The Precarious Position of India’s Christians—and Its Democracy

Interview by Surinder Kaur

Lawyer and author P. I. Jose discusses the growing influence of Hindutva ideology and its threat to India’s constitutional order.

Hindu nationalists wave flags of Lord Ram and raise prayer cries during an event held in India.

Anindito Mukherjee / Stringer / Getty

During the last decade in India, a Hindu nationalist government has taken the helm, and Hindutva ideology, once considered as fringe, has become firmly entrenched and empowered politically and socially.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi first rose to power in 2014, India has grappled with rising religious nationalism, posing significant challenges to its founding principles of pluralism and equality. Democracy watchdogs have expressed concern about the health of the world’s largest democracy. In 2018, for instance, one group categorized India as an “electoral autocracy.” In 2024, the country was downgraded in status, becoming known as “one of the worst autocratizers.” Both domestic and international observers have raised concerns about potential threats to India’s constitutional framework and minority rights.

Many rejoiced when Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failed to win an absolute majority last month for the first time in three elections, but concerns about the widespread political and social influence of Hindutva remain.

Against this backdrop, P. I. Jose’s new book, Hindutva Palm-Branches and the Christian Resolve, examines India’s evolving political and religious landscape. Drawing on his extensive experience practicing in front of India’s Supreme Court, Jose examines the growing influence of Hindutva and its impact on India’s constitutional democracy and secular fabric.

CT recently spoke with Jose about what secularism means in a country as religious as India, Hindutva’s effects on constitutional principles, and the precarious position of religious minorities, particularly Christians, in India’s current political climate.

How does India’s constitutional secularism compare to its practical implementation?

Former Indian Supreme Court justice K. M. Joseph once said, “Secularism is a facet of equality. If you treat all religions equally, that is secularism. You are fair, you do not bias or patronize.” However, his subsequent statement reveals the reality: “I am still optimistic that secularism will survive.” If a recently retired Supreme Court judge expresses such concern, one can imagine the actual situation in our country today.

The resolve of the people of India, in crafting the constitution, was to create “a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic Republic,” according to the current preamble. Interestingly enough, the preamble adopted in 1949 did not originally contain the word secular, as B. R. Ambedkar, the architect of our constitution, said there was no need to include the term. He believed the entire constitution manifested the concept of a secular state, as it codified nondiscrimination on grounds of religion and gave equal rights and status to all citizens.

The words secular and socialist were added in 1976, during the Emergency (a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when then–prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency across the country, claiming internal and external threats) via a constitutional amendment. And in a 1994 verdict, the Supreme Court of India held that secularism is part of the constitution’s basic structure and is unamendable.

However, Hindu nationalists have always been opposed to the idea of India being secular and, in fact, have made motions in parliament to delete the word from the constitution. As a result of Hindutva, which basically sees secularism as pandering to religious minorities, today we are witnessing widespread attacks against religious minorities, including Christians.

India has become infamous for lynching incidents and for the demolition of churches and other minority religious symbols. Fellow citizens and law enforcement personnel have attacked pastors, disrupted worship services, and engaged in rampant hate speech against religious minorities. Parallel to this, we see the government going all out to not only build huge religious structures for the state-favored religion but to color India in the majoritarian faith language and symbols, which is completely antithetical to secularism as envisioned by our founding mothers and fathers.

You argue that Hindutva opposes constitutional principles. Can you elaborate on this clash of values?

Activist V. D. Savarkar promulgated Hindutva in the 1920s to justify Hindu nationalism and establish Hindu hegemony in India. He defined Hindus as individuals whose “fatherland” and “holy land” were within the Indian subcontinent, thus excluding Muslims and Christians by definition but including Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains as Hindus. Hindutva envisions and strives for a Hindu rashtra (nation) and opposes the principle of equality for all citizens, and even speaks of disenfranchising religious minorities. Even though Savarkar spoke against the caste system, modern Hindutva promotes it—and its foundation is the erasure of religious minority cultures.

Our constitution, in contrast, states that “the State shall not deny to any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws within the territory of India.” What’s more, the constitution also prescribes equality as a fundamental duty for every citizen “to value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture.”

Savarkar was one of the people who supported the two-nation theory that ultimately resulted in the partition of India. Hindutva, I believe, created the pangs of partition and the killing of millions of Indians, including Mahatma Gandhi. In a country that values ahimsa (nonviolence), this ideology has led to a steady growth in violence, as repeatedly recorded by various commissions investigating sectarian violence and violence against religious minorities in India, including Christians.

The Supreme Court of India has equated Hindutva with “Indianization.” Why do you believe this judgment is incorrect and undermines secularism and democracy in India?

In a 1995 Supreme Court ruling on an election appeals case, Justice J. S. Verma wrote, “Hindutva is understood as a synonym of ‘Indianisation,’ i.e., development of uniform culture by obliterating the differences between all the cultures co-existing in the country.”

The court’s ruling led to “Hindutva becoming a mark of nationalism and citizenship” and emboldened a movement that has consistently used violent means to express and enforce their beliefs. Countless lives have been lost since, with the Manipur violence being the latest manifestation.

By defining Hindutva as a way of life and not as a religion, the court disassociated it with the Hindu religion. This meant that Modi’s BJP, for instance, could legally appeal to Hindu sentiments for votes, which they have been doing since then. This dissociation has divided the nation along religious lines, facilitated the spread of hatred against other religions for votes, and portrayed adherents of other faiths as anti-national.

You suggest that Hindutva is more about Brahminical supremacy than authentic Hindu faith. What evidence supports this claim?

Hindutva has two facets. One concerns its treatment of other religions, where discriminatory practices stem from a desire to establish the supremacy of its adherents. At its core, Hindutva aims to establish a Hindu way of life based on the caste system as described in the Manusmriti and the Arthashastra—two Hindu scriptures that uphold the supremacy of the highest caste, Brahmins, who are traditionally priests—but it also advocates untouchability against what it deems as the outcastes.

However, I include in my book several Hindu scholars who cite different Hindu scriptures that suggest that equality is actually at the heart of the faith. From the work of these authorities, we can see that authentic Hinduism does not support caste-based hierarchy.

Your book alleges that Hindutva supporters have infiltrated government institutions. Can you provide examples of this?

As far back as 1982, a government report identified RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteer paramilitary organization) methodologies for provoking communal violence as “infiltrating into the administration and inducing the members of the civil and police services by adopting and developing communal attitudes.”

Recently, this type of behavior has become obvious and accepted, as seen in the conduct of government nominees to selection boards, including those of religious minority–run educational institutions. If they want their loyalists running such institutions, can we expect them to allow anyone not toeing their line into government positions while they’re in power?

How can India restore the integrity of its electoral process?

Since Modi’s 2019 victory, public opinion has turned against the election process. By 2023, almost every opposition party agreed that the current regime is misusing government power to thwart democratic processes.

A Supreme Court verdict highlighted the need for an impartial election commission and laid down procedural safeguards for its selection. But the Modi government circumvented these new regulations and compromised the independence of the commission.

Further, the Supreme Court rejected the opposition’s demands that the paper receipts of the votes issued from electronic voting machines (EVM) be counted to confirm the authenticity of the votes polled.

The court’s stubborn reasoning on this will remain India’s misfortune until citizens find ways to convince those important wise old men in power. Unless all citizens are free to vote and votes are properly counted, democracy cannot be revived in India.

What is the state of India’s opposition parties?

Despite their calls to save the constitution, most parties refuse to unite and instead work against each other, effectively aiding the ruling party. This division is aggravated by the infiltration of Hindutva forces, weakening their ability to present a cohesive front. Why aren’t these opposition parties insisting on changing EVMs or on 100 percent verification of votes?

Given the challenges you outline, what solutions do you propose for protecting the rights of Christian minorities in India?

When warning signals came after the 1982 Kanyakumari riots, we failed to wake up. Same when, in 1998, the RSS and its affiliated groups attacked tribal Christians in the Dangs district of Gujarat. The 2008 Kandhamal incident shook us slightly, but we failed to respond unitedly.

Four decades later, Hindu extremists are 40 times stronger and more entrenched in the government and society. The whole state machinery and power is under their control. Democracy is on a ventilator, and we can only hope to heal it by working with the majority community to restore and strengthen secular democracy.

- More from Interview by Surinder Kaur

News

Evangelical Presbyterians Take on Debate Over Celibate Gay Pastors

David Roach

As it brings in churches from mainline and conservative Presbyterian denominations, the EPC feels the tension in compromise.

EPC stated clerk Dean Weaver at the 44th General Assembly meeting at Hope Church in Memphis

YouTube screenshot / EPC

A Presbyterian denomination that prides itself on freedom in nonessentials has found its cooperative ministry model strained by the latest discussion of human sexuality.

Presbyterian historian Donald Fortson has been a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church (EPC) since its inception in 1981, and he says he has never seen a more “raucous” General Assembly than this year’s gathering, held last month in Memphis.

Among the topics of debate was whether to admit a congregation whose pastor identifies as homosexual but also says he is celibate and supports a traditional Christian sexual ethic, which falls under what some have called “Side B” Christianity.

Greg Johnson, pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, led his congregation to leave the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) two years ago after that denomination had a preliminary vote to disqualify from ministerial office “men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct.” (The denomination needed two-thirds of presbyteries to ratify that vote, which failed.)

Johnson has described himself that way, advocating Side B Christianity both at the controversial Revoice conference and in his book Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality.

Now his church has inquired about joining the EPC.

“That has stirred up all kinds of controversy,” said Fortson, professor of church history and pastoral theology emeritus at Reformed Theological Seminary, “because we’ve got some in the EPC that appear to be very open to bringing him into the EPC, and we’ve got other groups that are absolutely opposed to him coming into the EPC.”

During its June 18–20 gathering, the EPC voted for a two-year study on “contemporary usage of the sexual self-conception and how such language comports with Scripture and the Westminster Standards.” All the denomination’s local presbyteries have been asked to pause consideration of matters related to the study while it is in progress. That means Johnson’s church would not be admitted until at least 2026.

Time will tell whether a denomination that has, for the sake of ministry cooperation, agreed to disagree on women’s ordination and charismatic practices can maintain the same posture on LGBTQ issues or if it will amend its constitution to address same-sex attracted clergy.

Unity in essentials

The EPC was founded more than four decades ago by a group of about 20 churches concerned with liberal drift in the Northern Presbyterian Church (then officially known as the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America). Three points of concern for EPC founders were growing acceptance of homosexual ordination, questioning by some Northern Presbyterians of Jesus’ deity, and a push to force acceptance of female pastors.

The EPC’s attempted resolution of those concerns was a Presbyterian church where all leaders affirm a list of “essentials,” including the infallibility of Scripture, the deity of Christ, and the necessity of evangelism. The EPC also affirms the Westminster Confession of Faith, but in a looser way that acknowledges “that it contains the system of doctrine taught by the Bible” and allows ministers to disagree on some points.

Both complementarians and egalitarians are welcome in the EPC, as are Presbyterians with differing views on charismatic practices. A range of views on creation (from young-earth creationism to theistic evolution) and the Sabbath (from strict Sabbatarianism to a more permissive take on the Sabbath) also prevail in the EPC.

“The tension exists between those who may stress more the essential tenets of the EPC and those who may stress more the Westminster Confession in the EPC,” said EPC stated clerk Dean Weaver. Some EPC members “are Evangelical with a capital E and reformed with a small r, and there are some who are Reformed with a capital R and perhaps evangelical with a small e.”

So far, the arrangement has succeeded. By 2008, the EPC had grown to 77,794 members. Five years later, it jumped to 134,833. Last year, it reported 125,870 members, making it the third-largest Presbyterian denomination in America, behind the mainline Presbyterian Church (USA) with just over 1 million members and the more conservative PCA with nearly 400,000 members.

The EPC’s membership leveled off somewhat in recent years, dropping 15 percent since 2018. The leveling off was due in part, Weaver said, to “unhealthy” congregations that transferred in from the PCUSA between 2008 and 2018 and subsequently closed. Yet “modest growth post-COVID” has included a 7.4 percent increase in adult baptisms and a push for church planting.

Most EPC growth has come through churches transferring from the PCUSA.

“A lot of us are refugees from the PCUSA, including myself, and we have watched the PCUSA swing extremely liberal,” said Carolyn Poteet, lead pastor of Mt. Lebanon Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh.

But some growth has come from PCA congregations leaving over women’s roles in ministry.

Among those is Hope Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Columbus, Ohio. After a “discernment period,” Hope has opened deacon nominations to women. It has yet to decide whether it will permit female elders. Pastor Joe Haack says his congregation can thrive in a denomination with the EPC’s vision.

“We want the essentials. We want to have those nailed down,” Haack said. But “for the sake of mission, we think liberty in nonessentials is so key.”

Yet as the two-year study on human sexuality proceeds, EPC observers are asking whether the denomination will continue to agree on what constitutes a nonessential.

An uncertain future

During floor debate at the General Assembly, an Ohio pastor said the sexuality study will not help the EPC advance its agendas of unity or doctrinal fidelity.

“Although this compromise seems reasonable on its face, it’s not a real compromise,” said Joseph Yerger, pastor of Mansfield First Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Mansfield, Ohio. Consequences of approving the study committee “will include and must include, out of a false sense of fairness and charity, an active and positive consideration to support the possibility of the socially influenced, theologically erroneous position commonly called Side B Christianity, as promoted by the Revoice conference.”

An open letter written by Fortson and two EPC elders, Nate Atwood and Rufus Burton, takes a similar line. It argues people who “identify as homosexual,” even if they “claim to practice celibacy in that self-identification,” should be “disqualified from holding office” in the EPC.

In support of its position, the letter cites Scripture, the Westminster Standards, and “lessons from mainline Presbyterian history on the ordination of celibate homosexuals.” To date, more than 370 Evangelical Presbyterians have signed the letter.

Atwood calls the denomination’s discussion of homosexuality “doing theology in real time,” akin to Protestant Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. He worries that permitting people who identify as homosexual to be ordained may unintentionally deny the Reformation doctrine of sola Scriptura, replacing the Bible’s call to repent of sinful desires with cultural accommodation.

“I agree with the critique of the conservative church that we have exhibited a kind of hostility to the LGBTQ community that has really hampered our witness,” said Atwood, pastor of St. Giles Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. “And I think there is some repenting to do with regard to our temperament and our attitude.” But “will we compromise the gospel,” which calls for repentance from sinful actions and “desires of the heart”?

Others say the EPC sexuality study is in keeping with the denomination’s vision. The compromise that led to the study committee was “a beautiful moment” and “what the EPC is all about,” said Poteet, chairman of the EPC committee that recommended the study. “Let’s figure out a way to be thoughtful and nuanced and submitted to Christ and submitted to Scripture and do this together.”

Evangelical Presbyterians agree that “sexual expression needs to be either celibacy outside of marriage or a marriage between a man and a woman,” she said. The question is whether a pastor can say of same-sex attraction, This is part of my experience, but I am living submitted to God.

Burton, stated clerk of the New River Presbytery in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, is optimistic about the study, even though he opposes ordination of celibate homosexuals.

He said during floor debate on the two-year study that it “is an answer to the prayers of the leadership team of the New River Presbytery.” It “will clarify our witness and bring our constitution and documents into greater conformity with the gospel.”

Still, it’s far from certain that studying Side B Christianity for two years will produce the desired result.

“I’ve been in the denomination for 10 years,” Poteet said, “and this is the closest I’ve seen it to not working. That was a little bit scary.”

David Roach is a freelance reporter for CT and pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama.

This article has been updated to correct the location of the New River Presbytery and clarify the PCA vote.

- More from David Roach

News

Christian Billionaire Found Guilty of Massive Wall Street Fraud

Emily Belz in New York

In a case that alluded to the investor’s faith, a federal jury convicted Bill Hwang of market manipulation and defrauding banks.

Bill Hwang arrives at Manhattan federal court on July 10.

Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Supporters of Christian investor and philanthropist Bill Hwang closed their eyes and prayed in federal court as they waited for a verdict on a case accusing him of massive Wall Street fraud. Hwang himself, serene throughout the proceedings, read a Bible devotional and took notes in the margins—a practice he had done throughout the trial—as he awaited the jury’s ruling.

On Wednesday, a jury found Hwang, at one time one of the wealthiest evangelicals in the US, guilty of manipulating the stock market and defrauding banks. It is one of the biggest cases of Wall Street fraud in terms of dollar amount, with banks losing $10 billion after he and his firm lied to them.

It is the crashing conclusion of a unique institution: Hwang’s Archegos Capital Management, a Christian investment firm that was named for a Greek word used to describe Christ as the “author” of our salvation (Heb. 2:10) and the “prince” of life (Acts 3:15). While Hwang’s defense team had argued that his aggressive trading at Archegos was within the bounds of normal Wall Street practice, the jury found he and his team were guilty of defrauding banks of billions and artificially pumping up stock prices.

The jury found him guilty of 10 of 11 counts. He was guilty of racketeering, securities fraud, market manipulation, and wire fraud. He was found not guilty on one count of market manipulation regarding one particular stock.

When Archegos collapsed in March 2021, the firm lost $36 billion, banks lending to Archegos lost $10 billion, and about $100 billion in market value disappeared.

Hwang’s Christian faith was woven into the long federal trial, featuring witnesses from Hwang’s Christian foundation Grace and Mercy as well as references to his Christian philanthropy. The jury heard the case before a courtroom that was consistently full of Hwang’s Christian supporters in New York—a feat of endurance over eight weeks when no phones were allowed in the courtroom and the technical subject matter was making even the jury sleepy.

Evidence in the trial alluded to the shared faith at the firm.

As the fund’s collapse was beginning in March 2021, Andy Mills, top brass at Archegos and a former president of The King’s College, a Christian college in New York, sent an email to another Archegos leader. “Pray that the markets rise tomorrow,” he wrote, according to documents from the prosecution.

“The point at which your business plan requires divine intervention is the point at which you have a solvency problem,” said prosecutor Andrew Mark Thomas in closing arguments, according to Bloomberg.

The defense initially intended to call Mills as a witness, but he did not end up testifying.

In the trial, the defense tried to refer to Hwang’s faith and his philanthropy as a way of highlighting his humble non–Wall Street ways, but the judge limited references to his personal devotion as irrelevant to a case of market manipulation.

The government’s case was that Archegos borrowed billions from banks on false pretenses and used that money to buy up large positions in a few companies, pumping up the prices artificially. The defense argued that Hwang genuinely believed in the companies he invested billions in, and that he wasn’t trying to defraud the banks but simply pursuing an aggressive trading strategy.

On Wednesday, as the jury members filed into court with their verdict, US Attorney Damian Williams slipped into the back of the courtroom—showing how seriously the Department of Justice took this case.

The jury in this case did not know this, but Hwang’s previous hedge fund, Tiger Asia, had pleaded guilty to a fraud charge in 2012. Tiger Asia was converted to Archegos in 2013.

The government’s case against Hwang centered on testimony from star witnesses Scott Becker and William Tomita, both former Hwang deputies at Archegos who had pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. Both Tomita and Becker said that when Archegos collapsed, Hwang offered them roles at his $528 million Grace and Mercy Foundation, which supports Christian ministries around the world.

Archegos and Grace and Mercy shared the same floor of office space—with a conference room to host regular lunchtime public reading of Scripture, a Hwang initiative. Some Archegos employees worked at both entities doing investments.

Grace and Mercy faces a lawsuit related to Archegos’s collapse, but it is not affected by this ruling. It has been operating normally since Archegos closed.

Another witness for the prosecution was Fernanda Piedra, a top Archegos employee who became the compliance officer for Grace and Mercy. The prosecution asked her to testify about the fund’s final days.

Tomita’s testimony undercut the defense’s image of Hwang as a humble Christian investor. He portrayed Hwang as an angry boss, yelling at traders if they took bathroom breaks. He testified that Hwang had lied to the banks that Archegos was borrowing billions from.

Prosecutors showed the jury Bloomberg Terminal messages, recorded phone calls, and charts upon charts depicting the links between Archegos’s buying practices and the movement of particular stock prices. When Archegos was on a buying spree of GSX, a Chinese educational technology company, in 2020 and 2021, the stock reached a price of more than $100 a share. It is now trading at $5 a share.

“Throughout my training at the company, I had been taught by Bill when necessary to give misleading pictures about the fund and its positions,” Tomita testified, according to Bloomberg.

Hwang, 60, faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison and his sentencing is set for October 28. He will be free pending sentencing on a $100 million bond.

- More from Emily Belz

Culture

Jesus Will Speak in 100 Tongues, Thanks to Man Who Helped Disney’s Elsa Sing in 41 Languages

Interview by Giselle Seidel

Rick Dempsey explains how his decades of localization expertise is being applied to The Chosen.

Rick Dempsey (center)

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: The Chosen / Pinkton / Getty

In 2014, Disney released a video of Elsa singing her hit “Let It Go” in 25 languages. If you didn’t know any better, you might have assumed that Idina Menzel, who sang perhaps the most popular Disney ballad in history, had performed each version.

Significant credit for this House of Mouse magic belongs to Rick Dempsey, who then served as senior vice president of creative for Disney Character Voices International. Dempsey’s team held auditions all over the world, ultimately finding the dozens of singers who brought the music of Frozen alive in their languages.

The goal was “to ensure there is character consistency” and that “the voices are all very similar around the world,” Dempsey said in 2014. “The good news is that we were able to find talent that were able to pull it off.”

This impressive consistency, or “character integrity,” is a concept and practice that The Walt Disney Company embraced and expanded nearly to the point of perfection, thanks to Dempsey’s work. Today, he brings this expertise to The Chosen, the most-translated TV show in history.

CT recently spoke with Dempsey about his transition from Disney, the arduous process of translation and localization, and how The Chosen is connecting with unreached people groups and places where sharing the gospel can cost people their lives.

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

Tell us about your 35-year-long career at Disney.

I started with Disney in 1988 and led character voices for the whole company. My job was to protect character integrity, which means that when the movie characters are adapted to connect with local audiences, they remain consistent across the languages. I think it is a unique responsibility to have in a secular company like Disney, because as believers, that’s similar to what we’re called to do with our own lives, that is, to maintain our Christian integrity wherever we go.

As the company grew internationally, Disney began to translate its work and sought to guarantee consistency and integrity with character voices in theme parks and consumer products, as well as our films, around the world. For the last 20 years of my career there, I led this and was also in charge of running the entire international localization for Disney, including Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and, as I was leaving, the Fox brand as well. I had a great run there.

You mentioned that you are in charge of localization, but not everyone knows what that means. Could you elaborate?

A lot of people would refer to that as translation, but we call it localization because there’s so much more to it than just translating a script. Localization means trying to get the nuances of the dialogue—it’s an idiomatic adaptation of the original content, meaning we are trying to get the local idioms and phrases and colloquialisms of a language into the dialogue, just like we have done in the original language.

How did you connect with The Chosen?

By the time we came back from the pandemic, I realized that my time had run out. Disney, as we all know, has taken a different turn in terms of family entertainment. I realized that my time was up there, so I retired from the company and kind of jumped off without a parachute.

Literally, right after I decided to retire, Come and See (the nonprofit that manages The Chosen’sfunding) was trying to figure out how to get the show out around the world, and someone in a meeting said, “I think I know a guy.” So they texted me and said, “Would you be interested in working on The Chosen and taking it out around the world, as you’ve done with all of Disney’s content?” I said, “Absolutely.” It didn’t take a lot of thought. Soon after, I started my own production company and began consulting on The Chosen.

Lately, numerous media companies have been pushing for more AI-assisted translations. From doing predominantly literal word-for-word translations, AI has come a long way producing more natural translations. Do you think AI will ever be able to do the job of localization?

Right now, for many languages, we are at what I call an 80-20 model that is 80 percent AI, 20 percent human. I think we will get to a point where AI will get a pretty good idea of how to do translation, but we will always need to tweak it with some human touches.

I’m sure someone can churn out an AI script for a film. But it’s gonna be very sterile. There’s something about the human emotion that we will never get from AI—you have to have that human touch to make it resonate and to make it real.

In The Chosen, there are colloquialisms and certain key terms and phrases that AI doesn’t necessarily understand. Because of the scale—we are translating into 600 languages—we will need to implement some type of AI to help along the way. However, there are many underserved markets where we don’t have a lot of data or information on that language within the AI world, so everything there will have to be human effort.

Are there elements or characteristics of The Chosen that make it particularly hard to localize?

Definitely. Every colloquial phrase or idiom used in English is a challenge to ensure a good translation. We also have to figure out how to communicate biblical and Jewish phrases. Even some of the Roman government titles are difficult to translate at times.

Additionally, the casting of the actors who voice Jesus has proven to be quite difficult in some markets. Jonathan Roumie’s voice has a very pure, full tone, with very little texture, yet it is not deep or resonant. The voice needs to be authoritative and commanding while still being compassionate and loving. He doesn’t sound young, and yet he doesn’t sound too old—strong early 30s. Finding all those attributes in one actor is extremely difficult, and we’ve found it can take several rounds of auditions before we can find someone close enough to play this central character.

Gaius is another difficult character. The English actor Kirk Woller has a very textured, mid-to-higher range voice. He is somewhat gentle in his approach to the character and yet he has governmental authority. Most countries start out by making him sound real gruff and forceful. It will often take several auditions to find someone who understands the gentle side of the character.

We understand that the end goal of The Chosen is to share the gospel, and that’s a task Jesus entrusted to his followers. To what extent have you been intentional in trying to find Christian people to do the localization process?

We are working with people who have a heart to get the story of Jesus out around the world in a really significant way. We have countries where the gospel is not allowed, but believers there are passionate to get The Chosen into their country.

We had an instance where someone who loves the show reached out from a country that is religiously oppressed. She would be imprisoned if caught even discussing the show. But now we are working with her to create subtitles in that language. She literally has to leave the country to make any kind of communication with us. This is another tremendous story of someone taking incredible risk to try and use The Chosen as a gospel opportunity to reach an entire people group who have not been exposed to the story of Jesus.

We make sure our translators are Christian believers, but that’s not a requirement for voice actors. And specifically in Muslim communities, we’ve had actors walk out on us once they understand the material and the subject of the show. Dubbing has been a real challenge in parts of the world where they’re very anti-Christian.

But God is in control. In one of those countries, one of our subject matter experts is a converted Muslim who now holds a doctorate degree in Hebrew and Judaic studies. He’s an incredible resource for us.

You mentioned the current goal is to have The Chosen available in 600 languages, and that’s truly a massive challenge. Some languages have hundreds of millions of speakers across entire continents, some far fewer and concentrated in a small region. How are you addressing these differences?

Well, yes. We estimate around 100 will be dubbed and subtitled, and another 500 will only be subtitled.

We are dealing with languages in regions like France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan, Latin America, Russia, Eastern Europe, where they have well-structured dubbing communities: translators, voice actors, recording studios. But we’re just now getting to those languages where we are starting to deal with underserved markets, and it’s proving to be a real challenge.

We’re getting into territory where people have never heard a dub in their own language. Some of those will just be subtitled languages because they just don’t have the infrastructure to put something the size of the media project that is The Chosen into their local language.

And it’s important to say we are doing all the translations and dubbing in the market itself, in the region where the language is spoken. That’s the only way it can be done, in my opinion. That’s the way we did it at Disney, because I believe working locally is the only way it will resonate with local audiences. You need the idioms and colloquialisms of the people of that market.

- More from Interview by Giselle Seidel

Theology

Artistic Humility in the Age of ‘Hot AI Jesus’

Matthew J. Milliner

As digital enticements proliferate, Michelangelo and the apostle Paul teach us to seek humbler, faithful art forms.

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

Why pray alone or with your family if you can pray with big-biceped celebrities on the Hallow app? Why limit yourself to reading or hearing the Gospels if you can have a Jesus with all the thrill and appeal of a bingeable Netflix series? Why cultivate the Ignatian prayer skill of active imagination when you can passively experience an immersive exhibit that brings a storm on the Sea of Galilee to life?

Why be satisfied with an ordinary church when you can digitally tour Europe’s greatest cathedrals or listen to famous preachers comfortably at home? Or why settle for traditional depictions of Jesus or figures from the Bible and church history when images of what The Atlantic dubbed “hot AI Jesus” and hot AI saints now proliferate online?

These are but some of the questions posed by our digital era’s dizzying accelerations, and Christians best have an answer. Here, I’ll focus on the artificial intelligence renderings of Jesus and explore how the example of history’s greatest Christian artist, Michelangelo, can help us resist the enticements of artificial devotion.

The easiest response to AI Jesus is to say that the iconoclasts—the Christian icon-breakers who warned against or outright destroyed devotional images in eighth-century Byzantium and sixteenth-century Europe—have been vindicated at last. An AI-generated image like shrimp Jesus is surely enough to cause some to hope that a modern equivalent of Oliver Cromwell’s stained glass–smashing soldiers will soon ride again.

Modern iconoclasts would argue that churches should be clean and imageless, an ever more necessary weekly cleansing of our digitally exhausted visual palette. This is venerable and ancient counsel. “When you are praying,” wrote the fourth-century desert father Evagrius of Pontus, “do not fancy the Divinity like some image formed within yourself. Avoid also allowing your spirit to be impressed with the seal of some particular shape, but rather, free from all matter, draw near to the immaterial Being and you will attain to understanding.” In other words, delete the app.

AI-Generated Image by CT / Midjourney / Facebook

CT created hot AI Jesus (left) inspired by the social media trend on Facebook (right).

Another answer—from the iconophile, or image-loving one—would embrace these new developments wholeheartedly, channeling them to positive effect. Arguably, this was Michelangelo’s approach. As his career began, visually arresting classical sculptures were being dug up from the ground, prompting in many a crisis of faith: Had Christianity brought such visual splendor to a premature end?

Michelangelo’s early sculptures answered with a resounding no, showing that Christian art could be just as beautiful as that of the classical world, or even more so. Perhaps, we should take a similar approach to the new medium of AI, both embracing and exceeding what the world offers us today.

I tried that strategy myself, spending months using AI trying to resurrect a lost African saint in AI-generated icons. It left me cold. Truth be told, the strategy of total embrace left Michelangelo cold as well. “So the affectionate fantasy, that made art an idol and sovereign to me,” he wrote in a late sonnet in the 1550s, “I now clearly see was laden with error, like all things men want in spite of their best interests.”

WikiMedia Commons

The classical statue of Laocoön, unearthed in 1506, and one example of Michelangelo’s alluring Christian responses, Cristo della Minerva (1519–1521).

But that disillusion with cultural production doesn’t necessarily mean the iconoclasts win the argument. Michelangelo did not give up art completely. He instead returned with new intensity to a lifelong interest in the simpler and purer aesthetic of ancient Christian icons, which on several occasions he attempted to replicate or echo. One art historian convincingly argues that Michelangelo aimed to “preserve traditions of religious imagery at a time when artistic developments threatened their integrity and dominance,” and that—I believe—should also be our strategy today.

Michelangelo also actively undermined the visual techniques he had mastered. Influenced by Reformation doctrines of grace, Michelangelo’s last works are deliberately impoverished. You can see this shift in the contrast between his first and more famous Pietà, made when he was in his early 20s, and the Rondanini Pietà, executed when he was in his 80s. In the first, a larger than life, impossibly youthful Mary holds Jesus; in the deliberately rough and unfinished second, Jesus—even in his death—appears to be upholding the appropriately aged Mary.

WikiMedia Commons

Michelangelo’s Entombment (1500–1501) and the humble ancient icon (1405) that helped inspire it.

Michelangelo’s trust in ancient, humbler art forms and his deliberate embrace of visual poverty helped him navigate the tumultuous 16th century, and it can help us navigate our own time as well. Deluged with AI’s slick and sexually suggestive images of Jesus, we can benefit from the wisdom of faithful iconoclasts without abandoning devotional images completely.

Like Michelangelo, we can choose to make and contemplate Christian images that are humble, perhaps unimpressive but deliberately and faithfully so. We can seek art that does not dazzle our earthly senses but defers to heavenly realities. Owing to the fact that the current “data sets these [AI] tools are trained on are biased toward hotness,” the new tools are unlikely to help. We do better to embrace images that pronounce their poverty, images that say, like John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30, KJV).

Michelangelo’s example teaches us to be suspicious of concocted visual greatness. Even if machines can now sculpt as well as he could, the lesson of Michelangelo’s final years remains the same: Christian images, insofar as they deserve the name Christian, should be deliberately restrained, for their purpose is not to attract attention or glory but to turn our eyes toward Christ. The traditional canon of Orthodox icons, more affordable now than ever, still does this remarkably well.

WikiMedia Commons

Michelangelo’s early Pietà (1498–99) and his late Rondanini Pietà (1564).

Faced with its own bewildering array of eloquent preachers and visually immersive pagan shrines, the ancient church asked questions like the ones with which I began. The apostle Paul’s answer was candid, even blunt: “I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God,” he wrote to the Corinthian church. “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness” (1 Cor. 2:1–3).

In this and the testimony of Michelangelo, then, I see a simple rule for sifting this fresh round of visual enchantments: Never trust an image—or a savior—without wounds.

Matthew J. Milliner is a professor of art history at Wheaton College. He is author most recently of Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon.

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News

Republican Party Backs Away from Pro-Life Stance in New Platform

Harvest Prude

Evangelicals oppose Donald Trump’s shift to leave abortion policy up to the states.

(Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

The new Republican National Convention platform endorsed by Donald Trump is missing the strong pro-life stance evangelicals have come to expect from the GOP.

Instead of calling for a concerted national push to curtail abortion, as the official party platform has done for the past 40 years, the new document removes that language and deems the matter best left to individual states to decide.

Even evangelical leaders who had been split over Trump have joined together in a chorus of criticism and disappointment.

“A moment when the abortion industry has been knocked on its heels is no time to shrink from a full-throated commitment to protecting preborn lives,” Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told Politico.

He wrote for Religion News Service that Republicans’ actions suggest they see abortion as “too politically fraught and prefer to run from a defense of the sanctity of life altogether.”

Clint Pressley, a North Carolina megachurch pastor who has recently been elected SBC president, wrote on social media that he is “disheartened” by national Republicans.

“The GOP platform may be subject to change, but God’s word is not,” he said. “Southern Baptists ‘contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death’ and will insist that elected officials do the same.”

The change in the proposed Republican platform reflects a shift toward Trump’s stance on the issue. He’s carved out a middle-of-the-road approach while on the campaign trail, saying the issue should be left to the discretion of the states. During the recent presidential debate, he also voiced support for the Supreme Court’s decision upholding access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

The life issue has been viewed by some on the right as an electoral liability since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade, which conferred a constitutional right to an abortion, in its 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Congressional Republicans have also distanced themselves from support for a national abortion ban, according to NOTUS reporter Haley Byrd Wilt.

The new platform document takes a softened approach on many social issues and is less detailed overall on exact policies than previous versions. The platform reflects key campaign issues for Trump, such as addressing inflation, calling for tariffs on trade, and a tough stance on immigration that, while light on specifics, calls for mass deportations.

In 2020, Republicans chose not to write a new party platform, merely carrying over the 2016 platform. For the past two campaign cycles, the platform devoted over 700 words to abortion and the life issue. It endorsed the “sanctity of human life,” weighed in on policy specifics such as congressional legislation and court decisions, and pledged that the GOP would seek a federal abortion ban that limited the procedure after 20 weeks gestation.

In contrast, the considerably pared-down platform for 2024 gives the issue 110 words. The new platform argues that the 14th Amendment, which says that states may not deprive any person the right to life, liberty, or property without due process, means “the states are, therefore, free to pass laws protecting those rights.”

The document goes on to voice opposition to “late term abortion”—the only time the word abortion is used—and says the Republican Party will support policies that support mothers and prenatal care, as well as access to birth control and in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“This is pro-choice language, in keeping with Trump’s pro-choice position. The sleight of hand is that it seems to claim the 14th Amendment applies to the unborn. But if the GOP believes that’s true, then the federal government, not just the states, has a duty to protect life,” wrote Joe Carter, in a piece for The Gospel Coalition. “The platform does no such thing. It gives broad support for IVF (even when it causes the death of a child) and only lists opposition to late-term abortion.”

On Monday, the platform committee approved the new document behind closed doors in an 84–18 vote. The New York Times also reported that Trump was laser focused on watering down the language on abortion.

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, who was a member of the platform committee, called the process “choreographed” in a statement and said it allowed for “no amendments to be discussed and voted upon.”

He said that delegates had to vote on the platform the same day they received it, without sufficient review time, and were only afforded a few minutes for discussion before the vote was taken.

Perkins is among a group on the platform committee that submitted a minority report arguing for stronger language on the abortion issue. The report calls for the addition of a “human life amendment,” arguing for language that better reflects the long-standing GOP position on abortion.

Family Research Council is also part of a recently launched initiative called the Platform Integrity Project, which seeks to preserve a strong stance on the “pro-life, pro-family, and pro-freedom” elements of the GOP platform.

It’s unclear whether delegates like Perkins will have a chance to address the issue at next week’s Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where the platform will be adopted.

In past years, Republican activists have been able to shape the party’s platform in ways that at times deviated from the presumptive nominee’s own statements. But that process has changed during the Trump years. The Wall Street Journal reported that, this year, Trump edited the document prior to its presentation to the platform committee.

Some pro-life activists refrained from criticizing the new platform. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that “it is important that the GOP reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment. … The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”

The platform also dropped language condemning the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage and omitted references to “traditional marriage.”

It instead addresses transgender issues at several points: “We will keep men out of women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex change surgeries, and stop taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition, reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX education regulations, and restore protections for women and girls,” the document reads.

“Any effort to weaken the Republican Party’s commitment to life and marriage would be a mistake,” Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said.

“On abortion, many states are becoming a black hole for the most vulnerable. Donald Trump won the 2016 election on the GOP’s most pro-life platform in US history. It’s both bad politics and wrong morally to weaken the party’s commitment to the most vulnerable,” Aaron Baer, president of the Ohio-based Center for Christian Virtue, told CT.

“For all those consoling themselves that the GOP is still better than the alternative on abortion, keep in mind that being a little less pro-choice than the Democrats is not a pro-life position,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor Denny Burk commented.

In an article for World, Burk wrote that “pro-lifers understood the deal they were making in 2016 when they turned out to vote for the Republican candidate,” referencing Trump’s pledge to appoint justices that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

“But now it looks as if Trump is altering the deal for his possible second term—a deal that has eviscerated the pro-life plank of the Republican Party platform,” Burk wrote.

The economy tends to be the top priority for American voters, though many pastors list a candidate's position on abortion and religious freedom as top factors in their vote.

Some social conservatives see the change as frustrating to the point where they’re considering withdrawing their support for Trump altogether.

“Dear GOP, I’ve said for years that I won’t vote for any politician, or support any party, that doesn’t stand fully against abortion from conception until birth. That’s not going to change in 2024,” Greg Gilbert, pastor of Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, said on the social platform X. “How many voters like me are you comfortable losing?”

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Iranian Christians Question Reformist Credentials of New President

Jayson Casper

Heart surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian takes the helm of the Islamic Republic, having campaigned for ethnic and religious minorities while pledging to reach out to the West.

Newly-elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian (center) speaks during a visit to a shrine.

Majid Saeedi / Stringer / Getty

The surprise election in Iran of the sole reformist candidate for president was met with an unsurprising reaction from the United States.

Heart surgeon Masoud Pezeshkian tallied 53 percent of the vote for a clear but narrow victory over hard-line former nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in an electoral process the State Department labeled “not free or fair.”

It followed the May 19 death of the previous president in a helicopter crash.

With “no expectation [of] fundamental change,” the perspective from Washington echoed that of Javaid Rehman, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Iran. The Pakistani-British lawyer stated that a new president is unlikely to improve the Islamic Republic’s record.

Iranian Christian sources in the diaspora agree.

“The result highlights a superficial change in leadership,” said Robert Karami, an Iranian Church of England pastor outside London and a board member of Release International, a UK-based advocate for the persecuted church. “It does not matter who holds the presidential office as long as the Supreme Leader remains in power.”

Pezeshkian, age 69, was one of six candidates permitted to run by Iran’s 12-member Guardian Council, appointed by head of state Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Dozens of candidates were disqualified, including former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Analysts speculated the inclusion of Pezeshkian was intended to increase voter turnout—but if so, the strategy initially failed and may have backfired.

Only 40 percent of the electorate participated in the first round held on June 28, the lowest tally since the 1979 Iranian revolution. It resulted in the first runoff since 2005, leading to a hostile campaign in which leading figures claimed Jalili would rule Iran like the Taliban in Afghanistan. Voters partially responded, as election day on July 5 witnessed an increased turnout of 50 percent.

But not Mansour Borji, who boycotted the diaspora ballot stations in the UK.

“I participated in the election by not voting, joining the majority who said no to the Islamic Republic,” said the director of Iranian religious freedom advocacy organization Article18. “Nor could I bring myself to do so on the 30th anniversary of pastors killed by the regime.”

July 5 marked the anniversary of when the last of the three victims—two of whom were Assemblies of God leaders—was identified in 1994.

Borji said that many Iranian Christians likely breathed a “sigh of relief” that Jalili did not win. His campaign called for strict adherence to Islamic law amid continued confrontation with the West while deepening ties with Russia and China. But as Pezeshkian has acknowledged that foreign policy is in the hands of Khamenei, Borji saw “little difference” between the two candidates.

Both had pledged to improve the economy, which has been in a tailspin since 2018 when Donald Trump unilaterally pulled the US out of the nuclear deal that limited Iran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for relief from sanctions. At the time the accord was signed under then–US president Barack Obama, the US dollar equaled 32,000 Iranian rials; it now trades for more than 600,000 rials.

Pezeshkian, however, linked improving the economy to negotiations with the US over sanctions, and would unilaterally return Iran’s nuclear program to compliance with the terms of the original deal. His candidacy was endorsed by Mohammad Zarif, the diplomat who forged the nuclear deal with the US and is speculated to return to his post.

Other indicators led Western press to accept Pezeshkian’s “reformist” label. Born to an Azeri father and Kurdish mother, he is the first president in decades to hail from Iran’s west, a region considered more tolerant due to its many minority populations—which he promised to represent. He counted “those who do not pray” among his supporters. And he struck a unique figure as a single father campaigning with his daughter at his side, never remarrying after the death of his wife in a 1994 car accident.

Pezeshkian also said he would resist hijab enforcement and internet restrictions.

But Borji and Karami, the UK pastor, both cited Pezeshkian’s history as a guardian of Iranian patriarchy. As head of the medical team at the Tabriz hospital, he reduced the number of female students and staff. He also imposed the wearing of the hijab there before it was legally mandatory, and during his 14-year parliamentary tenure he supported the legislation to make it so.

Pezeshkian unsuccessfully ran for president in 2013 and 2021, and may have adjusted his beliefs—or at least his rhetoric. He criticized the 2022 crackdown on demonstrators that killed 500 people and detained 22,000 others following the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, who had violated the hijab law. He even stated it was “scientifically impossible” to implement religious faith through force.

But Karami said he also called the protests beneficial for the enemies of Iran.

“Pezeshkian projects an image of modernity and reform,” he said. “But most Iranians view his ascension as a strategic maneuver by the Supreme Leader to buy time and appease the West.”

Borji agreed, calling the election a “circus” to garner legitimacy for Iran.

“Pezeshkian may be a heart surgeon,” he said. “But he doesn’t have the power or strategy to win over the hearts of the majority.”

Heart change, however, is the necessary solution, said Nathan Rostampour.

“My only hope for Iran is Jesus Christ,” said the Persian ministry director for Summit Church in North Carolina and a trustee of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board. “There are no real reformists in the system, anyway—they are all in prison.”

Rostampour said that Iran’s local church must focus on the Great Commission, emphasize discipleship, and become shining examples of the love of God through social service. Traditional reform is impossible, as the regime controls everything.

And it continues to persecute Christians. Last year, 166 followers of Christ were arrested, one-third of whom were involved in Bible distribution. And while Pezeshkian has made overtures to Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities, especially Sunni Muslims, will he—or can he—advance religious freedom for converts from Islam?

One survey finds Iranian Christians now number almost 1 million.

“While Pezeshkian’s win is ostensibly a victory for reform, it ultimately signifies little in the broader context of Iranian politics,” said Karami. “Until the power structure is fundamentally changed, the future for Christians remains bleak.”

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Serving Our Children Means Saying No to Youth Gender Medicine

Casey Hough

The administration’s new stance against childhood surgeries is only a start. Jesus has grave warnings for those who cause little ones to stumble.

Mercedes Mehling / Unsplash / Edits by CT

The Biden administration’s newly announced opposition to gender transition surgeries for minors is welcome. But Christians would be mistaken to let this news make us less vigilant on this issue.

The announcement only came after The New York Times reported late last month on efforts by the administration to “remove age limits for adolescent surgeries from guidelines for care of transgender minors.” And the White House clarified that the administration still supports “gender-affirming care for minors, which represents a continuum of care,” and respects “the role of parents, families, and doctors in these decisions.”

Youth gender medicine of all kinds also remains a live issue in state government and the judicial system. On June 24, the Supreme Court agreed to review a case challenging a Tennessee law that prohibits “gender-affirming care for transgender youths.” United States v. Skrmetti addresses whether the state ban violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Tennessee’s law currently differentiates the rights of a minor for treatment of a “congenital defect, precocious puberty, disease, or physical injury” from treatments rendered for “gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, gender incongruence, or any mental condition, disorder, disability, or abnormality.” Even so, medical groups like the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the American Medical Association (AMA) oppose such laws based on the claims that such medical procedures have reduced suicide attempts and decreased rates of depression and anxiety among minors who identify as transgender.

The neglected question is whether that’s true. What has been overlooked in these debates is that the well-being and long-term health of minors is taking a back seat to appeasing activists and politicians.

Such procedures, whether they be puberty-blocking medications or various surgeries, are misguided attempts by medical professionals who sincerely believe that they are helping children. However, sincerity does not sanctify an action. As Charles Spurgeon once said, “If you sincerely drink poison, it will kill you: if you sincerely cut your throat, you will die. If you sincerely believe a lie, you will suffer the consequences. You must not only be sincere, but you must be right.”

In the case of “gender-affirming care,” those who suffer the consequences of the lie are children. To even speak of “gender-affirming care” without qualification betrays a Christian’s fundamental convictions about the dignity of human life. Medicine heals the body; gender reassignment surgery disfigures it.

In fact, while American activist and medical groups claim that “gender-affirming care” works, other medical groups in Europe are questioning these claims, raising serious concerns about the ongoing health impact of these procedures, which is giving pause to medical professionals and lawmakers alike around the world. Recently, UK researcher Hilary Cass released her review of relevant studies and flagged the unstudied long-term impact of such medical procedures on minors, especially regarding “cognitive and psychosexual development.”

That should come as no surprise to Christians. These procedures are steeped in the demonstrably false idea that our gender has no relationship to our biology. If we desire to offer compassionate care to those who are in distress, we are best to counsel our children on the goodness of their created bodies as those made in God’s image. God’s design for his creation is very good (Gen. 1:31). The compassionate and loving course of action in these cases is not found in embracing a lie but in speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15).

With children experiencing gender dysphoria, we must be patient, listen to them, pray for them, teach them, and, when necessary, connect them with a professional Christian counselor. But social or medical transition is not the answer.

Doctors and surgeons currently perform these irreversible procedures with near impunity due to poorly researched studies that suggest there is some immediate benefit conferred to the child suffering from these mental disorders. Long-term studies, however, show that people “with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

What is also rarely mentioned are the rates of desistance among children who grow up without puberty-blocking medication and surgical alteration to their bodies, or the distress that many continue to feel after these procedures. Our government has a moral obligation to address these purported treatments and to expose the real harm that takes place in the name of “care.”

The bodies and brains of our children ought never to be regarded as pawns for political gain. They hold inherent dignity as image-bearers. Caring for them well in the midst of their mental distress forbids us from thinking or acting in any way that denies the rights of their Creator and Lord.

The Biden administration’s opposition to surgery is a start, but it’s only a start. Christians should support comprehensive bans on these treatments out of regard for God’s good design for humanity and his express purpose for governments in society (Rom. 13:1–17). Such laws guide our governing authorities and serve a good purpose that benefits all of humanity. We should desire and support such laws, for they prevent irreparable harm to the most vulnerable people among us and affirm that God has created and ordered us for his glory and our good.

This is not just a political and medical matter; it’s a theological matter as well. If, as Christians, we believe that God has created humanity in his image, then any debate regarding the health and well-being of children is inherently theological. The themes of God as creator, humanity as part of his creation, and the obligations of humans as stewards over the rest of creation bear great significance for how we ought to care for children in society.

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells his followers that unless they become like children, they will not enter the kingdom of heaven, and that whoever welcomes a fellow believer (child) welcomes Christ as well. He continues: “If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (v. 6).

Jesus’ point here is that just as children were to be protected from harm in the world, so also his disciples should be protected and not be caused to stumble by others. This comparison only works if Jesus’ audience understood that he expected both children in the world and the “children” of his kingdom to be protected from harm. If anyone ought to understand the importance of protecting children in the world, it should be those who have taken on the identity of a child of God and know the consequences of causing little ones to stumble.

Protecting children is the right and loving thing to do. It should be a priority for our government and for us as the people of God.

Casey Hough is director of partnerships and curriculum at World Hope Ministries International and assistant professor of biblical interpretation at Luther Rice College and Seminary. He is author of Known for Love: Loving Your LGBTQ Friends and Family Without Compromising Biblical Truth (Moody, 2024).

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Books

Review

Until the Next World Comes, Christians Hold This World Together

Coleman M. Ford

How the early church’s example of public witness helps us avoid the extremes of triumphalism and retreat.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Unsplash

Early on in my reading and study of early Christianity, I was struck by an assertion from an unnamed author writing to a man named Diognetus in the second century. This author, in his Epistle to Diognetus, declared that “what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.”

Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church

Stephen O. Presley (Author)

230 pages

$22.20

The author was getting at a paradox resting at the heart of our faith: Christians dwell in the world, yet in the beliefs they confess and the virtues they seek to model, they also transcend the things of this world. While Christ and the apostles taught this same principle, the Epistle’s analogy of the soul to the body is compelling. Though existing in a mortal body, Christians are bound for immortality. As the soul holds the body together, they are meant to hold the world together. Their task is to live in a way that makes the world better because of their presence.

Stephen O. Presley, a scholar of early Christianity, articulates this vision wonderfully in Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World like the Early Church. The book unpacks how early Christians viewed their place in a world that increasingly looks and feels like our own.

In a secular age, the postures and wisdom of early Christian voices can help us reclaim a vision for how to dwell within a society that has no room for religious exclusivity and little desire for transcendent moral reasoning. By exploring and connecting prominent themes of early Christian public witness, Presley channels the analogy presented to Diognetus and amplifies it through the voices of early Christian thinkers.

Active dualism

Presley begins by reminding us that our world is not just suspicious of the church; Christianity is seen as the antagonist. “Christianity,” he writes, “is not sidelined anymore because it is religious but because its moral claims frequently run contrary to new expressions of social progress and moral diversity.”

Our age of “expressive individualism,” as author Carl R. Trueman argues in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, has no need for transcendent theological claims and classic ethical foundations. Thus, Christian witness in the 21st century must increasingly answer the question, Is this good and beautiful? Without convincing today’s world that Christianity is appealing and desirable, we’ll struggle to convince it that Christianity is true.

To illustrate this, Presley assesses the nature of early Christian identity. Conversion, as the early church understood it, was no mere mental assent to propositional truth claims. Through catechesis and participation in the liturgical life of the church, new believers had their identities cleansed and remade.

Catechesis, or intentional instruction in doctrine, identified false beliefs and sought to replace those with biblical concepts. But this was a deeply spiritual experience. It served as a form of exorcism, cleansing one’s heart and mind from satanic presuppositions and leaving room for life-giving nourishment. The liturgical life of the church, which included baptism and the Lord’s Supper, ordered one’s entire life around the work of Christ and the redemptive story of God. As Presley notes, “This liturgical formation reminds us that the early church was not interested just in evangelizing and preaching but in forming a community.”

While always implicit in Christian faith and practice, this idea of “liturgical formation” must be recovered in our day. This is not an argument for high church worship alone, but a plea for intentional worship and formation practices within one’s church body. Christian community must extend past a causal relationship with a church down the street and instead be viewed as a vital collective of unified and committed men and women.

Beyond this, Presley highlights the cultivation of intellectual life among early Christian thinkers. We are privileged to see a recovery of this impulse within much of contemporary evangelicalism. But early Christian thinkers can help us carry it further.

By putting their thought lives into conversation with literature and philosophy, these thinkers brought all learning under the yoke of Christ. Scripture was the guiding compass, indeed the very fabric of knowledge, for early Christian thinkers. While evangelicals have (mostly) retained a high attention to Scripture, we have often lost the notion of how God’s Word ought to shape the way we engage all other forms of knowledge.

As Presley observes, “The church recognized the importance of intellectual engagement and interaction with the philosophical climate of the world around them.” Early Christians, even under persecution, did not consider retreat an option. Christian leaders today, in an age of moral and epistemological confusion, need to reinvigorate the church for winsome and irenic intellectual engagement in the public square.

Central to Presley’s argument, then, is a portrait of how early Christians understood their role in public life. While he separates his formal discussion of this subject into two separate chapters, one on citizenship and another on public life, the underlying ideas are similar across both. At one level, Christians understood their allegiance to Christ and his kingdom. They also sought to demonstrate their service and commitment to temporal authorities as those who had been ordained by God to serve. Christians were not “anti-imperial,” as Presley observes; they affirmed the established order and sought to live faithfully within its bounds.

Presley identifies this way of public life as an “active political dualism.” It involved prayer for governing authorities, commitment to pay taxes, and efforts to promote virtuous living for the common good. This, of course, did not guarantee acceptance by pagan neighbors. But the consistent witness was compelling enough to win some to the community of faith. If nothing else, it demonstrated the otherworldly nature of the Christian community.

Though Christian worship was much less public than Roman polytheism, it does not follow that Christians resided in the shadows. Their life and witness were attuned to what was taking place around them. Early Christian faith always impacted public life, whether it inspired a faithful presence caring for the community, a public witness against violence and atrocity, or a prayerful demeanor toward civic authority. A posture of active dualism tempered expectations while reminding believers that, ultimately, they were sojourners bound for a heavenly country.

Faithful presence

Presley’s core claim, simply put, is that Christians today need to relearn and apply the lessons of this active dualism. He is aware, of course, that retrieving voices from early Christianity is not an exercise in cherry-picking idealism. We must not assume, in other words, that every Christian in the church’s first three centuries carried out the work of cultural sanctification perfectly. (Here, it helps to remember Nadya Williams’s recent work on the presence of cultural Christians within the early church.)

Nevertheless, the framework of faithful presence espoused by early Christian thinkers and attested by non-Christian observers remains compelling. Today’s church shouldn’t operate with a triumphalist mentality, but that doesn’t mean shrinking in fear of the surrounding culture. As Presley asserts, “The Christian call to cultural sanctification is a call to pursue holiness and conformity to the likeness of Christ within any and every cultural context.”

The overall template provided by the early church and transmitted to us by Cultural Sanctification is sound. It may require some of us, however, to deal with cancers that threaten to infect our view of the church, the world, and our place in it. Cultural rejection isn’t the solution. Nor is replacing our current culture with some thoroughly Christianized alternative. The only answer to a world that rejects the church is a church that loves the world with faithful discernment and patient engagement, even as it longs for the world to come.

Coleman M. Ford is assistant professor of humanities at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Formed in His Image: A Guide to Christian Formation, as well as a forthcoming book, Ancient Wisdom for the Care of Souls: Learning the Art of Pastoral Ministry from the Church Fathers. He is cofounder of the Center for Ancient Christian Studies and serves as a fellow of the Center for Pastor Theologians.

- More from Coleman M. Ford

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The Pentecostal Who Shaped Swedish Politics

Interview by Geethanjali Tupps

Lewi Pethrus founded the Christian Democrats, started a still-in-print newspaper, and preached his countercultural values to whomever would listen, explains historian Joel Halldorf.

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

Joel Halldorf is a fourth-generation Swedish Pentecostal, so it was natural for him when he became a historian of evangelical religion and politics to take a strong interest in the most famous figure in his tradition: Lewi Pethrus.

Born in 1884, Pethrus was a tireless, creative leader of a relatively small religious group that received little notice at the time. After guiding the Swedish Pentecostal movement, Pethrus helped shape Swedish society by entering politics—something Pentecostals did not do back in the 1940s. Along the way, he founded a Christian newspaper and spoke out against secularism.

“If the church should learn one thing from Pethrus,” said Halldorf, “it is that there is no need to fear the loss of power, the loss of status, and marginalization. Because when you’re on the margin, you can do a lot of creative things as a church.”

Halldorf, author of Pentecostal Politics in a Secular World, spoke with CT about Pethrus’s lasting influence on his country, the impact of secularism on Swedish society, and the different political priorities of Swedish and US evangelicals.

Why was Lewi Pethrus such an important figure in Sweden?

When some people want to understand themselves, they go to a therapist. As a historian, I go to the past. Lewi Pethrus was a leading architect of the movement that shaped me, my family, and my friends.

He was a charismatic figure and public speaker, so the gifts of the Holy Spirit, including reports of healings and speaking in tongues, were an important part of his ministry. Not only did Pethrus establish contacts and friendships all over the Swedish Pentecostal movement, he also created institutions that became pillars of the Pentecostal movement such as Bible schools, a journal, songbooks, and conferences.

You talk about Pethrus’s surprising political transformation. How did that happen?

During World War I, Pethrus rose to become the most prominent leader of the Swedish Pentecostal movement. He viewed the war as a consequence of hedonism, arguing that people had turned away from God and society, and called on people to abandon the sinking ship of this world, join Pentecostal congregations, and await the imminent coming of the Lord.

When World War II broke out about 20 years later, Pethrus saw that secularization had dire and ongoing consequences for society: war, authoritarian politics, and lack of religious freedom. This propelled him into working for the political reform of Swedish society. He was perhaps the first Pentecostal leader in the world to move self-consciously into party politics at the national level.

What are the notable institutions that Pethrus began?

In the 1940s, Pethrus started a daily newspaper, Dagen, as well as a radio station that broadcasted in Sweden. The country had very particular laws and a state monopoly on radio broadcasting. When Pentecostals were denied access to this state-sponsored radio, Pethrus challenged the law by pirate broadcasting, that is, broadcasting via an offshore boat.

Pethrus’s political work also helped lay the foundation for the Christian Democrat political party, which was founded in the 1960s. Today, the Christian Democrats are not only represented in the Riksdag (Swedish parliament) but several members of the party also serve as ministers in the government. While the party has Christian roots and many of its representatives belong to different churches, they have developed a more secular and right-wing profile in the last decade.

Additionally, I don’t think there have ever been as many Pentecostals in Sweden’s government as there are today. This fascinating connection all started with Lewi Pethrus.

As for Dagen, it is still Sweden’s major Christian newspaper and has an ecumenical readership.

How did Pethrus advocate for his positions?

In Pethrus’s time, Sweden was moving toward a rational, secular, Enlightenment posture, particularly toward an infatuation with what is known as the “Swedish sin,” a progressive posture toward sex and nudity. Pethrus publicly opposed sex, drugs, and rock ’'n’ roll, often debating his opponents in the media and writing books that planted the Pentecostal flag.

When it comes to politics, what distinguishes Swedish evangelicals from Americans?

Having lived in the US during my years as a student, I’ve experienced several US presidential elections and discussed politics extensively with US friends who are evangelical or Pentecostal. It’s a strange experience as a European. When you come to the United States, there is so much in common—you recognize the services, the style of sermons, spiritual expressions, the hymns. Everything is very recognizable until you start talking about politics.

European evangelicals tend to view the role of government, especially the welfare state, quite differently from US evangelicals. To understand why, one must go back 100 years and see that in Europe, many of the churches, including Pentecostals, Evangelical Free churches, Baptists, and Methodists, were part of larger social movements, such as the workers’ movement and the temperance movement. These movements helped change Swedish society and other European countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as they moved from monarchy and the old regime toward democracy.

Many of the evangelicals were in the liberal camp, working alongside the Social Democrats and against the conservative party, which wanted to keep power in the hands of the king. This created an alliance that continued through the 20th century. As a result, the politics of evangelical movements in Sweden are far more centrist. They are in the middle—not right-wing and not socialist or Communist, but fairly liberal politically.

The state churches in England and France and even the Swedish Lutheran church supported the monarchy. They would not get onboard with democracy. That led to a loss of credibility for Christianity.

There’s an important lesson here for Christians: If you, as a church, tie yourself to a political system or movement, and then that system loses credibility in society, as the monarchy did, you will go down with it.

US evangelicals have tied themselves very closely to one particular political party. If this party loses its public credibility, the evangelicals will lose their credibility too.

Where do Pentecostals and other Christians in Sweden align politically today?

There are three areas in which we can see distinctive Swedish Christian politics today as a legacy from Pethrus. First, they don’t want to have a small state. Swedish Christians generally believe there should be a strong welfare state that can care for the poor.

Second, Swedish Christians want to have strong morality in society. For example, they believe it should be difficult to get access to alcohol and drugs. They are more right-leaning on moral issues than on social issues.

Third, polls have shown that evangelicals in Sweden are actually more pro–environmental politics, pro-migration, and pro-pluralism than secular voters. If you ask Swedish voters, “Do you think Muslims should have the right to build mosques in your city?” evangelicals will be more likely than other Swedish groups to say yes, because they believe that religious freedom is vital for their own existence.

Modern Swedish society was created largely by the workers’ movement and the Social Democratic Party, with a strong religious undercurrent. Now that we are experiencing some post-secular revival in Sweden, religion is talked about and debated more. Pentecostal movements from Brazil and Africa are growing here, and Syrian Orthodox have entered the country.

What is it like to be an evangelical in Sweden today?

There’s a very complex picture here. We can see what sociologists call depersonalization, which means people are moving away from religious traditions. It has become difficult to raise children in religious households, because secularization is accelerating. But we also can see a countermovement, because modernity has failed to fulfill its promises.

The promise of modernity was utopian societies with robust communities and a rich culture. While modernity has brought blessings, today we also struggle with social fragmentation, increasing mental illness, an endless cultural war, and a wave of shallow entertainment. I believe this has awakened a spiritual longing in which people are turning back toward religion and Christianity. However, this longing could be utilized by politicians looking for something they can use as a tool to fill in the gap that religion seems to have left in society.

Would it be fair to think of Pethrus as Sweden’s Billy Graham?

The existence of Billy Graham is a sign of how mainstream evangelicalism was in America during his time. This evangelist built close relationships with presidents and could be called “America’s pastor,” as his biographer, Grant Wacker, has written.

Even though Pethrus shared many of the visions of Graham, the Swedish public square did not have room for a Pentecostal pastor, or even an evangelical pastor, to take that position. If there was a religious figurehead for society, it would be a representative of the Church of Sweden, the state church.

But also because he lived in such a secular nation, Pethrus was always “the other” in Swedish society. He never belonged to the majority culture. On the one hand, he appreciated this position, since it gave him the freedom to challenge the mainstream and turn the Pentecostal movement into an alternative counterculture. But on the other hand, Pethrus longed for social respectability. He loved to quote professors and prominent politicians who said good things about the movement. He wanted to shape Swedish society beyond his own particular movement—much like Billy Graham did in the US. But Pethrus could never be a Swedish Billy Graham.

Right now, Pethrus is in the news because antisemitic comments he made in the 1930s have surfaced. What should we know about this controversy?

While Swedish Pentecostals were troubled by the rise of Nazism, ideas related to this movement seeped into the revival. Pethrus was, for instance, interested in the fate of the Jews, and saw the growing migration to Palestine as a fulfillment of biblical prophecies. Accordingly, he understood the persecution as part of God’s plan, since it increased this migration—and he even suggested that the persecutions were a consequence of the sins of the Jewish people. This was a bad case of victim blaming, in other words, and one that shows that antisemitism can be an integrated part of Christian Zionism.

Pentecostals put a great emphasis on ethics, and when Pentecostals go into politics, they sometimes do this with the ambition to create a society that reflects their biblical norms. But when this is done through censorship, laws, and restrictions, they might end up close to fascism.

In January 2004, a prominent Pentecostal leader in a religious community called Knutby sexually abused his young nanny and convinced her to murder his wife and their neighbor (who survived). How did this incident affect your faith, the Pentecostal church, and the Christians around you?

During the 1990s, there were a lot of renewal movements within Swedish Pentecostalism that attracted young people, and the congregation in Knutby was one of these. What first appeared to be an isolated and tragic happening turned out to reflect a deeply unsound and sectarian environment, where a murder was orchestrated by the local Pentecostal pastor. The leadership of the Pentecostal church in Knutby manipulated their congregation through references to special revelation and esoteric interpretations of the Bible, and thus created a cesspool of sex, violence, humiliation, and even murders.

I was never personally part of these charismatic and experiential groups, but several of my friends were involved. Even if none of them went to Knutby, the events there showed how wrong things can go in sectarian groups who separate from the mainstream and try to be, shall we say, theologically innovative.

How did it affect the Pentecostal movement in Sweden overall?

It gave Pentecostalism a bad reputation. I remember how local schools canceled their visits to an Easter play our congregation put up. These things happened all over the country.

Within the Pentecostal movement, it resulted in a strong coming together. One of the legacies from Lewi Pethrus was a rejection of denominational structures, but Knutby made the need for an organization and some kind of oversight over the congregations apparent.

Around this time, Karisma Center, one of the more controversial congregations in Stockholm, also collapsed, which helped tamper some of the charismatic fervor from the 1990s. The mainstream stepped up and tried to create order.

What type of impact can you still see today?

The tendency in the Pentecostal movement has been to emphasize that the events in Knutby were exceptional and reflections of the psychological setup of a corrupt local leadership. And, of course, this is in some sense true. But there are still questions that need to be asked: Why did Knutby attract so many young Pentecostals, and how can the risks for manipulation that biblicism and charismatic authority bring with them be addressed? There has, unfortunately, been a reluctance to have these conversations.

What has the influx of immigrants meant for the church?

This has meant a lot for the Pentecostal movement in Sweden. To begin with, many churches worked together with local authorities to find housing and help for those who came. By playing a constructive role here, relations with other local organizations were created, and some of the trust that had been lost due to Knutby was rebuilt.

Pentecostal churches have also been able to add groups of Pentecostals from Africa, Asia, and Latin America to their congregations—and they have also reached new converts. This has given new energy to the churches. But, of course, pluralism of this kind also has its challenges.

- More from Interview by Geethanjali Tupps

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Active dualism

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