The AI Bible: ‘We Call It Edutainment’

Staff Editor

Max Bard of Pray.com details an audience-driven approach to AI-generated videos of the Bible, styled like a video game and heavy on thrills.

Scenes from the AI Bible showing Satan, Jezebel, and the Nephilim.

AI Bible / Pray.com

When generative artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT first became widely available in late 2022, many people—including me—marveled at their ability to conjure detailed images from just a few lines of text. Sure, the AI tools struggled to create fingers. But they needed mere seconds to work up images that would take many of us painstaking days to make in Photoshop.

Since then, the capacity of large language models (LLMs) to create imagery, then silent video, then video with sound has rapidly improved. “We can talk!” exclaimed convincing AI-generated characters in a clip that made the rounds online earlier this year.

With this kind of technology on offer, it was inevitable that people would apply it to the Bible—and so they have. AI videos of biblical stories are proliferating, as 404 Media reported in June. Prominent among them is The AI Bible, which has over a million subscribers on YouTube and TikTok combined, and 1.2 million on Instagram.

The AI Bible is a project of Pray.com, a popular app with offerings including bedtime stories, meditations, a reading of the Bible by actor James Earl Jones, Prayer Therapy with TV personality Dr. Phil, and Sleep Psalms with pastor T. D. Jakes. I spoke with Max Bard, vice president of content at Pray.com. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Let’s start with a general introduction for readers who may not be familiar with this project. What is The AI Bible?

In a nutshell, The AI Bible is a series of channels on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube. It’s a project that we’ve created to glorify God using AI, mainly image and video generators. We’re using AI to bring these Bible stories to life like no one’s ever seen before—in these cool, cinematic-looking, and engaging videos with vivid storytelling. That’s what you’ll see on the Instagram and TikTok and YouTube channels.

Since this technology is still so novel, I’d like to take a minute to talk about process. What model do you use to create these videos? And how does the prompting work? Do you simply feed it a passage of Scripture and ask for a movie, or do you give guidance on the story and character design? Or maybe you write a whole script?

It’s a pretty extensive process. When Pray.com started making subscription content back in 2019, it was all audio content. So we had about 5,000 audio stories that we had already produced, and we took those stories and layered video onto that. So a lot of The AI Bible videos on YouTube—the longer form, 10-minute type—were derived from our audio content that we had already produced. It was a way for us to be able to quickly make some videos right off the bat.

All the newer stuff that we make currently has a long process that involves platforms like ChatGPT and Claude, which helps us with outlining what the stories will be. We’ll decide, Okay, we’re going to do the story of Adam and Eve. And then from there it’s like, Okay, how do you structure that into a video?

We have scriptwriters on our team, and one of them is a pastor, so he’ll write the whole script first. That’s the first process. The second process is taking that script and storyboarding it with visuals. That’s text to image, and for that we use the AI programs Midjourney and ChatGPT.

We’ll storyboard out that whole script, and that will help us create the animation next. So if we have a storyboard of, say, 60 scenes or 60 cuts, then we know exactly what the ending frame of each scene is going to look like compared to the beginning frame. That will help us with things like the coloring of the story and making sure we have the characters consistent throughout the story.

Once we make that storyboard in Midjourney and ChatGPT, then we’ll start using the AI video generators to turn those images into animations. You put the image into the video generator, and you tell the video generator what you want it to do. For example, with camera movement: pushing in, pushing out, wide-angle aerial shots, and that type of stuff. You can also tell the video generator what you want the characters to do: walking forward, their facial expressions, all that type of stuff.

I’m curious about the aesthetics of the videos. You mentioned that they’re cinematic, and I definitely see that. But the look is also very reminiscent of video games, especially in the design of the supernatural elements—like Goliath in the full Bible trailer, or the beasts of Revelation, or the Nephilim in one of your most popular videos. Was that a deliberate choice? And if yes, was there a particular purpose or audience you had in mind?

Yeah, it almost looks like Final Fantasy, the video game. We’ve got a lot of people saying that. When we first started pushing into these AI videos, that was the look that Midjourney and other image generators were creating with us.

We did a bunch of tests, and if you look deep in our Instagram or TikTok accounts, you could see different styles and books that we tried. And we took a data-informed approach and just said, Okay, these videos are getting more shares, more reposts, more comments. Let’s stick with this style and run with it. And that’s the style that you’re seeing right now.

We’re always testing different looks, so that’s why one day you may see a totally random style on our accounts. That’s us testing to see if this is going to resonate with people. We like to test a lot, but we think this current look is working really well and people are enjoying it, engaging with the stories, and wanting to learn more.

How do you decide which passages you’re going to pick to make into videos? I was looking over the YouTube channel and saw a lot of the more exciting parts of the Bible: Creation, Revelation, stories with a lot of action and violence and supernatural elements. But, of course, a lot of the Bible isn’t that exciting. It’s letters, sermons, guidance on how to live. Are we ever going to get an AI Bible video of Jesus preaching the Sermon on the Mount?

Yes, we will. And that’s coming pretty soon. We have some series that will be coming out maybe in the next three to four months that will follow Jesus’ life, Paul’s life, Abraham’s life. Those will be something where it’s likely a weekly drop.

Right now, we have a couple of series that we’ve made in the Pray.com app on David’s life, Jesus’ life, and Joseph’s life. For the AI Bible channel, we’ve already produced a series on Ruth, and we’re going to do a lot more of those where we follow a person from the Bible in a four- or five-episode series.

One video that caught my eye was about Job: “When SATAN Almost Won… The Full Story of Job’s Faith.” It’s 10 minutes long and very vivid, but I was struck by the fact that more than half of those 10 minutes are from Job 1, and then most of the book—about 40 chapters of Job and his friends wrestling through questions about why God permits evil and suffering for people who love him—gets taken down to a single spoken verse.

I’m thinking about people who are less scripturally knowledgeable, coming to a video like this. It’s presented as the “full story” of Job, but it doesn’t include any of the complicated rebuke of Job from God at the end and instead has some stuff about hope. As you’re moving into longer video formats, will they include more of the theology and discourse passages?

Yeah, definitely. Right now, we have a podcast called Bible in a Year. And in that series, there’s three stories of Job that I think are about 60 to 90 minutes. So when you take all those, it’s about 90 minutes of Job’s story that we created. And so for this AI Bible video, we had to chuck it down into 10 minutes. So how were we going to figure that out? And that’s what ended up being the 10-minute piece that you saw.

That’s how we’re testing out these stories on the AI Bible channel—to see what are the stories that resonate most with this audience right now. That’s why all the videos you see are 10 minutes. We’re able to make a video like that in a couple of weeks. The subscribers don’t have to wait a month or two for us to put out a 60-minute video or something that would take us quite a while.

So we’re using the 10-minute format to see which of the stories people most want to hear about—and you’ll see that in the comment section too. They’ll tell us like, Hey, I wish you did this story or that story, and then we’ll say, Okay, can we create this as a 10-minute version, see how it does?

And if it does well, let’s break this out into a five- or six-part series, which is something that we would do with Job and really get in-depth. The one that you’re talking about, there’s very little dialogue. It was a lot of just visuals, music, that type of stuff. When we get into the series, that’s when we start putting the dialogue from the Bible in there and really getting in-depth with these stories.

So what you’re seeing with these little 10-minute vignettes are the quickest way that we can get something out there to the users to see if something like this would work.

A video like that—which loses, frankly, the great bulk of Job’s difficult theological content and message—makes me wonder about your process for content review. What you’re putting out might be effective for testing audience interest, but who is making sure it’s theologically sound and historically accurate and biblically faithful? What is the process there?

We have a bunch of different layers of—call it checks and balances. One of them is we have a few pastors and theologians who look over the scripts, making sure that, like you said, it’s biblically accurate.

Before we even get into the image generation and video generation, that process happens—and the majority of the stories are written by pastors and ministers. That’s a great part of it, because they’re teaching these stories every day. We want to make sure that we’re getting them right and making them in a way that people can learn from them.

Let’s turn more toward purpose. Do you see The AI Bible project as discipleship or education or entertainment or what?

Yeah, we call it edutainment—education and entertainment. The value is the way that these stories are styled. They have a specific look to them, right? You watch these stories, and you’re like, Oh, this is AI. This is that AI look. That’s the entertainment part that I think people are really fascinated about.

And that fantasy look that you mentioned we see as bringing in a lot of people, some who aren’t even Christian and are really interested in these stories. Like, Oh, I’ve never seen this before. I didn’t even know these things, like that the Nephilim were in the Bible. This is interesting.

We’re getting all these subscribers, people we never would’ve normally reached from the Pray.com app. It’s reaching a younger audience than traditionally we had before, which is great. And I think it’s really opening the Bible up to a lot more people. You don’t have to know the Bible and the stories to enjoy these videos. You can check them out—maybe because you’re fascinated by the way it looks—and see something new, and then it gets you interested in what else happened in the Bible.

That’s what we’re seeing. A lot of people watch these videos and end up downloading our app. They tell us, Hey, I found you guys from a couple of these AI Bible videos. They didn’t even know that we were producing all of this audio content for Pray.com, and they’re finding us because of these video stories.

It sounds like you guys are very data-informed about the move from the videos to the app. Do you have data that would suggest that watching these videos is leading people to more offline involvement in the faith—reading their Bibles more deeply or more often, or maybe committing to life and worship with a local congregation?

The way we find that out is through qualitative feedback like reviews. We partner with pastors on a lot of podcasts, and we’ve had users who listen to the podcast, say, of Jack Graham’s Bible in a Year podcast. He’s a pastor in Dallas, Texas, and we’ve had people that say, Hey, I’ve been listening to your podcast for the past six months, and I just started going to your church.

We’re like, Wow, we’re seeing people taking action in person just by listening to some of these podcasts and going to their churches, which is awesome. We’re seeing a lot of that. We don’t see it in the app through data, because it doesn’t tell us location, but when people say that in reviews, it’s really powerful. This is proving that it’s working.

Just to make sure I understood you about the podcast partnerships and those reviews, is that through the Pray.com app and the audio content there? Or is that about the AI Bible videos in particular?

With the Pray.com app. Not necessarily the AI videos.

Some people don’t even know that The AI Bible is associated with Pray.com. We’re still working on the branding on that. It’s mainly with the Pray.com app—in the iOS App Store reviews or Google Play store reviews—that you’ll see people mentioning that explicitly.

Gotcha. Now, I can imagine someone making the case that The AI Bible is kind of like stained glass windows—and I’ll be interested to know if you’ve used this analogy.

When most Christians were illiterate in the premodern era, one reason they’d build cathedrals with lots of stained glass and mosaics was that people who couldn’t read and couldn’t understand most of the services in Latin could still learn the Bible stories by looking at those images. We’re in an increasingly postliterate era, and I can imagine someone saying, Well, we need to be making the Bible into video so that people who just will not read have a way to learn these stories.

But then I thought, Does the comparison work? Because you can sit in front of a stained glass window or a beautiful painting of the Crucifixion and engage in contemplative prayer. You can study the artwork while you talk to God. But the videos are very high drama. They’re very engrossing. And I see the appeal of that, of course, but it doesn’t seem conducive to contemplative prayer—honestly to any kind of prayer. I’m wondering what you think about that analogy.

Yeah, I see it as it’s another way of storytelling. It’s interesting that you brought that up—that there are a lot of people out there who either don’t or can’t read or maybe physically can’t read because they have a hard time seeing.

Many people who use our app are in that bucket, and we know that because they’ve left the reviews saying they have a hard time reading but enjoy listening to the stories. There are also people that enjoy learning through visual storytelling. That’s what The AI Bible project is all about: learning these stories in a different format that you can literally just watch and be fascinated by all the stories in the Bible that happened.

Some people don’t even know about stuff like the Nephilim, right? To be honest, I hadn’t read the Bible front to back before joining Pray.com, so I didn’t even know a lot of these stories. I’ve learned so much just working at Pray.com. Seeing these stories is exciting, and it makes me more engaged to learn more about the Bible.

It’ll almost be like a History Channel show, where you get these really awesome reenactments and then also commentary from pastors and theologians that helps guide you through these stories. And then you come back to these epic stories, and then you come back to the pastor explaining why it’s important, how you can apply it to your life. That’s where we’re going with this whole project.

Lastly, you’ve mentioned your work with data, and this is something we deal with in journalism too: questions of how to balance your mission with wanting people to look at the work—wanting to get people’s attention. That’s a real tension in lines of work that involve content creation.

I couldn’t help but notice that many of the characters in AI Bible videos—and this is true of the positive male figures, but even more so of the women—they’re very sexy. And some, like Jezebel in the Bible villains video, are showing a lot of skin.

Prior to seeing that video, in a conversation with a theologian, we said, Well, maybe you would show a video like this in a youth group setting and then use it to spark discussion. But I can’t imagine showing Jezebel and what she’s wearing there to a bunch of middle school boys. So I’m curious about the role you all see for that kind of sex appeal in teaching people about the Bible.

There are a lot of different approaches to it, right? We stay as true as possible to the Bible as we can. And so when we’re looking up images of—there’s not a ton of images of Jezebel on Google, but she’s typically wearing this dress, and we just portrayed this same sort of look that she has on a few images in Google and then used AI to bring it more to life.

I can see your point where it may look a little more sexy than I guess you had imagined, but I think in the Bible she was this kind of villain—not the person you would look up to from the Bible. So we took this route. Obviously, we didn’t want to make her way too sexy, right?

But yeah, there were a few people who had your reaction where it’s like, This could be a little too much for middle schoolers, like you brought up. That’s part of our testing process right now: How far do you go on these styles, and where are the pullbacks on it?

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Books

Review

A Woman’s Mental Work Is Never Done

Bonnie Kristian

Sociologist Allison Daminger’s new book on the cognitive labor of family life is insightful but incomplete.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Princeton University Press

Last year, our twins started kindergarten, and I started what I very much hope will not be a long-term project of trying to get their schools to talk to my husband.

Both of us are involved in their education, of course, but we want him to be the primary contact when the school needs to tell us that they’ve misbehaved or need to come home sick or have some event outside normal hours. This school did not quite take to that idea. No matter how often my husband took the lead on replying to teacher emails, speaking with administrators, and going to meetings, many messages (and there were so many messages) came exclusively to me. When the teacher started a group text for parents from our class, I was the one on the list even though she had my husband’s number too. In fact, every single parent she included was a mom.

This story would not surprise Allison Daminger, a University of Wisconsin–Madison sociologist and the author of What’s on Her Mind: The Mental Workload of Family Life. For it is usually “her” mind, especially where children and primary education are concerned. As Daminger finds, even couples like us who want to do things differently tend to drift—or to be pushed—into long-standing patterns of female household management.

What’s on Her Mind is a succinct and enjoyable book. Daminger writes well and thoughtfully explains her research—which is built around interviews with “172 parents representing 94 distinct couples”—including in an appendix narrating her study’s development and noting potential shortcomings. Evangelical readers won’t share her views on gender and sexual ethics, but her book is of real use for Christian academics, church and school administrators, and families.

Studies of how couples allot housework and other family responsibilities are nothing new. You may have seen reports that husbands in America, though still typically the junior partners in these endeavors, do markedly more childcare and chores today than they did in decades past.

But Daminger’s interest is not the visible, physical work of washing dishes or mowing the lawn or getting the kids in bed. It’s the “mental processes aimed at figuring out what the family requires, what it owes to others, and how best to ensure that both requirements and obligations are fulfilled.” This is “cognitive household labor,” in her terminology, and it includes “anticipating household members’ needs, identifying options for meeting them, deciding how to proceed, and following up after the fact.”

That kind of work never stops, and particularly when one spouse is disproportionately responsible for shouldering the load, it “operates as a near-constant ‘background job.’” If you’ve managed a household, you know what it’s like:

While any one instance of cognitive labor might seem a minor annoyance, the cumulative effects of many “small” or split-second acts can be substantial. … “Successful” anticipation and monitoring means near-constant vigilance. A trip to the kitchen provokes a mental note to buy more eggs. The changing of the seasons inspires an email to the summer camp. Efforts to sleep are interrupted by the sudden realization that the realtor never confirmed tomorrow’s appointment.

About four in five of the heterosexual couples Daminger studied were “woman-led,” meaning the bulk of the cognitive workload fell to the wife. Predictably, this was common in relationships where the man earned more or the woman did not work outside the home.

Yet similar patterns prevailed for couples where she made more or he was unemployed. As Daminger notes, “Most women in [the] more powerful economic position—63 percent, to be specific—also completed most cognitive labor for their household.” And taking on more decision-making and planning work doesn’t necessarily mean you get a break from the actual chores, Daminger reports: For most woman-led couples, “the female partner also completes the bulk of the physical work for her family.”

It is often true, as the old couplet puts it, that “Man works till set of sun, / Woman’s work is never done.”

Neither is this research done. Daminger looks forward to additional studies with larger sample sizes—numbers that might illuminate “how cognitive labor patterns and narratives vary across” demographic differences, including “races, ethnicities, and immigrant statuses.” But oddly, she doesn’t seem interested in faith as a factor, which strikes me as a significant oversight. Religions, Christianity included, have much to say about marriage, parenting, and work.

Christian academics could explore this sociologically and theologically. How do (or don’t) Christian ideas around family life and sex difference shape our cognitive labor? Are there meaningful distinctions between Protestants and Catholics or complementarians and egalitarians? (I would hazard an educated guess that in complementarian marriages, husbands tend to exercise less meaningful authority in household management than they imagine—and that in egalitarian marriages, husbands tend to contribute less equally than they suppose.)

Christian scholars might also range further than Daminger is willing to go in their search for explanations of workload patterns. What’s on Her Mind rejects “gender essentialism,” with Daminger arguing that gender is not “a personal quality—something we are” but “more akin to an activity. In this view, ‘woman’ is not an inherent feature of who I am but rather a role I continually enact.”

Daminger is obviously correct that our culture’s norms, expectations, institutions, and other structures hugely influence how we divvy up cognitive work at home. But she hampers her research by treating these factors as near-complete explanations. Clearly, there are cases where bodily sex matters to household management, even at this mental level.

When I was postpartum, for example, it was easiest for me to determine what products would be helpful to my recovery. And in any season, it makes perfect sense for my husband to remember the trash and recycling pickup schedules, because it’s physically taxing to get a full, heavy bin with a broken handle down the hill to the curb. These choices aren’t about “traditionalism” or “doing gender” as a cultural performance. They stem from physical realities.

Outside the academy, however, many Christian institutions and individuals would do well to hear Daminger’s message about choice and change in cognitive labor. Though interviewees tended to describe husbands as naturally a bit helpless—scatterbrained, disorganized, bad at calendars, and befuddled by grocery lists—the reality is that “cognitive labor prowess is as much a function of learned skill as innate capacity.” We can all learn to be competent spouses and parents.

Local institutions can help. Churches should make it easier for couples to get involved by minimizing the cognitive load they share. For example, my husband and I co-lead our small group, and there’s a mandatory training for group leaders coming up. Because the church provides childcare, we can both attend, relieving me from the burden of working through the babysitting list to see who can make it on a Saturday morning.

Church and school administrators alike should remember that fathers are just as responsible for their children as mothers are. Do not default to mom! Contact both parents unless directed otherwise, and if a family tells you the husband is the primary contact, respect that.

Moreover, schools should contact parents less. Share our mental load instead of multiplying it. Sure, we need to know if a kid gets a detention or suspension. But we don’t need an email about every lost homework assignment or time-out. Christian schools, in particular, can be nimble and trusted enough to find a reasonable middle ground.

That kind of institutional change would be helpful, albeit not quite sufficient. To be clear, it’s not my goal (or Daminger’s, for that matter) for every couple to divide the mental load equally. Striving for a bean-counting, 50-50 split reflects an ignorant, juvenile idea of marriage. The goal, rather, is honesty and love—love that “does not dishonor others,” “is not self-seeking,” and shows patience and perseverance (1 Cor. 13:4–7) with and for one’s spouse.

Throughout What’s on Her Mind, Daminger shares quotes and stories from the families she interviewed. Some are quite funny—if grim cringe comedy is your thing. For instance, one grown man shamelessly recounted going on a bathroom-cleaning strike because his wife failed to buy his preferred cleaning supply.

In another couple, the wife described her husband as “temperamentally ill-equipped for the frenetic multitasking and constant forecasting she relied on to juggle home, paid work, and childcare.” The husband agreed, saying his wife is “much more attentive to all the things that need to be done. … I can mostly go a very long time before it hits me that now is the time to deal with it.”

Sure, maybe—except that the husband is a surgeon. This is a job that requires grading high on measures of forecasting, decision-making, and attentiveness.

Now, perhaps the arrangement of their lives is such that this wife should do most of the cognitive labor at home. She’s also employed, but surgeons have demanding work. Yet this husband isn’t failing to notice family needs because he’s incapable. Either he does not want to notice, or he simply does not care.

And a third man, perhaps unwittingly, told that truth. His wife takes the lead in household management though she’s employed and he’s between jobs. This, he announced, is “just how we are.” She’s organized, you see, and he’s just a laid-back dude! But in his personal hobbies and interests, this man described himself as “much more of a planner” than his wife, keeping extensive lists and schedules. “When it comes to the things that I don’t care about, we’ll deal with them when they come,” he told Daminger, consigning most of the work of family life to that category.

Now, again, the goal is not a perfect 50-50. Different career choices, skill sets, and personalities all matter. But in these families, the unequal distribution of cognitive work is not about temperament. It’s about sin. A spouse who’s a powerhouse of decision-making and organization at work but somehow becomes calendar blind at home is not a bumbler but a liar.

Yes, it’s tough to come from a full day on the job and do more work. It’s also tough to be working at home all day—parenting and teaching, cooking and cleaning—and then spend the evening working even more. We all have it tough because life in a fallen world is tough and there is a lot of work to do. We owe each other love and service, not learned helplessness or pretended incompetence. We owe each other the truth.

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Storing Up Kingdom Treasure

Greenbriar Equity Group chairman and founding partner Regg Jones urges fellow Christians to invest in the next generation of Christ followers.

Melissa Huff

Greenbrier Equity Group

Growing up in Darien, Connecticut, as the oldest of four boys, Reginald “Regg” Jones III first experienced the transforming work of Jesus Christ in his life as an early adolescent. His entire family came to faith as the result of a spiritual awakening that took place at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the early 1970s under the leadership of Pastor Terry Fullam (who sat for an interview with CT in 1984). When Regg’s dad, a senior executive working in New York City, came to faith in Christ while attending St. Paul’s, it deeply impacted his wife and children. “It changed our whole family, and we all came to faith within a few years,” Regg says.

“I met the Lord in a personal way as a young teenager and was mentored and spiritually fed by some great youth leaders in junior high school and high school through Young Life,” Regg shares. “About 15 or 20 percent of the kids at my high school were involved in a Young Life Club in the 1970s led by Dean and Susan Allen. It was a very powerful time!”

“The joy of meeting Jesus when I was a teenager changed my life. I don’t know where I would be without him!”

Having experienced the work of God in his own life as a teen, Regg urges churches and ministries like CT to reach young people during this critical stage when they are making decisions that can impact the trajectory of their lives.

“When I was entering seventh grade, I met Anne Schneeweiss, a very dynamic youth leader who took an interest in me. She gathered a group of junior high youth and would come and pick us up in her little VW Bug after school on Wednesdays, and we’d have Bible study…She took a real interest in me as a mentor, and it made all the difference.”

For Regg, having trusted adults in his life who demonstrated their faith through their actions and pursued a relationship with him was instrumental in his spiritual growth as a young person. This is why Christianity Today is strategically investing in the next generation as a key part of Christianity Today’s One Kingdom Campaign. The Next Gen Initiative is reaching younger generations with an inspiring vision and authentic stories of what it looks like to follow Jesus and advance his kingdom. The Next Gen Initiative provides leadership training and mentoring, new media resources, and gatherings designed to equip and inspire young Christians as they navigate their faith journeys like Regg once did. Through innovative programs and biblically grounded resources, CT is helping young believers uncover the real, gospel-centered answers to life’s biggest questions.

“It’s clear that young people are searching for a faith that is real and are often receptive to spiritual conversations from a caring adult who takes the time to listen and build an authentic friendship with them,” Regg notes. “Christianity Today understands the importance of merging ancient and eternal truths with new means and methods that intersect with culture in a way that engages young people through stories that are relevant to the issues they are facing.”

“I’ve observed young people today are asking two big questions: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Why am I here?’” Regg explains. “‘Who am I?’ is about identity, and ‘Why am I here?’ is about purpose. And so, having an adult that takes time to get to know a young person, who can really see who they are, affirm their innate and distinctive value, and then can walk alongside and talk with them about things in life that are important—that’s life-changing! It’s the essence of discipleship and mentorship.”

Today, Regg calls ministry to the next generation his “lifetime passion.” A highly accomplished professional in business and finance, Regg discovered from an early age that he had a knack for numbers and acuity for investing—whether in his calling as a businessman or in his passion for investing in the lives of the next generation.

But he didn’t always know that God could use him in the boardroom as much as in ministry. Like most young adults, Regg wrestled with discerning God’s vocational calling in his life. He felt drawn to ministry work, having served in leadership through Young Life and the church, but had an undeniable talent for business. After consulting close friends and his dad, who all urged him to study business and finance, Regg sought the counsel of Gary Davis, who was the regional staff member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship when Regg was a college student.

“After an hour of talking with me and asking about my passions and interests, he said, ‘I think it’s clear you should go into business.’ I had been hoping to hear some advocacy for entering the ministry, but I will never forget what he said: ‘There are a lot of people that are good at ministry, and I have no doubt you’d be one of them. But there are actually fewer people with your Christian heart who will rise in business.’ He said, ‘You know, I can’t do my ministry without a few people like you giving me strategic advice and financial support. It seems to me that God’s prepared you for business,’” Regg recalls. “Hearing his perspective helped me realize that the Lord could use me in the marketplace. The heart of ministry and the true call of ministry is something that we all have, regardless of our vocation.”

Regg’s sense of calling has evolved as he has grown spiritually and professionally. Over the past 25 years, Regg has served as the chairman and managing partner of Greenbriar Equity Group, a private equity investment firm he cofounded. “My vision was twofold. One was to execute a strategy that didn’t largely exist at the time in private equity: to create a firm focused in the industries where I had been a leader on Wall Street during my time at Goldman Sachs.”

“The other part of my vision was the desire to bring a different set of values to the workplace. I wanted to bring that same sense of excellence and top performance that I experienced working with world-class firms and marry it with a distinctive internal culture of collaboration and teamwork,” he explains. “Really valuing the individuals and helping people realize their full potential; cultivating a nice place to work that is less political.” Established in 1999, Greenbriar has grown under Regg’s leadership to manage over $10 billion in committed capital over six funds focused on advanced manufacturing and services within industries such as aerospace, distribution, logistics, transportation, and related sectors.

Today Regg finds joy and fulfillment in giving to ministries such as Christianity Today and Young Life that are strategically investing in the spiritual lives of young people. After reconnecting with local Young Life chapters in Greenwich and metro New York, Regg was invited to join Young Life’s mission-wide board of trustees, where he has served for the past 14 years and chairs the finance committee.

“The impact is most life-changing right in those teen years when kids are most open and most curious,” he says. This is why Regg is encouraged by Christianity Today’s emphasis on reaching youth and young adults through its Next Gen Initiative. Earlier this month, CT selected 15 talented creatives ages 19–27 from around the country for the second annual Young Storytellers Fellowship. You can read reflections from the first cohort of fellows in their own words.

One of Regg’s guiding Bible verses as a young person was “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” (Prov. 3:5–6). “My dad would always say, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected,’” he shares, referring to Luke 12:48. “I was always a leader, and my dad recognized that. He told me, ‘This is a gift you have, and we have high expectations for you—not out of obligation but out of joy.’”

“I’m an intensely competitive person,” Regg admits of his drive to achieve. “But my life would not have the meaning or joy that it does apart from knowing Jesus.”

Ideas

Don’t Pay Attention. Give It.

Derek King

Attention isn’t a resource to maximize for productivity. It’s a gift that helps us love God and neighbor.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

In a digitally oversaturated society like ours, distraction is a daily sparring partner. What begins as a quick check of the weather to decide what to wear on a morning run turns into 20 minutes of scrolling political takes or cat videos. Most of us don’t wake up thinking, I’d like to spend two hours watching Seinfeld reruns today, but here we are.

Our devices and internet algorithms are remarkably effective at capturing our attention and redirecting it from whatever we intend. Yet for all the well-earned anxiety about our attention crisis, a troubling tendency in our discourse is to conflate the predicament with concerns about productivity.

We can, and should, care about productivity and attention’s role in it. But when output and efficiency become our primary concern, it distorts the nature of attention. Attention becomes only a means to an end, problematically viewed as merely a “resource.” And the root of this problem is glimpsed in the most basic way we talk about attention: We pay it.

When we pay for something, we expect something beneficial or useful in return. When we pay, we’re the consumer—and we want to know that what we’re paying for is worth the cost. But attention isn’t something we pay. It’s something we should give.

Our language about attention as a transaction reflects the modern economization of everything, including how we think of ourselves. The modern person, according to philosopher John Stuart Mill, is the homo economicus, the “economic man.” Each of us is a “rational” consumer seeking to “obtain the greatest amount of necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries, with the smallest quantity of labour and physical self-denial with which they can be obtained.”

Within such a framework, it’s easy to see how attention can be perceived as another resource to maximize for our benefit. But the subtle shift in language—from “pay” to “give”—should, if reflected in what we do, transform how we inhabit our world. When we give attention, we do not angle to use another for our own ends. Instead, as Christians, we seek to obey Jesus through our attention and renounce our selfish impulses to dominate. We’re instructed, after all, that the only way to find our lives is to lose them (Matt. 10:39).

Novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch, though not a Christian, wrote that attention involves not only what it directs us toward but also what it directs us away from. Attention gets us out of the way, thereby allowing us to receive whatever the object of our attention gives—what she calls an “unselfing.” Because attention directs us away from ourselves, the natural result is “a decrease in egoism through an increased sense of the reality of, primarily of course other people, but also other things.”

Murdoch’s views on attention are shaped by the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil. What Murdoch called “unselfing” Weil called “decreation,” writing that “the destruction of oneself” through attention to another is “to deny oneself.” In fact, for Weil, who was influenced by Christianity, attention is scarcely distinguishable from prayer.

Attention is something we give, not pay, because it is primarily a way we are present to another, as Murdoch and Weil saw. And that way of being present, especially as Christians, is antithetical to our selfish ends. The real work of attention is getting ourselves out of the way.

In an apt analogy, the theologian Rowan Williams compares prayer to birdwatching. It is waiting for God with “attention and expectancy, an attitude of mind sufficiently free of the preoccupations of the ego to turn itself with openness to what God in Christ is giving.” This is not just true of what we perceive as “quiet time” or any fleeting moment of talking to God. Rather, real attention can be given to anything—to borrow Weil’s example, even geometry!—and can become a kind of prayer as it opens us to experience God.

Such an orientation to the world is intelligible only within the Christian doctrine of creation. The things in our world are worthy of attention, and potentially an encounter with God, only because everything in the world was created good by God.

Imagine discovering, as one lucky picker did, that a recently purchased yard-sale sketch was an original of Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer. Setting the unexpected financial value aside, you would likely consider it worthier of attention only in virtue of who drew it. Since God created the world, we have good reason to believe even the most mundane and uninteresting objects are worthy of the gift of our attention.

Thus in The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon famously encourages his readers to look at an onion for an hour. One onion, one hour. Then, he adds:

Man’s real work is to look at the things of the world and to love them for what they are. That is, after all, what God does, and man was not made in God’s image for nothing. … If an hour can be spent on one onion, think how much regarding it took on the part of that old Russian who looked at onions and church spires long enough to come up with St. Basil’s Cathedral.

Capon and the old Russian are not looking at onions and church spires as a transaction. In their freely given attention, they open themselves up to the world and God. I’ve not taken up the habit of staring at onions, but I did start sketching as a spiritual discipline. It forces me to look—really look—at the way a tree bark connects to the trunk, and for that moment, I am “unselfed”: I am thinking only of the tree.

We give attention, as Capon says, as image bearers. For Christians, this has a specific meaning: Jesus Christ is the image of God his Father (Col. 1:15), and we are conformed to the image of the Son (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18). To give attention does not merely put us in better moral standing or help us amass trophies of productivity. With the help of God’s Spirit, attention rightly given helps us see the world and its people as Jesus did—with compassion (Mark 6:34; Luke 7:13).

To shape new habits of attention, then, we need new ways of thinking and talking about attention. Attention is a gift to be given: a gift of time and of our very selves, allowing our worlds to revolve around something that isn’t us, if only for a moment.

The next time you’re in conversation with a friend, don’t think about what’s for dinner or what new episode is out that evening. Gift your full attention, not expecting anything in return. Ask questions. Be curious. Inhabit their story alongside them. Whatever one thinks about the benefits or dangers of empathy, the desire to lose ourselves and compassionately abide with another is a fundamentally Christian impulse. It is, in fact, what God’s Spirit does for us.

At my church, we partner with Lexington Rescue Mission, an organization that aims to meet the urgent and long-term needs of the most vulnerable in our city. They feed people, help break cycles of addiction, and work tirelessly to move people from the streets into stable housing. There are many critical, tangible needs that must be met, and the people of our church (among many others) sacrifice money and time to help meet them.

In the midst of the overwhelming and urgent needs, the Mission reminds its volunteers that one of the most crucial and profound acts they can do is give attention to those they serve. One volunteer from our church regularly goes to the Mission to be a mentor, but he says that this mostly involves listening. Giving time and money can show you care about a person—but nothing says you care more than the gift of attention.

We can, and should, continue to recognize that attention is useful. It can help me become a better reader of the Bible or a better dad. But true attention isn’t about my productivity. It’s my way of being present to something or someone created by God. It’s something I give to live out my calling to love God and neighbor.

That’s not something we can buy. So let’s not try to pay for it.

Derek King is the scholar in residence at Lewis House, a Christian study center on the University of Kentucky campus.

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Ideas

Faith-Based Education Is Having a Moment

Chris Butler

Contributor

I’m excited to see churches—particularly Black congregations—step boldly into teaching.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

As children, families, and educators settle into the rhythm of another school year, I’m noticing the “back-to-school” season looks a bit different than it did when I was kid or even during the decade I spent advocating around education policy.

Homeschooling has seemingly become the fastest-growing educational model in America, with more than 2 million additional homeschooled students in the US compared to 2012. The trend has been partly fueled by Black families, who showed the most dramatic increase in homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic, thousands of microschools have also emerged nationwide, boosting their number to nearly 125 ,000. About a quarter of these small schools offer some type of faith-based education, and the vast majority are serving families at—or below—the average income for their areas.

In my own life, a friend who pastors a predominantly Black church recently opened a school to accommodate a surge of families who have joined his congregation in Florida. And with a new federal policy establishing the nation’s first-ever school-choice tax credit, many congregations are likely contemplating similar plans.

How we educate our children—and who gets the power to shape their minds—is a hot-button topic that often creates fissures along ideological lines. But the fact that churches—particularly Black churches—are once again innovating in this area is good news worth celebrating. Personally, I’ve spent so much of my life pushing for much-needed reforms in my own city of Chicago and the country at large. However, I’m favoring these changes not just for that reason. In the Bible and much of Christian history, education has always been essential for formation.

We see this across the Old Testament, from the Lord’s instructions to parents to impress his commandments upon their children (Deut. 6:1–6) to the patterns of the Levites scattered among the tribes as teachers (Deut. 33:10; 2 Chron. 17:7–9; Neh. 8:7–8) to the emphasis on study in the synagogue system that emerged from the Babylonian exile. In the Gospels, Christ embraces the title of teacher, and in the Epistles, Paul says church leaders must be “able to teach” (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:9).

But the Bible celebrates more than just religious education. In Moses’ account of the construction of the tabernacle, Bezalel and Oholiab have “wisdom” because of their mastery of metallurgy and craftsmanship (Ex. 31:3). The biblical writers assume knowledge of agriculture, astronomy, poetry, and commerce. In Psalm 19, David says, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (v. 1), and his theological insight about the Creator rests upon careful observation of the natural order. The fear of the Lord is indeed the beginning of wisdom (Prov. 1:7), and wisdom then leads us to pursue knowledge of the entire creation.

To carry on the best of biblical and church tradition around education, Christians need not be reactive or defensive. I believe our approach to education should transcend—and stand apart from—battles over curricula and teaching methods. Instead of having constant partisan bickering, local churches need a vision of education that forms disciples capable of navigating complexity, engaging differences, and transforming culture. Christian alternatives to secular schools are good. So is seeking the best way to teach children to read and the best books for them to encounter and debate. But more than that, we need to recover a view of schooling, particularly Christian education, as a sacred vocation.

No matter the institutional context or pedagogical model, education (for better or worse) is always tied to a kind of formation. We cannot spend time training the minds of children without simultaneously shaping their souls. Most readers know this is why so many Christian parents are particularly wary of secular schools and some even go as far as actively opposing all public education. To be clear, I’m not a fan of that approach. Public school remains the most practical option for many families, and there are lots of teachers, students, and administrators in non-Christian schools performing good works and radiating the love of Christ to those around them.

But each municipality, school, and student is different and requires a tailored approach, which in many cases can make faith-based education the right response. When those moments come up, local churches and believers should, in my view, unashamedly create spaces for students to learn despite sneers on the topic from the wider culture.

It’s been particularly exciting for me to see some Black churches getting more involved in this area and reclaiming a legacy that almost feels lost. After the abolition of slavery, a schoolhouse movement sprang up among formerly enslaved people across the American South. The movement owed a great debt to the Black church, which operated behind the scenes as an invisible institution as its adherents were in chains. When their bondage ended, thousands of emancipated people rose up like an “exceeding great army” and began “clothing themselves with intelligence,” a government inspector wrote at the time.

What the inspector witnessed was not just an educational movement; it was faith in action. Formerly enslaved people understood intuitively what their oppressors had tried to suppress: Literacy and learning were inseparable from liberation. The Black church didn’t just support these schools; it birthed, funded, and staffed them. Churches became classrooms, pastors became teachers, and offering plates funded textbooks alongside ministry.

Some would categorize initiatives like this as mere charity work, but they’re not. Forming citizens of God’s kingdom requires developing their full capacity as humans created in his image. And that call is not unique to the Black church. The Sunday school movement, for example, emerged from the same theological impulse. What began as an effort to educate poor children who were working long hours in factories became a revolutionary force for literacy and biblical discipleship. The church got involved not because it had a lot of resources but because it had theological clarity about human dignity and the role education plays in affirming it.

These days, we face not just academic underperformance and ideological battles over private and public schooling but also a crisis of discipleship in our churches. Our children navigate a digital ecosystem designed to fragment attention and monetize anxiety. They inherit a world where trust in meaning-making institutions is eroding, leaving them to construct identity from the debris of social media algorithms and a consumerist culture.

In the face of these challenges, local churches should not retreat from educational endeavors. If we do, we would be cheating families and communities out of an educational approach that integrates the fullness of human identity—an approach that sees each child as fearfully and wonderfully made, destined for both earthly purpose and eternal significance.

The growth of faith-based microschools, homeschooling, and new church-affiliated schools are seeds for a needed renewal. The pastor opening a school for families in his congregation is not just providing an educational option; they (along with many microschools) are creating an ecosystem where faith, learning, and community reinforce each other. And despite how they’re portrayed, many who choose to homeschool are not retreating from public life but rather reclaiming the family’s central role in training the minds and hearts of their little ones.

Our children are already being formed. The only question is whether the church will reclaim its role in that formation, bringing the fullness of our theological tradition to bear on the educational challenges of our time. History suggests we’ve done this before. Faith demands we do it again.

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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Ideas

The National Guard Debate Needs a Dose of Honesty

Chris Butler

Contributor

Criticizing federal overreach while remaining silent about local failures does not serve the cause of justice.

Members of the National Guard patrol the National Mall on September 1, 2025.

Mehmet Eser / Contributor / Getty

On a recent Sunday evening, my wife and I decided to take our kids out for a walk in our neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. As we rounded the corner, returning to our street, one of my kids asked, “Daddy, are those guys fighting?”

A group of young men had gathered on the corner of our block, their body language tense, voices rising. My 3-year-old son tightened his grip on my hand while my 14-year-old daughter’s demeanor became worried. Thankfully, the situation dissipated quickly, and we saw the young men run off before we reached the corner.

Inside the walls of our home that evening, my family discussed whether President Donald Trump’s intention to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago would make it safer for us to take an evening stroll in our community. Compared to those conversations and the thoughts inside my own head, the response from Chicago’s political establishment has not been as open or curious. Progressive voices across the city joined a familiar chorus of outrage, treating Trump’s announcement as merely an assault on local sovereignty while discounting that it’s also a response to genuine public safety failures. However, the always-easy path of reflexive opposition has not been helpful.

Let me set out at the beginning that this isn’t a partisan take. Before I went into pastoral ministry, I spent the better part of two decades working in Democratic politics and progressive advocacy. I organized the Chicago Peace Campaign, mobilizing local churches to engage communities plagued by violence, and worked on an initiative that called for an end to the “war on drugs,” which has taken an enormous toll on the Black community.

I’m not carrying water for Trump or looking for reasons to defend federal overreach. I’m aware there are serious legal questions about using troops to police American streets. Trump himself seemed to acknowledge the limits of his authority on Wednesday, saying state officials would have to ask him to send the National Guard to Chicago. I also understand that Trump’s rhetoric about Chicago—his description of the city as a “hellhole”—echoes the same dehumanizing language he used for African nations during his first term.

But at the same time, I recognize something Chicago’s political class refuses to acknowledge: The status quo is failing our families and communities.

When my children do not feel safe to ride their bikes in our neighborhood, when they come running home from the park because something they saw troubled them, when parents across the South and West sides of the city alter their children’s activities based on safety concerns, firebrand speeches from local leaders about improved crime statistics ring hollow. It’s true that Chicago’s violent crime rate has declined this year. But these marginal gains follow upticks in recent years as well as decades of devastating violence, and simply stating the progress doesn’t address the daily anxieties many families encounter in their own neighborhoods.

The uncomfortable truth is that the people legally empowered and morally responsible for protecting Chicago’s communities have not fulfilled their obligation, creating a vacuum that Trump now seeks to fill—and perhaps even exploit for other policy ends.

When lives are at stake, we cannot afford to travel the low road of partisan loyalty to either party. As the set-apart people of God, let’s be clear, truthful and nuanced—pursuing the peace and prosperity of our respective cities and towns (Jer. 29:7). The type of peace I want for Chicago encompasses far more than crime reduction, but it certainly cannot ignore basic security that enables communities to thrive.

We need neighborhoods where children can play without fear, families can walk to the store without calculating risks, and residents have economic opportunities to pursue meaningful lives. Deploying federal troops cannot build the social trust, economic development, and community cohesion a sustainable safety needs. But if those in charge plan and manage it correctly, deployment could be a meaningful first step—one state and local leaders should consider welcoming.

More federal help would go even further. The president could deploy federal law enforcement agencies—including the FBI and the DEA—to bolster investigations into the activities and people contributing to violence and disrupting quality of life in Chicago and other high-crime cities. As Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson has rightly suggested, Trump could reinvest in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to help get illegal guns off the streets. Furthermore, he could direct resources to programs intended to revitalize low-income neighborhoods and provide support for families who anchor those communities.

Justice-conscious Christians should hold all levels of government accountable for urban peace while advocating for comprehensive approaches to crime. This might mean welcoming federal partnership when it can contribute to immediate safety improvements (as DC’s mayor Muriel Bowser did this week) while also pushing for solutions that address root causes of violence. In that area, both the left and the right have constructive ideas worth considering.

The federal heavy-handedness we see on this issue is a direct result of local complacency. Trump’s motives are questionable and may focus more on calculated political positioning than on genuine concern for urban violence. However, we Christian leaders cannot limit our criticism to federal overreach while remaining silent about local government failures that directly harm the communities we serve. These selective denunciations serve partisan politics, but they do not serve the cause of justice.

The prophetic tradition, particularly in the Black church, calls us to speak truth to power at every level and not be cowed by progressive leaders, some of whom seem more concerned with political posturing and deflecting from the issues than with solving the concerns of families in vulnerable neighborhoods. Our children need leaders at every level who will prioritize their welfare over partisan politics. They should not have to wait indefinitely for basic safety.

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Church Life

How a Missionary Family in Lebanon Produced an American Hero

Jayson Casper

Bill Eddy’s Arabic acumen served US interests and forged Middle East ties.

William Alfred Eddy

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

This is part two of the Eddy family’s story. To read about the Eddy missionaries in Sidon, click here.

William Alfred Eddy was an American hero. Nicknamed “Bill,” he received the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, and two Purple Hearts for his service in World War I. During World War II, he quit his job as a college president to reenlist and helped plan the Allied invasion of North Africa. Later, as a diplomat, he advanced Franklin Roosevelt’s agenda by forging the US alliance with Saudi Arabia.

“Eddy (hereafter ‘Bill’) managed to pack four or five lives into a single lifetime,” wrote Princeton University’s alumni magazine about its former doctoral graduate. One of those lives began as a missionary kid to an American family in the Levant.

Part one of this series chronicled the Eddys’ multigenerational service in Lebanon, particularly its southern city of Sidon. Active in evangelism, education, and medical work, some of the Eddys died on the field and are buried in local evangelical cemeteries.

So was Bill. But while his gravestone inscription marks the rank of colonel in the US Marine Corps, it doesn’t include the number of years he “served the Lord” like his family members’ gravestones. The modern Eddy biographer, Muhammad Abu Zaid, didn’t criticize either approach. He called Bill the American “Lawrence of Arabia” and sympathized with his family’s earlier religious commitments.

In Forgotten Pages from the Ancient History of Sidon, published in Arabic by the Baptists of Lebanon, the president of the Sunni Muslim Sharia Law Court in Sidon described the religious and social development of Protestant ministry through building churches, schools, and clinics. Bill, he contrasted, pursued his country’s political objectives in the Arab world.

But today, evangelicals number only one percent of the Lebanese population. And polls indicate America’s poor reputation in the Middle East. Secular or spiritual, how does Abu Zaid evaluate the Eddys’ presence in his homeland?

“I felt sorry for them,” he told CT. “They didn’t succeed.”

The story continues from part one, with William Alfred, age 10, watching his father William King die suddenly on a preaching tour. After this traumatic experience, Bill moved to America and eventually enrolled in a Presbyterian university. Two years later, he transferred to Princeton and graduated in 1917. When the US entered World War I, he enlisted, fought in the tide-turning battle of Belleau Wood, and suffered a leg injury that made him limp for the rest of his life. After receiving his PhD in 1922, he joined the American University in Cairo, and one year later, he became chair of the English department.

Bill remained devout in his Christian faith—he even memorized large parts of the Quran while resisting Muslim efforts to convert him to Islam. In his memoirs, he wrote that he viewed his life as a secular extension of his family’s missionary service. After further academic work at Dartmouth and Hobart College in upstate New York, his military career continued in the US Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.

But there, he acted in ways he found antithetical to his faith.

Bill’s early espionage helped the Allies turn the tide against the Nazis in North Africa. To destabilize their local authority, he devised a plan to hire French operatives to assassinate local German and Italian agents, shielding the US from public responsibility. And in the Spanish Sahara, he allowed communist rebels to believe that America would facilitate the post-war overthrow of the fascist government on the mainland in Europe—knowing full well the US would not honor this promise. He later compared his deception to Peter denying Jesus.

“We deserve to go to hell when we die,” Bill later wrote.

U.S. Army Signal Corps / Wikimedia Commons

Bill (kneeling) serving as translator between King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud and President Franklin Roosevelt.

Toward the end of the war, Bill served as head of the US diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia, where he met King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. Given Bill’s background in Arabic and knowledge of Islam, the two developed a rapport. On Valentine’s Day, 1945, aboard a naval cruiser in the Suez Canal, Bill served as translator between the king and President Franklin Roosevelt, where the two world leaders bonded over their shared disabilities. The meeting cemented the US-Saudi alliance and displaced Great Britain as the major power in the oil-rich Gulf.

Throughout his career, Bill frequently deployed the cultural acumen and linguistic skills he had first gained as a missionary kid on behalf of American power. He believed US interests aligned well with the Arab world and supported a pipeline from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon that exported oil to Europe. Such infrastructure, he maintained, benefitted every party.

But his analysis did not always square with that of the local populations. In the Gulf, he designed a plan to manipulate opinion in favor of a joint US-Saudi oil venture by feigning Arab authorship of letters to leading politicians. In Lebanon, he strengthened pro-American policies of the Christian president Camille Chamoun that eventually contributed to civil conflict in Beirut.

On the other hand, many Arabs would appreciate Bill’s other diplomatic efforts, even if they ultimately failed. In 1948, US President Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize the State of Israel. In advance of this decision, Bill resigned from his position and quietly left the State Department as one of Truman’s advisors. He was “embarrassed,” his grandnephew Nick Eddy told CT, having assured Saudi leaders they would be consulted on the matter. Bill later wrote publicly that American support for Zionism would damage its relations with the Arab world.

Toward the end of his life, he settled permanently in Beirut, consulted for oil companies, and even visited Pope Pius XII at the Vatican. Bill died in 1962 at age 66. President John F. Kennedy recognized his “devoted and selfless consecration to the service of mankind.”

Abu Zaid told CT that his respect for Bill and his father, William King, doesn’t hinge on policy. William King served his Lord, as Abu Zaid, a Muslim sheikh, serves Allah. William Alfred served his country, as Abu Zaid, a Muslim judge, serves Lebanon. Both Eddys, he said, were true to their different callings.

Other Middle East analysis is critical. Scholars such as Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, Ali Shariati in Iran, and Abul A’la al-Maududi in Pakistan interpreted both missionary service and diplomatic overtures as meddling within a weakened Islamic world. And Edward Said, a Palestinian Anglican, described them as motivated by Western cultural superiority and in support of its colonialist project.

But many ordinary people appreciate the Eddy missions heritage. The National Evangelical Institute for Girls and Boys, the school they founded in Sidon, has an 1,800-student body. Two-thirds of students are Muslim, including from many of the leading families of the city. Each graduation begins with a message and prayer by a leader in Lebanon’s Presbyterian synod. And last year, the class of 2024 renovated the graves of its missionary founders, whose portraits are hung proudly in the school entryway.

This cemetery sparked Abu Zaid’s book when David Robinson (then the Muslim-Christian relations specialist for World Vision) asked the sheikh’s help to visit the final resting place of his uncle Bill. The scent of lemon blossoms wafted in the springtime air. Who are these Americans buried in my city? the devout judge wondered. His research led him to a remarkable conclusion: Muslims embraced the Eddy family, as they embraced Lebanon.

Turned away by many Arab Christians, William King, the missionary, chose to be buried in Sunni-majority Sidon. Dedicated to an American agenda, William Alfred, the diplomat, desired the same. The sheikh said he believes everyone should be able to preach and serve from their faith, since he claims the freedom to do so for Islam. Muslims may debate the impact of foreign service, but for him, the local mandate is clear.

“I will not advise the missionary,” Abu Zaid said. “But I will do what my religion tells me to do—welcome all and be hospitable.”

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Ideas

Eight Divine Names in One Glorious Passage

Andrew Wilson

Hebrew terms for God appear across the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah brings them all together.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

If you were a child of Christian parents in the 1980s or 1990s, there is a decent chance that at some point you memorized the Hebrew names for God. Like Jehovah Jireh, which means “the Lord will provide” (Gen. 22:14). Or Jehovah Rapha: “The Lord heals” (Ex. 15:26). Or Jehovah Nissi: “The Lord is my banner” (17:15).

There are eight such names altogether. (Besides the examples from Genesis and Exodus, they appear in Leviticus 20:8, Judges 6:24, Psalm 23:1, Jeremiah 23:6, and Ezekiel 48:35.) Learning these names—and in my case singing songs about them (with gradually accelerating Jewish melodies)—was just something we all did. Ever since, I have been unable to read the passages where Scripture introduces them without thinking of the names themselves, the songs they inspired, and the stories that gave them meaning. Clearly they made quite an impression; I have even written book chapters on all eight of them.

Until recently, though, I had never noticed that there is one passage in Scripture where the eight come together. And it is not just any passage, but arguably the most Cross-centered, Christ-shaped, emotionally resonant, and theologically significant text in the entire Old Testament—namely Isaiah 52–53.

This wonderful passage has two parts. The first half summons Zion to wake up, get dressed, shake off the dust, and celebrate the news that her salvation has come (52:1–12). The second half is a breathtaking poem on how this salvation has come about: through the unexpected, substitutionary, desolate, yet God-ordained suffering of his righteous, sin-bearing servant (52:13–53:12).

Readers familiar with both the Hebrew names for God and the song of the servant may have already noticed some connections between them. Take Isaiah 53:5, for instance: “The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (emphasis added throughout). This verse portrays the servant as both Jehovah Shalom (“the Lord is peace”) and Jehovah Rapha (“the Lord who heals you”). “We all, like sheep, have gone astray,” Isaiah continues in the next verses, evoking Jehovah Rohi (“the Lord is my shepherd”) and showing that our shepherd has become a lamb, led to the slaughter to carry our iniquities.

Two of the parallels are more obvious in Hebrew than in English. “After he has suffered, he will see [raah] the light of life and be satisfied” (53:11), Isaiah concludes, using the same root as Jehovah Jireh, which, beyond “the Lord will provide,” might be translated as “the Lord will see to it.” Just as God saw to Abraham’s need for a substitute as he prepared to sacrifice Isaac, Christ has seen to our need for a substitute who can satisfy the wages of our sin.

More startling are the allusions to Jehovah Nissi (“the Lord is my banner”), when Isaiah declares that “he will be raised and lifted up [nasa]” (52:13) and “he has carried [nasa] our sorrows” (53:4, ESV). Jesus lifts our sins by being lifted up on the cross, which makes him our banner, our lifted one: a standard raised high in the battle, promising shelter from our enemies.

The connections run beyond the servant song, however. They begin at the start of chapter 52. Isaiah grounds his call to wake up and get dressed in beautiful clothes in the promise that Jerusalem will once again be a holy city, free from anything unclean or impure (vv. 1, 11). His other invitation, to hear and celebrate the saving message being carried over the mountains by messengers with beautiful feet, springs from the fact that the Lord is returning to Zion to live among his people (vv. 7–12). In other words, Isaiah is saying, Awake, awake, because Jehovah M’Kaddesh (“the Lord is your holiness”)! Break forth into singing, because Jehovah Shammah (“the Lord is there”)!

Finally, as the passage reaches its triumphant conclusion, we discover that God is Jehovah Tsidkenu (“the Lord is our righteousness”). Isaiah 53:11 underscores the effect of the servant’s healing, shepherding, providing, and peacemaking work: “By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities” (ESV). It would be hard to find a clearer summary of what it means for God to be our righteousness. It is not just that Christ is righteous in himself, although that is gloriously true as well. It is that he makes us to be accounted righteous with him and through him, justifying the ungodly as he bears our sins and “[makes] intercession for the transgressors” (v. 12).

Considering these parallels plunges us into deep waters. If they hold up—and I think they do, although it is ultimately for each reader to judge—they suggest yet another reason to marvel at the message of Isaiah 52–53. The Suffering Servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, has put the providing, healing, lifting, sanctifying, peacemaking, shepherding, justifying, and indwelling of Israel’s God on perfect display through his death on the cross. Awake, awake, and break forth into singing!

Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.

Spirited Life: Spirited Life is a collision between biblical reflection and charismatic practice, aiming to make people happier in God.

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News

Saudi Arabian Prison Frees Kenyan After ‘Blood Money’ Payout

Moses Wasamu

A Christian mother relied on the Muslim practice of “diyat” to bring her son home alive.

Abdulkadir Arslan / Getty

Kenyan mother Dorothy Kweyu prayed 14 years for her son’s release from a Saudi Arabian prison. Her son, Stephen “Stevo” Munyakho, spent more than a decade on death row for killing Yemeni coworker Abdul Halim Mujahid Makrad Saleh in a dispute over money in 2011. According to Munyakho, Saleh attacked him with a knife, stabbing him twice before Munyakho grabbed the knife and stabbed Saleh in the chest.

Munyakho claimed self-defense, and at first Saudi courts, which run on sharia law, handed him a five-year jail sentence for manslaughter. Then Saleh’s family appealed, citing the “right to retaliate” for the loss of Saleh and demanding the death penalty. The courts responded by changing the conviction to murder—a sentence punishable by beheading.

“I kept telling God, ‘God, save my child, and spare me the pain and the ignominy of receiving my beheaded child,’” Kweyu told local media . Sometimes during her weekly phone calls to Munyakho in prison, he would say, “Mummy, today we saw darkness,” meaning one of the death row prisoners had been executed. He said the government executed more than 100 fellow inmates during his first year on death row.

Kenya’s foreign affairs secretary said all legal appeals for Munyakho had been exhausted. Saudi authorities set the execution date. Then the victim’s family agreed to consider a provision under sharia law: The court could commute Munyakho’s sentence if his family paid them diyat, or “blood money,” to compensate for Saleh’s death.

Saleh’s family initially asked for more than 350 million Kenyan shillings (nearly $3 million USD).

Kweyu told Citizen TV Kenya last year that Saleh’s family increased their demands 10 times and exceeded what Islamic law allows: “If this was a proper Quranic sentence, Stevo should be back now. The Quran requires a hundred camels, and by my calculation we only needed 11 million Kenyan shillings [$85,000 USD] to give the Yemenis.”

Blood-money payments are alien to many Kenyans, four out of five of whom identify as Christian. Islamic law in countries such as Saudi Arabia categorizes manslaughter and murder as quesas crimes, offenses for which victims have the right to retaliation equal to the harm done—such as a life for a life. Courts can pardon these crimes if a victim’s family accepts blood money as an alternative to legal penalties.

Though intended by the Quran as a form of mercy, blood money can complicate justice. Some Arab journalists have suggested exorbitant blood-money demands in Saudi Arabia—driven by greed and revenge—abuse the system and unfairly send families of death row inmates into poverty.

While Saudi Arabia’s judicial system calls for fair trials and punishments—at least on paper—judges apply their own interpretations of sharia law. In many cases, judges can set penalties at their discretion. The US State Department warned this leads to discrimination against noncitizens and non-Muslims as well as leading to inconsistent or extreme penalties, including the death penalty for nonviolent offenses such as sorcery and adultery. Appeals courts usually affirm the judgments of lower courts, making blood-money agreements inmates’ last chance for pardon.

Kenyan courts don’t accept blood money as a solution, but Muslim communities in northeastern Kenya do. According to Ishmael Kulu, an ethnic Somali living in Nairobi, Kenya, paying blood money began as a Somali cultural practice before Islam came to the nation.

“It was a dispute-resolution mechanism that was used in order to avoid revenge when a death occurred,” Kulu said. In Somali culture, when a person accused a kinsman of murder, the whole clan had to pay for the crime. Traditional elders from the affected clans would agree on a payment based on the age, marital status, and gender of the victim.

In rural, Muslim-majority areas of Kenya, people still use the blood-money system, though Kulu said that in towns “people prefer the judicial court processes.” Since clans make the payments, Kulu explained small clans feel the system favors big clans, which can easily raise any amount demanded.

Sasha, a Somali Christian convert from northern Kenya (whose real name CT agreed to withhold due to threats to her safety from her Muslim community), agreed: “Without the backing of a strong family or clan, you will suffer.”

She told CT her community handles most murder and injury cases outside the Kenyan courts. Although the blood-money system works in remote places without courts, Sasha said it is prone to manipulation and places the amount demanded for a dead woman at half that of a dead man: “The Islamic system is not just to women.”

In a 2005 incident, two clans clashed in Kenya’s northern Mandera County, resulting in 50 deaths. Clans agreed to pay 1 million Kenyan shillings (about $7,700 USD) or 100 camels valued at 10,000 Kenyan shillings ($80 USD) each in compensation for the death of a man. They agreed to pay half that for a woman or child.

Dorothy Kweyu appealed to the Kenyan government to negotiate for a delayed execution and lower blood-money payment. The victim’s family settled for 129 million Kenyan shillings ($1 million USD), but Kweyu could only fundraise 15 percent of the total (about $150,000 USD). In March, the government and the charity Muslim World League paid the amount in full on behalf of Munyakho, who converted to Islam while in prison.

Kweyu said she rolled around on the floor of her Nairobi home in joy and disbelief—her son was coming home alive. She credited her Christian faith and Presbyterian community at St. Andrew’s Church with getting her through her son’s ordeal: “All this time, God kept me going. I was surrounded by very prayerful people.”

Saudi authorities released Munyakho on July 22. He returned to Kenya on July 29, landing in Nairobi around 1 a.m. Family members, friends, and government officials greeted him, some with tears and dancing. But Kweyu said there’s one thing the blood-money payment didn’t resolve.

“I genuinely wanted to go see [Saleh’s wife] and seek her forgiveness,” she said. “Even though I was not physically involved in what happened, Stevo is still my child. So I wanted to go seek forgiveness on his behalf.”

- More from Moses Wasamu

Culture

Why Fans Trust Forrest Frank

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The enormously popular Christian artist says he experienced miraculous healing. His parasocial friends say “amen.”

Jeremychanphotography / Contributor / Getty

Last week, worship artist Cory Asbury (who wrote the popular song “Reckless Love”) posted a video to social media featuring some original music. He performed from a bed. The song was about God’s faithfulness during recovery from a vasectomy.

That sounds like something out of a weird-Christian-internet joke book, and it only makes sense in the context of a months-long, very online story about another Christian musician, Forrest Frank.

On July 19, Frank—whose song “Your Way’s Better” hit the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year and who has become one of today’s most popular Christian artists—shared on social media that he had fractured his back while skateboarding.

“Dads, this is your sign to get off the stick,” Frank wrote in the caption of a post that included a video of himself in a hospital bed and a recording of the accident, captured by a home security camera. According to Frank, he had fractured his L3 and L4 vertebrae.

Two weeks later, Frank posted a video telling his millions of followers that he had woken up, forgotten to put on his back brace, and realized he wasn’t in pain: “Did we just witness a miracle happen or do i have the fastest bones OF ALL TIME”?

As if to preempt accusations of fraud, he posted a screenshot of what appears to be medical documentation of his diagnosis and a video of the x-ray that showed the initial fractures. “I have complete healing in my back,” he said.

On August 7, Frank gave his first post-injury performance to an enthusiastic crowd at the Iowa State Fair, becoming the first artist ever to sell out the venue.

The 30-year-old had embraced the accident even before his recovery. He recorded a tongue-in-cheek song, “God’s Got My Back,” days after the injury. He collaborated with a relatively unknown band, The Figs, to turn their parody of his music into a bona fide hit, “Lemonade” (and subsequently invited them to perform it with him live). Frank also teamed up with fellow Christian artist David Crowder (who coincidentally had just broken his leg) on a song about “standing on the rock” (pun definitely intended).

Notably, there’s been very little public questioning of Frank’s integrity in the wake of his miraculous-healing claim. Maybe that’s because, at the time of his injury, he was arguably the most famous Christian musician of our moment. Fans know he wasn’t in need of a publicity stunt to promote his already-popular songs.

Shifting beliefs about the supernatural, especially among younger Christians, may also have something to do with the level of support. Contemporary Christian music (CCM) has always been an ecumenical endeavor, with artists and audiences including both cessationists and continuationists. Influential institutions like Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa (the California church that was a hub of activity during the Jesus People movement in the 1970s) explicitly avoided taking a side in the ongoing debate, allowing participation by artists and audiences with a range of beliefs about speaking in tongues, miracles, and prophecy.

But over the past 30 years, charismatic ideas have become more mainstream among Christian music’s core audience through the influence of megachurches like Hillsong and Bethel, whose leaders affirm the possibility of miraculous healings and visible manifestations of the work of the Holy Spirit. In the US, charismatic Christianity is growing more quickly than any other segment of the church, and recent studies suggest that Gen Z is more open to the possibility of the supernatural than preceding generations. More broadly, belief in miracles seems to have increased modestly in the US since the 1990s.

So maybe the celebratory online response to Frank’s miraculous recuperation suggests his fans see no reason to be suspicious or doubtful of miracles themselves, even ones they hear about online.

But I think the main takeaway from this injury saga is about Forrest Frank himself—about the power of parasocial relationships in the Christian-influencer sphere and about how Christian influencers are reforming the Christian entertainment landscape. Frank is a musician, but as many artists of his generation have found, success in today’s entertainment industry requires good music and good content. And a story of miraculous healing, of course, makes really compelling content.

CCM has long made room for drama and spectacle: Think of the theatrics of artists like Carman, the Dove Awards, and spinning drum sets. Altar calls and invitations to pray to receive Christ—often framed as public spiritual healings—have been fixtures of Christian concerts for decades.

But this is different; fans are “participating” in the miraculous via smartphone screen. The outpouring of enthusiasm around Frank’s story has become a kind of modern pilgrimage as followers flock to the digital location of a reported miracle. Millions of people have liked, shared, and commented, bringing themselves virtually closer to what they perceive as a holy site. Other artists and content creators have chimed in, riding the wave of attention and seeking proximity to the online action.

The state of the music industry right now is such that artists must self-promote on social media. And Christian musicians who fervently believe that they have good news to share know they will reach more people by generating views through viral content. It’s the same reality Billy Graham contended with as he sought to capitalize on developments in radio and television broadcasting.

Graham, like many evangelical media figures after him, decided that the potential pitfalls of mass media didn’t outweigh the potential value of figuring out its formats and learning to reach the people listening and watching.

For his part, Frank has become a master of online content. For years he has been able to attract attention on social media with trendy videos and musical hooks that seem written with short-form video in mind; fans use his songs to soundtrack their own posts.

That followers believe Frank’s claims of healing is evidence of the strong parasocial bond he has been able to forge with them online. They trust him. For some singers, a claim of miraculous healing could easily become a “jump the shark” moment for fans, causing loss of credibility. Followers, even the most devoted ones, are aware that anyone can post deceptive or staged content online. But Frank’s fans believe him and are eager to affirm his testimony.

Meanwhile, Frank increasingly seems to see his platform as an evangelistic one, referring to his followers as his “flock.” Over the past year, he’s progressively opened up about his personal faith in interviews, seemingly eager to share the gospel and his own story of transformation.

Frank is also adept at creating content that has a winsome air of authenticity. The collaborations that resulted from his injury seemed to take shape organically and spontaneously, giving fans the impression they were collectively watching the unfolding of something totally unscripted. Millions of followers watched the progression from The Figs’ initial musical send-up of Frank’s style to the eventual single and IRL performance. All of it was entertaining and feel-good.

Through a combination of catchy, uplifting music and an online presence that registers as authentic and unfiltered, Frank has managed to create a “halo” for himself. He talks about his artistic endeavors as a ministry; he tells fans that he makes decisions based on God’s direction.

This spiritual earnestness may very well be genuine. It also provides a defense from criticism, questions, and even satire. It’s a line of defense against naysayers, critics, and perceived haters.

In the aftermath of Frank’s injury, the artist posted videos in which he speaks vulnerably (and sometimes tearfully) about the experience and even calls out artists like Cory Asbury for creating related content that seemed to be mocking rather than offering good-natured support. Asbury then publicly apologized for his vasectomy parody. The two artists are now creating a collaborative single.

We are all—fans and skeptics alike—watching an artist try to navigate the line between public celebration of God’s work in his life and opportunistic self-marketing. This has always been the rub for Christian figures who say they have experienced the miraculous: They want to testify to God’s goodness and observable work in their lives, but the mere act of sharing it can invite accusations of fraud or grift.

He probably can’t walk that line perfectly, but Frank seems confident that “God’s got [his] back.”

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis is the worship correspondent for Christianity Today. Her book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families, cowritten with Melissa Burt, will be released this October.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

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