‘Going for the Jugular’ Does Not Wash Away Sin

Why the life and death of disgraced culture warrior Paul Pressler should serve as a warning to all of us.

The Fall of the Rebel Angels by Luca Giordano.

Wikimedia Commons / Edits by CT

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

A man named Paul Pressler warned us that a wrong view of authority would lead to debauchery and downgrade. He was right. What he didn’t tell us was that his vision for American Christianity would be one of the ways we would get there.

News did not break about the death of the retired Houston judge, the co-architect of the “Baptist Reformation” that we called “the conservative resurgence,” until days after his demise, probably due to the fact that he died in disgrace.

My colleague Daniel Silliman explains excellently the paradox of Pressler’s public and private life. According to multiple serious and credible allegations by named people, with corroboration from multiple others and over a very long period of time, Pressler was a sexual molester of young men and boys. As reporter Rob Downen of The Texas Tribune summarizes in his thread, the nature of the corroborating evidence against the late judge is the size of a mountain.

It’s fair to say that most people—certainly most people in Southern Baptist pews—did not know about these reports of such a villainous nature for a long time. But it is also fair to say that almost everyone, at least those even minimally close up, could see other aspects—a cruelty, a viciousness, a vindictiveness—that displayed the means of Machiavelli, not the ways of the Messiah. His defining virtue—for all of us who retold the “Won Cause” mythology of the reformers who “saved the convention from liberalism”—was not Christlikeness but the fact that he was willing to fight.

And fight he did. At a meeting of pastors, he famously used the metaphor that conservatives would have to “go for the jugular” in defeating the moderate Baptist leaders of the time. Commentator Bill Moyers and I would have sharply divergent views on almost every major theological issue, but he accurately described Pressler, in the 1980s, as one who “rules the Southern Baptist Convention like a swaggering Caesar, breaking good men when it pleases him.” Good men, and women, indeed were broken—and some are breaking still.

I write this as a biblical inerrantist—more convinced than ever that the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God and that it contains, as an oft-repeated line of our confession of faith puts it, “truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.” There were genuine issues of what any honest observer would call theological liberalism in some places, especially in some sectors of the Southern Baptist academy. But, as I came to realize much later than I should have, some of those deemed to be “liberals” were not so at all. Riffing on a misattributed quote from Andy Warhol, I’d realize that among Baptists, everyone gets a turn at being called a liberal for at least 15 minutes.

And many others, I’ve come to see, liberalized precisely because they saw the mafia-like tactics of those such as Pressler and concluded that, since this “conservatism” was so obviously not of the spirit of Christ, whatever was its mirror image must be right. I don’t agree, as a Christian, that this is the correct response—but, as a human being, I can understand it.

Sometimes, when teaching theology at a Southern Baptist seminary, I would quote Pressler warning about what he called the “Dalmatian theory of inspiration.”

“Once you say that the Bible could contain error, you make yourself the judge of what portions of the Bible are true and which portions are error,” Pressler said in an interview at the height of the Southern Baptist controversy over biblical inerrancy. “It is a presumptuous thing for an individual to edit God. Somebody has called it the spot theory of inspiration. The Bible was inspired in spots, and we are inspired to spot the spots.”

Even before the court actions and subsequent revelations, though, those of us in the conservative wing of Baptist life should have recognized the low view of biblical authority even in the actions Pressler did in full public view. Instead, we were told, and believed, that the stakes were too high—the orthodoxy of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination—to worry that the warlords leading the charge were not like Jesus. Many of us learned to tolerate the idea that one can do evil that good may result—a contradiction of the inerrant Word of God (Rom. 3:8).

The implicit idea is that, if the stakes are high enough, the usual norms of Christian morality—on truth-telling and kindness, gentleness, love, joy, self-control, etc.—can be ignored, at least long enough to fix the problem and return to normal.

This is not an unusual temptation: Let’s violate human rights in order to save human rights. Let’s terminate the Constitution to save the Constitution. Let’s elect sexual abusers to protect the family. Let’s disobey the Bible to save the Bible. Pressler warned (about other people in other situations) that what is tolerated is ultimately celebrated. That’s not always true, of course, but it certainly was in the case of conviction defined as quarrelsomeness.

Before one knows it, one ends up with a partisan definition of truth, all the more ironic for defenders of biblical inerrancy and—with a situational definition of ethics—for warriors against moral relativism. When this happens, the criterion by which the confession of faith is interpreted is through whatever controversy enlivens the crowd. Biblical passages that seem to be violated by one’s “enemies” are then emphasized, while those applying to one’s own “side” are minimized. To do this well, one needs some authoritative, if not authoritarian, leaders to spot the spots that are to be underlined and to skip over those to be ignored.

What difference does it make if one’s liberalism is characterized by ignoring Paul but quoting the Sermon on the Mount, or by ignoring the Sermon on the Mount but quoting Paul? How is one a liberal who explains away the Exodus but takes literally the Prophets, while that’s not true for the one who explains away the Prophets but takes literally the Exodus?

If the Bible is breathed out by God, then all of it is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16, ESV throughout). A high view of biblical authority does not, by itself, guarantee orthodoxy.

As one of my (very conservative) professors in seminary once told me, “Biblical inerrancy, by itself, is just an agreed-upon table of contents.” The work of interpretation must be done, and that requires the hard work of determining what matters are of “first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3) and what matters can be debated without ending cooperation. True enough.

But one can’t even debate those issues of interpretation in good faith if all sides are operating with their own secret canons-within-the-canon, determined by what to affirm or deny in order to stay in the tribe. That’s what the Bible calls being “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14). Whether those winds blow to the left or to the right or to the center, they leave us adrift.

Paul Pressler said he believed in biblical authority. He said that it mattered. It did, and it does. But the last 40 years should teach us that inerrancy is not enough. It does not matter how loudly one sings the words, “the Bible tells me so,” if one’s life and character contradict the words, “Jesus loves me, this I know.” Conviction without character destroys lives, and, in the long-term, reveals itself to have been something other than conviction all along. Sometimes, a battle for the Bible reveals itself to be a battle against the Bible.

It’s easy to see this in the tragedy of one man’s life, one denomination’s history. But the truth is that every one of us are vulnerable to the search for someone to spot the spots we are free to disobey. That’s a hill on which to die. It’s not the same thing, you know: going for the jugular and being washed in the blood.

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

Books

Review

Three Evangelical ‘Founding Fathers’ and Their Complicated Relationships to Slavery

Robert W. Caldwell III

A new book steers between full condemnation and “men of their time” dodges.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

How should white evangelicals think about slavery and past evangelical heroes who affirmed its practice? A new book by historian Sean McGever, Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield, helps us process these matters with historical accuracy and Christlike humility.

Ownership: The Evangelical Legacy of Slavery in Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield

Sean McGever (Author), Vincent E. Bacote (Foreword)

240 pages

$17.29

For many white American evangelicals, the issue of slavery is not much of an “issue” at all. After all, we live in a day where every country in the world outlaws the practice (at least on paper). We are rightly repulsed by practices reminiscent of slave ownership, like human trafficking and sweat shops. And we celebrate past evangelical leaders, like William Wilberforce, who tirelessly campaigned against the institution. Our denominations no longer split over slave ownership as they did prior to the American Civil War. Slavery, we thankfully conclude, lies in the rearview mirror of history.

Without denying the truth in these claims, there are two problems with this assessment. First, slavery, broadly construed, is still a live issue for a significant number of Americans, many of whom are believers in Christ. Just like Jews and Muslims carry with them a historical sense—a “communal memory,” if you will—of atrocities done to their ancestors by Christians (like pogroms and the Crusades), many Black Americans carry a remembrance of their ancestors’ subjection to slavery, segregation, and other forms of injustice. Consequently, they experience slavery and its aftereffects as painfully present realities.

Second, many of our white evangelical heroes have a complex relationship with slavery, a fact that can complicate our contemporary witness. What are white evangelicals saying when we honor such historical figures as towering exemplars of Christlikeness while treating their slave ownership (if we mention it at all!) as a minor character blemish, something “everybody was doing” at the time?

In Ownership, McGever helps readers confront these issues by examining the ministries of Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), John Wesley (1703–1791), and George Whitefield (1714–1770), three 18th-century figures who are arguably the founding fathers of modern evangelicalism. Each affirmed the institution of slavery at some point in their lives, yet only one (Wesley) came to change his mind on the subject.

Working within the system

Ownership is divided into four sections. The first takes up the influences, regarding slavery and its place in the world, that Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield inherited. The second examines how each was involved with the institution. The third considers how Wesley came to oppose slavery and his actions against it. And the fourth reckons with the legacies of each leader in light of their relationships to slavery.

The book gives introductory biographies of each man before launching into two informative chapters that provide historical context: one on the history of slavery, and one surveying English and Puritan views on the subject. Here, McGever describes the attitude that prevailed in much of Christianity until the 1700s. As he puts it, “Slavery existed in the world as a result of sin and evil, and … the best course of action was to work within that system.”

Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield naturally adopted this outlook. In their ministerial training, as they studied the consensus found in English and Puritan writers on slavery, they likely absorbed the following lessons: White Christians must avoid the improper acquisition of slaves (“man-stealing” is forbidden, but enslaving prisoners of war or the offspring of slaves is allowable); the slave relationship must be guided by Christian virtue (slaves are to be obedient, masters temperate); and slaves should be evangelized, but conversion does not imply emancipation.

This framework had centuries of the Western Christian tradition preceding it. It was thus quite natural, as each man engaged the surrounding socioeconomic world, for them to participate in slavery to varying degrees.

Edwards ministered in colonial Massachusetts and is known as America’s foremost evangelical theologian. Several of his disciples (including one of his sons, Jonathan Jr.) were known for their strong stances against slavery, which they derived from Edwards’s ethical writings. Yet Edwards himself failed to fully appreciate the antislavery implications nascent in his own works.

Consider that he and his wife, Sarah, enslaved numerous Black Africans, including Venus, a 14-year-old girl they purchased in 1731, and Titus, a 3-year-old boy purchased in 1756. While manumission was an option for handling one’s estate in those days—Sarah’s mother, for instance, arranged to free her slaves upon her death in 1740—the Edwardses did not choose this for young Titus, who was passed on to their eldest son Timothy after their deaths in 1758.

In essence, then, Edwards’s relationship with slavery followed the cultural norms of the day. While his writings led many to oppose slavery in the decades after his death, his example did not live up to his ideals.

Whitefield’s example is even more unsettling. Early in his North American ministry, the famous evangelist stopped short of fully supporting legalized slavery in Georgia, where it had been outlawed since the colony’s founding in 1733.

Whitefield oversaw an orphanage in Savannah named Bethesda (“house of mercy”). Bethesda was one of the central ministries of his life, but the harsh economic realities of sustaining it led him to reconsider slavery, viewing it as an option for addressing financial woes at the orphanage. In time, he came to believe that Black slaves were better suited to work amid hot Georgia summers than white indentured servants, who were far more expensive to employ.

Following a kind of anti-Wilberforce trajectory, Whitefield soon became a prominent proslavery lobbyist both in Georgia and England, campaigning for a decade until the colony legalized slavery in 1751. By his death in 1770, he owned 49 slaves, all associated with his orphanage. Though Whitefield was an outstanding evangelist, McGever reveals that he was a short-sighted businessman whose mishandling compelled him to rely upon slave labor so that his “beloved Bethesda” could survive.

Of the three men, John Wesley’s relationship to slavery was the most distinct, and McGever devotes significant attention to his long and slow awakening. Wesley had no exposure to slavery until he visited the Southern colonies in the mid-1730s. There, he and his brother Charles learned of the harsh brutalities committed by some slave owners.

Wesley’s response, however, was not to call for social change but to double down on commitments to evangelize enslaved people. For almost 40 years, as he led the Methodist movement back in England, he wrote nothing on the subject. As McGever suggests, this silence reveals a major blind spot in his social conscience.

Yet Wesley had a gift that neither Edwards nor Whitefield enjoyed: long life. (The latter pair both died in their mid-50s.) When Wesley was almost 70, he began seriously reading antislavery works, and over the next two decades his views changed. He first opposed all forms of slave acquisition and called for slave traders to immediately quit their jobs. In his mid-80s, he came to champion full emancipation.

Though we should be grateful that one of our evangelical founding fathers made the journey to antislavery views, it is stunning to note that it took him 50 years to complete the process, a testimony to the fact that sinful cultural norms are extremely difficult to eradicate from society.

Their blind spots, and ours

McGever excels at narrating the history of Edwards, Whitefield, and Wesley with an irenic tone. While he is clear that their proslavery actions are contemptable, he issues no fiery condemnations. Instead, we come to the humble realization that they were deeply flawed Christians like the rest of us. They may have ascended to the heights of theological acuity, sanctified holiness, and evangelical proclamation, but they did so as individuals who also participated in a system fraught with moral conundrums and evil. They are, in a sense, failed heroes, and we should acknowledge this complexity while telling their stories.

Ultimately, Ownership gives readers a profound historical sense, a recognition that, even among the best of us, social and cultural conventions shape believers in ways that future generations might find troubling. When history is written this way, we naturally ask ourselves, “What are my ethical blind spots, and those of my church and tribe?”

In the last chapter, McGever leads readers in an exercise of self-reflection patterned after the book’s fourfold framework: Have we inherited cultural influences that are biblically and ethically problematic? How are we letting these influences shape our thoughts and behaviors? What actions can we take to love others in more Christlike ways? What kind of legacy do we seek to leave for posterity?

While applying history in this manner is not without its pitfalls, McGever recognizes that humble self-examination, inspired by failed heroes, is a beneficial exercise for individual Christians and for the church at large. Sinful hearts are infinitely resourceful, and sinful patterns are remarkably resistant to change. The lessons of McGever’s book should aid the church as it pursues the Reformation emphasis of semper reformanda, “always reforming” according to the Word of God.

Robert W. Caldwell III is professor of church history at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Theologies of the American Revivalists: From Whitefield to Finney.

- More from John Wesley

Theology

What If the Christian Sexual Ethic Becomes a Feature, Not a Bug?

Daniel Darling

Evangelicals tend to assume our sexual ethic is deeply unpopular. But the wind may be shifting as thought leaders increasingly declare Christianity a cultural asset.

Jakob Owens / Unsplash

Christianity’s 2,000-year-old sexual ethic is not normal in the contemporary West and hasn’t been for some time.

The notion that sex should be confined to the bounds of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is not simply out of step with a culture reshaped by the sexual revolution and the LGBTQ movement. Many now consider our ethic to be something far worse than outmoded. It’s hateful, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center; “dangerous,” per the Human Rights Campaign; and a source of “great harm,” says prominent ethicist David Gushee.

Evangelical responses to these new norms have varied. Some have doubled down on traditional beliefs as a matter of basic orthodoxy. Some have remained quietly traditional while avoiding public confrontation. And some have joined exvangelicals and mainline Christians to propose a theological revisionism that affirms LGBTQ relationships and sex outside of marriage.

Despite their differences, all three postures understandably have a foundational assumption in common: that our traditional sexual ethic is deeply unpopular. That, at best, it’s a matter of difficult but necessary faithfulness, an obstacle to overcome in evangelism and discipleship—or, worse, a major cause of dechurching, deconversion, and rejection of the gospel.

But is it possible that Scripture’s view of marriage and sexuality is seen by a small but growing crowd outside the church as a feature, not a bug?

It might be too much to say the West is like G. K. Chesterton’s sailor who, having set off for adventure, found himself enchanted by the light of his own home shore. But I don’t think it’s too soon to say that the last decade of upheaval and alienation in our culture of sex and romance have made Christianity’s always-strange sexual ethic freshly attractive.

We’ve already seen this pattern with other elements of Christianity. Most famously, women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali shocked the world late last year when she announced her conversion from atheism to Christianity (after previously deconverting from Islam). She embraced Christianity, she said, because she found the “desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition” to be the “only credible” option to unite the West in opposition to “great-power authoritarianism,” “the rise of global Islamism,” and “the viral spread of woke ideology.”

Christianity, Hirsi Ali discovered, is the source of the rights and values she wants to defend, and where many progressives see our faith as repressive, she sees it as a great cultural asset. In this, she is not alone. The New Atheist thinker Richard Dawkins expressed his enthusiasm for “cultural Christianity” this past spring. And author Paul Kingsnorth, who moved from atheism to Buddhism to Christianity, similarly described his philosophical journey as one of coming to value some of the very elements of Christianity that modern Westerners are most likely to reject.

“I grew up believing what all modern people are taught: that freedom meant lack of constraint,” Kingsnorth wrote. But Christianity “taught me that this freedom was no freedom at all, but enslavement to the passions: a neat description of the first thirty years of my life. True freedom, it turns out, is to give up your will and follow God’s.”

British journalist Louise Perry has not likewise announced her conversion, but she seems to be impressed, not repulsed, by Christianity’s sexual ethic. Her provocative 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, questions the merits of a sexual order based only on consent and begs for a better ethic, “one that recognises other human beings as real people, invested with real value and dignity. It’s time for a sexual counter-revolution.”

Though she hasn’t embraced Christianity, Perry looks longingly at the very ethical teachings that many evangelicals see as burdens or liabilities. Here she is, writing in First Things last year:

Whereas the Romans regarded male chastity as profoundly unhealthy, Christians prized it and insisted on it. Early converts were disproportionately female because the Christian valorization of weakness offered obvious benefits to the weaker sex, who could—for the first time—demand sexual continence of men. Feminism is not opposed to Christianity: It is its descendant. …

What if … we understand the Christian era as a clearing in a forest? The forest is paganism: dark, wild, vigorous, and menacing, but also magical in its way. For two thousand years, Christians pushed the forest back, with burning and hacking, but also with pruning and cultivating, creating a garden in the clearing with a view upward to heaven.

In recent decades, Perry warns, the pagan forest is creeping back, crowding out that view.

This is only a collection of anecdotes, of course. Though recent polls show a slight decline in support for same-sex marriage and a similarly small reversal on sex and gender identity, the traditional Christian ethic is clearly still a minority position. Yet this trend among thought leaders of fresh interest in Christianity as a positive cultural force is noteworthy—and perhaps may trickle down to the general public.

What’s more, there may be a lesson here for evangelicals: Rather than being defensive about the countercultural aspects of following Jesus, maybe we can see anew that the very strangeness of Christian ethics can be inviting to those stuck in the thicket of cultural confusion.

This is the approach that theologian N. T. Wright took when asked in 2019 if he is embarrassed by the Christian take on sex and gender. “In the early Church, one of the great attractions of Christianity was actually a sexual ethic. It is a world where more or less anything goes, where women and children are exploited, and where slaves are exploited often in hideous and horrible ways,” he told The Atlantic. “So a lot of people, particularly the women, found the Christian ideal of chastity amazingly refreshing.”

Wright was not naive. When his interviewer pushed back, arguing that a “restricted sexual ethic” that appealed “in the horrible world of ancient Christianity, where it was a terrible thing to be a woman,” might not have the same persuasive power today, Wright acknowledged the “constant difficulties”—but didn’t cede the point that the way Christians live can be attractive in our culture too.

Could our sexual ethic be part of what Jesus had in mind when he urged his followers to “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16)? We aren’t accustomed to thinking of it that way. Yet we must remember that the Spirit “blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8)—even toward the aspects of Christianity that we’ve been conditioned to deemphasize in our desire to get a hearing in a hostile culture.

That’s not to conflate the cultural fruit of Christianity and the coherence of its worldview with the miracle of conversion itself. We must be wary of what theologian Carl Trueman rightly describes as “instrumentalizing” Christianity “in the service of a different cultural campaign,” as well as the tragedy of King Agrippa, who answered Paul’s articulation of the gospel by declaring himself “almost” persuaded (Acts 26:28, KJV). And as the writer Andrew Menkis said in his appeal to the almost-persuaded author Jordan Peterson, mere rules “cannot sate the hunger of our soul.”

Still, blessed are those “whose delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:1–2), and we should not be so surprised if people outside the church begin to see the blessing of Christian sexual ethics in a world bereft of meaning. Perhaps, like former skeptic C. S. Lewis, they are realizing that the “hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

Daniel Darling is the director of The Land Center for Cultural Engagement and the author of several books including Agents of Grace, The Dignity Revolution, and the forthcoming In Defense of Christian Patriotism.

- More from Daniel Darling

Corruption Is a Discipleship Problem

Robert Osburn

Six ways Christians often make the problem worse and five steps toward a solution.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

Led by Malawi’s chief law enforcement officer, 19 armed agents surrounded Martha Chizuma’s home in the capital city of Lilongwe at 4 a.m. on December 6, 2022. Whisked away in her pajamas in the early morning darkness, Chizuma, the director general of Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, was forced to kneel on the floor for questioning at a police station before being released. Her arrest was retribution for her efforts to expose high-level corruption in the government.

A London-trained lawyer and formerly Malawi’s government ombudsman, Chizuma was the first Malawian anti-corruption leader chosen through a purely merit-based process. “People fought against my appointment, and now they wanted to undermine me ,” she explained, especially because she was leading a grand corruption probe that was “a test case of the government’s commitment to integrity.”

Those who engineered her arrest presumably hoped to silence a godly public official determined to “spit fire at corrupt politicians,” as the Nyasa Times reported several days later. They have not succeeded.

The fight against corruption takes courage like Martha’s, in part because corruption offers massive rewards. Its global financial toll is notoriously difficult to estimate, but the total may exceed $1 trillion annually. Every year, 25 percent of the world’s adults pay at least one bribe. The demand for bribes from public officials causes many Christian-majority nations to have unfavorable rankings on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Too often, evangelicals are part of the corruption problem, which takes many forms: bribery, fraud, nepotism, human trafficking, sex-for-grades schemes, money laundering, ghost teachers in schools, and more. An African trained at a US evangelical seminary, after exchanging US dollars for local currency, shocked me when she said, “I only do business with Muslim money-traders. I would never trust a Christian!”

“The Church needs to clear its Augean stable,” said former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2017, comparing Nigerian churches to the manure-filled stables of a Greek myth. “They not only celebrate but venerate those whose sources of wealth are questionable. They accept gifts … from just anybody without asking questions. This gives the impression that anything is acceptable in the house of God.”

Why are Christians so insensitive to, and often even participants in, blatant corruption? There are at least six reasons.

First, some in the church are unwilling to hold Christian workers accountable. Others live in willful ignorance, as if it is not possible for fellow believers to be corrupt; thus, we fail to address warning signs or to undertake proper investigations.

Second, in some cases, a shift from traditional folk religion to Christian affiliation can actually exacerbate corruption. A recent unpublished report, based on interviews with 48 Christian leaders in Africa, explained that many followers of African traditional religion do not dare to lie because they believe their ancestors are watching from beyond the grave and could deliver certain, swift punishment. In contrast, some respondents said, African Christians seem more willing to lie—even when swearing on the Bible—because they think the Christian God is merciful and delays judgment.

Third, if pastors “preach anti-corruption, they will lose members who give large offerings,” says Orinya Agbaji Orinya of the Palace of Priests Assembly, a church in Abuja, Nigeria. In many cases, Orinya says, Protestant churches’ dependence on offerings pushes them to avoid offending corrupt but generous donors.

Fourth, pastors or Christian workers in many countries feel an expectation to benefit their families and ethnic communities, a phenomenon that journalist Michela Wrong calls “it’s our turn to eat.” Also known as demand sharing, this pattern creates intense pressures on leaders to raid organization finances for the benefit of friends and relatives.

A fifth reason Christians are AWOL in the fight against corruption, says Munkhjargal Tuvshin, pastor of Truth Community Church in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, is their dualistic mindset. “Most Christians,” Tuvshin states, “would say that corruption is a world matter, not a church matter. That dualistic mindset takes us away from standing with the truth.”

Orinya, who is developing a major anti-corruption campaign among Nigeria’s Pentecostals, proposes one more driver of corruption among Christians: the prosperity gospel. According to Orinya, the heretical movement’s message that “if you are poor, you must not be a child of God” sometimes motivates listeners to steal, believing that even ill-gotten gain is a divine blessing.

How can Christians make a substantial difference in bridling cultures of corruption around the world?

The first step is to disciple people to prioritize daily acts of integrity in the face of cultural norms that favor dishonesty. Citing Ephesians 4:25 (“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body”), pastor Taba Ebenezar in Bamenda, Cameroon, urges his congregation and community members to “make every day an integrity day.”

Well-trained disciples know that God is not a transactional spirit who pours out favors on those who pay the requisite bribe, whether to a shaman or a prosperity preacher. Ebenezar, whose nation ranks 140th of 180 nations on the Corruption Perceptions Index, says, “We cannot talk only about salvation when the country is going backward.”

Second, churches must become model societies. Secular leaders will be more able to envision corruption-free nations when churches exemplify a corruption-free life. Too many churches and mission organizations disguise unethical behavior through flawed management practices such as the use of nondisclosure agreements, thereby undermining the message of hope and honesty that the church should be living out.

Global Trust Partners (GTP), a worldwide spinoff of the US Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, is seeking to reshape the behavior of churches and Christian organizations through peer accountability groups that promote fiscal and ethical integrity along with generosity. As GTP’s CFO, Matthew Gadsden from Australia, commented, “Once transparency in governance comes in, then people can give with confidence that the gift is used for the purposes for which it is intended.”

Church leaders often fail to realize how much secular groups like Transparency International need them. Roberto Laver, a former World Bank lawyer who works on corruption issues in Latin America, says that secular groups “have all the tools on social accountability” but lack the social networks and universal ethic that the church offers.

Laver draws an interesting contrast between Catholics and evangelicals in Latin America, stating that the “Roman Catholic Church will speak out on every issue, including corruption … but their verbiage makes little difference [personally]. As for evangelicals, individually they are more honest, but they are more silent publicly.” Laver asks, “If the church is not exhibiting more public honesty, what hope is there in the gospel?”

The third part of the strategy concerns education on aspects of the Christian worldview that discourage involvement in corruption: God’s sovereignty, his ethical expectations for believers, and the transformative potential of faith in Christ. Pastor Ebenezar in Cameroon has an open invitation from public school authorities to teach integrity to children, a key to breaking the corruption culture. Ebenezar’s visible public advocacy campaign includes a weekly radio program, pro-integrity caps and shirts, and integrity awards at halftime during youth soccer games.

As British anti-corruption expert Martin Allaby says, “There is no substitute for deep cultural change.” Whether through films or music, in churches, schools, or homes, and whether with adults or children, teaching a Christian worldview provides a rational basis for efforts to restrain corruption.

In Jinja, Uganda, along with the usual radio fare, station director Anyole Innocent champions a Christian view of integrity on Busoga One, which has 1 million listeners daily. Creative efforts like Innocent’s and similar initiatives on social media are persuasive ways to reinforce a Christian worldview and mobilize believers to oppose corruption.

A Christian worldview also acknowledges the messiness of situations in which temptations to corruption are deeply intertwined with poverty. Public officials seeking bribes may themselves be the victims of corrupt senior officials who withhold their salaries—or their salaries alone may be insufficient to feed their families. God may call us to share gifts with impoverished families—especially those within the church—so that they do not feel driven to consider seeking bribes. Interestingly, whereas the Bible frequently condemns receiving bribes, it nowhere condemns the giving of bribes. But those who feel compelled to offer one should consider to what extent, in their own situation, doing so perpetuates an evil system.

A fourth key strategy, highlighted by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, is the development of networks of high-performing leaders who can work together across sectors of society. William Wilberforce’s Clapham community of the late 18th and early 19th centuries brought together bankers, parliamentarians, authors, activists, pastors, writers, and educators in determined efforts that, with support from the Wesleyan revival, profoundly changed formerly corrupt England for the better. High-performing networks can coordinate overall anti-corruption planning while also linking what happens in churches to national conversations and reform efforts.

Pathways for Integrity Network, which has recently launched in Uganda, shows the potential to become a high-performing anti-corruption network. Innocent, the radio station head, commented, “Looking ahead, we envision a network where organizations rely on us to train their employees, where job creators and seekers trust our recommendations, and where Western investors seek our assistance in Ugandan projects, including governmental initiatives, as reputable.”

The Faith and Public Integrity Network, cofounded by Allaby and Laver, brings together academics and Christian leaders for shared efforts. Some evangelicals, such as Martha Chizuma in Malawi, participate in high-performing networks, such as the Chandler Sessions, that are not specifically Christian.

The fifth part of the strategy involves a virtuous, sacrificial spokesperson as the face of the movement, much as Martin Luther King Jr. legitimized the US civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Activists need a cheerleader to bring their voices together for change. Ebenezar is one such voice in Cameroon, declaring ambitiously, “If we pastors engage with this issue, it will restore and liberate our nation!”

Perhaps we need a 21st-century James Yen to lead the fight against global corruption. Yen was a celebrated Christian agrarian reformer during China’s titanic struggle between the Nationalists (China’s ruling government from 1912 until 1949) and Communists. Both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek recruited him for their respective governments; he declined both offers.

One day, after these polite but earnest refusals, a leading government official in a passing limousine watched Yen fall from his bicycle as he crossed trolley tracks. The next day, a new automobile mysteriously appeared where Yen was staying. He quietly mothballed the car in a friend’s garage, choosing embarrassment and muddy pants over betraying his Christian integrity by accepting gifts from a corrupt government.

Not all Christians should decline service in corrupt governments. But virtuous, sacrificial leaders like Yen can powerfully spotlight and expose corruption. When the “fruitless deeds of darkness” (Eph. 5:11) are exposed, they wither under the bright light of truth.

In Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ) has focused relentlessly on corruption in public schools, achieving enormous dividends for the country’s 2 million school-age children. ASJ’s efforts reduced the percentage of ghost teachers (who don’t show up for class but continue to receive paychecks) from 26 percent to 1 percent in two years.

When schools reopened after a 28-month closure due to COVID-19, ASJ again mobilized its 20,000 volunteers to monitor schools and spot instances of ghost teaching. Thanks to the volunteers, says ASJ cofounder Kurt Ver Beek, Honduran students received their scheduled 200 days of education in the 2023–2024 school year. ASJ has persisted in spite of occasional harassment by some government officials.

In Malawi, Martha Chizuma is persisting too, with encouragement from some friends. Three days after her unexpected pre-dawn arrest, she was waiting for her driver when she saw ten very poor women approaching. “They hugged me, crying, because they knew what had happened to me,” Chizuma recalled. “One of them said, ‘I was so worried when they arrested you because we knew you were the only one fighting for us!’”

Although Malawi has an evangelical president, Lazarus Chakwera, the deeply rooted corruption plaguing the country has not yet been eliminated. In May, when corruption charges against a leading public official were suddenly dropped, the disappointment reminded Chizuma that hers is often a lonely path. We need more evangelicals like those ten women who encouraged Chizuma to continue in her difficult but crucial undertaking.

Robert Osburn is a senior fellow with Wilberforce International Institute and is author of Taming the Beast: Can We Bridle the Culture of Corruption?

- More from Robert Osburn

Theology

I’m Trading My Career for Motherhood. Neither Will Fulfill Me.

Sophia Lee

This isn’t a female problem, but a human one.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

The sight of an airplane soaring above me used to make my eyes sting with longing. At that time, I was a college dropout, a 52-pound brittle skeleton, years of anorexia having gnawed me down to little more than organs and skin.

Whenever I heard the planes, I would look up at the sky and imagine the people up there, busy living life, probably flying to important business meetings and conferences in Hong Kong or Los Angeles, or whatever important things people who aren’t dying of an eating disorder do. And I would stop to clutch at the visceral ache in my chest, remembering the days when I dreamed of becoming a journalist who traveled the world.

Twenty years later, I am doing exactly that. I write long-form stories from around the world. I am now that busy person on the plane, flying to meetings and conferences. I’ve ridden on horseback in the jungles of Burma to report on an unconventional humanitarian aid organization; flown a two-passenger airplane over the ice kingdoms of remote Alaska to report on Alaska Natives; driven past giraffes and gazelles grazing in open fields while reporting on missions to Chinese migrants in Kenya.

I am finally living the dream that seemed like a fantasy 20 years ago, when I had lost all purpose and meaning in life. But now, pregnant with my second child, I’m giving it up to be a stay-at-home mother, for who knows how long—and I am not okay.

I know how incredibly privileged I am to have the option not to work. I also know it’s a blessing to have children when so many women struggle with infertility and miscarriage. So it’s with some shame that I confess: I’m terrified of the upcoming transition from working mother to stay-at-home mother.

I have nursed this dream to do what I do today for so long, and worked so hard to get here, that giving it up now feels like time has abruptly stopped while I’m mid-somersault in a gymnastics routine, frozen in action, a body stuck in a stiff coil in the air, always falling, never landing.

When I shared this struggle with my discipleship group, our leader—a woman with three grown-up children, who gave up a potential nursing career to be a full-time mother—clicked her tongue. “I know what’s the problem,” she said. “You’re the typical modern woman.”

She’s right. I am indeed a stereotypical modern woman who bristles at stereotypical gender roles. I profess to support women striving for their dreams, whether engineering, piloting, or homemaking—but truth be told, until recently, I could not understand women who chose motherhood as their vocation.

Becoming a mother was never part of my dream. I didn’t buy the dominant message that women can do it all. The math didn’t make sense: You can’t give 100 percent to your career and another 100 percent to motherhood. I chose career, obviously; I didn’t think I had an ounce of maternal instinct. Even the chubbiest, rosiest baby did not make me want to coo. Why would I want to take one home with me?

The conversation about womanhood and motherhood often seems to fall into tiring cultural wars over tropes, not real women: One side declares a woman free to do whatever she wants, to follow her own heart (even as we know our hearts are as volatile, unpredictable, and inconsistent as my toddler).

The other side says women like me have swallowed “diabolical lies” about womanhood. They say a woman’s highest or greatest calling is to be a wife and mother. They say the feminist movement has deceived women into believing that a career can fulfill us and that housewifery is bland and suffocating.

True, society does not celebrate homemakers enough, which can make women who choose to stay at home feel dismissed and small. It explains the rise of “trad wives,” a social media phenomenon in which women refuse to apologize for their aprons and instead proudly reclaim the “traditional” values of womanhood, which they interpret as staying home to cook, clean, and care for their family, often through aesthetically pleasing vintage filters.

Neither side speaks to me. And these aren’t the kind of conversations I have with other women who struggle to feel fulfilled in motherhood or career.

Yes, I suppose I am that “typical modern woman.” But there’s something more. Those delicious hours I spent as a child filling notebooks with ideas and stories were not feminist roars but an innate expression of a creative God, who blessed both men and women to create and cultivate. I didn’t go to work excited about toppling patriarchy or earning wealth or social status. I worked because I loved it.

But then that changed. Our son, growing in my womb for months before I finally noticed him, started kicking. And before I ever felt ready to be a mother, two years ago, he was born with an indignant cry.

Thanks to California’s paid family leave benefits, I was able to take four months of maternity leave. The 122 days of taking care of my son full-time blurred into one fuzzy, sleep-deprived daze soaked in the cloying scents of sweet breast milk and milky belches. I couldn’t tell when the sun rose and when it set.

But I also never knew such tenderness. The love that bloomed inside me was no honeymoon rose, fresh and perky one season, droopy and faded the next. It just kept growing, an enchanted ivy that danced evergreen and lush. I observed this budding love with awe and journalistic curiosity: Did my body really create this magical creature? How can something so scrunchy and wrinkly look so sweet and delightful in my eyes?

I couldn’t imagine life without our son, couldn’t imagine how I could have ever desired a life without him. And yet—I was also bored out of my mind. I could not wait to return to work. My first day back from maternity leave, I dusted my desk and sat down with a steaming—not lukewarm—cup of coffee, and felt like I had been gifted a vacation. I felt, in so many ways, liberated. My intellect, stiff from neglect, could now explore things beyond tummy times and wake windows.

But I also came back a different person. I felt older, crankier, slower. My creativity was stuffy and sniffly like a persistent cold. My focus was off, all my senses overstimulated by a child greedy for food, touch, attention—everything and more than I had to give.

Traveling for a reporting trip became a logistic scramble of pumping and labeling a freezer’s worth of breastmilk, prepping two weeks of healthy meals, paying the nanny for extra hours, and sometimes flying grandparents cross-country to help out.

Figuring out a way to keep my milk supply was stressful. Once, I was stuck in the backseat between two grown men in a bulletproof truck for a 10-hour drive across the fields of war-torn Ukraine. We stopped for a quick lunch, and I raced to the restroom, frantically trying to manually pump a full load into the bathroom sink.

It affected my marriage. Seeing my husband’s exhausted, haggard face during our video calls when I was overseas made me feel both guilty and irritated. When I returned home, travel-weary, my husband greeted me with the relief of a drowning man spotting a raft and then paddled madly away, leaving me in the waters to make up for my parenting slack.

I love our son fiercely, deeply. But I don’t find motherhood fulfilling; and yet work doesn’t feel fulfilling either. Perhaps it never was, because even before I became a mother, I remember spending each birthday feeling anxious as another year passed, my 20s receding into my late 30s, feeling as hungry as I had been back with anorexia, with the hollow dissatisfaction that I was not as accomplished or as influential as I wanted to be.

Fulfillment is such a first-world, 21st-century problem to worry about, something we hear often: Is my marriage fulfilling? Is my career fulfilling? Is my friendship fulfilling? When I had nothing but bones, what I do now felt like the stars, the galaxy, the universe.

Now I have the stars and galaxy—plus the unexpected, unasked-for gift of motherhood—and it still doesn’t feel like enough.

If the answer to this is that I’m brainwashed by modern feminism and that I just need to recover the “real” meaning of womanhood, then that’s just piling shame upon shame, misleading me from one false illusion to another. I’ve seen many stay-at-home mothers compare their children and parenting to that of others, and then sink into an identity crisis when the kids are not all right or when they leave for college.

This is not a female problem. It’s a human problem.

Most men seem to get both worlds—fatherhood and a career. Nobody criticizes them for pursuing their ambitions, and everybody praises them for taking the kids to the park. We also don’t hear as many men talk about sacrificing career for family, and that’s a shame. I know an acquaintance who was too busy building his company to settle down, and now, almost in his 50s, wealthy and successful, he’s dating women in their 20s because he dearly wants children. It might have benefited him to think about the sacrifices of pursuing his ambitions sooner.

A lot of what I desire is good. I was made in the image of a Creator. I was made to create, which includes children, but not just children; and work and motherhood were never meant to fulfill me. Before humans ever began procreating or cultivating, God was already delighted in them and called them “very good,” simply for being. He created humankind already fulfilled in him. Fruitfulness and dominion is a blessing, an added bonus.

That’s how the Bible begins, with Genesis 1 and 2. The problem is that I’m trapped repeating the story of Genesis 3 over and over.

I was feeling insecure, exhausted, and dissatisfied when I recently reread Genesis 3. God opened my eyes, and I saw myself. I saw the Serpent distort God’s Word, twist God’s character, and implant doubt and temptation in my mind: Is God really good? Am I really content? I saw myself standing in the midst of all the fruits I could eat in the garden, yet fixating on the one fruit God prohibited. The garden, with all its overflowing, self-replenishing abundance, was not enough. God was not enough. I wanted that fruit.

It’s the sin of pride. It’s pride that sets these ever-climbing expectations for myself, pride that measures my value by what I produce. But I’ll never be satisfied, because I know too well how far I fall short, how many people are better than me, and then I feel the shame and fear of being exposed. I might not be starving myself to death anymore, but the same toxic mixture of pride and shame that developed into an eating disorder still courses through my veins.

Genesis 3 isn’t a story from long ago. It’s current reality. It is the engine through which this world operates, the way I operate.

When my second child is born, I will focus on motherhood for an indefinite season, because this is the season in which God has called me to be faithful. I will repeat the cycles of breastfeeding, rocking, and burping, and it’ll feel dull and monotonous.

I will try to be faithful, but I will likely feel resentful. My back will ache and my brain will creak. I will fight every urge not to get impatient with my toddler and husband, and sometimes lose. I will get bored. I will not feel enough, and I’ll want to seek fulfillment in something—until I remind myself of the garden, and that Genesis 3 is not the end of the story.

There’s fresh grace in this upcoming season. Maybe I shouldn’t think it unfair that women tend to struggle more with the sacrifices of career and motherhood. Maybe it’s a blessing, because this transition from working mother to stay-at-home mother will poke and stretch me in places tender and sore, jolting me from operating out of my usual system, to reflect on and reform old patterns of thoughts into new ones.

There’s nothing dull or monotonous about that.

Sophia Lee is global staff writer at Christianity Today.

- More from Sophia Lee

Church Life

Pakistani Christian Praised for Documenting Blasphemy Victims. Most Are Muslims.

Jayson Casper

Catholic advocate awarded by US State Department explains why Christians are disproportionately targeted while the Islamic majority predominantly accuses its own.

A father prays at the grave of his slain son who was murdered in an attack on an Ahmaddi mosque in Pakistan.

Daniel Berehulak / Staff / Getty

Last month, mob violence took the life of Lazar Masih of Pakistan. Hundreds of Muslims responded with brutality to accusations that the 74-year-old Christian had desecrated a Quran—even before he could be tried under the nation’s blasphemy law.

A year earlier, in a similar blasphemy accusation, thousands of rioters burned hundreds of 400 homes and 26 churches, sending Christian villagers fleeing for safety. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has consistently condemned this hostile climate as unjust, including in a special update issued last December.

“The brutal killing of Lazar Masih is an alarming reminder of the dangers of merely being suspected or accused of blasphemy in Pakistan,” stated USCIRF chair Stephen Schneck. “The country’s draconian blasphemy law signals to society that alleged blasphemers deserve severe punishment, which emboldens private individuals and groups to take matters into their own hands. Pakistani authorities must hold those responsible for his death accountable.”

Accountability is rare.

In 2011, Pakistan executed the assassin of Salman Taseer, a former governor outspoken in his criticism of such laws. But from 1994 to 2023, 95 individuals were killed in blasphemy-related extrajudicial attacks, according to data compiled by the Lahore-based Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Stretching back to 1987, at least 2,449 people have faced legal accusations.

USCIRF has recommended Pakistan be classified as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) since 2002 for its violations of religious freedom. Created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the independent bipartisan watchdog lobbies US policy to press reform on egregious offenders.

In January, Rashad Hussein, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, commemorated the 25th anniversary of IRFA by honoring CSJ executive director Peter Jacob as one of nine award recipients for his dedication to the cause.

In particular, he praised CSJ for compiling Pakistan’s only comprehensive database of blasphemy-related arrests, prosecutions, and killings. Last year, 329 suffered under the law, and 7 people were killed before ever reaching the court.

But of the accused, only 11 were Christians. High-profile cases such as Masih’s tend to reach Western and persecution-monitoring media, overlooking the 247 Muslims who were overwhelmingly targeted in a nation that is 97 percent Muslim.

Christians still suffer disproportionately, but Jacob works in defense of all. Since CSJ has started tracking data, 52 percent of accusations have been lodged against Muslims, 32 percent against Ahmadis (a heterodox Islamic offshoot founded by a messiah-like figure), 12 percent against Christians, 2 percent against Hindus, and 2 percent are of unconfirmed identity. Nearly 600 people are currently detained in prison.

With such data, Jacob lobbies the government. In advance of last February’s elections, he won concrete pledges to address minority rights issues in the platforms of three major political parties, who went on to win over half of Pakistan’s legislative seats.

Obtaining reform is more difficult.

Last year, parliament voted to increase the punishment for blasphemy offenses from three to ten years’ imprisonment. It also added language to forbid insults against the companions of Muhammad, which can implicitly target minority Shiites.

The US State Department has adopted USCIRF’s CPC recommendation since 2018. Open Doors ranks Pakistan No. 7 on its World Watch List of countries where it is hardest to be a Christian.

Jacob founded CSJ in 2014 and has spent 35 years in human rights work. He obtained a master of laws degree from Notre Dame University and served 18 years as executive director of the National Commission for Peace and Justice, established by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference on Pakistan.

CT asked Jacob about hate speech protections for Christians, why Muslims accuse each other of blasphemy, and how faith sustains him in an uphill battle:

Why are Christians disproportionally accused of blasphemy?

Christians take pride in the fact that their leadership supported the creation of Pakistan, and remain politically and socially active in the country while contributing to its welfare and defense.

But this sentiment is in a direct clash with the monolithic view of Pakistan championed by sectarian parties and extremist groups. Persecuting minorities became politically advantageous in the pursuit of religious nationalism, and as Christians resisted the human rights violations against them, their victimization only increased in scope.

Today, it is the Shiite Muslim sect that is predominantly persecuted. But as blasphemy laws were introduced by the military government in the early 1980s, and especially since 1992 when they were fully activated, Christians have been among the foremost victims.

Are the accusations based on fact?

Given the harsh punishments in the law and an environment of hostile social behavior, it is safe to say that blasphemy, in the real sense, is almost nonexistent. The entire range of cases is either totally or partially fabricated.

Experts widely believe that the civil law prohibitions of disrespect to the Quran and insult against the Prophet Muhammad are massively misused. Even so, the laws are discriminatory, religion-specific, and lack the safeguards built into criminal justice systems throughout the world. As the law fails to take into consideration the element of intent, it tends to punish the accused on mere suspicion.

How do Muslim-world blasphemy laws differ from legitimate hate speech protections?

In many Muslim majority nations like Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, blasphemy is not treated as a major offense. But Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran assign severe punishments up to the death penalty, established through religious decrees. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws came through an illegitimate military dictatorship, and then was later approved by parliament—which was assumed as popular approval—and subsequent political manipulation turned them into a social movement.

Nevertheless, the United Nations has urged all states to repeal blasphemy laws as inconsistent with human rights. Hate speech can cause human suffering. Given that defamation of religion is determined by perception, it is impossible to measure damage to a nonliving concept.

Incitement to violence should be the true area of concern.

Are Pakistani Christians in need of hate speech protections?

The law already has provisions to deal with hate crimes and provocation to animosity. The amendments to create blasphemy laws were therefore unnecessary and have created more tension and sparked more conflict than anything it has resolved.

Religious minorities have become vulnerable regarding their physical safety. In fact, after the 2013 suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar, the supreme court issued orders to ensure the protection of places of worship, secure minority participation in public policy, and promote their economic well-being.

Unfortunately, implementation is still pending.

I do not imagine there are any quick fixes. But building a counternarrative of inclusion can begin by undoing faulty provisions in existing blasphemy laws to add workable safeguards. This would include defining the offense of an insult, exempting unintended actions or speech, and delineating the scope of nonbelievers to speak about another religion.

Why do Muslims accuse each other of blasphemy?

Sectarian differences have rattled society.

Religious intolerance was first directed at the Ahmadi school of thought, a 19th-century offshoot of Islam that developed in India, as its founder claimed to be a prophet. As Muhammad is considered to be the final prophet, the law has barred Ahmadis from calling themselves “Muslims” since 1974, and a decade later prevented them from using Islamic symbols. Deeming their beliefs and practices as heretical, many organizations nurtured hostility toward them even to the point of human rights violations, criminal violence, and outright persecution.

This exclusion and intolerance then became part of Pakistan’s overall social climate. Christians became the next victims, and later Shiites and other minorities have also been on the receiving end.

The state became hostage to an ill-conceived law and unscrupulous implementation, aggravating otherwise ordinary individual community conflicts. Differences in interpretation among Muslim sects caused further tension, as extremists labeled other sects as apostates and blasphemers.

By virtue of their weaker status, minority groups suffer the most.

Does the blasphemy law impede the church and its witness?

There is abundant evidence that these laws have violated the freedom of religion, opinion, and expression of even the most legitimate religious leaders. But furthermore, they have created a generation of disenchanted youth who have turned away from those who use these laws to further their own vested interests.

It is difficult for the new generation to find a genuine discourse on religion.

If Pakistan adopted the American respect for religious freedom, ensuring the noninterference of the state in personal affairs of faith, this would not only be a way forward for the church but result in a transformation of the entire social order.

How does CSJ contribute to this goal?

Although those who joined hands to create Pakistan had varied objectives, there is ample evidence the state was to be a democracy based on the principles of equality and equity. What we see now related to freedom of religion is an aberration and contradiction to this original objective, so we dedicate our efforts to defining an alternative view of Pakistan.

And therefore, as an independent and multifaith human rights organization, we advocate for alternative public policies. We do this primarily by collecting data on the abuse of blasphemy laws, sharing our findings, and proposing remedies for relief.

We argue that the government should set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the scale and magnitude of this abuse and empower it to act on its findings. We seek allies to join in this demand and improve upon our recommendations.

Unfortunately, the authorities have not followed through.

Does personal faith sustain your advocacy?

I was raised Catholic within the ecumenical Christianity of Pakistan, and my worldview was informed primarily by Catholic social teachings. In my youth, I was particularly impressed by liberation theology and its concept of active nonviolence. As such, I have chosen to work for much of my life—but not exclusively—with Catholic organizations.

Jesus was accused of blasphemy—evidence of how a collective entity can level such atrocious charges for their personal gain. His parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us to reach out to all people in their distress, regardless of their identity. The Christian tradition contributed strongly to the development of human rights, as a neutral ground for all human beings.

I believe this is the best outcome of religious and educational experience.

At CSJ, we are strong believers in human goodwill. Our movement has endured difficult times through a deep faith that the people of Pakistan will change the course of our national history. This hope, along with our marginal successes, encourages us to continue the struggle.

Please keep us in your prayers.

- More from Jayson Casper

‘First of Its Kind’: A Jesus Film for the Deaf Community

Interview by Peter Chattaway

A new movie from Deaf Missions tells the gospel story in American Sign Language.

Jesus, played by Gideon Firl, signs forgive to his disciples in Jesus: A Deaf Missions Film.

Courtesy of Deaf Missions

Bible translation is as old as the church—older, even, when you take the Septuagint into account. From Jamaican Patois to Filipino Taglish and New Zealander Māori, translators today are still seeking to faithfully render Scripture for particular communities and cultures.

Subtitling is a kind of translation too. There are whole ministries devoted to dubbing and creating captions for Bible movies and TV shows, including The Jesus Film and The Chosen.

But what if you’re trying to reach people who communicate primarily not through spoken words, but with their hands and facial expressions? How can that act of translation bring new aspects of Scripture to life?

These are the questions behind Deaf Missions, a 50-year-old organization that began its ministry by making VHS tapes of American Sign Language (ASL) New Testament translations and distributing them in the mail. In 2020, Deaf Missions finished the first-ever complete translation of the Bible into ASL. In 2018, they put out a dramatic film, The Book of Job, now available for free on the Deaf Missions app.

Now, Deaf Missions has released Jesus: A Deaf Missions Film. The movie premiered at the Deaf Missions Conference in Texas last April and will be playing in theaters across the US on June 20.

Jesus was produced by a Deaf cast and crew for a primarily Deaf audience. That’s evident in ways aside from the use of ASL. Peter sees rather than hears the rooster crow. There’s a tight close-up on the ear cut off of the high priest’s servant.

Some of the film’s scenes put a uniquely Deaf spin on the biblical story. Jesus gives Simon the fisherman a “name sign” meaning Peter. When Jesus is crucified, the loss of his hands effectively means the loss of his voice—resulting in a bleaker Crucifixion sequence than similar films have portrayed.

Film critic Peter Chattaway spoke with Joseph D. Josselyn, who directed Jesus after serving as a producer on The Book of Job. He spoke over Zoom with two interpreters—one who translated his verbal speech into signs, another who translated Josselyn’s signs into verbal speech. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why make a film in ASL? What does a film made in ASL give an audience that subtitles or captions don’t offer?

That is a wonderful question to start with. As a Deaf person, my language—our language—is sign language, and sign language includes facial expressions and body movement. I can understand English—I can read captions—but those are separate from what’s happening on screen. They’re disconnected. I have to look to see the action and then look down to see the subtitles.

For a Deaf person, when we see something in sign language, it’s all there; there’s no barrier. I can connect with that actor or that signer immediately. Right now, this whole conversation is a bit cumbersome because we’ve got an interpreter and there’s this lag—whereas if it’s Deaf-to-Deaf, that core connection is uninhibited.

In developing the Jesus film, what kind of decisions did you face? How did they affect the way stories were told?

To cite one example, all four Gospels talk about Jesus saying things on the cross. But when you speak in sign language and your hands have nails through them, you’re not able to speak. I thought what your film did with the Crucifixion was really interesting.

As we were developing the script, we operated with two key principles. First, we knew we didn’t want to do a direct word-for-word translation of what’s in the Bible, so to speak. We wanted to look through Scripture as a whole and really say, “Okay, what was the message of Jesus? How did Jesus show his love?”

And then the second thing that we thought about as we were developing the script was making sure that we’re true to Deaf culture by looking at the story of Jesus through the lens of a Deaf person. All the actors—all of the people involved—are signers.

Regarding the Crucifixion: We wrestled with that scene. We thought, Well, do we stick an interpreter there to sign what would be said? Or depend only on the captions? If a Deaf person has their hands down, how would they express something? You saw what we did. We wanted to be as natural as possible in that moment.

I was also intrigued by some of the narrative choices you made. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the entire story of Jesus told in a flashback from the day of Pentecost, when people come to see the disciples speaking in tongues—and that was interesting too, the fact that the film begins with sign languages in tongues.

We wrestled with the opening and closing. We didn’t necessarily want to start with the birth of Jesus and then move chronologically. And we were thinking about diversity as well. So, Peter standing there talking about Jesus—we thought, Okay, wait a minute. What if we start with that and then go back and walk through the timeline and then wrap up with that scene, too? And everybody was in agreement that that was the best way to do it.

So in the Pentecost scene, were the disciples speaking in other sign languages?

Yes, yes, they were. I asked the 12 actors to do research on some different sign languages. There was some African sign language happening there, a couple different countries in Asia that use different sign languages. I asked them to sign some of the same phrases but in different sign languages—“God is good,” “God saves.”

This film is graphic at times. There’s the woman with the issue of blood (Matt. 9:20–22; Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48) and also the scourging of Jesus.

Regarding the bleeding woman, we really wanted to portray her suffering. Being a Deaf audience we’re very, very visual—very dependent on that. When we did our first edit, it was a lot less graphic and actually kind of hard to see unless you knew what was happening.

Same thing with the scourging. We wanted to somehow show Jesus’ suffering for us; our team had a lot of conversation about it. Of course, we’re all familiar with the Mel Gibson movie, and we didn’t want to copy that per se, but we didn’t want to minimize Christ’s suffering either.

It seems like there’s been an increased focus on Deaf actors in films and shows like A Quiet Place, CODA, Only Murders in the Building, Echo, and Hawkeye. The Chosen has leaned into its portrayal of characters who have disabilities: Little James has a limp, Matthew is autistic. How do you see your film as part of that increasing representation of people with disabilities?

I am so grateful that more and more Deaf actors have access to Hollywood; that’s exciting.

In this particular case, one of the things that we felt that was most unique is that we’re the only full sign language production led by a Deaf production staff. There were no language barriers because we could all sign. To the cameraperson, I said, “Hey, move that down”—they understood it right away. Or I’d say to an actor, “Hey, give me a little more expression”—I didn’t have to wait on an interpreter to do that. Our cast was completely Deaf.

I’m hopeful that we’ll see more and more Deaf cinema coming out. The mainstream approach of Deaf people involved in hearing projects is great, but this was the first of its kind and we’re very excited about it.

- More from Interview by Peter Chattaway

News

Robert Morris Resigns from Gateway Following Past Abuse Allegations

Kate Shellnutt

While the Texas megachurch said it “did not have all the facts” about Morris’s earlier misconduct, the woman who spoke out said she had informed its leaders years ago.

Robert Morris

Gateway Church

Gateway Church founder and senior pastor Robert Morris has resigned, and his Texas megachurch is launching an investigation into allegations of abuse from 35 years ago.

Morris—a former advisor to President Trump and leader of one of the largest nondenominational churches in the country—is leaving after an Oklahoma woman, Cindy Clemishire, shared a story of being molested by the pastor when she was a minor in the 1980s. He has led the congregation since 2000.

In a statement Tuesday announcing Morris’s resignation, Gateway’s board of elders said they were “heartbroken and appalled” to learn that what they believed was an extramarital relationship was allegedly abuse of a child, The Christian Post reported.

“Regretfully, prior to Friday, June 14, the elders did not have all the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse,” they said. “The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child.”

The elders had initially responded on Friday saying Morris had already disclosed what happened and “undergone restoration.” The pastor’s earlier statement to The Christian Post referred to the incident as “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Clemishire said she had been working for years to have Morris held accountable, including notifying the church of her story in 2005. She said at the time at least one pastor and one elder had been informed that the abuse started when she was 12.

Clemishire said the news of Morris’s resignation brought “mixed thoughts and feelings”—she believes he should have been terminated.

“Though we are called to forgive those who hurt us … we should expect and demand consequences,” she wrote.

The church has hired a law firm to conduct a review of Clemishire’s account from the 1980s. A spokesperson for Haynes & Boone, LLP, confirmed to CT that the firm “has been engaged to conduct an independent investigation.”

“Even though it occurred many years before Gateway was established, as leaders of the church, we regret that we did not have the information that we now have,” the elders said. “We are heartbroken and appalled by what has come to light over the past few days, and we express our deep sympathy to the victim and her family.”

“For the sake of the victim, we are thankful this situation has been exposed. We know many have been affected by this, we understand that you are hurting, and we are very sorry. It is our prayer that, in time, healing for all those affected can occur.”

Clemishire wrote that she and her attorney, Boz Tchividjian, want to see the scope of the review expanded in case there are more incidents. She told any potential fellow victims that they “will not walk this journey alone” and she hopes Gateway leadership will take this as “an opportunity to find the truth while providing help and restitution.”

“To the congregation of Gateway Church and the countless who have followed Robert Morris online, my heart is equally broken for you,” her statement read. “Please remember our faith is in Jesus, not an institution or a man in the pulpit. Keep your faith!”

The church did not bring up the allegations during last weekend’s services, where Morris was not scheduled to preach, and it has not posted about his resignation publicly on its website or on social media.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

Theology

Sacred Tattoos Promise Spiritual Power. Can New Thai Christians Keep Them?

James Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand

Pastors counsel believers with sak yant tattoos to let go of animistic beliefs and trust in God’s provision.

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

Chalolemporn Sawatsuk was a teenager in Kamphaeng Phet Province, in upper central Thailand, when he got his first tattoo.

The tattoo artist, a Buddhist monk, inked a pair of lizards onto the inside of his forearm, the same tattoo Chalolemporn’s father had. As he worked, the monk chanted blessings intended to imbue the tattoo with spiritual power that would increase Chalolemporn’s charisma and attractiveness. He also recited rules based on Buddhist moral teachings that the teen would have to follow to keep the power alive.

The tattoo seemed to take effect almost immediately, Chalolemporn said: Later that day, he convinced a woman to sleep with him.

Chalolemporn later received two more spiritual tattoos. Over the years, however, the enchanted images proved ineffective in keeping his life on course. In fact, his involvement in the world of illegal drugs resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment, before his talent in martial arts won him an early release and an encounter with a Christian friend led to his life transformation.

Sak yant tattoos, which date back centuries in Southeast Asia, were initially a way to enlist the help of local animistic spirits, but they later became tied to the Hindu-Buddhist yantras, or mystical geometric patterns, used during meditation. Sak yant adherents believe the tattoos secure specific benefits, including physical or spiritual protection, popularity, or success.

The intricate designs and patterns of sak yant have become popular with Thais and foreigners looking for a cool tattoo, but Christians are concerned about their spiritual implications. Thai pastors encourage new converts with sak yant tattoos, like Chalolemporn, to recognize that God has greater power than any spirit.

“[Sak yant] is visible on their body, whereas Christians don’t worship an image representing God,” explained Thanit Lokeskrawee, director of Chiang Mai Theological Seminary. “We need to have faith … in the invisible God, which really goes against the grain of Thai people.”

Skin-deep animism

Sak is the Thai word for tattoo, while yant means yantra. Historians believe the practice is at least a thousand years old, often used to protect men in battle. Although the tattoos predate Buddhism, sak yant and other animistic beliefs were incorporated into popular expressions of the religion once it took hold in Indochina.

Sak yant tattoos include various drawings, symbols, or words often written in ancient Khmer script. Adherents believe that only tattoos done by an expert who can properly perform the required chants and rituals carry spiritual efficacy. Today, sak yant artists are usually Buddhist monks or other types of holy men.

The rules that monks tell clients to follow in order to ensure the tattoo’s continued effectiveness include some seemingly arbitrary stipulations along with moral guidance. Chalolemporn, for instance, was told not to walk under an unfinished bridge. Breaking the rules supposedly saps the talisman of its power.

After receiving a tattoo, a sak yant adherent periodically participates in ceremonies intended to re-enchant the ink on their body. Every March, about 10,000 people travel to Wat Bang Phra, a temple 30 miles from Bangkok, for a festival to honor a famous deceased monk and to receive a fresh charge of magic for their tattoos. Videos of the ceremony show devotees seeming to enter a trance-like state as they jump, scream, and charge toward the stage. Many believe they are possessed by the spirits associated with their tattoos.

Decoding Thai spiritualism

Sak yant has grown in international popularity as celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Brooke Shields, and Ed Sheeran have obtained the tattoos. As a result of the increasing demand, more tattoo artists in Thailand are doing sak yant—sans monks or rituals.

In 2011, the Thai cultural ministry called for a ban on foreigners receiving religious tattoos out of concern that they were being placed on inappropriate parts of the body. In Thai culture, the head is considered holy, with lower areas of the body seen as progressively less so. Accordingly, a Thai may be offended by a sak yant tattoo on a tourist’s leg, since this is a less honorable location than the neck or upper back.

Many Westerners are drawn to the aesthetics of sak yant. However, they often struggle to understand the beliefs of Thais who use tattoos, amulets, and rituals to secure the assistance of spiritual forces.

Chris Flanders, a former missionary in Thailand and now professor of missions and intercultural service at Abilene Christian University, often compares the animistic spirit world to a technology his students are more familiar with: Wi-Fi.

Just as a cell phone is needed to connect to the invisible world of Wi-Fi signals, people whose worldview includes myriads of unseen spiritual beings that must be engaged or appeased must have the right device. For many Thais, Flanders said, the spiritual world is mysterious and scary yet also potentially useful—but only if people know how to tap into its power.

“Sak yant is a type of spiritual technology,” Flanders said. “It offers an opportunity to access the spiritual power that is all around us, but we’re just not aware because it’s invisible like Wi-Fi.”

Sak yant and the church

For Thai Christians, seeking spiritual protection or help through sak yant or other practices is clearly outside the bounds of their faith. Thai pastors say it’s not necessary for new believers to remove sak yant tattoos they got before conversion, especially since tattoo removal can be a difficult, expensive, and painful process. But even if the ink remains, pastors want to help eliminate the tattoos’ spiritual mark.

“I don’t have any problem with [Christian converts still having sak yant tattoos,] as long as they understand that the power is not in sak yant,” said Natee Tanchanpongs, lead pastor at Grace City Bangkok and a former academic dean at Bangkok Bible Seminary. “The power to protect them comes from the God of the universe who created them and is able to do more than we ask or imagine.”

Thanit, the seminary director, grew up in a Buddhist family and remembers noticing male relatives’ Sak Yant tattoos during childhood. He became a Christian after meeting a Thai evangelist while studying at a university. He has seen how Thai Christians struggle to fully let go of old ways of coping with fear or feelings of helplessness.

“When life is smooth and happy, [old beliefs] will hide,” Thanit said. “But once you get struck by a crisis, this kind of belief will float up and haunt you.”

In a pastoral role, Thanit says it is important to “discredit the influence” of sak yant tattoos and help Christians view them as simply ink patterns. But even for mature Christians who came to faith years ago, this can be a continuing challenge. Thanit isn’t always sure of the best way to help.

“I need God’s wisdom,” he said. “People in the past survived harm, fights, and wars with this kind of belief, so it’s not easy [to give it up].”

A different person

For Chalolemporn, the power and love of God provided something his three sak yant tattoos never could. As a teen, he showed promise in boxing, but he started hanging out with the wrong crowd and fell into drug addiction. When he ran out of money, he began selling drugs.

One day, Chalolemporn met another drug dealer in a rice field to settle a dispute, only to find the man armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Fearing for his life, Chalolemporn attacked, gained control of the weapon, and fired. Although he had intended only to scare the adversary away, the shot killed him.

Initially, a court sentenced Chalolemporn to death for his crime. However, the king of Thailand commuted his punishment to life imprisonment. At 19, he appeared destined to spend the rest of his days in Thailand’s harsh prison system.

While incarcerated, Chalolemporn restarted his martial arts career, competing in boxing and muay thai tournaments inside the prisons. He racked up victories and eventually became a national prison system champion. This success led to his sentence being reduced, a reward granted in Thailand to well-behaved prisoners who win martial arts competitions. At age 33, he was released.

The newly freed fighter wanted to continue his boxing career, but promoters were hesitant to work with a former death row inmate. During this time, Chalolemporn talked with a Thai Christian who suggested that he pray to God about his situation. Though the Christian faith was strange and unfamiliar to him, he and his wife, Sarunya, decided to ask God to give him a chance to compete.

Within a week, Chalolemporn was invited to enter a boxing match in China. However, when he arrived, he was told that he would not be able to fight. Discouraged and doubtful, he prayed that the fight would take place.

“If you are real, let me compete,” he remembers praying. “And then when I get back to Thailand, I’ll go to church.”

After a tense wait, he was informed that the match was back on. Since that first fight, he has continued competing in and winning international boxing and muay thai championships.

Chalolemporn Sawatsuk’s tattoos.

After returning home, Chalolemporn followed through on his promise. Another former prisoner who had become a Christian helped him find a church. From his first day at Tawipon Church in Ayutthaya, a city 50 miles north of Bangkok, he felt something he had been missing his whole life: unconditional love. The people were not judgmental of his past sins, nor were they worried about his tattoos.

“The Christians I met at church took no notice whatsoever of my sak yant tattoos,” Chalolemporn recalled. “All the people came up to me and said, It’s okay, welcome! Everyone loves you. God loves you. You have been redeemed.”

Chalolemporn says that God changed him dramatically as he learned about his new faith. Old vices gave way to an intense desire to honor his Creator.

His tattoos are still very visible, and they have even given him his nickname in the boxing ring: Kontualai, or “tattooed one.” But his belief in their power is gone. Instead, he prays to God for help and protection.

“Becoming a Christian was a really big change for me,” Chalolemporn said. “It was like becoming a different person.”

- More from James Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand

Theology

‘Rattlesnakes Don’t Commit Suicide’

Justin Giboney

This Juneteenth, the life of unsung civil rights hero Fred Shuttlesworth should be a clarion call to the biblical activism we still need to advance racial justice in America.

Reverend Shuttlesworth stands outside the wreckage of his house in December 1956, following an assassination attempt involving sixteen sticks of dynamite.

Don Cravens / Getty

In February, I preached one of the Black History Month sermons at Zion Baptist Church, a traditional Black church in Cincinnati. After the service, Judge Cheryl Grant, a longtime congregant, thanked me for delving into the legacy of civil rights advocate Fred Shuttlesworth.

Grant had been very close with the Shuttlesworth family after they moved from Birmingham to Cincinnati in 1961, and she was working on a documentary about him with filmmaker Mark Vikram Purushotham and biographer Andrew M. Manis. Her personal testimony about Shuttlesworth and his story of redemptive action has been more than inspiring for me, and now I’d like to share his story with a wider audience.

Shuttlesworth is an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. A cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he faced and ultimately outwitted Birmingham’s infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance racial justice in one of America’s most obstinately segregated environments.

What’s been most interesting to me about Shuttlesworth is how he personified the mixture of Christian orthodoxy and freedom fighting that characterized the primary stream of the Black church’s social action tradition. As a pastor and leader, he called himself a biblicist and an actionist, meaning he had a devout faith in the authority of Scripture while believing right doctrine compelled the Christian into social action.

Shuttlesworth knew preaching against white supremacy wasn’t enough. The church also had to get out of their seats if they wanted social change (James 2:14–26).

His biography, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, by Manis, recalls Shuttlesworth’s excitement when the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision outlawed segregation in public schools. Initially, Shuttlesworth believed this was a sign that the soul of America was “essentially good” and could be shamed into delivering equality.

However, several years of letdowns thereafter convinced him that “you can’t shame segregation. … Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide; ball teams don’t strike themselves out. You gotta put ’em out,” he said. Like a conniving serpent, the elected officials, corporate executives, and social networks driving a racially unjust system wouldn’t voluntarily cede their undue power and privilege. The church would have to crush the serpent’s head through prayer and action.

Shuttlesworth’s story is a reminder that the path to freedom for African Americans has been marked by delays, setbacks, halfhearted commitments, and broken promises. And few things capture the detoured route America has taken toward racial justice like Juneteenth, which celebrates news of emancipation reaching Black people in Texas two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans endured slavery for an extra quarter of a decade, then had to survive under the terrorism of Jim Crow for another century.

Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” On the scale of God’s plan for the whole world’s redemption, that’s true. But for us, here and now, it’s not true in any natural or inevitable sense. Those words are more artful than historical. Time is neutral, and the arc of history has had to be wrenched, hammered, and forcefully contorted to render—at best—a crooked zigzag that points somewhere in the vicinity of justice.

Advancing toward a freer society has never been a smooth, constant, upward progression for Black Americans. How are Christians to deal with this reality without falling into the bondage of despair and vengeance the Bible warns about (1 Thess. 4:13; Rom. 12:19)? Here again, Shuttlesworth’s public witness provides us with a fruitful example.

In 1957, Shuttlesworth attempted to enroll his two daughters, Pat and Ruby, in Phillips High School in Birmingham. When they pulled up to the school, a white mob surrounded them. Shuttlesworth was attacked with bats and chains, and the kicks and thrusts to the ground scraped most of the skin off his face. His wife was stabbed.

When Birmingham’s Black community heard about the beating, they were understandably furious—and eager to avenge their leader. Days later, an indignant, standing-room–only crowd awaited Shuttlesworth’s orders at a local church.

With a head bandage and an arm sling, Shuttlesworth urged the audience to respond by redoubling their advocacy efforts, not by behaving destructively. After all, he said, he was the one who’d been attacked, and if he wasn’t going to react in anger, they shouldn’t either. He responded with a grace that redeemed and reordered the tenacious fire burning within his people—a “heavenly fire.” That grace kept his work righteous, and the people’s tenacity disallowed cowardice and complacency in the face of evil.

Shuttlesworth could’ve moved that emotional crowd to tear the city down. It would’ve been an understandable response, but also shortsighted and counterproductive. Phillips High School would eventually be integrated, not through rage and outbursts but by planning and persistent pressure.

In the last few years, particularly since the murder of George Floyd, it seems the American evangelical church has gone backward when it comes to race relations.

Justice proponents have been expelled from pulpits and jobs. Calculating political activists have made boogiemen out of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT), fostering fears that too many white evangelicals have used as false justification to reject calls to humility or course correction on race issues from Black siblings in Christ. And just as Shuttlesworth discovered more than half a century ago, basic messages of racial reconciliation have proven insufficient to shame parts of the church into sincere repentance and reparation of a long and sinful history of division and injustice. Many of my peers have grown tired of spinning their wheels.

The proper response to this new detour is for Christians of all races to become more thoroughgoing biblicists and actionists. We must increase our reliance on the Bible and prayer. Undermining or deconstructing the Word of God in response to toxic evangelicalism is the ultimate cut-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move. The American church’s sins regarding race are a product of its failure to follow the Bible’s mandates, not the consequence of following them too closely. And as actionists, we must apply pressure inside and outside the church to force an acknowledgement of and remedy for historical injustice.

Juneteenth is worth celebrating not because it signifies the end of suffering and injustice for Black America. While the victory it recalls was late and incomplete, it was a significant accomplishment that revealed God’s will and love for his children. Finding gratitude and joy while awaiting the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises is the definition of faith. Happy Juneteenth!

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and the president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the coauthor of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

- More from Justin Giboney

Share

Share

Share

Working within the system

Their blind spots, and ours

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

In this series

Skin-deep animism

Decoding Thai spiritualism

Sak yant and the church

A different person

Share

Share

Share