Online Witch Doctors Lure South African Christians

Nyasha Bhobo

Churches are combating syncretism among millennials and Gen Z amid a rise of social media healers who call on ancestral spirits.

Gogo Kamo, a sangoma in Kempton Park, South Africa, uses bones, herbs, and the Bible to interpret a reading with an online client.

Guillem Sartorio / AFP via Getty Images

Millions of Black South Africans seek guidance from sangomas, traditional healers or so-called witch doctors who use their spiritual gifts to connect with ancestors, prescribe herbs to heal illnesses, and throw dry bones to predict the future.

It’s a centuries-old tradition that has continued in the majority-Christian country and has adapted for the internet age: A new breed of influencer sangomas are positioning themselves on social media as digital-entrepreneurial-spiritual seers.

Church leaders across several major denominations in South Africa have long decried the practice as involving “evil, devilish, and unclean spirits.” But as the online sagomas draw in a mass audience of millennial Christians—a generation eager to “decolonize” their lives and reconnect to indigenous African roots—church leaders have new concerns around syncretism as well as internet scams.

Condemnation of sangomas and African ancestral worship is the strongest cog uniting European-legacy churches like Anglicans, Baptists, and Catholics as well as African-initiated churches like the Zion Christian Church (ZCC), said Tendai Muchatuta, a cleric with All Nations Church in Johannesburg.

Both kinds of churches say the practice, despite its popularity, is not compatible with Christianity.

The ZCC is the largest African-initiated church in Southern Africa, with about 12 million churchgoers, including some 9 million in South Africa. Bauleni Moloi, a ZCC pastor in Johannesburg, called sangomas “dubious agents of darkness out to sway Christians from the true focus on the gospel of the cross.”

But younger Christians are more likely to disagree. Many millennial and Gen Z South Africans embrace burning incense, joining initiation ceremonies for sagomas (called ukuthwasa), donning ancestral bangles, and reciting ancestral idioms, all with Bible in hand.

As an Africanist awakening sweeps young Black South Africans, many have been calling for the decolonization of their society and institutions, including Christianity.

“They are Christian, they are under 30 years of age, they make the majority of South Africa’s population demographics. They are unlike their parents who grew up under a strict dogma of obeying Lutheran, Catholic, or Presbyterian missionaries,” said one online sangoma, who goes by the handle luthandolove00.

Another sangoma, Gogo Khanyakude, offers online “dream interpretation” and “crossover meditation” for a millennial clientele. “I grew up in a Christian home,” Khanyakude said, “and there’s no conflict in mixing my Christian faith with the sangoma calling work.”

Many online sangomas say they and fellow healers grew up serving in church, singing in the choir, or leading Sunday Bible school, but they couldn’t resist the pull of ancestral calling, which they say they experienced through dreams, possession, or illness that couldn’t be prayed away by their pastors.

Some churches in the area don’t see sangoma rituals as a contradiction to the gospel. Shembe Church in South Africa—the oldest denomination blending ancestor worship and Christianity in the country—welcomes the use of sangomas and attending their initiation ceremonies.

“African spiritualism is a noble way to tame the relentless influence of European Christianism in South Africa,” said bishop Bulawayo Dhoro of Shembe Church. “We don’t see a contradiction but a wonderful blend of two faiths to make them one. In fact, a dozen of our pastors are sangomas too.”

Other Christians see a much greater risk to adding other sources of healing and guidance beyond Christ and his Word. Christian sangomas will damage the integrity of the Christian faith in South Africa if they are tolerated in mainstream churches, said pastor Ezikiel Mamokethe, a retired Presbyterian cleric.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C17NH4VIOM-/

Actor Thabiso Mokhethi quit being a sangoma to pursue ministry and now advises that those who say they can do both are deceived.

“When it comes to God, he has no equal. He cannot share his glory,” he said on the Street Talk podcast earlier this year. “People are lost. … As long as you are submitting to the ancestorial world, you are out of the kingdom of God.

In April, actress Brenda Ngxoli also announced that she “left sangomahood for motherhood and Christianity.”

Some dodgy sangomas in South Africa use voice apps to create fake online sessions where cloned “voices of ancestors” are relayed to gullible clients on WhatsApp or Facebook.

Syndicates of these fake sangomas have fleeced unsuspecting victims of millions of dollars using a combination of hallucinogenic drugs, romance scams, and promises of spiritual encounters with departed ancestors, the South Africa Police Service warned recently.

“They are swaying many souls from the gospel of truth,” said Mamokethe. “Churches must have the courage to excommunicate believers who dabble as sangomas. It’s a scam.”

According to the pastor, “only gullible churches would welcome Christian sangomas.”

- More from Nyasha Bhobo

News

SBC Membership Falls to 47-Year Low, But Church Involvement Is Up

Kate Shellnutt

Amid the continued declines, Southern Baptists are celebrating back-to-back years of growth in worship attendance and baptism.

Kevin Gonzalez / Unsplash

Despite years of record-setting declines shrinking the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) to its lowest membership in nearly half a century, Southern Baptists have begun to see some signs of life within their 46,906 churches.

Worship attendance, small group attendance, and baptisms were up last year in the SBC’s annual statistical report, released Tuesday, while membership fell below 13 million.

2023 marks 17 straight years of decline for the country’s biggest Protestant denomination. It’s down 3.3 million from its peak, with the steepest drops coming during the pandemic. The SBC lost 1.3 million members between 2020 and 2022 alone.

Beyond COVID-19 disruptions, Southern Baptists have recently confronted some contentious issues within their convention, responding to sexual abuse and clamping down on female preachers, which have led some congregations to leave the SBC (including prominent megachurch Saddleback Church).

But statistics indicate that church departures aren’t a significant driver of membership decline; the SBC was down 292 churches last year, just 0.63 percent of its total.

In 2023, membership fell by 241,000, its smallest decrease since 2018. Yet attendance at SBC churches increased 6.5 percent, reaching above 4 million a week for the first time since the pandemic.

Attendance at small groups and Bible studies ticked up 4 percent to 2.4 million.

With fewer Americans than ever attending church and religious disaffiliation on the rise, leaders see even small increases in engagement and discipleship as worth celebrating.

It’s the first time in over a decade that SBC worship attendance has grown two years in a row, though it still lags behind pre-pandemic numbers. Back in 2019, SBC churches saw over 5 million show up each Sunday.

“Outreach and discipleship are difficult today. They require time and commitment when our culture offers numerous distractions and alternatives. The pandemic was discouraging as fewer people engaged in these activities,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, which releases the annual report.

“But as people have re-engaged and new people are participating, there is much to celebrate in Southern Baptist churches today while we invite more to join.”

Baptisms, the key metric for Southern Baptists, also grew for the second year in a row.

“God has been stirring the waters, and an upswing in baptisms has solidly begun,” wrote SBC president Bart Barber, a pastor in Texas.

“Not only have we experienced a second year of increased baptisms, but we have also witnessed a year-over-year gain—25.94 percent more baptisms than in 2022—that leaves no room for doubt about what God is doing among our churches.”

Kevin Ezell, president of the North American Mission Board, said the baptism trend is widespread across regions. Out of 41 state conventions, 35 reported more baptisms in 2023 than 2022.

“Pastors are the difference makers here,” he said in a statement. “Despite all the distractions and challenges out there, they are keeping the focus on evangelism and encouraging new believers to follow up with baptism.”

The report’s release falls about a month before the SBC’s annual meeting, which gathers over 10,000 messengers in Indianapolis in June. They are slated to address new mechanisms for overseeing abuse reform and reporting as well as clarifications to cooperation agreements and guidance around women in ministry.

The SBC’s current membership of 12,982,090 is the lowest since 1976. The membership size peaked at 16.3 million in 2006.

One bright spot, leaders say, is the generosity of members and churches, who spent nearly $800 million on missions last year, up 9 percent.

“We are sharing the gospel with more people, gathering for worship and Bible study in increasing numbers, giving billions to support churches serving communities across our country, and sending millions to support mission enterprises around the world,” said Jeff Iorg, the SBC Executive Committee president-elect.

“Southern Baptists are not a perfect people,” he added. “But we are a movement making a positive difference in our world, and our most recent statistical report underscores this reality and motivates us to press forward.”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

Books

Excerpt

Duke Ellington Read His Bible in the Bath

Larry Tye

An excerpt from Larry Tye’s The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Lightstock

“Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?” asked a 1921 Ladies Home Journal article. Whimsical wordplay aside, the question would become a serious one for mid-century America, as parsons and priests blamed jazz for soaring juvenile crime rates, drugs, and extramarital sex. A 1960 poll found that, among Black preachers, just 1 in 5 wanted to let jazz or blues into their services. Decades before, a religion editor at the Pittsburgh Courier had denounced Louis Armstrong’s “sacrilegious desecration of Spirituals.” Duke Ellington’s music was “considered worldly,” counseled the Rev. John D. Bussey, explaining why the local 1966 Baptist Ministers Conference had unanimously passed his resolution opposing a performance.

The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

Larry Tye (Author)

416 pages

$26.00

But whatever commandments they were breaking—and there were plenty, from slighting the Sabbath to serial adultery—Duke, Louis, and king of swing Count Basie all seemed to take the Christian faith they’d been raised in seriously. And that faith found its way into their music.

For Louis Armstrong, the connection was there from the very beginning, when he learned to sing in his mother’s Sanctified church. “The ‘whole ‘Congregation would be “Wailing—‘Singing like ‘mad and ‘sound so ‘beautiful,” he wrote with his characteristic expressive, idiosyncratic punctuation. “I’d have myself a ‘Ball in ‘Church, especially when those ‘Sisters ‘would get ‘So ‘Carried away while ‘Rev’ would be ‘right in the ‘Middle of his ‘Sermon. ‘Man those ‘Church ‘Sisters would ‘begin ‘Shouting ‘So—until their ‘petticoats would ‘fall off. … My heart went into every hymn I sang,” he added. “I am still a great believer and I go to church whenever I get the chance.”

With Saturday night performances that stretched into Sundays, that wasn’t often. But nearly half a century later, Armstrong released an album the church sisters would have loved, Louis and the Good Book, with gassed-up versions of spirituals including “Go Down Moses” and “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” He recorded “When the Saints,” the anthem of the Big Easy, more than 100 times.

Count Basie was raised in the Black church too. Two of his uncles were ministers; his father was a founder and pillar of Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank, New Jersey. In oral histories and writings, fellow musicians and friends use the word spiritual to describe what Basie brought to the band. Sideman Harry “Sweets” Edison compared their group to church organists and singers who inspire congregants to “get up to shout.” Basie was a spiritual presence offstage too. “Prior to eating, he would do this elaborate silent prayer,” recalls tenor saxophonist Eric Schneider. If the food came before he was finished, “it was understood that we should go ahead and eat.”

Duke Ellington was perhaps the most pious of the three maestros. Growing up, he attended two services each Sunday: African Methodist Episcopal Zion with his father, Baptist with his mother. As a young man, he consulted the Bible twice a day, sometimes taking the book into the bathtub and reading until the water got cold. Though he shunned most jewelry, he wore a gold crucifix around his neck and carried a St. Christopher medal in his hip pocket. His Christmas card bore a simple message in gold lettering: LOVE GOD.

In the last ten years of his life, Ellington devoted himself to a series of sacred concerts, performances that brought together jazz and classical music, spirituals, gospel, and the blues. Suddenly, he was getting more invitations to play in churches than in dance halls. Synagogues too. “These are things people don’t know about him,” said singer-songwriter Herb Jeffries. “He had a great ministry. It was hidden in his music. … He was practicing his ministry moving about here and there, making people happy!” When a reporter asked how he, “as a religious man,” could “play in dark, dingy places where depravity and drunkenness reign,” Ellington whispered, “Isn’t that exactly what Christ did—went into the places where people were, bringing light into darkness?”

He also pushed back against preachers who accused him of defiling their churches with his concerts. “Some people ask me what prompted me to write the music for the sacred concerts. I have done so not as a matter of career, but in response to a growing understanding of my own vocation,” Ellington wrote in his memoir. “I think of myself as a messenger boy, one who tries to bring messages to people, not people who have never heard of God, but those who were more or less raised with the guidance of the church.” The sacred concerts, this most accomplished of composers and bandleaders added, were “the most important thing I have ever done.” They were important to audiences too. Take the girl who approached Ellington after one performance, telling him, “You know, Duke, you made me put my cross back on!”

Sacrilegious, then, isn’t the word to describe these jazzmen. Yes, their faith was unorthodox, and imperfect. But it also was warmly ecumenical and personally sustaining. You can hear it not just in their Christmas tunes but in all of their jazz, music rooted in the gospels and Negro spirituals they grew up with. Their abiding belief in God, all three maestros made clear, is what emboldened and empowered them to write the soundtrack to the Civil Rights revolution, to shape the soul of America.

According to his son Mercer, Duke Ellington “was quite taken with the story of the ‘Juggler of Notre Dame.’” It’s a parable that applies to Armstrong and Basie too. “The man was a great juggler, who would sneak into the church and juggle before the altar. As the story goes, the priests found out about it and kicked him out. God intervened and told the priests to leave him alone. The man was celebrating His presence, by using the gifts that He gave him.”

Larry Tye is a former medical reporter at The Boston Globe, and now runs a Boston-based fellowship program for health journalists. The Jazzmen is his ninth book.

- More from Larry Tye

Theology

Yes, Paul Really Taught Mutual Submission

Murray Vasser

Why Wayne Grudem’s interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 is untenable.

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

In Ephesians 5:21, Paul instructs Christians to “submit to one another.” These words have traditionally been understood to require mutual submission, even among family members. The reformer John Calvin, for example, acknowledged that the notion of a father submitting to his child or a husband submitting to his wife might seem “strange at first glance,” but he never questioned that such submission is indeed what Paul prescribes.

In more recent years, however, this reading of Ephesians 5:21 has been called into question—ironically, in the name of theological conservatism. Many evangelical scholars now assert that the submission in this verse is not mutual submission (everyone submits to everyone) but one-directional submission to those in authority (some submit to others). The most outspoken proponent of this view is Wayne Grudem, a prominent theologian who helped establish the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.

Grudem, who recently announced his retirement from teaching, has argued for more than three decades that Ephesians 5:21 could be paraphrased as follows: “Those who are under authority should be subject to others among you who have authority over them.” On Grudem’s reading, this verse requires a wife to submit to her husband, but it does not in any sense require a husband to submit to his wife.

In defense of this interpretation, Grudem appeals to the meaning of hypotassō, the Greek verb translated “to submit” or “to be subject.” Grudem claims that this verb “always means to be subject to someone else’s authority, in all Greek literature, Christian and non-Christian.”

“In every example we can find,” Grudem contends, “when person A is said to ‘be subject to’ person B, person B has a unique authority which person A does not have. In other words, hypotassō always implies a one-directional submission to someone in authority.”

The problem with this argument is that the claims about hypotassō are simply not true. Consider the following eight ancient passages containing the verb hypotassō. Each decisively refutes Grudem’s claim that hypotassō “always implies one-direction submission to someone in authority.” In several, hypotassō is used to describe submission that is explicitly mutual, not one-directional. And in all eight passages, hypotassō is used to describe submission to people who are not in positions of authority. (All translations are my own. An extended discussion of these and other relevant texts will appear in my forthcoming article in the Lexington Theological Quarterly.)

The seventh-century monk Antiochus of Palestine gives the following advice to the one seeking humility: “Let him submit to his neighbor, and let him be a slave to him, remembering the Lord, who did not disdain to wash the feet of his disciples” (Pandectes 70.75–77).
The fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa explains that every member of a monastic community should consider himself “a slave of Christ who has been purchased for the common need of the brothers” and should thus “submit to all” (De instituto Christiano 8.1:67.13–68.12).
In a personal letter, the fourth-century bishop Basil of Caesarea speaks of one “who in accordance with love submits to his neighbor” (Letters 65.1.10–11).
In a treatise regulating life in a monastic community, Basil cites Paul’s exhortation in 1 Corinthians 10:24: “Let no one seek his own good, but the good of the other.” Basil thus concludes that it is necessary “to submit either to God according to his commandment or to others because of his commandment” (Patrologia Graeca 31:1081.30–38).
In a treatise attributed to Basil, the author describes members of a monastic community as both “slaves of one another” and “masters of one another.” This “slavery to one another” is not brought about by coercion, but is rather done willingly, with “love submitting the free to one another” (Patrologia Graeca 31:1384.7–14).
In a sermon addressing sexual promiscuity, the fourth-century archbishop John Chrysostom states that “the bridegroom and the bride” who have not had prior experience with other sexual partners “will submit to one another” in marriage (Patrologia Graeca 62:426.33–35).
In an exhortation to mutual submission, Chrysostom considers how one should treat a fellow Christian who has no intention of reciprocating: “But he does not intend to submit to you? Nevertheless, you submit; not merely obey, but submit. Entertain this feeling towards all, as if all were your masters” (Patrologia Graeca 62:134.56–59).
In a treatise attributed to the fourth-century monk Macarius of Egypt, the author exhorts members of a monastic community to remain “in this good and edifying slavery” and to render “all submission to each one.” The author envisions “all the brothers submitting to one another with all joy,” and exhorts them “as imitators of Christ” to embrace “submission and pleasant slavery for the refreshment of one another” (Great Letter 257.22–261.1).

Grudem’s interpretation of Ephesians 5:21 is thus founded upon a misunderstanding of the Greek verb hypotassō. As illustrated by the passages cited above, this verb is not only used to describe submission to people in positions of authority; it is also used to describe submission to neighbors, to brothers, and to wives.

Moreover, using Thesaurus Linguae Graecae—a massive digital library containing essentially all of the extant Greek literature from the ancient world—I have examined every citation and allusion to Ephesians 5:21 prior to A.D. 500. I find no evidence that the Greek-speaking church was even aware of the some-to-others interpretation defended by Grudem. Paul’s words in Ephesians 5:21 are uniformly understood by the ancient Christians to require submission to everyone in the community, regardless of rank, and are thus routinely associated with passages such as Mark 10:44 (“be a slave of all”) and Galatians 5:13 (“be slaves to one another”).

For example, immediately after quoting Ephesiasn 5:21, Chrysostom gives the following exhortation to mutual submission: “Let there be an interchange of slavery and submission. For thus there will be no slavery. Let not one sit down in the rank of free, and the other in the rank of slave; rather it is better that both masters and slaves be slaves to one another” (Patrologia Graeca 62:134.28–32).

Notice that in expounding Ephesians 5:21, Chrysostom uses the language of Galatians 5:13: “be slaves to one another.” While these two verses are routinely associated in the Greek patristic literature, Paul’s English readers often miss the connection. English Bibles typically render Galatians 5:13 as “serve one another,” but Paul’s language is stronger than this translation suggests. The Greek noun for “slave” is doulos, and the verb used in Galatians 5:13 is the cognate douleuō, which means “to be a slave.”

The verbs douleuō and hypotassō are thus quite similar and are sometimes used together as near synonyms. Consider the following four passages in which the verb hypotassō is paired with the verb douleuō.

The second-century Roman author Plutarch cites Plato’s advice not “to submit and be a slave” to passion (Moralia 1002E).
The Roman philosopher Epictetus, a younger contemporary of Paul, excoriates the one who fails to attain the Stoic ideal: “You are a slave, you are a subject” (Discourses4.4.33).
The Shepherd of Hermas, a second-century Christian text, describes what will happen “if you are a slave to the good desire and submit to it” (45.5).
In the first of the eight passages cited above, Antiochus writes, “Let him submit to his neighbor, and let him be a slave to him.”

In his arguments against mutual submission, Grudem has overlooked the similarity between these two verbs. He correctly observes that hypotassō implies a hierarchy in which one person is ordered below another person. Since two people cannot simultaneously be beneath each other, Grudem and other critics of mutual submission dismiss the concept as self-contradictory.

However, these scholars fail to observe that the verb douleuō in Galatians 5:13 also implies a hierarchy in which one person is ordered below another person. Nevertheless, as all commentators acknowledge, Paul is obviously using the verb douleuō in Galatians 5:13 to describe action that is mutual, not one-directional. Thus, while Paul’s language of mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21 is indeed (deliberately) self-contradictory, it is no more self-contradictory than his language of mutual slavery in Galatians 5:13.

The ancient church uniformly understood Ephesians 5:21 to require mutual submission, and the modern rejection of this interpretation among some evangelicals is rooted in spurious claims about the Greek verb hypotassō. Jesus took “the form of a slave” (Phil. 2:7), and all who follow him, both male and female, are called to embrace submission too.

Murray Vasser is assistant professor of New Testament at Wesley Biblical Seminary. This article summarizes academic research that was presented at the 2023 meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature and is forthcoming in Lexington Theological Quarterly.

- More from Murray Vasser

Church Life

The Key to Fighting Sex Trafficking? Showing Up.

Angela Lu Fulton in West Java

Indonesia’s Compassion First isn’t knocking down doors, but caring for victims and tutoring at-risk youth living in cemeteries.

Mala (left) and Susi (right), who take classes from Compassion First.

Photography by Angela Lu Fulton

Inside a cemetery in West Java, a woman rests on a mattress laid on top of a gravestone beneath the oak trees. The graveyard is home not only to the dead but to the living poor, who have nowhere else to go.

Residents of the Rose Cemetery community collect garbage, drive pedicabs, or clean graves by day. In the northern section of the cemetery, about 200 families live in brick and tin buildings lining a ditch filled with trash and milky sewage water. At night, many women resort to prostitution to provide for their families. Their daughters are often sold—or kidnapped—into the sex trade. (CT changed the names of the cemeteries and only used the first names of its residents for security reasons.)

Compassion First (CF) offered tutoring, parenting classes, and cooking classes for the community on a blue covered porch in the cemetery complex. Recently they moved to a new community center nearby. CF focuses on fighting sex trafficking in Indonesia, and here at the cemetery, that means community development among families vulnerable to exploitation.

Susi and Mala, two mothers who have lived in the community their whole lives, noted that neighbors rarely knew one another in the past. CF arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic—initially to provide food for the community and scholarships to the children. Since then, the neighborhood has become much more close-knit and better resourced. For young girls, this could make the difference between whether they are trafficked or not.

Susi learned from the cooking class how to make seblak (a spicy dish made of wet crackers and meat or seafood, smothered in sambal chili paste) and now sells it to supplement her income. Mala learned about the five love languages in the parenting class and this helped her relate to her children and husband. “I learned that kids are like durians,” she said. “Spiky on the outside and soft inside.”

Mala said that since CF started its program, all the moms have started small businesses.

“Usually a group comes for a while [then leaves], but YKYU comes here continually,” Mala said. (YKYU is the Indonesian name for CF.) “They really care for us, both the kids and the moms.”

Staying in a community “continually” is what makes Compassion First effective in Indonesia and unique among international anti–sex trafficking efforts there. Beyond the two community development programs in West Java cemeteries, the Oregon-based organization operates two shelters for girls rescued from sex trafficking and a transitional home.

They also work with law enforcement to help return trafficked girls to their homes, partner with other groups to monitor ferry terminals for traffickers, and arrange trainings for police, churches, and local communities on how to spot trafficking.

The work is slow and challenging, and opposition from mafia-linked traffickers and corrupt police had prompted CF leaders to consider giving up. But, amid their weariness, they say they’ve seen God bring the right people and the right resources at the right time.

“We talk about our work … in terms of everyday aftercare, everyday advocacy,” said Traci Espeseth, Compassion First’s director of development. “And it really comes back to just being faithful in showing up day in and day out and saying yes to God’s invitation.”

Photography by Angela Lu Fulton

A cemetery in West Java where the poor have made their homes.

Providing resources to victims of child sex trafficking

An estimated 70,000–80,000 Indonesian children are victims of sexual exploitation, according to the US State Department’s 2021 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report on Indonesia. Because the archipelago is expansive, girls are frequently transferred between the 6,000 inhabited islands, making it difficult to track them down and bring them home.

Sex traffickers often use debt or false offers of employment to trap girls—especially those from poor families—into sex work. Tourist spots like the island of Bali are destinations for foreign and local child sex tourism.

In 2022, the TIP report ranked Indonesia as Tier 2, meaning that while the government hasn’t reached the minimum standards for eliminating trafficking, it is making a concerted effort.

The government has come a long way since CF founder and CEO Mike Mercer first started to work in Indonesia in 2010. Before that, Mercer worked on post–Hurricane Katrina relief through his Foursquare church in Beaverton, Oregon. After learning about sex trafficking in Southeast Asia, he sought to work in an underserved country. His contacts told him that Indonesia had a great need, as other NGOs have tried and failed due to the difficulty of the work.

While other anti–sex trafficking groups congregated in Thailand and Cambodia, he headed to Indonesia, where his denomination had 13,000 churches. He knew that to succeed, he’d need local partners.

In 2010, CF opened a shelter for child victims of sex trafficking in the Christian-majority province of North Sulawesi. Due to the poverty in the province and the fact that women from the region are light-skinned (which is viewed as attractive in Indonesia), it has the second-highest number of women trafficked in Indonesia.

CF built connections with law enforcement in the city, especially the head of the investigative unit for women and children. “We were hand in glove from the beginning because we were aligned,” Mercer said. “I think that was the provision of God.”

Police were eager for CF to build a shelter as they had recently busted a sex trafficking ring and sent the girls back to their homes in North Sulawesi. Yet because the families and communities weren’t ready to receive them—some came from unsafe homes and many were stigmatized for their past—they struggled to reintegrate into society, and all the girls were re-trafficked.

The police were demoralized. So when CF contacted them about providing aftercare for rescued girls, local law enforcement were eager to help.

CF’s growing pains

With funds donated from the US, CF hired Indonesian staff, trained them with the help of veteran sex trafficking groups like Transitions Global, and started housing girls. But it wasn’t nearly enough.

“At first, we had to make it up as we went,” said Winda Winowatan, president of CF Indonesia. A North Sulawesi native, Winowatan worked in the church before joining the organization. She noted that while they had models from other parts of the world, locally, “we had no one to learn from.”

Ervillia Valentina, one of the first house moms at Sarah’s House in North Sulawesi, experienced many of those challenges firsthand. She lived 24/7 at the shelter with another house mom and two security guards. Even on her days off, Ervillia slept at the shelter. Together, they cared for four girls.

One night, all four ran away. “They were terrified because they were going through their legal cases,” where they needed to testify against their traffickers, Ervillia said. These attempts at prosecution would upset traffickers, who are closely tied to the mafia. Ervillia remembers mafia members revving their motorbikes outside the shelter to intimidate them. At times, the girls and the CF team needed to spend the night at a hotel.

When a girl ran away, case managers checked in with their parents, friends, and social media to find out where they’d gone. Then they brought them back and discussed whether the shelter was the right place for them. The first time, all four girls decided to return to the shelter.

One time after a girl ran away and Ervillia found her, the girl grabbed a knife from the kitchen and threatened to kill Ervillia. From then on, CF decided that house moms should not stay at the shelter 24 hours a day but live outside and trade shifts with others.

Valerie Bellamy, CF’s director of operations, said that although the girls choose to enter the shelter, most have tried to run away. Every time, CF will go find them again: “There comes a point when she realizes that she’s worth going after.”

Photography by Angela Lu Fulton

In the cemetery complex, Compassion First held classes on the blue covered porch.

Miraculous interventions

At times, the dangers have been grave. Mercer noted that one of their first court cases in 2011 took place in a rural city, and CF faced opposition not only from the mafia but from the corrupt police force. During the trial, one girl testified and named seven government officials whom she had been sold to. Several were sitting in the courtroom.

“It’s [times like this] where everybody on our team should have just … gone home, everybody should have quit,” Mercer said. “One of the ways we know the hand of God is with us is that all of those people still work for us today. It’s phenomenal.”

Their story landed in the newspaper, which was seen by an official from the US embassy, who asked for a meeting with Mercer and CF staff. A photo from that meeting was publicized, and suddenly all the opposition stopped as the police realized the world was watching. Through CF’s connections with the embassy in Indonesia, they were able to invite the head of the Portland Police Bureau and other US government officials to train local Indonesians on how to investigate sex trafficking cases and how to identify and engage with the victims.

“Westerners don’t actually get to go in and kick down doors,” Mercer said. “Anybody who says they do that is acting dangerously. … We are here to partner with our friends who are legally able to do that work, and then we’re here to take care of the humans that they intervene for.”

Becoming a government model

Over time, CF has been able to improve their care for the girls as well as their staff. Mercer said they realized they needed to raise a lot more money to hire more people and pay competitive wages to keep them, due to the hazards of the job. By providing their staff with extensive training and support for the secondhand trauma that they encounter, they have prevented the staff turnover that plagues other groups. Today, CF has more than 100 staff, and 90 percent are Indonesian.

At the home, CF provides the girls with trauma-based counseling, homeschooling, legal advocacy, and opportunities to explore their skills and hobbies so that they can pursue different career paths in the future.

“There’s a need to transition from surviving from day to day to thinking about tomorrow, what your dreams are,” Bellamy said. Referencing the typical girl they serve, she noted, “We wish trafficking wasn’t part of her story, yet her future is brighter than it has ever been.”

At the same time, they work with the girls’ families to make sure they are ready for their daughters to return. In some cases, the parents were the ones who decided to sell their daughter in the first place, so CF needs to find another safe family in the community.

Since its founding, CF has helped 67 girls and seen 24 cases go to trial, with a total of 23 traffickers convicted. Some cases resulted in multiple convictions and some with none.

The Indonesian government now uses Sarah’s House as a model. Winowatan has created step-by-step instructions for the North Sulawesi government to deal with trafficking victims.

CF has also seen fruit from its partnership with local law enforcement: In 2015, a government official in the province of Papua told Mercer that since doing a training two years earlier, they had seen a 50 percent reduction in the trafficking of girls from North Sulawesi to Papua.

And since 2022, CF has partnered with Love Justice International to monitor ferry terminals in North Sulawesi. Mercer heard that traffickers are now unable to get girls off the boats in North Sulawesi, so they’ve had to either find girls from another province or take more expensive routes.

Going where they’re invited

The needs elsewhere in Indonesia are many, but Mercer doesn’t want the group to dictate where they go to help. Instead, they wait to be invited into different spaces.

They expanded their work into West Java cemeteries in 2012 only after female sex workers invited them into their community. Mercer had heard that cemeteries in urban centers are the end of the road for sex workers, as the women there are either stuck in a generational cycle of prostitution or have “matriculated through this nefarious network of prostitution and they age out of everything,” Mercer said. “This is the last stop.”

With the leader of a local Christian ministry, a person of peace, and a box of sandwiches, CF staff visited what they have called “Marigold Cemetery” after dark and got to know the women selling themselves among the gravestones. On their second visit, they asked if they could organize and invite the women to a Christmas gala. The women agreed.

From there, relationships developed. CF started to better understand their needs, and in 2015, they opened their first community center near the cemetery, providing scholarships, tutoring, and classes. Every year, they continue to hold a gala, now for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas.

CF’s entrepreneurship class teaches adults and teens how to make journals using leftover fabric from boldly patterned Indonesian batiks. The journals are then sold in the US or to tourists visiting Indonesia, and all the proceeds return to the students.

One member of the class, 22-year-old Asya, has come to the center since she was in the sixth grade. She started making journals as a teen in between taking classes at the center. From the skills she’s learned from that class, including managing finances and photographing products, she’s started small businesses selling satays on the street and creating flower arrangements for special events.

What she appreciates most is the community she’s found in the class. “I share everything with them,” Asya said.

Expansion in Java

The invite into the Rose Cemetery community, where Mala and Susi reside, came when COVID-19 devastated the already-struggling community. Many residents lost their jobs and could not feed their children.

CF helped provide food for those families and invited them to join the Thanksgiving gala at the Marigold Center. At the event, the families told staff they also wanted the same resources and opportunities. CF eagerly agreed.

“I wish in 1997 YKYU was here so I could also study instead of getting married at 16,” Mala said wistfully. She dropped out of school after her first year of junior high because her dad died, and the family had no money for school. “I would rather have gone to school, so that’s what I tell my kids to do. … I ask them to join [YKYU] programs so that they can get support for their education, because as a mom, I can’t help them.”

As police connected CF with more rescued girls from the Muslim-majority West Java, CF realized they needed to open another aftercare home in the region. This would allow the girls to stay within their community and quell concerns among Muslim parents that their daughters would be “Christianized” if they went to Christian-majority North Sulawesi.

So in 2019, CF opened a second shelter called Grace House. Ervillia, who worked at the home as a program coordinator, said that they never forced Christianity on their mostly Muslim girls but gave them opportunities to learn about Jesus. Once a week, they hold “share nights” where pastors and volunteers share about their lives and tell stories from the Bible.

“One of the girls in our care program said she felt really loved and really accepted by our staff, and so that makes her love being in the program,” Ervillia said. “That’s how we see her life change and her self-worth change.”

While Grace House closed in 2021 due to landlord issues, around the same time, a pastor in West Java donated a property to CF, inviting them to build a shelter there to help local girls. Today, that center cares for three girls.

In the future, Mercer sees CF continuing to step into new spaces where their services are needed. The Indonesian government had said they hoped Compassion First would work in every province in the country. Currently, they are in four—including a case management office in Bali.

“As Indonesia continues to invite us to serve, then that’s what we’ll be doing,” Mercer said. “We grow out of assignment, not out of ambition.”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton in West Java

Church Life

Let the Neurodivergent Children Come to Me

Sunita Theiss

Gentle parenting is one tool to train up children who have disabilities with love and wisdom.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash, Wikimedia Commons

As a toddler, my son would often lash out at other kids for no apparent reason, causing incidents at daycare, at home, and in the church nursery. At times, he would even hurt himself in his distress. After more than a year of trying to encourage the “right” behavior, I felt like this was more than age-appropriate tantrums.

We sought an evaluation, and our son received multiple diagnoses that confirmed he’s neurodivergent, a term that commonly encompasses brain-based differences such as ADHD, autism, learning difficulties, and more.

One way to consider how my son experiences the world is to think of his brain like a highly sensitive smoke detector. A typical smoke detector on your kitchen ceiling will alert you to a potential emergency in the room. However, one that is highly sensitive might alert you to a neighbor smoking a cigarette as he walks by your window on his way to the store.

My son’s nervous system makes him similarly sensitive. He’s hyper-attuned to potential threats in the world around him, and sometimes the most typical everyday interactions can become extremely distressing for him, even resulting in acute anxiety attacks.

As first-time parents, we did our best to follow conventional advice about establishing routines and maintaining authority. We disciplined him with consequences, withheld privileges, and rewarded any display of self-control. Any physical discipline only succeeded in making us seem like a threat and triggering his fight-or-flight response.

Traditional forms of discipline were not working, and my husband and I knew we needed to change the way we parented. Yet I still wondered if this was compatible with my faith. I could not escape the maxim “Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

One Sunday, our pastor preached on the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32). He encouraged us to put ourselves in the shoes of a first-century Jewish father—to imagine being effectively disowned by your child and the emotions of having them eventually return.

Citing Kenneth E. Bailey’s work, our pastor explained that a first-century son who demanded his inheritance would be ceremoniously rejected, cut off from his heritage and his family. Our pastor described the father running to his son in order to reach him before the community noticed his return and cast him out forever. I pictured villagers running after the father to see what he would do, stunned that he embraced his wayward, reckless child instead of condemning him and casting him out.

Our pastor asked us to try to comprehend how unbelievable the forgiveness, grace, and protection the father extended to his son would seem to the rest of the village, who would at best despise the son and at worst excommunicate or stone him.

I tried to grasp the tenderness the father must have felt toward his son to be willing to forgive and find a new way forward that integrated his child back into the family and the community, regardless of what others thought. I wondered how to reconcile the discrepancies between this particular illustration of the love of God the Father and the parenting advice I continued to receive from other Christians to be firm, to shepherd and steward my child, and to let my child know I was the authority.

When I was encouraged to “shepherd” my children, I would jokingly respond that my lack of agrarian experience left me uncertain how to move forward. As I pored over the multitude of sheep and shepherd imagery in the Bible, I didn’t understand how a shepherd could brandish a rod against his sheep and still refresh or comfort them (Ps. 23:3–4).

So I did what many millennial parents might do: I searched the Internet for how to herd and tend to sheep, specifically looking for references to rods and staffs. I discovered that a rod would likely have been used to fight off wild animals who may come after the sheep—not against the sheep themselves, and that the staff was probably a shepherd’s crook, used to guide sheep and even retrieve them should they find themselves in a precarious situation.

I also learned that “Spare the rod, spoil the child” isn’t actually what Proverbs 13:24 says. The phrase likely originated from a 17th-century long satirical poem, Hudibras, and Samuel Butler’s words convey an explicitly sexual meaning.

Meanwhile, as we sought out strategies that would be effective for my son, I discovered secular experts who recommended mindful parenting that focuses on compassionately building skills—what is popularly called “gentle parenting.” I later found a number of Christian experts who encourage an approach to parenting that centers on connection, respect, and gentleness, including Flourishing Homes and Families, Connected Families, and Grace Based Families.

Both Christian and secular critics denigrate it as an overly permissive, boundary-free style of parenting that can have detrimental effects both in childhood and adulthood.

At the same time, proponents of gentle parenting don’t always agree on what discipline should look like. There are similar approaches called positive parenting, responsive parenting, and peaceful discipline, and some experts have even suggested abandoning the name “gentle parenting” altogether.

The words discipline and disciple both derive their meaning from the Latin word for instruction or teaching. As language has evolved, there continues to be an implication of order and instruction, but the concept of chastising or punishing didn’t become part of the word’s meaning until the 11th or 12th century, when it became associated with military instruction.

Gentle parenting, rather, allows my family to focus on instruction—on discipling our children in such a way that we model the Father’s love for them, so that they may grow to trust and know God.

Whatever you choose to call this style of parenting, the common thread is that parents are encouraged to be authoritative (often contrasted with authoritarian parenting), to focus on respecting and understanding the child, to emphasize cooperation between parent and child, and to encourage independence within appropriate boundaries.

At the end of the day, all parenting requires wisdom and discernment, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Gentle parenting offers one set of tools and strategies that enable us to model Christ’s love and to equip our children with the self-control, order, and grace required to navigate the fallen world we are all born into.

My husband and I believe that children are a blessing from God (Ps. 127:3), and we parent in a way that focuses on compassionately guiding and empowering our children (Eph. 6:4). We encourage autonomy, independence, and abiding faith by remembering that adults and children are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).

We don’t harshly punish our children, because we seek to love them as the Father loves us (1 John 3:1), and we endeavor to model discipline, grace, and faith in a way that we hope reflects that love (Prov. 3:11–12; 1 John 4:11–12). At every step, we consider our children’s development as well as their needs for support and accommodation.

When we punish our children, we are inflicting suffering for their past behavior with the hope of changing their future behavior. There is no shortage of ways to teach and instruct a child about wrongdoing—and how to prevent it—without causing them to suffer. Forgiveness, mercy, and grace are not opposed to discipline, good stewardship, and experiencing the real, felt consequences of our actions.

My husband and I have both the privilege and responsibility of working together to help our children develop skills and to offer support as they navigate the world with increasing independence. We allow our children to experience the consequences of their actions, and we discuss what we could do differently to achieve a different outcome. Most importantly, we teach them about the incredible grace and mercy that is offered to each of us.

We parent the way we do as a humble reflection of what God is offering to all of us. Throughout his ministry, Jesus went out to people and met them where they were. He didn’t insist on a standardized process of redemption, and there is ultimately no checklist we can follow. We can only follow him. To put it another way, Jesus wants us to follow his lead, and we ask the same of our children.

And when we inevitably fall short—or our children do—my hope and prayer is that we’ve cultivated the kind of love and grace that would allow a child to return in humility and trust or a father to sprint through town to greet his child, no matter the time apart or the circumstances of that separation.

A few months ago, we began to have similar concerns about our daughter’s development, and we sought an evaluation for her as well. As I discussed this with my mother and the psychologist, I realized that there are many similarities between my daughter’s behavior and how I was as a child. I decided to pursue my own evaluation, and we confirmed that both my daughter and I are also neurodivergent.

A recent CDC report found that nearly 1 in 10 children between ages 3 and 17 are diagnosed with a developmental disability, an increase from previous years. If this trend continues, the church will need to develop new tools to love and support our children. I imagine this will also include accepting and accommodating styles of parenting and forms of discipline that, while “new” to many in the church, are both rooted in Scripture and respectful of our children.

When the disciples stopped people from bringing children to receive blessing and prayer from Jesus, he admonished them (Matt. 19:13–14). We have no reason to believe that the children who came before Jesus were without disabilities. Throughout the Gospels, people came to Jesus for healing and prayer for themselves, their children, and their loved ones.

I deeply desire for adults to remember this before asking a seemingly disruptive child to leave a service or to refrain from participating in a church activity that would allow them to experience the love of Christ. “Do not hinder them,” our Savior says, “for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (v. 14).

Sunita Theiss is a writer, communications consultant, and homeschool parent based in Georgia.

- More from Sunita Theiss

News

If Panama Closes the Darién Gap, Would Evangelicals Care?

Franco Iacomini

(UPDATED) Migrant rights have been off-radar for many Panamanian Christians. But as pressures increase, some are speaking out ahead of this weekend’s general elections.

A migrant woman carrying her daughter near the first border control of the Darien Province in Panama.

Luis Acosta / Contributor / Getty

Update (May 6, 2024): José Raúl Mulino will be Panama’s new president after the Realizando Metas (Realizing Goals) party candidate won 34.2 percent of the vote.

Mulino began the campaign as the running mate of former president Ricardo Martinelli. (Martinelli previously served from 2009 to 2014.) When Martinelli was booted from the ticket after receiving a 10-year prison sentence for money laundering, Mulino assumed the top of the ticket. While other candidates fought to get him removed from the ballot for bypassing the party’s selection process, the country’s supreme court declared it legal two days prior to the election.

Last month, Mulino promised to close the Darién Gap, where tens of thousands of migrants have crossed from Colombia to Panama on their journey to the US border. On Monday, the president-elect reiterated his desire to do so, saying that he will work with the governments of Colombia and the United States to jointly create a long-term solution.

“Currently we have technology to survey the border, and I hope to start a repatriation process as early as possible,” he said in an interview Monday with Radio Blu.

Mulino is set to be inaugurated on July 1.

—-

On May 5, Panamanians will vote for a new president. The outcome of this election may have consequences for far more than its 4.4 million residents; it could change the migration reality for the hundreds of thousands of people traveling from South America, Asia, and Africa who pass through the Central American country en route to the United States.

Leading in the polls is José Raúl Mulino, a candidate for Realizando Metas (Realizing Goals), a right-wing populist party founded by disgraced president Ricardo Martinelli. He has vowed to shut down the Darién Gap, a densely forested jungle area that migrants must traverse to enter Panama from the bordering country of Colombia.

“We’re going to close Darién and we’re going to repatriate every one of these people, respecting their human rights,” said Raúl Mulino in April.

For many Panamanians, there was no migrant crisis before 2022. After passing through the Darién gap, migrants passed through the country on government buses to the Costa Rican border. But after a shift in US migrant policy sent many back to Central America a couple years ago, hundreds have since moved to Panama City and a handful of small towns. Residents have begun to blame them for crime and for overwhelming their sanitation systems.

Though evangelicals have largely been on the sidelines, many leaders say they should have done more.

“The church does not see the refugee problem as their own problem,” said Panamanian missionary Robert Bruneau, a regional leader with United World Mission. “They believe it is something the state should do and are not aware of the great opportunity they have to graciously and honorably serve someone who bears the image of God.”

A treacherous journey

With its mountainous rural terrain and long-standing control by Colombian gangs, the Darién Gap is one of the most treacherous passages of the arduous journey undertaken by migrants heading north. Few communities live in its swamps and jungles, rendering it one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes.

Immigrants first traveled through the region beginning in the 1990s, when Colombian citizens used the jungle to escape guerilla groups and flee to Panama or elsewhere. In the 2000s, Venezuelans started to travel through Central America and the Darién Gap as they sought refuge in the United States through the Mexican border. Since 2014, more than 7 million have left the country. Today, migrants from places as diverse as Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Haiti, Nepal, and China (who first fly into Colombia or Brazil) follow the same dangerous path.

As recently as 2011, fewer than 300 migrants crossed the border between Colombia and Panamá irregularly. Last year, the number surged to 520,000. Through the end of April this year, more than 135,000 people have entered Panama. And about 120,000 children crossed the Darién Gap last year, many unaccompanied, with approximately half under the age of five.

Survivors who make it through the forest arrive at camps, established by the Panamanian government, often suffering from health issues due to extreme exertion, malnutrition, or diseases transmitted by mosquitoes or contaminated water.

World Vision is one of a handful of Christian organizations serving migrants passing through the Darién Gap and works with churches to provide food, clothing, security, and legal guidance to those passing through the region.

“[These people] do not migrate by choice,” Mishelle Mitchell, a World Vision spokesperson for Latin America and the Caribbean, told CT. “They flee hunger, war, poverty, and deserve the right to be respected.”

Unseen and unheard

After recuperating in camps, the government offers migrants two ways of continuing their journey: For roughly $40, they can travel in privately operated buses to the Costa Rican border. Or they can go to the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua for around $80 to $90. The journey, which takes less than a day, keeps migrants from traveling on foot, a common scene in most Central American countries. It also largely keeps them out of sight and out of mind, says Gustavo Gumbs, an evangelical pastor who began working with migrants nearly a decade ago.

“The church was not awake to the refugee problem,” he said. “Even today, there are those who are either unaware of migrants or are not mobilized to help them.”

Evangelicals make up 22 percent of the population, compared to 65 percent of Catholics. But more than a dozen Catholic organizations work in the Darién region, led by Cáritas, the international arm of the Vatican for human rights, food security, and sustainable development.

In March, in a letter, Pope Francis addressed a group of migrants who met bishops and local authorities in Lajas Blancas, a city close to the Darién Gap, trying to find common ground with them as a son of Italian immigrants who went to Argentina “in search of a better future.”

“Migrant brothers and sisters, never forget your human dignity,” he wrote. “Do not be afraid to look others in the eye, because you are not a throwaway; you too are part of the human family and of the family of God’s children.”

Gumbs began Fundación de Asistencia a Migrantes (FAM) after feeling like he had a Christian responsibility to help those he saw in need in Panama City.

“We had an explosion in the number of migrants,” he said. “The government admitted that it could not take care of everyone.”

In 2016, he began collecting donations from churches of food, clothing, and hygiene items to take to migrants in Darién. Currently, more than 100 volunteers travel to the region daily to help migrants.

For years, Panama’s camps and bus system meant that few migrants interacted with locals. But in 2022, migrants began to return to other Latin American countries after the shift in US policy. Many arrived in Panama City.

“Suddenly, we had 10,000 people to feed,” said Gumbs, who picked up food from churches and collected donations from other Christians to pay for plane tickets for migrants going home.

“For the first time in many years, all denominations came together to do something together in Panama,” he said.

The success of the initiative led the Panamanian government to recognize FAM’s efforts, which now participates in migration discussions with internationally recognized organizations such as UNHCR and the Red Cross.

“As Matthew 5:16 says, even if they are not believers, they give thanks to God when they see the good works we do,” he said.

Even so, Panamanian Christians know the sum of their efforts has been modest.

“We are a small country. What we can do is insufficient; it’s like trying to stop a hemorrhage with a Band-Aid,” said Roderick Burgos, an evangelical social services leader.

For Panamanians, the influx of migrants is discomforting. Once sleepy towns, cities near the Colombian borders have become hubs for refugees as people wait for buses. Locals often charge migrants three to four times the previous amount for food, says Gumbs. Despite Darién being home to numerous endangered species including jaguars, macaws, and tapirs, garbage from the flow of people is everywhere, further threatening the animals and their habitat.

In 2020, Panamanian authorities blamed migrants for burning down reception centers in La Peñita, close to the Colombian border, and in Lajas Blancas, by the border with Costa Rica. In March, 44 migrants were arrested following a brawl that damaged part of a support center in San Vicente.

“The population in general is very upset [that so many people are passing through Darién],” said Jocabed Solano Miselis, a missionary to Panama’s indigenous peoples. “It’s not xenophobia, it’s the exhaustion of local resources.”

A new situation

Migration won’t be a top issue for most Panamanian evangelical voters, most of whom see the strongest connection between their faith and a socially conservative agenda. These convictions have led growing numbers to run for seats in Panama’s National Assembly and in city government.

“For many years, churches and Christians stayed away from politics, positioning themselves as intercessors,” said pastor César Forero of the New Life Family Restoration Center in Panama City.

But in 2014, the government announced a new sex education law that evangelicals believed would open the door for schools to teach pro-LGBT messages. Over the course of two years, pressure groups formed, and evangelicals teamed up with Catholics to organize in opposition.

“I thought that if we didn’t have about 10,000 people in a march, the law would pass,” said Burgos. “We had about 300,000 show up.”

After the government backed down in 2016, Panamanian Christians discovered a political strength they had previously never imagined. In the last general election in 2019, candidates began publicly identifying themselves as evangelicals.

Now, in 2024, “many of the aspirants are proposing pro-family policies,” said Forero. This includes trying to introduce a ban on same-sex marriage and advocating against issues like abortion and euthanasia, none of which are legal in Panama and currently face no proposals trying to legalize them.

In this regard, Panama already boasts some of Latin America’s most socially conservative legislation. Last February, the Supreme Court upheld a decision affirming that marriage is between a man and a woman. In April of this year, a coalition of LGBTQ organizations asked candidates to sign a pact expanding the rights of their community, including guaranteeing support for same-sex marriage. Seven of the eight presidential candidates declined to sign the document.

In the week leading up to the elections, the Evangelical Alliance of Panama called for a day of fasting and prayer on May 1 and asked Christians to judge candidates by several criteria, including fear of God, track record of transparency, pro-life stance, defense of the traditional family, concrete solutions to issues like education and health, fight against corruption, and desire to build a better country. Corruption, and crimes related to it, appears to be a main concern for voters. Last year, previous president Martinelli, who was current candidate Mulino’s mentor, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for money laundering.

In general, Latin American evangelicals vote for right-wing candidates, but public Panamanian polls do not include a religious affiliation question, so it’s not clear which candidate will have the most support from believers.

For the hundreds of thousands crossing the jungle on foot, however, there are decisions that are more urgent—and the results from the ballot can make a difference

“We believe in God’s justice, and justice relates to the dignity of individuals, both citizens and immigrants,” said Solano Miselis.

- More from Franco Iacomini

Theology

Goodbye Postmodernism, Hello Metamodernism

Benjamin Vincent

Our apologetics must evolve to engage with the new cultural mood of the next generations.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

For years now, scholars have announced the death of postmodernism. After decades of dominance as a cultural mood, the famously cynical and relativistic intellectual stance is finally out. In its place, another ideological outlook is taking hold—as those of us who spend significant time with the next generations (Z and Alpha) may have noticed.

So, the question is this: What fresh dispositions of thought are taking hold—and how might Christians engage well with our evolving cultural frontier?

One term that scholars have used to identify the new cultural mood is metamodernism. First used in 1975 to describe a literary shift, the concept became more prominent in the early 2000s thanks to the work of cultural analysts Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. In their 2010 article, “Notes on Metamodernism,” they made a convincing case for the new zeitgeist and provided a cultural analysis of its characteristics.

Metamodernism, according to Vermeulen and Van Den Akker, is a “structure of feeling” marked by “(often guarded) hopefulness and (at times feigned) sincerity”—deriving from a realization that “history is moving rapidly beyond its much proclaimed end.” While there are plenty of academic responses to their work, the term has gained little traction in the public sphere.

As a high school teacher, youth pastor, and an older member of Gen Z myself, I’ve not only grown up breathing the ideological air of metamodernism but have also seen what it looks like on the ground. It can manifest in a few tangible ways, including in what I call apocalyptic hope, inverted worldview-building, and highly narrated identities.

Apocalyptic hope (or what Vermeulen and Van Den Akker call “guarded hopefulness”) arises from and stands in contrast to the staid pessimism of postmodernism. It acknowledges that the world is in some sense “doomed” or at least in crisis, but responds to this fact with dark humor, sincere hopefulness (often expressed through irony), and a revolutionary spirit that actively rejects the passive resignation of past decades.

The next generation of young people have grown accustomed to viewing their futures in bleak terms, expecting dystopian outcomes from technologism and government overreach, natural disasters resulting from climate crisis, and global instability in the face of competing nationalist and globalist visions of the future.

Despite all this, most young people have not embraced a head-in-the-sand mentality to preserve the innocence of their youth, nor have most responded with obvious despair. Instead, my generation often faces the future with a dark joke on the outside and a fierce resolution to change the world on the inside.

In contrast to one of postmodernism’s signature aspects—what professor and cultural theorist Ag Apolloni called “the era of endings”—the metamodernist generation yearns for a new beginning.

Vermeulen and Van Den Akker described metamodernism as a realization that history isn’t over yet. If that’s true, then there’s still hope for change—which is why the next generation has a zeal for solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. When it comes to environmental, economic, or social issues, today’s youth are far more likely to identify with a cause and to seek to act on it—perhaps in drastic ways that can look like alarmism or overreaction. Having grown up believing our future may only be saved by drastic action, it makes sense for us to greet it with a wry sense of humor and a strong drive to remake the world.

Why should this matter to the church? It matters because one of the most essential elements of a worldview is its expectations for the future. Today’s young people expect things to get worse before they get better and feel a real burden to act quickly to avert the numerous disasters that humanity has brought upon itself. And as it happens, Scripture can meaningfully speak to and resonate with this attitude.

In Romans 8, Paul writes that all creation is groaning as it awaits redemption and re-creation. This groaning is not a natural feature of our world—it is an ongoing consequence of human sin and its destructive impact on God’s good world. The Christian story of reality speaks directly to the frustration and fear that plagues the metamodernist generations: Our world is plagued by the evils that we have wrought.

Fortunately, Scripture does not stop at diagnosing the problem. The gospel also prescribes a very real solution—the promise of re-creation, inaugurated by the resurrection of Jesus, as sinners share in a foretaste of the new life found in Christ and await our own resurrection patterned after his own. Seen through this lens, the gospel gives real substance to the apocalyptic hopefulness of metamodernism.

Another key facet of real-world metamodernism is what I like to describe as inverted worldview-building.

The historic norm has been to ground our worldview in metaphysical foundations and build up to ethical conclusions. In other words, at least on paper, we start with questions of ultimate meaning before moving on to questions of temporal purpose. As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in After Virtue, “I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”

But among the rising metamodernist generations, it seems this conventional order has been reversed. In response to the moral relativism of postmodern predecessors, the metamodernist generation first seeks to be grounded in certain essential ethical principles and then selects the best ideological framework to match those ethics. It’s a “cart before the horse” generation, in the sense that we often base our religious or philosophical positions on prior ethical assumptions rather than the other way around.

The new impulse, then, is to work backward from a kind of ethical certainty to whichever religious claims align with the ethical outcomes preferred by one’s crowd—and to reject those with ethical outcomes that are deemed “problematic.” According to this new ethical absolutism, some discard and denounce any religious outlook that seems to produce unpopular ethical conclusions.

Where truth and morality were once dismissed as little more than personal preferences, we now see people explicitly condemning many aspects of orthodox Christian teaching for its ethical failures. This also means that postmodern “tolerance” is decidedly out of vogue. In his book Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth, Thaddeus Williams observed that “since [the 1990s] we have watched a culture that prided itself in its nonjudgmentalism turn into one of the most judgmental societies in history.”

But while it may create some new challenges for Christian evangelism, this new cultural mood is not without its benefits. After decades of shadowboxing against ideological opponents who claimed to reject any moral reality or ethical standard, the church may find it refreshing to present its truth claims to people who acknowledge our frequently immoral world rather than trying to defend a purportedly amoral one.

From an apologetic standpoint, this shift in popular ideology also demands a shift in evangelistic approach. Rather than teaching young Christians to merely defend the existence of truth, we should be teaching them to better understand and articulate the grounds and benefits of biblical ethics. In communicating with the metamodernist generation, it is vital to defend a thoroughly scriptural view of Christian ethics.

As Rebecca McLaughlin points out in her book The Secular Creed, secularists and those who have moved on from a Christian worldview based on ethical outcomes often still cling to other ethical principles (like the weak holding the strong accountable), thinking such principles are “basic moral common sense” instead of realizing that many of “these truths have come to us from Christianity.”

Much of pop-culture ethic today can be reduced to the “harm principle,” an essential component of modern liberalism articulated by philosopher John Stuart Mill. Christian philosopher Charles Taylor describes the harm principle as the notion “that no one has a right to interfere with me for my own good, but only to prevent harm to others.” Some further conflate the harm principle with the biblical ethic, imagining that all God wants is for us to refrain from hurting each other—a simplistic reimagining of the Golden Rule. When filtered through the metamodernist mood, this can lead to a forceful condemnation of Christians who teach that there is more to morality.

“The injunction ‘Thy will be done’ isn’t equivalent to ‘Let humans flourish,’” Taylor points out, “even though we know that God wills human flourishing.” Scripture does not only call us to stay out of each other’s way and otherwise do what feels natural to us—it calls us to a way of living that goes beyond what is merely “natural” and often pushes us to lay down our own desires and even our own lives. Christ calls us to be transformed, and in Taylor’s words, “This transformation involves our living for something beyond human flourishing, as defined by the natural order, whatever it be.”

The final influential component of metamodernism, as I’ve observed it, is the tendency toward highly narrated identities.

One of the biggest practical differences between the younger generations (from millennials to Gen Alpha) and their predecessors is the level of comfort and familiarity with topics of mental health and psychological development. According to the American Psychological Association, members of Gen Z are “significantly more likely (27 percent) … to report their mental health as fair or poor” and are “also more likely (37 percent) … to report that they have received treatment or therapy from a mental health professional.”

Increased comfort and familiarity with the historically stigmatized topics of mental health diagnoses and development certainly isn’t a bad thing. This rise has been correlated to increased empathy and transparency about internal struggles and is already reshaping the modern workplace. But there are also side effects, especially thanks to the distorting influence of pop psychology.

Pop psychology today includes the large-scale dissemination of psych-adjacent opinions and advice offered in bite-sized portions on social media platforms. Madison Marcus-Paddison, a trauma therapist and counselor, points out that this type of content often suffers from oversimplification, lack of context, limited professional credentials, and loss of personalization when it comes to real and complex matters of mental health.

The real-world impact of this array of positive and negative shifts is a cultural mood characterized by widespread self-diagnosis, which can produce an over-narration of one’s identity under the guise of bettering one’s mental health.

Therapist Jessica Jaramillo, who works primarily with college students at the University of Colorado, has pointed out the rampant danger among youth in self-diagnosing mental health illnesses and identifying too much with their diagnoses. Even without a technical diagnostic label, there is a tendency among young people to overanalyze their own story to explain, justify, or solve their problems.

Like other metamodernist tendencies, this movement brings with it both positive and negative cultural shifts that Christians must meaningfully engage with.

On the positive side, this shift means that young people are far more willing to speak openly about the mental and emotional challenges they face and the burdens they bear. This openness may (often) take the form of sarcastic self-deprecation, but it nonetheless represents an increased vulnerability that can be a launching point for more honest conversations—which can be an inroad for sharing the gospel.

The dark side of this shift, however, is the sense of paralysis that often accompanies it. The more you attribute your sense of self to your past negative experiences, the less possible it will seem to hope for meaningful change in the future. Perhaps this sense of fatalistic determinism helps explain why the rate of suicide has tripled for adolescents and risen nearly 80 percent for high schoolers in the last decade.

In my experience as a teacher and youth pastor, this feature of metamodernism probably has the most impact on my interactions with the students I work with daily. Buried beneath wry, self-deprecating humor, many of my students feel it is impossible to escape the flaws that their past has built into them.

Once again, however, the gospel can speak a word of hope to the metamodernist mood. You are flawed, yes; you are a sinner, incapable of simply fixing yourself and becoming the person you want to be. But God’s mercies are “new every morning” (Lam. 3:23), and there is deep and abiding hope found in Jesus, into whose image we are daily “being transformed” (2 Cor. 3:18), and one day, “we will all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51).

Your identity today is not an inescapable trap. This does not need to minimize real pathologies and their treatment—it simply reminds us that we are more than the stories we tell about ourselves.

There is certainly more to be said about metamodernism today, but my hope is to help shift the conversation at the popular level away from an outmoded postmodern apologetic. And as we work together to proclaim the Good News in a changing world, by the grace of God, I pray we might soon see revival in the metamodern age.

Benjamin Vincent is a bi-vocational pastor and teacher in Southern California. He serves as assistant pastor at Journey of Faith Bellflower and as the department chair of history and theology at Pacifica Christian High School in Newport Beach, California.

- More from Benjamin Vincent

News

Christian Radio Sues Over Disparity in Streaming Costs

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Discrimination case claims that noncommercial religious broadcasters are paying far more than fellow stations to cover royalties for music played online.

Tanja Ivanova / Getty

The website for 99.1 JOY FM in St. Louis features a scrolling playlist of its lineup of Christian pop music and a “listen now” button to tune in to the simulcast broadcast. But visitors may find that after a few hours of streaming artists like Lauren Daigle and Brandon Lake, the site may kick them off.

Because of higher royalty costs, many noncommercial religious broadcasters are choosing to either limit the number of online listeners they allow at a time or simply not promote their online platforms at all. A new lawsuit from some of these broadcasters, including many Christian stations, claims that their royalty rate, which exceeds what other stations pay, is effectively a form of religious discrimination.

“The government is charging religious broadcasters a significantly higher rate,” said Rory Gray, with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “It suppresses religious speech in the public sphere.”

Noncommercial radio stations—which rely on listener support and grant funding rather than ad sales—have traditionally been able to negotiate lower royalty rates for the music they play. But religious broadcasters, like JOY FM’s owner, Gateway Creative Broadcasting, lost out on that deal during negotiations in 2016 with SoundExchange, the rights management company that distributes royalties to artists.

Then streaming costs for religious radio increased in 2021, following a ruling from the US Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), and Christian stations were subject to the standard rates. A suit filed in February against the board claims that due to the discrepancy in rates set by the CRB and privately negotiated rates, noncommercial religious broadcasters are forced to restrict their streams in ways other noncommercial stations, like public radio, are not.

“Noncommercial religious broadcasters are now paying rates at a commercial level,” said Gray, who serves as counsel for the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee in the case. “They just want to pay a fair rate, the same rate that the secular NPR stations are paying.”

According to ADF, noncommercial religious broadcasters are now paying a rate 18 times higher than the average rate given to NPR stations. (Both public radio and college radio stations privately negotiated deals with SoundExchange.)

Some in the Christian music industry are cheering the changes in royalty agreements since they help artists make profit. The lower rates for noncommercial religious broadcasters have historically resulted in Christian artists receiving far less royalty revenue than their mainstream peers.

In a 2023 article for Billboard magazine, Malcolm Hawker, chief operating officer for SESAC Music Group and former president and CEO of Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) said that the regulatory system around radio, especially when it comes to Christian radio, is broken.

Referring to K-LOVE’s parent company, Educational Media Foundation, Hawker said that nonprofit status obscures the reality that EMF is a financial powerhouse with over $1 billion in assets.

“This is a far cry from the small volunteer-run community stations the CRB rates are meant to protect,” Hawker wrote. “I believe that it’s inherently unfair for these networks to exploit the CRB rate structure that’s available to educational radio stations given their financial profiles and the significant amount of money they raise using music to build a large audience.”

Hawker focuses primarily on royalty structures for airtime, while the case ADF is making on behalf of religious stations has to do with royalty fees for online streaming. But the problem Hawker identifies is the same: that Christian artists generally see lower royalty revenue in part because most of the broadcasters that program their music pay noncommercial rates.

ADF says that this case isn’t about giving religious broadcasters the right to pay artists less but rather about the higher royalty rate compared to NPR stations. “If the rate was the same, we wouldn’t have a discrimination case,” said Gray.

In a statement, ADF senior counsel John Bursch said, “Religious broadcasters should have the freedom to exercise their faith and free speech without discrimination, but government officials are forcing them to pay exorbitant fees or have their constitutionally protected speech suppressed.”

NPR stations are also classified as noncommercial broadcasters and are eligible for funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which does not fund organizations whose programming “furthers the principles of particular political or religious philosophies.”

Because NPR was able to reach a private agreement with SoundExchange while the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee was not, the CRB rates apply to nonreligious commercial broadcasters but not to NPR. The CRB rates kick in for noncommercial religious stations with an average audience size of 218 listeners or more.

ADF says that this is, effectively, religious discrimination, even though SoundExchange, which is not technically a party in the lawsuit, contributed to the current state of conflict.

According to Gray, the Supreme Court will determine whether they will hear the case in mid-June. For the time being, religious broadcasters are stuck with the rates set by CRB. SoundExchange has also filed an appeal, arguing that the CRB’s 2021 ruling did not do enough to bring rates for webcasters in line with streaming services.

As the music industry struggles to adjust to a landscape dominated by streaming and social media, radio broadcasters are trying to modernize and find their place in it. Some industry veterans insist that the future of radio is online streaming, so the survival of noncommercial religious broadcasters depends on their ability to find a sustainable model under increasingly streaming-centric rules and regulations.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

News

Trash Problem Pushes Pastor to Action

Adam MacInnis

A Honduran church leads the way in local garbage collection while praying for an international plastics treaty.

Pastor Wilfredo Vásquez collects and sorts trash in Honduras.

Guevara Tearfund

A banner hangs outside the Church of God in the village of El Rincón, Honduras, that says, “Let’s be part of the solution, not the pollution.”

It’s a message pastor Wilfredo Vásquez posted after witnessing the harmful effects of plastics in his community.

“More and more, I understand that if we want to see changes in any area of society, we as children of God must take the initiative for those changes, because the church is the hope of the world,” he told CT.

Vásquez, who shepherds the Wesleyan-Arminian congregation in the Central American town of about 4,000 people, has started taking steps to help his community and hopes world leaders will do the same by establishing an international treaty on plastics.

From April 23 to 29, delegates from around the world met in Ottawa for the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-4). It’s the fourth stage in a five-stage process working toward an agreement that has the potential to change how plastic is handled globally.

If passed, experts believe it could have a similar impact on plastic usage as the Montreal Protocol of 1987 had on chemicals such as freon.

While the final stage of the process isn’t until November in South Korea, after the most recent round of discussions in Canada, delegates from more than 150 countries agreed to begin intercessional work. Right away, delegates will start meeting to develop ways to identify plastic products and chemicals of concern.

In El Rincón, 3,600 miles away from the latest round of discussions, Vásquez is praying for the treaty’s passage.

Vásquez knows exactly what’s at stake and what a difference even small changes can make, because he’s experienced it firsthand in his village. Speaking to CT through a translator, Vásquez shared about how until recently, there was no proper recycling or waste collection in his community.

“What people do with solid waste is either they throw it, they bury it, or they burn it,” he said.

The negative impacts could be seen all around. Trash littered playgrounds and sports fields. Smoke from trash fires polluted the air and caused respiratory problems for many people, including Vásquez’s mother-in-law.

“They close the doors and the windows and keep these people isolated,” Vásquez said. “They can’t go out because of the smoke.”

Compelled by love of neighbor and the biblical command to care for creation, Vásquez decided to do something to change what he saw.

He started encouraging church members and people in the community to stop burning trash. Then the church organized community cleanups and encouraged members to use reusable cups and utensils instead of single-use plastics.

Alongside Tearfund, a Christian charity that partners with churches in more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries, the pastor talked with community leaders and the local government about the need for waste collection.

The community now has a weekly garbage pickup. In addition, youth from Vásquez’s church collect and recycle plastic, while other recyclable waste is collected at sorting points established across the community.

As a result of these changes, the village is cleaner, and those with respiratory conditions can breathe easier.

Miriam Moreno, Tearfund’s environmental and economic sustainability manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, has worked with Vásquez to help make the changes in his community. One thing Tearfund did was fund containers for sorting waste.

“It’s very inspiring to have leaders like him to be able to share his experience and what he’s done,” she said.

Like Vásquez, Moreno says it is her faith which motivates her to do this work.

“I think it’s my responsibility as a Christian, and I feel very inspired to mobilize others and to get to know what others are doing,” she said.

She and Vásquez hope to encourage similar changes in other parts of Central America.

“While the waste collection and bins being installed in El Rincón will make a big difference to this community, there are hundreds of thousands more communities like this,” she said.

She believes addressing plastic pollution through an international treaty will be a key step toward helping impoverished countries.

“Everyone has heard the problems of plastic waste and pollution,” she said. “Everyone has a technical knowledge. But something that has been missing is that connection to make people aware of our responsibility as Christians to take care of creation.”

One of the people representing Tearfund at INC-4 is Rich Gower, a senior economist for the nonprofit. As an organization that works in more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries, he said, they’ve seen firsthand how plastic disproportionately impacts those living in poverty.

He said an estimated 2 billion people worldwide have no safe way to dispose of garbage. Like El Rincón, these places have few other options but to burn or dump their plastic and other waste on street corners and in open dumps.

“The results are wide-ranging and extremely harmful—causing toxic fumes; flooding; increasing the risk of cancer and other serious diseases like heart disease, respiratory infection, and other health conditions; and also creating climate emissions,” Gower said.

A Tearfund research paper, “No Time to Waste,” found that this results in the deaths of up to 1 million people each year.

Tearfund’s team at the UN talks is calling on governments to push for a treaty that fully addresses the impacts of waste on people living in poverty by ensuring four things are mandatory in the final agreement:

Reduction: legally binding targets to reduce plastic production and scale up reuse solutions
Recycling: universal access to waste collection and recycling
Respect: support for waste pickers, including a just transition
Response: mechanisms to ensure businesses and governments take action

Gower believes Christians have an important role to play in the process.

“Christians from around the world have joined together in Tearfund’s Rubbish campaign because we believe that every person created by God should be able to live a full life free from rubbish,” he said. “The growing waste crisis is having a huge impact on the lives of people living in poverty and is also harming God’s beautiful creation.”

The fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution will be held November 25 through December 1. If an agreement is reached, the plastics treaty could go into effect in 2025.

- More from Adam MacInnis

Share

Share

Share

In this series

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

A treacherous journey

Unseen and unheard

A new situation

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share