‘The Secret Agent’ Explores Memory and Authoritarianism in Brazil

The Oscar-nominated film reminds viewers to learn from the past—and to share our stories with the next generation.

Kleber Mendonça Filho accepts the Best International Film award for “The Secret Agent” at the 2026 Film Independent Spirit Awards on February 15, 2026.

Amy Sussman / Staff / Getty

I was born just a few years after the end of a dictatorship.

As Brazil’s fledgling democracy struggled to its feet in the 1990s, I learned about what had come before in school, in movies, and in songs. But I would also sometimes ask my grandmother what it was like when the Brazilian military seized power in 1964, stamping out dissent for the next two decades. Her answer has always been the same: “I don’t remember very well.”

At the time, my grandmother was a divorced woman, raising three daughters while working grueling hours to provide a decent life for them. It’s entirely understandable why that era is a blur in her mind.

But I’ve been thinking about memory a lot recently after watching The Secret Agent, an unsettling film released late last year and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho.

From the country’s northeast, Mendonça Filho often explores an underappreciated region in his work. My own city, Recife, is almost its own character in this film. Born in Recife, the director—nicknamed KMF—has put down deep roots there and, in an act that is both protest and homage, has built his career telling stories set in the region.

It’s a protest because the country’s film and television industries are concentrated along the Rio–São Paulo axis, which often means stories about the Northeast and its people are told from the perspective of outsiders. And it’s an homage because Recife has long been a city of enormous importance to Brazil, especially culturally. The Northeastern capital is shaped by Dutch, Portuguese, Indigenous, and African influences. It is home to the first synagogue in the Americas and was the departure point for some of the first Jews who would later arrive in New York.

The Secret Agent tells the story of Marcelo, who is a technology specialist played by Wagner Moura, a Golden Globe nominee for best actor. And it demonstrates just how far the dictatorship reached, how it left no community untouched.

After moving from Recife to São Paulo for work, Marcelo returns to his home city in 1977, during the years of Brazil’s military dictatorship. The opening scene sets the film’s tone: A corpse lies abandoned at a roadside gas station in the countryside. No one—not even the station attendant—knows exactly what happened. Marcelo stops to refuel and, intrigued, tries to learn more. He fails. Two police officers arrive, notice the body, and do nothing. Instead, they intimidate Marcelo and extort a bribe before he can continue on his way.

Moura’s character continues, walking through Recife’s familiar streets and landmarks. Viewers feel a constant sense that every character is being watched and that everyone harbors secrets that may never come to light. KMF is unafraid of discomfort. His storytelling is not always easy to understand or immediately legible. It challenges audiences. The Secret Agent carries a weight and an uncertainty that resist precise description.

Most eerie, perhaps, is the feeling that The Secret Agent is being told by someone who does not know the entire story—or who, like my grandmother, has forgotten crucial parts of it.

Forgetting, in fact, is one of the film’s central themes. Marcelo retrieves his son in Recife, readying to flee the country as a powerful businessman from the Southeast hunts him. We never learn exactly why Marcelo is being pursued, and he himself seems unsure how his life reached that point. In the film’s final moments, we encounter Marcelo’s son, Fernando, now older and working at a blood donation center.

When asked about his father, he appears resentful—as if he has forgotten everything his father endured to survive.

This theme of memory is all too relevant in our world today as democracies around the world seem tempted to slide into dictatorship and autocracy. Here in Brazil, our memories of dictatorship frequently resurface in various ways, especially in recent years. We are a young democracy.

Memory is a powerful defense. The Spanish American philosopher George Santayana wrote in his 1905 book The Life of Reason that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Many of us have heard that famous quote at least once, and some of us could quote it from memory. But how many of us know our great-grandparents’ full names? Great-great grandparents? How many of us are willing to pass down the painful stories that don’t reflect ourselves or our societies the way we want them to?

When we lose touch with our own stories, we are in danger. And if we, as individuals and as societies, fail to learn from the mistakes of the past, we will inevitably repeat them—not because we want to but because we are fallen creatures, living in a world that constantly confronts us with our own capacity for evil.

Long before Santayana put those words on the page, God had already said the same.

In Ecclesiastes 12:1, God calls his people to remember him in their youth. In Psalm 105, the psalmist urges them to remember the wonders and mighty acts God performed on their behalf. In Isaiah 46:9, God commands his people to remember the former things of old. Throughout Scripture, remembering is not merely the preservation of memory; it is a command to learn, to allow what has happened in the past to shape how we walk toward the future, striving for what is good, true, and beautiful.

The Christian practice of the Lord’s Supper carries immeasurable spiritual significance, and it is also deeply formative in this respect. By repeating the same ritual again and again, we train our minds to remember that Jesus Christ died, rose again, and will return. “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24), Jesus tells his disciples. He knew his followers would have short memories, memories that often reject him and rush toward sin and addiction.

When God’s people forget what he has said or done, they do not simply lose information; they actively reject instruction. In Judges 3, when Israel “forgot the Lord” (v. 7) and worshiped the Baals and the Asherahs, they rejected the very first commandment given in Exodus 20: “You shall have no other gods before me” (v. 3).

We become what we learn and what we fail to learn. We are today the sum of what we have managed to remember and practice, whether consciously or not.

If Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, another Brazilian film that left its mark in last year’s Golden Globes, places a magnifying glass over the suffering of a family during the military dictatorship, The Secret Agent goes further, removing that lens and forcing us to confront society as a whole, a society that has trouble remembering.

The Secret Agent tells the story of a father who does everything he can to save himself and his son, only to fall into the hands of his persecutors; of a son who moves on with his life and forgets what truly happened; and of a society condemned to face the same villains over and over because it forgets its past. Amid this sea of forgetting, may we as Christians be a people who engage in the radical act of remembering: recollecting both the evil that surrounds and tempts us and the goodness of God, who writes our stories and carries us forward.

Mariana Albuquerque is project manager for CT Translations.

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Books

Review

Decoding the Supreme Court

Harvest Prude

Three books to read this month on politics and public life.

Illustration by Christianity Today

This piece was adapted from CT’s books newsletter. Subscribe here.

Sarah Isgur, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court (Crown, 2026)

With a purported 6–3 conservative majority, why is it that the Supreme Court is taking on fewer cases and overturning fewer precedents? Why is the Trump administration more likely to lose than to win its cases that reach the high court?

Sarah Isgur would love to tell you. Isgur, an editor at SCOTUSblog, has served in all three branches of government. Legal nerds will recognize her as host of The Dispatch’s flagship podcast, Advisory Opinions. (I overlapped with Isgur during my employment there.)

With the legislature mired in dysfunction and the executive branch making audacious power grabs, Isgur invites readers to better appreciate the Supreme Court’s role in preserving the rule of law. She acknowledges that the countermajoritarian institution is guaranteed to make all sides mad at some point or another, which is exactly what it has done. Currently, more Americans disapprove of the Supreme Court than approve of it.

But using her signature entertaining style to demystify both the high court and the justices who serve on it, Isgur mounts a defense of the court that is as credible as it is disarming. While an outspoken conservative herself, Isgur wants readers to take into account more than just the justices’ political dispositions and also measure their orientation to upholding institutions versus disrupting them. While pundits and partisans are quick to reach for a 6–3 split to explain the court’s ideological makeup, Isgur makes the case that it looks more like 3–3–3. That’s only one of many valuable insights in what I found to be an entertaining and informative read.

**Jacob Siegel, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)**

In his book debut, Tablet special features editor Jacob Siegelargues that modern society is in the grip of a surveillance state perpetuated by Big Tech, politicians, and a technocratic elite.

The boogeymen of Siegel’s work are primarily presidents (early on, Woodrow Wilson, and in the latter half of the book, Barack Obama), the national security complex (particularly the CIA), Silicon Valley tech companies (primarily Google), a technocratic elite (various figures), and the media (though there is little mention of the apparatus of right-wing press).

Under the guise of combating misinformation, this public–private partnership promotes sanctioned messages with the unquestioning devotion of religious zealots. Siegel cites examples of shifting public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic and social causes like Black Lives Matter. Those who run afoul of orthodoxy may find themselves the target of conspiracies themselves (like Donald Trump with Russiagate) or deplatformed. Meanwhile, the media suppressed damaging information on political allies.

Siegel raises legitimate questions about the reach of Silicon Valley giants, the actions of the national security apparatus, and the ability of the national press to hold experts and elites sufficiently accountable. But the book’s interesting premise undercuts its own effectiveness through selective and unbalanced anecdotes. It is largely silent on Republican errors while hypersensitive to Democratic abuses. Although Siegel decries the dangers of echo chambers, his work seems unlikely to make much headway outside its own.

**Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017)**

When I was a cub reporter, one of my early assignments was to cover Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. Calling the hearing contentious is an understatement; the upshot of that assignment was that I rapidly became familiar with the judiciary committee. I still remember one rant from a wonky, young senator from Nebraska who concluded that really, Americans needed to watch more Schoolhouse Rock! That senator was Ben Sasse.

A few years later, Sasse would leave Congress to become president of the University of Florida. Today, having taken on the behemoths of politics and education, he’s now facing a different beast entirely: a diagnosis of metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer. It’s not often that politicians do hourlong interviews that I would universally recommend as worth your time, but Sasse’s recent interview with Sola Media on mortality is a must-watch.

After you’re done with the interview, you may be inclined to pick up one of his books. I recommend The Vanishing American Adult. In it, Sasse contends that there is a “coming-of-age crisis” among American youth. This generation of unprepared adults, he argues, poses a great threat to the health of the American experiment. The uptick in mental health diagnoses, entertainment media addictions, and vices like pornography and overconsumption are pervasive challenges. The last few years have shown his prescient thesis undersold these issues.

Some of his corrections to encourage the cultivation of virtue and discipline for children are out of reach for all but select families: Not everyone can send a 14-year-old to a cattle farm or take the family abroad for a month. But other remedies are actionable. Expose kids to hard work, to people older and wiser, and to excellent literature. Do what you can to cultivate virtue, and that sometimes includes learning to suffer well.

While his remedies for these ills are too modest to combat the scale of the problems, his current vivid example of enduring suffering shows that he has done what many politicians have not—to practice what he’s preached.

Harvest Prude is national political correspondent at Christianity Today.

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Books

Jan Karon Looks Back on 89 Years of God’s Faithfulness

Jayson Casper

The author of the Mitford Years series married at 14, protested segregation, and wrote her first book at 57.

Image courtesy of Jen Fariello Photography

Roughly 80 years ago, Christian novelist Jan Karon, creator of the beloved 15-volume Mitford Years series, stood in front of a mirror and told herself she would be a writer.

Roughly five years ago, the New York Times best-selling author felt like she lost her “reason to live.”

Karon, whose books have sold tens of millions of copies, has lived a life as rich and varied as the characters in her stories. Tomorrow she turns 89.

Although Karon is adamant that she writes for a secular audience, her books bear a decidedly religious outlook. “So many people don’t know that God loves them,” she told CBS in 2005. “[But] he made us and that makes us pretty interesting to him.”

Karon’s central protagonist in the Mitford Years series is Father Tim Kavanagh, an Episcopal priest in a rural mountain town in the American South. A lifelong bachelor, he rebuffs romantic overtures, takes in a loveable but neglected boy, wins the affection of an oversize stray dog, and marries at age 62, all while providing a bit of hope—and laughter—to scores of neighbors in need of community.

Readers have found the same comfort in the books, longing to live in a place like Mitford.

Like Father Tim’s marriage, Karon’s literary career began later in life. She published her first book, At Home in Mitford, at age 57. But her spiritual story began 14 years earlier when she gave her life to Jesus. She detailed this journey in a letter to her acquaintence Jo, stored today with her papers at the University of Virginia archives. Karon invited Jo to also follow Christ, adding that she hoped she had not offended her in any way.

This typical gentle spirit comes through in Karon’s reassuring words to Jo, which in describing conversion may also describe the two halves of Karon’s life. “In abandoning what we were, we begin to find out who we are,” she wrote. “And who we are is, well, it’s a whole lot of what we were.”

Young Karon had it rough. Janice Meredith Wilson was born on March 14, 1937, in the Blue Ridge foothills of North Carolina. At age 3 she saw her parents divorce, and she went to live with her maternal grandparents. A self-described anxious and quiet nail biter, Karon would sit on the porch churning butter as “Mama” told stories. She slept on a bed made from furniture-mill scraps, where she would read a copy of Robert Frost’s poems bought with the family egg money.

First-grade teacher Nan Downs brought Karon out of her shell by encouraging her to write on the blackboard and clap the erasers. Around age 10, Karon wrote a tale inspired by Gone with the Wind and won the short story contest at school. Two years later, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with her mother, who had by then remarried. But at age 14, she dropped out of school to marry Robert Freeland, eloping to South Carolina, where it was still legal to wed so young. One year later, Karon gave birth to her only child, Candace. And at age 18, after a gun accident left her husband paralyzed, she divorced him and took a receptionist job at an advertising agency in Charlotte.

Bored of answering the phone, she started proposing ad copy. With a developing career, in her early 20s Karon married Bill Orth, a Unitarian chemist active in theater circles. She further nurtured her love of the creative arts, and in the early 1960s she launched “the South’s only independent literary quarterly,” Response, which won the praise of Harlem Renaissance leader Langston Hughes.

Race issues became important to Karon. At age 23, she joined one of Charlotte’s first civil rights protests, marching against segregated lunch counters. She fondly recalls holding placards next to two “Southern sisters” in their 80s, decked out in their hats, gloves, and pearl necklaces. Angry men shouted, spat, and threw lit matches as they walked by. But by the late 1960s, she and Orth divorced, and Karon married and obtained her now-famous last name from Arthur Karon, a clothing salesman.

Arthur moved the family to Berkeley, California, but they divorced three years later. Describing the city as “often in a state of civil warfare” due to the protest movements, Karon told Jo she felt her life was “breaking into fragments, coming apart in oddly-shaped pieces.” She longed for the familiarities of home, like Hickman’s Drug Store’s five-cent ice cream and fancy hats at church on Sunday. Yet she hated her past and its “death centered” Christianity. Her grandparents, she complained, kept an Old Testament household.

“It was all locusts, fleas, and floods,” Karon told CT. “Pick your nose and go to hell.”

Only later did she learn the lesson that “nothing pushed on us can soften the heart. … [That] only comes from being loved.”

In 1970, Karon, who by then was thrice divorced, brought Candace back to Charlotte, where she resumed her advertising career. Though Karon recalled the comforting image of Jesus holding a lamb, she dabbled in Eastern religions. Still discontented, she took a six-week road trip to New England in a rundown Volkswagen bus before settling down in an old farmhouse deep in the North Carolina countryside.

Living on subsistence wages as she did freelance advertising work, Karon called the next two years a “healing process”—both the most trying and the most nourishing time in her life. Contemplating azaleas blooming from the earthen-red clay, she began to pray.

Karon’s fledgling faith survived a 1974 move away from quiet farm life as she occasionally attended a “liberal” church and prayed from time to time, she wrote to Jo. Her career improved steadily, but five years later at age 42, Karon lost her job as a TV producer. A turning point came in May 1980, when for the first time she fell to her knees to pray.

“I don’t know what to pray for,” Karon told God. “I’m just here, and I need help and just change me.” She asked God simply to be gentle with her.

Nothing happened. Perhaps that was the answer she needed. There was no clap of thunder, no angels at her bedside, she said. If anything, she was afraid God would send her to Africa as a missionary. But slowly, everything changed. Little by little, Karon said, she learned that God loved her—and even more slowly, that God also forgave her.

Life carried on, only more successfully. In 1987, Karon and a colleague won the advertising industry’s top Steven E. Kelly Award for their ad and split a $100,000 prize. A year later she quit her job, traded her Mercedes for a used Toyota, and moved back to the country in hope of becoming a writer.

The idea for Father Tim came in a vision of sorts as Mitford unfolded in her mind. Aware that a Baptist preacher conjured too many negative literary stereotypes, Karon crafted him as an Episcopalian, she said. His life began as a weekly serial publication in the local Blowing Rocket newspaper of Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Karon drew the illustrations. They paid her with a free copy of the 10-cent paper.

Circulation surged. But despite the local acclaim, Karon struggled through 11 publishing house rejections before Lion, a small Christian press, accepted At Home in Mitford. Two novels followed, as she used all her marketing skills to self-promote the books. But there was no national market for wholesome stories of simple characters, let alone with a Christian theme, Karon told World magazine. People preferred Stephen King.

“I don’t give you much of a ride. I just give you sort of a float!” Karon stated. “A lot of people tell me that my books put them to sleep, and I consider that a huge compliment.”

Her breakthrough came through well-connected word of mouth. Karon’s friend shared the first Mitford book with the owner of a bookstore in Raleigh. The owner then passed it on to a New York agent, who put it before an editor at Viking Penguin—who happened to be the daughter of a Lutheran minister. In 1996, the publisher purchased all three titles.

By the end of the decade, Karon was a best-selling author.

In 2000, Karon moved to a historic farm near Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello estate in Virginia. More novels followed, including A Common Life, a retrospective look at Father Tim’s wedding adventure; In This Mountain, where the now-retired cleric watches his adopted son become a veterinarian; and Shepherds Abiding, a Christmas quest to restore a derelict Nativity scene.

Karon even wrote a Mitford-themed cookbook.

But some controversy came with the 2007 publication of Home to Holly Springs. After receiving a cryptic unsigned letter asking Father Tim to return to the Mississippi hometown he has long left behind, the priest discovers he has a long-lost Black half brother.

The Virginia archive reveals some readers were grateful the nonpolitical Mitford series now confronted racism. Others were offended. Karon chaffed at the notion that this was a new turn in her writing. Over the course of the novels, Miss Sadie, an elderly member of Father Tim’s congregation, develops a warm relationship with her friend Louella, who is Black and moved from the city to be her caretaker.

Yet Karon was deliberate with the Holly Springs story line. It is common in the South to have unknown siblings and unacknowledged interracial extended family, she said, though the issue is never talked about. And since Father Tim from earlier stories lamented being an only child, she decided to fix that.

“I gave him a brother,” Karon said, “and the reader a look at brotherhood.”

Karon’s work is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike—and suitably adapted by both audiences. In 2003, Focus on the Family produced At Home in Mitford as a radio drama. Fourteen years later, The Hallmark Channel produced it as a made-for-TV rom-com.

Karon’s publishing pace has since slowed amid a family tragedy. She published her 14th Mitford book in 2017, followed by a Father Tim compendium of spiritual nuggets the year after. But in 2021, her daughter died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 68, throwing the author into despair. She told CT she lost her desire to live, as Candace was the “sunshine” in her life.

Some preached sermons at her—Aren’t you a Christian?—as Karon struggled with depression, she said. But she went to God on her knees, honest about her faults and mistakes. And then, she threw herself into a different kind of storytelling.

That year, Karon founded The Mitford Museum and housed it in her former North Carolina elementary school. Its first gallery is her first-grade classroom, returning full circle to Nan Downs and the influence she had on a frightened country girl. Currently the project is constructing the Mitford Discovery Center, a hands-on workshop and art space meant to help others uncover the hidden gifts they have to offer the world.

“To be seen is marvelous,” Karon said.

And last October, she published her 15th Mitford novel, My Beloved, resurrecting an unfinished short story she rediscovered while navigating her grief. It’s a whimsical tale, and Karon said that remembering Candace gave it a depth that goes beyond the surface-level laughter. She is now researching for a new book about 16th-century Italy following a monthlong visit to the country.

Perhaps Karon’s journey has been more adventurous than those of her village-settled characters. But as she told Jo, who she is now, after following Jesus, retains a whole lot of what she was before. From falling apart in Berkeley to finding a new story in Rome, from joining protest marches to writing about interracial families, from discovering God’s love to illustrating it for others through Father Tim, Jan Karon has been a witness to millions.

“This is life,” she said, “and it taught me how to write books.”

Additional reporting by Harvest Prude.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that Karon contemplated suicide after her daughter’s death. It also misstated the relationship between the characters Miss Sadie and Louella.

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History

The Year of the Evangelical

Daniel Silliman

America prepared for a bicentennial, and religious identity dominated the presidential campaign.

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

CT started 1976 on a contrarian note. As the nation prepared to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, a Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary professor argued that the real birth of America happened not in 1776 but in 1740. The January 1976 cover story argued, “We’ve picked the wrong year.”

What occurred in [1740] was nothing less than an inner American revolution, a spiritual declaration of independence that made the political reshuffling thirty-six years later an inevitability. The year 1740 was the crest of that wave of spiritual power called the Great Awakening. …

The message of personal commitment and individual decision central to the Awakening reached a wider audience than the issue of taxation without representation. The merchant class of the port cities might be inflamed by the irritating tax laws, but how much popular appeal did that issue have? Colonial America was a rural society. One authority states that only one out of twenty Americans lived in the city. While Boston was certainly a powerful radiating center, it could influence only a minority in the northern colonies, and by no means the whole seaboard.

To inflame the colonists sufficiently against Great Britain there had to be embers that were rekindled by the taxation issue, not created by it. The spiritual independence fostered by the Great Awakening saturated the colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia, from the Atlantic deep into the Appalachians.

Secondly, as a cause for rebellion the Great Awakening had a deeper appeal than the taxation issue. The spiritual appetite aroused in 1740 created a search for “something more,” a dissatisfaction with the status quo that refused to fade with time. Two centuries before, the Puritans of England had followed religious impulses that led to the beheading of King Charles. Is it any less likely that in 1740 transformed hearts would seek a transformed society and would want to free themselves once again from a monarch’s rule?

Most Christians, of course, were happy to celebrate 1776. CT reported that more than 1,000 overtly religious celebrations across the country were “thanking God for America.”

These endeavors range from production of a new hymnal, drama and musical presentations, and a conference on religious liberty to bell-ringing and large-scale outreach efforts. In addition to the officially recognized projects are many by individual churches and other religious groups in just about every city in the land. They all add up to a gigantic religious celebration of the nation’s first two hundred years.

The [American Revolution Bicentennial Administration] wants every bell in America rung on July 4 for two minutes at 2 p.m. EDST (11 A.M. Pacific time) when the Liberty Bell will be rung in Philadelphia. The American Bible Society is promoting participation by churches in the bell-ringing observance. In conjunction with it, the ABS is distributing to churches and synagogues a copper-colored bell-shaped pamphlet containing verses from Isaiah 61 and bearing the title “Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land.”

CT’s regular arts column, Refiner’s Fire, noted a surge of interest in science fiction in the 1970s but couldn’t decide what it meant.

Michael Crichton’s Andromeda Strain may have contributed to bringing scifi out of the closet. Crichton placed the action of the novel in the near enough future to avoid the fantastic ethos that has usually been a part of this genre.

The most visible evidence of the new popularity of science fiction is the continual replaying of the television series “Star Trek.” It has gathered a group of fanatical fans among the young. …

All this new activity may be deeply significant or it may simply mean that the Saturday morning “Jetson” fans have grown up and are unwilling to leave science fiction behind. I leave that profound determination to someone else. …

The subjects of science fiction are overwhelmingly politics, technology, and their interaction. Religion, sex, and other interesting social activities normally appear only peripherally or occasionally.

A review of Bob Dylan’s music—from his early protest songs through his electric turn and the Rolling Thunder Revue tour—reached sharper conclusions about his “almost Christian” music.

He views man in the light of the cosmic struggle between good and evil. Man must choose to follow God and truth or fall into death, decay, and ultimate judgment. …

Bob Dylan pioneered the message song; he remains at its forefront. He asks metaphysical questions and tries to give some answers, which are less than Christian. But he has affected many young people and continues to do so. We need to understand what kind of spiritual guidance he gives.

CT also reviewed some notable names in literary fiction, including Saul Bellow, Joyce Carol Oates, and the madcap maximalist conspiracy-theory capers of Thomas Pynchon.

The vision of Pynchon is one of apocalypse, of decadence, of a streamlined Doomsday Machine tooling, to the accompaniment of a kazoo chorus, down “the street of the twentieth century, at whose far end or turning—we hope—is some sense of home or safety. But no guarantees” (V.).

At age thirty-nine, Thomas Pynchon is perhaps one of the most accomplished American writers of our time. He has published short stories in various magazines, but his reputation rests primarily on his three novels. … He synthesizes philosophy, sociology, science (he was an engineering major at Cornell), popular culture, the humanities, and theology. And his novels are brilliant collages of literary modes and styles, defying classification. One reviewer commented that it is easier to nail down a blob of mercury than to describe a novel by Pynchon.

The three novels have been aptly characterized as an extended meditation on the twentieth century.

CT’s most controversial article of the year challenged readers to rethink the way they understood the gospel, taking cues from James Cone’s Black liberation theology. The author, described as “an angry evangelical from Chicago,” wanted readers to join him in the declaration, “Down with the Honky Christ—Up with the Funky Jesus.”

Most white people understand what a black person means when he calls someone a “honky.” If they can’t define it verbally they feel what it means—oppressor, bigot, slave-trader, exploiter, and in many ways, middle-class. A honky belongs to the status quo, the safe, the comfortable.

“Funky,” on the other hand, may be a new term to many of you. In black parlance funky often has certain positive connotations. For example, if I call a song funky I mean that either voice or instrument stepped creatively from behind the strictures of the notes, boldly and freely authenticating his or her own soul in the rendition of the number. Funky stands opposite to honky—liberated, authentic, creative.

These two adjectives used in relation to the Gospel incarnate in Jesus pinpoint the problem I see in traditional evangelical circles, black or white. We and our leaders have been preaching a honky Christ to a world hungry for the funky Jesus of the Bible. The honky Christ stands with the status quo, the funky Jesus moves apart from the ruling religious system. Jesus stood with and for the poor and oppressed and disinherited. He came for the sick and needy.

A Black Baptist minister from Boston offered a more measured reflection on the racial politics of the era, looking at efforts to integrate public schools through busing programs.

First, the problem is racism. Certain minorities are not wanted, not liked, and/or feared. Many bugaboos, superstitions, and stereotypes have been resurrected, if they ever were dead, against blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities.

Second, some people have found the issues of integration and busing advantageous. Because of greed and overt political ambition, they are willing to exploit the school situation for their own self-aggrandizement and political advancement.

Third, too many flame-feeders wanted to keep the busing crisis alive because they have profited by it, particularly in overtime pay, while the situation remained heated. That is the economical issue.

Psychologically, the cost of busing cannot be measured …

The big political story of the year was the presidential election. The Democrats nominated Jimmy Carter, a populist peanut farmer who told people he was a “born again” Christian, to run against incumbent Gerald Ford. The candidates’ religious commitments became a major campaign issue.

Ford is open, though not vocal, about his religious views. A lifelong Episcopalian, he credits the spiritual deepening of his life in recent years to involvement in prayer groups, study of the Bible, and the influence of other Christians, especially evangelist Billy Zeoli.

In a letter to Zeoli he stated that he had received Christ as his personal saviour and was being helped through prayer and Bible study (he and Zeoli study together periodically using the paraphrased Living Bible). He encouraged his son Michael to select an evangelical seminary. But he smokes a pipe, dances, and drinks cocktails before supper, and these practices disturb many conservative Christians (Episcopalians traditionally have not looked on them as vices). …

Carter, a Southern Baptist who takes a regular turn teaching a men’s Sunday-school class at the rural Plains (Georgia) Baptist Church, is the most outspoken of the four about his faith. He grew up in the church but not until 1966 did he have a conversion experience. He won’t discuss details but says he emerged from the experience a transformed person and began spending a lot of time in prayer and Bible reading.

He said he spent more time on his knees during the four years he was governor than in all the rest of his life put together. He tells his critics that he’s never tried to use his position as a public official to promote his beliefs, adding, “and I never would.” But whatever role he might have in the future, he explains, it will be with the same personal relationship with Christ he’s had in the last ten years.

The year 1976 seemed like “the year of the evangelical.” Political reporters asked candidates if they were “born again,” and analysts asked each other, “Will evangelicals swing the election?”

It is commonly acknowledged that America’s fastest-growing religious configuration is the evangelical Protestant community, whose current size is usually estimated to be some 40 million members—or at least 20 per cent of the population. If this percentage is projected to the electorate, it means that of, say, 80 million votes cast in the presidential election, 16 million will be by members of evangelical churches (both inside and outside the big denominations) and by those who identify with evangelical cultural traditions.

Evangelical voters are strongly concentrated in eleven southern states and six border ones (Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and Oklahoma). They are also found in fairly large numbers in several midwestern and north-central states (such as Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska). The southern and border states have 177 electoral votes, and Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska have 33, for a total of 210. This is short of the 270 needed for election, but evangelicals in other states (Ohio and Pennsylvania, for example) could provide the victory margin in a close election.

It is the candidacy of former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday-school teacher that has people talking about a possible evangelical voting bloc. Carter’s public expression of down-home religious commitment has raised questions—and eyebrows—for some voters (especially Jewish ones), but it has unquestionably gained him evangelical support. Evangelicals and Carter speak the same born-again, Christ-is-my-Saviour language.

Not all evangelicals were happy with Carter. Some specially questioned his judgment when he gave an interview to Playboy, known for its nude centerfolds, and were disappointed by his stand on the moral issue of abortion.

Carter’s positions appear ambiguous to some evangelical critics. His views on abortion have evoked the most vocal controversy to date. Contrary to many accusations, Carter says he had no input at all on the Democratic platform plank on abortion. That plank opposes a constitutional amendment to limit abortion. Carter says his position is similar, “but I would have worded it differently.” He also states that he personally opposes abortion and “will do everything possible to minimize its need” if he is elected President.

In a speech for anti-abortion candidate Ellen McCormack, convention delegate James Killilea cited opposition to Carter on the abortion issue by a Catholic writer and by Harold O. J. Brown, a teacher at Trinity seminary in suburban Chicago and a leader in the anti-abortion Christian Action Council. In describing Brown as “an evangelical like [Carter],” he quoted the theologian as saying: “For someone to say that he is morally opposed to abortion and then that he is against doing anything to stop the present flood of abortions is rather like Pontius Pilate’s action in washing his hands at the trial of Jesus.”

One pro-life picket outside the hall carried a sign saying, “Carter is nothing but a 621-month-old fetus.”

Many Republicans didn’t seem interested in talking about faith and tried to tamp down religious messages at the national convention. CT called readers’ attention to one conservative who seemed different: Ronald Reagan.

Talk-show host George Otis of Van Nuys, California, recently interviewed former California governor Ronald Reagan on spiritual and moral issues. Excerpts of Reagan’s views: …

When you go out across the country and meet the people you can’t help but pray and remind God of Second Chronicles 7:14, because the people of this country are not beyond redemption. They are good people and believe this nation has a destiny as yet unfulfilled. …

I certainly know what the meaning of “born again” is. … In my own experience there came a time when there developed a new relationship with God and it grew out of need. So, yes, I have had an experience that could be described as “born again.” …

You cannot interrupt a pregnancy without taking a human life. And the only way we can justify taking a life in our Judeo-Christian tradition is in self-defense.

Carter won in November, receiving about 1.6 million votes more than Ford. CT’s editor in chief reflected on what that said about prayer.

I have been musing over an indisputable fact: some Christians were praying for the election of Jimmy Carter and others were praying for the election of Gerald Ford. All had their prayers answered—God said no to some and yes to others.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Church Life

Q&A: Eric Mason on Ministering to Men and Witnessing in Politics

Interview by Benjamin Watson

The Philadelphia-based pastor discusses how the church can engage Black men and have a biblical approach to government.

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

Church conversations about masculinity are rooted in biblical truth but can sound different among Black Christians who have to contend with false ideological and religious movements, such as the Nation of Islam.

The Just Life’s Benjamin Watson sat down with pastor Eric Mason, who leads Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philadelphia, to talk about how the church can better engage Black men and give them tools to chart their own course. Mason believes the church has lost the manhood talk and must think creatively about ministering to men. Watson and Mason also discuss biblical justice and how the Chrisitan should relate with the government during times of disagreement.

Here are edited excerpts from their conversation.

We’ve lost the manhood talk the same way we’ve lost the justice talk. Because if you think about it, what would the Evil One want most to take out of our conversations from a biblical perspective? He wanted to take our manhood, obviously, because of the leadership, because of the order, because of all the sorts of things we see in Genesis, and because of all the ills that have a tie directly to manhood (or lack thereof). But he’d also want to come in and frustrate the justice talk because it keeps people in pain and hurt and without restoration.

I do believe what you said in relation to it. I’m going to give you the perfect example. The Nation of Islam is falling apart. Nobody knows that. Mosque No. 12, which Elijah Muhammad’s son started in Philly, and all the mosques, they’re now meeting in, like, a house, like a small little row house with barely any people in it.

But what keeps them relevant is that [Louis] Farrakhan has mastered the ability to talk to men about their key buttons. One of the things that we’re missing is the reason Black men are attracted to these different groups is because they talk about what’s wrong with the country, what’s wrong with situations.

They tell the whole story.

They’re saying we have to be responsible, and they speak truth to power. I believe that we have to have a comprehensive message that includes those things within it, in relation to how we apply the gospel to the area of justice. Because that is an issue that men want to know about. [They’re asking,] What can I do to be a change agent?

There’s another thing I see with men. I remember I was talking about how to manage money, and how it took years for me to get my wife and me out of debt, pay off our student loans, credit cards, and all of that. I said I ended up having to get an accountant, a financial planner, and started an LLC. I didn’t realize how much the men were listening. They were like, “Hey, Pastor, talk to us more about that.” So I related it and said, “I had to begin to have a financial vision for my home. And I believe God is going to hold me responsible for that and [for] building generational wealth for my kids, even as a pastor.”

Now, we have financial seminars with hundreds of people there. And dudes are in there connecting that. They’re saying, Why didn’t anybody tell me this? Particularly in our community, because we’re not taught from childhood about money in a particular way.

Let’s talk about politics for a little bit from a justice perspective. Do you think the church has the primary role in bringing about and correcting injustice, or is it the government? Or is it a combination of both? Some people would say the government has created policies over time—we can name a litany of them—that have been unjust policies, and we see the ramifications of those. The government needs to be the one to fix those things.

Then others would say, I can’t trust the government for anything and it’s the church that has to lead when it comes to racial injustice, but also poverty, education. How do you navigate the balance? Whose responsibility is it?

I want to come back to that because I want to address a bigger issue. In the Western world, we have a very entitled way that we look at the relationship between the church and government that wasn’t afforded the people of God in history.

I just haven’t had the time to do it, but I wanted to do a biblical theology of the relationship of the people of God throughout Scripture and throughout history with government. I want to ask the Bible questions. Anywhere in Scripture, did it make it the people of God’s responsibility to fix government? I’m just asking the Bible a question.

Now, what do I see in the Bible? I do see that the people of God were always a prophetic voice to government. I always saw that. Now, you got to understand, they were under absolute monarchies. We’re in a democratic republic. I would say we’re in new orders when it comes to the relationship.

When you think about world history, yes.

Yes, until the Edict of Milan, Christianity was illegal. So even our relationship with government before then was different until the Edict of Milan.

We’re some pretty entitled, privileged Christians.

So you understand what I’m saying? So in us approaching the subject … I have to say, “No, no, let’s back up. What does the Bible teach our relationship with government is in the New Testament?”

It’s two things. I’m going to sound like a sellout, but it’s the Bible. Fundamentally, it’s going to speak out against injustice, pray for government, and support where we can biblically.

Titus chapter 3 verse 1 says, “Remind them to submit to rulers and authorities, to obey, [and] be ready for every good work” (CSB). So we’re not talking about obeying carte blanche. We’re talking about obeying as long as God’s cool with what you’re being obedient to.

As long as they’re not telling you to do something totally incongruent to the gospel.

Absolutely. This is what it says though: “To be ready for every good work.” That means to serve government. Then it says, “To slander no one, to avoid fighting, and to be kind, always showing gentleness to all people” (v. 2). Why? Because verse 3 is going to tell you: you were lost. So don’t slander government officials. This is what the scriptures are saying.

- More from Interview by Benjamin Watson

CT Responds to the ‘We Are Not a Monolith’ Statement

Marvin Olasky

A note from the editor in chief.

Andrey Cherkasov / Getty

Christianity Today does not have a large staff. Unlike the newspapers of old, we do not have dozens of beats, with a full-time reporter for each one. I don’t enjoy admitting it, but last year we had only one dedicated beat with a full-time reporter: immigration. Happily, that reporter is very dedicated and very talented: Andy Olsen in 2025 turned out numerous stories showing the tragic turn in immigration ultra-enforcement.

Here are just three of our 2025 headlines: “Migrants Pushed Chicago to the Brink. They Also Brought a Revival.” “ICE Goes After Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution.” “They Led at Saddleback Church. ICE Said They Were Safe.” These were deeply reported stories, not opinion pieces: street-level, not suite-level. But no one reading them would mistake which side CT was on: We headlined one story “The Churches That Fought for Due Process,” and CT fought for that as well.

In 2026, on this side of the chaos in Minneapolis, the Trump administration may be recalibrating. What comes next is up for debate throughout America, including among our Latino brothers and sisters in Christ. Late last month, Christianity Today published “ICE Is Devastating Some Latino Churches,” an opinion piece by Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC).

In it, Rodriguez offered his political conclusions after observing plummeting Sunday service attendance in predominantly Latino churches. He also saw what we had learned: Congregants fear they may be subjected to heavy-handed and indiscriminate federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Rodriguez has been a Trump supporter, and we welcomed his willingness to offer some criticism.

Others did not welcome that, noting that Rodriguez continues to support President Donald Trump. A coalition of Latino Christian leaders published an open letter—“We Are Not a Monolith, We Are a Multitude”—expressing “disagreement and concern with the media representation” of Rodriguez and his organization as “the primary voice representing the Latino evangelical community.” The group cited CT’s publication of the article as contributing to that notion.

That was not our intention. We thought it newsworthy that Rodriguez seemed to be backing away from some support of Trump. Maybe he is not: Time will tell. Regardless of what other media have done, we certainly did not say Rodriguez is “the primary voice” of Latino evangelicals, because as our coverage has shown, many Latinos (and others) vigorously oppose ICE policies. The NHCLC is important, but so are other organizations such as the National Latino Evangelical Coalition.

CT President and CEO Nicole Martin notes this: “CT has a robust record of speaking out against unjust immigration policies and practices. We take seriously the call of Christ to care for those in greatest need by elevating the stories of the most vulnerable (Matt. 25:40).”

She adds that Rodriguez’s article “speaks to the harsh realities facing Latino communities in America and the heartbreaking effects of federal enforcement in many churches. It is one piece of our extensive coverage of immigration under this administration, which includes on-the-ground reporting, listening and lament, and a diversity of opinion articles like this one.”

Martin concludes, “At CT, we know ethnic monoliths do not exist, believe Christians are called to compassion for immigrants, and appreciate the steadfastness of leaders consistent in their opposition to harsh immigration practices. We are committed to publishing a range of evangelical perspectives on this and other important matters.”

We take seriously the specific concern in the open letter that publishing Rodriguez’s column “reinforces the misleading notion that a single leader can speak for the breadth and diversity of the Latino Christian community.” But we know, and anyone aware of the variety of Latino experience and beliefs knows, that this is not the case. He is one well-known figure who wrote an op-ed.

We ask that CT be judged by the full breadth of our immigration coverage, especially stories by Andy Olsen and Emily Belz, and our commitment to publishing perspectives that represent the breadth and diversity of the Latino evangelical community. We grieve with those who grieve over the state of violence and the fear facing Latinos and immigrant communities in our country.

Sho Baraka, editorial director of CT’s Big Tent program, says CT “will never conform to the current media zeitgeist, which rewards insular ideas and homogeneous thinking. CT continues to honor our brothers and sisters in Hispanic and Latino churches and invites them to bless us with their voices, making a more integrated witness of Jesus’ church.”

We invite more Latino leaders and journalists, whether liberal or conservative, to propose op-eds of their own. Of course we won’t be able to publish all, but we will publish some. As John Milton wrote nearly four centuries ago, “Who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?”

Marvin Olasky is editor in chief of Christianity Today.

- More from Marvin Olasky

News

Christians in Southern Lebanon Debate Staying or Leaving

Ghinwa Akiki and Hunter Williamson in Beirut, Lebanon

Weary of another conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, pastors and congregants weigh their options and find comfort in Psalm 91.

Smoke from an explosion due to Israeli bombardment rises in the hills of Rmeich in southern Lebanon.

Vincenzo Circosta / Getty

Last Monday night, Micheline Nahra lay awake listening to the familiar sound of gunfire and explosions as the latest war between Hezbollah and Israel continued into its second day.

Located just two kilometers from Lebanon’s southern border with Israel, Nahra’s village, Deir Mimas, has been at the front lines of multiple conflicts between the two countries. As a Christian village unaffiliated with Hezbollah, Nahra and other Deir Mimas residents knew their village was not a target of the Israeli strikes, but that reassurance did little to alleviate the fears of the 56-year-old mother. (CT agreed not to use Nahra’s real name due to security concerns.)

The next morning, Nahra called her neighbor across the street to check in on her as she prepared for the arrival of her grandchild. Nahra stood on her balcony, looking out toward her neighbor’s house, which is located next to the home of an Orthodox priest. As the two women talked, an Israeli tank shell suddenly struck the neighbor’s and the priest’s houses.

“I saw the fire and the smoke in front of my eyes,” Nahra said.

Over the phone, she heard her neighbor screaming before she hung up. The neighbor wasn’t harmed, but the priest’s son was injured. Shortly after, the Lebanese Red Cross came and took him to a hospital.

Nahra is not sure why the houses were hit. Nonetheless, it reflected the growing danger facing thousands of Christians in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has long had a stronghold. An Israeli strike on the Christian-majority village of Qlayaa, which is near Deir Mimas, killed a Maronite priest Monday.

Since March 2, Hezbollah and Israel have been engaged in a full-scale conflict—their second in less than two years—as part of the wider Middle East war between the US, Israel, and Iran. In Lebanon, the fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, but in the country’s south, many Christians are choosing to stay in their homes despite intense ground fighting, airstrikes, and evacuation orders.

Immediately after the attack in Deir Mimas, Nahra, her husband, and their son packed their belongings and went to stay at her sister-in-law’s home in the center of the village where they believed they would be safer.

It was the fifth time that Nahra had been displaced in her lifetime.

The last time Nahra and her family fled the village was during the 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel. They relocated to Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. But this time, they are choosing to stay in Deir Mimas due to financial constraints, their attachment to the land, and fear of what could happen to their house if they leave.

During the last war, Israeli troops moved into Deir Mimas and entered people’s homes, including Nahra’s. “They damaged everything,” Nahra said. “They made it dirty. They stole a lot of things from the house. It was horrible.” Other residents in southern Lebanon reported similar accounts, with some homes covered in graffiti.

After a cease-fire agreement in November 2024, the family returned home and repaired what they could.

Choosing to stay, however, is neither easy nor safe. Nahra noted that rockets regularly fly over the village and an interceptor missile fell once on the roof of a home 50 meters away from where they are staying now. The fighting has also cut electricity to the village, forcing residents to rely entirely on generators and solar panels.

In the face of this danger, Nahra is leaning more on her faith and her church.

On Friday night, she gathered with fellow Catholics and Orthodox Christians at Saint Michael Church for a Lent service. Around 40 people attended, including the priest whose home was shelled and his son, who had returned from the hospital. Despite the sound of explosions, Nahra felt a sense of serenity as the congregation prayed and read from the book of Psalms.

Multiple passages touched her deeply, particularly Psalm 91, which speaks of God being a refuge in times of hardship.

“Every time I read it, I feel we are surrounded by God’s power,” Nahra said. “But yesterday in particular, I really felt his embrace.”

Some Christians in South Lebanon have chosen to flee to safer parts of the country, where locals have turned hundreds of public schools and private institutions into makeshift displacement shelters.

With a young infant and two elderly members in his family, Maroun Shammas felt it was not wise for his family to stay in Deir Mimas. Early last week, the pastor of Baptist Church of Deir Mimas made the difficult decision to leave the village.

He and his family first tried to evacuate on Tuesday, but after driving north, road closures caused by the threats of bombings forced them to turn around. The next morning, they made a second attempt. This time they succeeded, but the first stretch of the trip was eerie as the family drove along deserted roads.

After about two hours, they reached a seminary on the outskirts of Beirut that was hosting displaced families from Deir Mimas and other parts of Lebanon. It was the same place Shammas and his family stayed for a few months during the war in 2024.

Photo by Hunter Williamson

Pastor Maroun Shammas stands at the entrance of the seminary where he and his family sought refuge after fleeing Deir Mimas.

“When we arrived, we had mixed feelings because we felt that once again, we were in a familiar place where we feel safe,” Shammas said. “At the same time, displacement is difficult, because you have to leave your home, the place where you live, the place where your memories are.”

This is the eighth time fighting has displaced Shammas.

“We hope this time will be the last,” he said. “I don’t know what the future holds for us, but we have the same longing to return and start over in the place we love and serve God.”

The day after Shammas and his family arrived at the seminary, his relative Najib Khoury landed at Beirut’s international airport after visiting Switzerland for the birth of his grandchild.

His flight arrived Thursday afternoon, just as Israel issued mass evacuation orders to several neighborhoods near the airport. Under the threat of impending airstrikes, friends of Khoury picked him up and drove him to a relatively safe part of Beirut, where he stayed the night. The next day, he departed to his village, Borj El Moulouk, which is next to Deir Mimas.

People told Khoury he was crazy for going back home, but the pastor of the Marjayoun Evangelical Baptist Church in Borj El Moulouk didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“My heart is here,” he said. “I’m not a hero, but I love this area.”

After arriving in the village on Friday, Khoury led a Bible study with about 25 people at his church. Explosions rang out throughout the meeting, and as Khoury stood at the pulpit, he cried, moved by the hymns that the worship leader had chosen. He said the songs reminded him of a shepherd he saw in Beirut the night he arrived. The shepherd had walked for two days from the southern port city of Tyre to Lebanon’s capital with his goats and planned to walk four more days to reach the country’s eastern Beqaa Valley.

“If a shepherd didn’t accept to leave his herd behind … how could I not be with mine?” Khoury said.

As Khoury spoke with CT over the phone on Saturday, the sound of airstrikes could be heard in the distance. The pastor described two incidents in recent days in which Israeli troops fired warning shots at Christians as they attempted to get their belongings from their homes in evacuated areas. One of those families is now sheltering in the church.

But Khoury also said that this conflict is not as intense as the war in 2024. Back then, Hezbollah had a stronger presence in the area, and Israeli attacks on the group damaged and destroyed the homes of many believers, including Khoury’s.

So far, only a few families in Khoury’s church have fled. One Syrian family returned to Syria, while two others moved to a Christian district further north. But with the church doors now open, they plan to return to Bourj El Moulouk soon.

Like Nahra, Khoury finds strength in Psalm 91, which has been the church’s slogan since an earlier war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. He is particularly comforted by verse 7:
“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

“I am clinging to this promise,” Khoury said, “and just yesterday, I was encouraging the church with it.”

Farther south, Christians face an equally precarious situation in the border village of Rmeich. Many of the towns around it lies in ruins, destroyed during the 2024 war and subsequent conflict.

This has left the village isolated as one of the only inhabited villages in the area, according Tony Elias, the Maronite parish priest at Saint Georges Church.

For the time being, the road to Beirut remains open, but it is unclear for how much longer. Elias noted that the village is seeking additional fuel to ensure that it can continue to run the generators that are providing residents with electricity.

Rmeich is one of the dozens of villages that sit within a huge swath of the territory in southern Lebanon to which Israel has issued evacuation warnings. But Elias said local officials and residents have decided not to leave. He said residents fear Rmeich could be used as a staging ground for attacks against Israel if people evacuate their homes.

Those concerns are not without precedent. Two years ago, an Israeli strike against a Hezbollah target destroyed the home of Emanuela Beatrice Tini while she was away from the village. In the blink of an eye, the 54-year-old Romanian expatriate and her husband lost the home they had invested 20 years of work into.

Tini sold her gold to help finance the reconstruction of the home, which she and her husband only finished a few months ago.

“We are very tired of this war,” she said. “We had just gotten out of a war two years ago. We need a break.”

Two days ago, Tini and her husband packed their belongings in preparation for the possibility that Israeli troops force them to leave their homes. The Romanian embassy also urged Tini to leave.

“But where would I go?” she said. Rmeich has been her home for the past few decades. It is also a place where she sees great needs and opportunities for ministry. She serves at her church with administration, cleaning, and cooking. She also loves to visit locals and share the gospel with them.

“God put me in Rmeich to serve him,” she said. “I asked God, ‘Why did you put me in this very difficult place? There’s always a war here.’ But then I understood that God needs me here.”

- More from Ghinwa Akiki and Hunter Williamson in Beirut, Lebanon

News

Cuba Lacks Fuel, Food, and Power. Christians Provide a Lifeline.

Hernán Restrepo

Trump’s recent oil blockade exacerbated an already desperate situation in the Communist country.

Members of the Iglesia Hermanos en Cristo Faro de Luz unloading supplies that will be distributed to people in the church and the community.

MCC / Fairpicture Photo / Alfredo Sarabia

Forty-year-old Moisés Pérez Padrón, who has lived in Cuba his whole life, says he’s never seen a worse crisis than the one the country is currently facing.

“The streets are full of garbage. You see children and elderly people searching for food or something they can sell among the trash,” said Pérez Padrón, director of Trans World Radio’s (TWR) office in Cuba. “Power outages last more than 12 hours a day, and families are destroying furniture in their homes just to use the wood for cooking.”

Born into a Christian home, Pérez Padrón is the son of the administrator of the only Baptist nursing home in western Cuba. He studied at the Havana Baptist Theological Seminary, where he now serves as vice rector. He is also copastor of Salem Baptist Church in Arroyo Apolo, a neighborhood in southern Havana.

Each day, Pérez Padrón enters a recording studio to produce Messages of Faith and Hope, a five-minute devotional podcast he sends out through Facebook and WhatsApp groups. His voice is also heard on the radio through TWR’s broadcasts from the Caribbean island of Bonaire on the 800 AM frequency.

In recent weeks, his messages have focused on placing hope in God rather than in political leaders. Quoting Isaiah 28:16, he emphasized the firmness of Christ, the precious cornerstone.

“Let us build on the solid rock,” he said. “Let us trust in Christ and his Word—not in political agreements or false religions, but in him.”

On January 29, president Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening tariffs or sanctions on any country that sends oil to Cuba, attempting to force the Communist-run island into making significant political and economic reforms. Four months earlier, hurricane Melissa swept through Cuba’s five provinces, displacing more than 735,000 people while destroying homes and basic infrastructure. In additional, Cuba faces a sharp population decline due to low birth rates and the mass exodus of young people.

Amid the chaos, churches and Christian ministries have stepped in to provide food, clothing, hygiene products, and above all, spiritual comfort. About 85 percent of Cuba’s population identify as Christians, according to the World Christian Database. Most are Catholic, while about 11 percent are evangelical. Despite facing persecution, including arbitrary detentions, threats, and harassment (see sidebar), Christians are largely able to worship freely in the country.

“You can go to the churches; the churches are open, and the government knows where they are. There’s no impediment to holding services in those churches on Sundays,” said Pérez Padrón. “But the real problem in Cuba regarding religious expression is that … space is limited. You can’t just go and build a new church.”

One of the most consistent Christian ministries has been Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), which has worked in Cuba for 43 years and currently supports five social programs carried out by the Association of Brethren in Christ (BIC) churches and the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue, a Christian organization that promotes human rights and supports vulnerable populations.

In the past year, MCC sent six shipping containers of humanitarian relief to Cuba, which included canned meat, relief kits, feminine hygiene products, infant care kits, school supplies, laundry detergent, and bed sheets.

Jacob Lesniewski, MCC’s regional codirector for South America, Mexico, and Cuba, is based in Mexico City but often visits the island, most recently in January. What he saw left him heartbroken.

“When you arrive in Havana, you can tell something isn’t right,” he said referring to the streets full of garbage, frequent blackouts, and lack of fuel at gas stations. “But it’s nothing compared to what you begin to see as you travel farther east. Entire cities look like ghost towns. There are factories, schools, and hospitals that once functioned but now stand empty and severely deteriorated.”

An outbreak of chikungunya—a viral disease spread by mosquitos that is easily treated with the painkiller acetaminophen—has infected more than 50,000 people since November 2025 and caused 55 deaths due to the shortage of medicine.

Lesniewski acknowledges the enormous logistical challenges involved in delivering aid. Since the oil embargo, the BIC congregations could not use trucks to distribute supplies. Instead, supplies had to be transported in carts pulled by underfed horses. Gasoline is sometimes available, but it must be purchased in dollars instead of Cuban pesos and is extremely expensive.

Yet the bureaucratic process of bringing supplies into the country proved surprisingly simple.

“You would think that in a Communist country, there would be endless obstacles,” he said. “But it’s quite the opposite—they are eager to receive help.”

Mayra Espino, a 70-year-old sociologist and researcher at the Christian Center for Reflection and Dialogue, has had numerous opportunities to leave Cuba as she served as a visiting professor in Spain, Honduras, and the United States. Yet she has chosen to remain.

Her decision reflects what Lesniewski calls “the stubborn resilience of Cubans.” Despite everything, many love their island and continue to find ways to cope with the crisis.

As a scholar, Espino identifies three main causes behind the current situation.

“The difficulties we are experiencing began even before Trump’s oil blockade,” she said. “First, the emigration of skilled professionals accelerated after the pandemic. Second, the current government has been unable to offer opportunities to the population. And third, the economic blockade has caused many businesses—especially in tourism—to collapse.”

Evangelical Christians, she notes, have gained a reputation for their social work on an island frequently hit by hurricanes. After four devastating hurricanes struck Cuba in 2008, local churches repaired the roofs of their non-Christian neighbors before fixing those of their own members—a gesture that earned them newfound respect.

“In a country where the state can no longer provide basic services like health care and education, Christian churches have become essential spaces for society—not only to receive humanitarian aid or spiritual comfort, but also to build community,” Espino said.

Fuel shortages have also led to public outrage over corruption. An investigation by Miami’s El Nuevo Herald revealed that Cuba resold 60 percent of the Venezuelan oil it received to China, with the proceeds allegedly lining the pockets of Cuban Communist Party leaders.

Amid growing frustration and despair, Pérez Padrón worries most about the safety of his family. He and his wife have two daughters, ages 5 and 6. As hunger rises, crime has also increased, especially in large cities such as Havana and Santiago, he said.

His voice breaks as he explains how he tells his daughters why the family has chosen to remain in Cuba rather than leave.

“We don’t tell them all the details of what’s happening, so they won’t worry,” he says. “In the middle of the hardships we face, we show them that there are still reasons to thank God. I have a job. They can go to school. God is good.”

Religious Freedom in Cuba

Although educated by Jesuit priests, dictator Fidel Castro established an atheist communist system after taking power in 1959. His government persecuted Christian pastors and sent them to labor camps, along with homosexuals, merchants, and political opponents of the regime.

Many Christians either fled the country or abandoned the faith, and the church shrank significantly. During the 1970s and 1980s, Christian communities survived through small but resilient groups of believers despite censorship and discrimination.

At the same time, under Castro, Cuba’s literacy rates rose dramatically—99 percent of the population could read and write by age 15—and malnutrition became relatively rare. These social advances allowed him to maintain a level of popularity.

Conditions began to change in the 1990s after the collapse of Soviet Union s parked both economic crisis and a renewed interest in faith. In 1992, Cuba’s Communist Party amended the constitution, redefining Cuba from an “atheist” state to a “secular” one.

Much of the credit for this shift has been attributed to the Catholic Church. Papal visits to the island became a priority for the Vatican beginning with Pope John Paul II’s historic trip in 1998. The day after meeting with Castro, the government reinstated Christmas as a public holiday.

Pope Benedict XVI visited the island in 2012, and shortly afterward the government permitted Good Friday celebrations. In 2016, a historic religious event occurred in Havana’s airport as Pope Francis met Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, the first meeting of Catholic and Orthodox primates since 1054.

Evangelical outreach also increased during the Obama administration. In 2015, the US government listed “religious activity” as one of 12 authorized reasons for Americans to travel to Cuba. That same year, Baptists sent their first full-time missionaries to the island in 54 years.

According to the most recent US State Department report on religious freedom, Pentecostals and Baptists are likely the largest Protestant denominations in the country with about 150,000 and 100,000 members respectively.

House churches—recently authorized by the government—represent another significant and often unregistered section of the Christian community. According to the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE), between 20,000 and 30,000 house churches gather throughout the country.

Other belief systems also remain influential. An estimated 70 percent of Cubans perform religions practices with roots in West Africa—such as Santería—particularly when seeking immediate help for issues like fertility, illness, or business matters.

Despite the recent opening, censorship persists. Christian newspapers and magazines are banned from circulation on the island, and religious groups are barred from owning radio or television stations. The creation of denominations that did not exist before 1959 is also restricted.

Open Doors ranked Cuba as the most dangerous country in Latin America for Christians on its latest World Watch List, placing it 24th worldwide. Meanwhile, the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights reported at least 873 violations of religious freedom in 2025, including arbitrary detentions, intrusive surveillance, repeated interrogations, threats, harassment, and—in some cases—physical or verbal abuse of minors at school because of their religious beliefs.

News

Nigeria Evicts 40,000 from Floating Slum

Emmanuel Nwachukwu

Christians struggle to help displaced residents find shelter.

Residents evacuate in a boat following forceful eviction and demolition of homes in the Makoko slum in Nigeria.

Toyin Adedokun / Getty

Every Saturday morning, Joshua Idowu, 37, picks up his soccer cleats and a whistle and leaves his home in Makoko, a century-old fishing community in Nigeria’s Lagos State that’s known as the “Venice of Africa.” For 45 minutes he treks across the floating settlement of wooden homes sitting on stilts above the polluted Lagos Lagoon until he reaches a sandy playing field, or “pitch,” opposite Makoko.

More than 60 boys ages 7 to 15 have already arrived by boat or through neighborhood boardwalks, ready to play. He leads them through gospel songs and prayers in the local Egun language before beginning soccer drills. “I also use this as an opportunity to teach them [Christian] morals,” Idowu said.

The children in Makoko attend overpopulated and underresourced makeshift schools, so when Idowu started teaching soccer in July 2024, he hoped it would provide a future for some of the boys living in the slum.

Then, beginning in December, the government demolished many of their homes. Idowu said he hasn’t seen some of the boys since.

“The children had to either relocate with their parents or [start working to help] support those who lost their businesses to the demolitions,” Idowu said. “Nobody is sure what’s next for them.”

With little notice and no plans for alternative housing, the Lagos State government displaced thousands of Makoko residents. It claimed the demolition was necessary for safety reasons and urban renewal.

Amphibious excavators knocked homes off their stilts and crushed the fragile wooden structures, collapsing them and sending household possessions into the lagoon. The state government demolished over 3,000 homes in Makoko, with the United Nations estimating the mass evictions displaced more than 40,000 people. Before the evictions, up to 300,000 people called the settlement home.

When residents in Makoko resisted the demolitions with protests, armed police accompanying the evacuation teams fired tear gas at them. Ten humanitarian organizations objected that “armed thugs, security personnel and demolition teams … set [homes] on fire with little or no notice, in some cases while residents were still [inside].”

The Lagos State House of Assembly halted efforts in February due to the backlash.

In Nigeria and throughout Africa, country leaders view urban-renewal projects as an opportunity to increase land value, improve the environment, revitalize decaying neighborhoods, and keep up with Africa’s booming population. But poor planning and execution can result in mass evictions that leave families homeless and desperate.

The Lagos State government defended the Makoko operation, as Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu had said his administration set aside $2 million in 2021 to redevelop the Makoko waterfront to meet international standards, and assured residents the government would compensate them.

Idowu said residents have lost trust in the Lagos State government and doubt they will receive any compensation.

Nelson Ekujumi, who convened a press conference for Nigerian advocacy group Coalition for Good Governance, called the demolitions necessary because slums expose residents to floods, fires, and hazards caused by proximity to high voltage power lines: “From a regulatory standpoint, [the government’s] concerns are valid … and something ought to be done to correct the observed anomalies.”

Others disagree. Marcel Mbamalu, a Lagos-based researcher, argued the state’s government has a history of sacrificing the poor and ignoring human dignity during demolitions: “This history reveals a systemic pattern: communities are repeatedly cleared with minimal warning, scant compensation, and little workable relocation strategy.”

Andrew Samuel, whose house in Makoko was razed last December, told CT he couldn’t recover his properties—electronics, clothes, and furniture. He said the government had promised to demolish houses only within 50 to 100 meters from the neighborhood’s power line, but the amphibious excavator went farther.

“They didn’t even give me time to collect anything from my house,” Samuel said. “I watched them scatter everything I owned. Now I can’t even recognize where my house was built.”

One resident reported the government had demolished both her home and her church, of which her husband is the pastor.

Many residents sell fresh and dried seafood caught from the lagoon, earning $3 daily. Unable to afford alternative housing since the demolition, some are now living in canoes and in makeshift shelters.

Makoko is one of the more than 169 slums in Lagos that house about 60 percent of the state’s 17 million people, according to a 2025 State of Lagos Housing Market report. The government has targeted many of these slums for sporadic mass evictions and demolitions in the past few decades, including the rundown waterfront areas of the Ikota River corridor, the Lekki Axis, Oko-Baba Sawmill, Mile 2, and Third Mainland Bridge.

Though residents live in these shantytowns legally, they may have only informal claims to their homes, and Nigeria’s Land Use Act of 1978 allows the government to seize land for public use. This leaves people who live there with little protection.

During one mass eviction over a decade ago, the government gave Makoko residents only 72 hours to vacate their properties. Men later hacked down homes with machetes and power saws, leaving around 3,000 people homeless. Many sought shelter in boats or churches.

This year, residents of Makoko, Sogunro, and Oko-Agbon likewise received short evacuation notices before amphibious excavators demolished their homes.

Mass evictions across Africa follow similar patterns of forced removal. In 2025, Ethiopia’s government evicted thousands in Addis Ababa and other cities for a development project that included plans to build a palace. In 2023, security forces in Angola demolished more than 300 homes the government claimed residents had built illegally, which “jeopardiz[ed] the completion” of its development projects. In July 2018, a mass eviction in Nairobi, Kenya, left 10,000 slum residents without shelter, bringing down churches and health centers as well.

Olamide Ajayi, cofounder of The Slum Project, told CT that slum residents resist relocation even after demolition due to deep-rooted attachment: “You have those living in a particular place for over 35 years of their life. It’s going to take a lot of time and rewiring.”

For the past five years, The Slum Project has visited a different slum in Lagos every December, partnering with local churches to provide food, medicine, and scholarships to children. Volunteers also share the gospel with them, Ajayi said, “to ensure that we do not leave them the same way that we met them.”

But her organization doesn’t have the resources to help most displaced residents yet. “We do what we can,” Ajayi said. “Most of the [problems] are not within our control or theirs.”

In Makoko, Idowu is among the few Christians providing support to displaced residents. His church—Methodist Church Makoko, a Global Methodist congregation—shelters more than 40 people. Every night, men, women, and children spread their mosquito nets over woven mats, thin foam mattresses, or blankets laid on the bare concrete floor.

“It is quite unbearable,” he said. Food supplies are dwindling, and finding sanitary toilets, showers, and kitchens is difficult, Idowu said. Families also grapple with trauma after losing everything in a day. Idowu said displaced children may have to halt their education: “[Food and shelter are] what the parents will focus on now.”

Idowu worries he won’t be able to continue mentoring the missing boys from his soccer clinic. “They don’t have phones,” he told CT. “And I don’t know where they were relocated to.”

- More from Emmanuel Nwachukwu

Theology

Why I Changed My Mind on Bible Prophecy and Politics

Russell Moore

Columnist

“It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: WikiMedia Commons

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

Every time there’s a war or rumors of war in the Middle East, Americans start arguing over prophecy charts again. The onset of the Iran war is no exception. People debate about unverified reports—whether US service members are told they are fighting for Armageddon or whether some US or Israeli leaders expect a third temple in Jerusalem to result from this tumult in fulfillment of dispensationalist ideas about prophecy.

Prosperity gospel preacher John Hagee is still here, arguing from his pulpit that the Iran war is the prompt the Bible predicted for the end times, just as he was doing almost a quarter century ago with the Iraq War. There’s a relationship between how we view the end of the world and how we see the political events around us, but I’ve changed my mind on what that relationship is.

My doctoral dissertation was about how viewpoints on last things shaped evangelical Christian attitudes toward social and political engagement. In agreement with theologian Carl F. H. Henry’s important book The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, I argued that overly utopian views of the thrust of history led to social gospel activism and thus usually to disillusionment. And I argued that overly pessimistic views of the kingdom of God—that history spirals downward until the sudden, cataclysmic coming of Christ, as in popular premillennialism—tend to deaden concern for social action that isn’t about winning souls to Christ.

I still agree with all of that. An understanding of the kingdom of God as a wholly present reality that can be brought in by human effort ultimately spawns a religion that is about social restructuring at the expense of personal renewal. And an understanding of the kingdom of God as a wholly future promise sees the world as a doomed project, for which the only remedy is for people to be rescued, soul by soul. Where I’ve changed is that I wonder whether, in 21st-century America at least, it’s not so much that end times theology influences politics as the other way around.

With the “kingdom now” category, we’ve had an entire century to see its trajectory. As Henry suggested in the 1960s, some churchgoers who aren’t sure whether Isaiah or Ephesians are the Word of God or not are fully confident about God’s position on energy policy. But these parts of the church tend not to have prophecy charts—unless it’s what “side of history” one should be on as it progresses.

What about the prophecy charts, though? Is that really the opposite problem—that these Christians are too focused on heaven, and their place in it, to be concerned about the things of earth? At least in some eras, the temptation of American Christianity has often been caricatured as a hyperspiritual otherworldliness. Is this why these Christians tend to think of love of neighbor only in the most individual and personal terms? For some, undoubtedly, that is the case. But for most of us, the fundamental problem is not otherworldliness but carnality. It’s not that we love the present world too little but that we love it too much.

What changed my mind on this is, first, how malleable the prophecy charts actually are. Here, I don’t mean the way certain pronouncements about the imminent end of the world have failed so repeatedly. The 1970s or 1980s, we were told, were the “terminal generation” because of the way Ezekiel clearly prophesied the European common market or the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Then the 1990s were the obvious end, because Saddam Hussein was allegedly reconstructing the Babylonian Empire.

When these things turn out not to be so clear after all, none of the prophecy teachers ever says, “Well, I was wrong. Let me go back to the Scriptures and see where I failed.” They usually just move to the next confident set of assertions. But the real problem of malleability isn’t so much the kind that takes years to track.

Instead, the problem is that now we can count on hearing certain answers whenever any political issue arises. For those who use Bible prophecy, the answer to “What will lead to the second coming of Christ?” always lines up with whatever their political tribe supports and can change as fast as that changes.

If the Iran war wraps up soon and the Iranian people finally have a free republic instead of a dictatorship, that will be, for some of these people, clearly the result foreseen in the Book of Daniel. If the war drags on for years, people who support the war will say, “Support the president,” and people who oppose the war will say, “This is the disaster the Bible foretold right before the coming of Christ.”

For some of these people, when the tribe was “America first” with no foreign interventions, that was God sparing the country from the “globalist” New World Order, and it was necessary for the second coming of Christ. And for some of these same people, now that President Trump is intervening in Venezuela and Iran, all this is prophesied, the right thing to do, and necessary for the second coming of Christ.

All of that is human. Very human. All too human.

But it’s more than that. It’s also that many people’s understanding of the kingdom of God seems to have different implications depending on the political or social questions at hand. For some on the “kingdom now” side, ushering in the kingdom meant supporting freedom, justice, and self-determination and denouncing authoritarianism and empire—unless the empire in question was the USSR or the authoritarians were Cuban.

And for the “kingdom future” people, there was always what we could call “the weave.” If the question was prohibition of alcohol, then God calls us to social action, to be salt and light in our world. If the question was Jim Crow, police-state segregation, then God forbids us to be distracted from saving souls by bringing politics into the church. And the same dynamic is at work in the same sectors today. Taking on abortion or gambling is Christians standing up for what is right (and I agree on both of those), but other matters the Bible takes up repeatedly—such as the treatment of the poor or partiality toward people on the basis of their race or ethnicity—are “social justice” and a “distraction.”

And so it goes.

Twenty-five years ago, I argued that an “already, not yet” framework of the kingdom is necessary for Christians to stop choosing between grace and justice, between love of God and love of neighbor, between regenerate hearts and thriving communities. I still think that. What I would change is that it’s not so much that we miss the what of the “already, not yet” but the who.

In what might be one of the most important passages in all of Scripture, Jesus said to his disciples, “The kingdom of God is not coming in ways that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you” (Luke 17:20–21, ESV throughout). Jesus himself is the kingdom of God in person. And he tells us not to be shaken by events, not to be conformed to this present age, but to keep looking to him.

Once we get bored by the actual Messiah, we will look for others. Once we lose our awe at the kingdom of God, we will look for other kingdoms. But the Christ of the kingdom frees us—from carnality pretending to be otherworldliness, from fear pretending to be conviction, from Machiavellianism pretending to be worldview, and from tribalism pretending to be community.

The kingdom of God—present already but not yet fulfilled—tells us what to care about (justice, peace, the poor, the vulnerable) while also shielding us from the disillusionment or bloodthirstiness that can come with expecting to have to bring the fullness of that kingdom on our own. As embodied in Jesus, the kingdom concerns us not just with outcomes but with ways and means, even as it prompts humility on how to get to those common goals.

I have no idea what will happen in Iran. I have no idea what will happen in the modern state of Israel. I have no idea whether we have 5 more minutes or 45 million more years before the Apocalypse. Jesus said, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority” (Acts 1:7).

Who needs a prophecy chart when we already have the Way?

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.

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Sarah Isgur, Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court (Crown, 2026)

Jacob Siegel, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)

Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017)

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Religious Freedom in Cuba

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**Jacob Siegel, The Information State: Politics in the Age of Total Control (Henry Holt and Co., 2026)**

**Ben Sasse, The Vanishing American Adult: Our Coming-of-Age Crisis—and How to Rebuild a Culture of Self-Reliance (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2017)**