After Assad: Jihad or Liberty?

A coalition of rebel fighters promises to respect Syria’s religious minorities.

Omar Hajkadour / Contributor / Getty

On Sunday, the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fell to a loose coalition of militant factions headed by Abu Mohammed al-Golani, once affiliated with al-Qaeda. Assad fled to Russia, and Syria’s prime minister welcomed the rebels. Golani promised that “Syria is for everyone” in a message directed to religious minorities.

Maybe—but rhetoric and reality may differ.

Joseph Kassab, general secretary of the Presbyterian Synod of Syria and Lebanon, told Christianity Today that some Christian leaders had defended the Assad regime as a bulwark of stability against jihadist rebels backed by regional governments.

Given rebel leader Golani’s past, Christians have reason for concern. Golani was affiliated with al-Qaeda in 2003 and has a $10 million bounty on his head as a US and United Nations designated terrorist. Though in 2013 he refused to integrate his militia into the caliphate-seeking Islamic State (ISIS), he said Syria must be ruled according to sharia law.

In 2016, Golani cut ties with al-Qaeda and the following year rebranded his group as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which in Arabic translates as “the organization for the liberation of Syria.” While Russia and Iran helped Assad stay in power and the US fought ISIS from its bases in the Kurdish northeast, affiliated rebel groups controlled only Idlib near the Syrian border with Turkey.

Golani violently consolidated power and then traded his military persona for a business suit. He told an American journalist in 2021 that his movement, if successful, posed no threat to the West. Golani has offered assurances to Christians in Syria, and yesterday churches were open. Many had decreased attendance.

Kassab said Syrian Christians focused on being productive citizens and promoting education, seeking to influence their nation slowly through ethical living and the demonstration of biblical values. Some joined the regime, he said, and benefited like all the others who supported it. “It is not the best way to live,” Kassab said, “but it was the best available.”

In Damascus, rebel leader Golani’s first public act was to enter the courtyard of the eighth-century Umayyad Mosque and declare his triumph a “victory for the Islamic nation.” In one neighborhood of winding alleys, The New York Times described Bab Sharqi as home to many Assad-supporting Christians, including how “Victor Dawli, 59, stood in his apartment’s entryway, a cigarette in hand. As a truck carrying Syrian rebels passed, Mr. Dawli waved. One fighter, clutching his rifle and hunched over in the bed of the truck, nodded in response.”

Times reporters Christina Goldbaum and Hwaida Saad noted “a sense of unease in the neighborhood, as people here walked a tightrope. Some have kept their heads down and stayed inside their homes. Others like Mr. Dawli say they have secretly supported the rebels from the start of their offensive. … When one neighbor passed by, Mr. Dawli shouted to him: ‘Good morning, congratulations!’ The man gave him a blank stare, then hurried down a nearby alleyway.”

Harout Selimian, president of the Armenian Protestant Churches in Syria, is uneasy. He told Christianity Today, “Any reduction in violence is a welcome step forward, but there is a lack of clarity over the opposition agenda.”

Yes, Syria’s 14-year-old civil war, which killed half a million people and displaced half of Syria’s population of 23 million, seems over. But who will emerge triumphant?

Presbyterian leader Kassab fears a Libya scenario, in which rival rebel factions fail in efforts to “share the cake” of their success and reignite an internal conflict. In 2011, Libya, like Syria, saw peaceful protests morph into a military struggle. But while Assad survived, Libyans killed Muammar Gaddafi and then turned on each other in civil war. Libya has been geographically divided in half ever since, with regional powers like Turkey and Egypt backing their favored parties.

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News

In the Divided Balkans, Evangelicals Are Tiny in Number, but Mighty

Interview by Bruce Barron

A leading Serbian researcher discusses how evangelicals have made a tangible difference.

The old center of Novi Sad In Serbia

Kristina Igumnova / Getty

Only 1 percent of the people in Serbia are Protestant, and only a small portion of them are evangelical. But social anthropologist Aleksandra Djurić Milovanović believes they have had an outsize impact in the country through effective social support and by bridging ethnic divisions.

Milovanović, a principal research fellow of the Institute for Balkan Studies at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade, has studied minority religious groups in Serbia and Romania for more than 15 years. Her internationally known work has included explorations of the migration of persecuted religious minorities, as well as renewal movements in the Orthodox church and interreligious dialogue.

The Balkans, a region in Southeast Europe, faced significant changes after the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1991. That country divided into six independent republics: Serbia (including the now-disputed region of Kosovo), Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. The Balkans also include Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Albania. Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims are the predominant religious groups.

Milovanović’s research interests were shaped by her upbringing in the region of Banat, which straddles the Serbian-Romanian border and has a very multiethnic and multireligious composition. She noticed that religious minority groups were often stigmatized, especially in public discourse.

“In my research in the Balkans, I have noticed that fear of evangelicals is a dominant discourse,” she said. “It is less prevalent than in the previous century, but there is still lack of knowledge about who evangelicals are, what they believe, and how they contribute to society.”

In her view, sources of this fear include the intertwining of religious and national identity in Serbia, the perception of evangelicalism as an imported faith from outside the Serbian tradition, and the tendency to brand groups of evangelicals as sects or cults due to their efforts to attract converts from dominant faith traditions.

Milovanović believes that scholarly work and friendly dialogue can allay those fears. She pursues practical application of her scholarship as a fellow and project coordinator of the Network for Dialogue in KAICIID, an international, multifaith dialogue center based in Europe, where she is engaged in projects that tackle social inclusion, hate speech, and discrimination.

CT spoke with Milovanović about how evangelicalism developed in Serbia and how evangelicals can grow their influence in the region.

What is the history of evangelicals in Serbia?

Protestants have been permitted in what is now the northern part of Serbia since 1781, but the first evangelicals were Nazarenes [an Anabaptist group, not connected to the Nazarene denomination that arose later in the US] who came from Switzerland around the 1860s. Their growth was related to the British Bible Society’s translation of the Bible into the languages of different ethnic groups in northern Serbia. The society had Bible distributors who traveled by horse to areas where the Baptists and Nazarenes were active.

At this time, the Serbian Orthodox church still used the Old Slavonic language in worship, and the people couldn’t understand the liturgy or what the priest was saying. In contrast, evangelical churches held services in each community’s local language, enabling even illiterate people to hear the Bible.

Evangelicals brought a small revolution to Serbia in terms of literacy and Bible knowledge. They introduced hymn singing and community participation in worship. The first Nazarene hymnbook, containing mostly Lutheran songs, was translated from German into Serbian by a famous national poet Jovan Jovanović Zmaj. When the Orthodox criticized him for doing so, he responded that it would not harm anyone because the songs were all about Christian love and respect.

Evangelicals were revolutionary in another important respect: They were multiethnic and multilingual. Back then, not only was religion closely tied to ethnicity, but interethnic marriages were uncommon. Evangelicals faced many challenges during the Communist period in Yugoslavia, which significantly influenced their decisions to emigrate in search of religious freedom. In my recent book, I focus on the Nazarenes, who were severely persecuted under communism due to their pacifism. Their story is an example of resilience and preservation of evangelical identity in a minority religious community.

How did evangelical relief efforts make an impact during the Bosnian War of 1992 to 1995 and since then?

When Serbia was receiving refugees coming from Bosnia and Croatia during the war, many evangelical humanitarian organizations, with support from the West, provided aid. People remember how they received support from evangelical churches.

Most famous were the efforts of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA). During the siege of Sarajevo, ADRA was the only faith-based organization that could deliver aid, because it was perceived as not divided along ethnic lines. ADRA representatives were very important messengers in this tragic time because they delivered letters between Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia for families divided by war. It was the only way family members could tell each other that they were alive. Even today, people say that “ADRA saved our lives.”

In recent years, evangelicals have assisted refugees from the Middle East and Ukraine, as well as homeless people, especially Roma communities in Serbia. Many evangelical relief agencies are part of larger transnational networks, which enables members of the evangelical diaspora from Serbia to be involved in various forms of humanitarian aid and assistance. Evangelicals also organize values-based activities for both evangelical and nonevangelical youth, and many of them make economic contributions as small business operators.

Do you see this humanitarian work attracting people to evangelical churches?

In some contexts, evangelical humanitarian work does lead to increased participation, especially among marginalized minority groups such as the Roma. It is remarkable how many Roma have become Pentecostals. Pentecostal churches actively welcome Roma, offering a sense of community and acceptance, which is different from the Roma’s general experience as a socially excluded group. There is a large Roma Pentecostal church in the city of Leskovac, with gifted musicians and livestreamed services.

Evangelicals are also playing a significant role with older people in smaller villages, bringing them together to provide a sense of belonging and support. Relative to the Orthodox churches, evangelicals have a more personal approach that goes beyond holding weekend services, with a greater set of activities during the week.

We are, unfortunately, witnessing many conflicts in the world nowadays, and people live in fear of another war and with tension and anxiety about tomorrow. Post-conflict societies have a special atmosphere. Evangelical communities often offer community support and a sense of solidarity. In my research, faith-based organizations have played a key role in addressing urgent humanitarian needs, such as the large number of refugees coming to the Balkans from the Middle East in 2015. Their specific approach and transnational networks facilitated a much more immediate response to those in need.

How do you believe evangelical minorities in other countries could contribute more positively to and gain greater respect in their societies?

Evangelicals can become more active in intra-Christian dialogue. I am very pleased when I see collaboration between evangelical pastors and Orthodox priests in the interfaith gatherings I organize. Prejudices toward the religious “other” are overcome through dialogue.

Evangelicals sometimes avoid interfaith dialogue because they do not understand its value or how they could contribute to such dialogues from a minority perspective. Scholars like me can help to provide an educational space where people can come together and learn about each other.

Evangelicals can also contribute to raising public awareness about the stigmatization of minority groups. They can talk about religious freedom and resilience because they have navigated difficult years of state oppression or nonacceptance by the dominant faith groups.

One important methodology is to visit different religious communities. I am developing various interfaith programs where we visit faith-group locations and talk with religious leaders. Without that personal experience, dialogue sounds very abstract. If you have a good facilitator who can engage members of the religious community in this way, you can create dialogue in such a way that they don’t even realize that is what they are doing.

Evangelical groups here are not active politically, or if they are, we do not see them speaking openly as evangelicals. But in recent years, many evangelical pastors have been trying to speak a more universal language, especially among youth, and to address broader societal issues. For example, they may address human trafficking or the rise of hate speech. In these ways, their visibility is seen as having more purpose.

One evangelical who effectively speaks a universal language is Nick Vujicic, an Australian American inspirational speaker of Serbian descent and Nazarene background. People all over the world admire his faith and how he overcame obstacles despite being born without limbs.

Many evangelicals are hesitant about interfaith dialogue because they do not want to endorse non-Christian religious views.

The purpose of dialogue is to move you out from your comfort zone into a space of growth and understanding where you learn about the other. Interaction with the other brings a change to you. That doesn’t mean that you convert to their view but that you understand and respect it. To be able to understand and respect others, you need to know them. And you can’t know them if you don’t actively listen to them.

What other patterns have you seen in evangelical influence in Serbia?

One of my students is writing his thesis on the development of entrepreneurship in the Seventh-day Adventist church. Many Adventists have become entrepreneurs because, as they are not supposed to work on Saturdays, it is difficult for them to find jobs. We are seeing a link between evangelical membership, willingness to work hard, and success in business. Max Weber’s Protestant work ethic is very much alive in Serbia!

Evangelicals as religious minorities carry stories of resilience that defy centuries of erasure. These stories have often been silenced beneath layers of prejudice. Their journey is not just about survival; it’s about the right to exist authentically. The experiences of evangelicals as religious minorities challenge mainstream narratives and encourage a rethinking of minority communities as active contributors to society rather than as marginal. The patterns of evangelical influence in Serbia reveal their [evangelicals’] resilient nature and their ability to adapt to societal changes.

Evangelicals in Serbia are showing how minority groups can be a driving force in any society. It doesn’t matter how big you are; what matters is the positive change you are bringing in the lives of people.

- More from Bruce Barron

Theology

Egypt’s Redemption—and Ours

Myles Werntz

Contributor

The flight of the holy family is more than a historical curiosity. It points us toward the breadth and beauty of God’s redemption.

Traveler Stories Photos / Pexels

The Christmas story is not a story of peace and quiet but a tale of tumult and danger.

It is the story of the Son sent of the Father into a harsh world, of a difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, of the magi travelling far from the East. It is a story of angelic visits; mass migration; murder; deceit; and finally, Joseph, Mary, and Jesus fleeing for Egypt to save their lives. It is a story that barely lets us catch our breath.

And it is within this peril that we find God working a surprising reversal that will be for the salvation of those “who were far away” as much as “those who were near” (Eph. 2:17)—the salvation of one of Israel’s oldest enemies alongside the holy family. God moves to Egypt to “say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people.’” And just as he promised, they come to respond, “You are my God” (Hos. 2:23; Rom. 9:23–25).

The story of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus running from the tyranny of King Herod appears in no one’s Nativity play. We leave it out of the front-lawn creche. It is found only in Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ birth (2:13–23), where it concludes an account of great violence: After learning of the impending birth of a new king in Bethlehem, Herod the Great flies into a fit of rage, ordering all the male infants in the area to be murdered (2:16–18). Wailing mothers add their voices to the songs of the angels, and the young family, having been warned by an angel of this impending disaster, flees south. They remain in Egypt until after Herod dies (2:13–15, 19–20).

This is a curious story, for consider where Jesus and his family go: They escape the massacre by returning not to their hometown but to Egypt, where Israel’s national history began. It was in Egypt that the people of God were told the name of God (Ex. 3:14), that Moses came to them, that events began which culminated in God’s giving of the Law.

Egypt was not, in the Old Testament, a place of respite, even if its leeks and onions were delightful and its food delicious (Num. 11:5). And yet, the one who fulfilled the Law leaves the land of promise and is carried into Egypt. It is a surprising turn of events that the land which oppressed Israel now becomes a haven for Israel’s Messiah.

To be sure, Egypt was the place of refuge for Jacob’s family before it was the place of their enslavement. And it was often Egypt with whom early Israel traded and made alliances (1 Kings 3:1). But Egypt in the Old Testament was also symbolic of the empires of the world. It was a people destined for destruction, the nation that attacked Israel in the days of Rehoboam (2 Chron. 12:2). Both Isaiah (20:3–4) and Ezekiel (29:12) warn against trusting Egypt.

The holy family’s flight to Egypt inaugurated a change in Egypt’s relationship to God and his people. In the first few centuries after Christ, Egypt became one of the most important centers of early Christianity.

Legend has it that Saint Mark came to Alexandria, Egypt, as early as AD 41, inaugurating the church there. In the decades that followed, Alexandria was the center of debate over Christ’s divinity, a conversation that led to the first great churchwide council in Nicaea in AD 325. Egypt was also the epicenter of early Christian desert monasticism. The early diocese of Egypt helped support Christianity across North Africa, and it was the home of Athanasius, Origen, Anthony, and Cyril—titans of early Christianity. Today, Egypt remains home to one of the oldest Christian traditions, the Coptic church.

The moment when the holy family flees as refugees into Egypt turns a page in God’s story. No longer is Egypt only the land where Israel was enslaved and false gods trounced. It is now the land that has sheltered the infant Christ, honored as the first among the Gentiles to welcome the Messiah.

This part of the Christmas story gives us a new perspective on how God works: across millennia, not minutes or days or even years. For the arc of history is long and bends toward the redemption not only of Israel but also of Egypt and of all who call upon the name of the Lord (Rom. 10:13). God is not slow in keeping his promises as some count slowness (2 Pet. 3:9). In Christmas, we see the promises of history coming to pass, including the promise that Israel would be a blessing to all the nations (Gen. 12:4).

That the villain of the Old Testament would become a hero in the New Testament is emblematic of the Christian hope. We hope for just this kind of surprise, that stories moving in one direction might yet have a different, better ending. We hope without ceasing that God’s great patience will provide time for the Holy Spirit to bring forth the church in all places. We hope that broken relationships will not always be broken, that by God’s mercy our political despair might contain the seeds of renewal. We hope for Esau to reconcile with Jacob, for the Prodigal Son to return home, for the cedars of Lebanon and the Temple Mount to be at peace again.

Christian hope does not mean setting aside good judgment or being dishonest about the past but trusting that our enemies too will enjoy being part of God’s good story. It does not mean setting aside reckoning of wrongs or forgetting the Exodus. It means telling a fuller and better story in which Egypt is also the cradle of Christian monasticism, hermeneutics, and preaching. It means telling the full truth of our enemies: that they too are beloved of God, that God has plans for them of which we do not know, that he is moving among them in ways which we cannot always see in full.

As we approach Christmas, let this kind of biblical hope work itself into our imagination. Let us remember that Egypt rescues the Lord, that Assyria repents at Jonah’s preaching, that the Gentiles lay down their idols and come to the church. There will be many opportunities in the New Year to tell a partial truth about our enemies. But the good news we see in Matthew 2 is that the ones who enslaved Israel have become the first among the Gentiles to welcome the incarnate Son.

Myles Werntz is author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Christian Ethics in the Wild and teaches at Abilene Christian University.

- More from Myles Werntz

Culture

Chick-fil-A Launches an App to Help Families Be Less Online

Haley Byrd Wilt

It offers the wholesome, values-centered content Christians expect from the closed-on-Sundays chain, but does the platform undercut its message?

Michael Siluk / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images

For little Sam, it’s the perfect moment to play. Big, magical snowflakes are whirling outside, and she’s determined to build a snowman with her family.

But her mom is glued to a laptop. Her dad is distracted, too, talking on his phone. Sam’s older brother is absorbed in a video game.

Many parents can recognize this scene. But it isn’t just a slice of family life in the digital age—it’s the origin story behind the Legends of Evergreen Hills, Chick-fil-A’s kids’ show.

At the end of the short film, Sam’s family rediscovers quality time, and they build a snowman together. The message is simple: Spend meaningful time with the people you love, delighting in creation and each other, unmediated by screens or the digital shadow-world.

But it’s easy to imagine an alternate ending. What if, instead of trudging into the snow with their daughter, Sam’s parents had handed her a screen of her own—where she could, perhaps, explore cow-themed video games and wholesome TV shows on the couch next to her brother?

Chick-fil-A is telling more of Sam’s story, with a full series that aims to teach young viewers to be attentive and kind. But some Christian families and entertainment experts say how Chick-fil-A is sharing that story—with Chick-fil-A Play, a new streaming and gaming app for kids—undercuts its message.

“The ways in which the app just adopts the existing business model of delivering content is not something that is particularly innovative or helpful to families,” said Felicia Wu Song, a cultural sociologist who studies how today’s families use technology.

Chick-fil-A states no fewer than five times in its press release that the app is intended to help families connect, suggesting that parents use it at home, in the car, during meals, and anywhere in between.

A sampling: The app offers “new ways for families to have fun, connect and spend time together,” it is “designed for parents and kids to share and experience together,” it will feature “fun and unique content made to be shared both within the app and in-person,” and it will encourage families to “make the most of the moments they have with each other.”

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The family-friendly messaging is familiar to Chick-fil-A loyalists (as is Evergreen Hills, whose animated clips have come up in Chick-fil-A’s commercials and restaurant app in recent years, especially around Christmas).

Founded by Christian businessman Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A has a long history of serving chicken alongside moral lessons. In the 1990s, kids’ meals came with Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey tapes. The chain has also offered VeggieTales CDs, a book series about Joseph, and books adapted from PBS’s Adventures from the Book of Virtues.

Evergreen Hills isn’t evangelizing viewers, though its episodes focus on virtues that overlap with Christianity. The app is also filled with wholesome content and plenty of reminders to be present with family members. It includes recipes, craft ideas, conversation starters, and prompts to play charades.

But parents may default to using this app not for connection but as a quick fix for restless children, who could be distracted by an animated show or a cow tractor-racing game long enough for parents to eat their waffle fries or send emails in peace.

Song told Christianity Today that the company’s goal of encouraging family time reminds her of other apps that are supposed to help with the most basic functions of life—such as apps to help people who feel overwhelmed by their digital devices to sleep or meditate. “There’s a strange way in which one looks to technology for deliverance from technology,” she said.

Song, author of Restless Devices: Recovering Personhood, Presence, and Place in the Digital Age, said she hopes the app’s components like conversation starters can become natural enough for people to not need to rely on their devices at all. “It’s just going to get us past the friction point,” Song said. “And then hopefully we can have other resources, whether it’s from our community or a faith community.”

So far, the Chick-fil-A Play app has over 50,000 downloads (and mixed reviews) in Google Play and has ranked between 50th and 80th in the entertainment category at the Apple App Store over the past week.

“Chick-fil-A is being really thoughtful about wanting to create a product that is about serving families rather than most everything else on the market, which is more escapist,” said Katelyn Walls Shelton—the most enthusiastic Chick-fil-A fan I know.

A mom of four young kids, Shelton hosted her twin sons’ birthday party at Chick-fil-A. During road trips, her family sometimes opts to do all three meals there. But she said she’s more likely to stick with the restaurant playgrounds rather than hand her kids the phone.

“That is what I think of as making the most of the moments with your family: sharing a meal together and playing together in the real world,” she said.

“The reality of the matter is that you’re using this app on a phone that is a personal device. As I found already with my children, it’s very difficult for them to play together because only one person gets to hold the phone.”

As screen time becomes more pervasive at meals, some Christians see it as distinctive for families to focus on each other rather than devices when they eat together.

“The church should be a space where that’s our norm,” said O. Alan Noble, professor at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of Disruptive Witness, which examines how to live faithfully in a distracted age. “We respect and love and recognize the dignity of each other so much, that when we eat meals, we are together, we are present, that we give each other attention, that we’re looking each other in the eyes, that we’re talking to one another.”

As a parent, he said, he understands that’s not always possible—but it should be the goal.

“There’s always going to be some excuse technology is going to offer to be away from the present moment, and it’s going to seem virtuous,” he said. “But the true virtuous thing to do is to be in the present moment with the people that you’re with.”

Still, some Christian parents have been looking for worry-free, wholesome entertainment for their kids to watch or their families to enjoy together, with Christian streamers coming up against free content on YouTube and media juggernauts like Disney.

Evergreen Hills on Chick-fil-A Play could be a start. Its first full episode states the show’s values outright: kindness, humility, compassion, perseverance, patience, sacrifice, and courage.

The show’s “bespectacled, white-haired ‘Timekeeper’ character is a throwback to Whit in the brand’s first big success, Adventures in Odyssey,” Fast Company wrote in its preview of the app, “but whereas the action in the earlier series sometimes occurred in Sunday school class, and Whit’s ice cream store was located symbolically atop an old church, the new show contains all kinds of fantasy tropes … set to a dramatic score.”

One of Evergreen Hills’s executive producers is Aaron Johnston, a Mormon who serves as Chick-fil-A’s creative director for brand entertainment. Johnston was previously a showrunner for a sci-fi series on BYUtv, a family-friendly channel from Brigham Young University.

“Nothing brings me greater happiness in this life than spending time with my wife and kids as we play and laugh and connect together,” he wrote on LinkedIn when the app launched last month. “I feel truly blessed to work for a company that recognizes that precious gift of time with loved ones and creates tools to help make it more meaningful.”

For VeggieTales creator Phil Vischer, there is value in presenting a show aligned with Christian values. If a fast-food company can create fun and meaningful moments for kids, he said he’s all for it.

Vischer remembered a conversation he had with philosopher Dallas Willard after VeggieTales:

“I wanted to take kids deeper into their faith than I ever did with VeggieTales. And I said, ‘I’m wondering how to teach kids Christianity, because I think all I did with VeggieTales was teach kids Christian values,’” he told CT. “And Dallas looked at me and said, ‘Well, isn’t that a part of Christianity?’”

- More from Haley Byrd Wilt

Culture

The Rabbit Room’s ‘Christmas Carol’ Draws on Dickens’s Pure Religion

Erin Jones

Artistic director Pete Peterson adapts the famous work with an eye to faith and a look back at Scrooge’s past.

Henry O. Arnold as Ebenezer Scrooge in Rabbit Room Theatre’s A Christmas Carol.

No matter how many times I hear “Come Thou Fount,” I still think of an angry Victorian man shouting, “Bah, humbug!” when we reach the Ebenezer line.

The name has become synonymous with Charles Dickens’s beloved Christmas Carol. After bringing his own adaptation to life, playwright A. S. “Pete” Peterson has become well acquainted with Ebenezer Scrooge and his spiritually significant name.

Peterson—brother of Rabbit Room founder and musician Andrew Peterson—serves as artistic director of Rabbit Room Theatre, whose adaptation of A Christmas Carol debuts December 7 in Franklin, Tennessee.

The Nashville-based Rabbit Room Theatre has enjoyed a broad scope and reach in its relatively short lifespan. In 2022, its adaptation of Corrie ten Boom’s The Hiding Place ran locally in Franklin to sold-out audiences, and the following year was released in movie theaters across the US and internationally.

When considering what project to bring to the stage next, Peterson turned to one of his favorite authors.

“It’s been a lot of fun to dig into the language of somebody you look up to so much,” said Peterson, a devout Christian and a lifelong fan of Dickens “To get to live in their sentences and their story structure and figure out how their brain was working … to put your own version of it alongside theirs is really rewarding.”

A Christmas Carol is shorter than most of Dickens’s other works and is divided into five chapters, called “staves.” Peterson said that the brevity in the text afforded him the opportunity to build on the existing structure and play with the gaps in the story.

“You can read it in one sitting, and that opens it up to a lot of room to build out the meat and bones of it in different ways,” Peterson said. “Every adaptation does that a little differently.”

One of the angles Peterson approached in studying the text was to examine how the character of Scrooge came to be such a humbug.

He noticed a recurring image throughout the story of a small boy: Scrooge’s childhood self, Tiny Tim, and the hauntingly gaunt boy called Ignorance who appears with the girl Want underneath the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Peterson realized how much the neglect and trauma of Scrooge’s childhood had contributed to the hardened, twisted adult Scrooge.

“The show that we’ve built gives us a really good roadmap from childhood through adulthood of seeing how a person can end up as this really angry, twisted, cold miser that Scrooge has become,” Peterson said. “And if we can understand how he became that way, then I think we can better understand how he can change.”

The character of Scrooge undergoes a miraculous transformation of divine intervention, repentance, and faith.

“Scrooge says, ‘The three spirits will strive within me,’ and I think that’s a real clue,” Peterson said. “The Trinity, the threefold spirit, strives within me—making me, sanctifying me, making me better than I was before.”

Even the name Ebenezer means “stone of help,” taken from 1 Samuel 7:12: “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the Lord has helped us.’”

While Dickens doesn’t explicitly explain the meaning of this name, Peterson believes there was both intentionality and significance to his naming, which is often a characteristic of Dickens’s storytelling.

In exploring that background, Peterson found ample source material from Dickens’s life, adding allusions to David Copperfield, a work considered to be largely autobiographical, as “Easter eggs” in the show.

Dickens not only experienced mistreatment as a child himself but also as an adult was moved by the plight of poor British children and sought to advocate for them through his writing.

After a visit to one London institution, Dickens wrote to a newspaper to enlist the attention of the readers to the efforts “to introduce among the most miserable and neglected outcasts in London, some knowledge of the commonest principles of morality and religion; to commence their recognition as immortal human creatures.”

“He had gone on a tour to visit all these places and see the facts for himself, and he was so affected by that tour that he decided he was going to do something about it,” Peterson said. “What he wanted to do about it was write a political pamphlet.”

Instead of writing a pamphlet, Dickens ended up writing A Christmas Carol. The resulting work, Peterson said, is a much more effective tool.

Dickens’s original audiences thought so too. Shortly after its publication, Dickens wrote in a letter,

I have great faith in the poor; to the best of my ability, I always endeavor to present them in a favorable light to the rich; and I shall never cease, I hope, until I die, to advocate their being made as happy and as wise as the circumstances of their condition in its utmost improvement, will admit of their becoming.

His social advocacy was not merely humanitarian but also grounded in his faith. “He was motivated, I think, by the gospel and his care for children,” Peterson said. “Dickens is really clear that he definitely had a strong Christian faith. It bears out in a lot of his work.”

A Christmas Carol is one of his works that bears the marks of his faith with particular clarity.

Certainly, the story reflects the mercy toward the marginalized spoken of in James 1:27: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”

While Peterson calls the story inherently a deeply Christian one, his adaptation also reflects his own faith.

“I’m foundationally a Christian. All of my stories and the ways that I tell them are foundationally Christian, and so I see it as a mission,” he said. “We get to invite people from all over the city into our storytelling … to tell these beautiful stories that bear the truth of Christ and the kingdom.”

Courtesy of The Rabbit Room Theatre

The cast rehearses in Franklin, Tennessee.

Producer and director Matt Logan was instrumental in promoting Peterson’s first foray into theater—The Battle of Franklin. Since then, the two have teamed up to form a symbiotic creative partnership for several productions, including The Hiding Place.

“Matt and I have learned that we have very similar storytelling styles,” Peterson said. “I’m able to write in a way that he enjoys developing on stage, and I think the way that he works on stage is something that enables me to write specifically for his skill set.”

Logan’s costuming and casting pedigree includes such Broadway credits as The Lion King, and he is also an established actor, director, and illustrator. He designed sets and costumes for the play’s upcoming premiere run, taking a creative direction Peterson calls a marriage of modern theater techniques with the traditional Victorian.

“You don’t do theater because you want to exactly represent a 19th-century street. Theater flourishes in its abstractions and its ability to paint beautiful pictures with light and space,” Peterson said. “We’re really leaning into that with this show.”

Peterson and Logan have been working on the production for the past year and a half, including multiple workshops with the cast and crew.

“It’s such a deeply Christian story that has so thoroughly pervaded our English-speaking culture,” Peterson said, “that it’s just a great opportunity to spread the good news.”

A Christmas Carol runs December 7–22 at the Franklin Special School District (FSSD) Performing Arts Center in Franklin, Tennessee, and tickets are available at rabbitroomtheatre.com. Peterson’s stage play is also available for purchase at store.rabbitroom.com.

Erin Jones is a freelance writer and the founder of Galvanize and Grow Copywriting. More of her writing can be found on erinjoneswriter.com.

- More from Erin Jones

News

Ghana May Elect Its First Muslim President. Its Christian Majority Is Torn.

Akosua Frempong

Church leaders weigh competency and faith background as the West African nation heads to the polls.

Ghana's Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia speaks at the launch of his presidential campaign.

NIPAH DENNIS / Contributor / Getty

Update (Dec. 9): Ghanaians hoping to elect their country’s first Muslim president will have to wait at least four more years.
John Dramani Mahama, who lost his bid for reelection eight years ago, will once again serve as the country’s president after winning 56.6 percent of the vote in Saturday’s election. Mahamudu Bawumia, the country’s vice president, secured 41.6 percent of the vote.

In his acceptance speech, Mahama thanked God for the victory and expressed optimism about the nation’s future. “I thank God… for preparing a table before me in the presence of my enemies, for anointing my head with oil, and for making my cup run over,” he told supporters on Monday.

Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang will make history as Ghana’s first female vice president.

…

A Muslim candidate has the best shot of becoming Ghana’s next president for the first time since the country declared independence in 1957. Recent polls show current vice president Mahamudu Bawumia narrowly leading former president John Dramani Mahama as the country heads to the polls on December 7.

The country of 34 million, where 73 percent of the country identifies as Christian, has only elected Christian presidents. No Muslim candidate has represented a major party, be it Bawumia’s New Patriotic Party (NPP), which is currently in power, or Mahama’s National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Struggling in a flailing economy, many Ghanaians, regardless of religious background, will vote for the man they hope can improve their infrastructure, increase youth employment, and solve the challenges posed by the rising cost of living and depreciating currency.

“I don’t have money to eat. I eat only once. … I eat once a day because of the economy, so I have to save it so that tomorrow I can eat it,” Faiza, a mother of two, told the BBC about the realities affecting her voting decision.

But for some Ghanaians, including Christians, a candidate’s faith is more important than their political credentials.

“We say that the people who can, and who will make us experience ‘The Africa God wants’ would be Christ-like persons—who live [a] lifestyle of godliness with integrity into every area of human endeavour,” wrote Jude Hama, the former CEO of Scripture Union Ghana, for a local weekend newspaper in October.

Ghana’s economy has sputtered for several years. From 2019 to 2022, the percentage of its public debt relative to GDP increased from 63 percent to 93 percent while at one point, inflation spiked to 54 percent.

While Ghanaians have criticized the current NPP government for the country’s economic woes, some have praised it for investing in social services, like making high school free.

Many Ghanaians also associate the Mahama administration, which lasted from 2012 to 2017, with a significant electricity crisis that left parts of the country with regular power outages. Critics also accused him of corruption. These factors, plus frustrations over the economy, contributed to Mahama’s loss to current president Nana Akufo-Addo.

On the campaign trail, both candidates have promised to fix the economy—and have been increasingly trying to do outreach to those who share their opponent’s faith, including making visits to mosques and churches, said John Azumah, the executive director of the Sanneh Institute, which studies both Islam and Christianity.

Yet this type of pandering does not impress him.

“I become very suspicious when candidates begin invoking religion for their policies,” Azumah said, pointing out that though many Nigerian Christians backed former president and fellow Christian Goodluck Jonathan, he struggled once in power and lost his reelection bid.

“I would rather have a good, competent, technocrat politician who can come up with good policies for the development of my country than to be fixated with religious labels,” Azumah said.

Further, religious affiliation can be misleading, said Kofi Bentil, a senior vice president at Imani, a well-known think tank. Ghana has had a number of leaders whose profession of Christianity was in name only, he said.

“Ghana has had presidents who worshiped idols and made pagan sacrifice. It was never a problem; I don’t know why a Muslim president should be a problem,” he said. “We must strictly separate church and state and focus on the person’s credibility and competence, not their faith.”

Bawumia and Mahama both come from royal families, had fathers who were politicians, and come from northern Ghana, a predominantly Muslim region that historically lagged behind educationally.

But the fact that Bawumia shared so much with Mahama wasn’t enough for Alan Kyerematen, a former NPP member who left the party when it decided to back the vice president.

“As a predominantly Christian nation, as Christians, it is our responsibility that we elect a Christian leader, who is also a Christlike leader. We want a leader who has the vision to bring hope to the hopeless, but we also want a leader who will be a servant leader to serve the people and not to Lord over them,” Kyerematen preached to a congregation in March. “We want a leader who has integrity. These were the characteristics of our Lord Jesus.”

Kyerematen’s comments sparked backlash, including from his former fellow party member Elizabeth Kaakie Mann.

“We are all Ghanaians, living in harmony and there is peace in the country,” she said. “The peace we are enjoying is a result of us tolerating each other, whether being Muslim, Christian or traditionalist. His statement seeks to bring chaos amongst religious groups in the country and we are calling on him to apologize and retract the statement.”

Kyerematen, who at one time had been a leading contender to be the NPP’s presidential candidate, is now running for president as an independent but has not polled higher than third.

Meanwhile, Bawumia’s team has tried to present itself as the only option for Muslims. Recently, vice-presidential candidate Matthew Opoku Prempeh accused the NDC of being anti-Muslim and said it would be haram (forbidden by Islamic law) for Muslims to vote for any NDC candidates.

“It’s a very divisive tactic, and it poses significant risks to Ghana’s unity and stability,” said Etornam Sey, a former journalist who now advocates for girls from marginalized communities. “Ethno-religious politicking is not right as a campaign strategy. If unchecked, it could drag Ghana down a path of dysfunction and disunity.”

Christians and Muslims have long peacefully coexisted in Ghana. To that end, presidents must continue to allow the constitution to guide their decisions, Azumah said, not Islamic law or the Sermon on the Mount.

“We should not impose one particular religion’s values upon a whole nation made of people from different faith traditions,” he said.

Despite his minor poll lead, both Azumah and Sey are skeptical of a Bawumia victory. (In fact, an October poll showed that 51.1 percent of Ghanaians supported Mahama.) Numerous incumbent governments around the world have lost reelection bids this year. That the NPP has already had eight years in power will make it more challenging for the vice president to win, Azumah said. The NPP has also had to deal with COVID-19 and the local challenges of a global economic crisis, Sey said.

Regardless of the outcome, a Christian politician’s life and policies should be so attractive that people would want them to govern ahead of any non-Christian, said Dieudonne Nuekpe, executive council member of the Church of Pentecost. When non-Christians win elections against Christians, Nuekpe said, it indicates that their faith is only professed—not lived out.

In fact, a non-Christian leading Christians, Nuekpe said, “happens only when God’s people disappoint him.”

Bentil said Christians obsessing over the faith of a candidate is unnecessary and irrelevant.

“Christians are stoking this religious issue, and it is dangerous!” he said. “Christians have had a lot of time to lead. What did they do?”

- More from Akosua Frempong

Culture

Where Are the Great Brazilian Christmas Carols?

Franco Iacomini

Christian music industry is booming in the country, but at Christmastime, congregations are singing the oldies.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

At any given hour on a December day in Brazil, a radio station is playing Simone’s 1995 version of “Então É Natal,” a local version of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” The cover has become so ubiquitous that in 1999, one newspaper columnist suggested that people fled the country at the end of the year to escape its incessant performance.

Brazil’s obsession with translated Christmas songs extends to church music, where most Christians sing and Christian radio stations play Portuguese versions of old European carols, like “Cantai que o Salvador Chegou” (“Joy to the World”) and “Oh Vinde Adoremos” (“O Come, All Ye Faithful).”

It’s not that Brazilian Christmas songs don’t exist: There are standards from the past, such as “Boas Festas” (“Happy Holidays”) by Assis Valente, released in 1933; Otávio Babo Filho’s “O Velhinho” (“The Old Man”), popularized by Carlos Galhardo in 1957; and the carnival-style “Meninos da Mangueira” (“Boys from Mangueira,” a reference to one of the most known samba groups of Rio de Janeiro) by Ataulfo Alves Júnior (1976). But all are songs about Santa Claus.

Meanwhile, Christian Christmas songs, even Roman Catholic ones, are lacking. Among the Catholics, most celebrations are modest. Local traditions like Missa do Gallo (Midnight Mass) don’t have specific local musical traditions, and church leaders often lend their buildings for public Christmas programs unrelated to church programs.

Meanwhile, Brazilian gospel music has exploded in popularity. According to Spotify, the genre’s listenership grew on average 44 percent each year between 2015 and 2020. This year, from January to March alone, the number of gospel music listeners on Spotify grew an additional 46 percent. In another platform, Deezer, two of the most streamed songs in the country in 2024 were Christian.

So why has a country known for its vibrant music scene, robust recording industry, and a growing evangelical population been slow to produce original Christmas music?

Part of it may be a consequence of the Judaizing theological movement that gained traction in the 1990s, happening simultaneously as the Brazilian evangelical population began to explode, said Renato Marinoni, founder of the Institute of Worship, Culture, and Art.

In addition to advocating for the observance of Jewish festivals, this movement began to argue that the Bible doesn’t command the celebration of Jesus’ birth and that the date of Christmas was borrowed from pre-Christian pagan rituals. As this ideology spread, many churches began downsizing their own Christmas celebrations.

“During my childhood, the church I attended in Poços de Caldas always put up a large Christmas tree in the building, but over time this tradition disappeared,” said Marinoni.

The lack of original holiday music sets Brazil apart from its Latin American neighbors. In Hispanic America, as in the United States, Christian musicians regularly release Christmas albums. Artists such as Marcos Witt (an American, son of missionaries who lived in Mexico) and Mexico’s Jesús Adrián Romero have regularly composed and released Christmas music for years. Some of them, such as Witt’s “Emanuel, Dios con Nosotros Es” are sung by Spanish-speaking congregations in seasonal services.

The same phenomenon is not seen in Brazil. “In the last decade, Brazilian evangelicals have produced lots of original worship music, but this type of repertoire [linked to Christian festivities] has not been something artists have as a priority [as it is in other countries],” said Marcell Steuernagel, the director of Southern Methodist University’s master of sacred music program, who grew up in Curitiba, Brazil.

Compared to other parts of the world (and compared to those countries’ holidays), Brazilian Christians celebrate the festival in a more introspective, familiar way, said Fabiane Behling Luckow, an art history professor at the Universidade Federal de Pelotas.

Many Christmas practices, including the singing of Christian Christmas carols, came as a result of immigration. Protestant migrants and missionaries who arrived in Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries brought their denominations’ hymnals and translated them, Luckow said.

Beyond their theological significance, celebrations such as Christmas connected newcomers to a distant motherland and family members across generations.

“This time of the year makes me very happy because I know that I’ll finally sing hymnal songs that remind me of my childhood and my grandmother,” said Luckow, whose family immigrated to Brazil from Germany.

Steuernagel agrees that Christmastime is marked by the celebration of traditions. “During the ‘ordinary time’ of the liturgical year, people turn to new music, to new releases,” he said. “During Christmas, as at Easter, people seek a return to the old and traditional.”

Traditional arrangements of Christmas carols are structurally and stylistically different from popular new worship songs, which tend to “have few chords and rely heavily on repetition,” said Anuacy Fontes, president of the Council of Music of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil. “It works very well for congregational singing, but it’s not what churches need at Christmas.”

The association of Christmas music with classical music, choirs, and orchestras may actually “discourage those whose work stems from a more popular context from exploring this area,” said Jorge Camargo, a Christian singer and composer. For instance, worship leaders may feel that Brazilian genres like Música Popular Brasileira, which incorporates samba’s guitar and drum, create “too simple” of a sound for the holiday.

Camargo, who has been active in the Christian music industry since 1980, issued a Christmas-themed album—Natal, Piano e Voz, in 2021. Only 2 of the album’s 11 songs were original.

The Christmas album, he said, is not among his most-played on digital platforms, even during the holiday season. “The upside is that I can promote it every year as if it were something new, because most people are unfamiliar with these recordings.”

The desire to add complexity and grandeur to Christmas celebrations has led many Brazilian churches to rely on cantatas (accompanied choral pieces that may have multiple movements, carols, or selections from larger works, like Handel’s Messiah), almost always translated from English and German, Marinoni said.

Almost all evangelical churches, even when they are small, have their own choirs. In general, Christmas services are special programs, with a brief preaching and more music than usual. Some congregations enact Nativity scenes. Most of these services happen before the week of Christmas—services closer to the holidays are often empty because many families travel to spend Christmas with their families in other cities.

Despite this national preference for old music, choirs, and orchestras, some dissenting voices have been raised. Defying the trend, some Christian musicians are dedicated to creating new Christmas songs with a focus on congregational singing. Purples, a band based in Limeira, in the state of São Paulo, has released a Christmas song every year since 2022.

“The Incarnation of Jesus, the one who made himself nothing as mentioned in Philippians 2:7, has always deeply moved me,” said Júlio Filho, Purples’ vocalist and songwriter.

“In 2022, when my son Cristiano was born, was when I realized how defenseless and vulnerable a baby is. That event made me come to a better understanding of the state of humiliation our Lord endured when he came into the world in such a profoundly human way.”

This was how “Emanuel,” Purples’ first Christmas song, came to life, which Júlio wrote for his small church to sing—and then was pleasantly surprised when he learned that other churches had incorporated the song into their services. The chorus says, “Christmas, our hope is born / Earth and heavens, bow to baby Jesus.”

The following year brought “Isaías 9,” whose lyrics are based on Isaiah 9:2, 6. With a simpler arrangement than “Emanuel,” the song was written to be accessible for worship leaders to teach their band and congregation. The band’s most recent track, “Glória,” released on November 25, includes vocals from a local church children’s choir and a portion that brings back Julio’s reflections on the Incarnation: “He became one of us. / He emptied himself. / By grace he delivered favor to his own.”

“Brazilian Christians are often concerned about anything that feels overly commercial, and this is also a concern shared by musicians,” Filho said. “But we need to be more intentional about celebrating occasions like Christmas and Easter so we are not flooded by tunes like Simone’s ‘Então É Natal.’”

- More from Franco Iacomini

Church Life

Shamans, Sorcerers, and Spirits: How Christians in Asia Grapple with the Supernatural

Compiled by Isabel Ong

Leaders discuss the rituals and practices impacting faith formation in Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

Asia has a crowded spirit world. And shamans are in the thick of the action.

Shamans serve as mediators between the human world and the spirit world. They communicate with spirits to achieve certain aims for individuals or communities, such as physical healing or alleviation of a disaster.

Unlike Buddhist monks or Hindu priests, shamans embrace spirit possession, said Chansamone Saiyasak, founder of Mekong Evangelical Mission in Thailand. “Shamanistic practices address basic needs, from health and security to social belonging and self-esteem, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy,” Saiyasak said.

In other parts of the world, an encounter with mystical forces beyond human comprehension may occur through consuming psychedelics like ayahuasca, a South American Indigenous concoction with hallucinogenic properties, or when seeing a sangoma, a South African witch doctor, to connect with an ancestor.

In Asia, engaging with spirits or divine entities is an activity that is often centered on the role of the shaman. Seeking counsel from a shaman is often seen as a legitimate and effective way to deal with everyday matters in life, from deciding who to marry to removing bad luck and healing diseases or illnesses.

Belief in the supernatural is widespread in the region: A majority of adults in Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam say they believe in a god or unseen beings, according to Pew Research Center. Having an otherworldly experience is commonplace as well. “We often experience evil spirits before we experience the Holy Spirit,” said author Justin Tan in a CT piece on the Hungry Ghost Festival.

Christianity Today interviewed seven scholars on how shamanism shows up in certain Asian contexts, what its key sources are, how it has influenced their churches, and what Bible verses challenge it.

In South Korea, shamanism is growing in popularity as younger shamans work through YouTube and other social media platforms to assuage citizens’ anxiety for the future. In Japan and Thailand, animistic beliefs form the bedrock of shamanistic rituals. In Indonesia, people may regard pastors as “spiritual shamans” who wield special powers. And in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, folk religion, folk Catholicism, and Daoism (Taoism) have helped shamanism to thrive because many of their rituals encourage people to appease a spirit or venerate a deity.

While shamanism has helped to develop a greater awareness of the spirit world across many parts of Asia, engaging in shamanistic rituals or practices invites syncretism, opens up room for evil spirits to influence a person’s life, and goes against God’s injunctions on spiritism and sorcery, say these Christian leaders. Their responses can be found in the drop-down list above or linked below:

Indonesia Kristian Kusumawardana, head of the bachelor’s degree program in theology at Bandung Theological Seminary

Japan Martin Heisswolf, author of Japanese Understanding of Salvation: Soteriology in the Context of Japanese Animism

Philippines Dave Johnson, editor of the Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies at the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary

South Korea Yohong Roh, instructor of religious studies at Louisiana State University

Taiwan Tony Chuang, author of Religiosity and Gospel Transmission: Insights from Folk Religion in Taipei

Thailand Chansamone Saiyasak, president of Mekong Evangelical Mission

Vietnam Saralen Tran, Christian education lecturer at Hanoi Bible College

- More from Isabel Ong

Church Life

Shamanism in Indonesia

Kristian Kusumawardana

Can Christians practice ‘white knowledge’ to heal the sick and exorcize demons?

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

When I was 14, a Christian friend introduced me to “white knowledge,” a supposedly mystical power from God that is distinct from the “black knowledge” of the devil. I memorized mantras, fasted, meditated, and performed special rituals. Once I mastered enough of this knowledge to become a “white shaman,” I used the power I felt I had acquired to heal the sick, exorcize demons, and protect people from black magic attacks, which occur through spells or charms that are used to harm others.

The deeper I delved into white knowledge, however, the darker my heart, mind, and emotions became. While I continued to attend church, I felt no peace. My mind didn’t understand Scripture, and my emotions were uncontrollable, although I was able to do good things that helped people.

Amid this confusion, I read 2 Corinthians 11:13–14 and realized that the white knowledge I had been studying was a deception of Satan, who masquerades as an angel of light. Nearly three years after I became a white shaman, I repented and experienced new birth. From then on, I have grown in my understanding of God’s Word.

Practicing shamanism is quite common in Indonesia, and it has a deep-rooted influence in the country’s culture. Shamans appear to possess supernatural power to either maintain or disrupt natural harmony. If they pray and perform rituals to heal the sick, expel evil spirits, support businesses, or maintain the harmony of life, people believe that their power originates from a god or a good spirit. These individuals are often called white shamans. Religious figures, including pastors, are often described as such.

In contrast, if certain individuals disrupt the harmony of life through their rituals by causing illness, economic loss, and suffering to others, people believe their power originates from evil spirits, and they are categorized as black shamans. They can easily become the target of mass anger and hatred. From 1998 to 1999, vigilantes killed more than 250 people suspected to be black shamans in East Java.

Because of traumatic memories from the 1998 killings, the Javanese word for shaman, dukun, carries a negative connotation. Those who practice witchcraft prefer to be called “paranormal,” or kyai in Javanese.

Recent events reveal the power that shamans continue to wield in Indonesian society.

In March 2022, a rain shaman performed rituals at a track on Lombok island to stop a downpour so that an international motorcycle race could proceed smoothly. While some people were against her actions, many were in favor, especially because the rain stopped. Last April, authorities arrested a village shaman in central Java for killing at least 12 people whom he had scammed in a money-multiplying scheme.

Generally, Christians in Indonesia reject shamanistic practices. Deuteronomy 18:10–12 firmly states that shamanistic rituals are “detestable to the Lord.” The account of Saul’s failure in 1 Chronicles 10:13–14 also serves as a stern warning to God’s people that consulting spirits, which is one form of shamanism, can bring about harsh judgment from God.

Some churches, especially those deeply rooted in traditional cultures, attempt to contextualize the gospel by adapting rituals commonly practiced by white shamans. For example, the Javanese Christian Church (Gereja Kristen Jawa) replaces ceremonies traditionally led by white shamans—like midodareni (a prewedding ceremony), mitoni (a seven-month pregnancy celebration),and nyewu dina (a thousand-day postdeath ceremony)—with thanksgiving services led by pastors.

The influence of the sacred-secular dichotomy in Indonesian Christianity, however, fosters spiritual shamanistic practices within the church. This dichotomy leads some to believe that there are certain people and objects that possess supernatural powers, enabling them to act as mediators with the spirit world.

In the church, this dichotomy makes pastors, the cross, the communion cup, and anointing oil be regarded as having supernatural powers, serving as mediators with God. As a result, the congregation may believe that only the pastor’s prayers are heard by God and that by touching or kissing the cross or communion cup or being anointed with oil, they will be blessed and healed by God.

This sacred-secular dichotomy should be increasingly dismantled. Evangelical church leaders should engage in intentional mentoring and discipleship so that congregations will increasingly understand and obey the Word of God. Seminaries can also conduct more research and studies on the gospel and culture to produce a more contextual theology.

Kristian Kusumawardana is head of the bachelor’s degree program in theology at Bandung Theological Seminary. Read more in our series’ lead article, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Spirits: How Christians in Asia Grapple with the Supernatural.

- More from Kristian Kusumawardana

Church Life

Shamanism in Japan

Martin Heisswolf

Christians in the country view pastors’ benedictions as powerful spiritual mantras.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

I lived in various parts of Japan, including the city of Yokohama, for 26 years. One of my neighbors was a practicing shaman who described herself as a “pipe” through which God’s blessings would flow. We invited her to our home and had deep conversations about our faiths, religious practices, and ups and downs in our work.

Japanese shamanism is not a religion but a way of exercising spiritual guidance in the context of an animist worldview. It likely arose from the shamanistic practices of the Ainu, an Indigenous ethnic group in northern Japan.

In ancient times, shamans were mainly involved in political affairs. The role of shaman was almost exclusively held by women in pre-Buddhist Japan around the eighth century. Today, shamans tell fortunes, connect the living and the dead as mediums, conduct salvific rites for the deceased, and provide counseling and healing ministries.

Three traditional groups of shamans exist today: the miko, who work mainly in Shinto shrines and dance to stabilize the cosmic axis connecting heaven and earth; the kuchiyose, who are masters of telepathy, mediumship, necromancy, and divination and gain knowledge that they use in fortune telling when they are possessed; and the jussha (magicians) and gyōsha (practitioners), who are key figures of Japanese “new religions” like the modern Shinto sect Tenrikyō.

In the last 50 years, interest in shamanism has rapidly increased. Some factors for this development include the abolishment of State Shintō in 1945, which allowed new sects to develop, and the growth of individualism, which freed people to fashion their own patchwork religions by drawing on old occult practices and supernatural phenomena. There are about ten times as many books on shamanism published today than in the 1950s.

Japan is a fast-paced and technologically advanced society, but when it comes to worldviews, the country has never been modern. High school and university education puts a thin layer of Western rationalism over an otherwise solid core of premodern thinking in which shamanism plays a vital role.

This is reflected in how the role of a pastor is conceived in some Japanese churches, where pastors’ prayers, particularly for healing, are considered more powerful than those of lay people. Only pastors can deliver the benediction, which is often understood as a mantra with inherent spiritual power. Pledging obedience to the pastor may also be part of public baptismal vows, and pastors can forbid church members from visiting other congregations.

Within the church, Japanese evangelicals must address the danger of spiritual abuse, especially as the culture favors a top-down leadership style. The Yawata scandal in 2005, where a pastor sexually abused women and girls in his church while claiming to have divine authority over them, shook the Japanese church and has since galvanized greater awareness and preventive action.

Mitsuru Murakami, a pastor and expert on churches that deteriorated into cults, and Jean Dôgen, a missionary from Truth Word Mission Church Kansai, founded organizations that help victims. Missionary William Wood’s book When Churches Turn into Cults: Fostering Biblical Discernment was also widely recognized and challenged pastors to rethink their leadership styles.

Outside the church, Japanese evangelicals must tackle worldview issues that are commonly only addressed by shamans or Shinto and Buddhist practitioners. These topics may include the felt need for protection against hostile spiritual beings, healing, discernment in important decisions, and ancestor veneration. If evangelicals don’t address these topics, Christianity will likely not be considered a relevant religion, which may lead believers to seek answers to these questions outside of the Christian faith.

The Old Testament is full of references that candidly speak against activities that fall into the field of Japanese shamanism. The most prominent shaman of his age, Balaam, attested to this: “There is no divination against Jacob, no evil omens against Israel. It will now be said of Jacob and of Israel, ‘See what God has done!’” (Num. 23:23). Divination and sorcery are not necessary for the people of God because the Lord will guide and provide for them. Seeking instruction from any other god would be an act of infidelity.

Martin Heisswolf is the author of Japanese Understanding of Salvation: Soteriology in the Context of Japanese Animism. Read more in our series’ lead article, Shamans, Sorcerers, and Spirits: How Christians in Asia Grapple with the Supernatural.

- More from Martin Heisswolf

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