

As a result, women from different religious groups in India do not have the same inheritance rights. Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Sikh women were originally excluded from inheriting ancestral property, and although a 2005 amendment sought to rectify this, they are still often disadvantaged. Muslim sons are granted a double portion of their family’s inheritance compared to daughters.

Christians are subject to the Indian Succession Act of 1925, which purportedly treats the inheritance rights of sons and daughters equally. But if the father’s will states that he wants to give his property only to his sons, it cannot be contested in court.

Syrian Christian women in the southern state of Kerala, for instance, are denied the opportunity to inherit ancestral property. One woman who sought a share of her family’s property was derided as a “troublemaker” by other family members. The idea that giving inheritance rights to women harms her family of origin, since she now belongs to another family and her husband will likely inherit his own property, persists in such communities.

In cities like Travancore and Cochin within Kerala, believers have generally followed Hindu laws even though Christian succession laws exist, maintains researcher Archana Mishra. “Women were assigned an inferior status which being discriminatory wounded women’s equality,” Mishra wrote in a 2015 journal article. “Males had absolute power to dispose of [their] property and there was no restriction on [their] testamentary capacity.”

In addition to these difficulties involving ancestral real estate, Christian women are also at a disadvantage with regard to inheriting their children’s assets. Current personal laws deny women the right to inherit their deceased children’s property if there is no will, meaning that all assets go to the father or, if he is not alive, the child’s siblings.

For this reason, the proposed UCC “is a good move and will result in the empowerment of Christian women,” contended Vinita Shaw, founder of Disha Foundation, a non-governmental organization that supports women and children through advocacy and community development initiatives.

The introduction of a national UCC aims to address the discriminatory impacts of such personal laws. Bhandari, the Uttarakhand-based nonprofit director, is cautiously optimistic. “In general, it can be said that this perhaps is going to be in the interests of all the communities for their betterment as far as their marital, familial and property-related matters are concerned,” he stated.

The threat of Hinduized norms

Improving inheritance rights for women is not the only domestic issue that the UCC tackles. Other changes include requiring cohabiting couples to register their status with the government, granting legal rights to children born out of wedlock, and a complete ban on polygamy.

The BJP champions the UCC as a modern approach to civil rights that will help India become “one nation with one law.” But instead of pursuing parliamentary legislation to implement it nationwide, the ruling party has adopted a more circumspect approach, letting state leaders promote the plan so as to avoid political unrest while continuing to appease its core Hindu nationalist base.

Opposition political parties such as the Indian National Congress have chosen to adopt a “nuanced” view on the UCC, recognizing its “layered and complex” nature according to a report from The Hindu. Regional parties, which operate within a limited geographical area and typically identify with a particular cultural or religious group, have also advocated for wider consultation and consensus building before the introduction of such a far-reaching reform. In their view, a hasty implementation could disrupt established social structures, fuel unrest, and be perceived as an attack on minority communities’ constitutional rights to freedom of religion and cultural preservation.

Despite the UCC’s claim to improve gender equality, Christians and other minority religious groups may bear hidden costs if the UCC is implemented nationwide. The consequences may well resemble those that have accompanied anti-conversion laws, said a Christian leader in Assam who wished to remain anonymous because of security issues.

“The anti-conversion law was meant to be applied equally to all religious communities, and anyone violating the law was supposed to face legal scrutiny. But that did not happen,” he said.

“Specifically, Muslim and Christian communities were targeted under the guise of this law, [and] Hindu mobs have forcibly reconverted people who believe in Christ to Hinduism, yet no action has been taken against these mobs, and no cases of ‘forced conversions’ have been registered.”

Rohit Singh, a Christian lawyer in Uttarakhand, draws similar conclusions. Because of the anti-conversion law, churches in Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, and other states have not been allowed to meet and worship together, Singh asserted.

In his view, the UCC will be equally biased against believers in practice. The government did not consult or take suggestions from Christians before rolling out the UCC, which was “forced upon us,” Singh argued.

On a wider scale, one of the biggest fears driving widespread resistance to a nationwide UCC is the potential imposition of Hinduized social norms, which would impact how religious minorities practice their faith.

Muslim leaders have voiced concerns that the UCC will infringe their individual rights as well as negatively impact religious freedom and societal cohesion in India. Some have criticized the disproportionate power that the BJP may wield as a result of the UCC’s adoption.

Catholic leaders have questioned how consistently the UCC will be applied across different castes and religious groups. The government “is trying to make lives more difficult for the minorities and discriminated sections of society like the indigenous people, Dalits and women,” argued A. C. Michael, president of the Federation of Catholic Associations of the Archdiocese of Delhi. Moreover, the UCC could impact the Catholic Church’s non-recognition of divorce.

For now, momentum toward adopting the UCC nationwide seems to be growing, with leaders in other states, including Gujarat and Assam, vowing to follow in Uttarakhand’s footsteps.

Even so, evangelicals in India have remained cautious about assessing the UCC’s merits and pitfalls publicly. “We've consistently underscored the need for a preliminary draft before launching into debates on a national Uniform Civil Code,” said Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India.

Delhi-based Christian tribal rights activist Govindra Hunjan, however, is not staying quiet.

“The UCC will wipe away the identity of the indigenous tribes by vilifying their traditional practices that have been there for centuries, like [the appointment of] village chiefs, settlement of petty matters in community settings, [and] property bequeathals, to name a few,” he said. “I see no need for such a law, except with the intent to weaken the tribals.”

- More from Surinder Kaur

Theology

Why the Pacific Islands Are 90 Percent Christian

Interview by Geethanjali Tupps

It wasn’t only because of missionaries from the West, says a Tongan Australian theologian.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

Christian overseas missionaries were more successful in Oceania—the region spanning the Pacific Islands, Australia, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand—than anywhere else in the world.

In particular, people in the Pacific Islands (which include Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga, and more) were receptive to the gospel because “their ancestors’ strong beliefs in a divine presence and in the afterlife made them very open to Christian faith,” wrote Jacqueline Ryle, a contributor to the 2021 reference volume Christianity in Oceania.

Tongan Australian theologian Katalina Tahaafe-Williams says her research reveals the same: The growth of Christianity in the region was not because of white Europeans but rather due to Indigenous missionaries who translated Christianity in a way that made sense to locals.

Tahaafe-Williams, who lives in Sydney, served as the Indigenous coeditor for the book alongside prominent global Christianity scholars Kenneth R. Ross and Todd M. Johnson.

“Our goal was to recruit Indigenous writers from all over the region to contribute to this volume,” she explained. “It was my task to connect with potential authors, theologians, leaders, and church members from the Pacific Islands … we were very committed to finding, however challenging it might be, authors who were part of that particular culture, thereby making the work very authentic.”

CT Global books editor Geethanjali Tupps spoke with Tahaafe-Williams on why Christianity flourished in the Pacific Islands, how migration patterns have impacted the church, and why the region shouldn’t serve as the poster child for climate change issues.

How did Christianity arrive in the Pacific Islands?

Protestant missionaries arrived in the Pacific Islands in the 1700s and 1800s. They had huge success in evangelistic efforts because of the London Missionary Society, which established schools and trained pastors in Samoa and Cook Islands. In Tonga, Methodist missionaries were most successful; in Samoa, the Congregationalists and Presbyterians dominated.

Christianity’s initial success was in Tahiti, which is part of French Polynesia, though the locals still prefer the original name of Maohi Nui. There, the missionaries not only converted locals but equipped them to take the gospel to other islands. The local missionaries’ status as Indigenous Pacific Islanders contributed to their success.

Did colonization in the Pacific Islands differ from elsewhere in the world?

We are small island nations with minimal natural resources. We have beautiful settings, an abundance of fertile soil and food, and materials to build homes. But we don’t have precious minerals. So the Europeans had no economic interest in Oceania, except for Australia and New Zealand.

As a result, the Pacific Islands were colonized more for religious than political or economic reasons. I believe that fact explains why we are still 90 percent Christian today.

What did the Islanders believe in before Christians showed up, and how did Christianity and local cultures interact?

The Pacific Islands are classified into three main groups: Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. All these cultures, like other Indigenous communities, had their own traditional religions before Christianity arrived.

Indigenous beliefs were very much connected to nature, the land, the ocean, and the earth. For example, a notion of the divine as Mother Earth is very much part of that spirituality and Indigenous religions across the nations in the Pacific.

Of course, when Christianity came, there were clashes in many instances. For example, the faith’s focus on individual sin and salvation was, and still is, at odds with our culture’s collective existence. Ultimately, however, the success of Christianity in Oceania was unprecedented.

Talk about how the Islanders contextualized Christianity and made it their own.

Taking my home island of Tonga as an example, I see some remnants of our traditional religion in how we understand Christianity, because some of our myths and legends contained stories of self-sacrifice—giving up your life for your friends, family, and loved ones. These legends, in effect, were transferred to Jesus Christ. When the story of Jesus was told in those terms, it was easily understood and contextualized.

We still tell the traditional stories today, but strictly within cultural ceremonies. Our spiritual faith is completely rooted in the gospel. But I believe that some of the values I was brought up with, and that we now regard as normatively Christian, like human dignity, justice, compassion, hope, and peace, were also the values that my ancestors lived out in practice.

Did Christianity shake up the region’s social structures in any way?

In the Pacific Islands, there isn’t a huge demarcation between powerful nobles or chiefs and the common people because we have such a close kinship structure. It was much more difficult for the people at the top to abuse the people at the bottom, because they would be abusing people they were related to.

When Christian missionaries came, it didn’t dispel social division but exacerbated it, partly due to the competition between Methodists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, and other groups. If tribal tensions were present, the missionaries sometimes deliberately played on those underlying conflicts because it gave them leverage with certain groups.

I attribute the success of Christianity to our nobles and our people, who were deeply spiritual and respectful. They found ways to reconcile and unify their people, so that they could receive Western missionaries while preventing civil wars and unrest from developing because of religion.

What about women’s rights? Did Christians contribute to advancing them here?

I wouldn’t deny that Christianity has contributed toward advancing women’s rights in some ways, but to a large extent, organic change has come from our culture.

The missionaries came with their Western, Victorian, patriarchal values and influenced the locals with this mindset. But women enjoy a very high regard and position in our kinship structure, and this is seen in some of the cultural practices that we still continue to enact in our ceremonies. We had female monarchs and female chiefs.

The sacredness of womanhood in my Tongan culture seems to me to have been cheapened over the years because of our openness to Western influences. Those of us who are aware of that cultural history are having to critique and unlearn Western ideas. If we had been more fully able to integrate our cultural understandings and worldviews with the Western influences that came with Christianity, I think women would have been ordained earlier in many Pacific Island contexts.

In terms of present-day concerns, how are migration patterns into and out of the Pacific Islands impacting the church right now?

Migration to the Pacific Islands is transitional, where people come to do ministry or work on a development issue. They come only for a limited time and then go back to the West.

More Pacific Islanders are trying to get to Western countries. There are more Tongans living overseas than in Tonga. But some older expatriates are experiencing nostalgia for their homeland and have come back to retire, or at least return for significant periods of time to be with their family members.

The church in Tonga, where I am from, continues to thrive. When I visit, I love seeing how actively the younger generation is participating in the church. The older generation is proactive about ensuring that young people are engaged in faith and spirituality.

One of the most controversial events in Oceania, with ramifications that persist today, is when the United States, France, and the UK used Micronesia as target practice for nuclear testing after the end of WWII. This forcibly displaced residents in the Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and more, and when people moved back to their island homes, many fell sick with radiation exposure. Where was the church during this crisis?

Nuclear armament and proliferation was part of the political agenda for countries like France and the US. Many of us in other islands were not quite aware that these countries had claimed and possessed Micronesia for nuclear testing, until countries like New Zealand drew attention to it in the global arena.

Pacific Island nations started mobilizing themselves during this time. Churches were very much part of that effort because of the very close link between church and state in the region. Churches were very active in trying to find ways to fight against nuclear testing. They were standing up and fighting to make their voices heard in political debates and other arenas. But Micronesia wasn’t the only region in Oceania that was impacted. Western countries were also conducting nuclear testing in Tahiti, one of the bigger island nations in French Polynesia. France was fully funding the Tahitian government and throwing money all over the place to try and hide the damage that they were doing and the terrible sickness and disfigurement of unborn babies.

Western countries are so powerful with their resources and military might. They got away with so much and still do to this day.

Do you find that Western privilege also permeates discussion on alleviating the effects of climate change in your region?

In recent times, the Oceania-Pacific region has become a lot more visible as the face of climate change in many global ecumenical and sociopolitical circles.

While working for the World Council of Churches in Geneva, I was very aware that Pacific Islanders were pushing for the visibility of climate change issues in churches and ecumenical circles, as well as in political settings such as the United Nations. However, it has become too easy to use a Pacific Islander as the face of climate change and its impacts, rather than saying this is a problem for all of us and we need to step up and confront it together.

To deal with the environmental problems associated with our carbon footprint, the Pacific Islands need resources that they don’t necessarily have. They should be getting resources to help manage the impacts of climate change, given that they are mostly the victims of it, not the cause.

When Western resources are accompanied with this sentiment—“We have the answers, and you have to just listen to us”—the locals are disabled from utilizing what they already know about living sustainably and from offering such knowledge to Westerners as resources.

Pacific Islanders, like all Indigenous communities around the globe, can still draw on their centuries-old knowledge of how to live with nature, the land, and the ocean in cohesive and harmonious ways. A patronizing and tokenistic emphasis on resources from the West has obscured the locals’ contextual knowledge and best practices for sustainable living, so that instead of enhancing such contextual gifts and skills to counter the impacts of climate change, a continuing colonial relationship of dependency is fostered.

- More from Interview by Geethanjali Tupps

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