Melanie Penn Sings the Resurrection Story

Interview by Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

The Broadway actress turned singer-songwriter talks about her new album and the value of sacred music outside of Sunday mornings.

Image courtesy of Melanie Penn

For a long time, Melanie Penn thought her voice would always be a vessel for music written by someone else. The classically trained Nashville-based singer-songwriter got her start in the early 2000s as a Broadway vocalist, performing roles like Sandy in a national tour of Grease.

Even after she became a worship leader at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan (led by the late Tim Keller), Penn saw songwriting as an intimidating undertaking, something meant for people with another kind of gift. Her gift, as she saw it, was singing.

But in 2005, Penn realized she was singing songs to herself throughout the day: her songs. She had lyrical and melodic ideas—lots of them—and she started to wonder if songwriting wasn’t so forbidding and mysterious after all. She reached out to Ben Shive, a Nashville-based producer and songwriter and now her long-term collaborator, to see if he would work with someone new and determined.

Twenty years later, Penn has found a home in Nashville, continuing to collaborate with Shive and a community of Christian musicians on projects like Anchor Hymns. Her 2017 Christmas album, Immanuel, was a musical study in perspective. Penn brought her experience as an on-stage performer to her songwriting, capturing the different voices and points of view of characters in the Christmas story.

Penn’s new album, The Rising (which released September 19), is a resurrection album. She’s adamant that it’s not for Easter alone, though it does invite listeners to inhabit the story from the perspectives of Peter, Thomas, Mary, and other biblical characters.

The Rising seamlessly blends story and worshipful reflection across tracks that range in style from intimate and folk-influenced songs to upbeat chamber pop. Penn takes moments from Scripture’s narrative—like Thomas’s encounter with the risen Christ—and expands them, inviting listeners to join with the disciple in asking for confirmation and assurance in the midst of doubt.

Penn spoke with CT about The Rising, her path from Broadway performer to singer-songwriter, and her approach to musical storytelling.

A lot of Christian musicians start out in Nashville. It seems to be where all of the action is, the place where performers have the best shot of getting a foot in the door. But you began in New York City in musical theater. Can you talk about your path from Broadway to the kind of songwriting you do now?

In college, around my junior year, I realized that I wasn’t going to have a career in classical music. I’m classically trained. I was singing opera, and my voice just topped out. There were things that my voice just wouldn’t do.

But I had good tone and clarity, and I was good with languages, so there were a lot of things going for me. And I loved musicals. So I decided to go to New York and try to make it on Broadway. For some reason I thought that would be easier.

I became an equity actor. I did a lot of cool stuff off-Broadway. I did a major national tour with Grease. But gosh, that’s a hard life.

Still, I really wanted to sing—though the through line in all of my early career is that I was always singing other people’s words. I thought that songwriting was for certain special people, and I put myself in the “non-special” category.

Once I realized that I was writing my own songs and that I might be able to do this, it was like I opened a pressure valve and all this steam started coming out. I just kept writing.

Ben [Shive] hates this story, but this is really what happened. I read an article in a magazine that said Andrew Peterson was the best Christian songwriter of that moment, so I got on Andrew Peterson’s website and saw that his latest CD was produced by Ben Shive. I messaged Ben on MySpace, and two weeks later I was in Nashville playing through demos.

When did you realize that you liked writing songs that center narrative storytelling? That’s been a hallmark of your music on Immanuel and now on The Rising.

I don’t use a lot of abstract poetry in my writing. I’m very direct. I like listeners to know exactly what I’m talking about. There are some artists who really dwell in the land of the abstract and they create a mood or vibe. But I want someone who is adjacent to Christianity to find my music and be able to understand it.

With Immanuel, I stumbled into this narrative style of writing by mistake. I wrote a song for the three wise men called “Follow the Star.” Then a couple of days later I wrote “Isaiah’s Song,” which is the first track of the album. At that point I didn’t even recognize that I was writing a Christmas album.

When I realized that I had this common thread, first-person perspectives from different moments of the Nativity, I was off to the races.

I so easily accessed what I had been doing on stage, which was inhabiting a character. I had been trained to see the world through someone else’s eyes and think about what’s motivating that person.

Your training has provided you with a broad musical vocabulary, which is audible in your eclectic style. What were some of the influences that you tried to bring to bear on The Rising?

The Rising is different from Immanuel because Ben and I cowrote all of the songs. This was a more collaborative project.

One thing we have in common is that we love the music of Stephen Sondheim. I’m obsessed with the way he does story and his lyrical richness. There are unexpected rhymes, slow reveals.

Sonically, I’m definitely influenced by the lush pop of the 1980s. Judy Collins is a big influence. And you can hear that Ben has really leaned into his gift for symphonic arranging over the past few years. He brings this sophisticated, orchestrated voice and sensibility to the music on the album.

How does the vocal storytelling you do in The Rising differ from the storytelling and acting you did on Broadway? Obviously there are some big differences between how you sing when you’re projecting for a big theater, but what are the similarities and differences when it comes to musically inhabiting these characters?

An album setting is so much more intimate. I’m always thinking about clarity, almost holding back. On a Broadway stage, it’s all about the money note. But I don’t think an album is the right place for that, at least for me. I want someone to hear my voice and find it calming, with a pure, gentle quality.

In a live setting, I can make things a little more exciting, leaning into moments when I can show off some vocal prowess and deliver.

Is there a song on The Rising that feels more personal to you than the others? Was there a character you identified with in particular?

Well, I’m an actress, so I found my way to identify with everyone. But the song for Thomas was the one that I very intentionally wanted to lift out of the narrative and give to a modern person who is doubting, for the deconstructed person who has walked away from faith.

Deconstruction’s not really a thing where I was living in the Northeast. But here in the South, I have met so many people who are deconstructing because they were all in on faith and Jesus, but then something happened. There was trauma, and they just can’t stay. They haven’t healed.

I wanted the song for Thomas to be for that time of deconstruction, Thomas sings this line, “I already lost you one time; I can’t do it again.” This is for that place of unbelief, wanting to believe, not knowing which end is up. At one point in the narrative in John’s gospel, Thomas says, “Let’s go to Jerusalem and die with him.” Thomas was all in.

You worked as a worship leader in Tim Keller’s church for a time. Did you ever consider gravitating toward writing worship music or pursuing a career as a worship leader at a different church?

I really like writing songs for people’s daily lives, as a way to relate to an audience outside of congregational worship. But then the question is “Where is the home for this?” It’s not for Christian radio, and it’s not for Sunday morning.

But I love writing this way, and I want to continue writing this way. I think the future for music like this is going to be in live concert experience.

The Rising is a whole work. A friend described it to me as an oratorio, and I love that description. It’s complete. It’s a journey. And I want to find settings to share it.

As someone who honed a gift for songwriting after thinking you didn’t have the ability, what would you say to people who feel a pull toward creating music but don’t see themselves as writers?

It never feels natural. It’s like going to the gym. It’s difficult work. I think we have to cut through this idea that if you’re good at making art, you just breathe and it comes out. That notion keeps a lot of people back because they start and it feels hard. Then they start to believe that they just aren’t good at it.

I ask for help. I ask God for help, and I say to God, “I’m available.” I do think there is a supernatural exchange that can happen and that God is willing to pour out skills, wisdom, and increased creativity. Asking is really important.

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis is the worship correspondent for Christianity Today. Her book The Myth of Good Christian Parenting: How False Promises Betrayed a Generation of Evangelical Families, cowritten with Melissa Burt, will be released this October.

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News

Church Discipline Is Still the Exception

David Roach

But it’s making a comeback in some circles, including among Reformed congregations that emphasize church membership.

Luis Quintero / Pexels

When a church member left her husband and moved in with another man, pastor Aaron Menikoff thought about the couple’s two young children.

“I wanted to be able to one day tell these kids that we did everything we could to save their parents’ marriage,” said Menikoff, pastor of Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

So Mt. Vernon Baptist initiated the church discipline process. Leaders asked the woman to live out her Christian profession by returning to her husband. Eventually, they excluded her from church membership when she failed to repent.

Since that case more than 15 years ago, the church has disciplined between one and three members each year—with the congregation’s support.

Church discipline “isn’t something that has been thrust upon me by a board of directors,” Menikoff said. “This is a body of Christ living out the Christian life.”

Menikoff’s church is not alone. While formal church discipline remains relatively infrequent in the US, it’s making a comeback in some circles, where pastors emphasize membership and position discipline as a form of care and restoration.

Church discipline proponents often cite Matthew 18:15–17 as prescribing the practice. In that passage, Jesus established the process of confronting a sinning church member three times, then excluding the person from their local congregation if they fail to repent.

Nearly one in six US Protestant pastors says their church “formally disciplined” someone in the past year, according to a survey released this summer by Lifeway Research.

“Formally disciplined” signifies following a set process for dealing with sin rather than a “one-off rebuke,” Lifeway Research executive director Scott McConnell said. Though the findings remain statistically unchanged from a similar survey in 2017, some ecclesiology experts see a shift in how certain churches and members embrace discipline as a crucial aspect of membership.

“There has been a slow and slight growth of it, especially in Reformed circles, in the last couple of decades,” said Jonathan Leeman, president of 9Marks, a ministry that seeks to build healthy churches. While pastors and seminary students seemed defensive about church discipline in the 1990s and early 2000s, he said, now they have become more open to the idea and want guidance on how to carry it out.

Still, the prevailing lack of church discipline is a vast shift from the norms of American church life two centuries ago.

In the antebellum South, Baptists excommunicated nearly 2 percent of their church members annually, according to Democratic Religion, a study published by church historian Gregory Wills. If that percentage prevailed today, America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, would force out more than 250,000 church members each year.

That level of church discipline seems absurd to a church culture focused on attendance and budgets, Leeman said. Plus, many Christians are scared away from the practice by horror stories of abusive church discipline—including shunning the person being disciplined, disowning a child, and allowing a pastor to unilaterally excommunicate someone.

But the decline in biblical church discipline remains striking, Leeman said.

“It’s not as if anybody ever stood up and said we need to stop practicing church discipline,” he said. Rather, “the practice gradually faded away as pastors became more interested in other things such as increasing numbers or remaining financially solvent.”

Over decades studying the United Methodist Church, Mark Tooley has seen occasional church trials for clergy misconduct but never formal discipline for a layperson. That aligns with Lifeway’s survey, which found Methodists are the least likely to indicate their church has “official policies in place for disciplining members.”

Such dearth of church discipline is a far cry from John Wesley’s practice of removing from Methodist rosters “people who were not abiding by Methodist standards,” said Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an ecumenical think tank that advocates for the renewal of historic Christian doctrine in mainline denominations.

Christianity in the 21st century is “more consumerist,” he said. “We pick and choose our churches and move from church to church based on whether it meets our needs. No one is going to stick around for any potential disapproval, much less any disciplinary process.”

But can Christians in a consumeristic, attendance-focused culture learn to love church discipline again? Sam Ferguson says yes, and church discipline’s progress at the Anglican church he pastors in northern Virginia supports his claim.

“People respond well if it’s done initially in a very pastoral way, where there’s a good relationship and you are not immediately publicly embarrassing or shaming someone,” said Ferguson, rector of The Falls Church Anglican, a congregation of some 2,000 members located outside Washington, DC.

Three to four times a year, Falls Church Anglican starts the church discipline process, which they call pastoral discipline, with a member. That entails one of the pastors approaching a person with questions and concerns about their behavior—usually serious and persistent issues like marital unfaithfulness, refusal to follow the church’s directions in ministry, and chronic absenteeism from church.

The congregation’s team of pastors confirms any allegations, then confers about an appropriate course of action. After allowing time for repentance, pastors return to the sinning person with another call to repentance.

If the sinning persists, the church’s pastors collectively decide that the person is not a member in good standing and, in extreme cases, may not take Communion. They also provide the sinning member with guidelines for what it would take to restore their membership.

Few people have ended up being excluded from church membership at Falls Church Anglican during Ferguson’s pastoral tenure. Some members have been barred temporarily from communion, and some have simply left during the process of discipline and not returned. Church discipline observers say the latter scenario is relatively common in American congregations, especially those that begin practicing discipline without precedent or ample teaching on the topic.

Generally, Falls Church Anglican members have responded well to the initial steps of the discipline process. Also, if pastors ever hear reports of a crime or allegations involving harm to a minor, Ferguson said, the church contacts police immediately rather than only handling the situation internally.

Gaining buy-in for church discipline begins with explaining the meaning of church membership.

“If you become a member at our church, you can lead a small group, you can run for all kinds of leadership and volunteer roles, and you can vote for our vestry members, who have the authority to call the head pastor,” Ferguson said. “To do that, we expect things of you, both in terms of your theological affirmations and your way of life.”

Menikoff sounded a similar tone.

“When people hear that word ‘membership,’ what they think of is Costco or Sam’s Club or the Y—a manmade way to keep an account of who’s where. In reality, not only is membership a biblical word,”

Menikoff said, citing Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, “but it’s rooted in the covenant community which is visualized by baptism and the Lord’s Supper.”

Not just any sin triggers church discipline in most congregations. Historically, church discipline has addressed sins that are verifiable (rather than attitudes of the heart, like pride) and from which a church member refuses to turn after multiple warnings. To trigger church discipline, a sin also should be “significant,” Leeman said.

“Significant is subjective,” he said. “But we know from both Scripture and existentially that some matters of the law are weightier. There’s a difference between a man selfishly eating all the ice cream in the house and a man leaving his wife for another woman.”

If church discipline continues to rise, its ascent may confound secular critics who say it makes church members vulnerable to attack. Ironically, Menikoff has found it makes believers feel secure.

“After we did one of our church discipline cases, we had a fellowship meal,” he said. “A young mother came up to me and said, ‘Thank you so much. I want to thank the elders for leading us in this direction. I feel safe here.’”

Menikoff’s conclusion: “She felt safe being in a church that took sin seriously. She didn’t feel like we were going to be going after everybody.”

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

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Books

Review

Anxiety Isn’t Unnatural—or Unfaithful

Wendy Kiyomi

Blair Linne’s memoir of mental illness shines light on why it occurs and how God can redeem it.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, B&H Books

“I am afraid because my body is not working right,” writes Blair Linne, a Bible teacher and poet, in her new book. “My mind is not working the way it once did.”

Anyone familiar with anxiety will understand the fear behind these statements. Anxiety disorder is a mental illness in which a person’s body and mind have heightened responses to threats that may or may not be real. Approximately a third of US adults will experience an anxiety disorder in their lifetime.

In Made to Tremble: How Anxiety Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to My Faith, Linne gives a compelling account of how mental illness forced her to passionately search for God’s faithfulness.

Anxiety entered Linne’s life a few years ago, when she was in a car accident. Although she was not seriously injured at the time, she soon began having troublesome episodes of breathlessness, rapid heartbeat, sweating, trembling, nausea, and intrusive thoughts. She visited the emergency room; doctors told her everything was fine. But for months, as she tried to care for her family and teach in the church, she felt unsteady. At any moment, her vision might blur. Her heart might race. Her breathing might become ragged. Or her limbs might sink. But she couldn’t predict when.

The anxiety was generalized—her body perceived and responded to threats that her mind wanted to explain away. Many people express the unpleasant surprise of managing physical distress symptoms that won’t go away even when they “know better.”

Linne found little support from her church tradition. Many of us feel shame when sickness affects our minds, especially when it appears in our body or behaviors. Christians hold that the mind should be driving the bus, disciplining the body and its passions, not the other way round. Aren’t we commanded to “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5) and “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2)? What does it mean to lose rational control and struggle to curb our panic? Are we unfaithful? Are we already defeated?

On the contrary, Linne says, anxiety might turn our lives upside down, but it isn’t unfaithful. Denying the body’s real power to determine mental health is gnostic, not biblical. Anxiety is a natural and even expected way that human bodies express their createdness in God. Moreover, anxiety is an authentic concession to the fallen nature of the world. It can even be a way that God increases our awe, trust, and delight in him. Nothing is outside God’s redemptive purposes.

In Made to Tremble, Linne sets out to trace a theological path that can guide others caught in their own storms. It is a tricky mission. On the one hand, she wants to avoid the false message of religious do-it-yourselfers, who wave “jazz hands, glitter, and ‘you can do it’ banners,” and tell anxiety-sufferers to pray harder and “rebuke the devil.” On the other, she wants to honor the desire for spiritual answers for the suffering that comes with anxiety. She succeeds because she is a gifted theologian and a devoted follower of Jesus. Pastorally, she knows what she is about.

Humans are inherently “made to tremble,” Linne writes. All this means is that we are contingent beings completely reliant on our Creator and the environment he sustains. This basic fact is knowable by our waking minds: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). It is also “understood” by our created bodies, which register God’s supremeness by instinct. “We’re more than animals,” a friend told me once, “but we’re not less.”

Although the book doesn’t cover medical research, I am fascinated by the animal nature of anxiety. Our brain, we believe, is the rational center that tells the rest of our body what to do. Interestingly, our gut is constantly sending other information along the vagus nerve back to the head—essentially calling the shots in the direction opposite of what we expect.

Doctors recognize our digestive system as our “second brain.” Food, movement, noises, smells, bacteria, hormones—even love and conflict!—all influence how our brain decides to act. Much of what we think, feel, and do, including anxiety, arises from what the gut says. Surely we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

The problem is that our bodies and the world are broken. The moment sin entered the world in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve were keenly aware of their vulnerability. Our body’s capacity to respond to an almighty, loving God, a capacity intended for our delight and his glory, became distorted. We now react to dangers and the reality of death; sometimes our bodies under- or over-react. Anxiety is one way that our bodies “speak” about living with sin in a sinful world.

Linne thus brings us coherently through the why of anxiety: It is not a personal failure but a natural consequence of having a disordered body within a disordered world. This sounds like bad news, but it can be a balm for the sense of fault that often accompanies mental illness. We want to know we’re not to blame. We want to know we’re not hopelessly lost.

She then turns to hope, which comes through Jesus Christ. He “suffered and trembled for us,” conquered death, and opened the way for us to be perfectly at ease with the Father. If God has so faithfully managed our worst fears, how much more will he be faithful in the lesser ones! A time is coming when all illness will be over: “Anxiety’s days are numbered.” If this sounds like an anxiety edition of the gospel, it is. Chapter 5 ends with an altar call.

Anxiety has a way of pitting us against our own bodies, but it doesn’t have to be this way. As Linne notes, we honor the body’s trembly nature by doubling down on God-ordained practices, like worship, prayer, and rest. We celebrate our embodiment with his gifts of nutritious food, sleep, nature, friendship, and family bonds.

Linne gives principles for when prayer for healing or against spiritual attack might be used—giving no guarantees, but equipping readers to take the Lord seriously at his invitation to pray boldly. Anxiety might be a time to concede our limitations and to learn new ways to cast our cares upon him. Linne recounts her petitions to God made minute by minute through feelings of heavy dread. “One of the most courageous things you can do,” she writes, “is ask Him for help.”

Anxiety is a kind of suffering, and suffering almost always whispers of failure. We shun it. Yet for Jesus, suffering was not a mark of failure but one of incomparable triumph. Those who suffer are precious to him; he will “consider their grief and take it in hand” (Ps. 10:14). Even if her prayers are not answered, Linne finds that Jesus is an attentive Savior and loving friend. She echoes Joni Eareckson Tada’s words from her 2019 book A Place of Healing: “He has chosen not to heal me but to hold me.” This is no silver lining, but pure gold.

I resonated with Linne’s insight that ministry to others is still possible and often even strengthened through mental illness. In managing anxiety, we may try to tighten control over as much as possible, but that is bondage. Amid seasons of anxiety, there is nothing more freeing than turning our spirits outward and inviting others into our life with God. Freedom of spirit in the face of physical limitation is compellingly Christlike. Linne turns the tables, showing that instead of anxiety leading to a diminished life, it can be a gateway to seeing hope and joy pour into a hungry world.

Anxiety symptoms—their intensity and confusion—are hard to describe. Linne falters on occasion by heavy reliance on various water and weather metaphors. While biblical and poetic—rough seas and rising waters often signify chaos in Scripture—too many images in short succession distract rather than illuminate. One paragraph went from ocean waves to an undertow to river rapids to pelting rain to a serene lake in a disorienting litany.

The book’s devotional cadence may inadvertently push readers toward a notion Linne critiques, that anxiety is best handled spiritually. The one chapter not focused on theological resources does mention other treatments, like counseling, medication, and lifestyle changes, but seems preoccupied with justifying them as spiritually acceptable. It may be too elevated for those trying to get relief from acute or long-term symptoms. A committed Christian friend of mine recently told me, “I only really got better when I treated anxiety as a purely physical condition.”

I understand the impulse for supportive theology, though, and I honor the outcome in Made to Tremble. The real story of a long-term illness is about making sense of one’s place in the world, and this is often a spiritual subject. Linne’s story of freedom in anxiety is a testament to God’s power and love, which shine through an experience that might have portended only sorrow. She has found herself carried like a lamb near the heart of her Shepherd, who holds his arms open to every one of us.

Wendy Kiyomi is an adoptive parent, scientist, and writer in Tacoma, Washington, whose work on faith, adoption, and friendship has also appeared in Plough Quarterly, Image, Mockingbird, and The Englewood Review of Books. She is a 2023 winner of the Zenger Prize.

- More from Wendy Kiyomi

Books

Kierkegaard Is for the Deconstructor

Haley Byrd Wilt

The missionary to Christendom is also a missionary to modernity.

WikiMedia Commons / Edits by Christianity Today

Plenty of young people may find Søren Kierkegaard relatable on the basis of his biography alone.

He once dug himself into debt during a personal crisis by spending too much money on books and coffee. He agonized over romance, unsure whether he was suited for marriage. He canceled his engagement—then he overthought and regretted that decision too.

Despair hounded him, as it hounds many of us. “I have just come from a party of which I was the soul: witticism flowed from my mouth, all laughed and admired me,” he wrote in his journal in 1836. “But I went (here indeed the dashes should be as long as the radius of the earth’s orbit)—————————————————————————away and wanted to shoot myself.”

Kierkegaard ultimately found a true path out of his despair: an absurdly hopeful, fiercely devoted faith in Jesus Christ. For him, Christianity was not an affair of cold reason or apologetics but a falling in love that should shape a whole life.

I think Practice in Christianity, his book exploring that idea (and published 175 years ago this week) will resonate with younger generations even more than the details of his life do. Of all his writings, Practice is perhaps the most urgent for modern, disillusioned people, especially those who have considered leaving the church in recent years due to doubt or disgust with the failings of Christian leaders.

I’m thinking of young people a lot like me: those who grew up attending church, then started working through serious questions about religion as adults while also watching some prominent Christians behave maliciously and transactionally in the public square.

Practice speaks to both concerns, first by laying out the existential requirements of Christian faith—we must either reject or believe the paradox of a God-man walking the earth, but we can never fully reason or study our way to faith—and second by painting a picture of earnest, untamed discipleship that bears fruit, a faith that won’t let young people down as their fallen institutions and leaders do.

Kierkegaard saw Practice as a judgment on Christendom more broadly but also as a judgment on himself, with the hopes that he could live up to the radical faith it describes. To avoid confusion, I’ll refer to him as the author, although he published this book under a pseudonym, “Anti-Climacus,” who represented “a Christian on an extraordinary level.”

Kierkegaard wasn’t just doing a bit, though. Practice was deeply meaningful to him. He privately described it as “the most perfect and the truest thing I have written.” And outside Scripture, Practice has done more than any other book to help me work out my faith with fear and trembling.

In Practice, Kierkegaard begins by asking, When we think about Jesus Christ, do we imagine him in glory, reigning over all things? Or do we envision him just as clearly as a human being walking dusty streets, an outcast who suffered and died in agony?

He argues the answer to that question reveals whether a Christian has truly become contemporary with Christ or is worshiping a false image of him.

“Directly there was nothing to be seen except a lowly human being who by signs and wonders and by claiming to be God continually constituted the possibility of offense,” Kierkegaard writes. “A teacher, a wise man, or whatever one wants to call him, a kind of miscarried genius who claims to be God—surrounded by a band of rabble.”

What madness to expect help from him! To follow Christ as his contemporary was to risk losing everything, to become an outcast like he was.

Would we do it?

Instead of reckoning with that question, being a Christian 1,800 years after Christ’s death and resurrection had become “as simple as pulling on one’s socks,” Kierkegaard writes.

“In Christendom we have all become Christians without perceiving any possibility of offense at an individual human being’s speaking and acting in terms of being God,” he continues. But “the God-man is the paradox, absolutely the paradox. … The understanding must come to a standstill on it.”

To become contemporary with Christ is to see the possibility of offense—not “offense” in the sense we usually understand it, like doing or saying something provocative or hurtful. Kierkegaard is using the word more existentially, based on Scripture: “What is the offense, that which offends? That which conflicts with all (human) reason.”

Christ must always pose the possibility of offense, Kierkegaard argues, both because he was an individual human claiming to be God—his loftiness—and because he was God present as a mere human being—his lowliness.

The Gospels are filled with accounts of people who were offended by Jesus for those very reasons. Healing on the Sabbath, associating with sinners, claiming to be the bread of life: Who is this man to act as if he’s God?

Christ himself repeatedly blesses those who aren’t offended by his presence. But Kierkegaard sees the possibility of offense as intrinsic to Christ’s role as the revealer of hearts: “It is he who is the examiner; his life is the examination, and not for his generation alone, but for the human race.”

Indeed, to try to believe in Jesus as Savior without confronting the possibility of offense is to bypass “the death throes that are the birth pangs of faith,” Kierkegaard writes. It is to skip “the shudder that is the beginning of worship.”

I have a hunch, partly out of my own experience, that some of the young people who have struggled with faith in recent years are seeing the possibility of offense clearly for the first time.

This may be because many American Christians rely on apologetics to evangelize. It’s useful in many ways, but our debates about archaeology and Bible translations will never explain the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation.

I also think people who grow up in the church necessarily start with a childlike Christianity; children cannot really comprehend Christ’s lowliness. I loved Jesus as the king of the universe when I was a kid, and I was grateful he had rescued me. This was good news!

Still, I had little clue of Christ’s sufferings, and I knew even less about the state of the world. As I got older, I learned that for all its beauty, that world was also horrific. Christ definitely didn’t appear to be reigning over it. Why hadn’t he returned yet to make all things new? My God!—I could see the offense.

I had discovered Christ’s lowliness. It’s a lowliness that chooses, out of love, to suffer at the hands of evil people, even praying for them to be forgiven while he was dying, rather than conquering with a mighty fist. A lowliness that asks his disciples to do the same.

“From the possibility of offense, one turns either to offense or to faith,” Kierkegaard writes. For me, choosing faith, by God’s grace, after seeing the possibility of offense was like becoming a child again.

Kierkegaard feared that pastors in his time weren’t forcing the question. He laments throughout Practice that churches are more likely to focus on the risen, glorified Christ than the abased Christ—even though Jesus told his disciples to lead self-sacrificial lives like his own.

“There is incessant preaching in Christendom about what happened after Christ’s death, how he triumphed and his teachings triumphantly conquered the whole world,” Kierkegaard bemoans. “No, Christ’s life here on earth is the paradigm; I and every Christian are to strive to model our lives in likeness to it.”

By the same grace that helps us turn to Christ in faith, we can become more like him. Kierkegaard’s view of continually striving, with God’s help, to be like Christ out of love for him, reminds me of Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead,” the apostle says (Phil. 3:10–12). “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

That path is narrow, and the journey is hard, but it is the way to life. “He came into the world in order to suffer; that he called being victorious,” Kierkegaard writes. “Only the imitator is [the true Christian].”

For my disillusioned friends, this rigor and earnestness before God is exactly what many of them have been longing for: a church that truly imitates Jesus.

Haley Byrd Wilt is a journalist whose work has been published in Foreign Policy, CNN, and The New York Times, among others. She reports on Congress for the nonprofit news publication NOTUS.

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Inkwell

The Limits of the Think Piece

Peter Biles

We want black-and-white truths about how we should live. But most of the Bible isn’t written this way.

"Silvretta Mountain Landscape with Schattenspitze & Eckhorn" by Ignaz Dorn

In recent years, I’ve noticed a strange tendency in myself to read essays about the craft of writing and literature instead of engaging with an actual short story or novel. I constantly read both—books about books as well as the books themselves—but often feel more comfortable with the former.

But the problem with only reading think pieces about literature instead of literature itself is similar to the problem of enshrining a certain philosophy of food over a good home-cooked meal right in front of you. We need both, but we will go malnourished if we stay in one camp and neglect the other.

At the outset, I recognize the irony at play here. This essay itself is a critique of reading habits, which, at least in my case, often seem to favor think pieces and essays over stories and novels. I respect both forms of writing and do believe that a philosophy of fiction can lay a deep and maybe even an essential foundation in the writer’s approach to the craft.

For me, John Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist and The Art of Fiction were extremely helpful and inspiring. But these books offer a different reading experience than Gardner’s pastoral novel Nickel Mountain. Why?

In fiction, the author is a backstage hand, invisible to the eye, while the essay writer remains obvious to the audience, like a speaker on stage or a seasoned Yosemite mountain guide. This difference in authorial presence accounts for a lot of the reasons we often prefer the forthright essay over a subversive short story or novel with ambiguous themes. In an essay, you usually know what you’re getting from the title and subtitle.

You click on an interesting title in search of an interesting article, and if you know the author, you read the piece because you trust the writer will guide you to satisfying conclusions. A typical internet think-piece (this one included) feels more like a direct address to the reader. It’s the writer saying, “Get in! We’re going to talk about the value of writing and great books! Here’s what it all means!”

It often feels preplanned. We’re in the writer’s hands and will be cared for. We may be in the Yosemite wilderness, but we have a seasoned ranger in safari shorts and a green handkerchief to explain to us how the valley formed, who free-climbed Half Dome, and what to do when a bear charges.

It’s entirely different, on the other hand, to be alone under a spread of stars on a sleeping mat, surrounded by hoots and growls.

Reading a think-piece essay at the expense of other forms runs the risk of dulling our appetite for fiction, not because nonfiction is bad but because a fictional story presents a lonelier kind of mental terrain. There may be no subtitle to a story. We don’t know exactly what we’re getting into. The author vanishes into a constructed world, inviting you to wade in.

Discomfort may be the price of this kind of plunge, but those who swim the channel seem to generally report happily. Literary essays tell readers to get in, the water’s fine, you won’t drown. Then the time comes to actually take a dip and tread. We get into unknown territory. We’re in a new world we’ve never been to. We follow the flashlight and plow into the darkness.

I went to an evangelical college, and my Old Testament professor once told the class, “Evangelicals really love Paul. Sometimes they forget about the other 90 percent of the Bible.”

He was pointing out a tendency among certain Christians to prioritize Paul’s epistles to various churches in the New Testament at the expense of the Old Testament narratives. These letters are wondrous, of course, and chock-full of wisdom, truth, and beauty. I return to them often.

But mainly, my professor was calling out a preference for declarative statements, theological articulation, and life application over stories, which tend to be more comfortable with mystery and open-endedness.

We want to be told the truth and how we should live—and we want it black and white. We want it in sound bites and simple directives, the meaning served clearly on a platter. There’s a place for such an address, for formulas and user manuals, but most of the Bible isn’t written this way.

Most of the Bible is narrative and poetry. It’s riddled with declarative statements about God’s character and how we should conduct ourselves, but they are couched within the story. Those parts of Scripture, in my opinion, are no less true or authoritative than Paul’s magisterial declarations in Colossians and Romans. In short, believers and the church need all of it—exposition, narrative, and poetry.

All this to say: Good stories don’t always offer their pearls of wisdom with open palms. A literary critic can uncover the pearls for us, or how she understands the pearls, but she can’t replicate the experience of our reading a story on our own. Literary criticism and think pieces are essential artifacts of social discourse. They aren’t the whole cigar.

Sometimes the explanation must give way to awe and wonder. We have to put down our maps and pick up our walking sticks. We have to swim the channel and trust that we can handle the depths.

But anyway, enough of this! Now go and read a breathtaking story. The water might be cold. It may even shock you at first. But it also just might wake you up.

Peter Biles is the author of four books, most recently the short story collection Last November. His writing has been featured in The Gospel Coalition, Plough, Dappled Things, and several others. He writes a Substack called Battle the Bard.

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Ideas

Excerpt

Pro-Life’s Future: More Than Just Abortion

Interview by Clarissa Moll

Clarissa Moll and Jonathan Liedl discuss a new pro-life mission and identity for a violent world.

Andrew Harnik / Getty Images

In a culture that devalues life, Christians offer a winsome witness to human dignity. Here are edited and tightened excerpts of a conversation between Clarissa Moll and Jonathan Liedl, senior editor at National Catholic Register, on CT’s The Bulletin podcast.

Clarissa Moll: 63 percent of Americans today say abortion should be legal in most cases. There was a time in conversations about the right to life when we could say, We all believe in human dignity. It seems we have lost something fundamental in our culture that, presuppositionally, we used to bring to those conversations.

Jonathan Liedl: You’re right. The common ground is fading away. Things are absolutist right now, with sorting quickly and definitively into partisan categories.

How others perceive the pro-life movement should change. Much of the antagonistic rhetoric has been that the pro-life movement just prohibits something or is only pro-birth. Because of this, relationships are important. In an increasingly polarized world, it’s harder for friendships between those with different views to exist. But witnessing with your life that you care about all life—serving, loving and sacrificing for the poor, for the homeless, for the stranger in our country in need—that makes a difference. Scripture says they will know we are Christian by our love. If people aren’t seeing that love inform all the ways we interact and support the vulnerable, the witness can ring hollow.

The pro-life effort involves many different people—different Christians, people of other faiths, even people of non-faiths. Work between Catholics and evangelical Christians has been significant. Honestly, oftentimes in the pro-life movement our greatest allies are feminists or atheists or even secular people who aren’t coming from the so-called Christian right. Often these people are able to speak with proponents of abortion or supporters of abortion rights and say, I come from this similar starting point that you did. Here’s why I have come to believe this as well.

Debate is fantastic. But if people don’t see their story represented in something, it’s easy to dismiss it. Since the Dobbs decision, the pro-life cause has lost every state initiative. There’s an immense amount of work to do. Women play an obvious leading role in the pro-life movement, but we also have diverse allies: people from the medical community, people with a scientific background.

For us, it’s part of our faith, our conviction that every human life is created in the image and likeness of God and therefore has inviolable and infinite dignity. But this is also natural law. You don’t necessarily have to be a believer to be convinced of the truths of these things. Some of those voices continue to be important to work with and to lift up when we’re trying to persuade others.

The goal is not just to prohibit abortion but to make it so no woman feels she has to choose between the life of her child and her own economic security or personal safety. When people are not engaged with Scripture, there are other ways to be persuasive and continue to advance gospel values. Thankfully, that’s what we’re supposed to do: Live the gospel. Perhaps we need an invitation to return to that and embrace it.

Moll: When Catholics talk about pro-life issues, they often refer to a concept called “the seamless garment.” Could this idea be a starting place for a pro-life conversation with a culture asking questions about human dignity and worth beyond abortion, such as in the recent aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s death?

Liedl: The original seamless garment was what Christ wore leading up to Calvary and his crucifixion. The soldiers did not tear it in two, to fulfill the prophecy. Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop of Chicago in the ’80s and ’90s, applied this image from Scripture to how we protect life and society. The seamless garment is a consistent ethic of life. For example, let’s say that you’re ardently pro-life, but when it comes to how you think about immigration policy, you’re not thinking about the dignity of the people involved. You can flip it around, of course, the other way. You can have great compassion for an immigrant, and you realize that they have inviolable dignity and certain rights and responsibilities that flow from that, but you’re not concerned about the unborn.

Some people think “seamless garment” has muddied the water, but that’s not how moral theologian and bioethicist Charlie Camosy and others like him understand that. For example, justice for unborn children and care for their mothers and families—they go together. The goal is to say no to something, which is the unjust taking of unborn life, but also to say yes to supporting women and children, whether through public policy or a parish launching some kind of diaper drive or supporting women materially.

The seamless garment shows connections. People are looking for deeper truths about the source of their worth and value. Many see neither major political party right now presenting a compelling and consistent vision of that. The seamless garment, a consistent ethic of life, can show you’re not willing to compromise this deeper truth of human dignity and the value of human life simply to pursue one other thing.

That faithfulness creates a compelling witness. To be pro-life isn’t just about passing laws or prohibiting abortion. It’s a worldview to be reflected not just in our public policies but in how we live in community. If we do that, others might be attracted to us.

Moll: The Christian pro-life movement in the US has, for many years, looked for large gains in legislation and in the halls of power. Now, where we don’t have Scripture as a common language in our culture, we may have to go back, like the women in the early years of the pro-life movement, and be grateful and thrilled to achieve small gains on behalf of the vulnerable. Maybe it’s around a conversation about the death of Charlie Kirk or about a school shooting, trying to introduce some of these broader pro-life beliefs.

Liedl: Exactly. That’s ultimately what Christ calls us to, to be faithful even in the little things. Because those who do well with the little things, bigger things might be asked of them.

- More from Clarissa Moll

Testimony

Was It Really God’s Perfect Plan to Amputate My Foot?

Stef Reid

A tragic accident jump-started my relationship with God. It also made me question his goodness.

Photography by Betty Zapata for Christianity Today

I woke up to a face full of sunshine. Time was ticking on my last day at my friend Irene’s family cottage on the lake. I needed everyone up so we could make the most of the morning and squeeze in one last round of tubing before my parents picked me up.

Eight of us piled into the boat as the lake sparkled in the morning sun. I silently declared this to be the best weekend of my 15 years of life. My tubing enthusiasm won me the first turn, and after a long effort of flying across the water behind the speedboat, I got tired, hit a wave, and fell off. I treaded water as I waited for the boat to circle back and pick me up, like it always did.

But this time, something was wrong. The boat was coming toward me way too fast. I later learned that there had been a miscommunication—the driver had no idea I was in the water.

In the moment, I was surprised by my lack of panic. I assessed my options and decided my best shot at survival was to surface dive, going far enough below to miss the propellers. It was a good plan. But I forgot to factor in the life jacket. The thing that was meant to keep me safe, with zips and clips that I couldn’t escape, meant I couldn’t get under.

I knew how lucky I was to resurface. I also knew something was very wrong. Water was swimming inside my body in places where it shouldn’t be. I tried to see my injuries after my friends pulled me out of the water, to know what I was dealing with, but every time I tried to look, a pair of hands firmly held my shoulders back against the deck.

My friends tried their best to protect me, telling me that everything was fine and that I was going to be okay, not realizing that the truth was written all over their faces: We were hours away from a hospital, and I didn’t have hours.

I’ve loved sports for as long as I can remember. I grew up doing everything from swimming to playing basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Then when I was 13, I was introduced to rugby. From that moment on, my life’s dream was to be an international rugby superstar. I caught the eye of some of the national coaches, and it looked like this ridiculous dream actually had a shot at coming true.

I had big dreams and plans, and I didn’t want anything to get in the way. Including God.

My family was a little bit Christian, and most of what I knew about God came from attending a Christian school. But my biggest concern about religion as a teenager was that God might suggest a path I didn’t want to take. I figured it was better not to ask God for his opinion than to ask and not take it.

So I decided to put my faith on hold until I was maybe in my 30s, maybe with a family and more time to invest in the small matter of life and death and what it all means. I wanted to enjoy the young, fun, adventurous part of life. God could have the boring leftovers.It just never occurred to me that I might not live to see my 30s. Until that day at the lake.

As our boat charged into the dock, the adults sprinted from the cottage. I was loaded into a van using a deck chair repurposed as a stretcher. The plan was to meet the ambulance halfway on the highway and swap cargo at the side of the road.

At the local clinic in Port Perry, Ontario, where my parents met me, I asked my mum, “Am I going to die?”

“No, sweetie, of course not. You’re going to be just fine.” My head was locked in a precautionary neck brace, so I couldn’t see her face. But it had taken her a long time to get that second sentence out, and I wasn’t sure whether she believed what she said.

When I was finally on my way to the hospital, I just wanted to sleep. The paramedics kept talking to me and insisting I answer. I asked if they would be so kind as to let me have a quick nap. They said no—because I might not wake back up. My eyes shot open immediately. I very much wanted to live.

Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like I had a lot of say in the matter. So I prayed. It was desperate, honest, and short. “God, I’m really scared. Please save my life.”

God answered that prayer. I woke up to the news that the surgery had been a wild success: There was no spinal damage, no internal organ damage, and no signs of infection or flesh-eating disease.

Then my mum walked into the recovery room. Her face did not look like someone who thought this was a wild success. There was nothing that could have prepared me for what she said next: “Stefanie, my darling, I’m so sorry. The surgeon did everything he could but was unable to save your right foot. He had to amputate it.”

I thought, How am I supposed to play rugby if I can’t run? And there was a greater question: What kind of loving God saves my life only to take away the thing I love most?

Yes, I wanted to live. But not like this.

Technically, God did exactly what I asked him to do in the ambulance: He saved my life. Personally, I thought it was obvious that I wanted that life to still include a full contingent of limbs. But prayer was new to me, and so was God. I wondered whether in addition to being omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, God was also very literal. Perhaps I should have been more specific and spelled it out for him.

I spent a lot of time in the hospital wondering just what kind of God this was. I had no doubt that God was real. I knew he had saved my life, because I had felt his presence in the water. A slightly different orientation of my body and it could have been my head in those propellers. Just a few centimeters deeper across my torso, and I could have been cut clear in half. A different blood vessel a few millimeters away, and I could have bled out in seconds.

If God could save my life by arranging for all of that, why couldn’t he have also saved my foot? More disturbingly, could he have saved it but chose not to?

But as I lay devastated in my hospital bed, I didn’t long for theological explanations. I wanted to talk to God. I told God how angry I was with him, how sad, and how scared. It occurred to me that he might be sad too. He didn’t say very much, but just as I had in the water, I felt his presence beside me.

For the first few years, I prayed for a miracle. I prayed that my foot would grow back. After all, I was talking to a God who helped a 90-year-old woman get pregnant (Gen. 21:2), kept a man alive in a giant fish (Jonah 1:17), and made the sun stand still (Josh. 10:12–13). A new foot was minor compared to that. Starfish grow new limbs all the time.

Spoiler alert: My foot hasn’t grown back. But I did get my miracle. What I thought would be the worst thing imaginable—the nuclear option making me question whether I still wanted to live—has transformed into a source of joy and possibility. And that’s because of what it taught me about God and myself.

After the accident, I let sports go and picked a new dream. I wanted to be a surgeon, just like the one who had put me back together. I went to Queen’s University to study biochemistry on a full academic scholarship. I got involved with student ministries like Athletes in Action and met wonderful, interesting, funny Christians who showed me how to share God’s love.

I studied hard, not knowing that I was about to circle back to my original dream. I received my first running blade and started training with the varsity track-and-field team. By the time I graduated, I had a world ranking high enough to qualify for the World Para Athletics Championships. In 2006 at graduation, I had to make a decision: Do I pursue medicine? Or do I follow this crazy dream of becoming a professional athlete with one foot?

I’d gone from living a life I didn’t want to having two great options. I chose athletics, not knowing whether it was the “right” choice—only knowing that it would challenge my faith in ways that were both uncomfortable and good for me.

As an athlete, I wrestled with questions like “Is it okay for a Christian to want to win?” “If God already knows the outcome of the next race, is there any point in me training?” and “If God loves me, then why am I losing so much?” I wanted neat and tidy answers from God. And while I did get some clarity, it was his humor, his love, his patience, and his steadfastness that jumped out at me as we talked. Who he was led me to deeper faith.

In my 18-year career, I had some wonderful moments of success. I became a long jump world champion, set five world records, and won multiple Paralympic medals across four Paralympic Games. You might now be thinking, See! It was all part of God’s perfect plan!

But I’m not so sure. Maybe “Is this God’s perfect plan?” is the wrong question. The accident, the letting go and picking back up of dreams, the big wins and the heavy losses, all of it has taught me that God’s perfect plan is less about the what and more about the who.

Jesus said in Matthew 28:20, “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” God has not promised to underwrite my life or gold-plate all my dreams. His big plan, his big promise for my life, is that he will always be with me.

Even if I don’t know why bad things happen, I trust God enough to give him the benefit of the doubt and know that one day, it will all make sense.

Stef Reid retired from sports in 2022 and now works as a keynote speaker, broadcaster, and high-performance coach. Find her on Instagram and LinkedIn.

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News

Fear and Hope for Christians Amid Nepal’s Gen Z Protests

Surinder Kaur

Young protesters upset over corruption have exacted political change, yet churches face an uncertain future.

Nepali protesters set fire to the main administrative building of the Nepal government on September 9, 2025.

Prabin Ranabhat / Contributor / Getty

On September 7, the eve of Nepal’s historic Gen Z protest, Nepali Christian scholar Karuna Sharma was waiting to catch a flight from the capital of Kathmandu to Dubai when she ran into an influential person. Their conversation turned to the next morning’s planned demonstration against the banning of social media platforms, and the person confidently dismissed its potential impact.

“There would be 1,000-2,000 youth, and then it would die down,” she remembered him predicting.

Instead, protest quickly escalated into the most violent political upheaval in Nepal’s recent history, leaving 74 people dead. Flames engulfed the parliament building. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned. The president swore in former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as Nepal’s interim prime minister, a favorite among protest leaders.

“The government did not really take the Gen Z protest seriously,” Sharma said. “They thought if they scared the crowds away, the protest would fizzle out, and therefore, we witnessed shooting on the very first day. Nobody had imagined that the protest could turn the way it did.”

For Nepal’s Christians, one of the fastest-growing Christian populations in the world, the upheaval brought both fear to the vulnerable religion minority as well as cautious hope for the new government. Most churches avoided direct political involvement, but individual Christians found ways to contribute to the movement.

Phur Jangbu, pastor of Boudha Dunamis Church in Kathmandu, told Christian Daily International, “We usually pray generally for the nation, but now it’s time to pray specifically for good governance. If the country doesn’t survive, how can we?”

For months, young Nepalis organized on Discord (a platform popularized by gamers) and online forums, venting frustrations over corruption, unemployment, and inequality. Vijay V.K., a 24-year-old Christian in Kathmandu, participated in one such group supporting the Gen Z initiative.

“The motive of the protest was not to harm anybody,” V.K. explained. “The youth were frustrated by the political leadership and wanted to demonstrate before the parliament house and other protest areas.”

The government’s September 4 decision to ban 26 social media platforms—including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, and X—only intensified tensions and “got fused with the peace protest,” V.K. said.

So on the morning of September 8, thousands of young demonstrators gathered in Kathmandu chanting against corruption and calling for justice. By noon, security forces fired live rounds into the crowds, killing at least 19 people that first day. By evening, protests had spread to dozens of other towns, including Pokhara, Nepalgunj, and Biratnagar.

Over the next 48 hours, Nepal’s political landscape unraveled with stunning speed. Protesters set fire to parliament, stormed the Supreme Court, and burned the prime minister’s residence. Crowds overran police stations and broken open prisons, releasing more than 13,000 inmates into the streets.

Though media reports attributed the arson to Gen Z protesters, V.K. maintains that his generation was committed to peaceful protest. “There were some self-interested people with political agendas who led it toward violence,” he said.

By September 12—just four days after the protests began—Oli had resigned and Karki was leading the country.

“This is not an elected government, and the next six months will be very challenging,” said Tanka Subedi, human rights activist and senior pastor of Family of God Church in Kathmandu. “But we are hopeful. The people asked for Karki because of her integrity. We pray that she can guide the nation to elections and preserve democracy.”

The United National Nepali Church Council (UNNCC) urged believers to avoid provocative social media activity. “Refrain from making unnecessary posts or negative comments on Facebook, TikTok, or other social media that may spread misunderstanding and fuel communal tension,” it said in a statement. Instead, they called Christians to be “engaged in prayer for peace, reconciliation, and the healing of the nation.”

Some Christians who supported the movement sought to be a light among the protesters. V.K. said he used a VPN to access the banned social media and called for peace. “I was posting messages to Gen Zers to stay calm and not use any violent means,” he said.

A Christian teenager said that most protesters were non-Christians and that Christian youth mainly helped by sharing information with news outlets and providing first aid to protesters. CT agreed not to use her name for security reasons.

Though the protesters did not target any churches during the violence, young men threatened one congregation in western Nepal, according to Christian Solidarity International. When the pastor sought the police for help, officers redirected him to contact the army, which was unreachable.

Subedi personally contacted several churches to check on Christian Gen Z members. “We thank God that we have not heard of any Christian being killed or injured during the violence,” he said.

These moments of crisis also opened doors for unexpected acts of Christian hospitality. Gary Hoag and Emma Pervaiz of the Christian financial accountability organization Global Trust Partners had just finished leading a training in Pokhara when the protests broke out. They found themselves stranded at the airport as airlines canceled flights and debris and fire blocked the streets.

A local Christian family, the Maharjans, came to pick them up on motorbikes, navigating through burning intersections and stone-piled roads. “People even hurled bottles toward us,” Maharjan wrote. “We reached home safely while the army took control of the city.”

The family hosted the visitors for two nights as authorities imposed a curfew.

The protests highlighted the deep frustrations of a generation long ignored by Nepal’s ruling elite. Youth unemployment stood at 20.8 percent in 2024. Tens of thousands leave the country annually to work in the Gulf states, often in dangerous conditions. As many as 15,000 Nepalis have enlisted as contract soldiers in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, politicians’ children flaunted luxury lifestyles online. Protesters adopted the phrase “nepo kids” to capture the gap between elites and ordinary youth. One protest sign read: “Politicians’ children bring Gucci bags; our children return in coffins.”

Nepal’s Christians share this frustration while carrying distinct vulnerabilities. According to Operation World, 2.9 percent of the population identifies as Christian—about 866,000 people. However, the 2021 official census recorded only 512,313 Christians. Analysts suggest that underreporting and the prevalence of house churches may explain the disparity. For Christians, the contested data highlights both remarkable growth and ongoing fragility, as numbers are often politicized in religious freedom debates.

In 1961, fewer than 500 Christians existed throughout the entire country. Today, Christians worship in every district. House churches multiplied during the Nepal’s civil war from 1996-2006 as well as after the monarchy’s abolition in 2008, when new freedoms allowed unprecedented expansion. Still, Christians faced harassment, sporadic arrests, and accusations of foreign influence.

Legal challenges continue troubling the community. Nepal’s 2017 anti-conversion law criminalizes attempts to “hurt religious sentiment”—language broad enough to penalize evangelism. A local pastor described the systematic pressure on foreign missionaries following Oli’s 2018 visit to India: “Deportations started, including Muslims and Christians. They introduced systems to monitor foreigners’ activities. Many believe these were copied from laws in Uttar Pradesh, India.”

On September 4, authorities arrested, fined, and deported American missionary Daniel Stephen Kearney for proselytizing.

According to the pastor, whom CT agreed not to name due to security concerns, rumors circulating during the protests suggested that demonstrators would burn Pashupatinath Temple—one of Hinduism’s most sacred sites—and blame Christians. The attack never materialized, but it demonstrated how easily the minority community could become a scapegoat.

Alongside these pressures, Christians have made progress. More than 30 Christian organizations and thousands of congregations have registered as public religious trusts, according to Prakash Karki (no relation to Sushila Karki), a Christian lawyer who is leading the effort. “This is the greatest way God has opened for us,” he said. “It allows us to operate freely, pay taxes, and gain legal rights.”

For many Nepalis, Sushila Karki’s appointment carried a sense of possibility. Father Silas Bogati, apostolic administrator of the Vicariate of Nepal, said his community trusted her integrity, recalling her past defense of wrongly accused Catholic clergy.

Others remained more guarded. Rev. Dilli Ram Paudel, head of the Nepal Christian Society, welcomed Karki’s leadership but noted that the caretaker government and parliament’s dissolution did not follow constitutional provisions. “Many political parties are opposing this move,” he said, urging prayers for peace and lawful resolution.

Subedi added that Christians’ long-term safety depends on Nepal preserving democracy. “Gen Z leaders made it clear they do not want Nepal declared a Hindu nation,” he said. “They support democracy, republic, and religious freedom. But Hindu influence is everywhere in government sectors, so Christians remain vulnerable.”

Bogati urged Christians to respond not with political agitation but with service. He pointed to healthcare and education as areas where the church could make a difference, particularly in remote regions where government support is limited. For him, such contributions embody both compassion and gospel witness.

Paudel framed the crisis in spiritual terms. “We hold on to hope and trust God for heavenly intervention and a speedy recovery,” he wrote in a prayer letter sent to CT. “Pray for open doors of resources, wise partnerships, and divine guidance for rebuilding our nation.”

Christians, like the rest of the nation, now face an uncertain road ahead. Young believers like V.K. and the unnamed teenager show both anxiety and resilience. “Within five to ten years, we’ll hopefully be able to live a good life here,” the teenager said.

- More from Surinder Kaur

News

Charlie Kirk’s Five-Hour Memorial Combined Gospel and Politics

Emily Belz

Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer, Christian stars like Chris Tomlin led worship, and MAGA influencers and pastors talked about Jesus and conservatism.

Erika Kirk speaks during the memorial service for her husband, political activist Charlie Kirk at State Farm Stadium on September 21, 2025 in Glendale, Arizona.

Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images

Before a loud, full stadium in Glendale, Arizona, at the memorial service of Christian and conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Erika Kirk tearfully forgave the assassin who shot her husband on September 10.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

Erika Kirk said her husband had sought to “revive the American family” and “save the lost boys of the West, the young men who feel like they have no direction. … He wanted to save young men, just like the one who took his life.” She will become the CEO of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) in her husband’s stead.

President Donald Trump spoke after Erika Kirk, saying that Charlie Kirk “did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them.”

“That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them,” he said. “Now Erika can talk to me and the whole group and maybe they can convince me that that’s not right, but I can’t stand my opponent.”

Local police estimated the crowd at about 100,000, including in two overflow areas. That made it one of the largest memorial services in US history. Millions more watched on livestreams. Pyrotechnics went off repeatedly, including when Trump and Erika Kirk came out to speak. The event lasted almost five hours.

The memorial for Kirk included both gospel proclamation and promotion of TPUSA, a grassroots network that engaged young conservatives and helped secure Trump’s 2024 victory. The logo for TPUSA flashed on the stage backdrop throughout the event.

The event invitation instructed everyone to wear their “Sunday best” red, white, and blue, and the memorial took place in Arizona at 11 a.m. Sunday morning when many churches were having services.

Music threaded through the service, with bagpipers playing “Amazing Grace,” Christian music stars Kari Jobe Carnes and Cody Carnes leading their hit worship song “The Blessing,” and Lee Greenwood singing “God Bless the USA.” Chris Tomlin led worship along with stars Phil Wickham and Brandon Lake, performing “Holy Forever” and “How Great Is Our God.”

Family remembrances included a recording of Kirk’s daughter singing “Jesus Loves Me.”

Here’s a quick look at four of the speeches, one from a pastor, one from a Turning Point leader, one from a well-known podcaster, and one from a key Trump advisor:

– Charlie Kirk’s pastor Rob McCoy, a longtime Calvary Chapel pastor from California, offered a gospel message, saying “There are none righteous, not even one.” He told of Christ coming to die on the cross: “The Lord loves you, he wants to save you…. Charlie looked at politics as an on-ramp to Jesus. He knew if he could get all of you rowing in the streams of liberty you’d come to its source, and that’s the Lord.”

McCoy led an altar call, asking those who wanted to put their faith in Jesus to stand. He pointed to a QR code on the screen for new believers to share their information so organizers could help “get you into a Bible-believing church.” Then came the singing of the National Anthem and chants of “USA.”

– Tyler Bowyer, chief operating officer of Turning Point Action, gestured to the crowd as he said, “[Kirk] always said to me, ‘If we could figure out how to bring the Holy Spirit into a Trump rally’ — I think you’ve done it.”

– MAGA podcaster Benny Johnson in his speech asked, “Who feels the Holy Spirit in the house tonight? Who can feel that revival happening right now?… Raise your hand if Charlie Kirk centered you a little closer to Christ. Did Charlie help you achieve your American dream a little bit more?”

Johnson compared Kirk to the first Christian martyr, Stephen, saying Stephen’s martyrdom helped spread Christianity. Referring to Romans 13, he said, “May we pray that our rulers here, rightfully instituted and given power by our God, wield the sword for the terror of evil men in our nation, in Charlie’s memory.”

– White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller spoke of taking action against evildoers: “They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us, because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.” He criticized those “trying to foment hatred against us” and said, “You have nothing, you are nothing.”

Members of Trump’s cabinet including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also spoke, as did White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. She credited Trump’s victory last year to Kirk’s mobilization of young people. Rubio described Kirk’s work as showing college students that the US was “the greatest country in the world and that Marxism was bad.” Rubio spoke of the gospel in his brief remarks and said Kirk showed that the country was “worth passing on to the next generation.”

Trump, the concluding speaker, called the event “like an old-time revival” and promoted his policy aims while eulogizing Kirk: “One of the last things [Kirk] said to me was, ‘Please sir, save Chicago. And we’re going to do that. We’re going to save Chicago from horrible crime. … We had a country that was dead one year ago, and now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world, and Charlie helped us make it that.”

- More from Emily Belz

Ideas

The Dangerous Distortion of Fear

Edward Song

When we let fear be our ruler, it twists our perceptions, narrows our vision, and turns us away from the love of God and neighbor.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Unsplash

Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered perhaps his most famous line—“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”—at his first inauguration in 1933. That speech stands as one of the most significant in American political history, but I confess that this best-known claim has always baffled me.

In 1933, the United States was in the middle of the Great Depression. Unemployment was at 25 percent, and the economy had contracted by almost one-third. Poor land management and droughts had created the Dust Bowl in the Great Plains. Striking workers engaged in violent conflicts with employers, and Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany just one month before Roosevelt’s speech. There were many real things to fear in 1933.

Contemporary research into the psychology of fear, however, shows that Roosevelt was onto something. Fear itself can transform how we perceive the world, turning even benign surroundings into a landscape of threats. Neuroscientists have shown that when we perceive threats, our amygdala—the brain’s fear-processing center—leaps into action before the more rational parts of the brain can catch up, leading to a cascade of far-reaching changes to how we see and engage with the world.

Fear increases our sensitivity to perceived threats, for example, making us more likely to interpret ambiguous facial expressions negatively. It can impair our memory and visual perception of the world.

Fear can generalize too, attaching to objects beyond its original source. In one infamous early 20th-century experiment, researchers conditioned a child to fear a white rat by clanging an iron bar whenever the child touched the animal. Eventually, the child became upset at the mere sight of the rat—and with no further conditioning, that fear spread to a random assortment of other furry objects: a rabbit, a dog, a furry coat, and even a Santa Claus mask. A fear of animals troubled the child for the rest of his life.

We often try to cope with fear by seeking out more information, but ironically this practice can intensify feelings of anxiety. In a study of media exposure in the wake of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, people who consumed high amounts of news about the attack experienced more acute stress than those actually at the bombings. Doomscrolling, apparently, is a real thing.

Unsurprisingly, fear can radically reshape how we see others, making us more tribal and distrustful. Numerous studies have indicated that individuals who are induced into fear exhibit a pronounced empathy gap and a reduced willingness to help people whom they perceive to be different from themselves.

In one striking experiment, white participants answered questions about their willingness to help homeless people. Those who first looked at anxiety-inducing images (e.g., pictures of wild animals, spiders, or people being attacked) became significantly less willing to help Black homeless people than white ones. In comparison, white participants in a control group who were exposed to neutral images were about equally willing to help homeless people regardless of race.

Interestingly, this outgroup bias is particularly activated by fear of illness. In another study, Canadian students induced to think about sickness and germs were much less likely to support the immigration of Nigerian immigrants than they were Scottish immigrants. Similar biases have been documented against people who are disabled, obese, or elderly.

And so just as Roosevelt understood, fear itself can be a dangerous and distorting force. Fear twists our perceptions, narrows our vision, and turns us inward in self-protection. It induces a kind of calculated madness—a frantic need to seize control, to take matters into our own hands. In our desperation, we gird our loins and harden our hearts to neutralize the threats. From the vantage of fear, doing what it takes to claw our way to safety is not just permissible but responsible.

It is telling that the very first effect of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Eden was fear: “[Adam] answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid’” (Gen. 3:10).

So the first fruit of the Fall was fear, a result of the broken relationship between God and humanity. The Reformer Martin Luther described sin as the soul turned in on itself homo incurvatus in se. Fear deepens that curvature, leading us to hide from God, distrust our neighbors, and retreat into our tribes. Fear is not merely a powerful emotion but also a description of the human condition, a sign of our brokenness. To be human is to be vulnerable and afraid.

If fear is a central problem of human existence, it should come as no surprise that the Bible talks about it so much. It is often said that the most frequent command in the Bible is “Do not be afraid.” It is surely a mistake, however, to treat this as just another of the commands in the Bible that we find impossible to reliably fulfill on this side of eternity. Rather, it is equally a word of comfort. The Bible never says there is nothing to fear. What it offers instead is something far stranger: the reassurance that we will never pass through our fear alone.

Near the end of the first century, a Christian community in crisis received a letter that would eventually be called 1 John. Like many congregations in our day, this church was unraveling. Believers had split over theological disagreements—perhaps about who Jesus truly was or what it meant to live a righteous life. Some members had left altogether, and those who remained were likely disoriented, uncertain, and afraid.

The letter is dire and apocalyptic in tone. Twice, John says it is the “last hour” (2:18), and he frequently talks about the Antichrist or the Devil (2:14, 18, 22; 3:8, 10; 4:3; 5:18–19). It reads like John’s last desperate instructions to a church in a world that is spinning apart.

It’s striking, then, that he doesn’t spend much time on arguments or abstract theology. Instead he writes about love. Again and again, he insists that love is the defining mark of the Christian life—not certainty, not self-protection, not doctrinal purity, but love. And in this context of real uncertainty and anxiety, he offers this: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (4:18, ESV).

We often hear that verse as a kind of spiritual benchmark, as if once we’ve matured enough in our faith, fear will evaporate. But John does not describe a state we must achieve. Rather, he describes what the love of God does: It casts out fear not by removing threats but by reorienting our hearts away from any illusion of self-sufficiency and toward the trust that we are held by someone greater than anything we may face.

This love does not deny the danger, nor does it guarantee that we will escape suffering. Instead, it assures us that we are not abandoned. Fear isolates and contracts the soul in grasping desperation; love draws near and invites it to open. In drawing near, the love of God displaces fear—not because the world is safe but because we are not left alone in the midst of it.

Julian of Norwich, the medieval English mystic, described this mystery with rare clarity: “If there be any such lover of God on earth who is continually kept from falling, I do not know of it. … But this was revealed: that in falling and in rising we are always inestimably protected in one love.” The promise of the gospel is not that we will never fall, or never fear, or never fail. It is that, even when we do, we remain in God’s love. That love does not wait on the other side of our fear. God meets us within it.

There are, to be sure, many real things to fear in the world (and many more imagined ones). That was true in 1933, and it is true now. Worse than these dangers, though, is what fear can do to us.

Fear distorts. It narrows our vision, hardens our hearts, and tempts us to grasp for control, to protect ourselves at the expense of others. When we give in to fear—when we let it name the world for us, dictate our loyalties, and justify our actions—it doesn’t just corrode our politics or poison our relationships. It deforms our souls. And so perhaps Roosevelt was more correct than he knew: The real thing to fear, in the end, is not some specific danger or threat but the way we let fear pull us away from the love of God and neighbor.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you,” God says through the prophet Isaiah (43:2). The waters may yet rise, but we won’t be left to the flood. Our task as Christians is not to deny our fear but to refuse to let it rule us—to be the kind of people who choose self-sacrificial love over self-protection, trust over control, and the presence of God over illusions of security.

Edward Song is the Herbert Hoover Endowed Chair of Faith and Public Life at George Fox University in Newberg, Oregon.

- More from Edward Song

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