‘Between Borders’ Calls to Christians

In its story of an Armenian refugee family, a new film emphasizes the church’s role in caring for the displaced.

The Petrosyan family arriving in Volgograd, Russia, in the film, Between Borders.

Between Borders

Four-year-old Olga Petrosyan and her grandmother huddled in the apartment as the mob of men pounded on the door. “Where are the Petrosyans?” the men shouted. When Olga began crying, her grandmother placed a hand over her mouth to stifle the sound.

Eventually, after a friendly neighbor said no one was home, the men disappeared. The year was 1988, on the eve of an ethnic and territorial conflict between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenians that still persists today. The Petrosyans had already faced growing hostility from Azerbaijanis, but the threat of death had never arrived on their doorstep before.

Their home had become uninhabitable. With a couple suitcases and a guitar, the family of four boarded a train out of Azerbaijan. Three years later, their apartment would be torched as the country erupted in war.

The Petrosyan family’s journey—from Azerbaijan to Russia and eventually to the United States—is dramatized in the new film Between Borders, premiering January 26. Starring The Chosen’s Elizabeth Tabish as Violetta, the fierce mother of Olga and Julia, the film depicts the family’s struggle to belong as they encounter persecution in Azerbaijan and later in Russia. The film is a tribute to the plight and perseverance of displaced peoples, as well as an urgent reminder of the role of the church as a haven for those who have lost their homes.

“I think there is a common experience for all refugees that home is everywhere and home is nowhere,” Olga Petrosyan, who is now working for a church in Kentucky, said in an interview with Christianity Today. “You will blend in to make it safe for you anywhere you go. But you will also never feel belonging.”

The film opens in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the Petrosyans experience signs of impending unrest. Ivan Petrosyan (played by Patrick Sabongui), who works as a rocket scientist, notices that the window of a local Armenian bakery has been shattered, and Violetta and the girls encounter a mob calling for death to Armenians.

The Petrosyans leave before the worst of the violence—the ensuing pogroms in Baku will result in dozens of Armenians being killed—but the onset of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory will make returning impossible.

In the city of Volgograd, Russia, the Petrosyans try to build a home in a shoe-box apartment with peeling walls and a broken heater. The gloomy conditions are enlivened by a visit from an American missionary named Dwayne, a Christian from a local Nazarene church plant, who brings boxes full of supplies. It’s the Petrosyans’ first encounter with Christianity, and soon they begin attending church. (The congregation in Volgograd was founded by Lonnie Norris, an American missionary who moved to Russia to plant churches. He is the executive producer of the film; his son Isaac is a writer and producer.)

Violetta, a former Communist party member, said in an interview with Christianity Today that at first she attended church to learn English. But her interest in grammar and syntax soon evolved into appreciation for the Good News that she belonged in the family of God.

Her daughter Olga remembered visiting the church in a cold, dark building that used to be a Soviet government office. When she entered, she immediately felt warmth radiating from the congregation. These Russian Christians were different from the Russians in their neighborhood, who treated them with disdain for being foreigners.

“All these people rushed to greet us, and for the first time I felt like they really cared about who I was as a person,” Olga said. “As a 9-year-old, I was trying to figure out, Why are they so happy? Why do they love me? Why is there so much joy in this place?”

Awed by the church’s generous acts of service, the Petrosyans eventually became Christians. In Between Borders, Ivan is the last to convert, reluctant to join a faith he sees as foreign and frivolous. But when the pastor offers him a job as the church’s maintenance man, he begins to overhear sermons about the Prodigal Son as he tightens hinges and fixes floors. Soon he too accepts the gospel.

The city of Volgograd never fully welcomes the Petrosyans, who regularly experience racist barbs, physical intimidation, and religious persecution; eventually, with the help of an American congregation of the Church of the Nazarene in West Virginia, they seek asylum in the United States. The film doesn’t delve into the specifics of the church’s aid, but Lonnie Norris said in an interview that the church helped the family find jobs and a lawyer for their asylum case.

Between Borders culminates in a climactic courtroom scene, in which the judge overseeing the Petrosyans’ asylum case declares that America should be a “nation of freedom, enlightenment, and compassion, a democracy that gives hope to those who have lost all hope, a land of refuge.” It’s a political manifesto that has extra resonance given the context surrounding the film’s release date. Between Borders premieres less than a week after the swearing in of President Donald Trump, who has promised to crack down on both legal and illegal immigration—including reinstating a policy from his first term that had asylum seekers “remain in Mexico” while their cases were being heard and suspending a refugee resettlement program.

“We’re not trying to make a political statement, but we do understand that it will be in some ways,” said writer and producer Isaac Norris.

The film doesn’t have the time or space to uncover the United States’ complicated relationship with asylum seekers, as more Americans want immigration levels reduced. The Petrosyans may have ultimately won their asylum case, but the film elides the stories of many others who have been turned away.

Perhaps America will always be fickle in its concern for the world’s huddled masses. But Between Borders suggests the church should be unwavering in its commitment to care for the sojourner. What is most striking about the final scene isn’t the pronouncement from a judge about the ideal of America; it is the presence in the courtroom of dozens of people from the Petrosyans’ church, who have come to show their love and support for the beleaguered family.

As Christians, we are each caught between borders, situated as we are between the present principality of darkness and the future coming of the risen King. We are sojourners and exiles, strangers in a foreign country (1 Pet. 2:11). Like Abraham, we look forward to a future home, “a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Heb. 11:10).

As people journeying to our heavenly home, Between Borders suggests that Christians should take the lead in serving refugees. Our care should be sacrificial and countercultural, so radical in nature that the only possible explanation is that we have been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Is it possible that the very mark of our set-apart-ness might be the way we generously and joyfully open our hearts and homes to those who are displaced? Could this deepen our understanding of Jesus, who sojourned here on our behalf?

At one point, Ivan is astounded and confused by the church’s generosity toward his family. He asks the pastor in Volgograd why the church members are being so kind to the Petrosyans.

“Jesus was a refugee too,” the pastor replies.

Christopher Kuo is a freelance journalist based in Ireland. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Duke Magazine, and elsewhere.

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Ideas

Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven

Ryan Brown

Many Christians around the world see persecution as a blessing. Westerners can learn from them.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek

“Is persecution coming to the West?”

This is a question I hear often in my leadership role with Open Doors US, a ministry with nearly 70 years of experience serving and supporting persecuted Christians around the world.

In response to cultures in the West that can seem increasingly indifferent or even antagonistic to the Christian faith, some followers of Christ here have shrunk back in fear from the broader culture and sought isolation. Others have come out swinging in anger and declared war against the culture at large.

The Bible clearly states that anyone following Jesus will be met with some level of opposition (Matt. 24:9; 2 Tim. 3:12). But when thinking about persecution, most of us tend to gravitate toward the idea of physical violence, such as martyrdom, assault, or the burning of a church building.

While those things certainly qualify as persecution, in the Beatitudes, Jesus also says those are blessed who endure insults or are the targets of those who “falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me” (Matt. 5:11).

As we look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 5, I wonder if the question about the likelihood of persecution is the wrong question to ask. Instead, what if we asked simply, “Do we treat persecution as a blessing?” And it’s here that our persecuted brothers and sisters have a lot to teach us.

Regardless of whether the response is expressed in fear or hostility, the root of both responses seems to be the same underlying assumption—persecution is inherently bad and should be avoided.

Yet in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges this notion, saying, “Blessed are those who are persecuted” (Matt. 5:10, emphasis added).

While I’m not saying we should pray for persecution, Jesus presents it as if it were a gift. As Christians, we certainly believe the words of Jesus are true, but still this idea that persecution is a gift seems counterintuitive and incredibly far removed from our felt experience in the West.

Perhaps we think persecution is one of those gifts we cannot fully appreciate now. When thought of in this way, we accept the words of Jesus as he tells his followers to “rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven” (v. 12). This notion of delayed gratification resonates with us. We can understand the idea of enduring discomfort now for a future benefit.

This is a principle we live out nearly every day in a variety of ways. Today, we accept reduced spending power so we can save for retirement. We experience the pain and discomfort of exercise now for the prospects of better long-term health. In Genesis, Joseph recognized God’s hand decades later on his brother’s evil deeds: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20).

In this context, it’s not a stretch for us to understand the idea that persecution experienced now can result in a future reward in heaven.

Yet while Jesus does speak of rewards in heaven, his words aren’t just about future blessings. “Blessed are those who are persecuted,” he says. He does not say, “Blessed will be the persecuted, someday.” Is it truly possible that persecution can be a blessing here and now?

Persecution manifests differently across the globe. In places like North Korea, Christians can be arrested for even having a Bible. In other places, believers are shunned or excluded by their communities. In still other contexts, Christians may be denied access to the education or employment needed to provide for their families.

I recently had a conversation with Ibrahim, a Christian brother from Sudan. When he converted from Islam, he was thrown out of his home. After sharing his faith with other Muslims, he was arrested and tortured and later chased from his home country. He calls that part of his life “dark times,” as he was contained in a dark prison cell so tiny he could barely turn around. And he endured that experience not once but multiple times because of his decision to follow Jesus and share his gospel.

When I asked Ibrahim about Jesus’ words in Matthew 5, his perspective was striking. For him, the blessing of persecution wasn’t relegated to the distant future. Rather, it seemed the blessing was something he had already experienced and continues to experience. “I went into prison as a kitten,” he told me, “but I came out as a lion.”

In his darkest moments in prison, Ibrahim said he was forced to recognize that he was poor in spirit (a group Christ also refers to as “blessed”), but in his poverty the riches of Christ were poured out upon him. In that dark prison cell, the light of Christ burned bright, transforming his suffering into a profound declaration of faith in Jesus—both to those around him and to himself.

In the same way Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son of promise, had shown that he valued obedience to God above everything else, my brother Ibrahim demonstrated that he treasured Christ above all else as he clung to him in prison. For Ibrahim, the persecution he experienced is a gift he treasures, not a socks-for-Christmas type of gift he didn’t really want. It is a gift he holds on to. It is a gift he is truly thankful for receiving. It is a gift that has changed his life.

Despite the challenges each step of the way, Ibrahim continues to minister to the people of Sudan. After being forced from Sudan, he moved to Egypt, where he continued to serve and encourage other displaced Sudanese. Before long, he was given two days’ notice to leave Egypt as well.

He is now in Kenya, focused on equipping Sudanese believers who travel to Kenya for training and then return to Sudan to minister. He is planning to move back to Sudan in the coming years and looks forward to the day when, in addition to equipping other Sudanese believers, he is able to participate in the frontline evangelism of his fellow Sudanese countrymen.

While persecution may certainly look different in the West than it does in Sudan, I pray that our responses to persecution would look the same as that of our Sudanese brother. Rather than responding with our gut reactions of fear or anger, will we respond to rejection, pressure, discrimination, or other mistreatment with a posture of thanksgiving for what God is doing through the suffering? Will we rejoice, as the apostle Peter encouraged us to do, as we “participate in the sufferings of Christ”? (1 Pet. 4:13).

I pray that rather than giving way to fear or anger, we’d invite the riches of Christ to fill in where we fall short. I pray that even though we may go into persecution as kittens, we’d emerge as lions. It’s more than any of us can do on our own. But Ibrahim’s testimony has shown that through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in each of us, it’s something God can do in us and for us.

Ryan Brown serves as president and CEO of Open Doors US, one of twenty-five national Open Doors International bases located around the world.

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News

Meet Trump’s Loyalists

Harvest Prude

A religiously diverse Cabinet has the task of carrying out presidential commands.

Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees

Saul Loeb - Pool / Getty Images

President Donald Trump has the keys to the White House again, and the Senate is moving quickly to ensure he has his Cabinet team in place.

The first successful confirmation was longtime GOP senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Catholic and now the first Latino Secretary of State. Rubio had the rare honor to be voted in unopposed, garnering 99–0 affirmative votes on Monday.

It’s unlikely the rest of Trump’s Cabinet will glide through as easily. But some may garner bipartisan support, like John Ratcliffe, who was confirmed to lead the Central Intelligence Agency on a 74-25 vote. This week, lawmakers are holding hearings for several of Trump’s other picks, and they may hold a full floor vote soon on Veterans Affairs (VA) secretary nominee Doug Collins, a former Southern Baptist pastor and chaplain who cleared a committee vote Thursday.

Trump’s second round includes some familiar faces and some White House newcomers. These are the people who will be implementing Trump’s broad “America First” agenda, which includes mass deportations and refugee-resettlement cuts, trade wars, and a sharp return to conservative policies on diversity and gender issues.

“When you look at his first go-around, you did see some establishment people,” Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University, told Christianity Today. Earlier picks such as Jim Mattis for secretary of defense, David Shulkin for Veterans Affairs secretary, or Nikki Haley for UN ambassador were more in line with a traditional Republican Cabinet.

Smith said some Republicans, like one-time Trump-critic Rubio, have moved into his orbit, a sign of the transformation of the party. But the president is still reaching from a more populist, antiestablishment, MAGA mold—more controversial nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services (HHS) and Pete Hegseth for the Department of Defense.

The through line that unites them all is simple, according to Smith: “With Trump, the ultimate standard is loyalty to Trump.”

Trump’s Cabinet also represents a curious mix of religious backgrounds, with Catholics predominating among the picks. The diversity reflects Trump’s voting base in 2024, which, while it still garnered strong support from white evangelicals, drew support from a wider coalition of voters.

One of Trump’s picks is currently an evangelical pastor: Southern Baptist Scott Turner, an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, was tapped to be Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Starting in 1995, Turner played for nine seasons in the NFL for three teams. Eventually, his interest shifted to politics, and he served in the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 until he joined the Trump White House.

Turner would be responsible for an agency that addresses the nation’s housing and community-development assistance needs and fair housing laws. It also oversees pervasive issues like homelessness. Turner worked on Trump’s opportunity-zone initiative, which sought to encourage private investment in low-income and otherwise distressed communities.

“We have an important mission ahead. To God be the glory. Let’s get to work!” Turner posted after the announcement of his nomination.

If confirmed, Turner would be the sole Black nominee on the Cabinet. In his post, he thanked former Trump-era HUD secretary Seventh-day Adventist Ben Carson, calling him a mentor. “I am aware that I have big shoes to fill,” he wrote. In an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner, Carson wrote his own endorsement of Turner, calling him “above all, a man of God.”

Another Southern Baptist on deck is Collins, whom Trump tapped for the VA. His hearing included questioning on how he would handle Biden-era policies that allowed the agency to provide abortions under certain circumstances, such as if the health of the mother is at risk or in cases of rape or incest. He said that the administration “will look at this rule and see if it complies with the law.”

Collins, who has a master’s degree in divinity from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, also has the role of pastor on his résumé. He served as the senior pastor for Chicopee Baptist Church in Gainesville, Georgia, for 11 years, according to the Illinois Baptist Newsjournal. He’s currently a member of Lakewood Baptist Church in Gainesville.

Collins also served as a military chaplain, serving for two years as a US Navy chaplain and later joining the US Air Force Reserve. He was also deployed to Iraq for five months in 2008 and remains in the Air Force Reserve as a colonel.

His career includes stints in the Georgia State House and in Congress, where he became vice chair of the House Republican Conference. During the Trump years, he was a stalwart defender of the president while on the House Judiciary Committee. He ran for the Senate in 2020 but lost.

Kristi Noem, Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary, belongs to a Pentecostal denomination. Her family attends Foursquare Family Worship Center in Watertown, South Dakota, which her grandparents helped plant. She has taught children’s church there. In her memoir, she said she believed going into politics was part of God’s plan for her.

The South Dakota governor would be overseeing what Trump has pledged will be the largest mass-deportation operation to date. The administration has recently changed a policy, dating back to the Obama administration, that law-enforcement officials are no longer barred from making raids on “sensitive” areas such as houses of worship or schools. Noem has a tough-on-immigration stance. During her time as governor, she once gave a speech to a joint session of South Dakota’s legislature where she focused on the role of cartels at the US-Mexico border.

For the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Trump picked Russell Vought, who has previously served in the same role. Vought grew up blue-collar, with an electrician father and a schoolteacher mother, and attended Wheaton College. He identifies as a Christian nationalist. In 2021, he founded the Center for Renewing America in 2021 and was one of the architects of Project 2025, a presidential transition plan collated by The Heritage Foundation that became controversial during Trump’s reelection.

The OMB is the largest office within the president’s executive office. It’s primarily responsible for presenting the president’s budget, but it also watches over other agencies’ programs and policies to ensure consistency with the executive’s vision. Vought is one of the proponents for Trump’s actions on Schedule F, which seeks to remove civil-service protections from executive-branch workers, instead classifying them as employees who may be fired “at will.”

During the first administration, he was one of the officials who defied a congressional subpoena to testify about Trump’s decision to freeze military aid to Ukraine. That decision led to Trump’s first impeachment.

Another returnee is Brooke Rollins as agriculture secretary. During the first administration, she worked on domestic policy as director of the Office of American Innovation. Raised by a single mom, she grew up on a Texas farm and has a degree in agricultural development.

During the last few years, she has served as cofounder and president of the America First Policy Institute, a think tank that aligned with Trump during his reelection campaign. While it received less buzz than Project 2025, the institute also focused on drafting presidential transition plans, including executive orders.

During the first administration, Rollins was a strong advocate for criminal-justice reform and worked with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner to push for the First Step Act, which implemented policies to reduce recidivism and sentencing disparities. Rollins is open about her Christian faith, highlighting Bible verses in her Instagram bio and participating in a weekly faith call hosted by the Republican National Committee. “Faith should always be at the heart of all we do,” she wrote on Instagram.

Army veteran and former Fox News contributor Pete Hegseth is nominated for secretary of the Defense Department. He attends Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship in Tennessee, which is associated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, cofounded by Idaho-based pastor Doug Wilson.

Hegseth grew up Baptist but told a Tennessee magazine he had a “Christian veneer but a secular core” until his late 30s. In the interim, he racked up a series of controversies for which he faced questioning by Democratic lawmakers during his confirmation hearing. He’s denied allegations of alcohol abuse and sexual assault. Hegseth, who has been divorced twice, has acknowledged past marital infidelity. In his hearing, he said he’s been “redeemed by his Lord and Savior for his failings in life.”

Initially skeptical Republicans have gotten on board with confirming him, but there were some signs of trouble on Friday when Sen. Lisa Murkowski became the first Republican to oppose one of Trump’s picks. The Alaska senator said she “cannot in good conscience support his nomination” and cited the allegations against him and past comments suggesting he opposed women serving in the military, though he has revised those in recent days. Hegseth can still be confirmed unless two other Republicans come out against him.

“The danger with someone like Hegseth is that someone could use their faith as just a shield for criticism and to say, ‘Well, you know, I’m a believer now, and I’m changed,’ and then you just try to short-circuit all the conversation,” Smith said. “I think the way that you get past that, obviously, is you look at someone’s life and their actions.”

Other Protestants include Doug Burgum, who would be Secretary of the Interior. While reticent to talk about faith, in one interview he told voters he grew up Methodist and had been “sustained” by his faith during difficult times, such as the deaths of family members.

Hedge-fund executive Scott Bessent, teed up for secretary of the Treasury, brings one of the more unique Protestant backgrounds to the table as a French Huguenot. He’s a member of the French Huguenot Church of Charleston and funded a renovation of the Gothic Revival building in the last few years. His relatives helped found the church in the 1680s, according to The Wall Street Journal. If confirmed, Bessent would be the highest-ranking openly gay US official. He is married to former New York City prosecutor John Freeman.

Trump’s Catholic picks that will make up his Cabinet include Vice President JD Vance; Rubio; Ratcliffe; Education secretary nominee Linda McMahon, who grew up Baptist and converted to Catholicism; Transportation nominee and former congressman Sean Duffy; Labor nominee Lori Chavez-DeRemer; HHS nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; Small Business Administration chief nominee Kelly Loeffler; and United Nations ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik.

Michael Kratsios, who would be science advisor, is a leader in the Greek Orthodox Church. Tulsi Gabbard, who would be director of national intelligence, is Hindu. Jamieson Greer, who would serve as US trade representative, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jewish nominees include Howard Lutnick for Secretary of Commerce and Lee Zeldin for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Less is known about the faith backgrounds or practices of some of Trump’s other selections, such as Energy Secretary pick Chris Wright. Pam Bondi has been tapped to serve as Attorney General; she has not spoken publicly about her faith but has had fundraising support from members of the Church of Scientology.

It’s not yet clear how Trump’s team will impact the administration’s positions on issues important to evangelicals.

“It was pretty clear in 2016 Trump believed he needed evangelical support [to win] and to get reelected in 2020,” Smith said. “It was a strong, necessary voting bloc in 2016 that I think you could argue he went out of his way to accommodate.”

Smith ticked off Trump’s actions like picking evangelical Mike Pence as his running mate and selecting Supreme Court justices vouched for by the Federalist Society. He made appearances at the March for Life and talked extensively about pro-life issues.

This time around, issues like abortion may be relegated to the back burner. Part of that is because the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision relegated the issue back to the states, but Smith also noted that there is a lack of appetite among congressional Republicans or the incoming Trump administration to attempt any kind of national legislation on the issue. Smith also noted that Trump has appointed pro-choice nominees like RFK Jr., leading to an outcry by some conservatives (including Pence).

“When you look in 2024 at least, to me, I think his behavior suggests he’s not running for reelection. Obviously, he’s a lame duck, and he’s just not as reliant or dependent upon evangelicals, and so I don’t think he has felt the same kind of need with appointments,” Smith said. “It’s a much more diverse coalition, and I think socially, a much more progressive coalition than what we saw in 2016. Evangelicals are a part of it, as opposed to a driving force.”

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Culture

After 30 Years, Skillet Rocks On

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The veteran band reached alienated youth group teens of the ’90s. Now the kids of their first fans are listening too.

Skillet performing at Winter Jam

Photography by Kurt Kryszak

Meghan Simmons remembered Skillet’s music blasting through the old speakers on her church’s bus as it shuttled her and her youth group friends to concerts and camps in the mid-1990s. She recalled that the band—hard rock influenced by grunge, nu metal, and arena pop rock, with songs like “Locked in a Cage” and “Dive Over In”—scratched the itch of relatively tame teenage disenchantment.

“I wasn’t a particularly rebellious teenager, but that harder sound sort of gave me something to hook my rebellion onto,” Simmons said. “That was my edgy music.” When she saw Skillet at Winter Jam—a yearly Christian music tour that regularly ranks among the top-grossing tours in the US—it was “by far the hardest concert” she had ever attended. She watched the band play “with my high school boyfriend [now husband]. He bought me a smoothie.”

Long-time fans of Skillet know what to expect when they show up to a concert: pyrotechnics, bone-rattling amplification, and a theatrical performance of a range of selections from their expansive catalog, including intense, raucous anthems and inspirational ballads. After nearly 30 years in the industry, the band remains one of the most successful Christian music groups working today. In 2024, Skillet was the fourth most-streamed Christian artist according to Luminate, behind only Elevation Worship, Lauren Daigle, and Hillsong Worship.

And its success isn’t confined to Christian circles. According to the band’s public relations firm, the majority of Skillet’s radio airplay for the past decade has been on mainstream rock stations. They have 8.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Organizations like the WWE, ESPN, and the NFL have purchased sync rights for their songs. The band has toured with acts like Nickelback, Seether, Papa Roach, and Korn.

Unlike most of their industry counterparts that emerged on the contemporary Christian music (CCM) scene of the ’90s (think DC Talk and Jars of Clay), Skillet has continued to do the near impossible: attract new young fans. Today, their core audience demographic is men aged 18–24.

This kind of longevity and reach is rare, especially in Christian music, where catalogs have historically had little value (though that’s changed somewhat in recent years) and few artists have managed to establish their songs as classics. In Skillet’s case, long-term success seems to flow from periodic reinvention and marketing savvy. They stay busy, touring almost constantly. On the heels of their first Middle East tour last fall, the four-member ensemble, which includes John Cooper and his wife Korey Cooper, Jen Ledger, and Seth Morrison, is headlining Winter Jam once again. A fresh group of fans will rock out to their heavy sound—maybe even over smoothies.

Edginess, musical and rhetorical, has long been part of Skillet’s brand. Increasingly, it seems, that edginess is expressing itself through politics. Frontman John Cooper’s activism on stage, online, and on his podcast—related to gender, politics, and wokeness—has attracted listeners who share his conservative views. (The podcast’s most recent episode is in part a critical response to a recent article by Christianity Today’s editor in chief Russell Moore.)

Cooper seems to understand that the teens and young adults (especially men) of today are experiencing a different kind of alienation than he did—one marked by a feeling of collective powerlessness and political disenfranchisement. But the underlying rage, loneliness, and pain? Those are themes Skillet has always addressed.

“I have a perpetual love for teenagers,” he told CT. “We have to talk about nihilism and anger. I want them to know it’s okay to feel this way, but I also want them to know that there is hope.”

In Skillet’s early days, Cooper sported piecey bleached-blond hair (a striking contrast to his current dark hair and long beard) and a punk-inspired wardrobe (lots of black, cutoff tank tops, and baggy pants), in keeping with the band’s creative debt to ’90s acts like Nirvana. Cooper said the angst and disillusionment associated with figures like Kurt Cobain is part of Skillet’s story, too. Grunge and hard rock resonated with isolated teens like Cooper himself, who lost his mother to cancer when he was 15 years old.

“I started fighting with my dad. I was angry, and I was lonely,” Cooper said. “I would fantasize about hurting people. Nothing extreme, but I’d think, This person is hurting me. How can I hurt them?”

During that dark season, Cooper said, Jesus rescued him, and music was there for him. “It was like, ‘No one I know understands me, but Metallica does, Stryper does, Trent Reznor does,’” he said.

Skillet’s first album, Skillet (1996), paid homage to Nirvana’s 1991 album Nevermind; the title track, “I Can,” borrows structurally and sonically from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” That grunge sound attracted Skillet’s early fans, mostly Christian teens and young adults looking for music that satisfied their desire for something cool and their parents’ search for “safe” content.

Skillet came out in the heyday of CCM’s bid to offer a Christian alternative to suit any musical taste: If you like NSYNC, try Plus One. If you like Alanis Morissette, try Rebecca St. James. These were artists for Christians who wanted a taste of what it would be like to be plugged into mainstream music subcultures—including their fandoms, concertgoing, and merch—but without sexual content, drug references, or explicit language.

Skillet took a slightly different approach. Josh Balogh, a writer for the Christian music forum Jesus Freak Hideout, said that though the band was always positioned as a Christian alternative to grunge, it also didn’t shy away from the dark content that defined the genre: “They were diving into mental health, suicidal ideation, really heavy themes.” Though their young Christian listeners might not have been allowed to listen to secular rock, they still resonated with the aesthetics of disillusionment and despair.

Andrew Czaplicki discovered Skillet in 1998 as a preteen at Creation Festival, a Christian music festival held in Pennsylvania from 1979 to 2023 that his parents made part of a family vacation. At the alternative “fringe” stage, he saw the band perform songs from their second album, Hey You, I Love Your Soul. Other Christian hitmakers like Audio Adrenaline played, too. But Czaplicki was an instant Skillet fan.

“I was an angsty kid, but my family had only ever listened to contemporary Christian music and country,” he said. “I felt like the world had just opened up to us, with all this new music we could listen to.” When Czaplicki was a lonely adolescent—his father was an active-duty service member, and his family moved every two years or so—listening to Skillet gave hard emotions a safe place to land.

Years later, during a family crisis, Czaplicki turned to the band’s music again. In 2018, he and his family were visiting grandparents over the Thanksgiving holiday. One morning, Czaplicki’s 18-month-old didn’t wake up. The unexpected death of their child left Czaplicki and his wife reeling. In the aftermath, Skillet’s music was like an old friend.

“There were days when their music got me through the day. Don’t get me wrong—God got me through it, but the music was the soundtrack,” said Czaplicki.

Skillet provided a place for his loneliness and sadness in adolescence. In adulthood, the raw, emotional, anthemic songs from the band’s 2016 album, Unleashed, resonated with him in the midst of mourning.

Now, Czaplicki and his 10-year-old son listen to Skillet together.

“I gave him an old iPod and loaded it up with Skillet songs so he can listen on the bus. He’s got the T-shirts. We go to concerts. It’s something we share now.”

Skillet’s appeal to the angry and angsty has continued to win it new fans and keep older fans coming back. The band has always adapted quickly to style changes in the industry, noted Balogh. And while Cooper insisted that Skillet doesn’t “chase trends,” he did acknowledge that they are always open to new sounds. Over the years, they’ve been influenced by Linkin Park, Breaking Benjamin, Imagine Dragons, Eminem, and Twenty-One Pilots.

They’re also open to cultural and political shifts. Veteran fans of Skillet have always seen the group as self-consciously countercultural. In the ’90s, their angst mirrored the grunge scene. Today, it mirrors the more online, “anti-woke” segment of American conservatism, which some young people see as the new counterculture.

Over the past decade, Cooper has become a vocal critic of the “deconstruction Christian movement.” In 2023, he self-published a book titled Wimpy, Weak, and Woke: How Truth Can Save America from Utopian Destruction. On his podcast, he calls out the “leftward drift of Christian elites.” The music video for the song “All That Matters” from the 2024 album Revolution features footage of him wearing a black cowboy hat. He sings, “These three things I’d die for: / my faith, my family, my freedom.” Cooper said listeners responded positively.

“All these fans are saying, ‘I’m just glad someone is saying it’s okay to love America,’” he said.

This anti-woke aesthetic seems to have particular appeal for young men. According to the music stats platform Chartmetric, Skillet’s audience is currently about 55 percent male (unusual in the Christian market), and nearly 45 percent of listeners are between the ages of 18 and 24. (By contrast, Elevation Worship, Lauren Daigle, and Hillsong Worship all have listenerships that are roughly 60 percent female or higher and primarily in the 25–34 age range.)

Skillet seems to be attracting young people, said Cooper, because they are looking for “truth tellers”: “I would guess that a lot of the same people who listen to Joe Rogan and Bill Maher are also drawn to us. Skillet is extremely nonjudgmental.”

Cooper also said he still understands alienated youth, even though what it means to be alienated has changed since the ’90s. Skillet’s music and message is resonating. He thinks that’s confirmation the band is doing something right.

And what about all those non-Christian fans? To some degree, the lyrics of some of Skillet’s most popular songs (like “Monster,” used during the 2009 WrestleMania 25th Anniversary broadcast) are vague enough that listeners can “create their own meaning,” Balogh said. A generically uplifting faith message permeates the music—but it wouldn’t necessarily register as Christian to a casual listener.

As the next generation of rock enthusiasts discovers Skillet, they may realize over time that the band’s discography includes lots of songs with explicit references to Jesus and the Cross. They may not know what to make of them. Cooper said he welcomes those listeners regardless.

“I meet fans all the time who say something like, ‘I don’t get the Jesus stuff, but your music makes me feel better.’”

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis is the Worship Music Correspondent for Christianity Today.

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Books

Review

The Blood, Sweat, and Tears of Black Missionaries

F. Lionel Young III

Older histories have highlighted the hurdles they faced. Newer works show them taking the driver’s seat.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Wikimedia Commons

The African American pastor and emancipated slave George Liele (1750–1828) began his missionary career some ten years before William Carey, the great English missionary to India, set sail for Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1793. Liele formed the Ethiopian Baptist Church in Jamaica in 1783, intentionally using Ethiopian in the church’s name because he rightly believed that Christianity was the religion of Africans long before it became the dominant religion of Europeans. Liele’s effective missionary labors gave rise to a Baptist movement in Jamaica that would animate a slave revolt in 1831 and inspire the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.

About a half century before Liele founded the Ethiopian Baptist Church, an Afro-Caribbean woman and former slave named Rebecca Freundlich Protten (1718–1780) began her own long career as a missionary. Her labors predated those of Ann Judson, the celebrated American missionary, by more than 75 years. Protten led revival movements in West Africa and the West Indies and helped spread Christianity throughout the Atlantic world. By some accounts, she is considered the matriarch of modern Christian missions. (Her life is the subject of a book, Rebecca’s Revival, published by Harvard University Press.)

The work of Black missionaries like Liele and Protten has not been completely ignored in the history of Christianity. Important studies like Black Americans and the Missionary Movement in Africa and Black Americans and the Evangelization of Africa, 1877–1900,both published in the early 1980s, have stood the test of time. These pathbreaking works are essential reading, even if some of their arguments are built on older ideas from the 1960s and 1970s.

But new studies are now emerging. The work of Black missionaries is now being “written back into the story,” to cite one recent CT headline, and misguided stereotypes of Christianity as a white man’s religion are being successfully challenged.

A generation ago, the great historian of missions Andrew Walls encouraged fellow scholars to “enlarge the story” of Christianity. One of the things he had in mind was placing greater focus on the contributions of African Americans. Emerging research in the history of missions is gradually adjusting our understanding of how Christianity actually spread throughout the world in the modern period.

For example, we now know that the gospel message was transmitted to Africa and the African diaspora largely through the efforts of other Africans. Mounting evidence drawn from mission archives also shows that the success of Anglo-European mission societies, founded in the 19th century, owed largely to African translators, evangelists, missionaries, pastors, teachers, and other workers. Available statistics show that as early as 1910, African workers already outnumbered white missionaries by a ratio of about five to one.

In addition, Black converts in Africa and the Atlantic world, including former slaves, not only accepted the Christian message but also shaped its meaning in remarkable ways. As the late missions scholar Lamin Sanneh put it in Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West, “Christianity helped Africans to become renewed Africans, not remade Europeans.”

One of the more interesting features of emerging work on Black missionaries in the Atlantic world is the necessary emphasis placed on agency, to use the term favored by historians. Stories that recall the blood, sweat, and tears of Black missionaries offer a welcome departure from what is sometimes called “done-to” history—narratives that focus primarily on the enslavement and mistreatment of Black people. As a result, we’re learning more about their own efforts to spread the gospel as opposed to what others have done to them.

Kent Michael Shaw I’s book Missiology Reimagined: The Missions Theology of the Nineteenth-Century African American Missionary is a recent example of this new trend. Shaw, a pastor and professor, sifts through sermons, letters, diaries, and journals written during the 1800s, bringing to light the history of African American missionaries during this period.

In particular, Shaw’s work examines the lives and ministries of noteworthy African American missionaries who set sail for Jamaica, Haiti, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Hawaii, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These figures include George Liele, Lott Carey, James W. C. Pennington, Amanda Berry Smith, Betsey Stockton, Alexander Crummell, James Theodore Holly, Daniel Coker, and William Henry Sheppard. As his book’s title suggests, Shaw also shows how their contributions shaped African American reflection on the work of missions.

In Shaw’s narrative, slavery and racism serve as the backdrop for his focus on the ministries of African American missionaries. He shows that the majority of enslaved African Americans heard the gospel not from their white masters but through the witness of other African slaves. This finding is consistent what we know about the spread of Christianity through indigenous agency. Shaw argues that African American slaves were so stirred by the Exodus narrative, the message of God’s love for the oppressed, and the story of Christ suffering to “set them free” that some were compelled to devote their lives to missionary service. Moreover, these missionaries were motivated to proclaim the Good News to other Africans because they believed the gospel would transform their lives.

African Americans who wanted to serve as missionaries in the 19th century faced significant challenges. Many, of course, had to win their own freedom before pursuing the missionary calling. Those who did had limited access to theological education, a problem worsened by the discriminatory practices of American colleges and seminaries.

Some prepared for overseas ministry by studying under the tutelage of ordained ministers. Others attended Black colleges like the Ashmun Institute (now Lincoln University) or Tuscaloosa Institute (now Stillman College), schools founded in the 19th century to train African American ministers. A few were admitted to institutions of higher learning like Princeton, Yale, Oxford, and Cambridge, usually with the help of determined white advocates.

Uncertain access to financial resources created another hurdle. Established mission societies and denominations tended to freeze out African American aspirants. A few white mission societies accepted Black applicants, often due to the mistaken belief that they would be less susceptible to tropical illnesses abroad.

But most African Americans were flatly rejected on racial grounds. This compelled them to strike out independently, either by providing their own finances or by receiving assistance from Black congregations. As the century wore on, more African American missionaries relied on predominantly Black denominations like the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and the National Baptist Convention.

Shaw draws from 19th-century primary sources to show that African Americans were engaged in missiological reflection. They thought about a range of subjects like colonialism, slavery, racism, education, cultural contextualization, the Holy Spirit, and even dancing and shouting in worship services.

The book helpfully illuminates African American understandings of the doctrine of salvation, which affirmed conventional evangelical perspectives but also transcended them. The African American missionaries in Shaw’s study believed in the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, which views Christ as bearing punishment upon the cross for the sins of humanity. This was the way most 19th-century Western evangelicals understood the meaning of Christ’s death. At the same time, and with equal fervor, they adhered to the Christus Victor atonement theory, which taught that Christ’s death also overcame evil by liberating mankind from sin, sickness, and death. This was the view many early church theologians had espoused, and it resonated with African Americans due to the history of oppression they endured.

Readers will be impressed by Shaw’s research as well as his familiarity with the history of African American missionaries. But the book does have certain flaws. There are a few grammatical stumbles and some unevenness in its overall flow. And at times, Shaw’s work comes close to celebrating its subjects uncritically.

But these imperfections do not detract from Shaw’s important contributions. His book helps point the way toward research avenues that further “enlarge the story” of Christianity. For starters, the archives of Black denominations need more exploration. And the history of white mission agencies, whose complicity with discrimination continued well into the 20th century, deserves honest evaluation. Evangelical mission agencies are trying to recruit Black missionaries, but the legacy of segregation lingers.

We also need more work on global missions in the 20th century, especially in this new era of world Christianity. Today, nearly half of the world’s foreign missionaries are Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans. We would shirk our duty as historians to abandon the study of Christian missions just as it is becoming less white and Eurocentric!

Readers interested in the growing diversity of the Christian story will find it useful to consider Shaw’s work alongside another recently published volume, The Palgrave Handbook of Christianity in Africa from Apostolic Times to the Present. Though focused mainly on African Christianity, it features several articles on the work of Black missionaries. Noteworthy contributions come from historians like Brian Stanley (who examines the important role of Black missionaries in Africa), David Killingray (who shows how emancipated slaves served the missionary movement), and Kimberly Hill (who considers how the concept of “Ethiopianism” spurred Black efforts at evangelization).

Studies like these offer a richer and fuller picture of the diversity of Christianity. Africans and African Americans embraced the gospel, transformed it in significant ways, and then made remarkable contributions to the growth of Christianity. Even today, we are only now beginning to appreciate the contours of this story. As Killingray notes, even the “evangelization of Africa” was “in the hands of Africans” and “often out of sight of European missions.”

Historians are now bringing these stories into the open, casting new light on the prophetic remarks of King David in Psalm 68:31–32. In the words of the King James Version, “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God” and sing the praises of the Lord.

F. Lionel Young III is a senior research associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide. He is the author of World Christianity and the Unfinished Task: A Very Short Introduction.

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News

South Korea’s Protests Are Bringing Some Christian Families Closer

Isabel Ong

Differing opinions on Yoon’s impeachment are driving kin apart. But a few parents and children are finding more common ground.

Thousands of people protest in Seoul, South Korea, near President Yoon Suk Yeol's official residence calling for his arrest after his impeachment.

NurPhoto / Getty

On a bitterly cold December day last year, Jeon Jeehoo decided to join a protest.

After wrapping up her part-time job as an English tutor at a hagwon—a Korean cram school—Jeehoo rushed to the subway. Ordinarily, the trip from her workplace to the National Assembly building in Seoul would take one and a half hours. But the station was in total chaos as crowds of people were also out and about, arguably for the same reason.

Jeehoo hopped on a bus, which made little progress fighting traffic. So she got off midway and started walking along a bridge across a river—one typically only used by cars, not pedestrians—toward the legislature, where thousands were gathering to call for President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment.

Before participating in this protest and several others later on, Jeehoo meditated on Micah 6:8, which says, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” The church cannot turn its back on society, Jeehoo thought.

Trudging across the bridge, the 24-year-old student and InterVarsity ministry leader at Sookmyung Women’s University clutched hand warmers in her pockets to soothe her frigid fingers. A frosty wind slapped her face.

As she drew closer to the protest site, she saw people waving light sticks that flashed bright green, purple, and pink hues in the air. The sounds of upbeat K-pop music—alongside loud cries repeatedly chanting, “Yoon Suk Yeol, step down!”—flowed into her ears.

Courtesy of Jeon Jeehoo

Jeon Jeehoo (second to left) with church friends at a protest to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol at Gwanghwamun.

Jeehoo’s father, Jaehyung, had arrived at the same protest site earlier that day. The crowd was overwhelming and felt eerily reminiscent of the Itaewon crowd-crush incident in Seoul in 2022, where more than 150 people died in a narrow alley while celebrating Halloween. He tried to text Jeehoo to warn her of the crowd, but cell service on the messaging app KakaoTalk was not working, and phone calls only worked after he left the protest’s vicinity, when the motion to impeach Yoon failed after members of the president’s People Power Party boycotted the vote.

Seven years earlier, the father and daughter had participated in another protest against former president Park Geun-hye, who was impeached in March 2017 and charged with bribery, extortion, and abuse of power. As Jeehoo shouted protest slogans demanding Park’s impeachment for hours in the freezing cold, her throat became raw and she tasted blood.

This protest would be similar, Jeehoo surmised. The protest against Park had a solemn atmosphere that was “full of resentment,” she said. But the mood around the National Assembly building was cheerful, with people dancing, singing, and wearing creative costumes.

One week later, when the second motion to impeach Yoon was passed, the mood turned jubilant as thousands of protesters—with an estimated 417,000 people present at its peak—let out a rapturous cheer outside the National Assembly.

Fifty-year-old Moon Chan and his twenty-year-old daughter, Hyein, who had arrived at the protest site feeling anxious and expectant, were among them. Chan had often driven Hyein to K-pop idol concerts but had never attended a single one. At the protest, however, he found himself waving a light stick from her favorite idol group beside her.

Hyein, meanwhile, saw an elderly man dancing to the Girls’ Generation song “Into the New World” when the news broke. A middle-aged woman standing in line for the restroom looked around and quietly took in the scene before saying, “Thank you for your hard work,” to a group of young people near her.

Older generations of Koreans excel in protests, but here they had warmly welcomed elements of younger Korean culture that felt unfamiliar, like singing K-pop songs that were not part of the traditional protest repertoire, Hyein thought. “Seeing their flexibility and willingness to adapt made me realize they were far more open-minded than I had thought,” she said. The Moons remained until evening, snapping photos of themselves with the National Assembly as their backdrop.

Protests have erupted across Seoul in the wake of Yoon Suk Yeol’s ill-fated martial law attempt. Almost every city in the country, from Daejeon to Busan to Jeju, held protests on its streets, outside their city halls, or in front of the Republican Party’s buildings.

Some of the protests were organized by rival political activists who use YouTube to garner supporters and livestream the gatherings. Some were led by civic organizations not affiliated with any religion or political party, such as Candlelight Action, which held the protest Jeehoo and her father participated in. Others arose organically, as angry citizens found each other in plazas and squares.

On December 3, Yoon rocked the country by issuing a nationwide emergency martial law, declaring that there were “anti-state” forces sympathizing with North Korea that threatened to cause South Korea’s downfall. The last time martial law was imposed in the country was in 1979 after Park Chung-hee, the president and a military dictator, was assassinated.

Armed soldiers surrounded the National Assembly building, preventing lawmakers from entering to cast their votes on the martial law declaration, which was formally lifted the next day. Members of the National Assembly then voted to impeach Yoon for abuse of power on December 14, throwing the country into further turmoil.

Protesters singing the song “Happy” by Korean pop rock band Day6 in Seoul when Yoon’s impeachment motion was passed on Saturday, December 14.

Tens of thousands of Koreans have since thronged the streets. Intensifying tensions between pro- and anti-Yoon supporters have exacerbated generational and gender-related rifts in Korean society. Many congregated outside the National Assembly, while others demonstrated in front of the People Power Party’s headquarters. Hundreds of Yoon’s supporters and opponents also spent weeks campaigning outside the president’s home in Yongsan, central Seoul.

Yoon’s supporters are predominantly elderly or young men, while those protesting against Yoon largely comprise women in their 20s and 30s.

“Mothers and fathers openly disapprove of their children’s activism, while some young South Koreans speak online of severing ties with their parents over their support of Yoon,” noted a report in the South China Morning Post.

In central Seoul, a large crowd gathered to oppose Yoon’s impeachment, calling the parliament vote invalid and championing for the president’s reinstatement. Pro-Yoon protesters waved American flags and chanted “Stop the Steal” in English while bearing posters with the slogan, even as peddlers hawked bright red MAGA-inspired caps bearing the words “against the unlawful impeachment.”

Yoon’s supporters see similarities in their president’s predicament to that of United States president Donald Trump, who was impeached twice. They say South Korea’s opposition Democratic Party stole the April 2024 legislative election by winning 175 out of 300 seats at the National Assembly. Yoon also suggested that election fraud was the reason why he failed to impose martial law in the country.

Similar splits have occurred in Christian circles. Many evangelical Korean churches are supportive of Yoon, whom they view as pro-America and capable of defending South Korea from communist influences.

One of the most prominent voices in this space is Jun Kwang-hoon, the pastor of Sarang Jeil Church. “If President Yoon hadn’t declared martial law, the country would already be in the hands of North Korea!” he shouted during a demonstration in early January.

Yet close to two-thirds of the pastors polled in a survey last month favored impeachment. Around 700 pastors from the Presbyterian Church of Korea held a public prayer meeting in the Yeouido neighborhood calling for Yoon’s impeachment.

Courtesy of Jeon Jeehoo

Jeon Jeehoo (far right) with her university friends at at the Yongsan office of the President of South Korea.

But the Jeons and the Moons have largely been spared these fissures. In fact, rather than tearing them apart, the protests have helped to bridge intergenerational divides between parents and children.

Long before the country’s political unrest, the Jeon family sought each other out. Jeehoo would confide in her parents about struggling to have an intimate relationship with God. They would also chat about interesting books they had read or political developments in the country. Even now, they often share life’s highs and lows with one another.

Since attending the protests, Jeehoo’s parents have stopped labeling younger generations as indifferent to politics and not brave enough to demonstrate publicly against an issue or a person in power.

Sixty-year-old Jaehyung, Jeehoo’s father, experienced martial law firsthand in the ’70s and ’80s, living under Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan’s authoritarian dictatorship, and during the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, where around 200 civilians were killed while protesting against Chun.

As Yoon’s short-lived martial law announcement broke, Jaehyung worried history would repeat itself as younger Koreans seemed less invested in politics.

But when Jaehyung turned up at the National Assembly that cold December day, he was surprised to see so many young Koreans showing up to protest. He felt heartened that young people wanted to mark this significant moment in South Korea’s history.

Joining the protests with her parents and receiving their support for her political activism also made her feel “very happy and proud,” Jeehoo said.

Chan, a member of Onnuri Church, also previously held stereotypes of young Koreans, thinking they lacked historical awareness and preferred individualism over collectivism. What he witnessed at the protest challenged his perceptions of that generation. He saw young people displaying resilience and creativity, expressions of hope and aspiration that were “vibrant and innovative,” he said.

“Seeing them create and lead their own unique protest culture while actively and diversely voicing their opinions [makes me] think that this younger generation possesses many qualities that surpass those of older generations,” he added.

It was a “blessing” to share similar values with her father, Hyein said. Many of her friends are struggling to understand their parents’ views, and vice versa, as they disagree over whether Yoon should be impeached.

On January 15, Yoon was apprehended after barricading himself in his residential compound for weeks and resisting an initial arrest attempt two weeks prior. Police formally arrested Yoon four days later. When a court extended Yoon’s period of detention for up to 20 days, his supporters stormed a court building, destroying office equipment and furniture, with 40 people suffering minor injuries. On January 21, Yoon made his first public appearance at his impeachment trial.

Upon hearing of Yoon’s arrest, Chan clapped and cheered with relief and joy, praising God’s sovereignty and justice. He thought of Revelation 18:10, which says, “Woe! Woe to you, great city, you mighty city of Babylon! In one hour your doom has come!”

Jeehoo joined a protest at Gwanghwamun with her university friends the day before Yoon’s arrest. As she and thousands of other protesters marched toward City Hall, waving handmade Korean flags, she listened to middle and high schoolers making passionate speeches.

An elderly man held up a sign that said, “Feminism saves democracy.” Another elderly man earnestly sang a K-pop song, stumbling slightly over its fast-paced rhythm. An elderly woman smiled and said, “Thank you for your hard work.” A young mother tightly gripped the hands of her two children as they marched along.

“The protest chants and those who shouted them were diverse rather than uniform,” Jeehoo said. “We applauded each other’s flags and laughed together.”

Additional reporting by Jennifer Park in South Korea.

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News

Wire Story

Trump Halts Refugee Resettlement Program

Diana Chandler - Baptist Press

After welcoming thousands of families in recent months, agencies are “heartbroken” over an executive order to temporarily suspend admittances.

Andrew Renneisen / Getty Images

Incoming President Donald Trump has halted for at least 90 days a refugee admissions program that resettled 100,000 individuals fleeing persecution in fiscal year 2024, including nearly 30,000 Christians.

By an executive order on Monday, Trump suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) “until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests” of the nation, ordered the secretary of Homeland Security to submit a report in consultation with the secretary of state within 90 days of the order regarding whether resumption of the program “would be in the interests of the United States,” and declared the order effective January 27.

A similar executive order went in place during the start of Trump’s previous term in 2017, Christianity Today reported, putting refugee families in limbo and churches’ plans to help families resettle on hold; the refugee ceiling was cut to a record low of 18,000 a year.

A majority of refugee resettlement agencies in the US are faith-based—including Church World Service, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Bethany Christian Services, and World Relief, the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals—and several had to lay off staff, close offices, or shut down entirely as a result of the cuts, CT wrote.

This time, Trump ordered the cabinet members to submit reports every 90 days on the program until he deems its resumption is in the nation’s best interest.

The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) responded with optimism. “We are hopeful that this reevaluation will lead to improvement in the process that will better facilitate persecuted people finding refuge in the United States,” ERLC President Brent Leatherwood told Baptist Press. “Southern Baptists maintain a deep and abiding concern for persecuted people across the globe—especially fellow Christians.”

Messengers to the 2023 SBC Annual Meeting passed a resolution stating, “We implore our government leaders to maintain robust avenues for valid asylum claimants seeking refuge and to create legal pathways to permanent status for immigrants who are in our communities by no fault of their own, prioritizing the unity of families.”

But refugee resettlement organizations and religious liberty groups, particularly World Relief, lamented Trump’s order. World Relief called the order “drastic” and urged Trump to reconsider, while yet expressing gratitude that the program might resume.

“We’re heartbroken by this decision,” World Relief President and CEO Myal Greene said in a press statement. “At a time when there are more refugees globally than ever in recorded history, including many persecuted on account of their faith, the United States should be doing more—not less—to offer help to those in need of refuge.

“Nevertheless, we’re grateful that the president’s order today still leaves room for resettlement to resume later this year, and we pray he will indeed resume resettlement as soon as possible.”

In the first three months of fiscal year 2025, more than 27,000 refugees were admitted in the US, World Relief reported, 2,241 of whom World Relief resettled in collaboration with local church partners nationally. Nearly 70 percent of those fled a threat of persecution in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Syria and Venezuela, all of which except Venezuela are included on the 2025 World Watch List of the 50 most dangerous countries for Christians.

“The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” Trump said in his order. “This order suspends the USRAP until such time as the further entry into the United States of refugees aligns with the interests of the United States.”

Trump reserved the right of the secretaries of state and homeland security, during the suspension, to jointly decide to admit refugees on a case-by-case basis, “but only so long as they determine that the entry of such aliens as refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States.”

In urging Trump to reconsider the executive order, Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s vice president of advocacy and policy, pointed to research focusing on the beliefs of Trump’s supporters.

Particularly, a 2024 Lifeway Research study found that 71 percent of evangelical Christians believe that the US has a moral responsibility to receive refugees, and a 2022 Pew Research study found that majorities of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents believe receiving refugees should be a goal of US immigration policy.

“Most evangelical Christians voted for President Trump in 2016, in 2020, and again in 2024,” Soerens said in a press statement. “They did so heartened by pledges that he would secure our borders and protect Christians from persecution, but most did not anticipate that he would halt a longstanding, legal immigration program that offers refuge to those persecuted for their Christian faith.”

In fiscal year 2024, the US resettled 100,034 refugees of all backgrounds, World Relief and Open Doors US reported in October 2024, including 29,493 Christian refugees from countries on the 2024 World Watch List.

The fiscal 2024 resettlement figure was the highest number since 2016, the result of the Biden administration’s rebuilding the refugee resettlement program after it reached lows during the Trump’s first administration, even before of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nadine Maenza, president of the International Religious Freedom Secretariat and a former member of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, has pointed out the influence US policy has on the ability of refugees to find an open door anywhere.

“When the US drops their numbers, countries around the world all drop their numbers, and when the US increases their numbers, it has the effect where all the other countries increase their numbers,” Maenza said upon the release of the October report from World Relief and Open Doors US “So when we close our doors, guess what happens? Other countries close their doors and it becomes an even larger problem in the world.”

- More from Diana Chandler - Baptist Press

Theology

Cynicism Could Cost Us Our Souls

Russell Moore

Columnist

An opportunistic or despairing attitude makes sense—unless you have the kingdom of God.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

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

This past week, I talked to a friend who was discouraged by the politicization of everything. She wanted a break from social media division and conversations that all end up as political arguments. So she found a Christian women’s Bible study in her community and signed up, hoping it could give her connection with others, a reminder that there’s more to life than the news cycle. Then she discovered that the Bible study speaker had been part of the January 6, 2021, Capitol attacks.

I winced, imagining her disappointment, and immediately thought of others facing the same kind of legitimate dispiritedness.

Imagine the Pentecostal Christian who trusted the “prophet” who seemed to know all kinds of personal details about people in his audience. What must she think when she realizes this was not the Holy Spirit but the man’s ability to scan social media feeds ahead of time, to pretend to have a spiritual gift when it was all just a marketing technique? Or contemplate what it must be like to be inspired by a pastor speaking at the presidential inauguration only to see him, within hours, offer a personally branded meme coin for people to buy. It would be hard not to see all this and not be disillusioned.

The danger, though, is that at least for some of us, disillusionment can easily give way to cynicism. The cynicism of our moment comes in at least two forms. One is an opportunistic kind of cynicism. This is the kind that determines that no one is really sincere and that the whole world is divided into two simple categories: hucksters and marks. The opportunistic cynic decides, then, to learn how to be a huckster. Anyone who doesn’t is a sucker or a loser, in this view.

That makes things much easier for the opportunistic cynic because, among other things, it gives an immediate intellectual shortcut. One need not actually think about what’s true and what’s false, what’s real and what’s fake, what’s right and what’s wrong. All the opportunistic cynic has to think about is what works. Once the cynic knows who the “friends” and who the “enemies” are, he or she has the template needed to cheer on the right side and to denounce the wrong one.

The other kind of cynicism is instead despairing. If opportunistic cynicism is self-advancing, despairing cynicism is self-protecting. Once I stop expecting actual goodness or sincerity in other people or in institutions, I feel like I can’t be hurt anymore, or at least not hurt as much.

I think often about the late pastor Eugene Peterson’s saying how creatures like crabs and beetles have an initial advantage over other forms of life because they have exoskeletons, protective bone systems on the outside, to protect them from disaster. Cynicism can seem to offer that kind of protection: Nothing can disappoint you if you’re pre-disappointed.

“Creatures with endoskeletons (that is, with their skeletons on the inside, like kittens and humans) are much more disadvantaged at first, being highly vulnerable to outside danger,” Peterson wrote. “But if they survive through the tender care and protection of others, they can develop higher forms of consciousness.”

Cynicism protects us from some initial hurt, but in the end, it filters out not only the genuine danger and fakeness we rightly want to avoid—it ultimately filters out everything and everyone. We no longer expect any goodness or authenticity or grace, anywhere. We stop seeking. We stop asking. We stop knocking at that door.

But even for those of us who decide we want to avoid cynicism, there are pitfalls. After all, one way to pretend to be free from cynicism is to act as though any negative assessment of reality is itself cynical.

The most cynical people I know are those who wave away any sense of lament or warning with “Why don’t you just talk about all the good things?” That’s not only its own form of covert cynicism but a cynicism factory because, in the fullness of time, most people come to see the difference between truth and propaganda.

So how do we respond to a troubled time without cynicism? The church is in genuine crisis on multiple fronts. So is the nation. So is the world.

Lately, I am drawn to the Book of Daniel. In the ninth chapter, Daniel—an exile from Judea in Babylon—wrote that he studied the Scriptures of old and determined “the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years” (v. 2, ESV throughout).

That itself was a reckoning with reality. After all, Jeremiah was controversial because he said that Babylon would indeed carry the people of God away and that it would be 70 years before they would return. The people wanted to hear other prophets, those who said the crisis would soon be over.

If Daniel had been cynical, he might have just denied there was a problem and busied himself with learning how to bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image whenever the music started. Or he could have simply given up altogether and decided that Jerusalem was gone, that all that he could hope for was to be left alone in Babylon.

Instead, the text reveals, Daniel turned to the kind of prayer that recognized how dire the hour was yet also remembered that God is a God of mercy and of grace, that he had delivered his people from Egypt and that he could deliver them again.

“Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of your servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate,” Daniel prayed. “O my God, incline your ear and hear. Open your eyes and see our desolations, and the city that is called by your name” (vv. 17–18).

God’s sanctuary was indeed desolate. Daniel was free from the deluded cynicism to say otherwise. And he trusted all that could change, because he was also free from the cynicism that gives up on hope.

Some of us struggle with seeing the depths of our crisis. Some of us struggle to see that the Spirit is still on the move, and that any Babylon can fall, as the Apocalypse puts it, “in a single hour” (Rev. 18:19).

We can help each other to remember all of that. And when one of us stumbles under the weight of cynicism, others of us can bear the burden for a while, to keep the prayers and hope and memory going until the hurting one can hear it again, can see it again.

Cynicism makes sense right now. It seems that the arc of history is bending toward it. But we know that the arc of history is skewed, and has been since our first ancestors brought death upon themselves in the Garden. We know that something’s gone awfully wrong with the world and that this is not how it’s supposed to be. That’s why we are looking for something different, for another king, another kingdom.

Let’s keep our sanity by reminding each other that cynicism will one day seem crazy.

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

News

Died: Arthur Blessitt, Who Carried a Cross Around the World

Daniel Silliman

The evangelist set a world record for longest pilgrimage and kept going for 43,340 miles.

Photo by Antony Matheus Linsen/Fairfax Media via Getty Images / edits by Christianity Today

People had a lot of questions when they saw a hippie minister with slightly shaggy hair hauling a 12-foot cross with a wheel across North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, hauling it down highways, up mountains, into deserts and jungles, through war zones, through cities and remote villages, and into countries where he did not know the language or understand the customs.

They asked what he was doing. Where he was going. And most of all, why.

Arthur Blessitt would answer with the gospel. He would say, “Jesus, man, he loves you,” and tell them the cross was a sign of how much. He would say, “If you would like to know Jesus and invite him into your heart, please pray this prayer with me now, Dear God, I need you …”

Blessitt did that for 43,340 miles, by his count. Which worked out to about 86 million steps and shoes he had to resole or replace several times every year.

He started in Hollywood in an impractical pair of sandals that he quickly replaced and went across the country to Washington, DC, and then on to 323 other countries, island groups, and territories. He set a Guinness World Record for longest ongoing pilgrimage and kept going for several more decades after that. He carried his cross all over the world for more than 50 years.

In his not-so-humble moments, Blessitt called this “one of the most dramatic and enduring pilgrimages in the history of man.” But he would also say his own role should not be overinflated. What had he done, except walk? Except be obedient to the voice that told him to go?

“I was just a donkey and pilgrim, lifting up the cross and Jesus,” Blessitt said.

Everywhere he went, people asked him to explain himself, and he told them about Jesus.

The evangelist died on January 14, 2025, at the age of 84. In a final statement posted to his website, Blessitt said he was looking forward to walking in glory.

“These feet that walked so far on roads of dirt and tar will now be walking on the streets of gold,” Blessitt wrote. “Ready to see Jesus again!”

Blessitt was born on October 27, 1940, in Greenville, Mississippi, to Virginia and Arthur Blessitt. The elder Arthur served in the Air Force in World War II and was stationed afterward in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Louisiana again.

The family was not especially religious but attended a Baptist revival when young Arthur was 7. It was held in a bush arbor—a temporary structure in the woods, made of brush and branches piled on top of fresh-cut poles—and the boy wanted to go forward during an altar call. Blessitt’s parents said he was too young to make a decision for Jesus. On the way home, as he recalled in his memoir, he pleaded and pleaded until his father hung a U on the dark Louisiana road, headed back to the revival, found the minister about to leave in his car, and said, “My son wants to give his life to Jesus.”

Blessitt told everyone he knew about his newfound salvation, leading his sister to Christ and handing out tracts and talking about Jesus in the bars where his father went to drink—until the elder Arthur, too, accepted Jesus.

Blessitt felt a call to ministry when he was 15 and went to Mississippi College and then Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary to prepare. He got ordained in a Baptist church and lasted one semester in seminary before feeling compelled to spend all his time evangelizing.

He ended up in Elko, Nevada, preaching in the brothels that were legal in the state, and then in Los Angeles, where the 1960s counterculture was exploding. In West Hollywood, he found a whole generation experimenting with drugs and music, new lifestyles, and new ideas, all searching for something better than their parents had given them.

“Kids are totally disillusioned with the phony concept of life,” he told a British reporter seeking to understand the hippie phenomenon. “They are contemptuous of the great American dream of money, two cars in the garage, cooler TV, coziness, and complacency. Jesus offers life: L-I-F-E.”

Blessitt, experienced at evangelizing in bars, made his way through the clubs on the Sunset Strip, including the famous Whisky a Go Go, before deciding to start his own: a nightclub for Jesus.

It was a safe and free place for people to go—strung-out kids, street hustlers, bikers, drug dealers, drag performers, and rock musicians. Blessitt gave out coffee, Kool-Aid, bagels donated by a Jewish deli, and New Testaments with psychedelic-looking covers. His wife, Sherry, said he should call it “His Place,” so he did, and he made a big cross to hang on the wall.

The cross came down when His Place was evicted by the landlord. Blessitt carried it outside, chained himself to it, and announced he was going on a hunger strike to protest this blatant attempt to banish Christian witness from Sunset Boulevard. He fasted for 28 days, Blessitt later wrote, before the owner of another building offered him a building for His Place.

Blessitt was only in the new location for a little while, though, when he heard Jesus speak to him.

“Not in an audible voice,” Blessitt later explained, “but in my heart and mind. I know HIS voice.”

Jesus said, “I want you to take that cross that is hanging on the wall in His Place and carry it across America.”

Blessitt said, “Thank you, Jesus, wow!”

There were lots of reasons to think this was a bad idea, but the 29-year-old evangelist was committed to being obedient to what he heard God say, regardless of the consequences. A few hundred people, including his wife and young children, gathered to see him start off on Christmas Day 1969. He led the crowd in a chant:

“Give me a J.”

“J!”

“Give me an E.”

“E!”

He spelled out Jesus and then asked, “What does that spell?”

The crowd said, “Jesus!”

Blessitt said, “What does America need?”

And they answered, “Jesus!”

He headed to DC. It wasn’t only the nation’s capital that needed Jesus, though, so after arriving in the summer of 1970, Blessitt decided to continue to Florida. But it wasn’t only America, either, so he went to Canada, and then to the ends of the earth.

Blessitt wrote about his journeys in his diary and later his memoirs with boundless cheerfulness. He had an apparently inexhaustible optimism for what he believed God was doing and always ran into people ready to hear how Jesus loved them. He told stories of amazing encounters, dramatic conversions, and miracles. Though ordained a Baptist, as time went on he increasingly spoke like a charismatic.

“Well, TODAY THE GLORY FELL!” he wrote in the late 1980s. “I know it’s strange, but there is a moment on almost every walk in every country where the glory comes, when there is liberty—there is a breakthrough.”

Following the Spirit could be dangerous. Blessitt wrote that someone tried to set his cross on fire in Indiana and a group of men on motorcycles stole it in Assisi, Italy. He was thrown in jail multiple times and assaulted by police at least once. He was chased by an elephant in Tanzania, a crocodile in Zimbabwe, a green mamba in Ghana, and men with stones in Morocco.

In America, he was shot at several times. Once, Blessitt said he jumped in a ditch and hid. Another time, he didn’t know why he hadn’t been hit. Maybe the men just missed, he reflected later, or maybe an angel had intervened, deflecting the bullets.

Blessitt ignored a doctor’s advice to get surgery for an aneurysm when he first set out and was fine, which he considered a miracle. He made up his mind to ignore all danger from then on. If he believed he was called by God, that overrode everything else.

“The call of God is not conditional,” Blessitt wrote. “I’d rather die in the will of God than live outside it.”

That commitment wasn’t a burden, for Blessitt, but a great adventure. People didn’t realize how exciting it could be to serve Jesus, he said. When he thought back at the end of his life to what he’d done and where he’d been, he couldn’t help but exult.

“Thank you Jesus for calling me to evangelism,” Blessitt wrote. “I have preached in houses of prostitution, homosexual churches, Hell’s Angels camps, rock festivals, in bars, nightclubs, go-go clubs, nude clubs, love-ins, on the streets, on sidewalks, on porches, in football stadiums, at automobile races, wrestling matches, dirty movie-porno clubs … even an occasional church!”

Blessitt is survived by his first wife, Sherry; his second wife, Denise; sons Arthur Joel, Arthur Joshua, Arthur Joseph, and Arthur Jerusalem; and daughters Gina, Joy, and Sophia.

He asked that there be no funeral or memorial services.

“The greatest thing you could do would be to go out and lead one more soul to be saved,” Blessitt said. “Share Jesus with someone today.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Blessitt’s age at his death.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Books

Review

Pilgrim Charity and Pilgrim Cruelty Aren’t Easily Separated

John G. Turner

Their treatment of Native populations appears hypocritical. But evangelism and conquest furthered the same underlying mission.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

In 1623, former Mayflower passenger Edward Winslow rushed west from Plymouth to visit Ousamequin, the Pilgrims’ Pokanoket ally and protector. Ousamequin was gravely ill and hadn’t eaten for days. Winslow found him surrounded by powwows “in the midst of their charms for him” and by women rubbing his extremities to keep him warm.

The guest from Plymouth examined the Pokanoket leader’s mouth and discovered that his tongue was “exceedingly furred.” Winslow used his knife to scrape away pus and relieve Ousamequin’s swelling before feeding him some “conserves.” Within a half hour, Ousamequin had considerably improved, and Winslow treated others in the village who were ill. “I see the English are my friends and love me,” Ousamequin declared. “Whilst I live, I will never forget this kindness they have showed me.”

Winslow spent the night in conversation with Corbitant, another local native leader. They talked about religion after Corbitant asked Winslow why the English prayed before meals. Winslow explained that all good things come from God and it is appropriate to thank him. The Pilgrim visitor equated the English God with Kiehtan, a creator deity known to Algonquin peoples.

These were intimate, tender, and hopeful moments, but within weeks relations between the Plymouth settlers and the Natives took a very different turn. Ousamequin warned the Pilgrims that the Massachusett people, located to their north, intended to attack the English settlement. The Massachusett were traditional enemies of the Pokanokets, Ousamequin’s people. Ousamequin recommended a preemptive attack.

Pilgrim leaders heeded his advice. They sent Captain Myles Standish and a small party of men to an English outpost on the rim of Massachusetts Bay. Standish and his soldiers encountered two Massachusett men, Wituwamat and Pecksuot, who apparently boasted of having killed Europeans. The Plymouth visitors feigned good intentions, then surprised their Native counterparts. Standish grabbed a knife hanging from Pecksuot’s neck and stabbed him to death. Others in the group murdered Wituwamat. The English killed around nine Massachusett in all before returning to Plymouth. They brought Wituwamat’s head with them and displayed it on a pike above Plymouth’s fort.

“Oh, how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some before you had killed any!” John Robinson, the Pilgrims’ pastor, wrote from the other side of the Atlantic. Robinson was baffled. Why had Standish acted in this manner? He lacked Christian “tenderness.” God would not approve of such barbarism.

How could the Pilgrims exhibit such a mixture of charity and cruelty? How could hopes for Native conversion devolve into bloody treachery and conquest? Were the Pilgrims hypocrites? Were they and their descendants not true Christians?

In The Wars of the Lord: The Puritan Conquest of America’s First People, Calvin Theological Seminary professor Matthew Tuininga argues that the English settlers of New England were not hypocrites. It wasn’t despite their Christianity that they conquered and decimated Native peoples. Instead, both evangelization and violence served the same broader purpose. Daniel Gookin, a Massachusetts Bay magistrate, referred to Native missions as a “War of the Lord” that freed souls from bondage to Satan. The Boston minister Increase Mather likewise referred to the 1675–1676 King Philip’s War as a “War of the Lord” in which God triumphed over his enemies. The English preferred peaceful conquest to bloody fighting. Either course, however, served the cause of Christ.

This book is a bracing corrective to simple morality tales. As Tuininga observes, prior generations of white Americans portrayed English colonists as well-intentioned men and women who established religious liberty and democracy in New England. Yes, Natives lost most of their land, but that was an inevitable byproduct of establishing conditions in which future Americans could flourish.

Nowadays the Puritans—Tuininga’s not-overly-accurate shorthand for most English settlers in New England—receive much more critical appraisal. While some American Christians still lionize the Pilgrims, contemporary books and curricula often depict them as rapacious racists who “used Christianity as a tool to justify the enslavement and genocide of innocent Native Americans.” Tuininga contends that “the reality is more complicated and disturbing.” Puritan theology “was not mere window dressing.” It animated both Edward Winslow’s anticipation of Native conversions and Standish’s murders of Wituwamat and Pecksuot.

The Wars of the Lord is a landmark history of 17th-century New England. Most historians narrate events in a single colony, such as Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay. Tuininga, by contrast, weaves together the histories of many English jurisdictions, not only the above but also New Haven, Saybrook, and Connecticut. The granular points of theology and church-state relations differed in the various colonies, as did the tenor of English-Native relations. Many scholars, moreover, take seriously either theology or political developments, specifically English interactions with Natives. As Tuininga notes, however, the Puritans “did not separate the spiritual and the secular.” He likewise maintains a broad scope.

If readers need encouragement to plunge into this capacious history, they should know that Tuininga combines sharp analysis with a readable and even entertaining narrative. There are familiar characters, such as the Pilgrims, Ousamequin (whom the Plymouth leaders called Massasoit), Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, and Mary Rowlandson, who wrote about her captivity during King Philip’s War (named for the Pokanoket chief Metacom, who went by “Philip”). Tuininga also introduces a procession of less familiar Native leaders, such as Awashonks, a female Sakonnet chief whose people supported but then abandoned Metacom during the mid-1670s war.

Awashonks is a paradigmatic example of Native persistence and adaptation. Like Metacom, she had rejected Christianity and resisted English encroachment onto her people’s land. As King Philip’s War turned in the favor of the English, though, Captain Benjamin Church of Plymouth Colony visited Awashonks with an overture of rum and tobacco. She wisely made him sample the rum to make sure it wasn’t poisoned. Then she struck an agreement with Church. Her men would fight for the English in exchange for “liberty to sit down in quietness on their lands.” The Sakonnets didn’t trust the English to honor their word, but they felt that an alliance with the settlers was their best chance.

King Philip’s War was a costly victory for the English. Approximately 10 percent of military-age colonists were dead, many towns were ravaged, and economic losses were immense. But fewer than half of all Natives survived the war. Many survivors were enslaved or reduced to servitude, and many more lost their land. Awashonks was right to be suspicious of English intentions. Her people lost almost all their territory.

It is surprising, perhaps, that the English also won the other “war of the Lord.” By the early 1670s, a large number of Wampanoags in what is now Southeastern Massachusetts had embraced Christianity, and the trend continued after the war as well. Certainly, some Natives rejected Christianity, as Metacom and Awashonks had done. But for many survivors, Tuininga explains, “Christianity became the key ingredient that held their communities together and enabled them to preserve their culture.”

One weakness of The Wars of the Lord is its overreliance on Puritan as an explanatory category. The label makes sense for the earlier portions of the story, those involving the Pilgrims (a separatist faction of the broader Puritan impulse within English Protestantism) and the founders of the Bay Colony.

It’s a less helpful term for the 1670s. Benjamin Church was the grandson of a Mayflower passenger, Richard Warren, who was one of the merchants who invested in the colony. Church and many other men of his generation probably did understand Natives as in some way in thrall to Satan, but they first and foremost were animated by a lust for land that transcended theological or religious boundaries. Missions to Natives, moreover, were never a central concern for most English settlers.

Tuininga’s narrative skill and solid research more than make up for this weakness, and the book’s greatest strength is his thoughtful approach to the American past. He ends his story with a conversation between Daniel Gookin and Waban, one of the earliest Massachusett converts to Christianity and the longtime leader of the Natick “praying town.” Waban complained to Gookin about the fact that the English did not accept Christian Natives as equal members of the body of Christ. Gookin pointed out that Jesus and his disciples also suffered unmerited persecution. “Waban, you know all Indians are not good,” Gookin observed. “So tis with Englishmen … and this we must expect while we are in this world.”

In his account of the dialogue, Gookin gave himself the last word, but the point was fair. English and Natives alike were a mixed multitude, and broad historical developments rarely hinge on the relative morality of opposing groups of people. Tuininga writes at great length about the “deplorable consequences” of English settlement without making them about “deplorable” individuals.

The Wars of the Lord is an antidote to contemporary political debates about the American past, which are not so much about the facts of history as about the relative importance placed on them. When it comes to 17th-century New England, should one focus on English settlements and the development of their religious and political institutions? Or on the Native peoples and their resistance to English conquest? How much time should one spend on the “deplorable consequences” for Natives versus the opportunities that drew waves of European immigrants to New England?

Tuininga demonstrates that the best response to these and related questions is simply to write good history. In its message, moreover, The Wars of the Lord is an appropriate mixture of thanks and lament. Natives “lamented, and still lament,” he concludes, “the injustices and tragedies that devastated their people and the way Christianity was used to justify it.” Conversion did not erase the sting of conquest. At the same time, Native Christians remained “thankful for the gospel and the hope it provided.”

There is no reason 21st-century American Christians should not partake of these mixed emotions when reflecting on their nation’s past. It is hardly surprising that English colonists, despite their professed allegiance to Jesus Christ, put their own interests above those of the peoples they displaced. After all, as the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once observed, “The good news of the gospel is not the law that we ought to love one another.” We, like our forebears, often fail to do so. “The good news of the gospel is that there is a resource of divine mercy which is able to overcome a contradiction within our souls, which we cannot ourselves overcome.” Thanks be to God.

John G. Turner is professor of religious studies and history at George Mason University. His forthcoming book is Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet.

- More from John G. Turner

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