The Evangelical Legacy of Gustavo Gutierrez’s Liberation Theology

How the Peruvian priest influenced the fathers of integral mission.

Alessandra Tarantino / AP Images / Edits by CT

Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, the father of liberation theology and Catholic theologian who first argued for a “preferential option for the poor,” died on October 22 at the age of 96.

The Peruvian priest’s ministry was heavily influenced by the injustices he observed in his country. For years, under the hacienda system, just 2 percent of Peruvians controlled 90 percent of the land, while sharecroppers earned pennies farming it and laborers worked in slave-like conditions on the estates.

In 1968, a coup tried to end this arrangement and empower peasant workers. But the many people left behind by these reforms soon left the haciendas, relocating to impoverished settlements outside Lima.

Moved by this suffering, Gutiérrez, a member of the Dominican order, published his most influential book, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation, in 1971, arguing that genuine liberation unfolds in three essential dimensions. First, political and social liberation addresses and eliminates the immediate causes of poverty and injustice. Second, the poor, marginalized, and oppressed are freed from conditions that limit their capacity for dignified self-development. Third, these communities are liberated from selfishness and sin and can now restore broken relationships with God and others.

When priests began embracing liberation theology across Latin America, the Vatican pushed back, criticizing its seemingly Marxist influence and reduction of Jesus’ status of divine savior to that of social liberator. However, unlike other advocates of liberation theology, Gutiérrez was never sanctioned by the Catholic hierarchy.

Though Latin America was still overwhelmingly Catholic in the early days of Gutiérrez’s ministry, many of the region’s earliest evangelical leaders came of age wrestling with similar questions. These ideas led fellow Peruvians like Samuel Escobar and Pedro Arana and Ecuadorian René Padilla to develop misión integral or integral mission, which sought to balance Christian responsibility to share about Christ’s saving work with a duty to respond to social inequities.

CT asked evangelicals familiar with the life and work of Gustavo Gutiérrez to share how liberation theology affected Latin American evangelical theology, practice and growth. Answers were edited for clarity and concision.

This piece will be updated.

JUAN FONSECA

Researcher on the history of the evangelical movement at Universidad del Pacífico, Lima, Peru

Samuel Escobar and Gustavo Gutiérrez were two Peruvian theologians who, in different ways, influenced evangelical and Catholic Christianity, respectively, encouraging both to embed their missionary work within Latin America’s context of suffering.

In 1969, at the First Latin American Congress of Evangelization (CLADE I), the evangelical theologian Samuel Escobar challenged Latin American evangelicals to “find a way to embody their faith in the Latin American reality.” For example, he urged them to develop an original, native hermeneutic in response to questions arising from the poverty belts of major cities or the indigenous cultures of the continent.

Two years later, Father Gustavo Gutiérrez published A Theology of Liberation, one of the foundational texts of liberation theology. Father Gutiérrez significantly impacted global Christianity in his insistence on placing the poor at the heart of the Christian mission, a conviction that transcended denominational boundaries and deeply renewed Christian theology.

However, in those same years, in the poorest neighborhoods of Latin American cities, Pentecostal preachers were mobilizing the unadorned spirituality of the poor. Despite a lack of formal theology and equipped with few material resources, Pentecostal churches nevertheless became the religious alternative to Catholicism for the continent’s impoverished.

To paraphrase American theologian Millard Richard Shaull, liberation theology chose the poor but the poor chose Pentecostalism in Latin America, an observation the truth of which other liberation theologians have already acknowledged. However, based on my own observation of Peru’s religious landscape, rather than placing liberation theology and Pentecostalism in opposition to each other, it is more appropriate to view Gutiérrez’s ministry and Pentecostalism as converging movements. Both liberation theology and Pentecostalism make the poor a common focal point for their respective hermeneutics, the privileged subject of their reflections and missions, and the face of Christ within their spiritualities.

British theologian John A. Mackay wondered in a CT article, in 1969, whether the future of Christianity would belong to “a reformed Catholicism and a mature Pentecostalism.” Gustavo Gutiérrez and liberation theology have already done their part in the process of reforming Catholicism. It remains for Pentecostals to continue maturing through their faith in the Christ of the poor.

David Kirkpatrick

Author, A Gospel for the Poor: Global Social Christianity and the Latin American Evangelical Left, United States

Gustavo Gutiérrez gave voice to an entire generation of Latin American theologians wrestling with questions of violence, injustice, and inequality in a Cold War context. His urging of a critical reexamination of traditional approaches to Scripture and call to amplify the voices of the poor had an immense impact on his generation of Latin American theologians, which included many prominent Catholic and Protestant figures such as Pope Francis and Methodist theologian José Míguez Bonino.

In 1973, René Padilla wrote the first article dedicated to liberation theology to appear in Christianity Today. Padilla, alongside many evangelicals, disagreed with Gutiérrez’s approach, which Padilla called a “straitjacket” on the Bible. “No attempt is ever made to show why this specific praxis (rather than any other) is chosen as the object of reflection, or to show what makes this reflection specifically Christian,” Padilla wrote. But he also refused to allow critiques of liberation theology to silence prophetic calls for justice. Many Latin American Protestant evangelicals agreed that an unjust postwar context called for new approaches to faith and practice.

In response to the English version of A Theology of Liberation, which was released in 1973, Padilla argued, “The need for a liberation of theology is then as real in our case as in the case of the theology of liberation.” Padilla’s answer was misión integral, a holistic approach to Christian mission that synthesizes the pursuit of justice and the offer of salvation, rather than joining the growing movement of liberation theology.

But Padilla concluded his CT article by asking a question that would define his life and work: “Where is the evangelical theology that will propose a solution with the same eloquence [as Gutiérrez] but also with a firmer basis in the Word of God?” Gutiérrez inspired an entire generation of Latin American Protestant evangelical theologians to continue their search for and theological construction of a truly Latin American theology of justice and mission.

Valdir Steuernagel

Pastor and theologian, Brazil

I never had the privilege to meet Gustavo Gutiérrez, even though his name was around me since the 1970s. Once I heard that he died, I found his book We Drink from Our Own Wells: The Spiritual Journey of a People in my library. As I opened it, the very first words touched me deeply: “To follow Jesus defines a Christian.” I smiled, because this is exactly what I would like to say too.

I come from another school of theology, but I share Gutiérrez’s recognition that context is important in the process of doing theology and that our context was Latin America. His being Peruvian affected how he thought and lived out his faith, which was always rooted in his confessional environment. Similarly, I am Brazilian, and this is the location in which I encountered the gospel and where I have had the privilege of living out my vocation.

My identity has also been shaped by an evangelical confessionality, which has been nurtured within the circles of the Latin American Theological Fraternity. But we were moved by Gutiérez’s conviction that theology had to move from the “libraries” to the “communities.” Our faith had to reach the most vulnerable people in our societies. With Gutiérrez, we were challenged to look at the “underside of history,” the communities so often hidden by the “victorious” narratives of history or who had become the “underside” precisely because of those victors.

I can still hear some of the conversations and arguments [among Catholic followers of liberation theology and evangelicals who defend integral mission] that pointed to the differences in our respective theologies. And I also see Gutiérrez’s commitment to his God-given calling and his long and deep sense of belonging [within the Catholic church], in which the poor and the most vulnerable had a special place, a place where they were embraced by a God of love and justice.

Ruth Padilla DeBorst

Professor, Comunidad de Estudios Teológicos Interdisciplinarios and Western Theological Seminary, Colombia/United States

It is impossible to conceive of theological work in the effervescent Latin America of the mid-20th century and the beginning of the 21st century without acknowledging the generous contribution of Gustavo Gutiérrez. Although this Peruvian priest and most of his liberationist colleagues were primarily developing their theology for and within the Catholic church, it nevertheless influenced evangelical thought.

The integral mission movement developed at the same time in the evangelical student movements and the Latin American Theological Fraternity. In 1972, René Padilla and Samuel Escobar met with several liberation theologians and interacted diligently with their writing, and they later spoke of how this experience had valuably challenged their hermeneutics and how they understood the ethical praxis of the Christian faith. Those who identify themselves as evangelicals today would do well to look with appreciation at the legacy of this giant of theology, not only in Latin America but worldwide.

Harold Segura

Pastor and director for Faith and Development of World Vision Latin America, Colombia/Costa Rica

Liberation theology emerged in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s with theologians such as Gustavo Gutiérrez (to whom today we bid farewell with gratitude and admiration), who presented the idea of a Christianity committed to the most vulnerable and excluded people. This theology placed the reality of poverty and injustice at the center of Christian reflection, affirming that the gospel should lead not only to spiritual salvation but also to social transformation.

For many evangelicals, this approach was a challenge. Most evangelical churches had focused their message on personal salvation, prioritizing conversion and spiritual life. Liberation theology, with its emphasis on social justice and its dialogue with the social sciences, was viewed with skepticism. Many considered it a political deviation that threatened the purity of the gospel.

However, not everyone rejected it. Some evangelical movements began to reflect on their own role in society and took a more active stance in the face of injustice. This theology had an undeniable influence on what, around the same time, began to be known as integral mission–a vision of the gospel that seeks not only the salvation of the soul but also the welfare of the body and justice in society. Integral mission was not a direct result of liberation theology, but liberation theology sparked the dialogue and reflection that allowed integral mission to emerge from evangelical soil.

In some evangelical communities, this social awakening did not change the belief that church growth efforts should focus on personal conversion and evangelization. In fact—partially in reaction to the political activism of liberation theology—evangelical movements experienced considerable growth, especially in some traditional evangelical sectors, where a more conservative and non-political faith was emphasized.

Today, many Latin American evangelical churches continue to navigate between spirituality and social engagement, seeking ways to be faithful to the gospel while responding to the needs of an unjust world.

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Ideas

Voting Is Important to Me. That’s Why, This Year, I Won’t Vote.

Robert Postic

A Christian political scientist considers what to do when no viable candidate aligns with our core values—or even comes close.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

“Vote Biblically!” At least here in Michigan, it’s impossible to miss the signs. Among evangelical Christians, they seem as ubiquitous as the ichthus fish bumper sticker.

I’m sympathetic. All my life, I’ve attended evangelical churches and called them home. I grew up with a message of “God, country, and family.” And I’ve always been conservative in both my theology and my politics. In most elections, I vote straight-ticket Republican, and voting is extremely important to me.

It’s precisely because voting is so important that I believe we need to thoughtfully evaluate calls to vote biblically and consider everything that can mean. Sometimes, given short-term political dynamics or the candidates available, declining to vote can be the best way to reflect our values and acknowledge the importance of an election. Sometimes, the right choice—and one way to conform our politics to Scripture—may be not voting, as new research suggests millions of American Christians are planning this fall.

The way we talk about voting in many predominantly white evangelical churches sends more than one message. In recent history, it has often been a thinly veiled encouragement to vote Republican. But it also sends the message that you must vote, that voting is an American duty and possibly even a Christian duty. Here I want to focus on that second claim about voting itself.

There is no biblical mandate to vote. That’s not to suggest that voting is somehow inconsistent with biblical teaching. God forbid! Choosing to vote in democratic elections and, more generally, to engage in peaceful civic participation is in alignment with virtually any reading of the Bible.

The problem is that many voters feel cross‑pressured. It’s not always obvious how we should vote. Sometimes, none of the viable candidates align with our core values—or even come close. This year, the Democratic presidential candidate holds positions I believe to be inconsistent with Scripture. But I also believe the Republican candidate lacks the requisite character to be president.

Some Christians in this position choose to vote for a third-party candidate. I respect that choice and agree that it’s much more important to vote for the candidate who best represents our values than it is to vote for someone who can win. Issues and character matter. But I also understand the political and legal realities in America that make it functionally impossible for third-party candidates to succeed. So rather than vote third party, I choose not to vote.

That decision always has its detractors, but this year it seems particularly unpopular. Over the last few weeks, I’ve encountered two main objections to my choice.

The first is that we’re always presented with imperfect choices. This is life. In voting, as in everything else, we simply need to deal with it and make the best choice we can from the options provided, even when those options are suboptimal.

The basic claim here is true, even about decisions far more personally consequential than a vote. For example, we pick imperfect spouses and imperfect churches. Fair enough.

But these analogies are less compelling than they appear at first glance. Neither choice is similarly binary, and neither begins with a very small pool of options from which we’re forced to select. In choosing a spouse, we are active in selecting the candidate pool—and anyway, choosing not to marry is a decision the Bible endorses (1 Cor. 7:39–40).

Likewise, when choosing a church, we typically have many viable options, not just two. Still, if the comparison seems compelling, let’s extend the analogy.

Imagine having to choose between (1) a church that doesn’t affirm the deity of Christ but holds to a traditional view on issues of sex and gender and (2) a church that does affirm the deity of Christ but also has an affirming view on issues of sex and gender. A congregation of the Latter-day Saints, perhaps, versus a very progressive Episcopalian church. In such a quandary, I expect many of my fellow conservative evangelicals begin to see the case for choosing not to choose as we try, however haltingly, to “cling to what is good” (Rom. 12:9).

The second objection I’ve been hearing is that policy issues alone should be the deciding factor in an election: Voting is about policy outcomes, and the stakes are too high to worry about lesser considerations, like character. God uses imperfect people to accomplish his good ends, and surely our standards are not higher than God’s?

As a political scientist, I agree that voting is about policy outcomes. But as a Christian, I disagree that it’s only about policy outcomes.

Yes, God uses imperfect people. But of course, he has no choice—“There is no one righteous, not even one” (Rom. 3:10)—and God does reject some people for some roles, especially powerful roles, due to poor character. (King Saul comes to mind.) Moreover, God operates with knowledge, freedom, and love I don’t have. His omniscient use of imperfect people in his redemptive work is hardly comparable to me voting for a deeply flawed candidate against my better judgment.

And yes, issues are important. Over the next four years, many federal judges and perhaps some Supreme Court justices will be appointed. Economic policy decisions could have major effects on our daily lives. Policies on abortion, foreign policy, and immigration have life-or-death effects. Again, fair enough.

But I believe how we get there is as important as where we arrive. “Winning the presidential election is vitally important,” James Dobson wrote in 2007, “but not at the expense of what we hold most dear.” I’m convinced character is a core value too. It’s equally part of what I “hold most dear” in politics—and not nearly so divisible from policy as many suggest. Without good character, the candidates we support may not even try to deliver the policy results they promise in exchange for our votes.

I understand the arguments for voting even when the viable choices are bad. I understand why some Christians believe it’s better to pick a side and push it to improve insofar as they can. My goal here is not to argue that all Christians should decide against voting. It is the more modest claim that in a binary election with choices like these, not voting may be the best way for many Christians to heed their consciences and the promptings of the Holy Spirit—even to “vote biblically.”

Robert Postic is a professor of political science at the University of Findlay. He received his MA in theology from Fuller Theological Seminary (1990) and his PhD from Wayne State University (2007).

- More from Robert Postic

Ideas

Radical Hope in an Age of Climate Doomsday

Bethany Sollereder

The current environmental crisis is progressing fast and furiously. How do we avoid despair?

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

One of the worst feelings in the world is seeing a disaster unfold that you can’t stop. The car crash you see happening a split second before impact. The sick person you can diagnose but cannot cure. An avalanche rolling down a mountain, when you know nothing can be done to stop it. A category five hurricane heading your way, promising to bring untold destruction.

For a growing number of people, climate change evokes this very feeling. As new temperature highs are smashed every couple of years (with 2023 breaking all previous global average temperatures in the last 100,000 years), the earth’s changing climate feels like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.

Record-breaking floods, wildfires, and storms slam into government indecision, political apathy (or denial), and personal entitlement. In just the past month, monster hurricanes Helene and Milton ripped through Southern US states, leaving communities devastated. The growing disparity between the scale of the challenges we face and the tiny amount of power any regular person has can fuel a sense of despair and anxiety.

People process large-scale disasters in different ways. A great many opt for denial, ignorance, or apathy (“there’s nothing I can do, so why try?”)—and there’s little to be done about them except to continue spreading awareness and education.

But for those who believe the warnings, there are two common ways of reacting. The more optimistic folks want to believe the best-case scenario; that a solution is plausible and within reach—that with just the right amount of coordinated effort, we can pull this off and change the world, perhaps even within a generation or two. While the more pessimistic people want to hear the worst-case scenario so they can expend their energy and effort carefully and with the long road ahead in mind—they know it’s foolish to sprint at the beginning of a marathon.

I noticed these two different reactions at the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns at my Oxford college. Some people were confidently telling us, “This will all be over in three months—we will be back to normal by September!” I walked around in my Eeyore-ish way saying, “Well, historical data suggests it will be at least a year, maybe two, before anything like normal life will resume. We better get used to this.”

I genuinely thought I was helping people by setting out a reasonable goal, so they wouldn’t have the sense—which I hate more than nearly anything—that the finish line keeps moving each time you approach it. But many of my more optimistic friends felt like I was crushing their hope. My attempts to always consider the worst-case realistic scenario eventually earned me the affectionate nickname “the Prophet of Doom.”

Regarding climate change, here is my “doomsday prophet” take: In one sense, the anxiety people feel is justified by the grim facts. The world is experiencing changes that are rapid and widespread and will bring intense suffering to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people.

We are in the grip of a serious global substance addiction to fossil fuels. The difficult truth to face is that we have already burned enough oil and natural gas to throw the climate into a new norm. The longer we burn fossil fuels, particularly at the furious rate we’ve become accustomed to, the worse it is likely to get.

Fossil fuels have brought us so many good things. Longer, better-fed lives. Less infant mortality. Rapid and cheap travel. We don’t want to lose the many benefits of our fossil-fuelled culture. But nor do we want to see our futures burned up by unbridled consumerism or thoughtless greed.

As with any serious addiction, withdrawal feels painful, is costly, and—when done poorly—can be deadly. In fact, the dramatic changes needed to curb our addiction would likely mean tremendous suffering and probable loss of life.

Think about it: We’ve built our entire developed world to depend on large-scale agriculture, the quick and efficient transportation of food and goods, and houses dependent on energy-intensive heating and cooling systems. If we cut off the oil that is a lifeblood to these systems, people can die.

As the climate warms, these heat events will become more frequent, but the most effective way to lessen their death toll is to use even more energy to create cool spaces. It is a vicious cycle—one that doesn’t stop at temperature changes.

Likewise, the staples of our diet come from an unsustainable agriculture system. One study found that 1.78 billion people are fed by crops that depend directly on fossil fuel–generated fertilizers—which, when overused, can poison waterways and damage the soil’s productivity over time.

All this shows what a wickedly complex problem climate change is. Scientifically, it involves biodiversity loss, water and air pollution, ocean acidification, biogeochemical flows, and ecological system breakdown. Socially, it involves technology use, sustainable development goals, cultural norms, population growth, economic and political systems, religious beliefs, and psychological and physical limitations.

The reason climate change is so difficult to talk about is that bringing up any one issue is like pulling on a thread in a spiderweb: Every other thread in the web vibrates in response. We feel powerless to effect the changes we would like to see when simply meeting the needs of each day feels like an uphill battle. And so, the anxiety builds—until the anxiety itself feels like part of the avalanche threatening to tumble down on us. Is there any hope at all?

The short answer is yes. In fact, I think this is the time for radical hope. I first encountered this term in Jonathan Lear’s excellent book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Lear explores the history of the Crow tribe in the mid-1800s as they responded to the changes brought by western settlement of their territories in Montana.

The key figure in the book is the Crow chieftain Plenty Coups, who spent his life leading his people through those often-traumatic changes with one key insight: The old nomadic way of life chasing the buffalo was inescapably and irretrievably lost. How could his people hope when the very possibility of a meaningful Crow life was being destroyed? They had to learn to live a new way of life. Even their core values, like what it meant to be courageous, had to be re-formed in a culture where traditional warrior acts of courage were illegal.

Radical hope, then, is the hope that is formed when all our previous hopes are gone. Radical hope was the kind God provided the Israelite exiles in Babylon when he said,

Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters. … Seek the peace and the prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. … Do not let the prophets and diviners among you deceive you. Do not listen to the dreams you encourage them to have. (Jer. 29:5–8)

This passage comes before the familiar words in verse 11: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Yet God’s good plans were not for that generation to return home to the way things had always been. Instead, their hope and future lay in investing in exile. Like the Crow, they accepted the reality that their old lives were gone and had to be made anew.

In the same way, for us, radical hope means settling down in our own exile and waiting for God’s promise to be fulfilled beyond the scope of our own lifetimes.

We are just beginning to see the consequences of a crisis that will characterize the world in future decades and realizing that all our goodwill—all our recycling, paper straws, and bamboo toothbrushes—will not avert the behemoth of climate change. The juggernauts of economy and politics are simply too strong for our small acts to make much difference.

In 2016, 195 countries joined the Paris Agreement, a pact to try to keep climate change from exceeding a 1.5-degree Celsius (2.7-degree Fahrenheit) change. That hope of keeping the world under 1.5 degrees is now gone, but there is still a place for radical hope.

What does this radical hope look like in our everyday lives?

For me, it looks a lot like the old serenity prayer: “Lord, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Worked out practically, it means planning my energy to try to make the most difference I can with the choices I make and the tools I have.

One tool that helps me budget my attention and energy well is called the “spoon theory”—which I heard about from my friends with chronic disabilities. It is a way to measure the effort you have to expend when illness prevents you from doing all you want to in a day. In short, spoon theory asks you to imagine your daily energy level as a certain number of spoons. Then you divide up your daily tasks based on how much energy each one takes: two to get up and dressed, six for grocery shopping, three for making a meal, and so on.

I do a similar thing with creation care. I generally use half of my spoons of environmental energy for advocacy and trying to change systemic and political institutions: voting, writing letters to political leaders, mobilizing and educating people. The other half I use on the smaller, more psychologically rewarding but less impacting works: restoring a stream bank, researching and substituting better products into my life, scouring thrift shops.

The effort I spend throwing my tiny bit of democratic influence into pursuing systemic change rather than trying to pursue a perfect private life means that my toothbrush is still plastic, and my infrequently driven car is still gas-powered—but I have a greater chance of making a large-scale difference than if I put all my efforts into making my private life perfect.

When cultural models either deny climate change or give up every good of modern society and live with perfect integrity off-grid on an organic farm, I’ve found that spoon theory helps me manage the perfectionism that could overwhelm and kill the possibility of doing real, concrete good without feeling overwhelming guilt about all I cannot do.

Western culture is deeply avoidant of some of life’s basic realities: sickness, suffering, death. Some try to cheat them with ever more elaborate uses of fossil-fuelled power, such as cryogenic freezing.

But as Christians, our ultimate source of radical hope is found in the Easter story. Jesus did not avoid intense suffering and death but accepted, endured, and overcame them. And in doing so, he made a way for the radical hope of resurrected life. The Christian hope is not in avoiding or cheating death or suffering, but in walking through it with courage and virtue while we anticipate the hope of resurrection and life everlasting in God’s new creation.

As natural disasters strike, as food insecurity increases, as human migration intensifies, we remember Jesus’ words: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). And because of his victory, we can live out our radical hope by loving mercy, acting justly, and walking humbly with God in difficult times.

Bethany Sollereder is a lecturer in science and religion at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in the theology of suffering and has written Why Is There Suffering?: Pick Your Own Theological Expedition, the world’s first theological “choose your own adventure” book.

- More from Bethany Sollereder

News

Gen Z Christians Aren’t Sold on Trump or Harris

Harvest Prude in Grove City, Pennsylvania

Young Americans resist polarization as they show up to vote for president for the first time.

Lynne Sladky / AP Images

Sophia Cappawana was elected to public office before ever casting a vote in a presidential election.

At 19, Cappawana serves on the local council in Duncannon, Pennsylvania; she conscientiously noted that she is “most likely” the youngest member in its history. The daughter of a former mayor and local tax collector, Cappawana had political ambitions since her student council days, but she knows she’s an outlier among Generation Z.

“I don’t feel like my peers pay attention as much,” said the young council member, a Presbyterian who attends Grove City College, a Christian liberal arts school in Pennsylvania.

Historically, young people have been among the least likely to show up at the polls. But that may be changing: Half of those under 30 voted in the 2020 general election, a new record, up from only 39 percent among that cohort in 2016.

And especially in a battleground state in a close presidential race, both parties are trying to nab younger voters. Cappawana sees political messaging when she’s scrolling Instagram or reading on Breitbart and Newsmax.

“I’ve made up my mind for Trump,” she said. She ticked off reasons, believing that the Republican candidate would be better for the economy and that global affairs would be less chaotic with him in charge.

Vice President Kamala Harris leads by 31 points over Donald Trump among likely voters ages 18 to 29 years old, according to last month’s Harvard Youth Poll. In 2020, exit polls found voters under 30 went for Joe Biden by around 60 percent compared with 36 percent for Trump.

Like the majority of evangelical voters overall, many politically active young evangelicals told CT they would also be casting their vote for Trump.

“You don’t see much of a generational divide when it comes to support for Trump: white evangelicals are pretty much all in, and they have been since 2016,” said Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

But he noted that the Harris campaign has been making a robust effort to reach out to young voters in general, including hosting events on college campuses. Some of that may break through to young evangelical voters as well, and CT interviewed several young Christian Harris supporters as well.

In a recent Lifeway Research survey, just under half of evangelicals under 35—48 percent—said they sided with Trump.

“Both parties are putting a priority on young voters in a way they maybe haven’t always in the past,” said Cedarville University political science professor Mark Caleb Smith.

“American politics is so polarized and opinions are so hard among most of the population, there just aren’t that many persuadable voters. And so the goal becomes to find new voters. … You look for young voters who are brand new to the system and try to pull them in, shape them from that point forward.”

Harris’s campaign has leaned into memes in it’s social media outreach to younger voters. The campaign also sought to court younger voters with policy announcements like a plan to provide payment assistance for first-time homebuyers and to provide a $6,000 tax credit for new parents.

Trump has courted young men by appearing on the social media platforms of men with huge followings, from YouTuber Logan Paul to video game streamer Adin Ross. Next week, Trump is sitting down for an interview with podcasting giant Joe Rogan.

Both campaigns have also had surrogates seeking to fire up younger voters: Pop megastar Taylor Swift endorsed Harris and Tim Walz on the day of the vice presidential debate and encouraged her fans to register to vote. On the conservative side, tech billionaire Elon Musk, as well as Charlie Kirk with the Republican youth organization Turning Point USA, have sought to mobilize young people.

Gloria Cope, a 23-year-old Virginia resident voting for the first time, has also noticed the political content on social media. On Instagram, she watches debate recaps and commentary from conservative influencers. “My algorithm has pretty much figured it out,” she said.

Cope plans to vote for Trump and said that as a Christian, the issues top of mind for her are abortion and religious freedom. Cope, who is Hispanic and grew up in a white foster family, said she also pays attention to border and immigration issues and foreign policy.

“A lot of the reasons I’m voting conservative, voting for Trump, are either religiously based or based on my circumstances,” she said.

On the other side of the aisle, Allie Cottom, a 19-year-old from Pittsburgh, is planning to vote for Harris.

Cottom was raised nondenominational and is in the process of converting to Eastern Orthodoxy. She’s also evolved politically, moving from the conservative politics of her parents to now a self-described moderate Democrat.

As a history and education major, she agrees with Democrats’ education policies, though she described some areas where she diverges to an extent, such as on abortion policy. She also believes the Democrats align more with her religious values than Republicans at the moment.

“Your Christian values should lead you to love others and not necessarily take it upon yourself to judge them and try to ‘fix them.’ That’s not our job,” Cotton said. “I think it’s important to recognize that Christians should help people and evangelize if that’s what your denomination is focused on. But it’s more about how you treat others and less about what you get out of it.”

She pushes back when fellow Christians insinuate you can’t be a Christian and a Democrat.

“Being a Democrat is not a monolith,” she said. “You can agree and disagree with different things in the party in the same way I’m sure a lot of Republicans don’t agree with everything their party is doing.”

Jacob Reese is one young Republican who doesn’t agree with everything his party is doing at the moment.

“I don’t think [Trump] represents the entire corpus of what the American conservative movement is,” he said.

He’s found some of Trump’s rhetoric “extremely irresponsible” and some of the former president’s stances on social issues—such as “his position on life” disappointing. He referenced the watering down of the Republican Party platform when it comes to abortion.

“We can be realistic about Donald Trump and JD Vance, where they’re at on life. You can be honest about that and recognize they’re not a Mike Pence on life,” Reese said. “But it doesn’t mean that we have to undermine what I believe is a core value of Republican platforms since Reagan—standing for life.”

Reese also disagrees with Trump’s protectionist trade policy, saying he prefers a free market model to one that relies on widespread tariffs, believing that will cause prices to rise.

But he still plans to vote for Trump, citing stronger disagreements with Democrats’ policy positions.

Reese said he and his friends discuss politics but have tried to keep it all in perspective: “Whenever I get annoyed at some stupid policy things that the Trump administration comes out with or another terrible idea from the Kamala Harris camp, ultimately, I have to remind myself, this is temporary. It’s very important we should be engaged, but it’s not the ultimate thing.”

At AEI, Cox has found in focus groups that there may be less enthusiasm in general for either party among young people, in contrast with previous generations.

“The millennial generation, when they were young, during the Obama years, were not just supportive of Obama—they were Democrats. They identified as Democrats. They generally believed in the Democratic Party.”

But the “same is simply not true for Generation Z,” who have told Cox they don’t believe Democrats are doing enough on issues that are important to them.

“The Democrats have squandered a huge advantage among young voters, who are seemingly much more divided than you feel like they should be, given how unpopular Trump has been among young people since he first arrived on the scene,” Cox said.

Adam Mikhail, a 19-year-old international relations major at Wheaton College, is one of those young voters. A dual citizen, Mikhail grew up in Cairo, the son of Coptic and evangelical parents, and said his stances shifted to the left due to the political instability he experienced in Egypt.

On issues like economics, criminal justice, and health care, Mikhail’s faith leads him to back policies that he believes support “human life and flourishing, justice, neighborly love, and good stewardship.” He said has been disappointed with several recent Democratic positions, including on the Israel-Gaza war.

“Frankly, I used to be a fan of Kamala Harris when she was running for president in 2020. She seemed to genuinely support a progressive platform,” Mikhail said. Now he believes she’s “pulled back to cater to conservatives and moderates.”

Mikhail voted early for Harris, more out of hopes it will help prevent a second Trump term than out of genuine enthusiasm for Harris herself. He listed concerns with Trump’s refusal to concede his election loss and the January 6 Capitol riot.

While young people are inundated with political information online, Mikhail said campaigns need to do more than show up in the places where young people are to truly earn their support. Many of his peers are politically apathetic and distrustful of politicians.

As many as half of young people will sit out this election, according to Cox, yet their voices, opinions, and approach to the public square will still shape American life around them, even if they’re not reflected in the exit polls.

“Young voters are essential to winning, but we also aren’t all easily convinced,” Mikhail said. “Targeting Gen Z through social media trends will not automatically earn a vote, as many of us want to be convinced that the vote will matter.”

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News

Indian Christians Worry About Indian American Political Success

Surinder Kaur

How an increasing number of Hindu politicians in America might threaten religious freedom in India.

Participants marching in the Annual India Day Parade in New York.

Anthony Behar / Sipa USA / AP Images

This year’s elections will not put a Hindu in the White House, but the 2024 campaign has highlighted the growing influence of the world’s 1.2 billion Hindus on US politics.

At the top, though she identifies as a Christian, Democratic candidate and current vice president Kamala Harris is the daughter of Shyamala Gopalan, a Brahmin (the highest caste in Hinduism) immigrant from India. On the Republican side, Usha Vance, nee Chilukuri, wife of Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance, is also from the Brahmin Hindu community.

Nationally, five Indian Americans serve in Congress. Nearly 50 hold seats in state legislatures, the majority Hindu, though several are Sikh or Muslim.

The growing presence of Hindu Americans in US politics is a relatively new development. Though Dalip Singh Saund became the first Indian American elected to Congress in 1957, the number of Indian Americans in politics only began to increase in the last decade. In September 2023, representative Shri Thanedar, a Democrat, launched the controversial Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, and Jain American caucus.

This swift rise in political participation and leadership is particularly striking given the community’s relatively small size. The population of Hindu Americans is about 2.5 million, or slightly less than 1 percent of the US population. The community’s influence transcends its headcount, largely because its overwhelmingly high socioeconomic status gives Hindu Americans the potential to make large contributions to political campaigns. In 2022, the median income for Indian American household was $145,000.

“There was always a Hindu vote, which was not recognized publicly,” Democratic strategist Ramesh Kapur toldThe Universal News Network in March, “but it is being recognized now.”

But rather than celebrate the success of Indian Americans in US Politics, back in India, as Hindu nationalism continues to strengthen, many Christians are nervous about the political priorities of the largely Hindu contingency across the Pacific. Some worry that right-wing Indian groups will encourage the US to engage in India without holding the country accountable for religious freedom abuses against Muslims and Christians.

Rajesh Sampath, a philosophy professor at Brandeis University and a former Hindu who converted to Catholicism, said he worried “about the uncritical acceptance of the Indian American rise.” Not questioning candidates’ positions on Hindutva, or Hindu nationalism, and ensuring that they are not under the influence of right-wing nationalism “could have adverse effects on civil rights, not only for Indian Christians in India but also in terms of race and equality here in the US.”

Hindu American power play

Hindu elected officials have served as both Democrats and Republicans and, in general, hold a number of perspectives on domestic policies. But their advocacy, or lack thereof when it comes to religious freedom of religious minorities in India, is what worries Indian and Indian American Christians.

For instance, both Democrats and Republicans have approved millions in arms deals to India while stalling efforts to designate it as a Country of Particular Concern by the US State Department, explained Neal Christie, the executive director of the Federation of Indian American Christian Organization.

(This designation is given to any country that the US government officially identifies as having systematic and severe violations of religious freedom, as defined by the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998.)

Meanwhile, in Congress, a resolution supporting Father Stan Swamy, a Jesuit priest who died in custody in 2022 while imprisoned under anti-terror laws and condemning the Indian government’s treatment of political prisoners, has not made it out of a committee since it was introduced in July. Christie attributes this hesitation to “many lawmakers’ vested economic interests in India and their fear of backlash from Hindu nationalists in their constituencies.”

“Politicians in the US, particularly Hindu ones, make a lot of noise when it comes to the attacks on Hindu temples in the US, but when it comes to the suffering of minorities in India, such as the demolition of churches in Manipur, we don’t see the same level of concern,” said Allen Brooks, a spokesman of the Assam Christian Forum.

As American leaders have increasingly seen China as the biggest threat to America’s geopolitical future, many have warmed to India. To that end, both Democrats and Republicans “have cultivated significant ties with Hindu nationalists for geopolitical gains, prioritizing trade and industrial relationships in South Asia over the pressing issue of religious freedom for minorities,” said Sampath.

Since first sending Narendra Modi into national office in 2014, supporters of Hindutva have exported their ideology overseas. In the US, Hindu American groups supporting Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Vishva Hindu Parishad have aggressive political outreach strategies in the United States.

These organizations promote a worldview that largely aligns with portions of the Republican platform regarding nationalism, traditional values, and defense of cultural identity, said John Dayal, a veteran human rights activist and spokesman for the All India Catholic Union. Dayal believes these groups have helped Hindu Americans find political success in American politics.

“Their main role for the moment is exonerating Prime Minister Modi and cleansing his image as well as that of other polarizing leaders from the Hindu right wing.”

Ron Adar / SOPA Images / AP Images

Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America marching in the India Day Parade.

What is more concerning, according to Dayal, is the “power wielded by affluent upper-caste Indian Americans in both politics and the corporate sector.” If Indian CEOs of US companies adopted right-wing political ideologies, “the power they could exert would be alarming,” Dayal said. “The access that the Hindu right wing has to the corporate sector and to the politicians in America is a very dangerous thing.”

The growing influence of Hindu American groups, as well as politicians, has also raised concerns about their potential impact on US foreign policy, particularly regarding religious freedom in India.

Of particular concern has been the admiration and endorsement of Modi by the Hindu American politician Vivek Ramaswamy, who was one of the Republican presidential candidates. After terming Modi an “excellent” prime minister and an “outstanding leader” in July 2023, Ramaswamy repeated praises of Modi as recently as September 2024 and credited him for “restoring Indian national pride” while making no mention of the abysmal human and minority rights record under Modi that critics repeatedly raise.

Christie questions how Hindu American legislators can align with values like tolerance, respect, and fairness if they legitimize a nationalist or exclusionary agenda in India.

Dayal shares similar concerns about both Hindu American politicians and Hindu groups in the US like the Hindu America Foundation, who has been accused of lobbying on behalf of the Indian government and having a relationship with far right organizations.

“When Hindutva, Modi, or the Sangh Parivar [family of Hindutva organizations] come under scrutiny in America, through reports of the USCIRF or through the work of advocacy groups, Hindu outfits like Hindu America Foundation (HAF), which have close ties with many Hindu American politicians, sanitize their sinister deeds, demonize the source of the scrutiny, and let extreme right NRIs [non-resident Indians] emerge as spokespeople for the community in the US.”

A recent report released by the Political Research Associates accuses the HAF of showing two different faces. While presenting itself publicly as a mainstream civil rights organization in American society, it has simultaneously opposed protections against caste discrimination, expressed prejudice against Muslims, and shown clear support for Modi’s BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party). Through this dual approach, the report states, HAF has been able to introduce these ideas into American institutional spaces where they previously would not have been welcome or taken seriously.

These groups, like HAF, “capitalize [use it for their advantage] on fears of radical Muslims,” says Christie, which he sees as “stereotypical and racist.” They also perpetuate negative portrayals of Indian Christians as “Rice Christians,” accusing them of forced conversions and spreading harmful stereotypes.

(“Rice Christians” or “Rice Bag” is a slur used against Christians in India alleging that they converted to Christianity for a bag of rice.)

The shifting Indian vote

In the 2020 election, 74 percent of Indian Americans voted, making them among the most politically engaged communities of all US ethnic groups. Traditionally a Democratic-leaning community, Indian Americans are beginning to show signs of political realignment. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, while 68 percent identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, an emerging 29 percent now identifies as Republican—a trend that has caught the attention of both sides of the aisle.

The biannual Asian American Voter Survey released in July 2024 showed that the number of Indian Americans planning to vote for Joe Biden dropped almost 20 points—from 65 percent in 2020 to 46 percent in 2024. While the survey didn’t ask respondents if they would vote for Harris, it did find that 54 percent of Indian American voters said they had a somewhat favorable or very favorable impression of the vice president.

Some Hindu Americans who felt that Harris’s positions on religious freedom, India-US relations, and minority rights were not in their best interests have criticized Harris’s (and Biden’s) policies and politics. A section of Hindu American voters also has misgivings that she “failed to connect with them in her previous campaigns for president and vice president.” Hindu right-wing publications have clearly rejected her identity as an Indian or a Hindu in the past, and she has been accused of not trying hard enough to reach out to mainstream Hindu organizations.

Political scientist Sangay Mishra notes that Hindu Americans are increasingly framing their political choices around support for India, viewing Democratic criticism of India’s policies as hostile to Hindu interests. This sentiment is echoed by activists like Utsav Sanduja, who launched the Hindus for America First PAC, arguing that “the Hindu voice, unfortunately, has been kind of hijacked by woke elements” and that Democratic “human rights lectures” risk alienating India from America.

A group of Hindu donors has also been pushing the Biden-Harris campaign to include a dedicated “Hindu page” in its 2024 manifesto, similar to sections included in earlier campaigns tailored to Muslim, Jewish, and African American voters.

On the Republican side, candidates like Ohio state lawmaker Niraj Antani have been proactive in highlighting their Hindu faith, presenting themselves as protectors of religious freedom and traditional values. Antani, in campaign messaging, frequently references his Hindu identity, perhaps most recently by praising the opening of the Ram temple in Ayodhya, India, a common nationalist Hindu refrain.

Diaspora’s divided voice

Last year, Modi met with Biden several weeks after more than 200 Christians died due to violence in the Indian state of Manipur. Indian Americans and several civil rights and interfaith leaders protested these attacks, as well as the Indian government’s increased restrictions on the press and civil society, in front of the White House.

After a video of a mob celebrating a sexual assault in Manipur went viral, Indian Americans and Indian expats took to the streets in cities in six American states, and more than 700 Indian Christians prayed for peace and justice in front of the UN.

The Indian Christian diaspora in the US could play a significant role in the complex political landscape surrounding religious freedom, but “because the Indian Christian diaspora is diverse ethnically and socio-economically and has not come to a common consensus on its commitment to human rights in the US and globally, they stay very quiet,” Christie said. He noted that many in this community stay quiet out of fear for their financial stability, property, the safety of their families, and worries about losing their Indian citizenship.

“Indian American Christians are a minority within the minority,” Sampath said. “You’re caught between these worlds, trying to survive as an Indian Christian minority within the larger Indian diaspora.”

Christie believes that Indian American Christians have a responsibility to advocate for more than just their own interests.

“If we benefit Muslims, Christians will benefit,” he said. “If we benefit Christians, Muslims and Hindus will benefit. Human rights is not a zero-sum game.”

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News

Vince Bantu Fired After Fuller Seminary Investigation

Daniel Silliman

Questions about 2019 hiring remain.

Vince Bantu

Fuller Seminary

Fuller Theological Seminary has fired assistant professor Vince Bantu five months after his local accountability group contacted the school with claims he was engaged in ongoing sexual misconduct and had secretly married a second wife.

The St. Louis ministers accused Bantu of privately justifying his ongoing sexual misconduct with novel theological arguments. They marshaled multiple witnesses and showed Christianity Today texts and documents supporting the allegations. Bantu told CT that the men he once trusted for moral accountability were lying, suggesting they were jealous of his ministry success.

Fuller conducted “a comprehensive and deliberate review of alleged misconduct,” according to Fuller president David Emmanuel Goatley.

Goatley sent an email to students on Wednesday afternoon announcing that the school decided to terminate Bantu’s contract.

Bantu, an expert in ancient African Christianity and the author of A Multitude of All Peoples, regularly spoke at Christian colleges and conferences. He taught church history and Black church studies online and at Fuller’s Houston campus over the past five years.

Fuller had hired an outside investigative firm to conduct the review. Inquiries into individual employees typically aren’t made public, and the seminary has not disclosed what the investigators found.

Fuller’s community standards say faculty must “abstain from … unbiblical sexual practices,” including all “explicit sexual conduct” outside of marriage and that marriage is a “covenant union between one man and one woman.”

The email to the seminary community does not indicate if Bantu did something inappropriate, changed his views, or something else. The message from the president only says, “Fuller Seminary has high expectations and standards of conduct for all members of our community, especially those in positions of authority.”

Bantu previously taught at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis and resigned after an investigation into what Bantu confessed was an “emotional affair” with a student.

According to Covenant president Thomas C. Gibbs, Fuller contacted Covenant in the process of hiring Bantu, and Covenant officials informed Fuller of Bantu’s inappropriate relationship with a student.

“It was, at the time, believed Dr. Bantu was demonstrating full repentance and had given a full confession,” Gibbs told CT.

It is not known how Fuller officials weighed Bantu’s confessed misconduct in the decision to hire him.

Goatley, who became Fuller’s president in 2023, told students on Wednesday that “Fuller Seminary has significantly enhanced its hiring process and policies since Dr. Bantu’s hiring.”

Fuller declined to respond to questions about the hiring process or the investigation.

Bantu’s faculty page has been removed from the Fuller website and videos of his talks have been taken down as well.

Bantu also works at a second seminary, Meachum School at Haymanot, which he founded in his hometown of St. Louis in 2018. The Meachum board posted a statement online that Bantu is on leave and “investigations are underway.”

The board described itself as “disheartened” by the allegations but assured students and supporters that “we are even more committed to the theological proliferation of orthodoxy and Black flourishing as we proclaim Jesus to the nations.”

The Meachum board members hope to have reports from the investigations in several weeks.

This story has been updated to note that Fuller declined to respond to questions.

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Culture

‘Conclave’ Takes Power—and the Papacy—Seriously

Kate Lucky

Starring Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci, the new film follows the process of choosing a leader of the Catholic church.

Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence in Conclave

Political thrillers are studies in power. Macbeth and All the President’s Men and House of Cards pose similar questions. Who wants power, and why? What will they do to attain it? And which machinations will they come to regret?

The new film Conclave, directed by Edward Berger and based on the novel by Robert Harris, has all the hallmarks of this genre: whispers, sidelong glances, shifting allegiances, dialogue as sharp as the whetted edge of a knife. Its setting, however, is not Washington but Vatican City.

The pope has suddenly died, and the College of Cardinals has gathered to elect his successor. Sequestered in the Vatican, they politick over meals and cigarettes in impassioned speeches and secret meetings before gathering each day in the Sistine Chapel to vote by secret ballot, praying their preferred candidate will secure a two-thirds supermajority.

This election process is real. Happily for Berger, it’s also made for the movies, all gilded vestments and towering frescos and pomp and circumstance. Cigarettes burn. Nuns hand-pinch ravioli. Plumes of smoke issue into the sky when each round of ballots is burned.

Conclave is a gorgeous film. It’s also a riveting one. The pope serves as the religious authority for nearly 18 percent of the world’s population. A papal election, it turns out, is the perfect place to apply those timeless questions about power.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and that fear has entered the hearts of some of the cardinals, particularly Cardinal Lawrence, manager of the conclave, brilliantly portrayed by Ralph Fiennes. Though Lawrence is undergoing a crisis of faith—in fact, he’d hoped to leave the college and join a monastic order—he takes extremely seriously the responsibility with which he’s been entrusted.

Lawrence’s own doubt, he insists, disqualifies him to serve as pope. Or does his reticence make him just right for the position? As one of his colleagues puts it, “The men who are dangerous are the ones who do want it.”

That maxim is certainly true in more profane politics. People who want to be president are rightly assumed suspect. Absolute power, we know, corrupts absolutely. But what about power grasped in service of a higher authority? What about power for God’s sake?

That question makes Conclave an especially compelling movie, and different from others of its kind. In this setting, such struggles aren’t only about selfish striving; they’re about love for the church and deeply held desires for its future. Some of the cardinals are obviously craven. But most are more complicated. It’s difficult to tell where ambition ends and where conviction—about the return of the Latin Mass, or women in leadership, or sexuality, or radical Islam, or social justice—begins.

Conclave offers an apt portrayal of the Catholic church’s factions, as well as how those factions muddle American political categories. The candidate who would be the first Black pope (Lucian Msamati) has traditional views on sexuality. The mysterious Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is a reformer, concerned for the plight of the poor. But he’s also very much religious, with a history of missions work in dangerous places. He wants to do his work within the church.

And though the film subtly advances progressive convictions, it gives cardinals of all ideological persuasions equal opportunity to fall short. Both the conservatives (Msamati, Sergio Castellitto) and the liberals (John Lithgow, Stanley Tucci) give in to their egos. They succumb to sin; they weep; they seek forgiveness. As Lawrence puts it, “We are mortal men; we serve an ideal. We cannot always be ideal.” Electing a pope, oftentimes, is a matter of choosing “the least bad option.”

Still, the “least bad option” has that 18 percent of the world under his leadership. He’s responsible for preserving Catholic fidelity and orthodoxy. He’s not merely accountable to voters or the rule of law but to God. Conclave takes this seriously. Even when one cardinal quips that the former pope had his doubts—“never about God,” but about “the church,” with all its bureaucracy and abuse and corruption—there’s a sense that the loss of that church would be grievous. The answer isn’t to abolish but to reform.

By the end of its twisty plot, Conclave shows its cards about what that reform might look like—with an election (and a subsequent revelation) that feels extremely unlikely even for a thriller as dramatic as this one.

It’s a rather didactic ending for a film so nuanced, so humanizing, and so accommodating of difference. At the conclave’s opening Mass, Cardinal Lawrence begs his brothers for unity, citing Ephesians 5:21. “God’s gift to the church is its variety,” he pleads. “There is one sin I have come to fear above all others: certainty. … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.”

Different viewers might conclude that more certainty on any number of these issues—Islam, women in leadership, the church’s obligation to the poor—is precisely what’s needed to keep that faith alive. Nevertheless, it’s moving to see a varied group of men, doubts and all, muddling their way forward amid the clouds of cigarette smoke and plates of ravioli. Their attempt, Conclave recognizes, is worthy of being made: for the power and the glory of the One on the throne.

Kate Lucky is the senior editor of culture and engagement at Christianity Today.

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Books

Review

The Church Is the World’s Greatest Love Story

Brett Vanderzee

Formal membership figures might rise and fall. But God’s desire for his people never wavers.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

People do crazy things for love.

In the ancient world, Jacob worked for Laban seven years to marry his daughter Rachel—and then another seven after Laban duped him into marrying Leah first. In the modern world, people go on The Bachelor.

God’s love is not crazy. (Since the Greek term for Word in John 1 also translates as reason, his love is actually as sane as it gets.) But his love is jealous: It is passionately and faithfully devoted to one people from beginning to end. That people is called Israel.

This unwavering love of God for Israel is the guiding light of theologian Brad East’s new book The Church: A Guide to the People of God. From the opening lines to the closing benediction, East shows us that the church belongs to God because it belongs to the family of Abraham. As our children sing in the VBS song, he recalls: “Father Abraham had many sons / Many sons had father Abraham / I am one of them and so are you.”

Israel has 12 tribes, Jesus calls 12 apostles, and East tells the story in 12 bite-sized chapters. Covering all manner of theological topics, he sketches a thorough yet accessible portrait of who God is, what he is up to, and how his people are at the heart of it all. It is the story of Paul’s great mystery in Ephesians: Christ loving the church as a bridegroom loves his bride (5:32).

All of this makes East’s book a much-needed tonic for our times. As you may have heard lately about Americans and the church, there has been plenty of love lost. In their own book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham document how 40 million Americans said sayonara to the church in the last quarter century—the biggest and fastest religious transformation in our country’s history. If there was ever a time to answer the question “Why church?” that time is now.

And yet, there is no sign of anxiety in East’s answer. Far above the fray, he begins with the transcendent mystery of the church and moves deftly to the church’s mother: Mary. By divine adoption, he writes, we became brothers and sisters of Jesus of Nazareth. In other words, we are Mary’s children, which makes us children of the church. To those who have lost touch with the church in our day, East gives time-honored advice: “Call your mother.”

The Church is bookended by reflections on Mary, some of them quite stunning. God’s people have long recognized her as the “mother of God,” and Jesus’ human flesh comes entirely from her. “No human being ever knew Christ with greater intimacy than Mary,” East says of the woman whose womb enveloped our Lord. It is striking for a Protestant to write about Mary with such depth, devotion, and insight.

Still, in true Protestant fashion, The Church is laser-focused on the Good Book. It is fitting that East—who wrote his dissertation on the relationship of church and Scripture—has saturated his book on the church with Scripture. Biblical citations carbonate nearly every page in parenthetical bubbles. A back-of-the-napkin tally of the book’s Scripture index shows references to 46 of the Bible’s 66 books.

But this is no mere box-checking exercise: It amounts to a substantive claim about the relationship of God’s Word to Israel, for “the business of the Bible is the calling of a people.” They go hand in hand, and to its credit, The Church will not let us forget it.

Nor will East let us forget that Scripture’s story is our story too. As Karl Barth once observed in his Church Dogmatics, “All humanity, whether it is aware of it or not, does actually stand in the Bible.” If the love story of God and his people is the central plot of the cosmos, each of us has a vested interest in how it all shakes out. Fortunately, Israel’s life leads straight to Jesus, and Jesus invites us into Israel’s life. “God created the world for the sake of Christ, and in that sense created it for the sake of Israel,” East writes. “Just so, God created the world for the sake of the church, which is Christ’s body.” In a world that often feels like it has lost the thread, the body of Christ points us back to the script.

And because Israel’s story includes the church, the church can be found on every page of Scripture. This may be why East feels no rush to reach the Acts of the Apostles. Much like the Bible itself, The Church doesn’t reach Pentecost until it is over 80 percent through. Since thinking about the church often starts with its birthday, this move is purposefully counterintuitive. Fresh thinking needs a fresh word, and East is ready to speak it: “We are not beginning at the end. We are beginning at the beginning.”

Jolted awake from stale thought patterns, we are better able to see the fullness of the truth. In an era when many want Christ without church, Jesus without Mary, Abraham’s God without the family of Abraham, East exposes these as false choices. The Church is his manifesto for why each of these pairs go hand in hand or nowhere at all. To paraphrase Fleming Rutledge in a passage from her book The Crucifixion, it is like trying to have a ham and cheese sandwich without one of the two titular ingredients. Either it all hangs together, or we are left hanging out to dry. In which case, Paul says, “we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19).

The final chapter (before a short benediction) elegantly leads us home. Here, East sharpens his outline of the church’s present character and activity. The church is the harbinger of Christ and his salvation; it speaks the gospel; it is catholic (as in universal) and apostolic; it teaches truth and administers sacraments; it is a people committed to justice and mercy but prone to failure; its life is a mission of worship and prayer—love and adoration for God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. All of this has been assumed and anticipated in the preceding pages, but having ascended to this doctrinal summit, the signature notes ring louder.

East has given us a worthy addition to Christian Essentials, a well-crafted series from Lexham Press. Each book in the series is friendly both to clergy in pulpits and to Christians in pews. The Church is not the pastoral vignettes of Wesley Hill’s The Lord’s Prayer, nor the fast-paced feast of Ben Myers’s The Apostle’s Creed, but it manages to find its own groove in good company. At the risk of sounding grandiose, it is something of a thumbnail sketch of The City of God: a compact and colorful rendition of the whole story of God and his people—the symphonic sweep of Augustine in a Brian Wilson single.

So we ask, once again, “Why church?” From God’s perspective, the answer is simple: love. Deuteronomy 7:8 says that God chose Israel not because its people were the greatest but simply because he loves them. The logic underpinning all space and time is the love of God in Christ. When we bathe in the church’s waters and eat at its table, we order our lives around the secret of the universe. That secret is the triune God’s love for his people, and it doesn’t get any more foundational than that. As East makes clear, “Love is its own explanation. It is rock bottom.”

When I tuck my children into bed at night, the last thing I do is sing. On many nights, the song I choose is a lullaby based on Song of Solomon 6:3: “I am my Beloved’s and He is mine—His banner over me is love.” East ends the first chapter of The Church by quoting this verse, adding a comment, and extending an invitation: “This one verse is the mystery of the entire story of the Bible,” he writes. “Come and see.”

Brett Vanderzee is music and preaching minister at The Springs Church of Christ in Edmond, Oklahoma.

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Theology

Election Day Can Help Break Our Addiction to Hope

Russell Moore

Editor in Chief

Real hope is not an argument, an opioid, or a sunnier form of despair. It’s a person named Jesus.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

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

Whatever our political views, those of us who care about America are apprehensive about Election Day. We face the specter of an ever-widening divide, with even the possibility of violence on the horizon.

A friend of mine, a public policy expert, recently talked about the anxiety that comes with constantly hearing the predictions, constantly watching often-contradictory polling numbers. “I guess I should just look for the ‘hopium’ that people are talking about,” she said. I could relate to that.

By “hopium,” she means the tongue-in-cheek label for curating news that offers reassurance of how everything is going to turn out all right. The metaphor works—especially in the context of a country plagued with opiate addiction—because there’s a kind of “hope” that is meant to numb us, to distract us from thinking about what could be a bleak future.

And Election Day is, in some ways, just a stand-in for even deeper fears and misgivings about what might be lurking around the corner—pandemics, world wars, ecological disaster, artificial intelligence catastrophes, who knows?

With the election and other things, I tend to default to convincing myself of the worst possible outcome—say, a 269–269 electoral tie that takes an already angry and exhausted public to the brink. But that’s kind of a counter-label hopium too, trying to forestall bad things by imagining them so that anything better is a welcome surprise.

Many Christians, when asking me about the aftermath of the election (however it turns out), say, “Can you give us some hope?” Often, what these Christians actually want is hopium—a way of saying, after all the division and scandal of the past decade, that something will happen that will put everything back together again. In their churches or families or in the country, they want things to return to the way it was in 2010 or 2015.

In one sense, then, perhaps the most hopeful thing I could say in the lead-up to Election Day is to encourage you to lose hope.

Many are familiar with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of “cheap grace.” The first thing we must recognize if we understand what he meant is that cheap grace is not “too much grace.” Grace is inexhaustible and unquantifiable. Cheap grace is no grace at all.

The kind of grace that calls for no repentance or transformation doesn’t ultimately work, even for the purposes of reassurance. Our consciences know—however deeply we bury that awareness—that we need something more than the superficial. We need the kind of grace that really knows us, in all our transgression, and says anyway, “You are forgiven.”

“Cheap hope” works the same way. It’s actually not hope. It’s a hopioid.

Søren Kierkegaard warned that introducing Christianity to a culture where everyone is a “Christian” will feel, at first, like taking Christianity away. Similarly, introducing hope as just a sunnier form of despair will feel, at first, like losing hope.

Hope is, of course, a Christian virtue (1 Cor. 13:13). But, as with grace, the Bible defines hope by contrasting it with what it is not. The apostle Paul wrote, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Rom. 8:24–25, ESV throughout). In calling us to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God,” Paul wrote that hope comes about in ways few of us define as “hopeful”—through suffering that produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope (5:2–4).

There’s a certain kind of Christian who drinks coffee from a mug with Jeremiah 29:11 on it: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope”—and that’s good. There’s another kind of Christian who often quotes a few verses before that: “But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (v. 7)—and that’s good too.

And yet neither of those verses—one giving hope to our faith, the other to our work—can be understood without the chapter before it. There, we see two prophets dueling it out. Hananiah is the messenger of “hope.” Within two years, he said, God will break the rule of the Babylonian invaders and will restore all the stolen vessels back to the temple. Jeremiah seems to be the “hopeless” one. He says:

Amen! May the Lord do so; may the Lord make the words that you have prophesied come true, and bring back to this place from Babylon the vessels of the house of the Lord, and all the exiles. Yet hear now this word that I speak in your hearing and in the hearing of all the people. The prophets who preceded you and me from ancient times prophesied war, famine, and pestilence against many countries and great kingdoms. As for the prophet who prophesies peace, when the word of that prophet comes to pass, then it will be known that the Lord has truly sent the prophet. (28:6–9)

Hananiah offered hopium. Jeremiah offered the only kind of hope God gives—the kind that goes the long way around, through the valley of the shadow of death, through the way of the cross. Hananiah’s kind of hope would be, “Hold on; this is almost over, and you can go back to normal.” Jeremiah offers a different kind of “a future and a hope”: “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord” (29:13–14).

That kind of hope is what enables us to exhale and trust and even rejoice—because it tells us the truth. Our situation, in every era from Eden to now, is even worse than it appears. But Jesus. And that’s what’s most important about a Christian view of the future, a Christian kind of hope. “The future” has a name: Jesus of Nazareth. Hope is not an argument but a person.

Real hope often finds us pointing right in front of us, saying, “I don’t exactly know where we’re going, but God does, and I’m with him.” Left to ourselves, the kind of faith we want is just sight. The kind of love we want is just affirmation. And the kind of hope we want is whatever we think best working itself out somehow.

Hopium, however we curate it for ourselves, is really just another kind of despair. Let’s let go of it. We don’t need it.

We can see backward—to the cloud of witnesses and martyrs who told us the truth. We can see way, way forward—to the wiping away of all tears. We just can’t see right ahead of us. But we know that whatever happens, just like in the far past and in the far future, underneath are the everlasting arms.

Those who would save their lives must lose it, Jesus told us. And those who would find hope must lose that too. That’s true on Election Day and on Judgment Day, and on every day in between.

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

Ideas

‘Thou Setter Up and Plucker Down of Kings’

Philip Yancey

Columnist; Contributor

William Shakespeare’s honest tragedies and bold assumption of God’s providence offer insight in our contentious election season.

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

In 2016, the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, I wrote a blog about the playwright and the election. Donald Trump, then a political newcomer, was running against Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee from a major political party. We all know how that turned out. Now, eight years later, I revisit the prescient bard, wondering what insights we might gain on our current political scene.

I once made a New Year’s resolution to read all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays in one year. Although I missed the deadline, eventually I got them all read. Even after four centuries, the plays seemed oddly up-to-date—especially in an election year.

With the news playing softly in the background, I reflect on the poet from the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide; in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ’twixt son and father.” Those words from King Lear sound like cable commentators describing the modern world. Too bleak for most generations’ taste, Lear was performed for centuries in a happy-ending version. Now that modern realism has caught up with its dark vision, it has become Shakespeare’s most revered play.

“Each new morn / New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows / Strike heaven on the face”—is that Macbeth or a contemporary political ad? Shakespeare’s depictions of crime, injustice, war, treachery, and greed demonstrate that, no matter what either political party says, these problems are not inventions of modern America; they have been around since Eden. As Richard III’s Queen Elizabeth says, “All-seeing heaven, what a world is this!”

Some major differences between the Elizabethan view of the world and our own stand out as well. Listening to politicians from both parties, I get the distinct notion that if we could just get the economy rolling and create prosperity—either through trickle-down economics or income equalization—why, then a golden age would return. Social problems (the closest modern equivalent to “evil”) stem from poverty and lack of education.

Shakespeare would disagree. “They are as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing,” observes an heiress’s maid in The Merchant of Venice. The bard’s plays show genuine respect for the decency of the lower classes. The real villains are the rich and powerful, such as Macbeth and Richard III, who have every advantage of education, wealth, and fine breeding. Beware, political megadonors: Along with other literary giants—Tolstoy, Balzac, Dickens—Shakespeare sees the rich, not the poor, as the most susceptible to injustice and corruption.

King Lear states the danger well: “Through tattered clothes small vices do appear / Robes and furred gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold.” Lear learns this lesson the hard way. Cast out of his own castle by his greedy daughters, he wanders alone through a pounding rainstorm, finally taking shelter in a cave with a refugee. For the first time he sees up close the plight of the poor and homeless:

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’r you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en
Too little care of this.

Shylock, in Merchant of Venice, pleads for an understanding of his minority status:

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

I recently reread his words substituting undocumented immigrant for Jew. (There were no legally practicing Jews in England during Shakespeare’s time. King Edward I had expelled all Jews from the country in 1290, an edict not reversed until after Shakespeare’s death.)

A belief in Providence underlies all of Shakespeare’s plays, which makes apparent injustice all the more grievous. “Wilt thou, O God, fly from such gentle lambs / And throw them in the entrails of the wolf? / When didst thou sleep when such a deed was done?” cries one character in Richard III after a murderous crime. “O God, seest Thou this, and bearest so long?” laments another in Henry VI, Part 2.

We heard similarly eloquent moral appeals from Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement, but no longer. You only rail against God if you still believe God is active in history, and the mainstream media now eschew God talk as politically incorrect.

In Shakespeare’s time, people still lived out their days under the shadow of divine reward and punishment. Lady Macbeth hopes otherwise. “A little water clears us of this deed,” she says as she and her husband rinse their hands of blood. How wrong she was.

Our leaders could use a dose of the humility of Edward, the Earl of March, who prays, “Ere my knee rise from the earth’s cold face / I throw my hands, mine eyes, my heart to Thee / Thou setter-up and plucker-down of kings.”

King Lear knew what it was to be set up and plucked down, and only in his reduced state did he taste the wonder of grace. Shakespeare often echoes what theologians call “the theology of reversal,” as expressed in the Beatitudes.

In the paradox of grace, he describes in As You Like It, “Sweet are the uses of adversity / Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” Dogberry, the comical constable in Much Ado About Nothing, gets his words mixed up in a deeply ironic way when he says to a wrongdoer, “O, villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption.”

I wish our politics showed more of the wisdom and profundity of William Shakespeare. Alas, I hold out little hope. If the mudslinging in media ads is any indication, even more gutter talk awaits.

But I do have one proposed solution. Shakespeare was a master of insults, and websites have compiled some of his best in a glossary of offense. Rather than falling back on pedestrian words such as stupid and liar and bully, why can’t candidates elevate their rhetoric if not their character?

Think of the TV ratings we’d see if politicians would learn to mimic Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, who defends herself against “a mad-brain rudesby, full of spleen.” Or this from King Lear: “[Thou art] a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave.” Democracy thrives on disagreement; I just wish for more poetry in the contest.

Alternatively, I suggest an even more audacious option. What if our leaders showed a bit more civility? “How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?” asks the duke in The Merchant of Venice.

Portia adds:

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. …
It is an attribute to God Himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.

Four centuries after William Shakespeare, we’re still waiting.

Philip Yancey is the author of many books including, most recently, the memoir Where the Light Fell.

A version of this article originally appeared on Philip Yancey’s website.

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