Theology

Is Sexuality a Matter of First Importance?

The apostle Paul’s discussion of same-sex sexuality in 1 Corinthians 6 is a clear, compassionate, and proportionate model for church leaders.

Illustration by Alex Nabaum

Earlier this year, many of us watched replays of the tragic collision and collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, leading to the loss of several lives and causing enormous damage and disruption.

As footage emerged, it was striking to see how immediately and totally the bridge seemed to come down. It looked like it happened all at once. The bridge had been constructed without any redundant support structures. The tragedy revealed that all of its supports were essential. Knock any one of these out and the whole thing will fall.

We might say something similar about Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11, one of the key biblical texts that addresses same-sex sexuality. This is not the sole focus of the text—Paul is talking about various sins—but it nevertheless provides essential foundations for how we should approach this whole issue as Christian believers.

In Western (and increasingly non-Western) cultures today, full affirmation of LGBTQ sexual identities and lifestyles is a litmus test of social acceptance. When I was at university in the mid-1990s, Bill Clinton was still affirming marriage as being between a man and a woman. On secular university campuses today, politically conservative voices defending traditional marriage are rare and virulently opposed. The cultural pressure on churches to switch to an affirming stance is increasingly heavy.

In today’s climate, the church cannot afford to neglect Paul’s words. Paul makes five vital points in 1 Corinthians 6 about same-sex sexuality. None of his words are wasted. Each facet of his teaching needs to be upheld alongside the others, like vital supports of a bridge. Neglecting any one will destabilize our approach.

While addressing legal disputes among Christians in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul interjects a stark question: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” (v. 9, ESV throughout).

The kingdom of God, of course, is God’s loving rule over his people, begun now in Christ and one day coming in its fullness. It is the life we were created for, the world as it was meant to be. It is what millions of people unknowingly crave every time they say life’s “not supposed to be this way.” It’s what we can receive through the death and resurrection of Jesus. Whatever else one might miss out on in life, nothing would be more tragic and devastating than to fail to inherit the kingdom of God. The stakes could not be higher.

Having made a blanket statement about “the unrighteous,” Paul provides some specific examples:

Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (vv. 9–10)

The two Greek terms translated here as “men who practice homosexuality” are malakoi and arsenokoitai—literally “soft” or effeminate ones and “men-bedders”—the passive and active willing participants in homosexual sex, respectively. Arsenokoitai is the combining of the two words used in the Greek translation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, passages that both condemn a man lying with a man “as with a woman.”

Paul provides no indication that he is referring only to coerced, nonconsensual same-sex activity (which was common in the ancient world); his language is broad and encompassing of all same-sex sexual conduct. Paul is moving no goalposts, introducing no innovation; he is simply lining up with what Scripture has always said: that same-sex sexual intimacy is sinful. In the New Covenant, God’s design for human sexuality remains the same.

Evangelicals are used to differing over issues of secondary importance. The Bible itself talks about how some topics can be disputable matters, where earnest Christians reach differing conclusions in good conscience (Rom. 14). We think of differing convictions over the details surrounding the return of Christ, whether all the miraculous spiritual gifts are operative in the church today, or the appropriate age for (and mode of) baptism.

Our need to agree to disagree means we can too quickly assume that any issue on which Christians differ must by definition be of secondary importance. But Paul shows us this is not the case with same-sex sexuality.

No sin is trivial because all sin is ultimately rebellion against God (1 John 3:4). But by including same-sex sexuality in this list, Paul shows us how deeply serious a sin it is. Eternity is at stake.

Not only does he stress the eternal implications of failing to repent of this; he also warns his readers not to be deceived about it.

Paul is expecting voices in or around the Corinthian church to preach contrary to what he is writing. We certainly hear many such voices in the church today, claiming not only that it is right to allow same-sex relationships for Christians but even that such relationships receive God’s blessing. But Paul is unequivocal in his message. To bless what God condemns is to keep people from the kingdom—to send them to destruction. Homosexuality is not trivial.

An observant reader of this passage would rightly point out that Paul’s reference to same-sex sexuality is embedded in a list of various sins both sexual (such as sexual immorality and adultery) and nonsexual (such as drunkenness and greed). All are disqualifying for inheriting the kingdom of God. These sins are very different, but they are all equally grave.

This is not the only time same-sex sexuality is addressed in the context of other, varying sins. In Leviticus, the two prohibitions against it come in the context of other forms of sexual sin. It is described as an abomination (again underlining how grave it is), but it is not the only behavior to be described this way. Proverbs, for example, lists deceitful speech, pride, and murder as being similarly abominable (6:16–19).

In the New Testament, we continue to see same-sex sexuality listed among other sins. In 1 Timothy 1:9–10, just as in 1 Corinthians 6, it is included alongside both sexual and nonsexual sins (such as perjury and striking parents). Even in Romans 1, where same-sex sexuality is given some prominence, it is given so precisely because it is emblematic of something true of all of us—we exchange the natural and divinely ordered for the unnatural and transgressive—and as part of a mounting case that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23).

The fact that biblical references to same-sex sexuality mention it alongside very different forms of sin demonstrates that it is not in a category of its own. We must be careful not to single it out in a way that suggests it is.

When we do need to mention it (as we surely do in today’s culture), we should follow the biblical authors’ cue and mention it alongside other equally grave sins. Part of our commitment to the authority of Scripture is reflecting its balance and proportion, not giving undue weight to one part of its teaching or neglecting others.

In some of the recent conversations about same-sex sexuality, I’ve been struck by two things. One, evangelical leaders like to use the theological term concupiscence in the context of sexuality; but I’ve yet to hear it in connection with any other sin.

Concupiscence is the idea that not only our acts but also our desires are fallen and sinful. We see this perhaps most famously in Jesus’ teaching that looking at someone with lustful intent amounts to committing adultery (Matt. 5:28). It is not just physical sexual acts that can be sinful, but mental ones too. (Indeed, it is hard to resist a physical sin after mentally rehearsing it.)

So same-sex sexual desire is a sin in the form of lust or emotional idolatry. This needs to be said when many in the evangelical world want to say the desires are somehow neutral. But the concept of concupiscence seems to be so rigorously applied to this sin and not to others.

Two, I have also wondered why so many voices condemning same-sex sexuality in particular are not as passionately condemning other sins.

When some denominations are discussing disqualifying from ordination any candidate who struggles with (and is repenting of) same-sex desire, I wonder why the same is not said of those who may be struggling with greed. If the justification for such disqualification is that Western culture is promoting and celebrating same-sex sexuality, then I’d suggest the very same thing needs to be said about greed. Not everything about greed is true of same-sex sexuality, but who can deny that our culture thrives on and fuels greed?

Both twist what God has given us in creation. One denies the good distinction in creation between male and female by attempting to make them interchangeable in sex and marriage. The other does the same to the distinction between heaven and earth, thinking that by sheer acquisition we can turn the latter into the former. Putting the question another way, which is drawing more Americans into idolatry and away from the kingdom of God: same-sex sexuality or greed?

Or when was the last time you heard a pastor preach against reviling (which Paul also mentions here)? Evangelical and Reformed discourse (especially on social media) is awash with reviling and accusation.

All of the sins Paul mentions deserve our careful and sober reflection. All of us struggle with something on his list. We should be most distressed by our own sin.

In a fallen world, each fallen culture will be more disposed to particular sins than others. Christian leaders will often find themselves having to address some sins more frequently than others, simply in response to cultural messaging. There is no question that, right now, same-sex sexuality is being forcefully promoted in Western institutions. Given this, it is no surprise that we are seeing more same-sex sexual sin in the world around us.

When a sin receives a high level of publicity, it is not just providing legitimacy for those already disposed to engage in it, but it is also encouraging others to engage in it who otherwise never would have. (One example of this is the explosive growth of younger people identifying as nonbinary, especially the phenomenon of rapid onset gender dysphoria.) The church should speak more strongly into this matter. It is necessary to respond to what is being thrust upon us by our culture.

But we would be wrong to conclude from this that same-sex sexuality is only a Western problem. Last year I had the privilege of attending a conference for Anglicans from around the world hosted by the wonderful leadership of the Anglican Church of Rwanda. It was exhilarating to gather, worship, and take counsel with such a culturally wide range of believers. I led a workshop on the theology of the body and how it applies to discussions about sexuality and gender.

Several times at the conference, I heard leaders say that same-sex sexuality is not an issue in non-Western countries. One directly told me, “It is not an issue in Africa.”

But Paul’s inclusion of it in 1 Corinthians 6 reminds us that it is not just a contemporary Western issue. It is a fallen human issue. While it may not be as prevalent in other parts of the world, that doesn’t mean it is obsolete there. In fact, I regularly hear from African believers wrestling with same-sex attraction looking for ways to find support.

Like greed, theft, and drunkenness, same-sex sexuality existed in ancient Corinth and exists today. We should not be surprised to see any of the sins Paul mentions bubbling up in any human heart. Same-sex sexuality is not unexpected.

Next, Paul takes an abrupt and beautiful turn after condemning sin: “And such were some of you,” he says (v. 11). Paul’s readers have already and decisively changed. Transformation has already come.

Paul did not list random sins. These are contextual sins in which Corinthian Christians had once been living, sins that had defined them. Yet God intervened. Such were some of you. What they once were, they are no longer. Paul explains what accounts for this dramatic change: “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (v. 11).

The Corinthians were washed: God cleansed them of their sin through the shed blood of Christ. What should have counted against them has been taken away. As Paul puts it elsewhere, God has “forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us” (Col. 2:13–14).

They were sanctified: God not only washed them but made them new and set them apart as his own. A decisive change has taken place in their relationship to sin. They are no longer under its dominion and rule, enslaved to its wants and ways.

And they were justified: God declared them to be right with him, acquitted and free from any charge that might be brought against them. He can now be eternally for them.

These words give all Christians deep encouragement. No sin is inescapable. The Corinthians needed to be reminded of this, and so do we. So many of these sins can feel as though we might never be free of them. So often the lie of the Evil One is that a given sin is part of our identity, that there is no point in trying to deny it or live differently.

But the glorious truth is seen in the dramatic contrast between what these Corinthians were and who they now are. It gives us great hope for those we know who seem enmeshed in same-sex sexual sin. No sin is inescapable.

One of the sad patterns in the Bible is the people of God being tempted to return to something they were delivered from. The Israelites in the Old Testament, powerfully delivered from bondage in Egypt, long to return to it.

And the Corinthian church members still need to be warned about the seriousness of the sins they have been so gloriously converted from. They need to be reminded that those who continue in sin risk exclusion from the kingdom of God. They need to be alerted to the voices seeking to deceive them.

Christians can still be tempted by past sins after conversion. We have been made new, but we also continue to feel the presence of our sinful flesh.

When I moved across town a few years ago, I spent the first few days driving back to my old house by mistake. Similarly, no matter how dramatic the conversion, we retain muscle memory of our past sins.

Christians from a gay background should not be surprised if they feel some residue of desire toward that sin, however decisively in their heart they have broken away from it. The healthy Christian life isn’t evidenced by a lack of battles with sin but by full-out war with it (Gal. 5:17). We are commanded to “put to death the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13), which wouldn’t need to be said if we were now immune to those very deeds.

As we consider the sins Paul lists in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, we may find that one or more remain a long-term form of temptation for us. There may be some in our churches who, though deeply converted to Christ and growing in him, continue to feel temptation toward same-sex sexuality. This does not call into question the legitimacy of their conversion or the health of their walk with the Lord.

As those who were washed, sanctified, and justified, we still need to be warned against sin. We are not yet immune. We will still feel the presence of our sinful nature until we receive our resurrection bodies raised in full power and glory (1 Cor. 15:43), being like Jesus “because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). In the meantime, we press on, justified but still vulnerable, freed but not yet fully free, tempted but nonetheless rejoicing.

The five truth statements in 1 Corinthians are all crucial foundations for a healthy biblical perspective on same-sex sexuality. They need to be held together. Neglecting any one of them will lead to the loss of that health.

To neglect the clear teaching of Scripture that those who practice homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of heaven is to send men and women to destruction and deny them the blessing of repentance. To treat same-sex sexuality as if it is a unique category of sin is to leave many people feeling out of reach of God’s grace and to leave others feeling (equally dangerously) superior to those who experience same-sex attraction. To claim that same-sex sexuality is a unique problem can make those who feel drawn to it feel invisible. How will those tempted by same-sex attraction hear the gospel if no one even knows they are there?

To deny that same-sex sexuality is escapable, on the other hand, is to deny the life-changing power of the gospel and to leave people thinking that their sin defines them.

And removing the final pillar—denying that temptation continues for the believer—would give sincere Christians fleeing sin little or no pastoral support. It makes confession more difficult, fans the flames of shame, and makes those tempted even more vulnerable to falling back into the very sin they are seeking to avoid.

We have all that we need in God’s written Word. But we need all that God has to say about such an urgent and personal topic. We need the constant recalibration of returning to Scripture, to its warnings, its reassurances, and its truly matchless hope.

Sam Allberry is associate pastor of Immanuel Nashville and the author of Is God Anti-Gay? and You’re Not Crazy.

News

Why Both Parties Want Hispanic Evangelicals in 2024

This year’s most closely watched voting bloc is reshaping the presidential contest—and the church.

Monet Bacs is the Arizona strategic director for the Libre Initiative.

Monet Bacs is the Arizona strategic director for the Libre Initiative.

Photography by Hannah Yoon for Christianity Today

The congregation that gathers at Alliance Church doesn’t need to be told to greet their neighbors. Dotted with West Texas flair—cowboy boots, shiny belt buckles, and big hair—they come with hands outstretched.

Together, they sing out about God’s healing and rescue, “Ahora, soy ciudadano del cielo,” proclaiming a united identity as citizens of heaven.

America’s Hispanic evangelical churches, which have been growing with converts from Catholicism as well as new immigrants, are known for this familia-style fellowship. Their pastors tend to be bivocational, busy enough that they focus more on the needs of their congregations than the culture wars clashing outside.

“Five to ten years ago, most Hispanic Baptist congregations … and even Hispanic Assemblies of God churches, their focus was on the gospel,” said Jesse Rincones, lead pastor of Alliance. Political conversations “never really made it to our pulpits.”

But politics have increasingly emerged in Hispanic pews in the years since Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump has gained more Hispanic support with each run at the White House—performing better among the demographic than any Republican candidate in decades—and Hispanic evangelicals have been a key target in his faith outreach.

Rincones, who also leads the Hispanic Baptist Convention of Texas, said Republicans have “probably seen some success in doing that in [the white evangelical] space and are now expanding” to Hispanic communities.

Jesse Rincones is the lead pastor of Alliance Church in Lubbock, Texas.Photography by Hannah Yoon for Christianity Today
Jesse Rincones is the lead pastor of Alliance Church in Lubbock, Texas.

Hispanic voters are the group to watch this election year. Their ecclesiastical and political participation will shape both the pews and the ballot box. Though both political parties are going after the demographic with new levels of outreach, winning them will be difficult.

Given the diversity within their congregations, Hispanic evangelicals attest to how hard it is to capture a group that spans starkly different positions across generations, backgrounds, and theological beliefs.

Gabriel Salguero, pastor of The Gathering Place, an Assemblies of God church in Orlando, Florida, said Hispanic evangelicals are “the quintessential swing voters.”

Members of Salguero’s congregation come from both sides of the political aisle, and he chooses to identify as an Independent rather than back either major party.

From his Gen Z and millennial congregants, he frequently hears of weariness with polarizing and hyperpartisan party leadership.

“[There’s] the assumption of Because we’re evangelical, we’re Republicans; because we’re Latino, we’re Democrats,” said Salguero, who also serves as president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. “Assuming that they can take us for granted—either party—I think that’s a mistake.”

At Alliance Church, one red “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) cap began to turn up regularly among the cowboy hats in the crowd.

“Politics … it brings some division,” said David Ramirez, a Spanish ministries pastor at Alliance who moved to the United States from Mexico City 16 years ago for college. He’s had congregants tell him to encourage people to vote for Trump “because he’s the one who has a Christian agenda.”

Ramirez understands the appeal but doesn’t see it as his place to make an endorsement. Instead, he wants to encourage a church that is respectful and loving across political stances.

The man with the MAGA hat, a Texan of Mexican descent, told the pastor that he met people at church who changed his views. Ramirez read between the lines: “I know that he was talking about immigrants.

“He told me, ‘Those people have become some of my best friends, some of the people that I love the most,’” Ramirez said. “And he’s a Trump supporter, 100 percent.”

David Ramirez is a Spanish ministries pastor at Alliance Church.Photography by Hannah Yoon for Christianity Today
David Ramirez is a Spanish ministries pastor at Alliance Church.

One in seven eligible voters in the US today are Hispanic, the country’s largest minority demographic. Hispanic Americans have traditionally voted for Democrats, but the party’s hold is slipping. Hispanic voters went out for Barack Obama by a majority of 71 percent in 2012, Hillary Clinton by 66 percent in 2016, and Joe Biden by 59 percent last election.

Meanwhile, Trump increased his support among Hispanic voters by 10 percentage points—from 28 percent in 2016 to 38 percent in 2020—narrowing the margins in Democratic strongholds like Miami and flipping a majority Hispanic district on the Texas border.

His campaign appointed Hispanic pastors for explicit faith outreach, meeting with them on the campaign trail and tapping them to pray at rallies. Trump’s pledges to defend Christianity, protect religious liberty, and advance the pro-life cause have resonated with Hispanics who share those values alongside fellow evangelicals.

The appeal is making a difference: Since Trump came onto the political scene in 2016, there’s been on average a 4-point increase in the percentage of Hispanic Protestants siding with Republicans and a nearly 6-point decrease in Hispanic Protestants siding with Democrats, according to an analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. The shifts in both directions are twice as big among Hispanic Protestant voters than Hispanic voters overall.

Charismatic circles are where Hispanics have really caught on to Trump’s message, joining a chorus of worshipers, prophets, and celebrity pastors who see Trump as God’s chosen. Over half of Hispanic Protestants identify as either Pentecostal or charismatic and believe in spiritual gifts from divine healing to speaking in tongues.

“So many Hispanic Christians—Protestants—are formally or informally Pentecostal,” said Robert Chao Romero, a pastor and a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

When individuals, particularly in immigrant communities, experience struggle, “Jesus meets us so powerfully,” Romero explained. He told the story of one of his cousins, who had heart problems, going to the doctor and “they’re praying, praying—and the next day the doctor goes, ‘You have no heart problems.’”

“We all have stories like that,” Romero said. “We experience God in those active ways.”

This awareness of God at work in the world and sensitivity to the spiritual realm can put higher stakes on political engagement. Praying for certain candidates and policies, getting involved in activism, and expecting miracles and political revival become Christian responsibilities imbued with calling.

Nilsa Alvarez is the Hispanic director for the Faith & Freedom Coalition.Photography by Hannah Yoon for Christianity Today
Nilsa Alvarez is the Hispanic director for the Faith & Freedom Coalition.

Nilsa Alvarez said her call to politics first sounded like a cascade of “really tiny, tiny little screams” echoing in her ears as she prayed on a park bench. She felt God tell her to advocate for victims of abortion. Later, she said, she saw a vision of Jesus taking her in and out of meetings in the White House. In the vision, she told Jesus she didn’t belong there, but she said Jesus encouraged her to be in the room.

“I could never identify myself with any of the prophets that ministered at my church, because they are prophets that God has anointed to build up the body. But there are those that are called to build up the government,” Alvarez said. She first got involved in politics ahead of the 2016 race, inspired to elect a Republican who could appoint Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Alvarez was a music minister at a Hispanic church in the Miami suburbs at the time. She soon met the faith director for the Florida Republican Party and began volunteering at voter registration drives at churches.

Her next job was regional faith director for the GOP. She said she knew inside her spirit that’s where her prophetic gift was meant to be used. When Trump took office, she found herself, along with other faith leaders, “going in and out of the White House. Like I saw.”

Alvarez, who now serves as the Hispanic director for the Faith & Freedom Coalition, described her political activism as part of a larger movement “to shift the culture in God’s direction” by bringing Christian influence into the government. Among charismatics, the concept of Christians being called to influence various realms of society is called the Seven Mountain Mandate.

The movement began decades ago as a way to spur evangelical engagement in rather than retreat from seven areas: media, government, education, economy, family, religion, and entertainment.

These days, it’s most commonly cited by charismatic and apostolic leaders calling for a Christian takeover in these spaces—dominionism—in preparation for Christ’s second coming. Self-declared prophets have incorporated Trump into Seven Mountain ideology, proclaiming that God chose him to use his influence to reclaim areas of culture.

“In a very short period of time, I think because there were some really high-profile, charismatic celebrity Trump supporters who were very open with their celebration of the Seven Mountain Mandate—an idea that had been pretty obscure in charismatic circles—all of a sudden it was just everywhere,” said Leah Payne, a historian of religion at Portland Seminary.

Not all charismatic- or Pentecostal-leaning Hispanic evangelicals lean to the right, Payne pointed out, though some prominent ones do. Honduran American televangelist Guillermo Maldonado rallied for Trump at his apostolic Miami megachurch, El Rey Jesús. It was the kickoff to the president’s “Evangelicals for Trump” campaign in 2020.

“We ask you, Father, that he could be the Cyrus to bring reformation, to bring change into this nation,” Maldonado prayed as Trump’s faith advisers laid hands on the president. “I declare, God, that you use him to change the spiritual atmosphere of this nation.”

Beyond the theological underpinnings drawing Hispanic charismatics to the former president, their national backgrounds can also play a significant factor.

Hispanic Americans who fled places with oppressive leftist or authoritarian governments—think Venezuela, Nicaragua, or Cuba—are inclined to oppose what they see as more socialist-leaning positions from Democrats. They’re also more likely to embrace churches and pastors that are outspoken on politics.

“Because of the countries they come from, they’re like, Well, we don’t want to become socialist,” Romero said. “There’s that natural more Republican-leaning thing happening in that context.”

But the trends among Hispanics are far more nuanced than a rightward shift seen in turnout for Trump.

Alexia Salvatierra, academic dean of Fuller Theological Seminary’s Spanish-language program, Centro Latino, and associate professor of mission and global transformation, points to the younger generations of Hispanic Christians that are growing the church.

Around a third of worshipers in Hispanic Protestant congregations in the US are under 30, surveys show, and their leaders also skew younger. Like others in Gen Z, young Hispanic believers are more interested than their older, conservative-leaning Christian relatives in addressing societal ills—advocating for criminal justice, education access, domestic violence solutions, or immigration reform.

When Salvatierra talks about justice and mercy in theology classes at Centro Latino, more than once she’s seen Hispanic students start crying “because I’ve finally given them permission to do what they want to do,” she said.

Hispanics represent the biggest immigrant group in America. Whether they’ve been here for generations or are new arrivals, most believe the immigration system needs to change. Hispanic voters favor extending legal status to “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, and immigrants who have lived in the US a long time, but many also see the need to increase border security.

The Libre Institute, a nonprofit focused on Latinos in the US, found in a survey of Hispanic voters that two-thirds agreed the country should do what’s necessary to “stop the flow of illegal immigration” at the southern border.

For immigrants who have their citizenship, the tough rhetoric about immigration crackdowns from Trump’s camp may not faze them for another practical reason.

“Mass deportations … it’s a really difficult thing to pull off,” said Jose Mallea, a presidential appointee to the George W. Bush White House who also advised Jeb Bush on Hispanic outreach during his 2016 presidential campaign. He said voters might be thinking, “I’m going to vote for [Trump] anyway because I believe in everything else.”

Evangelicals have grown more hawkish on illegal immigration in the past two decades. They have also advocated for immigration reform and asylum for migrants fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries while expanding ministries to assist new arrivals. Most Hispanic churches in the US have programs to help recent immigrants in some way, such as providing information, offering rides, or hosting English classes.

This year, Trump has made quelling illegal immigration a key component of his campaign, and polling showing rising public concern on the issue has left the Biden camp scrambling to address it as well. At the launch of the “Latinos con Biden-Harris” initiative in Phoenix, Biden told a crowd that “you’re the reason” he beat Trump and “I need you badly.”

Samuel Rodriguez, who leads the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, told CT that he believes the Republican Party needs a mindset shift when it comes to immigration. “The Republican Party needs to look at immigrants as a blessing,” he said. “And they need to be explicit and say legal immigration is a blessing.”

Rodriguez condemned racist rhetoric about immigrants from Trump’s camp but said priorities like economic safety, parental rights in education, and religious liberty will drive Hispanic Americans toward the GOP in greater numbers.

Rodriguez believes faith leaders, both liberal and conservative, will not shy away from political conversations this election cycle.

“My prediction is you will see pastors this year more than ever before in American history encouraging their members to vote,” said Rodriguez, who’s also the pastor of New Season, a Pentecostal megachurch based in Sacramento, California.

The Libre Initiative (sister organization to the Libre Institute), a libertarian-leaning group funded by the Koch brothers, focuses on outreach to Hispanic voters and centers its message on immigration reform, the economy, education, and health care. It’s now headed by Mallea, who brings his background in politics as well as his experience as a business owner in Miami.

For two decades, he’s fielded the same question again and again: “If Hispanic voters place so much importance on faith and family, why aren’t more of them joining the GOP?” Mallea’s response to Republicans: “Because you haven’t even tried to go into the community.”

He believes recent outreach efforts are finally bearing fruit. “This is going to be a historic year,” he predicted.

Libre steers clear of culture-war debates over issues like abortion and religious freedom and takes a pragmatic, pocket-book-based approach. At its Phoenix office, a cheeky sign on one wall reads, “Bidenomics is bad economics” in all caps.

After a stint working for the Republican Party, Monet Bacs ended up turned off by partisan politics but still wanted to find ways to fill the gap in outreach to her community.

“Honestly, just by the grace of God, I was working with a friend and she invited me to a Libre event,” Bacs, a 20-something Christian whose business casual attire would be at home on Capitol Hill, told me.

“I was very quickly blown away,” she said. Instead of the “cold, normal political scene,” volunteers traded hugs. There was warmth.

As the Arizona strategic director for Libre, Bacs coordinates English classes, grocery handouts, and networking events for entrepreneurs. “It gives me a lot of purpose every morning. When I wake up, I get to go to work,” she said. “I do feel like I’m meant to be here. It’s where God led me.”

Her father, who came to the United States from Guatemala on a foreign exchange program as a teenager, impressed upon Bacs that civic participation and political engagement couldn’t be taken for granted.

“In Guatemala, it wasn’t even an option to really think about those conversations,” she said. “The most civic thing you could do was just vote, and that was super exciting to him. So when he came to America, it was a complete mental overhaul, which is why he absolutely fell in love with this country. So that’s my passion, sharing that with other people.”

Bacs believes that Hispanic communities like hers are the sleeping giant in politics. “At the end of the day, everyone in this chapter, we all know how important it is to get our community involved. We’re constantly being left out of the conversation.”

Earlier this year, Libre took a group of Hispanic high school students on a tour of the state capitol in Phoenix. There, Republican representative Michele Peña—who flipped a Democratic-leaning district in an upset in 2022—spoke to the group, switching between Spanish and English. She explained, Schoolhouse Rock! style, how bills become laws and admonished them to stay in school.

Bacs believes having a focus on policy and practical how-tos resonates with voters who care more about opportunities and cost of living than political gesturing.

Latinos have drastically higher rates of starting and owning new businesses than any other racial or ethnic group in the US. Mallea said this entrepreneurial spirit, along with the perception that Republicans are stronger on economic issues, will win some Hispanic voters over time. As the Democratic Party “started to shift away from some of those values … all of a sudden, Hispanics are open to someone else.”

Yahaira Felix, Libre’s grassroots engagement director, was shocked after getting her green card to learn how “easy it is to open a business here in the United States.”

Felix, who worked in engineering in Mexico, started a cleaning company in 2022 after minimum-wage jobs rejected her for being overqualified. A few months later, Libre recruited her.

“The freedom that you have in your country is so different than the freedom that you have here in this country,” she said. “When you really learn those things, really, you want to keep it.”

As November draws near, disagreements about the best way to preserve those freedoms will lead to some bitter divisions, leaving churches wrestling with how to respond. But the friction may result in less wear in the social fabric of churches with strong connections among their members—like Alliance Church.

Jorge Vazquez is the Texas director of the Conexión Pastors Initiative.Photography by Hannah Yoon for Christianity Today
Jorge Vazquez is the Texas director of the Conexión Pastors Initiative.

Last year Jorge Vazquez, the administrative pastor of Alliance and the Texas director of the Conexión Pastors Initiative, led a dozen church members in a Bible study of politics and the Cross after some expressed interest in leaning into, rather than away from, political conversations.

For eight weeks they discussed typical election-year topics—poverty and economics, abortion, race relations, and same-sex marriage. “There were some healthy disagreements,” Vazquez admitted. But at the end of the day, no one walked away from their relationships—or the church.

Salvatierra says she doesn’t think this year’s contentious politics will splinter Hispanic communities of faith.

While she sees younger generations skewing more progressive than older relatives, she doesn’t see church splits “because we are a familia-oriented culture. … That means that you can’t demonize the other.

“The reality is that the Latino evangelical community is diverse across the political spectrum,” she added. “We tend to have relationships across the line.”

As more attention turns to Hispanics as a key voting bloc, political strategists and commentators will try to capture and predict their approach to the presidential race.

But those in Hispanic churches know better—they’ve seen the varied and nuanced perspectives, even among fellow believers. They’ve heard neighbors express different priorities and callings across backgrounds, ages, states, and income brackets. And they still call them family.

Harvest Prude is CT’s national political correspondent.

Theology

A Theological Monument to Unity amid Diversity

Fifty years ago, the Lausanne Covenant’s solution to rampant division in evangelical ranks wasn’t uniformity.

Illustration by Ibrahim Rayintakath

In the 2000 movie Memento, protagonist Leonard Shelby has a specific brain injury that prevents him from forming new long-term memories. He can remember information for 30 seconds to a minute at most, but then he forgets everything.

Leonard’s disconnect from his past leaves him in a perpetual state of bewilderment about how he got into his present predicament: What enemy am I running from—and why? Why am I holding a gun? His confusion is a consequence of amnesia, an inability to remember one’s own history. If Leonard could just relearn and remember the salient parts of his past, he could finally return to a stable existence, with a sane understanding of himself and the people around him.

Being an evangelical today is much like this. We too are disconnected from our past, albeit for more reversible reasons than a brain injury. As a result, evangelicals are more divided now than ever, with many of us combating enemies who were once friends.

But what if we paused to remember our history? Not only would we recall who we are and how we got here, but we might even rediscover the best that evangelicalism has been, is, and can be once again.

Of course, one of the biggest problems today is that there seems to be almost no consensus on what the word evangelical even means. If only evangelicals from around the world could agree upon the baseline parameters for evangelicalism—something minimal enough to encourage healthy diversity but substantial enough to ensure doctrinal integrity.

What if something like this already exists?

Fifty years ago, in July 1974, around 2,700 Christian leaders from 150 countries traveled to Lausanne, Switzerland, at the behest of American evangelist Billy Graham and British theologian John Stott.

The conference was officially titled “the First International Congress of World Evangelization,” but it came to be known as the first Lausanne gathering of ’74. And although it included merely a portion of the global church, Time magazine famously reported at the time that the congress was “possibly the widest-ranging meeting of Christians ever held.”

Top: Participants arrive at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974. Bottom: Booths translate Lausanne plenary sessions into the six official languages of the congress.Courtesy of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Top: Participants arrive at the Palais de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1974. Bottom: Booths translate Lausanne plenary sessions into the six official languages of the congress.

Perhaps the most important and lasting output of this gathering was the Lausanne Covenant, which in time would prove to be one of the most influential documents in modern evangelicalism. The purpose of the document was to answer a key question: How much must we agree with one another to partner together in the task of world missions?

At the time, as now, evangelicalism was feeling the effects of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, which caused ugly splits in almost every major Christian institution and denomination. The fundamentalist approach to differences involved rigorous litmus tests and doctrinal rigidity. The progressive outlook avoided setting any doctrinal boundaries, risking substantive departures from historical Christianity.

But evangelicals took another tack.

The evangelical approach to diversity exemplified at Lausanne is characterized both by (1) careful negotiation of unity across differences that is grounded in common confessions of historical Christianity and (2) celebration of diversity itself as an intrinsic good, and even evidence of an expression of God’s intended plan for the global, universal church of all believers.

The Lausanne Covenant provided a theological definition of evangelical and quite intentionally avoided any sociopolitical elements associated with the movement. It also did not stake out positions on a host of important yet secondary issues related to theology, doctrine, and praxis. For instance, there is no discussion of baptism, gender roles in ministry, or the age of the earth and evolution.

By steering clear of these sorts of issues, the Lausanne Covenant included Christians on both sides of disagreements who might otherwise be divided. Instead, the leaders of the congress sought to create a covenantal community across such differences and in service of a shared mission for “the whole Church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”

In one sense, the covenant is a corporate statement of belief composed of 15 articles, an introduction, and a conclusion. At just over 3,100 words, the document is short enough to be legibly typeset onto two sides of a single page. Stott, chair of the drafting committee, explained the reasoning behind each article in his exposition—a must-read companion to the covenant.

It would be a mistake to see this document merely as a statement of belief since it was intended as a covenant, Stott writes—a “binding contract” that commits its signatories to a common purpose and partnership. After 10 days of debate, discussion, and negotiation, most of the attendees (2,300) signed the document together. As Stott explained, “We did not want just to declare something, but to do something—to commit ourselves to the task of world evangelization.”

Even now, the covenant is meant to be signed by those who read and agree with it—and in doing so, we commit to cooperating with each other in the mission of God.

Like most evangelicals, I had never heard of the Lausanne Covenant growing up, nor was I asked to sign it until I was an adult. I’m a dark-skinned Indian, born in Southern California in 1978 to first-generation immigrants who were both Christians—including a father who studied at Biola University.

And while those at Christian institutions sometimes engaged with the Lausanne Covenant, I attended a public high school and a secular state university. The churches I grew up attending were nondenominational, which came with strengths but also some amnesia about Christian history.

I first learned of the covenant in late 2000, 24 years ago, when I was a graduate student studying to be a physician scientist. I applied and was accepted for the Harvey Fellowship—a scholarship offered to Christians entering underrepresented fields—and all applicants were required to sign the Lausanne Covenant. The next summer, I headed to Washington, DC, for a weeklong event to meet up with a small group of other new Harvey fellows.

This event substantially broadened my experience of evangelical diversity. Ben Sasse, a Yale historian and Reformed Presbyterian, was the first Christian I knew who made a plausible argument for infant baptism, even though he and I disagreed about it. Mac Alford, a plant biologist from Cornell, was the first Christian I’d met who affirmed evolution—which I rejected at the time.

And although these disagreements were uncomfortable, at least for me, we had all signed the Lausanne Covenant (which takes no stance on either of these issues) and so had already committed to cooperate.

The Lausanne Covenant offers a theological account of our differences—based on the underlying belief that these differences can be intrinsically valuable. The leaders of the congress were unsatisfied with a reduced community of agreement, seeking instead an expansive community across our differences.

The covenant explains, using what Stott called “a literal translation of Eph. 3:10,” that our different views on Scripture are a mechanism by which God’s wisdom is disclosed to us:

God’s revelation in Christ and in Scripture is unchangeable. Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole church ever more of the many-colored wisdom of God.

Instead of retrenching doctrinal boundaries to achieve a counterfeit peace, the evangelical invitation is to read our Bibles together, to sort out our differences, and to negotiate—and these instincts were clearly present in the way the Lausanne Covenant came to be.

Though the conference itself lasted only 10 days, the process of drafting the covenant took months of dialogue and negotiation. But with 2,700 delegates at the conference, how much cooperation was possible? Quite a bit, as it turns out. In Stott’s assessment, “It may truly be said, then, that the Lausanne Covenant expresses a consensus of the mind and mood of the Lausanne Congress.”

The drafting of the document was assigned to a small committee including Stott; the then president of Wheaton College, Hudson Armerding; and Samuel Escobar, a Peruvian theologian from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Months prior to the July meeting, attendees were sent papers from all the meeting’s speakers and asked to provide written feedback. Written by J. D. Douglas, editor of Christianity Today at the time, the preliminary draft was based on the key themes and insights of these papers.

In his exposition, Stott explains, “Already this document may truly be said to have come out of the Congress (although the Congress had not yet assembled), because it reflected the contributions of the main speakers whose papers had been published in advance.”

Before the conference, an early draft was sent out to several advisers, whose comments were used to guide the first revision of the document. Then a second revision was overseen by the committee.

But the drafters also wanted to engage with, listen to, and learn from the attendees themselves. So midway through the July meeting, each attendee was given a copy of the third draft of the covenant and asked to submit their responses and discuss in small groups that were organized each day.

From this feedback, any objections and suggested amendments were submitted for the drafting committee to consider. According to Stott, the congress

responded with great diligence. Many hundreds of submissions were received (in the official languages), translated into English, sorted and studied. Some proposed amendments cancelled each other out, but the drafting committee incorporated all they could.

Ultimately, this negotiation substantially impacted the final document along three primary themes. First, a carefully negotiated statement on biblical inerrancy was added. Second, the covenant’s statement on social responsibility was bolstered. Third, several changes were made to reflect the concerns and wisdom of the global church outside the Western world. These three themes, I believe, summarize the lessons of Lausanne for our current moment.

I. The article on the authority of Scripture was strengthened to include a carefully negotiated statement on inerrancy, influenced by input from Francis Schaeffer and others, which read that the Bible is “without error in all that it affirms.” This specific change was hotly disputed, creating a significant challenge for the drafting committee.

On the one hand, the reasons for including a statement on inerrancy were strong. A different view of Scripture was the root cause of many deep disagreements between evangelicals and progressive Christians. The modernist claim, driven by higher criticism, was that the Bible was “authoritative” but that its message was always subject to change due to its many errors.

Alongside this assertion, many liberal Christians rejected belief in the Resurrection, the Virgin Birth, and a historical Adam and Eve. And while these three classic claims of Christianity are not equally important, rejecting any one of them is a major revision with far-reaching consequences.

Clarifying the nature of this disagreement about Scripture was on the forefront of conference organizers’ minds. For good reason, evangelicals could not easily partner in world missions with those whose understanding of the gospel did not include, for instance, the bodily resurrection of Jesus—for this would be another gospel entirely (Gal. 1:6–9). As the apostle Paul said, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Cor. 15:17).

But also, in the immediate context, the Lausanne conference was a response to the Bangkok Conference on Salvation Today, convened the year before (1973) by the World Council of Churches (WCC). Even the location was chosen in part because of Lausanne’s proximity to Geneva, where the WCC is headquartered.

The Bangkok Conference included evangelical delegates as well as liberal and mainline Christians, many of whom had drifted from orthodoxy. And while its final report includes a concession to evangelicals, affirming with Acts 4:12 that “there is no other name [but Jesus] given among men by which we must be saved,” other requests to strengthen the theology of the gospel—echoing the Frankfurt Declaration of 1970, in which German Christians pushed back against the “humanistic turn” of missions in the WCC—were rebuffed as Western contributions that did not speak for everyone.

Moreover, the Bangkok report included statements labeling any release from societal oppression as a form of salvation, including “the peace of the people in Vietnam, independence in Angola, justice and reconciliation in Northern Ireland and release from the captivity of power.” In Christianity Today, Peter Beyerhaus wrote,

Here, under a seemingly biblical cover, the concept of salvation has been so broadened and deprived of its Christian distinctiveness that any liberating experience can be called “salvation.” Accordingly, any participation in liberating efforts would be called “mission.”

Beyerhaus added that the conference also presented Maoism—the communism of China—as an acceptable alternative to Christianity. Similarly, the church of prophet Simon Kimbangu—who claimed he was the incarnate coming of God the Father and that his son was the second incarnation of Jesus—was presented as a laudable example of an indigenous ministry.

More than offhand comments, these were intentional appeals of the WCC leadership to Asian and African churches, and any theological objections were dismissed as unhelpful attempts to assimilate indigenous churches to Western thinking.

While no one can dictate who is allowed to self-identify with the term Christian or even evangelical, the Lausanne Covenant grounds Christian unity in a shared mission of proclaiming the whole gospel to the whole world. This mission is why we join this often-uncomfortable community known as the church despite our differences.

Serious disagreements about the nature of the gospel can often be traced back to two fundamentally different ways of understanding Scripture. Everyone in this debate could agree that the Scripture was “authoritative,” but were its teachings always changing and full of errors?

On the other hand, even for many orthodox Christians, the term inerrancy was still the sticking point. Inerrancy was a loaded word, since it was already being used by some fundamentalists as a doctrinal litmus test. Compounding the problem, the term was poorly defined since it was still years before the Chicago statements on inerrancy and hermeneutics were written in 1978 and 1982, respectively. It should come as no surprise, then, that many attendees strongly objected to the covenant’s use of inerrancy in its statement on Scripture.

Stott’s solution to this impasse was forged in the negotiation process and was wise. Instead of demanding the word inerrancy, he replaced it with a concise and salient definition of the term by saying that Scripture is “without error in all that it affirms.” Evangelicals objecting to the term inerrancy could affirm this, but many progressives would not.

II. The congress also bolstered the covenant’s article on social responsibility. Here again the drafters were distinguishing themselves from both the progressives at the WCC and the fundamentalists’ overreaction to liberalism’s social gospel.

Tracing Billy Graham’s own path on the issue of social justice provides some instructive background. In 1953, breaking with his Southern upbringing, Graham began insisting that his audiences be integrated, with Blacks and whites seated next to each other.

In 1960, Graham spoke at widely publicized revival meetings in several countries in Africa—preaching the gospel to gigantic crowds at packed stadiums—but he was unwilling to preach the gospel to crowds segregated by the South African apartheid.

Graham’s deliberate actions were clear sociopolitical statements on racial integration in the church—infuriating many fundamentalists, including those in his own denomination, the Southern Baptists.

A week after Graham’s rebuff of South Africa, fundamentalist evangelist and broadcaster Bob Jones Sr. responded in an Easter radio message titled “Is Segregation Scriptural?” Arguing from a tortured reading of Acts 17:26, Jones taught that the answer was yes. Efforts to integrate the races and end segregation, he contended, worked against God’s created order and distracted from the task of sharing the gospel. In this, Jones echoed the views of many Christians in the South.

Though apartheid continued until the 1990s, Graham finally preached in South Africa in 1973, just one year before Lausanne—in perhaps one of the first large gatherings in the country to seat black, white, and brown people together. To the integrated crowd of 100,000, the Southern preacher roared, “Christianity is not a white man’s religion. … Christ belongs to all people.”

Top left: A. Jack Dain and Billy Graham sign the Lausanne Covenant at the closing ceremony of Lausanne, 1974. Bottom left: Leaders of the Lausanne congress during a press conference, 1974. Right: Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham.Courtesy of Billy Graham Evangelistic Association
Top left: A. Jack Dain and Billy Graham sign the Lausanne Covenant at the closing ceremony of Lausanne, 1974. Bottom left: Leaders of the Lausanne congress during a press conference, 1974. Right: Martin Luther King Jr. and Billy Graham.

Graham was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and sometimes a public ally to King’s cause, and he continued to grow in his desire to see racial justice over the course of his life. But Graham wondered if he had done enough, and in 2005, he expressed regret for not pushing for civil rights more forcefully, wishing he had protested with King in the streets.

This context brings life to the final version of the covenant’s text, which distinguishes the work of proclaiming the gospel—centering on God’s message to us specifically in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ—from the task of societal justice:

Here too we express penitence both for our neglect and for having sometimes regarded evangelism and social concern as mutually exclusive. Although reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty.

In response to the Bangkok Conference, the Lausanne Covenant makes it clear that liberation from oppression is not synonymous with the biblical concept of salvation. Yet the covenant also avoided the fundamentalist mistake of neglecting social justice and even called evangelicals to repent for dissociating Christianity from its rightful concern over the social order.

These are critical lessons for us today. Our present difficulties in talking and thinking about race, diversity, and social justice are not new. The theological debate about the gospel and social justice is at least as old as the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. Evangelicals rightly rejected the social gospel and the particular forms of liberation theology that led to a departure from historical Christian teaching. Yet we have often been too complacent—and too untroubled by our complacence—in our pursuit of justice.

Today, a contentious battle rages over critical race theory (CRT) and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. There are many ways to define and implement CRT and DEI, some of which approximate secularized versions of liberation theology. But the motivating desire to include and encourage diversity in society is admirable and ultimately reflects a longing for God’s kingdom. This is why many Christian calls for racial justice are driven by the language and concerns of Scripture and even grounded in the person of Jesus Christ.

At least at a high level, the stated goals of CRT and DEI are not the problem, even if we fear many common approaches to these ends are misguided or destructive. For those of us concerned about antibiblical versions of CRT, the best antidote might be to follow the Lausanne Covenant’s example. May we articulate a robust theology of justice and follow through in our actions—and may we be penitent for our past failures to pursue justice.

III. In studying the Lausanne Movement, I’m always struck by members’ pride, joy, and love for the diversity of the global, non-Western church and their desire to amplify its voice. The conference is structured to include people from the most remote, underrepresented, and underresourced countries. It offers sliding-scale fees to ensure participants with less means can attend. Even as organizers gather the most diverse and global group of Christians in history each meeting, they always express sadness for the corners of the church that cannot attend.

That said, Lausanne’s commitment to global participation faced several obstacles early on in its history—beginning with its first gathering, where more than 1,000 of the 2,700 attendees came from developing countries.

Before Lausanne, some African leaders called for a “moratorium” on Western missionaries and any money raised through their networks. This was in part because many objected to the paternalistic patterns they saw in missions, which were often fueled by large imbalances in wealth.

Western missions, even when well intentioned, have at times been exploitative and failed to create healthy, collaborative relationships that serve non-Western countries well. And to be sure, the missionary movement’s association of Western culture with Christianity did distort the gospel and was often a stumbling block to the rest of the world.

Lausanne organizers invited Christians from all sides of this debate to the congress, including Kenyan theologian John Gatu, the author of the moratorium. At the congress, the East Africa National Strategy group of about 60 Africans took up the question of this request. A robust and reasonable debate ensued between Gatu, who argued for the moratorium, and Festo Kivengere, an Anglican bishop from Uganda who argued against it. By the end of the week, both sides had sorted out their differences enough to offer a consensus statement to the congress:

The idea behind moratorium is concerned about over-dependence upon foreign resources both personnel and finances, which sometimes hinders initiative and development of local responsibility. [Our] group felt that the application of the concept behind moratorium might be considered for specific situations rather than generally.

With the moratorium writ large effectively withdrawn, the rest of the congress—and the largely Western drafting committee—could have responded triumphantly by avoiding the issue altogether. But instead, the committee recognized the legitimacy of the African concerns and amended the draft to state, “We also acknowledge that some of our missions have been too slow to equip and encourage national leaders to assume their rightful responsibilities.”

Elsewhere, in its article on “Evangelism and Culture,” the covenant also includes an acknowledgment that while “the gospel does not presuppose the superiority of any culture to another,” global “missions have, all too frequently, exported with the gospel an alien culture.”

The covenant as distributed by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in the 1970s.
The covenant as distributed by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in the 1970s.
The covenant as distributed by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in the 1970s.
The covenant as distributed by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization in the 1970s.

In these statements, the non-Western church rightly corrected the Western church, and the West responded with repentance. Once again, the “many-colored wisdom of God,” to recall the covenant’s phrase, arose not despite but because of disagreements that needed to be sorted out.

At the root of this issue was the common desire of non-Western Christians to be welcomed as equals. And the Lausanne Covenant overtly salutes the beauty of this vision:

We rejoice that a new missionary era has dawned. The dominant role of western missions is fast disappearing … demonstrating that the responsibility to evangelize belongs to the whole body of Christ.

Fifty years ago, evangelicals were becoming aware of how non-Western churches suffered when the gospel was too tightly linked with Western cultures and countries. And in our present day, we are seeing firsthand the dangers and damage this linkage has wrought on Western churches too.

Whenever we identify Christianity with the West, America, or any other sociopolitical entity, our witness and our understanding of the gospel become distorted. And when we ignore the full diversity of voices in the global church, we neglect the “many-colored wisdom” of God.

Top left: Festo Kivengere. Top right: John Stott. Bottom: Attendees at Lausanne II in 1989.Courtesy of Wheaton Archives & Special Collections, Wheaton College, IL
Top left: Festo Kivengere. Top right: John Stott. Bottom: Attendees at Lausanne II in 1989.

The Lausanne Covenant created a strange sort of movement—a network of Christians across the globe from several denominations and organizations. And although the congress itself was composed exclusively of Protestants, the covenant they adopted was intentionally in alignment with other branches of Christianity. At least among the Harvey fellows, many Catholics and Orthodox Christians have signed it too.

A Christian from China once recounted to me his being asked to sign the covenant, which brought him real fear and concern. In China, signatures were physical evidence that the government used to identify Christians and persecute them, so he had been taught never to sign something that would so thoroughly implicate him. Still, after much deliberation, he decided to sign the covenant—the only belief statement he has ever signed. Many of us will never face persecution like his, but in signing the covenant, we are joining in solidarity with him and so many others like him.

Particularly outside America, the Lausanne community has continued to grow, and although it remains full of disagreements, it has kept in clear view the mission of the one who is greater than all our differences.

Top: Attendees discuss the program at Lausanne II, 1989. Bottom: A keynote session during Lausanne II.Courtesy of Wheaton Archives & Special Collections, Wheaton College, IL
Top: Attendees discuss the program at Lausanne II, 1989. Bottom: A keynote session during Lausanne II.

The Lausanne community continues to gather new generations of leaders. Fifteen years after the 1974 congress, in 1989, the Second International Conference for World Evangelism convened in Manila and came to be known as Lausanne II. This congress included 4,300 delegates from 173 countries, including the Soviet Union. And in 2010, 21 years later, the Third Lausanne Congress met in Cape Town, South Africa. This time, 4,000 delegates from 198 countries gathered in person, but many more participated virtually.

This September, the fourth congress will convene in Seoul, where 5,000 delegates—myself included—will attend in person and 5,000 will attend virtually. Tens of thousands more will attend satellite meetings across the globe.

Much has changed since the last gathering in 2010. New wars are raging around the world, and rumors of war loom even in Korea where we will meet. The United States is preparing for another contentious presidential election, along with many other countries, and several denominational conventions are continuing to divide over tensions between fundamentalism and progressivism.

Still, my hope is that evangelicals will once again have an opportunity to remember who we are, where we came from, and why it is vital for us to work across our differences rather than ignore, stifle, or divide over them. And perhaps, as we reorient ourselves to the work of God’s global mission, we may recover the best version of what it has meant to be an evangelical.

As we look toward Seoul this year, I urge all believers—evangelical or not—to read, discuss, and consider signing the Lausanne Covenant. May church leaders teach it from the pulpit so congregations can wrestle with what it demands of us. Let it remind us of the beautiful and beloved community of differences and disagreements to which we are called.

Let us covenant together, once again, to take up the great task of world missions, that God’s whole church might bring the whole gospel to the whole world.

S. Joshua Swamidass is a physician scientist, associate professor of laboratory and genomic medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, founder of Peaceful Science, and author of The Genealogical Adam and Eve.

Ideas

What Hath Jerusalem To Do With Mar-a-Lago?

Editor in Chief

Donald Trump owns many properties; American Christianity cannot be one of them.

Illustration by James Walton

If, by some wonder of time travel, you were to visit a small-group Bible study in 2010 and someone were to ask you, “What’s the state of the evangelical church where you are, up ahead of us in 2024?” you might explain all of the divided congregations, all the friendships broken, all the estranged families. You might mention that almost no evangelical under the age of 40 wants to use the word evangelical at all.

And if someone were to ask, “How did all this happen?” you might mention that a revolutionary leader emerged, demanding loyalty and vowing retribution and revenge against those who stand against him. You might add that this leader asks his supporters to wave away his sexual abuse of women, his criminal charges for seeking to use mob violence to keep him in power, his hush money to a porn star, his incitements to violence, his lies, his cruelty, his narcissism, and his dismissal of personal moral character as weakness.

Maybe one of those before-times Christians would slam their fist into their hand and exclaim, “This is exactly what Francis Schaeffer and Charles Colson and James Dobson all warned us about—this is what happens when evangelicals retreat from the public square. When the culture war is lost, immorality, relativism, and filth fill the void!”

Another might ask, “What are you 2024 Christians doing to try to turn the young people away from the normalization of this kind of decadence?”

“It’s not the young people who are turning to this,” you tell them. “It’s us. That’s why many campus ministries won’t use the word evangelical. In 2024, the next generation thinks support for this man, Donald Trump, is in fact what it means to be evangelical.”

By then, the silence might give way to someone noting that it’s time to wrap up. Someone might ask for an “unspoken” prayer request since no one would know what else to say.

Christianity Today does not endorse candidates. While this writer’s views of the former (and possibly future) president’s fitness for office and its implications for the American republic are public and emphatic, they are beside the point here. CT readers and contributors have a range of political views—Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Trump voters, Biden voters, conscientious objectors to voting at all, those who write in Steph Curry, and more. That’s as it should be. The implication that to be a Christian one must adopt a particular political ideology or partisan identity is awfully close to the Galatian heresy the apostle Paul called a different gospel altogether (Gal. 1:6–7).

The crisis we face now, though, is one of witness and identity. Evangelical Christianity—for good or for ill—has long been tied in the public mind to a celebrity. Many people in the past, when they thought of evangelicals, would have thought first of George Whitefield or Charles Finney or Aimee Semple McPherson or Billy Sunday or Billy Graham.

Every one of those “celebrities” would rather have had Jesus as the first thought of the watching world, but at least the public recognized the person preaching him and his gospel. Now, when our neighbors hear evangelical, the face that flashes before their minds first may be a mug shot—of one of the most divisive personas in American history.

This is not because the secular media has caricatured us or because Hollywood elites have ridiculed us. Not all evangelicals—not even all Trump-voting evangelicals—have sought this confusion. But when it comes to this crisis of identity, the psychological incentives are different.

Those who want a separation of church and Trump tend to be those who most want unity, who are waiting for some magical happening to “break the fever” and return us to the before-times. They tend to cringe if anyone even acknowledges the problem, speaking in vague generalities and avoiding the name Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, in far too many churches and schools and ministries, loyalty to Trump must be explicit and total to not risk being seen as a liberal, as not “one of us.” And in those places, a person is only “one of us” if that Christian is willing to believe, against all evidence, that the last election was stolen. One must be silent at least or celebratory at most when seeing a man scream profanities at a rally and then market a Bible he endorses. One must pay no attention when a jury finds the leader liable for sexually assaulting a woman. What is all of that doing to us?

Moreover, we are in a time when even some Trump-voting evangelicals are noticing how destructive it is that this one figure seems to dominate every facet of our lives. Think of all the friendships that are gone. Think of all the families that are estranged. Think of all the churches that are in tension, the denominations that are splintered. Think of what this leader has asked you to ignore, to justify, in order to stay loyal to him. Think of the fear that overwhelms any pang of conscience for so many—fear of donors, online mobs, or maybe the extended family text thread.

However you plan to vote—is this the way you want to live?

The Bible tells us that our father Jacob, in fear over meeting his brother, Esau, from whom he was estranged, told his servants to anticipate three questions: “To whom do you belong? Where are you going? And whose are these ahead of you?” (Gen. 32:17, ESV). We could do worse than to ask those same questions of ourselves.

Have we replaced our primary sense of belonging—to Christ and him crucified—with politics and personality? Are we still following Jesus in seeking “a kingdom that cannot shaken” (Heb. 12:28), or are we groping toward a time when every foe is vanquished, every victory total—something that can never happen in a democratic republic? And those out ahead of us—the generations to come—what are we telling them?

We cannot time travel to the past, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have time travelers all around us. They are the boys and girls in our Sunday school classes, the adolescents in our youth groups, the young adults leading our mission trips. When they look back on us, what will they think it means to be an evangelical Christian? Babylon asked for our souls, and we said no. Rome asked for our consciences, and we said no.

We take marching orders from Mount Zion, not from Mar-a-Lago. The watching world should know the difference, and so should we. We can pretend it doesn’t matter, but it does. What difference does it make who walks in to the tune of “Hail to the Chief” if our children don’t believe us when we say, “Jesus is Lord”?

Russell Moore is CT’s editor in chief and host of The Russell Moore Show.

News

When One Christian College Closes, Another Takes Care of Its Alumni Needs

Houghton University agreed to help two shuttered evangelical schools with files and transcripts going back decades. It ended up being more work than anyone bargained for.

Christianity Today July 1, 2024
Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

Last summer Alliance University, known as Nyack College for most of its history, was in the middle of suddenly shutting down its operations after 140 years. As the frantic eight-week closure process began—helping students finish out classes, selling the school’s Steinway grand piano, pulling art off the walls—Alliance sought out another institution to become the ongoing custodian of records for students and alumni.

Needing a permanent home were transcripts going back decades, student financial records, and athletic records, as well as licensure documentation for Alliance counseling, nursing, teaching, and social work programs. Alumni might need those documents at any time for employers or licensing bodies.

It was tens of thousands of documents—some digital and some in filing cabinets.

Alliance asked Houghton University, another Christian college about five hours away in New York State, to take on the responsibility. Around the same time, The King’s College, another New York Christian college in trouble, asked Houghton to be the custodian of its records.

“It was loading the life rafts because the Titanic is going down,” said David Turk, the provost of Alliance University at the time that it closed. With so many Alliance and Nyack graduates going into ministry work, Turk felt it was important to have another Christian college care for the documents.

Christian higher education is a small world, especially in New York. Some Alliance administrators were Houghton graduates. Some Houghton professors are Alliance/Nyack graduates. Houghton readily agreed.

“For us there was no question,” said David Davies, Houghton’s provost and the son of two Nyack graduates. “We have such strong alignment with them. … Alliance and Houghton are two of the oldest Christian higher ed institutions in the state and in the region.”

But he added, “No one had a good firsthand sense of how much work this would be. … It has been more than we anticipated.”

Houghton’s experience may be useful for preparing other Christian higher education institutions to help fellow schools close well. Though a number of Christian colleges are seeing booming post-pandemic enrollment, the economics of Christian higher education are sobering.

Total undergraduate enrollment has been declining at schools affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) since 2015. And all schools are facing the “demographic cliff” of 2025, where the population of high school graduates drops significantly.

Last week, Eastern Nazarene University in Quincy, Massachusetts, announced its plan for closure. Eastern Nazarene is a member of the CCCU. Three other Christian schools have entered a teach-out agreement with Eastern Nazarene, which means they will take transfer students to help them finish their degrees in the same time frame.

“Like all small, private, liberal arts colleges, Eastern Nazarene has faced significant financial headwinds in recent years,” the school said in a statement.

Houghton is one place staying afloat. It welcomed its largest class in six years last fall and has an enrollment of about 800 students. It received 23 students from Alliance and 2 from King’s (most King’s students opted to stay in New York City).

When Alliance announced its closure, the school was in chaos. Turk was trying to help current students graduate. Deans of programs like nursing were working overtime to put their records together for Houghton, he said. Meanwhile, representatives from the Christian and Missionary Alliance headquarters came to gather all the personnel documentation, take pictures off the walls, and gather old yearbooks, Turk said. The school had the ed-tech company Parchment digitize as many records as it could for Houghton.

Kevin Kettinger, Houghton’s registrar, was working closely with employees at the Alliance registrar’s office.

“Seeing how painful it was for them made me really want to help even more,” Kettinger said. It was “raw,” he said.

“[Alliance staffers] bent over backwards in the midst of what they were going through,” said Davies.

In August of last year, Alliance’s athletic director (a Houghton graduate) drove a semitruck of Alliance’s paper records in dozens of filing cabinets to Houghton’s campus. Houghton distributed the 28 filing cabinets to various offices: athletics, counseling, student financial services.

Houghton had to bring in tech services to check on how to store Alliance’s digital data. The staff had to learn to use Parchment’s digitization system. All in all, it was more than 60,000 documents.

Davies said the school could have used a full-time person managing the process, although the work is tapering down some now.

“Alliance has a really large alumni base,” he said. “A lot of folks understandably panicked when they heard the institution was closing. They wondered how they were going to get information. … We had a lot of requests.”

Kettinger said Houghton staff were getting a flood of calls every day from Alliance alumni needing transcripts, replacement diplomas, licensure paperwork filled out, or degree verification. A year later the school still receives calls every day.

“We’re talking probably 20 master-degree programs,” said Turk from Alliance/Nyack. “Very, very complex. It’s not an easy thing to handle.”

People also called with requests Houghton couldn’t fulfill, about financial aid or tax forms or billing. They called because they hadn’t realized Alliance had closed and wanted to know what was going on. Some were upset about grades or graduation status, things Houghton couldn’t change or address. The records agreement stipulated that Houghton simply stewards the documents, and Houghton staff can’t go ask a former Nyack professor why he gave a certain grade. But Kettinger said the alumni “handled it really well” once they understood the situation.

“We’re hoping this is going to move into a more sustainable maintenance phase,” said Davies.

Houghton is still waiting for when it might receive student records from King’s. While King’s has ceased operations as a college, it still has a small staff and exists as an organization, so it has so far maintained its own documents.

Though Houghton made agreements to take records from King’s and Alliance, it is getting the files of four shuttered institutions in the bargain. Alliance’s records included 2,000 from another Christian school, Pinebrook Junior College, that closed in 1992 and transferred its records to Nyack.

And King’s is the custodian of records for Northeastern Bible College, a school that closed in 1990 and transferred its files to King’s.

For other schools facing this, Houghton administrators said having time to work with a closing school early in the process to know how to communicate to students and between institutions is helpful. Having a dedicated staff person helps the process, but that’s tough for small colleges to pull off.

Yet for all the work over the last year, the Houghton staff felt they were giving a gift to a fellow Christian college.

“We’re serving their students in the way we would want people to serve our students,” said Davies. “It’s an awful thing when your institution closes. You can’t turn it into a positive. It’s difficult emotionally; it’s difficult professionally.” As a Christian institution, “we don’t see ourselves in isolation,” he added.

Alliance staff felt that.

“[Closing] was a nightmare,” said Turk, the former provost of Alliance. “But Houghton was a dream.”

Theology

Celebrating the Stars and Their Maker on Māori New Year

As Matariki is celebrated in New Zealand, Christians navigate a return to the festival’s pagan roots.

Te Taumata Kapa Haka being performed for Matariki in New Zealand.

Te Taumata Kapa Haka being performed for Matariki in New Zealand.

Christianity Today July 1, 2024
Fiona Goodall / Stringer / Getty

The appearance of the Matariki star cluster (also known as Pleiades) in the New Zealand sky just before sunrise in late June or early July marks the new year in traditional Māori culture. Celebrated with feasts, prayers at dawn, and time spent with family, Matariki is a time to remember those who died in the past year, celebrate and give thanks for the present, and look forward to the future.

After the British colonized New Zealand in the mid-1800s, traditional Māori practices began to decline, and by the 1940s, public celebration of Matariki had stopped. Yet since the 1990s, Māori culture has undergone a successful revival, leading the New Zealand government to designate Matariki as a national holiday in 2022, celebrated this year on June 28 (although the festivities continue until July 6). This re-indigenization has also elicited the reintroduction of traditional beliefs, including the worship of ancestors and a pantheon of gods.

For Christians, this has led to a parsing of what believers should and should not embrace when celebrating Matariki. CT spoke with Michael Drake, who is of English and Māori heritage, about Christianity’s legacy among the Māori people and how believers can engage with Matariki today. Drake worked in Christian education for 50 years, including as a teacher, principal, curriculum writer, and school founder. Today he pastors and writes books, including the 2023 explainer A Christian Looks at Matariki.

Could you describe what Matariki is?

Matariki is a celebration embedded as far back as we know in Māori culture. It celebrates the rising of the Matariki star constellation, which is the beginning of the new year in our culture and indicates when harvesting and planting should be timed.

Rather than one unified group, the Māori are made up of different tribes with different customs, and we recognize the event in different ways. Yet there are common themes of eating, fellowshiping, and praying.

We cook hāngī by digging a hole in the ground and placing big rocks on the bottom and lighting a fire on top of it. After fighting the fire off, you put meat, fish, cabbage, and kūmara (sweet potato) in baskets in there with lots of water and cover it up with dirt. A few hours later, you open it up and the food is steamed.

It is a celebration of the new year. At that level, it’s something that Christians might well celebrate.

But traditional Māori culture is deeply animistic. There are prayers and incantations to the stars. The ancestors who died in the previous year are believed to have migrated to the stars, the Matariki constellation in particular. During the feast, the steam rising from the food you’re cooking goes up as a prayer to the stars, the ancestors, and those who died in the last year.

Did you celebrate Matariki growing up?

No, I was raised post–World War II at a time when my parents, who didn’t look overtly Māori, were able to hide the fact. I knew I had Māori ancestors but didn’t know I was Māori. They did this to keep us safe, due to the prevalent racism against Māori in New Zealand society.

It wasn’t until I was about 20 and went to college that I really understood my Māori heritage. It was quite exciting to see what my ancestry was and also to learn the significance of the gospel in Māori history.

How did the gospel come to the Māori people?

Anglican missionaries proclaimed the gospel to the Māori on Christmas Day in 1814. Over the years, God turned hearts massively. At the time, Māori were using muskets and cannons to fight each other, decimating the population. In God’s providence, Māori were ready for the gospel as they saw the promise of peace. Missionary Henry Williams came here in 1823 and established trust with them. He stood in the middle of a battlefield and told them to put down their rounds because God commanded them to live in peace.

By 1860, 80 percent of Māori were attending church on Sundays. The three keys to the Māori rapidly accepting the gospel were the preaching of the gospel, the translation of Scriptures into the Māori language (there was no written language previously), and the Māori themselves becoming evangelists.

How did the introduction of Christianity change their beliefs and practices?

There was a massive abandonment of pagan religion. The Scriptures were their rule of life. For example, in northern New Zealand, a group of chiefs each had multiple wives. As they read the Scriptures, they felt that was wrong—they should have only one wife. They decided to build a village where the surplus wives would be housed and placed under their protection so that they could be the husbands of one wife. They sought husbands for the other women. They worked out for themselves how the Scripture should be applied.

Christmas and Easter were celebrated. Matariki was celebrated in terms of celebrating family and community and thanking God for the food, the harvest, and the promise of a new year.

Based on the 2018 census, only 30 percent of Māori say they are Christian. What led to this large drop in the faith?

In the 1860s, the military confiscated massive amounts of Māori land, which led to the Māori’s alienation from Christianity. Many Māori lost confidence in the gospel and in the church as they associated the European settlers with the faith. The colonizers stripped Māori of their land, their territory, and their identity.

A hundred years later, in the middle of the 20th century, Māori tried to rebuild their identity again, and many resorted to the old paganism. Celebrations like Matariki, which many Christians celebrated simply as a new year, returned to being a pagan festival.

The government is now promoting Matariki in a religious way. State schools are being supplied with specially written prayers and incantations, which they claim are not religious but cultural. Some Māori young people are coming to believe in the traditional deities, and even non-Māori take part in it. That’s impacting the church, as many of our churches are struggling to reach Māori and be seen as open. You get quite a bit of syncretism in evangelical churches today.

How are Christians responding to prayers to Māori gods and deities happening in the workplace and taught at schools?

Most Christians are not quite sure what to do with it. Public events will often open with a kind of karakia or prayer. It depends on who is doing the karakia: A Christian would pray to God, while someone who isn’t Christian will pray to the stars or earth or ancestors. When Christians ask what to do in those situations, I say you just don’t have to say “Amen.”

There are all sorts of situations where as Christians, we see things going on [and] we do not have to participate in them, nor do we have to be antagonistic to them. We’re called to be wise and prudent. I think there’s a danger that we’ve become too confrontational about things we don’t need to confront.

We have an opportunity to share the gospel. You see that with Paul in Athens speaking about the unknown god. He says, Let's talk about him; I can tell you about him. This is a classic example of how we can use the culture without confronting it. On the other hand, in Ephesus and Philippi, they did have to confront the culture. There comes a time when you have to.

What was New Zealanders’ reaction when the government decided to make Matariki a public holiday?

There’s a significant group of non-Māori New Zealanders who are bitterly opposed to anything Māori. Sadly, there are a lot of Christians among them—they just don’t understand it; they can’t stand it. On the other hand, there are people who think it’s wonderful to celebrate Māori culture. In the middle are a large number of New Zealanders who are not particularly concerned; they are fairly benign toward different cultures as long as they don’t have to do anything about it.

What aspects of the festivals should Christians partake in?

We can celebrate the rising of Matariki and the fact that God has built the universe and continues to rule it in a way that for centuries Māori have been able to identify when this was going to happen. We celebrate the wonderful order in creation that declares the glory of God.

A lot of Christians will get up and pray during the dawn of Matariki because it is tradition to pray at that time. I personally avoid anything that can be misunderstood by somebody. To me the gods mean nothing, but if somebody sees me praying at dawn, they could misinterpret it.

Other Christians are quite happy to do that. I have no problem with that at all; it's perfectly right. You have that freedom in the gospel. Matariki is fun—it’s fellowship; it’s talking about those who have recently died and building family relationships.

Last year, I put out this booklet on how Christians can engage with Matariki, written for non-Māori believers unfamiliar with the holiday. I also opened the church service with a Matariki greeting and encouraged people to embrace it as a celebration of God’s grace.

How do you see Matariki as an evangelism opportunity?

This week, a handyman who came to fix my burglar alarm asked me what I thought of Matariki, and I got to share with him that God set the stars in their place.

He responded, “But [the universe is] so huge it doesn’t need us.”

“Yes, that shows how great God is,” I said. This is the type of conversation I’m happy to have around Matariki.

I cited Genesis 8:22 to him: “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” We have not only a glorious God but a constant God, a reliable God, a faithful God. All these you can show through Matariki. It’s an exciting time to share the gospel: Jesus is the bright and morning star.

Books

It’s Not Reverse Mission If You Just Stay in Your Own Church

Johnson Ambrose Afrane-Twum wants African migrant Christians to collaborate with and revitalize churches in the UK.

Christianity Today July 1, 2024
Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

Several years ago, Johnson Ambrose Afrane-Twum was under consideration to become a black lead pastor of a white-majority church in the United Kingdom, when a white friend approached him.

Christian Mission in a Diverse British Urban Context: Crossing the Racial Barrier to Reach Communities (Studies in Missiology)

“Johnson, everybody here knows that you can lead this church,” he said. “There is only one problem: Some people say they don’t want you as a pastor because you speak with a Ghanaian accent.”

“I thought to myself, what has an accent got to do with this?” said Afrane-Twum. “Is this the way God wants us to do church?”

Originally from Ghana, Afrane-Twum had planted churches in three West African countries through the Calvary Chapel movement before immigrating to the UK in 2005 to further study theology and leadership. He soon observed many newcomers to Britain starting vibrant congregations—and numerous local churches dying. These realizations, in tandem with his challenging experiences working cross-culturally, led Afrane-Twum to research how African Christian leaders could better work with UK locals to revitalize faith across the country.

In Christian Mission in a Diverse British Urban Context, Afrane-Twum explores African identity in UK churches, the cultural barriers Africans face in the UK, and the need for more creative ways to reach out to diverse communities. He recently spoke with CT about the African migrant community in the UK and its potential to bring revival to the body of Christ in that country.

How would you assess the current relationship between the established UK churches and African immigrant congregations?

Some people refer to the black churches in the UK as doing reverse mission. The UK brought the gospel to us in Africa, they say, and now we are bringing the gospel back to them. But this is often a misnomer. If you are an African in the UK today and you are tending only to your own kind and not to the wider community, then there is no reverse mission. That issue must be addressed. How do we partner with the white churches so that we can be effective in our missionary work to the whole UK and not only to our fellow black Africans?

Many white-majority churches allow migrant churches to use their buildings. But for an effective partnership, we must go a step further. Both the African immigrant church and the UK church agree on winning souls to Christ, but we are subject to cultural changes that have occurred in the past few decades because of migration. The first thing we must do is to commit ourselves to building a spiritual relationship of mutual love and trust. We need to help the white churches know that we are here on a mission. At the moment, they think we are here just for our own people.

God has providentially allowed black churches to come over here to sustain the UK churches. If we have a spiritual relationship of mutual love and trust, then we can work together for kingdom goals. If the white churches come to believe that they need revival and that we have been called to help them, then the next question is, “How we can best help?” How do they see us, and how do we see them? If there are cultural biases, then we have to address them. Achieving the goals of the kingdom of God should be our highest purpose, even though we may have other differences.

You chose four distinct churches to study for your research on intercultural ministry in the UK. What did you find?

Two congregations (All Nations Church in Wolverhampton and Harborne Baptist) are white-majority churches that have worked hard to bring in people from multiethnic backgrounds. My study of All Nations revealed that second-generation migrants in the UK can not only adapt to the lifestyle and culture of the wider white community but, if nurtured properly by local leaders, can themselves become leaders in multiethnic churches.

At Harborne Baptist, I saw how important it is for pastors to train local youth as cross-cultural ministers and to release them to work cooperatively with Christians from other backgrounds.

The other two congregations were the Ethiopian Church London, which is mono-ethnic, and the Church of Pentecost, a very successful congregation connected to a denomination from Ghana. The Ethiopian church prefers to organize itself around its own cultural allegiances and values. The congregation feels they can best connect with God at a place with people who share their background, language, history, culture, worship style, and social needs.

The Church of Pentecost, in contrast, is a migrant church that has tried to collaborate with a white-majority church in the UK. They believe that second-generation migrants’ ability to participate in multiethnic gatherings will increase as they develop confidence in their own ability to navigate the social spaces of the new host culture. They are working out a strategy to reach out to the wider community, which they believe would be accomplished by their next generation.

In general, migrant churches have enabled their members to discover a sense of identity and self-respect, which we lacked when we came into the country. But we need to work harder to partner with the white-majority churches toward creating a society that models the values of the kingdom of God.

What has been your experience with racism in the UK church?

Some white people in the UK feel that churches should continue to do business as they have always done and that you shouldn’t have to cross cultural barriers to reach out to other groups. When I was doing my master’s degree, one of the lecturers taught us about some of the models on church planting. He said that black churches should be for blacks and white churches for whites. Comments like these are why I am doing this work.

As for those people in my church who resented me because of my accent, I don’t think they were racist. I think they were ignorant.

How has the African migrant community in the UK helped give it a sense of identity?

What unites us in the UK is that we have been marginalized by society. When we come together as the African church community, we gain a sense of self-respect and identity and feel like we are with our people.

New arrivals also need help from their fellow Africans. If you go to a white-majority church and say, “I don’t have my immigration papers,” the next day the police may be knocking on your door.

Africans come to church no matter what their problems are. We pray for them, lift them up, encourage them, and help them integrate. That is what the church does. It’s both a spiritual and a social institution.

But the key question is—are we going to be cemented in our own glue? Are we going to find comfort in what we get from our fellow African Christians, or are we going to share what we can offer with others? That’s where we want to be, and the wider community is also waiting.

Do you see this collaboration happening?

African churches share the universally accepted doctrines of the Christian faith. I don’t see why we cannot work with our brothers and sisters in the UK if both sides practice equality and respect. Differences and commonalities are present among any groups. That shouldn’t bring division. Through interaction and dialogue, we can promote understanding of different cultures and foster greater participation and inclusiveness.

As the case of All Nations suggests, second-generation migrants can negotiate effective partnerships between black churches and white churches. The second generation is better placed to do this because they know both cultures. The challenge, however, is how these next generations can maintain their families’ culture, identity, and Christian faith, while at the same time adapting to the culture of the host country that has much influence on them.

The influence of the wider community has caused many migrant children to lose faith in God. These young people acknowledge their ethnic heritage but place a greater premium on adapting their lives and values to the culture and values of the wider society, which is an increasingly secular social context. This is concerning because the survival of the African immigrant churches hinges on our success in raising the next generation. The success of any meaningful cross-cultural initiatives will depend on how well the next generation of immigrants is equipped.

Black liberation theology is mentioned in the book as a way of understanding African contexts. How has this theology shaped African churches in the UK?

Black people coming from Africa are not all the same. Blacks in South Africa developed a theology of liberation, a South African version of what African Americans developed in the United States, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as a conscious and theological dimension of their struggles against apartheid.

But other sub-Saharan African countries, although they also had encounters with colonialism, did not experience struggles like those of black South Africans. As a result, the liberation theology expressed in these countries is quite different.

Africans ascribe spirituality to everything they do. They believe that everything an African does should be grounded in Scripture. We believe that demons are real and that we need the power of God to overcome demonic forces and witchcraft. For most Africans, liberation comes through prayer, fasting, and living a holy life to overcome the evil forces.

In this version of liberation theology, the place of the Holy Spirit and his empowerment is incredibly significant to assist us in our encounters with the demonic.

News

Canadian Megachurch Puts Ministry on Pause After Insurer Pulls Abuse Coverage

It’s been two years since its former pastor resigned and was arrested, but The Meeting House continues to feel the impact of its past.

The Meeting House building in Oakville, Ontario

The Meeting House building in Oakville, Ontario

Christianity Today June 28, 2024
R.J. Johnston / Toronto Star via Getty Images

The Meeting House was one of the largest megachurches in Canada, but this Sunday, each of its locations will be empty. Its home church gatherings won’t meet during the week. Kids won’t get together for youth programs. Members can’t see their pastors for counsel.

In the aftermath of an abuse scandal that shook the congregation and its leadership, the Ontario-area multisite church announced that it had lost a portion of its insurance coverage and would have to pause its ministry activities.

“Our current insurer has advised us that they will not be renewing our Abuse Liability (AL) and Employment Practices Liability (EPL) coverage as of June 30, 2024,” according to an email sent to congregants, explaining that the Anabaptist megachurch has struggled to get an extension from its insurer or to find another option for replacement coverage.

“In light of this development, we feel led to pause our normal ministry for the month of July to dedicate time to continue discerning what form God is inviting us to take into the future as a network of churches,” the Transition Board of Overseers and Network Leadership Team wrote.

The scenario at The Meeting House showcases the lasting damage that churches can face as a result of abuse by leaders and their response.

It’s been over two years since pastor Bruxy Cavey resigned from The Meeting House and was charged with sexual assault. Since then, further allegations have emerged. The church lost leaders and members, shuttering at least one of its sites, and has scrambled to recover. With the insurance status in question, ministry activities will be shut down at least through July.

“When I heard that news, I was just flabbergasted,” said interim online pastor Chris Chase, discussing the news on The Meeting House’s online livestream last Sunday. “I couldn’t believe it, because we’ve gone through so much, and you think, Oh, we finally got through the valley, we’re cresting up the mountain, and then you realize that you’re still in the valley.”

One viewer replied in the comments, “I am heartbroken that former leadership put the current leaders in this position.”

Cavey resigned in 2022, following a third-party investigation that found evidence of clergy sexual abuse against an adult victim at The Meeting House. Additional reporting has pointed to underlying problems at The Meeting House dating back years.

Canadian theologian Randal Rauser, who serves as director of faith-based organization investigations with Veritas Solutions, compared the revelations to an ice shelf breaking away after years of cracking under the surface.

“When the situation of church abuse finally ‘crashes’ into the ocean of public awareness, it is likely the result of patterns of abuse and dysfunction which had been unfolding for a long time,” he told CT.

Members at The Meeting House ended up making complaints against a total of four former pastors. Three more women alleged sexual abuse by Cavey, including one who says she had been a minor. (He is awaiting trial on three sexual assault charges and maintains his innocence.)

The Meeting House had already been struggling to get members to return after COVID-19, and the abuse scandal hurt attendance even more. It draws 1,565 people in person and online on Sunday mornings, according to its 2023 annual report, compared to over 5,700 five years ago.

The church once had 19 sites and now lists 12. There continues to be turnover among staff and the church’s board of overseers. The victims advocate contracted by The Meeting House to help with its response was replaced with someone from within the denomination. It faces at least three multimillion-dollar lawsuits involving abuse.

“The historical incidents and allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse at The Meeting House continue to impact our church today in many ways, including how we are viewed by insurers,” leaders wrote in the email to congregants.

Insurers may decline to provide liability coverage for ministries that don’t have solid policies to handle abuse, according to Charlie Cutler, president of ChurchWest Insurance Services, an agency insuring more than 4,000 ministries in California. To him, it’s a stewardship issue: Other churches’ premiums shouldn’t be spent covering another organization’s repeated mistakes.

“If there’s been a pattern of abuse, a pattern of bad governance in the ministry, you’re going to have a hard time getting coverage,” he said. “Every time there’s a claim, it’s going back to these offering plates at other ministries. They’re wanting everybody else to pay before they’ve proven that the problems have been addressed.”

The Canadian Centre for Christian Charities recently surveyed member ministries about costs and challenges around insurance. Nine percent said they had been refused coverage and another 9 percent said they “risked losing coverage without implementing risk management changes.”

The Meeting House continues to invite congregants to submit sexual harassment complaints. It says it has a policy for prevention and response, as well as “regular training and appropriate measures of accountability.” Its website also links info about its protection plan for youth and children.

The Meeting House leaders determined in June that “for the protection of our staff, volunteers, vulnerable people including kids and youth … it is not responsible to continue engaging in ministry work through The Meeting House church entity without full insurance coverage.”

They told members that they “grieve the need to pause ministry as a church” yet “have tremendous hope in the process of surrendering and listening to the Spirit as we discern together during this difficult time of pause.”

The evangelical minority in Ontario and even in other parts of Canada who have followed the situation at The Meeting House don’t know whether the church will be able to recover. At one point, it stood out for its growth, engagement, and messaging— The Meeting House began worshiping in movie theaters in the 1990s before that was a common model, and Cavey was a beloved leader who wasn’t afraid of breaking the mold of what ministry looked like.

“The Meeting House was long recognized as arguably Canada’s flagship megachurch, and as such, the cultural impact of its tragic downfall feeds into a general culture of cynicism about evangelicalism, Christianity, and organized religion altogether,” Rauser said by email. “This is tragic for many reasons, not least because a single high-profile instance of abuse within a church may overwhelm all the good the church accomplished along the way.”

Evangelical scholar Peter Schuurman wrote a doctoral dissertation on Cavey’s leadership at The Meeting House, published as The Subversive Evangelical: The Ironic Charisma of An Irreligious Megachurch. Schuurman has continued to follow the impact of Cavey’s abuse and departure on the congregation he led.

“It is a reminder that even if congregation members have no direct involvement as victims in clergy sexual abuse, they are all indirect and often unacknowledged victims,” Schuurman told CT.

“Not only are they reeling from the shock of their pastor being revealed as a predator and scrambling to find some redemptive path forward in the mess left behind, they may lose their spiritual home and faith community as well.”

Chase, the online pastor, asked participants to pray for a miracle for insurance coverage to come through, for leaders making difficult decisions, and for members of the church who have dealt with years of challenges.

“Pray for one another because, for some, this is as much as they could take,” he said. “They’ve journeyed through, and this might be their breaking point.”

With reporting by CT freelancer Meagan Gillmore in Canada. Gillmore also covered Cavey’s resignation and the fallout at The Meeting House for Toronto Life magazine in 2023.

Theology

Biblical Reflections from a Ukrainian Theologian’s War Diary

As Russia’s invasion fades from Western interest, daily musings from an evangelical seminary leader remind readers of the war’s ongoing reality for Ukrainian Christians who stay and serve.

Christianity Today June 28, 2024
Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

Editor’s note: Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Taras Dyatlik, an evangelical Ukrainian theological educator, has shared his daily reflections in a WhatsApp group. The following are two recent journal entries from June (edited for style and clarity).

In an old carriage with shabby walls and faded curtains, I am traveling on a train from Kharkiv to Uzhhorod in the same cabin as a soldier returning home for a short but longed-for vacation. His wife and children have found temporary shelter in a land saturated with pain and fear.

Yesterday, this soldier bought his daughter a small puppy. Now, he plays with it like a child, hugging and kissing it as if he has found a ray of light in this tiny creature. In a few days, he will return to the hell of war, and the puppy will remind his daughter of her father’s love.

The soldier is about 30, with a weathered, tanned face. He has scars on his arms and legs and deep wrinkles near his eyes. He naps nervously, anxiously, like almost everyone who has returned from the frontline.

Sometimes, he falls into a deep sleep and starts snoring loudly as if trying to drown out the memories of explosions and cries of pain. And when he is not snoring yet still asleep, he shouts orders as if he were back in the middle of a battle.

At one of the stations, when the rattle of the wheels and the squeaks of the worn-out railway car have subsided for a moment, an elegant woman of medium height in a blue tracksuit flies out of the neighboring cabin. She's about 35, and once upon a time, she must have driven men crazy with her beauty. But now her face is haggard, with deep shadows under her eyes.

Bursting into our compartment, she cries out to me, Tell him to stop snoring! Right now! What are you looking at me for?”

I look up from my laptop screen and calmly reply, “Keep your voice down; please don't shout. Don't wake him up.”

Clearly unhappy with my response, she retreats to her own berth.

Half an hour passes. The soldier wakes up, goes to the vestibule to smoke, and takes the puppy with him.

I hear the woman coming out of her cabin again. I meet her in the corridor, look at her beautiful yet tired face, still marked with irritation, and say what has been running through my mind all this time: “You can’t wake up a soldier who is coming home from frontline hell for a short vacation, even if he snores like a bear. Let him plunge into this healing sleep, safe from explosions and screams.”

The woman clamors, “I can’t rest when he snores! And I have my own personal front….” But then her voice breaks as she begins to tremble.

I reply gently, sensing that her reaction reflects a pain and tragedy of its own. “We are not under a hail of bullets.”

The woman freezes; her eyes are filled with tears that are about to spill out. She looks out the window and bites her lip.

After a while, the soldier returns from the vestibule, a slight smile on his exhausted face. The woman looks at me pleadingly as if asking me not to tell him about our conversation. She approaches him and says something about the puppy, gently stroking the little creature as she takes its paws in her palms and kisses them gently.

The soldier enters our cabin, softly closes the door, and lies down to rest again.

The woman turns to me, her eyes two lights of longing and pain. She whispers, barely audibly, “Forgive me. My husband was killed in the winter. I miss his snoring at night so much! I'm going to my mother; I can’t live alone anymore.”

Her words contain the pain of the whole country—the pain of every broken woman’s heart. And while the old train keeps rattling along, carrying each of us in our own thoughts, memories, and hopes, I am silently praying:

For those who are at the frontline, like this soldier.

For this woman and the irreparable loss of her beloved one.

For the opportunity to live and love again without war, which came to our land to sow death and destruction.

I pray for just peace in Ukraine:

For the healing of the wounds in our souls—of the soldiers, civilians, and volunteers who have experienced deep trauma.

For bridging the gaps between us.

For unity in diversity.

And the train keeps rushing along, giving us precious moments of rest—and humanity—amid the chaos of war.

[One week later]

Today, I woke up again with my heart torn in two. Shelling, deaths, and propaganda go on and on, day and night. I am tired of sharing our daily nightmare in this war diary.

This terrible Russian war seems to be sucking the very life out of us. Every day, we observe an ocean of human suffering, rivers of tears, and mountains of destroyed lives. And somewhere in my soul, a traitorous thought creeps in: God, where are you? Why are you silent? Do you really not care?

I remember how Jesus cried out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34).

Now I understand his pain—maybe only 0.000001 percent. But I want to believe, like Job, that my Savior lives and that on the last day, he will raise us from the dust (Job 19:25–26). I cling to this hope like a drowning man to a life-saving float.

And then there is this black hatred that comes up in my throat like bile. After every shelling, after every news of Russian atrocities, my heart is filled with a thirst for revenge. Oh, how I hate them! I want to scream like the psalmist, “Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (Ps. 137:9).

And then a still, small voice whispers, But I tell you, love your enemies” (Matt. 5:44).

How is this possible, Lord? How do we love torturers and murderers?

But I know that if I let hatred seize my heart, I will become like them, and then evil will win. Love for enemies is my Garden of Gethsemane, my bloody battle. It is the only way I can remain human.

This endless exhaustion, this spiritual desert—my “volunteer marathon” is a carrying of the cross. I fall under the weight of other people’s pain, and there is no end in sight. Will I have enough strength? Will I break down like Peter, who promised to follow Jesus to the end but denied him before the rooster crowed?

Lord, I pray like Paul that your grace will be sufficient for me, that your power will be perfect in my weakness (2 Cor. 12:9).

And then there are these thoughts: I am not like others! I do so much. I sacrifice so much in this civilian life and ministry!

And then I stop myself: Do you think that your righteousness is greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees? (Matt. 5:20).

All my good works are but filthy rags before the holiness of God (Isa. 64:6). All I have is his undeserved gift. So, down with pride, Taras. Serving is a privilege, not a merit.

And how often I find myself judging my brothers in faith—in both Ukraine and the West. But who am I to judge another’s servant? (Rom. 14:4). Each of us has our own Calvary. My job is to carry my personal cross—and then lend a shoulder to those who fall under their burdens, like Simon of Cyrene on the Via Dolorosa.

But the worst thing is when you realize that in the whirlwind of your ministry, you have forgotten the main thing: your relationship with the Stranger on the road to Emmaus. Prayers have turned into dry, short reports with figures and requests. The Word of God has become an unopened book with too many painful questions.

I work hard, but have I become a modern Martha who cares for many things but forgets the ”one thing” that is necessary—to sit at the feet of Jesus, forgetting about job descriptions (Luke 10:41–42)?

Forgive me, Lord! Without you, I am nothing. The source of my life is in you.

How unbearably painful this contradiction is sometimes: I love my country to the core, every piece of land. But at the same time, I know that my true homeland is in heaven, from which I am waiting for the Savior (Phil. 3:20). What do the borders of earthly states mean in the face of eternity? “There is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all” (Col. 3:11).

Even if my body is handed over to be burned for Ukraine, if I do not have the love of Christ, I am nothing (1 Cor. 13:3). Sometimes, amid the hell of war, I want to escape into sweet oblivion—not to think, not to remember, to live one day at a time.

But then your Spirit reminds me, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt. 6:33).

For what is our life? A vapor that appears for a moment and disappears (James 4:14). Every day can be a step toward eternity, where God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and death will be no more. There will be no more sorrow, no more crying, no more pain (Rev. 21:4).

Although the whole world and politics cries out to us like the movie title, “Don’t look up! Don’t look up!”—we must look up.

And how often we must wrest joy from the teeth of despair—to fight for hope in a battle with hopelessness. It is so easy to give up. But doesn’t the kingdom of God belong to children (Matt. 19:14), like that boy and girl who smiled at me from under the rubble of a ruined house? Where did they get this fierce strength of spirit?

I, too, must shine forth to a war-torn world. Let them see my joy and glorify my Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16).

The path is narrow, and the gate that leads to life is small (Matt. 7:14). Every step of our life and ministry in Ukraine is a battle. The enemy is external, but even stronger are the internal demons that cry out, “Taras, don’t look up!”

Every choice is a risk. Did Christ promise us a cloudless life? No! He warned, “In me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). How, Lord, can this be true?

And yet I choose to believe, despite …

To serve, despite …

To sow seeds of goodness in my soil scorched by hatred, despite …

To be a light in this oppressive, almost physical darkness, despite …

Because I know that one day, there will be no shadow, no trace of war, only light, only peace, only love.

One day.

Peace be with you, and keep your children away from war.

Taras Dyatlik coordinates seminary-based refugee hubs in Ukraine and serves as a theological education consultant for Scholar Leaders and Mesa Global in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Click here to join his WhatsApp community.

Editor’s note: CT offers dozens of select articles translated into Ukrainian and Russian.

You can also join the 12,000 readers who now follow CT on Telegram: @ctmagazine (also available in Chinese and Russian).

Theology

A New Blueprint for Chinese Churches: Beyond the Four Walls

In a rapidly urbanizing China, some houses of worship are taking inspiration from the Bible while rethinking local architectural tradition.

The Julong Church atrium.

The Julong Church atrium.

Christianity Today June 28, 2024
Shikai / INUCE

A scroll-shaped steeple. An imposing ark-shaped atrium. A pipe organ feature reminiscent of 19th-century North American Methodist churches.

These are some of the more striking elements in the Three-Self churches that Brazilian German architect Dirk U. Moench has designed in China. The Lutheran founded the design firm INUCE in 2011 and has offices in Fuzhou, China, and Münsterlingen, Switzerland, where he is currently based.

Moench has designed four churches in China. Two churches in Fuzhou and Luoyuan were completed in 2018 and 2021, respectively, while one in Julong was finished this year. Another ongoing project in Jinshan has garnered nationwide attention and received tens of thousands of likes on social media platforms like Weibo and Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), according to Moench.

CT interviewed Moench on how Chinese church design interfaces with Western architectural principles and the ways a church’s physical building can interact with and participate in China’s swiftly evolving urban landscape.

When you were asked to design a church in Fuzhou’s Jinshan district, Chinese officials and politicians told you that they wanted “a modern church for a modern China.” How did you interpret this?

In many ways, this is a political sentence. You have to fill it with meaning as an architect and as a Christian. Architects like to refer to the term genius loci, or “spirit of the place” in Latin, in that a building is a reaction to its immediate built environment, like historic buildings, specific roads, landscape features, and also built tradition—an architect’s filtered and amplified perception of a place’s essence.

Since Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms, the country has been transformed, and cities today don’t have much of a tradition as a place. There are modern buildings built alongside modern roads, with residential developments, offices, factories, and so on. You don’t have the “spirit of the place” that you can react to.

But what’s always very important to me is to understand the spirit of a community, the spirit of the individual congregation. I have learned that Chinese Christians are asking themselves big questions: How will this new building express who we are? How will it relate to this place and fulfill our needs?

Chinese and Western architectural traditions are often in dialogue here, and I try to create an artistic synthesis of them. This doesn’t occur on a universal scale but in more particular terms, such as: What is the physical environment in which this church is going to grow? What are the concerns of the individual community? What are their interests in the European and Western elements of Christianity, if at all?

Some years ago, authorities removed crosses from church buildings in China. How do the churches you’ve designed feature crosses?

China is a vast country. It’s a continent of its own. It’s hard to say that what happens in one area will happen in another part of the country. Local culture, religious policy, the relationship between Christian churches and the religious bureau might differ across places.

I’ve heard that there are regions in which the relationship between the authorities and Christian congregations is more harsh. But I’ve never had to consider or compromise my artistic and architectural pursuits.

The crosses I’ve designed involve aesthetic and situational considerations. For instance, the Jinshan church cross is 70 meters high and looks like a simple cross with classic proportions. The surprise for Chinese Christians lies in its color.

Almost all Protestant churches today have a red cross on top of their spire—it’s quite chubby and made of plastic to be illuminated at night. Westerners often feel reminded of the Red Cross or hospital signs. So I opted against that color and the neon light illumination and proposed to have it in white to complement the purity of the church building below it.

Dirk U. MoenchShikai / INUCE
Dirk U. Moench

What were some Eastern and Western architectural principles that influenced the churches you designed?

One of the big ideas that I try to bring across is the very European notion that the church is a piece of public infrastructure. It’s part of the city, and it’s there to service the city visually but also spatially and functionally. Even though Christianity is a minority religion in China, a church building can still be appealing to a broader public. This idea has been received very favorably by the local congregations.

In the West, we think of a beautiful curved roof as an icon of Chinese architecture. But what is most genuine and central to the idea of Chinese spatial organization is the wall.

Traditionally, the Chinese city is composed of courtyard houses, which are fully enclosed by a wall. There will be a major gate, usually at the center of the south wall, which has decorative features and a little roof of its own, that serves to represent this unit, this house, this family, to the outside world. The wall is not a safety concern; it’s a millennia-old tradition.

When missionaries in China started to build churches there, they often acquired plots in the middle of a Chinese city that were once a courtyard house. So the idea of a wall or enclosure around a “Western” church is not entirely foreign, and this principle was continued.

Hence, the earliest contemporary churches that we have in China are all behind walls and have gates as well. The spatial thinking is very Chinese, while the actual church is more Western-inspired.

Now, I want to challenge this because the Chinese Christian communities that I have talked to do not see themselves as a protective minority anymore. They see themselves as a vital element of society that can contribute and help to make a better city, not just through charitable works but also in being a part of public, urban life.

How did you translate this refreshed understanding of Christian community into reality?

The Hua Xiang church in Fuzhou is one example. People call it “the pink church of Fuzhou.” It’s surrounded by high rises and shopping malls, and sits beside an old church built by Methodist missionaries in the 1930s.

Main Entrance to the Hua Xiang Church.Shikai / INUCE
Main Entrance to the Hua Xiang Church.

I was not the first architect that the community had consulted for this project. There were already several designs—a gothic church with two spire towers and another with a more Romanesque basilica look. The congregation was not very satisfied with these ideas because they looked “lost” and did not have a harmonious relationship with the city. At the same time, they were wondering about their mission and whether the new building should cater to older members or draw young people. What I said was that the answer is not either-or; it’s both-and. To attract young people, you have to give them a sense of historical depth. They need to know their foundation and what they are building upon.

We had to let go of the notion of a European-inspired ideal church, like a cross-shaped church with a tower, and instead take inspiration from the city’s heterogeneous and chaotic situation. Maybe this new church could help to establish positive relationships to the skyline or continue the pitched roof motif emblematic of Chinese architecture.

Instead of high walls and formal entrance gates, like in traditional Chinese architecture, we installed retractable barriers at access points to the church, which are hardly visible and stay open late into the night. There is ample greenery providing shade and generous outdoor seating for believers and tourists alike.

Your other church designs also take inspiration from the environment. Why is that important to you as a Christian and as an architect?

In Chinese cities, you see shops moving in and out, façades being redecorated to look fancier, louder, and more attractive than the neighbors. But a church design is more timeless and stable. It is an architectural mediator that can help to harmonize imbalances in the built environment or bring the beauty of the place into focus.

In this way, a church building has a dialectical relationship with its environment: It stands out and blends in.

Julong ChurchShikai / INUCE
Julong Church

For example, Julong is a newly developed town in the outskirts of Quanzhou, a port city in the southern province of Fujian. People who live there have come from all over the country. Making the Julong church into an ark or a haven, inspired by the idea of Peter as a rock on which Jesus will build his church (Matt. 16:18), sends a message of stability within the torment of a changing world.

Its location at the foot of Julong mountain also doesn’t just allow people to gaze at the beauty of nature; it’s a visual reference to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus went up a mountain to preach and teach.

Do you think beautiful church architecture contributes to spiritual practices like worship or prayer? Or is it a distraction?

It’s the age-old Protestant question you’re asking: Does formal beauty inspire and bring you closer to God or distract you from this? That question needs to be answered by the congregation. As an architect, you cannot create a place of worship that suits your personal inclinations or beliefs. You have to listen to what the community wants.

The interior of the Hua Xiang church is a very simple white space, with gently undulating upper gallery floors, a flat ceiling, and a reduced number of light fixtures. It’s a very classical, almost Reformed understanding of how a liturgical space should look.

But a large pipe organ, popular in North American churches in the second half of the 19th century, functions as the main feature of the stage. That was a wish from within the congregation, who wanted an element of continuation with their Methodist heritage.

Does that pipe organ inspire the sermon or inspire prayer? I don’t think so. But I do think that the music it creates does reestablish bonds to the very Christian forms of being together. The church appreciates that they feel closer to their own tradition through it.

Is there something you hope for visitors to these churches to take away about God and about Chinese Christianity?

As an architect, I don’t impose myself into what people should think about God. I am not here to protect a specific or single understanding of God. I plan and design the physical church, but the real church is the people inside, the pastors and brothers and sisters who preach and project and teach Christianity.

If they think that my architecture helps them to do all of these, then I’m happy. I do not think it’s appropriate for me to think further than that.

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