‘Saint Nicholas Is Our Guy’

A conversation with printmaker Ned Bustard on what traditions teach about the joy of generosity.

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

Many Christians wrestle with whether to include Santa Claus legends in their holiday traditions. Printmaker Ned Bustard offers the church tradition and history of Saint Nicholas as a winsome middle ground, pointing believers to the beautiful truths of God’s greatest gift in the Incarnation.

Bustard, author of Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver, sat down with Clarissa Moll of The Bulletin to share what Nicholas teaches us about giving and generosity. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Why do Christians need the ecclesial tradition and story of Saint Nicholas?

There is a gravitas when you realize this is not just a made-up story. One of my favorite reviews of my book Saint Nicholas The Giftgiver is the complaint that there was too much Jesus and too much Santa. How could I dare bring magic and Jesus together? I like that the story of Saint Nicholas presents such a tension.

Twenty years ago, I wanted my children to enjoy the magic of Christmas and enjoy Saint Nicholas but not miss out on Jesus. We tend to do one or the other. I wanted to take back Saint Nicholas and claim him as mine because I’m a believer and part of the church. He was a real person, had dark skin, and was from Turkey. These are all real things. I’m investing in this person because he really existed.

I’m happy to write stories about imaginary creatures and people, but when it comes to church history and the faith that I’m a part of, I want it to be real and I want others to experience the weight and glory of being part of the church of Christ. We’re part of this church; we’re part of this tradition that goes back. We are moored, in the best possible way, across time with the cloud of witnesses, and we are connected to them.

What is the real story of Nicholas?

Nicholas was born in Turkey on March 17, 270, as far as we know. His story was written down after his death. He was born to a wealthy Christian couple who died soon after due to a plague. He was then given to his uncle to raise.

Nicholas’s uncle was an abbot in a monastery, and when Nicholas grew up he was made a bishop in his 20s or 30s. Folks were trying to decide who the next bishop should be, and they decided the next person to walk through the door would be him. Nicholas walked through the door, and he was made a bishop.

Some stories say that he went to Jerusalem and spent time as a hermit in a cave near there praying. Records show that he was at the Council of Nicaea. He was persecuted and imprisoned during the great persecution under Emperor Diocletian, and he died an old man.

There’s a story of Nicholas battling Artemis, the goddess of the city in which he served as bishop. He prayed against the goddess, and her statue fell over, kind of like Dagon in 1 Samuel 5. How much of these stories are true? We don’t know, but we do know that he really did exist and has this reputation for being generous.

That reputation for generosity is perhaps what we know best of Nicholas.

In the classic story, a family doesn’t have enough for the wedding dowries of their three daughters. Nicholas deposits three bags of gold in their home while they’re sleeping to give them the capacity to be married.

Why do you think that we need that particular perspective of Nicholas, as the public-facing bishop who gives in secret?

Secret giving is great and sometimes underrated. In our house, we had Saint Nicholas stockings, and I never said who filled those stockings. Other presents we’d put names on, but stocking gifts just appeared. My wife and I always had a long-running argument of whether or not these gifts should be practical. She would say, “Let’s put a toothbrush in the stocking.” I said, “No toothbrushes on Christmas. That’s too ordinary.”

We need joyful, raucous, superfluous gifts because Christmas is an extravagant gift. Even though prophets foretold this for hundreds of years, when you get the real gift of Christ in the Incarnation, it’s beyond what you can imagine. James says that all good gifts come from our Father above. All of the things that we receive are generous gifts from God.

What is the greatest gift you’ve ever given, and what’s the greatest gift you’ve ever received?

One of my happiest Christmases was in the ’70s. There was an action figure of a pirate and his first mate. The pirate had a peg leg, and you could open it to find a little treasure map inside. You could push on the characters’ backs, and they would swing their swords. On top of all that, it came with a fold-out ship for the figures to ride in.

Besides life and being chosen and loved by God, my greatest earthly present would be the day my wife said “Yes” and “I do.” That was the best gift I have ever received, such a glorious thing. However, in our family’s culture, we love to give gifts. I’m always searching for the best present because it is the way that I show love. Like Nicholas, I’d always rather participate in the joy of giving.

- More from Clarissa Moll

Books

Review

Looking Back 100 Years

John Fea

Three history books to read this month.

Illustration by Christianity Today.

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

**Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation (Viking, 2025)**

In his 1933 inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt explained why saving the economy required a heavy dose of federal intervention:

The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.

Andrew Sorkin, the author of 1929, agrees with Roosevelt. The crash could have been avoided if only humility and a sense of limits were able to overcome the darker sides of human nature: greed, ambition, and an addiction to optimistic thinking.

At the center of Sorkin’s story are the speculators: Charles Mitchell, Thomas Lamont, William Durant, J. P. Morgan, Jr., Jesse Livermore, and others. They spread the “gospel of economic opportunity” and tried to stop all efforts from the Federal Reserve to cool down the markets. By 1930, 8 million people were out of work. One thousand three hundred banks had failed. President Herbert Hoover called it a depression.

Sorkin rejects the idea, still bandied about in high school classes today, that Hoover caused the Great Depression. He argues that such an interpretation is the legacy of a well-orchestrated Democratic smear campaign in the years leading up to the 1932 presidential election.

Sorkin is such a compelling storyteller that readers with little knowledge of economic or financial history will enjoy and learn from this book.

**David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2024)**

John Lewis loved to preach. As an eight-year-old boy growing up in rural Alabama, he preached to chickens. In his definitive biography of Lewis, historian David Greenberg chronicles how Lewis fulfilled his spiritual calling not in churches but at Nashville lunch counters, Greyhound bus stations, the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and ultimately the House of Representatives. “Race was closely tied to my decision to become a minister,” Lewis once said. “I wanted to use the emotional energy of the Black church to end segregation and gain freedom for Black people.”

Lewis’s life, as Greenberg tells it, is a story of dogged persistence in the fulfillment of this calling. Lewis was put on this earth to do one thing—end racial injustice through nonviolent protest. He never wavered from that task, even when this vocation led to physical beatings that brought him to the brink of death.

The story of Lewis’s early years will be familiar to those who have studied the Civil Rights Movement. Greenberg covers it well. But his biography also takes us beyond Selma and the March on Washington. He tells the story of Lewis’s career in politics, his relationship with American presidents, and his marriage to Lillian Lewis.

John Lewis lived a life defined by hope, justice, peace, and love. His story reminds us that amid all of today’s polarization and political strife, there is a better way. Greenberg’s biography is a good starting point for those interested in walking this path.

**Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression (Vintage Books, 1983)**

Populism rules today in American politics. Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders gain political traction by reminding people that most of the nation’s wealth is concentrated in 1 percent of the population. Donald Trump has captured a significant portion of the white working class with promises of manufacturing jobs and nostalgic longings for a Christian nation.

For those who want to think historically about 21st-century American populism, Alan Brinkley’s 1983 book Voices of Protest is worth revisiting. Brinkley focuses on Louisiana governor and US senator Huey Long and popular Catholic radio preacher Charles Coughlin. Both men gained national attention in the 1930s as critics—from the left—of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Long was known for his bombastic personality, mesmerizing speeches, attacks on big businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, and proposal to redistribute the nation’s wealth to benefit ordinary working people. Coughlin believed that Catholic social teaching required him to use his radio platform to promote the expansion of American currency through the monetization of silver.

Long and Coughlin were both showmen with large audiences. Brinkley argues that their activism was informed by a distinct populist ideology. They appealed to middle-class Americans reeling from sudden economic change and concerned about the concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands. Brinkley’s book offers a window into the appeal, weaknesses, and danger of American populism and, in the process, provides insight into our current moment.

John Fea is visiting fellow in history at The Lumen Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and distinguished professor of history at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

- More from John Fea

History

‘A Shot Came Out of Nowhere’

Daniel Silliman

CT reported on the assassination of a president, a Supreme Court ban on Bible-reading in schools, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

CT in 1963 covered one of American history’s tumultuous years. When President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, editors in the magazine’s Washington, DC, office collected religious leaders’ comments on “The Death of the President” and tried to capture the feeling of the moment:

A shot came out of nowhere and changed a thousand things around the world. An unknown assassin brought sudden and tragic end to the life of a world-renowned figure; John F. Kennedy was dead by the hand of an evil man whom nobody knew, and who will be known only as long as his infamy is remembered. …

In one tragic moment, an unexpected event changed the plans and hopes of many people and of a nation. Strategies devised with an eye to next year’s presidential elections were suddenly obsolete. The whole civil rights issue at once took on new but unknown dimensions. … So little, one shot, by one unknown man, changed so much. …

During the 35 minutes that the fallen President lay dying in a Dallas hospital, three men gathered dead leaves and leisurely loaded them into a truck that stood on the circular drive that fronts the White House. The whirring blades of a helicopter could be seen above the grass in the back of what was the Kennedy home. Here of all places everything looked normal on this warm, gray, November day.

But suddenly a flag was quietly lowered to half mast above the white mansion. Others on surrounding public buildings were similarly lowered, and the eye received the message that the mind found impossible to believe. The President was dead.

Authorities identified the assassin as Lee Harvey Oswald—a lone gunman, they said, but one whose sketchy past, shadowy meetings with underworld figures, and sudden death in police custody would fuel decades of conspiracy theories. CT sent a correspondent to interview the accused killer’s mother.

Mrs. Marguerite Oswald … tried under difficult circumstances to provide religious training for her three sons. … The infant Lee was baptized in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in New Orleans. He was never confirmed.

Mrs. Oswald attempted to stay at home and rear her family but eventually was forced to go to work. She paid a maid to care for the children for a time, but when World War II came, she had to make other arrangements. The older two sons she placed in a Lutheran institution which accepted children having only one parent. She said she was expected to pay whatever circumstances would permit.

But Lee was too young to enter the church home. Mrs. Oswald said she had no choice but to leave him to the care of a sister, who also lived in New Orleans, and to hire other attendants for him whenever possible. …

“I know that my son was not an atheist,” Mrs. Oswald declared.

Before that fateful day, the biggest political story of the year was the Supreme Court decision in Abington School District v. Schempp. The court decided that teachers reading Scripture to students was a violation of the First Amendment. CT reported from the court:

Justice Tom C. Clark had been drawling over a zig-zag sewing machine patent when, with scarcely a pause, he shifted to cases 119 and 142. Clark talked for another 25 minutes. His voice trailed off as he finally announced the court’s decision against a 150-year-old American tradition of prayer and Bible reading in the public schoolroom. The decision was regarded in some quarters as imposing a restriction upon the religious practices of more Americans than any prior government action.

The court’s decision on June 17 was 8 to 1, with Justice Potter Stewart, an Episcopalian, voicing the lone dissent, just as he did in 1962 when the court struck down the 22-word interfaith prayer approved by the New York Board of Regents for use in the public schools of that state. … The justices differ sharply on why required public school devotions are unconstitutional. Clark’s majority opinion was shared only by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Hugo L. Black, and Justice Byron White.

Clark’s argument against devotional exercises in the public schools rested largely on the contention that the government must maintain an attitude of neutrality in religious matters. He said the test may be stated as follows: “What are the purpose and the primary effect of the enactment? If either is the advancement or inhibition of religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution.”

CT followed developments in the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, with an eye toward shifting religious positions and the impact on churches.

Anti-segregation campaign in Birmingham, Alabama, included a series of attempts by Negroes to worship in all-white churches. Several of the churches welcomed the demonstrators, while others turned them away. … Mercer University (Southern Baptist) trustees voted 13 to 5—with 3 abstentions—to enroll Negroes on the Macon, Georgia, campus.

Martin Luther King Jr. led the March on Washington in August. Four CT editors joined the throngs gathering on the National Mall to see if the “religious element” of the movement offered a “genuine spiritual under-girding” or if it was “a mere form of godliness.” They reported back:

The day was mostly bright, with temperatures in the eighties. Washington’s notorious humidity was somewhat offset by a fresh breeze and scattered clouds in the afternoon.

Highlighting the afternoon ceremony was the great oratory of King, who cried again and again, “I have a dream.” But as if to prove that people doze despite the best of preachers, hundreds stretched out on the grass and slept most of the afternoon away. Another temptation was the cool water of the Reflecting Pool, and other hundreds kicked off their shoes and stockings to dangle their feet over the edge. At least two persons fell into the shallow pool.

A. Philip Randolph, 74-year-old elder statesman of civil rights in America and the son of a clergyman, was among several speakers who appealed to religious precedent. Randolph, program emcee and chairman of the national march committee, reminded the vast throng of more than 200,000 that “We are leading the multitudes in the streets just as … Jesus Christ led the multitudes in the streets.”

NAACP leader Roy Wilkins, seeking to perpetuate the fervor of the day, said:

“You got religion here today. Don’t back-slide tomorrow.”

[Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, stated clerk of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA] declared that Negroes “have mirrored the suffering of Jesus Christ.” He quoted Romans 12:1 as a helicopter whirred high overhead.

CT founding editor L. Nelson Bell continued to oppose civil rights laws. He said there was no biblical justification for segregation, but his main concern was that “voices of moderation on both sides of the issue are being drowned out by the louder voices of ‘rights’ without reference to the realities of the situation.” Other evangelicals called for white Christians to join the Civil Rights Movement—or forfeit any claim to moral authority in America.

Evangelical leadership completely missed the point of the March on Washington and was not represented. … The evangelicals should do some soul-searching to discover how they got themselves into such a predicament. A biblical sense of the importance of men’s souls should have brought them close to the Negro. Also, the Negro churches are very conservative in their theology. Evangelicals pride themselves on affirming the oneness of man in their support of foreign missions. But conservative American churches and churchmen have done little in meeting the Negro problem. The little that has been done has been rather patronizing, and this the Negro considers an insult.

Evangelicals have often allied themselves with the conservative social and political forces in the United States, especially in the South. … Christianity at its inception and at certain great points in its history has been extremely radical. The usual conservative exaltation of property rights as the basic right sounds strange from those who profess to uphold the spiritual and downgrade the material. …

The members of evangelical churches need to learn the disciplines of the love of Christ.

CT also called readers to action on another current issue: cigarettes. The magazine urged Christians to read a recent report on tobacco and to stop smoking.

The Consumers Union Report on Smoking and the Public Interest approaches the problem on a medical and social basis without direct reference to its moral aspect, although ethical implications inevitably shine through its discussion of the industry’s deliberate blindness to evidence and the mendacity of its advertising. But the Christian community is in a different position. It can no more look at the cigarette-lung cancer problem from a morally neutral point of view than it can be oblivious of the moral implications of the daily slaughter on the highways and the human wreckage through alcoholism. …

Habitual cigarette smoking is no longer for the Christian a mere take-it-or-leave-it matter. It has moved from an optional indulgence to a question of the stewardship of the body. … On the scriptural ground that the God who gives us our bodies requires accountability for their use, none of us has the right to contract any habit that has been shown to lead to grave illness and premature death.

Amid the year’s crises and conflict, CT redesigned the magazine, hiring the artist who would go on to develop the iconic ad campaign, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” The redesign was announced with a note:

Christianity Today’s contemporary, clean look reflects tradition and at the same time maintains dignity and respect for the subject matter of conservative religious publication. To achieve it, New York artist Harvey Gabor made use of areas of white space, contrasting with text areas. … “There is always the same seeming paradox: to be contemporary and simple, but not sterile; to be modern, but with a touch of classicism. … Perhaps the most intangible quality I sought for Christianity Today was a style and momentum all its own.”

An English professor argued that Christians could read contemporary literature—even if the literature is itself immoral.

Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye may be taken to illustrate these distinctions. Because it contains offensive language, instances of censurable behavior, and a number of reprehensible ideas, many readers would label it an immoral book. But in doing that they may have overlooked the most significant scene in the novel, the one which provided its title, in which Holden explains to Phoebe his vision of standing in a rye field full of small children to guard them from plunging over a cliff. This is his way of making sense out of the terrifyingly chaotic world which envelops him, a world empty of values but full of phonies, and if we accept the idea that literature has some basic part to play in the human search for order, then the worth of this one scene ought to outweigh what we may regard as the worthlessness of the other elements. Catcher in the Rye is thus seen to be a mixed product, one requiring careful thought if it is to be evaluated sensibly. …

At the end of the year, CT reported a widespread sense of failure and helplessness in American culture and American churches.

Ministers and laymen alike felt a sense of defeat.

For clergymen, a chief source of frustration was what to do with the latest variety in a historic strain of hearers-only Christians. The 1963 crop of professing believers whose lives reflect so little of New Testament teaching drew many a pastor into the lonely garden of perplexity.

One candid young minister came out of an experiment aimed at more meaningful Christianity with these words: “It’s been a flop. So far I’ve managed to reduce the congregation from 400 to about 50.”

He had tried modern music, jazz, dialogues, discussions, and plays. Next on the list was a plan to convert the church into an apartment house with the lobby as a chapel.

The heresy of universalism, implicit or overt, may be held responsible for lay indifference in some quarters. But what about lethargy in evangelical ranks?

The growth rate of most evangelical enterprises has leveled off markedly in recent years, and in 1963 many such efforts were pushing to maintain the status quo. …

“It’s like trying to climb Niagara Falls to meet these needs,” one evangelical leader said publicly.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Culture

The 12 Neglected Movies of Christmas

Nathaniel Bell

The quest for a perfect fruitcake, a petty larcenist, and a sly Scottish dramedy should all grace your small screen this season.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash, Pexels

Christmas movies are hard to define yet easy to recognize. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of the genre, with one circle labeled “takes place during the holidays” and the other “themes of hope and redemption,” you might find Miracle on 34th Street at the very center. It’s a Wonderful Life would also live in the overlapping area, along with A Christmas Story—which still plays for 24 consecutive hours on TBS and TNT every year—and perhaps a Dickens adaptation or two.

Discovering a new classic is a tall order. (If it’s already a classic, why would it need to be discovered?) But if you’re willing to stretch the definition of “Christmas movie” just a little bit, possibilities begin to unfold. Keep the holiday milieu and the redemptive theme, but allow for a little melancholy amid the magic, and you’ve got plenty of alternatives to the familiar, comforting formula of a Hallmark special or a Christmas pageant.

To that end, here are 12 movies just outside the canon that beg for inclusion in this year’s holiday watch list. They vary enough in tone and subject to appeal to almost every mood and whim. Though none of them directly dramatize the birth of Christ, they are yoked together by a common yearning for salvation.

Remember the Night (1939)

When her trial is postponed until after the holidays, a petty larcenist (Barbara Stanwyck) spends Christmas with the lawyer (Fred MacMurray) assigned to prosecute her. The setup sounds perfectly contrived, but screenwriter Preston Sturges spins it into a scenario with surprising emotional punch. The movie’s beating heart is an extended visit to a family farm in which the woman confronts everything that’s been missing from her life. The irresistible warmth of this passage, which includes a rendition of a parlor song crooned by Sterling Holloway (the voice of Winnie the Pooh), could melt the hardest ice. | Watch on Prime Video.

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941)

Hospitality is a key theme among Christmas movies for its connection to the Nativity story. If the innkeeper hadn’t offered Mary and Joseph the stable, where would our Savior have been born? This virtue is put to the test in this spirited farce, in which a self-centered, razor-tongued radio celebrity (memorably played by Monty Woolley, repeating his Broadway role) is forced to spend Christmas in the home of a Midwestern family after sustaining a hip injury. Hilarity ensues, romance blossoms, and justice prevails in an ironic ending that forces everybody to learn their lesson. | Watch on Tubi.

Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

A lifestyle columnist (Barbara Stanwyck again) who has constructed a persona as the ideal housewife despite knowing next to nothing about keeping house must fake her way through a Christmas dinner when a GI (Dennis Morgan) visits her house. (The premise could easily work today if you swapped columnist for influencer.) What makes the film rise above its cute conceit is its poignant but understated glimpse into American life during World War II, with its unspoken longing for comfort and connection. | Watch on Prime Video.

Come to the Stable (1949)

Though it may be a stretch to label this one a Christmas movie, this postwar drama about two French nuns who enlist the residents of a small New England town to build a children’s hospital deserves closer consideration. The film begins magically with the two sisters (Loretta Young and Celeste Holm) emerging from the snowy plains on a moonlit night and contains enough peace and good will toward men to fill a dozen pictures. Also, the New England town is called Bethlehem. | Watch on Prime Video.

The Holly and the Ivy (1952)

Family reunions are an unavoidable motif of the holiday genre, but few movies capture the complex feelings that can attend such gatherings. This finely wrought British drama, in which an aging clergyman (Ralph Richardson) contends with a series of revelations concerning his three grown children during a Christmas visit, demonstrates the need for repentance as well as forgiveness. It uses the titular folk carol to demonstrate the power of the holiday to cut as well as to heal: “The holly bears a prickle, as sharp as any thorn …” | Watch on Prime Video.

Shower of Stars: “A Christmas Carol” (1954)

No Dickens adaptation can hold a candle to the 1951 Scrooge starring Alastair Sim (sorry, Kermit!) but here’s one worth rescuing from obscurity: an hourlong episode of the variety series Shower of Stars starring Fredric March as Scrooge and Basil Rathbone as Marley’s ghost. Those unfamiliar with the glory of live television may balk at the black-and-white kinescope presentation, but the drama survives intact. Its greatest strength is its music: a score by the great Bernard Herrmann and lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, who also wrote the teleplay. The result is a production whose soundtrack can be enjoyed independently of the visuals. | Watch on Prime Video.

Pocketful of Miracles (1961)

While it doesn’t match the emotional wonder of the original Lady for a Day, Frank Capra’s color remake is far more Christmasy. An elderly fruit peddler (Bette Davis) enlists the help of a local gangster (Glenn Ford) to transform her into an elegant society lady so her daughter won’t be ashamed of her when she visits with her rich fiancé. It’s a rare Hollywood film in which duplicity is presented as a virtue, and while it falls short of the magisterial It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra’s masterpiece), it has gained a small cult following. | Watch on Prime Video and Pluto.

ABC Stage 67: “A Christmas Memory” (1966)

Truman Capote narrates this adaptation of his own novella, a nostalgic, autobiographical account of his childhood relationship with a distant and eccentric relative. Most of the narrative revolves around the quest to make the perfect fruitcake, but there are emotional depths to the deceptively simple story. There is a remake in the 1990s starring Patty Duke, but the one with Geraldine Page, who won an Emmy, is the true classic. | Watch on YouTube.

Comfort and Joy (1984)

This sly Scottish dramedy, written and directed by the inimitable Bill Forsyth, is an offbeat holiday treat that connoisseurs seem to be keeping to themselves. Set in the days leading up to Christmas, the story involves a Glasgow radio deejay (Bill Paterson) who finds himself caught in the middle of a turf war between competing ice cream franchises. The themes here are reconciliation and renewal; the comedy is understated but richly quirky. | Watch on Hoopla.

The Dead (1987)

A Christmas party in Dublin at the turn of the 20th century is the backdrop for John Huston’s final film, a brilliant adaptation of James Joyce’s celebrated short story. The dinner gathering is rendered in warm, dusky tones and garlanded with a variety of sharply etched characterizations by some of Ireland’s finest actors. The film gracefully transitions into a profound meditation on the transience of life and the precious gift of memory. It may prove a bit melancholy for some tastes, but the rewards are ample. | Watch on Prime Video and Tubi.

Joyeux Noel (2005)

The 1914 Christmas truce is the subject of this Oscar-nominated French drama in which French, British, and German soldiers spontaneously lay down their arms to exchange carols instead of artillery shells. The fact-based story is a moving reminder that Christmas is about the promise of peace on earth, inaugurated by the arrival of Jesus. When Diane Kruger sings to her lover in the trenches, the voice belongs to French soprano Natalie Dessay, and the result is transcendent. | Watch on Netflix, Prime Video, and Tubi.

Christmas, Again (2014)

This low-key, low-budget, low-stakes indie drama captures the isolation that many people feel during the holidays. The center of attention is a lonely 30-something (Kentucker Audley) in New York City whose seasonal job as a Christmas tree retailer keeps him teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Modest and observational, the film unfolds with a series of encounters with a variety of colorful shoppers, one of which becomes a catalyst for renewal. The pleasure of this virtually plotless character study is in waiting to see the needle move—ever so slightly—away from despair and toward hope. | Watch on Prime Video.

Nathaniel Bell manages the internship program and teaches film history for the Snyder School of Cinema & Media Arts at Biola University. He lives in Whittier, California, with his wife and three sons.

- More from Nathaniel Bell

News

Amid Peace Talks, Russian Drone Damages Christian School in Kyiv

Jill Nelson

Ukrainians are wary of any plan that gives Moscow its “Christmas wish list.”

Damages to Kyiv Christian Academy from a Russian drone strike.

Image courtesy of Eric Moore

Eric Moore’s windows rattled as Ukraine’s air defense systems intercepted hundreds of incoming drones and missiles early Saturday. The South Dakota native and director of Kyiv Christian Academy spent three hours huddled in the stairwell of his townhouse with his wife and two sons, ages 7 and 9, during the most intense period of the attack.

Around 6 a.m., near the end of the nearly 10-hour bombardment, the school’s night security guard called. A drone had struck the grounds, blowing out 75 windows and leaving a crater 6 feet wide and 4 feet deep in the front lawn. The guard was patrolling the back of the property and escaped injury.

The K-12 school serves 47 students and shares its building with a private elementary school of 140 children. Moore surveyed the damage when it was safe to leave his home a few hours later.

“People were standing around, taking in the scene,” he told Christianity Today. “A dodgeball tournament had been scheduled for that morning by [the Christian group] Athletes in Action.”

The attack on the capital city left 3 dead and 29 injured while cutting power to the western half of the city. It calls into question the Kremlin’s commitment to ongoing peace talks.

“While everyone is discussing points of peace plans, Russia continues to pursue its ‘war plan’ of two points: to kill and destroy,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X.

After months of failed negotiations, Washington launched a new wave of diplomacy that began with a controversial 28-point peace plan, leaked by Axios in mid-November. The proposal made major concessions to Russia, including requiring Ukraine to cede land beyond the roughly 20 percent Russia currently occupies; shrink its army from around 800,000 to 600,000; and abandon all efforts to join NATO.

Ukraine and its European allies sharply criticized the plan, warning that insufficient security guarantees will invite the Kremlin to rearm and launch another invasion in the near future.

On Sunday, Ukrainian officials met in Florida to revise the plan with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The next day, Witkoff and Kushner flew to Moscow for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the revised plan “looks better,” though Putin signaled his displeasure and blamed Europe for amendments he called “absolutely unacceptable.” He warned that Russia is ready to go to war with European states if attacked.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the revised draft increases the cap on Ukraine’s military personnel to its current strength, defers land negotiations to “discussion between the leaders of the US and Ukraine,” and softens the language on NATO membership.

“Being tired doesn’t mean we’re ready to give up,” said Maia Mikhaluk, a pastor’s wife who lives in Kyiv and has helped plant churches across Ukraine for the past 18 years. She believes the original plan handed the Kremlin its “Christmas wish list” and provided “nothing that is good for Ukraine.”

If Moscow’s land grabs are legitimized or expanded, many of the Mikhaluks’ 27 church plants across the country will be in danger, she noted. “We have pastors in our network who would have to flee from the areas occupied by Russians, because if they stay, they’ll be slaughtered,” she said.

According to a Mission Eurasia report, Russian soldiers have killed more than a dozen priests and pastors in Ukraine since the war began. The organization’s president, Sergey Rakhuba, told CT that the Kremlin’s seizure of churches and detention of pastors in Russia-occupied regions should serve as a warning for what could happen nationwide if Ukraine’s security guarantees are sidelined in negotiations.

“This will happen with all of Ukraine if you give Putin a chance,” Rakhuba said. “He’s not going to stop with this so-called peace deal.”

Other unresolved issues in the framework include the future of Ukrainian elections and the fate of nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children that Russia abducted and subjected to indoctrination.

Despite the uncertainty and near-daily attacks on civilians, churches remain full and Christians continue serving with resilience, Rakhuba said. “I have not seen such a powerful movement of God in the countries of the former Soviet Union in my missional memory,” he added.

Last month, Mission Eurasia hosted its third annual volunteer forum, bringing together hundreds of Christians to share best practices and resources. The organization also provided wood-burning stoves for volunteers to deliver to Ukrainians whose homes were damaged by the ongoing war.

Ministries face new obstacles as well. Mikhaluk said Russian drones have become more accurate and deadly in recent months and are targeting humanitarian aid vans. Her church halted its aid deliveries to Kherson and Donetsk due to the increased risk. Some Ukrainian cities have even draped large fishing nets over their streets to trap drones aimed at vehicles and pedestrians.

Still, ministry work continues. Moore spent the weekend with more than 100 volunteers cleaning up glass and installing temporary windows at Kyiv Christian Academy. Classes resumed on Tuesday, and the school launched a campaign to raise money for new windows.

Mission Eurasia volunteers continue delivering food parcels to families in need and sharing messages of hope to marginalized communities. The group has delivered more than 300,000 food packages this year.

Mikhaluk’s church, a member of the Association of Missionary

Evangelical Churches of Ukraine, has redirected its frontline aid efforts to internally displaced people around Kyiv who need firewood, blankets, and other necessities as temperatures drop. She said Moscow has intensified its attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, and many fear this winter could be the most difficult since Moscow’s full-scale invasion began nearly four years ago.

The outcome of this week’s peace talks remains uncertain, but Mikhaluk said she knows where her hope lies. “God has always been very close and very real in those dark times,” Mikhaluk said. “When you’re completely stripped of whatever false securities you had—that, I think, is when we’re closest with God.”

- More from Jill Nelson

Theology

Russell Moore’s Favorite Books of 2025

Russell Moore

Columnist

CT’s editor at-large recommends a handful of biographies—from Augustine to Robert Frost—along with sci-fi, Stephen King, social media, and more.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

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

As soon as I hear the sound system play Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” I know it’s time to start compiling my list of my favorite books of the year. That happens, as you know, the day after Halloween. Below are books that resonated with me in some way or another in this crazy year. Here they are in alphabetical order by author.

Leslie Baynes, Between Interpretation and Imagination: C. S. Lewis and the Bible (Eerdmans)

“Even as a child who knew almost nothing about the Bible, I recognized the major biblical references right away, and as I studied Scripture and reread the Chronicles [of Narnia], I delighted in finding richer meaning in the books every time I picked them up,” the author of this book writes. “Like Edmund’s sister Lucy in Prince Caspian, I saw Aslan get bigger every time I returned to Narnia.”

Leslie Baynes, a former scholar in residence at The Kilns in Oxford, England, explores how C. S. Lewis interacted with current biblical scholarship and how he related his biblical depiction to his literary imagination. Even at points where I differed with the author, this was an invigorating read. That’s particularly true of the last half, where she explores how the Bible—especially the Gospel of John—shows up in the Chronicles of Narnia. She notes that biblical references become more explicit when Aslan is present.

Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story (Counterpoint)

Since I’ve written a full-length review essay of this book for Christianity Today—and since regular readers know how much Berry has shaped my imagination and thought—I will not replow that field. This is a beautiful book, a fitting endpoint, if it is, for the Port William community. The book ends with these words:

As he has come to know, Andy’s grief for the things that are lost affirms his love for them, as even the loss of them affirms the bounty by which they once existed, for in this world grief goes hand in hand with gratitude.

“Better than any argument is to rise at dawn / and pick dew-wet red berries in a cup,” Berry once wrote. This book is like that cup—sweet, with just the right amount of bitter mixed in, which makes the sweetness even better. This book is not an argument. It’s a standing ground—and a good one.

Nicholas Carr, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart (Norton)

Nicholas Carr warned us, years before it was an everyday topic of conversation, what digital life would do to our attention spans. This book looks at what social media technologies in particular have done to us, why, and what we can do about it. This is not abstract tech sociology. There are some clearly identified villains: The tech bros about whom Carr writes care more for statistics than people.

Carr identifies why social media led us to this crisis of rage, resentment, and unseriousness. Social media technologies function based on the fact that human beings need to be seen and acknowledged. We can do that quietly in person, but on social media, we must be loud. Plus, he shows, our familiarity with one another leads not to more connection but to less. Envy and anger, he notes, are fueled by proximity. The “technologies of connection” give us these dark aspects of nearness without communion.

The book explains why most people look at their own images repeatedly when on a Zoom call, and it’s not, as I would have thought, narcissism. It’s that human beings are constantly alert to how others view us. The person looking at that image is wondering how he or she appears before the judgment seat of everybody else. In an always-online world, that has implications.

And once again, Carr warns about what’s coming next, or rather, what’s already here but mostly unnoticed: the attempt to replace reality itself with an algorithm-created world that lets a person think he or she created it. That much of the church is not even thinking about this is itself a crisis—and one for which we’ll pay for generations.

Carr writes,

Maybe salvation, if that’s not too strong a word, lies in personal, willful acts of excommunication—the taking up of positions, first as individuals and then, perhaps, together, not outside of society but at society’s margin, not beyond the reach of the informational flow but beyond the reach of its liquefying force. … If you don’t live by your own code, you’ll live by another’s.

You can listen to Carr and me talk about these topics—and many more—here.

Catherine Conybeare, Augustine the African (Norton)

Augustine is kind of like John F. Kennedy in one way (and one way only): People love to write about his life, even as we might ask ourselves, “What else is there to say?” I’ve read almost all these books about Augustine and usually conclude that it’s impossible to improve on Peter Brown’s epic biography, Augustine of Hippo. But this book is different.

Conybeare, a respected classicist, concentrates on one aspect of Augustine that is usually left out of any consideration of his life or work: He was African. She then shows why this matters. It’s not a matter of 21st-century identity politics but a matter of understanding the world that shaped one who would shape the centuries to come. She traces the uniquely African context of languages, of relationship to Rome, of the particular crises and fragmentations of the church.

She does all this without turning Augustine into a mere receptacle of the political or cultural or theological forces around him. There is only one Augustine, and she reminds readers of this in the quotations she chooses from him. Here’s one, about his education: “People were more displeased if one pronounced ‘human’ without the ‘h’ than if one felt hatred for a human being.”

Stephen King and Maurice Sendak, Hansel and Gretel (HarperCollins)

This is, I’m quite sure, the only Stephen King story you will ever read that ends with these words: “They lived happily ever after.” King was asked to reimagine the Brothers Grimm story, using artwork done long ago by the now-deceased author and illustrator of Where the Wild Things Are. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that keeps intact the horror of a story about really horrible things: abandonment, lostness, poverty, predatory adults.

But as Sendak knew, the way to overcome the “wild things” is not to pretend they’re not there; it’s to stare them straight in the eyes until they make you their king.

In introducing the book, King writes, “Reader, I hope you will enjoy this poor effort at breathing a bit of life into an old story, and I know you will enjoy Maurice Sendak’s art, which is sunny on top and dark inside. Or vice versa.”

Ian McEwan, What We Can Know: A Novel (Knopf)

When I started reading this novel, I thought I knew what it was. McEwan writes a kind of science fiction—a couple of researchers working a hundred years from now, after nuclear wars and artificial intelligence and climate disaster have wiped away civilization almost to the nub, with the possible exception of the one remaining superpower, Nigeria. Two researchers in that future archipelago, which is what remains of the United Kingdom, are looking for a long-lost document rumored to be the pinnacle of 21st-century genius—“A Corona for Vivien,” written by a poet for his wife on her 54th birthday.

The story flashes back and forth between our recent past (2014) and 22nd-century Oxford. The narrative turns out to be a hand guiding the reader into a haunted house; all the while, the reader barely notices how the lights are dimming. At one point, the book seemed to have shifted from a sophisticated literary take on Blade Runner into the world of insufferably condescending and morally repulsive characters from a John Updike novel (Rabbit Runner?). And then I found that this too was misdirection.

I hardly know how to describe the story line without spoiling it for those of you who will want to read it, except to say the book is ultimately about time, memory, guilt, shame, and the question of whether there is something more than the judgment of history. The characters seem to seek all kinds of things—pleasure, fame, stability, a missing poem—but they are really looking for atonement, to resurrect the title of a previous McEwan book.

Daniel Nayeri, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story (Levine Querido)

A couple years ago, something sad came untrue. I missed out on one of the most enjoyable books I’d read in a decade from this list. Beth Moore recommended that I read Daniel Nayeri’s Everything Sad Is Untrue, saying, “You’re just going to have to trust [me]; this book is amazing.” She kept on me, asking, “Have you read it yet?” until I did. I realized very quickly that she was right. But I read it the year after its publishing date, so I didn’t get to include it here. I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

The Teacher of Nomad Land tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister in Iran during the Second World War. I suppose you could say it’s kind of Hansel and Gretel, except with Nazis instead of witches. The boy, Babak, aspires to teach nomadic children to read and to watch out for his little sister, Sana. They encounter a Jewish boy on the run from a German who seeks to kill him. I don’t think I’m spoiling this fast-paced story by telling you the last words of it: “Babak is a teacher, and a teacher is one who gives. Sana is a kid sister. Everybody has good work to do.”

This time I was the one texting Beth: “You have got to read this. It’s amazing.” Think of this newsletter as a text from a friend saying the same thing: Read this. It’s amazing.

Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Robert Frost might not be at the very top of a list of “Writers I Like but Would Not Want to Live Next Door To,” but he’s definitely on the first page or two. I’ve always found Frost brilliant but thought of him as a “You kids get off my lawn on a snowy evening” kind of grouch. This book surprised me by making me see a more human, more complicated, and more likable Frost. While changing the reader’s perspective of the poet himself, this book takes the reader into a deeper look at the work that came out of his complex psychology.

There’s a reason many people misremember the name of one of the most famous American poems as “The Road Less Traveled,” and this book tells us why. But Frost did not write the “The Road Not Taken” as a “You can do it” sign in a human resources department or a “Be yourself” lyric for a Disney film. The actual elegiac force of the poem is wrapped up with the life and work this book describes and analyzes.

Plunkett shows us the changes in Frost’s political views, his conflicted relationship with Christianity and the Bible, his insight into the meaning of metaphor, and his lifelong attempts to balance loyalty and ideals, justice and mercy (he preferred justice and called himself an “Old Testament Christian”). Plunkett quotes Frost in a letter: “Everyone is marked by his own craziness that he does not give way to.” The rest of the book shows us how that worked itself out in one life—and the art that called out from it.

Jonathan Rauch, Cross Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy (Yale University Press)

I try not to include books by friends on this list, but as you can see from some past years’ lists, sometimes that’s asking too much. This is one of those exceptions. In 2003—long before I knew him—Jon wrote an essay in The Atlantic celebrating the decline of religion and the coming Scandinavian-ish secular paradise. As I mentioned in our podcast conversation on the book, I recently found a piece of mine blasting him for it. Now we seem to be in a whole new world from that innocent time—and Jon says he’s changed his mind.

As you’ll see, he hasn’t changed his mind as much as I (and his many other Christian friends) would like. He’s still an atheist. But as this book lays out, he now recognizes that a healthy American democracy needs Christianity to be, well, Christian.

Rauch diagnoses with precision what he calls “sharp Christianity”—the fear-based, siege-driven posture that defines identity by enemies and politics by apocalypse. “Be not afraid” became “be very afraid,” he told me, and the pews started catechizing the pulpits.

He makes the case for what he calls “thick Christianity,” a faith that asks much, forms deeply, and binds people together in the slow ways of affection and belonging. That’s quite different from the post-Christian secularism some progressives wanted. It’s also quite different from those on the purportedly Christian right who think the New Jerusalem is replicating Hungary on I-65 in Tennessee.

The book is a plea from a sympathetic outsider to those of us who are Christians, asking no more from us than that we be ourselves.

You can listen to the conversation we had about the book here.

Graham Tomlin, Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World (Hodder & Stoughton)

Earlier this year, going through my journals from when I was a teenager, I saw how much of my prayer life had to do with math. I was constantly in fear of Algebra … and Algebra II … and Geometry I … and so on. I was surprised, then, when in young adulthood one of the major influences on my spiritual development was a dead mathematician.

Blaise Pascal’s Pensées shaped me—and it keeps doing so every time I go back to it, which is all the time. Having read Graham Tomlin before, I knew this would be a clear and careful analysis, so I read it thinking its main value would be to help introduce other people to Pascal. I was surprised. This book is much more than that.

Tomlin helps us not just see Pascal and his thought but also see with him such important things as the reason that faith is not, in fact, algebra. The book guides the reader to see the difference between the authority of testimony and the authority of reason. It shows why Pascal understood the natural world to neither confirm nor deny God’s existence since it provides hints that are “too much to deny and not enough to affirm.”

Tomlin also brilliantly and accurately deconstructs the caricature many people make of Pascal’s wager. He puts Pascal in conversation with important modern thinkers like Iain McGilchrist. And he puts the reader in touch with the testimony of a man who met and experienced not the God of the philosophers but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

“Pascal is an enigma, who recognized the enigmatic nature of this life that we have to live and the motivations that swirl around our minds and hearts,” Tomlin writes. “Like his great hero St. Augustine, he knew himself, and so he knew us, even us moderns, sometimes better than we know ourselves. Which is why, whether we follow his Christian faith or not, he remains an insightful, if sometimes uncomfortable, companion along the journey, illuminating our path with a strange light from another world, a world he yearned for and on which he wagered his life.”

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

Church Life

Celebrating Christmas with Hot Chai and Crispy Murukku

Surinder Kaur

Amid rising persecution, Indian Christians share Jesus’ love with friends and neighbors through delectable dishes.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

Abhishek Singh, 46, fondly remembers going caroling from door to door as a child in Jabalpur, a city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. As he sang Christmas carols in English and Hindi with his friends, appreciative families would hand him cashews, almonds, and sometimes even kebabs—a coveted delicacy of grilled minced-meat skewers flavored with aromatic spices.

Now, his home welcomes a steady stream of visitors, including eager young carolers, at Christmastime. “Our kettle would never be off the stove,” Singh, who’s an office manager, said. “Chai was constantly on the boil to serve to the guests.”

Across India’s bustling cities, Christmas hospitality takes on a uniquely communal dimension as homes become gathering places for people across different faiths, even as Christian hosts continue to face persecution amid rising Hindu nationalism.

Hindu extremists have forced Christians living in Madhya Pradesh to flee their homes. Last year, the state’s district court sentenced 42-year-old pastor Ramesh Ahirwar and his wife, Sakshi, to two years in prison and fined them 25,000 rupees (about $300 USD) each for breaking an anticonversion law.

The Ahirwars paid the fine while submitting an appeal to the High Court, and the state court granted them bail last May. They are now waiting for the court to announce the date of their appeal hearing, all the while feeling like a sword is hanging over their heads.

This has not dampened their resolve to open their home to visitors at Christmastime. “We cannot live in constant fear, so we chose to trust the Lord and continue to live our lives one day at a time,” Ramesh Ahirwar said.

After he leads the December 25 service, his church holds lunch in a big space to accommodate congregants and visitors. Both events have an “open invitation” that he extends to everyone he knows. “A few of my Hindu neighbors and Muslim friends attend the Christmas play and join us for lunch,” he said.

These gestures of hospitality in Christian homes across India reflect other interfaith celebrations throughout the year, like Diwali with Hindu friends and Eid al-Fitr with Muslims.

In Hyderabad, the capital of the south-central state of Telangana, 65-year-old retired English professor Grace Sudhir spends several weeks preparing her annual Christmas feast. In one corner of her kitchen sits buttery dough that she will fry into crispy murukku (Tamil for “twisted”), a festive snack prepared with rice-and-lentil dough and added spices.

In another corner, candied fruit and nuts soak in spirits, their sweet, boozy aroma mixing with the cardamom and cinnamon that perfumes the air. A plum cake, stuffed with a variety of nuts, cherries, orange and lemon peels and seasoned with cloves, cumin, and nutmeg, bakes in the oven.

When she’s done, Sudhir will share these creations with her neighbors of various faiths to demonstrate “Christ’s love for all humanity,” she said. She does this even as Telangana is experiencing a spike in violence against Christians this year, with mobs assaulting pastors and church leaders, burning Bibles, and vandalizing church buildings.

“As Christians, we are supposed to pray for those who persecute us and spread the good news about Christ, and that is what I try to do,” she said.

Christmas cuisine in India differs from state to state. But it has deeply Christian roots, dating back to the arrival of the apostle Thomas to southwestern India’s Malabar Coast in what is traditionally believed to be AD 52.

The region, now known as Kerala, is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Christians in Kerala—better known as Syrian Christians—make a special Christmas treat every year called appams. These lacy-edged pancakes, shaped from rice batter, contain soft, pillowy centers and are perfect for soaking up coconut-rich stews fragrant with black pepper and curry leaves. The traditional duck roast that follows is a study in patience; it takes about three hours of cooking time to prepare the tender meat, its skin crackling with spices.

Christians in Tamil Nadu, a state on the southeast coast, often prepare a popular regional dish, Dindigul biryani, which comprises distinctive dark grains and tender meat like chicken, lamb, or seafood marinated overnight in yogurt and spices.

In Goa, a state on India’s western coast, the most impressive part of a Christmas feast may be the bebinca, a multilayered dessert that requires days of preparation. Each of its 7–16 layers is individually cooked until the coconut-egg dessert achieves its distinctive striped appearance.

Prior to pulling this sweet out, hosts may serve dukra maas, in which pork belly becomes butter-soft after hours of slow cooking with spices, the fat melting into a sauce eaten with sannas, pillowy rice cakes that smell of toddy (a coconut wine).

Meanwhile, Christmas celebrations in Christian-majority states like Nagaland and Mizoram often feature nga atoiba thongba, a mashed fish curry made with vegetables and spices.

Over in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Sunday school teacher Jyotsana Lall, 49, hosts five different groups of non-Christian guests every Christmas, from her children’s friends and their parents to marathon-running companions and colleagues.

Since a majority of people in Gujarat are vegetarian, Lall mainly prepares dishes like bajre ka vada (pearl millet fritters), bajre ki bhakri (pearl millet flatbread), and totha ki sabji (pigeon-pea bean curry).

In a state with an anticonversion law in effect, it is difficult to have an open conversation with someone about Christ and his redemptive power, Lall says.

“But a decorated house, the aroma of goodies, and above all the love with which we share food with others send the message of the sacredness of Christmas,” she said.

Welcoming non-Christian friends for Christmas celebrations in her home often piques her guests’ curiosity about the holiday and compels them to ask her about her reasons for doing so, Lall said. Last year, a Hindu friend likened Lall’s Christmas busyness to her experience of Diwali fatigue and asked Lall how she could host so many different groups for meals and do everything “with a smile.”

Her friend’s question was a “great opportunity to share with her the source of my joy that does not vanish under stress or pressure,” Lall said.

Meanwhile, Singh welcomes close to 25 non-Christian families into his home in Madhya Pradesh, starting the week before Christmas up to the first week of the new year. His mother often prepares presents for close friends too, giving them new saris and shirts for their children along with Christmas cake and home-cooked goodies.

Jesus’ boldness in crossing religious and social boundaries by dining with tax collectors, healing a Roman centurion’s servant, and conversing with Samaritan women has been instrumental in guiding Singh’s Christmas hosting tradition.

“[Christ’s] hospitality wasn’t conditional on conversion but flowed from love,” Singh said. “He demonstrated that God’s welcome extends beyond faith boundaries, inviting us to do the same.”

- More from Surinder Kaur

Books

My Top 5 Books on Christianity in Southeast Asia

Compiled by Manik Corea

Explore how the faith has flourished in Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries in this religiously diverse region.

Illustration by Christianity Today

The following books were selected by Manik Corea, national director of the Singapore Centre for Global Missions. He and his family were missionaries in Thailand and involved in church-planting for 13 years before returning to Singapore in 2021.

Southeast Asia is the “most diverse region on Earth,” the Encyclopedia Britannica declares. It is home to adherents of all the major religions, alongside many local and folk religions of great assortment. Seven in 10 adults identify as Buddhist or Muslim in countries like Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study.

Historically, Christianity has had a relatively late arrival in Southeast Asia compared to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. The Christian faith is also often perceived as a “Western” religion, which may be because the first organized waves of missionaries only came on the coattails of colonial expansion. The Spanish arrived in the Philippines in the 15th century; the Dutch headed to Indonesia and the British to Burma (Myanmar) in the 17th century; and the British set foot in Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore two centuries later.

But this mode of faith transmission is changing. Today, Southeast Asia is home to nascent but vibrant Christian churches and movements. For instance, Singapore is the most religiously diverse country in the region, with the highest rate of conversions to Christianity. Some of the largest megachurches in the continent worship in malls within Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia.

Evangelicals around the world who are curious about how the gospel has changed the religious landscape in Southeast Asia and how the Good News continues to spread there will appreciate these books, which approach the faith from various angles: history, theology, missions, and comparative religion.

Christianity in East and Southeast Asia, edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Francis D. Alvarez and Todd M. Johnson

For a comprehensive understanding of Christianity in Southeast Asia, this 2022 publication is a must-read. It offers clear statistical data, analysis, and insightful writing on core religious issues affecting every country in Southeast and East Asia, even as “what is Asian and what is Christian are still being constructed and discovered,” Roman Catholic theologian Francis D. Alvarez writes in his opening essay.

The book gives special focus to Christian growth and decline in places like Laos, Brunei, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam. You will learn about the faith’s historical impact, emerging themes, and developing trends in each context, such as evidence of church growth in ground previously hard for the gospel in Thailand and Indonesia.

This is a helpful resource for church and mission leaders, researchers, or seminary students who are hoping to gain a deeper, broader grasp of how Christianity is shaping identity and culture in the region.

Mangoes or Bananas? The Quest for an Authentic Asian Christian Theology, by Hwa Yung

Believers in Southeast Asia are more like bananas than mangoes, Malaysian Methodist bishop Hwa Yung asserts. In other words, Christians only look Asian on the outside but have been schooled and discipled internally to think and behave like Western (or white) Christians.

Yung argues that Asian Protestant theologies continue to be held captive by Western Cartesian dualism—the idea that our rational minds and souls are independent from our material bodies—and enlightenment epistemologies that privilege natural or scientific worldviews.

These influences have diminished valuable aspects of Asian Christian identity, such as communal, holistic approaches to life and familiarity with the supernatural. Yung champions the need for more authentic contextualization within local worldviews while holding tenaciously to core and historic Christian tenets.

This scholarly work is Yung’s best known. I recommend it to Christians who want to explore critically how we should think, work, and live out God’s mission in the complex cultural milieus of Southeast Asia.

Clean Hands, Pure Hearts & Beautiful Feet, by Flora Man and Emily Soh

Southeast Asian Christians serve in varied and challenging places across the globe today. Countries that were once mission fields are now a mission force to be reckoned with, and this beautifully illustrated book is ample proof of that.

Stories of 10 Singaporean missionaries are brought to life in short, powerful detail for both children and adults. Many of these missionaries served in remote, far-flung places like the mountains of Bolivia, the villages of southern China, and the thick jungles of Papua New Guinea.

You’ll encounter people like Daniel and Wei Lei Jesudason, a couple who translated Scripture for two tribal groups steeped in sorcery and black magic in Papua New Guinea, as well as Tan Lai Yong, who raised up “barefoot doctors” in the hills of Yunnan Province, China.

Neighboring Faiths: A Christian Introduction to World Religions, by Winfried Corduan

Corduan writes as an evangelical committed to the exclusivity of the gospel while still managing to give each religion surveyed a fair and respectful analysis. His 449-page book is essential for believers in Southeast Asia who strive to love religiously diverse neighbors well.

Through a sociological perspective, Corduan explores various faiths—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism— that are either the majority religion in a Southeast Asian country or strongly represented in the region. Each chapter provides historical, doctrinal, and practical details behind each religion and its contemporary practice today, with detailed descriptions of daily rituals and rites of passage.

Corduan also tackles topics like the rise of radical movements within Islam and discusses various popular Hindu and Buddhist movements that have exported their unique emphases and practices across Southeast Asia. He also provides suggestions for how Christians should engage each religion constructively and wisely.

Good News for Bruised Reeds: Walking with Same-Sex Attracted Friends, edited by Joanna Hor, Ng Zhi-Wen, Bernice Tan, Tan Soo-Inn, Ronald JJ Wong, and Raphael Zhang

Same-sex attraction is a thorny, often-taboo issue among the generally conservative churches of Southeast Asia. But it will not go away, and we must engage with it wisely and biblically.

This year, Thailand became the first Southeast Asian nation to legalize same-sex marriage. In other countries, notably the Philippines and Singapore, there are growing movements that support LGBTQ rights for marriage and are calling for “transgender” to be recognized as a legitimate gender category.

How should Christians approach this issue with truth and grace? This book features compelling first-person narratives of believers who have struggled or continue to live with same-sex attraction. It also offers insights into how churches can care well for them with compassion while maintaining fidelity to God’s original design and his redeeming grace and vision for all people.

Check out other top 5 books on Christianity in East Asia and South Asia.

- More from Compiled by Manik Corea

News

Hong Kong Church Rallies After 60 Congregants Lose Homes in Deadly Fire

Joyce Wu

The territory’s worst fire in decades claimed more than 150 lives.

A major fire engulfs several apartment blocks in Hong Kong's Tai Po district on November 26, 2025.

Tommy Wang / Getty

Windy Yeung was passing through Hong Kong’s northern district of Tai Po on November 26 after a work meeting when she received news that a fire had broken out at the Wang Fuk Court apartment towers. Wanting to see how she could help, Yeung headed to the area and found distressed evacuated residents gathered outside.

A man in his 30s told her he had been trying for more than six hours to reach his father, a resident of the apartment towers, but hadn’t heard from him. He asked Yeung if there was any hope left for his dad.

Yeung, the communication officer of the Hong Kong Church Network for the Poor (HKCNP), said she felt her heart break at the question. Maybe his father was in the hospital, she suggested. Even if they couldn’t do anything and no one could enter the fire, Jesus could, she told him. The man then nodded and teared up.

The blaze that started at one of Wang Fuk Court’s eight 31-story apartment buildings that afternoon grew into Hong Kong’s deadliest fire in decades. Flames rapidly spread to six other buildings, destroying nearly 2,000 apartments. The fire has killed at least 156 people, including one firefighter, has injured dozens of others, and has displaced thousands of residents. More than 30 people remain missing.

Although firefighters extinguished the flames after more than 40 hours, Hong Kong continues to grapple with the devastation. Amid the grief, local churches have provided shelter and aid even as some church members mourn their own losses in the blaze.

At Tai Po Baptist Church, located minutes away from Wang Fuk Court, more than 60 members of the congregation lost their homes, according to pastor Dustin Yee. During worship services the Sunday after the blaze, senior pastor Root Chau preached on Psalm 46 to remind congregants God is their refuge amid devastation.

At the 11:30 a.m. service, about 300 attendees filled the pews of the second-floor sanctuary. Many congregants wore black, and several cried during the service, which included singing a Cantonese translation of the hymn “In His Presence.”

Chau told the congregants that one member had stayed in the bathroom of her 27th-floor apartment until firefighters rescued her. Church leaders had visited displaced members at temporary shelters. He asked congregants to pray for the church staff members who are helping those suffering from the catastrophe.

Tai Po Baptist prepared its space as a temporary shelter in the aftermath of the blaze, but only one married couple stayed there over a few nights, and another person visited briefly to rest, said Yee. The couple, who don’t attend the church, were too scared to stay in their own home, which was located near Wang Fuk Court, Yee explained. He added that people from Wang Fuk Court preferred to stay at the government-run temporary shelter, where they could more quickly receive information on matters like how to register for new identification documents.

A team of pastoral staff and counselors went to the site for identifying the bodies of fire victims and offered spiritual and emotional support to people who lost loved ones. The church is also providing funds for the displaced, and praying for the bereaved and injured.

Other churches and Christian organizations are offering similar services, and the government is supplying money, short-term hotel stays, and transitional housing for the displaced. Volunteers set up stations at a nearby housing complex to distribute donated items, such as clothes, packs of toilet paper, loaves of sliced bread, and pet supplies.

On the day of the fire, Yeung stayed around Wang Fuk Court from 5 p.m. until around midnight, comforting displaced residents and offering to pray for them. Yeung called some church friends in the area, asking them to bring bedding and clothes to the nearby churches that had opened up as temporary shelters for fire victims.

It is still unclear how the fire started at the apartment towers, which were undergoing renovations at the time. Construction workers had erected bamboo scaffolding over Wang Fuk Court’s eight towers and had covered the scaffolding with green protective netting.

Government authorities believe the blaze started when the netting on one building’s lower floors caught fire. It then spread to highly flammable Styrofoam boards that the construction company had installed outside the building’s windows. The fire-alarm system in the buildings was not working effectively, according to the fire service, leaving many residents unaware of the danger until it was too late to escape. Authorities also found that some of the netting had failed to meet fire safety standards.

Amid an ongoing probe into the fire, police have arrested at least 13 people involved with the renovations for suspected manslaughter. Some of the suspects are also under investigation by Hong Kong’s Independent Commission Against Corruption for possible graft connected to Wang Fuk Court’s $42 million renovation project.

During the city’s official three-day mourning period, which began on Saturday, Hong Kong and Chinese flags at government buildings flew at half-staff. Citizens grieving the deaths of Wang Fuk Court residents—including at least 10 migrant domestic helpers from Indonesia and the Philippines who died—streamed to a park by the now-charred apartment towers. There they laid white and yellow flowers and wrote notes expressing their sorrow.

South China Morning Post reported that pastor Jenny Lam Yat-kwan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hong Kong Diamond Lutheran Church had lost three family members in the fire. She noted that three young volunteers from a church in Tai Po helped her family as they sought to identify the bodies of loved ones.
“I saw God’s mercy and grace when these little angels quietly accompanied my family since Wednesday,” she told the Post. “They came every day, recognized my folks, and silently accompanied them.”

Although Yeung’s organization, HKCNP, is not directly involved in frontline disaster relief, it convened a Zoom meeting on Friday to connect its affiliated pastors from different districts with Tai Po pastors so they can discuss how to work together. HKCNP has also partnered with herbal-beverage company Hung Fook Tong to place donation boxes at the retailer’s stores across Hong Kong and to collect money for rebuilding victims’ lives. The group also created a spreadsheet listing many free resources, including medical services and counseling, to help the displaced find what they need.

Some pastors—who have kicked into high gear to help Wang Fuk Court victims—feel physically, emotionally, and spiritually weary. Yee is no exception.

“Frankly, I’m feeling tired right now,” he said late Sunday afternoon. “[We] pastors have no experience in doing this large-scale disaster relief and spiritual support.” At the same time, he appreciates the support his church has received from churches overseas, as well as from Tai Po Baptist’s own social service department, which provides counseling for its pastors.

What the church can best provide the grieving community is its presence, Yee said: “The most important thing is to be with them going through this.”

- More from Joyce Wu

Church Life

The Priest and Social Worker Deradicalizing Jihadists in Prison

Jayson Casper

One Catholic and one Muslim, they disagree on the role of religion in their work in Lebanon, but are united in their aim.

The shadow of a cross on the wall of Lebanon's Roumieh prison as prisoners stand behind bars during the Holy Thursday mass.

Patrick Baz / Stringer / Getty

Maya Yamout stared at the hardened jihadist sitting across from her over a plastic desk in the unkempt library prison. Books littered the floor. The man, a veteran al-Qaeda militant in the notorious Block B of Lebanon’s Roumieh jail pushed forward a glass of tea.

“Where’s the sugar?” Yamout asked.

The curt question fit their relationship. In their previous brief encounters, the prisoner called Yamout a spy, a pig, and all manner of insults that belittled her as a Muslim woman who did not wear a veil.

Yet this time, her mischievous smirk made the terrorist smile. Two weeks earlier, when he was sick, Yamout inquired about his health from prison guards and brought medicine and shampoo on her next visit. Once he recovered, he invited the visit, prompting the nervy but playful exchange. Sensing a breakthrough, Yamout proposed therapy. He accepted.

Eventually, filled with shame, he apologized for how poorly he treated her.

“To reach a prisoner, you have to bond over something,” said Yamout, the cofounder of Rescue Me, a Lebanese crime prevention and deradicalization organization.

But Yamout is clear: This something should not be religion. She’s found that speaking about faith often gets entwined in politics and leads to endless debate. It also rarely addresses what radicalized a militant in the first place.

Yet Marwan Ghanem, a priest in the Maronite Catholic church and president of the Lebanese chapter of Prison Fellowship International (PFI), takes the opposite approach. He centers his ministry on the story of Jesus and Zaccheus, believing the tax collector’s model of repentance can help any prisoner restore a debt to society.

Yamout and Ghanem worked independently in separate sections of Roumieh but met often for mutual encouragement. Despite their differences, when Yamout left in 2024 to pursue a PhD at the University of Swansea in the UK and budget restrictions at Rescue Me pinched its ability to go into prisons, she asked Ghanem to continue her work with extremists. She simply counseled him to go slow with religion, avoid provocation, be patient if insulted, and remember the prisoners’ humanity.

“Kill them with kindness,” Yamout said, “and kindness will prevail.”

Rescue Me, which Yamout and her sister Nancy founded in 2011, primarily worked among at-risk youth in the Hayy al-Gharbia neighborhood of Beirut until funding cuts in 2017 curtailed its service among the Lebanese poor as well as Syrian and Palestinian refugees.

Many in hopeless situations became easy targets for Islamic extremist groups, she discovered. And when prison overcrowding assigns ordinary criminals to Block B—designated for terrorist offenses—even the nonreligious can be radicalized through their need to belong, Yamout said.

She said Block B extremists fall into four categories. A quarter of her cases sought retribution for wrongs they suffered or the poverty they endured. Another quarter put a religious overlay on their frustration, while 35 percent did the same with politics. The remaining 15 percent are simple psychopaths—“I joined ISIS to smell the blood,” one told her.

Another prisoner she met fell into the second category. Born into Lebanon’s impoverished northern city of Tripoli, he went to Syria at the age of 19 to train with a jihadist group. A Lebanese court issued him the death penalty following his capture during clashes with the Lebanese army. Once in prison, he readily accepted working with Yamout and her sister.

No matter a prisoner’s classification in her system, Yamout engages each one individually through a variety of care including art therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, aggression replacement training, and newer techniques such as EMDR to address trauma. Over a decade in the prison, she has seen about 750 cases. At minimum she conducts six sessions with a prisoner. Some, like the man from Tripoli, require many more.

Only 10 people, she said, have gone back to terrorism after being released.

In the Tripoli prisoner’s case, Yamout recalled a conversation he had with Nancy.

“I deserve to die,” he said, quoting the quranic verse that a killer should be killed.

“I believe in rehabilitation and forgiveness,” she replied.

“But you are a Muslim,” he countered. “You have to follow this.”

“I go beyond religion,” she said. “I believe in second chances.”

Many years later, the prisoner sought Nancy’s opinion.

“Do you believe it can be right to kill a Lebanese soldier?” he asked.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“No,” he said quietly, his voice troubled by guilt.

The man remains in prison today, fasting and praying according to Islamic guidelines but distant from extremism. He followed Nancy’s advice to demonstrate his remorse by sharing his story with others. On Wednesdays, that became his routine in Roumieh, introducing new inmates to Block B.

“This is humanity,” Yamout said. “Why do I need religion?”

Ghanem, the Catholic priest, dedicated his life to answering this question. His early choir ministry morphed into charitable service in 2005, and through his Nusroto Association—Syriac for “chants of joy”—he runs a juvenile home, a shelter for battered women, and a drug rehabilitation center in addition to his work in the prisons.

Like Yamout, Ghanem won trust among the inmates by helping them secure essential medicine and hygiene products from outside the prison. But his breakthrough with the Islamists came when he gave an interview on television and spoke with compassion about their needs inside the prison. Many extremists in Lebanese prisons are Syrian, and many in the country resent the refugee population and the impact of Syria’s civil war on Lebanon.

“You are our abuna,” Ghanem said they told him, using the Arabic equivalent of father to address Catholic clergy. “They were proud to have a priest by their side.”

Using PFI programs The Prisoner’s Journey and Sycamore Tree, Ghanem told the prisoners about how the Messiah—avoiding Christian-Muslim controversy over the name Jesus or Isa—led Zaccheus to repent over defrauding his own people. True justice, Ghanem taught them, is not simply punishment in prison. It also restores relationships. The prisoner must confess his mistakes legally, in court. But then he must make it right with society.

Militant extremists seek justice for the ills of society through violence, Ghanem said. He helps them see the victims in their radicalized quest. And while he focuses on the social aspects of their crimes and life in prison, he does not ignore religion.

“Islam also demands repentance,” he said. “But my approach is Christian.”

Ghanem formerly served as the head prison chaplain for the Council of Catholic Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon, part of the interfaith High Council for Prisons that oversees all spiritual work. But it is primarily Christians, he said, who serve inmates outside their sect.

One day, a fight nearly broke out between Sunni and Shiite prisoners at Roumieh. Ghanem intervened to remind them they shared the same deprivations. Hungry, they both needed food. Hot, they both needed fans. He would do what he could to assist, he assured them, and the situation calmed.

Over time, Ghanem’s personal intervention in the lives of prisoners led one militant to send a letter of apology to the family of his victim, seeking reconciliation. Another, who detonated bombs on two passenger buses, told Ghanem he now knows that Christianity is a religion of love, forgiveness, and peace.

“As a priest, I speak to everyone as a human,” Ghanem said. “But I also help them see God in their life and show them the way to become a Christian.”

Rik Peels, a professor of religion at the Free University of Amsterdam and project leader of its Extreme Beliefs program, said academia is divided over the role of religion in deradicalization. Some view it as irrelevant, though he believes it is sometimes pivotal.

In his book Monotheism and Fundamentalism, Peels argued that all three Abrahamic religions must deal with problematic texts, mentioning the passages in Deuteronomy that can appear genocidal in advocating the killing of all Canaanites. But in teaching the image of God in all humanity, the unity in our fallen natures, and the nonviolence of the kingdom of God that loves even one’s enemies, Christianity provides essential principles to moderate a militant’s faith.

Studying violent extremism in America, the RAND Corporation found that structured interventions with sympathetic individuals outside the militant’s ideological circles can assist the process of deradicalization. Peels said that while the nature of extremism creates us-versus-them boundaries, such personal encounters are able to break through negative stereotypes.

Yamout recognizes the possible value of religious re-education, citing positive outcomes in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia while insisting on focusing on social and psychological factors. But in moving beyond spiritual particulars, she is living out hard-won lessons from her youth.

Raised in Tripoli before moving to Beirut at age 13, Yamout attended Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist schools where, like many Lebanese, she had friends from all sects. But after two friends went to Syria to join jihadist groups, the religious diversity of her environment drove her to seek God. Christians are sometimes better than Muslims in their love and acceptance of others, she felt, while Muslims often demonstrate a better commitment to justice.

In working together, they complement each other, Yamout said. But at age 24, trying to decide between political and religious approaches to her graduate work in deradicalization, she nearly died from a virus in her lung.

When she finally recovered, she realized that the presiding doctor caring for her was a Shiite, the primary nurse a Christian, and all were doing everything they could to save their Sunni patient.

“Humanity prevailed within me,” Yamout said, “and God gave me a mission.”

- More from Jayson Casper

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**Andrew Ross Sorkin, 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation (Viking, 2025)**

**David Greenberg, John Lewis: A Life (Simon & Schuster, 2024)**

**Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin & the Great Depression (Vintage Books, 1983)**