Christians Are Peculiar, and That’s Okay

Sho Baraka

I joined Christianity Today not as a trite multicultural experiment but to contribute to the wonderful weirdness of building the kingdom.

Courtesy of Sho Baraka

The word weird is weirdly being thrown around by politicians as if it’s an official political critique. Once that label is hurled at someone, they return to middle school ethics and recite the gospel of rubber and glue. Most people don’t want to be weird.

However, I can’t help but think of the strange predicaments that Yahweh has put his people in: Noah building an uncanny boat, Ezekiel’s dramatized prophecy, John the Baptist as a pre-modern hipster wandering the desert, and many more. It’s very peculiar for enslaved people to sing of God’s goodness and provision on plantations that attempted to designate them as worse than weird—inhuman.

Maybe to be set apart is to be weird and peculiar. However, many people have auctioned off their weirdness to cultural lobbyists for relevance and power.

Then I think of myself and the reasons I’m joining Christianity Today as the editorial director of the Big Tent Initiative. They sometimes feel peculiar. I feel weird that I still carry hope. I feel docile when I speak of reconciliation. I feel lonely still having a tremendous amount of love for the bride of Christ. But then I feel content that I’m bringing my peculiar self and many other descriptives to CT.

I bring complexity. I am a Canadian-born man with a Swahili name, who was raised by a Black Panther in the suburbs of Southern California. I’ve known privilege and poverty. I have bobo tendencies with a militant’s temperament, but I’m a pacifist on paper. I’d rather discuss the implications of rap beefs than political beefs because at least there is poetry involved. I’m a theological nomad who tries his best to allow Jesus to take precedence over all my wonderful distinctions. I am the divergent tenets of Ecclesiastes in a soaked paper bag.

I bring impartiality. When I mention that I accepted this position with CT to friends and associates, I’ve received both congratulations and concerns. I’ve had friends call CT “too white” and others call it “too woke.” Both these terms serve as coded language that express some concern or critique of my character for the work I’ve engaged in.

I’ve been called a pawn for my views on biblical and social orthodoxy. I’ve also been called a Marxist and a “woke preacher” for my views on racism and social injustice. Be assured, I do not sit in some compromised middle, but I am centered in a gospel that is actively revolutionary and traditional.

I bring the focus of Toni Morrison. This literary giant gave a solution to the grievances of complacent critics. “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it,” she once told a newspaper columnist. I will write these essays and find others to write them.

My objective isn’t to bring “soul” to Christianity Today like some magical Negro teaching a well-intentioned white man how to cha-cha slide across the difficult social issues of our culture. My objective isn’t to “do evangelicalism” in blackface so that more Black and brown folks will smash that subscribe button.

I’ve joined Christianity Today to cultivate an all-too-forgotten garden. A garden far from Eden but aspiring to the New Jerusalem. This is a place where anger, suspicion, and betrayal threaten to trample on the seeds of hope, love, and endurance. This is not a trite multicultural experiment, but it is an ambitious work to shine light on the brilliant voices of our manifold family who have been marginalized despite the rich history of their faith tradition. I’ve joined CT to be an additional hand in the dirt that prays for heavenly waters to fertilize a new social imaginary.

I bring the unbothered constitution of Zora Neale Hurston, who said, “I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes.” Often, Black writers are expected to only write from their pain and trauma. I will not be here for crisis writing. I write at the speed of wisdom and not anxiety. I will write when compelled. I will exercise the tenth fruit of the Spirit, which is to “shut yo’ mouth” when I have nothing helpful to add.

I am also no valet for Black essentialism. Too often in the Black community, we champion the maxim “We are not a monolith!” while snatching the Black card from those who question the doctrines that are sometimes established by academics and elitists in institutions far removed from the people they claim to serve. If I speak of plights and joys, I speak as someone who knows the benefits of living in the castle and the attic. However, I can’t distinguish with certainty which resident is advocating for his own self-interest if and when they conflict; therefore I don’t presume to carry the soapbox for all of Black society.

Let us be peculiar.

It seems as if the price for reconciliation and redemption has been inflated along with gas and groceries, but not many desire those luxury purchases. Let us be the strange ones who spend the cosmic currency to be heavenly ambassadors.

The church is weird and messy. However, most importantly, the church is sanctified and essential. Therefore, join me in seeking the kingdom and putting Jesus’ beautiful bride on display.

Sho Baraka is editorial director of Big Tent for Christianity Today.

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Christianity Today Welcomes Sho Baraka as Big Tent Editorial Director

Baraka will shape stories and strategies to help the historic publication reach and impact new audiences.

Photography by Sophia Denard

Christianity Today has hired author, artist, and innovator Amisho “Sho” Baraka to serve as the editorial director of its Big Tent Initiative.

“I cannot tell you how excited we are to have Sho on the team. His creativity and entrepreneurialism are exactly what we need to catalyze the important work of advancing the Big Tent Initiative,” said Christianity Today’s chief impact officer, Dr. Nicole Martin.

“You must have a unique calling from God to navigate between differences and elevate voices we might only hear on the margins. Sho has spent his life doing just that; bridging between cultures and ideas to frame the redemptive story of Christ in the world. We couldn’t have asked for a better person to fill this role at this critical time in our history.”

Christianity Today was founded in 1956 by the late Billy Graham to “express evangelical Christianity to the present generation.” The evangelical church in the United States has grown increasingly diverse, and the Big Tent Initiative aims to help the ministry represent that diversity. It also aims to build bridges of conversation and common cause across political and racial divides.

“Historically, Christianity Today has not represented minority and immigrant churches as well as it might have,” said president and CEO Dr. Timothy Dalrymple. “We’ve been working to change that. Sho is a transcendent talent who has earned enormous respect for his thoughtfulness and faithfulness. He has our full blessing to bring new kinds of stories and storytelling to Christianity Today that go beyond what we’ve typically done.”

Baraka has spent the last 17 years traveling the world as a Christian recording artist, writer, speaker, and consultant. He brings a wealth of media experience, with four solo albums, three feature film appearances, and a book, He Saw That It Was Good.

He was a founding member of Reach Records, the internationally known hip-hop consortium known as 116 Clique, and the AND Campaign, which focuses on weaving together biblical conviction and compassion. Baraka has also served as visiting professor at Wake Forest University and Warner Pacific University and has worked alongside his brother Dhati Lewis to coach leaders in minority-majority contexts.

Baraka will build on initiatives started by Ed Gilbreath, who paved the way with Big Tent partnerships and events that embodied the rich diversity of the kingdom.

“As the Big Tent director,” said Baraka, “I’m passionate about the ambitious work to expand CT’s voice and audience. We have an opportunity to spotlight a more accurate and beautiful mosaic of the North American church. I’m even more excited about creating the space for God-glorifying hospitality that will turn estranged neighbors into family.”

Baraka lives in Atlanta with his wife of 21 years, Patreece, and their three children, Zoë, Zaccai, and Zimri. They have two boys on the autism spectrum and have become ambassadors and advocates in the autism community.

For media inquiries pertaining to this story, please contact media@christianitytoday.com.

Christianity Today was founded by Billy Graham in 1956. In the nearly 70 years since, it has served as a flagship publication for the American evangelical movement, equipping the church with news, commentary, and resources. An acclaimed and award-winning media ministry, CT advances the stories and ideas of the global church. Each month, across a variety of digital and print media, the ministry carries the most important stories and ideas of the kingdom of God to over 4.5 million people around the planet.

Ideas

The World Says Accelerate. The Church Says Abide.

Aryana Petrosky

Prayer, fasting, and reading Scripture in community make our days more spacious.

solidcolours / Getty

If Moses took out his phone to take a video of the burning bush instead of lending his full attention, would he have missed the words of the Lord? If Mary had been scrolling on her phone on a break from her daily responsibilities, would she have been too distracted to notice the arrival of an angel?

Moses and Mary were witnesses to the eternal breaking into the temporal, the miraculous interrupting the mundane. They were fully present in time.

Can we say the same? We worry time is scarce and crave an escape from the inputs that “waste” it: TV and news, text and emails. Paradoxically, we turn to the same technology to speed time up when we feel bored or want distraction. Videos and pictures captured on a phone pull us away from a full experience of the moment.

Trying to hoard or waste time only makes the days go faster and faster. Like an hourglass with a hole in the bottom, time leaks out so steadily that we are surprised when we notice that the bulb is nearly empty. How do we patch the hourglass and start to recover, one by one, the grains of time?

For the six years I lived in Washington, DC, time was a constant tension. I wanted it to speed up, wanted it to slow down. I obsessively counted minutes when I was in transit on foot, bike, or metro. If I found myself frozen—waiting in line at the grocery store or on the public bus—I would immediately pull out my phone and scroll and scroll and scroll, attempting to escape time, wishing there were fewer minutes. I would have walked right past the burning bush or looked back down at my phone at the disruption of an angel.

My conflict with time led me to experiment. I fervently tried Sabbath practices, solitude retreats, long walks without my phone, the Book of Common Prayer, and social media fasts. It was never enough. These practices often felt like just another demand to squeeze out more minutes from an over-full schedule. They were mostly solitary. Life was a one-woman wrestling match with a culture that always wanted to consume more time , more of me, whether it was pressure to work, watch Netflix, scroll social media, or read the news. I struggled to not fall behind, to keep pace, while also leaving time for friends, family, church, and rest—all of which also began to feel like obligations.

I’d read enough to know that a disordered relationship with time wasn’t a personal problem but a cultural one, and especially anxiety-inducing for young people. But I hadn’t thought much about how a faith community could help. Turns out, transforming time by myself wasn’t sustainable, or even possible. It required the church.

The Anglican church I attended in DC had started a new program called the Christian Formation Cohort. When I first read the commitment form, I immediately thought, No way. The requirements appeared impossibly demanding for a city like DC. But I couldn’t silence the nagging feeling that I needed to participate.

The six-week program included a long list of spiritual practices designed for “detachment” and “attachment,” gradually incorporated. The detachment practices included no social media, no visual streaming alone (three hours a week with other people was permitted), no audio streaming other than the Bible and Christ-centered music, and no reading except for Scripture and material that fit Philippians 4:8.

The attachment practices included attendance at a weekly group session, 30 minutes of prayer a day in a posture of surrender, daily Bible immersion, weekly volunteer service, weekly fasting, weekly hospitality and “spiritual friendship,” weekly Sabbath, one 10-hour retreat, and attendance at one meal a month for four months after the completion of the six-week program.

I was immediately struck by how much these practices had to do with time. The practices of detachment encouraged less time (or no time) spent on absent-minded distraction. The practices of attachment encouraged more time spent communing with other people, God’s Word, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The anxious question for many of us that first week was simple: What am I going to do when I get home after a long day at work? Stare at the wall? We were asked to prepare by making lists of alternative activities and of people or situations we would pray for during our allocated minutes.

In The Congregation in a Secular Age, Andrew Root makes the case that our modern experience of time is a type of famine—an unsatiated desire for not just more hours in the day, but for a fuller and more meaningful experience of each passing moment. Silicon Valley asks us to innovate, accelerate, and maximize, making it possible to endlessly multitask, to do more and more quickly. Ironically, devices that purport to save us time make us feel like we never have enough. We can’t slow down long enough to hear ourselves think, let alone hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit.

This freneticism makes it especially difficult for the church to guide congregations into sacred time. Instead, “time is emptied for the sake of speed”; the church’s purpose becomes change, compulsive growth, rather than “transformation in the Spirit.” We need the church to go against the cultural tide of acceleration and to be a place where we learn to inhabit the holy, mysterious, and eternal.

As I settled into the program, time altered. The metro ride grew longer, evenings at home felt more spacious, and 30 minutes of prayer every morning became a comfort rather than a task. A few of the detachment practices came easily to me. But attachment practices like Scripture memorization, volunteer service, and fasting felt overwhelmingly difficult to fit into my full schedule. Some weeks, I completely failed to incorporate them, and hunger from skipped meals heightened my nerves.

The practice that surprised me most was listening to the Bible on audio. I listened while I made dinner; I listened while I washed the dishes. Gradually, the sounds in my mind changed. Instead of chaos and noise, I experienced life-giving quiet and peace.

The cumulative effect of consuming less, only “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable,” was liberating. Instead of cramming in more content on my metro rides or during my evenings home, I was given a moment to be still with my thoughts, and when prompted, to pray—a provocation I might have missed if I was tapping on my phone or watching Netflix.

But it was the community that made the real difference. On the days we met as a group, time lost its structure entirely as we became absorbed in each other’s stories. We empathized with just how difficult these practices were to incorporate and encouraged each other in our shared earnestness to inhabit time in a new way.

Sharing our experiences with other people—with free-flowing tears, laughter, and words of wisdom—create moments that Root describes as “resonance,” the solution for our time famine. Resonance, according to Root, is time gathered-up, filled with meaning and purpose. To create resonance, we have to get outside of ourselves and off of our phones. In an encounter with God or another person, in a moment of extension, we leave ourselves open, vulnerable to receive a divinely appointed moment of grace. Resonance fills the hourglass, replenishing us rather than leaving us depleted.

When I spoke with one of the pastors who co-led my group, he said that what made the cohort effective was its simplicity—a return to “the basics” of the Christian faith. Rhythms of detachment and attachment, focused on commitment rather than outcomes, feels novel in an era where we’re told to optimize our time. Fasting and prayer aren’t “productive” in a way we can immediately see.

But in reality, meeting together and reading Scripture and sitting in silence are simple and historic practices, fresh in every age across all of time. In DC, ranked the loneliest city in America, my pastor said we also ought to think of community as a spiritual discipline. We can’t reclaim sacred time as solitary individuals—especially not with technology that’s so powerful and addictive. It’s a task that is too difficult to do alone.

The countercultural cohort was transformational for my relationship with time—time as plentiful rather than scarce; time as opportunity rather than burden; time as something to inhabit with others rather than spend on ourselves. As Psalm 90 reminds us, we must be taught to number our days and be fully attentive to how we spend our time in light of eternity; for “a thousand years in [God’s] sight are like a day that has just gone by” (v. 4).

In the months since the cohort finished, rather than trying to go against the grain of our culture alone, I’ve cofacilitated silent weekend retreats and participated in weekly dinners. I’ve committed to daily morning prayer and Scripture reading, this time with a friend. Time spent together in praise and petition seems to multiply and slow down. Time fills up but doesn’t overwhelm; time is resonant. The burning bush flickers, and the Lord speaks.

A church known for its ability to transport people into transcendent, sacred time is a true respite from an insatiable culture of consumption and acceleration. It’s a compelling place to abide—past, present, and future.

Aryana Petrosky is a graduate student at The University of Edinburgh where she studies the intersection of ecumenical monasticism, spiritual disciplines, and faith in the public square. She helped launch The After Party: Toward Better Christian Politics and formerly worked for the American Enterprise Institute's Initiative on Faith & Public Life.

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Church Life

For Missionaries, Mental Health Feels Like a Burden and a Liability

Annie Meldrum

How sending agencies are trying to bring overseas workers off the perfect Christian “pedestal” and into a counseling chair.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

The long-standing stigma around mental health care has faded from many American churches, but has the shift made its way to the ends of the earth?

When you’re an overseas missionary, a season of deep depression, panic attacks, or chronic anxiety can seem to put your ministry in jeopardy, keeping you from the work you are being called and paid to do.

Yet missions workers are extra susceptible to such conditions. They experience culture shock. They witness trauma and fear persecution. And they often live in places where access to mental health professions is difficult to impossible.

For years, supporters have been trying to open up more conversations about mental health and to get workers on the field the help they need, but missionaries still fear the repercussions of coming forward with their struggles or their family members’.

Just over half of missionaries say they have an issue they worry could jeopardize their work in the field, according to a survey conducted this year by Global Trellis, an organization that supports cross-cultural workers. Emotional and mental health struggles were among their top concerns.

The ministry asked nearly 400 missionaries, many of whom had spent 20-plus years in the field, “How do we keep senders from putting missionaries on the pedestal, and keep missionaries from feeling like they have to stay on the pedestal?”

“We help people have language to talk about things. So, normalizing rest, normalizing growth, and just normalizing change,” said Amy Young, the founder of Global Trellis and a former missionary to China.

Other research has shown that missionaries’ stress levels are double to triple those of the average American, reaching levels that can lead to major health issues.

Sending organizations have seen missionaries leaving the field in crisis. From their view, improving mental health care is a way to better support those sent out to fulfill the Great Commission and to ensure their work is sustainable.

Some agencies are advising missionaries to include a budget for mental health care when they’re fundraising. They are also hiring and deploying more trained counselors who can be available—online and in person—to help work through the specific complications that come with missionary life.

“There used to be a strong belief that if you are really right with the Lord, you shouldn’t need counseling; you have the Holy Spirit,” said Penny Phillips, who served with Wycliffe Bible Translators. “There was some degree of shame associated with seeing a counselor, and that has changed.”

Over decades as a missionary counselor with Wycliffe, based at its Orlando headquarters, she saw missionaries grow more open to seeking counseling. Phillips and fellow professional counselors were available to travel to remote locations to minister to missionaries in many different countries.

“We were willing to see missionaries from any missionary organization,” said Phillips. Wycliffe’s goal, she said, was to serve all missionaries before, during, and after their time on the field. The main idea is for counseling to always be an open option to people serving all over the world.

While Phillips experienced and recognized the convenience of virtual counseling sessions, she still placed a high value on traveling to visit families in person. It is “easier to develop a trust relationship in a face-to-face situation,” she said.

John Leverington, also a longtime Wycliffe staff counselor, echoed Young in the importance of releasing missionaries from the pedestal on which they have stood for so many years.

“Those expectations are impossible to live up to and can lead to isolation, presenting a false self of competence while emotionally questioning one’s own faith, and, at some point, coming to a crisis that can’t be resolved on your own without support.”

With the particular dynamics of missionary work, mental health has proven to be a tough issue to navigate. In some cases, even when provided with mental health support, missionaries would rather suffer in silence than risk their sending organization declaring them unfit for their role.

“When missionaries are expected to go straight to their employers with health concerns, and when the help received is coming primarily from the ones in charge, a culture of distrust, fear, and secrecy can ensue,” Catherine Allison, who previously served in Malawi, wrote last year for The Gospel Coalition.

“Even when set with the best intentions, the structures to protect missionaries might inadvertently cause harm when mental illness comes knocking, especially if missionaries fear the potential loss of their careers, homes, and ministry dreams.”

In the Global Trellis survey, respondents described a range of self-reported mental health struggles and clinical issues: anxiety, depression and loneliness, PTSD from exposure to violence, and even suicidal ideation. One missions worker saw health issues as “the main way the Enemy attacks” families on the field.

Some said pastoral counseling and member care helped but wasn’t enough. One said they are transparent with their organization so they can get the care they need, but they couldn’t be as open with supporters. Another said being open about her mental health has been a connecting point with supporters.

“This fear that a missionary would be removed from the field due to emotional health can exacerbate the disconnect between many missionaries and the ones who send them,” the Global Trellis report read. “This can lead to hiding how their emotional health is really going.”

Sending organizations are trying to anticipate the potential for mental health needs and better incorporate trusting and supportive relationships throughout their ministries, so that missionaries and their families feel less isolated and leaders can be better positioned to help along the way.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board (IMB), with 3,590 overseas personnel, takes a team approach. Its five-member care teams—one in the US and four abroad—include around 80 employees, a combination of clinically trained professionals and pastoral care staff. They serve as relational connections and support partners for those on mission fields.

“We focus on supporting individuals, families—and we care for people, not only regarding what might be typically associated with counseling or psychological needs. Our focus is more holistic in terms of what people need spiritually, emotionally, and relationally, to be well and to be able to thrive in their places of assignment,” said Chris Martin, IMB’s director of member care.

As the agency continues to improve the ways that they serve their missionaries, Martin says he appreciates the cohesion among the different pieces of member care.

“Ideally, we would have routine contact with our personnel. Not only through our member care consultants but through team leaders and other leadership in our organization—and also team members who see and know enough about what’s going on with one another to be mutually caring and supportive,” he said.

As a past missionary himself, Martin understands the high stress of overseas living as well as the fact that no matter where someone is, life is not perfect. With that in mind, he talked about the idea that one of the most important goals for IMB member care is to promote well-being within each individual and between their teams across the globe.

Connie Dunn went through her own mental health struggles when serving as a missionary with Antioch Missions International. She brings that perspective and understanding into her work as a kids advocate for Antioch’s missionaries.

Antioch assigns its adult missionaries a pastoral overseer who is not necessarily licensed in counseling but is committed to encouraging and caring for each person. Additionally, it also encourages all their missionaries to include a budget for professional mental health care as they raise support for their time on the field.

Dunn’s job is to check in with families and children to make sure that they are receiving the mental health care that they need.

“It’s not just a kid counselor, but it’s also a kid counselor that understands the hardships that third culture kids and missionary kids face,” she said.

When parents see their kids suffering or in crisis, it’s difficult and can be hard to get them help. But the mission field context adds another layer of difficulty. Young at Global Trellis noted:

The missionary may wonder, “If it gets bad enough, are we going to have to leave the field? Could we lose our home and community? How will this affect our other kids’ schooling, education, and friends? How will this impact our children’s relationship with God? How will it impact our livelihood?”

Phillips at Wycliffe also expressed a need for more counselors for young people. She herself had spent 17 years as a teacher to missionary kids before deciding to become a licensed mental health counselor specifically for kids on the mission field.

Phillips said it’s important to be able to intervene early when kids are facing trauma, anxiety, and depression so they can learn tools for navigating mental health challenges before entering adulthood.

IMB recently implemented a program for kids and teenagers on the field called TCK (third-culture kid) focused member care. IMB’s goal is to be available both to the kids as well as to their families for advice and consultation.

As missions groups seek to bring the good news of Christ to the nations, they are also learning how best to care for the people they have sent out.

Counseling, said Phillips, “is for courageous people—who have the courage to come and ask for help—and for [people who] are willing to say, ‘I don’t have it all together.’ None of us do.”

- More from Annie Meldrum

News

Bangladesh’s Religious Minorities Want Peace Amid Country’s Turmoil

Surinder Kaur

While Hindus publicly confront mob violence against their community, Christians are apprehensive about speaking out.

A rally in Bangladesh.

Syed Mahamudur Rahman / AP Images

Bangladesh’s religious minorities have reported looting, arson, and vandalization following Sheikh Hasina’s abrupt resignation as prime minister last month.

Thousands of young people first took to the streets in June to protest a court ruling that reinstated a civil service quota system many found discriminatory and exclusive. But after Hasina insulted protesters, demonstrations escalated into violence.

Since then, rioters have attacked the parliamentary building, the residences of the prime minister and other political leaders, and numerous other establishments, including ones belonging to certain religious minorities. The Catholic charity Caritas Bangladesh stated:

According to different local, national, and international news media, as well as reports from local communities, more than one hundred houses, religious institutions, and commercial centers belonging to Awami League leaders and religious minorities have been attacked. The Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council [BHBCUC] reported that hundreds of families have been attacked, faced sabotage activities, and received death threats from miscreants.

Caritas also stated its own regional office in southwestern Bangladesh was attacked by more than 100 rioters on August 4, noting that one of the mob’s leaders told the group after about 15 minutes that this was not the intended target.

On social media, many unverified reports went viral of mobs destroying a church in the Nilphamari district in northern Bangladesh and some Christian homes in Khulna, the country’s third-largest city.

BHBCUC president Neem Chandra Bhowmik said that his organization had received reports over the phone of “vandalism, intimidation and threats from 52 of the 64 districts.”

In response, the BHBCUC has organized efforts to demand peace, justice, and the arrests of those initiating violence against the minority communities in Bangladesh.

While Christian organizations in Bangladesh affirm that they have recorded data on the churches and Christian establishments targeted, they have refused to publish it, fearing backlash, one leader told CT.

Few Christian groups have officially expressed their solidarity for peace, said Asa Kain, general superintendent of the Bangladesh Assemblies of God (AG), who added that the AG had “conducted peace rallies and prayed for the nation in public” and that some Christian nonprofits, such as HEED, are providing medical help to those wounded in the attacks. When asked whether Christian students also participated in the protests, Kain explained that many might have joined with their own groups but that he did not know whether they were on the streets or active only on social media.

Christians make up less than 0.5 percent (under a million) of Bangladesh’s 174 million people, according to the 2022 census. Hindus, which comprise 8 percent, have suffered even greater losses. One leader said that up to 300 Hindu homes and 20 temples had been vandalized. Another said that attacks on his community had killed five people.

Minority communities across the country suffered after the police went on strike following a mob attack against them that left nearly four dozen officers dead and 500 injured.

Acknowledging “stray incidents” against the Christian community, though clarifying that no AG churches have been affected, Kain said, “These incidents were expected because there was no police force at work [to protect the minority community] for six days.”

An August 5 statement from the Church of Bangladesh did not mention any violence against Christians but asked for the “safety and protection of all citizens, especially those who are most vulnerable” and for prayer for those who had “lost loved ones.” It also noted the challenges of limited internet access and said that “the curfew and limited access to resources have made daily life extremely difficult for many.”

The president of the Bangladesh Baptist Church Sangha, Christopher Adhikari also expressed concerns about the effects of the “long-term blockades and curfews” on the country’s day laborers.

John Karmakar, general secretary of the Bangladesh Baptist Church Sangha, urged people to “continue praying for peace and justice” in the country.

In a statement, the National Council of Churches in Bangladesh pointed to instances of vandalism targeting churches and minority offices and called for continued prayers for the protection of minority groups.

Muhammad Yunus, who was sworn in as head of Bangladesh’s interim government after Hasina fled to India, met with distressed Hindu community members on August 13. He subsequently promised to set up a hotline for Bangladeshi minorities to report any attack and receive swift action. On Friday, Yunus assured India’s prime minister Narendra Modi that the government would ensure the protection and safety of Hindus and other minority groups.

Martha Das, the general secretary of the National Christian Fellowship of Bangladesh, asked the church to pray for those who had lost loved ones and for a return to “law-and-order.”

“Pray that this interim government will govern with integrity and equality,” she said. “All the advisers in the government should stay healthy and work to build a real new Bangladesh.”

Despite being a small minority, Christians in Bangladesh have been an active community, with missionary activities dating back to the late 18th century that established churches, schools, and hospitals. While generally coexisting peacefully with the Muslim majority and the Hindu minority, Christians have faced periods of tension and occasional violence, including church bombings in the early 2000s.

The community has experienced significant growth at times, particularly among tribal and Hindu groups. Christian organizations have also been heavily involved in relief and development work, contributing to Bangladesh’s social services and national development. Although their relationship with the government has varied, Christians have often been welcomed for their contributions in health care, education, and agriculture. Christian leaders have worked to integrate more fully into Bangladeshi society while maintaining their religious identity.

Despite this, Bangladesh is ranked number 26 on Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List, largely due to backlash that Christian converts face from their former Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or tribal communities. In April 2023, insurgents killed eight tribal Christians in Chittagong.

The protests in Bangladesh stem from the economic discontent of many of the country’s young people. (Nearly 50 million Bangladeshis are between the ages of 10 and 24.) Despite the country’s economic growth, many young Bangladeshis have found it challenging to find work, and university graduates face higher unemployment rates than their less-educated peers.

On July 1, the High Court reinstated a quota (abolished in 2018) that guaranteed 30 percent of civil service jobs would go to descendants of those who had fought for the country’s independence. The students demanded an end to the quota that favored the allies of the ruling Awami League party, a group originally composed of those who had led the independence movement.

Despite having led the government that had overturned the quota, Hasina defended its existence.

“Why is there so much resentment towards freedom fighters? If the grandchildren of freedom fighters don’t get quota benefits, should the grandchildren of Razakars?” Hasina said.

(Razakar is a slur for those who colluded with the East Pakistani volunteer force during the war for independence and participated in its atrocities, including murder, rape, and property destruction, and are thus seen as traitors.)

Following the prime minister’s remarks, the protesters took to the streets, and soon security forces and members of the Chhatra League (the student wing of Hasina’s Awami League) opened fire, killing hundreds of students. The government harshly cracked down, shutting down internet and phone access and authorizing the military to shoot on sight. As of August 10, a total of 300 people had died and thousands had been injured since the protests began.

- More from Surinder Kaur

News

New Zealand Uncovers Historic Abuse in Church-Run Institutions

Isabel Ong

Survivors, advocates, and pastors call for “true repentance” among religious groups that ran schools and homes between 1950 and 1999.

The public taking part in a hikoi prior to the release of the Abuse in Care report at Parliament on in New Zealand.

Hagen Hopkins / Stringer / Getty

Not long after Frances Tagaloa accepted Christ at 16, she started experiencing flashbacks.

Over the next few years, Tagaloa began piecing together long-buried memories and came to recognize that she had been sexually abused between the ages of five and seven by a Catholic Marist Brother who taught at a school in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby.

Tagaloa only told her parents about the abuse years later, after getting married and having children, because talking about the issue was taboo in her father’s Samoan culture, and she didn’t want her parents to blame themselves.

Her mother approached the Catholic Church in New Zealand around 1999, but Tagaloa, 56, decided not to speak with them —until three years later, when she heard the Marist Brothers were going to name a classroom after the perpetrator, Bede Fitton.

When Tagaloa met with a Catholic counselor, she wanted an apology and for Fitton’s honors to be removed. Instead, the Catholic church offered her financial compensation. Tagaloa suggested that they donate the money to the evangelical ministry where she worked.

“I was really disappointed in the process,” she said. “I remember thinking that was just a big waste of time.”

Two decades later, another opportunity arose for Tagaloa to hold the Catholic Church accountable.

The ministry leader became the first witness in the Catholic hearing with New Zealand’s Royal Commission of Inquiry, an independent body established in 2018 to investigate abuse and neglect that children and adults faced while in the care of state and faith-based institutions between 1950 and 1999.

On July 24, the Royal Commission released its final report, which found that an estimated 256,000 out of 655,000—or nearly 1 in 3—children, young people, and adults were “exposed to pervasive abuse and neglect” in state and faith-based care across the country.

Survivors included those from Pākehā (European), Māori, and Pacific Islander backgrounds as well as people who lived with mental and physical disabilities. Māori or Pacific Islanders made up the majority of those in care and were disproportionately subject to racial and cultural discrimination, as well as higher levels of physical abuse compared to other ethnicities.

Christians comprise New Zealand’s largest religious group, making up 37 percent of the population, according to the 2018 census. But believers’ responses to the Royal Commission’s 3,000-page report have been largely muted, say the survivors, advocates, and pastors that CT interviewed.

Evangelical reactions to the report range from those who are “deeply aware” to others who “barely notice and say, This is not us,” said Stuart Lange, national director of the New Zealand Christian Network.

“Personally, I have been very disappointed at the responses from the faith-based sector,” said Baptist pastor Alan Vink. “I have kept a close eye on the media, and to date, there has not been even a statement acknowledging wrongdoing, let alone any comments about redress.”

The report’s publication evoked a “mixed bag of feelings,” said Hera Clarke, who was part of the Māori advisory group during the inquiry and serves as the commissary for reconciliation and restoration in the Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia.

“There are 200,000 survivors, and we’ve only been able to touch the tip of the iceberg.”

Safeguarding and listening

The Royal Commission investigated eight religious groups in its six-year-long probe: the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Methodist Church of New Zealand, the Presbyterian Church of Aoetearoa New Zealand, the Salvation Army, Gloriavale Christian Community, Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The inquiry team wrote that “at the beginning of the Inquiry period, faith-based institutions were among the largest providers of residential care for children in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Many of these churches ran children’s homes, unmarried mother’s homes, adoption and foster services, schools, and residential institutions. The Royal Commission also included situations where a person with authority in a religious institution provided pastoral care to an individual as a part of faith-based care.

Education was “the most common pathway” into faith-based institutions where people suffered physical, emotional, mental, and sexual abuse. Investigators also found that sexual abuse was more prevalent in faith-based settings than in state care. The report added: “Many survivors died while they were in care or by suicide following care.”

In October 2022, faith-based groups issued responses and statements during a public hearing held by the Royal Commission. Since the final report’s release this July, some churches included in the inquiry published statements that acknowledged and apologized for the harm caused.

“We acknowledge and take full responsibility for our failures to provide the safe, caring, and nurturing environment those who have been in our care had a right to expect and to receive,” wrote Anglican archbishops Don Tamihere, Justin Duckworth, and Sione Ulu’ilakepa.

“We are profoundly sorry for the suffering experienced by those in our care,” said the Salvation Army’s chief secretary Gerry Walker.

The Presbyterians convened a task force on July 31 to identify and recommend necessary steps to take based on the report’s findings. The Methodists, meanwhile, created a liturgy of lament ahead of the report’s release.

Lange, the New Zealand Christian Network national director, noted that evangelical churches have grown to recognize the need to implement more robust systems to protect children and youth in recent years. “A key response of every church must now be to be extremely vigilant, and do everything we possibly can to prevent abuse ever happening in our own spaces,” he wrote in an email newsletter to members.

Two months ago, Vink, who pastors Te Whānau Pūtahi, a congregation in the North Island city of Hamilton, reached out to the heads of many of these denominations, circulating a draft statement he wrote in hopes of issuing a joint response. Although he initially received positive feedback, Vink later heard that the churches would not be proceeding with this initiative.

“To be honest, the government has done a better job [than the church],” he said.

The Sunday after the report’s release, Vink gave a sermon at his church where he highlighted updates to safeguarding policies, including making their complaints policy more visible and introducing a new whistleblowing procedure. He closed with a reflection on Matthew 18:15–17, which focuses on dealing with sin in the church.

That same Sunday, Gracecity—a multiethnic charismatic church in Auckland—included a time of prayer and confession in their services. The church also published a YouTube video in which senior pastor Jonathan Dove outlined ways Christians can respond when the topic of abuse in faith-based care arises.

“Some Christians, in a desire to protect the church, come across [as] defensive,” Dove shared with CT in an email. “When hearing about the stories of horrid abuse in faith-based care, I wanted to ensure our church members responded with care, prayer, aroha (love), and a non-defensive posture.”

In the past year, Gracecity has introduced greater oversight over its preschool, children, and youth ministries, such as providing a complaints process with the option for an external review, updating their safeguarding policies, and training ministry staff and volunteers to identify signs of abuse.

Other Christians are carving out safe spaces for survivors within their churches.

Clarke, the Māori Anglican leader, listened to 317 survivor accounts in her role as commissary. For her, the work of encouraging, supporting, and providing room for survivors to share their experiences is ongoing.

With the report’s release, Clarke is now planning to hold workshops in various dioceses for Māori Anglican believers on what the recommendations from the report, such as establishing an independent “Care Safe Agency,” would look like.

“I, alongside our bishops and archbishops, take responsibility for what’s happened in the church,” she said. “How the [abuse] has impacted survivors and their families is unacceptable.”

Rising advocacy efforts

In its investigation of religious groups that employ high control—such as the Gloriavale Christian Community and Plymouth Brethren Christian Church—the Royal Commission found that authoritarian leadership and the ostracism and punishment meted out to those who leave the groups often perpetuated psychological and spiritual abuse.

Some Christians are helping people leave these religious communities. Liz Gregory, manager of Gloriavale Leavers’ Support Trust, founded the charity in 2019 to help former Gloriavale members reintegrate into society after they started showing up at her Reformed Baptist church in Timaru, four-and-a-half hours away from the commune.

Australian preacher Neville Cooper founded the Gloriavale Christian Community, a reclusive religious sect of about 700 that settled on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Islands, in 1969. In 1994, a New Zealand court found Cooper guilty of three counts of sexual assault, while Gloriavale’s current leader, Howard Temple, is facing 27 counts of sexual offending against girls between 9 and 20 years old.

At least 270 people have left Gloriavale in the last decade, and Gregory’s church is one of the places they often turn to for help in rebuilding their lives.

When the Royal Commission’s inquiry first launched in 2018, it only pledged to look into state care. As Gregory mowed her lawn, she felt powerless and began praying: Lord, I don’t understand. Why is no one doing anything? This is horrific. Who else cares about the people in Gloriavale?

The answer came quickly to her: Her church cared. So did survivors who still had family members in the group. Together, they could do something.

Gregory and other believers gathered Gloriavale survivors together and asked if they wanted the religious group to be brought to account. The survivors agreed, and Gregory invited the Royal Commission’s inquiry team to Timaru, where survivors shared witness statements and testimonies on the abuse they had endured.

The survivors are also currently seeking a declaration that Gloriavale is guilty of modern-day slavery due to labor exploitation on the commune and that the New Zealand government failed in its obligations to humanity in an upcoming court case, Gregory said.

The secretive group says on its website that it seeks to live out a practical Christian life with perfect obedience to God. It emphasizes living in community—like the early church in Acts—and uniformity, where everyone must think, act, and speak the same, said Gregory.

“[Gloriavale leadership] think they’re Moses … but really, they’re like Pharaoh,” she said. “They’re actually those people binding people into slavery. … And our message to them is: Let these people go.”

Another high-control group included in the inquiry is the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, which has 50,000 members across New Zealand, Australia, Europe, the Americas, and the UK. Its members believe that current leader Bruce Hales is “a manifestation of the Holy Spirit or the Paul of our day,” said Lindy Jacomb, who left the group 15 years ago at the age of 20.

Thirty-two survivors shared accounts of abuse or neglect within the group to the inquiry team. The Plymouth Brethren acknowledged only five allegations of abuse and “does not necessarily accept that these incidents occurred within its care,” the report stated.

When the Brethren excommunicated Jacomb for not accepting their doctrines and theology, she stayed with a Baptist couple. “They showed me everything that church was supposed to be,” she said. “They became a new family in Christ for me.”

Last November, she launched the Olive Leaf Network, a charity that aims to provide support and networking opportunities for people who leave high-control religious groups.

Many faith-based care survivors felt like they had to fight to be included in the Royal Commission’s inquiry, Jacomb said.

“Even after being included, many people have felt there was still a bias toward minimizing their harm … [and the government] having far too much faith and trust in the institutions that abused them,” said Jacomb. Many of these religious groups have also hired legal advisors and spent considerable funds to get legal advice, she added.

Seeking redress

For Jacomb, the report’s “forced exposure does not bring about true repentance” among religious groups. In her view, genuine repentance would include a public apology by faith-based leaders.

“I’m still waiting for my apology,” said Tagaloa, the abuse survivor. She has not received an in-person apology from the Catholic Church to date, only apologies communicated through the media or via email.

The New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference issued an apology to victims and survivors in 2021. After the release of the final report, the Catholic Church thanked the Royal Commission for their work and committed to reviewing the report and taking steps to make their communities safe.

Another important aspect of repentance in the survivors’ view is an independent redress system, one of 138 recommendations outlined by the Royal Commission.

Redress encompasses financial compensation as well as physical, emotional, and psychological rehabilitation. It also includes holding the perpetrators or enablers responsible, preventing further abuse, and apologizing for the abuse.

In Canada, where more than 150,000 Indigenous children attended residential schools and suffered physical, verbal, sexual, and spiritual abuse, the government and 325 First Nations settled a class-action lawsuit in 2023 that sought about $2 billion in reparations for losing their culture and language through the school system. In July, they also reached an agreement to reform the country’s First Nations Child and Family Services Program.

New Zealand’s proposed independent redress scheme, known as puretumu torowhānui in Māori, was first recommended by the Royal Commission in 2021 to “help ensure there is consistency and equity in the outcomes for survivors.”

At present, most survivors have to return to the institution that abused them to receive compensation, which may retraumatize them. It also incorporates a “huge imbalance of power,” said Tagaloa.

During the inquiry, the team uncovered evidence of attempts to hide or cover up abuse within faith-based groups like the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, Presbyterian Support Otago, and the Gloriavale Christian Community. Leaders destroyed records, moved perpetrators between institutions, or prevented survivors from reporting their abuse.

“I would strongly question whether these groups can be trusted at all to manage their own redress processes,” Jacomb said. “How can the survivor have any sense of confidence or trust that this institution is going to have their best [interest] at heart?”

Among its latest list of recommendations for faith-based entities, the Royal Commission’s report also called for the groups to work closely with the proposed establishment of a Care Safe Agency, to ensure care standards are up to par, and create a national registry of people in ministry who may pose a risk to vulnerable children and adults.

“I believe that the Christian church should acknowledge wrongdoing and express deep sadness to all the survivors,” Vink said. “We should be quick to offer full and comprehensive redress arrangements. In biblical language, this would be known as ‘restitution.’”

To other survivors of faith-based abuse, Tagaloa has one encouragement to share: Look to Christ.

“Jesus is probably the only God I know who was also abused,” she said. “He understands the experiences we’ve gone through because he’s experienced abuse.”

“That kind of God [who] loves us unconditionally, forgives, and also wants to know us personally, is the type of God I want to know—a God [who] will give us the opportunity to experience freedom and hope.”

- More from Isabel Ong

Church Life

The UK Race Riots Need the Voices of Returned Missionaries

Harvey Kwiyani

I’m a missiologist and a migrant who lives in Liverpool. Can Christians who have served overseas stand up for my community?

Far-right activists hold a riot in England targeting mosques after misinformation spread about the murder of three girls in Southport.

Drik / Contributor / Getty

Though born in Malawi, for the past eight years, I have made Liverpool my home. In this UK port city where, for centuries, millions of immigrants have passed through and at times settled, the vibrant migrant community is small but connected. Each June, for instance, we celebrate the Africa Oyé festival, a live music event that draws tens of thousands to the city annually.

At the same time, many of us who recently arrived or whose families are relative newcomers know the fragility of our feelings of belonging. Three years ago, for example, three Black players on the English team missed their penalty kicks during the European Championship match shootout and were subject to a torrent of racist insults.

In recent weeks, Liverpool has been the epicenter of the anti-migrant riots that have rocked the nation following the horrific stabbing of three young white British girls by a Black British teenager of Rwandan heritage in a nearby suburb. Since then, furor over these devastating murders has turned into nationwide riots targeting Black and brown communities (including both those born and raised in the country and those newly arrived) and their properties.

As a leader in a multicultural Liverpool church, I have found the past weeks to be strenuous. We have contended with the logistical nightmare of making sure that migrant communities (my own family included) are safe, including temporarily relocating children and the elderly to calmer neighborhoods and making sure their houses and cars are safe. We have also been trying to provide immediate and future psychological support for those traumatized. Among other violent actions, far-right protesters have attacked migrants, burned their cars, and smashed their windows as well as vandalized organizations and hotels providing support and housing to asylum seekers.

Serving my community in this way is, of course, not only draining but also isolating. I attend one of only a few congregations that have intentionally established a place where white, Black, and brown Christians, native-born and migrant, come together to worship. But many UK churches are segregated, and I know many Black and brown Christians who have experienced racism while attending majority-white congregations.

However, as a missiologist who is a migrant and is currently ministering to migrants, I believe that the white UK church may already have what it needs to initiate hard conversations within their churches and to defend migrants to the country at large. For more than two centuries, this country has sent numerous prolific missionaries around the world. And if there is one community outside the diplomatic circles in the West that knows a thing or two about the migrants and where they are coming from, it is missions organizations that have trained and sent thousands of British people to serve in mission around the world for many decades.

Returning missionaries arrive back home in the UK having learned new languages, made new friends, found new families, and developed acute awareness of the challenges of acclimating to foreign cultures. Of course, not all missionaries who are on furlough in the UK have the same capacity for ministry while at home as they do on the mission field. Yet returned and retired missionaries—and especially those leading missions agencies—should recognize the same opportunities for missional presence in their own neighborhoods.

What if these missionaries and missions agencies used this knowledge to identify with the migrants in their neighborhoods? What if they used these lived experiences to support communities like mine as we navigate the anxiety of national unrest? What if these Christian groups were the first Brits to publicly condemn the racism that too often inundates this country?

Of course, engaging in mission among migrants requires a different posture, skill set, and relational abilities. But it can generate catalytic fruit. Migrants who come to Christ or reaffirm their faith have the credibility to reach people from their home countries that might take missionaries decades to achieve. Standing up for migrants also rebukes the false narrative that missionaries have only a self-interested relationship with those they seek to convert and instead reminds the world of the love for people themselves that propels these believers to mission.

I propose three ways the missions community can embody this during this fraught time in the UK.

Advocacy

For many missionaries, returning home can mean easily slipping back into familiar cultural comfort zones. Yet their experiences of living as migrants in foreign cultures, their understanding of both the migrants’ and their own cultures, and their connections with churches among their own communities are treasures that give them a unique vantage point to help. These missionaries not only can follow the lead of those who have already organized counterprotests but also can protect asylum centers and mosques and offer food, water, and shelter to those in need of either substance or comfort. They can raise their voices to speak against racism, Christian nationalism, and the antimigrant rhetoric of the far right.

When far-right antimigrant groups stoke fear and hatred to the point that, as I wrote earlier, some of us have to temporarily leave our homes, what if missions agencies organized efforts with local churches to create safe places for migrants? What if a missions agency offered a hotline to talk to distressed migrants during a riot? Or to help migrants seeking shelter when their homes are unsafe? Or what if missions organizations offered counseling and psychotherapy support to those affected?

Reimagining missions theology

During the 1910 World Missionary Conference, out of the 1,215 delegates in attendance, 509 were from the UK—18 more than the United States and Canada together. In parts of Africa and Asia, many missionaries took advantage of British colonial rule to successfully spread Christianity. Their ministry was reinforced by the millions of European Christians in the 1800s who immigrated for economic purposes.

In the end, several former British colonies such as Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa embraced Christianity en masse. Nigeria alone, for example, has more than 102 million Christians, about one-and-a-half times the entire population of Britain today. Now, for decades, many people from these countries have arrived in the UK, along with their faith.

God has often used events we may not appreciate or may even fear to carry the gospel around the world. He who dispersed the Jerusalem church through persecution in Acts 11 now sends Africans and Asians—many of them believers—to parts of the world where Christianity has all but evaporated.

Every day we are bombarded with pundits that ask us to view mass migration from a political and economic perspective. But part of the mission community’s duty is to educate the church that this very migration will continue the spread of the gospel and to see the newcomers among us as people whom God wants to use.

Bridge building

Returned missionaries and their missions agencies must play an important role in creating better understanding and respect between British Christians and the wider UK community and newcomers. Missionaries’ command of multiple languages and grasp of the intricacies of different cultures can play a critical role in helping white Brits understand the reasons and motivations of those living among them.

In fact, during the colonial era many missionaries did this kind of work. Some, like William Carey, provided language training to foreigners while translating the Bible and other books to local languages. Today, though not missionary-sending ministries as such, organizations like Welcome Churches, Sanctuary Foundation, and the International Association for Refugees help Westerners learn how to work with the migrants.

During the recent riots, the best antidote has been white British people confronting racism in their own communities and defending migrants to fellow white Brits. Missionaries’ lived experience could allow them to go one step deeper and explain from a personal perspective what it is like to live in a new environment as someone far away from home. Their knowledge of straddling multiple cultures can offer a much more nuanced perspective of the migrant experience and a more detailed look at the alienation, loneliness, and fear that can accompany building an identity and way of life from scratch.

Returning the favor

Sadly, though I have met many missionaries who have challenged and grown my faith, I have also observed many missions agencies and churches ignore African migrants in their neighborhoods while sending their people to Africa to serve. Ironically, few seem interested in engaging Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans once they have migrated to Britain.

I remember attending a multi-agency mission conference in Manchester discussing the unfinished task of evangelizing my home country, Malawi. To my shock, the organizers of this wonderful conference did not think to invite some of the many Malawian pastors leading their (Malawian) congregations in Manchester.

When I lived in Minneapolis, our church sent nurses to Ghana for mission service but never cared to connect with the Ghanaian congregation that was next door to us. Sometimes I cynically wondered whether it was the exotic nature of working in Ghana and not necessarily working with and among Ghanaian people that drove most of that effort.

These oversights pain me because they seem to disregard hospitality—that is, the opportunity to honor and welcome newcomers. Most missionaries know that this is a fundamental part of mission work around the world and that much of their work hinges on the generosity and kindness of local people. Even Jesus told his disciples to move on to other homes and cities if such hospitality was lacking. “But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you” (Luke 10:10–11).

As someone who grew up around missionaries in Malawi, I saw how our communities went out of their way to be hospitable to visiting Western Christians. Once, members of a church I knew sold all their goats and cows to pay for a missionary’s housing repair. My experience is far from the minority; long before they migrated to the UK, many people warmly received Westerners, even at personal cost, risking their own livelihoods to help missionaries’ ministries thrive. Could those who were once welcomed now do the same for these migrants?

Harvey Kwiyani is a Malawian theologian and leads the Centre for Global Witness and Human Migration (Acts 11 Project) at Church Mission Society in Oxford, England.

- More from Harvey Kwiyani

News

Died: Timothy Dudley-Smith, Who Turned Metrical Poetry into Hundreds of Hymns

Daniel Silliman

The Church of England minister wrote “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and “Faithful Vigil Ended.”

Timothy Dudley-Smith / edits by Rick Szuecs

Timothy Dudley-Smith, author of “Tell Out, My Soul,” “Lord, for the Years,” “Sing a New Song,” and more than 400 other hymns, died in Cambridge, England, on August 12. He was 97.

Dudley-Smith was a Church of England bishop, serving as the suffragan, or assistant bishop, of Thetford in Norwich for 12 years before he retired in 1991. Prior to taking a position in leadership, he served as director of the Church Pastoral Aid Society.

He was always more widely known, however, for his hymns. Many Anglicans deeply cherished his words.

“These hymns restore our faith, not only in the gospel, but also in the action of singing that gospel together, with heart, and soul, and voice,” a retired English professor at the University of Durham wrote in 2006. “Dudley-Smith never lets us down. There are no weak lines, no approximate rhymes, no distortions of syntax, no fumbled metres … no bad hymns.”

Dudley-Smith’s most popular hymn, “Tell Out, My Soul,” has been published 190 times in Great Britain and is also popular in the US and elsewhere. It was first written in 1961, and by 1985, appeared in 42 percent of all contemporary hymnals, according to hymnary.org.

Ten of Dudley-Smith’s other songs have been published more than two dozen times. “Faithful Vigil Ended”—“Faithful vigil ended / watching waiting cease / Master, grant thy servant / his discharge in peace”—has appeared in 28 different hymnals. “Name of All Majesty,” written in 1979, appears in more than 70, including translations in French, Korean, and Chinese.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/0rsJY1evrwmWpzNgqCH3Hg?si=cd53bee83b4947b4

Dudley-Smith was a committed evangelical and identified with evangelicalism from childhood. But his work was embraced across party lines in the Church of England.

Ian Bradley, a church historian, hymnal editor, and BBC journalist, wrote that Dudley-Smith represented “a very orthodox Anglican tradition of hymn writing” and was “unashamedly evangelical.” At the same time, his work was seen as “very English,” according to Bradley, and somehow “broad enough to encompass Noël Coward, W. S. Gilbert, Stephen Sondheim, and Shakespeare, as well as J. I. Packer and Martyn Lloyd-Jones.”

Dudley-Smith, for his part, was often very modest about his hymns. He frequently noted he wasn’t actually musical and didn’t write any of the music, just the metrical poetry that could be put to various singable melodies. He titled his 2017 book on hymn writing A Functional Art.

“Not all our hymn texts will be, or even should be, Rolls-Royces,” Dudley-Smith wrote, “but they should all be decently roadworthy, and as true to Scripture, as free from blemish, as carefully constructed, as appealing to the imagination, heart, and will, and as user-friendly as we can make them.”

Dudley-Smith was born to parents Phyllis and Arthur in Manchester on December 26, 1926—Boxing Day. His father was a schoolteacher who frequently read poetry to his children, often putting them to bed with verses from A. E. Housman, Walter de la Mare, and Alfred Tennyson:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To Strive, to seek, to find, and not to yeild

That trinity of Victorian poets came to be his favorites, followed by 20th-century British figures such as T. S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, and John Betjeman.

When Dudley-Smith was 11, his father died. He later recalled that was a pivotal moment for his faith.

“I had prayed when I knew he was ill, and you might think that my prayers not altering the situation would have put me off,” he said in an interview. “But it didn’t. It introduced me to my need of a heavenly Father.”

Around the same time, Dudley-Smith decided he wanted to be a minister.

“Someone at a family tea party said to me (as they did in those days), ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’ I found myself replying, ‘I’m going to be a parson.’ It just came out. It was the first I knew of it myself!” he said.

Dudley-Smith was active in Scripture Union and learned the Bible in the group’s children’s programs. His faith deepened at a boys’ summer camp run by the conservative evangelical Church of England cleric E. J. H. Nash.

When he went to Cambridge, he considered pursing an education in math and education, like his late father, but ultimately decided on theology. He studied at Pembroke College and then did ordination training at Ridely Hall, both in Cambridge.

Dudley-Smith was ordained as a deacon in 1950 and a priest in ’51. His bishop—a former Olympic athlete and rugby player known as “the flying curate”—supported evangelist Billy Graham’s trip to England in 1954 and encouraged Dudley-Smith to get involved. The young minister helped ferry droves of schoolboys to the north London racetrack where Graham preached for four weeks, and then, responding to popular demand, extended his stay for two additional months.

The following year, Dudley-Smith joined the staff of the Evangelical Alliance and became editor of the organization’s magazine, Crusade.

His journalism won accolades from the priest in charge of religious broadcasting for BBC. The magazine was “something distinctly new in religious journalism in Britain. It was a glossy magazine … it had cartoons and a sense of humour, and it mixed devotional material with commentary on world events and—its editor’s trademark innovation—serious poetry.”

Dudley-Smith’s love of poetry was well-known by colleagues, and he also wrote his own verse. He had thought of trying to write songs but dismissed the possibility.

“I am totally unmusical!” he said. “I can’t sing in tune and often change key without knowing it.”

In the early 1960s, however, a priest working on the new Anglican Hymnbook approached him and asked if he wrote hymns. When he said no, the priest said, “Have you written any verse that might make a hymn?” And the answer to that was yes.

Dudley-Smith had been assigning someone to review the New English Bible for the Crusade and happened to look at Mary’s song of praise, the Magnificat, in Luke 1.

“Their version of Mary’s song begins, ‘Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord,’” Dudley-Smith later recalled. “I said to myself, ‘That’s verse,’ and wrote up four short verses.”

It became his first and most popular hymn:

Tell out, my soul, the greatness of the Lord!
Unnumbered blessings, give my spirit voice;
tender to me the promise of his word;
in God my Saviour shall my heart rejoice.

The hymnal editors, however, first set it to a tune that didn’t work. At a conference of 600 clergy working through the songs, people actually quit singing it halfway through. Then the words were set to Woodlands, a tune composed in the early 1900s, and that worked. The hymn was well received and came to be widely sung.

The poet Betjeman said it was “one of the few modern hymns that will truly last.”

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/6WhpFj2oki2126kBroDLOn?si=6064481367604ab1

The editors of the new Anglican Hymnbook suggested more religious themes that Dudley-Smith could write on, and he made hymn writing a regular part of his life and ministry. He published a volume of his hymns in 1966 and another in ’69. Together, they sold more than one million copies.

His prodigious output drew comparisons to Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, and some contemporaries hailed him as the greatest evangelical hymn writer of his day.

Dudley-Smith’s daughter Caroline Gill recalls he would write most of the hymns while on holiday in Cornwall.

“My father would rise early to pore prayerfully over his Bible and write in his manuscript book, which contained snatches of text that had accrued during the year, ready to be honed into hymns,” Gill wrote. “My father occasionally worked on a text at the beach, between a pasty lunch and an afternoon surf.”

Though he wrote a lot, it didn’t always flow. He wanted his hymns to be simple and deep, heartfelt and clear, biblical but uncontroversial. Too much repetition would make him cringe, and he also recoiled from approximate rhymes, like sin and king. He described his process as slow, careful, and laborious.

“I find you have to be prepared for two lines from a couple of hours’ work,” he once said, “and on subsequent review to scrap them.”

The work was worth it, though, because of the impact the hymns had on people’s lives.

“Many people learn more theology from hymns than from anywhere else,” Dudley-Smith said. “They provide a corporate participation in a unique way, enabling an expression of praise, penitence, commitment, and a whole range of things together. Also, I think, for many people, the hymn offers the chance to express emotions which are in their hearts, but which they would find difficulty in articulating themselves.”

Dudley-Smith’s second-most popular hymn, “Lord, for the Years,” became popular at Church of England New Year’s services and anniversaries. It was also used to solemnize national religious ceremonies in the UK, including the enthronement of the Anglican archbishop in 1991 and Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.

He was made an officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire—several ranks below a knighthood—in 2003 for his “services to hymnody.”

Dudley-Smith also wrote an authorized two-volume biography of evangelical leader John Stott, who was a personal friend. Vol. 1 was titled John Stott: The Making of a Leader; Vol. 2, John Stott: A Global Ministry. He edited an anthology of Charles Wesley’s hymns and a collection of English hymns, and continued writing his own hymns into retirement.

“Hymn writing has been for me a most enriching and entirely unexpected gift,” he said.

He called it “the best of all trades.”

Dudley-Smith’s wife, June Arlette MacDonald, died in 2007 after 48 years of marriage. He is survived by daughters Caroline Gill and Sarah Walter and son James Dudley-Smith, who followed him into ministry in the Church of England.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/track/3iPP9nv4WDXJjlBe5BbrRK?si=61986e7ca80d4eaf

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After Pastor Led 400 to Starve, Some Kenyan Christians Open to Church Restrictions

Moses Wasamu

The local evangelical alliance that fought government proposals in 2016 now says it supports regulations to prevent a future Shakahola.

Bodies being exhumed at a mass-grave site linked to an investigation around a Kenyan cult that practiced starvation.

Yasuyoshi Chiba / Contributor / Getty

A year after more than 400 members of a Christian sect starved to death in eastern Kenya’s Shakahola forest, a Kenyan task force is calling for policy regulations it hopes will allow the government to better balance religious liberty and human rights.

Paul Mackenzie, who led Shakahola’s Good News International Church, is still in custody awaiting the outcome of the case filed against him by the state. He and his associates have been charged with the death of 191 minors, and authorities believe the victims acted under direction from Mackenzie, an end times preacher who promised them heaven if they starved to death.

“The policy aims at strengthening the right for the use of freedom of religion and at same time to protect the public from potential harm arising from the practice of religion and belief,” the Religious Organizations Policy report stated in its introduction. “It ensures freedom of religion and belief is not used as an avenue to abuse human rights and dignity.”

Its most wide-reaching mandate would force all churches seeking to be legally registered with the government to first affiliate to existing denominations or umbrella groups. These groups include the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK), the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK), the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Kenya National Congress of Pentecostal Churches, the Kenya Coalition of Churches Alliance and Ministries, and the Organization of African Instituted Churches.

The current law requires churches to register with the Registrar of Societies but does not require them to affiliate with any recognized religious bodies.

Working with the umbrella groups “is a mechanism for self-regulation. It is a better model of regulation,” said Kepha Nyandega, the EAK’s secretary general. “Being accountable is biblical; even Jesus was accountable to God.”

This support reflects a pivot for the EAK, which in 2016 had previously suggested that this level of regulation would hamper evangelism efforts and the growth of the church.

Nyandega explained he favored this proposal, however, because it would allow umbrella groups to self-regulate and crack down when their own members become errant.

“If the bill becomes law, it will bring order in the religious sector and it will also make it easier for religious organizations to operate and work together in a clearly defined legal environment,” he said.

At the same time, Nyandega says, small churches worry that larger congregations “may try to control who may control the membership of the proposed Religious Affairs Commission.” In turn, he has assured small churches that the proposed legislation determines the composition of the commission, and that the commission will represent all interest groups.

The report calls for clergy to have a minimum level of theological training; for the government to regulate religious broadcast content; and for it to more strictly and routinely enforce building code, sanitation, and noise pollution standards. Any new religious organizations seeking government registration will now be vetted by National Intelligence Services (NIS) and county security intelligence committees.

The 14-person task force was commissioned in May 2023 by President William Ruto. Former National NCCK secretary general Mutava Musyimi led the group, which included Christian, Muslim, and Hindu professionals as well as experts of professional bodies. The current EAK chairman and archbishop of Kenya Assemblies of God, Philip Kitoto, and the former chairman and current archbishop of Deliverance Churches in Kenya, Mark Kariuki, were among those serving.

Among its deliverables is a bill that would make the group’s 11 recommendations law. Legislators will debate the bill when the attorney general sends it to parliament later this year.

Members of the public and churches may still have a chance to influence the law that will come out of parliament. Most government-sponsored bills (like the one in question) go first to parliament for debate. Afterward, a committee solicits public feedback and writes a report incorporating the views of the public before presenting it to parliament, where the report is once again debated and amendments are made before the bill finally becomes law.

This report was released to the public just weeks after young people led country-wide protests against the Ruto government and criticized the church for its close relationship with political power. Given this timing, pastors say they have little incentive to publicly oppose the proposed regulation.

“Remember,” said Tony Kiamah of River of God Church in Nairobi, a Kenya Assemblies of God congregation. “The Gen Zs said they will come for the church after they are done with the government.”

The bill would also create the Religious Affairs Commission, which would be led by a Registrar of Religious Organizations (RRO) and create new regulatory standards.

Despite what seem like good intentions, some church leaders worry that additional government oversight will only encourage corruption and that some government officials may take advantage of churches that fail to fulfill the requirements and demand bribes.

“Are we going to allow the government to regulate churches when the government cannot regulate itself?” said Kiamah.

To him, the key to preventing another Shakahola is not religious regulations, because existing institutions are too weak. For instance, although the government has tried to ban cults and religious extremists and prevent false preachers from freely operating, this still persists.

“The law is there to deal with such matters, but corruption is what has hindered our ability to deal with such issues,” he said. “We should strengthen the police service, the intelligence, the judiciary, and other government institutions, and we will be out of the woods.”

The Gikuyu, Embu, Meru and Akamba (GEMA) Unity Forum, a group that represents Pentecostals in predominantly central Kenya, said the proposed regulations would leave them “gagged as a church.”

“Any changes should be subjected to a referendum,” said Nicholas Ikui, a GEMA leader. “Some churches were established before Kenya got her independence. So, I wonder how such would be registered afresh.”

Religious organizations need the government because they lack the capacity and means to punish errant churches, says Joseph Mutungi, the bishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya, Machakos diocese. At the same time, “the government does not have the capacity to determine spiritual matters, which only the Church and other religious organs offer.”

If the report’s recommendations are implemented, the government could investigate claims and complaints against problematic churches. If those were verified, the RRO could deregister and publish names of individuals and groups whose preaching and teachings are seen to be extremist and cultic. Additionally, if the bill passes, any church leader who gives misleading information to the government would be at risk of being fined or imprisoned.

The task force has also recommended revising the national curriculum to educate students about the dangers of religious extremism and emphasize the need for religious tolerance.

While receiving the report, Ruto promised to protect freedom of religion as well as the Kenyan people.

“We will continue to safeguard and protect the freedom of religion, but at the same time mitigate its potential abuse to harm Kenyans,” he said last month.

Moves by the government to regulate churches more directly are not new. As far back as 2015, the government had plans to regulate churches.

Under the plan put forward by then attorney general Githu Muigai, religious entity registration applications had to be accompanied by personal information about its leaders.

Church leaders were to submit a copy of their national identity card, Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) certificate, personal identification pin, a passport photograph, a certified copy of a theological certificate from a duly registered and accredited theological institution, and a tax clearance or exemption certificate.

Religious leaders pushed back, claiming that being forced to declare their salary would require them to pay taxes and that the government was asking for personal details that previously churches had not been required to give to receive registration. The protest ultimately killed Muigai’s efforts.

- More from Moses Wasamu

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In Zimbabwe, Secular Education Is Overtaking Historic Mission Schools

Nyasha Bhobo

The private school boom corresponds with a bigger move away from colonial-era denominations.

Three mission schools outside of Harare, Zimbabwe.

Christian Ender / Getty Images

Neville Mlambo, 65, a retired missionary, shakes his head. His United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ) church had educated some of the finest Black ministers, CEOs, bishops, and judges in the last 100 years when Western colonialism and the church landed together in Zimbabwe.

“Colonial church-owned schools were prestigious. They groomed the cream of Black army commanders or city mayors,” said Mlambo. “Twenty years ago, we would overflow with 1,000 students squeezing for a place to study at our mission boarding schools. Today, we hardly attract 350 in some schools.”

Historic church-run mission schools in Zimbabwe—affiliated with a range of traditions, including Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Baptist, or Salvation Army—are now on the decline.

“They are losing money, students, and the next generation of congregants as more Black families troop to private secular schools,” he said.

Zimbabwe has one of Africa’s highest literacy rates: 97.1 percent of the population in urban areas are able to read and write. Its educational system has included a mix of free state schools, plus thousands of Christian seminaries, primary schools, high schools, and colleges. The Catholics, Anglicans, and American Methodists have vast tracts of lands in Zimbabwe and dominate ownership of missionary-led schools.

“Christian mission schools took off in the 1920s as the colonial project deepened along with a need to train clerks, teachers, nurses, or judges that served the colonial conquest. That story is unwinding today, fast,” says Edgar Shuwa, a theology lecturer at Rusitu Bible College, which is run by remnants of the American Baptist mission in east Zimbabwe.

There’s an explosion of secular private schools owned by Black entrepreneurs across Zimbabwe today, says the government. Nearly 500 private-owned primary and high schools were operating in the capital, Harare, in 2022, with authorities battling to even distinguish between licensed and unlicensed ones, said Zimbabwe’s education minister in April.

After Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, almost all students attended low-fee public schools run by the government and private schools run by Christian denominations. But in the last 20 years, more parents have turned to secular private schools, citing a decline in teaching quality and facilities in older schools. According to UNESCO, 29 percent of all schools in Zimbabwe are now privately run.

Church mission schools have run their course, according to 45-year-old Marlon Danga, who studied at the famous Catholic Kutama Mission, where Zimbabwe’s first Black prime minister, Robert Mugabe, was schooled by Jesuit fathers. Danga sees their strict doctrine-based curriculum as outdated as culture liberalizes.

“Like many Black parents today, I went against the script when it came to my offspring. I sent my kids to secular private schools that teach no adherence to any religion,” he said.

New money is empowering Black families to cut ties with schools run by colonial churches, says Stella Ngomwa, 49, a finance manager for a brewery. More Africans—in Zimbabwe and across the continent—are working to detangle their institutions and identity from Western colonialism.

“It’s a seismic shift, and we have lost,” pastor Mlambo said. “Less money coming from mother churches in America or Scotland means—for old churches like us Baptists, Methodists, or Anglicans—that we can’t adequately maintain our schools’ infrastructure or dole out more scholarships to poorer Black students. And we are losing appeal.”

With the rise of African-initiated churches, “the new African not only wants to own the church, he/she also wants to own schools, cities, land, identity,” wrote Yasin Kakande, author of Why We Are Coming: Slavery, Colonialism, Imperialism, and Migration.

Church-run mission schools dominated the colonial heyday, but the reality is that Black Zimbabweans lacked options, Ngomwa explains.

Now, the country’s Christian landscape is changing. More believers church-hop between denominations, rather than maintaining a strong identity within one of the older colonial-era denominations.

“I don’t want my daughters to be forced to recite Anglican hymns and attend Scripture Union meetings every evening at an Anglican or Dutch Reformed boarding school,” said Ngomwa.

Secular private schools also broaden the options for students to excel in programs like sports, which open doors for university placement abroad; Ngomwa’s daughter’s athletic involvement got her a place at a UK university.

Meanwhile, the quality of facilities and education in church-run schools is declining fast as old colonial churches get poorer, said pastor Ado Manake, a cleric with the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), a Black-founded, post-colonial Pentecostal Christian denomination that’s home to some of the biggest congregations in Zimbabwe.

“New Black-owned evangelical and Pentecostal churches are forcefully challenging colonial Catholic, Presbyterian, or Anglican churches in Zimbabwe,” said Manake. “We are opening new schools, making some nondenominational, and getting lots of students, because we understand the new Black clientele.”

Over the past 20 years, secular private schools have dismantled the monopoly of old-church-run mission schools. They charge pricey sums like $1,000 per semester in primary or high schools, compared to church schools that were a mixture of modest fee-paying students and those on scholarships .

Rusitu High School, situated in Zimbabwe’s far east province of Manicaland and established by American Baptists, had been a prestigious and popular option throughout the 20th century. Today, it can barely enroll 400, down from around 1,000 high schoolers at its peak. “We must accept times are changing—we used to attract students from all corners of Zimbabwe,” said Amos Gwade, the school’s treasurer.

There are still Christian options available: Some of the newer evangelical and Pentecostal schools continue to incorporate faith and doctrine in the curricula.

“In those schools, we make sure students, be they high school or college, are taught and prescribed key concepts like salvation through grace, not works, and miracles as a key manifestation of faith,” said Manake, of schools run by AFM and similar traditions. “We don’t want to go all-secular in our schools.”

- More from Nyasha Bhobo

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