Tim Keller Practiced the Grace He Preached

In an increasingly divisive world, the pastor theologian’s legacy was walking the higher road—the one less traveled.

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Wikimedia Commons / Aaron C / Daniel Gutko / Daniel Tseng / Gayatri Malhotra / Nathan Mullet / Unsplash

Hardly anyone could be more qualified than Timothy Keller to receive the Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Witness. It should have been the culmination of a remarkable career.

Keller applied Reformed theology to the heart of American culture while preaching at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, which he planted in 1989 with his wife, Kathy. Keller’s writing introduced Kuyper’s theology of vocation—his vision of God who claims “every square inch” of creation for his glory—to new generations of Christians around the world.

But the reaction from many Princeton Theological Seminary (PTS) students and alumni revealed just how much American culture had shifted since 1989 when Keller stepped down from the pulpit in 2017. Keller’s views on women’s ordination and homosexuality countered the prevailing norms at PTS and other mainline seminaries, not to mention the broader culture.

By this evolving standard, Abraham Kuyper wouldn’t have been eligible for his own award. Under pressure from various advocacy groups, PTS leaders rescinded their decision to grant Keller the 2017 Kuyper Prize (which has since been hosted by Calvin College). The renowned pastor seemed poised to become yet another casualty in the ever-expanding culture wars.

Or not.

Keller did not receive the prize, but he agreed to give the lectures anyway. PTS did not want to reward him, but he still tolerated them. And for all the preceding protest, enthusiastic applause greeted Keller when he stepped to the podium on April 6, 2017. PTS president Craig Barnes got the message once again when he returned to dismiss the crowd.

I didn’t attend the PTS lectures, but I understand the surprising affection for Keller.

As a teenage evangelical convert in the late 1990s, I knew my faith was not welcome in the halls of power, whether that was in the classrooms of an elite private school or in the offices of the US House of Representatives. I never expected my zeal for Christ would make me popular or famous or rich. I just wanted to be faithful to God and obedient to his Word no matter where he led. I wanted to share my faith without reserve, even among hostile crowds.

And in 2007, I found an exemplar who modeled how to do that in America’s most secular settings. Timothy Keller shared the gospel boldly in the idioms of his day, without demeaning or demanding anything but faith and trust in our faithful, trustworthy Savior.

When the tragedy of 9/11 gave way to a new and more virulent outbreak of the culture wars, Keller demonstrated a different way. As an associate editor for Christianity Today in 2007, I reported on the first public event of The Gospel Coalition (TGC), which Keller cofounded. My initial read of TGC’s Theological Vision for Ministry, drafted by Keller, set forth an agenda I could follow as a young Christian coming of age in this contentious 21st century.

Keller centered me on the gospel of Jesus, which “fills Christians with humility and hope, meekness and boldness, in a unique way.” The biblical gospel isn’t like traditional religion, which demands obedience for acceptance, or like secularism, which we’ve seen make American culture more selfish and individualistic.

The gospel, Keller taught with a nod to his late friend Jack Miller, says, “We are more sinful and flawed than we ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope.”

Steady amid hostility

Rare among preachers, Keller could engage the heart as much as the head. His books introduced me to social critics whose writing I could barely comprehend. But somehow, Keller’s books also struck me as profoundly simple in their consistent emphasis on the gospel of grace.

You can see this dynamic at work in his PTS address, which engaged with Lesslie Newbigin’s 1984 Warfield lectures at PTS. In these lectures, which became the 1986 book Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, Newbigin argued for a missionary encounter with Western culture, which had become post-Christian. I don’t know many Christian leaders who can simultaneously claim the heritage of Abraham Kuyper, famed Old Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield, and missiologist Lesslie Newbigin.

But that was Keller’s gift. It’s no cliché—he never stopped learning or growing. In my book, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation, I describe his intellectual and spiritual development as rings on a tree.

Keller retained the gospel core he learned from mid-century British evangelicals such as J. I. Packer, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and John Stott. He grew to incorporate such varied writers as Charles Taylor, Herman Bavinck, N. T. Wright, and Alasdair MacIntyre. And he somehow synthesized them with Kuyper, Warfield, Newbigin, and dozens more in the middle.

Keller’s final task, the great unfinished project he left to us, was charting a course for mission in the 21st-century West that bore scant resemblance to the middle-class context in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the 1950s.

Keller didn’t even believe his own successful ministry in New York would offer much guidance for the generations that would succeed him. Keller followed Newbigin, who identified the post-Christian West as the most resistant, challenging missionary frontier of all time.

None of the traditional Christian reactions to culture would suffice as the basis for an effective missionary program under these contemporary conditions. If anything, these responses could only warn Christians of what not to do. Christians must not withdraw like the Amish, pursue political takeover like the Religious Right, or assimilate like the mainline Protestants.

Keller matched these categories to his friend James Davison Hunter’s work To Change the World: “Defensive Against” (Religious Right), “Relevance To” (mainline), and “Purity From” (Amish). Hunter proposed “faithful presence within” as a more promising alternative, which Keller adopted as his own perspective in Center Church.

As many American Christians began to shift their social and political tactics in 2016, Keller came under increased criticism and scrutiny from fellow evangelicals. But anyone who followed his work over the decades could see that he was not the one who had changed.

Keller did not court such opposition. Anyone working with him could attest to his extreme aversion to conflict. In all our personal conversations, I cannot recall hearing a single critical comment from him directed toward a fellow believer.

His steadiness under this growing hostility gave courage and comfort to younger leaders who became disillusioned by the fall of so many of our former heroes. Even I worried about uncovering unflattering secrets when I began writing his biography. Instead, talking to dozens of Keller’s close friends and family members who knew him from childhood only confirmed my personal experience of him.

But growing closer to Keller didn’t lead me to idolize him. It simply allowed me to witness 2 Corinthians 4:7 in action, a flawed vessel carrying the most valuable treasure—nothing less than the surpassing power of God.

Love the local church

Keller may have demurred at his ability to anticipate new challenges for the late-modern West. But he still laid out an agenda that could radically reshape evangelicals’ priorities—if only they would turn off the cable news and listen. Keller’s PTS lectures proposed seven steps for a missionary encounter in the post-Christian West.

First, he called for public apologetics in the vein of Augustine’s City of God. For this, readers could start with Keller’s Making Sense of God, one of his overlooked classics. Second, he proposed a third way between the mainline concern for social problems and the evangelical concern for spiritual problems: Justification must lead to justice. Third, he challenged Christians to critique secularism from within its own framework, not from an outward construct. Borrowing from Daniel Strange, Keller called this process “subversive fulfillment.”

Fourth, as Keller had insisted so many times before, he encouraged laity to integrate their faith with their work. Non-Christians must see the difference faith makes in day-to-day living. Fifth, he encouraged Americans to learn from the global church. Keller admitted in his 2017 PTS lecture that conservative evangelicals in the United States put too much faith in their own methodology and struggle to see the kingdom of God apart from American national interest.

Sixth, Keller highlighted the difference between grace and religion. As Richard Lovelace showed Keller in his first class at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1972, missionary encounters that produce social change depend on grace, not on the rules of religion. Only grace brings spiritual transformation. Apart from the Spirit of God, we’re helpless to effect lasting change in our fallen world.

Keller would have excelled as a professor if he’d stayed at Westminster Theological Seminary instead of moving to New York with his young family and planting Redeemer. He made enough money on his books and speaking that he would never have run out of venues inviting him to pontificate. But God called Keller to pastoral ministry, and that is what so often set him apart.

Even when Keller chastised evangelicals, he spoke and wrote as a pastor with love for his flock. Keller’s only mentor, Edmund Clowney, helped him to love the local church, warts and all. As easily as Keller quoted obscure academics or New York Times columnists, he aimed to build up the local church. And in the explosive early growth of Redeemer church, and again in the dark days after 9/11, Keller witnessed the Spirit moving in unexpected and powerful ways.

Seventh, and lastly, Keller left American evangelicals with a vision for Christian community that disrupts the social categories of our culture. These thriving communities lend credibility to the transformative power of the gospel.

Keller cited the work of Larry Hurtado in Destroyer of the gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World. In this incisive study, Hurtado showed how the persecuted early church wasn’t just offensive to Jews and Greeks. It was also attractive. The first Christians opposed abortion and infanticide by adopting children. They did not retaliate but instead forgave. They cared for the poor and marginalized. Their strict sexual ethic protected and empowered women and children.

Christianity brought together hostile nations and ethnic groups. Jesus broke apart the connection between religion and ethnicity when he revealed a God for every tribe, tongue, and nation. Allegiance to Jesus trumped geography, nationality, and ethnicity in the church. As a result, Christians gained perspective so they could critique any culture. And they learned to listen to the critiques from fellow Christians embedded in different cultures.

Instead of delivering this lecture at PTS, Keller could have challenged the administration and canceled his talk. This would have gained greater attention and support from his fellow conservative evangelicals. He could likely have raised more money for his ministry too. But Keller put his teaching into practice. He had told Christians for years that the gospel offers a distinct alternative to the intolerance of secularism and the tribalism of religion.

I don’t yet see widespread evidence that evangelicals have taken Keller’s advice or followed his example. Intolerance has been met with intolerance, hostility with more hostility.

But I suspect, if the Holy Spirit blesses us with another awakening, our churches will look more like what Keller envisioned—where grace will once more find a way through the tangles of religion and secularism.

Collin Hansen serves as the vice president of content and editor in chief of The Gospel Coalition and is the author of Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation.

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Theology

The Dwight Schrute Theory of American Culture

Russell Moore

How Rainn Wilson’s character on ‘The Office’ reflects our current leadership crisis.

Rainn Wilson as Dwight Schrute

NBC / Contributor / Getty

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

This week on my podcast, I talked to Rainn Wilson, the writer, actor, and comedian who played the character Dwight Schrute on The Office. (For the first time, my kids insisted on attending a recording of The Russell Moore Show.)

As he and I were talking, I started to realize that Dwight might explain how we’ve arrived at this scary moment in American life.

In his (amazingly good) history of the television show, The Office: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sitcom of the 2000s, journalist Andy Greene tells of a fierce debate that broke out among the writers and producers of the show. When Steve Carell, the actor who played Michael Scott, left the show after seven seasons, the team had to decide which character would replace him as the “World’s Best Boss” at Dunder Mifflin Scranton.

“I did not think Dwight should be the boss because I think Dwight is not as benign as Michael Scott,” recounts one of the writers, Aaron Shure. “He’s like this weird amalgam of Mennonite and Star Trek nerd.”

“I also didn’t want Dwight to be empowered because I was afraid he wouldn’t be funny anymore with power,” Shure says. “It’s funny if he sets the office on fire and blowtorches all the doorknobs. But if he did that all day long without any sort of check on his behavior, it would be terrifying.”

By contrast, writer Danny Chun argues that responsibility might have changed Dwight’s character for the better. “To me it felt like he was going to do some insane, inappropriate, horrible, and cruel things, but he may now suddenly be forced into a position to contemplate what he was doing a little more, and that seemed intriguing.”

This in-house dispute among television writers in Sherman Oaks, California, reflects one of the most fundamental issues in American culture right now. Our nation seems precarious and anxious because our institutions are more than just weak. They’re also scary. When we look at the tech industry, public health authorities, the press, law enforcement, political bodies, the church, or nearly any other organization in American life, we see two almost equally terrifying realities.

On the one hand, we see leaders who lack good judgment. No one really questions whether the scientists and engineers working on artificial intelligence programs in Silicon Valley are good at what they do. Rather, we fear they’re as skilled as those who created a social media ecosystem that’s highly effective at isolating people through algorithms and enraging them with disinformation.

Similarly, no one wonders whether the pharmaceutical marketers who sold entire populations into opioid addiction knew what they’re doing. We worry they knew all too well and all too much.

The little nub of truth at the root of this fear is where conspiracy theories thrive. Anxious people start to assume there are all sorts of highly competent, morally depraved people running everything around them. That can be scary.

But the Dwight Schrute problem is even scarier. One of the most popular episodes in the series was the one referenced by Shure, in which Dwight plans a fire drill by torching doorknobs and sends the office into such a frenzy that someone has a heart attack. But as Shure notes, Dwight was limited in his ability to carry out mayhem. He was just the assistant to the regional manager.

Michael Scott is an idiot, to be sure. But his idiocy is hemmed in by sweetness and sincerity. He is a delusional narcissist in many ways, but he ultimately wants to be loved and accepted by family and friends. Even when he does objectively awful things (like attempting to frame the human resources director for a crime), he still seems to have some sense of boundaries. Michael simply wants to sing karaoke with Jim, be invited to parties by Ryan, and serve as the godfather at the christening of Pam’s baby.

When Dwight becomes manager, he hangs a dictator-style portrait of himself in the office and has the desk modeled after that of Saddam Hussein’s son. But all of it seems somewhat innocuous because his position is temporary. His power appears limited.

We see these same pictures in our culture. People start to worry when they realize their leaders have neither the expertise to navigate challenges nor brakes for their worst impulses. What could be funny in a person without power can be terrifying in someone with actual authority.

Perhaps that’s why people find ways to mythologize institutions or leaders when things start looking scary. To some, a political leader without a moral compass is playing brilliant “four-dimensional chess” that only looks chaotic because he’s too smart to let “them” know what he’s doing. We tell ourselves that a pastor who screams uncontrollably is nonetheless a church-growth guru who can take the congregation to the next level.

Behind those stories is the assumption that, as some Office writers thought of Dwight, responsibility itself will transform character and competence. Dwight might put Sprinkles the cat in the freezer to euthanize it, but once he’s manager, the thought goes, he’ll actually step up to the task. The stakes are high, after all.

This magical thinking helps us sleep through the night, but it isn’t true. Yes, Dwight finally becomes manager at the series end, but only after a long character-altering arc.

The idea that private character doesn’t matter to public leadership is not only morally corrosive but also fear-inducing. Regardless of whether someone is the regional manager of a midlevel northeastern paper company, a church bishop, or the president of the United States, the position itself doesn’t suddenly transform the person.

The same dynamic is true of life in Christ. Jesus tells us, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much” (Luke 16:10). What’s internal to a person eventually shows itself. A diseased tree cannot yield good fruit (Matt. 7:18), even if the whole community is counting on it to combat starvation. Dwight Schrute might be right that nitrogen is the most essential element for “above-ground leafy growth,” but all the nitrogen in the world can’t grow something out of a dead root.

Any mythology needs a chaos figure—a Loki, a Joker, a Dwight. But when those figures get put in charge, the results are bleak. We start giving up on character and competence and start looking for an even more chaotic figure to put checks on the first. In an office, on a film set, in a country, or in a church, that way leads to “Threat Level Midnight” (one of The Office episodes). And deep down, we all know it.

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

News

For Years, This Christian NGO Worked with Muslims in Myanmar. Then Came Cyclone Mocha.

Angela Lu Fulton

Long-term relationships helped the group aid the Rohingya while the UN and others were shut out.

Courtesy of Partners Relief and Development

When Hlaing heard that the “extremely severe” Cyclone Mocha was barreling toward Sittwe township on the western coast of Myanmar, she worried about her family and the 105,000 other displaced Rohingyas living in camps on the low-lying floodplains. Where could they go to shelter from the storm?

From the Thailand office of the Partners Relief and Development, Hlaing (who asked to only be identified by one name for her security) started sending updates about the cyclone’s strength and location to the group’s local contacts so they could alert the rest of the Rohingya community in the area. Team members on the ground urged people to evacuate to schools or temples that could withstand the wind. Hlaing’s family was able to shelter at a school across the street from their home.

Through the organization’s local network, Partners sent money to secure 200 bags of rice and provide for other needs ahead of the storm. “We expected the worst,” said Brad Hazlett, president of Partners. “There didn’t seem to be any way for the people to escape, and we’ve had other experiences where people were restricted from escaping the path of the cyclone.”

As the storm lashed out with 150-mph winds on Rakhine state Sunday, Hlaing continually checked Facebook for updates but saw no news about the camps.

Then on Monday night, she finally heard from Partners’ local contact: “Everything in the camp is destroyed,” he said. He sent pictures of piles of bamboo where homes used to stand, broken bridges, downed trees. He also visited her family to check up on them: They were unhurt, but the roof of their house had blown off.

The full extent of the damage caused by the storm—which was equivalent to a category 5 hurricane—is still unknown. That’s due to the difficulty accessing the worst-hit areas, the disrupted cell service, and the military junta’s obstruction of access and information.

The junta, which took power in a 2021 coup, placed the death toll at just 54 on Thursday. Yet Partners team members counted 110 dead in just seven of the Rohingya villages and camps they visited in Sittwe.

As of Thursday, the UN and other aid groups have not been allowed to access the area. Partners’ local team, on the other hand, has been able to provide food and tarps, as well as survey and publicize the damage.

Hazlett noted that Partners, a Christian aid group, can respond so quickly because of their decade-long relationship with the Rohingya community in Sittwe. By consistently showing up and providing food, health care, bathroom facilities, and schools, they’ve gained trust and developed networks that can mobilize quickly.

“We built a close relationship with the community and people in the camps,” Hazlett said, “We’ve worked very hard to improve their situation, but the situation remains so dire for them—they have no rights, they’re in camps behind barbed wire.”

‘An open prison without end’

The devastation brought by the cyclone has exacerbated an already disastrous situation facing the stateless Rohingya, whom the junta does not recognize as citizens. In 2012, violent riots led to the Rakhine, who are predominantly Buddhist and make up the majority in the state, driving up to 140,000 Rohingyas Muslims—including many living in Sittwe—out of their homes and into camps in the floodplains.

Rohingyas in the camps and nearby villages have had their freedom of movement severely restricted and are denied access to work and education. Heavy police presence, and in some places barbed wire, keep them in “an open prison without end,” as one former camp resident described it to Human Rights Watch.

After Rohingya insurgents attacked Burmese border posts in 2016, the army cracked down on the Rohingya living elsewhere in Rakhine state, killing thousands, burning villages, and driving them out of Myanmar and into Bangladesh. Nearly one million Rohingyas have fled across the border to Cox’s Bazar, once a beachside tourist destination that has now become the world’s largest refugee camp.

Now the reports released in the wake of Cyclone Mocha paint an even more devastating picture on the Rohingya who have remained in the country. The storm has destroyed 90 percent of the homes in Sittwe. Massive tidal waves swept over Rohingya villages near the Bay of Bengal, as dead bodies believed to be locals have been spotted along the coast Wednesday, according to Myanmar Now.

Outside Rakhine state, the cyclone also severely damaged homes, businesses, and infrastructure in Chin state and Magway and Sagaing regions, leaving more than three million people with humanitarian needs, the UN estimates.

In Sittwe township, survivors need food, fresh water, and tarps. The cycle destroyed the marketplace, flooded rice paddies, and damaged roads, making transportation difficult.

Yet the UN humanitarian office (OCHA) said Wednesday it was still waiting for the junta to allow them into these communities to “start coordinated field missions to gauge the full scope of the humanitarian situation.”

On Thursday, Partners posted on Twitter that it had distributed rice and tarps to 30 families and tarps to an additional 20. Hazlett noted the group can send funds directly to their team members on the ground to procure the aid.

‘Why do Christians care about us?’

Hlaing, who like most Rohingyas is Muslim, first encountered Partners in 2012 when she and her family fled their home in downtown Sittwe due to the violence. At the camp, she saw the organization provide medical aid to the many displaced Rohingyas who suffered from diarrhea and skin diseases. Soon she started volunteering with the group.

Partners is an openly Christian organization that works with and employs local Rohingyas. Hazlett noted that because the group is from the West, people automatically assume they are Christians. They will then ask, “Why do Christians care about us?” It gives him an opportunity to share that it’s “because of our faith, this is what we are called to do. Scripture is clear we are to love our neighbors.”

And the Rohingya have been receptive to that help. They see Partners’ consistency working in the community over the past decade, providing rice for Rohingyas in the camp who aren’t recognized as internally displaced persons (because they fought back against the military, Hlaing said). Partners set up toilets and hand water pumps in the camps. They built schools so children growing up in the camps could access education.

They tried to transition to sustainable development projects—helping Rohingya with farming plots of land or raising goats and chickens—yet those failed as the local Rakhine stole the fruits of their labor, claiming the land was theirs.

Hlaing noted that the Rohingya community is thankful for Partners because the group was “the first to help them when there was no support and nothing happening for them.”

‘… otherwise many more will die’

For Hlaing and others, Cyclone Mocha and the government’s response evokes memories of another devastating storm 15 years earlier: Cyclone Nargis, which killed more than 138,000 people in 2008. The junta didn’t warn people about the magnitude of the coming storm, preventing them from evacuating and taking shelter. They also resisted international aid, leaving many to die from injuries or lack of basic necessities.

Hlaing noted that, this time, while many Rohingya evacuated, others stayed likely because they didn’t realize how dangerous the cyclone would be. Once again, the government didn’t provide adequate warning or preparation before the storm, reported Myanmar Now. While officials made alerts about the storm over a loudspeaker at the camps, they did it in Burmese, which many Rohingya don’t speak. The government also didn’t provide transportation or accommodations for those who wanted to leave.

The government has also followed its 2008 playbook for disaster relief. “The Burmese military are not helping them,” said Tun Khin, the president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK, in a statement. “The international community needs to act urgently to reach survivors with medical and humanitarian aid, otherwise many more will die.”

Hlaing also hadn’t heard any reports of the government aiding Rohingya survivors. Instead, people have tried to assist each other individually, “In the camps, everyone has lost everything, so they can’t help each other.”

Beyond Partners, other Christian groups are trying to find ways to help victims. Dave Eubank of Free Burma Rangers (FBR), which trains ethnic minorities as first responders, said that after Cyclone Mocha, their Rohingya team is providing food and aid to Rohingyas who have fled across the border to Bangladesh.

However, the FBR’s focus remains on the ongoing fighting against ethnic armed groups and armed Burmese groups. Even amid the rain the cyclone brought in, the military continued “shelling, displacing, wounding, and killing” in Karenni state, Eubank said Tuesday.

“As bad as the cyclone is, to me the much bigger story is the three million already internally displaced people since the coup and the nonstop attacks,” he said.

Eubank also worries that the junta will take money donated for disaster relief and use it for their own purposes.

Amid all the challenges facing the Rohingya, Hazlett noted that over the years, Partners has made deep, lasting friendship with the Rohingya community and continue to walk with them. And yet “it gets harder and harder. These friends ask [themselves], ‘What do we have to live for?’ They’re not ever going to be able to move beyond this situation.”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

They Persecuted Indian Christians. Most Confessed. Did Divine Retribution Follow?

Interview by Surinder Kaur

A new documentary follows the lives of 10 of the men responsible for horrific attacks on the Kandhamal church.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Courtesy of Anto Akkara

“Christ is indeed alive at the ground zero of the worst [Christian] persecution in Indian history.”

That’s journalist and documentarian Anto Akkara’s takeaway after 15 years of telling the stories of a Christian community in the eastern state of Odisha (formerly Orissa), India, systemically ravaged by Hindu mobs in 2007 and 2008.

Over these two years, extremists took the lives of 100 Christians, burned down 6,500 houses, and burned down or vandalized nearly 400 churches and places of worship. More than 40 women were raped and sexually assaulted, and the violence disrupted school for 12,000 children for years. (Previously, Kandhamal Christians had been subject to sporadic terror, though nothing at this level.)

Starting in 2008, Akkara has made 34 trips to the rural Kandhamal region, where he has filmed four documentaries focused on how this violence has impacted the victims’ lives. For his latest release, The Right Hand of God over Kandhamal, Akkara uncovers the fates of 10 assailants who attacked the Christian community and concludes there has been some sort of “divine retribution” at work. Eight have died, including two by suicide, one in a car crash, and one from paralysis. Another lost his ability to speak. Beyond those whose stories he investigates, there are even more that he says regret their actions and have “embraced the faith they once tried to banish from Kandhamal.”

Akkara recently spoke with CT’s South Asia correspondent Surinder Kaur about his surprising conversations with the assailants, the ways his reporting changed how he sees God, and the courage and boldness of the Christians who lost everything.

Why did you decide to tell the story of these assailants?

In Christmas 2009, the government convened a peace meeting between Christians and Hindu extremists and activists. During the meeting, Bamdev Kanhar, an activist who had vandalized a church in 2007, stood up and said, “We should not attack Christians. We must live peacefully; otherwise God will punish us.”

After I heard this statement from witnesses, I contacted the priest who was also present in the meeting to confirm the report in 2010. I then went to meet Kanhar and spoke to him, and he verified his own statement. One after the other, I heard several confessions from various sources about assailants regretting their actions and began to investigate each one. Interviewing one source led me to another—an act I did not see as a mere coincidence. Instead, I could see the divine intervention of God. Every investigation was a stunning revelation to me.

How challenging was traveling to Kandhamal?

It was challenging indeed. The journey to Kandhamal takes five to six hours from Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s capital city. Depending on where you want to travel after that, you could end up traveling up to 100 miles through a sprawling jungle district. [Nearly two-thirds of the land in the district is covered by a dense forest.] These are sensitive stories, and I was extremely cautious to verify minute details before I published them because there is no room for mistakes. One needs infinite patience to pursue the leads in this remote region where documentation is unheard of.

What form of trauma do the victims of the anti-Christian violence continue to witness?

The victims of the violence continue to suffer the losses of the consequences of the attacks of 2007 and 2008 and sporadic incidents in the years prior. Some lost their lives. Many lost property. They still carry the pains and struggle with their harsh lives, while holding on to their faith valiantly. They have suffered the injustice at the hands of the government and judiciary where even murderers have not been convicted.

Though the Supreme Court of India in 2016 described the “large number of acquittals” in Kandhamal as “unacceptable” and ordered Odisha State to investigate “wherever acquittals were not justified on facts,” nothing has happened.

Further, most victims of the violence have not received the enhanced compensation that the Supreme Court ordered, as the government made no effort to inform them of these benefits.

Amidst struggle and hard life, these people have shown exemplary faith and witness. While working on my book Shining Faith in Kandhamal, I was worried about the safety of the victims quoted, and so I used pseudonyms and blurred the faces in the photographs I took to hide their identities. But when I took copies of the book to them, they were furious, and they said, “We are not cowards. … Let them kill us. Kindly show our faces.”

Since I first began visiting in 2008 to my latest trip in March 2023, their courage (about being identified) has not declined over the years and is manifested in their response to my book.

How has unmasking the persecutor through this documentary brought solace to victims?

Kandhamal has witnessed scores of incidents that I describe as divine retribution or God's punishment for injustice heaped on hapless people or for desecrating something sacred, like a cross or church.

In 2004, a 22-year-old boy named Akhaya Mallick urinated on the Tabernacle of the Raikia church after it was torn down. A few days later, he was hospitalized for urine blockage. He confessed to the doctor about his act at the church and then went and met the parish priest and confessed his sin. Mallick died a few days later … his older brother Pramod’s wife, Sharddha Nayak, confirmed.

Mallick’s sudden death instilled fear of the living God in his brother Pramod (who in 1999 had become a follower of Christ but due to pressure from family had recanted his faith), and Shardha and Pramod started to attend church regularly.

On the other hand, there are everyday incidents witnessed by the victims where their Hindu neighbors (who were part of the violence then) have confessed their participation and regret their involvement.

A pastor shared with me how his neighbor who had pulled down his house helped him rebuild it nearly two years later.

I know of Hindu assailants whom I met attending (Christian) prayers who told me, “We assaulted them and looted them, but instead of staying angry, they were smiling at us. We saw that they are living peacefully, while we have no peace of mind. So, we decided to join them.”

I have also met several Hindus sitting in houses of Christian victims and admitting that “we joined in the attacks on Christians due to the false propaganda. Now we live in peace.”

These incidents of Hindus embracing the Christian faith have given new confidence to the hounded Christian community in Kandhamal. The sense of fear they carried has disappeared, and they are now more hopeful.

How do you understand God’s act of justice in this context?

After documenting these incidents meticulously, I cannot endorse theologians or Christians who claim that “God is ever merciful and will never punish.” How can we judge God? I have solid experiences and a firm belief that God’s ways are inscrutable. We cannot brand God as A or B or C alone. God does not remain blind or sit idle to the atrocities on the earth. Even the secular world has the term natural justice.

Wherever persecution took place, whether [in] Kandhamal, Mangaluru, or other parts of India, there have been incidents of divine retribution.

We had people from across the country who watched the documentary and then shared what they believe were examples of divine retribution following other attacks on Christians. One commenter shared about a police officer who led the brutalization of Christian protesters in Mangaluru in 2008 who later killed himself. People also wrote about similar events happening in Hyderabad and Bihar, where church desecrators met tragic deaths.

How has seeing what you believe is God’s intervention in the Kandhamal community changed your thinking about God and the reality of persecution?

By human logic, it is difficult to comprehend what God has planned or willed. Why did God allow 10 of Jesus’ disciples to become martyrs? Why God allowed those 21 Coptic Christians to be martyred by the ISIS in 2015?

But when I look at persecution, I remember the dictum of church historian Tertullian , “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” He wrote these words under Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity in 313, and I believe they still hold true. In fact, I call one chapter in my book Early Christians of 21st Century “Kandhamal Proves Tertullian Right” because it holds stunning testimonies of Hindu converts. I have also come across several “St. Pauls of Kandhamal”—disciples of the slain Swami who have embraced the Christian faith.

Why is your documentary important for the global church?

The unconditional forgiving attitude of the traumatized Christians has floored the Hindu nationalists in Kandhamal. Would anyone believe that there has not been a single revenge attack even in Christian-majority areas?

Kandhamal’s story of faith by the means of my documentary is a reminder to the global church of hope, faith, forgiveness, and that God is in charge.

Do you think Indian Christians and Christians globally pay enough attention to the reality of persecution of Christians?

There is global concern about what is happening in India, especially among organizations advocating for persecuted Christians, but unfortunately, there is hardly any act of solidarity when it comes to state-level interactions. I am reminded of the US President Donald Trump’s India visit in February 2020. Christians in India had high hopes that Trump would mention religious freedom issues in India, particularly the persecution of Christians, but his visit went by without any mention of the increasing attacks on Christians under the Modi regime.

Do you think there are more such individuals who might have met such horrendous ends? Are you motivated to carry on this investigation further?

There are much more than these 10 lives that I have traced back while working on this documentary. I have come across dozens more of such stunning incidents bordering on divine intervention and revelation. After the release of my documentary, I am getting messages and phone calls from sources who are eyewitnesses and have told me about the fate of the individuals involved in the violence. My aim is not to project lives that ended tragically but instead highlight the process of realization that these individuals had whether they are still alive or dead.

What do you hope this documentary accomplishes?

Given the increasing persecution of Christians across the country by the belligerent Hindu nationalists, with the connivance of the mandarins of ruling BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] regimes, I intend to convey the message of hope and encourage my Christian brothers and sisters to trust in God. I also hope this crisp visual presentation of the stunning incidents recorded over 15 years will instill the fear of God and his judgment on the oppressors.

- More from Surinder Kaur

News

Australian Gamblers Could Lose Less Money, Thanks to These Christians

Jo Kadlecek

How church leaders are trying to help those addicted from squandering it all.

A bank of poker machines at The Reef Casino in Cairns, far north Queensland.

Fairfax Media / Contributor / Getty

The former CEO of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello, often says that no one gambles away money like Australians.

He’s not wrong.

Aussies lose more than $25 billion a year to gambling, the largest per capita in the world, according to the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Most is lost on poker machines (pokies) easily available in suburban pubs and service club restaurants, far beyond the destination gambling of casinos. Pokies alone netted a loss of over $11.4 billion in 2021. Add online sports betting and other means of legal gambling, and that’s about $1,277 lost every year per person—more than double that of the United States, The New York Times reported in 2018, and around 50 percent higher than second-placed Singapore.

More than one in 10 (11 percent) Australians report they’ve gone online to gamble at least once in the past six months, an increase from 8 percent in 2020, according to 2022 research from the Australian Communications and Media Authority. And because local governments benefit to the tune of $6.6 billion in taxation revenue across all gambling sectors, legislators find it nearly impossible to ward off lobbying efforts from either side of the gambling industry.

“Whenever I tell people that New South Wales has 40 percent of the world’s pokies, people are shocked,” Costello told CT. “More so when I tell them over 70 percent of the world’s pokies are in Australia’s pubs and clubs. I’ve said for years that gambling is to Australia as guns are to America, especially with the NRA’s lobbying influence.”

There’s a reason for that. Many pokies are located in Returned and Services League (RSL) and surf clubs, community gathering spaces around Australia that raise money for the local government and include bars, restaurants, and activities like lifeguarding programs.

Ten years ago, senior executives for ClubsNSW, the umbrella organization for 1,200 RSL groups and other clubs with pokies, traveled to Washington, DC, to “listen to NRA leaders on how to use a large membership base to force political outcomes.” The Sydney Morning Herald reported that they came back and created the Club Local Action Network—or CLAN—to help their 5.7 million members influence their communities against meaningful reform and to promote a “gamble responsibly” messaging campaign.

“That message was evil,” Costello said. “Every state government bought it, and it deeply stigmatized anyone with a gambling addiction. It takes the blame off of the machine and puts it on the person. It’s now easier in Australia to admit you’ve got a drug or drinking problem than it is to say you have a gambling problem.”

While conservative American evangelicals have had a long history of speaking against gambling (though not guns), Aussie Christian activism on the issue has been inconsistent. The church down under has different perspectives on whether a simple roll of the dice or a bet on the Melbourne Cup is a sin.

But Costello says the problem is not gambling itself; it’s the “zone” people say they get trapped in once they’ve begun—one where they lose all sense of reality, especially when pubs and restaurants don’t limit user spending on the almost 100,000 pokie machines across New South Wales, Australia’s largest state. In other words, anyone out to dinner at the local pub might be tempted by the pokies behind their tables and then get carried away without the guardrail a cashless card imposes.

“Cashless cards were introduced two decades ago (in casinos), so we all know it’s a solution,” Costello said. “No criminal will ever reveal their identity to sign up; plus, you have to set up your limit ahead of time so it automatically limits your losses.”

Raising the stakes for reform

For 25 years, Costello has been working for gambling reforms like cashless cards. Though the media frequently consults him as an expert on gambling harm, he’s also a pastor who has had to preside over six funerals of people who died by suicide because of the shame their gambling addiction brought.

Costello has met with hundreds of politicians, helped organize the Alliance for Gambling Reform (AGR), and asked dozens of other Christian leaders across Australia to join his efforts for reform throughout the years. Few have responded with little more than encouragement.

Until now. With cashless cards for pokies on the ballot this past March in New South Wales, Costello found support in Stu Cameron, who leads Wesley Mission, a historically Methodist ministry serving the poor, and Sandy Grant, dean of Sydney’s St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Within their denominations, the Uniting Church and Anglican Church respectively, Cameron and Grant began promoting reform for pokies.

“Pokies are created to addict. My heart as a pastor is both sorrowful [and] angry at the practices that enable this ongoing harm,” Cameron said. “Like so many Australians, including people in my extended family, I know it touches every corner of (Australian) society. There’s not a demographic, ethnicity, or a postcode who have not been impacted by gambling harm.”

Last September, in an open letter, Cameron and Grant called on the two NSW premier candidates to join forces in addressing pokies’ harm.

“We lament that it could be said NSW and its government have the world’s biggest, most destructive gambling addiction, and a growing reliance on a truly regressive and socially destructive form of taxation,” they wrote.

Citing Proverbs 14:31 and 31:9, they called for $1 bet limits on all poker machines, cashless gaming cards, longer compulsory shutdown periods for all poker machine venues, a limit to the number of gaming machines in clubs, and the ability for local leaders to limit the number of games in their areas.

“In 2022, people in NSW lost $8 billion to poker machines. It is the highest rate of loss, per person, anywhere in the world,” says Cameron. “Wesley Mission knows all too well the impact of gambling harm in NSW. We see the immense hardship faced by individuals and families affected by problem gambling and the ripple effect of gambling harm across communities.”

Their public advocacy encouraged other evangelicals to speak up, creating what Cameron calls “a small groundswell of change.” Common Grace, an evangelical social justice ministry, has become a key partner to the AGR, citing Costello’s leadership in helping them activate churches to advocate for change. The Victorian InterChurch Gambling Taskforce, with formal membership from the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, and Uniting churches and the Salvation Army, works with congregations across the state to address the harms of gambling in their communities.

Costello has also long called out the gambling lobby’s bullying tactics. Australian politics, he wrote in The Guardian this past January, have been “dominated by three major entities—the two major political parties and the gambling industry.”

For Cameron, such advocacy is a natural extension of Wesley Mission’s work, which established the first gambling counseling service in the country three decades ago.

“Since poker machines were introduced into NSW in 1956, the local industry has had the field to itself and there has been very little debate about it, until now,” Cameron said. “That means the gambling industry dominated in pubs and clubs and, in many respects, bullied out of existence any meaningful opposition.”

In an effort to begin building this movement, Cameron “got the ball rolling” last September when he and Grant joined The Pastor’s Heart podcast and appealed to church leaders with statistics and stories to highlight the issue, especially for the New South Wales election in March. Cameron shared how a member of one of his congregations said his gambling addiction almost destroyed his family. Cameron and Grant are now galvanizing the Christian community to continue challenging government officials to address what they call a crisis, particularly with pokies. Forty percent of all pokies’ losses come from chronic gamblers who usually are low income, ranking Sydney and New South Wales highest in the country in terms of poker machine losses.

“I’ve talked with many pastors who have had church members or family members feeling suicidal because of the shame of the situation they’ve got their families into,” Grant said. “I can understand Jesus turning over the tables in the temple—different issue because it was blocking access to God. But the anger at the chaos and the carnage done to people through this parasitic misery-making entertainment makes us want to act righteously for justice, not just blow off steam.”

The newly elected Labor government campaigned on a promise to implement a “trial” run on cashless cards for pokies in selected spaces across New South Wales. Last week, the government introduced a bill that would ban venues with pokie machines from making political donations.

“I do have hope things will change,” Costello said. “[Using cashless cards for pokies] is happening in Tasmania and more [local councils and church leaders are] organizing across other states. We don’t have to get rid of all gambling, but we can make this much safer for everyone.”

- More from Jo Kadlecek

How Comfort Women Begat Today’s Sex Trafficking Reality

Interview by Geethanjali Tupps

Why we’re still dealing with a deadly and tragic problem that never went away.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

There are an estimated 29 million women in modern slavery, including some form of sex trafficking and forced marriage, today. To understand why so many girls and women have suffered as victims of sex trafficking in Asia, Sylvia Yu Friedman wants more people to look back at history.

“Experts estimate that the Japanese Imperial military took up to 400,000 girls and women from nations they had occupied to more than 1,000 rape stations in China and hundreds of other military brothels across the Asia Pacific wherever soldiers were stationed,” she says. “UN experts have called this the largest human rights abuse against girls and women in the 20th century. However, the Japanese government has been unwilling to bear full legal and moral responsibility for conceiving and implementing this form of wartime sex slavery and has not issued a truly sincere apology that has satisfied the demands of the surviving victims and their families.”

Though the government has not fully taken responsibility, separately Japanese Christians have personally apologized to elderly survivors of Japanese wartime sex slavery in China.

“Their sincere apologies to these survivors and other Chinese and Koreans have brought a level of healing to generational pain that arose from the wounds of war that were never closed,” says Friedman.

An author, filmmaker, and philanthropy professional, Friedman has interviewed women across Asia who have survived both historical forced prostitution during World War II and current-day sex trafficking.

“I realized that a cycle of sex trafficking continues across Asia and that the enslavement that began with the Japanese Imperial military never went away due to gender discrimination and a lack of outcry and closure of historical wartime sex slavery,” she says.

Friedman’s passion for ending sex trafficking has led her to investigate its underworld for two decades. Through her work in philanthropy, she has been able to direct funds to some of the earliest anti-trafficking projects in Asia.

Friedman has also organized workshops educating others about the issue through the 852 Freedom Campaign. She is a pioneer in exposing different forms of human trafficking from her base in Hong Kong and won an award for her three-part documentary series on human trafficking in China, Hong Kong, and Thailand. She is also the author of A Long Road to Justice: Stories from the Frontlines in Asia and is currently developing a TV series based on this book with a Singapore-based film company.

Friedman recently spoke with global books editor Geethanjali Tupps about her investigation into the trafficking underworld in Asia, and how through this pilgrimage, she has come to terms with her Korean identity and witnessed the potential that Asian professional women have in changing the current sex trafficking scene, and has seen the impact of prayer.

How did you first become interested in fighting sex trafficking?

My dedication to human rights had its genesis in my experience with the searing humiliation of racism as the only Korean kid in an all-white school in Canada in the 1980s. Strangers on the street called me a chink, and classmates said “chink you” instead of “thank you.” My friends said insensitive things about my appearance or asked if the kimchi jar in my house held a dead animal.

All of this deeply sensitized me to injustice. As a teenager, my mother relayed a story from a Korean newspaper about Kim Hak-soon, a survivor of forced prostitution for the Japanese military before and during WWII. Kim testified to the international media about her experiences as a wianbu or a “comfort woman,” forced into prostitution as a teenager for the Japanese army. Kim shared her story publicly because the Japanese government denied they had any involvement in wartime sexual servitude and called the women “voluntary willing prostitutes.”

I was troubled that I had not learned this history in my school textbooks. I couldn’t shake off the fact that what she went through could have happened to me had I been born into her family at that time period.

What have you since learned about wartime sexual servitude?

Sexual violence in war currently exists in Ukraine and Nigeria through the Boko Haram. The cycle of sex trafficking continues with 6.3 million girls and women suffering around the world.

I believe this cycle of sex trafficking is continuing from the wartime sex slavery by the Japanese military. After the war, some Korean and Chinese victim-survivors were left behind in countries like Thailand, and in order to survive, they had to sell their bodies near military bases. What if governments, including the Japanese, had taken a stronger stance against the horrors of wartime sex slavery and “comfort women” after WWII and if they had declared, “Never again!”? A stance like this could have led to international agreements to stop the trafficking of women.

How have you been transformed after investigating the trafficking underworld for two decades?

In 2013, while I was researching my documentary on sex trafficking in Hong Kong, I first entered the red-light districts with a missionary to look for victims to interview. I was so scared, I was tempted to reach for the hand of the missionary if it were acceptable for me as a grown professional woman to do so!

While we were out, we met a young, traumatized mother who was forced to walk all night in search of “johns.” While she didn’t have physical chains to keep her tied to her traffickers, they had another more wicked grip on her: they knew her daughter lived with her grandmother in Africa and would threaten to harm her. We tried to think of ways to get this victim out and even brought her to a church service once, but her phone got cut off and she was moved to another location.

I’ve been in many frightening situations. I’ve been confronted by huge thugs in brothels while interviewing sex trafficking victims. I’ve had to walk by armed soldiers at a border area.

Living through these moments has given me a steadfast belief in the power of prayer. I have witnessed the tangible impact of my mother's fervent prayers and those of my friends when I walked away unharmed from a dangerous encounter in a notorious red-light district.

While filming in one of the most notorious red-light districts near the Myanmar border, I had a near-death experience. We were surrounded by thugs and mamasans who accused me of posting a video of their brothel on social media when I had not done so. My life flashed before my eyes. Then one of them said, “The police are coming,” and they scattered like cockroaches. But this was a very remote area. I believe this was a miracle; a friend had been praying for me at this exact time.

How has your faith played a role in your work?

My faith motivates my commitment to advocating through my writing, philanthropy, and films for the downtrodden and enslaved and in raising awareness about the abhorrent realities of modern-day slavery.

My book is really my testimony of how God moved in my life and in the lives of the frontline workers and the survivors of modern slavery and even the perpetrators, the traffickers, I’ve met along the way. Every step of my journey has been guided by prayer and the support of my mentors, pastors, and friends.

How have the survivors you have interacted with impacted your understanding of sex trafficking?

I met Kim Soon-duk, a survivor of Japanese military sex slavery, when she was 83.

Kim was a gentle soul, but her experience had left her deeply traumatized even after 55 years. Despite this, she did not harbor any resentment toward the Japanese for what she had endured. Instead, she asked me to tell her story to the world and, most importantly, to convey her desire for a truly sincere apology from the Japanese government before she passed.

I went on to meet and interview dozens of other survivors of wartime sex slavery in different nations, including China. It was a sacred experience to meet these elderly survivors who defied the conservative values of their Asian cultures to speak out against sexual enslavement that took place more than a half century prior.

These women were the first #MeToo activists and have been at the forefront of one of the longest-running activist campaigns against sex trafficking and war crimes of sexual violence in armed conflict. They deserve to receive the closure and dignity they so desperately seek. But as these survivors age, time is running out. They need our support.

What have you heard about the work of Christians from survivors?

I’ve spoken with North Korean women who were trafficked as brides in forced marriages and forced into online prostitution businesses. They have told me about Korean missionaries who have risked their lives to aid them in traveling along an underground railroad where they eventually can fly directly to Seoul and receive automatic citizenship and support. During one of the interviews, I’ve heard about an elderly South Korean pastor who passed away while guiding a group of North Korean women across a swollen river several years ago.

Through the Door of Hope ministry, I’ve met some brave young mainland Christian Chinese women who were fearlessly reaching trafficked women with God’s love in the red-light districts. These women’s faith has helped them overcome their initial stigma toward prostituted women and their initially unsupportive house church. Today, they rescue trafficked women and provide both survivors and some traffickers with job and rehabilitation opportunities.

How did the men you interacted with help shape your book?

I have been deeply moved by the testimony of a former trafficker turned missionary in Southeast Asia, and his expertise on modern slavery has been invaluable in my investigation into the dark underworld of trafficking.

Meeting elderly former Japanese soldiers helped me to understand the mindset of the perpetrators of military sex slavery. I have also had the privilege of meeting several brave Japanese Christians who felt it was their mission to share personal apologies with Chinese and Koreans that brought profound healing.

The generational war wounds inflicted by the Japanese military before and during WWII have left deep scars that continue to cause pain, trauma, and racial hatred in China, Hong Kong, Korea, and other nations.

How has covering sex trafficking affected your mental health?

I have a strong support network—my family, husband, friends support me, and I’m fortunate that I haven’t had to deal with serious mental health struggles. I also do not work on the frontlines full-time (that’s where the risk is higher) and have only swooped in to interview and document sex trafficking cases.

However, I have experienced trauma after my near-death experience in the red-light district in China. I also had secondary trauma early on while interviewing elderly survivors of Japanese military sex slavery, largely because I didn't establish sufficient boundaries in my work and I wanted to stand in their shoes to write empathetically.

How has covering sex trafficking affected your Korean identity?

One side effect of this journey has been that I’ve fully accepted my Korean heritage, a facet of my identity that I had previously dismissed due to encounters with racial prejudice during my formative years. However, living in China has helped me to embrace my cultural heritage.

Because I didn’t speak fluent Mandarin, I was asked by strangers whether I was Japanese or Korean—or they assumed I was overseas Chinese. I was often confronted by my heritage, more than I would have been had I remained in Canada. When I mentioned that I was Korean, strangers would almost always say that they loved Korean dramas and music and say how cool Koreans are. That always surprised me since I had grown up in an era when Asian culture was not considered cool.

Meeting Korean sex trafficking survivors helped me to see that no matter how hard I try to reject my Korean heritage, I am Korean in my DNA. I had a visceral reaction to learning about Japanese colonialism and the comfort women, which I attribute to generational hatred/pain—I would say it’s similar to the generational pain of children, grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and Japanese internment survivors in the US and Canada.

What is giving you hope?

More than 100 years ago, Asian women like me would have had bound feet, been considered property, not given a name until we were married, or allowed to go to school.

We’ve come a long way since, and there are more influential Asian women than at any other time. But we still have a long way to go in improving the rights and dignity of women and girls in Asia. I’ve heard of North Korean trafficked brides given flimsy slippers working all day in the fields to prevent them from running away and spoken with a woman chained up like a dog in her own home.

Last year, photos of a trafficked woman and mother of eight children chained up in Suzhou, China, sparked a discussion across the country. From what I hear from mainland Chinese, there is a growing anti-trafficking movement afoot there, and I believe it’s due to the increasing influence of professional women who are outraged by the horrific exploitation of women.

My friend Ai Jin was reaching out to women in the sex trade through Door of Hope for months when she found out that her 14-year old cousin was trafficked into prostitution. She was heartbroken and wanted to quit.

In my book, I write, “Ai Jin helped reinforce that ordinary people can do extraordinary acts of heroism. She was the first to admit that she was weak and often wanted to quit. But her tenacious belief in God kept her going out to the world of sex trafficking and prostitution, and that challenged me.”

Through meeting people like her, I have begun to dream that if 100 million Chinese Christians were to fight modern slavery, they would be one of the greatest forces in history.

- More from Geethanjali Tupps

Church Life

Malaysia’s Death Penalty Is No Longer Mandatory. Advocate Wishes Christian Conversation Was.

Interview by Isabel Ong

Christian lawyer explains why loving your neighbor in the Muslim-majority country entails speaking up.

An activist holds a sign against the death penalty in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Vincent Thian / AP Images

On April 3, Malaysia’s parliament voted to abolish the mandatory death penalty. In its place, the courts may mete out alternative sentences such as life imprisonment or whipping.

“[For] people who get involved in criminal activity due to economic hardships or exigent circumstances, there is now a way to proportionately punish them without the need to impose the ultimate penalty, which is death,” said Malaysian human rights lawyer Andrew Khoo, who lives in Kuala Lumpur and has campaigned to quash the death penalty in his country for the past 20 years.

The Southeast Asian country imposed a moratorium on executions in 2018 when it first pledged to abolish the death penalty completely. Now, capital punishment will no longer be compulsory for 11 crimes like murder, drug trafficking, and terrorism. The new law will also be applied retrospectively to reviewing the sentences of more than a thousand prisoners on death row, including those who have exhausted their appeals.

CT spoke with Khoo on the impacts of this new law and what a robust Christian engagement in politics amid a majority-Muslim setting might look like.

What is the significance of abolishing the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia?

We return the decision about sentencing back to the hands of judges, rather than judges being forced by law to impose a sentence without their ability to include any mitigation. It’s a return to justice and to proportionate sentencing.

Justice is about receiving an appropriate punishment for criminal activity, committing a crime, or going against the norms of society. But from a biblical perspective, justice needs to be tempered with mercy in the sense that we hate the crime but we don’t hate the person who committed the crime.

We can reinforce or restate society’s non-acceptance of criminal activity, but we can also allow ourselves to appreciate that sometimes people are driven to criminal activity through external pressures, economic considerations, and trying circumstances. This is not to say that we excuse the crime, but we allow ourselves a modicum of mercy when we impose sentences.

So the death penalty remains an option for some criminal offenses.

Yes. Generally speaking, we have not abolished the death penalty. If a crime leads to the death of an individual, the possibility of the imposition of the death penalty exists.

There’s been an attempt to decouple the death penalty from criminal activity that does not lead to the death of a person. For example, you could get the death penalty for illegally or unlawfully possessing a firearm in the past. The firearm didn’t even need to be fired. The fact that you possessed the firearm without a license was sufficient for you to be sentenced to death if you were convicted. So, we have broken the connection between the death penalty and a crime that did not result in a person’s death. That is a good thing.

Has the Malaysian government’s decision been influenced by events in neighboring country Singapore, where executions continue to be carried out?

I most certainly think so. Singapore was deaf to appeals—not just from Malaysia but from the international community—for mercy, clemency, and mitigation in sentencing when it came to executing people who were intellectually compromised.

This forced us to rethink the idea of justice and fairness in terms of sentencing and whether it was right to impose the death penalty on people whose criminal conduct was very marginal. People who had just exceeded the threshold for being considered a drug trafficker were treated in the same way as someone who was seriously trafficking in drugs. It didn’t matter whether it was 500 grams or 500 kilos of drugs; the sentence was still the same. This kind of injustice was reflected in some of the executions that were taking place in Singapore, where people with small amounts of drugs were found guilty and sentenced to death.

Even though the campaign to abolish the mandatory death penalty did not work in Singapore, it had a transboundary effect across the Causeway because Malaysian society began to see more clearly how these kinds of absolute mandatory sentences were unfair and unjust. It contributed to the environment whereby it made it possible for people to say, “We can afford to do away with the mandatory death penalty.”

How did the Malaysian church respond to the new law?

Issues like the criminal justice system or crime and punishment are not traditional issues which the church has spoken up for in the past.

There is an inherent contradiction here because the Christian witness is to all of life. There shouldn’t be a reservation about giving input on a particular issue, topic, or controversy because we don’t want to invite criticism, negative feedback, or pushback from the rest of society.

If we are sincere in our beliefs, we should be duty bound to share those perspectives and help influence public debate on all issues in Christian love. But because we have been brought up in a nation where Christianity is a minority religion, we are sensitive to the role that we play in public life. So, there’s a hesitancy to speak up on certain areas sometimes.

Does the notion of a sacred and secular divide affect Malaysian Christian engagements in the public square? Do Muslim leaders act differently?

In a true reflection of Christianity, there is no distinction between church and state. Even when America talks about the separation of church and state, they don’t see any incongruity about having people like Rev. Raphael Warnock, an ordained minister and pastor, as an elected senator in the state of Georgia.

Islam doesn’t see any separation between mosque and state. In Malaysia, Islamic religious leaders have become ministers in charge of religion, members of Parliament, and state assemblymen. But I’m not sure how comfortable Malaysian society would be if we had a Christian pastor go into politics and keep his job as a pastor at the same time.

Why are we uncomfortable with that? It’s something that Christians in Malaysia—and Malaysians in general—need to reflect upon. As my favorite quote from Desmond Tutu says, “When people say that the Bible and politics don't mix, I ask them which Bible they are reading.”

What can the Malaysian church do more or less of?

Malaysian Christians need to get more involved in small-p politics. They should get more involved in national polity and decision-making processes to bring Christian perspectives and values into public life.

Some people will misunderstand this and say, “You’re trying to Christianize Malaysia.” I’m not saying that at all. If we are people of faith, our ethics and morals are informed by that faith. We should be reflecting our perspectives in policy decisions that are being made in the country, because it affects people.

If we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31), then the idea that we should refrain from policy involvement even though we could help improve the quality and nature of life for the people around us—our neighbors—is a total antithesis of what the Bible tells us to do.

One area to do this is in terms of outreach and care for people in the prison system, which is very dehumanizing. It’s not a glamorous job. It’s difficult work, and it’s certainly not financially rewarding. People may shy away from this, but there are people in prisons who need help. They are hurting and in pain. There is an opportunity for us to minister to their needs and to give them some dignity in life and treat them as human beings. This is where we can show Christian love to people from all religious backgrounds and walks of life.

What theological truth or concept informs your opposition to the death penalty?

I believe in a God who is the Creator of life. It is not the role of a human being to take away that life. A mature and civilized criminal justice system will reflect that respect for the dignity and sanctity of life.

What is the range of perspectives that Malaysian evangelicals have on this issue?

The Christian community, as a whole, does not have a consensus on what position they take with respect to the death penalty.

Some feel that the death penalty is justifiable. They acknowledge that there is a time and place for it and there are circumstances in which the death penalty can be justified and defended in terms of its use. Since it is mentioned in the Bible and since God did order the killing of whole groups of communities in Old Testament times, they believe that there is room for righteous anger to be reflected. One of the ways that this righteous indignation about unholy conduct or activity can be expressed is in the use of the death penalty.

Then there are those who will say it will never be correct for society to take a life or for the state to say they are justified in executing someone in the name of protecting society. Doing so gives society, and human beings, the power of God to give and end life.

How do you dialogue with fellow Malaysian Christians who favor the death penalty because they believe it serves as an effective deterrent against serious crimes?

There is no empirical evidence to show that the death penalty is a deterrent. There are empirical studies that show the reverse: When the death penalty is there, crime continues to take place. For example, homicide rates in US states that retain the death penalty are higher than states that have abolished it in the past 20 years according to nongovernmental organization The Death Penalty Project.

The very fact that Malaysia introduced the mandatory death sentence for drugs in 1983 didn’t stop people from trafficking in drugs or getting involved in the business of carrying drugs. The logic just collapses.

If you say that the death penalty does work as a deterrent, why is it that people will continue to commit this crime, knowing full well that if caught and convicted they would face the mandatory death penalty?

What do you anticipate continuing to do now that this law has been passed?

My work will not be done until the death penalty is abolished in Malaysia in its entirety. To me, this is a milestone in that long journey, but there is still so much that needs to be done. It will probably take another 20 years.

- More from Isabel Ong

News

US Rates Religious Freedom of China, Iran, Russia Among 199 Nations

Jayson Casper

State Department cites evidence of immigration at release of annual IRF report, first authorized 25 years ago.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R) looks on as Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain delivers remarks on the roll-out of the International Religious Freedom Report at the State Department in Washington, DC, on May 15, 2023.

Jonathan Ernst / Pool / AFP / Getty Images

For the last 25 years, the United States has promoted global fidelity to its First Amendment.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) into law, mandating yearly reports to detail the respect given to this fundamental right in every nation of the world.

Not every nation is pleased.

“We are sometimes asked,” stated Rashad Hussain, US ambassador at large for international religious freedom, “‘Who are you as the United States to speak to other countries about their human rights conditions?’”

Hussain, whose State Department position was also created by IRFA, replied to the rhetorical question during this week’s launch of the 2022 IRF report. Covering 199 countries—US allies and enemies alike—it prepares the ground for year-end designation of the worst offenders as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC), with second-tier violators placed on a Special Watch List (SWL).

His two-fold answer began with US leadership grounded in its unique and foundational Bill of Rights. But he continued with immigration, evidencing preference for American rights in so many of the same 199 nations studied.

“People come to the United States from all around the world and demand that their elected representatives and government official promote our values in their homelands,” said Hussain. “In many ways we are representatives of the rest of the world, gathered here in the United States.”

The report’s Appendix G provides an overview of refugee policy, stating 25,465 individuals were resettled permanently in the US in fiscal 2022. Priority is given to CPC and SWL nationals suffering from religious persecution.

The highlighted litany of offenders is familiar.

Russia represses people of faith who spoke against its invasion of Ukraine.

Afghanistan sidelines all who differ from the Taliban’s austere religious interpretation of Islam.

Burma (Myanmar) attacks the homes of its Muslim Rohingya minority.

Saudi Arabia makes illegal the practice of any religion apart from Islam.

India tolerates hate speech against its Muslim citizens.

And China offends at many levels. Re-education camps exist for Uyghur Muslims. Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are destroyed. Christians are surveilled; Falun Gong practitioners are tortured.

The 49-page section stated thousands are imprisoned for their spiritual beliefs.

Hewing the original question, China claimed “ideological bias” was behind the report. India blamed “flawed understanding” behind US complaints.

Meanwhile, positive reception came from Belize and Bangladesh.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken preceded Hussain with praise for other nations. Belgium formally recognized its Buddhist minority. Brazil codified religious freedom guarantees for its indigenous communities. And the Central African Republic has continued to prosecute religion-based violence.

“We defend the right to believe or to not believe, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also because of the extraordinary good that people of faith can do in our societies and around the world,” Blinken stated. “We are acting on the findings and observations of the report every single day.”

Yet perhaps not enough.

While the independent US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)—also created by IRFA—“commended” the report, Abraham Cooper chided the State Department for issuing sanctions waivers to violating nations.

“The administration and Congress must now use this body of evidence,” stated the USCIRF vice chair, “to pressure governments to protect religious freedom and penalize with tangible consequences those that blatantly continue to commit egregious violations.”

A third of the 12 CPCs—Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—received no penalty for their abuses.

Senator Marco Rubio lamented one nation left off both the CPC and SWL lists.

“As a nation, it is both morally imperative and strategically important for us to remain steadfast in our commitment to combat the unjust persecution of individuals worldwide who peacefully live out their faith or beliefs,” stated the Florida Republican. “It is deeply concerning that the Biden administration continues to provide excuses for the Nigerian government.”

Nigeria was briefly designated as a CPC by the Trump administration in 2020, before being removed by the Biden administration the following year. Hussain, nonetheless, highlighted the plight of six-year captive Leah Sharibu, held by the West Africa branch of the Islamic State, who turned 20 years old one day before the report’s release.

Blinken additionally criticized Iran for cracking down on protests associated with hijab-removing Masa Amini’s death in police custody. The report stated that 19,204 individuals have since been arrested for “enmity against God.”

He also cited Nicaragua’s 160 attacks last year against the Catholic church.

And echoing Hussain’s remarks, in the report’s written introduction Blinken anchored American leadership back to a heritage grounded in the 1786 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. The US commitment later inspired the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, with Article 18 guaranteeing the peaceful espousal of any religious belief.

Blinken also invoked Clinton, who 50 years later tied US support for religious freedom to the wholesale promotion of human rights. It is a “bedrock American belief,” the president noted at the signing of IRFA, as he signed into law a “range of new tools” to protect the persecuted.

Hussain, the first Muslim to inhabit the office, pledged continuity.

“Religion can be such a powerful force for good in the world,” he stated. “We vow to redouble our efforts to ensure greater respect for freedom of religion or belief for everyone, everywhere.”

- More from Jayson Casper

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More Evangelicals Oppose School Vaccine Requirements

Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

While most still inoculate against MMR, they’re less likely to agree that kids must get the shots to enroll.

Courtesy of mikimad / Getty Images

In what could be a sign of COVID-19’s influence, some sectors of US society—specifically white evangelicals and Republicans—are showing a growing aversion to the requirement that schoolchildren be vaccinated for illnesses like mumps and measles.

Overall, about 70 percent of Americans say healthy children should be mandated to be vaccinated so they can attend public schools, according to a new Pew Research Center survey released Tuesday.

That is a distinctly smaller percentage from findings in 2019 and 2016, when 82 percent were in favor of such requirements. The share of the US public who say parents should get to determine not to vaccinate their children is 28 percent, an increase of 12 points from 2019.

“We are seeing a kind of marked drop in support for school-based childhood vaccine requirements,” said Cary Funk, Pew’s director of science and society research, in an interview. “That drop is particularly coming among Republicans as well as among white evangelical Protestants, many of whom are Republicans.”

The new survey shows that 58 percent of white evangelicals say there should be a requirement for children attending public schools to be vaccinated, while 40 percent say parents should be able to choose not to have their children vaccinated, even if that could cause health risks for others. Comparatively, in 2019, white evangelicals favored mandated vaccines for public schoolchildren by a margin of 77 percent to 20 percent.

Even though white evangelicals have a growing opposition to such requirements, they remain supportive of measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, Funk said. The report notes that 82% of white evangelicals who are parents of minors say their child has received such vaccines, close to the percentage of the share of all parents who say this (79%).

Funk noted that being “inclined away from school-based vaccine requirements is different than saying that the vaccines themselves are not safe or effective.”

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Eighty-seven percent of Protestants overall say this, and more than 8 in 10 of different kinds of Protestants agreed: 93 percent of white nonevangelicals, 87 percent of white evangelicals, and 82 percent of Black Protestants. Overall 89 percent of Catholics held this view, with 94 percent of white Catholics agreeing, as well as 83 percent of Hispanic Catholics.

A higher percentage of the religiously unaffiliated—91 percent—saw benefits of MMR vaccines outweighing risks, with 96 percent of atheists, 95 percent of agnostics, and 88 percent of those who described themselves as “nothing in particular” holding this view.

Compared to white evangelicals, lower percentages of all other surveyed religious groups were in favor of parents being able to decide not to vaccinate their children, even if such action would create health risks for others.

About 2 in 10 white nonevangelicals, Black Protestants, and Hispanic Catholics held this view, compared to a quarter of white Catholics, 10 percent of atheists, and 18 percent of agnostics. But 30 percent of people who described themselves as nothing in particular agreed that parents should be able to make decisions about childhood vaccinations.

White evangelical Protestants are the only religious group surveyed that had fewer than half—40 percent—agreeing that the benefits of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh the risks. Other groups seeing benefits of the recent vaccines outweighing the risks ranged from 60 percent of white nonevangelicals and those who are “nothing in particular” to 84 percent of atheists.

White evangelical Protestants, who were noted earlier in the pandemic for their vaccine hesitancy, stood out as the group that most reported not being vaccinated, at 36 percent. The subgroups with the highest percentages saying they are fully vaccinated and recently boosted were atheists (52%), agnostics (44%) and Black Protestants (43%).

Overall, 34 percent of US adults are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and recently boosted, and 21 percent had not been vaccinated.

The survey of 10,701 US adults was conducted online from March 13-19 and had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. The margin of error for the 1,669 white evangelical Protestants surveyed was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points.

- More from Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

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Americans Read the Bible More After Switching Denominations

Jonny Williams

In a recent survey, those who left their childhood traditions for a church of their own reported higher engagement with their faith.

Mateus Campos Felipe / Unsplash

Enid Almanzar was shocked the first time she walked into an evangelical church. She had been raised Catholic and was used to stained-glass windows, ornate crosses, portraits of saints, and statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary.

But the nondenominational church she visited had no such things. On the contrary, it seemed quite lax on religious decor or decorum; the pastor, she remembers, had tattoos and rode a motorcycle. “I thought it was sacrilege.”

But looking back, Almanzar believes that visit was the beginning of a process that led her back to faith after wandering away in college. She received her first Bible, joined a study group, and got baptized.

“I felt like I was walking in my mother's faith and my family's faith, and when I took that step into evangelicalism, now it became my faith; it became my Jesus,” said Almanzar, who now works at the American Bible Society (ABS).

She is one of millions of Americans who have switched faiths. While most who switch today are leaving church behind as agnostics, atheists, or nones (those who claim no religious affiliation), many Christians are switching denominations, and ABS research suggests that doing so may strengthen their faith.

People who switch religious traditions are more likely to read Scripture, according to a recent ABS poll in partnership with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago. Those leaving mainline Protestant traditions reported the highest boost in engagement.

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“We easily assume that rejecting the faith of one’s youth is a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, the State of the Bible data suggest otherwise,” the ABS report said. “Christians who have changed their faith are more Scripture Engaged than those who haven’t.”

ABS also found that those who switch traditions expressed deeper interest in the Bible and Jesus. For example, about two-thirds (64%) of religious switchers said they believe the Bible is accurate in “all of the principles it presents,” compared to about half (47%) of those who remained in their religious tradition.

About three-fourths also expressed curiosity in learning more about Jesus and the Bible, compared to roughly two-thirds of those who stayed.

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“More often than not, you have, like, some sort of spiritual awakening or something happened where you want to get more engaged in the Scriptures, the Bible, and that’s why you switch—because you may have found a church that made more sense to you and opened the Bible to you in a different way,” said Ryan Burge, a political scientist who tracks religious trends in America. Burge himself grew up Southern Baptist but is now the pastor of an American Baptist church.

The Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) also released a survey this week indicating that almost a quarter of Americans have changed religious affiliations, and half said they did so because they no longer believed in the religion’s teachings. The research showed that Catholics and nonevangelical Protestants were the most likely to switch.

Switching traditions can present challenges to both those arriving at new churches and those receiving them. Newcomers may bring with them different theological beliefs about the Bible and church practices. Catholics, for example, have a high regard for the Virgin Mary, and some believe in transubstantiation, the belief that the bread and wine consumed during Communion turn into the blood and body of Christ.

Eloy Rodriguez, Spanish pastor of Idlewild Baptist Church in Florida, warns that Protestants who show disrespect to the Virgin Mary may put off Catholics who still revere her as the mother of Jesus.

Lisette Grillo, who is on the pastoral staff of an Assemblies of God church in California, has noticed converts from Catholicism still going to Mass after attending Protestant services. She also sees them bringing the values from their Catholic backgrounds, such as a deep care for the poor.

Overall, Grillo has found that secondary issues in faith and practice often resolve over time.

“Above all the doctrinal points and above all the topics we can have a conversation [about] … the main thing is to show them who Jesus is,” Grillo said.

Almanzar says her exit from the Catholic church was not intentional. But now she sees beauty in the things she learned while she attended Mass—such as the sacredness of Communion and reverence for Scripture—and she brings those experiences to the New York church where she is now an elder and associate pastor.

“It's not like you throw the baby out with the bath water. … What are those things that were good that you can keep while making this faith your own?” said Almanzar.

Angel Mann, who works with ABS’s research team, shares a similar experience. Having grown up in the Southern Black church tradition, she says her rearing instilled in her an appreciation for community. This is what led her to a charismatic nondenominational church in Philadelphia, where she found community as she mourned her mother’s death.

Religious switching has worried church leaders who have seen steep drops in membership numbers. Nondenominational churches have added millions, while declines among Southern Baptists, United Methodists, Presbyterians, and other major bodies show no signs of slowing.

Despite the losses, not all news about religious switching is bleak. Americans are moving toward faith as well: Nearly a third of those who grew up in a religiously unaffiliated home—that is, agnostic, atheist, or none—now identify as Christian.

ABS also highlighted some of the factors in keeping the faith. One of them was the influence of mothers: “Among those who now identify as Christians, three out of four (77%) are following their mother’s faith.”

- More from Jonny Williams

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Raising the stakes for reform

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