Should Christians Across Denominations Be Singing the Same Songs?

Some traditions work to refocus on theological distinctives in their music as worship megahits take over.

If you feel like it’s hard to keep up with the cascade of new worship music, you’re not alone. The industry is producing new releases at a quicker clip, and the typical lifespan of a worship song—the time a song remains in regular rotation for church worship teams—has shortened.

Faced with a seemingly endless supply of new music, worship leaders are looking for ways to incorporate new music without skipping over the process of discerning whether the style and message of a particular song is right for their church.

For some, the ecumenicism of contemporary worship music is both a strength and a weakness, and they fear that not enough has been done to make sure that musical worship within their churches still reflects the theological commitments that bind them to a historical or denominational strand of Christianity.

Denominations are stepping in to help by offering new resources as guidance, or, in the case of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), holding on to their old ones. Last year, the SBC’s Lifeway Worship scrapped plans to shut down its online media database after an outcry from church musicians who trusted the site’s musical offerings.

“Leaders rely on us to provide some guardrails,” Brian Brown, director of Lifeway Worship, told CT. “If it’s been vetted by Lifeway, they have an added layer of confidence.”

Lifeway’s online resource isn’t as tech-forward but functions similarly to SongSelect, the popular Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) platform, and PraiseCharts. CCLI was formed to offer churches protection from copyright litigation, and PraiseCharts was founded by a worship pastor who wanted to create an alternative to mail-order music for church musicians, so they could have quicker access to arrangements of new worship songs like “Shout to the Lord.”

As the ecumenical digital songbook of new worship music has grown, the influence that denominations used to exert through their curated hymnals has weakened. Some leaders are concerned that the dominance of popular music produced by a handful of megachurches and artists—think Hillsong, Bethel, and Elevation—is washing away some of the elements of musical worship that reflect the doctrines and historical practices of their traditions.

In 2015, the United Methodist Church (UMC) launched its CCLI Top 100 Project, which resulted in “green” and “yellow” lists of popular songs and a set of downloadable criteria. Nelson Cowan, who now oversees the project, told CT in 2021 that sung doctrine is more than just an affirmation of the “right” words, “it’s doctrine we are learning and inhabiting and feeling and processing through song.”

Last year, the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians (ALCM) released its first list of vetted songs from the CCLI Top 100 list in its journal CrossAccent. Clayton Faulkner, dean of the chapel at Wartburg Theological Seminary and editor of CrossAccent, oversaw the pan-Lutheran vetting project.

“Theology was the main focus,” Faulkner told CT. “If a song isn’t theologically sound, it doesn’t matter if it’s singable.”

Faulkner and his team adapted the UMC’s criteria to reflect a Lutheran theological lens, emphasizing the centrality of the Trinity, sacramentalism, and liturgical time. Previously, Sundays and Seasons, an online and print resource for Lutheran churches, had suggested songs based on the liturgical calendar that aligned with Lutheran doctrine, but there was no centralized collection of evaluated contemporary songs.

Earlier this year, the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) released its CCLI Vetting Project. Historically, the singing of Scripture has been central in the Reformed tradition, stretching back to Calvin’s preference for unaccompanied metered psalms, unencumbered by ornamentation and focused solely on the singing of Scripture.

“The Christian Reformed tradition has a history of being theologically mindful about what we sing,” said Katie Ritsema-Roelofs, who led the CRC project. “The denomination started with psalm-singing, and that deeply informs how we think about congregational singing.”

Keith Getty, cowriter of the popular song “In Christ Alone,” grew up singing metrical psalms in his Irish Presbyterian church. Getty has persistently spoken about the need for greater attention to theological depth and care in the writing of contemporary worship music.

He and his wife, Kristyn, emphasize “modern hymns” and are in the process of producing a hymnal with Crossway, scheduled to be released next year.

For this year’s annual Sing! conference, hosted by Getty Music in Nashville, the Gettys selected the theme “The Songs of the Bible,” reflecting their ongoing commitment to cultivating the practice of singing Scripture-focused music within the modern worship landscape.

“God is hugely concerned with what we sing,” Keith Getty told CT. “God has made us to understand him through what we sing.”

Kristyn Getty sees a return to a more Bible-centered mode of congregational singing as a way out of worship war skirmishes and conflicts over trends.

“Singing Scripture is a timeless call on our lives, throughout generations. To sing Scripture is to sing lyrics that have been around for thousands of years, not written in America or Europe. It’s a way to lift our song beyond the moment, toward something more timeless.”

The Gettys aren’t the only prominent figures in the contemporary praise and worship scene advocating for renewed attention to theological content in song lyrics.

Songwriter and worship artist Matt Redman recently wrote for CT that church musicians need input from pastors and theologians to enrich the worship of their congregations. Redman will appear alongside other songwriters and theologians at the upcoming WOR/TH conferences—convenings that aim to cultivate cooperation between artists and theologians. The responsibility of overseeing the singing of doctrine, he says, is too great for one person:

Many of us, myself included, admit we need assistance in that area. We likely didn’t come into this via seminary or intense theological training; we came in through the avenue of loving music and being able to play or sing.

We humbly recognize we cannot do this on our own. We need help from thinkers, theologians, and pastors. We need to be sharpened by fellow songwriters and worship leaders too.

Redman and the Gettys see a need to reanimate the global church’s commitment to singing songs with theological depth.

Neither Redman nor the Gettys write music for a particular Christian denomination; their songs are among the most widely sung contemporary songs in the global church, and their ecumenical appeal is what makes them so popular and powerful.

But some denominational leaders fear that there is a downside to primarily singing music that is theologically general enough to be sung by Baptists, Lutherans, Mennonites, Methodists, and Pentecostals. Vetting existing music isn’t enough to correct what they see as doctrinal vagueness; they want to instead support the creation of new music within their traditions.

In 2020, a group of songwriters and creatives in the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA) gathered to write new songs that more explicitly reflect the denomination’s commitment to missions and the global church.

Alliance Worship grew out of that gathering and continues to write, record, and release new music, including “Yesterday, Today, and Forevermore,” a reimagined version of the hymn “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” by the CMA’s founder, A. B. Simpson.

“There are thousands of worship songs being released every year that are nebulous, kind of a catchall,” Tim Meier, vice president for development at the CMA, told CT in 2023. “What would it look like to sing our theology again?”

Most of the individuals involved in vetting projects find a lot to love about popular worship music and recognize that many of their congregants have developed deep spiritual and emotional ties to particular songs, even songs that might have a theologically murky line or two. Ritsema-Roelofs pointed out that the hymn “I’ll Fly Away” doesn’t reflect a particularly Reformed view of heaven, but it holds a special power and taps into something for some (especially older) congregants that is more than just nostalgia and sentimentality.

“I’ve served in congregations where they sing a song with questionable or poor theology, but it’s a heart song,” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “Pastorally, you can’t take that away. There is soul work that happens when people sing a heart song, and it’s deeper than just making us feel good.”

In the list of CRC-vetted songs, the team includes notes about their strengths and “opportunities” (generally, for improvement or adaptation) and potential liturgical uses.

There are a few songs that get the equivalent of a warning label, such as Charity Gayle’s “I Speak Jesus,” for its “concerning association of depression with spiritual warfare” and treatment of Jesus’ name as an “incantation,” and Bethel Music’s “Raise a Hallelujah,” for its “overemphasis on human agency and human responsibility.”

Even though there are songs that get a “red light” from the CRC’s vetting team, the list isn’t meant to be a set of rules. Ritsema-Roelofs says she hopes that the list and the principles used to compile it will serve a denomination that already has a history of prioritizing the careful selection of congregational songs.

“We talk a lot about ‘song diet,’” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “Is the diet of songs in the church balanced? Are you singing psalms? Are you singing Scripture? Are you singing laments? Are you playing favorites with the members of the Trinity?”

One concern articulated by the CRC team was that the amount of individualistic language in popular worship songs is out of balance.

“When our primary language week after week is individualistic, it gradually forms us to contain worship to MY service, MY relationship with God, MY, MY, MY,” they wrote in an introductory note. “When we worship corporately we experience both the joy and the responsibility of living in community.”

In addition, the vetting team noted that popular songs tend to be songs of praise and celebration—an important part of any balanced song diet for a body of believers—and that making space for songs of lament will require intention and effort. “A continual barrage of ‘Be happy—God’s got this!’ minimizes pain and presents a problematic long-term understanding of God’s presence or absence in human suffering,” they wrote.

Despite different theological lenses and priorities, the vetting teams from both the CRC and the ALCM categorized the songs “Raise a Hallelujah” and “Battle Belongs” (by Phil Wickham) as “not recommended” or in the “red light” category.

Both groups noted the triumphalism in each song, as well as the use of battle/warfare language.

“Much care should be taken when singing about spiritual warfare. It is too easy to slip into making our neighbors our enemies,” the Lutheran team wrote in the comments on “Battle Belongs.”

Although lyrical content is the primary focus of these vetting initiatives, singability and playability are important aspects of song selection, especially in small churches.

“We looked at chord progressions and considered whether they are achievable for amateur musicians,” said Faulkner. “We also thought about whether a song can stand on its own when played and sung with just a piano and voices.”

When questions arise about the ethics of promoting or using the music associated with a particular megachurch or leader involved in a public scandal, local churches are entrusted with those decisions.

“Our goal in this process was not to give a stamp of CRC approval. Our primary goal here was formational,” said Ritsema-Roelofs. “We wanted to help people think about what their congregations are singing, because over time, it forms you. It forms your theology and faith. This was never meant to bring experts into a room to tell people what they should and shouldn’t do.”

As of now, the CRC doesn’t plan to keep vetting every new CCLI Top 100 (which is updated twice a year), nor does the ALCM. The UMC published an updated list of vetted songs in 2024. Alliance Worship will continue to write and record new music for the CMA, and the Gettys will launch the Sing! hymnal next year, offering their “vetted” collection of songs old and new.

Keith Getty says that the process of cultivating a body of theologically rich, musically accessible songs for the church is not a quest for perfection, and that getting lost in the minutiae can mean missing the beauty of the gospel.

“The gospel story is our strength and our song. I would warn against trying to take every single song and make sure it’s right,” he said. “It’s not about getting everything right, it’s about understanding the big picture and getting most of it right.”

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Rwanda Explains Why It Closed Thousands of Churches. Again.

Morgan Lee

The East African nation has shuttered 9,800 “prayer houses” because it wants safe buildings and well-trained pastors. Is that too much to ask?

narvikk / Getty

Rwanda has shut down almost 10,000 places of worship in the past two months, and now its president has proposed making churches pay taxes on their income.

The country’s crackdown on houses of worship comes as part of an ongoing push to protect Rwandans from church corruption and fraud and to ensure that their buildings meet certain physical standards.

Just weeks after winning his fourth term, President Paul Kagame condemned “mushrooming churches” that “squeeze even the last penny from poor Rwandans.”

“These unscrupulous people who use religion and churches to manipulate and fleece people of their money and other things will force us to introduce a tax,” he said in his first remarks since taking his oath of office on August 11.

The Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), which oversees the country’s places of worship, found that thousands of churches—many of them rural, Pentecostal congregations—failed to meet legal requirements around theological education, building codes, and sanitation regulations.

The RGB delineates between churches, which are officially registered with the government, and “prayer houses,” or places where Christians worship and which exist under churches.

In a statement to CT, the RGB confirmed that it had inspected 14,000 prayer houses in July and closed 70 percent of them “for non-compliance with established regulations including registration, building codes, safety, hygiene/sanitation, and financial or other exploitation of followers.”

“It should be noted that the closure of a prayer house does not necessarily entail the closure of the church the prayer house is affiliated with,” the statement added.

The board began shutting down houses of worship in July and stated that “relevant authorities will continue to collaborate with religious leaders” to ensure that the legal standards, ranging from degree requirements to garbage cans and parking lots, are met. Places of worship that have been closed can reopen if they demonstrate that the violations have been fixed.

This isn’t the first time Rwanda has taken action against churches for being out of compliance with government regulations. The country closed more than 7,000 churches in 2018 over health, safety, and noise issues. That year, it added further regulations, including banning church leaders from encouraging long fasts and requiring certain financial disclosures from churches and prayer houses.

It also introduced a requirement that each church must have a legal representative who holds a theology degree. Churches had five years, until September 2023, to comply with the law, and after a grace period, the RGB began enforcing the new standard.

Churches registering with the government must submit an organizational chart. Leaders in national positions, as well as those who supervise groups of local churches or regional parishes, must have a university degree with a certificate in theology or a theology degree, according to the board’s former CEO, Usta Kaitesi. (Kaitesi recently left after five years as the RGB’s leader and was replaced on August 16 by Doris Uwicyeza Picard, who formerly worked at the Ministry of Justice.)

Kaitesi emphasized that the education requirement does not apply directly to the leader of each church—a demand that would make it cost-prohibitive for most religious organizations.

“This structure allows the parish pastor to be accountable for what happens at the local church level,” Kaitesi told CT in March. “It doesn’t take our responsibility from the local church pastor, but you want them to know that if this is the doctrine of the church, and the church has told us this is the doctrine, they should have somebody with the capacity for supervising the implementation of the doctrine.”

Kaitesi believes that national umbrella groups—the Protestant Council of Rwanda, the Evangelical Alliance of Rwanda, the Forum of Born Again Churches for Rwanda, and Association of Pentecostal Churches of Rwanda—have a critical role to play in implementation.

“We encourage [all church legal entities] to belong to an umbrella, because we believe that umbrellas can do a lot of self-regulation, more than us doing too much regulation,” she said.

The government’s legal standards have largely worked well for historic denominations.

“What was introduced—not today but five years ago—is good for the church. The government gave us five years to comply and kept giving us reminders. That ended last year in September,” Anglican Archbishop Laurent Mbanda of Rwanda told Religion News Service. “I think this was enough time to comply. We need to look at this from a positive side.”

It’s been much tougher for independent churches and congregations founded by a single person, many of which are smaller Pentecostal churches in rural areas.

Traditionally, Pentecostals and independent charismatic churches have said the Holy Spirit and the Bible equip them fully for ministry and that formal training is unnecessary, according to Reuben van Rensburg, a project manager with Re-Forma, a South African-based ministry that educates and trains church leaders.

These pastors “would have to have the right entry requirements if they were going to study at a tertiary institution,” he said. “They would have to pay for it, which most of them can’t, and they would have to leave their ministry or their family for an extended period of time, which they’re not willing to do.”

The legal crackdown has also spurred efforts to make theological education more accessible. The RGB announced a collaboration with Re-Forma last year, agreeing to accept the ministry’s certification as evidence that a pastor has obtained suitable theological training.

After a meeting in June, 31 denominations in Rwanda committed to participating in Re-Forma’s training programs, and RGB officials agreed to honor Re-Forma certification. With the change in RGB leadership, however, Re-Forma is uncertain whether this agreement will be upheld.

Many churches that meet the theological requirements have found it challenging to fulfill all the building-related requirements, which include regulations about the distance of toilets from the church entrance, paved access roads, and painted and plastered inside walls and ceilings. When the pandemic hit and the government closed all churches, it required them to install handwashing stations before reopening.

One Kigali church was closed at the end of July because it lacked a fire extinguisher, two garbage bins, and a lightning protector. The pastor, who noted that his congregation was previously closed for four months in 2018 because it was not soundproof, said they have since addressed the government’s most recent concerns. However, they are currently meeting only on Zoom and don’t have a sense of when the government will allow them to reopen.

Other churches were closed because they were not built on the minimum area of land required or lacked a proper waste management system, security cameras, or painted walls, said one denominational leader who asked not to be named for security reasons.

Fulfilling these requirements can seem arbitrary and spurious to some. In addition to the parking requirements, the government also requires greenery.

“Remember, we are in the dry season,” the denomination leader said. “Even if you plant the greening, it will not grow the same day.”

The government wants churches with air conditioning, high-quality sound systems, and accommodations for people with disabilities, seemingly on a par with the US and Canada, he said. Maybe that’s possible for Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches, which have operated in the country for more than a century and have their own revenue-generating projects, or for those with connections to outside funders like World Vision, which has implemented handwashing stations at some churches.

But for churches fully dependent on tithes, “You can’t expect it to be done in Africa in a short period,” he said.

The leader’s denomination is currently asking the churches that have not been closed to contribute to a fund to help reopen the closed places of worship. It is reaching out to contacts who can help them make their case to the government.

“We need serious prayers. It’s a movement that intends to limit the freedom of worship. And you know the consequences—if people don’t go to church, they will do other things,” he said.

Though many find the government oversight overwhelming, some Christians still see it as important.

“Churches are growing rapidly in many countries and such growth should not be at the expense of the safety of the congregants,” said Wissam al-Saliby, the president of the religious freedom advocacy group 21Wilberforce. “At the same time, the Rwandan government needs to make available a pathway for closed churches to meet requirements and to re-open. The possibility of redress and appealing closure decisions helps guarantee the right to freedom of religion or belief.”

Al-Saliby said he felt that the church leadership educational requirements were “disproportionate to the legitimate objectives the government is seeking.”

But he acknowledged the need for the Rwandan church to scale up and improve leadership formation. “Evangelicals grow through house churches and organic community efforts,” he said. “More often than not, theological education for church leaders follows growth rather than precedes it.”

Harvesters Church in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, was shut down on August 4 because the government was missing verification that its pastor had finished his bachelor’s degree in theology and leadership.

The pastor, Fred Kayitare, is optimistic that his congregation of around 500 will soon reopen and said he “totally agreed” with the theology training requirements. He described them as “for the goodness of the congregation.”

“I am the living example. I planted a church before I attended theological college. I can witness the change and transformation I acquired from school,” he said. “I’m another person now. And everyone at our church who knew me before can witness that. I even sent four other ministers from our church to the Bible college. We’re now five theology graduates from the same church.”

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Activist Lila Rose Under Fire for Suggesting Trump Hasn’t Earned the Pro-Life Vote

Harvest Prude

As conservatives see bigger shifts and divides over abortion, Live Action founder says she’ll keep speaking up for stronger policies.

Live Action founder Lila Rose

Courtesy of Lila Rose

“If you don’t stand for pro-life principles, you don’t get pro-life votes.”

That’s what Lila Rose, a leading pro-life activist, posted Monday on social media, in response to the latest move from Donald Trump’s campaign to moderate its stance on abortion.

It’s the line that put her at the center of controversy this week, with Trump supporters blaming her for jeopardizing the GOP ticket and calling her a grifter. The clash spurred further debate over what committed pro-lifers should do as they become increasingly sidelined by the Republican Party.

The online infighting comes at a moment when the pro-life movement is recalibrating after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade and as national Republican leaders have backed away from making abortion central to the GOP’s 2024 campaign message.

“We represent a constituency that has no voice, who can’t speak for themselves, and so it’s our job to speak for them,” Rose, founder of the pro-life nonprofit Live Action, told Christianity Today. “We’re being told, You have to shut up and sit down, and you should just be grateful for whatever we give you. And if we play politics that way, the pro-life movement will become completely defunct.”

Rose, a former evangelical who converted to Catholicism, stands by her convictions without compromise: She doesn’t support exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother, and wants a federal abortion ban.

Republicans went back and forth on X over Rose’s implication that pro-lifers should withhold votes from Trump. The self-proclaimed “most pro-life president in history” appointed the justices who overturned Roe two years ago. But more recently, he’s leaned toward leaving abortion up to the states and even mentioned backing women’s “reproductive rights,” often used to reference abortion.

The stakes are high for voters who reject Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and her campaign’s emphasis on protecting the right to abortion. Liz Wheeler, a conservative political commentator, wrote that “refusing to vote for Trump is a vote for Kamala Harris, the most gruesome pro-abortion politician in our country.”

Conservative commentator Ashley St. Clair was among Rose’s most vocal critics, telling nearly one million followers on X that it was “evil” for Rose to try to suppress pro-life voters “in the most consequential election in US history.”

St. Clair, operations manager at The Babylon Bee and the author of a Christian children’s book on gender identity, has described herself as “rather libertarian on the abortion issue.”

She accused Rose of using millions of dollars from pro-lifers wastefully, such as hosting an event at a Ritz Carlton, while others said Live Action should spend more on donations to pregnancy resource centers or ads in states with abortion ballot initiatives.

Rose founded Live Action as a teenager, gaining national prominence 15 years ago through undercover videos at Planned Parenthood. The nonprofit has grown what it says is the largest social following among pro-life organizations. In an interview Wednesday with CT, Rose shrugged off the criticism.

“My job is to advocate for people who are in danger of being murdered, and they are little babies,” she said. “People angry with me on Twitter is a small price to pay for advocating for the interest of children in danger of abortion, who currently, foolishly, are being thrown under the bus by not just the RNC platform but by the latest statements from the Trump campaign.”

Several major pro-life voices came to Rose’s defense, saying the accusations were a “misrepresentation” of Live Action’s mission and clarifying that most of the expenses on Live Action’s 990 form went toward employee salaries and producing video content.

2 things are true: 1) @LilaGraceRose's work to change hearts & minds and expose the lies of the abortion industry is unrivaled 2) Harris & Walz are abortion fanatics & must be defeated. If they win they will abolish the filibuster & force abortion without limit on all 50 states
— Marjorie Dannenfelser (@marjoriesba) August 27, 2024

They also respected Rose’s position.

Trump supporters “want to destroy her because she’s not bending at the knee,” wrote Bethany Mandel, a conservative Jewish author. “Lila is verbalizing something I’m hearing *a lot* from pro-life voters: Their votes should not be taken for granted.”

John Shelton, policy director for former vice president Mike Pence’s foundation, Advancing American Freedom, said he believes the attacks on Rose are misguided. For voters who have abortion as their main motivating issue, Shelton said it’s reasonable that they would want to lobby for (or against) their preferred policies.

“She’s a winnable voter,” Shelton said of Rose. “All Trump would probably need to say is, Yeah, I take that back. Somebody told me to do that. … But I’m going to be the pro-life candidate. I’m going to find something that we can pass, and we’ll reduce abortions. And this conversation wouldn’t be happening.”

My personal message to the Trump campaign on abortion: pic.twitter.com/TrjQI2BQqE
— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) August 28, 2024

While there have always been factions that have disagreed on political strategy, the recent fight highlights fractures in the pro-life movement that have been more on display since the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.

Over the course of the presidential campaign, Trump has taken care to distance himself from stances like the ones Rose holds and to move to the political center on abortion. The evolution has come as some on the political right have viewed the Dobbs decision as an electoral liability that has cost Republicans at the ballot box.

On Friday, Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration “will be great for women and their reproductive rights,” a phrase typically used to describe access to abortion. Also over the weekend, his vice presidential pick, Vance, said that Trump would veto abortion ban legislation.

Trump has also overseen an overhaul of the Republican Party platform on the issue of abortion. In July, the platform watered down its long-held stance seeking nationwide limits on abortion and moved to a position that opposes late term abortion, suggesting the issue is best left to the states.

While a small minority of conservative evangelicals have put their support behind Harris, Rose and others who are pushing for a more rigorous stance from the GOP don’t see Democrats as a viable alternative.

“I don’t want Kamala Harris in office,” Rose told CT. “And I also don’t want the Republican Party to increasingly become pro-abortion.” Rose has devoted episodes of her podcast to talking about the Democrats’ embrace of abortion as part of the 2024 campaign. The Democratic party platform includes a section affirming that they believe “every woman should be able to access … safe and legal abortion” and states the party opposes restrictions on the procedure, including on abortion pills.

White evangelicals are the only religious group with a majority opposed to abortion, with 73 percent saying it should be illegal in all or most cases. Public support on the issue has moved up and down, but currently 63 percent of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, Pew Research Center found.

Since Dobbs, Trump has articulated a more hands-off approach to abortion, holding that abortion policy should be left to the discretion of voters in each state. He’s also suggested he wouldn’t seek to restrict abortion medication.

Last September, Trump criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis for signing a Florida bill to prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, saying it was a “terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” At the time, he added that he wouldn’t sign federal legislation banning abortion at 15 weeks.

In previous races, Trump had to work against concerns that he would be too squishy on life: In 2016, he named conservative Supreme Court nominees and picked Mike Pence for vice president, who sponsored at least seven measures to defund Planned Parenthood in his time in Congress and signed every pro-life bill that reached the governor’s mansion during his tenure in Indiana.

At the time, that was key to Trump’s courting the evangelical vote. But in 2024, it’s unclear whether the majority of evangelicals will require Trump to articulate a pro-life position to earn their support. Instead, single-issue pro-life voters who question supporting Trump seem to be the ones on the defensive.

“Increasingly, his platform and his rhetoric is pro-abortion, and that should disturb and concern the pro-life movement,” Rose told Fox News.

Rose addressed the controversy on her podcast Tuesday. The episode title was “Trump Might Lose If He Keeps This Up.” She played a clip of Trump speaking at the 2020 March for Life, in which he pledged support for legislation that would prohibit abortion.

“Look at the departure. I mean, that was a great Trump right there. I remember the electricity in the pro-life movement,” she commented.

Given Trump’s current positions, Rose said she won’t vote for Trump. But she hopes he reverses course, telling CT she would be “happy to talk with Trump” or his team. Katelyn Walls Shelton, a fellow with the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, said she isn’t seeing defections toward the Democrat side but rather hearing pro-lifers question whether they will “vote at all.”

“I definitely hope that [Trump’s team] is listening. Because I think that if Trump changes course on this, he could be very inspiring,” Rose said.

After the episode aired, she tagged the Republican Party and Donald Trump in a post, essentially pleading with him to return to his previous positions on abortion. The message was clear: The ball is now in their court.“People say, Well, you’re suppressing the vote if you call out Trump for this. I’m not suppressing the vote if Trump does this—Trump’s suppressing his own vote,” Rose told CT. “The responsibility is on Trump to get people to vote for him and to win the pro-life vote.”

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More Christian Colleges Will Close. Can They Finish Well?

Nadya Williams

Contributor

The “demographic cliff” will force schools to cut jobs or shut down—but how they do it matters.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

On June 25, 2024, Eastern Nazarene College announced that it will close at the end of the year. I specify the date because it matters: The news came well after faculty members had begun planning syllabi and courses for the fall semester. To say this was a bombshell for them and their students is an understatement. Six months’ notice might be long in other contexts, but in academia, it’s scandalously brief.

This story is not unique among Christian colleges, and it raises an increasingly pressing question: What does it look like to navigate closures ethically and compassionately?

Christian institutions should be particularly committed to shutting down or downsizing in a way that treats faculty, staff, and students with love. Ending things well is an essential part of bearing witness and displaying good fruit for Christian colleges and universities, but, unfortunately, Eastern Nazarene’s behavior is far from exceptional.

Last summer, for example, conflicting announcements were coming out of The King’s College in New York City. The school laid off a number of faculty and ultimately canceled all fall classes, yet its board refused to take the final step to closure. It’s easy to imagine why they hesitated, but this proved to be a heartbreaking approach that raised warrantless hopes and left scholars scrambling to find new work.

The last few years have also seen closures by Christian institutions including programs at Trinity International University, Alliance University (formerly Nyack College), Goddard College, and Clarks Summit University. Even longer is the list of institutions that haven’t closed yet have ruthlessly cut programs, often in the humanities, in a desperate attempt to reinvent themselves and remain afloat. Some of the institutions on both lists have been struggling for years, and, in many cases, the pandemic accelerated their troubles.

This is all depressing, especially if you are a professor or a student or one of the alumni of the affected institutions—or an ex-professor like me. CT’s Emily Belz recently highlighted the challenge involved in records keeping for alumni of shuttered institutions. But what we’re seeing now is only the beginning; we should expect much more of these closures over the decade to come.

The single biggest reason for this is not unique to Christian schools. It’s the long-predicted “demographic cliff.” US birthrates dropped to an all-time low during the Great Recession and never bounced back. Next year, in 2025, we’ll be 18 years past that initial plunge, and our national birthrate remains below replacement level.

All things being equal, this means that every year for the foreseeable future, the entering freshman class in colleges nationwide will decline. Harvard will probably be just fine. Tiny Christian colleges without a national reputation, not so much. Even Wheaton College, the “evangelical Harvard,” had to make adjustments for this reality in late 2022.

Going forward, nearly all Christian colleges will have to plan to shrink, merge, or close. These difficult choices will be unavoidable and necessary. But, to get back to the question I posed at the outset, how college leadership approaches these decisions matters, and how Christian college leadership does it should be recognizably shaped by Christian ethics.

The biggest part of that how is when. The boards and other leadership of schools headed for cuts and closure must give faculty and staff the earliest possible notice that job loss is a possibility. For faculty, I’d argue that one year’s advance notice is the minimum that compassion requires.

True, in many other workplaces, a two-week notice is customary and sufficient. But higher education works differently because of its quirky annual hiring cycle. With very few exceptions, academic jobs are posted in the fall and early spring. Hires are concluded by late spring, and new positions begin in August. That means faculty need at least a full school year to have any chance of continuing to work in their field—not to mention to place a house on the market or finish out a lease and make plans for required relocation without losing a lot of money in the process.

There’s an obvious counterargument that can be made to such early advance notice of potential closure: It will prompt faculty to leave early, and such a loss of talent in short order could only make things worse for the institution’s reputation and fate. Maybe keeping quiet would buy leadership time to work behind the scenes to resolve the crisis.

But this counterargument ignores how university budgets work. Colleges typically set their budgets at least two years in advance, which means leadership likely knows closure is coming a year or more ahead of time. At that point, a miracle in the form of a massive influx of major donations is possible, perhaps, but it’s unlikely. Keeping quiet almost certainly can’t save the school—and certainly can’t justify playing with people’s lives (or, at least, their livelihoods).

Faculty layoffs at Cornerstone University, also this past June, were reportedly even worse by this measure of timeliness and transparency: “Several former Cornerstone faculty told [Religion News Service] that all six of those who left were tenured and had already signed contracts for the forthcoming school year when they were informed in June that their roles were being ended—likely too late to be able to obtain a similar spot elsewhere.” Even one year out of academia can be career-ending in our dismal higher-ed job market, so those lost jobs may well be these faculty members’ last university roles.

This timing is also devastating for students. Sure, some will transfer to other colleges—there are plenty out there, in this climate, that are eager to welcome more students, and closing schools, including Eastern Nazarene, have arranged transfer agreements with comparable institutions. But in practice, just over half of students who go through college closures never re-enroll. They’re probably demoralized and in debt and definitely left without a degree.

College and program closures affect real people, disrupting their lives and plans, and the shorter the notice, the more extreme the disruption. Christian university boards and administrators owe their employees and students more honesty and love.

In theory, of course, financial information about all private Christian schools is public per IRS rules. Institutional leadership might want to claim this absolves them from the charge of covering up dire financial straits. But the repeated shock that faculty and students express whenever they learn that their beloved institution is closing shows that they are not in the habit of looking up those forms on their own. Of course, why should they? That is not their duty.

If institutions that need to re-evaluate their finances in the future need a model, Wheaton has showed what it looks like to communicate genuine compassion for faculty, staff, and students. Two years ago, the college announced “a reduction of approximately 10 percent of the academic division, which includes faculty and academic staff, over the next three years to avoid a projected financial deficit.”

The striking part was the timing: “Ten faculty members, about 5 percent of the college’s 213 tenured, tenure-track faculty and permanent lecturers, were notified that their positions would end in June 2024 or June 2025.” The announcement was made on November 17, 2022, giving affected faculty notice of at least a year and a half.

That good practice needn’t be unusual. Considering how far ahead universities make budget projections, this kind of timeline is realistic for other institutions facing serious financial constraints. Furthermore, Wheaton’s case shows that such transparency need not result in a damaging loss of talent.

As we say about parenting, so much of faith and ethics are “caught, not taught.” Christian witness in difficult situations matters immensely, and in an age when we so often hear of cruel and unethical leadership, Christian college leaders could stand apart. Compassion may not keep college doors open, but it will make a difference in the lives of God’s image-bearers.

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

Correction: An earlier version of this article mischaracterized Cornerstone University’s program changes. We regret the error.

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Theology

Choose This (Labor) Day Whom You Will Serve

Michael Rhodes

Exodus reminds us that our work can be exploitative, idolatrous, or kingdom oriented.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

Next week’s Labor Day holiday honors the contributions workers make to society and celebrates the power and goodness of human work. But the historical roots of the holiday—which is grounded in advocacy against horrific working conditions, including those faced by child laborers—reminds us that work can also be awful.

Recent research bears witness to both sides of this reality. Studies demonstrate how employment makes a significant contribution to well-being in ways that go beyond our paychecks. “The pain caused by the experience of unemployment is one of the best-documented findings in all happiness research,” yet one recent study argues that pain essentially disappears when a person finds a new job. Clearly, work is good for you!

Except when it isn’t. Job quality also has a very significant effect on a person’s sense of well-being. Bad work can make life miserable and contribute to poor physical and mental health, as several studies suggest workers who “have little opportunity to use their skills” or influence decisions have significantly higher risks of back pain and heart disease.

And just like those early promoters of Labor Day recognized, workers are often exploited or excluded. Job applications with “Black” names still get far fewer callbacks from potential employers than do the exact same applications with “white” names. American companies steal billions of dollars from workers annually through “wage theft.” Low-wage workers saw the purchasing power of their wages decline from 1979 to 2013, even as the market grew 706 percent and average CEO pay grew by over 1,000 percent.

Despite the massive impact work has on our lives, American Christians haven’t always been good at prioritizing work in our discipleship. Amy Sherman cites research that shows less than 10 percent of regular churchgoers remember their pastor preaching on work. The “faith and work” movement has done enormous good in trying to get the workplace back on the church’s discipleship agenda, while Christians passionate about justice have emphasized the need to confront economic injustice.

Nevertheless, we still often struggle to hold together both the powerful possibilities and deeply dysfunctional realities of work in our world. So, this Labor Day, perhaps it can help to revisit the Book of Exodus—which offers three glimpses of the promises and perils of work.

First, Exodus forces us to wrestle with the ugly reality of work that exploits. It all begins when Pharaoh becomes disturbed at how many Israelites he’s seeing around town. His response to this perceived problem offers us a masterclass in xenophobia and economic oppression. Pharaoh’s first step is to stir up fear of the Israelites’ otherness, essentially saying, “Since they’re not like us, they’re not really on our side!”:

[Pharaoh] said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.” (1:9–10, CEB)

By sowing seeds of anti-immigrant fear, Pharaoh paves the way for a particularly appealing solution. The Egyptians will simultaneously subdue and profit off the Israelites, forcing them to do hard labor and build “storage cities” for Pharaoh. Such backbreaking work expands Egypt’s ability to acquire more and more.

This exploitation provides the background for the most famous scenes in Exodus, when the Lord hears the groans of his oppressed people in their toil and comes down to confront Pharaoh. God demands that the Israelites be released from “working” for their Egyptian overlord so they can come and “work” for God (the Hebrew word translated as worship in passages like Ex. 4:23 is the Hebrew word for “work” or “service”).

And when Pharaoh refuses, God liberates his oppressed employees, dismantling Pharoah’s military and economic power in the process.

There’s no doubt Pharaoh managed to get a lot done during his time as an Israelite employer. But God hates unjust gain. In Exodus, the creator of the universe looks past the grandeur of Pharaoh’s Egypt to see a people nearly broken. The King of Kings hears the cries of oppressed workers, even over the endless noise of Pharaoh’s propaganda machine. The Lord, the maker of heaven and earth, takes his stand against Egypt’s ruler and his oppressive workplace.

God then takes those liberated people into the wilderness and offers them a beautiful vision for life as coworkers with him. In fact, God gives Israel’s leader, Moses, a blueprint for a major initiative that will require the whole community to pitch in. Shockingly, just as Moses is receiving instructions for this new effort, the Israelites decide to take on a project of their own.

Their disastrous decision offers us Exodus’s second window into the workplace: Sometimes, our work can be idolatrous.

While Moses is on the mountain with God, the people create the famous golden calf, an idol designed to represent the divine power that brought Israel up out of Egypt (32:4). Like all idols, the golden calf claimed some of the love, trust, and service the Israelites owed the Lord. Walter Moberly famously argued that this betrayal is the equivalent of cheating on your spouse on the first night of your honeymoon. But it’s also a workplace revolt; having been liberated from their oppressive Egyptian employers, the Israelites set up an idolatrous workshop of their own.

Creating the golden calf requires a great deal of sacrifice and collaboration. All the people “invest” in Golden Calf Enterprises by giving Aaron gold earrings as raw materials. While Exodus describes Aaron as “making” the golden calf, it seems reasonable that others pitched in as well. Their creativity and collaboration presumably created something beautiful, at least in the eyes of the craftspeople who built it together.

When the Lord smashed Egypt’s exploitative workplaces, the Israelites rejoiced. But in the wilderness, they discover this God will also destroy the idols they were so proud to create and so prone to worship. When he does so, those who clingto such shiny idols risk destruction as well (32:35).

But there’s a third act in Exodus’s workplace drama. In an act of outrageous grace, God forgives the people and rehires them for a special job: the building of the tabernacle. This beautiful tent serves as the Lord’s mobile home, allowing God to go on pilgrimage with his people (25:8).

The tabernacle is both God’s royal throne room and a Garden of Eden–inspired glimpse of creation as the Creator intended the world to be. Israel’s work on the tabernacle, then, facilitates God’s royal presence in their midst and offers the community a glimpse of God’s new creation.This tabernacle project is kingdom-oriented work. It creates a tangible glimpse of God’s generous presence, reign, and way in a broken world. Now, that’swork worth doing!

But they can’t do this work on their own. God gives Moses guidance for how to build the tabernacle (25:9). He also gives Spirit-inspired wisdom and skill to craftspeople like Bezalel and Oholiab so they can work creatively and collaboratively with the entire community (31:1–6). Together, they build this beautiful yet simple glimpse of heaven on earth (36:2–7). And then, in response to their Spirit-enabled work, the Lord takes up residence in the home his people have made for him.

These three types of work—exploitative, idolatrous, and kingdom-oriented—can help us think about workplace discipleship today.

Exodus reminds us that the workplace is often a place where people are exploited, not least when they manifest the kind of overwhelming imbalances of power or ethnic discrimination that we see in Exodus 1. Just as the Lord criticized and confronted exploitative labor back then, God’s people must do the same today. Disciples who serve the God of the Exodus must learn to sniff out and confront such injustice wherever it exists—whether in their own workplaces or through public advocacy and political action on behalf of workers more broadly.

But if we want to avoid exploitative work, we’re also going to have to ask some hard questions. We’ll need to listen carefully to those for whom work does not work—including marginalized migrant workers, the working poor, and those suffering from sexual harassment or racial discrimination. We may need to consider the power imbalances reflected in the compensation structures and organizational processes of our own workplaces.

And we would do well to learn about Christians who prophetically pursued economic justice in the workplace in the past. Such leaders include Father José María Arizmendiarrieta, who helped found Mondragon, one of the world’s largest and oldest worker-owner cooperatives, currently employing 60,000 people worldwide; Cesar Chavez, whose faith-based, nonviolent labor organizing sought increased wages and better working conditions for exploited California farmworkers; and Martin Luther King Jr., who was assassinated during his participation in the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike demanding fair wages and safe labor conditions.

Of course, the Book of Exodus reminds us that even if our work isn’t overtly exploitative, it may well be idolatrous. The idols we make out of our work promise to deliver us, but they cannot make good on their commitments. Discipleship must train us to identify the idol-making propensity of our work, not least by reminding us that God hates our idols.

Our liturgical practices need to force us to reflect on the myriad subtle ways our work and ourworkplace might regularly create little idols for our idol-factory hearts to cling to—especially when such idol production often goes hand in hand with practices that exploit, oppress, and marginalize others for unjust gain.

Finally, Exodus invites us to embrace kingdom-oriented work. When we work in alignment with God’s purposes, collaborate with others on projects that create glimpses of the world as God designed it to be, and draw upon Spirit-given skills that allow us to make the sorts of beautiful places, services, and, dare I say it, products that echo God’s purposes for creation, our work becomes an act of worship.

As Mark Glanville puts it in his recent book, “By loving what Christ loves and challenging what Christ challenges” in our “parents’ groups, cafés, trucks, homes, factories, hospitals, and advocacy groups,” we bear witness “to the restoring reign of Christ.” We make the on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven reign of God that is on the way glimpsable to ourselves and to our neighbors.

Churches can and should embrace the kind of discipleship that prepares us to confront exploitative work, reject idolatrous work, and embrace kingdom-oriented work. Preaching on Exodus with an awareness of the book’s economic vision could be a good start!

Matthew Kaemingk and Cory B. Willson also argue that the way church services are structured can help workers bring their work-related praises, confessions, laments, requests, petitions, and gifts into corporate worship. They offer free liturgies, songs, and prayers to help you do just that at Worship for Workers. One of my favorites involves inviting congregants to decorate the Lord’s Supper table with visible signs of their own vocations.

Amy Sherman’s Kingdom Calling offers a vast array of stories and practices to help Christians discover how to exercise their “vocational power” justly and righteously through work. And Robby Holt, Brian Fikkert, and I wrote Practicing the King’s Economy in part to provide churches with discipleship tools and resources to help us bend our workplaces toward God’s kingdom. We include guidance for how Christians can create opportunities for those who most struggle to find jobs and flourish in them.

At an even simpler level, research shows that “supportive coworkers” and quality supervisors play an enormous role in the well-being of workers. How many Christians might discover an opportunity for kingdom work simply by giving more attention to the way they love their workplace neighbor?

Exodus doesn’t offer easy or straightforward answers to all our workplace questions. Yet it does invite us into a lifelong journey of discipleship in our work lives. There are some easy wins for churches that want to get started, but fully embracing Exodus’s invitations and challenges will require a lifetime of costly, time-consuming formation. But since most Christians spend most of their waking lives at work, what area of our discipleship could possibly be more pressing?

The present moment is ripe with opportunities for us to reckon with the powerful possibilities and painful realities of work. What better time to make a start than this Labor Day?

Michael J. Rhodes is an Old Testament lecturer at Carey Baptist College, the author of Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World, and coauthor of Practicing the King’s Economy.

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Culture

What to Watch for in ‘Rings of Power’ Season 2

Compiled by Kate Lucky

The sumptuous Tolkien prequel has returned. Here’s what a few CT writers noticed.

Charlie Vickers as Annatar and Charles Edwards as Celebrimbor in Rings of Power.

Ben Rothstein / Prime Video

The first episodes of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, season 2, are out August 29 on Amazon Prime. Christianity Today asked three writers to screen the season in advance and identify a theme for fans to keep in mind as they watch.

Evil in disguise

“Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light,” warns the apostle Paul (2 Cor. 11:14). So too in J. R. R. Tolkien’s mythology does the dark lord Sauron sometimes appear in “fair form.” In the guise of nobility, beauty, and goodness, he deceives and manipulates what he cannot win by conquest.

We never saw Sauron’s “fair form” in Peter Jackson’s justly beloved Lord of the Rings film trilogy. And in season 1 of Amazon’s prequel series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (ROP), we saw a Sauron who was more conflicted and confused than lovely. That season’s gimmicky reveal—the hapless cockney Southlander Halbrand was, gasp, Sauron all along!—was a cheap payoff for eight hours of otherwise impressive world-building and plotting.

Season 2 of Rings of Power is far stronger than season 1. It ramps everything up—including the action, violence, and gore (parental caution advised), as Amazon goes after the Game of Thrones audience. Happily, the show has fixed some of its pacing issues; though it occasionally struggles to juggle five locations and subplots, it also successfully stitches together the mass of jumbled, at times inconsistent narrative threads that Tolkien left behind. If nothing else, ROP is a sumptuous show, with lavish sets, costumes, and effects.

But the strongest compliment I can pay to Rings of Power season 2 is that its portrayal of Sauron, excellently done by Charlie Vickers, is unnervingly persuasive—fully embracing and making use of Sauron as a deceitful angel of light. Sauron, disguised as an emissary of the gods, worms his way into the confidence of elven master smith Celebrimbor and dwarven king Durin III with a light touch. He suggests and questions, and rarely demands; he plants ideas and lets them germinate; he flatters and compliments; he relentlessly appeals to pride, vanity, and ambition.

At one point, Sauron pushes too hard, and Celebrimbor calls him out on his tricks. The ROP writers don’t condescend to their characters; they don’t rely on the cheap trick of making the characters too dumb to figure out what’s going on until it’s time for the climax.

Instead, Celebrimbor both gradually succumbs to Sauron and is increasingly self-aware of what is happening, yet is still unable to stop it. This is the most affecting plot thread of the season, given real weight with Charles Edwards’ Celebrimbor. Tragically, it seems to resonate with the spiritual truths Tolkien likely had in mind—not only of Satan’s proclivity for disguise but for the powerlessness of our flesh to resist him without divine aid.

Paul D. Miller is a professor of the practice of international affairs at Georgetown University and a research fellow with the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Present presence

Our normal relationship to time is full of unknowns. Despite our best efforts, we cannot predict the future.

But as a prequel, Rings of Power temporarily transforms us into seers, offering us the “before” of the story so we might better identify the “after.” For a few tantalizing hours, the viewer is omniscient. Even as we see something “new”—backstories we didn’t know before—we’re reveling in affectionate nostalgia for something old: The familiar books and films that ROP both precedes (in narrative time) and follows (in “real-world” time). Janus-faced, we look to both the future and the past.

J. R. R. Tolkien, meanwhile, seemed to endorse a different view of time than what’s offered by our frantic 21st-century schedules and hour-long episodes of television: a particular emphasis on the present, on what’s now rather than what’s next. The most important moments in the Lord of the Rings unfold gradually along arduous journeys, during joyous feasts, and in quiet conversations between friends. Tolkien’s wisest characters—Elrond, Tom Bombadil, and Gandalf—fully inhabit the present; they realize that struggle is essential, that renewal cannot be rushed.

“Time is the process of creation, and things of space are results of creation,” wrote rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Tolkien’s books are about that process—the slow work of character development and world-building and good triumphing over evil.

But in this second season of The Rings of Power, even the sagest elves (Galadriel and Elrond, for instance) are caught up in urgency and haste. The journey is rushed.

Perhaps this breathlessness can be instructive for the viewer. These days, most of us are challenged by “the present.” Like the prequel, we are always looking backward at what’s been and forward at what’s to come. How do we attend simply to what is?

Some moments of ROP allow for such contemplation: a defiant craftsman composed in the face of evil, the quiet love of a brave captain. Here, the frenzied storytelling finally finds its flow. In such moments, the viewer is reminded that presence is all we really ever have. Fearful foretelling is the realm of Saruman and Denethor. We, as Christians, are called to “be still, and know” that the Lord is God (Ps. 46:10). The present is the single moment in which we can both delight in the light and defy the darkness—in and through and by the grace of God.

Gracy Olmstead is a journalist whose writing has appeared in The American Conservative, The Week, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and is the author of Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We’ve Left Behind.

Genuine friendship

Unlikely friendships abound in season 2 of Rings of Power.

Nori the Harfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and The Stranger (Daniel Weyman) journey together to the desert region of Middle-earth’s Rhûn, hoping to find answers about The Stranger’s identity.

Sauron establishes a bond with Celebrimbor, telling the elven smith, “There is no place for half-truths between those who have worked so close as you and I.”

But as Sauron’s dark power spreads, relationships fracture. Hearts grow corruptible. Convictions turn shaky.

In short: Friendship in ROP is wielded as a weapon. Words are used to cajole and manipulate; actions only serve to further selfish interests.

In modern-day parlance, we would call such friendships “toxic”—one person tries to exert control over another, exulting in their influence. Sauron engages in deceit and sows seeds of doubt to make Celebrimbor, and everyone else in Eregion, bend to his will.

Yet, however powerful Sauron appears to be, he’s also pitiful, someone who will never be able to enjoy the freedom that comes in relationship. Grasping for power and dominion over Middle-earth, he is the biggest loser when it comes to making friends.

Friendship, after all, is a gift. It is to be held lightly, woven in faith and trust that one is here for the other’s good, and vice versa. It does not fashion another in our own likeness, to yield to our wants and needs wherever and whenever we demand.

Nori and The Stranger’s friendship exemplifies this beautifully and serves as a foil to Sauron and Celebrimbor. When The Stranger gets separated from Nori, he encounters the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, who tells him that he has to choose between finding his friend and seeking his destiny.

It’s an impossible choice, perhaps, but The Stranger decides that friendship is worth more than self-discovery.

“We’re very different creatures, Nori, when all is said and done,” says The Stranger after he rescues Nori.

“Not so different at all, if you ask me,” Nori replies.

Scripture tells us that genuine Christian friendships are founded on mutuality. As the apostle Paul writes to his friends in Rome: “I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Rom. 1:11–12).

Nori and The Stranger seek each other’s flourishing. And their unlikely friendship also involves some measure of risk, forged out of a willingness to learn about another’s culture and way of life. It is not transactional or quid pro quo.

Rings of Power’s latest season challenges us to redraw the bounds of our circles, to build relationships with people who might look or sound quite different from us. As we cultivate friendships with gentle wisdom and fierce tenacity, we make room for the surprising and edifying work of the Spirit.

Isabel Ong is associate Asia editor for Christianity Today.

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Theology

When to Respond to Slander (and When to Ignore It)

Russell Moore

Correcting the record or remaining silent both involve the same thing: seeking to know Jesus.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

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

Not long ago, a woman told me about a conflict she was having with a fellow member of her church. Conflict might be the wrong word, since it seemed mostly one-sided. The woman said that the other church member was telling falsehoods about her in hallway conversations and social media groups.

“You seem to mostly ignore it when people lie about you,” the woman said to me. “Is that because it would be wrong for me to defend myself? Should I just ignore what they say about me?”

Part of the problem with answering this question is that we often think wrongly about what it means to “ignore.” Ignoring something sounds, by definition, passive—it is, literally, not to know and thus not to respond. And yet, ignorance—rightly defined—is active. In order to ignore well, we have to know well. That’s perhaps the biggest obstacle to making the decision to ignore or to engage.

Responding to slander about oneself is biblically complicated in a way that some other questions—say, “Should I have an affair?” or “Should I embezzle from my company?” —are not. “Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you be like him yourself,” the Bible says in one verse (Prov. 26:4, ESV throughout). And then the very next verse says, “Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” This isn’t a contradiction. There are times when responding is the right thing to do, and times when it’s the wrong thing.

Morality is not the compilation of data but conformity to a Person. The example of Jesus is complicated too because, as the wisdom of God, Jesus could see perfectly what we see imperfectly—which situations call for a Proverbs 26:4 ignoring and which call for a Proverbs 26:5 engaging.

When it comes to slander about himself, Jesus sometimes directly contradicted untruth (John 5:19–46). Sometimes, he responded not with a defense of himself but by asking questions or telling stories that revealed the underlying motives (Luke 14:1–6). Quite often, he simply ignored what was said about him altogether (Mark 11:33). At least once, he even ridiculed the slander (Luke 7:28–34).

In all those contexts, though, Jesus modeled what it means to avoid the warning of Proverbs, that is, to avoid sinning in response to sins against us. He said: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well” (Matt. 5:38–40).

The apostle Peter commands us to be less concerned about what people say about us than about what we actually are. “If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you,” he wrote. “But let none of you suffer as a murder or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler” (1 Pet. 4:14–15).

That requires a knowing of your own vulnerabilities. My church-slandered conversation partner noted that I usually ignore untrue things said about me, but she probably overestimated how much I even know about them. I don’t search my name or look at tagged replies from people I don’t follow on social media. That’s not because I think people are wrong to do that but because I know myself; if I paid attention to that stuff, I would be distracted. I couldn’t do what God has called me to do.

The woman I was talking to might be different. But if you have a tendency for quarrelsomeness or an oversensitivity to other people’s approval, you might be best served not just by ignoring slander but by trying to avoid, so much as is possible with you, knowing about it altogether. If you can’t respond to slander without retaliation or revenge, don’t do it.

This also requires knowing the situation. Jesus treated people who were genuinely confused by misinformation (John 1:45–51) differently from those who were seeking to, as Matthew put it, “entangle him in his words” (Matt. 22:15–22). Many of the people I know who exert time and energy “correcting the record” about themselves often don’t recognize the reasons behind why the lies are told about them.

Sometimes it’s genuine misinformation—in which case, confronting the lie with the truth might be the right thing to do. In many cases, though, the problem is not that the truth isn’t available but rather that it isn’t useful. In such cases, people are trying to build a “platform” for themselves by making inflammatory statements about someone other people in their world know. To respond to that makes as much sense as Jodie Foster responding to John Hinckley shooting a president to get her attention.

There are sometimes quite different principles involved in defending others from slander than in defending oneself. Joseph forgiving his brothers for their injustice (Gen. 50:19–21) is commendable. If he had waved away their mistreatment of others, though, that would have been unjust. Generally speaking, the principles of Proverbs 27:2—“Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips”—often can be applied to the question of responding to lies about oneself.

When someone’s lying about you, lean in the direction of ignoring it, unless obviously not applicable. When it comes to lies about someone else, do the reverse. To silently pass by while someone tells what you know to be lies about your neighbor is to get on the wrong side of Jesus’ parable of the beaten man and the Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37). Jesus waved off a lot of slander about himself, but he didn’t stand for it when it was directed toward, for instance, the man he healed from blindness (John 9:1–5).

The first-century church at Smyrna suffered slander from all directions: Their home religious community disowned them. The Roman Empire labeled them as seditious and erosive of national character. Jesus told them he knew about the slander, that it would get worse, but that what it means to overcome is a matter of his judgment seat, not the judgment of everyone else (Rev. 2:8–11).

The woman who asked me how—or whether—to respond to lies about her needs to know, above all, that Jesus knows the difference between the truth and lies; he is the difference between truth and lies. When deciding whether to correct the record or to remain silent and entrust yourself to God, seek to know yourself and your situation—but, most of all, seek to know him.

Sometimes a response is right. But more often than you might think, ignorance is blessed.

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

Culture

It Is Not Best for Man to Eat Alone

Anna Broadway

We’re all having meals by ourselves more often. But in the Christian life, food and community are inextricably intertwined.

Supper at Emmaus by Matthias Stom

WikiMedia Commons

When the waiter brought out my long-awaited high tea that day, I didn’t expect I’d still be grieving it decades later.

I was 21 and enjoying my first “real” spring break during a debt-building week away in London. After years of devouring chaste romances set in England, I’d learned that Harrods was the best place to experience the glories of scones, clotted cream, and tiny sandwiches, all served on tiers of gleaming china and, of course, washed down with hot tea. So on my inaugural trip across the sea, it seemed only right to indulge my credit card’s largesse on a high tea at Harrods. Alone.

As I looked around the room that day, I knew I’d made a grave mistake. Not even the tender scones and decadent clotted cream could balance the bitter taste of regret. They worsened it. With each new delight, I felt more keenly the lack of someone to share my enjoyment with.

When I was doing fieldwork for my book on singleness, someone told me it might be worse to eat alone than sleep alone. Eating alone is certainly a problem for people who live by themselves. But with 21st-century work schedules, sports practices, and other structural realities, even those with seemingly “built-in” meal companions in spouses or children or roommates often dine solo too. When we do share supper, allergies and dietary restrictions can create other divides. This shift has even changed apartment and home designs as dining rooms fall out of fashion.

Sometimes, the solitude of a meal alone feels welcome. Perhaps an introvert drained by a day of meetings wants nothing more than time alone to decompress. And for some harried parents, a quiet cup of coffee—a reward for getting up before the rest of the household—might feel like a rare and precious solace.

But for Christians, the question of how and with whom we eat involves more than our own preferences. What is God’s design for our meals?

Scripture includes a surprising number of stories featuring food. To prepare for liberation from slavery, God has the Israelites eat a special Passover meal of lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs that observant Jews continue to recreate annually to this day. Jesus later reinterpreted this meal in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

Jesus used food to make connections with outcasts and sinners. He made a meal to mend the rift caused by Peter’s betrayal, frying fish for breakfast on the beach. And it was only at the table that an Emmaus-bound duo finally recognized him.

Food also played a pivotal role in helping the early church grasp the extent of God’s vision for his people. As Willie James Jennings writes in his commentary on Acts, “to eat the animals that were associated with a people was to move into their space of living.”

This gives great significance to Peter’s thrice-repeated vision calling him to eat previously forbidden food. Jennings writes,

Peter is not being asked to possess as much as he is being asked to enter in, become through eating a part of something that he did not imagine himself a part of before the eating. This new eating grows out of another invitation to eat, one offered by his savior and friend: “This is my body, which is given for you.”

Not every church embodies a diversity that fully reflects the body of Christ. But to the extent we do, food provides one of the best ways to connect through our shared identity as God’s children. We all need the Eucharist’s embodied reminder of grace. Other shared meals, like post-service potlucks or coffee hours, point to both our equal dependence on God for life and the feast that awaits us in heaven.

And whether feeding the hungry and marginalized or organizing meals for the sick and weary, we acknowledge two truths: Our lives are interconnected, and what we do for the “least” in our midst touches Jesus himself. As the late Orthodox bishop David Mahaffey told me, “To me, God has given us food as a way of communion with him.”

What does all this mean for our many meals alone? Do they inherently fall short of God’s good design for sustenance?

One of my favorite things about the Bible is how much of life it contains: all kinds of people, all kinds of situations.

In the Book of 1 Kings, God sends Elijah east to Cherith, a presumably remote place where he’s instructed to hide until further notice. The author gives few details about this season, apart from the miracle of sustenance God provides against a backdrop of growing famine. Ravens, better known for taking food, bear the prophet’s meals.

Perhaps because of the birds, I’d never thought about the meals themselves as lonely. Yet Elijah must have spent day after day eating without human company. (For that matter, Adam, too would have eaten “alone” until God created Eve.)

I want to be careful not to fill in details the biblical authors did not provide. But a few things strike me about these men’s solitary meals. First, they involve an implied fellowship with God. Meals aside, the little we know of Adam and Elijah’s solitary seasons suggests a strong rapport with the Lord. Surely that extended to their meals too. In fact, perhaps they didn’t really feel alone because of his presence.

Second, both received direct provision from God—water and the ravens’ food for Elijah, fruit for Adam. Under these circumstances, I would hope both men regularly offered thanks. How often and well do we do this? Scarfing down a piece of toast while we drive or eating leftovers on the couch, it’s all too easy to dive in with scarcely a word of acknowledgment.

Lastly, it strikes me that both men ate alone during seasons of preparation. As Priscilla Shirer draws out in her study of Elijah, God used the time at Cherith to prepare Elijah for unexpected communion at Zarephath and eventual confrontation with Ahab. Adam’s meals alone occurred during a time of learning about the work God had given him and slowly coming to realize his need for human companionship. In fact, they occurred before the Fall!

So maybe our meals alone can still honor God’s design. How? Maybe we slow down to notice the sights, sounds, scents, sensations, and tastes of eating. (This can also help with anxiety and stress.) Instead of distracting ourselves with YouTube or social media, we can acknowledge and welcome God’s presence with us. And we can give sincere thanks for those who made and delivered and planted and cultivated and harvested, as well as the One who provided the rain.

And also: We should try to eat with others as often as possible.

I write this as someone who now eats many meals alone, sitting at my gate-leg dining table in the chair that faces the window. Thanks to one book interview with a Norwegian man who sometimes paid bills while he ate—and hated this—I try hard to avoid doing work during dinner. On better nights, I eat while reading or listening to a book. On worse nights, I scroll on my phone.

Not long ago, I shared a late-night bite with a friend who’d come by to get something. We almost always eat something together during visits, often my latest homemade soup. A few bites into that night’s bowl, he asked, “How was your day?”

After years of living in community, I’m now several months into only the second place I’ve rented alone in some 20 years. At my friend’s simple question, my shoulders dropped and tension melted away. Suddenly I was back at the family dinner table of my junior high and high school years.

On weekdays, we rarely ate any other meal with my dad. So he used our dinners to help all six of us connect. One by one, he went around to each of us as we shared “high” and “low” points from our day. This was one of the most emotionally formative rituals of my upbringing. It had a structured cleanup ritual (a nightly chore rotation, carefully tracked on the calendar), and clear boundaries for limited dissent from the family rules (we each got one dish from Mom’s recipe rotation that we didn’t have to eat).

Through our Friday night dinners of homemade hamburgers and French fries, we learned to celebrate the ordinary. Sometimes, our parents even splurged on a two-liter bottle of pop, though I wouldn’t make the connection to work weeks or paychecks until I became an adult myself.

Hospitality sacralizes the everyday. While apps help some find restaurant meal partners, eating at home has an extra vulnerability that deepens connections and accommodates more varied budgets. I love that another friend who lives nearby has started texting me when he’s made too many potatoes or too much chili (often leading to an impromptu meal). Other friends know they might have to clear a dining table chair or that I might serve leftovers. After months of such visits, one married friend finally invited me over for lunch at her home—our first meal there in a yearslong friendship.

Sharing food can take vulnerability and flexibility. But once you get past the initial risk or discomfort, deeper connection usually follows, and loneliness recedes.

Last summer, I briefly lived with a couple who often didn’t connect until the end of their day. Before he left for his bartending job, the husband prepped dinner in the Instant Pot and left it for his wife to eat when she came home from her work as a hairdresser. One night, he made chili; another night, fish chowder. Even when he got home late, even if she’d already eaten what he’d prepared, they often debriefed their days over additional shared food or drink.

When I moved in with the couple, they were eager to embrace communal living, but doubtful we could eat together. I cooked very differently from them, and they both had several allergies. But they often loved how my cooking smelled, and so I made a list of their restrictions so I could accommodate them. As we all settled into living together, I tried to find recipes we could all eat, or made small tweaks that worked with their diet. We ate stuffed peppers with cabbage leaves; for his birthday, I made my family’s eggless applesauce cake with gluten-free flour. By the end of my four months there, they were trying to include me in their detailed weekly meal plans.

It took compromise, for all of us. But looking back, it seems like all the times we three felt most connected involved either food or the kitchen or both. Whether any of us acknowledge it or not, God’s plan for food seems to keep reasserting itself. Perhaps that’s why Jesus most often depicted heavenly life as a massive feast, a theme John later takes up with his allusions to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Revelation ends with the promise of food restored, after all. In its final chapter, the tree of life, whose fruit caused God to banish humans from Eden, reappears (Gen. 3:22, Rev. 22:2). Only once God resumes sharing that food with humans does the Bible declare the curse no more, and God and humans so close that “they will see his face.”

Anna Broadway is the author of Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling and Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity.

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Books

Review

David Bentley Hart’s Brain-Breaking Argument for the Supremacy of the Mind

Nadya Williams

The theologian’s latest book, though rhetorically forbidding, yields brilliant insights on the relationship between material and spiritual things.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Pexels / Wikimedia Commons

There is a beautiful garden in perfect bloom, existing somewhere outside of time and place. There, four pagan gods have gathered together for an intense, six-day Platonic symposium about the nature of the mind and the spiritual world (after which they will rest on the seventh day).

This in a nutshell is the setting and the organizational premise, old and new all at once, of David Bentley Hart’s new book, All Things Are Full of Gods: The Mysteries of Mind and Life. Hart, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, explores the philosophy and theology of the mind in a manner that delights, bewilders, confuses, and alarms—sometimes separately and sometimes all at once.

The Archaic Greek philosopher Thales once said, “All things are full of gods.” For Thales, this notion was perfectly compatible with his scientific inquiry into astronomy, mathematics, and more.

The nod to Thales in the book’s title is appropriate. As Hart notes in his introduction in a sentence whose intimidatingly elaborate erudition—and sheer length—captures the style of his prose throughout:

Before the advent and eventual triumph of the mechanical philosophy in early modernity, and then the gradual but more or less total triumph of a materialist metaphysics of nature (even among those who believe in a realm beyond the merely physical), most developed philosophies, East and West alike, presumed that mind or something mindlike, transcendent or immanent or both, was the more original truth of things, pervading, sustaining, and giving existence to all that is.

As Hart recognizes, embracing the supremacy of the mind in all its mysterious glory doesn’t necessarily entail any new theological or philosophical discoveries. Instead, it involves dusting off and recovering something very old—pre-Christian, even. The idea of miracles, the acceptance of supernatural realities, and the need for mediators between gods and normal humans have all been features of human life and belief for millennia.

The Realest Reality

Michael Horton’s new book, Shaman and Sage, which I coincidentally read right before picking up Hart’s volume, is a good companion piece here, as it confirms the longstanding human bend toward the spiritual (but not necessarily religious). Indeed, the extreme contemporary skeptics, so quick to dismiss the reality of anything intangible or invisible, belong squarely in the historical minority. For much of human existence, people were more Thales than Richard Dawkins—seeing no conflict between the world of science and the mysterious unseen all around.

The spiritual state, then, seems to occur more or less naturally. By the end of Hart’s book, nevertheless, I felt that I could best relate to Hephaestus, the pagan metalsmith god Hart casts as the supporter of the material world. Hephaestus’s main conversationalist is Psyche, the goddess of the soul—that is, indeed, what her name literally means. (Also present at Hart’s imagined dialogue but less outspoken are Eros, the god of love and Psyche’s husband, and Hermes, the messenger god.)

It is Psyche who drives Hart’s main argument throughout this volume—that the spiritual and invisible world is true, and it is much more real than the physical and tangible world so ardently championed by modern philosophies. The argument for the latter also usually goes hand in hand with the exclusion of the divine and supernatural. Accordingly, Psyche’s journey to prove the reality of the life of the mind is inextricably connected with her axiom that the divine is everywhere.

As Hart says,

a truly scrupulous phenomenology of mental agency discloses an absolute engagement of the mind in an infinite act of knowing that is nothing less than the source and end of all three of these realities [i.e., life, mind, and language], and indeed of all things; or, to say this more simply, all acts of the mind are participations in the mind of God.

But when I say that I could best relate to Hephaestus by the book’s end, I do not mean that I am wholly persuaded by his materialist stance—that has never fully appealed to me. Rather, I find that, like him, I am lost in all the arguments Psyche (or, rather, Hart) presents. To say that this book broke my brain would be an understatement.

In many ways, All Things Are Full of Gods—brain-breaking tendencies included—is classic Hart. Stunningly twisting Ciceronian sentences, of the sort I have quoted in this review, might span an entire paragraph, enticing the reader with the beauty of their phrasing. Still, it is a beauty that one cannot fully or easily comprehend, as I often realized upon reaching such a one’s end. I understand, I think, the overall premises and arguments of the book; I struggled, however, to understand many individual sentences in full. But then, as Hart notes, language too is a mystery.

The evolution of Hart’s thought and brilliance is on full display, nevertheless, as he continues his decades-long exploration of the divine across traditions, offering in All Things Are Full of Gods a recognizable sequel to such earlier books as Atheist Delusions, The Experience of God, and, to a lesser extent, That All Shall Be Saved.

Here, Hart’s meditation—for this book is more a meditation in dialogue form than any sort of traditional argument—centers around two essential premises that Psyche painstakingly tries to prove by drawing on examples from the past two and a half millennia of philosophy. First, that God and the divine or spiritual world are intensely, palpably real. Second (and most important), that the visible world is not all that there is—in fact, the things unseen are more real.

The mind is greater than the body. As Psyche puts it early in the dialogue, “Whatever the nature of matter may be, the primal reality of all things is mind.” But this idea, Hart is convinced, is not unique to any one tradition; rather, it is universal in premodernity. And so, Psyche concludes, “Ātman is Brahman—which I take to be the first, last, most fundamental, and most exalted truth of all real philosophy and religion alike.”

Such beautiful yet loaded statements are what have previously embroiled Hart in charges of heresy. For instance, he has been accused of universalism (the belief in universal salvation), a stance he seems to defend most vehemently in That All Shall Be Saved. And Hart’s new book contains more than a whiff of what one article criticized as Hart’s “Post-Christian Pantheism.”

Drawing Protestant conclusions

What do we make of it all—the dialogue of four pagan gods about the nature of the divine, about the thinking life, and about the nature of reality and the search for wonder in the modern world? This choice of conversationalists to present Hart’s argument is certainly thought-provoking. But perhaps we overthink this remarkable project and its intended meaning if we focus entirely on the premise of four pagan gods in conversation.

Ultimately, the theme that comes through is that of mystery—a transcendent sort of question without an exact answer. What is the meaning of life, of exploration, and even of our very existence? Psyche’s informed answers to question after question from Hephaestus are kaleidoscopic, expanding into seemingly infinite worlds swirling within, but mainly lead to this conclusion: There is no clear comprehensible answer. The thinking life is wonderfully rich—or at least it can be if we leave ourselves open to endless questions, as Hart encourages.

At the end, I was left with the Protestant Sunday school question: Where is Jesus in all this? In the words of hymnwriter Fanny Crosby, we can proclaim, “Take the world, but give me Jesus”—a statement that can read as a Protestant variation on Hart’s overall argument about spiritual reality surpassing the physical.

But Hart is not a Protestant. And perhaps that is what irks his critics most. For all his brilliance, we cannot fully know Hart’s mind, and so critics guess. I will refrain. But I do know that after reading this book, I can still readily draw Protestant conclusions about the transcendent beauty of the Creator God who has made all things. While I would not agree with Thales in a literal sense—that “all things are full of gods”—I can agree with the God of Genesis through Revelation, whose Word, in Isaiah 6:3, says that “the whole earth is full of his glory.”

Nadya Williams is the author of Cultural Christians in the Early Church and the forthcoming Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity.

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Culture

19 Christian Para Athletes to Root For at the Paris 2024 Paralympics

CT Editors

Meet Paralympians from around the world who are unashamed of the gospel.

Around 4,400 Para athletes will vie for victory in 22 sports at the summer Paralympics, which run from August 28 to September 8 in Paris.

The Paralympics use a system of classification to ensure that Para athletes competing in the same category have “similar functional abilities in terms of movement, coordination and balance.” Each class includes a letter representing the sport (like S for swimming) and a number (the lower the figure, the greater the impairment in most cases).

The Christian Para athletes featured below hail from nine countries and are competing in 12 sports, including Para cycling, Para swimming, shot put, and wheelchair rugby.

Below are their stories on how living with disability and excelling in their sport has given them opportunities to proclaim God’s name.

With reporting by Isabel Ong, Mariana Albuquerque, Morgan Lee, and Angela Lu Fulton.

Boccia

Andreza Vitória de Oliveira, Brazil

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Andreza Vitória de Oliveira was 14 when she started practicing boccia. Today, the 23-year-old is a world champion who won gold at the Parapan American Games last year.

This is Oliveira’s second Paralympic Games; she first competed at Tokyo in 2020. “I’m going to do everything that I can do with a lot of dedication so that, God willing, everything goes well and I come back with a Paralympic medal,” she said.

At age two, Oliveira was diagnosed with Leigh syndrome, a neurodegenerative condition that affects the central nervous system and makes walking difficult. Oliveira started using a wheelchair at 11, and her mother introduced her to the sport a few years later.

“When you find happiness in doing something you love, every moment becomes a blessing, and every effort turns into an inexhaustible source of fulfillment and gratitude,” she shared on Instagram in April.

Long jump

Trenten Merrill, USA

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A post shared by Trenten Merrill ™ – Paralympic Athlete (@tr3n10)

In 2023, Paralympian Trenten Merrill finished fourth in the long jump at the Paris World Championship, off the podium by merely a centimeter and just four centimeters away from a silver.

Reflecting on the outcome, he shared on Instagram Colossians 3:23: “Work wholeheartedly as if working for the Lord and not for man,” and Proverbs 3:5–6, “Trust in the Lord with all thy heart; and lean not unto thy own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths.”

Merrill, who lost his leg after a car hit him while riding a dirt bike, tried out multiple track and field events before settling on long jump. The 34-year-old has competed at both Rio and Tokyo and is currently the American record holder in long jump for his classification. His mantra, at least according to Instagram, is “Trust God, trust the process and kick back like a BigMac.”

William Stedman, New Zealand

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In May, 24-year-old William Stedman set a new world record of 53.36 seconds in the men’s 400-meter T36 final (for Para athletes with coordination impairments) at the World Para Athletics Championships.

At Tokyo 2020, he won silver in the men’s long jump T36 category and bronze in the men’s 400-meter T36 race. He will compete in the same categories at the Paris Games.

“Relying on God through the stresses and ups and downs of being a professional athlete has been so important to me,” he revealed in a July blog post. “The environment can be very achievement driven … [but] having my identity in Christ means that although I may not always perform, my value is secure in Him.”

Stedman, who has cerebral palsy, considers Philippians 4:6–7 his favorite Bible verse: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Para Cycling

Jamie Whitmore-Meinz, USA

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A post shared by Jamie Whitmore-Meinz (@gutzytrigirl)

In 2008, Jamie Whitmore-Meinz discovered that she had spindle cell sarcoma, a condition that ultimately led doctors to amputate part of her left leg. Not long after, she learned that she was pregnant with twins.

“I’ve just always grown up knowing that strength comes from [God],” she said about this time in her life in a 2022 Sports Spectrum interview. “I’m going to fail and screw up, but I trust [God] to pull me out.”

Whitmore-Meinz, now 48, claimed gold at the 2016 Rio Games in the women’s road race C1-3 (a classification for Para athletes competing with prosthesis or limited movement). She has 12 world championships in total across her various disciplines and won the 2014 ESPY award for Best Female Athlete with a Disability.

“I’m so incredibly grateful God has led me on this path. … In 6 days I’ll officially be 16 years cancer free. I had no idea I would be heading to my third Paralympic Games way back then!” she wrote on Facebook in July. “God is good!”

Kadeena Cox, Great Britain

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A post shared by Kadeena Cox OBE (@kad21)

Last year, four-time gold medalist Kadeena Cox lost function on the right side of her body for the second time in her life and could barely walk. The first time this happened was in 2014, when she had a stroke and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

As the 33-year-old continues to recover, she’s headed to the Paralympics for the third time to defend her women’s C4 500-meter time trial title of 34.433 seconds.

Throughout the health setbacks she’s experienced, Cox has been vocal about how much she’s relied on God. “Coping with my eating disorder while trying to prepare for the Paralympics is rough. … I’m doing everything to try [to] be in the best place mentally and trusting God to help me through,” she shared on Instagram in June.

“I know the fact that I’m back doing my thing … could only be God’s strength in me,” she also wrote on Instagram.

Nicolas Pieter Du Preez, South Africa

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Nicolas Pieter Du Preez will be defending his title in hand cycling at the Paris Paralympics.

In 2003, Du Preez was hit by a car while cycling. He broke his neck and lost all function in his hands and fingers. Ten years later, he became the first person with tetraplegia (paralysis and loss of motor function from a spinal injury) to complete an Ironman triathlon.

He went on to win gold in the men’s time trial H1 race at the 2020 Tokyo Games despite sustaining a serious shoulder injury the year before. “So about a week after I broke my shoulder I told my wife that ‘this is probably God telling me that the gold medal in Tokyo is mine,’” he recounted.

Doing sports is how he spends time with the Lord. “I pretty much escape and connect with myself and God whenever I am out training, especially on the long easy training sessions,” he shared in a 2022 interview.

Para Swimming

Jessica Long, USA

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A post shared by Jessica Long (@jessicatatianalong)

For years, Jessica Long, one of the world’s most decorated Paralympic swimmers, has wrestled with her anger at having been given up for adoption.

“I’ve always been proving myself, right? To prove that I wasn’t just a girl with no legs, that I was worth it, that I can find a way to forgive my birth mom and that truly was the best thing,” the 32-year-old shared recently on The Natalie Tysdal Podcast.

Long was born without her lower leg bones and spent the first months of her life in a Siberian orphanage, undergoing 25 surgeries after coming to the US. She won her first gold medal at age 12 in 2004 and is now a 13-time world-record holder.

As she heads to her sixth Paralympics, Long knows that “at the end of the day swimming is just something I love to do. It’s a talent that God gave me.”

Katarina Roxon, Canada

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A post shared by Katarina M Roxon PLY, ONL (@katarinaroxon)

At 15, Katarina Roxon was the youngest swimmer to represent Canada in the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. Eight years later, she scored gold at Rio in the 100-meter breaststroke and was part of the team that clinched the bronze in the 4×100 freestyle relay in Tokyo 2020.

While she thought of retiring in recent years, the upcoming Paris Paralympics marks the fifth time she is competing. “Going through many valleys this last quad has truly made me rely on God and his will for me, whatever it may be,” Roxon, 31, wrote on Instagram.

Roxon, whose left arm is missing below her elbow, firmly believes that being “different” is a superpower: “We are all in positions that can change the world! So use the abilities that God has blessed you with, to change someone’s world for the better!!”

Taylor Winnett, USA

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A post shared by Taylor Michelle Winnett PLY (@taylor_winnett)

Twenty-four-year-old Taylor Winnett captured seven medals (three gold and four silver) at the 2023 Parapan American Games. When she celebrated these accomplishments on Instagram, she quoted 1 Timothy 4:8: “For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.”

The Para athlete is debuting at the Paris Paralympics and will compete in four swim events, including the 100-meter butterfly and the 400-meter freestyle in the S10 classification (for Para athletes with physical impairment).

Winnett lives with Ehler-Danlos syndrome and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and has shared about her struggles with loving her body. “I remind myself that even though my body has been broken down and is not considered ‘perfect’ by society, it’s my home,” she wrote on Instagram this April. “I was made in the image of God.”

Para Judo

Priscilla Gagné, Canada

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A post shared by Priscilla Gagne (@priscillagagne)

Six weeks before the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, judoka Priscilla Gagné fractured her elbow. But she went on to score the silver medal in the women’s 52-kilogram category against Germany.

“God gave me the grace to fight through it and still accomplish the mission, to come home with a medal,” she shared at a church in Tacoma, Washington in 2022.

Gagné, 38, was born with a genetic disorder, retinitis pigmentosa, and is partially blind. She started practicing judo in 2010, going on to medal at various world championships. “Judo has been something that God has used to enrich my life,” she said.

The Rhema Bible Training College graduate cites meditating on the Word and listening to an audio Bible as some of her favorite ways to spend time with God. “I’m a child of the Most High God. I do judo … but that’s not who I am.”

Para Powerlifting

Herbert Aceituno, El Salvador

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“What God did not give me in height, he gave me in strength,” Herbert Aceituno, 38, said in an interview in May. Aceituno was born with achondroplasia and hydrocephalus and took up powerlifting after a friend invited him to the gym.

In 2019, Aceituno broke the record in the men’s up-to-65 kilogram category when he lifted 182 kilograms. He broke another record at the 2023 Pan American Games by lifting a whopping 192 kilograms in the men’s up-to-59 kilogram category.

“This medal goes to God and in memory of my father who from heaven is proud of what is done in this beautiful sport,” he declared.

The Paris Games will be Aceituno’s third time competing. At Tokyo 2020, he scored bronze in the 59 kilogram weightlifting category and was the first Salvadoran to medal at the Paralympics. “Thank you God. Now the Paralympic dream begins again and, if God allows it, we will have fresh happiness for this country,” he wrote on Instagram.

Shooting Para sport

Alexandre Galgani, Brazil

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At the 2023 Parapan American Games, Alexandre Galgani, 41, took home a silver and a bronze medal and also secured a spot to compete in Paris.

When he was 18, Galgani hit his head while diving into a pool and experienced a spinal injury, losing mobility in most of his body. He competes in a category for rifle shooters who need support to shoot because they cannot use their arms to brace the weight of the weapon.

The Paralympian, who first represented Brazil at the 2020 Tokyo Games, shared an Instagram post in June reflecting on the power of second chances. “Then God said to me: ‘You will enjoy your life. You will learn to look to the future without feeling pain from the past. You will find a way to close wounds that once seemed eternal,’” he wrote.

“All honor to the one who strengthens me daily, God.”

Shot put

Funmi Oduwaiye, Great Britain

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Welsh Para athlete Funmi Oduwaiye, 20, will be making her debut in discus throwing and shot put at the Paris Games.

During a routine surgery to correct her knocked knees in 2019, the surgeon damaged an artery that delayed blood flow into her leg, according to a short documentary published in July. This led to 10 more surgeries over the next three years. Doctors said she would never walk again.

Oduwaiye defied expectations and fought through the pain and paralysis of her right leg below the knee. In 2022, she decided to try Para athletics and discovered she was a natural at throwing events. At the Welsh Athletics Championship, she threw 11.03 meters in F64 shot put, just four centimeters off the world record. (This classification is for Para athletes with lower limb impairment.)

Oduwaiye has leaned on her faith during the last couple of years: “I can name a number of people that have helped me along the way, but I feel like it was God moving through them,” she said. “I give all the glory to him for me standing here today.”

Poleth Isamar Mendes Sanchez, Ecuador

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At Tokyo 2020, Poleth Isamar Mendes Sanchez, 28, won the country’s first-ever Paralympic gold medal in the F20 women’s shot put (a class for Para athletes with intellectual impairment). At the Paris Games, she’s aiming to do the same.

Mendes was born with an intellectual disability and struggles with memory issues. In May, she celebrated making the podium at the Para Athletics World Championships by proclaiming: “God lives in me! Another victory, I can only be grateful.”

Mendes’s gratitude to God isn’t just limited to her sports achievements. “I know I have a lucky life and I appreciate every single thing I have. … Thank You My God,” she shared on her birthday several years ago.

Selina Sanday Seau, Fiji

Pacific WAVE Sports Consultancy / Facebook

Selina Sanday Seau

At a low point in her life, Selina Sanday Seau felt “she was not worth being part of anything.” The 45-year-old has a hearing impairment, a prosthetic leg, and a shortened hand on one arm. But God helped her to “realize her potential,” she said in an interview last year.

The versatile Para athlete has represented her country in badminton, discus, and javelin. She will compete at the Paris Games for the first time in the women’s Shot Put Ambulatory Para category after scoring bronze at the Oceania Athletics Championship.

Earlier this year, Seau enrolled in a sports science diploma program, and she hopes to encourage other people with disabilities to pursue their dreams. “Whether it is sports or studies,” she said, “if you have the determination and the passion, nothing is impossible.”

Sprint

Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira, Brazil

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A post shared by Alan Fonteles (@alanfonteles)

At the 2012 London Games, Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira beat his competitors, including South African favorite Oscar Pistorius, in the men’s 200-meter T44 final to win gold with a time of 21.45 seconds. (The T44 category is for Para athletes whose movement in a lower leg is affected at a low or moderate degree.)

The sprinter’s sudden fame overwhelmed the Paralympian, leading him to take a sabbatical away from the tracks. He returned to the sport in 2015 and competed in Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

Fonteles’s legs were amputated when he was less than a month old after he caught an intestinal infection that developed into sepsis. He began running with prosthetic legs made of wood and would bleed during practice.

For the Paris Games, the believer is competing in the T44 200-meter race and quoted Bible verses like Psalm 37:5–27—”Commit, trust, and wait”—on his Instagram account. “God has been incredible and I know there is still much more to come,” he wrote on Instagram last year.

Wheelchair Marathon

Daniel Romanchuk, USA

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At just 26, Daniel Romanchuk is already headed to his third Paralympics and is eager to return to the podium after medaling twice at the Tokyo Games.

In 2021, Romanchuk took home the gold in a thrilling 400-meter T54 race that saw him edge out Thai competitor Athiwat Paeng-nuea by 0.01 seconds. (The T54 category is for Para athletes who are functional from the waist up.) Several days later, he won a bronze medal in the marathon.

Coming into this year’s Games, Romanchuk has earned a second-place finish (with a personal best time of 1:20:37) at the Boston Marathon, and another second-place finish at the London Marathon.

“It’s a huge honor to be able to go to the Games and to represent the US on a world stage,” he said of competing in the upcoming Paris Paralympics. “Really thankful to God for the opportunities that I’ve had.”

Wheelchair Racing

Karé Adenegan, Great Britain

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Karé Adenegan of Coventry, England, was born prematurely with cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. At 11, she watched British Paralympian Hannah Cockroft win gold medals in the 2012 London Paralympic Games and realized that she too could compete at an elite level in sports.

Four years later, she went up against Cockroft in the 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, winning a silver and two bronze medals. In Tokyo, she took home two more silvers. In Paris, she will be facing off against Cockroft again in the 100-meter and 800-meter races.

While her disability caused her to question God, Adenegan, 23, began to see that wheelchair racing has been “a door to a platform to develop myself and share my faith,” she told Premier Christianity in July.

On her Instagram account and in interviews, she’s boldly pointed others to the source of her success. After the Tokyo Games, she wrote in an Instagram caption that, although she was living out her dream, “only Jesus satisfies. The greatest achievement of this year has been falling in love with Jesus again.”

Wheelchair Rugby

Zion Redington, USA

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A post shared by Zion Redington (@zionredington)

At the age of two, Zion Redington was adopted by Heather Redington-Whitlock, an American passionate about serving children with medical challenges. Redington was born in China with ectrodactyly, a condition that gave him one finger on each hand and one toe on each foot.

After doctors decided to amputate his feet to improve his mobility, his mother threw him into various sports. The best fit, though, was the Cumberland Crushers, a rec wheelchair rugby team in Nashville, which helped set Redington on a pathway to qualifying for this year’s Paralympic Games.

Despite his passion and talent for the sport, Redington acknowledged that he has struggled with stress and burnout. The 18-year-old recently described his faith as a “resting place” and “a place of comfort,” where he knows that God is with him and is supporting him.

- More from CT Editors

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Boccia

Andreza Vitória de Oliveira, Brazil

Long jump

Trenten Merrill, USA

William Stedman, New Zealand

Para Cycling

Jamie Whitmore-Meinz, USA

Kadeena Cox, Great Britain

Nicolas Pieter Du Preez, South Africa

Para Swimming

Jessica Long, USA

Katarina Roxon, Canada

Taylor Winnett, USA

Para Judo

Priscilla Gagné, Canada

Para Powerlifting

Herbert Aceituno, El Salvador

Shooting Para sport

Alexandre Galgani, Brazil

Shot put

Funmi Oduwaiye, Great Britain

Poleth Isamar Mendes Sanchez, Ecuador

Selina Sanday Seau, Fiji

Sprint

Alan Fonteles Cardoso Oliveira, Brazil

Wheelchair Marathon

Daniel Romanchuk, USA

Wheelchair Racing

Karé Adenegan, Great Britain

Wheelchair Rugby

Zion Redington, USA

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