Texas Law Aims to Stop Abortion Drugs at the State Line

Neighbors can now sue each other over mail-order drugs. Pro-life advocates are divided on the tactic.

The Texas State Capitol

Brandon Bell / Staff / Getty

Signs and stickers still show up around college campuses. Digital ads appear online, and the occasional billboard brazenly advertises a way to help women become “un-pregnant.”

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization created a path to end almost all surgical abortions in Texas and other states with abortion restrictions, but stopping out-of-state advertisements and shipments of abortion pills hasn’t been as easy.

In 2023, the abortion pill (typically a two-pill regimen consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol) was already responsible for approximately 63 percent of abortions in America. Since the Food and Drug Association (FDA) loosened restrictions in 2021, a doctor can prescribe the pill from another state and ship it across the border into states that otherwise forbid it.

“We hear that there are staggering numbers of chemical abortion drugs coming into the state,” said Amy O’Donnell, executive director of Texas Alliance for Life.

Although exact numbers are hard to estimate, she said, from the conversations her organization has had with health providers, abortion drugs are clearly prevalent in Texas.

“These drugs are circumventing our laws and harming women and, sadly, taking the lives of unborn babies in our state,” O’Donnell said.

Mailed abortion pills have changed have changed the landscape of the abortion battle nationwide.

“Unfortunately—especially in pro-life states where there aren’t brick-and-mortar abortion facilities—anyone at any time can purchase abortion pills online,” said Sarah Zagorski, senior director of public relations and communication for Americans United for Life.

Particularly troubling is the fact that there’s no verification that the pills are going to the person they were prescribed for.

“She could be buying them for someone else. She could be stocking them, or a predator or an abuser in her life could be buying them,” Zagorski said.

A new law in Texas aims to slow the flow into the Lone Star State. House Bill 7 (HB7), which went into effect on December 4, allows Texans to sue anyone who makes, distributes, mails, or provides abortion pills to people in the state.

John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, was a vocal supporter of the bill, which he hopes can become a blueprint for other states.

“Plenty of states have banned abortion, but there have not been strong responses to the new kind of trend after Dobbs of mailing abortion pills directly in the pro-life state, so we are very proud to kind of lead the movement in that direction,” Seago said.

By opening the potential for lawsuits by citizens, the goal is to stop companies from taking the risk of shipping into pro-life states and doctors from prescribing them to patients there.

The law is unique in that its approach relies on citizens bringing legal action. A lawsuit could be brought by a woman who is harmed by taking the pill, a family member, or simply someone who becomes aware of the pill being mailed into the state.

For instance, Seago said if a woman finds out her partner has purchased abortion pills to try to get her to end a pregnancy, she could file under this law. Or if a woman sends a screenshot to her friend of a website she ordered pills from, that friend could then sue the company that hosts the website.

Critics of the bill, including the Center for Reproductive Rights, have said it encourages Texans to spy on each other.

“It encourages a culture of surveillance, where the things people do in their own homes are fair game for public oversight,” the center wrote.

Seago believes that isn’t a reasonable argument.

“We’re talking about murder,” he said. “That argument only works if you don’t view abortion as a morally significant action. If I were to report my neighbor for abusing his children, nobody would say I’m being a nosy neighbor. They would say I’m being a good citizen, that I’m trying to protect innocent people in my community.”

He said the same should be true for those who report people involved with illegally shipping abortion drugs.

Seago said it’s important to recognize that this new legislation does not apply to women ordering the pills or licensed physicians in Texas who may be prescribing the drugs for use in miscarriage or other medical emergencies.

“Any Texas physician that’s trying to care for women has nothing to fear from House Bill 7,” Seago said. “This is not targeting them. This is really just targeting those out-of-state doctors and activists that are openly breaking our law and just hoping that they won’t be held accountable for it.”

O’Donnell said her organization had some concerns about an earlier draft of HB7, concerns such as women’s privacy and the potential to create “bounty hunters” by incentivizing non-injured parties to sue, but Texas Alliance for Life supported the amended version, which ultimately passed.

“The new amended language explicitly prohibits disclosure of their personal and medical information in court filings, and that’s critical,” O’Donnell said. “We want to do everything we can to ensure that women feel comfortable walking into the doors of a pregnancy center.”

In the version that passed, she said women are fully protected, which is why Texas Alliance for Life was able to lend its support.

“Our goal is always to hold the illegal abortion providers accountable but not to in any way put women under that enforcement,” O’Donnell said.

She said an amendment to deter bad actors was also key. In the final version, financial incentives are restricted. Non-injured parties can receive only $10,000, which O’Donnell said should prevent people from simply spying on women or neighbors, but maintain the rights of women and those close to them to seek compensation from the harmful effects of the abortion pill.

Seago said it remains to be seen how HB7 will fare in courts against shield laws in pro-choice states—laws that protect abortion providers who are acting legally in their states from being prosecuted under another state’s laws.

Prior to this bill’s passage, an attempt by Texas to sue a New York doctor was dismissed by a judge who cited shield laws.

“Shield laws themselves are a new invention that didn’t exist three years ago,” Seago said. “This is a complete legal fiction that they created: that laws that some activists in blue states created can sabotage the law enforcement of the pro-life state.”

He recognizes the response with legislation like HB7 is also new, but is confident that it will be a strong challenge to shield laws.

Some are not so confident in the strength of HB7. Thomas Jipping, who is a senior legal fellow at the Edwin Meese III Institute for the Rule of Law, said it is an unusual approach.

“To use this to effectively enforce criminal laws is very unusual, and we really don’t have any examples of it to know whether it will be effective,” Jipping said.

HB7 also includes 13 exceptions, including that people can’t use the bill to sue hospitals or physician groups.

“It won’t take much for the other side to reorganize their abortion-pill efforts to make sure that they’re done mostly by these groups, which you can’t use this law against,” Jipping said.

HB7 attempts to address shield laws by saying they cannot be used to defend against a suit under this law. Jipping said this may not hold up though as one state can’t tell another state how to use or enforce its own laws.

“I don’t think that—at least that provision of HB7—is even constitutional.”

But he said that’s true as well of shield laws, which undermine other states’ enforcement of pro-life laws.

He believes the best approach would be for pro-life states to enforce their own criminal laws and charge doctors from other states who are prescribing drugs illegally. This would likely lead to an eventual court case over the constitutionality of shield laws.

“That, I think, is a more credible kind of realistic approach, because otherwise what we’re left with is all sorts of miscellaneous lawsuits by individuals in one state against individual doctors in another state and with all sorts of complications as to how those cases would be litigated,” Jipping said.

Jipping said it’s hard to predict what the Supreme Court might consider if a case made it to that level, but a legal battle over abortion shield laws would likely consider the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution, which requires that states give full faith and credit to the judicial decisions of other states.

“If, for example, the Supreme Court would say State B refusing to cooperate or refusing to honor an indictment from State A violates the full faith and credit clause, then that state shield law would be rendered unconstitutional,” he said.

While the full faith and credit clause has always been part of the Constitution, it hasn’t been the subject of a lot of litigation or Supreme Court decisions, Jipping noted, adding that it’s hard to speculate on how the Supreme Court might rule.

Jipping believes, overall, the Texas HB7 has a low probability of being effective.

“I certainly believe that the cause of life requires creativity and innovation, and some of these approaches might appear to be attractive on the surface but in the long run can be more problematic,” he said.

For instance, if pro-life states use citizens filing suits as a tool to enforce laws, he said Democrat-led states could enact similar legislation to go after issues Republicans care about.

“We do need to find new ways to defend life in the womb, but they have to be credible and potentially effective,” Jipping said. “That’s a challenge, but I’m glad there are a lot of folks out there who are working on that.”

Sue Liebel, Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America’s director of state affairs, is more optimistic the new legislation in Texas might help.

“I don’t think it’ll stop it, but I think it’s one more thing to add some caution for those bad actors,” Liebel said.

She said a key factor is whether the cost of the lawsuits will be enough to counter the amount companies and individuals are profiting off the abortion pill: “There’s so much money to be made that the question is, you know, is the risk worth the reward?”

If the bill is successful, Liebel believes it could serve as a model for other states, and she’s heard some are looking at introducing a bill like that in their states’ next sessions.

Louisiana already has a similar law in place. On August 1, 2025, House Bill 575 (HB575) went into effect in the state. Known as the Justice for Victims of Abortion Drug Dealers Act, it allows women who take abortion pills to sue providers from other states who prescribed them.

Zagorski said an important element of this type of bill is that it empowers women.

“Realizing that the victim is able to make these claims and make these lawsuits is an important step of empowerment for women, that they do have a recourse in an unjust situation that they experience,” she said.

As state-level strategies expand, many pro-life leaders believe lasting change must also come at the federal level. Liebel said the best long-term solution would be if the FDA would reverse the 2021 decision that permitted mailing and prescribing abortion pills virtually.

The FDA had promised in September 2025 to look at the safety of mifepristone after new research, including a study of insurance data by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), indicated that the harmful side effects of mifepristone were higher than previously reported. The EPPC study found nearly 11 percent of the patients they studied experienced a harmful side effect, including infection, sepsis, and hemorrhaging.

“With the stroke of a pen, they could at a minimum halt the drugs from being mailed immediately while they’re doing their research review,” Liebel said.

Instead, the FDA has opted to delay the review until after the midterm elections.

That decision did not sit well with pro-life advocates.

“It is glaringly obvious that flawed political calculations are superseding the health and safety of women for those in the White House advising President Trump to stall the FDA’s review of mifepristone,” John Mize, CEO of Americans United for Life, stated in a release. “To avoid political backlash in the upcoming midterm elections, advisors within the Administration are acting on a false premise, that emphasizing the importance of women’s safety and direct in-person consultation with her clinician is a political liability.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called for FDA commissioner Marty Makary to be fired for his handling of the matter.

“The FDA is doing nothing while every single day abortion drugs take the lives of children, put women and girls at serious risk, empower abusers and trample state pro-life laws,” she stated. “The FDA needs a new commissioner who will immediately reinstate in-person dispensing as it existed under President Trump’s first term and immediately conduct a comprehensive study.”

In the absence of FDA action, pro-life advocates will continue to search for ways to address the issue.

In addition to passing HB575, Liebel said, Louisiana has added mifepristone to its list of scheduled drugs.

“That gives doctors and prescribers a strong warning that the drug has potential downfalls for people with preexisting conditions like ectopic pregnancy or other things that they need to rule out before they get the drug, but it also adds an enforcement mechanism,” Liebel said. “If we catch you trafficking in this drug, now that it’s on the schedule, we have additional penalties that we can add.”

She said several states are also looking at ways to block online sales of the drug.

“It’s actually taken the pro-life movement, the pro-life community, and elected officials who want to enforce this into new directions that we have typically been in in the past,” she said.

As much as Seago hopes legislation will cut back access to medical abortions, he knows personal relationships will remain key.

In a way, he said, it’s more challenging to combat chemical abortions than it was in the past with surgical abortions, because instead of going to one central location like an abortion clinic, you’re trying to meet individuals where they are, whether it’s the college dorm room or a family home.

College campuses in particular have become a key battleground where pro-choice activists are advertising places to get abortion pills and pro-life advocates are trying to deter them.

“That’s why we have doubled our efforts on college campuses, because we now need pro-life college students,” Seago said, “not just to be there to engage in conversation and to change hearts and minds but actually to save lives.”

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News

CDC Job Uncertainty Prompts Atlanta Churches to Offer Practical Care

Melissa Morgan Kelley

Laid-off employees receive job coaching, prayer support, from local congregations.

The Center for Disease Control headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Washington Post / Contributor / Getty

Waves of sirens pierced a quiet summer afternoon at home. In an area with multiple hospitals, sirens are a normal part of life. But this Friday in August 2025 was different—the sirens screamed in from multiple directions for more than 30 minutes, prompting a scan of our neighborhood Facebook page.

An active-shooter situation was unfolding at the campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) just one mile down the road as scores of fire trucks and police cars flooded in from city, state, and federal agencies. The shooter, angry about the effects of COVID-19 vaccines, had killed a police officer and shattered more than 150 windows at the CDC’s Atlanta campus.

Thankfully, no employees were injured in the attack that summer day. But the incident rattled an agency already reeling from 18 percent layoffs a few months earlier. The rest of 2025 didn’t fare much better: a public ousting of its director in August, a 43-day government shutdown, and additional layoffs in October. Challenges to reinterpret and reevaluate scientific evidence continue.

One CDC employee summed up these difficult events by paraphrasing Mike Tyson: Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

In the midst of recent upheaval, hundreds of CDC employees, their families, and the surrounding community are taking stock of a challenging year as they tentatively enter 2026. Christians serving in the CDC are grappling with questions about their vocations and the future of public health as they seek to trust God’s provision. And area churches populated with CDC employees are searching for ways to minister to those living through sustained uncertainty.

Linda Mattocks, 60, had served as a health scientist working in disease surveillance with the CDC for nearly 15 years when she was one of 2,400 agency employees laid off in a reduction in force (RIF) by email on April 1, 2025.

“My entire branch was eliminated,” she said. “We were notified one day, and most lost network access the next.” She expressed concern about the lost expertise and the lack of transition for those continuing her branch’s work. The group’s data management may have looked extraneous to an outsider, she said, but was necessary to understand where disease was present and how to assess the effectiveness of interventions.

Mattocks, a native of Northeastern Pennsylvania, began her career in mergers and acquisitions as an investment banker in New York City in an industry that “primarily tried to separate people from their money.” But she felt a pull toward a different kind of career that better aligned with her faith and her desire to serve others, so she eventually pursued a public health degree. “You go to work for the CDC because you want to help people,” she said.

Mattocks was inspired by the way the church has historically used public health measures to serve their communities — from John Calvin’s focus on social welfare leading to the building of hospitals and latrines in Geneva to Austrian monk George Mendel experimenting with peas and discovering the basic laws of genetics.

As the government makes deep cuts to public health research and initiatives, she asks, Where do we go from here, and does the church have a part to play? “If we say as a society that government has taken on too much and we can’t afford to provide public health, is there still a societal need? And whose responsibility is it if it’s not the government’s?”

Living in this uncertainty is hard, she said: “I have more questions than answers.”

Within hours of hearing about the CDC layoffs in April, Atlanta pastor Tae Chin began putting together a church event promoted by word of mouth to reach those affected.

“When grief strikes, it’s important for the church to respond with the loving presence of God,” said Chin, pastor of spiritual formation at Intown Community Church (which is also this reporter’s church), a Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation located just two miles from the CDC campus in Atlanta. “Our immediate hope was for people to feel valued and supported whether they were Christians or not.”

Three weeks later, 30 CDC employees and church members, including Mattocks, gathered over Greek food in an Intown conference room for “Process to Progress,” an evening of sharing stories, resources, and prayer. CDC employees approached the mic in the middle of the room to share stories of being laid off, while others nodded along. The church invited attendees to speak with individuals brought in for support: a financial adviser, a career coach, and several members who had experienced job loss firsthand.

One woman, a 38-year-old ten-year CDC employee laid off in the RIF, bounced her 3-month-old son on her knee throughout the Intown dinner.

“There aren’t many job opportunities for people like me,” she said, explaining that she was reworking her résumé to display how public health experience applies to the private sector. The leap from government work to the private sector has proven challenging for many laid-off CDC employees: “We’re all competing for the same jobs.”

She did not have a church home and was invited to the event by a fellow CDC employee. “It’s great they put this together,” she said. “I really appreciate the expertise and knowledge of the career coaches and financial counselors here.”

Intown Community Church senior pastor Jimmy Agan spoke at the Process to Progress event, welcoming the CDC community to the church: “Given our proximity to the CDC and our relational connections, we wanted to give people a place to grieve and to lament.” The 530-member church includes 35 members who work for the CDC or other federal agencies.

He also wanted the laid-off workers, many of whom went into public health with the goal of helping others, to know their work was not in vain.

“You may be thinking, It’s painful for my career to end this way, but if you went into public health to serve God by serving people, it was not wasted,” Agan said at the gathering.

Just days before the CDC event, Linda Mattocks attended a church service at Intown and sat with a fellow CDC employee who was still employed and shared gratitude about feeling protected. Mattocks marveled that despite the uncertainty she also was at peace: “I am just as protected. God doesn’t love her more and me less—I just don’t know yet how I’m protected.”

In our politically polarized society, Agan expects pushback for holding events like Process to Progress but sees this outreach the same way he would view other mercy ministries.

“I think of it like a church helping victims of a natural disaster, where some segments of people are hit harder than others,” said Agan. “And if people are hurting, we want to help.” But he acknowledges it’s likely some will misunderstand the church’s intentions. “We are a purple church in a purple city in a purple state. But we don’t want to let fear keep us from showing love.”

Chin agrees. He’s heard the argument that it’s not the church’s job, that this type of work causes the church to neglect other important things. “But our work isn’t just to represent a truncated version of Jesus’ death and resurrection,” he said. “It’s also to embody the restorative work of Jesus. The church is to image that today so people can taste and see the coming kingdom of God.”

During the extended government shutdown in October, Intown Community Church used its benevolence fund to provide financial assistance for church members who were federal employees and had missed multiple paychecks. “The church reached out with practical support when people were not getting paid,” said Mattocks. “For some, that assistance came at just the right time.”

She also drew comfort from the weekly prayers of the community group she has attended for the past 15 years and the knowledge that elders and staff were praying for her. Months later, she received surprising news—her entire branch was being reinstated. “The fact that my grant was brought back is clearly an answer to prayer.”

Now, Mattocks is reflecting on the past year and looking ahead: “I continue to approach my work with integrity and excellence and also want to have a different kind of patience to see where things go.”

Challenging times are not unique to the CDC, she said. It’s just a matter of time before we all suffer, she said, and difficulties create an opportunity to build resilience as we trust in God. “Tough stuff has happened before, and it will happen again. But God promises to provide.”

The coming year offers a challenge to keep serving the church body and beyond, said Agan. “Let’s be ready for when the next disaster hits. Who knows what that issue will be? Let’s offer gospel hope to people hurting, along with practical help, and not be afraid to be misunderstood.”

- More from Melissa Morgan Kelley

News

Died: Gospel Legend Richard Smallwood

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The composer of “Total Praise” worked with numerous celebrities but put the gospel first.

Maury Phillips/BET / Getty / Edits by CT

In April 1996, Richard Smallwood and his choir, Vision, released Adoration: Live in Atlanta. The groundbreaking gospel album featured the anthem “Total Praise,” which Smallwood would later refer to as “the song that changed everything.” Later that year, Whitney Houston performed Smallwood’s “I Love the Lord” in the blockbuster film The Preacher’s Wife.

By that time, though, Smallwood had already established himself as one of the most influential composers and performers in gospel music. He had been a major figure in the niche for decades, and he was committed to reaching new generations with his music and his message by embracing change.

“My desire is to stay current. I never want to become dated,” Smallwood said in a 2001 interview. “Music of today still inspires me.”

Over the course of his career, Smallwood earned eight Grammy nominations, three Dove Awards, and seven Stellar Awards. He was a member of The Celestials, the first gospel group at Howard University and the first to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. In 1989, the Richard Smallwood Singers became the first black gospel group to tour the Soviet Union. In 2023, President Joe Biden awarded Smallwood the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

Smallwood’s compositional style is marked by rich four-part harmony, intricate orchestration, and irresistible melodies. He helped bring Black gospel music into the halls of Eurocentric university music departments during the 1960s and ’70s, and his works remain widely sung in both congregational and concert settings.

Smallwood died at the age of 77 from complications of kidney failure on Tuesday, December 30, 2025.

As a student at Howard University—a historically black university in Washington, DC—Smallwood participated in student protests and sit-ins that led to the inclusion of gospel music in the university’s course offerings. In 1968, Smallwood accompanied student protesters on the piano, playing “from sun up to sun down,” he wrote in his autobiography.

Smallwood remained a tireless advocate for the gospel music tradition throughout his life, seeking to honor its history and its innovators and keeping it grounded in what he saw as its most important component: the message.

“The message is the most important thing,” Smallwood said. “I don’t have a problem with the trappings or musical package as long as the message isn’t diluted.”

Braxton Shelley, the George Washington Williams Professor of Divinity and Music at Yale University, said that one of the through lines in Smallwood’s vast catalog is the commitment to the singing of Scripture.

“There’s an anthemic character to Smallwood’s catalog because of how focused he is on setting Scripture in song,” Shelley told CT.

In his book Healing for the Soul: Richard Smallwood, the Vamp, and the Gospel Imagination, Shelley describes Smallwood’s “omnivorous sonic palate,” shaped by classical music, Broadway tunes, and jazz. He says Smallwood spoke often of his affinity for Bach and his early introduction to Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 1.

“Smallwood’s signature synthesis of the Black gospel tradition and a host of musical influences, especially classical traditions, made his pen one of the most distinct in musical history,” Shelley told CT.

Richard Smallwood was born in 1948 in Atlanta. In his 2019 autobiography, he described his early introductions to an eclectic array of music as well as his difficult home life. He recalled being beaten by his stepfather, an itinerant pastor who eventually settled in Washington, DC, and founded the Union Temple Baptist Church.

Music was an outlet and a fascination. Smallwood formed his first gospel group as an 11-year-old, gathering neighborhood kids to sing together. One of his early mentors was his eighth-grade music teacher, Grammy Award–winning musician Roberta Flack.

Smallwood graduated cum laude from Howard in 1971 with degrees in piano and vocal performance. He then served as musical director of Union Temple’s young adult choir, with which he recorded two studio albums.

In 1977, he formed the Richard Smallwood Singers. Their 1982 debut album, The Richard Smallwood Singers, had an 87-week run on the Billboard gospel chart. The group’s next two albums, Psalms and Textures,were both nominated for Grammy Awards. Smallwood won his first Grammy for his arrangement and production of the song “Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion” on the 1992 album Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration.

In 1985, Smallwood served as musical director and composer for the Broadway musical Sing, Mahalia, Sing!,based on the life and music of Mahalia Jackson. The musical featured Jennifer Holliday, who had previously won a Tony Award for her performance as Effie in Dreamgirls. Smallwood wrote all of the vocal arrangements and several original pieces for the musical.

Smallwood’s ability to arrange for both the church choir and the concert hall gave him a singular voice in gospel. Sarah Benibo, a worship leader and former member of the Stellar Award–nominated gospel trio God’s Chosen, told CT that while many remember Smallwood for his elevated orchestrations and colorful harmonies and textures, he had a way of nurturing singers and honoring the human voice.

“Richard Smallwood both challenged and comforted singers,” Benibo said. “Somehow, he was able to call us higher. He writes so that the voices themselves testify.”

Benibo credits Smallwood with making contemporary gospel music more accessible for male voices, noting that her gospel ensembles almost exclusively sang three-part harmony before Smallwood’s music began to circulate. Smallwood’s arrangements often divide the lowest vocal line into a high tenor part and a lower baritone.

“Suddenly, there was a split in the tenor part. That was a game-changer,” Benibo said. “Most gospel music was out of range for most men. It was all written for high-singing tenors. But most men are baritones.”

Shelley also added that, despite the oft-noted intricacy of Smallwood’s compositions, he was committed to accessibility and singability.

“The key to Richard’s accessibility is his recognition of the power of melody,” Shelley said. “Yes, there’s a ton of complexity in terms of harmony and counterpoint and accompaniment, but when you look at the melodies he writes, they’re extremely singable.”

Shelley compared Smallwood’s gift for adapting memorable melodies to that of J. S. Bach, who set simple chorale tunes in fugues and elaborate counterpoint. Smallwood’s melodies, Shelley said, could “wreck a church” even if sung completely in unison. “Richard writes in a way that is reflective of some of the best hymn writing across the centuries. He grounds his song in portable, accessible, memorable melodies. Not cheap melodies.”

Grammy-winning gospel artist Yolanda Adams wrote in a recent post on social media, “[Smallwood’s] music was faith incarnate—a divine gift that brought heaven to earth and transformed worship around the world.” Smallwood collaborated with Adams on the song “That Name” in 1999.

In a video tribute, multi-award-winning gospel artist Fred Hammond recalled Smallwood’s kindness and generosity early in his career, before Hammond gained widespread recognition in the industry. “There’s nobody like Richard,” Hammond said. “He was truly the maestro. … I don’t do everybody’s songs, but I do a lot of Richard’s.”

Smallwood was as committed to ministry as he was to his recording and performance career. In 2004, he was ordained as a minister at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Washington, DC. He was also open about the ways hardship and personal struggles shaped his creative output. He wrote “Total Praise,” one of his best-known songs, as he was caring for his mother, who had dementia and was experiencing declining health. Later in his career, he spoke openly about his own struggles with depression and suicidal ideation.

Shelley described “Total Praise” as “a window into what Smallwood does,” taking the singer or listener on a journey that encompasses both dissonance and resolution. The song uses the text of Psalm 121, beginning, “Lord, I will lift my eyes to the hills knowing my help is coming from you.”

“People latch onto that song because we all need help,” Shelley said. “We all need to know where our help is coming from. We all have storms. We all need to find peace in them.”

Smallwood remained dedicated to sharing that message throughout his career. His songs reached millions and were covered by artists like Destiny’s Child and Boyz II Men, but he insisted that everything but the Good News was secondary.

“This is not about making money,” he said in 2015. “It’s about winning souls and encouraging people through Christ. He takes care of it all.”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Ideas

Stephen Miller Is Wrong About the World

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

The homeland security adviser is right that the international arena is anarchic. But a devilish world order is not the solution.

Kayla Bartkowski / Getty

The Trump administration is ever more candid about its view of power in the international arena.

Bombing alleged drug smugglers on boats in the Caribbean “is the highest and best use of our military,” Vice President JD Vance argued in September, adding when challenged on the legality of the strikes that he doesn’t “give a s— what you call [them].”

“I do believe in the niceties. I get along with a lot of people,” President Trump told The New York Times earlier this month, acknowledging the value of international law “depend[ing on] what your definition of international law is.” But ultimately, he said, there is but “one thing” that can check his actions abroad: “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good.”

And speaking on CNN the same week, US homeland security adviser Stephen Miller went further, dismissing the international engagement Trump half-embraced. “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else,” Miller said to CNN host Jake Tapper, “but we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.”

There’s an important sense in which Miller is right: At a descriptive level, when you get down to it, the international order is fundamentally anarchic. But at prescriptive levels—the level of what the United States should do and be, plus the level of how people who profess to follow the God of the Bible should think—he’s telling a dangerous half-truth.

That the world does run on raw power tells us nothing about how it should run. This harsh reality doesn’t render ethics irrelevant, only difficult and often costly. And Miller’s “iron laws of the world” do not date to the beginning of time but to the Fall, to human rebellion against our own maker. They are devilish.

Now, anarchy in international relations isn’t as dramatic as it sounds. It’s just a recognition that there’s no single organization or person in charge of and meditating between every country on earth. The world is “devoid of any central authority with the wherewithal to protect states from aggression,” MIT political scientist Barry Posen explained in a brief for the think tank Defense Priorities (where I am a fellow). “Without a world government, each nation must look to its own resources to ensure its security.”

So yes, what’s commonly called the “liberal international order” or “rules-based international order” exists, and that’s generally a good thing. It’s a product (however insufficient) of centuries of Christians theorizing about war and justice. But it doesn’t operate with anything like the same force as domestic laws. You can’t opt out of your state’s criminal code or the federal tax code. But countries can and do opt out of—or let lapse or formally exit or simply violate—international treaties and laws.

For example, having seen how Nazi Germany treated prisoners of war, especially Soviet soldiers, I’m glad the Geneva Conventions have set international rules for handling of POWs. But Germany had previously signed the 1929 Geneva Convention on humane treatment of POWs, so how real were those rules?

Now, as then, some of us may aspire to something better. But what the Greek historian Thucydides wrote of international relations 400 years before Christ remains true in practice: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

The United States is undoubtedly “the strong” in this line. We can invade and occupy other nations. Regime change is a live option for us (though 50 years of failure suggest nation building is not). Our wealth and military might are unmatched; even near-peer nations have substantially lower military spending (such as European allies), smaller nuclear arsenals (China), or more outdated and depleted conventional forces and arms (Russia).

But let’s move past description to prescription: past what is to what should be. Often the US can do what it wants on the world stage. But what should it want?

Most succinctly: the rule of law and peace, so far as it depends on us. War and conquest are failures of foreign policy, not triumphs, and though it’s true that relationships between countries are anarchic, the United States is not. We have laws about matters of war and peace, laws that are binding on the president and vice president and certainly our homeland security adviser.

The framers of our Constitution approached these matters with utmost seriousness. They assigned the power to declare war to Congress rather than the president because of their well-considered and oft-vindicated conviction that no one person is “safely to be trusted” with that authority. Notes on the Constitutional Convention say that George Mason, known as the father of the Bill of Rights, was particularly interested in “clogging rather than facilitating war [and instead] facilitating peace,” and allowing presidents to act solo only “to repel sudden attacks.”

The War Powers Act of 1973 set even more granular law about presidential warmaking, and unlike international rules, that act and our Constitution are not opt-in arrangements for this or any administration. That the world is governed by strength, force, and power does not mean the United States should be.

The rule of law is a fragile and valuable inheritance; amid chaos, we need more of it, not less. This isn’t idealism but prudence, for the reality Miller describes is escalatory and precarious. It is not to be encouraged or accepted but rather fought.

Strong as we may be, the United States will find many imitators if we lead the world toward greater anarchy and violence, and those imitators are unlikely to be our friends. This posture toward power will have unintended and unwanted consequences. We would be fools to jettison the world Mason helped build to revert to the one Thucydides endured.

And that “iron law” of which Miller spoke is not as iron as he claims: God did not create a world governed by force. It is only in Genesis 3, after humanity has betrayed its creator to side with the Enemy, that God speaks of a world characterized by domination, scarcity, pain, hardship, and risk. Time did not begin like this, nor, in Christian conviction, will it end this way (Rev. 21).

Miller is Jewish, so citing Revelation here isn’t quite fair play. But the creation story is shared by our faiths, and so are the Old Testament wisdom books. Proverbs 16 is especially apt.

Even after the Fall, it says, “Better a little with righteousness than much gain with injustice” (v. 8). Even in a reality governed by power, a good king will love truth (v. 13), “detest wrongdoing” (v. 12), and refuse to “betray justice” (v. 10). Even amid global anarchy, God requires honesty and order (v. 11). He makes peace (v. 7); punishes wickedness (v. 4); and condemns violence, plots, and instigation of conflict (vv. 27–30). He knows when we deceive ourselves about the motives of our hearts (v. 2).

Christians and Jews have long debated, both with each other and among ourselves, what it looks like to “give a s—t” in a fallen world: to seek something more solid than niceties, more trustworthy than our own morality, more righteous than bare power. How do you know and fear the Lord when you no longer walk with him in the Garden? What does it look like to seek justice when it’s in such short supply? How do you choose shrewdness alongside honesty, realism alongside mercy? Can we avoid making the perfect the enemy of the good, or even the good enough?

These are old questions, big questions, questions faithful and good-faith people have answered very differently over the years, questions I cannot settle here. Nor do I envy anyone trying to answer them from a seat of power. But whatever the answer may be, it cannot amount to embracing the way of the world that sin has wrought.

“There is a way that appears to be right,” Proverbs 16:25 warns—a way that, in this fallen world, seems sensible, savvy, and secure. “But in the end it leads to death.”

Bonnie Kristian is the deputy editor at Christianity Today.

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Culture

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Helped a Missionary Talk About Jesus

Jennifer Park

But some believers remain wary of adapting the popular music genre for worship, so Christian K-pop isn’t going up, up, up.

One hot afternoon in the city of Malang, Indonesia, Korean missionary Ki-Joon Park was walking past a small neighborhood café when he heard a familiar tune: the K-pop hit “Golden” from Netflix’s popular animated film KPop Demon Hunters.

That evening, Park heard the same song again as a group of teenagers hanging out near his church sang it aloud, laughing as they stumbled through the Korean pronunciation of several words in the song.

KPop Demon Hunters took home the best animated feature and best original song for “Golden” at this year’s Golden Globes. Since its release last year, the film has been a runaway success, garnering more than 500 million views globally and becoming the most-watched title in Netflix’s history. It also earned more than $20 million at the global box office last year.

Across the world, the film has expanded the reach of K-pop music, a genre that often comprises a mix of sounds—including pop, hip-hop, electronic dance music, and traditional Korean music—set to energetic dance moves.

The Korean and Korean American Christians CT interviewed appreciate how KPop Demon Hunters’ widespread acclaim has enabled them to share the gospel more effectively. But they do not see Christian K-pop music as a growing genre in contemporary Christian music (CCM) and are wary of incorporating K-pop into worship songs as a means of outreach.

KPop Demon Hunters has opened up more conversations about the spiritual world in Indonesia, Park said. The film’s use of Korean shamanistic imagery—a demon boy band decked out in traditional Korean hats known as gat, or the mythical haetae, a lionlike creature known as Derpy—has allowed conversations about God and faith to emerge naturally among the young Indonesians he ministers to.

Introducing Christ to people in the Muslim-majority Southeast Asian country has also felt easier thanks to increasing interest in Korean culture, Park said. Once, his church held a summer event in its courtyard where a short-term missions team from South Korea taught local youth simple K-pop dance moves and how to cook Korean dishes.

Still, some believers in other parts of the world are uncomfortable with the film’s repeated references to demonic influences. One Christian school in the UK banned its students from singing the film’s soundtrack to respect people who find the film themes “at odds with their faith.”

Jaewoo Kim of the Christian nonprofit Proskuneo Ministries does not think that KPop Demon Hunters’ popularity has encouraged more Christian artists to adopt K-pop music styles into their compositions for similar reasons.

Certain elements in the film, like demons, spells, and shamanism, “likely make [Christian artists] feel hesitant to openly draw inspiration from it for their own work,” he said.

Kim melded K-pop music with Christian lyrics in the 2019 rap “I Will Proclaim.” He worked with Korean, Burmese, and Sudanese second-generation youth in Clarkston, Georgia, to write verses in their native languages that drew on Psalm 118:17—“I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done”—to encourage young people living with depression and suicidal ideation to find hope in Christ.

Yet Kim, who now lives in Portland, cautions against a wholesale adoption of K-pop in corporate worship.

“Even if we package Christian truth in popular sounds and distribute it widely, that alone does not advance the gospel,” Kim said. “The content must remain faithful, the medium must serve that content, and the messenger’s life must reflect what is being proclaimed.”

Within South Korea’s K-pop industry, success is often measured more by marketability and image than by personal maturity or communal responsibility, Kim said. K-pop idol mania also enforces narrow beauty standards; treats artists as consumable commodities; and subjects trainees to long hours, intense competition, privacy restrictions, and financial inequities, leading many artists to experience prolonged physical and emotional burnout, he added.

“Churches should not simply appropriate cultural forms without considering the values and demands embedded within the industry itself,” Kim said.

KPop Demon Hunters’ trendsetting soundtrack, which topped Billboard charts and earned five Grammy nominations, also may not result in Christian K-pop music experiencing a corresponding rise in popularity.

Leah Payne, author of God Gave Rock & Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music, says she will not be shocked “to hear a catchy tune from someone like Forrest Frank about the love of God that bears a strong resemblance to ‘Golden.’”

But Payne wonders whether any Christian K-pop group will catch on, because CCM’s older method of creating faith-based music that imitates pop trends is less prominent now.

In the late 20th century and early 21st century, CCM provided “safe” alternatives to mainstream top 40 music, like how DC Talk was marketed in comparison to Nirvana, Payne told CT. Based on this approach, there “should have been a K-pop CCM alternative a few years ago,” she said. But CCM now focuses mainly on producing music that can be used in worship services, Payne said in a recent interview with the Pittsburgh City Paper.

In South Korea, there is no specific music category labeled “Christian K-pop.” Most Korean Christians see a clear distinction between mainstream K-pop and CCM, even as some CCM artists may utilize K-pop sounds or visuals in their music. Popular K-pop idols who are believers may occasionally sing worship songs at their concerts, but they do so because they want to express their faith, not because they are part of CCM.

CCM in South Korea partly emerged from the growth of a vibrant church culture between the 1960s and the early 1990s. Youth ministries and worship teams in megachurches like Yoido Full Gospel Church began adopting pop, rock, and eventually full K-pop soundtracks as a way of reaching out to teenagers who were immersed in K-pop idol music.

Brian Kim (no relation to Jaewoo Kim) is part of a generation of Korean artists who normalized CCM in the East Asian country’s Christian music landscape. The Korean American artist and worship leader, who hails from Texas and currently lives in Seoul, is one of the most prominent CCM artists in South Korea.

Kim began writing Christian K-pop songs in the early 2000s, and his 2012 song “God’s at Work” has amassed nearly 3 million views on YouTube so far. More recently, he has spent the past four years training and mentoring a group of young artists in Seoul to equip them for Christian music ministry and gospel-centered missions.

Korean pop culture has experienced a huge popularity boom—a phenomenon known as hallyu or the “Korean wave”—in the past two to three decades. But Kim laments how “the Korean church has lost much of its influence” during the same period. South Korean churches have experienced declining membership amid low birth rates, increasing secularization, and growing skepticism toward religion.

In contrast, he said, more and more young people are participating in K-pop fandoms: organized communities of fans who support artists through concerts, online platforms, streaming campaigns, and shared rituals.

Kim hopes that avid K-pop fans can look to the church to find the loyalty and emotional bonds they currently experience by being part of a fandom. Adapting K-pop music styles in songs that remain grounded in Scripture could be one way to draw people into the church in his view. “The gospel is unchanging, and everything must ultimately return to it,” he said.

Park, the missionary in Indonesia, is hosting a cultural event in Malang later this year that will highlight Korean food and dance. It will also be an opportunity for locals to learn Christian songs in the Korean language.

“Culture may open the door [to evangelism], but the gospel is what we ultimately speak,” he said.

Additional reporting by Isabel Ong

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Theology

Christians, Let’s Stop Abusing Romans 13

Russell Moore

Columnist

Believers often use the passage to wave away state violence, but that’s the opposite of what Paul intended.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Image: Getty

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

An ICE agent shot protester Renee Good through the head this week and killed her. Videos record one of the agents cursing her as she died. I knew immediately that many Christians would be morally shaken by this, and rightfully so. And I knew many of them would soothe their troubled consciences with a predictable passage of Scripture, and it isn’t “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Instead, whenever an agent of the state kills a person in morally questionable circumstances, many Christians go right to Romans 13, quoting it before the blood is even cleaned up from the ground.

What people reference when they say “Romans 13” is the argument the apostle Paul makes in that chapter: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed” (vv. 1–2, ESV throughout). What some Christians draw from this, then, is that whatever the state does in using lethal force (or bearing “the sword” as Paul put it in verse 4) is morally legitimate and those who question it are wrong.

Some Christians quoted Romans 13 to oppose the American Revolution. Some cited it to oppose efforts at civil disobedience, such as the Montgomery bus boycott or the nonviolent resistance to police forces in Birmingham or Selma. And certainly people pull out this passage as a kind of moral trump card to silence questioning when they see the protester as not on their side or the person in power as on their side. That Romans 13 is most often invoked not when the state is acting justly but when Christians feel the urge to quiet their consciences ought to trouble us—not because this habit puts too much weight on biblical authority but because it attacks it.

The problem is not with Romans 13 itself, any more than the cocaine dealer quoting Judge not, lest ye be judged is a problem with Jesus. Should we refrain from quoting Psalm 91 because the Devil quoted it in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (Luke 4:1–11)? Not at all. But we also have no excuse for allowing ourselves to use that verse to make the same satanic case.

The Book of Romans did not come to us with chapter and verse distinctions; it was one continuous argument from the apostle. The argument in Romans 13 continues that of chapter 12, in which Paul exhorts the Christians to “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (v. 12) and to “bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them” (v. 14). He has just implored these readers not to seek vengeance on those who mistreat them: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (v. 21).

Paul then makes a very similar argument to one the apostle Peter makes elsewhere, in which Peter argues that those who are now “sojourners and exiles” should “be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:11, 13–14). Peter goes on to apply this posture by telling his readers not to use freedom as a “cover-up for evil” but to bear reproach for the sake of Christ.

Romans 13 makes a very similar case, with Paul writing—as did Peter—to people without badges or guns or even voting rights, telling them they can exist alongside their neighbors even as they wait for the kingdom of God. The powers that be, Paul argues, have a real and legitimate authority, and obeying that authority is not a break from obeying God but an extension of it. That authority exists for something: restraining wrongdoing, protecting the vulnerable.

That neither Paul nor Peter was giving moral carte blanche to the state is obvious not just in other Scriptures but also in their very lives. After all, both were later killed by the sword of Caesar (figuratively in Peter’s case, literally in Paul’s). Was the decree to behead Paul or to crucify Peter therefore morally right? No. Were the Christians who refused to say “Caesar is Lord” and were thus hounded, marginalized, or beheaded sinful in their refusal? Jesus said that, in that case, those who obeyed earthly powers were the ones bringing judgment on themselves (Rev. 14:11–12).

Moreover, the use of Romans 13 as a refusal to question the morality of a use of force is, ironically enough, a violation of the passage. We might well ask, what would Paul have written if Romans 13 were addressed to the authorities rather than to those under their rule?

Well, we actually know the answer, because the same Spirit who breathed out Romans 13 also breathed out John the Baptist’s instructions to tax collectors and soldiers. John told them not to extort money from anyone, implying that they would be held responsible for the misuse of their power (Luke 3:12–14). The same Spirit also favorably portrayed Paul’s interaction with the police who told him and Silas, on behalf of the magistrates, to leave quietly, to which Paul replied, “They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out” (Acts 16:37).

Paul knew of what he spoke. In his prior life, he had persecuted the church—with legal warrants and the full force of law. He did not see that legality of that action as being in any way an excuse (1 Tim. 1:12–14).

Romans 13 is about refusing to become what oppresses you, not about baptizing whatever the oppressor does. And Romans 13 puts moral limits around what authorities can and cannot do—it tells them to use the sword against “the wrongdoer,” for instance. Paul wrote Romans 13 not to protect the state from critique but to shield the church from vengeance.

To use Romans 13 to automatically justify state violence is not the equivalent of first-century Christians seeing their calling as not to overthrow the empire. To use it that way is more like if Daniel in Babylon had said that the fiery oven is the lawful punishment for civil disobedience against worshiping the king’s image, and therefore Nebuchadnezzar is right that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego should be burned alive.

There are legitimate uses of tragically necessary lethal force on the part of law enforcement officers. Watch the video, if you can, and decide for yourself if you think, morally, that this was one of them. But don’t simply turn away from the violence and refuse to ask any questions at all. And if you decide that whatever is done with government power is beyond moral scrutiny, don’t blame Romans 13. That’s not what it tells you to do.

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

News

The 50 Countries Where It’s Most Dangerous for Christians in 2026

Jayson Casper

From Syria to Sudan, believers around the world face increasing oppression and persecution.

Illustration by Kumé Pather

Pastor Edward Awabdeh had just finished serving Communion at the Evangelical Christian Alliance Church when he noticed members fiddling with their phones and whispering nervously to their neighbors. Many in the Damascus, Syria, church had received notifications of a suicide bombing at the Mar Elias Greek Orthodox church, located only 15 minutes away.

Syrian security forces suddenly entered from the rear of the church and evacuated the congregation within a few minutes. But even as congregants filed out peacefully, many feared for their friends’ and relatives’ safety at Mar Elias, where they learned that the June 22 bombing last year had killed 22 Christians and wounded at least 60 others.

“This was our hardest day,” Awabdeh said. “But most concerning is the general atmosphere of extremism [in the country].”

Persecution monitor Open Doors agrees. In the 2026 edition of its annual World Watch List (WWL), the nonprofit listed Syria at No. 6, up from last year’s ranking of No. 18. The country is the only newcomer to the top 10 most dangerous places to be a Christian and received a near-maximum score of 90 in Open Doors’ methodology.

In Open Doors’ previous reporting cycle, which ends each September, zero Syrian Christians died for faith-related reasons. For the 2026 report, Open Doors verified at least 27 deaths of believers.

The fall of the Assad regime in Syria occurred in December 2024. Shortly after, Ahmad al-Sharaa, the leader of the rebel coalition and head of the jihadist group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appointed himself as the country’s interim president and established Islamic jurisprudence as the main source of legislation in the transitional constitution.

Open Doors stated that power remains fragmented in the country, leaving space for extremists to harass Christians. Fear prevails among the few Christians who remain in the northwest city of Idlib, where the HTS base also contains ISIS cells and a Turkish military presence, as well as in central Syria due to a lack of local security and extremist intimidation.

In the larger cities of Damascus and Aleppo, Islamist actors have called for conversion to Islam through trucks laden with loudspeakers in Christian neighborhoods. They have placed posters on churches demanding payment of the sharia-mandated jizyah tax (historically levied on non-Muslims) for those who refuse.

The situation for Christians is more tolerable in Syria’s coastland regions and the Kurdish-ruled northeast, Open Doors stated. Still, Syrian authorities closed 14 Christian schools in the northeast that refused to adopt a new Kurdish curriculum, denying education to thousands of students.

Awabdeh has hope for Syria. Evangelicals enjoy “ten times” more freedom now than under Assad, he said. Authorities sent security forces to guard all Christian areas during Christmas, and the head of police in Damascus visited his church to offer holiday greetings. Officials also recently gave permission to build a community center on Alliance-owned land in the capital, which the previous regime had denied for more than three decades.

Yet Awabdeh remains troubled that the government is not reining in extremism. Officials say all the right things about minorities’ rights, he says, but there was little accountability following the Syrian forces’ massacre of Alawites last March and during armed militias’ killings of Druze Muslims last July.

In the southwest region of Druze-majority Sweida, armed men entered the apartment of one of Awabdeh’s church members and held him at gunpoint. They stole everything and destroyed all the Christian symbols in his home. A moderate Muslim shaykh told Awabdeh that some Islamic militants believe they have the right to loot non-Muslim properties.

Syrian Christian emigration continues to grow. Open Doors estimates that only 300,000 believers remain, down from a pre-2011 total of 1.5 to 2 million, which was 10 percent of the population at the time.

Globally, more than 388 million Christians live in nations with high levels of persecution or discrimination for their faith. That’s 1 in 7 Christians worldwide, including 1 in 5 believers in Africa, 2 in 5 in Asia, and 1 in 12 in Latin America. The total number rose by 8 million since last year, reflecting a steady increase over time. Per the 2019 WWL, 1 in 9 Christians worldwide resided in high persecuting countries.

The dramatic rise in Syria’s rank on the WWL should not distract from persistent persecution in the rest of the world. Open Doors noted two broad trends in particular: fragile governments and state-induced isolation.

Within the past 5 years, 5 of the 14 sub-Saharan African countries on the WWL have overthrown their governments and two have suspended their constitutions. In the democratic nations of Nigeria and Ethiopia, jihadist and rebel groups prevent the state from extending security and stability throughout its territory.

As a result of similar fragile governments elsewhere, Open Doors marks “Islamic oppression” and “organized corruption and crime” as two of the top three drivers of persecution in 10 of those 14 nations.

In the past decade, the average persecution score for the sub-Saharan region has increased from 68 to 78 out of a scale of 100, while the violence score (1 of 6 markers tracked by the list) has increased from 49 to 88 percent of the total category. This includes killings, detentions without a proper trial, abductions, and property destruction.

Ten years ago, 6 sub-Saharan nations ranked among the 20 most violent countries for Christians worldwide. This year’s list ranks 12 countries from the region in the top 20, including the only three with a maximum score: Sudan, Nigeria, and Mali.

Sudan (No. 4) rose one place in this year’s list due to violence directed at Christians. The civil war, ongoing since 2023, has displaced nearly 10 million people, equal to the population of Greater London or Bangkok. Nationwide, the conflict has damaged hundreds of churches, with Christians targeted in the Darfur, Blue Nile, Nuba Mountain, and capital regions.

The rebel Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, which held much of the capital of Khartoum for nearly two years, destroyed several Christian schools and churches, including the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church and the Evangelical Church in the Omdurman neighborhood. After the country’s national army regained control last March, it proceeded to bulldoze a Pentecostal church.

Yet Nigeria, ranked No. 7, attracted global attention last year when US president Donald Trump rebuked the nation and threatened military action over the persecution of Christians. Listed in the top 10 since 2021 and registering a maximum violence score for eight consecutive years, Nigeria suffers from farmer-herder land conflict mixed with religious intolerance and jihadist oppression.

While experts dispute the root causes of violence against believers, Nigeria recorded the overwhelming majority of Christians killed because of their faith in the 2026 WWL, with 3,490 deaths out of 4,849. Fellow sub-Saharan nations followed, with the Democratic Republic of Congo (No. 29) tallying 339, and Burkina Faso (No. 16) with 150.

However, not all persecution comes from Muslim sources. In Ethiopia (No. 36), the Orthodox Church, which is historically linked to state power, put pressure on Protestant communities that often face hostility at the local level. Despite a 2022 truce signed with the government, armed groups in the regions of Amhara and Oromia burned, demolished, or looted 25 churches, said Open Doors.

Open Doors highlighted other African countries for its second trend—government surveillance and oppression. The overall score for Algeria (No. 20) has increased 7 points to 77 since 2021. The government’s systematic closures of churches have resulted in an estimated three-quarters of Algerian believers no longer being part of an organized Christian community, Open Doors stated. Believers who meet privately to worship continue to risk arrest.

But the highest-ranked example comes from China (No. 17). Despite registering a score of 79, this increase to its all-time high did not result from any change in the level of violence. Instead, pressure on the church increased from the publication and enforcement of new regulations on the use of the internet and social media.

Preaching can only be hosted on registered websites, through the official Catholic and Protestant associations. Church leaders must support the Communist Party and a socialist system while refraining from fundraising, doing outreach to youth, and distributing Bible apps and religious material.

The new rules in China fit a pattern of increased regulation since 2018 and coincide with repression against previously tolerated independent churches, Open Doors said. Some of these larger fellowships now meet quietly in groups of only 10 to 20 believers. Government officials may accuse unregistered house church pastors of “provoking trouble,” and these pastors face suspicions of fraud if they collect offerings.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xp7RP/3/

Despite the lessening of violence levels in some still-oppressive nations, the statistics collected by Open Doors remain disturbingly high globally. Christians killed for their faith in countries including Nigeria increased by nearly 400 cases compared to the previous reporting period.

Acts of violence also forced Christians to leave their homes in search of safety elsewhere. In the 2026 WWL, Open Doors recorded 224,129 Christians who were internally displaced or became refugees, in comparison with 209,771 cases in the prior reporting period. Believers from Nigeria, Myanmar (No. 14), and Cameroon (No. 37) suffered the most this way.

The number of cases of Christians who have been physically or mentally abused (including beatings and death threats) for faith-related reasons increased from 54,780 to 67,843 in the 2026 WWL. Nigeria, Pakistan (No. 8), and India (No. 12) had the most instances of such abuse. The total number of Christians sentenced to prison, labor camps, or mental hospitals for their faith increased from 1,140 to 1,298, with India, Bangladesh (No. 33), and Eritrea (No. 5) leading the list.

Meanwhile, the number of Christians raped or sexually harassed for faith-related reasons rose from 3,123 to 4,055, with Nigeria, Congo, and Syria as main offenders. The report acknowledged the challenge of gathering these numbers, given victims’ trauma and cultural taboos.

Another sensitive data point: the number of forced marriages of Christians to non-Christians. Open Doors reported that this figure increased from 821 to 1,147, with Nigeria, Pakistan, and the Central African Republic (No. 22) as the top three.

Other indications of violence went down in the newest reporting period. Attacks on houses, shops, businesses, or other property belonging to Christians fell from 28,368 to 25,794 cases, with Nigeria, Sudan, and South Sudan (ranked outside the top 50) topping the chart. Attacks on church properties declined substantially from 7,679 to 3,632, with Nigeria, China, and Niger (No. 26) the most prominent offenders. The number of abducted Christians decreased from 3,775 to 3,302, with Nigeria, Sudan, and Mozambique the most dangerous for that category.

In many cases, figures cannot be measured precisely, so Open Doors sometimes reports round figures of 10, 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 100,000, depending on the situation. Its researchers emphasized that estimates are conservative and represent the “absolute minimum” of attacks and atrocities, meaning the actual figures are likely much higher.

Open Doors also described improving trends for Christians in certain countries on the 2026 WWL. Muslim-majority Bangladesh fell to No. 33 from No. 24 because of a 20 percent reduction in its violence score, following the relative calm after the 2024 overthrow of its government. The country’s interim prime minister, Muhammad Yunus, has also made several positive statements about religious freedom, though his commitment may be tested during next month’s elections.

In Malaysia, ranked just outside the top 50 most dangerous nations in which to be a Christian, the high court issued a groundbreaking ruling that recognized the role of police forces in the 2017 abduction of pastor Raymond Koh. The court ordered the government to reopen the investigation and pay a fine for every day of Koh’s disappearance, which has now reached a total of over $7 million USD.

Finally, although religious freedom conditions are not improving substantially in Cuba (No. 24), Mexico (No. 30), Nicaragua (No. 32), or Colombia (No. 47), there has been an increase in local and global religious freedom advocacy on behalf of believers in these countries. Churches in these contexts “show remarkable resilience and creativity” in serving their vulnerable populations, the Open Doors report noted.

CT previously reported the WWL rankings for 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012, as well as a spotlight in 2010 on where it’s hardest to believe. CT also asked experts in 2017 whether the United States belongs on persecution lists and compiled the most-read stories of the persecuted church in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

Read Open Doors’ full report on the 2026 World Watch List here.

Methodology

Open Doors scores each nation on six components, and each category can receive a maximum score of 16.7 for a maximum total score of 100. Researchers consider a score of more than 40 points as high.

Their methodology takes into account violence as well the pressure to reject their faith that believers experience from neighbors, friends, extended family, and society as a whole. The total score is determined based on answers from an extensive questionnaire.

Private life: the inner life of a Christian and his or her freedom of thought and conscience.
“How free has a Christian been to relate to God one-on-one in his/her own private space?”
Family life: pertaining to the nuclear and extended family of a Christian.
“How free has a Christian been to live his/her Christian convictions within the circle of the family, and how free have Christian families been to conduct their family life in a Christian way?”
Community life: the interactions Christians have with their respective local communities outside their families.
“How free have Christians been individually and collectively to live their Christian convictions within the local community? How much pressure has the community put on Christians by acts of discrimination, harassment or any other form of persecution?”
National life: the interaction between Christians and the nations they live in. This includes rights and laws, the justice system, the state, and other institutions.
“How free have Christians been individually and collectively to live their Christian convictions beyond their local community? How much pressure has the legal system put on Christians? How much pressure have agents of supra-local life put on Christians by acts of misinformation, discrimination, harassment or any other form of persecution?”
Church life: the collective exercise of freedom of thought and conscience, particularly as regards uniting with fellow Christians in worship, service, and the public expression of their faith without undue interference.
“How have restrictions, discrimination, harassment or other forms of persecution infringed upon these rights and this collective life of Christian churches, organizations and institutions?”
Violence: deprivation of physical freedom, serious physical or mental harm to Christians, or serious damage to their property. This is a category that can affect or inhibit relationships in all other areas of life.
“How many cases of such violence have there been?”

Additional reporting by Sofía Castillo

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Books

Christian Writer Daniel Nayeri Dreams from Home

Jonathon Crump

Lying on the floor of his mauve-walled writing shed, the celebrated YA author writes himself around the world.

Image courtesy of Leandro Lozada

The night before my flight to meet Daniel Nayeri, I happened to catch a lecture by Paul Kingsnorth. On the surface, the two writers have little in common. Daniel was born in Iran, and Paul lives in Ireland. Daniel primarily writes fiction for younger audiences; Paul writes essays, and the few novels he has published are decidedly not kid friendly. Yet in the 36 hours I would spend with one author, I couldn’t stop thinking about what the other had said.

I drove from my Louisville home to Port Royal, Kentucky, to hear Kingsnorth’s lecture, held in one of the only buildings in the small rural town that could accommodate such a large audience—the local Baptist church. Speaking from behind the pulpit, Kingsnorth made a startling claim: The hearths have gone out.

The hearth, Kingsnorth elaborated, is what makes a house a home. It’s a symbol of warmth and community, he writes in Against the Machine, because “staring into the smoky fire with family or neighbours was the genesis of the folk tale and folk song which tied the culture together.” Today, the metaphorical flames that once warmed our living rooms have been replaced by the “digital fires” of smartphones and social media platforms. According to Kingsnorth, when digital hearths flicker into existence, home devolves into a dormitory—stripped of activity and personality, it becomes the place you sleep when you’re not at work.

Kingsnorth’s lecture came at just the right time for me. I’ve been married for a year and a half. My wife and I hope to have children soon, Lord willing. I want our house to be a home, not just a dorm. But how do we keep our hearth burning?

When I got on the plane to Charlotte, North Carolina, to meet Daniel Nayeri, I was traveling in search of warmth.

Daniel and his 13-year-old son picked up my photographer friend and me from the airport in a big ol’ Ram truck. A Texan by birth, I was pleased. But not long after we piled in, Daniel informed us that the truck belongs to his wife. He drives the only vehicle cooler—a motorcycle.

Image courtesy of Leandro Lozada

When we first made plans to profile the novelist, I imagined my friend and I would rent a hotel room for a night. Daniel insisted we stay with him. His house in Rock Hill, South Carolina, is sky blue with copper gutters that adorn it like jewelry. The living room boasts a shelf with dozens of carefully selected picture books. Art hangs on every wall alongside shadow boxes of rocks, shells, and other treasures the family pockets on vacations.

Daniel and his wife, Alexandra, have used their extra space well, a talent they learned by living in much smaller quarters in New York City. Daniel found good work there as a literary agent and then an editor. But after 80-hour weeks in the publishing industry burned him out, he quit and worked as a pastry chef. The (slightly) more reasonable hours and tactile labor were good for Daniel. He started writing again. He knew if he went back to his apartment after early-morning shifts, he would sleep or get distracted, so he sat on park benches and subways instead, typing away on his iPhone. Eventually, he’d write four novellas by this method, compiled into the 2011 collection Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow.

The book is creative, experimental, and strange, each novella set within a different genre: Western, dystopian, hard-boiled detective, and fantasy. Daniel’s love of stories is apparent on every page. Four years after the collection, he published a volume about the craft of writing, How to Tell a Story. The interactive book operates like a game of Mad Libs, offering scenarios for readers to fill in with characters like Dapper Fox, Evil Wizard, and Robot and settings like Coliseum, Heaven, and Mystery Cave, teaching motivation, conflict, and resolution along the way.

After giving me a quick tour of the home, Daniel got to work in the kitchen, with its ginormous fridge and gleaming silver island. (Because of his culinary background, a fitted-out workspace is nonnegotiable. He drinks out of deli containers like characters from The Bear.) That night, we feasted on Korean food—kalbi (beef ribs) marinated for hours before Daniel browned them in the oven and served them with egg-yolk-anointed white rice and sides of kimchi. As we did before every meal, we held hands and prayed.

Making conversation with Daniel and his family is easy. Daniel is a talker. He compares American politics to the theatrical stylings of World Wrestling Entertainment and waxes eloquent about his affinity for the Apostles’ Creed. Alexandra (who has authored two picture books) asks the questions. She asks us what we think heaven will be like. She asks about the “top ten things” to know about me (I think I got to five). She asks which books we’d bring to a desert island.

As wonderful as they are to live in, whole homes rarely make for good literature, and Daniel’s characters mostly grow up in dysfunction. His newest book, The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story, follows Babak and Sana, two orphaned siblings living in Iran during World War II, with Russia and the UK controlling either side of the nation’s border. The siblings fall in with a group of nomads and, to make himself useful, Babak shoulders a chalkboard and starts teaching. The Teacher of Nomad Land declares the value of learning in times of strife. Last year, it won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, and CT’s editor at large, Russell Moore, named the book one of his favorites of 2025.

The next morning, after a breakfast of homemade cherry scones and clotted cream, Daniel showed me his dedicated writing space—a charming backyard shed with mauve walls and doors the same hue of pink as the Sour Patch Kids gum he offered me. The shed has plenty of windows but no internet connection. Daniel has long given up writing on his iPhone. Now he drafts his books by hand in a journal. In fact, he’s abandoned smartphones entirely and uses one of the “dumbphone” alternatives.

The shed contains a rug, a few chairs, and plenty of books. Juggling sticks sit ready at a desk in case Daniel gets stuck and needs something to do with his hands. That said, Daniel doesn’t usually write at his desk. He writes on the floor.

All writers have their rituals, and this is his—stomach down, a pillow propping up his chest, one leg splayed out behind him. He arranges journals and reference books on the floor just in front of his face. On a typical day, he enters his pink-and-purple shed in the morning, prostrates himself, and writes until lunch, doodling when he gets stuck.

“Iranians work on the rug,” he told me. “I prefer the ground. I’ve always preferred the ground.”

It’s the perfect posture for an author of children’s books and middle-grade fiction. Chairs and desks are the necessities of old age; the floor is the domain of the young. It’s playful. So is Daniel. He talks in silly voices and laughs at puns. Yet as with any kids’ book worth its muster, the playfulness comes with profundity.

After Daniel gets up from the floor, he shows me the journal in which he handwrote the original draft of Everything Sad Is Untrue, his most well-known book. The genre-bending memoir, written from the perspective of Daniel’s 12-year-old self, tells the true story of his family fleeing Iran after his mother’s conversion to Christianity. The title comes from J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King, when Samwise Gamgee wakes to see the resurrected Gandalf and asks hopefully, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?”

Even with its unapologetic portrayal of faith, the book received high praise from secular publications, including NPR and The Washington Post. “‘Everything Sad’ is a modern masterpiece—as epic as the ‘Iliad’ and ‘Shahnameh,’ and as heartwarming as ‘Charlotte’s Web,’” read the New York Times review.

Tucked into the pages of the writing journal like a bookmark sits a piece of paper printed with a famous quote from The Brothers Karamazov. I recognize it as one of the epigraphs in Everything Sad.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood they’ve shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.

Here, agnostic Ivan Karamazov is embroiled in a painful conversation with his brother Alyosha, a steadfast believer. They argue over how God can exist given the world’s suffering. Eventually, Ivan concedes that he believes something profound will appear at the end of time to make sense of all the bloodshed.

The passage has special significance for Daniel. For the two decades he lived in New York City, he attended Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church. On the Sunday after 9/11, Redeemer printed the famous passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky in the bulletin. Daniel cut out the quote with scissors and kept the piece of history. He still has it memorized.

Like a kid at show-and-tell, Daniel displays another of his books. This one, sadly, is now out of print. The Most Dangerous Book: An Illustrated Introduction to Archery really does recount the history of archery—but it’s also a toy that “turn[s] into a bow and shoot[s] paper ammunition.” As the back cover explains, this is “a weapon of mass instruction.” “What about ideas that are less bad?” Daniel asks in an introduction that reads like a manifesto. “Nothing ideas. Boring ones. Tepid ones. How are those dangerous? Reader, believe me, those are the most dangerous.” Boredom is more than a nuisance for Daniel; it’s a threat.

Fear of boredom fits Daniel as naturally as the leather jacket he wears while riding his motorcycle up and down the street for us to take pictures. When Daniel was my age—late 20s—he “wanted nothing more than to be a travel writer,” he said, journeying to exotic locations and penning pieces for Outside Magazine and National Geographic. He wanted to be the Anthony Bourdain of desserts, seeking out the best confections, smiling at the camera. But he doesn’t ride much anymore. When he’s not traveling for work, he’s content to stay home.

The man who longed to live out of a suitcase has become a homebody. He has his fitted-out kitchen, a room full of board games, a space for his son’s homeschooling, his writing shed. Why leave?

In his what-makes-a-house-a-home criteria, Kingsnorth listed “the coming together of man and woman in partnership,” “the education of children,” the “cooking, storing, and eating of food,” and the limiting of technological distractions. Daniel and his family check the boxes of Kingsnorth’s rubric, though they aren’t Luddites. Alexandra has an iPhone, and their son has a Nintendo Switch, but nobody texted during meals. They’ve learned how to keep the hearth burning without completely eschewing technology.

Before my friend and I left, Daniel pulled out puff pastry, spinach, and mushrooms to make lunch. His son put on music full of synth and drums. Someone tossed me an apron. As I helped cook, dancing around the kitchen with Daniel and his family, I was invited into their circle of warmth.

Really, I already had been invited into it, before I even bought my plane ticket. Anyone who has read Daniel’s writing can feel the heat radiating from his words, whether he tapped them into an iPhone in New York or scrawled them in a leather journal in South Carolina. With Daniel’s characters, I’ve traveled the 11th-century Silk Road and navigated a bus ride to school in Edmond, Oklahoma. But the fuel propelling his adventures has always been the desire for home.

Through both his work and our weekend together, Daniel taught me that making a house a home doesn’t mean insularity or avoidance of the world. He’s curious and free-spirited. But when he’s under the copper gutters, he turns his attention not toward a screen but instead toward his family, the blank page, or the mound of flour in front of him. In fact, it’s his rootedness that allows him to write such great adventures. As Kingsnorth observes, sitting in a smoky living room can be the precondition for the best folk tales and songs. And when it comes to pulling chairs around the coals, Daniel isn’t selfish. He extends hospitality physically with his scones and figuratively with his stories.

There’s something else essential to hearth-centered homes—something Kingsnorth, though himself a Christian, didn’t mention in his lecture. Daniel and his family are believers. Along with two millennia of Christians, they believe in God the Father Almighty, in Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Holy Spirit. With Dostoevsky’s characters, they believe like children that all the suffering and absurdity of this life will be justified. And with Samwise Gamgee, they believe that all the sad things will come untrue. That’s the story underneath all the other stories that keeps the embers burning. The church is their spiritual home no matter their geographical location. It’s mine too.

Before I knew it, I was on the plane back to Kentucky, enjoying the grilled cheese sandwich Daniel had packed for me in a brown paper bag. I arrived in Louisville late that night, and my wife picked me up from the airport. After she parked the car in our driveway, I stayed still for a moment, looking at our home in the dark.

Our house is different from Daniel’s. His is old, predating both world wars. Ours was built six years ago. The siding is gray instead of Daniel’s blue, and our gutters are a conventional white. Inside our fridge, instead of blocks of nice cheese and marinating beef, I find dairy-free alternatives for my wife and chicken ready to be tossed in a pot for our favorite soups. Our bookshelves differ from Daniel’s too. Sure, we also own The Brothers Karamazov, The Lord of the Rings, and (recently autographed) books by Kingsnorth. But as bookish Kentuckians, we also own inordinately more Wendell Berry.

As I struggle to find room on the shelves for all the books Daniel gave me, I think of the Kentucky farmer and writer. In an essay called “Family Work,” Berry wrote that all places have the latent possibilities to become homes. To realize these possibilities, all that’s required is “the time and the inner quietness to look for them, the sense to recognize them, and the grace to welcome them in.”

My wife and I have all the ingredients we need: We come together in partnership, we cook and store food, we share stories, and we cling to our beliefs. My time with Daniel was wonderful. Yet I was eager to get back to my house. That’s a good sign. It means our place is more than a dorm. It’s a home.

Jonathon Crump has written for The Gospel Coalition, Common Good, Christ and Pop Culture, and other publications. Follow him on Substack.

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Ideas

How to Do Your Own Research About Vaccines

Matthew Loftus

Contributor

A doctor shows how to inoculate yourself against foolishness with a shot of wisdom.

Peter Stark / Getty / Edits by CT

The CDC recently scaled back its schedule of recommended vaccines, removing vaccines for hepatitis A and B, meningitis, rotavirus, and others in a change that makes the US vaccine schedule look more like it does in countries that have socialized health care, such as Denmark. That change comes as more Americans are choosing to skip or delay certain vaccinations (though most parents vaccinate their children according to the schedules set by health authorities).

Overreach by health authorities during the COVID-19 pandemic reduced trust in institutions. It has not helped that many of those same health authorities recently latched on to claims about transgender medicine for children that aren’t defensible from a scientific perspective, much less a religious one.

Trust is far more easily broken than it is rebuilt, and statements about loving your neighbor are unlikely to convince people who think vaccines are harmful. Yet we should not allow our reactions to government overreach to override our God-given reason and cause harm. With more people refusing the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine, new measles outbreaks have occurred, as well as a handful of deaths—something not seen in the US for decades.

We do have to think critically about the recommendations and pronouncements that come down from the government and major medical associations, because their actions, like all human behavior, may be motivated by ignorance, foolishness, or pride. Most parents will want to follow whatever vaccine schedule the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts out, since those schedules are generally based on careful studies of how effective those vaccines are.

There’s nothing wrong with that—in my practice in Kenya, I see plenty of children with pneumonia, diarrhea, and meningitis whose parents wish their kids could get all the vaccines American children are given routinely. But for those who wish to investigate further, I want to suggest a few principles for discerning what’s true.

The first principle: Ask, What are the risks of harm and the potential benefit of a vaccine? I’ll start with an example of a vaccine not recommended for American children: the Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccine, given to children all over the world to prevent tuberculosis infections in the brain. My wife and I had to decide when our last son was born in Kenya whether or not to give him the BCG vaccine.

This vaccine, which uses a weakened form of tuberculosis bacteria to protect against infection, has the risk of causing minor problems like a local skin infection, as well as more rare but more serious side effects. I’ve watched patients die of tuberculosis, but I was also nearly killed by a vaccine side effect years ago, so I’ve seen both sides of the equation. We judged that, for our son, the potential benefit of avoiding infection outweighed the risk of harm caused by the vaccine.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (breaking from the CDC) recently recommended that all children 6 months and older who have never had a COVID-19 vaccine get one this year. This recommendation came because COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing emergency room visits. The number of children who die from COVID-19 every year is still low enough that there’s not enough scientific evidence to judge whether the vaccination prevents children from dying in the way other vaccines prevent death. For many families, avoiding the risk of a trip to the ER is enough to be worth taking the risk on a COVID-19 shot. For others, it’s not.

The next principle: When you encounter information, ask yourself, How do I know this is true, and what information might I find to falsify it? One common accusation is that insurance companies pay doctors “bonuses” to vaccinate a certain number of patients in their practice. This sounds like pure corruption—doctors getting kickbacks to inject kids!

So let’s ask how we can find out if it’s true—after all, anyone can write a meme or make a video on a cellphone claiming corruption is rampant, but it’s foolish to make a decision that could lead to the death of your child or someone else’s child based on something you saw on the internet. It turns out that insurance companies do pay for “value-based care” for a variety of metrics (such as how well-controlled diabetic patients’ blood sugars are). Childhood vaccination is one of those metrics.

What might falsify this claim of dollars trumping ethics? Well, if insurance companies are as profit-driven as the rest of the health care system is, they only recoup their investment in these value-based incentives if giving vaccines to children saves them money in the long run. And no one has found doctors saying they don’t believe in the CDC schedule but give the vaccines anyway.

Maybe those doctors exist, but here’s a more likely explanation: Doctors administer vaccines they think are good for their patients, and they’re grateful that the money helps cover the cost of storing and administering them. Insurance companies save money when the vaccines prevent children from being admitted to the hospital. No conspiracy or corruption there.

All of us want stories and facts that justify what we believe, so one of the most countercultural things Christians can do when we encounter new information is to figure out how it could be wrong. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (ESV). When we’re sitting alone with our screens, we should live out this verse by examining information that may seem right at first but doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

We have vaccines available to us that our ancestors who buried young children couldn’t have dreamed of. The recommendations for these vaccines rely on scientific reasoning that is freely available for parents to read and decide for themselves. But if you’re going to do your own research, think first about how to research well.

Matthew Loftus lives with his family in Kenya, where he teaches and practices family medicine at a mission hospital. His book Resisting Therapy Culture: The Dangers of Pop Psychology and How the Church Can Respond is forthcoming from InterVarsity Press.

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Books

Review

It’s Not Just What We Teach, but How

Matt Reynolds

A new book on public schools—and the public square—looks beyond culture-war battles to deeper questions of pedagogy.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, W. W. Norton & Company

A couple of lifetimes ago, back at the tail end of the second Bush presidency, I was working as a reporter in my rural Massachusetts stomping grounds. The small papers I wrote for had me covering pretty much everything, including area public schools.

At least in this neck of the woods, school board sessions were relatively tame affairs, revolving around the mundanities of budgets and building plans. Sometimes conversations turned testy over teacher layoffs or tax hikes, but they never felt like skirmishes in the culture wars. Townsfolk weren’t rushing the microphones with partisan diatribes, nor were board members auditioning to be the next Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow.

Two decades later, I can’t say whether that neighborly spirit prevails. Elsewhere in the country, though, it’s not unusual to see school districts riven by ideological rancor. Angry parents make news airing grievances over curricula, library books, and transgender policies. Activist groups use their clout to pressure unobliging officials.

Are American public schools fated to be perpetual battlegrounds? Journalist James Traub doesn’t think so. In his latest book, The Cradle of Citizenship: How Schools Can Help Save Our Democracy, Traub—an influential voice in education policy circles—strikes a cautiously optimistic tone. Yes, he concedes, political division and acrimony can pull students and teachers into a destructive vortex. But schools can do more than merely weather these storms, he says, envisioning them as essential in reacquainting a polarized society with its better angels.

Banishing the demons, in this view, requires a renewed focus on both the doctrines and the arts of good citizenship. Traub asks how public education can inspire a better understanding of American history, a closer familiarity with the workings of American government, and more dependable habits of disagreeing without coming to blows. “Just as an increasingly coarse and intemperate culture is infecting our schools,” he writes, “so a conscious and thoughtful effort to promote civic education can help knit us back together.”

The Cradle of Citizenship combines careful reporting and trenchant analysis. Traub toggles between firsthand accounts from classroom visits across the country and broader attention to the ideas, institutions, and historical currents shaping contemporary debates about equipping students to preserve and enrich the public square. Along the way, he exposes readers to diverse perspectives on what schools should teach and—crucially—how they should teach it.

Naturally, if regrettably, a great deal of everyday education discourse tends to obsess over the whatwhile scanting the how. Ask many Americans how to improve the nation’s civics curriculum and they’ll gravitate toward specifics: more on the Founding Fathers and their glorious ideals, say, or more on the victims of state injustice and popular prejudice. Hence the fervor in so many local dustups over textbook pages devoted to this or that person or cause.

Traub pays due regard to these red-versus-blue dynamics shaping today’s educational landscape. He visits Florida, seeking on-the-ground reactions to woke-proofing projects spearheaded by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, as well as the backlash at schools in progressive enclaves. He covers dueling narratives of America advanced by The New York Times in its 1619 Project and the first Trump Administration’s rival 1776 Commission.

Speaking of Trump, Traub wastes little time tallying his offenses against civic concord. I’ll admit to wincing at the book’s introduction, which flays Trump for menacing democratic norms and peddling a cartoonishly chauvinistic brand of American patriotism.

I’m a firm, if mild-mannered, never-Trumper, so I can’t dispute this assessment, even if I would’ve welcomed more naming and shaming of the president’s left-wing foils. But Traub’s denunciations, easily swappable with a thousand others before, had me bracing for a wearying trudge down well-worn paths.

Thankfully, however, the book aspires beyond tendentious pleas to restore a consensus shattered by red America. Traub comes off as a moderate liberal, appalled by Trump but conspicuously uneasy with progressive excesses. He laments both hyperpatriotic mythology and crude revisionism, woke zealotry and anti-woke table-turning, silence on systemic racism and the dogmas of diversity seminars.

Traub cares a great deal, then, about the content of the lessons American students learn. He cares, as we all should, about whether those lessons are historically accurate and ideologically fair-minded. He advocates a civics curriculum that fortifies distinctive American ideals while honoring the diverse strains of American identity and experience.

But some of Traub’s deepest passions emerge when he looks beyond red and blue squabbles over American self-understanding. He wants to disabuse readers of any suspicion that public school teachers function as ideological foot soldiers, dutifully relaying orthodoxies handed down from on high. In his observation, “most teachers are deeply committed to keeping partisan politics, including their own, out of the classroom.” Closer to the point, he argues, other factors shape those classrooms more profoundly than what we see in the headlines.

Most important is pedagogy, the methods and goals of teaching. In its most illuminating moments, The Cradle of Citizenship presents questions more urgent—and, to my mind, more interesting—than whether to emphasize George Washington’s heroic deeds or his entanglements with slavery.

Like politics, pedagogy comes in conservative and liberal flavors, though often each side’s politics and pedagogy run along parallel tracks. Traub notes, for instance, the influence of Hillsdale College, whose curricular guides favor both conservative ideas (favoring limited government to bureaucratic meddling) and approaches (preferring a syllabus of “great books” to faddish modern alternatives).

Many, however, reject this kind of package deal. Traub classifies himself as a “political liberal but a pedagogical traditionalist.” He takes after thinkers like E. D. Hirsch, the author of the 1987 book Cultural Literacy who countered educational progressives and their fondness for “critical thinking” by insisting that schools should stock students’ minds with abundant stores of concrete knowledge. Throughout his book, Traub finds kindred spirits among blue-state teachers who chafe under policies discouraging paying detailed attention to demanding texts.

This pedagogical traditionalism includes an ambivalence toward philosopher John Dewey, renowned for developing “child-centered” education theories in the early-20th century. Dewey and his progressive disciples—understandably—wanted to leave behind dry lectures and rote memorization, dictated from teachers with unquestioned authority to desk-bound children bored out of their minds. Without such a shift, he worried that children would never find their place in a complex modern democracy.

Decades downwind from Dewey, Traub shows how public schools have channeled Dewey’s ideals into the work of molding mature, engaged citizens. Many schools seek to cultivate adaptable skills—reading comprehension or argument analysis—rather than presuming to transmit a foundational body of knowledge. They encourage teachers to lead with relatable discussion questions rather than a decree of books opened to page so-and-so. And they amplify civics lessons outside the classroom, organizing visits to city halls, trips to local museums and monuments, mock legislative debates, and other extracurricular supplements.

Traub never dismisses these approaches outright, and he has little patience for conservative critics who deride “action civics” as mere pretext for dragging impressionable teenagers to Black Lives Matter rallies or climate protests. He agrees that schools can meet students on their own terrain, that they can creatively make American history and government interesting and relevant.

Yet schools do students a disservice, he argues, when they fail to declare what young Americans should know and resolve to teach it well. If the Constitution, the Civil War, or the Civil Rights Movement seems like a tale from a dusty attic, the answer is never to stow them away. It is to empower talented teachers to return to the source materials and make them crackle.

Pedagogical progressives might protest that the purpose of discussion prompts is launching classes into the relevant material, not bypassing it. But as Traub notes, this technique only goes so far.

In one revealing anecdote, he mentions an Oklahoma City teacher who, while introducing the Constitution, invites students to pick other examples of “framers.” She’s a good teacher, and her brainstorming exercise gets the conversation humming. But the students struggle to think beyond celebrities, sport stars, and familiar historical icons like Martin Luther King Jr. “Perhaps,” Traub speculates, “they had brought a very remote idea closer to themselves.” Yet they gained only the shallowest acquaintance with Jefferson and Madison or checks and balances.

Somewhat surprisingly, Traub credits a largely red-state (and, commonly, conservative Christian) phenomenon—classical schools—with coming closest to realizing his educational vision. The classical public charter schools he visits embrace pedagogical traditionalism unapologetically, speaking confidently of truth, beauty, and virtue. They immerse students in challenging books, keep discipline tight, and minimize digital distractions. Where the public-school consensus zigs toward accommodating students’ felt needs, classical schools boldly zag.

What especially delights Traub is how classical schools succeed on terms set by educational progressives. “The child-centered pedagogy that has dominated schooling, or at least school doctrine, for much of the past century, seeks to foster inquiry, critical thinking, open discussion, and debate,” he observes, and this—not heavy-handed indoctrination—is precisely what he discovers in most classical classrooms.

Beneath these questions about what and how to teach American civics, though, lurks an even trickier question: whether schools should train students for citizenship in the first place.

Traub believes they should. Otherwise, why write the book? And most readers, I suspect, nod instinctively at the notion of enlisting public schools as guardians of a broad, commonly held, democratic culture.

Yet I wonder whether we’re sometimes too quick with that instinct. Civics, after all, touches on more than the bare facts of history or the mechanics of bills becoming laws. It addresses the way we order our loves and loyalties.

Christianity leaves ample space for measured, nonidolatrous attachment to earthly polities and nations. In many respects, Romans 13 commands it. Yet Christian parents are right to raise our kids to be more attentive to God’s eternal kingdom than a to single nation born in 1776.

How do public schools handle families like that? Or, for that matter, radical parents who raise their kids to see America as a wicked place? Or crunchy parents who ground their children’s identities in family farms instead of 350 million anonymous strangers?

In a big, diverse country, home to many such outlier perspectives, what entitles public schools to play arbiter? Sure, dissenting oddballs are free to indulge their beliefs at home—and free to set up rival schools teaching rival doctrines. But public schools, by nature, accept all comers. How aggressively can they evangelize nonconformists?

As it happens, I align with Traub more than the previous paragraph might suggest. I believe public schools should make efforts, however modest and circumspect, to uphold a common American identity, one grounded in appeals to liberty and the pursuit of happiness—one that itself implies a freedom to inhabit other, weightier identities.

But no civics program can (or should) resolve every last dispute about our renderings unto Caesar. We all benefit from principled educational pluralism, with a healthy assortment of schools—public, charter, private, and home-based—serving the common good by leaning into their peculiarities, not flattening them. Like the Dutch Reformed thinker Abraham Kuyper, I don’t regard the resulting mosaic as a reluctant sigh of squishy relativism. I recognize it as the hand of God’s common grace governing his world.

Traub acknowledges the folly and futility of demanding educational uniformity, and he does “not believe our wildly heterogenous society can be shoehorned into a single kind of school or curriculum.” Yet he clearly places a higher premium on strengthening public schools than letting alternatives flower. Public education, he approvingly writes, “is the only social institution that operates on all citizens and does so from early childhood to the edge of adulthood. School is a powerful civic force whether we wish it to be for not.”

With its deliberate focus on the civic aims of public schooling, The Cradle of Citizenship never intends to reckon with the civic value of schooling in all its forms. The full implications of educational pluralism—and brass-tacks matters like vouchers and parental choice—lie mostly beyond its scope. That said, I hope readers on all sides of these debates can appreciate its able defense of a public-spirited pedagogy that steers clear of tribalistic ditches.

Matt Reynolds is a writer and a former CT editor. He lives with his wife and son in the suburbs of Chicago.

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