Living Like a Monk in the Age of Fast Living

Lessons on intentional living from the modern monastic movement.

Illustration by Justin Horstmann

The most tasteful invitation to contemplative prayer I have ever experienced was in a garden next to a charming British mansion. Along a path meandering through flowers and shrubs a series of interactive spaces featuring signs with relevant Scripture passages and instructive prayer prompts—specifically designed to help the visitor process grief after loss.

In this garden, I am encouraged to sit on a bench and imagine a lost loved one in the empty seat next to me. I can sit in a rowboat near a stream and recall the stormy waters I have endured in life. I can pick up a stick from a pile, identify a concern or wound, and release it to God by tossing the stick into the stream. I can even download an app to play meditative music along my journey.

My wife, Cheri, and I visited this Remembering Garden at Waverley Abbey in Surry, England, founded by the Order of the Mustard Seed (OMS) community as part of their 24-7 Prayer initiative. We went there after attending and speaking at the New Monastic Roundtable in Switzerland in 2023, which is a global network of 20 different intentional Christian communities like OMS who are seeking to adapt ancient monastic principles and practices to enrich modern faith and life, including designing sacred public spaces for contemplative prayer.

I returned home filled with renewed appreciation for these and other fresh expressions of the ongoing new monastic movement. This movement was first introduced 20 years ago by the dreadlocked Shane Claiborne on the cover of Christianity Today. So I was more than surprised when, a few months ago, I heard a leader who runs in some of the same circles say casually, “The new monasticism is dead.”

While it’s true that traditional monasticism is declining in many historic Christian traditions, new monasticism—the contemporary reappropriation of monastic wisdom—is still very much alive. More than that, the movement is gaining a new and growing following among the next generation and is meeting universal human needs that are felt more now than ever.

In our global digital age, many Christians are rediscovering the importance of community, the value of rhythms and routines amid chaotic circumstances, and the need for deeper commitment to spiritual formation. Over the past five years alone, the pandemic, incidents of racial injustice, and the church abuse crisis have led to a wake-up call. We are realizing that it may be worth sacrificing modern comforts and conveniences to live out our highest ideals and potential as God’s people and that we may need to look back in order to go forward.

Some believers have been sensitive to these needs for a long time—people who consider themselves “new monastics” (like me), who are fascinated by the desert elders’ courage to relocate to abandoned places. We are intrigued by the idea of living in a close community and making serious commitments to fundamental values. We wonder if establishing communal rules for life might tame the wild horse of late modern culture and help us better order our lives around the gospel.

Today, this reappropriation is taking the form of devotional apps like Lectio 365, introductory virtual classes on contemplative prayer, repurposed convents in Europe, and prayer spaces in alleyways and financial districts. It looks like Christian university campus houses establishing their own rules of life or communal discipleship programs, and small “colleges” of Christian students attending larger universities. It is happening through globally dispersed organizations like OMS, which takes prospective members through stages of preparation and vow-taking in a digital initiation process modeled after traditional religious orders.

It’s worth noting that the term monasticism is more complex than our present usage suggests. For centuries, religious lawyers have debated distinctions between monks and friars, simple and solemn vows, religious and consecrated life, and so forth.

Once, when I was presenting a session for the American Academy of Religion conference, one responder simply said of the new monastics, “They are not monastic. They do not make vows of chastity.” End of discussion. It would probably be more appropriate to say we subscribe to “institutes of consecrated life,” but that term is rather obscure. The reason most people still use new monasticism is because it seems fitting for a movement eager to retrieve the practices and sentiments of a radically religious form of life.

Christians who are interested in monastic principles want to take up a distinct lifestyle that will help them mature in Christ. Some of us have found a need to fast, spend time away from social interaction, or meditate on our own sins before God. Like those who compete in the Olympic Games, or consecrated virgins, members of monastic orders go “into strict training”—not to run “aimlessly” but, as the apostle Paul writes, to “strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that … I myself will not be disqualified for the prize” (1 Cor. 9:24–27).

The technical word for this kind of activity is asceticism, but most talk about it in terms of formation. Author Trevin Wax wrote last year that spiritual formation—defined as “a total reworking of personal habits and spiritual disciplines” out of “allegiance to Jesus as Lord of all life”—is the fourth and most recent wave of influence shaping evangelical churches today.

Wax is on to something, as many of these next-generation expressions of new monasticism are keenly focused on spiritual formation.

For example, John Mark Comer, the author of the recently popular book Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did., has noted a “micro-resurgence” in the common monastic practice of adopting a rule of life as a way to live more intentionally and meaningfully.

Most religious orders are governed by rules of life, which define daily rhythms and devotional routines for the community and its individual members. Such statements usually consist of a clear vision, habits for prayerful self-reflection, and practical ways to maintain accountable relationships and care for one another.

The idea behind this is that we are all being shaped by a rule of life whether we realize it or not. So we can either conform to the social rules our culture sets for us or we can adopt an intentional vision that casts Christ’s lordship over every area of our lives, even in their most mundane aspects.

Such a goal can be accomplished without written rules, of course. I once visited one of the oldest monastic expressions in Christian history: the monastery of St. Antony in Egypt. The order there is not governed by a written rule—they had such well-established patterns that recorded regulations were deemed unnecessary. Nevertheless, for those of us without 1,500 years of accumulated wisdom or an unspoken culture of life, writing down a clear statement of our God-inspired aims can be helpful.

Jared Patrick Boyd, founder of the Order of the Common Life (OCL)—a “missional monastic order reimagining religious vocations for the 21st century”—affirms a communal rule of life that is summarized in four rhythms (bodily labor, prayer, study, and rest) and 12 commitments, including simplicity, hospitality, and service to the church.

Yet Boyd insists these are not merely devotional practices. “You can do spiritual disciplines all day long,” he told me in our interview, “but if it is not toward this particular theological understanding of the shape of the human soul and the work of God, then it does not really fit the tradition.”

OCL currently has five vowed members, but 65 novices are in process and another 45 postulants will begin in 2025. Its goal is training Christians—largely online through virtually dispersed groups—to become “spiritual mothers and fathers” in their own ordinary community settings, forming “evangelists for the love of God” in their churches and places of work.

A notable feature of monastic life, both then and now, is that members see themselves as constituting an alternative community. Both of these words—alternative and community—are crucial for our embodiment of the ancient Christian faith in our disconnected, frenetic lives and communities.

We live in a rapidly changing world, not least because of the technology that we live by, such that both community and alternative become hard to understand, let alone embody. “As we become more affluent, individualistic—we lose our aptitude for community and we do not know how to get it back,” said David Janzen of Reba Place Fellowship, a small but long-standing intentional Christian community.

Too often, spiritual formation is discussed in terms of individual growth in Christ, when that is only a small part of the story. Jesus and the New Testament writers make it clear that the Holy Spirit was given “to us” (Acts 15:8) and that the Christian life is meant to be a communal one (Rom. 12:5). That’s why most of Paul’s letters in the New Testament were written primarily to churches—because God’s plan has always been to prepare a people, a royal priesthood, the body of Christ, reigning with God forever (1 Pet. 2:9). Whether we like it or not, all of us exist in the context of a community—that is the soil in which we are each planted and growing.

Monastic thinking has always held up community as a primary agent, means, and aim of God’s work in our lives. Call it sharing life, koinonia (in Greek), or “thick community,” God intended us all for authentic fellowship. Yet this kind of community certainly doesn’t come about by accident.

Too many admirers of new monastic living “think that it will just happen in community, and it just doesn’t. It takes a tremendous amount of intentionality,” said Boyd of OCL. He told me of a meeting with a few leaders from the Vineyard USA movement in 2012, where they discussed two simple questions: “(1) Is there room in the Vineyard for a monastic expression? (2) If there is room, what might such an expression look like?”

Twelve years later, this expression looks like a charismatic, 21st-century recovery of the monastic ascetical (formation) tradition—for which Boyd’s recent book, Finding Freedom in Constraint: Reimagining Spiritual Disciplines as a Communal Way of Life, is a manifesto. And although the aim of OCL is to train Christians to be on mission in their own communities and is not primarily to start residential communal expressions, they are currently exploring what a 21st-century urban monastery might look like.

But new monasticism is not simply an embodiment of community. It is an expression of alternative community. What does it look like to love the world without losing oneself within it? What does it look like to be distinct from the world without being escapist or leaning too far into Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option of “seced[ing] culturally from the mainstream”?

Alternative communities today, whether virtual or face-to-face, demand that we define Christian identity in ways that are either cross-cultural, multicultural, or countercultural. They also require conversations about nurturing common life and about learning the balance between caring for one’s family and one’s community. They open up discussions about how we can respect both the introverts and extroverts in our midst and force us to invest in the neglected practice of resolving interpersonal conflict.

Intentional and communal living has also been accompanied by wholesale commitments to practice virtue. Lifelong vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are meant to combat some of the world’s age-old allures of money, sex, and power—and protect against the threats they pose to relationships within the community. And while modern monastic admirers may not carry on these vows in full, their traditions remain a vital source for inspiration and innovation.

For early Benedictines, a loving distinction from the world meant leaving their families to form semi-isolated cloisters—out of which they could offer charity to those in need. Today, that might look like sharing homes or incomes with others. For second-century virgins and 13th-century Beguines, chastity looked like renouncing the securities of earthly marriage for espousal to Christ. For “vocational singles” today, it may look like embracing celibacy out of reverence for Christ and in service to his kingdom.

We may not share all our income in a residential community, but we can choose to spend less and to share the rest in a common cash-sharing app, funneling funds to invest in local needs. We may not move into a cloister and recite the divine office seven times a day, but we might join a virtual group of partners to pray together daily and share self-examining reflections monthly.

We may not renounce our employment and income, but we could choose to work part-time and spend the rest of our time serving in our churches or the community. We may not choose absolute obedience to an abbess or abbot, but we might want to explore the problems and possibilities of church authority and structure and invest more deeply in a humble submission to Christ’s body.

The point in all of this is that we must learn to see commitment to these principles as simply taking the next appropriate step in the context of a loving, trusting relationship with God and others.

I dream of future monastics designing tools and spaces for 21st-century communities and individuals that creatively integrate Christian asceticism with new monastic impulses—all with the goal of meeting acute felt needs of our age and culture and facilitating the deep internal work necessary to increase our Christlikeness.

The classic collection of essays edited by The Rutba House, School(s) for Conversion: 12 Marks of a New Monasticism, lists creation care, peacemaking, sharing economic resources, and lament for racial division and active pursuit of just reconciliation as among the top marks of a new monastic way of life. Even though the New Testament speaks explicitly on such issues, these aspects have often been neglected in manuals of spiritual disciplines and formation programs until recently.

For some of us, this might look like healing our loneliness or rejection by family, friends, or society at large. For others, it means acknowledging before God what Howard Thurman calls the “hounds of hell”: our fear, hypocrisy, and hatred. Likewise, many of us need to examine and unpack the invisible racial, patriarchal, ecological, or classist backpacks we are carrying.

One of the first and simplest ways we can do this work is through our prayer life—one of the most familiar marks of monastics. Our prayers are the soil from which the entire flower of monastic life grows. Do we care for the earth and its future? It must be voiced in our prayers. Do we hate the divisions of our time? We lift our lament to the Lord. Do we want to forgive those who have wounded us? We start by airing our grievances to God. This is what prayer rooms and prayer walks are all about.

I also think future new monastics will be invested in deeper and more tangible expressions of worship. The words, structure, and spaces of our gatherings (whether liturgical or charismatic) all proclaim our faith. I long for new monastics to build more chapels and prayer gardens in busy downtowns, in tent cities, or in isolated rural hamlets. This is part of what it means to both demonstrate a commitment to a contemplative life and to offer hospitality to strangers.

As always, the form isn’t nearly as important as the heart behind it. One passion in my own work is to encourage future monastic efforts to lay aside any sense of elitism and offer steps that make “institutes of consecrated life” available and accessible to all—facilitating opportunities to experience “Community 101” via spiritual formation apps, creative sacred spaces, and guided contemplation.

We must remember that retrieving something from the past and bringing it into the present for the sake of a hoped-for future is not a science but an art. And as with any art, we cultivate modern forms of ancient principles by finding our way through the unknown—a process that can take generations.

Yet I am encouraged that we are well on our way. What I hear again and again in my conversations with leaders and followers alike is that there is a deep longing to live out the life and teachings of Christ more explicitly in our present generation. At its best, this desire is neither an expression of elitism nor an unrealistic expectation for the whole church but is rather a simple longing to make ourselves wholly available to God.

As I sat on the verdant lawn of Waverley Abbey during my visit to the Remembering Garden, I wondered if the Order of the Mustard Seed could truly keep their idyllic vision of a globally dispersed network alive—with a viral prayer app, 34 houses of prayer, 6 residential communities, nearly 1,000 members, and many other aspirations. What if all of it collapses under the pressures of finances, institutionalization, or even ordinary interpersonal conflict? It’s not that I had any secret suspicions about it in particular—I have just seen it happen to community initiatives like it many times before.

Then I remembered the words of Tim Otto from Church of the Sojourners in San Francisco when he spoke at the New Monastic Roundtable: “The church anywhere is always on the verge of failing.” Yet God’s movement in and through his church is always bigger than our perennial failures, and even the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Evan B. Howard is the founder and director of Spirituality Shoppe: A Center for the Study of Christian Spirituality. He is a retired professor from Fuller Theological Seminary; the author of Deep and Wide: Reflections on Socio-Political Engagement, Monasticism(s), and the Christian Life; and a friend of many new monastic communities.

This article appeared in the January/February 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Holy Habits".

- More from Evan B. Howard

Culture

An Andraé Crouch Song Has Kept Me From Sin

Maina Mwaura

The gospel great earned plenty of awards and accolades. His legacy also had quieter impacts on individual believers like me.

Rob Verhorst / Contributor / Getty

This month marks ten years since the death of singer, songwriter, and pastor Andraé Crouch. He was nominated for 20 Grammy Awards, winning 7, and 4 Dove Awards; his musical career produced hits like “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” and his all-time smash “My Tribute (To God be the Glory).” From the time he wrote his first gospel song at the age of 14, he’d lead a life that few Black men born in his time could access.

Many gospel and contemporary Christian music artists today recognize Crouch as the father of modern gospel music. When I asked a few to reflect on his legacy, they sang his praises. Kirk Franklin called him “more than a trailblazer. … His music taught me that worship could be boundless, weaving powerful testimony with unmatched artistry.” Amy Grant described Crouch’s music as an “honest, ongoing conversation with God.” Gospel singer Kierra Sheard said, “Crouch showed us artists that we don’t have to dummy down our creativity or revelation.”

But on this anniversary of Crouch’s death, I’m not just thinking about his impact on the music industry—his work with artists like Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson; his composition for The Color Purple; his arrangements for The Lion King. I’m also thinking about what his legacy has meant to me.

For the first eight years of my life, I grew up in the Greek Orthodox Church, and I can’t remember much music being part of my routine as an altar boy. When my mom made the decision that my sister and I would start attending the big Baptist church down the street, I noticed the songs right away.

One Sunday, Andraé Crouch came to perform, belting out “My Tribute” from a baby grand piano on a platform. As a Black boy in a mostly white church, seeing a person who looked like me was rare. His performance resonated with the audience—and with me. Though I still can’t carry a tune, this was the beginning of my love for worship music.

Crouch was deeply formed by the Black church. His father led a Church of God in Christ congregation, which Crouch’s twin, Sandra, a gospel great in her own right, ultimately took over.

But his music wasn’t just for Black people; it was for all people. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Crouch was breaking barriers by being on the stage at First Baptist Orlando. He helped open the door for others who looked like him to be on the stage.

My family would end up joining First Baptist; in fact, my mom has been a member there for the past 42 years, and it’s now one of the most diverse churches in the country. (She recently told me she wants “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” sung at her funeral, when it’s time for her to go home to heaven.)

Last week, on a trip back to Orlando, I walked through the halls of church, recalling some of the places where God has showed up in my life. One of those places was the youth choir room, singing “Jesus Is the Answer” as a middle schooler just trying to fit in. My favorite Crouch song has kept me from sin; it has come to mind when I’ve wanted to go astray. “Jesus Is the Answer” is still my anchor in a world that feels even darker than it was when I was 13.

I’m connected to Andraé Crouch not only through his music but also through a particular believer whose life he impacted. It turns out that my youth worship pastor at First Baptist, Byron Cutrer, had spent some time with Crouch in college, watching him write rhymes on a legal pad as he crafted his songs. As my worship pastor struggled to discern next steps as a student confused about what was next, Crouch offered encouragement: “Be who God wants you to be, and you will do what God wants you to do.”

This quote is now on my wall. Crouch’s ministry flowed through my pastor and in turn flowed through me, teaching me how to worship God. So it is in the church: Legacy is never just Grammys or Dove Awards, public accolades and successes. It’s the quiet work of believers building up fellow believers, words of encouragement and comfort, daily witness.

As we reflect on Crouch’s legacy, I believe that he took his own advice; he was who God wanted him to be. He did what God wanted him to do, paying tribute to the one he knew he was singing to.

Maina Mwaura is a journalist and the author of The Influential Mentor: How The Life and Legacy of Howard Hendricks Equipped and Inspired a Generation of Leaders.

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Skeptical Conversations About Converted Skeptics

Kate Lucky

And other responses to our September/October issue.

Edits by Abigail Erickson

More secular thinkers are turning to Christianity, wrote Nathan Guy in “Some of Christianity’s Biggest Skeptics Are Becoming Vocal Converts.” He asked, “How do we distinguish between those who have fully accepted the truth and those who have adopted the faith as a sociopolitical tool or cultural accessory?”

Our readers offered answers on social media. “By their fruits, of course,” wrote one person on X. An Instagram user added, “I’m okay with asking, ‘Is their faith merely intellectual?’ as long as we also ask, ‘Is so-and-so’s faith merely prayerful?’ or ‘Is so-and-so’s faith merely experiential?’ We have to stop pretending an intellectual pursuit of God is somehow inferior to any other pursuit of him.”

Other readers questioned these conversions’ significance. “It seems like a lot of the former atheists who are coming over are doing so for the culture war—they prefer ‘traditional’ values,” said a reader on Instagram. Another found it “unlikely that these three individuals [A. N. Wilson, Tom Holland, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali] are examples of a greater trend.” Even if they were, “the validity of theism doesn’t rest on how many people endorse it or find it somehow more appealing than atheism.” Whether or not a few notable converts reflect a broader shift, Christians always ought to be ready to give the reason for the hope that they have.

Kate Lucky, senior editor, engagement & culture

The Uneasy Conscience of Christian Nationalism

If you truly want to be big tent, why not have an article from both sides of the evangelical political spectrum? CT could have just as easily featured an article on “The Uneasy Conscience of the Christian Left” or “The Soul of Evangelicals for Harris.” I canceled my subscription to the Christian Century long ago. I don’t want to cancel my subscription to Christianity Today.

Gene Frost, West Chicago, IL

A Dating App Dilemma at Church

The only thing I would have added to Kevin Antlitz’s response is that maybe this little boy had a mental illness that cannot be helped. What would other parents do in a situation where your child cannot act “normal”? It’s an impossible ask for people who are not familiar with mental illness and the pain and suffering that goes with it.

Claudia Davidson, Bothell, WA

The Soul of MAGA

I am suspicious that Americans’ love of television gave rise to Trump’s current mythos. It seems the most clear motivation is the desire to be seen and heard in a society that his supporters feel has excluded them.

Johnny Nickel, Birmingham, AL

A Vision for Repair

The Catholic church near my home runs a monthly repair café where skilled professionals and gifted amateur craftsmen and craftswomen will fix and repair almost anything, from old vacuum cleaners to laptops. You can sit and enjoy coffee and cake while the work takes place. The youngest repairer is 16; the oldest over 80. But the major issue [in society] is “How do we repair the breaks caused by conflict on social media?” With algorithms giving us views like our own, it’s easy to go down some very deep rabbit holes where the light of reason is never seen.

David Parish, London, UK

Making Space for ‘Yearners’

If you look at a herd of animals, there are animals in the center completely surrounded and protected, and there are animals on the edge. The ones in the center don’t come in contact with what is outside the herd; the ones on the edges do. “Edge people” are the ones evaluating and negotiating those outside and inside the herd. They are in contact with both. Evangelicalism wants them to become insiders. But maybe they are doing and being exactly what they need to do and be. Maybe orthodoxy is the museum of Christianity, and it is absolutely necessary and valuable. But maybe we need other ways of being and thinking too. Luther was a heretic. Jesus was a heretic to many Jews. Yearners implies they would be better off to move to the center of the herd. Maybe not.

Patricia Hunt, Staunton, VA

Calling Is More Than Your Job

I felt Steven Zhou’s response omitted the most relevant question: Should Christians be seeking a vocational calling at all? The idea that God specifically calls each believer to a career (or a spouse, a college, etc.) is not well supported by Scripture and, as Zhou articulates, often leads to disappointment and frustration. Instead of stretching the idea of a vocational call to make it fit reality, we should instead pursue with wisdom the faithfulness in our work to which all believers are called.

Justin Myers, Alexandria, VA

The Man Who Made Global Methodism Possible

While I appreciate that theologically CT has more affinity to the GMC, as a lifelong member of the UMC I would have appreciated at least some representation of the alternative views readily available about the conduct of the WCA and Mr. Boyette during the separation process. There are two sides to the story. Instead, we got a hagiographic depiction of him and the nascent GMC. I recognize that I am not unbiased in this matter, but to anyone truly familiar with all of the difficult back-and-forth during this denominational split, this article was astoundingly biased. The descriptor puff piece seems apt.

Tim Griffy, Richardson, TX

- More from Kate Lucky

News

A Christian and a Shiite Confront Loss in Lebanon

Jayson Casper

With many displaced by the war between Israel and Hezbollah, a believer wrestles with the challenge of coexistence.

Children inspect the destroyed buildings after an Israeli attack in Lebanon.

Anadolu / Getty

In early October, in a Christian village in southern Lebanon, “Samira” (we’re using pseudonyms due to the political situation) decided to water her lemon trees. The autumn winds were dry this season. Rain was less frequent. The frail, hunched-over grandmother filled her bucket and went outside.

Samira’s husband had died two years earlier. Her children had long ago moved away, seeking better opportunities in Beirut, but her daughter owned the house next door and made frequent trips back, recently refurnishing the interior with modern decor. Samira loved the home’s colorful bedspreads in the rooms where her great-grandchildren often stayed.

But such visits were infrequent these days. A year earlier, Hezbollah had entered the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza by shooting missiles into Israel. Israel had pushed back, and the exchange of fire between the Shiite militia and Israel drove thousands from their homes on both sides of the border. And in late September, Israel increased its bombing campaign against suspected Hezbollah sites throughout the country. Nevertheless, Samira had remained, adamant that her Christian village was not a target.

Samira had just begun watering her lemon trees when everything went black. A thunderous peal roared through the village and a blunt force of air shoved her backward. An Israeli rocket had struck a home three houses down. A Shiite family from a neighboring village had rented the vacant house only a few days prior.

When she came to her senses, Samira wiped away the dirt that covered her face. The tree had shielded her from the worst of the blow, and she stumbled back inside over glass shards from her broken windows. She struggled to breathe.

Through a cracked and fallen mirror, Samira realized that white dust coated her head to foot. The impact had knocked her curtains onto the floor and blown her cabinets off the walls, spilling their contents everywhere. After locating a bag of medicine, she went next door. Her son-in-law was in town, unhurt—but the attack had also badly damaged the home. She has since relocated to Beirut.

Meanwhile, the displacement of Shiites from the south has led to interactions that have astounded many Lebanese Christians. “Janette,” a Christian medical professional, visited a government shelter at the public school across from her home in Beirut. The groundskeeper motioned her toward a middle-aged mother wearing a black chador whose husband had just died in the war. Janette approached to offer her condolences but was immediately rebuffed.

“Do not console me—congratulate me,” the widow replied. “My husband is now in heaven, a martyr for his faith. If only my son will be similarly blessed.”

Janette staggered but recovered from her shock to politely end the exchange. She had Muslim friends, including Shiites, in her middle-class and largely secular social circle. Though aware of Hezbollah’s convictions, she had never heard anyone talk this way before. “We have completely different mindsets,” she said. “How can we share a country together?”

Before France assumed mandatory authority over Lebanon after World War I, the Ottoman Empire controlled the area, which was sometimes considered part of Syria. Since Lebanon gained its independence in 1943, the country has navigated civil war and sectarian politics as it managed its religious diversity in pursuit of national identity.

Next on the agenda is the election of a president by the national parliament. By political custom, the head of state must be a Maronite Christian, but Hezbollah-aligned parties have kept the position vacant for over two years, insisting on a candidate agreeable to their agenda. The next parliamentary vote—several have failed previously—is scheduled for January 9.

- More from Jayson Casper

Culture

A Bible Prof Listens to Taylor Swift

Madison Pierce

The artist sings about sin, angels, and a stone rolled away, but her Christian imagery doesn’t always land.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

Savvy New Testament readers pay attention when its authors interpret Scripture—the texts that Christians call the “Old Testament.” Why does the author of Hebrews think this passage should be referenced here? Why does Paul use this quotation in a way that seems strange? These questions lead us to deeper appreciation of the Bible’s unity and power.

Although the implications are by no means the same, similar questions can be asked with respect to any artist who references the Christian tradition. Why does this novel include biblical allusions? Why the cruciform figures in this painting? And why is Taylor Swift singing about “rolling the stone” away?

Arguably the most successful artist of our time, Taylor Swift has produced a corpus full of Christian imagery—with mentions of “burning flames or paradise” (“Style,” 1989) and “falling from grace” (“Don’t Blame Me,” Reputation, and “Castles Crumbling,” Speak Now [Taylor’s Version]). In her songs, “what died didn’t stay dead” (“Marjorie,” Evermore); a suitor calls himself a “Good Samaritan” (“The Manuscript, TTPD); “devils roll the dice” and “angels roll their eyes” (“Cruel Summer,” Lover). In “Soon You’ll Get Better” (Lover), reflecting on her parents’ cancer diagnoses, Swift speaks to their medications: “Holy orange bottles, each night I pray to you.”

Swift’s most recent album is no exception. The Tortured Poets Department narrates breaks with friends and significant others—but perhaps also a “break” with organized religion (see, especially, “But Daddy I Love Him”: “God save the most judgmental creeps / Who say they want what’s best for me / Sanctimoniously performing soliloquies I’ll never see”).

In “I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can),” Swift sings, “Come close I’ll show you heaven / If you’ll be an angel all night.” In “loml,” she calls the man she’s speaking to “Holy Ghost.” Her lyrics cite liquor that anoints (“The Albatross”) and demons that need to be exorcized (“The Black Dog”).

One could argue that words like angel and paradise are simply part of our cultural vocabulary, so quotidian as to be spiritually meaningless. Who hasn’t described a particularly excellent dessert (or a great piece of music, for that matter) as “heavenly”?

But even allusions that don’t explicitly or intentionally refer back to a particular Bible story or verse are worth examining. The questions these references raise are worth asking.

For instance: What does it mean that Christian concepts often appear as romantic metaphors in Taylor Swift’s music? Again and again, Swift defines romantic love as “sacred.” “Holy Ground” (Red) is framed around an idea from Exodus 3:5: “And right there where we stood / Was holy ground.” In “Guilty as Sin?” (TTPD), Swift wonders: “What if the way you hold me / Is actually what’s holy?” In “False God” (Lover), Swift finds “religion in [his] lips”; the “altar is [her] hips.” The two lovers “make confessions” and “[beg] for forgiveness” while drinking wine. This Eucharistic reference is more sophisticated than Swift’s other allusions; confession precedes approaching the table. But—and this is a big “but”—her ascension is not to God, but instead to a transcendent moment with her partner.

Like Swift’s prayers to pill bottles, these images may make us uneasy. The idea that sexual gratification offers a glimpse of something “divine” is a distortion of Christian theology. The sense that sex could be the key to fulfillment obscures the path toward joy in communion with God.

But Swift’s reliance on religious imagery here is worth a second look. We say that America is becoming post-Christian—but Swift, at least, seems to think that religious language is still resonant for her listeners. “Holiness” remains one of the most powerful concepts she can access to impress upon us the seriousness of her feelings. She may be mislocating “sacredness,” but sacredness itself, that sense of being set apart, is still a real category for her and for her fans.

So too are the categories of “sin” and “punishment,” those distinctions between heaven and hell, grace and the Fall, that she so often draws upon in her work. In “The Prophecy” (TTPD), for example, she refers to Genesis 3:

And it was written
I got cursed like Eve got bitten
Oh, was it punishment?

Like our foremother Eve, Swift perceives herself as cursed—perhaps even persecuted. Thus, another set of her references, drawn from the Gospels, inspires another question: How does Taylor Swift connect to the story of Jesus?

Elsewhere on TTPD, speaking to a former partner, Swift sings, “I would’ve died for your sins” (“The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived”; see also “False God”). Out of context, this line might seem offensive. How dare Swift imply that she can atone for our transgressions! But her intention isn’t to imply that she’s the Messiah. Her self-sacrifice ends in tragedy, not resurrection. She’s expressing the extent of her devotion, however foolish.

I don’t think Swift has a savior complex. But I do think she identifies with the pain and suffering of Jesus, even seeing herself at the mercy of mobs. From “Castles Crumbling”:

People look at me like I’m a monster
Now they’re screaming at the palace front gates, used to chant my name
Now they’re screaming that they hate me
Never wanted you to hate me

In this possible allusion to the triumphal entry, we hear Swift’s warning: Sure, one day they’re crying out “Hosanna” or belting “Love Story,” but it doesn’t last. “What if I roll the stone away? / They’re gonna crucify me anyway,” she laments on “Guilty as Sin.” She, like Jesus, couldn’t do anything (even perform miracles!)without being criticized.

Similar themes appear in “Cassandra” (TTPD). Swift draws upon the Greek mythology of the titular character, even as her lyrics call to mind the story of the woman (allegedly) caught in adultery: “When the first stone’s thrown, they’re screaming / In the streets, there’s a raging riot.” The accused woman’s story paired with Cassandra’s (who was assaulted and later murdered) converge in a narrative that we know all too well: A gifted woman is disregarded, exploited, then deemed “the problem.” Swift’s decision to reference a story in which Jesus provides hard-won empathy to an abused woman is meaningful. This is good theology; Jesus stands with us in our pain.

Throughout her work, Swift uses the New Testament, and the story of Jesus in particular, to understand her own experiences of public suffering. In this, she provides a model to Christians in their own difficult seasons. We too must “fix our eyes on Jesus” (Heb. 12:2, CEB). That said, “righteous” suffering, as Christians understand it, results from injustice, from a dedication to the gospel. Swift does considerable advocacy work; her music gives language to many in pain. But she is by no means grounding that work in a commitment to God.

This raises one more question: How, then, should Christians interact with the language of our faith that appears in the Corpus Swifticum?

It’s worth remembering that Taylor Swift is writing poetry. She isn’t literally praying to pill bottles. She uses figurative images to communicate what is sacred to her, what merits devotion, what is transcendent and powerful. This is theology in a broad sense—insofar as the concepts of worship and holiness are properly connected with God—though I don’t think Swift is consciously articulating her beliefs through these lyrics. For all that she wears on her sleeve, and in spite of a song like “But Daddy, I Love Him,” that card now stays close to her chest.

Even so, whether she realizes it or not, Swift becomes a biblical interpreter when she engages with the rolled stone and Eve’s punishment, an altar and the Holy Ghost. We have to take seriously the indirect communication that appears in her references. What we see when we take them seriously is that Miss Americana herself often misuses and misapplies Scripture; her lyrics often reflect misunderstandings of God.

Even so, Swift sees many things quite clearly. Many of her songs reflect the value of friendship and the beauty of creation. She calls for justice and offers the oppressed a voice. She gives acceptance to young women battered by harmful messages about their bodies and their societal worth—messages that have too often come from the church.

So to answer Swift’s question, “Who’s afraid of little old me?” Not me. And I encourage you not to be either. No, every Taylor Swift lyric is not holy. But many of her lyrics offer something valuable—not least a glimpse of God from another vantage point.

Madison N. Pierce is an associate professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary and the author of Divine Discourse in the Epistle to the Hebrews.

- More from Madison Pierce

Testimony

My Drug Kingdom Collapsed. Then My Savior Found Me.

Herman Mendoza

Disillusioned by my life of crime and excess, I walked into a prison chapel. I came out a new man.

Photography by Corrie Aune for Christianity Today

In 1998, I found myself in a prison chapel. I had been in a chapel like this before, to coldly negotiate with a God I barely trusted, but there was something different this time.

I was jittery as I sat down and looked around at the other inmates singing unfamiliar songs. Instead of joining them, I let my mind drift back to all the things that had gone wrong in my life. It was an extensive list. I was a drug lord at the end of my rope.

The singing ended, and the preacher got up behind a makeshift pulpit. As he read Psalm 139, something inside me began to shift. O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. The words broke through the miserable fog in my brain and birthed an unexpected sense of peace.

It was the first time I had ever known such peace. And it would change my life.

I grew up as the youngest of five boys in an immigrant family. My parents had made their way from the Dominican Republic to the United States in 1965 after the assassination of President Rafael Trujillo.

Raising five boys was sometimes overwhelming for my parents as they worked constantly to meet the demands of life in New York City, especially with a language barrier. My mom, a practicing Catholic, and my father, a Protestant, tried to instill Christian values in us rowdy boys, and I attended church at an early age. But I only understood Christianity superficially at that time.

In the early ’70s when I was a teenager, I thought if I could dress and act a certain way, I’d be accepted by the other kids in the diverse neighborhood of Queens where I lived. Things took a bad turn, though, when I started fighting with other kids and experimenting with marijuana and other drugs.

My brother Emilio was in a gang, and I admired his emblemed jacket, his cool sense of belonging and power. I wanted to be like him. So when I was 13, I joined a gang too. There were thrilling moments but also terrible ones—like the day I witnessed my gang leader get shot and killed. But it wasn’t enough to turn me away completely, and before long, I landed in juvenile detention for robbery.

In high school, I thought I had changed my ways after meeting Alexandra, the girl who would become my wife. We eventually married and had our first child, but we were buried under financial problems. I began thinking that if I connected with Emilio, who was then involved in drug distribution, I could make things right at home.

And so I began to immerse myself in the ins and outs of drug trafficking. I eventually oversaw the whole eastern seaboard. Millions of dollars passed through my hands. I became a drug baron, living in luxury and excess, glutted on parties, mansions, celebrities, women.

Our financial problems were gone, but now there were other troubles. For one, I was always looking behind my back with apprehension. Would I get caught?

My fears were realized in 1996. Police arrested me and seized $3.8 million worth of cocaine, and my drug kingdom collapsed.

After much negotiating, my attorneys were able to reduce my life sentence. One day while in prison, I went to the chapel, thinking I could also negotiate with God to further intervene in my case. I was used to working things so that I’d have my way. I bargained with God, saying if he allowed me to be released earlier, I wouldn’t drink alcohol for six months. There were no words of repentance or a desire to seek him—it was pure selfishness, a transaction. Still, God heard my prayer. I was released from prison after only a year and a half.

That summer, I ran into an old acquaintance at a local bar. He turned out to be the second-in-command of a large cocaine distribution network for which Emilio also worked. We started talking, and the acquaintance offered me millions of dollars in cocaine if I wanted in.

My heart raced, thinking of the riches I could once again possess. The Bible says in Proverbs that as a dog returns to its vomit, so do fools return to their folly (26:11). In the same way, I accepted the offer and was once again involved in distribution.

But it’s not only dogs that return to messes. God does too.

That fall, I was arrested again, along with my brother Emilio, by the US Drug Enforcement Administration. I faced 18–25 years of incarceration in federal prison.

Shortly after, I was released on bail—but failed to report to my court appearance and became a fugitive. My life felt empty and void, and the little I knew about God seemed to fade. I felt the only recourse I had was to party all night and forget about my woes and worries. Though I wasn’t physically imprisoned, I felt trapped.

One night after getting drunk, I went home, knowing that would be the first place the cops would look for me. I was tired of being a fugitive, and the police found me in the morning. On my way to jail, I asked them to open the back door so I could end my life.

Little did I know that my brother Emilio, who had been in prison this whole time, had surrendered his life to Jesus at a chapel service. He had also prayed to God, pleading, “Lord, send my brother to the same facility where I am housed. I want him to know you as Lord and Savior.”

God answered that prayer. When I arrived at the facility, I was sent to the same housing unit as my brother. Emilio praised God when he saw me, but I responded by looking at him with indifference.

As the months passed, I grew increasingly depressed. My wife had left me, my friends had abandoned me, and I was desperate for a way out. But Emilio refused to let me wallow in self-pity. One night, he said, “Come to the service with me. God can help you through this.”

I shrugged. I needed help from something or someone. Why not God? I had once trusted God, however imperfectly, to get me out of jail. Even though I had strayed far from him since then, maybe this time he could do something about the ache inside me that wouldn’t go away.

And so I found myself in the prison chapel once again.

The preacher explained that whatever had landed us in prison was a result of sin and that God wanted to give us peace and salvation. He quoted Romans 5:8: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He said, “Christ wants to meet you right now.”

It was as if his words were meant just for me. I couldn’t help but reflect on all the things I had done or experienced in my life and where they had led me—prison, literally and figuratively. Even if I escaped from prison, I could never escape the prison of my past. Just as that thought formed in my mind, the preacher said, “God has a way out for you.”

My heart pounded hard in my chest. Did God tell him to say that?

The preacher continued, “God wants you to know that he can fill that void. Christ can make you a new person.” The fog cleared in my mind. When the preacher invited us to come and pray, I walked to the front of the chapel and fell to my knees, sobbing.

The weight of my sins and their far-reaching consequences hit me. I thought about all the people I had wronged, the lives wrecked by addiction, my broken family. I said, “God, forgive me.” As the words tumbled out, a warmth enveloped me. It felt as if God had physically reached inside me, taking out all the guilt and shame, all the dark deeds, and filled that space with light. He had answered my prayers and saved me when I least deserved it.

I became a new man. I realized that all the drugs, alcohol, and wealth couldn’t compare to the immense love and peace of God. All I wanted was more of God, more of Jesus. Even though I was still in a physical prison, I was spiritually free in my mind, body, and soul. Praise the Lord!

Things were still hard, though, especially when it came to my marriage with Alexandra. After many months of sending letters to her and of my parents trying to intervene on my behalf, God stepped in. I remember fasting and praying for my wife for three days. On the third day, God answered my prayers yet again: She came to see me.

My wife wanted a divorce. But I shared about the hope within me and said that Jesus could give her the same experience of true freedom. I went on to tell her that even if she left me, Jesus loved her, and that all I wanted for her was salvation.

Alexandra began to cry and said, “I want what you have—I see you in such peace.” She continued, “My life is a mess. I drink all day and night, and I have also been unfaithful to you.” As we confessed our sins to one another, God began to restore our marriage right then and there. And, best of all, Alexandra accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior too.

Today, I am an author, pastor, and speaker, sharing hope in chapels, churches, and venues around the world about the one who heard my prayers and saved my life, Jesus Christ. I have spoken to children and college students, law enforcement officers and governors. Christ has shown me that the hands that were once used to destroy people’s lives are now being used to restore and build up others in Jesus. My life is Christ and Christ alone! This is who I am now.

Herman Mendoza is lead pastor of Iglesia Promesa Internacional, director of PowerHouse Kids Ministry, and author of Shifting Shadows: How a New York Drug Lord Found Freedom in the Last Place He Expected. His story has been adapted into a film, Drug Lord’s Redemption.

- More from Herman Mendoza

News

Preaching Against the Odds

Compiled by Mariana Albuquerque

Online gambling is literally taking food off the table for Brazilians. Christian leaders explore the best ways to address its impact on faith and families.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty / Pexels

In 2023, the Brazilian government legalized online sports betting. In 2024, gambling became ubiquitous throughout the country.

In the past year, fans have found themselves inundated with gaming advertisements in the Instagram stories of major influencers, on the jerseys of sports teams, and on billboards in big cities. Brazilians spent around R$20 billion per month (around $3.2 billion USD) on online betting in the first eight months of 2024, according to the Banco Central.

Recently, a report in Folha de S. Paulo showed that many pastors are concerned about sports betting and a good number of evangelical federal deputies (the “evangelical bench”) have been working to block the release of games of chance in Brazil. A majority (61 percent) of evangelicals still oppose gambling, compared to 53 percent of Catholics and 55 percent of Brazilians in general. However, according to another report, about one-third (29%) of evangelicals admit that they have gambled on betting websites, compared to 22 percent of Catholics. One in five (21%) of evangelicals say they have gambling debt, nearly double that of Catholics.

A majority of evangelicals, approximately 63 percent, are also considered poor, and their salaries are equivalent to $256.70 USD a month, a demographic that has been especially susceptible to gambling. Retail-market analysts have blamed gambling for a drop in sales of rice and beans among the poorest citizens. In August, a quarter of the 20 million beneficiaries of Brazil’s main social-benefits program reported gambling.

In light of gambling’s explosive impact on Brazilian life, CT asked six pastors, experts, and theologians about how they are advising fellow Christians to navigate this addictive activity.

Responses have been edited for clarity.

Lucas Carvalho

Pastor and church planter, Igreja Presbiteriana Videira in Brasília

Recently, I heard a member of a church I pastor say that he worked in the financial market, but when I questioned a bit more about his occupation, he admitted that he “worked” by betting. Even though 50 percent of the family’s monthly income is already fully committed to paying off gambling debts, they categorically affirmed that it was a legitimate job that provided financial returns and did not think that betting was a problem. I tried to explain that bets are not investments and that if something was driving him into debt, it was sinful, because believers should have an upright financial life.

But changing our financial behavior without changing what we think is valuable in life is merely cosmetic. That’s why it’s important to ground families in the gospel of Christ, who, though he was rich, became poor for our sake (2 Cor. 8:9). We must remember that everything we lack is found in Christ. Only he can satisfy us. No amount of money can give us what Christ does.

Pedro Pamplona

Pastor of the Igreja Batista Filadélfia in Fortaleza, Ceará

I’m not naive enough to think no church members are betting, but I believe it’s a minority. I’ve had to counsel a young father in our church who was losing a significant part of his family’s income on sports betting. I was careful and loving, but also firm. This is an unacceptable situation, and the church must address cases like this with both love and firmness.

Pastors and leaders must teach not only about the dangers of gambling, but primarily about greed and the love of money. It’s this idolatrous desire for wealth that makes us easy prey and ideal customers for betting companies. We need to talk about financial education, provide a solid Christian worldview of work, and confront those who are being dominated by addiction and sinning through the misuse of their resources. Furthermore, it’s essential to create a safe environment for confessing this sin and seeking pastoral help.

It’s also essential to remind the members of our congregations that “those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.” (1 Tim. 6:9–10)

Fabiano Bohi Goulart

Pastor of A Família de Deus Church in Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul

In our community [a Pentecostal middle-class church], though we haven’t yet faced the issue directly, we are already openly addressing it from the pulpit.

Christian churches have historically been at the center of organized resistance against addiction. I became a Christian at 14 years old and have visited many denominations, and preaching and concern about addiction are a constant presence in Brazilian church pulpits. Recovery centers spread across Brazil almost always have a confessional line. Partnerships with missionary agencies with specialized training to help addicts are always important. It would also help greatly if we included financial-education courses in our Bible school curricula, teaching people how Christ’s lordship brings healing to our economic relationships.

Ana Carolina Caires Lopes

Member of the First Biblical Baptist Church of Cidade Ademar (São Paulo), writer for Graça em Flor Ministry, and teacher for the Frutíferas platform

In a society constantly facing financial difficulties due to a failing and corrupt economy, our leaders need to open their eyes to the new strategies that are luring Christians and making them believe there are easier shortcuts to success or to solving their debts. The new betting market will continue to expand as long as it is not seen for what it really is: a means of spreading greed and the love of money, “which is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim. 6:10).

We need to hear more from our pulpits that we serve the owner of all gold and silver, that our kingdom is not of this world, that our eyes must be set on things above, and that no human promise stands against the Lord’s promises of provision, care, and justice.

VIctor Vieira

Pastor, professor, and best-selling author from Vitória, but currently living in Kansas

The first time sports betting caught my attention was during a soccer game break when I heard the phrase Profetize na Bet! [“Prophesy at Bet,” the slogan of a sports-betting company]. Somehow, I began to realize that that phrase in that situation was intentionally out of place. In Brazil, the word prophesy is closely linked to prosperity theology, which is widespread in Brazil. Linking this word to sports betting is communicating to the punter that, by betting, he may be determining his financial improvement in some way. In that moment, I knew that, unfortunately, this concept would deeply occupy the hearts of an entire generation.

The apostle James teaches us that we are tempted by our own lust (James 1:14–15). In other words, the desire to get rich quickly and easily is already within us. What sports betting does is provide the opportunity to unleash that sinful desire, and with sin comes death and destruction.

Gambling is not something that is explicitly listed in the Bible as a sin, but trying to make a living through betting is greed, and getting rich without work is an illusion and a deception. Not every open door or opportunity is an option for the believer.

Our actions are about the intention and inclination of the heart. Addiction is idolatry, even when it is socially acceptable or government regulated.The false projection we Christians create of a successful life, where we overvalue economic achievements at the expense of the deeper aspects of life, causes our frantic pursuit of wealth to justify actions that are incompatible with our faith and the way of life that a disciple of Jesus is called to embrace.

Obeying the teaching of 1 Thessalonians is fundamental in this conversation: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (4:11–12).

- More from Mariana Albuquerque

News

Report: Christians in Europe Face Rising Discrimination and Hate Crimes

James Thompson

Still, rates of faith-based harassment remain higher among the Jewish and Muslim communities.

Jeff J. Mitchell / Getty Images

After taking self-defense lessons and repeatedly calling on the police for protection, two nuns living in France decided the escalating hostility against them for their faith was too much. They moved from the region rather than endure further “beatings, spitting and insults.”

In England, a convert to Christianity from Islam fought off a knife attack by his flatmate, who said he “deserved to die” for renouncing his former religion. The Guardian reported that both men were in the UK as asylum seekers.

And across Western Europe, Christians report “discrimination and bullying” and in some instances “even loss of employment” for expressing faith-based opinions in their workplaces. Some have even faced repercussions for views expressed in “private conversations or posts on private social media accounts.”

These examples are among 232 personal attacks against Christians documented by the Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe (OIDAC) in its annual report released last November.

The organization tallied “2,444 anti-Christian hate crimes in 35 countries” in 2023, drawing from police records, its own research, and data from other organizations; the majority of incidents involved vandalism of church buildings or property.

The OIDAC report named France, the United Kingdom, and Germany as the “most affected countries.” France had the highest number of anti-Christian hate crimes, with almost 1,000 incidents reported. The UK recorded over 700 cases. Germany’s tally, 277, was more than double its total last year.

“These trends should alert us all to step up efforts to protect freedom of religion or belief, including the freedom to openly and respectfully discuss different philosophical and religious viewpoints on sensitive issues, without fear of reprisal and censorship,” Anja Hoffmann, executive director of OIDAC Europe, said in a press release.

In reaction to the OIDAC report, Julia Doxat-Purser, sociopolitical representative and religious liberty coordinator for the European Evangelical Alliance (EEA), singled out her native United Kingdom as having a particularly troubling track record with religious workplace discrimination.

“This workplace problem has been apparent for some years in the UK, with numerous cases each year,” Doxat-Purser told CT. “Of course, the vast majority of British Christians do not face such serious difficulties at work. However, this may be because they choose to keep quiet about their faith. [The] EEA believes that the workplace should be a safe space for people of all faiths and none, where no one needs to leave their beliefs at the door, [and] where differences are accommodated with respect.”

Doxat-Purser also referenced another issue highlighted by OIDAC: discrimination against Christian politicians. One example cited in the report is David Campanale’s removal as a Liberal Democrat candidate for the British Parliament because of his faith.

“Sadly, it seems that some British political parties are making it almost impossible for Christians with orthodox views on certain matters to be party members or candidates,” Doxat-Purser said.

OIDAC’s 2024 report was compiled using an updated methodology compared to previous years. The 2023 report only included data that the organization had compiled on its own, resulting in 748 documented cases of intolerance or discrimination against Christians. This year, other sources were included, Hoffman said, to “gain a fuller picture of what is happening in Europe.”

In addition to attacks on Christians, OIDAC noted that “acts of violence against Jewish and Muslim believers were particularly high” last year. European governments reported approximately 9,000 antisemitic and 6,000 anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2023.

“It is particularly challenging to attract attention for discrimination against Christians in Europe, compared to the discrimination of minority groups such as Jews and Muslims,” said Christof Sauer, senior consultant and former founding director for the International Institute for Religious Freedom.

In Western Europe, where Christianity has a long history as a majority or even as a state-sponsored religion, intolerance toward Christians does not always receive the same attention as attacks on other groups.

“Secularists might regard Christians in Europe as those in power, as ‘perpetrators’ of violence from a historical perspective, and might have a hard time acknowledging victimhood,” Sauer told CT. “There is an increasing degree of religious illiteracy in Europe, and understanding of the broad scope of religious freedom often is limited.”

When the persecution of Christians is discussed by policymakers and believers in the West, the focus is often on countries found on the Open Doors’s World Watch List, an annual report that ranks the 50 countries where Christians face “the most extreme persecution,” most of which are in Africa and Asia.

“It is quite challenging to do justice to such a broad range of phenomena in only one measuring instrument,” Sauer said. “Therefore, I welcome complementary instruments. This includes the World Watch List … as well as the OIDAC Europe reports that systematically focus on one particular region of the world. Both help us track developments and alert us to different levels of hostility, discrimination, pressure, or violence against Christians.”

The OIDAC report closes by recommending that European governments “improve religious literacy among public officials and state media to ensure fair representation of religious views in media communication,” and “collect disaggregated data with the specific aim of monitoring intolerance and discrimination against Christians.”

The report encourages the European Union to create the position of an “EU Coordinator combating anti-Christian hatred,” which would be similar to existing positions for opposing discrimination against Jews and Muslims.

The report’s recommendations to churches and individual believers include confronting “undue restrictions on the free exercise of faith” and engaging “in public discourse in a respectful and informed manner, contributing to the dialogue between religion and secular society and building bridges between different groups.”

- More from James Thompson

News

Died: Richard B. Hays, Who Wrestled with the Moral Vision of the New Testament

Daniel Silliman

The influential scholar said his commitment to the literary unity of Scripture led him to change his mind on Christian sexual ethics.

Duke Divinity School / edits by Christianity Today

Richard B. Hays, the New Testament scholar who taught the narrative unity of Scripture and changed his mind late life about the morality of homosexuality because, he said, of the narrative of Scripture, died on January 3. He was 76.

Hays was the author of Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, New Testament Ethics, The Conversion of the Imagination, Reading with the Grain of Scripture, and The Moral Vision of the New Testament, which Christianity Today named as one of the 100 most important Christian books of the 20th century.

“Hays has hit a home run every time he has stepped to the plate,” CT reported in 1999. “What makes his approach hard for skeptics to resist is the quality of his mind: supple, clear, and persuasive, extremely well informed. It is hard to find a hole in his arguments.”

In his final book, however, which he cowrote with his son, Hays announced that he had found a hole himself. He had changed his mind about the biblical teaching on sexual ethics. In fact, he argued, he believed that God had changed God’s mind, so while the New Testament clearly condemns homosexuality, God doesn’t anymore. God’s mercy got wider.

Hays argued this late development in his thinking was grounded, however, in his view of the Bible.

“Scripture, read as narrative, offers a vision of a God who is dynamic and personal, and can constantly surprise us by reshaping what we thought we knew as settled matters,” he told CNN.

While many Christians are startled by the idea that God might change his mind, Hays argued that idea has more to do with Greek philosophy than the revelation of Scripture.

“There are plenty of stories that do show God changing his mind,” he said. “That’s the God of Scripture. … He’s unchangeable in that he has revealed himself as a god who changes.”

The argument of The Widening of God’s Mercy was unconvincing to many of Hays’s longtime readers.

British New Testament scholar N. T. Wright asked him how he thought he could be confident in any ethical claim. Robert A. J. Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice, said Hays’s argument is nonsense, capitulates to cultural pressure, and has no basis in Scripture. Denny Burk, president of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, said he learned a lot from Hays over the years but was “deeply grieved” by the turn in his thinking.

Hays said he understood why people were upset. He really didn’t want to burn any bridges. But he had to be faithful to his reading of the Bible, and change is part of Christian discipleship.

“It’s something that Scripture itself calls us to all the time: repentance,” he told National Public Radio. “The Greek word for it is metanoia, which means a change of mind.”

He added that he hoped the book would be his “final word.” A few months later, he was admitted into hospice care.

Hays was born in Oklahoma on May 4, 1948. His father was an airline pilot, his mother a Methodist church organist. His parents got divorced when he was 3 and Hays was raised by his mother, spending a lot of time in the church where she worked.

The experience led him to reject Christianity.

“By the time I was in late high school, I had decided that the church was full of hypocrites and I didn’t want anything to do with it,” he told Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler on her podcast Everything Happens.

Hays’s belief that all Christians are hypocrites was challenged when he went to university at Yale. He met the school’s famous chaplain, William Sloane Coffin, and was impressed by the way his faith led him to social activism, including opposition to the war in Vietnam and support for the Civil Rights Movement.

Then Hays had a conversion experience reading the Bible. He went to church in Oklahoma with his mother over winter break his sophomore year for a Christmas Eve service. In the darkened church before the service, he picked up a pew Bible and opened it at random. His eyes fell on Mark 8:35: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”

“Bang,” he later said, “that hit me right in the chest.”

He didn’t know exactly what it meant to lose your life for the gospel and somehow, with Christ, enter into the mystery of death and resurrection. But the words brought him up short and, as he put it, “stunned me into offering my life to Jesus.”

When he asked his wife Judy to marry him a few years later, Hays told her he thought he was going to become a preacher. Or a rock ’n’ roll star.

What he actually did after graduating from Yale was get a job teaching high school English in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. The young couple joined a nondenominational house church that was attempting to live out “radical Christianity.” The group was deeply formed by the teachings of German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who wrote The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together.

After a few years, Hays was dissatisfied teaching English and returned to Yale to enroll in the divinity school. He decided to study the Bible.

He found he thought about the text differently than most of the other seminarians and seminary professors, though. They were mostly interested in a form of biblical criticism that “sought to probe behind the canonical texts by postulating multiple hypothetical sources and hypothetical historical facts that had been covered over by layers of tradition and redaction,” Hays said. He was drawn, on the other hand, to the literary quality of the Bible, the shape of the narrative, and the unity.

“It has a deep and subtle narrative unity—not because unity has been superimposed by ecclesial fiat or by some clever editorial design, but because the diverse biblical witnesses bear common witness to God’s grace-filled action in the story of Israel,” he said. “You have to read the thing whole and see how the parts relate to the whole.”

He started trying to teach Scripture that way at Yale in 1981, the same year he got ordained in the United Methodist Church. His book, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, explored the way the apostle quoted the Old Testament. Where many scholars said Paul was taking the Bible out of context, Hays argued he was using a literary device known as metalepsis, quoting fragments in order to draw readers into the context.

In 1991, Hays moved to Duke Divinity School, where he worked alongside theologians Ellen Davis and Stanley Hauerwas. He published The Moral Vision of the New Testament in 1996, arguing that Christians shouldn’t attempt to extract a few moral principles from the Bible and then apply those principles to particular ethical dilemmas. They should, instead, pay attention to the overall narrative and the themes that emerged from it: community, cross, and new creation.

The book has been, by some estimations, “one of the most-cited works of New Testament scholarship.”

Wright called it “a breath of fresh air” and even “a hurricane, blowing away the fog of half-understood pseudo-morality and fashionable compromise, and revealing instead the early Christian vision of true humanness and genuine holiness.”

Hauerwas said, “There are few people I would rather read for the actual exposition of the New Testament than Richard Hays.”

Hays himself, however, came to regret the part of the book where he wrote about sexual ethics.

“We must affirm that the New Testament tells us the truth about ourselves as sinners and as God’s sexual creatures,” he wrote in 1996. “Marriage between man and woman is the normative form for human sexual fulfillment, and homosexuality is one among many tragic signs that we are a broken people, alienated from God’s loving purpose.”

He began to rethink the issue when he started to form relationships with LGBTQ people serving in his Methodist church in Durham, North Carolina. Hays joined the worship team, playing guitar, and the worship leader identified as queer—and as a deeply committed disciple of Christ.

Hays came to think that, with sexuality, he had not actually examined the larger narrative of Scripture, but had just grabbed a proof text.

His opposition to LGBTQ affirmation eroded.

“The Bible … shows us a much bigger picture of God as a God who continually surprises us, continually surprises his people with the scope of generosity and grace and mercy,” Hays said. “It’s beyond me to understand why things are different now. But that’s God’s prerogative.”

Hays was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July 2015. Doctors told him they expected him to die by Christmas.

He was devastated by the news and wept uncontrollably at the thought of not seeing his grandkids grow up. But he found comfort, again, in Scripture. He and his wife started reading the Psalms together every night.

His diagnosis brought him back, he said, to the mystery of the words of Jesus that had first called him to faith. He would lose his life; only then would he find it.

“It’s a matter of letting go of life itself and entering the mystery of death and resurrection,” he said. “My own brush with literal death has deepened my conviction that our hope lies in our union with Christ and the ultimate promise of resurrection of the body.”

After treatment and surgery, Hays was cancer-free for seven years. In the fall of 2024, however, a scan showed metastases to both lungs. He spent Christmas surrounded by his family and then died at home in Nashville.

Hays is survived by his wife Judy and their children Christopher and Sarah.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Church Life

‘I’ve Never Heard Anyone Complain of Loneliness’

Nik Schatz

Lessons from the Plain Community about relationships and life together.

Steve Cicero / Getty

“That was a good sermon.”

I had just finished preaching a message on friendship from the Book of Proverbs, and I’d made the case that forging strong relationships is harder in today’s world than it was in biblical times. Ours is an era of rampant individualism, autonomy, and isolation in a way that the ancient world simply was not. So I appreciated Michael’s compliment, though I could tell there was a “but” coming.

Sure enough, he added, “But there’s a group of people who wouldn’t be able to relate to what you said.”

He proceeded to tell me about the Plain Community—Amish and Old Order Mennonites here in eastern Pennsylvania best known in the wider world for their buggies and clothing styles. I was aware of them already, of course, but over the next year, Michael’s words kept returning to me.

Reports of friendlessness were coming from every direction. I saw the surgeon general’s public health warning about loneliness. I read social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s latest book about isolation and the anxiety it creates in today’s youth. I heard stories from people in my church about their difficulty making friends. And I began to wonder: What could we learn from the Plain Communities, from people who couldn’t relate to the experiences I saw everywhere?

Michael drove me out into the country to meet with two of his former colleagues. Joseph is an Amish man who runs a house for emotionally and mentally troubled Plain people, and Catherine is a Mennonite woman who works for a mental health clinic that serves the Plain Community. Amish and Mennonite families travel far and wide, even from other states, to find help at this clinic. Michael knows them because he’s a psychiatrist who specializes in helping Amish and Mennonite people.

It felt like I’d entered a bygone era as we pulled up to the clinic. Men were dressed in black suits, with long beards, and women had dresses and bonnets to match. A group gathered outside were talking and laughing in Pennsylvania Dutch while taking a break from their woodworking and other endeavors.

As we entered Joseph’s office, I was instantly drawn to a chart posted on his wall. It was a family tree, dating back ten generations. I’m accustomed to offices filled with diplomas, certificates, and credentials. But in this community, who you are matters a great deal more than what you’ve accomplished.

That was the first surprise. The second came after I introduced myself and my purpose. Michael answered with something I almost didn’t believe: “I have never once heard an Amish or Mennonite person complain about being lonely.”

Surely this was hyperbole. Or exaggeration. Or he didn’t know this tribe very well. I turned to Joseph and Catherine. “Is loneliness a problem in your communities?” They looked at each other and shook their heads. “No,” Joseph replied. “I’ve never heard anyone complain of loneliness.”

Even though their work puts them in contact with people actively struggling with mental and emotional health issues—more likely, perhaps, than the average Plain person to deal with loneliness—neither could remember any such concern. Other worries, of course. But not isolation.

For the next hour, I heard story after story of unparalleled community care. A couple would come in for marriage counseling, and half of their extended family would tag along. A patient would come for mental health treatment and bring along a dozen friends. Clinical meetings would last for hours because so many family members and friends would crowd the room, offering their insights and support.

For us “English people” (the term many Plain People use for those outside their communities), this might sound overwhelming. Intrusive. Nosy. But it is also a testament to the closeness of these families’ and friends’ relationships and their unfailing commitment to one another.

As our conversation continued, my understanding and appreciation for these communities’ rigorous rules grew. There is a logic here, as draconian as the restrictions may seem, and it is not only about separation from the world and its evils. It is also about fostering community. The rules make it hard to be isolated, autonomous, and independent. They require community members to work together, stay together, and bond together.

For instance, why is electricity prohibited in Old Order houses but allowed in their barns? Because lights in every bedroom create easy paths to retreat from the common-room fireplace where families want to gather.

Why do some groups permit scooters but not bicycles? Because one may easily bike into town and separate from peers for the day, but riding a scooter alone is less safe or convenient. It’s more natural to go in a pack.

Why are tractors equipped with steel tires rather than rubber? Because steel tires are illegal for use on main roads, making it impossible to ride into town solo.

Why is the dress code so strict? Because it forms a comradery. It facilitates a cohesiveness. The clothes, the hats, the suspenders, the bonnets—it all creates an identity. It all says, “You belong here.”

“I didn’t realize how individualistic we are,” Michael told me after we left, “until I started working with these people.”

Of course, it’s easy to imagine downsides to this way of life or even ways its structures could be subject to abuse. I’m not planning to join the Plain Community or give up electricity or change my wardrobe. And yes, I’ve also met with people who left Amish or Mennonite communities because they found the restrictions and togetherness to be overbearing.

But imagine a world in which loneliness is the exception, not the rule. Imagine showcasing a family tree of ten generations instead of announcements of individual achievement. Imagine a community in which you can say, “I belong here.”

We English people can move in that direction. We can make togetherness more likely and isolation less convenient by reordering our own ways of life with those goals in mind.

At the congregational level, we must not give up “meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing” (Heb. 10:25), but organize our lives to meet more often and more easily. We can commit to in-person worship every Sunday—and make that the bare minimum. We can adopt spiritual disciplines that are practiced together rather than alone. We can put in the risky work of initiating and reciprocating, forging deep friendships over arm’s-length acquaintances.

Within families, there is even more we can do. Many households have a “no phones at the dinner table” rule to foster conversation. One family I know banned video games on weeknights, and now their kids run outside to play with friends every day after school. A coworker of mine has an early Tuesday breakfast every week. She attends the breakfast religiously, choosing people over sleep. Our family decided not to install a TV in our living room. We made that the nicest room in the house and put the TV in the cold, outdated basement with old furniture. We still watch TV, but we’re more likely to choose to stay upstairs together by the fireplace, reading or playing board games.

By making isolation inconvenient and togetherness easier, we can fight the plague of loneliness. With some intentionality, we can exchange shallow autonomy for deep belonging. We can learn a thing or two about togetherness from fellow Christians in the Plain Community.

Nik Schatz serves as the executive pastor at Hershey Free Church in Hershey, Pennsylvania. He holds a ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary and a DMin from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

- More from Nik Schatz

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