Studies of Religion Need the Corrective Lens of Social Science

Arthur E. Farnsley II

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

Efe Ersoy / Pexels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Church Life

A Greater Light than Diwali

Surinder Kaur

South Asian Christians use connections between the Diwali festival and Christmas to point their communities to Christ.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

In New Delhi’s Chittaranjan Park, Mary David adjusts the traditional Christmas star hanging from her balcony. The fading remnants of her neighbors’ Diwali lights from last month create a gentle reminder of South Asia’s unique festival season. “It’s beautiful how the celebrations flow into each other,” she says, arranging her Advent wreath.

In other parts of India, like Chennai’s bustling Marina Beach area, carol singing fills the air where Diwali celebrations echoed just weeks ago. Churches prepare for midnight Mass while traces of their Hindu neighbors’ festival lamps linger in memories. And in Ahmedabad’s Maninagar neighborhood, Rachel Khristy, a schoolteacher, thoughtfully reflects on the season’s transitions. Last month, her family joined neighbors for Diwali’s lighting ceremony; now, amid Advent preparations, she’s planning Christmas dinner for these same friends.

Across South Asian cities, especially in India, this festival transition has become a familiar rhythm. Streets that recently buzzed with Diwali celebrations now pulse with Christmas preparations. Families who gathered to create intricate rangoli patterns (a colorful art drawn on the ground at the entrance of the house, with materials like powdered limestone, dry rice flour, or colored sand) and light diyas (clay lamps) during Amavasya (new moon)—celebrated as the darkest night of the month—now string Christmas lights and arrange Nativity scenes. The sweet aroma of plum cakes and Christmas treats fills the air just days after the smoke from Diwali fireworks has dissipated, while wreaths and garlands appear alongside fading rangoli designs.

Though emerging from different faith traditions, both these festivals celebrate the triumph of light over darkness. However, they reflect different understandings of divine intervention in human affairs. Christians, of course, celebrate the season as the time when God’s Son came to earth as a human. Hindus celebrate stories of their deities who appear on earth temporarily as avatars, a Sanskrit word for divine descent.

At times, Indian Christians have found this concept helpful in explaining elements of their faith to non-Christian audiences. For instance, 20th-century Indian Christian theologians like Aiyadurai Jesudasen Appasamy, Vengal Chakkarai and Pandippedi Chenchiah and several mainstream Syriac Christian songs use the term avatar as the translation for Immanuel.

Many maintain that Jesus’ incarnation significantly differs from the Hindu concept of an avatar. Diwali, for instance, commemorates the victory and return from exile of King Rama, the god Vishnu’s avatar. Another story celebrated during the holiday celebrates another of Vishnu’s avatars, Lord Krishna, defeating a demon. The avatars’ royalty and power contrasts with that of Jesus, who, though proclaimed as Messiah, is the son of a carpenter and describes himself as having “no place to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20).

The distinctive theological perspectives between Hinduism and Christianity become most visible in how each community celebrates its festivals. In a small church in Punjab, pastor Anujit Emerson helps children arrange a nativity scene. “We tell one story,” she says, “the story of God becoming human.” This stands in contrast to their recent experience, where just weeks ago, these same children watched their Hindu friends celebrate multiple divine victories: Rama’s triumph over Ravana, Krishna’s defeat of Narakasura, and Lakshmi’s bestowal of blessings.

Notably, Vishnu’s time as Rama and Krishna is limited, said Vijayesh Lal, who leads the Evangelical Fellowship of India. In contrast, Jesus’ embodiment as both God and human is an eternal merging of divine and human essence that persists beyond his death and return to heaven.

The contrasts extend to how these divine figures engage with humanity. In the Hindu tradition, Hindu deities and their redemptive or salvific actions are for Hindus. In contrast, the power of Jesus that defeats death is available for all who believe, a promise not limited by caste or culture, explained Samuel Richmond Saxena of the World Evangelical Alliance Theological Commission. He added, “His light was meant to illuminate every corner of the world.”

Christ’s light doesn’t just illuminate, explained Emerson, who is also a Sikh convert; it is “transformative and eternal” in nature.

Diwali’s theological claims mean Christians like Khristy try to exercise wisdom when determining how to engage with the holiday. While her children joined their friends in setting off firecrackers, her family politely declined participation in religious rituals like the puja (worship) ceremonies to the deities.

Lal sees these festival intersections as opportunities for religious communities to better understand each other’s faith. Many Hindu friends are genuinely curious about the meaning behind Christmas celebrations, he said. “When they see the Nativity scenes in our homes or hear carols about the birth of Jesus, they often ask questions about why God would choose to be born in such humble circumstances.”

The similarities between Hindu and Christian understandings of light overcoming darkness create natural bridges for dialogue while still allowing space to highlight Christianity’s distinctive message.

For instance, light for Hindus generally refers to individual, personal enlightenment, said Saphir Athyal, the former principal of the Union Biblical Seminary, who has guided Christian families through these cultural negotiations. For Christians, light looks like Matthew 5:16: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

The ancient Sanskrit prayer from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad—“Tamso ma jyotirgamaya” (“lead me from darkness to light”)—“resonates with this universal human longing for divine light,” Saxena pointed out. For Rajendra Prasad Dwivedi, a Christian apologist, these same verses “formed a solid foundation” to embrace Christ. Dwivedi recalled, “It brought me immense joy and excitement to realize that the prayers of Vedic rishis and munis (sages and ascetics) from thousands of years ago were answered in Christ Jesus.”

As Christmas Eve approaches, Khristy’s home buzzes with preparation—the aroma of fresh plum cakes baking, children practicing carols for the midnight service, and neighbors dropping by to admire her Christmas lights and decoration.

“We maintain our beliefs while building bridges of understanding,” she says, arranging fresh Christmas wreaths. “Besides, everybody loves Christmas cakes.”

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Theology

What Your Anxiety Needs This Christmas

Russell Moore

Editor in Chief

The answer to our fears is as unexpected—and apocalyptic—as the birth of Jesus.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

Last Sunday, I took a break from the apocalypse to focus on Christmas.

By “apocalypse,” I’m not referencing the news cycle but, literally, the actual Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, through which I’m teaching week-by-week Sundays at my church.

The problem is that we are right in the middle of the book, which consists of bowls of wrath, boils and plagues, and a woman riding a beast while drinking the blood of the martyrs. It seemed a little anxiety-inducing to go through all of that and then end with, “So Merry Christmas, everybody!”

Instead, I turned to the Gospel of Luke, to the time of baby Jesus—and found myself right back in an apocalypse.

In the text, right after the account of Jesus’ birth, Mary and Joseph present the infant Christ in the temple. There, they are approached by the prophet Simeon, who takes the baby in his arms.

Some of what old Simeon then says sounds Christmasy enough for our expectations. The baby is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel” (Luke 2:32, ESV throughout).

But then he gets dark. Simeon turns to Mary and predicts, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed” (vv. 34–35).

The word apocalypse, of course, doesn’t hold the same meaning biblically as our pop culture gives it (“scary dystopia”). The word means “unveiling,” a showing of what’s hidden to our perception, a revealing of the way the universe really is. What Simeon saw in that bustling outer court of the temple was that Mary was headed for heartbreak—the kind of soul-tearing heartbreak that would make visible what was really true.

It’s hard to follow “A knife is headed for your heart, lady,” with “Happy Holidays and a Blessed New Year!” The foreboding nature of that word had to be unnerving, if not terrifying. The more I think of it, though, the more I’m convinced that is exactly what we need, all of us, this year.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that adolescents and young adults make up an “anxious generation,” driven by the limbic effects of smartphone and social media ecology. But he also asserts that the anxiety is not limited to any one generation. We all live and move and have our cultural being in a kind of acute anxiety.

By anxiety, here, I don’t mean the clinical, medical condition from which many people suffer. I mean instead the sort of generalized state of worry and tension that seems so heightened in the world around us and within us right now.

In his new book, Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment, and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, poet David Whyte argues that anxiety describes the way we try to avoid conversing with the things that scare us by worrying about them instead. This kind of constant anxiety, he writes, is actually a defense mechanism for what we are afraid can hurt us.

“Anxiety is the trembling surface identity that finds the full measure of our anguish too painful to bear; constant anxiety is our way of turning away from and attempting to make a life free from the necessities of heartbreak,” he writes. “Anxiety is our greatest defense against the vulnerabilities of intimacy and a real understanding of others. Allowing our hearts to actually break might be the first step in freeing ourselves from anxiety.”

A heightened state of worry feels like doing something, but that kind of hyper-vigilance is exhausting. And it often cuts us off from those things that require vulnerability—the risk of being hurt—to exist: love, affection, compassion, wonder, awe, curiosity, courage, giving of self. Maybe Whyte is correct that what is needed for us right now is not to protect ourselves from heartbreak but to embrace it.

That’s where I realized just how similar the warm, bright Christmas story is to the dark, scary middle of the Book of Revelation. Every Sunday, I remind my church-folk (and myself) that the “scary” parts of Revelation are actually good news. God is pulling back the veil so that what’s hidden is made plain.

The kingdoms of this world are shaky and tottering. The way of Caesar, the way of the Beast, seems right now to “work.” For the first-century church, the word from Patmos is a call to overcome: not by fighting like the Devil against the ways of the Devil but by remaining faithful, enduring through suffering, and waiting on the God of Israel to make all things new.

The Apocalypse doesn’t deny that dangerous days are coming, but it makes clear that they are limited—“a time, and times, and half a time” (12:14). On the other side of the sword that cuts through Mary’s heart at the cross (or those that cut off the martyr’s heads in first-century Rome), there’s a weight of glory that cannot be described adequately with words. We can free ourselves to risk heartbrokenness because a broken heart is the beginning of the story, not the end.

Simeon’s warning is in the context of blessing. He was waiting, by the Spirit, for the “consolation of Israel” (Luke 2:25). He never saw an overthrown Rome. He never saw the murderous house of Herod torn down. He never saw the promise fulfilled of the nations streaming to Mount Zion, with David’s throne occupied by David’s heir. And yet he could say that he could die in peace because he had, in fact, seen “your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples” (v. 32).

What he saw was this baby. And that was a hidden reality, except for the eyes of faith.

The people bustling through the temple courts didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe one of them heard the infant Jesus crying and said, “Somebody should tell that woman to keep that kid quiet.” They saw a normal day, filled with the anxieties of life. But Simeon saw an apocalypse—and in it, a world blinded with light.

Every life is filled with anxiety, and every age is too. Sometimes that anxiety feels more acute than at other times, and the future seems more uncertain than before. This Christmas, let’s look beyond the days and years right ahead of us. Let’s see the Light that shines out of Bethlehem, the Light that shines in the darkness, the Light the darkness cannot comprehend or overcome.

Let your heart be broken, but rejoice. All is well in heaven and will be well on earth. Remember the good tidings of great joy. And have yourself a merry little Apocalypse.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

News

Wire Story

Olivet University Loses Its License to Operate in California

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

The school says it will appeal the decision and remain open under a state religious exemption.

Olivet University's San Francisco campus

Courtesy of Olivet University

A California Christian college is vowing to stay open despite a state judge’s ruling that bars the school from enrolling new students and requires current students to be sent to other schools.

California is the second state to bar Olivet University, a small school with ties to South Korean minister David Jang, from operating a campus. In 2022, officials in New York state decided not to renew Olivet’s license to run a campus in Dover, New York, citing alleged financial mismanagement.

In 2020, the school agreed to pay more than half a million dollars in fines for improperly removing asbestos from its Dover campus, also home to the World Olivet Assembly, which claims to be a “global gathering of evangelical churches and para-church organizations.”

Olivet’s main campus in Anza, California, in the desert southeast of Los Angeles, says it has applied for a religious exemption to remain open, despite a ruling from California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education revoking the school’s license to operate. (Olivet offers other select classes at sites in several other states.)

In a decision that takes effect in early January, Judge Debra Nye-Perkins of the Office of Administrative Hearings found that the school failed to educate students properly and that it has not maintained adequate educational records, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“The only degree of discipline that would protect the public is the revocation of respondent’s approval to operate,” wrote Nye-Perkins, after hearings prompted by a complaint filed by California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education.

In a statement posted on its website, the school said it would appeal the decision to revoke its license.

“In addition to pursuing the appeal, Olivet University has made the decision as of December 11 to operate under religious exemption in California, and submitted its application same day,” according to the statement. “This step reflects the University’s commitment to continuing its mission and activities while upholding its core values and principles as a Christian institution.”

Jang has been a controversial figure in evangelical circles, with ex-members claiming his sect teaches that the Korean minister is the “Second Coming Messiah,” which the sect denies. Along with running the church and Olivet, sect members have started a number of online business, and for a time owned Newsweek magazine. The group also had close ties to the World Evangelical Alliance before the WEA reportedly severed the relationship last summer.

In 2020, the college and former publishers of Newsweek and The Christian Post, which also has ties to Jang, pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtaining $35 million in loans. The loans were supposed to be used to purchase computers but were used for other purposes. The chair of the board of Olivet pled guilty and served no jail time but was banned from the school’s board. The school also agreed to repay $1.25 million.

More recently former students of Olivet, many of them from countries in Asia, sued the college, accusing school leaders of forcing them to perform unpaid labor and controlling their movements.

“At all times while Plaintiffs lived at Olivet’s Anza campus, they were not permitted to come and go from campus unless they first received permission from an Olivet employee,” a complaint in the lawsuit alleges, the LA Times reported.

Olivet leaders did not reply to a request for comment, but have denied any wronging in the past. The school blames its current woes on a long-running feud with the current owners of Newsweek magazine, who have also had ties to Jang in the past. Though a lawsuit over the management of the magazine was settled in 2023, a spokesperson for Olivet has accused Newsweek’s owners of colluding with California’s post-secondary private education bureau to harm the college, according to the Gospel Herald, a Christian news site whose editor is an Olivet professor.

The Gospel Herald also published a redacted image of a Bureau for Private Post-Secondary Education investigative form purportedly showing that a writer from Newsweek made an initial complaint against Olivet.

“Since 2022, Newsweek has published more than 20 maliciously negative reports targeting Olivet University due to ownership disputes, even collaborating via email with BPPE to attack and manipulate the school,” the spokesperson told the Gospel Herald.

Olivet also claims to remain in good standing with the Association for Biblical Higher Education, its accreditor, though the college was placed on probation by the ABHE from 2021-22 and was on warning from the group at the time California officials were investigating Olivet.

“Respondent continues to show a cavalier attitude toward compliance with the BPPE’s statutes and regulations,” Nye-Perkins said in her decision.

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Culture

Marcos Witt Was Tired of the ‘Same Old Christmas Songs’

Hernán Restrepo

Latin America’s beloved worship musician wanted to apply Psalm 96:1 to a tradition-heavy genre.

Edits by Christianity Today / Source Images: Courtesy of Marcos Witt, Getty

For Marcos Witt, writing Christmas music is about more than capturing seasonal sentimentality or warm memories. It’s about creating original music that glorifies God, said the beloved Latin gospel musician and worship leader—even during the Christmas season, when familiar tunes play on repeat.

“It says in his Word, ‘Sing a new song to the Lord,’” Witt said, quoting Psalm 96:1 “It doesn’t go beyond that.”

Witt has produced some of the most popular contemporary Christmas songs in Latin America. His originals have become standards, incorporated into the collection of tried-and-true carols sung by many Christians in the region. Songs like “Es Navidad” and “Nada Especial” appeal to Spanish-speaking evangelicals looking for alternatives to traditional Catholic carols like “Mi Burrito Sabanero” or “Los Peces en el Río,” which emphasize saints and the Virgin Mary.

Audiences unfamiliar with Witt’s worship songs now recognize his holiday music. Christmas music is just one facet of Witt’s expansive discography, but it has provided opportunities for the former missionary kid to reach new listeners.

Witt released his first Christmas album, Es Navidad, in 1996. The title track has remained one of the most popular modern Christmas songs among Spanish-speaking audiences, establishing Witt as a musical icon with broad crossover appeal and a unique position in the Latin American music industry. In November of this year, he released “Nació La Luz,” an unexpected collaboration with prominent Mexican actress and singer Thalia.

Over the course of Witt’s 38-year career, he has sold over 27 million copies of his albums (he has released more than 40), earning six Latin Grammys and two Billboard Awards. Through CanZion, his record label, Witt has cultivated and launched the careers of Latin American artists such as Danilo Montero, Jaime Murrell, and Jesús Adrián Romero. Now based in the Houston area, he is one of the most influential evangelical leaders among Hispanics in the United States.

“To talk about Marcos Witt is to talk about someone who brought [Christian music] to the Hispanic mainstream,” said Pablo Aguirre, an Ecuadorian music producer and member of the Latin Recording Academy.

Es Navidad (It’s Christmas) transformed the way Latin American evangelical churches celebrate the season. Churches adapted songs from the album almost immediately, using them in church Christmas programs and performances. Before Witt released the album, evangelicals in the region relied on Catholic carols that, while familiar, had less and less resonance among young people (and association with a church tradition that many evangelicals wanted distance from).

“Almost three decades after its release, it is still relevant,” Luisa Calle, a journalist from Billboard, told CT.

Witt told CT that it was his producer, Juan Salinas, who first suggested that he make a Christmas album. He liked the idea but was determined not to release just another collection of holiday covers.

“I didn’t feel like making an album where we sat down and sang the same old Christmas songs,” Witt said.

Es Navidad contains some modern arrangements of traditional songs translated from English, such as “Silent Night” and “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” But it was two originals that established the album as a Christmas classic. The first song on the album is the title track, “Es Navidad,” a celebratory, faith-forward song with a festive tropical-inspired arrangement.

It’s Christmas! The Earth celebrates.
The rich and the poor will share
The happiness and joy that on that day
Christ Jesus came to give us.

—“Es Navidad” (Christianity Today’s translation)

“Es Navidad” is one of only a handful of his songs that have managed to cross over into the mainstream from the Christian niche and break what Witt calls “the barrier of the evangelical world.” Throughout the month of December, holiday shoppers hear the song over store loudspeakers throughout Latin America and on secular radio stations.

Another original on the album, “Nada Especial” (“Simple Man”), has remained popular with Spanish-speaking audiences. In the style of a bolero or love ballad (reminiscent of hits performed by singer Luis Miguel), the lyrics reflect on the humbling acknowledgement of having no gift worthy of the infant King:

I wish I’d been one of the wise men,
to bring you a gift that’s befitting a King,
I would have offered it humbly before your feet.

—“Nada Especial”

Following the success of Witt’s 2001 album Sana Nuestra Tierra (Heal Our Land), which earned his first Latin Grammy, he released another Christmas album, Tiempo de Navidad (Christmas Time). The ambitious project was recorded at Abbey Road studios (where the Beatles famously recorded their 11th studio album of the same name) in London, and it features lushly orchestrated Christmas standards performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Alongside covers of songs like “White Christmas” and “What Child is This?,” Witt released a new arrangement of “Nada Especial.”

Witt released the album jointly with Sony Music and his own record label, CanZion. The scale and production quality of the album were evidence of Witt’s growing popularity and broad appeal with Spanish-speaking audiences. Witt took advantage of the moment following his Grammy boost and started building inroads to the Anglo music market, releasing an English version of his new album, titled Christmas Time.

In 2020, Witt released the EP Navidad Es Jesús (Christmas Is Jesus), bringing in a multinational array of artists including Spanish singer Kike Pavón, the Mexican duo Majo y Dan, the Mexican band Rojo, and the Guatemalan singer and songwriter Lowsan Melgar. In 2022, Witt published an EP featuring his daughter Elena Witt-Guerra on two traditional hymns, “Silent Night” and “O Holy Night.”

Witt’s 2020 Christmas EP illustrates his unique position in the industry as both a performer and an influential collaborator. He is an artist with mass appeal and recognition, working with fellow musicians across genres and geographic boundaries, who also remains firmly rooted in the Christian industry. Witt said his success has also opened doors for him to become a pastoral figure in the industry beyond the Christian niche.

“Over the years, I have had the privilege of being able to pray with many [performers], supporting them in times of crisis, in times of pain,” Witt said.

Partnerships with mainstream artists have sometimes resulted in criticism, but Witt has continued to serve as a bridge to the Christian niche for musicians interested in making music that reflects their faith.

“By joining forces with figures from the secular world, Marcos not only achieves greater visibility for Christian music but also contributes to changing the perception that this type of music is limited to a closed circle,” Latin Grammy producer Pablo Aguirre told CT.

In October, Witt posted an interview with Mexican actress and singer Thalia, one of the best selling Latin pop artists of all time and a recognizable face among telenovela audiences. During the interview, Thalia spoke openly about her Christian faith, which she has been reluctant to do in the past. She talked about attending the Christian church that her sister leads, growing up in a religious family, and having a personal encounter with Jesus as a young adult.

“I knew that she was a follower of Jesus, but I also knew that she was a follower of Jesus secretly, and she kept it very quiet,” Witt said.

Thalia, who has never spoken publicly about her faith, messaged Witt on Instagram earlier this year about a possible collaboration, and he was eager to help her make her first Christian record.

Thalia’s foray into the Christian music sphere comes at a time when other long-standing, secular Latin American artists such as Daddy Yankee and Farruko are making their faith a more visible part of their personas. Christianity Today recently reported on a similar trend in Brazil, where pop stars such as Ana Castela or Wesley Safadão are courting Christian music audiences.

Witt said he considers it an honor to be asked to help an artist experiment with singing about their faith. He added that he doesn’t want to push anyone in that direction, but “when the opportunity arises, I respond—‘Here I am. Send me.’”

There has been no shortage of criticism about this collaboration. A few days after the song’s release, several YouTubers published videos criticizing Witt for recording the song with Thalía, who has expressed her support for the LGBTQ community on several occasions.

“Ah, well, I have been criticized in worse ways,” Witt said of the backlash. “I don’t have to be accountable to my followers on Instagram or TikTok. I’m going to have to give an account to the Lord.”

After 38 years in the music industry, Witt seems to be unconcerned about the appearance of being too familiar with its secular side. Producing Christmas music has provided organic opportunities for Witt to build his audience and his relationships with other artists across stylistic and market boundaries. The season immerses religious and nonreligious listeners in music that celebrates Christ’s birth, and for almost 30 years, Witt has been singing new songs, hoping to offer something more than just holiday entertainment.

Hernán Restrepo is a Colombian journalist who lives in Bogotá. He has managed the social media accounts of Christianity Today in Spanish since 2021.

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Ideas

The Orphan Care Movement Grows Up

Jedd Medefind

Two decades into the resurgence of Christian adoption advocacy, the movement bears both visible bruises and greater wisdom.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty, WikiMedia Commons

Some 20 years back, a remarkable resurgence of care for orphans began. It united believers across the US and beyond who longed to renew the age-old Christian commitment to children on the margins, from international adoption to local foster care. The movement arose eager but green.

In May 2004, 29 leaders gathered in Little Rock, Arkansas. Some led venerable ministries, others startups. Some were pastors and business leaders. Many were also adoptive or foster parents. “There were all kinds of opinions in the room,” recalled Andy Lehman, then vice president of a new orphan-care nonprofit. “But we all loved Jesus and longed to see more Christians stepping up for orphans.”

Interest in orphans seemed to be sprouting in many corners of the church. Technology and travel were shrinking the world. The global AIDS crisis spotlighted the reality of orphaned children. Just a year before the Little Rock meeting, President George W. Bush had launched the largest health initiative by any nation in history, including a special focus on children orphaned by HIV. Countless private efforts also flowered, from massive organizations like World Vision to mom-and-pop nonprofits.

International adoption was surging, too. Respected Christian leaders like Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman, who welcomed a daughter from China in 2000, showed believers that adoption wasn’t just a last resort for parents who couldn’t conceive. It was also a beautiful way to provide a child with a family.

This energy appeared novel, but its roots ran deep. Christians have always paid special care to children the world discarded. Even as a persecuted minority in the Roman empire, the first believers earned a reputation for seeking out children left to die and welcoming them as sons and daughters.

Christians have been known for similar efforts ever since, from early saints like Afra of Augsburg to George Müller, Pandita Ramabai, and Charles Spurgeon. Their efforts varied from orphanages to adoption to aid for widows and more. But all acted with a strong sense that God cares deeply for orphans and calls his people to do the same.

The eclectic bunch in Little Rock wanted to reignite this ancient commitment. Dennis Rainey, founder of Family Life and an adoptive father, gave the group a charge that would define their work together. Rainey observed that despite their shared values, most organizations worked in isolation or even competition. He asked a bold question: “Can we leave our logos and egos at the door to accomplish far more together than any of us could alone?” The participants pledged to find out.

“Unity isn’t easy,” Rainey warned. “It doesn’t happen without serious effort.” He added another caution: “This call to care for orphans, adoption, foster care—that’s not easy either. It may be one of the hardest things a person can do.”

Looking back now, Rainey admitted that many of those present seriously underestimated the challenges ahead, himself included. “We didn’t know the half of it,” he said.

Today, many who began this journey are still at it but are markedly changed. Most bear invisible scars. Their early enthusiasm has been humbled, their idealism chastened. Yet many also evidence surprisingly buoyant hearts and spiritual depth. How did they get there? And what can fellow believers committed to justice and mercy learn from the passion, pain, and perseverance of this movement?

Courtesy of CAFO / Edits by CT

Dennis and Barbara Rainey (right)

Fresh enthusiasm and big dreams

When the group next gathered, enthusiasm ran high. A volunteer observed that participants “were making plans to change the world before they even got to the first meeting.”

On some issues, realism held sway. Participants agreed that bad actors in the field needed to be confronted. At the time, virtually anyone could raise money “for orphans” with zero accountability. One of the group’s first steps was to adopt shared standards for fiscal integrity and governance.

But other elements of their plans were thick with idealism, even naiveté. Phrases like end the orphan crisis and bringing hope to millions echoed in plenary talks and hallway conversations. Solutions now viewed as flawed—including large, impersonal orphanages—went largely unquestioned. Perhaps most of all, it was taken for granted that the right blend of faith and elbow grease could fix just about anything. Love would heal the hurts of any child, no matter how severe.

Like others in the room, Andy Lehman and his wife, Jill, not only desired to spur others to action. They wanted to answer God’s call personally, too, whatever that might mean.

Even as the organization Andy Lehman was helping build worked to support orphan care on a larger scale, the Lehmans began the process of adopting a boy from Korea. “We had two little ones already,” explains Jill. “But we knew so many kids out there were growing up without families.”

International adoption meant a long, costly, and uncertain journey. The Lehmans were not deterred. “We had plenty of questions,” Andy recalled. “But it also felt straightforward. As it says in Psalms, ‘God sets the lonely in families.’ That’s exactly what he did for us in Jesus, welcoming us into his family. If we could do that for a child, why wouldn’t we?”

The fruits of unity

In 2007, the growing community incorporated as the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO). Their work together began to spill beyond annual summits, including stronger accountability standards and a joint advocacy campaign.

Organizations with media reach—including Focus on the Family, FamilyLife, and Shaohannah’s Hope (now Show Hope)—synchronized their messaging. Others pitched in. The group even sent a delegation to the White House, securing a PSA from First Lady Laura Bush.

The campaign was a smashing success, tabulating millions of media impressions. People who visited a redirecting website were guided to trustworthy organizations that matched their sense of calling, from foster care or adoption to ministries worldwide.

That’s when I first encountered CAFO. I served as a special assistant to President Bush, and the meeting request for a CAFO delegation was funneled to me. Eventually, I joined the organization full-time and have served as its president for 15 years.

In 2004, the same year as the first CAFO summit, a Colorado pastor named Robert Gelinas learned that 875 kids waited in the state’s foster system for adoptive families while more than 3,000 churches gathered weekly. Gelinas was confident that, working together, Christians could end the waiting.

Gelinas met with state officials, listening and forming friendships. He engaged fellow pastors, too. His message was simple: “The body of Christ needs to come together to make sure there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado.”

In time, Gelinas and his friends formed a nonprofit, Project 1.27, to spearhead the charge. Focus on the Family and other Colorado partners also threw in their weight. Pastors preached on God’s special love for orphans. Congregations launched foster care ministries.

Within five years, the number of children in Colorado waiting for adoption had been cut to fewer than 300. Sharen Ford, a senior state administrator at the time, said, “Project 1.27 and their partners turned things upside down. So many kids who’d have spent their whole childhood in the system were welcomed to loving homes. We estimated they saved the state at least $5 million.”

The CAFO Summit continued to grow, topping 1,000 attendees in 2010. Models like Project 1.27 spread quickly in a setting like that, along with contagious enthusiasm. The coordinated initiatives owned jointly by CAFO’s growing membership continued to expand.

Courtesy of CAFO / Edits by CT

People travel from all over the world to attend CAFO Summit.

Inspired by an Orphan Sunday service held by a small church in Zambia, CAFO created resources to help local churches all over the world do the same. By 2010, hundreds of churches were joining in. Diverse expressions ranged from Sunday sermons on God’s heart for orphans to evening concerts, from foster-family recruiting lunches to fundraisers for projects worldwide.

The July 2010 cover of Christianity Today captured the moment. “Adoption Is Everywhere,” the editor’s note declared, adding that nearly “every conference we’ve attended recently devoted attention to orphans … with calls to establish foster-care ministries [and] support adoptive families.” A subsequent edition described “the burgeoning orphan care movement.”

Christians were giving, too. The 2011 ECFA State of Giving Report found that donation growth in the field notably outpaced almost every other area. This category included orphan care (up 21%), adoption (up 15%), and child sponsorship (up 24%). To many, this offered further evidence of the power of Christian unity and coordination.

Adoptive families like the Chapmans and the Lehmans were no longer exceptions. A 2010 Wall Street Journal article described churches becoming filled with fostered and adopted children of differing backgrounds and races. Russell Moore’s 2009 book Adopted for Life freshly expressed the gospel foundations of adoption.

By 2014, Barna Research confirmed that practicing Christians were twice as likely to adopt as the general population, including in the adoption of children with special needs, sibling groups, and older children. Evangelicals were five times as likely to adopt.

“It was great to see so many believers adopting,” Jill Lehman said. After their own adoption of a boy from Korea, they had welcomed a daughter from Ethiopia as well. “We had often felt like outliers. Not anymore.”

Orphan fever

Progress like this doesn’t go unchallenged, however. For years, critics had complained of Christians’ engagement in the field. Some faulted believers for not doing enough. Others suggested the opposite—that Christian enthusiasm for orphan care was overkill. At best, they said, this newfound enthusiasm represented bumbling good intentions. More likely, it sprang from self-aggrandizing hubris, exacerbating the very problems it tried to solve.

Among the most potent of the critics was Kathryn Joyce, an advocate-journalist who’d written exposés on other Christian endeavors, from homeschooling to pro-life efforts. In 2013, after a number of hard-hitting magazine articles, Joyce released a magnum opus of critique, The Child Catchers.

The book offered a damning portrait. Page after page detailed the errors, excesses, and devious intentions of what Joyce described as orphan fever. No facet of the Christian movement was exempt. Readers encountered adoptive parents who treated their children “like slaves.” Nonprofit leaders appeared utterly inept in crosscultural interactions. Joyce argued that even “seemingly heroic” actions—like the adoption of children with special needs—were shot through with “commercialization” and “corruption.”

At times, Joyce seemed to struggle with the remarkably sacrificial choices she observed. Virtually all her subjects, whatever their faults, had upended their lives for the sake of children who bore no biological claim on them. This couldn’t be merely for love, she concluded. Darker motives ranged from “proselytizing” to “making their antiabortion activism seem more truly ‘pro-life.’”

For the people giving their lives to this calling, the ugly caricatures cut deep. What hurt most, though, was that many criticisms held partial truths. Orphan advocates did often use statistics sloppily. The movement had underestimated the complexity and hazards of the work. Christians had not always done enough to support birth mothers or to prevent kids from entering orphanages.

At the same time as critics were spotlighting the movement’s shortcomings, countries that had previously allowed large numbers of international adoptions were increasingly closing their doors. Some did so in response to actual or rumored improprieties, including Guatemala. Others, like Russia, used adoption as a diplomatic pawn.

Amid all this, the most aching realities never made the news. Families that had welcomed children from the most painful of places now shared in that pain, sometimes profoundly. Parents discovered that the effects of abuse and severe neglect ran deeper than they’d imagined. Those who ministered through adoption and foster care couldn’t retreat from a hard day. Home was ground zero.

Meanwhile, even as some US states expanded their faith-based partnerships to serve foster youth, others moved in the opposite direction. Illinois and Massachusetts ended work with Christian agencies that wouldn’t place children with unmarried or same-sex couples. New leadership in Colorado—where churches had made such dramatic progress—pulled back sharply from faith-based partners as well. The number of waiting children in the state began to tick steadily upward again.

For some, the struggles were difficult but bearable. For others, they were crushing. The stress test on marriages sent some couples to counseling and some to divorce. While church communities rallied around weary families in many cases, other congregations seemed fearful or oblivious. Parents often felt abandoned by the very communities that had cheered when they’d first brought children home.

Like many others, Andy and Jill Lehman’s adoption journey wove together seeming extremes. It included hard-earned growth and moments of pure joy. Andy’s work also provided vivid reminders of what their kids might have faced without adoption—heartbreaking realities of life in orphanages or on the streets.

But what had felt like manageable challenges in the early years grew larger, more complex and sharp-edged. Jill and Andy’s relationship persevered, but at times their home felt like a combat zone. Nothing seemed to help, even out-of-home care in a residential program.

Andy admitted his prayers were often tearful. “Those years held many of the hardest things we’ve ever faced,” he said. “As much as we’d thought we were prepared, we weren’t.”

I’ve heard similar words from countless others. Some carry the deepest pain imaginable. It’s a lament over a prodigal child, still profoundly loved despite countless hurts. It is also grief over a family portrait that appears irredeemably distorted. For some, it has all been too much. Little but disillusionment remains of the enthusiasm they once felt.

But a remarkable number of advocates are still at it. They bear scars, some deep. But there’s a light in their eyes and a weightiness to their words that wasn’t there before. They’ve walked through fires, and not all of them are yet on the far side. Still, they’ve persevered. They continue to take on new challenges, both in organizations where they serve and at home.

“Some of what we’ve faced are things you’d never choose,” Jill Lehman said. “It’s probably a good thing we didn’t know everything the future would hold. But we have zero regrets. There’s so much we would’ve missed out on if we’d taken a safer route.”

In many of these families, children who struggled deeply as teens have made positive turns as young adults. As one recent study confirmed, while adoptees are more likely to face certain challenges in childhood, they generally do quite well in the long run. Narratives that cast adoption or childhood trauma as destining a person to a miserable life are not only statistically inaccurate but also deeply unfair. David Brodzinsky and Jesús Palacios, two experts in adoption and child welfare, concluded, “Not pathologizing adopted people is as important as not minimizing their problems.”

“There were a lot of tears in our home in the years after I was adopted,” described a young man, Trent Taylor, who had experienced severe abuse before being adopted out of foster care at age 10. “But my parents were rock solid. They made it clear they’d never, ever give up on me. I’m so glad they didn’t.” Now in his early 20s, Taylor leads a ministry called Watch Me Rise to help current and former foster youth.

Wisdom for the future

There are no quick fixes to the deepest struggles. Veterans in the adoption and foster care field affirm that professional intervention for families can sometimes be a lifeline to stabilize chaotic situations. Yet healing requires more than medication or therapeutic visits alone. Parents and family life must play a central role.

True healing involves the whole person, including physical elements like sleep, diet, exercise, time outdoors, and boundaries for screen use. As many studies now affirm, age-old practices of the Christian life, like thanksgiving, forgiveness, prayer, serving others, and community, contribute powerfully to well-being. Amid the self-focus of therapeutic culture, habits like these lift our eyes toward God, his world, and the needs of others.

Courtesy of CAFO / Edits by CT

The CAFO Summit in 2024.

As Taylor put it, “There’s certainly a time for introspection and dealing with your past. But ultimately, a person will never truly flourish just by looking deeper at themself.”

The CAFO community continues to grow too. What started with 29 leaders now includes more than 290 member organizations and a global network of churches—still trying to leave “logos and egos” at the door. The most recent CAFO Summit conference, the 20th since that first gathering in Little Rock, drew over 2,400 people from more than 40 countries. Year-round, members work together in jointly owned initiatives, harnessing the strengths of the whole community. These span from US foster care to global best practices and research, church-based ministries to locally led networks in developing countries.

Meanwhile, even as international adoption remains limited, locally led expressions of the movement are expanding worldwide. Perhaps not coincidentally, many of the most vibrant national movements are growing in countries that saw the most international adoptions—from Romania to Ethiopia to the Philippines. Efforts rising from these countries—including World Without Orphans from Ukraine and Alianza Cristiana para los Huérfanos (ACH) in Guatemala—add tremendously to the global movement.

But no amount of visible growth, however impressive, is enough to keep a person from toppling when trials come. That kind of staying power comes only from a vibrant life rooted deep in Christ. The many who’ve persevered, including Andy and Jill Lehman, testify to that foundation.

Despite all they’ve faced, the Lehmans continue to pour into the movement both at work and at home. When I asked if they’d do it again, Andy didn’t hesitate. “No question,” he said. “Our family’s story is still being written, but we are so very thankful for it, for all of it. In the Christian life, the hardest things and the best things often come together.”

Jedd Medefind is president of CAFO.

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Culture

All My People Died at Christmas

J. L. Gerhardt

Amid the snowflakes and lights, I needed particular reminders of God’s presence.

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

When I was a child, my grandmother died three days before Christmas. We buried her on Christmas Eve. Years later, my little brother fell asleep at the wheel driving home from college to spend the holidays with family. He hit a tree and died instantly. And years after that, I miscarried my first baby in a taxicab passing the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

The irony of so many goodbyes at a season reserved for celebrating the most important arrival ever was entirely lost on me. Despite being a wholly devoted follower of Jesus, I had never once celebrated Christmas as the birth of Christ.

This is weird. I know it’s weird because I’ve since made friends with Baptists and Presbyterians and Anglicans, and when I explain my dearth of Christmas praxis, they all look at me like I’m insane. But if it wasn’t explicitly laid out as a command in the pages of the New Testament, my childhood church didn’t practice it. And as the apostle Paul does not appear to have celebrated Christmas, we were definitely not celebrating Christmas.

This meant that my preacher didn’t call out Jesus’ birth in sermons except as a caveat: “And as we all know, the Bible doesn’t mention when Jesus was born.” We did not sing Christmas songs in church. When “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” played on the radio, my brother and I changed the lyrics from “Remember Christ our Savior / Was born on Christmas Day” to “Remember Christ our Savior / Wasn’t born on Christmas day.” Every time we did it, we felt like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the Castle Church door.

Sometimes my family would get Christmas cards from well-meaning friends, with nativity scenes or angels on their fronts. Holding a card like that was like holding a dirty magazine, like contraband snuck in from a fallen world. We prayed these card-senders would come to their senses.

So no Jesus at Christmas. But Santa, reindeer, cookies, and Christmas lights were fair game.

We didn’t think God was less “with us” at Christmas than at other times of the year—just not especially with you. God is equally with us every day. No need to privilege one over another.

When life was easy, this understanding of omnipresence made sense to me. But losing all my people at Christmas made me wonder. Some days, God felt distinctly less with me than on other days. And some days (maybe not the days I’d most expect) God felt especially present.

In her book Thermal Delight in Architecture, architect Lisa Heschong writes that “our nervous system is much more attuned to noticing change in the environment than to noticing steady states.” Humans derive greater pleasure from novelty. It’s why we love the first few days of a new season (snow!) and abhor the lingering last days of that very same season (more snow). It’s why we like to sit by a fire after a day skiing. It’s why we jump in cold water before the sauna. As Heschong explains, “the experience of each extreme is made more acute by contrast to the other.”

And yet, she notes, modern people have chosen a “steady state environment” as preferable for everyday life: We’ve collectively decided that “any degree of thermal stress is undesirable ” and expend significant effort and expense to eliminate it.

I grew up thinking of God’s presence like central heating, a steady state environment, no special days because every day is special. It turns out, the quickest way to forget that something is special is to make “special” ordinary and expected. As psychologist Richard Beck writes of reclaiming enchanted faith, “God is everywhere, but when He is everywhere, He tends to be nowhere.”

When my grandmother died, when my brother died, when I miscarried my baby, God’s presence didn’t feel much like easy oxygen (I could barely breathe) or reliable gravity (I felt like I was floating in space). It felt more like a friend walking through the door, turning on a lamp. It felt personal, particular, located, new.

Even children can tell you the details of the birth of Christ. Where was he born? In Bethlehem. Where did they lay him? In a manger. Who was there? His mother Mary. Joseph the carpenter. Shepherds came to see him. Magi from afar brought gifts.He was wrapped in swaddling clothes. The king, a particular historical king, Herod the Great (not Herod Antipas or Herod Agrippa) sought to kill him. The story is full of specifics. Why? Because it actually happened. And real things happen not in general but in particular.

Theologians call Jesus’ arrival in the form of a particular person, in a particular place, at a particular time, and among a particular culture “t he scandal of particularity.”

At Christmas, God is not everywhere equally at once, evenly distributed in a state of constant homeostasis. He’s “here”—a body in a woman’s arms, apparent in a way he wasn’t only moments before. The arrival of Christ marks a transition: Something was wrong and then was made right. Something was less and then more. En-wombed and then birthed.

This is the way God chooses to express His steady presence—hidden then revealed, shrouded then unveiled, silent then loud, faith then sight.

I was seven when my grandmother died. I still remember looking into the yawning mausoleum, watching the coffin be pushed into darkness, weighing the impossible possibility of resurrection. It was Christmas Eve.

One year later, on Christmas Eve, I stood in our driveway in St. Petersburg, Florida, watching snowflakes fall like stars from a generous sky. I opened my mouth wide to catch them on my tongue. Fat flakes melted on my eyelashes and cheeks. I’d never seen snow. I’d never see it in St. Petersburg again. It seemed like God had deliberately gone out of his way to prove what the angel said to Mary: “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37, ESV throughout).

When my brother Bobby died, I’d never felt so lonely. He’d been my best friend. Something like 500 people came to his funeral—several ex-girlfriends, a few of his bosses, his third-grade teacher, and the entire men’s basketball team from his college. We told stories. We laughed. We sang. It was beautiful. A beautiful funeral shouldn’t be possible. But here it was, because here God was: “Immanuel,” which means God with us (Matt. 1:23).

And then the baby. We told that story to our church one year at Christmas, about how we’d waited for seven years to have a baby and then we lost him and all seemed lost. But even so, God was close and kind. Telling that story brought God close again, this time for people in the room who’d never heard another person tell a story about miscarriage. Sharing it felt like unzipping the sky and testifying, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy” (Luke 2:10).

Christmas reminds us of the breaking-in nature of divinity, of the way God steps into particular moments, making himself known in new, personal, special ways—like arriving in the City of David during the time of Herod the Great to a virgin mother. Like St. Petersburg on Christmas Eve, love carried on snowflakes, or in New York City in a taxi cab, Christmas lights reflecting on the hood of the car, or at the Church of Christ on Park Boulevard, the grieving saints singing all together, “They sing in heav’n a new song…”

Yes, God is everywhere. He “fill[s] heaven and earth” (Jer. 23:24). But Christmas is teaching me that God also comes to specific people at specific times in specific ways, sometimes in increased materiality or intensity. I’m learning it’s okay for some days to feel more special than others, because some days are—not because God’s here on some days and absent on others, but because, for whatever reason, God has chosen certain moments to find us with announcement, revelation, or adventure. They may not be the days we expect him. They may be when we least expect him: at funerals, in a hospital bed, on the anniversary of a loss, or in a manger.

I didn’t grow up celebrating Christmas as the birth of Christ, but I do now. I celebrate with candles and Nativity scenes and carols and Advent prayers. And I celebrate by leaving the door open, expecting Immanuel’s particular arrival.

J. L. Gerhardt is a Storytelling Partner at Hazefire Studios, author of The Goodness, and creator of the audio memoir The Happiest Saddest People.

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News

Fadi Lost His Apartment. He Won’t Let the Same Happen to His Church.

Heather M. Surls

Gaza’s 700 remaining Christians face exorbitant prices, bombed apartments, and the loss of their community to violence and emigration.

Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City.

NurPhoto / Getty

Because of the complex sociopolitical realities present in wartime Gaza, Christianity Today is using protective pseudonyms for “Fadi” and other Gazans.

As Fadi heads to work, surveillance drones hover overhead. Their presence is continuous. Sometimes their monotonous thrumming—combined with the sound of explosions—keeps him and other Gazan Christians at Holy Family Catholic Church from sleeping.

Fadi, a shadow of stubble on his face, wears one of the two sets of clothes he brought out of his home before it was bombed. He walks more than 30 minutes one way because in Gaza City, gasoline costs more than $250 a gallon. The streets are dangerous, he said, with gangs occasionally stopping people to demand their phones and money. Early in the war, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) contacted residents if they were about to bomb an area, but now warnings are fewer. Fadi, who is unmarried, worries that a missile could fall at any time.

Israeli shelling flattened Fadi’s apartment, and its loss grieves him deeply. Since his late teens, he had worked to build a foundation for his future. When the war began, he felt as if 11 years of preparation had disappeared.

Before the war, when he was upset or angry, Fadi would buy himself a coffee, get in his car, and drive to sit by the Mediterranean Sea. Now, he said the beach is full of garbage and debris from destroyed buildings. “Our lives, for more than a year now, have been frustration after frustration. There’s no joy, really,” he said. “Nothing good has happened from the first day of the war until today.”

In early October, the IDF faced a regrouping Hamas and began a new ground operation in Gaza’s northernmost governorate. On November 26, the IDF bombed a school that sheltered displaced Palestinians. Though reports do not mention the presence of Hamas in this particular school, their fighters often embed themselves among displaced citizens in similar locations. Fadi saw donkey-drawn carts and three-wheeled rickshaws, plus ambulances with seven or eight people packed inside each one, carrying the wounded to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, which sits in the same region as Holy Family and currently sees around 700 outpatients per day.

In the last two months, shelling has forced more than 130,000 Palestinians from the northern towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun, and Jabalia south to Gaza City, where, according to a recent report, about 375,000 now reside. Among these are Fadi and hundreds of other Christians sheltering at Holy Family and the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Porphyrius.

“We won’t leave the church,” Fadi said, “not because it’s giving us food and protection, but the opposite: We are the ones protecting the church.” Without their presence, the church could suffer break-ins and bombs. Though international law considers targeting of religious sites a war crime, this rule becomes void if a site is used for military purposes. The IDF has damaged hundreds of Gazan mosques this year, claiming them as terrorist hideouts, and twice Israeli missiles or shrapnel damaged Holy Family’s buildings.

The believers who remain in Gaza number little more than 700. In an interview released on October 8, Gabriel Romanelli, an Argentinian priest serving at Holy Family, said 1,071 Christians—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—were in Gaza at the beginning of the war. He said 30 percent of the Christian community has been lost, with 43 dead and 300 leaving Gaza by way of Egypt. Escape through the border crossing—for a hefty fee of $5,000 per person—was possible until May, when the IDF captured the Philadelphi Corridor.

Nearly all of those remaining now live in one of the two churches in Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighborhood. Fadi himself entered Holy Family five days after Hamas’s murderous invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. After 14 months, life for the Christians has taken on a spartan sense of routine. The displaced sleep in the buildings of the Latin Patriarchate school, with two or three families occupying each classroom. Wooden shelters constructed in the compound’s open yards serve as school classrooms for the children. In addition to Sunday mass, morning prayers and evening mass take place in the church sanctuary each weekday. At these times, the steady clanging of church bells pours over the neighborhood’s rubble.

Fadi said the church provides a hot meal to residents twice a week. The rest of the time, people rely on their own resources—canned goods like tuna, peas, beans, and chickpeas. Some staples like milk, bread, meat, and coffee are on store shelves, but few can afford them. Meat costs around $50 a pound and coffee close to $25 for a half pound.

For months, the displaced Christians did not eat fruit or vegetables—until one day when a delivery of produce arrived, oranges included. As crates were unloaded, Fadi watched in disbelief, filled with a sense of euphoria, as if the war had ended.

“At the same moment I was very upset,” he said, “because the simplest thing—vegetables and fruit—we were so happy just to see them.”

To accommodate laundry needs, the church purchased ten washing machines with financial support from outside Gaza and created a sign-up schedule. It recently installed solar panels that provide several hours of electricity to each classroom—just enough for lighting each room and charging devices. Four hundred people share the church complex’s restrooms, but to bathe, they must heat water in pots over wood fires. Although diabetes, blood-pressure, and thyroid medications are extremely scarce at best, Fadi acknowledged that most of Gaza’s 1.9 million displaced face worse circumstances: “We have it much better than others.”

Some of the “others” live in Jabalia, a city in northern Gaza. One Jabalia resident, Ayman, said he risks death whenever he leaves his home and family. Tomorrow, Christianity Today will tell his story and another’s.

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

- More from Heather M. Surls

Marvin Olasky Joins Christianity Today as Executive Editor of News and Global

World-renowned journalist to come out of retirement for “one last rodeo.”

Courtesy of Marvin Olasky

Christianity Today welcomes celebrated veteran journalist Marvin Olasky as executive editor of news and global, where he will lead the domestic and global reporting teams as he develops and executes a more robust vision of storytelling consistent with the mission of the ministry. He will also employ cultural, theological, and journalistic expertise that takes the initiative to inform the evangelical conversation on the issues and trends facing the world and the church. Olasky, who served as editor and editor in chief of World magazine from 1992 to 2021, joined Christianity Today on December 2.

“Marvin Olasky is one of the most respected journalists in the world,” said Christianity Today editor in chief Russell Moore. “I value his wisdom, experience, insight, and expertise. But even more than all those things, I value his Christian character and integrity. I am honored to have him here at Christianity Today.”

Olasky’s accomplishments include training the next generation of journalists as professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin (1983 to 2007), provost at The King’s College in New York City (2007 to 2011), and distinguished chair in journalism and public policy at Patrick Henry College (2011 to 2019). Olasky has authored 30 books, including The Tragedy of American Compassion, Abortion Rites, Fighting for Liberty and Virtue, Reforming Journalism, Lament for a Father, and Pivot Points.

“In a marketplace saturated with misinformation and disinformation, it’s as important as ever to have excellent, trustworthy reporting from a Christian perspective,” said Tim Dalrymple, president and CEO of Christianity Today. “Marvin is a legend in the industry, and we’re honored he’s joining the team. As Christianity Today expands its journalistic coverage of the global church, and the diverse North American church, Marvin will help us deliver first-rate reporting across the board.”

Joy Allmond, executive director of resources and editorial chief of staff, added, “To call Marvin a colleague and to partner with him in serving the church is an incredible honor. I’m thrilled for how much I—along with the teams we both lead—will benefit from his hard-fought journalistic and spiritual wisdom.”

Olasky lives in Austin, Texas, and has been steeped in community, church, and family— chairing the boards of the Austin Crisis Pregnancy Center, City School, and Zenger House and continuing to serve as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. He and his wife, Susan, have been married for 48 years and have four children and seven grandchildren.

A 1971 graduate of Yale University, Olasky earned a PhD in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 1976. He was a Boston Globe correspondent and Austin American-Statesman columnist and is a Discovery Institute senior fellow and an Acton Institute affiliate scholar.

“I’ve pursued my calling in Christian journalism for nearly half a century, so when CT invited me to do calf roping in one last rodeo, I happily agreed,” Olasky said of his decision to come out of retirement to assume this post. “I like the people and look forward to the challenge.”

For media inquiries pertaining to this story, please contact media@christianitytoday.com.Christianity Today was founded by Billy Graham in 1956. In the nearly 70 years since that time, it has served as a flagship publication for the American evangelical movement, serving the church with news, commentary, and resources. An acclaimed and award-winning media ministry, CT elevates the storytellers and sages of the global church. Each month, across a variety of digital and print media, the ministry carries the most important stories and ideas of the kingdom of God to over 4.5 million people all around the planet.

- More from Marvin Olasky

Ideas

Guilt and Sorrow and Obedience and Love

Kate Lucky

Staff Editor

My Christmastime charity is small, insufficient, and muddled in motive. It is also what I can and must do.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

Last week, I took my toddler with me to buy some presents for a church toy drive. I thought we’d have fun picking gifts for kids in need.

Instead, seeing him in the cart made me sad. I thought of everything he had at home, his boxes of blocks and books and racing cars, the sand pail and shovel I’d just ordered him for the holiday. I started to pull more from the shelves: a basketball, a wooden puzzle, bath toys. We had to do penance for all that we had. Literally, I considered, this was the least we could do, a few presents tossed into the box by the altar. It struck me that this was such an insignificant and ultimately ineffective solution to the injustice that gives my child so much and other children so little.

Christmas has always made me feel this way—a little shaky, a little sad, exposed to the world’s cruelties and bewildered by them. I don’t think I’m alone in that. This time of year, neediness imposes itself via giving trees and canned food collections and end-of-year mailers. “The Christmas Shoes” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” play on the radio. We hear of the dying mother, the soldiers at war. Tiny Tim isn’t just a poor child; he’s a poor child on crutches. Jesus isn’t just born as a baby, utterly helpless—he’s born in the cold, in the dirty straw. It’s all too much.

And so, like many Christians, I practice charity in December, moved to action (or, at least, purchases) out of some inevitable combination of guilt and sorrow and obedience and love. There’s always someone who has more; there’s always someone who has less. Thus, the toy drive. The quarters in the Salvation Army kettle. The year-end donations. We send up a few prayers for the troops and for the grieving. Scrooge brings over a big turkey.

Then the month is over and the new year, with its resolute demands, is upon us. What did any of it matter, this flurry of generosity? Anything less than Jesus’ radical call—Sell what you have, give to the poor, and follow me (Matt. 19:21)—feels like too little. What good is a basketball in a world like this?

Recently I went to see Small Things Like These, the new film adaption of an acclaimed novel by Claire Keegan. The movie presents a few tortured days in the life of Irishman Bill Furlong (Cillian Murphy), a quiet father who makes his living as a coal merchant in the 1980s. In a coat with worn leather shoulders, he shovels and scrapes; at night, he scrubs soot from his hands and eats his hot plate of dinner and pours over homework with his five daughters. In the living room, a Christmas tree glows.

But suddenly, Bill’s good, solid life is shaken by tragedies. There’s a child, collecting sticks by the side of the road. There’s another child, drinking rainwater from a dish. There’s a girl, in the neighboring Catholic home for unwed mothers, with a desperate look on her face.

Bill is moved. Bill is disturbed. And nobody can quite understand why. His wife wants him to save his coins for his own family. The nuns pour hot tea and encourage him to forget. All around swirls the festive atmosphere of Christmas—decorated store windows, snow, a choir, cake soaked with alcohol. Enjoy, it all insists; leave the trouble alone.

But Bill cannot. A combination of personal trauma and plain benevolence compel him to action: Coins are given anyway, nuns defied. He weeps in the night. “Do you ever get worried?” he asks his wife. In church, he chews on the words of the liturgy: “The Lord is compassion and love.”

Small Things Like These is about speaking up in the face of injustice, being the conscience that draws attention to corruption—in this case, the abuses of the Magdalene Laundries.

But it’s also about profligate generosity, irrationality, even irresponsibility. We don’t get to see what happens when Bill does what he does (which, you’ll see if you watch, is far from the least he could do). Even so, he helps only a few people. He does not—cannot, does not try to—dismantle the whole unjust system. He’s not even thought through all the consequences of his actions. The boy to whom he gives the coins, his wife warns, has a father who’s a drunk. Bill doesn’t have a plan, exactly.

That doesn’t matter. Bill acts; Bill answers. Bill does something small, and that something small gives him the courage to do something larger. God will handle the rest.

Familiar details, carols, and legends around the Nativity story emphasize this giving out of nothing, these extra gestures in service of the Lord. The little drummer boy strikes his instrument. The lowly donkey carries a pregnant Mary, the young, unwed mother who says yes to the child in her womb. The shepherds follow the star and just … show up.

Later, the wise men display their gifts. Why would the baby Jesus need gold and frankincense and myrrh? The God who made everything is offered a few jars of perfume and precious metal. It’s absurd. “What can I give him, poor as I am?” asks one of my most beloved songs. “If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; / If I were a wise man, I would do my part; / Yet what I can I give him: give my heart.”

In a new essay published in print this month, the Catholic philosopher Byung-Chul Han meditates on the future-oriented nature of hope. “Hope looks ahead and anticipates,” he writes. “It affords us a power to act and perceive of which neither reason nor understanding are capable.”

Hope doesn’t need a justification. Hope also doesn’t need a sure outcome. “The substance of hope,” writes Han,” is a deep conviction that something is meaningful, independent of any concern for whatever actual results are achieved.” The toys and the coins may not constitute a measurable, quantifiable remedy. But they still mean something.

Perhaps my Christmas feelings amount to sentimentality. (Listen to the saccharine “Christmas Shoes” again and you’ll know what I mean.) Perhaps they are motivated by shame. Our family still has so far to go in feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, in combating the persistence of our greed.

But who cares how the feelings have come up? This tenderness—it’s right. It’s truer than reason. It’s the correct response to the wound at the center of the world, a response that is no less real for its seasonal wavering. I press my finger on the sore spot, press and press, in a meager way doing as Bill did, as the wise men did, overwhelmed by compassion and awe at the Christ child, throwing their paltry riches at the Savior’s feet, trying to remedy the shock of his birth in the straw.

We press where it’s tender, and when we think we can’t bear it, there comes hope. Hope, writes Han, that only ever emerges from despair: “It confronts the world in its full negativity and files its objections.” Files its objections. One basketball. One puzzle. And then: Lord, let us give one more, give beyond the sensible, even and especially our hearts.

Kate Lucky is the senior editor of culture and engagement at Christianity Today.

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