Our Faith Is Not Too Fragile for Science

An excerpt from The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

I sat by myself at one end of the boardroom, fidgeting with a few notes on the table in front of me. At the other end were about ten older men in suits and ties peering over their tables, arms crossed. It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone just walking in to determine which end of the room held the power.

The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith

Jim Stump (Author)

HarperOne

272 pages

$23.49

After my brief opening statement, the rest of our time was set aside for “discussion.” The two-hour meeting felt more like an inquisition. The first questioner hardly let the silence settle after I spoke: “Jim, I went to school with your father. We even went on a mission trip to Mexico together. I’ve known you since you were a kid. What happened to you?”

I’ve replayed this scene in my head a hundred times, varying what I say in an attempt to get my accusers to stand up, shake my hand, and say, “Oh, now we see. That makes sense. Sorry for the trouble.” But every time it ends the same way: I have to give up my position as a tenured professor of philosophy and leave the college I’ve served for 17 years.

My crime? Believing what 99 percent of those who have a PhD in biology or medicine believe: that human beings evolved over time and share common ancestors with every other life form on the planet. But this was a small Christian college, one of the places where evolutionary theory is deemed incompatible with Christian beliefs. And not just incompatible—evolution is considered dangerous. These men believed that hearing anything positive about evolution would make students doubt the Bible. If you can’t believe the creation account in the very first chapter of the Bible, their thinking goes, then why believe any of it?

I do not believe faith is so fragile. I’d already shared with the panel examples of the ways faith and science can not only coexist but actually strengthen each other. But the rhetoric of prominent young-earth creationist groups so unsettled the college leadership that, after questioning me, they changed the official statement of beliefs that faculty have to sign each year.

To be fair, I wasn’t technically fired. I could have stayed if I agreed to the new rules. There are still a few other faculty members there who would admit behind closed doors that they accept evolution. But they can’t teach it as true, like they do photosynthesis or germ theory. They can’t publish scholarly work that defends it. And they certainly can’t have leadership positions in organizations that advocate for evolution—even if that advocacy comes from a Christian viewpoint.

That gatekeeping not only worries but saddens me, because my engagement with science has led me to a deeper, more authentic faith. It troubles me too, because time and again I’ve seen that this kind of hostility toward science leads Christians—especially students asking questions about the faith they inherited—away from Christianity by drawing a line that need not exist.

I do understand why some Christians draw that line, though. I think their logic works something like this: We want to convince people that the Bible can be trusted. When people today pick up a Bible and read a story from Genesis, they might be skeptical that it really could have happened just like the text says. That kind of doubt will eat away at the foundations of scriptural truth and make people doubt other aspects of what the Bible claims. To really counter these doubts, we must show that these stories could have happened just as described. That will convince people that the Bible is telling the truth.

But in practice, I find, it often works the other way around. When we shut down sincere questions about the Bible, we don’t convince people it’s telling the truth. We make them skeptical of our entire faith.

“My church lied to me.” That’s how author Philip Yancey answered on my podcast when I asked whether he was frustrated with how his church conditioned him to think about science. Yancey has written a lot of books critiquing the easy answers given by the Christian community to difficult questions.

He grew up in a fundamentalist church in Atlanta that denied there were ever dinosaurs, and they preached that Black people were cursed and could never be leaders. Yet when Yancey won a summer fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), he discovered his mentor would be a Black man with a PhD in chemistry. That’s when he realized his church had lied about race. “Lied” is a pretty strong charge, but they were obviously wrong. He went on:

And if they’re wrong about race, maybe they’re wrong about evolution, maybe they’re wrong about the Bible, maybe they’re wrong about Jesus. And it was a huge crisis of faith. And the only way I dealt with it was just to back off from faith for a period of time. It took me—and is taking me—a long period of time to sort out. That’s what I do as a writer, to sort out what is worth keeping and what needs to be shed, because the church doesn’t always get it right. And if you get it wrong on science, if you get it wrong on one of these topics, you are opening the door to people just dispensing with everything that the church taught.

That’s a pretty good description of the way religious organizations push people away when they give scarcely credible answers to sincere questions. There is only a slight difference between answering a question with a far-fetched answer that must certainly be accepted as unquestionably true and not answering the question at all.

Toward the end of my time as a professor, a student came into my office in tears. She had just come from a Bible class where she asked a question about the way our faith tradition typically interpreted some passage. I don’t even remember now which passage, but I do remember the answer she said the professor gave: “You shouldn’t be asking questions like that.”

I wish what that student experienced from a Bible professor and what Yancey experienced from his church were isolated experiences. But I’m afraid they are not, and this habit of putting a swift and definitive end to questions is contributing to the well-documented dechurching of the American people.

One of the big reasons young people walk away from their faith is that their questions are not taken seriously. They have questions specifically about science, but church leaders don’t seem to realize this—or else they give answers that seem bizarre and outlandish compared to mainstream and well-confirmed scientific views.

The result is that people grow up in religious communities with a particular view of science that is so tightly wedded to a particular view of the Bible that it is essentially a package deal. Then, when they get out into the real world (or even just watch a nature documentary) and realize that their view of science is clearly wrong, they throw out the whole package. They dispense “with everything that the church taught,” in the words of Yancey.

Hearing from lots of former students who went down that path made me want to start addressing these topics with my current students, giving them a place to ask questions and showing that science doesn’t have to lead them away from faith. I wanted my students to see that they didn’t have to give up their faith because of science. Proclaiming that message is what led to my departure from the college, but I’m still working to show there is a better way.

Jim Stump is vice president for programs at BioLogos, host of the podcast Language of God, and author of The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.

From the newly released book THE SACRED CHAIN: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith by James Stump. Copyright © 2024 by James Stump. Published by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

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News

More Porridge? Senegal Protestants Debate Exchanging Holiday Foods with Muslims

Jayson Casper

Ngalakh combines baobab fruit and peanuts to end Easter in West African nation, reciprocated by the sharing of meat breaking Ramadan’s fast.

Catholics pray during a Good Friday service outside of St. Charles church in Senegal on March 29, 2024.

John Wessels / Contributor / Getty

In Senegal, Muslims love to share meat. Christians share porridge.

Ending the monthlong Ramadan fast this week, the faithful in the Muslim-majority West African nation invited Christian friends to celebrate Korite (Eid al-Fitr), focus on forgiveness and reconciliation, and share a wholesome meal of chicken.

A little over two months later during Tabaski (Eid al-Adha), the mutton from sheep slaughtered in commemoration of Abraham’s sacrificing of his son will likewise be distributed to Christian neighbors. (Both feasts follow the lunar calendar and change dates each year.)

But for Christians, the sign of interfaith unity is the porridge-like ngalakh.

“Senegal is a country of terranga—‘hospitality’—and the sense of sharing is very high,” said Mignane Ndour, vice president of the Assemblies of God churches in Senegal. “Porridge has become our means of strengthening relations between Christians and Muslims.”

Sources told CT the holiday treat is highly anticipated.

In the local language, ngalakh means “to make porridge,” and the chilled dessert marks the end of Lent. Between 3 and 5 percent of Senegal’s 18 million people are Christians—the majority Catholic—and families gather to prepare the Easter fare on Good Friday.

Made from peanut cream and monkey bread (the fruit of the famed baobab tree), these core ngalakh ingredients are soaked in water for over an hour before adding the millet flour necessary to thicken the paste. The dessert is then variously seasoned with nutmeg, orange blossom, pineapple, coconut, or raisins.

Tangy and sweet yet savory, the porridge gets its brownish color from the peanut cream.

The Christian community in Senegal traces its origin back to the 15th-century arrival of the Portuguese. And Jacques Seck, a Catholic priest in the capital of Dakar, stated that ngalakh developed during the period of French colonialism as mulatto servant women prepared their masters a meatless meal during the Lenten fast.

Ndour said that over time the tradition extended to Protestants as well.

Its believers numbering only in the thousands, the Protestant Church of Senegal was founded in 1863, becoming more visible in the 1930s. Lutherans came in the 1970s and are the second-largest Christian denomination today, alongside Methodists, Presbyterians, and newer evangelical groups.

But for some, ngalakh is controversial.

“Evangelicals do not share this tradition,” said Pierre Teixeira, editor in chief of Yeesu Le Journal, an interdenominational monthly publication. “But the rare churches that practice it broadcast a film on the gospel before distribution.”

Teixeira, a former Baptist pastor, grew up in a Catholic home in Dakar. Recalling the porridge from his youth, he said it was a symbol of communion that commemorates the death of Jesus on the cross. But today the focus of Senegalese evangelicals is on societal integration. In the past 20 years, the small community has seen an increase in its students at university and efforts by believers to influence the marketplace and political arenas.

Ndour, raised in a Muslim home, believes the two activities are compatible.

“Easter is not simply the feast of Catholics, and ngalakh is the feast of all Senegalese,” he said. “It represents a path of understanding, through religion.”

While Protestants value the practice of terranga, some view an interfaith dessert as an extrabiblical barrier to evangelism that should be dropped as a local tradition. Others, Ndour said, do not distribute the porridge to Muslim neighbors lest they be obliged to reciprocally share in the Muslim Tabaski feast, which they view as prohibited given local interpretation of Paul’s warning about meat sacrificed to idols.

But many cherish the social custom within Senegal’s lauded religious tolerance.

“Ngalakh is a delectable dish meticulously crafted with love and passion,” said Eloi Dogue, vice president of Africa operations for Our Daily Bread Ministries. “It serves as a symbol of unity and goodwill among neighbors, particularly our Muslim friends.”

Islam came to Senegal in the 11th century through trade and spread through a combination of conquest and heartfelt conversion. Rejection of colonialism attracted many locals into Sufi orders emphasizing a mystical interpretation of Islam, which merged Senegalese and Muslim identities.

Other Senegalese interacted closely with the foreign authorities and assimilated their culture. But the French concept of laïcité combined easily with Sufi religious tolerance, and the Senegal constitution’s first article declares the nation to be a “secular, democratic, and social republic.” Its first president was a Catholic, and voluntary religious education at school allows parents—often in mixed marriages—to educate their children in the faith of their choice or none at all.

But Dogue, also international director of Dekina Ministries and former evangelism and missions executive secretary for the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, said the value of ngalakh is not only in coexistence.

“Yes, it is originally a Catholic tradition,” he said. “But it is also a means of fostering outreach and building bridges of understanding, bearing witness about God’s care, love, and goodness.”

Americans, he added, could similarly invite Muslim neighbors over to share their Thanksgiving meals.

Ndour grew up mostly ignorant of ngalakh in his village 95 miles southeast of Dakar. Aware of the local Lutheran mission headquarters, his family belonged to the Mouride Sufi order. He first recalls trying the porridge dish at age 15; however, it was life at university in the capital that introduced him to its true meaning.

But there he was also introduced to the assurance of salvation in Christ. An evangelical pastor shared his faith, and Ndour has been sharing his since. In this, the holiday meal can be used as a bridge.

“Ngalakh opens doors that were previously closed,” he said. “This can then allow us to talk about the true Easter sacrifice—which is Jesus.”

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News

Wire Story

Baptists Call on House Speaker Mike Johnson to Stand with Ukraine

Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

Seminary leaders say that the country, where Baptists are the largest Protestant denomination, has lost hundreds of churches in the war with Russia.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson

Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

Southern Baptist leaders have written to US House Speaker Mike Johnson, a member and former official of their denomination, urging him to support Ukraine in Russia’s war against its Eastern European neighbor.

“As you consider efforts to support Ukraine, we humbly ask that you consider the plight of Christians,” wrote the leaders, who either have ties to the SBC’s Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary or to Ukrainian Baptists. “The Russian government’s decision to invade Ukraine and to target Baptists and other evangelical Christians in Ukraine has been a tragic hallmark of the war.”

The letter, sent Monday, was signed by Daniel Darling, director of the seminary’s Land Center for Cultural Engagement; Richard Land, the namesake of the center and a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC); Yaroslav Pyzh, president of Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary; and Valerii Antoniu, president of the Baptist Union of Ukraine.

Johnson is a former trustee of the ERLC, serving when Land—who also is a former commissioner of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom—was its president.

In February, the Senate passed a $95 billion package for funding Ukraine, Israel and other allies, with $60 billion earmarked for Ukraine. But Johnson, whose tenure as House speaker may rely on his handling of the bill, has yet to schedule a House vote on the funding measure.

Conservatives in the House who oppose funding for Ukraine on “America First” grounds, led by US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, have threatened to trigger a vote to remove Johnson from office.

“Speaker Johnson has a really difficult job right now, maybe the most difficult a speaker has ever had,” Darling said in an interview with Religion News Service. “I think he does in his heart want to support Ukraine.”

But Darling noted that Johnson, whose office did not immediately respond to the letter, is trying to balance the differing views of House members.

The Baptist leaders told the speaker in their letter: “We believe that God has put you in this position ‘for such a time as this.’”

Darling said he hopes the letter will serve as an encouragement to Johnson while also ensuring that he and others are aware of religious liberties being violated in areas of Ukraine that Russia has occupied since 2014.

“Evangelicals and Baptists are being mistreated in the Russian-occupied territories significantly,” he said. “We’ve lost probably 300 churches. Pastors are really struggling over there, wherever Russians have taken over.”

Hannah Daniel, the ERLC’s director of public policy, told RNS in a statement that Southern Baptists have long opposed authoritarian regimes’ prohibitions of religious freedom.

“The resolve of our lawmakers to stand with Ukraine has wavered, despite the brutal persecution of Christians, particularly Baptists, the kidnapping of children, and the destruction of churches because of Russia’s unjust and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine,” she said. “Congress must look past any hesitation or obstinance and overcome division to swiftly pass such a package.”

Globally, religious freedom experts are concerned about the war’s effects on Ukraine’s faith communities.

“The Russian military has indiscriminately bombed churches, monasteries, kingdom halls, mosques, synagogues, cemeteries, and other religious sites,” said Nury Turkel, chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a quasi-governmental watchdog group, at a hearing in March, “and the Russian soldiers have abducted and tortured religious figures because of their leadership role.”

Darling said he and the other signatories realize “the details have to be worked out” but they chose to write to Johnson because of their desire to see continuing congressional and US support of Ukraine, even as Baptist entities have spent millions in donations to support refugees now living outside the war-torn country.

“He has said he’s committed to doing it so I think he will,” Darling added. “But we wanted to encourage him as well and not just be another person just throwing stones at him but to say, hey, we’re supporting you, we care about you.”

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Theology

We Are ‘Gods’ Because We are God’s

Wil Rogan

The Book of John reminds us that Jesus’ humanity makes ours possible.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

Nearly halfway through John’s Gospel, Jesus tells those gathered in the temple at the Feast of the Dedication, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods”’?” (10:34). In effect, Jesus says that Scripture says that God says, “You are gods.” What is Jesus on about?

It really is quite surprising. After all, we read the Scriptures and learn that human beings are not gods—at least, not in the sense that God is God. When the mighty Nebuchadnezzar failed to recognize the difference between human beings and God, he ate grass alongside the oxen until he learned as much (Dan. 4:1–37).

Yet, strange as it seems, Jesus saying “you are gods” tells us something essential about what it means for us—and for Jesus—to be human.

Now recall that, shortly before this statement in John 10, Jesus had said, “I and the Father are one,” and that those who heard him recognized the statement as an offense to God punishable by stoning (vv. 30–31; Lev. 24:10–16).

Their concern was not unfounded. Jesus said this at the Feast of the Dedication, when Jews remembered how God delivered them from Antiochus IV, whose chosen name Epiphanes (meaning either “illustrious” or “manifest”) suggested he thought of himself higher than he should have. So, stones in hand, those gathered around Jesus charged him: “You, a mere man, claim to be God” (v. 33).

Their accusation of blasphemy includes the critical idea that a human being cannot be God. And it is this idea that makes Jesus bring up the time that God called human beings gods:

Is it not written in your law, “I said you are gods?” If [God] called them to whom the word of God came “gods”—and the Scripture cannot be broken—are you saying of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world “you are disparaging the divine” because I said, “I am God’s son”? (John 10:34–36, my translation)

Now to us, Jesus’ reply might at first seem like a trick. It’s as though Jesus downplays his claim about being one with the Father by saying that all human beings are, in some manner of speaking, gods! Jesus’ answer can also be read not as a trick but as a profound theological claim: Humanity and divinity are not ultimately incompatible.

If we want to understand Jesus’ larger argument, we must look at the context of the biblical passage he quotes and interprets, which is Psalm 82. This complex psalm envisions God addressing a council of human judges (or deities, or divine kings—scholars today are divided in their interpretation, but the ancients understood this as addressing human beings).

In this psalm, these human judges do not do justice to the poor and needy—a failure that reflects their fundamental lack of knowledge and understanding (vv. 1–5). So God judges them and says, “You are gods; you are all children of the Most High. But you will die like mere mortals and fall like every other ruler” (vv. 6–7, NLT).

These human judges are “gods” in that they can exercise judgment like God does. But whereas God’s judgment is just, wise, and impartial, their judgment is unjust and benefits the wicked. So, these humans will not live forever—as gods are supposed to—but will die as mortals.

Returning now to John’s Gospel, Jesus quotes this psalm within his appeal to those gathered in the temple to judge rightly about his works. He tells them, “Believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (10:38). This echoes his earlier appeal to those troubled by his healing a paralyzed man on the Sabbath: “Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly” (7:24). In this, Jesus affirms our godlike capacity for exercising good judgment and asks us to judge how his works make the case for his oneness with the Father.

The capacity that makes us most godlike is also the one that is supposed to make us know and trust that the Father is in Jesus and that Jesus is in the Father. This is one reason that Jesus reminds his hearers that God called them “gods” when asking them to judge with right judgment about his works.

To be sure, Jesus is not saying we are gods in the way that God is God. The word god in ancient Greek had more range than it does in English now. Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle used the word god to talk about what human beings can make of ourselves when we live in the best possible way. To them, for a human to be like god was to approach immortality, happiness, goodness, and wisdom, among other things.

For John’s Gospel, we are most godlike when, through trust in Jesus, we become God’s children and come to have eternal life (1:12). To put it another way, we are gods because we are God’s.

Sometime after John’s Gospel was written, ancient Jewish interpreters read Psalm 82:6–7 as a story about God making humans immortal like gods, and humans losing their immortality through sin. So it was with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and so it was when God restored Israel’s immortality by giving them the Law at Sinai, only for them to lose it again after the incident with the golden calf.

Early Christians came to see Psalm 82:6–7 as a story about how God adopted humanity when Jesus gave us “the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). Having become once again “children of the Most High” (Ps. 82:6, NLT), we will no longer die as mere mortals.

And what of Jesus’ humanity? When Jesus quotes Psalm 82, he is establishing a basic compatibility between humanity and divinity. But Jesus is also distinctive among human beings on account of his oneness with the Father. This is not because of what Jesus does of his own accord so much as it is because of what the Father does in him.

In the same breath that Jesus identifies himself as “God’s Son,” he refers to himself as “the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world” (10:36). This language of consecration, used as it is during the Feast of the Dedication, is about how God sets Jesus apart for sacrifice, just as new altars are set apart for sacrifice (Num. 7:1–11; 1 Kings 8:63–64). In an astonishing turn, then, Jesus is most distinctive in his oneness with the Father at just the point he is in most solidarity with us, namely, in being mortal.

And this gets at the meaning of Jesus being at once human and divine. It is not that Jesus is superhuman (much less a superhero or a superstar), but that when he lays down his life for us (and takes it up again), it is God’s power at work in him (John 10:17–18).

This brings us full circle to what it means to be the kind of humans that God calls “gods .” When we judge with right judgment about Jesus’ words and works, we see how they purify disciples for love, liberate the afflicted, and bring life to the world (5:1–9). As we ourselves are purified, liberated, and made alive by Jesus, we find ourselves able to love our neighbors in the same way that Jesus loved us. So, in discerning what Jesus is like, we better imagine and embody what our lives with others can become.

Jesus’ image of the vine and branches in John’s Gospel gives us another angle on the continuity between his humanity and ours. Jesus is the vine and his disciples are fruit-bearing branches of the vine (15:1–7). Just as a branch broken off of its vine loses its vitality and capacity to bear fruit, Jesus tells his disciples, “apart from me you can do nothing” (v. 5). But the disciples are not broken, withered branches. They are branches that stay on the vine.

Because Jesus is alive now, we do not need to become Jesus to be like him. The branches need not replace the vine. By God, our lives—our peculiarities, limitations, and all—might become receptive to Jesus’ power the way a fruit-bearing branch is receptive to the power of its vine (vv. 1–8).

The fruit we bear with Jesus is the work of love, and this work takes the shape of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. This is what it means to be God’s children, what it means to have eternal life, what it means to be addressed by God as “gods”: to be human like Jesus. In other words, Jesus’ humanity makes ours possible.

Wil Rogan is assistant professor of biblical studies at Carey Theological College in Vancouver.

Portions of this article are excerpted from Wil Rogan, “Jesus’s Humanity and Ours: John’s Christology and Ancient Views of Self,” in Early High Christology: John among the New Testament Writers, ed. Joel B. Green, Diane G. Chen, and Christopher M. Blumhofer (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2024), 63–74.

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Some Evangelicals Want a Third-Party Option, Even Without a Chance at Winning

Harvest Prude

The American Solidarity Party is a small but growing alternative to the Trump-Biden race.

Peter Sonski and Lauren Onak are running on the American Solidarity Party ticket.

Courtesy of the American Solidarity Party

Charlie Richert would really like to stop voting for his dad.

But in the last couple presidential election cycles, the 30-year-old attorney in Indianapolis has been unable to square his conscience with picking either the Republican or Democratic party nominee, so he’s resorted to writing in a name.

“There’s no way I can escape having my faith inform how I vote,” said Richert, a nondenominational Christian who grew up Republican. “Unfortunately, we’ve been kind of stuck in a doom loop of candidates at the presidential level that I’ve just not felt comfortable voting for.”

This year, he’s not drawn to alternatives like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or Cornel West. “Maybe I’ll write in Abe Lincoln this year. Sorry to my dad, but a new name to write in would be fun,” he said.

He recalls seeking to convince his classmates in an eighth-grade mock election that they should support Mitt Romney, but his chagrin with the Republican Party’s presidential nominee tracked with the ascension of Donald Trump.

In a year when both major party presidential candidates are viewed unfavorably by a quarter of Americans, many find themselves less excited about the two options at the top of the ticket. But, like Richert, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to go for third-party options.

The third-party candidates running in 2024 span the ideological spectrum, from independents Kennedy and Princeton University professor Cornel West to Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Then there are the more obscure party or candidate options—the Prohibition Party, Andrew Yang’s Forward Party, Maryland politician Jason Palmer, and that man in Texas who changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else.”

Perhaps the most promising third-party attempt, the No Labels Party, drew in funding with its centrist messaging, but its efforts failed before Election Day. The party ended its presidential campaign last week after being unable to find “candidates with a credible path to winning.”

RFK Jr. has emerged as the top third-party candidate this race, polling just under 12 percent, higher than any third-party candidate since businessman Ross Perot in 1992. The son of former attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, his popularity is aided by his high-profile last name.

After failing to make headway in the Democratic primary, Kennedy opted to run as an independent. He is only on the ballot in half a dozen states, but his campaign is on a signature-collection blitz and has vowed to get on the ballots of all 50 states this fall.

Kennedy has said his campaign is “a spoiler for President Biden and President Trump.”

It remains to be seen which major party candidate would be hurt more if Kennedy’s strong polling translates into votes come November. But both parties are taking the threat seriously, with the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee (and Trump himself, for that matter) going after the independent candidate.

“I suspect at least some of the support for RFK Jr. is really just a potholder for the anger and dissatisfaction with Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” said Mark Caleb Smith, a political scientist at Cedarville University in Ohio.

Kennedy is Catholic and at times has appealed to his faith in interviews and on social media. His policies span the ideological and political spectrum, and he’s best known for his environmental activism.

He’s also antiestablishment and was a vocal critic of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and he has criticized the impact that had on the right to religious assembly. He’s pro-choice and believes that the Dobbs v. Jackson decision overturning a national right to abortion was a mistake.

For evangelicals seeking candidates who reflect their values and beliefs more closely than either of the major parties, some have backed indepedent candidates or found new political homes in lesser-known third parties.

Dale Huntington, a 41-year-old pastor of City Life Church in San Diego, California, landed on the American Solidarity Party (ASP), a small but growing Christian party founded in 2011. Its platform is largely shaped by social teaching from Catholic thought.

He found out about the group because of evangelical author and professor Karen Swallow Prior, who is a member of ASP’s advisory board.

“I don’t support the death penalty or abortion. I am largely anti-war and anti-police brutality,” Huntington said. “I would say voting for a third party is choosing to acknowledge the system as it is has become broken.”

Huntington used to alternate between Republican and Democrat tickets but ultimately felt like neither was holistically pro-life.

In 2020, the American Solidarity Party ran its first evangelical presidential nominee—retired teacher and former Evangelical Free Church elder Brian Carroll (whom CT reported on at the time).

Carroll had long had his doubts about the Republican Party’s level of commitment to pro-life policies. But it was the GOP’s hardening on immigration, education, and other issues in 2016 that made him defect entirely.

After that, he went looking for other options. When he stumbled upon the ASP, he said, “[I] read the platform once and I said, ‘Yes, this is it.’”

When Carroll ran, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns made campaigning difficult. It also was a challenge for volunteers to garner signatures during lockdowns. Despite that, they had some success. Last presidential election, the American Solidarity Party made it onto the ballots of 8 states—and received write-in votes in 31 states. They drew over 42,000 votes in total.

“We’d love to double the number,” Marcos Lopez, party chair, told CT.

Ballot access is a huge challenge, he added, for a party facing limited financial resources, a small pool of volunteers, and stringent state requirements to get on the ballot.

Despite challenges, interest in the group is growing. There was a surge in volunteer signups online after Super Tuesday last month, when it became clear that November would bring a Donald Trump and Joe Biden rematch.

Party members acknowledge that winning is not in the cards, but they believe a third option allows Americans who reject the “lesser of two evils” argument to vote in a way that respects their conscience and sends a message.

“Whether you’re Catholic, whether you’re Baptist, whether you’re a nondenominational evangelical, whether you’re Orthodox—anyone who is serious about their faith, and anyone who’s serious about wanting to see these policies grounded in advancing the common good—anyone who wants to see those things happen is willing to come to the table,” Lopez said.

The issue of abortion has been a particular draw for religious individuals, Lopez said. “We’re looking at an issue in November where neither [Republican nor Democrat] candidate really fits the label of pro-life. … In many states we’re going to be the only pro-life option people can vote for, and that’s a very sad reality. But it is a reality, and that makes our work even more important.”

Abortion can be a deal breaker for some evangelicals when it comes to crossing the aisle to support Biden. While the Trump campaign has highlighted pro-life wins (such as the Dobbs decision), Trump has presented a softer approach to the issue in recent days.

On Monday, he said it should be left to the states to carve out individual abortion policies. “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people. You must follow your heart, or in many cases, your religion or your faith,” he said in a video statement.

On Thursday, he said in response to a reporter that he would not sign a federal abortion ban.

This year, Peter Sonski, a former editor for the National Catholic Register, is the American Solidarity Party candidate. Sonski, 61, has been a member of both the Democratic and Republican parties throughout his life but was frustrated that neither fully matched his religious convictions.

“We want to protect human life, give it all the protections of the law,” Sonski said of his party. “At the same time, we recognize there are many more things that the government can do—and society in general can do—for women who have needs in pregnancy … health care, expanded child tax credits, better housing options; all of these are factors.”

The father of nine and grandfather of six brings the experience of an elected official to the role: He serves as a school district member for the board of education for Connecticut’s 17th District. He tapped Lauren Onak, a 35-year-old stay-at-home mother and community organizer, as his vice president candidate.

Onak was raised a Democrat but defected to the Republican Party due to her interest in the pro-life movement. But a number of things caused her to break with the party, culminating in the birth of a daughter with a rare genetic syndrome and seeing how the social safety net of a “blue state” like Massachusetts benefited her daughter’s special needs.

It was “seeing the importance for this social safety net very much in action and having to push back against this mindset of, if you need help from the government, it makes you somehow weak,” she said.

She joined the American Solidarity Party in 2021, following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest, believing it offered a “reasonable voice in politics.” At 35, she’s just old enough to join the presidential ticket. She believes her candidacy is important for other disillusioned millennials.

One of those millennials is Bob Stevenson, a 40-year-old pastor in Chicago who found himself frustrated with having to choose which convictions to prioritize when he went to the ballot box.

He felt like he had to pick between unborn babies or immigrants and people in poverty.

“It’s almost like, that’s a red thing or that’s a blue thing. And I’m like, that’s a Christian thing,” Stevenson told CT. Although he said no party is perfect, he found the American Solidarity Party “straddles those concerns in a way that partisan politics don’t. So that was deeply attractive to me.”

Third parties have a tough uphill battle, largely due to the two-party structure that dominates American politics.

“We do have an abundance of third parties,” Smith said. “They just can’t seem to rise to the point where they have a significant impact. Most of that is because the two major parties absorb them.”

But third parties still have an effect: Smith gave the example of the Green Party elevating climate and environmental issues, which resulted in Democrats incorporating more of those concerns into their platform; or Republicans (at least in days past) leaning more libertarian and drawing voters away from the Libertarian Party. Other examples include the abolition of slavery and universal health care.

Smith says that rather than third parties or candidates becoming competitive, major changes in American politics usually happen within the vehicle of a major party. Or, at times, a major party falls by the wayside only to be replaced, such as the Whigs, who were replaced by Republicans.

“It isn’t that a third party rises up and it’s competitive. It’s one of the two major parties just implodes, and then this party steps forward and kind of picks up the pieces and you see something else emerge,” Smith said.

While the framework of Republican and Democratic parties has been in place since 1856, Smith said dissatisfaction with the options is at a “pretty significant and historical” level: “We keep seeing that in primary results on both sides of the aisle—even though the contest has been settled for a long time—that both candidates are getting pretty significant pushback.”

Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley continues to garner primary votes, despite dropping out after Super Tuesday’s primaries confirmed she had no viable path to the Republican nomination for president. On the Democratic side, progressives organized to lodge protest votes to send a message to Biden in Michigan’s Democratic primary, racking up more than 100,000 “uncommitted” votes.

But that may not translate to large numbers of Americans choosing to send a statement by voting outside the major parties on November 5.

Americans unhappy with their options may be more likely to tune politics out and sit elections out entirely. Those who head to the ballot box despite frustration and alienation from both major parties, Smith noted, “are a fairly small group of people.”

Christians who vote third party are aware that they’re a minority. But they think there are some things more important than making a pragmatic choice. Stevenson said when friends or family found out he planned to vote third party, they looked at him like he had his “head screwed on backwards.”

But he believes that “it’s a way for us to bear witness in the United States where Christians have historically, over the past couple of decades, aligned themselves with a political party and have shown themselves to be political opportunists and pragmatics.”

“I think it’s an opportunity for us to offer a different way. We can be like, actually the way of Jesus doesn’t look like an elephant or a donkey.”

Correction: Brian Carroll had served as an elder in the Evangelical Free Church, not the Evangelical Covenant Church.

- More from Harvest Prude

Testimony

How a Chinese-Born Research Scientist Became a Daring Online Evangelist

Sean Cheng

CT’s outgoing Asia editor recalls how God led him to America, toward the Christian faith, onto the internet, and outward to serve the global Chinese church.

Courtesy of Sean Cheng

I was born in southwest China, in the Ganzi (Garzê) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province. Only a few days after birth, I was sent to Chengdu, the province’s capital city. My sister and I were raised by our grandmother while my parents, both medical doctors, were sent by the Communist Party to the rural Tibetan area many high mountains away from the city, where children could not get a decent education.

I knew at a very young age that I had to get outstanding grades to enter college and avoid living in the cold and poor mountainous area. I studied hard and excelled in school.

At age 16, I went to Shanghai to study chemistry at Fudan University, one of China’s top schools. This was in the 1980s, after China had opened its door to the world. At this time, Chinese universities were quite liberal and tolerant of free thinking, and Fudan was known as one of the most “Westernized” universities.

In college, I began to rebel against indoctrination into official Communist ideology, and I wanted to learn more about Western thought and culture. But my worldview had been influenced by years of atheist education. I thought I did not believe in anything and had no interest in any religion.

After graduation, I went back to Chengdu and started to work in a research institute as a polymer scientist. After work, I played a lot of mahjong, gambling late into the night, but I was unhappy in my heart. After the crackdown on the student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, I was heartbroken and lost. (I witnessed similar forms of violent suppression on the streets of Chengdu.) I sank into deep darkness and hopelessness. I could not find an answer to my heart’s questions, and life became meaningless and unbearably painful. I decided that I would leave China and go to America for graduate study, and I began preparing for the relevant tests.

Meanwhile, I started reading a lot of books on philosophy and religion. Most of the books I found on Christianity treated it negatively, but I also became friends with a few Christians at the “English corner” by the Jinjiang River in the center of Chengdu.

Arriving in America

In 1990, to make some extra money, I went with a British expedition team to the source of the Yangtze River in the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qinghai Provinces, serving as their interpreter. Out of 30 people on the team, 27 were Christian, and they used hovercrafts to go upstream on the Yangtze and access remote Tibetan villages, where they would do charity work. I spent more than a month with them on the Tibetan plateau.

We traveled on dangerous roads, braving snowstorms, mudslides, and other forms of severe weather. The team’s official Chinese hosting company, whose primary interest was making money for themselves, created additional difficulties on top of cultural, political, and natural challenges. But I observed how the British Christians prayed when facing adversity, and how they worshiped God joyfully, singing guitar-led hymns in their tent. I was moved by their genuine and selfless love for the Tibetan people, and I found myself wishing for their kind of life and faith.

In the summer of 1992, I received a graduate school admission letter from the University of Alabama, and I waited outside the US consulate in Chengdu for four days and four nights to apply for a student visa. The I-20 paperwork certifying my admission was lost when the school mailed it the first time. I had to make a very expensive international phone call to request another copy, which I finally received on the third day in line outside the consulate.

In August 1992, I arrived in America with $42 in my pocket (that was all my savings—one of my relatives bought me the flight ticket). I was ready to start pursuing the “American dream” of freedom, democracy, happiness, and scientific achievement.

But what I found was salvation in Christ. I joined a Chinese Bible study group on campus and became a Christian soon thereafter. Because I had no car, I relied on Chinese friends to take me around for shopping and other things. Christians from the fellowship offered their help, and on Friday nights they would take me to their Bible study, even though I was there mostly for the Chinese food.

Early on, I often debated with the Christians about theories of creation and evolution. Yet I was increasingly moved by the Christian charity these friends showed to me, especially because of the sharp contrast between Christian love and the “we should hate our enemy” teachings I had absorbed from my Communist education. I realized that their ability to act out sacrificial love came from faith in God, the same faith that inspired the British Christians’ love for the Tibetan people.

I also began to realize the hatred and other darkness in my own heart, and my need for salvation. On a Sunday in October 1992, I was sitting in a pew at Tuscaloosa First Baptist Church. The pastor preached an evangelical sermon about Christ’s cross and God’s love. I was moved to tears. When the pastor asked if anyone would believe in Christ and go forward to the pulpit, I stood and walked to the front, and the pastor held my hands as we prayed. I was baptized in that church only two months after arriving in the US.

Internet evangelism

After I graduated with my master’s degree in 1995, I started working in the US chemical industry, first as a scientist, then as a research and development manager. The work brought me to Arizona, then New Jersey, and then Maryland. At the same time, I grew spiritually and served in local Chinese churches.

It was also in 1995 that I started writing about Christianity on the primitive Chinese internet. Pretty soon I began engaging online with non-believing Chinese intellectuals in China and overseas. This made me one of the earliest Chinese Christian apologists on the internet.

Even though there were only a few online Christians then, Christianity was one of the hottest debate topics on the early forums that sprang up on the Chinese internet during its infancy. Debates about science and Christianity appeared on a list of “Top 10 Chinese Internet News” in 1996 and 1997, and I was one of the few Christians named on the list.

In 1996, I became one of the earliest volunteer coworkers for the ministry Chinese Christian Internet Mission. We uploaded apologetic and evangelistic materials on our website for people in China (the government hadn’t yet erected its “Great Firewall” of censorship). I also started my own personal gospel website, “Jidian’s Links,” in 1998. (Jidian is my penname, and in Chinese it is the name of the biblical figure of Gideon.)

At the end of the1990s, many Chinese online forums became popular. Christians, including myself, were active on those platforms, dialoguing with intellectuals in China about Christian faith. Many influential Chinese intellectuals were involved in such conversations.

When more useful internet platforms such as blogs, Douban, Weibo, Zhihu, and WeChat became popular in the 2000s and 2010s, Chinese Christians quickly took them up for evangelistic purposes. I started writing blogs, gradually expanding my focus beyond apologetics to cover culture and current affairs. In 2012, a collection of my blog essays, The Search and the Return, was published in China. In an official Chinese Communist Youth League journal article published that year, the author called me one of the most influential “internet missionaries” that Chinese youth should be aware of.

Protection and providence

But my evangelism in China was not limited to online writing. Before the Chinese government tightened its control on religions in 2018, there was a golden window of 10 or 15 years when evangelism was possible inside the nation itself. During this period, I went back to China two or three times each year, giving evangelistic “free and public seminars” at Christian bookstores and coffee houses run by house churches while meeting Christians and seekers in many Chinese cities.

In 2011, I became a full-time Christian worker. I joined the Chinese media ministry Overseas Campus Ministries (OCM), based in California, to serve as director of its evangelism division and chief editor of its magazine and media platforms. Through our WeChat account, we reached more than 70,000 subscribers before government censors blocked and deleted it. And we organized a Christian blogger “circle” in China to inspire and foster more Christian authors. I answered nearly 300 faith-related questions on Zhihu before my account was censored in January 2020.

While with OCM, I also served diaspora Chinese churches in North America, Asia, and Europe as a speaker and preacher. In 2019, I joined an international mission organization as a “diaspora and returnee missionary.” In January 2022, I was “seconded” to Christianity Today to serve as Asia editor. In my two years at CT, we have published not only hundreds of Chinese translations from English, but also dozens of articles originally written in Chinese. I will continue to serve the global Chinese churches through my mission work as well as my media ministry.

When I came to the US 32 years ago, my parents expected that I would become an outstanding scientist. I did well as a scientist in the chemical industry, but my parents never anticipated that I would give up that career and become an internet missionary writer and editor. Many of the Chinese forums I frequented no longer exist today, but occasionally I still get direct messages from Chinese Christians who say they knew me through my online presence when they were still atheists. Some have gone on to become full-time ministers or missionaries. They are amazed that I am still actively evangelizing on the internet and through Christian media.

Thinking back on my journey of life, I am more convinced than ever before that I have nothing to boast in except God’s grace. He worked in my heart when I was struggling in China. He led me onto the internet, and into apologetics and missions, in his own timing. My journey has been full of his protection and providence. As one hymn puts it, in words I can heartily affirm, “by his own hand he leadeth me.”

Sean Cheng is a Christian writer, media editor, and diaspora Chinese missionary based in Maryland. In 2022, he published a book in Chinese, Above All Things, on the topic of science and Christianity.

- More from Sean Cheng

Books

The Church Loses When Our Arts Communities Die

Conor Sweetman

Christian writers and artists need communities of like-minded creatives so we can best serve both the church and the world.

Blend Images / Walter Zerla / Getty

I can remember the moment small literary magazines entered my life and established a subtle but dominating influence. I was talking with my dad about some classes I was taking at the end of my undergraduate years, and I shared an idea that had recently popped into my head: “I want to start a magazine. I’ll invite some friends who like to write and are into photography to feature their work. I’ll print 10 or 20 copies and see what happens.”

Surprised, he pointed at a maroon-covered, finely printed journal lying on his desk, the word Image emblazoned across the top. Below the title, a description: Art. Faith. Mystery. As the dean of students at a Christian liberal arts university, he knew his way around a landscape that I was just beginning to roam.

The direction of my life was permanently altered at that moment. I found a world that took seriously the things I loved: faith, books, imagination, the creation of culture, and the development of craft. It lit a fire in my chest. But ten years later, it feels like that world is crumbling—or is at least on quaking ground. In February, Image announced it was shuttering after 35 years of operation for financial reasons—and then, in March, joyfully reversed its announcement after an outpouring of support. Other small magazines and presses haven’t made the same comeback, and Christians in the Visual Arts announced it was disbanding last year.

From my vantage, these closures don’t demonstrate a lack of energy, talent, or interest in arts and literature in the church. In some ways, the arts and faith movement—led by writers, painters, poets, and photographers who live by a drumbeat not usually highlighted in Christian community—seems to be swelling to a crescendo.

But the lack of institutional viability and support is palpable. Major streams that watered the literary and artistic ecosystem of the American church seem to be drying up all at once.

Budding artists and seasoned writers feel left to fend for themselves, as seen in widely discussed reflections from Lore Ferguson Wilbert and Jen Pollock Michel on the publishing world. Creative gatherings for Christians are often difficult to fund and organize; there’s a precarious feeling that their existence must be constantly justified. It’s no coincidence that so much Christian writing today is in a personal and confessional mode—there’s a quiet cry going up from artists in our pews to have genuine spiritual and aesthetic community.

Small magazines can fill that need, serving as “experiential labs and community hubs for rising and established writers and thought leaders,” said Sara Kyoungah White, a former editor at the Lausanne Movement who is now a copyeditor at Christianity Today.

White found community, she told me, in small magazines like CT’s Ekstasis (the magazine that came out of that conversation with my dad), Foreshadow, and Fathom. Writing in those pages allowed her to explore her faith through the kind of nuance and poetry that have grown rare in these didactic times. She could engage with the works of like-minded creatives and re-enter the literary and cultural landscape with a Christocentric lens. Such communities evoked those of artistic and literary greats like Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and James Joyce, who gathered in the salons of Paris.

But you don’t have to be a writer or artist yourself to benefit from flourishing Christian literary and artistic communities. “The best way to think about literary publications is as part of a larger ecosystem of ideas,” said Paul J. Pastor, senior acquisitions editor at Zondervan, in an interview.

“Any ecologist will tell you that the resilience and vibrancy of an ecosystem depends on the ‘little’ guys just as much as—and sometimes more than—the ‘big’ guys,” explained Pastor. “Just like in a forest, where the ‘keystone species’ holding an ecosystem is often a type of creature overlooked or invisible to most people, so there is a specific and important contribution of the small literary publication that may well be essential and irreplaceable—and only fully seen by the wider collapses that follow when it goes away.”

Without that hindsight, though, institutional support for this kind of community can be a tough sell in the church. A literary magazine may not bring in new converts or keep the church lights on. Why should we financially support work that doesn’t have quantifiable, utilitarian value?

Most succinctly, we should do it to foster a vibrant and beautiful culture in the church. God has embedded a hunger for beauty in the human spirit, and God’s own interest in beauty is evident in his Word. We see it in the artistic call of Bezalel to weave pomegranates with red, purple, and blue thread onto the robes worn into the Holy of Holies (Ex. 28:31–35; 35:30–35); in the masterful poetic structure of the Psalms; in the epic language of apocalypse and prophecy.

As Christians, it is our responsibility to be aware of how we are satiating our hunger for beauty. Are we developing a taste for what is good and an aversion to the acrid flavor of evil? Are we more influenced by beauty that orients us to the strange and unexpected work of God in the world—or by political slogans and self-help books?

The power of the small literary magazine is in its ability to confront us with new ideas, to expand our palates to the overlooked, the strange, the serendipitous, the delightful. This will never be very measurable, but that does not make it unnecessary. “The contributions of ‘small’ writers and literary publications are immense, but their influence can be difficult to trace,” Pastor told me. “You can’t know how an image or idea developed in a poem or short story may awaken something in a reader who, years later, will write or paint or talk or sculpt it out, perhaps for an audience of millions, perhaps just for one person whose life may be saved, and in turn—who knows?”

“But,” he added, “what such artists need, what such a movement needs, always, is a passionate and supportive audience.”

Groundbreaking storytelling requires backing and bulwarks. In the mid-20th century, that looked like “grants, residencies, affiliations, and academic positions.” In the Renaissance, it was elite patronage. Perhaps now, we need a new model to make room for what Anne Snyder, editor of Comment, in an interview called “the necessary wrestling with tougher stuff: arguments, substantive debates, being unafraid to be political when necessary, the hard calls that choosing the Jesus Way necessitates … a combination of cultural chutzpah and a delight in the imago Dei.”

That may seem like a daunting or even risky proposition, but Pastor is hopeful. “There is a new generation producing absolutely remarkable work,” he said, “and while the organizations that support us are fragile, it has always been that way.” A century from now, he predicted, ours will be remembered “as a renewal moment in Christian literature. And all of us get to participate in it.”

The ceaseless work of creation, education, and tending to the depths of the human spirit will continue. But we can advance it with bold and creative institutions tasked with bridging image and word, mind and spirit, for the sake of the church.

Humans will satisfy this hunger for beauty one way or another. As God’s people, we should host the feast.

Conor Sweetman is the director of innovation and collaboration at Christianity Today and editor of Ekstasis.

- More from Conor Sweetman

Books

Review

Why Defend Your Faith If You Live in the World’s Most Christian Continent?

Agnes Makau

Apologetics in Africa offers resources to both believers and skeptics where the church remains largely unequipped to respond to attacks on their faith.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

For most Africans, there is no dichotomy between sacred and secular realms. While this holistic approach to life has great merits, it can also serve as a sponge, soaking up all kinds of spirituality. Christian apologetics acts as a gate to lock out syncretism and false teachings.

As 1 Peter 3:15–16 reminds us, we should be prepared to defend the faith while “keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” In other words, apologetics is a gentle conversation about faith, not a fight to be won. Apologetics in Africa: An Introduction offers answers to both believers and skeptics on a continent where Christians remain largely unequipped to respond to attacks on the faith they embrace.

This is by no means the first book on apologetics in Africa, but it is long overdue, distinguished by the diverse authors’ unique perspectives on selected topics in apologetics. In a continent where the danger of syncretism is very real, effective apologetics is desperately needed, not just as an academic topic but in the daily lives of believers.

Hailing from Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Nigeria, and Uganda, the contributors to Apologetics in Africa approach Christianity as a faith that has been widely accepted throughout the continent but requires contextualization. These 16 essays on cultural and practical issues give direction for the integration of faith and life in the African Christian church, which has been influenced by African traditional beliefs, colonization, Western thought, and contemporary global trends. (Despite its title, the book primarily speaks to issues in sub-Saharan Africa, and all of its contributors hail from Anglophone countries.)

Christian theology in the African context must be complemented by apologetics, because believers need a faith they can explain. Moreover, faith grows when it is open to examination. Therefore, apologetics can be considered a crucial subset of African theology, and this work rises to the task—even though it is modestly titled an “introduction,” as an invitation to further discussion. After all, the task of apologetics never ends.

The historical plot

The Kenyan gospel musician and apologist Reuben Kigame wrote, “Christian apologetics has its deepest roots in North Africa.” In a way, this book is revisiting the topic of apologetics in Africa after a long hiatus, but with a focus on contemporary issues. Suitably, editor Kevin Muriithi Ndereba, the head of practical theology at St. Paul’s University in Kenya, opens Apologetics in Africa by looking back to Augustine, Tertullian, and others who lived in North Africa when the “default mode of missions” was apologetics.

Ndereba describes apologetics as multidisciplinary and as a beneficiary of other disciplines—which is an important observation because the questions people ask about faith are not confined to a particular category. When an academic curriculum includes a course on apologetics, it is typically an upper-level course. That’s because students need a strong reservoir of background information to enable interdisciplinary integration in their work on apologetics.

The book’s arrangement into four issue categories (biblical, philosophical, cultural, and practical) implies the development of a wide-ranging discourse that can guide scholars and others engaging in African apologetics. Of course, biblical issues are a good place to start, because there can be no defense of the Christian faith without a biblical foundation. In that section, Kenyan New Testament scholar Elizabeth Mburu’s article “Is the Bible Reliable? Biblical Criticism and Hermeneutics in Africa” is particularly well articulated. Mburu’s approach combines two perspectives—classical questions and contextualized hermeneutics—for the purpose of a believer’s transformation.

Pertinent doctrinal topics for a diverse Africa

Africa is a diverse continent with 54 countries, more than 3,000 tribes, and enormous variations in cultural beliefs and practices. Accordingly, though African readers may find areas of commonality in this book, they will also need to reflect theologically on their unique interests and contexts in order to engage in apologetics effectively.

In the face of this cultural diversity, it is imperative for African believers to understand some key biblical doctrines to build a firm foundation for their inferences. To me, three doctrines stand out as particularly central. The first is well covered in this book, the other two less so.

Christology

This key topic, especially the person of Christ, does not have close parallels in African traditional belief systems. But as South African theologian Robert Falconer writes in his chapter “An African Apologetics for the Resurrection,” the historical truth and reliability of Christ’s resurrection is what makes Christianity worthy of our exclusive affiliation.

In an application of Christology to an African cultural context, Ndereba contributes a chapter on “The Doctrine of Christ and Traditional Eldership Rites: mbũrĩ cia kiama.” Mbũrĩ cia kiama can be translated as “goats for the council.” The term refers to the traditional Gikuyu practice in which a man who has qualified for the status of eldership gives goats to the council of elders.

Ndereba commends this tradition for recognizing the value of mentorship but also raises a dilemma: How should Christians approach the practice? Do African Christians still need to perform animal sacrifices in order to take status and responsibility seriously? How can they align that practice with Christ’s redemptive sacrifice? The process of contextualization cannot simply imbue African traditional practices with Christian significance, because their meanings may not align.

Christian apologists in Africa should examine their own culture closely and discern appropriate analogies for their setting. However, converts to Christianity should be taught the whole counsel of God even where there are no obvious similarities to their culture.

It is common for authors contextualizing their theology in Africa to highlight aspects of Christology that find similarities in African traditional beliefs—mostly the work of Christ—and shy away from unfamiliar concepts such as the person of Christ. Yet the doctrine of the person of Christ is central to Christianity and attracts key apologetic questions: How can God have a son? Does Christianity have more than one God? How can three gods be one? How can Jesus be both human and God?

When we are explaining the person of Christ, adaptations of or analogies to African traditional beliefs are inadequate and must be referenced with a disclaimer. Here are two examples.

Christ as the ancestor: Christ is often presented in this way in Africa because he is the mediator between Christians and the God of the Bible. But Christ is also God himself, and he is alive, whereas the ancestors are considered the “living dead.” Furthermore, we can communicate with God through Christ, but communication with or through African ancestors would be considered divination and therefore unbiblical.
Christ as an elder (or elder brother): As Ndereba appropriately explains, the position of an elder in Africa has historically been a significant role. But many of those considered elders today may not attract as much honor as previously; moreover, many in the younger generation are detached from their traditional background and need different analogies they can relate to. Additionally, in African tradition, the elder brother is considered equal to the father, and he takes over the father’s responsibilities in differing degrees depending on the community. But the analogy between Christ and the eldest brother would not be pleasing to all African Christians, as its impact would be influenced by people’s experiences. Many elder brothers are enemies to family progress, and Christ does not fit that description!

Pneumatology

Whereas Christology receives thoughtful treatment throughout the book, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit (pneumatology) does not receive prominent attention in the biblical issues section. It would have been a useful addition, as this doctrine has been abused in church and cultic circles, or sometimes unfortunately neglected.

In some instances, people struggle to discern the difference between demon possession and the power of the Holy Spirit. This problem has made the whole topic of spiritual warfare difficult for most African Christians, and many of them trek from church to church looking for a prophet to rescue them. As a result, these believers are living in bondage, not liberation. There is a pressing need to discuss the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of African believers, so as to distinguish it from the role of demons and other spirits as understood in traditional African beliefs.

Ecclesiology

With regard to the doctrine of the church, important issues arise when African Christians try to align their practices on church ordinances with the ways in which African communities have traditionally recognized rites of passage such as birth, puberty, death, and burial.

One rite of passage this book does scrutinize is marriage, especially the cultural practices involved with it. As Zimbabwean theologian Primrose Muyambo explains in her chapter, African dowry practices (known as lobola) can easily cause Christians to compromise their faith, since marriage is considered a huge milestone in an individual’s life and becomes a status symbol within the community.

Although lobola may affirm the value of women, in modern Africa it has become materialistic, often causing bitterness and conflicts. Muyambo points out that parents of educated young women are demanding large amounts of money or expensive items such as houses, water tanks, or cellphones as dowry payments. Due to the high costs, some couples have resorted to cohabitation, despite the church’s opposition. The African church must align this rite of passage with Christian practices so as to help parents adapt and to support young Christian couples who seek to marry.

Similar problems arise around other rites of passage not discussed in this book. Since some church ordinances seem mysterious in their symbolic meaning and could appear to have parallels to traditional African rites of passage, magic, and occultism, addressing these matters is crucial for African apologetics. Church leaders must identify primary areas where compromise of one’s faith can occur due to cultural demands and contemporary worldviews, because syncretism is thriving in the African church and creating major apologetics dilemmas. Believers need biblical principles that enable them to know what to discard and what they can appropriately transfer from their culture to Christianity. Ugandan pastor Rodgers Atwebembeire’s chapter “Apologetics and Cults in Africa” demonstrates what is happening too often and provides a warning for the danger that Christianity in Africa faces if the church is not established on sound doctrine.

Overall, despite the noted omissions, this book should encourage further research and reflection on practical apologetics issues in Africa. (It would be wonderful if the book also sparked the development of more accessible and affordable apologetics resources as well.) The authors’ contributions are an antidote to intellectual and emotional barriers to faith, and the contextualizing approach to hermeneutics prepares believers to give an answer for the faith they profess in their contemporary cultural setting.

Agnes Makau is dean of the School of Theology at Scott Christian University in Machakos, Kenya.

- More from Agnes Makau

Books

Review

Why Defend Your Faith if You Live on the World’s Most Christian Continent?

Agnes Makau

Apologetics in Africa offers resources to both believers and skeptics where the church remains largely unequipped to respond to attacks on their faith.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

Apologetics in Africa: An Introduction

Kevin Muriithi Ndereba (Editor)

404 pages

$25.49

The historical plot

Pertinent doctrinal topics for a diverse Africa

Christology

When we are explaining the person of Christ, adaptations of or analogies to African traditional beliefs are inadequate and must be referenced with a disclaimer. Here are two examples.

Christ as the ancestor: Christ is often presented in this way in Africa because he is the mediator between Christians and the God of the Bible. But Christ is also God himself, and he is alive, whereas the ancestors are considered the “living dead.” Furthermore, we can communicate with God through Christ, but communication with or through African ancestors would be considered divination and therefore unbiblical.
Christ as an elder (or elder brother): As Ndereba appropriately explains, the position of an elder in Africa has historically been a significant role. But many of those considered elders today may not attract as much honor as previously; moreover, many in the younger generation are detached from their traditional background and need different analogies they can relate to. Additionally, in African tradition, the elder brother is considered equal to the father, and he takes over the father’s responsibilities in differing degrees depending on the community. But the analogy between Christ and the eldest brother would not be pleasing to all African Christians, as its impact would be influenced by people’s experiences. Many elder brothers are enemies to family progress, and Christ does not fit that description!

Pneumatology

Ecclesiology

Agnes Makau is dean of the School of Theology at Scott Christian University in Machakos, Kenya.

- More from Agnes Makau

Theology

The Book of Job Gives Us Good News for an Unfair World

Ellie M. Wiener

The book reminds us that life is unjust, but so is the gospel of God’s grace.

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

Life is unfair, and that is a problem.

All humans seem to have an “unfairness radar” that goes off whenever we encounter senseless injustice. From trite examples provoking our frustration, such as someone cutting us in line, to those that deeply grieve us, like a young mother of three fighting terminal cancer, we mourn with an acute sense that the world is not as it should be. Or consider unfairness on a global scale, as the news barrages us with unrelenting reports of armed conflicts and natural disasters—as we struggle to register the staggering counts of individual lives upended or ended by relentless forces of harm.

Last year, a terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel killed 1,200 unsuspecting people and made another 253 people hostages, followed now by over 31,000 reported deaths and an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In the same year, a series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed nearly 60,000 people, injuring and displacing millions more. This is not to mention the over 3 million COVID-induced deaths, which have been reported globally in the few years since the pandemic sent the entire world into a frenzy. And the fallout of these events will continue to reverberate throughout bereaved and unsettled communities for a very long time.

We often cope with injustices by looking away and medicating with distractions, since sustained eye contact with misfortune is uncomfortable. Or we may—sometimes rightly, sometimes self-righteously—angrily blame the various parties involved, desperately trying to account for the unaccountable. We are gratified when any positive changes result, yet we are also aware of how powerless we are to reverse the diagnosis, divert the bullet’s path, or end the suffering across the sea.

And in all this, we wrestle with a God who could have intervened but did not.

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center study, conducted in light of the coronavirus outbreak and other tragedies, over 60 percent of American adults had given thought within the past year to “big questions such as the meaning of life, whether there is any purpose to suffering and why terrible things happen to people.” For millennia, difficult circumstances have led people to ask questions about the nature of the Being responsible for the nature of reality as we experience it.

How could an infinitely powerful and thoroughly good Creator God be governing this world, as the Bible claims, when the world seems to be in such a messy state? Especially when those who are innocent and faithful to him suffer inexplicably? At the very least, shouldn’t God spare them from the unfair arithmetic of having good things subtracted and bad things added to their lives?

As formidable as these questions are, I am heartened to know the Bible takes them seriously and refuses to offer tediously thin answers. In fact, the Book of Job confronts the issue of unfairness head-on, and with admirable honesty. Rather than abashedly apologizing for an incompetent deity, it boldly commends a tenacious trust in the Creator of this good yet groaning world. And in the process, it points ahead to the figure of Jesus as God’s ultimate answer to the question of unfairness.

Many of us are familiar with the book’s premise: Job is the paragon of piety, living with genuine allegiance to God and enjoying a superlative level of flourishing (1:1–5). However, he is suddenly struck with a comprehensive loss of his wealth, children, and health—“without any reason” (2:3). Two chapters in, the rattled reader surveys the once rich yet still righteous Job, now sitting alone with torn clothes on an ash heap, miserably scraping the boils off his skin with a broken piece of pottery.

In this way, the book deliberately sets up an abrasively incongruous situation: What happens if the most righteous person imaginable is subjected to the most devastating suffering imaginable—just short of losing his very life? Is living in allegiance to God worthwhile amid such baffling, offensive unfairness? What does it take to sustain gritty trust in God when it seems he’s abandoned you?

After Job’s stalwart initial responses to his calamities (1:20–21; 2:10), three of his friends come to comfort him, at first sitting by in sympathetic silence (2:11–13). And then the verbal floodgates open. As the four of them launch into protracted debate cycles (3–27), the dialogue devolves into futility and animosity as Job’s friends have no room to be mystified by his plight. Surely, they contend, actions and consequences exhibit reliable correspondence. Do good, and you get good; do bad, and you get bad. It only seems fair, right?

They think Job’s woes indicate that his character must be compromised by some secret sin, and that he would be restored if he would only make a penitent return to God. Their rigid paradigm for how God orders the world lends them a neat explanation for suffering and a guaranteed way out.

But Job is far from convinced. Like the reader, he knows that he has done nothing to deserve this suffering. There is no explaining away the unfairness. Hovering on the brink of death, Job rails against God, whom he regards as responsible for his anguish and for allowing such a breakdown of justice in the world. In his experience, it feels as if God is rushing on him like an attacking warrior, piercing him with arrows and slashing him open (6:4; 16:6–17; 19:6–12).

These are raw, audacious words of accusation. But for all his brash speech, Job is no angry atheist. He addresses God persistently and directly, refusing to turn his back on him—even as he vacillates violently between despairing of an adequate response from God and confidently anticipating it. After all, where else could an ostensibly God-forsaken God-fearer turn but to God himself?

Eventually, Job’s friends’ attempts to make sense of his plight are exhausted, and Job seems to be more frustrated and alienated than he was before. His longing for God’s voice to enter the fray has become unbearable. And, at long last, after 37 restive yet disorienting chapters, God answers from the whirlwind (38:1; 40:6). Evidently, God’s silence did not mean either absence or apathy since it’s clear he had indeed been listening all along. His eloquent speech borrows language from the human debates but cuts through their impasse with his reorienting perspective.

Yet God’s answer to Job is surprising and may even seem callous and irrelevant. Feeling no need to excuse or explain why Job is suffering, God instead launches into soaring poetry. He rebukes Job for speaking beyond what he understands in a way that maligns God’s way of sustaining and governing his world (38:2). God then paints a portrait of his creation, which is emphatically brimming with life and masterfully superintended by his benevolence. And he underscores how humans, with their narrowness of comprehension and control, are vastly inadequate to be gods over such a creation.

The Creator has crafted the sort of world where boisterous animals can frolic freely (38:39–39:30) and rain falls even on desolate land where no one lives (38:25–27). And although this world contains forces of chaos, far too wily for humans to handle, they are ever under God’s thumb (38:8–11; 41:8–11). Indeed, God reliably secures order and justice in his world—banishing the wicked with morning light as effortlessly as one shakes out the folds of a garment (38:12–15; 40:10–14).

What has all this poetic whimsy to do with Job?

In his perplexity and pain, Job had extrapolated something about the character of God based on his experience, imagining a deity who could be malevolently capricious toward him and the world. Yet God challenges that presumption: Is Job really in a position to indict God, dictate the terms of their encounter, and demand that God justify his suffering? Dispelling any delusion of entitlement, God makes abundantly clear that he is responsive but not coercible. And rather than letting our human experiences interpret God’s character, God invites us to flip the script.

In other words, the Creator is wise, sovereign, good, and just. That is the starting point. As his creatures, humans are simply not privy to everything he knows and does. God allows the mystery of his comprehensive design and hidden activity to persist, when all we can see from our vantage point is the unfairness of a given circumstance.

So the crisis of decision for the boil-covered, ash-bound Job hovers in the air as he is left to answer the same questions that unfairness surfaces for all of us: Are we (still) willing to trust God when he tells us he is not accountable to us? Can we be satisfied with the assurance that God knows what we cannot understand and governs what we cannot control?

Job is. Now “seeing” God for himself, Job has been satiated by God’s answer (42:1–6). As Bill and Will Kynes write, “In the midst of such a personal struggle we don’t need a theology seminar, we need a word from God himself. Job felt personally betrayed by the treatment he was receiving, and more than anything, he longed to meet with God.” In the end, the bracing “realness” of an encounter with God, who shows up for his servant, is the only thing capable of lifting Job from desolation to renewed hope and trust.

But then something else, quite unexpected, happens: God beckons Job to pray for his three friends so that God’s dangerously hot anger toward them may be quelled (42:7–9). But—the disgruntled reader protests—how can God possibly expect Job to intercede for these conspicuously un-interceding friends who deserve judgment for their failure of friendship toward their suffering companion? And can God’s mercy, mediated by his suffering servant Job, actually accomplish justice?

Apparently, it can. Job prays for his friends, and, because of his obedience and God’s favor toward him, they are spared. And then, in a stunning sweep of divine mercy—while Job is still in the process of interceding for his friends and securing their forgiveness—God restores Job’s fortunes, leaving him with “more than” what he had at the beginning (42:9–17).

As it turns out, grace is also unfair. Or, rather, grace at first seems unfair to humans who assume that the world works based on you-get-what-you-deserve logic. Actually, grace is the ordinary fabric, the natural operating system, of an existence designed and inhabited by the God of superabundant generosity.

Journeying with Job from chapters 1 to 42, I cannot help but sense the theological inertia of the entire book moving inexorably toward Jesus, the ultimate righteous sufferer, consummate friend who intercedes, and God’s decisive answer to all injustice. But while a virtuous Job suffered unwittingly, just short of death, through no fault of his own—thinking God had become his enemy—the perfectly righteous and blameless Jesus knowingly walked into the forsakenness of a sinner’s death, through only the fault of our own.

Jesus was not merely a man who prayed for his failing friends—he is the Son of God who died for friends whose failure had earned their death. God himself bore the crushing unfairness of our death so that he can be eternally “unfair” in his grace toward us by giving us life we could never demand or deserve.

In the end, Job’s solace was God himself—being satisfied by God’s long-awaited answer, by “seeing” him (42:5). In the same way, Jesus is the One who answers humanity with his very presence with us and for us. Our soul-deep solace is seeing the God who answers unfairness by climbing inside it, dying because of it, and transforming it by his resurrection to hand it back to us as his grace.

Without minimizing what remains harrowingly unfair in this world, Jesus addresses it by arranging the unjust discrepancy of his innocent suffering to be our only hope. Alongside Job, we struggle with pain and loss that defy human calculus—but then again, divine generosity also confounds our math. Why should the Creator send showers on a wasteland (Job 38:25–27) and on the unjust (Matt. 5:45)? Why should the Father send his willing Son to save rebellious sinners?

When we grapple with inexplicable suffering in our lives, we want a “Why?”—but like Job, what we really need more than anything is a “Who.” We need to see God answering us with himself in the person of Jesus. And because he already has, when our hearts cry out with longing to see him with our own eyes, we can be assured that in due time, we too will behold our God and end up somewhere inconceivably “more than” where we started (1 Pet. 1:3–9; 5:10).

Ellie Wiener is currently working on a dissertation on the Book of Job as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge.

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