Trump’s AI Jesus Might Be the Messiah We’ve Been Looking For

Columnist

Perhaps this blasphemous image can expose what we’ve become—and, ironically, lead the way back to what’s real.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: Google

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

In the past few weeks, the president has posted an Easter message that used profanity and threatened civilizational genocide, has issued threats to the pope, and has posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus. (He now says he was portraying himself as a doctor.) After all this, even some of the president’s supporters feel humiliated and angry. I think it’s worth asking what exactly is coming to light in this moment and whether it could disrupt a means-to-an-end cultural Christianity.

For years, some evangelicals have told us Donald Trump might be the disruptor we need to bring us back to Jesus. For the first time, I think they might be right—just not in the way they thought. Maybe “Trump AI Jesus” is what we’ve been waiting for to show us what we’ve become. And oddly, that just might be a point of hope.

After all, the now-deleted Truth Social post was not some break from the usual pattern. Just two weeks before, the senior adviser of the White House Faith Office compared the president to Jesus Christ, with specific references to his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. If that’s not blasphemy, the word has no meaning. But her comments were met with applause in the East Room and yawns most other places. A week or so before that, the president posted images of his proposed presidential library in Miami, including a gold statue of himself pictured before a crowd of attendees.

But the Trump-as-Jesus (excuse me, as Florence Nightingale) post was so tawdry and public that it was humiliating. The humiliation it caused was not about Trump. Who did not already know his high view of himself? It was about us: The president is so confident in evangelical and white Catholic support that he is willing to stand on Fifth Avenue and point the metaphorical gun at the first commandment, confident he will not lose any support.

Many times over the past decade, I’ve quoted an editorial in The Guardian, published shortly after the 2016 presidential election, that explains American evangelicalism to a secular British audience. “A religion that is responsive to the pressures of the market will end up profoundly fractured, with each denomination finding most hateful to God the sins that least tempt its members, while those sins that are most popular become redefined and even sanctified,” the editors wrote. “In the end, a market-driven religion gives rise to a market-driven approach to truth, and this development ultimately eviscerated conservative Christianity in the US and left it the possession of hypocrites and hucksters.”

Two thousand years of Christian history should have taught us the church needs to be both an institution and a movement, or else it becomes unmoored. During the Reformation, institutionalization was the problem. The church’s authority was so unquestioned it could use people’s fear of pain in purgatory to enrich itself with the selling of indulgences. That problem could not be corrected from the inside—it needed some theses nailed to the door.

We need reformations and revivals to keep the church from becoming just one more institution. But we need institutions to keep the church from becoming an entrepreneurial populist mob tossed to and fro by the passions of the moment.

When the problem is ossified institutionalism, only an outsider—a Martin Luther or a Roger Williams—can address the problem, because those on the outside cannot be bought with position or power. But when the problem is market-driven populism, the opposite is sometimes the case: We need an institution to call out our wrongs.

Perhaps this is why Pope Leo has been able to speak in ways that don’t fit the “movements” of the moment—he’s pro-life on abortion and euthanasia, solid on the traditional Christian emphases on marriage and family, unflinching in opposition to the mistreatment of migrants and to unjust war-making and war crimes, and—perhaps most counterculturally—against the idolatry of politics. Maybe what enables him to hold all these views is that he knows he represents a 2,000-year-old structure that predates and will postdate all these political movements, including the American republic.

Quests for institution without renewal or for movements without structure ultimately lead to the same place: back toward whatever we already want, now reimagined as the gospel itself. And there will always be people who want to commandeer that kind of gospel, to mobilize voters or to sell products.

The problem is not that Trump can’t tell the difference between himself and Jesus. It’s that too many of us can’t. That’s why many people’s test of loyalty right now is not whether you hold to the gospel or to the mission or to the creeds or to the transformed life but whether you are sufficiently “in line” on politics. And almost every leader, in government and the church, knows that any show of ambiguity summons an angry mob of outrage.

But we’ve seen all this before.

In the Book of Acts, Paul went into Ephesus preaching the gospel, and that became a problem. He said handmade gods were no gods at all. The guild of silversmiths who made miniature shrines to the goddess Artemis—led by a man named Demetrius—saw their revenue stream was about to dry up. But Demetrius was savvy enough to know that “our profit margins are suffering” wasn’t going to fill the streets. So he reframed it, saying Paul was disrespecting and threatening the great goddess Artemis and the city’s identity as her dwelling place, the center of one of the most powerful cults of the ancient world (Acts 19:27). That framing worked. He mobilized the crowd.

The people were in the streets, chanting, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (v. 28, ESV throughout) for hours. Acts notes that most of the people didn’t even know why they were there or why they were so impassioned (v. 32). They just knew what side they were on. The economic grifters counted on the tribalistic mob, and they knew the way to get at them was nationalist frenzy. These were not three separate things—they were one system, each element feeding the others, all of it needing an identity large enough to die for and an enemy visible enough to hate.

But the moment ended. A town clerk came to himself and said the frenzy had gone on too long and would destroy the city. This low-level Roman bureaucrat looked at what his city had become and flinched.

More importantly, Paul would later write to the city’s little, seemingly irrelevant church to tell them they were at the epicenter of the new thing God was doing: gathering all things together in Christ (Eph. 1:10), who is before all things and in whom all things hold together. Paul told them “the course of this world” and “the prince of the power of the air” and “the passions of our flesh” (2:1–3) are what Jesus came to undo.

Paul wrote that the dividing wall, the thing that makes tests of loyalty and tribal identity feel ultimate, has been broken down by a body, not a better politics (v. 14). He showed them that the real battle is against principalities and powers, not flesh and blood—which means chanting the name of any earthly figure, however loudly and however long, is fighting the wrong war with the wrong weapons.

The mystery of Christ—hidden for ages, now made known—is that the answer to every Ephesus in every century is not a counter-mob or a reformed silversmith guild or a smarter political coalition. It is the same thing it always was: something that looks too small for the moment. Sometimes that starts with people who, while polishing silver, look into the dead eyes of an idol and ask, Is this what we’ve become? To see it close-up is humiliating. Sometimes the humiliation leads people to double down. But sometimes it leads back to what’s real.

Maybe we’re in that kind of moment. I don’t know. But perhaps the craziness and grossness of this blasphemous time will cause us to look at the Jesus images we’ve made for ourselves—to really look at them—and ask, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”

Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today as well as host of the weekly podcast The Russell Moore Show from CT Media.

History

Changing Times and Technology

Daniel Silliman

In 1981, CT helped evangelicals navigate debates over Ronald Reagan, genetic engineering, television, and male headship.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, CT Archives

Was Billy Graham out of step with evangelicalism? In the article “Candid Conversation with the Evangelist,” CT asked the magazine’s founder if he had drifted to the left while the grassroots movement was moving toward the Religious Right. Graham had a different view of what was happening:

I do not agree with that observation. … There are, perhaps, some differences on social and political questions that are more evident today because of our visibility. The pendulum swings back and forth on some of the social, economic, and political issues. But most evangelicals recognize they have responsibilities in these areas in certain contexts. I have been called “liberal” in some areas because of my stand on certain social issues; I have been called “conservative” theologically. I accept both labels, and believe that I stand in the mainstream of evangelicalism.

CT also profiled Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell, asking whether he was “bandit or crusader.” The magazine noted that, as a fundamentalist, Falwell would not cooperate with Graham on evangelistic events, and asked Falwell whether the Moral Majority was fundamentalist. He said:

The most aggressive leaders in Moral Majority are fundamentalist pastors. That isn’t necessary, because Moral Majority is not a religious organization; it’s political. There is no theological agreement in Moral Majority. At the same time, fundamentalists like me were taught to fight before we were taught to read and write. There is no lack of courage among fundamentalists. Fortunately, fundamentalists like me have been growing up over the past 20 years. We have been finding we can fellowship only in truth, but that we can have friendship in many other affinities. …

My definition of a fundamentalist is one who, first, believes in the inerrancy of Scripture, and second, is committed to biblical separation in the world and to the lordship of Christ. …

What we’ve said from the beginning is that the Moral Majority is a political organization. You’re not going to hear doctrine there. We are not going to try to witness to you there. You come as an American who shares the moral views of the membership, and to fight together on a prolife, profamily, promoral, pro-American position.

Pro-life Christians faced political setbacks in 1981. Elected leaders told them banning abortion was politically impossible.

That route requires two-thirds approval of each house of Congress and ratification by 38 states. Advocates of a constitutional amendment have been unable to agree on wording or strategy, and none of the many versions has been reported out of committee.

Ardent antiabortion activists themselves are hopelessly split: some want exceptions for such reasons as rape and incest included in the wording; others are holding out resolutely for no exceptions. And some Catholics among them have blended their opposition to unnatural contraception with their antiabortion views, further clouding the amendment cause. …

Proabortionists generally see little chance of an amendment being passed in the near future, but a statute is conceivably within easy reach since both houses are ruled by a conservative majority. Some antiabortionists fear that debate over a statute, whose continued existence would be subject to the ideological whims of future congresses, will distract from efforts to win an amendment. Others—including some stalwart antiabortionists on Capitol Hill—believe [North Carolina Jesse Helm’s proposed legislation defining an unborn child as a person] is unconstitutional.

Then, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court. She had long called abortion a right that should be legally protected. CT reported the response of Christian activists who had mobilized pro-life support for Reagan.

Prolife leaders gathered in Dallas … a week before Senate confirmation hearings were to begin in Washington on O’Connor’s nomination, to proclaim their chagrin and do what little they could to fight the confirmation. It became clear during the long day of speeches and sermonizing that whatever their hopes for defeating O’Connor, the prolifers were not yet ready to give up on Ronald Reagan. It was the day’s most surprising development.

“Ronald Reagan is the greatest president we’ve had in my lifetime, and history may record that he’s the greatest president ever,” declared evangelist Jerry Falwell. Falwell promised Reagan he would withhold all comment on O’Connor until after the confirmation hearings. He turned down repeated opportunities provided by the press to denounce Reagan because of O’Connor.

When Carolyn Gerster, an Arizona physician and long-time leader in the prolife movement, met with candidate Reagan early in his campaign, he convinced her of his commitment against abortion. The interview led her organization, the National Right to Life Committee, to endorse him for president. During the Dallas rally, she spoke heatedly against the O’Connor nomination, but she was steadfast in her belief in Reagan. She believes Reagan was misinformed about O’Connor’s abortion record, either by O’Connor herself, or by a Justice Department staff member who researched her record.

In 1981, CT looked at another way Christians could demonstrate commitment to the value of life, publishing multiple articles on the need to include disabled people in church. A pediatrician wrote about why churches should welcome children with Down syndrome.

In my work with developmentally delayed children, I have seen and attended creative and innovative church school programs where there was an environment of love and acceptance. But in many churches, which find themselves faced with children like Jason for whom they have no program and whose very presence evokes strong feelings, rejection results. …

The act of rejection … is based on the notion that because of his retardation, Jason could not comprehend “church,” and, therefore, could not benefit from it. That is a very dangerous attitude, yet it is one that pervades our society and characterizes many of the attitudes toward retarded individuals. …

But the church has not only a commitment to accept, but the opportunity to provide a specific ministry. It is the ideal place to establish the fact that functional and intellectual abilities are not synonymous with acceptability as a person—nor, most certainly, acceptance into the kingdom of God.

CT called attention to a “new area of responsibility” in 1981 with an editorial on “genetic engineering.”

Having witnessed how Congress has handled, or mishandled, abortion, the energy crisis, the post office, Amtrak, and the economy, one is not given to much optimism about how our legislators will do with biotechnology and a definition of what constitutes “life.” There is no doubt that the lines of battle are already being drawn. Those who were not alarmed by the Supreme Court’s decision played down fears by noting that the oil-eating bacterium was not life, but matter. The invention was a manipulation of matter, not the creation of life in a godlike sense, they explained.

On the other hand, a strong cry of protest arose from others in both science and philosophy (not necessarily Christians, by the way), who warned against a dangerous “foot in the door” situation. Their argument is that genetic engineering makes no distinction between life and matter. They warn that the ultimate conclusion is that all of life’s properties can be reduced to the “physico-chemical.” …

What to do about splicing genes, it seems to us, will be decided on the same basis as abortion and euthanasia. If “life” is purely material, then anything goes; there are no moral boundaries. The trend in public policy in recent decades decidedly has been away from a definition of life as something special and sacred and toward a definition that is “physico-chemical.” We agree with the alarmists on this point.

Evangelicals embraced another kind of activism in the early 1980s: boycotts. CT noted one apparently successful effort to convince television networks to stop airing offensive material.

If you want to do something to rid television of profanity, sex, and violence, switch off your set, write protest letters to network officials, or join a PTA lobby. But if you really want to do something, pull together a large group of people (three to five million will do), get backing from the Moral Majority, and plan a boycott. Threaten to stop buying products of companies that sponsor offending programs—and watch the fur fly.

That’s just what Donald B. Wildmon, founder of the Coalition for Better Television, did. He proposed a one-year boycott of products from sponsors of television shows marked offensive by 4,000 volunteer monitors during a three-month period. … The monitors produced a list of sponsors—but Wildmon never used it to effect his boycott. One week before the scheduled announcement of his list, Wildmon met with advertisers in Memphis and made an eleventh-hour decision to hold off on the boycott.

Justifying the boycott, Wildmon, a United Methodist clergyman, had said, “Our values, our principles, our morals—those things which are very dear and meaningful to us—have been ridiculed, belittled, mocked, and insulted by the networks. We feel the boycott will be criticized very loudly by the networks and the companies, but that’s nothing new to us. The only thing that matters to them is money and we’re ready to see the boycott through to prove our point.”

Christians concerned about the quality and morals of television in 1981 were also exploring the use of a new technology, the video cassette recorder, or VCR. CT said it might be the “key to taming the TV monster.”

Our family decided it was time to stop talking about television’s potential for harm and do something about it. … We looked for a workable alternative that would let our preteens feel privileged, not punished. For us the answer is a video cassette recorder (VCR). We play what we judge the very best programs. Add an occasional rented videotape, and a birthday party or slumber party becomes special. …

Saturday morning cartoons, often called TV’s most violent hours, once kept our children entranced. Now they usually give way to a replay of Sound of Music, “Little House on the Prairie,” “Star Trek,” or “Those Amazing Animals.” …

Taping costs are not unreasonable. We record six hours of material on a $15 videotape. We paid $850 for a fully portable A.C./battery-operated, 11-pound VCR. Used standard table-top models go for $350 and up. As a result of our new control over TV, we watch it less and we watch it constructively.

CT told readers their churches should also consider VCRs.

Video—specifically, prerecorded videocassette programming—could become the church’s “now and future” audio-visual tool. … While newer, lighter, portable VCR units are becoming increasingly available (remember those ads?), even carting an older machine to the home of a shut-in, plugging it into the TV, and turning on, say, John Stott, would add a new dimension to home visitation.

If you start thinking about the possibilities that exist when you possess your own VCR camera, the sky is suddenly the limit. Now you can take last Sunday morning’s service or the Sunday school Christmas program to that shut-in. Or, add a five-foot projection screen to the TV set at church: John Stott or Chuck Colson or John Mac Arthur or Oswald C. J. Hoffmann or a host of others can teach your congregation—almost in person—for a relatively small tape rental fee.

Evangelical media had its own big controversy in 1981 after CT investigated the story behind Jack Chick’s Christian comic book Alberto.

It purports to be the true story of a Jesuit priest named Alberto Rivera, who was raised and trained in a Spanish Jesuit seminary, and whose job was to infiltrate and destroy Protestant churches. … A year ago, Alberto Rivera himself issued a sworn statement defending the allegations. He declared in part that, “Alberto is a true and actual account and I will face a court of law to prove the events actually took place.” …

This reporter’s investigation shows that not only was Rivera not a Jesuit priest, but also that he had two children during the time he claimed to be living a celibate life as a Jesuit. Neither, it seems, does he have a sister in England who was a nun. Rivera has been sought by police for writing bad checks in Hoboken, New Jersey, and for stealing a credit card in Florida. Those revelations taint the credibility of the fantastic stories Rivera tells in the comic books.

Evangelicals were also debating the issue of male headship in the home in 1981. CT published multiple female authors sharing personal stories of how they submitted to their husbands. A woman in Pennsylvania wrote about how she navigated a difference of preference in holiday decor.

Hale and I have varying tastes in music, literature, hobbies, home decorating—and even in Christmas trees. He doesn’t like Christmas trees, and wouldn’t care if we never put one up. My family always had real trees that scraped the ceiling and filled the house with their fragrance. The conflict came when we were given an artificial tree as a wedding present.

For the first several years we had more than just a “discussion” on real versus artificial trees. Finally, my husband said he didn’t want to hear about it any more. So, during some years when the children were temptable babes, we didn’t put up any tree; the rest of the time I have had to be satisfied with an artificial tree, with no mention of a real one at all. … I know there is no substitute for the peace and security of having a biblically ordered home.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Ideas

My Family Resisted Iran’s Regime. My Hope Is Not in Foreign Intervention.

Sara Afshari

Jesus spoke peace to his disciples as they hid. Iranian Christians modeled for me that same resistance with grace.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, WikiMedia Commons

On Saturday, February 28, just a few hours after the start of the US–Israel war against Iran and before the internet went dark, my sister called from Yazd in central Iran. Her voice was calm.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We have supplies. We’ll stay home. We’ll lock the doors.”

Then the line went silent.

By the next evening, reports emerged that her area had been bombed. After that, nothing. No messages. No calls. No confirmation. Just silence.

Days later, she managed to call again briefly, just long enough to say the family was alive. Alive—but still behind locked doors.

In recent weeks, Iran has been plunged deeper into war. Airstrikes have hit cities, energy infrastructure, and residential areas. Reports—fragmented and difficult to verify—suggest widespread destruction of homes, hospitals, and public spaces. Communication blackouts have made it nearly impossible to know what is happening on the ground.

For those inside—and for those of us with family there—fear, uncertainty, and waiting are a lived reality.

And in the middle of that waiting, I found myself returning to a familiar passage: “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’” (John 20:19).

John’s gospel does not hide the fear of the disciples. After the Crucifixion, they are not bold or triumphant. They are hiding. Their fear is a reasonable response to violence. They have seen what power can do, so they lock the doors.

That image, behind locked doors, has followed me in the weeks since the war began. It is one Iranians are familiar with. In societies shaped by prolonged authoritarian rule, closing the door is not simply retreat; it is learned wisdom. Private space becomes a fragile shield against surveillance, detention, and violence. And yet even locked doors do not—and did not—always protect us.

My childhood unfolded in the shadow of prison. Visiting my siblings in prison was part of ordinary life. I remember one visit when my brother was weeping. He had tried to save a prostitute sentenced to execution by asking to marry her, hoping to spare her life, but his request came too late.

“I couldn’t save her,” he said. The system was swift and unforgiving.

Yet even within prison, there were signs of dignity. I remember the handbags and handicrafts prisoners made, which we bought to support them. As a child, I loved those heavy handbags: their stitching, their colors, their weight. Only later did I understand that they were more than objects. They were quiet acts of resistance, beauty created under constraint.

Our home was never entirely private. At least once a month, we burned books in our backyard tanur—the bread-baking oven—after warnings that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was coming to search the house. A neighbor, both a friend and an informant, would give us a narrow window of time. We burned books to protect ourselves, then slowly bought them again. Buying and burning, concealing and reclaiming.

Even home was negotiated space, never fully secure.

My journey adds another layer. As a young student leader, I identified as a Communist and atheist. I believed structural injustice required structural change. When I once told my mother that I might be arrested, she said, “If it is for your ideology, I will be proud of you. But if it is for immorality, I won’t forgive you.” That distinction shaped me deeply. When I later became a Christian, my concern for justice was reoriented. Faith did not silence political awareness; it deepened its grounding.

As older teenagers, my friend, my brother, and I searched for the unmarked graves of dissidents executed in the early 1980s. We found two beneath a large tree. We sat there in silence then read a poem to them.

These memories shape how I respond to the present geopolitical moment. As a family, we did not support the Iranian regime. My story is marked by resistance to its coercive practices. Yet opposing domestic authoritarianism does not automatically mean embracing foreign intervention. Sovereignty, even when misused by regimes, remains a serious moral concern. The history of the region reminds us that external military action often fractures societies rather than restores them.

When Jesus appears in John 20, Rome has not fallen. The empire remains intact. The disciples remain vulnerable. And the risen Christ shows them the scars in his hands and side. The scars remain visible, a reminder of the violence. Yet resurrection carries it forward in transformed form.

I too have seen scars caused by interrogation and torture, even more vividly after I became a Christian. I have seen cigarette burns on a friend’s side, leaving small holes in his flesh because of his faith. I have seen another friend’s shoulders damaged simply because he believed in Christ. I have seen my brother’s back torn by lashes. I have also known detention and questioning myself.

John’s narrative resists two temptations: It does not deny fear. (The doors remain locked.) Nor does it promote retaliation. Instead, Christ speaks peace into a room shaped by fear. This peace is an invitation to a different way of being present. “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (v. 21). The disciples are commissioned to embody power rather than taking it.

Today, responsibility cannot be reduced to simple alignment with a regime or foreign power. It calls for discernment. As part of the Iranian diaspora, I am conscious that those inside the country have endured sustained repression in ways many of us outside have not. Our voices must therefore be careful: How do we speak responsibly about a country we no longer live in—but still belong to?

Iran today feels like a locked room, a place filled with the sounds of aircraft, explosions, ambulance sirens, fear, rumors, and unanswered questions. Perhaps my own heart feels like that room too. I now know that my family are alive. But many others have died, and many more have been made homeless. New scars are forming—on bodies, on cities, on memory.

Part of me wonders, Could this mean change? Could I return? Another part asks, What will be the cost? Will sovereignty be lost? Will Iran become another fractured country in the Middle East?

When Jesus says, “Peace be with you” (v. 19), it is not the peace of empire. It is not the peace of silence. It is the peace of wounded hands that did not retaliate.

I am Iranian. I am Christian. I carry scars.

John 20 also speaks of breath. Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (v. 22). Breath recalls creation: a new beginning. It suggests that renewal begins with interior transformation and shared vocation rather than dominion. Applied to Iran, it suggests that lasting change emerges from dignity, accountability, and resistance. It resists the reduction of our future to pure power calculations.

Christ enters the locked room without dismantling the door. He does not rebuke the disciples for their caution. He neither glorifies fear nor demands reckless exposure. He stands among them, shows his scars, and speaks peace.

I do not know how Iran’s political future will unfold. Power will shift. Narratives will compete. Nearly five decades of accumulated scars will not disappear overnight.

What remains is a posture shaped by memory and faith, resistance and grace—resistance without cruelty, critique without surrender to empire, hope without romanticizing collapse. The inheritance of my childhood—prison corridors, burned books, hidden fugitives, unmarked graves—does not demand vengeance. It calls for moral seriousness and responsibility.

The passage in John does not offer escape from uncertainty. Peace is spoken into fear, not after fear is gone. Scars are acknowledged. Commission follows encounter. The locked room becomes not only a place of confinement but also a place from which vocation begins.

Behind locked doors, the gospel reminds us, Christ is present.

A version of this article was published on the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies’ website.

- More from Sara Afshari

Ideas

Partying in Joy and Sorrow

Wendy Kiyomi

Contributor

Christ has freed us to be a party people, even in grief and pain.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

We need to throw more parties.

At least, that’s what my husband and I decided last year in an attempt to beat back the sorry shroud of despondency that had settled over us. Many of the parties we hosted were small gatherings, some were medium, and two were big. All of them were splendid.

Our parties were splendid for happening at all. On paper, you see, we had no business celebrating: In fact, we were in the trenches, facing serious problems trying to care for our children. All three of them had come to us through foster care and adoption. They are precious and talented—and have significant health issues. We were spending hours each week getting treatment and adjusting medications. Our desks held piles of bills. We were in the middle of court proceedings for an insurance appeal. All the while, our kids were doing worse. Our prayers were mostly laments. The household was hardly a party playground.

Yet our conviction grew nonetheless: We needed to party.

We were inspired by several friends who had shown us sweet care by inviting us to their shindigs. My favorites were the impromptu occasions. One friend asked us the day of his birthday to come over and celebrate that evening. He was late in planning and had a hankering for croque-monsieur, a sandwich his wife had volunteered to make. We had never heard of such things and were tickled to our toes. We shuffled over to their house, where they greeted us with lively welcomes, bubbly drinks, and chips and dip. Weary and lackluster though we appeared, we still saw a glimmer of hope. We were loved and not lost; merrymaking was still possible and within our reach.

Merrymaking is rare, however. Americans attend parties about half as often as they did in 2003. Only about 4 percent of us have a get-together on the calendar for a given upcoming weekend. Almost three-quarters of us have no plans for a party on our birthday. Who would we gather with?

Our friend pools are small—only 64 percent of us say we have more than one good friend—and expanding our circles is hard since we’re hesitant to talk with new people.

We need more parties, and fast. When my husband and I came to that realization in our own lives, my sister suggested I read Priya Parker’s wonderful book The Art of Gathering.

Any gathering, Parker declares, can strengthen our bonds to one another. When we understand why we’re gathering, we become leaders in human connection. The guests we invite, the conversations we have, and the space we arrange are all an art form of love and meaning.

In other words, parties are ministry—a ministry of joy for host and guest alike.

I’ve always loved the opening lines of the marriage ceremony in the Book of Common Prayer: “Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” It strikes me that Jesus was also adorning parties. His contribution to the proceedings, after all, was more wine—the best yet. He could have given a sermon or a practical gift, but instead he replenished the “wine that maketh glad the heart of man” (Ps. 104:15, KJV).

Jesus’ sober-minded loyalty to his Father’s purposes is clear in every New Testament scene. Yet parties were a major part of his ministry, and many of his parables of the kingdom are set at fancy banquets. He describes God as a rejoicer, celebrator, party-thrower extraordinaire. Jesus was also present at so many dinners that his detractors called him “a glutton and a drunkard” (Matt. 11:19). Many guests with him were tax collectors and sinners, sellouts and down-and-outs who perhaps had no business celebrating either, except for one reason: Christ was come.

Christ is come. He is bringing about a salvation the prophet Isaiah equated to a magnificent banquet:

The Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever. (Isa. 25:6–8)

Our prayers of lament are an important response to the reality of sin and death, and fasting pushes us to rely on God. But parties have their place, too, telling of the corresponding reality of God’s mighty salvation. To gather round and make merry, to flaunt our finery, dance, sing, and celebrate, is to witness to the hope that is ours in Jesus Christ. Brought into God’s household, we become a party people.

My family had plenty to celebrate even as we wrestled with insurance and health problems. We had friends to invite, food to share, a home to open, family who loves us, and a God who takes our grief in hand and turns it to songs of joy (Ps. 10:14; 126:6). Our own parties mimic, in our small way, the grace and generosity of the King who is forming for himself a people who love him and each other.

We planned our first big party for after Easter.

Our croque-monsieur friends loaned us a handy little book called The 2-Hour Cocktail Party by Nick Gray, a guide for giving a simple, sweet party. We followed the steps: We printed invitations and passed them to friends, acquaintances, and as many neighbors as possible. We told people to wear festive attire. We bought provisions, extra glasses, and a new tablecloth. We moved chairs around and sent enthusiastic reminders.

The morning of the party, though, my daughter woke up with severe side pain. By noon she was in the emergency room.

As I sat with her, the hospital-room door opening and closing—first for the intake nurse, then the medical assistant, the registrar, the doctor, the nurse again, the transport aides, the doctor again, and the snack lady in slow progression—I alternately prayed and fretted. Maybe this was a sign that we really did have no business trying to give a party. Look at us! The afternoon we needed to prepare was swallowed up. Our guests might arrive and find us unprepared, flustered, clearing clutter and tossing ice into bowls.

Was it faithless to cancel? Was it foolish not to?

I thought of Jesus at dinners with friends and strangers, tranquil and attentive to those who gathered with him to eat and drink. A supernatural calm settled over me. A long ER visit was cartoonishly discouraging, but it was also a way we might see God’s love in action. He might have something wonderful in store.

And so he did.

I went home a couple times to check with my husband, put out a few things, and jot down some to-dos. I changed into my fancy outfit and went back to the ER to wait.

Our party was scheduled for 7 p.m. At 6:15, the hospital staff seemed to be moving toward discharging my daughter. At 6:35, we got all our paperwork and clearance to leave. We got home 15 minutes before the party’s start time. I hurriedly got out the ice and the small plates.

A good friend was one of the first to arrive—she had brought beautiful platters of sliced vegetables, translucent red, white, and golden discs arrayed around creamy spreads. She took them into the kitchen to unwrap. I spilled my news.

“Guess where we’ve been all day,” I blurted.

“Where?” she asked.

“The emergency room,” I said, blinking and smiling through tears.

“Oh, Wendy,” she said. She looked me in the eye and squeezed my shoulder.

We took the platters to the table with the other food, then filtered toward the center room, where a pleasant hum of guests shrugged out of their coats and stepped forth in nice clothes. We poured our drinks and clinked. It was splendid.

A month later, the weather had warmed. My family and I were invited to a barbecue at the neighbor’s house. We were standing in the yard chatting with a newcomer when our croque-monsieur friend walked up.

I went to say hello. “It’s good to see you,” I said. “But how do you know the hosts?”

He gave me an odd look. “I met them at your party,” he said. “We exchanged numbers.”

I remembered now: They had struck up a conversation in our dining room after everyone had said their names and answered the icebreaker question. Both had new babies, liked to listen to podcasts, and apparently now were also friends.

Throwing parties is an exercise in hope, a phrase I love from Esau McCaulley. Because of our hope in Christ, we as his church can be a party people. We can lay the table and watch the ruler of the feast adorn it. We and our guests can celebrate together, even in life’s sorrows, that we are loved and not lost. What a splendid gift!

Wendy Kiyomi is an essayist who writes on the trials of faith, complexities of adoption, and delights of friendship. She lives in Tacoma with her family and is a 2023 winner of the Zenger Prize for journalistic excellence.

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A New Approach to Native Missions Starts with the Past

Janel Breitenstein

A painful history with church-run schools has many Indigenous people wary of Christianity. Native ministries are working to share the real Jesus.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Martha Craft, Getty

When Martha Craft looks at the class photo from her First Communion in 1979, she contrasts the children’s smiles with their futures. Craft is a member of Alaska’s Iñupiat and Athabaskan peoples, as were many of her classmates, and nearly all would go on to experience profound tragedy, their lives marred by addiction, suicide, and more. Some, she told me, “have lost their faith completely.”

Craft herself was abused by a Catholic priest, she said, one of the known offenders whom the church hierarchy nevertheless assigned to remote Alaska Native villages in the 1960s and 1970s. She believes the priest abused her classmates too. In the years that followed, Craft’s path meandered through alcoholism and eventually to healing in and through her faith in Christ.

Over the past three decades, she has helped child after child through her work: first as a teacher, then as a counselor. Her searing personal history, she explained, has helped her connect even with children “with the most aberrant behavior.” And today, she tells her story in trauma-healing seminars across the United States, primarily working with Native Americans, many of whom have little other—or little positive—contact with the church.

It was through the seminar that Craft met Ryan O’Leary, an Ojibwe Christian who was then completing his doctoral dissertation on trauma among Native populations. O’Leary’s research had ignited his curiosity about his own family’s history and its effects across generations: His paternal grandparents were both students of Indigenous residential boarding schools, institutions in the United States and Canada that many Native children in the 19th and 20th centuries were coerced to attend. Though arrangements varied, often these schools were established by the government and managed by Christian churches and denominations.

In the 1910s, O’Leary’s grandmother Susie Day was forcibly taken from her family by an unknown party to Hayward Indian School in Wisconsin. (Unlike many such institutions, Hayward was run not by a church but by a government agency.) O’Leary’s family doesn’t know who took her, but they’ve passed down the gutting stories she told of her time at the school. When caught speaking her native—and only—language, Ojibwemowin, Susie’s small hands were beaten with the sharp edge of a ruler until they bruised and bled. Students at similar schools were subjected to electric shock or needles piercing their tongues.

Susie’s brother Willie, then 9 years old, was also taken to a residential school in Minnesota. While there, Susie said, he was pushed down the stairs by a staff member attempting to discipline him. The fall was fatal.

Craft and O’Leary alike are careful not to downplay the reality of personal sin in any culture, including those of their tribes. But neither are they willing to downplay the massive and multigenerational damage these institutions wrought.

The boarding schools’ aftershocks are felt in modern tribal life in the United States and Canada to this day. Periods of mandatory attendance in both nations meant that at the schools’ height, a staggering 83 percent of Native school-age children attended hundreds of such boarding schools in the United States, reports David W. Adams in Education for Extinction. The Canadian government likewise funded 139 schools housing more than 150,000 children, many forced from their family homes.

Some tribes put up fierce resistance, and many residential school administrators and teachers believed their work to be a Christian ministry. But the schools were often brutal. They removed Native children from their homes, sometimes taking them hundreds of miles away from their parents for forced assimilation.

Often children’s hair was symbolically cut and their names changed in accordance with what in many schools was an explicit policy: “save the man; kill the Indian.” In some schools, children were habitually neglected, starved, and abused. Some children committed suicide, and sanitation and ventilation were often poor, so significant numbers of children died of disease. Tuberculosis deaths in 1930s residential schools in Canada, for example, were 10 times the national rate at the time.

A 1928 report determined “frankly and unequivocally that the provisions for the care of the Indian children in boarding schools are grossly inadequate,” and a 2024 Washington Post investigation found more than 3,000 Native children died in boarding schools between 1828 and 1970. Other contemporary research similarly shows that the school conditions led to above-average child mortality compared to wider populations at the time. One Canadian report found that the odds of a child dying in the country’s residential schools were the same as the odds of a Canadian soldier dying in World War I.

For all that, these schools’ stories are not exclusively those of abuse. Canada’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy notes that some former students have recognized a measure of good in their experiences. Some boarding school alumni reported developing self-discipline and a strong work ethic, acquiring trade skills, and gaining new ability to interact with the majority culture. Others met friends and spouses or found relief from poverty. In multiple cases, Native communities advocated for a school, particularly for children with no other place to stay. And later in the system’s history, some schools became tribal-run institutions, incorporating Indigenous languages and traditional knowledge into their curricula.

On balance, however, it seems evil outweighed virtue in these institutions—and again, many were administered or supported by churches. Presbyterian, Congregational, Catholic, Episcopal, and Baptist churches sponsored approximately half of the schools in the US, and in Canada, most of such schools were run by Catholic, Anglican (Church of England), Methodist, and Presbyterian (Church of Scotland) churches until 1969.

This is not a history long past. The last residential schools closed in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the schools’ students are still alive today, and many more families were shaped by this trauma in their recent history.

Last year, Craft took her seminar to two Alaskan villages still only accessible by plane. Every resident over 60, so far as she could tell, had been a residential student because there was no other option in the area when they were young.

Craft and her team prayed as they walked through the first town, she told me, wondering if many people would turn up. They expected a group of around 10. Instead, between the two seminars, dozens arrived and stayed for all three days. Cultural norms of silence and nonverbal communication slowly yielded to honest, open conversation, Craft said. Fearful faces came to express “softness, joy, peace,” she recalled.

At the end of the second day, while the group gathered for a meal, a tribal elder in his 70s stood to say, “This is the first time I’ve talked about what happened to me at that school.”

Native Christians like Craft and O’Leary regularly grapple with the recency of this history and its lack of resolution. Church involvement in the residential schools poses a tremendous—and understandable—obstacle to sharing Jesus with Native people to this day. “Many tribal people associate Christianity with phrases like ‘cultural genocide’ and ‘forced assimilation,’” O’Leary explained.

Dennis LaSarge is an Ojibwe Christian I interviewed who was brought up to despise Christianity for exactly these reasons. But he said he’s learned to distinguish that history of grotesque evil from the God revealed in Jesus. “What are the fruits of the Spirit? It’s love, joy, peace. Look at the people who committed those crimes. Does that sound like Jesus Christ?” LaSarge asked. “You have to get to know him. We can move forward and find out who he is.”

O’Leary’s late grandmother Susie was a believer in Jesus too, he told me. Even so, she tended to talk “about fear. I never heard her talk about the goodness of God.” O’Leary suspects this is because she was evangelized at her school but never truly discipled, and “when people go through deeply traumatic experiences, particularly as children, as a result of professing Christians not acting like Christians, it creates deep and often long-lasting trauma in them, including a distorted view of God.”

Craft has seen that same pattern in her life and ministry. “The Catholic church was not representing God when they sent that priest” to her town, she said. She’s passionate about distinguishing human abuses from “the name of God” and helping people understand “what should have happened and who God really is.” Pastors she meets in some of the most remote Alaska Native villages “comment how much hope they now have as the pain and trauma in these villages is now being addressed.”

In O’Leary’s experience, helping Native peoples get to know Jesus requires pairing the gospel and discipleship with biblical justice, active reconciliation, and a robust theology of God’s true character, including his profound goodness. Once Native church members are equipped by seminars from the First Peoples Initiative to navigate their own trauma, he said, they’re able to share the same the training with others on their reservations—a self-replicating, disciple-making ministry he prays will reach those who need it most.

Beyond the seminars, which use much of the same material as Craft’s programs, the initiative is also supporting church planting and revitalization in Native communities, building safehouses with discipleship resources for Indigenous women who flee sex trafficking, connecting Christian mentors to Native entrepreneurs and discipling through business development, and educating Native families in relational and spiritual health.

This work of rebuilding is overwhelming and too often overlooked by other American Christians, who don’t think of tribes in North America as unreached people groups and may not be aware of the historical traumas underpinning high rates of addiction, broken family structures, suicide, and homelessness among Indigenous people.

Yet the power of the Cross can overcome even this trauma, for “by his wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5). And today, in places where those acting in Christ’s name once killed, stole, and destroyed, O’Leary’s First Peoples Initiative works to show Indigenous people “what true Biblical Christianity looks like” so “these tribal people come to meet, know, and follow a Jesus who came from the tribe of Judah.”

Janel Breitenstein is a freelance writer on emotionally healthy relationships. She is the author of How to Stop Yelling Up the Stairs: Keeping Your Cool While Raising Your Kids, among other books.

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Wire Story

Beth Moore Is Leaving Her Ego Behind

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

Eyeing retirement, the prolific Bible teacher still longs for discipleship in a fractured church.

Annie Mulligan / RNS

For Beth Moore, leaving the Southern Baptist Convention was like falling off a cliff and not knowing if anyone would catch her.

At times, she’d walk the woods near her Texas home and have candid conversations with Jesus.

“I would say to him over and over, I hope you know where we’re going,” Moore said in a recent interview. “I hope you know where we’re going, because I don’t have a clue where we’re going, and I don’t know where I’ll ever belong again.”

It’s been five years since Moore, bestselling author and Bible teacher, left the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, a church that had been her refuge while growing up in a troubled home and that gave her a life she loved. Since then, Moore has found a new church home as an Anglican, rebuilt her ministry, written a memoir, recovered from spinal surgery, and kept doing what she’s always done—helping women learn to dig deep in the Bible.

But last month, Moore announced she’d begin winding down Living Proof Ministries, the nonprofit she’s run for 30 years, and will stop hosting major public events. Next spring, she’ll h old her last major event, in Nashville, Tennessee. She still plans to accept some speaking engagements, but it’s the first step toward retirement for Moore, who will turn 70 next year.

“I could not turn back the hands of time,” said Moore, who said she wants to pass the baton on to younger leaders and to cheer them on.

“I’m getting closer and closer to the day that I’ll see his face,” she said, referring to Jesus. “What are we going to do? Take our big old egos with us?”

On a sunny Tuesday afternoon in Houston in mid-March, Moore sat in the study at Living Proof, its walls lined with Bibles and commentaries and scholarly reference works. By her side were her Christian Standard Bible and a cup of Starbucks.

Moore said she was undone by the decision to walk away from the Southern Baptist Convention. She worried she was betraying the people she loved, even as church leaders and former friends turned against her—mainly because of her outspoken criticism of President Donald Trump and her advocacy for survivors of abuse.

“It’s such a strange thing to have known people so well, and to look across the table at one another, and I mean this both ways, and truly not be able to understand what the other is thinking,” she said. “Honestly, you can’t wrap your mind around it. I thought we were all on the same side.”

Moore has spent a lot of time thinking about the things that divide her fellow Christians in recent years, how she has seen conservative evangelicals grow suspicious of others when they cite Jesus’ commands to love God and their neighbors.

“What has happened to us?” she said. “We have lost all sense of nuance. Everything is so polarized.”

She said she longs for more focus on discipleship—the idea that being a Christian is not just to be saved but also to be changed and to behave more like Jesus.

“We’ve gotten so brutal and so mean and turned into bullies from every side and certainly every extreme. And that could not be more oppositional to carrying a cross and following Jesus,” she said.

Moore’s search for a new church was difficult. Though women from all kinds churches had attended her events and read her books, Southern Baptists were Moore’s people. The rhythms and songs of the Baptist world helped her make sense of the world.

There are times when her Baptist heart still stirs. Like the Sunday when the congregation at her new church home church sang “Blessed Assurance,” a beloved hymn of her childhood.

It took Moore back to sitting with her grandmother and other family members in the pews at First Baptist Church in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where she had grown up.

“The things that were dear are mine forever,” she said. “I refuse to give it up.”

Still, she’s not been able to escape the past. About a year and a half after she left the SBC, someone tracked Moore down and found her on a livestream from her new church. She was in a robe and had been the lector that day, reading the Scripture. Frames from the livestream went viral. She feared her past troubles would haunt her new church.

“I thought I found a safe place,” she said.

Moore called church leaders, who she said tried to reassure her that things would be all right. She recalled one woman in the congregation taking her aside and telling her that the church had her back. “You will never, ever have to fight for yourself here,” she recalled the woman saying.

That incident reminded her of what she lost. She had so many friends in the SBC and felt no one had stood up for her.

“Sometimes you leave a place, not because you don’t love them anymore, but because you do,” she said.

Even as she plans to close out Living Proof, Moore says there’s still nothing better than cracking open a good Bible resource and digging in. She believes there’s a difference between teaching the Bible and being a preacher, something she has no desire to do.

“What I love and feel most called to do is open those pages with a group, encourage them to get into it with me,” she said.

She laughed at all the props she employed in the past—like the model brain she used to haul on airplanes with a note for curious TSA agents, or the skeleton she brought out when teaching about Ezekiel 37, a passage about dry bones coming to life.

Julie Salva first heard Moore teach in the 1990s, when Salva was visiting her cousin in Jacksonville, Florida, and found herself in church, listening to “some lady named Beth.” Salva was hooked from the moment she showed up.

“I was like, my goodness—seriously, my goodness—this woman is a teacher,” Salva said.

Salva, who has taught the Bible to adults at Hermitage Hills Baptist Church, said Moore helped her realize she could study the Bible on her own. And she hopes to be in attendance in 2027 when Moore’s ministry hosts its final event in Nashville.

A few years ago, she met Moore at a book signing and was beside herself with joy.

“It’s not a fan girl thing. It has nothing to do with that,” she said. “Her teaching changed my life, and as a result, I’m able to pour into other people.”

Moore’s love for the Bible is contagious, said Megan Lively, who plans to go see Moore in April at the Cove in Asheville, North Carolina, a famed retreat center started by Billy and Ruth Graham that’s a few hours from her home.

“There are two people I know who truly love Jesus and bear fruit,” she said. “That’s my mother-in-law and Beth Moore.”

Lively, who has a master’s degree from a Southern Baptist seminary, said that in the evangelical world, there are lots of opportunities for men to get advanced education in the Bible and theology, but not as many for women. Moore’s studies, she said, help fill that void.

Lively, a whistleblower and advocate for SBC abuse victims, recalled sitting with Moore and other advocates during the 2019 SBC annual meeting, as the denomination’s abuse crisis was becoming public. A year earlier, Lively had come forward, accusing SBC leader Paige Patterson of covering up a sexual assault when she was a student.

The women ended up hanging out with Moore all afternoon and finding laughter amid their frustrations with the SBC.

“In the midst of a crisis, she brings joy,” Lively said.

Kristin Du Mez, a historian at Calvin University, said Moore’s move toward retirement is the end of an era. Moore, like Bible teachers Joyce Meyer and Kay Arthur, was a superstar of women’s ministries for decades—and helped create space for evangelical women to thrive on their own terms.

“It was at women’s ministry events where they really felt seen, where they felt included, where they felt like the messaging really was directed to them personally,” said Du Mez, who writes about Moore in a forthcoming book about the lives of Christian women.

Du Mez said some church leaders have underestimated the power of what happened during women’s Bible studies. There was a lot of laughter and pink Bibles at those events, but also serious study and engagement with biblical scholarship. Moore, she said, was known for her humor, her ability to connect with an audience, and the depth of her teaching.

“That was part of Beth’s brand,” Du Mez said. “She was approachable, she was likable, but I think many women were drawn to the fact that they got something of substance from those Bible studies.”

Du Mez has also watched Moore’s struggles to make sense of the current political moment and her loss of belonging. The evangelical movement, she said, is built not just on belief but also on deep and meaningful friendships. But for some, those friendships have shattered in the Trump era and those ties have proved fragile.

The past few years, Moore said, have taught her about the power of love, even for our enemies. Jesus taught his disciples to love God and to love their neighbors. There are no exceptions to those rules, she said — Christians may disagree or fight with one another, but they are never allowed to hate.

“We cannot get comfortable with our hate,” she said. “It is poison to us. We may feel it. It may overwhelm us at times, but that cannot be a place we stay. We have to fight. We have to fight for the right to love and not let someone drag us into hate.”

When she finally stops teaching, Moore hopes she will be remembered for her devotion to Jesus, not her flaws. “I would hope they would be able to say, well, you know, that girl was a mess,” she said. “But she loved Jesus and she wanted us to love him.”

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UK Immigration Plans Unsettle Hong Kongers Who Fled China

Joyce Wu

Christians continue to cling to the fact that “the Lord has not abandoned us.”

A family who arrived in Britain from Hong Kong plays football in Chelmsford on January 26, 2021.

Adrian Dennis / Contributor / Getty

Connie Law and her family moved from their home of Hong Kong to Manchester, England, in 2021 after Beijing imposed a stringent national security law on the former British colony. Many families made similar moves in search of greater freedom for their children as authorities clamped down on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, an action officials said restored order from chaos.

The UK provided a pathway to citizenship for Hong Kongers through the Hong Kong British National (Overseas)—or BN(O)—program, which requires five years of residency plus language and financial sufficiency requirements before allowing them to apply for permanent residency. After one year of permanent residency, they can apply for citizenship. Canada and Australia offered similar immigration pathways.

Yet as Law and many of the 170,000 other Hong Kong immigrants in the UK reach the five-year mark, new proposed requirements for permanent residency applicants—including an increased English proficiency—could make it impossible for some Hong Kongers to stay in their new home.

At the Chinese church in Manchester where Law is the assistant minister, she said many congregants would not be able to reach the proposed conditions of “upper intermediate” English—equivalent to university entrance level—and an annual income of more than £12,570 (about $16,870) for three to five years. Annual earnings over that amount are subject to income tax. Unveiled in November, the proposed regulations were part of the UK’s plan to restrict the influx of migrants.

“Everyone is scared and worried” that the proposal will jeopardize their immigration prospects, Law said.

After complaints from Hong Kong immigrants, the British government confirmed in mid-March that those on the BN(O) route will not face changes to their English requirements, whereas other categories of immigrants will be subject to the stricter language standard starting in March 2027. But it remains unclear how the government will proceed with the proposed income requirement.

Hong Kong pastors ministering in the UK describe this latest upheaval in the immigration process as disheartening while also seeing the ways God is continually teaching their community to trust in him instead of worldly governments—even those friendly to Hong Kongers’ democratic ideals.

When news broke that the UK government was seeking to raise the bar for immigration, many Hong Kong immigrants became troubled, depressed, and tearful, said Wong Siu-yung, a preacher at various Chinese churches in the UK. Some found it unfair that the UK would alter the terms to the immigration pathway they had agreed to.

Wong, who is in his early 50s, said the tougher language requirement would be challenging for him; he would need to work hard to improve his conversational English.

This is not Wong’s first immigration setback. He initially moved to Taiwan during Hong Kong authorities’ crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in 2019 and 2020. He worried about arrest as he helped spearhead a Christian declaration that Beijing considered sedition. After discovering Taiwan’s changing immigration requirements effectively barred him and his wife from gaining permanent residency there, they emigrated to the UK in 2022.

Living in Nottinghamshire, England, Wong currently works at a warehouse in addition to preaching. He also had jobs in pharmaceutical packaging, sandwich production, and as a sushi chef, so meeting the proposed income requirement would not be a problem for him.

But immigration “isn’t just about one person, we’re a family,” said Wong, referring to his wife, who would not satisfy the income criterion. Because it is hard for Hong Kong immigrants to find jobs in the UK on par with what they did in Hong Kong, they often resort to blue-collar work, Wong explained. But his wife cannot take up physically strenuous employment due to chronic rheumatoid arthritis.

Critics of the income stipulation say it is an unreasonable demand for certain groups such as caregivers, students, and retirees. Hong Kong Watch, a UK-based rights organization, surveyed 2,000 Hong Kongers under the BN(O) plan and found only 38 percent of the respondents said they could satisfy the income requirement. It also found that only 28 percent of the participants were confident in reaching the proposed upper intermediate English level.

Faced with the prospect that new immigration rules could upend their lives, YouTubers have created videos to inform fellow immigrants about the latest updates on the BN(O) plan. Hong Kong immigrants have also lobbied their members of Parliament to urge the British government to exempt them from possible immigration changes. In Nottinghamshire, Wong and about 500 other Hong Kongers signed a petition in November addressed to their parliamentarian.

As a follow-up, about 60 of them met with that member of Parliament in mid-January in the town of Worksop to express their concerns over the proposed immigration requirements. One couple said that raising the English standard to upper intermediate would force them to divorce to ensure their children have a future in the UK. The wife’s English falls below the proposed standard enough that she would need to return to Hong Kong, while her English-proficient husband would remain in the UK with their children.

Other immigrants said they would return to Hong Kong if the British government abruptly enacted the proposed requirements, according to Law. While Law has already applied for permanent residency under the previous requirements in March, she noted the difficulty Hong Kongers in the UK face in returning home.

For instance, if her family had to return, her eighth-grade daughter wouldn’t be able to catch up to the Chinese standard at a local Hong Kong school, so Law would need to send her to a more expensive international school. Law and her husband would struggle to afford school tuition, secure a job, and find suitable housing, as they’ve already sold their Hong Kong property.

Still, Law sees immigration-related challenges as opportunities for spiritual growth. Some non-Christian immigrants came to faith in the UK after finding community and support from the church. And within Law’s Christian immigrant community, believers encourage each other to have more faith in God.

“We’ve already been through big trials, going from not finding a job to finding one, not adapting to English to persevering through many difficulties, so our faith has grown a bit and that lets us have faith to keep enduring,” she said.

Hong Konger Anne Ngai and her family also applied for permanent residency in March. Ngai, a youth pastor at a Chinese church in London, noted that some of her church members have decided to return to Hong Kong due to their inability to adjust to living in the new country. Others struggle with doubts that they can fulfill potentially more stringent immigration requirements. Weighing on many immigrants’ minds is the question of “Should I return [to Hong Kong] or remain not knowing if I can finally stay here?” Ngai said.

When she lived in the comfortable familiarity of Hong Kong, Ngai felt she had life under control. But since moving to a foreign country and dealing with countless new challenges–like getting a driver’s license, sorting trash, getting her boiler fixed, and navigating the subway system without internet access underground–she sees more clearly how God protects and provides for her. “God is very true and real,” she said.

Back in Nottinghamshire, Wong said that even moving to the UK is not a full escape from Beijing’s influence. In January, the UK government, under the ruling left-wing Labor Party, allowed Beijing to build a “mega-embassy” in London despite opposition from activists who fear the site could facilitate surveillance on dissidents.

As he and his wife face hurdle after hurdle on their immigration journey, Wong has learned that perseverance in faith is crucial. He pointed to 1 Corinthians 10:13—“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be temptedbeyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” In the context of the Israelites’ failure to remain obedient to God, Wong noted the way out that God provides to believers is not necessarily a quick, easy escape, but rather perseverance itself.

He also clings to the importance of living in the present as expressed in Ecclesiastes 3. Rather than worrying excessively about the future and things outside one’s control, “in the present, you can discover the Lord’s grace, you can see the Lord work,” Wong said. The present is part of eternity, he said, and even food and family are part of God’s eternal graces.

“When what’s ahead is so uncertain and the world is so chaotic and broken,” Wong said, “we have to hold on to these things so we know we are now in eternity and the Lord has not abandoned us.”

- More from Joyce Wu

Books

Excerpt

Sorting out Truth and Lies After Divorce

Vaneetha Rendall Risner

An excerpt from This Was Never the Plan: Walking With God Through the Heartache of Divorce.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, The Good Book Company

After my divorce, I questioned everything about myself, so whenever outsiders implied that I was even partly to blame for what happened, it hit a nerve. I still remember reading an article weeks after my ex had left that made me even more insecure, and that may or may not have inspired my purchase of a dartboard.

The author said, “After talking with thousands of married couples, I have seldom found a loving, submissive woman with a husband who is abusive or immoral.” He went on to encourage women to suffer with a quiet and patient spirit under any type of mistreatment. The article used Scripture to defend this position, sending me into a rage and solidifying my fear that most Christians were silently judging me for being divorced.

Please know I am not against submission. But biblical submission doesn’t mean putting up with abuse, and a lack of submission cannot be the underlying cause of a spouse’s abusive or immoral behavior. My ex felt that I modeled biblical submission and encouraged me to give talks on it, which I did. But my submission did not save my marriage.

At the same time, I wasn’t blameless in my marriage. Far from it. I acted self-righteously, believing I was never wrong. I said unkind things with a condescending tone. I was critical when I could have been compassionate. And that’s just for starters.

That’s the tension—discerning what is and isn’t actually ours to own. Some of us tend to blame ourselves for everything, constantly replaying what we could have done differently. Others of us instinctively excuse ourselves, shifting the blame elsewhere. And most of us swing between the two, unsure of what’s truly our responsibility. So how do we know what we are truly accountable for and what we’re unfairly carrying?

I had to learn to separate what was truly my responsibility from what others tried to put on me. Maybe you’ve wrestled with that too. Perhaps you’ve been unfairly blamed for things outside of your control, or maybe there are places where God is gently convicting you. We all need wisdom to see the difference. Divorce made me doubt myself, whispering lies that I was all too willing to believe. Here are some of the lies I told myself and the truths I needed to hear.

Lie: I wasn’t enough, or maybe I was too much.

I thought something was inherently wrong with me. Do you wonder whether your spouse would have kept their promises if you were more attractive, in better shape, smarter, more athletic, funnier, less needy, not so talkative, or more outgoing?

Truth: I am enough as I am.

My worth is not defined by my ex’s actions. We are all defined by God’s love for us. You are made in God’s image and are inherently valuable, deserving of love and respect, and God wants you to know that. Don’t let your spouse’s words or actions devalue you.

Lie: If I’d acted differently, this wouldn’t have happened.

I assumed it was somehow my fault. Perhaps you’re beating yourself up, wondering whether, if you’d been more attentive, supportive, or fun, or had taken on different responsibilities, this wouldn’t have happened.

Truth: You’re not responsible for someone else’s actions.

I wasn’t responsible for the choices my ex made. Everyone is accountable for their own actions, so don’t blame yourself or feel guilty about a situation you couldn’t control.

Lie: I failed to notice the warning signs or to fix the relationship.

I felt responsible for fixing our relationship. Perhaps you’re wondering whether you could have saved your marriage if you had noticed signs of trouble earlier and had initiated something—conversations, changes, counseling, or some other kind of intervention.

Truth: You cannot save a relationship by yourself.

Since marriage involves two people, I couldn’t put the burden solely on myself to figure out what was wrong. Each person needs to be honest about what’s going on with them. You might reflect on when your situation changed in order to learn from that, but don’t take responsibility for what isn’t yours to own.

Just identifying the lies and reading the truth won’t automatically change your perception. But it is a first step. Whenever you realize you are putting yourself down and accepting responsibility for what was never your fault, begin replacing it with the truth. Keep reminding yourself that you are a beloved child of God and ask him to keep putting what’s true in front of you.

I want you to heal from the pain you’ve endured. For me, an integral part of healing was looking at my own heart and seeing areas where I needed to change. We’ve all been wounded, and we’ve all wounded others. None of us are completely innocent.

If you’re like me, those words might make you feel defensive. Perhaps your ex deeply wronged you, but now somehow you’re the one under a microscope, with strangers and friends speculating on what you’re doing wrong. Please know that this chapter is not meant to elicit guilt or condemnation but rather to move you toward wholeness. Our sin entangles us—recognizing what’s holding us back will help us to grow and to heal.

Let’s begin by praying:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you
and lead me along the path of everlasting life. (Ps. 139:23–24, NLT)

Then, as you ask God to search your heart, you’ll likely become aware of ways in which you’ve been tempted to turn your back on God and find relief on your own. Satan wants to exploit your pain, pushing you into anger and bitterness or swamping you with guilt. He wants to pull you away from God when you need him most. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told his disciples to pray that they wouldn’t fall into temptation (Luke 22:40). He knew that in the coming hours, days, and perhaps even years of suffering, each would have unique temptations that they needed to bring to God.

While everyone’s struggles are particular to their temperament and past experiences, we all contend with destructive ways in which we respond to ourselves, to others, and to God. Each destructive path will promise relief from the pain, but none will ever deliver. Only God can.

Vaneetha Rendall Risner is author of This Was Never the Plan: Walking with God Through the Heartache of Divorce. This article is a lightly edited excerpt from the book, published with permission from the Good Book Company.

- More from Vaneetha Rendall Risner

Books

Review

Put Not Your Trust in Techno-Kings

Jeffrey Bilbro

A new book on Elon Musk examines his wide influence, impressive achievements, and flawed ideology of centralization

Illustration by @‌richchane

Elon Musk may be the most polarizing figure in our polarized society—or at least Donald Trump’s only credible rival for that crown.

To show my cards at the outset, I’m not a fan. But reading Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff, gave me a grudging respect for Musk’s real achievements. While venture capitalist Marc Andreessen proclaimed that “software is eating the world,” Musk pivoted to building rockets, cars, robots, tunnel-boring machines, and brain chips. His impressive record of making stuff—real stuff—sets him apart from most other tech titans.

Slobodian and Tarnoff are critical of Musk too, but they demonstrate how Muskism defines our economy much as Fordism shaped America’s 20th-century industrialization. Beneath the madness of Musk’s online trolling is a method we’d do well to understand.

But we should also recognize that, alongside its genuine successes, this method has a heresy at its core. As Christians, we await not a “Techno-king,” Musk’s official title at Tesla, but a Messiah whose kingdom is not of this world.

Muskism opens with its weakest chapter, which considers the motives that led Musk’s maternal grandfather to immigrate to South Africa, implying Elon shares his ancestor’s racism. While the authors acknowledge that Musk has a “conflicted” relationship with his birthplace and was “alienated by the machismo that dominated white South African society,” they still insist, “Apartheid South Africa was the cradle of Muskism.”

The chapter relies mostly on speculation about his childhood, and—given that Musk secured a Canadian passport and left the country at just 17 to avoid military service—it seems unwarranted to saddle him with the evils of apartheid.

The next three chapters are better. They chart the early years of Musk’s career and identify key features of his modus operandi.

First, when the dot-com crash led tech companies to consolidate markets to turn a profit, Musk “moved in the opposite direction.” He invested the millions he made selling his first startup into making rockets and colonizing Mars. You can’t disrupt the aerospace and automobile industries simply by spinning up new software; you have to solve difficult engineering and logistical challenges. Mars hasn’t happened (yet), but Musk’s SpaceX drastically reduced the cost to launch satellites and succeeded in ferrying astronauts where legacy giants like Boeing embarrassingly failed.

Second, while libertarian rhetoric is the norm in Silicon Valley, Musk tends to collaborate with the state and often profits by providing platforms for government infrastructure. Musk himself has noted how state investment creates opportunity for private profit, drawing a parallel between tech companies benefiting from federal defense research that led to the internet and aerospace companies benefiting from NASA’s research.

SpaceX got its start fulfilling government contracts, and Tesla survived hard times by landing a large government loan. While Tesla paid back that loan early, it continued to benefit from federal incentives lowering the price of electric cars, and SpaceX has thrived on NASA contracts and on selling its Starlink internet service to governments alongside individual customers.

The US and other governments now pay Musk’s companies for “sovereignty as a service” in the same way they hire private security contractors such as Blackwater or contract with Palantir for information analysis. In 2025, Musk’s xAI signed a $200 million contract to give the US government access to Grok, its AI tool. Muskism doesn’t seek freedom from government; it seeks profit.

Third, Muskism combines principles from software development with vertical integration in a model that Slobodian and Tarnoff call “lean Fordism.” Silicon Valley, the land of “move fast and break things,” gave Musk experience with the power of iterating quickly and learning from failure. As Musk has said of SpaceX’s philosophy, “If we’re not blowing up engines, we’re not trying hard enough.” He has adapted elements of Toyota’s “lean production” methods to give Tesla engineers quick feedback.

What makes Muskism distinctive is how it combines the “fail-fast experimentalism” of agile development with the vertical integration championed by Henry Ford. Ford’s own implementation didn’t always succeed, and by the 1990s, globalization made just-in-time supply chains the more popular solution to lowering costs. Musk bucked these trends by bringing more production in-house.

Instead of outsourcing electric batteries for his cars, for instance, he built the “gigafactory” to make components for Teslas. Amid rising tensions between the US and China, the return of tariffs, and the disruptions of COVID-19, Musk’s insistence on controlling the entire production process proved prescient.

The second half of Muskism examines what the authors call Musk’s “cyborg turn”—his growing interest in social media that culminated in his purchase of Twitter (now X); his work on AI and brain-computer interfaces; his concerns about the “woke mind virus”; his crypto boosterism; and his role in Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) program. Yet what the book terms a “turn” obscures the continuity between the various personae that Musk wears. “Carbon Musk” and “Cyborg Musk” share the same DNA.

At its core, Muskism is a response to the disruption and uncertainty of contemporary life. If you want security, you need to control essential infrastructure: cars, factories, rockets, the internet, social media, AI. If the wrong people control them, disaster may ensue, so guarantee that the right people have control.

But this approach doesn’t fundamentally challenge the underlying dynamics set in motion by highly centralized networks. A more radical response to the existential risks posed by our dependence on far-flung, brittle infrastructure would embrace creaturely limits and seek decentralized, resilient forms of exchange. Muskism instead demands access to the “God mode” of total, centralized power. As the authors note, rather than looking to escape from the matrix, Musk wants to control it.

If you squint, you can almost make out a more decentralized road not taken. Widespread batteries and solar panels could make the electrical grid more resilient, and crypto’s promise has always been its peer-to-peer transactions. But Tesla—or any hacker—retains control of all its cars and can use its cameras and microphones to surveil drivers. And crypto remains prone to corruption or to celebrity influencers—like Musk—who manipulate its value.

Twitter is a case in point. Musk became frustrated with its role in spreading “the woke mind virus,” but “instead of seceding from the network, he [determined he] would take control of it,” Muskism’s authors write. The company had plenty of problems when Musk purchased it, and while he may have made it more profitable, it’s hard to argue that Muskism has made X a haven for civil conversation (though it has become a valuable source of training data for Grok). The fundamental problem isn’t the algorithm; it’s the scale.

Musk has also taken this approach with AI. He founded OpenAI out of concern about the damage that a rogue or misaligned AI could cause. When he lost control of that organization, he launched Grok instead. Yet training a reliable, “truth-seeking” AI is proving as impossible as running a large-scale social media platform in a way that serves truth and genuine understanding.

Muskism’s authors chart major Grok missteps, including when it called itself “MechaHitler” after a video-game character. Musk has confessed that “it is surprisingly hard” to guide AI between the Charybdis of (pardon his language) “woke libtard cuck” and the Scylla of “MechaHitler.” It may even be impossible.

Slobodian and Tarnoff observe that one approach to security is to airgap a computer, isolating it from any network by which hackers might access it. Musk consistently opts against that kind of solution. Instead, he personally takes control.

This mentality guided DOGE’s efforts to centralize government data across many agencies in a quest for efficiency and power. But as the authors point out, “Silos are not necessarily bad things. . . . The barriers between them can be safeguards—checks against overreach, misuse, and surveillance.” Even when it seems to succeed, Muskism leaves systems hypercentralized and therefore vulnerable to unprincipled tyrants and unforeseen disruptions.

For Musk, this is where Mars comes in: It’s the escape hatch if there’s a critical failure on Earth. If that seems far-fetched, keep in mind that it may, in fact, be easier to fly to Mars than to engineer social harmony and truth-seeking AI. For the rest of us, it’s prudent to know more about the techno-king shaping our society, and Muskism is a perceptive introduction, though the book has plenty of flaws.

Sometimes the authors indulge in dark insinuations or criticize Musk for things outside his control. They focus on his forays into European politics without acknowledging that, in fact, immigration and declining birth rates pose wicked political problems that more centrist and leftist parties have failed to address. They ignore that Musk isn’t responsible for elite failures and rising populist frustrations across the West.

These missteps are a good reminder that we shouldn’t get distracted by Musk’s flamethrowers and memes. Muskism is and will continue to be an influential ideology, and Christians can recognize its genuine accomplishments while rejecting its fundamental heresy.

Our hope does not lie in gaining “God mode” access and controlling essential platforms. If we place our hope in the return of the King who rode into Jerusalem on an ass, we’ll be freed to take up the work of loving our neighbor without fretting about what the future holds or the next Herod who thinks he’s on the throne. Some of us might even be freed to reimagine transportation and energy and communication in radically decentralized, convivial, redemptive ways.

Jeffrey Bilbro is professor of English at Grove City College and editor in chief at the Front Porch Republic. His most recent book is Words for Conviviality: Media Technologies and Practices of Hope.

- More from Jeffrey Bilbro

Ideas

Thou Art the Man

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

President Donald Trump’s diatribe against the pope—paired with his posting of a blasphemous AI-generated image—shows contempt for the things of God.

U.S. President Donald Trump walks to Air Force One on April 11, 2026 at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.

Tasos Katopodis / Stringer / Getty

After King David’s crimes against Bathsheba and her husband, the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to speak to him. Nathan began with a parable: a story of two men, one rich and one poor, the former rapacious and cruel and the latter his victim. As David was stirred to righteous anger, Nathan replied, in the famous rendering of the King James Version, “Thou art the man.”

That line came to mind as I read President Donald Trump’s weekend diatribe against Pope Leo XIV, which he soon followed with a post (later deleted) of an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus.

Trump shares image depicting himself as Jesus Christ. pic.twitter.com/LFsvjYGcgu
— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) April 13, 2026

Plenty could be said of the details of Trump’s comments about the pope. But more important, I think, is the posture this pair of posts evinces toward the things of God. Even if Trump is right on every issue he invokes—crime, COVID-19 closures, Iran, Venezuela, and the stock market—he’s still grotesquely wrong to elevate himself to the level of Christ and claim for himself authority over Christ’s church.

The elevation in that image is not debatable. It’s not generic self-aggrandizement. It’s not a classic political cartoon. It’s not, as Trump implausibly claimed, “me as a doctor, making people better.”

Nor is it just one more Trumpian exaggeration, as longtime commentator Geraldo Rivera suggested, and therefore something we shouldn’t take seriously. Nor yet is it something we should take “seriously, but not literally,” as is so often true of Trump. It’s sacrilege, plain and simple. It’s blasphemy.

I don’t say that because I’m “offended,” in Rivera’s term. My feelings aren’t really relevant here. I say it because I have functioning eyes, and I can see what this image is intended to convey.

And in case there were any lingering doubts, the president’s message to the pope clears them right up.

Donald Trump’s long post on Pope Leo. pic.twitter.com/gVDHDTdgXd
— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) April 13, 2026

Notice his phrase, over and over: “I don’t want a Pope who …” But where did he get the idea that his opinion would be relevant in the selection of a pope?

As an evangelical Protestant, I do not uphold the papacy. But Catholics are part of the body of Christ—“no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:3). And the purpose of a pope is not to please a president, nor should the perspective of a president have any bearing on picking a pope.

The pope is, fundamentally, a pastor, one of many shepherds of the flock. As a pastor, he is not immune to critique. But as with every pastor throughout the church, whether ministering in a backwoods chapel or in the Vatican, the person whose opinion matters is God.

In a brief statement responding to Trump’s post on Monday morning, the bishop leading the US Conference of Catholic Bishops observed that “Pope Leo is not [Trump’s] rival.” The president, I think, would agree. His post suggests he sees the pope not as a rival but as a subordinate, one more “world leader” who ought to bend to his own whims as the most powerful man on the planet. He says Leo should “focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician,” but his evaluation of Leo is entirely political.

Think again of that list of issues above: all politics. “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” Trump began his post, talking about the pontiff in language straight out of an election attack ad. Even his claim that Leo was chosen to be pope only “because he was an American, and [the Catholic church] thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump” is classic Trumpian politics—he loves nothing more than taking credit for politicians he’s endorsed winning their races. All this makes perfect sense if Trump considers the pope as a politician, and one inferior to himself.

This brings me back to Nathan and David. When the prophet revealed the king’s guilt, David immediately confessed. “I have sinned against the Lord,” he said. And though his sins were forgiven, he did not escape consequences, because what he had done had “shown utter contempt for the Lord” (2 Sam. 12:13–14).

Though I’m generally aligned with the pope’s views of Trump’s war in Iran, I won’t put his recent comments, the statements that drew the president’s outrage, on par with Nathan’s message for David. Scripture unambiguously says Nathan was sent to David by God (v. 1), and I can’t assign the same authority to Leo.

But I will say that the president is dead wrong to position himself as the pope’s superior, whether implicitly with his words or explicitly in that blasphemous and pointedly timed image. And while taking down the Jesus image is a start, it’s not David’s swift and unqualified confession. Trump says he has “nothing to apologize for,” but I can think of at least two things: challenging the lordship of Christ and showing contempt for the things of God.

Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

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Lie: I wasn’t enough, or maybe I was too much.

Truth: I am enough as I am.

Lie: If I’d acted differently, this wouldn’t have happened.

Truth: You’re not responsible for someone else’s actions.

Lie: I failed to notice the warning signs or to fix the relationship.

Truth: You cannot save a relationship by yourself.

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