Top ACNA Leader Faces Sexual Harassment Allegations

Kathryn Post – Religion News Service

Following a string of scandals, the accusations against Archbishop Steve Wood come amid plans for the denomination to overhaul its abuse response.

Archbishop Steve Wood

Courtsy of ACNA / Religion News Service

Archbishop Steve Wood, who heads the Anglican Church of North America, faces allegations of sexual harassment, bullying, and plagiarism, according to a report released by The Washington Post on Thursday. The list of charges, signed by at least 10 individuals attesting to the allegations, is the latest in a string of crises to rock the small, conservative denomination.

Claire Buxton, a former children’s ministry director at St. Andrew’s Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where Wood serves as rector, told the Post that Wood attempted to kiss her in his office in April 2024, just before he was elected to replace Archbishop Foley Beach as head of the denomination.

Buxton claims that before the incident, Wood gave her more than $3,000 from church funds and that church employees had commented on Wood’s “excessive praise and fondness” for her. Priests have also accused Wood of plagiarizing sermons and bullying staff members before becoming archbishop.

The presentment, as a formal complaint is known in the church, was submitted on Monday to Wood and other bishops.

“I do not believe these allegations have any merit,” said Wood, who also continues to serve as bishop of the Diocese of the Carolinas, in a statement to Religion News Service. “I place my faith and trust in the process outlined in our canons to bring clarity and truth in these matters and respectfully decline to comment further at this time.”

The charges in the presentment include alleged violation of ordination vows, conduct giving cause for “scandal or offense,” and sexual immorality.

“I was in shock,” Buxton told the Post. “It’s just bizarre to me how far we—the Anglican Church in North America and its leadership—have gotten away from basic morals and principles.”

The Post reported that a rector in Wood’s diocese wrote a letter to Wood in 2019, questioning his moral authority to serve as bishop. He accused Wood of preaching sermons he didn’t write, publicly cursing at colleagues, and using a $60,000 truck provided by the diocese for church visits—then left Wood’s diocese soon after.

Buxton told the Post that Wood began acting inappropriately with her in fall 2021, repeatedly showering her with money, calling her “Claire Bear,” and offering to send her to a luxury resort. Buxton said she was fearful that Wood would attempt to start a physical relationship with her.

When she confronted him in April 2024, Wood reportedly told her: “You know how special you are to me. You’re my favorite person in the world.” When she got up to leave, the Post reported, he put his hand against the back of her head and tried to kiss her.

By September 2025, less than a year into Wood’s tenure as archbishop, a group of Wood’s former colleagues had drafted a presentment and received signatures from at least 10 clergy and laypeople from the denomination, as required by church bylaws.

The Post reported that after the presentment was submitted, denominational officials asked those who signed the presentment to re-sign it and attest to the truth of the allegations “under penalties of perjury.” One of the presentment’s authors told the Post the group backing the presentment declined to comply, saying it was not required by church bylaws.

The Anglican Church of North America was founded in 2009 after some 700 churches split from the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church in Canada over various disagreements, including the acceptance of women priests, LGBTQ+ affirmation, and the rewritten Book of Common Prayer.

In July 2021, a mother went public with allegations that Mark Rivera, a onetime lay leader at Christ Our Light Anglican Church in Big Rock, Illinois, had sexually abused her 9-year-old daughter. At least nine other people have also shared grooming or sexual misconduct allegations against Rivera, who has since been convicted of felony sexual assault and felony child sexual assault.

More than 10 clergy and other lay leaders in the ACNA’s Upper Midwest diocese have been accused of misconduct as a result, and its bishop, Stewart Ruch, stood trial in a proceeding that concluded October 15—but not before two prosecutors had resigned amid claims of procedural misconduct. The church court’s order is expected on or before December 16.

Meanwhile, the denomination has been shaken by dustups involving other bishops. One ACNA bishop was defrocked in 2020 due to his pornography use; in 2024, another bishop, Todd Atkinson, was ousted for inappropriate relationships with women.

In September, Bishop Derek Jones, who oversaw a jurisdiction that endorsed ACNA’s chaplains, announced his departure from the denomination after the archbishop moved to investigate several misconduct allegations against him. The jurisdiction claimed the proposed investigation violated church bylaws, and has moved to exit the denomination, attempting to take its chaplains with it. The jurisdiction also sued the denomination for trademark infringement and unfair business practices.

Since he was elected last summer, Wood has named transparency as one of his priorities and has issued regular, direct communications with ACNA members. In March 2025, he hired a director of safeguarding and canonical affairs as a point person for the denomination’s efforts to protect vulnerable people from abuse and harm.

In July, that director played a key role at a town hall, where ACNA leaders detailed a proposed overhaul of the denomination’s clergy misconduct and abuse protocols. The rewrite aims to clarify the process, making it easier to submit complaints against bishops while also introducing “off-ramps” so that not every complaint becomes an investigation. After several cycles of public feedback, the proposed changes are intended to be voted on next year. If adopted, the revisions would go into effect in January 2027.

At the town hall, Wood reiterated the importance of misconduct protocols. “Discipline in the church is one of the most important things that we can give our attention to, our minds to,” he said.

- More from Kathryn Post – Religion News Service

Books

Anti-Fragile Faith in Chaotic Times

Kelly M. Kapic

Slow Theology highlights how a long obedience in the same direction grows.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Brazos Press

I don’t use social media. It’s not because I’m strong but because I’m weak.

Social media is a “hot” environment where producing content requires a quick wit, constant attention, and clever takes, none of which I am good at. But more than that, I know that it would swallow me up into its countless debates, that my anxiety would spike, that moments of rage would produce comments later regretted, and that inevitably, I would form all kinds of strong but unfair opinions while losing myself in an endless scroll.

It’s true that social media platforms can expose abuse, providing space for the voiceless to speak up against corrupted people and disordered power structures within society and the church. But regrettably, exposure of misdeeds or problems on hot media often produces hot resistance instead of needed institutional change, leaving people angry, disillusioned, and alienated. In that environment, legitimate criticisms are often seen as empty hostility, producing only more heat.

Rather than giving up on the church or institutions, we need to cool down the environment. Slow Theology authors A. J. Swoboda and Nijay K. Gupta recognize how our culture of speed and hot media inevitably focuses on problems and scandals while rarely producing healthy, constructive growth. As they wisely note, “Deconstruction in the proper dose can save one’s faith, but the wrong dose can be fatal.”

Hot environments can easily provoke rash and destructive action. In a hot media environment, we mustn’t toss the church aside but instead love it and tenderly care for it. Any criticisms must be given and received in that spirit, while we remember that we are the church.

Speaking clearly, compassionately, and truthfully into hot media culture, Swoboda and Gupta encourage eight practices they believe can foster “resilient faith in this turbulent world.” They have it exactly right when they ask readers, “What if, by God’s grace, every new question we asked was not a problem? What if it was just a way for our faith to become deeper?”

The first practice they recommend is to learn to linger with God. Our Creator has remained the sustainer of the universe for ages. God isn’t in a panic or rush—after all, he invented time. Only by spending slow time with God can we step away from panic and receive strength to push against injustice and sin.

Second, to appreciate the process that accompanies healthy theological reflection, they encourage us to“take the long view of faith” without expecting to know everything immediately. Convictions normally grow, evolve, and deepen. Furthermore, it is unreasonable to believe that each of us must personally study every doctrine and develop convictions on each point. Informed personal convictions can be useful, but only false piety has the hubris to expect strong opinions on all topics.

Third, they recommend cultivating both a sabbath attitude and a sabbath practice. Rhythms of work and rest teach us that we don’t need to express opinions on every matter and that not being able to help with some vital cause does not make us bad people. Rest reminds us that we can’t control the universe nor the shortcomings in the church.

Their fourth recommended practice is to “ponder the mysteries.” One reason people leave the faith, especially if they grew up in theologically insular spaces, is that they have felt lied to; they were given the impression that Christianity had easy answers to all the hard questions, whether about God, the Scriptures, or ethical issues. When believers discover that clichés and easy answers don’t survive the difficulties of life, they can be tempted to give up their faith entirely.

Slow Theology, however,reminds us that discovering complexity, paradox, and mystery can move us toward deeper faith, humility about ourselves, and awe regarding God. Swoboda and Gupta argue that, unlike a secret, which tries to keep people out, in theology, “mystery intends for those who are in it to keep seeking.” We should not confuse this view with sloth or sloppy thinking, since “a slow theology is not a lazy theology.” Instead, it is meant to approximate what Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109) meant by the phrase “faith seeking understanding.”

Thus, we arrive at lament, the fifth practice, where we talk through our difficulties with God. Questions about the prosperity of the wicked, economic injustice, and the suffering and mistreatment of the most vulnerable echo concerns we find in Scripture.

When God’s people in Scripture ask raw and honest questions of the Lord (Gen. 18:23–25; Ex. 5:22–23; Job 7:20–21; Jer. 12:1; 20:7), they don’t find their God to be an indifferent deity but a God who pronounces judgment, expresses compassion, and promises one day to make all things right (which affirms that things are not yet right). God cares more about injustice and abuse than we do. When we lament, he is quick to hear and promise that, in the end, he will set heaven and earth right.

The authors then encourage us in our lamenting to run toward problems rather than away from them—the sixth practice. They obviously do not recommend that an abuse victim return for more abuse, but they encourage us to wrestle with problems rather than ignore them, and to do this with God and as part of Christ’s body, which naturally takes us to our next practice which emphasizes the need for community, but present and historic.

Seventh, Swoboda and Gupta remind us of the practice to “believe together,” emphasizing our faith and life require the church. Too often, our theology and faith are overly individualistic. Yes, Christian faith is personal, but, thanks be to God, faith doesn’t need to rest on a comprehensive personal theology. Creeds, confessions, and denominations remind us we depend on others both across history and across the globe to inform, sustain, and grow our faith.

Creeds and confessions are now often viewed with skepticism, and the result is that each of us feels the weight to develop our own theology. “But doing theology alone was never God’s intent,” conclude our authors. In fact, doing so “increases the chance that we may distort the church’s message that has been handed down for generations.” It is good and right for us to wrestle with difficult doctrines and ideas, but we need each other—and an abundance of time—to handle those questions well.

Finally, the authors encourage us to never give up. We need each other to persevere, and this includes those who are not able-bodied or who live outside of neurotypical categories. Accordingly, “the slowest person in any church is almost always the one who exposes the theology of that church.”

Only with the full body of Christ do we slow down and discover areas in our theology and life that need revision. In this process, we are equipped to finish the race together. The authors beautifully interpret Jesus accordingly in John 15: “Make yourself at home in my household of love forever” (v. 9, MSG).

Our hot media environment and world need to be cooled by slow theology. Swoboda and Gupta call us to resist what is trendy and instead invest in what is local, relational, and embodied. Doing so allows us to cultivate a healthy appreciation for history, to develop the ability to think critically about our past and present, and to form a theologically informed habit of dwelling in love.

We should encourage “deconstructions” that reject idols, but not those that reject Jesus and his earthly bride. Dorothy Day once wrote, “As to the Church, where else shall we go, except to the Bride of Christ, one flesh with Christ? Though she is a harlot at times, she is our Mother.” We have no other mother; we need the church, even while considering its deep imperfections.

Real, abiding, life-giving love is present and patient with others; it willingly endures great trials and suffering because of a larger vision and hope. Don’t lose heart: God is patient with us, and we do well as individuals and as the people of God to grow patiently in grace and truth.

Kelly Kapic is Honorary Chair of Theology and Culture at Covenant College. His most recent books are You Were Never Meant to Do it All and You’re Only Human.

- More from Kelly M. Kapic

Church Life

Will There Ever Be Peace in the Middle East?

Jayson Casper

An explainer on sectarianism, and how it keeps the region divided.

A mosque and a church damaged by bombings in Syria.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

This is the first part of a three-part series about the problem of sectarianism in the Middle East and how the interfaith group, Adyan Foundation, seeks to pave a new path in Lebanon and Iraq.

The Middle East is a diverse region with Muslims, Jews, and Christians living together, along with each religion’s many sects or denominations. Ethnically, the region is peopled with Arabs, Jews, Kurds, Armenians, and Berbers. And despite speaking Arabic, many Assyrians, Copts, Samaritans, Yazidis, and Kakai maintain a separate ethnic identity.

Each sect, with its distinctive history and beliefs, is often deemed at least somewhat heretical by the others. While in Western countries theological disagreements do not usually end up harming the larger society, in the Middle East, sectarianism can lead to conflict and violence between different groups.

Sectarianism in the Middle Eastern context is defined in this article as the politicized prioritizing of one’s religious or ethnic group at the expense of a larger national identity.

Linda Macktaby, a Congregationalist pastor in the National Union of Evangelical Churches in Lebanon, illustrates the difficulty of dealing with sectarianism through a simple game she calls “Stick,” which is played during workshops she leads through Adyan Foundation, a Lebanon-based organization promoting interfaith dialogue and equal rights in the Middle East. Adyan means “religions” in Arabic.

The concept of the game is simple: Six individuals balance a single bamboo rod on their outstretched pointer fingers and lower it until they can lay it on the floor. They must cooperate and go slowly—if anyone’s finger loses contact with the stick, that person is replaced by someone from the crowd of about 20 people. Macktaby appoints from among attendees a referee, who watches carefully for any violation. The outside group can also collectively decide to swap out the original six players.

“We need someone shorter,” an onlooker may call out. “You’re going too fast,” says another. Multilingual Lebanese often speak Arabic, English, and French, but when mixed with other nationalities, one language prevails and the less fluent are quickly replaced for the sake of communication. Across the many sessions she’s led, Macktaby finds that, before long, the crowd tends to remove the tall people—who then stand on the sideline criticizing the shorter players. Those displaced by language sulk into the background. Sometimes the tide turns against the women.

But Macktaby makes it worse. She starts shouting advice to the players. She makes a blind suggestion that someone from the crowd would have a steadier hand. And she criticizes the referee, sometimes inserting herself to expel an offender. Tensions rise. The stick falls. Not once in all the workshops she’s led has Macktaby seen a group successfully reach the floor.

After the game, Macktaby explains that the task appears simple, but the rule of finger contact makes it nearly impossible. She gently rebukes the participants: “Why did you allow me to interfere? I undermined the judge and played you off against one another.” Without fail, the workshop attendees—all friends before the game—divide themselves into sects.

And this, she explains, is where sectarianism comes from.

In the game of Stick, the challenge is to lay down the bamboo stick. In nations around the world, including in the Middle East, the challenge is to create a functioning society. In both Stick and politics, the rules and behavior of the leader can erode trust and cooperation.

Linda Macktaby supervising a game of “Stick.”

Many assume religion to be the root of division in the Arab world, but diverse beliefs and identities are a fact of life in most societies. Instead, those in charge—politicians, businessmen, and foreign interests—are driven by competition over resources and rely on sectarianism to manipulate the rules and play one group off another, Macktaby said.

In some nations, a strongman relies on his religious group to maintain legitimacy, such as how leaders in Saudi Arabia and Qatar have traditionally leaned on their conservative Wahhabi ideology within a largely Sunni Muslim population. But in Bahrain, a Sunni monarch governs a Shiite majority nation. Similar minority rule existed in Iraq prior to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and in Alawite-led Syria before the recent fall of Bashar al-Assad.

In the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain, oil money has provided economic prosperity that has dampened dissent over which tribe within the dominant sect lays claim to leadership. In Iraq and Syria, nominally secular republican governments have given the appearance of popular assent. In all, the leader carefully guards access to state resources, doling out political and economic benefits to members of sects that cooperate with the regime.

Where there is rule of law, healthy competition over power can fuel a functioning society. But often in the Middle East, competition takes place within and between sects over who can get closest to the leader at the center of power. And such a leader may then rely on fear to keep each group in line.

Beware the fundamentalist Muslims, some might say. Or Christians, connected with neocolonialist powers in the West. Wielding the heavy hand of the state, the leader ensures the compliance of all.

Such rhetoric may not be entirely false. Traditional Muslims might oppose alignment with Western nations—popularly assumed to be “Christian”—that push to normalize homosexuality. Alternately, contemporary Muslims might prefer modern standards of human rights as opposed to strict enforcement of sharia law.

During the Syrian civil war, many Western Christians familiar with the Middle East understood the dilemma of the church in Damascus. Then the dictator fell, replaced by a former al-Qaeda member. The new leader promised fairness amid an environment of chaos, leading outside observers to ask: Should we believe him? Can he deliver? Would Syrians have been better off with authoritarian stability? Can they run a democracy without it devolving into religious violence?

Do these questions suggest that sectarianism infects Western minds also, when considering the Arabs? European sects overcame centuries of hostility to create their modern society. While historical and cultural circumstances vary, there is no fundamental difference between them in human—or sinful—nature.

Sectarianism becomes even more obvious in Middle East nations without a strong central government—namely, Lebanon and post–American invasion Iraq. Here, the rules of the game specifically appoint political positions to sectarian communities. These practices derive both from formal constitutional procedure and informal agreements by political elites.

In Lebanon, the president must be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister a Sunni Muslim, and the speaker of parliament a Shiite Muslim. The parliament is divided evenly between Christians and Muslims. Within each group, the religion’s sects are proportionally assigned seats. Protestants, for example, are allotted a single member.

In Iraq, ethnicity is a factor, as the president must be a Kurd. The other posts are determined by religion: The prime minister is a Shiite Muslim and the speaker of parliament a Sunni Muslim. Only women and religious minorities have a parliamentary quota, but political parties largely organize and secure seats according to their sectarian identity.

In principle, the system protects each sect from dominance by the others. Nations like Belgium and Switzerland have similar patterns to manage internal diversity, said Abdo Saad, the regional programs director for Adyan. By prioritizing national identity, strong institutions, and democratic practice, these countries have united their distinct language and religious groups.

But in the Middle East, France (in Lebanon) and America (in Iraq) had an outsized role in the early development of written and informal rules in partnership with local elites, Saad said. The two countries are now more democratic than their preceding systems of Ottoman, colonial, and Saddam Hussein rule, Saad added, but if ordinary people are asked if the government benefits them, they will laugh.

In 2019, both Lebanon and Iraq experienced popular uprisings against corruption and the sectarian nature of government. After failing to become a true revolution, the people voted the same parties back into power. Consider how in the US, many find fault with both the Republican and Democratic parties, but would not throw away their vote, so to speak, on a third-party candidate unlikely to win. The alternative of losing to the side one likes least makes it difficult for new political entities to emerge.

In practice, the system incentivizes citizens to rally behind their sectarian leaders. Each branch of government has checks and balances on the power of the other sect. But the result is that political life tends to revolve around issues of identity instead of ideology and political programs.

Voting does matter. The percentage of parliament that each sectarian party wins often determines the distribution of posts within government ministries. Yet informal agreements ensure that each sect presides over a certain influential sector—such as policing, finance, and public works—or else they rotate between these positions. Politicians then reward their supporters with jobs in these sectors. Corruption becomes endemic, including within the judicial system.

What can be done about sectarian governance? Parts two and three of this series offers Lebanese and Iraqi answers to the question of managing sectarian differences.

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Christian Colleges Object to Trump ‘Overreach’ on Higher Ed

Emily Belz

The administration’s compact with universities would freeze tuition for five years and cap the number of international students, among other measures.

A USC professor protests the Trump compact on higher education.

Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

The Trump administration wants colleges to sign on to its new compact on higher education, but Christian colleges say it amounts to “undue government control.”

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), which in the US represents 150 largely evangelical institutions, signed on to a statement from the American Council on Education that said the compact was “government control of a university’s basic and necessary freedoms.”

At the beginning of October, the Trump administration sent a ten-point memo that outlines changes colleges should make, including freezing tuition for five years, refunding students who drop out their first semester, capping the number of international students, removing race-and-gender-diversity consideration in hiring and admissions, and eliminating parts of the institutions that “belittle … conservative ideas.”

The Trump administration initially sent the compact to nine schools, but President Donald Trump has since said all colleges should agree to it.

The compact says a higher education institution could diverge from its requirements “if the institution elects to forego federal benefits.” A White House adviser on the policy told The Wall Street Journal that the government wouldn’t necessarily cut off federal funding to schools that don’t sign on, but it would prioritize grants and White House access to schools that do.

Of CCCU member schools, “I haven’t seen one that said, ‘Sign me up. I’ll take it,’” said CCCU president David Hoag in an interview.

Some of Hoag’s specific concerns are the five-year freeze on tuition and the requirement to refund tuition to students who drop out after a semester. Those requirements are financially unworkable for schools, he said, as health care costs rise every year and schools try to pay faculty fair salaries.

“Don’t put us in the box with the Ivy League schools that are charging very high tuition—$80,000, $90,000. We’re not even in that ballpark,” he said, adding that the average tuition of CCCU schools is about $30,000, which is further discounted 50 percent on average.

Federal aid flowing to Christian colleges, generally speaking, goes to student financial aid like Pell Grants, whereas federal research grants might go to large research schools like Johns Hopkins University.

David Turk, a retired provost who served for decades at the now-shuttered CCCU school Nyack College, said the compact’s financial requirements to freeze tuition for five years and refund those who drop out were “laughable.” He said CCCU schools are already struggling to pay faculty decent wages and contribute to employee retirement funds.

“These schools exist on a financial knife’s edge,” he told CT, adding that part of the reason Nyack closed was that it didn’t charge high enough tuition. “You can tell a state university to [freeze tuition]. They get taxpayer money.”

Hoag is concerned that the admissions process requirements in the compact could ban faith statements, and the ban on diversity consideration in hiring could “conflict with certain programs that are mission-driven at our institutions,” he said.

Another requirement in the memo is a 15 percent cap on international students at each school. Turk, the longtime provost at Nyack College (later called Alliance University before it shut down in 2023), said the cap would undercut the purpose of historic missions schools like Nyack that were training global ministry leaders.

About 30 percent of Nyack’s student body was international when the school shuttered, he estimated. Campbellsville University, another CCCU school, has a student body that’s 30 percent international.

“I can’t imagine a CCCU school saying we’re going to limit our international students,” said Turk. “This is just not us. This is not what evangelical schools are about. This is not what the church is about.”

This compact comes at a time when Christian colleges have seen enrollment grow but are also navigating big changes under the new administration.

The administration has cast uncertainty on international student visas, and now a new Trump requirement for H-1B visas holders to pay a $100,000 fee presents a challenge for universities with professors and researchers on those visas.

Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” that passed this summer also phases out the Grad PLUS loan program, which is a significant backer for graduate students at CCCU schools, said Hoag. The removal of federal loan programs is the “pendulum” swing away from the Biden administration writing off billions in student debt, he said.

Students will have to go to private banks for loans, which means they or their families must have good credit ratings.

“I’m not overly concerned with this current administration with religious liberty being attacked per se, but I am concerned about the funding piece,” said Hoag.

A week ago he was in meetings with boards of several colleges and put up slides showing the amount of Pell Grants and other federal financial aid for students at their schools.

“I’m putting numbers on slides that are $17 million to $75 million,” Hoag said. “My schools that are doing better—I say to them, ‘Remember your dependency needs to be on the Lord, not the federal government. How can you be thinking if some of that money goes away in the future?’”

Other Christian schools have seen benefits of a new administration. The Biden administration issued record-setting fines against the two biggest Christian colleges in the country: Grand Canyon University and Liberty University.

Grand Canyon faced a $37.7 million fine for misrepresenting the cost of graduate programs, and the school accused the government of “overreach.” The Trump administration rescinded the fine.

Liberty was fined $14 million for campus safety violations, and the school’s objection to the fines came up at the Trump administration task force tracking anti-Christian bias in the federal government.

Liberty and Grand Canyon are not part of the CCCU.

In addition to the CCCU, the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, the main representative of Catholic higher education in the US, signed the statement opposing the compact.

“The compact is just the kind of excessive federal overreach and regulation, to the detriment of state and local input and control, that this administration says it is against,” the statement said.

It added, “To be clear, we agree that higher education has room for improvement … but undue government control is not the way for higher education to deliver on all of its promise.”

So far, no school in the country has agreed to Trump’s compact.

- More from Emily Belz

Books

Review

Do Evangelical Political Errors Rise to the Level of Heresy?

Stephen O. Presley

A Lutheran pastor identifies five false teachings that threaten to corrupt the church’s public witness.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Lexham Press

If we can learn anything from the history of Christian heresies, it is that they never truly vanish. Instead, they resurface in every generation with new twists.

Tim Perry sets out to identify the modern twists on ancient heretical teachings in a new book, When Politics Becomes Heresy: The Idol of Power and the Gospel of Christ. The term heresy originates with an ancient Greek word meaning “choice” or “the thing chosen,” and Perry believes many evangelicals have consciously chosen to embrace a mixture of politics and religion that is dangerously close to heresy.

Perry, a Lutheran pastor in the Canadian province of Manitoba, styles the book in the form of a catalog of heresies, akin to what the ancient church called a Panarion, a Greek term meaning something like “medicine chest.” Such works offered Wikipedia-like entries detailing the origins, essential doctrines, and key representatives of each heresy, along with suggested “cures.”

Early Christian theologians, such as the fourth-century bishop Epiphanius, drafted versions of these catalogs to help Christian leaders identify how heretical doctrines might be creeping into their congregations. Perry’s work attempts something similar. While the contemporary heresies differ from their ancient expressions—no evangelicals hold to the Gnostic hierarchy of “aeons,” for example—key features and false teachings persist.

Perry’s chief worry, as his title suggests, is a habit of allowing politics to displace the spiritual life. In his view, the church too often sees the voting booth, rather than the altar, as the place where God is most powerfully at work. Perry believes leading 20th-century evangelicals, like Harold John Ockenga and early CT editor Carl F. H. Henry, would share his concerns about the movement they helped shape.

As he argues, they would recognize “the loss of transcendence and the substitution of politics as a grave spiritual malady that requires spiritual medicine—namely, repentance—to cure it.”

Perry organizes his book around five heresies: Simony, Gnosticism, Arianism, Pelagianism, and Donatism.

Throughout church history, Simony has referred to the trafficking of religious things, often in the form of buying and selling church offices. The name derives from Simon Magus, the false convert in the Book of Acts who tries to buy the power to impart the Spirit (8:18). In medieval and Reformation churches, where politics and religion were more closely aligned, Simony was a common problem.

To understand the dynamics of Simony today, Perry appeals to the writings of Charles Taylor, author of the landmark book A Secular Age. He focuses on Taylor’s concepts of the “social imaginary,” the “immanent frame,” and the “buffered self,” showing how these terms capture a tendency to focus exclusively on the present moment and the political maneuverings that give it shape.

In this context, Perry writes, Simony means expecting the Bible “to speak immediately to a modern political matter, as though there is absolutely no room for reflection or disagreement.” When evangelicals misuse Scripture in this manner, he argues, they “traffic” it as a means of gaining political and cultural power.

Gnosticism is another heresy Perry finds lurking among evangelical communities. Gnostics, as he describes them, were an assortment of religious groups that were “entirely wedded to the spirit of their age.” They blended Christianity with other ancient religions and philosophical views, especially versions of Plato’s philosophy that viewed the immaterial realm as better and nobler than embodied life on earth.

As a result, their thinking embraced various dualisms that distinguished between spiritual and material realities. Gnosticism, writes Perry, encourages the “instrumentalization of matter, especially the body,” which it regards as inhibiting to the true spiritual life.

Perry sees parallels in the evangelical desire to maintain its relevance to modern culture by trying to embrace both trendy philosophies and the gospel. In its heyday, he argues, evangelicalism was a renewal movement fueled by a “well-defined sense of otherness.” He worries, however, that today’s evangelicals have lost this mentality, resulting in a “view of Jesus, whether on the right or left, [that] bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the Bible.”

Arianism, Pelagianism, and Donatism are the three heresies that round out Perry’s contemporary catalog. Regarding Arianism, he stresses that Arius, the early theologian and namesake of the heresy, was “conservative” in the sense of revering the Bible. Yet he also denied the full deity of the Son, which had crippling implications for the doctrine of salvation.

Perry suggests that evangelicals are often too pragmatic to see the consequences of subtle but dangerous innovations like Arianism, much less contend against them. “Even in our Christology,” he writes, “evangelicals tend to put the doctrine’s usefulness ahead of its truth.”

Pelagianism undermined the doctrine of original sin, claiming that even fallen human beings could attain sinless perfection through their own efforts. For the theologian Pelagius, Perry notes, “grace indeed accompanied both the will to do the good and the act itself, but grace was itself dependent on the free decision of the human will.”

Perry sees the modern temptation of Pelagianism in popular self-help movements that some evangelicals embrace. He writes, “What we see in the moral self-improvement of the evangelical right and the social transformation of the evangelical left is a false and finally Pelagian gospel that expects us to bootstrap our own moral and social perfection.” Once we embrace this kind of Pelagianism, Perry argues, we lay the groundwork for a hyper-partisan competition over which side’s agenda produces the best moral outcomes.

The Donatists, to consider Perry’s final example, were looking for the perfect church, unaffected by the sins of the fallen world. The Donatist controversy, as church historians call it, has roots in the Roman Empire’s persecutions of early Christians. The Donatists wanted to purge the church of those who, in some way, capitulated to pagan pressure to disavow Christ and worship false gods. For the Donatists, the Christians that “lacked such holiness weren’t actually members” of the authentic church.

Many issues arise when studying the Donatist movement, but in Perry’s analysis, one of the most important is the relationship between the church and the world—a conundrum that continues to divide evangelicals across the political spectrum. Perry asks a challenging question: How can we define norms of genuine Christian holiness at a moment when Christians have divided political loyalties and competing visions of cultural engagement?

In each chapter, Perry explains how the church can root out the modern versions of ancient heresies. His proposed solution to Simony, for example, is cultivating the virtue of prudence, which he describes as “the use of proper caution; deliberation in decision-making; using reason in both self and community governance.” Prudence demands communities whose members value careful thought, listen to expertise, and deliberately work to guide each other down the narrow path of biblical faithfulness.

Perry’s solution to Gnosticism is embracing moral and biblical realism, or what C. S. Lewis called the “Tao.” Evangelicals, in this view, should take greater pains to guard against letting any earthly philosophy supplant the morality of Scripture and the biblical story of salvation through Christ.

Turning to Arianism, Perry recommends a renewal of basic discipleship in the doctrine of the incarnation, a habit of confessing the Nicene Creed in worship, and patterns of reading Scripture in accordance with the Trinitarian theology that the creed affirms.

Similarly, regarding Pelagianism, he simply asks the church to reclaim the gospel and to reject the temptation of building the kingdom on our own. As he writes, we cannot “vote for God, nor by our votes or other forms of engagement bring in God’s kingdom.” But we can pray for our leaders, bear witness to God’s reign within our own spheres of influence, and testify to the good news of the gospel.

Finally, Perry argues that overcoming modern forms of Donatism involves learning to cultivate honest debates on important issues. As he emphasizes, this entails a “deliberate commitment to the investigation and, if necessary, condemnation of wrong ideas.”

The common theme running through all of Perry’s critiques concerns the perennially contested relationship between church and politics. A good summary of his thought lies in the quote he cites from Anglican scholar Oliver O’Donovan: “The Church has only the authority to persuade; when it gets itself mixed up in the authority given by God to the magistrate, namely, the authority to compel, there is no end to the mischief that results.”

Perry is surely correct that many evangelicals confuse the spheres of church and politics in ways that fall short of biblical faithfulness. Yet even where his indictments are well justified, they often lack a measure of specificity.

In defending his approach, Perry notes that too much specificity can distract readers from seeing broader patterns of heretical drift within evangelical communities. On the other hand, erring too far on the side of generalities arguably allows greater leeway for assuming that only other sorts of evangelicals are to blame.

It’s possible too that Perry has failed to exhaust the ways that contemporary heresies and related false doctrines manifest themselves in Christian circles. Take, for example, his discussion of Gnosticism.

The Gnostic tendency to instrumentalize the material world has all kinds of implications for how we understand the meaning of human life and the significance of divine of creation, especially in a technological age. How, one might ask, is the material world being instrumentalized today, and how should Christians respond?

The language of heresy is serious business, and in some cases, the book perhaps leans on it too strongly. Perry knows the term should not be used lightly, because heresy implies the damnation of souls. But he argues, “I have deliberately cast that indictment as heresy to indicate that it is a spiritual problem first.” This is a helpful clarification, because readers might not always see the connections between their spiritual lives and their political engagement.

But heresies also concern core Christian beliefs, not secondary issues of doctrinal disagreement or principled decisions about temporal political affairs. In a climate of intense partisan conflict, one pressing challenge is balancing the imperatives of seeking church unity (John 17:21) and purging the evil among us (1 Cor. 5:13), all the while engaging the world with the gospel. To that end, readers will need to evaluate the sins Perry describes on a case by case basis: Do they rise to the level of heresy, or are they are matters of principled disagreement on how the church should engage the surrounding culture?

Ideally, the kind of self-examination Perry advocates can lead to healthier forms of cultural engagement. I do hope, though, that Perry’s arguments do not lead readers to retreat from active citizenship in their local contexts or to dismiss the very idea of creating and maintaining secular political spaces. Either way, such considerations underscore the importance of local pastors and thoughtful Christian leaders, who help us navigate the tension of living as citizens of the city of God while acting as salt and light in the city of man.

Perry’s book is helpful in recovering an awareness of ancient heresies and showing how these errors never truly go away. May the church today heed his exhortations, seeking “prudence and patience, faithfulness in witness, and a political civility” in an age marked by sharp lines of political division. I think both early church fathers and 20th-century evangelical stalwarts would give that vision a hearty amen.

Stephen O. Presley is senior fellow for religion and public life at the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy and associate professor of church history at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of Cultural Sanctification: Engaging the World Like the Early Church.

- More from Stephen O. Presley

History

Highlights and Lowlights of 1957

Marvin Olasky

In its first full year of publication, CT looked at Civil Rights, Cold War satellites, artificial insemination, and carefully planned evangelism.

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

Last week, Christianity Today began its year-by-year showing of what the magazine thought important since it began in 1956. We’ll present what CT published—warts and all, as in an item on segregation noted below. Today’s installment shows evangelical reactions to the news of 1957.

We’ll start with a small cloud on the horizon that decades later would become part of a thunderstorm. CT reported on evangelical concern about immigration and the impact a proposed bill might have on the country’s makeup.

The National Association of Evangelicals has voiced objections to Senate Bill 2410, introduced by Senator John F. Kennedy (D.-Mass.)—providing for an annual redistribution of unused quotas.

Such a provision means that quotas from such countries as England, Ireland and Germany, which are seldom filled, could be assigned to regional pools. This would give emigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania a second chance of coming to the U. S.

Dr. Clyde W. Taylor, NAE Secretary of Public Affairs, said the bill “provides for a shift of quotas from the unused ones for western and northern Europe, that have provided our main cultural emphasis, to southern and eastern Europe, that are Roman Catholic and decidedly of minority cultural emphasis.

Following World War II, the victorious Soviet Army had created puppet regimes throughout Eastern Europe. CT editors wondered whether they would last. It look another 32 years for those dictatorships to fall, but in 1957 one writer asked, “The East German State: Has It Feet of Clay?” The cautious answer:

The [Communist] Party itself, hated by the masses, maintains itself in power by brute force. It rationalizes its position by posing, through endless propaganda media, as the agent of transformation, which promises a glorious tomorrow through planned and managed change. …

East Germany is predominantly Protestant. The Evangelical (Protestant) Church has attracted wide attention for its courageous resistance to the encroachments of the regime. Dr. Jacob, Bishop of Cottbus, declared in Berlin last June that the Church would accept no compromise with atheism and would resist the “theoretical and material godlessness” that underlies the dialectical materialism to which the government professes such slavish adherence. …

The larger ministry of the Church is curtailed in every way imaginable. A church may receive little or no help from the outside; it may export no funds whatsoever. While the supply of paper for atheistic literature is abundant, the publication of religious periodicals is rigidly controlled because of “paper shortages.” Home missions are rigidly curtailed; all but a handful of the Railway Missions ministering to the aged, the infirm and mothers traveling with children have recently been closed. …

If and when Germany is reunited, and if the present government of East Germany is liquidated, the question of what legacy the regime will leave behind is a crucial one. One dares to hope that such a time will reveal that the East German Church has been largely significant in keeping alive the ideas and ideals of Christian civilization during the long night of communist rule.

New technologies raised complicated moral questions. Christians in the late 1950s confronted issues of artificial insemination.

Artificial insemination (the procedure whereby a donor renders a woman pregnant through the medium of a physician’s instruments and office) today is no longer an academic question. … In the United States alone thousands of “test-tube” babies are born every year. …

The practice, of course, involves fundamental moral and spiritual considerations. … Does the method used sanction the conception of a child by a man who is not the husband of the mother? Or, in other words, is it possible that circumstances may occur when it is morally and spiritually excusable for a woman to have a child by a third party to her marriage?

Doctors and sociologists in increasing numbers say yes. They point to the impersonal nature of the arrangement; to the natural hunger of married couples for children; to the frustrations that inevitably attend a childless marriage. … They often speak of this act as a simple medical procedure which, to all practical purposes, now allows the husband himself to become a father—although the semen is not actually his.

But the fact remains that the woman who submits herself to artificial insemination has a child by a man who is not her husband. The donor, not the husband, is the true father of the child that is subsequently born. The productive union between this father and this mother is not that of husband and wife. It may properly be asked, therefore, if the infant is not, logically and literally, born out of wedlock?

On the other hand, supporters of artificial insemination point out that the procedure can hardly be called natural intercourse. And without the physical sensations associated with sex, can this be adultery?

But such attempts to justify the practice on account of the procedure employed raise other questions: If the method used to accomplish this conception and pregnancy is without moral stigma, then why wouldn’t it be morally right for any woman to have children this way, even unmarried ones? Why a husband at all? Most women crave the joys of motherhood, spinsters as well as matrons; and millions are denied those joys because they never marry. If it is morally defensible to have children via the test-tube and without benefit of clergy, then why not any woman who desires children, whether single or married?

CT also addressed racial segregation. The magazine published a pro-segregation piece—for which it later apologized—while the editors themselves wrestled with the limits of legislation and the role Christians should take in leading by example. In the “The Church and the Race Problem,” the editors wrote:

There are wrongs in the land, and the church had best be the Church, and cry against them; there is no biblical mandate to preserve the shaggy status quo. Community tolerance of violence; forced segregation in public transportation; tactics of fear and intimidation; snobbishness that looks down upon Negro Christians virtually as inferior believers; the indifference to discrimination against the Negro in America even by some churches calling for missionaries to lift the life and culture of the dark-skinned natives of Africa—these factors suggest the deep need for soul-searching and repentance in the churches.

The Church needs to recover the biblical point of view. The Church itself was born in the glory of a multi-tongued and multi-colored Pentecost. It moved swiftly to make Christian brotherhood a reality in the experience of the inhabitants of Africa and Europe, no less than of Asia and the Near East. It did not preoccupy itself with the adoption of strategically worded resolutions at the top level of councils and conventions; it put Christian love to work at the local level. The early Church unleashed a flood of kindness in a world of racial strife; the modern Church has too often unleashed a flood of resolutions. …

In its enthusiasm to do something vital, the Church falls easy prey to secular and socializing programs. It has no mandate to legislate upon the world a program of legal requirements in the name of the Church. Nor dare it disregard the existence of social rights in which the natural preferences of individuals may be expressed without compromising the legal or spiritual rights of others. Forced integration is as contrary to Christian principles as is forced segregation. The reliance on pressure rather than on persuasion has resulted in a marked increase of racial tensions in some areas. Christianity ideally moves upon the life of the community by spiritual means; the secular agencies, on the other hand, tend to resort to force, with the result that their achievements are continually endangered. Paul did not outlaw slavery legally, but he outlawed it spiritually; he sent Onesimus back to Philemon as a brother in Christ. He knew that the Church’s weapons are spiritual, not carnal; that Christian progress is not revolutionary but regenerative. And a recovery of the imperative affectionate neighbor relations, and of the Holy Spirit as the dynamic of Christian living, is still the best—and the only durable—hope for a firm solution of the race problem.

While some churches seem determined to continue with a program excluding other races, and others are thrown into internal tensions between member and member, and member and minister, still others, without fanfare and headlines, have long welcomed all converts to Christ with equal dignity and rights as members of the body of Christ. Any church should be open to believers of any race. Forced segregation, however, involves the abrogation of a citizen’s legal rights as well as his spiritual rights.

The Church by a true example of the equality of all believers may rebuke the conscience of the world. The fellowship of believers still holds a power to vitalize the fellowship of the community at large. What has compromised this power is the secularization of the churches. Let the church be the Church, and the sense of human brotherhood will be revived; the redeemed will find that their differences from each other pale alongside the fact of their unity in Christ, and that their differences from the unredeemed are less important than their common dignity and shame in Adam. The Christian is not without principles on which to base his personal relationships, and they are comprehended in the obligation of love for neighbor. A friendly smile, a kindly word, a courteous act, speak more eloquently than a press release.

A voluntary segregation, even of believers, can well be a Christian procedure. A church may be impoverished by the racial limitations of its membership and also impoverished through indifference to cultural ties. Churches in which integration is not practiced may be just as Christian as those where it is found. The determining factor is exclusion or inclusion because of race. Are the Chinese congregations of New Orleans or Chicago or San Francisco unchristian because they prefer such an alignment? Are all-Negro or all-White churches necessarily monuments to racial prejudice? And may not the publicity of the integrated church reflect an emphasis on spiritual pride as much as the unintegrated church?

The churches in America are on the advance. The searching of soul is a good sign. Little can be gained by organizational pressures; more will be gained from mutual respect and forbearance. The long sweep of history not only shows the church and individual Christians on the side of justice; it shows the content of justice itself lifted and purified by the conscience of the church. In the long run, it will be so in America also even in matters of race. Let us hope this is a decade of decision and deed.

While politics sometimes seemed important—even urgent—CT always directed readers back to the crucial work of gospel proclamation. Readers received regular reports on Billy Graham’s ministry, including his successful evangelistic event in New York City.

One of the largest crowds in Billy Graham’s New York Crusade turned out the night he delivered a special address to the thousands who had made decisions there to live for Christ. An estimated 19,000 jammed Madison Square Garden for the sermon on “How to Live A Christian Life.” …

[Billy Graham said,] “How does a Christian grow? I am going to list five ways. There are others, but these are five of the most important.

“First, a Christian grows when he prays. When you were a baby, you had to learn to walk. You learn to pray the same way. God doesn’t expect your words to be perfect. When I heard my son, Franklin, say ‘da-da’ for the first time, the words were more beautiful than any ever used by Churchill. I am going to be a little worried, however, if he is still saying ‘da-da’ when he is 12 years old. … “Every Christian should have a quiet time alone with God every day. Your spiritual life will never be much without it. …

“Second, a Christian grows when he reads the Bible. This should happen every day, without fail. … Turn off the television set and read the Bible. …

“Third, a Christian grows when he leads a disciplined life. Your bodies, minds and tongues should be disciplined. Practice self-control. The Holy Spirit will give you the strength to become Christian soldiers. …

“Fourth, a Christian grows by being faithful in his church. Going to church is not optional; it’s necessary. God says we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. … Get into a good church where the Bible is preached and Christ is exalted. Get to work for God. Join a Bible study cell in your church. The communists borrowed this method from the early church and their godless doctrine spread like wildfire.

“Five, a Christian grows through service. Be a soul winner. There’s a difference between a witness and a soul winner. A soul winner is filled with the Spirit of God. He visits the sick. He gives to the poor. He loves his enemies. He is kind to his neighbors. Anyone can walk up to another on the street and bark, ‘Brother, are you saved?’ It takes more than that. We have a lot of witnesses today but very few soul winners.”

In November, CT asked evangelical Episcopal priest Samuel M. Shoemaker—widely considered one of the era’s best preachers—to write about revival and “How to Bring a Nation under God.”

What, then, should we seek to persuade America to do if we would see “this nation under God”?

First, this nation must repent. It must repent of all its arrogance, its thunderings about being better than other nations, its loss of God and the terrible consequences in crime, from crooked politicians to dopepeddlers. …

Second, let America return to its houses of worship. It is years since some of our pagan citizens have listened either to the claims of the Gospel, or its moral challenge to their lives. Church-going, for the converted, is the opportunity for the greatest exercise of which man is capable, the worship of Almighty God. …

Third, let America think and act responsibly and unselfishly. It is hard in these days to wean any act, national or personal, from elements of calculation and prudence. We need the infusion into this nation of some more simple integrity and common goodness. …

Fourth, let America seek with all its heart the faith of our fathers from which have come our chief blessings. Free nations must admit the right of any to disbelieve, to accept thanklessly the blessings which believing men have bequeathed to us which come ultimately from God. This liberty is the only way to have an uncoerced truth, a faith that is truly free. But no nation can thrive on neutrality. A wise and wary people will realize that its best leaven are the caring, creative folk who believe in God and therefore try to meet human needs as they arise.

The threat of global communism was a constant topic during the Cold War era that began when World War II ended and sputtered on until the Soviet Union ended in 1991. Americans worried when Russians leaped ahead in the Space Race by launching the first man-made satellites—Sputnik 1 and 2—taking the ideological competition into the heavens.

In 4 B.C. wise men from the East were so attracted by a strange constellation in the sky that they went out of their way to inquire of its meaning. We have reason to wonder whether the launching of Sputnik I and Sputnik II is not saying something of significance to us and we are missing the message.

Scientists tell us that it is the most significant event since the splitting of the atom. Military strategists inform us that it will change the face of future warfare. Were a rocket with an H-bomb warhead to be launched in Moscow, they say, it would destroy New York or Washington twelve minutes later. Several of these rockets could change the course of history, even extinguish Western culture. And prophetic scientists declare that if warfare were thus waged in this fashion, man could be wiped from the face of the earth. …

The message of Amos is appropos to modern America, Sputnik or no Sputnik. …

God wants America to wake up and stop ignoring his threat of future judgment. “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion, and feel secure in the mountain of Samaria … O you who put far away the evil day, and bring near the seat of violence” (6:1, 3). Like those in ancient Zion, Americans are at ease. We trust in our military defenses as much as the Israelites trusted in their natural mountain fortresses. And by concentrating on our strength, we do not even think of God as essential to our defense. …

Our entertainment-loving children are not interested in the rigorous discipline that makes scientists and men of learning. Rather than in studies, they are majoring in football. … America needs to repent for allowing the gods of pleasure and wealth, of might and wisdom, to displace the God of Holy Scripture.

- More from Marvin Olasky

News

Will There Be a Christian Super Bowl Halftime Show?

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Conservatives suggest country and Christian artist alternatives for game day.

Attendees pray during a Turning Point USA event on September 24, 2025.

Alex Wroblewski / Contributor / Getty

On September 28, the NFL announced that popular Puerto Rican recording artist Bad Bunny would headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show. The news sparked conservative backlash. A petition on Change.org calling on the NFL to replace Bad Bunny with country artist George Strait—who the petition says “embodies the heart and soul of American music”—has gathered over 66,000 signatures.

Bad Bunny has been critical of the current administration’s immigration policy and announced earlier this year that he would not include the continental US in his 2025–2026 tour because he was concerned about immigration raids impacting his fans. After the NFL’s announcement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be “all over” the Super Bowl.

On October 9, the conservative political organization Turning Point USA announced on X that it would be producing an alternative “All-American Halftime Show.” The organization has not stated that the event is a direct response to the selection of Bad Bunny as the headliner, who sings primarily in Spanish. The event website does not yet list any confirmed performers, but it does allow visitors to fill out a form and select the musical genres they want to see included in the show. The first option on the list is “anything in English,” followed by Americana, classic rock, country, hip-hop, pop, and worship.

Turning Point USA’s halftime show might not be the only counterprogramming during the 2026 Super Bowl; Christian musicians have also floated the idea of a safe-for-the-whole-family performance.

On October 4, worship musician Cory Asbury posted a video on Instagram proposing an “alternative, family-friendly halftime show” for the 2026 Super Bowl. Asbury, most widely known as the writer of the song “Reckless Love,” said that the halftime show is usually “raunchy as heck.”

“What if we threw together an alternate show at a different venue with just the biggest Christian artists and glorified the name of Jesus on a gigantic scale?” Asbury said.

The next day, Forrest Frank, whose song “Your Way’s Better” hit the Billboard Hot 100 over the summer, posted a reaction video to Asbury’s, which named Frank as a collaborator. The posts sparked excitement and speculation among Christian music fans.

Currently, it’s unclear whether there has been any direct collaboration between Turning Point USA and Cory Asbury and Forrest Frank. Both Christian artists have been quiet about their plans on social media since their initial posts.

If Asbury and Frank have their own plans for a Christian alternative show that is not affiliated with Turning Point USA, there could be three separate halftime programs competing for viewers during the 2026 Super Bowl.

Historian Paul Emory Putz told CT that there is a long history of counterprogramming and evangelistic efforts related to the Super Bowl and its halftime show, which was not the major entertainment event it is now until 1993, when the NFL hired Michael Jackson to perform. The year prior, FOX aired a live episode of the sketch comedy show In Living Color during halftime, and millions of viewers who switched the channel from CBS to FOX didn’t return to the Super Bowl afterward. Viewership in the second half plummeted.

Jackson’s 1993 performance elevated the status of the Super Bowl halftime show. Evangelistic organizations began to see the event as an opportunity to reach a huge audience with the gospel. In 1993, Sports Outreach America, headed by Ralph Drollinger (now the leader of Capitol Ministries), distributed video tapes featuring Christian athletes sharing their testimonies and encouraged Christians to host watch parties in their homes or churches and show the videos during the halftime show.

Putz noted that this tradition of using halftime to highlight player testimonies goes back to the 1950s, when evangelistic ministries would take basketball teams overseas and speak to the spectators about Christ’s work in their lives midway through the game.

Historically, said Putz, sports evangelism and halftime testimonies weren’t explicitly political. “The priorities were evangelism and gospel presentations,” said Putz, who pointed out that eventually, Drollinger left Sports Outreach America because he became more interested in political activism.

Over the past two decades, Christians have objected to the sexual and sometimes explicit content of Super Bowl halftime shows. The famous wardrobe malfunction during Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake’s 2004 performance is one example.

Derwin Gray, a former NFL player and now pastor of Transformation Church, told CT that he thinks it’s understandable for Christians to want to watch a show that their kids can enjoy too.

“We all know that halftime shows can get risqué,” said Gray. “But you also have a right to just turn off your TV.”

Gray said that he is concerned about the political dimension of this year’s halftime show backlash.

“If there is pushback because Bad Bunny is Latino, I think that smacks of bigotry,” said Gray.

Bad Bunny is one of the most-streamed artists in the world, and 2026 won’t be his first Super Bowl performance—he also appeared with Shakira and Jennifer Lopez in 2020.

“The [NFL] didn’t choose Bad Bunny because they like, or even care about, his politics,” wrote Xochitl Gonzalez in The Atlantic. “They chose him because he’s enormously popular—he is the most-streamed male artist in the world on Spotify—and that’s good for business.”

Gray said that, as a player, he never cared who the halftime performer was. As a pastor, he hopes that an alternative halftime show doesn’t capture Christians’ enthusiasm because of politics.

“If there are Christian artists who want to do a Christian halftime show with praise and worship, great,” said Gray. “I hope there’s a gospel presentation. I hope there’s no political agenda.”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

News

As Madagascar’s Government Topples, Pastors Call for Peace

Christina Ray Stanton

Gen Z–led protests on the African island nation led to a military takeover.

Protesters gather for a civil society rally outside City Hall in Antananarivo, Madagascar on October 13, 2025.

Luis Tato / Contributor / Getty

Last week, a military coup toppled Madagascar president Andry Rajoelina, the culmination of weeks of youth protests against the country’s collapsing infrastructure.

The National Assembly impeached Rajoelina on October 14 after he attempted to dissolve it. CAPSAT, an elite military logistics unit, then announced the formation of a two-year transitional council tasked with drafting a new constitution and organizing elections. The High Constitutional Court ratified the takeover and named Colonel Michael Randrianirina interim president.

From exile, Rajoelina denounced the rebellion as “an illegal and unconstitutional attempt to seize power.”

On Monday, Randrianirina chose Herintsalama Rajaonarivelo as his prime minister—a move BBC reports angered protest leaders, who said the businessman’s selection “runs contrary to the desired structural change.”

The protests began on September 25 as hundreds of young people poured into the streets of the capital of Antananarivo, answering a viral call spread through Facebook and Instagram groups known as Gen Z Madagascar. They protested the nation’s rolling blackouts and the growing scarcity of water—a crisis that has been years in the making and that has only worsened in recent months. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in New York, Rajoelina praised his country’s progress under his leadership during an address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Although Madagascar’s constitution guarantees the right to assemble, authorities denied permission for the march. Still, the crowd surged forward, placards raised and Malagasy flags snapping in the wind.

Then chaos erupted. Tear gas rolled through the dusty streets, shouts collided with the crack of rubber and live bullets, and protesters scattered as security forces moved in. Looters ransacked shops and homes, gunfire echoed across the city, and frightened bystanders found themselves caught in the crossfire. At least 22 people died during the protest.

Pastor Tanteraka “Tank” Randrianjoary of Tana City Church, located near Democracy Square where the protests took place, remembers that night vividly.

His sister called to say that her company’s van had been grounded—it was too dangerous to drive home. Randrianjoary drove her and her coworkers to their homes, then stopped to help a man with a broken arm and his young daughter who were trying to reach the hospital. Tear gas exploded beside their car as Randrianjoary’s ten-year-old son, who had come along to help, cried in the back seat. Inside their home, Randrianjoary’s wife, Jaela, prayed with their other children for safety—and for peace.

In the days that followed, looters set the Bible Society of Madagascar on fire, destroying about 2,700 Bibles. The protests also spread in cities across the country as their demands broadened: better schools, functioning hospitals, and transparency in government finances.

The United Nations condemned the bloodshed. “I am shocked and saddened by the killings and injuries in the protests over water and power cuts in Madagascar,” said Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urging authorities to avoid “unnecessary and disproportionate force.”

The African Union has suspended Madagascar’s participation due to the coup.

Although Madagascar has seen political unrest before (Rajoelina rose to power 16 years ago through popular protests), this time, social media has united a generation of young protestors. They cite movements in Kenya and Nepal as inspiration. Half of Madagascar’s population is under 18, two-thirds under 30.

A former French colony that gained independence in 1960, Madagascar is home to breathtaking biodiversity—up to 90 percent of its species exist nowhere else in the world. The country also produces 80 percent of the world’s natural vanilla and nearly half of its sapphires. Yet despite this abundance, it remains one of the world’s ten poorest nations. Nearly 90 percent of Malagasy people live below the poverty line.

In Antananarivo, average monthly earnings in 2024 were less than $100 USD. Rural incomes are far lower. Chronic malnutrition affects nearly half of children under five. Over 13 million people lack access to clean water, leading to widespread disease. The country has only three hospital beds per 10,000 residents and a severe doctor shortage. Life expectancy remains low—63 years as of 2021.

Access to basic utilities has sharply deteriorated over the past decade. Nearly half of Malagasy households lack running water, according to the World Bank, and only 12 percent have access to basic sanitation. Electricity cuts cripple businesses, hospitals, and schools.

These are the issues that keep Pastor Tank awake at night. “In the past few years, Madagascar has gone backward economically,” he said. “Our currency has devalued greatly, and more of our members now struggle to meet basic needs—food, shelter, health care.”

Randrianjoary studied under Redeemer Presbyterian Church’s Timothy Keller and founded Tana City Church in 2012 in hopes of helping build faith and community amid hardship. Randrianjoary and his pastoral staff takean active role in community life—the church holds classes tohelp children develop basic skills, covers school fees and supplies for over 100 students, provides childcare and health care, and supplies groceries to struggling families.

As unrest rose in Antananarivo’s streets, church leaders stepped in to offer calm and accountability. In late September, members of the Council of Christian Churches in Madagascar—representing Catholic, Anglican, Protestant Reformed, and Lutheran denominations—urged an end to the bloodshed and offered to mediate between protestors and the government. But the talks didn’t materialize as they hoped.

The council renewed their offer on October 10, saying they were “already moving forward with mediation between the different parties.” Eighty-five percent of Madagascar’s citizens identify as Christian.

Pastor Andria Rakotomalala of Tana City Church Francophone believes civic responsibility, including advocacy for the poor, is part of the Christian faith.

“We are very resilient. … If there is no food, [we]survive on cassava,” Rakotomalala said. “But resilience cannot replace justice. Holding those in power accountable aligns with the gospel.”

On October 11, Randrianjoary, Rakotomalala, and seven other pastors released a joint statement offering prayer that “God would bring repentance, healing, an end to corruption and an end to lawless behavior at every level of society.”

Rakotomalala hopes Madagascar will become a place of peace. “We need reforms, along with free and fair elections. May there be no more interference to undermine that process.”

- More from Christina Ray Stanton

Inkwell

The Oldest Career in the World

Martin Shaw

We’re looking for storytellers. Maybe you’re one of them.

“Mearcstapa” by Stephen Crotts, Mixed Media, 2025.

Back in the ’80s, they used to have something called career conventions. Toward the end of your schooling, the sports hall would be filled with little stands and a smiling person telling you why a job with the bank, the army, or even as one of those newfangled computer programmers was your very best option. You, as a wide-eyed 16-year-old, were fresh meat.

I sometimes imagine what it would have been like if there’d been a desk in the furthest, shadiest corner of the gymnasium, perhaps with foliage wrapped around the table or desert sand underfoot, where some wizened and mysterious soul may have suggested that you take up the quest of the oldest job of all: a storyteller.

In truth, I wouldn’t have really known what a storyteller was when I was 16, at least not in the way I’m writing about it to you today. It’s become a very popular term these days, encompassing a wide range of disciplines: screenwriting, theatre, movie-making, even advertising. With a modest shrug of the shoulders and a winning grin, the actor can say, “Well, I guess I’m a kind of storyteller,” and we all know what they mean. It gives a sense of an ancient lineage to their art form.

Back at the careers convention of 1987 at Casterton Community College, what I didn’t know about was the kind of storyteller sometimes referred to as a bard, griot, skald, or gleeman—a figure of cultural significance among the tribe, clan, or community. A respected character, sometimes held in awe and even a little fear by the folk gathered around their feet.

The seanchaí (Irish storyteller) could tell stories both long and short, terrible and touching, complex and heartbreakingly simple. They could read the fireside, tavern, or lecture hall they were in, knowing exactly the kind of medicine to prescribe. They weren’t quite religious figures, but they carried a soul-weight nonetheless.

A storyteller reminded the people about who they were, what they’d been through, and where they may be going. This was the pastoral element. This is what came out at moments of collective ceremony: a birth, a wedding, a funeral.

But when things were a little too cozy, or some kind of corruption needed to be named, the storyteller spoke in a prophetic modality. At a moment like this, they may have used satire, riddles, or uncomfortable tales to make their point. They were not benign figures. They were keenly aware of what words were not being spoken in the community. Storytellers have always dwelt in the tension of the pastoral and the prophetic.

Little 16-year-old me knew none of this. I’d been told stories to by my dad and read to by my mum, but I had little idea that telling stories held a wider, historic weight. Maybe I had a dim idea of a bearded old man on a Welsh mountain with a harp or women chanting stories as they yarned, but it was all firmly in the “long time ago” category.

Because this is where I thought myth lived—in the recesses of ancient history. Stories moved me more than I could understand, but I didn’t think there were any modern-day inheritors of the tribal teller. Maybe the ladies who read stories in the library? Perhaps.

But once they’d put the book down, I didn’t see them as connected to the narrative anymore. The traditional charisma of the teller just wasn’t there. I wasn’t quite convinced that Mrs. Philips from Ashburton Library had led a storyteller’s life, which should be akin to being a pirate or running away with the circus. I could detect no gold teeth or rubies in her pocket. She didn’t even smoke a pipe or have an Irish wolfhound at her feet. Maybe she was a mistress of disguise.

There’s an old Aboriginal idea that you find stories within dreams or by going on walkabouts. You sleep by a river for a couple of days and attend to what it wants to say. You track a jaguar till you are close enough to steal a whisker. Then, maybe, you have a story of heft in your pocket. The notion in many indigenous communities was that the earth reveled in myth, thought in myth, even expressed itself in myth. It’s a mistake to assume that myths are entirely constructed for humans by humans.

Yet life and its catalogue of challenges will often lead us humans back to stories. Back then, the only decent way to talk about a personal problem was through a story. Too many “I” statements, and you diminished it, reducing the religious dimensions of the conundrum you faced. You spoke of yourself through the story and, in doing so, became bigger, and your situation more nuanced and poetic.

We find this approach all over the world. Ancient stories ensured the edges of the tent weren’t too firmly nailed down, that there was plenty of room for interpretation, heated opinion, teary emotion, and bellows of laughter—room for mystery. You would never dare to presume to tell a story what it is.

These stories were passed from storyteller to storyteller; no one claimed entire authorship of the tale. Everyone handled the non-changing bones of the narrative and then brought it to life by adding the beating heart of their own imagination. In this way, great myth-telling was a combination of both tradition and innovation.

In medieval times, this was called the matter and the sense of a story. The matter was the bones, and the sense was the wily genius that the storyteller summoned that particular night. If you never improvised, you would have been considered too dry for the vocation, but if you put no weight on tradition, then you would have been a bird careering too near the sun. It was an endless task weighing these two disciplines, which was a significant part of the apprenticeship as a storyteller.

In many ancient cultures, another element was intimately intertwined with the storyteller’s apprenticeship: the rite of passage. This was an experience, usually around the age I was when I was standing in that careers convention, when you took an extended period alone to fast in a wild place. Maybe a mountaintop, out on the ice, some forested glade. You went to meet God. You went to be shaken. You went to formally announce the end of childhood. This complex process is essentially triadic, often referred to as severance, threshold, and return.

You severed from friends, family, even your usual ideas about yourself, and headed into the threshold time. Other words for that could include the liminal, the contemplative, the thin. Heaven and earth may have gotten a little closer during that period. Maybe on the last night of your excursion, you would stay up, praying for a vision. When you returned, you were brought happily and weepily back into the bosom of your community.

The vision you received was a tender shoot, a subtle thing that required your attention. In some way, your particular revelation would grow into something that ultimately benefited the whole clan. And guess what, the way that vision was often best articulated was in the shape of a story—told orally to the delighted community. If it was especially precious, it would be remembered, it would be danced, it would be repeated, it would be puzzled over, and maybe, over many generations, it would become a myth. There’s really no quick route with this.

Somehow God decided to curate enough mayhem in my own young life that I had no choice but to remember the stories I loved as a child and divine deeper meaning from them. By my early 30s, I found myself living in a tent on a succession of English hills, seeking to be an apprentice to stories in the ecologically savvy way I am describing here.

For four years, the hymn of rain on canvas pattered alongside as I slowly learned many antique fairy tales, many almost forgotten or barely known at all. I also trained in wilderness rites of passage, and the two have gradually entwined rather delightfully. I’ve now written 18 books and have taught all over America, England, and Europe. Approaching my 50th birthday, I went on a 101-day vigil in an English forest. On the last night, I fell into an encounter with Christ that is still circulating in my heart to this day.

The motif of leaving the familiar, encountering the peril and wonder of the numinous, and returning with a growing wisdom is one of the most profound signposts we have to being a real human being. Everyone is carrying this story of their own life, sometimes clumsily, but still gripping. Myth can unfold your wingspan a little, taking your individual life experience and giving it a wider panorama. Stories walk us home. A storyteller blows new breath on old embers.

The God of the Christians was a scandal from start to finish. He was born a fugitive, died an outlaw, rubbed almost everyone the wrong way, was hammered to a cross to pay for it, then had the audacity to come back. How did this figure choose to communicate in the main? Through stories. If we want to be like our teacher, we could try doing the same. Pastoral and prophetic, the sense and the matter, tradition and innovation—I have indeed been scattering breadcrumbs all the way through this essay.

So here we are, back at the careers convention. You’ve tried out a bunch of stalls, are holding a ton of pamphlets, and are maybe feeling a little overtired. Look toward the far end of the hall, back in the shade a bit. Most people have sloped off by now. There I am. Maybe there’s a trail of woodsmoke and some vines crawling around the desk. Possibly a raven quizzically checking you out.

I offer you the invitation that was resolutely not offered to me at 16: Maybe you’re a storyteller. Sleep on it. Dream on it. Wonder on it. Pray on it. Turn off your screens and go on a walkabout. We have a God who thinks in myth, who revels in story, who delights in the truth of fable.

Maybe your quest has just arrived.

Martin Shaw is a writer, mythographer, and Christian thinker who has authored many books, including the upcoming Liturgies of the Wild: Myths that Make Us. He founded the oral tradition and mythic life courses at Stanford University and is director of the Westcountry School of Myth in the UK. Subscribe to his Substack, House of Beasts & Vines, and his YouTube channel, Jawbone.

- More from Martin Shaw

News

Amid Fragile Cease-Fire, Limited Aid Reaches Gazans

Jill Nelson

Locals see the price of flour rise and fall as truce is strained and some borders remain closed.

A displaced Palestinian boy carries a box of emergency supplies provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza on October 19, 2025.

Eyad Baba / Contributor / Getty

The US-brokered peace deal between Israel and Hamas brought hope of imminent relief to Gazans who have suffered under the two-year war. Yet Gaza residents are still struggling to feed their families, said Osama Sawarih, a Muslim-background believer in the Palestinian territory.

In June and July, Sawarih secured food by visiting one of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s (GHF) four aid sites. He eventually stopped as he found the sites unsafe.

Now Sawarih is feeding his family with food he bought from Gazans who had hijacked aid trucks over the course of the past three months. He has made seven trips to buy aid that was intended for free distribution but wound up in the hands of looters and gangs after the United Nations relaunched aid deliveries in mid-July.

Israel stopped all aid deliveries between March and May, citing Hamas’s purported theft of the deliveries. The blockade created a hunger crisis that made relaunching aid deliveries a dangerous and unstable endeavor.

When the aid-truck looting first began in July, a 55-pound bag of flour cost $120 USD, Sawarih said. Christianity Today agreed not to use Sawarih’s real name, as converts to Christianity face danger in Gaza.

After the October 10 cease-fire that led to the release of all remaining living Israeli hostages, more aid began to arrive and the price of flour went down to $9.

Then, this week, as the cease-fire threatened to tank and Israel announced the southern Rafah crossing would remain closed, the price of flour increased to around $30, Sawarih said.

“If the news of the crossing’s closure is announced, the merchants hide the goods and raise the price double,” he added.

On Sunday, Israel carried out a wave of strikes across Gaza after two Israeli soldiers died from a rocket attack. Hamas denied responsibility.

The soldiers were in the area designated as an Israeli security zone, east of the “yellow line.” Trump’s 20-point plan includes a temporary Israeli security buffer that currently makes up 53 percent of the enclave, which will be reduced incrementally.

At least 26 Palestinians died in the retaliation, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. President Trump insisted the cease-fire was still in place and suggested Hamas leadership may not have been involved in the attack against the soldiers.

Dozens of Palestinians have also died in Hamas-led executions in Gaza City, in what many analysts claim were attempts to defeat anti-Hamas clans as the terrorist group emerged from hiding in the wake of the cease-fire.

Meanwhile, US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and advisor Jared Kushner arrived in Israel on Monday to ensure the cease-fire remains intact and to address some of the thornier issues in the second phase of the plan, including the disarmament of Hamas and the formation of a stabilization force in the enclave.

Vice President JD Vance joined the diplomats a day later and said the cease-fire process is going “better than expected” but called for “a little bit of patience.” Hamas has yet to return all the bodies of deceased hostages, including some potentially buried under rubble or in unknown locations, Vance said.

Vance also warned that “if Hamas doesn’t cooperate, it will be obliterated.” He did not give a deadline for the group’s disarmament. Earlier this week, Vance announced the creation of a civilian military coordination center in southern Israel, where 200 US troops are actively working alongside international delegations and the Israeli military to promote stability and to rebuild Gaza.

Hanna Massad, founder of the nonprofit Christian Mission to Gaza (CMG), keeps in close touch with friends and church members in Gaza. They told him that the Hamas attacks against locals in Gaza City are less severe now than when the cease-fire was first announced but that people are still nervous.

Gazans are also waiting for more food deliveries. “The aid is coming in, but not as expected,” Massad said. He has heard reports of the United Nations facing challenges with their deliveries.

The armed looting of trucks has continued despite the cease-fire, preventing even distribution. Throngs of people attacked a 10-truck aid convoy arriving from Egypt on October 12, according to The New York Times. A metal cage covered with barbed wire protected the driver.

Members of Gaza Baptist Church in Gaza City have vegetables but no meat or eggs, due to limited quantities of aid reaching the northern city and to inflated prices, Massad noted. The costs of other items have decreased since the cease-fire but have not yet reached pre-war levels.

Together with their ministry partners in Gaza, CMG has continued its food program and plans to distribute 9,000 hot meals of rice and vegetables to Gazans this month. Massad hopes to expand deliveries in the north, where needs are more acute.

Sawarih said the flow of aid in the south is ramping up but also encountering hiccups.

On October 12, Egypt sent its largest-ever aid convoy to Gaza with 400 trucks delivering 9,000 tons of food and supplies. According to the UN World Food Program, an average of 750 metric tons of food are entering the enclave daily—far below the 2,000 metric tons needed to make up for the shortages.

Most of the Egyptian trucks passed through Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing. The Rafah crossing, Egypt’s primary border crossing into Gaza, was slated to reopen for humanitarian aid under Trump’s plan. But on October 18, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas must return the bodies of the remaining deceased hostages before it opens.

Sawarih said the process for acquiring the Egyptian aid involves submitting a list of married adults in your clan to the Egyptian Committee, a Cairo-based relief agency, on WhatsApp. His clan is among those who have not received approval, yet “there are lists of large families that have received aid more than once,” Sawarih noted.

He has heard that the GHF sites are closed. A GHF spokesperson told several news agencies last week that the organization has paused operations during the hostage release phase of the cease-fire, but added that its long-term mission to deliver aid remains in place.

Meanwhile, a spokesperson from North Carolina–based Samaritan’s Purse told CT that its direct distributions of food rations at GHF sites are currently suspended “due to the recent developments from the peace agreement,” but that it continues to work with local partners in Gaza to provide critical assistance to families in need. The Christian nonprofit began distributing food, including sachets with fortified peanut butter, in early August.

Despite the hurdles, Sawarih said he is optimistic about an end to the war and hopes for progress at the Gaza reconstruction conference next month. The gathering in Cairo will seek international donors and private sector financing for the rebuilding of Gaza. According to the United Nations, around 78 percent of Gaza’s buildings have been damaged or destroyed.

As Sawarih waits for his aid-delivery approval and the day when food will no longer be scarce, he prays for a continued cease-fire and that “Hamas will no longer be present in Gaza in any form.”

- More from Jill Nelson

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