Forgiveness Is an Art

The new movie “Exhibiting Forgiveness” depicts the dysfunction of generational trauma—and the freedom that’s on offer.

Andra Day as Aisha and André Holland as Tarrell in Exhibiting Forgiveness.

Stories are an advertisement for the virtues we value. And today’s stories are dominated by narratives that glorify personal indignation and revenge: John Wick, The Bourne Identity, and practically any heist film.

Meanwhile, forgiveness often feels archaic. And many films that broach the subject can fail to capture the complexity of real-life absolution, which rarely comes with a cheap confession or an obvious transformation.

Titus Kaphar’s Exhibiting Forgiveness is a laudable exception in an era of justified anger. The protagonist, Tarrell, portrayed by André Holland, is a painter about to have his life interrupted by the return of his once abusive and drug-addicted father, La’Ron, played by John Earl Jelks. The soulful Andra Day plays Tarrell’s wife, Aisha, the psalmist who gives musical context to the family’s lament. (I endorse any excuse to have Andra Day sing, no matter how contrived.)

Tarrell is a celebrated painter. Much like his paintings, Exhibiting Forgiveness is intentional in its composition, designed to focus the viewer on what’s consequential. The mise en abyme of importance is that forgiveness, like art, requires sacrifice, audacity, and long-suffering.

Aside from being a reputable artist, Tarrell is a loving father to his son and a devoted husband to his wife. Despite these virtues, he cannot seem to outperform his past trauma. As Bessel van der Kolk states in The Body Keeps the Score, “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body.”

Tarrell believes he can shake his anguish without seeking help. His distress not only lives in his body, causing panic attacks, but also provides the impetus for his profound work.

The dilemma of art is that we can make something valuable while failing to resolve the pain that inspired it. Tarrell is loved by his agent—but possibly exploited. He is loved by consumers—which is a kind of voyeurism. Only a few are concerned with the soul behind the product.

The film presents its major conflict when Tarrell’s father returns, sober and saved, from a 15-year absence, seeking reconciliation from the son he neglected. Despite encouragement from Tarrell’s mother, Joyce, played by Academy Award nominee Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Tarrell refuses to entertain the idea. Joyce shares a litany of Scripture to warn her son about the self-destruction of unforgiveness—but those seeds fall among thorns. Now, we discover the flaw in our protagonist. He is tormented by his own pride.

If you’re expecting sophisticated apologetics in this film, you will be disappointed. Kaphar has presented us with everyday people. Joyce is that one aunt who believes the truth of the Bible in her bones better than she can articulate it with her tongue. La’Ron is that uncle who has experienced the transforming power of the Spirit and now texts Scripture to you every day. They are just as obnoxious with their virtues as they were with their vices. But they both appear to understand the power of Matthew 18:21–35.

In this passage, Jesus presents to his disciples a parable of forgiveness that is layered with warnings. A servant forgiven of an enormous debt refuses to forgive a fellow servant’s small debt, leading to his own punishment and showing that we must forgive others as God forgives us. Once the master learns of the servant’s unforgiveness, he hands him over to jailers. This is a stark reminder that unforgiveness is itself a form of torment, a cycle that keeps us chained to bitterness.

The ironic tragedy in Exhibiting Forgiveness is that by withholding forgiveness from someone who once tormented him, Tarrell is tormenting himself. His false liberation is actually a prison. As Nelson Mandela wisely stated, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.”

Tarrell chooses the torment of resentment rather than the liberation of forgiveness because he doesn’t want to appear weak. But Christian forgiveness isn’t weak. It’s not a simple act of “letting go” or ceasing to hold something against someone. True reconciliation isn’t merely the absence of accusations; it’s the restoration of relationships to a state that existed before the offense occurred. Tarrell’s father has acknowledged his offenses, has done the work of repair, and desires that restoration.

Forgiveness, like art, is never finished. It is a daily practice of revision, a constant reconstructing of our understanding of both ourselves and those who have hurt us.

And, like art, forgiveness requires skill. It’s something that must be cultivated—through prayer, through practice, and through patience. Forgiveness doesn’t yield instant results, but it does yield enduring peace.

I found myself both applauding Tarrell’s progress and feeling unsatisfied with where he ends up. Forgiveness is a radical act, one that goes beyond human instincts and societal norms—but Tarrell doesn’t get radical enough. Without spoiling the film, I’ll say that the humanist in me was indulged, but the Christian had more questions. One of those questions: “Who is true forgiveness for?”

In a text exchange about the movie, theologian and friend K. A. Ellis shared this with me about forgiveness:

I’m learning from persecuted Christians that forgiveness is not solely for the guilty or the offended; forgiveness also serves as a witness to a watching world. Imagine millions of faithful Christians throughout history who, at their lowest moments, have uttered the same words as Jesus when he was hung on the cross: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Even as they’re physically punished, they pray forgiveness for those who hate and hurt them. … Such a thing is unfathomable apart from Christ.

Joyce encourages her son to be such a faithful witness. But she’s expecting the fruit of forgiveness from a tree that can only produce from the soil it was given. Tarrell was cultivated in anger and sorrow, but the very religion he mocks could be the rich ground he needs to flourish. In a moment of sincerity, he implores his father to continue to pray for him despite his refusing to embrace the biblical admonishment of his parents. His posture is “Be patient with me,” as the servant pleads in Matthew 18.

Exhibiting Forgiveness is an honest primer for the priesthood of believers. Some in the Black community might see the film as primarily dealing with the dysfunction of Black trauma. It could very well be that.

However, it can also be a kind of confession that leads to greater joy, fuller amnesty. This is artwork that can normalize forgiveness. As men reconcile with the trauma of their past, children will inherit the tools of emotional health, wives will rejoice, and our communities will witness redeemed portraits that reflect the forgiving Father in heaven.

It’s easy to get trapped in the colors of revenge and pain. Only through forgiveness can the full palette of life open up to us.

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

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Books

Excerpt

After Making Baseball History, Branch Rickey Faced a Spiritual Crisis

Paul Emory Putz

How the famed executive who signed Jackie Robinson found renewed hope in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

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

On a summer night in 1956 at a camp center in the mountains near Estes Park, Colorado, Branch Rickey took the podium. His task: to deliver an address to the 250 young men gathered for the inaugural Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) summer conference.

Well into his 70s, the aging Major League Baseball executive felt swept up in the moment. “If this group here tonight were to find themselves dedicated to a common cause,” he exclaimed, they could transform the United States “before the next generation is over.”

Rickey’s speaking role on the first night of the conference reflected his importance to the fledging FCA. Their relationship had begun in August 1954, when an unheralded 29-year-old college basketball coach named Don McClanen met with the baseball executive, sharing his vision for an organization of athletes mobilized to instill Christian values in America’s youth. “If athletes can endorse shaving cream, razor blades, and cigarettes,” McClanen reasoned, “surely they can endorse the Lord.”

When Rickey responded enthusiastically, McClanen had the final piece needed to launch his movement. The organization that became the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was born.

The significance of Rickey’s support for the FCA can hardly be exaggerated. Rickey had an elite sports pedigree. He had played in the big leagues and then carved out a long career in the front office, building championship teams with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The latter, under his direction, famously broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson.

Rickey was also a lifelong Methodist who remained committed to his faith. “I want to live the ideals of Christ every day, in business and on the athletic field,” Rickey explained. As the most prominent symbol of Christian faith in America’s most popular team sport, he was the prototype for the blend of sports and faith that the FCA sought to promote.

But the FCA provided something Rickey desired, too. In fact, a spiritual crisis in Rickey’s life the year before he first encountered McClanen had primed him to be on the lookout for something precisely like the FCA.

When McLanen came knocking on his door, Rickey saw something other than a no-name young man with big ideas and a bare resume.

He saw an answer to prayer.

Branch Rickey’s faith does not fit easily into the categories of “modernist” or “fundamentalist,” “mainline” or “evangelical.” One the one hand, he was a traditionalist who sought to follow the old-time Methodist religion passed down from his parents. Even as he made his way into professional baseball, he maintained his commitment to Sabbath observance, staying away from the ballpark on Sunday.

But he also supported ecumenical Protestant efforts to move beyond dogma and to find common ground on shared social issues. He read William James, the liberal philosopher of religion who located its power in the realm of personal experience. The church, Rickey believed, needed to help people see Jesus as a “live, dynamic force, willing to be put to the practical field test.”

The through line for Rickey’s faith, in both its traditional and modern forms, was that it needed to reach the individual person. In this way, his religious views were deeply tied to his view of America. He believed the country’s genius lay in the pioneering spirit of “rugged individualism.” By the 1920s, this led him to a growing concern with the influence of communism and socialism; collectivist systems, he believed, undermined the individual initiative that was necessary for the country to thrive.

Rickey’s suspicion of communism was heightened in the early years of the Cold War and the hysteria of the Red Scare. The entire country seemed to be on guard against the supposed threat of communism. In the minds of many Americans, it was lurking everywhere from the movie screen to the classroom—and, some believed, in the church as well.

In 1953, Rickey expressed his concerns to a Methodist official, asking about “the apparent socialistic tendencies” of some Methodist ministers and “the obvious identification of some of our theological professors with Socialism.”

Throughout 1953, Rickey’s worries about communist sympathizers within Methodism festered. Then, in November, Rickey’s faith received a shock. During lunch with his pastor, Robert Howe, and a Methodist bishop named Lloyd Wicke, the conversation turned to the Bible. Bishop Wicke, in Rickey’s telling, declared that the writers of the four Gospels offered contradictory versions of Jesus; he then informed Rickey that no one really believed that Jesus was born of a virgin.

When Rickey returned home, he reflected on Wicke’s comments, growing more and more disturbed. Was the bishop right? Was he mistaken to form his life around teachings found in a book full of contradictions?

Unable to sleep, pacing near the fireplace, he thought about throwing his well-worn Bible into the flickering flames. Rickey finally decided to lay out his frustration in a letter to Howe.

How could bishop Wicke, Rickey wondered, lead his congregation in reciting the Apostles’ Creed? How could he shepherd a Christian denomination when he did not believe basic Christian doctrines the laity took for granted? Rickey thought of his mother and father. “Neither of them would have been able to understand Bishop Wicke,” Rickey wrote, “but they always felt, I am sure, that they understood what Jesus said and by practicing what he preached they continuously increased their happiness and their belief in Jesus as the Christ.”

Rickey contrasted the bishop’s view of Jesus as a “social prophet” with his own view of a Jesus who “ministered to individuals, and right now.” The Sermon on the Mount, Rickey explained, “really makes me wish to be a good man—a better man. All of Matthew makes me believe that He is interested in me personally.”

Having vented his frustrations, Rickey ended his letter by resigning his membership from First Methodist Church.

Despite Rickey’s frustration, he stopped short of placing the letter in the mail. Rickey’s Methodist commitments were too strong, and the letter remained filed away with the rest of his papers.

Even so, it highlighted Rickey’s inner turmoil and his religious perspective. It revealed his continued focus on the practical usefulness of religion in an individual’s life. Rickey contrasted the bishop’s view of Jesus as a “social prophet” with his own individualistic conception of religion, highlighting throughout the letter what he called the “empirical knowledge” that grounded his and his parents’ belief in Christianity. By practicing their faith, they found it to be useful; by finding it to be useful, they found it to be true.

At the same time, the letter revealed the limits of Rickey’s pragmatism. Rickey was not a stickler for theological specifics, but for him Christian faith could only have practical meaning for an individual if it was grounded in core Christian doctrines about the deity of Christ and the reliability of the Bible. Rickey could not wholeheartedly follow a bishop who seemed to reject those beliefs.

In Rickey’s mind, more than his own Methodist faith was at stake—the future of the country depended on the continuation of personal Christian commitment. Theology and politics were intertwined. Bishop Wicke’s liberal theology and intellectualism could undermine America’s spiritual foundation and lead to communism.

Rickey’s shaken faith made him eager to connect with Christians who shared his approach to religion. In a letter to a friend a few months later, Rickey recounted it all: the lunch with Bishop Wicke, the letter he wrote but never sent, the distrust he felt for denominational leaders. “If I were ‘testifying’ in an old-time Methodist class meeting,” he reported, “I would close my remarks surely,—‘pray for me, my Christian friends, pray for me,’—and I would really mean it.”

Don McClanen knew nothing about this in April 1954 when he announced his FCA idea with a letter sent out to 20 prominent Christian athletes and coaches across America, including Rickey. The goal, McClanen explained in the letter, was to “provide an opportunity” for athletes and coaches “to speak and witness for Christ and the wholesome principles of good character and clean living to the youth of our nation.”

McClanen followed his letter with a summer road trip where he could make his pitch in person. In August, just before returning to Oklahoma, he met with Rickey in Pittsburgh. What was supposed to be a short conversation stretched for hours, ending with Rickey’s enthusiastic endorsement and support.

McClanen had the key leader he needed to provide respectability and legitimacy to his upstart organization. Rickey had renewed hope for the future.

By gathering Christian athletes under one banner, the founding of the FCA marked the beginning of a new era and the launch of a movement—the rise of a religious sports subculture that would come to define and shape what it meant to be a “Christian athlete” in the decades to come.

That subculture, in turn, was deeply shaped by the twin desires that motivated Rickey: finding an authentic faith that could speak to the everyday experiences of athletes and coaches, and connecting that faith with the destiny and direction of the American nation.

Paul Emory Putz is director of Truett Seminary’s Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University. This essay is adapted from his book, The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (Oxford University Press).

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News

How Mexican Christians Reacted to Indigenous Inauguration Blessing

Franco Iacomini

“Not everything in our culture is bad or satanic,” explained a Zapotec evangelical leader.

Claudia Sheinbaum (center) takes part in an indigenous ceremony as part of her inauguration as the new president of Mexico.

Cristopher Rogel Blanquet / Stringer / Getty

On October 1, Claudia Sheinbaum became Mexico’s first female president. Like her predecessors, she was sworn in at the Palacio Legislativo de San Lázaro and gave her inaugural address in front of the Congreso General.

But her inauguration day also included a ceremony offered by a group of indigenous and Afro-Mexican women after she proceeded to the Plaza de la Constitución. The women, who represented several of Mexico’s 68 indigenous groups or were descended from free and enslaved Africans, handed her the bastón de mando y servicio. After Sheinbaum received the baton, a gesture symbolizing that the indigenous community had recognized her authority, she participated in a cleansing ritual led by a Mazatec healer.

The ritual, according to the official program for the ceremony, was to prepare her to exercise her leadership wisely and with prosperity, resulting in blessings such as health for all and good harvests.“Claudia, may the sacred elements accompany you, may the holy water always purify your soul, may the air always be with you, may our dear Mother Earth always bless you,” pronounced the celebrant, as incense burned. “We invoke the nahuales, the deities, and other divine beings and spirits that inhabit this place. We ask for life, enlightenment, and wisdom for the constitutional president, Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo.”

During the ritual, Sheinbaum and the representatives of the indigenous groups raised their arms with open hands and faced in each cardinal direction, asking the “divine forces of nature” for energy, wisdom, forgiveness, reconciliation, peace, and good health.

Then, the group turned to the “center of the earth”—which, for the ancient Aztecs, was located in the Temple of Tenochtitlan, one block from the ceremony site.

“From the center of the earth, we ask for forgiveness from our earthly mother. Because we have not respected her, we have suffered these climate changes with her,” said the celebrant as the event concluded.

Not many Mexican Christian leaders have spoken out in disagreement with this blessing, despite its nod to indigenous mythology and nahuales or naguales, guardian spirits that have the ability to communicate with gods and humans and to change their appearance from humans to animals.

“I don’t even know if the president has faith in those rituals,” said Luis Chávez, the president of the Unión Nacional de Traductores Indígenas, an organization dedicated to translating the Bible into the 68 indigenous languages and their 364 variations spoken in present-day Mexico. “But we understand that our peoples have a cultural identity, and not everything in our culture is bad or satanic.”

As a Zapotec whose community is based in the present-day state of Oaxaca, Chávez saw parts of the ceremony that he and other indigenous Christians could affirm.

“Although they are sometimes far from the Christian principles in which we believe, these rituals demonstrate principles of valuing life, nature and respect for authorities, whom our people recognize and obey,” he said.

Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known more commonly as AMLO, first incorporated the bastón de mando y servicio, an acknowledgment of the 23 million people (19 percent of the Mexican population) who still live in indigenous communities, during his 2018 inauguration. In November 2020, he took part in another traditional rite during a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) event honoring those who had died in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Similar practices have also been adopted in other countries; former Bolivian president Evo Morales’ 2006 and 2015 inaugurations included traditional ceremonies, as did Colombian president Gustavo Petro’s 2022 inauguration.

Among the critics of the inauguration ritual was Father Eduardo Hayén Cuarón, parish priest of the Ciudad Juárez Cathedral and director of the weekly newspaper Presencia. “Everything seems harmless: women are lifted up, and peace, harmony, and good vibes are offered,” he wrote on X. “But we must point out that these are witchcraft rituals and are, in fact, a form of implicit worship of the devil.”

The cleansing ritual was a “shamanic ceremony,” wrote Aarón Lara, the president of the Ibero-American Congress for Family and Life. “Of course, it violates the secular state, which a few hours earlier Sheinbaum promised to uphold and guarantee for all citizens.”

A secular state since 1857, Mexico has nevertheless been a deeply religious country, one where Spanish colonizers built cathedrals over the ruins of ancient Aztec temples and many locals developed a syncretistic faith that is now deeply embedded in local culture. Contact of these indigenous belief systems with Christianity (and even with pre-Christian European influences that accompanied the Spanish colonizers) resulted in exuberant celebrations, like those of Día de los Muertos.

In many ways, these ceremonies are less about undermining the state’s official secularism and more about honoring indigenous cultures, something that has become more prominent in Mexico in recent decades, says Alejandra Ortiz, co-coordinator of the Logos and Cosmos Initiative in Latin America for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

On the other hand, some feel confused by the mixture of beliefs present in people’s daily lives. “I see [the ceremony and the reactions to it] as part of the extensive religious syncretism we have in Mexico,” said Sally Isáis, director of the missionary agency Misión Latinoamericana de México.

Isáis notes that although political parties don’t align with religion, they borrow its terms and images. For instance, Sheinbaum’s party, formerly called the Movimiento Regeneración Nacional, now goes by Morena. “The very name Morena alludes to the ‘Brown Virgin,’ the Virgin of Guadalupe,” said Isáis, referring to the patron saint of the Americas and a title used for the specific appearance of the Virgin Mary in Mexico.

The nickname La Virgen Morena or La Morenita arose after Mary allegedly appeared to Nahua peasant Juan Diego in 1531 and he described the woman who visited him as having a dark-skinned face (in Spanish, piel morena). The story of the virgin appearing to a native led to a mass conversion of indigenous people—9 to 10 million people reportedly became Catholic in 10 years—but also led many new converts to see Mary as related to the local deity Tonantzin, the Aztec mother goddess. That aspect of Catholicism melded with pre-Hispanic religious practices to both aid the church’s popularity and help traditional belief systems survive.

Despite Mexico’s robust religiosity, Sheinbaum has a relatively ambiguous relationship with religion. Her father was the son of Ashkenazi Jews who left Lithuania in the early 20th century, and her mother was the daughter of Sephardic Jews from Bulgaria, but Sheinbaum does not practice Judaism. On some occasions, she has appeared in clothing adorned with Catholic saints. During her campaign, she met with evangelical leaders.

In her inauguration speech before the Congress, Sheinbaum defined herself as “a mother, grandmother, scientist, and woman of faith, and from today, by the will of the people of Mexico, the constitutional president of the United Mexican States,” she said.

Evangelicals represent around 14 million of Mexico’s 126 million inhabitants. There are no clear statistics on the number of indigenous evangelicals, but Chávez estimates that they may make up 20 percent of the community or about 4.5 million people.

That would make the proportion of evangelicals among indigenous people significantly higher than that in the country at large. And they face strong opposition in their communities, which has contributed to Mexico ranking 37th in the World Watch List, the religious persecution ranking compiled by the organization Open Doors.

“In some indigenous communities, those who decide to abandon ancestral and traditional beliefs to follow Jesus face ostracism, fines, incarceration and forced displacement,” states this year’s Open Doors report.

Evangelicals who refuse to make financial contributions to fund Roman Catholic celebrations may be punished by their neighbors, who cut off their access to services like electricity or water.

The US government has previously questioned Mexican authorities over religious persecution, including mistreatment of indigenous evangelicals. As recently as last year, the State Department’s international religious freedom office reported that diplomats had met with state and federal government officials responsible for religious and indigenous affairs as well as with Catholic Church leaders to express concerns.

In April, neighbors and local authorities attacked the 172 members of a Baptist congregation in the state of Hidalgo, cutting off power to their homes and blocking access to their church. Their attackers explained the raid as punishment because the Christians had not paid “their dues” to the Catholic Church and claimed the right to enforce the customs and traditions of indigenous communities.

Article 2 of the Mexican Constitution guarantees indigenous peoples the right to “apply their own normative systems in the regulation and resolution of their internal conflicts.”

When Christians outside of these communities label indigenous peoples’ practices as witchcraft, their disapproval can add to the pressure on indigenous Christians.

“There are segments of the Christian population who can go so far as to satanize all indigenous principles,” said Chávez. “I call on the church in Mexico and globally to continue teaching our people biblical principles without imposing different cultural forms. It is about respecting culture while teaching a better way.”

- More from Franco Iacomini

Ideas

Bring the Evangel, Leave the ‘Ism’

Janel Breitenstein

The harvest of spiritual seekers today is aplenty, but the mentality of the workers is outdated.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash

If you grew up in the modern evangelical world, you’re familiar with old-school evangelism methods: walking along a beach, clutching brochures in sweaty hands. Memorizing the Romans Road and cinching knots in beaded, wordless bracelets, we stood ready to deliver our formulaic gospel presentations. And to be clear, methods like these have wrought beautiful eternal ends over the years.

Yet I wonder if our approach to evangelism is evolving as rapidly as the changing culture we hope to love. In 2022, an Evangelism Explosion study released by Lifeway Research reported that 35% of respondents would feel less open to continuing a faith conversation that employed pamphlets, brochures, or phone apps.

We may not see as many Christians handing out tracts today, but there are many modern-day equivalents—impersonal faith-sharing strategies that can leave the hearer with the impression You don’t even see me. Perhaps now via an app, a platitude offered on a social media post, an apologetics argument removed from the soul-questions of the asker—we may inadvertently communicate that the gospel is a one-size-fits-all, plug-and-play solution rather than the Good News of a God who levels his gaze, offers his presence, and engages us directly with our individual stories and needs.

This disconnect also discourages many believers from even wanting to share their faith. Curiously, the same Lifeway study referenced above found that while the majority of Americans are open to faith conversations, most of their Christian friends “rarely talk about their faith.” Likewise, a 2019 Barna report found that while 73% of millennials feel equipped to share their faith, close to half (47%) aren’t sure they even agree with the ethics of evangelism.

Perhaps the reason we feel so uncomfortable sharing the gospel is that our mentality lacks integrity and authenticity and often sees people as projects. But what if we reframed our understanding of evangelism, such that even the most disenchanted could fall in love with sharing their faith?

First, we know much reluctance toward Christianity these days is due to the image problem of the church. Close to one in five non-Christians claim hesitancy toward Christianity due to overpoliticization, and nearly half (42%) of those with no faith report resistance due to the hypocrisy of religious people—unsurprising given the abuse crisis among Christian leaders. Surveys and studies consistently show American Christians are perceived as self-righteous and judgmental or simply inauthentic, unsafe, and irrelevant.

In Evangelism in a Skeptical World, Sam Chan writes, “When our non-Christian friends think of Christianity, they don’t think of good news, salvation, forgiveness, restoration, justice, mercy, or love. Instead, they think of hate, fear, power, and violence.” They see Christians as hating and treating gay people contemptuously, as worse sinners than the ones guilty of any other sinful lifestyle, like those listed in Prov. 6:16–19 or 1 Cor. 6:9–10. In short, for non-Christians who prize the ethics of equality, rights, and justice, Chan reasons, Christians are seen as oppressors rather than friends of the oppressed.

This perception is particularly problematic with Gen Z. Instead of viewing religion as a set of truth claims to be dismissed on its own terms, the next generation is characteristically one of “ethical absolutism, [where] some discard and denounce any religious outlook that seems to produce unpopular ethical conclusions,” observes Benjamin Vincent in a previous CT piece.

Consider, too, the possible need to approach Gen Z and Alpha as we would do for honor/shame cultures of the Majority World. Many young people today are geared toward saving face or, perhaps via cancel culture, “finding ways of shaming people who are considered a threat to their social group,” explains one youth pastor. Rather than revealing Jesus as the antidote to a personal guilt they don’t feel—how might they respond to him as a communal shame-lifter?

In an article entitled “How to Share Jesus so He’s Actually Good News,” Asian American Tony Wee writes of how the guilt-innocence gospel framing failed to reach him growing up in a collectivist family. Even in his youth, Wee cared far more about the shame or honor of his community than about his own individual guilt. And like Wee, most of my own teenagers and their friends hardly seem concerned by personal guilt. But shame? Shame, they understand.

Wee encourages us to consider how the gospel offers radical solutions to a new set of burning questions: “How can we present the good news for their unique longings—to the point they might genuinely find it beautiful (Romans 10:14-15)?” For instance, youth pastor Sean Dotson proposes tracing shame for this generation throughout the Bible and exposing how “Jesus conquers shame through his death and His resurrection,” serving as the scapegoat for the shame of all humanity.

Rest assured, the burning questions and longings are there. As a missionary and mother of teenagers, I see so many of my kids’ peers feeling their way toward God (Acts 17:27)—like the many Gen Zers among the 50,000 people who flocked to the Asbury outpouring. One article [with research on a spirituality-focused app for younger generations] that “most Gen Z (77%) consider themselves spiritual … and over half (51%) of millennials report feeling deep spirituality at least weekly.”

A wider understanding of all God saves us from isn’t just advantageous for non-Christians. In The 3D Gospel: Ministry in Guilt, Shame, and Fear Cultures, Jayson Georges observes that “a one-dimensional gospel […] threatens the veracity and integrity of the Bible. We misread Scripture and construct a sub-biblical view of God. If God does not save us from shame and fear … we severely minimize his glory.”

When we seek to grasp all dimensions of the gospel and its saving power, we put ourselves in a position to know God more deeply and make him known more effectively. To that end, we might ask ourselves what questions the gospel has answered for us and healed in our own hearts.

How have we beheld different facets of God in various seasons of our own lives? Can we truly proclaim that “which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched … concerning the Word of life” (1 John 1:1)? Does our experience of Jesus and his healing demonstrate “the power of God that brings salvation” (Rom. 1:16)?

As Ruth Haley Barton describes in Life Together in Christ, effective evangelism acts as “an invitation to spiritual transformation offered by someone who can bear witness to that transformation in their own life.” Or to paraphrase Spurgeon, we are beggars telling other beggars where we found bread; humility is an irreplaceable ingredient. But before we can rightly offer this sustenance to others, we must first examine how we have personally tasted and seen (Ps. 34:8) Jesus as our Bread of Life (John 6:35)—not just when we were first saved, but for fresh manna day after day.

With that kind of authenticity and self-awareness, initiating conversations about Jesus becomes as natural as it is inescapable. Let what pastor Trevin Wax observes of his believing friend be said of us: “it would have been impossible for us to form a lasting friendship without talking about Christ. His Christianity was so central to his identity that it could not go unnoticed or unmentioned.”

I am always ready to talk about Jesus—whether on the beach, in line at the grocery store, or in the comments of a social media post. I still strike up conversations with people who sit next to me on flights and share testimonies of all that God’s done in my life. Sensitivity to social situations and awareness of others’ needs doesn’t dampen our courage, our urgency, or the frequency with which we share about the love of Jesus. It simply prevents us from doubling as an annoying gong (1 Cor. 13:1).

It’s also easier for us to lean into this authenticity (rather than forcing a “gospel” conversation ill-suited to the moment) when we remember that salvation belongs to God alone (Rev. 7:10) and only the Holy Spirit can truly change a human heart. God’s preferred method of reaching people is through the body of Christ as his ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:19–20), but his process is ultimately a long-suffering, journeying one. As Paul said, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God gave the growth” (1 Cor. 3:6).

Which means, in our approach to evangelism, we must hold in tension both eager exigency and peaceful patience. When I served as a missionary in a Muslim context, I learned about the Engel scale’s fifteen stages of someone’s posture toward Christ—spanning from the time when someone has no awareness of God to the moment they feel comfortable sharing their faith with others. I knew I might never move someone from 1 to 15. But guiding someone from a 3 to a 6? That was cause for gratitude.

Being present, opening ourselves to empathy, and embarking on the often painstaking yet vital process of establishing trust must critically precede any method or strategy. We must prepare ourselves for the long haul of receiving someone’s searing pain or unshakable questions if we are to avoid bypassing the suffering of others, not unlike the priest and the Levite who walked past the man bleeding by the wayside.

Drawing near to those who seem far off empowers us to respond to their church hurt with compassion rather than defense (2 Tim. 2:24). We learn the invaluable skill of active listening (James 1:19), so we know when to pose thoughtful, tell-me-more questions and when to share our own stories (1 Pet. 3:15).

The late Steve Douglass, former president of Cru, once remarked from stage at a missions conference I attended in 2003, “The gospel flows best through the holes in people’s lives.” Each of those holes are specific to the person: No doctor would perform CPR as an antidote to a broken femur. And when we take the time to listen each person’s story and pinpoint their pain, we can offer words of life that bind and heal their unique wounds.

For this reason, Galatians exhorts us to “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (6:2). The former action satisfies the latter command in ways that are messy, self-sacrificial, unique to every person—and decidedly unformulaic. This is, after all, how God bears our burdens.

God descending to dwell with us now and forever—to the point of carrying our sorrows (Isa. 7:14; 53:4)—underscores the steep prerequisite of modeling this all-in love as people first encounter Jesus. Evangelism extends its plea from a high priest who keenly sympathizes with weakness (Heb. 4:15). Christ alone is the unique balm for both my crippling pains and theirs, where God himself shoulders all our suffocating burdens and responds to our overwhelming questions.

Even in his ministry, Jesus responded to vastly differing needs with responses that were equally diverse. Jesus repeatedly addressed his listeners with dignity, engaging their needs with unconditional love—often long before he ever asked them to follow him. As John Marriott reminds us, Christ met each person wherever they were, with kindness that led them to repentance (Rom. 2:4). “Think of the woman at the well,” Marriott writes. “Zacchaeus. The woman caught in adultery. All had rejected him with their lifestyles. But Jesus pursued them, loved them, and kept the conversation going.”

The high calling and standard set by Jesus’ unconditional love does not change, whether its message is accepted or not. Even after Adam and Eve’s rejection of God, courtesy of their sin, he kept leaning in. And in a culture where Christians are viewed as either pretentious or suspicious—and impersonal evangelistic agendas can be sniffed out a mile away—our desire to share the good news about Jesus must be modeled after his example. That is, any compulsion to talk about our faith must proceed from a deep conviction of our own testimony and an even deeper regard for the recipient.

So don’t throw away that impromptu chat on the beach about the hope you have! But just as the Great Commandment precedes the Great Commission in every Gospel, we first love our neighbor, so we evangelize—not the other way around. And in both directives, our obedience to Christ is as urgent as ever.

Janel Breitenstein is the author of Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids’ Hearts and a missionary with Engineering Ministries International, with which she served in Uganda for five years.

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Lebanon Evangelicals Serve Shiites Displaced by Hezbollah-Israel War

Jayson Casper

Despite safety risks and strained resources, churches work hard to help Muslims unaccustomed to experiencing Christian love.

Shiite women and their children who fled south Lebanon for shelter in Beirut.

Marwan Naamani / AP Images

On September 23, Mustafa put his family of five on a small motorbike and drove seven hours north from Tyre to a village in the Lebanese mountains, weaving slowly through lines of gridlocked vehicles. Some in those cars—like his brother Hussein’s family of six—would not arrive for another two days.

The path normally takes two hours.

Mustafa, and thousands like him, were frantically fleeing Israeli bombs aimed at Hezbollah, the Shiite militia designated by the US government as a terrorist organization. Until that moment, he and his brother had been agricultural workers in a farm outside the city, living in a spartan two-bedroom apartment provided by his employers.

CT agreed to withhold his family name for security reasons. Mustafa is a Christian originally from Afrin, a Kurdish area in northwest Syria. Asked if he shared his brother’s faith, Hussein said, “Not yet.”

Their home nation does not recognize converts from Islam. And while Lebanon is the only Arab nation to grant freedom of conversion, Tyre is a socially conservative Shiite city under the political sway of Hezbollah.

This was Mustafa’s second displacement. In 2013, he and his brother fled the Syrian civil war. But over the past five years, as poverty rates tripled in Lebanon, the nominal Sunni Muslims found support from a local Christian ministry offering aid.

Eighteen months ago, Mustafa professed faith in Christ.

“I follow Jesus,” he said. “He saved me.”

When Israel began its ground invasion of Lebanon, it issued evacuation orders to both Muslim and Christian villages in the south. But the large majority of the displaced come from Shiite areas suspected of housing weapons depots and underground tunnels—where resident Shiites may or may not align with Hezbollah’s Islamist ideology.

According to a survey conducted in early 2024, while 78 percent of Shiites viewed positively the militia’s role in regional affairs, only 39 percent said they felt closest to Hezbollah among Lebanon’s political parties, compared to 37 percent of Shiites who felt closest to none.

Only 6 percent of Christians had “a lot of trust” in the Shiite militia.

Within these realities, Christians are eager—and cautious—to help. Gospel commitments and national solidarity require hospitality. Sectarian guardedness encourages suspicion. And Israel’s bombing campaign creates fear that welcoming the displaced might make them a target.

Many are helping anyway.

Mustafa and Hussein found shelter in living quarters offered by an evangelical church in the mixed Muslim-Christian village where they sought refuge. A plastic rug covered half of the cement floor in their private allotment, with thin mattresses pressed up against the walls. Blankets and pillows strewn about were evidence of their children’s fitful night of sleep.

“This is our message: to show love in action as we lead people to Christ,” the church’s pastor said. (CT is granting him anonymity due to the uncertain political situation in Lebanon.) “As they receive, we teach them to give.”

His congregation currently hosts about 100 people, displaced from their homes in the south and in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. More than half are from neighboring Syria; the rest are primarily Lebanese Shiites. The pastor said 60 percent of the total are believers in Jesus. Others, like Hussein, are their relatives or Muslims already closely connected to churches in their original area.

They all pitched in to prepare 500 tuna sandwiches for local distribution.

Not Just Talk

Hezbollah’s current conflict with Israel began last year on October 8, one day after Hamas invaded from Gaza and killed approximately 1,200 Israelis, taking 250 hostages. The Lebanese militia initiated what it called a “support front” for Hamas, launching missiles that caused 80,000 Israelis to flee from villages near the border.

A similar number of Lebanese also fled from Israel’s retaliation, and for 11 months the two sides had kept their missile exchange relatively contained, aiming to avoid a larger and perhaps regional conflict with Iran, which backs both Hamas and Hezbollah as proxy forces.

That status quo held despite the deaths of 12 Druze children, hit by a Hezbollah missile in the Golan Heights, and Israel’s increased targeting of militia leaders inside Lebanon, Syria, and Iran. US-led negotiations to de-escalate or stop the fighting failed to overcome Hezbollah’s insistence on a simultaneous ceasefire in Gaza. And on September 17, Israel included the return of northern citizens to their homes as an official war goal.

Hours later, an attack of exploding pagers, and, the next day, of walkie-talkies—widely suspected to be conducted by Israel despite its official denial—killed tens and wounded thousands of militia members and affiliated medical personnel in Lebanon and Syria. Six days later, the bombing campaign began. Israeli officials reportedly stated their policy was “de-escalation through escalation.”

Lebanon estimates that the fighting has displaced 1.2 million of its 6 million residents. More than 950 public schools, warehouses, and other facilities now serve as shelters. Ninety percent of the displaced, nearly half of whom are children, are unable to meet their basic needs.

The above-mentioned mountain village pastor secured permission from the Muslim-led municipality to provide aid alongside several other relief groups in coordination with a local ministry run by a church elder.

One local assistance coordinator, a member of the heterodox Druze Muslim community, said “the church is number one” in providing help, while some other groups “say they are helping but are mostly just talk.”

But with classrooms throughout the country filled with families seeking refuge, he laments that his three children have nowhere to go for school.

The last Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, in 2006, sent 900,000 people from their homes. Then, churches and citizens of all sects rallied to help, but today, the resources are far fewer.

Many are reluctant to rent their apartments to displaced Shiites, afraid the refuge seekers cannot—or will not—continue to pay. Hyperinflation and a 98 percent currency devaluation had many Lebanese already scurrying simply to provide for themselves. Political gridlock has kept the nation without a president for two years, while the prime minister works in a caretaker capacity.

Who to Blame?

Many people blame Hezbollah.

“I am against Shiites in politics, but in humanity we can’t refuse to help them,” said the Druze assistance coordinator. “We suffered from Syria; we suffered from Iran. Maybe we are waiting for America to help.”

American and French diplomats attempted to broker a three-week ceasefire in Lebanon, and the Lebanese foreign minister stated that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had agreed. Days later, an Israeli airstrike using bunker-buster bombs leveled four residential apartment buildings and killed Nasrallah in his underground quarters. US officials denied knowledge of Nasrallah’s approval.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly agreed to ceasefire negotiations, then backtracked. Israel stated its war is against Hezbollah, not Lebanon. Netanyahu, addressing the Lebanese, referenced the campaign against Hamas.

“You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza,” he stated. “Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”

Lebanon has long officially supported implementation of UN resolution 1701, adopted to end the 2006 war. It calls for the disarmament of all militias and the withdrawal of Hezbollah beyond the Litani River, about 18 miles north of the Israeli border. But Lebanon’s 2008 effort to dismantle the militia’s private communication network failed after Hezbollah’s armed show of force in Beirut.

The United States is reportedly pushing now for Lebanese politicians to elect a president, who, under an unwritten but 80-year-old agreement, must be a Maronite Christian. Members of the Lebanese parliament, divided equally between Muslims and Christians, elect the head of state.

But Christians are divided into two main political parties and other smaller ones, some of which ally with Hezbollah as a political entity to win support from the Shiite electorate. Prior to the Israeli escalation, leading Shiite politicians repeatedly blocked completion of the voting process for the Christian president, insisting on a candidate sympathetic to Hezbollah’s cause.

But the two primary Christian party heads are understood to nurture presidential ambitions and have failed to work together consistently to represent their community.

“I blame Christian leaders—they work for their own interests, not the interests of our country,” the mountain village pastor said. “If you give the space to others, you can’t blame them when they take it.”

In 2000, Hezbollah won widespread social favor, even from many Christians, by compelling Israel to end its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon, originally intended to impose a buffer zone against incursions of Palestinian militants. Since then, the militia squandered Sunni Muslim support by entering the civil war in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad, publicly confirmed in 2013. Ordinary Christians joined many in disenchantment when Hezbollah sided with sectarian leaders against the 2019 popular revolution, ushering in the past five years of economic decline.

The militia’s support for Hamas prompted “We Don’t Want War” posters throughout Beirut.

Offering Christian Love

“We are angry. Without any consultation with the government, Hezbollah dragged Lebanon to war,” said Joseph Kassab, president of the Supreme Council of the Evangelical Community in Syria and Lebanon, who said no lasting peace can come through violence. “Many Christians feel that Israel has no restrictions in war, and the militia was wrong to provoke its enemy.”

The winds of change are blowing, however, said Jihad Haddad, pastor of True Vine Church in Zahle, a Christian town in the Bekaa Valley, as he modified a Chinese proverb: Some build walls to resist the wind; windmills would better serve ministry. Since Christians have no political voice in the current conflict, he is directing his efforts to support the displaced.

The relief center at the church already distributed 2,000 food parcels a month before the current escalation, with much grown on its own farmland. To care for the many now sheltering in schools, the church has adapted the parcels so they provide nutrition without requiring cooking. The displaced also face a shortage of blankets, but the church has already emptied its warehouse.

Haddad sees a revival on the horizon, but it is not easy. Lebanon, he said, is stuck between the “hammer” of Israel and the “anvil” of Hezbollah. Missiles have hit one mile from his home and, in the other direction, one mile from the church.

Perceptions of Gaza create poignant fear.

“We are very cautious about welcoming families we don’t know,” Haddad said. “Where Israel finds militants, they bomb them.”

The people of Zahle, he said, carefully check Shiites for affiliation with Hezbollah. True Vine has provided shelter in church apartments for 17 families connected to the congregation, as believers and others seek out what they hope is safety in a Christian location. But Haddad also fears that if the church were to become overwhelmed by housing all those seeking refuge, it could not provide services to everyone.

Church-based help across denominations has made a strong impression.

“If there had been no Christians in Lebanon, we would have been devoured,” stated Mohamed al-Hajj Hassan, a Shiite sheikh known for his opposition to Hezbollah, in a widely shared video clip of his television interview. “They are the ones who protected us and helped those who roam the streets. They are the ones who took in our women and children.”

Christians could have sided with Israel, he said. Shiites must now “reexamine our conscience and think about whether we may have wronged our partners in the country.”

Thimar / Edits by CT

Volunteers supported by Thimar prepare meals for the displaced

Such appreciation, however, does not make it any easier for evangelicals to open the doors of their institutions, said Nabil Costa, head of the Association of Evangelical Schools in Lebanon. Its 35 schools serve 20,000 students, a mix of Christians and Muslims. Lebanon’s government compelled a Seventh-day Adventist school in a Shiite neighborhood in downtown Beirut to provide shelter for the displaced.

Costa said evangelicals will be willing to open their schools once the government decides all private school facilities are needed to help. This can include discussion of how to cooperate with the education ministry to provide supplementary instruction for public school children forced from their classrooms.

The war has displaced 40 percent of Lebanon’s 1.25 million students.

Costa also heads Thimar, the local Baptist social service organization overseeing Beirut Baptist School (BBS), which negotiated with the government to transform its campus into a distribution center for the displaced. Located three miles north of the densely populated Dahiyeh area of Beirut, where Nasrallah was killed, the school’s vicinity is not currently threatened by Israeli airstrikes. But amid the ferocious echo of regular bombing, BBS assists seven nearby public and private institutions that host the displaced, providing 700 daily meals. Additional aid is provided to mountain churches.

“We have no right to reject refugees,” Costa said. But he cautioned the government, “Do not take advantage of our Christian love.”

Open Our Hearts

Some, even among the displaced themselves, are offering it freely.

On Monday, September 23, Laya Yamout woke at 6:30 a.m. to the sound of Israeli airstrikes. A registered nurse serving with Horizons International, she also volunteers at Tyre Church, founded by her now-deceased father 14 years ago as a church plant in the Shiite city. She had already curtailed her local movements as precision drone strikes targeted Hezbollah militants riding their motorbikes. Best not to be caught behind one, she said, in case they miss.

But this attack felt different. Four hours later, Yamout was visiting an elderly patient with dementia when another blast hit nearby. She rushed home, packed her bags, and drove 55 miles north to Beirut with her dog by her side. The 50 people in her congregation—nearly all Muslim-background believers in Jesus—eventually found their way to scattered locations, sheltering in schools, churches, or with family members. One returned to Iraq.

Yamout stayed with a friend in a Christian neighborhood of the capital.

“Honestly, it is safer,” she said. “I don’t want to have to flee again.”

The next morning, Yamout rose to volunteer at a clinic connected with a large Kurdish church in Beirut. On Wednesday, she went back to Tyre with two others, hoping to volunteer with the Red Cross.

After taking seven hours to reach Beirut two days earlier, it took little more than an hour to return home amid the “apocalyptic” scenes of stalled-out cars abandoned on the side of the road and a half-dozen smoldering buildings to the right and the left.

Almost immediately, she turned around. Tyre resembled a ghost town, with no water, electricity, or cell phone reception. The streets were emptied of nearly everyone but Hezbollah militants, but she was not intrinsically afraid of the environment.

Her father was jailed twice for his evangelism, and church property repeatedly vandalized. But over the years, Yamout said, Tyre Church won the begrudging respect of its community, and the road it is on became popularly known as “Church Street.”

Yet it was not safe to remain. Two believers slept on the beach in fear that their apartments would be hit. Yamout filled a 15-passenger van to return to the capital with the church families that were unable to find earlier transportation to safety.

On Thursday, she was back serving a clinic in a Christian town 50 miles north of Beirut that has received many people displaced from the Bekaa Valley. Each day on average she treated 150 people.

“Now is the time to open our hearts,” Yamout said. “We may never get this chance again.”

Lebanon has Christian content on the airwaves and churches throughout the country, but many Lebanese villages of all sects self-isolate from other communities. Ordinary southern Shiites who know few Christians now find themselves sheltering in Christian areas. They are deeply traumatized, Yamout said, but they light up with a smile when she tells them she is also from Tyre and takes time to listen to their stories.

At each school, Yamout works with the local church to follow up with any who show openness to the gospel. She advocates caution when extending hospitality since some militia members are likely to slip in. But while most are now fighting the Israeli ground invasion on the border, believers might show love to militants’ wives and children. Alongside them are thousands of Lebanese Shiites, unrelated to Hezbollah, who are meeting Christians for the first time.

Meanwhile, at the mountain village church where Mustafa, Hussein, and other “not yet” Christians shelter, they and their families eat around long plastic tables set up in the church parking lot. Mustafa hopes to return to Tyre but not to his hometown in Syria—it is too dangerous there. Despite the uncertainties of an indefinitely temporary residence, he is at peace in Lebanon.

“We don’t know what to do next,” he said. “Only God does, and we trust him.”

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News

How Can Evangelicals Navigate Political Tensions? Practice.

Harvest Prude

This campaign season, Christians have tried to proactively address political polarization—starting with tough conversations among themselves.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

Daniel Breed has heard all the politics-related horror stories: members leaving their small groups, new cliques forming, churches splitting entirely. So the Presbyterian pastor isn’t taking chances with his flock this year.

Emmaus Road Church in Appleton, Wisconsin, draws in around 200 faithful on a Sunday. It’s a mostly conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) church; some congregants sport Donald Trump campaign signs on their cars or lawns, and others voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Beyond the one-on-one conversations that crop up during the campaign, Breed hosts a faith and politics class in the months ahead of Election Day. Every other week, participants gather at their new church building downtown to share a meal, then divide into classrooms.

They discuss historical instances of evangelical involvement in politics, examples of faithful Christian engagement, and ideas for how to interact across the political aisle.

People need a place to process the fear and anxiety surrounding political issues, and Breed believes the close-knit church community is the right testing ground for listening and asking questions.

“I think it’s because we built a lot of social capital,” he added. “I haven’t had anyone leave because of these issues.”

Breed thinks churches need to be direct about these kinds of conversations and hopes more will see that, even though members “might have differing opinions, it’s possible to do that and stay together.”

Researchers are finding that polarization is currently at a height in modern history, with Americans less likely to hold a mix of liberal and conservative views and more likely to be entrenched in partisan camps.

By the last presidential election, nearly 80 percent of Americans had “just a few” or no friends across the political aisle, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Researchers have also found that people’s partisanship leads them to perceive others as “more extreme” than they actually are, leading to negative views not just of the opposing political party but also of the voters who identify differently than themselves.

And those who manage to keep across-the-aisle relationships often find they can do it only by barring political discussion entirely: Nearly half of Americans have stopped talking politics with someone due to differences.

But more evangelicals like Breed are done accepting the polarization in their pews and are calling on their fellow church members to engage with rather than avoid the issues that divide them.

In the aftermath of tensions surrounding the 2020 election, this year’s race has seen a batch of organizations offering mediators, curricula, and other resources to combat polarization. Some groups, like The After Party, are new and explicitly evangelical. Others, like Essential Partners, date back decades and are seeing there is fresh interest in their offerings due to today’s divisions.

In places where people are willing to lean into tough conversations, experts said they’ve seen encouraging results.

Essential Partners is one of these groups. It offers coaching, mentoring, and facilitating dialogue on particularly fraught topics—essentially, divorce-proofing institutions. The organization isn’t explicitly religious but has worked with denominations and faith-based groups.

John Sarrouf, a Christian and a coexecutive director at Essential Partners, has had plenty to do the last several years. He’s helped churches face local issues related to congregational merges, church summer camp programming, and COVID-19 policies. Currently, he’s seeing issues crop up around politics and the war in the Middle East.

Sarrouf has found two main reasons churches bring in organizations like his. About 30 percent of the time, it’s “inspiration.” They want to “get better at living together.” Then there’s the other 70 percent: “desperation.”

“Something has come up that’s really threatening that congregation or the denomination and their ability to live and work and worship together,” he said.

Conflict and polarization “flattens people,” Sarrouf explained. Suddenly, people go from Bible study partners and church committee friends to opponents. Eventually, stubborn polarization leads to people simply leaving.

“A lot of churches suffer from that. When there’s a conflict, there’s a divide. People stop showing up. Not because they don’t love the church,” Sarrouff said, “but it’s really exhausting to be in a toxic, polarized space like that.”

An important component of his work is to help people “rehumanize” their neighbors or fellow church members who are on the other side of a conflict. He nudges them to remember, That person was the first to show up with food for dinner when my mom was sick. Or That person who votes differently is the person in the choir who helps keep me on pitch.

Leaders can see changes in congregational interactions. People go from standing with stiff postures and avoiding eye contact to leaning in, smiling, and nodding. “It’s really life-changing for people,” he said. “People can get back to doing the important work that they want to be doing in a community.”

Sarrouf said he’s seen communities who have participated in resources like his have more tools to navigate conflicts well in the future and “become incredibly resilient to the next impulse or opportunity for division.”

“We tend to train people to do this themselves,” he said. “It’s not their first conflict. It won’t be their last. They have to learn how to do this and own it and make it a part of their everyday lives—so that it becomes just how they live together.”

Last month, a coalition of evangelical leaders released the statement “Our Confession of Evangelical Conviction,” which seeks to remind Christians what they have in common theologically even as people are divided politically. (Signatories include Christianity Today editor in chief Russell Moore.) Some churches plan to read the document publicly.

Moore is also a part of The After Party, a six-week video course launched this year that focuses on how Christians can develop a “Christ-centered political identity.”

Since it came out in April, The After Party’s program has been used by around 75,000 people through conferences, books, training for pastors and lay leaders, and small groups, according to The Washington Post.

Another group, the Mending Division Academy, established last year, has a particular focus on pastors whose churches are struggling with divisions. The organization is headed by Napp Nazworth, who resigned from The Christian Post in 2019 due to disagreements over a pro-Trump column. The group’s curriculum deals with everything from misinformation to polarization to deconstruction.

Bob Roberts, a Baptist pastor in Keller, Texas, has seen polarization on some extreme levels in his work overseas in Vietnam and Afghanistan. In addition to pastoring, he’s been involved in religious freedom advocacy and interfaith work abroad, which has heightened his concern over infighting among Christians at home.

“We’ve dealt with extremists around the world. Sorry to say we now have them in our own country,” he said. “And once somebody is truly radicalized in how they think, not just the actions they carry out, it’s incredibly hard to shift them. The most important thing to do is to get upstream of that and deal with it before they’re radicalized.”

Roberts wants to start with some concerning ways Christians talk to each other: How can you be a Christian and vote for this candidate? Or that candidate? You must not be a Christian if you vote for this candidate or that candidate.

Roberts cofounded the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network, a group that brings together pastors, imams, rabbis, and leaders from various faith groups to foster peace in their communities and combat radicalization and polarization. His group has already worked with around 500 people and had several hundred download online resources.

One resource he uses for churches is the Peacemaker’s Toolkit. It explores how the Bible handles peacemaking and moves to how everyday Christians can practice this with each other. One small tool involves is pocket-sized cards with best practices: how to refrain from bad mouthing others on social media, how to verify information online, and how to listen well to people despite disagreeing with their point of view.

Left unaddressed, polarization spreads to a host of other issues—including weariness among younger generations toward politics and church spaces.

“One of the reasons they’re leaving is they’re just sick of how Christians talk to each other, particularly Christian leaders,” said Biola University professor Tim Muehlhoff. “A lot of the young generation, they’re done with the argument culture. They’re like, ‘I can’t do that. … I’m not demonizing the other political party.’”

Muehlhoff asked a group of students how many of them had stopped talking to a friend or family member due to political disagreements. Half of his class raised their hands.

Muehlhoff and fellow professor Rick Langer have asked Biola students to lean into these hard conversations. The two professors partnered with Pomona College, a private liberal arts school, as part of a group called Bridging the Gap, which pairs conservative universities with liberal ones to have one-on-one discussions. Biola students have also participated in a program called Unify America, which sets up Zoom calls between political opposites.

Participation in these projects has at times garnered criticism from fellow Christians or concerned parents, who have accused the professors of being “all winsome, no convictions.” Parents have worried that participation in the Zoom conversations would negatively impact their children’s faith.

Muehlhoff said one student told him, “I don’t think anybody trusts our faith. Everybody thinks we’re so fragile. Like, one call and we’ll walk away from the faith.” Nearly all the students are scared going into the discussion, Muehlhoff said. But they leave exhilarated.

Much of each call is spent finding areas of common ground—unreasonable professors, too much homework, plans for summer break. By the time the students get to the hard questions at the end—one example was discussing their definitions and views on marriage—they’d already established the camaraderie necessary to have a respectful discussion.

The students told him they left the conversations encouraged by being able to share their own views and learning about someone else’s. “Good, because you’re all doing it again,” Muehlhoff told the students. “I signed you up for a second one.”

Their work goes beyond the classroom. The two former pastors have also authored books on disagreeing well and combating cancel culture and now helm Biola’s Winsome Conviction Project, which seeks to help Christians counter polarization and unhealthy ways of communicating.

The project does this through weekend church retreats, public forums, events, workshops, and small groups. They tackle hot button issues, from abortion to sexuality. Basically anything, Muehlhoff said, that “is just splitting communities and churches.”

The project sprang out of the “concern that we just lost the ability to talk to each other as Christians,” he explained.

Too often, the church has added to the division rather than providing an alternative model for engaging with both non-Christians and fellow Christians, Muehlhoff said: “People are splitting over preferred pronouns. They’re splitting over Black Lives Matter. They’re splitting over … whether to have a smoke machine during worship.”

But often, just under the surface are the real concerns: The dispute over the smoke machine, Muehlhoff explained, represented to some members evidence that liberalism was infiltrating their church.

Some pastors are worried that proactively engaging these issues will lead to more problems. “The sentiment is ‘I’m not opening this can of worms because, quite frankly, I don’t know if our church will survive,’” Muehlhoff said. They think that “politics will do us in.”

But faith leaders may underestimate the appetite regular people in the pew have for talking about these issues. At one event in 2022 in Washington, Winsome Convictions set up chairs for an expected 250 people. Almost 600 Christians from area churches ended up coming, including many walk-ins.

At that same session, Muehlhoff recalled a woman coming with her adult son. The two had not spoken in two years over political disagreements, but the mom begged her son for one last favor: to come to the Winsome Convictions event. At the end, the son stood up during a testimonial session and said participating had led to the best conversation he’d had with his mom in a decade.

Breed also hopes that more Christians will lean into these discussions via formal curricula or one-on-one discussions in their churches rather than simply leave spaces where they don’t agree.

“My opinion is, if you can’t get along with Christians and you have to go somewhere else, those churches aren’t gonna last very long either,” he said.

And he thinks faith leaders will increasingly have a role to play.“The voices that their congregation is hearing outside of the gospel are going to be very, very loud. They are going to say things such as ‘This person is going to be the end of the republic. If you vote for this person, it’s going to be the end,’” Breed said. “They’re going to be hearing those voices loud. The question is, will they hear the gospel louder?”

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Church Life

Lessons from Philippines’ Martial Law Still Hold for the Church Today

Interview by Caleb Maglaya Galaraga

Filipina social anthropologist Melba Padilla Maggay, who fought for democracy 40 years ago, critiques today’s evangelical politics.

A Filipino activist lights candles to remember victims of martial law in the Philippines.

Ezra Acayan / Stringer / Getty

One September day in 1972, Melba Padilla Maggay stepped outside to find Manila’s newspaper stands empty and massive lines for jeepneys, the Philippines’ local public transportation. Then-president Ferdinand Marcos had declared martial law, giving him wide-ranging power over the government.

At the time, Maggay was a journalist and a young Christian who had come to faith through the ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The nine-year period of martial law saw tens of thousands of Marcos’s critics thrown in prison and thousands tortured or killed.

In 1978, she and some friends started the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture (ISACC) to wrestle with the question of how Christians should respond to martial law. Maggay and ISACC later joined the nonviolent 1986 People Power Revolution, which eventually deposed Marcos and restored democracy in the Philippines.

Maggay, who has long studied the intersection of religion, culture, and development in the Philippines, is a founding member of the international Life & Peace Institute and an ambassador for Micah Global, an international alliance of over 700 faith-based development organizations.

Currently, she is working to mentor a new generation and “disciple young people who will be formed in holistic witness, not just evangelism,” Maggay said. She hopes to raise leaders not just of churches or Christian organizations but of the Philippines’ barangays (“neighborhoods”), cities, and country.

Christianity Today recently spoke with Maggay about how Christians should respond to the current challenges facing the Philippines. The responses have been edited for clarity and length.

Several weeks ago, we marked the 52nd anniversary of the Philippines’ declaration of martial law. Today, the former dictator’s son—Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.—is now in office. Why is understanding that period of martial law important when viewing current events?

It’s hard to tell these stories, even though we’re talking about something from 40 years ago and people like me weren’t jailed and didn’t experience human rights violations from the martial-law years. But what I didn’t realize was that I was traumatized by the experience and the fact that the church didn’t understand the implications of martial law properly.

I was also traumatized when I was suddenly out of a job and could not exercise what I felt was my calling: journalism. [Marcos had shut down all independent media.] Some people, including Christians, thought martial law was okay because they thought the victims of human rights abuses were rebels anyway. But the whole country was traumatized without realizing it.

Because so many people didn’t fully grasp what happened to our country during this time, I’ve encouraged everyone to write down our stories. That’s why my book—Dark Days of Authoritarianism—is a book of personal accounts of people who lived through this period. Unlike ideology, nobody can quarrel with a story.

How did the church respond to the declaration of martial law?

At that time, I was a young Christian and a new university graduate. I was a cub reporter at the Manila Chronicle. Then, suddenly, there was martial law and the newspaper was shuttered. I spent the first three months of martial law visiting my friends in jail. The editor of The Manila Chronicle was the first to be imprisoned because he was investigating an incident of gun smuggling. I did not want to write for the newspapers allowed to operate at the time, as they were all run by Marcos’s cronies.

I remember that in our church, one of the leaders praised God for martial law. He said, “Now our freedom to worship is secure, and we are not going to [fall into communism].” But as I was sitting there listening, I thought, Wait, there’s something wrong with this. Why should we praise martial law? Just because of our freedom to worship?

Christians can praise God even in jail. The right to worship is not something that the state gives and takes away; you can worship God anywhere. Paul was a tremendous witness when he was in jail. So I told several leaders within the evangelical community, “Wait, why are we prioritizing our freedom to worship?”

If that’s the case, we are no different from lobbyists as we lobby for our freedom to worship.

It seemed that ISACC was at odds with a lot of the evangelical community when the group joined the nonviolent People Power Revolution.

There were two forces that disagreed with the People Power Revolution. One was the evangelicals; the other was the extreme left. The evangelicals didn’t want to join because they say faith has nothing to do with politics.

Like Protestants in many countries, the Protestants in the Philippines have been divided over whether they should put a greater focus on social justice or gospel proclamation. How can believers bridge that divide?

The dichotomy of When you’re for evangelism, you don’t care about social justice; if you are for social justice, you don’t care about evangelism is wrong. This is a legacy of Western dualism. But this dichotomy is too ingrained in our brains, and I think we should get out of that.

Filipino culture is very holistic. In fact, most Asian cultures are. That’s why religion in Asia has always been the basis for culture.

In the Philippines, we’re just labeled as Catholic, but the indigenous culture and religious imagination of Filipinos are strong. I have always said, “We are not Christianized; we simply adapted,” because that is a very strong feature of the culture. The Filipino always adapts.

Look at the Overseas Filipino Workers everywhere. Local cultures love them. Why? Because we adapt. In other words, people mistake that for conversion. No. Five hundred years of Christianity did not really change us.

In anthropology, there is what we call surface and deep structures of culture. The surface is easy to change. In our case, the anitos (“ancestor spirits”) were exchanged for saints with Caucasian features—then, the church, instead of huts or shrines near our houses. Stonemasons were called to build churches. It’s easy to change the surface. But the mindset has remained. In other words, we may have 500 years of Christianity, but when it comes to our idea of morality, nothing changed.

You mentioned that Filipino evangelicals seemed to withdraw from the public square during martial law. But what are your thoughts about those who preach dominionism, the idea that nations should be governed by Christians and biblical law?

That is also wrong. Today, Filipino evangelicals are entering politics in the same way evangelicals in America did in the 70s after they lost cultural power. The Filipino church is made in the image of the American Bible Belt. But the problem is that Christians should not use the coercive powers of the state to persuade people about the values of their faith.

This is why separation of church and state is in both countries’ constitutions. What the separation of church and politics means is that you tolerate everybody. We are now in a pluralistic world.

In other words, you do not coerce people to conform to your values. Paul said that “we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience” (2 Cor. 4:2). Fight for your values in the public space, but without using the coercive powers of the state, where there is a punishment for those who hold different values.

For instance, when it comes to same-sex marriage, the church has to stand for its values. In the same way, we must be prepared to tolerate other people’s values as long as they’re not criminal behavior.

Filipino evangelicals in political office share the same strategy as the Religious Right in America. Before, they didn’t want politics. Now that they’ve entered politics, they got off on the wrong foot. In other words, they are sensitive to values that are against us, like abortion. But they don’t speak out on issues of justice. That’s wrong. Christians, when they’re in politics, should be seen as people who speak for those who are voiceless.

Is there a better way for Christians to engage with politics or run for political office?

In the New Testament, dominion means servanthood. Leadership is servanthood.

The only meaning of dominion is that when we fell, we lost mastery over creation. But now, Jesus has given us power. Human agency was restored. That’s why I tell my elderly friends, “We can do something for as long as we are alive.” We have human agency, including the poor, who think they can’t do anything because they are victims of social forces around them. But no, they can take hold of these things. It is part of the restoration of dominion.

Dominion is not lording it over people. We should be servants to everybody. If you want to be a leader, you have to serve everybody. So dominionists’ take on dominion is wrong. In other words, we have power now to serve everyone. We have power, agency, in such a way that we can help all others in human society.

What is the most pressing challenge facing the Filipino evangelical church?

Developing a theology that will respond to our context of poverty and injustice, as millions of Filipinos are still mired by these societal ills, should be the first priority of the church. We have been reductionist in our understanding of what it means to bear witness. In 2 Corinthians 10:5, Paul says “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” That’s the witness—not just formulas like “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life” and “You will get saved and go to heaven.”

What does it mean to bear witness? To take every thought captive, whether it happens in theological circles or in the public square.

There’s a strong need for Christians to be biblically literate. The Bible is too important to be left to theologians. We have to go back to what the Bible says about all the issues around us. You should always think about it. It should be second nature.

What does God’s Word say here? That’s number one for me, making every thought captive to obey Christ, regardless of what ideas are discussed—social justice, university education, or the media.

Christians must be able to relate the Word of God to the everyday issues they face, whether personal or social. That is very important but not commonly practiced. People like “canned” Bible studies and are shallow in their grasp of the Scriptures.

You said in Transforming Society, “I do not like politics. Like many of that generation … of the early 1970s, the white heat I used to feel over political issues has been tempered by years of disappointment, or, perhaps, by the tiring and corrosive effect of having worked too hard and too long at social change with only marginal success.” What keeps you doing this work?

I am thankful that the Lord has kept me. I just turned 74, and most of my contemporaries are either dead or gone or have given up. Some of them say, “What can we do? We are old; we cannot go out marching the streets like we used to do. And the forces around us, like social media, are very powerful.” They feel nothing can be done.

But the meaning of the Cross is not just forgiveness of sin. The Lord Jesus did not die just to forgive us and give us a ticket to heaven. The Lord Jesus died for the redemption of the whole earth.

The missio Dei (“mission of God”) is not to secure a ticket to heaven just for us. The missio Dei is the redeeming of the whole creation, the new heaven and the new earth.

And we are being asked to participate in the remaking of that earth. That is my missional task: Obedience to what it means to be part of God’s agenda of remaking the new heaven and the new earth. But of course, many evangelicals don’t see this because they think the world is going to fall apart. So they let go of the environment, let go of social justice, and so on.

But anything that we do in the name of Christ will contribute to this remaking of the new heaven and the new earth.

Our problem is that we are only focused on Ephesians 2:9: “not by works, so that no one can boast.” We overlook verse 10. But verse 10 says, we are saved “to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” In other words, we were chosen and elected. God has an agenda that he is inviting us to participate in.

Additional reporting by Geethanjali Tupps.

- More from Caleb Maglaya Galaraga

News

SBC Pastor Admits Creating Fake Document to Deceive FBI

Daniel Silliman

Former Southwestern Seminary professor Matt Queen faces possible five years in prison for his part in cover-up.

Youtube screen grab

Southern Baptist pastor Matt Queen pleaded guilty Wednesday to the federal crime of making a false statement to the FBI. He created a fake document and gave it to agents as evidence, allegedly in an effort to help Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (SWBTS) cover up its failure to report a student accused of sexual assault, according to court documents.

Queen got caught in his lie and admitted it to federal prosecutors in June 2023. On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to one felony charge after the US government agreed to drop an additional charge of obstruction of justice.

“He made a false statement. He has great remorse for doing so,” Queen’s attorney, Sam Schmidt, told The Tennessean. “He regrets it and wish[es] that never happened.”

Queen, who had taught evangelism at the seminary and currently serves as a minister at a church in Greensboro, North Carolina, faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison but is expected to be sentenced to several months. If he had been found guilty in a trial, the judge could have sent him to prison for as long as 20 years.

The North Carolina pastor is the first—and so far only—Southern Baptist to face criminal charges in a federal investigation of the convention’s handling of sexual abuse allegations.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York has been looking into the nation’s largest Protestant denomination since 2022. The probe was prompted by a report commissed by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) that found Executive Committee staff, who are responsible for the denomination’s day-to-day operations, refused to do anything about allegations of sexual abuse. Executive Committee presidents had a secret list of more than 700 abusive pastors but flatly rejected calls for reform and maligned abuse survivors and advocates calling for change.

SBC lawyers turned internal discussions about abuse into discussions around legal liability, according to the report, until protecting the institution from lawsuits became the highest priority—higher than protecting people from sexual predators in pulpits and Sunday school classrooms across the country.

The Executive Committee announced in March the federal investigation concluded without any charges but later clarified the broader investigation was still ongoing.

Queen was indicted on federal charges two months later. The author of Everyday Evangelism worked at SWBTS for 14 years and served, for a period, as interim provost.

“The FBI will never tolerate those who intentionally lie and mislead our investigation in an attempt to conceal their malicious behavior,” FBI assistant director in charge James Smith said at the time.

According to the indictment, Queen “knowingly altered, destroyed, mutilated, concealed, covered up, falsified, and made a false entry into a record, document, and tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence” a federal investigation.

Prosecutors sent a subpoena to the Fort Worth, Texas, seminary in October 2022, demanding any and all documents “related to allegations of sexual abuse against anyone employed by or associated with” SWBTS. The following month, an employee later identified as dean of women Terri Stovall was told that a current student had committed sexual assault.

Nothing happened to the student for three months, until a local police force received a report and made an arrest.

In January 2023, Stovall wrote up a document detailing the allegations against the student, the actions she had taken in response, and the seminary’s failure to report the student to police. According to the federal government, Stovall’s report became evidence in the investigation as soon as she created it and was subject to the subpoena.

The next day, however, she was told to destroy it by an employee later identified by SWBTS as seminary chief of staff Heath Woolman. According to federal prosecutors, Woolman ordered Stovall to make her report “go away.”

Queen was at that meeting, according to the indictment, in his capacity as interim provost. But when FBI agents asked him about Woolman’s instructions to destroy evidence, he said he had not heard that.

Queen then wrote about the meeting in a notebook—leaving out the part about destroying evidence—and gave it to the FBI, according to the indictment. He told the investigators it was a contemporaneous account of the meeting and supported his account of events. His notes said the administrators had discussed giving Stovall’s report to another department but noted nothing about destroying evidence or covering anything up.

Queen had actually written it five months later, according to prosecutors, manufacturing evidence to back up his story and strengthen the lie.

In June 2023, Queen confessed under oath that he had in fact heard the seminary chief of staff tell the dean of women to make her report “go away.” He acknowledged the notes were falsified.

Federal prosecutors have not filed any other charges in the case. They also have not indicated whether the investigation is ongoing. Federal officials usually do not speak about investigations before bringing charges.

Woolman, who allegedly ordered evidence destroyed, left SWBTS and now ministers at a church in Florida. He has not spoken publicly about the allegations. The head of campus police has also left the seminary.

SWBTS president David Dockery praised Stovall for refusing to cooperate with a cover-up.

“This episode is a matter of deep regret to me,” he said in a statement earlier this year. “I am, however, grateful that several employees in whom I placed great trust acted responsibly, especially Terri Stovall. I commend the service and integrity of these employees.”

On Wednesday, the school reiterated its commitment to complete cooperation with authorities.

Queen’s sentencing is scheduled for February.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated the year that Matt Queen said under oath that he had made a false statement to the FBI. He confessed in 2023.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Theology

The ‘Least of These’ and the Quest for a Post-Christian Conscience

Russell Moore

Editor in Chief

Human suffering should not cause us to categorize our neighbor but to be one.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

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

Every few years, someone makes the point that, “actually,” the “least of these” passage from the Gospel of Matthew doesn’t really have anything to do with how we treat the poor or the stranger or the hungry.

The “brothers” to which Jesus refers, the argument goes, are the messengers he sent out—meaning that the way one responds to the bearers of Jesus’ word signifies the way one responds to him. It’s not about the poor, the argument goes, but about mistreated fellow Christians.

A friend told me last week that some social media controversy dusted up for a bit over just this question. He needn’t tell me who posted it, because it doesn’t matter in this ephemeral medium—the players always change and the game remains the same.

Anybody who’s ever been a youth pastor knows that there’s a certain kind of question—like “How far is too far?” or “Actually, Jesus wasn’t talking about the kind of sex I want to have”—that’s less about “just asking questions” of the text than about doing what one wants to do.

The text in question here, of course, is a familiar one to those who’ve been in the orbit of the Bible for any time at all. After a series of parables about the kingdom of God, Jesus portrays for his disciples a haunting description of Judgment Day, in which the nations are gathered before Christ the shepherd, who divides the sheep of the redeemed from the goats of the damned.

To both groups, Jesus notes that he had been among them—as hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, a stranger. The sheep, Jesus said, had fed him, given him water and clothing, welcomed him in, visited him in his distress. The goats, Jesus said, had ignored him. Both groups are shocked and ask, “When did we do this?” Jesus responds, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40, ESV throughout).

Even those who believe that “brothers” refers to those whom Jesus sent out with the gospel are quick to say that the point of his teaching is hardly “Which vulnerable people can we safely ignore?” As a matter of fact, under any reading of Jesus’ words, the application is the exact opposite, and it’s hard to imagine how Jesus could have worded it to make the point any stronger.

Suppose, for a moment, that the “brothers” here are, in fact, those whom Jesus sent out. The scene is of the gathering of all the nations—very few of whom would have encountered this relatively small group of people. As a matter of fact, all of those originally sent out are now dead. Are the nations of people outside that small circle now exempt? Of course not.

More to the point, the entire teaching centers on the surprise of both groups—sheep and goats—as to when, in fact, they ever encountered Jesus. The sheep do not respond, “Yes, we know. That’s why we did it. We had the chart telling us which strangers to welcome and which to ignore.” The goats could not have said, “If we’d known they were with you, we, of course, would have given them some porridge!”

The question is about conformity to Jesus himself. This is the one charged, repeatedly, with eating and drinking with those outside the approved definition of “brothers” (Matt. 9:9–13; Luke 19:1–10; John 4:5–26). This is the Jesus who told us that the “friend/enemy” distinction—love those who are “with” you, and hate those who aren’t—is contrary to the kingdom he is announcing. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’” he said. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt. 5:43–44).

The question raised by these sorts of “actually” arguments, about parsing out who fits in the “least of these” and who does not, is not a new one. It is, quite literally, the question Jesus answered from a lawyer seeking to parse out how he was within the bounds of “love God and love your neighbor” with the question, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). One can almost hear the equivocating “Actually, neighbor in the context of the Torah refers to those within the household of Israel, so …”

Jesus deconstructs all of that with a story, choosing the most hated possible example of negative identity politics—a Samaritan—to make the point that the question is not about figuring out how to categorize “neighbor” but about how to be a neighbor, by showing mercy and compassion (vv. 36–37).

The entire canon makes the case that our response to the poor does indeed tell us something about our response to God. “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed,” and “whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered,” the Bible says (Prov. 19:17; 21:13).

The Psalms repeatedly argue that the fatherless, the widows, the strangers, those deemed too powerless to matter, have a God who knows and hears them and who will plead their case (Ps. 68:5). The prophets make the point that the ill treatment of the vulnerable—the poor, orphans, widows—makes worship noxious in the presence of God (Isa.1:14–17).

Jesus’ own brother, James of Jerusalem, likewise argues that landowners robbing their workers of wages is an offense to God because “the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts” (James 5:4).

Why else have Christians—from the first century—cared for unwanted children and opposed abortion and infanticide? Our treatment of the vulnerable reveals what we think about God, for the vulnerable are made in his image too. The idea that some people are disposable because of their lack of value by the world’s categories of power and wisdom is directly opposed to Christ and the meaning of the Cross. An assault on human dignity is an assault on the image of God (James 3:9).

And the image of God is no abstraction. The exact image of the radiance of God has a name: Jesus of Nazareth (Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3). As we do to those who bear that image—even the “least” of them—we have done unto him.

Does that resolve all of our prudential arguments about how best to care for the poor when it comes to governmental systems and policies? Of course not. It does not answer every question about how best for you, personally, to address the needs of those around you. It does mean, however, that when you confront the need of a vulnerable person in need of help, your response is not to ask for their papers. Those who welcome strangers have, at times, entertained angels unaware, the Bible tells us (Heb. 13:2). And the key word there is unaware.

If one is embarrassed by the miracles or morality of Jesus, one can always demythologize him with all the fervor of a 19th-century German scholar. If one is embarrassed by the compassion or empathy of Jesus, one can demythologize him there too, with all the frenzy of a 20th-century German soldier. None of that will change, not one iota, that Jesus is ultimately seated on the throne. Before him, “Has God really said?” is a terrible question to ask. So is “Who is my neighbor?”

And when confronted with the suffering of human beings around you, making the point that those who are suffering are less than the “least of these” is no argument at all.

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

Ideas

Mind the Power Gap in Missions

Josh Irby

Western missionaries can make good partners if they avoid trampling on their majority world friends.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

In the past 50 years, the center of Christianity has shifted from the West to the Majority World. As Zambian mission leader Lazarus Phiri told me during a recent interview, “Those who were once a mission field are now looking like a mission force.”

Yet all too often, well-meaning mission partners in the West operate as if this shift has not occurred. The reason, in part, is that the centers of power (including money, education, institution, passport privileges, etc.) remains in the West.

This power gap in mission partnerships between Western and Majority World members, if it is not acknowledged, can result in wasted resources, discouraged missionaries, decreased engagement, and broken relationships.

Author and missiologist Miriam Adeney relates a story she once heard from an African Christian leader:

Elephant and Mouse were best friends. One day Elephant said, “Mouse, let’s have a party!” Animals gathered from far and near. They ate, and drank, and sang, and danced. And nobody celebrated more exuberantly than Elephant.

After it was over, Elephant exclaimed, “Mouse, did you ever go to a better party? What a blast!” But Mouse didn’t answer. “Where are you?” Elephant called. Then he shrank back in horror. There at his feet lay the Mouse, his body ground into the dirt—smashed by the exuberance of his friend, Elephant.

“Sometimes that is what it is like to do mission with you Americans,” the African storyteller concluded. “It’s like dancing with an elephant.”

When I first read this story, it felt like a gut punch. I mentally scrolled through my 25 years of cross-cultural mission engagement and wondered if anyone would say this of me. Have I been an elephant? In my exuberance for the mission, have I ever crushed my friends and partners?

Of course, no one enters global missions with a plan to stomp on their partners. But if you speak with missions leaders from around the world, as my colleagues and I have in researching for the Mission Shift podcast, you will discover many unwitting elephants dancing across mission fields.

Considering the power differential in missions, how can we Westerners work with others in a way that lifts our partners rather than grinding them into the dirt?

First, we need to recognize the power of money. Mary Lederleitner, author of Cross-Cultural Partnerships: Navigating the Complexities of Money and Mission, writes of the distorting power of wealth, “The person coming from the more affluent or developed country assumes he or she knows what is best.” She adds, “It is very counterintuitive to learn from people that have less wealth and less education than you.” But a failure to do so can lead to a sense of superiority that, when played out in partnership, becomes a patriarchal relationship.

As Layo Leiva, who has developed partnerships between Latin America and the United States through his regional role with Cru, said succinctly in an interview for our podcast, “The role of money is the role of power—who has the money has the power.” This is not to say that money should not be involved in missions. The sharing of resources within the body of Christ is central to gospel transformation. But we need to recognize the challenges to partnership it creates.

We also need to recognize the power of choice. Brian Virtue, who researched hundreds of cross-cultural partnerships for his PhD work, describes a scenario he saw multiple times:

People [on the lower side of the power difference] were granted access to the initial conversations, but when it came time for the decision-making and the implementation, they were no longer part of the process. It’s almost like they heard, “We’re going to go to the adult’s table and talk about it. And we’ll get back to you.”

Who is at the adult table in a partnership? If the table is populated exclusively by those from the West, or with the highest degrees, or with the biggest budgets, then your partnership is probably affected by power disparities.

There are many more powers in a mission partnership we need to recognize: education, nationality, organizational size, language, and history, to name a few. If we have eyes to see them, then we have a chance to use them for the benefit of the mission. You have money? Great! Invest it in God’s mission. You have education? Great! Use it to uplift your brothers and sisters. “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Rom. 12:6, ESV throughout).

But also, if we recognize the effect power has on partnerships, we can heed Paul’s warning: “I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment” (v. 3). Elephant could have done so much good with his size if only he had recognized the potential dangers it presented.

Once we recognize the presence of power, we need to learn to walk softly in our partnerships. Slavko Hadžić, an evangelist in Bosnia and Herzegovina and associate regional director with Langham Preaching, advises, “If you come for the first time to a country or region, don’t come with an agenda. Come to observe. Don’t rush with promises. Wait, learn, be open to hear. Let the Lord lead the steps.”

Part of walking softly is recognizing that God is already at work on every continent and in every corner of the earth. What if we entered every cross-cultural situation looking for the signs of God’s work rather than a place to plant our flag or insert our own agendas? Too often we use the urgency of the mission as an excuse for injuring our partners in the mission. To walk softly, we must walk slowly.

Milan Michalko, a local pastor in the Czech Republic, also encourages a slow pace. “Partnership without relationship? I have no time for that,” he says. Relationships take time to build. Michalko has a theory as to why this is often hard for American organizations: “Because they have money, they have no time.” The abundance of money demands an abundance of quick results, but healthy partnerships demand more than a 30-minute lunch and a shared Google spreadsheet. “If you want a quality partner, that’s time consuming. You have to be here. You have to invest time. You have to build trust,” Michalko says. To walk softly, we must walk in relationship.

Forrest Inslee, coauthor of the book Re-Imagining Short-Term Missions, shared of a moment in Haiti when a team learned how to walk more softly in partnership. On the island of Haiti, the history of colonialism and inequality have embedded the idea that, because of their superior resources, the West always knows best. The actions of Western teams have only confirmed this conclusion.

Once, when a team was participating in some community performances, the American visitors took center stage, as if they were compensating for a program that was deficient or incomplete. Once, when a team was participating in some community performances with the organization Konbit Haiti, the American visitors took center stage, as if they were compensating for a program that was deficient or incomplete. But this time, the Haitian leaders spoke up. “Would you please stand in the back of the room instead of on stage?” they asked.

By speaking up, these leaders risked offending their guests and jeopardizing the flow of resources from their American partners. And some were offended. But the majority learned from the challenge. They stood in the back. Over time, the partnership grew in mutuality, trust, and health. To walk softly, we must sometimes stand in the back.

Leiva shares one nonintuitive way of walking slowly. In mission partnerships, the higher-power partner often shares the products of their system (money, books, programs) but rarely lets the lower-power partner behind the curtain to see how the products are made.

Money is sent, but no one shares how to raise money. Books are translated, but no one shares how to write a book. One partner maintains control, and the other becomes dependent.

Layo now asks his partners to not only send the product but also “transfer the technology” that produced it. This way, instead of creating endless dependency, we contribute our strength to grow our partners’ strength. As we walk softly, our power lifts our partners rather than crushing them.

When we recognize our power and learn to walk slowly, we have an opportunity to make the most important discovery in partnerships. The principle is found in another story of a mouse, this one from Aesop:

A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion’s nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.

“Spare me!” begged the poor Mouse. “Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you.”

The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.

Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter’s net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.

“You laughed when I said I would repay you,” said the Mouse. “Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion.”

Too often, we in the West define power by the ways we are powerful: money, education, passport privileges, and other resources. Like the Lion, we laugh at the idea of being helped by a Mouse. But other powers are at play than those that can be measured: cross-cultural flexibility and understanding, dependence on God, willingness to suffer, and missional ingenuity.

Every follower of Christ—even the one who appears small—is powerful. Every believer is filled with the Spirit. Every believer is a part of the body with a crucial role to play. Every believer is formed by God for his mission. And as Paul reminds us, those who seem the weakest are indispensable (1 Cor. 12:22–27).

Even lions and elephants have needs. In fact, sometimes our strengths are the sources of our needs. Because of our abundant resources, we can be slow to pray. Because of our efficient systems, we can be slow to improvise. Because of our set plans, we can often miss what God is doing in the margins. More than ever, the West needs the many strengths of the Majority World.

Even Jesus, whom Lederleitner calls “the ultimate high-power partner,” positioned himself to rely on the strengths of others. He made himself nothing, taking the form of a man. He walked softly among us. He invited the disciples “behind the curtain” of his life and shared everything with them. He entrusted them with the mission.

The Lion of Judah did not laugh at the contribution of common men and women from the villages of Galilee. He called them friends and gave them the keys of his kingdom. Likewise, our Lord has commissioned and empowered us with his Spirit. And whenever we follow his example, our mission partnerships will give us all a reason to truly celebrate.

Josh Irby is Cru City Global’s partnership director for Europe and a cohost of the Mission Shift podcast. He is a former missionary and coauthor of Cross on a Hill: A Personal, Historical, and Biblical Search for the True Meaning of a Controversial Symbol.

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