Federal Job Cuts Hit Home as Virginia Picks Spanberger as Its Next Governor

Economic concerns take priority over transgender issues in schools.

Virginia gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger and Winsome Earle-Sears

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Key Updates

November 5, 2025

Democrats win big in Virginia
October 23, 2025

Federal Job Cuts Hit Home as Virginia Picks Its Next Governor

November 5, 2025

Democrat Abigail Spanberger handily won Virginia with 57.5 percent of the vote, with nearly every county voting more Democratic than in the 2024 presidential election. Economic concerns seemed key to many voters: Over 82 percent of Spanberger supporters said that federal cuts had affected their finances “a lot.” According to exit polls, voters identifying as white born-again or evangelical Christians voted for Republican Winsome Earle-Sears with 79 percent, and Spanberger with 21 percent. Earle-Sears’ focus on transgender issues had mixed results: Around 22 percent of voters for Spanberger said that support for transgender rights in society had “gone too far,” while 78 percent of voters for Earle-Sears said the same thing.

Down-ballot, Democrats also did well: Lieutenant Governor Ghazala Hashmi is the first Muslim woman to win statewide office, with 55.3 percent. Jay Jones, whose violent texts had generated controversy, won with 52.8 percent. Democrats also won a majority of 61 in the House of Delegates.

October 23, 2025

The first major electoral test of President Donald Trump’s second term takes place right across the Potomac River as Virginians head to the polls to pick a new governor in a couple weeks.

Along with the gubernatorial contest in New Jersey, the Virginia race represents one of the most closely watched off-year elections this November and may offer a referendum on the direction of the country ahead of the 2026 midterms, though both states are more to the left of center than other contests at play next year.

Voters in the Old Dominion State, heavily impacted by the issues in Washington, tend to swing against the party in the White House. This year Democratic former representative Abigail Spanberger and Republican lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears are sparring over the economic outlook and thorny social and cultural questions, including how schools are handling transgender students.

A down-ballot scandal, with the Democratic nominee for attorney general fantasizing in leaked texts about the death of a Republican politician, has also disrupted the race and invoked already-prescient questions of political violence.

“It is a fairly nationalized race,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a newsletter from the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

While next year’s battles feature more purple and red states compared to New Jersey and Virginia, political watchers are still paying close attention to how the campaign tactics and messages are landing with voters, Kondik said. Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates the race as “likely Democratic.”

While Earle-Sears’ campaigning around education has resonated with Republican evangelicals, Christian Democrats appreciate Spanberger’s focus on jobs, with this year’s aggressive downsizing of the federal workforce hitting the state particularly hard.

Virginia has the highest population of federal workers—147,358—outside Washington, DC, and California, and researchers expect the state will lose 9,300 of those by the end of the year. The ongoing government shutdown may cause additional strain. Each gubernatorial candidate has sought to point blame at the other for the standoff unfolding in the US Senate.

As the pastor of a Black church in Northern Virginia, Michelle Thomas said the cuts especially hit hard for members of her community. For years, government work offered stable, meaningful work for Black Virginians, something that has changed seemingly overnight with the change of administration.

Families are “shaken” by the loss, said Thomas, who leads Holy & Whole Life Changing Ministries International in Loudoun County and serves as president of the county NAACP chapter. “People want their lives back.”

Job seekers try to build up their resumes for the job search, while parents affected by the downsizing wrestle with whether they can afford to send their children to college. Together with the loss of jobs, sticker shock and high inflation have left people wanting change.

“Voters are looking for leaders,” Thomas said. “They’re not just looking for partisan rhetoric. They’re looking for people to show up with a plan. They want solutions to bring jobs back, solutions to bring prices down.”

Part of Spanberger’s plan to address economic concerns focuses on increasing agricultural exports, developing student apprenticeships, building in-state job training for sectors facing shortages, and investing in infrastructure and rural broadband. To help federal workers and contractors specifically, she’s proposed using the state’s Board of Workforce Development to set up mentoring partnerships and to place workers with private-sector jobs based on transferable skills.

“The chaos coming out of Washington isn’t just bad policy, it’s creating real harm for Virginia families and businesses,” Spanberger said at Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Education and Workforce Conference earlier this month.

Earle-Sears has largely stayed away from talking about federal workers. She’s highlighted the jobs the administration added to the state during Governor Glenn Youngkin’s tenure: By June 2025, Youngkin saw 263,700 jobs added since he took office in 2022, according to an analysis by Cardinal News. Virginia also launched online resources to connect federal workers with new jobs. Earle-Sears also plans to cut taxes and get rid of some business regulations.

The Republican candidate has put the spotlight on school policies around students who identify as transgender. She deployed the Trump campaign’s 2024 election playbook by airing an ad that states, “Spanberger is for they/them, not for us.”

Earle-Sears wants to continue policies the Youngkin administration issued in 2023 that held that students should use facilities like bathrooms or locker rooms based on biological sex. Youngkin’s guidelines require parental permission before official school records can refer to a minor by a different name or pronoun, and make schools provide alternative facilities for students who request to opt out of single-sex spaces with transgender students.

Not all districts have complied with Youngkin’s plan. Several school districts continued to use previous guidance allowing students to use bathroom and locker facilities according to the gender they identified with, which has led to confrontations with other students and in some cases escalated to lawsuits.

That’s gotten the Trump administration involved. The US Department of Education determined that the policies of five Northern Virginia school districts violate Title IX, a federal civil rights law barring sex-based discrimination in education. The DOE said allowing transgender students to access facilities on the basis of gender identity “violate the sex-based protections” of the law.

“The more parents see these schools defying the guidelines, the more they want change from liberal elected officials,” said Victoria Cobb, president of The Family Foundation of Virginia. “They certainly don’t want those policies rolled back at the state level.”

Pastor Jonathan Avendano has heard concerns from parents in his community and his congregation, Iglesia Maná del Cielo in Northern Virginia.

“They’re just not comfortable, and obviously even their students, their kids, are not comfortable,” Avendano said. “We need to bring changes in what is happening in the school systems and especially make parental rights in the forefront of all that.”

Avendano is also a member of Youngkin’s Latino Advisory Board and has hosted Earle-Sears at his church.

Kondik said Spanberger’s “mainstream Democrat” brand may protect her from attacks that proved effective in the presidential election.

“If you look at the ads that Trump and his allies did against Harris, they did have video of Harris talking about sex-change operations for inmates. They don’t have video of Spanberger saying that,” Kondik said. “Spanberger has provided less ammunition on that and other issues.”

The Democratic candidate has danced around specifics on transgender policies and schools. In one ad, Spanberger highlighted that she’s a mother of three daughters and said, “As a law enforcement officer, I went after child predators, so it really angers me to hear these lies about who I am.” She added that “we need to get politics out of our schools and trust parents and local communities.”

Over 60 percent of Virginians identify as Christians, a number that has dropped 10 percent over the last decade, according to Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study. Of those, 25 percent told Pew they identified as evangelical Protestant, and another 10 percent identified as historically Black Protestant.

A former CIA agent, Spanberger won election to the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms in a longtime GOP Virginia district Trump carried by six points. She became part of the “mod squad,” short for moderate, in part due to opposing Nancy Pelosi’s bid to be House speaker. In 2020, Spanberger went viral asking members of her party to stop talking about defunding the police or about anything to do with the word socialism. Other times, she voted squarely with the rest of the party, including when it came to supporting Trump’s impeachment.

Earle-Sears, a Marine Corps veteran who immigrated from Jamaica in the 1970s, is Virginia’s first Black woman to serve as lieutenant governor. She used to direct a Salvation Army homeless shelter and had owned an appliance-and-plumbing-repair store. She served one term in the statehouse. She also served as vice president of the Virginia State Board of Education.

As lieutenant governor, she supported alternatives to public schools, and the Youngkin administration opened 15 College Partnership Laboratory Schools, also known as lab schools. Similar to charter schools, lab schools are tuition free and able to set their own curricula and budgets, and they are connected with public higher-education centers or eligible private colleges and universities.

Earle-Sears sought to tie Spanberger to a down-ballot scandal that surfaced in the campaign’s final days. National Review reported on text messages sent by Democratic attorney general nominee Jay Jones in 2022 fantasizing about the deaths of the then–House speaker Todd Gilbert and his children. Jones apologized but resisted calls from Republicans to withdraw from the race.

At a contentious debate at Norfolk State University, Earle-Sears said Spanberger should call for Jones to leave the race: “What would it take? Him pulling the trigger? Is that what would do it, and then you would say he needs to get out of the race, Abigail?”

Spanberger said voters would have to make up their own minds about who to support and reiterated that she condemned the violent rhetoric in the texts: “I denounced them when I learned of them, and I will denounce them at every opportunity.”

National figures have gotten involved, with former president Barack Obama planning a November 1 campaign event with Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for New Jersey’s gubernatorial contest. So far, Trump has not explicitly endorsed Earle-Sears, but he said Monday that “I think the Republican candidate is very good, and I think she should win, because the Democrat candidate is a disaster.”

Neither campaign responded to interview requests. Early voting began September 19. The election will take place November 4.

- More from Harvest Prude

Ideas

Religious OCD and Me

Drew Brown

Scrupulosity latches onto the thing we hold most dear—our relationship with God.

Illustration by Kate Petrik / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

I didn’t know what scrupulosity was until I was 23 and sitting in a psychiatrist’s office. After months of extended panic attacks, someone I trusted recommended this psychiatrist to me, adding that he was a kind and Christian man. So I made an appointment and sat in his office, unsure of what to expect.

I told him about my incessant shame over sin and the striving to be perfect for Christ. I told him that as a second-grader, I seriously contemplated my salvation and whether or not it had “stuck.” I told him about the hours I spent memorizing the Bible in high school, elusively searching for the peace and joy Scripture talks about. I told him about the twice-a-day calls to my dad for reassurance that I was normal, that my irrational spiritual fears weren’t going to happen. And I told him about the panic attacks I was having, about how they all centered on one big, scary spiritual fear.

He listened to me and then casually told me I had something called scrupulosity, or religious obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He said it so simply, as if there were a neon sign above my head blinking my diagnosis.

Scrupulosity—a subtype of OCD focused on moral or religious obsessions and compulsions—comes from the Latin word for a small stone, evoking the pain of having a pebble stuck in one’s shoe. It is a small thought lodged in the brain. Intrusive in nature, it nags and nags and nags until the sufferer cannot think of anything else but that one thought, often a spiritual fear. And that fear can come in many different forms.

The International OCD Foundation lists many fears that can be categorized as scrupulosity: fear of committing blasphemy or offending/angering God, fear of having committed a sin or behaving overly morally, fear of going to hell or being punished by God, fear of being possessed, fear of death, fear of the loss of impulse control, and obsessively needing to acquire certainty about religious beliefs. Church historians think Christian greats like Martin Luther, John Bunyan, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux dealt with scrupulosity.

Many of these are fears any “normal” person might hold. Isn’t this just another way of describing legalism? Most people, I assume, do not want to go to hell or be punished by God. The difference between scrupulosity and legalism, however, is that the scrupulous brain cannot let go of that one thought, that one fear. Someone struggling with legalism may experience great relief after a meeting with his or her pastor, but for someone with scrupulosity, that irrational fear will only return. Around and around, that one question spins in the scrupulous brain: What if, what if, what if?

So we read our Bibles for hours a day. We pray the same verse over and over and over again. We confess the same sins—both real and perceived (“just in case”). We find someone to vent to about all of our spiritual fears. These coping mechanisms—these compulsions—work for a little while at providing reassurance. But soon enough, the fears return and the loop continues. Over and over and over again, forever afraid.

Because our OCD latches onto the thing we hold most dear—our relationship with God—the gospel contorts into a doctrine of fear. On the outside, we look like elite Christians, always reading our Bibles and showing up at church whenever the doors are open, but our motivations are driven by fear rather than joy. We have somehow lost the concepts of peace and joy in the equation of our faiths. We need help—both spiritual and psychological—to recover them.

I’ve known people who have been spiritually healed from their OCD. However, my story of healing hasn’t been one miraculous moment. Rather, as Eugene Peterson famously titled his book, it’s been “a long obedience in the same direction.” I have fought this battle daily through deep relationships with family, friends, clergy, trustworthy therapists, kind psychiatrists, and—above it and within it and orchestrating it all—God’s provision and grace.

Early on in my healing journey with scrupulosity, I learned that I can’t control that my brain gets hooked on my spiritual fear, but I can control whether or not I fight it. Fighting it is a losing battle; the more I fight, the bigger the fear will get. Instead, I learned to acknowledge the thoughts; to say, “Okay, I recognize this fear is here, but I don’t need to do anything about it.” Like taking a leaf and setting it in a stream, I have learned (and continue to learn) how to accept fear and then let it go.

Psalm 131 (NRSVue) puts this practice into spiritual terms:

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,

     my eyes are not raised too high;

I do not occupy myself with things

     too great and too marvelous for me.

But I have calmed and quieted my soul,

     like a weaned child with its mother;

     my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord

     from this time forth and for evermore.

This psalm reminds me that I can give God all my big, scary spiritual fears; God is able to hold them for me. I do not need to lift my heart up; I do not need to raise my eyes too high. There is so much that is “too great and too marvelous for me.” Instead, I can calm and quiet my soul in the arms of God—the arms of God are big enough to hold all of it.

And I have to continually—each day, each hour, sometimes each moment—remind myself of this. It’s not a one-time switch but a continual process. I am not “healed.” I still take medication every night, and just yesterday I sat in my psychiatrist’s office for a checkup. I also stand in line to receive the Eucharist each week, which transcends my medication and reminds me of Christ’s bodily presence and sacrifice.

It’s been ten years since my diagnosis and discovery—ten years of receiving the Eucharist, taking medication, and going to therapy. Since then, I’ve realized that there are many others out there like me, religious or not (one study conservatively estimated at least 1.5 million Americans). I’ve also realized that so few pastors and spiritual mentors recognize or are aware of scrupulosity.

For those who struggle with this diagnosis, you are deeply loved by a God who longs to draw near to you. Despite the difficulty and the confusion, God is faithful. And above and beyond your big, scary spiritual fears, there is God’s grace—a reality that exists even when it isn’t felt in the moment. Surround yourself with people who speak this grace over you.

For those with spiritual authority, know that those who live with scrupulosity are sitting in your pews. We love God, but we need words of peace spoken over our frayed and fidgeting souls, words of peace when the tumult of our waves rises above our heads.

Drew Brown is a writer currently pursuing his doctor of ministry degree at Western Theological Seminary. He writes on his Substack, Slow Faith.

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News

Fewer Hong Kong Youth Interested in Seminary

Peter Maize

Many feel disillusioned about the church and its lack of engagement amid the turmoil of the past few years.

China Graduate School of Theology.

Image courtesy of China Graduate School of Theology.

After more than a decade of working for Christian media and student ministries, CC Lau decided to enroll in one of Hong Kong’s top seminaries to fulfill her calling to become a pastor and evangelist. Currently, she is studying online part-time at Alliance Bible Seminary while also balancing work and caring for her mother. She hopes to study full-time next year at the seminary’s campus, which is perched on a hill on the remote Hong Kong island of Cheung Chau.

Lau wants to experience living on campus, engaging directly with educators and classmates while pursuing her master of divinity degree. “Face-to-face, you can see hidden dynamics and you can see the teacher’s … example and be more focused in study,” Lau said. “It’s easier to exchange ideas with everyone and understand more comprehensively.”

Lau’s desired pathway to ministry is becoming less common in Hong Kong. Between 2019 and 2024, the number of local full-time students enrolled in Hong Kong seminaries dropped 23 percent, from 929 to 716, according to the Hong Kong Church Census released in March. Enrollment in church-run training institutes, like the college courses held by iSee Church in Wan Chai, plummeted from 54 to 12.

This continues a trend that began more than a decade ago, according to the church census, which the Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement has conducted every five years since 1993. Church attendance is also down by more than 30 percent from 2014. Congregations are aging, and tens of thousands of Christians have emigrated in recent years, largely due to Beijing’s imposition of a national security law in 2020 following Hong Kong pro-democracy protests.

The decline in student numbers is compounded by the fact that Hong Kong has a large number of theology programs: 20 seminaries and church-run institutes are competing for students in the city of 7 million, where less than 20 percent are Christian. Many of the most established seminaries in mainland China—such as Alliance Bible Seminary, which was formed in Wuzhou in 1899—moved to Hong Kong after the Communist takeover of China.

As a result, “the best theological books in Chinese and the best Chinese theologians are still in Hong Kong,” said Jonathan Ro, the accreditation secretary of the Asia Theological Association.

The China Graduate School of Theology (CGST) is one of the most prestigious seminaries in Hong Kong. But even this 50-year-old institution is not immune to the current challenges facing Christian educators in the former British colony.

“Every year, we have financial challenges,” said Bernard Wong, CGST’s president. Compared to a decade ago, the number of full-time students at his seminary has dropped by more than 30 percent.

Wong noted that many young people in Hong Kong have become disillusioned, as they feel the church has not provided answers to the societal turmoil that has roiled Hong Kong in the past six years—widespread protests followed by mass arrests, the imposition of a stringent new national security law, limitations on free speech, and a new “patriots only” legislature.

Although young people love the church, “they are seeing that the church needs to change,” Wong said.

But it isn’t just the lack of concrete responses to current events that have led young, devout Christians to turn away from traditional paths and seek other ways to live out their faith. Many don’t see the need for a seminary degree anymore.

“A lot of people come to me and ask whether they need to go to Bible college or not,” said Sammi Wong (no relation to Bernard Wong), who runs a martial arts ministry. “They think seminary or bible college is only for those who want to do full-time paid ministry. They are good Christians. They have the passion to serve.”

Sammi started out on the traditional path to ministry. He graduated from a Bible college in Australia before moving back to Hong Kong to accept a position as an associate pastor in a local church. After a few years, he began to feel that many people in Hong Kong weren’t being served by the church, including the poor and ethnic minorities. So he resigned from his church to devote himself full-time to working for local Christian nonprofits.

Today, Sammi runs the Hong Kong Gospel Martial Arts Ministry, which uses kung fu to share the gospel in one of Hong Kong’s most disadvantaged districts, Sham Shui Po. He often meets young people who don’t want to work in the local church because “they think there are a lot of boundaries or systems or rules … [that] are a barrier to [doing] ministry.” They want more freedom to meet the needs of the community instead of “doing a lot of admin or meeting with the elders,” Sammi said. Many of these young people end up working in poverty-fighting organizations or social work.

For Hong Kong young people who do want to pursue theological education, many turn online, where resources are plentiful and often free. This sometimes leads them to decide that they don’t need to follow the traditional seminary path, Ro said.

Hong Kong seminaries and Bible colleges have recently begun providing their own online courses, at times reluctantly.

“In the past, online theological training was looked down upon as inferior and not at all something that was accepted,” Ro said. “But now after COVID, everyone knows how to use Zoom. From then, schools have adopted an online model to offer as an alternative to the residential model.”

Hong Kong seminaries have also begun offering weekend and part-time classes to fit busy schedules. But online courses and flexible schedules don’t address the underlying issues that have led a large number of young people to question the value of a seminary education.

“The young people … question the church, question society,” said Nelson Leung, general secretary of Hong Kong Church Renewal Movement. “So they feel that the church cannot respond to social justice changes.”

Leung believes that seminaries need to “reform” to deal with the massive upheaval that Hong Kong and the local church have experienced. That includes outreach to “de-churched” young people, many of whom left the church when they didn’t hear their pastors talking about the pro-democracy protests and the government crackdown happening right outside the church doors. Pastors need to engage with young people in person and through social media, Leung said.

Ro stressed that young people are wondering if seminaries will address their questions about politics and religion “in a holistic and deep theological way.” To survive, seminaries need to be prepared to have answers.

“If you can’t take any position … you are teaching theology in a vacuum that doesn’t deal with a certain reality that you can’t address,” Ro said. “Young people who do come to seminary feel like they are walking on eggshells and they are not sure if they [can] ask a question.”

- More from Peter Maize

Culture

Why ‘The Screwtape Letters’ Is Uncomfortable to Watch

Kate Lucky

The two-actor play uses C. S. Lewis’s classic work to warn people—especially Christians—about the dangers of lukewarm faith.

Image: Fellowship for the Performing Arts

If anyone expected a Halloween gimmick, they were disappointed.

I can see how some theatergoers might have been confused. It’s October, after all. Marketing materials for The Screwtape Letters, a theatrical adaptation of C. S. Lewis’s epistolary novel currently on a national tour, show a sinister man cast in red before a wall of skulls and femurs.

Last weekend, the California Theatre staged the two-actor play about demons and hell, complete with a glowing red mailbox, echo effects, vomit, and creepy lighting. Next weekend, the venue will host Symphonic Spooktacular: “Bewitching Broadway.” If you didn’t know the Screwtape book, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was similar spooky-season fare.

But frights weren’t the point of this show. At least, not the jump scare kind. Fear of God? For sure. And I think the audience in San Jose’s gilded California Theatre mostly knew that’s what they were in for. That is, I think they were mostly Christians. At least if the laughs were any indication.

The packed house for the 7 p.m. showing laughed at jokes about what demons eat—“municipal authority with graft sauce,” “a lukewarm casserole of adulterers.” They laughed at how humans get led astray from their faith: sometimes by pastors, sometimes by sex, sometimes by friends they want to impress, sometimes by “moderation in all things.”

They did not laugh about the terrifying prospect of respectable people “progressing quietly and comfortably” toward hell. That warning they took seriously. They did not laugh (well, maybe they gave a knowing chuckle) at veiled Jesus references.

All the play’s lines, funny or otherwise, come from C. S. Lewis’s original text, first published in 1942. (The show excerpts 24 of the 31 letters in his novel.) Screwtape takes place on one spare set—essentially an armchair and a desk—with dialogue recited by one character, the senior demon Screwtape, who dictates to his pantomiming minion, Toadpipe.

Screwtape wears a waistcoat and a smoking jacket. Toadpipe wears a scaly metallic onesie. Screwtape speaks in a posh British accent. Toadpipe babbles and hisses. The addressee of Screwtape’s letters—his nephew Wormwood, a junior demon—is never shown. Nor is the human “patient” that Wormwood is attempting to tempt under his uncle’s tutelage.

It’s hard to sustain 90 minutes of monologue, and my attention drifted at times. But Screwtape (Brent Harris) does an admirable job with what he’s given, introducing elements of physical comedy to break up the staging and varying his delivery as the show goes on. (By the end, he’s despairing, hair standing on end, at the prospect of the patient’s salvation.)

His role necessitates dramatic flair, and he provides—though sometimes his delivery is too exaggerated to be effective. Sometimes, it’s just weird. More laughs came in response to his thrusting and sex sounds, which accompanied an already-odd passage from Lewis about fashionable female body types. That passage is unobjectionable in its takeaway—it’s a warning about pornographic desires and the pressure they put on women—but it also shows its age, and Harris’s interpretation doesn’t help its cause.

More so than the play’s challenging structure, whoever takes on the character of Screwtape has to contend with the production’s purpose. Fun? Sure. But this is also an altar call.

The “justice of Hell is concerned only with results,” whereas the Enemy, “heretical” as it is to admit, is motivated by love, proclaims the beleaguered uncle. “Real life” may seem to be lunch and the newspaper—but there’s actually nothing more real than this world of heaven and hell, powers and principalities. “We want cattle who can finally become food,” sneers Screwtape. “He wants servants who can finally become sons.”

Preaching is the point. Screwtape’s theatrical adaptation has been put on for almost two decades now by Fellowship for Performing Arts, a “not-for-profit New York City–based production company producing theatre and film from a Christian worldview” for “intellectually and spiritually diverse audiences.” (This tour will continue along the West Coast before visiting Arizona, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan.)

Its other productions have included The Great Divorce and Paradise Lost as well as stagings of Genesis and Mark’s Gospel. Most theater groups don’t have a statement of faith. FPA’s is the Nicene Creed. No wonder that the staging is barebones and the casting is slim. The point isn’t a big-budget production but something streamlined that can carry the gospel to as many theaters as possible.

The company’s founder, Max McLean, played Screwtape himself for many years. (CT profiled him in 2012.) Right now, McLean is acting in a show he wrote called C.S. Lewis Onstage: Further Up & Further In and working on a Screwtape movie.

During his post-show talk in San Jose, as the audience effused praise for what they’d just seen, McLean said that the Screwtape show had been convicting and even life-changing for some viewers, judging by feedback he’s received. The point of the production, he reiterated, was for viewers to understand the “wiles of the devil” and to “put on the armor of God.”

Some elements of the show are alarming—like when Screwtape, illumined in icy blue light, mocks a human who realizes too late that he wasted his days on earth; or when he describes the noisiness of hell to a bashing soundtrack, as compared to the silence and music of being with the Lord. Those vignettes were sobering for me, a Christian. If any agnostics in the audience saw them, I bet they had a reaction too.

But most viewers, I’d wager, weren’t skeptics but believers—several of whom, like me, have read the original book. (There was a show of hands during the talk.) We were the in-group, laughing cheerily at cracks at celebrities and sexy temptresses and selfish people who are too particular about their tea and toast, giddy when the demons gag on words like prayer and love. Ha! Take that! We wear the armor of God! “Mm,” murmured the woman next to me as she watched, in the same way some congregants hum approval along to sermons.

Ultimately, it’s C. S. Lewis himself who sets us straight. Through the words of Screwtape, Lewis warns of worldly vice and snobbery but also of Pharisaic hubris, spiritual pride, an “inner ring of trained theocrats.” At least on stage, it’s hard for those warnings to land as powerfully as the more theatrical jabs at hourglass silhouettes and Madonna. But they’re certainly in the original text.

In the novel, which I read again post-curtain, a preface caveats that the sinful humans Screwtape mocks are themselves not given “wholly just” portrayals. “There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth,” Lewis warns. Nobody is safe from the snares of Satan—but also, nobody is outside of the grace of God.

- More from Kate Lucky

Theology

A Real Revival Is Not Controllable

Russell Moore

It implies a movement of the Spirit, not just a boost in numbers.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

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

“I saw on a news clip that Bible sales are up,” a woman said to me this week. “Does that mean we are in a revival?”

The news reports this woman noticed are consistent with what Bob Smietana at Religion News Service cited from a new Pew Research Center study: A growing number of Americans—almost a third—now believe religion’s influence is rising in America.

Last week, my friend David French noted in his New York Times column that he senses a changing spiritual temperature, but argued that it might not be revival we are feeling. French sees something more like a revolution—a movement that combines the language of faith with what political scientist William Galston calls the “dark passions” of anger, resentment, and revenge.

At the same time, in recent years we have seen signposts of what very few would doubt are moments of revival—the renewal at Asbury University, for instance. Whatever one thinks of the word evangelical these days, one mark of virtually anything included in that designation is a hope for and openness to revival.

It seems that this is a time of both warning and hope. One kind of revival is a sign of God’s favor, another kind a sign of God’s absence—and we ought to pay attention to both.

Almost 20 years ago, Jewish commentator David Frum, now at The Atlantic, offered an outsider view on why evangelical Christians seemed to so often want to claim their brand as a “majority” in American life—silent or moral or “real American.”

“Christian conservatives often react with hostility to bad news, even when they hear it from their friends,” Frum wrote. “Good populists, they confuse the observation that they are losing with the opinion that they ought to lose. And they usually reply to bad news by citing polling data that indicate substantial public support for their positions.”

I winced when I reread these words after all these years. While I don’t think I’m anybody’s idea of a populist, I can see how, at least psychologically, I did indeed embody the mindset Frum described. That was often, for instance, one of the ways I argued for the superiority of evangelical Protestantism to the mainline denominations—or how I argued that my more conservative Baptist wing was superior to the Baptists on our left. Our churches were growing, and their churches were not.

To some degree, my point was and is valid. After all, I was reacting to some of the more extreme liberalizing forces, which argued that modern people cannot accept virgin births or second comings, so Christianity must “change or die” by throwing the supernatural overboard. But if that argument worked on its own terms, then we should see Unitarian Universalist megachurches or global church-planting movements of congregations with rainbow flags. We don’t.

If someone said to me, “I want to quit my job and take up origami because I want to be a millionaire,” I might well respond by saying, “Have you ever seen a millionaire who became rich doing origami?” That would be addressing the argument on its own terms. But I would miss the chance to point out a more important problem: “You can’t even make a recognizable paper swan.”

Many of us went well beyond engaging the argument for revival on its own terms—often implicitly assuming that bigness is an argument for God’s blessing and that one’s “rightness” could be seen in the success itself. That argument, though, leads us to a heretical view of God.

If the growth of conservative evangelicalism in the late 20th century implied God’s approval of us, then did that mean God had previously approved of liberal mainline Protestantism when, in the first half of the century, it was growing? Back then, did God side with the massive and liberal Riverside Church in New York City and reject the small, struggling Gospel Mission down the street from it?

Was God an Episcopalian who became a Southern Baptist who became nondenominational and now has baptized himself with the Holy Spirit and become a Pentecostal? That’s the absurdity to which a metric of judging fidelity by “success” will lead.

Twenty-five years ago, the historian Martin Marty noticed this subtle change in us, in what he described as a shift from “truth claims based on unpopularity to truth claims based on popular success.”

Marty said the typical conservative evangelical mindset throughout history has included an insistence on an objective standard of truth—standing above and outside of history. This usually has resulted in what is considered strange, weak, and foolish when judged by the standards of the outside world. Marty pointed out that Jesus uses the metaphor of a “little flock” when speaking of his people, promising such as these the kingdom (Luke 12:32).

The implication in Jesus’ words is that those who follow him will be tempted to fear because they will feel, based on the evidence of quantifiable success, that they are endangered. The flock will be little when judged by the standards of human categories, but they will receive a kingdom given to them in Christ—and therefore not visible until he is (17:20–24).

When success is measured by public opinion, the stakes are high. When the sign of God’s favor is seen in popular response, we inevitably start to see the market—however that market is defined—as the revelation of God. And when the market shifts what it wants, the entrepreneurs must change with it. In some eras that means sexual “liberation,” and in others it means the humiliation of opponents.

Jesus describes the Beast of Revelation to John as having near-universal popularity and success: “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?” (Rev. 13:4, ESV throughout). In this case, what seems like revival is actually collapse, while what seems like collapse—believers being conquered (v. 7)—is actually revival.

Revival, as Jesus reveals it, entails a change of affection (2:4–5). Sometimes that is seen in explosive growth (as on the day of Pentecost), and at other times it is seen as a tiny remnant conserving what is true. In either case, the church—and individual Christians—should know both how to be “brought low” and how to “abound” (Phil. 4:11–12).

We should pray for revival. That starts with knowing what it is. Revival is not a market or an artifact. Revival cannot be controlled; it can only be received. Revival is the wind of the Spirit—a wind that often tears down a Babel before it calls out an Abram from Ur.

Revival doesn’t start with a blueprint or, God forbid, a marketing plan, but with a state of helplessness and dependence. When God showed Ezekiel a field full of dried-out bones and said, “Son of man, can these bones live?” the prophet responded, “O Lord God, you know” (Ezek. 37:3–4). That was the right answer. And it should be ours.

God can send revival. But that will mean, as it usually does, that the kind of religion the age wants—the kind that can be livestreamed and monetized—will first have to fall. Real revival is disturbing and disrupting, which is why so many of us, if left to ourselves, prefer the counterfeit kind.

Revival? We can’t handle revival. That’s the point. Revival—the real kind, the kind that can’t be controlled—handles us. And the first thing it blows away is the stick by which we measure our success.

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

For Vince Bacote, the Black Evangelical Story Has Something for Everyone

The theologian behind a recent documentary on what compelled him to tell a challenging and beautiful story.

Morgan Lee

Jennifer Heim Photography

In the summer of 1993, Vince Bacote (pronounced bay-coat) was a graduate student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School trying to make sense of a conference on black evangelicalism he had just attended at Geneva College, a Christian college in western Pennsylvania.

“The experience was incredible and vexing all at once,” he said. Vince felt intellectually stimulated, while simultaneously feeling vexed by critiques he heard about mainstream evangelicalism. When classes resumed in the fall, he wrote an article entitled “Black and Evangelical: An Uneasy Tension.”

For years, Vince forgot about that piece. But his reflections as a 20-something became the seed for Black + Evangelical, a documentary that premiered in February 2025 and was released in June 2025. Produced by Christianity Today and Wheaton College as part of CT’s Big Tent Initiative, the film includes the voices of over 20 African American men and women who contributed to and challenged the evangelical world over the past 75 years.

“When people think of who tells stories about Christianity and evangelicals, they think of CT,” Vince said. “So for CT to be involved in telling that story is vital. CT’s Big Tent Initiative helps impact the church by partnering with others like me to help bring important stories to the broader church and world,” says Vince.

CT’s Big Tent Initiative is building bridges within the American Church across racial, denominational, and political divides. Projects like Black + Evangelical help bring to light the stories of American Christians that need to be heard.

As the documentary recounts, the American evangelical movement has not historically been a racially inclusive one. Though Billy Graham famously banned organizers from segregating his crusades, he declined to join Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington. Throughout the past several decades, racism and politics have often made white evangelical spaces hostile, uncomfortable, or inhospitable for many Black Bible-believing Christians.

“I want minorities who are evangelicals to know that their experience is not a unique experience. There are other people who have been where they’ve been,” says Vince.

The work is deeply personal to Vince, who has spent his entire professional life in historically white evangelical spaces. Today, Vince is a professor of theology at Wheaton, where he has worked for 26 years. But during his decades in the evangelical world, he has witnessed fellow Black Christians wrestle with the movement, decry it, and leave it.

“There’s a lot of discourse about what the evangelical movement really is. It’s fine to have these critiques, but I wanted to do something that’s not mainly a critique but ultimately something that leaves people with hope,” he said. “No experience of life in the church is without complication.”

The genesis of the project goes back to 2008, when Vince attended an event at Fuller Seminary for Black evangelicals and reconnected with Ron Potter, a scholar he first met at the Geneva College conference in 1993. As he listened to Potter throughout many discussions that weekend, he recognized that he had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the figures and events in the last 70 years of black evangelicalism.

“I thought it’d be a great idea to put Ron in front of a camera and feed him questions,” said Vince.

Vince particularly wanted to build up the archive of information about Black evangelicals. He had found writing about this community, compared to research about the traditional black church, to be sparse.

“It’s important for people to understand that however you’re going to talk about black Christians in the United States, you also have to include this as part of what you’re talking about,” he said.

That same year, Vince mentioned his idea of an oral history project to Ed Gilbreath, who then served as director of digital and consumer media at UMI and had founded UrbanFaith.com. They picked up the conversation again in 2020, after Ed returned to Christianity Today as The Big Tent Initiative director. (He had two prior stints at the ministry.) Wheaton wanted to bring Potter to campus, and Gilbreath suggested that Christianity Today partner with the archival project, a proposal that Vince eagerly embraced.

Vince got to work, and what started as one 80-minute interview with Potter developed over the next three years into 24 interviews and 40 hours of video footage. He noted his conversation with Bill Pannell, a renowned professor and preacher from Fuller Seminary, who passed away last fall, as a particular highlight.

“He told me it was important for people to be both black and evangelical,” he said. “Bring your whole self, rather than censoring yourself. To me, that’s huge.”

As he worked on the project, Vince was connected with Dan Long, a filmmaker and alum of Fuller Seminary, and they decided to turn the interviews into a documentary, which they knew would give their material far more reach.

Vince appreciated that Christianity Today and Wheaton both jumped in on the project, noting that their presence helped raise money and attention to the project.

“CT is a valuable and trusted voice for helping us understand important stories and trends in the world, full of challenges old and new,” said Vince. “I have benefited from a wealth of resources over the decades, and CT continues to be a media ministry that helps the Church have greater discernment and faithfulness in a world that needs to encounter the greatest news of all.”

Beyond someone like himself as the target audience, Vince sees the film as also speaking to someone who grew up in a Baptist, AME, or other Black Church denominations before attending Wheaton or joining an evangelical Bible study. He also hopes it resonates with non-white Christians as well as the broader evangelical movement and church at large.

About 300 attended the film’s premiere earlier this year. When it ended, the audience gave it a standing ovation.

“It was shocking in the most positive way,” said Vince.

“I’ve gotten unsolicited emails from people talking about how seeing it has been helpful and informative and how it has resonated with them because it is connected with their experience,” he said. “For others, it is telling a story that they didn’t know that much about, and they see how much they need to much there is for them to learn about, and they’re willing to do that learning.”

Pastors

Tribalism Comes with a Warning Label

Robert Kim

When tribalism turns us inward, we live like the rest of the world apart from the gospel.

Andrii Yalanskyi / 500px / Getty

In an age where division feels more natural than unity, Christians are at an important crossroads.

The mission of God—the redemption of all people through the gospel of Jesus Christ—is too important, urgent, and beautiful to be hindered by tribalism. Yet within the church, tribal formation continues to fracture the body of Christ, creating silos of thought, culture, and denomination that often prioritize self-preservation over the mission of God.

Jesus prayed in John 17:21, “That they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (ESV throughout). This prayer was not for mere uniformity but a real spiritual unity—a deep collaboration centered on God’s mission.

If the world is to believe in Jesus, then our unity as believers is not optional. It is essential. Embracing unity can renew our witness, amplify our impact, and advance the gospel in a divided world.

An outworking of our Christian unity is kingdom collaboration—the purposeful and Spirit-led partnership between believers, churches, and ministries who choose to work together despite their differences for the sake of the gospel and the glory of God.

It reflects the biblical principle that the church is one body with many members (1 Cor. 12:12), each with unique gifts, roles, and cultures that serve the greater whole. In fact, kingdom collaboration is more valuable—and more biblical—than just staying in our tribal formations.

Harvie M. Conn, the late professor of missions at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, argued that the letters to the churches in the Book of Revelation, such as to the church at Ephesus, is not referencing one local church but rather all the churches in that region. The collective whole, rather than a singular church, was the witness of the church.

When I was church planting in Philadelphia, I led an interdenominational event for area churches called All 1.6. We had the sole objective of asking how we could reach all 1.6 million people of the City of Brotherly Love with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One tangible outcome of the effort allowed two churches planting in University City to no longer see each other as competition but as fellow laborers called to support one another. While this type of work can be costly (time, relationships, etc.), it was time well spent to demonstrate how we are better together.

This type of unity is rooted in humility, recognizing that no single tradition, denomination, or leader holds the monopoly on truth or mission. It understands that no single church or ministry can do the work reaching its community.

Further, collaborative efforts like this value diversity, seeing cultural and theological differences (within orthodoxy) as strengths, not threats. And such efforts pursue a common mission: to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey Christ (Matt. 28:18–20).

Contrast this with tribal formation—a natural but dangerous tendency to cluster with those who think, look, worship, and act like us. Tribes form for comfort, but they can often devolve into isolation, pride, and even antagonism toward other parts of the body of Christ.

Instead, from Genesis to Revelation, God’s story is one of partnership and unity. When God called Abraham, it was to bless “all the families of the earth” (Gen. 12:3). When Jesus commissioned the church, it was to go and make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). This global, boundary-breaking vision started with a unified church.

This early church modeled collaboration. In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Council gathered apostles and elders across cultures to resolve the Gentile question. Their decision preserved the unity of the church and propelled the mission forward. Likewise, the apostle Paul partnered with churches in Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, and beyond—raising funds, exchanging leaders, and writing epistles that crossed tribal lines.

Unity doesn’t mean we lose our identity or convictions. Paul was a Jew to the Jews and a Gentile to the Gentiles (1 Cor. 9:20–22). But he refused to let secondary issues divide the church. He warned the Corinthians, “Each one of you says, ‘I follow Paul,’ or ‘I follow Apollos,’ or ‘I follow Cephas,’ or ‘I follow Christ.’ Is Christ divided?” (1:12–13).

Tribalism is subtle and can often masquerade as loyalty, tradition, or even faithfulness. But when it turns inward, it creates mistrust, widens division, and shifts focus from God’s kingdom to human kingdoms.

Tribalism undermines mission becauseit breeds competition instead of cooperation. Churches and ministries begin to compare numbers, styles, and success metrics, leading to envy, suspicion, or superiority. This competitive spirit quenches the Spirit, tells a false gospel, and stalls mission.

Further, tribalism creates a mindset that diminishes or undervalues perceived “others” and ultimately undermines the power and credibility of our collective witness. And it can isolate resources and knowledge: One church may have discipleship tools; another, outreach strategies; another, cultural insight. When we operate in silos, we can be tightfisted about kingdom resources rather than living out of the generosity of the gospel.

Thankfully, there are real stories that show us that when believers work together across tribal lines, God does more than we can ask or imagine.

In many global contexts, denominations are laying down logos and egos to plant churches collaboratively.

In cities like Houston, 10–20 churches of different backgrounds now share resources, training, and support to reach neighborhoods none could have reached alone. In other places, efforts to serve the poor, fight human trafficking, or provide disaster relief through justice and mercy ministries are excellent witnesses of how churches can work together.

Prayer and worship events like days of prayer for the community, joint prayer walks, or ministries like Bless Every Home gather believers from all backgrounds for one cause: praying as Jesus taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come … on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10).

These are not merely examples but rather expressions of the kingdom of God breaking into our divided world.

If you’re a Christian—whether a pastor, layperson, or ministry leader—here’s how you can help turn the tide toward kingdom collaboration in your own context.

First, repent of tribalism. Ask the Lord to reveal where pride, fear, or insecurity has closed your heart to others in the body. Confess it and receive God’s grace. I often pray Psalm 139:23–24: “Search me, O God, and know my heart!”

Then, let God enlarge your vision of the church. Celebrate other tribes. Learn from Christians outside your tradition. Read their books. Sing their songs. Pray with their pastors and befriend them, maybe joining a local pastor’s prayer group or inviting other leaders to lunch, because true collaboration flows from friendship and trust.

Do you have a resource—such as a discipleship program, curriculum, facility, or training—that you can offer others? When we share generously, we demonstrate the character of God and have kingdom impact beyond our imagination. Sometimes our best resources are not our strategies but our stories. We can share those too.

While differences will arise, Christians across traditions share a common foundation in the gospel. By focusing on what we have in common more than what separates us, we can create meaningful connections. Some of my best friends in ministry are those who are not part of my denomination or tribe.

We can often think that the greatest threat to the church’s effectiveness is “out there,” but it’s often the division “in here.” When we isolate, we shrink. But when we unite, we shine.

The apostle Paul urged the Ephesian church to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Why? Because “there is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope … one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all” (vv. 4–6).

God’s vision for his church is not tribal dominance but kingdom collaboration. A church that works together will worship together for all eternity. And a church that collaborates together will have a greater witness together.

Let’s choose the harder path of partnership over the easier path of pride. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus challenges the disciples to love their enemies with a profound question: What good is it if you love those who love you? When we stay in our tribal formations, we live like the rest of the world apart from the gospel.

Let’s see our theological, ethnic, and denominational diversity not as problems to solve but as gifts to steward. Let’s be the answer to Jesus’ prayer in John 17. Because the kingdom will reflect people from every tribe, let’s glimpse that heavenly life with one another today.

Robert Kim serves as an associate professor of applied theology and church planting at Covenant Seminary and the director of church planting at Perimeter Church in Atlanta. He planted churches during his pastoral career and currently serves as a board member for the missions organization Serge.

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Ideas

There’s No Shame in Talking About Pregnancy Loss

Isabel Ong

Staff Editor

Eli and Hannah’s conversation in 1 Samuel holds wisdom for Christians on how to care for people who have lost babies or experience infertility.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

Two days after Christmas, I found out that my first baby had died in my womb.

The sidewalks were thick with snow and the streets felt eerily calm as my husband and I drove to the emergency department at a nearby hospital. I shivered uncontrollably in a cold ultrasound room as the technician smeared goo on my stomach and took image after image in silence. Later, in a cramped hospital room, a harried doctor burst in, announced that there was no heartbeat, and told us to go home and wait for “it” to pass naturally—all within the span of a few minutes.

The shock and grief at receiving these four words—there is no heartbeat—have not diminished over time. Since then, we have gone on to experience two more pregnancy losses. In the aftermath of these precious, premature deaths, I have had to reckon with dashed dreams, unrelenting grief, fist-shaking anger, and, on top of it all, the stigma and shame surrounding miscarriage and infertility.

Questions would float unbidden into my mind: Was it my fault? Could I have done something to avoid these outcomes? Why did this have to happen to me, again and again? Is there something wrong with me?

Experiences of pregnancy loss and infertility are more prevalent than we might realize. Where I live in Canada, one in six people experience difficulty conceiving, and around a quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.

These experiences often reflect an inability to have biological children or a failure to live up to traditional expectations of womanhood and motherhood. Some may even think that they are not “real” women until they give birth to or raise their own children.

Women in both developed and developing countries bear the brunt of the blame for being infertile and childless, leading to depression, anxiety, stress, guilt, and an overall decrease in their sense of well-being, a 2021 study in the International Journal of Fertility and Sterility observed. Some women also experience secondary infertility, a quieter grief, when a woman has children and desires more but is unable to get pregnant or carry a baby to term.

Well-meaning comments from fellow Christians can also inadvertently induce shame and guilt rather than provide comfort. We refrain from discussions about these topics because it can feel awkward, and tend toward privileging stories that celebrate victory over infertility. We honor families with large numbers of children without also comforting those who are silently suffering.

But Christians can be more proactive in eradicating stigma around infertility and pregnancy loss in the church. Hannah and Eli’s exchange in 1 Samuel 1 gives us insights into a more compassionate conversational ethic that encourages us to share or welcome such stories without shame.

Hannah is one of two wives to Elkanah of the tribe of Ephraim. She experiences great anguish at her prolonged season of barrenness, weeping and refusing to eat whenever she goes up to Shiloh to worship God with Elkanah and his other wife, Peninnah (vv. 6–8).

In ancient Israel, people viewed children as assets to ensure a family lineage’s survival, and women commonly experienced the pressure to bear children in a time when infant mortality rates were high and lifespans were short, notes Megan Klint at The Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity.

The Bible’s reference to barrenness as one of the curses for disobedience in Deuteronomy 28:18 also led to perspectives that often attributed the cause of the condition to “sinfulness or simply a lack of blessing from God,” Klint wrote.

These social expectations of women, coupled with perceptions of childlessness as divine punishment, may have contributed to why Hannah is so despondent. She brings her agony to God, weeping bitterly and making a vow that she would dedicate her son to him if only he would give her a child (vv. 10–11).

As Hannah prays, however, Eli the priest mistakenly thinks she is drunk and tells her to put away her wine (vv. 12–14). His negative assessment of Hannah praying in her heart and moving her lips without making a sound (v. 13) makes it seem as if her grief and pain are unwelcome in God’s presence. He shames her for her purportedly distasteful behavior when all Hannah is doing is beseeching God for help.

The attitudes that we bring into the church, and into our conversations with people who are suffering and grieving their babies’ deaths, may sometimes perpetuate shame and stigma like Eli’s actions did.

Brittany Lee Allen lost multiple children in utero and wrote for CT that she received comments from fellow believers like “At least it was early” or “You’ll have another baby.” My friend’s mom once asked her after she experienced a loss, “Why do so many women have miscarriages now?”

Comments and questions like these can inadvertently convey that a woman’s body has failed to do a good enough job in preserving her baby’s life. They can implicitly blame a woman for doing something wrong or not doing enough to ensure a healthy pregnancy.

Ultimately, they reinforce shame by placing the blame for infertility and pregnancy loss on a woman’s body or a woman’s decisions—akin to the kind of dismissive judgment that Eli makes of Hannah.

But Hannah is not ashamed of how she acts in God’s presence. Her reply to Eli’s remark tears her torment wide open for him to witness. She tells him that she is deeply troubled and that she is “pouring out” her soul to the Lord. She goes on to divulge the state of her heart to him: “I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief” (vv. 15–16).

Hannah’s prayers, while not recorded in Scripture, are likely raw, honest, and unfiltered—the kind of prayers that those of us who have experienced infertility and pregnancy loss are intimately acquainted with. She does not shame herself for acting in a supposedly unsavory fashion. Neither does she accept Eli’s shaming of her.

For those of us who have experienced infertility and pregnancy loss and wrestle with negative assumptions and sentiments about our experiences, Hannah’s response is helpful.

Being vulnerable about barrenness and loss in a Christian environment that celebrates victory and overcoming life’s obstacles may seem daunting and shame-inducing. Yet Hannah’s example shows us that there is no shame in articulating our distress and desires before the Lord and his people.

Like Hannah, we can be unafraid to share our stories of loss and grief in the church, even if they may invite discomfort and judgment. Doing so enables us to break these cycles of stigma and humiliation, for we know that God does not turn away from these soul-deep expressions of sorrow. We can remember the ways that God is loving and kind to all who experience these issues, recognizing that he hears Hannah and remembers her pleas (v. 19). We can place our hope in Christ, a firm and secure anchor for our souls (Heb. 6:19).

The end of Eli and Hannah’s exchange offers a shame-free vision for Christian conversations around infertility and pregnancy loss. After Hannah tells Eli her reasons for her behavior, Eli says: “Go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” (1 Sam. 1:17).

These three words—go in peace—may seem ordinary, but they hold a wealth of meaning. In Hebrew, the phrase means to “walk in shalom.” The idea of walking here references a continuation of Hannah’s spiritual journey: All may not be well yet, and her prayers may still be unanswered, but she can live with the confidence that God’s shalom goes with her, surrounds her, and leads her.

The shalom of God breaks the destructive patterns of shame that take up space in our minds, bodies, and churches. It makes room for grief and loss to be expressed and acknowledged without condemnation. It is freeing and empowering: As Hannah departs, her face is “no longer downcast” (v. 18).

“In a broken world, trauma—and the attending shame—will continue to be with us,” pastor Rich Villodas writes. “But, by the grace of God, it doesn’t have to consume us. It can be redeemed.”

The winter after I received the gut-wrenching pronouncements that my baby’s heart was no longer beating, I longed to stay curled up in bed for the foreseeable future, hidden from the world and its horrendous realities. Everything around me lost its shine and luster; nothing seemed right in the world anymore.

But I got out of bed eventually. I hugged my bleeding, healing body. I went for counseling. I wept. I groaned. I spoke regularly about my baby—and later, the others I have lost since then—in conversations with family, friends at church, and strangers on social media. My husband mentioned them in sermons he preached from the pulpit.

We also picked names for them. For our first, God led us toward the name Shiloh, as it means “the peaceful one” in Hebrew. The name Shiloh reminds us that God’s shalom goes with us and carries us. But I still long to hear from my Christian family the words that dismantle stigma and shame, that welcome and accept my grief in its untamable wildness: Go in peace.

Isabel Ong is the Asia editor at Christianity Today.

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Books

Review

Our Weary World Needs a Sigh of Relief

Sara Billups

David Zahl explores the underappreciated power of God’s grace to lift our earthly burdens.

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

In the early 1980s, when Bob Dylan embraced Gospel music shaped by a newfound Christian faith, he famously sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody.” In less poetic terms, that means we’re all held captive to something.

It’s tricky, this captivity. It may be that having money—or its inverse, living simply—becomes what identifies Christians more than Christ. We could be held captive to self-disgust as we age—or to its inverse, the cult of skin serums and neck lifts that promise youth for a little while longer.

As David Zahl puts it in his latest book, The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World, “The great question is not if we are captives, but how we approach our captivity.”

I, for one, was reading so much news around last year’s presidential election and in the first months of the new administration that I thought I was held captive by the next headline. I gave up news for Lent and filled the void by looking for vintage T-shirts on Facebook Marketplace and making trip wish lists to Morocco on Airbnb. It turns out I, maybe like you, am held captive by distraction.

We’re captive to this or that habit or obsession because we’re bored, maybe, or numbed out. We’re tired or wanting a minute to ourselves. Zahl argues that the only way out of our personal and collective captivity, whatever its flavor, is grace. Like we crave food, Zahl says, “we crave grace because it answers our real, objective spiritual predicaments: guilt, lack of love, death, separation from God.”

Grace—the unconditional love God showers upon undeserving sinners—is a core biblical tenet that every Christian knows and that few take time to carefully consider. And I may be projecting here, but even if some of us understand grace theologically, few consider its power to help untie the knots that bind us to our disordered desire and captivity.

“Grace,” writes Zahl, “is the most evergreen reason that people become Christians, and it is the most compelling reason for remaining one.”

What you find in the Christian faith that you cannot find elsewhere is what my neighbor and plenty of other modern people besides have found: the Big Relief of God’s saving grace, which is to say, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Grace is the most important, most urgent, and most radical contribution Christianity has to make to the life of the world—to your life and mine!

Zahl, an author and director of Mockingbird Ministries, describes himself in the book as a “fairly comfortable middle-aged husband and father of three.” Despite a high degree of cultural literacy, he comes across as a “normie” dad who takes his kids to sports practice and loads the dishwasher after a long day at the office.

Zahl is not trying to put on an air of over-intellectualism in these pages—the writing style in The Big Relief is as approachable and practical as its ideas. Zahl is also pastoral. I wrote in the margins of my copy, complete with all-caps emphasis, “I feel MINISTERED to as I read.”

“We are all chasing relief,” Zahl argues. “The experience of being a person is, in many ways, the experience of craving and seeking relief. We want out from under, room to breathe, if just for a little while.” In each chapter, Zahl breaks down the theology of grace, illustrating the particular forms of relief it brings. (Chapter titles include “Favor: The Release from Rejection” and “Rest: The Relief from Keeping Up.”)

Zahl notes that “relief is not a word often associated with God today, at least not with the God of Christianity.” For many people, he says, religion “feels less like a place to seek refuge than a system to seek refuge from.” That hasn’t been Zahl’s experience of church, which he describes as “the place I go when there is no place left to go.” But instead of analyzing reasons the church is failing, Zahl finds hope for its future through the lens of grace, calling it “the Big Relief at the heart of Christianity.”

The book should appeal to a wide range of readers, whether they experience the church as a place of refuge or long to break free of its grip. Zahl covers themes so broadly relatable—like rejection, regret, guilt, status anxiety, and “keeping up” with neighbors and peers—that nearly everyone should find at least some welcome insight or encouragement. (For most readers, of course, certain topics will resonate more than others. In my case, having long ago thrown in the towel on meeting the world’s standards of productivity, I found myself less interested in Zahl’s chapter on play as a release valve.)

In some of Zahl’s most incisive sections, he looks at matters of favor and guilt through the lens of contemporary politics. “The pressure to belong—to be both loved and liked by others—is less of a pressure and more of a longing,” he writes. “The most popular road to belonging today is probably politics. … When political arguments get overheated, it behooves those of us on the sidelines to remember that, for some people, it’s not just policies at stake but personal acceptance.”

Here, Zahl drills down to our emotional motivations for taking sides, the dynamics of which look a lot like the playground and the high school lunchroom. We long to be liked, and advertising our political opinions and affiliations can seem like the surest path to belonging.

Yet taking this path also courts the risk of alienation from friends or family members on the other side of the political aisle. As Zahl explains, we find relief from these tensions by resting in the grace of belonging first to Christ. “The Big Relief reverses the order of belonging,” he writes. “In a setting of grace, belonging precedes behavior. … Grace makes the first move.”

Zahl, in his chapter on the grace of Christ’s atonement, is also insightful in connecting our political passions and divisions to the weight of guilt we carry. Here, Zahl holds both progressive and conservative readers to account with a refreshing reminder that, whatever our politics, guilt is a driving force in how we identify politically and who we identify with.

“Guilt,” he writes, “is more a default state of being, exerting constant pressure and wreaking havoc on mental health. In left-of-center circles, many people feel pressure to demonstrate contrition and regret over cycles of injustice. In right-of-center circles, many people feel pressure to assert their innocence and reject any framework that might imply otherwise.” For members of either circle, Zahl argues, relief comes from the “once and for all atonement of Calvary,” which takes our guilt off our shoulders.

Despite its focus on contemporary sources of anxiety and captivity, The Big Relief is generationally ecumenical. Gen Xers in particular (Zahl’s own cohort) will find plenty of Easter eggs, including subheads riffing on records from alternative rock bands like The Replacements and Pavement. One especially resonant section recalls classic ’90s-era college campus debates on postmodernism and moral relativism.

Zahl leaves us with a warning to be careful, cautioning that “grace can become a new test of purity.” We can waste time running after a specific act of God’s grace instead of discovering it in life’s more mundane expressions.

I’ve seen people I love chase a dramatic form of grace—something miraculous, maybe, like a radical healing or revival—for extended periods. This can leave them insular and disconnected from family. Even worse, it can tempt them to look for tangible gifts of grace more than they look to the God who grants them.

Zahl reminds us that grace, like so many good gifts, is usually delivered in boring circumstances—in other words, in real life. Remember Zahl’s central question here: not “if we are captives, but how we approach our captivity.” As a captive to my own internal and external desires, I appreciate Zahl’s timely reminder that I, and others burdened like me, have never been freer.

Sara Billups is the Seattle-based author of Orphaned Believers: How a Generation of Christian Exiles Can Find the Way Home and the forthcoming Nervous Systems: Spiritual Practices to Calm Anxiety in Your Body, the Church, and Politics. She writes at Bitter Scroll on Substack.

- More from Sara Billups

News

The Anglican Communion Is Coming Apart

Tim Wyatt

Conservative Gafcon leaders break from Canterbury and claim the future of global Anglicanism.

Canterbury Cathedral

Max Barrett / Getty Images Plus

Not even two weeks after the Church of England unveiled Sarah Mullally as the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury, a network of conservative Anglicans has exploded what fragile harmony or consensus existed.

A statement released last week from Archbishop of Rwanda Laurent Mbanda, chair of the Global Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (Gafcon), announced his group plans to take control of global Anglicanism and refound it on scriptural orthodoxy.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has for centuries served as the “first among equals” spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, a family of 42 churches worldwide that derive from the Church of England. But years of strife over same-sex relationships have culminated in last week’s statement, raising the possibility that the fraying communion may be disintegrating for good.

In the statement, Mbanda declared that “the future has arrived” and that Gafcon was making good on its promise from almost 20 years ago to save Anglicanism from theological liberalism.

The movement began in 2008 when scores of conservative churches, mostly from Africa and Asia, boycotted the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops called by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Instead, they held their own gathering in Jerusalem, which evolved into the Gafcon network.

At the time, the dispute focused on moves by liberal Anglican churches in the United States and Canada to consecrate gay men and women as bishops and to create liturgies to bless same-sex couples. Then, in 2023, the mother church for the whole communion agreed to bless gay relationships. This prompted Gafcon to publicly reject the then–Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s traditional authority as head of the communion.

The latest statement appears to go further. Mbanda wrote that Gafcon would “reorder” the communion so its sole source of unity was the Bible. The traditional institutions that bind the autonomous Anglican provinces together—including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lambeth Conference of bishops—had failed to uphold traditional teaching and are rejected, the statement added.

“We cannot continue to have communion with those who advocate the revisionist agenda, which has abandoned the inerrant word of God as the final authority,” Mbanda wrote.

Gafcon statements expressed similar sentiments before, but now leaders are asking member churches to pick a side. While some Gafcon churches have for years cut all ties with the communion and even rewritten their constitutions to strip out mention of the Church of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury, others have continued in both camps: going to Gafcon events and taking part in the traditional institutions of the Anglican Communion.

This has to end, Mbanda’s statement said, and churches that belong to what Gafcon now calls the Global Anglican Communion cannot go to meetings called by the Archbishop of Canterbury, nor give or receive money from the official Anglican Communion. And for the first time, the Gafcon archbishops will elect one of their own to act as “first among equals,” a direct rival to the authority of Canterbury.

Nobody expected Gafcon to approve of the choice of Mullally as Archbishop of Canterbury. The former senior nurse turned bishop previously led the project to introduce gay blessings and also represents the first woman to ascend to the throne of Saint Augustine in Canterbury Cathedral, an issue for certain Gafcon provinces that do not ordain women as priests or bishops.

But few predicted such a bold move and so soon. Some have interpreted the statement as a schism, with Gafcon establishing a rival Global Anglican Communion set against the official Anglican Communion.

The Church of Ireland, Anglican Church of Canada, and Episcopal Church reaffirmed their loyalty to the Canterbury-aligned communion.

“We grieve that some GAFCON primates have chosen to remove themselves from the Anglican Communion,” said Sean Rowe, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. “We pray for their participation in God’s mission in their contexts.”

But Mbanda and other Gafcon figures insist they are not leaving but instead wresting back control of the communion from its traditional sources of authority, what they see as liberal and discredited.

In a podcast interview after the statement, Mbanda said the Global Anglican Communion was closer to a rebrand than a new organization and that it was the revisionist Anglicans in the UK and North America who were the true schismatics.

“Why would they accuse me of being schismatic when they are the ones who departed?” he said. “We have always been there. We stay there. We continue there.”

The announcement changes little for churches such as his in Rwanda, let alone breakaway Anglican movements such as the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), which are sponsored by Gafcon and have never been in communion with Canterbury.

These conservative churches do not take part in communion affairs or institutions and have already jettisoned their links with the church in England. The statement will pose greater challenges for more moderate Gafcon members, such as Anglican churches in Kenya, Uganda, or Chile. Felix Orji, a Nigerian bishop who leads an ACNA diocese in Texas, said some provinces which have had a foot in both camps will have “an intense battle over this issue.”

“There’s going to be some conflict in the internal running of certain Gafcon provinces, and this may push some of them to decide, ‘You know what? We’re going to stay with [the] mother church. We’re not going to go with Gafcon,’” he said. “So it’s a risky venture, but it was necessary.”

But do not expect the entire Anglican project worldwide to divide into two camps just yet. Susie Leafe, the director of the British pro-Gafcon group Anglican Futures, said nobody expected the conservative minorities languishing within liberal provinces to abandon their buildings and salaries to start afresh as breakaway churches.

“I don’t think they’re going to suddenly say that everybody in the Church of England or the Anglican Church of Australia—that’s very mixed—they’ve all got to leave for new church plants.” The messy reality of Anglicanism, with liberals and conservatives and everything in between bound up in loose affiliation, will continue for now.

Indeed, the official response from the communion’s secretary general, Anthony Poggo, has been a plea for provinces not to abandon an official, if plodding, process currently consulting on more tepid reforms to how Anglican churches with different beliefs can relate to each other.

“I share the hope of the commission that all Anglicans, and the whole Church of God, may still seek and find agreement in the Faith,” Poggo wrote. Theological uniformity cannot be demanded—it requires “patience and love” and the “hard work of discernment.”

Gafcon leaders have denied their move was solely prompted by Mullally’s accession, but Orji doubted the statement would have arrived if, by some miracle, a more conservative figure had emerged as the next Archbishop of Canterbury.

“We’ve been pleading for repentance, for rapprochement, and now you have a woman, and this woman is in favor of everything we’re against,” the ACNA bishop said. “And so there is no hope. If the Church of England had chosen a male who is evangelical, I don’t think that this decision would have been made.”

Lee McMunn, a former Church of England vicar now a bishop in the Gafcon-aligned Anglican Mission in England, said Mbanda’s surprise statement prompted both joy and encouragement for small breakaway movements like his own.

“So much of Anglicanism is often characterised by nuanced statements to prevent anybody from feeling they’re left out,” he said. “So to have a really bold declaration centred on God’s Word, that’s the key for me.”

Refusing communion funds would be costly but worth it for other provinces previously still linked to Canterbury, McMunn said. “If we’re going to stand together on the Word of God, there will be sacrifices to be made. But it is worth it because there is now a clarity in terms of our communion.”

Beneath the disagreement over Mullally’s gender and her LGBTQ-affirming theology is a deeper argument over the definition of Anglicanism. Is it a relational movement, united around historic colonial ties to England and sustained by friendship and shared liturgies? Or is Anglicanism, going all the way back to the first break with Rome led by Henry VIII in 16th-century England, about fidelity to the Bible over transnational institutions and relationships?

Orji said he retained a lot of fondness for England, dating back to the British schoolteachers who led him to Christ when Orji was a teenager in Nigeria. But he welcomed Gafcon’s apparent decision to abandon these ties.

“It is important that the primacy of England should not take precedence over the primacy of Scripture,” he said. “We cannot allow our affection for England to trump affection for Christ and his Word.”

- More from Tim Wyatt

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