UK Churches’ Outreach to Muslim Migrants Scrutinized After Clapham Attack

James Thompson

Evangelical leader: Ministers’ testimonies were never intended to be the “make-or-break” factor in judging asylum applications.

Weymouth Baptist Church has taken in 40 asylum seekers from the immigration barge Bibby Stockholm.

Finnbarr Webster / Getty Images

A chemical attack that injured a dozen people in the South London suburb of Clapham a month ago has sparked the resurgence of a national debate over the UK’s asylum system and the church’s involvement with migrant converts.

The suspected perpetrator, Abdul Ezedi, was an Afghan refugee who came to Britain illegally in 2016 and was granted asylum in 2020 on appeal after his two previous applications had been denied. He won his appeal even though he had been convicted of a sex offense in 2018.

At his tribunal, he claimed he had converted from Islam to Christianity and would face persecution from the Taliban if he was returned to Afghanistan. A member of the clergy vouched for the sincerity of Ezedi’s religious belief. A tribunal judge was convinced by the plea and granted Ezedi asylum status.

The uproar grew as the details of Ezedi’s case became clearer and doubt was cast on the sincerity of his conversion. (Metropolitan Police confirmed last week that they found his body in the River Thames, where he had likely drowned.)

Suella Braverman, a member of the UK Parliament who has formerly served as Home Secretary (a top cabinet position in the British government with responsibilities including immigration issues), wrote in The Telegraph that “churches around the country [are] facilitating industrial-scale bogus asylum claims.”

Braverman charged that, at some churches, migrants can simply “attend Mass once a week for a few months, befriend the vicar, get your baptism date in the diary and, bingo, you’ll be signed off by a member of the clergy that you’re now a God-fearing Christian who will face certain persecution if removed to your Islamic country of origin.”

While Ezedi’s asylum appeal was supported by a Baptist congregation according to media reports, much of the subsequent criticism has been focused on England’s established church. Matthew Firth, a former Church of England priest, told The Telegraph that while the Church of England had not engaged in “direct wrongdoing,” it had nonetheless been “naive” and often turned “a blind eye” to questionable claims of conversion by asylum seekers.

Church of England leaders have disputed these accusations and contend that it isn’t the responsibility of local congregations to determine who is eligible for asylum. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said in a statement in early February that “it is the job of the Government to protect our borders and of the courts to judge asylum cases. The Church is called to love mercy and do justice.”

Many of the statements from church leaders reflect how clergy have responded to similar controversies in the past. However, there are indications that the church may soon adjust how it supports asylum seekers.

Some ministers, while maintaining that their main responsibility is to help the vulnerable, have admitted the difficulty in discerning whether converts preparing for baptism are genuine believers. The Guardian reported that the Church of England is reviewing its guidance for clergy on engaging with asylum seekers. It was not immediately clear what specific changes to the Church of England’s current guidelines were being considered.

Some congregations outside the Church of England have also found themselves the subject of intense media coverage after the Clapham attack.

Several media outlets reported on Weymouth Baptist Church’s ministry to Muslim migrants who were living on the Bibby Stockholm barge. The barge has been chartered by the UK government to serve as a living space for about 500 asylum seekers while their claims are processed.

A BBC report in early February said that the church was working with 40 men, 6 of whom they had already baptized. Dave Rees, an elder at the church, told BBC Radio 4 that their engagement with the migrants was enhanced through a connection with a Farsi-speaking minister.

Weymouth Baptist is part of the Evangelical Alliance, a network of evangelical churches and believers in the UK and the founding member of the World Evangelical Alliance. Danny Webster, the organization’s director of advocacy, believes that the role of churches in helping win asylum cases has been overstated in public discourse.

He contends that church leaders’ testimonies were never intended to be the “make-or-break” factor in judging asylum applications. Rather, they were seen as providing better evidence of genuine faith than asylum seekers’ responses to the religiously illiterate or trivial questions often asked by Home Office caseworkers. (CT has previously reported on questions used to evaluate the faith of asylum-seeking Christian converts’ faith in the UK.) However, he says the Clapham attack may still lead to some adjustments.

“I suspect church leaders will need to act with even greater discretion in the future,” Webster said. “I think there is some wisdom in having a level of almost baseline standards in terms of how long has this person been attending church, what has their commitment been—so it’s almost a more factual questionnaire rather than [a personal opinion].”

Even with the high level of scrutiny, Webster says believers should continue engaging with asylum seekers: “We want churches to be sharing their faith, we want people to be getting baptized, and at the end of the day, it’s not our job to really decide how sincere someone is.”

Sara Afshari, a research tutor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, also encourages churches to continue supporting asylum seekers and other migrants. She converted to Christianity in 1989 while still living in her native Iran. After she was baptized, she was imprisoned several times because of her faith.

She later came to the UK to study theology and found a supportive community in Church of England congregations. Her doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh focused on the conversions of Muslim-background Iranians to Christianity. She maintains that “only God knows the heart of a convert.”

“Sadly, we hear only about those who betray the church, not those who really support the growth of the church and enrich the church, which are the majority,” Afshari said. “Even in Iran, we have examples of those who betray the church, and their betrayals cost people’s lives. But again, it didn’t mean that the Iranian church leaders refused to accept [new converts].”

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Confusion, Strategy Shifts, Layoffs: What’s Happening at the American Bible Society?

Emily Belz

The historic and well-funded organization has seen two years of turmoil: five CEOs, money fumbles, and a pullback from global work. It is searching for a fresh start.

The American Bible Society’s New York building in 1893, left, and current Philadelphia headquarters, right.

Wikimedia Commons, Google Street View / Edits by CT

The 208-year-old American Bible Society (ABS) used to have a simple mission: print and distribute Bibles in the US. At its peak in 1979, it was giving away 108 million a year.

Once Americans had access to Bibles, ABS’s challenge became getting people to read them. In the early 2000s, the organization shifted to a mission of “Scripture engagement.” That is not as clear-cut as the number of Bibles printed, and in the years since, people in ABS circles have disagreed on what to do with a large legacy organization’s resources. A new Bible museum? A Bible app for military members? Curriculum on trauma healing through Scripture?

And how much should an organization that partners with Bible societies around the globe focus on the “American” part of its mission?

This 21st-century identity crisis has sharpened in the last two years with the quick turnover of five executives in a row, tens of millions of dollars in financial shortfalls, and the loss of a major donor. Sources said that about 30 staff were laid off late last year, which amounts to about 20 percent of employees.

Amid all the issues, ABS is changing its priorities. But it’s not clear whether the organizational messes are driving those decisions or if the messes are part of the pains of changing strategy. CT heard from ABS staff, former staff, donors, and other stakeholders, all with different ideas of what is causing the problems at ABS.

The stakes are high because ABS has a roughly $100 million-a-year budget and a $600 million endowment, which puts it in the top 1 percent of Christian organizations in Ministry Watch’s database by assets. Bible societies around the world rely on its support. Over the last two years of turmoil, staff and other ABS supporters say they haven’t had a clear sense of who is running the organization.

Of the five CEOs who have led ABS since 2022, two were board members serving as interim leaders, an unusual practice. One of them, Jeff Brown, lasted just a month. Neither board member turned CEO remains on the board.

ABS “didn’t want to deal with the issues,” said Ellen Strohm, an ABS director who left in January 2023 after 18 years there. Over her career there, she oversaw fundraising and project management.

Strohm said there was a culture of “magical thinking” that everything would get better without addressing systemic problems.

ABS has been moving to operate more like a foundation, overseeing more grants over the years instead of direct ministry. But the organization hasn’t had the systems in place to make that work, according to Strohm and other former employees, which has created cascading problems.

In the US, the organization focuses on various “Scripture engagement” projects as well as annually reaching hundreds of thousands in the military through its armed services ministry; promoting its State of the Bible research; and operating a new museum in Philadelphia on the Bible in American life called the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center.

Historically the organization has funded Bible translations around the world with a goal of translating the Bible into every living language by 2033. In recent years it has focused resources on its Bible-based trauma healing initiative to help faith communities address community trauma.

Starting in February, the new CEO of the American Bible Society Jennifer Holloran—its first female CEO and a former executive at Wycliffe Bible Translators USA—was walking into several layers of challenges, despite ABS having a comfortable endowment and historic reputation. The executive search firm seeking a CEO for ABS back in August noted that it was seeking someone who could “lead an organizational transformation.”

“While the specific challenges ABS has faced in recent years happened before I assumed the role of president and CEO, I know that the board and senior leaders have made great progress in refocusing the organization around its historic vision and mission,” Holloran said in a statement to CT. She said ABS would “develop new ways to support churches and partner organizations in creating opportunities for all people to experience Scripture’s life-changing message.”

After the layoffs late last year, the board sent an email to staff stating that ABS’s operating model required “fundamental change” and that the organization would be operating “fewer distinct, individual ministry programs—especially on its own. Instead we will focus on programs that … build on our strengths in partnership, convening, and thought leadership.”

It appears ABS will move more to grantmaking, like awarding funds for scholarly work on the Bible to groups like Scriptura.

In a statement responding to a number of questions from CT, board chair Katherine Barnhart reiterated that shift in strategy.

“For approximately two years, the board of directors of American Bible Society has been strategically aligning its planning and work in a way that is focusing ABS on finding, fostering, and furthering innovations in Bible access and engagement,” she wrote.

“As we move forward, ABS is leveraging its core strengths—including convening partners, provisioning resources, and developing and sharing insights—to play a significant role in creating and scaling programs that can broadly engage US culture and the world in the Scriptures. This refocusing means, in part, that ABS now operates fewer distinct, individual ministry programs—especially on its own.”

The organization’s tax filings show how it has been shifting to operate more like a foundation: Its head count has been shrinking over the years as it has moved from direct ministry to providing grants to partners doing projects on Bible engagement. The largest slice of its budget (roughly $40 million of its $103 million in expenses in the 2022 fiscal year) goes to grants to US and international organizations, according to its latest public tax filings. In 2013, it was only giving $11 million in grants of its $92 million budget.

Board chair Barnhart has a background in foundation work, having served on the board of the National Christian Foundation (NCF), to which she and her husband donated their family’s business more than a decade ago. The vice chair of ABS, David Wills, was the longtime president of NCF.

Despite that move toward more grantmaking, ABS was still spending a sizable portion of its budget on salaries and benefits—$28.8 million in fiscal year 2022.

The board has also experienced a turnover since 2022. Only 10 of the 19 board members from 2022 remain on the board, though the two most recent board chairs remain.

The organization had intentionally shrunk an unwieldy board in the last two decades: In the early 1990s it had 72 board members, then 30 in 2013, when the bylaws were changed to limit the board to 18–24 members. It now has 13 members, according to the ABS website.

The way the organization has handled these changes has hurt morale, according to multiple current and former staff.

Over the years, other Christian nonprofits have shifted direction and suffered “death by minnow nibbles” due to lack of mission clarity, board members not fulfilling their proper role, bad company culture, lack of good metrics, and donors pulling the organization away from its mission, Peter Greer and Chris Horst write in Mission Drift.

Financial and operational problems

In 2019, Strohm was working on major gifts at ABS. She remembered feeling like she was having a heart attack from all the pressure at work, and she drove herself to the hospital where she discovered her lung had collapsed.

That year the organization discovered it unexpectedly went over budget by $17 million. The overspend has not been previously reported. That spurred a number of changes: the departure of the CEO at the time, Roy Peterson; layoffs; and a reevaluation of partner programs the organization was funding. The organization was able to cover the deficit partly by drawing from ABS’s roughly $600 million endowment. There is no evidence of malfeasance on ABS’s part, and it had recently gone through multiple audits.

Strohm said the organizational response to audits showing inadequate systems “was healing the organization lightly.”

The $17 million shortfall appears to be related to confusion between partner organizations overseas and ABS, sources say. Partners were spending project budgets that ABS hadn’t yet raised.

ABS had been a rock-solid financial partner for so many decades that program leads reportedly assumed the pledged budgets would come through. Bible society partners having fiscal years falling at different times than ABS also contributed to the confusion.

Even with these systemic failures, the organization was shrinking its division-monitoring programs, according to current and former staff. In 2020, ABS disbanded Global Scripture Impact, the in-house accountability unit evaluating programs that ABS was funding. Then it created a new team called Reporting and Metrics, which also dwindled in the years following. Now it has a new team, called Ministry Insights, for independent monitoring of the programs it is supporting.

Deficits have been a regular feature: ABS tax filings show it has operated with a total deficit of $56 million from fiscal year 2016 to 2022. ABS had an additional $11 million deficit in fiscal year 2023, according to its stewardship report.

Despite the deficits, ABS had financial cushion. It had boosted its endowment in 2015 when it sold its Manhattan headquarters for $300 million and moved to Philadelphia.

Losing a translation partner

Another set of problems emerged with project reporting, as the organization shifted from a large base of small donors to major donors. In general, small gifts typically go to unrestricted revenue. Major donors typically want their money spent in certain ways and want more detailed reporting, which Strohm said ABS was unable to deliver.

The shift from small donors to major donors “broke the systems,” Strohm told CT. Sources said that American donors also tend to want more “impact” metrics, which the organization’s partners overseas might not historically emphasize. Overseas translation partners might send a quarterly report that consisted of saying they had finished translating the Book of Mark, for example, which is not “industry standard” reporting in the US, according to sources.

There was no “enterprise system that can follow a dollar in to a dollar out,” Strohm said. “When you have to connect a donor dollar to a project, that’s where the complication comes in, and you have to have really good systems. … ABS had very little idea of how the money they were receiving or giving was spent.”

As a result, she said the organization would create strategies that were “so broad that no matter what a donor wanted to do you could fit it in.”

One of those major donors was Every Tribe Every Nation (ETEN), which multiple sources said was contributing millions to ABS primarily for Bible translation work. In 2018 the organization—whose major backers include Mart Green of the Hobby Lobby family—began demanding more reporting, according to Strohm and other sources, or it would reduce funding.

ETEN was giving ABS around $11 million in 2019 and began decreasing its giving in 2020 as reporting did not improve. According to Strohm, an audit of the ETEN funds showed ABS was below 40 percent compliance, meaning less than 40 percent of funds were complying with donor intent.

By 2022, ETEN had completely withdrawn its funding for translations and then later that year withdrew all its funding to ABS, which sources said was at least in part based on ABS’s inability to provide sufficient reporting. ETEN redirected some funding through the United Bible Societies Association (UBS-A), according to ABS sources. United Bible Societies is the consortium of global Bible societies, many of which oversee translation projects.

According to a 2021 year-end report from UBS-A, “the association has obtained increasing levels of funding from organizations with similar objectives such as ETEN (Every Tribe Every Nation) and YouVersion.”

That withdrawal contributed to more problems with budgeting and was a major factor in the fiscal year 2021 shortfall, Strohm said. ABS’s tax filings show a $16 million deficit in fiscal year 2021. But fiscal year 2022 bounced back with a $9 million surplus.

“In the UBS fellowship, when you start a Bible translation project, you’re in it for the duration,” she said. “It’s the assumption that you’ll fund the whole project. ABS was between a rock and a hard place. There was no money to continue these commitments, and the donor was committed to more accurate reporting.”

Global cuts

In the past about half of ABS’s grant money has gone overseas and half has gone to domestic organizations. Now ABS has been making cuts to its global funding, according to several sources, and shifting its focus to be more domestic. ABS used to contribute about 40 percent of a fund that supplements the budgets of global Bible societies, and reportedly has reduced that to 25 percent.

Meanwhile, it has invested tens of millions in the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center in Philadelphia, which “explores the relationship between faith and liberty in America from its founding to today.” One source noted that ABS is reflecting a trend in the US church broadly, where money is focusing more on domestic ministry than global missions work.

Bible Society Lebanon has a five-year trauma healing program it launched with ABS support in 2021. Last year ABS pulled out of the program, according to the longtime head of the Bible Society of Lebanon, Mike Bassous.

Bassous said Bible Society Lebanon was about halfway through the program, having trained about 300 Bible teachers. He said ABS would still allow them to raise money for the program from major US donors through ABS, but with a 28.5 percent “administrative fee” that applies to all major donor gifts for trauma healing programs.

“I speak American English. I can understand corporate America,” Bassous said. “But you didn’t know who you could talk to at ABS. … Something is wrong.”

And on global Bible translations, one ABS donor received contradictory messages on ABS plans. An email he received from an ABS staffer late last year said that the organization would “divest translation work by December 1, 2023.” Then, in a January press release about the new CEO, board chair Katherine Barnhart said, “While we are continuing to support the essential work of Scripture translation, ABS must also develop new ways to make the Bible available.”

“I’m a longtime supporter, but I as a donor am confused,” said Nick Athens, a former ABS board member and donor.

Barnhart, in her statement to CT, did not directly respond to questions about the translation shift but said, “Where the refocusing is affecting our partnerships with other organizations, we’re working with those partners to explore alternative sources of funding and leadership. We are continuing to support Scripture translation in partnership with UBS as we recommit to developing new ways to make God’s Word accessible to all.”

Inside ABS, staff remain confused about whether or how the organization plans to address the recent turmoil. ABS had commissioned an internal investigation, conducted by the law firm Simms Showers and shared with the board last year, but the staff still doesn’t know what the focus of the investigation was or what recommendations came from it.

Even basic communication, they say, has dwindled; the organization’s annual stewardship report for 2023 was nine pages, when in past years it was quadruple that size.

Hopes for change

From Strohm’s perspective, the problems are systemic and cultural. They can’t be blamed on a single leader at any point.

“ABS has a way of breaking your heart,” Strohm said. “The staff generally work in good faith. … They’ve gotten rid of almost all of the leadership since I was a part of the organization, and the same things continued.”

Several sources said that greater openness from the organization to discuss problems—instead of a culture of “success theater,” as one stated—would help lead the organization to health.

Multiple people did express optimism about the choice of new CEO, Holloran.

“The hiring of Jennifer Holloran is, in my opinion, a much-needed down payment by the current ABS board on the debt it owes the organization’s legacy mission, donors, recent and current staff, and concerned friends of ABS,” J. David Schmidt, who consulted with ABS senior leaders on strategy between 2012 and 2022, told CT. “Her experience at Wycliffe and willingness to serve in this critical season is a much-needed, hope-filled balm, especially given the recent years of governance struggles.”

At the very least, Holloran is tasked with overseeing a major shift in ABS’s identity. In John Fea’s history of ABS, The Bible Cause, he notes that the organization for most of its history considered itself a “service organization” that published Bibles and produced Bible translations. Now ABS will see if it can find a clear path in more grantmaking than direct service.

Eugene Habecker, who was the CEO of ABS from 1991 to 2005, said, “The world needs a healthy and functioning ABS.”

Editor’s note: CT’s chief impact officer Nicole Massie Martin, who was recently among leadership at ABS, was not a source for the reporting of this story.

- More from Emily Belz

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More Evangelicals See Immigrants as a Threat and Economic Drain

Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

Survey: Even with growing concerns over the past two years, most still favor immigration reform and say the church has a responsibility to help.

John Moore / Getty Images

American evangelicals have complex perspectives on immigration and want a nuanced political response, but most want Congress to act soon.

A Lifeway Research study sponsored by the Evangelical Immigration Table found evangelicals are increasingly concerned about the number of recent immigrants to the US but still believe Christians have a responsibility to care for those who are in the country illegally. While most want to secure the border to prevent additional illegal immigration, evangelicals also advocate for a path to citizenship for those already in the country.

“While many evangelicals fear that our nation is harmed by the volume of recent immigrants, more feel responsible to show compassion,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “The urgency continues to grow among evangelicals for Congress to act this year to improve laws around immigration.”

Many evangelicals have a negative perception of the recent number of immigrants to the United States. Half (50%) say they are a drain on economic resources. More than a third see the number as a threat to the safety of citizens (37%) and a threat to law and order (37%), while 28 percent say they are a threat to traditional American customs and culture.

Yet, a large percentage of evangelicals see the number coming to the country as an opportunity or even an improvement. Two in 5 evangelicals say the number of immigrants presents an opportunity to introduce them to Jesus Christ (40%) and to show them love (39%). Around a quarter (26%) believe immigrants represent an improvement to America’s cultural diversity, and 14 percent say they’re a boost to entrepreneurial activity.

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“It is not surprising that the share of evangelicals who believe that the arrival of immigrants presents an economic challenge or a threat to safety or order has increased, given both very real issues at the US-Mexico border in recent years and the large number of migrants reaching American cities where they are legally barred from working, providing for themselves and contributing economically,” said Matthew Soerens, national coordinator of the Evangelical Immigration Table.

“But it’s also important to note that ‘threat’ and ‘opportunity’ responses are not mutually exclusive. There are many evangelicals who both believe there are economic challenges related to immigration and see the arrival of immigrants as an evangelistic opportunity.”

The study surveyed both self-identified evangelicals and those who qualify as an evangelical based on key theological beliefs. Self-identified evangelicals are increasingly concerned about the number of recent immigrants.

While 33 percent saw them as an economic drain in a 2022 Lifeway Research study, 49 percent feel that way now. The percentage who sees the recent number as threatening is also on the rise, with the percentage of those saying immigrants are a threat to safety climbing from 32 percent to 38 percent and those saying immigrants are a threat to law and order growing from 30 percent to 37%.

Additionally, fewer see the number as an opportunity to show love (down from 46 percent to 38%), an improvement to cultural diversity (33 percent to 26%) or a boost to entrepreneurship (18 percent to 14%).

Still, when asked about legal immigration, 80 percent of evangelicals believe it is helpful, and around 3 in 5 say we should at least keep the current number of approved legal immigrants. Specifically, 23 percent say legal immigration is helpful to the US and we should increase the number of legal immigrants approved in a year.

More than a third (36%) believe it is helpful and we should maintain the current number approved. Another 21 percent say it is helpful but we should decrease those approved. Meanwhile, around 1 in 5 believe legal immigration is harmful, including 13 percent who say we should decrease the number approved and 7 percent who believe we should completely stop approving legal immigrants.

“Few evangelicals are interested in closing the door to immigrants. Rather a large majority support legal immigration,” said McConnell. “Growing fears about the recent volume of immigrants were voiced the month after media reports of extremely high immigration numbers in December.”

Personal and political response

Evangelicals believe both they and the US as a whole have responsibilities regarding immigrants entering our country. More than half (55%) say Christians have a responsibility to assist immigrants even if they are here illegally, while 70 percent say followers of Jesus have a responsibility to care sacrificially for refugees and other foreigners. Additionally, evangelicals believe the US has a moral responsibility to accept refugees (71%) and specifically refugees fleeing persecution (72%). A similar number support legislation that would allow Afghan allies evacuated by the US military to apply for permanent status after vetting (75%).

“Large numbers of evangelicals accept responsibility within the Christian community to care for refugees, and a majority feel the same about caring for immigrants here illegally,” said McConnell. “Many evangelicals don’t believe our nation has the option of turning our back on those fleeing persecution.”

Thinking about national responsibilities, more than 3 in 4 evangelicals (77%) say it is important that Congress passes significant new immigration legislation in 2024. Among self-identified evangelicals, the percentage of those who view passing new legislation to address immigration this year is higher now (78%) than those who said the same in 2022 (71%) and 2015 (68%).

Within that legislation, evangelicals have priorities they believe should be reflected. Around 9 in 10 say they support potential immigration legislation that respects the rule of law (93%), ensures fairness to taxpayers (93%), respects the God-given dignity of every person (91%), protects the unity of the immediate family (91%) and guarantees secure national borders (91%).

Additionally, 3 in 4 (75%) support legislation that establishes a path toward citizenship for those who are here illegally, are interested and meet certain qualifications for citizenship. Each of those has similar levels of support among self-identified evangelicals compared to 2022 but higher levels than in a 2015 Lifeway Research study.

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When asked about changes to current immigration law, 78 percent of evangelicals say they would support changes to immigration laws that would both increase border security and establish a process for those who are currently in the US illegally to earn legal status and apply for citizenship if they pay a fine, pass a criminal background check and complete other requirements during a probationary period. Around 2 in 3 (65%) say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported an immigration law that did both.

Additionally, 80 percent would specifically support bipartisan immigration reform that strengthens border security, establishes a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children (commonly referred to as “Dreamers”) and provides a reliable number of screened, legal farmworkers.

“Evangelicals’ approach to public policy solutions has not changed significantly,” said Soerens, who also serves as the vice president for advocacy and policy at World Relief. “The vast majority want policies that ensure secure borders, treat all people with dignity, protect family unity, allow immigrants who are unlawfully present to earn permanent legal status and eventual citizenship and ensure the US remains a refuge for those fleeing persecution.”

Immigration influence

Two in 3 US evangelicals (66%) say they are familiar with what the Bible teaches about how immigrants should be treated. They also point to the Bible as one of the top influences for their thinking on immigration.

A quarter of evangelicals (26%) say the Bible has influenced their perspective on the topic more than any other source. Fewer point to the media (15%), immigrants they have observed (13%), friends and family (12%) and immigrants they have interacted with (11%). Even fewer say they’re most influenced on immigration by the positions of elected officials (6%), their local church (4%), national Christian leaders (2%) and teachers or professors (2%).

When asked to identify their top three influences, friends and family (45%) moves to the top. Slightly fewer point to the Bible (43%) and immigrants they have observed (40%). Around a third place the media (36%) and immigrants they have interacted with (32%) in their top three influencers. Fewer say the positions of elected officials (28%), their local church (22%), national Christian leaders (14%) and teachers or professors (10%).

There has been a lot of movement among who has influence on evangelical views on immigration. The largest growth among self-identified evangelicals has been the number indicating the Bible has been most influential. It has grown from 12 percent in 2015 to 21 percent in 2022 and 26 percent in 2024.

Half of evangelicals have had the opportunity to interact with and observe immigrants within their congregation, as 51 percent say their church has at least some first-generation immigrants. Additionally, some evangelicals are immigrants themselves. One in 5 are either first- or second-generation immigrants. Almost 1 in 10 US evangelicals (8%) was born outside of the United States, and 12 percent are the children of at least one parent born outside of the country.

Church involvement

For some evangelicals, the church provided them with personal experience meeting and serving immigrants. Three in 10 (31%) say they have heard immigration discussed at their local church in a way that encouraged outreach to immigrants in their community. Twice as many (60%) say that was not the case.

Around 1 in 3 (32%) say their church currently has a ministry or outreach that serves refugees or other immigrants, while 39 percent say no and 29 percent aren’t sure. Additionally, 34 percent say they have been involved in such a ministry, 13 percent currently and 21 percent in the past. Two in 3 (66%) have not participated.

Whether or not they are actively involved in ministry to immigrants, evangelicals would like to hear more about it from their churches. More than 4 in 5 (82%) say they would value hearing a sermon that teaches how biblical principles and examples can be applied to immigration in the US Among self-identified evangelicals, 81 percent would value hearing such a sermon. That’s higher than in 2022 (77%) and 2015 (68%).

“While less than one-third of evangelicals say they have heard immigration discussed in their church context, 82 percent say they would like to hear a biblically-focused sermon on this timely topic,” said Soerens. “Pastors who may fear that a biblical message on the theme of immigration may be divisive in an election year should know that their people are hungry for discipleship. In the absence of pastoral leadership, however, most are still primarily influenced by extra-biblical sources.”

- More from Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

Does Naming and Shaming Help the Cause of Indian Christians?

Compiled by Surinder Kaur

Local and international activists discuss Voice of the Martyrs escalating the country’s religious freedom status to “restricted nation.”

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) has newly classified India as a “restricted nation” in its latest global prayer guide—a change from its earlier “hostile area” categorization—as persecution against Christians is “now driven by India’s national government,” says VOM.

VOM’s “hostile area” category identifies nations or large areas of nations where the government may attempt to provide protection, but the Christian population remains persecuted by family, friends, neighbors, or political groups because of their witness. Indian believers have largely faced this type of violence, including last year’s Manipur attacks, which killed more than 100.

In contrast, “restricted nation” describes countries where government-sanctioned circumstances or anti-Christian laws lead to the harassment of Christians or the loss of their civil liberties. It can also include government policies or practices preventing Christians from obtaining Bibles or other Christian literature. (Christians in restricted nations often also experience persecution from family, community members, and/or political groups.)

Although Indian Christians largely face persecution that reflects VOM’s “hostile area” categorization, the government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been a key player in recent years in driving public opinion against non-Hindu Indians.

“The rise of Hindutva ideology—and the open and enthusiastic embrace of this ideology by Modi and other government leaders—has had the effect of making India’s national government an overt persecutor of the church rather than a protector of religious minorities and religious freedom,” said VOM spokesperson Todd Nettleton.

“This emphasis—backed by the power of the federal government as well as multiple BJP-controlled state governments—has had a chilling effect on religious freedom, even without a formal change in the laws of the nation.”

CT reached out to six religious freedom advocates, two international and four Indian, to learn if this label helps or hinders outsiders in their understanding of the situation in India. Does the new classification bring any changes for the church in India, either good or bad? Does naming and shaming help the cause of Indian Christians?

Answers are arranged from those skeptical of the efficacy of the new designation to those who believe it is constructive. Additionally, CT asked VOM what they hoped would be achieved by recategorizing India.

John Dayal, veteran human rights activist in India

The situation of Christians in India should shock everyone in the world, especially in the West, as also in South Korea and the Philippines, which have sizable Christian populations and are political and business partners of India.

The new “restricted nation” status assigned by VOM does not fully capture the complexity and severity of the situation in India. The unique nature of the threat faced by Christians in India from Hindutva ideology is distinct from threats faced in other parts of the world, such as Islamist elements, dictatorships, communism, or political movements associated with Buddhism.

The fact is that the highest political officers in the country are leading the marginalization of religious minorities. Laws are being enacted every day to harass the population, restrict religious practices, and shut down all evangelization. This is a very serious matter and mitigates not just against the Indian constitution but also the UN Charter.

Nothing really changes [with this new VOM designation] for the common Christian in the village or the small town. The Hindutva elements are not fazed. The international rebuke is faint and weak and is immediately muffled by their accolades for the Indian ruling group and especially for its leader.

A. C. Michael, national coordinator, United Christian Forum (UCF), India

Such labels are nothing new for our country. Whether we as a country are labeled a “restricted nation” or not, it is a well-known fact that our country is becoming a challenging place for Christians to practice their faith.

According to our reporting at UCF, incidents of violence against Christians in India have drastically increased since 2014, from 147 incidents to 720 incidents in 2023, which amounts to two Christians attacked every day for practicing their faith somewhere in the country.

Having said the above, one cannot deny that such labels do help in letting other nations know of the status of religious freedom of a country. I am of the view, however, that just stopping with these labels wouldn’t help much in improving religious freedom. More needs to be done, like sanctions against countries that curtail freedom of religion and imposing restrictions on business dealings with such countries.

Vijayesh Lal, general secretary, Evangelical Fellowship of India

While such designations may initially draw attention to the challenges faced by Christian minorities in India, we must recognize the complexity of our situation. India is a vast and diverse country, where the experiences of Christians vary greatly depending on geographic location, socioeconomic status, and other factors. A blanket label risks oversimplifying our reality and overlooking the unique contexts in which we live and worship.

Moreover, we must consider the response of the Indian government to such designations. Historically, these labels have not led to meaningful changes in government policies or actions toward religious minorities. Instead, they often serve as diplomatic points of contention rather than catalysts for positive reform.

In older days, this designation might have nudged the government to revisit certain policies and prompt India’s international partners to speak up more forcefully in defense of religious liberty. That heightened visibility could conceivably have led to positive reforms.

But we are living in a different context now, where the ruling dispensation continues to deny what is alleged about religious minorities in India. And the international community is too busy wooing India, so that human rights or religious freedoms are mentioned in passing, if they are even mentioned at all.

And while international attention is important, true change must come from within our communities. Indian churches and faith-based groups are not merely victims; we are actively working to protect our religious freedoms guaranteed by India’s constitution. Focusing solely on narratives of persecution overlooks the resilience and advocacy efforts of Indian Christians and the broader civil society.

Rather than relying solely on rhetoric, we need in-depth analysis rooted in local realities. This means amplifying the voices of Indian Christians and engaging in dialogue with our government and civil society to find solutions tailored to our specific contexts.

Shibu Thomas, founder, Persecution Relief, India

Categorizing India or any nation under a certain label based on the verified data of the challenges faced by the Christian community creates an awareness of the ground reality. This is useful in upholding each other in prayer, since we are all members of the same body, sharing each other’s suffering and pain.

But will the Indian church benefit in any way if the label is altered? No! Rather, we must acquire the maturity to accommodate it, while on the other hand, making all efforts to live in peace and harmony with all people. Jesus taught us to give to Caesar what belongs to him and give God what belongs to him.

We ought to rather pray for our authorities so that we can live peacefully.

Instead of seeking help from outside, which will in no way be helpful but cause greater harm, we need to understand that persecution is a sign of the Lord’s Second Coming. Instead of looking for ways to combat it, we need to embrace it gracefully, forgiving, loving, and praying for our persecutors. Who knows, God has put them here to refine the church! Foreign organizations have their own agendas, which is not always beneficial to the church in India.

So, I appeal to all Indian Christians to come back to the biblical foundation to endure and to stay faithful till the end, following the example of Christ in suffering.

Wissam al-Saliby, director of the Geneva office of the World Evangelical Alliance

Labels and rankings are helpful for building general awareness, for mobilizing public opinion, and for inviting India’s government to change course and India’s allies to speak up in support of religious freedom.

But they cannot, and are not meant to, provide Christians with an accurate and nuanced picture of how the churches and Christian ministries are steadfast and faithful in the face of persecution, of the growth and impact of the church in society, of significant differences in freedom and persecution from one Indian state to another, and of indigenous advocacy for greater religious freedom. We should be wary of discourses that inadvertently portray churches as helpless victims in the face of persecution.

In addition, these categorizations do not help those who want to advocate on behalf of their Christian brothers and sisters, because advocacy requires factual reporting, legal analysis, and focused recommendations for legal and policy change.

In recent years, we have seen that regardless of who sits in the White House, the US’s relationship with India comes first. The theory of change that supposes that awareness and public opinion in Western nations will lead the governments of those nations to prioritize religious freedom in their foreign policy is not working.

I believe we need to prioritize support for Indian Christian voices speaking prophetically to Indian authorities in India and [to rally behind] churches in India building national multi-faith and multi-stakeholder movements in support of greater freedom for all. The indigenous voices must grow louder in parallel to international voices advocating for religious freedom.

Knox Thames, former US state department official

While I’m unfamiliar with VOM’s labels, the trendline for religious freedom in India has been worrisome for years. I have argued for the US State Department to use its designation power to add India to the Special Watch List because of the consistent and growing number of religious freedom violations against Christians and also Muslims. Such a step by the United States could encourage the Modi government to pursue a different path, one that supports religious freedom and minority rights.

Designations such as these create advocacy opportunities. They force policymakers to consider inconvenient facts about India, allowing advocates to press for better policies that encourage Delhi to reform.

Todd Nettleton, VOM spokesperson, United States

VOM’s aim, with this change in status, is to accurately reflect the nature of persecution our Christian brothers and sisters in India are facing and to enable Christians in the free world to better understand and more knowledgeably pray for them.

It’s important to understand that this change in classification is not an effort toward change. Rather, it is a reflection of change that has already taken place in the persecution Indian Christians face. There may be those in government or leadership who see or reference this information, but VOM is not an advocacy organization and influencing governments or other leaders has never been our goal.

Rather, VOM’s goal is fellowship between members of the global body of Christ. VOM’s primary audience is followers of Jesus in free nations, and our goal is to enable them to better understand and more knowledgeably pray for persecuted Christians in more than 70 nations around the world—including India—where Christians regularly face persecution for the activity of their faith.

- More from Surinder Kaur

Church Life

Wang Zhiming: Miao Martyr Memorialized in Westminster Abbey

Liu Yanzi

He was tortured for his faith but remained steadfast through the Cultural Revolution.

Executioners (left) and a Chinese prisoner (right)

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

Westminster Abbey in London, the exclusive chapel of the British royal family, has served as the site for the coronation of generations of kings, royal weddings, funerals, and other significant events. Today it functions as the final resting place for many renowned British nobles, poets, generals, scientists, and writers, such as Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Charles Dickens.

Since 1998, ten statues of 20th-century Christian martyrs from around the globe have graced the Great West Door of the abbey, including Maximilian Kolbe, Martin Luther King Jr., and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Also among these revered figures, however, is a less widely known martyr from China: Wang Zhiming (王志明, 1907–1973), a Miao pastor from Wuding County, Yunnan Province, who was persecuted during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and executed after a violent denunciation rally in 1973.

The Miao people of China first encountered the gospel when Catholicism was introduced to the Guizhou and Sichuan provinces around 1798. One hundred years later (in 1906), Protestant missionaries Arthur Nicholls (葛秀峰) and William Theophilus Simpkin (师明庆) of the China Inland Mission (CIM) journeyed for several days from Kunming to reach the Miao tribes, who were still practicing slash-and-burn agriculture and hunting.

The foreign Protestant missionaries brought not only the Bible and the gospel but also health education measures, transforming the Miao people’s old customs of ghost worship and cohabitation with animals and treating epidemics such as plague and typhoid. Samuel Pollard (伯格里), a British Methodist missionary who had come to this area before Nicholls and Simpkin, created the Miao script, translated the Bible into the Miao language, and implemented social reforms in medicine, education, charity, and infrastructure among the Miao in Guizhou.

Wang Zhiming was born in 1907 in a Miao family. From 1913 to 1924, he attended a Christian school run by CIM in Dajing and Shapushan for the local Miao people. After graduation, he accepted a teaching position at the church school. In 1940, Wang became a preacher at the Shapushan General Assembly of CIM in northern Yunnan, and in 1944, he was promoted to the position of president of the General Assembly, overseeing Miao churches in Wuding, Luquan, Fumin, Lufeng, and Yuanmou counties.

In 1945, Wang traveled to Kunming to translate and compile the Miao version of Hymns of Praise to the Lord, which may have been the first Miao hymnbook in China. By the time of the Communist takeover in 1949, there were more than 5,500 Miao, Yi, and Lisu people who believed in Christ in Wuding County alone.

In 1951, Wang was ordained by CIM in Kunming and promoted to pastor. By this time, the Communist Party had targeted Christianity as the vanguard of imperialism invading China, and foreign missionaries were rushing out of the country. Wang was accused of being a “time bomb left by imperialism in the local area,” and his ordination as a pastor became one of his crimes. In 1954, he was arrested on the charge of “not repenting and continuing to engage in religious espionage activities.”

Two years later, in an attempt at international propaganda, the Communist Party released Wang and appointed him as deputy leader of a delegation that attended the National Day ceremony in Beijing, where he was received by Mao Zedong. However, this was merely an attempt to make Wang a tool for the Three-Self Patriotic Movement. Wang’s faith in Christ did not waver.

At this time, the Miao church had entered the stage of self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. With the deepening land reform efforts and the political campaigns of the Great Leap Forward and the Socialist Education Movement, the church faced increasing persecution. Church properties were seized, and pastors were arrested, tortured, and imprisoned.

By the time of the Cultural Revolution, the movement emphasizing the personal worship of Mao Zedong and loyalty to his ideology had reached its peak. Public church activities were completely banned, and the church went underground. Wang was constantly a target for refusing to let the Communist Party mold him into a “new socialist person.” Instead, he led his followers in clandestine Christian gatherings in nearby caves.

On May 11, 1969, Wang, along with 20 other church leaders, was arrested for opposing believers’ participation in the “Three Loyalties” (to Mao) campaign. Wang was accused of five “crimes.” First, he was called an imperialist lackey and an unrepentant spy, disseminating a spiritual opium (religion) that dulled the masses. Second, he was labeled a counterrevolutionary. Third, he was said to have consistently resisted the state’s religious policy. Fourth, he was a landlord, one of the “Five Black Categories”; and fifth, during the Long March, when the Red Army passed through Lufeng County, he had led a group of landlords who obstructed the Red Army’s passage, even personally killing Red Army soldiers (this last claim of murder was a false accusation).

During his incarceration in the Wuding County Detention Center from 1969 to 1973, Wang endured extreme mental and physical tribulations. When confronted with the question, “Do you trust Mao Zedong or Jesus?” his unequivocal response was “I believe in Jesus.” Wang’s refusal to recant exposed him to horrific torture.

In 1973, Wang sensed that his day of martyrdom for the Lord was imminent. Shackled in handcuffs and leg irons, he finally saw his son and wife, who had come to visit him. The Han guards, however, strictly forbade them to use the Miao language to communicate. Wang uttered a few words in Mandarin with coded spiritual meanings:

I have failed to reform, and my current predicament is self-inflicted. You should not emulate me but should obey the arrangements from above. You should work hard to ensure that you have food to eat and clothes to wear. You should maintain hygiene in all aspects to keep your body healthy and avoid diseases.

Wang’s wife presented him with six boiled eggs. With his bleeding palms, Wang patted his wife’s shoulders and back from left to right and then from top to bottom, making the sign of the cross in blood. He kept three of the eggs and returned three to his wife. The eggs symbolized resurrection to eternal life, and the two sets of three symbolized the Trinity.

On December 28, 1973, 66-year-old Wang was sentenced to death. The following day, after a public trial attended by tens of thousands of people at a middle school playground in Wuding County, he was paraded through the streets. His five crimes were inscribed into the death mark hat on the back of his neck, and the three Chinese characters for Wang Zhiming were crossed out in red signifying that the criminal deserved death. Wang faced the congregation with a smile on his face, showing not fear but joy.

After Wang was executed by firing squad, the local government announced that “at the request of the revolutionary masses, the criminal’s body should be completely destroyed with explosives.” Wang’s family quickly pleaded with the government for mercy, promising not to erect a tombstone or any other conspicuous marker. The government agreed to let the family “drag the body of the counterrevolutionary back home.” Villagers drove a horse-drawn cart to the execution ground to collect the body, and along the way, the Miao villagers halted the cart to bid farewell to Wang.

In 1976, Wang’s son, Wang Zisheng, was also arrested for assembling an underground church. Overall, seven members of Wang’s family suffered for their faith during the Cultural Revolution. Not until after the revolution had ended did Wang’s family receive a “rehabilitation” notice restoring his public respectability.

Illustration by CT / Source Image: WikiMedia Commons

Wang Zhiming statue (left) at the Westminster Abbey in London.

When Westminster Abbey decided to commemorate Wang with a statue, his descendants learned about it very late. The British had sent all the materials in English, and Wang Zisheng, the son of a “Five Black Categories” father who had never attended middle school, could not decipher the English text. But through other people’s translations and explanations, the family eventually learned that Wang had been selected as one of the most significant martyrs of the 20th century.

Around 2002, Wang’s descendants visited Westminster Abbey and took photos to bring back home. When they showed the photos in their home village, the Miao people were moved to tears and the Christians gave glory to the Lord.

In 2011, Chinese dissident writer Liao Yiwu, living in exile in Germany, published a book titled God Is Red (the English translation was published in 2012), which included Liao’s interview with Wang Zisheng and recounted some of Wang Zhiming’s stories. In 2014, independent documentary filmmaker Hu Jie released Songs from Maidichong (video in Chinese); the film recreated the heavenly praise songs echoing in the mountains of central Yunnan and described the impact of increased materialism, which had accompanied China’s “reform and opening up” period, on the Miao church. It also included interviews with Wang’s relatives.

Despite brutal persecution, Miao believers clung firmly to their faith, and their pastor, Wang Zhiming, left a poignant testimony of martyrdom. May their testimony continue to inspire the Chinese churches currently enduring persecution, and may it encourage the Miao church to take up its cross, follow the Lord, and spread the gospel faithfully in the new era.

Liu Yanzi is a Chinese scholar and teacher in Japan. She holds a PhD in international cultural studies from Kobe University.

- More from Liu Yanzi

Inkwell

The Scars of the Crocodile Spirit

Amelia Rasmusen Buzzard

On Life that Doesn’t Take an Eye for an Eye

Photography by Shafi Marshall

FOLLOWING AN ACCIDENT in which an Amtrak train hit a small car at noon on a summer day, paramedics recovered two living bodies from the wreckage and transported them to Rockford Memorial Hospital, where one went into surgery for a splenectomy. That body, one of a 10-year-old girl, emerged breathing, with a line of staples down her belly.

I was that girl. I remember absently running my fingers over the bumps of steel as I fell asleep at night. It’s strange to think that I know what it’s like to be stapled, the ends of steel slivers curled beneath my skin. Months later, when they removed the staples, the holes bled, sixteen of them, and left a scarry constellation on my belly. I felt unsafe, like I had been unbuckled from a car seat, missing the familiar tug of the staples on each side of my midsagittal plane. The metal strips were quite literally holding me together, and when they disappeared, I thought I would fall apart. But over the course of the months, my body had quietly grown its own adhesive.

Over time, scar tissue bloomed where the staples had once been. The pink line faded to white against my natural tan. My mom gave me a round-capped tube of Mederma and said to give myself a belly rub each night to fade the scars. I never used it. I didn’t think my scars were ugly. They were a glimmering cloud in the desert sky, a stretch of the Milky Way. They were vast and terrible and irrefutable. They were nature. And they were beautiful.

My scars set the scene for a larger story that the world has tried many times to tell but only God can finish. Though just a child, I bore upon my belly a glyph that told humanity’s story: We will be broken. We can heal. But the mark of pain remains. My scars, like all of our scars, remind me of past pain and that future pain will come, and more pain, and eventually death. I cannot control that.

THE CROCODILE PEOPLE of Papua New Guinea have practiced ritual scarification for thousands of years. Still today, there are men who submit their bodies to be slashed hundreds of times by razor blades in a rite of passage so brutal that some die in the process. But when the initiate emerges from the spirit house, he has taken on his god’s form. His back, like the crocodile’s, bears a gnarled pattern of scales.

In an interview with the BBC, the chief-councilor of New Guinea’s Parambei village declared of the crocodiles what pagans have always known about their gods: “We fear them but draw energy from that power.”

The scars serve as the initiates’ reminder that they have undergone intense physical pain and are now capable of anything. By being figuratively eaten by the crocodile and taking on its appearance and ferocity, the initiate becomes the power he feared. Upon his back, he wears the crocodile’s hide. When he looks at himself in the river, a crocodile stares back.

But the tribesmen can never feel secure in their scars. Faced with the vast indifference of bloody Nature, they choose to meet it on their own terms, exerting what little control they possess in order to escape with their lives. They feed the gods some bloody flesh, and, in doing so, spare the village. It is a fear-based business. If they fail to placate the gods, the gods will have no use for them but to devour. At their most basic level, the scars remind the Parambei tribesman to beware the crocodile, or suffer once again.

The Parambei aim to complete the story of suffering by deriving power from pain, but ultimately, it’s still just suffering, more suffering, and then death. The pagan story of scars may be rich with symbolic meaning, but the ending ruins everything. Embracing scars is not the answer to life’s suffering.

FOR THE CHRISTIAN, the most important scars are not our own. We look upward, to a God who bears his own marks upon his body. Instead of looking at the world around us to find meaning for our scars like the pagan, we look to the scars of Jesus.

In the spirit houses, the crocodile stamps the bodies of his worshippers with his image. In the Garden of Eden, the Christian God stamped mankind with his image. The crocodile spirit and the Christian God don’t sound so different, although God’s tender forming from clay is less violent than the crocodile’s slashing knife. Where the two stories really diverge is when the Christian God stamped his very self with the image of man.

In the Old Testament, God’s people complain he has forgotten them. He responds through the prophet Isaiah: “Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:16 ESV). In “The Glorious Deeds of Men,” writer and podcaster Spencer Klavan explains how this verse metaphorically describes how creators are changed by creation. God, who shaped Adam from the dirt, has been indelibly altered by that act. He can never forget his creation because when he made it, it became etched into his very being. According to Strong’s Concordance, the primary meaning of the Hebrew word translated “engraved” is “to cut.” It is likely the same word the crocodile men would use for their ceremony—but in this case, it is not the man who cuts his body to bind himself to god. Instead, God cuts his body to bind himself to man.

It sounds like sacrilege to say that the eternal God would allow himself to be changed by the temporal. It is most definitely sacrilege to suppose that he would ever sculpt himself into the shape of a man. But why stop there? If he wanted to engineer the ultimate obscenity, God would cause his man-self to be born in a stable, whipped, beaten, nailed to a cross, severed from his own goodness, and killed. I should shut my mouth now, lest a lightning bolt destroy me. The Almighty would never allow himself to be pierced in such a way.

Yet, that’s exactly what he did.

IN THE YEARS following my own scarification, I came to adopt the mindset of a crocodile man. It is, I believe, the one that comes most naturally to us. As I ran my fingers over the ripple of white on my belly, I convinced myself that because I had been spared death, I must pay the god who scarred me. I must pay him not for power, but for the privilege of living. God became to me a stern face and a wagging finger, like those teachers who say, “Playground time is a privilege, not a right. You must be a good girl, or I will take it away.” Like the crocodile men, I lived in fear that if I did not appease the god, he would take away the life he had given me.

That, in our world, is how power operates. Might makes right. Eye for an eye. Tit for tat.

Though the crocodile men of Papua New Guinea at first seem strange and foreign to Western ways of thinking, their rationale for scarification is as common as mud. Scars remind us that we dodged death, but next time, if we aren’t careful, we might not be so lucky. God’s scars remind us that he did not escape death. His own broken body is proof. When the whips bit into his back, piercing the skin with the stripes of a crocodile’s back, he did not become like the crocodile, powerful and cruel, but instead went straight into its jaws.

It just doesn’t make sense. Why would The All-Powerful subject himself to this humiliation?

The textbook answer is that God sacrificed himself to fulfill the demands of justice, once and for all. Read the theologians for a deeper analysis of the finer mechanisms of substitutionary atonement. But that does not get to the emotional heart of the question. When people ask why Jesus died on the cross, they are not wondering about metaphysics but why he would do it this way. In the moment that God created man, surely he would have seen the future stretched out before him like a map—Cain striking Abel, the Canaanites burning their children for Moloch, all suffering reaching a climax in the moment on the cross when God abandoned himself and experienced the purest form of Hell. Surely, an all-powerful God could have written the story so it did not involve any scars at all? Wasn’t there another way?

This is the problem of evil. I’ve thought hard about this question, like most of us have, only to come to the conclusion that the scars of God are themselves the only sufficient answer.

When I first read Isaiah’s words about God’s engraved palms, I imagined an angel scribe using some sort of spiritual laser to paint God’s hands with our names in glowing henna. But that’s not what happened. Instead, God recruited Roman soldiers in a godforsaken hinterland of a world empire to shatter the bones of his hand with iron nails. The soldiers treated God, whom they viewed as an ethnic, social, and political inferior, with less dignity than they would have treated a stray dog. The fists that held cyclones and galaxies—the entire universe—chose to suffer wounds inflicted with injustice, racism, and cruelty. His choice to engrave that moment forever in his eternal body silences all accusations.

If he was willing to suffer for this world as it is, in all its exquisite pain, then who am I to say he should have made it differently? But even the most humble of us can wonder, and ask what we are being taught.

What the story of God’s scars tells me, first and foremost, is that he takes delight in alchemizing the filthiest evil into good, even if it costs him everything. Because he suffered willingly, because he bears scars on his body, my own scars are symbols neither of power nor survival but of hope. We will be broken. We can heal. But God, unlike the crocodile spirit, has sealed our temporary, fleeting, healing into eternal scars. Those scars will last.

DESPITE THE CONVICTION I feel when I meditate upon this story, it is difficult to live in its truth. It is not just keeping one’s thoughts kind and pure, remembering to pray, and following one’s vocation with energy and faithfulness that makes the Christian life a daily battle. It is resisting the urge to make a deal with the crocodile spirit.

We all accumulate mental and physical scars as we go through life, even amidst our materially easy and modern life. We are tempted to glorify our scars, to say that what does not kill us makes us stronger, and even to deliberately scar ourselves to show our power. But whatever we may pretend, the only scars that can save us are those of the Crucifixion, accepted not as a deal, but as a gift. If we are to cling to Christ’s scarred hands, we must drop the blood sacrifices, stop the incantations, and burn the spirit houses. If we let them go, we will find that what has held us all this time was nothing more or less than God’s grace.

Amelia Rasmusen Buzzard has written for The American Spectator, Evie Magazine, Medicinal Media, and Perishable Goods. Find her on Instagram @ameliajane_writes or read her blog at writersblogck.substack.com.

- More from Amelia Rasmusen Buzzard

Books

Excerpt

God Whispers to a Restless and Grief-Stricken Heart

Mike Cosper

An excerpt on doubt, despair, and restoration from Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found.

Elijah in the Desert by Moritz Berendt

Wikimedia Commons / Edits by CT

Think about Mount Tabor for a moment. Remember the blinding light of Jesus’ glory and the stunning presence of Elijah and Moses, the weight of that moment and what it meant in the mind and heart of Peter, and what it confirmed about the dream that had taken up residence in his heart and his spiritual imagination. The brilliance of this dream—how incredibly close it felt on Mount Tabor—creates the unbearable cognitive dissonance with the reality of Jesus, arrested, mocked, beaten, scorned, flayed, and executed. Dead in a tomb.

Land of My Sojourn: The Landscape of a Faith Lost and Found

Mike Cosper (Author)

IVP

168 pages

These visions didn’t fit together: the bleach-white light of the Transfiguration, the ashen linen that now wrapped Jesus’ dead body, and the stony blackness of the tomb as the stone rolled shut against it. Peter had expected Elijah: fire from heaven, a land cleansed of evil. What he’d gotten instead—I don’t think he had a name for it. I don’t know him.

But maybe Peter didn’t know Elijah either.

Sometimes our expectations are the source of our pain.

Peter looked at Elijah and saw a conquering hero. But he was only paying attention to part of the story.

When Elijah humiliated the prophets of Baal, the crowd of onlookers fell to the ground and cried out, “The Lord—he is God!” (1 Kings 18:39). They then slaughtered the prophets, cleansing the land of their oppression. Elijah then prayed for rain, and it came. Ahab fled to Jezreel, unable to deny what he’d seen with his own eyes. Mission accomplished.

And yet it wasn’t. Jezebel responded to all Ahab told her by promising to kill Elijah, and the menace of humiliation and death overwhelmed him. He fled to the desert, collapsed under a broom tree, and prayed for death. “I’ve had enough,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kings 19:4). I give up. I turned and ran. I failed. And I wish I were dead. It’s the cry of disillusionment and despair.

God gave Elijah the gift of sleep under the broom tree, woke him to feed him, and let him sleep again. When Elijah woke the second time, God fed him again to strengthen him for the long journey ahead to Mount Sinai.

Elijah’s journey from the broom tree to Sinai took 40 days and 40 nights—the same length of time Goliath taunted the armies of Israel, the great flood covered every living thing on earth, and, later, Jesus fasted in the wilderness. Elijah’s long-suffering wasn’t without purpose. There’s an intersection with God at the other end of 40 days and 40 nights, and Elijah would soon have his.

The question God asks Elijah in the cave at Mount Sinai is one he asks all of us who find ourselves disillusioned and disoriented. “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (v. 9).

It’s not unlike the question Jesus asks almost everyone he encounters in the Gospels: “What do you want?”

The answer isn’t easily found. It’s hard to say “I want to go back” because you know that the homeland you miss was built, to some degree, on illusions. Disillusionment, in this way, is a gift, albeit an unpleasant one. But naming something better is difficult too.

Elijah’s answer is illuminating, not because he provides us with the right response (as if there were one) but because he shows a way forward: he complains. Loudly. Unapologetically. “I’ve given everything to you, God. But now I’m alone. I have no place to belong. No sacred spaces. Every memory is haunted. Everyone I loved and trusted has either turned on me or been crushed just like me.”

I was raised not to complain, to see it as unvirtuous. I was also taught much about the holiness of God and what we were and weren’t allowed to say or do before him. But there’s a funny tension between my modern ideas and the attitudes of many of the fathers and mothers of our faith in the Hebrew Bible. They have an audacity, a willingness to argue, complain, or speak out of naked self-interest. Maybe that’s one aspect of what it means to have a childlike faith: having the audacity to speak your mind in a relationship where the asymmetry of authority and control couldn’t be starker.

God tells Elijah to walk out onto the mountain. It appears, from the text, that he doesn’t, instead watching from within the cave as a violent wind kicks up enough to tear the mountain apart and shatter rocks. But God isn’t in the wind. Then comes an earthquake, and still no God. Then comes fire, but again, God isn’t in the fire (1 Kings 19:11–12).

The account of God’s absence in the wind, quake, and fire is less about God and more about Elijah. He’s a veteran of God’s glory at Mount Carmel. He stands on what is maybe the holiest ground outside of Jerusalem, a mountain where God once before appeared spectacularly and renewed his covenant with Abraham’s children. But Elijah can’t see God in the spectacular anymore. The wind doesn’t move him. The earthquake doesn’t make him shiver. The fire leaves him cold.

As the final traces of wind quiet and the last of the flames turn to embers, a deep silence settles over the mountain. There, like a whisper, Elijah hears the voice of God. There’s something different here, though, than the voice of God Elijah has been wrestling with up until now. He’s aware of the divine presence in a new way and is at last drawn to it, walking to the mouth of the cave as if to get a better listen.

I read this story as descriptive of a journey of the heart. It’s a picture of the transformation that happens on the other side of grief. Perhaps it’s not simply that God wasn’t in the wind. (What would it mean that he was “in the wind” anyway?) Rather, it’s that Elijah had lost the ability to find him in the wind. The spectacles had grown too complicated, too haunted with loss. Elijah’s restless and grief-stricken heart needed silence on the other side of the storms of wind and fire to hear and recognize the voice of God.

Elijah came to Sinai despairing that his life and his dreams had come to an end. He left aware that the best parts of that dream—the hope of a renewed and restored Israel—were in God’s hands and always had been. Seven thousand people Elijah had no idea existed remained faithful. The deeper awareness was that he needn’t cling to the outcomes of whatever followed. The old cliché “God is in control” turns out to be true, but it may be something we only truly learn and that only liberates us after things fall apart.

Like disillusionment, despair is a disease only for true believers—dreamers and lovers. It hits when life falls apart, our sense of meaning and purpose fades when the people closest to us become incomprehensible or those we love disappear because of lies, brokenness, or death. Despair afflicts the lonely and forgotten, those whose prayers echo against a sky of concrete gray.

Those who’ve never known it themselves often encounter this deep darkness in others and are often mystified by it. The temptation to moralize it is powerful. “Put your hope in God,” the cry of the psalmist, can quickly become, “Cheer up already,” a sentiment likely to only deepen despair by intensifying a person’s sense that something is wrong with them, their pain is invisible, and they are ultimately alone.

What we see at Sinai is both sobering and hopeful for both those who have suffered in spiritual darkness and those who love and want to support those suffering now. It simultaneously reveals that there is something solitary about that darkness and that, like Elijah’s journey first into the wilderness and ultimately to the cave on Sinai, the journey is taken alone.

Dante’s Inferno has long been understood as the greatest literary expression of this kind of encounter with disillusionment and despair. No one chooses exile and no one chooses spiritual disillusionment. You simply awaken to find yourself there, wondering where the light has gone and where to turn next. In Inferno, Dante finds himself trapped between ravenous creatures and the gates of hell, discovering that the only way out of darkness is through it.

So it is with disillusionment. As much as we might run from it or distract ourselves, it lurks like the she-wolf and the leopard that hunted that great Italian poet. Our way out is into a place we fear, a journey that for Dante meant bearing witness to the great evils of the world on his way to redemption in paradise.

For Elijah it meant finding solitude under the broom tree and on the fiery face of Mount Sinai. There he found out what we all can discover on the other side of grief—that he wasn’t alone. That under the noise of storms and the heat of fires was the whisper of God, and that in the distance beyond us is always a remnant. We are never truly alone.

Mike Cosper is the director of CT Media.

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Wire Story

Calvin President Resigns Over Inappropriate Messages

Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

Trustees found Wiebe Boer’s alleged conduct “concerning” and “inconsistent with the high standard and character” the college expects of its leadership.

Wiebe Boer had been president of Calvin since 2022.

Calvin University / RNS

The president of Calvin University has resigned after admitting he engaged in inappropriate communication with a member of the campus community.

In a statement Monday, the Calvin Board of Trustees said it had received a report alleging President Wiebe Boer “engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate communication and attention toward a non-student member of the campus community.”

“The report did not include allegations of sexually explicit communication or physical contact, but the alleged conduct is concerning and inappropriate,” the trustees said in their statement.

University officials said they then hired an outside expert to review the allegations. That review included speaking with Boer, a former oil executive and son of Christian Reformed Church missionaries who became Calvin’s president in 2022.

“After being notified of the report, Dr. Boer denied some of the allegations but did admit to sending communications that were inappropriate and inconsistent with the high standard of conduct and character expected of the President of Calvin University,” the board said in its statement. “Dr. Boer subsequently offered his resignation, which the Board accepted.”

No further details about Boer’s conduct or the complaint were given.

Gregory Elzinga, Calvin’s vice president of advancement, has been named interim president. The board’s statement described him as already being involved in the day-to-day management of the school and “well situated to provide effective continuity of leadership while the Board conducts a thorough search for the University’s next permanent President.”

School officials plan to hold a campus meeting for students with Elzinga on Thursday.

Boer became president of Calvin at a time when the school had been under pressure to abide by the rules of the Christian Reformed Church in North America, in particular the church’s teaching about sexuality. In 2022, the denomination ruled that congregations and church members must abide by church teaching on marriage and sex—which state that only heterosexual sex within marriage is allowed.

That teaching is now considered a part of the church’s core confession—and applies to Calvin, which allows openly LGBTQ students to attend but requires faculty and staff to support the church’s confessions.

Some faculty have asked for a “gravamen,” which would allow them to officially state their concerns about a church doctrine.

A Calvin professor said his contract was not renewed after he officiated a same-sex wedding for a staffer at a research center that had been affiliated with the school. That center and the school also have cut ties.

In the fall of 2022, Boer told Religion News Service that Calvin will continue to be hospitable to its LGBTQ students. “I don’t want to be the president of an institution that isn’t welcoming to everybody,” Boer said.

Boer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its announcement of Boer’s resignation, the trustees said they “take our responsibility to provide an environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation very seriously and continually strive to promptly and thoroughly respond to allegations of misconduct.”

“We ask for prayers for the entire Calvin community, trusting that the Holy Spirit will comfort all of us in the sustaining grace of God, now and always,” they said in their statement.

- More from Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

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In Six-Hour Meeting, Park Street Votes to Affirm Current Leadership

Daniel Silliman and Kara Bettis Carvalho in Boston

Senior minister Mark Booker asks the historic evangelical congregation to commit to work of repair after “break of trust.”

Park Street Church in Boston

tupungato / Getty

Park Street Church voted to affirm senior minister Mark Booker on Sunday by a vote of 350 to 173, with 20 abstaining.

The prominent evangelical church in Boston has been roiled by controversy as ministers, elders, staff, and lay leaders disagreed over a series of decisions—as well as the process of making decisions—at the 220-year-old congregationalist church. Ultimately the entire congregation was thrown into the dispute. The conflict became public when a group of more than 75 members petitioned for a special meeting to review the firing of an associate minister who said he had “serious concerns” about Booker’s spiritual leadership, citing “patterns at variance with the biblical qualifications.”

The conflict raised questions about checks and balances and the durability of congregationalism amid escalating disagreements about leadership. Congregationalism is the preferred polity of many evangelicals, including those in Baptist, nondenominational, and Stone-Campbell churches.

Park Street’s regularly scheduled congregational meeting on Sunday was cast as a referendum on the leadership of the church. Critics proposed a set of amendments to the bylaws that they said would add much-needed limits on church leaders’ power and nominated an alternative slate of elder candidates.

Booker, who was called to lead the church in 2020, proposed a nonbinding vote to affirm his continued leadership at Park Street. The elders approved the ballot measure, adding it to the agenda, as CT reported last week.

“It is clear there has been a break of trust at the elder, minister, and staff level,” Booker told the congregation during the fractious six-hour meeting on Sunday. “This break of trust among the leaders of this church has spilled over into the congregation as well, causing deep pain for all of us, and all of us bear it in one way or another. The Christianity Today article revealed these breaks to a wider audience. And I understand that this is and has been unsettling for our community.”

Booker characterized CT’s reporting on the division at the church as an “oversimplified binary picture” and called it disappointing.

Twenty-one staff members also wrote an email saying they were frustrated with CT’s reporting and “upset with the way it characterizes our church.”

In his annual meeting speech, Booker said he and many others bore responsibility for the “fences” that had broken down in his community. But he asked the congregation to affirm his calling as senior minister despite his mistakes.

“The question I believe will be before you in a few minutes is whether you would like for me to grow as I shepherd among you,” Booker said.

Booker’s wife, Mandy Booker, was given a few minutes to speak in defense of her husband’s character. She said the allegations against him “paint an impressionistic picture” of “an insensitive and power-hungry man” but are based “almost entirely on imputations of motives and disagreements about leadership decisions.”

Those who know Booker best, she said, know this depiction is wrong.

“Mark is a pastor, through and through,” she told the congregation. “He lives and breathes Jesus.”

Other Park Street leaders also spoke up at the meeting to take responsibility for the division that has threatened to split the church. Elder Leslie Liu said that a few weeks ago she read Amos 6:12, which says “you have turned justice into poison and the fruit of righteousness into bitterness,” and wept for Park Street.

“This is what I see in our church, bitterness and poison, where there should have been righteousness and justice,” Liu said. “Our congregation is divided. Small groups are divided. Committees are divided. Staff are divided. And I don’t think I need to tell you the board has been divided for some time now. You can tell by what you’re seeing here. When you see signs of sickness on the outside of the fruit, you know something’s not good on the inside.”

Liu said that after three or four other complaints about Booker, the elders should have asked for an independent investigation into whether he had misused his spiritual authority. She asked the congregation, however, to turn to God in this time of crisis.

“Have you ever been sick but you didn’t actually know what was making you sick?” Liu said. “We know that we are sinners, but now we are seeing it out in the open. Let’s go to the master physician for the surgery that we need.”

The extended meeting was contentious and occasionally chaotic. People shouted at the moderator to allow members more or less time and leeway to speak. There were conflicts over parliamentary procedure and the proper way to count standing votes.

One member objected to the nonbinding vote, calling it “meaningless,” citing a guide to parliamentary procedure.

“If we want to take a vote, we can take a vote,” Karolyn Park said, “but let it be binding, because we are the congregation with final human authority. We deserve our voices to be heard.”

The congregation voted by paper ballot, passing their votes down the rows to place in a collection basket.

When the ballots were counted and the results announced—67 percent for Booker, 33 percent opposed—the church was silent, except for the shifting of a few bodies and the shuffling of a few feet.

The affirmed senior minister said that no one took joy in the result and that moving forward would require “a lot of grace.” He asked the congregation to commit themselves, in the coming months and years, to the work of repair. He promised he would be a shepherd to the whole church, even those who voted against him.

“I’ve had the sense for some time that we—the staff, the elders, and the congregation—are on the cusp of God’s deeper work,” Booker said. “We cannot do this as we fight each other. We can do this as we heal together.”

Not everyone was satisfied with the result. Michael Balboni, the former associate minister who brought charges against Booker, accused the leadership of choosing power over love.

“The 60 or 65 percent who have won today, you haven’t won. You haven’t won. Because love has not won, and when love is overcome by power, we all lose and Jesus is defamed and our church has reproach upon us,” Balboni said at the meeting. “We’re all going home having been proven broken.”

Some in the congregation complained that Balboni was off topic and asked the moderator to stop him, while others shouted, “Let him speak!”

The former minister said the glory of God was not present in the congregation, “unless we choose the path of love” instead of power.

“This is my last word. I will not give up. And I will not give in. Until there is a fair process that hears what has happened to me, what has happened to other ministers, I will not stop,” Balboni said.

The Park Street clerk has approved a petition to call a special meeting in April to review the elder’s decisions to dismiss the charges Balboni brought against Booker.

On Sunday, however, the congregation affirmed Booker and elected the five officers and six elders chosen by the nominating committee. The alternative slate of candidates put up by petition all lost. The congregation also rejected all five proposed amendments to the bylaws.

Some Park Street members who spoke to CT after the meeting said the meeting was disheartening and they wished there had never been a vote on Booker’s leadership.

“I personally feel it was unfortunate that that vote took place. It drew a line in the sand,” said Victor Sheen, who has been a member for more than 20 years. “He does not have the mandate, even though he has the majority. But I am hopeful there can be healing.”

Others said they were glad the congregation got the chance to vote and Booker was affirmed. They believe it will help the congregation be able to put all of this controversy behind them soon.

“The congregation affirmed their belief that Mark will continue the work of reconciliation and repair,” said Elizabeth Lohnes, the church’s former director of communications, in an email to CT. “I am eager to see a move towards a thriving work environment for everyone.”

One member who joined in 2022 said he was impressed by Booker’s leadership during the sometimes painful meeting.

Booker “did his part in leading the whole congregation in a posture of love and grace,” Hanno van der Bijl said in an email. “He listened well as he sought to bring everyone together. He is a broken and sinful person like the rest of us, and he acknowledged and apologized for his mistakes.”

Members hope the affirmation vote can mark the beginning of a new chapter for the historic evangelical church.

“While really difficult, allowing space in the meeting for both sides to be heard was an important step in resolving conflict and moving forward as a congregation united in our love for Jesus,” wrote Laurel Sweeney, who also joined the church in 2022. “I’ve greatly appreciated and benefited from Mark’s gifted preaching. I’m thankful that the majority of the congregation affirmed his leadership and that we can begin a process of healing.”

Correction: In a previous version of this article, a paraphrase of a statement from former associate minister Michael Balboni mischaracterized his remarks. He did not say that the glory of God had “departed” from Park Street Church, but that it is not there “unless we choose the path of love.” According to Balboni, he was not referencing 1 Samuel 4:21.

News

Petra Means Rock Churches: Jordan Permits Site’s First Prayers in 1,400 Years

Jayson Casper

Religious tourism initiative at ancient city recalls Moab, Byzantium, and Arab tribal Christianity, amid speculation on Paul’s possible first missionary journey.

Archbishop Christoforus in the Byzantine church of Petra.

Courtesy of Board of Commissioners of the Petra Regional Authority

[This article is also available in Dutch.]

Imagine yourself as Indiana Jones, traversing the narrow, nearly mile-long Siq gorge, with mountain cliffs towering on either side. Turning a corner then reveals the vast expanse of the ancient city of Petra and its majestic Treasury, the first-century rock-carved tomb of an ancient Nabatean king. You pass by the 121-foot-tall structure and its statues of Roman and Egyptian gods, making your way up a steep 800-step ascent to the equally impressive Monastery.

But before reaching Petra’s largest monument, you turn off the path into a different sort of ruin, mosaics lining the floor around half-sized recycled columns as incense wafts through the air. But unlike in the Harrison Ford movie, you do not meet an 11th-century knight preserved by the Holy Grail. Instead, the Greek Orthodox metropolitan of Jordan passes you a cup of Holy Communion.

In January, he offered the first Christian prayers in Petra in 1,400 years.

Other generations of film aficionados may prefer The Mummy Returns, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, or even Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. While onsite Hollywood productions provide revenue for Jordan, this is dwarfed by the $5.3 billion the country earns from its tourism industry. In 2022, Petra received 900,000 visitors, nearly one-quarter of the national total.

But now, the Hashemite kingdom is adding a religious component.

“It is a great blessing to be in this holy place in Petra,” said Archbishop Christoforus, before proceeding to offer the bread and wine. “We are not thinking of what surrounds us in stone, but of the saints and spiritual identity in its heritage, history, and civilization—and our great and blessed [Jordanian] homeland.”

In 2021, Jordan launched a five-year national tourism strategy with an emphasis on religious sites, including the Vatican-endorsed pilgrimage locations of Jesus’ baptism at Bethany-beyond-the-Jordan; Mount Nebo, from which Moses viewed the Promised Land; and Mukawir, home to a Herodian palace where John the Baptist may have been beheaded at the biblical Machaerus. Approximately 85 percent of tourists come for cultural and heritage purposes, and one-quarter of baptism site visitors travel from the United States.

With such tourists likely to visit Petra already, Jordan would like to extend their stay.

“Unfortunately, Petra is known mostly for its Treasury and Siq,” said Fares al-Braizat, chief of the Board of Commissioners of the Petra Regional Authority. “There is plenty more it can offer, and the churches are an additional discovery.”

Ten have been discovered so far, with excavations ongoing. But the fifth-century Byzantine cathedral was only discovered in 1990 and fully unearthed eight years later. Restoration has proceeded sufficiently not only to inspire Braizat to add Petra to Jordan’s list of Christian historical sites but also to revive the ancient city’s religious heritage. It only adds to the nation’s reputation as an open-air museum, he said.

Jordan’s evangelical community is appreciative.

“How can you have a historic church site and not bless it with prayer?” said David Rihani, president of the Jordanian Assemblies of God. “Petra shows that the government cares about the history of Christianity in this land.”

The biblical history is even longer. Petra may have been inhabited as early as 7000 B.C. and became the capital of the Nabatean Kingdom around the fourth century B.C. The Jewish historian Josephus and the Septuagint translators connected the Arab tribe to Ishmael’s firstborn son Nebaioth, and some identify Petra as the biblical Kadesh where Moses struck the rock that gushed water in Numbers 20.

The Iron Age Edomites then refused the Hebrews passage along the King’s Highway—located in Jordan—and Aaron thereafter died and was buried at Mount Hor. Local tradition, Josephus, and the Christian historian Eusebius place this in Petra, where a mountaintop shrine is said to cover his tomb.

Herod the Great, supported by Cleopatra, plundered Nabataea in 32 B.C., but his son Herod Antipas married the daughter of the Nabatean king Aretas IV, whom he divorced in A.D. 27 in favor of Herodias, his brother’s wife, causing the controversy with John the Baptist.

Petra’s initial Christian history is quite contested. After conversion, Paul says in Galatians 1 that he immediately went to “Arabia,” which scholars identify with the Nabatean Kingdom, which included Syria. Many believe this three-year sojourn was a time of contemplation. But noting that Paul’s Damascus Road experience was accompanied by his call to apostleship, Martin Hengel argues that this was actually Paul’s first missionary journey.

Braizat and Giovanni Pietro Dal Toso, the Vatican ambassador to Jordan, at Petra’s Treasury monument.

Jewish Targums relate that Abraham’s wife Hagar settled in the area, and Paul speaks of her in Galatians 4. A Jewish community is known to have existed in Hegra, the second most important city of the Nabatean Kingdom, located not far from Petra. Isaiah 60 mentions the “rams of Nebaioth” offered on Jerusalem’s altar, and Hengel speculates Paul may have been motivated by this vision of the messianic kingdom.

Such explanation provides context to the 2 Corinthians 11 account of Paul’s escape from Damascus, lowered in a basket from the city wall. Acts 9 attributes the trouble to Jewish leaders, but Paul specifically names the governor of Aretas, the only mention of a contemporary ruler in his epistles. It would not be hard to imagine that the apostle’s preaching disturbed his Hellenistic brethren and that the local leader stepped in to calm the scene.

But there is no archaeological evidence that Paul visited Petra, or that the apostle otherwise features in the conversion of the Nabatean people, said Pearce Paul Creasman, executive director of the American Center of Research (ACOR), recognized as a “genius” by National Geographic. Based in Amman, ACOR was founded in 1968 and excavated the Byzantine Church in Petra in 1992. Over the next several years, three other ecclesial sites were unearthed, chronologically descending the mountain.

The late fourth-century Ridge Church is understood to be the oldest, with the Blue Church—named after its colored Egyptian granite construction—likely slightly preceding the originally named “Petra Church,” to which the fourth structure, a baptistry, was later attached. All are easily accessible to tourists today.

The church father Athanasius mentioned a Bishop Asterius of Petra, who denounced Arianism as a heresy and was sent into exile before being restored to his position by Emperor Julian in A.D. 362. Archbishop Christoforus stated there were seven dioceses in Petra, jurisdictionally under the church of Jerusalem. And a set of about 140 papyruses discovered in the Byzantine Church in 1993 show a flourishing community as late as the sixth century. The Greek script depicts a type of proto-Arabic and describes how Emperor Justinian’s edicts were applied locally within only one year of issuance.

But current research, Creasman said, cannot determine how Christianity came to the city. Tombs marked the deification of Nabatean kings, while temples facilitated the worship of the local god Dushara and his three female cohorts al-Uzza, Allat, and Manat. Petra lost its independence to the Romans in A.D. 106, and an earthquake in 363 sealed a decline from its golden era as a regional caravan hub, displaced by Syria’s Palmyra and emerging sea routes.

Yet history is replete with examples of how new religious ideas took hold in trading cities, and Petra was then a lush green center in a regional desert that at one time attracted a population of over 20,000 people. All currently discovered Christian sites, however, date after the earthquake, as the new landscape afforded the opportunity to recast the city in its Christian identity.

Some scholars believe that Petra continued as majority pagan, and while some temples were repurposed—or at least marked with crosses—others maintained their original function. The famous Monastery, originally dedicated to King Obodas I, was transformed into a church at an unknown date, while the Treasury also features later Christian carvings.

“Views and beliefs change,” Creasman said, “even as populations stay the same.”

Petra thereafter fades from history, with little known about the region’s Islamic transformation. There is a 12th-century Crusader castle, and evidence of Muslim curiosity when the Egyptian Mameluke sultan visited a century later. Petra was not rediscovered by Western exploration until 1812, receiving UNESCO World Heritage Site designation in 1985. In 2007, it was voted one of the new seven wonders of the world.

But it is Petra’s status as an “icon of the Arabs” that gives it special significance to Jordanian Christians, said Chris Dawson, a British assistant professor of historical theology at Jordan Evangelical Theological Seminary (JETS). Author of Travel Through Jordan, which he calls a brief guide for Bible students, he has led tour groups to Christian sites for decades and describes 60 locations that shed light on the Scriptures.

“There is an idea that to be authentically Arab you have to be Muslim,” Dawson said. “Putting Petra on the map as an authentically Arab Christian city—however pluralistic it was—is an opportunity to show otherwise.”

But there are other locations as well. Pella is the Decapolis city to which Christians fled after the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Madaba, in addition to its famous mosaic map of the Holy Land, has a nearby church clearly depicting an Arab identity. And Jerash, one of the world’s best-preserved Greco-Roman cities, allows modern-day believers to imagine a civic life permeated by paganism.

With a previous temple to Zeus built by a surely unrelated “son of Zebedee,” Jerash hosted incense altars to gods, along with what archaeologists have identified as an oracle, an idol-making factory, and a meat market once stocked with the remains of sacrifices. Considering Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 8, how might Christians have navigated their diet and otherwise culturally related to their surroundings?

“Go not so much for pilgrimage,” Dawson said, “but to put yourself in the shoes of the early believers. It helps us understand their pressures.”

But while Christianity faded from Petra and other Jordanian cities with the advent of Islam, there is an enduring link between them and the followers of Jesus today. Dawson cited how early Arab Christians took the third-century Roman persecuted Cosmas and Damian as patron saints and named churches after them throughout the region—including in later day Jerash. And the Arab Ghassanid tribe adopted same-era Sergius, a Syrian soldier decapitated for his faith.

Dawson’s colleague at JETS is a Ghassanid descendant.

Haidar Hallasa, a 76-year-old faculty member and pastor in the church of the Nazarene, has dedicated the latter half of his life to studying Arab Christian history. Author of Arabic titles translated Jordan’s Biblical Geography and Our Forgotten History, he said many modern Christians throughout the Levant descend from the ancient tribe—which originated in fourth-century Yemen.

His great-grandfather, a Bedouin Muslim, came to the Transjordan region in 1735, fleeing from his crimes in the Bethlehem area. Describing himself as an Egyptian Copt, he took a job as a shepherd, developing a reputation for honesty that eventually led to a marriage with the one-eyed daughter of a tribal leader.

Hallasa’s resulting subtribe, he said, boasts 10,000 people today.

But the Ghassanids were not the only Christian tribe with influence. During the early Islamic era, the first Umayyad caliph, ruling from Damascus, married a daughter of the Benu Kalb tribe and appointed her Christian relative as the ruling prince of Tiberias. Many members eventually converted to Islam and others fled to Constantinople, so Hallasa sometimes tells open-minded Muslims that their personal religious identity may stem not from faith but from poverty. While intermarriage is a sign of fluctuating good relations, Arab Christians were assessed sometimes exorbitant jizya taxes that designated them as second-class citizens.

In hope that greater knowledge of history might encourage some to ponder the gospel, Hallasa has chronicled an additional 52 tribes from the Arabian Peninsula with Christian origins. But his primary message is for social tolerance.

Though it has been challenging, he has won such acceptance in his native Karak, 75 miles south of Amman—a city once belonging to Moabites, Nabateans, and Christians but that is overwhelmingly Muslim today.

“Radical Islamists want to divide us,” said Hallasa. “I say the opposite: You were Christians, we stayed Christians, but we are all one people.”

Also a Ghassanid, Rihani believes that evangelicals have a special role to play in relating Jordan to global Christianity. Tourists not only bring economic benefit for a struggling economy but interaction with their faith. And those who come to the Holy Land and extend their stay in Jordan further promote an exchange of peace.

Christian prayers in Petra can only help.

Vaguely aware of this history before the announcement, Rihani said it highlights how Jordan had a role in spreading the Bible throughout the region. But mostly, Petra’s Christian prayer is a form of divine encouragement.

“God is telling us, I’ve been here before, and I will continue with you,” Rihani said. “We should not have stones without spirituality, as the message of the gospel is alive in Jordan.”

- More from Jayson Casper

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Personal and political response

Immigration influence

Church involvement

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John Dayal, veteran human rights activist in India

A. C. Michael, national coordinator, United Christian Forum (UCF), India

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Shibu Thomas, founder, Persecution Relief, India

Wissam al-Saliby, director of the Geneva office of the World Evangelical Alliance

Knox Thames, former US state department official

Todd Nettleton, VOM spokesperson, United States

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