‘I Knew I Would Pay a Price for My Faith’: China Releases Missionary After Seven Years

John Sanqiang Cao shares how hand-copied Bible verses, prayers, and a mother’s love buoyed him during his imprisonment.

Amos Cao holds a family photo showing his father, Pastor John Cao (far right).

Paul Sancya / AP Images

When pastor John Sanqiang Cao, 64, crossed the border back into China from Myanmar’s Wa State on March 5, 2017, Chinese officials were waiting to arrest him. For years, he had traveled across the porous border from Yunnan Province to the impoverished Wa State, where he founded more than 20 schools, established drug rehabilitation centers, and provided medicine, books, school supplies, and Bibles to locals. Wa State is part of the notorious “Golden Triangle,” one of the world’s largest producers of methamphetamine.

Yet the courts in Yunnan sentenced Cao to seven years in prison for allegedly “organizing illegal border crossings,” a crime usually applied to human traffickers.

His case garnered widespread attention as Cao’s wife and two sons are US citizens, and Cao has permanent residency in the US. While he could have applied for US citizenship, Cao decided to keep his Chinese passport so that he could return to China for ministry work. He split his time between pastoring a Chinese church in North Carolina and training Chinese house church leaders and mobilizing them to do missions.

Various international religious freedom groups and US lawmakers have long advocated for his release. In 2019, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that Cao was targeted due to his Christian faith.

Chinese authorities released Cao on March 5 after he finished serving his sentence. Four police officers escorted him to his hometown of Changsha, where he is now subjected to supervision and “thought reform” by the local government for five years.

CT spoke with Cao about his time in prison, the Bible verses that sustained him, his views on persecution, how it feels to be released to a changed China. This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity.

How are you feeling now? It has been more than 40 days since I have been freed. My health has improved a lot: My tinnitus was serious in the beginning, now it is much better. Every day I go out and jog for 20 minutes, so my body is recovering well.

How free are you right now? I am generally free, although two agencies, the judicial office and the police station, still monitor me every month by visiting my house. I can go out and about without being followed. However, I do not have a Chinese ID, so I am unable to go see a doctor or travel elsewhere. What was your time in prison like? I stayed at two prisons during my imprisonment. Because I shared the gospel with fellow prisoners at the first prison (Menglian Detention Center in Yunnan), I was transferred to Kunming Prison in 2019. To punish me, I was no longer allowed to speak with other inmates.

Pastor John Cao

In China, prisoners need to go through laogai, which means “reform through labor.” The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regards labor as noble and imposes long hours of work on prisoners. The purpose of laogai is to transform a bad person into a good person. At Menglian Detention Center, we sewed pants and clothing, for which we received next to nothing. At Kunming Prison, I assembled paper bags for tea leaves, as well as gift and fruit bags, without getting paid. While I was imprisoned, I did not get sun exposure—I probably only saw sunlight about 10 times a year. Without sunlight and the vitamin D it produces, my body became weak. I was not allowed to go outside or to exercise. I could not even exercise in my room. Every day from 7 to 7:30 a.m., we had to watch a state-owned news program. I had zero interest in the news, as it is dogmatic and meaningless to me. I usually bowed my head to pray as the news played in the background. I did learn about the COVID-19 pandemic and other major outside news to some extent. All of us had to learn dozens of “red songs” [praising the CCP] to “inherit red genes and ready ourselves to liberate all human beings.” Since I could not speak to anyone when I was in the Kunming prison, I would pray and sing praise songs. I would also write some poems of praise. I was placed under surveillance by four fellow inmates, and I could not step out of my room. Although they could freely interact with inmates from other cells, I could not speak to any of them. Similarly, prisoners would not approach me once they saw the four guards standing beside me. Are there particular Bible verses that encouraged you? I did not have a Bible while in prison. Although both my mother and my lawyer brought Bibles to my prison, the correctional staff refused to hand them over to me. My mother would write down Bible verses in her letters to me. Yet the police checked our correspondence: If faith was mentioned in my letters, they would not be delivered.

Both prisons had small libraries with hundreds of books. I would search for Leo Tolstoy’s books, since there are some Bible verses in his books. When I found them, I’d be very, very happy and copy the verses in my notebook. In the four years I was there, I copied dozens of verses. I especially liked the verses that remember believers who are suffering in prison. In Psalm 137:1–3 it says,

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion. There on the poplars we hung our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs, our tormentors demanded songs of joy; They said, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ These verses about Israel and the Jewish people’s grief during their Babylonian exile spoke to me.

Have you ever doubted your faith or wondered why you had to go through this trial? I have never wondered. Once I returned to China to spread the gospel, I knew that sooner or later I would be persecuted for my faith. Jesus said we will go through what he had experienced. For whosoever will pursue his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for the Lord’s sake shall find it. Also, I have been to every province in China, where I visited many Christians who were persecuted, beaten, and imprisoned. I’ve heard their testimony. So when the day came, I had a great peace in my heart. I knew I would pay a price for my faith, so I felt very joyful. Your mother went to great lengths to visit you. What is behind her strength and courage? My mother may seem like an ordinary Christian, but she is a very remarkable Christian. It took her two full days to reach the detention center where I was held in Menglian, and oftentimes she could not even see me. On the days when we were able to meet, we had to talk on the phone through a glass window. Our conversations were monitored.

One time, my mother mentioned that a fellow believer passed on his greeting and was praying for me. Before she even finished her sentence, the keyword praying triggered the police to cut off the conversation and end our meeting. For her to ride the train for so many hours to merely have a three-minute conversation with me caused her to burst into tears.

According to China’s prison law, prisoners have the right to write letters to their loved ones, but I could only write letters to my mother. That cut off my contact with the outside world, as I could only communicate through her. I wrote a poem to pay tribute to my mother. I talk about how during World War II, many mothers sent their sons to the frontline to fight. One line goes, Mothers sent off their sons in the past, side by side my mother stands with me now. I regard my mother as my comrade, who fights besides me. She is mightier than the WWII mothers.

Many people, from local Christians to US government officials, have called for your release and prayed for you. What would you like to say to them? I am extremely grateful for all the brothers and sisters around the world who prayed and advocated for me. I also know that they tried through many channels to convince the Chinese government to correct this mistake and release me.

I am very thankful for the many US lawmakers and officials who put in a lot of effort to free me. Whether ordinary citizen or official, they spoke out for me out of a sense of justice.

Many Chinese Christians also came to the entrance of my prison to pray for me. This could get them arrested, so they took great risks. The police at the prison knew that if there were people standing at the gate, they would be praying for me. An officer once secretly notified me that there were people who kneeled at the gate to pray for my freedom.

When you were released, you returned to a very different China with even less freedom for Christians, a worsening economy, and a crackdown on civil society. How are you coping? Initially, when I learned about my seven-year sentence, I could not wrap my head around the fact that they would persecute me, even though the things I did in northern Myanmar were beneficial to China. Once I was released, I realized that many pastors had been arrested. I came to realize that this is a crackdown against the house churches in China as a whole, and I just happened to be among the first few individuals.

Chinese Christians are not anti-government, they obey the constitution. An ordinary citizen does not possess a gun—how can he incite subversion of state power? For the government to crack down on Christians, it is an act of self-harm and self-damage. Not only do the Christians get hurt but the government also hurts its reputation and is discredited.

What are your plans going forward? First, I would like to get a Chinese ID so I can reunite with my family in the US. Without my ID, I cannot move freely to other places, purchase a cell phone, register for accounts online, or see a doctor.

It is not only about the reunion or about the inconvenience. It’s also an expression of me being a Chinese citizen. I highly value my citizen’s rights, so for them to be deprived, it is very unfair and unjust. Christians experience a lot of similar treatment like this in their daily lives.

Other than that, my life has been good. Changsha has been good. I am able to participate in in-person and online church services. I have been contacted and invited by house churches to pastor them, but I have not yet decided, since house churches are still considered illegal in China. As always, my main purpose is to share the gospel.

- More from Interview by CJ Wu

Theology

Reality Is Now a Diss Track

Russell Moore

Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s rivalry reveals our craving for controversy—and what’s lost when community is based on shared hatred, not love.

Drake (left) and Kendrick Lamar (right)

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

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

Not since Tupac died have we seen the country quite as fixated on a feud between rappers. Over the past several weeks, artists Drake and Kendrick Lamar kept the news cycle abuzz with their dueling diss tracks—ridiculing each other in trivial matters of height and weight and popularity before getting nastier with implications of secret love children and the possible grooming of minors.

As the lyrics amped up, police even investigated whether the argument was related to a shooting of a security guard outside Drake’s home in Toronto. For most people, though, the feud didn’t seem dangerous; it just seemed fun. And that’s what worries me.

I am far from qualified to judge who the better artist is between Drake and Lamar. My dogs were named Waylon and Willie, but, come to think of it, the Outlaws wrote a diss track or two themselves. Even so, if this were just a story about musicians’ egos battling, it could be quickly forgotten. The greater concern is not that these two artists have diss tracks, but that we are all living in one ourselves.

Drake and Lamar obviously do have some genuine dislike of each other. I share sarcastic barbs with a good friend sometimes, but I’ve never accused him of being a pedophile or of neglecting his child support. And yet, it also seems that much of this feud is theatrical—meant to mutually benefit them both.

After all, the question in the music industry press right now is not whether restraining orders will be sought but whose tracks are beating whose on the charts. The truth is, no matter who is “winning” or “losing” in that competition, both are winning. People are listening, if only to see which one will hit lyrically lower, jab more personally.

And the consuming audience wins too. It’s one thing to be a fan. It gives fandom an extra hit of adrenaline, though, to move that fandom from liking someone’s work to liking someone’s work while hating someone else’s. That transcends genres and platforms. Not long ago, some fans were enraged by DC Comics writer Tom Taylor’s musings that he would like to revisit some aspects of the backstory of the character Batgirl. They showed it by posting pictures of them burning photographs of Taylor’s face. He responded by posting, “I write COMIC BOOKS.”

This would be one thing if it were limited to fandoms vicariously living out virtual feuds, posing their favorite artists / movie franchises / characters / video game avatars / restaurant chains as imaginary gladiators at war with one another. The problem is that, as with so much else, these online realities are becoming real world realities. And they are affecting every part of life, including that of the church.

Texas Monthly recently highlighted the way that many Eastern Orthodox church communities in the United States are disturbed by the phenomenon of “Ortho Bros” tearing apart their communions. These are usually young men, almost always somewhere on the spectrum of white nationalist/Putinist/neo-Confederate. They are perhaps disproportionately “incel” (involuntarily celibate), but almost always with a view of women that confuses misogyny with masculinity.

And in their churches, they take the tactics of online troll discourse—complete with “I was only joking” when caught in one-step-too-far indefensible behavior—into the actual life of the congregation. These are usually, the Orthodox say, un-discipled young men, often with “father issues,” who aren’t drawn by the spirituality or liturgy of Orthodoxy but by being able to use it like a gamer would a “skin”—an identity from which to identify enemies and to fight them, “safely” and from a distance.

We, of course, have seen a much, much larger phenomenon like this in our own evangelical circles. The theology differs, but not the vibe—and, after a while, one realizes that the vibe is what matters, when one is bored of following Jesus and learning the Bible.

Decades ago, there was an evangelical trope that one should be a disciple of Jesus, not a fan. That’s true, but perhaps we should recognize what particular kind of fandom is infecting our religions communities: the kind that finds belonging by a shared hatred rather than a shared love.

This damages not just the witness of the church but the souls of the “reverse fans” who use it as a place to spike their adrenaline with a constant craving for controversy. It also hides what’s really damaged and hurting, in need of the repair that can come only from grace.

Long before hip-hop, one unbelieving philosopher launched what one might call a “diss track” against another (by then long dead) anti-theist philosopher that almost predicted the reverse fandom we would see now—especially with the theatrical pseudo-masculinity that denigrates women. In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell dismantled Friedrich Nietzsche’s tough-guy portrait of himself as a woman-hating nihilist who valorizes the strong and abhors “weakness.”

“It is obvious that in his day-dreams he is a warrior, not a professor; all the men he admires were military,” Russell wrote. “His opinion of women, like every man’s, is an objectification of his own emotions towards them, which is obviously one of fear. ‘Forget not thy whip’—but nine women out of ten would get the whip away from him, and he knew it, so he kept away from women, and soothed his wounded vanity with unkind remarks.”

Even as atheistic as he was, Russell also called out the ridiculous nature of Nietzsche’s dismissal of Christianity for its “weakness” and “slave mentality.” He wrote: “He condemns Christian love because he thinks it is an outcome of fear: I am afraid my neighbor may injure me, and so I assure him that I love him.”

“It never occurred to Nietzsche that the lust for power, with which he endows his superman, is itself an outcome of fear,” Russell wrote. “Those who do not fear their neighbors see no necessity to tyrannize over them. Men who have conquered fear have not the frantic quality of Nietzsche’s ‘artist-tyrant’ Neros, who try to enjoy music and massacre while their hearts are filled with dread of the inevitable palace revolution.”

With a few minor tweaks, the same could be written of the kind of trolling we see now—absent Nietzsche’s intellect but with all of his bile—that seems obsessed with putting women in their place and longing for a caesar who can impose a Nietzschean kind of “Christianity” on the rest of the world.

These are often people who are terrified of women and who would rather fantasize about cracking the whip in an imaginary, restored Christendom of the future than leading a prayer group in their own actual church. This kind of soul does not resonate with the psalms of the faithful but only with diss tracks—of whatever genre or denomination or tribe, as long as they channel anger and punish enemies.

The police responding to shots at Drake’s house unnerved those who remember previous “feuds”—not just between musicians but even between Olympic athletes and high school athletes and cheerleaders (or their parents), not to mention rival mob bosses—that ended in blood, not just words. Many remember that what starts as theater often becomes real. Artist rivalries are one thing—competing fandoms usually don’t hurt anybody. The stakes are higher, though, for a neighborhood, for a nation, for a church.

A people who lose truth turn to theater. A people who have given up on mission entertain themselves with feuds. A people who forget how to sing the songs of the redeemed can find that all that’s left are the diss tracks of the enraged.

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

News

Died: Gospel for Asia Founder Athanasius Yohannan

Daniel Silliman

The champion of “native missions” trained more than 100,000 evangelists but got in trouble for financial mismanagement.

Believers Eastern Church / edits by Christianity Today.

Athanasius Yohannan, who built one of the world’s largest mission organizations on the idea that Western Christians should support “native missionaries” but got in trouble for financial irregularities and dishonest fundraising, died on May 8. He was 74 and got hit by a car while walking along the road near his ministry headquarters in Texas.

Born Kadapilaril Punnoose Yohannan and known for most of his ministry as K. P., Yohannan founded Gospel for Asia in 1979. Over the next 45 years, the organization trained more than 100,000 people to preach the gospel and plant and pastor churches in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other places in Southeast Asia, according to a recent ministry report. Gospel for Asia raised as much as $93 million in a year and in 2005 reported it was supporting about 14,500 indigenous evangelists and pastors in same-culture and near-culture ministry. Christians in the US were asked to give $30 per month to support them.

“If we evangelize the world’s lost billions … it will be through native missions,” Yohannan wrote for CT. “The native missionary is far more effective than the expatriate. The national already knows the language and is already part of the culture. In many instances, he or she can go places where outsiders cannot go.”

Yohannan’s death was mourned by Gospel for Asia, the church that he started and served as metropolitan bishop, and prominent political leaders in India.

“He will be remembered for his service to society and emphasis on improving the quality of life of the downtrodden,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on social media. “May his soul rest in peace.”

Both the governor of Kerala and the leader of the opposition in the state assembly released statements offering condolences, saying Yohannan’s death was a great loss.

In Yohannan’s final “Shepherd’s Letter” as the head of Believers Eastern Church, he urged his followers to remain disciplined and faithful.

“During our time on earth, we are embarking on a journey to become more like Christ,” he wrote. “I am so proud of all of you for your faithfulness to the church and for your thirst to become like Christ our Lord. The greatest desire I have for all of us is that we are known by our love for others.”

Yohannan was born on March 8, 1950, the youngest of six sons in a family that raised ducks. They lived in the village of Niranam, where a stone monument in the local Orthodox church memorializes the arrival of the apostle Thomas in the year 54.

His mother was a devout Christian and, as Yohannan later told the story, secretly fasted and prayed that one of her sons would grow up to be a minister. She didn’t think it would be her youngest, “Yohannachan,” however, because he was so shy and insecure. When he announced at 16 that he was dedicating his life to serving God and fulfilling the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations, she gave him 25 rupees (about 30 cents US)—his first donation.

Yohannan said he was inspired by a missionary team that was raising support for work in northern India.

“As they explained the desperate need of the subcontinent, I felt a strange sorrow,” he wrote in 2019. “That day I vowed to help bring the love of Jesus Christ to those mysterious states to the North. At the challenge to ‘forsake all and follow Christ,’ I somewhat rashly took the leap, agreeing to join the student group that summer.”

But then the missionary organization turned Yohannan down. He was too young and hadn’t even finished high school. The rejection stung. He recalled how much it hurt even decades later.

“I had nobody to stand with me,” he told a newspaper reporter in 1980. “There were no churches or missionary societies to say, ‘Hey, we’re behind you.’”

Yohannan was, however, allowed to attend a training program in Bangalore the next year. That was the first time in his life he wore shoes, he later recalled. In Bangalore, Yohannan heard George Verwer, founder of Operation Mobilisation, challenge people to live and die for Christ. That night, Yohannan prayed, giving his whole life to Christ and committing himself to “breathtaking, radical discipleship.”

He joined Operation Mobilisation and started street preaching—experiencing the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in the process.

“I felt a force like 10,000 volts of electricity shooting through my body,” Yohannan wrote later, describing his first sermon. “All at once God took over and filled my mouth with words of His love. I preached the Good News to the poor as Jesus commanded His disciples to do. As the authority and power of God flowed through me, I had superhuman boldness.”

Yohannan traveled around India with Operation Mobilisation for about seven years. He met and married a German missionary named Gisela. His youth was noticed by Western missionary leaders, such as John Haggai, who praised his talent and charisma and challenged him to do great things for God.

The young evangelist’s relationship with his missionary teammates was not always good, however. Some felt that he wanted attention too much and that preaching gave him an inflated sense of importance. At one point, as he later recalled, no Operation Mobilisation team would work with him.

“You are proud and arrogant,” one of the leaders told him. Another said, “Nobody wants you. No one can help you. Only God can help you.”

After that, Yohannan decided to move to the United States to get more ministry training. He went to Criswell Bible Institute (now Criswell College) in Dallas and took classes for two years. He was ordained in a local Baptist church.

As he considered the prospect of pastoral ministry, however, Yohannan felt himself drawn again to missions. He began to pull out world maps at a Tuesday-night Bible study and led the Baptists in prayer for the people of faraway places, as George Verwer had often done. He talked to the Christians about giving a dollar a day, or $30 a month, to missions.

In 1979, Yohannan and his wife started Gospel for Asia, based in Texas. The ministry established its India headquarters four years later, according to Gospel for Asia.

Yohannan published Revolution in World Missions in 1986. It was part autobiography, part critique of Western missions, expounding Yohannan’s theory about the superior effectiveness of national evangelists. The lost do not need your missionaries, he told Christians in America and Europe. They need your money.

“The Holy Spirit is moving over Asian and African nations, raising up thousands of dedicated men and women to take the story of salvation to their own people,” Yohannan wrote. “These national missionaries are humble, obscure pioneers of the Good News taking up the banner of the cross where colonial-era missions left off.”

Yohannan did not go so far as to call for the withdrawal of Western missionaries from Asia or other parts of the world, but he did argue that sending people from the US and Europe was a bad use of resources, unwise, and colonialist.

Gospel for Asia grew quickly. According to the ministry, Western funds were going to support 4,500 native missionaries by 1990. Gospel for Asia has reprinted Revolution in World Missions seven times, and there are now about 4 million copies in circulation.

Yohannan also started his own church in 1993. Believers Church was conceived as an indigenous Indian denomination, separate from Western influences, but also more evangelical than some historic Indian churches.

Over time, the church adopted a more Eastern Orthodox style. Yohannan was elevated to bishop in a service in 2003 and claimed apostolic succession. He took the title “Metropolitan,” to designate himself the head of the church’s bishops, and the honorific “Moran Mor,” which is similar to the Western designation of “Most Reverend” or “His Holiness.”

The increasing emphasis on authority raised concerns for some Gospel for Asia staff.

“K. P. functions as an episcopal bishop,” a group of them wrote, “and wears the robe, hat, ring and some other accompanying items. Staff and leaders there commonly kneel or bow and kiss K. P.’s ring in a sign of veneration. … This is not how Jesus taught and modeled authority.”

Yohannan denied that anyone kissed his ring, but the staff members released photos and videos. They also reported he had started to teach that disobeying him was a sin. If he told a staff member to move to Myanmar, Yohannan reportedly said, the correct response was “yes sir,” not “I’ll pray about it.”

The staff raised additional concerns about fundraising issues, prompting an investigation by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA). In September 2015, the ECFA concluded that Gospel for Asia had violated five of seven standards. The ministry misled donors, soliciting donations for specific purposes and then using the restricted funds for other projects, including the construction of a new headquarters. Some of the movement of money was not properly documented.

Blogger Warren Throckmorton reported on the roiling scandal extensively at the time.

Yohannan appeared to be unaware of the basics of nonprofit management and the board failed to provide adequate oversight, according to the ECFA.

Gospel for Asia acknowledged it had been “unintentionally negligent” but also pointed out that no one had personally benefited from the financial irregularities and that no money was found to be missing, even if it wasn’t all where it was supposed to be.

The ECFA took the unusual step of expelling Gospel for Asia.

Some donors sued the ministry, claiming their funds were misused. Gospel for Asia ultimately settled, agreeing to refund $37 million to a class of 200,000 donors. The ministry did not accept any guilt, however, and the terms of the settlement required plaintiffs to agree that “all donations designated for use in the field were ultimately sent to the field.”

Several prominent evangelical leaders spoke out and endorsed Yohannan’s integrity, including George Verwer, pastor and author Francis Chan, Anglican Church in North America bishop Bill Atwood, and D. James Kennedy Ministries president Frank Wright.

“I cannot say enough good things about K. P. Yohannan and all my friends at Gospel for Asia,” Wright said. “This ministry is exceptionally effective, fully Christ-centered and worthy of broader support.”

Chan, the author of Crazy Love, said he had examined Yohannan’s life—his tax returns, his home, his car, and even what he ate—and was convinced he had not taken any money or enriched himself or his family with ministry donations.

“How could anyone accuse someone like this [of] fraud and racketeering and trying to take money?” Chan said. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

After the expulsion from the ECFA, Believers Church decided to change its name to Believers Eastern Church to emphasize the difference and distance from Western evangelicalism.

In 2018, the bishops all took the names of early church fathers, martyrs, and saints. Yohannan chose Athanasius, a fourth-century theologian from Egypt known for his writings on the Trinity.

After that, he was referred to by the church as Athanasius Yohan I. Toward the end of his life, his writing focused on the biblical basis for liturgy, ritual prayer and prayer ropes, the importance of tradition, the use of incense in worship, and the sacrament of Communion.

He continued to lead Gospel for Asia until his death.

“We are called to be witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ by telling people about His love through words and actions,” Yohannan wrote to the church about a year before he died. “My dear children in Christ, please remember that if we live for the Lord and are His witnesses, we will have to go through suffering, whether it’s persecution, misunderstandings, or other problems.”

Yohannan is survived by his wife, Gisela; their daughter, Sarah; and son, Daniel, who is now the vice president of Gospel for Asia.

- More from Daniel Silliman

I Didn’t Want a Baby. I Wanted This Baby.

Faith Chang

Mourning miscarriage means acknowledging the particular life that’s been lost.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty / Pexels

You’re young. You can try again,” the phlebotomist says as he sticks a needle in my arm. He’s drawing blood for tests that will confirm what ultrasounds are already saying: I am miscarrying. I recognize the young man’s attempt to offer comfort and receive it as such. What I do not say is, It’s not that I just want a baby.

Before this third pregnancy, I’d told my husband I was done. Any additional members added to our family of four would not be coming from my body. So it is with two young children at home and in the middle of waiting for our first foster care placement that we find out we are pregnant again.

My body tells me early on that I am mothering my third child, affirming in intimate ways the hidden presence of the little one being formed in my womb. The all-day queasiness of “morning” sickness. The fatigue. The slow tightening of pants around my waistline. In these ways, in the giving of myself, I am getting to know this baby just as I did his or her older sisters.

When I begin spotting and having cramps, I get to know—to love—this baby another way, through anguished pleading with God. I’d prayed similar prayers once before. That time, a doctor’s “I don’t see a heartbeat …” was followed by the relief of seeing the tiny, flickering heart of my now 10-year-old. This time, there is no flicker.

The heaviness settling deep in me is not because I want a baby. I want this baby, my baby. I want my child to live.

My baby dies in my womb early in my first trimester, and I am unprepared for the grief that rocks me. I am also unprepared for the ways I will struggle to feel that this grief is permissible, even as sobs seize my body unexpectedly throughout the day, even as a mild depression settles in for months, even despite the news that I am pregnant again.

Eventually, I’ll come to find this is common, that those who miscarry often seek permission to grieve. Although 10–20 percent of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage, it can feel like an “invisible” loss, often occurring before family and friends even know about the pregnancy. Medical trauma, involuntary childlessness, societal stigma, and guilt or self-blame can converge to make this suffering complicated.

But there’s something else that can make grieving hard—and that’s wondering whether or not our heartache is justified; about what, or more precisely, who we’re grieving.

In the weeks following my miscarriage, I feel a dissonance. Even as I mourn, a part of me casts suspicion on my sadness. My pain tells me that I have indeed lost a child. But is that really true?

A few things contribute to this question. I’ve been influenced more than I realize by the cultural milieu, which frames any affirmation of the personhood of unborn babies as ignorant at best and harmful to women at worst. Given how common miscarriage is, some argue, it’s absurd to believe each loss is the death of a person. Someone once casually remarked to me that she didn’t believe heaven would be filled with fetuses.

I’ve also spent my life in Asian American churches and ministries, where topics like sex, abortion, and miscarriage are rarely explicitly addressed. Outside of church, most of the arguments I’d seen from the pro-life movement appealed to later stages of fetal development. But my baby never looked like the ones pictured on posters at rallies and, to my knowledge, he or she never had a heartbeat.

Is it appropriate for me, then, to grieve the death of a baby who I have only known in positive pregnancy tests and nausea and a slightly swelling belly?

Some would argue that it doesn’t matter whether my baby was a person with a soul. They’d reassure me that it’s ultimately my “conception of the pregnancy” and personal attachment to the fetus that matters, not any objective claim about fetal value. But for me, there is no escaping the question of personhood. The claim and comfort of my faith is far more wide-reaching than subjective experience and emotional relief.

The Christian hope is based on the person of Christ, broken not in my imagination but truly, bodily, for me. Jesus’ heart really did begin to beat again in that tomb on the third day, so our bodies really will be raised imperishable on the last (1 Cor. 15:51–54). Christianity acknowledges that one implication of paradise lost is the physical reality of death reaching inside me, so that I know it in cramps and bleeding and cries of “My baby, my baby.” It also assures me that insofar as my grief corresponds to reality, my hope—that the Creator truly has my baby in his hands, that he sees and cares, that he will bring this child beyond the veil into eternity—is real too.

In the end, it is through the sorrow and comfort of others that I find full permission to grieve.

My husband says, “I miss Pax”—the name we end up giving our baby. My father-in-law weeps for our loss. My mom tells me that Pax will always be her grandchild. Church members who’d hoped with us for better news now drop off pig’s trotters in black vinegar, chicken and ginger soup, and sweet red bean porridge—Chinese postpartum food—at our door. In doing so, they are honoring the toll pregnancy has taken on me. As they tend to my body, they are tending to my heart. Each person who acknowledges our loss is saying, You’re right. Your sadness is justified.

If each human life can invariably be traced back to its very beginnings, and if every person is made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27; James 3:9), then we who have lost babies in the womb are right to grieve.

But even in a church that affirms life from conception, there are subtle ways in which the narratives we absorb prevent us from mourning with those who miscarry.

We are tempted to give false assurances about the future (“You’ll get pregnant again”) or reasons the miscarriage might have been good (“It’s better than if the baby had been born with a genetic disorder”). Sometimes blame is harmfully placed on parents (“You disobeyed God” or “You didn’t take care of your body”). These responses fail to acknowledge the reality and weight of our loss, and the personhood of the babies we grieve.

If the babies we lost were truly babies, then Christians—tenderly and in ways sensitive to each person suffering—must weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). The church must be solidly pro-life here. We must acknowledge the personhood of children from the womb not merely by teaching against abortion but through entering into the grief of those who suffer pregnancy loss in all its forms.

Many in our pews have lost babies to miscarriage and stillbirth. Others are brokenhearted over babies lost to abortions, those they could not prevent or once chose and now regret. In a culture that extends sympathy for pregnancy loss but stops short of acknowledging the fullness of what that loss implies, Christians have a unique opportunity to make space for this suffering. We of all people have solid ground from which to offer comfort, hope, and healing.

In the weeks and months following my miscarriage, I have conversations with other women who have miscarried. Some are older women who had no pro-life movements in their countries of origin. Many have never had anyone affirm to them the personhood of the babies they lost. So it is healing for me and for them to speak openly about these children now.

“I also have a child in heaven,” one mother tells me. Another woman wants to know, “Do you really believe that your child is with God?” She is asking me about Pax, but she is thinking of her own sorrow, the babies she will later tell me she’s lost too.

Do I believe my baby is with God? Yes, I tell her without hesitation. I do.

Faith Chang is the author of Peace over Perfection: Enjoying a Good God When You Feel You’re Never Good Enough. She serves at Grace Christian Church of Staten Island and on the editorial board of SOLA Network.

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Theology

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Train

Kate Lucky

I’m learning that motherhood is less about technique and more about wisdom and formation.

Bastien Jaillot / Unsplash

Almost six months ago, I had my first baby. Ever since, I’ve been thinking about sleep: how long; how deep; whether it’s happening in a car, on a walk, in a lap. And I’ve been thinking about how to achieve that sleep faithfully, honoring both the dignity of my baby and my duty as a mom.

For many new parents, sleep is a controversy, a series of choices that open you up to criticism. Some parents put their baby in bed with them. (Dangerous!) Others opt for a bassinet. (Cold-hearted!) Some use a pacifier. (Problematic.) Others don’t. (Equally problematic.)

In the newborn months, night feedings are necessary. The controversial faith-based program Baby Wise, promising full nights of sleep at only seven weeks, has therefore been condemned by pediatricians. But even as their babies grow, some parents continue to respond to every whimper. Loving, they proclaim. Unrealistic, say their opponents. And ultimately, not good for the baby!

Others choose to “sleep train,” putting their baby down awake so that they’ll learn to fall asleep on their own. This often involves crying. Worth it, parents insist. Selfish, say their critics. And ultimately, not good for the baby!

If you’ve cared for an infant in 2024 and successfully avoided sleep debates, I commend you. I have not. In part, because of Instagram. Also, because I needed information. My baby seemed tired all the time, and yet his eyes simply would not close. How could I help him rest?

I read some curriculum; I watched some videos; I browsed blogs; I talked to friends. Over time, I learned some strategies. We sang lullabies. We purchased blackout curtains and overnight diapers. We used a swaddle, then a “sleep suit,” then a “sleep sack.” Everything helped.

As for sleep training? Ultimately, we adopted a hybrid approach—putting the baby down “drowsy but awake,” tolerating some fussing but continuing to comfort. He took most of his naps in the crib. His eyes weren’t red anymore. Sometimes he slept the whole night through. For this blessed development, I had the sleep experts to thank.

And yet: Sometimes, sleep still made me anxious. When the baby went down for bed 30 minutes too late, or took another too-short nap, I worried I’d ruined his schedule. I wasn’t being disciplined enough. When the baby complained at 3 a.m., I lay in bed, watching the monitor, wondering if I was being too withholding, if I shouldn’t just gather him into my arms regardless of “the plan.”

Adopting the sleep techniques is one thing. But what hasn’t worked for me are the philosophies undergirding both sides of the debate: the regimented and strategized versus the freewheeling and improvised, and what they assume about human nature.

For the sleep training experts, kids are codes to be cracked. Put a baby down to bed at the same time each night—no more than 15 minutes too early or too late. Rocking or feeding to sleep can create a dreaded bad habit that can ruin a good sleeper in an instant. The science of REM and a table of nap times can tell us most everything we need to know about how to care for our children, they say.

It’s correct that infants respond well to routine, and that typically developing kids follow a certain predictable trajectory. But spend time with a baby and you’ll realize that they’re so much more than a machine, preset to roll, babble, and eat solid foods as the months progress. Each child has her own temperament. Each will buck the guidelines in his own way. Each is “fearfully and wonderfully made,” utterly distinct, not a prefab copy (Ps. 139:14).

The sleep training literature does offer caveats. Some babies don’t respond to the methods. Many babies experience temporary regressions. Babies get sick and grow teeth and sometimes get inexplicably cranky. The caveats feel more descriptive than the norms. Why did the baby wake up three times? Ultimately, explanations are futile, an attempt to understand a child’s needs within an adult rationale.

But what if adult rationale is getting in the way—in parenting and in the rest of my life as a Christian? Jesus asks us to come to him as children, guileless, lowly, utterly honest in our dependence on him.

The sleep trainers, with their charts and protocols, sometimes underemphasize the goodness of this kind of relationship, the beauty in pure, unruly, inexplicable need. When my baby wants me in the night, that’s not a failure of a system. It is the system.

Rather than trying to explain my baby—why he loves his fox toy, why he drinks bottles three ounces more than the guidelines, why he sticks his legs through the bars of the crib—what if I simply beheld him, content with a measure of mystery? What if I allowed my baby to come to me as Jesus invites us to come to him, through a Holy Spirit that understands groanings we ourselves can’t comprehend (Rom. 8:26)?

Yet I don’t think the “attachment” types have it all right either. For these moms—the co-sleepers and the snugglers—babies are ultimate authorities. Your child wants to suck for five minutes every half an hour? He’ll sleep only while touching you? Let him; he knows what’s best for himself. He’ll eat only until he’s full, and he’ll only cry when he has a need to be met.

But this doesn’t feel true either. “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do,” writes Paul to the Romans (7:15). He’s speaking about sin. In a fallen world, this tension—doing things that run counter to our best nature, wanting what’s bad for us—is present from our earliest days, willed or otherwise (Ps. 51:5).

Babies want to stick their hands in their diapers, then into their mouths. They hate car seats. They hate socks. My job as a mother isn’t just to let my child lead, even when he’s small. It’s to raise him up in the way he should go. It’s to set parameters, to lay some plans, even if they have to be adapted along the way.

Being a mother, I’m learning, isn’t so much about the strategies and techniques, after all, whether it comes to sleeping, or eating, or the more complicated tasks to come: discipline, education, spiritual formation.

This isn’t just a matter of eschewing two camps for some kind of “middle way.” It’s rethinking the very idea of “camps” at all, understanding parenting less as a philosophy we adapt and more as a calling we answer, at times full of confusion, inconsistency, and improvisation.

God, after all, doesn’t call us to be experts, to read one more product review or research study, or to know all the answers in advance. Instead, we’re simply called to be wise, which has more to do with attention than information, more to do with end goals than tactics.

Wise people are authorities who depend on the ultimate Authority, asking questions of God, depending on and submitting to him even as our children depend on and submit to us. That’s my prayer this Mother’s Day, my first with a baby in my arms: wisdom. And more sleep.

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

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News

Spanish Evangelical Party Makes a Bid for European Union Parliament Seat

Ken Chitwood

Long-shot campaign needs 15,000 signatures for the chance to get on the ballot.

Voters in Spain cast their ballots. The European Parliament elections will take place in June.

Zowy Voeten/Getty Images

Eye-catching election placards are popping up across the European Union. They appear overnight in public squares and in front of train stations, along the Autobahn and the Champs-Élysées and many lesser-known rues, strassen, and calles.

With bright colors and bold slogans, each promises to make a difference in the European Parliament, if only passersby will vote for their party in the upcoming election.

“Make Europe strong,” says one.

“Make it happen,” urges another.

And there’s a new slogan for a new party in Spain: “United in values, guided by faith.”

The sign asks people to vote for Fe, Infancia, Educación, y Libertad (Faith, Childhood, Education, and Liberty) or FIEL, a new, explicitly evangelical Christian party. The party’s candidate for the European Parliament may not actually appear on ballots in June, though. Before Juan José Cortés can stand for election, FIEL needs 15,000 signatures by May 12.

“We are at a crucial moment,” party president Salvador Martí wrote in a recent campaign letter. “Your signature is essential so that we can continue in the battle, and so that together we can work for a better future for all.”

Martí acknowledges this is an uphill battle. Many experts say it’s basically impossible to build a new party from scratch out of a tiny religious minority. Evangelicals make up about 2 percent of the Spanish population. There are fewer than 5,000 evangelical congregations in the whole country, even with the recent increase in evangelical immigrants.

“We do not want to settle for the obstacles that say that it is not possible to build a party built by citizens like you and me in Spain,” Martí wrote in April.

The once-every-five-year election presents a strategic opportunity for evangelicals seeking to have more influence on European politics.

The European Union’s 447 million citizens in 27 countries have the chance to vote from June 6 to 9, electing 720 politicians to the parliament in Brussels. Those leaders, sitting in the EU’s only directly elected legislative body, will provide democratic oversight to the European government. They will pass laws and approve budgets, together with the council of appointed representatives of member countries, and steer the EU into the future.

Evangelical parties like FIEL may have a chance in 2024 to make some gains, due to general discontent with the long-established ruling parties. But they will have to cut through disinformation, reach generally disinterested voters, and jockey for position amid a range of parties hoping to capitalize on that discontent.

At the moment, polls suggest Europe’s far-right parties—including Alternative for Germany in Germany, National Rally in France, and Vox in Spain—are winning over voters dissatisfied with the status quo.

The center-left and center-right parties that have historically dominated since World War II will probably win enough seats to form a governing coalition. But the current president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen of Germany, said her party in Brussels might have to consider working with these far-right groups. Left-leaning members of the current coalition say that would be unacceptable.

Amid the fray, Christian candidates—evangelicals among them—are trying to join multi-party groups and to win seats so that they can have an impact. In the last election in 2019, for example, three members of the European Christian Political Movement (ECPM) won seats: Bert-Jan Ruissen, from a conservative Calvinist party in the Netherlands; Peter van Dalen from the centrist Christian Union in the Netherlands; and Helmut Geuking, a Greek Catholic, who is part of the social conservative Family Party of Germany. Cristian Terjeș, from the Christian Democratic National Peasants’ Party in Romania, became the ECPM’s fourth representative in the European Parliament the following year.

The ECPM’s general director, Maarten van de Fliert, said the 22 separate parties that make up the ECPM all want to promote their Christian values in EU politics. What that looks like, though, can vary a lot from country to country, party to party, and denomination to denomination.

“All these different denominations and all the different interpretations of doing Christian politics also reflects the colorful diversity of the Christian faith and of the Lord God,” Van de Fliert told CT. “How the parties want to implement those Christian views varies very much, along the line of church denominations.”

Van de Fliert could not say whether any of the ECPM politicians are evangelicals, though. The distinction did not make sense to him.

“It does not work like that in Europe,” he said.

Arie de Pater, who represents the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA) in Brussels, said there are about 20 million evangelicals in Europe, but they don’t have a single political identity and aren’t unified, in all their different political contexts, around any one-party program.

The EEA is non-partisan but lobbies to advance biblical beliefs and values at the European level. De Pater said the organization has traditionally focused on freedom of belief, freedom of expression, policies that strengthen families, and politics that protect life by limiting abortion and assisted suicide. In this election, de Pater said, many evangelicals represented by the EEA have also expressed concerns about humanitarian aid for asylum seekers and the possible future dangers of artificial intelligence.

The EEA also does a lot of work encouraging evangelical involvement in EU politics.

“We want to show people the importance of the parliament and the upcoming elections,” de Pater said. “The parliament will shape the future of the European Union for the next five years, if not longer. It’s important we engage the debate.”

In other words, de Pater said the EEA wants to “draw people into Europe.”

FIEL, however, wants to change the way Europe works. Similar to other populist parties, FIEL hopes to draw support from Spaniards frustrated with politics as usual in Brussels.

“Europe is at a key moment in a fierce battle where policies based on lies are confronted with policies based on truth,” Martí told CT, “and where attempts are being made to bury the Christian principles of Europe.”

Martí is a police officer in the northern city of Logroño who achieved some media notoriety a few years ago as a result of his educational project, “Alexia Enséñanos,” which seeks to protect children from possible abuses, and the other leaders of FIEL have gathered educators, lawyers, political scientists, social workers, and pastors with deep Christian convictions, who all share common concerns. Some of the concerns are familiar evangelical issues, like protecting the sanctity of human life and religious freedom. But the leaders are also talking about “uncontrolled immigration, poverty, and social disintegration,” according to a FIEL party statement.

The issue that galvanized Martí and others to found the party is public schools. FIEL proposes granting parents “the ability to set limits to schools” and guaranteeing them the right to be “informed and consulted on the activities in which their children will participate.” They would also like to eliminate “the promotion of inclusive language in school material” and to change sex education so that it “does not destroy innocence.”

FIEL shares some agenda items with the rising right-wing party Vox, which supports “traditional values” and opposes what it calls Spain’s “progressive dictatorship.” Vox wants parents to be able to opt their children out of mandatory classes if the instruction goes against their values.

Martí said he agrees with some of what Vox wants and that there are evangelical brothers in that party “doing their bit to bring change to Spain,” but he also said FIEL is different. It’s distinctly religious and distinctly evangelical.

“Our first responsibility is to be faithful to God and to the principles of the Bible, not to partisan interests, not even our own,” Martí said.

As of mid-May, however, the party only had about half the signatures necessary to get on the ballot. And some of the nation’s evangelicals haven’t even heard of FIEL and its slogan, “United in values, guided by faith.”

Diego Huelva, a 41-year-old evangelical living on the outskirts of Seville, said he was surprised to hear that a Spanish evangelical party would even attempt to stand for elections. Huelva said evangelicals in Spain have generally not been interested in working in politics because of their experience of repression under the Francisco Franco dictatorship.

Recently, however, Huelva has seen an increase in more outspoken evangelicals from Latin America who are interested in joining the political fray.

“They come with different perspectives on politics, and feel called to participate more actively,” he said. “The more they become integrated here in Europe, the more they will try and shape European politics.”

That’s the future, though. In 2024, the prospects for an explicitly evangelical party in Spain seem very thin.

“Getting those signatures would be a huge success,” Huelva said. “Getting someone elected to parliament would be a miracle.”

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Church Life

Bringing the City of God to the Cities of Earth

Rabekah Henderson

Christian urban designers and developers explain how their faith affects their work—and how their work affects your faith.

Arto Marttinen / Unsplash

The design of our communities shapes how we interact with one another, love one another, and grow with one another. But who shapes those communities?

In a broad sense, we all do. Our choices of where and how to live, learn, work, and worship collectively influence the market, ministry decisions, and what feels “right” and “normal.” But some professions—city planners, urban designers, architects, and real estate developers—take a larger and more direct role in creating our cities and neighborhoods. And for many Christians in these industries, faith guides their construction of spaces for community flourishing.

Where we live can echo both the creation and redemption yet to come (Rom. 8:18–25). These places can foster deep, lasting community in a fragmented world, four Christians in these industries told me, and the local church can be a model of inviting, appealing design.

The pillars of good urban design—beauty, function, community building, accessibility—are more than fads or human preferences. They’re a foretaste of the redeemed earth, a signpost pointing us toward a better way of living. And it shouldn’t be lost on us, said Chris Elisara, chair of the Congress for New Urbanism Members Christian Caucus, that the world to come isn’t described as a garden or a quaint village but as a city (Rev. 22:3). “As we participate in kingdom building,” he told me, “it culminates with [that] city description in Revelation. And that’s where God dwells with his people again.”

Accordingly, more mundane “kingdom building” through city planning and urban design shouldn’t be thoughtless, out of touch, or chaotic. It must be carefully considered in line with how we’re called to live together in Scripture. “We all fit together in creation in a way that’s particularly designed,” Elisara continued. “And so when we do our planning, our architecture, we need to bring an understanding of how to do those in such a way that they are commensurate with God’s vision of humanity.”

In A Theology of Cities, the late Tim Keller described that vision as “marked by God-shalom (Jeru-shalom)—his peace,” one concrete outworking of which is accessibility and the neighborliness it facilitates. Resilient community flourishes when the built environment encourages incidental encountering, easy gathering, and casual strolling—what architect and urban designer Mel McGowan called facilitating “horizontal connection.”

“When I look at the instructions Christ gave us to love God and to love our neighbor, they’re both relational,” urban designer and architect Michael Watkins agreed. “And I’m certain we can design a built environment that allows us to be more relational.” In Watkins’s work, this means creating neighborhoods and developments that encourage mixed uses, multigenerational living, and walkability.

It’s easier to get to know your neighbor when you see them in their front yard or in line at the nearby shop each day. It’s easier to befriend a nearby family when you see them at the park a few times each week. It’s easier for a church community group to live life together when members are literally—not only spiritually and emotionally—close.

But vertical connection matters too, McGowan said. Sara Joy Proppe, a former real estate developer and founder of Proximity Project, similarly told me that she believes the built environment is a crucial part “of what shapes us as human beings—God created it as a setting for our stories.”

Part of Proppe’s work is helping churches use their property well. With her guidance, congregations have turned unused acreage into community gardens, dog parks, walking paths, and other small-scale public spaces for organic neighborhood life. “I really care about strengthening the church to be very active stewards and have their place” in a community, Proppe said. “The built environment is such a conduit for living out the gospel. And I think that’s a piece that churches don’t see very clearly.”

Church design itself can have an important—if often unnoticed—impact on the life of a city too. Historically, churches in denser, more urban neighborhoods were often built to be the anchor of a block or a neighborhood, sitting in a prominent spot like a street corner or in front of a small public square. Neighborhood life, both secular and sacred, would revolve around and within the church. Physically orienting local life around the church was a safe bet because, as Elisara wrote with geography professor Chris Ives, churches tend to be “stubbornly committed” to their communities and places.

McGowan has studied how churches and other houses of worship fit into the design of cities in centuries past, and he’s learned firsthand that modern, secular substitutes—big-box stores and massive movie theater complexes—simply do not have the same effect. “We were literally trying to recreate this feeling of human-scale, European urbanity, but it was always sacred space that was the center point” of those older communities, he explained. A Target or a theater might fill the space, but it won’t give local life the same long-term anchor and transcendent meaning.

Of course, post-war America embraced a different approach to home and church design—one that was car-centric and suburb-oriented—and, today, relatively few of us live in a neighborhood built around church life. Our churches tend to have large parking lots on even larger plots of land, and the massive spaces that are useful on Sunday morning often sit empty (or barely used) the other six days of the week.

Those of us who aren’t in an urban planning field can think about how to put such spaces to good use. All Christians are called to “cultivate and keep” our world (Gen. 2:15, NASB), and that includes our houses of worship and the spaces around them. Whether urban, suburban, or rural, how can we make our church properties more beautiful and useful? How can we make them places that reflect, in Elisara’s phrase, “what it means to be fully human as God made us to be”?

Greater density of people and uses is often a good place to begin. Denser spaces designed to be relational allow us to encounter both the joys of community and its more “sanctifying” elements: annoyances, selfishness, and sin. Churches with acreage or rooms that are empty more often than not can explore using those spaces for child care, education, affordable housing, or even an entire “urban village.”

And beyond church property lines, Elisara advises Christians to actively “advocate for policies in [their] cities, towns, and neighborhoods that are best for that city,” including safer streets, greater freedom in housing construction, and better non-car transportation options. Advocating for these things will look different for Christians who live in more suburban or rural environments, but our built environments shape our lives at any density—and even if we fail to notice, they shape our faith too.

Rabekah Henderson is a writer covering faith, architecture, and the built world around us. She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been featured in Mere Orthodoxy, Common Good, and Dwell.

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Theology

Digital Lectors for a Postliterate Age

Brad East

Postliterate people still need God’s Word, and online Bible ventures have found eager listeners.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty / Lightstock

Suppose you agree that ours is an increasingly postliterate age. The average person, including the average Christian, is reading less, and Christians of all ages, especially the young, lack the basics of biblical literacy. Is that all there is to say? Is hunger for Scripture simply dying out?

By no means. Of all tech pessimists I may be chief, yet few things excite me more than what’s happening online with the Bible. What we see is not declining interest in Scripture but an explosion of it. The question is not, therefore, whether people still need and actively seek nourishment from God’s Word but how best to get it to them.

Let me share a snapshot of some promising attempts to give an answer—to meet the world’s deep hunger with the pleasures, depths, and inexhaustible beauties of the Word of God. Call them “digital lectors.” In the preliterate era, most believers never read the Bible for themselves but heard it read aloud in the gathered assembly of worship. Those who read the Word were called lectors, which is Latin for “readers” and a term still used in liturgical traditions.

Online, new lectors are meeting the moment, presenting the Bible in fresh and creative ways. Sometimes, in a lovely closing of the ancient circle, they aren’t explaining or expounding the text, just reading it aloud. Either way, people are listening.

Let me begin with three overarching themes before turning to specific examples. The first and happiest thing to say about these online Bible ventures is that they are ecumenical. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox are all rising to the occasion, using a mix of audio, video, and animation. So far as I can tell, there is little but mutual support and blessing between producers as well as listeners, and occasionally they feature crossovers and shared platforms.

It would be a marvelous irony of providence if the culprit for so much division and polarization today—namely, the internet and our digital devices—became an instrument of Christian unity. Lord, hear our prayer!

Second, I see an enormous range of audience scale and composition. Some lectors speak to millions, others to dozens. Often, audience size is determined by a given project’s targeting: Is it for women or men, Black or white, seekers or old-timers, deconstructed or reconstructed, liturgical or charismatic, or all of the above? Does it presume massive background knowledge or nothing but curiosity? Does it expect hours of leisure time for lengthy videos or nothing beyond 15 minutes a day for a quick listen in the car?

Third, alongside broad ecumenical convergence is a clear gender divergence. Outside of the most generic and massively popular programs, there are clearly demarcated male and female spaces for online Bible engagement. The latter consist primarily of authors and speakers who leverage their social media followings into Bible studies, online collectives, and theological reflection—by women, for women. Think of Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer, Jen Wilkin, Jen Pollock Michel, Haley Stewart, and Phylicia Masonheimer, as well as organizations like She Reads Truth and Well-Watered Women.

The lectors I’ll review below are either reading for a broad audience or, in one case, geared toward men. Of the lectors speaking to women, I’ll only say: Keep it up. So long as the functional effect isn’t a Jefferson’s Bible for the sexes—separate, expurgated editions for male and female—this gender divergence isn’t a problem. It’s an asset. What we see online is what we see in church: believers wrestling with Scripture as men and women.

That said, the first resource I’ll name is widely popular, including across the gender divide. BibleProject is the brainchild of Tim Mackie and Jon Collins, who made their first video together a decade ago. The result, in their words, is “a nonprofit, crowdfunded organization that makes free resources like videos, podcasts, articles, and classes to help people experience the Bible in a way that is approachable and transformative. We do this by showcasing the literary art of the Scriptures and tracing key biblical themes from Genesis to Revelation.”

“Videos,” “approachable,” and “literary art” are the key words there. Their YouTube channel has more than 400 videos and more than 4 million followers. Dozens of videos have between 1 and 4 million views. The videos are typically 4–7 minutes long and consist of a voiceover unpacking the major through-lines and connections both within a biblical book and between it and the rest of Scripture. The commentary avoids jargon and “Christian-ese” while distilling historical and exegetical insights for an audience that may never have read the text in question.

For my money, no one does it better. Over the years, their videos have been a mainstay in my college classroom, and they always land with students. BibleProject can unlock even the most esoteric or foreign text—Leviticus, say, or Ezekiel. It seeks the spirit of the sacred page through careful and loving attention to the letter. God is revealed in the words of the Word.

In the podcast world, The Bible in a Year is the heavyweight. Launched by Ascension Presents in 2021, it publishes one episode daily and has repeatedly ranked as the most downloaded podcast in the nation.

The show is hosted by Father Mike, a Catholic priest at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Father Mike is young, telegenic, and extremely personable. On his YouTube channel, he speaks straight to the camera and explains Catholic teaching and practice in a simple, direct, and unapologetic style. On the podcast, he takes 15–25 minutes to read the biblical text aloud before offering modest context and commentary. Episodes are surely planned but feel unscripted, like a spontaneous homily delivered by a wise pastor who loves the Bible and knows it from the inside out. It’s not surprising that believers of all kinds have flocked to this resource, numberless Protestants among them.

A very different resource comes from Jonathan Pageau, a French-Canadian artist, icon carver, and convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. Over the last seven years, Pageau has developed something of a cult following online. In addition to his art, writing, and public speaking, he founded Orthodox Arts Journal; began a podcast called The Symbolic World; started a YouTube channel and a publishing press by the same name; and now has turned the entire enterprise into a website and online community that, early in April, held a World Summit. Well-known Pageau fans include Bishop Robert Barron, Rod Dreher, and Jordan Peterson.

By his own description, Pageau explores “the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world.” He argues that creation—in itself and in our experience of it—is intrinsically symbolic, and that the symbols we find across all times and cultures (such as contrasts of light and dark, above and below, within and without, male and female) are written into the world by God himself. They are God’s language, his special vernacular, and modern humanity is suffering from a mass symbolic amnesia. We are no longer conversant with God as we once were.

The result, Pageau contends, is a civilizational crisis. Even Christians are now post-symbolic people: We struggle to engage symbol-laden Scriptures and to interpret the world via biblical symbolism.

Pageau’s followers—many of them young men who feel alienated or adrift—flock to him for symbolic exposition of Scripture and nature alike. For the first time, maybe even after a lifetime in church, they find that the Bible is not boring but beautiful, a peerless cultural artifact, a book with bottomless depths. Like Jesus’s kingdom, the Bible is not of this world. Its voice, though never less than human, is somehow more than human. It is a means of grace.

For all their theological and stylistic differences, BibleProject and The Bible in a Year are Pageau’s single-minded comrades in this sense: Their task as lectors for a new age is to make the Bible interesting again. Or to put it the other way—they refuse to let the Bible be boring.

How many churches, pastors, and well-meaning teachers have assumed their job was to explain the Bible away, to apologize for it, to shave off the hard edges, to gloss over the wacky, the wild, the spooky? But these elements are exactly what draw so many people to the Bible in the first place. We must not try to tame Scripture any more than we try to tame God. Even in a postliterate age, Scripture untamed will continue to fascinate and transform us.

There are more examples I could give—many more. Alastair Roberts, of the Theopolis Institute and the Davenant Institute, comes to mind. Roberts is a co-host of Mere Fidelity and, on his own, has recorded a running podcast seriescommenting on every chapter of the Bible (as well as a crossover conversation with Pageau). Other ventures worth mentioning include Holy Ghost Stories, Truth Unites, Pints with Aquinas, Practicing the Way, and Word on Fire. But my aim here is not to be exhaustive; far from it. The point is that something is happening.

Shrewd lovers of God’s Word are using the internet to introduce or reintroduce an entire generation of drifting believers to the Bible. This generation may never become readers in the traditional mode: book in hand, turning pages. But they are encountering Scripture. Digital lectors are making sure of it.

Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry.

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Books

Review

Marilynne Robinson Reads Genesis Without Anxiety

Matthew Mullins

Unperturbed by debates over the book’s relationship to modern thought, she helps us appreciate its marriage of literary structure and theological claims.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Wikimedia Commons

In her latest book, Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson insists that modern readers have largely misunderstood the literary and theological significance of the Bible.

Reading Genesis

Marilynne Robinson (Author)

352 pages

$21.09

Among the most salient causes of this misunderstanding, she argues, is our tendency to read ancient texts through modern categories—history, myth, fiction, nonfiction—that do not map neatly onto ancient literature. The result is a never-ending and mostly unnecessary debate between those who approach Genesis as a catalog of events and those who read it as mythic pastiche, pieced together from various ancient sources.

We get a feel for Robinson’s impatience with this debate in her characterization of the factions warring over Noah’s flood: “One side in the controversy is rebuilding the ark to demonstrate its seaworthiness, or tramping up Ararat looking for its wreckage. The other sees the story as cribbed and fraudulent.” Both sides, Robinson concludes, are led astray by the same impulse to judge the veracity of Genesis on the basis of how closely it conforms to historical events.

In fact, as she argues at the outset, “the Bible is a work of theology, not simply a primary text upon which theology is based.” The implication for modern readers of Genesis is that when we focus primarily on the historicity of the Flood account, for example, we tend to ignore the arrangement of Genesis as a work of literature designed to grapple with theological questions.

Arranged with artistry

This is not to say that Robinson doubts whether all the events represented in Genesis took place or that she fails to consider its compositional history. The goal of Genesis, in her estimation, is not to offer a play-by-play of primeval events but to give a theological account of who God is, who we are, and how we should live together in light of that theology. In Robinson’s estimation, then, the book’s literary structure is of utmost importance to its interpretation.

By literary, I do not mean that she treats the Bible as somehow comparable to a novel or any other contemporary form of literature. I mean that she is interested in the composition and final form of the biblical text, in the way it has been arranged with artistry to communicate theological truths about God, humans, and the world.

This literary approach makes sense given Robinson’s status as a modern master of the novel and the essay. Her novels have earned numerous honors, including a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her erudite essays on subjects ranging from theology and science to politics and history have made her a stalwart contributor to some of the nation’s most storied periodicals, religious and otherwise. Literary structure is her craft, and she is deeply attuned to how the arrangement of Genesis asks us to read it in certain ways to the exclusion of others.

While Robinson’s emphasis on literary craft might seem to place her in the camp of those who regard Genesis as merely human in its authorship, she harbors no compunction about the fact that Genesis is, at least in part, a more-than-human text.

The accounts we find in the Bible “are really far too tough-minded to be the products of ordinary this-worldly calculation,” she points out. “I am content to believe,” she notes, “that certain early Hebrews, under the influence of Moses and still pondering the faithfulness of God that they saw in the liberation from bondage, were inspired with a true insight into His nature.”

For Robinson, the fact that the Scriptures are shaped by both divine and human hands presents no contradiction. As she observes, “the Bible itself indicates no anxiety about association with human minds, words, lives, and passions.” This lack of anxiety—palpable in her prose—is among the most important dispositions of Robinson’s reading that Christians might seek to emulate. She is not apologetic about the things that many modern readers find threatening to the Bible’s relevance, reliability, and authority.

Perhaps the most potent of these perceived threats is scholarly inquiry into the provenance and composition of Genesis.

Whether engaging the Documentary Hypothesis (the theory that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible are stitched together from disparate traditions) or comparisons between Genesis and other ancient Near Eastern texts, Robinson maintains that Genesis is a unique and ingenious literary creation composed by humans, inspired by God, and designed to convey the truth about God and his world. Far from being fearful of comparisons with other ancient texts, Robinson contends that Genesis is most obviously unique at these points of contact.

Robinson argues that resonances between Genesis and ancient Near Eastern stories such as the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh or Enuma Elish constitute the best proofs of the Bible’s—and its God’s—exceptional nature. This claim is central to her reading and repeated throughout the book: “The Genesis stories, rather than adopting or appropriating them, instead engage the literatures to which they are often compared, accepting an image or a term but transforming its meaning within a shared language of thought.”

Comparing Genesis with other ancient creation accounts, she maintains that “the biblical way of telling the story of Creation differs from ambient narratives precisely at the points of their likeness.” Contrasting Noah’s flood with Gilgamesh’s, she insists that “these two stories differ crucially at their points of similarity.”

Again and again, Robinson demonstrates how theological insights into God’s character are clearest at these points of comparison. The Babylonian notion that humans exist to make offerings to Marduk, for instance, makes the Hebrew God so radically unique. As Robinson states, God is distinct “in His having not a use” for human beings, “but instead a mysterious, benign intention for them.”

Unlike the Babylonian gods, who are revealed to be numerous, capricious, and needy, Genesis gives us a God who is one, purposeful, and infinitely gracious. This graciousness, in Robinson’s reading, turns out to be central to the theology of Genesis. The book’s literary structure brings us back to it repeatedly, from God’s forgiveness of Cain to the second chance extended to humans after the Flood to the many redemptions of Abraham and his descendants.

Along the way, God’s image-bearers pick up on this divine predilection for compassion and learn to forgive one another. Esau absolves his brother Jacob. Joseph pardons his brothers. Genesis shows that God’s graciousness to us and our need to be gracious to one another cannot be overstated. It establishes mercy as foundational to Israel’s way of life as the people come up out of Egypt and build their own society.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, it turns out, is not like any of the other ancient gods at all—which means that those who would follow him will be set apart from the rest of the world as well.

Robinson’s reading of the ancestral history that begins with Abraham in Genesis 12 and ends with the death of Joseph in Genesis 50 traces the purposes of this God in the lives of Abraham’s descendants and, notably, in the lives of those not descended from the first patriarch. The book’s theological emphasis on mercy and forgiveness thus extends to all people. God calls to himself a chosen people, but he also rescues Hagar and Ishmael and works through Melchizedek, Abimelech, and others who come from outside the line of Abraham.

God is repeatedly shown to be the God of all people, and Robinson’s focus on the literary arrangement of Genesis reveals that God has had a plan for all people from the beginning.

Purposeful answers

The great strength of Robinson’s literary approach to the Bible is that it focuses our attention on how a book like Genesis invites us into lifelong reflection on the nature of God and his plans for us. It may seem, occasionally, that Robinson sidesteps concerns raised by biblical scholars, but her approach fits the design of the text, which was careful and purposeful in answering the questions of ancient readers.

Modern Christians will benefit from spending a few hours with a book that does not treat the Bible as a “primitive attempt to explain things that reason and science would in the course of time make a true and sufficient account of.” And we might especially learn something from Robinson’s characterization of Genesis as an attempt to give a true account of God’s people in light of their convictions about who God is.

Unlike many histories that seek to romanticize and vilify their subjects, Genesis offers unsparing portrayals of some of its most celebrated heroes and generous portrayals of some of its most dastardly villains. It suggests that we might be better prepared to know God if we take seriously the psalmist’s plea for God to search our own hearts and to see ourselves as he sees us. Genesis, in this respect, is truly incomparable.

Matthew Mullins is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures and Postmodernism in Pieces: Materializing the Social in U.S. Fiction.

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News

Arizona Pro-Life Groups Pray Against Abortion Ballot Measure

Harvest Prude

A dozen states could vote on the issue come November.

Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images

Rosie Villegas-Smith was spending a Saturday handing out flyers with volunteers from Voces Unidas, a pro-life nonprofit, when she noticed a group gathering signatures.

The woman who approached her never mentioned the word abortion, only referring to women’s rights, but she quickly realized what they were campaigning for: a ballot measure on expanding abortion access in Arizona in the November elections.

The southwestern state is one of up to a dozen across the country that will vote on abortion later this year, part of the continued reshaping of the legal landscape following the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

Arizona’s measure would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, overriding its current 15-week ban and allowing the procedure at any point in a pregnancy if a health care provider determines it is necessary to protect either the life or the physical and mental health of the mother.

The state has been in a back-and-forth over abortion policies for weeks, with pro-life groups ramping up efforts to reach out to women who may be considering abortions and to voters who may consider supporting expanding abortion access.

Last month, Arizona’s top court ruled that an 1864 law prohibiting abortion could go into effect as a result of the reversal of Roe v. Wade. The controversial ruling came under fire nationally; even former president Donald Trump and other high-profile Republicans suggested it went too far. Vice President Kamala Harris slammed the law as putting women in a “state of chaos and cruelty caused by Donald Trump.”

A legislative repeal narrowly passed the state Senate 16–14 after two Republicans crossed the aisle to side with Democrats. One of the GOP lawmakers who voted for the repeal, Sen. Shawnna Bolick, said that repealing the strict 1864 law, and leaving a more moderate abortion bill in place, may dampen efforts by abortion rights groups to put more expansive abortion measures on the ballot. “I am here to protect more babies,” she said.

Gov. Katie Hobbs signed the repeal last week, which is slated to take effect 90 days after the legislative session ends this summer. There are legal efforts underway by the abortion rights groups asking the state supreme court to block the 1864 law from going into effect in the interim.

A 2022 state law allows abortion until 15 weeks of pregnancy in Arizona, with an exception beyond that point if necessary to save the mother’s life. The 1864 law prohibited abortion at any stage in a pregnancy, with an exception for the life of the mother.

“It’s imperative for pro-life citizens in Arizona to educate themselves and their neighbors about this extreme constitutional amendment,” March for Life president Jeanne Mancini told CT. The measure, she said, would “open the floodgates to painful abortion up until birth, ending precious, innocent life and stripping women of the health and safety protections they need and deserve.”

Arizona for Abortion Access, which is campaigning in support of the new measure to solidify abortion protections in the state constitution, says it has met the signature threshold to get the ballot. It’s now up to the secretary of state to verify the signatures.

“They’re not even happy with [15 weeks],” Villegas-Smith said. Pro-life groups like hers are addressing the implications of the proposed amendment and appealing to voters to protect life.

Villegas-Smith, who is originally from Mexico, became interested in pro-life advocacy as a result of watching friends suffer in the physical and emotional aftermath of their abortions. Her group also seeks to reach out to minorities.

The largest group of women receiving abortions in the state are Hispanic—in 2021, 43.8 percent according to the Arizona Department of Health Services—and Voces Unidas seeks to reach minority women with information as well as through support groups, baby showers, and in some cases, safe housing.

“We know that it’s very important to give a message for hope, that the baby is a gift from God, and so we organize baby showers for them and give them a basket and a cake and a full celebration,” Villegas-Smith said, “especially for women who don’t have family support.”

The nonprofit is not explicitly religious, but Villegas-Smith said they often work with religious groups, and that many of the volunteers and employees identify as Christian or Catholic. Voces Unidas makes a practice of “praying for life,” praying outside of abortion centers and at the capital before the vote over repealing the 1864 law.

Abortion policies may be on the ballot in nearly a dozen states come November. In addition to Arizona, there are ballot measures in Florida and Maryland. Other states, such as Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, and South Dakota, are either in the signature-gathering process or have submitted signatures and are waiting for approval. New York’s ballot measure is facing blowback in the courts, making the fate of the effort uncertain.

Since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision reversing Roe, voters in a handful of states, including California, Michigan, Ohio, and Vermont, chose to protect and in some cases expand abortion access via ballot measures. Other states, like Kentucky and Kansas, voted down measures that would have restricted abortion.

“It’s kind of a wake-up call to us, to I think Arizonans and Americans, that a 15-week abortion law is not enough,” said Kelsey Pritchard, state public affairs director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The group has a field team in Arizona canvassing ahead of the election.

“They’re on the ground not only making the pro-lifers aware of what’s at stake here, but people kind of in the middle as well. Because when you’re talking about health and safety, it’s not just a Republican pro-life thing. That’s something even pro-choice people care about,” Pritchard said. “That’s really something for all Arizonians to care about.”

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Arranged with artistry

Purposeful answers

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