A Hurricane Doesn’t Tell Us Who to Hate

Editor in Chief

What natural disasters reveal about God and neighbor.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

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

My family is from one of the most hurricane-prone places in the United States—our hometown was virtually wiped from the map by Hurricane Katrina. Because of this, we spend hurricane season tracking each tropical depression with dread and then, often, relief, when the storm moves somewhere out of the path of the people we love.

This time, though, with Hurricane Helene, we exhaled too soon. Instead of hitting the coast, the hurricane devastated inland places we never expected to be vulnerable—such as Asheville, North Carolina; Valdosta, Georgia; and countless other communities flooded nearly out of existence, with people stranded without food, electricity, or cell service.

After the storm passed through, I spent some time searching through social media, trying to determine the well-being of people I know and love. As I did, I saw—as we all have—image after image of human suffering and neighborhood devastation.

And, since it was social media, I also saw a lot of the usual types using the disaster to vindicate their own negative polarization. Some posted that the massive disaster befalling Asheville was due to that city’s well-known progressive culture and politics. Others countered by saying that most of the North Carolinians left homeless by the flood were in “red” counties, so maybe this was God’s judgment on MAGA. And on and on it went, as it always does.

In the past, after almost every hurricane, we could usually count the hours until Pat Robertson or some other television evangelist would blame it on God’s judgment on something—sometimes as specific as New Orleans’s annual “Southern Decadence” parade, and sometimes as general as “America’s turn away from God.”

Nor was this limited to the political right. While our families were crawling out of the rubble of Katrina, now almost 20 years ago, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (then on the left and well before his gadfly persona of today) quoted the prophet Hosea to suggest that the storm was retribution for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol for combating climate change: “For they that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.”

The trivialized venue of modern social media is unique, but the underlying sarcasm about “What did they do to deserve this?” is not. And the much more serious, much more sober fears and questions beneath that are not unique either. What does it tell us about God when human beings have their entire lives wiped away?

Kris Kristofferson, the singer/songwriter who died this week, wrote a song, “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” based off of unbelieving philosopher Voltaire’s book Candide. Kristofferson’s song references police brutality, systemic racism, and unjust treatment of the poor with a tongue-in-cheek praise to living “in this best of all possible worlds.” Kristofferson laughed, but Voltaire mocked, pointing his satire at Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s defense of God’s justice in a cosmos of suffering and evil, that this is “the best of all possible worlds.”

While I believe Voltaire was wrong, Kristofferson was right to point out the kind of fatalism the philosopher saw as coming along with many attempts to justify God. We can yield to a shrugging “that’s the way it is” mentality that sees in every evil a signpost as to what God actually wants. That can lead to a “eat, drink, and be merry” hedonism, with a passive acceptance of all sorts of things that should be, at least, mourned, and, at best, changed.

The way Voltaire points, though, leads to the same form of pessimistic resignation in the long run. If the universe around us is random, chaotic, and meaningless, then we ought to read in it what is most ultimate: suffering, pain, and death.

Christians, Jews, and other theists have wrestled with the so-called “problem of evil,” including the problem of “natural evil,” for millennia. Some give greater emphasis to God’s sovereignty, with good biblical backing. Others emphasize the freedom and responsibility of human beings, along with a rejection of the idea that God could ever be the author of sin—also with very good biblical backing.

The question abides: How could a good and powerful God allow a world such as this one to exist? Why could he not stop the dam from breaking to keep that North Carolinian family’s house from being washed away? Is it because God was angry at them?

This is not just about hurricanes and earthquakes and tsunamis. Often, even in the quieter, less visible manifestations of very personal suffering, someone will wonder—even if they don’t say it—What has that person done to deserve this?

The Bible doesn’t ignore this question. God does not tell Job why, ultimately, he was allowed to suffer—nor does he give Job an answer as to why the universe is so seemingly filled with chaos and danger. God does, however, reject the easy answers of Job’s counselors, some of whom seek to read backward from the suffering an oracle about what God wants.

Jesus, likewise, condemns the suggestion that those who suffer at the hand of other people’s evil intentions or in the throes of some natural calamity are to blame for their calamity (Luke 13:1–5). He repudiates the religious leaders’ suggestion that a man’s congenital blindness was his or his parents’ fault (John 9:3). The chaotic natural forces around Jesus—whether wild animals or unclean spirits or boat-threatening storms—were calmed and redirected by the presence and voice of Jesus, the one who puts heaven and nature back together again.

When Christians speak of the existence of natural evil as a mystery, some balk that this is a way of evading the question. And yet every attempt—from that of nihilists to hyper-Calvinists to everyone in between—to answer the meaning of suffering bumps upon a mystery of some sort. The question is, what kind of mystery?

The mystery we see in the way of Jesus is one in which we hold together a tension: that of a God for whom not a sparrow falls apart from his awareness (Matt. 10:29–31) and for whom the death of a friend is received with weeping by Jesus himself (John 11:35).

Without a sense of the mystery of the wildness and fallenness of this present universe, the danger is that we come to see it as “normal.” Even worse is the danger that we would see in the bloodiness and violence of nature some picture of the way that God is. As Reinhold Niebuhr warned in the last century, “Our obsession with the physical sciences and with the physical world has enthroned the brute and blind forces of nature, and we follow the God of the earthquake and the fire rather than the God of the still small voice.”

The fact that we view the world around us with simultaneous awe, wonder, terror, and grieving is itself a signpost that there’s something missing from the merely natural. Jesus told us that earthquakes and other natural disasters would happen. He did not picture these as good but as the “birth pains” (Matt. 24:7–8, ESV throughout) of an old order that will be passing away, yielding to a new order beyond imagination.

The Bible itself tells us that these birth pangs are a creation in upheaval, “groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Rom. 8:22). Our response is not to solve that nature-in-crisis the way we would an algebra equation. Our response is to groan right along with it as we wait, with a hope we cannot see, for all things to be where they belong: under the feet of a resurrected Christ and his joint heirs.

In the meantime, we do exactly what numerous people are doing right now: Clearing away the trees in front of people’s homes. Sitting alongside grieving families who have lost the ones they love. Serving food to those whose pantries are empty and whose local grocery stores are under water.

A hurricane doesn’t tell us who to hate. It reminds us who to love.

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

News

Gen Z Protestants Want to Be Famous for Their Hobbies and Talents

Annie Meldrum and Isabel Ong

“It’s easier to say to someone [that] you’re good at singing or playing football than having a faith or engaging in church.”

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

Gen Z Protestants don’t want to be known for their faith.

Instead, they want their talents, interests, hobbies, and education levels to be the ways they make a name for themselves.

They see their faith as a support during challenging times. Prayer is the second most common way that they cope with stress, tied with distracting themselves by watching or reading something.

And while they may often be regarded as an “anxious generation,” they are optimistic about the future. Four in five Gen Z Protestants believe that they can make a meaningful impact in the world for succeeding generations.

Young Life offered CT an exclusive look at these Protestant breakouts from its recent release of The Relate Project, a study which examined the beliefs and aspirations of 7,261 young people between 13 and 24 years old.

Researchers decided not to use the term evangelical in the report because it “can mean different things to different people in different countries,” said Kimberly Nollan, Young Life’s director of research and evaluation.

“The focus of the Relate Project was to better understand Gen Z’s relationships with themselves, with others and with God,” said Nollan. “To keep that focus and avoid mis-interpretations, we chose to avoid that language.”

The study covered eight countries: the US, the UK, Mexico, India, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. It surveyed adolescents of various faiths in July and August 2023. The sample of Christians from the study also included those who identified as Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, or other.

Overall, it found that belief in God is integral in boosting Gen Z’s sense of purpose and well-being.

“Young people can experience flourishing apart from faith, but our research found that those without a faith frame (e.g., atheists, agnostics, and nones) report lower levels of flourishing,” the report stated.

Researchers also noted that cultural differences might account for variations in responses. For example, focus groups found that young adults in the four East African countries and India are generally more hesitant to talk to older adults because they fear incurring their disapproval.

For this story, “global” refers to the eight countries surveyed by Young Life.

Reputation and recognition

At least half of young Protestants in the US and UK said that they wanted to be known for their talents (54%), as well as their interests or hobbies (52%).

Only around 1 in 3 (32%) wanted to be recognized for their religion or beliefs.

Survey results were similar in East Africa, India, and Mexico. Just under half (43%) of Gen Z Protestants in these countries preferred to be known for their educational qualifications, while 2 in 5 (40%) wanted their talents to be recognized first.

The desire to be identified by their religion or beliefs ranked fourth (27%).

These findings are consistent with what Alexis Kwamy has observed about Gen Z believers in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, where he is based.

“This shift suggests a new way of integrating faith into daily life, where religious identity isn’t always openly expressed but is instead intertwined with personal achievements and social contributions,” Kwamy told CT.

Chris Agnew, a Pioneer Mission leader at Coastal Church in Portrush, Northern Ireland, agreed. “Religion is either a dirty word, or it’s a private thing,” he said. “Spirituality would be more warmly received, but it’s easier to say to someone [that] you’re good at singing or playing football than having a faith or engaging in church.”

Other leaders think that the survey findings are debatable.

“Young people introduced to Christ at an early age appreciate [being known for their] religious beliefs,” said Patrick Barasa, general secretary of campus ministry Focus Uganda. “It’s those that tend towards secularism that live according to interests.”

The traditional format of church participation may also contribute to how Gen Z Protestant identity is being formed, said Mary Olguin, general secretary of student ministry Compa (Compañerismo Estudiantil) in Mexico.

There is a perception that “a Christian is excellent based on how they serve (for example, by showcasing their talent in worship), rather than by their fruits,” she said.

Raychel Sanders, 21, is an avid runner and rock climber. But she has learned to also be comfortable building a public Christian identity.

As a freshman at Mississippi State University, she commented on the beauty and intricacy of creation during a conversation with an agnostic professor at school. She remembers he gave her a funny look.

Since that incident, however, Sanders has answered her professor’s questions about Christianity and shared her faith with him several times.

Beyond being recognized for her outdoor pursuits, she wants to be known for “having compassion on people for the sake of winning them to Christ, but without compromising on what is true,” she said.

Other young adults, like Ananya Rachel Mathew from Uttar Pradesh, India, asserted that one’s abilities can be used to represent and honor God.

“All our talents come as a gift from our Father above,” said the 21-year-old, who enjoys singing, dancing, and painting. “The Father who has bestowed our talents upon us [would] be pleased if we employed them to praise and glorify his name.”

Prayer and stress

Globally, prayer ranks second (43%) among Gen Z Protestants as a coping mechanism for stress and is tied with distracting themselves by watching or reading something (43%). Listening to music is ranked first (62%), while reading or meditating on Scripture is ranked fifth from last (19%).

Gen Zers tend to lead a fast-paced life and may not make time for individual prayer, says Olguin in Mexico. “This dynamic often causes prayer, which is often perceived as a passive practice or not directly linked to their immediate achievements, to be relegated to the background or performed quickly and mechanically,” she said.

Yet Olguin noticed that more students attended Compa’s prayer meetings after the pandemic and believes this is because they enjoy praying in community.

Though public prayer may come naturally to young Mexican believers, that’s not the case with the teenagers Bruce Campbell works with at his Northern Ireland–based youth ministry, Exodus.

“The most common fear I hear young people expressing in terms of prayer is their fear of praying out loud in a group setting,” he said.

Campbell has noticed a rising interest in listening to worship music among young Christians in his region, which he surmises may be linked to their increasing desire to seek emotive experiences.

“Although I see this as largely a positive thing, I am sometimes cautious of how this trend can lead to a less than costly discipleship,” Campbell said. “It’s much easier to chill to a Bethel album than to read the minor prophets or tell your friend about Jesus.”

Mental health concerns

Caring for their personal mental health and their communities’ mental well-being was a top priority for Gen Z Protestants across the eight countries surveyed, ahead of other concerns like adequate job opportunities, climate change, and religious tensions.

In the UK, poor mental health “has reached almost pandemic proportions,” said Sonia Mawhinney, Young Life’s regional director for the UK and Ireland. The lack of professional help available has also placed “a heavy strain on both full-time and volunteer youth leaders to try to help young people in this mental health crisis,” she said.

At present, the ministry is exploring ways to partner with schools, churches, sports clubs, and government agencies across the region to provide support and care for young people.

“The thrust towards self-help and wellness in society at the moment can be confusing for young people,” said Agnew, one of the Northern Ireland–based leaders. He noted that it’s hard for Gen Z believers to figure out where Jesus comes into the picture.

“The challenge is to gently accompany people on their journeys, but also not allow anyone’s own struggles to remove the divine invitation to partner with God [in] what he’s doing in the world,” he said.

Building stronger intergenerational relationships is another important factor in addressing the mental health struggles that Gen Z believers face, leaders told CT.

“The silence around the topic of mental health from older generations is creating distance from our next generations,” said Tanita Maddox, Young Life’s associate regional director in Spokane, Washington. “[We ought to] be Jesus weeping at the tomb of Lazarus, even though Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus again.”

In March, Olguin and her team finished work on a manual titled Salud mental en la pastoral universitaria (mental health in campus ministry) that equips leaders working with Gen Zers in Mexico.

The manual, which covers topics like the theology of emotions and burnout syndrome, was created in collaboration with the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students’ (IFES) Logos and Cosmos Initiative. A second edition is currently in progress and is slated to publish next February.

Young Life Mexico, meanwhile, is conducting a study to examine the mental, physical, and emotional health of leaders and kids involved in the ministry, according to its regional director Pratt Butler.

Future impact

More than 4 in 5 (83%) of Gen Z Protestants believe they can change the world for good.

Gen Zers with a religious affiliation feel more empowered to effect change, the Relate Project found. “Protestant and Orthodox Christians have the strongest sense of agency, while it is lowest in atheists, agnostics, and ‘nones,’” the report noted.

Evangelizing “to as many people around as possible” is how Mathew, the 21-year-old in India, envisions creating a meaningful impact on successive generations. “We are his people who have been ordained to carry out a very specific task—which is to spread his word to others who don’t know about our Lord," she said.

Some leaders, however, think that one’s faith may not necessarily boost one’s level of influence, particularly if faith is merely regarded as a private, personal relationship with God.

“For our young people, action to make the world a better place is fragmented or disconnected from their Christian faith,” said Maddox, the Young Life US associate regional director. “[But] our relationship with God should push us to bring the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth by caring about the things God cares about, and acting on those things.”

This generation is very compassionate, said Mawhinney, the Young Life UK and Ireland director. “Young people are pleasantly astonished when they encounter what the Bible has to say about their passion for justice and creation care,” she said.

“When we teach them the full meta-narrative of Scripture and how God’s redemptive vision includes the necessity for love of neighbor and the world he made, young people are both surprised and inspired to see that their passion is in sync with God’s.”

Additional reporting by Surinder Kaur

- More from Isabel Ong

News

The Gettys’ Modern Hymn Movement Has Theological Pull

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis in Nashville

Yet even at their annual worship conference, there’s room for multiple styles of music to declare the stories of the Bible.

Keith and Kristyn Getty.

Courtesy of Getty Music

The success of “In Christ Alone” established Keith Getty as one of the leading songwriters in what he refers to as the modern hymn movement. The popular breakout song—which has remained on Christian Copyright Licensing International’s Top 100 list for over 15 years—has come to represent the musical priorities and values of Getty Music, the organization founded by Getty and his wife and collaborator Kristyn.

Their team has since developed 38 of the 500 most-used songs in US and UK churches, and Getty Music draws thousands of music-minded Christians to its annual Sing! Conference.

At the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville last month, attendees could purchase tumblers and tote bags printed with “In Christ Alone.” The song’s singable, soaring melody, simple four-verse form, and lyrics that reflect on the life, death, and resurrection of Christ have made it the model modern hymn.

“The Gettys don’t mince words about what Christ did for us,” said Jim Ouse, a repeat Sing! attendee. The 82-year-old grandfather from Wilmington, North Carolina, came with his daughter and three of her six children. “The music is theologically rich.”

For some, the Gettys and their emphasis on modern hymns represent a countermovement in the mainstream contemporary worship music industry, which is currently dominated by worship artists from megachurches like Hillsong and Elevation. Attendees of Sing! talked about their preference for hymns because of their tendency to include text that covers a lot of theological ground, and they sometimes made a comparison to more repetitive, lyrically simple, or ambiguous contemporary worship music.

The crowd at Sing! was noticeably multi-generational; babies babbled throughout the conference sessions, school-age children stood on their chairs to see the stage, and a substantial percentage of the crowd was over the age of 65. Older and younger attendees milling around the conference center spoke of the importance of singing and having access to music that explicitly conveys Reformed theology. This year’s conference theme, “Songs of the Bible,” appealed to those who prefer songs with text that they can confidently trace to the Word of God.

“If we’re going to sing, I want to sing something from Scripture,” said Karen Pederson, a retired teacher and choir director from Tioga, North Dakota.

“This music is scripturally based,” said Derrick Bridges, a musician and worship leader in Nashville. “And it’s not too complicated; it’s easy to sing.”

The perception that the Gettys operate outside or on the fringe of the mainstream worship music industry is occasionally encouraged by Keith Getty, who jokingly refers to the “dumb six-line songs” to which he offers an alternative. Fans of the Gettys see their music as a needed antidote to shallow praise and worship in their churches. The lyrical density of the Gettys’ modern hymns is a signpost of depth, and many say that their commitment to “singing theology” is what brings them to Sing!

“The theology in the music is sound, Reformed, and historically rooted,” said Daniel Troy, a software developer and volunteer at the conference. “And it’s truly congregational. It’s singable.”

Sing!’s Reformed identity comes from the Gettys’ roots in Irish Presbyterianism, as well as the relationships they have forged with influential Reformed evangelicals like John Piper, Alistair Begg, and John MacArthur. The Gettys’ popularity has grown over the past 20 years alongside the “Young, Restless, and Reformed” movement, and the emphasis on singing the “songs of the Bible” is consistent with the Calvinist practice of psalm-singing, tracing back to the 16th century.

But a scan of the event’s sponsors and partners reveals a relatively ecumenical supporting ecosystem: The Voice of the Martyrs, Crossway, Cedarville University, Planning Center, and Museum of the Bible, to name a few.

The Gettys split their time between Northern Ireland and Nashville. Their first Sing! Conference was hosted in 2017 at Brentwood Baptist Church in Music City. The now-annual event at the Opryland convention center draws thousands for three days of congregational worship, preaching, and networking. This year, over 6,500 people attended in person, representing 50 US states and 32 countries. According to Getty Music, over 30,000 viewers tuned in to the conference livestream.

The Gettys’ emphasis on text-focused hymnody and incorporation of musical characteristics and genre markers from folk music, traditional Irish music, and bluegrass have helped them carve out a unique niche in the landscape of contemporary praise and worship music. Their varied style has also attracted devoted fans who are willing to travel to participate in an annual worship conference.

Graham Ellis, an 83-year-old concert organizer from Wales, said he came to volunteer at Sing! because he believes that the Gettys’ music is part of a project that all Christians can get behind: enriching the worship of the global church through music that teaches the Bible in a Bible-illiterate world.

“I want people to come and hear the Bible and to be ministered to,” said Ellis. “The Gettys’ goal is to teach the Scriptures, evangelize the world, and reach whole families.”

Elaine Koester, a retired Reformed minister from rural Indiana, said that the Gettys’ “excellent music with excellent theology” is what drew her to the conference. “The music and worship is all shaped by the Word of God.”

A recurrent feature of this year’s conference was the forthcoming Sing! Hymnal, which the Gettys are publishing with Crossway in 2025. A small prototype of the hymnal was provided to each attendee at this year’s conference, and when Keith Getty addressed the crowd at the opening of the first session, he said, “Please turn to number four in your hymnal.”

Thousands stood and turned to the hymn “All PeopleThat on Earth Do Dwell” (the final verse of the hymn is recognized by many as “The Doxology”) as a synthesized organ played the opening chords.

Baton in hand, Getty conducted the conference congregation, eventually joined by an orchestra. In addition to the hymnals in their hands, singers had access to the written notation and text on the projection screens. The second selection was “How Great Thou Art,” which the congregation sang with equal gusto.

Historically, “How Great Thou Art” and the tune “Old Hundredth” (to which “The Doxology” and “All Creatures That on Earth Do Dwell” are both set) are separated by centuries. The former took shape across the 19th and 20th centuries, eventually popularized in the US by Billy Graham’s crusades. The latter is a hymn tune first published in the 1551 Genevan Psalter.

At Sing!, these beloved hymns of the faith from different eras of church history are part of the same cultural project. They support the modern hymn movement by providing both a model and a musical lineage for new songs that are conceived of as “hymn-like” rather than as additions to the digital songbook of contemporary praise and worship music.

While most people on the platform at Sing! didn’t openly criticize contemporary worship music or its most popular creators, many attendees agreed the music of the Gettys and the songwriters on their team is a welcome departure from what they perceive as more “mainstream” worship music. Some of the endorsements in the sample Sing! Hymnal suggest that the Gettys are reviving a better or truer form of musical worship.

The Gettys “have been used by the Lord to provide theologically rich, singable music for the church in this generation,” wrote John MacArthur, pastor of Grace Community Church in California and Chancellor of Master’s Seminary, a prominently featured sponsor of the conference. “More than anyone else they have led in the long-awaited revival of hymns which have always been the true music of the church.”

In his endorsement, Alistair Begg, pastor of Parkside Church in Ohio (where the Gettys once served as worship leaders), called the hymnal “theologically sound and melodically enlivening.” Joni Eareckson Tada, founder of the Joni and Friends International Disability Center, wrote, “This hymnal will be a timeless collection of theologically rich songs that will set your heart soaring!”

Despite the implication that modern hymns have a monopoly on “theological richness,” the distinction between the modern hymn movement and the broader world of contemporary praise and worship is blurry, even at Sing!

The cohort of performers and cowriters gathered by the Gettys is not an exclusively modern hymn-focused group. On the second night of the conference, recording artist and author Andrew Peterson staged a performance of his selections from his concept album, Behold the Lamb of God. Sandra McCracken, a singer-songwriter who has collaborated with numerous popular worship artists like All Sons & Daughters, is also on the Gettys’ writing team.

On the final evening of the conference, special guest and contemporary Christian music giant Michael W. Smith appeared for a short on-stage conversation with Keith Getty followed by a performance of Smith’s “Agnus Dei.”

In many ways, “Agnus Dei” is a quintessential contemporary worship song, featuring two simple sections, “Alleluia, for the Lord God Almighty Reigns” and “Holy, holy are you Lord God Almighty / Worthy is the Lamb, Amen,” that can be repeated and varied in intensity.

The vocal line stretches the first syllable of “Alleluia” over multiple notes, a contrast to the text-focused, syllabic writing (one syllable per note) of the Gettys’ music. The song’s lyrics are from Revelation chapters 4 and 5, making it an easy fit for the theme, “Songs of the Bible,” but the selection was, nonetheless, a contrast—perhaps a nod to the potential for the modern hymn movement to act not as an antagonistic contrast to other popular worship music but as a partner.

In his sermon during the first plenary session, John Piper spoke at length about the relationship between heart and mind in musical worship. The influential pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis affirmed the importance of theologically sound text, with a caution against treating it as a goal in itself.

“I don’t want anyone to assume that Scripture is an end in itself, that truth is an end in itself, that lyrics are an end in themselves. They are servants of Godward emotions,” Piper said. “The mind exists to serve the heart … right thinking is never an end in itself.”

Singing words that expound theology, in Piper’s view, ought to be in service of turning one’s heart and affections toward God. At a gathering where so many in the crowd spoke of their commitment to “theologically rich” text, Piper’s sermon seemed directed against putting particular songs in a spiritual hierarchy.

For attendees like Stan Fitzenrider, the Gettys’ music isn’t appealing because he believes it’s “better” in some way but because it speaks to his emotions. The form and characteristics of hymns are more familiar to him and closely associated with his own faith journey.

“When my wife died a few years ago, this music really touched me,” said Fitzenrider, 73. “It brought me closer to God and helped me heal.”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Books

Review

The Bible Contains Discrepancies. That Doesn’t Make It Untrustworthy.

Noah M. Peterson

Scholar Michael Licona makes the case for a “flexible inerrancy.”

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty / WikiMedia Commons

In 1983, biblical scholar Robert Gundry was ousted from the Evangelical Theological Society.

Gundry, in his lengthy commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, had suggested that Matthew tailored stories about Jesus to his specific audience, sometimes in nonhistorical ways. Theologian Norman Geisler, who spearheaded the ouster, believed this “undermine[d] confidence in the complete truthfulness of all of Scripture.” Gundry disagreed with this assessment—he affirmed the doctrine of biblical inerrancy and argued the authors of Scripture were using accepted literary standards of their day. But he was expelled nonetheless.

Thirty years later, New Testament scholar Michael Licona found himself embroiled in a similar controversy. Licona had questioned the literal historicity of Matthew’s reference to saints rising from the grave after Jesus’ resurrection (Matt. 27:52–53). Here, too, Geisler led a campaign against the perceived threat to biblical inerrancy. As a result, Licona voluntarily resigned from Southern Evangelical Seminary and left his position at the North American Mission Board. (Today, he teaches at Houston Christian University.)

The doctrine of inerrancy may be a historically recent development, but some consider it essential to the faith. In fact, Geisler believed the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture was “the foundation of all other doctrines.”

But what happens when cracks appear in that foundation? I can tell you: It’s unsettling.

During my transition from high school to college, I deconstructed the Catholic faith of my upbringing but eventually reaffirmed my belief in God and converted to Protestantism. One of the foundational building blocks of my reconstructed faith was the authority of Scripture—including my idea of inerrancy.

But then that idea was contested. Though Christians have been dealing with the topic of biblical contradictions since there was a Bible, I started earlier this year. My exposure to contradictions occurred on TikTok, where I found clips (like this one) of critical biblical scholars challenging my beliefs about what the Bible is and how it works. I learned about the two different lists of animals on the ark (Gen. 6:19–20 and 7:2–3), the potential discrepancy between 1 Chronicles and 1 Samuel about who killed Goliath, and the differing genealogies of Jesus Christ. In my high school apologetics class, I was taught that there are only apparent contradictions in the Bible, not real ones. But what if there actually are real ones?

Licona takes up this question as it relates to the Gospels in his new book, Jesus, Contradicted: Why the Gospels Tell the Same Story Differently—a shorter and more accessible version of his 2016 academic book, Why Are There Differences in the Gospels? From the beginning, he’s clear where the problem lies: “Contradictions offer a challenge to the historical reliability of the Gospels and to some versions of the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.” Yet he argues that they “do not necessarily call into question the truth of the Christian faith.”

The rules of ancient biography

The most skeptical position on inerrancy, as advanced by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman, treats contradictions between Gospel accounts as a reason for doubting their accuracy altogether. If the authors can’t get the minor details right, why trust them at all?

On the flip side, attempts at harmonizing the Gospels have been a popular (though not unanimous) Christian response. While some harmonizations may be legitimate, others seem far-fetched (like Peter denying Jesus six times, not three) and risk “subjecting the Gospel texts to a sort of hermeneutical waterboarding until they tell the exegete what he or she wants to hear,” as Licona put it in his 2016 book. Harmonization in the wrong place may very well lead us astray—and damage our credibility.

A third camp sees Gospel differences as grounds for rejecting the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. This was my initial reaction as I wrestled with the biblical scholarship. The Bible, I believed, was the very Word of God, his speech in written form. But if God cannot err and the Bible has errors, then how could the Bible be divinely inspired at all? I began to think this collection of books by human authors might be just that: human.

Worse, the doubts spread. If what I had been told about the Bible was untrue, what else about Christianity was untrue? My conception of inerrancy and inspiration put my faith on shaky ground. But Licona lays out an alternative to this inflexible view of the Bible, hopefully preventing a good many Christians from falling away when they encounter contradictions too.

According to Licona, there’s a better way to handle Gospel differences, and it starts with understanding why they’re there in the first place. Licona provides a plausible explanation: Most of the differences between Gospels are due to literary conventions common to the genre of Greco-Roman (or “ancient”) biography and thus are not really contradictions or errors at all.

Importantly, ancient biography is not modern biography. Ancient biographies are playing by different rules and have different purposes. “Ancient biographers,” Licona explains, “sought to narrate sayings and deeds of the biographee that illuminated his character.” They’re portraits, not legal transcripts. The “essence” and “life” of a person are what matter, not precise details. Therefore, “Imposing modern expectations on ancient texts and authors is anachronistic since it assumes a standard not aligned with their objectives.” In ancient historiography, facts can be “reported with some elasticity.”

Matthew’s genealogy is a case in point. Luke and Matthew both contain genealogies for Jesus, but they don’t match. A popular explanation (though, as Licona points out, not among scholars) is that Matthew’s genealogy applies to Mary while Luke’s applies to Joseph. However, Matthew’s math suggests this is the wrong approach.

Despite claiming to include all the generations from Abraham to Jesus, Matthew omits multiple generations and uses “Jeconiah” twice (1:11–12). Why? He may be using a rhetorical device called “gematria,” where numbers are assigned to letters in the alphabet. In the Hebrew alphabet, the letters in “David” yield the number 14. By listing three sets of 14 generations, Licona argues, “Matthew appears to have arranged his genealogy artistically in order to communicate to his Jewish readers that Jesus is the Son of David, the Messiah.”

Understanding the rules of the game is essential to understanding what’s going on in the Gospels. Licona draws from ancient Roman compositional textbooks and Plutarch’s Lives to demonstrate six rules (or “compositional devices”) common to the genre:

Compression: presenting an event as occurring over a shorter time frame than its actual duration.
Displacement: removing an event from its original context and placing it in a different one.
Transferal: taking an action done by (or to) one person and attributing it to someone else.
Conflation: combining elements of two or more events but narrating them as one.
Simplification: omitting or altering details to abbreviate a story.
Literary spotlighting: only mentioning the person(s) in focus while being aware of others present.

When read in light of these compositional devices, many of the apparent contradictions between the Gospels disappear. Take the story about Jesus raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead: Is she about to die (as in Mark and Luke) or has she already died (as in Matthew)? While those with a preference for harmonization might posit that Jairus said both, this is more likely an example of Matthew compressing a story, as is his tendency.

For instance, in the story of Jesus healing the centurion’s servant, Luke records the centurion sending emissaries on his behalf (7:1–10), while Matthew cuts out the middlemen and has the centurion go himself (8:5–13). Likewise, Matthew compresses Mark’s account of the events following the triumphal entry (compare Mark 11:1–23 and Matt. 21:1–21). In Matthew’s version, Jesus appears at the temple once rather than twice, and the fig tree he curses withers immediately, not on the next day.

We find other examples of compositional devices at play in the Resurrection narratives. The Gospels differ in recording the number of women who visited the tomb, the number of angels at the tomb, and the number of male disciples who visited the tomb afterward. Are these errors, or merely examples of literary spotlighting?

The human element

While compositional devices clear up apparent contradictions and “errors”—calming concerns that differences between the Gospels undermine their historical reliability—they also raise issues for how we understand Scripture. They introduce a distinctly human element. The Gospel authors use sources. They paraphrase. They modify words and actions, even those of Jesus. Matthew and Luke improve upon Mark’s grammar, and Luke exhibits “editorial fatigue” (where he changes a story, but leaves leftover portions from the original, as with the parable of the talents).

Patterns like these flatly contradict the “divine dictation” view of inspiration—that the evangelists were heavenly stenographers taking down every word they received from the Holy Spirit. And though most evangelical Christians who affirm the inspiration and total inerrancy of Scripture would deny “divine dictation,” this model remains influential.

For example, the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy states that “the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration” (emphasis added). The glaring question is “How?” While the authors concede, “The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us,” their view of inerrancy implies a very small role for the human authors themselves.

There’s a danger in holding such a rigid view of inerrancy. If you cannot square what you believe about Scripture with what you read in Scripture, something has to give. And if you put this view of Scripture at the foundation of all your beliefs—as Geisler recommended—then the whole edifice might come tumbling down.

Licona calls his alternative “flexible inerrancy.” Under this view, “the Bible is true, trustworthy, authoritative, and without error in all that it teaches” (emphasis added). Whereas traditional inerrancy says the Bible cannot err in any way, including in the details, flexible inerrancy says the message of God is preserved despite human involvement in the composition and preservation of the biblical texts.

How is Scripture divinely inspired then? Licona proposes a theory:

God, having foreknown all possible worlds, chose to actualize the one in which the biblical authors would write what they did. On some occasions, God may have planted ideas, concepts, perhaps even the very words they would write. However, the human element is present throughout and includes imperfections.

This view isn’t entirely original. In 1999, Christian philosopher William Lane Craig argued that God orchestrated the circumstances whereby the biblical authors would write what they did, and in that sense guided the process. Similarly, Reformed theologian B. B. Warfield thought inspiration looked like “[bringing] the right men to the right places at the right times, with the right endowments, impulses, acquirements, to write just the books which were designed for them.”

The Bible doesn’t spell out how inspiration works, and we can only speculate, but such statements at least don’t contradict Scripture. For example, Licona conducts a word study of theopneustos (the word for “inspired” or “God-breathed” found in 2 Timothy 3:16) and finds, “Perhaps the closest way of describing the meaning of theopneustos is to say the thing it describes derives from God or that God is its ultimate and special origin.”

Due to the Bible’s ambiguity regarding inspiration and inerrancy, we ought not demand conformity to the most rigid conceptions of either. There should be room to question. And we should remember that there were followers of Jesus before there was a New Testament. If believing in traditional inerrancy is a litmus test for being a Christian, then Jesus’ disciples wouldn’t pass. Nor would Paul, or any members of the early church.

The Gospels as we have them accomplish what their authors intended. Though they may supply tinted windows into Jesus’ life and teachings, what we see is true and compelling. They show us who Jesus is, what he was like, and what he taught. They establish his authority and the beauty of his way of life.

If the words and deeds of Jesus as recorded in the Gospels had contradicted the living memory of Jesus, it’s unlikely they would have found such broad acceptance across the early churches. They were preserved because they taught readers how to be disciples—and they can do the same for us today, no matter our view of inerrancy.

Noah M. Peterson is a philosophy of religion graduate student at the University of Birmingham and the editor of a think tank based in Washington, DC.

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News

‘It’s Okay to Say We’re Born Again’

Daniel Silliman in San José, Costa Rica

Global Methodists embrace evangelical identity but seek to emphasize distinctive doctrine of sanctification.

Global Methodists sang worship songs and Wesleyan hymns in Costa Rica at the first General Conference.

Courtesy of the Global Methodist Church

Nowhere on its website or in its founding documents does the new Global Methodist Church call itself evangelical.

Perhaps the term is too controversial, too divisive and political.

Or perhaps the Methodists are just out of practice.

“You know, as Methodists, it’s okay to say we’re born again,” said Asbury Theological Seminary professor Luther Oconer, preaching to the more than 900 people gathered in San José, Costa Rica, last week for the denomination’s first General Conference.

“Tell the person next to you, ‘I’m born again.’”

Around 900 people turned and said, “I’m born again,” laughing at themselves as they did.

The convening General Conference looked and sounded evangelical, with charismatic tinges. There was talk about evangelism, missions, the Great Commission, discipleship, and revival. People spoke unselfconsciously about the presence of the Holy Spirit, words from the Lord, what God is doing among them right now, and their love for Jesus. They read aloud from Scripture, taking the words as personal promises. Delegates raised their hands, singing Chris Tomlin’s “Holy Forever” and other contemporary worship songs, and lifted their voices with camp-meeting fervor when the band struck up “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.”

Oconer, who is originally from the Philippines and described himself as a third-generation Global South minister, ended his sermon with an altar call. He asked people to come forward to give themselves and their new denomination to Christ, committing to the biblical vision of a New Testament church.

“Let us be a church of Pentecost first,” he said. “We must be a church of Pentecost first. We are a people born of the Spirit, first and foremost.”

People streamed forward, kneeling, praying, crying, singing. Steve Beard, editor in chief of Good News, described this as “old-time Methodism,” a religious movement unconcerned with the propriety of mid-century mainline Protestantism, a movement of field preaching, circuit riders, conversion experiences, and testimonies about freedom from sin.

In the midst of resurgent evangelicalism, however, some Global Methodists are worried about preserving Wesleyan distinctives. They expressed concern that the denomination might slide into a kind of generic evangelicalism.

The religious landscape is increasingly dominated, after all, by nondenominational churches that reject the importance of distinctives. Even churches that have affiliations often downplay their differences. Many evangelical churches feel about the same, whether they’re Southern Baptist or Evangelical Free, Independent Christian or Christian and Missionary Alliance. They sing the same songs, talk about the same Christian celebrities, listen to similar sermons, and practice mostly indistinguishable liturgies.

Roughly half the congregations that left the United Methodist Church have not joined the Global Methodists. Some are waiting to see what happens. They have said they might join, depending on the shape the new denomination takes, its authority structure, and the guarantees put in place to prevent the repetition of their bad experiences. But others are just done with denominations—liberal or conservative, mainline or evangelical. Hanging on to Methodist connections isn’t that important to them.

Mark Tooley, president of The Institute on Religion and Democracy and a lifelong Methodist, said the new denomination is going “against the headwinds of current American religious preferences.” As they embrace an evangelical style, Global Methodists will be forced to answer the question, “Why should Christians be specifically Wesleyan?”

In Costa Rica—as delegates passed a constitution, established the process for nominating bishops, and dealt with the legislative business of founding a new denomination—they also worked informally to articulate a Wesleyan charism, the unique spiritual gift that the Global Methodists could offer to evangelicals and the whole church.

“I think what we have to offer as a movement is the ‘heart strangely warmed,’ which is hearts changed, sanctification,” said Emily Allen, an Asbury seminary student and a delegate to the General Conference. “There’s a line I love from the Methodist communion liturgy: freed for joyful obedience. That is such a joyful thing! We need to have our hearts transformed.”

Jeff Kelly, pastor of the largest Global Methodist church in Nebraska, said he sensed the Holy Spirit changing hearts during the legislative sessions in Costa Rica.

“I’m seeing an injection of grace—that Wesleyan gift of grace,” he said.

It made him think that the new denomination might put an emphasis on the doctrine of sanctification, Kelly said. That idea could be reclaimed as the key Wesleyan distinctive.

“I think John Wesley called it the Methodist depositum,” he said. “After you’re saved, you’re not done. God is still bringing change.”

Seedbed, a publisher specializing in Wesleyan literature, currently lists two books on sanctification among its best-selling titles.

The publisher also released a hymnal in time for the convening General Conference. Editor Sterling Allen, a Global Methodist minister at a church in Houston, called it “a curated renewal of Charles Wesley’s most beloved hymns” that he hoped would serve as “a catalyst for repentance and renewal, a celebration of the joyous proclamation of the gospel, and an outpouring of the Spirit.” It includes 58 hymns on sanctifying grace, including “Spirit of Faith, Come Down,” “What is Our Calling’s Glorious Hope,” “Lord, Fill Me with a Humble Fear,” and “O Joyful Sound of Gospel Grace!”

Seedbed is also reprinting Methodist texts as pocket-sized tracts. One is John Wesley’s On Perfection. Another is The Character of a Methodist, where the founder of the movement writes that “Methodists are continually offering their whole selves to God … holding back nothing but giving all to increase the glory of God in the world.”

On the final day of the General Convention, the Global Methodists voted to change their mission statement to put more of an emphasis on sanctification. The original mission statement, put in place by transitional leadership, said the church’s goal was “to make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”

David Watson, New Testament professor at United Theological Seminary and lead editor at Firebrand, said it seemed too generic to him. That mission statement would work for any evangelical megachurch—but wasn’t specifically Wesleyan.

With input from Paul Lawlor, a pastor in Memphis, and Jason E. Vickers, a professor at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor, Watson proposed an alternative. The new mission statement said, “The Global Methodist Church exists to make disciples of Jesus Christ and spread scriptural holiness across the globe.”

It passed overwhelmingly.

“What I’ve tried to do is keep us theologically grounded so we don’t lapse into mere pragmatism but stay Methodist,” Watson said. “What’s at stake is our identity as Methodists. … For us, the heart of it all is sanctification.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the worship band at the convening General Conference played “Oceans.”

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Ideas

The Evangelicalism of Jimmy Carter

Daniel K. Williams

Contributor

The former president, who turns 100 on Tuesday, was elected while serving as a Southern Baptist deacon. But he was never fully welcomed by white evangelicals as one of our own.

Former President Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday School class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Georgia.

David Goldman / AP Images

When Jimmy Carter spoke about his faith in Christ while campaigning for president in 1976, many evangelicals were ecstatic.

No previous presidential candidate had claimed to be “born again” or spoken so openly about his relationship with Jesus. Nor had any welcomed journalists to his adult Sunday school class, which Carter continued to teach even while running for the White House. But then again, no other presidential candidate was a deacon in a Southern Baptist church.

The United States needed a “born-again man in the White House,” Oklahoma pastor Bailey Smith told the crowd gathered at the SBC’s annual meeting in June 1976. Then he added, in case anyone missed the hint, “And his initials are the same as our Lord’s!”

But only a few weeks later, Third Century Publishers, an evangelical publishing firm cofounded by Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, released a book that sharply criticized Carter’s evangelical bona fides. The book, What about Jimmy Carter?, was written by a young evangelist named Ron Boehme.

When he first heard about Carter’s candidacy, Boehme said, he was “thrilled” that a born-again Christian was running for president. Yet as he learned more about Carter’s beliefs, his opinion of the Democratic candidate quickly soured. Carter, he discovered, had embraced neo-orthodox views of the Bible, and he supported liberal abortion policies as well as gay rights.

Perhaps Carter wasn’t really an evangelical at all, Boehme decided, or not even a believer. “When a man promotes or goes along with immorality and ungodliness in his political campaigning and lawmaking, he is not a true follower of Jesus,” he wrote. Appropriating one of Jesus’ statements in the Sermon on the Mount, Boehme doubled down: “A good tree cannot produce bad fruit.”

Boehme was hardly alone in this conclusion. Although Carter won approximately half the white evangelical vote in 1976, many evangelicals echoed Boehme in their questions about his faith during the weeks leading up to the election. Carter’s interview with Playboy magazine disturbed many conservative Christians, and so did a few of his policy positions.

By 1980, some evangelicals who had once supported Carter (such as the Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson) were at the forefront of the movement to defeat him at the polls. Carter, they decided, had promoted “secular humanism” through his promotion of a feminist agenda and his refusal to oppose gay rights. Indeed, it was largely a reaction against Carter’s presidential policies that prompted the political mobilization of the Religious Right and the strong evangelical support for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

After Carter left office, the rift between him and the increasingly conservative leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention continued to grow. Carter eventually left the Southern Baptist Convention to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a denomination that ordained women and rejected some of the SBC’s conservative political stances.

But Carter continued to call himself an evangelical Christian. He continued to speak of reading the Bible daily, praying constantly, and teaching weekly Sunday school classes at his Baptist church. His volunteer work through Habitat for Humanity became legendary. And he frequently shared his faith with others, including with non-Christian international leaders while he was president.

He also wrote several books about his faith. “I am convinced that Jesus is the Son of God,” he said in his final book on the subject, published in 2018. Jesus is his “personal savior,” he declared, as well as “an exemplary personal guide for a way for me and others to live. … The basis elements of Christianity apply personally to me, shape my attitude and my actions, and give me a joyful and positive life, with purpose.”

After consulting the description of evangelicalism provided in a Wikipedia article and supplementing it with information from one of his Bible commentaries, Carter concluded in the book that not only was he a Christian, he was an “evangelical Christian.” He had been born again; he shared his faith with others; and he loved Jesus as his Savior. What could be more evangelical than that?

But clearly there was a difference between Carter’s understanding of the faith and the views of his evangelical critics. His born-again experience of conversion may have resembled theirs, and his devotion to prayer and Bible reading may have been just as strong, but on two issues Carter parted ways with conservative evangelicals of the late 20th century and beyond: biblical inerrancy and politics.

Those were the very issues at the heart of the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention that began while Carter was in office. For many conservative evangelicals of the 1970s—Harold Lindsell, Francis Schaeffer, and the leaders of the conservative faction within the Southern Baptist Convention—biblical inerrancy was central to the evangelical identity. Without an inerrant Bible, Protestant Christians would have no fixed, transcendent source of authority, they argued. The Reformation principle of sola scriptura, combined with an understanding of God’s perfection and sovereignty, demanded an inerrant scripture.

Many of these evangelicals also argued that the American government needed a fixed, transcendent moral standard based on Christian principles. Legal abortion and a new public celebration of sexual immorality were the result of politicians and judges who had forgotten God’s law, they said.

Their vision of Christianity as an influence in the public sphere primarily meant championing Christian moral principles in the face of growing secularization. They thought that the sexual revolution, along with second-wave feminism, was perhaps the greatest threat that the American family had ever experienced. And they were determined to stop that threat by electing godly people to office, people who would be guided by God’s law, not contemporary cultural trends.

But Carter did not share any of these views. His political and religious ideas were shaped not by a reaction against the sexual revolution but by experience of the civil rights movement. Like other white southerners of his generation, Carter grew up amid racial segregation and inequality, and he concluded that the white evangelical churches of his region were mostly on the wrong side of Black Americans’ struggle for justice.

Carter’s own Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, was officially segregated until 1976. The congregation voted in the 1960s against accepting Black people as members, and Carter opposed that decision but did not immediately leave the church. Yet, as he recalled years later in his book Faith: A Journey for All, he was inspired by the examples of other Christians who took the countercultural stance of reaching across the color line in the segregated South. Only a few miles from his home in Plains, for example, Millard and Linda Fuller started an interracial Christian communal farm named Koinonia—then later founded Habitat for Humanity.

Encounters with people like the Fullers convinced Carter that what the country needed was not a public campaign to take America back for God. It was a practical emulation of the ethics of Jesus. This, after all, was how African American Christian advocates for civil rights had gained the support of previously oppositional white Christians, who were moved by the activists’ example of Christlike love.

Carter was so impressed by that example that he framed his entire Christian faith around this principle rather than around any specific doctrinal statements. But the more that he read Scripture, the more impressed he was by the ethics of Christ and the more he wanted to have Jesus as his “constant companion” by grace through faith.

For Carter, then, biblical inerrancy was a non-issue. Perhaps the Bible did contain some internal contradictions that could not be harmonized, he decided, and perhaps parts of the Bible did need to be reinterpreted in the light of modern science. But that really didn’t matter as long as the general narrative of Jesus’ life was historically correct.

And the Christian Right’s political priorities were misguided, Carter likewise determined, because they were centered not around the ethics of Jesus but around an erroneous notion that family values could be imposed through law. As an Arminian Baptist, Carter opposed creeds, believed in the priesthood of all believers, and strongly insisted that faith must be freely chosen to be true. It could not be dictated by legislation, he argued in multiple books, including Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis and Faith: A Journey for All.

Following Jesus in public office, then, could not mean imposing Christian standards through law. For Carter, it had to mean acting with integrity and with concern for all people. And if the nation turned to God, the fruit of this conversion would not necessarily be laws against same-sex marriage or abortion. It would be a dedication “to the resolution of disputes by peaceful means” and a commitment to “freedom and human rights” for others, including especially the rights of women, which he believed too many conservative evangelicals ignored.

Functionally, Carter’s faith had more in common with mainline Protestantism than with late 20th- or early 21st-century American evangelicalism—and evangelicals weren’t incorrect when they observed that difference. But Carter was also a lifelong Baptist who believed in born-again conversion, a personal relationship with Jesus, and the need to share one’s faith with others. He always spoke of faith with an evangelical accent, and despite his differences with more conservative Christians, he cherished a love for the same Savior.

With the perspective of history—thanks to the longest post-presidency in American history—those commonalities are perhaps easier to see now than they were in 1980. Carter’s determination to extend the love of Jesus was a better reflection of the Sermon on the Mount than his evangelical critics realized.

Daniel K. Williams teaches American history at Ashland University and is the author of The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship.

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Ideas

Who Is My Neighbor?

Nikki Toyama-Szeto

How Christians can love well in a digitized, global, and polarized world.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

My neighborhood, just outside of Washington, DC, has a strong sense of local community. I know the people on our block, and I love bumping into folks—at PTA meetings, sports outings, or the grocery store. My neighborhood has quaint traditions: We celebrate holidays with cookie exchanges. Local groups play music on front lawns in the summer. On these lovely nights when people are walking the block, I don’t see the divisions and divides that worry me when I read the news.

So I was surprised a couple of months ago to find out that I didn’t actually know many of my neighbors. One of my kids was collecting items for a service project. On a Saturday morning, we slowly walked the block, placing a flyer at each door. With half a stack of flyers left, we continued to the next block—a block I walk or drive often.

But the slowness of the task caused me to pause, to stop at each door, to see each place where people live. I noticed the numbers on the walls, the color of the doors. And I was surprised at how many homes I had never “seen” before. I was surprised, just one block away, how few of the people I knew. Before that day, I would have called these folks my neighbors. In reality, I didn’t know my neighbors.

Throughout the Gospels, we see the exhortation to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37–40; Mark 12:29–31). But who is my neighbor (Luke 10:29)? And what does being a neighbor look like in a time of such polarization?

When I try to make sense of what it means to love my neighbor, I think of Acts 1:8. In this passage, Jesus exhorts his followers to bear witness to the power of his resurrection in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Jerusalem was essentially the disciples’ city. Judea was the larger region that contained their local city. Samaria was a region just next to Judea—a place that was adjacent and had a different ethnic group. And the ends of the earth were, well, everywhere else.

I use these categories of Jerusalem (the city where I am), Judea and Samaria (the region I’m in and the one next to it), and “the ends of the earth” (everyone else) to help me think about whom I consider my neighbor. I try to make sure I have neighbors in each of these groups.

Jesus’ invitation to his first followers to bear witness is extended to us today—to be people who bear witness to Jesus “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

When I’m trying to navigate tricky issues, expanding my definition of neighbor like this helps. I try to use these three categories of people to stretch me to care about people just beyond my natural inclination—people in the place where I am, the place just next to me, and a place farther away.

How does an issue affect people like me? Or people who are adjacent to me—nearby, but perhaps affected slightly differently? And how does it affect people with whom I don’t have much in common, people who seem far from me? And what response to this issue would bear witness to God’s character and love to each of these different groups?

That final group, the ends of the earth, seems like a catchall: Did I miss anyone? Well, reach out to them too. One of my favorite insights about missions comes from an Indigenous Christian theologian who pointed out to me that North America might be part of what the early church imagined as “the ends of the earth.” It’s humbling to think that I am someone else’s “ends of the earth.” And at the same time, it nudges me to do the extra work of caring about someone different, perhaps even at odds with my group.

With each of these circles, I try to think, How can I love this group of neighbors as myself? How can I learn more about the realities of their daily life, their priorities, and their cares? And how can I carry that perspective with me as I think about my role as a Christian committed to social action? Are there places where I can journey alongside, add my voice as a support, and function as a neighbor in this diverse and dynamic place where we live?

Caring only about the people nearest to us or most like us doesn’t bear witness to our God, who cares for all people and calls people from all nations to become part of his family. Only seeking the good of those who live near us or live like us can lead us to perpetuate economic, racial, ethnic, or other divisions. That lifestyle doesn’t bear witness to Jesus’ power to be a peacemaker who is able to remove dividing walls and bring unity to groups separated by hostility (Eph. 2:14–15).

Our current political system encourages a self-serving posture. It leads us to ask, “How do I accumulate power and use it to push through my demands and center my priorities for my own well-being?” This perpetuates a game where there are winners and losers.

In a world like this, one of the most compelling ways we Christians can bear witness is by being generous with our hearts, passions, and interests and by using our voices, votes, and energy on behalf of our neighbors. We can love our neighbors as ourselves and love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

My hope is that Christians would not play politics the way the world does, but rather—filled with an abundance that comes from being unconditionally loved, repeatedly forgiven, and embraced by a caring, powerful, and compassionate God—feel generous with our love, hope, and faith.

We can not only love the neighbors who have commonalities with us but also love the neighbors who are just over and beyond our reach. In this way, we can be people who bear witness to and live in the reality of Jesus, the peacemaker who removes walls of hostility and offers reconciliation generously.

Nikki Toyama-Szeto is the executive director of Christians for Social Action.

Learn more about Evangelicals in a Diverse Democracy.

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News

Widespread Helene Misery Stretches Christian Relief Groups

Emily Belz

Organizations respond to destruction in Florida, Georgia, and rural Appalachia, but they must pull resources from as far away as Canada.

Men inspect damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in Asheville, North Carolina.

Sean Rayford / Getty Images

Devastating hundreds of miles from the Florida Gulf Coast to Georgia to the mountains of North Carolina, Hurricane Helene has created a complicated equation for Christian organizations that are on the frontline of disaster response.

“In my more than 20 years of disaster experience, I can’t think of a time when such a large area was at risk,” Jeff Jellets, the disaster coordinator for The Salvation Army’s work in the South, said in a statement.

Samaritan’s Purse chief operating officer Edward Graham told CT that the organization had to call in equipment and volunteers from its Canadian arm for its hurricane response and even had to adjust some of its overseas work. Just for this disaster, Samaritan’s Purse is operating in Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina.

“We’re running at max capacity for our domestic response,” Graham said. But he added, “Logistically, God has given us the resources and the talent to navigate.”

Still, Christian relief organizations—partnered with local churches—were working on bringing help to the most difficult-to-reach places. In western North Carolina, where record-setting flooding destroyed roads and other infrastructure, mountain communities, including the city of Asheville, were difficult to access.

On Monday, Samaritan’s Purse was setting up an emergency field hospital in North Carolina’s Avery County, a rural area in the Appalachians where search and rescue teams were conducting operations in mountain towns and remote valleys.

The field hospital will function as an emergency room alongside the local hospital in anticipation of an influx of patients from rescue operations. More than 100 have died in the storm.

Graham also said a Samaritan’s Purse helicopter dropped food and water to stranded students at Lees McRae College in the mountains of North Carolina. He said he alerted the North Carolina National Guard that the school would need Chinook helicopter evacuations, and the military airlifted students out on Sunday.

The disaster had engulfed Samaritan’s Purse’s own headquarters in Boone, North Carolina, and its staff were reeling from losing homes in the storm.

The disaster also hit personally for the Graham family in Montreat, North Carolina, where evangelist Billy Graham raised his children. Edward Graham, Billy Graham’s grandson, serves on the board of Montreat College, a Christian college in the same area which also suffered significant damage. Graham said he didn’t know the state of the family home, but he couldn’t give that his attention: “My grandfather lives in heaven.”

“It’s not that there is a lack of supplies and desire to help,” said Amanda Held Opelt, an author and songwriter who worked for Samaritan’s Purse for a decade. She lives in a rural area near Boone called Meat Camp and has family in the surrounding Appalachian hollers.

The only road into Meat Camp is gone, and Opelt knows a pregnant woman who is due soon and stranded. “What we need is a thousand engineers with bridge-building capabilities to get here,” she said.

Graham noted that flooding in a flat plain is one thing, but they were seeing “the power of water in a valley.”

Opelt noted the resilience of people in Appalachia and the small local churches there, cut off from the world but checking on each other and bringing water for the sick and elderly. She was able to navigate into the small Appalachian community of Bakersville, North Carolina, to check on her two aunts.

“They were sitting there eating saltines and vegetables from their garden and washing their bloomers in the creek,” she said. “I started crying when I saw them.”

The most extensive death and destruction is in North Carolina, but communities in Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida are also dealing with destroyed homes and infrastructure.

After the storm, some churches in heavily hit areas met outside to worship on Sunday, locals reported. But some church members and leaders couldn’t communicate with each other at all because of compromised cell service. And others focused on distributing water and food from their properties, which became natural community gathering points.

The Salvation Army quickly deployed 14 mobile units to provide thousands of meals in Florida and Georgia.

Send Relief, the disaster response arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, has 23 response sites set up in six states to respond to Helene, providing food and organizing debris removal and hot showers.

Convoy of Hope, a faith-based disaster response organization that partners with local churches, arrived with supplies in Perry, Florida, on Sunday. Three hurricanes have hit Perry in the last year. The organization was sending supplies on Monday to Morganton, North Carolina; Tampa Bay, Florida; and Augusta, Georgia.

Local organizations and churches have gotten to work as well. Baptist churches in western North Carolina were distributing water, the biggest need in the area.

Evangelical climate scientists warn that local churches and relief organizations will have to adjust to a new normal of these types of super-charged weather events in unexpected places.

Jessica Moerman is a climate scientist and the CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network. She’s also from Knoxville, Tennessee, near the areas devastated. Her family members lost a home in the 2016 wildfire in nearby Gatlinburg.

“What we’ve seen over the last few years is that we’re just in a new normal,” she said. “We’re seeing it across the Southeast and across Appalachia—small towns saying, ‘This is like nothing we’ve seen before.’”

Moerman explained how seawater warming due to climate change made these storms worse. With Helene, warmer gulf waters meant the storm held more water in the atmosphere and had the strength to go further inland and dump historic rain on western North Carolina—a place so far inland that few would expect it to be vulnerable to hurricanes.

The warm seawater is “rocket fuel that makes these storms stronger and more intense,” she said. “The hurricane has so much more energy, it can travel farther … It’s really, really heartbreaking.”

Christian disaster relief organizations will have to prepare for a situation “where we are expecting worse storms than we’ve ever experienced in the past and expecting to experience them again.”

Organizations responding now are focused on people are still missing from the storm, and staff noted that first responders in these areas are still having issues with communication and are battling their own fatigue.

Graham said Samaritan’s Purse would stay in the disaster areas for the duration.

“This is going to be a very long recovery,” he said. “We do not leave the community till it’s done.”

- More from Emily Belz

Ideas

25 Precepts for This (and Every) Election

Bonnie Kristian

CT Staff; Columnist

On disagreement, faithfulness, forbearance, and votes.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

The high season of American politics is here. Stomachs are knotted. Electoral trend lines undulate. Betting markets tremble.

And what of the American church? Many of us are trembling too: with fear, with rage, with anticipation of whatever may be in store for us in Washington—and in our own kitchens and sanctuaries.

A few weeks ago, a colleague of mine here at CT wrote an article pertaining to politics, and the online backlash was furious. The social media responses crossed every prudential line in Proverbs; they would have made Martin Luther blush.

And it didn’t come from social media bots, machines programmed to automate inhumanity. The names of many respondents were familiar. They weren’t computers; they were Christians. It was us.

When I say “us,” I don’t mean that you are personally sniping on social media; I know I’m not. Rather, I mean that the precepts I offer below are not—cannot be, if they’re of any use—reflections and guidance loftily directed at those people, the Christians who embarrass and frustrate and confound us.

The way we get through this next month and the months to come with any semblance of Christian love and unity is to copy Paul in 1 Timothy: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst” (1:15). And not just to say it, but to mean it.

To that end, here are 25 precepts for an election year:

A Christian’s opposition to Candidate X does not entail her support for Candidate Y. It does not entail it by implication or in practice. To insist otherwise against the protests of your sibling in Christ is to embrace dissension and slander.
You can critique a fellow Christian’s politics without questioning his faith, and both of you should be able to hear the difference.
Your critique of a fellow Christian’s politics may well include reminding her of the commitments and obligations of her faith.
Your critique of a fellow Christian’s politics may never persuade him. At a political impasse with a sibling in Christ, mutual forbearance and grace is usually a better way forward than ongoing argument. What better things could you each be doing with your time?
There is a line across which a Christian’s politics might justifiably cast doubt on her profession of faith. The line may not be where we assume it to be.
That line may even be different for different Christians in different times, places, and stages of sanctification, for God does not address our every sin, error, and weakness at once.
Some of us may need more courage of our convictions, especially if we find ourselves a religious, political, or cultural minority in our churches and wider communities.
But most of us, in this brash and hasty culture, are more likely to need forbearance and grace for those we believe to be less spiritual, moral, intelligent, or knowledgeable than ourselves.
Forbearance isn’t tolerance. Grace is not condescension.
Nor are forbearance and grace indecision and cowardice.
Remember 1 John 4:20: “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.”
Lasting political disagreement among Christians is not by itself evidence of sin, unbelief, or any other dysfunction. Reasonable, faithful Christians may in good faith reach different conclusions. They may all have solid biblical support for their views; they may all seek the common good; they may all seek to love their neighbors; they may always disagree.
Your voting choices are constrained by the realities of our electoral system. You can vote third party or write in a name, but don’t pretend these are politically viable candidates when they are not.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide to only seriously consider viable candidates.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide that viability is less important than ethical and policy alignment.
Reasonable, faithful Christians may decide not to vote: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help” (Psalm 146:3, KJV).
Hope is a Christian virtue; wishful thinking is not.
Wisdom is a Christian calling; cynicism is not wise.
No candidate is owed your vote. Not even if you believe you have a duty to vote. Not even if you’re registered to one party or another. Not even if you live in a swing state.
With some exceptions, down-ballot votes—especially for state and local officials, judges, and ballot initiatives—will have more frequent and more tangible effects on your life and those of your neighbors than votes for president.
This is probably not the most important election of your lifetime. If it is the most important election of your lifetime, you can’t know that in real time. You may be able to make that assessment 5 or 10 or 20 years hence, but you cannot know now.
Your vote is not passed along to the candidates with an explanatory note. The candidates do not know you felt conflicted or were strategically voting to change the direction of the opposing party. They only know they have won with the support of however many thousands or millions of Americans, and they will act in those voters’ name—that is, in your name.
What you do in the privacy of the voting booth is your own business and may be kept secret. But if you find yourself hesitant or ashamed to share how you voted, ask yourself why.
All told, your individual vote is of negligible import in determining the electoral outcome or the future of the country. It may be of substantial spiritual import for you.
“Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39).

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Culture

Fasting Is A Good Thing. But For Some of Us, It’s Complicated.

Jacinta Read

My history of disordered eating means I practice the spiritual discipline in community and with accommodations.

PM Images / Getty

For a time when I was a child, I wanted nothing unless it was grilled cheese—without the bread. My loving parents accommodated me by placing a special order when we went to restaurants. Eventually, I became a vegetarian after making the connection between the animals I professed to love and what was on my plate.

By the time I was a teenager, I ate a greater variety of dishes. But pickiness had given way to something more sinister. A friend and I ate burgers and fries, then guiltily pooled our money to buy a diet product called Trim Gum. My problematic relationship with food escalated after I left home for boarding school, an ocean away from my family. I went to great lengths to mask the fact that I had started throwing up after every meal.

Many factors contributed to my bulimia. I was a mixed-race girl who had grown up in Hong Kong, where grown-ups pinched children’s cheeks and openly body-shamed others. Supermodels reigned supreme in ’90s pop culture, enforcing waifish beauty standards. It didn’t help that I aspired to be a ballerina. Decades later, I’d learn of the link between disordered eating and neurodivergence; it’s common for autistic people like me to struggle with food in one way or another.

Into all this reached the loving arms of God. My illness was interrupted by amazing grace and a youth group full of new friends who provided me with the community I craved. It was a beautiful but sadly temporary reprieve: Eating disorders are resilient. They can morph and return like the unclean spirit in Matthew 12. And this happened to me in the guise of fasting.

Scripture contains dozens of references to fasting. The psalmist fasts (Ps. 69:10); the prophets fast (Ezra 8:23; Dan. 10:3; Neh. 1:4). Jesus went without food and water for 40 days in the wilderness (Matt. 4:2). In fasting, we give something up in order to deepen our dependence on God; we remove a meal or a drink and fill the space they leave behind with prayer.

But there are physical, mental, and social implications to fasting that can add up to major problems for anyone who has struggled with disordered eating. “When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen,” instructs Jesus, “and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:17–18). For those with eating disorders, however, secrecy can derail recovery.

As a relatively new Christian in my early 20s, I took to fasting with zeal. It was mid-summer; I was training for a marathon and also undergoing a 40-day “Jesus” fast. I ran miles in the heat, then came home to shower and study the Bible, collapsing in an exhausted heap. I drank clear liquids but I did not eat. I don’t remember what I prayed for; I was simply interested in proving that God’s sustaining power was better fuel than food.

There’s no limit to the ways in which good things can, without care and community, distort into chaos and destruction. Neither the body nor the brain works as God intended unless they are cared for as God intended.

As a fit young person, there would be a delay before I felt the long-term physical consequences of this extreme deprivation. It was the psychological effects that first became apparent. Research shows that the quality and quantity of nutrition directly affect our brain’s neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers responsible for every facet of functioning. I was starving and dehydrated, and I quickly lost my grip on reality.

My descent into irritability and paranoia lasted a few short weeks; it ended when I landed in the local ER after a serious self-inflicted injury. The recovery process since has been an uphill slog. It’s taken years—and it’s taken supernatural levels of loving support from others.

For the first 15 years of my eating disorder recovery, I agreed with my husband: I would not fast. Not during Lent. Not during special times of prayer. I’d come to God in other ways: by reading the Bible and books on theology, listening to podcasts, and taking walks in nature.

On one hand, this wasn’t difficult. People tend to afford fasting (or its absence) some privacy.

On the other hand, it was difficult. The desire to fast never left me. I battled faulty logic, wanting to blame life’s troubles on my failure to give up food and drink. It was hard to shake the idea that if fasting could bring about a breakthrough, then not fasting could be the reason behind any number of problems. As a matter of survival, I had to hold this tension.

My fixation with fasting was more than an eating disorder running into hyper-religiosity. It was what the poet John Keats called an “irritable reaching for certainty.” If fasting could make my prayers more powerful, then there was something I could do to get the outcomes I wanted from God. Not fasting meant giving up a measure of control.

Grappling with this, I stumbled upon the essence of faith. I remembered that the cross was an unearned gift. God’s loving salvation is unconditional. I was loved, even if I never fasted another day in my life.

You’re still here even though I didn’t fast? My prayers assumed a playful tone. Responding in kind, God proved himself as I completed my doctoral studies, a miracle I’d previously thought impossible without fasting. I got on with my life, banking all my faith in a grace that exists in spite of failure.

Instead of fretting about eating or not eating, I allowed God to engage me with art and music. He nourished me with words of life from the Bible and great literature. He drew my family to a healthy church community where we contributed what we could while feeling safe to say no when needed. If the topic of fasting came up, I willed myself to disengage. When thoughts of spiritual discipline came with feelings of obligation, I sensed the Holy Spirit: I love you, don’t do me any favors. My recovery was centered on God’s unmerited grace.

That said, complete freedom around food is an ideal I haven’t yet reached. Instead, I struggle on, remembering Paul with the thorn in his side and the Lord’s words to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

This could be the end of the story: I opt out of fasting due to my complicated history with food. For two decades, this was my safe and appropriate stance. There is no shame if the same is the case for you or someone you know.

But in recent years, I’ve felt ready to revisit fasting. There is no overstating the importance of time, which has allowed for gradual healing and greater maturity. Twenty years on, my genuine desire for spiritual formation now grows safely alongside a stubborn commitment to mental and physical health.

This season unfolds under the watchful eyes of my husband, doctors, and therapist. Now, I compare fasting to exercise: It’s not compulsory, but it is beneficial when done for the right reasons and with proper care. People with physical injuries or disabilities might require special accommodations and should use them without shame. I have learned to afford myself the same grace in fasting.

Through experimentation, I’ve found some strategies that work for me. I abstain from solids only; my fasts are shorter; I use nutritional supplementation; I break fasts guilt-free if I feel my motivation veer. I try to let my hunger serve as a call to prayer.

There are new challenges too, such as feeding my family on fast days and being honest with my teens, who are still in their formative years.

I am on track for the 40-day fast I was interested in all those years ago, but the 40 days aren’t consecutive; I’ve been at it for two years already. I have faith that this is fine.

Fasting as a spiritual practice can bring numerous benefits as we heed the call in 1 Corinthians to glorify God in body and spirit. But access to these benefits is complicated for some of us. As we Christians press into spiritual formation, my hope is that we hold space for the community around us, made up of stories and recovery journeys that we might never know.

Jacinta Read is a writer, artist, and neurodiversity advocate. She serves as the Connections Pastor at Vintage Church Pasadena.‌

- More from Jacinta Read

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