Mike Pence Shares the First Thing He Said to Trump in Four Years

Harvest Prude and Kate Shellnutt

The day after Jimmy Carter’s funeral, the former VP spoke to CT’s Russell Moore about what happened in the presidential pews and his prayers for his former running mate.

Mike Pence and Donald Trump

Jacquelyn Martin / AP Images

Though Mike Pence hadn’t seen Donald Trump since leaving the White House, the former vice president said he was grateful to get a moment to speak with him at Jimmy Carter’s state funeral this week.

The day after the funeral, Pence talked with Christianity Today editor in chief Russell Moore about his continued prayers for his former running mate; his impressions of the incoming administration, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.; and his interactions with Carter.

“The opportunity to speak to the president yesterday is something that I appreciated, I welcomed,” he told Moore, in a CT podcast episode that will air Wednesday. “I’ve really been blessed at how much I’ve heard from people around the country who saw [our] handshake, and in that handshake, saw some hope that we might be moving past those difficult days. That’s certainly my hope.”

As the former presidents, first ladies, and vice presidents sat together at the National Cathedral on Thursday, “Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that God put me on one of these rows,” Pence remarked. Media coverage scrutinized the small interactions among them, noting Pence’s handshakes with the Trumps and former Second Lady Karen Pence’s refusal to acknowledge either.

“He greeted me when he came down the aisle. I stood up, extended my hand. He shook my hand. I said, ‘Congratulations, Mr. President,’ and he said, ‘Thanks, Mike,’” Pence said.

“You’d have to ask my wife about her posture, but we’ve been married 44 years, and she loves her husband, and her husband respects her deeply.”

pic.twitter.com/dmVImBx4Vs
— Russell Moore (@drmoore) January 11, 2025

The very public reunion was far from the only thing on his mind at the funeral. Before joining the Reagan Revolution and becoming a Republican, Pence had voted for Carter and was “greatly heartened that there was a born-again Christian serving in the White House,” he told Moore. Backstage at an event in 2015, Pence said he got to thank the 39th president for his service and commended how Carter “spoke plainly about his faith in Jesus Christ” in office.

Pence brought born-again bona fides to the Republican presidential ticket in 2016, and both he and Trump have applauded their work together in the White House and the legacy of their administration. Yet the two split political paths in the tumultuous aftermath of the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and hadn’t seen each other in nearly four years.

Pence went on to enter the presidential race as a candidate in 2023 but dropped out by the year’s end. When Pence opted not to endorse Trump last year, the president said he “couldn’t care less” and that “we need strong people in this country, we don’t need weak people.”

Pence has repeatedly stood by his role of certifying President Joe Biden’s 2020 win, despite the political fallout.

During the interview with Moore, Pence’s most critical remarks came when asked about some of Trump’s nominees for his upcoming term. He said he doesn’t think the Republican-controlled Senate should confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head Health and Human Services, citing the former independent presidential contender’s pro-choice stance on abortion and lack of qualifications.

A stalwart advocate for the United States’ continued support of Ukraine, Pence also said he had concerns about former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard potentially serving as national intelligence director, citing her “willingness to essentially be an apologist for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin over recent months,” and added that her 2017 visit with Syria’s recently ousted dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is also a matter of concern.

Since the close of the first Trump administration, Pence has stayed active in the advocacy world and founded Advancing American Freedom, which focuses on advancing conservative social and economic policies.

He’s also spent time praying for Trump, as he pledged he would do in one of their final conversations in office. Trump told him, “Don’t bother,” he recalls. But Pence reiterated the sentiment at the meeting’s end as he stood ready to walk out the door: “I said, ‘You know, there’s probably two things that we’re never going to agree on. … We’re probably never going to agree on what my duty was under the Constitution on January 6.’ And then I said, ‘and I’m never going to stop praying for you.’

“And he said, ‘That’s right, Mike, don’t ever change.’”

Update: The full interview with Pence was released on The Russell Moore Show podcast on January 15.

News

LA Pastors Wait on a ‘Gentle Miracle’ While Their Communities Burn

Emily Belz

Wildfire survivors say recovery from such huge loss is possible, but halting.

A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire in Altadena, California.

Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images

Los Angeles has had wildfires before, but residents have never seen anything like the wildfires rolling through their city now, burning through brush and buildings and leveling whole neighborhoods. It’s the worst destruction in local history.

But the sight of block after block of destroyed homes stings with familiarity for residents of Paradise, California, whose community similarly went up in flames in the 2018 Camp Fire.

Pastors there know the grief of such widespread, incomprehensible devastation—and the challenges of rebuilding.

“The loss of your home and community in basically a few hours—every aspect, all at once—you go through the mourning process,” said Samuel Walker, a pastor in Paradise who lost five congregants and his home when the town caught fire six years ago. “You don’t realize, ‘Why is this so hard?’ It’s because you’re mourning the loss of so many things all at once.”

Today, hundreds of miles south, 100-mile-per-hour winds are whipping up flames around LA, with the Palisades Fire spreading to the coast, the Hurst and Kenneth fires igniting northwest of the city, and the Eaton Fire burning near Altadena and Pasadena to the east.

Since Tuesday, the fires have destroyed entire blocks of homes, businesses, and churches—more than 10,000 structures so far. People have scratchy throats from breathing in smoke, and evacuation orders are continually shifting. At least seven people have died.

Firefighters and water supplies have been stretched thin to fight the fires over tens of thousands of acres. Local pastors recounted widespread loss of homes among their congregants. They couldn’t give a number because the fires were still burning and information was unfolding; as of Friday morning, officials described the Palisades Fire as eight percent contained and the Eaton Fire as zero percent contained.

“It feels like we’re losing part of our city. The Palisades seems to just be gone,” said Alex Watlington, senior pastor of Pacific Crossroads Church in Santa Monica. “There’s not just damage; it’s just gone. Like it was never there.”

Two elders at Pacific Crossroads and many of its congregants living in the Palisades and on the east side of LA have lost everything; the church is coordinating aid through its Hope for LA ministry.

“Everybody needs help, but you don’t know where to start,” Watlington said. “In ministry, whenever someone dies and you do a funeral, you feel really under-resourced and under-equipped to walk into that. It’s not the same thing, but it’s akin to that. You’re walking into people’s loss, and it’s just irretrievable.”

Walker remembers that overwhelming feeling. The Camp Fire had burned for more than two weeks, displacing 50,000 people and smoldering 19,000 buildings. He found himself weeping uncontrollably over a close friend who died, and then furious about someone breaking into his car and stealing the last two objects his family had saved from the fire.

But getting his emotions out helped him be ready to listen and pray with his congregants. Walker was incredibly angry at God for allowing the fire, and he found it healthy to admit that rather than pretend he was fine.

So he advises pastors in LA: Cry if you need to cry, and yell if you need to yell.

“Let the Lord do what he wants to do in you, so you in turn can minister to the people,” he said. “The biggest thing people will need right away, besides basic needs … is hope. Somebody to share their story with.”

Fellow pastors who survived California wildfires said churches in Los Angeles should prepare for a long and nonlinear recovery. The early days are focused on meeting basic needs like housing and meals. But then grief begins to set in, as well as angst about moving or staying to rebuild.

“What you find three or four months later, there are spiritual challenges—people disagreeing on how long grieving should take or missing their old church building. All the baggage that comes with hurt,” said Josh Lee, the lead pastor of Ridge Presbyterian Church in Paradise, which lost its building in the Camp Fire. “That’s the kind of thing you have to have your eyes open to in pastoral ministry. All the brokenness that comes afterward.”

Watlington in Santa Monica understands that rebuilding could be too emotionally taxing for some who have lost their homes; he knows that in the weeks and months ahead, he’ll inevitably be helping people move away to start over.

Joshua Jamison, who pastors Jubilee Church in Paradise alongside his wife, Melissa Jamison, remembers volunteers helping survivors sift through the ashes of their homes, sometimes finding a piece of jewelry or some memento.

“Most of the time, people didn’t find much of anything, but … the time people would spend sifting through the ashes was just so powerful,” he said. (Returning to the rubble may pose a health risk, he said, but he thinks people can be safe with protective equipment.)

No two disasters are the same, but Paradise, which used to have a population of around 26,000, was about the same size as Pacific Palisades, California. Most churches in Paradise burned down overnight in the Camp Fire in 2018.

Many of them have rebuilt; some only just opened their new buildings last year. One congregation that lost its building, Ridge Lifeline Church, now meets in a bowling alley that survived. After the fire, the town’s population fell to a low of 4,000 before rebounding to around 10,000.

“If you had told me we were going to start a church in Paradise again, I would have laughed and said, ‘No, it’s gone,’” said Lee of Ridge Presbyterian. But the church did begin again, slowly.

“It’s alive, and I don’t know how that happened,” said Lee.

Recovery comes haltingly. For a time, Ridge Presbyterian had no children showing up to Sunday school; now the recovering church has about 10 or 15 elementary schoolers. Lee said people in his community are worried about a big increase in home insurance that might force them to move even after rebuilding.

“But God is at work,” he said he would say to people recovering in Los Angeles. “Trust that, even though it seems very scattered and not linear.”

In the LA area, the current fires have destroyed or severely damaged at least a dozen churches.

In the Palisades, that includes Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, Pacific Palisades Community United Methodist Church, Corpus Christi Church (a Catholic parish), and two rectories of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church.

In Altadena and nearby Pasadena, the fire destroyed Lifeline Fellowship Christian Center, St. Mark’s Episcopal, Altadena United Methodist Church, Altadena Church of the Nazarene, Atladena Community Church, and Pasadena Church of Christ. Hillside Tabernacle City of Faith (Church of God in Christ) in Altadena also sustained serious damage.

“If I haven’t gotten back to you today, please forgive me,” Hillside Tabernacle pastor G. LaKeith Kenebrew wrote on Facebook. He said his own house and his in-laws’ house had “burned to nothing” and added that “between checking on members, trying to keep the church from completely burning down and realizing that our city looks like a scene out of an apocalyptic movie … either I could not answer or my phone was dead.”

Calvary Church in Pacific Palisades said its sanctuary was severely damaged, but the pastor Justin Anderson called it a “miracle” that the rest of the campus, including a gym that the congregation could worship in, was unharmed. Dozens of families in the church lost homes, according to Anderson, who just started pastoring the church this week.

Paradise survivors said other undamaged churches might need to welcome displaced people. In 2018, Chico Church of Christ in nearby Chico, California, took in the Paradise Church of Christ congregation when its building burned.

With nowhere to go, people from Paradise had brought their pets to church with them, said Chico Church of Christ office manager Christie Presswood.

Over time, Chico’s status as a landing ground for so many displaced people changed the town, too, she remembered. She advises churches in that position to “be as understanding as you can be, because they’re going through a lot of trauma.”

“Seeing the news reports I’m seeing now in LA, it brings it all back,” Presswood said.

In this initial stage of recovery, Jamison recommends giving survivors cash, gift cards, or gas cards. He knows church people like to deliver food and clothing, but he said funds are better so people can get what they need.

The Paradise pastor also urged churches to plug into existing disaster-aid infrastructure, like a local assistance center that coordinates aid in California after fires. Being part of that process prepared his church to respond to subsequent disasters in the area, and Jamison now leads the Oroville Hope Center, which distributes resources to people in need.

Distributing water also became an important task of the local Christian community. For two years, the Hope Center distributed water to people in Paradise. Contaminants from the fire in the water system meant people weren’t ready to drink Paradise water for a while.

The recovery process has been slow and sometimes sad.

“It was depressing, looking out there and seeing charred buildings and burnt trees,” said Walker, who pastors First Baptist Church of Paradise.

For three years, he and his family didn’t have a settled home, but they have one now. Looking back, he said he sees how God “gently” cared for him and his congregation after he felt so much anger about the fire.

First Baptist had about 75 people attending before the fire. The number dropped afterward, and there were times when leadership thought the church would have to close. But in the last couple of years, attendance has grown with new people, and now 100 come on a Sunday.

For Los Angeles residents in destroyed communities, Walker said life will never be the same.

“But it’s going to be good. It will be a different good,” he said. “There will be joy again, but allow yourself time to go through the process of mourning. … Don’t feel like God is judging your response. I don’t think he is. I think he knows our hearts; he knows what we can handle. He wants us to just bring it to him.”

The LA fires are still raging, so local pastors aren’t quite thinking about recovery yet. They are praying for winds to die down and for firefighting resources to arrive to contain the blazes.

“We need a gentle miracle,” Watlington said.

Maybe some of that miracle could come from rebuilt churches in Paradise. According to Walker, a young firefighter who was baptized at First Baptist in Paradise a couple of weeks ago was just sent down to fight the inferno in Los Angeles.

- More from Emily Belz

Inkwell

Ambient Light

Drew Jackson

Photography by Alen Palander

Two New York girls riding down a Georgia highway
for the first time in memory. They know they have roots here
but have they thought of their grandmother, buried
six feet in this red clay? Have they thought of how
she now nourishes these dogwoods and magnolias
the way she nourished me on Grand Magnolia Dr.?
It is nighttime as we drive and they cannot see
how this earth is different from the dark soil of North.
Maybe tomorrow when the morning star rises.
But tonight they do not care about what is beneath
their feet because they have been caught up
into the heavens. Look at the stars one shouts!

We can’t see them like this back home
says the other. Amazed and with a tinge of sadness.
Then they share with us front seaters
that the moon is now in its waxing gibbous phase.
As if we know what that means. As if
we know anything at all. I want to give them
more than ambient city light. For them
to joust with Orion and join their sister shine to Pleiades.
Jump up out the backseat and take a ride
on Ursa Major. My loves, I want to give you the stars.
To give you what you’ll need to live
beneath these falling stars.

Drew Jackson is a poet, speaker, and public theologian. He is author of God Speaks Through Wombs: Poems on God’s Unexpected Coming and Touch the Earth: Poems on The Way.

- More from Drew Jackson

News

Brazil’s Fight Over the Soul of a Snack

Franco Iacomini

For decades, acarajé has been considered an offering to Afro-Brazilian religious deities. What happens when evangelicals start producing and selling it?

A woman prepares a dish of acarajé.

Silvia Izquierdo, AP Images / Edits by CT

It’s summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and many tourists have arrived in northeastern Brazil, eager to wander the cobblestone streets of Salvador, the vibrant capital of the state of Bahia, renowned for its Afro-Brazilian culture. Many will grab a bite at one of plentiful colorful stalls selling local culinary specialties like acarajé.

Or maybe, if you will, a “Jesus fritter.”

A black-eyed-pea snack seasoned with onions and deep-fried in palm oil, in recent years the specialty has become a source of tension between two increasingly outspoken and growing communities: evangelical Christians and Afro-Brazilian religion practitioners and their defenders. Long a source of pride for a marginalized community, the dish’s preparation and sales are regulated by the state. Evangelicals’ discomfort over its use in traditional spiritual practices has clashed with those who see these concerns as disrespectful and racist.

“It is not just a delicacy,” said Luiz Nascimento, academic director at the Seminário Teológico Batista do Nordeste (Northeast Baptist Theological Seminary) at Feira de Santana. “Acarajé has a history related to religious practice that gives it another dimension.”

Acarajé arrived in Brazil via the Brazilian slave trade, which began in 1540 and lasted for more than three centuries. Brazil only abolished slavery in 1888, the final country in the Americas to do so, and for years the industry was a pillar of the nation’s economy.

Enslaved Africans brought a dish across the Atlantic called acara jé or “fireball to eat” in Yoruba, likely a reference to the snack’s reddish color. Many also continued to worship their local deities, known as orisha, which later syncretized with Catholic saints and developed into a handful of religious communities in parts of Brazil, Cuba, and Haiti.

Practitioners of Candomblé, the largest of these groups, frequently use food to connect with orisha, said Patrício Carneiro Araújo, an anthropologist at the Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira, and certain foods are linked to specific entities and offered to them. Acarajé is primarily associated with Yansã, a warrior orisha and patroness of winds and fire, who is married to Xangô, the orisha of justice.

Though acarajé had a sacred significance, enslaved Brazilians also sold it during the few hours of the day they could work for themselves, and the profits frequently funded the freedom of enslaved individuals or their family members. Later, terreiros, the houses of worship for Afro-Brazilian religions, began to fund their religious work by selling acarajé.

Today, at least 3,500 people work in the acarajé industry in Salvador, smashing black-eyed peas and frying up the batter according to recipes passed down for generations. Aracajé manufacturers hand off their work to baianas do acarajé, female sellers who must follow state mandates that regulate the type of food they can sell with the acarajé and the attire they can wear. Their uniform includes necklaces known as guias, with beads made from seeds or crystals and with a color that connects to the orisha the baiana worships.

The direct relationship between acarajé and Afro-Brazilian religions has shifted as the religious and demographic landscape in Brazil transformed in the last 50 years, despite the Northeast consistently having the smallest evangelical population of Brazil’s five regions.

Edits by CT / Source Image: Manu Dias, GOVBA, Flickr

Acarajé being fried.

In 1970, evangelicals made up 3 percent of the area’s population. By 2000, they accounted for 10 percent, and by 2010, 16 percent. (The most recent census, conducted in 2022, will publish its findings later this year.)

Many Brazilian evangelicals are Black, composing a community that has continued to suffer prejudice and racism more than a century after the abolishment of slavery. Poorer than the average Brazilian, many embraced Pentecostal teachings in the latter half of the 20th century, where they found solace and hope amid challenging circumstances. According to the 2010 census, there are 14 million Black evangelicals in the country, compared to the 300,000 Black Brazilians who follow Afro-Brazilian religions.

“If you visit Salvador today and want to eat acarajé,” Araújo said, “there’s a high chance it was prepared by an evangelical man or woman.”

When some baianas do acarajé (nearly all of whom are Black women) converted to evangelicalism, many felt uneasy selling a product tied to orisha worship. In the early 2010s, some sellers even attempted to rename the dish the bolinho de Jesus, or the “Jesus fritter.” Some pastors preached against acarajé on social media, calling it sinful.

Afroreligious scholars saw the situation differently.

Denying the religious character of the dish or trying to “convert” it is a form of racism, said anthropologist and babalorixá (Candomblé priest) Pai Rodney de Oxóssi. “Slavery ended, but things didn’t change for Black people in Brazil for a long time,” Araújo said. “Racism survives in daily actitudes, and even in religion and food.”

Nascimento observed a disparity in who is being criticized.

“If you visit a Chinese or Japanese restaurant, you’re unlikely to worry about the owner’s religion or what goes on in the kitchen,” he said. “Why, then, does this concern arise with African-origin food?”

“There’s religious intolerance toward terreiro foods,” wrote Aline Chermoula, a scholar of African ancestral cuisine.

In response to the attitudes of some Christians towards acarajé, local legislators in some Bahia cities have created strict rules about how to cook and sell traditional products, effectively banning rebranded acarajé. Currently, Bahia state officially recognizes the dish’s cultural heritage, and Brazil similarly honors the baianas’ attire at the national level, a stipulation that prevents people from making custom changes, like swapping out a white dress for a red one.

As a teenager, Luiz Henrique Caracas, who pastors an Assembly of God church in Ilhéus, a city in southern Bahia, heard a pastor using 1 Corinthians 10:21 as a rationale to avoid acarajé: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too.” According to Caracas, the pastor was looking for a place to eat after returning from a trip, and the only spot he found was an acarajé stand. The pastor then prayed out loud in front of the vendor, rebuking the demons and consecrating the food to Jesus before eating it.

The story astonished Caracas, who grew up eating acarajé prepared by his father. To his many patrons, José Luiz dos Santos Silva was known as Irmão Luiz do Abará (abará is made with the same ingredients as acarajé, but steamed instead of fried).

Irmão Luiz do Abará grew up in a Catholic family sympathetic to Afro-Brazilian traditions before he embraced evangelical Christianity in the late 1980s. Now in fragile health, he rarely sells his products today. But for years, his church invited him to prepare acarajé and abará at its events.

The dish was so familiar to Caracas, the son, that he would never have imagined that some brothers and sisters of faith had restrictions on it. “For me, eating acarajé has always been as natural as eating any other dish,” said Caracas, who directs the Eclésia Pentecostal Theology School in Ilhéus and counts an acarajé vendor as one of his students.

Few news-making confrontations have occurred in recent years, though Candomblé practitioners continue to be bothered by evangelicals in the acarajé industry, many of whom proudly broadcast their identity by naming their stalls “El Shaddai” or “Acarajé Gospel.”

For Nascimento, all dilemmas he faces today about eating acarajé or supporting a particular vendor come down to health. His cholesterol levels have led to dietary restrictions that exclude fried foods such as acarajé.

When he could, Nasciment ate it frequently, thanking God for it every time. He quoted 1 Corinthians 10:30: “If I take part in the meal with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of something I thank God for?”

- More from Franco Iacomini

Church Life

In Hong Kong, One Pastor Ministers to a Gen Z Protester in Prison

Hannah Keziah Agustin

Amid high rates of depression and anxiety among young people, Christian leaders boost efforts to address mental health challenges.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash

In the last two years, KK Ip, who pastors an evangelical, multicultural church in Hong Kong, has traveled to a prison located on the border between China and Hong Kong several times.

Every visit takes more than 3 hours. Much of it is commuting time, but once he arrives at the prison, he often waits for 45 minutes before the prison guards escort him to a meeting room.

There, Ip meets with a young woman who was arrested in 2019 for protesting against Hong Kong’s now-scrapped extradition bill. Although she was not involved in any violent acts, the government sentenced her to nearly four years in prison in 2023.

During their half-hour-long interactions, Ip chats with her about her thoughts and the conditions inside the prison. Over time, he sensed her despondency and anxiety over the uncertainty of the prosecution process and its potential outcomes.

“Planning for the future seemed pointless” to the young woman, Ip said.

Before her trial began, Ip prayed with her for guidance in her future career. And as trust began to develop between them, she became more “grounded and hopeful for the future,” he said. She will be released from prison next year.

The Gen Zer, whose name is withheld for security reasons, is not a believer. But Ip has found ways to convey God’s love and grace to her through these in-person visits and also through writing letters to her regularly (he once sent a postcard while vacationing in Greece), sharing insights and encouragement.

“Christ’s sacrifice [has] liberated us from the imprisonment of sins, and I believe in extending that love and support to the youth in our city,” Ip said. “I want her to know that there are people willing to walk with her no matter how far away [they are].”

Ip is not alone in his conviction to care for Hong Kong’s depressed and anxious Gen Zers, who are experiencing a tumultuous political, economic, and social climate. Other pastors and ministry leaders in the city are taking steps to address these mental health issues in creative ways, from creating handy tools to build emotional literacy to opening up spaces for conversations about these challenges inside and outside the church.

In the six years since the 2019 pro-democracy protests, Hong Kongers have dealt with some of the strictest COVID-19 measures in the world: Its borders were shut in 2020, and visitors had to enter mandatory hotel quarantines. Then, the authorities implemented a tough national security law in June 2020.

While more than 123,800 locals have immigrated to Britain and thousands have received permanent residence in Canada, an influx of people from the mainland has moved in. Since December 2022, around 55,000 people from China have moved to Hong Kong on “top talent” visas.

These rapidly evolving changes in Hong Kong society have taken a toll on Gen Zers’ mental health. Almost half of 18-to-24-year-olds in the city reported having moderate to severe depression with symptoms of anxiety and insomnia, according to a survey last year by the Mental Health Association.

Nearly half of youth aged 12 to 24 said they consider themselves failures, based on a Hong Kong Christian Service survey last year. But only a third of Gen Zers will seek professional help for their mental health problems, a poll by the Chinese YMCA of Hong Kong found.

As Hong Kong churches grapple with dwindling congregations and threats to their religious freedom, Gen Z Christians are also experiencing greater levels of depression and anxiety. Stories of young believers struggling with their mental health are common, said Fox Lo, associate general secretary of the Fellowship of Evangelical Students (FES).

One university student who wanted to further her studies had to drop out of school because her experience of depression and anxiety hindered her from finishing her papers, Lo said.

“Some people say there is no PTSD in Hong Kong because there is no post-trauma,” he added. “The trauma continues every day.”

Lo and others at FES believe the Bible can address the trauma that many young Hong Kongers are experiencing, especially in showing that God cares about humanity’s complicated range of emotions.

When the protests erupted in Hong Kong in 2019, Lee Chiu Mei was in college. Many of his classmates joined the protests outside his school.

“The news information was too overwhelming every day, and I had no time to process my feelings,” Lee, 24, said. Church was not an ideal space to discuss the fiery political issues and divisions sweeping the city, as he did not feel comfortable articulating his personal views there.

After observing that young people like Lee had difficulties expressing how they felt about Hong Kong’s political climate in 2019, Lo hit on the idea to creatively convey the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 as a comforting message for Gen Z believers. Along with other student leaders at FES, he created a deck of cards depicting these Bible verses to help young people share vulnerably about their emotions.

One card, for instance, depicts a heart being poured out onto clasped hands with this verse printed behind it: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:3). Another card showcases a person in tears slumped over a rock, while the other side declares, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4).

While the protests were taking place, Lee met with a small group of Christian students at his school, all of whom he was meeting for the first time. He selected a card from the deck before him, gazing at the illustration on it. He described how he felt looking at the image, read the accompanying Beatitude, and imagined how Jesus would respond to his current circumstance. The other students also shared their reflections.

The cards helped Lee and his peers share their worries with each other—something they normally would not do, as they feared arrest for speaking critically of the government.

“I finally felt that I had the space to express these feelings and that I had someone to accompany me to face the trauma caused by society, to pray for each other, and to leave everything to God,” Lee said.

The second version of the cards, which features the Psalms, was published in 2023 for use in college ministry events during the pandemic and continues to be used today.

There are no illustrations on the cards, but there are words describing emotions, like “angry,” alongside verses like Psalm 35:17: “How long, Lord, will you look on?” On another card, the word shameful accompanies Psalm 40:11: “Do not withhold your mercy from me, Lord; may your love and faithfulness always protect me.”

When students don’t know which card to choose, FES’s leaders ask them to select cards they find interesting. Doing so allows them to explore more nuanced emotions under the general feeling of sadness they may be carrying, said Lo.

Instead of intellectualizing their emotions, looking at the cards and identifying words or images that speak to them offers Gen Z believers the space to express how they feel, pushing against the norm in most Hong Kong churches.

“Churches are afraid that if [people share] too much about their struggles or depressive feelings, it would discourage people not to pursue faith and not go to church,” said Barry Cheung, FES’s general secretary.

Another Christian ministry, Breakthrough Hong Kong, is encouraging Gen Z to bring conversations about depression and anxiety to the public square.

The group’s Emo Error Gym (emo is short for emotions) began as a two-day interactive display in a shopping mall in Tsuen Wan last year. A question on a large board asked people to respond to the question “What’s your emo level?” Young Hong Kongers wrote their responses on pieces of paper shaped like leaves, which were hung up on a brown cardboard tree for passersby to look at.

“I couldn’t socialize with others normally because of depression, and my friends don’t even know about it,” one person wrote. Another person wrote, “I do not like the way I am right now.”

“When other people read these notes, they know they are not alone,” said Wilson Lam, Breakthrough’s associate general secretary.

Breakthrough uses this display to connect Gen Z Hong Kongers to its ministry, which focuses on reaching youth for Christ through digital media, books, and social-support services like counseling. This March and April, the exhibit will be held at five universities in Hong Kong.

Allowing Gen Zers to acknowledge the anxiety and depression they are facing helps guide them toward a more holistic understanding of health and personhood, said Lam.

“In school and society, young people focus on doing,” which often leads to burnout and feelings of isolation, said Lam. “From a Christian perspective, the ‘being’ is more important than the ‘doing.’”

One church, meanwhile, hopes to bring these conversations inside its walls and to become a safer space for Gen Z to have conversations about depression and anxiety.

The Methodist International Church of Hong Kong is in the process of converting a floor in its church building into a center for young people. Slated to open later this year in the Wan Chai neighborhood, the space will be open to Gen Zers who want to socialize, study, and have conversations on any topics they choose.

Gen Zers “need an opportunity to talk openly in settings where there is no stigma attached to talking about one’s sadness, hurt, anger or confusion,” said Lance Lee (no relation to Lee Chiu Mei), a psychologist and pastor at the church.

Through the center, the church also aims to offer support groups, pastoral counsel, and a full range of coaching, counseling, and Christian psychotherapy services.

Doing so is part of a church’s calling and “a root to evangelism, to witness, to the expansion of the kingdom even for people who believe God or religion is irrelevant,” Lee asserted. “People need space where they can bring all of who they are and be met by a Jesus who knows me, loves me, and wants to embrace me deeper.”

For Lee, creating room for conversations around depression and anxiety within the church is not the end goal. Rather, he believes that doing this will give Gen Zers “hope, inspiration, and excitement that the God who is with us in this really has a way for us to be happy in Hong Kong five to ten years from now.”

Ip, the pastor, continues to minister to the young woman in prison. Sometimes their conversations are trivial; other times they have broached religion. “To imitate Christ, we must take up the cross and care for and love those who feel hurt or wronged,” he said.

Additional reporting by Jessie Chiang and Isabel Ong

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When Reading the Psalms, Don’t Skip the Superscriptions

Andrew Wilson

Columnist; Contributor

They’re part of the Bible’s original text, and frequently essential to understanding it.

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

Some passages of Scripture get ghosted. Occasionally, you see this happen when you ask someone to read a particular chapter aloud. The words are all right there on the page. But the person reading them literally acts as if some are simply invisible.

I am not talking about the portions that we generally avoid reading aloud. There are plenty of those: long lists of names, numbers, offerings, or building projects where the words are unpronounceable, the story is obscure, and the repetition is intense (looking at you, Numbers 7). I have argued before that there is gold to be found in lists and building projects too. Instead, I am talking about something stranger: the way that many (if not most) Christians treat some of God’s inspired words as if they do not exist.

I am referring, in particular, to the superscriptions in the Psalms. I have noticed it frequently in my church: If, for example, someone is given Psalm 51 to read, the reading typically begins with the first verse—in this case, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love.” Which means it omits what the passage says immediately beforehand: “For the director of music. A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.” Most people hardly realize they have missed anything. If you mention it afterward, they might be puzzled, as though someone had suggested reading the contents page or the index.

No doubt much of the problem stems from the ways Bibles are formatted. Because our Bibles tend to include so many introductions, headings, subtitles, chapters, and verse numbers (let alone cross-references and study notes), additions to the text of Scripture often account for more words than the text itself. It is hardly surprising that people assume original titles like “To the choirmaster” and “Of David” belong in the same category as editorial insertions like “The Call of Abram” or “The Birth of Jesus.” But they don’t. They are part of the Hebrew text, and frequently essential to understanding it.

Psalm 51 is a good example. This beautiful prayer of repentance reads completely differently when we know what David has done to earn Nathan’s rebuke and how his sin has been exposed. Plenty of psalms start similarly, by providing a narrative location for the song that follows. Knowing that a poem is “a Psalm of David. When he fled from his son Absalom” (3:1) adds spiritual and emotional heft to the words “But you, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high” (3:3)—not least because Absalom has lifted his own head, and indeed will meet his doom as his head is lifted in a tree (2 Sam. 18:9).

In the first verse of Psalm 57, David states, “I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” His prayer makes new layers of sense when we know it comes from inside a cave while Saul is trying to kill him. Even the simple phrase “in God I trust” (56:4) sounds very different on the lips of a political prisoner—according to the psalm’s superscription, David composed it as a Philistine captive—than it does on a dollar bill.

Some psalms, like these, begin with comparatively long and detailed superscriptions. But the short and subtle ones can be equally revealing. Many believers know the lines “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (127:1), and we freely apply them to our commercial or charitable initiatives. The resonances are quite different, however, when we start as the psalm does: “A song of ascents. Of Solomon.” The application quickly changes when the author is Solomon and the “house” is the temple. The “labor” becomes less metaphorical when we realize they took seven years and prepared God’s dwelling for centuries.

A few songs later comes an even more familiar line: “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” (133:1). Again, though, look what happens when you read the superscription first: “A song of ascents. Of David.” Except, perhaps, for Cain and Abel, no brothers in Scripture dwelt in unity less than David’s sons. Amnon raped his sister; Absalom killed his brother and arranged a coup to overthrow his father; Adonijah attempted a coup as well, before being killed on the orders of his brother Solomon (who then killed numerous other people). Suddenly the opening line of the psalm sounds less like a platitude—a comforting reflection at the start of a prayer meeting, say—and more like the desperate longing of a father who has seen endless conflict among his own children. In the Psalms, as in all Scripture, knowing the “who” and “why” can alter the “what.”

So if anyone asks you to read a psalm, start with the superscription. You will be glad you did.

Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.

Spirited Life: Spirited Life is a collision between biblical reflection and charismatic practice, aiming to make people happier in God.

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Irish Evangelicals Stand Against Growing Approval for Assisted Dying

Christopher Kuo

With the UK making moves to legalize the practice, Protestant and Catholic leaders reiterate a pro-life defense for the vulnerable.

Leinster House in Dublin serves as Ireland's parliament building.

Dave Walsh Photography / Getty Images

When the government put its abortion ban up for a referendum vote seven years ago, Evangelical Alliance Ireland executive director Nick Park and his team crisscrossed the country to speak at Catholic Masses about the issue.

Now, the evangelical advocates say they are ready to launch a similar tour across Irish churches if assisted dying comes up for legislative debate.

In a country with a history of deep sectarian divides, the pro-life cause remains a source of unity and shared convictions among Christians in Ireland. As the neighboring United Kingdom advances a bill to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives, Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic leaders have grown more concerned about the issue and the possibility of similar moves degrading the value of life in their own country.

“I think it would be an absolute tragedy,” Park said in an interview. “Once you start chipping away at a basic core gospel principle that human life is sacred, it has unforeseen consequences.”

Last March, the Irish legislature’s Joint Committee on Assisted Dying published a report recommending that assisted dying be legalized in certain restricted circumstances. In October, the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish legislature, voted 76 to 53 in favor of noting the report, a move that drew criticism from Christians across the country.

In response, Catholic bishops in Ireland called on members of the church to advocate against such proposals.

“Assisted suicide, far from being an expression of autonomy, is a failure of care,” they wrote. “By legislating for assisted suicide or euthanasia, the State would contribute to undermining the confidence of people who are terminally ill, who want to be cared for and want to live life as fully as possible until death naturally comes.”

A bill to legalize assisted dying was proposed in the Dáil, but the dissolution of the legislature and the ensuing November 29 general election precluded any deliberation on it.

The election results could decrease the chances of legislation on assisted dying or at least delay such proposals for months: The key sponsor of the previous assisted dying bill lost his seat in the election, and the two parties that won the most seats are consumed with the task of forging a coalition government.

Still, faith leaders in Ireland worry that the recent vote in the UK could renew momentum for a similar movement in Ireland. A recent poll conducted by the Irish Examiner found that 57 percent of people in rural Ireland support legalizing assisted dying, while 21 percent are opposed.

When the UK bill was being debated, the Methodist Church in Ireland released a statement saying, “Once assisted suicide is approved by the law, a key protection of human life falls away.”

The Church of Ireland, which is the country’s largest Protestant denomination, argued that legalizing assisted dying would put pressure on the elderly and other vulnerable populations to end their lives.

“As Christians we believe that all life is created in the image of God, as a gift from Him, and has intrinsic value, regardless of who we are, our personal circumstances and our abilities and limitations,” its statement read. “If we accept that, in some cases, there are those who by means of age, disability or illness would qualify for assisted suicide, have we not judged their life to have less value?”

Dr. Michael Trimble, a consultant in acute internal medicine with the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast and a member of the Church of Ireland’s Church and Society Commission, said in an interview that legalizing assisted dying in Ireland would likely have a detrimental impact on vulnerable populations. (The UK bill currently does not apply to Northern Ireland, and a majority of the Northern Ireland members of Parliament voted against the UK bill.)

“Once you’re over the line that assisted suicide is acceptable, then the slippery slope is very real,” Trimble said, “If you cross the robust barrier of ‘We don’t kill people,’ it’s very hard to put up any other barriers that are strong enough to withstand challenge.”

“If the church is not speaking out on behalf of the vulnerable, then it’s failing in its mission,” he added.

Park said his organization is prepared to coordinate with both Protestant and Catholic communities to advocate against future proposals for legalizing assisted dying.

“It’s been a key cornerstone of Irish society for a long time that people that are ill, people that are disabled, people that have a life that some would say is a lower quality of life, are actually very special and have a lot to contribute to society,” he said.

Approving assisted dying would be a drastic departure from how Irish society has treated vulnerable people in the past, Park said.

“When you have somebody with special needs, the Irish-language term for that person is literally translated as ‘child of God.’ And I think that shows something about where the Irish heart has always been,” Park said. “But now this idea that somebody, because of terminal illness, that their life isn’t as important, that would be quite a shocking turnaround for us.”

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From Plains to the Presidency, Jimmy Carter Remembered at National Funeral

Harvest Prude

Grandson said his 100-year life testified to the “goodness of God.”

The state funeral for President Jimmy Carter was held Thursday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC.

Haiyun Jiang - Pool / Getty Images

After a week of remembrances, the nation bid farewell to its longest-living president, former president Jimmy Carter, in a hymn-laden, Scripture-laced service that stretched an hour past its expected end.

Carter, a progressive Baptist who described himself as born-again and who elevated evangelicalism to the public eye during his campaign, arranged for faith to be front and center in his state funeral.

Held at the Washington National Cathedral, the service included the hymns “Come Thou Almighty King,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Be Still My Soul.” The choir also sang “Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” also known as the “The Navy Hymn,” in honor of Carter’s service in the Navy.

Carter died December 29 at 100 years old. His flag-draped casket was met outside the doors of the church building by Marshall Hollerith, dean of the National Cathedral, and Mariann Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington.

The casket entered the cathedral to the rich accents of civil rights champion and ordained minister Andrew Young—a former Democratic congressman from Carter’s home state of Georgia—reading passages from John’s gospel and Job:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. … I know that my redeemer lives, and that he shall stand upon the latter day upon the earth. And though this body shall be destroyed, yet shall I see God, who I shall see for myself and my eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger.

On the front row sat the Carter children: Jack, Chip (James Earl III), Jeff, and Amy. Across the aisle sat the former presidents and their spouses: Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. and Laura Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald and Melania Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris sat in the row just ahead with husband Doug Emhoff and President Joe Biden alongside Jill Biden.

The 39th president’s grandson, Josh Carter, opened by speaking of grandfather’s commitment to Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, noting that “from World War II to COVID, he taught Sunday school.”

On Sunday mornings, people from all over the country would be lined up, sometimes from the night before, to hear his grandfather preach. “My grandfather would address the most diverse Sunday school every Sunday,” his grandson said. Jimmy Carter’s final lesson, in 2019, was reportedly about “being ready to go to heaven.”

Faith, and his church, were “central to his life.”

“He worshiped the Prince of Peace,” the younger Carter said. At the end, his tribute turned into something of a gospel sermon, where he read a long passage of Scripture: Romans 8:1–18, 38–39.

Carter was very public about his faith, participating at times in door-to-door evangelism and speaking about his faith to world leaders during his time in office, according to Randall Balmer, a professor of religion at Dartmouth College and the author of a Carter biography focused on faith.

Balmer, who met with Carter multiple times, said the former president shared that he and his wife, Rosalynn, had a habit of reading the Bible every night, often in Spanish, as a way to keep their devotional lives—and their Spanish—sharp.

Carter outlived at least two people he had originally asked to deliver eulogies at his funeral. The sons of the late president Gerald Ford and Carter’s late vice president, Walter Mondale, spoke in their stead.

Steven Ford, actor and Gerald Ford’s third son, told the Carter family that “God did a good thing when he made your dad.”

He shared an anecdote, provoking laughter, about how both Ford and Carter made a pact to speak at each other’s funerals. Carter fulfilled his pledge by speaking at Ford’s state funeral service in 2006.

Former president Ford’s prepared tribute included a homage to Carter’s 77-year marriage to Rosalynn Carter, who passed a year before the president: “In a life rich with blessings, none was greater for Jimmy than his love he shared with Rosalynn and the love the two of them shared with their children,” his son read.

“We add our prayers to the prayers of tens and millions around the world,” Ford said to the Carter family at the end of his speech.

Ted Mondale, former Minnesota state senator, delivered a eulogy written by his late father that touched on Carter’s support for making human rights a centerpiece of foreign policy, striving to bring peace to the Middle East, addressing climate and environmental issues, and supporting women’s rights.

Stuart Eizenstat, Carter-era White House domestic affairs advisor, also mentioned the former president’s policy wins—and the difficulties that beleaguered Carter’s one term—stubborn inflation, foreign policy woes, a protracted hostage crisis.

Jason Carter, former Georgia state senator and chair of the board of the Carter Center, spoke of the man he knew as “Papaw” who would sometimes answer the door in shorts and Crocs. He spoke of his grandfather’s down-to-earth nature in washing Ziploc bags to reuse, struggling with adopting new technology (like the cell phone), and papering his fridge with pictures of his grandchildren.

“From the moment that he woke up until he laid his head, his life was a testament to the goodness of God,” Jason Carter said, referencing Bethel Music and Jenn Johnson’s worship song “Goodness of God.”

He also spoke about Carter’s philanthropic, post-presidency work, such as nearly eradicating diseases like the Guinea worm and building houses with Habitat for Humanity.

Another grandson, James Carter, read the Beatitudes passage in Matthew 5:1–16.

President Joe Biden’s tribute touched on Carter’s faith in God and vision for America: “Throughout his life, he showed us what it means to be a practitioner of good works, and a good and faithful servant of God.” He added, “Today, many think he was from a bygone era, but in reality, he saw well into the future.”

Near the close, Young spoke about the unlikely friendship he, a Black man, developed with Carter, who grew up in the thick of the Jim Crow segregated South. Carter would later appoint Young to be his ambassador to the United Nations.

“James Earl Carter was truly a child of God,” Young said.

One of the only secular songs, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” featured Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood serenading the crowd.

At the end of the service, clergy led a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and circled the casket to lay their hands in a benediction, including Budde, the bishop; Tony Lowden, Carter’s longtime personal pastor from Maranatha Baptist Church; and Sean Rowe, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church.

Carter’s casket departed to the powerful sound of a 10,000-plus pipe organ and choir singing “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.”

The state funeral is one of the last events closing nearly a week of remembrances—from military salutes, to services in Georgia, to a period of lying in state that was open to the public in the US Capitol building.

Carter was president from 1977 to 1981 before losing his reelection bid to former president Ronald Reagan.

Later Thursday, there will be a private funeral service at Maranatha Baptist Church. Then, Carter will be buried in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, next to Rosalynn, who died November 19, 2023. Carter is survived by more than 30 family members.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the Bible citations for the passages read by Andrew Young and Laura Bush’s name.

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Your Pastor Won’t Text You to Ask for Gift Cards

Anna Broadway

Leaders are working to keep their flocks from getting fooled by impersonation scams, which use church details to prey on members’ generosity.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

When David Ogan, a priest in the Orthodox Church in America, had a family emergency while traveling, fellow Orthodox from around the country were willing to send money to help. They took his calls, heard the story of what happened, and wired him the funds he needed right away. After all, the church upholds acts of mercy, a selfless form of Christian love in action.

Except the calls weren’t from Ogan, and there was no emergency.

When Ogan started getting calls directly from concerned Christians—Was Father Ogan all right?—the Clarksville, Tennessee, priest immediately recognized the situation as a scam. But how?

At first, Ogan thought the scammers were impersonating an uncle who shares his name and runs a prison ministry in Nashville. But then, Ogan learned they had shared his address, the name of his church, and even his children’s names in their calls.

One of their targets, Philip Kontos, a priest in Florida, estimates he sent $650 by Zelle. The scammer claimed to be Ogan calling from a relative’s phone. Kontos sought to verify the story before he sent anything, but the scammer’s story matched Ogan’s details in the Orthodox Church in America’s expansive online clergy directory. Sending help by Zelle made sense, given the urgent need the man described.

Only after he’d sent the money—and a follow-up call went unanswered—did Kontos start to wonder. When he dialed the number for Ogan in the online directory, Kontos reached the real priest and learned the truth.

Welcome to clergy-impersonation scams, a widespread but targeted form of phishing.

Similar scams use the names of bosses, banks, or family members to seek money transfers, financial details, or gift cards. Criminals can play on an additional level of trust and the inherent generosity in church communities when they simulate requests from a member’s pastor or priest.

According to the annual data book put out by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), impersonation scams were the second most common complaint in 2023, after identity theft. That year, the FTC received 853,935 complaints of imposter scams, amounting to losses of nearly $2.7 billion.

Those are only the complaints on record; a 2021 study found only 4.8 percent of people report their experience with fraud to the Better Business Bureau or a government agency.

“It’s a very underreported crime,” said John Breyault, a fraud expert and vice president at the National Consumers League. With fraud, “we tend to blame the victim,” which leads to silence.

Neither the FTC nor the National Consumers League tracks clergy impersonation specifically, but these scams target Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox churches in states from Alaska to Missouri, Texas to Florida.

“He used all the right words; he used the terminology,” said Kontos of the man who called him at 3 a.m. one day, claiming to be Ogan. “He used a nickname for the wife that was appropriate. … He seemed legit.”

Possibly, the scammer gleaned the term matushka, a word many Orthodox Christians use for a priest’s wife, from the directory, which provides detailed information about each clergy member in the United States. Public listings include an address (sometimes one’s home), phone numbers, emails, and the name of the priest’s wife, if he’s married.

In Levelland, Texas, a small town west of Lubbock, Presbyterians have a much different set of common terms. But scammers got close enough to pull off a fraud there, too. Cindy Terzenbach, a long-time parishioner at First Evangelical Presbyterian Church, said all the details sounded plausible when she got a text from someone who claimed to be her pastor, Jon Sharpe.

According to the message, he was in a meeting but needed her help with something. “I would jump in front of a truck for him,” Terzenbach said. Tired from an early day that started at 4:30 a.m., she didn’t at first ask “her pastor” why his number had changed.

His request to buy gift cards seemed plausible, based on a prior church job she’d had. One text even pledged to send a prayer letter with the cards, “which sounds like something he would do,” Terzenbach said.

“What these scams rely on is the criminal scammer building trust with the victim,” Breyault said. “The scammers are very organized. … Like any other business, [they] want to get ROI [return on investment],” so they do their research.

Glyn Gowing, a computer science professor who created the cybersecurity program at LeTourneau University in Longview, Texas, said scammers often research churches, whether through directories, social media, or other means.

“What they’re trying to do is convince the victim that the scammer is a member of this community,” he said. “One of the ways they do that is to have knowledge of other things in the church.” This might include researching differences in church terms, like matushka or prayer letter.

The second time I got a phishing text related to an Anchorage church I’m connected to, it claimed to be from the new interim pastor. A year or two before, I’d gotten a similar text that claimed to be from the prior pastor.

In the first case, I had his number and texted his wife to check if he’d changed it or had his phone hacked or stolen. But the interim pastor was so new I didn’t yet have his number. Only after the scammer mentioned gift cards did I check with someone else.

Terzenbach, unfortunately, had bought and sent pictures of three $100 gift cards before the scammer’s charade finally slipped. Then she called her pastor and learned the truth. When he said it wasn’t him, “I just started bawling,” she said. “It tore my heart out.”

Sharpe eventually reimbursed Terzenbach, one of four people at the church to get the texts. He believes the scammer got their numbers in a Telegram hack of some kind. Sharpe had asked to join a private Telegram group the very same day the texts went out.

How can churches and parishioners protect themselves? Gowing, Breyault, and others offered several tips for preventing phishing scams and protecting against fraudulent calls or messages.

Protecting Networks

Impersonator scams rely on knowledge of people’s relationships and networks. Protecting that information limits scammers’ ability to target a church or denomination.

Limit apps’ access to your contacts. Gowing said messaging apps like Telegram, Signal, and WhatsApp usually seek to access all his contacts, but he doesn’t grant that access. “I know it’s a pain” to manually add those you want to chat with, he said, but it’s safer.

Limit online access to community information, especially directories. Both Breyault and Gowing said churches and denominations should be careful what they put in publicly available listings, especially online. Gowing’s church uses printed handouts only and urges people to safeguard them. When the church issues new directories, it reminds people to shred the old ones.

At senior pastor Brad Strait’s Presbyterian church near Denver, the staff had taken precautions with their directory. But with 1,400 members, church staff couldn’t know everyone. Based on fraudulent emails and letters sent in his name, Strait believes a scammer pretended to belong to the church and got the directory from a staff member that way. As in other cases, the letters sought money through gift cards rather than parishioners’ usual avenues of giving.

Cherry Creek Presbyterian has since made its directory even harder to obtain, Strait said. The church also requires more vetting before someone can access it.

When asked about its online, public directory, the Orthodox Church in America did not answer questions. A church spokesman said by email that the church was not aware of what had happened with Ogan and had no comment.

Let people choose what to list. Gowing, at LeTourneau, said he doesn’t include his phone number in his church’s directory. Strait said that after scammers accessed the Cherry Creek Presbyterian directory, the church gave its members more choice in what their listing shows.

The Orthodox Church in America did not answer questions about how much choice its clergy have over the details included in its public directory.

Encourage discretion in online posts and streams. Breyault said scammers might follow churches or even clergy on social media. If a church streams services that include detailed announcements and contact information, leaders might want to reconsider how they distribute some details.

Discretion also takes education, which Gowing’s and Strait’s churches have both provided. If parishioners like to post pictures of church bulletins online, encourage them to think before they include detailed contact information in posts.

Recognizing Scams

Even with prudence, any church that seeks to embody Jesus will at some point encounter those who seek to take advantage of its openness and hospitality. As Ogan suggested, Jesus’ advice in Matthew 10:16 applies: “Be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”

Help people recognize red flags. Scammers tend to use consistent strategies. Breyault said these include a sense of urgency and unusual method of payment—for example, gift cards or a third party like Zelle, PayPal, or Cash App. The texts Terzenbach and I both received claimed the pastor needed help while in a meeting. In Kontos’s case, the caller claimed to have recently had a car accident.

Gowing said urgency is “usually a sign that something is weird, especially if you don’t recognize the phone number. Be willing to say no. … Any reasonable person, given today’s environment, will understand that you did not immediately jump and send them a $300 gift card.”

Another red flag depends on whether a church has clear processes for seeking money, helping congregants, and so on. In the Orthodox church, Ogan said priests have clearly identified people they should contact when a problem happens. If a person deviates from the typical process, it should raise a question: why?

At Strait’s church, leaders repeatedly stressed that they’d never ask people for gift cards. “I’ve said that from the pulpit; we’ve sent out an email,” he said. The church also hosted seminars on fraud to help parishioners better recognize scam attempts.

Ogan said he’s received cybersecurity training through multiple other organizations he’s worked with, but not the Orthodox Church in America. Kontos, who sent money to the person posing as Ogan, said he’s never received cybersecurity training through the church.

Slow down and test claims through other channels. Urgency discourages a holistic, thoughtful response. Slowing down allows for that. If you don’t recognize the phone number or email a “clergy member” uses, Gowing recommends calling or contacting the person through a different means. If the person claims to be traveling and unable to access their device or account, call someone else who could verify that.

At the same time the fraudulent emails started going out, Strait said his wife got a message claiming she’d won two tickets on United Airlines and needed to provide her Social Security number for a tax form. The claim sounded so bizarre they almost wrote it off as fraud. But something made them check before dismissing the email entirely.

After contacting a United executive, Strait and his wife eventually learned the contest was legitimate and she really had won! They ultimately used the tickets to visit Asia.

“So you never know,” he said, “and that’s the problem, that you have to be very careful.”

As Terzenbach warned, “You don’t know what’s real and not real anymore—especially with AI.”

But not knowing doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Ogan compared responding with heart and head to a kind of emotional sobriety. “When we forget to apply that sobriety to our core as a human being, we often get preyed upon and let down,” he said.

Using head and heart together helps avoid scams and fraud while preserving compassion and the ability to help, when appropriate. Or as Strait summarized their process, “We did not enter our data. We stopped and we talked about it.” He said they asked themselves, “How can we learn if this is true?”

Talk about when fraud happens. Breyault said it’s important for churches “to stress that this happens to everyone. Fraud is one of the most common types of scams for people to fall victim to. … If we are comfortable sharing our stories about what happened, … then we can start to see change.”

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Syrian Christians Are Anxious About New Regime

Jayson Casper

Through prayer and protest, believers struggle to interpret the promises of newly ascendant Islamist leadership.

Christian Syrians lift crosses and independence-era flags as they rally in the Duweilaah area of Damascus.

Louai Beshara / Getty

For years, “Maria” (we’re using a pseudonym, given the political situation) thought little about her apparel or how to greet her colleagues. A Christian and longtime Syrian government employee, she kept her head uncovered and wore Western business-casual attire. She greeted her coworkers with “sabah al-khayr,” which means “good morning” in Arabic.

But an alliance of rebel forces, some connected to jihadist groups, has now seized government power. The new leaders in Damascus repeatedly say Christians, some of whom had allied with the Assad regime, face neither persecution nor displacement. Yet small aspects of Maria’s work life have already begun to change.

Recently, a new boss for her department informed the office that coworkers would now greet each other with “salamu alaykum,” Arabic for “peace be upon you.” That’s the standard greeting between religious Muslims. Maria wonders if changes might be gradual, that next week, or next month, or next year, she will be required to wear a hijab.

Maybe the new greeting requirement is a good sign. Since many radical Muslims refuse to exchange peace greetings with nonbelievers, maybe this new boss is inviting Maria into the traditional religious exchange. The new regime might be Islamic, but it might also be welcoming. Maybe.

Some gestures may have big meanings. The new government declared December 25 and 26 national holidays. Roughly 125 miles north of Damascus, in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, hooded figures dressed in black burned the community’s Christmas tree two days before the holiday. Within a day, the new authorities vowed to replace the tree’s charred remains.

In Damascus, the country’s capital, residents of the Christian neighborhood of Bab Sharqi hung up a neon sign with “Merry Christmas” in cursive lettering. As in years prior, they set out Christmas trees on the “street called Straight” (Acts 9:11, ESV) a road which for centuries has commemorated the conversion of Paul.

But disturbed by Christmas tree arson, hundreds of Christians filled the Bab Sharqi streets on Christmas Eve, carrying crucifixes and Syrian flags. Some shouted, “We demand the rights of Christians.”

What are those rights? Pastor “Bassem,” who heads an evangelical church in Aleppo in northern Syria, watched a video of rebels entering a church in Latakia, a city on the Mediterranean coast that is also an Assad stronghold. They promised the Christians good treatment, but Bassem wonders how to interpret frequent declarations of religious tolerance.

Islamic law, Bassem noted, traditionally assures “people of the book”—Christians and Jews—of their place in a Muslim society. But for Bassem, behind such announcements rests an attitude of religious superiority: You are under our rules, but you will be okay. Maybe.

He does reflect on how, as the rebels advanced in November and early December, the clash between the fighters and military could easily have been violent. As forces advanced to the outskirts of Aleppo, Bassem gathered around 150 people in his congregation for a prayer meeting. Other churches in his evangelical network met similarly throughout Syria to pray that “there be no bloodshed.”

The new Syrian government’s consistent rhetoric of tolerance has some analysts asking: Is the talk merely an attempt to assuage a nervous international audience? Following the initial weeks of relative calm, the US removed a $10 million bounty on the new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly with al-Qaeda. But it kept in place economic sanctions enacted against the previous regime, pending further developments.

- More from Jayson Casper

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