Pakistani Christian Praised for Documenting Blasphemy Victims. Most Are Muslims.

Jayson Casper

Catholic advocate awarded by US State Department explains why Christians are disproportionately targeted while the Islamic majority predominantly accuses its own.

A father prays at the grave of his slain son who was murdered in an attack on an Ahmaddi mosque in Pakistan.

Daniel Berehulak / Staff / Getty

Last month, mob violence took the life of Lazar Masih of Pakistan. Hundreds of Muslims responded with brutality to accusations that the 74-year-old Christian had desecrated a Quran—even before he could be tried under the nation’s blasphemy law.

A year earlier, in a similar blasphemy accusation, thousands of rioters burned hundreds of 400 homes and 26 churches, sending Christian villagers fleeing for safety. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has consistently condemned this hostile climate as unjust, including in a special update issued last December.

“The brutal killing of Lazar Masih is an alarming reminder of the dangers of merely being suspected or accused of blasphemy in Pakistan,” stated USCIRF chair Stephen Schneck. “The country’s draconian blasphemy law signals to society that alleged blasphemers deserve severe punishment, which emboldens private individuals and groups to take matters into their own hands. Pakistani authorities must hold those responsible for his death accountable.”

Accountability is rare.

In 2011, Pakistan executed the assassin of Salman Taseer, a former governor outspoken in his criticism of such laws. But from 1994 to 2023, 95 individuals were killed in blasphemy-related extrajudicial attacks, according to data compiled by the Lahore-based Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Stretching back to 1987, at least 2,449 people have faced legal accusations.

USCIRF has recommended Pakistan be classified as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC) since 2002 for its violations of religious freedom. Created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), the independent bipartisan watchdog lobbies US policy to press reform on egregious offenders.

In January, Rashad Hussein, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, commemorated the 25th anniversary of IRFA by honoring CSJ executive director Peter Jacob as one of nine award recipients for his dedication to the cause.

In particular, he praised CSJ for compiling Pakistan’s only comprehensive database of blasphemy-related arrests, prosecutions, and killings. Last year, 329 suffered under the law, and 7 people were killed before ever reaching the court.

But of the accused, only 11 were Christians. High-profile cases such as Masih’s tend to reach Western and persecution-monitoring media, overlooking the 247 Muslims who were overwhelmingly targeted in a nation that is 97 percent Muslim.

Christians still suffer disproportionately, but Jacob works in defense of all. Since CSJ has started tracking data, 52 percent of accusations have been lodged against Muslims, 32 percent against Ahmadis (a heterodox Islamic offshoot founded by a messiah-like figure), 12 percent against Christians, 2 percent against Hindus, and 2 percent are of unconfirmed identity. Nearly 600 people are currently detained in prison.

With such data, Jacob lobbies the government. In advance of last February’s elections, he won concrete pledges to address minority rights issues in the platforms of three major political parties, who went on to win over half of Pakistan’s legislative seats.

Obtaining reform is more difficult.

Last year, parliament voted to increase the punishment for blasphemy offenses from three to ten years’ imprisonment. It also added language to forbid insults against the companions of Muhammad, which can implicitly target minority Shiites.

The US State Department has adopted USCIRF’s CPC recommendation since 2018. Open Doors ranks Pakistan No. 7 on its World Watch List of countries where it is hardest to be a Christian.

Jacob founded CSJ in 2014 and has spent 35 years in human rights work. He obtained a master of laws degree from Notre Dame University and served 18 years as executive director of the National Commission for Peace and Justice, established by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference on Pakistan.

CT asked Jacob about hate speech protections for Christians, why Muslims accuse each other of blasphemy, and how faith sustains him in an uphill battle:

Why are Christians disproportionally accused of blasphemy?

Christians take pride in the fact that their leadership supported the creation of Pakistan, and remain politically and socially active in the country while contributing to its welfare and defense.

But this sentiment is in a direct clash with the monolithic view of Pakistan championed by sectarian parties and extremist groups. Persecuting minorities became politically advantageous in the pursuit of religious nationalism, and as Christians resisted the human rights violations against them, their victimization only increased in scope.

Today, it is the Shiite Muslim sect that is predominantly persecuted. But as blasphemy laws were introduced by the military government in the early 1980s, and especially since 1992 when they were fully activated, Christians have been among the foremost victims.

Are the accusations based on fact?

Given the harsh punishments in the law and an environment of hostile social behavior, it is safe to say that blasphemy, in the real sense, is almost nonexistent. The entire range of cases is either totally or partially fabricated.

Experts widely believe that the civil law prohibitions of disrespect to the Quran and insult against the Prophet Muhammad are massively misused. Even so, the laws are discriminatory, religion-specific, and lack the safeguards built into criminal justice systems throughout the world. As the law fails to take into consideration the element of intent, it tends to punish the accused on mere suspicion.

How do Muslim-world blasphemy laws differ from legitimate hate speech protections?

In many Muslim majority nations like Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, blasphemy is not treated as a major offense. But Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iran assign severe punishments up to the death penalty, established through religious decrees. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws came through an illegitimate military dictatorship, and then was later approved by parliament—which was assumed as popular approval—and subsequent political manipulation turned them into a social movement.

Nevertheless, the United Nations has urged all states to repeal blasphemy laws as inconsistent with human rights. Hate speech can cause human suffering. Given that defamation of religion is determined by perception, it is impossible to measure damage to a nonliving concept.

Incitement to violence should be the true area of concern.

Are Pakistani Christians in need of hate speech protections?

The law already has provisions to deal with hate crimes and provocation to animosity. The amendments to create blasphemy laws were therefore unnecessary and have created more tension and sparked more conflict than anything it has resolved.

Religious minorities have become vulnerable regarding their physical safety. In fact, after the 2013 suicide bombing at a church in Peshawar, the supreme court issued orders to ensure the protection of places of worship, secure minority participation in public policy, and promote their economic well-being.

Unfortunately, implementation is still pending.

I do not imagine there are any quick fixes. But building a counternarrative of inclusion can begin by undoing faulty provisions in existing blasphemy laws to add workable safeguards. This would include defining the offense of an insult, exempting unintended actions or speech, and delineating the scope of nonbelievers to speak about another religion.

Why do Muslims accuse each other of blasphemy?

Sectarian differences have rattled society.

Religious intolerance was first directed at the Ahmadi school of thought, a 19th-century offshoot of Islam that developed in India, as its founder claimed to be a prophet. As Muhammad is considered to be the final prophet, the law has barred Ahmadis from calling themselves “Muslims” since 1974, and a decade later prevented them from using Islamic symbols. Deeming their beliefs and practices as heretical, many organizations nurtured hostility toward them even to the point of human rights violations, criminal violence, and outright persecution.

This exclusion and intolerance then became part of Pakistan’s overall social climate. Christians became the next victims, and later Shiites and other minorities have also been on the receiving end.

The state became hostage to an ill-conceived law and unscrupulous implementation, aggravating otherwise ordinary individual community conflicts. Differences in interpretation among Muslim sects caused further tension, as extremists labeled other sects as apostates and blasphemers.

By virtue of their weaker status, minority groups suffer the most.

Does the blasphemy law impede the church and its witness?

There is abundant evidence that these laws have violated the freedom of religion, opinion, and expression of even the most legitimate religious leaders. But furthermore, they have created a generation of disenchanted youth who have turned away from those who use these laws to further their own vested interests.

It is difficult for the new generation to find a genuine discourse on religion.

If Pakistan adopted the American respect for religious freedom, ensuring the noninterference of the state in personal affairs of faith, this would not only be a way forward for the church but result in a transformation of the entire social order.

How does CSJ contribute to this goal?

Although those who joined hands to create Pakistan had varied objectives, there is ample evidence the state was to be a democracy based on the principles of equality and equity. What we see now related to freedom of religion is an aberration and contradiction to this original objective, so we dedicate our efforts to defining an alternative view of Pakistan.

And therefore, as an independent and multifaith human rights organization, we advocate for alternative public policies. We do this primarily by collecting data on the abuse of blasphemy laws, sharing our findings, and proposing remedies for relief.

We argue that the government should set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the scale and magnitude of this abuse and empower it to act on its findings. We seek allies to join in this demand and improve upon our recommendations.

Unfortunately, the authorities have not followed through.

Does personal faith sustain your advocacy?

I was raised Catholic within the ecumenical Christianity of Pakistan, and my worldview was informed primarily by Catholic social teachings. In my youth, I was particularly impressed by liberation theology and its concept of active nonviolence. As such, I have chosen to work for much of my life—but not exclusively—with Catholic organizations.

Jesus was accused of blasphemy—evidence of how a collective entity can level such atrocious charges for their personal gain. His parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us to reach out to all people in their distress, regardless of their identity. The Christian tradition contributed strongly to the development of human rights, as a neutral ground for all human beings.

I believe this is the best outcome of religious and educational experience.

At CSJ, we are strong believers in human goodwill. Our movement has endured difficult times through a deep faith that the people of Pakistan will change the course of our national history. This hope, along with our marginal successes, encourages us to continue the struggle.

Please keep us in your prayers.

- More from Jayson Casper

Theology

I’m Trading My Career for Motherhood. Neither Will Fulfill Me.

Sophia Lee

This isn’t a female problem, but a human one.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

The sight of an airplane soaring above me used to make my eyes sting with longing. At that time, I was a college dropout, a 52-pound brittle skeleton, years of anorexia having gnawed me down to little more than organs and skin.

Whenever I heard the planes, I would look up at the sky and imagine the people up there, busy living life, probably flying to important business meetings and conferences in Hong Kong or Los Angeles, or whatever important things people who aren’t dying of an eating disorder do. And I would stop to clutch at the visceral ache in my chest, remembering the days when I dreamed of becoming a journalist who traveled the world.

Twenty years later, I am doing exactly that. I write long-form stories from around the world. I am now that busy person on the plane, flying to meetings and conferences. I’ve ridden on horseback in the jungles of Burma to report on an unconventional humanitarian aid organization; flown a two-passenger airplane over the ice kingdoms of remote Alaska to report on Alaska Natives; driven past giraffes and gazelles grazing in open fields while reporting on missions to Chinese migrants in Kenya.

I am finally living the dream that seemed like a fantasy 20 years ago, when I had lost all purpose and meaning in life. But now, pregnant with my second child, I’m giving it up to be a stay-at-home mother, for who knows how long—and I am not okay.

I know how incredibly privileged I am to have the option not to work. I also know it’s a blessing to have children when so many women struggle with infertility and miscarriage. So it’s with some shame that I confess: I’m terrified of the upcoming transition from working mother to stay-at-home mother.

I have nursed this dream to do what I do today for so long, and worked so hard to get here, that giving it up now feels like time has abruptly stopped while I’m mid-somersault in a gymnastics routine, frozen in action, a body stuck in a stiff coil in the air, always falling, never landing.

When I shared this struggle with my discipleship group, our leader—a woman with three grown-up children, who gave up a potential nursing career to be a full-time mother—clicked her tongue. “I know what’s the problem,” she said. “You’re the typical modern woman.”

She’s right. I am indeed a stereotypical modern woman who bristles at stereotypical gender roles. I profess to support women striving for their dreams, whether engineering, piloting, or homemaking—but truth be told, until recently, I could not understand women who chose motherhood as their vocation.

Becoming a mother was never part of my dream. I didn’t buy the dominant message that women can do it all. The math didn’t make sense: You can’t give 100 percent to your career and another 100 percent to motherhood. I chose career, obviously; I didn’t think I had an ounce of maternal instinct. Even the chubbiest, rosiest baby did not make me want to coo. Why would I want to take one home with me?

The conversation about womanhood and motherhood often seems to fall into tiring cultural wars over tropes, not real women: One side declares a woman free to do whatever she wants, to follow her own heart (even as we know our hearts are as volatile, unpredictable, and inconsistent as my toddler).

The other side says women like me have swallowed “diabolical lies” about womanhood. They say a woman’s highest or greatest calling is to be a wife and mother. They say the feminist movement has deceived women into believing that a career can fulfill us and that housewifery is bland and suffocating.

True, society does not celebrate homemakers enough, which can make women who choose to stay at home feel dismissed and small. It explains the rise of “trad wives,” a social media phenomenon in which women refuse to apologize for their aprons and instead proudly reclaim the “traditional” values of womanhood, which they interpret as staying home to cook, clean, and care for their family, often through aesthetically pleasing vintage filters.

Neither side speaks to me. And these aren’t the kind of conversations I have with other women who struggle to feel fulfilled in motherhood or career.

Yes, I suppose I am that “typical modern woman.” But there’s something more. Those delicious hours I spent as a child filling notebooks with ideas and stories were not feminist roars but an innate expression of a creative God, who blessed both men and women to create and cultivate. I didn’t go to work excited about toppling patriarchy or earning wealth or social status. I worked because I loved it.

But then that changed. Our son, growing in my womb for months before I finally noticed him, started kicking. And before I ever felt ready to be a mother, two years ago, he was born with an indignant cry.

Thanks to California’s paid family leave benefits, I was able to take four months of maternity leave. The 122 days of taking care of my son full-time blurred into one fuzzy, sleep-deprived daze soaked in the cloying scents of sweet breast milk and milky belches. I couldn’t tell when the sun rose and when it set.

But I also never knew such tenderness. The love that bloomed inside me was no honeymoon rose, fresh and perky one season, droopy and faded the next. It just kept growing, an enchanted ivy that danced evergreen and lush. I observed this budding love with awe and journalistic curiosity: Did my body really create this magical creature? How can something so scrunchy and wrinkly look so sweet and delightful in my eyes?

I couldn’t imagine life without our son, couldn’t imagine how I could have ever desired a life without him. And yet—I was also bored out of my mind. I could not wait to return to work. My first day back from maternity leave, I dusted my desk and sat down with a steaming—not lukewarm—cup of coffee, and felt like I had been gifted a vacation. I felt, in so many ways, liberated. My intellect, stiff from neglect, could now explore things beyond tummy times and wake windows.

But I also came back a different person. I felt older, crankier, slower. My creativity was stuffy and sniffly like a persistent cold. My focus was off, all my senses overstimulated by a child greedy for food, touch, attention—everything and more than I had to give.

Traveling for a reporting trip became a logistic scramble of pumping and labeling a freezer’s worth of breastmilk, prepping two weeks of healthy meals, paying the nanny for extra hours, and sometimes flying grandparents cross-country to help out.

Figuring out a way to keep my milk supply was stressful. Once, I was stuck in the backseat between two grown men in a bulletproof truck for a 10-hour drive across the fields of war-torn Ukraine. We stopped for a quick lunch, and I raced to the restroom, frantically trying to manually pump a full load into the bathroom sink.

It affected my marriage. Seeing my husband’s exhausted, haggard face during our video calls when I was overseas made me feel both guilty and irritated. When I returned home, travel-weary, my husband greeted me with the relief of a drowning man spotting a raft and then paddled madly away, leaving me in the waters to make up for my parenting slack.

I love our son fiercely, deeply. But I don’t find motherhood fulfilling; and yet work doesn’t feel fulfilling either. Perhaps it never was, because even before I became a mother, I remember spending each birthday feeling anxious as another year passed, my 20s receding into my late 30s, feeling as hungry as I had been back with anorexia, with the hollow dissatisfaction that I was not as accomplished or as influential as I wanted to be.

Fulfillment is such a first-world, 21st-century problem to worry about, something we hear often: Is my marriage fulfilling? Is my career fulfilling? Is my friendship fulfilling? When I had nothing but bones, what I do now felt like the stars, the galaxy, the universe.

Now I have the stars and galaxy—plus the unexpected, unasked-for gift of motherhood—and it still doesn’t feel like enough.

If the answer to this is that I’m brainwashed by modern feminism and that I just need to recover the “real” meaning of womanhood, then that’s just piling shame upon shame, misleading me from one false illusion to another. I’ve seen many stay-at-home mothers compare their children and parenting to that of others, and then sink into an identity crisis when the kids are not all right or when they leave for college.

This is not a female problem. It’s a human problem.

Most men seem to get both worlds—fatherhood and a career. Nobody criticizes them for pursuing their ambitions, and everybody praises them for taking the kids to the park. We also don’t hear as many men talk about sacrificing career for family, and that’s a shame. I know an acquaintance who was too busy building his company to settle down, and now, almost in his 50s, wealthy and successful, he’s dating women in their 20s because he dearly wants children. It might have benefited him to think about the sacrifices of pursuing his ambitions sooner.

A lot of what I desire is good. I was made in the image of a Creator. I was made to create, which includes children, but not just children; and work and motherhood were never meant to fulfill me. Before humans ever began procreating or cultivating, God was already delighted in them and called them “very good,” simply for being. He created humankind already fulfilled in him. Fruitfulness and dominion is a blessing, an added bonus.

That’s how the Bible begins, with Genesis 1 and 2. The problem is that I’m trapped repeating the story of Genesis 3 over and over.

I was feeling insecure, exhausted, and dissatisfied when I recently reread Genesis 3. God opened my eyes, and I saw myself. I saw the Serpent distort God’s Word, twist God’s character, and implant doubt and temptation in my mind: Is God really good? Am I really content? I saw myself standing in the midst of all the fruits I could eat in the garden, yet fixating on the one fruit God prohibited. The garden, with all its overflowing, self-replenishing abundance, was not enough. God was not enough. I wanted that fruit.

It’s the sin of pride. It’s pride that sets these ever-climbing expectations for myself, pride that measures my value by what I produce. But I’ll never be satisfied, because I know too well how far I fall short, how many people are better than me, and then I feel the shame and fear of being exposed. I might not be starving myself to death anymore, but the same toxic mixture of pride and shame that developed into an eating disorder still courses through my veins.

Genesis 3 isn’t a story from long ago. It’s current reality. It is the engine through which this world operates, the way I operate.

When my second child is born, I will focus on motherhood for an indefinite season, because this is the season in which God has called me to be faithful. I will repeat the cycles of breastfeeding, rocking, and burping, and it’ll feel dull and monotonous.

I will try to be faithful, but I will likely feel resentful. My back will ache and my brain will creak. I will fight every urge not to get impatient with my toddler and husband, and sometimes lose. I will get bored. I will not feel enough, and I’ll want to seek fulfillment in something—until I remind myself of the garden, and that Genesis 3 is not the end of the story.

There’s fresh grace in this upcoming season. Maybe I shouldn’t think it unfair that women tend to struggle more with the sacrifices of career and motherhood. Maybe it’s a blessing, because this transition from working mother to stay-at-home mother will poke and stretch me in places tender and sore, jolting me from operating out of my usual system, to reflect on and reform old patterns of thoughts into new ones.

There’s nothing dull or monotonous about that.

Sophia Lee is global staff writer at Christianity Today.

- More from Sophia Lee

Corruption Is a Discipleship Problem

Robert Osburn

Six ways Christians often make the problem worse and five steps toward a solution.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

Led by Malawi’s chief law enforcement officer, 19 armed agents surrounded Martha Chizuma’s home in the capital city of Lilongwe at 4 a.m. on December 6, 2022. Whisked away in her pajamas in the early morning darkness, Chizuma, the director general of Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau, was forced to kneel on the floor for questioning at a police station before being released. Her arrest was retribution for her efforts to expose high-level corruption in the government.

A London-trained lawyer and formerly Malawi’s government ombudsman, Chizuma was the first Malawian anti-corruption leader chosen through a purely merit-based process. “People fought against my appointment, and now they wanted to undermine me ,” she explained, especially because she was leading a grand corruption probe that was “a test case of the government’s commitment to integrity.”

Those who engineered her arrest presumably hoped to silence a godly public official determined to “spit fire at corrupt politicians,” as the Nyasa Times reported several days later. They have not succeeded.

The fight against corruption takes courage like Martha’s, in part because corruption offers massive rewards. Its global financial toll is notoriously difficult to estimate, but the total may exceed $1 trillion annually. Every year, 25 percent of the world’s adults pay at least one bribe. The demand for bribes from public officials causes many Christian-majority nations to have unfavorable rankings on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.

Too often, evangelicals are part of the corruption problem, which takes many forms: bribery, fraud, nepotism, human trafficking, sex-for-grades schemes, money laundering, ghost teachers in schools, and more. An African trained at a US evangelical seminary, after exchanging US dollars for local currency, shocked me when she said, “I only do business with Muslim money-traders. I would never trust a Christian!”

“The Church needs to clear its Augean stable,” said former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2017, comparing Nigerian churches to the manure-filled stables of a Greek myth. “They not only celebrate but venerate those whose sources of wealth are questionable. They accept gifts … from just anybody without asking questions. This gives the impression that anything is acceptable in the house of God.”

Why are Christians so insensitive to, and often even participants in, blatant corruption? There are at least six reasons.

First, some in the church are unwilling to hold Christian workers accountable. Others live in willful ignorance, as if it is not possible for fellow believers to be corrupt; thus, we fail to address warning signs or to undertake proper investigations.

Second, in some cases, a shift from traditional folk religion to Christian affiliation can actually exacerbate corruption. A recent unpublished report, based on interviews with 48 Christian leaders in Africa, explained that many followers of African traditional religion do not dare to lie because they believe their ancestors are watching from beyond the grave and could deliver certain, swift punishment. In contrast, some respondents said, African Christians seem more willing to lie—even when swearing on the Bible—because they think the Christian God is merciful and delays judgment.

Third, if pastors “preach anti-corruption, they will lose members who give large offerings,” says Orinya Agbaji Orinya of the Palace of Priests Assembly, a church in Abuja, Nigeria. In many cases, Orinya says, Protestant churches’ dependence on offerings pushes them to avoid offending corrupt but generous donors.

Fourth, pastors or Christian workers in many countries feel an expectation to benefit their families and ethnic communities, a phenomenon that journalist Michela Wrong calls “it’s our turn to eat.” Also known as demand sharing, this pattern creates intense pressures on leaders to raid organization finances for the benefit of friends and relatives.

A fifth reason Christians are AWOL in the fight against corruption, says Munkhjargal Tuvshin, pastor of Truth Community Church in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, is their dualistic mindset. “Most Christians,” Tuvshin states, “would say that corruption is a world matter, not a church matter. That dualistic mindset takes us away from standing with the truth.”

Orinya, who is developing a major anti-corruption campaign among Nigeria’s Pentecostals, proposes one more driver of corruption among Christians: the prosperity gospel. According to Orinya, the heretical movement’s message that “if you are poor, you must not be a child of God” sometimes motivates listeners to steal, believing that even ill-gotten gain is a divine blessing.

How can Christians make a substantial difference in bridling cultures of corruption around the world?

The first step is to disciple people to prioritize daily acts of integrity in the face of cultural norms that favor dishonesty. Citing Ephesians 4:25 (“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body”), pastor Taba Ebenezar in Bamenda, Cameroon, urges his congregation and community members to “make every day an integrity day.”

Well-trained disciples know that God is not a transactional spirit who pours out favors on those who pay the requisite bribe, whether to a shaman or a prosperity preacher. Ebenezar, whose nation ranks 140th of 180 nations on the Corruption Perceptions Index, says, “We cannot talk only about salvation when the country is going backward.”

Second, churches must become model societies. Secular leaders will be more able to envision corruption-free nations when churches exemplify a corruption-free life. Too many churches and mission organizations disguise unethical behavior through flawed management practices such as the use of nondisclosure agreements, thereby undermining the message of hope and honesty that the church should be living out.

Global Trust Partners (GTP), a worldwide spinoff of the US Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, is seeking to reshape the behavior of churches and Christian organizations through peer accountability groups that promote fiscal and ethical integrity along with generosity. As GTP’s CFO, Matthew Gadsden from Australia, commented, “Once transparency in governance comes in, then people can give with confidence that the gift is used for the purposes for which it is intended.”

Church leaders often fail to realize how much secular groups like Transparency International need them. Roberto Laver, a former World Bank lawyer who works on corruption issues in Latin America, says that secular groups “have all the tools on social accountability” but lack the social networks and universal ethic that the church offers.

Laver draws an interesting contrast between Catholics and evangelicals in Latin America, stating that the “Roman Catholic Church will speak out on every issue, including corruption … but their verbiage makes little difference [personally]. As for evangelicals, individually they are more honest, but they are more silent publicly.” Laver asks, “If the church is not exhibiting more public honesty, what hope is there in the gospel?”

The third part of the strategy concerns education on aspects of the Christian worldview that discourage involvement in corruption: God’s sovereignty, his ethical expectations for believers, and the transformative potential of faith in Christ. Pastor Ebenezar in Cameroon has an open invitation from public school authorities to teach integrity to children, a key to breaking the corruption culture. Ebenezar’s visible public advocacy campaign includes a weekly radio program, pro-integrity caps and shirts, and integrity awards at halftime during youth soccer games.

As British anti-corruption expert Martin Allaby says, “There is no substitute for deep cultural change.” Whether through films or music, in churches, schools, or homes, and whether with adults or children, teaching a Christian worldview provides a rational basis for efforts to restrain corruption.

In Jinja, Uganda, along with the usual radio fare, station director Anyole Innocent champions a Christian view of integrity on Busoga One, which has 1 million listeners daily. Creative efforts like Innocent’s and similar initiatives on social media are persuasive ways to reinforce a Christian worldview and mobilize believers to oppose corruption.

A Christian worldview also acknowledges the messiness of situations in which temptations to corruption are deeply intertwined with poverty. Public officials seeking bribes may themselves be the victims of corrupt senior officials who withhold their salaries—or their salaries alone may be insufficient to feed their families. God may call us to share gifts with impoverished families—especially those within the church—so that they do not feel driven to consider seeking bribes. Interestingly, whereas the Bible frequently condemns receiving bribes, it nowhere condemns the giving of bribes. But those who feel compelled to offer one should consider to what extent, in their own situation, doing so perpetuates an evil system.

A fourth key strategy, highlighted by University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter, is the development of networks of high-performing leaders who can work together across sectors of society. William Wilberforce’s Clapham community of the late 18th and early 19th centuries brought together bankers, parliamentarians, authors, activists, pastors, writers, and educators in determined efforts that, with support from the Wesleyan revival, profoundly changed formerly corrupt England for the better. High-performing networks can coordinate overall anti-corruption planning while also linking what happens in churches to national conversations and reform efforts.

Pathways for Integrity Network, which has recently launched in Uganda, shows the potential to become a high-performing anti-corruption network. Innocent, the radio station head, commented, “Looking ahead, we envision a network where organizations rely on us to train their employees, where job creators and seekers trust our recommendations, and where Western investors seek our assistance in Ugandan projects, including governmental initiatives, as reputable.”

The Faith and Public Integrity Network, cofounded by Allaby and Laver, brings together academics and Christian leaders for shared efforts. Some evangelicals, such as Martha Chizuma in Malawi, participate in high-performing networks, such as the Chandler Sessions, that are not specifically Christian.

The fifth part of the strategy involves a virtuous, sacrificial spokesperson as the face of the movement, much as Martin Luther King Jr. legitimized the US civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Activists need a cheerleader to bring their voices together for change. Ebenezar is one such voice in Cameroon, declaring ambitiously, “If we pastors engage with this issue, it will restore and liberate our nation!”

Perhaps we need a 21st-century James Yen to lead the fight against global corruption. Yen was a celebrated Christian agrarian reformer during China’s titanic struggle between the Nationalists (China’s ruling government from 1912 until 1949) and Communists. Both Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek recruited him for their respective governments; he declined both offers.

One day, after these polite but earnest refusals, a leading government official in a passing limousine watched Yen fall from his bicycle as he crossed trolley tracks. The next day, a new automobile mysteriously appeared where Yen was staying. He quietly mothballed the car in a friend’s garage, choosing embarrassment and muddy pants over betraying his Christian integrity by accepting gifts from a corrupt government.

Not all Christians should decline service in corrupt governments. But virtuous, sacrificial leaders like Yen can powerfully spotlight and expose corruption. When the “fruitless deeds of darkness” (Eph. 5:11) are exposed, they wither under the bright light of truth.

In Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, the Association for a More Just Society (ASJ) has focused relentlessly on corruption in public schools, achieving enormous dividends for the country’s 2 million school-age children. ASJ’s efforts reduced the percentage of ghost teachers (who don’t show up for class but continue to receive paychecks) from 26 percent to 1 percent in two years.

When schools reopened after a 28-month closure due to COVID-19, ASJ again mobilized its 20,000 volunteers to monitor schools and spot instances of ghost teaching. Thanks to the volunteers, says ASJ cofounder Kurt Ver Beek, Honduran students received their scheduled 200 days of education in the 2023–2024 school year. ASJ has persisted in spite of occasional harassment by some government officials.

In Malawi, Martha Chizuma is persisting too, with encouragement from some friends. Three days after her unexpected pre-dawn arrest, she was waiting for her driver when she saw ten very poor women approaching. “They hugged me, crying, because they knew what had happened to me,” Chizuma recalled. “One of them said, ‘I was so worried when they arrested you because we knew you were the only one fighting for us!’”

Although Malawi has an evangelical president, Lazarus Chakwera, the deeply rooted corruption plaguing the country has not yet been eliminated. In May, when corruption charges against a leading public official were suddenly dropped, the disappointment reminded Chizuma that hers is often a lonely path. We need more evangelicals like those ten women who encouraged Chizuma to continue in her difficult but crucial undertaking.

Robert Osburn is a senior fellow with Wilberforce International Institute and is author of Taming the Beast: Can We Bridle the Culture of Corruption?

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Theology

What If the Christian Sexual Ethic Becomes a Feature, Not a Bug?

Daniel Darling

Evangelicals tend to assume our sexual ethic is deeply unpopular. But the wind may be shifting as thought leaders increasingly declare Christianity a cultural asset.

Jakob Owens / Unsplash

Christianity’s 2,000-year-old sexual ethic is not normal in the contemporary West and hasn’t been for some time.

The notion that sex should be confined to the bounds of a lifelong covenant of marriage between one man and one woman is not simply out of step with a culture reshaped by the sexual revolution and the LGBTQ movement. Many now consider our ethic to be something far worse than outmoded. It’s hateful, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center; “dangerous,” per the Human Rights Campaign; and a source of “great harm,” says prominent ethicist David Gushee.

Evangelical responses to these new norms have varied. Some have doubled down on traditional beliefs as a matter of basic orthodoxy. Some have remained quietly traditional while avoiding public confrontation. And some have joined exvangelicals and mainline Christians to propose a theological revisionism that affirms LGBTQ relationships and sex outside of marriage.

Despite their differences, all three postures understandably have a foundational assumption in common: that our traditional sexual ethic is deeply unpopular. That, at best, it’s a matter of difficult but necessary faithfulness, an obstacle to overcome in evangelism and discipleship—or, worse, a major cause of dechurching, deconversion, and rejection of the gospel.

But is it possible that Scripture’s view of marriage and sexuality is seen by a small but growing crowd outside the church as a feature, not a bug?

It might be too much to say the West is like G. K. Chesterton’s sailor who, having set off for adventure, found himself enchanted by the light of his own home shore. But I don’t think it’s too soon to say that the last decade of upheaval and alienation in our culture of sex and romance have made Christianity’s always-strange sexual ethic freshly attractive.

We’ve already seen this pattern with other elements of Christianity. Most famously, women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali shocked the world late last year when she announced her conversion from atheism to Christianity (after previously deconverting from Islam). She embraced Christianity, she said, because she found the “desire to uphold the legacy of the Judeo-Christian tradition” to be the “only credible” option to unite the West in opposition to “great-power authoritarianism,” “the rise of global Islamism,” and “the viral spread of woke ideology.”

Christianity, Hirsi Ali discovered, is the source of the rights and values she wants to defend, and where many progressives see our faith as repressive, she sees it as a great cultural asset. In this, she is not alone. The New Atheist thinker Richard Dawkins expressed his enthusiasm for “cultural Christianity” this past spring. And author Paul Kingsnorth, who moved from atheism to Buddhism to Christianity, similarly described his philosophical journey as one of coming to value some of the very elements of Christianity that modern Westerners are most likely to reject.

“I grew up believing what all modern people are taught: that freedom meant lack of constraint,” Kingsnorth wrote. But Christianity “taught me that this freedom was no freedom at all, but enslavement to the passions: a neat description of the first thirty years of my life. True freedom, it turns out, is to give up your will and follow God’s.”

British journalist Louise Perry has not likewise announced her conversion, but she seems to be impressed, not repulsed, by Christianity’s sexual ethic. Her provocative 2022 book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, questions the merits of a sexual order based only on consent and begs for a better ethic, “one that recognises other human beings as real people, invested with real value and dignity. It’s time for a sexual counter-revolution.”

Though she hasn’t embraced Christianity, Perry looks longingly at the very ethical teachings that many evangelicals see as burdens or liabilities. Here she is, writing in First Things last year:

Whereas the Romans regarded male chastity as profoundly unhealthy, Christians prized it and insisted on it. Early converts were disproportionately female because the Christian valorization of weakness offered obvious benefits to the weaker sex, who could—for the first time—demand sexual continence of men. Feminism is not opposed to Christianity: It is its descendant. …

What if … we understand the Christian era as a clearing in a forest? The forest is paganism: dark, wild, vigorous, and menacing, but also magical in its way. For two thousand years, Christians pushed the forest back, with burning and hacking, but also with pruning and cultivating, creating a garden in the clearing with a view upward to heaven.

In recent decades, Perry warns, the pagan forest is creeping back, crowding out that view.

This is only a collection of anecdotes, of course. Though recent polls show a slight decline in support for same-sex marriage and a similarly small reversal on sex and gender identity, the traditional Christian ethic is clearly still a minority position. Yet this trend among thought leaders of fresh interest in Christianity as a positive cultural force is noteworthy—and perhaps may trickle down to the general public.

What’s more, there may be a lesson here for evangelicals: Rather than being defensive about the countercultural aspects of following Jesus, maybe we can see anew that the very strangeness of Christian ethics can be inviting to those stuck in the thicket of cultural confusion.

This is the approach that theologian N. T. Wright took when asked in 2019 if he is embarrassed by the Christian take on sex and gender. “In the early Church, one of the great attractions of Christianity was actually a sexual ethic. It is a world where more or less anything goes, where women and children are exploited, and where slaves are exploited often in hideous and horrible ways,” he told The Atlantic. “So a lot of people, particularly the women, found the Christian ideal of chastity amazingly refreshing.”

Wright was not naive. When his interviewer pushed back, arguing that a “restricted sexual ethic” that appealed “in the horrible world of ancient Christianity, where it was a terrible thing to be a woman,” might not have the same persuasive power today, Wright acknowledged the “constant difficulties”—but didn’t cede the point that the way Christians live can be attractive in our culture too.

Could our sexual ethic be part of what Jesus had in mind when he urged his followers to “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16)? We aren’t accustomed to thinking of it that way. Yet we must remember that the Spirit “blows wherever it pleases” (John 3:8)—even toward the aspects of Christianity that we’ve been conditioned to deemphasize in our desire to get a hearing in a hostile culture.

That’s not to conflate the cultural fruit of Christianity and the coherence of its worldview with the miracle of conversion itself. We must be wary of what theologian Carl Trueman rightly describes as “instrumentalizing” Christianity “in the service of a different cultural campaign,” as well as the tragedy of King Agrippa, who answered Paul’s articulation of the gospel by declaring himself “almost” persuaded (Acts 26:28, KJV). And as the writer Andrew Menkis said in his appeal to the almost-persuaded author Jordan Peterson, mere rules “cannot sate the hunger of our soul.”

Still, blessed are those “whose delight is in the law of the Lord” (Ps. 1:1–2), and we should not be so surprised if people outside the church begin to see the blessing of Christian sexual ethics in a world bereft of meaning. Perhaps, like former skeptic C. S. Lewis, they are realizing that the “hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.”

Daniel Darling is the director of The Land Center for Cultural Engagement and the author of several books including Agents of Grace, The Dignity Revolution, and the forthcoming In Defense of Christian Patriotism.

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News

Robert Morris Resigns from Gateway Following Past Abuse Allegations

Kate Shellnutt

While the Texas megachurch said it “did not have all the facts” about Morris’s earlier misconduct, the woman who spoke out said she had informed its leaders years ago.

Robert Morris

Gateway Church

Gateway Church founder and senior pastor Robert Morris has resigned, and his Texas megachurch is launching an investigation into allegations of abuse from 35 years ago.

Morris—a former advisor to President Trump and leader of one of the largest nondenominational churches in the country—is leaving after an Oklahoma woman, Cindy Clemishire, shared a story of being molested by the pastor when she was a minor in the 1980s. He has led the congregation since 2000.

In a statement Tuesday announcing Morris’s resignation, Gateway’s board of elders said they were “heartbroken and appalled” to learn that what they believed was an extramarital relationship was allegedly abuse of a child, The Christian Post reported.

“Regretfully, prior to Friday, June 14, the elders did not have all the facts of the inappropriate relationship between Morris and the victim, including her age at the time and the length of the abuse,” they said. “The elders’ prior understanding was that Morris’s extramarital relationship, which he had discussed many times throughout his ministry, was with ‘a young lady’ and not abuse of a 12-year-old child.”

The elders had initially responded on Friday saying Morris had already disclosed what happened and “undergone restoration.” The pastor’s earlier statement to The Christian Post referred to the incident as “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady.”

In a statement released Tuesday, Clemishire said she had been working for years to have Morris held accountable, including notifying the church of her story in 2005. She said at the time at least one pastor and one elder had been informed that the abuse started when she was 12.

Clemishire said the news of Morris’s resignation brought “mixed thoughts and feelings”—she believes he should have been terminated.

“Though we are called to forgive those who hurt us … we should expect and demand consequences,” she wrote.

The church has hired a law firm to conduct a review of Clemishire’s account from the 1980s. A spokesperson for Haynes & Boone, LLP, confirmed to CT that the firm “has been engaged to conduct an independent investigation.”

“Even though it occurred many years before Gateway was established, as leaders of the church, we regret that we did not have the information that we now have,” the elders said. “We are heartbroken and appalled by what has come to light over the past few days, and we express our deep sympathy to the victim and her family.”

“For the sake of the victim, we are thankful this situation has been exposed. We know many have been affected by this, we understand that you are hurting, and we are very sorry. It is our prayer that, in time, healing for all those affected can occur.”

Clemishire wrote that she and her attorney, Boz Tchividjian, want to see the scope of the review expanded in case there are more incidents. She told any potential fellow victims that they “will not walk this journey alone” and she hopes Gateway leadership will take this as “an opportunity to find the truth while providing help and restitution.”

“To the congregation of Gateway Church and the countless who have followed Robert Morris online, my heart is equally broken for you,” her statement read. “Please remember our faith is in Jesus, not an institution or a man in the pulpit. Keep your faith!”

The church did not bring up the allegations during last weekend’s services, where Morris was not scheduled to preach, and it has not posted about his resignation publicly on its website or on social media.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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Ideas

Sunday Best in India: Christian Women Weigh What to Wear to Church

Compiled by Surinder Kaur

From embracing Western styles to preserving cultural heritage, how female leaders in six states navigate competing perspectives on appropriate attire.

Daniel Berehulak / Staff / Getty / Edits by CT

While Christianity in India is as old as the early church itself, it was the modern missionary movement initiated by William Carey that caused the faith to take root. But colonial rule also caused Christianity in India to become associated with foreigners, despite the tradition that it originated with the apostle Thomas as early as 52 A.D. and historical evidence that the East India Company actively opposed missionary activities.

The growth of the Indian church, however, imparted new Indian converts not only a religion but also a culture. Mahatma Gandhi was critical, saying these converts had “imbibed the superficialities of European civilization, and have missed the teaching of Jesus.” He was not alone. Christian evangelists such as British missionary E. Stanley Jones and the wandering ascetic Sadhu Sundar Singh also took issue with the conflating of Christianity and Western culture. This impulse emphasized the need to “give the water of life in an Indian cup.”

Although India gained independence from British rule in 1947, many urban and semi-urban Indian churches continued to embrace the Western heritage they inherited. This included using pews instead of sitting on the ground; embracing a liturgy of hymnals, creeds, and doxologies; constructing cathedral-style church buildings; and the practice of wearing “white” bridal gowns or saris. Yet Western attire has not displaced the colorful traditional clothing for weekly worship, and church communities remain diverse in their dress.

CT spoke with seven female Christian leaders from six regions of India, all either married or above age 30, about their understanding of “Sunday best” clothing in India. The answers are arranged from favoring Western outfits to preferring traditional attire:

Avani Wilson Tandel, volunteer for the Women’s Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, who attends a Methodist church in East Gujarat:

I prefer Western attire exclusively. Western clothing makes me feel comfortable, confident, and carefree, allowing me to express my style effortlessly. It grants me the freedom to move, sit, and stand comfortably, while also keeping me in line with current fashion trends.

Additionally, I find Western attire to be practical and presentable in various settings, especially the global community. It boosts my confidence, empowers me, and gives me a professional look.

It makes me feel “positively,” which I describe as an acronym:

P — Professional personality
O — Outstanding thinking
S — Strong and skilled
I — Influencer
T — Talented
I — Insightful
V — Versatile
E — Embracing equality
L — Looking lively
Y — Youthful

My choice also positively influences others, such as these:

Young unmarried girls who want to wear Western dresses but feel the pressure of their family, society, and tradition. As a married woman, I can inspire them not to yield to societal pressures but exercise their freedom to choose.
Married women, who are pressured not only by tradition but also from age-old patriarchy. I can inspire them to make this choice without fear of judgment from the community and their own families.
The global community, as it portrays adaptability and openness toward multiculturalism.

Lalrinmawii Fanai, an elderly member in a Presbyterian church in Mizoram:

Our English-speaking congregation has people from different cultures and languages, and therefore we are not constrained by a specific preference in dress. I wear a variety of clothing, whether Mizo Puan (traditional attire of various Mizo communities), Western dresses, or pants. But one time after attending the morning service, I was in a hurry to get to the afternoon service at a nearby church and showed up in the skirt I was wearing. I later heard that there were questions about my attire! So I understand that many people here are conservative and expect traditional clothing.

Some years ago, the women’s wing—a department at the highest synodical level of the Presbyterian church—requested all women to wear their traditional Puan to a church service. I only heard this anecdotally, but I think that is why Mizo women adhere to it. Most if not all women wear their traditional Puan for church, including weddings or other events. I believe it has more to do with the promotion of culture and heritage and nothing to do with matters of faith.

That the synod said so is usually taken as a polite way of saying “Look, everybody, just follow this.”

Deepthi Tarapatla, a theologian and church management committee member of an independent church in Andhra Pradesh:

I am comfortable wearing both types of clothing, but I prefer to wear an Indian traditional outfit in church so that I don’t look different from the crowd and can fit in. If I was in the United States, I might wear Western outfits; but not always, because I find Indian outfits to be more comfortable.

Although there are no guidelines or restrictions from the church authority in South Indian churches about what to wear or not wear, in general married women are expected to wear traditional garments. Even a traditional sleeveless Indian outfit is not acceptable and considered indecent in church. For me, the criteria should be that the choice of clothes should not be a means of attracting other people’s attention and becoming a distraction from church itself.

Abhineeta Matney, professor of epistemology and intercultural studies in Madhya Pradesh:

For me, the question of clothing depends on where I am worshiping. If somewhere in India, where the majority of the women wear Indian attire, I would probably wear salwar kameez (an Indian dress with a head covering). When I am in the US, there is no set standard. In the Midwest or South, many women still wear dresses; in places like Colorado and California, people dress more casually. Either way, my intention is to dress modestly in a manner that demonstrates humility and reverence.

Whether reference is made to covering one’s head in 1 Corinthians 11 or to the instructions for worship in 1 Timothy 2, the bottom line is to not draw attention to yourself and distract from the heart of worship. Whatever I wear, it needs to be based on respect for propriety, taking into account any cultural nuances. Having said that, I am no one to judge what another person is wearing. If I am truly in church to worship, Christ welcomes everyone “just as you are,” so I wouldn’t want to be a stumbling block by trying to impose my standards of modesty. We need to look past dress codes, because we are not bound by tradition when we worship Jesus Christ.

Seema Linus, a leader in a Wesleyan church in South Gujarat:

It’s very important to dress according to the place and occasion, but according to the Bible, we must be modest. God has created us beautiful, and we must reverently maintain our inner beauty more than outwardly beautifying ourselves. We should carefully and sensibly choose our clothing for church. It is not about a sari, salwar kameez, or Western outfit. Church is about worshiping God, talking and listening to him.

First Timothy 2:9 instructs women to “adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing” (NKJV). Our choice of Indian traditional attire, such as saris or salwar kameez, is primarily rooted in our cultural heritage and is an individual preference. People can choose whatever they like to wear, based on comfort or culture.

Snehprabha Massey, president of the Women’s Society of Christian Service for a Methodist church in Uttar Pradesh:

It is a biblical command for women to cover their heads and dress modestly. An Indian sari and salwar suit is perfect for this purpose, while also giving us a modest and elegant look. These options drape a woman’s body completely, leaving no room for men to be lured or distracted in church.

The sari is an internationally acclaimed garment that even global fashion pageants feature as a representation of timeless beauty and style. Western clothes are more appropriate for unmarried girls, making them look attractive and smart. But once married, husbands and in-laws prefer that their wives and daughters-in-law dress modestly in traditional garments, especially in church.

The bride traditionally receives 5, 11, 12, or 51 sets of clothing—numbers considered auspicious in Indian weddings—in her bridal trousseau, which are mostly saris and salwar kameez, leaving her with fewer options for Western wear. (An Indian bride usually does not take her old outfits into the household she marries into.) In any case, there is no doubt that an Indian traditional outfit looks good on every type of body—whether slim or bulky.

Anujit Emerson, trustee for Voice of Truth Ministries and pastor of an independent church in Punjab:

Though I love Western outfits, I strictly wear Indian traditional wear in church. Christians, being a minority community, are being watched very closely by people of other faiths who are looking for reasons to malign us. I do not want what I wear to give them an excuse. As a pastor, if I dress up in Western jeans and a casual blouse, what example am I setting before my Hindu and Punjabi neighbors? Many Indians consider such clothes as modern and unacceptable. And what example am I before my congregation? I certainly do not want to be a stumbling block for them. As Paul spoke about eating in Romans 14:20, I apply the same to dress: “Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food”—or an outfit.

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Theology

‘Rattlesnakes Don’t Commit Suicide’

Justin Giboney

This Juneteenth, the life of unsung civil rights hero Fred Shuttlesworth should be a clarion call to the biblical activism we still need to advance racial justice in America.

Reverend Shuttlesworth stands outside the wreckage of his house in December 1956, following an assassination attempt involving sixteen sticks of dynamite.

Don Cravens / Getty

In February, I preached one of the Black History Month sermons at Zion Baptist Church, a traditional Black church in Cincinnati. After the service, Judge Cheryl Grant, a longtime congregant, thanked me for delving into the legacy of civil rights advocate Fred Shuttlesworth.

Grant had been very close with the Shuttlesworth family after they moved from Birmingham to Cincinnati in 1961, and she was working on a documentary about him with filmmaker Mark Vikram Purushotham and biographer Andrew M. Manis. Her personal testimony about Shuttlesworth and his story of redemptive action has been more than inspiring for me, and now I’d like to share his story with a wider audience.

Shuttlesworth is an unsung hero of the civil rights movement. A cofounder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he faced and ultimately outwitted Birmingham’s infamous commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, to advance racial justice in one of America’s most obstinately segregated environments.

What’s been most interesting to me about Shuttlesworth is how he personified the mixture of Christian orthodoxy and freedom fighting that characterized the primary stream of the Black church’s social action tradition. As a pastor and leader, he called himself a biblicist and an actionist, meaning he had a devout faith in the authority of Scripture while believing right doctrine compelled the Christian into social action.

Shuttlesworth knew preaching against white supremacy wasn’t enough. The church also had to get out of their seats if they wanted social change (James 2:14–26).

His biography, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, by Manis, recalls Shuttlesworth’s excitement when the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision outlawed segregation in public schools. Initially, Shuttlesworth believed this was a sign that the soul of America was “essentially good” and could be shamed into delivering equality.

However, several years of letdowns thereafter convinced him that “you can’t shame segregation. … Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide; ball teams don’t strike themselves out. You gotta put ’em out,” he said. Like a conniving serpent, the elected officials, corporate executives, and social networks driving a racially unjust system wouldn’t voluntarily cede their undue power and privilege. The church would have to crush the serpent’s head through prayer and action.

Shuttlesworth’s story is a reminder that the path to freedom for African Americans has been marked by delays, setbacks, halfhearted commitments, and broken promises. And few things capture the detoured route America has taken toward racial justice like Juneteenth, which celebrates news of emancipation reaching Black people in Texas two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation. Black Texans endured slavery for an extra quarter of a decade, then had to survive under the terrorism of Jim Crow for another century.

Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” On the scale of God’s plan for the whole world’s redemption, that’s true. But for us, here and now, it’s not true in any natural or inevitable sense. Those words are more artful than historical. Time is neutral, and the arc of history has had to be wrenched, hammered, and forcefully contorted to render—at best—a crooked zigzag that points somewhere in the vicinity of justice.

Advancing toward a freer society has never been a smooth, constant, upward progression for Black Americans. How are Christians to deal with this reality without falling into the bondage of despair and vengeance the Bible warns about (1 Thess. 4:13; Rom. 12:19)? Here again, Shuttlesworth’s public witness provides us with a fruitful example.

In 1957, Shuttlesworth attempted to enroll his two daughters, Pat and Ruby, in Phillips High School in Birmingham. When they pulled up to the school, a white mob surrounded them. Shuttlesworth was attacked with bats and chains, and the kicks and thrusts to the ground scraped most of the skin off his face. His wife was stabbed.

When Birmingham’s Black community heard about the beating, they were understandably furious—and eager to avenge their leader. Days later, an indignant, standing-room–only crowd awaited Shuttlesworth’s orders at a local church.

With a head bandage and an arm sling, Shuttlesworth urged the audience to respond by redoubling their advocacy efforts, not by behaving destructively. After all, he said, he was the one who’d been attacked, and if he wasn’t going to react in anger, they shouldn’t either. He responded with a grace that redeemed and reordered the tenacious fire burning within his people—a “heavenly fire.” That grace kept his work righteous, and the people’s tenacity disallowed cowardice and complacency in the face of evil.

Shuttlesworth could’ve moved that emotional crowd to tear the city down. It would’ve been an understandable response, but also shortsighted and counterproductive. Phillips High School would eventually be integrated, not through rage and outbursts but by planning and persistent pressure.

In the last few years, particularly since the murder of George Floyd, it seems the American evangelical church has gone backward when it comes to race relations.

Justice proponents have been expelled from pulpits and jobs. Calculating political activists have made boogiemen out of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI) and critical race theory (CRT), fostering fears that too many white evangelicals have used as false justification to reject calls to humility or course correction on race issues from Black siblings in Christ. And just as Shuttlesworth discovered more than half a century ago, basic messages of racial reconciliation have proven insufficient to shame parts of the church into sincere repentance and reparation of a long and sinful history of division and injustice. Many of my peers have grown tired of spinning their wheels.

The proper response to this new detour is for Christians of all races to become more thoroughgoing biblicists and actionists. We must increase our reliance on the Bible and prayer. Undermining or deconstructing the Word of God in response to toxic evangelicalism is the ultimate cut-your-nose-to-spite-your-face move. The American church’s sins regarding race are a product of its failure to follow the Bible’s mandates, not the consequence of following them too closely. And as actionists, we must apply pressure inside and outside the church to force an acknowledgement of and remedy for historical injustice.

Juneteenth is worth celebrating not because it signifies the end of suffering and injustice for Black America. While the victory it recalls was late and incomplete, it was a significant accomplishment that revealed God’s will and love for his children. Finding gratitude and joy while awaiting the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promises is the definition of faith. Happy Juneteenth!

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.

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Theology

Sacred Tattoos Promise Spiritual Power. Can New Thai Christians Keep Them?

James Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand

Pastors counsel believers with sak yant tattoos to let go of animistic beliefs and trust in God’s provision.

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

Chalolemporn Sawatsuk was a teenager in Kamphaeng Phet Province, in upper central Thailand, when he got his first tattoo.

The tattoo artist, a Buddhist monk, inked a pair of lizards onto the inside of his forearm, the same tattoo Chalolemporn’s father had. As he worked, the monk chanted blessings intended to imbue the tattoo with spiritual power that would increase Chalolemporn’s charisma and attractiveness. He also recited rules based on Buddhist moral teachings that the teen would have to follow to keep the power alive.

The tattoo seemed to take effect almost immediately, Chalolemporn said: Later that day, he convinced a woman to sleep with him.

Chalolemporn later received two more spiritual tattoos. Over the years, however, the enchanted images proved ineffective in keeping his life on course. In fact, his involvement in the world of illegal drugs resulted in a sentence of life imprisonment, before his talent in martial arts won him an early release and an encounter with a Christian friend led to his life transformation.

Sak yant tattoos, which date back centuries in Southeast Asia, were initially a way to enlist the help of local animistic spirits, but they later became tied to the Hindu-Buddhist yantras, or mystical geometric patterns, used during meditation. Sak yant adherents believe the tattoos secure specific benefits, including physical or spiritual protection, popularity, or success.

The intricate designs and patterns of sak yant have become popular with Thais and foreigners looking for a cool tattoo, but Christians are concerned about their spiritual implications. Thai pastors encourage new converts with sak yant tattoos, like Chalolemporn, to recognize that God has greater power than any spirit.

“[Sak yant] is visible on their body, whereas Christians don’t worship an image representing God,” explained Thanit Lokeskrawee, director of Chiang Mai Theological Seminary. “We need to have faith … in the invisible God, which really goes against the grain of Thai people.”

Skin-deep animism

Sak is the Thai word for tattoo, while yant means yantra. Historians believe the practice is at least a thousand years old, often used to protect men in battle. Although the tattoos predate Buddhism, sak yant and other animistic beliefs were incorporated into popular expressions of the religion once it took hold in Indochina.

Sak yant tattoos include various drawings, symbols, or words often written in ancient Khmer script. Adherents believe that only tattoos done by an expert who can properly perform the required chants and rituals carry spiritual efficacy. Today, sak yant artists are usually Buddhist monks or other types of holy men.

The rules that monks tell clients to follow in order to ensure the tattoo’s continued effectiveness include some seemingly arbitrary stipulations along with moral guidance. Chalolemporn, for instance, was told not to walk under an unfinished bridge. Breaking the rules supposedly saps the talisman of its power.

After receiving a tattoo, a sak yant adherent periodically participates in ceremonies intended to re-enchant the ink on their body. Every March, about 10,000 people travel to Wat Bang Phra, a temple 30 miles from Bangkok, for a festival to honor a famous deceased monk and to receive a fresh charge of magic for their tattoos. Videos of the ceremony show devotees seeming to enter a trance-like state as they jump, scream, and charge toward the stage. Many believe they are possessed by the spirits associated with their tattoos.

Decoding Thai spiritualism

Sak yant has grown in international popularity as celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, Brooke Shields, and Ed Sheeran have obtained the tattoos. As a result of the increasing demand, more tattoo artists in Thailand are doing sak yant—sans monks or rituals.

In 2011, the Thai cultural ministry called for a ban on foreigners receiving religious tattoos out of concern that they were being placed on inappropriate parts of the body. In Thai culture, the head is considered holy, with lower areas of the body seen as progressively less so. Accordingly, a Thai may be offended by a sak yant tattoo on a tourist’s leg, since this is a less honorable location than the neck or upper back.

Many Westerners are drawn to the aesthetics of sak yant. However, they often struggle to understand the beliefs of Thais who use tattoos, amulets, and rituals to secure the assistance of spiritual forces.

Chris Flanders, a former missionary in Thailand and now professor of missions and intercultural service at Abilene Christian University, often compares the animistic spirit world to a technology his students are more familiar with: Wi-Fi.

Just as a cell phone is needed to connect to the invisible world of Wi-Fi signals, people whose worldview includes myriads of unseen spiritual beings that must be engaged or appeased must have the right device. For many Thais, Flanders said, the spiritual world is mysterious and scary yet also potentially useful—but only if people know how to tap into its power.

“Sak yant is a type of spiritual technology,” Flanders said. “It offers an opportunity to access the spiritual power that is all around us, but we’re just not aware because it’s invisible like Wi-Fi.”

Sak yant and the church

For Thai Christians, seeking spiritual protection or help through sak yant or other practices is clearly outside the bounds of their faith. Thai pastors say it’s not necessary for new believers to remove sak yant tattoos they got before conversion, especially since tattoo removal can be a difficult, expensive, and painful process. But even if the ink remains, pastors want to help eliminate the tattoos’ spiritual mark.

“I don’t have any problem with [Christian converts still having sak yant tattoos,] as long as they understand that the power is not in sak yant,” said Natee Tanchanpongs, lead pastor at Grace City Bangkok and a former academic dean at Bangkok Bible Seminary. “The power to protect them comes from the God of the universe who created them and is able to do more than we ask or imagine.”

Thanit, the seminary director, grew up in a Buddhist family and remembers noticing male relatives’ Sak Yant tattoos during childhood. He became a Christian after meeting a Thai evangelist while studying at a university. He has seen how Thai Christians struggle to fully let go of old ways of coping with fear or feelings of helplessness.

“When life is smooth and happy, [old beliefs] will hide,” Thanit said. “But once you get struck by a crisis, this kind of belief will float up and haunt you.”

In a pastoral role, Thanit says it is important to “discredit the influence” of sak yant tattoos and help Christians view them as simply ink patterns. But even for mature Christians who came to faith years ago, this can be a continuing challenge. Thanit isn’t always sure of the best way to help.

“I need God’s wisdom,” he said. “People in the past survived harm, fights, and wars with this kind of belief, so it’s not easy [to give it up].”

A different person

For Chalolemporn, the power and love of God provided something his three sak yant tattoos never could. As a teen, he showed promise in boxing, but he started hanging out with the wrong crowd and fell into drug addiction. When he ran out of money, he began selling drugs.

One day, Chalolemporn met another drug dealer in a rice field to settle a dispute, only to find the man armed with a sawed-off shotgun. Fearing for his life, Chalolemporn attacked, gained control of the weapon, and fired. Although he had intended only to scare the adversary away, the shot killed him.

Initially, a court sentenced Chalolemporn to death for his crime. However, the king of Thailand commuted his punishment to life imprisonment. At 19, he appeared destined to spend the rest of his days in Thailand’s harsh prison system.

While incarcerated, Chalolemporn restarted his martial arts career, competing in boxing and muay thai tournaments inside the prisons. He racked up victories and eventually became a national prison system champion. This success led to his sentence being reduced, a reward granted in Thailand to well-behaved prisoners who win martial arts competitions. At age 33, he was released.

The newly freed fighter wanted to continue his boxing career, but promoters were hesitant to work with a former death row inmate. During this time, Chalolemporn talked with a Thai Christian who suggested that he pray to God about his situation. Though the Christian faith was strange and unfamiliar to him, he and his wife, Sarunya, decided to ask God to give him a chance to compete.

Within a week, Chalolemporn was invited to enter a boxing match in China. However, when he arrived, he was told that he would not be able to fight. Discouraged and doubtful, he prayed that the fight would take place.

“If you are real, let me compete,” he remembers praying. “And then when I get back to Thailand, I’ll go to church.”

After a tense wait, he was informed that the match was back on. Since that first fight, he has continued competing in and winning international boxing and muay thai championships.

Chalolemporn Sawatsuk’s tattoos.

After returning home, Chalolemporn followed through on his promise. Another former prisoner who had become a Christian helped him find a church. From his first day at Tawipon Church in Ayutthaya, a city 50 miles north of Bangkok, he felt something he had been missing his whole life: unconditional love. The people were not judgmental of his past sins, nor were they worried about his tattoos.

“The Christians I met at church took no notice whatsoever of my sak yant tattoos,” Chalolemporn recalled. “All the people came up to me and said, It’s okay, welcome! Everyone loves you. God loves you. You have been redeemed.”

Chalolemporn says that God changed him dramatically as he learned about his new faith. Old vices gave way to an intense desire to honor his Creator.

His tattoos are still very visible, and they have even given him his nickname in the boxing ring: Kontualai, or “tattooed one.” But his belief in their power is gone. Instead, he prays to God for help and protection.

“Becoming a Christian was a really big change for me,” Chalolemporn said. “It was like becoming a different person.”

- More from James Thompson in Bangkok, Thailand

News

Died: Disgraced Southern Baptist Leader Paul Pressler

Daniel Silliman

The Texas judge behind the political strategy for the “conservative resurgence” molested and assaulted teenage boys, according to allegations eight men made in court.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: Houston Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images

The things that Paul Pressler did in private changed the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) radically and irreversibly.

In private, in a French café in New Orleans in 1967, Pressler planned the takeover of the largest Protestant group in America with Baptist college president Paige Patterson. He came up with the political strategy for the “conservative resurgence.”

In private, in an airport hotel in Atlanta in 1978, Pressler and Patterson gathered a group of ministers and established an informal network. They instructed those men to organize messengers to go to the SBC’s annual meeting and elect a president committed to using the position’s appointive powers to wrest control of the convention away from leaders they considered too liberal, too bureaucratic, and insufficiently committed to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

When a reporter with the Baptist Standard asked the Texas appeals court judge at the time if he was meeting with groups of clergy as part of a hardball campaign to elect the next SBC president, Pressler adamantly denied it. Then he questioned what would even count as a “meeting,” given the many possible ways you could define that word.

Then he allowed he was, in fact, doing some things in private.

In private, in a sauna at a Houston country club in the late 1970s, Pressler touched a young man’s penis, according to sworn testimony given in a lawsuit that was settled last year.

And in private, around the same time, Pressler started to molest and rape a 14-year-old, telling the teenager he taught in his Southern Baptist youth group that he was “special” and their “relationship” was special but needed to be kept secret because “no one but God would understand,” according to the allegations in the lawsuit filed in 2017.

Eight men ultimately came forward to accuse Pressler of sexual misconduct. All of them did it publicly using their names: Gareld Duane Robbins, Toby Twining, Chris Davis, Peter Wilcox, David Stripling, Sam Tejas, Mason Tabor, and Brooks Schott. The allegations stretch over decades and range from unwanted invitations to join Pressler naked in a hot tub to sexual assault.

Pressler denied all the allegations and fought the lawsuit in every way he could.

The court proceedings prompted the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News to launch an investigation of sexual abuse in the SBC. Reporters found credible allegations against 380 church leaders in 20 states and an apparently denomination-wide pattern of dismissing, diminishing, and hiding abuse.

The publication of the investigation—including the allegations against one of the architects of the conservative resurgence—hit the SBC like “the judgment of God,” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler, a captain in the conservative resurgence, wrote in 2018.

CT editor in chief Russell Moore, a former Southern Baptist leader who had long celebrated the triumph of the conservative resurgence, said crisis was too mild a word for the scandal. “It is an apocalypse,” he wrote.

The revelations about Pressler shattered an SBC legend that Moore and others had once eagerly believed:

Those outside the SBC world cannot imagine the power of the mythology of the Café Du Monde—the spot in the French Quarter of New Orleans where, over beignets and coffee, two men, Paige Patterson and Paul Pressler, mapped out on a napkin how the convention could restore a commitment to the truth of the Bible and to faithfulness to its confessional documents.

For Southern Baptists of a certain age, this story is the equivalent of the Wittenberg door for Lutherans or Aldersgate Street for Methodists. The convention was saved from liberalism by the courage of these two men who wouldn’t back down, we believed. In fact, I taught this story to my students.

Those two mythical leaders are now disgraced.

Pressler died on June 7 at the age of 94. His death was not publicly acknowledged at the SBC annual meeting held in Indianapolis a few days later. Multiple convention leaders later said they did not know he had died.

His death was first reported by Baptist News Global, an independent news outlet, after a Houston funeral home posted an online notice about his passing.

Pressler is survived by his wife, Nancy, daughters Jean Pressler Visy and Anne Pressler Csorba, and son Herman Paul Pressler IV. A memorial service was held in private.

He was born Herman Paul Pressler III on June 4, 1930. Pressler could trace his Baptist heritage back generations on both his father’s and mother’s sides. His father, Herman Paul Pressler Jr., was a lawyer who worked for the oil company Exxon. His mother, Elsie Townes Pressler, was a prominent leader in Houston’s social and civic affairs, serving on the city’s first municipal arts committee as well as the Junior League, the Women’s Auxiliary to the Houston Bar Association, the National Society of Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Harris County Heritage Society. She was also a founding member of the family’s Baptist church and traced her ancestry to John Leigh Townes, a respected preacher known as “the Major” in northern Alabama in the early 1800s.

Pressler wrote in his autobiography that his favorite memories of growing up were duck and dove hunting with his family and riding horses on his grandfather’s ranch in the Texas Hill Country.

He grew up in the Baptist church and had a conversion experience at age 10. He bowed his head in a pew and accepted that he was a sinner.

“Jesus Christ shed His blood to pay for my sin,” Pressler wrote.

His family was not all overjoyed by his conversion, however. Pressler overheard his father telling his mother they should have become Episcopalian before their son came to identify so strongly with the Baptists. The elder Pressler had stopped going to Baptist services (though he still sometimes attended Sunday school) after a minister had “run off with a woman from the church.”

It was an early lesson for the younger Pressler about the long shadow cast by sexual scandals.

But Pressler came to believe that the real threat to Baptists was not the kind of sin and hypocrisy that hurt the faith of his father, but theological liberalism. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire at 16 and was offended when a local minister dismissed the idea of personal salvation as a backward cultural phenomenon peculiar to the South.

When Pressler went to Princeton University a few years later, he clashed with a chaplain who told him that large parts of the Bible were not relevant to modern life and with a professor who said some of the gospels were unreliable.

Pressler was not swayed in the slightest by these men. He graduated an avowed enemy of liberals, which he defined as anyone who thought the Bible contained errors or that it reflected, in any way, the time and culture in which it was written.

“Perhaps it was a good thing for me to be exposed to radical liberal theology,” he later said. “I promised God I would not sit back any longer.”

Despite his interest in theology and church politics, Pressler decided to go into law and politics. He attended law school at the University of Texas at Austin and ran for a seat in the state legislature while he was still a student and won.

Pressler took the lead on a number of legislative issues in the late 1950s, according to contemporary reports in Texas newspapers. He proposed giving cities the power to set curfews for people under 18. He tried to loosen regulations on drive-through banks. And he pushed to reduce the amount the state spent on old-age assistance, a welfare program that gave pensioners $5.25 per month.

At the time he was a member of Houston’s Second Baptist Church.

In 1970, he was appointed a judge. From that position, he believed he had the independence to lead an attack on the “liberals” in the Southern Baptist Convention.

“Because pastors in the churches were in sensitive positions, their identities would be protected as long as possible,” Patterson, the co-architect of the conservative resurgence, wrote in his book Anatomy of a Reformation. “Pressler, by then a judge, and I, as president of Criswell College and associate pastor at the First Baptist Church of Dallas, would draw whatever public attack might come.”

The key to the strategy, as Pressler laid it out for conservative ministers he met with privately in at least 15 states, was organizing a voting bloc at the annual conventions. The messengers needed to vote for Pressler and Patterson’s candidate of choice. That person would then appoint only conservatives to the boards of SBC entities. Over a period of about ten years, the conservatives would have control over every institution, completely taking power from the leaders that Pressler called “denomicrats.”

Pressler and Patterson also coached conservative ministers to stay focused on the issue of biblical inerrancy. Though there were important differences on other theological issues, the doctrine of the Bible was the best ground to fight on.

“We shouldn’t sit around and let the theological left-wing tail wag a conservative dog,” Pressler said. “I think it’s about time that basic Baptist theology flavors the boards of our institutions. If that gets anybody in trouble, so be it.”

Pressler liked to quote his ancestor, John Leigh Townes, who led a fight against the Stone-Campbell movement in the 1830s. Conservative Baptists needed to do their duty—“with meekness and mildness if you can, but forcibly if you must.”

Pressler and Patterson’s first candidate for the SBC presidency was Adrian Rogers, pastor of a Memphis megachurch. In 1979, he won on the first ballot, the first time that had happened in 120 years.

Pressler would later compare the convention fight to the pivotal Civil War battle at Gettysburg, when the Union Army stopped Robert E. Lee and forced the Confederates to retreat.

“But this time,” the judge said, “the right side won.”

Rogers’s victory was followed by the elections of fellow conservatives Bailey Smith, Jimmy Draper, Charles Stanley, Rogers again, Jerry Vines, and Morris Chapman, who won with 57 percent of the vote in 1990.

Some conservatives had qualms about Pressler’s political tactics. He was quoted as saying he was “going for the jugular” of the SBC and that he was more than willing to attack people who were conservatives themselves if they did anything to protect liberals. He plied a seminary student who worked as one of his opponent’s drivers for information and secretly recorded the conversations.

When questioned about the ethics of that, he told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram it was routine to tape conversations in American politics.

“This Paul Pressler has caused more trouble than anybody I’ve ever heard of,” a pastor from North Carolina said at the time. “Everywhere there is suspicion.”

The conservative resurgence kept racking up victories, though, and opposition to Pressler faded away. As his political strategy moved from triumph to triumph, however, allegations about his private sexual misconduct kept threatening to come out.

While he was organizing the vote for Rogers, he was fired from a youth ministry position at an independent Presbyterian church (where he worked while maintaining his membership with the Southern Baptists). An 18-year-old had told the pastor that Pressler assaulted him in a sauna.

“I was absolutely not aroused,” the man later said in a sworn deposition. “I froze. … I was naked and trapped—miles from home—and I needed to get to safety.”

Then, in 1989, Pressler was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to head his administration’s Office of Government Ethics. Before he could be confirmed, Pressler withdrew.

He told Baptist Press he declined because of family obligations and his commitment to serving the SBC. Senior officials in the FBI told a different story. They said they uncovered “ethics problems” during the required background check. Patterson quietly assured allies that the issue was spurious accusations of homosexuality, which he claimed were completely unfounded gossip and slander.

No one in the conservative resurgence or SBC leadership appears to have investigated any further.

In 2004, the dark allegations threatened to come out again. A student in Pressler’s youth ministry at Houston’s First Baptist Church reported that Pressler pressured him to strip and spend time with him naked in a hot tub. A church committee reprimanded Pressler, telling him that a “vast majority” of the congregation would consider “naked behavior” to be “morally and spiritually inappropriate.” However, the church leadership also promised to protect “the cause of Christ and your reputation by not disclosing our conversation or other information pertaining to this matter outside of our committee.”

Pressler left First Baptist a short time later and returned to Second. The one church said it did not inform the other of the allegations.

That same year, Gareld Duane Rollins threatened to expose Pressler and go public with allegations of abuse stretching back decades. Pressler arranged a legal settlement, giving the man $1,500 a month for 25 years in exchange for a confidentiality agreement.

Rollins accepted, and the allegations were not made public. In 2017, however, after discussions with a prison psychiatrist, he changed his mind and filed a civil suit seeking more than $1 million in damages.

A Southern Baptist lawyer close to Pressler said the charges were made up “to extort money from the Southern Baptist Convention.” A total of eight men filed affidavits with allegations of sexual misconduct, though, and even those conservatives who had long praised Pressler as a hero of the faith recoiled.

The scandal has left the Southern Baptists deeply divided. Some see abuse reform as a pressing, urgent issue. Others consider it a distraction or camouflage for efforts to fundamentally change the polity of the SBC.

Current Baptist leaders and those who carry the flag of the conservative resurgence today were mostly silent at the news of Pressler’s death. Several of the men who accused him of sexual abuse, however, expressed relief.

Chris Davis, who is now a pastor, said he was on vacation at the beach and “joyfully overwhelmed by the outpouring of texts, calls, and posts from #SBCToo survivors, SBC pastors who care about abuse reform, and leaders driven from the SBC because of their principled stand.”

When Rollins heard the news, he started talking about the muscle car he had wanted as a kid. He told a Texas Tribune reporter that for the first time since he was abused at 14, he felt like better days were ahead.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

East Asians Leave Childhood Religion Most in World, but Remain Spiritual

Isabel Ong

(UPDATED) Pew survey of more than 10,000 adults in Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam examines Christians’ and Buddhists’ beliefs, practices, and affinity to other traditions.

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

The rate of religious conversion in East Asia is among the highest in the world: Half of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea have left the religion they were brought up in for another religion or no religion. Among Christians, substantially more adults in those two places left the faith than those who converted to Christianity. The region also has the highest levels of deconversion. More than a third of adults in Hong Kong and South Korea say they now no longer identify with any religion.

Yet at least 4 in 10 adults in East Asia and Vietnam who are religiously unaffiliated still believe in unseen beings or a god.

And about 80 percent of Taiwanese and Japanese adults say they burned incense to honor their ancestors in the past year.

These are among the findings of “Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies,” a massive report released today by Pew Research Center. While few people in the region pray daily or say religion is very important in their lives, many “continue to hold religious or spiritual beliefs and to engage in traditional rituals,” said Pew researchers.

Surveys of 10,390 adults in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan—defined here as East Asia—and Vietnam were conducted between June and September last year.

Although Vietnam is located in Southeast Asia, Pew included the nation in this survey due to its adoption of Confucian traditions, its historic ties to China, and its embrace of Mahayana, a branch of Buddhism common across East Asia. (Last September, Pew released an in-depth survey on religion in Southeast Asia, highlighting six nations.)

Researchers acknowledged the complexity of measuring “religion” in the region, as this word often denotes organized, hierarchical forms of worship rather than more “traditional Asian forms of spirituality.” Translators of the surveys, which were conducted in seven languages through phone calls in the East Asian countries and face-to-face interviews in Vietnam, were also asked to choose the most generic possible word for “god” and to avoid terms that referred exclusively to a divine entity from a particular religion.

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Pew found that adults with no religious affiliation make up the largest share of the population in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Vietnam. In Japan and Taiwan, Buddhism closely beat out the nones.

Christians make up 32 percent of the population in South Korea, 20 percent in Hong Kong, 10 percent in Vietnam, 7 percent in Taiwan, and 2 percent in Japan. (Because the sample size of Japanese Christians is so small, Pew did not include the attitudes of this group in its findings.)

Pew researchers concluded that, while people say religion is not important in their lives, “when we measure religion in these societies by what people believe and do, rather than whether they say they have a religion, the region is more religiously vibrant than it might initially seem.”

Religion’s fluidity in East Asia was the report’s “most striking characteristic,” said Fenggang Yang, founding director of Purdue University’s Center on Religion and the Global East. Yang was an expert adviser to the Pew report.

“When they must choose a single [religious identity] … many East Asians report no religious identity, even though they may hold religious beliefs and practices,” Yang said. “The beliefs and practices may be provided by more than one institutionalized religion. This has been the East Asian norm for a long time.”

Christianity in East Asia

In the region, South Korea has the largest share of Christians who identify as born-again or evangelical at 51 percent. Christians over the age of 35 are more likely to identify as such compared to younger believers (54% versus 38%). South Korean women and Christians without a college degree are also more likely to describe themselves as evangelical.

Meanwhile, 44 percent of Vietnamese Christians, 36 percent of Hong Kong Christians, and a mere 8 percent of Taiwanese Christians describe themselves as born-again or evangelicals.

The low percentage of evangelicals in Taiwan may not provide a fully accurate picture as “a lot of Christians in Taiwan … don’t really know the theological or denominational differences” between labels like “evangelical” or “charismatic,” said Shirley Lung, sociology professor at the University of Denver.

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Christians are the most likely group to consider religion “very important.” About a third or more of believers across East Asia say this, along with two-thirds of Vietnamese Christians. Meanwhile, less than 20 percent of Buddhists in East Asia say religion is very important.

Most of the Christians surveyed say that they generally go to church, with 80 percent of believers in Vietnam responding they attend weekly, compared to 46 percent of their counterparts in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The newness of Christianity in Vietnam compared to other places in the region may be why church attendance there is high, says Hien Vu, the Institute for Global Engagement’s Vietnam program manager.

Vietnamese Christians “have had strong personal experiences of positivity through their faith, which has helped them build strong faith in Christ and at the same time, strong connections and trust with fellow believers,” she said.

Roughly 9 in 10 Christians surveyed say they pray to Jesus Christ. Compared to followers of other religions and the religiously unaffiliated, Christians are most likely to pray at least once a day: About half of Christians in Vietnam and South Korea and 40 percent of believers in Taiwan and Hong Kong say they do so.

Christians are also more likely to ponder existential questions on the meaning of life or to experience wonder about the universe, compared to Buddhists or the religiously unaffiliated. A majority of South Korean Christians (62%) think about this at least monthly.

South Korean Christians are the only ones in the region to have a wide age gap when it comes to who identifies as Christian: 35 percent of older adults compared to a quarter of younger adults.

In terms of evangelism efforts, most Hong Kong Christians say it is acceptable to proselytize (82%), while most Christians in South Korea oppose it (70%).

The majority of adults in the region did not attend a school with religious affiliations, except for in Hong Kong, where half of the adults went to a school that is associated with a Catholic or other Christian church. This is due to the large number of church-run schools in Hong Kong that proliferated under British rule.

Christians in East Asia are more likely to have attended Christian schools than Buddhists are to have attended schools with Buddhist ties. For instance, 22 percent of Taiwanese Christians attended a school associated with a Christian or Catholic church, compared to 10 percent of Taiwanese Buddhists who attended a school connected to a Buddhist organization.

The Pew report finding that more people in Hong Kong and South Korea identified with Christianity rather than Buddhism may seem counterintuitive to some, Yang said.

“People in the East or West commonly hold the stereotype that East Asia is predominantly Buddhist,” he said. “It is time to abandon it.” Religious switching

Many people across the region now claim a different religious identity from the one they were raised in. Pew researchers measured the rates of “religious switching” between major world religions, such as between Buddhism and Christianity, not within a tradition (for instance, between Catholicism and Protestantism).

Religious switching has led to a nearly 10 percent drop in the number of Christians in Hong Kong and South Korea. In both places, roughly 1 in 10 adults who were raised in a different religious tradition or who had no prior religious identity now profess faith in Jesus.

Yet, at the same time, a substantially greater number (17 percent in Hong Kong and 19 percent in South Korea) have left their childhood faith of Christianity for another religion or no religion.

These findings indicate that Hong Kong is an “open society” where religious affiliation is not a determining factor for strong social cohesion, said Wai Luen Kwok, associate professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. As there are many Christian schools in the city, “young students may receive religious education other than that of their families and may switch to another religion.”

Churches ought to find out why people are dissatisfied with the faith and choose to leave it, said Pan Chiu Lai, philosophy of religion professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Some people may be attracted to a “modernized” form of Buddhism flourishing in East Asia that promotes meditation or mindfulness, vegetarianism, and “a Buddhist worldview (without a Creator God) as a more ‘reasonable’ worldview compatible with modern sciences,” he said.

Pew’s findings on the large number of South Koreans who have left Christianity for another religion or no religion corresponds with a survey that Chaeyong Chong conducted recently, which showed that “Protestantism was the most common previous religion among the unaffiliated in South Korea,” according to the professor of social religion at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The number of people who identify as Protestant but do not attend church—known as “Canaan” Christians in South Korea—is also rising, said Chong. Their numbers have nearly tripled in 10 years, from 11 percent in 2012 to 29 percent in 2023.

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Overall, Taiwan and Vietnam are the only two places where Christianity has increased because of religious switching. In Taiwan, 15 percent of Christians were raised Buddhists. The percentage of Buddhists have also dropped in Hong Kong and South Korea by 12 and 15 percentage points respectively, and by 10 percentage points in Japan.

Vu, the Vietnam program manager, sees the high rate of religious switching in the region as hopeful because it “indicates a search for something greater than oneself and a quest for meaningful ways of living.”

Rates of religious switching in the world

Yet, the biggest winner of religious switching is the no religion group, which grew by 30 percentage points in Hong Kong and South Korea as well as nearly 20 percentage points in Taiwan and Japan. In Vietnam, the group actually saw a net loss: 55 percent of Vietnamese said they were raised without a religion, while 48 percent identify with it now.

Hong Kong and South Korea have the two highest rates of disaffiliation in the world. In Hong Kong, 37 percent of the population left their childhood religion and now no longer identify with any religion, while South Korea comes close behind with 35 percent.

“Koreans are more instrumentally religious, meaning that they use religion to get what they want rather than being interested in religion itself,” Chong said. “Add to this the fact that religious people (pastors and clergy) are often found to be involved in various social problems or to be immoral, and you have a recipe for disappointment in religion.”

In terms of how “sticky” a religious group is, or how good it is at retaining its members, Christians have an exceptionally high rate of retention in Vietnam (95%), while the East Asian countries range from 40 to 60 percent.

Affinity with other religions and traditions

Adults who say they have no religious affiliation make up about half or more of adults in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Vietnam. Japan and Taiwan also have a significant share of religiously unaffiliated respondents, at 42 percent and 27 percent respectively.

This group of people are least likely to say religion is very important in their lives. Yet many feel a personal connection to Buddhism or an Indigenous religion. For example, at least a third of religiously unaffiliated adults in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan say they feel connected to a Buddhist way of life.

Across the region, more than half of all adults in South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan say they feel connected to at least one tradition besides their own.

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In South Korea, a majority of Christians, Buddhists, and the unaffiliated feel connected to the Confucian way of life. Meanwhile in Taiwan, a quarter of Christians and about 40 percent of Buddhists and the religiously unaffiliated say they feel connected to the Daoist way of life.

Christians’ affinity to other religious and philosophical traditions in the region is a positive finding as it “may reflect that many of them do not adopt a fundamentalist [or] exclusivist attitude towards other religions,” said Lai. Belief in the spiritual realm

Across East Asia and Vietnam, respondents are more inclined to say they believe in unseen beings, such as deities or spirits, rather than in a god. They are also most likely to say that mountains, rivers, or trees possess their own spirits, as opposed to believing that spirits exist in human-built landscapes and physical objects.

Education levels have a surprising impact on these beliefs. Respondents with higher levels of education, said Pew researchers, are more likely than those with less education to believe in unseen beings. Eight in ten college-educated Hong Kong adults say this, compared with those with less education (64%).

In South Korea, Christians are most likely to profess belief in unseen beings. Eighty percent of South Korean believers say so, compared to 62 percent of Buddhists and 41 percent who are unaffiliated. In other places like Taiwan and Hong Kong, Buddhists were more likely to say they believe in it than Christians. Christians are the largest group to believe in the existence of angels and demons. In South Korea, for example, more Christians than Buddhists say that angels or helpful deities exist (69% versus 54%) and that demons or evil deities exist (63% versus 47%).

They are also most likely to say that both heaven and hell exist, although there is a stronger belief in the former.

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The proportion of the religiously unaffiliated who say they believe in unseen beings ranges from 39 to 73 percent across the region.

Many in this group also continue to make food and drink offerings to care for their ancestors, with 92 percent of Vietnamese adults saying they have done so in the past year. At the same time, nearly all Vietnamese burn incense to honor their ancestors, along with 80 percent of Japanese and Taiwanese adults.

Religiously unaffiliated Taiwanese adults who engage in these practices may do so as a form of respect, said Lung, the sociology professor. “My guess is that this is something cultural, not necessarily something religious, that individuals have done since they were kids,” she said.

Belief in miracles, karma, fate, rebirth, and nirvana

People with higher educational qualifications in Hong Kong are more likely to profess belief in miracles than those with lower levels of education (65% versus 55%), Pew researchers found.

Hong Kong Christians ranked highest (85%) in saying that miracles exist, as did a substantial majority of Christians in Taiwan, South Korea, and Vietnam.

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Belief in karma is also prevalent across the region. While Buddhists are most likely to believe it exists, the majority of Christians in Vietnam (71%), Hong Kong (68%), and Taiwan (64%) agree. Christians in these regions are also likely to say they believe in fate.

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A sizable proportion of Christians also ascribe to beliefs in rebirth and nirvana.

Thirty-five percent of Hong Kong Christians believe that humans can be reborn—the Buddhist teaching of samsara—while 42 percent of believers in Hong Kong say they believe in nirvana, the Buddhist concept of liberation from the cycle of rebirth.

Relationship between religion and society

The Pew survey also measured the extent to which respondents agreed that religion is helpful to society in providing meaning and purpose in their lives, and that religion offers guidance to people to “do the right thing and treat other people well.”

Most respondents agreed with these statements, with Vietnam and Taiwan gathering more positive responses than other places. Japanese adults were least likely to agree.

Christians were a somewhat more likely than other groups to affirm these statements. Eighty-nine percent of Hong Kong Christians say religion helps inform and improve ethical behavior, compared to 78 percent of Buddhists and 76 percent of religiously unaffiliated people, Pew said.

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In terms of whether religious leaders should be involved in politics, people in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan were least supportive.

In all of the polled places, most respondents felt that religious leaders should not become politicians. Many also did not think they should not talk publicly about which politicians and parties they support.

Observing the remarkable changes in religious identification in the region, Pew researchers asked, “How meaningful is religious affiliation in Asia? Do the religious labels even matter?”

Pew believes they still do: “How people describe their present religious affiliation and their childhood affiliation tends to correspond with their level of religious belief and practice.”

Yang, the Purdue University sociologist, added that he doesn’t think people should “read too much into the finding that the most common religion is ‘no religion’ in East Asia,” he said.

“‘No religion’ has become a growing and concerning phenomenon in the West, but it has been a traditional phenomenon in East Asia because religious identity is not always the most important,” he said. Other new religious trends in the West, such as Sheilaism (which involves mixing elements from multiple religions into one’s spiritual beliefs), have also been common in East Asia for centuries, Yang added. “Learning about religion in East Asia may help to shed light on current religious change in the West,” he said.

- More from Isabel Ong

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Avani Wilson Tandel, volunteer for the Women’s Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance, who attends a Methodist church in East Gujarat:

Lalrinmawii Fanai, an elderly member in a Presbyterian church in Mizoram:

Deepthi Tarapatla, a theologian and church management committee member of an independent church in Andhra Pradesh:

Abhineeta Matney, professor of epistemology and intercultural studies in Madhya Pradesh:

Seema Linus, a leader in a Wesleyan church in South Gujarat:

Snehprabha Massey, president of the Women’s Society of Christian Service for a Methodist church in Uttar Pradesh:

Anujit Emerson, trustee for Voice of Truth Ministries and pastor of an independent church in Punjab:

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In this series

Skin-deep animism

Decoding Thai spiritualism

Sak yant and the church

A different person

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Christianity in East Asia

Affinity with other religions and traditions

Belief in miracles, karma, fate, rebirth, and nirvana

Relationship between religion and society

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