The Letters That Shaped Me

Some ministry lessons come through seminary. Others come in envelopes.

Dusan Stankovic / Getty

Ministry forms you in ways seminary cannot. The real classroom isn’t the lecture hall—it’s a church hallway, a living-room visit, a late-night prayer, and sometimes a pointed letter from a longtime member. If you allow it, ministry will humble you, teach you, and even sanctify you. And much of that formation comes through the gift of correction—often unsolicited, sometimes uncomfortable, yet undeniably formative.

The first letters

Few things can humble a young pastor quite like a letter from a seasoned church member. I’ve received more than I can count. Some were tough to read, others less so. But every one of them shaped me more deeply than I anticipated. Initially, I thought pastoral leadership was mostly about vision and preaching. I soon discovered it also meant learning to listen carefully, even when the words sting.

At 26, single and fresh from seminary, I became senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Covington, Georgia. With three years of seminary behind me, I was convinced—maybe overly so—that I already knew what I needed to know. In my mind, I was ready. In reality, I still had much to learn.

The church, of course, knew this long before I did. Thankfully, congregants were both kind and courageous enough to help me see it. Letters arrived regularly in those early years. Some were gracious, others not so much. They identified ways I could grow, noted my failures, or expressed concern that the church had changed in directions they wished it hadn’t. Looking back, I’m genuinely grateful for every letter. Those letters were a kind of discipleship, reminding me that pastoral ministry requires more than conviction. It requires humility and a willingness to listen to the very sheep you’ve been entrusted to shepherd.

Fred’s letter

One of the most memorable letters I received came from a man named Fred. Fred was never shy about sharing his opinions. Usually he didn’t need a letter—a dinner-table or parking-lot conversation would do. But one day he handed me a long, typed letter. Clearly this one mattered deeply to him.

Fred had been reading through the newly published 2008 edition of the Baptist Hymnal we’d just placed in the sanctuary. And he was not pleased. His favorite hymn, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” had moved from No. 8 in the 1991 hymnal to No. 656 in the new one.

“Six hundred fifty-six,” he wrote. To make the point, he repeated it: “Six hundred fifty-six.” He added, “I am sure in the next edition of the Baptist Hymnal the song will be purged altogether.”

I braced myself, expecting him to hold me personally responsible for the editorial decisions being made at Lifeway Worship. But the blame never came. Fred just wanted me to know.

More importantly, Fred wanted me to keep singing that hymn. Even more than singing, he wanted me to keep believing its truths: that our God is indeed a mighty fortress
and that he will never fail us.

Why younger pastors need to listen

Fred’s letter wasn’t really about me. But many letters were—and those were much harder to read. Some were gentle; others were quite harsh. But one way or another, each was formative.

As pastors, we’re tempted to dismiss criticism, to filter out the voices we would rather not hear. Yet let me encourage you not to discard these hard letters too quickly.

Some letters carry critiques. Others carry cries for help.

Some express frustration. Others communicate grief.

And some—like Fred’s—reveal a deep love for the Lord and his church, rooted in a history that predates your tenure and possibly even your birth.

Listening doesn’t require you to agree with every word. But it does mean receiving each word with humility. It involves asking, What can I learn from this? It means choosing personal discipleship over defensiveness.

As Proverbs 9:9 says, “Instruct the wise and they will be wiser still.” James 1:19–21 calls us to be “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,” recognizing that anger rarely produces righteousness. The pastoral life demands teachability, not just in theory but in everyday practice—email inboxes and church mail slots.

Similarly, 1 Peter 5:5 offers a word of wisdom to pastors: “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.’” This humility extends to how we handle feedback—even when it’s clumsy, unsolicited, or a bit unfair.

Not-so-nice letters

In my early days at First Baptist, I received many letters critiquing the length of my sermons. The church had long been accustomed to a strict one-hour service. The service began at 11:00 a.m. with sermons typically lasting 25 to 30 minutes and a noon dismissal sharp enough for congregants to beat the Methodists to lunch at the local eateries.

Fresh out of seminary and full of zeal for expositional preaching, I believed the church needed longer preaching, not shorter. My sermons regularly clocked about 40–45 minutes. You can imagine how people reacted to this change and what type of feedback I received.

Initially I felt defensive. I would think to myself, Did they even listen to the sermon? Are they interested in worshiping and growing in Christ together—or just getting to lunch?

To be fair, my frustration may have been understandable. But over time I realized my own errors. I had led the church into this new norm without sufficient wisdom, grace, and tact.

Around this time, a friend drove Alistair Begg to the seminary chapel, where he had been invited to speak. Knowing Alistair was a hero of mine, my friend asked him to give me a call. To my surprise, he did.

I jumped at the opportunity to ask him a burning question: “How do I correct my congregation? How do I get them to embrace longer sermons?”

To my surprise, he replied, “This Sunday, give them a 25-minute sermon.”

He was right. What did it matter how long I preached if my congregation had stopped listening? They had to know I was willing to meet them where they were before I could lead them forward into greener pastures.

Alistair’s gentle rebuke reminded me again: Receiving correction is central to pastoral life. The challenge is learning to welcome it well.

Receiving the letters

So when the letters come—and they will—receive them as an invitation.

Sometimes they’re invitations to change.

Sometimes to be encouraged.

Always to listen carefully.

Even the harshest letters often echo Fred’s underlying message: The history of this church is important. The truth of God is important. And both can be hard to hold on to.

Over the years, I’ve found a few simple practices that help me receive these letters wisely. I offer them here in hope that they’ll help you too:

Don’t respond right away. Sit with the letter. Pray. Quick responses rarely reflect careful thinking or spiritual maturity. Give the words time to settle, allowing God space to quiet your spirit and clarify your thoughts.

Ask what’s true. Even if 90 percent feels off, don’t miss the 10 percent that’s right. Every piece of feedback may contain a kernel of truth worth hearing—even when it’s delivered poorly or laced with assumptions and misunderstandings. Your personal growth requires you to spot the small but valuable insights hidden beneath the critiques.

Talk to a trusted voice—not to vent but to discern. Choose someone mature enough to help you separate genuine correction from unfair criticism. A trusted friend, mentor, or elder can help you see clearly and respond wisely.

Say thank you. Even if you only acknowledge the letter in prayer, give thanks for the chance to grow. A heart of gratitude will often soften the heart, even toward difficult people and harsh words. It turns criticism into an opportunity for grace and growth.

Let the letters shape you

The most formative lessons I’ve learned in ministry didn’t come from books or conferences. They arrived in envelopes—sometimes written in a tone I didn’t enjoy, but still rich in wisdom. Those letters shaped me. They refined me. And in some cases, they reminded me of truths I needed to believe again.

Keep a file of meaningful letters. Read them slowly. Pray over them. Resist the urge to rush past discomfort. Let them sit with you longer than your instinct wants them to. And then keep singing the songs they remind you not to forget.

Especially the ones that declare,
“A mighty fortress is our God.”

Not every letter will be accurate. Not every word will be fair. Yet received with humility, even the hardest ones can foster growth in us.

In a culture quick to defend, dismiss, and cancel, the church desperately needs pastors who listen humbly. Ministry isn’t about remaining unchanged. It’s about being reshaped.

So let the letters shape you. And keep singing.

Jason Edwin Dees is the senior pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Atlanta.

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Ideas

Church in a Time of Brain Rot

Jeffrey Bilbro

Contributor

Technologies that promised mutual understanding have instead fomented confusion and fraud. Christians can model a better way.

Illustration by Lisk Feng

More of a good thing is not necessarily better. And what starts as a good thing may not stay that way.

This is a lesson we’ve had to learn and relearn in recent years while living through rapid shifts in digital communication technologies. It’s vertigo-inducing how a given tool or platform can have one effect in its infancy and an opposite one in its maturity.

But perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising: Scale and proportion matter. Our bodies need some salt, for example, but too much salt will make us ill. Communication technologies have a similar effect on the body politic. The same tool that at a low dose can contribute to mutual understanding and consensus can, when adopted on a wider scale, foment confusion and antipathy.

If we want to keep our feet under us amid these disorienting shifts, Christians must learn how to recognize this paradoxical reality and work together to keep such potent technologies in their place. Yet we’ll only be able to do so if our sense of community and belonging flow from the rhythms of our churchly life together. In other words, it’s our very commitment to living as members of Christ’s body that will enable us to serve a techno-addled society and call it to a better way of life.

Nicholas Carr articulates these dynamics well in his latest book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart. It is a grave mistake, he warns, to assume “that the way a complex technological system works early in its development will be the way it works as it matures.” Yet because “the story we told ourselves about the net, from its earliest days, was a story of ‘democratization,’” many were slow to recognize how easily an abundance of information may foster enmity and mistrust.

Carr’s argument about the effects of too much content pouring through our screens corroborates the insights of the Catholic technology critic Ivan Illich, whom Carr—somewhat strangely—never mentions in Superbloom. In the 1970s, Illich proposed that the application of industrial-style technologies in any given field—education, medicine, transportation, communication, and so on—would be marked by two watersheds.

“At first,” Illich explained, “new knowledge is applied to the solution of a clearly stated problem, and scientific measuring sticks are applied to account for the new efficiency.” Such success generates great optimism, and these early improvements are used to justify “the exploitation of society as a whole in the service of” some too-simple metric, like content produced and disseminated. After this second watershed has been crossed, chasing further technological efficiencies fails to improve the situation and often causes new problems instead.

An example from an earlier era—the era which coined terms such as consensus, brain rot, and even, as Carr notes, social media—can help us to see this progression. The printing press played a key role in unifying the American colonists and orchestrating their rebellion against Britain. As the early American historian David Ramsay famously put it in 1789, “In establishing American independence, the pen and the press had merit equal to that of the sword.” Hence, a few years later, the Philadelphia Typographical Society could declare the press “the tombstone of ignorance and superstition.”

After such a positive experience with the hand-powered printing press, the industrialization of printing in the late 1820s and other new communication technologies, most notably the telegraph, were met with messianic fervor. The first message sent across the Atlantic Ocean in 1858 concluded with a nearly blasphemous connection between the advent of this technology and the advent of Christ: “‘Europe and America are united by telegraph. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men.”

Such sentiments were common. An earlier essay in Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune is typical: “The Magnetic Telegraph, which is literally material thought, and flies as swift, absolutely annihilating space and running in advance of time, will be extended to all the great cities in the Union—so that a net-work of nerves of iron wire, strung with lightning, will ramify from the brain, New York, to the distant limbs and members—to the Atlantic seaboard towns, to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louis and New Orleans.”

The result, heralds of this new communication age were sure, would be the spread of truth and enlightenment. The Tribune story treated the telegraph as infallible, a tool to make journalistic “fraud and deception … next to impossible.”

Today it’s hard to believe that anyone seriously thought misinformation and fake news, much less sensational trivia, would be eliminated by the telegraph—but then, it was less than 15 years ago that Twitter was going to spread democracy throughout the Middle East. As I said, rapid technological shifts can induce vertigo.

One of the most notable consequences of the new connections the telegraph and industrial printing wrought is what we’ve come to call consensus: that experience of a common feeling throughout society. Consensus, in fact, is a fairly novel concept. The word first entered the English language in the mid-1800s, referring to a nation or other group of people sharing the same sensations and opinions at the same time.

As consensus develops—as people come to think and feel in unison with a speed and totality only possible through mass communication—the dangers of groupthink become pronounced. Political slogans, memes, and sentimental appeals pulse through these networks and our minds. And when there is an exception to that unity, some dissent that is disagreeable or even disgusting to the majority, the experience feels more intimate and hence more disconcerting.

The most obvious example of that disconcert from the 19th century is the question of slavery. When Northerners read proslavery essays or Southerners encountered abolitionist literature, their deeply divergent sentiments became unignorable. When, in the 1830s, Northern abolitionists blanketed the South with antislavery pamphlets, the result was not persuasion or mutual understanding but riots, bonfires, and calls to censor the mail. Proslavery sentiments only intensified.

Today, when our digital feeds provide constant reminders of what our fellow citizens and even fellow Christians think about immigration or vaccines or gender, the result is usually not deeper understanding but visceral antipathy. The networking technologies that make public consensus possible also make the dissent that persists more apparent and galling.

We tend to focus on the deleterious individual effects of digital communication technologies: Carr’s earlier book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is a classic of this genre. And for individuals, it’s possible to make choices that counteract these effects. When Henry David Thoreau warned his readers that paying attention to sensational news would cause “brain-rot” (a term chosen as the Oxford Word of the Year in 2024), he could recommend changing their informational diet as a remedy.

It’s harder to address the political or cultural problems of an overconnected society, because these require collective action. I may be able to improve my own news habits, but I can’t choose to live in a world without TikTok.

So what is to be done about the studies Carr summarizes in Superbloom that show “false or otherwise misleading stories [are] 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than factual ones”? And that the most educated people, and the ones who follow the news most closely, also have the most distorted understanding of contemporary events? And that when most of us encounter “different points of view” online, we see these “not as opportunities to learn but as provocations to attack”?

As Carr concludes, “Flooding the public square with more information from more sources” does not “open people’s minds or engender more thoughtful discussions.” It doesn’t even “make people better informed.”

What makes the challenge of meaningful change even more difficult is that skepticism of our hyperconnected world is often corrupted or co-opted. Carr gives the particularly ironic example of Frank Walsh, who one night shot a bullet through his family’s TV—only to find himself an overnight news sensation. The next week, he won a new TV on a reality TV show.

We have become accustomed to the phenomenon of “politicians [who] go on social media to express their disdain for social media, [and] then eye the like count.” At the societal scale, is that really the best we can do?

Carr concludes Superbloom by proposing we look for ways to turn aside and form alternative communities on the edges of these digital networks. “Maybe salvation, if that’s not too strong a word, lies in personal, willful acts of excommunication,” he writes, in “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.”

He’s right, but it’s the togetherness aspect of this response that is particularly vital, for communication technologies by their very nature pose challenges that demand cooperative responses. What Carr does not say is that communities and even institutions already exist, all over our country, that are uniquely equipped to rise to this challenge: Christian families, schools, and churches.

We should be taking the lead in embodying alternative ways of communicating and feeling together. We need to practice developing a different kind of consensus, the consensus of members of the church conforming to the mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2; 1 Cor. 2:16), not members of an increasingly secularized society oriented around New York and Silicon Valley. This type of consensus is the stability we need to avoid fresh waves of vertigo as dramatic technological development, particularly around artificial intelligence, continues apace.

Communal action at the scale of a church or Christian institution can take many forms. We might begin with something like screen-free church services. Families and small groups can host discussions of books like Andy Crouch’s Tech-Wise Family and create their versions of the Postman Pledge. Students can start Luddite clubs. Christian schools can take a cue from the Bruderhof communities and workshops that subordinate technologies to shared commitments.

We can both observe and offer examples that testify to the possibility of distinctly Christian consensus even in this digitally networked age. It is still possible for Christians to think and feel according to our membership in an alternative community. It is still possible for our consistently shared life of Scripture, communion, and prayer to form in us a consensus tied not to some mass public but to the body of Christ.

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

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Theology

Does the Quran Support Religious Pluralism?

Jayson Casper

Islamic scholars from Tunisia and Egypt challenge the historical record.

Eric Lafforgue / Art in All of Us / Contributor / Getty

This is part three of a three-part series about a network of interfaith centers in the Muslim world. Click here to read parts one and two.

Last month, an obscure jihadist group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus, Syria, that killed 25 people. The attack came as a response, it stated, to the government requiring prior approval of Islamic preaching in the Christian neighborhood. Three months earlier, at the site of the future bombing, austere Salafi Muslims called on residents to convert to Islam, a practice known in Arabic as da’wa. Later, a car drove up and its occupants loudly repeated the call until local Muslims sent them away.

Salafis are known for growing long beards and wearing traditional robes in imitation of the prophet Muhammad. Salafi practice is not inherently violent, and reporting does not draw a clear connection between the incident at the church and the later suicide bombing. But many jihadists emerge from or are drawn to Salafi communities, as both aim to follow the Quran literally in complete devotion to Allah.

The jihadists even adopted a particular verse from the Quran as their slogan: “Fight the polytheists together as they fight together against you.” To them, belief in the Trinity is an offense against Allah’s oneness. In preventing Muslims from proper da’wa, then, both state and church in Syria became worthy of war.

Some experts say Salafis and jihadists represent a reaction—peaceful or otherwise—to reclaim a lost idealized era when Islam governed much of the world. Yet most Muslims are neither Salafis nor jihadists; many have accepted democracy and the nation-state system that formally adopts principles of minority rights and common citizenship.

Still, according to a 2013 survey of Muslims in 38 nations, the sense of Islamic superiority lingers. Like many evangelicals, the most devout Muslims view their faith as the only way to heaven and consider converting others to be a religious duty.

In the West, belief that someone is going to hell has little civic impact, as religious faith tends to be an individual decision. But in the Muslim world, this belief has subjected Christians to a long heritage of second-class citizenship. And the survey reveals that substantial minorities of the most devout want sharia made the law of the land, applied also to non-Muslims.

The modern principle of pluralism holds two ideas in tension: Believers should be free to spread their faith, while minority religions and their beliefs should be respected. As Syria shows, this can be complicated in the Middle East, where the understanding of Islam is a crucial factor for interfaith peace.

One Tunisian Muslim academic, Adnane Mokrani, makes a bold assertion: Islam, when properly understood, is an ally of religious pluralism. Though he concedes this is a minority viewpoint among Muslims, Mokrani, who serves on the Network of Centers for Christian-Muslim Relations advisory board, said that a new generation of theologians are reevaluating the Quran’s understanding of diversity.

The new network, profiled previously this series, doesn’t comment on political events or policies. It recognizes the witness of one’s faith as an essential part of both Christianity and Islam. But it believes that interfaith peace may require setting aside evangelism and da’wa in certain ways and places, though not as an activity of individual believers.

In this case, Mokrani believes the diversity of religions flows intentionally from the divine will, expressing his argument in a recent webinar. He cited this verse from the Quran as evidence: “If Allah had willed, He would have made you one community.” This idea is similar to that of the academic sage in the first article in this series, who lamented the state of conflict and rancor that ensues from religious difference. Yet the passage continues optimistically: Multiple religious communities exist so that they may “compete with one another in doing good.”

Classical Muslim theology, however, divides the world into the “House of Islam” and the “House of War,” as multiple verses in the Quran encourage Muslims to fight unbelievers. Historically, the House of War was the realm of opposing empires, with the Christian Byzantines the most stubborn in resistance.

This theology recognized that Jews and Christians in conquered lands now resided within the House of Islam. The Quran refers to Jews and Christians, along with Muslims, as “People of the Book,” in recognition of a shared scriptural heritage, Mokrani said. Classical Muslim scholars rejected much of the Bible’s content as distorted. Yet the Quran honors its conception of the Torah, given to Moses, and the Gospel, given to Jesus, as “containing guidance and light”—the same terms it uses of itself.

On the ground, this meant that Muslims would not forcibly convert Jews and Christians. Instead, the two religious groups could continue practicing their faiths in exchange for payment of a tax called jizya. Through this, these communities received status as dhimmis, safe from war and given freedom of worship—though not to evangelize. Treatment varied over time, but their second-class status reinforced the Islamic sense of religious superiority.

The historical development of Muslim society led to a gap between the original conciliatory vision of Muhammad and the later, more rigid attitude of scholars, maintains Mokrani, who is also professor of Islamic studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. Faced with a growing empire and Christian opposition in war and faith, Muslim scholars’ commentaries on the Quran polemically defined Islam as a religious community distinct from Jews and Christians rather than in continuity with them.

Their interpretive tool was the location of Muhammad’s prophecies.

In Mecca, the prophet preached on monotheism and morality, focusing on the Final Judgment. He spoke positively about Jews and Christians, calling his polytheistic tribesmen to repentance. Eventually, though, Muhammad fled north to nearby Medina, where the people accepted him as a political leader focused on governing. And here, his rupture with the Jews and armed skirmishes with Christians on the outskirts of the Byzantine Empire forced later scholars to interpret the differences between Mecca and Medina revelations.

From there, the principle of abrogation emerged, evident from passages eventually forbidding alcohol and shifting the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. Since the Quran stated that Allah could “replace a verse with another,” scholars followed the pattern to prioritize latter revelation over earlier passages. And the commentaries they wrote increasingly limited the application of broadly worded verses.

An important example—crucial for religious pluralism—comes from a verse declaring, “Let there be no compulsion in religion.” Omaima Abou-Bakr, a professor at Cairo University in Egypt, examined centuries of commentaries for her chapter in Freedom of Expression in Islam: Challenging Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws. One early commentator qualified the plain meaning of “no compulsion” by linking it to another verse establishing the jizya tax. Later, another cited verses demonstrating the necessity of combat and related a traditional saying of Muhammad that praised the idea of captives of war entering paradise in chains—that is, accepting Islam after their military defeat.

Other early commentators linked instead to verses emphasizing, “Whoever wills let them believe [or] disbelieve.” But Abou-Bakr wrote that hundreds of years passed before another major commentary in the 19th century connected the “no compulsion” passage to tolerant verses about non-Muslims. By then, the world had changed, as European colonialism entered the House of Islam and shattered its civilizational sense of superiority. Muslims were now on the defensive, having to address accusations that their religion spread by the sword.

Mokrani highlighted other examples of tolerant verses. Not only does the Quran commend its conception of the Torah and the Gospel, but it also calls Jews and Christians to follow their own Scripture. If they do, Allah declared they will have “no fear” on the Day of Judgment, “nor will they grieve.”

“The only conversion required is to God,” Mokrani said.

This passage about the People of the Book also stresses the importance of the Quran to Jewish and Christian communities. But it comes, Mokrani emphasized, from the later Medina period of Muhammad’s ministry. So does the verse about the divine will for pluralism—that Allah could have formed “one community” if he had wanted to.

Mokrani’s argument that these passages are not abrogated runs into potential difficulty, however, considering what many scholars believe to be one of the final verses revealed in the Quran: “Certainly, Allah’s only Way [translated literally as “religion”] is Islam,” while a later verse in the passage says those who follow other ways “will be among the losers.” Still, rejection of this religion is met only with the promise of hellfire, and Muhammad is told “your duty is only to deliver the message.”

But Mokrani said the Quran’s emphasis on religious communities, not religions, yields a significant clue in how to understand what the “Islam” of this passage actually stands for.

The idea begins in recognizing that Arabic contains no system of uppercase and lowercase letters. Muslims have traditionally stated that the Quran can truly be understood only in its original language, compared to Christians who have eagerly translated the Bible. To that end, Muslims usually craft titles like The Meaning of the Glorious Quran, or something similar, when publishing translations of their holy text.

All translators must make choices. Mokrani highlighted the verse in which Jesus’ disciples confess their belief in Allah: “Bear witness that we have submitted.” This is the rendering at quran.com, and all quotations in this article are drawn from the popular internet site. In other translations, however, the disciples “testify that we are Muslims.”

To Christians, this is clearly an anachronism. Islam did not exist at the time of Jesus. Yet many Muslims maintain that Allah’s religion—as the verse above states—was always Islam. The Arabic word islam means “submission,” and this is what Allah requires. In the majority Muslim view, Jews were required to submit to the Torah and Christians to the Gospel, but now all people must submit to the Quran.

In English, “Islam” is capitalized as the name of a religion. This is a legitimate translation, as the Arabic islam is preceded by the definite article. But Mokrani said that the Quran never refers to Judaism, Christianity, or other faiths as religions; it therefore does not follow that “Islam” is a religion either. Instead, Allah addresses religious communities—Jews, Christians, and the people of Muhammad, muslimuun in Arabic, meaning “those who submit.” According to Mokrani’s exegesis, any within these communities who submit to Allah through their respective scriptures will be saved.

Does this pluralism only include the People of the Book? Not necessarily, he maintained. Another verse includes other regional religious communities present at the time of Muhammad’s preaching, and even polytheists, saying that “Allah will judge between them all on Judgment Day.” In this verse, Mokrani points out, salvation is promised to none, but neither is the possibility denied.

Scholars consider this chapter of the Quran as partially from Mecca, partially from Medina. A later verse puts polytheists clearly in hell. Muslims generally follow the principle of abrogation, and jihadists in Syria not only expand the meaning of polytheism but also apply it violently.

But why, Mokrani asks, should Muslims prioritize the later particular verses of the Quran over the earlier universal verses? In his chapter of The Study Qurʾan, Walid Saleh wrote that much of what Muslims believe is more from the commentaries on the text and less from the text itself.

Sources referred to in this article are interpreting their faith in an era of widely esteemed religious diversity. Mokrani and Abou-Bakr admit theirs is a minority viewpoint—though their human task is the same as that of the commentators from an era of Muslim conquest.

“But now there are many voices,” Mokrani said, “taking the same direction of pluralism.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Church Life

Singing Hymns to Warn the Bears

Anna Broadway in Anchorage

On the outskirts of Anchorage, a Southern Baptist retired science education professor captures creation on her cameras.

Donna Gail Shaw uses a tree ladder to swap out memory cards from one of her trail cameras on the outskirts of Anchorage.

Photography by Anna Broadway

Donna Gail Shaw is up a tree, her holstered .44 revolver sometimes grazing the bark as she adjusts a game camera and describes the time she almost got between a bear and its cub.

“It was the biggest brown bear I’d ever seen in my life. And she kept coming toward me. And I thought, ‘This is not good,’ because I’m yelling and talking to her and she’s … coming toward me. She keeps looking this way. And I look that way too, and then I look at her and I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’”

For the better part of ten years, Shaw, a retired science-education professor, has made weekly hikes near her home to check each of the game cameras she maintains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. During summer, they number half a dozen or more.

As the lifelong Southern Baptist tells it, the hikes to and from her trail cameras—and the footage of wildlife she retrieves from the memory cards, then shares online with a growing audience—all sprang from simple curiosity. One day, on a hike, she met a man who maintained some game cameras that caught interesting footage of animals. When she got tired of pestering him to share his latest videos, she set up her own.

Several years later, Shaw’s work has acquired a following that’s gained increasing media coverage. But though some of the articles note her habit of singing hymns as a way to alert bears to her presence, the pieces are mostly framed as nature stories. They don’t consider the spiritual implications—how Shaw’s work obeys Jesus’ call to consider creation or how it might entail a practice akin to prayer.

Each game camera is slightly larger than a standard copy of the Book of Common Prayer—or a Lunchables snack kit. Depending on the location, Shaw might use moss or other greenery to camouflage them—more to hide the equipment from people than to hide it from animals.

Due to an unusually dry winter, we contended with few mosquitos the day Shaw took me out. Much of her route goes over winter mushing trails for dog-sled teams—trails which become a swamp of boot-sucking mud in summer.

Photography by Anna Broadway

Donna Gail Shaw hikes toward the Chugach Mountain Range near marshy ground that becomes dog mushing trails in winter.

This year, the swamp trail still had good visibility in early May, when Shaw set out to install more of her seasonal cameras. (She keeps only two, dubbed her “bunny cams,” up year-round. The name comes from the snowshoe hares whose pellets alerted her to the location’s filming potential.) Due to a few light snows in April, Shaw delayed our journey until the ground was fully thawed for Alaska’s short summer season. By the time she deemed the area ready to hike, the birch trees had sprouted a fresh coat of green, but little more than dead yellow grasses emerged from the mud, into which we sometimes sank ankle deep.

To check existing cameras and install new ones, Shaw wore a pair of gray Xtratuf shoes, the almost-knee-high boots many Alaskans favor. Later in the summer, Shaw said, the mosquitos get so thick she has to wear a head net. The swamp grasses grow high enough to conceal more wildlife—whether the spruce grouse she had us watch for in some sections or the bears for which she stayed constantly alert.

“Safe, to me, is when I can see around me and I can see in the creek and see if there’s a bear that’s going to kill me,” she explained. This rubric has determined the places where Shaw puts her cameras—particularly those that point at particular trees where bears love to rub.

Photography by Anna Broadway

Shaw points to strands of hair left on a bear rub tree.

When I suggested an opening prayer for our hike and interview, Shaw asked me to cover several specific things she usually asks God for before each of her treks. We should ask for safety, she said, for us and the animals alike. On her own, she also usually prays that if she should fall, God would bring her down gently and she would be able to get up again.

Shaw, 70, suits her prayers to action. In addition to a summertime array of two bear sprays and two air horns, she carries a sleek .44 revolver holstered near her substantial hip pack. She also tells a friend when she goes out, and has her track the journey via Apple’s Find My app.

As Shaw talked, a “girls in science” baseball cap shielded her face from the midafternoon sun. By the summer solstice in June, Anchorage gets almost round-the-clock daylight, but Shaw keeps a pretty consistent schedule and avoids going out too late in the afternoon or too early in the morning. No matter the sun’s position, bear activity near the creek where she trains some cameras becomes increasingly likely around 4 or 5 p.m. During the month of July, Shaw never hikes alone, because too many salmon are in the creek, prompting “high bear activity.” She said, “I’ve just learned from experience that I have too many bear encounters in July.” Bearing out her caution, a 67-year-old woman hiking alone was mauled by a bear earlier this week, in a “heavily wooded” area just a few miles from where Shaw keeps her cameras.

As a child in rural East Texas, Shaw grew up in a family that regularly hunted. But an early misadventure shooting a bird with a BB gun “broke my heart,” she said. “Now I like to hunt the cameras.”

Earlier on, Shaw checked the cameras as often as three times a week. “That slowed down after I had too many bear encounters.” Now she goes closer to once a week, often hiking Sundays after church. Perhaps that has something to do with the hymns. She landed on those after pondering how to make noise on her usually solitary hikes.

Photography by Anna Broadway

Bear skat on the ground near one of Shaw’s trail cameras.

Once she started, she said, “I enjoyed it so much that I would add a new hymn every year.” This year she’s learning “Because He Lives.”

“It was part of my upbringing … and I miss it,” Shaw said of the hymns. “I also like the message God gives me through the hymns, even though I might be singing the same hymns over and over. Maybe he speaks to me differently each time.” When Shaw runs out of verses, she prays out loud, including for some of the people in her hiking groups.

Before visiting the camera sites with her, I had wondered how Shaw’s video practice shapes how she relates with God. But she didn’t explicitly articulate those connections when I asked her about them. Some of the theologians I followed up with after our hike said she doesn’t need to.

“It’s part of our … Western Christianity to have to be able to put explanatory words” to what Shaw’s doing, said Danny Zacharias, an associate dean at Acadia Divinity College and adjunct professor for the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies. The “natural integration of her life,” he observed, “sound[s] a lot like Indigenous ways of being and knowing.”

Randy Woodley, an emeritus professor at Portland Seminary and author of books including Becoming Rooted, agreed. “This is the most natural thing in the world for [Shaw] to be doing,” he said. “She’s … showing us the rivers and the salmon, the grasses and the wind. And this is the domain that we’re supposed to be taking care of.”

“When we say that, as Christians, God loves the world, we’re almost always thinking human beings,” Zacharias said. “Indigenous Christians, when we say, ‘God loves the world,’ we mean God literally loves the leaves and the trees and the weeds and the waters. And when we think of Jesus as being the Savior of the world, we think of that inclusive, all-encompassing way as well.”

Walking with Shaw, I was struck by how much of the earth remains uninhabited—a fact especially brought home by Alaska’s vast stretches of mountains and tundra. Thanks largely to fieldwork for my recent book, I’ve visited 50-some countries. But that focus on mostly urban centers leaves out how much of the earth is mainly traversed by air, sea, and land creatures like those Shaw trains her cameras on.

“The Bible gives us plenty of stories to show us that we not only can encounter God in creation; we encounter God through creation,” Zacharias said. He cited examples like the burning bush (Ex. 3), a rumbling mountain, wind, and “Jesus comparing himself to water.”

According to 1 Kings, attention to God’s work in creation strongly influenced none other than Solomon and his wisdom:

He spoke three thousand proverbs and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He spoke about plant life, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of walls. He also spoke about animals and birds, reptiles and fish. From all nations people came to listen to Solomon’s wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom (4:32–34).

Perhaps the Bible includes Solomon’s proverbs but not his botanical or biological studies because we each need to consider creation anew, to study it for ourselves. “Wisdom, fear, awe, joy—all of these things we need in life—we learn those from creation,” Woodley said. “The wolves don’t kill more than what they need to eat. Bears don’t unless they’re rabid. … I’ve seen hawks in trees with songbirds because they’re not hungry; they’re fine.”

With her trail cameras, Shaw offers a glimpse of animal interactions—from the playfulness of young bears (caught on some of the cards we retrieved that day) to foxes making a meal of moose. “Life’s not all rainbows and butterflies, and nature’s not that, and those are some of the things we can learn,” Woodley said. But if, like Solomon, we would do better to emulate Shaw’s attention than to just watch her videos, Woodley and Zacharias offered some other ideas.

During his master’s program, Woodley said he used to walk around a cemetery near Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to “see nature, smell the leaves after rain. … If you don’t have a yard to do that in, drive ten miles,” he said. “There’s a lot going on.” Zacharias suggested both “intellectual research” like learning where your water and food come from and choices about your living space. “Even in really urban spaces, we can intentionally be growers,” he said. “It’s good to have greenery around you, something that you need to have responsibility for and that you receive something back from.”

In these weeks after my hike with Shaw, I’ve been struck by how often my view of God’s character hinges on his recent responses (or perceived lack thereof) to my prayers or the human affairs that worry me. I’ve wondered: Is my pessimism because I don’t spend enough time in those woods? Is it because I don’t sufficiently study all the ways God continues to faithfully sustain the lives of billions of creatures he knows so well that he notes even each bird that dies?

Photography by Anna Broadway

A pair of bald eagles circles the skies above east Anchorage, near the route Shaw hikes to check her trail cameras.

Mortality came up frequently in my time with Shaw—whether the ever-present risk of a fatal bear encounter or the evidence of various tree and animal deaths. But even as Shaw faces some increased limits as she ages, she said the hikes continue to energize her. Recently, she’d been cleaning out a duplex she has decided to sell—a task that left her weary. “But when I finish there, I put on my hiking clothes and I come out here, and the exhaustion goes away,” she said.

Perhaps that rejuvenation owes itself to what one of the hymns she referenced that day describes.

And he walks with me,
And he talks with me,
And he tells me I am his own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there
None other has ever known.

Anna Broadway is the author of Solo Planet: How Singles Help the Church Recover Our Calling and Sexless in the City: A Memoir of Reluctant Chastity.

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Inkwell

Elizabeth Bruenig’s Advice for Young Christian Writers

Interview by Christopher Kuo

A chat with a Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist.

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

This piece was adapted from a newsletter series for Inkwell and written by former CT NextGen fellow Chris Kuo. Subscribe to the Inkwell Substack here.

Storytelling calls to me because I love the craft of writing and revising, the deliberate, recursive process of tinkering with words, sentences, and story structure. But I also love telling stories because of their ability to transform us—the best ones re-enchant what has grown familiar and introduce us to new, surprising ways of inhabiting the world, altering our thoughts and forming our loves.

Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic, has mastered this type of storytelling. I’ve admired Bruenig’s work for a while now, ever since I heard her speak at an event during college. Over the years, I’ve grown to recognize her distinctive style, the way her opinion pieces blend on-the-ground reporting, rich sensory detail, and reflections on weighty political or philosophical topics.

By many measures, Bruenig has reached the pinnacle of American journalism. She is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and has worked in several of the most prestigious newsrooms.

In a phone call with Inkwell, Bruenig reflected on how her faith influences her work, offered candid observations about newsroom culture, and gave some advice to young journalists. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In your day-to-day work, do you consider yourself a Christian journalist? How do those identities intersect?

I consider myself a Christian and a journalist. The Christian prefix fits over everything I do. I’m a Christian mom, I’m a Christian wife and I’m a Christian journalist, a Christian writer. There’s a really long history of Christian writers. Starting in the early church, Augustine was a Christian writer, so I don’t think it’s hard at all to fit those identities together. The way it affects my work is in my choice of coverage, in my approach to interacting with people, and in my areas of interest. The death penalty is the most obvious because it’s a life issue. And that’s very important to me.

Some Christians who might consider journalism can be intimidated by the atmosphere they might perceive as hostile to faith in some of these elite newsrooms. Have you felt that way?

There are a lot of talented Christian journalists laboring away without making a big deal about it, which is something I didn’t recognize at first as a Christian myself who makes a big deal out of it, which is maybe not what I should be doing. But there are lots of people who are practicing their faith and doing their journalism work in these big institutions day in and day out.

But I don’t think people are mistaken when they detect a certain liberal bent in a lot of mainstream journalism, and I don’t think that’s necessarily the result of any wrongdoing. It’s just when you have people who have those politics, it affects their worldviews and their coverage. It happens to everyone.

There is some hostility. People obviously have a problem with some of the politics that seem to result from the Christian faith at times. There are people at work who won’t even speak to me, which is fine. I understand these are serious issues, and people have all kinds of different views on them that are very personal and closely held. I don’t want to force myself on anyone who doesn’t want to be my friend.

But I think the important thing is if you can go to work every day and do something that glorifies God, in some small way, even if it’s just having an interaction with a source where you’re empathetic and kind, or putting some stuff down on paper that really thinks through Christian virtues and Christian ideas like mercy and forgiveness. I think that’s all you really need.

My family is my rock, and the people who know me and are in my real daily life like me. So I can get by without being widely acclaimed or thought of as a cool journalist on the scene.

What is your relationship like with your editors?

I’ve always had a lot of editorial freedom, which is a gift and something that I appreciate quite a lot. I think generally the editors I’ve worked with have been fairly open-minded, and the country is 62 percent Christian, so there is a big audience out there for people who want to think through topics related to Christianity.

Do you ever think about an alternate career path?

I do think about going back and getting my PhD and finishing it, maybe once my kids are grown. They’re six and nine. I think if I go back and get my degree, it won’t be to have a career in academia. That was my dream for a long time. But you just have to listen to where life is leading you.

Is it important that there are journalists who are Christian in newsrooms like The New York Times or The Atlantic?

I do think it matters. In part, from a standpoint of a magazine trying to reach audiences, there are lots of people in the United States who take the principles of Christianity really seriously. And for people who don’t, Christianity still impacts their daily lives because Christian politics is a real active thing in the United States, as you pointed out.

Not every Christian journalist has to write about Christianity; that’s a weird quirk of my writing. But those ideas and those sensibilities matter. It helps that the journalist can understand where Christians and politics are coming from, and to distinguish the good from the bad in what they’re doing.

What advice would you give to young Christian journalists and writers?

I think the best way to develop your craft of writing is by reading. Every year, somebody puts out the 100 best American essays of the year, and I always buy them and read them because that’s how you learn: by seeing people demonstrate the craft. If you’re trying to do magazine journalism, read a lot of magazine journalism. If you’re trying to do straight news reporting, read a lot of straight news reporting.

Build relationships. Relationships are really key in this industry and probably every industry. If you’re concerned about newsrooms having certain antagonisms, I would just suggest building a lot of close relationships in your real daily life. Consider your profession as a public-facing thing that you do that’s important and meaningful, and it gives you an opportunity to worship God, but it can’t be your whole life.

You don’t go into your career and make it your whole life. I have relationships with lots of people in real life who don’t even know I’m a writer. It’s just not relevant to our conversations. My friends don’t read my writing. It’s just a separate part of my life. And that helps me stay a little sane. At the end of the day, you close your computer, and you have a household of people who love you, and that’s what really matters.

Check out more of Elizabeth’s work:

The Man I Saw Them Kill at The New York Times
Inside America’s Death Chambers at The Atlantic
I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait at The New York Times

Behind the scenes with Bruenig

In her words, Bruenig’s foray into journalism happened largely by accident.

After graduating from Brandeis University in 2013 and earning an MPhil in Christian theology from Cambridge University, Bruenig began a doctoral program at Brown University in religion and philosophy, with the plan of becoming a Christian academic.

Around the same time, her husband Matt landed a job in DC. Tired of maintaining a long-distance relationship, Bruenig dropped out of her program and moved to be with her husband. To earn some income, she started writing for the magazine The New Republic, a move that quickly launched her career as a journalist.

In the decade since, Bruenig has established herself as a voice of moral clarity on a wide-ranging set of topics, from abortion and the death penalty to sexual abuse in the Catholic church and the politics of Bernie Sanders. Informed by her Catholicism and her political convictions—she is both pro-life and proudly socialist—her most distinctive work probes the many facets of human nature, wrestling with concepts of guilt and mercy, judgment and justice.

In the piece that made her a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing in 2019, she describes the ostracization of a teen sexual assault victim in Bruenig’s hometown in Texas. Over the course of 10,000 words, Bruenig grapples with what justice means for someone who has been lied to, mistreated, and discredited.

The art of storytelling, she concludes, can be an act of justice—an attempt, however halting, at seeking the truth and righting old wrongs: “This is my imperfect offering toward that end: a record of what happened, and the willingness to have been troubled by it all these years. It still troubles me now—it will always be unresolved—and I hope that it troubles you, because the moral conscience at ease accomplishes nothing.”

That sentiment is what animates Bruenig’s reporting: the wielding of words, details, and images to trouble her reader’s conscience, and her own, to shake us out of our ease and stir us to action.

Chris Kuo is a writer and reporter with bylines in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Fare Forward, and Christianity Today.

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Inkwell

The End of Personal Aesthetics

Sarah Finley Purdy

Fashion and clothes were my identity. Then Christ’s robe unraveled me.

"El Jaleo" (1882) by John Singer Sargent

August in Manhattan is brutal, I think most would agree—it’s humid in a particular way that I’ve yet to experience elsewhere. The concrete bakes on all sides, turning the sidewalks into a large, hazy mirage. The city clings to exposed skin, and the long subway-platform wait times bring the dread of clean work clothes being sweated through. No matter how breezily or practically I dressed for the weather when I lived there, summer wrapped itself around me, its oppressive presence a constant companion on my daily commute.

The experience of New York City is intermingled in my mind with the weather that each season brings and the clothing it necessitates. Despite the difficult reality of having lived year after year in the most populated city in the United States—scraping by with a full-time job and multiple adult roommates—the thought of summer in New York still brings a joyful tinge to my heart; it rests in my mind as an open door, a new chapter.

In August of 2013, I moved from a small town in rural Ohio into the bustling uptown of Manhattan. I was 24 years old, and this was my first time living outside of my parents’ home. I had moved to the city to pursue a master’s degree in fashion and textile history with a focus in museum practice from a leading fashion school. This step felt validating on a professional level, but I also believed God had put me in the right place.

As one would imagine, New York was an eye-opening place for someone like me. I had been raised in the Midwest my entire life, cultivating a love for the fine arts and the experience of museums—but never venturing too far from my backyard. As I woke up in Manhattan, I found I had the center of arts and culture at my fingertips; famous artists and designers could realistically be sharing my sidewalk space. The visual stimuli alone were enough to excite and then exhaust me day in and day out.

I quickly declared my love for New York in my heart, vowing I would live there permanently after I was finished with school. My feelings were much like those of Joan Didion at the beginning of her essay “Goodbye to All That”:

I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves on the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay a finger upon the moment it ended. … I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any colloquial way, I mean that I was in love with the city, the way you love the first person who ever touches you and you never love anyone quite that way again.

In graduate school, I marveled at the writings of fashion and art scholars like Caroline Evans and Anne Hollander. They saw the worth of studying fashion in the same way that art has been studied for centuries, and each had a shrewd eye to the current cultural norms surrounding humanity’s deep inclination to get dressed.

My eye took in the sartorial markers all around me and I began to experiment at a fast pace with my personal style. Prior to my move to New York, I had been cultivating a love of clothing and self-presentation. Some of my earliest childhood memories revolve around playing dress-up—as a ballerina, a waitress, a swimming athlete, or a performer. All of these roles required specific outfits, and I found clothing to be a way to express my different interests and to build upon my own personality.

Clothing became an outlet to self-expression and identity, an outlet I carried with me through adolescence and into adulthood. But in New York, these youthful ambitions took on a more serious and encompassing role; clothing now communicated to my friends and peers my self-perceived importance.

Childhood traumas had left me struggling in adulthood to feel like I was enough—within my family structure, my friendships with other women, and in tumultuous romantic relationships with men. My shyness at times was overpowering, especially in group settings. It seemed there was always someone funnier or more interesting or more educated, and those whose attention I desired seemed to gravitate toward these people instead of toward me.

Both consciously and subconsciously, the way I dressed helped me fit into situations I found uncomfortable. Fashion made me interesting and desirable. It started conversations between strangers, elicited compliments and niceties. It signaled aspects of my personality or knowledge and projected a false sense of confidence that carried me through exhibition openings and job interviews.

My anxiety and self-hatred were perfectly masked behind things like a vintage Givenchy dress bought at the Manhattan Vintage Show the second year I lived in the city. Navy blue with white stripes, the dress was 1960s Audrey Hepburn–era Givenchy (the actress and the designer had a glamorous and legendary working relationship for several decades). I thought the dress was perfect; it signaled that I was aware of culture, modernism, and design history.

But the fact is, I had used some of my loan money from school to pay for it. Using clothing to express status brought with it the cyclical desire for newness, consumption, and simply keeping up. The thing that I had idolized and followed to this new city was ultimately the thing that would buckle and crumble under my insecurities.

I saw my struggles reflected back to me through the eyes of literature. The character of Pauline in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye pursues clothing and beauty as a way to be accepted by other women—to disastrous effect on her marriage and family. “Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity and ended in disillusion.”

All along, I neglected to consider the threads wrapped around me in light of the faith I claimed to hold deeply in my heart. Christ was Lord of all, I had always been taught, but when it came to how I identified, he played a miniscule role. The longer I lived in New York pursuing a career after graduate school, the more dysfunctional my social anxiety became and the more quickly I slipped into sadness or anger.

At the time, I was attending a Bible-teaching church in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. I had visited within the first few weeks of living in the city, and when I met a mutual friend of a companion back in Ohio, I felt confident it was the place I was supposed to worship.

Attending this church was my first time choosing a church outside of my family structure, and it was here that the Lord graciously began working in me to free me from legalistic ideas and extrabiblical strictures. It was here that the idea of Christ began to give me a heavy feeling in my chest and brought tears to my eyes. Jesus was so much bigger and more complex than I had ever realized.

When I finally looked to Scripture, I saw that the human experience of clothing when expressed by Jesus—or even individuals such as the Old Testament priests—stood in stark contrast to the way I experienced clothing and identity. For example, in John 19 it reads:

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says, “They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” (vv. 23–24)

During this period in history, clothing was an expensive necessity, and the average person did not own more than one or two garments for daily use. It’s no wonder Christ’s clothing was something the soldiers saw fit to divide amongst themselves, just as one would divvy up money or other valuables.

Jesus’ seamless robe has been regarded by the historic church as a symbol of his purity and perfect covering. Sometimes the tunic is equated with the priestly undergarments found in the Torah, connecting Christ to the practice of intercession for sins.

A robe constructed without seams means the entire garment was woven in one piece, an extremely challenging and impressive feat for the production methods of the time. It’s speculated by historians that to make such a garment would require an incredibly skilled craftsperson capable of weaving in the round on a warp-weighted loom. Even by current weaving standards, this is a difficult and uncommon task. During Jesus’ time, a garment such as this would have been priceless. Christ’s tunic was the perfect covering, seeming to almost defy human creative ability.

Soon after this passage in John, Christ dies and makes a way of salvation possible for all people; I knew this story intimately. But it struck me anew that Christ, stripped of his own perfect garment, completely covers us—he himself is the seamless robe that gives us lasting identity. We could not make such a garment ourselves.

I came to find out that Christ does not merely hide one’s self-hatred but abolishes it—not to give us the air of intelligence or knowledge but to provide earth-shaking wisdom. His love is not fleeting, passing over that which is more interesting in one person for another. His love is all-encompassing and focused completely on each of those who have given their lives to him.

He is capable of loving in a way that transcends human ability but fulfills our deepest desires. And those in Christ are able to feel fully covered in its glorious manifestation. With our spirits clothed in this righteousness, our outward presentation no longer holds the kind of weight or destruction of self that it previously did. We are free to present and use clothing to build up and honor Christ’s newness in us, not be torn down in ourselves and our identities.

What was murky started to become clear: There were multifaceted implications of clothing in my day-to-day life, both in the way God had designed them to function and the way in which I, in my humanity, had warped that design.

Scripture is explicitly clear that craftsmanship and beauty matter to God, but not merely superficially. Beauty comes from and is offered for the one from which all beauty flows. When I warped things like clothing or fashion to function solely to glorify self instead of God, it became a means of destruction instead of real creation.

In the same way that Didion chronicles leaving New York upon her marriage to author John Dunne at the end of “Goodbye to All That,” I also eventually left New York to live in Philadelphia after getting married in 2018. Sometimes it’s best to let your first love fade into the hazy August mirage.

Like Didion, I hold fond, almost mythic memories of my time in the city. But “at some time the golden rhythm was broken” and it was time to step into something new and lasting. In many ways, years later, I am still leaving New York in my mind, still unpacking my worldviews from that time and holding them up against the clear light of the Word. But that is the way Christ works; he is gentle and kind in freeing us from ourselves.

My loves continue to grow, reoriented and made new. I still enjoy fashion deeply, but its practical role has changed. To know that I am cared for beyond all measure as I am, clothed in Christ’s perfect garment, has freed me to enjoy beauty and abundance in my true identity.

This essay was originally published in Ekstasis magazine.

Sarah Finley Purdy is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology and has worked for the Calvin Klein archives and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is now a grant writer for the Kent State University Museum, raising funds for their world-class fashion collection, while living with her husband and daughter in Cleveland.

- More from Sarah Finley Purdy

Church Life

Loving Muslim Neighbors Without Watering Down Your Faith

Jayson Casper

The Egyptian head of a network of interfaith centers relates how early Arab Christians taught him to engage Islam.

A cross representing Christianity and a crescent representing Islam painted on the palm of a demonstrator during a rally in support of national unity in Egypt.

MOHAMMED HOSSAM / Contributor / Getty

This is part two of a three-part series about a network of interfaith centers in the Muslim world. Click here to read part one.

When Wageeh Mikhail was a boy, a Muslim mob attacked his Presbyterian church and killed his Sunday school teacher in the Upper Egyptian city of Minya. Though he remembers little about the event itself, he recalls praying for the assailants. And he still feels emotional remembering how he honored the childhood lessons that told him to love his enemies.

It was not the last time he had to.

Three decades later, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Islamist supporters of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi alleged that Christians had collaborated against him and used that pretext to set dozens of churches on fire. In some locations, Muslims defended the local houses of worship.

Among these was Mikhail’s childhood church. The subsequent Sunday, grieving members worshiped in the burned-out pews—this was the extent of their protest. And across the country, Christians refused to escalate the conflict.

Though Mikhail was living in Cairo at the time, he mourned from afar and again remembered his Sunday school lessons. Today, Mikhail is the director of the Network of Centers for Christian-Muslim Relations (NCCMR) and has a clear message: Muslims are not the enemies of Christians.

“Islam has been a practical and theological challenge to the Christian faith,” he said. “But we must work together.”

CT previously introduced Ramon Llull, a 13th-century Franciscan hermit from the re-Christianized island of Majorca in modern-day Spain, who advocated winsome relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews. During the Crusades, he penned a novel in which a representative sage from each religion argued persuasively about his faith, without rancor, and the three remained friends.

NCCMR is similarly countercultural today but in a different direction. In a world in which interfaith dialogue can seek a relativistic commonality among the monotheistic religions, NCCMR’s partners, representing 18 centers in 13 countries with five additional applicants, recognize the call to conversion as an essential part of each religion. At formal events, the members agree to forgo Christian evangelism and comparable Muslim da’wa. Yet as individuals they are free to witness. Mikhail emphasized that all participants believe in freedom of religion—and its propagation.

“Christians have to evangelize,” he said. “The one who said ‘Do not kill’ also said ‘Go and make disciples.’”

NCCMR has faced sensitive issues beyond evangelism. During last year’s inaugural meeting, several attendees voiced concerns over rumors of an international conspiracy to merge Islam and Christianity into one religion. Mikhail assured them the network’s mutual commitment was to honor each faith as an exclusive religion with claims to divine truth.

Keeping in spirit with Llull’s characters, members agreed to avoid arguments and direct challenges over their respective religion’s superiority. Yet the network also made clear that NCCMR is not for religious leaders who assert that all paths will lead to God.

Mikhail appreciates Llull. But his vision for dialogue comes from his ancestors. In the early 1990s, he studied at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo (ETSC). Though many of his professors were Egyptian, they used textbooks largely imported from the US. From this he assumed that all good theology came from the West.

An American reoriented his theological geography. In Mikhail’s third year at ETSC, Mark Swanson, now professor of Christian-Muslim studies and interfaith relations at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, offered a course on Arab Christian heritage. Mikhail’s perspective radically changed.

In time, he discovered the “beautiful” 9th-century conversation between an Abbasid caliph and a Melkite bishop. He admired the “deep and difficult” defense of the Trinity by a 10th-century Jacobite theologian from modern-day Iraq. And he noted the apologetic works of a 13th-century Coptic bishop in Egypt, which contributed to the local revival of the Orthodox church.

Arab Christians have lived under Muslim rule for the last 1,400 years, but the realities of their situation have varied widely. Periods of harsh persecution bracket periods of cooperation, beginning with the Islamic conquests and the imposition of second-class dhimmi status on those named “People of the Book” by the Quran, namely Christians and Jews.

Mikhail, however, highlights how Muslims and Christians built the Abbasid civilization together. Hunayn ibn Ishaq, a Christian from the Church of the East in modern-day Iraq, was the chief translator associated with Beit al-Hikmah (the House of Wisdom), rendering Greek philosophy into Arabic. For 300 years, Mikhail points out, the Assyrian Christian Bukhtishu family served as the doctors of the caliphs and founded the leading medical school in Persia.

Unfortunately, Muslim treatment of Christians often depended on the whim of the leader, Mikhail said. Within a generation, the Abbasid-era golden age gave way to the destruction of churches and imposition of a special dress code for Christians and Jews.

Historian Philip Jenkins has highlighted how times of Christian persecution often correlated with outside pressure on the Islamic empires. Yet these were not always characterized by a sectarian lens, Mikhail noted. Arabic literature at the time of the European Crusades labeled them as the “Wars of the Franks,” emphasizing the political dimension over the religious.

On the shelf in Mikhail’s office sit 36 well-worn, pastel-colored volumes from a 40-plus series of early Arabic manuscripts of Christian-Muslim encounter. As opposed to the Latin dialogue of 12th-century Peter Abelard’s Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian, or even Llull’s winsome yet foreign-crafted debates, this Lebanon-published collection chronicles how local Arab believers dealt with the ascendant Islamic faith.

These manuscripts include the ancient treatises Mikhail celebrated above, but most are not available in English. He hopes the NCCMR can secure funding to translate them one day. The respectful approach of historic Arab Christianity can serve not only as a retort to polemic tendencies in the West, he said, but also as a reminder to global Muslims that the church of Jesus was first—and remains—an Eastern faith.

The network has launched a one-year diploma program in Muslim-Christian relations, which it aims to build into a master’s program. Other projects in development include a dictionary of Muslim-Christian relations and a yearly rotating symposium. NCCMR’s recent webinar featured an Islamic defense of religious liberty, which CT will report on in the next piece in this series. Christians need to learn Islam from Muslims, Mikhail said, as Muslims need to learn Christianity from Christians. This can happen only in dialogue.

“Bitterness must not shape our future,” Mikhail said, “only hope and love.”

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Kenyan President to Build Multimillion-Dollar Church on Official Residence Grounds

Moses Wasamu

Christian leaders disagree about Ruto’s plan to build an 8,000-seat church on government property.

The State House in Nairobi, Kenya.

LUIS TATO / Contributor / Getty / Edits by CT

A dilapidated tin-walled mabati chapel on the grounds of State House—the presidential residence in Nairobi, Kenya—has become the center of drama between President William Ruto and his critics. The presence of the small temporary chapel had never been controversial.

This month, though, Ruto is defending a plan to pull down the old structure and replace it with an 8,000-seat church, according to media reports. R uto quoted Haggai 1:4 to guests at State House on July 7: “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” Ruto promised to build a permanent chapel at State House during his 2022 presidential race.

Some Kenyans have reacted angrily to the building’s proposed 1.2 billion shilling ($9 million USD) price tag. Critics say Ruto should not prioritize building an expensive church while the country suffers from the high cost of living and a struggling public health sector. They blame some of these problems on taxes imposed by Ruto’s government.

Social media commenter Dannish Odongo said, “I’m a Christian but that’s wrong. The state and the church should be separated. Think about when a person who’s not a Christian will be in power. Would you be okay if a Hindu uses state resources to build a temple? Or a traditional believer uses state resources to build their altar?”

Ruto said he is using his own funds, not public funds, to build the church. Some Kenyans doubt the president’s claim. According to the Salaries and Remuneration Commission, the president earns 17.32 million Kenyan shillings ($133,500 USD) in a year. Building the church himself would cost Ruto the equivalent of his salary for 69 years.

Ruto has been cagey about his wealth. But in 2021, he told media he makes 1.5 million shillings ($11,500 USD) daily from his poultry farm, denying accusations of amassing his wealth from corrupt deals.

Fred Matiang’i, former cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Interior, told a parliamentary committee that Ruto owns “18,500 acres of real estate property, two high-end hotels, five helicopters,” and a poultry farm. Media reports also said he owns 400,000 shares of telecom giant Safaricom and a further 8,000 shares of Kenya Airways.

This March, former deputy president Rigathi Gachagua—impeached last year after falling out with Ruto—claimed Ruto had amassed a wealth of 3 to 4 trillion shillings (about $23 to $30 billion USD) since assuming office in 2022. Gachagua did not provide any evidence to support his allegation.

Brian Okoko Njeka, a lawyer and a Christian, said the project “reeks of corruption—a president boasting to build a church of such magnitude with his personal money is a direct insult on the face of poor Kenyans. It is immoral and a mockery to the seat of the presidency.”

Okoko said he sees the president’s decision to build the church as a political move and an opportunity to entice Christians into supporting his political agenda.

But Idris Duba, a worship pastor with the Kenya Assemblies of God in Nairobi, told CT, “For proper context, there was an existing church. He is building a better one. I have no problem with him doing that, because it was already there … and it is not that the money he is using is from the public, because according to what he says, he is using his resources.”

Presidential adviser David Ndii said the church will serve more than 1,000 staff members who live and work in the State House compound, along with their families. The State House has not yet revealed who will run the church or how its services will be conducted.

According to the 2019 Kenya National Bureau of Statistics report, 88 percent of Nairobi’s population of over 4 million identify themselves as Christians. One of the largest church buildings in Nairobi is the Winners Chapel , with a seating capacity of 12,000.

Other African leaders have built expensive churches in their countries, but not at their official residences. Mobutu Sese Seko—who ruled Democratic Republic of the Congo beginning in 1965—built a chapel in 1978 “made of marble, decorated with gold objects and other precious metals.” Rebels destroyed the structure when they deposed Mobutu in 1997.

Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana’s president from January 2017 to January 2025, began to build a cathedral that drew sharp criticism from citizens about its financing and prioritization over other national needs. The expected cost of $100 million quadrupled due to inflation, though the cathedral remains unfinished.

President Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, in power since 1979, reportedly built a church with 1,000 seats in Mongomo, his hometown. Critics said he fixated on building a place of worship at the expense of “building schools, hospitals and housing.”

In Kenya, Anglican archbishop Jackson Ole Sapit quickly questioned the construction of the church in State House grounds, saying it violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

Article 8 of Kenya’s Constitution defines Kenya as a secular state with no official religion. A lawyer petitioned the High Court in Nairobi to stop the construction, arguing the president’s action endorses Christianity as a superior or state religion, contrary to what the constitution envisaged. He also argued such a project requires Parliament’s approval.

The High Court sitting in Nairobi has given the attorney general seven days to respond to the petition on Ruto’s behalf.

- More from Moses Wasamu

Church Life

How a 13th-Century Spaniard Modeled Interfaith Friendship

Jayson Casper

The Franciscan hermit’s lessons live anew in a network for Muslim-Christian dialogue.

Ramon Llull

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

Sitting with a student distraught by religious war, a God-fearing academic lamented the chaos in Syria, the destruction of Iraq, and the existential tensions seemingly ever-present in the Holy Land.

“What a great fortune it would be if … every man on earth could be under one religion,” he said. “[Then] there would be no more rancor or ill will among men, who hate each other because of the contrariness of beliefs.”

The academic’s answer, unfortunately, underestimates the human capacity for conflict. Beyond the bloody geopolitics, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism have split into sects and factions, to the point of killing fellow believers who share the same text yet hold different beliefs.

But for some, the “rancor and ill will” have prompted a corrective impulse to unite the faiths through interfaith dialogue. And the impulse is not new. The God-fearing academic? He’s a character from a book written in the 13th century by Ramon Llull, a Franciscan hermit and early proponent of an initiative still controversial among many believers today. Countercultural even then, The Book of the Gentile and the Three Wise Men addressed a world severely lacking in peaceful religious pluralism.

When Llull published his book in the 1270s, Crusaders were strengthening castles in Syria. The Mongol horde had sacked Muslim Baghdad—but then suffered defeat in Palestine, in the fields of Galilee. Llull wrote from what is now Spain, during the Reconquista, a military campaign to restore the Iberian Peninsula to Christendom. The Muslim realm, which they named Al-Andalus and became known as Andalucia, had been comparatively tolerant of Christians and Jews.

Llull lived on the island of Majorca, where his father settled after James I of Aragon declared victory in 1229. In the decades that followed, Christian kings in the liberated lands increased restrictions on non-Christian monotheists resident since the 8th century Islamic conquest. Some they forcibly converted, and within a few centuries, they expelled nearly all Muslims and Jews.

Llull, writing in Latin, Arabic, and his native Catalan, advocated for converting the non-Christians by rational argument, not the sword. While he did defend the Christian conquest of Muslim lands, he also founded missionary schools and traveled to North Africa, where he disputed with Islamic scholars.

Few of his contemporaries attempted the same. In fact, the literature concerning religion in the Middle Ages—across faiths—reflects a martial spirit that concludes with the authors’ faith triumphing decisively.

In the 12th century, for instance, Petrus Alfonsi published Dialogues Against the Jews, in which his imagined conversation partner converts to Christianity. Reversing the victor, Judah Halevi wrote The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith, in which a regional king embraces Judaism after hearing the cases of Islam and Christianity. A century later, Salih ibn al-Husayn al-Ghaffari made clear the Muslim case, composing The Shaming of Those Who Have Corrupted the Torah and the Gospel.

Llull operated differently. Though scholars maintain the book demonstrates a slight bias toward Christianity, he presents each of the three wise men’s discussion of their faith in straightforward terms. And when the philosopher chooses his religion in the end, the friends ask him not to reveal it. The book ends with the reader in ignorance, as the Muslim, Christian, and Jew desired to continue enjoying their conversation.

This conclusion might not sit well with Western evangelicals who may fear that the interfaith movement blurs the lines of doctrine and downplays the uniqueness of Jesus. Llull’s characters did not do so. Did the Christian lose an opportunity to encourage rival religious adherents toward the faith, some might ask, rather than just discussing belief?

Evangelicals in the Muslim world, however, might feel like the characters made a winsome decision to preserve peace and friendship in joint consideration of God. After all, since their community is usually less than a percentage point of the population, they must think about how to engage Islam peacefully.

Today, these realities have spurred some to partner with other Christians to create outposts for interfaith dialogue. They respect Muslims as citizens, neighbors, and fellow God-fearers—while holding to the Nicene Creed.

Last year, these pioneers and their Muslim counterparts met in Istanbul to launch the Network of Centers for Christian-Muslim Relations (NCCMR), a community of 18 entities stretching from Nigeria to Indonesia. In some countries, their religious communities are at odds. In others, people of different faiths for the most part live seamlessly among one another.

In our next piece, we will introduce Wageeh Mikhail, director of the NCCMR, and learn how his personal history of religious violence shaped his path to this work.

- More from Jayson Casper

Culture

Rapper nobigdyl. Wants Listeners to See Jesus in Their Enemies

Interview by Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The Fan Favorite winner in NPR’s Tiny Desk contest speaks with CT about the message of “imago interlude” and the prophetic voice of Christian hip-hop.

Courtesy of nobigdyl.

When Dylan Phillips started working in the Christian hip-hop industry, he was too cautious to try to make it as a rapper. Phillips, who now performs as nobigdyl., started out as a road manager, supporting the careers of artists like Derek Minor. Minor eventually fired Phillips in 2014 in what was meant to be a friendly push into the spotlight.

That push put Phillips on a career trajectory that the pragmatic artist and entrepreneur had not set out to follow. Over the past ten years, he has become a successful solo artist and leader in the Christian hip-hop niche. Phillips has over 1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. His independent artist collective, indie tribe, hosts an annual festival in Nashville called Holy Smoke! His latest album, Seoul Brother, is a collaboration with Kato On The Track, an Atlanta-based Korean American artist.

In May 2025, Phillips won Fan Favorite in NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest for the second year in a row—and this year, the entry that won was a recording of the song “imago interlude.” The video begins with a close-up shot of the rapper’s T-shirt, printed with the words “you don’t know jesus til you see him in your enemy.” The first line of the song is a confrontation: “Christian music or music that Christians use / To get their fix just another hit of the clicks and views.”

In “imago interlude,” it’s clear Phillips isn’t afraid of making his listeners uncomfortable. He hypothesizes that some Christians consume faith-based music while neglecting to love their neighbors. He’s not shy about wading into divisive political territory, rapping about wars and humanitarian crises:

I look for Jesus and I didn’t see him on the news.
Saw him in Palestine; the power lines were out of juice,
He was a 9-year-old; her body had been battered, bruised.
Saw him in Zion too, a missile through a tattered roof,
A father clinging to his child, pleading out to you.
Saw him in Kyiv and Moscow.
The bleeding won’t stop now.

“Imago interlude” also showcases Phillips’s eclectic musical vocabulary, infusing jazz harmonies and funk-inflected instrumentation with complex rhythm and dense lyricism. Artistically formed by an array of genres and scenes, his music resists regional classification.

The 27-year-old rapper grew up moving frequently—his dad worked in logistics for Walmart, so by the time Phillips was 18, he had lived in seven states. The near-constant movement allowed him to absorb the musical traditions of the West Coast, Appalachia, and the South. He remembers going to jazz clubs in California to watch his uncle, Grammy-winning drummer Derrek Phillips, perform with bands and combos. Those venues also introduced him to spoken-word and slam poetry.

Although Phillips’s parents are not musicians themselves, Phillips described them as “music connoisseurs,” filling their home with the music of Elton John, James Taylor, Counting Crows, Third Eye Blind, and a rotation of Motown standards. As a student at Middle Tennessee State University, Phillips studied music business.

Now, in a performing career he never expected to have, Phillips is reflecting on the shape of the Christian music industry and trying to carve out a new, sustainable space for hip-hop artists. He spoke with CT about how the world of Christian hip-hop is changing and what he thinks artists offer the American church in tumultuous times.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

The opening line of “imago interlude” is striking, confronting listeners with the idea that Christian music is being used for “clicks and views.” What were you thinking about when you wrote those opening lines?

Initially I was thinking about how Christian music shouldn’t just be for us. We shouldn’t be circling the wagons and making sanitized music to throw on for our tribe, something for Christian consumers to use as an alternative to other music when they want something for the kids. Christian music shouldn’t be something that we as artists use just to get a bigger and bigger platform or go viral.

It should have something to say for the culture and to the culture.

If we’re creating and if we think that God has crafted us and fine-tuned us to make this specific art that we are making, then there are people that need to hear the specific messages that God is sending through us.

So those lines were a critique of the individualistic, me-centered, capitalist idea that “Oh, I’m just making this music to go up the ladder.”

The shape of the industry has changed so much in the past 15 years. These days, going viral is potentially a career-making moment for artists. How do you balance the desire to find your audience and listeners with the conviction that virality and views shouldn’t be the primary driver of what you create?

I think it’s about continually recalibrating toward my belief that God is the greatest creator. I believe that he used art, conversation, and people to reach me in his kindness and love and mercy. He’s doing that for the world.

So whatever I’m doing creatively, I want it to reflect his excellence and the gift that he has given me. My job is to say yes to him and honor him in that, and platform and virality may come with that.

Platform is not the enemy, you know? I mean, in broad terms, there’s nothing more viral than the Bible. The Psalms are the most popular songs ever.

I always think, Can I make something that’s part of the soundtrack of a life walking with God?

And not every song is going to be as deep as “imago interlude.” Sometimes it’s a song that inspires joy in people, something they can go grocery shopping to.

The point is, am I chasing that platform, or am I seeing that platform as an opportunity to help people walk with God?

You spent so much of your childhood moving across the country, and the different musical influences you’ve encountered show up in your music. You’ve also experienced lots of different church music traditions. How have those varied practices and sounds influenced your art and faith?

I spent most of my life in the COGIC church [Church of God in Christ], which is a Pentecostal Holiness denomination. In COGIC churches, the choir culture, the vocal and instrumental training, and the coaching in general, it’s incredible. The musicianship is actually crazy.

As a kid, I remember watching these 15- and 16-year-olds on the drums and keys. They seemed like adults to me at the time. And to this day I can remember the runs and rhythms they were playing. Stuff I didn’t even know was possible. And they were self-taught, mentored by other people in the church.

But while we were attending COGIC churches, my mom wanted us to try Awana. It’s not a COGIC thing, so she would take us to the Southern Baptist church across town on Wednesdays. Eventually I started going to the youth group there, and that’s where I first heard music by David Crowder, Switchfoot, and Lifehouse—CCM [contemporary Christian music]. I had never heard that stuff before.

It’s easy to dunk on CCM, but in my opinion, there’s a lot of really inspiring melody there. I learned a lot from it.

What’s it like to be a Christian hip-hop artist based in Nashville? Nashville is this musical power center, but country music and CCM are the dominant musical forces, and historically, hip-hop’s power centers have been in Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, or New York. How has your location in Nashville influenced your work?

Yeah, Nashville hasn’t always been a power center for hip-hop. But, you know, the elements of excellent hip-hop music have actually always been in Nashville; it’s just that country music and Christian music get the front-page treatment.

The music history in Nashville is way more eclectic than most people realize. Nashville’s called Music City because of the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Gospel music, blues, jazz, rock-and-roll, rockabilly, R & B, all of that is in the DNA in Nashville, and those are all predecessors to hip-hop, which is essentially a remix of those genres.

And there’s always been a rich Black cultural heritage in Nashville as well. There are multiple HBCUs [historically Black colleges and universities], some of which are 150 years old at this point. The Civil Rights Movement came through Nashville. A lot of the training for peaceful protests happened at Fisk University.

There is a hip-hop community here, and there actually is a distinct style. It’s very musical, a lot of melody, a lot of jazz, and that makes sense because of the history of Nashville.

You write lyrics about Christian music being “used,” sometimes hypocritically. And CCM does have a reputation for being positive, upbeat background music. Do you think Christian hip-hop is able to offer something that CCM generally doesn’t? Are there messages or ideas that hip-hop artists are willing to engage that tend to be watered down in other popular Christian music?

Yeah, I think there’s a very independent spirit in Christian hip-hop. On the whole, most of us are not signed to major labels, so we’re not part of this system that can lend itself to sanitization and being safe. Christian hip-hop can provide a less censored, less biased, prophetic voice.

I think about artists like Propaganda; he’s gonna say what he believes is beautiful and true regardless of what he loses or gains. He’s proven that over and over again. Jackie Hill Perry, she’s gonna do the same thing.

Lecrae is much more of a household name and accepted by the mainstream, but he’s obviously proven that too. He was No. 1 overall on Billboard at one point, and then he started speaking out about police brutality and lost some of that platform he had within CCM.

Christian hip-hop has this unique tradition and history. We’ve shown that we’re gonna say what’s beautiful and true, regardless of the consequences.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

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