The Antidote to Election Anxiety

Contributor

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

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ideas

All Saints Die

L. S. Dugdale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Culture

Exorcism Movies’ Terrifying Truth

Paul Marchbanks

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

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it is enough.

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

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

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

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

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Ideas

Digital Sloth in the Online Arena

Scott Gustafson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Theology

Biblical Beasts and Where to Find Them

Paulo Nogueira

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

Edits by CT / WikiMedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Ideas

How Not to Vote for Barabbas

Domonic D. Purviance

A democratic process resulted in the greatest miscarriage of justice in human history.

Christine_Kohler / Getty / Edits by CT

In the heat of election season, I’m reminded of how politics in America has a way of dominating our culture like nothing else. Every election is declared the most consequential of our lifetimes. Every issue is described as existential in its stakes, and we are told that the entire future of our country—and the world—comes down to how we vote.

Part of why we get worked up about elections is what we believe about democracy. We believe voting is the primary way to solve critical issues of our day. Elections are where we fight for our beliefs, identify our tribes, advance our agendas. Democracy isn’t perfect, but there’s a reason so many countries have settled on it as their preferred form of government.

Yet when we look to Scripture, we find a cautionary tale about democracy that’s worth recalling each election season. Despite its strengths, democracy will always be limited by how the people’s hearts are aligned.

In Matthew 27:15–26, as well as parallel passages in the other three Gospels, we see the Savior, Jesus, shortly before his crucifixion. Just a few days earlier, he had entered Jerusalem triumphantly and was celebrated with cries of “Hosanna!” But now, though innocent of any crime, Jesus had been arrested and turned over to the Roman government. He was held on charges trumped up by the religious leaders in the city.

As was the custom during the time of the festival of Passover, the Roman governor of Palestine, Pilate, allowed the people to choose a prisoner to release. And this time, it came down to a vote. Pilate presented a choice between two candidates: “Jesus who is called the Messiah” and Barabbas, a known criminal and murderer who tried to save his people by overthrowing the Roman government in a rebellion.

Though Jesus had been beloved in Jerusalem less than a week before, the chief priests and the elders persuaded the people to vote to release Barabbas. And what was to be done with the innocent Jesus? “Crucify him!” they shouted.

This is primarily a story of Christ’s substitutional sacrifice for our sin. We see ourselves in Barabbas, the guilty one for whom Christ gives his life. We are just as unworthy as Barabbas, but God’s love is so gracious that he sent his Son to suffer the death we deserved.

But at another level, this is also a story of democracy—of how a democratic process resulted in the greatest miscarriage of justice in human history.

Pilate was responsible for administering justice, but he found it more politically expedient to let the crowd decide, to heed their vote and thus keep order and protect his own power. The chief priests and elders—the religious leaders who were supposed to guide the people in righteousness—instead convinced the people to vote for Barabbas. They envied Jesus and felt that he threatened their position of influence. And the people, though they knew Jesus was innocent, nevertheless voted for the criminal rather than their Messiah. A man who deserved punishment was set free, and the Savior of humanity was sentenced to death.

Barabbas is not the only figure here with whom we should identify: We have just as much in common with the crowd that voted to crucify Jesus. In the depravity of our sinful nature, we would never choose Christ if it were left up to us. By grace, we know that it is not we who choose Christ but Christ who chooses us. While in our hearts we cry “crucify him,” he still dies to save us.

Moreover, it’s important to note that it was not democracy that failed here. There’s no suggestion in any of the Gospels that Pilate fudged the results. If anything, he seems to have preferred to release Jesus, protesting his innocence: “What crime has he committed?” Though the answer was “none,” the crowd really did cry for Jesus to die.

Democracy is a comparatively good system, but it is merely a human system. It can only function justly to the degree that the people within it have aligned their hearts, motives, and interests with truth and righteousness. Otherwise, the depravity of human nature will bend even a perfectly functioning democracy toward injustice. Government “by the people” will always reflect the heart of the people in question. It was a government “by the people” that resulted in the crucifixion of “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15).

The value Americans tend to place on politics and the democratic process makes it difficult to remember this inherent limitation. But as Christians, we must.

Though we have the civic privilege and responsibility to vote, we cannot put all our hopes on this or any election. Politics is not the only—or even primary—way to solve critical issues of our day. Remember, early Christians changed the entire Greco-Roman world with no political power.

Like the crowd at Pilate’s palace, we can be seduced into misusing and misunderstanding our votes if our hearts are not fully turned toward God, if we do not trust him alone to heal this broken world. Barabbas tried to “help” God save his people by overthrowing Rome, even if that meant committing murder. To vote for Barabbas is to put faith in anything other than God, including an election, to bring about God’s purposes. But our faith must be in the true Savior, who gave his own life to save ours.

Politics has its place, yet our primary mandates as Christians are the Great Commission and the Great Commandment. And though we’re privileged to live in a functional democracy, that democracy will become dysfunctional and unjust if we put all our hopes in elections and not in Christ.

Domonic D. Purviance is a writer, men’s ministry leader, and finance and economics expert. He cofounded King Culture, a nonprofit organization that equips men to reflect the selfless leadership of Christ.

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News

Candidates Break Out Faith References ‘For Such a Time as This’

Harvest Prude in Pittsburgh

During their final push, Trump and Harris extend more explicit appeals to Christian voters.

Kamala Harris speaking at a church (left) and Donald Trump being prayed over at the National Faith Summit (right).

Edits by CT / Source Images: Getty / AP Images

In a deep red swath of Pennsylvania, houses, roadways, and businesses are bristling with campaign signs, most bearing the name of Donald Trump or his Make America Great Again slogan.

Brodie Whitley, a Presbyterian living in Grove City, plans to vote for Trump, but her favorite sign has another message: “Politics are temporary. Jesus is forever.”

“That’s the sign I want,” she said.

Overall, there’s been less focus on religious outreach by either campaign this election cycle, less talk of religion, and fewer faith events. Most Americans don’t see either candidate as particularly religious.

But in the final days of the campaign, both former president Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are doing more to evoke God in their messaging—and to appeal to Christian voters in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan.

Trump and Harris have held events in Georgia churches in recent weeks. They each offered remarks to different crowds on how the country needs faith—with contrasting ideas of how to live that out in office.

The gathering was put on by the National Faith Advisory Board, made up of Trump’s former faith advisors and led by Pentecostal evangelist Paula White-Cain. The lineup listed several leaders who had been involved in Evangelicals for Trump events in previous campaigns: Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas, Jack Graham, Greg Laurie, Samuel Rodriguez, and Jentezen Franklin.

At an event outside Atlanta on Monday, Trump promised Christians they’d have the opportunity to influence a second Trump administration.

Trump told White-Cain that he’d reinstall a faith office to hear out evangelicals in the White House. (While president, Trump had scrapped the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which had been resurrected under Biden.)

Trump also talked about religion being under threat in the US.

“We’re going through a lot of problems in our country … and it’s less based on religion than it was 25 years ago and 50 years ago,” he said. “We were a really, people would say a Christian, and really religious, even other faiths country, and that seems to be heading in the wrong direction.”

Trump has repeated a similar message of faith under fire at other events, including at a “Believers for Trump” event earlier this month in Michigan, an initiative launched this summer to drive turnout among churchgoers in battleground states. Individuals can sign up to be a “Church Captain” to encourage their churches to vote.

The former president told the crowd in Georgia that Christians aren’t doing enough when it comes to this election: “I shouldn’t scold anyone, but Christians aren’t known for being very solid voters.”

Ben Carson, the Seventh-day Adventist doctor and 2016 presidential hopeful, leads Trump’s faith outreach. He told CT in a statement that the campaign will continue to remind voters that Trump “did more for the faith community than any president in history.”

Carson listed religious freedom, women’s sports, and abortion as key issues for faith voters. Though Trump has called himself “the most pro-life president” for appointing the justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade, some evangelicals have been disappointed in the GOP’s shifting platform on the issue.

At a “Believers and Ballots” town hall at Christ Chapel in Zebulon, Georgia, Trump called religion “the glue that holds it all together” and repeated his concerns of how Christians are facing “persecution.”

“When you have faith, when you believe in God, it’s a big advantage over people who don’t have that,” he said.

A new survey by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Brookings Institution has found that Christian support for the candidates splits on racial lines.

Among weekly churchgoers, three-quarters of white Christians (76%) support Trump and 21 percent support Harris, while 13 percent of Black Christians support Trump and 85 percent support Harris.

Churchgoing Latinos are more evenly divided. Just over half side with Trump (55%) compared to 41 percent with Harris.

The Democratic candidate has also sought to appeal to people of faith, stopping by churches on Sundays as part of the “souls to the polls” drive to increase voter turnout among Black Christians. At each visit, Harris has reminded believers of the importance of taking time to vote.

At New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, she told congregants that “our country is at a crossroads, and where we go from here is up to us as Americans and as people of faith.”

“We face this question: What kind of country do we want to live in?” Harris said. “A country of chaos, fear and hate, or a country of freedom, compassion and justice?”

At other events, the vice president has spoken about growing up singing in the choir and going to Sunday school at a Black Baptist church she attended with her neighbor.

Harris grew up with a Hindu mother and a Baptist father and identifies as Baptist. She described her faith as being driven by a belief in a “loving God who asks us to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, and to defend the rights of the poor and the needy.”

Last week, Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she prays “every day, sometimes twice a day.” After President Joe Biden withdrew from the race, she called her longtime pastor, Amos Brown of Third Baptist Church of San Francisco, to ask for prayer. “I needed that advice. I needed a prayer,” she said.

On Sunday at a majority Black church in Philadelphia, Harris said she drew inspiration from Paul. “In hard times when we may grow weary in doing good, we must remember the power that works within us, the divine power that transformed Paul’s life, guided him through shipwreck and sustained him through trials.”

She encouraged congregants to vote and said she was confident in the outcome: “When I think about the days ahead and the God we serve, yeah, I am confident that his power will work through us. Because, church, I know we were born for a time such as this.”

Some Christian voters would find analogies of trials and shipwrecks to be apt descriptors of this election year.

Back in 2016, Benjamin Carlucci, who lives in a Pittsburgh suburb, used to listen to both Ben Shapiro and NPR to follow the campaigns.

Now he’s changed his approach: “I pay attention but in less of a ‘I’m an active and informed voter’ and more of a ‘I can’t look away from a car crash,’” said Carlucci, an Anglican who works as a creative director for a nonprofit.

“I have this constant conflict in me where I want to completely disengage and just step away from it, but that also feels irresponsible, so I don’t. There’s just no way to be happy and engaging in the current political climate.”

While usually the economy would be Carlucci’s top issue, this year it’s Trump’s “refusal to honor the transition of power, things like that that I feel are fundamentally un-American.” He plans to vote for Harris.

Despite the occasional references to faith by the candidates, many Christians in Pennsylvania are turned off by the negativity, with tens of millions of dollars worth of advertising poured into their state.

“I’ll say this—speaking for the whole entire state of Pennsylvania—we don’t really want it to come down to Pennsylvania,” said Don Opitz, an ordained Presbyterian minister and chaplain at Grove City College.

While he doesn’t want partisanship in churches, he wishes more faith leaders would talk about how to apply “biblical wisdom, theological perspective, to the issues of the day.”

Too often, he sees political engagement driven by more negative impulses. “We let our politics get away with being a politics of accusation and projection. That’s the dark stain on all of us,” Opitz said. “It’s something that is genuinely sub-Christian that is happening.”

Whitley, who is supporting Trump in this election, has been going through the Book of Judges in a church group, which she has found an odd comfort.

The descriptions of leaders, “all these wicked, wicked people,” reminds her that whether her candidate wins or not, God is in control.

“Something that I rest very confidently on, and I know this will sound like a Bible answer, it’s not the person or the party that we have to put our faith or our trust in whatsoever. … Whatever candidate is put into that position for the next four years, eight years, whatever that looks like, God has the bigger picture.”

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Books

The Christians Living Under Buddhist Nationalism

Interview by Angela Lu Fulton

Yale scholar David Moe explores the faith and identity of ethnic minorities in his home country of Myanmar.

Children and their parents praying in a temporary church at a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar.

The rural Chin village in the mountains of Myanmar where scholar David Moe was born in 1983 no longer exists. This village of 70 Christian families has moved twice, higher and higher into the mountains.

Moe’s desire to become a pastor led him to pursue higher education outside of Myanmar, and today he is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer in Southeast Asian studies at Yale University.

Yet he hasn’t forgotten the community that raised him. His new book, Beyond the Academy: Lived Asian Public Theology of Religions, argues that highly educated theologians should dialogue with those outside the ivory tower and engage the perspectives of grassroots Christians—those without theological training. For the book, Moe interviewed 15 grassroots Christian leaders in Myanmar who hail from the Chin, Kachin, and Karen communities.

These Christian ethnic minorities live in a unique context: In Myanmar, Buddhism is the state religion, and Buddhists make up 90 percent of the population. Most of the country’s elite, including the ruling military junta, are from the Buddhist Bamar ethnic group.

After Myanmar gained independence from the British in 1948, the new Buddhist nationalist leaders argued that those who weren’t Buddhist or Bamar were not true Burmese, leading to decades of discrimination and oppression of ethnic minorities. The 2021 military coup ramped up fighting between armed ethnic groups and the military junta yet also rearranged loyalties as interracial and multiethnic groups banded together to resist the coup.

Christianity Today asked Moe about the gaps between academic public theology and the faith of Myanmar villagers, the role Buddhist nationalism plays in Myanmar, and the intertwining of religion and identity that has led to a rise in Christian nationalism among Chin refugees in the US. The responses have been edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me about your journey from a small village in Chin State to the Ivy League?

I was born and grew up in a village called Khin Phong. I went to school there and served as a Sunday school teacher at the village church.

I am the first graduate from our village school to get a PhD. The school was established in 1946, two years before Myanmar gained independence from the British. My late mother never went to school, but she was a very faithful follower of Jesus Christ. She always encouraged me to be faithful to Christ and serve God. I see my mother as a role model for my Christian faith.

I started my theological journey at a seminary in Myanmar because I wanted to be a pastor. Then I had a chance to go to Malaysia for my MDiv. In Malaysia, I had a chance to come to the US for further graduate studies. When I finished my PhD in theological studies, I didn’t immediately find a job. The military coup happened in 2021, so I couldn’t go back to Myanmar.

I applied to be the pastor at two very small Burmese churches in the US, but I was rejected. Then I had an opportunity to teach at Yale, focusing on Southeast Asian studies, religion, politics, and ethnic identity.

My scholarship engages four different communities: the academic community, the Burmese Christian community, the public society, and the political state. I feel that I’m in the right place.

In seminary, you began reading Asian liberation theologians like Taiwan’s Shoki Coe and India’s M. M. Thomas. How did their ideas differ from the kind of grassroots faith that you saw in your church growing up?

I love academic work; that’s why I’m in academia. But particularly when it comes to the discipline of public theology, academics are only engaging with other academics. That is not quite relevant for real life. If we are concerned about public life, we need scholars to engage with grassroots people.

Of course, we are not endorsing everything grassroots Christians do. They also have limitations, but if we want to understand public life—the common good in society—we need to engage with grassroots Christian churches that are witnessing about Jesus Christ without knowing any theology. They are just living their lives.

Because of my background, I see myself as a theologian who bridges the academy and the grassroots church.

What are some of the gaps that you found between academics and grassroots Christians?

Theologians in the academy talk a bit too much about politics and political power while sometimes forgetting about spiritual power. This gap is especially noticeable in Africa and Asia, where people are mostly thinking about spiritual power in their daily life.

When it comes to salvation, some academics focus too much on physical liberation. But these grassroots Christians talk a lot about life after death, about spiritual salvation.

Another gap: Academic theologians focus too much on the prophetic role of Jesus Christ without sufficiently addressing his priestly life and its implication for pastoral work. Myanmar ethnic minorities relate Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross to their pre-Christian cultural practice of ritual sacrifice, which is similar to what the Israelites practiced in the Book of Leviticus.

I asked one of the grassroots church elders I interviewed what his favorite book of the Bible was, and he said Hebrews because “it focuses on the sacrificial role of Jesus Christ as the priest.”

Could you explain a bit more about the religious makeup of Myanmar? Why is it that most of the ethnic majority, Bamar, is Buddhist, while most ethnic minorities are Christian?

There are two main factors. First, as I just mentioned, the pre-Christian cultural practice of rites among ethnic minorities paved the way for the gospel. The second is that ethnic minorities practiced spirit worship based on oral tradition; they didn’t have any written documents. When the Western missionaries came, they helped develop literature in the region, translated the Bible, created a Burmese-English dictionary, and started schools and medical clinics. This is how ethnic minorities came to love Christian missionaries. On the other hand, Bamar Buddhists already had literature because Buddhism is a systemic religion. They had a systematic way of thinking, so Western missionaries did not convince them to become Christian.

For us Chin people, we lived high up in the mountains northwest of India, so not many Bamar Buddhist missionaries reached us. However, in the lower regions, where Bamar and Karen minorities lived together in the same cities, some might have been evangelized.

How did Buddhism become intertwined with Bamar identity, leading to Buddhist nationalism?

That began in the colonial period under the British (1824–1948) when Buddhist nationalism first emerged as the anti-colonial movement. During that time, Western missionaries also came to Myanmar, so for the Buddhist nationalists, Western missionaries and the British colonizers didn’t seem that different.

After we gained independence from the British in 1948, Buddhist nationalism turned into an anti-ethnic minority movement. Many Buddhist nationalists believed that ethnic minorities easily embraced Western Christianity. That’s why they faced discrimination in the Buddhist-majority country.

Growing up in the village, did you ever hear of the term Buddhist nationalism?

I did not. I only heard about this term after I entered the academic community. However, I did experience it. We understood Buddhist nationalism as lumyo-gyi wada, which means the “domination of the majority race.” The leaders promoted Burmese as the national language at the expense of ethnic minority languages, nationalized Buddhism as the state religion, and privileged the Bamar majority Buddhists.

When I was in the village, we felt it was natural that the majority had control over the minority. I knew that ethnic minorities faced discrimination based on their identity. The idea was that to be Bamar is to be Buddhist, and to be Chin is to be Christian. Even if ethnic minorities changed their religion to Buddhism, they couldn’t change their ethnicity, so they would still face discrimination.

When you asked grassroots Christians about their thoughts on Buddhist nationalism, some said they thought it was a myth, as they had only had positive experiences with Buddhists, while others said it was reality. Were you surprised by the answers?

I was a little surprised, but I understand their response is based on the people they encounter. It’s fair, because when we say “Buddhist nationalism,” we are not saying that all Buddhists in Myanmar are bad. I approach Buddhism paradoxically: There is the moral rule of Buddhism and the amoral rule of Buddhism.

In the West, the common perception of Buddhism is the Dalai Lama version of Buddhism, which is filled with peace and compassion. But they have not look at the ugly side of Buddhism, where Buddhism is misused as a political tool for violence, identity-based discrimination, and nationalism. This is more apparent in places like Myanmar and Sri Lanka. We need to look at both the beautiful and the ugly sides of Buddhism so we can fairly engage with moral Buddhists who also hate Buddhist nationalism.

Due to ongoing fighting between the military and armed ethnic-minority groups, 70,000 Chin refugees now live in the US. How have they brought over this idea of blending religion and nationalism?

Many Chin refugees hate Buddhist nationalism back home in Myanmar, but when they come to the US, they really love Christian nationalism. Some display flags in their churches and homes. I ask them, “You say Buddhist nationalism is a problem in Myanmar, but how come you don’t think Christian nationalism is a problem?”

I think they justify this by arguing that Christianity is above all other religions. They also say that the US is built on Christian principles. They think Democratic presidents are anti-Christian.

Do many support Donald Trump for president?

Absolutely. They really love him because they believe he can make America’s economy great again and that he will protect Christian identity. They also view Trump as powerful and think that he has accomplished what he promised to do.

In your book, you note that Kachin Christians often justify their fight against the Bamar military by pointing to the Bible. Could you explain more about that?

After the coup, I interviewed a couple of Christian activists who say they love the Old Testament because it is explicit about evil and how God’s chosen people fought against their enemies. Because they believe the coup is evil, they like passages in Psalms—for instance, Psalm 1:1–2—that call God’s people to fight and resist evil. Moses is their role model.

Your book also includes a quote from some Kachin Christian who said they “would not go to heaven if there are Bamar there.”

Even before the coup, Kachin Christians faced a lot of discrimination. For them, being Bamar, being Buddhist, and being part of the army are inseparable. They don’t like Bamar people. It’s as if the anti–Buddhist nationalists have become the anti-Bamar people.

This is a radical view that shows how much Kachin people hate Bamar Buddhist nationalism. That’s why they say if there are Bamar in heaven, they would choose another place because they would not want to live together with them in the future. Of course, this is not the correct view for Christians, as we have to love Bamar even if we hate some policies or Buddhist nationalism.

You did a round of interviews before the 2021 coup began, then another round almost a year after the coup. Did you find that your interviewees’ answers had changed in that time?

The leaders I talked to still saw the military junta as the same—evil.

However, the way some Christian minorities saw Buddhists became more positive after the coup because there was an opportunity for interreligious resistance to the coup.

As I said earlier, Buddhist nationalism first emerged as an anti-colonial movement, then as an anti–ethnic minority group movement. But after this coup, Buddhist nationalism turned into an anti-democracy movement, which opened up the opportunity for some ethnic minorities and Bamar people to work together as they resisted the coup.

Are you seeing more people from grassroots backgrounds going into the academy and helping bridge academia with what is happening on the ground?

I think it’s growing in that direction, especially in my community. There is a paradigm shift among the younger generation. But we need to push the boundary of contextual theology and engage with the grassroots people. Engaging grassroots Christians and including them in academic writing is very difficult. It’s easier to engage with another academic book than with the people. I think many people know it’s needed, but I think many people are lazy.

Many scholars of world Christianity celebrate how Christianity moved its center from the West to the Global South. I don’t think they pay enough attention to how Christianity is flourishing particularly among the ethnic minorities and poor people living in the Global South. It’s not just a demographic move but a socioeconomic move toward the poor, the marginalized—people who are similar to Jesus’ disciples in the first century.

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

Ideas

Christ and a Coin-Toss Race

Russell Moore

Editor in Chief

As Election Day approaches, American Christians must remember to render “to God the things that are God’s.”

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

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

“Here we are, right at the end, and the election is a coin toss.” A friend said that to me just a few minutes ago, referring to the razor-thin polling margins between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. A few thousand votes one way or the other in as few as three swing states could produce radically different alternatives for the future of the country.

I wonder, though, whether as American Christians we ought to think of Election Day as a coin toss in a different way as well. Even in a more secularized society, the words “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17, ESV throughout) are still recognizable to most people. The account—from the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke—recounts Jesus’ response to the question of whether to pay taxes to the Roman emperor’s regime.

Like many other Scriptures, those words have been grossly misused. They’re quoted to justify churches engaging directly in political activism (often paired with a misreading of Abraham Kuyper’s famous declaration that there is not one square inch of the universe that Jesus does not claim as “Mine”). They are also quoted to make the case for a separation of Christian conscience from public justice (often with a similarly downgraded version of Martin Luther’s idea of two kingdoms).

Jesus’ words here actually speak sharply to what it means to be his follower in a time of pronounced divisions and high stakes. But to hear them rightly, we must pay attention to how Jesus discerned what was real and what was false. In many ways, his political situation—though radically different, set in an ancient empire rather than a modern democracy—was similar to the one facing us right now.

First, Jesus upended an artificial controversy to provoke a genuine crisis in his hearers. The question about taxes was posed by two very disparate groups—the Pharisees and the Herodians—but neither side was truly grappling with a theological dilemma. They were executing a strategy. They were humiliated by Jesus’ parables against them and so plotted “to trap him in his talk” (v. 13). This was a proxy war.

Jesus saw through the artificial controversy and the manipulative flattery with which it was framed: “Teacher, we know that you are true and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but truly teach the way of God” (v. 14). It was not out of naive ignorance but “knowing their hypocrisy” (v. 15) that Jesus answered.

What Jesus recognized here was what journalist Amanda Ripley calls “conflict entrepreneurs,” those who have an interest in creating havoc and division for its own sake. If we are to seek “the mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:15–16), we should likewise be able to recognize that often what really matters is not what’s debated most fiercely around us. Such controversies may light up the limbic system, but often they distract us from what really matters, to the detriment of our neighbors and ourselves.

As Jesus upended the artificial controversy, he also upended the tribalism that undergirded it. The conversation about Caesar’s coin, after all, was not really about tax policy. The Pharisees knew that the throne of the kingdom of Israel belonged by covenant to David’s heir (2 Sam. 7:1–17), not to a puppet of some Gentile occupying force. So if Jesus told his hearers to pay taxes to Caesar, he’d be understood as negating that covenant promise. But if Jesus had answered that people should withhold the tax, this would be heard as Jesus urging insurrection against Rome.

Those who were “just asking questions” knew that they could use the question—particularly for those who cared about God’s covenant—to draw tribal boundaries. For the whole crowd, they could make taxes into a “You’re not one of us” question of identity. They chose this strategy of riling political passions because they “feared the people” (Mark 12:12). To deny the possibility that Jesus was, in fact, “the stone that the builders rejected” (v. 10), now made the cornerstone of a new creation, they sought to push him into existing divisions.

The trap aside, those divisions were real and serious. So too are the divisions in American life—and the consequences of this election are of crucial importance. But one of the reasons the country is exhausted is that so much of our political debate is not about politics at all. It’s about whether one is really part of the tribe—whatever tribe that is. To be excluded feels like a threat to our very existence.

Yet Jesus refused to join a tribe and instead asked for a coin. In this, he reordered the priorities of the entire conversation. “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” he asked (v. 16). Caesar, of course, had honored his own image, depicting himself as the son of the gods.

Jesus’ response made all that self-magnified glory look pitiful and small. He tossed the coin back to his interrogators and got to the question behind the question. Mark ends the story by recording that “they marveled at him” (v. 17).

As the American experiment continues to be tested in the years to come, those who love our country best will be those who are not Americans first. The sense of politics as ultimate leads us to do unspeakably awful things, harming our own country, because “desperate times call for desperate measures.” But Christians who are secure in our first priority—to seek the kingdom of God and to be citizens of that realm—can love our country well. We can render unto Caesar without veering into idolatrous worship of party, politicians, or democracy itself.

The New Testament honors the legitimacy of government—even really, really flawed governments like Rome. But that honor never includes making politics or government a source of identity or meaning in life.

We often can tell where our priorities are by what drives us to despair or to anger. I voted in this election, and if it goes a different way than I want, I’ll be worried and upset. But if I find myself in a frenzy or hopeless, I ought to rethink what it means to follow one who was tranquil before the government with the power to crucify him (John 18:33–36) while his disciples were fleeing, but then sweat drops of blood in prayer in the garden while those same disciples were asleep (Mark 14:37).

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Other passages teach us about the separation of church and state, but that’s not what this text addresses. Other passages teach about the duty to pay taxes; that’s not the reason we have this one. This is about something we all should remember as we make our way to Election Day: that we are first and foremost Christians. That we belong to God.

We owe it to the legacy of George Washington and James Madison and Harriet Tubman and all the Americans who came before us to guard the institutions and freedom they handed on to us. We owe the same to the generations to come. Politics matter. But when politics start to define us, to control our sense of who we are, to keep us in a state of artificial exultation or artificial doom, we should recognize what’s happening.

Someone is handing us a coin. We should toss it back.

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

Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.

News

Satellite Imagery Documents Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage

Jayson Casper

As archaeologists discover new ruins revealing the ancient origins of the church, new technologies reveal the extent of its destruction in neighboring Azerbaijan.

Aftermath of the Azerbaijan Shelling in 2020 Over The Shushi Cathedral In Nagorno Karabakh.

NurPhoto / Getty / Edits by CT

Discovered ruins of a fourth-century church in Armenia are “sensational evidence” of the nation’s early Christian history, stated Achim Lichtenberger, the lead German archaeologist of a binational excavation effort with the local National Academy of Sciences. Carbon dating of wooden platforms may establish an octagonal structure as the oldest documented church in Armenia.

Tradition indicates that Armenia became the world’s first Christian nation in AD 301. The church design reflects features resembling similar building styles in ancient eastern Mediterranean civilizations, previously unknown in the Caucasus region. The ruins were found in Artaxata, once the capital of the Kingdom of Armenia, which means “the joy of truth” in the original Indo-Iranian language.

But Christina Maranci, an Armenian professor of art and architecture at Harvard University, said the joy of these discoveries is outweighed by alarm at the destruction of Armenian heritage sites in the neighboring country of Azerbaijan. The Muslim-majority nation initiated fighting that displaced its Armenian residents from a disputed region and is now accused of systematically removing the remaining evidence of their ethnic historical presence.

“This is their long-term plan,” she said. “The intent is to erase evidence of our existence, which they do not admit anyway.”

In a 44-day war with Armenia in 2020, Muslim-majority Azerbaijan reclaimed most of its internationally recognized territory in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave then populated by ethnic Armenians who had proclaimed themselves a breakaway republic they called Artsakh.

And last month marked the one-year anniversary of a lightning Azerbaijani offensive to capture the remaining pockets of land, which resulted in their near depopulation as 100,000 refugees fled to Armenia. Furthermore, beyond the geopolitical dispute and humanitarian crisis, critics see new evidence that Azerbaijan continues to demolish signs of the region’s historical Armenian presence.

Maranci is one of several academics employing scientific and technological advances to demonstrate claims of antiquity. Her expertise includes the study of spolia, remnants of ancient structures repurposed in modern construction.

As an example, Manci cited two monasteries from the 14th and 15th century that were destroyed—twice. In the 1950s, Soviet authorities leveled the structures and haphazardly incorporated the medieval stones into the building materials for two public schools. Children could daydream, Maranci said, while looking at randomly placed images of crosses, saints, and angels.

Until Azerbaijan bulldozed the schools to make way for new roads.

Though the spolia in the schools were clearly visible, Azerbaijani officials may have not bothered to notice them, as they removed outdated structures in favor of modern housing developments. Intentional or not, Maranci said the disregard for Armenia’s religious heritage fits into a wider pattern of cultural erasure.

Satellite Imagery Documents Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage

A satellite photo of Chirag/Chragh School before and after destruction

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A satellite photo of Zar/Tsar School before and after destruction

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Her work is referenced by Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW), a Cornell and Purdue University initiative founded in 2020 that documents both Armenian and Azerbaijani historical sites. After the fall of the Soviet Union, a six-year war between the two nations resulted in Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding territory. Many Azerbaijani villages were looted and leveled.

Out of 63 mosques, CHW found that Armenians had destroyed 8 and inflicted major damage on another 31.

The accusation of Azerbaijani erasure, however, has not been limited to Nagorno-Karabakh. In a report released earlier this month, CHW used satellite imagery to confirm the destruction of 108 monasteries, churches, and cemeteries—98 percent of the sites the organization had located—in the noncontiguous Azerbaijani territory of Nakhchivan, which borders Turkey and Armenia.

CHW increased its geolocation of cultural heritage during Azerbaijan’s 2023 blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh, and then again following the Armenian exodus. With over 2,000 sites in its database, 436 are actively monitored at the time of writing.

In its first post-displacement report, CHW noted the destruction of the 19th-century St. John the Baptist Church, known locally as “Kanach Zham,” and an 18th-century cemetery. Four other sites were destroyed, with an additional nine newly threatened. This group includes two 13th-century churches, the only historic structures left standing in a village that was leveled to prepare for a new housing development.

“Azerbaijan knows it is being monitored,” Maranci said. “I don’t know what games are being played, but they are destroying centuries of history, faith, and identity. I wish it would stop.”

In 2021, the International Court of Justice warned Azerbaijan not to allow the destruction of cultural heritage. But three months later, the minister of culture announced a plan to remove Armenian inscriptions from churches, labeling them “forgery.” Azerbaijan follows an internationally discredited theory that claims most of these structures belonged originally to an ancient Christian people called Caucasian Albanians.

Satellite Imagery Documents Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage

A satellite map of St. Astvatsatsin Monestary of Tsghna before and after its destruction

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A satellite photo of St. Hovhannes Church before and after descruction

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A satellite photo of Surb Sargis Church and Surb Grigor Church before and after destruction

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The evangelical minority in Azerbaijan pays little attention to the claims and counterclaims regarding Armenian heritage sites.

“The issue of cultural heritage is not something we think about,” said one church leader, granted anonymity to speak freely on a sensitive topic. “But the government’s development of this area is legitimate.”

Azerbaijan is rated “not free” in Freedom House’s annual survey of political rights. And for the first time, the US State Department included Azerbaijan in its most recent designation of violators of religious freedom.

The church leader stated that most Azerbaijani evangelicals come from a Muslim background and are not actively persecuted by the state. But their churches tend to be far from Nagorno-Karabakh and prioritize local witness and social acceptance.

This leader said his own church has already engaged in evangelism among the few Azerbaijanis within the reclaimed lands. He found the development work taking place impressive and professional, acknowledging that progress thus far is only a small part of what is planned. Left fallow for decades, the regions bordering Nagorno-Karabakh acted as a buffer zone and were treated by Armenians as a negotiating pawn while they sought local self-rule.

The Azerbaijani government designated the region as a “green energy zone,” and is now facilitating the voluntary return of citizens displaced 30 years ago. Critics have stated the construction contracts are awarded to figures with close ties to the president’s family.

Yet despite his positive assessment of state land development, the evangelical leader said that the destruction of area churches is likely even greater than what groups like CHW are documenting. He said the church buildings should be given instead to “living churches” like his own so that spiritual life can continue therein.

Unless Azerbaijan concludes a peace treaty that would facilitate the return of Armenian refugees, he said. Then these churches, including the downtown cathedral in the capital city of Baku, could be restored to the historic Armenian Orthodox church.

Peace negotiations have been an on-again, off-again process. In hopes of improving the prospects for peace, last December Armenia dropped its bid to host this year’s COP29 global environmental summit and backed Azerbaijan’s successful candidacy, thereby securing the release of 30 prisoners of war. (COP29 will take place in Baku on November 11–22.) In July, Azerbaijan stated that 90 percent of a proposed peace treaty text had been agreed upon. And in August, it dropped its demand for a land corridor through Armenia to connect Nakhchivan with the main part of the country.

Azerbaijan is insisting that Armenia adopt constitutional language forswearing any claim on Nagorno-Karabakh—a domestically polarizing issue. But while Armenia expressed hope that a peace treaty could be finalized before the start of COP29, Azerbaijan countered that the current Armenian proposal was “unrealistic.”

Aren Deyirmenjian, Armenia representative for the evangelical Armenian Missionary Association of America, said he believes his government has made it clear that Armenia has no claim on Artsakh. It has offered paths toward peace, which Azerbaijan has rejected. He wonders what more they can want.

But he acknowledged the source of their popular anti-Armenian sentiment.

“I have heard terrible stories about Armenians doing very similar things to what Azerbaijan is doing now,” said Deyirmenjian. “Somehow, that makes you understand why there is so much hatred in the Azeris’ hearts.”

However difficult, apologizing is the Armenian “biblical duty,” he said. It should then be reciprocated, which may seem highly unlikely. Yet if Armenia is indeed the world’s first Christian nation, its actions must be different from those of the Azerbaijani enemy. Apologies would demonstrate the humility, he said, that is essential for eventual reconciliation.

Until then, evangelical hearts are pained by the cultural destruction.

“There is clear intent to erase our heritage,” Deyirmenjian said. “While the world is busy, Azerbaijan wants to get rid of all evidence that Armenians are native to these lands.”

- More from Jayson Casper

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