The SBC’s Abuse Prevention Work Is Not Done

Eric Costanzo

Five years ago, our messengers pledged to take substantive action to end sexual abuse in our churches. We cannot let another year pass with that promise unfulfilled.

SBC Pastor Eric Costanzo speaks with Oklahoma Baptists in his role as chair of the state's SBC abuse prevention and response task force.

Courtesy of The Baptist Messenger of Oklahoma / Edits by CT

Just over five years ago, a fire broke out in one of the world’s most famous houses of worship, the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. In the days following, officials confirmed that one reason the fire grew out of control was that the security team, after hearing the alarm, miscommunicated and responded at the wrong location. The fire was in an attic, but the team went to the sacristy, located in an entirely different building. Portions of the cathedral soon burned to the ground.

It was also just over five years ago that alarms sounded in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) when reports emerged detailing hundreds of cases of sexual abuse in our churches and organizations over a span of decades. Since then, the eyes of the nation have been on America’s largest Protestant denomination as we’ve grappled with how to respond to these revelations and prevent future sexual abuse. This includes an ongoing investigation by the US Department of Justice, which recently filed its first indictment.

As an SBC pastor for more than 20 years, it saddens me to report that, rather than fighting our fire with every available resource, efforts to extinguish sexual abuse in the SBC have been hindered by distractions and delays. As messengers gather in Indianapolis for the SBC annual meeting this week, it remains unclear whether addressing our abuse crisis is still a priority for the SBC. This concern is magnified by the latest update from our abuse implementation task force: After two years of painstaking work by faithful volunteers, their tasks were not completed due to several “obstacles and challenges.”

Five years ago, recall, our initial reaction to the abuse revelations was a unified call to action. We won’t stop until we get this right, convention and church leaders said. Momentum began to build toward fighting the fire through one of the SBC’s greatest strengths: cooperation. New relationships and efforts were forged, and a community of abuse survivors and advocates emerged, who were welcomed and given platforms from which to share their stories in the SBC.

As work was beginning in 2020, survivor Susan Codone told CT, “It takes years to change a culture, usually at least ten years, and the measure of success will be a significant reduction in the cases of sexual abuse in churches along with a much higher number of churches actively enacting policies and caring for the abused.”

Sadly, five years into the process, the hopeful spirit of cooperation with which we started has all but dissipated. Key SBC leaders have disagreed about what steps should be taken and who should direct them. A perceived divide exists between preserving institutions and protecting the vulnerable, in part because of fears of litigation and infighting about the transparency of investigations. Millions of dollars pledged by the two largest SBC entities for the purpose of abuse response and survivor support have yet to be distributed. Some leaders now treat the more vocal abuse survivors like villains rather than victims—sometimes even working against them—resulting in a seemingly irreparable loss of trust. All the while, the fire continues to burn.

This is not to say that no work has been done to address abuse in the last five years of SBC life. On the contrary, our convention has made significant efforts to identify potential vulnerabilities and to train and equip churches to prevent abuse. Multiple task forces and work groups were appointed to address abuse at both the national and state levels, and collaborative efforts from these groups have produced materials to help churches develop the right policies and procedures for abuse prevention and response.

I’ve participated personally in these efforts and have seen many of our leaders and members commit much of their time and resources to fighting the fire. I’m especially proud of the work we’ve done in Oklahoma, which has received an abundance of support from our state convention. I’ve also had the opportunity to hear from more abuse survivors than I can count, and I feel the weight of our tremendous responsibility to them.

Nevertheless, the work has been frustrated by several diversions, and abuse prevention and response efforts have been less effective than hoped. According to recently released surveys by Lifeway, the SBC’s own research arm, less than half of our churches provide training to those who work with children or teenagers on how to report sexual abuse. Additionally, less than 20 percent of churches provide training on caring for abuse survivors. Our work is far from finished.

As our annual meeting convenes yet again this year, it’s time for us to make a final and actionable commitment to address sexual abuse in every one of our more than 50,000 churches—and I believe there are at least three ways we can do so. They are the three things to which we committed from the start.

First and most importantly, we should use our unmatched capacity for cooperation in the SBC to mobilize each of our international and national entities, seminaries, state conventions, local associations, and the publications of each to train and equip every church in addressing abuse. We should ensure that the best abuse prevention and response curriculum, policies, and procedures are in the hands of pastors and key leaders in every church, in both print and digital formats. We should provide multiple opportunities for state, regional, and local abuse prevention and response training and set high expectations for churches and their participation.

Our SBC structure is built not only to protect the autonomy of local churches but also to hold them accountable to our agreed-upon standards for doctrine, practice, and cooperation. We’ve been successful in similar efforts related to other pro-life, pro-family, and pro-human dignity issues. Why would we not apply the same fervency to protect our children from abuse?

Second, our churches need comprehensive access to the long-awaited Ministry Check database of both convicted and credibly accused abusers as a forum to search for known abuse concerns related to any potential applicants for employed or volunteer positions in SBC churches or organizations. (It remains to be seen whether a recently formed independent organization to administer this database will receive official SBC support.) Though some aspects of the database have been contested, specifically those related to the category referred to as “credibly accused,” it is long past time that we have this useful instrument to protect our children and churches from repeat abusers.

Finally, our churches and leaders should reengage with the SBC abuse survivor community and allow their voices to be heard in every decision-making process. Their words may not always be as gentle or polished as some might prefer, but why should they be? They’ve been burned in the fire, and the injustice and trauma of their abuse has yet to be properly addressed. Their input, along with input from those with professional expertise in areas related to sexual abuse, will be most valuable in selecting the right tools for our work.

While the Notre-Dame fire was tragic from a symbolic standpoint, the physical damage itself was ultimately limited. The fire burning in the SBC is of a far more destructive nature because of the unspeakable harm done to precious lives. If we continue to delay our response, we’re communicating a willingness to accept the fire’s damage.

Scripture calls leaders in the church to be “shepherds” of and “examples” for “God’s flock that is under your care” (1 Pet. 5:2–3), which means the responsibility to address the SBC sexual abuse crisis lies not with the US Department of Justice, the media, or the general public. It lies with all of us who lead in the SBC.

As our messengers gather, a full half-decade after we committed to take substantive action to end sexual abuse in our churches, we must get this right. If we allow yet another year to pass without beginning to extinguish this fire, we should not be surprised when it consumes us.

Eric Costanzo is lead pastor of South Tulsa Baptist Church in Tulsa and coauthor of Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church.

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Theology

The Generous Genius of Jürgen Moltmann

Paul Zahl

Memories and reflections of the famed theologian from his last overseas doctoral student and friend of 33 years.

Jürgen Moltmann in his study in his apartment in Tübingen.

Bernd Weissbrod / picture-alliance / dpa / AP Images / Edits by CT

When he died at home in Tübingen, Germany, last Monday morning at age 98, the world could justly say that Jürgen Moltmann was the leading Christian theologian of the second half of the 20th century. He had championed liberation theology from South America, then imported it successfully to the West. He had inaugurated an eschatological “theology of hope” and freshly underlined the role of the Holy Spirit in mainstream Protestant and Catholic theology alike. His 1973 book, The Crucified God, had developed an almost instantaneous following among evangelical Christians on both sides of the Atlantic, and the full list of Moltmann’s literary output is dazzling.

I was Moltmann’s last overseas doctoral student, and we were close friends for 33 years. On Wednesday, I will fly to Germany to attend his funeral and interment at Tübingen. But today, I want to share with you a glimpse of his remarkable and faithful life.

Moltmann’s theological thinking emerged initially as the result of his captivity, from 1945 to 1948, as a German prisoner of war in Britain, as well as his searing experience as a teenage anti-aircraft gunner during the 1943 British air raid on Hamburg, his native city. After the war ended, he returned to Germany and studied theology at Göttingen under the Reformed theologian Otto Weber, and was much influenced by Karl Barth.

Moltmann then spent five years as a local pastor outside Bremen, during which time his wife Elisabeth gave birth to a stillborn child. It seemed an absurd and despairing event at the time, before the couple would go on to have four healthy daughters—how much more loss could God impose?

After that early pastorate, Moltmann gradually became world renowned. He supported James Cone’s development of Black theology in New York. In El Salvador, when six liberationist Jesuits were murdered in their beds by members of the Salvadoran military, one of the priests was reading The Crucified God when he was shot. Moltmann was especially popular in Eastern bloc countries behind the Iron Curtain, including East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. A consistent world traveler, he would spend 10 years in the US as a visiting professor at Emory University in Atlanta, though Tübingen was always home base.

When I knew him, Moltmann was never cold nor remote, despite his prestige. He looked you straight in the eye, almost always warmly, and always had his students’ best interests at heart. If he was piqued, you could tell in a moment.

Moltmann was more than an academic adviser. He helped me and my family through the seemingly impossible task of earning a Tübingen doctorate entirely within the German language, recognizing my wife Mary’s sacrifice in keeping us together during that period. One week, when he and I traveled from Tübingen to the UK, we spent an afternoon with my son John, who was at boarding school nearby. As we sat together on the airplane back to Germany, he said with real feeling, “Now I understand what you and Mary have taken on. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

I was not the only beneficiary of this generosity. I once observed Moltmann pilot a very nervous doctoral student through his final oral examination. The student, who had traveled many miles for this moment, almost failed the test—until Moltmann saved the day with a question for which the student was equipped to give a good answer. He passed.

Moltmann observed the human dimension of all his students. That was exceptional in the extremely demanding world of doctoral candidates at Tübingen. Where other professors could be severe, Moltmann was not fearsome—not at all! He brought you in to his life and thought. He never left out the pastoral dimension, the feeling dimension, the pain and stress dimension of all with whom he came into contact.

After a year of slow progress under his tutelage—including having to master Hebrew durch Deutsch, the most arduous intellectual task I have ever been set—I was suddenly admitted to Herr Moltmann’s Lehrstuhl team in 1992. I was a sort of unpaid assistant for his research projects, and morale on the team was high. We wrote our respective dissertations, tutored undergraduates, edited and translated Moltmann’s manuscripts, and even created films and other popular programs for the wider community.

The night I gave my first full lecture to the team—fellow doctoral students, full-time assistants to Moltmann, and the man himself—I played, as an intro, an excerpt from Bob Dylan’s 1979 song, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” It went on a little too long, and I saw the professor blanch for a moment, as if wondering if he’d made a mistake in taking me on. But then the lecture came, my German was okay, and I could see him breathe a sigh of relief.

After my doctorate was completed in 1994, Mary and I returned to the US. I had been called to the post of dean and rector of Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. We kept in close touch with the Moltmanns, both of whom were warmly welcomed when they visited our church to preach and teach.

We saw them several other times on both sides of the Atlantic over the decades to come. Moltmann knew about the conflicts within the American Episcopal Church, which is my denomination, over questions of gay marriage and ordination. He was less traditional on the subject than I, but he sympathized with the challenges we faced at that time. I wish now that I had actively sought his wisdom, so enduringly affected by his wartime experience, during that fraught and difficult period.

I can think of almost no weaknesses in Moltmann’s character and soul, if I can put it that way. He loved those whom he was given to love with wholehearted enthusiasm. Once, I spent an afternoon in his company when a grandchild came to visit. It was as if Kris Kringle were right there in the flesh, crawling on the floor and cracking us all up.

He had more than a twinkle in his eye—he had a belly laugh, and often. It never felt like an act, as if he were trying to be “one of the boys” (or girls, as two of his three assistants were brilliant young women). It was simply that, after all he and Elisabeth had suffered, he remained an unfailingly practical optimist.

It is strange to recall that I first went to Tübingen to study under someone else—not Moltmann. Justification by faith was my intended subject, not liberation theology! It happened, however, that George Carey, the then–archbishop of Canterbury, called his friend Jürgen, not the other chap, to make my initial contact in Germany. And it became clear, very soon after I arrived, that the other chap was not the right person—not in a thousand light years.

One Sunday afternoon, in the garden at 25 Biesinger Strasse, Moltmann turned to me and said, “You forget about him. I like you. I’ll take you. And we’ll make it about justification.” I smiled inside and thought to himself, “This is God’s teacher for me. I want no other.”

Paul Zahl is a retired Episcopal priest. He and his wife, Mary, together with their three sons, John, David, and Simeon, were loved warmly and encouraged mightily by Jürgen Moltmann.

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News

Some Churches Call Clergy Sexual Misconduct an ‘Affair.’ Survivors Are Fighting to Make It Against the Law.

Rebecca Hopkins

Advocates push for legislation criminalizing sex between ministers and those they spiritually guide.

The California state senate effectively killed a bill that would have made clergy sex abuse a crime.

Rich Pedroncelli / Assocaited Press

Krystal Woolston struggled with her mental health as a teenager, but she headed to college hoping for a brighter future. Then, a married pastor who seemed to care about her gave her a different path forward. He told her God wanted her to have sex with him to help her heal.

Looking back 12 years later, Woolston realizes how vulnerable she was to his spiritual manipulation.

“I was just falling, freefalling in so many ways,” Woolston said. “Everyone deserves to be able to go to church and be safe.”

It took her six years to understand this pastor’s pattern of “special treatment” was really manipulation and that the sex was, in fact, abuse. It took four more years to get her denomination to stop him from leading church youth trips.

Woolston doesn’t want anyone else to go through the same thing.

She and a small group of abuse survivors and advocates have been working to make sure it doesn’t. They want sex between clergy members and adults they are spiritually guiding to be illegal in all 50 states. It is currently only against the law in 13, including Connecticut, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia. But advocates are working behind the scenes to introduce state legislation saying that these kinds of relationships, often characterized as “affairs,” are not consensual but criminal.

“Criminalizing abuse is another way of saying, Here, see, it’s abuse,” said Kate Roberts, an adult clergy-abuse survivor and cofounder of Restored Voices Collective. “The more it is legitimized as abuse in various ways, the better that is for prevention and for survivors getting the help that they need.”

Many states have laws that say people in some professions, such as doctors and therapists, cannot have consensual sex with clients. Professional authority changes the nature of the relationship between adults, making some very vulnerable to manipulation and thus in need of legal protection. Restored Voices Collective and other victims’ advocates say the same thing is true of ministers.

“If a victim of adult clergy sexual abuse comes forward, there’s a strong likelihood that that person is going to be blamed as somebody who is ruining the pastor’s career and [told] this is something that is purely an ‘affair,’” said Boz Tchividjian, an advocate and attorney who is helping with the effort. “The question is, if a pastor or a faith leader uses their spiritual position to identify, groom, and ultimately sexualize a relationship with a person under their care or supervision, is that really a consensual relationship?”

Tchividjian, who has been advocating for survivors for decades, said he gets more calls from survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse than any other type of victim. In most cases, they’ve never told anyone. They are often not even sure whether or not they are victims of abuse and are consumed with shame and guilt.

“This is something that is very different from child sexual abuse,” Tchividjian said.

Lucy Huh, who researches adult clergy sexual abuse at Baylor University, said victims consider what they have to lose—their reputations, relationships, marriages, faith communities, and even their faith itself—and most remain silent, keeping their trauma to themselves. The result looks very different than what happens to people who have affairs.

“Consensual relationships don’t result in trauma and lifelong suffering,” Huh said.

New research done at Baylor in fact shows that survivors of adult clergy sexual abuse suffer rates of traumatization that surpass even war veterans. In a study that is currently being peer-reviewed for publication, professor David Pooler found 39 percent of adult survivors screened positive for posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. By comparison, slightly less than a quarter of US veterans who’ve been through a war showed signs of PTSD.

Survivors are not surprised by the statistic. Lori Knapton told CT that she didn’t initially know how to describe the sexual abuse she endured. The best she could do was say her pastor had convinced her to have an affair with him. It was her husband who pointed out this was a misuse of the pastor’s spiritual authority and actually not a consensual affair, but manipulation—sexual abuse.

“It was very much emotional, mental, psychological, physical abuse, but the spiritual component was the deepest part of it,” Knapton said. “It felt like he raped my soul.”

When Julie Sale first realized she was a victim of clergy sexual abuse and reported it to her church, she was fighting suicidal thoughts. The response was devastating.

“Originally I was just trying to live, just trying to take another breath,” Sale told CT. “When you've depended on the institution your whole life to guide the way you live—decisions that you make, how you raise a family—and then suddenly that church just kicks you out and says you’re helping Satan essentially, it is soul destroying.”

According to previous research that Pooler has done at Baylor, only about 10 percent of victims who reported their abuse to their church said they received a positive response. Some of those who talked to CT for this piece said their churches ultimately disciplined the pastors. Some pastors were fired, but not all of them—and even those who were dismissed or even defrocked can apply to work at another church and pass a criminal background check with flying colors.

“You’d think pastors would be out in front on this,” Pooler said. “It’s survivors leading the way.”

Maine passed legislation criminalizing adult clergy sexual abuse in 2019. California is currently considering similar legislation. State senator Dave Min, a former law professor at the University of California, Irvine, sponsored the bill in January.

“Consent is not a defense,” the proposed legal language says, “if the person who commits the sexual battery is a member of the clergy who, in such capacity, is in a position of trust or authority over the victim and uses their position of trust or authority to exploit the victim’s emotional dependency.”

Huh, who was involved in drafting the legislation, said she hopes laws like these will change the way people think about this issue.

“The US has the potential to set a true precedent in recognizing that clergy sexual abuse of adults is a serious issue by establishing criminal consequences for those who prey on their congregants,” she said. “Most other countries automatically blame the victim while protecting the abuser at all costs.”

Changing laws is not an easy road, though. At a California Senate Public Safety Committee hearing in April, representatives from the California Public Defenders Association and the American Civil Liberties Union spoke against the legislation for criminalizing consensual sexual contact. Though Sen. Min said he was willing to make changes to the legislation, he drew the line on the matter of consent. The committee decided not to vote on it, killing the bill.

“It is so hard for survivors to be heard, much less to obtain justice,” Huh said.

Huh and others appealed the matter to the governor and plan to keep fighting.

In some cases, legislation takes years to get passed. Sometimes, there is a little progress and then nothing happens. There are few making open arguments against this kind of legislation, but inertia, neglect, and lack of concern present major obstacles for advocates who want to make change.

Knapton decided she would be vulnerable in an effort to humanize the issue and push for legislation. She shared her traumatic story with elected representatives in her state. They seemed like they cared, Knapton said, but the proposed bill was later tabled.

“It felt like that’s what’s been happening for the last five years, people hearing my experience and then being like, We don’t care about it,” she said.

Woolston is in the early stages of this effort. She knows that her story might well be ignored too. But she’s hopeful that things will be different now.

“I have a support network now that I didn’t then,” she said. “I have people who are like, We’re not going to let you fall.”

- More from Rebecca Hopkins

News

Wire Story

Most Pastors Still Oppose Same-Sex Marriage

Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

Levels of support for LGBTQ relationships have plateaued among Protestant clergy.

Michał Franczak / Unsplash

Almost a decade after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country, most pastors remain opposed, and the supporting percentage isn’t growing any larger.

One in 5 US Protestant pastors (21%) say they see nothing wrong with two people of the same gender getting married, according to a Lifeway Research study.

Three in 4 (75%) are opposed, including 69 percent who strongly disagree with same-sex marriage. Another 4 percent say they aren’t sure.

Previous Lifeway Research studies found growing support among pastors. In 2010, 15 percent of US Protestant pastors had no moral issues with the practice. The percentage in favor grew to 24 percent in 2019. Today, support is statistically unchanged at 21 percent.

“Debates continue within denominations at national and judicatory levels on the morality of same-sex marriage, yet the overall number of Protestant pastors who support same-sex marriage is not growing,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “The previous growth was seen most clearly among mainline pastors, and that level did not rise in our latest survey.”

Pastors are slightly more supportive of legal civil unions between two people of the same gender, but most still disagree. Currently, 28 percent back such arrangements, statistically unchanged from the 32 percent in 2019 and 28 percent in 2018.

The previous growth in clergy support of same-sex marriages was driven by US mainline Protestant pastors. In 2010, a third (32%) were in favor. By 2019, almost half (47%) saw nothing wrong. Current support among self-identified mainline pastors remains at similar levels (46%).

Evangelical pastors have been consistently opposed to same-sex marriage. Fewer than 1 in 10 have expressed support for the practice since 2010. Today, 7 percent of self-identified US evangelical Protestant pastors say they see nothing wrong with two people of the same gender getting married.

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A similar divide exists regarding civil unions between two people of the same gender. Most mainline pastors (54%) are supportive, while only 14 percent of evangelical pastors agree.

Methodists (53%), Presbyterian/Reformed (36%) and Lutherans (34%) are more likely to be supportive of same-sex marriage than Restorationist Movement (8%), non-denominational (5%), Baptist (4%) or Pentecostal (1%) pastors.

Additionally, female pastors (42%), who are more common among mainline denominations, are far more likely than their male counterparts (16%) to back same-sex marriage.

Other demographic groups also have varying degrees of support, though none as drastic as the denominational differences.

Younger pastors are more likely to be supportive than the oldest pastors. Protestant pastors 18 to 44 (27%) and 55 to 64 (22%) are more likely than pastors 65 and older (15%) to see nothing wrong with same-sex marriage.

“The moral and doctrinal beliefs of individuals do not tend to move very often or very far, so we wouldn’t expect pastors’ positions to change much,” said McConnell. “However, the differences we see by age make it noteworthy that the higher numbers of young pastors seeing nothing wrong with same-sex marriage is not yet having much of an impact on overall numbers.”

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Those with more education are more supportive. Pastors with a master’s (30%) or doctoral degree (26%) are more likely than those with no college degree (9%) or a bachelor’s degree (7%) to say they’re OK with same-sex marriage.

Pastors in the Northeast (27%), where same-sex marriage was first legalized in the US, and the Midwest (25%), are more likely than those in the South (18%) to be supportive.

Those leading smaller churches are more likely to see nothing wrong with two people of the same gender getting married. Pastors at churches with fewer than 50 in attendance (27%) and those at congregations of 50 to 99 (25%) are more likely than those at churches with attendance between 100 and 249 (11%) and 250 or more (8%) to be in favor of same-sex marriage.

“Because fewer pastors in mid- and large-size churches are open to same-sex marriage morally, an even larger majority of Protestant churchgoers are in churches in which their pastor does not support same-sex marriages or civil unions,” said McConnell.

Many of the differences between various types of pastors exist for civil unions as well. Younger pastors are more likely to be supportive than older pastors. Pastors with more formal education are more likely to back civil unions.

Those in the Northeast and Midwest tend to be more in favor than those in the South. Pastors at the smallest churches are more likely to see nothing wrong with civil unions between two people of the same gender than those at larger churches.

- More from Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

Church Life

Southern Baptists, Outsiders Hear Our Confessions Too

Hannah Anderson

Baptist confessions have long drawn attention beyond the church. The proposal on male pastors will too.

Baptist Press / Edits by CT

Messengers from around the country will soon gather in Indianapolis to conduct the business of the Southern Baptist Convention. As in recent years, they will consider the exact relationship between the association and its member churches—a question of unique significance to Baptists who have historically valued local church independence.

This week, they will be asked to take final action on an amendment that would alter the SBC constitution’s understanding of a cooperating church from one that “closely identifies with” the complementarian stance of the Baptist Faith and Message (BFM) to one that “affirms, appoints, or employs only men as any kind of pastor or elder as qualified by Scripture.”

The proposal came in the wake of last year’s disfellowship of Saddleback Church after it installed three women as staff pastors (which an overwhelming majority of messengers understood to be in conflict with the BFM).

Despite this swift and certain response, proponents believe the Law Amendment, named after its author, Mike Law, is necessary to further unify practice. Others worry that such reforms move the convention toward a form of “subscriptionism,” which would use bureaucracy to enforce norms on individual churches, putting the SBC at odds with historic polity.

But the concern for Baptist identity highlights another, often overlooked, aspect of the debate: Historically, Baptist confessions were a form of public witness.

The earliest Baptist confessions emerged in 17th-century Reformation England, a time of tremendous social, political, and religious instability. Unlike their Presbyterian and Anglican counterparts, which established and enforced denominational teaching, Baptist public statements had an apologetic, even irenic, quality to them, telling outsiders who Baptists claimed to be.

This was essential in the early days because Baptist practices of believer’s baptism and church autonomy meant that they were often confused with more radical sects, including continental Anabaptists who refused to pay taxes, enter the military, or accept the legitimacy of civil rulers.

In fact, when representatives from seven London congregations gathered to craft what would become the London Baptist Confession, they met to “disclaime as notoriously untrue” charges of disorder and the “clearing of the truth we professe, that it may be at libertie.” And it worked.

Historian William Lumpkin, once professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that “Outside the Baptist fellowship the Confession was received with unequaled surprise. People generally were amazed at the moderation and sanity of its articles.”

In this way, early Baptist confessions were used to present Baptist belief as reasonable and nonthreatening. The first editions of the London Confession were dedicated to Parliament as a way to petition for greater religious tolerance, and, according to Lumpkin, subsequent revisions had Parliament’s reception as a primary focus, reworking the language in response to contemporary critics. This backdrop also explains why early Baptists explicitly committed to submitting to civil authorities and living justly with their neighbors, even to the point of accepting the consequences of civil disobedience; or in the words of the London Confession, “not accounting our good, lands … and our own lives dear.” As Christians had for centuries before them, early Baptists understood persecution and martyrdom as a form of witness.

Recognizing witness—not simply organizational cooperation or resource distribution—as a major reason for Baptist affiliation also clarified grounds for disaffiliation. Confessions were not creedal documents but cooperative ones that allowed congregations to lean into the safety of shared communion for the sake of public witness. Should an individual or church walk in a way that would distort the gospel they professed, other members had a right, and perhaps even a duty, to withdraw from them.

Current debates in the SBC recognize this tension, but, for the most part, they tend to focus internally, framing questions as a matter of associational conformity with little to no attention given to the message being sent to outsiders. But when considered through the lens of public witness, questions that appear to be similar quickly show themselves to be very different.

For example, when a member church covers up sexual abuse or retains a sexual predator in leadership, they become a clear and obvious threat to the SBC’s shared testimony, not to mention a threat to the safety of surrounding society. As such, associated congregations must decisively and actively disfellowship from that church to preserve their own public witness and commitment to the common good.

But how to handle more internal disagreements, such as open table Communion (which many SBC churches practice despite the BFM) or women’s exact roles in local congregations, is less clear. While the SBC is unapologetically complementarian, as the disaffiliation from Saddleback Church testifies, the application of these principles varies from member congregation to congregation.

Because of the belief in local church autonomy, each defines the nature and extent of pastoral ministry slightly differently. Unlike other traditions, the SBC does not have a shared process for ordination or a definition of pastor, even as it attempts to regulate that very office.

Unfortunately, the Law Amendment does nothing to clarify whether pastor refers to the function, office, or title, relying instead on the sweeping statement “a pastor or elder of any kind.” When asked, proponents counter that “Southern Baptists know what a pastor is and who should be a pastor,” which unfortunately amounts to “we know it when we see it.”

One strange result of this lack of clarity has been the creation of a list of churches with women who hold staff positions under the title of “pastor,” regardless of the work they actually do within the congregation. A congregation with a woman named as a worship or children’s pastor is not distinguished from one with a woman who holds elder authority as a senior pastor (which would run counter to the BFM’s complementarian stance).

To be clear, Baptist confessional history unquestionably affirms doctrinal alignment as necessary for close association and cooperation. Early Baptists grouped themselves along soteriological convictions, and current Baptists must wrestle with similar boundaries. At the same time, however, messengers must consider whether the high level of scrutiny on women in this moment signals a disproportionate level of concern.

Unlike their Baptist forebears, the SBC currently maintains a “big tent” approach to some doctrines and practices, such as soteriology (Calvinist versus Arminian), leadership structure (plurality of elders versus senior pastor with a deacon board), and worship (contemporary versus traditional). What does it say to outsiders that SBC member churches are free to disagree about these issues, but a woman being named a children’s pastor is a bridge too far?

More concerningly, the Law Amendment would be located in Article III.1, which specifically names uncooperative churches as those who “affirm, approve, or endorse homosexual behavior,” mishandle sexual abuse, and discriminate on the basis of ethnicity.

Since June 2019 when the SBC Credentials Committee was reshaped to better respond to such churches, it has recommended the disaffiliation from 18 churches, including 6 for mishandling sex abuse and 6 for ordaining women as senior pastors. To outsiders, the numbers could suggest a strange parity between how the SBC views women in leadership and how they view predatory pastors.

As the nation’s largest Protestant association, the SBC may not feel the same need as its marginalized ancestors to preserve their public witness. Even so, its size and influence means that it must concern itself with how the Law Amendment will be perceived by outsiders.

Protecting public witness does not mean shifting doctrine or changing convictions about what Scripture teaches. However, it does mean weighing the wisdom and prudence of emphasizing minor differences, even as the SBC continues to be under public scrutiny for its treatment of women.

Like its early Baptist forebears, the SBC has taken an unpopular stand based on conviction and conscience. But the SBC would do well to also consider what their ancestors understood about public witness. Baptist confessions do not exist simply to monitor those inside the community but to communicate something to those outside it.

If the Law Amendment passes, it risks sending a message—not about what the SBC believes about the gospel or biblical fidelity—but that monitoring local churches to keep women in check is foundational to their identity.

Hannah Anderson is the author of Humble Roots and Heaven and Nature Sing. She is pursuing an MDiv at Duke Divinity School with a focus in theology and art.

- More from Hannah Anderson

Books

Evangelicals Don’t Love Donald Trump Enough

Russell Moore

Christians who wave away the former president’s sexual immorality may be the most anti-Trump constituency of all.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

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

For the first time in history, a former (and possibly future) president of the United States is now a convicted felon. A jury found that Donald Trump falsified business records to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star, with whom he had an affair, in order to keep the story from hurting his 2016 presidential campaign. If only President Trump could have seen the reaction from many white evangelicals to his sexual crimes and misdemeanors, he could have saved some money.

Pundits are probably right that this conviction—like all the revelations of the past almost-decade—will have little effect on the actual election. At this point, people know who they are supporting or opposing—and it’s hard to imagine many who didn’t know all along. The implications, though, are moral, not just legal or political, and on that ground, we should ask whether the most politicized evangelicals should actually love Donald Trump more.

One might reasonably ask how white evangelicals could possibly love Trump more. The most visible evangelical supporters of the former president have been willing, since at least 2016, to wave away criticisms of his character, from the Access Hollywood tapes onward. Many of these voices defended the former president as fit for public leadership, even after a jury found him liable for doing just what he bragged about in those tapes of yesteryear: groping a woman’s genitals against her will. And now this. But all of that is precisely what I mean by asking about love.

The question has been on my mind since I read the galleys of a brilliant book on former president Richard Nixon, coming out this August, by Christianity Today journalist Daniel Silliman, which you can read more about in the soon-to-be-published July/August issue.

Most people who follow religion and politics know about Billy Graham’s oft-articulated regrets about how close he became to Richard Nixon. Many also know about Nixon’s aide—and later Watergate felon, and still later repentant born-again Christian and revered evangelical leader—Charles “Chuck” Colson, and how evangelical ministers typically were so awed by the Oval Office that they would lose the ability to say much more than “Yes sir, Mr. President” when they were there. Silliman, though, demonstrates that this was not the whole story.

There was at least one evangelical pastor who spoke hard truths to Nixon. John Huffman, a Presbyterian pastor in Florida, who had revered Nixon since his days as a young Republican at Wheaton College, preached to the president as he sat in the pews of his church in the midst of Watergate, calling both publicly and privately for Nixon to confess the truth. What’s most surprising to me is not that there was at least one courageous voice of integrity—I’m sure there were others too—but the reason that Huffman gave to Silliman for why he didn’t sidestep the question of guilt with Nixon: “I really loved the man.”

This, Silliman argues, is what made the difference. This pastor didn’t see Nixon as a transactional figure for whom one should trade unquestioning loyalty for a set of policy positions—much less the proverbial seat at the table. He saw him as a human being—a person loved by God, and a person who would ultimately stand, as all of us will, before the judgment seat.

Put aside, for a moment, the question of whether a former president should be prosecuted. That’s another question. Put aside the politics of red state versus blue state. What about the question of morality? What would our relationship to Trump look like if it were informed by our belief that hell exists?

The former president’s defenders are too smart to believe what some of them imply—that Trump never really knew Stormy Daniels and that he was paying her six figures of hush money to keep her from talking about something that never happened. So what message does it send when—like every other political constituency—we find ways to minimize that by suggesting that the cultural and political stakes are too high to worry about such minor matters as keeping one’s vows or telling the truth?

That’s especially when a figure is held up to the rest of the country as a champion of restoring the country to Christian values—to when “girls were girls and men were men,” as the old sitcom characters Archie and Edith Bunker would sing it. And that’s especially true when Christian leaders hail Trump as a “baby Christian” and he licenses his name to Bibles. For many Americans, the word evangelical now is shorthand for “Trump supporter.” How can we blame them when, in so many arenas of American Christian life, people who deny the Trinity are embraced as Christians, but those who don’t support Trump are ostracized as apostates?

Many will talk about how God uses flawed and imperfect people; that’s true, of course. This is not, though, a Chuck Colson repenting of his sin, taking responsibility for it and pleading for God’s mercy. This is someone who instead now says that he will take revenge on his critics and enemies the moment he is back in office.

What does that say to those who are watching, learning from Trump’s “never admit, never apologize” strategy? It says policy is more important than character. Achievement is more important than integrity. The implication from religious leaders reputedly bearing witness to the God for whom they speak is this: A man is justified by winning alone.

You know that some of us, such as this writer, have very strong views about this figure’s being fit for public leadership, what he is doing to the witness of the church, the degradation of women and the glorification of political violence, and so on.

Some of us believe strongly in the separation of church and Trump. But maybe the problem is not primarily that so many evangelicals love Trump but that they love him so little that they are willing to say to those who follow his direction, This is fine, so long as you give us what we want.

Is it really love to use someone to achieve one’s goals—never even asking what the transaction is doing to that person? And then to just pretend that all of it never happened, and, if it did, everybody does it so it’s okay? One might even say that’s how an immoral man wrongly would treat a porn star, not the way a Christian people rightly would treat a leader who claims to represent them.

God loves Donald Trump. God loves those who will wreck their lives following his moral example. That’s not in doubt. The question is—do we?

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

- More from Charles Colson

Books

Excerpt

I’ve Preached the Gospel Countless Times. The Love of the Amish Preached It to Me.

Tim Rogers

An excerpt on grief, forgiveness, and the gospel from Beechdale Road: Where Mercy Is More Powerful Than Murder.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

On Sunday, June 21, 2020, 18-year-old Linda Stoltzfoos of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, was kidnapped and later murdered by Justo Smoker—my brother-in-law.

Beechdale Road: Where Mercy Is More Powerful Than Murder. A True Story.

Megan Shertzer (Author), Tim Rogers (Author), Kate Lab (Cover Art)

152 pages

$14.99

As you might expect, my family journeyed through tremendous grief, anger, and pain. But as you might not expect, we also journeyed through the challenge of receiving unexplainable grace, kindness, and mercy at the hands of the Amish community, of which Linda Stoltzfoos was a part.

The story to be told is not just another story of grief and healing but a story about the gospel. It’s a gospel story embedded in the very tangible way the Amish community poured out grace and mercy on my family—and our struggle to receive it. As a pastor for over 20 years, I have preached the gospel countless times, but through my encounters with the Amish community, it was preached to me in a way that was deeper and more personal than anything I’ve ever encountered before.

Many years ago, I memorized Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8–9: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.” But in the last four years, for the first time in my life, I’ve had to wrestle with what it really means to receive unmerited grace when there is absolutely nothing you can do to make things better on your own. My family experienced what it’s like when undeserved mercy confronts undeniable evil, when kindness upends condemnation, when heaven engages hell.

This experience began with a knock on the door that I had no interest in answering. I was in no mood to talk to anyone just a few hours after it became public that Justo was charged with Linda’s kidnapping. My shoulders dropped and I thought to myself, “Oh, come on. I don’t have energy to interact with anyone right now.” Sitting there at the kitchen table, I just wanted them to go away.

What got me up from the kitchen table was fear. I was afraid it might be the FBI or police looking for more information or needing something else. Also, I realized I probably should take responsibility to face whoever was there, because the alternative was to wait long enough that my daughter would feel compelled to get the door. As good as avoidance sounded, I didn’t want to put her in that position. I found the energy to get up and drag myself to the door.

I peeked through the side windows next to the door and took a breath. It looked like a young Amish family standing outside. I was immediately relieved—it’s so much more welcoming to see an Amish family than uniformed officers at your door. Then, immediately, before I reached for the door handle, other feelings came over me that I’d never felt when interacting with the Amish until this moment: guilt and shame. I felt more vulnerable than I’ve ever felt opening my front door.

With the door opened, my eyes at once met our neighbor, Mary (name changed for privacy). We’d never really interacted before. She had her four children with her, all very young and all basically unaware of the situation their mom had chosen to enter. Their eyes were full of youthful exuberance, wonder, and interest at coming to our home. Her eyes were full of compassion. I saw no pity there, and certainly no anger—nothing close to that. There was an immediate sensation that she knew what was going on here in a way that few did. Her presence was a gift, and it immediately displaced my guilt and shame.

“I’m Mary, your neighbor,” she said. “And you may not know this, but I was the teacher at Nickel Mines.”

The tears barely stayed in her eyes. As I stood there, I knew she didn’t have to say more. She knew. She knew everything—everything that was about to come our way over the coming season, and everything we would uncover in ourselves, in our community, and in our personal faith in God.

My oldest daughter, Megan, was in kindergarten when Nickel Mines happened. On October 2, 2006, Charles Roberts entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, just 15 minutes from our home. He forced the teacher, the aides, and all the boys outside. Inside, he shot ten girls—killing five—then killed himself. Mary was that teacher. She was only in her late teens when this happened.

And here she stood, 14 years later, at our front door. In a way, it seemed like she’d just come from running out the back door of that schoolhouse. The pain was fresh, the wound was deep. But her presence wasn’t only about recognizing that. Mary was doing what so many in her Amish community did right on the heels of Nickel Mines: They forgave. Immediately. And as completely as they could. This posture of forgiveness took on various forms, and, in this moment, what it meant for Mary was that in her right hand she held a handpicked bouquet of flowers and in her left hand a small bag of homegrown cucumbers.

I hate cucumbers. But in that moment, I felt like I loved them. I almost cried over cucumbers. The cucumbers represented to me the manifestation of her deep desire to provide comfort and love to our family. What could really be said or done or offered at this point, given the gravity of the moment? Love could be expressed verbally, but the cucumbers represented to me a grace of someone trying something tangible rather than just being satisfied with words.

And when you’re overwhelmed, even the smallest grace can touch the deepest part of you.

“I brought you some flowers and some cucumbers,” she said. “I hope you like cucumbers.”

“Thank you so much,” I lied. “I really do.”

I took the gifts while she remained standing on our front porch. I learned the kids’ names and thanked her for coming. Then she took a breath, and with glassy eyes said to me, “There is hope. God will take care of you.”

I nodded. To this day, I’m not sure what I said in response. What she said and what she did in that moment were far more important. Mary gave us a gift of grace with her nonjudgmental presence, just hours after learning it was her neighbor’s family that had inflicted this Nickel Mines–like pain on the Amish community once again.

That early visit was a preview of what was to come, though I didn’t know that then. All I knew was that in our two-minute interaction, she had changed the narrative without realizing it.

In the first narrative that we were living, we felt great shame and guilt over the pain inflicted on our community by our family member, whom we love. It would make sense if people around us were angry, particularly the Amish community, and most certainly Linda’s family. We expected to play the role of the ones asking for forgiveness, being silent in the background, having to figure out how to grieve while also absorbing the brunt of pent-up anger in our community for the long weeks between Linda’s disappearance and Justo’s arrest. That was a narrative that made sense, and that we anticipated—though we couldn’t fully verbalize it.

Mary and her cucumbers opened up our hearts to another possible narrative, one that acknowledged the need we all had for healing. We all were wounded. We all deeply needed love, grace, and the gift of personal presence to chase away shame and guilt.

This narrative included the possibility of hope—hope for a future that might not be as dark as the current moment felt. Her narrative acknowledged the pain that would come, but it didn’t leave us there. In eating these cucumbers, it was as if we could taste and see that love is good. It was the kind of love that might just be able to heal.

Mary’s visit made me think that Paul’s words in Romans 8:38–39 might be even grittier than I had experienced in my life to date: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Neither death nor life can separate us from the love of Christ? Even if your brother-in-law takes someone’s life? Christ’s love is present in that space?

When I closed the door, I was holding back tears as I held the bag of cucumbers and the vase of flowers in my hands. I was holding love, and I didn’t want to put it down. These gifts weren’t enough to chase away all the pain and hurt—there was still much more of that to come. But in the moment, they gave life and breath and hope and kindness.

That’s what personal visits and cucumbers do. They raise our vision, encourage our soul, give us honest hope that this current sadness might not be forever sadness. Love lifts, lightens, and stabilizes—which was good, because the journey we were starting had plenty more to show us. We would need as much love and grace as we could find.

Tim Rogers has served as lead pastor at Grace Point Church of Paradise, Pennsylvania, for more than 20 years and is active in various community roles.

Coauthor Megan Shertzer works as an adult advocate at The Factory Ministries in Paradise, Pennsylvania. Megan is Justo’s niece.

- More from Tim Rogers

News

Southern Baptist Digital Hymnal Gets Saved

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Worship leaders convince curriculum company of the value of lifewayworship.com.

Vlad Shalaginov / Unsplash

Lifeway no longer plans to shut down its online music ministry resource lifewayworship.com .

In July 2023, the company announced its plan to retire the platform—a “digital hymnal” that provides users with chord charts, vocal arrangements, and orchestrations—then paused those plans a week later after a strong response from customers. After a year of reevaluation and interviews with worship leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) who use the site, Lifeway has changed course and decided to continue maintaining and updating the resource.

“Lifeway is a curriculum company,” Lifeway Worship director Brian Brown said. “These worship leaders reminded us that music is their curriculum. It ministers to the whole body.”

Lifeway arranged panel discussions with more than 200 worship leaders between July 2023 and May 2024. The ministry was surprised to learn how many of these leaders—who served in churches of many different sizes and with a wide range of musical styles—relied on lifewayworship.com .

“We undervalued some of the unique things we provided, and we didn’t see how much support we were giving these churches. Much more than we realized,” said Brown.

Will Bishop, associate professor of church music and worship at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said that when Lifeway announced the end of lifewayworship.com a year ago, he didn’t think it would be controversial.

“I sort of thought, Who’s going to ever miss this?” he said.

But six months ago, Bishop began leading worship at a small SBC church in Louisville, Kentucky, and says the experience has completely changed his mind; the resource is invaluable to his ministry.

“I have spent many years in bigger ministries with bigger budgets, but now I’m leading a church with a choir of about 18 people, a piano, organ, flute, violin, and trombone. I would absolutely miss it.”

Bishop says that lifewayworship.com is unique because he can find quality arrangements à la carte. Instead of purchasing a full orchestration of a hymn for $70, he can buy individual parts for his team of musicians for about $8 total. And for small and medium-sized churches on limited budgets, that makes a big difference.

“The majority of Southern Baptist churches are small ministries with maybe 15 people in the choir and 3–4 instrumentalists,” said Bishop.

Services like MultiTracks, PraiseCharts, and SongSelect offer tools that allow big churches to replicate the recorded versions of new worship songs. Bishop says that for larger churches with the teams and budget, those resources are ideal. But it’s not what most smaller churches need.

“Lifeway doesn’t have to be everything. No one tool can be everybody’s tool. It’s a wonderful thing to be focused on small and medium-sized churches.”

Brown says that in addition to hearing from users that lifewayworship.com provides a unique set of musical tools, his team found that many of the worship leaders look to Lifeway not only for resources but also for theological guidance—something they can’t get from other non-SBC resources.

“One of their key concerns was the theological vetting of the lyrics of songs,” Brown said. “They wanted to make sure that the songs have been theologically vetted from a Southern Baptist perspective.”

Lifewayworship.com was originally envisioned as a digital SBC hymnal. Launched in 2008 under the direction of Mike Harland, the site started out with the 674 songs in the Baptist Hymnal and gradually expanded its offerings over time. But it wasn’t designed to be a groundbreaking tech resource; it was designed to make it easier for congregations to have access to new, approved music.

“We were a music company first, we weren’t a computer company,” Harland told CT last year. “There were certainly other companies that had more user-friendly platforms, but we aspired for our content to be the very best.”

SBC congregations don’t have to utilize music approved by Lifeway, but some church musicians said they are overwhelmed by the amount of new worship music they have to choose from, according to Brown. For them, trusted curation is welcome.

“Ultimately, worship leaders and senior pastors are going to make decisions about music in their local context. But these leaders rely on us to add some guardrails,” Brown said.

Lifewayworship.com also offers orchestrations with simplified, readable rhythms and emphasizes congregation-friendly arrangements and key selection. Those services are crucial for time-strapped worship leaders or those with limited formal musical training. Some worship leaders told the ministry they do not feel well-equipped to rearrange songs or select singable keys.

Moving forward, lifewayworship.com will continue to provide arrangements of new music but will also seek to provide guidance and create community among worship leaders across the denomination.

“We want this to be the beginning of more regular communication with our churches, and we’re looking to continue talking more intentionally and more regularly with our worship leaders,” said Brown. “This is just a starting point for us.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

News

Indian Christians Relieved as Election Results Limit Hindu Nationalists

Surinder Kaur

With Modi’s BJP denied an outright majority in parliament, church leaders credit prayer movements and hope the restoration of coalition politics will protect religious minorities.

Ritesh Shukla / Stringer / Getty

The world’s largest democracy underwent a significant political shift in its 2024 general election, as Indian voters upended the previously unshakable dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) remains the largest coalition and will form the next federal government, likely making Modi the first Indian head of state to serve three terms since Jawaharlal Nehru led the subcontinent’s initial post-independence government. But as the official vote counting stretched past midnight on June 4, results indicated that voters rejected Modi’s aspirations for an overwhelming majority that many feared would have empowered him to reshape India’s secular and democratic foundations.

Christians and other religious minorities in India rallied for the cause of pluralism.

“The people have spoken clearly for a return to the founding ideals of India,” said Vijayesh Lal, general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI), which represents more than 65,000 Protestant churches. “They prefer harmony over narrow sectarianism and divisive politics.”

Running a populist campaign of Hindu nationalism, in 2014, Modi led the BJP to a landslide victory, securing 282 of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament—the first outright majority for a single party in 30 years. His mandate was strengthened in 2019 when the BJP increased its tally to 303 seats.

Having won political control over the federal legislature and many of India’s 28 states, Modi seemed invincible heading into 2024. Many critics worried that the nation’s multiparty democracy was sliding toward authoritarianism.

Instead, opposition leaders now claim the results of the 2024 election “shattered Modi’s aura of invincibility.” While the BJP-led coalition still secured a slim parliamentary majority with 286 seats, the BJP itself won only 240 seats—63 fewer than in 2019 and well short of the 272 seats it needed in order to govern alone.

Modi had publicly stated that he would win 370 seats and that his coalition would win over 400. In such a scenario, Christians and many other Indians suspected Modi would move the nation closer to the vision of the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the BJP.

John Dayal, spokesperson for the All India Catholic Union, said an overwhelming mandate could have empowered Modi to reshape India into a Hindu nation, disenfranchising religious minorities and indigenous communities from their rights and resources.

Founded in 1925, the RSS is considered one of the largest far-right volunteer movements in the world. One of its founding leaders, M. S. Golwalkar, wrote that India’s religious minorities must be “wholly subordinate to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not even citizen’s rights.”

Such rhetoric has become embedded in the BJP narrative, resulting in an increase of hate crimes against Christians. However, data from the Pew Research Center indicates that the party’s polarizing brand of nationalism has fewer takers in large swaths of India, especially in the south. The backlash among traditionally tolerant Hindus, combined with frustration over rural distress, inflation, and unemployment, has now led to a more fragmented political scene.

Many Indian Christians see this as a blessing.

“The result is like breathing fresh air after a long time of suffocation,” said C. B. Samuel, former head of EFI’s disaster relief and development commission.

Despite the setback, Modi still called the result the “victory of the world’s biggest democracy,” as he announced his intention to form the next government in negotiation with coalition allies. This development, sources told CT, signals a return to a more pluralistic democratic reality.

Samuel interpreted the opposition surge as a movement to support marginalized communities, to avoid favoritism of any religion, and to promote a sense of hope.

A. C. Michael, coordinator of the United Christian Forum, a human rights group that tracks data on Christian persecution, predicted a coalition government will “put Modi on a leash” and ensure greater accountability.

The BJP’s main challenger was the newly formed Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a broad coalition of regional and ideological rivals of the BJP brought together by Rahul Gandhi of the Indian National Congress party.

Gandhi, the great grandson of Nehru and heir to India’s preeminent political dynasty, embarked on a grassroots campaign of unprecedented scale—including two marches of 2,000 miles and 4,200 miles across India over two years. Alongside allies such as the Samajwadi Party and Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Gandhi highlighted issues including Modi’s Hindu nationalism, alleged cronyism, and the erosion of civil liberties during his terms in office.

An aggressive social media offensive helped the INDIA coalition challenge the perception of Modi’s inevitable success. And in heartland states such as Uttar Pradesh—India’s most populous, with 241 million people—significant discontent was evident within the party’s traditional support base as the BJP lost roughly half its seats.

“The BJP grew increasingly authoritarian and instilled a climate of fear,” said an attorney in Uttar Pradesh, granted anonymity due to his close work with the persecuted church. “This verdict should alleviate those concerns.”

But persecution is prevalent in other states as well, stated award-winning human rights and peace activist Cedric Prakash, a Gujarat-based Jesuit priest. He called the Modi government “particularly hostile” to all religious minorities but noted that other adversely affected communities included small farmers, indigenous coastal people, migrant workers, casual laborers, tribals, Dalits, and other vulnerable sections of society.

Civil society groups rallied on behalf of such communities to swell the opposition’s ranks, and Prakash said Christians should join them to pursue the “gospel values” of justice, liberty, and equality.

Alongside their vote, Indian Christians also mobilized in prayer. EFI members, which represent more than 50 denominations and 150 ministries, as well as other denominations came together in marathon prayer sessions and interchurch prayer chains.

“People cried out to God, humbling themselves, to ‘heal their land’ and reaffirm democracy and freedom during the elections,” said Paul Dhinakaran, chancellor of Karunya University and chairman of Jesus Calls Ministry.

Across the nation, hundreds of such groups, including Dhinakaran’s National Prayer and Ministry Alliance, fervently sought divine intervention as the tense vote counting unfolded—underscoring the significance of the electoral outcome for India’s religious minorities.

“Many shed tears of joy,” said Samuel. “Now is the time for gratitude, to step back to see God at work.”

Yet Prakash said while this “second-best” election scenario was still an answer to prayer, it was now up to Modi’s coalition partners to ensure the new government does not tamper with the constitution.

“India has proved to the world that democracy, social justice, and constitutional laws must prevail over all other considerations,” said Dhinakaran.

The INDIA coalition will also have to work hard to become a functional opposition, as the diverse alliance united to defeat Modi without a shared ideological vision. While Gandhi’s Congress Party is the largest in the coalition, more than half of INDIA’s seats came from regional parties.

Yet the outcome still inspired hope among Christians.

“Indeed, we were expecting this kind of result,” said Jacob Ninan, pastor of Trinity Highland Tabernacle Church in the southeast state of Kerala, where Christians comprise 18 percent of the population. “There was intercession throughout the nation for a restoration to democracy.”

Nonetheless, for the first time, the BJP was able to secure one of Kerala’s 20 parliamentary seats after years of failing. Paradoxically, this came through direct appeals to Christians through local churches, notwithstanding the party’s rhetoric elsewhere in India. (The Congress Party still claimed majority support of local citizens, securing 14 seats.)

Ninan attributed the BJP’s new seat in Kerala to its local candidate’s charisma, citing his fame as an actor, his assistance to the poor, and his neutral stance on religion as he avoided the Hindutva line.

Prakash was more concerned in his analysis. “Voting for the BJP in Kerala is a troubling signal for secular democracy,” he said. “If Christians voted for the BJP, they would soon learn it is an anti-Christian party.”

Despite the positive turn in election results overall, however, Lal warned that social polarization and Christian persecution in India are unlikely to disappear immediately. Decades are needed, he said, to form the societal will necessary to reject sectarian hate and to restore fraternity. The outlook, in fact, “remains grim,” he said.

Nonetheless, the current political balm is welcome.

“The 2024 Indian elections defied expectations,” Lal said. “The BJP’s hollow victory and the opposition’s triumphant loss reaffirmed democracy’s power to change the course of a nation, against all odds.”

- More from Surinder Kaur

Books

Doubting Thomas: Why the Evangelical Crush on Aquinas Needs to Mature

Leonardo De Chirico

Thomism is experiencing a renaissance in theology, but there’s a reason it’s controversial.

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

To engage with the medieval Italian priest Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) is to approach one of history’s greatest theological giants. Aquinas is second only to Augustine in his influence on Western Christianity—and his legacy of Thomism is a vast ocean. Academic discussions in theology and philosophy demand Aquinas and Thomism as conversation partners.

Yet evangelicals, in particular, have had an unresolved relationship with Aquinas over the years. The pendulum of 20th-century evangelical scholarship on Aquinas has swung between strongly negative appraisals (from Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van Til, for example) and, since the 1980s, more appreciative receptions (such as from Norman Geisler and Arvin Vos). Yet in the last decade or so, there has been a Thomist renaissance within evangelical circles.

Evangelical apologists were first attracted to his epistemology, especially his defense of an evidentialist view of the relationship between faith and reason, which assumes that reason can ascertain the existence of God. Evangelical theologians then began retrieving his “classical” doctrine of God’s oneness in the face of modern Christological and Trinitarian trends, which they perceived as slippery slopes to unorthodox views—which promote a social trinity and a hierarchical subordination of Jesus to the Father, for instance.

In the face of pressures from secularization and the identity crisis felt in some evangelical quarters, Aquinas can be perceived as a bulwark of a “traditional” theology that needs to be urgently recovered—and is thus in danger of being idealized in an uncritically positive retrieval.

Previous generations of Protestant scholars could not avoid Aquinas, given his stature and importance for theology, but he was always read with selective eyes. Today, however, there is an increasing tendency to think that you cannot be properly orthodox (in the “catholic” sense) if you don’t embrace the fundamental tenets of Thomism.

What is often overlooked by these evangelical retrievers is the controversial history of Aquinas. From the Reformation and beyond, Roman Catholicism has considered Aquinas as its chief champion in its anti-Reformation stance and resulting antibiblical developments, such as the 1950 Marian dogma of the bodily ascension of Mary.

What are we to make of this divide over Aquinas? What are the strengths and weaknesses, if not dangers, in retrieving Aquinas for theology today? The point is not to avoid Aquinas, nor to study him uncritically, but to provide the theological map with which evangelicals might approach him.

As an evangelical theologian who has been working on Roman Catholic theology for 25 years—and, more recently, working toward an evangelical appreciation of pre-Reformation theology, including Aquinas—I’d like to offer five principles that can be useful in affirming the evangelical interest in Aquinas without veering into heterodox territory.

1. Scripture alone is ultimate, and tradition (Aquinas included) is always second.

In reading Aquinas, evangelical theology must always practice the sola Scriptura principle (the Bible alone is the inspired written Word of God and the ultimate authority in all matters of life), the tota Scriptura principle (the whole Bible is inspired by God and needs to be received as a whole), and the Scriptura sui ipsius interpres principle (the Bible is its own interpreter).

At the end of his letter to Sadoleto, John Calvin wrote, “We hold that the Word of God alone lies beyond the sphere of our judgment, and that Fathers and Councils are of authority only in so far as they accord with the rule of the Word, [but] we still give to Councils and Fathers such rank and honor as it is meet for them to hold, under Christ.”

This leads to a theologically sober and realistic view of tradition, including Aquinas’s substantial legacy. In J. I. Packer’s words, “Tradition, after all, is the fruit of the Spirit’s teaching activity from the ages as God’s people have sought understanding of Scripture. It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.”

That is all to say that Aquinas is important but not decisive; he can be useful but never definitive—especially where he is distorting or deviant from God’s Word. In other words, Aquinas can be enriching, but only to the extent that he is faithful to Scripture.

2. Aquinas is a giant of church history whose teachings need to be appropriated eclectically.

All Protestant theologians have studied Aquinas as the primary exponent of medieval theology. But the best readers of Aquinas have had neither reverential fears nor inferiority complexes—they have faced Aquinas head-on with an evangelical boldness undergirded by the biblical principle of “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:21, KJV).

Responsible retrievers of Aquinas—such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Herman Bavinck, through Francis Turretin—have exercised a theological discernment allowing them to appreciate the aspects of Aquinas’s teachings that are in line with biblical faith and to reject those that conflict with Scripture.

In other words, they did not embrace the Thomist system as such but broke it down into its parts—as far as possible while maintaining their integrity—and used them eclectically. That said, eclecticism has its own risks, and we must not lose sight of the fact that Aquinas is a “worldview” thinker and that any analysis of the Thomist system must be done as a whole.

Evangelical scholarship can neither reject Aquinas as a hopelessly compromised theologian (the anti-Aquinas temptation) nor elevate him as the chief parameter of Christian orthodoxy (the Roman Catholic temptation). Rather, it should treat Aquinas as an unavoidable conversation partner in the history of Christian thought. And like anyone else from Christian tradition, Aquinas is to be read generously yet critically in light of the “Scripture alone” principle—which the Protestant Reformation recovered for the whole church.

3. There are many ambivalences and serious problems in the Thomist system.

Aquinas’s thought has a myriad of brilliant insights, but the Thomist system, which includes his metaphysics and epistemology, contains tendencies and trajectories that can lead to structural theological flaws.

In The Cambridge Companion to the Summa Theologiae, Christoph Schwöbel points to Adolf von Harnack’s insights that “Thomas’s account of grace remains constantly ambivalent. On the one hand it looks back to Augustine, on the other hand, it points forward to the dissolution which Augustinianism would undergo in the fourteenth century. … Thomas intends to insist on the sole efficacy of divine grace; but the way in which he develops this theme already points in the opposite direction.”

Aquinas’s thought is pervaded with an ontological optimism that translates into epistemological optimism (stressing the positive role of reason), moral optimism (underlining the role of virtues as human habits), and, in the post–Vatican II interpretation, soteriological optimism (all humanity participates in one way or another in the mystery of salvation).

From this point of view, one cannot easily separate Aquinas’s classical theism (and its implications for Trinitarian theology and Christology) from his soteriology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, Mariology, and devotional life. The latter components of his thought are all argued in terms of the former, so it is incongruous to consider the latter flawed and the former sound. All of Aquinas’s theological constructs are formed and shaped around the same parameters, which incorporate Scripture but are not ultimately submitted to it.

In other words, Aquinas’s thought is part of a larger integrated system that needs to be appreciated as such and appropriated eclectically, but not unquestioningly.

4. Roman Catholicism is the full outcome of Aquinas’s theology and legacy.

The Roman Catholic Church has long held Aquinas as its vital intellectual champion, the most thoughtful, profound, and comprehensive voice of Roman Catholic thought. The Church of Rome has long appropriated Aquinas as the Catholic theologian par excellence.

Canonized by Pope John XXII in 1323, only 50 years after his death, Aquinas was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Pius V in 1567 for being the Roman theologian whose thought was seen to have defeated the Protestant Reformation.

In the 20th century, the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) established that Aquinas should be the supreme guide in theological studies leading to the ordination of priests. Pope Paul VI (Lumen Ecclesiae, 1974) and then John Paul II (Fides et Ratio, 1998) expressed a deferential appreciation by identifying Aquinas “as a master of thought and a model of the right way to do theology.”

Aquinas laid the foundations for the theological framework typical of Roman Catholicism, including their belief in a fundamental interdependence between nature and grace (sometimes referred to as “natural theology”), which most Protestants find highly problematic from a biblical perspective. Evangelical theology has always been grounded in the historical-redemptive motif found in Scripture: creation, sin, and redemption, however formulated.

Aquinas is acknowledged as the authority behind many nonbiblical developments in medieval and modern Roman Catholicism, from the Council of Trent to Vatican I and II. These distorting departures from the biblical faith exist in critical areas of Catholic soteriology, ecclesiology, sacramentology, and devotions. While Aquinas has a high view of the Bible, it falls far short of the scriptural standards reinstated by the Protestant Reformation.

When engaging with Aquinas, it would be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yet evangelical Thomists cannot ignore the fact that Rome regards him as the quintessential founder of Roman Catholic theology, in all its divergence from Protestant thought.

5. Evangelicals should neither be infatuated with Aquinas nor disparaging of him, but exercise maturity.

Today’s renewed evangelical appeal to Aquinas’s metaphysics and epistemology is not occurring in a vacuum. In our current cultural climate, Aquinas primarily symbolizes a return to the “great tradition” of premodern Western philosophy, a retrenching of evangelical modernity in Christian antiquity.

In some sectors of evangelical theology, the thought of keeping classic thinkers like Plato and Aristotle integrated into our biblical worldview produces an anxiety-relieving effect. In a world that is suspicious of metanarratives, Aquinas’s theology holds apologetic appeal for its claim to harmoniously combine faith and reason and to challenge skepticism with the rationality of faith.

However, the remedy may be worse than the problem, especially if it leads to an infatuation with Aquinas and an uncritical idealization of his thought.

For one, there has been a recent trend of evangelicals converting to Roman Catholicism, in part because of an attraction to Aquinas’s intellectual density and spiritual depth. In many cases, conversion begins with an affirmation of his metaphysics and ethics, which eventually leads to a full embrace of his theology. Upon further study, such individuals become convinced that Aquinas’s thought could not be split into disconnected pieces, and their conversion to Roman Catholicism follows.

Perhaps, as Barrett points out, it is unfair to see this potential for conversion as a universal caution—that it is untrue to say that Aquinas is “the gateway to Roman Catholicism.” But, at the same time, one should not be naive about the attraction many find in Aquinas’s theological vision and how it can often be an appetizer for the “full package” of Roman Catholicism.

Yet a disparaging attitude toward Aquinas is equally problematic. Aquinas belongs to a pre-Reformation age when the Western church had not yet committed itself to what Rome would officially endorse at the Council of Trent and later. Although he is behind much of what Roman Catholicism would transform into an anti-Protestant stance, he is still part of a more “fluid” time in church history that requires reading with both spiritual empathy and critical discernment.

We should read Aquinas like Peter Lombard, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus, and other medieval theologians, who benefited from Aquinas’s insights and lessons yet raised issues wherever his system departed from Scripture.

We must neither fear Aquinas nor elevate him as an absolute standard for Christian orthodoxy—neither dismissively rejecting nor naively embracing his system of thought. Evangelical theology must seek a realistic reading of Aquinas, submitted to Scripture’s supreme authority and in the service of the gospel.

This piece has been adapted from Engaging with Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Approach at the permission of Inter-Varsity Press.

Leonardo De Chirico is the director of the Reformanda Initiative in Rome, pastor of Breccia di Roma, lecturer in historical theology at Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione (Padua) and the author of several books including Same Words, Different Worlds: Do Roman Catholics and Evangelicals Believe the Same Gospel? and the newly published Engaging with Thomas Aquinas: An Evangelical Approach.

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