Evangelical Colleges Celebrate Best-Ever Enrollment Numbers

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

Grace College freshmen play in Winona Lake.

Courtesy of Grace College

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from Daniel Silliman

Books

How Japanese American Pastors Prepared Their Flocks For Internment

Tom Sugimura

Sermons preached the Sunday before they were sent off exhorted suffering Christians to find their hope in Jesus and to continue to gather together.

Evacuees of Japanese ancestry in Woodland, California, board a train for Merced Assembly center.

WikiMedia Commons

Many Japanese American Christians first heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as they returned home from Sunday worship. Japanese students gathered with their faculty at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, to pray long into the evening. During the nightly curfew enforced for Nikkei (the term for all ethnic Japanese in the US), ministers telephoned frightened church members who huddled together in their homes.

Ten weeks later, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized Executive Order 9066, forcing nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast to relocate to internment camps. Throughout the spring of 1942, public notices started appearing on telephone poles in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles announcing the dates when “all persons of Japanese ancestry, both alien and nonalien” would be evacuated and where they would be picked up.

Each family could only bring whatever luggage they could carry, leaving behind homes, businesses, farms, churches, communities, and even pets. Authorities then bused them to makeshift assembly camps where they would reside for several months before being transferred to one of 10 relocation centers in the country’s interior.

My grandparents and their two young children, my aunt and uncle, were detained at Manzanar Relocation Center near Death Valley, California. The older generation rarely talked about the camps, so in college I began to study the internment to learn about my family’s story. Now, as a pastor, I’ve expanded my research to how the Japanese American church practiced soul care during that difficult time in our nation’s history.

By the outset of World War II, Nikkei churches numbered about 100, mostly led by Issei, or immigrants from Japan, but also including Nisei, ethnic Japanese born in the US. These believers endured their grief and shame by caring for one another, as exemplified by the actions of Nikkei pastors and the sermons they preached in the days before evacuation.

In my research, I discovered an unpublished manuscript entitled The Sunday Before: Sermons by Pacific Coast Pastors of the Japanese Race on the Sunday before Evacuation to Assembly Centers in the Late Spring of 1942. Like John the Baptist, Nikkei ministers raised their voices in the wilderness to proclaim a message of hope in Jesus Christ. Yet they also actively lived out their faith by suffering with their flocks and leading worship services behind the barbed wire of the internment camps. Their witness in the face of unjust suffering models how we can care for souls today. (Unless otherwise noted, most of the sermons quoted below are from The Sunday Before).

The whole counsel of God’s Word

In the days before evacuation, Nikkei pastors exhorted their anxious flocks to remember Old Testament pilgrims like Abraham, Moses, and the faithful remnant in the Babylonian exile. They also sought to bolster their congregation’s “sufferology” from the New Testament letters to persecuted churches and from the example of Christ himself. During those tense days and in the months to come, pastors reminded their fellow believers that God would empower them to rejoice in suffering just like Daniel praying in the den of lions, Paul and Silas singing praises in prison, and Jesus willingly enduring on the cross “for the joy set before him” (Heb. 12:2). A believer’s faith was not determined by their circumstances, but rather by their response to these circumstances.

On Easter Sunday, April 5, John Yamazaki proclaimed from the pulpit of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church that the power of Christ’s resurrection came only through suffering, citing Philippians 3:10. Yamazaki, who had pastored St. Mary’s since 1913, then reminded his flock that Good Friday preceded Easter as he walked them through examples in Scripture of God’s sustaining grace during times of evacuation: Abraham leaving Ur for a land that God would show him, and Israel wandering in the wilderness before reaching the Promised Land.

“It was those of the new generation—may I term them ‘the second generation’ or ‘Nisei of the Exodus’—that crossed the [Jordan] River and went into Canaan, the Promised Land, under the leadership of Joshua, a new leader,” he said.

Yamazaki continued with the Babylonian captives, the remnant who returned to rebuild Jerusalem, and Mary and Joseph’s trek to Bethlehem where Jesus was born. “This is the higher and greater way that God holds for us,” Yamazaki said. “So, if evacuation is the order of the day in our lives, we have examples in history recorded in the Bible.”

The day after his sermon, a sad caravan of “66 small trucks and cars, 6 large trucks, and 13 public (Pacific Electric) Busses” conveyed 700 people from St. Mary’s departure point, “pretty much emptying out the neighborhood of Mariposa Avenue and Olympic Boulevard,” according to a journal article by Joanna Gillespie in Anglican and Episcopal History. Yamazaki would go on to pastor the Episcopal church at the Jerome camp in Arkansas.

After the war, St. Mary’s became a refuge and a resource center for Nikkei resettlers who had nowhere else to live, because their former homes had been taken. Yamazaki served as president of the Los Angeles Japanese Clergy Association and continued to pastor St. Mary’s until 1956, when his son took over as rector.

The sufferings of Christ

Shigeo Shimada grew up in Japan, where his father disowned him for believing in the “foreign” religion of Christianity. He immigrated to America for seminary studies with only his broken English and $200 in his pocket, yet he clung to the truth that the same God who saved him in Japan would provide for him in a distant land, he wrote in his book, A Stone Cried Out: The True Story of Simple Faith in Difficult Days.

At a farewell service on February 15, before being sent off to internment camps, Shimada exhorted Alameda Japanese Methodist Church in the San Francisco Bay Area to remember the sufferings of Christ, according to his book.

You and I are and will be suffering a great deal because of this war. This is an opportunity to test our Christian faith. Let us meet all suffering face to face and endure the coming tribulations patiently. Let us not give up hope, whatever our trial may be. … Remember, you are all Christians and you are all citizens of the kingdom of God. The Issei people are called enemy aliens, and unfortunately the Nisei are treated like aliens as well. However, we must not become enemy aliens of God. Please behave as children of God wherever you may go and whatever your situation may be.

Shimada refused to conceal the future suffering his people would face, relating the Nikkei persecution to that of the early church under the Roman Empire. Peter had written to Christians who were likewise dispersed from their homes and facing an uncertain future (1 Pet. 1:1). They, too, were subject to harsh authorities with little say about what would happen to them (2:18).

Yet Shimada called them to be like Jesus, whose humility was not a sign of weakness, but rather a mark of measured strength: “To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (2:21). The church’s suffering should neither be strange nor unexpected, but an opportunity to joyfully share in the sufferings of Christ. Thus, believers must be ready for whatever might befall them and rejoice, knowing that faithful endurance would fashion them into the likeness of their Lord and Savior.

Shimada would soon be tested himself, as his family was assigned to live in one of the filthiest horse stables at Tanforan Assembly Center, a former racetrack south of San Francisco. They slept in an old horse stall which had been whitewashed inside without first being cleaned. Workers had placed linoleum on the floor directly atop a pile of manure and the putrid smell filled the air day and night until it saturated their hair and clothes, he wrote in his book. Shimada resented being treated like an animal until he began to reflect on Christ’s atoning sacrifice.

My thoughts turned to Jesus Christ who was born in a stable that must have been much worse than ours. … Yet Mary and Joseph did not complain about their miserable situation. When the shepherds came to meet Jesus and worship him, it was a heavenly picture. I am sure that the stable was full of glory. However, in another stable of the twentieth century there was nothing but the spirit of resentment and bitterness. Why such a difference between the two stables? It was a difference of the hearts. Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds were profoundly related with God, whereas God was absent in my heart in our stable. I was deeply ashamed of myself. When I realized that being put in a stable as the holy family had been was a unique experience, a spirit of peace replaced the resentment and bitterness in my heart.

Shimada’s family was transferred to Topaz Relocation Center in Utah, where agitators often accused Christian ministers of being pro-American spies. Shimada had to sleep with a guard outside his bunkhouse, yet he faithfully shepherded the flock that God had given him.

After the war, Shimada continued to pastor Nikkei churches. He was also able to lead his aged father to Christ, more than 25 years after being disowned and thrown into the street.

The fellowship of the gathered church

Sohei Kowta, the pastor of Wintersburg Japanese Presbyterian Church in Orange County, California, preached an installation service for young Donald Toriumi at Union Church of Los Angeles on April 19. He urged Nikkei Christians to uphold the example of Abraham, who not only followed the Lord in faith, but also continued to worship him: “Wherever he visited a new place, the first thing he did there was to build an altar to Jehovah God.” He also emphasized that the church was not just a building, but mainly consisted of her people.

“Within a very short time, we shall have to move out from … this church where we have played together and prayed together; this church where we have talked together and worked together; this church where we have sung together and sacrificed together,” he preached. “But, we Japanese … shall be like Abraham, the mighty migration leader; filled, not with hatred or bitterness, but with faith, hope and love. We shall go wherever God wants us to go, and as we go along we shall bless the people everywhere, as did Abraham of old.”

Kowta and many members of his church would end up at Poston Relocation Center in Arizona, where he served on the pastoral team of Poston Christian Church. Like the other camps, the church gathered members from many different denominations, both Issei and Nisei, including Japanese and English speakers. They adopted broader doctrinal statements like the Apostle’s Creed and jointly decided on which hymns to sing and how to rotate preaching. Their beautiful picture of oneness amid diversity followed the example of the early church and anticipated Christ’s coming kingdom.

Following the war, Kowta actively aided many Nikkei by establishing a resettlement center at Union Church called the Evergreen Hostel, where he would serve for many years.

The ministry of presence

Many Nikkei pastors comforted their congregations not only with their words but through the ministry of presence. Lester Suzuki, the young pastor of Los Angeles Japanese Methodist Church, could have avoided internment, as his wife’s family in Colorado offered them refuge. Instead, he and his family chose to suffer with his flock.

On April 26, the Sunday before their forced removal, Suzuki stood before the congregation to preach. “Brethren, we are facing the eve of evacuation,” he said. “We must evacuate our homes and churches and be taken to strange places, and we will not know what will happen to us. This is our last Sunday on which we can worship in our own sanctuary.”

Suzuki mourned with his church about leaving behind a chapel they had built with their own hands and financed with their hard-earned wages. Many had attended Sunday school there since childhood and were now forced to vacate without certainty of return.

In less than a week, Suzuki, with his wife and two children, boarded a bus to the Santa Anita racetrack, 14 miles northeast of Los Angeles, where they, too, would live in a horse stable for several months. Although his role was to cheer the flock, he couldn’t stop the tears from flowing as the bus pulled away from their home.

At Santa Anita, Suzuki was appointed chairman of Christian youth activities. He made his pastoral visits on a bicycle, and the youth ministry thrived since almost half of the evacuees were between the ages of 10–29. A third to a quarter of the 4,200 residents would attend the Sunday morning worship services, which met in the grandstands, with hymns played on a portable organ. “The Santa Anita stadium, which once seated screaming horse-racing fans, was now echoing the songs in praise of God lifted up by our young voices,” wrote Midori Watanabe in Triumphs of Faith.

Suzuki would go on to lead Granada Christian Church at Amache camp in Colorado and serve as a historian for the Nikkei community after the war. He conducted his doctoral research on Christian ministry in the camps and conducted many oral interviews among members of the churches he pastored.

He would attribute his effectiveness as a shepherd to the ministry of presence, as he recounts in his book, Ministry in the Assembly and Relocation Centers of World War II.

“The opportunities of the [relocation] Center experience gave every minister a deep sense of sensitivity with the inner feelings of people as they ministered in the post-war era,” he wrote. “The common experience of having suffered together with no extra privileges, having learned the common lessons of deprivation, of humiliation, of indignity, and yet come out with a sense of dignity and strength of character and much deeper faith in God made them much more effective ministers than if they had arrived from a free country.”

This ministry of soul care during the Japanese American internment compels the church today to remain present with fellow sufferers, to continue gathering together, and to remind one another of Christ’s person and work from the whole counsel of God’s Word.

Tom Sugimura is a church planting mentor, counselor, and pastor of New Life Church in Woodland Hills, California. He is the author of The Church Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Faith during the Japanese American Internment of World War II.

- More from Tom Sugimura

Books

Mitt Romney Chose Truth Over Tribe. We Should Too.

Russell Moore

Character and competency matter all the time, whether that’s in public office or the church.

US Senator Mitt Romney

Samuel Corum / Stringer / Getty

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

This week, all of Washington is abuzz about journalist McKay Coppins’s profile in The Atlantic of US Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), which revealed Romney’s forthcoming retirement from the world’s most important deliberative body.

The piece, excerpted from Coppins’s forthcoming book, Romney: A Reckoning, is striking because in it, the senator does not retreat into euphemisms or PR-speak in disclosing what he believes to be the problems in the country and in his own party. Instead, he lets his “yes” be “yes” and his “no” be “no,” no matter what people might think of that.

Setting aside for a moment whether one agrees or disagrees with Romney’s viewpoints, now might be the time for us to reevaluate what we once knew about the importance of character—not just in public office, but also in the church.

As I read the profile, many thoughts came to mind, but one memory kept flashing to the forefront. Several years ago, I was interviewed on a media format I rarely engage—a drive-time radio comedy/news/sports/politics show. One of the hosts challenged me on my saying that a lack of character makes someone unfit for office. He said he had found evidence that I once thought the exact opposite.

Now, there are lots of things that I have said in my life where I now think the exact opposite (I’ve discussed some of them here), but I was hard-pressed to think how this was one of them. The radio host pointed to a panel I had done back in 2012, when the controversy in the evangelical world was over whether Christians could vote for Mitt Romney, then the Republican nominee for president, given the fact that he’s a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I don’t—and didn’t then, either—endorse candidates for office, but I made the case that Romney’s faith did not at all represent a moral dilemma for those who disagree with him theologically, as I did and do. I’ve had theological discussions with four former presidents of the United States in my life—sometimes with a lot of agreement, sometimes not. In every case, I was reminded of how few presidents in American history would even have the categories to have theological conversations.

In fact, one of the many reasons I admired Romney at the time was the fact that he didn’t try to sweep all those differences away into some “least common denominator” civil religion to play identity politics with the evangelicals. He was clear that he believed in the teachings of his church and gladly served as a missionary and as a stake leader. But he was also clear that his oath would be to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, not any pronouncement from Salt Lake City.

I can believe a person to be wrong on his or her religious convictions and still believe him or her to have the character and competency requisite to lead in a civil office. That didn’t—and doesn’t—seem contradictory to me at all.

Campaigning for public office in a democratic republic can be compared to a job interview. A citizen is delegating someone to “bear the sword” of public justice (Rom. 13:4), as the apostle Paul put it.

Imagine if you were a shift supervisor of a grocery store in your town, working to hire a new manager. Imagine that you also served on the pastor search committee of your church at the same time. You are interviewing candidates during the day—to work in the meat or produce or frozen food departments of your business. And you are interviewing candidates at night who might preach to and shepherd your congregation.

A candidate comes forward who believes Jesus was a good man, but probably not God. He says the idea of a Trinity doesn’t make sense to him, and when someone quotes the Nicene Creed, he says it’s all incomprehensible to him.

When asked what he would say if he were asked at the Judgment why he should be admitted to heaven, the candidate says, “Well, I worked hard, paid my taxes, and went to church every Christmas Eve; if that’s not good enough for you, I don’t know what to tell you.” Does that disqualify the candidate? Well, in this case, it depends on whether the interview is in the daytime or at night.

If you’re looking for someone to manage products and people and to make a profit in the produce department, personal regeneration, much less theological consensus, is not a necessary qualification. As a matter of fact, you might well be mistreating your employers if you hire a born-again produce manager who ends up throwing away boxes of spoiled fruit at the end of a week because he didn’t know how to anticipate inventory.

At night, though, those interviews would include a different set of criteria. You might well end up hiring a pastor who has to ask Alexa to do basic multiplication (people have, after all, hired me before) but who meets the biblical qualifications for the pastorate and who shares the doctrinal convictions of the church.

You would never in that context say, “This candidate thinks Habakkuk is a kind of cannabis, and when asked about the Holy Spirit, shrugged and said ‘I can teach it whatever way you want.’ But he knows how to invest our building fund in a way that will pay off our debt in half the time.”

Now, let’s suppose you go back to the daytime interviews. A candidate comes to you, and you know him from your church. He posts Christian memes to social media all the time and is heavy into “discernment” against bad doctrine. He also has a record of sexually harassing his fellow workers at the last three grocery stores for which he worked. His references say, consistently, “Don’t trust him, because he lies all the time.”

When you ask the prospective employee why he called in sick so often to his last workplace, he says to you, “Probably because of how much cocaine I was doing, but I’m only selling it now, not using.” When you ask him about why so much money went missing at his last workplace, he says, “There’s nothing that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of my peers,” and winks at you.

Right after that, you interview a woman who has a record of honesty, straightforwardness, and integrity in all of her previous workplaces. Every employee who has worked for her testifies that she’s truthful and fair. She knows exactly how to keep the shelves in her area stocked, to reduce waste, and to bring in a profit. And, from everything you can tell from her past background, she can be trusted with the bank receipts. She’s also active in the Mormon Women’s Relief Society in her neighborhood, where she works with at-risk youth and single mothers.

Of the two options, you are obviously going to hire her over the church guy. In fact, if you did the reverse, you would be violating your duty to your business obligations.

Might you be wrong? Sure. Maybe the woman is just playing the long game. She’s been waiting to embezzle funds until she got to a grocery store without so many security cameras. Or maybe she’d never thought about how much more work she could get done with cocaine until she talked to the other candidate, while they waited to be interviewed. You might be surprised, but generally, someone’s past record of integrity will show you how that person will operate in the future.

A boring preacher might still manage a business well. A skilled marketer might teach the Bible poorly. But character and competency matter for both the grocer and the pastor, just in different areas.

Whatever one thinks of Mitt Romney’s perspective, no reasonable person doubts that what he is saying publicly lines up with what he’s saying privately. To think one thing internally and to say the opposite externally, Jesus tells us, reveals something twisted in the human heart (Matt. 22:18; Mark 7:14–23). At its most literal level, that’s what integrity means: a holding together, an alignment of mind, mouth, and conscience.

We live in a time, though, in which leaders—whether in the civil or in the spiritual spheres—often say things they know to be not true, because they are afraid of the loudest and angriest among their own people. Sometimes the fear is a lost primary election or being booed at a convention.

Sometimes the fear is what former congressman Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) called “the assassin’s veto”—the threat of physical violence against oneself or one’s family (the Coppins profile reveals that Romney was spending $5,000 a day on security for his family).

The pull of the tribe over one’s conscience is strong. You start to wonder if you’re crazy. You start to know that when you walk in the room and everyone stops talking and looks down, they were probably talking about you. You start to be embarrassed that your friends don’t want to be seen with you.

Political theorist Yascha Mounk writes in his forthcoming book The Identity Trap about the problem of internalized shame and the “reluctant heretic” (meaning heresy against one’s group identity, not against one’s religious conviction). Such a person is “so nervous about disagreeing with prevailing sentiments that they practically seem to apologize for their own ideas.”

These dissenters think they are being charitable or shielding themselves from criticism, but instead, Mounk argues, they signal “that they themselves seem to regard their views as somehow illicit,” and thereby “encourage the enforcers of orthodoxy to use moral shaming or rank intimidation to shut them down.”

In such a context, it is very hard to let one’s “yes” be “yes” and “no” be “no.” In such a context, it is all the more necessary that someone—at least someone with a conscience, even with fear and trembling—will do it anyway.

Mitt Romney is leaving Washington. He will never sit in the Oval Office. He’s remained faithful, though, to the vows he made and to the oaths he swore. How many are left who will be willing to feel the sting of exile when they believe they have to choose between the truth and their tribe?

As long as we keep acting as though personal character is irrelevant for—or maybe even worse, a detriment to—leadership, we will find that there are very few. Once you learn to justify the breaking of one vow, the breaking of the others gets easier and easier. If history has taught us nothing else, hasn’t it taught us that?

Character matters, all the time. Character matters, everywhere.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

News

Tony Evans Brings Up the Mixed Emotions of Remarriage After Loss

Kate Shellnutt

His engagement announcement reflects the complications of grief and celebration that Christians experience with second marriages.

Tony Evans and fiancée Carla Crummie

YouTube screenshot / Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship

Tony Evans stood before his Dallas congregation last week—with keyboards playing softly in the background and his four adult children standing behind him—to announce that nearly four years after losing his wife Lois, he was engaged to remarry.

“God, in his sovereignty, has brought someone into my life,” the 74-year-old told the crowd, which broke out in applause. He introduced Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship to his fiancée Carla Crummie, a widow who had lost her husband around the same time as Lois’s passing.

The announcement came with a sense of both somberness and celebration. “Pray for us,” he asked the church, calling it a “sensitive” and “tender” time.

Evans had been married to Lois for 49 years before she died of cancer at the end of 2019, and the famous preacher described how she had been his partner in life and ministry. He told his church, “This may evoke some grief in some people, which I can understand, because we’re reminded about the fingerprints”—the legacy of his late wife.

Christians who have lost their spouses know firsthand the mixed emotions that come with remarriage.

“I’m more aware than most people of the reality of joy and grief that need to coexist in the life of a godly person,” said Jonathan Pitts, who attended the service along with dozens of ministry colleagues to celebrate Evans’s birthday. Pitts lost his wife of 15 years, Wynter, in 2018. She was Evans’s niece.

“I was there to grieve with those who grieve but also rejoice with those who rejoice—to rejoice with Dr. Evans that he’s found love again and companionship, knowing that that tension is not a problem to be solved but a tension to be managed,” said Pitts, a pastor in Franklin, Tennessee, and the former executive director of Evans’s resource ministry, the Urban Alternative. “We, more than all people, should know how to walk in that space with integrity and with peace and with hope.”

While plenty of churches offer ministries for the bereaved and premarital counseling for new couples, fewer Christian resources are tailored to the unique family dynamics brought about by remarriage after death. Widows and widowers may not anticipate their emotional and spiritual needs as they move into a new relationship, or how their relatives will feel.

“One of the biggest mistakes people make is they think, ‘I have to turn off my grief now that I’m married to you and not be sad over my previous partner,’” said Ron Deal, a marriage and family therapist who serves as the director of FamilyLife Blended.

“So when the new partner gives permission to that ongoing expression of grief, we’re both free to deal with our past and our loss and at the same time be making steps forward in our new relationship. The past and the present are not in competition unless you make it a competition.”

Families’ experiences of grief can vary depending on the age, timing, and circumstances around a death, but Deal said people are prone to underestimate how much remarriage will affect their children, even as adults.

While grown kids may encourage their moms or dads to find someone after losing their spouse, it can be a challenge for kids when it actually happens. They see a different side of their parent, may worry about the financial implications of the new marriage, and are inevitably reminded of the parent they’ve lost.

Widows and widowers are more likely to have adult children, since the older you are, the more likely you are to have lost a spouse. Well over half of married women over 75 have gone through the death of a husband at some point, according to data from the US Census Bureau. But fewer than five percent of the 1.4 million people whose spouses died were under 45.

Pitts was left a single father to four daughters when his wife died at just 38, weeks after they moved from Texas to outside Nashville. Together, the Pitts family remembered Wynter by lighting a candle to symbolize her presence at holiday meals, telling stories about her, and carrying on her nonprofit ministry For Girls Like You.

Two years ago, Pitts married Peta Sergeant, an actress from Australia. He described “fighting for celebration,” stewarding both joy and grief while knowing the loss of his first wife would always be part of him and his family.

“One of the most isolating places to be is walking into remarriage … my now-wife Peta would say that she became an instrument of grief, but our marriage became an instrument of grief,” Pitts said. “What happens is that newness of life together, it provokes the grief of everyone else.”

“I couldn’t imagine not being married to Wynter, but all of a sudden now I have a new wife and can’t imagine not being with her,” he said. “Imagine the complication of that for a child or a mother-in-law or a father-in-law, or even your own feelings around it. It’s so confusing.”

After becoming a widow twice, losing one husband to an aneurysm and the other in an Air Force plane crash, Rachel Faulkner Brown has worked to offer spiritual support and care for fellow widows through Never Alone Widows.

She has seen over a hundred widows involved in the ministry marry again in the past few years. The transition, she says, can be another form of loss—after losing your spouse, you also lose a part of your old life when you enter another relationship.

“Remarriage is a death to everything, a transition to new life,” said Brown, who lives outside Atlanta. “If you don’t understand death and resurrection, you won’t understand remarriage.”

Her ministry’s retreats can be a place for women to be open and honest about their loss with others who get it, things like how to balance remembering and honoring your first husband while investing in your new relationship.

Brown said marrying a widower can be an appealing option for women who have lost their spouses young. “That’s the quintessential ‘You get me, you understand me, you feel safe’ option,” she said. “But there are way more widows than widowers. Widowers don’t stay single as long.”

Christian resources by Robert DeVries and Susan Zonnebelt-Smeenge, a Calvin Theological Seminary professor emeritus and clinical psychologist who married after losing their first spouses in the 1990s, emphasize the importance of working on intentional goals through the grieving process. They include: accepting the reality of a spouse’s death, processing emotions, storing away memories, discovering an identity outside of the previous marriage, and reinvesting in a “new normal.”

“Good-bye is difficult to say … you will say it hundreds of times to all the various aspects of life you shared with your spouse,” they write in their book From We to Me. “You will realize it each time you do something new without your previous spouse. And one day you will know it’s time to say the final good-bye.”

Deal estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of weddings today form blended families, whether following death or divorce. These relationships are more complicated than first marriages. They disrupt relationships with children (and for older widows and widowers, their grandchildren), holiday traditions, and financial and estate planning. He sees the potential for the church to better counsel and equip those who remarry for their new reality.

Some widows and widowers don’t have those tough conversations until they’ve already found a new partner, but some learn along the way through support groups like GriefShare and specialized ministries like Never Alone Widows and Refuge Widowers.

Outside of organized groups, Pitt found himself connected with fellow widowers through mutual friends and fellow pastors. He knows how difficult the journey can be but believes, by God’s grace, it’s something people can get through and also flourish in.

“The grief journey and healing is like a ministry that God has given me that I never would have signed up for that I actually really love. I love being with people that get to experience God in hardships,” he said. “When you walk through loss, it doesn’t just happen to you. It’s something that you become and something you live with.”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

News

Do Artsakh’s Armenians Need More or Less ‘Christian’ Advocacy?

Jayson Casper

As humanitarian aid—and Azerbaijan’s attacks—return to the Caucasus enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, religious freedom advocates debate the merits of emphasizing religion.

A religious official leads a prayer during a protest organized by the Armenian National Committee of America outside of the U.S. Capitol.

Bryan Olin Dozier / AP Images

It was almost a good news story.

After nine months of blockade, humanitarian aid finally reached the Armenian Christians of Nagorno-Karabakh on Monday. But almost immediately, ending three years of tense ceasefire after a 2020 war, Azerbaijan renewed on Tuesday its military assault on the mountainous Caucasus enclave.

And following today’s surrender and promised disarmament of local separatist forces, the region will almost certainly revert to the sovereignty of a neighboring nation that Armenians fear—and a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court warns—is preparing a genocide.

Thousands massed at the airport in the capital of Stepanakert, preparing to leave.

Advocates for Armenia are at a loss. But of the three aforementioned adjectives—humanitarian, Armenian, or Christian—which ones were most effective in pressing for humanitarian aid? And now in a new phase of the conflict, which will be the most crucial in mobilizing further support?

CT spoke with six religious freedom experts about best practices in Christian advocacy.

Background:

Only one day prior to the assault, the International Red Cross confirmed that aid entered Nagorno-Karabakh from both neighboring countries. Ethnic Armenian separatists had agreed with Azerbaijani authorities to simultaneously open the Lachin corridor and the road to Aghdam.

Lachin connects westward to Armenia, and before the blockade facilitated 400 tons of daily supplies to what locals call their ancestral territory of “Artsakh,” home to several ancient churches and monasteries. Aghdam, a ghost town undergoing rebuilding that Azerbaijan recaptured along with portions of Nagorno-Karabakh during the 2020 war, connects eastward.

Last December, government-backed eco-activists set up a blockade—later turned into a checkpoint—on the Lachin corridor, as Azerbaijan insisted on its internationally-recognized sovereignty to prevent the flow of alleged weapons into the enclave.

Russia brokered the end of the 2020 war, and its peacekeepers were tasked to keep the flow of goods open along Lachin. Their failure angered Armenia, which recently responded by conducting military exercises with the United States.

The regional demography is religiously complex, as Armenia—the world’s first Christian nation in 301 A.D.—is allied with Orthodox Russia and Shiite Iran against Western-friendly Shiite Azerbaijan, Sunni Turkey, and Jewish Israel.

In addition to weapons, Azerbaijan kept out food, goods, and medicine. Families were restricted to one loaf of bread per day. Gas supplies were cut off, one-fifth of businesses closed, and last month was the first reported death from malnutrition.

The International Court of Justice ruled to compel Azerbaijan to lift the blockade last February, while the European Court of Human Rights sided three months earlier with the local population.

Negotiations between the two nations have failed to produce a peace agreement. However, Azerbaijan has stated that once the enclave is reintegrated, its Armenian minority will enjoy the full rights of citizens in a multiethnic and multireligious state.

Yet Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev has also stated that any Armenian who does not want to live under Azerbaijani sovereignty should leave. Many advocates interpreted the blockade as a slow-moving attempt at ethnic cleansing, and in this new escalation, Aliyev emphasized the opening of humanitarian corridors—including back to Armenia.

What compelled this week’s minor breakthrough?

One week before the initial agreement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Aliyev to express “concern over the deteriorating humanitarian situation.” According to the official State Department readout, however, neither the word Christian nor Armenian was spoken by the senior diplomat. Religion and ethnicity were completely ignored.

But one CT source stated that Blinken’s outreach to Azerbaijan “ticked up” following the June visit to Armenia by Sam Brownback, former US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. And at a congressional human rights hearing on Nagorno-Karabakh after his return, in calling for legislative action his language was completely different.

“120,000 Christians are being suffocated,” Brownback stated, “blockaded by Azerbaijan.”

His trip was arranged through Philos Project, which works to ensure the citizenship rights of minority Christians and their ability to “flourish” in the region. President and founder Robert Nicholson said some believing advocates in the West are oddly reluctant to embrace their ancient brothers and sisters.

“Christians often make the mistake in thinking that the Christian thing to do is not specifically advocate for Christians,” he said. “But love for the brethren is the preeminent marker of New Testament faith, so I double down in my support.”

Like all sources interviewed, Nicholson resisted characterizing the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as Muslims persecuting Christians. Yet sectarianism is a factor, as both Armenia and Azerbaijan have effectively merged their religious and ethnic identities. And with the latter’s attempts to erase the former’s historic Apostolic faith from the enclave, Nicholson said it would be improper to neglect their status as Christians.

Both humanitarian concerns and religious solidarity were mentioned in Philos’s open letter to President Joe Biden in January. But in its bipartisan effort to influence US foreign policy, sometimes the word Christian is strategic to highlight.

“The best people on this issue have been Democrats,” Nicholson said. “Conservative Republicans who identify as Christians seem not to have gotten the memo, and we are trying to bring them in.”

So is Joseph Daniel, Middle East and North Africa manager for International Christian Concern (ICC), who handles its Armenia file. ICC’s public policy work, however, is a secondary priority to raising awareness in the church, with its persecution.org website aptly titled to get more believers to care. While such an approach helps with fundraising, he said it also puts them in a bit of a “Christian bubble.”

But for Armenia, the religious label is not sufficient on its own.

“Christians should not side with the confession ‘just because,’” said Daniel. “But advocating for the preservation of Christian heritage has value, independent of personal belief.”

ICC has turned down several requests by Armenian activists to highlight their cause when the issue was primarily military—or even humanitarian. But even during the Soviet era when the nation was Communist, Daniel said that advocating on behalf of a suffering people who consider themselves Christian would have been the right thing to do.

“Who are we to determine the necessary percentage of individual faith?” asked Daniel. “But where the light exists, however corrupted, God can still use it for the gospel.”

That is the primary motivation for the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA), founded in 1918 in part to care for the survivors of the Armenian genocide in Turkey. Their evangelism concentrates on their ethnic kin—but by no means is their advocacy against Islam.

“We have experienced the love, welcome, and embrace of Muslim Arabs after the genocide,” said Zaven Khanjian, AMAA executive director. “Religious fervor is manipulated only by parties interested to enflame a crisis.”

Therefore, when AMAA speaks of Artsakh to the wider world, the focus shifts to human rights and ethnicity.

“Christians in America have an obligation to support Armenia against a clear and viable intent of ethnic cleansing,” Khanjian said. “But what moves everyone is humanism, and the state, with no religious affiliation, has an obligation to uphold the values of freedom and justice around the globe.”

So also must Christians, argues Michel Abs, not least in the Middle East.

As secretary general of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), alongside his advocacy for the rights of Syriac Christians he has petitioned on behalf of Zoroastrian Yazidis, heterodox Shiite Alawites, and Palestinians—most of which are Muslim. What matters, he said, is not their specific faith but their regional citizenship. Thus, when he issued the council’s letter on behalf of the blockade in Artsakh, he made no mention of religion.

“Everyone in the Middle East knows we are dedicated to the Christian presence in the region,” said Abs. “And to emphasize our religious identity in the West makes cheap use of our faith, showing us as a pitiful people.”

Instead, from the strength of the love of Christ, Christians must defend all. Where our people are wrong, he said, he would counsel them accordingly. The world is becoming a mosaic, and Christian distinctives must bring us together.

“The cross is our inspiration,” Abs said. “We must not crucify others.”

According to Wissam al-Saliby, there is a particular distinctive that helps.

“Our advocacy puts the human—made in the image of God—above every other distinction,” said the advocacy officer at the United Nations for the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA). “And diplomats have praised our multi-faith efforts, sharing with us that it gains more traction than anything single-faith.”

Recent advocacy in India, for example, has involved Muslims and Hindus.

Representing over 140 national alliances, Saliby said the WEA is driven by the concerns of local evangelicals. In some countries the message is distinct, if evangelicals suffer uniquely. In other countries, current or historic interchurch dynamics push leaders away from ecumenical engagement. And in others still, believers find themselves on conflicting sides, so peacemaking is prioritized.

But where possible, such as in Nagorno-Karabakh, collaboration is best. The WEA statement to the UN Human Rights Council in March was issued jointly with the World Council of Churches, and made no specific mention of Christianity.

“Our advocacy is for freedom, human rights, and dignity for everyone,” Saliby said. “It is easier said than done sometimes, so we need to discern in prayer how best to speak up and engage with the authorities.”

This same process has led Stefanus Alliance International to not advocate for Nagorno-Karabakh at all. A Norwegian Christian mission and human rights organization, its European orientation prefers the language of freedom of religion or belief, which is not at stake in the blockade.

“If you want to play a card, the religious one plays well to get support,” said Ed Brown, the American secretary general of Stefanus, of tendencies in US-based Christian advocacy. “But it can also exacerbate the situation and contribute to the long-term problem.”

Religion is a factor in the enclave, he emphasized, but it is only one of many. Historical grievances in the Caucasus go back decades, and each side has often demonized the other. In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, the ethnic Armenians are truly suffering and deserve support. But honest human rights work must also acknowledge their prior abuses as an occupying power.

Victims in one situation may end up being violators in another, Brown said, and advocacy must adjust accordingly.

But though the religious label is not the focus of conflict in this current crisis, might it be useful to center in others?

“It depends, and I think we need both approaches,” Brown said. “But at the end of the day, in any given context, it is hard to know what works best.”

So why did Blinken get involved?

A mere 21 hours after tweeting his commendation of the humanitarian aid agreement, the US secretary of state called for an immediate cessation of “unacceptable” hostilities. Four hours later he reported speaking directly to Aliyev.

Azerbaijan pressed forward anyway.

Has all advocacy been for naught? Armenians lament that Western powers continually “warn,” but failed to link aggression to specific consequences. Now in a new stage of the conflict, they and their allies will redouble their efforts.

Nicholson, the Philos Project president, felt vindicated—in both assessment and support.

“Azerbaijan has shown its true face to the world, and we advocates were the ones to help expose it,” he said. “It just goes to show what a small group of committed people can do, with God’s help.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Theology

Unable to Find Ultimate Truth in Zen Buddhism, I Turned to Jesus

Sita Slavov

I thought I needed to try harder at meditation. What I really needed was the Holy Spirit to enlighten me.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Unsplash

I’ve always wanted to be spiritual, but I have trouble believing things,” I said, smiling nervously at the robe-clad Zen Buddhism teacher. We were sitting together in a small room for a one-on-one conversation about my Zen meditation practice.

He chuckled. “So, I guess Zen is perfect for you.”

The year was 2011, and I was 36 years old. I had been practicing Zen Buddhism for three years and had traveled to Kentucky to attend my first meditation retreat, a weekend event held at a Zen center near Lexington. The retreat schedule was tough. We sat in meditation from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., broken up by short periods of walking meditation, meals, and chores. Everything was to be done in silence.

Zen was the latest chapter in my lifelong spiritual quest. That quest had begun during my teenage years, when I realized that my Hindu ancestry—passed down by Indian immigrant parents—need not dictate my own faith. As I became aware of alternative belief systems, I realized that I was an agnostic: I honestly didn’t know what to believe. So I dropped the Hindu label and committed to discovering for myself the ultimate truth.

Growing up in Houston, I learned the basics of Christianity through friends and neighbors. I also spent part of my childhood in the United Kingdom, where Christian prayer, hymns, and sermons were part of regular school activities. My Hindu parents always spoke respectfully about Christian beliefs. They would go (and encourage me to go) to church with friends when invited.

But it wasn’t until I got to college that I came to know Jesus through my evangelical Christian friends. I observed how their faith gave them peace and strength during difficult times. And every time I heard about God’s far-reaching love for us, demonstrated through Christ’s sacrifice, I wanted to weep. But while my heart was ready to take the leap, my inner skeptic—the stubbornly agnostic, somewhat smart-alecky part of my brain—held me back.

In my late 20s, I joined a church with the hope of nurturing the seeds of faith that lay dormant within me. During that time, there were moments when I truly did embrace what the Bible says about Jesus. But inevitably, my inner skeptic would pipe up with its doubts, and I would find myself backtracking to appease it. It’s more plausible that Jesus was just a great teacher, and that the Resurrection is just a metaphor, I’d tell myself. And I don’t need to accept all of Scripture, only the parts that resonate with me.

Several years later—with my head and heart still at spiritual loggerheads—I quit going to church and began to explore Zen Buddhism.

Less than 1 percent of the US population identifies as Buddhist, and an even smaller fraction identifies as Zen Buddhist, especially considering Zen’s aversion to labels. But it’s a path that many spiritual seekers have found appealing. Many of the people I got to know through my Zen practice had turned away from Christian upbringings to seek answers in Zen.

My inner skeptic was intrigued by the possibility that Zen might provide a spiritual path that didn’t require specific beliefs. Buddhists generally don’t view the Buddha as divine. He was a human teacher. The name Buddha simply means an awakened or enlightened person—a status that, in theory, anyone can achieve through practice.

And Zen—at least the American flavor of it that I experienced—goes further, de-emphasizing even traditional Buddhist beliefs like rebirth or karma. Some Zen Buddhists do hold these beliefs, and teachers may refer to them; but as one of my Zen teachers put it, “They’re optional.” (Stubborn skeptic that I was, I opted out.)

Fundamentally, Zen is a practice, and its core is meditation—sitting still and focusing attention on something. One straightforward option is focusing on one’s breath, often by counting it. Alternatively, some Zen teachers encourage practicing with a koan—a paradoxical statement, riddle, or story that is supposed to confront the student with the inadequacy of analytical thinking. “Solving” a koan requires insight that goes beyond the limits of reason.

Regardless of the specifics, meditation gives one a front-row seat to observe one’s “monkey mind”—the inner monologue that is constantly blabbering, engaging in elaborate arguments, and singing 80s songs—as it tries to hijack attention away from the focus of meditation. As I started practicing Zen meditation, I slowly got better at directing my attention. I found that anchoring my attention to my breath could give me some distance from the antics of my monkey mind, helping me stay grounded in stressful situations.

This benefit isn’t unique to Zen or Buddhism. I suspect most mental health professionals would tell you that it can be obtained from learning secular mindfulness skills, or from any spiritual discipline that trains the attention. But Zen practice aspires to more than psychological benefits. It aspires to a direct encounter with the nature of reality that cannot be expressed in words or concepts.

As Dogen, a Japanese Zen teacher from the 13th century, put it, “To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.” In Zen, I imagined that I could indulge the radical agnosticism of my inner skeptic by sitting still and taking a deep, honest look at the present reality—including the state of my own mind—just as it is.

In doing so, I hoped to eventually see through the walls of my ego, let go of my biased and limited ideas, and experience the raw, ultimate truth. Such a mystical experience wouldn’t be a one-way door to spiritual awakening. But over time, the cumulative insight from my meditation practice—integrated into my life, into the world of words and concepts—would help me grow spiritually. It would help me become more fully present and alive in each moment, less prone to causing suffering for myself or others, and increasingly able to discern exactly what was needed in every situation.

Over the next 12 years, I practiced Zen meditation daily and attended numerous meditation retreats. I grew to enjoy the natural beauty of the retreat center in rural Kentucky, and I was touched by the hospitality, sincerity, and authenticity of the staff there. The meditation itself, however, could be unpleasant. There was physical pain and boredom. There were distressing thoughts and feelings that I couldn’t act on or distract myself from. But periodically, my inner monologue would ebb, accompanied by a heightened awareness of the chirping birds, the croaking frogs, or the rain striking the roof. Those moments were beautiful.

Still, I didn’t experience any spiritual breakthroughs. I never solved any koans, and I certainly didn’t feel “enlightened by all things of the universe.”

Frustrated but still determined, I started making plans to attend a month-long Zen retreat in the fall of 2020. I figured I just needed my monkey mind to shut up long enough for me to finally catch a direct glimpse into the ultimate truth—and I was convinced that a month of silent meditation ought to do it.

But that wasn’t God’s plan.

When the world shut down in 2020, the retreat was canceled. As the fear and isolation of the following months brought me to the brink of a mental health crisis, something shifted profoundly within me. I found comforting Bible verses floating through my mind. I found myself inexplicably drawn in by Christian videos I found online, including a Max Lucado bible study. Frustrations with Zen aside, I didn’t feel I was being drawn away from Zen as much as I was being drawn toward Jesus.

I spent the summer and fall of 2020 exploring online and outdoor church services. That Christmas, I was ready: I fully committed my life to Jesus. It was the spiritual breakthrough I had hoped to get from the month-long Zen retreat, better than anything that I could have imagined—and it was done God’s way, not my way.

As further evidence that God uses all things for good, my detour through Zen has solidified my faith in Jesus. My inner skeptic, having finally learned that its radical agnosticism is a dead end, was done trying to run the show. While doubts still arise, I no longer stay stuck in them. Instead, I come back to what my heart knows: Jesus is the Son of God and Savior of the world, not just a great teacher. The Resurrection is not just a metaphor. And no part of Scripture is optional.

Over the past few years, I’ve had a chance to reflect on the difference between Zen meditation and Christian practices like contemplation or biblical meditation. The key difference is that the Christian practices are anchored in the knowledge of God through Scripture and faith.

In Zen, I often felt alone in the trenches with my darkest thoughts and feelings. And even the most beautiful moments I experienced during meditation—those moments of delight in God’s creation—were useless without a compelling framework to process and integrate them into my life. In contrast, when I meditate on God’s Word and presence, the Holy Spirit sustains me in the trenches, and Scripture provides the framework to understand my experience.

Despite Zen’s downplaying of words and concepts, I suspect that many Zen practitioners at least implicitly use traditional Buddhist teachings as their framework for understanding their meditation experience. If that’s the case, then—even in Zen—spiritual understanding doesn’t just come about by directly experiencing reality, free from any preconceptions, as my inner skeptic had hoped. The conceptual lens through which we view our experiences matters immensely.

All told, you could say that I was a terrible Zen student. After more than a decade of Zen practice, after daily Zen meditation and numerous retreats, after hours upon hours of sitting with uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, I came no closer to understanding the ultimate truth and having it transform me spiritually. And rather than patiently persevering, using my spiritual disappointment and the challenges of 2020 as fodder for my Zen practice, I threw in the towel and turned to Jesus.

What I can confidently say, though, is that I gave Zen my best effort. And my best effort wasn’t good enough to save me.

Only Jesus could do that.

Sita Slavov is a professor of public policy at George Mason University and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

- More from Sita Slavov

News

Senator Demands to Know if World Vision Is Funding Terrorism

Ken Chitwood

Christian aid organization says it is not and defends former director sentenced to prison in Israel.

Senator Chuck Grassley talks to reporters.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senator Chuck Grassley is concerned that World Vision International may have funded terrorism with US taxpayers’ money.

The long-serving legislator from Iowa sent the Christian humanitarian aid organization a letter last month asking for answers to a number of questions about funding, current programs, and accountability. World Vision received $491 million from US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2022.

“Congress and the American people deserve transparency with respect to the steps World Vision has taken to ensure taxpayer money is used as intended and not for illegal activity,” Grassley wrote. “Please provide answers.”

The humanitarian organization told CT that it sent a reply to Grassley on September 9. On the larger point, the group is unequivocal: “World Vision does not support any form of terrorism.”

The senator’s inquiry comes a year after a World Vision employee was sentenced to 12 years in prison in Israel. According to prosecutors, the former director of aid to Gaza diverted $50 million meant for hungry children and farmers to Hamas, which the US State Department has designated a terrorist organization. Little of the evidence used to convict Mohammed el-Halabi was made available to the public, beyond a confession that Halabi’s lawyers say was coerced. Four United Nations experts raised concerns about what they called “egregious” violations of Halabi’s right to a fair trial.

World Vision continues to defend the former Gaza aid director. The organization says his conviction was unjust and the Israeli court’s ruling is “in sharp contrast to the evidence and facts of the case.”

In 2016, the humanitarian aid organization commissioned an independent audit of the aid to Gaza and found no irregularities.

Brett Ingerman, the lawyer who headed up the audit, told CT in 2022 that “the investigation did not find even a hint of funds being diverted to Hamas or any schemes or collusions involving other World Vision employees or third parties.” The investigators looked at more than 280,000 documents and interviewed more than 180 people but couldn’t find “any material evidence” that the World Vision employee “was affiliated with, or works for Hamas.”

Investigations by USAID and the German and Australian governments came to the same conclusions. The Australian government said only a court could determine Halabi’s guilt, but it’s internal review “uncovered nothing to suggest any diversion of government funds.”

Grassley, however, is not convinced. In his letter addressed to Andrew Morley, World Vision president and CEO, the senator asked for a copy of the full audit, which has not been made available to the public.

Grassley asked about steps the humanitarian organization has taken to “prevent further money being sent to terrorist organizations.”

The senator also wants information about the humanitarian organization’s current work in Gaza. A 2023 report from World Vision mentions $9.6 million dollars were budgeted for Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, but did not mention any specifics about local partners or vetting practices.

When Halabi was directing the Gaza effort, World Vision reported helping 40,000 children with food, medical supplies, and other assistance annually. All aid to the area was suspended when Halabi was arrested. Critics of the Israeli government’s policies toward Palestinians said the arrest and prosecution was intended to have a chilling effect on humanitarian aid.

Grassley is not particularly concerned with Israel and Palestinians. He is concerned with terrorism and the misuse of foreign aid. He has been investigating places where taxpayer funds might end up in the wrong hands. In another letter last month, he asked USAID head Samantha Powers to account for the government’s relationship with World Vision, noting the Christian group is the “sixth-largest implementor of USAID grants.” Grassley asked for documents showing the agency has worked to prevent funds from going to terrorism.

“It is paramount that US dollars do not, in any way, shape, or form, fund or encourage terrorism,” the senator said. “My goal is to improve transparency and make sure every cent of taxpayer money is used as intended and not for illegal activity.”

Grassley is also currently asking Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for information about $6 billion in US assets released by the Biden administration to Iran in exchange for American detainees.

In 2020, the senator investigated World Vision’s relationship with the Islamic Relief Agency. In a subsequent US Senate Finance Committee Report, the humanitarian organization was accused of failing to properly vet organizations it partnered with. The senate committee said that while the funds given to the Islamic Relief Agency were not likely used to directly fund terrorism, the money “inevitably aids their terrorist activities.” World Vision was accused of being “borderline negligent.”

The humanitarian organization denies it did anything wrong working with Islamic Relief Agency, but it has also made changes to its vetting process as a result.

Now, World Vision has sent their response to Grassley’s most recent questions, saying they addressed his concerns within the timeline previously agreed with his office.

In the meantime, the humanitarian aid organization said it will continue to fulfill its Christian mission, “ensuring our resources provide maximum benefit to the vulnerable children we serve.”

- More from Ken Chitwood

Sharing the Story of One of the ‘Greats’ Among Us

Looking beyond Jordan K. Monson’s award-winning cover story for CT magazine.

Caitlin Edwards

Amy Sprunger

This past April, at the Evangelical Press Association’s 2023 convention, Christianity Today won first place in the Personality Article category for Jordan K. Monson’s feature “The Linguist”.

In an interview with CT, Monson reflected on why this article was such a success, including why Katharine Barnwell’s story resonates with so many people, the importance of biblical interpretation in our world today, and how God continues to work and move among us.

What first got you interested in biblical interpretation?

I began reading the New Testament when I was 17. I grew up in a mainline church and had a decent foundation, but I’d never made it my own, so to speak. I began reading with mixed motivations—a healthy curiosity and desire to grow nearer to God, but also the hubris of a 17-year-old wanting to simply know more than his peers and “win” arguments (whatever that means).

I had read only a few chapters when arriving at Matthew 4, Jesus’ temptation in the desert. It blew me away. This was followed by The Sermon on the Mount. I couldn’t believe how good it was. I’d been hearing about the Bible my whole life, but reading those words myself knocked me on my back.

I thought, What good is it to read this and not live it? Not remember it? So I began memorizing whole sections of Scripture. There’s something about memorizing Scripture instead of just reading it that carved new pathways in my mind. I’ve never had such a strong experience of becoming the person I wanted to be with comparatively so little effort. The Holy Spirit plus a touch of neuroscience is probably the explanation.

Soon the hubris was mostly done away with, and I was on a mission to learn and know and follow God.

Do you remember when you first learned of Barnwell and her work?

Eleven years ago, I sat at a hotel table at my first Bible translation conference. I was hoping to get to know some of the movers and shakers, but I was the most junior person there and it was clear they weren’t interested. Suddenly, I sensed a shift in the room. The gaze, the collective energy of the room, shifted toward the door. I glanced around the room and saw nearly half the heads turn, whisper, and stay fixated.

I looked at the C-level leaders, and they all gazed there too. All I saw was an elderly woman in a light blue dress. I looked at my colleague next to me, and she anticipated my question. “Have you ever met the Michael Jordan of Bible translation?” she asked.

I’ll never forget the jarring charm of that comparison. Michael Jordan to an elderly British woman.

That was the first time I heard of her. Little did I know then that she’d revolutionized nearly every aspect of Bible translation. One of the greats was among us. It’s why everybody in the room hushed. As I learned more and more about her, I couldn’t believe somebody could be so revered and properly appreciated in their own field while almost nobody outside the Bible translation world knew of her influence.

I wrote the CT story to change that. One of the greats has lived and is still living among us. It’s not very often we get a “great.” And I’m honored to be her chronicler in the corner.

Your article did such a great job of describing Barnwell and the importance of her work. Is there anything you had to leave out that you wish you could tell readers?

I had four times the material that I was able to put into the article. CT is a magazine, after all, and not a book publisher. The great news is that B&H (part of Lifeway) commissioned me to write her full story, which will be coming out in May 2025.

What is it about Barnwell and her story that you believe resonates with so many people?

We were blown away by the reach and influence of this article. So many readers reported weeping, being reduced to snot and tears, even though it’s not the kind of story you’d expect to produce that emotion. It was the greatness of God through her that caused the emotion, not any kind of sadness.

The church in the West has been through an extremely hard decade. The kind of secularization we’re undergoing both broadly and even within the church is disenchanting everything and everybody. It’s as if we were saltwater creatures and the salt is slowly being stripped out of the water.

There’s hardly a single reader without family, friends, and close loved ones who’ve not only left the church but walked away from their belief in Christ. It’s exasperating. Add to that the nationalism, quasi-paganism, and other “-isms” that have so tarnished the witness of many of those who taught us the faith, and it has made for a very discouraging decade.

To then read Katy’s story—somebody who arguably has 100 times the fruit of Billy Graham but was virtually unknown until the CT cover—is touching. She shows that God is completing his Great Commission. And even if it seems difficult here, God is doing his work. And we get to be a part of it. And he is great. And he will see it through. Katy’s story shows this more clearly than any I know outside of Scripture.

If readers only took one thing away from your article, what would you hope it would be?

God is in control, and he is the one fulfilling his Great Commission. We’re simply privileged to get to be a part of it.

What makes CT a good outlet for this article?

There are very few institutions in the world that can claim what CT can. It is arguably the only publication in the English-speaking world where a 7,200-word article, 13 magazine pages, could be given to a story like Katy Barnwell’s and the story of Bible translation.

No other publication I can think of would dare go beyond 4,000 words, let alone have the reach CT does. If The Atlantic or The New Yorker won’t publish a certain story, there are a dozen others who may publish that work. If CT didn’t publish this, it wouldn’t be published anywhere.

Christianity Today has also been working to expand its global reach, including translating articles (in 18 languages now). What do you see as the next step for CT in this sphere?

Morgan Lee and the global team have done an incredible job with this, and I’m so glad the riches of CT’s ministry are able to be shared with many of the major languages of the world. I dare not suggest anything, because I bet she’s miles ahead of me.

I’ll just say this: In a world with so much frivolous content and bad takes, the beautiful orthodoxy of CT is a lifeline. When I was alone on the mission field and separated from the fruitful discussion of leading Christian thinking, CT was like an oasis in the desert for me. And I speak English, likely the leading language of Christian discussion in the world right now. I can’t imagine what believers sometimes feel like from other major languages.

I’d be thrilled to venture a decade or two into the future and find there that all the major languages of the world have a robust, beautifully orthodox presence from CT—written, edited, recorded, published, and produced by and for those who speak those languages.

Church Life

All About That Tenor: Why Men Don’t Sing in Worship

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Music experts say we don’t need more “manly songs,” but we do need to help lower voices find their place.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Getty

The 1910 edition of the YMCA songbook, Manly Songs for Christian Men, has no foreword or introduction, just a brief explanation on the title page: “A collection of Sacred Songs adapted to the needs of Male Singers. For use in Adult Bible Classes, Y.M.C.A. Meetings and all gatherings of men for religious work and worship.”

The first song is “For the Man of Galilee,” which opens with these lines:

Shout aloud the stirring summons
O’er the land from sea to sea
Men are wanted, men of courage,
For the Man of Galilee.

The song alternates between accented, march-like sections in unison and four-part harmonies. The music gives tenors the chance to project at the top of their range, and the basses get to land on a resonant low A-flat at the end of each verse. It’s a rousing march in the tradition of 19th-century men’s choirs, once fixtures of many European and American communities.

But today, if you ask leaders and pastors about the status of congregational singing in their churches, most will confirm that many men just don’t participate. Some blame musical style, some blame lyrical content, and others blame generalized “feminization” of the American church.

Recent interest in the state of masculinity, explored in a raft of op-eds, books, and podcasts, has reinvigorated a perennial discussion about why so many men don’t sing in church. While there has been plenty of speculation about the “effeminacy” of contemporary worship music and its effects on men in churches, most men’s reasons for singing are not so ideological.

The lower rate of musical participation among men likely has little to do with a dearth of manly marches in today’s churches. It has a lot to do with the male voice itself—its range and patterns of development—and socialization in a culture where so many men are uncomfortable with their own voices. The music isn’t a threat to their masculinity, but they aren’t sure where their voices fit in.

The stakes of that question—Why aren’t men singing?—vary depending on how we interpret the biblical mandate to sing praise. Many Christians take Paul’s admonition, “Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts” (Col. 3:16) as an explicit directive to sing.

And yet “it’s acceptable for men not to sing,” said Randall Bradley, Baylor University professor of church music, director of the men’s choir, and director of the Dunn Center for Christian Music Studies. “In fact, I think the expectation is that men don’t sing.”

Men hear higher, wider vocal ranges from popular singers and worship leaders; Chris Tomlin and Phil Wickham have famously impressive tenor ranges, far out of reach for most male voices. It’s relatively rare to hear a baritone or bass leading worship on a worship album or at a church that uses contemporary worship music.

More than a particular musical style, that expectation for vocal range can make it harder for the average guy to have the comfort and confidence to lift his voice on a Sunday morning, said David McNeil Jr., assistant professor of choral studies at Colorado Christian University.

“American popular music tells you that a good male voice is a high voice,” said McNeil, who, like Bradley, conducts a men’s choir and works as a church music minister. “If you’re a tenor and you sing in church, you’re more likely to be told, ‘Wow, you should be a worship leader.’”

Tenors and countertenors have had star power for centuries. In 17th-century Italian opera, castrati (male singers who were castrated to preserve a high vocal range) were cast in the heroic roles; their seemingly superhuman vocal abilities made them figures of fascination. By the 19th century, the castrati had disappeared, and even the tenor had shifted to the more masculine “heroic tenor” (no falsetto) and the bel canto baritone, partly because of public discourse about masculinity.

“The prevailing thought was that countertenors and tenors sing from the head, not the chest,” notes Allison McCracken, associate professor of American Studies at DePaul University and author of Real Men Don’t Sing: Crooning in American Culture. “The barrel-chested baritone was considered more masculine.”

McCracken’s research explores our persistent fascination with the high male voice and the periodic cultural backlashes against it. She argues that historically, crooners and boy-band tenors have been simultaneously beloved and viewed with hostility. (Think of the mocking of young heartthrobs like Justin Bieber or Justin Timberlake in their teen-idol days.)

The history of male vocal ranges in popular music isn’t so far afield of contemporary debates about why men don’t sing in church. The dynamics around the high-voiced male in popular music show up in contemporary worship music; the singers we celebrate on stage don’t sound like the average man in the pews.

“The people singing on the radio are anomalies,” Bradley noted. “Most men’s voices are bigger, louder than most women’s voices. The vocal folds are larger too.”

These physical differences put men at a disadvantage if music is pitched awkwardly or if the song calls for a low volume or light tone. Plus, worship leaders may select a song’s key based on their voices, not the congregation’s. The rate of new worship music production also means that songs come and go more quickly, often before people have a chance to learn them well enough to sing with confidence.

Picking the right keys or using more familiar songs won’t fix everything, though. Men who are used to not singing need to learn or relearn how to use their voices, and many congregational songs, new and old, are vocally challenging.

Hymns, Bradley notes, aren’t necessarily more popular with men, but they are often pitched better for men. In his experience, lyrical contemporary worship music is harder for men to sing not because their stylistic preferences differ but because the dynamics are more arduous for wobbly vocalists.

“It can be more difficult for men to sing in pop styles because those styles require subtleties like scooping, singing lightly, or quietly sneaking in. Those are refined skills, and men’s voices tend to be a little clumsier,” said Bradley.

For most girls and young women, vocal change doesn’t interfere with singing in adolescence as dramatically as it does for men, giving them more time to develop their voices and the ability to sing sensitively or integrate stylistic flourishes.

Guys go through awkward stages of vocal change that start in puberty and can continue into their late 20s. Without affirmation and encouragement to keep singing and honing their voices during this time, many men choose to stop singing altogether. They come to think of their voices as ugly.

McNeil says he regularly hears nearly identical stories from older men in his church choir about being put down by music teachers. “‘My fourth grade teacher told me I just sound bad.’ I hear that all the time.”

Bradley hears similar stories from his singers: “We have so many people talking about teachers who told them they can’t sing or always put them in the back row.”

Bradley and McNeil believe that these kinds of negative experiences have helped create a culture where men don’t feel comfortable singing and avoid the embarrassment of being singled out or feeling exposed.

The good news, said McNeil, is that music educators today are more aware of the sensitivity of guiding male voices, and those stories seem to be less common among younger singers.

“We don’t generally think about how personal singing is. It’s incredibly vulnerable,” Bradley said. “We have to be so gentle when we work with people’s voices.”

McNeil and Bradley find that their singers are far more concerned about range and singable arrangements than they are about musical style. Neither of them have choir members asking to sing “manlier” songs.

“They will sing anything that touches their hearts or intellect,” said Bradley. “They are openhearted. They don’t complain about repertoire. They don’t care about worship wars.”

McNeil’s men’s choir, a small ensemble with 12–15 members, sings selections from a broad range of genres: arrangements of contemporary worship songs, classical standards, and modern choral works. He finds that emotional expressivity in any genre is something that most men are comfortable with.

“In my experience, they are looking for a full range of expression,” said McNeil.

At Baylor, Bradley finds that men are looking for emotional and relational depth when they join the men’s choir. Every fall, the group goes on an overnight retreat; 70 young men travel to a small church outside Waco to rehearse, do some grilling, and square off in a much-anticipated dodgeball match between upper- and lowerclassmen. There’s a lot of laughter, deep conversations, and hours of singing.

“Singing in a choir is like building a house together,” said Carson Hooker, president of the Baylor Men’s Choir. He grew up in a Christian Reformed church singing a blend of traditional hymns (often accompanied by his grandmother on the organ) and contemporary worship music, and has been singing in choirs since fifth grade.

The Baylor choir retreats, he says, strengthen the sense of community and purpose among the group. His first was awkward, but mostly because everyone attended via Zoom because of the pandemic. It’s hard to feel connected when you’re singing remotely.

“I’m fascinated by the comfortableness of men singing with other men,” said Bradley, the ensemble’s director. “Singing is an expression of your whole self.”

“I don’t think there is nearly as much stigma about singing as there used to be. And young men today are more comfortable choosing their version of masculinity and accepting different choices,” said Bradley. “For the church, it’s a really hopeful place to be.”

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

News

DeSantis Partners with Pastors in Attempt to Gain on Trump

Kate Shellnutt

Even with his new faith coalition and bolder pro-life convictions, few evangelicals are stepping away from the former president and GOP frontrunner.

Ron DeSantis at the Pray Vote Stand Summit.

Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images

Ron DeSantis is putting his Christian convictions forward as he tries to gain ground with evangelical voters, who continue to favor former president Donald Trump.

“I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God,” the Florida governor told hundreds gathered for the Family Research Council’s Pray Vote Stand Summit on Friday in Washington, DC, repeating one of his favorite Bible lines about putting on “the full armor of God.”

“When you stand up for what’s right in this day and age, that is not going to be cost-free. … And it’s the faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition. It gives you the foundation to know that all the insults, all the nonsense they throw at you, ultimately doesn’t matter because you are aiming higher.”

The summit came one day after DeSantis, who is Catholic, launched his Faith and Family Coalition. The group features endorsements from 70 pastors in the early primary states of Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire. The coalition invites supporters to back DeSantis through “faith and prayer.”

Trump still leads the GOP race by a wide margin—a straw poll of over 500 in attendance at the DC summit had the former president over DeSantis, 64 percent to 27 percent—but a slice of evangelical voters are being swayed by what they see as stronger character and tougher stances on pro-life issues from other candidates.

“Former president Trump, despite all the merits and many good things he did, is relatively weak in comparison to other candidates, and especially governor DeSantis, on these issues, which are core issues for social conservatives,” one attendee, Ken Oliver, told The Guardian. “We need to build a consensus around limitations to abortion, whether it’s 6 weeks or 15 weeks or 20 weeks. Why shy away from that?”

DeSantis has not specified exactly what type of restrictions he’d pursue as president but regularly reminds voters that in Florida, he enacted a six-week ban on abortion.

Trump, whose conservative Supreme Court appointees ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade, called DeSantis’s heartbeat ban a “terrible mistake” on Meet the Press last weekend. At the Pray Vote Stand Summit, speaking before conservative evangelicals, he said the topic was “very hard on elections” and “an issue” during the midterms.

While some evangelicals who formerly supported Trump have expressed disappointment in his pro-life stances this time around, most continue to back him and believe he has the best chance at beating President Joe Biden next year.

Trump has skipped several faith events in the Hawkeye State, which will kick off the GOP presidential race with its caucuses in January. Meanwhile, DeSantis continues to make a focused effort on faith outreach there, holding a God Over Government rally on Saturday before attending a banquet and town hall hosted by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.

On the campaign trail, he has lamented inflation, touted school choice, promised to appoint conservative justices, and decried religious discrimination and restrictions on religious expression. He emphasizes the importance of standing for truth, including against “gender ideology” in schools and gender transitions for minors.

DeSantis also pledged federal investigations into the attacks on faith-based pregnancy centers and pro-life activists.

His faith outreach has made in-roads with pastors. DeSantis thanked the “shepherds of God’s flock” in attendance at the DC summit and applauded them and their churches for their role in restoring the country against decline.

Two dozen pastors in Iowa backed DeSantis’s Faith and Family Coalition, including Jon Dunwell, a pastor in Grinnell, Iowa, who is also a state representative.

“This man has opened himself up for me to have an influence in his life, and I’m going to take every opportunity for a leader who’s that open and says, ‘Hey, I want pastors praying for me. I want pastors speaking to me. I want people in engaging with me on important issues and having a seat at that table,’” Dunwell said in an interview with KCCI in Des Moines. “That’s what I love.”

DeSantis, a 45-year-old father of three, was raised Catholic and continued to identify as Catholic through his time serving in US Congress. Last week, he met with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, and said as president, he would end religious discrimination against Catholics in “federal bureaucracy.” But mostly, DeSantis doesn’t bring up his Catholicism in particular.

His testimony, including how prayer buoyed his family during his wife’s breast cancer, includes just broad references to “faith.” A piece by the Catholic magazine America titled “The Mysterious Catholic Faith of Ron DeSantis” said it’s unclear whether the DeSantises are active in a congregation and that they have declined to discuss details about their religion in public. His campaign bio makes no reference to faith.

Just two US presidents have been Catholic—Democrats John F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Biden—but Catholicism doesn’t seem to be a big enough part of DeSantis’s campaign to help or hurt him.

“He’s a good conservative. I don’t think his Catholicism will interfere with his campaign for president; I think there are other issues,” said Dennis Ross, a former congressman from Florida who served alongside DeSantis and the director of the American Center for Political Leadership at Southeastern University in Lakeland.

Trump still has an upper hand with name recognition and broad appeal among a growing segment of Republican voters who are evangelicals but don’t attend church regularly. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted last week found that evangelical voters prefer Trump by a roughly 35 percentage-point margin over DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

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The whole counsel of God’s Word

The sufferings of Christ

The fellowship of the gathered church

The ministry of presence

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In this series

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