What CT Asked Advice Columnist Ann Landers

Daniel Silliman

As America teetered on the edge of revolution, the magazine called for more innovation, responsibility, sensitivity, and stewardship.

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

In 1970, CT caught up with Ann Landers, the widely read newspaper columnist who answered personal, ethical questions. CT asked, “Why do you think people come to you for advice rather than seek the counsel of a clergyman?”

My readers actually answer this question in the opening sentence of their letters. For example: “Please don’t tell me to see my clergyman about this problem. I’m ashamed to let anyone know we are having this kind of trouble in our family.” “It is easier for me to write to you because you do not know us.” …

I receive approximately 1,000 letters a day. Every letter that has a name and address receives a personal reply in the mail. …

Both clergymen and psychiatrists have written to me for help. Far more numerous are letters from wives of psychiatrists and clergymen. The wives of clergymen resent the criticism of women from the congregation. If they dress in style the word is, “She has no right to look like a fashion model.” If the clergyman’s wife underdresses, she is harpooned for “looking dowdy.”

Ministers appeared marginal in other popular media as well. CT noted a lack of “evangelical visibility in TV programming.” Part of the problem, according to the magazine, was that church leaders showed little interest in innovation.

The churches are still trying to reach people within the confines of formal worship, and not on the level where they live. … The Church has to realize that just as evangelism must assume many different postures (as shown at the recent U. S. Congress on Evangelism), so spiritual television programming must find expression in a variety of situation contexts.

Here is the meat of what the Church can portray: examples of believers on the firing line of contemporary events and needs; enactments of Christian heritage, perhaps in a spiritually oriented “Saga of Western Man” series; modern-parable presentations of the Christian message in ways able to speak to all age groups; and exposure of the great music, art, and literature of the Church with an emphasis on the Church’s ability to continue to inspire the arts today.

Many evangelicals were pessimistic about the future of America in 1970. The country seemed on the verge of collapse.

More and more the question is asked: Will we soon need a new Gibbon to write The Decline and Fall of the United States of America? Signs of decay are not hard to find. The showy facade of affluence, technological advance, great knowledge, military might, and a high standard of living cannot hide the internal rot. …

The frightening thing is the combination of ailments coupled with the patient’s disregard for his symptoms, and his unwillingness to seek a true cure. Is this not a way of committing suicide?

We are engaged in a war that has terribly divided our people, brought near anarchy to some college campuses, and elicited a flood of obscenities, half-truths, name-calling, and irresponsible rhetoric. Emotion and fear and weakness, rather than reason and courage and strength, now seem to characterize our people. The social fabric is wearing thin and the holes are visible to all.

Founding editor L. Nelson Bell was especially concerned about the anti-war movement and the possibility of a revolution.

We must recognize the forces with which we have to deal. We are not confronted merely by a group of idealists who wish to effect change by an over-activistic approach. True, many young enthusiasts have been captivated by the professed idealism of some leaders. But the fact is that we are faced with a hard core of student activists and others who are determined to tear down the present structures of society at any cost, and within their number are those whose basic philosophy is closely allied with that of either Moscow or Peking.

That spring, national guardsmen shot and killed four unarmed students at an anti-war protest at Kent State University in Ohio. CT invited an evangelical campus minister to write about the experience.

I have never been in war, but that day as I stood with hundreds of students on the campus commons I knew how ugly war could be. … The whirlwind has begun. The unalterable laws of the spiritual dimension are proving their reliability. God is not mocked. What a man plants in his life and in the lives of others will yield back manyfold. And we have sown the wind.

We have sown the wind of permissiveness in the home. … We have sown the wind of egotistic humanism. … My plea to the Church is to begin sowing the wind—the Spirit. Begin at the most crucial location in the nation: the college campus. Sow genuine love and spiritual power in the lives of students who may someday determine the direction of men and nations.

Evangelist Tom Skinner, author of Black and Free and How Black is the Gospel?, said America was in the midst of a racial revolution and the church faced a critical test.

The black brothers on the street are not playing when they say that unless they get justice they will burn the system. Now the question is, Where does the Church stand in the midst of that revolution? What is the message of evangelism? What is the message of the Church? …

The New Testament Church also grew up in a time of revolution. It grew up in a time when the Romans were exploiting the Jews, and when the seeds of revolution were being sown by Jewish nationals who were saying that there was only one way to get that Roman honky off your back and that was to burn him out.

In the midst of this there arose this radical group of disciples who had been with Jesus for 3 ½ years, who had walked with him and seen him live his life in total dependency upon his Father, had seen him crucified, resurrected, and ascended to his Father. Filled with his life they went out and impressed people that they had been with Jesus. … They said that real revolution lies in allowing the common clay of your humanity to be saturated with the deity of Christ.

CT reported on “gay rights” groups staging protests:

The Gay Liberation Front caused a furor among 600 Episcopal delegates to the Diocese of Michigan’s annual convention when two Gay Lib members spit out Communion wine near the altar. Others hugged and kissed in the pews and aisles at St. Paul’s Cathedral. …

The diocesan convention was later adjourned early when twenty Gay Libbers marched to the podium carrying signs and shouting slogans. The disruption took place when a Gay Lib leader was not allowed to speak in favor of a resolution encouraging Episcopal churches to lend their facilities to homosexuals.

A Gay Lib member yelled to departing delegates: “What are you going to do when you have a Christian son or daughter that’s a homosexual? Are you going to disown them, too?”

Several days later in Washington, D. C., about thirty-five militant homosexuals held hands, hugged, kissed, and shouted obscenities as they disrupted a conference on theology and homosexuality at Catholic University. …

The spokesman (none of the dissidents revealed his or her name) demanded that conference members stop examining homosexuality and begin practicing it instead.

CT noted the emergence of a new denomination that rejected biblical condemnations of homosexuality—the first example of what would later be called an “affirming” church.

People call the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles the “gay” church. This doesn’t particularly please the 440-member congregation drawn overwhelmingly from the homosexual community. “We are a Christian church first, and homosexual second,” said its 56-year-old assistant minister, who prefers not to be identified lest his regular job in the “straight” world be jeopardized. …

Its homosexual ministers are far from homogeneous in theology or even in their views of the basic cause of homosexuality. [Troy] Perry, whose sermons are fundamentalistic in tone, considers homosexuality essentially genetic. His assistant minister, a former United Church of Christ and Evangelical Reformed minister liberal in theology, believes homosexuality comes from psychological conditioning. Both men were married and fathered two children before turning to the gay life.

Some churches across the country were , CT reported.

Christians who have lamented the drift of so many churches away from the faith centered in Jesus Christ and founded on Scripture should take joyful note of the list of congregations now returning to that faith. This list is increasing at a rate that may indicate a trend, and perhaps the beginning of a general movement. Throughout the country there is a growing network of pastors who have given themselves to leading churches back to the only solid foundation for Christian faith.

The Trinitarian Congregational Church in Wayland [Massachusetts] a good example. … When the Reverend Donald S. Ewing became pastor of Trinitarian in 1955, the church was struggling to maintain its existence. Many of the 175 members were inactive. The church had a debt of more than $80,000 with an annual budget of only $12,000. Under Dr. Ewing’s ministry it has grown to a membership of more than 1,200 with an annual budget of more than $160,000.

But these statistics are only a reflection of the really significant developments, those that took place in individual lives. Commitment to Jesus Christ, interest in Scripture, and concern for people throughout the community are now common characteristics of the members.

Some congregations were experimenting with different kinds of music in worship.

Evangelical churches have taken the lead in introducing a new kind of sacred music patterned after the popular folk rock. Country or Western music is also being appropriated by evangelical churches more than ever. Theologically liberal churches have been more reticent about such musical inroads, but in those congregations that allow it, these types of music as well as straight jazz are now heard. Most common are the folk and jazz “masses.”

Interestingly, the new movement is being welcomed by many respected church musicians, even those who have until now insisted upon classical forms. Others are critical. Church-music journals have generally been sympathetic, though they are publishing hot dialogues on the pros and cons.

“The Church is groping now for a new musical language,” says Dr. Donald Hustad, professor of church music at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “At the moment we go with the latest fad.” Hustad regards the current trend as secular music’s biggest invasion of the Church since about 1850.

As President Richard Nixon established a new government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, an Asbury Theological Seminary professor wrote about Christian responsibility to steward creation, not exploit it.

The Christian should face with frank realism the fact that the biblical understanding of things must run counter to many prevailing modes of thinking. He must, for example, challenge the current stress upon purely quantitative evaluations of economic success, usually stated in terms of the annual increase in our Gross National Product. It is not only that infinite expansion is impossible within a finite order, but also that “man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” …

Taken seriously, the concept of biblical stewardship will permeate human life with the conviction that man holds his environment in trust, under God. It will remind man that abuse of his trust will bring, not only a searing final judgment from the God under whom man lives, but strong intermediate judgments in the form of impoverished lives and hungry bodies. It is in these terms that our decision-makers need to be reminded of the consequences of an outraged environment.

Toward the end of the year, reflecting on their stewardship of CT, editors published a statement of purpose, reminding themselves and readers of the goal of the magazine:

We have tried to present orthodox Christianity to nonevangelicals reasonably and persuasively and to provide evangelicals with a scholarly apologetic for their faith. We have explored the relation between evangelism and social action on the part of Christians and have tried to stimulate a new sense of responsibility in those who formerly had shied away from involvement in the affairs of the world. At the same time we have given hearty support to personal and mass evangelism.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Kenyan Churches Compete with Bullfights on Sunday Morning

Pius Sawa in Kakamega County, Kenya

As the traditional sport regains popularity, pastors report young people have disconnected from church.

Spectators cheer as two bulls take part in a fight during a traditional bullfighting tournament in Malinya Stadium in Kenya on January 1, 2024.

Fredrik Lerneryd / Contributor / Getty

On a Sunday morning in Kakamega County in western Kenya, two elderly women dust plastic chairs, open windows, and lay white linen on the tables at the front of the sanctuary inside Grace Calvary Christian Baptist Church. Pastor Jackson Sikolia prepares his sermon in his small office as members start arriving one by one.

When the 56-year-old Sikolia enters the sanctuary, half the seats are empty and only a handful of the attendees are young people. No youth sing in the choir. Only one teen girl helps with the children in Sunday school.

Yet outside, young men and women crowd the roads blowing vuvuzelas, whistling, or honking motorbike horns as they wait to accompany one of their village’s champion bulls to a fight a few miles away. Then they hop onto overloaded bikes—often holding four to six people—and carry tree branches (a traditional expression of excitement) as they cheer and follow the bull out of town.

Fights often start around 8 a.m. on Sunday mornings. Less successful “curtain raiser” bulls face off in up to 20 matches before the main event: a fight between the champion bulls. Matches only last a few minutes as the animals lock horns in an open space surrounded by a ring of spectators, while their owners wave sticks and shout to incite a fight. The match ends when one bull pushes the other out of the ring or when one falls down or runs away.

While locals celebrate the revival of the traditional form of bullfighting, pastors worry that the weekly events are leading young people to skip church. Although bullfighting used to take place on Saturdays and on public holidays, organizers now schedule them for Sundays, Sikolia said. For small churches like Grace Calvary’s 30-member congregation, a few more empty seats is a big loss.

Sikolia said his youth serve as the “main pillar” of the congregation, as the church’s current activities and future growth depend on them. Young people help with Bible readings, singing, and ushering on Sunday mornings. Now they’re not showing up.

“Sunday should be a day dedicated to God, not to fighting bulls,” Sikolia said. In Kakamega, about 1.7 million of the county’s 1.8 million residents identify as Christian.

Bullfighting in Kenya has centuries-old ties to the local Luhya culture. Its current form began in Kakamega in the 1960s as a post-harvest celebration and has grown in popularity, moving from fields to larger venues and capturing the attention of an increasing number of Kenyans. Fights can draw thousands, with some commuting hours to watch the events.

Now, even some prominent politicians, the county government, and a university in Kakamega promote bullfighting events on special occasions. Sociologist Kathleen Anangwe pointed to the country’s high unemployment and young people’s need for socialization as reasons for the rising popularity of bullfighting.

Francis Inganji, a 23-year-old from the village of Shibembe, said he prefers watching bullfighting to going to church. His mother required him to attend church services growing up, so he rarely had a chance to see the fights. After he dropped out of high school at age 15, Inganji started attending the fights with his friends. He still attends church on Sundays when no fights are scheduled.

These fights provide more than entertainment. Inganji said the bulls’ owners often treat fans to meals of beef or chicken, bread, rice, and sodas when they return from a fight to thank them for their support. Some owners build a fan base by giving money gifts as well.

One owner in his 70s, Joel Mulela, buys and sells bulls in Kakamega. He said since many families struggle to feed their children, free food from the owners can entice young people: “These children will never want to miss a bullfight.”

Some families invest in keeping bulls and grooming them to fight, hoping they will catch the eye of a wealthy buyer who wants aggressive animals for more elite fights, which come with cash prizes. Buyers may pay as much as 200,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,500 USD)—15 times the value of an ordinary cow at the village market, Mulela said. In contrast, selling a dairy cow’s milk only earns about 6,000–10,000 shillings ($47-77) per month.

Bullfight watchers also engage in gambling. Recently, sports betting companies such as Pepeta have started allowing people to place bets on bullfights, paying out cash to winners and making a profit off those who placed losing bets. Inganji admits he’s gambled on bulls. His occasional winnings keep him following the fights.

Pastor Moses Isachi of Friends Church Lurambi said he opposes bullfight gambling because it tempts young people to steal money from their parents: “We have had cases where these young people steal even chicken or eggs to go and sell in local shops to get money for gambling.”

He said gambling also encourages laziness and discourages learning jobs skills.

Brian Shinyaga, 25, another youth from Shibembe village, struggles to balance attending church on Sunday and watching bullfights. He said he tries to catch the 10 a.m. service at his Catholic church after attending a bullfight. Because of his frequent absences, he lost his position as youth group treasurer.

“A fight can last for between 10 and 30 minutes,” he said. “If it starts at 8, I have enough time to rush home and prepare for the next church service.”

Sometimes the crowds get rowdy. Shinyaga admits many youths end up fighting, falling off overloaded motorbikes, or engaging in sexual activities under the influence of drugs during these events. Bullfights can also lead to injuries as the overwhelmed bull seeks to escape from the ring, goring or trampling spectators in the process.

Bishop Zadock Lubira of the Holy Peace Fire Church, an evangelical congregation in Nyayo Tea Zone, Kakamega, said that in the late 1990s, churches and concerned parents convinced county authorities to shift fights from Sundays to Saturdays. “How it went back to Sunday is what I don’t understand,” he said. “We should unite as a church to change this.”

Sikolia agrees, but he wants to do more than change the schedule. Youth need job skills and leadership opportunities, he said. In 2020, he began teaching young men how to make energy-saving stoves and charcoal briquettes—made from sawdust, maize stalks, or other organic materials—to sell to locals at an affordable price. He’s currently mentoring 20 youths, hoping they will encourage their peers to get more involved in church and abandon bullfighting.

Whenever he preaches at funerals, Sikolia also slots in a message for the youth against bullfighting. “I tell them to stop mixing dangerous events with the church, because God wants the youth,” he said, adding that young people who skip church to attend the events have sometimes been injured or even killed. “At the end of the day … the church [is] called to pray for [these youth].”

- More from Pius Sawa in Kakamega County, Kenya

News

Refugee Arrests Shatter Sense of Safety in Minnesota

Emily Belz in Minneapolis

A federal judge ruled that ICE can no longer arrest legally admitted refugees in the state, many of whom are persecuted Christians. But damage has been done.

Law enforcement carry out an arrest in St. Paul, Minnesota on Jan. 16.

Mostafa Bassim / Anadolu via Getty Images

It was the coldest night in years for Minneapolis, but a young refugee’s friends there texted that they wanted him to come hang out.

He texted them back that he couldn’t come because his dad didn’t want him going out. Even as legal refugees, this Afghan family, whose identity is withheld for their safety, was concerned about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). The young man’s mom poured more saffron tea for everyone at their home as they sat on cushions and talked with friends who had come for dinner, a spread of rice, chicken, eggplant, and big rounds of naan.

Cheryl Hudson was helping one of the Afghan kids tape a script by their front door to remind family members what to say in case they were visited by ICE agents, who cannot enter without a warrant. Hudson helped the family resettle through her Minneapolis church, Urban Refuge, four years ago. Hudson’s family and two other church friends have since grown close to the Afghans—they’ve accompanied the refugees to the emergency room and have shared many late-night dinners.

Thousands of refugees, many of them persecuted Christians, have found a safe haven in Minnesota. But for weeks now, many of them have not left their homes on advice of their lawyers and local refugee-resettlement agencies.

The Afghan family applied for green cards but are still waiting for approval, which made them worry they were at risk of arrest under the Trump administration’s Operation PARRIS, an effort announced in early January to “reexamin[e]” refugees who have been granted legal status but are awaiting their green cards.

Instead of simply reinterviewing the refugees, which would be unusual on its own, federal immigration enforcement has been arresting and sending many of them to detention centers in Texas.

At least 100 refugees have been arrested in Minnesota, according to The Advocates for Human Rights, a legal aid group. The group did not know of any who had been deported to their home countries last week, but it said it could not know every situation among the more than 5,000 refugees in Minnesota potentially subject to reexamination.

“There’s been a large number of people arrested without access to an attorney or assistance, and DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] has no process or system in place to track who they are arresting or what is happening to them,” said Madeline Lohman, the group’s advocacy and outreach director, in an email to CT.

Agents did not inform refugees of what was happening to them during their arrests, according to CT interviews and lawsuits filed since.

Some refugees were released in Texas without a way to return home. Part of what immigrant churches in Minnesota have been doing in the last week is arranging travel for their refugee congregants to return home if the government releases them.

Unlike asylum, for which tens of thousands of immigrants in the United States apply even though odds of approval are low, refugee status can only be requested from abroad. Refugees must wait outside the country, often for years of vetting and background checks by multiple agencies, until they receive an invitation from the US government. They must prove that they face persecution in their home countries. They resettle in the US in partnership with an agency, often faith-based nonprofits like World Relief.

When the government first began arresting refugees a few weeks ago, World Relief’s CEO Myal Greene called it a “five-alarm fire.”

But on Wednesday night, a federal district judge issued a temporary restraining order barring further arrests and “unlawful detention” of refugees who have not been charged with any grounds for removal.

Judge John Tunheim also ordered the release within five days of all Minnesotan refugees who have been arrested. He ordered that the government return them to the state for their release and alert the refugees’ lawyers so someone can meet them, due to Minnesota’s stretch of dangerously cold weather.

A higher court could overrule the judge, and the judge could amend his own order after a fuller hearing, but refugee resettlement organizations like World Relief breathed a sigh of relief.

“Refugees have a legal right to be in the United States, a right to work, a right to live peacefully—and importantly, a right not to be subjected to the terror of being arrested and detained without warrants or cause in their homes or on their way to religious services or to buy groceries,” Tunheim noted in his ruling.

Already the arrests have shaken refugees’ sense of safety in their new country. In court filings and interviews with refugees and advocacy groups, a similar picture of ICE emerges: agents entering refugee homes without warrants and sometimes coaxing them outside through deception. A class action lawsuit recounted one plainclothes agent allegedly pretending he had hit a refugee’s car to get the refugee outside for an arrest, a tactic others shared in interviews with CT.

One refugee who was targeted at home said in the class action lawsuit that her “experience has caused her to relive similar experiences of armed men knocking on her door in the country she fled.”

US Citizenship and Immigration Services said its effort centered on “adjudicators conducting thorough background checks, reinterviews, and merit reviews of refugee claims.”

Tunheim, the federal judge, ruled Wednesday that the government could “conduct reinspections” of the refugees’ cases without arresting them.

At the Afghan family’s home, Hudson explained again why they couldn’t trust government agents or open the door for them. “I’m really sorry they’re not doing the right thing,” she told them.

But the warnings about ICE quickly gave way to happier dinner conversation. Hudson’s daughter and the Afghan kids recalled playing laser tag together and going on the flume ride at the Mall of America. Another church friend at dinner helped them refill a prescription by phone. After only four years here, some kids in the family already have American accents and talk with the young slang of 6-7 and brain rot.

“They’ve grown in their independence greatly,” Hudson said. “We’ve grown in depth of friendship.”

- More from Emily Belz

The Big Tent Initiative

The Big Tent Initiative is building bridges across the American Church.

Anne Kerhoulas

The Church today stands at a crossroads. Political polarization, racial tension, and denominational divides have fractured our witness and weakened our unity. Many believers long for a faith community that reflects the beautiful diversity of God’s kingdom—where people can disagree without division and pursue truth together in love. The Big Tent Initiative exists to meet this need.

The “Big Tent” is a place that brings together diverse groups of people who are united around the same core biblical beliefs. Through thoughtful conversations, creative media, and fresh theological resources, this initiative convenes Christian leaders and storytellers from many backgrounds to model a better way—one marked by grace, humility, and understanding.

By platforming underrepresented voices, learning from believers from different backgrounds, and creating spaces for honest, hopeful, and winsome dialogue, The Big Tent Initiative is helping the Church rediscover what unites us in Christ.

Your gift to the One Kingdom Campaign supports and extends this vital work. Learn more about The Big Tent Initiative and how you can make an impact here.

Theology

Christian Devotion Does Not Undermine Christian Charity

Brett Vanderzee

When Christians neglect the poor and oppressed, it’s not because we love Jesus too much but because we love him too little.

Anointing of Jesus by Alexandre Bida

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

It was a “social experiment” playing out on TikTok: A young Kentucky woman called churches asking if they’d buy formula to feed her (fictional) hungry baby. Only a handful agreed on the spot, and the stunt went viral, “proof” that Christians and other religious people are stingy hypocrites who can’t be bothered with the needy.

In reality, it proved nothing of the sort. A pastor who jumped at the chance to help was rightly honored. And while some responses were admittedly obtuse, there are also good reasons a church secretary wouldn’t instantly comply with a stranger on the phone. Baby formula—because it’s shelf-stable, relatively expensive, urgently needed, and subject to intermittent shortages—has long been a popular item for black market trading and schemes to defraud SNAP, the food stamps program.

And beyond baby formula, the generosity of Christians and other religious Americans is well-established. While not free of hypocrisy, we’ve consistently set the curve on giving. “The evidence leaves no room for doubt: Religious people are far more charitable than nonreligious people,” writes Arthur Brooks in Who Really Cares, a painstaking study of American charitable action. “In years of research, I have never found a measurable way in which secularists are more charitable than religious people.”

This generosity doesn’t just extend to houses of worship. Religious folks outperform secularists “in every measurable way,” Brooks documents—including giving to secular charities, volunteering, and donating blood. This has been true of Christians for centuries. Basil of Caesarea is credited with paving the way for the modern hospital, and the early church was renowned for its courageous care of the sick. Our culture’s deep assumption of the value of the young, weak, and vulnerable undeniably rests on the ethical foundation laid by the carpenter from Nazareth.

Still the perception remains: this idea that Christians are all words and no deeds, too busy doing empty religious rituals to see Christ in beggarly form. Even Christians sometimes fall into this line of thinking, wondering if there’s a tension between the church’s worship and the Lord’s work. Do love and adoration for Christ feed our impulse to feed the hungry? Or is churchly devotion to Jesus a mere distraction from tending to a broken world filled with dire needs?

Certainly, we should welcome prods to action: The Christian disposition to care for the least of these cannot remain a mere disposition. “The goodness of caring for the poor,” Joseph Bottum warns in An Anxious Age, can become “much less about actually caring for the poor … and much more about feeling that the poor should be cared for.”

Yet it’s a mistake to pit worship and service against each other—a mistake that will diminish our worship and service alike. Hearing, praying, learning, and singing the stories of Jesus’ mercy each week confronts us with the fact that Christianity is not a historical curiosity. It demands to be lived.

Christian devotion does not undermine charity but underwrites it. And going to church does not distract us from service but teaches us to serve. Far from competing with practical charity, devotion to Christ is what keeps his teachings in our lives.

The church’s call to worship is a call to action. It is a call to awaken from sloth—from what theologian Ross McCullough describes as “the vice of failing to love [goodness] enough.” The virtue that Christians have traditionally prescribed to combat sloth is diligence, the Latin root of which is diligere, or “to love.” Love is an indispensable ingredient to the Christian life, as the apostle Paul says in one of his most-quoted chapters: “If I give all I possess to the poor … but do not have love, I gain nothing” (1 Cor. 13:3).

When Christians neglect the poor, oppressed, and marginalized, it is not because we love Jesus too much but because we love him too little. Weekly fellowship with a church intent on doing justly (Mic. 6:8) is a practice and a source of diligence. The worship of Christ and the works of Christ are designed to go together, and any attempt to separate the two will ultimately fail.

This is the truth underneath the seemingly dismissive remark Jesus once made about the needy: “The poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:11). The line, a reference to Deuteronomy, comes in the story of Jesus’ anointing at Bethany. A woman breaks open an alabaster jar of expensive perfume and pours it on his head—much to the disciples’ dismay.

“Why this waste?” they ask. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor” (Matt. 26:6–9). But Jesus calls the woman’s action “beautiful.” She was anointing him for burial, he says, adding that the disciples will always have the poor (vv. 10–12).

What are we to make of this strange episode? Does it confirm the caricature of callous religiosity? Is Jesus justifying Christian selfishness?

The passage Jesus quoted points us to the answer. By invoking a fragment of Deuteronomy, Jesus was invoking the whole passage (a practice known as “metalepsis”), in which God addresses the ubiquity of poverty in order to command its redress: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (Deut. 15:11, NRSVue). Students of the Galilean rabbi would have known the citation’s implications.

The context in Matthew matters too. In the prior chapter, Matthew 25, Jesus points to treatment of the downtrodden as the criterion for eternal salvation and damnation, listing out feeding the hungry, giving a drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned. “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these,” Jesus says, “you did not do for me” (v. 45). From the Sermon on the Mount to the end of Matthew’s gospel, no one walks away with a license to ignore the lowly.

But what of the expensive ointment at Bethany? Does extravagant worship lavished on Jesus undercut care for the poor?

Actually, the opposite. Matthew 25 says that whatever we do for the poor we have ultimately done for Jesus. And in Matthew 26, the principle is reversed: When the woman does a beautiful thing to Jesus, she also does it to the poor.

That is, she doesn’t just anoint his body for death; she anoints his very way of life. She anoints his fellowship with the least, his touch of the untouchable. She anoints his sermon that starts by saying the poor in spirit are blessed (Matt. 5:3). Her worship is directed at the one who “became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9)—not materially rich but “rich in good deeds” (1 Tim. 6:18).

When I was in college, a friend of mine had an idea to start a movement called Sunday Morning Worship. The idea was to convince students to stop attending their local churches and instead spend Sunday mornings downtown serving the homeless. The heart behind the idea was good, echoing the call of Isaiah 1:12–17 to stop privileging solemn assemblies over seeking justice for the oppressed and needy.

But the “living sacrifice” of Christian service (Rom. 12:1–2) is never in competition with Christian worship. On the contrary, Sunday morning is precisely where we learn of Jesus’ heart for the destitute. And as it happened, our congregation on campus already had vibrant ministries to the poor. The work was being done; we needed only to join in.

That isn’t always the case. Too many churches have been unfaithful to the ministry agenda of Jesus. We have not always mirrored his tender mercy. But fervent worship of Jesus is not the problem here. It is the beginning of the solution.

In his comments on the story from Matthew 26, theologian Stanley Hauerwas reminds Christians of the work and worship incumbent upon every congregation:

The wealth of the church is the wealth of the poor. The beauty of a cathedral is a beauty that does not exclude but in fact draws and includes the poor. The beauty of the church’s liturgy, its music and its hymns, is a beauty of and for the poor. … “The poor you always have with you” is not a description to legitimate a lack of concern for the poor, but rather a description of a faithful church. This woman, this unnamed woman, has done for Jesus what the church must always be for the world—precious ointment poured lavishly on the poor.

When Christians bend the knee to Jesus, we adopt his posture to the impoverished: humble service, devotion, and sacrifice. To mirror the posture of Jesus is to prepare to carry a cross.

Brett Vanderzee is preaching and music minister at The Springs Church of Christ in Edmond, Oklahoma, singer-songwriter, and cohost of the podcast Bible & Friends.

- More from Brett Vanderzee

Ideas

This Winter, Be Bored

Hannah Miller King

Contributor

This slow and quiet season is an opportunity to hear anew from God.

EyeEm Mobile GmbH / Getty

Parenting literature these days is full of encouragement to let kids be bored. In an over-scheduled world, kids need downtime. Their brains benefit from white space, which ultimately results in greater creativity and motivation.

As a mom of three young children, I can attest to the benefits of boredom (although I can also attest to the messiness of its ensuing blanket forts and slime recipes). My own best memories of childhood are from a season when my siblings and I learned to entertain each other without a home television.

Adults aren’t given the same permission to be bored. Instead, we are encouraged to be productive. We evaluate our worth and usefulness in terms of busyness and efficiency. In our achievement-driven society, any kind of lull is perceived as evidence of poor planning or low ambition. The quiet rage I feel when I am held up in the grocery checkout line—without any more emails to respond to on my smartphone—exposes my pathological aversion to white space.

For me, and for many I’ve pastored, this “efficiency addiction” can often be subdued only by some kind of mind-numbing entertainment. In a discussion about Sabbath-keeping, some friends admitted to me that the only way they know how to disentangle from work is by bingeing Netflix shows. It seems that our consumer-capitalist framework has taught us to know only two modes: productive or entertained.

Many of us are currently riding that pendulum as we leave the constant stimulation of the end-of-year holidays for the fresh to-do lists of New Year’s resolutions. Our fluctuation between overwork and inertia demonstrates that we have forgotten how to exist apart from what we produce or consume.

Of course, productivity is part of our calling as God’s image bearers. Work predates the Fall and will likely last into eternity (Isa. 65:17–25). But we are more than what we do.

God declared creation to be “very good” before human beings did anything to develop it (Gen. 1:31). When my children embrace the natural lulls in activity on a given day, they are usually reconnecting with this good creation. They inspect icicles outside or play in a bubble bath. Sometimes they fall asleep. Their ability to receive the present moment, with all the limitations and pleasures of embodiment, convicts me. It exposes my disinterest with the world beyond my computer screen or to-do list. It exposes my fear of what might be deemed inefficient or insignificant.

I am challenging myself to welcome my own encounters with boredom as a spiritual discipline of sorts. In the spare moments of the day when I would typically turn to my phone for either a quick task or mindless clickbait—waiting in line at the store, sitting at a red light, even walking from the bedroom to the kitchen—I am seeking instead to be present.

This has made my life less productive and at times less interesting. But it is also reorienting me to a way of being in the world that is more expansive than my to-do list. When we resist the urge to fill every moment with a task or bit of amusement, we practice a subtle form of cultural resistance. We remind ourselves and others that life is more than a series of accomplishments and that enjoyment is not synonymous with entertainment.

Getting there, of course, is not easy. Our commitment to preoccupation often stems from deeper anxieties than the day’s deadlines. Busyness can mask low self-esteem, unprocessed grief, fears about the future, and much more. But even these need to be given space to emerge so that we can address them honestly.

I have a friend who is a spiritual director. She encourages people not to overstuff their prayer lives with activity—because even good things like prayer lists can inadvertently feed our preoccupation. Our souls need white space, time to unfurl in God’s presence and be healed. We can’t hustle our way to holiness, Alex Sosler wrote for CT, because “formation is less about productivity and more about stillness.”

This is how boredom can lead to breakthrough in our lives: not as an end in itself but—as its etymology suggests—as a boring through, like a hole that is bored or drilled into a solid object to make space for something else. If we can prayerfully receive it, boredom can create the conditions within us for deeper attunement and presence.

When we embrace white space, moments or even hours of inefficient, uninteresting time, we begin to reconnect with the basic truths of our existence in the world. We discover parts of ourselves that predate our productivity and will outlast the next episode on Netflix. When we practice the skill of presence, we retrain our senses to see the goodness of creation as it is right now and we increase our capacity to enjoy it.

Ultimately, strengthening our attunement to creation can serve another end: wonder. As I’ve practiced slowing down and paying attention to the present moment, I’ve realized that just because I’ve seen that icicle or the sunset for 36 years doesn’t mean I’ve exhausted their beauty or meaning.

Sometimes, after we’ve inoculated ourselves to the world’s gifts, we need to force ourselves to look again until we remember how to see. This too is a kind of attunement to God, who is always affirming creation by holding it together (Col. 1:17). When we learn to value presence over productivity, we grow into his image and rediscover the wonder for which we were made.

In Orthodoxy, theologian G. K. Chesterton put it this way:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

The inevitable winter lull, with its long stretches of routine and inclement weather, can lead to more frustration and determination to get things done. But if we let it, these months’ slower pace can reorient us to the gift of being, apart from questions of usefulness and productivity. We can choose to embrace these unavoidable inefficiencies—and the boredom they may evoke—as a kind of spiritual discipline that reconnects us to our true selves and to God.

As we become attuned to the people and things in front of us, we live counter-culturally, reflecting the image of the God who said in the beginning, “Let there be,” and it was good.

Hannah Miller King is the associate rector at The Vine Anglican Church in Western North Carolina and the author of Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness.

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Ideas

Nicki Minaj Is Right on Persecution—But Neglects Suffering Closer to Home

Chris Butler

Contributor

The rapper’s political advocacy seems sincere, but she has fallen into political tribalism.

Nicki Minaj being interviewed by Erika Kirk at Turning Point USA's annual AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Arizona on December 21, 2025.

Caylo Seals / Stringer / Getty

This piece was adapted from the Mosaic newsletter. Subscribe here.

Nicki Minaj has gone MAGA.

The rapper’s political evolution seems to have begun last fall when she expressed rightful concern over the safety of believers in Nigeria. Minaj, who identifies as a Christian, has since started talking more about God and has expanded her commentary to other hot-button topics.

The modern right welcomed her with open arms: She exchanged compliments with Vice President JD Vance, spoke at a Donald Trump–friendly political event, and threw dehumanizing punches at media personality Don Lemon for his presence at an ill-mannered anti-ICE demonstration in a church. This week, Minaj also appeared with Trump at another event and called herself his “number one fan.” She said she is not concerned about the criticism she’s facing due to her alignment with the president. “It actually motivates me to support him more,” she added.

The problem with all this isn’t Minaj’s embrace of politically conservative principles. The Trinidadian-born rapper once had an expletive-filled one-liner in a song about voting for Mitt Romney. (She later said it was sarcasm.)

The problem is also not that she champions her faith or criticizes politicians over gender ideology—even though it is hypocritical to simultaneously promote her own debauchery-filled music. The real problem is her online taunts, middle-fingered Chucky memes, and the culture-war mentality that seems to fuel much of what she does. Her behavior is yet another sign that reveals what happens when genuine concern about social issues is formed by outrage.

I should say here that it’s possible everything she’s doing is part of a grift, as some have suggested. But as of right now, I’m not convinced by that theory.

Minaj, whose real name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, grew up in a Christian home. It’s unclear if or where she goes to church, but she has previously pointed out she does have a pastor who leads a nondenominational ministry in Brooklyn, New York. Minaj speaks openly about prayer, baptism, and her desire to please God. She seems like she has sincere concerns about issues that resonate deeply with many believers—not just the persecution of Christians abroad and gender confusion but also the right to worship without intimidation.

These are not fringe concerns. They are real, morally serious questions, especially for Black Christians navigating a political landscape with two white-dominated parties that often treat faith as either a liability or a prop. But concern alone is not enough. Without discipleship, concern often curdles into grievance.

During an appearance last month at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest, Minaj did not offer a comprehensive political platform or a detailed endorsement of the Trump administration’s policy agenda. The rapper had previously criticized the first Trump administration’s family-separation policy and revealed that she “came to this country as an illegal immigrant.” At the conference however, she didn’t bring up any of that.

Instead, she focused on areas of alignment with the administration—religious freedom, resistance to cultural coercion, and a shared sense of being bullied or silenced—complimented both Trump and Vance, and ignored the rest.

Omissions like this reflect the way our political culture increasingly trains participants, especially public figures, to emphasize alignment and bracket complexity. Internal critique is often framed as weakness, and complexity often seems like a liability rather than a virtue.

As a result, people amplify some of their concerns and become quieter on others, not because they abandoned those concerns but because they no longer feel speakable. Suppressing tension, however, doesn’t clarify our public witness; it only distorts it. Over time, many, including Christians, learn to say only what their tribe (or one they’re trying to belong to) will affirm.

This explains why figures like Minaj can speak passionately about Christian persecution abroad while remaining silent on policies that harm vulnerable families at home, why outrage over cultural coercion can coexist with indifference to state coercion, and why people can pair Christian language with rhetoric that dehumanizes perceived enemies.

But removing inconvenient tensions is not a problem unique to MAGA. I have similar concerns with the left, which treats dissent—especially on sexuality, race, and identity—as worthy of social exile. This very trait has been on full display with former fans of Minaj, who are circulating petitions calling for her deportation to Trinidad.

For Black Christians, the act of losing nuance can be especially dangerous. Historically, the Black church has held together moral commitments that do not fit neatly into America’s partisan binaries: a high view of human dignity alongside a strong sense of right and wrong, a demand for justice coupled with personal responsibility, and resistance to oppression in tandem with a search for reconciliation.

That tradition has always required discernment, not slogans. But discernment must be taught. And too often, it has not been.

Many churches, wary of political entanglement or exhausted by partisan conflict, have retreated from shaping consciences on public issues altogether. Others have functionally outsourced their political theology to one party or another, trading prophetic distance for access and affirmation.

But when churches fail to form believers politically—not by telling them who to vote for but by teaching them how to think Christianly about power, justice, and responsibility—the media, partisan movements, and social media often become places of discipleship and affirmation.

Minaj’s story illustrates this vividly. She does not arrive at Turning Point—or the recent event with Trump—as a policy technician or ideological theorist. She arrives as someone who feels pushed, mocked, silenced, and spiritually disrespected. And she is met not with patient theological conversations but with applause. Her anger is validated. Her “courage” is celebrated. Her complexity, however, is quietly narrowed.

The tragedy is that a community of Christians should be where someone like Minaj can bring all her convictions, examine them honestly, and refine them through Scripture and community. It should be among us that she can ask hard questions about immigration, religious liberty, gender, violence, and state power without hearing that only some of those concerns are welcome.

Unfortunately, both for Minaj and for the rest of us, these types of communities have become few and far between.

Chris Butler is a pastor in Chicago and the director of Christian civic formation at the Center for Christianity & Public Life. He is also the co-author of Compassion & Conviction: The And Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

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Theology

What Happens When You Look Away from the Minneapolis Shootings

Russell Moore

Columnist

Ask not what will happen to your country—although that’s of grave importance. Ask what will happen to you.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

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

In 1981, novelist Walker Percy wrote a column he titled “A View of Abortion with Something to Offend Everybody.” As a Christian, he took on the seared consciences of pro-life people disregarding the poor women who don’t get abortions but can’t feed their babies. As a medical doctor, he took on the seared consciences of pro-choice people who see the unborn child as just a blob of detachable organic matter.

His final word was for the ones he assumed would be the winners of the political moment. To supporters of abortion, he wrote, “According to the opinion polls, it looks as if you may get your way. But you’re not going to have it both ways. You’re going to be told what you’re doing.”

What Percy identified here is much bigger than just one issue. It is rather the temptation, present in all places, to make invisible whatever actions trouble one’s own conscience, to make disposable whatever people one’s own tribe deems unworthy. He knew the fellow pro-lifers he was criticizing would not argue that children of poor women deserved their suffering. They would just say, What poor women in my community? And he knew the abortion rights supporters he was criticizing would speak loudly about choice without ever describing what actually happens in such a choice—and to whom.

This month, masked federal government agents in Minneapolis shot and killed two American citizens. With the first shooting, that of Renee Good, those arguing that we should ignore ICE’s culpability said Good was attempting to drive into the officers. Slowed-down video footage convinced many people who saw it that this was not the case, but surely the people waving away this killing thought the officer was justified in his response. The second and more recent killing, that of Alex Pretti, seemed much less ambiguous: A man legally carrying a concealed weapon was thrown to the ground, disarmed, and then shot ten times.

Over the past several days, the president’s language has been much more restrained than that of his vice president and his Homeland Security secretary, and homeland security adviser, who in some cases implied and in other cases stated that these two protesters were domestic terrorists.

If this were a mere question of governance and policy, it would still be of great importance. After all, we can see what happens in other places when armed authorities kill with impunity those who protest. And as I wrote two weeks ago on the meaning of Romans 13, the responsibility for holding such power accountable in America’s system of government is ultimately with all of us. But let’s step back from the civic space for a moment.

Some Christians, wherever they are politically, have said what should be obvious and noncontroversial: The killing of people under the circumstances we saw filmed is evil. But others who profess the name of Christ have said Good and Pretti deserved what they received. And still others throat-cleared their way out of making judgments only after the Pretti video became ubiquitous. Even if these were murders, the argument goes, these people shouldn’t have been where they were when they were. The immoral taking of human life, in other words, should be safe, legal, and rare.

People made the same arguments after the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney in Mississippi in 1964: Nobody is for killing anybody, but if they had stayed home, they would be alive today. People made the same arguments about John Lewis in Selma when police beat him or about Martin Luther King Jr. when he was assassinated. What has changed are not the arguments themselves; the only thing that has changed is the time.

Jesus warned about this when he said to the religious leaders around him, “For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets’” (Matt. 23:29–30, ESV throughout).

It is clear, of course, that those who want to cover up conversation about these killings expect that most of us will look away and that those who don’t will quickly move on. In Machiavellian terms, these leaders have good reason to assume our willful forgetfulness. They’ve seen it before, over and over again. Maybe you fit into that category: You don’t want to justify what sure seems to be murder, but you don’t want to get out of touch with your tribe either, so you choose not to think about it at all.

Ask not what will happen to your country—although that’s of great and grave importance. Ask what will happen to you.

What happens to you? If, when Charlie Kirk was murdered, your thought was Well, he shouldn’t have said the Second Amendment was worth the lives that were lost in school shootings or if now your thought is Well, they should have stayed home, and they’d be alive today, do you hear yourself? If that’s your response, you don’t object to murder but to murder of people on your side. It would be disastrous for us as a country if we collectively started to think like that. But a soul is even more permanent than a state.

The searing of a conscience—especially by evaluating in terms of tribal belonging what lives are worth living—leads to easier and easier searing in the future. The power to discern good from evil demands “constant practice” (Heb. 5:14). The next-to-end result is chilling: “They kill the widow and the sojourner, and murder the fatherless; and they say, ‘The Lord does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive’” (Ps. 94:6–7).

Armed agents doing wrong things can perhaps count on masks to shield them from accountability—or on presidential pardons or legal immunities or even the short attention spans of the American people. But what happens to you when you make moral decisions about the life or death of those made in the image of God? That cannot be hidden, at least not permanently, not to the God who judges the living and the dead.

If the universe is meaningless and good and evil are just categories of power or distinctions between friend and enemy, that’s one thing. But if there is an all-seeing God and Jesus is alive, then the judgment seat is quite different from public opinion. You cannot hide a hardened heart behind the fact that you weren’t the one pulling the trigger. God is not a political hack of any party or movement, and he doesn’t observe the Fifth Avenue rule.

The country is in a dangerous time. You might conclude that defeating your enemies is worth ignoring some lives lost—murders you would have denounced if the “other side” had done the killing. You might conclude that a culture war is worth your conscience. If so, you might win. After all, the United States is only 250 years old, and underestimating human virtue and responsibility is often a safe bet in a fallen world.

But you can’t have it both ways. You will be told what you’re doing.

Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

Church Life

How to Witness Well in Post-Christian America

Darrell Bock

We must engage the truth of the gospel with relationship and respect.

Mitchell Luo / Unsplash

Times have changed significantly in my 50 years as a believer. Here in the United States, the perception and position of the Christian faith has flipped from seemingly being the home team to being the visitors instead, even perhaps the rivals met with booing. Some survey data suggests the decline in U.S. Christianity may be leveling off, but that’s after a significant drop. In 2007, 78 percent of American adults identified as Christians. In 2024? Only 63 percent.

We live in a post-Christian context, even, at times, a “negative world” in which being a believer is not just neutral but socially detrimental. This shift changes everything about how we present Christ. Our world is not new; it’s much like the world of the first-century church. Now, though, we must reckon with stereotypes about Christians and peoples’ past experiences of church.

The church taught for decades that what is in the Bible is true because it is in the Bible, full stop. But what do you do when the Bible is not automatically assumed to be a source of truth or, at the very least, an innocuous good book? “Because the Bible says so” can’t be the end of our conversations with the roughly 30 percent of Americans who identify as religious nones.

These days, how we engage with non-Christians is as important as what we present as truth. Christians have always valued humility and sacrificial love as core virtues, reflective of Christ on the cross. Through the centuries, we’ve seen how those virtues can change hate and hostility into love and respect for all made in God’s image.

But the temptation is always to use force instead. This is not only a theologically and ethically troubling solution to the problem of unbelief but also an ineffective strategy. The gospel is about an internal change of heart, not an external change of law.

Before we even begin to discuss specific contentious issues such as immigration, sexuality, gun control, vaccinations, abortion, the Middle East, race, diversity initiatives, or a host of other specific issues, we must consider how we enter the public square, a place where Buddhists and Presbyterians, Muslims and Baptists, Jews and agnostics must figure out how to live together.

I want to argue that the Christian’s best initial strategy is to listen, and to listen seriously. Engagement means persuading, not badgering. We must take the time to understand the underlying why behind another person’s position, even when we ardently disagree. Leaping into argument and conflict often closes doors. If we sincerely hear out someone else’s rationale instead, we often discover not only an open door but also a bridge that can take us toward the gospel.

I have found looking for common ground often changes not just a conversation’s direction but its tone, allowing me to present how Christ makes a difference and offers an alternative way of seeing life’s choices. For example, when I have acknowledged our failure to live well together in a diverse culture, all of a sudden my conversations about race go from confrontation to collaboration.

But for many Christians over the last four decades, the default in public spaces has been to fight. As a result, we have made nonbelievers the enemy, driving them away from the gospel. Peter challenges us to give a defense of our hope with meekness and respect (1 Pet. 3:15–16). In his letters, Paul insists that Christians do good to all people and alwaysuse gracious speech (Gal. 6:10; Col. 4:5–6). Ephesians 6:12, a passage drawing imagery from warfare, declares that our battle is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual forces. The people we seek to convince are not our combatants; the real battle is spiritual, not merely intellectual or emotional. This deeper spiritual battle means living out our faith consistently, with peaceable patience, even as we advocate courageously for our beliefs.

Christians may wrestle with what their orientation should be toward people who need what Jesus offers but have not yet received his free gift of grace. Do I fundamentally value those people on the basis of their being made in God’s image? Or do I focus first on the decisions they make or ideas they hold that run counter to God’s word? Do I see people who do not know God as my adversaries? Or do I see them as the ones for whom Christ died, to whom we make an appeal to know God precisely because of his exceptional, sacrificial love (2 Cor. 5:19–20)? The latter perspective is inseparable from our ability to share our faith in a pluralistic context.

The gospel is a challenge and an invitation. Without the invitation, I do not have the gospel. But I often see believers focused on the fight at the cost of the welcome. The result is a missed opportunity for attracting our neighbors.

The Bible is revelation from God, defined by The Oxford English Dictionary as “the divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world.” Think about that definition. What’s revealed in Scripture is not separate from what’s revealed in the natural world. The Bible’s claims are constituent of human existence. A teaching is true not just “because it’s in the Bible.” Teaching appears in Scripture as a disclosure of what already is and has been—what was already true. In the beginning, there was the Word (John 1:1).

When we discuss the Bible’s teachings with someone who has no regard for or familiarity with the text, then we need to present the ideas of Scripture on their own terms. We need to make the case for the biblical worldview by appealing to its wisdom and truth.

But in addition to using these apologetic strategies, we must also remember that the fruit of the Spirit is fundamentally relational. The Great Commandment is relational. Christ’s way is distinctive in how he calls us to treat those who oppose us: We are to love our enemies, not just our allies. That treatment is the standard by which we measure Christian love.

Tone matters one heaven of a lot. The best way to witness in our world is to reflect the approach of our Savior. Only in relationship and respect will we be able to not only stall the decline of Christian faith in the United States but also actually advance the gospel anew.

Darrell Bock is the senior research professor New Testament Studies and executive director of cultural engagement for Dallas Theological Seminary. He is the author or editor of over 45 books.

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Church Life

Young Christians Can Stay in the Black Church

Michael Lyles II

A legalistic congregation and my own spiritual immaturity made me sour on church. But God and another congregation drew me back.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash, Pexels

If you go to a Sunday service at many Black churches, you won’t find a lot of young people there. Pew Research Center confirmed this generational gap, which has also attracted media attention. Congregations that once served as the political, social, and economic nerve centers of their neighborhoods face uncertain futures as millennial and Gen Z Christians opt for online services, seek membership in multiethnic churches, or ditch church altogether.

There are many reasons young people are stepping out of the pews. Some just don’t want to go to church or to be affiliated with one religion. Others think the Black church is not involved enough in contemporary political and cultural issues. And a subset of young Black Christians distrust spiritual leaders, feel that they don’t fit in at church, or have had upsetting experiences they often call church hurt.

Some of these sentiments echo in my own journey of walking away and coming back to the Black church about ten years ago, at 30. My relationship with the church changed when I understood the deeply personal reasons behind why I left, studied Scripture for myself, and transformed my understanding of the role God intended church to play in my life. I realized what we all eventually discover: There’s no perfect church or perfect Christians, just a perfect Savior worth following.

Whenever I meet anyone new, I do not enjoy answering the question “Where are you from?,” because the predominately white suburb where my parents chose to raise me is not what I would have picked for myself. My parents grew up in tight-knit segregated Black neighborhoods in the 1960s. When they had the opportunity to choose where to live in the mid-1980s, they moved to a northern Atlanta suburb that had a population of roughly 50,000 people.

The makeup of the town meant I was isolated from the Black history and institutions that were important touchpoints with my own culture and with the city of Atlanta—the only exception being a local Black church my family attended. When I was five, my mother reminds me, I asked her why the people at my school were white when the people at church were brown. I remember some kids asking me if they could touch my fade or if I was black all over my body. Others were overly eager to make “a Black friend,” which made me acutely aware that I was not like them.

Since my extended family lived elsewhere, our church became my version of the proud Black neighborhoods where my parents grew up. Church was the place I could see people who looked like me, and it was the center of my family’s social life. My father taught the high school Sunday school class for decades while my mother poured her heart into the children’s program and youth ministry.

My parents, particularly my dad, cast large shadows. It seemed every active member knew him and by extension knew I was his son. Growing up, I often felt as if fellow church members treated me like a carbon copy of my father, even though both of us were (and still are) very different from each other. We don’t share the same ministry gifts. But the constant comparison made me wonder if God wanted me to be a replica of him. Those feelings planted seeds of anger, hurt, insecurity, and spiritual doubt, all of which were then watered by legalistic attitudes within the congregation.

This was the beginning of a complicated relationship with my church. On the one hand, it was the place where I met my childhood best friend, and I felt the Holy Spirit moving as our youth choir sang a rendition of Psalm 23. I loved and respected many of the members. On the other hand, it was also the place where, like many Christians in predominately white evangelical churches, I saw the excesses of the ’90s purity culture.

As a teen, I involuntarily joined a junior-high vow-of-purity program in which my peers and I were told we could risk going to hell for having premarital sex. A sin? Yes, but surely not one uniquely beyond the reach of God’s mercy. The well-intentioned but ultimately poor theology didn’t stop there: our teachers also told us we would face the eternally fiery furnace if we listened to secular music, especially if we did so on a Sunday.

Then there’s what didn’t happen. We didn’t have nuanced conversations about honoring God with our sexuality. My biggest takeaway from our church was that Christians shouldn’t talk, joke about, or even acknowledge our sexual desires. There was also little to no conversation about how to stay true to the biblical sexual ethic in a nation where many who oppose our views on sex align with us on racial-justice issues—and where those hesitant to address injustice call themselves Christians too.

Then there was the case of traditional marriage, which our church rightly promoted as a worthy aspiration. But at times, it felt as if we were championing the American dream (the spouse, the house, the kids) instead of preaching the whole counsel of God, which says not everyone is called to marriage or parenthood (1 Cor. 7:1–8). Moreover, even when Christians are called to this path, their journeys may not follow the formulaic fairy tale we were sold.

Over time, I struggled with how a church that seemed to paint every issue in black and white could be a relevant part of my life when the situations I encountered Monday to Saturday had many hues of gray. So I left.

When I went to college, I was still a Christian. But church was no longer where I rooted my social or spiritual life. I eventually found a group of friends (made up of fellow jaded Christians, agnostics, and “spiritual” people) who embraced candor and occasional irreverence and were not preoccupied with whether everything I said, did, or thought was a sin. I wanted a community that could handle my doubts about legalistic biblical interpretation and did not shy away from the fact that life is sometimes messy—even for the most dutiful Christians. My friends provided that, but my spiritual life petered out.

Years after I ran away from church, however, God used another Black congregation in Harlem, New York, to shake me out of my spiritual slumber. He also pushed me to confront a hard truth: The root cause of my attitude toward the church was my own spiritual immaturity.

I visited the Harlem church with my then-girlfriend, now wife, after our yuppie peers suggested it was a fun place to go before brunch on Sundays. There, the doubt and criticism of church behaviors I encountered as a kid were welcomed, not rejected. The church pushed us to read the Bible cover-to-cover so we would know what was in it and what was not. At that point, I couldn’t have told you the general narrative of the Bible from Abraham to Jesus. I knew hymns but not the context of the Bible passages that inspired them.

The other church members and I did not always agree with each other—or our pastor—on theological interpretation. But we learned how to disagree with a Bible-centered perspective.

The accounts of Israel’s monarchs in the Old Testament showed me God doesn’t relate to every generation of a family the same way, so I did not have to feel guilty or insecure about having different gifts than my dad. I didn’t feel pressure to never miss a church service, which felt like an expectation growing up. The Harlem church’s training gave me a spiritual defensive mechanism against the subtle forms of legalism that bothered me as a kid and that, I believe, have led a chunk of young people to walk away.

But the fault isn’t with Black churches alone. Many young people, including me, left because we had a distorted view of our local congregations. We didn’t see Black churches as what God intended: a joint spiritual savings account that requires investment from every member. Instead, we saw them as tools we could use to withdraw support, prayers, love, and a weekly sermon about rules we had to follow.

Maturity in the faith requires taking ownership of our relationships with Christ and looking for opportunities to help others lean into that same fellowship, not expecting everyone (including churches) to cater to our every need. That doesn’t mean we won’t face pain. Other believers might continue to hurt us, and life will have messy seasons. But when our faith and hope are rooted in Christ—not in people or circumstances—we can better weather those storms.

Today, my wife and I are raising our kids in a racially diverse community in Atlanta. We go to a Black church, but we don’t rely on it to be the only place where our kids encounter people who look like them. My dad and I respect each other’s differences and allow each other the space to worship and serve in our own ways. Our churches are not perfect, and neither are we.

Black churches, like all other congregations, are made up of people, not walls. They are imperfect, but they are also one of the instruments God is using to renew the world. Millennials and Gen Zers should avoid squandering their proud legacy and choose to invest in them instead.

Michael Lyles II is an executive recruiter in Atlanta and a member of Elizabeth Baptist Church, where he teaches a children’s church class with his wife, Kristina. He has written for Our Daily Bread Publishing and is part of the volunteer answer team at GotQuestions.org.

- More from Michael Lyles II

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