10 Stories about the European Church in 2024

CT Editors

Jürgen Moltmann passes, Russia restricts Ukrainian churches, and church planters strategize about how to start congregations on a continent that thinks it doesn’t need God.

Illustration by Christianity Today

How do you start a congregation in Liechtenstein? It’s very wealthy, and the father and son team trying to get a church going there say only about 10 percent of the population visits a house of worship on a weekly basis. (Read more in the article from Ken Chitwood below.)

Across the continent, Christian leaders are grappling with the challenge of trying to reach a population that often finds religion irrelevant. Here’s a look at how pastors, theologians, and laypeople attempted to live out their faith and stay the course this past year.

What It Takes to Plant Churches in Europe

Ken Chitwood

Where some see ambition as key to evangelism, others experiment with subtler ways of connecting to people who don’t think they need God.

Died: Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian of Hope

Daniel Silliman

A German soldier found by Christ in a prisoner of war camp, he became a renowned Christian scholar who taught that “God weeps with us so that we may someday laugh with him.”

Supporters of the "Not Dead Yet" campaign, which opposes the Assisted Dying Bill, protest outside the Houses of Parliament in London, holding signs that spell out #ASSISTUSTOLIVE.

UK Christians Lament Landmark Vote to Legalize Assisted Dying

Christopher Kuo

Pro-life faith leaders say Parliament’s proposed bill fails to protect the vulnerable and fear it will “create more suffering and chaos.”

Aftermath of the Azerbaijan Shelling Over The Shushi Cathedral In Nagorno Karabakh.

Satellite Imagery Documents Erasure of Armenian Christian Heritage

Jayson Casper

As archaeologists discover new ruins revealing the ancient origins of the church, new technologies reveal the extent of its destruction in neighboring Azerbaijan.

Died: Carlos Payan, Charismatic Pastor Who Loved Catholics and Christian Unity

Léo Lehmann

The child of Spanish Civil War refugees brought together French people longing for healing in Christ.

Demonstrators celebrate after the voting primary results were announced in 2024.

After Two Elections, France Is Divided. Can Evangelicals Make a Difference?

Kami Rice

Though they make up only 1 percent of the population, these believers want their presence to be meaningful.

In Secular UK, Evangelical Alliance Experiences Record Growth

Interview by James Thompson

Leader explains why the movement is seeing its biggest membership bump in 30 years and its mission for the years ahead.

The destroyed headquarters of Mission Eurasia in Irpin, Ukraine.

Russia Restricts Churches in Ukraine. Divided Orthodox Critique Both.

Jayson Casper

Ecumenical Ukrainian delegation to DC summit tells of Russia’s wartime destruction of 630 religious sites, without the input of Moscow-linked church.

Pastor Olaf Latzel appears in court in 2020.

German Pastor to Pay for Anti-LGBTQ Statements

Ken Chitwood in Germany

Years of court cases come to an end with settlement agreement.

The Church of England enthrones Justin Welby as archbishop of Canterbury.

Church of England Leaders Kept Evangelical Beatings Secret

Daniel Silliman

Archbishop Justin Welby resigns after abuse report exposes cover-up dating back to 1982.

Thank you for reading stories by Christianity Today’s global team in 2024. We regularly translate our work into more than half a dozen languages. Learn more here.

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Culture

All I Want for Christmas Is … a ‘Nosferatu’ Remake?

Paul Marchbanks

The vampire movie might not be as irrelevant (or irreverent) as you think.

Lily-Rose Depp stars as Ellen Hutter in Nosferatu.

This Christmas Day, amid the usual holiday trappings, a Nosferatu remake will arrive in movie theaters. Whatever combination of iconoclastic provocation and marketing savvy led A24 to schedule a vampire film’s release for December 25, this bit of counterprogramming may offer an opportunity.

A century ago, the famous exemplar of German expressionism handed audiences an unapologetically Christological ending. Will this new version, created by filmmaker Robert Eggers, do the same?

The monsters inhabiting our horror stories are never irrelevant to human experience. Frankenstein’s pieced-together, reanimated giant and those Godzilla-scale creatures awakened by nuclear detonations signal apprehensions about the excesses of scientific inquiry and experimentation. Werewolves and zombies register fear of contagious disease and death.

Modern vampires bear the weight of the latter threat, too, but combine the possibility of a premature demise with either hope of resurrection (as one of the undead) or a chance at passionate romance with a beautiful (albeit ice-cold and deathly-pale) lover.

If centuries of vampire lore signal any truth about the human condition, it’s this: The unknown and the dangerous exercise unwonted power over our desires.

These days, those desiring to spin a vampire yarn can choose between multiple—let’s say four—narrative paradigms that have coalesced since this particular monster made his way into the English language two centuries ago. These templates differ according to the roles given to faith and each protagonist’s ability to resist the enticements of their bloodsucking admirer.

The same dark and stormy night in 1816 on which Mary Shelley conceived Frankenstein, John Polidori lifted these creepy immortals from the pages of ancient Greco-Roman texts and Eastern European folk tales and planted them squarely in the gothic Romance novel. In The Vampyre (1819), the “deadly hue” of Lord Ruthven’s colorless skin and his “dead grey eye” fail to scare off the “virtuous wife and innocent daughter” who cannot gainsay, elude, or overpower his seductive spells. This monster is malevolence incarnate, a specter of unrepentant, unstoppable wickedness. Such a story rejects the psalmist’s promise that evil will be destroyed (Ps. 37:9) and allows no opportunity to flee temptation (James 4:7). Knowledge is impotent, and faith wholly absent.

Robert Eggers’s own The Witch (2015) constitutes a modern counterpart: Its powerful killers bathe in blood to restore their youth, float in the air during spell casting, and utterly destroy a Christian family whose faith crumbles one tragedy at a time.

J. S. Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) retains the mesmerizing power of the vampire, who awakens both ambiguous repulsion and even stronger attraction. This time, however, rescue arrives in the form of human ingenuity. The knowledgeable Baron Vordenburg saves the day by uncovering the entombed murderer and adroitly applying stake to chest and axe to neck. Though Le Fanu makes clear that the vampire cannot bear the sound of praying, no invocations, crosses, or eucharistic wafers play a role in Carmilla’s defeat.

Marvel’s vampire-hunting Blade, who once headlined a film trilogy and will reappear on screens before long, provides a modern example of this type; he dismisses crosses and holy water as utterly worthless.

A third variant, codified by Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), actualizes faith by granting surprising agency to the titular vampire’s prime target. Mina is “one of God’s women,” her fiancé attests, “fashioned by His own hand to show us men and other women that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth.” Mina veers from precedent by showing no interest in Dracula when he materializes in her bedroom; love for God and her husband protect her heart. Though the vampire begins her transformation by forcing her to consume his blood, her prayer, “God grant that we may be guided aright,” is finally realized when the men kill the vampire with the help of clues Mina herself collected.

The final, more recent archetype adds conflicted, remorseful vampires to the mix, soulful parasites whose inner torment pairs well with chiseled jawlines and piercing eyes. Any romantic interest they show is passionately reciprocated by their would-be prey. Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel series popularized this strain of narrative with help from Anne Rice’s books, and have since spawned Twilight, Underworld, The Vampire Diaries, and a host of similar ilk.

In realizing his childhood dream to remake Nosferatu, then, filmmaker Robert Eggers has many options. Filmmakers often play fast and loose with source material, so Eggers need not toe the line drawn by F. W. Murnau—who himself took liberties when (illegally) adopting Nosferatu from Stoker’s Dracula in 1922. Murnau’s film turned the Mina character, renamed Ellen, into the central hero by allowing her to sacrifice herself to save others, a Christlike “sacrifice of her own bloode” that provides the only means of delivering her town from the vampire’s bloodlust.

The same character (now named Lucy) does the same in Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of Nosferatu, using a cross to ward off the demon until she learns that only the death of a “pure-hearted woman” can end Dracula’s reign. Unfortunately for the world, her valiant sacrifice does not save anyone. In a twist that recalls evil’s inevitable victory in Polidori’s original, Lucy’s infected husband becomes the new lord of darkness.

The trailer for Eggers’s film sketches the outline of a female protagonist eager to embrace the dark lord who sails through her window on the night wind, a protagonist who later complains to her husband that “you could never please me as he could.” These clips could sum up the entirety of the tale or subtly mislead.

Perhaps Eggers will turn our protagonist into a sad victim of her own lust. Or, maybe, she’ll become an adulteress whose passionate devotion somehow humanizes the fiend. She could even prove herself a mastermind who defeats Dracula by playing mind games better than he.

There’s one more possibility we can discuss with other viewers—whether Eggers realizes it or not. If our hero recognizes her need for the divine and, like Stoker’s Mina, prays “with all the strength of my sad and humble soul,” perhaps the film’s release date will not prove quite so irreverent.

Paul Marchbanks is a professor of English at California Polytechnic State University. His YouTube channel is “Digging in the Dirt.”

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Theology

Repeat the Sounding Joy—Until it Becomes Habit

Shena Ashcraft

Both science and Scripture attest to the power of rejoicing, especially when we don’t feel like it.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

If Bible-reading habits are any indication, many Christians are struggling with anxiety this year. Top Scripture search engines showed that one of the most popular passages of 2024 was Philippians 4, and especially verse 6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”

Yet just two verses earlier, Paul issues another command—one so important he felt it worth repeating: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (v. 4).

It seems joy, not just the absence of anxiety, is essential to experiencing God’s peace amid life’s challenges. Both Scripture and science prove the power of rejoicing, even, and perhaps especially, when we don’t feel like it. Thankfully, the highs and lows of the holiday season provide us with ample opportunity to do just that.

Isaiah, the wise Israelite prophet, recognizes that his people have been in anguish, darkness, and gloom—but he reminds them that this condition is not God’s forever-plan for them. He paints a picture of what is to come:

You have enlarged the nation
and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
as people rejoice at the harvest. (Isa. 9:3)

Imagine this, Isaiah seems to say, God increases the people’s joy, and in turn they rejoice, just like the experience of joy at a good harvest. He emphasizes harvest time, where God’s people are celebrating together, singing and dancing in the streets, feasting and sharing their bounty with neighbors, all lifting their voices and instruments in praise to God for his provision.

The order of joy and rejoice in this verse highlights a cyclical pattern, where each prompts the other—joy, rejoice, joy, rejoice. Joy is often a felt emotion—it can feel like a burst of lightness, a well of exuberance, or a lingering hum of contentment—while rejoicing, as the word itself implies, is a responsive action. To re-joice is to respond to joy.

This cyclical relationship is also supported by science. Andi Thacker, a Licensed Professional Counselor and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, explained in an interview that the way joy and rejoicing participate with one another can be seen as part of a neurological feedback loop.

In the mental health profession, the term feedback loop explains how thoughts, emotions, and behaviors influence each other in a continuous cycle. Without our knowing, one element reinforces the other, contributing to either a positive change or the persistence of negative patterns. “In a feedback loop,” Thacker said, “a well-worn neurological rut is dug. A habit is formed.”

We might recognize this when we feel frustrated about something, so we complain about it. That complaint gives our brain a tiny temporary reward. It felt nice to vent for a moment, yes? But the irritation still exists, and it fuels further grumbling. Frustration, grumble, frustration, grumble. The cycle creates grooves in our brain—a grumbling habit of frustration—that we find ourselves slipping into time and time again.

But the loop we see in the words of Isaiah 9:3 is the opposite. It’s positive. When we feel joy, we respond with grateful rejoicing. When repeated over and over, the cycle carves a well-worn path in the brain that leads to joy. And whenever the cycle of joy is repeated more often than the spiral of frustration, the brain will find it the easiest, most familiar path to take.

Responding to joy with action can lead to embodied cognition—which explains how our physical bodies and sensory experiences influence our emotions and perceptions of the world. Warren Brown, UCLA Brain Research Institute scholar, writes, “Our thoughts, ideas, beliefs, memories, etc. are grounded in our bodily existence.” For good or bad, and whether we realize it or not, our bodies affect our emotions.

We see this in the Bible too. From the Old Testament to the New, the way God’s people rejoiced was often expressed in physical acts.

When God rescued the Israelites from Pharoah’s horsemen and chariots, the prophet Miriam took timbrel in hand and began to dance and sing, giving thanks to God (Ex. 15:19–21). In Deuteronomy, Moses told the Israelites to seek the dwelling place of the Lord, to give offerings, and to eat as their act of rejoicing in God’s presence (12:4–7). After rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah planned a ceremony to rejoice, where choirs sang and people offered great sacrifices (Neh. 12:40–43).

The angel who foretold the birth of John the Baptist said that many would rejoice at John’s birth—a prophesy that was fulfilled starting with John’s own father, whose “mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God.” (Luke 1:14, 64). And when the Magi, overjoyed, found the infant Jesus with his mother, Mary, “they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh” (Matt. 2:10–11).

For God’s people, rejoicing has almost always been accompanied by physical actions. God’s people have danced and made music, shouted and serenaded, or spoken words of adoration. Some have feasted and given gifts. Others have bent low to worship.

But what about when it seems there’s nothing for us to celebrate? What do we do when the joy of the Lord feels elusive—when our vision for the future isn’t panning out the way we anticipated, when we’re burdened with financial, professional, or personal anxieties—or when our family or culture expects us to be cheerful and jingle-y, but all we feel is weight and sorrow? What good is a cycle of joy and rejoicing if there is no way to manufacture the joy that causes it to start spinning?

We’ve already discussed the first way to join the cycle—to feel that fresh spark of joy from an outside prompt and then respond with rejoicing, like Isaiah’s vision of Israel at harvest time. And sure, we can always pray for God to restore to us the joy of his salvation (Ps. 51:12). But what if that spark seems unavailable to us?

Embodied cognition tells us we do not need to wait for an emotion—we can enter the feedback loop with physical behaviors alone. What does it look like to engage in the bodily action of rejoicing before feeling any joy? It can be as simple as an unprompted smile, a childlike cartwheel, or a private dance party. It can be a prayer of preemptive gratitude, a spontaneous feast with friends, a high-five with a stranger. It can sound like a hearty laugh or a peaceful sigh. In another CT article, gratitude experts Peter Hill and Robert Emmons suggest putting pen to paper or worshiping aloud.

Our bodies, words, and actions are more than simply passive reflections of our emotions; they are active participants in how those emotions are shaped. These physical movements and actions can prompt our brains to align with our bodies—to generate joy by behaving joyfully. And the cycle spins as evenly as before but with a new starting point: rejoice, joy, rejoice, joy.

This second route to joy is demonstrated in the prayer of another Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk. In response to his question-and-answer session with God about injustice in the world, Habakkuk declares that he will enter the cycle of joy and rejoicing—even when his circumstances call for lament:

Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior. (Hab. 3:17–18)

Like the harvesters celebrating in Isaiah 9:3, Habakkuk sets his words and body to rejoicing. But he does so even when no fruit has been produced, and no bounty is promised. The prophet is sure that from this action he will still reap joyfulness (Hab. 3:18). And just like Habakkuk, Thacker says, “rejoicing won’t change the truth about life, but it will change our ability to handle it.”

Many of us are drudging through this holiday season with a sense of dread, burdened by the increased tension and weight of division between family members, friends, neighbors, and church members. Our bodies are primed toward grumbling, as our bones have grown stiff from the lack of reasons to rejoice.

But whether our life circumstances are what we might wish them to be, joy is available to us. We can actively choose to cultivate it. Even without a praiseworthy event or emotion, we as God’s people can always embody joy out of a childlike faith that our God is good, holy, and just. And our brains will eventually align with our bodies when we mimic the rejoicing of God’s people who have come before us.

When Paul and Silas were stripped of their clothing, beaten, and imprisoned, they sang a celebratory song and rejoiced, even while their feet were clasped in chains (Acts 16:25). It is this very context which informs the conclusive message of this year’s most popular passage for anxious Bible readers, in which the apostle Paul writes, “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want” (Phil. 4:11–12).

To live out the gospel is to participate in this cycle of joy and re-joy and to jump in at any point. For those who are abuzz with holiday spirit, let us teach our brains the right response of joyful gratitude to the giver of all good things. And for those who are feeling the heaviness or frustration of the season, let us position our bodies in the posture of rejoicing. Let our mouths form the words of gratefulness. Let our cheeks rise into the shape of a smile. Let our feet stomp to a beat and our hands clap in celebration.

Why? Because there is one ultimate reason for us all to rejoice no matter what, which Isaiah himself explains later in the same chapter we began with: unto us a child is born. To us—the ones who once lived in darkness—a Son is given. The government of the kingdom rests entirely upon his shoulders. He is called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. And of the greatness of his peace there will be no end (Isa. 9:6–7).

Because of Jesus and his coming at the perfect time, now is a good time for this weary world to start rejoicing.

Shena Ashcraft is a ThM student at Dallas Theological Seminary and a teacher at her local church in Ohio.

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News

A Shiite and a Catholic Find Refuge—and Friendship—at Baptist Seminary Shelter

Jayson Casper

From war to ceasefire, two Lebanese men bond during a traumatic three months.

A man looking at the rubble of destroyed buildings in Beirut, Lebanon.

Bilal Hussein / AP Images

While an explosion reverberated across the valley from Beirut to the foothill village of Mansourieh, two men puffed on their cigarettes in resignation. Israeli jets were striking another apartment building in the Dahiyeh region of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital city, likely killing a Hezbollah militant or targeting an underground weapons depot within the tightly packed urban area.

Neither man cared about politics or the war, brought to their doorstep by last year’s decision of the Shiite Muslim militia to launch rockets into Israel to support Hamas. Tit-for-tat attacks had crossed the southern border for the 11 months that followed, as neither side wanted to engage in a larger conflict. That fighting displaced tens of thousands on both sides while leaving the rest of Lebanon largely unscathed—yet ever worried about an escalation.

It came in September. On the 17th, Israel declared the return of northern citizens to their homes to be an official war goal. Hours later, an Israeli sabotage operation exploded Hezbollah pagers, killing 13 and wounding around 4,000 militia-linked individuals. Then, on September 23, Israeli missiles struck throughout Lebanon, and hundreds of thousands fled their homes. Lubnan Assaf, a 42-year-old Shiite Muslim, and Awad Saab, a 72-year-old Greek Catholic, somehow found their way to the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary (ABTS) guesthouse—and became friends. At its peak, the evangelical institution housed almost 250 displaced individuals, about one-third of whom were fellow Christians.

ABTS offered daily chapels and provided three meals a day—but no televisions. Isolated from the news and away from static entertainment, couples walked in the seminary gardens while children rode scooters down the access road from the library. Assaf and Saab played a Rummy-like card game until 10 p.m., exchanging details about their abandoned neighborhoods.

Assaf gave Saab the daily update that his auto-accessory shop on the edge of Dahiyeh had not been looted. Saab replied that his eight-month pregnant daughter, one of 15 people who remained in their southern village on the frontline of the Israeli ground invasion, was still doing all right. Both whittled away the hours in relative boredom, as each over time expanded his spiritual horizons.

Assaf’s Story

Assaf’s apartment in the working-class Shiite neighborhood of Ouzai, located in Dahiyeh near the Beirut airport, overlooks a local café and the Mediterranean Sea. His shop serviced mostly middle-class Christians who frequented the area, well-known for its inexpensive furniture and manufactured goods.

Over the years, Assaf saved up enough money to build a home in his family village of Younine, 11 miles northeast of Baalbek, an ancient Roman city preserved in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon’s agricultural heartland. Driving from Beirut means passing by marijuana fields that fuel an unofficial economy run by local Shiite tribes that reportedly collaborate loosely with Hezbollah.

Artful calligraphy from the Quran adorns the walls of Assaf’s home. His wife, Mira, and their 15-year-old daughter wear the hijab. When war came to Dahiyeh, they relocated for safety, while Assaf returned to Beirut to oversee his shop.

The next day, an Israeli missile flew over Younine. The whistle and nearby explosion rattled the home, as the Baalbek area suffered widespread bombing. Frantically, Assaf’s wife, Mira, reached out to her husband. After one night of terror, she hired a taxi at three times the normal fare to reach a Christian area just east of Beirut. Another phone call went to her cousin, Abed Zein El Din—an assistant professor of practical theology at ABTS.

Zein El Din had become a Christian in his early teenage years but had preserved family relations and was now in a position to help Mira. He secured a place at ABTS for Assaf, Mira, and their two children. Mira volunteered to help in the kitchen and attended the daily chapels.

Meanwhile, Assaf ate breakfast at 7:30 a.m. in the ABTS cafeteria. Chapel followed an hour later, but by then Assaf was heading to work. He went not to serve his customers—few Ouzai residents remained—but to protect his shop from thieves. A neighborhood watch that patrolled the streets at night disbanded in the morning, and rumors of stealing circulated in several abandoned Shiite areas.

Assaf kept to Christian areas as he entered Beirut and passed by statues and shrines of favored saints. On light poles were banners displaying the encircled cedar-tree insignia of Lebanese Forces, the popular Christian political party known for its opposition to Hezbollah. But as Assaf drove west across the capital, the demography changed, and with it the political markings.

Banners on light poles displayed the bearded, smiling face of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, killed on September 27 by a massive bunker bomb. Other tributes were to “martyrs on the road to Jerusalem,” as the militia calls its fallen soldiers. Present also were the green flags of the Amal Movement, the secular face of Shiite politics, which cooperates with the Islamist party to dominate the sectarian scene.

On some days, a makeshift checkpoint, erected to keep drivers away from the area of an announced Israeli strike, interrupted Assaf’s commute. Ignoring the details of war at ABTS, he did not follow Israel’s regular warnings to evacuate selected buildings and the surrounding 500 yards.

Many strikes were very precise. In the cosmopolitan Ras Beirut section of the capital, a missile hit its ground-floor target next door to a popular gaming store and three blocks away from a Baptist church. The blast strewed debris and shattered glass into the street, while the apartments above were left untouched. But across the street was a gas station that, if hit directly or indirectly, could have engulfed the area in flames.

Residents were wise to limit traffic, for the nature of strike was unpredictable. In the Haret Hreik neighborhood, a larger missile brought down an entire apartment building, and its shattered hull collapsed atop the Malek al Tawouk restaurant chain. But drivers were also aware that pinpoint drone strikes could take out a single vehicle, impacting no other cars on the road.

Changing his route due to the checkpoint, Assaf would eventually reach Ouzai and slowly navigate its narrow alleyways until he arrived at his shop, where he would fiddle with his cell phone until about 3 p.m. That is when the neighborhood watch group re-formed, keeping everyone off the streets at dark.

Videos circulated in some areas of discovered burglars tied and hanging from street poles, with signs of “thief” hung across their necks in shame. Assaf had known his neighbors since youth, but in recent years, many left and rented their apartments to less-known Syrian refugees. Best not to hang around after hours, he decided.

Back at ABTS, he would find his family, have dinner, and smoke his cigarette. The seminary showed them love, Assaf said, and communicated that Jesus motivated their service. But neither senior leaders nor general staff ever asked them to believe as they do. Earlier in life, he had been without work, but fellow Shiites in the patronage networks of Hezbollah and Amal would only help the politically affiliated. At the guesthouse, there were no strings attached to anything.

“Evangelicals are the best people,” Assaf said. “There is no sectarian spirit or self-interest. They just cared for us.”

Saab’s Story

Deir Mimas is a village in Lebanon located 55 miles southeast of Beirut. It once had a population of 4,600 people. It boasts seven churches, with a Protestant community noted in travel literature as early as 1875. Its grand treasure—apart from more than 100,000 olive trees, many dating back hundreds of years—is the Monastery of Saint Mamas, a third-century shepherd and martyr under Roman persecution.

The monastery, built in 1404, became the center of a Christian community within the sloping hills of the Lebanese south. Located only 43 miles from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth, Deir Mimas borders the Shiite village of Kafr Kila, where Hezbollah maintained a dominant political position. The Hezbollah-Israel war in 2006 led to the destruction of the medieval cloister. Qatar funded its rebuilding in 2010.

That war contributed to a reduction of Deir Mimas’s population. It dwindled to around 1,000 Christians as people moved for better economic opportunities, and then to 350 as hostilities began anew with Israel. By comparison, locals said that Lansing, Michigan has over 700 now-Americans originally from the tiny village.

One who remained in Deir Mimas was 67-year-old pastor Maroun Shammas, now suffering his seventh displacement from the troubled region. Originally from the village and born with scoliosis and only 30 percent lung capacity, he has led its Baptist church since 1998. Hezbollah’s support front and the Israeli response drove him and many parishioners away, and he lived with family in a large Christian town near Sidon. But unable to abandon his congregation in war, last summer he rented an apartment in a nearby Christian village to make the 20-minute weekly commute back for Sunday service.

Twenty people were attending the Baptist church on a Sunday in July when a missile exploded only 500 yards away. Most judged the area no longer safe, and by September, Shammas and 34 other villagers, including 12 church members, had found refuge at ABTS.

Saab was one of them, but his pregnant daughter stayed behind with her husband. Travel to Beirut was still possible, and Deir Mimas was not an Israeli target, but out of precaution they sent to Saab their 12-year-old son, who kept up with his online studies from the seminary premises.

Before the war, Saab was not a religious man. He believed in God and acted ethically, but he never went to church and only politely engaged with his wife in spiritual discussions. Three months ago, however, headaches sent him to the hospital, where a CAT scan revealed aneurysms in his cranial veins. Doctors warned him the operation might be fatal, and during surgery they cut him open from chest to scalp. But Saab made it through, and though as a side effect he is increasingly forgetful, he no longer forgets God.

Asked about the war, he said simply, “I have my health. Whatever God gives us is good.”

And at ABTS, he began to read avidly—the Bible, theological books, whatever pastor Shammas gets him. Every morning, he attended chapel, singing along with Arabic praise songs. But Saab wanted more, and on Sundays he joined in the services of two churches that rent space on the campus grounds.

Nabil Costa, chief executive officer of Thimar, the Baptist development ministry governing ABTS, said help to the displaced “preached Jesus without preaching.” Only one-third attended chapels, but at meals they listened to prayers thanking God for their daily bread. A leading Shiite media personality given refuge said on television, “Evangelical service has been outstanding.” And the principal of the affiliated Baptist school said one family displaced from Dahiyeh enrolled their child on the recommendation of a sheltering Shiite leader—even when told he would study the Bible.

Similarly, the impact on Saab was substantial.

“God willing, I will be an evangelical soon,” he said. “And when we return to Deir Mimas, I will be the first one in the church.”

Ceasefire

In late November, rumors spread that a ceasefire could be immanent. By then, fierce fighting was taking place in Deir Mimas, with Hezbollah mentioning the location 12 times in its description of operations as it boasted of destroying an Israeli Merkava tank. Saab’s The attack came as Saab’s son-in-law was in Beirut, leaving the pregnant mother alone in a house located only ten yards from the combat zone. The previous two nights, she and the other remaining residents slept in a two-story villa in the heart of Deir Mimas, not only for mutual encouragement but also to put maximum distance between themselves and the exchange of rocket fire in the battlefield.

Residents reported seeing Israeli forces walking through the streets, issuing warnings for everyone to stay inside. Video footage also emerged of troops sheltering inside the monastery, mocking Christian rituals in a pretend wedding between two soldiers.

Saab called it a “shame” but reported that an Israeli officer later came with the mayor from Metula, a Jewish village across the border, to offer apologies to the local priest. Israel officially condemned the act and said it would investigate the soldiers involved. Jesus told his followers to turn the other cheek, Saab continued, so he asked God to forgive them.

Nonetheless, he worried constantly. At night, Saab was regularly up until 3 a.m., despite taking sleeping pills. He passed the time with occasional visits to his brother’s barber shop in Beirut.

The ceasefire came on November 27. The agreement calls for Hezbollah to relocate away from the Israeli border beyond the Litani River, with Israel to withdraw from Lebanese territory within 60 days. The Lebanese army is to deploy in the south and ensure the dismantling of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure. An international committee led by the United States, with representatives of France, Israel, Lebanon, and the United Nations, will monitor violations. So far, Israel accused the militia of transporting weapons, while Lebanese media reported Israel uprooting olive trees in Kafr Kila—where Shammas said he has many close friends.

In Beirut, Hezbollah portrayed the ceasefire as a victory. Cars filled the streets, honking horns as supporters waved high its signature yellow flag with uplifted green Kalashnikov rifle. While sympathetic toward the Palestinians, many Lebanese disagree with this assessment and are angry at the militia for imposing a foreign conflict on their nation. The World Bank estimated the cost of rebuilding would exceed $3 billion, while Israel estimated its domestic repair costs at $273 million.

International law forbids embedding military infrastructure in civilian areas, as Hezbollah established its leadership operations in Dahiyeh. But this also greatly encumbers Israel’s options, as the Geneva Convention states that forces must refrain from attacking a target if the loss of civilian life or damage to civilian objects “would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.”

In the south, an Associated Press review of satellite data revealed that in each of 11 villages along the border, between 100 and 500 buildings have been destroyed or damaged. Outside the specific 13 points of the ceasefire agreement, Israel has forbidden civilians from returning to 10 locations. The displaced were encouraged to delay their return to over 60 additional villages—including Deir Mimas.

The Deir Mimas municipality agreed with the assessment. The mayor asked residents to stay away and said local officials would coordinate with the Lebanese army to determine the timing for a safe return. Pastor Shammas spoke of the Christian responsibility to carry the cross, to return eventually to Deir Mimas despite the volatile setting and depressed economic conditions, in order to be a light in the regional darkness. This he identified not with Hezbollah or Israel but with the spiritual reality that exists wherever Christ is not Lord. War is only one mark of evidence.

Meanwhile, Saab checked in on his daughter. A few days later, a local priest in the nearby Christian village of Qlayaa successfully secured Lebanese army permission to pass the checkpoint and take her ten minutes back to his church. From there, the Red Cross transported her to the larger town of Marjayoun, where she took a taxi back to Beirut. The roads were quiet. Within two hours, she was reunited with her husband and soon thereafter began the search for a local obstetrician. This week, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

When the time comes, their home church in Deir Mimas will need repair. While the sanctuary is undamaged, shock waves from the blasts shook free several of the traditional red-orange tiles from the roof of the adjacent hall. Inside, damage was worse, as corresponding ceiling tiles crashed to the ground. Several homes—including those of Shammas and of Saab’s daughter—had windows blown out and doors knocked off their hinges. Nine homes, Saab counted, were severely damaged in the fighting.

Assaf was more fortunate; his home suffered only minor cracks in the walls. An evacuation warning for a house only ten yards from his own made the family nervous, but it turned out to be one of many prank notices that added to the overall stress of wartime life. His shop is back open, but business is slow. He called Saab to wish him congratulations for the safe delivery of his grandson.

Meanwhile, ABTS invited Assaf’s family to its annual Christmas party, delighting his wife. The children received gifts. It was a grand reunion of formerly displaced friends from every corner of Lebanon, back again at their temporary home.

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Three Die in Nigerian Methodist Conflict

Daniel Silliman

New interim bishop tasked with stopping the violence.

Four months after becoming an interim bishop for a new Methodist denomination, John Pena Auta is heading home to Nigeria with an overwhelming assignment. He has to find the words to stop the spiral of violence that has left three people dead and nearly a dozen homes burned.

Two groups of Methodists clashed in the eastern village of Munga Dosso on Sunday, December 15, according to local news reports. Members of the Global Methodist Church (GMC) attempted to reopen one of three local church buildings that had been shuttered by the Taraba State Government during the schism that has divided Methodists around the world. Members of the United Methodist Church (UMC), who claim that the building is rightly theirs, tried to stop them.

In the ensuing conflict, 27-year-old Elisha Masoyi was shot dead. He has been identified as the brother of a UMC lay leader. Fire consumed 11 houses. One was the home of Abraham Kefas, director of a UMC school. Two of his children, ages 2 and 4, died in the fire.

Authorities detained 23 people but did not immediately file criminal charges, according to Nigerian news reports. Local UMC leaders said there is no question about who to blame.

“We are outraged,” UMC bishop John Schol wrote on Facebook. “We warned the GMC bishops of Nigeria that tensions were escalating because of the split within The United Methodist Church in Nigeria and to call GMC members in the midst of our differences to be peaceful and responsible. Yet it fell on deaf ears.”

Micah Dopah, director of the UMC’s connectional ministries in the region, called for Johnwesley Yohanna, a former bishop, and Auta, who was made bishop during the GMC’s first general conference in September, to be arrested.

“These leaders should be brought to book,” Dopah told The Daily Champion. “Let them be ready to face the wrath of the law, for their ungodly act in Munga Dosso.”

Auta, who is originally from a rural area in Taraba and previously served as provost of the Methodist seminary about 20 miles from Munga Dosso, was in the US when the attack happened. He was speaking to Global Methodist churches in Georgia and Alabama about the work in Africa, his vision for the new denomination, and the importance of Christian unity.

“We are all called children of God, we’re called to love one another, and we are called to be one in Christ,” Auta told two ministers at Clearbranch Methodist in Trussville, Alabama, on their weekly podcast. “The Bible I read is the Bible you read. … The Bible unites us across the land, across the globe.”

Auta did not immediately respond to emails from Christianity Today but did issue a brief statement condemning the violence.

“Violence is not the best option of mitigating misunderstanding,” the statement said. “I pray God to heal those that are maimed and comfort those grieving with the everlasting peace of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

Some GMC leaders say the violence is really rooted not in Methodist divisions but in local conflicts that predate the church split. Nigerian ministers Simon Jatutu and Yayuba Baziel Yoila cited an ongoing “chieftaincy dispute.” Chris Ritter, a GMC pastor and blogger, reported that the fight can be traced to a rice harvest. GMC bishop Scott Jones mentioned a multigenerational feud.

“There is great uncertainty about the facts of what happened this past Sunday in Nigeria, and we are cautioning individuals to hold lightly the various versions and accusations that are being shared on social media,” Jones said in an email sent to church members. “What we do know is that this conflict is based in a long-standing family feud of over seven decades that has been heightened by the process of disaffiliation in Nigeria.”

Whatever the original source, the Methodist division in Nigeria has stirred up great animosity. The two sides disagree over the legitimacy of the division, who really broke from whom, and the numbers that are part of the new Methodist denominations. GMC leaders say they have 600,000 to 700,000 people, with more joining every day. UMC leaders claim that only 60,000 to 200,000 left in July and that many of them were deceived and returned to the UMC as soon as they realized what was happening.

The sides disagree over the Nigerian UMC’s relationship to homosexuality, which remains a criminal offense in the West African country. A UMC regional conference recondemned homosexuality in December, despite the approval of same-sex marriage and out LGBTQ clergy at the UMC’s general conference held in the US in May. African UMC leaders say GMC leaders are spreading “disinformation” and slandering the UMC as a “gay church.”

Nigerian Methodists are also fighting over property. The dispute includes individual church buildings, denominational assets including the Taraba Methodist headquarters, and a government license to operate in Nigeria. Property ownership is complicated by layers of legal rules, including colonial-era laws, common law, case law, and the Land Use Act of 1978, passed by the legislature, assigning states the responsibility to hold all land in trust for the people.

Some of the property disputes are going to court. Some have led to physical clashes. Police intervened in an altercation in the capital of Abuja after a pastor said his church would remain with the UMC.

“I have never seen such a thing before in my life,” one church member told local reporters. “The fight was so serious that when the police came they did not stop until they fired tear gas.”

There have been other physical conflicts as well. Absalom Nuhu, a Global Methodist minister in Abuja, said he has evidence of two GMC ministers and five GMC buildings being attacked, as well as several ministers’ homes and district meetings. Nuhu blames local UMC leaders.

“They instigate violence more than anyone else,” he wrote. “They are aggrieved, very angry at us. So they fight and accuse us of fighting them.”

The Taraba government closed all Methodist churches in August, citing the need to “prevent a breakdown of law and order.” An official ordered all church signs removed until the dispute was settled.

Both UMC and GMC leaders have been pushing the government to settle it so the churches could reopen by Christmas.

The conflict escalated to violence before that could happen. Now Auta, the newly minted bishop, is returning to Nigeria to try to intervene before any more people die.

“We urge the Church to pray fervently,” the GMC bishops said in a joint statement, “for those suffering unspeakable loss, for justice to be brought to those responsible for such violence, and for peace to be restored.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

Theology

The Blood Cries Out at Christmastime

Brad East

Contributor

The 12 days of Christmas tell of martyrdom, pain, and sacrifice as much as life, joy, and salvation. This is no accident.

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

As the song says, there isn’t only one day of Christmas. There are 12. Christmastide lasts from December 25 through January 5, from the day we mark Christ’s birth until the eve of Epiphany, when we remember the visit of the Magi. These bookends are familiar, but in between, lesser-known events and people are celebrated in the liturgical calendar observed by many Christian traditions.

Some are obviously fitting, like the Feast of the Holy Family. Some are feast days like any other—say, John the apostle on December 27 or Pope Sylvester I on December 31.

A few days, though, might strike us as odd. December 26 is the Feast of Saint Stephen, the first martyr who was stoned for the faith. December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the babies of Bethlehem slaughtered by Herod in his attempt to kill a potential rival to the throne. And January 1, the eighth day of Christmas, celebrates the circumcision of Jesus.

Each of these ties bloodshed to Christmas—even the last one. This is not, however, how we usually mark the Christmas season, which is festive because it is a festival: a great party in honor of the birth of the King. Advent is for penitence; Christmas is for merriment (Matt. 9:15).

Yet there is a reason for the timing of these altogether bloody memorials. They are a stark reminder of the world into which Jesus was born, the world he was born to save. Even as we make merry, we will be less likely to trivialize the nativity of Christ when we remember that this child was born to die.

“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” of sins: so says Hebrews 9:22. Christmas may seem a long way from Calvary, but in truth it isn’t far at all. The Cross is already in view, whether for God (from eternity), for Scripture (as a narrative), or for us (who know the end of the story). Mary’s son is born to shed his blood for us. Even from the womb, this baby is bound for Joseph’s tomb. The circumstances of his birth and the saints honored during this season testify to that sobering truth.

Work backward with me through these three events: the stoning of Stephen (December 26), the slaughter of Bethlehem’s boys (December 28), and the circumcision of Jesus (January 1). I say “backward” because, although we are moving forward through the calendar, we are reversing the flow of the narrative: from Acts 7 (after Pentecost) to Matthew 2 (after Jesus turned two) to Luke 2 (when Jesus was just eight days old). By the end I hope the rationale will be clear.

The Blood of the Martyrs

The day after Christmas memorializes the first Christian martyr. His name and story may be familiar to many of us, but they are worth recalling to mind.

Quite soon after Pentecost the 12 apostles realize that they could not by themselves fulfill every duty necessary to maintain the growing Christian community. So they appoint Stephen and six other men to serve the nascent but growing assembly of faith in Jesus (Acts 6:1–6).

Already the young church has suffered opposition from without and within. Yet the number of Jesus’ disciples is “increasing,” expanding the circle of the young church (2:41–47; 4:4; 5:12–16; 6:7). Peter, John, and the other apostles have been placed in custody, thrown in prison, and beaten (4:3–7; 5:17–42), but no follower of the Way has yet been forced to follow it, as Jesus did, “to the end” (John 13:1). Until Stephen.

Stephen is a great debater. Wise and full of the Spirit, he engages in public disputations with fellow Jewish leaders and scholars (Acts 6:8–10). Angered by his speeches, false witnesses stir up trouble with rumor and gossip, and the high priest asks Stephen whether what they say is true (6:11–7:1). His answer is a sermon, and it proves to be his last. When he is finished, the mob is seething with rage. They drag him out of the city and stone him to death (7:54–60). A young man named Saul nods along in tacit approval (8:1).

Stephen is the first martyr for Christ, the proto-martyr and paradigm for all who would come after him. Why? And why remember him on the second day of Christmas?

We believers are meant to imitate Stephen because, in his life and death, Stephen imitates Christ. He boldly proclaims the word of God. He performs signs and wonders (6:8). His face shines with heavenly light (v. 15). Like Jesus, Stephen entrusts his soul to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (7:32), confident that he is the God not of the dead but of the living (Luke 20:37–38). Confident, that is, in the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16)—which is only another word for resurrection (2 Tim. 1:10).

Finally, like Jesus, Stephen consents to his own death. He doesn’t will it, but he allows it to happen. He does not fight back; he turns the other cheek (Matt. 5:38–48). He even petitions the Lord for this sin—the lynching of an innocent man—to be forgiven (Acts 7:60). Having learned this prayer from Jesus’ own lips (Luke 23:34), he takes another as his dying breath: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59; Luke 23:46). As Jesus prayed to the Father, so martyrs and disciples pray to Jesus, reigning in glory at the Father’s right hand.

A martyr is not only, as Stephen was, a believer who dies for the faith. A martyr is a witness to Christ. That is what the Greek word martys means, and it is why every Christian is called to it. Following the apostles, who were eyewitnesses to the Resurrection, all of us continue to testify to the risen Lord in word and deed, in life and death (Acts 1:8, 22; 2:32). Fittingly, Luke notes the presence of certain “witnesses” at Stephen’s stoning (7:58).

Understood in this larger way, martyrdom makes sense at Christmastide. We celebrate Christ’s coming not because he saves us from death but because he shows us how to die—how to have true life in this dying life. He is born to give us life abundant, which is eternal life (John 10:10). Yet even as we grasp hold of this life here and now, in our mortal bodies, we know we will not possess it in full until we are, like Jesus, beyond death. “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him” (Rom. 6:9).

So when we remember Stephen’s death on the day after we remember Jesus’ birth, we are, in effect, remembering our baptism: our death day and birth day at once. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (vv. 3–4). For “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit” (John 3:5).

Every birth calls forth death; the two are inseparable. Birth is bloody, and what is birthed is mortal. The birth of Jesus at Christmas thus points simultaneously to the death he will die to give us life; to the baptism that is our second birth, through union in his death; and to the final end of the whole fallen cycle in his resurrection, ascension, and return.

Stephen is the first of Christ’s innumerable seeds sown in the earth. In the words of Tertullian, born about a century after the deaths of Peter and Paul, “The blood of Christians is seed.” Or as the expression is more commonly known, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” In the economy of Christ, death begets life. Christmas cannot help but remind us of both.

The Blood of the Innocents

If at first glance Stephen is difficult to place in relation to Christmas, the slaughter of the Holy Innocents is far less so.

The story is straightforward: When men from the East tell Herod about the child “born king of the Jews” (Matt. 2:2), Herod conspires to murder Jesus before he can become a threat. Enraged that the Magi then “outwitted” him to conceal the baby’s location, Herod orders “all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old or under” to be killed (v. 16).

Through angelic intervention, Jesus escapes to Egypt with Joseph and Mary (vv. 13–15), but the lament of Rachel for her children cries out to God without consolation (v. 18). Only when Herod is himself dead does the holy family return from Egypt and settle in Nazareth (vv. 19–23), hometown of Mary (Luke 1:26–27) and now of the Messiah (Mark 6:1; John 1:46; 7:40–42).

Just as Stephen’s death replayed Jesus’ death, so Jesus’ birth replays Israel’s birth. Like Moses, he must be delivered from a tyrant’s mass infanticide (Ex. 1:8–2:10). Like Joseph, Rachel’s son (Gen. 30:22–24), he must seek protection from his own kin in the foreign land of Egypt (39:1–6). Like all the sons of Jacob, he must come out of Egypt and enter the land of Israel promised to Abraham (12:7; Hos. 11:1).

Every step is beset by danger, violence, and bloodshed, and nothing less than divine intervention is required to fulfill the Lord’s plan for his people’s salvation.

We remember the holy innocents, then, because they are the all-too-typical price that evil exacts when faced with the good purposes of God. We remember them because a world that murders children remains, somehow, the world that God loves—a world that does not lie beyond redemption, that needs the gospel of the child Christ more than ever. And we remember them in conjunction with Christ’s birth because, as believers’ prayers and songs have honored their sacrifice across the centuries, the holy innocents anticipate the once-for-all sacrifice on the cross. In the words of Ephrem the Syrian, composing hymns in the fourth century:

The babes were slain because of Your all-reviving birth.
But since the King, our Lord the Lord of the kingdom, was a slain [king],
slain hostages were given by that cunning tyrant.
The heavenly ranks received, clothed in the mysteries of His slaying,
the hostages whom earthly beings offered. Blessed is the King Who magnified them!

The Blood of Abraham’s Seed

On the eighth day of Christmas the church celebrates the circumcision of Christ. For Gentiles this is an odd thing to do; for moderns who relegate such procedures to the sterile corridors of hospitals and professionals, it is even odder.

Because so much of Christian history is weighed down by latent prejudice against the Jews, it is a wonder that, buried deep in the church’s memory, we have never forgotten the significance of this day. It is set on the eighth day of Christmas because God’s covenant with Abraham commands the circumcision of every Jewish male on the eighth day following his birth (Gen. 17:12). This is just what the Gospel of Luke records: “On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived” (2:21).

Circumcision anticipates baptism. Just as baptism is a new birth through death to the old self—a mortifying entrance into God’s covenant family—so circumcision wounds the flesh for the sake of covenant life with the Lord. It takes the symbolic measure of a man, his virility and power to beget earthly life, and cuts. It does not ask permission. It proclaims, through blood, that this child belongs to God because he is a child of Abraham, and he will be expected to live as one all the days of his life.

Thus God to Abraham: “My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant” (Gen. 17:13–14).

Jesus is circumcised because he is Mary’s son, and Mary is a daughter of Abraham. Jesus is a Jew, subject to Jewish law. But Jesus, we confess, is not just a Jew but the God of the Jews. He is the Jewish God made flesh. He is the author of the Law. He is the friend of Moses. He is the voice who called Abram out of Ur and made extravagant promises to him. He is the source of the command to circumcise.

In Jesus, therefore, Abraham’s God submits to his own covenant. The circumcising God is himself circumcised. As Ephrem puts it in another nativity hymn:

Behold on the eighth day as a babe
The Circumciser of all came to circumcision. …
The sign of Abraham was on His flesh.

This is a great mystery. It is one reason the church does not pass over the eighth day of Christmas as an uneventful episode in Jesus’ infancy but honors it with a feast.

A further reason is that this is the first drop of blood shed by the Savior. In the same way that Stephen and the holy innocents bookend the story of Jesus with martyrdom, so in his own flesh Jesus begins and ends his life by shedding his blood. It opens with a Jewish blade and closes with Roman nails. Jesus is scarred from the beginning—and as we learn from Thomas, his scars are healed but not erased in the Resurrection (John 20:19–29).

Paul teaches us that the offspring (or “seed”) of Abraham is singular, not plural, because the promises of God come to their head in Jesus, the Messiah of Israel and Savior of the nations (Gal. 3:1–4:7). This is the gospel proclaimed at Christmas in hymns like “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”:

Mild He lays His glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth;
Born to give them second birth.

As we sing with joy this Christmastide, let’s not forget the cost of this second birth. If we have ears to hear, the story of Jesus won’t let us forget it. Nor will the church’s calendar.

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

- More from Brad East

News

He Fled His Gaza Home. Now He Feeds His Fellow Displaced.

Heather M. Surls

Those still on the ground search for hope and wrestle with their faith as war rages on.

Displaced Palestinians travel on a cart in the southern Gaza Strip.

AFP / Getty

Because of the complex sociopolitical realities present in wartime Gaza, we are using protective pseudonyms for “Ayman” and other Gazans.

Read Christianity Today’s Tuesday piece on a Gaza Christian:

The toll of war is particularly evident in Jabalia, a city in northern Gaza under double siege: The east-west Netzarim Corridor of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) cuts Jabalia off from the south, and a military operation that began in October cuts it off from Gaza City.

As the IDF pursues Hamas operatives in Jabalia, explosions blow up entire residential blocks. A Jabalia resident, Ayman, has small children who sleep fitfully and run to him, terrified and shaken, when bombs fall. The smell of gunpowder causes their eyes to swell and makes breathing difficult. Ayman reported that people shot in the street bleed to death because others are afraid to venture out to help. Dogs gnaw on the corpses left behind.

Ayman’s family could move south, as the IDF commanded at the beginning of their operation—and Ayman said they will if soldiers get close to their apartment. Until then, he believes that staying in their home—already damaged by shelling—is the safest alternative. At the end of November, the Hamas-run Gazan health ministry claimed that 1,410 families in Gaza have been wiped from the Palestinian civil registry. They died in their homes and in shelters in designated “safe zones.” Israeli media note that the ministry does not distinguish between civilians and fighters.

In general, southern Gaza is quieter, though Palestinians there also face conditions that Husam, a Palestinian living in Khan Younis, describes as famine. Right before speaking with Christianity Today, he organized a meal distribution for an aid organization he has worked for this year. People crammed and jostled around enormous pots to receive portions of lentils prepared over wood fires. All around Gaza, people prepare meals this way, Husam said, using wood salvaged from smashed furniture and uprooted trees.

The number of aid deliveries entering Gaza plummeted in October, according to data published by Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories. While Israel blames international aid agencies for not delivering resources lined up at the border crossings, the agencies said armed gangs and ruined roads make deliveries near-impossible.

Husam and his family fled Khan Younis in January. They first spent four days in a school near their home amid sounds of tank shells, quadcopters, and machine guns. Next, they fled about seven miles south to Rafah, which was then a designated humanitarian safe zone, where they lived on the sandy Egyptian border in a plastic tent. In the winter, rainwater soaked their mattresses, and in the heat, Husam felt as if they were living in a greenhouse.

In Rafah, Husam began to partner with several organizations to distribute aid to fellow displaced Palestinians. Once, he was able to provide his neighbors with a chicken. Through the tent walls, he could hear them enjoying the first meat they’d eaten in a long time.

When he distributes aid, Husam said, “I’m at the peak of happiness. I forget the suffering of war, the scarcity of food and absence of security, and danger in every place. I get tears of joy helping people—I live like I’m on a mission for the Lord.”

In May, when the IDF began an offensive in Rafah, Husam’s family returned to Khan Younis, where they now live in a relative’s home. His days are mostly occupied with following the news and trying to find food for his family, searching social media groups to learn where food distributions will happen. His children, who have not been in school since the war began, stand in lines to get meals and clean drinking water and to power the family’s phones at a charging station. A 55-pound bag of flour, which used to cost $9.75, now runs more than $275.

After living under Hamas’s governance for 17 years, Husam’s opinions about the group are cool and distrustful. He said their policies don’t benefit the average Gazan, just those in their party. Under current conditions, he sees them take more than their fair share when aid is distributed. They use civilians as human shields. He even sees a correlation between concentrations of Hamas fighters and the locations of food distributions—a pairing that sometimes leads to IDF attacks on distribution sites.

Some accuse Israel of carrying out genocide—a charge Israel considers spurious considering the magnitude and intentionality of the Holocaust. Israel maintains that Hamas started the war and has used hospitals, schools, and apartments to shield its military bases, contributing to civilian casualties. Husam sees validity in both of these views: “If the question is whether genocide is being carried out, the answer is yes—but it is in partnership with Hamas.”

Still, Husam said his spirits run high, and he believes God is with him. Sometimes, he sits near his destroyed home and reflects. “When you see death with your own eyes and survive it, everything becomes easy after that,” he said. “One starts to say, ‘Thank God, we came out alive.’”

Meanwhile, in Gaza City, Fadi said he does not feel that he’s leading his own life. He said God gives him and Gaza’s other believers patience to endure. He is convinced that once a ceasefire is made, every Gazan will have mental illness, and a new kind of war will begin: one against unemployment, inflation, food scarcity, and severe housing shortages.

“There is nothing in our hands to do but pray, honestly, and live with the situation we’re in.”

- More from Heather M. Surls

Theology

A Messiah for a Messy World

Carmen Joy Imes

Contributor

Anna and Simeon remind us of what it looks like to wait on Jesus amid personal and political upheaval.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

Holidays have an uncanny way of exposing how messy our lives really are. The juggle of expectations from different family members, the tense conversations around politics or life choices, the pain of divorce or estrangement or death, the struggles of mental illness or the realization that a loved one is declining faster than we knew, the crush of extra events that fill the calendar—all these can leave us feeling breathless and broken.

But this year, I’m savoring the truth that life’s messiness is the optimal backdrop for the Christmas story. After all, isn’t the whole point that God sent his Son to earth to become one of us? To enter our strained families and renew our dashed hopes?

Not only did Jesus’ unconventional arrival complicate his family’s situation (initially threatening his mother’s safety and his father’s plans to marry her); he also arrived in the middle of a political scenario that was stretching the budgets and sanity of every Jewish family. But it’s precisely this climate that set the scene for the salvation Christ would eventually offer.

Aside from the holy family and the shepherds, the first people in Luke’s gospel to recognize that the Messiah had come were people who had spent years—decades even—longing for his arrival. The Gospels single out two people in particular: Simeon, a godly man from Jerusalem, and Anna, another prophet in the temple courts. Through their example, we see what it means to wait faithfully for Jesus amid life’s messiness, whether personal or political.

Anna and Simeon lived on the margins in a world controlled by Roman interests, which curtailed their freedom to live out their faith. Yet they both refused to buy into the imperial propaganda announcing that the Pax Romana, the “peace of Rome,” had come. Their discontent with the status quo drove them to the temple to pray and wait in hope for better days and a different king.

Worst of all, the rebuilt temple had never offered any proof of the presence of God. Unlike the tabernacle, which God’s glory filled (Ex. 40:34), and the temple of Solomon, where heavenly fire also came on the altar (2 Chron. 7:1), the rebuilt temple was a disappointment. At its dedication, there was no fire, no visible glory—nothing to signify that God dwelt there.

Yet Simeon and Anna both clung to the promise that God’s presence would be reestablished in their midst—and that yearning propelled them day after day.

Simeon’s most notable characteristics were that he was “waiting for the consolation of Israel” and that “the Holy Spirit was on him” (Luke 2:25). His singular focus was the restoration of his nation, which had been torn in two almost a thousand years before. That posture of longing made him a ready vehicle for God’s Spirit. Led by the Spirit, Simeon sought out the infant Jesus whose young family had come to the temple courts for ritual purification as torah-observant Jews. The Spirit revealed to Simeon that this was the child for whom he’d been waiting all his life!

Simeon held Jesus as he prayed and prophesied over him, blessing the family; and then he spoke directly to Mary: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (v. 34–35).

I wonder if Simeon addressed Mary specifically because he knew how deeply mothers feel the suffering of their children—and that she would bear the grief of public opposition and ultimately the loss of her son.

Either way, Simeon recognized not just the joy but also the pain that Christ’s coming would provoke. Yes, salvation and light and glory would come through this child, but also division. Because of Jesus’ role as a light, he would expose people’s inner thoughts and attract criticism. His coming would not instantly tidy up the mess but initially complicate things further.

Now we turn to Anna, whose life had been marked by grief ever since her husband died just seven years into her marriage. The text tells us nothing of her children, so it’s possible she was also barren. After decades of living as a widow, 84-year-old Anna spent night and day at the temple worshiping, fasting, and praying. It seems she had no desire to be anywhere else.

Luke also tells us in passing that Anna was from the tribe of Asher. This is remarkable because Asher was one of the northern tribes, settled along the coast of Phoenicia, that had been taken into exile by the Assyrians in 722 BC. Although the people of Judah eventually returned to the land, the northern tribes did not—at least not collectively. Most of them had lost their Israelite identity as they assimilated to the nations where the Assyrians scattered them.

So, the fact Anna knew her heritage and lived in Jerusalem tells us she was a notable exception to the rule. Clinging to her ancestry, Anna kept the covenant faith alive, praying fervently for God to establish his kingdom and return to the temple.

The fact that Anna’s life was marked by loss meant she had far less stock than others in preserving the status quo. That yearning helped her recognize the Messiah alongside Simeon, a fellow discontented believer. Simeon and Anna were among a faithful remnant of a broken nation, gathering at an empty shell of a temple and waiting for God to fulfill his promises of a king from David’s line who could reunite their people and lead them back to obedience to God.

Perhaps Anna’s presence was a sign to Simeon that all was not lost—that even the scattered northern tribes might one day return. Perhaps Simeon reassured Anna that she was not alone in her longing—that someone else refused to grow numb under imperial power. Their shared hopes overflowed in jubilant praise the moment they met Jesus. At last, they recognized the answer to their prayers and began proclaiming the good news of his arrival to all who would listen.

This year, when the empty place at your table ties a knot in your stomach or when things feel especially complicated personally or politically, remember this: Christmas reminds us that God sees our pain and has done something truly miraculous to bring about our healing.

To appreciate this truth, we first need to stare into the darkness and feel the full weight of the world’s brokenness. As theologian Fleming Rutledge writes, “Advent is the season that, when properly understood, does not flinch from the darkness that stalks us all in this world. Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light.”

Which is why, like Anna and Simeon, those of us who find ourselves in messy circumstances are often best positioned to welcome and recognize the promise of Jesus. All the hardest bits in life can increase our longing for Christ’s second coming—and our ability to see it for the great gift that it is: a day when all will finally be made whole.

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

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Books

Review

Studies of Religion Need the Corrective Lens of Social Science

Arthur E. Farnsley II

Sociology can help us see neglected drivers of religious beliefs. But it shouldn’t lose focus on the beliefs themselves.

Efe Ersoy / Pexels

You should read Religion for Realists: Why We All Need the Scientific Study of Religion. The author, sociologist Samuel Perry, will help you understand how social scientists think about religion. Most importantly, his work will improve how you think about religion too.

I come by this evaluation honestly. I have been a member of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion for 40 years and served as executive officer for 10 of those. I am certain social science supplies a lens on religious practice that corrects common misunderstandings about religion. This book clearly and concisely describes that lens and how to focus it.

Over the first decade of his career, Perry has written effectively on an impressive array of topics. It’s worth asking why he felt the need to champion the social-scientific perspective as a valuable tool for understanding religion. First, he is worried the most common mistaken assumptions about religion are not just untrue but actively dangerous. We are looking at the wrong things and failing to see what’s really happening, sometimes with very negative consequences. The first four chapters lay out the nature of the problem, offering three primary examples of the mistakes and their consequences.

Second, Perry is concerned that academia wrongheadedly dismisses the study of religion, either by ignoring it or actively resisting it. Chapters 5 and 6 make his argument that this should stop. To be honest, the first four chapters of this book will benefit people who want to know more about how religion works; the last two chapters are mostly insider baseball for professionals. They follow clearly from Chapters 1–4, but they shift the conversation from Perry explaining things for everyone to Perry pleading with, and sometimes admonishing, sociological colleagues.

The book is so clearly written that I could very nearly summarize it for you here, but the full argument is important enough to consider in full. Here’s the gist: Western understandings of religion have been defined by the Anglo-Protestant tradition. Those of us who have taught about world religions know this by heart. Students who grow up within this tradition imagine everything is about beliefs, sacred texts, ideas, and individual choice. It is a long, hard slog to help them realize, first, that not all religions are doctrine-based, and second, that even their own religions are less about doctrine than they think.

The three “argument” chapters follow this idea closely. Argument one: The Anglo-Protestant tradition holds up beliefs as the cognitive force in religion. In reality, religion is primarily shaped by social identity and norms.

I’m convinced Perry is right about this; I’ve written about it myself. When my students imagine that people choose from a menu of beliefs, I ask them, “Do you really think most people in Italy, Ireland, and Mexico looked at the menu and chose ‘Catholic’?” As Perry points out, this is the hardest nut to crack, and he goes after it with a hammer. (An aside: If Perry manages to get everyone to read Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, that alone was worth his time.)

Argument two: The Anglo-Protestant tradition proposes that ideas and doctrines drive growth or decline in religion. The truth is more mundane. Population dynamics drive religious growth and decline. By 2050, give or take, there will be as many Muslims in the world as Christians. Is this because Muslim ideas will vanquish Christian ideas? No. It’s because Muslims will have more kids and raise them to be Muslims.

Argument three: The Anglo-Protestant tradition suggests that individuals, and their obedience to their beliefs, are the principal agents of religious change. In fact, the real driver is social structure. This chapter gets the thickest. Those who aren’t social scientists may need to spend slightly more time here, but I can give you an overview.

Why did religious institutions in America become steadily less influential over the 20th century? Because the state got steadily more influential. Authority, power, charity, justice, access to resources—the state came to provide these things much more than religion did. How could religion not become structurally less important? (Given this, is it any wonder then that conservative religious believers tend to distrust the state, or that many people now polarize around politics the way they once polarized around religion?)

I will not go far into the chapters on academia here. Perry is right about the shoddy way that secular universities treat the study of religion. He notes that scholars who are personally religious are accused of “me-search,” studying things that are about themselves. These religious religion scholars are presumed to be conservative and, therefore, wrong.

Perry mentions that “me-search” is common and unproblematic in other research topics. I’d go much further and say personal experience is considered a sign of authenticity in racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual-identity studies, but not in religion. Or, put another way, white scholars are often not trusted to study Blackness, and straight scholars are often not trusted to study alternative modes of sexuality, but nonreligious scholars are more trusted to study religion.

On the whole, Religion for Realists deserves your close attention. But the book has two related problems, both of which stem from inadequate attention to broader intellectual trends shaping the study of religion.

The first problem arises from Perry’s description of the Western perception that religion is primarily about beliefs, which he terms a “folk understanding of religion.” This fits his argument. He wants the reader to “start thinking more in terms of unconscious bias and group loyalties than self-conscious beliefs; more about fertility rates, cohorts, and immigration than doctrines.”

Perry surely knows, but doesn’t acknowledge clearly enough, that this change is never going to happen.I first read this book on my flight to the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. There, I was surrounded by around 10,000 scholars, many of whom have dedicated their lives to more careful readings of Scripture, to literary analysis (however postmodern), to ethics, and to writing and rewriting history. All of that effort is about ideas, and none of it amounts to folk religion.

Perry is correct that other scholars don’t take religion seriously enough. Most sociologists will tell you that if you know ethnicity, race, social class, and gender roles, you can explain religion without referring to anything religious at all. Perry needs to come a little cleaner that this is not quite what he thinks. He is, after all, personally religious, as he discusses in the book.

In reality, the relationship between ideas and social structure is not an either/or proposition. The great sociologist Max Weber said that while the material causes and social structure are hugely important, ideas are the “switchmen” that track and guide human action. Perry wants to add the more materialist social-scientific perspective as a corrective to the mistaken view that ideas determine everything, but this corrective runs the risk of not taking the ideas seriously enough. It is true that people wrongly think religion is primarily about beliefs, but it is also true that religion, especially Western religion, really is about beliefs. A helpful corrective cannot become the sole alternative.

The second, related problem is that Perry frequently uses conservative religious believers as examples of people who grasp the social-scientific perspective on religion and deploy it to their own advantage. In his view, they intentionally tie religious culture and traditions to ethnicity, nationalism, and notions of “blood and soil.” He is, again, totally correct. He and his colleagues have done impressive work on Christian nationalism, for instance. After all, once modernity is underway, an individualizing social structure does not go easily back in its box. Pushing back in favor of tradition requires something hard and forceful, like authoritarianism.

I think Perry is right that the current authoritarian push is a reaction against certain changes in the social structure over the past 60 or 70 years. However, the problem is that it is disingenuous to accuse conservatives, even authoritarians, of having a conscious, informed plan to place society on their doctrinal track while neglecting to acknowledge that this track is at war with an equally conscious, informed plan to remove religious culture and ideas from the marketplace of human endeavors altogether.

It is no accident that the secular university is so opposed to studying religion. Antonio Gramsci, one of the most influential Marxists at the turn of the 20th century, proposed breaking the cultural hegemony of the ruling class by undermining its reigning ideologies in religion, among other spheres. In the 1960s, Rudi Dutschke called for a “long march through institutions,” with Marxist materialism working gradually through the state and public education to undermine traditionalist culture, including religion. What we are seeing now in liberal arts and social science departments is the success of this march.

There are authoritarians who use the same tactics as Marxists, consciously, to push back. But describing them as intentionally reactionary without noting what they are reacting against is simply inaccurate. I kept waiting for Perry to acknowledge the leftist tilt of sociology, but he is so committed to the discipline as a scientific enterprise that he talks about eliminating bias without acknowledging where the bias begins. All science must guard against bias, but sociology was invented to challenge traditionalist understandings of values and culture.

In the end, however, I believe Perry has done a great service by arguing persuasively for a social-scientific perspective to adjust and correct understandings of religion that focus too much on belief and doctrine. It is very important to see the social, material, and demographic factors that drive religious change. Seeing these factors will not convince a single reader of this review to regard ideas and beliefs as irrelevant to religion—and it shouldn’t. Western religion is about ideas and beliefs, but it is never only or even primarily about that.

To understand the world around us, we must see ideas and the social forces in constant, interlocking motion. And we must understand that the most effective change agents use ideas and social forces, sometimes consciously and intentionally, to nudge society in their preferred direction.

Arthur E. Farnsley II is research professor of religious studies at Indiana University Indianapolis. He is senior research fellow for The Center for the Study of Religion & American Culture.

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