What If a Good Pastor Is a Bad Preacher?

Karen Swallow Prior, Kevin Antlitz, and Kiara John-Charles

CT advice columnists also weigh in on anguished estrangement and a suspicious devotional.

Illustration by Studio Pong

Got a question? Email advice@christianitytoday.com to ask CT’s advice columnists. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: What do you do about pastors whose preaching isn’t good? I don’t mean bad theology but more mundane problems. Messy organization. Poor delivery. Too many ideas at once. I don’t come to church for a performance, and I appreciate the wisdom and intent. These are faithful shepherds. But they could be more skilled, and I wonder if it’s ever appropriate to say so. —Tough Crowd in Tennessee

Karen Swallow Prior: Some people’s jobs have regular evaluations built in. Preachers and pastors, perhaps because of assumptions about the nature of their callings, are often in roles for which such assessments are not the norm.

It’s seldom wise to give advice or feedback that is neither requested nor expected. But your question raises others that might be more important: What part does the sermon play in the church’s worship service and in the overall life of the church? (This differs across denominations.) Is the church governed in a way that supports that congregational emphasis? Do other church leaders (like elders or bishops) “pastor the pastor” to facilitate the reflection, rest, and growth needed to develop preaching skills?

After all, among the biblical qualifications for an elder is the ability to teach (1 Tim. 3:2). This includes the ability to communicate, and church leadership should be holding preachers to this standard along with the expectation of maturity that would support such accountability.

These underlying reasons for a pastor’s lack of skill in preaching are the more important matter here. If your church is a place where character, care, feedback, and growth are encouraged, then the preaching problem should diminish over time. If it is not such a place, then poor preaching is not your most significant worry.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Karen Swallow Prior lives in rural Virginia with her husband, two dogs, and several chickens. Following a decades-long vocation as an English professor, Karen now speaks and writes full-time

Illustration by Studio Pong

Q: For years, my younger sister has experienced severe, undiagnosed mental health issues. Though she’s an adult, her rage and deception have harmed my parents, and I’m not alone in worrying about their welfare. My parents’ motto is to forgive like Jesus, but it hurts to watch how my sister treats them. I’ve cut ties with her, to my parents’ dismay, and I need advice. I know God calls us to forgive, but is estrangement a sin? —Isolated in Illinois

Kevin Antlitz: These questions are among the most confounding and painful we can face. To begin, it may be helpful to differentiate forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration. In my experience, much harm comes from conflating these three related yet distinct things. Christians are commanded to forgive whether or not someone apologizes (Matt. 6:14–15; Col. 3:13). Forgiveness is hard, but by the grace of God, it is within our control.

Reconciliation, however, requires both sides to take responsibility for wrongs, to repent of harmful behaviors, and to repair the damage when possible. We ought always to seek reconciliation (Rom. 12:18), but this is not within our control. It is a two-way street.

And though reconciliation brings peace, it doesn’t automatically restore the relationship to what it was. Such restoration isn’t always wise, let alone possible.

Now, to your situation. Your instinct is right: God is indeed calling you to forgive, and he will give you the grace to do it over and over again. But forgiveness and boundaries aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, forgiveness often requires strong boundaries. If your sister refuses to take responsibility and repent, reconciliation and restoration aren’t possible. Your options, then, are enabling her bad behavior or estrangement. As sad as it is, you’ve chosen the path of wisdom. As long as you remain open to reconciliation, estrangement is not sinful in your case.

Jack Richardson

Kevin Antlitz is an Anglican priest at a Pittsburgh church positively overflowing with kids. He and his wife have three young children who they pray will never know a day apart from Jesus.

Q: I’ve never known my dad to be a writer, so I was surprised when a sibling showed me Amazon pages for three books—all Christian devotionals—listing him as the author and self-published within a single week. Since then, my father has promoted these books online. He’s tech-savvy, and I strongly suspect he “wrote” them using ChatGPT. The situation has been gnawing at me. I’m angry, disappointed, and stressed. What should I do? —Taken Aback in Texas

Kiara John-Charles: As we enter adulthood, navigating parent-child relationships can stir up complex emotions, especially if you suspect your parent is involved in deceit or some other sin.

This situation requires balancing honor for your father with a call to integrity. Scripture provides a few examples of adult children confronting their parents. Think of Jonathan defending David against his father, Saul (1 Sam. 19:4–5; 20:32), or Jesus correcting Mary at the wedding in Cana (John 2:3–4).

These stories show the delicacy of such moments and the necessity of wisdom. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide and convict you and your dad alike (John 16:7–8, 13).

While the desire to see your father live a life of integrity is natural, confronting him in anger and disappointment is unlikely to result in the admission of guilt you seek. Your approach to him and what he seems to have done must come from love.

Begin with prayer to align yourself to God’s heart, and allow the Holy Spirit to steer your steps. If God does lead you to talk to your father about his writing, speak to him with love, respect, and curiosity. Start with questions rather than accusations, remembering that you haven’t yet confirmed your suspicions. Encourage honesty if he has been deceitful, but engage him in honor and charity, trusting the Spirit to move.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Kiara John-Charles is an LA native with Caribbean roots and a love for travel and food. She works as a pediatric occupational therapist and serves at her local church in Long Beach, California.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Qualms & Proverbs".

Qualms & Proverbs: Got a question for CT’s advice columnists? Email advice@christianitytoday.com. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

- More from Karen Swallow Prior, Kevin Antlitz, and Kiara John-Charles

Ideas

Don’t Forsake the Assembly

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

A durable, dogged, in-person, on-paper, public commitment to a local church is a necessary part of the Christian life.

Illustration by Klaus Kremmerz

Certain Bible verses demand to be quoted in the King James Version, and Hebrews 10:25 is one of them. Following calls to “hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” (v. 23) and provoke one another “unto love and to good works” (v. 24) is an exhortation even more direct: Christians should not be “forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is.”

This is indeed the manner of some—today in ways the epistle’s unknown writer could not have anticipated. Human foibles are the same as ever, but 21st-century Christians have excuses for forsaking the assembly that first-century Christians could not muster: You can always just listen to a sermon podcast. You can pick up that extra shift or sleep a little longer or take your kid to the travel soccer tournament and make it up to God when the next episode drops. Well, you can do these things in the sense that this technology is available and no one will keep you from using it. But you can’t replace Sunday morning with a recording and presume that you’ve been to church.

Digital “attendance” is a misnomer. Even the best sermon podcast or livestream is not church, and a durable, dogged, in-person, on-paper, in-public commitment to a local church is a necessary part of the Christian life. Church is “not an optional add-on,” as theologian Brad East has written at CT. “It is how we learn to be human as God intended. Indeed, it makes possible truly human life before God.”

Sometimes, of course, we find ourselves in extenuating circumstances. Some Christians must contend with sickness or disability that makes church attendance physically impossible, perhaps for a long time. Their local congregations have a duty to bring church to them, insofar as that is feasible. Some Christians live under persecution or in places where there literally are no local congregations or have some other hardship that renders the exhortation in Hebrews a word of future hope rather than a near-term reality.

I am speaking not about these circumstances but about those typical of Christians in the modern West. I’m particularly speaking of Christians in America, which enjoys world-historic freedom, security, and comfort and which—even decades into record-level dechurching and church closures—is bustling with local churches. Here, for most of us, most of the time, professing to follow Jesus must mean going and committing to church.

And I do mean going. The church is the people, not the building, true enough, and there are contexts where that’s a needful reminder. My strong suspicion, though, is that America in 2026 is not one of them. We could stand to think a bit more often about church as a location to which we must bodily take ourselves. We must go, week in and week out, even when we’ve slept poorly or it’s storming or we do not feel like getting the kids out the door for the seventh day in a row.

It is somewhere we must go even when there is somewhere else we’d prefer to be. I understand how many Christians find themselves in a post–blue laws world struggling to avoid Sunday work shifts. Those of us with 9-to-5 jobs should be grateful that our work doesn’t interfere with Sunday worship and should do what we can to accommodate siblings in Christ who have more taxing and volatile schedules—perhaps including helping them find other work.

I have no similar sympathy for discretionary, time-intensive leisure activities that habitually take the hours that ought to be reserved for assembling. I’m thinking especially about travel sports, which in the past few decades have emerged as a major competitor to Sunday service attendance. If I may follow Hebrews in its bluntness, any kids’ sports league that convenes on Sunday mornings should either change its schedule under parental pressure or find that the only Christians on its rolls are Saturday Sabbatarians.

(Do I need to add a Screwtape Letters bit here? “My dear Wormwood, inspire in the patient a mad fanaticism for travel sports’ assurances of the well-rounded college application, the opportunity to learn real leadership, and the excellence that will translate into lifelong success. Never let him consider that this season’s soccer schedule will have him away from the sanctuary 11 Sundays of the next 13 or that he’ll be too exhausted on the other 2 to even contemplate arranging himself on a wooden pew at 9 o’clock in the morning.”)

The goods of church that we miss when we forsake assembling together are hard to overstate. In East’s phrase, the church, for all its flaws and failings, is a God-founded institution “finely tuned to the complex needs of the human experience—to help us with everything from early socialization to midlife crisis to dying well.” Even the best soccer season can’t compare; and neither can the sermon podcasts we may be tempted to substitute suffice.

On the podcast front, I speak from experience, because I embraced sermon downloads sooner than most. In my 20s, I moved to a small town in Virginia and began attending a nondenominational church within walking distance of my apartment. I met the pastors, joined the young adults group, and volunteered in the Awana kids’ program. I was married in the historic sanctuary where I’d learned to be an active member of the local body of Christ.

But early in my time there, it became apparent that the theological resources at my new church only went so far. I was in a season that today might be called deconstruction, though I didn’t experience it as the crisis the label now connotes. I was a 22-year-old exploring big theological topics myself for the first time, and I realized that the pastors at my church—though faithful, sensible, and kind—were working in a different register. I had questions beyond what they could realistically answer.

So I turned to books, to begin with. Then blogs. (It was 2010, after all.) Then, after Googling the name of an author I’d found helpful, I made a discovery: the sermon podcast.

Podcasts as we know them were only half a decade old at the time, and I still thought of sermon recordings as things that lived on cassette tapes in church vestibules. Soon I learned I could fill my screenless iPod with four archival sermons each week and spend my long runs under the tutelage of venerable pastors and expert theologians. And it was all free! I was surprised. I was impressed. I was hooked.

Over the next few years, those sermon podcasts shaped my faith and career alike. I no longer listen to any, except to make up the odd week that I’m out sick on Sunday. But it’s no exaggeration to say that without them, my life might look very different today. By no means do I recommend against them.

Yet for all their goods, digital media are not church, and church is not to be forsaken in their favor. Like a book or an essay, a podcast or video may offer guidance, instruction, and encouragement. These are elements of church, but they are not the whole. For that, we must assemble. It is in the assembly that we “hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering” and provoke one another “unto love and to good works.” It is by going to church that we learn to be the church.

The necessity of that lesson is why simply intending to go is not enough. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” we all know from too much experience (Matt. 26:41).

That truth is why, last spring, I knelt before the bishop of the Pittsburgh diocese one Sunday morning and was confirmed into the Anglican Church in North America. Confirmation wasn’t something I’d expected to pursue. I wasn’t raised in churches that practice it, but it’s offered by the church I’ve now embraced.

So I sought it, most simply because I could. Because it’s there. Because it’s another way to bind myself to this congregation, to say, “I’m in,” and I want other people to help me remember that when I’m inclined to forget.

I expect we are all so inclined at some point or another. Perhaps the inclination is particularly tempting in this time and place, in a society as noncommittal as they come. But the confirmation liturgy, developed from the 1662 version of the Book of Common Prayer, suggests to me that human weakness and inconstancy can flourish with or without the atomization and irresponsibility of our time.

“Will you obediently keep God’s holy will and commandments, and walk in them all the days of your life?” the bishop asks.

“I will,” the confirmands respond, “the Lord being my helper.” (Many other denominations do something like this in the membership vows or church covenant.)

It’s a realistic and humble reply—yet one that the next exchange suggests is not quite humble enough. After receiving that answer, the bishop immediately pivots to ask the whole congregation, “Will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support these persons in their life in Christ?”

Commit to faithfulness, yes, the question implies, but let’s think about contingency plans.

For me, I am glad someone is doing that thinking. It’s necessary and prudent. By divine design, the Christian life comes with support; the congregation answers yes.

It’s no knock on the Holy Spirit to recognize that we also need other people—that sometimes “the Lord being my helper” looks like an exhortation from your pastor or a book recommended by your small group or a casserole from the family in the next row. Sometimes we are too weak to hear God’s still, small voice (1 Kings 19:12, also in the KJV), but we can take in a text from a friend.

Naturally, this kind of give-and-take commitment goes for spiritual support and institutional maintenance alike. At our church, confirmation is a step beyond membership, one required to serve in select lay leadership roles. It provides an extra layer of theological instruction and scrutiny from our clergy, a layer that in some other traditions looks similar, in others is different, and in some may not exist at all.

Having seen firsthand what can happen in a local church without deliberate care in steering the congregation, I’m all for it. Our era is not (if any era ever was) a time of stasis, a time of ecclesial plenty, a time in which congregations can coast on the good work and established traditions of generations past.

Christian institutions, including local churches and denominational hierarchies, are inevitably human endeavors, subject to entropy like anything else in a fallen world. If we simply assume we’ll still have faithful, functional congregations 10 or 20 or 30 years hence, we won’t. They must be actively maintained, a task requiring steadiness and diligence, perseverance and forbearance.

I pursued confirmation to reiterate my aim to participate in that work. It is a way to solidify—to put down in writing and speak aloud in the sanctuary—the duty I already know to be real. Confirmation isn’t the only way to do that, of course. Many Christian traditions don’t confirm people, and confirmation is never explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Neither is formal membership, though that too strikes me as a good idea.

There are plenty of perfectly good ways to commit oneself to a local church, and (as a thoroughgoing Protestant) I don’t imagine God gets unduly worked up over the ceremonial details. Yet some kind of deliberate, public, in-print commitment is vital. “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together” is an active task.

The point is not about one exact arrangement or another. The point is to be in and to say so and to invite others to say it back to you when you’ve fallen silent. The point is the commitment, the orientation of your heart toward God, and the body of people whom you will serve and who will serve you in turn—people with whom you will assemble to worship, study, and imitate Christ.

Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Church Life

Miroslav Volf: ‘Disagreeing With You Feels Like Disagreeing With Myself’

Andrew Hendrixson

The deep friendship between the theologian and poet Christian Wiman is built around mutual respect and a willingness to tackle life’s hardest questions.

Illustration by Denise Nestor

“My office or a big room?” Miroslav Volf asked. His Blundstone boots carried his tall frame to a sputtering coffee machine. Before Volf got the last words out, his friend Christian Wiman said, “Big room.” Wiman was running a few minutes late because a half-marathon in New Haven, Connecticut, had led to road closures. His “Montana” baseball cap was slightly askew. He looked pleased that coffee was underway.

It was a gray Labor Day at Yale University when I met with Volf and Wiman, my former professors. The mild temperatures heralded the end of summer, and campus was mostly quiet aside from some rustlings in the hallway, where students sat around open laptops and sifted through books that bloomed with colorful tabs. We met in an empty seminar room in the building where Volf directs the Yale Center for Faith & Culture.

Volf and Wiman loom large in their respective fields for good reason. They have spent their lives exploring the human experience and articulating something of the complexities of faith—Volf as a theologian and Wiman as a poet.

The former has spent his life asking questions about the furthest reaches of forgiveness and the ways we can live together across great differences. The latter has long wrestled words of faith and doubt across pages. Poetry helped him return to church after a 20-year absence and a diagnosis of incurable blood cancer.

Along the way, these two men have built a friendship by looking squarely at life’s big questions and tackling faith and doubt, suffering and joy, together.

Their writing seems incapable of lingering on the superfluous. No question is too big or unwieldy for Volf and Wiman, no confession of doubt too destabilizing. Rather than lead them toward cynicism or unbelief, their willingness to ask hard questions has drawn them closer to one another and to God.

Recently, the two friends decided to give readers an intimate view of their relationship in their book Glimmerings: Letters on Faith Between a Poet and a Theologian. They expanded on those letters as they sat at a long table in the classroom last September. The conversation centered on each man’s faith, including Wiman’s ongoing battle to keep despair at bay and Volf’s admission that he longs to possess a hunger for God that seems to elude him.

For years, Volf and Wiman have taken walks together, beginning at Yale Divinity School and trekking a regular route along the sidewalks of New Haven. The walks began early in their friendship, and these first conversations tended to focus on what each was reading. Neither had read the other’s works. Their friendship came about when Volf’s wife, Jessica Dwelle, took a class with Wiman. When the two couples got together for dinner a short time later, Volf and Wiman found themselves compelled by the mind of the other. “At some point,” Volf said, “we started talking about prayer and about a desire for God.”

Occasionally, one of them would be out of town or unduly weighed down by a teaching load, or Wiman was sick, and they’d continue their conversations by writing emails to one another.

The emails began in earnest during the fall of 2022. Wiman said these letters “came at a period of great urgency.” He had been diagnosed at age 39 with a rare and incurable form of cancer called Waldenström macroglobulinemia. Twenty years later, as he began his correspondence with Volf, he “really was dying.” He went on to say, “It was a literal godsend to me the way that this exchange happened.”

Cancer’s effects on Wiman’s body come in waves, quieting for a stretch of years then becoming acutely virulent. “I started getting sick in 2022 and had a hard time finishing that semester, but in 2023 it was really bad,” he said. He completed a book called Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair but wasn’t sure he would live to see it published.

He was wrestling at the time with “what it means to love God.” He said, “It seems to me such an abstract question. And in a way I feel like
I know what it means, in the way that I feel like I know when a poem is beginning. It’s about the same sort of feeling. But there’s something very elusive and frustrating about it when you are in a period of suffering.”

“I found it immensely helpful to think about these issues with somebody concrete before me,” Volf said of their email correspondence. Rather than working through an issue alone and “speaking to myself or to a potential reader,” he said, “I had specifically Chris in view, and that just catalyzed something for me.” Their walks on campus and around New Haven laid the foundation on which they later built as they emailed one another. “It was really helpful that I knew [Wiman] well,” Volf said. He spoke of “a certain honoring and appreciation of what’s coming from the other side. And that to me was really wonderful.”

“I don’t know what faith means anymore,” Wiman wrote to Volf in an email that would later appear on the first page of Glimmerings. “I’m
fifty-six years old with a pile of books behind me and an experimental bone marrow transplant ahead of me and I don’t know what faith means.”

That kind of raw honesty marks their published correspondence, from the first entry on February 28, 2023, to the last one written on June 16, 2024. As Wiman struggled with a sense of God’s absence, Volf confessed that he doesn’t reach for God so much as he recognizes God is holding him.

“My sense is that even when Chris and Miroslav experience God differently,” Wiman’s wife, poet Danielle Chapman told me, “they approach theological questions with the same urgency.” She said the friendship with Volf has been “a great gift to Chris, to have a friend who sees but is not put off by his intensities, whose own faith and understanding is sharp enough to engage real suffering and despair without attempting to dispel or dismiss it. This has been all the more true when the questions they’ve asked together have literally been questions of life and death.”

In the midst of his correspondence with Volf, Wiman underwent an experimental treatment in Boston called CAR T-cell therapy, which
saved his life. When we met, he looked well, like the Wiman I remembered from class.

Both Volf and Wiman come from families riddled with tragedy and grief. Each bears the marks of the place from which he came.

Born in Croatia and educated in Germany, Volf came of age in the 1960s, a tumultuous time in former Yugoslavia. His father was a Protestant minister in a predominantly Catholic region who spent time in a labor camp and whose conversion came during a death march he narrowly survived. Volf’s mother lost four children.

“What my mother did early on,” Volf said, “was to talk to us about her experiences of her four children dying, of the grief that she had. She didn’t shield us from that.” He said her openness wasn’t disorienting for him. Rather, “my love for my mother, and for her struggle, and for what has come to be of her just grew. Suffering was in the middle between us.”

Wiman responded, “She sounds like a strong person who could convey her pain without it being completely destructive. I didn’t have that. There wasn’t strength to convey suffering; there was just this blast of suffering.”

Wiman came of age in a trailer in a hard-beaten stretch of West Texas. His family was prone to reoccurring avalanches of addiction and self-destruction. His essays about his early years are threaded with violence and chaos and what he calls his “badly plugged well of unfocused rage.” I asked him once, during a coat-and-tie dinner at which our conversation about drug-addicted and incarcerated family members stood in ragged contrast to the crisp linens on the table, how he’d gotten from there to here. “Sheer desperation,” he told me.

Navigating desperation and despair is a far cry from the sort of acclaim these men have earned in their professions. In addition to founding and directing the Yale Center for Faith & Culture, Volf is a longtime professor of theology at Yale Divinity School. Wiman is an author, editor, translator, and professor of communication arts at Yale Divinity and the university’s Institute of Sacred Music. Volf sat on the hiring committee for Wiman, a detail Wiman hadn’t heard before our talk last year.

Although Volf can be found teaching graduate seminars or giving the Gifford Lectures, he can just as readily hold a conversation onstage with Rainn Wilson at the Aspen Ideas Festival or chat with Maria Shriver on the Today show. His books are among the seminal theological texts of our time.

Edgardo Colón-Emeric, dean of Duke Divinity School, recounts using Volf’s The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World in a seminar on the theology of reconciliation. “One of my students was a Burundian pastor who had been recently tapped by his government to work on a post-genocide national reconciliation project,” Colón-Emeric said. “I was so moved by his story that I gave him my marked-up copy of Volf’s book. He thanked me profusely and told me, ‘This book will save lives.’”

Wiman’s writings have left their own imprint. He received the distinguished Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and then spent years at the helm of Poetry magazine. His work can be found in the pages of The New Yorker and in his own books of prose and poetry. He recounts stories of strolls down Chicago sidewalks with the late poet Mary Oliver and the dead bird in her pocket or time spent with his friend and poet laureate the late Donald Hall.Wiman also speaks around the country, discussing the works of French philosopher Simone Weil or 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards and offering sermons at Yale’s Marquand Chapel.

His own suffering marks others’ art. Singer-songwriter Sandra McCracken told me, “Chris Wiman’s work haunts me with truth as he wrestles so earnestly with suffering and certainty.” She said reading Wiman’s writing is “disruptive—and all the more effective because it’s so elegant. I am quite sure that Wiman’s poetry has left some of its shimmering residue on my songs for many years now.”

For all of their accolades, what comes through most when Wiman and Volf are in the same room is a deep friendship, one that can handle a bit of intellectual roughhousing. That’s something the two men engage in, though their tussles are not with one another so much as with themselves. There’s a lightness: In Glimmerings, readers can sense their friendship acutely during these disagreements. Volf writes, “I love how disagreeing with you feels like disagreeing with myself, free of any envy and malice.”

During our talk, Volf spoke of the correspondence with Wiman as one “with no upmanship” and said, “It is a kind of release where my own winning was not at stake.” Wiman replied that their communication, even when friction was present, “was a genuine search. We did disagree, but it was a genuine search.”

Wiman has no formal theological training and never spent a day in graduate school, but there is still a piercing clarity of theological insight in his writing. He writes about feeling God’s absence, needing to summon God by focusing his attention on him. Wiman is very much after something. His hunger for God is heard in his voice and seen in his tendency to rub his palm over his closely shorn scalp as he stews on a question.

Volf, confessing that he does not reach for God as much as he recognizes that he’s being held by God, said, “I’m not proud of that.” He continued, “I want to have what Chris has. I want to have the longing.”

Wiman seemed surprised to hear this. “Really?” he asked.

“Yeah, absolutely I do.”

“I want to have what you have,” Wiman replied. They turned toward one another as smiles slowly appeared. “You seem secure in your faith,” Wiman said. “You don’t seem milquetoast or lukewarm. You seem secure. I would like to have that security. I just think of it as a calm—some deeper calm that enables people.”

Perhaps that sense of calm stands out in contrast to Wiman’s own—as he puts it—“impulse to self-destruction, which has been a war throughout my life.” He has found some refuge from the war in poetry, through which he came to Christ—taken by the throat, he has said—in his 40s after falling in love and receiving his cancer diagnosis.

He said concepts like grace, faith, sin, and love can feel impenetrably abstract. “I can only understand these abstractions when they’re rooted in poetry or metaphor that opens them up in some way,” he said. Poetry “locates abstraction,” and then, as he writes in Glimmerings, “all of my instincts tell me I must follow God. I simply know that he is.”

Volf spoke of what he called a “feature of modernity,” particularly pronounced in the United States, in which there is an “expectation that life should be directly within your control, and if it isn’t, then there’s something wrong with the world, or something’s wrong with you.”

“I was raised in the setting in which this expectation could not be had,” Volf said. “The relationship to faith was not a matter of asking how faith can help me be fully in control of my circumstances.” Nor was it a matter of “how faith would actually help shift and change” his circumstances. In the churches of his youth, he said, “we prayed for healing, but the assumption was that the world is such that you are not and will not be in control. And God comes.”

Indeed, God comes, even in suffering. The topic of suffering was peppered throughout the course of our conversation, as it was in Volf and Wiman’s correspondence. In one letter, Volf relayed a provocative question that came out of a class he taught with a colleague. The question was “whether we could imagine letting Jesus raise our kids.” Volf said he initially “balked at the idea viscerally, as if some unspecified but great damage would befall them if committed to [Jesus’] care.”

Volf has three children, and Wiman two. They discussed how, as Wiman put it, Jesus seems to claim people through suffering. Both explored the thought experiment of whether they ultimately could allow their children to suffer and watch it happen if it was the means by which God claimed them. Volf wrote of his young daughter, “Somewhere deep down, I do desire to take Mira’s hand and together with her follow the radical, uncomfortable Christ.”

Many of us carry questions that could fold us under their weight. They can incite a despair that renders us anemic and our places and lives and futures only arid. Or they can incite a despair, like Wiman’s response to me at our fancy dinner, that has the capacity to buoy us and spark newness.

In spite of the suffering that both men have walked through, Volf and Wiman maintain a fierce and visceral hope. Both have a ready laugh that sounds sincere, albeit hard-won.

The glimmerings in the book title is taken from a line by poet Seamus Heaney: “Glimmerings are what the soul’s composed of.” It was Wiman who first proposed that their correspondence become a book. “It was a very strange thing for me to do,” he said. “I’m not looking for more work. It was a weird, sudden thing.” Wiman sent an email to Volf, who responded immediately that he had been “musing on the same idea.” Volf told me, “I felt that there was something really significant going on that could be of broader significance than just for us.”

Many of the book’s early readers seem to agree. Krista Tippett, who has interviewed both Volf and Wiman for her show On Being, told me, “The learning behind these letters is matched by the fierce courage of their words to each other.”

In any of the differences between these friends, the necessity of facing soberly and honestly not just their own suffering but the suffering of Christ is a place of earnest agreement. “He did make those in need terminal points of his love,” Volf wrote in one of his letters. “He fed the hungry, healed the sick, raised the dead.” Volf later continued, “Christ consoles because his experiences with God are so close to our anguish.”

Despite Wiman’s assertion that he doesn’t know what faith means anymore, his life tells another story. Knowing him, reading his writing, and listening to the recent conversation all say something quite different. Wiman may always need to pile sandbags against encroaching despair and self-destructive impulses. Volf may always, at the edges of even the best days, feel moments of what he calls “cosmic motherlessness.” They may be chronic, these symptoms of human finitude and frailty.

But Volf and Wiman seem simultaneously to believe so deeply that Christ is present and hears them that each will take to God the loneliness, absence, and doubt he feels about that very God.

We are less inclined to cry out—for years and decades—to an ether we believe is empty. Part of faith is believing that we will be heard. Volf and Wiman seem to know that, ultimately, they will be.

As our conversation drew to an end, I asked Wiman to read aloud one of my favorite poems of his before we parted. It is titled “I Don’t Want to Be a Spice Store” and is a litany of what he wants and does not want to be. He doesn’t want to carry “handcrafted Marseille soap” or other luxuries.

Half the shops here don’t open till noon
and even the bookstore’s brined in charm.
I want to be the one store that’s open all night
and has nothing but necessities.
Something to get a fire going
and something to put one out.

It is one of my favorite poems because of the final three lines, two dozen words that startle me because of the openness to which they aspire and the possibility of communion for which they leave room—expect, even.

I want to hum just a little with my own emptiness
at 4 a.m. To have little bells above my door.
To have a door.

Neither Wiman nor Volf is a spice store. Their lives and their work have never dealt in trivialities. The necessities they have offered are sometimes comforting, like finding God amid a ravaging illness, and sometimes challenging, like finding ways to forgive those who have injured us and our families most deeply.

They share a sense of urgency in that each has spent his life asking the most pressing questions humans can ask. As they have asked how to repair ruptures—whether across warring ethnic groups, in a family, or within themselves—both have done so with a sense that God sees and holds them, even when they’ve had to strain to believe it.

Like the biblical psalmists of old, Volf and Wiman have taken refuge in the belief that no frantic, middle-of-the-night question, no flash of desperate honesty, is unheard by God. They have also taken refuge in the friendship of one another. Each carries the essentials. Each has a door.

Andrew Hendrixson is an artist and writer who is pursuing a doctoral degree in theology from Duke Divinity School.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "No Question Too Big".

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News

Nursing Home Revival

Amy Lewis

Churches invest heavily on children and youth. But what about those in the twilight of their lives?

Illustration by Matija Medved

Jennifer Bute, the executive partner at a large general practice in Southampton, UK, was driving to her office in 2004 when she got lost. Suddenly, the 59-year-old doctor couldn’t remember how to get to the medical center she had worked at for the past 25 years.

When she finally showed up and told the staff why she was late, no one believed her. Bute realized something was wrong.

Over the next four years, more troubling things happened. She began forgetting her passwords. Her sister came over for a visit and on her way out the door remembered she’d left her phone back at Bute’s apartment. Bute offered to go get it. When she returned with the phone, she didn’t recognize her sister.

“Are you going to give me that phone?” her sister asked.

“No,” Bute told her, “I’m going to give it to my sister.” Only when her sister looked puzzled and moved her head in a certain way did Bute recognize her mannerism and realize who she was.

The last straw came when she arrived at a case conference she was leading and asked all the attendees to introduce themselves. They were confused. “Don’t be so stupid, Jenny,” said one colleague. “We’ve worked together for 20 years!” She didn’t recognize any of the 22 people in the room, but they all knew her.

That same year, Bute diagnosed herself with dementia and visited a neurologist she knew professionally. Bute said he refused to examine her, insisting he could tell just by looking at her that nothing was wrong. It took five years before she got an official diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 64. She resigned her job and stopped working as a doctor. In 2011, she and her husband moved into an assisted-living village in Somerset, England. Her husband died a few months later.

Today she lives at Richmond Villages Cheltenham Care Home, an advanced-dementia care facility, as she needs more daily help, including reminders to eat and drink. The day we spoke, the 80-year-old had looked in every cupboard for the mug she uses for her morning tea. She eventually found it in the microwave—full of yesterday’s tea.

Yet one thing she hasn’t forgotten is her call to go out and make disciples of all the nations—including the residents at her care facility and others in the UK who are losing their memories.

When Bute first moved into Richmond Villages in 2022, she invited a few of her fellow dementia-unit residents to attend her church, C3 Church Cheltenham. But after only a few visits, her friends stopped coming. When her pastor, Christian Walsh, asked her why, she responded that the service was too long. “But people are interested,” she added.

So Walsh started running a Friday-afternoon course at Bute’s facility called Life’s Difficult Questions that mirrored an Alpha course. Some attendees were Christians; some were not. When the course ended, they kept meeting. Bute said she is seeing people in her building accept Jesus. “I wouldn’t call it a trend, but they are coming—slowly,” she said.

Pastors and leaders who minister to the elderly around the world are also seeing people return to their faith in Christ or believe in him for the first time. They note the extraordinary opportunity and challenges in reaching this demographic. On the one hand, they have more time to consider Christianity and are often more open to discussing matters of life and death as their lives near the end. On the other hand, some struggle with their memory, like Bute, while still others have lost their sense of purpose, especially as many of their friends and loved ones have died. Their time is limited, making evangelism more urgent.

As the world’s population ages and birthrates drop, ministry to the elderly is becoming increasingly important, since those over the age of 65 represent a larger population and mission field. In the US, the senior-citizen population is expected to nearly double in the next few decades, with more than 94 million Americans 65 and older by 2060, according to US Census Bureau projections.

Some church leaders are encouraging Christians to get involved and not to neglect the older adults in their communities. CT spoke with ministry leaders in the UK, the US, Australia, and Uganda about how they are seeking to love and reach this population.

“God is so not finished with these people,” said Elisa Bosley, a chaplain in Colorado. “Unfortunately, the rest of our society thinks they’re finished. But the harvest is there. And we can pray for God to send workers into the harvest to see the beauty of this work and to jump into it with commitment.”

In Australia, believers Are mourning the national decline of Christianity. For the first time in the country’s colonial history, less than 50 percent of residents claim to be Christian, according to its 2021 census.

When demographer and social analyst Mark McCrindle looked closely at the longitudinal data, he discovered a surprising trend: Despite the general decline in self-identified Christians, nearly 195,000 Australians over the age of 55 moved from no religion to Christianity in the last five years, making up 25 percent of the country’s Christian converts. In the last decade, the proportion of Christian converts over 55 increased by 11 percentage points. His team interviewed 3,000 Australians to find out why.

They found that many people who converted to Christianity had grown up attending church or were familiar with the religion but had rejected it. As they age, McCrindle said, the veneer of secularism wears off. “They realize that secularism and materialism can’t answer loss and grief and frailty,” he said.

According to his team’s interviews, the older generation sees younger generations growing up in uncertain geopolitical and technological times. Those cultural changes motivate them to look at the faith that held the society they used to know together.

For instance, Christine Hill of Geelong, Victoria, didn’t become a Christian until she was 75. Although she attended a local Methodist church on her own as a child, she stopped going when the church sent her home with a packet of tithing envelopes to fill.

Years later, she was baptized into a New Age spiritualist church and visited fortunetellers, looking for answers about the future of her youngest son as he struggled with mental health issues. In 2022, he went missing, and Hill remembers desperately praying to God to bring him home safely. Hours later, she found him at the beach near their home, and he told her that he had found the Lord.

Hill began reading books about Christianity and bought a King James Bible. She stopped going to yoga and tai chi classes. She was baptized at a nearby Pentecostal church and started attending a Christian Reformed church.

Hill said Jesus has changed her. She said she’s a gentler, softer person now. “I keep asking the Holy Spirit to make me more like Jesus,” she said. “I want to be changed—heart, mind, and soul.”

And she’s sharing the gospel with others, including her former neighbor who is in his 80s. She gave him a Bible, and a few weeks later he asked her how he could “speak to the Lord and give him [my] heart.” Right there, Hill helped her neighbor pray the sinner’s prayer.

“I wasn’t evangelizing him,” she said. “I just asked him about the Bible and talked with him about the things of life.”

In Boise, Idaho, Stephanie Smith has also seen an openness to the gospel among older generations. As the leader of Calvary Chapel Boise’s Twilight Hope, a ministry to the elderly, Smith visits eight different elder care facilities with her team to hold services or Bible studies.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the group visited Grace Memory Care, a home for patients with dementia. Residents gathered in the common room with a large-screen TV playing a 1980s sitcom. Smith handed out stapled songbooks with classic hymns like “The Old Rugged Cross” and “I’ll Fly Away” printed in a large font. The room swelled with cracking yet joyful voices. In a lull between two songs, one woman from a back couch called out, “I love them all!”

Smith followed the worship time with an exposition of Psalm 3 and exhorted the residents to cry out to God even in their confusion.

She recalled the impact the Bible had on a Korean War commander in his late 80s at Avista Senior Living several miles away in Garden City, Idaho. Living there forced him to finally sit and be still, but he had trouble sleeping, and his thoughts tormented him. He listened as Smith taught through the Book of John. After one gathering, the Word of God pierced the veteran’s conscience, and he asked Smith, “Who told you that about me?”

At first Smith didn’t understand what he was talking about. Then she responded, “I think that’s the Holy Spirit. It’s God pursuing your heart.” He became a Christian after that meeting.

In the ensuing months, he shared with Smith his guilt over being the only survivor of his battalion after an attack in the war. Smith prayed with him.

Before his death, he told Smith, “When I’m praying, I don’t feel that stress anymore. It just goes away, and I just feel joy and calm.”

Twilight Hope was founded in 2000. Under Smith’s leadership, the team now has a rotating team of about 19 people. Because of their visits, she’s seen the residents—who can’t leave the facilities to attend worship services—learn more about the love of Jesus. Her volunteers have grown in their faith and love for God through their interactions with residents, she said. And the Christians living in the facilities have encouraged Smith as they model what it looks like to finish the race well.

Still, finding enough volunteers for the ministry is a challenge. Many people will help with Christmas caroling events at the retirement homes or attend special classic-movie nights that Twilight Hope puts on at facilities. But only a few volunteers come out consistently.

Some people find long-term care facilities intimidating. “I think it’s because there’s weird smells, there’s scary noises, sometimes there’s bells going off,” Smith said. “Some of the facilities feel like hospitals, and that freaks people out.”

Yet she believes those feelings fade quickly. “Once you get in there, and once you get over that, and once you start to get to know the people, you’re gonna fall in love with them,” she said. “They’re so wise. They have whole histories behind them, a life to share.”

She noted that residents especially enjoy when children visit. One volunteer, Jake Alger, has been serving and bringing his children with him for the past 18 years. His youngest is 6 and is a favorite among the residents.

“Jesus tells us to love our neighbor, and the reality is a lot more of our neighbors are going to be older,” Smith said. “There’s a real sense
of urgency.”

A 2024 Barna Group report found that about half of pastors say ministry to older adults is a high priority for their church. But 60 percent say they don’t have anyone at the church specifically dedicated to ministering to older adults. Meanwhile, when McCrindle surveyed Australian pastors, he found that churches spend a large portion of their budget on children’s and youth ministry.

Bosley, the chaplain at a long-term care facility in Boulder, Colorado, noted that churches often don’t invest in the elderly “because there’s no return on investment—they will not grow your church rolls or grow your budget.”

She noted that American society prizes youthfulness, vitality, and cognition. “We avoid working with elderly people because we’re afraid of death ourselves, so we don’t want to stare at it in the face all the time.”

In the early 2000s, Bosley’s father-in-law developed Alzheimer’s, and she spent the next decade caring for him. After his death, she became a licensed chaplain for dementia patients, but she couldn’t find resources that fit the needs of many of her residents.

So she founded Spiritual Eldercare, creating specialized Bible discussion guides, large-print hymnals with fewer verses of the age-old favorites set in lower keys, YouTube versions of the songs, and suggestions for full-length worship services.

She noted that by serving people struggling with dementia, she is obeying God’s command to care for widows, orphans, and aliens. Bosley sees dementia patients as all three—many have lost their spouses and their parents. They also feel like aliens. “They’re really living in a different land than we are,” Bosley said. “They’re in a different reality. It’s our job to go to them and to speak their language.”

When Bosley is at Balfour Cherrywood, a dedicated memory-care residence facility, she invites everyone she meets to the church services she leads. Some decline, saying they aren’t Christian, but she tells them to come anyway—no conversion required. “I don’t want them to feel like I’m only there for our little clique,” Bosley said.

And often they show up. “God is at work. They’re lonely. They’re bored. They’re curious.”

Bosley crouches or kneels in front of a resident she’s speaking to so she can look the person directly in the eyes. She finds that they pause to process her questions, but if she waits a few seconds, she usually gets a response. “Like anyone else, they respond to being seen, listened to, treated with dignity, and not talked to as if they were children or, worse, absent altogether,” she said.

Oftentimes, the residents in long-term care don’t remember the church services that she prepared. They don’t remember that she prayed for them. They don’t remember singing the same song every week. But Bosley said that is beside the point.

“It’s still worth it because they are affected and reached in that moment,” Bosley said. They often weep when they sing the old hymns or when she prays with them. “God is so active in reaching his people. I get to see these miracles all the time. I used to write them all down … but there were just so many.”

Source: Jennifer Bute, Kenneth Mugayehwenkyi, Stephanie Smith. Images used with permission.

Left to Right: Jennifer Bute, a former doctor ministering to her fellow dementia patients in Cheltenham, UK; Kenneth Mugayehwenkyi, founder of Reach One Touch One Ministries in Uganda; and Stephanie Smith, leader of Twilight Hope in Boise, Idaho.

Mark Wormell, 67, acting rector of St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Cremorne, Australia, began researching in 2016 how older adults, especially those with dementia, come to Christ. When he visited care facilities and spoke with chaplains, every person had stories of conversions.

He began to study the theology behind conversions within that demographic: What does faith look like for someone with dementia? What does repentance mean for those who can’t remember what they’ve done and are not that sure what is right or wrong?

He realized that repentance comes by the sovereign help of the Holy Spirit and doesn’t need to be articulate or detailed.

“It’s knowing that there is a God … that God loves you, and knowing that that God will care for you and that you are dependent upon him,” he said.

His professors encouraged him to publish his resulting paper, “Coming to Christ in Dementia,” as a book, but his classmates, 30 years his junior, wondered why he would even bother trying to lead people with dementia to Christ.

“It made me sick, as if they didn’t matter to God,” he said.

Today, Wormell continues to visit dementia wards at care facilities and run Communion services. Some of the people in the care home are blind. Some are deaf. But for those who have taken Communion all their lives, “they know what to do, even if their mind isn’t totally switched on,” he said.

When he approaches residents with a piece of bread or cup, they just reach out their hands. “They know they’re receiving something good from God.”

During one visit, Wormell explained to the residents that Communion was a meal for anyone who trusted in Jesus. As he brought the bread and cup around, one man named Peter said he had never taken Communion before. He considered himself a Christian but had never been a regular member of a church. He felt like an outsider there, so he had never gone forward. “It’s the first time that anyone had asked him to take Communion—at the age of 95—and he just sat there in tears,” Wormell said.

Kenneth Mugayehwenkyi of Mukono, Uganda, said working with seniors also helps other generations, as many grandparents care for orphaned grandchildren. In 2002, two orphaned girls approached Mugayehwenkyi’s wife, who worked for Compassion International in Seeta, Uganda, for help. Yet her current program was full. So Mugayehwenkyi, who was working as a social worker in the US at the time, started sending part of his income home to help them.

Later that year, he returned to Uganda to help rebuild the shack where the orphans lived with their 70-year-old widowed grandmother, Elizabeth. The girls’ parents had died of AIDS, and Elizabeth had no way to support herself or her granddaughters.

Then he met Elizabeth’s friends and found them in similar circumstances—raising the kids of their own dead children in their old age. Mugayehwenkyi changed his plans, and instead of seeking to move his family to the US, he moved back to Uganda. He began meeting weekly with these destitute grandparents to study the Bible and pray about their circumstances.

He noted that many nonprofits, government organizations, and ministries in Uganda invest money to reach children not only because they are vulnerable but also because of their potential. For Christian groups, children ages 4–14 are statistically more likely to embrace Christianity than other age groups are. Sometimes ministries use these children as success stories they can show to wealthy donors overseas.

Mugayehwenkyi believes that focusing only on children treats people like commodities, especially as the elderly also have great needs. Many widows and widowers are raising their orphaned grandchildren with few resources.

What started as a few grandparents meeting weekly quickly grew to dozens. He founded Reach One Touch One Ministries (ROTOM) in 2003 and started to provide food for hungry grandparents at the meetings, but they would save it to take home to their grandchildren. So his group began making extra food and providing containers so the grandparents could both eat and take leftovers home. His ministry began alternating home visits with group meetings, where the grandparents could share their stories and difficulties, study the Bible, and pray.

One member of his group died due to difficulty accessing a hospital to treat his malaria, so Mugayehwenkyi decided to open two clinics specifically for geriatric care. Mugayehwenkyi said the average age of the grandparents in his group has increased from 72 to 80 years old in a country where the life expectancy is 68.

When the program began in 2003, about 80 percent of the grandparents claimed they were Christians. But as Mugayehwenkyi got to know them, he found that only half truly believed in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Now, after 22 years of ministry, Mugayehwenkyi says at least 87 percent of the attendees have a relationship with Jesus and about 70 percent of them share their faith with other people in their lives. In these two decades, ROTOM has ministered to more than 2,000 older people—along with 600 orphans.

He noted that because many already consider themselves Christ-ians, they don’t think they need salvation. They take “a different path,” Mugayehwenkyi said. “It takes a relationship, sometimes over many years of trust.”

Back in Cheltenham, England, Bute or a member of her church leads a group of about a dozen people between the ages of 70 and 90 every Friday afternoon. Some of the attendees used to travel or knit. They remember their pets fondly. “But they’re more likely to mention life’s experiences that have been hard and how God fits into that than spend time talking about their interests,” Bute said.

Among dementia patients, familiar songs are important, since music memory is one of the last things to fade. So they sing either “It Is Well with My Soul” or “In Christ Alone” each week, as Bute believes those songs tell the story of the gospel. For many, the songs were initially unfamiliar, so Bute spent time telling them the backstory of the former and explaining the latter line by line. Now the songs have become firm favorites even for those with more advanced dementia.

After singing, the group discusses a topic that relates to their everyday lives. One recent topic was grace—the words we say at the table before we eat, the way we’re graceful in movement, and ultimately God’s grace to us in Christ. Not all participants are Christians—one woman comes just because she attends every activity at the care facility. Some of the staff members have Buddhist tendencies, but they have shown an increased interest as the weeks go by. “ ‘By all means, save some’—isn’t that what the Good Book says?” Bute asked (1 Cor. 9:22).

She noted that Mike, a 90-year-old attendee of the study, was virulently anti-God and “anti-everything.” Later they learned that he had a bad experience at his Catholic school.

Mike came to the Friday meetings for years but was “on the fence” about following Jesus. A few weeks ago, Walsh asked Mike if he was still on the fence. “I don’t think so,” Mike told him. Bute gave him an orange book with the Gospel of Luke interspersed with questions.

When I first scheduled an interview with Bute, she forgot our appointment. When we finally connected, she was apologetic but realistic about her forgetfulness. “I laugh over it,” she said. “I can’t help it, and there’s no point getting upset.” She added, “But with faith, I’m just grateful. I think I’ve learned more about God. I’m very grateful to God.”

Bute noted that since her diagnosis she has trusted God more. People ask her if she’s worried about her son who lives in Ukraine. “No,” she said. “All our days are numbered, and if he dies, then I shall be very upset, of course. But I know where he’s going, so I don’t need to worry about it. What good is worrying going to do? God’s important to me, and I trust him.”

Her faith in God amid hard circumstances has been a witness to those she lives with at the care facility: “We need to live close to God if we want to help other people find God,” she said.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled Christina Hill’s name and misstated Smith’s involvement in the founding of Twilight Hope as well as the description of Mike’s experience at Catholic school.

Amy Lewis is a writer located in Geelong, Australia.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "The Silver Harvest".

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Ideas

Witnessing Is The Church’s Work

Ashley Hales

Staff Editor

A note from CT’s editorial director in our January/February issue.

Illustration by Studio Pong

Every quarter, my church’s book club meets to discuss a novel. We’ve read (among others) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Homer’s Odyssey, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Percival Everett’s James, and Leif Enger’s I Cheerfully Refuse.

Most times we meet, I guide the discussion around a few central questions: What does this book say about what it means to be human? How does this character help us wrestle with identity? Does religion in the novel (or its lack) give us a window into how others perceive Christian faith? By the end of the evening, people who disliked a particular novel often find something to reframe their original judgment (or at least they find a few people who loved the book).

While the pleasures of reading are often solitary, reading in community expands our imaginative horizons. We see things we were blind to. We find something to enjoy that we might not have had an appetite for previously. We become curious together. The best stories demand to be shared. Their resonance grows in community.

Christians, too, have a shared story. We come together each week to participate in the lived-out drama of a redeemed people. We rehearse and remember Scripture. We share our testimonies—the application of the gospel to our personal histories.

This issue you hold in your hands celebrates these testimonies—stories we tell about ourselves, the world, and God. As people of the Book, we share stories that are not just our own: We must give ourselves to formative communities and formative habits. Jen Wilkin shows us that discipleship requires learners who are biblically literate. Bonnie Kristian reminds us to not forsake the assembled people of God. Amy Lewis reports on growing global conversions among the elderly, and Haleluya Hadero reports on the allure of African spirituality, which can pull some Black people—even Christians—into false religious practices.

Our testimonies are not without complication and doubt. Andrew Hendrixson profiles the friendship of theologian Miroslav Volf and poet Christian Wiman, noting how each has created space for a desire for God alongside theological wrestling. In the narrative arc of redemption, we trust that our wrestling moments find a home in the household of faith.

These moments also testify to the outside world that each specific gathered community of believers is a living witness to the truth of the gospel. David Zahl believes part of this witness has to do with play (and pickleball). His essay argues that play is part of the relief of the gospel and that Christians should be the most adept at delight.

We also are thrilled to feature CT’s Book Awards—the best books of the year in evangelical publishing that we believe will influence faith and practice. Be sure to read original essays from our Book of the Year award winner, Brad Edwards, and our Award of Merit winner, Robert S. Smith. We hope both of their books, along with our other category award winners, influence your own story of faith.

Whether you host a book club or enjoy a Book Awards selection on your own, may you find that the stories we read, the stories we tell, and the stories we live testify to the one true and beautiful story: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Ashley Hales is editorial director for features at Christianity Today.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Editor's Note".

- More from Ashley Hales

Church Life

Disciplines Don’t Save. Christ Does.

Michael Horton

Michael Horton exhorts Christians to not confuse discipleship with the gospel.

Illustration by Studio Pong

A disciple was someone who followed a rabbi around not only to learn doctrine but also to see its application in life. Jesus was one such rabbi, as we see in the familiar story reported in Luke 10:38–42 (ESV throughout):

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Martha offers hospitality, preparing meals and hosting Jesus and his disciples. As we see in Jesus’ ministry, this too was part of discipleship. Yet Jesus, the Word incarnate, found nothing greater than hearing and delivering his Father’s words, the “one thing … necessary.”

The chief mark of discipleship is receiving Jesus in his Word, as Mary does. There is a time for a disciple to do “many things,” but attentiveness to Christ is first. Jesus is delivering himself to Mary as her Savior. The instruction Mary is receiving “will not be taken away from her.” She will cherish these hours, for these words of life will fuel her many works.

A disciple is first and foremost a recipient of good news. Following the example of Jesus is an important part of discipleship in the Gospels, but it is not the gospel.

Yet many today are equating discipleship with the gospel. John Mark Comer focuses his recent book, Practicing the Way, on discipleship. Comer reports that many people told him they had never heard about discipleship before in their evangelical churches.

This is surprising to me. I grew up in an evangelical world in which Dallas Willard—the preeminent name on spiritual formation—made a significant impact. Everyone was talking about discipleship. A translation of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ (circa 1418–1427) was a well-marked-up volume in my mother’s library. In His Steps, an 1896 classic by Charles Sheldon, was on the shelf too. In that book, Sheldon, a Congregationalist pioneer of the social gospel movement, asked the question “What would Jesus do?”

For 19th-century evangelist Charles G. Finney and other revivalists, in fact, following Christ’s example edged out Christ’s saving work in their preaching. Evangelicalism is an activistic version of Christianity, which has its pros and cons, as Jesus’ words to Martha and Mary suggest.

One evangelical theologian who focuses on Christian activism is Scot McKnight. I appreciate his emphasis on Jesus himself being the gospel. But I think McKnight’s reactions against a genuine problem of evangelical reductionism (found in such resources as the “plan of salvation” tracts) lead him to another oversimplification.

Comer, too, emphasizes the active nature of Christian practice, but he lacks McKnight’s nuance. Comer acts as if no one had thought about discipleship and the kingdom of God until he came along.

As I see it, the problem with Comer’s emphasis is equating discipleship with the gospel. In Practicing the Way, Comer says, “And through apprenticeship to Jesus, we can enter into this kingdom and into the inner life of God himself.” But even if we were to adopt this approach—doing all the things Jesus said—that is not salvific. Jesus taught that a person enters the kingdom through the new birth, which is an entirely supernatural gift of grace (John 3:1–8).

But there is nothing really about grace in Comer’s Practicing the Way. In fact, there is a lot about Jesus as example, but the main point is “What would Jesus do?” Part of what is done seems to be a “rule of life.” Comer’s emphasis on a rule of life may echo the Benedictine Rule, but it is a decidedly modern monasticism, both in its view of salvation and in its individualism. His “nine core practices” can be done without any particular accountability to a local church. Like many who emphasize Christ’s example over his achievement, Comer seems to think that God’s work is something he accomplishes merely through us rather than for us.

But Jesus is not just a preeminent rabbi. He is also the Father’s incarnate Son, who descended in flesh to redeem us from condemnation and death. Jesus is the gospel.

So while the message of Christian formation according to Jesus’ example is entirely appropriate for Christian growth, it is instead made into the gospel itself. It isn’t.

Jesus himself summarized loving God and neighbor as the fulfillment of the whole law (Matt. 22:37–40; Gal. 5:14). Jesus exemplifies the perfect human, not only in his birth but also in his obedient life and sacrifice.

The “What would Jesus do?” (or WWJD) gospel is not a gospel at all. It is the law—the good law. We have it not only prescribed in the Ten Commandments but also fulfilled in Christ. The Good News is not “Give your life to Jesus” or “Surrender all”—actions we take—but the truth that the incarnate Son gave his life and surrendered all for you. Apart from this Good News, the example of Jesus leads us either to despair or to self-righteousness.

This truth is abundant not only in Paul’s writings but also in the Gospels, even in the episode with the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:16–22). The Pharisee in one of Jesus’ parables goes so far as to thank God for his moral superiority, but Jesus says the tax collector “went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (Luke 18:14). How could this happen unless, as Paul teaches, Christ’s fulfillment of the law is imputed to us just as our transgressions are imputed to him?

It’s not a question of whether we hold in principle to such doctrines but rather whether they function as key drivers of gospel discipleship or are transformed into the gospel itself.

I have learned much from conversations with Professor McKnight. But I know more about what he believes about “King Jesus” than “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Apart from the latter, it is terrifying news that Jesus is King. Look at me. My best efforts at discipleship are stained by pride and sloth. I’m hardly a person Jesus could trust to help him usher in the everlasting kingdom of righteousness and peace. I want to be, but even my wanting is too often halfhearted and fleeting.

Is there a gospel for people like me? Maybe I don’t have a great testimony of descending into a horrible life of rebellion and then surrendering all. But Jesus surrendered all for me. King Jesus on a cross: That’s the story from Genesis 3:15 to the end of the Bible.

Maybe we can’t point to radical moments of transformation in our lives and in the world through us. Perhaps we are those who go to church, confess our sins, hear and believe the gospel, receive Christ’s body and blood, and go out again into the world to love and serve our neighbors in meaningful but quiet and failing ways.

I need the body of Christ because I’m not a good disciple on my own. There are no rules or core practices that will save me from this. Only the story I’m baptized into can do that. Let me hear it again, from different episodes, until I feel myself becoming rescripted into it. Let me pray with other struggling Christians who sometimes just don’t feel like praying.

Above all, let me be a recipient of grace. Instead of coming together to get our marching orders for consummating the kingdom, let us come together to confess our sin and our faith in Christ, who is greater than all our sin. And let us go out to offer a sacrifice not of atonement but of thanksgiving for the atonement Christ accomplished once and for all.

Jesus reigns. The good news in this is not that he gives you an agenda and example (which he does!) but that he is your “righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).

Discipleship is not the gospel. It is the fruit of the gospel. Just as fruit varies from tree to tree, so do our roles in God’s kingdom. There is no promise that you will become a world transformer. You might just be somebody who washes dishes, changes diapers, or drives a truck. That’s good. Jesus was a builder.

Perhaps there will be decisive moments where your discipleship enjoys a significant impact, but for most of us, it is a slog. We try not to be “anxious and troubled about many things,” but we are. We try not to envy, but we do. We try not to surrender to sloth when there is so much to accomplish, but we are halfhearted.

Martha thought Mary was wasting her own time and Jesus’ by asking theological questions. But maybe that’s what a disciple does more than anything. Mary and Martha were both disciples, but the work of discipleship starts with and remains grounded by the gospel that falls from Jesus’ lips.

Disciples do serve, work, and extend hospitality. But they do this because they have sat at the feet of Jesus to learn who he is and what he has come to do.

More than providing comfort or anything else, the news that King Jesus is the Lamb of God is the fuel for following the example of the one who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28). Martha indeed found the one thing necessary, which Jesus pointed out to her: “Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Michael Horton is J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. His most recent book is Shaman and Sage.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Are You Really a Disciple?".

- More from Michael Horton

Corresponding Issue

Christianity Today

January/February 2026

Culture

Faith Stagnant? Play More.

David Zahl

Having fun might be the greatest testament to the gospel of God’s grace.

Illustration by Chiara Xie

On our way to church every weekend, my family and I pass two sets of tennis courts, one municipal and one belonging to the local university. We’ve been taking this route for more than a decade, and for the first two-thirds of that time, the courts were empty on Sunday mornings. During COVID-19, these spots came alive. Now they are crowded with people—old and young, women and men of every shape and size. They’re not playing tennis, though. They’re playing pickleball.

What accounts for the explosion? I have a couple of theories. For starters, the bar to entry is far lower than that of tennis. You can pick up the game in an hour or so, no matter your age. The fact that it’s usually played outdoors is another plus, as is the fact that it gets the body moving. Legs pump and hearts beat—but not too much. The fitness requirements are modest in comparison with tennis, where there is far more ground to cover. It also helps that pickleball is an inherently social game. Singles play is almost nonexistent, which is no small thing considering one in three older adults and one in four adolescents are socially isolated, according to the World Health Organization.

But people don’t take up pickleball primarily to ward off loneliness—or to counterbalance rising levels of “workism,” for that matter. It’s simply fun. There’s something delightful about the ball’s little pops, something faintly ridiculous about the use of words like kitchen and, of course, pickle. The newness of the game means nearly everyone is a novice, so the stakes are low. In a time when the world feels heavy, pickleball feels like a respite. Pickleball has become a thing because we are starved for play.

Much has been made of the decline of free play in the lives of American children. Statistics generally focus on the consistent reductions in recess times that elementary schools have instituted over the past few decades. The strategy consultant company EAB (Education Advisory Board) reported that between 2001 and 2019, average weekly recess time in US schools declined by 60 minutes to make room for more instruction. Of the time for recess that remains, it is still a common practice for educators to withhold it from rowdy students as a disciplinary tool. Equally notable is the way extracurricular excess has squeezed out afterschool downtime, with the demands of college-transcript-enhancing activities ramping up earlier and faster.

When that pattern is combined with increased parental vigilance, kids simply play less than they once did. They certainly play less freely. Social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt link this decline to inversely high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among young people.

The decline applies to adults as well. What once were hobbies are now, for many of us, side hustles. A weekend scrapbooking project morphs into an Etsy shop. A brisk jog in the woods is now a training session for the next trail-running 5K. Add smartphones to the mix, allowing the workday to bleed into off-hours, and play doesn’t stand a chance.

The decline of play is lamentable not just for its social consequences; it is also lamentable for what it signals about contemporary spiritual conditions. A life in which play is sparse is one in which joy is sparse. This alone ought to grieve believers who consider joy a fruit of the Spirit and a core aspect of the Christian life and God’s character. More than that, Christians are bold enough to claim that God’s fundamental disposition toward the world he created, as revealed in Christ, is one of grace.

Play describes a way of being in the world that divine grace makes possible—a way that is dynamic and delight-filled, outward-oriented yet faithful. As such, it represents an urgent if tragically undertapped opportunity for Christian witness to a world drowning in dreariness. Those who champion grace might do well to champion play as a response to it.

Play, is, admittedly, a tricky word to pin down. It’s almost impossible to dissect play in a playful way. It is one of those know-it-when-you-see-it experiences. Yet if play is as vital to the human soul and spirit as I suspect it is, it may be worth attempting a definition.

Psychologist and ethologist Gordon Burghardt offers a few key traits that characterize play, three of which are worth listing here. These traits were originally identified in the animal kingdom but translate to a Homo sapiens context.

First, something can be considered play if it does not immediately serve our need to survive. Play, in this sense, is unnecessary activity.

Second, play is voluntary and not a response to some external influence. It is something we do simply because we like it. If you undertake a given activity out of fear or coercion, it is not play, but when that same activity is unhooked from threat and pressure, it becomes play. There may be winners and losers in a game, but it won’t truly be play unless the stakes are benign.

Third, play occurs when and only when, Burghardt says, “the animal is well-fed, safe, and healthy.” An expression of freedom, play happens when our basic needs are met. One reason researchers like psychologist Peter Gray believe free play is so essential to children’s development is because it is where they can experiment, take risks, and fail without suffering consequences.

There are other attributes we can highlight. Play is usually noninstrumental. We understand and experience something as play when we do it for its own sake rather than as a means to an end. It may produce a result, but that’s not why we do it. Many of us play pickleball because we genuinely enjoy the sport, not because it yields any concrete reward.

Play also tends to be relational and transportive, like a trip to another universe where alternate rules apply. Spike a ball at someone on the street, and you will be reproved at best. Do it on a volleyball court, and you’ll be cheered. Furthermore, play tends to be motivated by delight rather than judgment. The fact that few people grew up playing pickleball competitively is no coincidence when it comes to the game’s popularity. It means that when we play it, we are free from comparison with our past selves.

Yet we make a mistake when we limit our understanding of play to games and other ostensibly nonserious pursuits. Play may include frivolity, but the reality is more expansive than that. Indeed, everyone plays. Grandmas play, and so do middle-aged moms with demanding careers. Their forms of play may or may not resemble fun in the conventional sense. For some, play may look like doing a jigsaw puzzle after dinner. For others, it may look like baking something delicious. Gardening can be a form of play. Kids in war-torn towns find ways to play. So do folks in elder-care facilities.

Learning about something you’re deeply interested in can be a form of play. Plenty of people experience an aspect of play at work; that element is usually what they like most about their jobs. Indeed, the opposite of play is not work but depression. Part of what makes certain circumstances so difficult—for example, being a single parent struggling to make ends meet—is the lack of play they afford.

Researcher Stuart Brown writes in his book Play,

Life without play is a grinding, mechanical existence organized around doing the things necessary for survival. Play is the stick that stirs the drink. It is the basis of all art, games, books, sports, movies, fashion, fun, and wonder—in short, the basis of what we think of as civilization. Play is the vital essence of life.

Christians have long had a conflicted relationship with play. On the one hand, a church without a playground is hardly a church. Kids may go to Sunday school to learn, but there’s usually an overlay of fun. Vacation Bible school tends to be light on the “school” part and heavy on Technicolor wackiness.

And then there’s youth group, one of the last bastions of nonperformative fun available to teenagers in the age of the travel-sports industrial complex. The youth group mixer game is the height of this sort of play, a mix of silliness and exuberance pioneered by organizations like Young Life and elevated into big entertainment by Dude Perfect. Shaving a balloon, playing lights-out hide-and-seek, seeing how many marshmallows you can fit in your mouth—these things are proudly and subversively ridiculous. They do not serve the college transcript.

For adults, there are church softball and basketball leagues, watercolor classes, and movie nights. In these ways, churches prioritize play whether they realize it or not.

This unconscious reverence for play makes sense, given the references we find in the Bible. In 2 Samuel, we read of David joyfully dancing before the Lord after the ark of the covenant enters Jerusalem (6:14). Later, when Zechariah prophesies about the building of the second temple, he equates the Lord blessing Zion with “city streets … filled with boys and girls playing there” (8:5). In Proverbs, the portrayal of wisdom as being “filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in [God’s] presence” suggests a playful disposition lies at the very heart of creation (8:30–31).

On the other hand, we have the stereotype of the Christian killjoy, embodied in Dana Carvey’s “Church Lady” skit on Saturday Night Live and rejuvenated via Angela on The Office. This is the religious person we experience as “the fun police”—serious in the extreme, the opposite of playful toward other Christians or the culture at large. These caricatures, while incomplete, have an undeniable basis in reality.

My grandfather tells the story of growing up in Porterville, California, in the 1920s as the son of a pietist Lutheran pastor. When he was 10 years old, he and a friend were caught playing a drum in the street on Good Friday. The full-throated chastisement he received from his parents, who characterized his play as ill-conceived and even blasphemous, stuck with him the rest of his life. He would often cite the incident as a key contributor in his decision to leave not only Porterville but also the Christian faith itself.

I doubt my great-grandparents would have openly equated gaiety with sin, but that’s what their reaction communicated to their preteen son. Truth be told, I can see where they were coming from. Our faith deals with the heaviest subjects imaginable—sin, death, evil—and if there’s any particular day we should defer to the seriousness on offer, that day is Good Friday.

Illustration by Chiara Xie

Yet it’s precisely from the blood of Christ on Good Friday that we might begin to construct a theology of play. I’m referring to the assurance afforded Christians by the blood of Christ shed on Calvary. This “blessed assurance,” as we have come to know it, flows from the claim that forgiveness of sins is tethered to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ rather than anything you and I do or don’t do. We can therefore move into life with the confidence that the gospel applies to us personally.

My church tradition foregrounds this assurance in the baptismal liturgy, which ends with the pronouncement that the person is “sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” This unshakable guarantee of God’s love, presence, and power frees the Christian from worrying about the state of his or her soul. “All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away,” Jesus says in John 6:37.

The blessed assurance of grace announces that the high-wire game of proving ourselves is finished. By grace, the lingering threat of judgment has been removed, establishing precisely the sort of safety that Burghardt’s definition requires for a person to play, albeit on a deeper, existential level. What this means is that, when it comes to God, the Christian is set free from the spur of necessity and can enter into a new relation of play. Nigerian theologian Nimi Wariboko connects the dots when he writes, “The logic of grace is the logic of play.”

In more gut-level terms, the key question of the Christian life becomes one of freedom: What would you do, what risk would you take, what would you say if you weren’t afraid? What would you do if you truly believed your standing with God was secure, the ultimate threat of judgment was removed, and you didn’t have to do anything? How would you spend your time and energy if you could undertake something for the sheer joy of doing it rather than any outcome it might produce?

These are scary questions, but I suspect their answers have something to do with exercising the unique gifts God has given each of us. We may even find ourselves free to think of others and their well-being rather than anxiously safeguarding our own.

Fortunately, a theology of play is built on more than the absence of judgment. It also takes seriously Christ’s exalting of children. In Matthew 18:2–3, we read how Jesus “called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” There are many ways to interpret his words: as an invitation to humility, as a beatitudinal valorization of the least, as a rebuke to the social hierarchies of the day. But certainly an endorsement of childlikeness should make the list. The only thing children do is play. At least, that’s what they do after their immediate needs are provided for—and before extracurriculars get ahold of them. There is no becoming like a child that does not involve play.

Last, a theology of play depends on a robust view of the Holy Spirit. After all, the Christian cannot speak about freedom without speaking of the Holy Spirit as its engine. “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” writes Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17. It is no coincidence that the images the Bible gives us for the Spirit—fire, water, wind—are united by their uncontrollability, spontaneity, and dynamism, three attributes that apply to play as well. As Wariboko puts it, “Play is an expression of the freedom of the spirit.”

The Spirit is not our instrument; if anything, we are the Spirit’s instrument. And the way the Spirit works in the world is not formulaic but creative, surprising, and free-flowing. This means that the Spirit-driven Christian life in the key of play looks less like a game of pickleball and more like a game of “Calvinball,” the hilarious recreation improvised by Calvin and his stuffed tiger Hobbes in the legendary comic strip of the same name. It is a made-up game where the same rule can never be used twice.

A few implications of a theology of play present themselves at this point. First, understanding play as an essential part of the Christian life does not mean Christians are exempt from suffering. Even the most cursory reading of Paul’s letters would discount any suggestion in that direction. However, it does mean there may be something inescapably fun about being a Christian.

Laughter and joy are not incidental. Perhaps this hints at what Augustine meant when he articulated a vision of Christian life as focused on delight rather than obligation: delight in creation, delight in others, delight in God. In other words, church may be a great place to cry, but if it doesn’t inspire a smile now and then, something may have gone awry.

Second, there is a difference between commending playfulness and endorsing the sort of indulgence that religious folks may associate with the specter of lawlessness. Play isn’t insipid but fundamentally constructive. Theologian (and my brother) Simeon Zahl writes,

In play a person is free to engage with the world creatively, actively, energetically, but without fear of ‘serious’ consequences. The Christian is free to play with things that once seemed deadly serious, to find delight in what were formerly objects of fear, and to take themselves much less seriously.

If play is truly an essential dimension of a Spirit-driven Christian life, a sense of humor is not spiritually negligible. Silliness and self-deprecation become not just virtues but acts of resistance in a world (and a church) that enshrines productivity more with each passing day. You will know them not just by their works of love but by the “useless” laughter that accompanies those works.

Illustration by Chiara Xie

Does play matter now? It feels as if the world is on fire, collapsing as we speak under waves of acrimony, fear, and exploitation. The doom is palpable, and not just on social media (though particularly there). Am I really saying the Christian response to the state of the world is to … play? To be like a modern-day Nero, callously batting around a pickleball as Rome burns? Isn’t the proper Christian response to suffering one of service and sacrifice and reconciliation? Absolutely it is.

Yet to iterate an earlier point, work and play are not mutually exclusive categories. Adopting a playful attitude toward your work on behalf of others doesn’t make that work any less urgent; it merely ensures you won’t burn out as quickly. To serve others in a way that makes you smile, that even brings delight, means you will serve your neighbor better. Like a child in a sandbox, you will take bigger risks if you believe eternity isn’t at stake.

In addition, I doubt anyone believes the solution to present distress will come from amplifying the gravity of our predicament even more. Self-seriousness is already at critical levels. In fact, I often wonder if our culture’s current heaviness invites Christians to turn up the volume on their witness to a lighter way of being in the world. As the world grows steadily more grave, our playfulness points that much more clearly to a different world, a kingdom full of forgiven sinners, where children laugh and angels, you know, play.

Fortunately, the ultimate contribution Christians make in the world isn’t the injunction to play more or harder. I consider this a relief since we all know there’s nothing less fun than the command to have fun. No, our ultimate contribution is the message of salvation that we cling to and share, the gospel of Jesus Christ. That good news is rendered incomprehensible if not wedded to a sympathetic mode of delivery: grace spoken graciously, love conveyed lovingly, and freedom communicated freely, which is to say, playfully.

Back to those pickleball courts. I visited the other day, paddle in hand, and the vibe had shifted. The skills were stronger, the smiles less abundant. It was clear that certain contestants had invested the game with ranking and identity. Play had taken a back seat to competition. The outing reminded me that while the playful sharing of the gospel in word and deed remains a high and worthy calling, it is also one we will inevitably foul up. But maybe that’s okay. There are no grades at recess, after all.

David Zahl is founder and director of Mockingbird Ministries. He is the author of The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-out World; Low Anthropology; and Seculosity.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Blessed Are the Pickleball Players".

- More from David Zahl

Corresponding Issue

Christianity Today

January/February 2026

Books

Review

He Left the Pastorate. But He Hasn’t Given up on Religion.

Michael Wear

Ryan Burge’s Vanishing Church shows the importance of faith for America.

Illustration by The Project Twins

Ryan Burge “stumbled” into ministry, as he put it. He left the pastorate with his church in decline, but he has not yet given up on reviving religion in America.

Burge is a sociologist who has carved out a nearly singular online profile as a prominent purveyor of charts and graphs about religious life in America. In his new book, The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us, he reveals more of the man behind the numbers than usual in this data-driven but heartfelt (and heart-wrenching) narrative of religious change and decline in American life.

Readers rarely hear from pastors whose work in pastoring comes to, in Burge’s words, an “unceremonious end” or who describe their own two decades of ministry as an “abject failure” when assessed by “traditional metrics of attendance, number of baptisms, and giving.” Pastors of 50-member churches rarely get book deals (as Burge has). Yet not many pastors of 50-member churches have shaped the way thousands of academic, religious, and civic leaders think about religion and society. Though Burge may be uniquely positioned to write this book, his pastoral experience is not unique.

What Burge mourns is not just the decline of his church but the “hollowing out” of American religious life as a place to belong before believing. Forty years ago, he observes, “there was a place to feel welcomed and embraced no matter how much or how little one believed in Jesus Christ that particular Sunday—or how one cast their ballot on Election Day. But that’s no longer the case.”

Instead, Burge argues that “American religion has become an ‘all or none’ proposition—conservative evangelical religion or none at all.” This, then, “leaves tens of millions of theological and political moderates with no place to find community and spiritual edification, or to work collectively to solve societal problems”—effectively religiously homeless. He widens the lens, surveying five decades of religious fracturing and polarization, focusing on evangelicals, mainline Protestants, Catholics, and the religiously unaffiliated.

Burge’s discussion of evangelicals will be particularly interesting to readers of Christianity Today. The height of evangelical identification in America occurred during the 1990s, when American evangelicals were the least politically polarized they’ve ever been. Specifically, evangelicals’ “numerical peak” in 1993 occurred when 3 in 10 Americans identified as evangelical. This was also when they were the most politically diverse and when their political affiliation was fairly evenly split between the Democratic and Republican parties.

How convenient it would be for Burge to argue that the more polarized evangelicals become, the less they attract and retain adherents. But that’s not what he sees in the data. He affirms the exceptional resilience of American evangelicalism in the context of broader religious decline. The polarization of American evangelicalism over the past three decades may have contributed to its broader decline, but as Americans have increasingly identified Christianity with a particular political ideology, culture, and aesthetic, Burge is clear that the data “doesn’t suggest that becoming more politically conservative equated to a net negative for evangelicalism’s share of the population.”

What Burge does argue, as I have said elsewhere, is that Americans, including evangelicals, increasingly look to their churches to affirm their political views: “There are people who have begun attending evangelical churches more for their partisan leanings than their theological views.”

Evangelicals should be wary of a dynamic in which people go to politics to get their spiritual needs met and go to church to get their political views affirmed. We may think it’s a happy coincidence—or, worse, an intrinsic fact—that Christianity maps onto a specific political ideology, but if we are attentive, we might find that our political ideology is eating our theology for breakfast.

How did we get here? Burge turns his attention to what he calls the “Big Church Sort”: naming the cultural fault lines that lead to a siphoning across political and socioeconomic divides. Socioeconomically, he contends that “religious practice has become a thing of privilege,” as higher education and income relate to increased church attendance and religious commitment.

Culturally, Burge sees the 1990s as the hinge point for the Big Church Sort. “Between 1991 and 1998,” Burge writes, “the share of eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds who said that they had no religious affiliation went from 8.1 to 20.5 percent, while the share who were Christians dropped from 87 to 73 percent.” Religion became polarizing, Burge argues, and moderation became viewed as a liability.

While the Religious Right polarized religion—not just politics—in a way that favored evangelicalism, this polarization harmed Christianity overall, demographically speaking. According to Burge, the Religious Right “absolutely led to a surge in the share of Americans who aligned with an evangelical tradition, but it also led to a rapid weakening of other major Protestant denominations, and it pushed a growing number of Americans, especially young adults, to no longer align with any religious tradition at all.”

Major technological and global shifts in the ’90s likely contributed to America’s religious decline, including the end of the Cold War (and thus the need for American leaders to strike a contrast with the Soviet Union and “godless communism” with affirmations of the centrality of religious virtue in America), as well as the widespread availability of the internet. Whatever the reasons, the decline of religion in 1990s America, and especially the disappearing of the religious middle, is central to understanding religious life in America today.

Given that religious commitment of any kind is less common today, Burge suggests that shared interests and understanding are more likely to emerge among people who practice religion in any form, even different faiths and traditions.

This does not minimize or erase the significance of the differences between those varied religious traditions—between Christianity and Islam, for instance. But in civic life, people who hold religious commitments of any kind might increasingly find that the very nature of being religious results in similar interests and experiences. Indeed, diverse religious groups already collaborate to promote and protect religious freedom in the courts.

Of course, while we lament the decline in religious practice and a rise in religious disaffiliation, America still remains an exceptionally religious nation. “About 85 percent of Americans believe in God in some way, over 60 percent of Americans identify with a Christian tradition, and 55 percent of adults attend religious services at least once a year,” Burge writes. It is hard to think of any meaningful characteristic more Americans hold in common than religious adherence.

We cannot think about the future of American democracy without thinking about the future of faith in this country. In this book,Burge solidifies his standing as one of the leading scholars who will help us do just that.

As he closes the book, Burge passionately pleads for readers to identify “fringe beliefs”—positions not held by a significant percentage of the public. He encourages readers to reject using those beliefs, or political processes, to impose unpopular views or engage in “burn it all down” nihilism.

Burge encourages Americans to willingly participate in religious communities that do not perfectly fit or affirm their political views and to resist a tribal approach to politics, noting how siloed churches can dehumanize others. As his analysis of religious decline heavily focuses on lost social capital, Burge’s case for returning to faith relies on a recognition of its personal and civic benefits. It is a case worth making, and I hope it is heard by those who believe religion does more harm than good.

Yet his case for returning to religion is insufficient. For one, Burge argues for a religious future on the grounds that are not all that religious. It may be that “the fate and future of American democracy” are at stake when we consider Americans belonging to a local religious institution, but I am doubtful Americans will make their way to a local church to save democracy—nor should they.

Democracy might require the return of religion, but the return of religion cannot be motivated by democracy or political needs of any kind. For Americans to return to the religious middle, the religious middle must rediscover their own sense of confidence, commitment, and conviction in Christian belief itself. While Burge emphasizes the value of the religious middle as a home for those who doubt, who aren’t quite “all in,” I am not sure this is viable or advisable.

The problem for Burge, it seems, is that mainline churches were too reasonable, victims of a polarizing politics and a “branding problem.” Burge affirms the analysis of scholars Dean Kelley and Larry Iannaccone, whom he summarizes, saying, “Mainline churches have tried to be too many things to too many people.”

While evangelicals “often place a strong emphasis on regular attendance and consistent engagement,” Burge writes, “the same is not often the case for mainline Protestants.” He does not offer a clear correction of this disposition.

It is insufficient to value Christianity solely for what it contributes to the well-being of Americans and their communities.

While the church should have room for people who struggle with doubt, churches should not be organized to affirm and encourage doubt. Although pastors do not need to act as if they have all the answers, Christianity offers not just good works but knowledge about reality. Churches should permit doubt without anxiety or penalty, and those who struggle with doubt should receive understanding and care, buoyed by the faith of those around them. Doubt can be a terrible thing—it should not be confused with humility.

The reason local congregations can bring together people across differences is Christ, who holds them together in shared love of God. This, too, is dogma.

The immense social capital local churches produce, so thoroughly documented by Burge in this book, is not the cause of the local church, but its effect. The civic contributions of local churches and the Christians who make them up must flow from their rootedness in the life and gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Vanishing Church is a valuable, provocative book. It will help clarify beliefs concerning the role of the church and both personal and communal expressions of faith, as well as Christianity’s relevance to American society. Whether or not one agrees with Burge’s prescriptions, the book helpfully complicates preferred narratives across political and religious spectra.

For those who celebrate the decline of religious attendance, Burge forces them to count the costs of this development, including the social and civic losses it entails. For those who mourn this decline, Burge demands that we acknowledge America’s broad exceptionalism when it comes to Christianity, especially considering that the 20th century relied on a broad Christ-ian diversity of tradition, politics, and even conviction.

Even with Burge’s own doubts and discomforts, he continues to tell the story of faith within this country, making his case for the good it contributes one graph and data point at a time.

Michael Wear is the president and CEO of the Center for Christianity and Public Life and author of The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "The Hollowing Out of American Religious Life".

- More from Michael Wear

Books

Review

Revival Begins with Suffering, Not Celebrity

Luke Geraty

Craig Keener’s book Suffering reminds us from where true greatness comes.

Illustration by The Project Twins

I remember the first time I heard Craig Keener speak. The world-renowned scholar had recently published Miracles, a two-volume work providing a philosophical, biblical, and experiential case for the supernatural work of God. Most of us assumed he’d aim his comments toward the charismatic crowd in the room and talk about documented healings and people being raised from the dead.

Keener did not disappoint. But he also broadened his work to include the role of suffering as a framework for how those of us who “earnestly desire the spiritual gifts” (1 Cor. 14:1, ESV) must also remember the formative experience of suffering. After all, Jesus said, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also” (John 15:20). Keener’s new book, Suffering: Its Meaning for the Spirit-Filled Life, likewise argues suffering is a primary way we experience the Holy Spirit.

While Suffering is not written only for those connected to a charismatic tradition, it is an important book for those of us who are part of movements emphasizing the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. Why? Particularly in this tradition I share, there is a degree of misleading teaching concerning both the reality of suffering and the ways the Bible instructs us to respond to it. In fact, some Christian leaders, such as Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and others in the Word of Faith movement, suggest suffering isn’t something followers of Jesus should experience. When someone does suffer, they teach, that person must have disobeyed or displeased God.

But suffering is not always evidence that God is disappointed with us or we have done something wrong. As Keener notes, “Miracles display God’s power more directly, but God also provides testimony by sustaining us in hard times.” Those hard times are precisely what Keener aims to address.

Suffering begins by reminding us of two things: Jesus is worth everything, and there is a cost to following him. So the question for the reader becomes “How much is Jesus worth?” Keener navigates through the Gospels, reminding us Jesus is to be valued above job security (Matt. 4:18–22), residential security (Luke 9:57–58), financial security (Matt. 19:21), family ties (10:37; Luke 14:26), social obligations (Luke 9:60), and life itself (Matt. 10:38). When we experience everyday hardships, we have a chance to cherish Jesus above all else and base our hope not on circumstances but on the assurance that our names are written in the Book of Life (Rev. 3:5).

Jesus, too, speaks of the value of suffering. He tells his disciples, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33), but today we often leave this out of our gospel proclamations. Given the reality of suffering, what has sustained the church through tribulations, trials, and tremendous difficulties? Jesus gives us the answer: He comforts his disciples, saying, “But take heart! I have overcome the world.” For Keener, revival does not simply indicate God’s active presence with corresponding joy and renewal; it can also strengthen the faith of Jesus’ followers in preparation for testing and adversity.

Church history also indicates that many of God’s most powerful actions, often described as revivals, are directly connected to hardships. Keener states the connection: “Sometimes revival comes after hardship, but sometimes it comes to get us ready.” Those in charismatic traditions would do well to take heed. While we spend countless hours praying for revival and teaching on the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence, we need to remember that following Jesus is an invitation to take up our cross and that a cross-shaped life can be where we experience the Spirit’s work—both personally and corporately.

Rather than see suffering as a way to experience the comfort of Christ or the power of the Spirit, many leaders seek influence by enhancing their own platforms, finances, and social success. We see a different picture when we turn to Scripture. Keener provides a biblical understanding of the characteristics of New Testament apostles and prophets, a far cry from platform or wealth. He leans into a better understanding of the people God raised up to influence the church, reminding us that “a key biblical hallmark of such ministry is suffering.”

Likewise, Matthew D. Taylor, in his book The Violent Take It by Force, is also critical of particular movements (such as the Global Apostolic and Prophetic movement or New Apostolic Reformation) because they focus on obtaining power. Suffering is a helpful corrective both to charismatic Christian practices that emphasize revival and success without the Cross and, more broadly, to Western Christianity, which often focuses on glorious victory and happiness.

So how should we think about the relationship apostles and prophets have with suffering and trials? Keener draws out the importance of suffering in the life of the apostle Paul, especially as described in 2 Corinthians. We read that Paul shared “abundantly in the sufferings of Christ” (1:5) and experienced “troubles” that led to him being “under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that [he] despaired of life itself” (v. 8).
Additionally, Paul provided extensive lists of the sufferings he experienced (4:8–13; 6:4–10). When those in charismatic traditions seek to answer the question “What is an apostle?” they must see it’s clearly marked by trial, persecution, and discomfort, not shiny suits, gold watches, and private jets.

Furthermore, suffering is not simply a Pauline experience; it is also connected to all the New Testament apostles and Old Testament prophets. Apostles suffered, and their ministry was one of hardship. Rich and satisfying? Absolutely! But also costly.

These same New Testament apostolic attributes appear among the prophets of the Old Testament. Keener notes that God used prophets to help prepare his people for suffering: “True prophets often delivered messages about suffering and, especially in times of national disobedience, were forced to experience it themselves.” As James 5:10 concurs, “Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” Many of God’s prophets were killed (1 Kings 18:4; 2 Chron. 24:20–22). Indeed, what matters is less the office and more the general point: Leadership requires suffering as a way to experience the Spirit of God.

Keener’s book is a helpful resource both in how it engages Scripture and in how it challenges us to understand suffering. Keener’s first-rate biblical scholarship displays his learning, but his work also offers significant pastoral wisdom. He inspires believers through stories from the persecuted church, such as Christians who suffer for their faith in Iran or northern Nigeria.

When we suffer, we might wonder what the connection is between suffering and spiritual warfare. Is all suffering simply an attack from demonic forces, or is it more complex? Keener frames his view in a “now and not yet” understanding of the kingdom of God. As we read the New Testament, especially Paul’s statement in Ephesians 6:12, we discover that we are in a clash of kingdoms and that suffering often results from spiritual opposition. Yet whether suffering is a result of the Fall or of spiritual attack, it is an avenue where followers of Jesus can gain a greater sense of intimacy with God as we share in the “fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10, KJV). When we suffer, we remember Christ, who suffered for us.

Suffering also engages practical concerns in a gold mine for pastors seeking to shepherd their flocks. Keener dismantles the prosperity gospel while noting how Scripture challenges us both to pray for God’s provision (which is relative) and to be generous. Keener shows us that financial difficulties are common for millions of Christians and that we must realize we are all vulnerable to financial hardships. This shared experience should “motivate us to greater compassion for those in need.”

Generosity is the Christian response to suffering. Suffering will help us frame these hardships as what they are and will empower us to be faithful to Christ, see things in light of his kingdom, and persevere to the end.

This is the crux of Keener’s work. Followers of Jesus can, by the power of the Spirit, endure and conquer. The Spirit-filled life—what all Christians are called to pursue—is a journey not of worldly power but of intimacy with Christ. How are we to suffer? What resources can empower us to trust God? Why does suffering exist? Who is responsible for it? Keener provides thoughtful answers. We suffer for a variety of reasons, and we endure and overcome because we share in Christ’s suffering. Testing produces character and conforms us to Christ’s image, for in Scripture we discover that our present suffering cannot compare to our future hope.

Luke Geraty serves as a pastor theologian at the Red Bluff Vineyard Church in Northern California and hosts The Sacramental Charismatic podcast.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Suffering Is Part of the Job Description".

- More from Luke Geraty

Corresponding Issue

Christianity Today

January/February 2026

Church Life

This Ex-Atheist Has Some Explaining to Do

Interview by Kara Bettis Carvalho

Novelist Christopher Beha’s move from unbelief to faith in Christ confounded those who know him. His new book walks skeptics through his conversion.

Illustration by Tim Bouckley

Two years ago, CT declared New Atheism dead, referring to an angry and vitriolic form of unbelief that arose in the early 2000s. Writer and editor Christopher Beha tackles today’s atheism—what he calls “romantic idealism”—more than 20 years later in his book Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer.

Beha defines romantic idealism as an irrational worldview that elevates free will and personal experience, whereas older forms of atheism focused on scientific materialism that looks to the physical world as the extent of existence.

Why I Am Not an Atheist explores these two forms of unbelief, documenting Beha’s own journey out of organized religion, through atheism and agnosticism, and eventually back to the Catholic church.

Beha, a former Harper’s Magazine editor known for his novels, including What Happened to Sophie Wilder and The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, spoke over the phone with Christianity Today from his home in Brooklyn Heights, New York, about his journey as a skeptic. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kara Bettis Carvalho: Tell me why you wanted to write this specific book.

Christopher Beha: I had made this return to faith after leaving a Catholic church in my childhood, being an atheist for a long time, being somewhat of a seeker, and eventually finding my way back into the church. And there were a lot of people in my life who found this development puzzling—not, I really want to emphasize, that anyone was hostile or antagonistic about it—but they found it puzzling and inconsistent with what they understood about me and my intellectual values.

It’s one of those things that people often have a hard time having conversations about. And I found that when I could talk at some length with people about these things, those conversations were often very valuable. But it was difficult for me to give a short, encapsulated answer to the question of why I’m not an atheist anymore. So I kind of sat down in an effort to answer the question in a way that I hope will be of interest to people of any faith background who are interested in the journey that one person went on that led them out of and back into the Christian faith.

KBC: You discuss two different categories of atheism: scientific materialism and romantic idealism. How did you come to those categories?

CB: Part of my goal was not just to give an account of a plausible form of religious belief to people who are atheists but to give a fair and, in some ways, compelling account of atheism to religious believers. Because if you’ve been raised in a religious faith and you’ve never had that faith shaken, it may be that the idea that people could not believe in God seems a little nuts.

As someone who has been on both sides of the fence, I think I can describe both sides fairly and from the inside in a way that I hope would make them mutually comprehensible. If you’re describing atheism and what it would mean to hold atheist beliefs to a person who has spent their whole life within a religious tradition and is not really familiar with these things, the first thing you could note is that there isn’t just one kind of atheism, in the same way that religion is not a monolithic category. Even Christianity is not monolithic.

Some of the loudest atheists would like to claim as much because they would like a monopoly on what people who don’t believe in God do believe. That’s where the New Atheists are obvious spokespeople. Roughly speaking, the tradition that the New Atheists advocated was scientific materialism.

Scientific materialism is the belief that physical matter is all that exists, that we come to have knowledge about the physical world through the empirical sciences. Accordingly, knowledge about the physical world delivered through the empirical sciences is the only real kind of knowledge.

Scientific materialism often goes hand in hand with an ethic of utilitarianism, which attempts to ground ethics in the physical sensations of pleasure and pain and then tries to similarly quantify those sensations in a way that allows us to make a science of ethics.

Utilitarian scientific materialism is what most people imagine to be atheism. When I started on my own intellectual journey through this at the beginning of the 21st century, at the height of New Atheism, that really was the dominant form.

But that version of atheism does not apply to many of the most famous atheist thinkers. It does not apply at all to Nietzsche, for example, who is possibly the most famous atheist philosopher. Nietzsche was incredibly hostile to the utilitarians. And it doesn’t apply to many of the thinkers who followed Nietzsche, including Heidegger and the whole line of existentialists through Camus and others. They tend to coalesce into a tradition that I call romantic idealism.

If materialism tells you physical reality is all there is, idealism tends to emphasize not objective reality but subjective mind or subjective experience of reality. And it tends to have an ethic of authenticity. Our job—our sort of life project—is creating our own meaning in this desolate, godless existence by somehow living in a way that is authentic to our subjective experiences.

These two traditions can give you one view or the other, but they do a very poor job of synthesizing the two. And what I eventually came to think is that the tradition that could synthesize these two and give you the best of both atheist traditions was a theistic tradition—one that understood the physical world as created by something other than our own minds, and thus something we can’t entirely control and within whose terms we have to live. But this view also recognizes the reality of our subjective selves within that world, the reality of other subjective selves, and our obligation to recognize their lives as just as meaningful as our own.

KBC: CT has covered the New Atheist movement over the years, including some of those who have converted, as you mention in your book, to Christianity. But it doesn’t necessarily seem that your goal is to convert anyone. So who are you trying to persuade? What is your goal in this intellectual journey through these two ways of thinking?

CB: I don’t know that I’m trying to persuade anyone. That sounds like a cop-out, probably, or just a rhetorical move, but it’s true. I want to convey as accurately as possible what I believe, and I would like to make those beliefs comprehensible to others.

There is a dream of a particular kind of philosopher that the truth can be proven in the way of a mathematical proof, that one can start from certain premises and work logically out from them and then arrive at points that are indisputable. And I don’t believe that, in part because I do believe that so much of what we think about reality has to do with our subjective experiences. And my sense is that our subjective experiences are widely different. So what I can say is “This feels true to me, and here’s why it feels true.”

The New Atheists loomed large for me because they were a big deal at the time I became an atheist. But I don’t think they have a particularly large influence at this moment. I don’t hear a lot of people citing Christopher Hitchens.

And it does seem like what I’ve called romantic idealism is increasingly, among younger people, the primary mode of atheism. Again, there is a strong ethic of authenticity. There is a sense that we are capable of creating ourselves from nothing, that we are not created by something larger than ourselves, and that we don’t have to conform to that creation. This view says, “My great responsibility in life is to be authentic to myself, and if other people don’t like my behavior, they have to get with the program.”

KBC: You talk about love being one of the things that drew you out of your introspection and gave you meaning. How did understanding God as love change your spiritual understanding of who he is?

CB: Love is a thing that both of those atheist traditions have a hard time engaging with. The scientific materialism tradition understands the feelings that we call love as being essentially neurochemical responses to brain chemistry, and it understands us as having evolved the capabilities for these feelings for evolutionary reasons (for mating and kinship).

We all know that’s not a very convincing description of the feelings we actually have. But the romantic idealists don’t do a great job with it either. They are very attuned to these profound psychological states, but they do not think of them as something emanating from outside ourselves. And they do not do a great job of taking seriously the object of our love and thinking about what a commitment to that object would actually mean.

This view says we are meant to act, again, in a way that is authentic to our passions. But it is not going to make great demands on us and insist that we put someone other than ourselves at the center of our lives.

So if you think of love as coming from outside ourselves—as neither a chemical state nor simply a psychological state—then what is it? And that’s the question that starts to bring you down the tradition that says that God is love, that love is God, and allows you to understand all of creation as a product of this love. And that understands this love as a gift to us but also a gift that creates certain obligations, because we are being commanded to love God and love others, to love the rest of God’s creation with the same love that he bestows on us.

KBC: We have a broad decline in religion, especially in the West, but we’re also seeing a lot of young people who are increasingly spiritual. And in our current moment, some American Christians are feeling that maybe we’re on the brink of revival, and they feel some kind of spiritual awakening happening. How do you see our current spiritual moment?

CB: Almost everybody thinks we’re in a tough place right now—and not just economically and politically, but psychologically. People are struggling. People are very unhappy. There’s a lot of different things this can be blamed on, but it does seem that one thing it can’t be blamed on is religion, for the simple reason that the rise of these problems has coincided with the decline of religion.

If you go back again to the New Atheists, circa 2001, you had an evangelical Christian as president; and you had someone like John Ashcroft as his attorney general attempting to dictate many of the rules, the laws of the United States; and then you had foreign threats that struck people as being very bound up with certain expressions of Islam, et cetera. It was at least plausible for some people to say, “Religion and theistic belief in particular—that’s our real problem. That’s at the core of why we have all the problems we do.”

I don’t think anybody could say that right now with a straight face, wherever they are on the political spectrum or whatever they have identified as our problems. That in itself raises an opportunity to say to people, “Okay, we ruled out the idea that ‘religion poisons everything,’ as Hitchens put it. Let’s talk through what the real problems are, and let’s open ourselves up to the possibility that some form of religion might be among the possible solutions.”

KBC: Is the present-day lack of religion caused by people’s serious philosophical dilemmas and intellectual challenges? Or is it more about selfishness—desires around different vices, pleasures, sex, that kind of thing, and the moral code that religion demands?

CB: It is perfectly possible to, just as a kind of metaphysical matter, believe in God and then live whatever life you want. And you may eventually start finding that you are drawn away from some of those vices.

You may give out an Augustinian “Lord, give me chastity, but not yet.” I don’t find that—for anyone I know—the thing keeping them from belief is a sense that they want to be able to live a self-indulgent life that Christianity forbids.

I’m coming at it as a Catholic. For Catholics, obviously the institution of the church is very important. And in my lifetime, the Catholic church has done a lot to undermine its own authority as an institution. We live in a time where people are very suspicious of institutions in general because many institutions have done a lot to undermine their authority.

The hypocrisy of church leadership, not just Catholic church leadership but across the board, has been a real problem. People see some of the behavior of those who lead various churches, and they find the idea that these people are going to act as moral arbiters to be kind of a joke.

Again, that doesn’t have to mean you then stop believing. You could just exist outside a tradition while still believing. But I do think various
Christian institutions have something to answer for in this decline.

Secular society offered a competing worldview that struck many as persuasive for a long time, but for a whole host of reasons that too has lessened recently.

When you talk about the possibility of revival, that’s part of it. So the secular institutions too have done a lot to undermine their own authority in recent generations.

KBC: This kind of gets back to the original questions you asked throughout the book: “What can I know?” “What must I do?” and “What may I hope?” Do you see any objective answers to those questions? Even Jesus saying he’s the Way, the Truth, and the Life implies there is one way. Do you see one true, objective answer?

CB: I think the way is love and the two commandments Jesus held above all others—to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

The problem that Christian existentialists like Kierkegaard talked about at great length is what Jesus doesn’t give you—in the way of other traditions that are highly legalistic—which is a day-by-day, minute-by-minute of every rule you’re supposed to follow and the assurance that as long as you’re following all of those rules you’re one of the good ones. He says, “Love.” And you can’t always be sure you’re doing it right. We all need to be approaching it with humility.

Jesus also teaches that we’re all fallible and that we should spend a lot more time thinking about the ways we are coming up short ourselves in that commandment to love than thinking about what other people should be doing differently.

We see through a glass darkly. I do think there is an objective truth. At the same time, I don’t think I have a complete understanding of that truth, because part of what I think about that truth is that it outstrips human understanding.

I expect I’m always going to be working through these questions. There is never going to be the time when I tell myself I can stop asking these because now I “have the answer.” This again gets to the existential part of it. Even if you have the right answer, you must keep answering it. I guess that’s the best I can do.

Kara Bettis Carvalho is a features editor at Christianity Today.

This article appeared in the January/February 2026 issue of Christianity Today as "Christopher Beha".

- More from Kara Bettis Carvalho

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