The Harvard Obsession

Pete Williamson

Harvard president Claudine Gay has resigned. Perhaps it’s not time to think less of Harvard, but to think of Harvard less.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Getty

On Tuesday, I received an email from the president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, announcing her decision to resign. It was addressed to “members of the Harvard community,” to which I belong as an alumnus (MDiv ’14) and a Harvard chaplain for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

Harvard is a community I care about deeply. And the last few months have demonstrated that many other people care deeply about Harvard too—people well beyond the list Gay emailed. Her announcement came after a series of Harvard-centered media frenzies, some about Gay’s December congressional testimony and subsequent plagiarism allegations, and some about student groups’ response to the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7 and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war.

I’ve been asked many times for my opinion of what’s happening, and, initially, my instinct was to provide the nuance those headlines always seem to miss. But as the stories kept coming, increasingly, I’ve found myself giving a different answer: Perhaps you should care about Harvard less.

In one sense, the interest was understandable. This round of media attention started with a truly reprehensible statement by a Harvard student organization after October 7, a statement that laid all blame for the violence on Israel and that was signed by a number of other student groups.

I raised an eyebrow when I saw it, but I also know firsthand what student groups can be like: passionate, informal, chaotic. I would later learn that some groups were surprised to see their name attached to the statement, and others had not seen the statement before it was published.

This is going to cause a stir on campus, I thought.

Boy, was I wrong. It did not just cause a stir on campus. It caused a stir nationwide. And why was it a national news story? Probably for the same reason you’re reading this very article: We’re obsessed with Harvard. Harvard gets clicks.

Along with a few other top academic institutions, Harvard has a special way of occupying the minds of the American public. The name alone evokes a strange mixture of awe and envy. The brand conveys a significance that fascinates us. For a second, we forget Christ’s words—“the last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt. 20:16)—and are taken with Harvard’s prestige.

I’ve experienced this myself. When I got the opportunity to study at Harvard in 2011, I was drawn in by its reputation. I didn’t really reflect on whether it was the right choice for me or part of God’s plan for me. I saw the H at the top of my acceptance letter, broke up with my girlfriend of six days (sorry!), and bought a one-way ticket to Boston.

Everyone at Harvard knows the power of the name. It’s why Harvard students say, I study in Boston, not, I’m at Harvard. No one wants to drop the H-bomb on an otherwise polite conversation!

As I started my ministry with Harvard grad students, I learned a key lesson from my mentor, Jeff Barneson, who has been a campus minister at the university longer than Israel wandered the desert: “We all must reach the point where we repent of the reasons we came to Harvard.” Why? Because, to some degree, we all came here because we were enamored of the worldly success that is synonymous with the Harvard name.

Harvard has rightly earned much of its reputation through centuries of world-class scholarship. That ought to be applauded. But sound scholarship is not the reason Harvard stories go national while we ignore what’s happening at local community colleges or state schools to which we’re far more likely to have a personal or communal connection. Our increasingly interconnected world is causing our attention, along with our anger, to be pulled toward remote narratives.

Too often we fail to scrutinize where our attention goes and why we’re focusing less on our own communities and more on faraway people and places. We don’t notice the fruit of giving too much attention to glittering names like Harvard—and it is not good fruit.

First, caring too much about Harvard makes us more likely to oversimplify and misunderstand distant stories and people, which risks distorting our attitudes. It’s a symptom of “Gell-Mann amnesia,” a term author Michael Crichton coined to describe how we notice misleading statements and errors when we read news stories on topics within our expertise, then read uncritically on topics outside of our experience.

Because few of us know Harvard and similar institutions well, we are likely to be misled by flawed reporting and to caricature the people involved. Instead of seeing the image of God in them, we see simplistic representations of ideas we hate. We miss the reality of the situation and fail to regard people from Christ’s perspective (2 Cor. 5:16).

Relatedly, caring too much about Harvard often has us spending time and care on problems too big and far for us to help—while neglecting smaller, nearer circumstances where we could actually make a difference. If every person who wrote an angry comment at the bottom of a Harvard article spent that same energy on their city, school district, or church, they’d likely find something more constructive to say and something more useful to do.

Jesus gave his attention to the people in front of him (Matt. 14:14). He gave little credence to the colossal institutions that trusted in their own significance (Mark 12:13–17). We would do well to imitate him.

Finally, our over-attention to Harvard exacerbates the very imbalance of which its critics often complain. Even an anti-Harvard obsession helps to concentrate power in Harvard and institutions like it.

The world is full of brilliant people and outstanding universities. As a society, we would do better to recognize that brilliance wherever it is found, rather than assessing people based on their association with a brand like Harvard. Harvard has no monopoly on brilliance and does not deserve a monopoly on our attention.

The point is not to bash Harvard—though, certainly, it does deserve scrutiny and even criticism for a great many things. Rather, it is to redirect our attention toward better objects. There’s a quote, often misattributed to C. S. Lewis but more accurately credited to Rick Warren, which explains that humility “is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

Something like that applies here. For most of us, the right response to all this clamor isn’t to think less of Harvard, but to think of Harvard less.

Pete Williamson is the team leader for InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministries at Harvard University and a Harvard chaplain.

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News

Wire Story

Word Perfect: Christian Proofreaders Celebrate a Billion Bibles Checked

Diana Chandler - Baptist Press

Peachtree Publishing Services reviews 80 percent of Protestant Bibles in the US, looking at 300,000 details in each project.

Peachtree Proofreading Services / Baptist Press

When Jan Gibbs began proofreading Bibles 14 years ago for Peachtree Publishing Services, which celebrated in December the distribution of a billion copies of its works, she first had to learn to draw lines.

In the Bible’s poetry books in particular, primary, secondary and tertiary vertical lines designate the indentation for each horizontal line of text. Line placement must match the translators’ desires to a tee.

Mastering poetry alignment, she moved to proofreading running heads to conform to each publisher’s order. Then footnotes. Then word breaks.

Cumbersome to many, to Gibbs it’s mother’s milk.

“I find it fascinating,” said Gibbs, who today is Peachtree’s vice president of Bible proofreading. “My husband said that this would absolutely drive him insane.”

When proofreading God’s inerrant Word, there’s no room for error.

Peachtree proofreads 80 percent of the English Protestant Bibles in the US, proofreads many Catholic Bibles and serves publishers worldwide, Peachtree president Chris Hudson told Baptist Press.

“We are making sure everything is as perfect as can be,” he said. “We want people to find God when they read the Bible, not find a mistake.”

But surely, with so many details in play, someone must have made an error somewhere in Peachtree’s history, one could presume.

“We don’t get a lot of feedback of mistakes. Mostly we’re catching lots of mistakes before it’s printed,” Hudson said. “Every step along the way gets looked at at least twice by different people. Through our electronic and our people checks we’re catching most things. But we are human, so occasionally we’ll get (feedback) that we missed a spelling of a word here or there, but it’s not very often.”

Preserving God’s inerrant Word in perfect text is Peachtree’s key theological motivation.

“We have the Bible he wants us to have, and therefore we want to preserve it exactly as God intended. It’s why our people work for us,” Hudson said. “We could all be making more money doing something else, but we’re driven to protect and advance God’s Word and help people engage the Bible. It’s that genuine theological drive that motivates us.”

An evangelistic heart to spread God’s Word at home and globally inspires Peachtree’s team of “introverted people” to sit at their desks and check text for hours. In 2023, Peachtree proofread Bibles in 12 languages with a capacity to reach 94 countries.

Among Peachtree’s more than 45 clients are B&H Publishing, Harvest Ministries, Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, the Museum of the Bible, the American Bible Society, and Moody Publishing, as well as Catholic Bible publishers.

Gibbs recalls an error being made on a project she oversaw. One of the scanners on her team missed a detail in a portion of the red-letter text. The publisher spotted the error during printing. A couple of pages would have to be pulled and the correct pages inserted. It was expensive.

“I was just devastated,” Gibbs said. “It was like at the end of a red-letter section. I want to say it was like the ending punctuation was missed. It was something like that. On some red letters, you’ll have a red single quote that ends a section, then the double quote next to it would need to be black. But it was just horrible.”

Peachtree had to recheck the entire red-letter section with no additional compensation before the publisher finalized the print.

“Needless to say, ever since then,” she said, “I almost always go through and check red letter sections for jobs I’m in charge of. We are humans and we do miss things sometimes. It’s crushing when we do, because it’s such an important book.”

Peachtree checks more than 300,000 details on any given Bible before publication, including the biblical text, supplemental material, study and devotional content, cross-reference systems, concordances, and indexes. About 20 fulltime workers and additional contract employees do the work, all remotely since the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of hours are poured into each project, usually spanning as much as three months, Hudson said.

Peachtree has its roots in the 1960s work of Mildred and Frederick Tripp. Mildred, a solo proofreader, gained clients after she developed a unique method of proofreading at Oxford University Press, according to Peachtree’s website. Doug and June Gunden purchased the concept from the Tripps and formed Peachtree Editorial Services in 1981, refining the method to include a systematic team approach to proofreading.

Hudson has incorporated software tools to work in concert with the human hand, which he describes as merging the best of both worlds. It’s not artificial intelligence, he said, but he speculates that AI might be used in the future to improve the software programs in use.

The proofreading process has changed since Gibbs began at Peachtree, but she’s as motivated as ever.

“I’ve spent the last 13 years learning it, and I still love it,” she told Baptist Press. “I still love the work I do.”

- More from Diana Chandler - Baptist Press

Books

Review

Close Encounters of the Elite Institutional Kind

Daniel G. Hummel

How a contested alien abduction claim from the 1960s helps explain modern cynicism toward credentialed experts and organizations.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

A friend recently recounted a horrible flying experience full of delays, obfuscating explanations, and eventual cancellations. We concluded that one of the most infuriating parts of modern travel is that there is no single person to blame when it falls apart. Most likely, it’s not a failure of this specific pilot or that particular mechanic or this or that airline. It is truly systemic, with a hundred moving processes, none of which have overriding authority over the others.

The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America

Matthew Bowman (Author)

Yale University Press

288 pages

You can lose your cool in the terminal, but what power does any single employee really hold? You can curse the universe, but alas, it is not moved. If you are a Christian, you can utter a prayer for mercy—I’ve petitioned for such travel miracles but never experienced one myself. It all makes your jaw clench and your stomach turn.

Americans today seem to be in a similar situation as the stranded passenger, directing our rage both in focused and indiscriminate ways across our society, which many see as falling apart.

Since the 1960s, public trust in all types of institutions has plummeted. Since Gallup started tracking survey results, faith in the US Congress has dropped to 8 percent, with newspapers rating at 18 percent, banks at 26 percent, and organized religious institutions at 32 percent. According to these metrics, most institutions have bottomed out in the last two years. Overall, American confidence in institutions has fallen from 48 percent in 1979 to 26 percent in 2023.

Explanations are many and varied. To make sense of the collapsing trust in government, we often cite events like the Watergate scandal and trends of party polarization. Loss of trust in business is often attributed to scandals like Enron and the 2008 banking crisis. Cratering trust in religious institutions is blamed on moral failures, including revelations of systemic sexual abuse. Recent commentators have offered many theories for what historian Matthew Bowman calls “the cynicism and conspiratorialism of American life today.”

Bowman’s new book, The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America, offers a new way to frame the problem in human as well as institutional terms. The results are surprising and welcome.

Bowman uses what has been characterized as the original blueprint for the modern UFO-encounter trope—the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in rural New Hampshire on September 19, 1961—to explore the cynicism in American society that began in the 1960s and continues today. The book manages to recast big trends in American life through a story that is smaller in scope and more intimate in detail.

A historian at Claremont Graduate University who has written on Mormonism, evangelicalism, and religion and US politics, Bowman is well equipped to tell the Hills’ story. In his account, both the couple’s abduction narrative and its broader reception were deeply influenced by the surrounding social context, which combined the height of American civil religion, the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and the authoritative scientific pronouncements of credentialed experts and government officials.

The Hills’ UFO encounter not only reflected this world but, over time, chipped away at it. They were rejected by military and scientific authorities, and they were simultaneously embraced by competing authorities in the realms of religion, spirituality, and pseudoscience. Their story pried open cultural fissures resembling those in our world today: widespread distrust in both public and private institutions, skepticism toward institutional leaders, dismissiveness toward expertise we don’t already agree with, and the conspiracy thinking at work in many parts of public life.

The encounter

On the night of their claimed abduction, when Betty and Barney Hill witnessed a mysterious “flying saucer” overhead while driving home from Montreal, they were living in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Betty, 42 years old at the time, was a white social worker and a New Hampshire native. Barney, 39 years old, was an African American postal worker and civil rights activist from Philadelphia. Married in May 1960, they were a rare interracial couple in New England.

The Hills were also Unitarians who attended South Church in Portsmouth. The ethos and assumptions of Unitarianism—and by extension Protestant civil religion—pervaded the Hills’ New England culture. In the 1950s and early 1960s, this meant a progressive theological and political optimism, rooted in a trust of human reason and the American dream, that defined Unitarian beliefs and teachings.

More specifically, in 1961 this meant a seamless religious and social embrace of the civil rights movement. Though the Unitarian denomination was predominantly white, its leaders were notably active in promoting civil rights. The South Church minister installed just six months before the Hills’ fateful September night was a liberal civil rights minister named John Papandrew. His sermons and efforts at community organizing came from a place of deep hope in the capacity of American institutions to reform, and from a confidence that those institutions could effectively better the lives of common people. This faith set up the Hills for repeated disappointments and disillusionment.

Enter the event that made Betty and Barney believe that they had encountered an extraterrestrial UFO. Bowman does not evaluate, as many investigations have before, the veracity of the Hills’ account. He believes their testimony was sincere, but he is guarded in giving it credence. Part of the problem is that the Hills’ narrative evolved over time, with Betty and Barney remembering more details and discovering more memories through hypnosis.

The Hills, channeling their Unitarian optimism in human reason, believed (contra the consensus among professional psychologists) that hypnosis helped to recover accurate but repressed memories. In their case, these included vivid descriptions of an invasive abduction involving small grey aliens with large eyes, a needle that penetrated Betty’s womb, and dozens of medical tests performed on Barney.

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by CT

Betty and Barney Hill

As respectable, progressive members of their community, the Hills looked for validation in the best ways they knew how. They contacted the Air Force and a knowledgeable civilian organization, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), met repeatedly with an esteemed psychologist, and eventually invited journalists to document their story.

At each turn, however, they faced increasing scrutiny. The Air Force dutifully received the Hills’ story but did not take it seriously. Psychologist Benjamin Simon, who led both Betty and Barney in multiple sessions of hypnosis, interpreted the findings as evidence of suppressed racial anxieties rather than any external reality. And journalists grew both skeptical and bombastic in recounting the story.

The Hills were active participants in spinning their experiences out of their own control. They actively sought attention and recognition in Portsmouth and beyond, growing increasingly convinced that a conspiracy of suppression was underfoot. With enough national notice, they believed, their narrative would be vindicated.

Resistance and disillusionment

Of course, as Bowman’s subtitle makes clear, this all took place not in a vacuum but in a roiling social and political climate defined by increasing polarization around civil rights. Papandrew, a very public supporter of Betty and Barney, left his South Church pastorate in late 1963 because his sermons and activism had failed to sway the congregation. The people “did not want him to preach things that made them uncomfortable,” Bowman concludes.

Betty and especially Barney began to see their own story falling victim to similar forces. By 1966 the first full journalistic accounts of their abduction were hitting bookshelves. But the increased attention did not provide the breakthrough the Hills were seeking. It mostly made things worse. The couple ditched their psychologist and began to consult with a local psychic, an antiestablishment scientist of parapsychology at Duke University, and a UFO enthusiast who also dabbled in the occult, among others.

These alternative authorities supplied the Hills with a vast array of intellectual and spiritual tools for making sense of their experiences. In describing the spiritual “New Age” that the Hills were entering, Bowman uses the term bricolage to capture the mixing and matching of ideas from the occult, Kabbalah, alchemy, astrology, and the like.

Establishment resistance led to disillusionment across the board. Even as the Civil Rights Act became law, Barney “was beginning to worry that his trust in the power of the state to change minds was unjustified.” This happened locally in Portsmouth as white residents dragged their feet—from the barber shop that refused to integrate to the lawyer that took the barber’s case.

Bowman mentions that Barney never joined the more radical Nation of Islam or embraced the ideology of Black power, which harbored a deep skepticism that American institutions could integrate at all. Yet Barney and the Nation of Islam’s founder, Elijah Muhammad, shared a fascination with UFOs and a faith that “science would reveal the bankruptcy of white America.”

Moreover, Barney interpreted backlash from the scientific establishment and civil rights activism “to be expressions of the same bigotry.” In less than a decade, a cynicism foreign to Unitarian progressivism had captured Betty and Barney—and many Americans besides.

Barney died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1969, while Betty lived until 2004. The divergent lifespans meant that while Barney remained largely stuck in a place of disillusionment, Betty continued to grapple with her own story in new and increasingly creative ways. Her version of what happened in 1961 continued to develop, and she reported further encounters with UFOs. By the 1970s, she claimed to have witnessed hundreds of visitations.

Her fame increased with a 1975 film starring James Earl Jones as Barney, and her infamy grew when a large portion of one of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos episodes in 1980 was dedicated to debunking the Hills’ story, employing the memorable phrase, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” The establishment, in Betty’s mind, was at it again.

Betty remained a household name among UFO enthusiasts but ultimately lived a life of struggle with the very authorities from whom she sought validation. As Bowman writes, establishment skepticism “frustrated the Hills because it implied to them that their own reasons and perceptions could not be trusted.” Moreover, he concludes, “It seemed catastrophic to them, not only because of their experience but because it implied the nation was run not by its citizens but by a dominant and trained elite.”

In 21st-century parlance, you could call it the “deep state,” the “swamp,” or simply “the elite.” Bowman’s insightful and compelling analysis of the Hills shows their resemblance to many Americans today who trust their own ability to determine the truth while doubting the motives of those who wield expertise and institutional power.

Believing rightly

The Hills’ story helps illustrate that this state of affairs has a deeply personal and experiential component that can’t be captured by invoking either discrete events (like Watergate) or broader patterns (like polarization). The collapse of trust in institutions can’t be pinned exclusively on either a conservative or liberal cast of characters. Nor is it definitively populist or establishmentarian in origin.

The “establishment” began to alienate the Hills through encounters with individual scientists, psychologists, military representatives, and journalists. And Barney’s loss of civil rights optimism occurred not primarily because of white resistance to integration nationally but because of events in Portsmouth.

In other words, individual organizations and entities, including churches and other ministries, have the heavy burden of representing a much larger institutional type in their day-to-day interactions, whether they like it or not. None of us have been mistreated by “the church” or “the state” in some absolute definition of those terms. Yet thousands of us have been mistreated by specific churches, authority structures, and government agencies—by certain manifestations of systemic forces and particular structures of injustice.

This way of reframing the cynicism and conspiratorialism of American life today affects Christians in at least two ways. First, it bears repeating that the Hills were active agents in their own alienation. They misunderstood the purpose and effects of hypnosis, they routinely obfuscated or changed their story, and they resorted to authority sources that were specious at best.

They acted in ways they understood to be consistent with their Unitarian faith—which was not “anti-science” or antiestablishment—and many others in their community spurred them on. Regardless of the details of the Hills’ experience, there were telltale signs that their story was not true or, at best, incomplete and subject to scrutiny. When the truth is obscured in this way, it reflects failures of discipleship, community support, and individual character.

At the same time, the Hills were subject to larger forces that treated them, time and again, as less than fully human. Many people looked to instrumentalize the Hills, and many others looked to suppress, exaggerate, or twist the couple’s experience for their own ends. In Bowman’s telling, very few people who entered the Hills’ life after 1961 regarded them as humans first. Rather, they quickly became pawns in various games of authority, control, or careerism. Bowman’s book is a heartbreaking portrait of the all-too-common American experience of institutional life. No wonder it breeds cynicism.

Some years ago, Dallas Willard observed that “we live in a culture that has, for centuries now, cultivated the idea that the skeptical person is always smarter than the one who believes.” That insight drove those (like the Hills) who doubted the establishment as much as it drives those today who doubt the ability of others to reason toward truths on their own.

Willard’s charge is not to believe indiscriminately but to believe rightly. He concludes the above quote by observing that “the fashion of the age has identified mental sharpness with a pose, not with genuine intellectual method and character.” If cynicism has become the problem in the way Bowman documents, then genuine thinking and living seem the most effective recourses we can summon.

Daniel G. Hummel directs The Lumen Center, a scholarly collective of Christian writers, researchers, and educators on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism: How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation.

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Theology

Neural Implants: Should We Become One with AI?

A. Trevor Sutton

As Christians, we must prioritize thinking theologically about emerging technologies.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Getty

Will artificial intelligence destroy humanity or elevate it to new heights? Silicon Valley technologists are in a tumultuous debate about this very question.

Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and SpaceX, is working with his new startup, Neuralink, to develop neuroprosthetic devices—tiny electrodes implanted into human brains that can connect us to computers and artificial intelligence (AI). The corporation received FDA approval to conduct human clinical trials after its controversial testing on primates. It’s raising substantial funds to compete in this industry and making headlines in the process.

Proponents claim they could treat quadriplegia or Parkinson’s disease—or augment cognition and memory. Musk believes that through this technology, we will “achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence.”

Despite its continuity with existing embodied technologies—such as eyeglasses, hearing aids, pacemakers, and smartwatches—neural implants are the first devices to enable humankind to interface directly with machines. Such new territory often invites either terrifying fears or massive hopes.

Terrifying fear, or techno-pessimism, imagines a dystopian future where human beings become dispassionate and dependent machines—while limitless hope, or techno-optimism, imagines a utopic future where technology solves all our woes. The latter logic flows as follows: AI cannot outpace human intelligence if we are one with it. In other words, if you can’t beat AI, join it.

But whether technology inhibits absolute human freedom or promotes absolute human power, both assume that humanity is an absolute law unto itself.

Egbert Schuurman, a Christian philosopher of technology, thinks that techno-pessimism and techno-optimism are both essentially religious in nature. Arguing that these views have to do with absolutes, Schuurman writes that “the fundamental choice upon which this pretension rests is a radical one and thus is religious in character.”

For example, if you think neural implants will either destroy or deliver us, that is a religious thought. If implanting computer chips in our brains becomes our ultimate hope or fear, then it has become either our god or our eternal enemy. Either way, Schuurman points out, the conversation takes a religious turn. And humanity will never develop a proper relationship with this technology if we seek to let it determine our absolute hopes or fears.

As a pastor and co-author of Redeeming Technology: A Christian Approach to Healthy Digital Habits, I want us to consider how any emerging technology might intersect with our theological framework. How can we think theologically about neural implant devices? Let’s consider three simple and questions: Do I want this? At what cost? For whose benefit?

Do we want this? Theologian Norman Wirzba said we should always ask ourselves whether any new technology is something we even want.

“This stuff is coming so fast,” Wirzba said of AI. “It’s coming with such allure because the promises are enormous and it’s really easy to get sucked into that. Because maybe it does not correspond to fundamental values that we should be having.”

The Bible says much about human ambitions and desires—and about how our wants can often become our wardens. Scripture is full of characters with misguided aspirations. Adam and Eve desired god-like freedom but later came to regret it. Israel wanted a king like the other nations only to be ultimately disappointed. Such stories can serve as a warning sign to limit our impulsive instincts.

Desiring new technologies to ease human suffering and disease can be a good and noble objective. But even a purely altruistic motive can eventually turn into the goal of optimizing basic human brain functioning. Do we want a future where human thought is indistinguishable from machine learning? Are we dissatisfied with the human brain in its present state such that we feel the need to augment our cognition and memory?

At what cost? We need to consider the ethical and societal costs that could come with bringing neural implants to market and whether the ends justify the means.

What humanitarian price are we willing to pay when it comes to how clinical trials are conducted on human subjects? What societal price are we willing to pay if this technology results in a steep divide between the technological haves and have-nots?

The answers to these questions will reveal our ultimate priorities. Martin Luther stated that a god is that which we fear, love, and trust in above all else. If we are willing to sacrifice anything—financially, ethically, societally—to bring neural implants to market, then this emerging technology has become our god.

For whose benefit? As of now, neural implants are positioned to benefit individuals with clinical deficits, such as people suffering from paralysis. But who stands to benefit when this technology reaches the wider consumer market?

Jesus calls us to love God along with loving our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30–31). By keeping the focus on how neural implants might serve our neighbor—and not just ourselves—we can better ascertain the proper value of this emerging technology.

It is very likely that neural implants will go to market before these questions are answered, since neurotechnology companies are likely not thinking theologically about their creations. But as believers, we can reflect on how emerging technologies might impact us all.

Perhaps that starts with considering the impact existing wearable technology has on us. Has my Fitbit or Apple Watch brought more or less peace into my life? How does tracking my daily step count serve my neighbor? What is really driving my desire to have that next new wearable device like Apple’s Vision Pro?

Once we begin to think theologically about the devices we are already wearing on our bodies, maybe we will be better prepared to ask far bigger and harder questions—like what it might mean to implant devices in our brains that help us become one with AI.

A. Trevor Sutton is a Lutheran pastor in Lansing, Michigan, and co-author of Redeeming Technology: A Christian Approach to Healthy Digital Habits.

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News

Died: Donald Wildmon, Champion of Christian Boycotts

Daniel Silliman

The Methodist minister and founder of American Family Association mobilized believers to exert economic influence on major corporations.

American Family Association / edits by Elizabeth Kaye

Donald Wildmon, a Methodist minister who seized on the idea that boycotts would be the best way to make America more moral, freeing television airwaves of suggestions of sex and anti-Christian bias, died on December 28. He was 85 and suffered from Lewy body disease, a type of dementia.

Wildmon organized and mobilized Christians across the country, convincing them that they should exert their combined economic power to influence what was on TV.

Through a succession of organizations he founded in Tupelo, Mississippi—the National Federation for Decency, the Coalition for Better Television, Christian Leaders for Responsible Television, and ultimately the American Family Association—he taught the Religious Right to embrace boycotts as a political tool. Before him, boycotts were primarily associated with the civil rights movement. Many conservatives considered them anti-capitalist, coercive, and un-American. Wildmon changed that.

“What we are up against is not dirty words and dirty pictures,” he said. “It is a philosophy of life which seeks to remove the influence of Christians and Christianity from our society.”

Wildmon also refined and developed boycotting strategies, learning to go after advertisers, rather than TV networks, for maximal effect.

He and his organizations objected to the depictions of sexual situations and suggestions of immorality on All in the Family; Almost Grown; Amen; Benson; Charlie’s Angels; Cheers; The Dukes of Hazzard; Dynasty; The Facts of Life; Family Ties; Full House; and The Golden Girls (going alphabetically); as well as Knight Rider; Knots Landing; L. A. Law; Magnum, P. I.; Matlock; Murder, She Wrote; Saturday Night Live; Three’s Company; Three’s a Crowd; Who’s the Boss?; Wiseguy; The Wonder Years; and many other TV programs.

So they applied pressure to major American corporations from General Motors to General Mills, Pepsi to Clorox, pushing the companies to cancel ads and curtail their financial relationships with ABC, CBS, and NBC.

Wildmon was not always successful. That didn’t bother him.

“I was raised to know that it was not a disgrace to fight and get whipped,” he said.

He was successful enough, on the other hand, that TV executives and civil libertarians called him everything from a religious dingbat and rabble-rouser to a would-be Christofascist censor taking “the first step toward a police state” by organizing “the greatest frontal assault on intellectual freedom this country has ever faced.”

On news of his death Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves praised Wildmon’s “impressive legacy of Christian ministry,” saying it will “live on for many years to come.”

Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress said, “Don Wildmon was a true pioneer in encouraging pastors like myself and thousands of others to speak out on the great moral issues of the day.”

Wildmon was born on a farm in Dumas, Mississippi, on January 18, 1938. His father Ellis raised cotton on 100 acres. But the family ran into financial trouble, forcing Wildmon’s father to take a job with the state government and his mother, Bernice, to go to work as a school teacher. The family lost the farm and moved to Ripley, Mississippi, when Wildmon was a child.

Raised in a Methodist church, Wildmon felt his first call to ministry at age nine, but as he later recalled to CT, it was kind of vague. He just knew that “the Lord had something special for me to do.”

In high school and college, Wildmon found himself drawn more to journalism. At 16, he started working part-time as a local sports reporter, writing for a newspaper and broadcasting on the radio. He joined the army after college, serving a stint he later described as “miserable,” and then returned to the idea of ministry.

He was ordained in the Methodist Church in 1964 and enrolled in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University the following year. He was initially rejected from Emory because of a weak academic record but, as he later recounted, figured out how to lobby his way in.

“I found out who had influence,” he told CT in 1991.

After graduating with a master’s in divinity, Wildmon was assigned to a church in Tupelo, Mississippi. But the work left him unsatisfied. He started writing on the side, turning out more than a dozen devotional books and starting a syndicated religious column that was published in papers across the South. Most of his columns were on the practical and psychological benefits of religion, often ending with a twist that revealed the person he was writing about was famous.

He still felt bored and constrained, however, like he was “going ’round and ’round and getting nowhere.” He told a friend he had “lost the feeling God had something ‘special’ for me to do.”

Wildmon’s life changed direction in December 1976 when, as he would recount many times, he tried to watch television with his wife and four kids.

“On one channel there was sex,” he recalled. “On another there was profanity, and on the third a guy was preparing to work someone over with a hammer.”

He turned off the TV—and wondered if he could rally others to do the same. Wildmon launched “Turn Off the TV Week” in April 1977, urging his congregation not to watch anything for seven days.

The event received national attention, and Wildmon, who was 39 years old, decided to leave the ministry, take $5,000 he had saved, and start the National Federation for Decency.

“I remember lying in bed thinking, ‘Is this what the Lord wants me to do?’” he said.

It wasn’t clear that short-term boycotts of television shows would have the impact Wildmon wanted to have, though. It was also hard to prove that people were really not watching. So the next year, instead of asking people to not watch TV, Wildmon tried a different approach. He asked people to watch and keep track of every depiction and reference to sex they saw.

He and his supporters viewed 225 combined hours of prime-time television over a 15-week period and, according to their tally, saw something sexual or sexually suggestive more than three times an hour. The vast majority of the references, according to Wildmon, were sex outside of marriage.

Wildmon and his supporters also identified the sponsors of these shows. Instead of complaining to the networks about the programing, Wildmon picked an advertiser to target.

“I regret that it’s come to this,” he told reporters at the time, “but people have a responsibility to support good programming and not support programming they think is prurient. We think that, economically, the sponsors can be held accountable.”

That same year, Tupelo was in turmoil because of a boycott organized by a Black civil rights group called the Union League. Silent marchers, protesting white police violence, had an impact on the local economy. Stores in Tupelo saw sales drop between 10 and 20 percent.

The tactic was criticized for being too aggressive and coercive, but Union League leaders pointed out it was actually working.

“The Black boycott of white-owned stores has not only had an economic effect,” one said, “it’s causing an emotional breakdown in the white community.”

Wildmon adopted the same strategy. As he later explained to CT, he realized he didn’t need to change people’s minds. He needed to change the incentives that were driving their behavior.

“They may be converted to my way of thinking; they may not,” he said. “The bottom line is: Are you going to keep putting things on TV?”

The first target was Sears and Roebuck, which was advertising on All in the Family, Charlie’s Angels, and Three’s Company. Wildmon only had about 1,400 people on his mailing list at the time, but he arranged a few strategic pickets at stores around the country and the company’s headquarters in Chicago. A short while later, the company announced it was going to cut back on its investment in TV ads, and Wildmon was able to declare victory.

Wildmon’s activism had an impact even on companies he didn’t target. In the 1980–1981 TV season, Procter & Gamble withdrew ads from 50 different shows. The company, which was spending about $500 million in television advertising at the time, credited Wildmon.

“We think the coalition is expressing very important and broadly held views about gratuitous sex, violence, and profanity,” the CEO said. “I can assure you that we are listening very carefully to what they say.”

Wildmon saw another big success when he moved beyond television to target convenience stores that were selling Playboy, Penthouse, and other pornographic magazines. In 1986, 7-Eleven announced it was going to stop selling pornography at its 4,500 corporate-owned stores. 7-Eleven recommended franchise owners drop the magazines as well.

“It is a good example of what can happen when the Christian community stands together with selective buying,” Wildmon said. “It took us approximately two years, but our voice was heard.”

Wildmon led subsequent protests against Holiday Inn for showing pornographic movies; the National Endowment of the Arts for supporting art many thought obscene; theaters that showed the film Showgirls; and Kmart, which owned Waldenbooks, which sold novels with “erotic” stories about child sexual abuse.

Despite some notable victories, not all conservative Christians agreed with the strategy of boycotts, however. Jerry Falwell Sr., founder of the Moral Majority, initially signed on to work with Wildmon and to contribute $2 million to promote one boycott but later changed his mind. He had questions about whether the approach was too coercive.

TV executives pushed the argument that boycotts are anti-democratic and that Wildmon and people like him were threatening censorship (even though neither Wildmon nor any of his organizations suggested the government should ever be involved in suppressing speech). One called boycotts “a sneak attack on the foundation of democracy.” A poll, commissioned by the networks, showed that 55 percent of those who identified with the Moral Majority did not want to force their opinions on others, and Falwell backed away from that approach.

Other Christians questioned the church’s role in this kind of political activity.

Alan Johnson, a New Testament professor at Wheaton College, told CT that his church participated in the boycott of 7-Eleven, but he thought that was wrong.

“It is inappropriate for the church to become involved in the use of coercive force,” said Johnson, who died in 2018. “When [the church] gets into the business of coercion, it detracts and can even undermine its main mission … which is the proclamation of Christ’s gospel.”

Wildmon, for his part, easily dismissed arguments that he was trying to advance a police state. People could decide what they wanted to buy, he said, and that didn’t undermine democracy or free markets.

He did sometimes think, though, that his political activity might have had a negative effect on his own faith.

“I went through a period where I lost my emotional connection to my faith,” he told CT in 1991. “I’m not entirely out of that period. I don’t know if I will ever regain my emotions.”

Wildmon said this wasn’t because of the boycotts themselves, however. He felt estranged from his faith because so many churches and so many Christians didn’t see the urgency and importance of fighting for public morality like he did. He couldn’t understand why Christians were so focused on church suppers and softball teams when the culture was being overrun by evil.

While he agreed that getting advertisers to pull ads from TV programs with sexual content wasn’t the same as bringing people the Good News of Jesus Christ, he still thought it was related.

“I see it helping make conditions in society conducive to the message that a Charles Colson or Billy Graham or somebody else brings,” he said.

And Wildmon didn’t think conversion was supposed to be the end of Christian life, either.

“Once an individual accepts Christ, what then?” he asked. “Is that it? Is that the sum total reason for the existence of the church?”

The answer seemed clear to him. To be a faithful Christian in contemporary America, Wildmon believed, you had to get involved in politics, protests, and boycotts—even when they weren’t effective.

“God didn’t call me to be successful,” Wildmon told The New York Times. “He called me to be faithful.”

Wildmon is survived by his wife, Lynda, and their children Tim, Mark, Donna, and Angela.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Why a Journalist Believes Christianity Today Is Needed in Our World

“I have a broader perspective at the end of reading an article in CT.”

Nabor Godoy

From the time she was little, Amy Burgess loved hearing people’s stories and felt as though she had endless questions for those around her. She loved to uncover the truth and look for new angles on situations. These passions made her decision to pursue journalism feel like a no-brainer. It was a career that would give her permission to dig into new stories and get paid to help tell them.

“I can sit and talk with people forever, asking question after question,” Amy explained. “If you do that as a random person, it can be weird, but if you can say you’re working on a story, then you can ask whatever you want and people are willing to help out.”

Amy started her career path in journalism as an undergraduate student at Biola University. Biola gave her a strong foundation for her vocation. Not only was Amy part of a community of young believers who were committed to their faith, but she also found a safe place to have hard conversations about faith and the role journalism should play in a free and democratic society.

“It was very impactful for me to think about journalism and how its core principles are integrity, honesty, and objectivity,” Amy said. “There is courage required to participate in certain aspects of journalism and to bring truth, whether it’s appreciated or not.”

Amy started her career as a daily newspaper reporter. Her first week on the job, she had to cover the accidental drowning of a man on a nearby lake. She was one of the first people on the scene and the first person to talk to the man’s friend who had been in the boat with him when the accident occurred.

That story sticks with Amy to this day because of the weight of the situation. The man’s friend was in one of the defining moments of his life, and Amy was present with him. “It was a heavy weight, but also it felt like a sacred privilege to be able to be a compassionate presence with him in that moment,” Amy said.

Over the years, Amy has worked as a news reporter, freelance journalist, marketing consultant, and many more roles, but the weight of journalism and what it brings to the world has stuck with her and led to her appreciation of Christianity Today with its work in Christian journalism over nearly 70 years.

“If you look back at when Billy Graham founded Christianity Today, 1956, people had an almost blind trust of anything that was in print,” Amy said. “There was trust in the voices of journalism. It was great for Christianity Today to be born in that and to be the voice that represented kingdom topics.”

Now Amy sees that our world has a completely different view on journalism, and there is a common distrust of media. People are constantly getting scams on their phones or in their emails. As a consumer it can feel like you have to be on your guard all the time.

“It’s such a hard time to establish credibility, authenticity, sincerity, truthfulness, trustworthiness, and I think Christianity Today does a great job of that,” Amy explained.

Amy was recently talking with a friend who was having trouble finding the truth about a certain topic. Even though her friend had explored multiple sources about her question, they were all saying different things and she couldn’t decipher which one was true. They all seemed to be drawing from the same facts and interpreting them differently.

It isn’t enough anymore to do research and find a path through the facts. Amy believes that in today’s world, we have to take more responsibility than that. Christians have always been searching for trustworthy sources to help us navigate the emerging issues of our day. We continuously have to go back to Scripture and figure out how to align modern life with the eternal truths of God’s Word.

“Some issues are cultural, and some issues are absolute. It’s not always easy to tell the difference,” Amy said. “Christianity Today offers a place for intelligent, respectful, informed conversations about these issues. That’s a rare space these days.”

Some of the biggest emerging issues for Christians in this present context—women in ministry, gender identity, and politics—are important to be able to discuss. Amy believes that, of all people who should be able to have civil discussions based in love for each other, Christians should be at the front, and it’s heartbreaking to see the opposite of that so often.

“Christianity Today is addressing the modern issues that are confronting Christians in the context they live in,” Amy said, “and trying to put truth-seeking at the center.”

Over the last five or six years, Amy became aware of some of the heat CT takes for having difficult conversations and bringing different voices to important topics. It astounded and frustrated her and was one of the things that prompted her to donate to Christianity Today.

When Amy and her family reached a point where they were able to expand their giving, she started looking around at what was important to her and what she could invest in that had the potential for far-reaching impact. Journalism, and in particular Christianity Today, was one of those things.

“Christianity Today’s ability to cover the kingdom globally, to remind us of the bigger picture and be courageous enough to broach topics and discussions that can make people angry” are reasons she’s giving to CT.

Amy never regrets the time spent reading CT articles. “I know more, I understand more, I have a broader perspective at the end of reading an article in CT. It’s a huge benefit to me in that way,” she claimed.

Amy wants to contribute to the work Christianity Today is doing to hold space for important civil conversations around topics of faith and culture. She feels one thing we can do with our money is encourage groups we care about.

“It’s like casting a vote in a way,” Amy explained. “I vote for this existing. I vote for Christianity Today to be a thriving part of Christian discourse. Sending money is a way I can do that.”

Theology

Friends in High Places

Stefani McDade

We love celebrity conversions, but this obsession may not be as gospel-centered as it seems.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty / Unsplash

We love Christian celebrities. And by that I don’t only mean speakers and pastors who gain celebrity status in the Christian world. I mean famous celebrities in secular spaces—think Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Daddy Yankee, Hulk Hogan, or the latest, Nala Ray—who publicly convert or make a profession of faith.

In one sense, this rejoicing is good and right, an extension of the “rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). But applauding celebrity professions of faith from afar is not quite the same as rejoicing when witnessing true repentance. And if we’re not careful, we can end up grasping at straws, looking for the subtlest of signs that our favorite famous figures are believers—even if they’re bearing little to no fruit (Matt. 7:15–20).

This habit of looking for Christians in high places is popular across cultural and political lines. Our family watched football games together when I was a kid, and whenever a player pointed to the sky after a touchdown, my mom would say (sometimes joking, sometimes not), “I bet he’s a Christian!” She and my sisters do the same thing now with K-pop band members, and I once had a roommate who was lowkey obsessed with Justin Bieber and regularly prayed for his salvation.

Believers on both sides of the political aisle are eager to prove that their favorite politicians are really and truly saved—like those who claim former president Donald Trump was (repeatedly) led in the sinner’s prayer, or those who point to President Joe Biden’s Mass attendance as a sign of genuine faith.

This past fall, as soon as news spread of actor Matthew Perry’s passing, Christians started circulating quotes from his autobiography detailing a powerful encounter he had with God. Just a few weeks prior, Christians were scouring the pages of Britney Spears’s new memoir for kernels of faith—which are there, alongside her account of learning Kabbalah from Madonna and the revelation that she doesn’t have “strict ideas about religion.”

Spears’s religious syncretism is one reason this eagerness to find breadcrumbs of faith is not simple Christian hope: It encourages us to overlook serious departures from basic orthodoxy in our enthusiasm for claiming a famous soul.

More recently, there’s been debate in evangelical circles about the Muslim-turned-New Atheist intellectual figure Ayaan Hirsi Ali—whose public conversion outlines her reasons for subscribing to Christianity but doesn’t mention Jesus at all. While some say she’s just a new believer who doesn’t have the right words yet, others speculate that she’s not so much gained a Christian faith as accepted the Judeo-Christian worldview as a sociopolitical tool.

Moreover, our obsession with celebrity conversions evinces a kind of favoritism Scripture explicitly prohibits (Gal. 2:6; 1 Tim. 5:21). James 2 warns us about this: “My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism,” for “if you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers” (vv. 1, 8, 9).

Heaven’s rejoicing seems to be impartial, but the greatest rejoicing here on earth is too often reserved for celebrity sinners. After all, do we rejoice with equal gusto when people in other industries become believers? Do we jump for joy when we discover our plumber is a Christian? Are we just as eager for signs that our ordinary neighbor or coworker is coming to faith in Jesus?

Of course, our neighbor converting probably won’t make Christianity seem cooler, while celebrity conversions can. It’s hard to imagine that’s not a factor in this phenomenon. Maybe, we think, the public conversion of a famous person will help the cause of Christianity.

Granted, the Bible makes it clear that we are all called to use our talents to glorify God (Matt. 25)—and that could include worldwide fame, popularity among our peers, or a general regard for our good deeds (1 Pet. 2:12). But Jesus’s earthly ministry didn’t rely on converts’ high social status. He didn’t pursue the well-to-do or highly regarded but rather those on the margins who held little to no power and influence.

The Old and New Testaments are congruent from start to finish in demonstrating that God chooses the foolish things to shame the wise, exalts the insignificant to shame the self-important, and bestows greatest value on the people the world finds most worthless (1 Cor. 1:28).

Indeed, in the body of Christ, Paul says, “the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor,” because “God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it.” Why? “So that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor. 12:23–27).

When we unduly exalt the already-exalted, we may fail to care for this part of the body of Christ in a different way. We risk doing a grave disservice to the very people we admire, particularly when they are new believers and therefore vulnerable in their faith. The Bible repeatedly warns against pride (Prov. 8:13; 1 Pet. 5:5; James 4:6), but lauding celebrity Christians encourages it.

Inappropriate honor may also compel new celebrity Christians to lead in a season of faith when they would do better to follow. Last fall, the television personality and entrepreneur—and former occultist—Kat Von D posted a video of her public baptism on Instagram. Her post was reshared by countless giddy believers, and yet she made it clear in a follow-up video that she likely won’t talk much about her faith online: “If you started following me because you think this will become some kind of Christian meme page, it’s not going to happen.”

“It’s not for any other reason than I just don’t really feel equipped to be the poster child for Christianity,” Von D continued. “I think that I’m still learning and as I do, I will become more equipped.” That’s wise, for as James advised, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). Especially for those with large audiences, sound discipleship should come first.

Jesus Christ himself became famous, but he is not a Superstar—and his followers aren’t called to fame either. The conversion stories we amplify shouldn’t be tributes to secular stardom but testimonies of God’s grace. Let’s not orient our evangelism strategy to reach the famous at the expense of the forsaken, and let’s stop looking for celebrities to validate our faith.

Stefani McDade is theology editor at Christianity Today. Update (April 17, 2024): This story has been updated to note new celebrity conversions.

- More from Stefani McDade

News

How Mennonites Learned to Thrive in Latin America

David Román

A denomination known for its traditional way of life and pacifist convictions has spread out across the region.

Group of Mennonite immigrants in the waiting room of Jorge Chavez International Airport in Peru.

VW Pics / Contributor / Getty

The well-kept lawns and exquisitely maintained houses in the town of Filadelfia could be part of any prosperous neighborhood in Europe or North America. They’re actually in rural Paraguay and most belong to conservative Mennonite communities. Known for their traditional way of life and pacifist convictions, in recent decades they have been settling across Latin America.

Paraguay, a landlocked South American country, is home to one of Latin America’s largest Mennonite communities. In a country of just six million around the size of California, Paraguayan Mennonites are particularly prominent as some of the largest landholders, as well as dominant in dairy and agricultural industries.

Arriving in Latin America just a century ago from Canada, the US, and Europe, the Mennonite experience is marked by frequent migration—and believers’ ability to put down roots and sustain their culture.

“I think it’s fair to say that there’s always been an impact everywhere the Mennonites have arrived,” said Delmer Wiebe, a Mennonite theologist who grew up near Filadelfia. “A highly developed work ethic has always left deep traces and brought many changes. God has blessed the effort. And that blessing has often been transformed into social and community aid.”

Low German-speaking Mennonites, as a socioreligious community, trace their origins back to 16th-century Western Europe. Not be mistaken for the Amish, who are also who are also Anabaptist, the Mennonites are named after Dutchman Menno Simons (1496–1561) and emerged in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, coalescing around ideals of nonviolence, adult baptism, and separation from worldly temptations.

As they moved from the Netherlands to Germany to Ukraine, Mennonites stuck to the now-archaic Low German language while escaping mandates to serve in various countries’ militaries, swear civil oaths, and join national education systems. Today, across North and South America, Mennonites have found refuge and thrive in several countries.

In Latin America in particular, Old Order Mennonites have settled in countries where social customs remain closer to their own conservative values. Some Mennonites in the US also continue to live traditionally while others are fully in the mainstream when it comes to technology and lifestyle. (In recent years, these Mennonite churches have been split by debates over same-sex marriage and other issues which have not affected Old Order communities in Latin American countries or in the US.)

The most conservative Mennonite colonies reject the use of rubber tires on tractors, electricity, and telephones, among other things. More progressive colonies, particularly in Paraguay, find it normal to own smartphones, TV sets, or pickup trucks. Diversity sometimes is found within colonies, with some members having starkly opposed views on education, labor, the use or rejection of the Spanish language, and more generally, ties with the outside world.

Scholars believe Mexico has the largest number of Mennonites in Latin America, although expansion there has been limited by conflicts over access to water resources. As a percentage of the total population, communities in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Belize are more significant, and they are predominantly visible in the countryside.

According to the Mennonite World Conference (MWC), 10 percent of the 2.13 million people belonging to churches rooted in the 16th-century Radical Reformation in Europe are based in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, this number does not include some of the most traditionalist groups, like Old Colony Mennonites and Old Order Mennonites, who make up many of the Latin American communities and which do not organize with the MWC, according to Karla Braun, a MWC spokeswoman.

The Mennonite expansion into Latin America started in the 1920s, when a group of Mennonites left the prairies of Manitoba for the deserts of Northern Mexico, Yann le Polain de Waroux and his coauthors wrote in their paper “Pious Pioneers: the expansion of Mennonite colonies in Latin America.”

Since then, Mennonites have created over 200 agricultural colonies across Latin America, spanning nine countries and seven biomes. Le Polain and his team’s calculations show that Mennonite colonies today cover an area exceeding that of the Netherlands, having expanded through the conversion of uncultivated land to agriculture in remote areas.

In Belize, 14 Mennonite colonies account for a non-irrelevant percentage of the population. The tiny country of 400,000 saw its first Mennonite settlers in 1955—Mexican communities looking to escape calls for stricter control of the group within that country.

But by the 1970s, many Belize Mennonites were already moving to Paraguay and Bolivia, fearful of creeping modernization and land scarcity.

In his paper, le Polain identified 65 Mennonite colonies in Mexico, the first Latin American country to open its borders to the group, and even more colonies (90) in Bolivia, where the first Mennonite settlement was founded in 1954. There, believers found land and an accepting attitude by the local authorities, which has allowed some groups to stick closer to their original roots.

“In Bolivia, the largest Mennonite communities are very conservative,” said Rebecca Janzen, a University of South Carolina scholar who has studied Mennonite colonies in the region and has relatives in several. “The largest communities there don’t learn Spanish, they don’t use electrical tech. … In Mexico, there are some people who attended university; in Bolivia, that’s much rarer.”

The isolation of Mennonites in Bolivia, in fact, contributed to a series of dramatic rapes that wracked one of their communities, Manitoba, around 2009. The rapists, fellow Mennonites, allegedly used home-made drugs and took advantage of the victim’s ignorance of local law and the Spanish language. Last year’s feature film Women Talking was inspired by the case.

Janzen notes that the Mennonite expansion in Latin America and elsewhere has been driven by high fertility rates. Mennonite families typically are very large, and currently new colonies are often created out of lack of land for new households, rather than conflicts with civil authorities. This is leading some Latin American Mennonites to look for new land in Africa, with countries like Angola as a possible focus for future expansion of the faith.

Conversion to the Mennonite faith is also possible, although it is difficult even when candidates are willing to abide by limitations on the use of technology. Mennonites are often reluctant to accept outsiders into their communities, as they are joined by family ties stretching for centuries. In addition, the need to learn Low German and Mennonite customs and the frequent absence of guidance for such possible converts represent high barriers for possible entrants.

As an example, Janzen added, the times for Mennonite religious services are not publicized. The services are typically conducted in Low German, with specific chanting that may be very hard for outsiders to learn and follow, she said.

Mennonites do conduct evangelization and missionary activities, which often have the effect of bringing indigenous and isolated communities to the Christian faith, even if they don’t become Mennonites.

“This missionary activity is completely separate from the colonies,” Le Polain said. “When they are conducting missionary activity and cooperation, these are different people doing it, with different goals.”

Of all the Latin American countries settled by Mennonites, Paraguay provides a clear example of Mennonite expansion through both conversion and the demographic growth of preexisting colonies.

Delmer Wiebe, the son of old-stock Mennonites, is a department head in Paraguay’s Evangelical University, created in the 1990s in the capital city of Asunción with the help of the country’s Mennonite community. Of the five other members of the department’s executive board, two are nonethnic Mennonites who have converted to the faith.

One of those is Rogelio Duarte, a professor of theology who became Mennonite 50 years ago. He estimates that Paraguay has between 45,000 and 50,000 Mennonites, both old stock and converts.

“Mennonite influence in Paraguay is important both economically and educationally, as well as religiously and socially, especially through the work with native ethnic groups,” Duarte said. “It is one of the largest denominations in Paraguay.”

The Evangelical University is just one of many Mennonite-inspired projects seeking to make a positive impact on one of Latin America’s poorest countries. Others include a charity hospital outside Asunción, a Mennonite-led community-building program, and a foundation that helps poor Paraguayans treat eye illnesses.

Across El Chaco, a scarcely populated flat region in the western half of Paraguay, Mennonites represent a significant share of the population. Mennonite-founded Filadelfia, a sleepy town of 20,000, is the largest settlement in the entire region.

Not to be mistaken with the city in Pennsylvania, Filadelfia is in many senses a showcase of the outreach efforts by Paraguay’s Mennonites. Featuring a museum and a hospital, including a specialized eye clinic, it’s become a draw for non-Mennonites attracted to the town’s clean, healthy lifestyle—and as USC’s Janzen notes, that’s a strong selling point for Mennonites all across Latin America.

“In Paraguay, I’ve met some young people who went to a more open-minded (Mennonite) church that had services in Spanish,” Jenzen said. “Somebody met their husband in OkCupid, but then you go to a restaurant, and you have all the food that my grandma used to cook way back then. It’s a weird combination.”

This combination has led to a more prominent role of Mennonites in Paraguay, as well as higher conversion rates and a positive social impact. It’s also made Mennonites more visible, so that they have sometimes been targeted by militant groups looking for ransom money. In addition, Le Polain said, it’s also leading to lower fertility rates specially in the colonies that have left the most traditional practices behind.

In the end, Mennonites have had to accommodate themselves to changing circumstances in every place they have settled, and their relationships with different states and societies continues to evolve, said Ben Goossen, a Mennonite-born professor at George Mason University.

“Today, Latin America remains a place of great importance and attraction for Mennonites of many different backgrounds and faith practices,” Goosen added. “And it is certain that the region will remain a center of thriving and expanding Mennonite life for the foreseeable future.”

- More from David Román

Books

Theology Is Not a Waste

Jon Nielson

Far from being impractical, careful theological study is crucial to ordinary Christian life.

Illustration by Miriam Martincic

This is an excerpt from Knowing God’s Truth, which won the Award of Merit in the Young Adult category of CT’s 2024 Book Awards.

Probably the biggest critique of the discipline of theology, even by Christians, is that it is not practical.

It is not surprising that people who do not know Jesus do not want to study theology. What is often quite disappointing is that many Christians look at theology as something that is not useful—something that does not really matter in everyday life. Perhaps you have not heard this yet, but you will!

There is a very real sentiment from some Christians that careful theological thought and study is a waste of time; Christians, these people think, should be out helping people, preaching the gospel, and engaging in active obedience rather than learning about God and the Bible.

So why is theology important? Why give many hours to its study?

The most basic reason why theology is important is that it is about God; it is the study of our Creator, Savior, and King. In a very real sense, then, the study of theology is the best and most important study that we can ever engage in.

It is not a waste of time to learn more about the God of the universe. It is, in fact, probably the most valuable thing we could be giving our time to do. The study of theology, of course, should not prevent us from helping people, sharing the gospel, and actively obeying Jesus; it should actually help us do these activities with even more knowledge of and love for God—and for human beings created by this God.

Theology also affects the way we live. Many people do not realize that every decision we make is ultimately a theological decision. Everything we do is a reflection of our beliefs—especially our beliefs about God. What we say, how we think, the way we use our time—all of these ultimately reflect what we truly believe to be true about the universe and the meaning of life. In this sense, then, our theology really does affect the way we live. What we believe about God has an impact on the choices we make—even the small ones—every single day.

Finally, a theological view of the world that is informed by the Bible helps us make sense of the world around us. God, in his Word, reveals to us the deepest realities about our world: his role in creation, the sinfulness of humanity, his sovereign purpose and plan, and the salvation that is available only through Christ Jesus, his Son. Careful theological work, then, matters because it is a way for us to understand and make sense of the world.

When we study theology, we come to see our purpose as we understand God’s role in the world by listening his Word. Systematic theology begins with a study of the doctrine of Scripture because without God’s revelation, we cannot know about God. But why not start by examining God’s existence, character, and actions, since God obviously has been around (infinitely) longer than the Bible?

We begin with Scripture because we are weak, finite creatures who cannot simply rely on reason and careful thought to lead us to the truth about the God of the universe. Certainly we could come up with some good ideas about God, but we cannot even start down this road in the right way until we have laid a solid foundation for study, discussion, and thinking about him. Scripture is this foundation.

We can get to a certain point in our understanding of God without the Bible; we can see that he exists and that he is powerful. But we need his Word to show us the rest of what we can know of him—the rest of the truths about his character, his actions, and his way of salvation through his Son.

Our starting point is an examination of what the existence of Scripture itself tells us about the God who created this world: He is a God who speaks. This has important implications for the way that we approach Scripture. We come to it not as a “dead” book that we search for information, but as the living Word of God that has significant things to say about every area of our lives.

There is much that we can learn from the simple fact that God—the God of the Bible—speaks to people. When we refer to the Bible as the “Word” of God, we are saying that the one true God of the universe is a “speaking” God. He is not silent. He has not left human beings completely in the dark as to how they can know, love, worship, and serve him. He has spoken through his Word.

So what do we learn from the very existence of the Bible? First, we learn that the God of the universe wants to be known.

This is a key point for us to consider. The God who created us has gone out of his way to communicate with human beings. He reveals himself to them through his Word. He teaches them about his character, ways, and plan. He shows them how they can come into a right relationship with him. Our God speaks because he is committed to inviting people into relationship with him, so that they can actually know the God who created them!

Further, God wants to relate to his people through his Word. Throughout history, from God’s first words to Adam and Eve, we see that God’s primary way of relating to human beings is through his Word to them. He spoke to Abraham. He gave the Law to Moses. He spoke to his people through the prophets. His Son, Jesus, came as the “Word … made flesh,” according to John 1:14 (KJV).

Now, Scripture—his Word—guides Christians as they follow and relate to him. God’s Word is his primary way of relating to people. That’s why his people have always been people of his Word.

Finally, we learn from the existence of Scripture that we must listen to God’s Word. Since it is the communication and revelation of our Creator—the only true God of the universe—the Bible is the most important word we can listen to! We should work hard to listen to the Bible because the God who made us has actually spoken in it.

Here is what Paul writes about the Word of God:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Tim. 3:16–17, ESV).

Paul’s phrase breathed out helps inform our understanding of inspiration. The Bible, according to Paul, is really “breathed out” by God. In other words, the Bible that we read and study is as closely tied to God as our words that we speak are tied to us!

How did God breathe out Scripture? He did it by the power of his Holy Spirit. This is what we mean when we speak of God inspiring human authors to write the books of the Bible. His Holy Spirit was actively and powerfully working in and through them as they wrote. Men such as Moses, Samuel, David, Paul, Peter, and John wrote with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Now, we need to make a distinction between inspiration and dictation. Inspiration does not mean that God dictated every word to the biblical authors or somehow magically grabbed their hands and forced them to write certain words without their minds being engaged at all! The very nature of the Bible tells us this is not the case; it was written with distinct human personalities, styles, and tones that are representative of the authors.

Yet the truth of inspiration tells us that God’s Holy Spirit was powerfully overseeing each part of the writing of Scripture, so that as Paul wrote (from his own experience and with his own style), he was writing words and truths that completely and truly lined up with what God wanted to say to human beings.

One other passage that we should consider here comes from the apostle Peter’s second letter. Peter speaks of the prophets—who both wrote and spoke to God’s people—as being “carried along” by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21). This is just one other picture that the Bible gives us for inspiration.

These men spoke and wrote by their own power, but they were “carried along” by the Spirit in a powerful way so that their words were perfectly united with his Word to his people—in just the way that he intended.

So what does inspiration mean when we talk about the Bible? It means that God is directly behind the words of Scripture. He sovereignly oversaw its composition by the power of his Holy Spirit. He “carried along” the biblical authors and “breathed out” his Word to us through their writing. Because of this, we can truly say that the Bible is God’s Word. We can say that when the Bible speaks, God speaks!

Because of the doctrine of inspiration, we can truly say that the Bible is God’s Word. We know that, in Scripture, we have a source of truth that comes directly from the sovereign God who powerfully inspired its words.

God did this through human authors, who wrote out of their own situations—and with their own styles and personalities. We can accurately say that the Bible is 100 percent human (written by human authors) and also 100 percent divine (inspired by God the Holy Spirit—every single word).

If there is one simple reality that we observe in every part of the Bible, it is this: God rules his people by his Word. To put it in a slightly different way, God’s Word is always attached to God’s authority—his rule over his people with power, protection, and strong instructions and commands. Indeed, whenever God speaks, he speaks with authority.

The doctrine of inspiration must necessarily lead into the doctrine of the authority of Scripture. If the Bible really is inspired by God—if it is “God speaking” by the power of his Holy Spirit—then the Bible is a book with great authority. It is the actual Word of God.

This means, quite simply, that there is no greater authoritative word in the entire world than the Bible. Because it is truly God’s Word, it is a word of authority and power; we must listen to it, respond in faith and obedience. The God of the universe has spoken; this is his authoritative Word, and we do well to listen and obey.

Jon Nielson is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church of Wheaton in Wheaton, Illinois, and coeditor of Gospel-Centered Youth Ministry: A Practical Guide.

This article appeared in the January/February, 2024 issue of Christianity Today as "A God Who Speaks".

- More from Jon Nielson

News

Christmas Massacres Challenge Secular Explanations of Nigeria Conflict

Jayson Casper

Religious animosity mixed with farmer-herder tensions continue to plague Christians in beleaguered Middle Belt region.

Families in Maiyanga bury in a mass grave relatives killed in deadly Christmas attacks conducted by armed groups in Nigeria's central Plateau State, on December 27, 2023.

Kim Masara /AFPTV / AFP / Getty Images

At least 140 Nigerian Christians were killed over the Christmas holiday.

Attacks on 26 villages in Plateau State began December 23, led by suspected extremists among Fulani Muslim herdsman against Christian farming communities. Some media reports cite nearly 200 dead, with many missing as local residents fled from gunmen into the bush.

Grace Godwin was preparing Christmas Eve dinner when her husband burst in with news from the neighboring village, ordering her and the children into the fields. Rebecca Maska similarly took cover but was shot and bled for three hours until help arrived, while her son had his hand chopped off with a machete before escaping. Magit Macham dragged his wounded brother to safety and hid overnight until the attackers moved on.

“These attacks have been recurring,” Macham told Reuters, having returned home from the regional capital of Jos to celebrate Christmas. “They want to drive us out of our ancestral land.”

For years, violence has plagued the West African nation’s Middle Belt, where a predominantly Muslim north intersects with a predominantly Christian south. Land rights issues are also contested, as seminomadic cattle herders press against settled agrarian hamlets in Africa’s most populous nation.

The Christmas massacres were the worst attacks since 2018. A local publication tallied an additional 201 deaths in Plateau State in the first half of 2023. Across the Middle Belt, at least 2,600 people were killed in 2021, according to the most recent data by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project.

The Northern Governors’ Forum called the attacks “reprehensible and heinous.” It was further condemned by the national Muslim organization Jama’atu Nasril Islam, which called the attacks “barbaric” but within the context of a “cycle of violence.”

The chairman of the Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association, however, blamed the “whole problem” on an alleged incident of cattle rustling in which three Fulani cow breeders were killed. But the report was downplayed by the head of a multi-security task force in Plateau State, who linked it to an initial incident of cows grazing in a potato field.

Chased away by farmers, the parties agreed to negotiate a settlement, he said.

“I know we have been having a series of problems with the herders in the area,” stated Mahanan Matawal, a local official. “[But] even if cattle were rustled somewhere different from our communities, we should not be blamed for the atrocities.”

Some analysis has linked tensions to climate change, and Maria Lozano, a representative for Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic relief group, stated there were many factors in the ongoing strife. But the timing of this specific attack had “religious undertones.”

Polycarp Lubo, chairman for the Plateau chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), said the assailants sent letters to the villages warning them they “will not celebrate Christmas, but run away with their rice.” He expressed surprise that security was not able to act on such advanced warning.

Gideon Para-Mallam, chairman of the Para-Mallam Peace Foundation, expressed exasperation with secular explanations.

“A terrible genocide is taking place in Plateau State, but it is being window-dressed to look like a clash between farmers and herders,” he stated. “Sadly, false and misleading narratives are created while rivers of blood continue to flow.”

Calling the attack a deliberate land grab meant to eliminate the Christian population, the former Lausanne Movement regional director said that 5,000 people were displaced and eight churches burned down. Two clerics were killed, including Baptist pastor Solomon Gushe and nine members of his family.

Open Doors ranks Nigeria No. 6 on its annual World Watch List of countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian. In 2022, it tallied 5,014 Nigerian believers killed because of their faith. And since 2009, Intersociety, a Nigerian nongovernmental organization, stated that at least 52,000 Christians and 34,000 moderate Muslims have been killed by jihadist forces. Additionally, 18,000 churches and 2,200 Christian schools have been burned down.

Last year, dozens were killed in church on Pentecost Sunday.

Para-Mallam hopes the Plateau State atrocity will be a “turning point,” and stated the military response prevented the death toll from reaching the thousands. Even so, security policy must shift from damage control to proactive prevention of conflict.

Catholic bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah appealed to Nigerian president Bola Tinubu, who was sworn in last May.

“You have what you prayed for, what you dreamt of, what you longed for,” Kukah stated. “Now is harvest time. … Under your watch, we must end the ugly instrumentalization of religious, ethnic, or regional identities.”

Tinubu immediately ordered provision of humanitarian aid to the area and vowed that “these envoys of death, pain, and sorrow will not escape justice.”

Amnesty International’s branch in Nigeria, however, called for an independent investigation, stating that Tinubu’s promises to combat insecurity have so far proved empty. Such “brazen failures,” it accused, “are gradually becoming the norm.”

And according to some analysis, the security response has further enflamed violence. In unrelated action in Nigeria’s northwest region, soldiers are accused of burning down the houses and villages of terrorist fighters. But as soon as the army leaves the area, emboldened fighters take revenge on innocent residents.

An additional 16 people were killed on Christmas in the northern Sokoto State.

The northwest Kaduna State, however, witnessed a holiday event that illustrates both the difficulty of military deterrence and a challenged religious harmony. Earlier in December, over 100 Muslims were killed, when the army mistakenly targeted their village in a bombing campaign against terrorists.

On Christmas, they celebrated with Christians in the neighborhood church.

CAN president Daniel Okoh lamented more than the loss of life.

“We mourn with the families, friends, and communities who tragically lost their loved ones,” he stated. “[This] is not only a criminal act, but also a direct assault on our shared values of peace, unity, and mutual respect.”

No group claimed responsibility for the attacks.

“This indeed has been a gory Christmas for us,” said Plateau State governor Caleb Mutfwang. “Until we cut off the supply in terms of sponsorship, we may never be able to see the end of this.”

- More from Jayson Casper

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