The Church Shouldn’t Be an Echo Chamber

Let us not give up meeting together—even when we disagree.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Lightstock

Recently, a woman at my church approached me with a question borne out of genuine curiosity. She asked, “You’re a female theologian. Why did you choose to come to our church when women aren’t allowed to preach here?”

Since much of my work as a Bible scholar is public, it is no secret that I support women’s full participation in ministry, including in church leadership. So I wasn’t surprised that someone happened to notice my convictions did not match our church’s practice on this issue.

It’s a good question, and one I’ve wrestled with regularly—since, at present, I don’t feel I’m able to serve our church in all the ways that God has called and equipped me. I so long for the body of Christ to embrace the gifts of all its members, not only here but around the world. But as CT’s April issue reminds us, the global church is far from united on what women can and can’t do in church.

Still, I was glad my friend asked me about our family’s decision-making process, because it’s face-to-face conversations like this that prevent polarization. The role of women isn’t the only issue that divides us today. Approaches to racial reconciliation or diversity initiatives, our posture toward climate change, and politics—particularly when there’s another contentious presidential election in sight—are all areas that threaten to fracture our faith communities.

According to The Great Dechurching, a recent book by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge, people are leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. Forty million Americans who used to attend church no longer do—that’s 16 percent of adults in the US. And while some have simply stopped believing, others are leaving because they disagreed with their church or its clergy, and still more feel hesitant to re-engage with church for a variety of other reasons.

That’s not to say there aren’t many good reasons to move on to a different church—with any form of abuse being highest among them. Participation in corporate worship is not something to take lightly, and there is much to consider when deciding to join a church family. We must take a church’s doctrine and practice seriously as we consider whether we can commit to membership. We are shaped by our community, after all.

Yet I have a growing conviction that we give up far too easily on meeting together when we disagree. I believe there’s a danger in seeking out people who align so precisely with the way we see the world that we will never be challenged in our beliefs or our life choices—not to mention that we are likely to leave as soon as the illusion of perfect alignment is inevitably shattered.

Part of the problem, as Daniel K. Williams points out in a previous piece for CT, is that evangelicals’ theology of the church must be born again—out of the inbred individualism that prioritizes personal faith over (optional) participation in corporate community. As Myles Werntz notes about Bonhoeffer’s ecclesiology, the church should not be centered on individual experience but on being “a people who encounters Christ through and with one another.”

We can learn so much more from fellowshipping with those who see the world from a different vantage point. A church that’s an echo chamber fails to reckon with the ways God’s Spirit works deep and wide across the globe. But learning to love others who see the world differently takes work—especially in a society that sorts us out based on our natural affinities.

For starters, internet algorithms effectively silo us from hearing from others who hold different views. “Algorithms serve up the news we want to hear, virtually assuring us of our own rightness,” Carrie McKean observes. Online friend groups prompt us to self-select our conversation partners based on shared interests and affiliations. And, for a variety of historical and socio-economic reasons, our neighborhoods and schools can sometimes become homogeneous as well.

But this problem isn’t new. Even in the first century, long before modern technology, human beings were separating themselves from those who are different. Yet Jesus had little interest in uniformity. He publicly engaged both with religious leaders and society’s most notorious sinners. He accepted people from every social class, from the rich young ruler to the poor widow.

Among his disciples was a tax collector working for the Roman government, several fishermen who resented Roman taxation, and a radical trained to fight Rome. Likewise, his female followers were members of vastly different economic classes—from the poorest crowds to the ruling elite. Based on these affiliations and associations alone, Jesus’ followers represented the entire sociopolitical spectrum of the time.

Jesus not only tolerated people with different points of view but also intentionally sought them out and created a new community that transcended these differences. Jesus sought to build a new community that rose above divides of political affiliation, class, and gender. He invited his followers to work together on something important—following him, learning from him, imitating him—and learning to love each other.

Still, after Jesus’ ascension, the early church quickly faced difficult questions about how much racial and cultural diversity the church could, or should, tolerate and incorporate. But as they opened the doors to non-Jews, they ultimately discovered the rich contributions these Jesus followers could make to the movement.

In fact, there were a host of differences that could have divided early Christian communities. Take the short book of Philemon, for example, which explores how a freed slave rejoins fellowship as an equal with his former slave owner. And we think our churches have challenges!

Yet too often today, church hunting simply becomes a search for “our people”—that is, those who live comparable lifestyles, have similar opinions, and vote the way we do. And if that’s our approach, we’re missing out.

When we moved to Southern California in 2021, we had the opportunity to start fresh and reimagine what church participation could look like. I was hungry for a sense of rootedness, a connection with the historic Christian faith that attended to the church calendar and was sensitive to the spiritual formation that happened during gathered worship. We also wanted a church that was close to home, preferably within walking distance. (That certainly narrowed things down!)

These various factors led us to the church we now call home, just three blocks away from our house. It’s a unique congregation with the strong influence of university professors and students, making it a thoughtful and intellectually robust congregation that is at the same time remarkably low-key. It has a strong sense of community, with active groups meeting regularly, a prayer team available after service, and weekly fellowship over donuts and coffee where friendships can deepen.

I was amused and delighted on the first Sunday when we walked up to the donut table and saw a sign that read “Ordinary Time” to signal our place in the liturgical calendar. (In case this is new for you, Ordinary Time is the season of the church calendar that begins after Pentecost and leads up to Advent.) And when the host welcomed the congregation with an opportunity to silently consider our intention as we entered the service, I was sold. This was the kind of spiritual shepherding and historical rootedness I had been longing for.

Over time, of course, I’ve learned that my fellow church members and even its leaders sometimes disagree and see things differently. Some of these differences are simply philosophical or doctrinal, but some can impact our actual practice (or, in my case, who is allowed to practice) and become a source of angst for members who are personally affected.

Some have asked me why we don’t leave—but such a decision is not simple. Of the whole list of factors that go into choosing a congregation to join (location, doctrine, practice, music, preaching, community, values, events, missional fit, and opportunities for service), our current church is the best match for us.

We are consistently challenged and nurtured in ways we appreciate. We serve in meaningful ways. Leaving would be deeply painful because we love the people and so much about the services. It’s not just about what we get from the service. It’s also about what we can give. We might find another church that’s a better fit in one area, but it might be lacking in other areas.

We stay because we have come to love these people. We are convinced that some differences need not divide us, and we’re better off learning how to love one another well amid our disagreements.

Spending time face to face and side by side with those who see the world from another angle is good for our souls. It shatters the untrue and unhelpful illusion that the world is filled with people who look and think like us. It reminds us that the kingdom of God is wider and deeper than the homogeneity of our imaginations. I, for one, still have much more to learn and more to teach in my local community of fellow disciples.

Spiritual transformation does not depend solely on what is said from the pulpit but on who is beside us in the pews. As we give shared attention to following Jesus, we will become more like him. And as we each draw closer to Jesus, we will inevitably draw nearer to one another in our shared understanding and love. In our increasingly divided world, this is the good news we all need!

Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University and author of Bearing God’s Name and Being God’s Image. She’s currently writing her next book, Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters.

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Books

Review

The New Testament Authors Had Enslaved Helpers. How Much Does That Matter?

Nadya Williams

They likely farmed out the most physically arduous elements of composition. But they (and God) still deserve credit for the words.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash / WikiMedia Commons / Pexels

In a poorly-lit, cluttered room, four men (and an angel, an ox, a lion, and an eagle—oh, my!) sit and recline in cramped quarters. Disheveled, pallid, hunched over books—codices, not scrolls, of course—all four are absorbed in the same activity together: writing the Gospels. Their labor forms the subject of a popular art tableau from late antiquity on. Whether portrayed together or separately, the four Evangelists—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—are always writing, each working tirelessly on the Gospel that bears his name.

God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible

Candida Moss (Author)

336 pages

$23.31

But art isn’t always an accurate representation of reality, as biblical scholar Candida Moss reminds us in her new book, God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible. “For the past two thousand years, Christian tradition, scholarship, and pop culture have credited the authorship of the New Testament to a select group of men: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter, and Paul,” Moss writes. “But the truth is that the individuals behind these names, who were rewarded with sainthood for their work, did not write alone. In some meaningful ways, they did not write at all.”

So who did? The people who almost always did the physical writing and, in many cases, the public reading in the ancient world: the educated enslaved scribes and copyists, lectors, expert shorthand stenographers, secretaries, and other related professionals, who were ever-present yet not quite seen in the shadows of the Roman Empire, where slavery was simply a fact of life. Moss sees her work, therefore, as making the invisible visible, crediting the previously uncredited, and bringing the ghosts into the emancipatory limelight.

When handwriting was hard

Before going further, one precautionary note: While for many people in the pews today this idea of the New Testament writers not penning their scrolls by their own hands might seem shocking, for ancient historians, Moss’s description of book production is hardly surprising.

The Roman Empire was an extremely stratified society, where enslaved people were ubiquitous, always on hand to do such hard work as writing. Keep in mind, after all, that writing with ancient implements and technologies was much more physically arduous than the method I’m employing right now, as I type up this review with ease, seated in a well-lit room, in my pajamas in a comfy chair.

And I’m wearing glasses, with yet another updated prescription, because even in the modern world, a lifetime of reading Greek will seriously mess with one’s eyesight. Who knew? Paul did, apparently. According to Moss, Paul’s reference in Galatians 6:11 to including a brief note in the letter in large script by his own hand (whereas the rest of the letter was penned by an unnamed other) may denote his visual impairment.

It is a good reminder why someone beyond the prime of youth (as Paul was) would not be able to handwrite his own letters. Just think how many people today wear some sort of assistive eyewear. In a world with exceedingly poor medical care and no good indoor lighting, someone like me (who has worn glasses since first grade) was basically doomed. Since this same world also ran on enslaved labor, this meant, again, relying on secretaries—who were often unfree. Theirs was a career that privileged the young, even children, before eyesight eroded and hands grew arthritic.

We’ve established the generally widespread use of scribes. But who were the writers of the New Testament specifically? Moss begins the tale with some names that we know, and this is where things begin getting more hypothetical—always plausible, never absolutely provable (welcome to ancient history, folks!). There is Mark (the author of the Gospel)—according to Moss, he was originally the enslaved scribe and translator of the apostle Peter. At least he got to add his name to his own book, but that was far from typical.

Then, among the more obvious examples, in Romans 16:22 one Tertius interjects to add his greetings to those from Paul. Who is Tertius? He is likely an enslaved professional scribe. While Paul himself could not have afforded such a scribe, his patrons helped him out in this way. As Moss writes, “Tertius is traditionally associated with the deacon and community leader Phoebe, a wealthy member of the group of Christ followers in Corinth.”

So, what did it mean for Paul to write so many of his letters, like Philippians, with the aid of a scribe from a Roman prison? Moss paints a picture that corrects the vision we have of a writer seated next to Paul in a dungeon, neatly taking dictation. Rather, she notes, the secretary is unlikely to have been allowed inside the dungeon, instead taking dictation while crouching outside, next to the tiny window that allowed light and air into the subterranean prison. Paul, then, had to yell from below to be heard—hopefully accurately—by the dutiful scribe, paid by the line.

Once complete, the Gospels and the letters were transported, read aloud, and recited from memory—and not only in churches, Moss notes. In one intriguing tale, she narrates a hypothetical dinner party at which an enslaved lector was tasked with reading aloud Mark’s Gospel. Could such a recitation, Moss wonders, have resulted in the addition of the longer ending of Mark (16:9–20)?

Perhaps an experienced lector, practicing for a public reading, was afraid that the original ending was too simple, inelegant even (sorry, Mark!). Instead, then, he decided to jazz up the account a bit, adding a more entertaining ending to the Gospel. Nothing unusual to it. Readers and performers in antiquity had been doing this for over a thousand years, at this point, since at least the days of the Homeric epics.

Something extraordinary afoot

Moss’s research and storytelling are beyond reproach, even as we can (and should) quibble over some of the more hypothetical scenarios she presents. But then, as Moss reminds us herself at the book’s outset, “This method of history-telling involves imagination, refocus, and redress. … All ancient history involves imagination: even for famous emperors, politicians, and philosophers, the evidence is scant and hyperbolic.”

Reading this work of thorough research—and finding myself disagreeing with some of its fundamental assumptions—I kept thinking more about the imagination aspect involved. History is not an exact science. Facts do not speak for themselves but require interpretation. The question remains, therefore, what to do with the highly impressive body of material that Moss assembles in the book and in the expanded resources at the accompanying website.

Just how might the awareness of enslaved writers being involved in the composition of the New Testament affect our view of the Bible? This is where evangelical Christians will find themselves disagreeing with the book’s fundamental assumptions—and, therefore, conclusions—on theological grounds.

The book’s title—God’s Ghostwriters—gives away the game. Who are ghostwriters, anyway? In her new memoir, Ghosted, Nancy French takes readers behind the scenes into a modern professional ghostwriter’s life. There are plenty of prominent politicians and media personalities who have the platform—the name recognition—but cannot write their own books or even news articles. A good ghostwriter comes alongside them, then, and writes quickly and efficiently, taking the kernels of information she has learned about her subjects and presenting their stories and opinions more compellingly than they could manage on their own.

At the end, though, the ghostwriter steps back into the shadows. Hers is not the name on the book’s cover—or if it is, it is merely there in tiny print underneath the main “author.” Tertius sends his greetings; but Paul is the author.

This is exactly the process Moss imagines having happened with the New Testament—the ghostwriters made their own decisions in drafting the New Testament, which means that the end result may be more Tertius than Paul, for instance. We have here the beginnings of a scandal: Supposedly, the foundational religious text of an entire movement had been written by the nameless and the powerless, rather than by their named oppressors. And yet, is this really the case? The homogeneous nature of Paul’s letters, so many of which even the most ardent skeptics accept as authentic, is strong evidence that Paul, rather than various scribes he employed, was the true author nevertheless.

Moss’s interpretation, while possible, brings its own presuppositions to the table. It assumes, for instance, that the New Testament is a fully human document, compiled by human hands and driven by wholly human motivations, just as any other work of human literature. In other words, this approach to the evidence takes God out of the picture (unlike, to cite one example, historian Carlos Eire’s recent book about levitating saints, They Flew). Miracles are a tough pill to swallow, whether we’re considering a saint possibly airborne mid-prayer or, in this case, the divine inspiration of Scripture.

And yet, that is the foundation of belief: the idea that the things seen are not the only things—and beings—that exist. When considering the composition of the Bible by various hands, what if we acknowledge that something extraordinary is afoot rather than treating the Bible as if it were written exactly like any other work of ancient literature? What if we recognize God’s place in the process of writing the New Testament, just as we recognize other miracles afoot in Jesus’ ministry and in the lives of saints and martyrs afterward?

Most importantly, what if, instead of interpreting the data Moss considers merely as part and parcel of the oppressive structures of the Roman Empire, we see Christianity as what Jesus and his followers wanted it to be—a revolutionary belief that all human beings are unconditionally priceless because they are each made in God’s image? As sociologist Rodney Stark has argued, many (even if not all) Christians lived out this belief in caring for each other, causing the explosive growth of Christianity that otherwise seems utterly unexplainable.

Some of the enslaved martyrs whose stories Moss considers in this book, like Blandina and Felicity, certainly considered the faith to be their strength, their encouragement in a world that otherwise saw them as non-entities. It was the promise of eternity with God that gave them strength to find hope in Christianity and to resist Roman oppression. It doesn’t seem a stretch to imagine the same faith inspiring the secretaries who assisted Paul and his ilk.

Yes, the Roman Empire was oppressive, abusive, and highly hierarchical. And yet, from the earliest days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, his followers included people who otherwise would never have banded together as equals. In Christ, they could see each other as treasured children of God, as collaborators in the kingdom here and in the one to come. Maybe God’s ghostwriters, far from ghosts, were always part of the plan.

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

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News

Christian Athletes Know How to Build Platforms for Jesus. Can They Brand Themselves?

Emily Belz

NIL deals in college athletics present new challenges—and opportunities—for colleges and students.

UConn star Paige Bueckers, an outspoken Christian, has some of the biggest NIL deals in women's college basketball.

Steph Chambers / Getty Images

When Deverin Muff played Division I college basketball at Eastern Kentucky University, student athletes weren’t allowed to earn money off their name, image, and likeness (NIL)—their personal brand.

Now he’s a professor at the university, and some of the players in his classes have agents. An NCAA policy change in 2021—heralded by Muff and other Christian athletes as a matter of fairness—allows college athletes to earn money beyond financial aid or scholarships.

“This is a matter of justice, frankly. … It righted a historic wrong,” said Pepperdine University sports administration professor Alicia Jessop. College sports, especially football and basketball, draw in billions in revenue.

Christians in college athletics have welcomed the change to allow NIL deals, according to interviews with CT. But they are also navigating an unknown landscape and finding challenges along the way. The NCAA itself is still reeling from the resulting shifts in the economics of college sports, passing additional NIL rules just last week.

Jessop was recently teaching a class on NIL deals at Pepperdine, where she is also the faculty representative to the NCAA. One student decided to put the class into practice immediately and reached out to a sunglasses brand to pitch a deal. In a short time, the student had a free pair of sunglasses delivered.

“It’s a teaching tool,” said Jessop. “They think they’re learning about NIL so they’re focused, but they’re getting a whole business curriculum put in front of them.”

Under the new NCAA rules passed last week, schools can be more directly involved in NIL deals and they can offer a support system that helps educate students through the process.

“It’s an opportunity for Christian athletes in college to develop maturity and wisdom to navigate the world, which is what college sports should be about,” said sports historian Paul Putz, assistant director of the Faith & Sports Institute at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary. “It’s the Wild West a little bit, but there’s opportunities as well.”

Christian athletes might be well prepared for the NIL market, said Putz, because they’ve already been taught to think highly of their platform as a way of “promoting” Jesus.

He noted that national sports ministries like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) and Athletes in Action have marketing and sales roots; Don McClanen founded FCA in 1954 with the idea that athletes could use their name, image, and likeness to endorse Jesus instead of shaving cream or cigarettes.

Christian colleges have consulted with NIL lawyers, according to interviews with CT, and have developed NIL-specific policies to put boundaries on what brands students can partner with.

For example, Houghton University’s NIL policy prohibits “activities that endorse businesses or brands that are engaged in activities inconsistent with the University’s mission.” Most Christian schools have policies similar to secular schools, which also don’t want students doing promotional deals with gambling companies, for example.

One question mark in this new NIL landscape are collectives. Some nonprofit and for-profit NIL collectives have formed around school programs that are often backed by alumni to find NIL opportunities for players.

The NCAA has tried without success to restrict these collectives from being a part of the recruitment process, in an effort to avoid “pay-to-play” incentives that might simply send the best college athletes to the wealthiest schools. The IRS also issued a memo last year saying that these nonprofit collectives might not be tax-exempt, which could dampen alumni donor backing of these groups.

Is NIL making college sports transactional?

Some Christians have worried about college sports becoming more and more transactional. Historically, Christians have associated amateurism in college sports with moral formation, according to Putz. Playing non-professionally in an educational setting is considered character forming.

But money has always been a part of the equation—it just wasn’t going to athletes. Coaches were already drawing high salaries by the 1920s, Putz said. He doesn’t see any concern about transactional deals with coaches. (One recent example: Public records showed The Ohio State University signed a new offensive coordinator for $2 million.)

“If [NIL] is transactional, we’re learning that from the grown-ups in those spaces, from the people who are setting the pace and expectations,” Putz said.

Harold “Red” Grange, considered one of the college football greats, announced he would turn professional shortly after his college team won the state championship in 1925. Critics, which Putz said included Christians, were angry that he would stoop to commercialism.

But Putz said that when James Naismith, the Christian who invented basketball, was asked about Grange, he said any college athletes going to play professionally were simply doing what coaches had already done.

“He saw early on the way college sports were already commercialized,” Putz said.

Small potatoes at smaller schools

Most Christian college students aren’t going to see big NIL deals. According to Jessop, Pepperdine students tend to get in-kind deals on things like sunglasses.

One estimate in 2021 put Division III athletes’ average NIL compensation at $47 a year. That has likely increased as students become more entrepreneurial, but the bulk of NIL money goes to football programs at the Power Five schools, which have drawn over $595 million in NIL funding in the past three years according to Opendorse.

Most Christian college sports programs are Division II, Division III, or part of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, a conference for smaller colleges. The combined NIL football program earnings for all schools across those programs was estimated at around a half-million dollars.

Baylor, one of the only Christian schools in the Power Five conferences, reports that more than half of its student athletes have NIL deals. Smaller schools might not have the resources to hire agencies to help students with deals, as some larger Christian colleges have done.

Tim Schoonveld, the athletic director at Hope College, a NCAA Division III school, has 550 student athletes, and he estimates 15 of them have some kind of NIL deal. But they aren’t Nike ads.

“Maybe the local restaurant will give you a meal a week if you tweet about them,” he said. “That’s the limited stuff we get.”

That’s by design. Division III athletes, like those at Hope, don’t receive athletic scholarships; the benefit is that they have more time to focus on school and don’t lose their financial aid package if they step off the team.

But Schoonveld is happy for student athletes to earn income off their name and image. He thinks schools can help students navigate the ethics of deals; he wants them to balance making deals with being generous as people—engaging with younger fans without expecting compensation, for example.

After the NCAA began allowing NIL deals, Peyton Mansell, then a quarterback at Abilene Christian University, reached out to a local farm and told them he liked their milk, according to the school’s student newspaper The Optimist. Mansell and the farm worked out a partnership, and that experience led him to start his own beef jerky business in 2022, which has taken off.

“Now, being able to return that favor by being on the other side, and being able to say, ‘Hey, I want to sponsor you,’ is really nice,” he told The Optimist. “Especially at a school like ACU, which doesn’t have the national reach like other universities.”

UConn basketball star Paige Bueckers, an outspoken Christian, has a self-imposed requirement that any NIL deal includes a charity or community engagement opportunity. Bueckers was the first college athlete to sign a deal with Gatorade, and Jessop said that women athletes are the “early winners” with NIL because they can establish their own marketing deals when “historically their athletic departments have not marketed them.”

Is NIL spurring transfers?

Another NCAA rule change in recent years that plays into NIL allows student athletes to transfer schools without the penalty of sitting out a season or more. That means bigger schools with more incentives can often recruit top players at any point. Muff, the former college basketball player turned professor, has conversations every week with students who might be wrestling with transferring, often to bigger schools with the possibility of better compensation.

He brings up why it might be good to stay even without the greater NIL incentives, and asks them to think about life outside of sports.

“Because I’m a former student athlete, teaching at the school I played at, the conversations can get deeper,” he said. “That’s my hope for anybody who does come talk to me—that they consider the community they’re leaving.”

Muff did not transfer in part because he became a Christian through the ministry Campus Outreach his sophomore year.

“Having that community that was already built in here, not only with other Christians at school but the church community, that helped a lot,” he said. “People are well within their right to transfer whenever they want to, but instead of being a hired gun, you have the opportunity to be in a family.”

He added: “If they truly believe somewhere else is going to be better for them, go for it. But consider all your options before leaving.”

Jessop said for top athletes, “money talks”—and she thinks the pay-to-play collectives are more responsible for driving transfers than NIL as a concept. But she still thinks students will seek out Christian universities for their values.

And that is where Christians have a unique contribution, Putz said.

“If we’re an athletic program that wants to be a Christian athletic program, how do we connect what’s happening in NIL within a broader structure of a Christian flourishing for student athletes?” said Putz. “NIL presents a laboratory space for figuring out those questions.”

- More from Emily Belz

News

Mike Johnson Defies GOP to Heed Evangelical Pleas for Ukraine Aid

Harvest Prude

After lobbying from fellow Southern Baptists and Christians affected by the war, the House speaker moves a package forward.

Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images

When deciding whether to protect his place in leadership as House speaker or go against his party to do what he believed was right, Mike Johnson turned to prayer.

After weeks of hearing intelligence briefings and pleas from fellow Christians, Johnson ultimately sided with his convictions rather than conceding to the Republican Party’s isolationist wing. He backed a $95 billion foreign aid package that, despite the opposition of 112 GOP legislators, overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last weekend.

Like many of his fellow Republicans, Johnson had initially opposed further aid to Ukraine, voting against it prior to becoming speaker and waiting months to move forward with an aid package after the Senate approved its version in February.

He “went through a transformation,” according to one GOP colleague, House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Michael McCaul. The shift may have come in part due to the influence of Ukrainian evangelicals, fellow Christian leaders, and his personal faith.

“He got down on his knees, and he prayed for guidance and said, ‘Look, tell me. What is the right thing to do here?’” the Texas congressman told NOTUS’s Haley Byrd Wilt. The next day, Johnson said to McCaul, “I want to be on the right side of history.”

The House vote on the Ukraine provisions, around $61 billion, was 311 to 112; a majority of Johnson’s colleagues voted against the measure, while aid to Israel and Taiwan had broader support. The Senate cleared the package Tuesday in a bipartisan 79–18 vote. Now the measure heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

Ukrainian leadership had grown more vocal about depleted weapons two years into the war with Russia, and Christian leaders had asked Johnson to move forward with authorizing further aid.

In addition to hearing intelligence briefings from national security advisors, the Louisiana congressman met with Ukrainian Christians, who detailed the horrors in the war-torn country. Pavlo Unguryan told the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that in speaking last week with Johnson, he painted the war as a spiritual struggle.

Another Christian, Serhii Haidarzhy, spoke to Johnson through an interpreter and shared how his wife and his four-month-old son Timofee had been killed due to a Russian drone strike.

Johnson reportedly embraced Haidarzhy and prayed for him, according to CBN.

During a press call earlier in the month, a group of evangelicals—including Patriot Voices chairman Rick Santorum, Faith and Freedom Coalition’s founder Ralph Reed, and Sandy Hagee Parker, chairwoman of Christians United for Israel—urged the speaker to offer support for Ukraine and Israel.

A group of influential Baptist leaders also wrote to Johnson to highlight the plight of Ukrainian Christians, saying, “We believe that God has put you in this position ‘for such a time as this.’”

The letter highlighted how, during the war, the Russian army has destroyed Baptist churches and threatened, tortured, and removed pastors from their positions. Signatories included Richard Land, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC).

Current ERLC president Brent Leatherwood also wrote to the speaker, a fellow Southern Baptist, with concerns about the plight of Ukrainian Christians in Russian-controlled territories.

“Our fellow Baptists have faced particularly intense persecution and have had over 400 churches destroyed by Russian attacks,” he wrote. Leatherwood urged Johnson and Democratic minority leader Hakeem Jeffries to end the paralysis that gripped the House on the issue.

Johnson served as an ERLC trustee for two terms, and Leatherwood has sought to maintain friendly relations with the Louisiana lawmaker.

“He was at my first meeting in Washington as president of the ERLC,” Leatherwood told CT in an interview last year. “He’s obviously got that past, that historical connection with our entity, and I wanted to open a dialogue with him because he is such a prominent Southern Baptist on Capitol Hill.”

“I was struck in that meeting, because here is someone who is devoted to our convention. A number of the issues that he has publicly spoken about are issues that are very important to Southern Baptists. I think that kind of denominational history is very evident in the profile that he carved out as a member of the House of Representatives and now as speaker of the House.”

In February, the Senate passed a national security package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan with similar contours to the current package, but Johnson stalled acting on it in the House for two months.

Though aid for Israel remains strong on the right, supporting embattled nations in Eastern Europe and the Asia-Pacific region is expected to come with a cost.

Johnson acknowledged that it was a tough political decision: “I could make a selfish decision and do something different, but I’m doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he told reporters last week.

The move angered some Republicans, not least because it took votes from Democrats to get the foreign aid package across the line. There has been a pile-on by some influential voices on the right.

Trump ally Steve Bannon said that Johnson “must go just like Kevin McCarthy,” the former House speaker. Tucker Carlson lambasted the move and described Johnson as “weak” and “susceptible to evil.”

Meanwhile, Johnson’s GOP colleagues on the Hill are considering a motion to vacate, a procedural move to bring up a vote to demote Johnson. So far, they have yet to act on it.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Johnson’s most outspoken critic at the moment, has taken to the airwaves to vow that Johnson’s time as speaker is over.

“People are fed up,” Greene said about the amount of money spent out of Washington. “He’s absolutely working for the Democrats, passing the Biden administration’s agenda. This is a speakership that is completely over with.”

But the criticism has been muted by bipartisan praise.

After the package was passed, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted his gratitude on the social platform X: “I thank everyone who supported our package, this is a solution for protecting life. I personally thank Speaker Mike Johnson and all American hearts who believe, as we do in Ukraine, that Russian evil must not be winning.”

There has also been support in unlikely, and influential, quarters.

Donald Trump has so far declined to join the criticism, which may protect Johnson from dissatisfaction spreading among the majority of House Republicans. Last week, the former president told reporters during a joint press conference with Johnson that “I stand with the speaker,” and, after the House passed Ukraine aid, Trump also rallied to Johnson’s defense.

On Monday, while addressing reporters in the midst of his legal trial, Trump noted that House Republicans have a razor-thin majority. “It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do,” Trump told reporters. “I think he’s a very good person.”

His stance may be to prevent the House from being thrown into another chaotic speaker election in the lead-up to November. The perception—if it grows—that Republicans are unable to govern may hurt their ability to hang onto their slim and unruly majority come November, as some conservatives have pointed out.

In December, Leatherwood had forecasted that the speaker’s faith would play a significant role in his tenure.

“You can have two Baptists in a room and get seven different opinions. It’s very possible, in fact, likely, that there’s not going to be agreement on everything. And that’s just with Baptists,” Leatherwood said.

“But personally, in meeting with [Johnson] and interacting with him last year, I got the sense that this is a faithful Christian who has a history of being engaged in Baptist life and who believes, like I do, that our faith can inform and guide us to good policy that ends up actually serving and benefiting every American.”

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Theology

Eco-anxiety Is Crippling Gen Z. How Can We Move Forward?

Naomi Bosch

Christians can disciple each other toward action, prayer, and hope.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Pexels

I’m 26 and mostly full of enthusiasm for the future. But when I think about the heat waves, floods, and humanitarian crises that I’ll likely experience in my lifetime, I feel a sense of dread. And even more so when I think about the future of my children and my children’s children. I wonder if they’ll get to experience all the beauty of God’s creation that I so cherished while growing up.

As a young farmer, I feel my chest tighten as I watch weather patterns and the seasons become more and more erratic. I worry if there’ll be wars for food and water with a warmer climate, or if water sources will be polluted and the soil will be eroded.

Many people, especially my age, feel the same way. A recent survey asked 10,000 young people across the world about their thoughts and feelings regarding climate change. According to the findings, three out of four young people think the future is frightening. More than half reported feelings of sadness, anxiety, anger, and powerlessness when thinking about climate change. And around 45 percent of respondents said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning.

These fears have become so prevalent in our generation that a new term has been coined: eco-anxiety.

In a way, young people today have fulfilled climate activist Greta Thunberg’s provocation to leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2019: “I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day.”

But while I respect Thunberg’s contribution to putting climate change on the world’s agenda, I disagree with her on this. I don’t believe that panic will help us. What we need more of today is hope—a deep hope, not a kind of naive hope that closes its eyes to reality.

The environmental reality does look bleak. Just remember last summer—it was brutally hot. According to climate scientists at NASA, it was Earth’s hottest since global records began in 1880. But despite the record heat of 2023, it likely will be one of the coolest years in the lives of many young people. Many scientists believe our planet is on track for alarming global warming, a biodiversity crisis, and serious disruptions in weather patterns.

Residents of Oceania and the Maldives, for example, are highly at risk for rising sea levels. The resettlement of some villages and towns has already begun. And in the future, many more “environmental refugees” will likely have to flee their homes because they can no longer stay there—an estimated 216 million refugees by 2050.

The impacts of climate change are felt most by the poorest, such as subsistence farmers and communities with limited access to funds after environmental disasters hit. These people are also the ones who have least contributed to climate change.

Biodiversity loss, wildfires, pollution, climate change, and extreme weather events certainly give us reasons to lament and worry. We can feel powerless when decision-makers fail to protect the environment and our future. And the constant stream of bad news that we’re exposed to online takes its emotional toll too.

As a Christian, I know that God cares for the world. But I also believe that God is lamenting for all that has gone wrong with his creation. Jesus never shied away from feelings. Instead, he openly showed emotions such as sadness, fear, anger, and grief. The Christian faith equips us with tools to deal with the fear we may feel for the future of the Earth. Here are three practices that have helped me deal with my own eco-anxiety.

Take small steps to change.

My grandad has been cultivating a small apple orchard behind his house for decades. One sunny week in September, my father, my cousin, her husband, her young son, and I harvested the apples. While I was picking the sweet fruit from the branches, I noticed little ladybugs nestled in the hollow around the apple stem, seemingly asleep.

I carefully woke the beetles and gently placed them on a branch. I didn’t want them to die in the cider press or in the cellar. In relation to the current insect decline, my action may seem completely pointless. But it gave me hope. And I think God was pleased too (the aphids perhaps less so).

When worries for the planet paralyze us, we can do something to care for it, no matter how small and insignificant it may seem. Cook a meal instead of buying a plastic-wrapped ready-made one. Bike to work or school instead of driving. Invite someone around for a cup of fair-trade organic tea. Avoid doomscrolling and don’t pick up your smartphone for an hour. Plant a salad on your windowsill.

This may seem ridiculous in view of the scale of the crisis. But stewardship helps. We can also be sure that every act of love, no matter how small, is worthy in the eyes of God.

Talk to the Good Shepherd.

Nothing can calm me down like sitting in a meadow and looking at a flock of sheep. Sheep are very fearful animals. Only once they feel completely safe and have eaten their fill do they lie down in the grass together. As I watch the animals graze and lie down, my anxieties subside. I can’t help but think of Psalm 23:

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. (vv. 1–3)

I begin to talk to Jesus, the Good Shepherd. To the Lord of all creation, through whom everything was created (Col. 1:16), but who at the same time cares for every sparrow (Luke 12:6). When everything around us seems gloomy and we are tormented by fears about the future, we can rest assured: God is for us. Jesus is the lighthouse bringing hope, order, wisdom, and light into our world.

During an uncertain time, Psalm 90:14 particularly spoke to me: “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.”

Simple, short prayers throughout the day can be helpful—a conversation with the Good Shepherd. For example, as we read the news and feel anxiety or worry, we might direct a quiet Lord, have mercy or Into your hands I commit this to God. Or we might ask him, What do you want me to do?

Celebrate.

This practice may sound almost ironic in view of the state of our planet. But I believe that celebrating is exactly where the key to hope lies. While fear, worry, and anger are legitimate emotions considering the injustices of the environmental crisis, they can also easily rob us of joy or make us cynical. But in this state, we can no longer enjoy—or serve—beautiful relationships with God, our fellow human beings, and the rest of creation.

So let us not close our eyes and hearts to all the beauty and goodness that we still have left. Instead, let us celebrate and enjoy it! “Taste and see that the Lord is good,” the psalmist invites us (Ps. 34:8).

At a time when I was physically and emotionally unwell, I suddenly had the urge to celebrate life. I was inspired by the many festivals that the Israelites were supposed to celebrate year after year. In the midst of heaviness and hopelessness, I wanted to celebrate the good.

I started to think about how I could do good for myself, others, and nature. It is only when we can share our joy with others that we experience complete happiness. So, under the motto “Celebrate, Share, and Renew,” I made a list of ideas for the coming month.

I treated myself to coffee and cake with a good book in a lovely café. I gave away homemade pralines. I invited my best friends over to make sourdough pizza. I went for a walk and consciously savored God’s majestic creation. I donated to a Christian nature conservation organization for projects like bio-sand water filters and fruit trees for schools and communities in Uganda, beehives for farmers in Kenya, and reforestation projects in Peru or Lebanon.

When my festive month was over, I felt as if the fog had finally lifted. My sadness had actually turned into joy. I could finally laugh and write again with hope, and that hope had taken the form of concrete acts of love.

What if we sat down at God’s richly laid table—in the face of all the bad things that are happening in the world? And what would it be like if we invited our friends and neighbors, young and old, to join us? What if, in our work to care for God’s creation, we also enjoyed it ourselves—through colorful autumn leaves, joyful walks, and delicious, lovingly prepared food?

As Christians, we must neither whitewash reality nor live in fear of doom. Rather, we can live hopefully in the midst of environmental concern. While acknowledging the ecological challenges of today, we can face our feelings of eco-anxiety. And then, we can take environmental action out of love for the Creator, knowing that one day, we will rejoice in the renewed creation.

Naomi Bosch is an author, agricultural scientist, and freelance writer focused on sustainability and creation care. She lives and farms in Zagreb, Croatia.

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Hold Your Clapbacks

Bonnie Kristian

C.S. Lewis recommended discernment over diatribes in exactly the moments we’re most eager to indulge in critique.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

I’d just finished reading one of C. S. Lewis’s lesser-known books, Studies in Words, when I happened upon a recent New York Times report on evangelical support for Donald Trump. The former president’s summer of legal woes is off to an early start, and many have asked whether the present trial (or another) will lose him support ahead of Election Day. The answer—among his base, anyway—is undoubtedly no.

If anything, the opposite is true: In some circles, his adversities are hailed as a kind of vindication, his endurance on the campaign trail as a sign of divine blessing. “For some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, the political attacks and legal peril he faces are nothing short of biblical,” the report said. “They’ve crucified him worse than Jesus,” one Trump enthusiast told the Times.

Now, the Lewis book is mostly fascinating linguistic history, but the last chapter examines how we use language to dispense criticism, and its final two pages are precisely the warning our political culture needs as we plod through another contentious election. It’s certainly the warning I need and the warning I hope fellow Christians will heed, particularly those of us in politically diverse families, friend groups, and congregations.

I realized how much I needed it as I read that Times article. It published on Easter Monday and I read it the same day, the drama of Easter weekend fresh on my mind. Suffice it to say, the crucifixion line did not sit well with me.

“Worse than Jesus”! I remember thinking. I agree some of this legal stuff is far-fetched, but are you kidding me? Do these people not know what crucifixion entails? Do they not know Trump probably sleeps on silk sheets? Has actual diamonds on his front door? We’re not exactly dealing with a “man of sorrows” here (Isa. 53:3, KJV).

I could have kept going. Some part of me wanted to keep going, to tear that line to shreds, to pick apart the poor theology and misplaced political loyalty, to make it the focus of this very article, to personally and publicly sort the sheep from the goats. I had the impulse to self-aggrandizing political judgment I’ve observed in others, and I was dismayed to find it tasted delicious in my own mouth.

But recalling what Lewis said about criticism made me spit it out. He was writing more than six decades ago, so his idea of a public critic is now anachronistically narrow. He envisions a book reviewer, or a scholar assessing some new research—essentially, people like Lewis himself.

Today, of course, we can all play the critic, and we don’t need to confine our critical attention to books or journals. Old norms against talking politics in many social and professional contexts have fallen away. And the internet as we know it invites us all to render judgment on just about anything we like, sometimes in the form of condemnation (“X is bad and stupid”) and sometimes as affirmation (“I support Y, the good and smart thing”). We often describe this as “taking a stand.”

Taking a stand can be the right or even necessary thing to do. Yet our motives are often less pure than we imagine, and this is where the warning comes in. “I think we must get it firmly fixed in our minds,” Lewis wrote, “that the very occasions on which we should most like to write a slashing review”—or post a devastating TikTok or tweet or message in the family chat—“are precisely those on which we had much better hold our tongues. The very desire is a danger signal.”

Lewis was not opposed to condemnation. He wasn’t advocating cowardice. Sometimes, he said, we must “condemn totally and severely.” But we should pay attention to why we want to speak this way, why we want to pronounce “a fully indulged resentment.” If we find ourselves rushing to critique some person or group for doing “‘exactly the sort of thing we always loathe,’ then,” Lewis wrote, “if we are wise, we shall be silent”:

The strength of our dislike is itself a probable symptom that all is not well within; that some raw place in our psychology has been touched, or else that some personal or partisan motive is secretly at work. If we were simply exercising judgement we should be calmer; less anxious to speak.

And if we do speak, we shall almost certainly make fools of ourselves. Continence in this matter is no doubt painful. But, after all, you can always write your slashing review now and drop it into the wastepaper basket a day or so later. A few re-readings in cold blood will often make this quite easy.

I realize this advice may feel as outdated as Lewis’s picture of writing a review on physical paper and placing it in the physical trash. From right and left alike, our political life reverberates with calls to urgency and outrage: If you aren’t ready to take radical political action, you “don’t know what time it is.” If you stay out of politics—even if that amounts to so small a rebellion as declining to follow every news cycle—you must be enjoying the luxury of privilege.

It’s not true that disinterest in politics is a sign of privilege; on the contrary, more educated (and therefore higher income) Americans are more politically engaged than their less privileged counterparts by just about every measure. But it is true that there are many outrageous and urgent matters in American politics. I am plenty discontented with the whole state of things myself.

And politics is hardly the only place we have important and difficult disagreements. (I often say I’m more worried about causing a stir in Christian circles on X, formerly Twitter, than in its political spaces; the intra-church fights can be more vicious.)

In many contexts, Lewis’s call to forbearance will never be obsolete. It echoes the spirit of Paul’s advice to Timothy to avoid “foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful” (2 Tim. 2:23–24).

The high stakes we encounter in politics and beyond are exactly why Lewis’s advice to take a pause before (or even instead of) taking a stand is so needful: We wouldn’t need the warning if we were all in agreement.

Thanks to the grotesque distension of the American election cycle, we are 18 months into this thing and still have 6 months to go. It will get worse before it gets better. The impulse to take stands—confident stands, bombastic stands, stands that bring discord into our close relationships and have zero effect on national politics—will only grow stronger. By November, we’ll be awash in diatribes and bereft of discernment, if we don’t take care.

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

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Theology

Let the Seas Rise and Feed the Poor

Elia Maggang

Helping marine biodiversity flourish is a means of participating in God’s work, says an Indonesian theologian.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash

Indonesia is the largest archipelagic nation in the world. It’s made up of an astounding 17,000 islands, with 70 percent of the population living in coastal areas. Many view the country as a divers’ haven because it is home to vibrant coral reefs teeming with colorful fish, and it’s also where the largest mangrove ecosystems on the planet exist.

But my country is facing a severe marine ecological crisis today because of destructive fishing, pollution, climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions. Our ecosystem of mangroves, seagrass, and coral reefs is in decline. Fish stock is also decreasing, while other sea creatures are frequently poisoned by land-based pollution.

This crisis is a serious threat in the Indonesian context, where ecological and social lives are often inseparable. Over half of the population’s annual protein intake comes from fish and seafood, and around 7 million people depend heavily on the sea for their livelihoods. But now, more than 2.5 million Indonesian households involved in small-scale fishery activities are at risk of losing their way of life and source of income. Fishing grounds are increasingly limited, triggering conflicts among traditional fishermen.

Poor people in our coastal areas have suffered the most due to their dependence on the sea for survival. Many use traditional techniques and equipment such as pudi—fishing weirs that channel fish to a particular location—and bubu, fish traps made of bamboo, to collect various kinds of seafood during low tide to feed themselves.

The marine ecological crisis, however, is increasingly destroying their source of food. It’s also erasing our culture of caring for the needy, in that coastal communities often give priority to the poor when it comes to gathering provisions from the sea.

In other words: The sea gives us food and cultivates compassion for the poor among us. But both its sustenance and communal care are now in danger.

Reflecting on the traditional practices of Indonesian coastal communities and churches, I offer the concept and practice of “blue” diakonia (pronounced “dee-ak-on-ee’-ah”), the Greek word for service and ministry from which we get the English word deacon.

Australian scholar John N. Collins’s study of diakonia in the New Testament and in ancient Greek sources stresses that the service and ministry conducted by humans point to God’s mandate to look after the poor. Danish missiologist Knud Jørgensen also sees diakonia as an invitation to participate in God’s work of looking after and liberating the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed.

Most Indonesian believers regard diakonia as a primarily human affair, demonstrated through caring for the poor by providing them with food or financial support. Such an understanding, however, does not incorporate ways in which creation itself looks after the underprivileged.

In my view, we need to develop a blue diakonia that acknowledges and supports the sea—which feeds the poor and gives life to all who rely on it—as an active participant in the triune God’s work.

A foretaste of the kingdom

A 2023 survey by government agency Statistics Indonesia found that 25.9 million people live in poverty in the country. This makes diakonia a crucial practice among believers, who comprise 11 percent of the population in the Muslim-majority nation.

There are three diakonia models that are widely accepted in Indonesian Christian communities, according to Indonesian theologian Yosef Purnama Widyatmadja: diakonia karitatif (charity), diakonia reformatif (individual/community development by training) and diakonia transformatif (structural/social transformation). Integrating the ecological crisis into how Indonesian churches practice diakonia is a promising new development. In fact, there is growing interest in a theological discourse known as eco-diakonia, which seeks to ensure that nature keeps expressing its agency, especially as a source of food, and that the poor have access to that food sustainably.

But in blue diakonia, it is specifically the sea—not nature more broadly—that Christians strive to serve and protect. The waters that cover the face of this planet are God’s good creation, as are all the creatures within it, which he blesses and empowers to “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas” (Gen. 1:10, 20–22). The sea and its creatures experience God’s love as he looks after and renews them (Ps. 104:24–30; 145:9).

Moreover, the sea and its creatures are not outcasts but part of God’s coming kingdom. As American theologian J. Richard Middleton says, the phrase there was no longer any sea in Revelation 21:1 is good news, because the sea will no longer be used by the Roman Empire as a means to expand their exploitative economic power. Instead, the sea will take part in worshiping God as new creation: Its creatures will join others in heaven, on earth, and under the earth to sing to “him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb” (Rev. 5:13).

Through this perspective, churches can proclaim the gospel (Mark 16:15) by letting the sea and its creatures have a foretaste of the coming kingdom of God. Preserving and restoring the sea so that it keeps embodying its role of providing food, particularly for the poor, is that foretaste—and an outworking of blue diakonia.

In the province of East Nusa Tenggara, the evangelical church Gereja Masehi Injili di Timor (GMIT) has sought to improve marine conditions in its vicinity for the past five years.

In 2020, the church partnered with the Indonesian Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries to transplant coral into the Savu Sea National Marine Park, located within the province, to restore the park’s ecosystem. Since 2021, GMIT has also planted and taken care of mangroves on Savu Island. This project is “an expression of our faith as we preserve God’s gift of life, restoring and protecting mangroves just as the mangroves protect us from cyclones,” said GMIT’s former synod moderator Mery Kolimon.

“We just cannot let the mangrove ecosystem [be] destroyed—we need to help restore it because that is our call as God’s people,” added Rowi Kaka Mone, one of the project leaders.

Other Indonesian churches carry out ministries that aim to conserve the waters around them. For many years, two churches in particular—Gereja Protestan Maluku (GPM) and Gereja Kristen Injili di Tanah Papua—have carried out the traditional sustainable fishing practice of sasi laut, which preserves marine ecosystems by keeping an area free from fishing activities for a particular period of time, ranging from three months to two years.

People often call GPM’s practice of sasi laut by another name: sasi gereja, or “church sasi.” This concept “carries the blessing of the local church and, for believers, the fear of God. To break ‘church sasi’ is to commit a sin,” said a Forests News report.

Caring for widows and orphans

Nevertheless, regarding the sea only as a recipient of diakonia—Christian service and ministry—is not enough, as this perspective could overshadow the sea’s agency in creation.

It is true that the sea needs humans to care for it. But the sea also has decisive agencies that we should recognize. The sea is not a passive object that is fully dependent on humans. Examining how the sea plays a vital role in carrying out God’s mission, even in its recovery from anthropogenic damage, helps us realize that humans not only do something for the sea but also with it.

What this means is that the sea can also be regarded as diakonos, a deacon or minister that looks after the poor by providing food for them. The coastal communities of Indonesia perceive the sea as a living entity that nurtures and sustains their lives with physical nourishment. For instance, the maritime people of Lamalera in East Nusa Tenggara call the sea ina fae belé or sedo basa hari lolo, phrases that describe how the sea is an all-loving mother who bears and raises her children and supplies everything they need.

A more specific portrayal of the sea taking care of the poor is found in a 1997 study, led by Indonesian theologian and anthropologist Tom Therik, of the fishing activities of Pantai Rote, Semau Island’s maritime community. In the local language and in traditional poetry, the poor are called ina falu (widows) and ana mak (orphans). Twice a day, these widows and orphans head out to harvest aquatic plants and sea creatures during low tide. This is a widely accepted cultural norm in the community, as the poor cannot afford boats or adequate fishing equipment and can only rely on the bounty of the sea for daily sustenance.

The sea shapes the people’s culture of looking after the poor: The waters in that area are part of the Coral Triangle, also known as the “Amazon of the Seas” because it contains the most marine biodiversity on the planet. It’s home to 76 percent of coral species as well as six out of seven species of marine turtles, and it serves as a prolific tuna spawning and nursery ground.

Perceiving the sea as God’s active agent, as I argue here, is not alien to our Christian faith. The Bible explicitly does so. In Genesis 1:22, God blesses and commands sea creatures to “be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas.” In Genesis 4:11–12, the land is portrayed as standing against evil by opening its mouth to receive Abel’s blood and refusing to yield its crops for Cain.

These biblical personifications of creation also allow us to acknowledge the significant role of the sea in God’s liberation of the Israelites from their oppression in Egypt (Ex. 14:20–21). The sea withdraws itself and piles up to let the Israelites pass through dry ground while it stops Pharaoh’s army from pursuing them, says Indonesian biblical scholar Margaretha Apituley.

Perceiving the sea as diakonos—an emissary of God’s work—is therefore part of a biblical framework. Just as the Sea of Galilee facilitates Christ’s work by providing two fishes, alongside five loaves, to feed the multitude (Mark 6:30–44), the Indonesian seas facilitate Christ’s work by offering all that swims and grows within it as food for the poor in the archipelago’s coastal communities.

In essence, blue diakonia is a mission for and with the sea. It recognizes and respects the sea as an active participant in God’s work. As churches support the flourishing of the seas as a means of feeding the poor, Christians and the sea can also become co-diakonos, or co-ministers, of God.

Encounters between Indonesian traditional maritime cultures and Christianity can be an important opportunity for churches to address the marine ecological crisis and its negative impacts on the poor. My hope is that blue diakonia can be a mission that belongs not only to Indonesian churches but also to churches all around the planet, just as Jesus commanded his disciples, “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37).

Elia Maggang holds a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK. Based in Indonesia, his theological work revolves around the intersections of Christianity and Indigenous traditions, especially their theology and practice regarding the sea and humans’ relationship with the sea.

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Panic Won’t Protect the Planet Well

Carrie McKean

I grew up as a climate change denier. Now I understand we must care for God’s creation and people alike.

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

I grew up believing that Earth Day was a liberal holiday. Climate change was a lie, a ploy by leftist political activists to dismantle US economic superiority by undermining domestic energy production and crippling our industries. Humans had a God-given right to have “dominion” (Gen. 1:26) over the earth, I was taught. The natural world was ours to “steward” (Gen. 2:15), which to us meant it could be used as desired to improve the lives of industrious, hard-working families like ours.

Everywhere I turned, I saw this definition of stewardship in action. It was well-intended but, I now think, ill-considered. My home then was the Texas Panhandle, atop the Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala is the largest aquifer in the nation, but after decades of High Plains farmers tapping it with abandon, it’s drying up.

These days, I live five hours south of my hometown atop another major geological formation: the Permian Basin, the nation’s most productive oil field and the heart of the US oil and gas industry. Thirteen years ago, I cried when we moved to Midland, Texas, for my husband’s new job with a natural gas company, not wanting my family to be part of an industry I’d come to believe was destroying the earth. Needless to say, by then, I no longer believed climate change was a lie.

I’d spent nearly four years in a small village outside of Beijing where the drainage creek bubbled with dangerously toxic sludge; we’d go days without seeing the sun through the industrial haze; and blowing my nose in the winter would leave me with a tissue blackened with coal dust. I didn’t have to be a climate scientist to conclude that there would be consequences for how humans were treating the earth.

As my views changed in my late 20s, I found a new—yet still evangelical—vocabulary for talking about the planet. Like many other thoughtful Christians eager to disassociate from a history of climate change denial, I traded one extreme for another. Dropping the free-for-all model of stewardship, I instead began espousing an apparently sensible but functionally vague idea that Christians should care for creation.

But in those 13 years, living amid the fossil fuel industry and grappling with the complexities of energy production has changed my perspective again—and this time, not to another extreme. I’ve learned so much from sober-minded industry experts here in Midland, many of whom are faithful Christians. They’ve brought depth and nuance to my thinking about science, creation, and orthodoxy, and they’ve helped me hold in tension the beliefs that climate change is real and that an abrupt transition to green energy would be enormously harmful for vulnerable people here in the US and across the developing world.

For Christians who believe God desires for us to care for his creation and his people, there’s ground between “climate change is fake” and “the earth is on fire,” and we can help lead the way to a more reasonable conversation about energy production and consumption.

It’s easy to see how the conversation got so unreasonable. We’ve traded pragmatic thinking for impassioned rhetoric, mixing apocalypticism and accusations at every turn. Many have come to believe we’re on the verge of catastrophic environmental tipping points, a premise that makes any opposition seem intolerable and any response but sheer panic feel irresponsible.

Climate anxiety has risen to the point that some people are deciding to remain childless or, in a few cases, calling for the “graceful bowing out of humanity.” This is a shockingly anti-human, voluntary extinction movement that, while fringe, has profoundly consequential ideas.

Even more mainstream voices tend to take an absolutist tone. “The science is clear,” the United Nations says: “To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, emissions need to be reduced by almost half by 2030 and reach net-zero by 2050. To achieve this, we need to end our reliance on fossil fuels and invest in alternative sources of energy that are clean, accessible, affordable, sustainable, and reliable.”

The problem is, that kind of drastic solution is not as simple as it sounds. Right now, 60 percent of US electricity is generated by fossil fuels (including the energy charging many electric cars), and 18.6 percent comes from nuclear plants. Our primary alternative electricity sources—like wind and solar—contribute about 21.4 percent of our power, but they’re much less reliable. US emissions won’t be halved in six years unless we have a catastrophic plunge in quality of life.

We also face crippling storage and transmission problems that cannot be wished away. Per Evergreen Action, a climate activism group, over 80 percent of clean energy projects in the US may never be completed. That’s because we don’t have enough transmission lines in our electric grid to move the power they’d generate from production areas to consumers.

At least with transmission, we know the solution, even if we may not be able to implement it quickly enough. Storage is another problem entirely: Though development work is underway, we do not yet have scalable battery solutions that can help make renewables a reliable alternative to fossil fuels. We can collect solar power, but we need enormous battery capacity to even out its distribution across distance as well as seasons and weather patterns.

And on top of all this, our need for energy is only increasing. AI’s appetite for electricity is voracious—utility companies already can’t keep up.

Besides these technical problems there’s a more human concern. “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results,” the economist Milton Friedman once said, and the real-world risks of an energy policy revolution are serious. Quick transitions like those demanded by the UN demonstrably drive up prices, destabilize geopolitics, and create shortages that hurt the vulnerable more than the prosperous, who can afford to absorb higher costs in service to green ideals.

This is most apparent in the developing world, where, just as here, parents want their kids to learn how to use computers and doctors want hospitals to be able to run ventilators—all of which require electricity. “When looking at underlying indicators of economic poverty, lack of access to energy looms large,” said Scott Tinker, a University of Texas geologist, in a recent article. “The wealthiest nations in the world enjoy the greatest energy security—affordable, available and reliable—and the poorest nations are essentially energy starved.”

Demanding that developing nations go net-zero by 2050 is not only implausible but inequitable and unfair. And that’s not the only way the developed world’s green arrogance hurts the global poor. In her May 2024 cover story for The Atlantic, writer Stephanie McCrummen reports that the Maasai people in Tanzania have been forced off their land in the name of offsetting pollution. “In the past two decades,” she writes, “more than a quarter million Indigenous people have been evicted to make way for ecotourism, carbon-offset schemes, and other activities that fall under the banner of conservation. That figure is expected to soar.”

By moving the manufacturing of cheap consumer goods to countries with lax environmental laws, developed countries export our pollution (and our trash) and camouflage our insatiable appetites with elaborate carbon credit schemes. Then we demand that the global poor economize and clean up their comparatively minimal energy use. We want the speck in their eyes gone by 2050 but have no real intention of addressing the log in our own.

An abrupt energy transition would do domestic damage too. California, which pursues green energy initiatives with gusto, is a good case study here. The state’s energy policies have consumers “paying to model good climate behavior,” in the words of commentator Susan Shelley. The price for a kilowatt hour of residential electricity in California is double that of Texas, and high cost of living is a major reason many Californians are moving out of the state.

It’s even possible for a premature transition to green energy to increase pollution. Germany committed to phasing out nuclear energy to pursue even greener renewables, but when Russia cut off gas exports after invading Ukraine, Germany had to turn back to coal, a far dirtier fuel than nuclear or even natural gas.

And while there are environmental abuses in domestic energy production—chronic flaring, unchecked methane emissions, orphan wells, produced water disposal problems, and more—shutting down US producers, whether directly or by regulating them out of business, will make things worse. Though in need of further reform, domestic energy production is already cleaner than production in much of the rest of the world. It’s better for the environment to drill domestically than to import dirty oil from countries with laxer standards.

For Christians like me—who aren’t policymakers, corporate leaders, scientists, or activists—the global scale of energy policy and climate change is daunting. But if we can disentangle ourselves from both climate change denial and climate “doomerism,” we could understand that our stewardship of the earth is not a carte blanche but a responsibility to God and neighbor. We could be well-positioned to pursue practical, feasible solutions to the world’s energy crisis.

“As I see it, most people’s interaction with God’s created world falls into one of three categories,” said Midland’s mayor, Lori Blong, who owns a privately held oil and gas company with her husband. People think the “earth is something to be served by humanity for the good of nature; or the earth is something to be subjugated and consumed by humanity in shortsighted greed; or the earth is something to be stewarded for the good of humanity and the glory of God.”

“Bible-believing Christians ought not serve creation nor consume creation,” Blong told me. “We must steward it prudently.”

Stewarding in this sense means working to develop cleaner energy alternatives while also understanding the realities of physics and thermodynamics and supply and demand. Abilene Christian University’s work to develop nuclear energy, which is partly funded by Christian donors with roots in the oil and gas industry, is a great example of the innovation that can happen when pragmatic energy experts, motivated by a sense of God-given calling, explore the future of energy development in hopeful, judicious ways.

It also means we ought to explore less technologically splashy but perhaps more impactful ways to mitigate harm. For example, planting trees or developing seagrass fields are both cost-effective ways to capture carbon, but they don’t look as cool in a headline as expensive carbon capture plants or redirecting the sun’s rays. Or consider that 40 percent of energy consumption in the US is tied to heating and cooling buildings; improving insulation is a straightforward way to lower that use which doesn’t require new technology.

Perhaps the most significant thing we can do on an individual level is simply curb our own consumption, living more simply by buying less, using less, disposing less. Jesus warned us to “guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). Christian thinkers like Wendell Berry or Paul Kingsnorth articulate challenging and countercultural ideas here that don’t look like merely railing against the fossil fuel industry or smearing tomato soup on Van Gogh paintings.

There may be no better place to root ourselves than in 2 Timothy 1:7: “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (NKJV). The dominant climate conversation is full of fear—fear of conspiracies to hurt the American economy as much as fear that human behavior has irrevocably ruined the world.

Both expressions of this “spirit of fear” are far from the truth. Climate change deniers unreasonably act as if fossil fuels are an unlimited resource that can be consumed without consequence, dismissing evidence to the contrary as “liberal,” but doomer fears are leading our leaders to shortsighted, panicky decisions. Taken far enough, these policies will foster energy scarcity, increase global reliance on dirtier energy sources, and destabilize us all with more war, famine, poverty, and human suffering. In the midst of such a frenetic storm, Christians must be a source of peace, reason, and even hope.

Carrie McKean is a West Texas–based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Texas Monthly magazine. Find her at carriemckean.com.

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Unpacking Community

Joy Allmond

Finding an ecclesial home is one challenge. Living in community is another.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

As of the past few months, my husband and I have been living in my home state of North Carolina, but we moved to a town that’s new to us. With such a location comes both joy and frustration. The joys include living closer to family, having mini adventures while exploring our metroplex, and making this new-to-us house a home. Among the frustrations are finding new doctors, getting a North Carolina driver’s license, and—of course—unpacking.

Yet one aspect of moving that carries the tension of both joy and frustration is establishing community. That includes getting to know the neighbors and making friends, but I’m mostly referring to engaging with the local church and relearning how to do community there. Finding an ecclesial home is so critical to life for followers of Christ. Every body of believers has its own way of relating internally—among itself—as well as engaging with the community outside of the church.

In this May/June issue, CT writers and editors offer ways you, our readers, can engage with people both visible and hidden in plain sight. In the pages that follow, Ericka Andersen brings a feature on the state of women and alcoholism in the church. There are probably women in your own community who have drinking struggles but don’t know how to ask for help and likely feel shame at the prospect of doing so. And we hope this cover story from Jordan Monson and Mark Fairchild gives you a new angle from which to see the apostle Paul and read his letters—whether individually or in community.

We also hope you’re encouraged by these stories and others in the following pages—such as one woman’s account of navigating church conflict and a report that helps us think about how to engage Christians with ADHD in our own faith communities.

God’s plan for the world (A; there is no B) is to be accomplished through the church of Jesus Christ. We pray our work here through these stories can be used by him to continue building it.

Whether you’ve been in the same physical location or church community for decades or God has you in a new place (literally or figuratively), we hope our work invigorates you to go deeper—in the Scriptures and in your own spheres of community.

Joy Allmond is executive editor at CT.

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Stories We Are Made to Tell

Timothy Dalrymple

It is easy to be discouraged by division in the United States, but we are called to have a bigger worldview.

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

Recently I attended an evangelical church in Cairo. I was warmly welcomed and given a headset for real-time translation of the service. It’s the largest evangelical church in the Arab world, with many thousands attending in person and tens of thousands attending remotely each week.

This particular service, for young adults, was filled with beauty. The teaching was biblically sound. The prayer was heartfelt. The worship of 3,000 young Egyptians rose like a flood tide within the walls of the sanctuary.

The Coptic Orthodox Church is the primary Christian communion in Egypt, representing about 10 percent of the population. It traces its roots to the missionary work of Mark the Evangelist.

Evangelicals in Egypt are a minority within a minority, and the police vehicles sitting outside the church were a sobering reminder that many churches there have been torched or bombed in recent decades. CT is partnering with filmmakers to recount how 21 Egyptians in Libya died for their faith in Jesus at the hands of ISIS in 2015.

The story of evangelicals in Egypt is the story of a faith that flourishes even in the harshest environments. It’s the kind of story Christianity Today was made to tell—the kind we tell today more frequently and more powerfully than ever before.

In the March issue, I explained that we have been reexamining and rearticulating who we believe God is calling us to be. The truths we affirm are timeless, yet the ways we affirm them are adapted to each generation. Our calling, we believe today, is to be a storyteller of the global church. Because we yearn for the church and world to love Christ and his kingdom, we advance the stories and ideas of the kingdom in every corner of the planet every day of the year.

It would be easy, especially in an election year, to grow discouraged at the fragmented nature of the church here in America. As members of the global body of Christ, however, we are called to have a wider view.

The vision of this evangelical church in Cairo cites the second chapter of Habakkuk. Verses 13 and 14 read, “Has not the Lord Almighty determined that the people’s labor is only fuel for the fire, that the nations exhaust themselves for nothing? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

Someday, the stories that consume our thoughts and stoke our anxieties will fade into silence. The story that endures is the story of the bride of Christ. That’s the story that will continue into eternity. Thank you for joining us in telling it.

Timothy Dalrymple is CT’s president and CEO.

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