Hispanic Churches Groan Under Florida’s Double Immigration Crackdown

Andy Olsen

Some Latino pastors feel betrayed by the government’s harsh enforcement efforts, as worship leaders disappear and congregants stay home.

Parishioners pray for undocumented immigrants during a 2023 service at Iglesia Rescate in Miami.

Bryan Cereijo / The Washington Post via Getty Images

Agustín Quiles monitors the anxiety of Florida’s pastors one phone call at a time.

Quiles, who heads an advocacy organization for Latino evangelicals in the state, hears anxiety in the voices of pastors who call him worried about youth who don’t want to go to school, afraid that immigration agents might intercept them. He hears it when pastors say yet another family stopped going to church—it was no longer safe.

He heard it in the pastor who rang him concerned about one of his church’s leaders, an undocumented Colombian national the pastor described as his right-hand man. The pastor said he could never fill the man’s shoes if something happened to him.

And Quiles has heard it when pastors have quietly told him they feel betrayed. They supported Donald Trump because of his conservative stance on issues like transgender rights. But 60 days into Trump’s second presidency, Quiles said, many of those pastors confess to him, “I feel regretful that I made the decision I made, because of what’s happening to my own brothers.”

The president’s swift actions to close the US border and deport thousands of immigrants have drawn cheers from supporters across the country, including many evangelicals, while also triggering protests and at least 29 immigration-related lawsuits.

But in Florida, which has become the leading edge of red-state efforts to match Trump’s aggressive policies with hard-line local enforcement, Hispanic church leaders say their communities are living in shock from a double threat.

Florida lawmakers have made a point of outdoing the rest of the country in cracking down on immigrants. In February, Republican governor Ron DeSantis signed a set of bills lawmakers had developed in consultation with the Trump administration.

The new laws make it a crime for undocumented immigrants to enter the state, and they also require local law enforcement to help federal officials detain immigrants. The laws increase penalties for immigrants without legal status who commit crimes—making the death penalty mandatory for those convicted of murder.

“In Florida, there’s a terrible fear,” said Blas Ramírez, a bishop with the International Pentecostal Holiness Church who lives in West Palm Beach and oversees several congregations up and down the state. He estimates that roughly a third of people in his churches are undocumented.

Attendance has dropped, Ramírez said. Venezuelans who might have worshiped in person last Sunday stayed home, for example, absorbing news that federal authorities had invoked an obscure wartime law to deport immigrants. They were processing constant rumors of sweeps by local police and reports that the federal government was flying Venezuelans to a megaprison in El Salvador, accusing them of being terrorists despite family members’ claims that some of them were only guilty of getting tattoos.

“Look, the president is applying a law from the 1800s to undocumented people, a law that applies to enemies of the United States,” Ramírez said. “What is that saying?”

Latino evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential election, resonating with his messaging on the economy and traditional stance on issues like abortion and sexuality. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanic Protestants voted for the president, compared with just 46 percent of Hispanics overall. In Florida, the president enjoys more support among Hispanics than he does in other states with large Latino populations.

But when it comes to the president’s immigration actions, some of the state’s Hispanic evangelicals say they are growing disillusioned.

“We agree with the deportation of violent criminals and securing the border,” said Gabriel Salguero, pastor of The Gathering Place, an Assemblies of God church in Orlando. “What we’re concerned about is that, although that’s the rhetoric, that’s actually not what’s happening.”

In fact, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been arresting more criminals across the country since Trump returned to the White House. During the first few weeks of February, the agency detained well over 20,000 immigrants with criminal records and pending criminal charges—more than it did in any month during the Biden administration, according to government data compiled by Syracuse University.

But those figures may be misleading. ICE scores violations as minor as driving with a broken taillight as criminal convictions; current data offer few clues about how many of those arrested actually committed violent crimes.

The numbers are clear about one trend, however: Arrests of noncriminals are soaring. In the middle two weeks of February, ICE swept up 3,721 immigrants with no criminal record—a 334 percent increase over the first two weeks of January.

Salguero is alarmed by the administration’s use of language that he says lumps all immigrants together and demonizes them. He sees how comfortable White House officials are, for example, labeling as “illegal” migrants who received Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a program created by President H. W. Bush to keep certain groups from being deported to unsafe countries.

“Let’s not play these games saying that TPS people are illegal criminals,” said Salguero, who is also president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition. “It’s subtle: They started by saying, ‘We’re going after criminals.’ Now they’re saying, ‘All criminals.’ So speeding ticket? Jaywalking? Are you a criminal?”

As Salguero spoke, he rattled off text messages and phone calls he’d received in recent days. A pastor in Tampa had texted him that his church’s guitarist had been arrested, leaving his wife and US-citizen child behind. Leaders from a Pentecostal denomination reached out about a Latino pastors’ event where Salguero was scheduled to speak; they were moving the event online because pastors were afraid to travel.

Latino ministry leaders say they have never seen such elevated fear and vigilance within churches. They attribute much of it to the administration’s decision in January to allow immigration enforcement in churches, an order currently being challenged in court.

Luis Ávila, director of Hispanic ministries for the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, travels the country hearing from pastors of more than 100 Latino congregations in his denomination. Not everyone is paranoid, he said—churches with relatively few undocumented members are carrying on as normal.

Many churches, though, are watching everyone who comes in and out their doors. Worshipers are staying away or streaming services from home. “We’ve been through these kinds of situations before, but never before have we seen what we are going through right now,” Ávila said.

In Florida, Hispanic evangelicals have spoken out before against DeSantis’ support of harsh anti-immigration measures. Churches lobbied successfully to soften the language in a 2023 bill that would have made it a felony to drive a vehicle with undocumented passengers.

But the wins have been few, and ministry leaders say they struggle to reconcile the fact that so many state and national leaders pushing hard-line laws are outspoken about their faith and depend heavily on evangelical support. Last November, more than 80 percent of white evangelical voters in the US cast their ballots for Trump.

“In some ways, it feels for Latino evangelicals as if it’s a persecution,” Quiles said. “It sounds weird, but it’s like, ‘If you’re undocumented, it doesn’t matter if you’re a Christian. You don’t belong here.’”

Salguero pointed to Lifeway Research polling that consistently shows evangelicals want to see the church operating in the spirit of Romans 13, where all are subject to authority, but also in the spirit of Romans 12, not conforming to the pattern of this world. And he said the biblical pattern is clear when it comes to how evangelicals should shape policy toward immigrants: “The overwhelming biblical evidence, from the times of Abraham all the way to Jesus, is that we are to integrate immigrants in a humane way,” Salguero said.

What’s happening now, Ramírez said, appears to him like the exact opposite. The bishop recently met with a Venezuelan pastor and his wife whose fledgling Orlando church fell apart after immigration agents detained several of its members.

The church’s worship team was practicing one day in the clubhouse of a townhome community, according to Ramírez. When the musicians and other church leaders left the practice, agents met them in the parking lot and arrested at least half a dozen of the group. Days later, Ramírez said, agents returned and detained a second group of congregants after they left the clubhouse.

Evangelicals who tolerate aggressive immigration enforcement against noncriminals are “complicit in this unjust action,” Ramírez said. “The church is supposed to defend the oppressed. The church is not supposed to defend the enemy of the oppressed.”

Ramírez, a former lawyer from the Dominican Republic who took evangelism trips to Cuba on his way to full-time ministry in the United States, said he understands a thing or two about oppression. He said he was arrested and imprisoned twice in Cuba in the late 1990s for “preaching the gospel.”

When pastors have to whisper about what’s happening in their churches, when they’re afraid to speak about someone who was arrested, Ramírez said it’s a clear sign that individual liberties are being harmed.

“I thought I’d never see this kind of fear and terror again,” he said. “But people are living it now, here.”

Quiles is especially troubled by Florida’s new mandatory death penalty for undocumented immigrants who commit violent crimes. He’s the president of Mission Talk, a policy group that works with a diverse set of Latino churches in Florida—from conservative Pentecostals to more theologically progressive Cooperative Baptists—to engage them in state policymaking. In addition to lobbying for more compassionate immigration policy, his organization opposes capital punishment.

For several years now, Quiles has led church leaders on trips to Montgomery, Alabama, to study the Civil Rights Movement and America’s dark history of white supremacy.

“I never lived that,” Quiles said. “But it feels like they are trying to go back to those times where you would lynch anyone for any given reason. Is that the same spirit? Is that the same sin that we’ve never dealt with, where we have an obsession with just automatically adding the death penalty to someone who is undocumented?”

Hispanic leaders say they have spent the past two months in countless meetings discussing legal rights and church security, discussing what members need to do to prepare in the event they are detained. Do you have a power of attorney ready? Do you know who will care for your children if you disappear? Who will manage your home and your assets? Identical conversations have repeated thousands of times, in Florida and across the country.

If you pastor a Hispanic church in America right now, Ávila said, you cannot ignore immigration discussions. “It’s part of your life.”

But you also have to pray, he said. He doesn’t want criminals to come into the country, and he agrees that authorities have to stop anyone doing “bad stuff.” But he prays for a way through the mess for the immigrants in his churches.

“I know hundreds of families, and I say to myself, ‘Wow, these people, the only thing they do is good for the country,’” he said. “I see the way they are living, acting, working.”

When he prays for those families, Ávila said, he always starts with this: “Lord, I ask you to sensitize the hearts and minds of these lawmakers.”

Andy Olsen is senior features writer at Christianity Today.

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Ideas

Big Digs, Bad Detectives

Amanda Hope Haley

From the archaeological discoveries of Ur to Mount Ebal, Christians need to be more careful evaluating the facts.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

The best-selling fiction writer of all time was on her second solo trip in the Kingdom of Iraq in 1930 after a devastating divorce. While visiting friends at an archaeological site, novelist Agatha Christie met the University of London professor Max Mallowan, who would become her second husband and inspire seven novels set in the Near East.

Mallowan was a different sort of detective than the ones Christie often created for her novels. Today we would call him an Assyriologist, an expert in the language and history of the ancient Mesopotamian cultures that wrote Sumerian and Akkadian in cuneiform. Mallowan distinguished himself as an archaeologist directing digs in modern-day Syria and Iraq. When Christie met him, he was working with famed (and soon-to-be knighted) archaeologist Leonard Woolley to excavate a city in southern Iraq.

Mallowan and Woolley found bricks and cylinders buried within buildings’ foundations, inscribed with cuneiform writing. As they read the ancient texts, they realized this city had a name many people would recognize: Ur. Hadn’t God said to Abraham, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur” (Gen. 15:7)?

Like detectives, they put together the evidence and announced that they had discovered the biblical home of Abraham. Soon spectacular artifacts from the excavation were on display at museums in the United Kingdom and the United States, wowing the public. Each exhibit and many reports on their work and their discoveries carried the claim that this site in southern Iraq was the city of the great patriarch.

Unlike the detectives of Christie’s novels, however, the archaeologists were wrong. Ur is like the Springfield of ancient Mesopotamia—many regions had a city with that name. The biblical text itself seems to place Abraham’s city in southern Turkey, where the city we now call Urfa has been inhabited since 9000 BC and where local tradition maintains it was Abraham’s home. In the Middle Bronze Age, the city was connected to Haran and Canaan by a major road. That Ur, long believed to be Abraham’s Ur, is about 1,000 miles from the city that Mallowan and Woolley excavated.

It is unclear today whether the archaeologists made a simple mistake or they knew it wasn’t true. Perhaps, in their minds, they were simply suggesting the possibility that this could be Abraham’s ancient birthplace. They may have felt some pressure to get the public to care about their work and sought to connect the archaeological discoveries, however dubiously, to the public’s limited knowledge of ancient history. Most Westerners, then and now, only encounter the ancient Near East in Sunday school lessons, adventure stories, and fiction of the sort Christie would soon write, with titles including Death on the Nile, They Came to Baghdad, and Murder in Mesopotamia. If the archaeologists couldn’t associate themselves with Hercule Poirot, then tying Ur to Abraham was probably the next-best option for engaging an audience.

They were not the first to make flawed but flashy claims about Bible-related finds. European Christians flocked to the Holy Land in the Middle Ages and announced many discoveries based on unprovable local hearsay, including the location of Ararat and multiple contradictory sites of Christ’s birthplace, crucifixion, and tomb. The construction of churches in many of those places enshrined the early pilgrims’ claims but also made modern archaeological excavation nearly impossible.

Nor were Mallowan and Woolley the last to go beyond the evidence and say they had discovered something without substantial support for that claim. Today, archaeologists face impossible pressures to produce sensational finds or, short of that, clickable headlines. Excavation projects often face severe financial constraints, and dig directors compete for donations and grants. Going public with bold claims of big discoveries that “prove the Bible” is one sure way to get attention, even if research has not yet been completed and the hypotheses are unlikely to be supported by the facts.

Going big and going early leads to an uptick in public interest and in those necessary donations. Unfortunately, it also spreads bad information and can lead to a loss of trust in experts, archaeology, and even the Bible itself when those hypotheses presented as fact are later proven wrong.

Scientists in all fields have been accustomed to years-long processes of discovery, debate (peer review), and then publication because they were concerned with accuracy. We need precision. We need to be able to trust the research, whether it’s for a new drug or new information about the world of Abraham. When history intersects with Scripture, our understanding of that history also impacts how we understand the Bible. Wild claims and bad detective work by archaeologists should be a concern to anyone who cares about God’s Word.

On March 24, 2022, a notification alerted me to a livestreamed press conference. A team of archaeologists was announcing its discovery of a tiny lead “curse tablet” they said contained the oldest Hebrew inscription ever found. They went on to claim that it demonstrated Israelites were capable of writing several centuries earlier than previously thought, which would impact how we understand the development of the biblical texts and language itself.

My jaw hit my desk, not because of the amazing discovery but because of the lack of support for the ostentatious claims. There were no images of the writing available at the press conference, only drawings. The dating of the item wasn’t very clear. It had been found in an excavation trash heap, making it impossible to date with stratigraphy and contextualize with surrounding artifacts. Also, what was it? The archaeologists at the press conference called it a “curse tablet,” but could the tiny piece of folded lead be anything else?

Criticism from world-renowned scientists was quick, and debate continues today. The discoverers have released some high-resolution images of the marks inside the object that they identified as an ancient curse, but that has not convinced other experts. Some say it isn’t a “curse tablet” but a fishing-net weight or something else. Maybe the writing isn’t writing at all but clumsy tool impressions.

Debate will continue about the exact nature and possible importance of this folded piece of lead. However, most people who watched the original press conference and accepted the claims as facts will not follow the back-and-forth debate, the new evidence, and the contested interpretations. If they do hear about the expert criticisms of the extraordinary claims, Christians might just dismiss them as academics attacking the historical veracity of Scripture.

That’s too bad. A public debate could be a good thing, teaching people about the detective work that goes into academically solid archaeological reports. The process of discovering the truth about the ancient past is complicated and time-consuming. It requires attention to detail, discipline, and a lot of care. The slow, dusty work of scraping dirt off dirt and cataloging artifacts can bore the outside observer and sometimes the excavators themselves, but it is necessary as archaeologists work to understand how our ancestors lived.

Sensationalism, on the other hand, is quick, cost-effective, and exciting. “Edutainment” series regularly engage viewers with a few facts and many wild, flawed theories. While they may intrigue and motivate future archaeologists to join the profession, their conclusions can’t be trusted. Viewers must remember such shows are designed to entertain more than to educate, and they should therefore watch with some curiosity and much discernment.

No matter how information about the ancient Near East is packaged and presented—at museums, during press conferences, or on our screens—we as Christians can take responsibility for our responses to big archaeological claims. We who care about the Bible and how it connects to the past and present can learn to evaluate competing claims and come to informed conclusions.

As outside observers, we can begin by asking questions:

What is fact, and what is interpretation? We need to be able to distinguish the concrete details from the conclusion that is being drawn. There was an Ur in southern Iraq, but calling it “Abraham’s” is interpretation. There was a folded piece of lead at Mount Ebal, but calling it a “curse tablet” is interpretation.
How careful is the interpretation? Trustworthy scholarship builds a solid case, as does a good detective. Archaeologists should thoroughly consider mountains of evidence and demonstrate that when they offer their interpretation.
Do other experts agree? Scholars regularly challenge exaggerated claims and present alternative explanations. A press conference with a big claim rarely presents the full story, so we must watch for other interpretations of the facts even when they aren’t promoted as widely as the initial headlines.
What more is there to learn? Science is rarely settled so long as exploration continues. Even as distant spectators, we can enter into the process of discovery if we are willing to recognize that our current interpretations aren’t facts, there may be new information, and we will need to consider changing our minds.

We will never know everything about the ancient world or the mysteries of the Bible, but the search for better understanding can improve our abilities to discern between fact and fiction, Scripture and tradition. And for Christians, time spent asking questions, detecting answers, and refining our beliefs brings us into closer relationships with the God who created us and the earth we are privileged to investigate.

Amanda Hope Haley studied biblical archaeology under Lawrence Stager at Harvard University and has dug at Tel Ashkelon and Tel Shimron. Her book Stones Still Speak: How Biblical Archaeology Illuminates the Stories You Thought You Knew will be published by Revell in September.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that no epigraphers were involved in the press conference announcing the discovery of a “curse tablet.”

- More from Amanda Hope Haley

Theology

The Forgotten Woman Who Preached in Congress

Jack Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison

In the 19th-century, Harriet Livermore boldly defended a women’s right to speak in the church and pulpit.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress

On a brisk January morning in 1827, Harriet Livermore mounted the speaker’s chair in the Hall of Representatives and became one of the first women to deliver a sermon in the United States Congress. She preached to an overflowing crowd of more than a thousand, including President John Quincy Adams, who sat on the steps leading up to her since there were no other free seats.

After reading Psalm 112, she preached from 2 Samuel 23:3, which says, “He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” (KJV). Newspaper reports of the crowd’s reaction, with quiet weeping and overt sobbing, were lavish with praise. Livermore would go on to speak in that very chamber three more times—from 1832 to 1843—and always before considerable crowds.

Livermore’s generation was one in which the Scriptures were under fresh scrutiny. Just six years after she was born in 1788, famed hero of the American Revolution Thomas Paine published The Age of Reason,in which he launched an assault on the Bible. At about the same time, Thomas Jefferson famously produced a Bible void of miracles. Yet in the end, such detractors did not win the day.

In fact, the Bible remained a dominant influence on early American life—a reality nowhere more apparent than in the founding of the American Bible Society (ABS) in 1816. The fledgling nation already boasted of over 100 local Bible societies—six times the number of states in the union. And by 1829, the ABS had announced its ambitious plans to put a Bible in every American home.

In such an era, women who fought for the right to preach had to defend their stance biblically. And defend they did! Within a generation of the American Revolution’s end, women began launching their first apologetic salvos—each beginning with the word scriptural.

In 1820, a woman named Deborah Peirce published a slender treatise entitled A Scriptural Vindication of Female Preaching, Prophesying, or Exhortation. Four years later, Harriet Livermore penned a more substantial work on the subject, entitled Scriptural Evidence in Favour of Female Testimony in Meetings for Christian Worship. Hers was an extraordinary defense—innovative and independent—that mirrored the remarkable, even eccentric, woman who wrote it.

Within three years, her work had garnered enough attention to merit her an invitation to preach on the national stage of Congress. And in view of last year’s 200th anniversary of Livermore’s landmark defense, hers is a story worth remembering this women’s history month.

As a young adult, thanks to her father’s high-profile position as a district attorney and member of Congress, Livermore enjoyed deftly navigating the Washington, DC, social circuit. Then, at the age of 23, she abruptly and inexplicably declared that she would devote herself to a religious life. Soon, the former party girl had transformed into the model of a pious and devoted debutante.

A decade later, in 1821, the intrepid Livermore spoke in public with men present for the first time at meetings of the Freewill Baptist Church. Her initial steps into public speaking were halting. The first time she spoke, she prayed aloud during a meeting. Another time, she spoke to the congregation for about five minutes after the preacher delivered a sermon. Although these steps were modest, her Christian friends criticized her for overstepping her biblical bounds as a woman. She quit public speaking—but not for long.

Livermore soon began touring New England, preaching as far south as Philadelphia. At that time, one of Livermore’s female friends named Julia asked her “to transcribe … those passages in Scripture, which might place the subject in a favourable point of view”—that is, the subject of female preaching. This letter became the basis of her book.

Livermore confronted long-standing views of women held by most Americans and also had the opportunity to address a bevy of influential British commentators, the likes of Matthew Henry, Philip Doddridge, Thomas Scott, and Adam Clarke—whose commentaries were so influential that they were published under the authors’ last names, including Matthew Henry’s Commentary, Scott’s Bible and Clarke’s Bible.

As part of her argument, Livermore pointed to an inconspicuous passage tucked into Paul’s letter to the Philippians. In chapter 4, verses 2–3, Paul referred to Euodia and Syntyche: “I implore Euodia and I implore Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. And I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life” (NKJV).

At the time, most commentators insisted the “labor” mentioned here didn’t include preaching. For instance, Matthew Henry claimed that women assisted ministers “by entertaining the ministers, visiting the sick, instructing the ignorant, convincing the erroneous. Thus women may be helpful to ministers in the work of the Gospel.” Women, in short, could assist ministers but not preach themselves.

Yet Livermore countered by posing the rhetorical question, “Ah! Does Paul say they laboured for me? No, they laboured with me in the Gospel.” Labor in the gospel is not, she pointed out, labor for the gospel.

She went further still when she contended, on the basis of Augustin Calmet’s highly regarded Bible dictionary, that the infant church in Philippi “was disciplined and governed by two women,” not men. In an era of American history when women had no say in the governance of the church, with the exception of the Quakers, Livermore’s succinct declaration was explosive.

No defense of a woman’s right to preach would be compelling without addressing Paul’s mandate for women to be silent: “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says” (1 Cor. 14:34, KJV).

When commentators interpreted passages on women in 1 Corinthians, they faced a conundrum. While chapter 14 seems to argue that women should not speak in church (v. 34), Paul referred to “every man who prays or prophesies” and equally to “every woman who prays or prophesies” chapters later (11:4–5). Commentators tended to crack this conundrum by distinguishing between inspired women who prophesied and prayed in 11:4–5 and uninspired women in 14:34–35.

Commentators also tended to describe the uninspired women of chapter 14 as disruptive. Thomas Scott, for example, conjectured that these women Paul addressed would speak publicly “when not under any immediate impulse of the Holy Spirit; and perhaps they interrupted the other speakers by enquiries or objections, according to the disputatious spirit that prevailed.” Adam Clarke concurred: “All that the apostle opposes here is their [the uninspired women] questioning, finding fault, disputing,&c, in the Christian Church.”

Livermore found allies in these commentators and followed their lead by drawing the same distinction. She described the women whom Paul silenced in 1 Corinthians 14 as conducting themselves “in a very unbecoming manner in their church meetings, opposing and contradicting the brethren; usurping authority over them.” Paul, as she interpreted his letter to mean, silenced these kinds of women in Corinth—but certainly not all women. This gave her a foothold to argue that inspired women in the early church did speak aloud.

Yet beyond the distinction between inspired and uninspired women, Livermore made a further distinction in the type of church gatherings in which women should be able to speak.

When she wrote her Scriptural Evidence, Livermore was associated with the Christian Connection, a church founded in New England in the early 1800s for the restoration of apostolic Christianity. It held two types of meetings. In meetings devoted to worship, women could speak; in business meetings, they could not. Livermore superimposed these two categories onto the context of 1 Corinthians: She identified worship meetings with women praying and prophesying in chapter 11 and business meetings with women remaining silent in chapter 14.

Yet—and this is essential for understanding Livermore—while she acknowledged the Christian Connection’s distinction, she herself breached the silence demanded of women in business meetings. In her autobiography, Livermore recounted how she had spoken in an all-male business meeting of elders.

But rather than vilifying her, “those brethren and fathers gained an evidence that the Holy Ghost was my teacher; for the same afternoon I received a certificate of their approbation to visit the [C]hristian churches.” Livermore broke the silence as an inspired woman, not just in worship gatherings but in church business meetings as well.

Soon after publishing her letters to her friend, Julia, however, Livermore left the constraints of the Christian Connection behind—and three years later, she was preaching on the national stage of Congress.

As Livermore grew older, her beliefs became stridently millennialist: She expected Jesus’ imminent return. She believed Native Americans were descendants of the ten lost tribes of Israel; their conversion to Christianity would be a prelude to the return of Jesus in Jerusalem. Motivated by this conviction, between 1836 and 1858, Livermore made no fewer than four transatlantic trips to Jerusalem, the last at age 70, to witness Jesus’ return.

Despite her blue-blooded birth, boarding-school education, and charismatic ability to sway crowds from Congress to Connecticut, Livermore’s popularity—and finances—dwindled as her millennial beliefs swelled. At one poignant moment in her later years of poverty, Livermore pawned her dead mother’s silver spoons to underwrite her itinerant preaching. She died in a Philadelphia almshouse and, at her request, was buried in an unmarked grave.

Harriet Livermore lived and died—as she described herself in a private letter to James Madison and in the title of one of her books—“a pilgrim stranger.”

Jack Levison holds the Power Chair at Perkins School of Theology. His recent books include a revised edition of Fresh Air. In 2021, his book A Boundless God won CT’s Award of Merit.

Priscilla Pope-Levison is research professor of practical theology in the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Her most recent book is Models of Evangelism.

- More from Jack Levison and Priscilla Pope-Levison

Pastors

When Your Church Has Growing Pains

Jason Edwin Dees

A look at how church growth shapes both the blessings and the burdens of pastoral leadership.

Photo by Jacob Norris / Lightstock

“Things just aren’t the same around here.”

I have heard statements like this throughout my ministry, often in response to church growth. People rarely critique church growth directly, so their concerns usually stem from its perceived consequences—whether real or not. Comments such as “I don’t have as much access to the senior pastor as I once did” or “We must be watering down the message” are all too common.

In a growing church, each member of the church may have less access to the senior pastor. Typically, that comes along with more pastors who often compliment the pastor’s strengths with other gifts being hired. The assumption of “watering down the message” also can be very frustrating and can come from a kind of church culture skeptical of growth, one that assumes if the church is growing, we must be doing something wrong.

While these concerns can be difficult for pastors to navigate, a few key principles can be helpful in guiding people through the changes that come with church growth.

Don’t moralize church size

One of the most unhelpful tendencies in modern church culture is to be overly critical and moralize church size. The large church should never say to the small church, “I have no need of you,” nor should the small church say to the large church, “I am better than you.” Throughout history, God has worked powerfully through churches of all sizes in unique ways, and we should not despise that.

Of course, if a large church truly waters down the gospel into secular moralism, that deserves critique. Likewise, if a small church fosters a hyperlegalistic or judgmental culture, that needs to be addressed. However, there is no biblical basis for critiquing a church simply because of its size. The Bible does not command that a church must remain small or grow beyond a certain number before it should split into multiple congregations.

Similarly, it does not prescribe that churches must grow by 10 percent each year to be faithful. Many faithful churches care deeply about evangelism but do not experience rapid growth.

We get into trouble when we turn church size or service count into moral issues. These are practical considerations, and each size brings distinct advantages.

A small church nurtures deeper personal connections among members, allowing the senior pastor to know and shepherd each person individually, shaping his preaching to specific needs.

A large church, on the other hand, can offer specialized ministries and broader missional reach. Multiple services create more opportunities for people to serve, often fostering a robust discipleship culture—particularly beneficial for children and student ministries.

These differences, while significant, aren’t moral distinctions. A large church isn’t wrong for being large, nor is a small church wrong for being small. The kingdom of Christ is served by churches of all sizes, each playing its unique role in God’s mission.

Church growth dynamics as a discipleship issue

While many churches celebrate numerical growth, they often overlook the critical need to disciple their members through the emotional and spiritual adjustments that accompany such growth. The pastor who focuses solely on numbers misses these vital pastoral opportunities. However, the wise pastor anticipates members’ feelings about change and proactively addresses them.

While openly discussing these dynamics may initially unsettle some members, it ultimately builds trust between church leadership and the congregation, creating space for honest conversations about growth and change.

Growth dynamics

Smaller churches thrive on lay leadership, with members taking key roles in ministry and decision making. Larger churches, by necessity, become more dependent on staff to coordinate their broader scope of ministries.

Communication styles shift as well. Smaller churches can share information effectively through pulpit announcements and weekly bulletins. Larger churches need more sophisticated strategies—often involving multiple channels—to keep their congregations informed and connected.

Perhaps the most noticeable difference involves pastoral access. In smaller churches, members typically enjoy direct interaction with the senior pastor. Larger churches, however, provide pastoral care through a network of ministers, each serving specific segments of the congregations.

Tim Keller’s widely read article “Leadership and Church Size Dynamics” is essential reading for understanding these transitions. He maps out how churches function differently across various size categories:

House churches (0–40 attendance)
Small churches (40–200 attendance)
Medium churches (200–450 attendance)
Large churches (400–800 attendance)
Very large churches (800+ attendance)

His insights illuminate the natural shifts that occur as churches grow through these stages. Each category brings unique challenges and opportunities, requiring different approaches to leadership, ministry, and community life. I strongly recommend his article for a deeper understanding of these dynamics.

Place dynamics

A church’s location and history can also profoundly shape the dynamics of its ministry approach.

For example, when I served at First Baptist Church of Covington, Georgia (which averaged around 650 in attendance), it felt like a larger presence in the community than Christ Covenant in Atlanta (which averages over 2,500). In Covington, First Baptist had a prominent role in the town, while in Atlanta, Christ Covenant is one of many large, influential churches, often perceived as small and intimate by city standards.

Legacy shapes perception too. Older, well-established churches tend to view themselves as significant, even if their influence or attendance has declined over time. The wise pastor recognizes these perceptions and is sympathetic to the feelings of church members in different contexts.

Cultural differences also play a role. In larger cities, church members are often more flexible and open to progressive changes. In smaller towns, people tend to be more servant-hearted and willing to take on practical service roles. For instance, at First Baptist Covington, a deacon was responsible for locking up the building each week—a task that required an entire facilities team at a larger suburban church I later pastored. These aren’t just operational differences; they reflect each community’s unique values and expectations.

Successfully shepherding a congregation requires understanding these contextual nuances and honoring the church’s place in its community.

Member dynamics

When joining a church, a person often identifies with a specific role or ministry. You might hear statements such as “I am in charge of hospitality” or “I lead the middle school youth program.” These roles give members a sense of belonging and purpose within the congregation.

But as churches grow, these roles naturally evolve. A lay volunteer might be replaced by a staff member, a more gifted volunteer might step into leadership, or a ministry might shift direction entirely. Much of the resistance to church growth stems from these changing relationships and responsibilities. Members struggle not just with losing familiar roles but with shifts in how they connect to the broader church community.

This is where pastors must be especially attentive, helping members navigate what I call “the second call.”

A church member’s calling to serve rarely remains static. In a healthy church, members who have been serving faithfully may find their roles disrupted—whether through church growth, ministry changes, or life transitions such as having children or entering new seasons of life.

When this happens, I have seen dedicated church members interpret this disruption as a sign to leave. But often, what they truly need is a renewed call to serve in a new way. This transition can take courage and energy, but those who embrace it often discover deeper fulfillment in church life.

This “second call” may eventually become a third or fourth call as members continue to grow and adapt. Helping members understand these shifts and clarifying their frustrations are essential parts of pastoral leadership.

Lead with wisdom and grace

Church growth brings both challenges and incredible opportunities for discipleship and ministry. By avoiding the trap to moralize church size, proactively addressing growth dynamics, and shepherding members through the changes they experience, we can help our congregations navigate these transitions with wisdom and grace.

Consider a few practical ways you can begin engaging your congregation in this vital area of discipleship:

Address these dynamics openly in church membership meetings, creating space for real questions and honest dialogue.
Use a regular congregational email to tackle concerns directly, inviting members to share their thoughts and questions.
When preaching through a text outlining a particular church challenge, seize the opportunity to address growth and size dynamics in your local church.

Remember, when someone says, “Things just aren’t the same around here,” the tension created isn’t a problem to solve—it’s an opportunity to shepherd.

May God grant us wisdom as we embrace both the joys and the challenges of leading his church through these seasons of change.

Jason Edwin Dees is the senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church (Buckhead) in Atlanta.

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Theology

The Church’s Glory Is Between Three Birds

Russell Moore

Columnist

The raven broods and the rooster struts, but the dove descends to show us a new world.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Pexels

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

If you wanted to convey to someone in a single image the idea that the church is glorious, holy, and ultimately triumphant, how would you do it?

I suppose you might start with a marketing plan and choose, like any other institution, something to signify trust, strength, and power. Nations, corporations, and even middle school basketball teams adopt symbols such as bears or eagles or rising suns. What you probably wouldn’t choose, however, is the face of a turncoat sobbing with shame.

That’s why I was reluctant to say yes when a colleague pitched a representation of Peter hearing the rooster crow for Christianity Today’s March/April issue cover art. “That’s too negative,” I said. “We want the picture of a bride coming down out of heaven adorned for her husband (Rev. 21:2) or an army awesome with banners (Song 6:10).” Not a shame-faced man after his denial of the Son of God.

It wasn’t until I actually saw the artwork that I realized how wrong I was. Illustrator Aedan Peterson did not soften the agony of the jarringly beautiful scene. One can feel in the posture and visage of the fallen disciple what it would be like to live out Jesus’ words, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times” (Mark 14:30). The art prompts the body to feel Peter’s involuntary loss of control at that moment: “And he broke down and wept” (v. 72).

What I missed at first is that this scene really isn’t about the pathos of Peter. It’s about what’s going on in the background behind him: a bird in flight, representative of a struggle that starts at the beginning of the biblical canon and continues all the way to the end.

One bird is never pictured with the scene of Peter’s denial but shows up elsewhere in Scripture: the raven. Ravens are sometimes depicted positively in the Bible, such as in carrying food to the starving prophet Elijah to sustain him in his desert escape from Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 17:4–6).

But there’s a reason Edgar Allan Poe chose a raven to deliver the ominous line “Nevermore” in his unnerving poem. In Scripture, ravens are pronounced unclean, and the people of Israel are forbidden to eat them (Deut. 14:14), because the birds are carrion eaters. To see a raven, as to see a vulture, is to see a sign of the presence of death.

After the Flood, the first bird that Noah sent out as an intelligence-gathering operation was a raven, which went, Genesis tells us, “to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth” (8:7). The raven could survive capably in such a situation—with corpses everywhere on which to feed.

Peter did not see a literal raven in his moment by the fire, but he did see the omen of death. One of the indignities and horrors of crucifixion in the Roman world was that those left on the crosses would often be eaten by scavenging birds. In the arrest of Jesus, Peter could see such a future for himself.

Literary scholar Erich Auerbach once described this scene as revolutionary and unprecedented in the literature of the time: the depiction of the emotional anguish not of a hero or king or god but of a common fisherman. The Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart wrote too that this scene must have “seemed to its first readers to be an aesthetic mistake; for Peter, as a rustic, could not possibly have been a worthy object of a well-bred man’s sympathy, nor could his grief possibly have possessed the sort of tragic dignity necessary to make it worthy of anyone’s notice.”

Peter’s anguish and hopelessness in the face of death—that of his rabbi and likely his own—is crucial to his story of denial, included in all four Gospels. After all, when told of Jesus’ impending crucifixion, Peter’s first response was to rattle his swords. “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you,” Peter said (Matt. 16:22). Peter saw the defeat of the Messiah by Rome to be a hindrance to the plan of the dawning of the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.

But Jesus said that Peter’s bravado was actually the hindrance—that it was carnal, even satanic (v. 23). Jesus continued, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (vv. 24–25).

When Jesus is arrested, Peter’s first response is violence—to follow the way of the raven toward the death of his enemies, cutting off the ear of the servant of the high priest, earning once again a rebuke from Jesus: “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword” (26:52).

Crouched over the charcoal fire, Peter later tries to hide his Galilean background and his affiliation with the teacher out of a sense of self-protection. He doesn’t want to die. And that’s when he hears the call of another bird.

The crowing of the rooster is about more than just one man, even a man as significant as the apostle Peter, who was the first to confess Jesus as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:16). Jesus gave him a name that meant “rock” to convey stability, fortitude, and dependability, saying, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (v. 18).

With a name like that, we might wish to see a heroic, stalwart Peter as a model for us that we too can hold fast as the people of God. But if that’s what Jesus had shown us, we could not survive the shaking of the church. We would lose heart. We might even doubt that the church could withstand a time of secularization, dechurching, repetitive scandal, and scary global threats.

Where are the rock-like pillars of stability who can take us there? All we have are weak, fumbling Christians like us, who know how many times we have said to the outside world with our thoughts or actions or fear, with our lack of love or faith or hope, “I do not know the man” (26:74). We are not heroes, and we have none around us.

The cry of the rooster was one of the most familiar sounds in the life cycle of a first-century person, as common as the sound of an iPhone alarm is to us. It would probably have had the same effect then as it does now, causing the person hearing it to initially grumble.

We want to stay asleep, but the rooster’s cry is to wake us up. And part of what Peter had to hear is that he is not as strong as he thought he was. Neither are we. That’s why the sound of the rooster’s crowing—as painful as it is to hear—is actually grace.

The reason Peter wept when he heard that chicken’s call is that Jesus had told him ahead of time that this sound would coincide with Peter having denied him three times. If we get what’s really happening here, it can change everything.

If Jesus had simply nodded at all of Peter’s vows of commitment to the death, Peter would have had reason, after he had fallen into what he said he would never do, to despair. He would have thought that Jesus’ commitment to him was based on Peter’s own performance, on his own heroism. He would have believed that Jesus had simply thought him to be stronger or more faithful than he actually was.

But Jesus knew what would happen before the rooster crowed. And even knowing Peter’s fragility and flaw, Jesus said to him, in the same scene, “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32).

That’s, of course, exactly what Peter does. Jesus meets Peter after his resurrection—at the very same setting of a charcoal fire—not to rebuke him but to reaffirm his love.

The rooster is there, representing all the ways we fumble and fall and fail, but the rooster’s crow is not the final sound. If you look closer at the March/April cover, you will see another bird. On the pillar behind the scene is the shadow of a dove. The raven had followed Peter all his life—“Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat” (v. 31)—but so had the dove.

The dove, remember, was the second bird that Noah sent from the ark. The dove first brought back a branch—a sign of life on the other side—and then it didn’t return at all, having found a place to rest beyond the wreckage of judgment.

At Jesus’ baptism, which is his sign of solidarity with us sinners in the judgment we deserve, the Bible tells us that he saw “the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’” (Matt. 3:16–17).

That dove of the Spirit would descend once more after Jesus’ resurrection: on the disciples gathered in Jerusalem at Pentecost, giving birth to the church (Acts 2:1–21). The dove—like the one Noah once sent out from the ark—returns with signs of life, holding a branch from the Tree of Life in the new creation, beyond all we can see or imagine.

Crucially, this Spirit is not a reward for good behavior or heroic deeds. At Pentecost, it fell on a church filled not with geniuses and strategists but with fishermen and peasant women. And who was standing there announcing that a new day had dawned? Who was the first recorded to bear witness that day? Simon Peter, not one bit afraid to say the word Jesus over and over and over again (vv. 14–41).

That’s why we remain confident that the church we love will triumph. The raven broods and the rooster struts, but the dove descends.

The raven is an omen of the death and destruction around us. The rooster is an announcement of the dawn of another day, the day after we have failed yet again to live up to all our bluster.

The dove is less visible, less noticeable, except to the eyes of faith. But in its mouth, there’s a branch that shows there’s a new world on the other side of it all.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

Church Life

Bring Back Screen-Free Sunday School

Kaz Hayashi

Digital Bible lessons can’t replace teachers passing on the faith.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

My church’s children’s ministry was looking for volunteers one Sunday. “There are scripts and a video you can use, and all materials would be prepped for you,” the email said. “No prep needed.” The lesson plan I received for the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3 contained icebreaker questions, Bible passages, and a link to the video teaching. Even the words of a prayer were all written out, ready for me to recite verbatim.

But I decided to formulate my own plan. “Act like a monkey! Sing ‘Baby Shark’ like an opera singer!” I said to my group of fourth and fifth graders at the start of the lesson. Then I asked them, “Have you ever been asked or told to do something that goes against God’s rules?” I told them a story of when I was a child in my karate class in Japan and my teacher asked me to bow down to a shrine. “Even though I was scared to go against the teacher, because I believed in Jesus, I chose not to bow when everyone else in the class bowed their heads.” Upon hearing how my faith was challenged, the kids’ smiling faces expressed surprise and bewilderment.

After some children participated in a trust-fall exercise to experience what having faith in someone else was like, I shared how we should live out our beliefs courageously in obeying God. I then asked them questions like “Do you want to come and play at my house this Sunday instead of going to church?” and “Do you want to play this cool game where we are evil priests who worship other gods?”

Nothing I did was particularly novel or exciting. But the kids in my class were attentive and engaged—surprising my fellow Sunday school teachers, who observed how the children did not display the same level of interest when watching videos about the Bible.

I have taught and led children’s ministry in various American churches for years, and I am alarmed by the growing number of churches that depend on prerecorded videos for Sunday school lessons. This may be partly influenced by a shift toward virtual worship services—children’s ministry included—during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before 2020, almost half of Christian congregations offered online church services, but that figure jumped to three-quarters in 2023. Some megachurches have dedicated YouTube channels for kids’ content featuring animated Bible videos, amassing tens of thousands of views. One video portraying Jesus’ life story has more than 3 million views.

While I am not suggesting a full-scale rejection of the use of screens or technology in church, relying solely on videos during Sunday school seems to convey a poor biblical understanding of the role, function, and process of teaching.

Teaching Scripture through short videos that do not invite social interaction or dialogic thinking shrinks the role of “teacher” into one who is primarily (or only) concerned with communicating Bible knowledge. But Scripture reminds us that being a Bible teacher to little ones is more than simply disseminating facts or truths about the Word. A teacher is to assume an integral role in passing on the faith, exemplifying spiritual maturity, and modeling discipleship to Jesus.

There is certainly a plethora of biblically sound media geared toward kids. Some children’s ministry curricula go through the Bible canonically from beginning to end; others are organized topically. Some, like the BibleProject, offer robust reflections on key portions of Scripture via slick graphics in less than 10 minutes, while others include games and prizes.

Some videos are produced in-house by denominations to ensure theological alignment and supplement Sunday school staff and volunteer efforts. This frees up time spent on lesson preparation and lowers the barrier of entry into children’s ministry. Other videos aim to increase the entertainment value for kids by incorporating corny jokes that supposedly prevent little ones from thinking church is boring.

But there are several glaring disadvantages to depending solely on video content. Kids can disengage cognitively and socially. It’s easy for them to zone out and become passive recipients of information when watching something onscreen since they do not need to actively engage with the content. A video does not invite children to read a passage, prompt follow-up questions, or challenge them to summarize what they’ve learned.

While we seldom see Jesus directly teaching children in the Gospels, they were certainly present during his sermons. In the feeding of the 5,000, the Bible explicitly states that those who ate the bread and fish included men, women, and children (Matt. 14:21). The feeding of the 4,000 similarly identifies children in the crowd (15:38).

In these scenes, Jesus’ role as a teacher is not the focal point of the story. Instead, both stories mention how Jesus saw the crowd and had compassion, which led him to feed the people—children included. However young they might be, the children in these biblical narratives learn about Jesus through their interactions with him. They experience him as giver and provider, one who meets physical needs like hunger with a practical, communal solution. These two narratives affirm that a teacher’s role is not merely about delivering knowledge but also about having tangible, real-life engagement with students.

Jesus is also not content with teaching children from a distance. In a story recorded in all the synoptic Gospels, people bring children and babies for Jesus to lay his hands on and pray over (Matt. 19:13; Mark 10:13; Luke 18:15). When the disciples rebuke the people and try to distance the children from Jesus, he calls the children to himself, lays his hands on them, and blesses them (Mark 10:16). Jesus also instructs his followers, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18:16).

This story powerfully demonstrates the importance of how Jesus ministers to children with words and deeds. Children should not simply be a detached audience that listens to Jesus from a distance. Jesus desires to interact directly with them, sharing his love and compassion.

Scripture reveals that a teacher must follow God and exhibit Christ-like attributes to all around them. The apostle Paul critiques “teacher[s] of little children” who teach the law but do not embody what they profess (Rom. 2:17–24). Christian leaders are given leadership roles in the church not simply due to their mastery of knowledge but due to their godly character (1 Tim. 3:1-13).

When children’s ministries increasingly depend on digital content for worship, teaching, and prayer at church, we must ask whether we are helping children experience and follow Christ. While children’s ministry curricula with video content certainly offer convenience and ease, we should not overlook the significant shortcomings churches can experience when they completely depend on videos for Sunday school.

What is the most tangible way we can communicate and show Christ’s love to young hearts and minds in our pews? First John 3:18 says, “Let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” We can be present with them, pray for them, and be living examples of the love of Christ.

This incarnational model of children’s ministry is challenging and requires a significant time investment. A Sunday school teacher should ideally begin by prayerfully and carefully studying and reflecting on the Scripture passage and what it communicates. Then the teacher can creatively think of ways to help children participate in the learning process.

Instead of using pre-scripted prayers, we can pray out of a genuine love and care for the children in the classroom. We can ask them about their lives and listen attentively to their stories. We can invite children to read Bible verses aloud from a regular Bible rather than a children’s Bible. We can challenge them to think about the “why” behind the stories they read in Scripture. We can cultivate space for them to wonder, imagine, and ask delightfully silly questions.

Some of the most important teachable moments I’ve experienced are unscripted and organic. During our Sunday school lesson on Daniel 3, I asked the children: “If I give you $100, would you say, ‘I hate God’?” One boy jokingly said yes. I paused and responded, “I’m sad to hear this, because we know that in the Bible one of Jesus’ closest followers, named Judas, did this exact thing in turning away from Jesus for money.” The boy looked surprised, probably because he was not expecting me to respond and because what I said made him realize the serious implications of his words.

I don’t know what long-term effect that response had on my Sunday school class, but in that moment, I did something a video-based lesson couldn’t: respond to a spontaneous comment and perhaps help the children see how similar we are to the figures we read about in Scripture.

Kaz Hayashi is associate professor of Old Testament and biblical and theological studies at Bethel University/Seminary and a fellow of Every Voice, an organization that cultivates diversity in Christian theological education.

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Books

Review

The Immigration Stories We Do Not See

Myles Werntz

A new book brings fresh focus on the reality and policy of migration in the Americas by sharing the testimonies of those searching for a new home.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

For many years, migration was both invisible to me and everywhere all at once. In retrospect, it seems impossible that I did not notice it in over a decade of living in Central Texas. But it was only on leaving Texas to teach in Florida that I realized how little I had seen.

In Florida, my students were from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic, and our next-door neighbors hailed from Lebanon, Senegal, and Haiti. We lived in Florida in 2015, when the world watched as thousands upon thousands fled conflicts in the Middle East. In this season, migration forever became part of my world.

Upon returning to Texas in 2016, I came to see that migration is among the most significant social questions for Christians. It brings into focus not only what it means to love our neighbors but also what it means to do justice to all our neighbors. It knits together history, philosophy, political science, and theology. It requires us to pull together insights from psychology, economics, business, and ethics. It tangles up our politics, faith, and culture and demands we give better answers than I, for one, am usually equipped to supply.

Migration scrambles our thinking because it scrambles all these categories. The challenge for Christians seeking to contend with it faithfully is to resist the urge to oversimplify, to imagine we can unscramble what we cannot.

Isaac Samuel Villegas’s Migrant God: A Christian Vision for Immigrant Justice enters this difficult conversation not as a policy proposal but as a testimony. I note this at the beginning because testimony is a theologically significant starting point. As Christians, so much of our faith is built around bearing witness to the testimony of others—of Jesus (John 5:36), his apostles (1 Cor. 1:6), and fellow Christians—and only then establishing how we will live. Faithful testimony invites us to encounter reality.

Villegas’s testimony begins with asking questions about death at the southern US border. Beginning in 1994, an approach called “Prevention Through Deterrence” was put in place, and it directed migrants from the South through a portion of the US-Mexico border with particularly dangerous terrain. This policy has resulted in hundreds of migrant deaths .

By redirecting migrants through more dangerous terrain, Villegas explains, the policy intended to deter migrants: The crossing is so difficult, especially in extreme weather, that perhaps they simply would not come. But they do still come, and some die on the way. Often, when the remains of migrants are discovered, their bodies are unrecognizable and unreturnable to their loved ones. And so, when a group gathered at the border wall in Arizona to hold a vigil in memory of those missing and presumed dead, Villegas gathered with them to bear witness to their names.

By beginning with this account of witnessing the deaths of migrants, Villegas sets the tone for the remainder of the book. We begin to understand migration by attending to those who migrate.

Each chapter in the book is grounded in this way, built less on abstract theory than on names and places. The effect is deeply humanizing, giving flesh to a frequently inhuman debate in which faceless migrants and unknown citizens living in the borderlands are sidelined in favor of convoluted policy debates and legal procedures.

But Migrant God is also grounded in Scripture, as Villegas recounts the stories of migrants as caught up in biblical stories. He describes meals of arroz y frijoles with the undocumented as mirrors of the Last Supper, and remembrances of loved ones lost in the borderlands echo Christian liturgies. Public laments for lost kinship with those on the other side of the border mirror the laments of the Psalms, and protests against divided families echo the prophets’ cries for God to act. Villegas frames words and deeds that might otherwise look like matters of politics alone as deeply theopolitical. He invites us to see God at work in the world.

At the heart of Villegas’s account is a call to recollect God’s care for and history among migrant people. It is this theme that enables Villegas to see the world of Scripture come alive in contemporary testimonies. As he writes in the conclusion,

We believe that our neighbors—regardless of citizenship status, residency documentation, or whether they live on this side or the other side of the border—are held in God’s care. The Bible reminds us that God has been known to join caravans in the wilderness. The Spirit of God dwells with people on the move. A migrant God for migrant life.

In addition to stories of migrant life in the United States, then, Villegas writes of the migrants of Scripture: Israel on a journey through the desert, the holy family fleeing from Herod. These familiar stories are used not as cudgels but as provocations, to invite the reader to connect them to present-day testimonies.

In this evocation of Scripture, this seeing of the present through the lens of the past, Villegas’s work becomes most potent. He reminds the reader that migration is not a new question, nor is migration necessarily a crisis. Through personal accounts, he reiterates that migrants are not irrational or erratic—that no one leaves a home country without a reason and that dwelling in a foreign land comes with great difficulty. Though we may miss it in “invasion” rhetoric, migration is always about humans leaving old homes and trying to make new ones.

Villegas leaves some aspects of migration unexplored. God’s care for migrants is also concerned with finding them homes, with making it possible for the migration to end. Villegas does not make this connection, leaving unexamined what Scripture has to say about belonging, about building a home across borders, and about what role borders play in helping to establish our homes.

I raise the question of migration’s end not to challenge the testimonies Villegas offers but to suggest that there is another dimension to these stories: that God’s presence to migrants is ultimately for the end of their journeying.

Beginning with this end in mind helps us to see more clearly why death is such an affront and what migrants long for in their laments. But it also invites us to consider the testimony of migrants alongside another group of testimonies: the testimonies of those among whom migrants will dwell. Beginning with mercy is appropriate, but moving toward justice invites us to consider testimonies of people of good faith who may want to welcome migrants but have honest questions and honest concerns.

Villegas explicitly states that he is not trying to change anyone’s mind about immigration policy or the ethics of immigration. His aim is to give a human face to an issue often obscured by policy. At times, however, the book strays from this premise and stretches into analysis—theorizing about policing, the nature of borders, and the violence migrants suffer. This is, I think, inevitable: Beginning with testimony leads us to ask more questions about the dynamics underlying those stories. It is natural to turn to thinking about how we might remedy the suffering to which Villegas witnesses.

Yet whatever quibbles we might have over the place of testimony in deciding difficult political and moral questions, Villegas’s work stands out for never losing view of the migrants themselves. This is a habit to be widely imitated if we want more constructive debates about how to humanely and mercifully respond to immigration—if we want to do justice to those seeking a new life elsewhere and to those who are there already.

Migrants are witnesses to a life many of us do not know. That’s not to suggest that their testimonies shouldn’t be subject to scrutiny or that those testimonies generate unassailable policy conclusions. But it is to say migrants cannot be reduced to obstacles or objects of pity or fear. Migrant God offers readers clear eyes and scriptural vision about God’s care for migrants, putting before us the stories and faces too often lost in our debates, mistreated by our laws, and diminished in our politics.

Myles Werntz is author of From Isolation to Community: A Renewed Vision for Christian Life Together. He writes at Taking Off and Landing and teaches at Abilene Christian University.

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News

Filipino Evangelicals Celebrate—and Protest—Duterte’s Arrest

Hannah Keziah Agustin

“I’ve seen many presidents in my lifetime, and even if my opinion is unpopular, I think he’s the best.”

Supporters of Rodrigo Duterte partake in a rally to stand in solidarity with the former President of the Philippines who was arrested for alleged crimes against humanity.

Anadolu / Getty

On Tuesday, March 11, Jack Alvarez attended mass at Ina ng Lupang Pangako Parish in Quezon City. The occasion: thanking God that the International Criminal Court (ICC) had arrested Rodrigo Duterte.

The former president’s war on drugs had claimed the lives of many of the attendees’ children and spouses, who brought photos of their loved ones and placed them on a table by the sanctuary. Locals attended the service—and so did those who had to travel more than an hour to get there.

The evening concluded with “Pananagutan,” or “Brother to Brother.” A tearful crowd sang in Tagalog, “We are all responsible for each other. We are all gathered by God to be with him.”

“Many were happy that they were finally getting justice,” said Alvarez, who pastors Komunidad kay Kristo sa Payatas (Community of Christ in Payatas), an independent evangelical church about a ten-minute walk away that serves the poor and densely populated barangay next to a former dumpsite.

During the Duterte administration, law enforcement shot dead between three and four Payatas residents a day, Alvarez said, recalling one day in 2016 when police shot five men in the heart after accusing them of being drug dealers and of fighting back against the police.

Outside of Ina ng Lupang Pangako Parish, Christians across the country are divided over the ICC’s arrest and charges, which accuse Duterte of killing thousands of people while serving as the head of the “Davao Death Squad” and later while overseeing the country’s law enforcement after he became president. Starting while he was mayor of Davao City, Duterte threatened drug dealers, saying not that he would bring them to justice but instead that he would kill them. Later, police and unidentified shooters executed these extrajudicial killings (EJK).

In Davao City and across Mindanao, the country’s second largest island, thousands of Duterte’s supporters took to the streets, lighting candles, raising placards with words like “We Stand with Duterte” and “We Love You, Tatay,” and praying for his freedom and safety.

“I’m almost 68. I’ve seen many presidents in my lifetime, and even if my opinion is unpopular, I think he’s the best,” said Maria Palacio, a pastor who serves at the prophetic ministry House of Unlimited Grace.

The longtime Mindanaoan has a picture she took with Duterte when she visited Davao—she had been waiting on the sidelines of the photo queue when he called her over—and gushed about how he was “down-to-earth and acted like a regular citizen.” Using his childhood nickname, many of his supporters called him Tatay Digong, or Father Digong, a gesture that came because residents “felt safe” when he was in power, Palacio said.

“People aren’t used to rulers with an iron fist,” she said. “But when he became mayor and president, he cleaned everything up, and drug addicts were scared.”

One of Palacio’s family members struggled with a drug addiction that often left him violent. She felt grateful for policies that she believed directly combatted a problem that had ruined her loved one’s life and hurt her family, and she said she would have voted for him again in the upcoming mayoral elections—Duterte announced he would seek another term last fall—had she still been based in Davao.

Whereas Catholics and mainline Protestants have been grateful for the ICC’s arrest, evangelical reactions have been largely determined by larger politics of the regions where they are from, said Aldrin Peñamora, director of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches’ Justice, Peace, and Reconciliation Commission.

On social media, some Duterte supporters have blamed current president Bongbong Marcos for Duterte’s arrest, Peñamora said. In 2022, Marcos won the presidency, and Duterte’s daughter Sara Duterte won the vice presidency. But the relationship disintegrated when Marcos began to distance himself from Duterte’s drug-war policies. Last year, Sara Duterte threatened to kill Marcos by assassination if she were murdered, and she was impeached by the House of Representatives last month.

Beyond the political drama, misinformation about the president’s whereabouts, images of Duterte prayer rallies created with generative artificial intelligence, a rumored arrest of First Lady Liza Marcos, fake quotes, and false accusations about the ICC have influenced many Filipinos, including Christians.

Duterte is fortunate to at least have gone through due process, unlike the 30,000 who were immediately killed during the drug war, said Gabby Go Balauag, a staff member at Hope of Glory Community Church in Marilao, Bulacan. Further, he wrote on Facebook, Christians’ support for the bloody drug war raises serious moral and theological concerns, among them one’s understanding of the sanctity of life, the emphasis of compassion over condemnation, and the importance of government accountability.

“I can’t align my faith with Duterte’s rhetoric of murder, violence, and abuse,” he said. “This isn’t God’s heart for governance and for disciplining our countrymen.”

His senior pastor, Jonel Milan, tries to keep his congregation informed about current events. Every day from 7:00 to 7:30 a.m., the church gathers to pray about different political issues facing the country. Among them are the West Philippine Sea dispute and the upcoming senatorial elections in May. Balauag said that the majority of congregants agree that the war on drugs was wrong and are praying that the ICC will uphold justice.

On March 14, Duterte appeared in court in The Hague, though his hearing will not start until September 23. Over the next six months, Peñamora hopes church leaders will be careful about not letting politics splinter their congregations. He prays regularly for Duterte’s salvation and spiritual well-being.

“Let’s not forget the thousands of victims and their families,” he said. “My prayer is for the church to have a moral vision to care for them.”

Back in Payatas, Alvarez volunteers with Bawat Isa Mahalaga (“everyone is important”), an evangelical ministry that encourages Filipino Christians to become more civically engaged. As part one of its initiatives, each week, he and his congregants join with Ina ng Lupang Pangako Parish members in giving packs of rice to those orphaned and widowed during the drug war.

“There is no part of creation that is not under the lordship of Christ, and this must reflect in how we help orphans and widows,” Alvarez said. “It isn’t too late for evangelicals to be vocal against EJKs.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the ministry that Alvarez volunteers with.

- More from Hannah Keziah

Theology

Baptism Is Not Optional

Brad East

Contributor

It’s our adoption into God’s family and the seal of our union with Christ. We don’t take it seriously enough.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source images: Unsplash

What is baptism? Is it necessary? Does it do anything? Who can receive it, and when, and how?

These are just some of the questions my students carry into the classroom. I teach theology in Bible Belt, red-county West Texas. Most of my students would check “Christian” on a survey, and their brand is nondenominational: Low Church, Scripture alone, no liturgy or hierarchy, no creeds or rituals. To be a Christian, for them, means to believe in God, trust Jesus for salvation, and follow him as best one can. For the more committed among them, it entails habits of prayer, devotional reading, and Sunday morning worship.

Baptism has a marginal role in this picture. Yet baptism is central to the Christian life: commanded by Jesus, taught by the apostles, and honored, practiced, and contemplated from church fathers like Augustine of Hippo and Cyril of Jerusalem through Protestant reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin. So why does baptism rank so low among these students’ spiritual concerns? I’ve noticed at least three background assumptions they tend to share.

First, my students see baptism as purely symbolic. It does not do anything. Nothing “happens.” In terms of God’s action or presence, it is no different from any other spiritual practice. At the same time, students idealize baptism as a subjective experience. Although God isn’t “literally” washing away their sins, they earnestly hope to feel something. Like weddings with vows written by the bride and groom, baptism is curated, personalized, and documented.

Second, baptism is fundamentally an individual act for my students (if they bother to be baptized at all). It is neither communal nor ecclesial. It is unlikely to be performed by a pastor, in a church, during worship. Above all, it is active, not passive; it is something one does, not something done to oneself. It is, in this sense, a “work.” The agent of baptism is the self; if God is an actor in the drama, his action happens earlier, offstage, likely in tandem with a classic sinner’s prayer.

Third and finally, my students assume baptism is about choice. As a “work” one performs before others, baptism is thus a public display of the decision one has made to be pro Christi. It is one’s undivided, unequivocal yes to the Lord. As a result, baptism is reserved for those able to make such a decision. This is why newborns cannot be baptized—though in recent years many of these congregations have been moving the age for baptism ever downward without explaining the change.

It’s not surprising, then, that among my students, both lack of baptism and “rebaptism” are quite common. The latter happens, for some, because they just didn’t “feel” it the first time—so maybe, they worry, it didn’t “take.” Others decide in their 20s that, a decade prior, they lacked the relevant maturity or knowledge to make a genuine choice for Christ.

For still others, baptism isn’t so much a spiritual wedding, to be performed a single time, as a vow-renewal ceremony, to be repeated as often as one desires. And both the students who are unbaptized and those who go back for repeats view baptism as surplus to requirements anyway—good to do, sure, but not much more than that. For them, even the first time was a vow renewal of sorts.

Talking about baptism

It breaks my heart when I hear these stories. To be sure, I know that Christians disagree about baptism. But surely even traditions with a “low” view of baptism—those that understand it as an ordinance rather than a sacrament—cannot be happy with this sorry state of affairs. Baptists did not get their name by taking baptism lightly.

For nearly the whole of church history, it has been a given for most Christian traditions that baptism is once for all, never to be repeated; that it is a holy mystery instituted by Christ and commanded for all; that in it and through it, the Spirit of God is at work; and that by it and through it, the grace of God is communicated and the gospel of Christ proclaimed.

A supermajority of Christians today still hold to this view, whether Lutheran or Orthodox, Anglican or Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, or Church of Christ. Even Anabaptists (literally “rebaptizers,” a label first applied by their opponents) saw themselves not as re-upping a previous baptism that just didn’t feel right but as performing the first valid baptism the person in question had received. And they took baptism so seriously they were willing to die for it.

We don’t, thank God, burn or drown fellow Christians over baptism anymore. In fact, talking about baptism today—about getting it right in doctrine and practice and hence about ways of getting it wrong—feels like breaking a ceasefire. Our present ecumenical peace is hard won and fragile. Why threaten to disturb it?

My answer is simple: The truth matters, baptism matters, and too many churches handle baptism in the lackadaisical, emotive, and diminishing way I see in my classroom. So, let’s actually talk about what baptism is, what it isn’t, and what Scripture and tradition teach about it.

Cards on the table: I hold a full-blown, whole-hog “high sacramental” view of baptism. It’s a visible word of the gospel; it’s a means of grace; it’s an effective sign. By the power of God’s Word and Spirit, baptism does what baptism says: It washes you clean. It gives you Christ; it gives you his Spirit; it gives you his saving grace. “Baptism,” as the apostle Peter succinctly puts it, “saves you” (1 Pet. 3:21, RSV throughout).

To anticipate the most common objection, no, God does not need water to save you or anyone else, including the thief on the cross (Luke 23:39–43). But that’s because God is God: He can save how, when, and where he pleases. This sovereign prerogative on God’s part is distinct from the ordinary means by which he wills to save us and that he himself instituted through Jesus and his apostles. For example, no doubt God could have saved Israel apart from the Red Sea. Yet that is just how he chose to save them—by dividing the waters and guiding them through on dry land.

As Moses once delivered God’s people from bondage to Pharaoh through the waters, so Jesus delivers us from slavery to sin through the same.

This is what makes baptism so special. It brings together everything significant in the gospel: Father, Son, and Spirit; grace, adoption, and forgiveness; life, death, and resurrection; union, marriage, and faith; Israel, church, and election. Baptism is like the center of the hourglass—all the good things God means to give us come through this one point, before expanding again into the fullness of our lives.

How is this possible? “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). So with the miracle of grace in the mystery of baptism.

I want to unpack that mystery as best I can in this brief space. If you’re already with me, great. We can’t repeat these truths enough. If you’re skeptical of my view of baptism, I ask your patience and suspended judgment. Hear me out and see what you think by the end. What matters is the truth. At a minimum, I hope we can agree that my students deserve something better, richer, and fuller than what they’ve been offered up to now. When given the chance, here’s what I tell them.

Adoption by a heavenly Father

Let’s start with a popular adage: “Everyone is a child of God.” I’ve heard it on the lips of pastors and politicians in equal measure. Is it true?

No, it is not. Everyone is created by God and is his beloved creature. And we all, from conception to death, bear God’s image. This is true irrespective of whether one has ever heard the name of Jesus, and nothing can change it.

But we aren’t born children of God. Birth marks us as human, not divine. We have mothers and fathers and a Creator in heaven, but not (yet) a heavenly Father. This is why Scripture calls Jesus the “only” Son of God (John 1:14, 18; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). His status is unique.

The gospel is the good news that you and I may become children of God. We may receive the gift of God as our Father. And this makes sense: How could it be good news—or even news at all—if God were already our Father?

The Gospel of John puts it this way: The eternal Word came into the world yet was not received for who he was (1:1–11). “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (vv. 12–13). We are not born God’s children; rather, God became man to give us the power to become his children. This is the purpose and the effect of the Incarnation.

The idea of a transfer of parentage is not new to us. It’s called adoption, and for Paul, this one word sums up the work of Christ on our behalf (Rom. 8:15, 23; Gal. 4:5). Through Jesus, the eternal Son of God, anyone on earth may receive the grace of becoming his brothers and sisters and therefore sons and daughters of the Almighty.

But how? This is the question Nicodemus puts to Jesus (John 3:4). And Jesus gives a straight answer: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (v. 5). In short, spiritual rebirth comes through baptism.

In Jesus’s own baptism by John, we see water, Spirit, and sonship joined together. We ourselves are baptized not only in obedience to Jesus but also in imitation of him. Whereas baptism is the moment of our adoption by God, Jesus was already God’s Son. He submitted to baptism to sanctify for all time the waters that would impart his rank to others. Every subsequent baptism is thus a participation in his, a reenactment of the scene at the Jordan. God says anew, about us, what the crowds heard that day: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22, translation mine).

The many gifts of baptism

Adoption into God’s family is only one of baptism’s many gifts. Through this wonderful sacrament God bestows on us more gifts than I can name here, but I will mention six.

First, the gift of the Holy Spirit. When we are baptized, we join not only Jesus in the Jordan but also the 12 in the Upper Room (Acts 2:1–13). Every baptism is a personal Pentecost. As the Spirit descended on Jesus in the river and on his followers at the festival, so he descends on us.

Second, the gift of union with Christ. In baptism, what is his becomes ours; what was ours he takes into himself and there extinguishes (2 Cor. 8:9). What he is by nature we become by grace—not only children of God but also kings, priests, prophets, sages; holy, righteous, faithful, immortal; happy, blessed, spiritual, eternal. In a word, he gives us his own life, indestructible and inexhaustible because it is the life of God (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:1–4; 1 John 5:11–12).

But not without, third, the gift of death, as Paul writes:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. (Rom. 6:3–5)

Baptism drowns the old self, the flesh ensnared by sin and death. We rise from the waters reborn, freed from bondage to the old tyrants that enslaved us. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Fourth, the gift of adoption. Am I repeating myself? No, I speak of another adoption: not by God but by Abraham. Baptism joins us to God’s chosen people. All the promises of God are “Yes” and “Amen” in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20) because he is the offspring of Abraham (Gal. 3:16). No one can have Abraham’s son (Matt. 1:1) without Abraham himself, or Abraham’s God without Abraham’s family. Outside this family, Gentiles are hopeless and godless (Eph. 2:12). Those of us who are Gentiles, then, receive a double adoption in baptism. As Paul writes,

In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Gal. 3:26–29)

Fifth, the gift of membership. Baptism is not only vertical; it is horizontal too. Baptism adds us to the church, which is Christ’s body: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:12–13). Hence Paul lists “one baptism” alongside “one Lord” and “one faith” in his famous statement of Christian unity (Eph. 4:4–6).

Finally, the gift of marriage. The bond that baptism works in us is not only filial, between Father and children. It is nuptial, between husband and wife. Our public profession of faith is like the vows we make at the altar; accordingly, baptism is the consummation of the marriage. After all, an unconsummated marriage is invalid; in a manner of speaking, so is faith apart from baptism. Baptism is the perfection of faith because it seals the union of bride (the soul) and groom (Christ).

Lest this seem like stretching a metaphor, return to Paul: “Do you not know that he who joins himself to a [woman] becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two shall become one flesh.’ But he who is united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Cor. 6:16–17). Apparently the only intimacy comparable to the spiritual union between a believer and Christ is the bodily union of husband and wife—and the former transcends the latter by fulfilling it. As Paul writes elsewhere, “This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:32).

The gifts of the bridegroom range far beyond this meager list. Cyril of Jerusalem, for example, says that baptism will “give you amnesty for your past sins, plant you in the church, and enlist you in his army, putting upon you the armor of righteousness.” It is more than a spiritual bath, washing the soul clean. Types and figures of baptism fill the Old Testament: It is the primal waters of creation, tamed by the Creator (Gen. 1:1–2); it is the Red Sea, through which God’s people are delivered from bondage (Ex. 14:1–15:21); it is the Jordan, in which the Gentile Naaman is cleansed by the God of Israel (2 Kings 5:1–19).

Baptism does what nothing else can. As Martin Luther said, by baptism “we are made holy and are saved, which no other kind of life, no work upon earth, can attain.” All of God’s promises come together here, in the waters of grace.

The good news of baptism

Perhaps I’ve sold you on the meaning, gifts, and even necessity of baptism but not yet on its inner logic—what makes it intrinsic to the good news rather than an additional box to check once God has done the real work, so to speak, off camera. Why, in other words, did Jesus command his apostles to make disciples from all nations not only by “teaching” but also by “baptizing” them (Matt. 28:19–20), or as later tradition would put it, through “word and sacrament” together?

Here’s one way to put it: The good news of baptism is its objective, factual character. This is why Luther exalted baptism. When tormented by the devil, Luther was unable to rely on his faith, because that was the very thing under assault—when you can’t be sure you believe, then belief is no consolation. But he could always point to his baptism as a matter of historical fact. It is said that he would reply to Satan: “Baptizatus sum” (I am baptized).

Luther’s example helps us see the depths of God’s mercy toward us. In baptism, God has provided us a tangible, historical moment to which we can point with every confidence, even in times of doubt and anxiety. Then and there, Christ himself met us in the waters.

That confidence is possible because baptism is not, like tithing, a human work we perform. It is a divine gift we receive. We are not the agents of baptism; God is. We don’t “do” baptism; baptism is done to us. Notice the phrasing: One is baptized. The grammatical passive is also theological. I can’t baptize myself; I need another to do it for me.

And like the death of Christ on the cross, baptism is once for all, not to be repeated. In this sense, “rebaptism” is an oxymoron because baptism—washing with water in the triune name of God—always “takes.” Every “redo” is just a bath. We are already maximally forgiven, maximally redeemed, once for all, forever.

This is the startling, wonderful, incredible good news of baptism. It’s why baptism embodies the gospel. Grace is scandalous. It gives us what we don’t deserve, what was never ours to expect. It pardons thieves, liars, adulterers, and murderers. It pardons me. It pardons you.

The living Christ imparts this pardon through baptism, because it bears his effective word and, with it, God’s power to save, his grace for sinners, and his will to forgive. As Cyril instructed catechumens preparing for baptism in the fourth century, “Stop paying attention to the lips of the one speaking, but to God who is working.”

Baptism is about what God has done, can do, and will do pro me (“for me”). It’s not about my yes to God, which may be weak or wavering and at any age is sure to lack maturity and knowledge alike. That’s why I’m being baptized in the first place—my lack, my need. Baptism, instead, is ultimately about God’s yes to me. It is about his inscrutable love for godless rebels made manifest through the humblest and most common of elements: water.

In the words of Paul (2 Cor. 9:15), “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint.

- More from Brad East

Testimony

I Went to Prison for Murder. God’s Word Brought Freedom.

Antoine Davis

After enduring brutality as a child and inflicting it as a gang member, I sought healing and wholeness at the cross.

Courtesy of Britteni Davis and Robert W Jensen / Edits by CT

My mother’s screams pierced my ears as I sat at the top of the stairs, holding my siblings for comfort.

My stepfather repeatedly slapped, slammed, and choked her until she was nearly unconscious. Between her cries and the shattering of broken picture frames, I struggled to keep my violently pounding heart from breaking through my eight-year-old rib cage.

Many of these fights resulted from my stepfather’s infidelity and blatant disrespect of my mother. Whenever she confronted him about coming home at three in the morning or sleeping with other women, he would respond with anger and aggression. On many occasions, she would apply makeup in the morning to cover the scratches and bruises on her face.

For years, my mother worked tirelessly at multiple jobs to provide for her family, giving everything she had to take care of her children. Unfortunately, she went months without knowing about the frequent beatings I was receiving in her absence.

Whenever she would leave for work, my stepfather would accuse my mother of sleeping with other men—an obvious projection of his own wrongdoing. Because I was a child from my mother’s previous relationship, he began accusing me of covering up her alleged affairs, despite the fact that I was too young to process the concept of adultery.

Ideally, home should have been a refuge from the harsh realities of life in the outside world. Instead, it became the source of my trauma. Beatings and brutal words were the norm. When my mother finally noticed the black-and-blue marks that decorated my body, she confronted my stepfather, only to be met with more of his brutish attacks, the consequence of his toxic masculinity.

Believing I had nowhere to turn, I suffered in silence, stuffing my hurts, pains, fears, and anxieties deep inside, trying to make sure my mother wouldn’t get punished for trying to protect me. I had no idea these traumatizing experiences would crack my internal mirror, distorting my view of reality and fueling a twisted sense of self.

Somewhere deep within me, I believed that God was real, but he didn’t seem relevant in my struggle to survive. I endured the feelings of emptiness alone, which set me searching for anything that would fill the hole in my heart.

Hanging with the ‘big boys’

The ceiling fan did nothing to clear the cigarette smoke that filled the air. Beer cans and alcohol bottles covered the countertops, and no one seemed concerned about the three-year-old toddler wandering in the living room. I had just sat down at the black wooden table in the kitchen after being invited to play dominoes with my older cousins and their friends. Most of them wore blue bandanas around their heads and necks, indicating their affiliation with the Crips, a neighborhood gang based in South Seattle.

While Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” blared over the sound system, a spark from a clear blue lighter illuminated the tip of a brown cigar filled with marijuana. My cousin took a pull, holding the smoke in before passing the blunt around the table. When it finally reached me, I leaned back, expecting to be excluded from their smoke session.

When my older cousin, whom we called E-Tray, noticed my hesitation, he began calling me “Lil’ Chow Chow,” a knockoff of the kid rapper Lil’ Bow Wow, and everyone at the table burst into laughter. “What, you can’t hang with the big boys?” he asked, adopting a high-pitched voice meant to sound unmasculine.

On the surface, it was fun and games, but he didn’t know about my unhealed wounds of rejection, the deeply rooted insecurities I had developed after years of being abused by my stepfather. Although my 13-year-old conscience told me not to give in, my hunger for acceptance won out.

I took the blunt and placed it to my lips. Within seconds, I began coughing uncontrollably, as if someone had vacuum-sealed the air from my lungs. Nothing was enjoyable about that experience. But the unpleasant feeling of getting high was overshadowed by the cheers, fist bumps, and pats on the back I received from those around the table. When they passed me the alcohol, I took that too.

Gradually, the intoxication settled in, not merely from the drugs, but from feeling validated. For that reason alone, I kept smoking, determined to show the fellas that I belonged. In retrospect, I realize the insight of Proverbs 27:7, “To the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” I was starving for love and acceptance, and this bitter introduction to drugs, alcohol, and gang association appeared to provide both.

Weary and unfulfilled

It was a little after 2 a.m. when I made it back to my duplex. Opening the bedroom door, I found my two-year-old son and his mother sound asleep. Before getting undressed, I emptied my pockets, pulling out a gun, some drugs, and money I had collected from the women I prostituted. Together, the items gave a snapshot of my life as my 21st birthday approached.

Sitting on the edge of the bed—still high from the pills I took earlier—I contemplated the road I was traveling. A lot had transpired in the previous four years. I had been shot at, held at gunpoint, and assaulted multiple times and had lost close friends to senseless violence during my high-school years.

I had gone from smoking and drinking to womanizing, pulling off bank scams, dealing drugs, and popping ecstasy pills—all intended to numb the pain of the lingering void I felt inside. I had the money and street cred I longed for as a 13-year-old, but none of these things provided fulfillment.

Compelled by my weary soul, I slid from the edge of my bed and onto my knees. While resting my head in my hands, I began praying to a God I had never met, speaking with an unexplainable confidence that he could fill the emptiness within me. After praying, I wiped the tears from my eyes, returned to bed, and fell asleep. But less than three weeks later, I would be caught in a situation that would alter my life forever.

It began with a devastating phone call from my son’s mother, who delivered the news that my best friend had been shot multiple times at an auto parts store. I squeezed the phone in tears as she related the details, exclaiming, “He might not make it!” The shooter had fired on my friends and me numerous times before, leaving 25 empty shell casings at one of the crime scenes. Despite our attempts to defuse the ongoing tension, which sprang from a senseless argument, he was bent on establishing his street credibility, even at the cost of trying to murder someone I loved.

Hours later, my friends and I prepared to take our revenge. We climbed into our Ford Taurus, one of us armed with an assault rifle and the other two (including me) carrying handguns. As the car stopped at a red light, pulling close to our target, we jumped out. Filled with grief and anger, one of my friends approached the other vehicle, firing multiple rounds in its direction.

When I lifted my handgun to join in, I thought about how often this man we were attacking had threatened my life. I thought about the friend I loved lying in a hospital bed after this man had shot him seven times just hours before. My 21-year-old mind was consumed by fear, pain, sadness, anger, and frustration. Mindlessly, I chose to squeeze the trigger. By the grace of God, my gun jammed. I didn’t realize that on the other side of those tinted windows was a two-year-old child.

Healing behind bars

Within a few days, I found myself lying on a concrete floor of an overcrowded county jail cell, watching the headlines flash across the screen of an old television hanging from the ceiling. Above the “Breaking News” of my capture was a mug shot, showing an intoxicated 21-year-old whose fuzzy French braids and glossy eyes fit the media’s image of a criminal.

I closed my eyes in disbelief, wondering how my life had been reduced to the label of murderer. As I contemplated my reality, a waterfall of depression poured from my chest into the depths of my bowels, and I felt overwhelmed by fear as I envisioned life in prison.

Getting up from my cot, I asked the young man in the cell for the Bible that he had offered and I had rejected, just hours earlier. I had always believed in God, but I had never considered what he required of my life. I was too angry and bitter, never realizing that my pain had become my prison, first figuratively and then literally.

This Hispanic kid handed me the blue book, with a warped partial cover. Beneath the title, The Message, were broken handcuffs torn from a man’s wrists, symbolizing the freedom I desperately wanted. For the following week, I lay on the floor, reading the Bible for hours. Its truths cut me like a surgeon’s knife, removing the moral cancer that nearly consumed my heart through years of trauma.

I felt exposed before God’s Word. It penetrated through everything I had used to hide my childhood scars. I saw the truth of my brokenness, pointing me toward the cross where God promised wholeness through faith in Jesus.

The night before I was extradited back to Seattle, I sat up wrestling with a series of questions. How can God love a murderer? How can he accept this flawed and fragmented person I’ve become? Can I come before him utterly broken and empty-handed? My heart ached for mercy and grace. Before long, I had dropped my head in prayer:

God, if you’re real, I want this new life you’re offering through your Son. Please forgive me for the things I’ve done, and give me the heart to be the person you created me to be.

In that dark jail cell, I wept until my eyes were swollen. This time, a sense of peace flooded my heart like water bursting through a broken pipe. I knew I was accepted—not by the men whose affirmation I once sought but by the God who held my life in his hands. From that day forward, I studied the Word of God like my life depended on it, and through my relationship with Christ, the holes in my heart began to heal.

‘Walk with me, Son’

On September 24, 2011, I was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to 63 years in prison. Before I was transferred from King County Jail to Washington State Penitentiary, I poured myself out before God yet again, praying that he would give me the grace to endure what he had in store for me.

I’ll never forget the words the Lord placed on my heart in that jail cell: “Walk with me, Son, and I promise to work it out for your good.” I didn’t fully understand the details of that promise, but I clung to him without compromise.

It’s been 16 years, and my imprisonment hasn’t been easy. But God has been faithful. After receiving my Certificate in Christian Leadership from The Urban Ministry Institute, I became a licensed pastor, working under the leadership of my senior pastor, Zachary Bruce Sr. of Freedom Church of Seattle. I’ve been privileged to minister to countless folks who have been hurt, broken, and overwhelmed by their traumatizing experiences. And I’ve watched the gospel message radically change the lives of fellow prisoners who, like me, were dismissed as irredeemable.

As a child, I never imagined that God would use someone as broken and messed up as I was. But I have found that even in the messiest lives, God can produce a message—if only we have the audacity to trust him.

Antoine Davis is an incarcerated writer and journalist serving a 63-year sentence in Washington state. He is the author of Building Blocks: Curriculum for Creating Wholeness.

- More from Antoine Davis

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Don’t moralize church size

Church growth dynamics as a discipleship issue

Growth dynamics

Place dynamics

Member dynamics

Lead with wisdom and grace

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Talking about baptism

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Adoption by a heavenly Father

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The many gifts of baptism

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The good news of baptism

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Hanging with the ‘big boys’

Weary and unfulfilled

Healing behind bars

‘Walk with me, Son’

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