Died: Marshall Allen, Christian Muckraker Who Held the Health Care Industry Accountable

Emily Belz

His reporting was marked by a cheerful determination to uncover truth, which friends and coworkers attributed to his faith.

Illustration by Christianity Today

Marshall Allen, an investigative journalist who insisted that uncovering truth was fundamental to Christian faith, died on May 19. The 52-year-old suffered a heart attack a few days earlier, according to his former employer ProPublica, one of the world’s leading investigative journalism organizations.

Allen’s unflinching reporting on the US health care industry brought relief to patients and some changes to how hospitals and insurers operate. He said the industry “exploits people’s sickness for profit”—but showing that took intense determination and extended investigations.

For one reporting project on poor hospital care in 2011, he interviewed 250 doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, and patients. The resulting series in the Las Vegas Sun was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and the Nevada legislature introduced new requirements for hospitals as a result.

In another investigation, Allen reported that Dignity Health, a large religious health system that described itself as carrying on “the healing ministry of Jesus,” had refused to cover the medical expenses of an employee’s three-month-premature baby. Dignity claimed the woman hadn’t filled out the necessary paperwork and that she bore sole responsibility for a nearly $1 million hospital bill, though she had enrolled her baby with the insurer from the NICU.

After Allen called the company with questions, Dignity reversed its decision and retroactively covered the baby, who survived.

“Some people might think that Christians are supposed to be soft and acquiescent rather than muckrakers who hold the powerful to account,” he wrote in The New York Times. “But what I do as an investigative reporter is consistent with what the Bible teaches.”

Allen argued that the Bible “teaches that people are made in the image of God and that each human life holds incredible value.”

A Christian journalist, he said, should be comforted by God to be a comfort to others. A Christian journalist should rebuke deception and unfair practices. A Christian journalist should get all sides of the story, in line with Proverbs’ call for hearing multiple witnesses. And a Christian journalist should admit and correct mistakes with humility. He also shared this vision of Christian journalism in lectures to journalism students at The King’s College.

“He saw this work as redemptive and Christian in nature,” said Paul Glader, a friend of Allen’s and a former journalism professor at King’s. “He did amazing work investigating the health care bureaucracy and bullies, seeking out answers and truth for the little guy—all of us consumers.”

Allen grew up in a Christian family that was thrifty when it came to their own needs and generous with others. He recalled his parents giving lavishly to their local church while refusing to go on big vacations. That thrift allowed Allen to graduate college debt-free, which allowed him to work in ministry and then journalism. It also meant he drove a rusty 2002 Honda Odyssey.

He began his career in youth ministry, working for Young Life. He served three years with the ministry in Nairobi, Kenya. He began to enjoy writing when sending newsletters home from Kenya, his wife, Sonja Allen, told ProPublica.

When Allen and his family returned to the United States, he got a master’s in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and began writing for Christian outlets, including Christianity Today and Boundless, a Focus on the Family publication.

Allen recalled run-ins with religious editors who objected to investigating Christian leaders.

“He was quite critical of the evangelical press for being too subservient to authority and unwilling to investigate,” according to Glader.

He also had conflicts with a secular editor who doubted whether a Christian could be a good journalist and said the word Christian “as if it were some kind of slur,” he wrote.

He eventually landed at local news outlets in Southern California. He advanced to a job at the Las Vegas Sun, where he first focused his attention on health care. His journalism and publishing colleagues described him as someone with moral clarity, humor, courage, and curiosity.

“He was truly a person like no one else I’ve ever known. He would have been intimidating because of his directness, confidence, and fearlessness except that he wasn’t, because he was so kind and unjudgmental,” said Emily Laber-Warren, director of the Health and Science Reporting program at the City University of New York’s journalism school, where he taught.

Allen also tried to adjust his fellow evangelicals’ view of mainstream journalists. He largely felt that his colleagues embraced his faith.

“I think, sometimes, conservative Christians are completely ignorant about the way the media works. And I also think liberals are completely ignorant about the way the Christian world works, right? There’s so much ignorance on both sides,” he told World Radio.

In addition to journalistic investigations, Allen committed himself to helping fellow journalists, journalism students, and patients caught in the maze of the US health system.

He wrote a how-to book on navigating medical billing called Never Pay the First Bill. The book’s review section on Amazon is filled with people describing how his reporting helped them negotiate bills and get out of medical debt. Author Leah Libresco Sargeant credits his book with helping her resolve a $1,400 bill for her daughter’s care.

“He’s fighting people who systematically profit off of human misery and vulnerability, and it would be easy to let that curdle into contempt,” she told CT. “Instead, he writes generously about people who fight back and never loses his warmth.”

After leaving ProPublica in 2021, Allen wrote a Substack newsletter documenting individual cases of medical billing gone wrong.

Glader, formerly at King’s, said Allen also never took himself too seriously, but had “infectious joy” that countered what could have been discouraging work.

That joy mixed with rigor showed up in stories like the one he did about why eyedrops spill out of people’s eyes. He began by writing that the “good news” was that spilling wasn’t the user’s fault. The “bad news” was that drug companies had designed the drops to be wasteful.

Over the years, Allen wrote about death several times. It was not an anxious topic for him. He saw it as a spur to “love and good deeds,” he said after his father died in 2022.

“I know this sounds dark, but I have a sober appreciation for death,” Allen explained. “Death will bring us all to our knees and test what we believe. One of my favorite Bible verses, Ecclesiastes 7:2, says it’s better to go to a ‘house of mourning’ than it is to celebrate at a ‘house of feasting. For death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart.’”

“Death is my destiny and it’s also yours. Let’s take that to heart and let it change how we live.”

Allen is survived by his wife, Sonja Allen, a women’s minister at 121 Community Church, and their three sons, Isaac, Ashton, and Cody.

- More from Emily Belz

News

Wire Story

Anglican Bishop Removed as Clergy Call for Transparency in Investigation

Kathryn Post – Religion News Service

While the ACNA hasn’t offered public updates on a trial for Stewart Ruch’s abuse response, Todd Atkinson, a bishop appointed to assist him, has been deposed over inappropriate relationships.

Bishop Todd Atkinson

Anglican Network in Canda

Nearly three years ago, Bishop Stewart Ruch of the Anglican Church in North America’s Diocese of the Upper Midwest admitted “regrettable errors” in handling sexual abuse allegations against a lay minister, before taking a leave of absence. An acting bishop took over the diocese and another ACNA bishop, Todd Atkinson, was tapped to assist him.

But Ruch’s absence hasn’t quelled the simmering controversy in the diocese, a sliver of the small, theologically conservative denomination that split from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada in 2009 over those two denominations’ acceptance of LGBTQ clergy and marriage for same-sex couples.

On Monday, a group of ACNA clergy published an open letter expressing concern that there have not been public updates about a promised church trial for Ruch since November 2023. The letter pushes for regular updates on the trial’s progress and for information about why Ruch has not been inhibited, or limited in his duties, because of his alleged laxity in the past.

On the same day, Atkinson, the assisting bishop, was removed from ordained ministry after a church trial found he had engaged in inappropriate relationships with women and interactions with minors.

Atkinson’s misconduct dates back to at least 2012, six years before he joined ACNA, according to the church court’s order. In 2014, Atkinson began overseeing a Canadian church planting initiative called Via Apostolica that was later grafted into ACNA’s Diocese of the Upper Midwest in 2020. The church court found Monday that Atkinson repeatedly fostered exploitative relationships with multiple women under the guise of being their “spiritual father.”

According to the court order, Atkinson often gave women extravagant personal gifts worth hundreds of dollars, sometimes with funds from accounts maintained by Via Apostolica. Financial reports show that from fall 2013-2014, Atkinson spent more than $10,000 on gifts for pastors and their wives, including the women he behaved inappropriately with, according to the order.

Evidence submitted for the trial shows that Atkinson texted women incessantly, sending one more than 11,000 text messages over four months in 2015. The woman reported that Atkinson attempted to give her a ring and family heirloom without his wife’s knowledge, and after church leaders barred him from communicating with the woman, he had a third party deliver 80 pages of his handwritten journal entries to her.

Part of the evidence for the trial included a 2016 report that found Atkinson had taken part in a “codependent” and “excessive” relationship that had the “appearance of evil,” according to the order. Atkinson reportedly targeted women with a history of trauma or abuse, initiating “father-daughter” relationships with them while acting as their priest, bishop, and counselor.

“The Court finds credible the testimony from multiple witnesses that the Respondent encouraged a culture where his authority was not to be questioned,” the order says. “The Respondent misused spiritual language to excuse and normalize inappropriate behavior, leveraging ecclesiastical authority in order to coerce, control, and exploit women selected from a similar profile.”

The order also found Atkinson had inappropriate interactions with minors. In one instance, the court found, Atkinson invited a 13-year-old girl to get coffee alone and without her parents’ knowledge, and later hosted her alone for a movie night in his basement. The court said Atkinson’s misdeeds were compounded by the fact that he did not disclose any information about prior complaints against him when he applied to join ACNA in 2018.

Andrew Gross, director of communications for ACNA, applauded the work of the church court. “The Court for the Trial of a Bishop, a group of elected volunteers, did an excellent job producing a sound verdict based upon over 2,000 pages of evidence,” he said, adding, “This case is an example of the Anglican Church in North America structures working well in both the investigative and judicial phases of the process.”

While Atkinson was inhibited from all ministry in June 2022 pending the outcome of his investigation, Ruch decided to end his leave and return to his office in October 2022. He has apparently continued to act as bishop of the Diocese of the Upper Midwest as well as rector of the diocesan headquarters, Church of the Resurrection in Wheaton, Illinois.

Clergy from 12 of the 28 dioceses have signed up so far. ACNA clergy please do read and prayerfully consider support @Tish_H_Warren @artofbreathing https://t.co/MUvNRJ0Bnk
— Esau McCaulley (@esaumccaulley) May 21, 2024

The letter also suggests there’s been a lack of transparency about the presentments, or church charges, brought against him by three bishops and one grassroots group of congregants in Minnesota.

“We have done our best to outline the issues without attributing intentional malice to provincial actions nor have we presumed the outcome of the trial,” the authors wrote. “Our concern remains the potential harm done through this process, which has been publicly lamented by many of the survivors. We believe that the church can and should do better.”

As of Tuesday evening, the letter had been signed by 46 ACNA clergy.

Two related open letters were also recently published — one by and for ACNA laity echoing the concerns and requests of the clergy letter, and the other signed by 88 clergy and leaders in the Anglican Diocese of South Carolina, requesting that the church court responsible for adjudicating the presentments against Ruch meet promptly and be transparent about the status and timeline of the trial.

To the Laity of @The_ACNA re: transparency & provincial responses:

"We as laity have the unique privilege to exercise our voice freely…our participation in diocesan & provincial processes is essential to the soundness of our ecclesial structures."https://t.co/AnYMth1ulq
— Marissa Franks Burt (@MBurtwrites)
To the Laity of @The_ACNA re: transparency & provincial responses:

"We as laity have the unique privilege to exercise our voice freely…our participation in diocesan & provincial processes is essential to the soundness of our ecclesial structures."https://t.co/AnYMth1ulq
— Marissa Franks Burt (@MBurtwrites) May 21, 2024

?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>May 21, 2024

“The fact that Bp. Ruch has not been temporarily inhibited and continues to function in his Diocese and as a member of the College of Bishops in good standing while under two presentments is an affront,” the South Carolina church leaders wrote.

“For too long, our silence has signaled a passive complicity with this travesty.”

- More from Kathryn Post – Religion News Service

Books

Review

The Flannery O’Connor Novel That Might Have Been

Jonathan Rogers

Her final work was continually revised but never finished. Can we know what she was aiming to achieve?

Flannery O'Connor at her home in Georgia.

Joe Mctyre / AP Images / Edits by CT

Flannery O’Connor was an inveterate rewriter, working, reworking, and deleting episodes from her stories and novels. Her archives, collected at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, bulge with deleted scenes and alternate versions of characters scarcely recognizable as the people who inhabit the published versions of her stories.

Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress

Jessica Hooten Wilson (Author), Steve Prince (Illustrator), Steve Prince (Illustrator)

Baker Pub Group/Baker Books

192 pages

$15.48

O’Connor spent five years crafting Wise Blood, her first novel. It took her seven years to complete a draft of her second novel, The Violent Bear It Away—and it was only 45,000 words long! (In her defense, she was simultaneously producing some of the best short stories ever written.)

When O’Connor died in 1964 at the age of 39, she left behind scraps and pieces of a third novel called Why Do the Heathen Rage?—a dozen or so episodes repetitively, even obsessively rewritten. In the early 1980s, the scholar Marian Burns described these literary oddments as “an untidy jumble of ideas and abortive starts, full scenes written and rewritten many times, several extraneous images, and one fully developed character.”

In the intervening decades, Why Do the Heathen Rage? has been mostly ignored. But in the last few years, author and Pepperdine University professor Jessica Hooten Wilson has dived into that untidy jumble, hoping to make sense of it for the rest of us. The result is Flannery O’Connor’s “Why Do the Heathen Rage?”: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress, a book that alternates between Wilson’s explanatory essays and scenes from the novel that might have been.

Editorial choices

The manuscripts from O’Connor’s archives totaled 378 typed pages dispersed over 20 file folders, in no particular order. O’Connor left no indication as to which iteration of a scene or character or sentence she considered closest to a “final” version. Nor did she leave any indication as to how the episodes should be sequenced. More to the point, it seems unlikely that O’Connor herself had a good idea what any final version might look like. She very much seems to have been feeling her way through.

Describing her own editorial process, Wilson writes, “My version of these pages comes from intersplicing sentences and paragraphs from the left-behind pages, making editorial choices about which words O’Connor meant to cut or keep, and presuming to show the best of what was left unfinished.” The fact that Wilson boils O’Connor’s 378 manuscript pages down to 60-something pages gives a sense of just how many editorial choices she had to make.

O’Connor indicated in her letters that she conceived Why Do the Heathen Rage? as a sequel or continuation of her short story “The Enduring Chill.” In her novel-in-progress, the protagonist is a version of Asbury from “The Enduring Chill,” though he is now named Walter (except in those fragments where he is named Julian, or Charles, or Asbury).

Walter exchanges letters with a civil rights activist from New York named either Sarah or Oona (again, depending on the fragment), who is either his cousin, his aunt, or a stranger. In his letters, Walter engages in what Wilson calls “epistolary blackface,” posing as a Black man who works for Walter’s family. Things move toward a crisis when Walter realizes that Sarah/Oona is speeding toward him in her convertible and will soon discover that he is not one of the “poor black people of the South,” as she supposes, but an overprivileged, overeducated, overfed slob.

Things move toward a crisis, but they never reach a crisis. There are experimental scenes, false starts, and contradictory character sketches in which O’Connor is clearly trying to get a feel for the story she’s telling and the characters who inhabit it. But the moment before Sarah/Oona’s racial naiveté collides with Walter’s racial cynicism feels like the place where the main trunk of the story is lopped off. From this point, O’Connor is unable to find any way forward. Here is the fundamental narrative problem, and O’Connor died before she solved it.

Any number of factors help explain why O’Connor never finished (indeed, barely started) Why Do the Heathen Rage? A slow writer in any case, she was slowed further by the illness that killed her a few years into the project. She was writing about social and political issues (civil rights, poverty, even euthanasia) much more directly than usual. Furthermore, she was writing for the first time about a protagonist who receives grace early in the story rather than at the end.

After all those spectacular and terrifying conversions in her previous stories, O’Connor was now trying to write about a protagonist who would have to undergo the long, slow business of sanctification. Wilson quotes from a letter O’Connor wrote amid her work on Why Do the Heathen Rage?: “I’ve reached a point where I can’t do again what I know I can do well, and the larger things that I need to do now, I doubt my capacity for doing.”

Wilson makes a convincing case, however, about the greatest difficulty O’Connor might have been confronting. She had written herself into a situation of needing to deal with race and civil rights in a more honest and thoughtful way than she ever had before. She knew that her customary glib and contradictory treatment of race was insufficient for her subject matter, yet she didn’t know how to be less glib or more consistent.

On matters of race, O’Connor was only slowly learning to live (and write) up to her own ideals; she was still growing into her better, more sanctified self. A deeply theological writer, O’Connor nevertheless tended to treat the civil rights movement as a social, political, and cultural matter rather than a theological matter. Wilson writes, “She is trying to write about race as one element of a story about the theological problems that face secular contemplatives and secular social activists. By not reading the issue of race with theological significance—which must include the Black perspective that so often eluded her—O’Connor seems to have been unable to finish the story she longed to tell.”

Acts of imagination

If Black perspectives are absent or elusive in O’Connor’s prose, New Orleans artist Steve Prince offers a corrective in nine haunting and thought-provoking linocut illustrations, and in an afterword commenting on his images.

For her own part, Wilson’s insights into O’Connor’s inner life and cultural milieu are almost as valuable as the work she has done in organizing and editing O’Connor’s manuscript fragments. “This book tells the story of the unfinished manuscript,” writes Wilson. “I consider Flannery as she drafted the novel and what would have influenced her creation of the story: what was she reading, what news stories were making headlines, who was giving speeches on her new television?”

Less valuable is Wilson’s attempt to compose a “potential ending” to Why Do the Heathen Rage? She admits that it is presumptuous to write a final scene for a novel by Flannery O’Connor. Nevertheless, she argues, “all acts of imagination are presumptuous.” That may be, but some acts of imagination are more presumptuous than others.

I must register one other complaint, this one about the cover. A badge on the book jacket proclaims that this is “the unfinished novel in print for the first time.” That is a misleading claim. Calling these fragments an unfinished novel is like calling a pile of Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil studies an unfinished Leonardo painting. I don’t imagine this badge was Wilson’s idea. Its promise of an unfinished novel is neither fair to O’Connor nor true to Wilson’s accomplishment.

O’Connor’s prose accounts for about a third of Flannery O’Connor’s “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” It is prose that O’Connor considered unready for public consumption. I can’t help but look, but I still have misgivings. I had similar misgivings in 2013 when Farrar, Straus and Giroux published a book of private prayer journals O’Connor had written at age 20. (I looked that time too.)

In the prayer journals, as in those first ten stories of her celebrated short story collection (also written during her student days), we see a very young Flannery O’Connor struggling to figure out how to be Flannery O’Connor. In these fragments of Why Do the Heathen Rage? we have a reminder that even when Flannery O’Connor was as mature as she would ever be, she was still struggling to figure out how to be Flannery O’Connor. She struggled every time she sat down to the typewriter. Writers everywhere, take courage.

Jonathan Rogers is the author of The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O’Connor. He is the host of The Habit Podcast and the author of The Habit Weekly on Substack.

- More from Jonathan Rogers

Be Quick to Listen, Slow to ‘Therapy Speak’

Mia Staub

Using terms like trauma, abuse, and toxic too flippantly has consequences for our relationships.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

I was going through a breakup when I started therapy post-pandemic. My friends were telling me that I needed to work on healthier emotional boundaries. They said I was probably experiencing trauma from a toxic ex. Most likely, I’d been in a codependent relationship.

When I went to fill out the intake questionnaire before my first appointment, I regurgitated what I’d heard. I was seeking therapy to “establish healthier emotional boundaries because of a codependent relationship that had left me traumatized.”

But after a few sterile sessions full of the jargon I’d picked up from friends and the internet, I stopped using these terms—trauma, codependence, emotional boundaries. I was using language to distance myself from reality. I was confusing self-preservation for emotional maturity.

It’s not like these words were entirely inaccurate. It’s that they’d become clichés, shorthand that kept me from understanding the nuances of my own experience. I wasn’t undergoing “trauma.” But I was scared of what another romantic relationship would look like and worried about whether it would turn out the same way this one had.

I’m not alone in my use of “therapy speak.” Thanks to social media, terms once confined to clinical settings are ubiquitous in everyday conversations. A difficult roommate is “toxic”; conflict is “abuse”; every ex-boyfriend is a “narcissist”; and stress is always “trauma.” We are all “victims”; we are all “gaslit.”

Sometimes, of course, these words are warranted. With mental illness on the rise, it’s helpful to have common language at our disposal. As more people discuss their mental health, therapy itself is becoming destigmatized. Hearing other Christians talk openly about abuse may be the encouragement a victim needs to come forward. Acknowledging a painful childhood as “traumatic” may free someone to seek professional help.

But all of us, and Christians in particular, should be careful about overrelying on therapy speak to describe our relationships with others. This language has consequences—not only for understanding our own lives rightly but for living together as the body of Christ. How we speak shapes what we do, and therapy speak might be limiting our ability to love our neighbors well.

Overusing therapy speak—or using it out of context—conflates different kinds of difficult experiences. That conflation can be confusing at best and harmful at worst.

Take, for instance, a social media video that came across my feed a few years ago, in which a woman describes skipping a meal as “self-harm.” Of course, this may indicate a pattern of disordered eating. But in many cases, though skipping breakfast is unfortunate, it’s also benign. Classifying one missed meal as self-harm undermines the seriousness of what that term really means.

Then there’s the word trauma. I’ve heard it used to describe a difficult class at school or even an encounter with a centipede in my first apartment (true story). But when trauma becomes a fair characterization of normal conflicts or everyday stresses, its real meaning—“exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence”—gets minimized.

Using words like toxic and gaslighting as sloppy shorthand for normal conflicts with parents, professors, and friends is dishonest, even when done without ill-intent. It dilutes the meaning of serious words for people who’ve undergone serious suffering.

For example, when abuse describes an argument between roommates, it’s no longer a helpful word for those who’ve experienced real mistreatment, including in the church. For congregations that are reckoning with actual instances of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, or the abuse of authority, it’s especially important to be precise with language. Overusing a word can take away its severity, making light of the heaviness it holds for those walking through dark valleys.

Overusing therapy speak can keep us from hearing each other. It can also give us an excuse to stop listening altogether. It’s hard to argue for reconciliation when a friend deems your relationship “toxic” or “problematic.” Nobody can push back on plans canceled for “self-care.” And “emotional boundaries” just can’t be crossed.

When we use therapy speak to shut down conversations, relationships become dictatorships, with one person wielding terms over another. A me-versus-them dynamic centers ourselves rather than others. I feel unsettled about something you do; because of that, I need space. We seek to minimize any conflict, discomfort, or inconvenience.

This deflection of responsibility discourages both introspection and even honest confession about the ways we fail to love our neighbors. Labeling your friend as a “narcissist” is easier than recognizing the part you play in the dynamic. It’s far easier to set an “emotional boundary” than to sacrifice for someone else, especially when it feels like they’re being annoying or unreasonable.

Of course, sometimes, boundaries are warranted. Sometimes, relationships must end. But cutting people out of our lives should always be done carefully and thoughtfully. Therapy speak can simplify what should be a process of discernment and prayer about our own roles in a relationship into a black-and-white judgment that doesn’t consider others’ complexities, mistakes, and imperfections. My mom remembers a conversation differently; she’s “gaslighting” me, and I won’t speak with her anymore. My emotionally immature colleague didn’t respect my time during a meeting; he’s “toxic,” and not worth the trouble of getting to know.

Our brothers and sisters will annoy us, hurt us, and misunderstand us. Sometimes, this will require a private conversation to clear the air (Matt. 18:15), but often won’t warrant estrangement—or wielding these words as weapons.

God doesn’t promise perfect relationships, and we should be asking the Lord to search our hearts, to identify the planks in our own eyes (Matt. 7:5). We need to be honest about “any offensive way” within instead of assuming ourselves to be the victim (Ps. 139:23–24).

“Unquestioning validation” from those around us feels great in the short term. Distancing ourselves from those who have offended us is easy and can even be misconstrued as accountability or justice. But these relational quick fixes aren’t helpful in the long run—especially if what we want is real Christian community.

For Christians, that community is eternal. It’s also messy. In Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer recognized that through hard relationships, we realize how much we need God’s grace: “Thus the very hour of disillusionment with my brother becomes incomparably salutary, because it so thoroughly teaches me that neither of us can ever live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and Deed which really binds us together—the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ.”

Therapy speak just might be making us less patient, less kind, and less generous, slower to forgive and quicker to anger. Our culture too easily tosses people aside over difficulties that are converted into trauma or toxicity. We limit the fruit that comes from living together. We turn sacrificial love into a burden.

This is an opportunity for Christians to be countercultural—not by promoting unhealthy relationships, closing down conversations about mental health, or rejecting the insights that therapy provides, but simply by using our words carefully and by seeing people beyond the labels we ascribe to them.

After settling into therapy, I found the slow (and oftentimes ugly) practice of expanding on my emotions to be a fruitful one. My therapist helps translate what I am saying into the terms that make sense for each situation. To be honest, sometimes I just need help figuring out strategies for conflict resolution. My therapist often reminds me that “it takes two to tango”; she confronts me thoughtfully and straightforwardly about how I might be misrepresenting someone else. Our process together has shown me how important it is to have a good support system—a system that can “carry each other’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2) with patience and grace.

Mia Staub is editorial project manager at Christianity Today.

- More from Mia Staub

News

Wire Story

DOJ Issues First Indictment in Southern Baptist Investigation

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

A former official at Southwestern Seminary has been charged with falsifying records in the federal probe into the denomination’s abuse response.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth

Michael-David Bradford / Creative Commons

A former Southern Baptist seminary professor and interim provost has been indicted on a charge of obstructing justice in a sexual misconduct case, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Matt Queen, who was previously an administrator and professor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, allegedly gave the FBI falsified notes during an ongoing investigation into alleged sexual misconduct at the seminary, which is in Fort Worth. He was arraigned Tuesday, according to the DOJ.

“As alleged, Matthew Queen attempted to interfere with a federal grand jury investigation by creating false notes in an attempt to corroborate his own lies,” said US Attorney Damian Williams of the Southern District of New York in a statement. “The criminal obstruction charge announced today should exemplify the seriousness of attempts by any individual to manipulate or interfere with a federal investigation.”

Queen, who was named pastor of Friendly Avenue Baptist Church in Greensboro, North Carolina, earlier this year, could not be reached for comment.

The indictment is the first official acknowledgment by the DOJ of an investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention and its entities. Southern Baptist leaders announced in 2022 that they had been subpoenaed by the Department of Justice and promised to cooperate.

News of the DOJ investigation followed the release of a report from Guidepost Solutions showing that SBC leaders had mistreated abuse survivors for years, denied responsibility for the actions of local churches and downplayed the number of sexual abuse cases in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

Earlier this year, the SBC’s Executive Committee announced the DOJ’s investigation into the committee was ended, leading to confusion. The Executive Committee later issued a statement saying the DOJ’s investigation into the SBC and its entities remained open.

In a statement Tuesday, the DOJ gave more details about the investigation.

“Since approximately 2022, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (‘US Attorney’s Office’) and the FBI have been investigating allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct related to a national religious denomination (the ‘Denomination’) and its affiliated entities, and the alleged cover-up of such allegations by individuals and entities associated with the Denomination,” according to a statement.

As part of that investigation, Southwestern was required to give any documents about abuse to the FBI. However, according to the DOJ, a seminary official received a report of alleged sexual abuse by a student in the fall of 2022. That alleged abuse was reported to the school’s campus police, though not to the FBI, but no other action was taken.

A Southwestern staffer, referred to as “Employee-1” by the DOJ, was later told by a Southwestern leader (Employee-2) to destroy a document about the incident and the seminary’s inaction, according to the DOJ. Queen was allegedly in the room with Employee-1 when this happened, but allegedly told the FBI in an interview that he had not heard Employee-2 say to destroy the report.

He subsequently produced a set of fake notes from the meeting, the DOJ alleges, which he presented to the FBI in June 2023—but he gave conflicting stories about when the notes were written, later admitting the notes were fake.

Matt Queen in a video for Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in November 2022.

“On June 21, 2023, MATTHEW QUEEN testified under oath that he had in fact heard Employee-2 direct Employee-1 to make the Document ‘go away,’” according to the DOJ.

The 49-year-old Queen could face up to 20 years in prison after being charged with one count of falsification of records.

“Matthew Queen, an interim Provost, allegedly failed to inform the FBI of a conspiracy to destroy evidence related to the ongoing investigation of sexual misconduct and instead produced falsified notes to investigators. Queen’s alleged actions deliberately violated a court order and delayed justice for the sexual abuse victims,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge James Smith in a statement. “The FBI will never tolerate those who intentionally lie and mislead our investigation in an attempt to conceal their malicious behavior.”

In a statement, Southwestern said the student involved in the alleged abuse was suspended and later withdrew from the school. The seminary also stated it reported the matter to the DOJ as it was required to do.

The school said the alleged actions described in the indictment were “antithetical to the values of the seminary.”

“After the seminary learned of Queen’s actions in June 2023, he was immediately placed on administrative leave and resigned as interim provost,” the school said in the statement. “All employees alleged to have acted improperly in this matter are no longer employed by the seminary.”

Southwestern, once one of the nation’s largest seminaries, has fallen on hard times in recent years. Last year a report from the school’s leaders detailed years of financial mismanagement, including overspending its budget by $140 million over 20 years. The school’s former president, who left in the fall of 2022, is suing the school for defamation.

The school also settled a lawsuit in 2023 with a victim of Paul Pressler, a legendary SBC leader, and in 2021, sued to regain control of a Texas foundation that had been taken over by former staffers, who allegedly tried to divert money away from the seminary.

- More from Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

News

Moral Failures by Christian Leaders Are a Huge Problem. Can New Standards Help?

Megan Fowler

ECFA is adding leadership integrity to its accountability criteria.

hxdbzxy / Getty

The accreditation agency for over 2,700 evangelical nonprofits wants to raise its standards to address “one of the greatest financial risks” posed to churches and ministries today: moral failures by leadership.

For decades, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) has established guidelines around financial transparency, stewardship, and governance. This year, the organization announced plans to add a new requirement to address the integrity and character of a ministry’s leaders.

It’d be the biggest change to ECFA’s standards in 45 years.

First introduced in March 2024, the proposed standard states, “Every organization shall proactively care for its leader and support the integrity of its leader in conformity with ECFA’s Policy for Excellence in Supporting Leadership Integrity.”

ECFA members and experts in the Christian nonprofit agree with the idea of the new standard but aren’t sure exactly how to implement it.

In an interview with Christianity Today, ECFA president and CEO Michael Martin likened the standard to a guardrail. While no written policy or accountability measure could eliminate sinful behavior by leadership—each leader ultimately bears responsibility for their own integrity—organizations can be doing more to help keep them in check.

“There’s consensus around the idea … that the board has an opportunity and responsibility to come alongside a leader to help leaders be in a position where they can best thrive,” Martin said.

In 2021, ECFA surveyed more than 800 of its member ministry leaders and board chairs, and 94 percent said leadership failures are impacting donor trust. Respondents also said they needed more resources for supporting the integrity of ministry leaders and wanted ECFA’s help.

A three-page commentary on the new standard includes the following direction for member churches and ministries:

The board, or a board committee, should meet at least annually with the leader to discuss how the board “can provide appropriate support in proactively caring for the integrity and well-being of the leader as a whole person.”
The leader is responsible for “investing in their relationship with Jesus and guarding their heart (Prov. 4:23), striving to live above reproach in the biblical expectations for leaders (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Tit. 1:6–9), and submitting in a spirit of love and humility (1 Pet. 5:1–6) to the care and support offered to the leader by the ministry’s board.”
The board should also ask the leader about the leader’s commitment to upholding biblical integrity principles, as outlined in a written code of conduct. According to the commentary, leaders ought to demonstrate traits like humility, growth, and the fruit of the Spirit. The board is then responsible for documenting these conversations in its minutes.

ECFA accreditation can provide a level of assurance to donors and participants, but it does not exempt a ministry from high-profile moral failings. In 2021, ECFA terminated RZIM’s membership because the ministry’s resources “were improperly used in relation to sexual abuse and misconduct by the ministry’s late founder,” Ravi Zacharias.

In 2019, Harvest Bible Chapel lost its standing with ECFA in the wake of controversy over founding pastor James MacDonald, which culminated with his firing.

Last month, Pursuit Church in Denver, North Carolina, an ECFA member, fired a pastor for sexual misconduct. Pursuit Church remains an ECFA member.

Scott Rodin believes ECFA’s approach to leadership integrity represents the kind of “holistic thinking” that keeps ministry leaders and boards in healthy relationships.

Rodin is a senior consultant and chief strategy officer with The FOCUS Group, which helps faith-based organizations connect with their donors. He said leadership failures have a ripple effect through ministries, impacting employees, donors, and the larger community that ministries are trying to reach.

Though the emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being of a ministry leader might not seem directly connected to donor trust, Rodin believes the health of a leader is reflected in the health of the organization. He said the proposed standard represents the kind of thoughtful work that boards of directors should be doing in the first place.

“A leader’s relationship with God, with themselves, their neighbors—it has a massive impact on how they do their work,” he said. Leaders encounter opportunities for compromise every day, Rodin said. “Fuzzy ethical edges turn into cliffs really quickly.”

Since announcing the proposed standard in early March, ECFA has solicited feedback from members through a form on the ECFA website. Martin said most of the organizations that have responded have affirmed the need for such a standard and asked ECFA for guidance on what implementation should look like.

The integrity standard would be eighth on ECFA’s list of standards of responsible stewardship. The seven existing standards cover doctrinal integrity, governance, financial oversight, legal compliance, financial transparency, compensation and third-party transactions, and stewarding financial gifts. ECFA did not specify the kind of integrity questions a board should ask a ministry CEO.

Frank Sommerville appreciates the intent behind the standard, but he says it is unclear what compliance should look like. As a practicing lawyer and CPA, Sommerville’s clients, about 70 percent of whom are faith-based organizations and ministries, are contacting him for advice about implementation.

“I applaud the effort of ECFA to address the issue of leadership integrity. I have seen in my 30-plus years that the lack of integrity in the senior leader can harm or destroy an organization,” he said.

Still, he wonders how ministries will implement a standard that ECFA intentionally left vague and open to many interpretations.

In its commentary on the standard, ECFA says its members have “much latitude to care for and support the integrity of their senior leader … in a manner that is best suited for their context.” The commentary also clarifies that the board does not need to be a leader’s accountability group. But ministries might struggle with where to draw these lines.

Sommerville thinks ministries might have a hard time determining what type of integrity they need to monitor. Financial integrity? Sexual integrity? Daily Bible reading?

“Is it the job of the board to hold a leader accountable for non-work, non-job performance activities?” Sommerville says. “Is that the best use of the board’s time?”

As Pursuit Church illustrates, ministry leadership failure does not disqualify a ministry from ECFA accreditation.

Though cases of corruption and financial mismanagement grab headlines, Sommerville believes they represent a small percentage of ministries. In almost every case of failure, he says, board members believed it was their job to support the leader without question.

“You don’t need a board that serves the vision of the leader; you need a board that ensures the leader is implementing the vision of the organization.”

Sommerville hopes organizations will take the standard seriously and not treat it as a box to check without addressing root issues.

Most of ECFA’s members are parachurch ministries, though the group says churches make up the fastest-growing member segment, just over 10 percent. Members are able to comment on the proposed standard through the end of May. ECFA expects to officially roll out the new standard in the fall.

- More from Megan Fowler

Ideas

I’m a Political Prisoner in Congo. My Ministry Is Thriving.

Lazare Sebitereko Rukundwa

Even as I long for health and freedom, I see the good that God is doing.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

The end of April 2024 marked my 10th month in detention at Makala Central Prison in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Each day passes, leaving the impression that I will be free tomorrow. I know the day I hope for will finally come, because I have put my hope in the Master of times and circumstances. As he says in Matthew 25:31–46, he is also detained with me here. When he is done with detention, he will lead the way to my freedom. My hope is built on that rock.

I was arrested in a legally irregular process. During the time I was falsely accused of calling people in my Eastern DRC region to arms, I was on a video (which my lawyers have submitted) promoting the Nairobi Process’ call for a cease-fire. In fact, I was part of that process and I have long been dedicated to achieving peace and development.

After being shifted from prison to prison and finally to Makala, I joined an Assemblies of God chaplaincy and a team of ordained prisoners who minister here with the help of donations and resources that we are able to receive.

Early on, I asked the committee about starting a literacy class in the prison due to the huge number of people who don’t know how to read and write. The initiative caught the attention of authorities and many people with a humane spirit.

About 100 people, men and women, boys and girls, are now benefiting from the program, and over 50 have now learned to read, write, and calculate. One adult student said, “I never expected that I would learn how to read and write in prison. Thank you for this initiative.” Many of those that haven’t had the opportunity to go to school are from the Kinshasa region and grew up as kuluna (street children).

When someone in jail learns how to hold a pencil and reaches a stage of writing, reading, and calculating, I feel like making a song to the Lord, the master of times and circumstances.

One child detainee asked the teacher, “Why can’t we have the program run every day? Learning is good for us. It also helps me to remain busy.”

Another adult said, “Now I need a Bible that I can read for myself.”

There are Bibles that we have successfully distributed. They make an impact not only in Bible study groups but also on evangelism teams. I have witnessed teams moving from cell to cell with Bibles, reading and sharing verses.

Besides the literacy classes, in April, we also initiated a skills training class on making soap, detergent, and disinfectant for 54 students. The teacher is also a detainee. We are able to use these products to help improve our own sanitary conditions.

Other initiatives include a tree planting project, a climate change course, and a class on making paint and pigment.

A program on the theology of work, which I teach, has also extended outside of the prison. One of our detained students was released weeks ago and, surprisingly, secured a new job in the government. He called me to request the syllabus, saying, “I want to use it to mobilize the provincial parliament members to learn and apply it.”

Another person said, “What I like about this is that you don’t only teach about spiritual salvation; it also touches physical needs.”

I felt very much encouraged. There are so many things to talk about, as God never stops surprising us with his “jokes.” He makes us smile.

On the chaplains’ committee, we confront problems to solve daily, even if our own issues are not yet resolved. There are those who lack means for basic needs such as clothing, food, and medication. I have seen more than a dozen people who needed money to resolve their legal cases. Once they were able to provide the money, they were freed.

In particular, I remember how a family of five, detained for over ten months, was released and went home after we donated the necessary funds.

In another example, the director of music here at our church in Makala sat in my little room and explained his financial problem. When a solution was found, he cried with joy and said, “I have been singing to bless the church, and today I am blessed too!”

Being a prisoner does not make me less human. I continue to dream, to be creative, and to be a person who can turn circumstances into opportunities. I am made to positively impact my environment.

Grace has been mine; I have pleasant roommates, which is a blessing—we share everything, and that builds our faith, hope, and friendship.

Moreover, I pass time tending to my plant nursery in the room. I eat fruits and keep their seeds, which I put in plastic water bottles. This has also been a good way of procuring peace of mind.

As I tell my roommates and my theology of work class, nature is our relative. My conversation with the environment dates way back to the 1970s with my small shamba (farm) of potatoes. The area still carries my name, “mukwa Lazaro” (at Lazare’s).

When I was arrested, my medicine was left behind. Later on, my medicine was brought and shown to me, but it was never given to me to use. Without that medicine, I have still survived, even though I experience many health issues with no appropriate medical attention. Through all these circumstances, God has been my healer and protector.

It is easy to be stressed with unbearable living conditions. I can think like the apostle Paul, How come I minister to the needs of others, and yet my own case is unresolved and my needs unmet? But my answer is already written:

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Cor. 12:8–9)

I feel that the work of this ministry is firm, and that it’s now time to go back home.

Lazare Sebitereko Rukundwa, an Assemblies of God member, founded Eben-Ezer University of Minembwe in South Kivu, DRC. He was a civil society delegate during the Inter-Congolese Peace Consultations in Nairobi. His family and the people of Minembwe await his release.

- More from Lazare Sebitereko Rukundwa

Theology

How to Be a Christian Influencer Worthy of the Name

Justin Giboney

We do not deserve to wield influence in the church while being simps and sycophants to the secular world.

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

There’s good reason for the church to be wary of social media influencers—particularly those who speak to spiritual matters. We aren’t wrong to be disconcerted at the idea of Christians being led by online personalities who might be more charismatic than theologically sound or more creative than credible, especially when the influencers are disconnected from church discipleship and discipline themselves. Algorithms, monetization, and viral moments create endless temptations and adverse incentives that can seduce even well-meaning creators into serving themselves and the worst elements of pop culture.

Yet I’m also persuaded it’s possible for Christians to speak faithfully in that tension, and that we do ourselves no favors by running away from the reality of social media’s influence.

I was reminded of this while attending this month’s Black Christian Influencers (BCI) Conference, where founder Jackie Horbrook succeeded in curating an atmosphere that was both aesthetically dope and substantively gospel-centered. Christian creators in fields as varied as theology, activism, and fashion came together to discuss how to use their platforms to glorify God—and how to navigate the risks that come with staying on the cutting edge of culture while centering Christ.

Those risks are not as new as they may seem. In John 7, Jesus’ brothers essentially tell him that he’s not maximizing his potential as a pre-digital influencer. He needed to be more outward-facing, they argued, and show off his miraculous works more frequently because “no one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret” (v. 4).

That advice exposed their failure to understand Jesus’ true mission. Even though he’d become a popular public figure, his purpose was much more significant than a few “viral moments.” Jesus wasn’t pursuing influence for its own sake; his message and timing had to align with the Father’s plan of salvation. “My teaching is not my own,” he told his amazed audience. “It comes from the one who sent me” (v. 16).

That text should guide Christians who have a social media ministry and influence the lives of thousands or millions of people. We must never be more concerned with growing our platforms than with stewarding our influence faithfully. God has not placed us in this position to flex and revel in the admiration. Christian influence comes with a cross. Its purpose is far more about self-sacrifice than self-indulgence.

Or it should be, anyway. The design of the medium will always make that model of faithfulness counterintuitive. Successful influencers are proficient at protecting their platform and knowing what their audience wants, which puts them in constant danger of audience capture. This happens when we pander to our audiences, giving them only what they expect to see and want to hear in clever ways—following their lead maybe even more than they follow ours.

A faithful ministry cannot do this. We must tell the truth to our audience instead of tickling their ears (2 Tim. 4:3).

This may well be bad for business. Piling on an opponent will always get more likes than in-group critique. The conservative crowd wants to hear about how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are ruining America, and the social justice crowd wants an endless review of white evangelism’s misdeeds. Neither wants to hear about how they themselves fall short of gospel compassion or truth.

But if our public witness is dictated by digital rewards, we’re far from Christlike. A chapter before his brothers’ confused advice, as his ministry was drawing large crowds, Jesus did what would be unthinkable to some influencers: He gave the crowd a hard teaching that caused many of his followers to desert him (John 6:53–66). The purpose of his ministry was never to pacify or flatter his audience by affirming all their self-perceptions and preconceived notions. He was there to edify them and bring them to the cross. Likewise, an influencer unwilling to lose followers for the sake of truth cannot engage faithfully.

Many influencers will also face a temptation to imitate and endorse popular culture. For those engaged in social justice and action, too often our theology can become flimsy and ambiguous. Messages about the Christian sexual ethic and the sanctity of life start to disappear from our platforms. We don’t want to lose secular political allies, offend the custodians of culture, or go viral for having “regressive” views. I myself remember hesitating to critique the Black Lives Matter organization’s alternative to the traditional family ethic. I supported the racial justice message in principle, but I knew many of my peers would construe any disagreement as disloyalty.

Too few of us have the boldness to engage secular activists and academics while upholding the authority of Scripture. We are too busy trying to fit in. Some of us are just happy to be invited to the table and to be associated with this person or that institution. But we do not deserve to wield influence in the church while being simps and sycophants to the secular world.

That description is neither hyperbolic nor hypothetical. I’ve seen Christian influencers scrub their platforms of content they’d produced with saints like Jackie Hill Perry after being called out for nothing other than the “offense” of sharing a screen with Perry while she spoke the gospel truth. They look more like Simon the Sorcerer than Jesus—using the church to further their careers at the expense of the gospel (Acts 8:9–25).

A Christian influencer, to be worthy of the name, must be a teacher with a cross. We must use our talents and recognition to lead people toward Christ, not ourselves.

This is a high standard, but it is a standard Christians can and do meet, as I saw firsthand at the BCI Conference. From comedian Matthew Hudson spreading the gospel through satire to Ekemini Uwan loving her neighbors through advocacy, Christian influencers are using social media in furtherance of the Great Commission. This is a new medium for the church—and for church accountability—but it is an opportunity to follow Jesus in pointing those amazed by our teaching to God.

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and the president of the AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the coauthor of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

- More from Justin Giboney

Culture

Forrest Frank Is Making the Internet’s Vibiest Christian Music

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

His upbeat hits and worship collaborations are capturing younger listeners on social media.

Forrest Frank (right) and Connor Price (left) took off on social media as the popular musical duo Surfaces.

Edits by Christianity Today / Source Images: Screenshots of Youtube

Some of the most popular music we hear in our Instagram and TikTok feeds comes from Forrest Frank, the independent artist and music producer known for his viral, feel-good songs.

His beat-driven pop combines vibey grooves and infectious hooks in hits like “Up!” and “Good Day.”

Frank was the top-ranked new artist on last year’s Billboard Christian charts, and his advice for fellow Christian musicians is this: Make good music, and the audience will follow.

The 28-year-old has found a massive audience by leveraging his production abilities, social media savvy, and collaborative approach to music-making. But he’s confident his songs climb the charts on Spotify and trend on social platforms because they are good songs, not because he’s figured out how to hack the algorithms.

“If your content’s not doing well, the song’s not good enough,” the 28-year-old said on YTH Nation, a podcast by the youth ministry at Elevation Church.

The Waco, Texas-based musician and Baylor University grad is half of the popular duo Surfaces, and he has teamed up with an array of popular Christian artists including Elevation, Maverick City Music, Lecrae, and Hulvey.

A common theme of Forrest Frank’s social media content is debunking the perception that Christian music is boring or corny, or that young people won’t listen to music with faith-forward lyrics.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C5tVLlwvEEr/

His success seems to be proving that there is a large cohort of Gen-Z Christians looking for music that speaks openly and unapologetically about Jesus.

One of his viral reels shows Frank and Hulvey leading a passionate crowd of young adults in worship at a concert with the text Christian rap isn’t worship (sarcastically) overlaid, as the two artists and the audience sing the words of their song “Altar”: Glory to the Father / You deserve the praise / Lead me to your altar / Wash away my shame.

Frank is convinced that a rising cohort of Christian artists have the potential to capture audiences who aren’t even looking for Christian music.

“In the same way that Christians have sacrificed their value systems to absorb worldly art, I think what’s coming is the world’s going to sacrifice its value systems to absorb Christian art,” he said.

Frank seems to see himself appealing to listeners who are concerned about the content of secular music but haven’t found a Christian alternative good enough to pull them away. (That may seem like a dig at previous generations of Christian artists, but it’s a generational rite of passage for younger listeners to perceive the music of their parents as passé.)

Christian art—music included—has shaped human culture for millenia, but Frank is looking at the here and now. What is Gen Z (and older Gen Alpha) looking for? And how can Christian musicians offer something new, relatable, and redemptive?

Frank has 4.1 million followers across social media platforms. In March, his song “Always” briefly became the No. 1 trending song on Instagram. Last month’s EP release, “God Is Good,” featuring Christian hip-hop artist Caleb Gordon, already has 2.1 million streams on Spotify, and a reel featuring the song and duo has 1.2 million views.

“A Christian song is the 12th most viral song in America right now,” Frank said in a video posted on Instagram, before breaking into the chorus of “Good Day.”

Another post says, “A Christian song is the #1 most viral song in all Brazil,” cheering the popularity of “No Longer Bound,” a collab with Hulvey.

According to Chartmetric, 16.3 percent of Forrest Frank’s listenership is in Brazil; he occasionally translates and reposts content in Portuguese as a shout-out to his Brazilian fans.

“Content is an art form,” Frank told Elevation YTH. “I try to be kind to my viewers. It’s like running a restaurant. You’re gonna just be like, ‘Here’s your food.’ No, it’s like, ‘Here’s your perfect plate I made for you. I hope you love it.’”

Frank grew up in the church and surrounded by musicians—his mother was a worship leader and his grandmother wrote children’s music—but he didn’t aspire to become a Christian artist or even to pursue a career as a performer.

He began experimenting with making music as a high school student after seeing an artist on YouTube using a Maschine—a compact digital workstation used to generate melodic and percussive audio material using knobs and buttons—to make beats. He bought his own Maschine Mikro and was immediately hooked on the process of DIY music-making. At Baylor, he put in hours of work in isolation, developing his skills as a producer and composer.

Frank says that he started to fall away from his faith in college and points to a pivotal experience that reignited his faith: a spur-of-the-moment decision to show up at a worship night at a church.

“I remember just falling on my knees and crying out to Jesus,” Frank recalled, as he told the story to Elevation YTH.

After graduating, Frank took an office job and continued to make and release music as a hobby, waiting to see if his creative work would find an audience. It did; and after about a year of managing a job and an accelerating music career, he left to pursue music full-time.

Frank’s success as a Christian artist is preceded by the success of Surfaces; their song “Sunday Best” peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the duo collaborated with Elton John on the song “Learn to Fly” for the iconic singer’s album The Lockdown Sessions, produced in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C10JFGwx20v/

In 2018, Frank released his first solo album, Warm, under the name Forrest. It’s only over the last year and a half that Frank has broken out as a Christian artist as “Forrest Frank.”

Today’s listeners—across genres and niches—find so much of their music online, but not all artists have succeeded in using digital platforms and harnessing social media algorithms. Artists like Frank seem to be finding success because they understand what their audience wants from the music and, perhaps as importantly, what they want to do with it.

“Most artists I know really struggle with social media. It feels like self-promotion,” said Wisdom Moon, founder of Lula Music Group, a consulting and management agency for Christian artists.

“You have to look at it as serving your audience by giving them something hopeful, something they relate to.”

Songs go viral on TikTok and Instagram not because they are catchy (that’s part of it) but because they are useful as sound clips to act as background music for content by other creators and followers.

“Artists have to think of their careers not just as musicians but also as content creators,” said Moon, who has also worked for Christian music labels like Centricity and Integrity.

And for Christian artists, faith plays a part in the content they contribute and contribute to. The most successful ones think of themselves as cocreators with their audiences.

Songs like “Good Day” and “Up!” are bouncy and lighthearted, the perfect background track for a TikTok from a beach vacation or a reel showing an unmedicated labor with amazingly good vibes. They serve an audience that wants the music to feel like it could score their lives, or the lives they want to have.

This pragmatic, social media–conscious approach to music-making may seem at odds with the missional vision Christian artists like Frank articulate for their music. But Moon pointed out that popular Christian musicians have always had to navigate this tension between utility and witness.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C6XRdkePFDh/

Christian songs have long served as an inspirational soundtrack for young Christians as they build their identities. He recalled his days in youth ministry, making highlight videos from mission trips using Audio Adrenaline’s “Hands and Feet” as background music.

“Christian audiences are looking for songs that speak to their life and point to Jesus at the same time,” said Moon. “Christian music has always had to serve a dual purpose.”

People used to add their personal soundtracks to wedding slideshows and senior photo montages, but now every moment can be scored with background music on video platforms like TikTok and Instagram. It’s part of how audiences, including young Christians, engage with music these days.

The musician / content creator model opens doors for independent artists like Frank to build a career without the interference of a label (although, Frank had the benefit of being a successful label-represented musician prior to embarking on a career as an indie solo artist). It also prompts artists to allow their listeners access to their personal lives for the sake of building a community and following. Frank has embraced the model by posting photos of his wife, child, and home, and occasionally incorporating them in his musical content.

As a solo artist, Frank has released an impressive amount of music in a short time. His 2023 album New Hymns features a laid-back rendition of “Amazing Grace” and a guest appearance by rapper Lecrae on “Nothing but the Blood.” He also released a Christmas album last year, A Merry Lofi Christmas, which showcases Frank’s laid-back vocals but against a cozier soundscape than his viral, danceable songs like “Up!” and features jazz saxophone solos and brass.

In February, he released a remix of “Praises” with Elevation Rhythm. In April, he released the EP God Is Good. This spring, several of his singles (“Up!,” “God Is Good,” “Always,” and “Good Day”) have gone viral on social media.

Frank is committed to serving his growing audience, but he says he’s open to whatever God has next, whether that’s continuing on this trajectory or doing something else (he jokes that if he didn’t make it as a musician, he would have probably become a massage therapist or a chiropractor).

“If God told me to delete my Spotify, I’d do it right now. If God told me to delete my Instagram, I’d do it right now.”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Theology

The Loosening of American Evangelicalism

Brad East

Long-standing norms against drinking, tattoos, and Catholic-coded church practices have rapidly fallen. What’s going on?

Icee Dc / Unsplash / Edits by CT

Something has happened in the last 25 years in American evangelicalism—what I believe to be a massive generational shift. I’d like to sketch a picture of the change I see and ask if you see it too.

First, though, let me set the scene. I have in mind low-church Protestant traditions in the United States: churches centered on the Bible, evangelism, and personal faith in Jesus; often but not necessarily nondenominational, with moderate to minimal emphasis on sacraments, liturgy, and ecclesiastical authority; and marked by a revivalist style as well as conservative beliefs about sex, marriage, and other social issues. Historically, these congregations were predominantly white and middle- to lower-class, though not as uniformly as is often imagined. Many were founded within the last three decades, and they’re typically given to long sermons, contemporary worship, monthly Communion, and lots of lights.

These are the churches in which I’ve noticed what I would call a kind of loosening. This shift is largely unwitting, or at least unplanned. It is not consistent or ideological; it is not a program or platform; it’s not even conservative or liberal per se (and my goal here is not to render an overall positive or negative judgement on the change). This loosening consists of a broad relaxation of previously unspoken—or at least unwritten—social norms.

The most obvious example is attitudes about alcohol. For generations, American evangelicals were known to be highly suspicious of drinking, sometimes to the point of being teetotalers. This remained true through my teen years, and when I heard that Brother Joe or Sister Jane enjoyed a glass of wine before bed, it was whispered knowledge about private behavior. Joe and Jane were not drinking in public. They certainly weren’t microbrewing beer in their garage and handing out samples at small group.

Two decades later, so far as I can tell, this taboo on alcohol has all but disappeared. Professors at my private Christian university aren’t allowed to drink with students. But just a dozen years ago they weren’t allowed to drink at all, and this rule change is not an anomaly in evangelical institutions.

Now think of other timeworn taboos among American evangelicals: tattoos, dancing, gambling, smoking, even mothers working outside the home. “Cool” celebrity pastors are far from the only millennial and Gen Z evangelicals with tattoos. If I were to ask one of my devout Christian college students what theological reasoning informed their decision to sport multiple tattoos, they would not offer me careful rebuttals of their grandparents’ outmoded interpretation of Leviticus 19:28. They would give me a blank stare: What does God have to do with it?

Or consider entertainment. Churches and Christian parents continue to police the boundaries of appropriate content, but the window has widened considerably. Once upon a time, Disney movies were suspect. Onscreen sex, language, and violence were known to be dangerous causes of adolescent misbehavior. But now evangelicals’ viewing habits appear interchangeable with your average Netflix or HBO subscriber. Some even cast watching Game of Thrones or The Sopranos as a task of cultural engagement: I’m just doing my missional duty. If the gore, cruelty, and nudity offend your fundamentalist upbringing, so much the worse for you, weaker brother.

This loosening is happening within the church building too. The American evangelicals I have in mind traditionally looked askance at practices reminiscent of Catholicism—formal liturgy, vestments, sacraments, the church calendar, sometimes even creeds. These things were long seen as extrabiblical innovations that threaten to obscure the gospel, usurp the sovereign authority of Christ, or promote a lifeless, nominal faith.

Yet today I see an astonishing movement by all kinds of evangelical institutions toward retrieving these formerly Catholic-coded practices. Christians who once refused to acknowledge Easter as distinct from every Sunday’s celebration of the Resurrection now observe Lent. Churches founded on a principled rejection of creeds recite the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds each Sunday. Churches historically committed to memorialism speak of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist (and they call it “the Eucharist,” not just “the Lord’s Supper”).

The loosening even extends to evangelical seminary curricula and sermon research. Professors and pastors reference writers and thinkers outside evangelicalism and even Protestantism, drawing on Catholic priests, medieval Orthodox monks, and patristic bishops and councils. Like all my other examples, this is not a shift in service of theological liberalism. In some cases—creedal recitation particularly comes to mind—it is a conservative change, a turn to catechesis as a bulwark against theological drift.

Now, I called this loosening a “generational shift,” and, in one sense, it is. But in my observation, it’s not only the under-40 crowd doing these things. If that were the case, we’d still have an important change underway, but it might be nothing more than the normal pattern of children unlearning their parents’ ways.

My contention, instead, is that it’s not just millennials and Gen Zers who are loosening. It’s their parents and grandparents too. Former teetotalers are now drinking; one-time Disney boycotters are binging Netflix; erstwhile skeptics of gambling are hosting poker nights.

If I’m right, this is a seismic shift, not business as usual. What’s going on? What has led so many evangelicals in such a brief span of time to shed so many social and liturgical taboos?

Before I venture four ideas, I should acknowledge that I’m doing some speculating here. I don’t have charts and graphs to back up my sketch or prove some explanation. But just as I’m sharing my observations to see if they’re widely recognizable, so I’m floating these four ideas to see if they resonate with Christians in other corners of American evangelicalism.

First, this loosening suggests to me that American evangelicalism’s many unwritten norms were not sustained solely by doctrine, congregational authority, or biblical teaching. Norms against drinking, tattoos, formal liturgy, and the like were extraordinarily powerful and uniform because of the ambient culture surrounding the church.

In many cases, that outside support included the state. It’s no coincidence that this loosening has occurred while laws related to “vice”—alcohol, divorce, drugs, and once-illegal sexual activities—have been falling like dominoes across the last half-century. Sometimes law is downstream from culture, sometimes upstream, but either way, the church is part of this social river.

Second, a less Christian and more secular culture creates new incentives and pressures on ordinary believers. If everyone in the non-Christian majority believes or does x, it becomes a conspicuous sign of Christian discipleship (or intransigence) to continue abstaining from x. This leads all believers, pastors included, to reconsider their commitments: Is alcohol, after all, forbidden by God? In black and white, chapter and verse? If not, then why am I suffering my neighbors’ or coworkers’ scorn? Besides, everyone always knew about Joe and Jane’s wine collection. Let’s go ahead and join them.

Third, when Scripture is ambiguous or disputable on some matter while the wider culture’s position is clear, the onus falls to pastors or the institutional church to convince congregants to reject that wider cultural norm. And what we have seen in recent decades is a decline of pastoral authority, the death of thick denominational identity, and a crisis of confidence in Christian institutions.

The elders say so or Pastor John knows best doesn’t cut it anymore. I can vote with my feet and join a church whose pastor says otherwise. Who is Pastor John, anyway? Isn’t he the same one who told me all believers are capable of interpreting Scripture for themselves? And that no authority except Scripture should decide matters of faith and morals? And that all matters on which Scripture is silent are “indifferent,” subject to personal conscience?

Fourth and finally, there are no sectarians in post-Christian foxholes. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the same forces leading evangelicals to start drinking, getting tattoos, and watching HBO are also leading them to say the creeds, receive ashes on their forehead, and read Pope Benedict XVI. When the world feels arrayed against faithfulness to Christ, you need all the friends you can get. Doctrinal differences that aren’t relevant to current cultural battles—think infant baptism, not theologies of sex and gender—can be overlooked in a pinch.

This is what I mean when I say that the loosening I see is no top-down, organized, ideological plan. It’s happening organically, all at once, sometimes in apparently contradictory ways. For this reason, it’s not easy to judge. I myself grew up without liturgy in the church or alcohol in the home; now I cross myself before prayer and enjoy a drink with my parents. On the other hand, I lament the colonization of believers’ leisure time by screens, whether streaming TV or apps like TikTok, as well as the accompanying laissez-faire attitude about onscreen content.

Whether each specific trend is good, bad, or yet to be determined, I do know this loosening has happened during the same years that church attendance has decreased while loneliness and congregations’ loss—or refusal—of authority over their members have increased. What looks like gain for some (perhaps less authority means less propensity for abuse) may be loss for others (wayward members who need strong medicine to get their lives on track).

Either way, American evangelicalism is changing, even as I write. What will it look like when this shift is finished? God knows.

Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry.

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