Fly Me to the Moon: Praying for Peace this Mid-Autumn Festival

A former NASA R&D director contemplates how faith in God has shaped lunar explorations.

People look at illuminated art installations of the moon and the earth on display for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

VCG / Contributor / Getty

Before my retirement in 2021, I traveled regularly to speak at Christian conferences in America and East Asia. These preaching engagements often occurred during the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is a popular time for Chinese churches—whether in the US or in Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and the Philippines—to hold special events. While I deeply enjoyed fellowshipping with these brothers and sisters in Christ, a part of me missed my family, especially when I found myself gazing at the beautiful full moon in the sky.

My fascination with the moon began in my youth. As a 14-year-old in Taiwan, I watched footage of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon on a neighbor’s black-and-white TV. In that awe-inspiring moment, a secret dream to work at NASA was birthed within me, even though it seemed impossible at the time.

In 1987, God fulfilled my dream of working at NASA, where I eventually became a research and development (R&D) lab director. I’ve long regarded humanity’s explorations of the moon not only as a scientific endeavor, but also as an exercise in trusting God, who has a remarkable way of weaving together our dreams and his plans for us into a tapestry more beautiful than we could ever imagine.

Over the moon

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, as it is known in the West, the moon is at its roundest and brightest, the autumn air is cool and dry, and Chinese families enjoy a time of reunion. The event, which falls on September 29 this year, occurs on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar.

Many Chinese Christians observe the festival as a cultural celebration, resonating with its themes of familial bonding and gratitude. This emphasis is reminiscent of US and Canadian Thanksgiving celebrations, where families gather to give thanks and share a meal together.

Besides traditions like eating mooncakes, Chinese people may also recite poems that extol the beauty of the moon with a tinge of melancholia. A popular choice is renowned Song Dynasty poet Su Shi’s “Song of the Water: Mid-Autumn Festival”:

When does the bright moon appear?
I raise my wine to ask the azure sky.
I cannot guess what celestial palace reigns,
What year is it tonight up high? …

In life, there’s joy and sorrow, parting and reunion;
The moon may wax or wane, perfect or crescent;
Such is the way of the world, hard to comprehend;
Yet may we all endure, till the end of our days;
Sharing the beauty of the moon, though miles apart.

Bittersweet poetry like Su Shi’s often captures the essence of the season. But one tale stands out for its poignant depth: the legend of moon goddess Chang’e.

According to this Chinese myth, Chang’e was driven by a yearning for eternal longevity and stole an elixir of life from her husband, Houyi, who had received it from the Jade Emperor as a gift after shooting down nine suns that were burning up the earth. Upon consuming the potion, however, Chang’e found herself ascending to the moon, never to return to earth again. There she remains in eternal solitude, and this story now serves as a reminder of the loneliness that can accompany the quest for immortality.

The flight of Chang’e to the moon may be a fable, but going to the moon is a desire that Christians throughout the centuries also share—and a feat that was accomplished merely 50 years ago.

More than a moonshot

In our decades-long pursuit of lunar expeditions, one thing that has encouraged me is that many of the astronauts and scientists involved in the American space program were devout Christians. The vastness of the universe they encountered led them to appreciate the magnificence of our Creator.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the lunar module of America’s Apollo 11 in the Sea of Tranquility on the moon. The next day, Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon and said the famous line, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” Aldrin followed 20 minutes later.

Before the two astronauts stepped out onto the lunar surface, however, Aldrin, who was an elder at Webster Presbyterian Church and had arranged with his pastor to take Communion in the module, remembered Jesus Christ on the moon. He also read two handwritten passages from the Bible, John 15:5 and Psalm 8:3–4: “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without me” and “When I consider thy heavens, the works of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou has ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him?”

A year prior, humans had entered lunar orbit and circled the moon for the first time through the Apollo 8 mission. On Christmas Eve in 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders made a live television broadcast from the moon’s orbit to Earth and individually recited Genesis 1:1–10. This broadcast won an Emmy award for the highest viewership worldwide at the time.

Later, James Irwin became the eighth man to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 15 moon-landing mission in 1971. During his mission, Irwin experienced an irregular heartbeat but also described sensing God’s strong presence, which he said was a power he’d never felt before. A year after returning to Earth, he resigned from his position as colonel and established High Flight Foundation, an evangelistic ministry that spreads the gospel worldwide.

Charles Duke became the tenth astronaut to reach the moon a year later on Apollo 16. Following his return to Earth, Duke continued to serve in the US Air Force Reserve. On February 8, 2021, he preached at a special gospel gathering at Christian Ministries Church in Hot Springs, Arkansas, commemorating the 50th anniversary of his mission’s moon landing and urging truth-seekers to return to the true God.

Among these luminaries in the Apollo program is another figure that might be lesser-known but no less accomplished: Chinese American scientist Xinyuan Tang, who was also known as Frederick Dawn. Called the “father of spacesuit fabric” for his soft, incombustible Beta cloth, Tang’s invention helped to address the flammability of the original Apollo spacesuit, which contributed to a fatal fire during the first Apollo mission that killed three astronauts.

Illustration by Christianity Today

Xinyuan Tang

Tang was a devout Christian and a long-standing member of Clear Lake Chinese Church near Houston, which I previously served at. Despite his achievements, he remained exceedingly humble. “I praise and thank God, for unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it work in vain. It’s by God’s special grace and guidance that I have achieved what I did today, and may all glory be to God,” he said in an interview with a discontinued Chinese Christian publication, OK Magazine.

When I officiated at Tang’s memorial service, NASA dispatched a plane to fly a national flag over the Space Center to recognize his significant contributions to interstellar travel, and later covered his coffin with this flag.

Everlasting peace

Gazing at the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival reminds me that faith in God has helped human beings achieve space explorations, and that peace and unity is not to be taken for granted or taken lightly.

The courageous Apollo 11 astronauts left a lasting message on the lunar surface with this plaque inscription: “We came in peace for all mankind.” This happened during the Cold War era, and the statement was a hopeful wish for peace in the realm of space exploration.

But our real example of peace is Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself on the cross to reconcile man and God, as Ephesians 2:14 says: “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility.”

In the Bible, this verse refers to removing animosity between Jews and Gentiles, and in today’s context, I see it as applicable to our tense geopolitical environment.

One event gives me hope that pursuing peace is possible amid a challenging political climate. China’s lunar orbiter—aptly named Chang’e—landed on the far side of the moon for the first time in 2019 and sent out a lunar rover (named Jade Rabbit, who is the celestial companion of Chang’e in the Chinese myth) to examine the moon’s surface. The China National Space Administration notified NASA of its exact coordinates, enabling the latter to photograph the Chinese space modules from above. You could say that this rare collaboration in lunar research between China and the US was akin to Apollo meeting Chang’e!

More recently, Christian astronaut Victor Glover is headed for the moon very soon. Next year, he will be piloting the Artemis 2 and paving the way for future NASA lunar missions. He will also be the first Black man from the American space agency to go to the moon.

In the vast expanse of the universe, where stars twinkle like distant dreams and the moon beckons with a soft glow, my prayer is that our words and deeds will also represent a profound sense of Christlike harmony and hope, like the Christian astronauts exemplified when they beheld God’s glorious creation in space.

And just as our reunions during the Mid-Autumn Festival wrap us in a warm embrace of goodwill and serenity, may our celestial—or spiritual—journeys be infused with the ever-present peace of Christ.

James Hwang spent 14 years as a research and development lab director at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Following this, he felt called to ministry and served as the senior pastor of a church in Houston and as the executive director for an international Christian broadcasting ministry’s Chinese department. He now teaches at several seminaries and mentors doctoral students.

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Pastors Wonder About Church Members Who Never Came Back Post-Pandemic

Hannah McClellan

New research shows disagreement over COVID-19 policies drove changes in attendance, but “a lot of it is a mystery.”

laterna magica / Lightstock

After a few hard pandemic years, Paul Seay is happy to see more people coming to the two Methodist churches he pastors in Abingdon, Virginia.

Still, he can’t help but wonder, What happened to the people who never returned?

“Some had been very involved—and they’re just gone,” said Seay, who leads Charles Wesley United Methodist Church, a historically Black congregation, and Abingdon United Methodist Church, a large red brick church down the road.

At a low point, Charles Wesley had about six people in attendance. Things didn’t get quite that dire at Abingdon UMC, which had about 180 before the pandemic. But it also really struggled with the impact of COVID-19.

They weren’t alone. According to a new study on the impact of COVID-19 on the American church from Arbor Reseaerch and ChurchSalary, a sister publication of Christianity Today, more than one in three churches saw attendance decline between 2020 and 2022. And while many, like Seay’s congregations, have seen growth since the darkest days, they still seem to be missing people.

“It was not uncommon in discussions with pastors,” the researchers found, “to hear stories of ‘a third’ or ‘half’ or ‘20%’ of a congregation not coming back once the doors reopened.”

Charles Wesley now has about 20 people on a good Sunday, and Abingdon UMC has grown to around 200. But Seay still notices the people who aren’t in the pews anymore.

“The pandemic,” he told CT, “really zapped the congregation.”

There doesn’t seem to be a single clear explanation for this. The survey of 1,164 Protestant pastors, followed by 17 focus groups and nine in-person case studies, found varied and complicated explanations. Across the country, pastors from 42 different denominations said people left because of disagreements over health policies, because of other disagreements, because they moved, and sometimes without explanation.

“Ultimately, a lot of it is a mystery,” Seay said. “It’s just a new frontier.”

According to the study, churches in large cities and the suburbs were the most likely to see a decline in attendance, while rural churches were the least likely to see any change at all. Majority Black congregations were hardest hit, with 64 percent reporting decreased attendance since 2020.

The report found that church attendance was most impacted by reactions to pandemic restrictions. Churches that responded to COVID-19 by shutting their doors for long periods, limiting attendance, and requiring masks for extended intervals sometimes lost members who wanted to return to “normal” more quickly. And churches that responded with less stringent restrictions sometimes lost members who were more cautious or had health concerns.

Perry Hunter, who left his Church of Christ congregation in Borden, Indiana, still feels kind of conflicted. The older, rural church stayed shut down for a long time during the pandemic, so Hunter, who was a deacon, decided to visit a larger church about 15 miles south.

“I felt we needed to go to a bigger church for the kids and to have more stuff to do without me running it,” he said. “It was nothing personal about our old church, but during the time at the larger church, our kids loved it and my wife was receptive.”

He still gives financially to the Church of Christ, but in the end, Hunter ended up attending the Independent Christian Church called Northside.

Others who left their churches during the pandemic feel like they were betrayed. One woman, who spoke to CT on the condition of anonymity, said she continues to works as an administrator at her mid-sized nondenominational church. But she stopped attending services because she didn’t feel the leadership was taking her health concerns seriously. “I am still shocked that the body of Christ was not more compassionate about ensuring COVID did not spread,” she said.

She doesn’t know when or if she will go back.

For many church leaders, deciding when and how to reopen in-person services was often a Catch-22. It seemed like whatever they did, whatever they said, however they responded to COVID-19 health recommendations, someone was going to be angry or upset and leave.

“It’s just a fact of the matter that the whole pandemic was highly politicized,” said Drew McCallie, lead pastor at First Farragut United Methodist Church in East Tennessee.

At Farragut, attendance dropped from about 220 on an average Sunday down to around 80. In addition to the pandemic, the church also went through staff transitions and ended one of its regular worship services.

But now the church is back to about 100 regular attendees—and growing. McCallie says the congregation, which he started leading a few months ago, has a very solid base of engaged members, which he is thankful for. But he and other pastors that he’s talked to have noted that some members who have returned are not as quick to volunteer as they once were.

“Some folks took a step back and said, ‘I realized that I was giving so much that I was burning out, and I’ve actually enjoyed having a little more time on my hands,’” he said.

Other church leaders say they’ve had to deal with the idea that there’s nothing they could have done to keep people. Once-committed congregants are leaving churches because they are leaving the area. The pandemic prompted a rush of moves and job changes, which impacted where those people went to church.

“We lost almost every young family in the church except mine,” said Jeff Schoch, the senior pastor at Crossroads Bible Church in San Jose, California.

The pandemic restrictions and high cost of living made California unattractive for some young families. And though these families weren’t unhappy with their church, the pastor feels like he paid a price.

“It was a kick in the gut—all the time connecting to them, integrating them into the church, and they all moved to Boise,” he told CT. “We had a lot of people move.”

Other churches, however, say the pandemic relocations have led to new growth. At Crossover Church in Tampa, Florida, executive pastor Christopher Harris said all the church’s metrics trended up during the pandemic—attendance, giving, baptisms, and salvations. The church, which its website describes as multi-ethnic, multi-generational, and Christ-centered, sees an average of 35–40 new families each week.

“We are in one of those cities in the United States that has explosive population growth,” Harris said. “Lots of growth and development brings its own host of problems, but it also means we have a lot of new people coming to our church.”

However, even churches like Crossover that have seen growth throughout the pandemic can struggle to consistently engage people—a finding supported by the ChurchSalary report. More and more people view church attendance as optional, according to the many pastors who were surveyed.

“If there’s any issue that I would lift up, it would probably be just us as leaders being frustrated with the changes in levels of commitment of folks. You know, folks don’t attend church every week anymore, generally speaking,” Harris said. “Now a church’s competition has nothing to do with another church. It has to do with your kids’ sports schedules, your work schedule, self-interest around travel, and all those other kinds of things. And so people often now see faith as optional.”

But churches have had to pivot before, Harris said. Moving forward, he believes Christians need to be faithful to the historic examples of the church by “maintaining our message while changing our methods.”

Seay agrees. While attendance numbers and regularity might not be as strong as many pastors would like, he does see some bright spots.

Many local congregations are more unified, he said. They’ve learned from the hard things they experienced during the pandemic and are more focused on the big picture.

So Seay is cautiously hopeful. He is pleased with the growth his churches have seen, but is even more pleased by their spiritual growth.

“This can’t just be about my ego, or about us being a post-COVID success story,” he said. “It’s really about trying to form a church culture that really, really is a faithful culture of disciples—a place where … people to fall in love with Jesus and fall in love with the church.”

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COVID-19 Hit Black Churches Harder, but They Weathered It Better

Emily Belz

New research shows how Black churches suffered during the pandemic. But these congregations also found unity where others were torn apart.

Mourners attend a funeral for COVID-19 victim Conrad Coleman, Jr., at New York Covenant Church in July 2020.

John Moore / Getty Images

Pastor Lorenzo Neal had the first panic attack of his life on a hot summer night during the pandemic. He imagined it was what a heart attack would feel like. His neighbors called 911.

As the pastor of New Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jackson, Mississippi, he was carrying a lot of burdens through the pandemic.

He has pastored New Bethel for 14 years, and said his 130-member church lost several key members to the virus, including a mother and son who died within two weeks of each other. Neal himself contracted the virus early on and was sick for more than a month. On top of that, he was initially shouldering the entirety of virtual worship himself.

“I was doing too much,” he said. “I was already seeing a therapist for some other things, but once that came to light, we were able to explore some areas that needed to be addressed.” He asked his congregation for prayer without specifying what he was experiencing in his own mental health, which he said is common in Black faith communities. His anxiety has since calmed.

COVID-19 hit Black congregations harder physically and brought a heavier mental health burden to Black or African American pastors, according to a new study on the impact of COVID-19 on the American church from Arbor Research Group and ChurchSalary, a sister publication of Christianity Today. But the study showed Black churches also had more unity about pandemic health measures and lower closure rates.

In interviews with CT, a number of Black pastors affirmed the study’s findings. The pastors dealt with a disproportionate amount of sickness and death while carrying the additional burden of ministering in their communities after the murder of George Floyd. Other ministry demands cropped up too: Married couples needed a lot of counseling during the pandemic, they said, and then local health officials came to the pastors to convince their congregants to get the vaccine when it became available.

Pastor Jerry Young is the head of the National Baptist Convention and has also pastored in Jackson, Mississippi, for 50 years.

“I do not know of anything that has adversely affected the church as much as COVID has,” he said. He said the mental health of pastors “has not been sufficiently diagnosed or attended to.” But he added that the pandemic also “caused a lot of people to become a lot more serious about their walk with the Lord.”

Black Americans experienced higher rates of COVID-19 and death than white Americans, according to analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by KFF.

In May 2020 in New York City, for example, African Americans counted for 28 percent of coronavirus deaths, even though they made up only 22 percent of the population. COVID-19 also killed a number of bishops in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the nation’s largest African American Pentecostal denomination. COGIC urged its church leaders to follow government directives and follow scientists’ advice.

“The last three years brought a level of unraveling that was unusual,” said bishop D. A. Sherron, the pastor of Global Fire International in Brooklyn, New York. Sherron lost five family members in the first COVID-19 wave. “It really, really took a toll on everything.”

The ChurchSalary study also found that Black or African American congregations were the most likely to have a positive response to pandemic health measures and were less divided about health measures, which “may have insulated them from the kinds of internal COVID-19 conflicts that negatively impacted so many other churches,” ChurchSalary found.

Two-thirds of Black congregations interviewed for the study had an “extremely positive” reaction to pandemic health measures, compared to only 29 percent of multicultural congregations and 20 percent of majority-white congregations. Black congregations were among the most likely to still mask and practice social distancing indoors in 2022.

The study also found that the ethnicities that were the “least polarized” in response to health measures also had fewer church closures. But most Black congregations also saw a decrease in attendance. Pastors said that some of their congregants still watch services online, though they’re trying to get people to come back.

Young, the head of the National Baptist Convention, said he wrestled through health measures alongside his pastors as a pastor himself, deciding to pause in-person worship for a time. He felt he couldn’t have services and tell people to decide individually whether to come or not.

“People would have kept coming because the pastor says, ‘Come,’” he said. “I made a decision for the people entrusted to my care.”

In interviews with CT, Black pastors described other changes because of the pandemic. They saw congregants develop deeper relationships with God.

“Many lives were lost,” said Steve Smith, the administrative bishop for New York’s COGIC churches. “But somehow it has brought us to deeper depths with God, and greater expectations that the God of the Bible will manifest.” Smith said he noticed congregants take up “habits of practice in the presence of the Lord—prayer, silence, solitude.”

Pastors reported becoming more engaged with congregational care themselves.

Pastor Frank Williams, the former president of the National African American Fellowship of the Southern Baptist Convention, leads two churches in the Bronx, Wake-Eden Community Baptist Church and Bronx Baptist Church. During the pandemic, Williams was checking in on congregants and praying for them, particularly nurses working on the frontlines. The church deacons would call people in the church regularly and report back to the pastors about who was called and when.

“Through the pandemic, ministry became more, for me, about the people, and not about the tasks of the vision,” Williams said. “Sometimes we can lose focus on the people because we are so focused on a destination. … People mattered beyond what they can do and provide to the ministry.”

Still, attendance numbers are not back to where they were before the pandemic at his churches. Some people who used to attend in-person tell Williams that they’re continuing to watch online.

Black pastors said that, like many other pastors, they had an added burden of shifting services online when many Black churches weren’t prepared technologically.

At the start of the pandemic, Williams learned how to use video production software and set up cameras in his home to stream church services on Sunday—“no one could come over to help.” It was anxiety-inducing but also “exhilarating,” he said. The worship team would record songs at home and send them to him, and he would use movie editing software to compile the songs to add in at the right parts of the live service.

Smith said that in New York’s COGIC churches, there were many pastors who were “mighty men of God” but had “minimal training in technology.” Many churches did not have an online giving platform, he said, and some had to close due to lack of funds or because the pastor died from the virus.

Now, he says, most New York COGIC churches have an online presence, and “the awareness of how much we need the younger generation,” he added, saying some pastors reached out to their grandchildren for technology help.

Overall for Black pastors, ministry burdens were greater, but their churches found ways forward through the toughest pandemic months.

In the Bronx, Williams officiated seven weddings in his church, mostly in outdoor parks. And he buried his senior deacon, a mentor throughout his whole adult life, who died of the virus in isolation at a hospital in the deadly first wave in New York City. The same day that he did a small funeral service for the deacon, he had to take his wife to the hospital with a bad case of COVID. She eventually recovered.

The church voted to create a “regathering team” that would have the power to make decisions about meeting during the pandemic. “Once we had that in place, the members trusted the process,” Williams said. “They trusted the members on the team.”

Other than the death of the senior deacon, the church mostly felt indirect impacts of the virus. One member at Wake-Eden lost 11 members of her family to COVID “in short order,” Williams said.

The church hosted a forum on processing grief. Williams preached about domestic violence, and about watching for “how isolation is affecting your relationships.”

Then, just as Williams’ two churches were recovering from COVID losses from the first wave, George Floyd was murdered. For a Black church, racism was not an unexpected topic to address; every year in February, the Bronx churches did an event on “the reality of Black life.” So they held several forums about social justice in that June and July, modeled after the February forums. The first one lasted four hours because “people needed to talk,” Williams said. The churches also helped facilitate a march of pastors in the Bronx.

“There was so much emotional pain in those months,” Williams remembered. “You had to lean on each other and lean on God, and keep doing what has to get done.”

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100,000 Reuses for the Church to Find

David Roach

With a record number of congregations predicted to close their doors by 2025, multiuse developments may be the future for shrinking congregations and empty buildings.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Pexels

The future looked bleak for St. Peter’s United Church of Christ (UCC) in Louisville, Kentucky. The congregation had dwindled to a dozen elderly German Americans in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood. Their building was falling apart.

Despite its façade of stained glass and majestic steeples, all the building systems were failing, including plumbing, electrical, and heating. Plaster was falling off the walls and ceiling. The city eventually closed the building due to its dangerous lead paint.

But thanks to the vision of pastor Jamesetta Ferguson and a partnership with the UCC’s Church Building and Loan Fund, the church’s property now houses a thriving multiuse development known as The Village at West Jefferson. It has injected life into the local economy—and the formerly dying church.

With funding from multiple mainline denominations, private investors, the city of Louisville, and the federal government, St. Peter’s erected a complex that includes a coffee shop, a credit union, a daycare center, health care services, and more. Hundreds use it weekly. Plus, the congregation is up to 160, with a “multi-cultural, multi-generation” membership.

“The community has really been renewed in many ways,” said Patrick Duggan, executive director of the Church Building and Loan Fund. St. Peter’s “is doing the work of serving the poor. In the meantime, it has created about 100 jobs. This is not just talking the talk. It’s actually walking the walk.”

Similar multiuse developments are popping up across North America on the properties of formerly dying churches—most of them in mainline Protestant denominations.

A Montreal Anglican church shares space with a nonprofit circus company and a refugee advocacy group among other organizations. The mixed-use development at Emory Fellowship in Washington, DC, includes affordable housing. So does the development spawned by Arlington Presbyterian Church in Virginia.

The challenge of declining congregations in big buildings won’t go away anytime soon. Each year, church closures outnumber new church starts in America by 50 percent, according to Lifeway Research. In 2019, prior to the pandemic, although about 3,000 new churches opened, 4,500 closed. Five years earlier, Lifeway’s analysis showed church openings outpaced closings 4,000 to 3,700.

Church closures are predicted to snowball. In 2021, the percentage of Americans holding membership in a house of worship dropped below 50 percent for the first time in history, the Gallup organization found. The median church size in 2020 had fallen to less than half of what it was in 2000—from 137 to 65.

Such data has spawned a dire prediction by Presbyterian researcher Eileen Lindner: By 2025, 100,000 North American churches could close their doors.

“Over and over, I have experienced congregations of 10 or 50 or perhaps 100 in buildings that would host 500 or 1,000,” said Rick Reinhard, principal consultant with Niagara Consulting Group. “It’s great to pray. It’s great to hire charismatic pastors. But for the most part, those churches are not going to come back.”

With declining churches, it’s not that certain parts of the facility are utilized while others sit unoccupied. The entire building is underused or unused, Reinhard said. “The $7–$10 per square foot per year it costs to operate church properties will sink” most congregations with big buildings and small crowds.

For example, a church that had 500 people in its 50,000-square-foot facility in 1970 may have dwindled to 30 elderly people today. Building operations alone would necessitate annual giving of nearly $17,000 per attendee. The math doesn’t work.

But is transforming a church building into a community development hub a valid way to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission? Yes, says Shannon Hopkins of Rooted Good, a group that helps faith-based organizations align their mission and their money. She’s worried that if declining churches resort to selling their buildings rather than repurposing them, America will miss out on a flood of missional impact.

House-of-worship closures in the coming decades could yield “the greatest reshaping of American communities since the GI Bill,” Hopkins said. “This is a time of hope. While a lot of the narrative is about decline,” the present “is a really unique moment of opportunity.”

Churches across the country are seizing the opportunity. That includes congregations in rural and urban settings, with the setting determining how they repurpose. While dying urban churches may repurpose into affordable housing, rural Ottumwa, Iowa, has seen eight churches close in recent years. Three have repurposed into a creative arts space, a medical office, and a residence.

Among congregations assisted by Rooted Good, an Alabama church is starting an economic development zone from one of its buildings. In San Antonio, a declining church aims to transform its facility into a park and outdoor amphitheater while meeting for worship in a nontraditional, dinner church setting (where worship occurs over a meal rather than in a sanctuary).

In the next 50 years, up to half of US churches will repurpose their buildings, Hopkins said.

Mark Clifton isn’t sure that’s a good idea. As senior director of replanting for the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), he wants church buildings to remain church buildings—housing replanted and revitalized congregations. His view represents an evangelical counterapproach to mainline denominations’ repurposing strategy.

Closing churches “robs God of his glory,” Clifton said. “What about a dying church says our God is great and his gospel is powerful?” The church “is not a store. It’s not a restaurant. It’s not a mall. It’s the bride of Christ. It’s worth fighting and battling to keep those churches going as a testimony to the power of the gospel.”

When a dying church seeks assistance from Clifton, he helps them choose from among three paths:

A new church plant could adopt the old church’s building and bring its members into their new congregation.

A healthier church could adopt the dying church and work to plant a new congregation in its building.

The dying church could hire a pastor with training to replant the church from within. That pastor would shepherd the remaining members and work to transform them into a vibrant church once again.

Clifton practices what he preaches. Three years ago, he became pastor of the three-member Linwood Baptist Church, 35 miles from Kansas City. The members wanted to sell the building and close, but Clifton convinced them to try something different. Today they have 115 in worship and have baptized more than 20 new believers over the past three years.

It may be wise to let groups in the community use a declining church’s building, Clifton said, but as an outreach rather than a repurposing or an attempt to raise capital.

Others say a replant isn’t always feasible. The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF), a group that formed in the 1990s as a protest against the SBC’s conservative direction, has researched the ways churches can utilize their properties to generate additional income. Its case studies feature churches dabbling in solar farming, paid-parking facilities, preschool programs, and neighborhood outdoor space among other options.

“Often out of the necessity to be better stewards of their real estate and to enlarge their financial base, these churches have discovered needed energy through more regular use of their buildings,” the CBF states on its website. Repurposed churches “have forged new friendships with entities now using their space” and “have also seen their financial situation improve significantly through the income generated by these creative ventures.”

The difference between conservative and progressive denominations’ approaches to declining churches boils down to theology, said Duggan of the UCC. Conservatives generally think redeveloping church buildings represents a secular or political approach. They emphasize gospel preaching and evangelism. Progressives may draw from theological traditions like liberation theology and the thought of Walter Brueggemann to emphasize community development and affordable housing.

“It really has to do with the vision of who Jesus is and what the church is supposed to be,” Duggan said.

Despite the difference of opinion on what to do with declining churches’ buildings, one fact draws universal agreement: A fresh strategy for them must emerge.

“The future,” Reinhard said, “is not a stand-alone church with a fence around it, divided from the neighborhood, isolated from the neighborhood.” Something has to change.

David Roach is a freelance reporter for CT and pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama.

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India By Any Other Name? Christians Braced for ‘Bharat’ or Not

Surinder Kaur

Believers weigh what the latest postcolonial name change discussion would mean for religious freedom and pluralism in the Hindu-majority nation.

Bharat vs. India: A Kashmiri woman walks in front of a sign of this month's G20 summit.

Yawar Nazir / Stringer / Getty

This month’s G20 summit in New Delhi gave rise to a controversy about a possible name change for the host nation, after the Indian government denoted the country as “Bharat” instead of the usual “India” on official guest invitations.

This was a clear departure from political convention, and the ensuing debate focused on the need for a name change as well as the possible cost. The constitution of India, meanwhile, contains both names and uses them interchangeably.

While the opposition criticized the administration of prime minister Narendra Modi, leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) welcomed the presumptive move, with some declaring the name change as necessary to “come out of the colonial mindset,” saying that those opposing it “are free to leave the country.”

The possible adoption of the term Bharat over India closely aligns with the inclinations of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the mother organization of Modi’s BJP. Founders of both the RSS and BJP advocated for a stringent, Hindu-centric vision of India (which they called “Hindusthan,” land of Hindus), wherein religious minority groups, particularly Muslims and Christians, must live “wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.”

“Our country is Bharat, and we will have to stop using the word India and start using Bharat in all practical fields—only then will change happen,” stated RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat on September 1.

Christianity Today spoke to Indian Christian leaders on the likelihood of the name change and their reactions. While some expressed concern about the possible impact on minorities, especially Christians, others dismissed it as a diversionary political tactic.

A divisive dinner

Two days after Bhagwat’s statement, dinner invitations sent to dignitaries attending the G20 Summit on September 9 and 10 introduced president Droupadi Murmu as the “president of Bharat” rather than the conventional “president of India.” Traditionally, invitations issued by Indian constitutional bodies have consistently used the name India in English texts and Bharat in Hindi texts.

This deviation from the norm raised questions about the intentions of the Modi government, which has ruled the country for more than nine years yet has shown no preference for Bharat in the past.

The controversy further escalated when a photo of an invitation to the formal G20 banquet, addressed from the “president of Bharat,” went viral on social media. The two booklets released and distributed to the G20 dignitaries by the Modi government included one titled Bharat: The Mother of Democracy, which claimed, “Bharat is the official name of the country. It is mentioned in the Constitution as also in the discussions of 1946–48.” The booklet also refers to Hindu religious texts, such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and outlines “democratic ethos in Bharat over thousands of years.”

On the same day, BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra tweeted that Modi was attending a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia as the “prime minister of Bharat.”

The development occurred just days after the Modi government’s surprise announcement of a five-day special session of Parliament held September 18–22. Since the government did not announce the agenda for the special session, unconfirmed reports emerged about the tabling of a resolution to change the name of the nation.

Speculations were put to rest after the government published the agenda before the session began this week, but the confusion still gave rise to a controversy. Concerns were raised about the government’s intent and the possibility of changing the name of India to Bharat, given Modi and his party’s commitment to right-wing ideology and their push for Hindi language.

A. C. Michael, former member of the Delhi Minorities Commission, spoke to CT on the spread of right-wing ideology and the proposal of the name change. He expressed concern about religious fundamentalism and majoritarianism, which have adversely affected the “secular fabric” of the country.

“Religious minorities are already being treated as second-class citizens: no freedom to eat what we want, no freedom even to dress the way we like,” he said, citing local bans of Muslim headscarves in a Karnataka school. “Naming [India as] Bharat will be like a last nail on the coffin.”

Van Lalnghakthang, a professor of ethics and theology in Sielmat Bible College in Manipur and a pastor of the Independent Church of India, sees this proposal as an attempt “to promote a particular group, and alienate the minorities.”

What’s in a name?

Adding fuel to the already blazing fire, Modi opened the G20 Summit with a placard placed before him that read “Bharat” instead of “India.” Modi’s sudden preference for Bharat raised eyebrows.

“The possible name change … suggests an underlying objective, i.e., an attempt at changing India’s history,” Lalnghakthang said.

The renaming of cities in India predates Modi, with the most striking examples being the renaming of Bombay to Mumbai in 1995, when the regional political party Shiv Sena assumed power. This decision was motivated by the party’s desire to shed colonial associations and honor the city’s Maratha heritage, paying homage to the goddess Mumbadevi in the process.

Calcutta was changed to Kolkata to match its Bengali pronunciation in 2001, and Bangalore to Bengaluru in 2014. Since Modi’s arrival on the national scene in 2014, there have been many official initiatives to remove symbols of British rule and traces of the country’s Muslim history from India’s urban landscape, political institutions, and history books.

For instance, Allahabad, founded by Mughal emperor Akbar, became Prayagraj in 2018, reflecting its status as a Hindu pilgrimage site. However, some historical names, such as the Allahabad High Court, have not been changed.

In 2015, the new Modi government renamed New Delhi’s Aurangzeb Road to APJ Abdul Kalam Road. In 2016, Haryana’s BJP government renamed Gurgaon to Gurugram, after the mythological character Guru Dronacharya. In 2018, the Mughalsarai Junction Railway Station was renamed Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Junction, likely because of the word Mughal, a historic Muslim dynasty that ruled the subcontinent for hundreds of years, in its name.

Churches generally have not been affected by the name changes. While relatively newer churches are using the new names of their cities, such as Kolkata Christian Fellowship, which was founded in 2005, older Roman Catholic dioceses of Madras and Calcutta, as well as the Anglican dioceses of the Church of South India and the Church of North India, use the older names. The nearly 200-year-old historical educational institution in Chennai still goes by the name of Madras Christian College.

Changing names of institutions, churches, and organizations is not as simple as it may sound in India, say Christian leaders.

“There is a lot of paperwork, documentation, and legal hassle involved in changing to any name,” said Vijayesh Lal, the general secretary of the Evangelical Fellowship of India (EFI). “Secondly, the names that have been in use for many years become ‘brand names,’ and nobody can take the risk of such a change.”

Bharat and beyond

The debate between India and Bharat is quite old. Although people who support calling the country Bharat argue that the name India was forced upon the nation by the British, historians say that the name has been in use for many centuries, even before the colonial period.

The term India came from the Indus River, a Greek pronunciation of the Sindhu River. Even before Alexander the Great’s Indian campaign in the third century B.C., travelers from distant lands referred to the region southeast of the Indus as “India.”

Bharat, on the other hand, comes allegedly from the Hindu epic Mahabharata, particularly from the mythological king Bharata. Another school of thought claims the term came from the Vedic tribe of Bharatas, mentioned in Hindu scriptures.

“We are a secular nation, and many cultures and languages exist in our nation,” Lalnghakthang said. “This may be a plot to remove secularism by renaming the nation on religious grounds. This may impact religious freedom for minorities, including Christians, in India.”

The preamble of the constitution begins with “We, the people of India.” Part one of the document in English states, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States,” while in Hindi it states, “Bharat, that is India, shall be a Union of States.”

Changing India’s name to be only Bharat would involve a constitutional amendment, which would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of parliament.

In 2015, the Modi administration had opposed a public interest litigation in the Supreme Court of India that sought to change the name of the nation from India to Bharat. The government told the Supreme Court at the time that “there is no change in circumstances to consider any change.” Now, however, there seems to be a change in Modi’s stance.

Atul Aghamkar, national director of EFI’s National Center for Urban Transformation, said it was common for him and his peers while growing up to identify themselves as “Bharatiyas” (people of Bharat) in the Hindi and Marathi languages and as “Indians” in English.

Opinions have also been expressed that there may be other reasons for the government’s sudden preference of using Bharat over India, rather than just getting rid of the colonial baggage as claimed.

One of the allegations by the opposition is that the Modi government’s sudden shift in preference has come only after the formation of a new anti-BJP coalition called INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance). The coalition is made up of 26 parties and will contest elections in opposition to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Aghamkar also sees the decision as a political move. The INDIA coalition “has significant implications on the upcoming general elections, and the ruling party knows it,” he explained, “and that is why they and the prime minister seem to have given prominence to the word Bharat rather than India, so that the opposition may have no advantage.”

“Another more compelling reason for this preference change is to keep the Hindu right-wing happy and to divide the nation further on those who would accept this change and those who wouldn’t,” he said. “Given the contemporary sociopolitical climate in India, it is bound to impact the minorities adversely, who are already under tremendous stress.”

Michael Williams, president of the United Christian Forum, said he personally prefers the name India. “I have been raised an Indian and it is a vital part of my identity,” he said. “I see this action as yet another distractive move by the present leadership to hide their inability to provide solid governance.”

If in the future this change happens, as is the agenda of the RSS, Aghamkar said, it may not have any direct implications for the rights of Christians. But its interpretation, as well as certain aspects of its imposition, may affect the rights and privileges of the community.

“It is too early to think about how to respond to this,” he said, “but Christian leadership may need to be prepared to protect their place and freedom in the constitutional framework and stand firmly on it.”

Lal expressed concern that changing the name to Bharat only, which so far has been secular might identify the nation (and its government) with a particular religion.

Annie Samson Peters of the department of philosophy at St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, points back to the Bible and reminds Christians of their duty to pray for the nation—whether India or Bharat.

“As Christians, our hope and trust are anchored in Christ Jesus, irrespective of the shifting political landscape or debates surrounding the nation’s name,” said Peters.

“God is sovereign and he has a purpose for his people, even in challenging circumstances. We are called to submit to earthly authorities and to demonstrate that through our prayers for our leaders and the nation,” she said. “Ultimately, it is the unwavering faith in God’s plans that is a source of peace and strength in these ongoing discussions.”

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Books

Review

Rosaria Butterfield Issues Five Battle Cries for the Church Militant

Bonnie Kristian

There is much to admire in her views on church and community, but also much to find troubling in her new polemic.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty

If Rosaria Butterfield’s courage “waned and waxed” in writing Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, as she reports in her acknowledgements section, you wouldn’t know it from the text. Her tone is urgent and earnest, and she conceives of her work as a charge by a “church militant” against a powerful enemy who is sure to lose the war, but is now winning many battles.

Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age

Rosaria Butterfield (Author), Kevin DeYoung (Foreword)

Crossway

368 pages

$14.99

Butterfield’s aim, as her title indicates, is to identify five norms that are both false and ascendant in contemporary American culture. Her positions will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with her personal history, as detailed in her previous books about her conversion and Christian hospitality.

But though Five Lies covers some of the same territory, it is less memoir and more direct assault. In her tour of the front lines of the culture war, Butterfield makes a compelling case for a high view of biblical and ecclesial authority, and she not only commends but models repentance. Alongside these and other merits, however, Five Lies offers some questionable views on the Bible’s connection to Jesus, the faith of Christians who depart from Butterfield’s conclusions, and the extent to which major institutions are committed to undermining Christian values.

The five lies

“God’s will,” according to a remark Butterfield cites from John Calvin, “is that Christ’s kingdom should be encompassed with many enemies, his design being to keep us in a state of constant warfare.” Her primary audience is Christian women, and she wants them to join her fight.

Thus, contra the advice of fellow Christians like Rod Dreher in The Benedict Option, it isn’t “sufficient to leave well enough alone and build our faith on firmer foundations.” Withdrawal for the sake of discipleship and community, participation in a pluralist market of ideas, and pragmatic focus on points of practical agreement are all unacceptable for Christians, Butterfield says: “The reason we can’t do this is that none of these solutions honors God. Indeed, each and every one is a sin in its own right.”

Unfortunately, Butterfield continues, these sins are multiplying, and “enemy lines [are] drawn within Christianity” as more and more Christians believe the five lies, which she defines as follows:

1. Homosexuality is normal.

2. Being a spiritual person is kinder than being a biblical Christian.

3. Feminism is good for the world and the church.

4. Transgenderism is normal.

5. Modesty is an outdated burden that serves male dominance and holds women back.

Few of Butterfield’s arguments on these topics will be novel to readers familiar with the past half-century of culture war and intra-evangelical debate over women’s roles. Lie 1 gets the longest treatment and includes autobiography about Butterfield’s years in a lesbian relationship before her conversion.

The two chapters devoted to Lie 2 are largely given over to a story of lost friendship and an extensive recounting of a lecture from Butterfield’s former pastor on the storyline of Scripture. Only three pages (122–125) directly address the claim in question. Nor does she elaborate on an intriguing turn of phrase—paganism “that wears the clothes of Christianity”—which could mean the syncretism of ill-discipled Christian faith with self-help spirituality, or maybe something like the post-Protestantism of Joseph Bottum’s An Anxious Age, or maybe both or neither.

Tackling Lie 3, Butterfield selects Jesus and John Wayne author Kristin Kobes Du Mez as her primary foil. She might have strengthened this section by tilting at opponents who align with her thinking, apart from questions of women’s roles: namely evangelical egalitarians who are theologians, not historians like Du Mez, and who share Butterfield’s views on biblical authority. I won’t do Butterfield the dishonor of assuming her unfamiliar with egalitarian arguments. But I will say that, as an egalitarian, I could in good conscience take the vow about biblical infallibility she describes taking, and I don’t recognize my views in these pages.

Moreover, Butterfield could have been more careful about specifying the type of feminism she deplores. Feminists want equality with men so badly they’ll deny “basic biology,” she writes. “Under feminism, men and women are interchangeable.” This is true of some feminists, no doubt, but it can hardly be said of others, like the gender-critical feminists whose stance on transgenderism resembles Butterfield’s own.

Like Lie 1, Lies 4 and 5 offer few surprises. One in the former is Butterfield’s distinction “between an illness (gender dysphoria) and an ideology (transgenderism),” a contrast I wasn’t sure she’d draw. And in the latter, I appreciated her case that social media misuse is a kind of immodesty, as well as her sharp connection of modesty to our blurry digital line between public and private.

Encouragements and exhortations

That wasn’t all I appreciated. Butterfield’s insistence on the development of virtue in the Christian life, her castigation of celebrity pastors who neglect their over-large flocks, her assumption that Christians won’t ostracize loved ones over culture-war disagreements, and her condemnation of American civil religion are all points well made. Moreover, any reader who comes to Five Lies as an unchurched culture warrior will not leave it ignorant of the gospel.

Beyond that, throughout Five Lies, Butterfield beats a steady and needful drum of encouragement to commit to a healthy local church and submit to sound pastoral authority. “My prayer,” she writes, “is that our generation would be known for faithful prayer, fervent worship, diligent church membership, and sacrificial hospitality, blessed by and magnified by the Holy Spirit.” My prayer is the same.

She is also correct that implicit beliefs about biblical authority—often unexamined—undergird many of the debates Five Lies reviews. If you are unconvinced of biblical truth, Butterfield cautions, “then the minute the Bible crosses you … you will declare [that offending part] an ancient bias and no longer binding.”

Finally, Butterfield’s regular exhortations to repentance are admirable. And whether or not one agrees with her judgment, she shows a welcome willingness to admit error in explaining why she no longer uses preferred pronouns that conflict with biological sex. If there is one thing we in the chattering class need in greater supply, it is honest acknowledgement of our public mistakes.

The Bible and the body of Christ

I did not expect to conclude Five Lies in total agreement with Butterfield and am not interested in rehearsing my expected disagreements. But I do want to examine three aspects of the book which left me troubled.

The first pertains to Butterfield’s view of Scripture. In the appendix, which offers “Guiding Principles for How to Read the Bible,” she writes:

The apostle Peter addresses the relationship between the human authors of Scripture and the Holy Spirit when he says, “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20–21). Because of the Holy Spirit’s role and authentication, we can be confident that the word of God is a “permanent embodiment” of Christ himself. (emphasis mine)

Describing the Bible as the “permanent embodiment” of Jesus is odd, at the very least. Jesus is already permanently embodied, post-Resurrection, in his glorified human body (Luke 24:39, 1 Cor. 15:42, Phil. 3:21). When Christians speak of the “body of Christ,” we mean the church, not Scripture (1 Cor. 12:27). And though we speak of Jesus as “the Word” (John 1) and the Bible as “the word of God” (2 Cor. 2:17), they are not the same word, and we do not worship the Bible. It is Jesus who is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,” a fuller revelation than God’s words “to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways” (Heb. 1:1–3).

Butterfield’s use of quotation marks around “permanent embodiment” made me wonder if she had a reference in mind, though there is no footnote provided. I believe her intended reference may be a 2013 article from pastor Nicholas Batzig, whom Butterfield cites elsewhere in the book.

In that article, Batzig uses the same phrase—but, crucially, the directionality is reversed. Where Butterfield says the Bible embodies Christ, Batzig says the Old Testament law finds “permanent embodiment” in Christ through his perfect fulfillment of its requirements. Batzig’s directionality has sound biblical basis (Matt. 5:17); I’m doubtful the same can be said of Butterfield’s version.

True believers

A second area where I would have welcomed greater clarity concerns the question of whether a true Christian can endorse (or live out) any of the positions Butterfield dismisses as lies, either in whole or in part. Several times, she explicitly allows that disagreement is possible among believers—but many comments throughout the book suggest the opposite.

On the one hand, Butterfield recognizes the existence of “Christian[s] struggling with homosexuality.” She acknowledges that “Christians do disagree on matters of doctrine,” and that salvation does not depend on our theology, including belief in biblical inerrancy. She confesses that she personally “continued to believe some of [the lies] for years into my Christian life.” Most conclusively, she affirms “there are true believers who affiliate with gay Christianity,” even if “to their own harm.”

But on the other hand, Butterfield repeatedly uses “professing Christian” and similar phrases to suggest there are many who claim Christ but, as revealed by their beliefs about sex and gender, aren’t actually saved. She says “gay Christian” is “an oxymoron if there ever was one” and “there is truly no such thing as a ‘transgendered Christian,’ if by this term we mean [someone] celebrating a transgendered identity as somehow honoring to Christ or the church.” Butterfield rejects the whole “gay Christian movement”—including figures like Wesley Hill who say marriage is reserved for opposite-sex couples and commit themselves to celibacy. It “presents a false religion,” she alleges, “a different religion from biblical Christianity.”

Is this a deliberate tension—a push toward “fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12–13)—or just a lack of precision? The most generous interpretation I can make is that Butterfield is holding fast to Christ as the foundation of a Christian’s identity. One passage supports this read well:

Union with Christ demands that Christ has exclusive claims on his redeemed people. Indeed, you do yourself great harm if you insist on holding two forms of self-representation—sexual and spiritual. Both forms of self-representation compete for the same thing: your loyalty, your heart, your sense of self, your faith. Homosexual identity is incompatible with union with Christ because there is no dual citizenship for a Christ follower.

But other parts make that interpretation difficult. When Butterfield defines a “transgendered Christian” as someone “celebrating a transgendered identity as somehow honoring to Christ or the church,” this leaves room for people who don’t themselves identify as transgender. Likewise, her description of the “gay Christian movement” includes many people who don’t identify as gay. Does Butterfield doubt their salvation or not? I don’t know.

An accurate lay of the land

My final concern is Butterfield’s tendency, from the first page of her introduction, to overstate the prevalence and scope of institutional capture, by which I mean the transformation of some commonly respected organization or profession “into a mouthpiece for an ideology.”

She starts with a theoretical story of you, the reader, going to a “big warehouse grocery store.” In the parking lot, “a brother in the Lord” yells “Bigot!” or “Hater!” as you pass with your children. Screens inside show a news report about “intersectionality and gay Christianity,” and the reporter declares “full-scale war against heteronormativity.” The Costco staffer checking membership cards “shak[es] her fists in rage” over your misgendering (saying “miss”) and shrieks, “Your heteronormativity abuses me!” Then, the kicker: “This is real life, but it feels like you inhabit the pages of a dystopian novel.”

But that’s the thing: It’s not real life. Store televisions play inoffensive videos of flowers and food designed to show off their HD tech, and a store clerk literally shaking her fists and screaming at a random mom about heteronormativity would be caught on camera and shamed on Twitter for days. Were this play staged on social media, I’d believe it—but Butterfield didn’t present it as an indictment of digital larping, cruelty, and radicalization. She staged it in Costco.

A similar dynamic reoccurs several times in Five Lies. For example, while discussing brain-sex theory, Butterfield asks how you might discover the supposed sex of your brain. “Google is there to help,” she writes, “and to manipulate with an online quiz.” But “Google” here means one of probably millions of results the search engine will return if you ask for something like “brain-sex quiz.” Butterfield’s footnote refers to brainfall.com, a low-budget BuzzFeed imitator with no affiliation to the tech giant.

More seriously, Butterfield says “bathrooms in government schools are coed by law” and claims this is “federally enforced.” It’s true that the Obama and Biden administrations have pushed public schools to allow students to “access sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity,” but this is not a federal “law,” and it is not “enforced.” On the contrary, in our federalist system, bathroom bills are passed at the state and municipal level, and many of them require people to use the space corresponding to their biological sex.

In a similar confusion, while discussing Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage, Butterfield appears to mistake an amicus brief (a paper giving the justices advice which carries no legal weight of its own) with the court’s legally binding decision. She writes that the “court declared opposition to gay marriage a discriminatory act of ‘animus’ (hatred)”—but the Obergefell decision does not include that word.

Butterfield’s footnote points to a Washington Post article describing an amicus brief, and she also neglects to mention that the legal meaning of animus, in the context of civil rights law, concerns only the behavior of state officials acting in their official capacity. That is, even if the Obergefell ruling had explicitly invoked animus, it wouldn’t have applied to private citizens’ opposition to gay marriage, like Butterfield’s own. It isn’t illegal to believe marriage should be reserved to heterosexual couples—and to say so as loudly and as often as you like.

“We are to rule in the midst of our enemies,” Butterfield reflects toward the end of the book, referring to Psalm 110:2. “But what are we to rule? Who? How? It feels like no one listens to us anymore.”

It’s a plaintive line, and one which makes sense of these overstatements of institutional capture. That’s not to suggest Butterfield is wrong in her basic observation that American cultural norms on sex and gender have changed at lightning speed in living memory. But it is to say that the change is not as complete as Butterfield imagines, that many institutional safeguards of religious liberty are holding strong, and that a soldier heading to battle should want an accurate lay of the land.

Butterfield herself points to a better way: “Things have changed—and we need to discern how those changes impact our lives. But the gospel hasn’t changed. God hasn’t changed. Here at the Butterfields’, the gospel still comes with a house key.”

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

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News

PEPFAR Fight Worries African Christian Leaders

Emily Belz

Those in the countries where the HIV/AIDS program has saved millions of lives feel sidelined by the American debate.

The Coptic Hospital in Kenya distributes PEPFAR-funded drugs.

Brent Stirton / Getty Images

African Christians who have long worked against HIV/AIDS either in health facilities or in church ministry are anxiously watching the current AIDS fight in Congress, which will have direct effects on their programs on the ground.

The September 30 deadline is approaching to reauthorize the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a US-funded HIV/AIDS program that is currently supporting 20 million patients on treatment, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. US pro-life groups are opposing the five-year reauthorization on the grounds that the Biden administration has “hijacked” the program to provide and promote abortions as well as loosen African abortion laws. African faith-based providers say they have seen no evidence of that.

“We assure the United States Congress that the claim that PEPFAR supports or promotes abortion is to us strange, unfounded, and unfortunate,” wrote a group of 350 African church leaders, mostly evangelicals as well as some Catholics, in a Sept. 15 letter to Congress. “We would like to reassure you and the American public that we have seen no evidence that this is something that has ever happened.”

They urged the passage of the five-year reauthorization, saying that without it, “our people will be left in fear of the future.” The signers included pastors, heads of evangelical networks, and medical directors of Christian hospitals.

Congress has reauthorized PEPFAR every five years since former president George W. Bush began the program in 2003, but this year, reauthorization appears unlikely by the deadline. This week more domestic pro-life groups announced their opposition to a multi-year reauthorization.

PEPFAR will keep its currently appropriated funding without reauthorization, so Congress has some time to make a deal. But a failure to reauthorize puts long-term health projects as well as certain features of the program in doubt. African health experts said it could have unpredictable consequences on the ground, like making patients worry that their life-sustaining drugs are going to be cut off.

Before PEPFAR began, Nkatha Njeru ran an HIV clinic at Nazareth Hospital, a historic mission hospital outside of Nairobi, Kenya. It was one of the early health facilities distributing antiretroviral drugs, which were expensive and hard to obtain at the time.

After the advent of PEPFAR, the drug prices dropped dramatically, and programs like Njeru’s were able to treat exponentially more patients. In the first year of receiving PEPFAR funding, the clinic scaled up from treating about 50 patients to about 1,200. “We’re not talking about ‘people living with HIV.’ It’s people that I can name,” she said.

She no longer runs the clinic, but she said the current fight in Congress makes her “very anxious.”

For 20 years, she said, patients have known they can go every month to pick up their drugs. Even a short gap in the drugs, which suppress viral load, would allow opportunistic infections.

“If [patients] don’t know if they will get the next dose, it’s going to cause panic as well,” she said. “And we don’t know what people will do—they might register in more than one clinic, just so that they can pile up drugs. And obviously that’s going to be disastrous.”

More domestic pro-life groups announced their opposition to the five-year reauthorization this week. Americans United for Life, the March for Life, the National Right to Life, Catholic Vote, Students for Life of America, and the lobbying arm of Focus on the Family have joined The Heritage Foundation, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, and the Family Research Council in opposing the multi-year reauthorization.

On Tuesday the groups articulated their position in a letter to congressional Republican leaders, saying that while they want PEPFAR to continue, Biden had “hijacked” PEPFAR “to promote abortion in African countries.” The groups called it “neocolonialism.”

Their argument reiterated arguments from Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican who had previously been a major advocate for PEPFAR but has long been frustrated that it was exempt from the Mexico City policy (except during the Trump administration). That policy prohibits federally-funded international groups from performing or advocating for abortion with separate resources.

The groups want reauthorization to include more pro-life restrictions like Mexico City. The bipartisan politics of PEPFAR have always been tenuous, but this is the biggest stalemate in its 20 years.

In support of their position, the US pro-life groups cited a June letter from a different group of more than 100 African church leaders, mostly Catholic, who were concerned about PEPFAR promoting abortion. But the letter does not argue against reauthorization.

In that letter, leaders worried that PEPFAR was “supporting so-called family planning and reproductive health principles and practices, including abortion, that violate our core beliefs concerning life, family, and religion.” Pro-life groups usually understand “reproductive health” as code for abortion.

“We ask that PEPFAR remain true to its original mission and respect our norms, traditions, and values,” the June letter says.

The Biden administration has since clarified that “reproductive health” in the context of PEPFAR refers only to “HIV prevention, testing, and treatment services,” “education, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections,” cancer screening and treatment, and “gender-based violence prevention and care.”

“PEPFAR does not fund abortions,” the amended document from the administration reads.

Njeru, who ran the HIV clinic in Kenya, is now the CEO of the Africa Christian Health Associations Platform, which represents roughly 10,000 mission hospitals and faith-based health facilities in 32 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where PEPFAR programs are concentrated. Her organization signed a different letter to Congress from 35 faith-based organizations working in Africa urging reauthorization.

Some of the facilities in her network implement PEPFAR; many were doing HIV/AIDS care before PEPFAR existed. Faith-based health facilities make up a large part—sometimes a majority—of health facilities in sub-Saharan African nations.

Njeru told CT that none of the US pro-life organizations opposing reauthorization had contacted her about their concerns.

She said that PEPFAR is such a big program that there is a “risk” of misusing funds, but that the program had more oversight than other foreign aid programs.

“The most rigorous accountability I’ve had to deal with has been on PEPFAR funding,” she said. “Especially we Christians should not be trivializing issues around [being] pro-life. … [But] we haven’t had evidence yet of PEPFAR money being used for reasons that it’s not meant to do.”

The HIV clinic that Njeru used to run, which had 50 patients before PEFPAR, now has 5,000 patients on antiretroviral treatment, she said, and is currently treating about 300 pregnant mothers who are HIV positive so their babies will be HIV negative—another feature of PEPFAR.

The Sept. 15 letter from African church leaders said the PEPFAR program “has succeeded in protecting our families and children beyond our greatest expectations.”

“It has been an answer to prayer,” they wrote. “We have all experienced the terror of HIV/AIDS, either losing a dear family member or members of our congregations. PEPFAR brought not only relief from the plague of HIV/AIDS but hope for our future as well.

“We pray you will listen to our humble voices. … Life expectancy is rising, orphanhood is falling, healthy births are increasing in health care facilities, and other health challenges are being recognized and addressed where they never were before.”

- More from Emily Belz

Theology

Eating Bitterness: My Culture Helps Me Persevere. The Bible Helps Me Hope.

Isabel Ong

Both talk about endurance in suffering, but only Scripture encourages me to boast in my weakness.

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by Christianity Today

I was a bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding this summer. The night before the big day, I ransacked my kitchen to concoct a welcome drink for the groom and his groomsmen. As I stirred oyster sauce, vinegar, ketchup, lemon juice, honey, ginger, matcha powder, and Sichuan pepper together in a big bowl, I forced myself to taste the unpleasant-looking mixture and realized that one flavor was lacking: bitterness.

This welcome drink was part of a Chinese wedding custom we call “door games” or “gatecrashing,” where bridesmaids give the groom and his groomsmen a series of challenges before the groom can meet his beloved face to face. The tradition arises from the belief that the bride is a precious daughter whose family will not let her be taken easily. (To be clear, this custom is performed with good-humored intent.)

In the game suan tian ku la (酸甜苦辣), the bridesmaids serve the groom and groomsmen food or drinks in four specific flavors—sour, sweet, bitter, spicy—to signify the various difficulties and challenges that the new couple will face in the future. (Typically, these flavors are consumed separately rather than mixed together, but we were short on time.) If the groom and groomsmen are able to imbibe everything, no matter how horrid-tasting, it’s a sign that the new couple will be able to stomach anything that comes their way.

But bitterness isn’t just one component in a Chinese wedding tradition. It’s a flavor that’s permeated our cultural consciousness and way of life through the words chi ku (吃苦), which translates to “eat bitterness.” This term has a deeper symbolic meaning than consuming bitter gourd or herbs like mugwort, though; it primarily refers to persevering through hardship and suffering without complaint.

In May, Chinese president Xi Jinping referenced chi ku five times when giving advice to young graduates struggling to find employment in China, with statements like “the countless instances of success in life demonstrate that in one’s youth, choosing to eat bitterness is also choosing to reap rewards.”

From a Christian perspective, eating bitterness can be a helpful term that points us to the work of Christ on the cross. But it can also reflect a rather stoic approach to life, regarding complaining about one’s circumstances as weakness.

Suffering and perseverance, which are intimately intertwined in eating bitterness, are also linked in the Bible. However, a key difference lies in their end goal: for Christians, it is godly hope rather than self-mastery. Scripture also encourages us to boast in our weaknesses, which chi ku does not permit, because doing so is akin to failure.

An embodied affliction

Chinese people tend to experience emotions in their bodies rather than their minds. For instance, a study comparing Malaysian Chinese and Euro-Australian experiences of depression found that people of Chinese descent shared their physical problems, while those of Euro-Australian descent talked about troubling states of mind or mood.

Granted, talking about emotions rarely happens in Chinese culture, which is why the physical ailments that a person of Chinese descent goes through—ranging from occasional sicknesses to chronic health conditions and severe illnesses—may bear witness to his or her immediate struggles and challenges.

In this worldview, eating bitterness reinforces the notion that pain and struggle are to be internalized and digested, rather than avoided or spat out.

The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering also give us an intimate glimpse of chi ku, where Christ himself, I would argue, ate bitterness. To read how lash after cruel lash ripped his back is to be made painfully aware that he experienced this as the incarnate Son of God, the Word made flesh (John 1:14, Mark 15:5). To recall that his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground as he prayed (Luke 22:44) is to know that Christ is familiar with our suffering. To receive and partake of the bread and cup at Communion is to remember his body and blood, broken and shed for us (1 Cor. 11:23–25).

Our own embodied experience of eating bitterness may also serve as a means through which we enter into Jesus’ suffering and recognize that of others around us.

“Pain breaks us open, allowing us to become kinder and more generous toward others who suffer and preparing us to recognize God’s suffering in the person of Christ,” wrote Jenell Williams Paris in a review of Rob Moll’s What Your Body Knows About God.

Some Chinese Christians are familiar with eating bitterness for Christ’s sake. In northern China, authorities threw Yang Xiaohui and Chen Shang into jail for gathering with other Christians. Despite facing ridicule and ill-treatment, the women began witnessing to guards and cell mates by singing worship songs in Mandarin. “Even when I was locked up in a jail cell, my soul was still free,” Yang said.

Stoic inclinations

What complicates this favorable understanding of eating bitterness is that it is often imbued with an innate stoicism that focuses primarily on enduring present pain in hopes of a better future, rejecting any expressions of emotion in the process.

Some think that eating bitterness is a way of building mental, emotional, and physical fortitude. The Chinese phrase chi ku shi fu (吃苦是福), which translates to “eating suffering is good fortune,” highlights how there is “opportunity for wisdom and growth” in suffering, one Stanford University researcher opined.

Others might feel resigned to the suffering they undergo, argues Filipino theologian Dick O. Eugenio in Asian Christian Ethics. “This fatalistic tendency is not perceived as a destructive response,” he wrote, “but an appropriate passivity informed by a recognition of greater workings that make society just.”

Reasons for this passivity may include a “fear of contradicting the divine imperative” or “accumulating more bad karma,” he added.

In my view, what seems most problematic about the stoic nature of eating bitterness is that it does not permit complaint. To speak our grievances is akin to admitting weakness or to an inability to ride things out. More devastatingly, it can be considered a failure to withstand and overcome trials and tribulations, or to adopt a positive attitude or posture toward suffering.

Eating bitterness inadvertently becomes a limitation placed on our humanness and our ways of being and moving in the world.

The Oscar-winning film Everything Everywhere All At Once puts this concept in sharp focus (note: spoilers ahead). Evelyn’s laundromat is an emblem of chi ku, exemplifying how she has forged a means of survival in a foreign land, no matter how difficult customers get or how formidable—and murderous—her tax auditor becomes. In encountering an abundance of different Evelyns across the multiverse, however, she comes to perceive her present existence as a laundromat owner as restrictive and meaningless.

Going against the cultural grain

Evelyn’s experience of eating bitterness might resonate with those of us who are going through difficult circumstances with no conceivable end in sight. Yet, as Christians, we know that there is a more redemptive arc within our experience of suffering.

Like the concept of eating bitterness implies, suffering and perseverance go hand-in-hand in the Bible. We are called to “glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope,” Romans 5:3–4 says. We are to consider it pure joy when we face trials, knowing that one who perseveres is “blessed” (James 1:2, 12).

Where voicing our faults is regarded as failure in the Chinese worldview, in the biblical worldview, boasting about our weaknesses (2 Cor. 12:9) is paradoxically seen as a strength.

Talking about failure is often shunned in Chinese culture, perhaps because it seems shameful or might dishonor our communities at large. In church, we often prefer highlighting victories instead of being vulnerable about our ongoing struggles. But this predisposition toward triumphant storytelling might mean that we miss God’s larger, all-encompassing story for us: It is in the thick of suffering, rather than at its conclusion, where we most fully encounter his love, tenderness, and solidarity.

“Christ comes right in the midst of our pain and powerlessness so we can know his presence. When we belong to Jesus, the paradoxical path to flourishing is finding our weakness where God’s power is perfected (2 Cor. 12:9),” wrote therapist K. J. Ramsey for CT.

From a biblical perspective, then, eating bitterness is an inclination toward hope in Christ rather than self-mastery over suffering. Hope does not put us to shame, as Paul declares (Rom. 5:5). To hope does not mean manifesting an ideal outcome, but recognizing that hope is itself “a living activity, a struggle, a commitment, a discipline,” as writer Danté Stewart argues.

Jacob’s wrestling with God (Gen. 32:22–32) also comes to mind here. His limp might serve as an indication of eating bitterness, but it is also a reminder of his relationship with a God who loves him, who did not let him go before blessing him amid the struggle.

Taste and see

My ongoing encounters with eating bitterness, like rebuilding my life as an immigrant in Canada, and experiencing a miscarriage—with the lingering grief and sorrow that surrounds it—may pale in comparison to what others are facing.

But I believe that God does not discount or demean my particular experiences of suffering.

Rather, it is in the midst of these unresolved tensions and unmet hopes that I recognize I am not in control of the trajectory of my life. He holds it all in his hands, bidding me to acknowledge and proclaim how he is working in my life with my fellow believers, even if it pains me to verbalize the ups and downs in the already-and-not-yet that characterizes the Christian life.

Like David asserts during a time of distress when Saul pursues him to take his life: “I will glory in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. … Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him” (Ps. 34:2, 8). May we, like David, partake in God’s enduring promises even as we eat bitterness.

- More from Isabel Ong

News

How Asbury Marketing Navigated the Potential Pitfalls of Revival Fame

Daniel Silliman

“This was not ours. And we don’t take credit.”

Students worship at Asbury University at the start of a new semester.

Carter Hammond / Asbury University

College marketers love photos: students in class, students out on the grass—maybe throwing a frisbee, reading a book, or laughing with friends. For a Christian school, any image of someone singing or praying is good. They are always looking for compelling pictures that say to prospective students, This could be you.

And the Asbury revival—the “outpouring” in February 2023, where students in Wilmore, Kentucky, felt moved by the Holy Spirit to stay in chapel and sing, pray, confess, testify, and sing some more for about two weeks—produced lots and lots of compelling photos.

But Jennifer McChord didn’t think she could use them.

When the revival started, the vice president of marketing and enrollment at Asbury University was a year and a half into an intensive digital ad campaign to raise the Wesleyan-movement school’s brand profile. She was trying every way she could to grab the attention of 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds who loved Jesus and wanted to be challenged in their faith while studying Bible theology, biological psychology, English, health communication, equine science, or any of the other subjects offered at Asbury. Her team wanted to make sure that Christian high school students in the region knew about and seriously considered applying to the school.

But using the photos and videos from the revival for an ad campaign felt like it would be a violation of something special. The administration decided they weren’t going to do that.

“If it seems like we’re trying to benefit from the outpouring, that’s the check,” McChord told CT. “This was not ours. And we don’t take credit.”

From the outside, news that Asbury has record-breaking enrollment this fall seems, kind of obviously, like an outpouring of the outpouring. After all, the revival went viral on social media and grabbed the attention of Christians around the country and the world, right as high school seniors were making decisions about college. It only makes sense to think that Asbury got a Holy Spirit enrollment bump.

“I think people in our community will immediately say it was [the] outpouring,” president Kevin Brown told the Asbury student newspaper.

Internally, however, administrators say the move of the Holy Spirit presented the school with a peculiar marketing challenge. They worried about the real danger of misusing it. Even the act of celebrating what God had done could become cheap and crass, if too directly commercial.

The marketing team, deep into a push to increase enrollment post-pandemic, had to stop and evaluate the ways they were going to represent the outpouring—if they were even going to—in advertising materials. How were they going to avoid misappropriation? How were they going to incorporate it in the story of Asbury’s mission and identity, and talk about it with prospective students and their families?

Before they’d really decided what they were going to do, McChord told CT, they noticed the student-led campus tours started to fill up more than normal. But the “prospective students” turned out not to be prospective students at all. Instead, they were visitors who found they couldn’t get into the chapel, because so many people came to participate in the revival. They were signing up for tours in hopes of gaining access another way. They were disappointed when they found their groups wouldn’t be traipsing through the middle of all the praying and singing.

The university community did a lot of work to protect the outpouring from visitors who seemed like they wanted to hijack it. In the process, they also embraced the idea that the outpouring wasn’t theirs to control. They were caretakers. It was a gift. Any attempt to own it would be wrong.

“We want to be true to how the Holy Spirit showed up,” student life vice president Sarah Thomas Baldwin told CT at the time. “We are seeing the Holy Spirit come upon our students, and we want to honor that.”

Marketing and enrollment decided they needed to adopt the same disposition. When the outpouring came up in plans for promotional efforts, they asked themselves if it seemed like they were trying to benefit from the work of the Holy Spirit. If the answer was yes, they shut it down.

“It’s been a very careful and prayerful process,” spokeswoman Abby Laub said.

The results sometimes felt counterintuitive. As they were promoting the school, counselors and recruiters found themselves on occasion telling people they shouldn’t enroll in Asbury in anticipation of the next outbreak of spiritual fervor.

“We’ve had to correct some people when they say, ‘I can’t wait for the next one’ or ‘I’m excited to get to be part of an outpouring,’” McChord said. “You can pray for that. Be expectant—that’s part of our theology. But we don’t plan it. It’s not on our schedule. We’ve had to have a lot of these conversations.”

At the same time, the marketing team’s big goal with the digital ad campaign and other outreach efforts was to make sure that more people knew about Asbury. They wanted to raise the school’s profile and communicate that this is a place where students can earn a good education while also growing spiritually.

The revival got that message out. They just had to accept it as a gift.

“We hold it with both hands,” McChord told CT. “But truly open hands.”

The outpouring also encouraged the marketing and enrollment team to lean in to conversations about the spiritual life at the school.

While prospective students and their parents are, of course, concerned with practical things from degree paths to the quality of the food to potential scholarship packages, they are also interested in Christian formation.

“From a marketing and enrollment standpoint, what the outpouring has allowed us to do is be all-in on who we are at Asbury,” McChord said. “We can really be clear: It is an academically excellent school with spiritual vitality. You will encounter Jesus here. You will learn about God. It will be your decision what you’re going to do with that.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Evangelical Colleges Celebrate Best-Ever Enrollment Numbers

Daniel Silliman

Students impacted by pandemic isolation seem drawn to Christian communities and education.

Grace College freshmen play in Winona Lake.

Courtesy of Grace College

Eleven evangelical college and universities have announced record enrollment this fall—which is a record for breaking records, as far as anyone in Christian higher education remembers.

Asbury University saw enrollment jump 20 percent, while East Texas Baptist University’s student population climbed above 1,800, the highest in the school’s 111-year history. Abilene Christian University has more than 1,000 incoming freshmen, and Cedarville University is celebrating an increase of 374 students for a total incoming class of 1,017. Grace College, marking its 75th anniversary in Winona Lake, Indiana, grew by 465 new undergraduates, and Taylor University, also in Indiana, added 606 students to its rolls.

Concordia University, St. Paul, beat its previous record by 218 students. Lipscomb University welcomed more than 700 first-time freshmen. Dordt University’s enrollment climbed to 1,911 students and Samford University’s incoming class is 11 percent larger than last year’s, continuing a decade and a half of growth. Ouachita Baptist University had a 14 percent increase in undergraduates and now has a total of 1,581 undergraduates on its campus in Arkansas.

Overall enrollment numbers at schools affiliated with the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities are not yet available. But several other evangelical schools have also reported strong numbers, including Houghton University and Wheaton College, which surpassed its enrollment goal by about 50 students after a few difficult years.

College presidents and vice presidents who spoke to CT say prospective students are drawn to the community at small Christian schools. The incoming class suffered through the social isolation imposed on them through the pandemic in high school and now are looking for deep connections in college. They place a high value on the very thing that evangelical institutions have always offered—discipleship, relationships, and a place to grow.

“It’s hard to be an 18-year-old student right now,” said Jennifer McChord, Asbury’s vice president of enrollment and marketing. “When they see a place where they can have these meaningful, authentic connections where they are seen and known, it stands out. Because that’s what they’re craving.”

Schools like Asbury have also been working very hard to get the message out about the value of Christian higher education. After the institution, named for an early American evangelist, learned that many local high schoolers didn’t know what Asbury was, the marketing department decided to invest in an intensive digital advertising campaign. For the last two years, social media ads have targeted 16- and 17-year-olds in the area who express an interest in growing in their Christian faith and one or more of the academic and extra-curricular programs that Asbury offers.

“A lot of ads. A lot of videos. A lot of value content,” McChord said. “We use the digital platforms to drive a student to engage with a counselor and drive them to visit, where they can see.”

Asbury also developed a number of partnerships with Christian high schools in the region, offering scholarships and developing a stronger pipeline from evangelical secondary education to evangelical post-secondary education.

According to Mark Pohl, Grace College’s vice president of enrollment management, less than a third of graduates from Christian high schools go on to Christian colleges. Increasing that percentage could mean a lot to a school like Grace.

Pohl and Grace College president Drew Flamm visited about a dozen Christian high schools in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan the year before Grace broke its enrollment record.

“We encourage students to talk to their families about the continued discipleship process and the value of Christ-centered education as they make their faith their own,” Flamm told CT. “We’re a discipleship institution. Part of the application process has students indicate a relationship with Jesus. And we also emphasize you can get a good job with a Grace education.”

Christian schools have also been working on improving the pipeline out of college—where students go when they graduate. Bethany College, a West Virginia school affiliated with the mainline Disciples of Christ, has signed agreements with other institutions to guarantee qualifying graduates a seat in medical school, law school, pharmacy school, and veterinary school.

“We want to tell mom, dad, and student you can get there from here. That second phase of post-secondary education is already worked out if you come here,” said Bethany’s interim president Jamie Caridi.

Bethany, like other Christian colleges and universities that spoke to CT, does not often compete against peer institutions for prospective students. Most of the young people considering Bethany are also looking at public universities, Caridi said.

Small Christian schools have to find ways to credibly promise a career path that seems equivalent to what someone could get at a state school. And then they add a promise about the potential for close relationships and spiritual growth. The West Virginia school, which went through a severe financial crisis in the 2010s, now offers degrees in cybersecurity, digital marketing, and health care administration, as well as pre-physical therapy, pre-occupational therapy, and criminal justice.

“We feel like America today needs Christian education more than ever before in history,” Caridi told CT. “But if we’re honest, at some point the marketplace lost sight of the value of Christian education. The marketplace has shifted, so we need to offer academic programs that are relevant to the marketplace but are a good mission fit for us too.”

Many Christian schools have made similar shifts in emphasis in the last few years. That “program innovation” seems like it’s paying off for some of them in 2023.

Nearly 10 percent of Ouachita Baptist’s record undergraduate enrollment, for example, is made up of nursing students—a program that didn’t exist a few years ago. The Baptist founders may not have envisioned that in 1886, but the administration sees the pre-professional degree plan as a natural fit for the Christian school.

“When I talk to these students, they talk about a calling to nursing,” president Ben Sells said. “And that comes in part out of their Christian faith and seeing the need to meet the nurse shortage in our state and, more often than not, some need in their family. We’re extending our mission to serve students who want to be really proficient in nursing and who are sincere about their Christian faith.”

Individual institutions may also be benefitting from larger trends that have little to do with changes to the curriculum or outreach efforts. Early data collected from 841 colleges and universities showed a surge of applications in 2023.

A number of large public schools have also reported record enrollments this fall, including University of Ohio, University of Kentucky, University of Tennessee, University of Arkansas, University of Alabama, and Michigan State University. That growth can’t really be explained by an emphasis on small communities and the importance of faith formation. It appears that some prospective students delayed college, waiting for the pandemic to end.

“If you are basing how you’re thinking or feeling on the life decisions of 17-year-olds,” Wheaton president Philip Ryken said, “there’s going to be a complexity and inscrutability to that, no matter what.”

Top Christian college administrators are acutely aware that one or two good years may not signal a reliable upward trend. The president at Bethany said, “no one is spiking the ball,” while the president at Grace said recruiters would need to continue to remember the fundamentals of a good defensive strategy.

Many in higher education continue to worry about how declining birthrate will impact the total number of potential college students. Some experts have talked about an “enrollment cliff” as soon as 2025.

“I don’t know that we are seeing some dramatically new situation for Christian college enrollment,” Ryken said. “I think, year by year, we’re going to see some winners and losers and we’re going to continue to see that it’s tougher than ever financially to sustain your mission.”

But all of the presidents and vice presidents who spoke to CT said they were, nevertheless, hopeful. The rising enrollment numbers give them a sense of momentum, and they’re encouraged that recent events seem to have helped people recognize the value of Christian higher education.

“As horrible as the pandemic was, it probably increased interest in Christian higher education,” said Beck Taylor, president of Samford University. “Students who did not enjoy online education are looking for places to really invest in community. … We can really live into the relational aspects of university education and do it with credibility.”

For Christian colleges, seeing a record number of students show up feels like the reward for many years of hard work. It also feels like an opportunity to fulfill the mission of Christian education.

“We can really be clear about the value,” said McChord at Asbury. “When we can lock arms and pour into these students who are suffering from social isolation, anxiety, and so many other challenges today, continually pointing them back to the cross, pointing them to the truth, and challenging them to find what God says about it, that is value. And that’s what they’re looking for.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

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More than a moonshot

Everlasting peace

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A divisive dinner

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Bharat and beyond

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The five lies

Encouragements and exhortations

The Bible and the body of Christ

True believers

An accurate lay of the land

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An embodied affliction

Stoic inclinations

Going against the cultural grain

Taste and see

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