Hamas Releases All 20 Living Israeli Hostages

Israelis and Palestinians feel relief but fear the uncertainties to come.

Ziv Berman, one of the released Israeli hostages formerly held captive in Gaza since 2023, gestures from the window of an Israeli helicopter.

Ahmad Gharabli / Contributor / Getty

Key Updates

October 13, 2025

Israeli Hostages Released
October 9, 2025

Cautious Optimism Surrounds Israel-Hamas Deal

October 13, 2025

Hamas released all 20 of the remaining living Israeli hostages Monday, Israeli military said. Meanwhile, Israel released nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees as part of the cease-fire deal brokered by US president Donald Trump to end the war.

A video released by Israel Defense Forces showed the father of released hostage Eitan Mor weeping with joy as he embraced his son. Mor, 25, was working as a security guard at the Nova Music Festival in Re’im on October 7, 2023, when Hamas members took him hostage.

Hamas said it would release the bodies of 4 of the 28 deceased hostages later Monday. Earlier, the group suggested that it did not know the location of all of the bodies.

Humanitarian groups are preparing to bring large amounts of aid into the Gaza Strip, which is facing a severe food crisis. Around 600 trucks of aid per day will soon start arriving in the territory under the cease-fire agreement, according to the Israeli defense body in charge of humanitarian aid in Gaza.

Trump, who spoke to Israel’s parliament, Knesset, Monday, called the deal “the historic dawn of a new Middle East.”

He added, “At last, not only for Israelis but also Palestinians, the long and painful nightmare is finally over.”

As Trump heads to a summit in Egypt with world leaders backing the cease-fire plan, many challenges still remain, including whether Hamas will agree to disarm and who will govern Gaza.

October 9, 2025

Two years and two days after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Israel and Hamas agreed Thursday to stop fighting and to exchange hostages and prisoners. Gazans and Israelis took to the streets to cheer the news of a possible end to the war.

In Nazareth, Azer Ajaj, the president of Nazareth Evangelical College, said he was “overwhelmed with joy” when he first heard about the prospective cease-fire and deal between Israel and Hamas.

“This is what my church and I have been praying for personally throughout the war,” he told CT.

President Donald Trump, who brokered the deal, called the signing of the first phase of the peace plan “a momentous breakthrough,” and declared, “We ended the war in Gaza.” Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said he received guarantees from the United States and other mediators that the war was over.

Questions remain about other parts of the 20-point plan, including whether Hamas will disarm—a condition the group had previously refused—and who would govern Gaza. Yet the deal is the biggest step toward peace since the war began.

“This is a GREAT Day for the Arab and Muslim World, Israel, all surrounding Nations, and the United States of America,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS!”

On Thursday evening, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security cabinet to seek approval of the agreement. Once they approve, the full cease-fire will go into effect 24 hours later, according to government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian.

According to Trump, Hamas will return the roughly 20 hostages believed to be alive early next week. The deal also mentioned the release of the at least 26 deceased hostages; however, Hamas told negotiators that it doesn’t know where their bodies are located. A multinational task force will be formed to find the bodies.

In return, Israel will release 250 Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Palestinians detained in the wake of the October 7 attacks. Israeli officials are finalizing a list of Palestinian prisoners they plan to free, and victims of their attacks have 24 hours to object.

As soon as Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) could begin to withdraw from agreed-upon areas of Gaza, leaving them in control of about 53 percent of the Gaza Strip, Bedrosian said. Five border crossings would reopen, allowing aid to flow back into Gaza, according to Egyptian and Hamas officials. For months, Israeli restrictions, heavy fighting, and mobs have made it difficult for aid trucks to reach Palestinians, leading to a severe hunger crisis.

Following the October 7 Hamas attack, which killed 1,200 Israelis, the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry says the ensuing war against Hamas has led to the deaths of more than 67,000 Palestinians. The Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its death toll. Israeli attacks have destroyed two-thirds of Gaza’s infrastructure.

“We have wept with those who weep, whether they are Arabs or Jews,” Ajaj said. “The possibility of such a deal means an end to the continuous suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, the return of Israeli hostages to their loved ones, and perhaps even the potential for a new round of negotiations to reach a comprehensive solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

This is the third cease-fire since the war began. Seeing previous cease-fires break down makes Ajaj “cautiously reserved” in his optimism. Yet he is hopeful because he knows both sides are desperate to see the conflict end.

“My concerns compel me to pray more intensely: that God would raise up Palestinians, Israelis, and allies from supporting nations to champion this deal and offer guarantees for its continuity,” Ajaj said.

Jamie Cowen, a Messianic Jewish lawyer in northern Israel, said distrust of both Hamas and Netanyahu’s government makes many wonder if the deal will hold.

“The people here are exhausted and hopeful for an end to the worst disaster and longest war to befall Israel in her modern history,” Cowen said. “Most feel like I do. We want an end to this, but we are wary based on past experiences.”

Trump’s 20-point plan, which he unveiled in late September during Netanyahu’s visit, also states the IDF would agree to withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip. Hamas members who “commit to peaceful co-existence and to decommission their weapons” would be given amnesty, and no resident would be forced to leave Gaza.

It also states that an apolitical transitional government made up of Palestinian and international experts would govern Gaza. This committee would be overseen by a new international “Board of Peace” headed by Trump and made up of other foreign leaders including former UK prime minister Tony Blair. Hamas would have no role in governing Gaza, and the whole territory would be demilitarized.

The plan calls on the Palestinian Authority to complete a “reform program,” at which point it can take back control of Gaza, and urges international investment to re-develop the territory. When that has advanced, “the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood, which we recognize as the aspiration of the Palestinian people.”

The deal is a stark change from Trump’s previous plan, which called for the voluntary evacuation of Gazans to other countries.

Danny Kopp, chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Israel, offered his “concern for the many ways this deal could be foiled coupled with apprehensive hope for all the ways it could succeed.” He worries the US will lose interest and patience to secure all the goals of the second phase, including establishing a Palestinian governing body “that is deradicalized, pursues peace with Israel, and crushes the remnants of Hamas.”

He noted that as unimaginable as it was for Israel and Germany to become strong allies decades after the Holocaust, “can we imagine the same one day for Israelis and Palestinians?”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

News

As Shutdown Strains Incomes, Church Ramps Up to Feed the Hungry

Diana Chandler – Baptist Press

In suburban Detroit, a $50,000 ministry grant helps families keep food on the tables during furloughs.

iStock / Getty Images Plus

The federal government shutdown furloughed 57 members of the Commonwealth of Faith church, where a third of the 350 attendees are federal workers, including bivocational pastor Torion Bridges and his wife Jasmine.

The change could jeopardize financial gifts from a quarter of Commonwealth of Faith’s adult members, Bridges said.

“Some people give when they don’t have, but the reality is, some people stop giving,” Bridges said, especially since they don’t know how long the shutdown will last or in some cases, whether their positions will be retained.

That made the news all the more comforting when, just a couple of days in advance of the shutdown, Bridges learned the church had been awarded a matching grant of up to $50,000 through November 2 to fund its feeding ministry.

“Food insecurity is something our church has always cared about, whether or not people can eat,” Bridges told Baptist Press. “That’s a big thing for us at Commonwealth.”

Across Michigan, about 29,900 civilians are federal workers, the Congressional Research Service said in a September 25 report.

Jasmine is among church members furloughed, while Bridges continues to report to work for the Veterans Administration, their pay delayed until the government resolves its impasse. What’s more, Bridges doesn’t accept a salary from the church he planted in 2018 through the North American Mission Board, although his wife also works in real estate and is opening a day care center.

The grant will undergird offerings that help feed children at five Metro Detroit schools with which the church partners and 15 early childhood development centers. It will also support the church’s distribution of groceries and hot meals through the Fields Feeding Program Commonwealth birthed in 2020. The program has grown to include 35 sites, Bridges said, most of them churches.

“To have this ability to be matched for that, it’s like the old hymn says, ‘Whatever betide, God will take care of you,’” Bridges said. “And I’m not trying to be funny when I say this, but I personally think that Commonwealth is one of God’s favorite churches. It just happens like that. I can’t explain the favor that’s on this house. But we just keep on doing whatever we feel God has called us to do.”

Bridges hopes the grant will allow the church to double its feeding outreach, including Westfield Charter Academy, which shares a campus with the church, and the Cornerstone Network of Schools.

“We send kids home with meals and snacks to cover what they’re not getting while away from school. We do the same with the early learning centers,” he said, “and our aim is to go from five to 10 schools and 15 to 30 centers.”

Through the Fields Feeding Program, launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the church plays a part in feeding those in need across Michigan through food distribution and hot meals. Commonwealth and partner sites have together served more than 80,000 hot meals and distributed more than 75 million pounds of groceries since the program’s inception in 2020.

Commonwealth launched the Fields-Harper Community Christmas Dinner in 2024, when it served a fully prepared hot Christmas dinner to 800 families of four, Bridges said.

“Any family can come into the church and enjoy a Christmas dinner, receive a small gift for each kid and have a gospel conversation,” Bridges said.

With the grant, which came from a local donor, the church hopes to serve 1,600 families this year by offering several serving times.

“I assume I’m not the only pastor that has church members in their pews that work for the federal government that need help, and we need more than just thoughts and prayers on this,” Bridges said. “We need actions to ensure our people don’t go hungry.”

- More from Diana Chandler – Baptist Press

Books

Review

‘Roe v. Wade’ Eroded the Church’s Historic Pro-Life Consensus

Gillis J. Harp

It was already unraveling by 1973. Repairing it today won’t be easy.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Notre Dame Press

After the Supreme Court’s polarizing Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the liberal Protestant organ, The Christian Century, sometimes expressed deep ethical concerns about freer access to abortion. Though generally supportive of the ruling, some of the magazine’s contributors were willing to express serious qualms about its potential impact.

Writing in 1975, Kenneth Vaux, a theologian and ethicist at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, lamented that the majority opinion “opened the floodgates for thousands of thoughtless and unwarranted abortions.” Four years later, United Methodist chaplain J. Claude Evans argued that the pro-choice movement needed to respect the consciences of those who considered abortion tantamount to murder. The government, he added, should ensure that public monies never fund abortions.

Liberal Protestant unease of this sort is one of the many illuminating themes in Daniel K. Williams’s new book Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of “Roe v. Wade”. Williams offers a thorough and insightful study of how American churches—Protestant and Catholic, white and Black—grappled with the ethics of abortion before and after the Supreme Court’s momentous decision. In particular, he seeks to show how different Christian denominations formulated positions on abortion that “reflected a particular theological framework” rooted in convictions that preceded Roe and persisted well after the landmark case.

Along the way, Williams questions at least a couple common assumptions. First, denominational defenders sometimes maintain that their traditions’ positions have never changed over time. Second, some scholars argue that evangelicals shifted their views suddenly for pragmatic partisan reasons. Here, Williams has in mind Randall Balmer’s thesis that white Southern Baptists adopted pro-life perspectives because of racial and political considerations rather than theological convictions.

Prior to the mid-20th century, American Protestants and Catholics hardly differed on matters of abortion. While historian James Mohr has maintained that first-trimester abortions were common and widely accepted during the 18th century, Williams inclines toward studies maintaining that abortions were relatively rare during this period due to widespread disapproval.

By the mid-19th century, that disapproval became more explicit, with Protestant bodies passing resolutions (like the Northern Presbyterians’ 1869 statement) that issued strong condemnations. By the turn of the century, the social gospel movement softened attitudes toward birth control among some Protestants, and this tended to liberalize their approach to questions of abortion.

Despite this gradual trend, however, ecumenical organizations, including the National Council of Churches, expressed ethical reservations as late as the early 1960s. A few prominent liberal Protestants, such as Princeton University’s Paul Ramsey, remained firm opponents. But by the early 1970s, virtually every mainline Protestant denomination supported liberalizing America’s abortion laws.

Indeed, Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion in Roe echoed an official statement crafted by the United Methodist Church that framed legalized abortion as a matter of individual rights. The similarity was no accident; Blackmun was a faithful UMC member. “One could even call Roe v. Wade itself a liberal Protestant decision,” Williams concludes.

As for American Catholics, Williams highlights the deeply rooted theological and philosophical arguments, stretching back to early- and medieval-church traditions that prevailed in the pre-Roe era. The church’s position regarding the appropriate penalty for abortion changed over time, but its conviction that abortion was a serious sin did not.

Historic church teaching helped American Catholic leaders understand opposition to abortion within a broader social context. Detroit’s cardinal John Dearden, for instance, connected the pro-life cause with larger concerns about poverty and opposition to the Vietnam War, and many Catholic politicians (including Democratic senator Ted Kennedy) embraced such an approach—at least initially.

Meanwhile, white evangelicals’ more individualistic understanding of sin militated against this kind of broader social perspective. American Protestants, both theological conservatives (like Billy Graham) and theological liberals, had come to accept artificial birth control by the mid-20th century. Although independent fundamentalist Baptists had a long record of opposing abortion, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) continued to espouse a moderate or centrist position as late as 1971.

Christianity Today sharply criticized the Roe decision, though, and many evangelicals came to interpret legalized abortion as a disturbing sign of a larger moral decline in American culture. Both the SBC and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority (founded in 1979) issued jeremiads about national decay, justifying their activism with concerns about liberal hostility toward the traditional family. As Williams observes, “This new understanding of the pro-life campaign as a quest to restore Christian values in the nation’s law” had been less central in pro-life discourse before Roe, and it generated some debate within the movement.

During the 1980s and 1990s, debates over abortion emerged even within liberal mainline Protestant denominations, such as the United Methodists, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Episcopalians. Pro-life groups within the mainline forged alliances with renewal movements that sought to pull their communions away from theological liberalism in general. When these movements failed, Williams notes, the resulting denominational splits produced bodies that were “more homogenously liberal” on abortion.

Some liberal theologians recognized that pro-choice arguments were based upon individualistic Enlightenment assumptions. Even so, Williams observes, the position of liberal Protestants soon hardened as pro-choice advocates “reframed [abortion] as a healthcare equity issue.” Moreover, by the 1980s, Black Protestant leaders increasingly assumed an unqualified pro-choice stance. Take, for instance, the civil rights leader, minister, and presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson. In 1977, he had staked out a firm pro-life position. Yet his views shifted in 1983, gravitating toward what had become the mainstream posture of the Democratic Party.

As liberal Protestants retreated from earlier convictions, conservative evangelicals and Catholics increasingly recognized each other as co-combatants in the pro-life cause. In 1992, representatives from both traditions began crafting an ecumenical agreement, published in 1994 as “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” The joint statement deepened their alliance on the abortion issue while laying the groundwork for further cooperation.

By the early 2000s, Williams notes, many American Catholic bishops intensified their focus on abortion itself as distinct from a broader ethic of human dignity. Some asserted their right to deny Communion to pro-choice Democratic politicians who attended Mass, though Pope Francis later discouraged such a confrontational approach. When, in 2022, a conservative Supreme Court majority finally overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, it was not surprising that four of the five justices were Catholics.

The demise of Roe underscored the diminished role of mainline Protestants in shaping religious attitudes toward abortion. Indeed, the entire framework of the abortion debate had changed profoundly since 1973. As Williams explains, “The fusion of the pro-life movement with a campaign to return the country to Christian principles turned the abortion debate into a referendum on the religious identity of the nation.”

Like all good historical works, Abortion and America’s Churches provides invaluable context, complicating our understanding of the past in enlightening ways. But the book also raises difficult questions about the viability of Christian pro-life witness going forward. Williams believes that a “pro-life ethic [that] demands self-sacrifice and a commitment to marriage, sexual chastity, and care for others” is unlikely to prevail in an increasingly unchurched and intensely individualistic society.

This is undoubtedly true. But the presumed moral divide—between a pro-life movement grounded in religious values and a largely secular opposition—isn’t quite so clear, especially in light of Donald Trump’s pronounced reshaping of conservative political coalitions. How should one understand the pro-life movement’s transactional decision to support a figure as ethically compromised as Trump? How much damage has the movement sustained to its reputation and wider influence on account of this alliance?

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, as Williams notes, the Republican Party—under Trump’s sway—dramatically weakened the pro-life elements of its platform. Moreover, some American Christians (Protestant and Catholic) find Trump’s transgressive behavior appealing. In recent election cycles, a good number gave him electoral support, despite the presence of bona fide pro-life evangelical alternatives like Ted Cruz (in 2016) or Mike Pence (in 2024). Admittedly, scholars might need more time to assess these developments in their fullness.

All told, however, Abortion and America’s Churches succeeds in tackling a difficult subject with a consistently fair and even-handed approach. Between its admirable objectivity and its extensive reliance upon primary sources, the book is likely to become the standard treatment of how different Christian traditions have wrestled with abortion.

Moreover, unlike many academic works, Williams’s book can serve as a helpful guide for productive dialogue on this emotionally charged subject.

Gillis J. Harp retired as professor of history at Grove City College in January 2025. His most recent book is Protestants and American Conservatism: A Short History.

- More from Gillis J. Harp

News

Kenyan Churches Struggle to Support Childless Couples

Moses Wasamu

One Christian woman hopes to destigmatize infertility.

A doctor specializing in reproductive health attends to a patient at his clinic in Kenya on September 16, 2021.

Tony Karumba / Contributor / Getty

For more than a decade, Cecilia Karanja of Nairobi, Kenya, struggled to have children.

She married three times, with two marriages ending in divorce due to physical abuse and abandonment due to infertility.

The pastors at her Pentecostal church in Nairobi, encouraged Karanja to fast and pray to get pregnant. Once, a pastor prophesied she would have a baby. She didn’t.

She tried attending the church of a well-known TV preacher who promised miracles. That didn’t work either. Karanja said she couldn’t face her church friends or attend baby showers. She felt like less of a woman. Many people assumed she’d had abortions in the past and then could not conceive.

“You feel incomplete; everywhere you go, you feel that people are discussing you,” she said.

Karanja first got married in her mid-20s. She and her husband tried for years to get pregnant before finding out her husband was infertile due to a low sperm count. Karanja left him after he started to beat her. Eight months later, she married again. Her second marriage ended in divorce six years later after her husband’s friends and relatives convinced him she could not have children. He left her for another woman.

When other women introduced themselves by referencing their children’s names, Karanja couldn’t do the same.

“At times, I would just cry and cry in the house,” Karanja said. “In church, when people are giving testimonies of how God has blessed them with children, I would feel so terrible.”

Karanja said the church doesn’t openly discuss infertility. Cultural stigmas make childlessness a topic reserved for whispers, not public conversation, in Kenya. Because of this, many infertile men and women don’t get needed medical or pastoral care.

Infertility affects 1 in 5 couples in Kenya, totaling 4.2 million people, according to All Africa. Sexually transmitted infections are a leading cause of infertility in the country, as well as parasitic infections from contaminated water. Infertility levels in Sub-Saharan Africa have reached as high as 30–40 percent.

Myths and mistaken beliefs about the causes of infertility, such as witchcraft and possession by evil spirits, lead couples to delay treatment while they turn to religious or traditional healers. Some of those stigmas also linger in churches.

“Cultural or religious misconceptions can make couples feel isolated or judged,” said Isaac Kimani, pastor of Kingdom Seekers Fellowship in Nairobi. “[Infertility is] often treated as a private struggle rather than a communal concern in the church.”

When churches do talk about infertility, they can oversimplify the problem, said Matthew Okeyo, pastor of Africa Inland Church in Milimani, Nairobi. In Karanja’s experience, church leaders would encourage prayer and fasting but provide little counseling or guidance about ethical medical options. “The church has spiritualized this issue instead of looking at the social, psychological and practical part of it,” he said.

When couples do look into medical solutions—such as surgery to repair blocked fallopian tubes or medication to stimulate ovulation or increase sperm count—costs can prohibit them from getting treatment. For example, surgeries for female infertility can cost between 250,000 and 500,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,800 to $3,900 USD). A Kenyan worker’s average monthly salary is 37,000 shillings (about $280 USD).

Because of the stigma surrounding female infertility and the high cultural emphasis on having children, some men turn to divorce or polygamy as a solution. In 2014, Kenya legalized polygamy for men who follow Islam or traditional religions. Wives do not have to consent. Christian and civil marriages are supposed to remain monogamous under law, but even these couples sometimes turn quietly to other sexual partners. Some practice polygamy unofficially. Some infertile men allow their wife to have sex with male friends to conceive a child.

John Daau of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan said the common practice of polygamy in Africa has affected even the clergy. “Some Christians, including ordained ministers, have chosen to marry second wives due to childlessness and the stereotypes associated with it in our African context,” he said. Church leadership and congregations usually expect these pastors to step down, but some refuse despite biblical injunctions against church leaders having more than one wife (Titus 1:6; 1 Tim. 3:2).

Meanwhile, some leaders say churches should develop more robust ministries to childless couples. “The pastoral care ministers should be committed to provide continuous services to the infertile couples through counseling, preaching, public and private prayers,” wrote Christian scholar Richard Muasya.

While many Kenyan churches hold health talks about issues such as mental health and HIV/AIDS, these presentations rarely feature infertility. Muasya argued that churches’ spiritual care for those affected by infertility should not be a one-off event.

Cecilia Karanja agrees. Despite feeling unsupported at church, her faith kept her going. After seeing a doctor, she learned she had blocked fallopian tubes. She decided to pursue surgery to have them unblocked, planning to go to South Africa if she couldn’t have it done in Kenya.

In 2010, Karanja raised enough money to have surgery. She arranged with the specialist to pay it off in installments, using what she made from running a secondhand furniture business. The surgery was successful. She later married her third husband, Benson Karanja, and gave birth to three children. She said she hopes churches will educate their congregations about infertility to reduce the stigma and misinformation about the subject.

“Let pastors talk about solutions, not only praying,” Karanja said. “Let them invite doctors, and people like me, to talk about the problem of infertility.”

- More from Moses Wasamu

Inkwell

Art Is Not About You

Grace Hamman

Chaucer’s penitentiary story “The Parson’s Tale” can teach us how to find communal self-knowledge and true repentance.

"The Bride" by Diego Best, Sep. 2025.

Caught between a tavern and a cathedral, between the slums and stews of Southwark and the beating heart of medieval religion in the 14th century, a passel of pilgrims journeys onward to the grave of a martyr.

To pass time on the road, they have been spinning stories: good stories, bad stories, stories that poke holes in the pretensions of other pilgrims or that bore even the kindest listener, stories that are basically an obscene middle finger to the universe. Now, buoyed by these tales, they are almost to Canterbury to visit the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket.

The end of the journey has come, and pilgrim shadows loom long on the road. It is now the Parson’s turn to tell a story. You may be a priest, pleads the host who has orchestrated this game of tale-telling, but don’t ruin the fun. The Parson smiles. He cannot rhyme, but he will tell “a merry tale in prose / To knit up all this feast and make an end.”

Thus winds down the great poem of Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales. But the Parson’s merry little tale is neither merry nor little nor a tale. It is a rather lengthy moral treatise of 1,080 lines on the subject of penance.

Medieval communities across Europe used this genre to examine the conscience and prepare for the threefold sacrament of penance: contrition, oral confession of sins, and satisfaction. These writings surface everywhere in the Middle Ages, a dull white noise behind the bright songs of poetry that appear in The Canterbury Tales, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Unsurprisingly, “The Parson’s Tale” rarely ends up in collected translations of The Canterbury Tales. Outside the most dedicated Chaucer scholars, most readers find it sleepy at best, judgmental at worst. Where is the witty, poignant, storytelling Chaucer we know and love?

In fact, scholars disagree on how to read it. How is this implausible moral treatise supposed to tie up the wild yarns spun out before it? Is it a piece of absurdity, and did Chaucer mean it as a joke, a sly injection of dusty-dry religious hypocrisy punching down the creative, messy, and human? After all, Chaucer is famous for his trickery.

Such interpretations pit creative stories against the dull, penitential tale of the Parson. This conflict aligns with how we often view ourselves and art in postmodernity: as discrete, divided, and individual. We think that’s what makes them our stories, our art. Instead, insists the Parson among the crowd of storytellers, his tale “knits up this feast.” It makes an end. It coheres. It reorients each pilgrim’s tale in a new light.

Etrogs. Mixed Media (Pencil and Procreate), Diego Best, Sep. 2025.

The point of all penitential literature—that mumbling, monotonous genre of “The Parson’s Tale”—is self-knowledge in service of reconciliation within Christ’s body. Embracing divine grace is indeed the end and the beginning of all our stories told on the road. We begin to ask, What can communal self-knowledge offer us today, in the ways we understand ourselves and our creative work in this world?

Perhaps the very phrase “communal self-knowledge” strikes us as an oxymoron. Today, self-knowledge usually means something more like seeking the sparkles of uniqueness about oneself (mainly good things). How are you different from others? Or sometimes it means implicitly asking, How are you different in a cool, interesting, maybe even misunderstood way? This postmodern self ends up celebrated but anxiously protected like a fragile balloon at a toddler’s birthday party.

In the West, we often frame self-knowledge as heroically won despite the world, despite community, despite familial ties and national histories. In that defiant context, the admission of weakness, failure, wrongdoing, or even the need for others can compromise the integrity of that hard-won individual self.

In stark contrast, medieval self-knowledge was always communally contingent. The Parson begins by paraphrasing Jeremiah 6:16 and the kind of knowledge that we seek as we pursue life together: “Standeth upon the ways, and seeth and asketh of old paths (that is to say, of old sentences) which is the good way, / and walketh in that way, and ye shall find refreshing for your souls.”

For medieval people, it was these “old sentences” that could help people understand themselves more fully. For in confessional self-knowledge, the question transforms. It’s not how you are special or different. Instead, how have you fallen and failed in the ways that other people just like you have? And how will you be caught up in the workings of God’s grace, just like those fallen friends around you?

The old paths of “The Parson’s Tale” reach further back in time than Chaucer’s 14th century, all the way back to the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215—a council of theologians who inadvertently ignited a profound emphasis on spiritual interiority. This papal council confirmed that all Christians must participate in yearly confession, in the sacrament of penance, before they received the Eucharist during Eastertide.

To receive Christ’s body was serious business. Medieval thinkers cautioned that one mustn’t receive casually, with a compromised conscience or while living in conflict with one’s neighbors. Though all baptized Christians were saved by grace, penance was meant to clean the house of the heart and effect reconciliation within communities. Ideally, when taking the Eucharist, no one would be in a position of isolation from God or humankind.

Pomegranates. Mixed Media (Pencil and Procreate), by Diego Best, Sep. 2025.

To confess fully, one needed to take the first step of penance known as contrition—to know what was sin and what wasn’t, to strip away the little rationalizations and self-deceptions. So, back in the 14th century, our Parson made a list of vices. What do you lack? Where do you hurt? How have you hurt others? He describes how vices might be combatted with patterns of living called virtues.

Then, as the Parson describes, one confessed all these things fully to a priest before moving to the final stage, satisfaction: the acts and apologies to be done in the aftermath. Satisfaction was the reclaiming of your place within community, the “receipts” or proof that you were determined to begin to undo what you had done. Pilgrimage itself was a work of satisfaction. Satisfaction asks, What is your role within your community, within your contexts and histories? What are you called to in love?

What paths might you follow that have already been trod? So asks the penitential literature of “The Parson’s Tale.” Confessional self-knowledge becomes a creative and communal endeavor, bravely laying bare our failings to one another. This self-knowledge can be shared, modeled, or taught. The ways other people have erred, loved, or worshiped become paths to guide us into greater understanding of ourselves and God.

Confession has always and only belonged to the individual person. Yet the self is completely unknowable apart from others and apart from its vocation of love within the community. Then, humans lost themselves. Now, we mistakenly draw this precious self ever closer in response, buttressing it against the world. Against this reality, the old penitential paths of the Parson come as a comfort, as a relief to us.

There is an inviolate sturdiness in the self and story belonging to the kingdom of heaven, one that does not drift like the frail self defined only on its own terms. Ordinary, communal, penitential self-knowledge that manifests in repentance and flowers into active love of self and community is indeed “a merry tale in prose.”

Figs. Mixed Media (Pencil and Procreate), by Diego Best, Sep. 2025.

In The Canterbury Tales, pilgrims have threatened to mutilate one another, have nearly rioted in response to hearing lies, or have cut one another off in desperation to reach the end of a boring story. There have been stories told to reinforce social hierarchies or to deepen violence between men and women or religious groups.

Chaucer poetically sets “The Parson’s Tale” as the last curious story on the old path to Canterbury to somehow miraculously knit up the feast. All the pilgrim tales are ultimately meant to be interpreted in the context of their commonality, in the shared pilgrims’ ancient path toward Christ.

The knitting does something to Chaucer’s art—just as penance does something in both individual persons and communities. The tales themselves, from the mundane to the stupid to the beautiful, have become welling sources of communal self-knowledge. The merry tale in prose works backward.

Knit up the feast. When we begin to understand ourselves within communities, held in grace cemented by mutual failure and need, all our tales can become merry tales of repentance, however prosaic.

How does your creative work—whether in writing, art, or relationships—belong to others as much as it belongs to yourself?

It is still yours, just like confession is always yours. Yet when we understand our creative labors as distinctive solely because they are individual or different from other people, we lose something essential. Work becomes ephemeral, fleeting, flimsy. Stories lose their cosmic meaning set apart from their teller and the teller’s community.

But within the pilgrimage, within the penitential work of communal self-knowledge and healing, stories lose their ephemerality and become enduring gifts given to others. They then tenderly hold up the mirror, like the Parson, to our likeness to and distance from God.

Grace Hamman is the author of Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues & Vices for a Whole & Holy Life and Jesus Through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages. Learn more about her work at gracehamman.com.

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Culture

Taylor Swift Makes Showgirls of Us All

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Something compels us to perform our relationship with the pop star’s music. Maybe that’s her secret to success.

Tibrina Hobson / Stringer / Getty

This past weekend, the internet was overrun by takes—thoughtful takes, sloppy takes, bad takes, lazy takes about Taylor Swift’s new album The Life of a Showgirl. By Saturday, the discourse had devolved into fragmented skirmishes over the Max Martin vibes, the Motown callouts and modulations, and the lyrics. “Is Taylor Swift becoming a trad wife?!” “This song is so clearly a rip-off of ____.” “This is dull, mid pop.” “This is an album by an artist who obviously isn’t hungry anymore.” (I concede that the title track does sound a lot like “Cool” by The Jonas Brothers.)

This collective bonding ritual happens on social media every time Taylor Swift drops an album, bringing together fans and anti-fans alike. When we publicly perform our relationship to the pop star, it’s at least in part about our own self-construction.

I used to be a vocal anti-Swiftie, an obnoxiously performative one. In college, as a DJ at an alternative radio station, I would have confidently told you, “I don’t listen to Taylor Swift.” I was insufferably concerned with crafting a contrarian persona, and this disavowal was a quick way of identifying myself as cool. I scoffed at Swift’s 2014 pop pivot, though I couldn’t deny that “Shake It Off” was irresistibly fun (except for that bridge).

I should mention that I was trying to impress my co-DJ, who was in a metal band. It worked. We now have three kids.

My objection to Swift, at the time, was that she stood for a dominant culture I didn’t want to be associated with—mainstream pop. My rejection of her music was based on my own interest in identity construction. I wanted to be the sort of person who listened to bands my friends hadn’t heard of. (I was a real pleasure to be around.)

Over the years, my aversion to Swift’s music has mellowed. In part, this is because I grew out of the insecurity that drove me to meticulously curate playlists and a collection of hipster band T-shirts.

I’m now a casual and friendly listener: When Swift’s language gets too crude for the kids in the back seat, I play the clean versions of her songs. What’s the point in trying to resist the magnetism of “Style,” “Cruel Summer,” “Anti-Hero,” and “The Fate of Ophelia”? I used to think it was admirable to refuse to see their merits. Now I sing their praises and belt them out in the car.

(At this point, a content warning for Christian readers: Showgirl is an explicit album, full of bad language and raunchy jokes. Many of the songs are earworms, so if you do listen, be prepared to be stuck with them for a few days. Clean versions are always a good option.)

As I listened to The Life of a Showgirl last weekend, I found myself thinking a lot about performance and identity construction. Swift, like all of us, has a version of herself she wants to craft for public consumption. For a celebrity of her fame, curating a public persona is necessary. Even though Swift is famously good at cultivating parasocial relationships with her fans, she also performs for them.

Most of us will never know what it’s like to have a public persona evaluated by millions we will never meet. Most of us are called to a quiet, humble life in which only those we most care about have access to our unfiltered selves. Endless performing gets in the way of knowing, and of being known. This kind of public pressure is the antithesis of the intimate knowing we experience from God—the Maker who searches and knows us—and long to find in loving human relationships.

The Life of a Showgirl is a continuation of Swift’s public self-construction. This is what it sounds like when she is having fun—cracking dumb jokes and singing hummable melodies. While people on the internet perform their reaction to her, Swift is owning the cringe, the silliness, the sex, the feuds, and it seems that she’s enjoying herself.

The album’s opening track, “The Fate of Ophelia,” plunges listeners into a moody, dance pop trance that contrasts sharply with the more plodding, melancholy opener for 2024’s The Tortured Poets Department, “Fortnight,” in which Swift laments, “I love you, it’s ruining my life.”

Love is no longer ruining Swift’s life; she’s been rescued. She’s trying on a new version of herself, apparent from the first release of Showgirl’s album artwork. The rhinestone showgirl getup Swift wears on the album cover is uncharacteristically revealing.

No surprise then that Showgirl is a self-conscious performance. It’s “sexy” in the way a Vegas showgirl is “sexy”; there’s safety in the very obvious conceit of it all. There’s a lot of razzle-dazzle, rhinestones, and feathers, but the performer has the security of the stage, and she doesn’t seem all that interested in seduction.

“Wood,” an audible homage to the Jackson 5 with a few vocal moments reminiscent of ’90s Mariah Carey, is lyrically an endless series of double entendres about sex and male anatomy. It feels like a bachelorette party joke. It’s the phallic cake your sister-in-law brings to shock your unmarried sisters. It’s a hyperpalatable pop song that just isn’t that serious.

Christians should still consider whether Paul’s injunction to think on whatever is “noble, right, pure, and lovely” precludes listening to this track (Phil. 4:8). But understanding the song as more bawdy than erotic does tell us something about what Swift is trying to achieve with this album—successfully or otherwise.

“Actually Romantic,” Swift’s diss track apparently aimed at fellow pop artist Charli XCX, is similarly lighthearted, poking fun at negative attention with a Weezer-esque guitar-driven groove. “CANCELLED!” is a Reputation-reminiscent, prickly statement of devotion to scandal-plagued friends: “Good thing I like my friends canceled.”

Despite writing songs about love and sex and adding more free-flying expletives to her catalog, Swift has managed to preserve a veneer of “good girl” innocence. Unlike some of her pop princess forebears—Britney, Christina, Mariah—Taylor has always performed her sexuality somewhat awkwardly. Even when she’s slinking across the Reputation tour stage in a one-legged catsuit, she seems like she is trying on a character rather than embodying the pop bad girl.

A decade ago, Swift said publicly that she doesn’t think of herself as “sexy.” Her ambivalent relationship with her perceived sex appeal perhaps endears her to her female fanbase. Videos of her clumsy dancing seem to only strengthen Swifties’ devotion: She’s just like us!

There’s a strong contingent of Christian women on the internet—lots of millennial moms like me—who unapologetically wear the label of “Swiftie” with no caveats about the lyrical content of her music. They participate in the fandom with zero-irony gusto. I spoke with some of them about their spiritual experiences at the Eras Tour.

Perhaps millennial women are the quickest to forgive Swift’s overuse of cringe internet-speak (“Did you girl-boss too close to the sun?”) because many of us are moms who spend at least some of our waking hours listening to the “Spidey and His Amazing Friends” soundtrack. We’ve learned that sometimes it feels better to enjoy something than it does to be cool.

But I also get the impression from some of these peers that the embrace of Swift, along with her sex-positive anthems and salty language, is an act of self-construction. It’s shorthand for “I’m a cool Christian mom,” or “I’m a former evangelical good girl spreading my wings and freely enjoying the pop culture I was denied as a child.”

Many of these women probably grew up hearing sermons with illustrations from movies like Braveheart and The Matrix. If men are free to find inspiration or feel understood through these violent films (as books like John Eldredge’s best-selling Wild At Heart suggest they should), women wonder: Why can’t we feel free to find the same thing in the music of a pop star singing about love and sex and the trials of womanhood?

Braveheart and Showgirl overidentification is risky. American Christians, often intentionally, look to films and music to construct individual identities and to find examples of masculinity and femininity. Powerful and sometimes moving, mass media falls short when it comes to offering models for what it looks like to move through the world in a Christlike way. Movie and pop stars aren’t the kinds of “icons” a Christian can rely on to better understand themselves.

Instead, a healthy relationship with pop culture requires a certain amount of “disinterested interest,” of observation without asking too much of it. Our self-definition comes through a life “hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3)—less concern with how the world is asking us to sort ourselves, more prayer about who the Lord is calling us to be.

Swift tries on a few different personas on The Life of a Showgirl—the rescued “Ophelia,” a “Father Figure,” a fragile starlet (“Elizabeth Taylor”), a world-wise “Eldest Daughter.” The throughline is the performer, the showgirl, the persona that Swift can’t put away at this point in her career.

Swift has just wrapped up one of the most extravagant, lucrative tours in history. She’s in a very public relationship, now engaged. The 35-year-old superstar has probably never been more aware of how much her life requires an endless performance. Under the weight of that knowledge, what’s a girl to do?

Perhaps Swift is surviving by finding ways to take the spotlight less seriously. The Life of a Showgirl is more party than diary. She’s not doing it with a broken heart anymore, but there’s no doubt that she is performing. The Eras Tour is over, but the show goes on.

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis is the worship correspondent for Christianity Today. Her book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families, cowritten with Melissa Burt, will be released this October.

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Theology

The Loss of One Forgotten Virtue Could Destroy the Country

Russell Moore

Columnist

We’ve all become numb to this unserious, trivializing age.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

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

Last week, many people commented on a group of American generals and admirals for what they did not do. They were gathered at Quantico, Virginia, for live-televised speeches by the president and the secretary of defense. The military leaders did not cheer and shout as if at a political rally, nor did they boo and jeer. They stood and listened with discipline and dignity. Many people who watched this event, regardless of political viewpoint, were struck by this. And yet in no other generation would Americans consider this remarkable. The spirit of the age was highlighted here by the strangeness of the exception to it.

These generals and admirals included Republicans, Democrats, and independents. The striking thing about their demeanor is that their posture would have been exactly the same in every imaginable circumstance. If, in some alternate reality, a President Bernie Sanders had addressed them about how he would use the military to deal with the billionaires, they would have looked no different than they did that day.

What these military leaders demonstrated is a quality we all intuitively recognize but find hard to put into words. Indeed, this characteristic might be best described by what some older English versions of the Bible translated as grave. The reason we hardly ever use that word now is probably because it feels like it should mean “dour” or “harsh.” The word is closer, though, to what we mean when we say someone has gravity.

This characteristic is one that the apostle Paul commanded for church leaders—that they be “sober-minded” (1 Tim. 3:2, ESV throughout) and “dignified” (v. 8). The recognition of our need for this quality in leadership is not unique to Christianity. When someone thinks, for instance, of George Washington, this trait is one of the first that comes to mind. He was a serious man.

What does this gravity mean, and why do we need it?

One aspect of its meaning is clarity. To say a person is “sober-minded” conveys this. The mind is clear. To press the metaphor a little further, think of what comes to mind with the word drunk. Inhibitions are lowered. Judgment is skewed. If, while sitting on a plane to take off, you hear your pilot through the intercom with slurred voice, announcing, “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere!” you will likely react differently than you would if you overheard someone in the seat across the aisle saying the exact same thing in the exact same way. On a flight, you understand the stakes are high. You want someone whose judgment is unclouded.

The opposite of this kind of clarity is not ignorance, really, but silliness. In addition to telling Timothy to appoint only “sober-minded” leaders, Paul warned him to avoid those who were “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1:7), and he also cautioned Timothy to avoid “irreverent, silly myths” (4:7).

Gravity also means maturity. This trait is inseparable from clarity because both are related to wisdom. Sometimes new readers of the Bible are thrown by what they believe is a contradiction between the repeated commands to be childlike and commands to have maturity. But this is no contradiction at all. One assumes the other. Wisdom begins, the Scriptures say, with “the fear of the Lord” (Prov. 1:7)—that is, genuine wisdom starts with a sense of dependence, a recognition of what we do not know.

Solomon received wisdom because he first confessed, “I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in” (1 Kings 3:7). Wisdom includes, the Scriptures tell us, the discernment to know the difference between good and evil (Heb. 5:14). But when Adam and Eve attempted to grasp this knowledge on their own, apart from childlike dependence on their Father, the result was not wisdom but folly.

The New Testament pairs two statements about the young boy Jesus: He was with his parents and submissive to them (Luke 2:51), and he “increased in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and man” (v. 52). He embraced both childlikeness and maturity. Indeed, the Bible says this process was essential to our salvation: In his human nature, Jesus “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8).

A final aspect of this gravity is something harder to convey. It’s what we might call a sense of responsibility. The person takes seriously what’s at stake. This facet is bound up with the other two. The “LOL nothing matters” mentality of trolling—on social media or in the pulpit or in public office—is about much more than the person who does such things. Immaturity is selfishness.

Solomon recognized the stakes and knew they were not about him. He was to lead other people, and part of what they needed was more than his years or experience could give him (1 Kings 3:8–9). The writer of Hebrews lambasted the immaturity of his readers, those who should have matured from “milk” to “meat,” because living off milk imperils their own integrity (Heb. 5:14) and also because “by this time you ought to be teachers” (v. 12).

Many times over the past several years, I have heard people—believers and unbelievers—wonder when “the grownups” are going to show up to save us. Sometimes the “us” they are talking about is the country; sometimes it’s the American church. The problem with this is similar to what the late Willie Morris, my fellow Mississippian, described as the rebuke he received from his supervisor at the University of Oxford while defending his thesis in history. “My next-to-last sentence said, ‘Just how close the people of England came to revolution in 1832 is a question that we shall leave with the historians,’” he wrote. “I read this to my tutor, and from his vantage point in an easy chair two feet north of the floor he interrupted: ‘But Morris, we are the historians.’”

No grownups are coming to save us. We are the grownups. When our leaders—in the church and out—are unserious people, people we don’t even expect to bear the weighty authority of trust, we are not playing a game. People are counting on us. Lots of them haven’t been born yet.

We’ve all become numb to this unserious, trivializing age. And many of us have fallen to entertaining ourselves with the clownishness of it all. But think about the people who shaped you, who most turned your life around when you needed it. Were they winking and nodding their way through lies or bluster? Were they gullibly falling for untruths? I imagine they had a clarity, a maturity, a responsibility that gave them weightiness. They were serious people. They were sober-minded. They were grave. We are defying gravity. But sometimes what feels like flying is just falling, except for that sudden stop at the end.

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

News

Amid Floods and Heat Waves, Indian Church Fights Climate Change

Rishabh Jain

Christ Church in Kerala tends to its garden while helping its parishioners and neighbors live sustainably.

Members of Christ Church in Kerala, India.

Image courtesy of M. John Kuruvilla / Edits by CT

Each morning, as M. John Kuruvilla unlocks the wooden gates of Christ Church in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the sweet smells of wild citrus greet him as he steps into the shade of towering mango and neem trees on the five-acre campus of the 166-year-old Victorian church building. It’s a living tapestry decades in the making.

He starts the day by walking through the campus, checking labels, pruning trees, and watering flowers. As the church’s warden and steward, he oversees daily maintenance of the grounds and tends to the congregation’s environmental stewardship initiatives.

These efforts began soon after Kerala faced devastating floods in the summer of 2018, killing more than 350 people. Kerala churches in the same denomination saw their sanctuaries flood. “That moment, seeing not just the damage but the faces of our parishioners made us realize climate change wasn’t just news headlines. It was now. It was us,” Kuruvilla said.

Stories of repeated monsoon floods and searing summer heat waves began to dominate church conversations. The number of extreme rainfall events has tripled across the country over the last 70 years, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. In January, Kerala saw unusually high temperatures, reaching into the upper 90s. Those heat waves typically arrive in March and April.

This sense of urgency led Christ Church, which is part of the Church of South India (CSI), to start actively tackling climate change in 2019 through its Ecological Forum. The group initially started in 2008 to protect the campus’s more than 119 tree varieties and champion creation care.

“Our church campus is not just a sacred space for worship but a sanctuary for nature,” he said, pausing under a 100-year-old mango tree that survived the 2018 deluge. The forum’s early years focused on cataloguing each tree in the church compound, launching an annual sapling drive that encouraged each family in the parish to plant a tree, and distributing 150 “eco kits” of compost and saplings to homes. Along the church’s garden path, members of the Ecological Forum planted different trees named in Scripture.

As head of the initiative since 2023, Kuruvilla steered Christ Church toward further sustainability, switching from single-use plastics to compostable materials at church gatherings and overseeing the installation of a 15-kilowatt solar energy system in 2022 that now powers the entire church and parish house.

“When the first [electricity] bill hit zero, we held it up at Sunday service,” he said, laughing. “That’s when people wanted to know how we do it.”

At first, many congregants feared the solar scheme was out of reach. “A few older members said, ‘That’s fine for the rich but not for us,’” Kuruvilla said. “But we brought in energy advisers, negotiated discounts for group buys, and showed neighbors our experience. Slowly, even skeptics came on board.”

Today, more than half of the 1,200 church households have solar panels set up on their homes, thanks to guidance and support from the church.

Every December, the vicar, Alex P. Oommen, visits church members’ homes for a “green audit”—evaluating energy use, water conservation, home gardening, and recycling. Families installed rooftop rainwater-catchment systems, cutting their municipal water use by 40 percent. The church celebrates the most sustainable examples on Sundays.

Support also goes out to the broader community. The church arranges study tours with agricultural university scientists; buys organic produce in bulk from local farmers to support regional livelihoods; and mobilizes a campus and neighborhood cleanup every Gandhi Jayanti (a national holiday), inviting locals of other faiths.

“Our greatest ministry isn’t in the pews; it’s in how the church campus inspires the city,” Kuruvilla said. Schoolchildren visit the church’s garden, learn about the church’s waste management system, or join workshops run by the youth group’s “green ambassadors.” “We’ve tried to be a demonstration site for sustainable city life. If even nonmembers learn how faith and ecology fit, we’ve succeeded,” Kuruvilla said.

Parishioner Elsie Mathew’s family joined the first solar-power workshop in 2022, but she admits they still had doubts. “The upfront cost scared us,” she said. “But the church helped with research and a group discount.” They saw their electricity bill fall by nearly 40 percent.

Their resolve further strengthened when they saw the church leading. Mathew started volunteering at tree-planting drives, which have placed more than 4,000 saplings across the city since 2019, and then became a green-audit advocate herself. “The year after our install, our neighbor signed up too.”

Mathew now coordinates the church’s school-outreach program, training youth to teach composting, organic gardening, and climate awareness to local students. “My daughter’s school even started a mini tree nursery,” she said. “These changes ripple out.”

Over the past two years, Christ Church reports a 35 to 40 percent reduction in water use across green-audited parish households, and its Ecological Forum has twice taken top honors in the CSI Diocese’s Green Parish competition. Their efforts inspired seven neighboring churches to start similar ecological ministries in the past year, with 2,700 households now involved.

Churches in other parts of India are also seeking to combat climate change. For instance, in the northeast state Nagaland, the Ao Baptist Arogo Mungdang is reimagining how faith communities steward rural land through the Tuli Farm project. Started in the early 2000s, the 130-acre farm is used as an eco-conscious retreat center, an agricultural innovation center, and the Canaan Farmers School. Here, local farmers, many of whom are from Indigenous tribes, receive hands-on training in organic cultivation and sustainability, coupled with regular spiritual retreats.

Sameer Bora, a farmer based in Nagaland, credits the program for changing his mind about modern farming. “I used to burn stubble and use chemicals,” he said, referring to pesticides. “Now, after seeing what good compost does and after prayer and discussion, I switched to techniques [I learned from the school].”

The practice of burning straw stubble after harvesting grains is banned in India, as it is a major cause of air pollution around the country and has caused a massive public health crisis. Local governments have fined farmers who continue to burn stubble and have even sent some to jail.

Bora said that since making the change, “my yields are better, and my heart is lighter too.”

Sustainability pushes against traditional farming practices and requires farmers to trust their trainers. The goal, said the school’s director, Chubatola Aier, in a January speech, is not just crop yields but a culture of sharing, care, and resilience that matches the gospel’s vision for creation.

Back in Kerala, Kuruvilla hopes to see in the next few years every household in the church using solar power, every child understanding composting before turning 10, and five other small parishes start similar projects.

More immediately, he’s working on building a biodiversity map to share online so others can learn, and maybe even replicate the model. “Floods and droughts may keep coming, but if each church becomes a wellspring, spiritually and ecologically, hope can keep spreading.”

Mathew echoes the feeling: “Caring for creation isn’t optional for us—it’s how our faith takes root in the world. Faith without works really is dead.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated that Christ Church flooded in the 2018 Kerala floods.

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Culture

The Manosphere Gets Discipline Right and Dependence Wrong

Luke Simon

Contributor

Young men are right to want agency, clarity, and strength. But grit alone cannot carry them.

Jean-Daniel Francoeur / Unsplash

When Timothée Chalamet accepted an award at the 2025 Screen Actors Guild ceremony for his performance as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, the crowd expected the usual humility: an expression of shock over his win or maybe overwhelmed, rambling gratitude.

Instead, Chalamet was blunt. “I know the classiest thing would be to downplay the effort that went into this role and how much this means to me. But the truth is, this was five-and-a-half years of my life.”

He pushed further. “The truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats.” He named his inspirations: Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, Viola Davis, Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps. “I want to be up there.”

Some praised the ambition. Others were hesitant. But Chalamet’s words struck me as more than ego. They signified a larger shift. Many award speeches, like actress Hannah Einbinder’s at the most recent Emmys, perform virtue. They gesture toward saving the world. Chalamet wanted to talk about saving the self.

That shift from public causes to private discipline isn’t just happening in Hollywood. It’s been going on for years in a corner of culture that’s often mocked but won’t go away: the manosphere. To be clear, Chalamet isn’t part of that world. But his cadence echoed its ethos, formed in reaction to some of the loudest admonitions of the past decade.

In 2018, Greta Thunberg cried, “Everything needs to change, and it has to start today.” In 2020, Ibram X. Kendi cried, “Saturate the body politic with … antiracist policies.” More recently, Donald Trump cried, “Fight!” Different voices, same refrain: The system is broken, the elites are corrupt, and everything must change.

For many young men, that refrain has grown tired. When every problem is global, every solution systemic, and every crisis urgent, exhaustion sets in. Eventually a young man throws up his hands. What do they expect me to do? I’m not in Congress. I don’t run an oil company. I don’t control the global supply chain or the prison system. How, NFL, am I supposed to “end racism”?

Chalamet didn’t sound like the culture warriors exhorting us to be advocates. He sounded more like Rule No. 6 from psychologist Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: “Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.”

This, I’d argue, is the misunderstood message of the manosphere. In a culture paralyzed by crises too big to solve, it offers, as Peterson’s subtitle put it, an “antidote to chaos.” It begins not with governments or movements but with something more manageable: the man in the mirror.

Peterson, a clinical psychologist, didn’t set out to lead a movement. But with the release of 12 Rules in 2018—alongside podcasts, YouTube lectures, and theater tours—he became an unlikely father figure to a generation of disoriented young men. His lectures mix Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Book of Genesis but always circle back to the practical: Make your bed, “stand up straight,” befriend “people who want the best for you,” “be precise in your speech.” He doesn’t mock young men, but he doesn’t excuse them either. He calls them to grow up, to become competent, dependable, truthful, and—in his words—“the strongest person at your father’s funeral.”

The manosphere, of course, is bigger than Peterson. Men want the perseverance of David Goggins, who preaches toughness through suffering. They want the structure of James Clear’s Atomic Habits, the curiosity of Joe Rogan’s long conversations, the honesty of Theo Von’s humor.

And yes, some want Andrew Tate. His vision of masculinity is troubling, loud, and often toxic. He teaches young men to be ruthless for power, to treat women as property, and to see wealth and sexual conquest as markers of success. He has been arrested on rape and sex trafficking charges, allegations that underscore just how destructive his message can be for those who listen. But Tate’s popularity also reveals something we can’t ignore. He offers a path, however flawed, that promises strength and control in a world that feels uncontrollable.

All this to say, some of the manosphere messages are good. And it’s not fair to lump Goggins, Peterson, or Rogan in with Andrew Tate. A world where more men took responsibility for what’s within reach—their bodies, their work, their families—would be a better one. But the gospel of the manosphere is still incomplete.

Scripture affirms discipline: “Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control” (Prov. 25:28). Paul told Timothy, “Train yourself to be godly” (1 Tim. 4:7). Even Jesus, who said, “My yoke is easy,” still offered a yoke (Matt. 11:30). Formation, obedience, and effort matter. But the Bible adds a counterweight: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain” (Ps. 127:1). Discipline without dependence is just another version of self-salvation. It may make you productive, even impressive, but it cannot make you whole.

No number of reps in the gym, journal entries, or ice baths can heal the rot in the human heart. After all, “it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Grace is not only forgiveness that wipes the slate clean and leaves you to scribble on it again but also the power that helps you make fewer marks in the first place.

Grace is the kindness of God that leads to repentance (Rom. 2:4), the Spirit who works in us “to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13). Without grace, self-improvement ends in exhaustion or arrogance. With grace, even small steps of faith become acts of eternal significance.

That’s the tension Christian formation must hold. Men are right to want agency, clarity, and strength. They’re right to desire lives that matter. But grit alone cannot carry them. “Can an Ethiopian change his skin or a leopard its spots?” (Jer. 13:23). No. And neither can young men change their character with a self-help book.

The gospel of the manosphere demands endless performance and offers no rest. The gospel of Christ begins with mercy. It isn’t a more disciplined self-improvement plan. It is an utter transformation that begins, counterintuitively, with acknowledging the limits of the self.

So how can the church call young men to this kind of agency? Two notable Christians come to mind as presenting possible paths forward.

First, there’s John Mark Comer, who has popularized a sort of “formation” path. His “Rule of Life” calls young men to silence, Sabbath, Scripture, and community—not as productivity tricks but as practices of abiding. His emphasis is on spiritual disciplines, drawn from monastic rhythms but adapted for everyday believers. His work resonates in churches, contemplative circles, even the wellness world. But wherever it lands, the point is the same: You become whole not by trying harder but by making space for God. As Jesus said, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4, ESV).

Charlie Kirk, by contrast, embodied more of a “family” path. Known for his political combat, he increasingly emphasized the household as the true foundation for cultural renewal. He urged men to get married, stay married, raise children, and be present as fathers. Read your Bible. Build something lasting with your work. Provide stability where the world offers chaos. His vision wasn’t about dominance but responsibility—responsibility carried not in pride but in reliance on God. This is “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

These approaches reach different audiences but share something vital: They refuse to separate discipline from dependence. Both invite men to take responsibility not for the whole world but for what God has entrusted to them. And both remind us that true change doesn’t begin with the man in the mirror; it begins with the man on the cross.

If the church wants to reach young men, it must continue to hold out precisely this message in a world offering two competing stories. One says, “Save the world”—an impossible burden for any man to carry, a burden that more often than not leads to disengagement and despair. The other says, “Save yourself”—which is crushing. The church must name both as counterfeits and announce the only true gospel. We cannot save the world, and we cannot save ourselves. Christ must save us, and he has.

At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, his wife, Erika, vowed to carry on his mission to reach “the lost boys of the West, the young men who feel like they have no direction, no purpose, no faith, and no reason to live. The men wasting their lives on distractions, and the men consumed with resentment, anger, and hate.” And how did she begin that mission? By forgiving the boy who murdered her husband.

That is what can save the lost boys of the West, even one as lost as Tyler Robinson. Not the gospel of the world. Not the gospel of the self. Not performance, self-help, or sheer willpower. Only the undeserved, transforming grace of God. Only Christ—and him crucified.

Luke Simon is the Co-Director of Student Ministries at The Crossing in Columbia, Missouri, and an MDiv student at Covenant Theological Seminary. He has written on Gen Z, technology, masculinity, and the church. You can follow him on X.

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Ideas

A Civil War of Words

Kara Bettis Carvalho

Staff Editor

Evangelical factions can increasingly be identified by our speech. We agree on big issues yet insult and talk past each other.

Illustration by Kate Petrik / Source Images: Getty

Jesus said people would know we are his disciples if we love one another (John 13:35), but increasingly they know evangelical factions by our speech. There are many Christians in America who are united on major ethical and theological issues but divided by our moral language, and this chasm between culturally moderate and conservative evangelicals is only widening.

We agree, for instance, that racial reconciliation is biblical but clash over whether diversity sounds aspirational or woke. And we agree that abortion is evil and helping unexpectedly pregnant women is important but break ranks over phrases like baby killers (too harsh?) or caring for women (too soft?). And we agree on a sexual ethic that rejects same-sex marriage and gender transition, but we differ on how to describe it: Is it a “biblical” ethic? An “orthodox” ethic? A “traditional” ethic? And do we describe someone as a “trans-identified male” or a “man pretending to be a woman”? Our ethical destinations may be the same, but our language can be miles apart.

Much of this difference may come from location, as Aaron Renn observed in Life in the Negative World. Because they often live and work in more urban areas, culturally moderate evangelicals tend to “face more risk and a greater social cost when they run afoul of the current secular progressive line,” he wrote, a risk that “is often under-appreciated” by evangelicals in more conservative and Christian-friendly environments.

But this difference is not merely a matter of culture. Paul wrote that our conversation should “be always full of grace, seasoned with salt” (Col. 4:6), a pairing that suggests we can err in either direction. Is there a role for hyperbolic, crude, or even demeaning language in moral leadership? When is strong language necessary to wake people up to wickedness—and when does it become sinful itself?

These questions have repeatedly come up in recent years. In early September, for instance, apologist Gavin Ortlund hosted theologian Joe Rigney on his podcast to hash out a disagreement they’d had about use of coarse language and swearing by Christians generally, young men specifically, and even more specifically, pastor and author Doug Wilson, who is Rigney’s colleague.

When confronting grave sin, Rigney argued, Christians can and perhaps should use satire—including crude or even sexualized language—“to reveal the great evil, the great wickedness that’s being celebrated and yawned at by evangelicals,” to rebuke “both evangelical apathy” about wrongdoing and the wrong itself. Over an hour of conversation, Ortlund pushed back, agreeing with the underlying sentiment that strong language could be used to morally awaken people but denying that disparaging women (and particularly specific female body parts) is ever acceptable.

A similar conversation arose in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. A political activist and debater, Kirk was known for speaking provocatively—something many saw as admirable and worth imitating and others deemed distracting or even hateful.

Or consider President Donald Trump’s use of political hyperbole. His book Trump: The Art of the Deal popularized the phrase “truthful hyperbole,” which Trump defined as “an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

It’s also a very effective tool of division. This kind of hyperbole is surely part of why conservatives don’t take “the climate crisis” seriously and progressives won’t productively engage “the border crisis.” As Damon Linker observed at The Week, we now use existential threat far more often and easily than we should. This kind of hyperbole, Linker argues, “is the rhetorical equivalent of screaming at the top of your lungs in a room echoing with noisy arguments and teeming with seductive distractions.”

Insults like Big Eva, Big Pharma, and Big Fertility provoke strong feelings, but they rarely move us closer to truth or understanding. Slapping the label liberal or right-wing on any given position immediately raises walls. Calling people “sodomites” or saying they’re full of “reckless, indefensible, racial rhetoric” might technically be true, but is it necessary or persuasive? Calling anything we dislike trauma, tyranny, or fascism, waters down the realities of those words.

There’s often some truth in these statements. Calling out sin is certainly necessary—and can be done quite persuasively. But hyperbole and other alienating language is risky whatever the speaker’s cultural alignment. It might draw attention, but it also raises blood pressure with mixed results.

“The more we shout, the less we hear. The more we exaggerate, the less we believe,” concludes Linker. “And the more we hype the truth as we perceive it, the less likely we are to think anyone else has anything valuable to say.” Christians care about truth and about people, and our relationships with fellow evangelicals should be marked by love, not division. We can persuade, rebuke, and care through reason without adding to the drama (John 8:7).

I am certainly not making a case for watered-down language. It’s not that the middle way is always best. A winsome apologetic doesn’t have to be soft. Any reader of Scripture will recognize the strong and forceful language Jesus, Paul, and Peter used in their attacks on immorality—especially inside the church (Matt. 7:6; 16:23; Phil. 3:8; 2 Pet. 2:12). Ortlund and Rigney discussed God’s condemning language through the prophet Ezekiel in calling Israel “dry bones” (37:1–4).

Yet Proverbs reminds us often that frequent and foolish words are ruinous (10:10; 12:18). And Paul’s instruction about grace and salt in his letter to the Colossian church is given “so that you may know how to answer everyone” (4:6). It is grounded in Paul’s desire to “proclaim the mystery of Christ … clearly, as I should” (vv. 3–4).

Clear does not usually mean harsh or exaggerated. It means command of the facts, specificity, and the argument-through-questions method of Jesus and Socrates. If we know the truth, we can hold it out bare and trust that it will pierce the hardest of hearts.

Kara Bettis Carvalho is a features editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Kara Bettis Carvalho

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