Indian Churches Encourage Couples to Leave and Cleave

For many couples, in-laws are a major source of marital strife.

madisonwi / Getty

After a visit with her new in-laws the day after her wedding, 26-year-old Taara Ravupoodi left anxious and confused by a question her mother-in-law asked her and her husband.

“After God comes who?” her mother-in-law asked angrily.

“Your spouse,” she responded. Yet her new mother-in-law kept repeating the question until she heard the only acceptable answer from her son: “Parents.”

Ravupoodi, an Indian American living in Indianapolis, married her husband, who immigrated to the US from South India at a young age, more than a year ago. Conflicts with family began on her wedding day, when her father-in-law stormed out of the reception because the hired flutist played instrumental music that included upbeat secular songs.

Since then, nearly every tension between the couple has been tied to her in-laws, and they struggle to find the balance between honoring their parents and prioritizing their marriage. Highlighting the sensitivity of this topic in Indian society, Ravupoodi asked to use a pseudonym, as she feared speaking out would hurt her relationship with her in-laws.

Many couples in India and among the Indian diaspora face marital stress due to the strong influence parents have over their children and their children’s marriages. Pastors and counselors trace most marriage problems in India to couples not “leaving and cleaving” from the husband’s family, a reference to the command in Genesis 2:24 that “a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

Christian ministries in India are helping couples push back against cultural norms while honoring both their in-laws and their spouses.

Prabhan Chandy Mathew, founder of Urban India Ministries (UIM) in Bengaluru, India, has mentored and ministered to families across India for more than three decades. He noted that, unlike in the West, where children often move out of their parents’ home after high school, in India most children live with their parents even after they get married.

Many Indian parents are deeply invested in their children’s lives—paying for their education and amassing property and wealth for them—and therefore have high expectations of their children. These expectations continue beyond marriage and hinder any attempts at biblical leaving and cleaving, Mathew said.

Mathew added that India’s philosophical understanding of the hierarchy of priorities, “Matha, Pitha, Guru, Daivam” (Mother, Father, Teacher, God), also adds to the problem.

“God is last on that list, and the mother is first,” Mathew said. “And that’s exactly what we see in many Indian Christian homes.” He pointed to popular Indian sayings such as “Your mother has carried you in her womb for nine months, but your wife just came in yesterday.” As a result, “in the Indian context, the biblical ‘leaving’ process becomes more of a ‘grieving’ process, for both children and parents.”

When Ravupoodi’s husband, who had only ever lived with his parents, moved from Chicago to Indianapolis to live with his wife, he felt immense pressure to make sure he didn’t disappoint his parents. Meanwhile, Ravupoodi, who had known her in-laws for several years before marrying her son, noted that her mother-in-law became more possessive of her son after they got married. She’d point out to Ravupoodi how her son was “her everything,” often holding his hand, making it seem like she was competing for his affection.

“She once told me that ‘You might be holding his arm on one side, but I’m always on the other side, holding his arm too,’” Ravupoodi recalled.

Ravupoodi’s husband initially struggled to set boundaries and truly “leave” his parents out of the fear of disobeying them. He also felt indebted to his parents for helping him pay off his college tuition.

When her husband struggled last year to muster up the courage to tell his parents that they’d spend half of their Thanksgiving break with Ravupoodi’s family and half with his family, the couple sought their pastor’s advice.

The American pastor, who had known Ravupoodi’s husband and his family for many years, pointed out that his parents’ expectations of only spending the holiday with them were unfeasible for a married man. He had to be okay with disappointing them. The couple ended up spending three days with Ravupoodi’s family and five days with his family.

Mathew notes that when a couple lives with parents, which is the case for about 70 percent of married couples in India, they aren’t given a chance to become an independent unit.

“The rule over the parental home is still with the parents, and the newlywed wife often does not even have the autonomy to cook a meal for her husband or do things her way,” he said. Even when couples live separately from parents, Mathew says parents continue to meddle remotely by frequently calling to check on the couple, advising on important decisions, and expecting the couple to visit often.

One pastor of an independent church in New Delhi noted that for many Indians, leaving and cleaving is seen as dishonoring parents. (He asked for anonymity as his church and NGO are currently facing persecution.) He’s seen a married man in his church struggle because his parents expected him to buy them a house, fund his siblings’ weddings, and meet all of their financial needs and wants. As a first-generation Christian who’s trying to share the gospel with his family, the parishioner faces immense pressure to provide for his parents while also prioritizing his own marriage.

Churches are becoming more open in addressing these issues in their congregations, Mathew said. “Many pastors are seeing enough marriage breakdowns within their churches and are realizing that it is beyond their ability to help couples in distress. So they’re reaching out to us for solutions.”

Apart from counseling couples, UIM has held annual marriage retreats since 2003 and started a couples and family counselling helpline in 2015, which now operates in six languages.

In 2023, UIM released a nine-session premarital education curriculum that hundreds of Indian churches now use. The Scripture-based lessons present real-life scenarios and ask couples how they would deal with them. The last session is for the couples’ parents, and they are specifically taught to release their children.

The session is not easy, said Nibu Skariah, pastor of an independent church in Bengaluru who has been using UIM’s curriculum in his church for two years now. He says many parents are not comfortable listening to lessons in a formal setting. But he finds that having a few prior informal conversations with the parents to understand their contexts and mindsets is helpful. The sessions have seen some success in his church, and he has been able to guide both parents and children into the idea of separation, including living separately after marriage.

In cases where parents are insistent on the couple staying with them, Skariah advises couples to live separately for at least a few years after getting married before returning to live with the in-laws. Skariah, who himself struggled while living with his family after getting married, said a couple should strengthen their own relationship first so that they can deal with the frictions of joint living.

However, some pastors emphasize that leaving and cleaving does not always equate living apart.

“When the command to leave and cleave was given in Genesis or in later books, it was given to the Israelites living in tents, by family, by clan,” the New Delhi pastor said. “So I’m careful to point out that it’s not really about physically moving out necessarily but about prioritizing one’s marriage.”

Mathew views the separation as similar to cutting an umbilical cord, which becomes vital for both the mother and the child after a point. But he believes that in an Indian context, it is essential to teach that this is foremost an emotional detachment, rather than a physical one. In restricted environments where physical separation is not possible, he advises couples not to force the issue and to move out only when it’s possible to.

The New Delhi pastor said he makes sure to talk openly with his congregants about leaving and cleaving because he believes it’s good for couples and parents to hear the countercultural message over and over again. Apart from one-on-one conversations and premarital counseling, he also tries to incorporate the idea into his Sunday services and wedding sermons. His church also conducts couples’ retreats every few years, where these topics are discussed in detail.

“Over the last few decades, India has changed a lot: There are more nuclear families, more love marriages, more women working outside of the home,” he said. “People are looking for guidance and are eager to hear the message on leaving and cleaving. So I think it’s the right time to be talking about all these issues relating to marriage.”

However, he’s found that due to the negative impression of counseling, or just the cultural shame around sharing personal problems, people often don’t come to a local pastor for any kind of counseling until things have gotten really bad.

Ravupoodi and her husband never sought counsel from Indian American churches in their area because they feel that community is very parent-centric and preaches a narrative that puts parents above everything, including God’s will. However, the couple has benefited from a Christian counselor who’s been teaching them to build healthy boundaries and establish trust and safety in their marriage.

For instance, the counselor advised them to decide beforehand how many hours they would spend with in-laws, what they would do during their time together, what topics they would discuss, and how to handle a conflict should it arise. He also advised Ravupoodi’s husband to speak up when his parents are being disrespectful.

Ravupoodi said her in-laws have at times been upset and resistant toward some of the boundaries. But overall, things have improved, especially between Ravupoodi and her husband.

“A lot of the beliefs in the Indian Christian community are rooted in Hindu traditions, including putting your parents above everything,” Ravupoodi said. “And it’s now up to us, our generation, to break away from those unbiblical generational traditions. So the hard work is for us to do now.”

- More from Divya Chirayath

History

From Prohibition to Pornography

Daniel Silliman

In 1958, CT pushed evangelicals to engage important moral issues even when they seemed old-fashioned.

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

Christianity Today took a moment in 1958 to reassess the repeal of prohibition after 25 years. Was the relegalization of alcohol good for America? Or had the teetotal Christians and fundamentalist moral crusaders of the 1920s been right to try to ban beer and liquor?

Alcohol industry leaders didn’t think there was any question that Americans should celebrate their quarter-century of accomplishments.

This year the brewing industry proudly notes many of its accomplishments since the time of its rebirth, 25 years ago. The distilling industry also joins with the brewers in celebration of the repeal of the 18th Amendment, an occasion “which should be meaningful not only to brewers (and distillers) but also to millions of others who have benefited from relegalization.” So spoke the president and chairman of the U. S. Brewers Foundation, E. V. Lahey, a few months ago.

He pointed out that the national economy at the time of repeal in 1933 was suffering the “deepest depression of the century” and that relegalization of the liquor traffic had brought billions of new taxes to the government, and billions of dollars to American farmers and workers. Beyond this, he implied, the industry should be grateful that 22 per cent of the beer customers are women, that the tavern is now a respectable place, that the tavern operator is “a good citizen and a credit to his community,” and that “a good job has been done in keeping the public sold on the premise that the operation of breweries and taverns is compatible with the American way of life.”

CT thought a biblically informed evaluation of the impact on American life would lead to a very different conclusion.

Frightening and terrifying are mild words to describe the tragic existence of 5,000,000 alcoholics who are in helpless bondage to strong drink. This is a distressing situation, not only to be weighed in terms of a personal hell being endured by alcoholics alone, but more, by the anguish, suffering, shame and tears of those who are related to them. To that staggering number of alcoholics, however, must be added also the appalling number of some 2,000,000 others who are today problem drinkers, verging on alcoholism and whose indulgence is wrecking cars, ruining lives, and destroying homes. Who actually can estimate the moral damage that is resulting from a habit which the liquor industry in a thousand ways is endeavoring to call, “the American way of life?”

Reaction to this deplorable, distressing social problem finds expression in the question Cain once asked: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” … There is a hardened unconcern on the part of the public which accepts the damage resulting from the liquor traffic and absorbs, without a protest, the consequent financial toll. And despite the havoc being wrought and the powerful forces promoting such liquor sale, efforts to stem this evil seem pitiful and inadequate.

Another major moral issue that concerned evangelicals was the increasing availability of pornography. In the spring of 1958, CT investigated how easy it was to buy obscene material, even in Washington, DC.

Two young women learned that the “best” literature in the nation’s capital is readily available to them, even though they are ministers’ daughters.

On a special research project for Christianity Today, they found easy access to the magazine stocks of three newsstands in downtown Washington. One of the girls is the daughter of a Dutch Reformed minister, the other the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman.

Within three blocks of the White House, they were able to buy:

—The May issue of Hush-Hush, which features “the inside story of the nude model who pinch-hit for Princess Meg.”

—The April issue of Ace, which includes the story of “a voluptuous wench.”

—The spring edition of Sunbathing Review, with more than 85 pictures of nude women and children. One series of photographs portrays the activities of two teen-aged girls in a California nudist camp.

—The March edition of Night and Day, carrying several advertisements that offer by return mail pictures of women posed to order.

—Three undated publications, all of which have pictorial sequences of nude women.

CT called on Christians leaders to pay attention to the issue and speak out against “Sex and Smut on the Newsstands.”

A virulent moral sickness is attacking American society. Its obvious symptoms may be seen at any newsstand in large cities or small. American society is becoming mentally, morally and emotionally ill with an unrestrained sex mania.

For two years we have been independently—and in the last six months cooperatively—studying trends in popular magazines and paper-backed books. We have watched, appalled, as scores of new titles have made their appearance in the magazine field, many of them violating every standard of decency which has hitherto been recognized in the publishing field.

We are convinced that the only reason there has not been an indignant outcry from our nation’s religious leaders is that few have been advised of the extent to which standards have plunged. We ourselves are incredulous as we survey from month to month some of the cartoons, jokes and stories that appear in the so-called “men’s entertainment magazines.”

It is high time that our churches awaken to the kind of material being circulated to teen-agers and young adults of both sexes, sold openly at drug stores and newsstands under the guise of sophistication and respectability.

CT also looked at the issue of education in 1958, delving into concerns that secular pedagogical theories were undermining Christian faith in public schools.

Largely through John Dewey’s influence, the twentieth century injected a naturalistic-evolutionary philosophy into professional education. This was a speculation that denied the reality of the supernatural, rejected changeless truth and moral standards, and spurned the relevance of historic Christian theism for the crucial problems of thought and life. Whatever worked was considered “true” until constantly changing society determined something else more workable, “more true” and tenable—until it, too, was replaced, and so on ad infinitum.

This philosophy first penetrated into teachers colleges. It spread among professional administrators, then it captivated large groups of teachers, and finally, it infected thousands of American school children exposed to its direct or indirect influence in the classroom. It was a professionally calculated leavening of American education that involved dismissing eternal spiritual and moral entities to extracurricular classification or even to the circular file.

Although American public education did not fully live and move and have its being in this naturalistic philosophy, it nonetheless contracted the disease of secularism on an epidemic scale. American public education during the past generation has not been religious in character, it has not encouraged training in religious subjects, nor has it given subject matter a religious orientation.

While public education seemed to succumb to “the disease of secularism,” private religious education faced its own challenges. Many evangelicals wondered, “Can the Christian College Survive?” CT invited Wheaton’s president to tackle the question.

For the Christian college, the storm warnings are out. The academic barometer is unsteady, even lowering, with hints of possible hurricanes on the distant horizon.

There is no assurance of uninterrupted prosperity such as we have seen in the past decade. Prudent college trustees and administrators are considering carefully the possibilities of economic depression beyond recession, with attendant unemployment for both parents and students. Likewise there is always possibility that the present cold war may turn hot, and that “brush fires” on limited frontiers may unleash unlimited nuclear warfare. Christian colleges face the warnings of increasing costs of operation, and likewise the general trend of enrollment toward publicly supported colleges and universities.

But foreboding as the storm warnings are, it is well to remember that Christian colleges are sturdy crafts which have weathered severe storms in past generations. Colleges have a way of riding out a hurricane; and though battered severely, they still sail on.

The magazine also endeavored to assess the social impact of revival. Looking back 100 years at a historical example, a Lutheran minister and evangelist argued that great awakenings not only save souls, they transform culture.

The indirect results of the revival, for communities and nations, are not so easy to trace fully. But they were as distinct and far-reaching as leaven working on the whole lump of society. The effects touched the social circles of community life, education, government, new institutions, various reforms, cultural standards, and new organizations whose enterprises belted the globe. …

Once again in history God had demonstrated the amazing capacity of prayer in pathfinding all his purposes. The prayer meeting gave us the great revival, and with it, a new Christian unity. The revival, in turn, gave us many social by-products. These, all taken together, put new leaven into our liberties and salt into the whole of our society.

After these hundred years, when living is so fluffy, praying so feeble, and much preaching so flabby, nothing is more renewing than to contemplate the wonders that God can work in all the earth through his simplest organic structure—the prayer meeting.

Without revival, people would pursue alternative answers to life’s problems. That seemed to be what was happening in Latin America, CT reported.

1958 was communism’s year in Latin America. Facts apparent at year’s end: Stepped up activity of Soviet agents in Hispanic countries, and alarming indifference of public sentiment. In 1958 the Communist party (1) was legalized in Chile, (2) joined a coalition to elect a conservative president in Costa Rica; (3) helped oust a dictator in Venezuela; and (4) threw Argentina into a state of ferment.

Mexico is Latin America headquarters of Soviet infiltration. All Red satellite countries maintain large embassies in Mexico. The Russian embassy alone boasts a staff of over 900 trained operators. No one can guess how many agents are scattered throughout the continent. But their espionage and indoctrination are backed by a tidal wave of literature and propaganda. …

And the naturalism of Marx, tangible, here-and-now, seems to offer what modern man needs. He wants potatoes, not platitudes. The earthy religion of the Reds cannot be fought, therefore, with the empty trappings and dead traditions of Romanism. Only an evangelical, supernatural faith can save Latin America—a faith which is not afraid of its social conscience, nor of sacrificial discipline, but which is essentially a regenerating miracle—in short, a New Testament faith.

In the US, many of those who were concerned about freedom were interested in an emerging political movement: the libertarians. CT gave readers a primer on the movement and its relationship to Christianity in a piece titled “Christ and the Libertarians.”

From the point of view of the average businessman, the New Deal launched America on the path of “creeping socialism.” By the mid-1950’s over one hundred “business sponsored” organizations opposing the New Deal’s political philosophy of interventionism began to appear. Many welcomed the name “libertarian” to distinguish themselves from the political liberals who accepted Big Government as a necessary instrument of social progress.

Although differing on many points, libertarians have, since their beginning, shared one common apprehension: the steady growth of government and the corresponding decline of individual responsibility and freedom. They have been driven by a very real fear, the fear that a government which controls the economic life of its citizens today will control their thoughts and souls tomorrow. To the libertarians, the “democratic process,” which many trust as an adequate safeguard against tyranny, supplies no sufficient guarantee against a tyrannical majority. They have read American history and know that the architects of our Constitutional system, who were aware of the danger of tyranny by the majority, tried to prevent it by specific checks which later political developments either weakened or destroyed.

Three libertarian organizations that have had the most to do with the religious community have been the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York; Spiritual Mobilization, Los Angeles; and the Christian Freedom Foundation, New York City.

But the real problem in America, according to CT editors, was not the New Deal, secular education, pornography, or alcohol. The problem underlying everything was actually the church.

Pronouncing judgment on America is no longer an exclusive franchise of a few weeping Jeremiahs. Nor is it peculiar to evangelists constantly reminding the nation of its spiritual decline, its neglect of a great Christian heritage, its whoring after false gods of money and ease. Many pulpiteers are indeed swift to show that despite America’s religiosity no sweeping repentance and faith, no decisive change of heart and life, places social forces in our great cities conspicuously in the service of the living God. Billy Graham readily admits this even of New York City. Religious analysts are finding America spiritually and morally second-rate. …

Today not Nero but the churches fiddle while Rome burns. The churches have even approved leaders who support socializing and collectivistic trends in the name of the Christian community, and have permitted them without protest to speak for Christian conscience. …

But absolutes do not cease to be absolutes, imperatives do not cease to be imperatives, because of failure to recognize them as such. Biblical theology and ethics give little credence to the modern notion that God does not articulate permanent principles. Unless the Church accepts her biblical heritage and enunciates the great ethical principles that sustain our tradition of freedom, her own liberties may vanish together with those of the nation she fails. There may not always be a U.S.A., but there will always be a Church. As the believers in Russia can eloquently testify, however, the Church sometimes is chained and imprisoned not alone for her courage to affirm the superiority of spiritual over limited political loyalties, but as penalty also for her silent and unprotesting subjection to the power-state.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Tackling Unemployment

Interview by Haleluya Hadero

The head of The T.D. Jakes foundation on job assistance and economic empowerment.

iStock / Getty

For the past few months, the US job market has been showing signs of weakness. Erratic economic policies coming out of Washington make businesses skittish to hire new workers. Federal workforce cuts, the immigration crackdown, and higher interest rates are also contributing to the slowdown, according to economists.

In the past two years, the general unemployment rate has hovered around 4 percent. For African Americans, it’s increased from 6 to 7.5 percent over the four months leading up to October. Racial employment disparities are nothing new. But the gap has worsened recently as a result of the slowing economy and may worsen even more due to cutbacks to diversity initiatives.

Black churches have long stepped in to help congregants support themselves and their families during financial crises, offering food, cash assistance, and other needed aid. But when it comes to employment, there’s perhaps no one offering services on the same level as Bishop T. D. Jakes, the founding pastor of the Dallas-based megachurch The Potter’s House.

Jakes pastored the predominantly Black congregation for nearly 30 years before handing over the leadership mantle to his daughter and son-in-law in July. He oversees other organizations, including the T.D. Jakes Foundation, a nonprofit focused in part on providing workforce training to residents in underserved communities in Dallas and other cities like Atlanta and Miami.

Funding for the projects comes largely from Wells Fargo, which has struck a partnership with the prominent pastor that both sides say “could result in up to $1 billion” in financing over ten years.

Some have criticized the collaboration with the bank, which has been accused in the past of engaging in harmful lending practices that have disproportionately impacted minorities. The foundation declined to comment on those criticisms. But Jakes has previously said that he feels comfortable working with new leaders at the bank who he believes are attempting to rectify past misdeeds.

Jakes has announced plans to develop mixed-income housing with investment from the bank. The partnership also includes grants from the Wells Fargo Foundation, some of which have already been distributed to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and economic-empowerment initiatives.

CT recently caught up with Kelley Cornish, president and CEO of the T.D. Jakes Foundation, to hear more about the organization’s work. The interview has been edited and condensed.

Kelley, what’s the foundation’s origin story? What did the initial launch phase look like?

The T.D. Jakes Foundation was launched just before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Bishop Jakes was thinking about what he wanted his legacy to be.

For the first two years, the foundation focused on moving programs the church was already doing into a public charity. Jakes had started putting together job fairs and hiring mixers when he first came to Dallas many years ago. Today, when people come to our hiring mixers, they can get headshots. We work with employers ahead of time to identify jobs for them.

Jakes had also been hosting two-week summer camps for kids at the church. So we moved those to the foundation. We recently hosted a camp in Atlanta which offered coding and robotics training.

You joined the foundation in 2023. It seems work ramped up around that time.

Around the time I arrived, we were able to partner with the Wells Fargo Foundation and receive funding to build out the foundation.

I have a corporate background, specifically in banking. I knew we needed a vision to steer the organization forward. One day I asked Chairman Jakes, “What’s your vision?” He replied, “What’s your vision?” I was like, “Oh! I don’t know. Let’s figure this out together.”

We brought in a consulting firm and went through a yearlong process to flesh out the vision (“a world where every community thrives”), and the three pillars of our work: financial inclusion, workforce readiness and educational access, and community well-being.

We’ve funded programs in each pillar, and we’re now moving from Dallas to Atlanta, Baltimore, and other parts of the country. We’ve hired more people and now have more than 30 employees.

Are companies—and their foundations—more willing to give money because this work is not being done within the church?

Yes. There are people who really believe in the reach of Bishop Jakes and want to invest or co-partner with the foundation but might not want to donate money to a religious entity.

We also have a corporate board governed by an executive from Google [Jim Anderson], former Dallas Mavericks CEO Cynthia Marshall, and others. We’re not competing with the church. We’re supplementing its work.

The foundation has a goal of reaching up to 75,000 people with workforce programs by 2026. Are you on track to reach that goal? How are you seeing an impact, in terms of growing labor-force participation or participants benefiting from new skills?

We’ve funded some HBCUs —including Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Wiley University—because they are our pipeline into corporate America and entrepreneurship opportunities.

At Wiley University, Wells Fargo is powering a financial empowerment center that teaches students, staff, and the community about credit and banking. We’re also giving money to other financial-literacy entities like Operation Hope.

Recently, we kicked off our first cybersecurity cohort. Thirty to fifty people are engaged in a four-month program. The certifications they’ll receive will make them eligible to earn an annual salary of $70,000.

Last year, we saw about 2,300 people come through our hiring mixers. We had 1,700 people attend a three-hour event in Dallas. We checked the data afterward and saw that 500 people had actually received jobs from that one particular event.

Tangential programs we’re funding include a nonprofit in Maryland that offers a food-and-employment center and sees upwards of 3,000 people a month, and a Baltimore-based sustainable-energy organization called Power 52 that offers career training, including for formerly incarcerated individuals.

Is growing Black unemployment impacting the organizations you fund, or is it too early to tell?

I always like to see the glass as half full. We’ve been focused on solutions since day one. With our job fairs, it takes us a while to know the impact. But we do see people show up. They’re interested. If they’re not unemployed, they might be underemployed or want to get ahead of changes that might be coming in their organizations.

We’re focused on financial inclusion because we want people to get their financial house in order. So we feel well positioned to respond to what’s happening right now. I’m glad that right now we have components in place to help individuals think about what they can do next.

I’m not surprised by what I’m hearing and what I’m reading in the news. I do think it’s cyclical and believe that the pendulum will swing. It always has.

You’re also focused on reducing prison recidivism rates.

This is another one of those initiatives that started inside The Potter’s House and now lives in the foundation. It’s a 12-to-18-month program that focuses on financial wellness, family unification, faith, and mental health.

The recidivism rate for our program was as low as 17 percent, which is much lower than the national recidivism rate. That program has been around for 20 years, and we’ve had 42,000 people enroll.

We always have more work than we think we can handle. Right now, we have 230 cases, so we’re hiring more caseworkers. We’re looking to expand the program next year and offer a toolkit to other organizations, local governments, or churches that want to launch their own initiatives.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the number of people who attended the foundation’s hiring mixers last year.

- More from Haleluya Hadero

Ideas

The Strangest Enemy I’ll Ever Meet

Eric McLaughlin

Scripture speaks of death as an enemy Christ conquers—and the door through which we see God face to face.

Detail from Still-Life with a Skull by Philippe de Champaigne

Wikimedia Commons / Edits by CT

Here in the rural heart of Burundi, there is a red dirt route that serves as a 5k walk for me. Down the hill, across a small stream, then keep going until you turn left at the cemetery. Due to its proximity to the hospital where I work as a family medicine missionary physician, this cemetery has expanded greatly in the years I’ve lived here. It is mostly a collection of bare wooden crosses scattered in the shade of fast-growing eucalyptus trees.

But halfway through the cemetery, there is a small clearing. Here the graves are prominent, with large, white-painted crosses that give names and dates of births and of deaths. The graves are covered with tile, sometimes flowers. These are mostly people I’ve known. I was present for most of the burials. They were colleagues and friends at the hospital. Most were my patients before they died.

I pause in my walks and remember these people and their deaths. Josué was our cashier, wheelchair-bound since before I met him from some old injury. He was smart and kind and unfortunately couldn’t feel the infection in his legs until it had overwhelmed him.

Silas was a pastor, gentler than anyone could expect from the years he lived as a refugee in Tanzania. He was sick for years, and though I had a suspicion of his diagnosis, I had neither the tests to verify nor a treatment to help him.

Justine had something wrong with her liver, but I wasn’t able to find out what exactly, and her sudden decline surprised me.

Jean Philippe’s sudden death remains a mystery to me to this day.

They were young. None of them near what I might consider retirement age. Pondering the graves around me, I am confronted again and again with the fact of death. Death has come and taken them from us. When might it come for me?

The more precise question, medically speaking, is what disease is likely to kill me. Accidents and other tragedies aside, disease is generally how we die.

Recently, my son was doing a school report on author J.R.R. Tolkien, and he wrote that Tolkien died “from old age.” My doctor reflex automatically kicked in: “No one dies from old age,” I told him. Though the phrase is widely used, any doctor will tell you that there’s always some underlying illness. In Tolkien’s case, it was a bleeding ulcer, but dying “of old age” usually means that the person was old and their doctor did not have an exact diagnosis. This is why we don’t write “old age” as a cause of death on a death certificate. Death comes by disease, even if we have not found it.

Of course, disease does not always lead to death. A child’s fever doesn’t threaten her life in wealthy countries (though it may in Burundi). Many chronic diseases can be managed for years before they bring the possibility of death—if they ever do.

That ability to separate disease and death surely contributes to the focus of American doctors and patients alike on disease rather than death. But this focus, though medically intelligible, is spiritually impoverishing. The Bible, church history, and Christians in poor countries today all pay more attention to death, and that attention offers insights that can help us live more faithfully in our mortal lives.

Westerners have not always thought about disease and death as we do now. In the art and literature of other eras, we often see death personified. Though people in the past knew full well that disease could lead to death, they spoke of Death, rather than disease, coming to find us. He could be avoided for a time, but not forever. Disease was merely his agent; Death was the real fact, with power over all, great and small alike.

This tradition has faded from both medical and popular mindsets, especially in wealthy countries. Advances in accessing medical care mean that, in high-resource settings, we almost always know which disease was the immediate cause of a person’s death. We now view disease as the real fact of the situation and death as merely its occasional consequence.

I was trained as a physician in this newer way of thinking, but that mindset could not survive my work abroad. For years now, I have tried to treat patients in desperate circumstances. Their diseases often remain obscure to me, but the coming of death is clear. Living in this more traditional paradigm has forced me to rethink the relationship between death and disease. It has sent me searching out what Christianity has to say of these two great inevitabilities.

The Bible speaks broadly and with great nuance about disease. It is a result of sin in the world, but not necessarily the direct result of sin in the diseased person (John 9:1-3). God sometimes sends disease (2 Sam 24:15), but he also heals and calls his people to do the same (Luke 9:1-2). Healing was central to Jesus’s ministry, and it proclaims what God’s kingdom is like (Luke 7:18-23). Nevertheless, we see a persistence of disease even in Jesus’s followers (1 Timothy 5:23) that speaks of a kingdom still to be fully realized.

Because disease is fundamentally suffering (or at least the threat of suffering) in a person’s mind or body, disease can be understood much as we understand all suffering: as something that is fallen but not without redemption (Gen 50:20, 2 Cor 12:9). We tirelessly fight disease as a result of the Fall. But when it persists despite our efforts, we seek to be faithful in that suffering, trusting that God can and will redeem it in ways that we may only barely understand.

The Bible also speaks of the obvious ways in which disease leads to death (e.g., Psalm 107:18). Yet Scripture also understands death as more than an endpoint of disease; its model is closer to the older tradition than the modern framework.

In Genesis 3’s story of the Fall of humankind, the consequence is not disease but death: “you will die” and “to dust you will return” (vv. 3, 19), though disease will be death’s tool. Jesus healed, but his life was directed toward death—and resurrection. Paul personifies Death in 1 Corinthians 15 using the words of Hosea to address Death directly—“Where, O death, is your sting”—and describing it as the last enemy Christ destroys (vv. 26, 55).

Like disease, death was never natural in the sense of being part of God’s original creation. And like disease, it will cease in the fullness of God’s new creation. But unlike disease, since Christ’s resurrection, death is more than a defeated enemy: Until Christ returns, it is how we see God face to face (1 Cor. 13:12). In that sense, to “live is Christ,” as Paul writes, but “to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).

Christ our Lord has walked this path before us. Now, as poet Malcolm Guite writes, God’s grace is “pulling us through the grave and gate of death” into the fullness of his presence.

These biblical passages should shape our understanding of disease and death at least as much as modern medicine does. Let’s take disease first. There’s no doubt that the kingdom of God advances against disease, and part of Christ’s destruction of the works of the devil is our fight against disease (1 John 3:8, Matt 11:4-5). Medicine, surgery, public health initiatives, sanitation, lifestyle modification—all these can be weapons of God’s people for God’s purposes. It is a glorious thing when disease is vanquished.

Yet we must remember that health and length of days are primarily an opportunity to love and serve God and neighbor (Matt 22:36-40). Health is good, but it is not an end unto itself. And when sickness is not vanquished, despite our best efforts, we must love and serve then too. In this, persistent disease and suffering may not always or only be an obstacle: Suffering can build compassion. Disease can force us to slow down to what John Swinton calls “the speed of love.”

As for death, Christians look for its coming, difficult though that may be. A 2019 study in the Annals of Palliative Medicine reported the results of a survey of hundreds of people asking their preferred way to die. Overwhelmingly, respondents wanted to live a long, rich life and then die in their sleep.

Why is this idea so appealing? The study suggests a variety of reasons, but I think most come down to a preference for living as if death is not waiting for us.

Here in Burundi, death is common and sudden, including among the young. Funerals are attended by the hundreds, and I expect few reach adulthood without having sung in a funeral choir. Nevertheless, I find here much the same sentiment about death that I find in America—the same avoidance those researchers found. Even here, where the subject is unavoidable, talking about death is met with the same hesitation. Even among many Christians, I find the same futile wish to spend life ignoring its most inevitable event.

Yet there are exceptions to that rule. Pastor Silas, one of my friends in the cemetery, came to talk to me in the final stages of his unknown illness. He wanted to go visit his friends in Tanzania. They were meeting to pray, and he wanted to take a long public bus ride on a broken road to join them, even in his frailty.

He knew the trip would take a toll on his body. He knew death was near and that this journey would bring it nearer, but still he wanted to go. He made that trip and got back home again, and though we didn’t talk about it directly, he showed me how life is more than length of days.

The difference between how Silas faced death and how many of my other patients do—and the lack of difference between their attitudes and those of my American friends—tells me our approach to death is not determined by our circumstances. Whether death is sanitized and hidden away as in much of America, or raw and ever-present as in rural Africa, we must decide how we will approach it.

For centuries, many Christians carried on the tradition of memento mori, the Latin reminder that we will all die. They would engrave a skull or some other symbol of physical mortality to regularly confront themselves with the fact of death and the need to prepare to meet it. Perhaps these Christian forebears would endorse my habit of taking a regular constitutional past the graves of my friends.

Here I find myself wanting to suggest that Christians should be marked by having no fear of death, but perhaps this is not reasonable. Even defeated, death marks such a transition—such an unknown—that fear seems inevitable.

What matters, I think, is less the absence of fear but the presence of hope. Is our faith in Christ’s promise of resurrection more than lip service? We don’t know much about the other side of that door, but if Christ is raised, then life is there (1 Cor. 15:12-28). Life in the presence of our Savior.

Lastly, what of the intersection of disease and death? Not every disease will end in death, but most lives will end with disease. Medical rescue from death is glorious and redemptive—but always temporary. There is a moment in every treatment where we, doctor and patient alike, must shift our efforts from fighting disease to facing death well. Knowing when that shift should take place is always hard, but cultivating this presence of Christian hope in death may be the best way to protect against compulsively fighting disease and losing the bigger picture.

A “good death” is about more than chronology, more than the prolonging of life by medical or other means. We will only meet death well when we understand that life is more than length of days, and there are worse things than losing years. When I pass the graves of my friends, I remember their diseases but, more than that, the hope they have realized. Awash in that hope is how I hope to die.

Eric McLaughlin is a missionary doctor in Burundi and the author of Promises in the Dark: Walking with Those in Need Without Losing Heart.

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Books

Review

First Comes Sex, Then Comes Gender

J. Alan Branch

A new book acknowledges both categories as biblically valid—but insists on ordering them properly.

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

In The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory, Anglican scholar Robert S. Smith joins conviction and compassion in a sober, cogent analysis of how God’s Word speaks to contemporary gender debates. His crucial conclusion: “God’s desire for my gender—that is, whether I should perceive and present myself as a man or a woman—is revealed by the design of my body.”

Smith carefully analyzes Genesis 1:27, which affirms that God created all people “male and female.” Crucially, he notes that Scripture echoes this teaching in its account of Adam and his descendants after the Fall, declaring, “When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them” (5:1–2). This latter passage, as Smith writes, shows that man made in the likeness of God “is a community of persons, not an androgynous, asexual, or bisexual individual.”

Together, these Genesis passages demonstrate that the body God gives to every person is part of his good creation, regardless of how he or she perceives it. As such, bodily realities undergird the concept of gender, which is foundational to personal identity. They determine the trajectory we should follow in thinking about our own gender roles and expressions: “To the extent that we can speak of gender identity and gender roles as constructed, faithfulness … requires that all such constructions respect and reflect biological reality.”

A faculty member at Sydney Missionary and Bible College, Smith clearly demonstrates that the fact of our male and female bodies entails a specific approach to gender. His tone is irenic and avoids inflammatory hostility, but he is firm in opposing the constellation of contemporary perspectives that developed out of works in transgender theory like The Transsexual Phenomenon, published in 1966 by Harry Benjamin, an eccentric 81-year-old endocrinologist.

Benjamin argued, “For the simple man in the street, there are only two sexes. A person is either male or female, Adam or Eve. … The more sophisticated realize that every Adam contains elements of Eve and every Eve harbors traces of Adam, physically as well as psychologically.” On this basis, Benjamin contended that every person has androgynous tendencies somewhere deep within them. In some way, he theorized, this contributes to the discomfort some people feel with their own bodies and the corresponding desire to change sexes. In other words, sex and gender are inherently different categories.

In sharp contrast, Smith sees gender as a conceptual category that should be grounded in, and never separated from, biological sex. He defines gender as “the culturally mediated set of conceptions, expectations, and roles associated with being either male or female. Such a definition distinguishes gender from sex without disconnecting gender from sex.” The reality of the body’s sex comes first, and then gender expression flows from the body itself. Accordingly, Smith rejects the idea that subjective feelings of gender dissonance give moral grounds for gender reassignment surgery.

In some respects, debates about gender identity seem distinctively modern. On a deeper level, however, they flow from debates as old as ancient philosophy—in particular, the contest between two schools of thought known as realism and nominalism. While The Body God Gives gestures toward this older debate, Smith could have strengthened the book by addressing it more explicitly.

The conflict between realism and nominalism boils down to what philosophers call universals and particulars. Put simply, universals are qualities or characteristics that can exist in many things or people at the same time. “Maleness” and “femaleness” are universals, but particulars are distinct entities—like a specific husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter.

Philosophically speaking, realists affirm both universals and particulars, regarding the latter as instances or expressions of the former. Nominalists, however, only recognize particulars. In their view, what realists define as real, objective categories and concepts are nothing more than arbitrary human labels or conventions.

The modern transgender debate demonstrates how realism and nominalism can drive dramatically different ethical conclusions. A realist might say, “John is a man,” connecting something particular (the name John) with something universal (the status of being a man rather than a woman). In this view, the universal category of man encompasses all those who possess male genitalia, X and Y chromosomes, and other shared biological characteristics. These universal properties unite the particular person named John to all others who share them.

In contrast, transgender theory reflects an extreme nominalism. Denying the universal categories of male and female means there are only particular persons, none of whom share the universal properties of either biological sex or gender.

Without saying as much, The Body God Gives makes a strong case for Christian realism. The universal categories of male and female are woven into creation by a wise God. We describe particular people God created as male and female because these categories are real, not merely convenient inventions.

The Body God Gives also addresses intersex conditions, referring to rare developmental disorders that cause children to be born with some mix of male and female characteristics. As Smith concludes, “intersex conditions do not constitute a third sex.” While I concur with his judgment, he could have presented a stronger argument for it. Intersex advocates may be correct that cosmetic surgery on very young intersex children is sometimes unwise, given that most of the conditions being treated are not life-threatening. But some intersex conditions do impede the healthy functioning of the colon and urinary tract. Specific, surgically correctible problems like these underscore the degree to which intersex conditions represent variations from the normally occurring binary of male and female. In this sense, they are more analogous to a cleft palate than a third sex.

Smith does not resolve the debate about using the preferred pronouns or names of those claiming to have changed genders. But perhaps his book is stronger for staying focused on explaining the goodness of male and female bodies and clarifying their normative guidance on living as men and women. His clarity on these core subjects offers a helpful starting point for thinking through practical outworkings of Christian living in a world where transgender identities are common and celebrated.

Smith’s emphasis on evangelism is also refreshing. We can share Christ and offer the hope of the new birth to anyone who repents and believes, even people who have pursued various steps in gender reassignment. As Smith notes, Scripture attests to this fact by speaking of eunuchs who live faithful, God-honoring lives. In Isaiah, God promises “an everlasting name” for eunuchs “who choose what pleases me and hold fast to my covenant” (56:4–5). And the New Testament records the apostle Philip evangelizing and baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26–39.

This brings us to a perpetually difficult question: What should a church do if a transgender person comes to faith in Christ? Smith is correct that genuine repentance means pursuing faithfulness and “living (as much as is possible) in harmony with one’s God-given sex.”

Going further, though, it’s worth emphasizing that some reversals of gender reassignment surgeries may cause more harm than good. Because these procedures are notorious for causing post-operative problems, I would not suggest a reversal surgery if, for example, the new believer has no colorectal or urinary tract issues.

Meanwhile, a transgender person accepting Christ should begin transitioning back toward a gender identity as closely aligned as possible to his or her biological sex. Even so, the church must realize that things might never be exactly as they were. Furthermore, church leaders should approach any use of cross-sex hormones with great caution, as these can involve significant health risks. (No pastor wants an effort to repent from past sins to result in a pulmonary embolism.) But thankfully, God’s grace—alongside prudent medical advice—is sufficient to navigate such problems.

Transgender discussions can be disorienting, but we are not the first generation of believers to face them. In ancient Rome, the popular cult of the goddess Cybele included male devotees who castrated themselves and dressed as females. There are many differences, of course, between this cult and modern transgender advocates. Yet if we traveled back in time to the church at Rome and described our current gender landscape, those early believers might reassure us that they have seen something similar.

The gospel was sufficient for addressing gender confusion in the first century, and the same gospel is sufficient for addressing it today. The Body God Gives is a helpful tool for the church as it defends the goodness of our created bodies and shapes our moral thinking about gender.

J. Alan Branch is professor of Christian ethics at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of 50 Ethical Questions: Biblical Wisdom for Confusing Times and Affirming God’s Image: Addressing the Transgender Question with Science and Scripture.

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Ideas

In Politics, Contempt Is a Common Tongue

Chris Butler

Antisemitic, racist texts show the need for spiritual and character renewal.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

When the New York Young Republicans recently disbanded after a leaked group chat revealed members were sharing racist and antisemitic messages, state leaders called it a “fresh start.”

Days later, a similar scene played out in Washington, DC. Paul Ingrassia, a young Trump nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel, withdrew his nomination after Politico published text messages in which he boasted of a “Nazi streak” and called for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.” Ingrassia had made a litany of racist comments before he was nominated. But even for many of the president’s most loyal allies, this appeared to be a bridge too far.

Meanwhile, Jay Jones, a Democratic candidate running for attorney general in Virginia, has fallen behind in the polls after text messages surfaced in which he mused about shooting a political rival, Todd Gilbert, and seemingly wished harm on Gilbert’s young children. Jones apologized and remains in the race.

The exposure of all these private messages has sparked necessary outrage across the political spectrum. But the real story here is about not just one party or one person. It’s about what happens when the rot of contempt seeps into our national bloodstream. There’s what was said but even more so what shaped people to say it—and how our culture, by degrees, is being trained to think, feel, and speak the same way.

While these types of messages still represent extremes in our culture, the underlying language of contempt has become a common tongue of our public life.

What used to be shamefully whispered in private corners now plays out openly in comment sections, podcasts, and campaign rallies. This flagrant contempt for political opponents opens the door to even more grotesque behavior in private spaces. From “jokes” about rape and genocide to gleeful celebrations of opponents’ suffering, cruelty has become a currency of authenticity. To belong in political circles, one must prove a willingness to scorn.

Our digital culture has only magnified the problem. On the right, contempt often takes the form of dehumanizing minorities or glorifying cultural dominance. On the left, it shows up in mockery of faith, in the dismissal of opponents as irredeemable bigots, or in casual delight in their misfortunes.

But this constant contempt is not simply a feeling or an action; it is a curriculum. It teaches that identity is secured by mockery, moral seriousness is naive, and empathy is weakness. It corrodes our humanity and forms habits of the heart that make mercy unimaginable. At the end, it feeds a formative process fueled not by the Spirit but by the flesh.

Behind this culture of contempt often lies a dormant but persistent state of fear: fear of losing cultural and political power, fear of being canceled, fear that if we let our guard down, they will win. This anxiety is enhanced even more when Americans—including Christians—imagine each other as worse than we are.

Recent research from the nonpartisan More in Common initiative, for example, found that while most Americans—81 percent—believe people of all religions should feel like they belong in the US, we drastically underestimate each other’s goodwill. Most Americans also believe 47 percent of evangelicals value religious liberty for everyone, when 78 percent of evangelicals do. Similar misperceptions hold for Muslims, Jews, and atheists.

Fear, however, doesn’t explain everything. Contempt also offers a counterfeit sense of community that’s forged around shared grievance. It presents a type of peer pressure that creates solidarity through shared disgust. It tells us we don’t need to build anything beautiful to belong. We just need to hate the right people, whether or not they’re culpable of harm.

But a community formed through scorn cannot inspire its members toward anything better. It can only hold together through the sinister power of mutual disdain.

Scripture shows us this is precisely where the church should step in. The body of Christ exists to form people differently, cultivating habits of speech, imagination, and love that runs counter to the world. If contempt is the pedagogy of disdain, then the church needs to be the school of grace.

This formation begins in worship, where we learn to name God rightly and, in doing so, see others rightly. It continues through preaching that deepens the conviction that every person bears God’s image and therefore commands our reverence. It deepens in discipleship that trains believers to speak blessing rather than curse and model biblical examples by directing godly disgust toward sin, sinful systems, and demonic spirits (Eph. 6:12) instead of toward people who God loves. Like Elijah challenging Baal’s prophets or Jesus calling out the scribes and Pharisees, the Bible shows how to use sharp language for godly ends without falling into sin.

The practices we cultivate—truth telling, forgiveness, confession, repair—are not just private virtues but public gifts that our political culture needs to see on display. When we speak well of others, repent when we’re wrong, see others as neighbors rather than enemies, and build bridges of mercy (even in disagreement), God will use these small, stubborn habits to slowly remake our world.

The exposure of these recent hateful messages is painful, but it may also be providential. God often allows what is hidden to come to light so healing can begin. What has been revealed in our politics is a mirror and a message for the nation.

Accountability is critical if we are to move forward in a healthy way. Justice was served when the New York State GOP swiftly disbanded its youth wing and the Senate refused to advance Ingrassia’s nomination. But accountability alone cannot heal a nation that has been shaped by contempt. Punishment may allow the news cycle to move on from a scandal, but what we desperately need is a renewal.

Chris Butler is a pastor in Chicago and the director of Christian civic formation at the Center for Christianity & Public Life. He is also the co-author of Compassion & Conviction: The And Campaign’s Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement.

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News

Government Shutdown Deepens Hunger Crisis

Harvest Prude in Maryland

When paychecks and SNAP distributions stop, the food pantry line grows.

Members of the military and their families receive food from Feeding San Diego food bank

Sandy Huffaker / AFP via Getty Images

A month into the government shutdown, The Community Hope Center began to notice different faces at its regular food distribution in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

In an average month, the center serves around 4,000 households in partnership with the city. This month, people who hadn’t needed to visit its food pantry since the COVID-19 pandemic returned, and families who had never come for food assistance showed up for the first time.

“We are seeing a lot of new people come in and different people from all walks of life,” said Sharon Camacho Meakes, executive director of the nonprofit, which is affiliated with Seneca Creek Community Church.

Hunger ministries around Washington, DC, are navigating the second-longest government shutdown on record: More than 1 million federal workers are not being paid while Congress fails to pass a budget, and on November 1, the government will halt funding for food stamps, meaning more families that rely on federal assistance will turn to community organizations for help.

Capital Area Food Bank, which serves DC and neighboring counties, has scheduled food distribution days specifically for federal workers. The nonprofit partners with around 400 organizations as distribution sites in the area, many of them faith-based. Seneca Creek Community Church is one of those spots, and volunteers from the church showed up in full force on Wednesday.

Federal workers and contractors bundled up in coats and sweaters waited in a line that stretched outside the church in the brisk October air. Moms pushed strollers or wrangled busy toddlers, older adults came with adult children to help them carry boxes, and a few 20-somethings in business casual shivered in the cold.

Inside, volunteers handed out boxes of food and told workers about other ministries that could help, including one that distributes winter coats.

“I have a lady with a baby who needs help,” one volunteer in the food distribution line called.

“I’ll take her,” said a woman sporting a Capitol Area Food Bank black hat as she sprang into action.

The volunteers shepherded the mom, with squirming baby in tow, through the line and out to her car, where they loaded up a box of shelf-stable food and a box of produce, which include items like pasta, canned tomatoes, tuna, white chicken, beans, peanut butter, and cereal. The organization plans to continue the weekly food drives for federal workers until the shutdown ends.

“Thank you and God bless you!” Jackie Chips, a church volunteer near the end of the distribution line, said as she handed boxes to the federal workers.

“The need is great, and it’s going to get greater,” Chips told CT. “But prayer is powerful.”

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has instructed states to hit pause on sending out November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments, and the administration has said it cannot use contingency funding to keep SNAP going.

More than 47 million Americans don’t have enough food or don’t know where their next meal will come from, according to the USDA’s 2023 report, the most recent data available on the topic. (The Trump administration did not release a report in 2024 and canceled future reports.) Over 7 million children live in households with food insecurity.

Many of them—42 million—use SNAP, and another 6.7 million women and children are on the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC). The availability of WIC funds beyond this month varies by state.

Some states are making up for the pause in federal funding: California plans to deploy the National Guard to help with food distribution and divert millions of dollars to food banks. Virginia declared a state of emergency to use state funds to provide SNAP to recipients. In Louisiana, the governor signed off on using state health department funds to replace lost SNAP funding for the first week of November. But some states are unable to cover the funds, and more than two dozen states are suing the administration and asking that it use reserve funding to cover the gap.

The looming cessation of SNAP benefits exacerbates already-strained resources at the country’s food banks, which saw a rise in demand as grocery prices continue to climb.

Heather Taylor with Bread for the World said the need could very quickly reach “catastrophic levels” that outpace food charities.

“A lot of folks who are on SNAP, they’re already struggling because the amount that they receive typically does not last until the end of the month. So they’re already stretching and leveraging charity, leveraging food banks,” added Taylor, who is managing director of the Christian antihunger organization.

“Our fear, from what we’re hearing and reading, is that people will take extreme measures, like parents not feeding themselves at all, to do what they can to have a minimal amount of food for their children.”

She said Christians have a moral obligation to help meet the needs of their hungry neighbors.

In Congress, Senate chaplain Barry Black took it up with the Almighty in full earshot of the politicians at the heart of the stalemate as he offered an opening prayer Tuesday.

“Lord, remind our lawmakers that no gold medals are given for breaking shutdown records, but a crown of righteousness is given to those who take care of the lost,” Black prayed.

The chaplain, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, has had the longest consecutive tenure among Senate chaplains. He’s used prayer during shutdowns before to highlight their impact on the vulnerable.

While many federal workers receive back pay, contractors for the government do not. They’ve already missed two paychecks, and one federal worker in Maryland, Stephanie, told CT she’s worried it will push back her plans to retire next year, since the shutdown has meant she’s needed to dip into her savings to pay her mortgage. “This might be a setback,” she said.

CT agreed to withhold last names, as workers were worried about employment repercussions for speaking to the press.

Stephanie is frustrated with what she sees as politicians “bickering.” “Why take it out on us?” The 66-year-old asked.

Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, is also praying for an end to the stalemate in Congress. Since the shutdown started, his church in Orlando, The Gathering, has fielded more requests for monetary assistance from its benevolence ministry. Church volunteers saw longer lines at last week’s food pantry.

“The pastors in our coalition, from Chicago to Texas to North Carolina to Florida to New York, they’re seeing those numbers are increasing,” Salguero said.

Salguero knows food insecurity firsthand. For part of his upbringing in New Jersey, he and his siblings relied on reduced-price lunch cards at school and went hungry at home sometimes, eating sandwiches of peanut butter and jelly or just mayonnaise and bread.

Those leaner years shaped his understanding of Matthew 25: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me” (vv. 35–36).

“This is not an abstract thing,” Salguero said. “We’re going to continue to advocate for both sides of the aisle to come together so that children and elderly people and the vulnerable are not going to bed hungry.

“For me, the church is always going to be the church. We’re not going to stop feeding people,” he said. But he is praying the government finds a way forward soon. “No matter how much we do, we could never cover the need that’s out there.”

“One thing that’s very clear is that nobody thinks that private philanthropy can patch the whole gap created by the sudden withdrawal of SNAP,” Galen Carey, vice president of government relations with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), told CT. He’s already hearing reports from Christians about nearly empty shelves at Salvation Army and other food pantries around the country.

NAE and Bread for the World support politicians passing a stopgap measure, like Sen. Josh Hawley’s bill The Keep SNAP Funded Act of 2025, or the administration using emergency funds. Some politicians have resisted efforts to pass stopgap funding on the grounds that it prevents lawmakers from feeling pressured to negotiate an end to the shutdown entirely.

“There’s an awful lot of churches who are just concerned about making sure that kids aren’t going to bed hungry,” he said. “They’re happy for that problem to be solved in whatever way it can be solved.”

At Wednesday’s food drive in Gaithersburg, Seneca Creek lead pastor Mark Tindle told CT that while the community has been hit hard, even some furloughed workers in his church have shown up to volunteer.

One federal employee in a food line told CT he felt “completely blindsided” by the shutdown. Tyrell, a Marine and father of three, said the pause was draining his bank account and he still had to report to work despite not being paid. He delivers for DoorDash at night to cover rent and medicine for one of his daughters.

“What happened to making America great again?” Tyrell asked. He said he’d thought about reaching out to members of Congress but didn’t know if it would make a difference. When asked who he voted for, his response was succinct: “Not this.”

Tyrell said he is leaning on his faith during the uncertainty. After he got through the line, he loaded the boxes into the back of his car. On the rear window, a white sticker spelled out “In God We Trust.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the National Association of Evangelicals.

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Pastors

Jonah in an Age of Outrage

Michael LeFebvre

The prophet’s lesson is also ours: We must recover compassion for neighbor and enemy alike, or our words will be hollow.

ZU_09 / Getty

Political discourse today is increasingly marked more by bitter conflict than by consensus. Evangelicals are often at the forefront of these contests. They confront social challenges on issues like abortion, gender, and immigration that seem to threaten biblical values. But in doing so, Christian leaders walk a precarious line between addressing society’s errors and succumbing to its acrimony.

Preachers especially, as much as ever, need to cultivate a prophetic voice with a prophetic heart—a heart of compassion. One important resource for that formation is the Book of Jonah.

Contrary to popular stereotype, Jonah is much more than a children’s story. Jonah is a prophet sent to confront injustice, but he lacks the compassion God wants from him. Through a series of lessons, God teaches Jonah—and he teaches us as we attend to Jonah’s story—the compassion God requires.

The story of Jonah offers timely guidance for proclaimers today to overcome their own feelings of bitterness and to speak truth with love.

At the beginning of the book, God calls Jonah to go to Nineveh, but Jonah despises the Ninevites and refuses. Importantly, Jonah’s anger toward Nineveh is justified. It was a royal city of the Assyrian Empire, which was committing atrocities across the ancient world. The boundaries of the expanding empire had not yet reached Israel, but they were steadily approaching. Furthermore, for several generations already, Israel had been paying tribute to Assyria.

The oppressive tributes and the fearful conquest drawing near gives Jonah good reasons to desire Nineveh’s fall. And God himself is angry at Nineveh: “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city,” God tells Jonah, “and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (1:2, ESV throughout).

God does not dispute Jonah’s anger. He shares it. The Assyrians are cruel, and Israel’s fears are justified. In the same way, believers today often feel anger at cultural evils. Such indignation has its place.

However, the marvel of God’s compassion is that, unlike ours, it is not quenched by anger. And God calls us, like Jonah, to face society’s evils with an indignation that is both led by and ready to yield to compassion.

As the book continues, God sends two experiences to cultivate compassion in Jonah’s heart. In the first, Jonah faces his own deserved judgment and rediscovers God’s compassion toward himself.

Upon being commanded to go to Ninevah, the prophet instead boards a ship for Tarshish to “flee from the presence of the Lord” (v. 3). But God sends a storm to stop the ship, threatening its destruction. The very justice Jonah wishes upon Nineveh falls upon himself. And Jonah knows he deserves it. “I know that it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you,” he confesses to the sailors (v. 12).

Jonah persuades the sailors to throw him overboard. And that is where the surprise of God’s compassion appears. Cast into the sea, Jonah is swallowed by a great fish. Initially, that fish seems to seal Jonah’s demise, but then it spits him out—safe and whole—back on dry ground.

Jonah’s heart is deeply moved to have escaped death. “The waters closed in over me to take my life,” he recalls. “Yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God” (2:5–6).

That same awareness of God’s love is essential for proclaiming his Word today. We may warn of judgment, but we are not ministers of judgment. We are ministers of the gospel by which we ourselves are loved.

After the lesson at sea, Jonah obeys God and goes to Nineveh. He has rediscovered God’s love for him and goes out of obedience to the Lord. But Jonah still feels no concern for Nineveh. He has more to learn.

Upon arrival in Nineveh, the prophet preaches God’s judgment. Then he retreats outside the city to watch heaven’s wrath destroy it. He wants to see Nineveh burn. But God cancels Nineveh’s judgment; the people abandon their evil ways, so God relents. Now Jonah is angry with God for failing to follow through.

In that setting, Jonah’s second lesson begins. This next lesson expands Jonah’s renewed awareness of God’s love for himself to include compassion for Ninevites too.

God raises up a large, leafy plant to shelter Jonah from the sun. Jonah is “exceedingly glad” for the plant (4:6). Then God sends a tiny worm to eat its stalk. The plant quickly withers, and Jonah is left exposed to the desert sun. He is furious.

God chastens Jonah for showing care (hus) for the plant but failing to care (hus) for thousands in Nineveh, including children and animals (4:9–11). That Hebrew word hus is the capstone term for the book. It is an emotional word denoting the inner turmoil that leads to heartfelt compassion. God wants his prophets to genuinely care, with real feeling, about others—even Ninevites.

Jonah has no rebuttal. God’s rebuke silences him. His desert lesson shows that God wants his messengers, today as then, to condemn injustice but always with heartfelt love.

But there is more to these lessons. Further driving home this calling to love, there is another, surprising layer to Jonah’s experiences at sea and in the desert.

Toward the beginning of the book, when Jonah retreats to the ship’s hold during the storm, the crew works to save the ship from sinking—and they pray.

At first, each sailor cries out to his own god, but their own gods don’t respond. So they rouse Jonah. “Arise, call out to your god!” the ship’s captain urges. “Perhaps [your] god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish” (1:6).

Here is a great irony: The sailor calls the prophet to pray. And he expects that Jonah’s God is the one who will care, who “will give a thought to us.” These sailors show more urgency in prayer, more concern for life, and more awareness of God’s compassion than the prophet himself!

A similar twist emerges in the Nineveh episode of chapter 3. Jonah barely starts preaching when Nineveh’s ruler humbles himself. He “arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes.” Then he calls the city to repentance. “Who knows?” the king declares. “God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish” (vv. 6–9).

Once again, it is the Gentile leader who comprehends heaven’s compassion. The Ninevite king responds with humility and public concern better than the prophet.

These may be the most convicting features of the story. When God’s people let bitterness quench their compassion, he awakens that compassion in worldly elites—putting his own people to shame. In this way, God humbles and transforms his own followers.

Is God doing this same work today? Christians should be known for love—welcoming immigrants (Lev. 19:33–34; Heb. 13:2); promoting relief for the poor, both personally and as a society (Lev. 25; Isa. 1:17; Matt. 25:35); and caring for creation (Gen. 1:28; 2:15). Yet too often, it is atheistic scientists, politicians, and celebrities who champion these causes, while evangelicals have become known for many things besides love.

One of Jonah’s key lessons is this: While God sends his church to confront society’s evils, he also uses the world to expose our failures. Wise prophets learn even from their opponents, and that humility fuels a heart of compassion.

The word evangelical once carried a reputation for social good—leading in the fight against slavery, caring for the poor, and building hospitals and schools. Today, it is more often tied to political tactics and culture-war battles than to Christlike love. The Book of Jonah offers a needed corrective.

Christians must not abandon their prophetic voice. But unless the church recovers the prophet’s heart—genuine hus, real compassion for neighbor and enemy alike—our words will be hollow.

Jonah’s preaching shook Nineveh, but the greater miracle was the change in Jonah himself. That same transformation is what the church needs today. If we want our voice to be heard, our love must first be seen.

Michael LeFebvre is a Presbyterian minister, a senior fellow with the Center for Pastor Theologians, and author of a devotional study of the Book of Jonah from which this article is adapted, Loving the Other: Jonah’s Contempt Meets God’s Compassion.

- More from Michael LeFebvre

Church Life

Grassroots Efforts Bring Together Diverse Sects in Iraq

Jayson Casper

Interfaith group uses projects and dialogues to push for greater religious freedom.

Christian (left) and Muslim (right) women praying and studying in Iraq.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

This is the third article in a three-part series about the problem of sectarianism in the Middle East and ways the interfaith group Adyan seeks to pave a new path in Lebanon and Iraq. Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

Three years ago in Iraqi Kurdistan, an adherent of the Kakai faith posted on social media that he had been called an infidel by a Sunni Muslim sheikh.

Kakai is a synthesis of Zoroastrianism and Shiite Islam, with between 110,000 and 200,000 followers in Iraq. Persecuted throughout their history, some Kakai consider themselves an independent religion, others a sect of Islam. But most Kurds are Sunni. The offending adherent felt a clear threat; some interpretations of Islam call for the killing of infidels.

Abdo Saad, regional programs director for Adyan Foundation, a Lebanon-based organization promoting interfaith dialogue and equal rights, reached out from his office in Erbil, Iraq, to the local ministry for religious affairs, alerting officials to the danger the Kakai follower may have faced. The authorities intervened and spoke to the sheikh privately. The Kakai man told Saad the issue had been resolved. But the ministry took no further action against the cleric.

Saad was not satisfied. In the honor-shame culture of the Middle East, it is often possible to resolve issues of religious freedom behind the scenes. Many converts to Christianity, for example, can live in relative peace if their Muslim families are not devout. Most authorities are not out to arrest believers.

However, if a conservative cousin publicizes the convert’s new faith, trouble may ensue. Wise officials may calm the situation, perhaps by relocating the convert to a different part of the city. They do not want Muslim extremists to discover the offense and call into question the religious legitimacy of a government that does not enforce the Islamic ban on apostasy.

Yet in the Middle East, only Lebanon allows a convert to officially register his or her new faith. For other nations in the region, religious scruples often trump religious freedom. Governments resolve many social issues along similar patterns, but human rights advocates lament that—as with the Sunni sheikh and Kakai Kurd—officials do not take a public stand.

Lebanon boasts one of the Arab world’s more robust expressions of political and cultural commitment to religious freedom. But Saad said the concept of rights-based citizenship has not sufficiently taken hold in any nation to enable a transition to a free and open democracy. He counsels Christians and Muslims to listen well to each other’s concerns so they can reform their nations together.

“I don’t have the answer for what this should look like,” he said. “I hope our grassroots work will push the leaders, but I don’t know.”

His uncertainty is warranted for Iraq as well. Under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, the nation had a nominally secular regime that integrated allied elites from different sects into its authoritarian governing structure. During the transition to democracy under US occupation, Iraqi political parties immediately organized along religious lines, and the majority Shiites captured power.

Sunni insurgencies followed, culminating in the creation of ISIS. Shiite militias backed by Iran joined the international coalition to defeat the jihadist threat but then kept their weapons and eroded national sovereignty. Neighboring Syria may witness a similar transition to conservative Sunni power now that a former al-Qaeda member has overthrown the Alawite-led regime.

Adyan registered in Iraq in 2022. An early project aimed to replicate the Lebanon success of Alwan, a school-based program to foster religious diversity and acceptance. Alwan means “colors” in Arabic. The Iraqi government welcomed the effort but insisted on calling it by the less kid-friendly name “Education on Active and Inclusive Citizenship,” as the original name made them think of the LGBTQ rainbow. Due to local sensitivities, the interfaith group accepted.

Other projects worked on social cohesion, Saad said. In a Chaldean Catholic city in the northern area of Nineveh, a Christian, Muslim, and Yazidi led joint efforts to renovate a public square damaged by ISIS. They restored electricity, installed benches, and held a public dinner. Some played backgammon long into the evening.

Similarly, in the southern city of Basrah, Iraq, with an overwhelmingly Shiite population, Adyan helped a Shiite and a Sunni lead a festival of diversity in the main city square. Artists and singers entertained onlookers, when a member of the minority Mandaean religion took the stage. He told Saad this was the first time he felt comfortable speaking publicly about his faith, in which John the Baptist is the greatest prophet.

Within a sectarian society, good social relations are possible—even common. It is harder to put controversial freedoms on paper. Adyan therefore convened a three-year national dialogue with 33 civil society leaders from all sects to create an Iraqi roadmap of reform. The goal was to raise awareness of a plan away from sectarianism toward a political system of equal rights that encourages all sects to shape both local and national governance.

Recommendations were bold. The final document challenged corruption and proposed shifting power from the central government to regional authorities. It called for transitional justice for victims of violence alongside the wise reintegration of ISIS families. And it urged the disarmament of sectarian militias while granting extra rights to religious minorities to secure their role in building a new nation.

The roadmap chided the nation’s constitution for being “ambiguous” on freedom of belief. Positively, it said Iraq could set an example of an “open and tolerant Islam.” But there was no clear statement on blasphemy laws or the right of conversion due to the sensitive nature of the topic.

Saad said that while Iraq guarantees religious freedom due to its diverse society, such issues are the “devil in the details.” Recognizing the challenge, Adyan is careful in how it words its advocacy, aiming to be both progressive and “conflict sensitive.”

The stakes are high. One of the 33 leaders went on to become the minister of culture. Another leader, a well-known researcher and critic of sectarian militia, was assassinated, likely by a non-state militia.

A second example of sensitivity concerns underage marriage. Linda Macktaby, a Congregationalist pastor in the Union of National Evangelical Churches, is working with Adyan and the UN children’s agency to produce a manual for Lebanon on children’s rights. Using verses from the Bible and Quran, it addresses issues of education, violence, and exploitation. “Who would oppose these?” Macktaby asked.

But to ensure buy-in from religious leaders, the manual speaks only about the “risks” of child marriage, she said, and doesn’t include that the UN and other rights experts say it should be forbidden. While a prominent Lebanese Shiite cleric condemned child marriage as incompatible with human dignity, others rely on classical Muslim sources that tie family happiness to a daughter’s marriage before menstruation.

Macktaby said that in the Middle East, it is often best to address sensitive topics indirectly. One has to choose: address an issue on secular foundations and lose its popular appeal, or involve religious leaders for wider circulation by carefully crafting the language.

“Teach tolerance,” Macktaby said of her preferred approach. “If someone is different than you, accept them.”

Similarly, Saad said Adyan tries to help spiritual leaders see religious pluralism within their holy books. The language may not match human rights legalese, but the texts are at least familiar. One regional charter on freedom of religion and belief quotes from a robust representation of Middle East faiths, selected by clerics from five nations and nine sects.

And it is specific without being inflammatory. The first principle declares, “Faith is a Voluntary Choice,” before also addressing issues of noncoercion, human dignity, diversity, and justice. The signatories committed to working gradually for change but were specific in their condemnation of anticonversion laws. The abandonment of a certain religion, it said, should not be criminalized.

Recommendations to religious leaders, however, do not challenge the uniqueness of their faiths. Instead, the document urges them to a solidarity that “transcends all affiliations” and works for the common good. This includes standing up for minority traditions in need of help, as with the Kakai believer.

There are no easy solutions for solving sectarianism. Adyan members disagree all the time. But Saad and Macktaby said they stick together, as there is wisdom in their religious diversity. And when sectarian fear keeps many separated, grassroots projects can expand their base of support.

“We are very good at bringing people together,” Saad said. “And this is needed for a new social contract.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Church Life

Becoming Part of God’s Family

Carmen Joy Imes

Weekly participation in ordinary church life isn’t flashy, but it is radical.

Terren Hurst / Unsplash

Mom and I turned off the main road and onto the familiar side street, our eyes scanning the corner lot where we spent untold hours back in the early ’90s. The church seemed not to have changed much in 30 years—solid rock walls, the angular slope of the steepled roof, bottle-glass windows from the ’70s. The parking lot was cracked and aging, long overdue for repaving. The lawn was a tangled mass of cropped weeds that needed attention. The neighboring parsonage had been condemned, boarded up, and fenced off.

It was no longer a Foursquare church. The sign announced an Indonesian Seventh-day Adventist church worshiped there instead. It was Saturday, but our drive-by must have been too late to see any activity.

We attended New Life Fellowship Foursquare Church during my high school years. We were rebounding from the shock of our previous pastor’s moral failure at a vibrant charismatic church where we discovered the third person of the Trinity and found deep and unconditional love.

At that church, although we hung on through the transitional period under an interim pastor, eventually it was clear that closing the doors made the most sense. The church had been too tightly wedded to the founding pastor’s vision and charisma to easily disentangle itself. Too many people had left. The building was far too big for the remnant that remained.

With wounds still tender, we found New Life Fellowship. This congregation was open to the work of the Spirit but grounded in the Scriptures and part of a 70-year-old denomination that gave it more stability than the nondenominational church that had folded. We threw ourselves into it with abandon. When it came to church, our family was all in.

We showed up on Sunday and Wednesday and for workdays and special events. I joined the youth group and was soon helping to plan activities. My parents became elders. My dad ran the sound booth. I started a missions prayer group and began raising support for my first overseas trip. Our family was always the last to leave, so the pastor eventually gave my parents a set of keys so we could lock up on our way out.

Our congregation was a hodgepodge of mostly lower-middle-class families barely paying the bills (plus one doctor and one golf-course designer) and a disproportionate number of single moms. There was a woman with an alcoholic husband who only showed up intermittently to offer a moving testimony whenever he decided to sober up. A couple my parents’ age with an in-home daycare and teens who were always on the edge of trouble. A retired couple whose quiet presence strengthened the rest of us. A woman in chronic pain who liked to sit in the back so she could dance during worship, using her body to honor the Creator. On a good Sunday, maybe 60 people came.

But here’s the deal: We loved each other. I met regularly with Donna, 60 years my senior, to pray for missionaries. I recall vigorous discussions with the seven or eight teens in my youth group about what it should look like to follow Jesus. I spent hours talking theology with our volunteer youth leader, who was a plumber by day but found his real purpose in leading us. Bernice cooked dinner for the whole church every Wednesday so we could fellowship around the table before youth group and Bible study. The pastor appointed me “missions coordinator” and gave me the microphone during the service once a month to give updates about the missionaries our church supported.

The building wasn’t much to look at, but we were family. When I went off to Bible college, the church celebrated my graduation and sent me off with tears and hugs. Their words of blessing and generous gifts spoke of their investment in me as a person. I still have the bookends from pastor Jim in my faculty office, two spinning globes that signified both my love for learning and my love for world missions.

I returned home after my freshman year in the summer of 1996. I don’t remember whether it was his idea or mine, but pastor Jim gave me the opportunity to teach an adult-education class so that I could pass along what I was learning in college. I designed a course entitled Understanding Worldviews to help us have better conversations with our unbelieving neighbors.

Looking back, the thing that shocks me most is that he attended my class with his wife and required all the elders (including my parents) and other pastors (including my youth pastor) to attend as well. Our church had no formal mentoring program, but pastor Jim created opportunities for me to hone my skills. He saw that I had something to offer—never mind that I was a teenager—and he made space for me.

One of my favorite passages during that season was Paul’s exhortation to Timothy: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity” (1 Tim. 4:12). I was indeed young, but age was not a disqualifying factor in God’s mission.

I have loved and been loved by many churches in my nearly five decades of life, and New Life is no exception. We were a ragtag group of ordinary people gathering to meet with an extraordinary God. To show up with one another week after week knit us together as family. The fruit of our life together had nothing to do with rebranding or casting a five-year vision or crafting a mission statement (although we tried that too). It had everything to do with our habit of meeting together.

The building was dated. The sermons weren’t unusually arresting. The music was canned. (As I recall, we sang to prerecorded “tracks” on the electric keyboard with the help of keys and guitar and a couple vocalists.) We wielded no political influence. We simply kept coming and connecting with others who were following Jesus.

This is the way. Ordinary followers of Jesus gathering to worship an extraordinary God, loving one another as best we knew how, and waiting for Christ’s return, just as Paul exhorts us in Ephesians:

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (2:19–22)

We (and our church building) may not have been much to look at, but together we became a holy temple for God’s presence. In an age when churches are so often in the news for the wrong reasons, it’s worth remembering the innumerable ordinary congregations like my childhood church that experience radical transformation in incremental ways.

Week after week we resist the temptation to sort ourselves into factions and exclude those who have no worldly power to wield on our behalf. We do this by gathering to worship and hear the Word while we wait together for Christ’s return. Let’s not give up this habit. The world depends upon it.

Carmen Joy Imes is an associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University and an author. Her latest book is Becoming God’s Family: Why the Church Still Matters.

- More from Carmen Joy Imes

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