The Lessons of the Paris Olympics Tableau

Jared Boggess

As an art director, I think the Olympics failed to consider its audience. But as a Christian, I’m not surprised by disdain from those outside the church.

Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” and Jan van Bijlert’s “Feast of the Gods"

Illustration by Christianity Today

Ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Thomas Jolly seemed confident in what he had conjured up for the hours-long opening and closing ceremonies. The artistic director was tight-lipped about the details of performances he’d been planning for two years—but in the days leading up to the Games, he revealed that he expected the spectacle to “be very meaningful for the artists that will perform.”

Now, with the opening ceremony behind him, Jolly is left defending his vision.

One segment has drawn particular controversy: a tableau of LGBTQ activists, drag performers, and lewd dancers that many viewers felt subtly reenacted Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. “My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,” Jolly said in response to the uproar. “Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.” And yet, the scene has divided, met with scorn by those who experienced it as a mocking parody of Christ and his disciples.

There is a vast disparity between what Jolly claims were his artistic intentions and the way his art has been perceived.

As an artist and art director myself, I am constantly wrestling with what visuals communicate. When I review submissions from our contributing artists, I evaluate not only the technical execution of their images but how our readers might interpret their meaning. In my journal, I write down notes and sketch out possibilities as I search for the right way to convey an idea without words. Should the symbolism be overt? Does this scene merit nuance and ambiguity? How might a use of color or form offer a new perspective?

In all of my creative work, I have intentions for what will be conveyed. And then I look into the future, trying to anticipate how those intentions will be perceived.

All makers are subject to their audiences—to how the novel reader or album listener or museumgoer understands and experiences their work. Art does not exist in isolation; it is always communal. That’s a blessing, not a curse. The moment we tell a story, release a song, or perform a play, it is no longer solely our own. This is the beautiful, wonderful, risky way that all art is a collaboration between the artist and the rest of the world.

Defending the controversial Olympics performance, Jolly explains that his intentions were different from the offense taken by some viewers. In other words, he argued, it’s not his fault. The offended audience failed to interpret his art properly. Jolly contends that the scene was drawn not from Da Vinci but from Le Festin des Dieux (The Feast of the Gods), a Jan van Bijlert painting of a banquet on Mount Olympus. The sun god Apollo faces the viewer; a naked Dionysus eats grapes in the foreground. It’s quite plausible that this work was his true inspiration.

“Le Festin des Dieux” (“The Feast of the Gods”) is a painting by Dutch painter Jan van Bijlert, circa 1635–1640

But this defense—“you failed to interpret my art properly”—doesn’t absolve an artist. That kind of response is lazy and pretentious. It comes from an ego that assumes the artist’s perspective is the only proper reading of what has been communicated.

By blaming the viewer’s faulty interpretation, the artist asserts that their intent supersedes what their work has communicated. It denies the objective reality of how their art sits in time and space, its context in history and culture.

As one art historian and professor emeritus said to The New York Times , “The idea of the central figure with a halo and a group of followers on either side—it’s so typical of ‘The Last Supper’ iconography that to read it in any other way might be a little foolhardy.”

Our intentions matter, but they don’t guarantee how others will react. When Paul warns, “Do not let what you regard as good be spoken of as evil,” he doesn’t instruct the Romans to defend themselves (Rom. 14:16, ESV throughout). He tells them to change their actions, to “never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother” (v.13).

Our intentions do not define reality. We are accountable for forming our creations carefully. And we must be humble enough to recognize when we have not succeeded.

Artists are very perceptive people. As an art director, Jolly must have carefully considered the implications of every detail of this performance. To fail to accommodate the perceptions of 2 billion global Christians was careless at the least, and quite possibly intentional disregard.

Sometimes art is meant to be shocking and provocative. Art commands attention and disrupts assumptions for good reasons. But Jolly says that wasn’t his goal. If he was aiming to communicate inclusion, he did so at the exclusion of Christians and religious groups appalled by the performance. In the end, his message only resonated with part of his viewership.

So Christians aren’t wrong to be offended. And also—what we do with our offense matters.

Whether Jolly and the performers risked or embraced the opportunity to be scandalous, it is understandable that Christians would find a scene reminiscent of the Last Supper particularly abrasive. But aside from careless artistic decisions, should the church be surprised by an affront such as this—let alone the obscenity of the rest of the opening ceremony?

In the midst of a discussion on immorality, Paul tells the Corinthian church that they cannot isolate themselves from the sinfulness of secular society. They would have to depart from the world itself to achieve such inoculation (1 Cor. 5:10). Yes, they should strive to protect the integrity of the church body—as we should too. If there is someone within who refuses to turn from their sinfulness, Paul exhorts the Corinthians not to associate with them in order to uphold a moral standard within their community.

But this is not a standard Paul expects of the world outside the church. He reminds the Corinthians that it is God’s role to judge “those outside,” not theirs, including in the context of shocking sexual sin (1 Cor. 5:13). Apparently, the Corinthian church had been distancing themselves, avoiding any interaction with unbelievers in the city of Corinth. Paul tells them that this is not right.

This is the same pattern that prompted the Pharisees to question Jesus when he dined with tax collectors (Matt. 9:10–13). Would Jesus have shared a meal with drag performers, with people who might ridicule the church and its sacred symbols? We should have no doubt that he would have, or that he calls us to do the same.

We also shouldn’t doubt that Jesus calls them to repentance. His response to sin was not to shun or condemn, but to proclaim his forgiveness and invite people to follow him. This is his invitation to all of us.

We shouldn’t expect unbelievers to understand or respect the solemn gravity of a scene like the Last Supper. We shouldn’t be surprised at the obscenity of the performances throughout the opening ceremony. But neither should we be indifferent. Our reaction should be heartache and compassion. Our world is fallen. We’re fallen too, fortunate to have heard and received the redeeming work of Jesus.

And so, like a thoughtful artist wrestling with the implications of their work, we should consider what our actions communicate. What is our intended message? When Christians publicly condemn and boycott the Olympics in response to the opening ceremony, it hardly conveys our belief that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.

And when Barbara Butch, the DJ in the center of the tableau performance, receives death threats and harassment after the performance, our silence about the sanctity of her life, as one who also was made in the image of God, is telling.

Instead, might we share a meal together? And perhaps take a walk through the halls of a museum discussing what the works on the walls seem to communicate? In that precious shared space, we can express how we lean on a hope that does not put us to shame. No amount of ridicule outweighs the real love that has been poured into our hearts by the grace of God (Rom. 5:5).

Jared Boggess is CT’s print art director.

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Ideas

Our Perennial Political Temptation

Mark Caleb Smith and Emma Blakemore

Reckoning with a half-century of American evangelicals’ pursuit of a “seat at the table.”

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

The political choice for American Christians is not between Republican Donald Trump and whomever the Democrats nominate in Chicago this month. It is between Christ and a corrupting, power-centric vision of Christendom.

This decision has confronted believers since we first dreamt of influence instead of the nightmare of persecution. The battlefield conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine created the possibility of using the state to spread Christianity, and the quandary of how to navigate faith and politics, church and government, has not left us since.

Christendom refers to a society or civilization that is not just majority Christian, but one that officially denigrates other faiths and, ironically, poses risks for our own. Though historic versions of Christendom had their benefits—and it is right for Christians to bring our faith and ethics to the public square—this kind of Christian quest for power, even for the best reasons, can eclipse Christ or hamper our witness.

The rise and fall of social and political structures do not reflect the rise and fall of Jesus, who remains eternally on his throne. And though it is possible to pursue Christ and power together, the struggle to keep them in perspective is constant.

That struggle is vividly evident right now among politically conservative evangelicals in America. Since the 1970s, the Christian Right has acquired access and influence to pass laws and shape the judiciary. Christian Coalition architect Ralph Reed asked for just a “seat at the table” where the real decisions get made, but that seat came at the price of political loyalty. And such loyalty, even in the pursuit of the good, can be twisted beyond what Christian witness can bear.

What follows should not be taken as support for Biden’s replacement on the Democratic ticket. Our focus on the Republican Party is not because we believe that Democratic Christians are immune to political temptations or that Christians should be loyal to the Democratic Party. On the contrary, we think misplaced loyalty to any party risks the exchange of hope in Christ for faith in Christendom, and white evangelical support for the GOP has been so overwhelming that this risk feels close to reality.

Our story, however, begins with a Democratic politician—former president Jimmy Carter. In the 1976 election, his campaign decided an interview with Playboy was a chance to showcase God’s candidate to the Devil’s readers. Carter needed to be more than admired. He had to be relatable.

Maybe the interview helped with some voters: Carter squeaked into the White House in November of 1976, as Gerald Ford, his opponent, still carried the stain of the Nixon administration. But Playboy left its own kind of stain on Carter. He spoke about temptation’s grip on the human heart, admitting his own struggles with lust, and used the word screw. Many of his fellow Christians vehemently objected.

“Screw,” said Bailey Smith, a pastor and former Carter enthusiast, “is just not a good Baptist word.” Prominent Southern evangelicals including Harold Lindsell, Jerry Falwell Sr., Jerry Vines, W. A. Criswell, and Bob Jones Jr. all took aim. At one rally, Carter faced a picketer holding a sign that said, “With Christians like Carter, who needs pagans?”

Carter’s frayed relationship with conservative Christians would grow worse during his presidency. These voters were searching for a political lifeboat to survive the cultural flood. Traditional Christianity’s influence was waning thanks to the 1960s counterculture, the sexual revolution, and Supreme Court decisions like Engel v. Vitale (1962), which prohibited school-sponsored prayer in public education. The nascent Christian Right wanted to fight back through politics.

They needed a champion, an avatar of rectitude willing to wage battle in the public square. At a personal level, as a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, Carter fit the role. But publicly, he refused to use the government to encourage the kind of clean living he exemplified. He famously said Jesus would oppose abortion, but his administration would not undermine Roe v. Wade (1973). “You can’t legislate morality,” he told Hugh Hefner’s rag. He was not the transformative leader sought by the Christian Right. If the movement’s leaders wanted a revolution, they needed someone able to inspire followers and persuade opponents. They needed the right kind of moral authority—a credible connection of private and public goodness. Carter was not it.

The champion the movement chose in 1980 was Carter’s mirror image: a Republican from liberal California instead of the Democrat from conservative Georgia. In two terms as California’s governor, Ronald Reagan had signed a law that increased abortion rights and opposed a referendum that gave the government more power to remove gay teachers from classrooms. Reagan had also been divorced, and his religious life was more private than public.

But Reagan’s appeal went beyond policy. “The Gipper,” as he was sometimes called, painted a picture of America’s past that gave faith a place of honor, appropriating the biblical simile of a “shining city on a hill” to make the faithful feel seen and comfortable in the new GOP.

Reagan was a pivotal figure in American politics. His calm and sunny optimism made conservatism respectable and attractive. To some extent, this was a boon for the Christian Right, but Reagan’s was a patriotic, ideological revolution more than a moral one. He did not transform attitudes about abortion, gay rights, or even prayer in school among the broader public—yet politically engaged evangelicals stuck with him anyway.

In the Reagan era, “We were somebody. We mattered,” recalled Moral Majority executive Ed Dobson. “All the years in in the backwoods of the culture were over. We had come home, and the home was the White House.”

A decade later, that home was occupied by the first baby boomer president. Democrat Bill Clinton, whose alleged marital infidelity was an issue in the 1992 campaign, was later accused of having a sexual relationship with a White House intern. That story exploded in 1998, and Clinton denied wrongdoing to his Cabinet and, later, the public. He was eventually impeached for perjury and obstructing investigations into his conduct.

Now a vital part of the Republican coalition, the Christian Right actively sought Clinton’s downfall and doggedly emphasized the necessity of good character in public life. “As it turns out, character DOES matter,” wrote Focus on the Family’s James Dobson of Clinton. “You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world!” Reed and Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, would make similar points.

Conservative evangelicals’ intense political clarity in that moment—their vocal conviction that public leadership must stem from private morality and that character is political destiny—infamously would not last. We know the next chapter of this story all too well: On October 7, 2016, a leaked “hot mic” recording of Donald Trump, then the Republican presidential nominee, heard the candidate describing at least his adulterous and vulgar impulses, and, arguably, his habit of sexual assault.

The audio fit patterns in Trump’s past. He was on his third marriage and not only sat for an interview with Playboy but appeared on the cover. He had bragged about extramarital affairs and hurled misogynistic public insults. But his conservative Christian supporters—from pundit Eric Metaxas and megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress to long-standing leaders like Reed, Dobson, the younger Graham, the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, and broadcaster Pat Robertson—overwhelmingly did not flinch.

Trump’s then-running mate, Mike Pence, perhaps the most politically successful son of the Christian Right, stayed on the ticket. “I am proud,” he declared, “to stand with Donald Trump.”

The path from “Screw is just not a good Baptist word” to “I am proud to stand with Donald Trump” is longer than the 40 years between those statements. The cultural trends apparent in 1976 had all continued, particularly where sex was concerned. Gay marriage had been legalized, and calls to expand transgender rights and normalize polyamory were growing. It’s easy to lampoon the hypocrisy of the Christian Right’s leaders on the question of character—and they deserve it—but it’s also true that many conservative Christians sincerely felt a heightened sense of cultural doom.

Our major political parties had changed almost as radically. Gone were the days of overlapping coalitions and moderating work across the aisle. Party identities hardened and talk of culture war was joined by fear of civil war.

A politics of persuasion through moral authority may have seemed fanciful in this environment—and electing Trump may have seemed like a rational bargain to establish a conservative bulwark on the Supreme Court, where gay marriage, like abortion nearly 50 years prior, had become the law of the land.

On paper, it worked. Trump’s Supreme Court nominees helped overturn Roe in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. But Dobbs has left many conservative evangelicals and other social conservatives floundering: Abortion rates have increased nationally; the pro-life cause has suffered ballot box defeats in red states Kansas and Ohio; and Trump’s 2024 campaign has removed support for a federal ban on abortion—as well as opposition to same-sex marriage—from the GOP platform.

Perhaps that decidedly mixed record can prompt reflection. In 1980, Christianity Today ran an editorial on the upcoming election season. It argued for the necessity of a broad issue agenda for evangelicals, one that would reflect the full witness of Scripture: care for the poor and peacemaking alongside pro-life principles and demands for good character.

“Too narrow a front in battling for a moral crusade, or for a truly biblical involvement in politics, could be disastrous,” the editorial concluded. “It could lead to the election of a moron who holds the right view on abortion.”

That wisdom has been ignored. A thin agenda combined with fervent partisan loyalty left many believers feeling like the pursuit of Christendom through the Republican Party was their only option. That loyalty encouraged Christians to defend what was indefensible only a few years before. Continued loyalty requires even more.

In Matthew 10:16, Christ sends out his disciples as “sheep among wolves.” This is an apt description of the Christian’s peril in the field of politics. It is often a dirty game, full of compromise and complications. But the stakes and danger of the game are no excuse to ignore, defend, or grow comfortable with sin.

In the same passage, Christ commands that his followers be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” Our shrewd loyalty must sometimes give way to holy innocence. A Christian life of integrity is lived behind closed doors as much as in the public square. This is our best and most persuasive witness (John 13:35; 14:15), and practicing honor, respect, submission, truth, and love of enemies as political virtues is the best way for us to wield power. Opposition to abortion is critical, but it cannot be the only political outworking of our loyalty to God and his Word.

Reagan was right: We are a shining city on a hill. But that we is not America. We are believers, followers of Jesus, pointing people toward the cross. Only there will we find the good we so desperately pursue. We can use our votes and voices to nudge our temporal government toward justice, but those are crude means. The glorious ends we seek require God and the transformation only he can provide. Our politics should not be devoted to restoring Christendom but to revealing Christ.

Mark Caleb Smith serves as professor of political science and director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University and is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and other publications in religion and American politics.

Emma Blakemore is a fellow at the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. She earned her undergraduate degree in international studies from Cedarville, and in her role at the Center, she focuses on research initiatives in law, religion, and politics.

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What Good Can Come Out of Sing Sing?

Emily Belz

A stunning film about a prison theater program shows the power of a loving community—rather than self-help—to bring transformation.

Courtesy of A24

As a reporter, I sometimes receive mail from those behind bars who have story ideas or who keep in contact after a prison interview. Recently, I had a note from someone in a New York prison suggesting I see Sing Sing, a new movie about a theater program at Sing Sing, the maximum security prison in New York . This person hadn’t seen the film, but he had heard the buzz about it and that it was about redemption.

A movie about prison? One look at the Christianity Today news section this summer will tell you why I didn’t feel like watching something that would make my spirits lower than they already were. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that way lately.

But oddly enough, Sing Sing, in theaters August 2, parted the clouds for me. For one thing, it’s a very good movie. Led by the twin talents of Colman Domingo and Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, it’s generating Oscars chatter for its actors’ performances.

It wasn’t the movie’s award chances that raised my spirits, though. It was its vision of community, its stunning use of the word beloved in one line of dialogue. That’s what the movie is about: how being beloved can change someone, can make the irredeemable redeemed. The person who wrote me that letter was right.

Sing Sing is based on a real theater program at Sing Sing called Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), where a group of men behind bars puts on productions of Shakespeare and other plays.

When we join the story, the men are skipping the Bard to do a production of their own making, featuring time travel, Westerns, ancient Egypt—and sure, a little Shakespeare. They title it Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code.

The film is funny and it’s heartbreaking. It depicts the heaviness of prison without being gratuitous; it depicts people changing their stories without being naive. The men don’t become better by reading self-help books, embarking on a private program of personal growth. Instead, it’s their community that hauls them by the collar into a better version of themselves. When one man doesn’t understand a stage direction, the other men jump in to explain; when one is angry, the others try to de-escalate the situation; when one is crying, another listens and comforts through the prison wall. Without spoiling anything, you’ll want to stay for the credits.

At one point in Sing Sing, the director of the play says, “Who would have thought the healing of the planet could start behind the walls in Sing Sing?”

The healing of the planet? At moments, the movie has this almost-too-earnest dialogue. But Christians know what the character is talking about. Restoration of all things—of the whole world—can come from unlikely places. Like a stable, or a prison.

In Surprised by Hope, theologian N. T. Wright comments on John 21:17: that moment when Jesus, after his resurrection, asks, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

“There is a whole world in that question, a world of personal invitation and challenge, of the remaking of a human being after disloyalty and disaster,” Wright says. Resurrection, Wright argues throughout his work, is not just about going to heaven but about restoring all things. That restoration happens not through individuals figuring out the big questions of life on their own, but through the entire body of Christ working together—a restored community of head, hands, feet, and elbows.

RTA is not a faith-based program, but in real life, it’s working toward aims similar to those of Christian organizations behind bars—organizations that want to give the incarcerated some measure of a restored life, that want to remake a human being after “disloyalty and disaster,” as Wright describes it.

After seeing Sing Sing, I spoke to Sean Pica, who grew up in New York prisons—he went in at age 16 and was released at 34. Pica says his years in Sing Sing should have been the worst of his life after he “failed everyone.” Instead, he was restored—and became the first in his family to earn a college degree.

Pica recalled that when he first arrived at Sing Sing as a skinny teenager, a group of older Black men came to his cell. They told him to make his bed and sign up for school.

“They wouldn’t take no for an answer,” he said. They pushed him to get a high school diploma. Pica did. He went on to get an undergraduate degree from Nyack College, a now-shuttered Christian college that had a program at Sing Sing at the time. Then he got a master’s degree from the now-shuttered New York Theological Seminary.

He also experienced the benefits of RTA; while incarcerated, he became the carpenter for the productions and built sets. He knew the men portrayed in the film.

A free man for 22 years now, Pica runs Hudson Link, a nonprofit college education program behind bars that has 700 students enrolled (it had early ties to Nyack before Nyack began to struggle). He’s not quite sure how he ended up leading a college program.

“That is God’s hands all over that,” he said, underlining how he needed community to get to where he is now. “It’s not a solo [expletive] sport.”

The film hits close to home for Pica, literally: Hudson Link operates within a 30-yard radius of RTA, so the organizations’ ties are close. Pica still builds sets for the theater productions—including the sets for Breakin’ the Mummy’s Code, the production depicted in the movie. When A24, the studio behind the film, held a screening at Sing Sing this year, they invited Pica.

He was in disbelief, sitting in the packed chapel auditorium in the maximum security prison and watching men he knew quoting Shakespeare on the big screen. He didn’t care if the film screened anywhere else.

And what did he think of the film?

“It’s the real deal,” he said. “I cried through most of it.”

Emily Belz is a staff writer on the news team.

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Books

5 Books on Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit

Kristin Elizabeth Couch

Chosen by Kristin Elizabeth Couch, author of Deep Roots, Good Fruit: Seeing the Fruit of the Spirit Through Story and Scripture.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

Keeping the Heart

John Flavel

This book, written by an English Puritan minister, is an alluring masterpiece: ancient, beautiful, and true, shining a spotlight into the soul’s crevices. To produce authentic spiritual fruit, Flavel declares, a heart must first be soft and tender. He writes, “To keep the heart, then, is to carefully protect it from sin, which disorders it, and maintain that spiritual frame, which fits it for a life of communion with God.” In stunning prose, Flavel implores Christians to remember that God has obliterated our stony hearts and made them new. We are meant to walk circumspectly, bowing low before God as the Holy Spirit generates godly fruit.

The Mystery of the Holy Spirit

R. C. Sproul

Sproul deftly unpacks the mysteries surrounding the Holy Spirit, showing through God’s Word who he is and what he does in the heart of every true Christ follower. Many have been swept away by false teachings regarding the third person of the Trinity, and Sproul graciously guides the reader’s gaze back to the Bible. As he explains, the Holy Spirit is God himself, and he has chosen to take up residence within each Christian, stirring up the heart while convicting, comforting, helping, and guiding.

The Character of Christ: The Fruit of the Spirit in the Life of Our Saviour

Jonathan Landry Cruse

This short book is a perfect delight. Cruse, a Presbyterian pastor in Michigan, guides us to Jesus, who manifested the Spirit’s fullness of perfect fruit. With captivating writing, Cruse heartens the reader to cling to the true vine, Christ, forever bearing in mind that spiritual fruit is the result of God’s work in us rather than the product of our own striving. The chapters move along with the Spirit’s fruit as listed in Galatians 5, punctuated by vivid examples from common life.

The Hiding Place

Corrie ten Boom

Dutch Christians Corrie and Betsie ten Boom suffered inconceivable tortures in a Nazi concentration camp—their punishment for hiding Jews in their home. During their captivity in Ravensbrück, the sisters discovered that triumphant living is possible anywhere, in all circumstances, with God as their souls’ hiding place. Bed bugs, selfishness, brutality, and pain became the sisters’ portal to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as they embraced the Holy Spirit’s work. Readers can trace the Spirit’s luscious fruit as it ripens in this unforgettable tale, beholding magnificent sanctification forged in the hothouse of dark affliction.

Safely Home

Randy Alcorn

Alcorn’s novel introduces the characters Li Quan and Ben Fielding, who met as college roommates at Harvard. Decades later, Quan resides in China, facing daily persecution and death threats as he heeds the Holy Spirit’s governance and ushers his beloved family into the perilous underground church. Meanwhile, Ben has scaled the American corporate ladder, simultaneously experiencing financial wealth and spiritual bankruptcy. While on a business trip in China, Ben reconnects with Quan, and a masterful story unfolds, full of darkly unexpected twists and turns. Alcorn brilliantly reveals what happens when the Holy Spirit stirs and softens, taking up residence in the human heart.

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History

A Short History of Parental Rights

Joseph K. Griffith II

Christians in America enjoy the right and duty to educate our children as conscience dictates, thanks to a balanced legal tradition.

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

When the COVID-19 pandemic pushed K–12 schooling online and gave public school parents a new window into how and what their children were learning, a nationwide debate erupted. Public curricula on race, class, and gender and the role of parents in shaping their children’s education came under scrutiny as they hadn’t for two decades.

By 2023, 22 states had implemented parental rights or curriculum transparency laws or executive orders, to varying results. In Maryland, Muslim and Christian parents sued their local school board for not allowing them to opt their elementary-aged kids out of mandatory LGBTQ story hours. In the state of Washington, the recent “Parental Rights initiative”—requiring public schools to release children’s medical records to their parents—is being challenged in the courts.

Meanwhile, homeschooling is now the fastest-growing form of education in the country. Once illegal in many states and associated with white, religious conservatives, it is increasingly ethnically, religiously, and politically diverse. Some parents are (wisely) taking it on a kid-by-kid, year-by-year basis.

How did we get here? And how should Christians—especially those who want to both train up their children in the way they should go (Prov. 22:6) and seek the welfare of their city (Jer. 29:7)—think about the potential tension between the right of parents to direct their children’s education and the role of the state and wider community in forming educated citizens?

William Blackstone’s 1765 commentary on English common law is the seminal text on parental rights in the Anglo-American constitutional tradition. It begins not with the radical independence of autonomous adults but with parents’ intimate and enduring relationship with their children. The Creator of the universe, Blackstone wrote, has implanted in the heart of every mother and father a deep, familial love for their offspring that nothing can totally destroy. Parents present in their kids’ lives have a unique opportunity to know their children’s individual needs, proclivities, and capacities.

From this footing, Blackstone and his American counterparts in our country’s formative legal years struck a middle path between the absolute power of the state and the absolute power of parents, alternatives for which they found historical warnings in the legal codes of Sparta and Rome, respectively.

On one hand, because parents typically know and love their own kids, the responsibility of raising, protecting, and educating children belongs first and foremost to parents, not to the state or the broader political community. Early American legal commentator James Kent faulted the ancient Spartan regime’s attempt to subsume the individual into the state. “It is a plain precept of universal law,” wrote James Schouler, another influential 19th-century American jurist, that “young and tender beings should be nurtured and brought up by their parents.”

On the other hand, since parents’ power is “derived from” their duty, Kent continued, their power is not (and in the Anglo-American tradition never has been) absolute. There is no right to abuse or neglect one’s offspring. Indeed, Kent emphatically denounced the Roman patriarch’s power of life and death over his children as “barbarous and unfit for a free and civilized people.” (Similarly, writing in the context of the Roman family in his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul instructs fathers not to provoke their children to anger [6:4].)

Complicating Blackstone’s somewhat neat account of parental rights, however, every state in America funded common schools and passed a compulsory school attendance law between 1852 and 1918. In a political community where “We the People” rule, it was argued, shouldn’t all parents be required to educate their children so that they may take on the responsibilities of citizenship when they grow up? As Schouler wrote, “So intimately is government concerned in the results of early training that it interferes, and justly, too, both to aid the parent in giving his children a good education, and in compelling that education.”

But then, don’t compulsory school attendance laws shift the responsibility of rearing children from parents to the state? Numerous state supreme courts resolved this tension by upholding the general authority of the state to form an educated citizenry while also protecting the right of parents to direct the particulars of their own children’s education. According to these decisions, states may set minimum educational standards, but parents have the flexibility to meet those standards in a variety of ways, both inside and outside of the classroom.

For example, these courts ruled that parents have the right to opt out their children from studying certain subjects or from participating in certain activities in public schools (such as bookkeeping, grammar, singing lessons, and dancing exercises in a physical education class).

In a frequently cited decision that closely followed Blackstone’s argument, the Wisconsin Supreme Court wrote in 1874 that parents have the “paramount right … to make a reasonable choice from the studies in the prescribed course which his child shall pursue” because parents are “likely to know the health, temperament, aptitude and deficiencies” of their own children. Moreover, the Massachusetts and Indiana Supreme Courts, at the turn of the 20th century, ruled that parents have the right to educate their children at home, provided, of course, that they meet the minimum standards set by the state.

This story culminates in the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision of Meyer v. Nebraska in 1923. In the aftermath of the Great War, the Nebraska legislature criminalized teaching foreign languages to children before the eighth grade in order to destroy “alien enemy sentiment” and “Americanize” the large German American population in the state. In response, Zion Lutheran School offered foreign language instruction during recess, which it argued was technically outside of regular school hours. Enraged, vandals shot out the school’s windows and burned all its German-language books.

However, at the behest of his students’ parents, Robert T. Meyer—a 42-year-old round-spectacled, mustached teacher at the school—persisted, teaching German from a book of biblical stories. He was fined a full month’s salary. Undeterred, he said that he had the responsibility to teach his students to practice “the religion of their fathers in the language of their fathers.”

On appeal and in front of the Supreme Court, Meyer’s legal counsel declared that the case poses “one of the most important questions that have been presented for a generation”—namely, whether the state or the parent “has control over the education of his child.”

In a 7–2 decision, the Supreme Court struck down the law, ruling both that public education is of “supreme importance” and also that a parent’s right to direct his or her children’s education is “essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.” Echoing Blackstone’s thesis, the Meyercourt held that, “corresponding to the right of control, it is the natural duty of the parent to give his children education suitable to their station in life.”

Today, in the United States, Christians can be thankful for our legal right to fulfill our sacred duty to educate our children according to the dictates of our consciences, whether at home or in public or private schools—a right unavailable to many Christians across the globe. Indeed, stories abound of Christian families from places like Cuba and Germany seeking refuge in America in order to educate their children as they see fit.

Of course, Blackstone’s framework, even modified for a democratic people, will not neatly resolve all disputes between parents and the state. It does not give parents the right to unilaterally dictate what is taught in public schools. But it does suggest that, since parents typically know and love their own kids, they ought to have the right to direct the particulars of their children’s education.

Joseph K. Griffith II is the William Blackstone Professor of Law & Society at the Ashbrook Center and an assistant professor of political science at Ashland University. This article is adapted from a previously published paper, “‘Long Recognized at Common Law’: Meyer and Pierce’s Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Precedent on Parental Educational Rights and Civic Education,” in Perspectives on Political Science.

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Theology

The Paris Olympics’ Altar to an Unknown God

Taylor Worley

The organizers deny their tableau referenced Da Vinci’s Last Supper. But the imagery speaks volumes about the spiritual needs of our confused society.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Screenshot from X

The controversy over the Paris Olympics’ alleged mockery of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper during the opening ceremony takes us all the way back to ancient Greece. Not to Olympia, the site of the original Games, but to Athens, as documented by the evangelist Luke in Acts 17. Then, as now, Christians had to navigate a tragic misunderstanding of the Good News, and the apostle Paul’s patience with the foolishness of the Greeks (1 Cor. 1:23) just might come in handy as we watch the 2024 Games.

For many years, I assumed that Paul must have commended the religiosity of the superstitious Athenians with his tongue firmly in his cheek. But the longer I spend with this story, the more I believe my initial reading to be wrong. Just read verses 22 and 23:

Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: To An Unknown God. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.”

There’s no sarcasm here. Paul seems genuine in his praise. Despite the fact that the city’s numerous idols “greatly distressed” him (v. 16), he found something to admire and used the Athenians’ extreme superstition as an opening for the gospel. Could we try the same with Paris?

But, first, I must concede that the artistic choices made with this tableau are undeniably awkward, seriously shortsighted about audience reception, and distasteful at best. I understand why many Christians were offended—though I must also note that evidence for what was intended is inconclusive. Scholars disagree on whether this was a deliberate parody or unwitting allusion, and it’s unlikely that the offended will get a satisfying apology or the confused a concrete answer.

So where do we go from here? This sort of thing has happened before, and it’ll happen again. Do we have an option other than being angry or turning a blind eye? Is it possible to reflect on this in a more helpful way, and perhaps even to imitate Paul and advance the gospel?

A good place to begin is to ask, “Why might the creators of this spectacle have wanted to borrow Christ’s table in the first place?” This is not an unusual move in the art world, which has no shortage of references to classic images like Da Vinci’s. Contemporary artists allude to and appropriate Christian imagery all the time. From an art history perspective, the reference itself isn’t all that novel or significant—what matters is the meaning it’s given.

For instance, Andres Serrano’s 1987 photograph, Piss Christ, offers almost no nuance, which is why it continues to generate outrage among Christians. By contrast, Andy Warhol made an extensive series of paintings based on Da Vinci’s Last Supper at the end of his life. Those works continue to receive thoughtful engagement, including from Christians, that is changing the way scholars think about Warhol’s spirituality.

WikiMedia Commons / WikiArt

‘Piss Christ’ by Serrano Andres (left) and The Last Supper by Andy Warhol (right)

Determining whether such references are intentionally offensive or simply inside baseball for art school grads—or a new incarnation of the confused longing of the Athenians—is often a tough call. That’s exactly what’s disputed with the banquet imagery from the opening ceremony in Paris. Were the organizers honoring the original—Da Vinci’s masterpiece and/or Dutch artist Jan van Bijlert’s 17th-century The Feast of the Gods—by seeking to add to its meaning, or were they demeaning or redefining it?

WikiMedia Commons

Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert

I believe the answer comes down to whether we believe the possible Last Supper reference pictured Christ and the disciples in a wildly inappropriate or out-of-character way. Superficially, the answer may seem to be an easy yes: The disciples were replaced with drag queens, and in place of the Lord’s Supper on the table was a nearly nude man, painted blue.

But part of the reason it’s so hard to shake the connection to Da Vinci, despite the Olympics’ insistence that the only intended reference was Greek mythology, is that the performance in Paris seems to be pressing the question of who belongs at that special table. And we must remember that Jesus himself pressed this issue again and again in his ministry by dining with “sinners and tax collectors” (Mark 2:15–17). Disturbing the established codes for table fellowship got Jesus in plenty of trouble, and—off-putting though it was for many viewers—this performance may have been an attempt to do the same.

Looking beyond Paris, though, Christians may want to rethink our possessive instincts around Christian imagery. I get it. As an art history professor at a Christian college, I routinely find myself getting grumpy about sloppy appropriations of “our” stuff. I could make a long list of recent examples from movies and television that got me worked up.

Yet it’s helpful to recall two things that may temper this reaction. First, our ancient Christian brothers and sisters were often at a loss for how to both reject idols but also depict their faith, so they regularly appropriated ready-to-hand visual cultures of their Greco-Roman neighbors. Take a look at the central scene in the ceiling mosaic of the Arian Baptistry in Ravenna, Italy. Is that a river god present at Jesus’ baptism?

Ввласенко / WikiMedia Commons

Baptism of Christ, a mosaic in Arian Baptistry

Or compare the many depictions of Jonah under his vine (for example, the British Museum’s Jonah sarcophagus) to portrayals from the ancient world of Dionysus or Endymion, reclining under dangling vines. Artists borrow from each other, whether they’re Christians or not, and early Christian use of pagan imagery provided visual camouflage to survive the most severe seasons of Roman persecution. With time, that practice of subverting familiar forms gave way to creating wholly new ones. (Recall that Christians didn’t depict Christ on the cross for eight centuries after his resurrection.)

This is part of why it’s difficult to settle the reference question in Paris: The Feast of the Gods looks a lot like The Last Supper, so even if the Olympics only had Van Bijlert’s painting in mind, as claimed, the tableau would still look like Da Vinci’s painting. These works have shared sources, and one generation’s art inevitably informs another. We can’t accept that kind of cross-pollination when it works for us and complain when it doesn’t.

Whether we like it or not, masterpieces like Da Vinci’s, created by and for the church, are part of a shared cultural heritage that will continue to inspire successive generations of artists, generating lots of hits and plenty of misses. Would we really prefer it otherwise? Perhaps we can learn to marvel at the staying power of these images in a secularizing world.

And that brings me to the second reason we should resist knee-jerk condemnation: Why do these images still resonate? Why did the organizers of one of the few truly global events of modern life choose this image?

I believe the decision says a great deal about the spiritual needs of our time. In his response to the media after the backlash, the artistic director described the scene as a picture of inclusion. He could have chosen many different ways to express that value, but he chose an image that, for good or ill, brings to mind Jesus dining with his betrayer and instituting a meal by which all believers remember him.

Are we really disappointed by that choice? Or could we see here a clumsy grasping for truth amid desperation, loneliness, and unconscious longing for God—a grasping that deserves our compassion? Could we, like Paul in Acts 17:27, hope that this tableau’s organizers and fans “would seek [God] and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us”?

Jesus himself was mischaracterized by his friends and enemies alike. He showed immense patience with the confusion that followed him wherever he went, responding not with outrage or indifference but with probing questions, well-timed calls to repentance, and announcements of the gospel. Even stern ol’ Paul, disturbed by the gross idols around him, found a way to redirect a confused people to God.

Taylor Worley is visiting associate professor of art history at Wheaton College and author of Memento Mori in Contemporary Art: Theologies of Lament and Hope.

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News

Choctaw Bibles Connect Christians with Native American Heritage

Hannah McClellan

Translation and digitization projects are seeking to revitalize the Indigenous language.

PhotoEuphoria / Getty

Kenny Wallace doesn’t have a lot of people to talk to in Choctaw.

But he does have a Bible app with a new translation of Scripture in the Indigenous language that his ancestors spoke. And it has an audio sync feature that allows him to listen to the words aloud, to hear how they sound.

“Sometimes, that’s the only Choctaw voice I ever hear,” Wallace told CT. “Not only is it feeding my soul, but it’s actually feeding me culturally as well.”

Wallace, an African American Choctaw Pawnee, said his family was cut off from their Indigenous heritage by racism and geographic distance. He officially started the journey to reclaim his heritage in 2008, beginning with language. To know where he came from, he knew he wanted to understand Choctaw.

He started by getting an old Bible translated in the 1800s and learning words from it. But when Wallace, a teacher and worship pastor who lives in Canada, started interacting with other Choctaw speakers, he learned he’d picked up some peculiar vocabulary—old religious words, a little out of date.

Then he found a new version started by the Choctaw Bible Translation Committee. It came with an app, which had the audio sync feature that allowed him to listen to Scripture as his ancestors might have heard it.

“The app has been such a blessing for me,” he said. “Language is probably the largest carrier of culture.”

The Choctaw Bible translation project is still in progress. So far, portions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke have been translated, along with 2 Corinthians, the three epistles of John, and a few of the shorter Old Testament books, including Amos and Jonah.

“The heart of a culture is in its language,” said T. Christopher Hoklotubbe, director of graduate studies at NAIITS, an Indigenous seminary, and a classics professor at Cornell College in Iowa. “The hope is that Indigenous people will read … the Bible in their own language, which will revitalize the language.”

There are currently about 175 Indigenous languages spoken in the United States. But many are in danger of disappearing. Data from the US Census Bureau shows that while one in five Indigenous people over 65 speak an Indigenous language, only one in ten under the age of 17 do. Some experts predict that more than 80 percent of the languages will not have anyone who speaks them by the year 2050.

Today, there are fewer than 20 Indigenous languages that have more than 2,000 speakers. Choctaw, part of the Muskogean language family spoken by the people who lived in what is now the Southeastern US before European colonization, is one of them. There are roughly 10,000 Choctaw speakers today. And yet it is still considered endangered, because so few people learn it when they are children.

Preserving and reviving those languages is important to many Indigenous people. For Christians like Wallace and Hoklotubbe, there’s a spiritual aspect to it too.

A Bible in an Indigenous language provides Christians “a different way of hearing and thinking about Scripture,” said Hoklotubbe, a New Testament scholar who is Choctaw and is teaching himself the language.

Most Christians throughout history, the Bible scholar notes, have received Scripture in translation. Jesus most likely spoke Aramaic, while the Gospels were first written in Greek, so even in the original New Testament, Christians learned a “second-degree version of Jesus’ words,” according to Hoklotubbe.

This reality should inspire Christians to approach new translations with curiosity about what can be learned, Hoklotubbe said, trusting that God will fill in any gaps.

“By translating biblical texts into modern Indigenous languages and sitting with the nuances of Indigenous words, we might stumble upon new meanings,” he said. “Any opportunity to have accessible material in our Indigenous languages, especially texts that have so much importance for Christians, is a wonderful opportunity.”

The modern translation of the Choctaw Bible has been in progress for more than 20 years. The committee was formed in 1998 in response to a call from Choctaw churches.

“Pastors had a passion for the youth, for their faith and growing and knowing Jesus,” said Laura Christel Lavallee Horlings, committee program coordinator with Wycliffe Bible Translators. “But they realized the youth didn’t understand the Choctaw version of the Bible that they had, even though the language they understood best was Choctaw.”

The committee’s first goal was to translate the passages and stories specifically requested by pastors. Some early translations included the Christmas stories from Luke and John 1:1, which says, “Áyokcha̱ya anno̱pa yat ammóna aki̱li ka̱ a̱ttattók. Mako̱ oklah í haha̱klot hicha hapi nishkin a̱ isht oklah í pihi̱sa hicha hapibbak isht oklah í potoho̱littók mak ókih.Áyokcha̱ya anno̱pa yappak isht imma oklah í hachim anólih ókih.”

The app, with the audio feature, has gotten a lot of positive responses, Lavallee said. It’s very useful for people learning the language. One woman told her, “I’m going to be listening to this until I can read it for myself.”

Translation is slow work, though. The committee aims to have a digital version of the New Testament finished in 2027, with a printed version out the following year. This year, they got funding for three full-time and one part-time Choctaw translators. There are also a number of volunteers from Choctaw churches working on the project.

In the meantime, others are making the 1800s Choctaw Bible, originally published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, available online. YouVersion, a ministry of Life.Church in Oklahoma, added the Choctaw version of Scripture to its popular Bible app this year. It is the 1,300th language available on the YouVersion Bible App.

Bradley Belyeu, who worked on the project for Life.Church, told the Choctaw Nation newspaper that he was motivated by the discovery that his great-grandmother was Choctaw, according to her birth certificate. He saw a copy of the 1800s Bible in the Choctaw Nation museum in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma, and threw himself into the digitization project.

“I’m really passionate about getting God’s Word into people’s heart language,” Belyeu said. “We celebrate every new language that is added.”

Kenny Wallace knows the difference it can make—especially when your “heart language” is not the language you grew up speaking but a lost piece of heritage that can be recovered by reading the Bible in Choctaw.

“It allows me to reconnect with my history [and] with God’s Word in ways that were really stolen from me and my family,” Wallace said.

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Ideas

Why I Left My Professorship to Homeschool My Kids

Nadya Williams

In a disintegrated, stressful culture, my family has found respite—and a strengthened faith—in learning together.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

The modern life is remarkably compartmentalized. We are family members at home, but all our other roles take us elsewhere, and we must perform them only in strictly designated spaces.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in how we handle children and career. We live in a society that is family unfriendly and built on the religion of “workism,” which places work first and family a distant (and optional) second. These priorities require compartmentalization: Kids must go to designated places for kids so adults can go to designated places for work. The result is a grueling and isolating schedule for all, especially children.

A child who takes the bus to school might need to be up before 6 a.m. to be on time. A full day follows, ever more of it involving screens. After school, extracurricular activities can keep kids away from home until dinner—which family members may well eat apart—and after dinner comes homework. There’s little room for quality family time, certainly not during the week. The closest some families come is time spent in the car, rushing from school to activities to home, rinse and repeat.

For adults, of course, work happens at work, ideally a suitable commuting distance from home. Particularly for those with professional careers, work and home life can be so separate that our own spouses don’t know our “work selves,” as some couples suddenly realized in the early days of the pandemic. The growth of remote work has blurred this line, but, even there, our ideal is a dedicated home office with a closed door.

Such a neatly organized system sounds grand in theory—if you’re a robot. But this compartmentalization isn’t working very well for us humans. The results speak for themselves: Families are more stressed than ever, more overscheduled, more overwhelmed, less connected. Anxiety for people of all ages is through the roof—and it is especially harmful for our kids, as Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Shrier have shown in their respective recent books.

But then, the compartmentalized life was never suited to human flourishing. We take this lifestyle for granted as a necessary byproduct of the modern age, but Christians—called to integrate our whole lives to the worship and service of God—should be particularly well-equipped to see that our lifestyle has gone very wrong.

My family has also come to see that our lives do not have to be so compartmentalized. For most of world history, family life was far more integrated, and family members spent more time together each day. They worked together, read together, ate meals together, prayed together.

Most of us can’t replicate that historical model, because most of us aren’t running a farm or a small family business based in the home. But we can regain some integration by educating our children at home, and, in my house, we do just that.

Homeschooling families like mine want to combine learning with family life to promote not just individual growth but family flourishing, with spiritual benefits. Of course, homeschooling isn’t the only way to recover an integrated life and to put family flourishing first. I know families who have children in public and private schools who achieve such flourishing with significant conscious effort. But homeschooling is certainly one way to pursue this goal, and I’d like to give you a glimpse of what it looks like in the 21st century.

I have been homeschooling for 14 years now, and my children have never been to public school, although we have attended a number of homeschool co-ops over the years. My oldest graduated high school a year ago. Also a year ago, I left my academic career as a professor of history and classics.

These days, during the school year, my children have a leisurely breakfast in pajamas, then start doing something creative—drawing or coloring, reading, listening to an audiobook, or putting together a puzzle. Once I am sufficiently caffeinated, we work on the few formal subjects for which we use a curriculum. Lately that’s math and Koine Greek for my son, who just finished fourth grade, and math and letters for my daughter, who has just finished pre-K.

Over the rest of the day, we read aloud—a lot. This includes family Bible reading, but many other books too. We also read quietly on our own. We go to the library multiple times each week for both books and activities. We regularly take field trips and spend hours each day outside, sometimes with friends. We go to the playground, take walks, ride bikes, and create ephemeral chalk masterpieces on our driveway, fueled by homemade snacks and baked goods.

Most of all, we focus on living life together as a family, chores and all. School is fully integrated into family life. My husband Dan and I are parents, yet we are also teachers to our kids—a tradition that harkens back to Moses, as we see articulated powerfully in the Shema (Deut. 6:4–9; 11:13–21). The line between the two titles (parent and teacher) is blurred or erased altogether in the home, Deuteronomy reminds us. God calls us to teach our children about him every waking moment, not to outsource all learning to “professionals.”

One of our goals in beginning to homeschool was to significantly reduce family stress for all of us. And this past year, even amid a cross-country move, I think we’ve largely succeeded. Reducing our stress over the minutiae of education—over stuff that can be scientifically measured by the standardized tests that modern schooling idolizes—has given us more space to think about more important learning outcomes, about raising kids who will love God with all their hearts, minds, and souls and love their neighbors as themselves.

Children are little for merely a blink of an eye, the cliché goes. Except, it’s true. We only have a few years to teach them these greater lessons, to introduce daily practices to cultivate a life that places others ahead of one’s self. Such practices make our house into a “(home)school of democracy,” where, alongside reading and arithmetic, we teach our children how to communicate and collaborate across differences while we grow together in patience, love, temperance, prudence, charity, and justice.

In her recent book, Becoming Homeschoolers, Monica Swanson writes that the most important benefit of homeschooling for her family was its effect on the bonds of parents with children and siblings with each other as they grew together not only academically but spiritually. More than a decade of teaching undergraduate and graduate students with various educational histories convinced me of homeschooling’s practical and pedagogical advantages. But after homeschooling myself, I think Swanson is right. Homeschooling’s chief virtue is how it integrates and strengthens our relationships—within our family and, most of all, with God.

Nadya Williams is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church (Zondervan Academic, 2023) and the forthcoming Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (IVP Academic, 2024).

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News

In Asian American Churches, Generational Differences Deter Young Leaders

Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

Survey: Majority Asian churches are half as likely to have leaders under 30.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Lightstock / Unsplash

One of the first spiritual formation books written for Asian American Christians, released by InterVarsity Press in 1998, is entitled Following Jesus Without Dishonoring Your Parents. Even in its title, the book acknowledges how Asian Americans’ faith and discipleship are inextricably intertwined with family and culture. Questions of calling, mission, church community, and spiritual practices are often seen through the cross-generational lens of family obligation and cultural heritage—resulting in complex perspectives on ministry and discipleship.

This layered lens on faith begins to shed light on a major finding in the recent National Survey of Asian American Congregational Leadership Practices by the Innovative Space for Asian American Christianity (ISAAC): Of the more than 200 Asian American (or majority Asian American) congregations surveyed, about 35 percent reported no leaders under the age of 30 on the ruling church board. This is more than double the number of non-Asian congregations in the survey who reported a lack of young leaders on their board.

The ISAAC survey finding also aligns with broader church studies that show how many congregations are aging and fewer young people are identifying as Christian. But, within the Asian American context, the lack of young leaders points to significant theological and cultural differences between the generations that affect communal identity, missional priorities, leadership diversity, and pastoral succession.

Steve Wong, who is the founding pastor of a small Asian American congregation in Silicon Valley, says that churches like his are often asking, “Who are we serving, actually?” It’s not a simple question when the term Asian American encompasses individuals from nearly 20 different ethnic groups, each with their own diverse cultures and life experiences.

In addition, first-generation immigrants may have different expectations and norms than second- or third-generation Asian Americans—making it harder for the younger generations to be in community with their elders.

Jason Ashimoto wasn’t yet 40 when he stepped into the senior pastor role at 400-person Evergreen Baptist Church in Southern California. He understood that his leadership was dependent on his ability to navigate these generational differences.

Having started as a young intern within the church, he knew the elders in the church would always see him as young—and he honors that perspective.

“I can’t be barking orders to them,” he told CT. “These are my elders. I always have to respect them.” Because he chose to see the older congregants like his own grandparents—caring for them, respecting them, and recognizing their authority—he was able to earn their trust over time.

But not all young Asian American leaders can so readily adapt. Steve Wong has found that Asian Americans who have spent time in white-majority congregations have trouble acclimating to Asian churches’ typically indirect styles of communication, which can include understating opinions, avoiding conflict, and talking around difficult topics.

“In a church that’s going to identify as Asian American, rhythms of communication are different,” he explained. “We may be singing the same notes, but the time signature is different.”

Mia Shin, who served as a lay leader in a Korean American church for about 20 years and is the lead pastor of a church plant in central California, thinks Gen Z Christians can be put off by the indirect communication and the avoidance of hot-button topics that are important to them.

“Transparency and authenticity are high on their priority list,” she told CT. “Asian American congregations and evangelical congregations, for the most part, don’t want to address hard topics from the pulpit.”

Longtime pastor Grace May, who has served in Chinese churches and African American churches in New England, agrees—and adds that it points to major theological differences between older and younger Asian Americans. “One of the priorities in a lot of young Asian American minds is the issue of justice. In theologically conservative churches, this is not discussed or it’s not a real concern.”

May believes that many Asian churches lack the language or training to discuss structural sin and systemic evil, instead focusing on personal salvation. This may explain why the ISAAC study found that significantly fewer Asian American congregations (34%) participated in the Stop AAPI Hate movement during the pandemic than their non-Asian counterparts (60%).

Another theological sticking point that may affect young adults’ involvement is women in leadership. Both Shin and May had limits placed on their roles when they served in Asian American churches, from being unable to preach to being prohibited from serving Communion. They often saw younger, less experienced men being given discipleship and leadership opportunities that were denied them.

The ISAAC study confirms their experience. Thirty-two percent of the Asian American congregations surveyed do not allow women to teach alone with adult men, nearly double the proportion of non-Asian congregations.

“We probably have many more women who are called to pastoral ministry,” said Grace May, “but if they don’t have it modeled and are taught a complementarian theology, and are excluded from any training, why would they consider seminary or the pastorate?”

There are other reasons young Asian Americans might not choose to go into church ministry. Each leader interviewed for this article had several ideas, including pressure from immigrant parents to be financially successful; more attractive missional opportunities in the for-profit or nonprofit sectors; and Gen Z’s valuing of work-life balance set against most Asian American churches’ continuing expectation of 24-7 dedication from their church leaders.

The challenge for Asian American congregations, then, is how to attract, retain, and ultimately raise up young Christians when such significant cultural and theological differences exist between older leadership and the up-and-coming generations. Those on the ground recognize the need, as well as the risk to the health of Asian American faith communities, and are pursuing a variety of different strategies.

Steve Wong is involved in the Evangelical Covenant Church’s efforts to disciple and train more young Asian American leaders. The denomination has put out a call for more Asian leaders within the Covenant and is convening a leadership conference for them in 2025.

Mia Shin, on the other hand, is taking a more grassroots approach through her young church, connecting with a nearby college campus as well as community arts groups that attract young adults.

“The church has to go to them where they’re at, care for them, and then lovingly bring them into the faith community when they’re ready,” she said. “We need to be adaptable by finding creative ways to connect with the younger generation in their existing circles of interest.”

- More from Dorcas Cheng-Tozun

News

An Assassination Attempt in Brazil Brought Politics into Churches

Franco Iacomini

Presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed a month before the 2018 election. Polarization and Christian nationalism has only grown since then.

Supporters of Jair Bolsonaro hold a prayer vigil in support of the candidate after he was stabbed.

Suamy Beydoun / AP Images

On September 6, 2018, the eve of Brazil’s Independence Day, a crowd of people was carrying Jair Bolsonaro through the streets of Juiz de Fora when a man approached and stabbed the then-presidential candidate in the abdomen.

Bolsonaro was rushed to the hospital; the knife had damaged his small intestine and a nearby vein, causing heavy internal bleeding. The injuries kept him in the hospital for more than three weeks during the heat of the presidential campaign.

“God acted and deflected the knife,” said Bolsonaro’s son Flávio within hours of the event.

Though Bolsonaro didn’t exit the attack on his life with a fist pump and look of defiance, his recovery from the assassination attempt nevertheless energized his base and grew his supporters, including among significant numbers of evangelical Christians, who would propel him to the presidency a couple months later.

Just weeks before the attack, polls showed 26 percent of Brazilian evangelicals, which includes both mainstream Protestants as well as neo-Pentecostals, backing Bolsonaro. After the stabbing, that number rose to 36 percent. By the first round of elections on October 7, 48 percent of evangelicals voted for Bolsonaro, a number that increased to 69 percent during his winning November run-off.

Prior to the incident, Bolsonaro had not been shy in his attempts to court the evangelical vote. Journalist Ricardo Alexandre notes in his book E a Verdade Vos Libertará: Reflexões Sobre Religião, Política e Bolsonarismo:

In August 2018, during an interview with GloboNews, the then-candidate declared, “I am a Christian,” and, suggesting the supernatural nature of his success, continued, “Look at the popular support I am having. Isn’t it unimaginable that this is happening? How did I achieve this? When I talk about ‘God’s mission’ I think about the following: What will my motto be? What will my flag be? So I went to John 8:32: ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”

Up until the attack, evangelical support for the candidate had largely been expressed during campaign stops and rallies—that is, outside the church. The separation of church and state is enshrined in the Brazilian constitution, and all forms of political advertising are banned from any “place of common use,” which includes churches. A church’s formal support of a candidate could result in a fine for the candidate and the religious leader, or possibly force a candidate to resign from a race.

In the aftermath of the violence, however, Bolsonaro’s name began being invoked fearlessly from the front of the church.

“For the majority, the moment was about bringing a word of reconciliation between supporters of Bolsonaro and those who opposed him,” said sociologist Igor Sabino, a specialist in international relations, who remembered hearing pastors teach on Scriptures relating to support of governmental authorities, such as Romans 13, 1 Timothy 2, and the Psalm 72.

The General Convention of the Assemblies of God in Brazil (CGDAB), the largest Pentecostal church in the country, organized a prayer campaign shortly after the assassination attempt, asking God to “direct us to vote for men and women who are committed not only to the good and the future of the nation, but, above all, committed to God and his Word.”

At Igreja Batista Atitude, the Rio de Janeiro church attended by Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, leaders paused to pray for the candidate during a conference that was being held on the same day as the stabbing, while those in the sanctuary knelt.

Silas Malafaia, who leads the Pentecostal megachurch Assembly of God Vitória em Cristo, addressed the issue of elections during the evening service on September 6, citing Paul’s words in 1 Timothy 2:1–2 that “petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people—for kings and all those in authority.”

As Bolsonaro recuperated in the hospital and made public appearances in the days that followed, many Christians praying for the injured candidate became more vocal about their support for him.

“These weren’t just prayers for Bolsonaro’s health in a time of crisis—an obligation for every Christian,” said Paulo Won, pastor of Igreja Presbiteriana Metropolitana of Campinas. “They were prayers for his victory. From the Pentecostal spectrum to the more traditional churches, the leadership itself established a very clear direction in favor of his candidacy.”

Some of this manifested into action. Four days after the assassination attempt, a group of pastors that included Coalizão Pelo Evangelho (The Gospel Coalition’s Brazil branch) published an open letter that appeared to reference Bolsonaro’s campaign talking points.

One item, for example, asked God to “frustrate all attempts at fraud in the electoral system.” (At that time, only Bolsonaro’s campaign was making allegations of fraud in electronic voting machines.) The document also recommended “rejecting candidates with interventionist emphases in the family, educational, ecclesiastical, and artistic spheres,” reflecting the claims that Bolsonaro and his allies held against the opposing party, Partido dos Trabalhadores.

The letter was widely republished on Reformed social media, church websites, and church bulletins.

On the same day of the attack, Malafaia, who is known for his political prophecies, declared in a video posted on his YouTube channel that the assassination attempt was actually “a sign that Bolsonaro should be the next president of Brazil,” echoing the words of Bolsonaro’s supporters outside of the church.

Street vendors sold T-shirts with Bolsonaro’s face and the words He bled for you, recalled Sabino. Brazilians shared memes of Jesus walking alongside Bolsonaro in the hospital and standing beside the surgeons who operated on him.

“His survival brought elements of spiritual warfare to the campaign, as if there was evidence of a supernatural plan for him, that he would be God’s anointed one,” said Sabino.

For Bolsonaro’s evangelical supporters, this “plan” was God raising up someone to “save Brazil from the forces of a left-wing, atheistic government,” said Victor Fontana, pastor of Comunidade da Vila, a Reformed church in São Paulo.

Those looking for a messianic throughline latched onto anything that appeared to give greater meaning to the attack. “That was foolish,” said Fontana in retrospect. “[The attack] wasn’t a moral act. He didn’t choose to be stabbed.”

The weeks between the attacks and the election became a “union of Brazilian messianism with Christian nationalism,” according to journalist Alexandre. “Bolsonaro presented himself as someone that God sent, a carrier of truth and salvation to Brazil. And who will rise up against the Lord’s anointed? Voting against him, from this perspective, would have been the same as opposing God’s plans.”

This mentality kept many Brazilian Christians from critically examining Bolsonaro as a candidate, including reflecting on his seeming endorsements of the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985 and statements that many found misogynistic and prejudiced.

Instead, after he won the presidency in that 2018 election, evangelicals rarely criticized him during his term. Many joined in storming the Congresso Nacional, the Supremo Tribunal Federal, and the presidential palace on January 8 2023, appealing to the army for a military coup after Bolsonaro lost the previous year election and accused it of being stolen. A number of protesters carried Bibles, praying before they entered Congress and singing hymns while being arrested by federal police. At least four pastors were among those detained.

“It seems that many evangelicals in Brazil do not fully understand how democracy works, with the natural alternation of power,” said Won. “It’s as if democracy doesn’t matter, and what counts is the permanence of God’s anointed one.”

Six years after the stabbing incident, some pastors are now questioning what happened. “We made the mistake of turning a blind eye to those who call themselves Christians but whose actions are far from Christ,” said Ziel Machado, a Methodist pastor and vice-rector of Servo de Cristo Seminary in São Paulo.

Brazilian evangelical leaders and churchgoers could have defended democratic ideals in 2018 and in the years that followed, says Daniel Guanaes, who pastors Igreja Presbiteriana do Recreio in Rio de Janeiro. He believes that incidents such as the stabbing of Bolsonaro and the recent shooting against former US president Donald Trump present an opportunity for the church to take a stand against political violence, emphasizing how such acts are antithetical to Christianity and democracy.

“Legally, they are crimes; theologically, they are sins,” he said. But this was not the route the Brazilian church took. “The stabbing became partisan. And we were wrong about it.”

The church of Jesus Christ should not be confused with the evangelical movement in Brazil (or in the United States or in any other country), nor with the social movement studied by political scientists, says Alexandre, and conflating the two will have significant negative repercussions for the growth of the church.

“This identification of the church with a political faction is the kiss of death for Brazilian evangelicalism,” he said. “This will become very clear in the religious affiliation statistics in the coming years.”

- More from Franco Iacomini

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