Confronting Evils

In 1974, CT saw trouble in the White House, Chile, and Cyprus, and in the American fascination with exorcists.

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

The Watergate scandal grew worse in 1974—and then worse still. CT looked at President Richard Nixon’s ethical lapses, revealed in the publication of transcripts of secret tapes he had in the White House, and asked, “Should Nixon resign?”

There can be no doubt that a large percentage of those who voted for Richard Nixon in November, 1972, no longer have confidence in him, and that his capacity to execute the functions of his office has been considerably reduced. Whether guilty or innocent of impeachable offenses—“treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”—he bears the ultimate responsibility for what Watergate has come to stand for.

Mr. Nixon’s problems were greatly intensified by his release of the transcripts of the tapes. Up to that time the major if not the only question was a legal one: Did he have advance knowledge of Watergate and was he involved in the cover-up? To that has been added a large question of morality. The transcripts show him to be a person who has failed gravely to live up to the moral demands of our Judeo-Christian heritage. We do not expect perfection, but we rightly expect our leaders, and especially our President, to practice a higher level of morality than the tapes reveal. …

We now have a President who is under House scrutiny for possible impeachment and whose moral flaws have been revealed. A legal question lies at the root of the call for impeachment; a moral question, at least superficially and theoretically, lies at the root of the call for resignation. If the President were to resign, the legal question would not be resolved. Yet the Constitution does not provide for the removal of a President because of moral flaws. To resign would be to leave the presidency for other than a constitutional offense. …

Superficially a case can be made for resignation based on the immediate best interests of the nation. But the long-run disadvantages might outweigh any immediate benefits.

When Nixon did resign—the first (and, to-date, only) president in American history to step down in disgrace—CT paused to reflect on the troubled era and express hope for the next president, Gerald Ford.

During the last decade and a half John F. Kennedy was assassinated; the armed forces fought in Viet Nam and finally came home; Lyndon B. Johnson was eliminated from the 1968 presidential campaign by the pressures of an unpopular war despite his election in 1964 by a great landslide; Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a time when his candidacy for the office of president was reaching a high tide; Richard Nixon won the election in 1968 with the promise to end the war in Viet Nam and bring peace to the world. The end of Nixon’s first term was marred by the Watergate charges. …

Early in his second term Nixon succeeded in bringing U.S. participation in the Viet Nam war to a conclusion. Not long thereafter came the exposure and finally the resignation from the vice-presidency of Spiro Agnew, whose “law and order” mentality was grossly at variance with his personal practices. Meanwhile the Watergate situation was moving slowly but inexorably to a climax, which finally came on the evening of August 8, when President Nixon announced to the nation that he would resign the following day. …

America’s new president, Gerald Ford, seems to have grasped the central demand of the nation from the ethical standpoint: the need for truth, honesty, and integrity in the White House and throughout the government. He has promised to make these principles the pole-stars of his administration. No government can long stand when these virtues have disappeared. We hope that Mr. Ford will clearly exemplify them, that in his conduct of the government there will be an openness and honesty and an obvious commitment to righteousness.

President Ford would be well advised to choose men and women of Christian faith and prayer to work with him—not just career bureaucrats, businessmen, and financiers.

In 1974, CT also reported on struggles around the world. Theologian René Padilla, a regular columnist, wrote about the military coup in Chile in a piece titled “The Church and Political Ambiguity.”

For many Latin Americans the former President of Chile, Salvador Allende, was a symbol of hope. Democratically elected in 1970, he was for them the embodiment of a cherished desire for revolution without bloodshed. …

But the experiment was doomed to failure. Whatever one may think of the ideological color of Allende’s revolution, the fact remains that no small nation in the Third World is truly free today to follow its own course and to keep its economy unaffected by international pressures at the same time. Add to this the internal pressures created not only by the political conservatives but also by the extreme leftists, and you will easily understand the great economic chaos that overtook Chile in the months preceding the military blow of September, 1973. …

I will not attempt here to explain the factors that precipitated the military blow led by General Augusto Pinochet and his colleagues (all of them professing Roman Catholics) last year. According to a common opinion, it would have never taken place aside from the encouragement of the U. S. State Department. Be that as it may, Allende’s Marxist experiment came to an end marked by his own suicide and followed by a systematic effort to reverse the revolution that he had initiated.

As soon as the military had taken over, several evangelical leaders expressed their adherence to the new government. That God had directly intervened to deliver the country from Communism was a widespread view among evangelical Christians. And I know of at least one missionary statesman whose interpretations of the military takeover as God’s doing was widely circulated abroad. Nothing was said, however, about the negative aspects of the whole situation and particularly about the appalling cruelty displayed by the military regime in dealing with its political opponents.

CT also tried to help readers understand the political tumult happening in Cyprus, where a military coup overthrew a president who was also an Eastern Orthodox archbishop:

To write about Cyprus is not easy, partly because of the complexity of the situation, partly because of the marked (but understandable) unhelpfulness I experienced in Nicosia from British and American information agencies, but also because of my dismay, felt in 1965 and recently renewed in Nicosia, that the dual role of Makarios should perpetuate old antagonisms. That one man should officially represent both church and state calls for a Solomonic wisdom and impartiality that the president/archbishop shows little signs of possessing.

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” is a word that the apostles may well have proclaimed to the Cypriot proconsul Sergius Paulus. Makarios and his troubled island vividly demonstrate the folly of ignoring that divine injunction.

Evangelicals were thinking globally in 1974 thanks, in part, to the International Congress on World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland. CT treated the event as a monumental moment in evangelical history and covered the gathering from beginning to end. Billy Graham laid out the purpose in a 5,600-word article, “Why Lausanne?”

God is at work in a remarkable way. Never have so many people been so open to the Gospel. In parts of Asia, there are evidences of the outpouring of God’s Spirit in evangelism. In Korea, the churches are increasing four times faster than the population. In certain parts of northeast India, Christians now form a majority of the population and are bringing about a whole new dimension of civic righteousness. In Papua, New Guinea, a land where the Gospel was virtually unknown before this generation, a large percentage of the people now profess faith in Christ. Latin Americans are responding to the Gospel in unprecedented numbers, and evangelical churches in many parts of Latin America are multiplying vigorously.

In North America, especially the United States, there has been a remarkable upsurge of interest in the Gospel in the last decade—especially among youth. It is true that old denominations with theologically liberal tendencies are declining; yet the more evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptist Convention (America’s largest Protestant denomination) are showing a steady growth. Similarly the evangelical theological seminaries and Bible schools are overflowing while the more liberal schools are seeing a dramatic drop in enrollment. Scores of para-church evangelistic organizations are flourishing as never before.

Editor Harold Lindsell offered an optimistic appraisal after the meeting:

Lausanne dealt substantively with two questions: (1) What is it that evangelicals believe and are called upon to do? and (2) What strategies and methods can evangelicals, working together, use to complete the task God has called them to do?

Lausanne brought together many of the finest evangelical minds and the most devoted and committed servants of God. The excellence of the program, the wide range of small strategy and study groups, the mingling of men and women across racial, class, and denominational lines, and the free expression of differing opinions on some questions were hallmarks of the congress. …

At Lausanne the Gospel was tied to the mission of the Church, and that mission was defined as the evangelization of the world. … The spirit of sacrifice required to do this job was emphasized, and covenant signers were called upon to cultivate “a simple lifestyle in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.” …

At Lausanne, social action was not put on the same plane with the proclamation of the Gospel, nor was it given standing as a substitute for the Gospel. But it surfaced again and again, and Christians were called to work for justice for all mankind.

Other spiritual developments of the era were more troubling. CT said the success of the film The Exorcist spurred widespread interest in demons, prompting many Americans to ask, “Exorcism: Is it for real?”

Experiential realization of Satan’s existence is not hard to come by either, in our century of world holocausts (nobody wants war, but war is everywhere), genocide, and a humanity bent on self-destruction. … If one accepts the biblical evidence for the ontological reality of the devil, one is simultaneously committed to the reality of demon possession, for the demons of the New Testament do not remain outside human life, with their hideous countenances pressed as it were against the windowpanes of the soul; they can break through the glass and take up residence within. …

Possession by demons is one of the most constant and universal religious phenomena, experientially confirmed among primitive peoples and civilized moderns alike, as the classical treatises on the subject fully attest ….

Whatever the forms employed in exorcism, everything must focus upon the power and strength of Christ. An exorcist, no matter how sound in doctrine and sanctified in life, is no personal match for supernatural evil. Just as some witnessing battles are lost while others are won, so some exorcisms succeed while others do not.

The maturity of The Exorcist as book and film was nowhere better demonstrated than in its recognition that in the last analysis, where all else fails, only Substitution rids man of the evil powers arrayed against him. Thus the final appeal must always be made to the Great Substitute, who on the cross, “having spoiled principalities and powers, made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Col. 2:14, 15).

There and there alone we have an Exorcist who (thank God!) does not need to be paid to prevent repossession. What he did for us can never be repaid. And one day even our failures will be redeemed, for from the heights of heaven to the lowest depths of hell every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Housing Doesn’t Solve Homelessness

Marvin Olasky

At California’s Orange County Rescue Mission, a two-year program provides far more than a roof over residents’ heads.

Homeless people and tents on a sidewalk in Los Angeles, California on July 24, 2025.

VCG / Contributor / Getty

California Governor Gavin Newsom regularly repeats his mantra: “Shelter solves sleep; housing solves homelessness.” Hmm. From 2022 to 2025, I wrote weekly columns about homelessness and gained insight by living for three weeks in shelters. Based on that I can say: In general, it is not true that housing solves homelessness.

Maybe it solves homelessness for people who are notaddicts, alcoholics, mentally ill, or victims of abusive childhoods, but most homeless people are in one or more of those four categories. Maybe housing solves homelessness if the rest of us don’t like to see homeless people: Get them out of sight and they can be out of mind.

Invisibility benefits those who have homes. Unseen homeless folks don’t ask us for money, so we are free from giving what often goes to buy drugs or alcohol, or from not giving and feeling heartless. But for those who are out of theirminds for various reasons, housing does not solve homelessness.

Augustine 1,600 years ago famously said regarding God, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The earthbound equivalent is “Our bodies are restless until they reside in a home.” For many, though, walls and a roof alone do not make a home.

Instead, hiding away addicts or alcoholics inside an apartment leaves many apart from everything except a needle or a bottle. Hiding away the severely mentally ill leaves them apart from everything except walking nightmares. People who are desperately ill need to be together with someone who can offer compassionate help.

That’s one reason a chart used at the Orange County Rescue Mission (OCRM) in Tustin, California, impressed me. It’s one of the places I lived at for a few days in January to gain some street-level understanding of these issues. Instead of using one marker to assess progress in coming out of homelessness—a signed apartment lease, say—OCRM evaluates a more holistic list of ten, including: “spiritual … sobriety/substance abuse (if applicable) … mental health … shelter/housing … social/family relationships … income and employment … physical health, food, and nutrition.” (This quotation and those that follow are from the OCRM “Outcome Assessments,” and I’ve seen that actions back up those words.)

OCRM calls its residents “students” and helps them move from freshman to senior status during what is often a two-year stay until graduation. To move from one class to another, students need to make progress in the various areas, going from “stuck” to “accepting help” to “believing” to “learning” to “thriving.”

The “believing” is most clearly applicable to spiritual formation. Some homeless people might avoid discussions about faith and Christianity or aggressively dismiss opportunities to participate or learn more. However, when they enter OCRM, they need to be “willing to attend Bible studies/church events and engage in discussions about Christianity.” The big change comes with attending church, involvement in church community, and—in God’s mercy—coming to faith.

For those contending with sobriety/substance abuse, “stuck” means a life of alcohol, drugs, and unwillingness to discuss that or get support. That often accompanies a belief that change won’t happen and a tendency to miss appointments. A move to “accepting help” begins with the realization that “I’m fed up with the negative impact of alcohol or drugs.”

“Believing” comes with understanding that change is essential and the willingness to access support to maintain sobriety, set goals, and keep appointments. To graduate, participants need to understand what triggers them to drink or take drugs and to find new ways to cope with the causes. They thrive when faith, family, friends, and support groups, plus their own strategies, help them maintain sobriety. The compassionate help that begins at OCRM radiates out in these community connections to support the still vulnerable, yet newly focused, graduates.

A typical pre-OCRM social or family life is often described like this: “I am always alone or with people who exploit me, and I will not discuss this.” Through ongoing relational care at OCRM, students begin to articulate a shift. “I want to find more positive relationships. … I am talking to one or more people I can trust. … I’m recognizing that my relationships revolved around alcohol, drugs, or negative behavior.” Then comes “I need support to maintain/build positive contacts but am learning,” and “I feel connected and supported. … If I am in contact with my family, the relationship is healthy.” New, trusting relationships developed in the shelter give students confidence to try new skills and take wise relational risks as they rebuild social and family connections outside the shelter’s walls.

Crucially, OCRM’s ten steps out of homelessness are not vague wishes but measurable outcomes. Regarding “income and employment,” a first step is often starting work on a GED or high school diploma, as necessary, and starting a volunteer work assignment. Then comes more learning and training, completing a job readiness workshop, gaining a diploma, developing a personal budget, meeting with a financial accountability partner, and starting and continuing full-time employment.

On legal matters, pre-entrants often combine missed court appearances with denial of responsibility. Eventually they learn “how to avoid high-risk people situations. I’m learning my triggers and how to manage my behavior. … I have no outstanding issues with the police or courts.” Each step equips a student with the skills necessary to succeed long-term when housing becomes a viable option.

Regarding “physical health, food and nutrition,” the movement being fostered is from bad health and risky behavior to action for improvement, including taking daily prescribed medications, seeking nutritious food, and visiting doctors and dentists as needed.

Students receive evaluations at months 3, 9, 13, and 19. It’s hard: Most who enter head back to the streets during those first 3 months, but 7 out of 10 who stick around past that go all the way to graduation. According to OCRM, in 2025, 100 percent of graduates secured full-time employment and housing, and since 2018, 85 percent of alumni have maintained sobriety and employment. One-fourth of entrants do not have a high school diploma, but graduates have one or the GED equivalent. The hardest thing is that OCRM works for some but not for others.

The work of organizations like OCRM reveals the oversimplification embedded in Newsom’s mantra. For most, the journey from homeless to homed is a long and winding one that only reaches its end with thecompassionate help of many trained supporters. Solving homelessness requires far more than available housing units and a way to cover the monthly rent. OCRM’s practical program readies homeless men and women for not a temporary tent but a permanent home on earth and perhaps in heaven.

- More from Marvin Olasky

Ideas

Duvall’s ‘The Apostle’ Treated Evangelicals With Empathy

Aaron Griffith

In the late actor’s hands, Christian conversion was not something to be lampooned or deconstructed but an object of wonder.

Robert Duvall at the 15th Cognac Crime Film Festival in 1997.

Eric Robert / Contributor / Getty

Robert Duvall died last week at the age of 95. An acting legend, he starred in memorable roles in classic films, such as The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. But Duvall was also an expert interpreter of American evangelicalism.

His 1997 film The Apostle, which he wrote, directed, and starred in, was far less popular than Francis Ford Coppola–directed blockbusters, and it almost wasn’t made. Duvall ended up spending $5 million of his own money to produce the film after initially failing to land Hollywood interest. I’m glad he forged ahead. For me, as a historian of American religion and someone who grew up in Southern evangelicalism, The Apostle remains a powerful example of how filmmaking can treat a religious subject with critical empathy.

The film centers on Sonny, a Pentecostal revivalist and pastor played by Duvall. Sonny has a successful preaching ministry and oversees a large church in southeastern Texas. He is also married to Jessie, played brilliantly by Farrah Fawcett, with whom he has two young children. Sonny discovers Jessie has been sleeping with a fellow minister and has orchestrated a takeover of the church, effectively removing him from leadership. He gets drunk and shows up to his son’s baseball game, whereupon he flies into a rage and, in a shocking scene, assaults his wife’s lover with a baseball bat. (We learn later the lover dies from his injuries.)

Sonny then goes on the run from the law. Ditching his car in a river along the way, he baptizes himself and takes the name Apostle E. F. He winds up in a rural Louisiana town and announces his intention to start a new church. The church welcomes both Black and white residents, becoming a site of belonging for townspeople on the margins (including the now-famous Walton Goggins in one of his first roles) and receiving the ire of a local white supremacist (played by Billy Bob Thornton). Sonny rebukes the racist, inspires his church community, serves those who are in need, and seems to have remade his own life and ministry in a humbler, gentler style. But eventually he is found out. He preaches one last sermon, then gives himself up to the police who wait outside the church.

What is most striking about the film is not the plot or even the rich character studies; instead, it’s Duvall’s depictions of Pentecostal worship and sophisticated explorations of Southern evangelical ministry and practice. Duvall not only acts well in the film, but he also cast and surrounded himself with actual Pentecostals.

“I didn’t want to come in and tell them what to do. I wanted them to show me what they do,” Duvall later said. In the film, he literally hands these men and women the microphone, and they preach, pray, and worship on camera as they would any given Sunday. Unlike most Hollywood depictions of evangelical faith, The Apostle’s “qualified realism,” as Patton Dodd has put it, lingers on the preachers and congregants in these moments, showcasing the beauty and rhetorical power of radical evangelical preaching and worship.

Sonny himself embodies evangelicals’ dispositions and ministry style. This is all the more remarkable given that Duvall hailed from a very different background, that of Christian Science. Yet he understood the weight and internal logic of classic evangelicalism.

This is clear in the film’s first few minutes, when Sonny and his mother (played by an elderly June Carter Cash) come upon a car wreck on the side of the road. Duvall runs to the crashed vehicle, Bible in hand, and prays with the seriously injured young driver. “I want you to know the Lord loves you,” he tells the man, before asking him to pray in his mind and ask Jesus into his heart so he might go to heaven. The man, in shock, barely able to speak and possibly on death’s door, nods in agreement with Sonny’s exhortations and whispers, “Thank you.”

On paper, this scene probably shouldn’t work. Indeed, it is fashionable to criticize American evangelicals for moments like these, where an individual’s simple moment of decision, offered as a kind of “get to heaven and out of hell” card, overlooks the much more expansive vision of the Christian life in its practical, communal, and complex fullness. Many evangelicals and ex-evangelicals alike have been burned by exactly this kind of exhortation, laser-focused on the afterlife, to get right with God by asking Jesus into your heart. But The Apostle shows in this moment the deep power of evangelical faith for confronting the most wrenching of horrors, even death itself. It doesn’t matter if you have never thought a wit about God; when the chips are down, Jesus stands ready to receive you still.

God can do it for the man in the car. And, the film suggests, God can do it for Sonny—though whether he accepts that call is another matter. In Duvall’s hands, the evangelical conversion experience is something to be not lampooned or deconstructed but marveled at.

At the same time, The Apostle showcases evangelical violence and harm. This is true not only of Sonny’s deadly assault on a fellow minister but also of his relationships with others, especially women. Though he rages against his wife’s infidelity, Sonny admits he has been unfaithful himself. He also pursues a younger woman later in the film, trying (though never succeeding) to sleep with her. Sonny might be a skilled preacher with a remarkable church, but as my students have said to me when I show them the film, he is also a major creep. And given his own dishonesty and reluctance to disclose his past, it’s not a stretch to say his entire ministry is built on lies.

Sonny’s ongoing sinfulness, as well as the fact that he never takes responsibility for it, indicates that this is not a simple story of redemption, a term that comes up time and again in early reviews of the film. But I don’t think that is quite right. Duvall clearly understood something about the constant temptations evangelicals face in the realms of sex and worldly power—and in the flexibility of evangelical self-definition, of never having to say sorry.

I have often wondered whether the marketers behind the film hoped evangelical audiences would overlook this fact, given that some of the movie’s promotion branded it as a feel-good, redemptive Christian story, with Steven Curtis Chapman as the lead single on the soundtrack to boot.

Though some viewers may see the story as pro-Christian propaganda, and others as a takedown, The Apostle is a powerful film that holds up because it doesn’t try to escape these tensions. It offers a mirror: Evangelicals are Christians with spiritual gifts to offer a hurting world, and they are sinners with their own temptations and patterns of corruption. Duvall gave us a gift with The Apostle, not because it celebrates or bashes evangelicals but because it shows us as we are.

Aaron Griffith is Assistant Professor of American Church History at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America.

- More from Aaron Griffith

News

Trump’s SOTU Heralded a Revival. The Data Is Mixed.

Harvest Prude in Washington

In a State of the Union focused on immigration and domestic policy, the president’s mention of Christianity was brief and debatable.

Pool / Getty

President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, DC on February 24, 2026.

In his joint session address to Congress Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that since he took office a year ago, the United States has experienced a religious revival.

“There has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity, and belief in God,” he said at the State of the Union (SOTU) address.

“We love religion, and we love bringing it back,” he added. “And it’s coming back at levels that nobody actually thought possible. It’s really a beautiful thing to see.”

Eric Loepp, assistant professor of politics at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater, said Trump’s mention may have been more “aspirational” than grounded in evidence: “Religion served as one of the pillars supporting President Trump’s overarching theme: that America is enjoying widespread renewal and entering a ‘golden age’ not only in economic terms but in spiritual and cultural ones as well.”

Trump said the surge was “especially true among young people,” and gave credit for that to conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, whom Trump said had been “martyred for his beliefs.”

At that point in the speech, Trump invited Kirk’s widow, Erika, one of his featured guests at the address, to stand. The chamber’s Republicans stood, whistled, and applauded, with some chanting, “Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.”

“In Charlie’s memory, we must all come together to reaffirm that America is one nation under God,” Trump said. He circled back to religion at the conclusion of his speech: “When God needs a nation to work his miracles, he knows exactly who to ask.”

While Christians said they hope to see a broader cultural interest in faith, political scientists doubt the United States is experiencing the kind of enthusiastic resurgence in Christianity that the president described.

“There’s just no empirical evidence that points to that conclusion,” said Ryan Burge, a professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. “No matter what metric you look at—belief, attendance, or religious affiliation—there’s nothing that points to the conclusion that Gen Z is seeing a revival.”

Daniel Bennett, political science professor at John Brown University, said the president’s remarks “seem to be referencing a vibe shift more than concrete evidence or supporting data.” He added, “On the contrary, there’s plenty of data out there to cast doubt on these sorts of statements, however encouraging they would be if true.”

Pew Research Center’s latest survey from its Religious Landscape Study found that a long-term decline in religiosity in America had relatively stabilized from 2019 to 2024. While the decline doesn’t show signs of dramatically reversing, the share of Americans who identify as Christians has stayed somewhere around 60 and 64 percent from 2019 to 2024.

Around 45 percent of Gen Z Americans identify as Christian, according to Pew—that’s a 10 percent decline from a decade before.

Last year, Gallup found a 17-point drop in the percentage of US adults who say that religion was an important part of their daily life over the last decade, and reported that the share of Americans who actively attend church has also declined.

“It is not surprising that any president may focus on a specific data point or narrow band of activity rather than larger trends if it better aligns with their political narrative,” Loepp said. “Time will tell if President Trump’s vision in last night’s speech will become a reality. At the macro level, I doubt we will see a sudden resurgence to peak levels of religiosity.”

But Loepp said he wouldn’t be surprised if some people were to become more religious, particularly given rapidly changing technology and other challenges of modern life.

“It will not surprise me at all if some segments of the population increasingly turn to religion to help find meaning in their lives,” he added. “Recent developments, particularly among younger Americans, could indicate that the conventional wisdom will evolve.”

While acknowledging that research is divided on the subject, Daniel Darling, director of The Land Center for Cultural Engagement at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, said he’s seen some encouraging signs when it comes to the interest in faith. He mentioned Bible sales and anecdotes of college students having an increased interest in church and Christianity.

“I do think something is stirring, which would be characteristic of God to bring forth a fresh wave of spiritual life in the midst of a tumultuous time,” Darling said. “Ultimately, we will see if this season bears fruit, but we can rejoice even in the pockets of revival we might be witnessing.”

Young people seem to be buying Bibles in greater numbers compared to other age groups, and book tracker Circana Bookscan found in 2024 that Bible sales had increased 22 percent over a year’s time.

Barna Group also found last year that younger churchgoers tend to attend services more frequently than older generations. The survey did not look at the number of people identifying as Christian.

Overall, Trump spent a larger amount of time talking about immigration and the border than religion. In explicit detail, he described crimes committed by individual illegal immigrants against American citizens. He claimed undocumented immigration had fallen to “zero” admissions in the past nine months. Although border crossings are at record low levels, in January, there were still over 6,000 illegal crossings at the US-Mexico border.

Pro-life issues traditionally of interest to evangelicals received scant attention. Abortion received zero mentions. Trump made brief mention of in vitro fertilization (IVF) while highlighting one of his guests who is undergoing IVF treatments, Catherine Rayner. He also touched briefly on transgender policies in schools, highlighting one of his guests, college student Sage Blair.

Bennett characterized Trump’s references to gender ideology and religion as “fleeting” in comparison with his focus on immigration.

“It’s striking that the president’s attention to culture-war issues tended to center on crimes committed by undocumented immigrants,” he said.

“Trump leaned heaviest into the most polarizing issues,” said Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. “These are also the issues where Trump can claim something closer to majority support in some ways. Most Americans agree that a closed border is important, but there is growing concern with how immigration enforcement is happening domestically.”

Democrats’ response to the speech was mixed. Some nodded off, some left early, and around 50 Democrats boycotted to attend counterprotests elsewhere. Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democratic response in a brisk 12 minutes.

Chris Butler, director of Christian civic formation at the Center for Christianity and Public Life, said Trump “probably oversells his claim.”

But he thinks that ultimately, numbers tell only part of the story: “Personally, I think the character of Christianity in America matters more to the nation’s future than its size.”

- More from Harvest Prude

Ideas

At SOTU, Trump Overstates and Inflates Presidential Power

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

In his State of the Union marking our 250th year, the president honored athletes, veterans, Sage Blair, America—and himself.

President Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, DC on February 24, 2026.

Pool / Getty

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was a speech made for social media, far less the pragmatic information transfer and policy proposal the Constitution envisions than a clip-ready string of personal anecdotes, guest backstories, partisan jabs, and victory laps.

All the best of these moments had one thing in common: They were not about Trump.

Consider his evident joy over meeting the US hockey team, fresh off triumph at the Olympics and now honored anew with their goaltender’s receipt of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Or his introduction of two venerable World War II veterans, each 100 this year, some of our last living witnesses of a conflict that remade the world—and America’s role on the global stage. Or his concluding meditation on the remarkable and many-faceted history of a still-young country at its 250th anniversary.

Or consider especially Trump’s profile of Sage Blair, a Liberty University student who “was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender,” the president recounted, “treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents.” Blair’s story is horrifying, a case where no Trumpian exaggeration is needed to make the point. “Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said. Surely we can.

But then consider much of the rest of the speech, the parts focusing less on the state of the union—“strong,” as per usual in the post-Reagan era—than on the man at its helm.

It is inevitable, of course, that presidents will speak of themselves in this address. Yet it is not inevitable that they will figure in the speech as Trump did last night: as a salvific figure who has personally and exclusively solved all our national problems, improving not only on the performance of past administrations but on the entire country’s collective efforts from 1776 to 2016.

Knocking former presidents is a comparison I don’t begrudge him. My own assessment of most of them, particularly recent leaders, would be similarly dim. But Trump’s more sweeping portrayal of the United States as a “dead country” he alone could resurrect is at odds with his tributes to our accomplishments and principles.

Have we long been, as Trump said toward the end of the speech, “the pinnacle of human civilization and human freedom, the strongest, wealthiest, most powerful, most successful nation in all of history”? Or were we, until Trump just recently fixed us, weak, moribund, poor, and oppressed? Both can’t be true at once.

More important than agreeing on that history, though, is understanding what Trump’s account of himself says of and does to the office of president going forward. We’ve long had an overgrown executive and undernourished legislature in this country. The president is too powerful, and Congress is too feckless, whiny, and self-sabotaging. The powers are not balanced. The checks are not checking.

Trump is by no means the source of that distortion, which well predates him and plays havoc with our Constitutional design. But he does benefit from and exacerbate it—including in this State of the Union address, where he both overstated and inflated presidential power.

The overstatements were Trump’s claim of personal responsibility for goods no president can reliably produce. Presidential policies matter, yes, but they’re hardly all that matters. When President Barack Obama in 2012 told American business owners they “didn’t build” their companies, giving credit to government instead, conservatives and free marketers of all stripes rightly objected.

This kind of thing is just as objectionable when Trump does it, and he did it a lot in this speech, taking credit for “a turnaround for the ages” on one big, multicausal phenomenon after another.

And maybe much of that, the parts focused on political and economic issues, can be waved away as standard presidential hyperbole in an election year. But the same cannot be said of Trump’s credit-taking for reviving Christianity in America:

I’m very proud to say that during my time in office, both the first four years and in particular this last year, there has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God. Tremendous renewal. … We love religion, and we love bringing it back, and it’s coming back at levels nobody actually thought possible. It’s really a beautiful thing to see.

In these telling lines, Trump foregrounded himself above the murdered activist Charlie Kirk, misrepresented what current polling on American Christianity actually shows, and gave not even a nod to the work of the Spirit or Christ’s church. Surely we can also all agree that if we’re blessed with another Great Awakening in this country—a renewal not of “religion” generically but of “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3)—credit goes to God, not any politician (1 Cor. 3:17).

This kind of overstatement deserves pushback, but at a pragmatic political level, Trump’s inflation of presidential power worries me more. It will only add to congressional atrophy and further executive branch bloat, destabilizing our economy and governance by building huge policies on the flimsy and impermanent foundation of executive orders.

The most striking example here came in the president’s discussion of how he hopes to levy tariffs in the future, after losing on the issue at the Supreme Court this month:

[Tariffs] will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes, and they’ve been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better [than the version the court struck down], leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before.

Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.

I too would love it if foreign countries paid our government so much money that the income tax went away. That’s a lovely fairy tale. But here in reality, per our Constitution, major new policies are not to be authored by the president and approved by time, whatever that means. They are to be authored and approved by our duly-elected Congress.

To put it in Trump’s terms from this speech, running a country on memos instead of legislation is a surefire way to “drain the wealth out of the productive and hard-working people who make our country great, who make our country run.” It is literally lawless. It is no way to continue for the next 250 years.

Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.

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Theology

What If Aliens Are Real? A Thought Experiment

Russell Moore

Columnist

I don’t know how likely extraterrestrial life might be. But no matter what, the truth of Christianity will stand.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: Getty

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

This is how strange our times are: Last week, two United States presidents engaged the question of whether aliens are real, and it wasn’t even in the top 15 stories of the week. The debate was over not “aliens” as in migrants to a country but “aliens” as in extraterrestrial, nonhuman beings.

Former president Barack Obama sparked the controversy by responding to a question about aliens in a podcast interview and saying that “they’re real” before assuring listeners that there are no underground bunkers studying aliens at Area 51. President Donald Trump then accused Obama of giving out “classified information” and then pledged to declassify government documents on what used to be called unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and are now referred to as unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs).

Those discussing UAPs these days are not tinfoil-wearing conspiracists but rather the secretary of state and senior military officials who argue that someone seems to have some kind of technology that American scientists can’t explain. Still, I find it highly unlikely that anything substantial will come out of whatever documents are released. But let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that science does one day prove the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life.

Obama clarified a few days later, after his interview prompted questions all over the world, that he was not suggesting he has some inside information about aliens. Just the opposite, he said: “The universe is so vast that” he finds it likely that we are not the only conscious species out there. Some people were disappointed by this. Some of them just want the drama of it all, of course, but some want alien life to be out there because they find the prospect of a lifeless universe in which we are all alone to be a depressing reality at best and an existential crisis at worst.

Others have the opposite view. If next week Trump were to give a speech presenting compelling evidence of extraterrestrial life (as his daughter-in-law speculated he at some point will), some people would be terrified. A thousand movies have anticipated how the world would respond—with some picturing panic, others euphoria, still others world peace wrought by having a common enemy.

But what about your church? What would happen the Sunday morning after this kind of news? Some would have a crisis of faith. After all, no doubt people would opine this means Christianity—along with every other religion—is wrong. We are just a cosmic accident, they would say, since most religions but especially Christianity grant human beings uniqueness in the universe.

And if the news were the opposite—proving that we are alone in the universe—some people would be in a crisis of faith then, too. In that case, they would think our aloneness, in light of such a vast universe, means we are just a speck of matter, conscious for a moment, on a little rock circling a star.

The reason I bring this up is not because I have an argument to make, one way or the other, about how likely alien life might be. What I do know is that even if we were ever to definitively solve the question of whether we are alone in the universe, Christianity would be just fine. And that’s because the question is not really all that new.

The David of the Bible did not know what a black hole was, and he wouldn’t have recognized an elementary-school model of the solar system, much less images from the Hubble Space Telescope. But he could see the sky, and its vastness caused him to feel the smallness and seeming insignificance of humanity: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:3–4, ESV throughout).

In Scripture, God himself often communicates that the known world is far bigger and stranger than what the human mind can imagine, much less comprehend. We need not go into outer space for that kind of insight. We need only recognize how unexplored and mysterious our own oceans are: “Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great; There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it” (104:25–26).

Yet the very same Scriptures reveal human uniqueness. David answered his own question about why we should consider a tiny human significant: “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet” (8:5–6). Both these things are true: Humanity is a speck in a dizzyingly large universe—and the heir of all of it.

The writer of Hebrews took the argument a step further. He quoted David and then added that the problem is everything certainly does not seem to be under humanity’s feet. Nature is big and wild and chaotic—and ultimately kills us all. How can we say that humanity matters, much less that it is central? “But,” the writer says, “we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (2:9).

The Christian claim is this: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and the Son of God is inseparably united with human nature and thus is “not ashamed to call them brothers” (Heb. 2:11). That was no easier to accept in the first century than it is now. After all, no one in the first century knew what satellites were, but they did know that the cosmos was unspeakably big.

And of this one workman rabbi from Nazareth, the apostle Paul wrote, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16–17).

The gospel has already grappled with the fact that we as the human race seem alone and microscopic. We are “fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17) not because we can conquer but because he was crucified. His defeat of death accomplished the promise that boggled Abraham’s mind when he looked at the night sky over Canaan: “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them,” God said to him. “So shall your offspring be” (Gen. 15:5).

If a spacecraft were to arrive and an alien say, “Take me to your leader,” we might be unnerved. But we would not, as Christians, be facing a dilemma we hadn’t seen before. We have always known there are nonhuman intelligences out there in the created order—principalities and powers, angels and demons. And it was just as stunning in the first century to ask why Jesus died for us and not for them:

For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. (Heb. 2:16–17)

Paul wrote of bad circumstances and of good, “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound” (Phil. 4:12). The same is true here. We know how to be in a universe where there’s no other planet with intelligent beings. And we know how to be in a universe where there is. We’ve encountered phenomena far more anomalous than whatever the Air Force has tracked. The problem isn’t aliens, and it’s not even human fragility. The problem is misunderstood glory.

Even if there’s something out there watching us, and even if it were to ask, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth, or from the little rock to which Nazareth clings?” we still have the same answer we always had: “Come and see.”

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

News

First, Honesty. Then, Multiplication Tables.

Carrie McKean in Midland, Texas

We need to know how badly students are failing in math class. Then we must return to the fundamentals.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

In many ways, what happened with math instruction in the United States mirrors better-known problems with how our children have been taught to read.

As outlined in the deeply reported Sold a Story podcast, American reading instruction shifted from teaching phonics and reading fundamentals through rote practice to a more “vibes-based” approach centered on sight words and “balanced literacy” delivered in cozy classroom book corners. We chose to believe that exposing kids to good books would be enough to teach them to read and to love reading. It didn’t work.

Good books are necessary to make good readers, but they’re not even close to sufficient. Literacy rates cratered across the country as this new pedagogy was implemented. By 2022, National Association of Educational Progress data showed that roughly one third of America’s fourth and eighth graders failed to read at basic level. The pioneer of the balanced literacy movement, Lucy Calkins, fell from grace, and the tide began to turn on reading instruction styles.

Our trouble with math education is similar. This story hasn’t been as deeply reported yet, but it follows the same cultural trajectory. It even has a similar antihero, Jo Boaler, a professor of education at Stanford University, is seen by some in education as a ”beacon of hope.” But her critics allege that she “made bold assertions with scant evidence” which they feared would “water down math and actually undermine her goal of a more equitable education system.”

Boaler wrote a book called Math-ish that aims to help students find “joy, understanding and diversity in mathematics.” Influential in developing the pedagogical shifts that informed Common Core standards—and even in how teachers are trained to teach mathin states, like Texas, that haven’t adopted Common Core—Boaler aimed to help students experience math instruction more “broadly, inclusively, and with a greater sense of wonder and play.”

That certainly sounds more delightful than a worksheet—even akin to the reading corners with twinkle lights and beanbag chairs. But seasoned math teachers told me they see it as a dereliction of duty. (The local educators I interviewed weren’t allowed to speak on record per school district policy.)

Students can’t explore the beauty and mystery of math if they don’t understand the fundamentals, said one math teacher. Setting students up for failure because we haven’t taught them the basics isn’t loving and supportive, said another.

And especially in public schools, as students flounder, gaps in equity grow rather than shrink. Students in families with more financial resources pay for expensive private tutoring to teach the basics neglected in the classroom. Students whose families can’t afford tutors’ rates fall further and further behind.

I interviewed parents, teachers, and Matt Friez, a member of my school district’s Board of Trustees, to inform this story, and for all their frustrations, they aligned on a lot. While they have real differences of perspective, they all know that fixing math education is a daunting challenge. And they agreed on some initial steps for improvement.

The first step is honesty. For Ebony Coleman, a local parent who was horrified to discover just how far behind her eighth-grade daughter had fallen in math, this is paramount. Last summer, she began her “Math Ain’t Mathin’” grassroots campaign to make math achievement a high priority for the district. She went door to door and talked to over 100 other parents here in the Midland Independent School District (MISD). She found that only 20 percent of parents thought their children were below grade level in math. In reality, district statistics suggest that upwards of 60 percent are falling behind.

Coleman wants parents to take greater responsibility for proactively seeking solutions, but she believes that must start with teachers and district administrators being more forthcoming about student performance. (I reached out to Midland ISD for comment but did hear back before publication.)

Friez agrees. “I want every campus to publish data so that everybody knows exactly what is going on, who is on track and who is off track,” he said, “down to you seeing clear data for your child.”

Armed with the truth, the next step is to focus on the fundamentals. The teachers I spoke with told me they want to see more paper and pencils and fewer Chromebooks in math classrooms, to see their fellow teachers get out from behind their desks and roam the classes, actively monitoring student work and catching computation errors in real time. But with all the other responsibilities and expectations that have been added to teacher workloads and the ways reliance on digital tools has become a professionally acceptable option, these teachers recognize that for some of their colleagues, reverting to an older teaching style feels unrealistic.

Similarly, parents and students alike want to reduce reliance on video lessons and digital tools and increase high-quality direct instruction. All my sources agreed we must bring back rote memorization of basic math facts like the multiplication tables and other commonly used patterns, like the correlation between common fractions and percentages.

Rather than simply buying new curricula, one veteran teacher said she’d like to see the district return to a district-wide, collaborative, grade-level approach to lesson planning, something that worked well in the past. In that model, teachers within the district who have demonstrated results in the classroom work together to create a district-wide plan to meet state standards. It includes collaborative lesson planning and in-person teacher training on instructional methods, formalizing and expanding the guidance veteran teachers already give their colleagues when they can. This model helps ensure every student receives quality instruction, even when assigned a less experienced teacher.

The math educators I interviewed are not naive or in denial about the scope of this problem. They know the task in front of them is gargantuan. When only 30 percent of students in the district are on track in math class, as is the case in Midland, it’s easy to lose heart.

On the afternoon I met with a group of teachers, we convened in a local coffee shop. When one of the teachers was picking up her latte, she glanced behind the counter and caught sight of a former student, now in his early 20s and a part owner of this new business.

He came bounding to the front of the café, embracing her in a huge hug. “You remember me!” she said, laughing. “Of course!” he boomed. “You were my fifth-grade math teacher!”

When it came time to leave, she nodded back at him. “There’s so much about the system that is so broken. But I keep working at it because of kids like that,” she smiled. “Look at him now! He owns and runs his own business! He’s a productive member of society! He’s building something good for our community!”

“I can’t change the world for everyone in the district or the state or the nation,” the teacher added. “But I can do my best to make a difference for the kids God brings into my school.”

This is part three of a three-part series on math education in America. Read parts one and two at these links.

- More from Carrie McKean

Ideas

Faith Should be Public but Not Performative

Jen Pollock Michel

Guest Columnist

Christian faith must act on behalf of the most vulnerable, not clutter social media feeds.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

After the killing of Alex Pretti, Blake Guichet, a popular Christian influencer, resisted the emotional undertow of social media. One of her Instagram posts declared open resistance to what “the internet tell[s] you … to carry.”

“Faceless strangers don’t get to tell you if you’re a good person or not because of the events you do or do not post about,” Guichet wrote—though not incidentally, as Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic reported, Guichet posted seven times after the death of Charlie Kirk.

Her purported retreat from public political speech, a tactic other influencers like her have taken, mirrors the resignation many of us feel in this civic moment. Our sense of powerlessness grows, and we’re tempted to limit our sphere of care and compassion, even to believe that when we do so, we imitate Jesus, who, according to Guichet’s post, “withdrew when crowds demanded more.” To avoid emotional overwhelm and partisan rancor, we are tempted to abandon public concern for private faithfulness.

This may, in some cases, represent a sober wisdom about the limits of human capacity. But a retreat from grave social matters can also be a dangerous form of self-protection. From William Wilberforce to Harriet Beecher Stowe, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Martin Luther King Jr., we see compelling examples of Christian faith that emboldened public dissidence with—and even resistance to—obvious evil.

The question remains: Is their moment ours? And if it is, will their courage be ours too?

Today’s problem is not, as Guichet argues, the scope of global suffering, even if we succumb to doomscrolling the news and carrying the emotional weight of global tragedy. The problem isn’t that social media demands swift responses, nor is it the moral sifting of said responses. The problem isn’t even the shallow performativity of internet speech that is more committed to rallying the base than persuading the unconvinced.

Although it is wise to turn from online outrage, we cannot, as followers of Jesus, turn a blind eye to the least of our neighbors, whom we love as an act of worship (Matt. 25:45). To do so may indicate we have failed to imagine meaningful public engagement—love, in the name of Christ, performed not simply in “words or speech” but “with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18).

At this particularly charged American moment, a more widespread problem is resignation to the plight of the refugee, asylum seeker, and immigrant in our midst, those who are being detained and deported without due process. The logic of an inward turn, toward our families and the four walls of our homes, thrives in a society of haves and have-nots. The haves enjoy a privileged isolation from the trauma the have-nots suffer: family separation, jail, and credible fear of returning to their home countries. It’s the have-nots who need our voice.

Many public Christian influencers like Guichet can afford the idyll of a quiet domesticity that men like C. and M. and S., three of my church’s ESL students, cannot. These West African asylum seekers (whose names I’m withholding) entered the United States under a then-legal process, yet they were recently detained after they lawfully presented at their immigration appointments. It’s unclear if and when their cases will be heard in court.

These are law-abiding immigrants with authorization to work. Through no fault of their own, their once-legal status is pulled from under their feet. Their faces represent many others, including at least 10,000 Haitians who sought refuge and employment in Springfield, Ohio, just 90 minutes from my house. This hardworking community, unjustly indicted by smears during the last presidential election, will be vulnerable to deportation if the courts allow the administration to lift protections, as they did in the case of Venezuela TPS holders.

These are not crises of far-flung places. They haunt my proverbial backyard. Should I ignore them?

When neighbors like me do not defend these and others loudly and publicly, when we do not decry our government’s aggressive campaign to terrorize immigrants rather than afford them due process, we cannot believe we represent the heart either of good government or of the God to whom the psalmists pray: “‘Because the poor are plundered and the needy groan, I will now arise,’ says the Lord. ‘I will protect them from those who malign them,’” (12:5). Collectively, Christians must recover our prophetic voice.

When we do not clearly challenge Christian silence that masquerades as virtue, we do not love with sufficient courage. This is not a partisan argument—but it is distinctly political. If politics is the way we speak of our civic housekeeping, everyone has a responsibility to keep the house in order.

Performativity is a word that rose to prominence after George Floyd’s murder and the ensuing protests. In 2021, Merriam-Webster added a new definition to its entry on performative: “made or done for show.” Rightfully, we reject performativity in the name of Jesus, who called out the religious leaders of his day for their blatant sins of hypocrisy. They performed their prayers on street corners. They gave to the needy—but only when a noisy brass band could trumpet their offerings, lest their generosity escape notice. “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward,” Jesus said (Matt. 6:2).

Yet we might misunderstand Jesus’ correction and throw the public good out with the performative bath water. When Jesus called us to pray and give in secrecy (6:3–6), did he forbid public gestures of committed Christian principle? In cautioning us against the insincerity of public spectacle, did he command us to refuse interest in anything other than our private concerns?

I don’t think so. Though performative actions and speech are suspect, public life and speech are not. Jesus was a public figure.

When the chief priests and elders finally seized Jesus, his arrest was a covert operation—an irony Jesus couldn’t help but highlight: “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me? Every day I sat in the temple courts teaching, and you did not arrest me” (Matt. 26:55). Jesus was never simply a private citizen, and if his revolutionary movement was to be stamped out, Rome understood it would necessitate a private arrest but a public crucifixion, his limp figure hanging as a stark imperial warning.

So too the apostles’ ministry was public. The attention they generated put them in the murderous sights of the same authorities that put Jesus to death. In private homes, the apostles broke bread, and in the public square, they preached and performed wonders and signs. As crowds gathered, Peter loudly and boldly proclaimed the mystery of God made flesh, this Jesus of Nazareth crucified, dead, and buried, then raised on the third day and ascended into heaven (Acts 2).

When public speech put Paul and Silas in prison in Philippi—and the magistrates suddenly reconsidered their rashness, begging the inmates’ quiet departure—Paul was indignant. “They beat us publicly without a trial, even though we are Roman citizens, and threw us into prison,” he said. “And now do they want to get rid of us quietly? No! Let them come themselves and escort us out” (16:37).

Perhaps some will argue that these biblical examples stand out as apolitical. Critics could argue the gospel is a message of eternal salvation (it is!) and we did not find the apostles in the public square, throwing stones at Caesar’s policies. Yet as Larry Hurtado argues in Destroyer of the Gods, simply claiming the name of Christ was political resistance.

In the Roman Empire, residents were expected to participate in “processions and sacrificial offerings to the guardian god or goddess of the city,” Hurtado writes. “Even in ordinary activities such as giving birth, or eating, or travelling, in the meetings of guilds and other social groups, or in the formal meetings of a city council, people typically offered appropriate expressions of reverence to the relevant divinities.” Discipleship in the reign of the Caesars was always a public affair, as Christians pledged allegiance to a different king.

For a more recent example, in the 19th century, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) and her siblings grew up in a Christian home that underscored the social and political responsibilities of all Christians. As Obbie Tyler Todd details in his recent book The Beechers, “All of Lyman Beecher’s children were certain that the family unit was the building block of American society.” Though Stowe’s public activism against slavery is more widely known today, her older sister, Catharine, was an early and outspoken critic of the Indian Removal Act, which forcibly resettled many Native Americans . Lyman Beecher’s children were raised to understand that Christian faith begged active public involvement in their neighbors’ good.

Catharine and Stowe’s younger sister, Isabella, a suffragist, spoke of the influence of their childhood home on her own social activism: “I date my interest in public affairs from those years between eleven and sixteen, when our family circle was ever in discussion on the vital problems of human existence, [where] the United States Constitution, fugitive slave laws, Henry Clay and the Missouri Compromise alternated with free will, regeneration, heaven, hell, and ‘The Destiny of Man.’” The Beecher family did not always see eye to eye on public policy, but even as they diverged theologically as they got older, the Beecher children agreed Christianity was a matter of not only private conversion but also political responsibility.

My work as a public writer began within the explosion of social media platforms, and until now, I have largely agreed with Guichet’s refusal to “be reduced to whatever this year’s version of a black square on Instagram is.” But as a citizen of this democracy and of the kingdom of God, I can only conclude that public speech and action are becoming more necessary, not less. Silence can be a means of complicit concealment of injustice.

I am not suggesting we take up more social media tirades. Yet Christians must allow their public lives and words to instruct the people of God in the confusion of our moment, when lies parade as truths and vice is mistaken for virtue. Every conversation counts right now, as we seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God (Mic. 6:8). Public—and private—speaking matters for every neighbor, especially those who cannot speak for themselves.

Jen Pollock Michel is an author, speaker, and spiritual writing mentor for Whitworth University’s MFA program. Her most recent book is In Good Time, and her forthcoming book publishing this fall is A Rule for the Rest of Us.

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News

Mass Kidnappings Leave Nigerian Churches Reeling

Emiene Erameh

Christian leaders fight to draw attention to the abductions by criminal gangs amid government denial.

Security officers stand guard next to a bus carrying freed worshippers at the Government House in Kaduna.

Contributor / Getty

Raymond Na’allah said worshipers were dancing to praise songs and giving tithes on Sunday, January 18 when armed kidnappers surrounded Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S) Church 2 in the Kurmin Wali community in Kajuru Local Government Area, Kaduna State, northwestern Nigeria. Around 11 a.m., a female church member went outside to use the outhouse, saw the kidnappers, and ran back inside, shouting warnings. Worshipers rushed around in confusion, attempting to escape or find places to hide.

Na’allah said the kidnappers had swept through the area, first targeting two other churches in the village—the local Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) branch and C&S Church 2’s sister congregation, C&S Church 1—rounding up worshipers as they went. Na’allah’s church was the last stop before kidnappers—who didn’t bother to hide their faces—took their victims into the forest.

In the confusion, Na’allah managed to escape to a nearby house. He hid in the restroom, so the kidnappers didn’t find him. “Maybe because they had already taken so many people,” he said. He watched, agonized, as the young male kidnappers severely beat his neighbors and family members. He said the attackers took captives’ phones from them “probably … to discourage people from trying to escape.”

Kidnappers took 177 people, including 29 members of his family—his mother as well as siblings, nieces, and nephews. Then they contacted him and the other villagers through a representative and demanded 250 million naira (about $186,000 USD) and 20 motorcycles for the return of all hostages.

“Our hope is in God, because where will we see that amount of money?” Na’allah lamented.

At first, the state government and police denied the abductions happened, damaging the already-eroding trust in Nigerian leadership’s ability to address ongoing security challenges.

Kaduna state officials only retracted the denial after the Chikun/Kajuru Active Citizens Congress (CKACC) published the names of the 177 victims in a statement on January 21. The Kaduna governor Uba Sani then visited the area and assured residents that his government is “resolute in its determination to secure the safe and dignified return of all those taken from their homes.”

Then on January 25, kidnappers snatched six more victims, this time in the town of Maraban Kajuru.

On February 2, the government announced that 80 of the 177 people initially listed as victims from Kurmin Wali had actually fled to neighboring villages to hide but had returned home, according to Reuters. Na’allah’s family members and others remained in captivity, but by February 5, the military secured their release.

Though Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) leadership disagreed with some aspects of the government’s account—reporting that only 11 victims escaped while 166 had remained missing—it confirmed that the military helped free all abducted church members and no one had to pay a ransom.

The Maraban Kajuru victims remained unaccounted for by last report.

Individual and mass kidnappings have risen across Nigeria in recent years as jihadist groups and criminal gangs turn to abductions as a source of income, with Kaduna being among the worst-hit states. The rise of banditry in the Kajuru and Birnin-Gwari local government areas in Kaduna has intensified since 2016, partly fueled by high youth unemployment and vast savannah forests ideal for bandits’ hideouts. The Nigerian National Assembly passed a law in 2022 to make paying ransoms illegal, hoping to withhold incentives from kidnappers. Still, abductions have continued.

Christians in neighboring states suffer too. As CT covered in September, kidnappers in Kwara State refused to return a pastor to his family after receiving the agreed-upon ransom. He died of a health condition while waiting for his release. Parents in Niger State spent the days leading up to Christmas praying for the safe return of their children after a mass kidnapping at a Catholic school. Kidnappers returned the children after the government threatened to attack them.

The Nigerian government insisted this year it’s working with United States leadership to improve security and reduce violence in the country.

Enoch Kaura, the chairman of the CAN branch in Kajuru Local Government Area said the government knows about the chronic kidnappings and should live up to the responsibility of securing Nigerians’ lives and property. He believes the government should also include community members in the solutions, such as civilian-led intelligence gathering or joint civilian-security force patrols—measures already used in Borno State. “If the locals can defend themselves, I think these people cannot attack them anyhow again,” Kaura said.

As Christians struggle to trust official responses, they rely on prayer.

One Christian woman told CT the kidnappers took her brother and his wife in the Maraban Kajuru raid days after the church attacks. She heard about their abduction on social media then confirmed it by calling a sister-in-law. The kidnappers have now demanded 70 million naira ($52,000 USD) for her brother and sister-in-law’s safe return.

The local government chairman visited her and her parents, retirees aged 81 and 69, to commiserate with them and gather firsthand information about the abductions, but the woman said she hasn’t heard anything since. Waiting for news is painful: “We wake up hopeful, but it is difficult to sustain as the day grows.”

Her local CAN chapter has organized prayers for the release of kidnapping victims, she said. Because kidnappers are well-armed, villagers like her can’t mount a rescue—they must wait for the government to act or illegally pay ransoms in hopes of getting their loved ones returned.

“We don’t have power to change anything, but we so much believe in the One who has power to turn things around,” she said.

While many still wait, Raymond Na’allah no longer must. Na’allah recalled his days passed in a blur as he wondered how his family members were faring after being taken from Kurmin Wali. He told me his home village no longer feels safe, but he has nowhere to go.

When Na’allah heard the news of the release, he was staying with relatives in Kaduna’s state capital. He recalled that inwardly he wanted to shout and laugh, but he only smiled. Na’allah said he looked forward to returning home and reuniting with his relatives. He added that the governor assured them of adequate protection in the future.

“If government can keep to its promise of ensuring security, then maybe we can return to our farms,” he said.

Though Na’allah and his neighbors avoided paying a ransom this time, their resources are still depleted from the ongoing kidnapping crisis. Na’allah, a farmer, said he is struggling to survive off what remains of last year’s harvest. He sold much of his crop already to help community members raise ransom money for an earlier kidnapping.

- More from Emiene Erameh

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