Venezuelan Churches Brace for Migration Wave After Disputed Maduro Election

Evangelicals call for peace amid violent crackdown against opposition demonstrators.

A protest in Venezuela against Nicolas Maduro winning the presidential election due to questions surrounding his victory.

Jesús Vargas / Stringer / Getty

Last Sunday, pastor César Mermejo preached about hope in difficult times to his congregation in Maracay, a city of 1.3 million that sits close to the Caribbean coast.

But he did so via a pre-recorded audio file he distributed via WhatsApp, following the Venezuelan government’s advisory against in-person gatherings on Election Day, held July 28.

In his digital broadcast to Comunidad Cristiana Mizpa Dios de Esperanza members, Mermejo reminded them of Psalm 98:1, which affirms that the Lord “has done marvelous things,” while also acknowledging that some in his congregation probably felt more like the speaker in Psalm 43:5 who asked, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?”

Many Venezuelans were anxious that night, hoping for a change that would end Nicolás Maduro’s nearly 12 years in office and 26 years of socialist rule since Hugo Chávez rose to power with the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). But others were apprehensive; Maduro had warned that the country could face a “bloodbath” if he didn't win the election.

After a delay in the disclosure of partial results, the Consejo Nacional Electoral, at around 1 a.m. on Monday morning, declared Maduro the winner.

Opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia did not concede but instead blamed election fraud for his purported defeat and declared himself president-elect. On Monday night, people burst onto the streets in cities throughout the country, demanding a recount.

As demonstrations have continued throughout the week, the government has confronted protesters with tear gas; other reports have emerged of unidentified people shooting at demonstrators. Through August 1, at least 11 people have died and more than 1,000 have been detained.

Many Venezuelan evangelical churches have joined the chorus of voices that reject the result proclaimed by the electoral authorities and suspect fraud. Some, by contrast, support Maduro, appreciative of his efforts to provide tangible resources to their congregations.

Primarily, evangelical leaders have called for peace. In his role as president of the Consejo Evangélico de Venezuela, Mermejo advised local churches to cancel worship services for the foreseeable future “for the safety of their congregants.”

The council also urged Christians to pray for the country with “calm and sanity” and requested “that the review of the tally sheets of the presidential elections be carried out in a transparent process, in accordance with the provisions of the legislation.”

The election protests present yet another challenge for a country that dealt with severe economic collapse, hyperinflation, political instability, and a humanitarian crisis, despite being home to the biggest oil reserves in the world. The United Nations estimates that 7.7 million Venezuelans currently live outside of the South American country, a number that has further destabilized the nation and its churches. (The in-country population is 29.4 million.)

The loss of so many of his fellow citizens is personal for José de los Santos Rodríguez, the former pastor of the Primera Iglesia Evangélica Libre de Maracaibo. His congregation of 50 people was located 80 miles from the Colombian border in what was once a flourishing city and a business hub for oil companies.

But Maracaibo “was turned into a pile of trash,” he said. “People started to go from house to house begging for food.”

Two years ago, the church closed its doors after all the members left the city.

“Most people left the country without any planning, without even asking God,” he said. “They left because they had no job and because what they earned wasn't even enough for transportation.”

Rodríguez has kept in touch with his former church members by recording and sending out 20-minute daily devotionals.

“I have people in Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, the United States, Spain, and Peru,” he said.

Today, his church members are among the nearly 3 million Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, the 1.5 million in Peru, and the half million each in Brazil and Chile. For many of these immigrants, Christian organizations played a key role in helping them build new lives.

Among them is Darvin Delnardo Tehn, a youth leader at Encuentro con Cristo, an evangelical church in Santiago, Chile, founded by German immigrants, which runs a nonprofit that offers short-term housing for migrant families. In 2017, at age 27, Delnardo, a university graduate, left a dead-end job and his hometown of Colonia Tovar, near Caracas, to start a new life in Chile.

Many supported Delnardo’s leap of faith.

“I left Venezuela with the blessing of my family and my church,” he said. “My pastor is always interceding for me.”

Delnardo’s pastor, Ender Urribarrí, confirmed that Delnardo confided in him his plan to migrate. Urribarrí didn’t try to dissuade Delnardo, but asked him to prepare to understand the cultural challenges of a new country and not to forget that “you have a mission there too.”

“God gives us the joy of exporting church leaders to other countries. Isn’t that wonderful?” said Urribarrí.

As his churchgoers have begun to emigrate, Urribarrí, who leads Iglesia Evangélica Encuentro con Dios in Colonia Tovar, has devised a plan to help them maintain a pastoral presence in their lives as they face uncertainty and hardship. For the first two years, he communicates consistently with those who have emigrated. By that point, he expects that they will be connected to a new local church and his communication drops to one call every three months, and then to twice a year.

This strategy has been working so far, he said. “When they visit Venezuela, they come to us. They still say ‘this is my church,’” he said.

Now Urribarrí is excited about the future: “I want to keep seeing what God will do in the church and in my country.”

Rodríguez thanks God that despite the dispersal of his former congregation, he has still been able to serve in full-time ministry. He and his wife receive pensions (though they add up to less than $10 USD a month), and he also receives the bono de guerra, a subsidy paid by the government to retired people that adds $100 to the family monthly income. Without this, he would be forced to spend all his money on his blood pressure medication.

“Every time we are in need of something, there is someone who helps out,” he said.

Rodríguez does not believe change in his country will result from the pressure exerted by foreign entities such as the US government, the European Union, and the Organization of American States. (On August 1, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a statement congratulating González for winning the elections in Venezuela and asserting that the claim of a Maduro victory does not represent the will of the Venezuelan people.)

“The Lord and his justice will change the country,” Rodríguez said. “I can’t say when it will occur, but I’m certain it will.”

Until then, Christians in Venezuela will have to keep finding ways to survive and aid their fellow citizens.

“What keeps us here in this country, fighting, is the love we have for this land and the faith we have in the Lord that he can bring an answer for Venezuela,” said Yosleiker Pérez, pastor of Ministerio Extendiendo el Reino de Dios, a Pentecostal church in north Caracas. “And for those who believe, everything is possible.”

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News

Black Christian Leaders Find Hope with Kamala Harris

Harvest Prude

The vice president’s faith and commitment to issues stirs enthusiasm among the traditionally Democratic voting bloc.

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris greets parishioners during a service at Corinthian Baptist Church in Iowa.

Justin Sullivan / Staff / Getty

Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t the type of politician to cite the Bible a lot.

Darryl Ford, the former pastor of a nondenominational evangelical church in Atlanta, thinks that might be a good thing.

“We’ve gotten used to seeing people who will make Bible quotations and pray for me on a Sunday, then vote to disenfranchise me on a Tuesday,” he told Christianity Today.

Ford and many other Black Christians say they care about the faith of the new Democratic Party nominee, who is replacing President Joe Biden on the ballot in November, but they’re focused more on issues than rhetoric. The former pastor says Black Christians support Harris because she has a good grasp on things like criminal justice and health care.

“Because she’s been in it, she’s lived amongst it. She’s not new to it,” he said. “Even if I don’t agree with her on a certain issue, I believe she has a good handle on what that issue actually is.”

Black clergy across the country report a new enthusiasm in an election year that was previously leaving voters feeling discouraged and depressed. African Americans have overwhelmingly supported Democratic candidates since the party threw its weight behind civil rights legislation in the 1960s. But having Harris at the top of the ticket has brought a new energy, reminding some of Barack Obama’s historic first campaign.

“It feels like 2008,” said Khristi Lauren Adams, an ordained Baptist minister who works at a private school in Baltimore County, Maryland. “I think there’s a similar sentiment happening right now.”

According to a recent YouGov poll, nearly 40 percent of Black people say they are enthusiastic about voting this November. Seventy-four percent say they plan to vote for Harris come November. A month ago, Black support for Biden’s reelection was only 69 percent.

“The reason you’re seeing the organic response from the Black faith community is because she belongs,” Matthew L. Watley, senior pastor at Kingdom Fellowship African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Maryland, told CT. “She’s one of us, and it’s been demonstrated for a long time.”

Harris hasn’t shied away from talking about her deep roots in the Black church tradition. In a 2022 speech at the Annual Session of the National Baptist Convention, USA, the largest traditionally Black denomination in the country, Harris connected her faith and politics, crediting her childhood church experiences for giving her a framework for action.

“I was raised to live my faith,” Harris said. “Marching for civil rights, my parents pushed me in a stroller. That was faith in action.”

Now her candidacy is motivating other Black Christians to action.

“We’re ten toes down—all the way in,” said Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes, co-pastor of The Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, New York, which is part of the Progressive National Baptist Convention. “We’re not saying this is a perfect person, no candidate is. … Kamala may not be leading with her faith, I’m okay with that,” she said. “I don't feel like she is dangling it for a vote.”

Some Black pastors who are known as theological conservatives have come out in support of Harris too. Dwight McKissic, senior pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas, and an influential Black leader in the Southern Baptist Convention until he left in 2021, praised Harris’s “superior qualifications” on social media.

“I believe the energy, synergy, fundraising, volunteerism, and momentum driving and characterizing her campaign … is unprecedented in American political history,” McKissic wrote. “Kamala Harris represents those who’ve been rejected among us. The support she’s galvanized is amazing to me.”

He said that while he doesn’t agree with Harris on everything, he will personally vote for her.

McKissic specifically disagrees with Harris’s positions on abortion. She is believed to be the first vice president to visit an abortion clinic, and has said she supports legislation protecting nationwide abortion access.

McKissic said since the Republican Party removed the commitment to push for a constitutional ban on abortion from the party platform, however, neither major party offers a pro-life ticket. He believes many Christians will make their decision based on who seems most qualified to be president of the United States. For him, it’s an obvious choice.

Harris is not without Black Christian critics, though. Some ministers are skeptical of where she would lead the country, if she makes it to the White House.

“I don’t feel that sense of hope that I sense that others might,” said Walter Harvey, pastor emeritus of Embassy Center MKE and president of the National Black Fellowship of the Assemblies of God.

In Harvey’s eyes, Harris’s positions on social issues are disqualifying. The Democrats have “championed some policies that are unbiblical to family, that are unbiblical as it relates to sexuality, and I think it’s cost the African American community,” he said.

His majority Black congregation in Milwaukee is pretty diverse politically. He expects a divided reaction to Harris’s candidacy.

“I think half would welcome her and champion her, be excited about her,” he said. “I think there’s the other half, or close to half, who would be challenged by her message … and would not want to endorse.”

A YouGov poll found that around 10 percent of Black voters plan to vote for Trump. Less than 10 percent are unsure of who they will vote for. Around 5 percent plan to vote for a third party candidate.

Harris is just now ramping up her presidential campaign, so it remains to be seen what kind of outreach she might do to try and persuade Black Christians like those in Harvey’s church in Wisconsin to vote for her. Since the announcement that Biden was stepping down and Harris was going to run, her longtime pastor, civil rights leader Amos Brown, has organized a “100 days of prayer” campaign.

Brown, who was once taught by Martin Luther King Jr. at Morehouse College, is well respected by Black Christians, and many have noted his relationship with Harris. One of the first things she reportedly did, preparing her run for the White House, was to call Brown and request prayer.

Harris has also established relationships with some Black churches in the greater DC area. She has occasionally attended Kingdom Fellowship, the AME church in Maryland where Matthew Watley serves as pastor. He told CT her most recent visit was a surprise. Watley got a phone call on Sunday morning from the vice president’s staff.

“She woke up and she wanted to come worship with us,” Watley recalled.

Harris may not be in a church pew every Sunday, but it is clear she “was formed by the church and still has the principles of Christian living,” Watley said. “I think any honest pastor would say that many of our parishioners move that way these days.”

Since Biden became president in 2020, he has brought in faith leaders from various traditions to hear their concerns, get their input, and ask for prayer and support, the AME minister said. Watley hopes that outreach will deepen if Harris wins.

“My prayer,” he said, “is that the party will once again embrace faith as central to its identity, as historically it always has.”

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Theology

Why Christians Rebuke Evil in the Name of Jesus

Nicole Massie Martin

In a moment of great fear, Sonya Massey understood the power of the name of Christ. We should too.

Mourners bring candles to a vigil in honor of Sonya Massey.

Aashish Kiphayet / AP Images / Edits by CT

It was the early ’90s when I was first introduced to the idea of rebuking the Enemy in the name of Jesus. My sister and I had just finished watching the horror movie Candyman, and I was scared out of my mind.

I cried when the movie was over, terrified to be alone, and I was certain that the man on the screen was out to get me. For days, the Candyman lingered in my thoughts, making it impossible to focus. I was lost in my fears until I shared them with my Aunt Judy, a God-fearing woman. As she listened to me and saw my tears, she reminded me that I did not have to be afraid. “All you have to do,” she said with a confident calm, “is rebuke the Enemy, and he will flee from you.”

I needed to hear that because, in my young mind, Candyman was not just an enemy from a movie but the Enemy. The next time thoughts of him entered my mind, I took a deep breath, gathering my small courage, and with eyes closed and fists clinched, shouted out loud, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!”

Peeking out of one eye, I felt calm for the first time since I’d watched the movie. My childish conception of evil may have been a little confused, but the peace and deliverance from the sense of foreboding evil that the name of the Savior brought me was deep and real.

Evil takes a different form when we become adults, a subtler and cleverer shape. Talk of the Devil is relegated to charismatics, and those who speak of Satan are often dismissed as unreformed, uneducated, or holdovers from the naive hellfire-and-brimstone version of Christianity that we moderns work hard to forget.

Maybe people in developing countries, where witchcraft is vibrant and corruption prevails, are seeing manifestations of evil, we might allow. But that doesn’t happen here. Not in America. Here, when we think of evil, we’re more likely to think of those across political and ideological divides. We might well rebuke them, but that has little to do with Jesus.

Yet the Bible is clear about the reality of evil and the importance of rebuke. God regularly exercises this power, from the cursing of Satan in Genesis (3:14–15) to the rebuke of Satan in Peter (Matt. 16:23) and the chastening of believers who do not repent (Rev. 3:19). In the Old Testament, we see God cursing operatives of the Enemy and reproving kings who do evil (Mal. 1:3; Ps. 11:5; Isa. 59:18; Jer. 22). In the New Testament, Jesus scolds religious leaders who act with evil intent (Matt. 23). Scripture assumes that evil is real, that it is the enemy of God, and that it is overcome by the name of Christ.

As believers, we still have the authority to rebuke in order to resist Satan and the evil of this world. Scriptural rebuke is not a personal power to be manipulated for our own purposes and rivalries. It is a weapon of spiritual warfare in God’s plan to “destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8), a sign of the intolerability of evil in the presence of a holy God.

Perhaps this is why Sonya Massey’s last instinct, before being fatally shot by a police officer in her Illinois home last month, was to rebuke evil in the name of Jesus.

Massey was reportedly having a mental health crisis when she asked police to come to her home to look for a possible prowler. We don’t know exactly what was going through her mind in her final exchange with the officer who shot her. But we do know that in extremis, in a moment of great fear, she understood that evil is defeated by the name of Jesus (Luke 10:17). She understood the truth that when we resist the Enemy, he will flee (James 4:7).

I don’t think, as some have speculated, that Sonya believed the officer who killed her was literally a demon. But because he had the audacity to authenticate his threat to shoot her in the face, there is no doubt that evil was present. As believers, “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12)—and these are the enemies Sonya was right to rebuke in her final moments.

She called on the only name that could save her. And while her life was not spared on this side, because of her faith in Jesus, we can be confident she has attained the eternal life for which we long.

Sonya’s story is a reminder of the necessity of rebuking evil—of refusing to be so “sophisticated” that we imagine ourselves not in need of God’s help in the face of the Enemy. With every generation, we yearn for the coming of Christ who will wipe every tear and finally destroy the advancing darkness of this world (1 Cor. 15:24–26; Heb. 2:14–15; Rev. 21:4). But until that time, it is our duty to rebuke the evil around us. The tactics of the enemy are not to be placated or normalized. They are to be bound and defeated.

For this reason, we must rebuke the evils of racism and sexism—not because we simply dislike them, but because they work against the equality of believers (Gal. 3:28) and the goodness of God. We must rebuke political idolatry and apathy to violence not because they are a threat to us, but because they are a threat to the power and peace of God. Our calling, as followers of Jesus, is to hate the evil that Jesus hated and to love the truth Jesus loved. While the Enemy is not always clear to us, and evil isn’t always easy to discern, God will overcome the Enemy once and for all.

The timing of that final victory is unknown, but God’s promise is sure. I pray that the church can find courage to hate evil as we cling to what is good (Rom. 12:9). The power to rebuke the Enemy is a privilege we cannot take lightly, a reiteration of the victory of Christ. The one who overcame death on the cross is the same one who overcame my childhood fears—and the same one who heard and loved Sonya Massey as she cried out for his help. In him, God has already triumphed over evil. In him, we can embrace the power of spiritual rebuke with confidence that, one day, evil will surely end.

Nicole Massie Martin is chief impact officer at Christianity Today.

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The Lessons of the Paris Olympics Tableau

Jared Boggess

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

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

Illustration by Christianity Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jared Boggess is CT’s print art director.

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What Good Can Come Out of Sing Sing?

Emily Belz

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

Courtesy of A24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And what did he think of the film?

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

Emily Belz is a staff writer on the news team.

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Theology

Our Perennial Political Temptation

Mark Caleb Smith and Emma Blakemore

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

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Books

5 Books on Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit

Kristin Elizabeth Couch

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

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

Keeping the Heart

John Flavel

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

The Mystery of the Holy Spirit

R. C. Sproul

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

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

Jonathan Landry Cruse

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

The Hiding Place

Corrie ten Boom

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

Safely Home

Randy Alcorn

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

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News

Choctaw Bibles Connect Christians with Native American Heritage

Hannah McClellan

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

PhotoEuphoria / Getty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from Hannah McClellan

Theology

The Paris Olympics’ Altar to an Unknown God

Taylor Worley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feast of the Gods by Jan van Bijlert

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

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

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

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

Baptism of Christ, a mosaic in Arian Baptistry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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History

A Short History of Parental Rights

Joseph K. Griffith II

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from Joseph K. Griffith II

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