Indian State Moves to Criminalize Praying for the Sick

Surinder Kaur

A proposed ban on “magical healing” is the latest government initiative targeting Christian practice and evangelism in Assam.

An interdenominational prayer service held in the wake of the attacks on the passing of the Healing (Magical) Bill.

Courtesy of Assam Christian Forum

State lawmakers in India are seeking to curtail evangelism with a ban on “magical healing” that could penalize Christians who offer prayer or any “non-scientific” practices to comfort people who are sick.

Last month, the northeastern state of Assam introduced the bill, which Christian leaders say unfairly targets their community’s custom of praying for the sick. Though church healing meetings in India have drawn people to Christ, local Christians insist that prayer is a legitimate, universal spiritual practice and not an unethical tool for conversion, as Hindu nationalists claimed.

The proposed ban, which passed the 126-member state assembly on February 26, states that:

No person shall take any part in healing practices and magical healing propagation for treatment of any diseases, any disorder or any condition relating to the health of a person (relating to human body) directly or indirectly giving a false impression of treatment to cure diseases, pain or trouble to the human health.

Any first-time offender can face one to three years in prison, a fine of 50,000 rupees (about $600 USD), or both. A subsequent conviction may result in up to five years’ imprisonment and/or a fine of 100,000 rupees (about $1,200 USD).

The bill must be ratified by the president of India to become an act. Assembly leaders in Assam say that the healing ban does not target any particular religion, but they were clear about their aims to restrict evangelism and conversion.

“We want to curb evangelism in Assam, so in that direction, the banning of healing … will be a very, very important milestone,” said Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam. The state is governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the national ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“Healing is a very, very dicey subject, which is used to convert tribal people,” said Sarma. “We are going to pilot [this bill], because we believe that religious status quo is very important. Whoever is Muslim, let them be Muslims; whoever is Christian, let them be Christians; whoever is Hindu, let them be Hindus, so there can be a proper balance in our state.”

The bill has drawn flak from the Christian community and the opposition party.

The Assam Christian Forum (ACF), an umbrella body of all Christian churches in Assam, has spoken out against the ban as a violation of religious freedom and against lawmakers’ characterization of prayer as “magical healing.”

“Prayer is a universal practice across religions, used to invoke divine healing,” the forum stated. “Labeling it as magical healing oversimplifies the profound spiritual dimensions of faith and life.”

ACF clarified that Christian prayers for healing are acts of compassion, not conversion. According to the forum’s spokesman Allen Brooks, leaders are concerned that any prayer that may follow healing could be perceived as “a motive to convert the other person to Christianity,” in which case “everybody will go to jail.”

In the neighboring state of Nagaland, the Chakhesang Baptist Church Council criticized the Assam bill as wrongly banning Christian practices in a secular country. The council praised its own state for upholding the right to freedom of religion.

The council’s executive secretary, C. Cho-o, also objected to the term “magical healing” as dismissive of supernatural intervention. “Healing is the work of God, not the work of Christians,” he said. “So, when divine healing takes place, Christians cannot claim responsibility, nor can they be blamed for it!”

Officially called the Assam Healing (Prevention of Evil) Practices Bill, 2024, the proposed law would criminalize any “non-scientific healing practices with ulterior motives for exploiting the innocent people.”

Besides the punitive provisions, the bill empowers police “to enter and inspect any practices within the local limit of jurisdiction of such person where he has reason to believe that an offence under this Act has been or is likely to be committed.” It gives officers a free hand to seize any advertisement, record, or document as evidence.

Healing meetings are common in India and have drawn many people to Christ after they have personally experienced healing or have watched their loved ones recover. Local Christians can recount testimonies around the power of healing for the church. (They shared responses anonymously with CT out of security concerns.)

One leader saw how healings can be an entry point for the gospel, attracting people looking for an answer for their physical suffering.

“Signs and wonders abound, and many people come to know Jesus as healer first, and then as they walk with him as their Lord and Savior,” he said. “But to call this a conspiracy or magic would be belittling it. It definitely is not evil, but the grace of God.”

A convert shared how transformative healing ministries were for her in the three years since she began attending church.

“My family was surrounded with bouts of sicknesses and illnesses. Since I have begun to follow Christ and my family has joined me, we have gotten rid of the bondage of illness,” she told CT.

Hindu right-wing groups have for years alleged that Christian groups are engaging in unethical conversion tactics under the guise of “healing crusades” in India. They have accused Christians of promoting superstitious beliefs, making false claims about miraculous healings, and using deception to convert people, especially from economically disadvantaged communities, to Christianity.

The Organizer, a weekly publication associated with the BJP, ran a special report expressing that the Assam bill will thwart Christian missionaries from luring “villagers with magical healing” and will prevent them from converting tribals.

The Assam Tribal Christian Coordination Committee (ATCCC) has appealed to the government to review the bill, expressing concerns that its current wording could be misused to target the Christian community.

Like other local Christians, the ATCCC stated that the bill should not link “magic healing” with proselytization or conversion, as the Christian church aims to share Jesus’ teachings of love and peace.

The committee urged the chief minister to ensure the bill’s integrity and to maintain the secular principles of the country’s constitution while passing it, fearing that its current form could lead to more harm than good.

The Angami Baptist Church Council (ABCC) from Nagaland condemned the Assam bill as an attempt to target Christian humanitarian work by misleadingly equating divine healing with “magic” used for conversions. It stated Christian healing combines science and prayer, not magic.

The council urged the “sister states” of northeast India to promote peaceful coexistence instead of sowing division through such discriminatory laws.

A pastor in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city, believes that even if the ban is brought into action, it will not stand for long.

“In Assam, we have both tribals and non-tribals who will not obey the law that is being imposed in the state,” said Kamleshwar Baglary of Harvest Baptist Church.

He believes that migrants from other states are responsible for the recent political mayhem in Assam.

“Most of the people used by the Hindu fundamentalist organizations are paid workers to execute their plan in the state,” Baglary said. “They cannot rule in Assam with their ideologies.”

While responding to the bill, the ACF also expressed concern over demands by pro-Hindu, right-wing groups like Sanmilito Sanatan Samaj and Kutumba Surakshya Parishad, which have demanded that schools remove Christian symbols like statues of Jesus and Mary, alleging that the institutions are being used for religious conversion activities.

The situation has escalated with anti-Christian posters being pasted on the walls of several Christian schools, including Don Bosco School, St. Mary’s School, and Carmel School. These posters serve as an ultimatum to remove religious symbols within a specific timeframe. The Assam healing legislation has only added fuel to the fire.

Brooks, the ACF spokesman, has defended the schools as providing equal opportunities beyond caste, creed, and gender, and has clarified that ACF’s healing prayer services are not intended for conversion.

He argued that the new law unfairly targets the Christian community’s practices and undermines their long-standing service to the society of Assam. Christian missions have helped preserve the Assamese language and have established educational institutions that have produced many notable figures, including former chief ministers and chief justices.

“Our destiny as a nation lies in our diversity, while respecting each other’s individuality,” he said.

- More from Surinder Kaur

News

Fear, Grief, then Supernatural Peace: Myanmar Christians Process Draft

Elizabeth Francis

While many young people feel helpless over the news of the conscription law, believers see an opening for ministry.

Military officers marching in Myanmar.

Aung Shine Oo / AP Images

When Kyaw Sone, a 27-year-old seminary student in Yangon, Myanmar, heard the news last month that the government was conscripting young men and women amid the country’s civil war, he felt “very, very sad.”

“These are our oppressors and now we have to fight for them,” he said of the military junta that overthrew the elected government in a coup three years ago. Since then, civilians—including many of Kyaw Sone’s Christian friends—have fled to the jungles to join resistance groups fighting the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s military. “In my flesh, I [also] want to fight them,” Kyaw Sone added. (CT has agreed to pseudonyms for the Christians in Myanmar interviewed, for security.)

Kyaw Sone, who is part of the small Christian community in Rakhine State, has witnessed the brutality of the Tatmadaw firsthand. In 2017, the junta forcibly evicted the Muslim Rohingya people in Rakhine, killing thousands and forcing 700,000 to flee to Bangladesh. Since the coup, fighting between the well-funded military and an alliance of ethnic armed groups and pro-democracy forces has intensified, with the military bombing churches and destroying entire villages. The junta also cut off aid to Rakhine after Cyclone Mocha last year, leading to an unknown number of deaths.

Over and over Kyaw Sone prayed, “God, what should I do?” until he felt God touch his heart. “He has chosen me for ministry and the church,” he said. “While I am angry and I want to fight, through prayer I see God is using me for his kingdom, so I will stay and serve.”

News of the conscription law—which affects men ages 18 to 35 and women ages 18 to 27—has sent shock waves through the country. The government announced that it would draft 60,000 people a year, with the first batch of 5,000 to be called in April.

Some young people are seeking to flee the country. Others have decided to join the resistance. Still others feel paralyzed without any good options. Yet several Christians CT interviewed said they found a peace beyond all understanding that motivates them to continue their ministries, which are seeing unprecedented fruit. At the same time, Christian groups across the border in Thailand are doing what they can to help young people seeking refuge.

Desperation and fear

The conscription law reveals the desperation of the Tatmadaw, which in recent months has faced its worst military defeat since its coup sparked the current civil war three years ago. Starting in late October, ethnic armed groups have gained control of a large swath of territory in northeastern Myanmar. Resistance groups in other parts of the country have also launched their own attacks, including the Arakan Army in Rakhine State.

Since the coup, the Myanmar military has suffered from mass defections and has had difficulty recruiting soldiers. Recently, the military has reportedly resorted to kidnapping young men and forcibly enlisting them. To date, more than 4,600 people have been killed and 26,200 arrested, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

The nationwide anger against the junta explains the overwhelming distraught response to the conscription. Joel, a technical advisor for an international nonprofit that supports Burmese organizations, noted that “the intensity of emotion and fear was as if the coup had happened all over again.”

“Our team in Mandalay’s first reaction was one of, I don’t want to die at the hands of the [military] while being under their control. I’d rather die fighting for the resistance. And, if I don’t dare to do that, then I am going to go to Thailand,” he recalled.

Joel spent several years in Myanmar with his family, including during the time of the coup and the ensuing protests. After half a year of sleepless nights as soldiers raided neighborhoods, shot people in their homes, and carted civilians off to prison, his family made the difficult decision to leave. They realized their foreigner status put their team and their friends at higher risk.

After news of the conscription broke, Joel was tasked with interviewing young people across Myanmar so his organization could know how best to build capacity within the national staff and target their resources to the most-needed areas. Even though the interviewees came from different ethnic groups, religions, and professional backgrounds, the overall feeling was the same.

“I think the intended consequence of this [conscription law] is to put fear into those who are the backbone of the resistance and people giving aid,” he said. “If they flee, then their families might be targeted or at least not have enough money to survive.”

Gospel opportunities in the chaos

Lydia, director of the Waystation, a Christian nonprofit serving marginalized communities in central Myanmar, was alone in her room at night when she heard the news of the conscription.

“I was so surprised that [the conscription law] included young women as well,” said the 27-year-old. (Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun later said the government did not yet have plans to call women into military service.) “My first thought was, Where can I go? I wanted to run away and hide somewhere. I felt so afraid to sleep on my own.”

For several months before the news, Lydia had stopped letting male staff go out into the communities they served because the police and military presence was so strong there. She feared that the young men would be snatched away and enlisted.

“I quickly prayed, but the first three days felt like my whole life was broken,” she said. “I had no hope and was very fearful.”

The next day at work, she gathered her staff and felt like crying. “As the leader, I looked at all of them who are young, and I was so afraid for them,” Lydia explained.

Many of her staff began to plan to leave the country, and she wanted to go as well. But then she read Matthew 7:24–29, about the wise man who built his house on the rock and the foolish man who built his house on the sand. “My foundation is Jesus, but where is my faith?” she asked herself. “The storm is coming; where is my faith? Am I building my house as a wise man or a foolish man?”

She then came upon 1 Corinthians 3:10–13, which encouraged her and even brought her joy: “Jesus is our foundation. Even though my whole life can fall, my foundation is God.”

After that, she shared these verses to strengthen others.

Lydia, who is from the Kachin ethnic group, comes from a long line of Christians. Her extended family moved to the Mandalay region long before the coup, as their home had become a war zone after decades of persecution at the hands of the Tatmadaw.

While her father initially looked for ways to keep her from conscription, her cousins seemed bold and unafraid. Her youngest cousin, who is of conscription age and whose wife just had a baby, still goes out to evangelize every day. He told her, “Lydia, God has a ministry for you here. … Everything is in God’s hands. Even though the situation is bad for God’s people, we have God’s protection.” Lydia noted that her cousin’s strong faith helped settle her own fears. She and other members of her community now sleep on the floor of his church, as they find safety in numbers. The church has grown from a few families to 100 people since the coup. Nearly all the members are new followers of Christ.

She’s seen other gospel opportunities. One nearby village the Waystation has been trying to reach had long been averse to any Christian support or witness. Yet recently, they’ve seen a change. “The villages are open to the gospel now in a way they have not been,” she said. “I’m dreaming of what God has for us there.”

Meanwhile, Kyaw Sone said God is speaking to him through the story of Caleb. As Numbers 13 relates, when Moses sent 12 spies to Canaan, 10 of them came back fearful of the powerful people, but Caleb and Joshua believed they could conquer the land.

“Sometimes we are faced with problems in Myanmar,” Kyaw Sone said. “It is so bad and it seems impossible that we can pass [through them]. Yet Joshua and Caleb knew it was possible with God. I read this story again and again. It’s very fitting for my life right now.”

The difficulties are ever present. Kyaw Sone’s parents are still in Rakhine, which is facing a food shortage as all entrances and exits are blocked by the junta forces due to the fighting between the military and the Arakan Army. Last month, the Tatmadaw detained and arrested two flights of civilians returning to Rakhine, accusing them of coming back to join resistance forces. Many have not been heard from since their arrest. Their families fear they will be used as human shields and porters for the military.

Kyaw Sone said his parents are safe for now but sad that their children can’t return home anytime soon. Despite the hardships, his face lit up as he shared that he recently led four people to Christ in Yangon. One woman, who converted on her deathbed, has passed away, but he now has three new disciples.

Preparing for an influx

Across the Myanmar-Thai border, the Charis Project has been serving refugees and migrants from Myanmar in the border town of Mae Sot for the past 15 years. The Christian organization also supports internally displaced peoples (IDPs) on the Myanmar side of the border. Before the coup, most of the fighting had been between the Tatmadaw and ethnic groups seeking greater autonomy.

The Charis Project trains and coaches parents who have experienced deep trauma to build healthy families within the chaos and insecurity they are currently living in, said CEO Aaron Blue. The project’s long-term vision looks 30 to 40 years into the future, seeking to raise children to become wise and compassionate adults who seek peace and make a better world around them.

“Family, by God’s design, is the single most powerful resource in the development of a human,” Blue said.

Their mission has not changed since the coup or the announcement of the conscription, yet Blue believes they are in a unique position to help the influx of people fleeing into Thailand.

The conscription laws impact an estimated 12 to 17 million people, and Thailand cannot accommodate such a large number leaving Myanmar, Blue noted. Since the Charis Project has relationships with ethnic resistance organizations (EROs)—which include ethnic armed groups but also people providing aid, building political foundations, and establishing safe corridors—they can work “upstream” to stem the flow of people into Thailand by helping displaced people find safety within ERO-liberated areas of Myanmar.

“Internally, the EROs do not have the capacity or funding to deal with the amount of IDPs fleeing to the territory they control,” Blue said. “But they are people with the logistics who can get aid to where it is needed. We work to build funding and support for the IDPs; this includes food, medical supplies, [and] hygiene products.”

The Charis Project partners only with EROs that are working for peace: While ethnic armed groups share a common enemy in the Tatmadaw, they do not all agree on tactics and ethics. “There are people on the other side [in Myanmar], people with authority and influence [that] are fighting for peace and the future,” Blue said. “They are Christians seeking peace in the structure of conflict. They are serving out of a commitment to the kingdom of God and their future.”

Blue and his team watched as the conscription law brought fresh fear and desperation. But they also saw a new determination among the youth to stand up. He noted that the conscription news has yet to result in an influx of refugees entering Thailand, but they anticipate it will happen soon and are preparing aid and necessary support.

“People with power are destroying their nation, and the people [of Myanmar] just want to live,” Blue said with tears in his eyes. “They want peace, they want this to stop. They just want to go to the market without being shot. To live without their kids being kidnapped. They want to go through a year without being terrified.”

How the global church can help

CT asked the interviewees how the global church could pray for their brothers and sisters in Myanmar. Here are their answers:

-Pray for the people of Myanmar to hear God’s voice and reassurance amid the trials.

-Pray for the military to lay down their weapons and for the fighting to end in Myanmar.

-Pray for Christians in Myanmar to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

If Christians wish to make financial donations, the interviewees urged not to give to the UN or UNICEF, as they work with the Tatmadaw and don’t have the best access to the people’s needs. The Charis Project and the Waystation are two Christian groups working directly with young people in need.

Elizabeth Francis is a pseudonym, as the writer continues to live and travel in sensitive areas.

- More from Elizabeth Francis

Theology

Why John MacArthur Is Wrong About MLK

Justin Giboney

The prominent pastor’s claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was “not a Christian” is not only ahistorical. It misses God’s heart for justice.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

When my grandfather died, a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. was hanging over his deathbed. His name was Bishop Thomas Lee Cooper, and he was part of the Black church’s now-fading civil rights generation, which King defined.

It’s no great mystery why he and millions of other Americans held King in such high regard. This confessing Christian leader literally sacrificed his life to exemplify love of neighbor. His prophetic dream was a clear application of the gospel, which gave his people reason to “keep on keeping on” while suffering under the sword of oppression. He modeled a tenacity and grace that challenged America’s wicked racial caste system without reciprocating the hatred or belligerence of those lynching his people. And King always pointed Black Americans’ hope toward Jesus Christ, not himself. It’s impossible to honestly honor him without acknowledging the role his Christian faith played in his social action.

Contrarily, in February comments more widely circulated this month, California pastor and theologian John MacArthur called King “not a Christian at all,” “a nonbeliever who misrepresented everything about Christ and the gospel.” He also called The Gospel Coalition (TGC) “woke” for honoring King in its MLK50 conference in 2018, implying this signaled the end of TGC’s faithfulness and orthodoxy.

MacArthur cast these condemnations casually, with an apparent air of self-righteousness that suggests his theological expertise is paired with an infantile understanding of neighborly love (Heb. 5:11–13). Deep knowledge of systematic theology, unfortunately, can exist alongside a desperate need for remedial instruction on the greatest commandments (Matt. 22:37–39) and a failure “to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14), including King’s good work of peace and justice informed by Scripture and motivated by the gospel.

I spoke at MLK50, and I don’t recall seeing any speakers who weren’t unambiguously orthodox. MacArthur’s accusations aren’t only too lightly made. They are plainly slanderous.

MacArthur may take issue with some of King’s early theological work, which did question Christian doctrine. However, as Mika Edmondson—himself a pastor and systematic theologian—insightfully explained, “King’s early seminary papers don’t reflect his final fully formed theology.” Not unlike Abraham Kuyper and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, King wrestled with theological liberalism but later seemed to “shift back toward the faith of his conservative Black Baptist upbringing.”

And notice, as Edmondson also mentioned, that Kuyper’s and Bonhoeffer’s salvation is never questioned. “They are given the benefit of the doubt.” Why is King held to a different standard? Even theologians who were slaveholders receive less scrutiny than King in some Christian circles.

But let’s be honest: The details of King’s theological journey have never been the principal concern of his detractors. J. Edgar Hoover and Bull Connor didn’t hate King because of his theology or even his indiscretions. They hated his audacity and how he called out America’s sins and exposed its fictional storylines. They hated that he didn’t know “his place” and was undermining their authority.

In Acts 5, the apostle Paul’s teacher, Gamaliel, warns fellow religious leaders against trying to kill the apostles based on their inconvenient testimony about Jesus. After reciting a brief history of past leaders and upheavals, he says: “Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God” (vv. 38–39).

The leaders to whom Gamaliel spoke had rejected the Messiah and had helped bring about his death, just as Peter and the apostles charged (vv. 29–32). Yet they were unwilling to accept the truth and repent. They thought they were close to God, but their behavior was at odds with his purposes.

To their detriment, many evangelical leaders (and others) rejected King’s righteous indictment of America’s injustices just as the religious leaders rejected the message of the apostles. God sent America a messenger, and some in the American church are still unable to reckon with his message. They remain too focused on justifying themselves to accept verifiable historical facts. They may find themselves fighting against the very thing they claim to uphold.

As for MacArthur, he might genuinely believe he’s defending the faith, but he’s actually defending a false narrative that has weakened the church’s credibility. People are walking away from the church in part because they can’t reconcile the double-mindedness of this type of evangelicalism. One cannot worship the Prince of Peace and refuse to be a peacemaker in the social context.

That said, though MacArthur’s concerns about the ideological Left’s impact on the church are often exaggerated, they are not completely unfounded. The far Left has distorted social justice and disfigured its redemptive form. It’s become more about individual autonomy and self-indulgence than equality under the law and social order. I too lament when Christian leaders imitate secular activists and academics in the public square and fawn for their validation.

But rejecting King is no solution to this problem; he is the model of the unabashedly, unmistakably Christian activism we need—the exact kind of public, Christian faithfulness that the dysfunctional corners of the Left have eschewed. Condemning King and evangelical groups who are trying to show contrition and repentance is a move toward “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander” (Eph. 4:31), not redemption.

Ironically, those who are obsessed with political power and cultural domination are often the same as those who question King’s representation of the gospel. It’s telling that he’s known for self-sacrifice, and they’re known for resentment and self-interest. They pick up a cross and awkwardly try to use it as a sword, but King knew “the cross is something you bear and ultimately that you die on.” Their assessment of King is wrong.

And disparaging King is not enough to discredit the Christian social justice movement more broadly, as MacArthur has sought to do. To accomplish that, MacArthur would have to do more than smear King’s legacy and deny his faith. He’d have to tear the Spirit-filled prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos out of Scripture. He’d have to retroactively undo the eschatological motive behind God’s deliverance of the Hebrews. He’d have to go back and rip the heart of Jesus out of the chests of Christian abolitionists.

He will fail in that effort. Social justice, as practiced by Amelia Boynton Robinson and Fred Shuttlesworth, is the fruit of the gospel and is found wherever God reigns. And King’s vision and self-sacrifice rightly made him a symbol of the church’s call “to set the oppressed free” (Luke 4:16–21).

Ultimately, the justice imperative comes from God, who sits on the throne of justice and righteousness, not from any person or organization. And inasmuch as MacArthur or any others reject or even obstruct the American church’s efforts to repent of injustice, imitate Christ, and heal our country’s racism, sexism, and economic inequalities, they will only find themselves fighting against God.

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, attorney, and the president of AND Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He's the co-author of Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

Theology

Fasting for God’s Kingdom

Alexander E. Massad

How the Muslim month of Ramadan transformed my understanding of fasting, prayer, and Lent.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash / Getty

The sun was setting on a sweltering late Friday afternoon in Amman, Jordan. Sun filtered through the dust in the air, glazing the buildings and streets below, as the smell of petrol wafted through my open window.

I had just returned from a lengthy day of study and prayer at the Qasid Arabic Institute and was preparing to host my Muslim friends for dinner. The previous night, they had shown me overwhelming hospitality while serving dinner in their own home, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to match their level of love and sincerity—or meet the culinary standards instilled in me by my Mexican mother. More than anything, I wanted whatever meal I cooked to convey the fullness of my mutual affection for and genuine fraternity with them.

After all, this was the month of Ramadan—a holy month for Muslims, where they fast from dawn to dusk to engender hospitality, prayer, and spiritual purification. How could I infuse my deep appreciation for what I had learned about fasting and prayer from my Muslim friends with the fragrant love of Christ? “God, please bless these chicken fajitas after a day of fasting and enliven good conversation after a time of prayer,” I prayed silently.

By the grace of God, my homemade chicken fajitas were well-received, and our group sat around the table to enjoy hours of good conversation—about the gospel, prayer, and what it is like to have sincere faith in a world that seems to be careening into secularism.

The short three months I spent in Jordan fundamentally transformed my understanding of God in numerous ways. And in this holy season of Lent, I have begun to rethink what it means to fast and pray as a Christian in light of my experience reading the Gospels in a Muslim-majority context.

Growing up in a Catholic family, I used to think fasting was about not eating certain foods and lauding those people who dedicated themselves to strict dietary regimes. After embracing Protestantism in high school, I began to think of fasting as something that misguided people did to try and earn their salvation—and I, Reformed Christian Alex, clearly knew better than they did. Instead, I would “fast” by giving up something I enjoyed to show God how serious I was about this fasting thing. In turn, my prayers for repentance would be that God would invade my interior life and make me more holy. I believed in the sovereignty of God so much that I expected God to do all the work.

Looking back, I realize I’d misunderstood the significance and the purpose of spiritual practices like fasting and prayer—both as a Catholic and as a Protestant. Fasting is not about food; it is not about appearing emaciated like St. Jerome. And it is also not about the act of giving up something to demonstrate my holiness. What I have come to understand is that true fasting and prayer, as outlined in Scripture, is a rebellious act against our desires and a disposition for action.

In Matthew chapter 6, just after listing the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches his disciples to not look somber while fasting—a mark of hypocrisy. Rather, he says, “when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:17–18).

Fasting is not for the sake of other people or even for our own sake. Jesus seems to be telling us that fasting is for the sake of God. Those who look somber and who mark their faces with ash desire the attention of others. Their religiosity is on display. Their quest for holiness is motivated by self-satisfaction and the attention they get from others. They believe they are spiritually satiated because they feel full of religious vigor and commitment. But this is not the kind of religiosity that God wants.

The prophet Isaiah critiqued Israel for seeking God’s blessings while oppressing others in Isaiah 58, declaring “on the day of your fasting, you do as you please and exploit all your workers” (v. 3). He describes how Israel cries out for God to recognize their fasting because they have bowed their heads “like a reed” and laid in “sackcloth and ashes” (v. 5).

Yet Isaiah responds, “You cannot fast as you do today and expect your voice to be heard on high” (v. 4). Instead, the fasting God desires is “to loosen the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke.” He further instructs his audience “to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter” (vv. 6–7). This fast will result in Israel’s righteousness shining “like the dawn” and “healing will quickly appear” (v. 8). Only this fast of justice will bring glory to God and invoke his blessing, Isaiah says.

Isaiah is critical of those whose stomachs are full of holy vigor because they perform the outward actions of fasting and expect God and society to recognize their piety. Their fast has become indifferent to God’s desires. Self-deprivation, whether through fasting or even through giving to the poor, has becomes a means to advance their own agendas, leading to injustice.

The fast God calls for in Isaiah is one that not only attends to the oppressed, but also ends the systematic exploitation (v. 3c) and violence (v. 4) that perpetuates oppression. Instead of merely giving to the poor, Isaiah calls Israel to “loosen the chains of injustice” (v. 6a)—by addressing the unjust systems keeping them poor.

The Lord desires a fast that rebels against systemic brokenness in the world—a fast that overturns injustice, liberates the oppressed, feeds the hungry, and clothes the naked. The goal of fasting is not a hungry stomach—but one must hunger. It is not strictly a form of self-denial, but the self must be denied. Fasting is a rebellious act, saying no to the things we desire to create a deep sense of hunger within us for the perfect justice and righteousness of God.

In our age, we are constantly assaulted with demands for our attention, distracted by entertainment, and concerned with our self-image online. When we starve the idols of our desire, we feel hungry, tense, and unsettled. And so, I believe the fasting God desires is a fast that unsettles us to the core of our being, where we cannot truly find rest until we are united with the object of our desires: God. Put simply, fasting allows our souls to experience an unsatiated hunger that only God can truly satisfy. The fasted soul, united with God, does not desire the praise of others. What is the praise of others when one is filled with God?

Fasting involves a rebellion against our capitalist consumerism that tells us that, to be happy, we need to consume more. The soul in God does not feel overly burdened by feeding the poor, liberating the oppressed, and countering injustice. Instead, the fasted soul feels a compulsion from God to do these things. The soul that is in God cannot help but desire God’s kingdom here on earth.

It is this desire for God’s kingdom of justice and freedom here on earth that impels the fasted soul to prayer. This compulsion to prayer is the result of tension the fasted soul attains between dwelling in the presence of God and living in a broken world. One the one hand, the fasted soul dwelling with God has a vision for the potential glory of creation as it should be in God’s kingdom. One the other hand, in this life we cannot dwell in the presence of God forever. We must engage creation as it is and not escape into a holy shelter away from the oppressed and poor.

Indeed, we see this in the transfiguration when Peter desires to “put up three shelters” for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah hinting that he wants to remain in this state forever (Matt. 17:4). Yet Jesus leads them off the mountain of glory and immediately heals a demon-possessed boy (Matt. 17:14-20). Jesus shows his disciples that although it is good to see the glory of the Lord it is not sufficient to dwell in this state forever while the world needs healing.

In this season of Lent, we should consider how the fasted soul moves the believer from desire to prayer inspired action. When we fast, we train our souls to focus on its true desire—God. Starved of idols, the fasted soul yearns for God. Yet faced with the tremendous need in the world, our first recourse is to call out in prayer. Like fasting, prayer is not for the praise of others. Jesus taught his disciples to “be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others” because they will “have no reward” from God (Matt. 6:1).

Instead, he instructs his followers to pray in seclusion and with intention, because God already knows what is best before we even speak (Matt. 6:5–8). This sets up an interesting tension. On the one hand, humans need words to pray, because without words we struggle to communicate. Yet when we use words, we can fall into assuming that God operates according to our norms, constraining God to the concepts that our words communicate. When we pray for “the good,” for example, we are constrained to the English language and our cultural context. A Christian praying for Ḥasan in Arabic is praying for something good, excellent, or favorable.

On the other hand, Jesus tells us that God knows what is best even before we speak. In this sense, God is beyond the constraints of human language. God both accommodates the intentions in our words and is beyond the limited language concepts embedded in our words. Our notion of what is “good” cannot contain God, who is ineffable, beyond our human minds. The fasted soul understands this because the believer has given up her or his intellectual idols and is open to God acting in ways that are beyond our understanding. Indeed, God is greater than our limited conception of goodness. And praise be to God!

The joint practice of fasting and prayer cultivates the soul’s yearning to commune with God and seek his kingdom through tangible actions in this world. The fasting soul confesses, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Such fasting awakens a desire to loosen the bonds of injustice, to break the yoke of oppression, to feed the hungry, to open homes to the homeless, and to clothe the naked. Prayer arising out of a fasted soul often leads to tangible action. As rabbi Abraham Heschel said when he returned from Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. and was asked if he found time to pray, “I prayed with my feet.”

As I sat in my apartment on that late June evening listening to the waning sounds of prayer echoing from the mosque next door, I was hungry. I had not eaten all day. It was Ramadan and I was fasting with my Muslim friends as an example of my Christian faith. Having fasted for several days, eating only before sun-up and after sun-down, I had become accustomed to the feeling of physical hunger.

However, I discovered a different, deeper hunger during that month—a spiritual hunger for God’s kingdom to be made manifest in the lives of myself and the people around me. I wanted to see the gospel for the poor and oppressed in action: for the man with his donkey-pulled cart of fuel tanks to be freed from his poverty, for my refugee friends to find a safe and permanent home, and for the city where I lived to flourish. I yearned for the universe to attain the harmony found in its Creator.

And although we ate, I left hungry. Although we talked late into the night, I felt discontented. Fasting had awakened a new perspective, one that was not satisfied with knowledge or material gain. Having fasted during Ramadan, I began to realize the holy discontent that one feels when confronted by a world that is suffering, in need of people radically transformed by God.

I have long since left Jordan. I have a wonderful family, work that is fulfilling and meaningful, and could not ask for more. Yet in the quiet moments of the day, I find my soul restlessly yearning for a fast. In this time of Lent and Ramadan, let us fast to clarify our soul’s yearning for God. Let this clarity compel you to pray. And let these prayers excite you to action.

Alexander Massad is assistant professor of world religions at Wheaton College.

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Remembering Canadian Politician Brian Mulroney, Who Opened Doors for Evangelicals

Brian C. Stiller

The late prime minister welcomed our engagement at a crucial time—and changed my mind about public witness.

Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press via AP

Brian Mulroney, prime minister of Canada from 1984 to 1993, passed away last week at age 84.

Mulroney was known as a leader capable of pushing big ideas. But he also opened doors for evangelicals in Canada to engage with the government on major issues. His encouragement was very important, coming at a time when Canadian evangelicals were wrestling with how to present a gospel witness to civil society.

One year before Mulroney became prime minister, I was invited to lead the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), the Canadian affiliate of the World Evangelical Alliance. Prior to my arrival, the EFC had been relatively inactive. It was largely a collection of files accompanied by an occasional public meeting.

I had grown up as the son of a Pentecostal pastor on the Saskatchewan prairies. For us, politics was considered outside the orbit of Christian concern. However, two provincial premiers, both Baptists, saw things otherwise, and their actions provided fodder for earnest conversations as to what Jesus meant when he said, Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.

On one hand, Tommy Douglas, a pastor with socialist leanings who became premier of Saskatchewan, introduced the first universal health care system in North America. Meanwhile, in the neighboring province of Alberta, E. C. Manning was a free-enterprise capitalist who also preached every Sunday on the radio.

Despite their influence, our church had no interest in public engagement, apart from bringing people to Christ and preparing them for eternity.

However, as the EFC president, I perceived that the evangelical community could not stay out of issues boiling within our political spheres. Abortion was becoming a major topic of debate, one that we could not ignore.

Eventually, in 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that provisions in the Criminal Code requiring the involvement of a hospital in an abortion were contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This decision left Canada in a vacuum, as the only country in the West with no laws restricting abortion. The EFC could hardly be silent in such a situation.

Up to this point, the only Canadian churches that had significant contact with the government were Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants. Evangelicals were simply unknown. Moreover, in the 1980s, we were victims of what I called “the Jerry Falwell effect,” meaning that our reputation was being harmed by how the Canadian media portrayed US evangelicals as angry “fundamentalists” and assumed that Canadian evangelicals were the same.

Our task was obvious in Canada: to dismiss that myth, establish a public understanding of who we were and what we believed, and then figure out how we might make useful contributions to our country.

Courtesy of Brian C. Stiller

Brian C. Stiller of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada pictured with then-prime minister Brian Mulroney

What I didn’t know was that the new prime minister would be open to engaging with evangelicals. When Mulroney formed his government in 1984, a number of evangelicals were included: Jake Epp became minister of national health and welfare, Len Gustafson was parliamentary secretary, and Mennonite John Reimer, along with other evangelicals, entered parliament as members of Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party.

Epp, highly regarded by both his party and those in opposition, helped us understand not only how we might speak to the government—especially on the issue of abortion—but how to build credibility.

For one of my one-on-one meetings with the prime minister, I arrived with an agenda that our senior staff had worked on. While waiting for Mulroney to call me in, I mulled over my early-morning Bible reading of Daniel chapter 11: “And in the first year of Darius the Mede, I took my stand to support and protect him” (v. 1).

It seemed to me that I should put aside my planned agenda and instead offer words of encouragement. A few minutes later, I was invited into his office, and after some pleasantries, was asked about my agenda. My response was simply, “Mr. Prime Minister, I have no agenda today but to encourage you.” We spent a few minutes with some Bible verses and prayed, and, after the customary photograph, I left.

The next week while I was boarding a plane, the minister of justice, Ray Hnatyshyn, invited me to sit with him for a minute. He promptly asked, “Brian, what happened with you and the prime minister last week?” My heart sank. Had I gone too far? I wondered. “Minister, was there something wrong?” I asked with trepidation.

He smiled and said, “No, not at all,” and then proceeded to tell me that the prime minister had extended his time with me, delaying his meeting with the Cabinet members waiting for him in the next room. After joining the Cabinet meeting, Mulroney told them of my visit and our conversation and prayer.

As Hnatyshyn recalled, “The PM said, ‘If we as the government misunderstand or ignore the evangelical community, the country and this government will be the losers.’”

That simple meeting opened more doors for important and substantive conversations with people at all levels of the government, giving us opportunities to understand how to relate in a God-honoring manner to “Caesar,” than many protests or editorials might have accomplished.

When I heard about Mulroney’s untimely death, I was reminded of the lessons I had learned from him in seeking to understand how our public witness fits within the agenda of Christ and his kingdom.

In my global travels, this question is often among the first that Christians ask me, as they seek to understand how our commitment to Jesus as king should shape our interaction with government.

Brian Mulroney opened the door for us to flesh out our mandate and to embody what the apostle Paul instructed: “For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good … Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor” (Rom. 13:4, 7).

Brian C. Stiller is global ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and the founder and former editor in chief of the Canadian magazine Faith Today.

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News

SBC Executive Committee Says No Charges Following Federal Investigation

Kate Shellnutt

Without offering details on the nature of the Justice Department inquiry, the denomination’s administrative entity says it’s “grateful” that “no further action” will be taken around its response to abuse.

Jae C. Hong / AP

An 18-month-long federal investigation into the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee has concluded without any charges or action against it, the Executive Committee said on Wednesday.

The country’s largest Protestant denomination has been the subject of a Justice Department probe following a 2022 report that showed SBC leaders refused to respond to allegations of abuse due to legal liability and failed to enact policies to protect its members from predatory pastors.

The Executive Committee—with staff at its Nashville headquarters and dozens of elected trustees from across the country—oversees everyday business for the SBC. The entity said it was informed last Thursday that its part of the investigation had concluded “with no further action to be taken.”

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York declined to confirm or comment on the status of the inquiry when contacted by CT.

The Justice Department has not publicly acknowledged or commented on the SBC investigation since it began. Federal grand jury subpoenas and proceedings—for better or worse—are shrouded in secrecy. To protect the accused and the integrity of the investigation, the government often doesn’t disclose who had been involved.

According to the Executive Committee, the investigation was expected to look into multiple entities. Presidents of each of its seminaries and agencies had signed a letter in 2022 agreeing to participate and saying, “Our commitment to cooperating with the Department of Justice is born from our demonstrated commitment to transparently address the scourge of sexual abuse.”

Jonathan Howe, the interim president of the Executive Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that the investigation into his entity had ended. He did not comment on the status of other SBC entities that could be involved.

“While we are grateful for closure on this particular matter, we recognize that sexual abuse reform efforts must continue to be implemented across the Convention,” he said. “We remain steadfast in our commitment to assist churches in preventing and responding well to sexual abuse in the SBC.”

Multiple advocates for abuse victims—including SBC abuse survivors Megan Lively and Tiffany Thigpen as well as attorney Rachael Denhollander, who has advised the SBC task forces charged with abuse reform—say they were told by officials that the case is still open and ongoing.

The truth of this post still stands.

However, DOJ officials have confirmed to me that this investigation is not closed and that information did not come from their office.

Regardless of the end result, our personal call and command to pursue justice remains. https://t.co/bUv4yOhkkw
— Rachael Denhollander (@R_Denhollander) March 6, 2024

Christa Brown, a survivor who has led the charge calling for reforms, including a database of abusive leaders, responded on X.

“This does not lessen SBC’s moral responsibility for grievous harms. Nor does it alter the reality that, in countless SBC churches, leaders violated state laws and standards,” she said.

From the outside, it was never clear what federal statute Southern Baptists might have violated or how federal prosecutors might make their case, several experts told CT.

There’s a lot still unknown. Neither the SBC nor Justice Department officials have publicly specified the scope or focus of the inquiry, which dated back to August 2022. At the time, the Executive Committee’s general counsel said the entity had received a subpoena but no individuals had been subpoenaed yet.

The Justice Department website says that child sexual abuse is “generally handled by local and state authorities, and not by the federal government.” It’s unusual for federal investigators to get involved in clergy abuse, though they have examined abuse and cover-up by Catholic priests in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Orleans, starting in 2018.

So far, none have been charged under federal laws, such as those that restrict racketeering (RICO) or interstate trafficking (the Mann Act). Any possible federal penalty for Southern Baptist entities as part of the probe into abuse response would be the first of its kind.

Besides the Executive Committee, no other SBC entity—such as the denomination’s six seminaries and its missions agencies—has publicly acknowledged any involvement in the investigation.

A spokesperson for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), the SBC’s public policy arm, said it had not been subpoenaed or asked for information from federal investigators.

In a response to CT, ERLC president Brent Leatherwood stated:

We have a responsibility to combat abuse by ensuring predators do not have the ability to prey on our churches, and equipping pastors with the tools to do so. The Gospel demands it and messengers have consistently called for such action. Carrying out that objective in a cooperative way remains the goal.

The ERLC continues to offer resources around abuse response and prevention. It was part of the SBC’s initial abuse response following the landmark 2019 investigation by the Houston Chronicle that compiled 700 cases of abuse in Southern Baptist churches.

The issue of abuse has dominated the SBC ever since. There were claims of former seminary president Paige Patterson mishandling abuse at two schools; a lawsuit involving Conservative Resurgence leader Paul Pressler, accused of abusing young men for decades; conflicting factions over whether abuse was really a big problem for the denomination; limited mechanisms for expelling churches who employed abusive pastors; and a massive third-party investigation authorized by convention messengers.

The SBC is also currently facing lawsuits from victims of abuse as well as from leaders named in abuse reports.

The Tennessean reported that legal expenses cost the Executive Committee $2.8 million in the previous fiscal year and that the entity underwent layoffs in part due to the cost of the abuse response.

Last month, the volunteer task force overseeing abuse reform in the SBC announced plans to launch an independent nonprofit to manage the programs, including a database of abusive pastors.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

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News

Liberty University Fined $14M Over Campus Safety

Emily Belz

Focused on the evangelical school’s handling of sexual violence, the federal penalty is by far the largest in the Department of Education’s history.

Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia

Lukas Souza via Unsplash

The US Department of Education (DOE) announced on Tuesday that it has fined Liberty University $14 million for its failures to report campus crimes and its treatment of sexual assault survivors. The culmination of a long-running federal investigation, it is by far the largest fine for such a campus safety violation, according to the department.

Liberty is the largest evangelical college in the country, with the school reporting in 2022 about 16,000 students on campus and 130,000 students enrolled overall. The school has $4 billion in assets. It is among the colleges awarded the most federal aid in the country, with students receiving $772 million in 2017 according to ProPublica.

Colleges receiving federal aid are required by the Clery Act to report crime statistics and campus threats. After a complaint in 2021, the DOE reviewed Liberty’s handling of campus safety from 2017 to 2023.

The federal government found the failures at Liberty centered on its handling of sexual crimes. The department’s final review concluded that Liberty had failed in 11 areas, from timely responses to sexual violence to reporting crimes either to the department or the wider community.

“Students, faculty, and staff deserve to know that they can be safe and secure in their school communities. We respond aggressively to complaints about campus safety and security,” said Richard Cordray, who oversees federal student aid for the DOE, in a statement.

In response, Liberty acknowledged that “there were numerous deficiencies that existed in the past. We acknowledge and regret these past failures and have taken these necessary improvements seriously.” It did not name sexual assault survivors in its statement, as the federal report did, but said its failures were focused on “incorrect statistical reports as well as required timely warnings and emergency notifications that were not sent.”

“It is a new day at Liberty University,” the statement concluded, adding that it had invested an additional $10 million in campus safety infrastructure.

The previous record Clery Act fine was $4.5 million for Michigan State University over its failures responding to sexual assault complaints against doctor Larry Nassar, according to AP.

Former gymnast Rachael Denhollander, a survivor of Nassar’s abuse, was also involved in recent years in pushing Liberty to address its handling of sexual assaults. A lawyer and a Christian, she had taught classes at Liberty’s law school, but then in 2021 was initially barred from speaking at a prayer rally about the issue on campus. The school later allowed her to speak at the rally.

Liberty had previously described the government’s preliminary findings as full of “significant errors” and “unsupported conclusions.”

But the final federal report found that Liberty had made severe errors, including an incident where a woman reported being raped by a man she thought was armed, and whom she also reported beat her physically. The university’s investigator declared the case “unfounded,” stating that the “victim indicates that she consented to the sexual act.”

The department’s final report found a general attitude conflating assault with violations of the school’s honor code, known as “The Liberty Way.” It found from interviews that the honor code deterred reporting of crimes.

“Under The Liberty Way, acts of sexual misconduct, consensual sex, and alcohol policy violations are all top-line offenses,” the final report reads. “As a result, the conduct monitoring and enforcement system established by The Liberty Way created an environment where people experiencing violence at the hands of an intimate partner or persons who were incapacitated by alcohol or drugs could be subject to disciplinary action if they reported the offense.”

It stated that the department “does not, in any regard, dictate or question the doctrinal views, missions, visions, or values of any institution,” but that it was investigating anything that might have “contributed to violations.”

As part of the settlement with the federal government, Liberty agreed to spend an additional $2 million on safety monitoring over the next two years, during which time it will be under heightened federal monitoring. Liberty will have to implement “new policies, procedures, training programs, and systems” to address deficiencies found in the investigation, or face review of its federal aid.

A consultant will oversee these federally mandated remediation efforts at Liberty, and the university will have to implement federally approved training for anyone involved in handling cases of sexual violence. Liberty must notify the Department of Education within seven business days of any disciplinary action against a staff member related to a crime or a violation of the university’s sexual misconduct policy.

In the statement responding to the fine, Liberty maintained that the DOE has treated the university unfairly. It called the investigation “unprecedented and arduous” and said the review of seven years of data was “the most extensive review period of any higher education institution in the department’s history.”

“Many of the department’s methodologies, findings, and calculations in the report were drastically different from their historic treatment of other universities,” it said in its statement. “Liberty disagrees with this unfair treatment.”

Author Karen Swallow Prior, a longtime professor at the school who left in 2020, said on X that the school’s response was “grievous.”

“Rather than demonstrate genuine repentance and lament, @LibertyU whines that it was treated unfairly,” she wrote. “This fine is pocket change for the school.”

Some students have filed lawsuits against Liberty over its handling of sexual assault, and the school settled a case with 12 women in 2022.

Students and alumni have repeatedly spoken out about Liberty’s shortcomings on campus safety, with prayer rallies and protestors outside football games. Groups of students and alumni like Justice for Janes and Save 71 are pushing for changes on how the school handles sexual violence and other abuse.

“Liberty should be apologizing to the students who have been harmed over the years and demonstrating a commitment to change,” Dustin Wahl, cofounder of Save 71, told the Associated Press. “Not because they are being dragged along by the government, but because they genuinely want to be transparent and fix the problems.”

The severity of the fine and remedial requirements “reflect the serious and longstanding nature of Liberty’s violations,” the Department of Education said in a press release.

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Ideas

How Evangelicals Became a Voting Bloc

Daniel K. Williams

Evangelical voters’ focus on policy over character came much earlier than you think.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

The stakes in the presidential election could not have been higher.

The American economy was stagnant. Several years of the worst inflation in decades made each trip to the grocery store a painful experience. Federal spending was out of control. Drug use was on the rise. The country was in a tense standoff with both Iran and Russia, with no resolution to either conflict in sight.

But Christians were especially worried about the nation’s morals. Abortion and divorce rates were on the rise. Views of sexuality and gender were changing rapidly, and pornography use was rampant.

The incumbent president was no help. The White House was occupied by a churchgoing Democrat who was seen by many politically conservative evangelicals as weak and ineffective. He was more influenced, they thought, by secular liberals in his administration than by anyone with a biblical worldview. He wouldn’t stand up to forces of evil in the world, evangelicals decided. In fact, he was letting secular humanists persecute American churches and jeopardize Christians’ First Amendment rights.

It was time to stand up for freedom. It was time to stand up for God. And it was time to “make America great again,” in the words of the campaign slogan of the Republican candidate most of them came to support.

This Republican challenger also professed Christianity. But he went to church a lot less than the Democratic incumbent, and he’d been divorced. He “was not the best Christian who ever walked the face of the earth,” one of his supporters conceded, “but we really didn’t have a choice.” When it came to choosing candidates, evangelical Christians had once cared about character first and foremost, but now they couldn’t afford to be choosy. In a crisis, issues mattered more than religious devotion. They didn’t want a Sunday school teacher in the White House; they wanted someone who could deliver results.

And so, they voted for … Ronald Reagan.

Despite eerie parallels to the present, the year I’ve described is 1980, not 2024. But the moral calculations evangelical voters made as they chose Reagan over the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter, set the stage for the political dilemmas Christians are wrestling with today.

At the heart of those questions is whether evangelicals should vote as a bloc, uniting behind whichever candidate is likely to deliver our legislative or judicial agenda. Does advancing that agenda justify voting for a morally compromised candidate? Are evangelicals obligated to vote for the candidate who shares our views on abortion, religious liberty, and LGBTQ issues?

In 1980, leaders of the Christian Right said yes. Issues mattered more than candidates’ personal characters, they believed. Christians had not just the option but the duty, they said, to vote for the candidate who would deliver the best results, not the one who would make the best pastor.

This argument may seem very familiar today, but it was novel among evangelicals in 1980. Only four years earlier, nearly all evangelicals who had commented on the 1976 election—regardless of whether they supported Carter or the Republican, Gerald Ford—had said that what mattered far more than any position was a candidate’s personal faith and moral character. And they hadn’t necessarily thought Christians would or even should vote as a bloc for one party or contender.

“Christians in particular ought to be concerned about the ethical and religious convictions of those who aspire to the presidency,” Christianity Today declared in April 1976 in a statement typical of the time. “The basis upon which a leader makes his decisions is more important than what side he takes in current transient controversies.”

CT cared about political issues, to be sure. In 1976, the magazine published several editorials expressing great concern about abortion and other moral issues. In Eternity magazine, the theologian Carl Henry wrote a list of signs of national moral decay that he hoped the next president would address. But ultimately, the editors of Christianity Today and several other evangelical magazines (including Moody Monthly, Christian Life, and Eternity) concluded that character and faith mattered more than discrete issues.

Evangelicals in 1976 were especially concerned about “ethical and religious convictions” because they felt they’d been duped in 1972. That year, more than 80 percent of white evangelical voters had supported Richard Nixon, only to learn that his talk of “law and order” and the need for public morality weren’t accompanied by personal moral integrity or respect for the law. Four years later, they most wanted a candidate with a clear moral compass and accordingly sought to avoid policy litmus tests.

Thus, there was no united evangelical voting bloc in 1976. The evangelical vote was evenly divided between Ford and Carter, with northern evangelicals more likely to pick Ford and those in the South more inclined to support their fellow southerner. Both men, after all, could make a plausible claim to personal faith and moral integrity.

To some politically minded evangelicals, however, this division felt like a wasted opportunity. The evangelical vote was a “sleeping giant,” one analyst wrote; if evangelicals would only unite behind a single candidate, they could swing the election.

The dream of a political takeover was hard to resist, especially with the country experiencing a seemingly inexorable moral decline. “We have together, with the Protestants and the Catholics, enough votes to run the country,” Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson declared of evangelicals in 1979. “And when the people say, ‘We’ve had enough,’ we are going to take over.”

To “take over,” Christians needed to be able to dictate a legislative agenda in Congress, which meant they couldn’t rely on “nice guys” who maintained a squeaky-clean lifestyle but voted the wrong way. They had to behave like any other political interest group.

When their newly formed political action committees (like the Moral Majority PAC) donated to campaigns, they wanted some assurance that their contributions would buy the right votes. They wanted something more than good people in Washington; they wanted results. “Christians must keep America great by … getting laws passed that will protect the freedom and liberty of her citizens,” Jerry Falwell Sr. declared in 1980.

In the short term, the strategy seemed to work. Evangelical votes helped put Reagan in the White House and gave control of the Senate to Republicans for the first time in a quarter century. Over the next 40 years, Republicans won more presidential elections than Democrats did and controlled both houses of Congress more often than they had since the early 1930s.

But most of the Christian Right’s agenda remained unfulfilled. And even when conservative evangelicals did get laws or court decisions they wanted, they felt frustrated in their inability to change the cultural direction of the country. Even the reversal of Roe v. Wade (1973) in 2022 appears not to have lowered abortion rates in most states.

Politically, with several decades of hindsight, evangelicals’ decision to prioritize policy over character has produced mixed results. But it has had a profound effect on the church, because it turned evangelicals into a voting bloc. That’s how evangelicals are increasingly perceived outside the church, and it’s often how we perceive ourselves as well.

The only way Christian Right leaders could marshal millions of votes from 1980 onward was to treat the church as a political machine. With that model in place, it was inevitable that politicians—even fellow Christians—would begin treating evangelicals not as citizens of a heavenly kingdom or as members of a church purchased by the blood of Christ but as a political interest group whose votes would be delivered to whichever candidate checked the right boxes on a policy questionnaire.

This dynamic has also exacerbated racial divisions among American Christians. It quickly became apparent that the vast majority of Black Christians wouldn’t make the same partisan voting choices as white evangelicals. Today, in any political conversation, evangelical typically means “white,” though many evangelicals are not white.

It’s not too late to revisit the choice that Christian Right leaders made in 1980. We can still choose a different path this year. Whatever politicians or the media may say about the “evangelical vote,” we don’t have to treat the church as a voting bloc. We don’t have to boil our concerns about our nation’s spiritual and moral health down to a small handful of policies that might not pass even if our candidates win.

After all, the policy goals that prompted many evangelicals to support Reagan in 1980 were elusive after his election and indeed remain so to this day. Evangelicals began to operate as a voting bloc, but America’s moral crisis couldn’t be solved by a political platform. The same will prove true this year, however the election turns out.

The more we reflect on the gospel, the more we’ll realize that for citizens of a higher kingdom, no approach to voting can produce the moral renewal that can only come from Christ and his church. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t vote. But it does mean it’s okay if we make different choices on Election Day. Many important things are at stake in this election, but the survival of the kingdom of God most assuredly is not.

Daniel K. Williams teaches American history at Ashland University and is the author of The Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship.

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News

Global Methodists Run Toward Renewal

Daniel Silliman in North Carolina

On the other side of disaffiliation, traditionalist congregations pursue prayer, revival, and revitalization.

Global Methodists arrive for an early church service in Trinity, North Carolina.

Daniel Silliman

June Fulton felt weird sitting in the third pew.

At every service since she joined the choir when she was 12 years old—her whole life, basically—she has sat with them on the stage behind the pulpit at Mt. Vernon United Methodist Church (UMC), in Trinity, North Carolina.

But there was no singing at the disaffiliation vote. So Fulton, now one of the matriarchs at Mt. Vernon, took a spot in the pew next to a friend.

“Everybody filled out their piece of paper, a ballot, and they had to sign it,” Fulton told CT. “Every person went up and put their paper in the basket and then we sat there quietly. So quietly. It was so strange to sit there so quietly as we waited.”

Representatives from the denomination collected the ballots. They went into a back room and counted the votes to see whether the small rural church would be one of the thousands to exit the UMC over LGBTQ affirmation, fidelity to traditional Christian teachings on sexuality, the authority of the Book of Discipline, and years of bruising ecclesial conflict.

Fulton leaned over to her friend and said how sad it all was. She said this was not something you ever wanted to do.

Her friend said, “I just wonder what it’s going to be like. I think we’ve made the right decision. But I just wonder what it’s going to be like,” Fulton recalled.

Fulton wondered that too. She hoped the congregation would soon put it all behind them—the debates; the acrimony and the weight of it; the sorrow; and the endless, complex process of disaffiliation.

“We can go forward,” she said, “and go back to doing the things we always did do: caring for people, looking after people, and being the church.”

Mt. Vernon did vote to leave. Today, almost a year later, there are only a few remaining indications that this congregation used to be part of the mainline church that was one of the largest, most powerful, and most influential Protestant groups in the US. A beat-up road sign about a mile down the rural highway has the denomination’s name and logo and directions to the church. The hymnals in the pew still say United Methodist.

But Mt. Vernon, like 7,630 other churches, is free of the UMC. Thirty-three percent of the denomination’s congregations in Western North Carolina have left, along with more than half of those in Texas, 38 percent in Pennsylvania, 35 percent in Ohio, and nearly a third in Indiana.

Across the country, the newly separated Methodists are hoping for, praying for, and pursuing renewal. They are, as Fulton hoped, moving forward and going back.

Ten miles away from Trinity, at Wesley Memorial Methodist Church in High Point, North Carolina, Brenda Radner was one of about 300 people who attended a two-day seminar on Methodist identity in February, with lectures on Wesleyan history, theology, ethics, and hermeneutics. She started attending Wesley Memorial 56 years ago, when she was just 19. But the congregation’s recent exit from the UMC has made her want to dig deeper into Wesleyanism and learn more about the distinctives of her faith tradition.

It’s exciting, Radner told CT, to think about what might happen next.

“I would love to see revival. And I think it might come. I would love to see it start right here in High Point,” she said.

Revival is one of the explicit goals of the School of Methodism, put on by The John Wesley Institute. The first two-day event was held at Wesley Memorial, and there are half a dozen more being planned at other churches this spring and summer, according to director Ryan Danker.

The first one began with a call to worship. Hundreds of Methodists stood in the neo-gothic church to sing the great Charles Wesley hymn, “O for a Thousand Tongues.”

Before Communion, the assembled believers lifted their voices again with another classic from the cofounder of Methodism, singing out an invitation to new life.

“Come all the world! Come, sinner, thou! All things in Christ are ready now,” they sang. “Come all ye souls by sin oppressed, ye restless wanderers after rest.”

The event was attended by many North Carolinian members of the new Global Methodist Church, which is in the process of forming out of a split with the UMC. But it was also attended by members of UMC congregations, as well as people from the Anglican Church in North America, some as-yet-unaffiliated congregations, and perhaps a few people from the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church.

Danker talked about their common history in his opening lecture in the High Point sanctuary. He pointed them back to their original ethos, formed in the 18th-century Methodist revival fires that swept through Great Britain, the US, and the world.

“I’ve noticed recently, wherever I go—I speak to all kinds of Methodists—there’s a desire for the vibrancy of early Methodism,” he said. “What I want to do with my time here is provide something of a blueprint for Methodist revival.”

Danker urged all Methodists to look to that history for the fire pit, dry wood, and kindling that the Holy Spirit can set aflame.

The next day, Asbury University professor Suzanne Nicholson talked about recovering John Wesley’s approach to reading Scripture. Too many people, she told the gathered Methodists, have been led astray and distracted by debates about technical terms in hermeneutics, forgetting what the Bible is actually for.

“John Wesley was saying that God wants to transform us, and Scripture will transform us,” Nicholson said. “Scripture is the trustworthy revelation of the mind of God.”

The traditional Methodist approach to the Bible is literalist, according to Nicholson, but that doesn’t mean Wesley or other early Methodists like Peter Cartwright and Francis Asbury read everything literally. Instead, they accepted the plain meaning of the text, which involves an assessment of the genre of writing, the literary and historical contexts, and the larger story of Scripture, moving from original sin to justification by faith, new birth, and inward and outward holiness.

Methodists should read commentaries alongside Scripture, Nicholson said, and pray and ask for illumination from the Spirit. They should also look back to Wesley’s historic Bible-reading practices.

“One of the things we find with Wesley’s sermons is they’re just dripping with Scripture,” she said.

Several women attending the School of Methodism said they thought the greatest hope for Wesleyan renewal and revitalization would come from the deep commitment to the Bible that Nicholson talked about.

“We’ve kind of got to immerse ourselves and be in the Word,” said Catherine Fulcher, who attends Wesley Memorial.

Her friend Angie Fary agrees. As someone who grew up Baptist before joining the UMC 20 years ago, Fary appreciates learning more about the history and tradition of John Wesley and early Methodism. But she said she was especially encouraged, in this time of transition, to hear the speakers pointing Methodists back to the Bible.

“We’re going to stay the course in God’s Word,” Fary told CT.

Some Global Methodist leaders have also been directing a lot of energy toward prayer. They say they want the new denomination to be bound together less by bureaucracy and legal arrangements and more by intercession.

Laura Ballinger, an Indiana pastor on the Global Methodist’s prayer steering committee, said representatives from the new denomination’s different regions gather every month to pray. There are also groups in each region that are praying, and more on the local level. The church encourages each congregation to appoint a “prayer point person.”

The people in the pews of Global Methodist churches are urged to remember that they are dependent on God and that this new, fresh expression of Methodism will need his enabling, empowering, and sustaining grace.

“We want Jesus to be Lord, so we have to listen to him, and pray to him, and ask for empowerment,” Ballinger told CT. “We want to be a church—truly be a church—that is connected to each other and the Lord through prayer.”

Many people fasted and prayed for weeks prior to the convening conferences that formalized the regional organization of the Global Methodists. According to Ballinger, the meetings have been marked by extended times of prayer and an overflow of the fruit of the Spirit, especially love and joy.

“I saw people weeping with intense joy,” Ballinger said. “At a business meeting.”

The prayer requests ahead of the convening conference of the Great Lakes region focused mainly on practical concerns. Methodists were asked to pray that the conference would go smoothly, that registration would be orderly and efficient, and that everything spoken onstage would edify the church.

But the people on the prayer list were also asked to ask God for an outpouring of the Spirit and for each person present to be “alert to the Lord.”

Carol Perry, a member of Grace Methodist Church in Decatur, Illinois, said that as she drove home, she thought about how every face seemed filled with joy and how there was so much love, even from people she didn’t know. It was a powerful religious experience.

“I think part of the joy came from the freedom we have … because we are truly following Jesus and the church he is building,” Perry wrote. “I have only been following Jesus for about nine years. Freedom in Christ is a phrase I’ve heard a lot but really haven’t experience in such a profound way.”

The regional conference kind of seemed, in the words of another Methodist hymn writer, like “a foretaste of glory divine.”

Back in Trinity, North Carolina, the new Global Methodist pastor was preaching on that theme on a rainy February morning. Caroline Franks told the Mt. Vernon congregation about a recent meeting she’d had with people interested in being ordained in the Global Methodist Church.

“They’ve heard what God is doing among us, this remnant movement,” she said.

The denomination is still being formed, according to Franks, and the renewal of Methodism is just starting to take hold. But if they look now, the Mt. Vernon congregation can just catch sight of the great work God is doing. Franks compared it to the experience of the disciples who saw Jesus transfigured on a mountaintop.

“This is a preview, a sneak peak, a glimmer of what God is going to fulfill,” she said. “It’s a glimpse of God’s glory. A glimpse of what grace really is.”

Back in the choir on the piano side of the stage, June Fulton believed this. She thought it felt right. So this is what it is like, she thought. She couldn’t wait to see more of the new life this renewal would bring to the Methodist congregation she has belonged to since she was born.

“We really don’t know all the ins and outs of what will happen,” Fulton told CT. “But we’re united again, and I hope we will grow. We are wanting to build a new fellowship hall and of course we’re wanting to reach out into the community. We’ll have to see what will happen—but it’s exciting.”

Theology

Studying Scripture Isn’t Safe, But It Is Good

R. Alan Streett

As a Bible professor in an evangelical institution, I feel the tension of teaching truths that might offend.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Lightstock

When I began my studies at Wesley Theological Seminary, several upperclassmen warned me about taking courses offered by George Wesley Buchanan, a no-nonsense professor who demanded excellence from his students and graded them accordingly. One faculty member derisively charged Buchanan with interpreting Scripture according to Judaism rather than Christianity. Since I was young, impressionable, and desired to succeed in my first year of studies, I avoided Dr. B. like the plague.

Forty-five years later, I stumbled upon George Buchanan’s autobiography, which recounts his difficult years at Wesley and how his colleagues often misunderstood his research and, at times, maligned him. His book is titled An Academic Hound Dog Off the Leash, and Buchanan—now in his 90s—wanted to set the record straight before heading off to glory.

His memoir captured my imagination, and I eventually came to respect the man I once shunned. I discovered Buchanan earned a reputation in wider academic circles as a first-rate scholar, especially among elected members of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, a prestigious biblical society whose past presidents included venerated figures like C. H. Dodd, Rudolf Bultmann, Joachim Jeremias, C. K. Barrett, Oscar Cullmann, and John Barclay.

Using metaphorical language, Buchanan likened his fellow faculty members to “collie dogs” who spent their time keeping the sheep within the fold and rounding them up whenever they strayed. Their main job was to protect the theological borders of their institutional pasture. By comparison, Buchanan identified himself as a “hound dog” who followed the scent of biblical truth wherever its trail might lead.

After reading Buchanan’s story, I realized at the time that I was a border collie. As a pastor, professor, apologist, and cult-buster, I drew thick lines around conventional interpretations of biblical theology and warned people of the dangers lurking beyond those acceptable boundaries. The problem is that, in Protestantism especially, there are more borders than there are even denominations—and each border acts as an enclosure to enfold its sheep, and requires collies to protect it.

On one occasion, the conservative Christian college where I taught invited Richard Bauckham, a prominent British biblical scholar, to give a lecture for the student body. During the Q&A session, a colleague of mine asked him a question about his views on eschatology, and Bauckham’s response did not fully align with the institution’s position. Afterward, there was an unspoken expectation of us professors to address this issue when the students returned to class. This is what border collies do!

In 2005, I was granted a sabbatical and began working on a second PhD. My first doctorate was from a school that majored in training border collies, so to speak, but the University of Wales (UK) was different. Bill Campbell, my supervisor, had the patience of a saint. Having worked with other American evangelical students, he suggested I expand my academic horizons, read outside my comfort zone, and enter conversations with other scholars in my field.

With anxiety and trepidation, I took the first steps beyond my comfortable ecclesiastical borders to discover a vast new world. It was frightening, exciting, and enlightening. I began reading Second Temple literature and ancient primary sources dealing with the Roman world. Before long, I met gracious academics who took interest in my studies and offered me constructive criticism. And by the time I completed my PhD thesis, I was a full-fledged hound dog!

I was eager to bring my newfound knowledge into the classroom and teach my students how to similarly think outside the box. And yet, like George Wesley Buchanan, I soon found this raised eyebrows among some of my colleagues.

For instance, there was concern when I taught that Jesus spoke in Aramaic and that the gospel authors translated Jesus’ sayings into Greek. Some thought I was arguing that there was a “text behind the Greek text,” although I assured them that this was not the case. I explained that there are some Aramaic sayings which the gospel writers had to translate and spell out for audiences who did not know Aramaic. Yet the academic dean of the school still called me into his office to question me, and I had to reassure him that I held true to the historical creeds of the church. All this controversy began because I was simply trying to use all resources at my disposal to help students interpret the Scriptures more correctly.

As a biblical theologian, I am trained to study each book of the Bible on its own—to examine it in its unique literary, historical, and social contexts. Bible scholars do not try to harmonize the Gospels, for example, because we know that each book is unique. Their authors wrote at different times to different audiences located in different parts of the empire, lived under different leaders, and experienced different levels of persecution. The authors wrote for distinct reasons and had distinct goals in mind, selecting only the stories about Jesus and his teachings that were helpful and pertinent to their respective audiences.

Biblical theologians also utilize supplementary materials such as ancient Roman and Jewish literature, epigrams, and cultural practices. And contrary to what some might think, this “outside” information is not considered a source of “extra-biblical revelation,” but it helps us to interpret the Scriptures with greater accuracy. The more familiar we are with ancient customs, the better our understanding of the biblical text.

For example, in my book Subversive Meals, I explain that Roman banquets in the first century included the meal proper as well as symposium activities (after-meal entertainment, discussion, music, speeches, etc.), which were linked by a drink offering (pouring a cup of wine out to the emperor and the gods as a sign of loyalty to the empire). The Lord’s Supper followed the same pattern—meal and symposium—but believers raised a cup in honor of Christ and his kingdom. Hence, back then, the Christian Communion meal was seen as an anti-imperial act of subversion.

Knowing this helps us better understand the historical context of the Christian meal and the cost some first-century believers paid to participate. Each bit of new data helps us to get closer to a text’s original meaning in its first-century setting—and since getting the text right is the name of the game, we must use every tool at our disposal.

Occasionally, a single new historical insight can lead us to rethink long-held interpretations of certain biblical concepts and passages, which can ultimately shift our established theological understanding of a given doctrine.

We saw this process in action when E. P. Sanders, after studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered that most first-century Jews did not, in fact, believe in a works-based salvation, as many scholars had previously thought. Rather, most Jews understood salvation to be the result of divine election—that God chose them and established a covenant with them, and keeping the Law was merely seen as evidence that they were God’s covenant people.

This groundbreaking biblical insight changed the way many interpreted Paul’s relation to Judaism—as well as his letter to Galatians and his theological arguments on the doctrine of salvation. Scholars like N. T. Wright, James D. G. Dunn, and Scot McKnight, among others, gravitated toward this new perspective, which led to a controversy over the nature of justification that continues even now. As a result of this discovery, some systematic theologians and others are raising issues about abandoning traditional reformation theology altogether.

That is not to say traditional understandings of certain doctrines should be set aside on a whim. But neither should we hesitate, based on solid research, to seek further light on any given subject. After all, it was the re-examining of Scripture—in comparison with established Catholic creeds—that ultimately led to the Protestant Reformation and its widespread distribution of the Bible to the common believer.

Some systematic theologians focus on church councils and the historical development of creeds, many of which were formulated in response to specific heresies (such as Docetism and adoptionism) and have been upheld and defended for centuries. And while biblical scholars can repeat and affirm the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds without reservation—standing in unity with the church universal—our task is different from systematic theologians.

The main question we are concerned with is, What did the text mean to the original audience? We focus on the first-century text and seek to acquire more historical and cultural insights. Otherwise, the entire field of biblical studies would remain static, and no fresh readings or analyses would emerge. In other words, our primary job as biblical scholars is to interpret the text rightly; and we are often happy to leave the doctrinal implications in the hands of systematic theologians.

That said, even the best hound dogs can occasionally find themselves barking up a wrong tree. But we must not allow that possibility to hinder us from our overall task. So, I urge my fellow hound dogs to keep their noses to the ground and follow the trail of biblical truth. Amazing and exciting discoveries—leading to a better understanding of Scripture—are just beyond the horizon.

R. Alan Streett is the senior professor emeritus of biblical theology at Criswell College in Dallas.

- More from R. Alan Streett

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