Online Church Attendance Retains Some of Its Pandemic Boost

Rachel Pfeiffer

While most regulars are back in-person, pastors are rethinking how to minister to the higher numbers of digital worshipers.

Joshua Hanson / Unsplash / Edits by CT

It’s been three years since Easter set records for church streaming, with churches canceling in-person worship during the early weeks of COVID-19. Though church doors have long reopened for services in the United States, the pandemic has had a lasting effect on attendance.

A multisite church based in Riverside, California, Sandals Church had about 80,000 people watch its services over the 2020 holiday weekend, up from around 3,000–4,000 before. Like churches across the country, Sandals saw online attendance numbers drop and level out once it resumed gathering, but it was still drawing in three to four times as many online participants as before.

The congregation has since launched a dedicated online campus—Sandals Church Anywhere—designed to be watched in small groups in people’s homes.

“Sandals Church Anywhere is an opportunity for a group to meet in person, but they’re not near a Sandals Church location,” said pastor Alfredo Ramos. “They can watch the service together, process it together, have a meal together, and have time to facilitate through the group questions. These are groups that I get to directly oversee and offer pastoral care to.”

Staff at Sandals are looking into the microchurch model for the 12,000–13,000 people in their online community and have adapted the service itself. Instead of the typical structure of a few worship songs before the sermon and a few after, the online Sandals service has a shorter intro and clear call to giving before quickly getting into the sermon. The digital service then concludes with only one or two songs.

“We’ve just tried to figure out how do we give an honest service that actually makes sense to that particular environment or platform,” Ramos said.

While online church participation isn’t as high as during lockdowns, 22 percent of Christians said they watch online services more often than before the pandemic, according to a Pew Research Center report released last month.

Pew found that the overall percentage of Americans going to church regularly has dropped slightly. But the demographics most likely to attend church before the pandemic saw more dramatic declines, with white evangelicals down 5 percent between 2019 and 2022 and Black Protestants down 15 percent.

There aren’t as many people showing up on Sunday mornings at Woodland Park Community Church, according to Pastor Kirk Greenstreet. Before the pandemic, the Woodland Park, Colorado, congregation usually drew 550–600 people between its two services on a Sunday. Three years later, average attendance is around 500–550.

At the start of the pandemic, the church had already been moving toward offering a livestream service, and once shutdowns began, the staff was able to quickly get the technology in place so they could offer their Easter 2020 service online. Though Woodland Park reopened in June 2020, it’s kept the livestream for about 100–150 people each week.

The hybrid model has become a new normal for churches. Pushpay’s State of the Church Tech report, released in January, found that 89 percent of churches surveyed offered services through a hybrid model. But adding a streaming component or digital campus also brings news challenges, even without the complications of shutdowns and social distancing.

Whether they added online options for the first time over the past few years or saw a boost in engagement due to the pandemic, churches must consider technology costs, staffing hours, and ministry philosophy for those they serve through screens. They have to think about what they are aiming to do through their presence online.

“How many people sat in our building on Sunday? How many people consumed our product online? It's easy to judge the spiritual success of our church by having the usher stand in the back and count heads,” wrote Jeff Reed of theChurch.Digital, whose experience in Internet ministry dates back to an online Bible study in 2000. “Nickels and noses is a great way to measure success of a corporation. But Matthew's 28's Great Commission holds us to a different standard, one that takes more time and is proven far more effective.

Reed has spent the past three years helping churches implement new strategies and technology for digital ministry: how to make sense of analytics and numbers, what to do combat burnout while always connected, ways to rethink small groups, and strategies reach kids and teens. One common issue is how to lead online participants to spiritual transformation and discipleship.

“Digital is a consumeristic mindset,” said Reed. “The standard [for churches] is online to offline. The gospel we hear in our online world has to influence our offline relationships. Otherwise, all we’re doing is creating consumers.”

Both Greenstreet and Ramos have seen this firsthand. While many new members who have come to his church since the pandemic first connected by watching services online, Greenstreet said that fewer congregants are joining small groups and serving. He believes that digital church has contributed to these trends.

“It's just so easy to be at home, stay in your pajamas, sip your coffee, watch the livestream and feel like you did church but not ever be connected with other believers, encouraging one another and loving one another,” Greenstreet said. “It's been one of the biggest dangers of the online [services] that I’ve seen.”

For Ramos, who is shepherding a congregation where most of the members never set foot on a physical campus, these challenges are perhaps even more pronounced.

“The challenging thing continues to go back to how we effectively measure discipleship amongst our viewers and help people take steps beyond just attending or consuming,” he said.

To this end, Ramos and the staff at Sandals Church have created a lot of short-form video content around different spiritual practices to help viewers grow in their faith. Additionally, they’ve tried to get people connected in small groups and tried to ensure people have clear opportunities to give to the church and hear stories about how God is working in the church.

With all of these strategies, the hope is those attending the church virtually won’t just consume content but actually participate in the church, and that the new models will lead to more opportunities to evangelize and make disciples.

“There’s a whole mission field in digital. Missions for the next 10 years can be found in virtual reality,” said Reed, whose site and podcast discusses church involvement in the metaverse and streaming platforms like Twitch. “It’s unbelievable, the opportunities that we have to engage in dialogue with people in this space.”

Both Reed and Ramos brought up the decline in institutional trust, especially in recent years. Many who have spiritual questions are no longer turning to churches or pastors for answers but instead look to the internet. With this in mind, Ramos also believes the digital space offers an important platform for evangelism.

“The digital space then becomes a really natural place for people to go to as sources of authority, so why not get ourselves in those places and be curious, honest, and helpful in the way that we offer content to try to reach people who may never step foot in your church but happen to scroll across something that moves them,” he said.

Churches are still navigating how to best engage in the digital space, remaining faithful to both the standards the Bible sets for a church and the commands it gives to reach the lost. Yet, the pandemic made it abundantly clear that ignoring the digital components of church attendance and discipleship is no longer an option. In the years to come, the church needs both.

“We need the digital, and we need the physical,” Reed said. “We need both of these for the Great Commission.”

- More from Rachel Pfeiffer

Theology

Asian American Theologian: Our ‘Culture’ Is Not to Blame

Interview by Curtis Yee

When it comes to the community’s response to trauma and anxiety, Daniel D. Lee calls for a closer look at the dynamics of racism and the migrant experience.

Jason Leung / Unsplash

The past several years have seen a sharp rise in violence against Asian Americans.

In 2020, the FBI recorded a 73 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. Over the next two years, the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center documented over 11,000 self-reported discriminatory incidents, two-thirds of which were categorized as harassment.

Acts of violence against Asian Americans, including a rash of physical assaults in New York City and the 2021 Atlanta spa shooting, have captured the national media. And a recent shooting in Monterey Park, California, by a Chinese American man stirred up similar sentiments of stress and anxiety.

But that heightened anxiety is contrasted against a sense of personal and cultural sublation among the diaspora that can make both verbalizing and addressing these stressors difficult.

While a wide majority of Asian Americans believe that violence against them is increasing, they are also the least likely of all US racial groups to report incidents of hate or utilize mental health services. Instead, many Asian Americans slouch into a form of cognitive dissonance, often defaulting to criticisms of themselves and their own cultural values while struggling to fully acknowledge the racialization they face—a result of what author Cathy Park Hong calls “minor feelings,” or “the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic.”

For Asian American Christians to address the increased stressors within their communities, Daniel D. Lee, a professor of theology and Asian American studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, believes they’ll need to more fully embrace and examine their own heritage and theology—understanding the way both have been shaped by their racialized experiences in the United States.

“If you think the only problem that arises within the Asian American community is cultural, then everything will be a cultural problem. It’s Asian shame. It’s Asian values. It’s something wrong with our family dynamic. It’s indirect communication,” Lee said. “But what if it’s racial? We’re a racial minority. What if it’s internalized racism? What if it’s self-hatred? What if it’s actually how we evaluate our cultural values based on a white norm?”

“Maybe it’s something that comes out of the migration experience; maybe it’s your family. How do you tease this out? If you are actually proficient in multiple categories, you can say, Oh, it’s not this; it’s that.”

Author of the new book Doing Asian American Theology: A Contextual Framework for Faith and Practice, Lee spoke with Christianity Today about distinguishing racial trauma from cultural values, contextualizing Asian American history, and bringing ethnic identity under the lordship of Christ.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Are there particular ways that Asian American Christians tend to grieve difficult situations?

When we talk about [Asian American] churches in general, there’s a kind of contextual confluence, certain things within the context that overlap and stress each other. You have the Christian thing, and you have the Asian American Christian thing. On top of all that, sometimes cultural values of shame and collective identity can play a role.

I say it that way because people are too quick to blame their Asian heritage based on more of a white norm of what it means to be human. That becomes very toxic for Asian Americans because, compared to white normative communities, everything we do is wrong: We’re too quiet. We’re too indirect. Something’s wrong with us. We’re not assertive enough.

All those [presumptions] are based on a norm that isn’t beneficial for us, but how do you know that this is racism as opposed to our culture being at fault? There are layers and layers that play against each other, and they can create a nice cocktail to where it’s difficult for Asian Americans in certain spaces to navigate and find the right kinds of resources that can really nourish and heal our community.

You talked about this confluence of layered ideas—the white normative culture, the Asian American subculture within that, and the Asian American Christian framework within that—but in your book you argue that a lot of Asian Americans don’t realize that those dynamics are playing out. Why is that?

A lot of Asian American churches are relationally and societally Asian American, but they have no idea how to consciously be theologically or spiritually Asian American. I don’t mean you have to put the word Asian American on a sign above your church. I’m just saying that these are the people you are ministering to; these are what their issues are.

It doesn’t mean we erase individuality. People have different experiences, but there are some themes we should at least be aware of. Not everybody might fit some of those themes, but at least you have an idea that because of societal forces, because of historical forces, these are some of the things in the waters. Average Asian Americans don’t know those things. Our leaders don’t know them.

The problem is, they have a white normative education that basically doesn’t talk about Asian American stuff—or maybe some of these people learned all their rhetoric and concepts from the Black community, which is obviously very beneficial, but that’s not necessarily particularly Asian American. If you use somebody else’s categories that are normative to them, then you start distorting your experience. You start distorting your experience so that it fits more of their understanding, and that’s basically where stereotypes come from.

When we internalize [those stereotypes] for Asian Americans, we describe ourselves the way other people would describe us—in a very crude way. And that’s what’s taking place devoid of [an understanding of Asian American culture and theology]. We typically say, “Oh, it’s because of our Asian shame,” but some things are not cultural; they’re actually racial. We’ve experienced racism, and we’ve turned this way as a result of it.

How does that intersect with the faith of Asian American Christians?

So much of evangelical Christianity has been colorblind. In my book, I talk about the fact that it started out with this kind of supersessionist theology where we forgot the fact that Jesus is Jewish; we forgot that Jesus’ Jewishness has soteriological significance. And Jesus wasn’t just fully human, fully divine—he was actually Jewish, and that covenantal relationship actually mattered to God. That’s why the Bible has all these genealogies, right? Now, we think that no matter who you are, you are in Christ, but no. You’re in a Jewish Christ. So it means that I can’t just come to God in my generic humanity, because that’s not how the Bible talks about what it means to be human.

Sometimes Asian American identity can be fraught; it can be painful, because society makes it very painful, or even our common community can make it very painful. So we say, “Oh, you know what, I don’t want to deal with this painful identity. I am a child of God.” It’s a shortcut. It’s a simple answer. It’s a Band-Aid. Is it true? Yes, it is true. But it’s not like there’s a self that can be extracted out of or separated from my body and my culture and who I am. Who would that be, right?

The one that God loves is all of me—with the Asian American, Korean American male aspects of who I am. I am in Christ, because I’m in a Jewish Christ, not just some generic human Christ. If we have a generic human Christ, maybe I can be generically human, but that’s not what the Bible says. So I am in Christ as all of who I am, not in spite of who I am.

What does it mean to embody ourselves as Asian American Christians more holistically?

I always clarify that I don’t actually think that our goal is to become “more Asian American.” I don’t know what that means—like should we eat more Asian food or learn our language or only marry another Asian? What it actually means is that I allow God’s presence and God’s shalom to fully impact that aspect of my life.

But to do that, we have to own that part of ourselves. The fact that we’re Asian Americans isn’t all of who we are. I mean, we have other identities, right? I’m a theologian. I’m a son. I have my personality. I have my family identities. I’m an Angeleno. All those things matter, but being Asian American intersects with everything else, and it’s a significant part of who I am, just like other identities that I have. And all these identities need to be reconciled because I want Jesus to be Lord over all these identities. Otherwise, they will have a life of their own apart from Christ’s lordship.

What that looks like it’s hard to say. There’s no template for what being an Asian American Christian looks like.

Asian Americans are such a broad pantheon of cultural groups from different backgrounds that the application of being more embodied may vary quite a lot.

A lot of people will talk about the fact that the Asian American category is inadequate, but the white category is inadequate. The Black category isn’t adequate. Every racial category is inadequate, but it’s part of how the US decided to organize society. You can’t just get rid of it, because it’s baked into our society.

Now, we have to hold [these categories] lightly; we have to make sure we don’t use them toxically. But there is a way in which these categories have some function, and it doesn’t mean that every use of them is toxic.

The Asian American category—same thing. Sometimes I’ll walk into a room, and it doesn’t matter that I’m Korean American. Everybody’s stereotypes about a general East Asian American–looking man will be projected on me whether I like it or not. I still have to navigate that. Whatever happens in China might impact me. I’m not Chinese. It doesn’t matter. It’s part of how implicit bias works. That’s just navigating the world, and that’s not going to just go away because I want it to.

So, I always tell people, “Yeah, I’m Korean American, but I’m also Asian American.” And I have to make sense of that. I have to actually own that to some degree.

- More from Interview by Curtis Yee

News

Chinese Christians Seeking Asylum Fly to US

Angela Lu Fulton

UPDATED: After arrest in Bangkok, the “Mayflower church” leaves for America.

Members of Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church in China prepare to submit their applications for asylum at the United Nations refugee office in Bangkok, Thailand in September 2022.

Sakchai Lalit / AP Photo

Update (April 7):

Nearly all 63 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church (SHRC) will celebrate Easter in the United States. A week after the Bangkok police arrested the congregation’s 28 adults and 35 children, 59 of the members are flying to their new home in America. One pregnant woman and her family will stay in Bangkok until the baby’s birth, which is expected to be April 20. They are also released and staying in a hotel now.

The Wall Street Journal confirmed the group’s departure from Thailand through a spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee agency and a Thai police official.

Thai officials had intended to deport church members who they had detained for overstaying their visas, according to the Journal. The congregation had relocated to the country after they were unable to gain asylum in South Korea, which they fled to in late 2019 and early 2020.

Now, the community will arrive in Dallas on Good Friday and then travel to the city of Tyler, where religious persecution advocacy group Freedom Seekers International has been working to resettle them. US activists credited the State Department for ensuring that the community arrived in America, rather than China.

SHRC members had long hoped to resettle in the United States, an outcome that had secured the backing of former Representative Frank Wolf, head of the US Commission on Religious Freedom, and ChinaAid’s Bob Fu.

As early as last year, churches in Texas had agreed to sponsor the congregation after their arrival, including providing housing, living expenses, and help settling in. The US has often provided resettlement or humanitarian parole for people facing persecution from the Chinese government, including formerly detained Uyghurs, human rights activists, and house church Christians (including a family from Early Rain Covenant Church.)

SHRC pastor Pan Yongguang told CT last year that the time in South Korea and Thailand had been “the hardest time in my pastoral ministry.”

“On earth, Christians are sojourners. We can keep moving forward, but Thailand isn’t my destination; neither is the United States. We are walking toward our heavenly home.”

—

Members of a Chinese house church spent the night at a Bangkok police facility Friday after paying fines for overstaying their visas. Human rights groups fear that the 28 adults and 35 children who were detained Thursday could be repatriated to China where they would likely face prison time.

On Friday, a Thai court in Pattaya released the church members after they paid their fines. Deana Brown, one of two Americans staying with the group, told The Associated Press they expected to be able to return to their hotel nearby. Instead, they were put on two buses with police escorts and taken to Bangkok. A Thai police officer told the AP it was normal to bring violators of the immigration law to Bangkok for processing.

Yet confusion spread when one police officer told some church members that they were headed to the airport in Bangkok where they would be sent back to China, according to ChinaAid’s Bob Fu. Frightened, they forced the bus to stop and disembarked. Videos showed the church members, some crying, on the side of the road as two women said they had been hit and stepped on by officers.

Only after they were given reassurances by phone that they would not be taken to the airport did they reboard the bus and resume their journey, the AP reported. They were then taken to the Police Club in northern Bangkok—as the city’s Immigration Detention Center is notoriously overcrowded—where they will stay until they can get bailed out.

Their fears of being taken to the airport are not unfounded: In past cases concerning Chinese dissidents, the Chinese government has repatriated asylum seekers in Thailand immediately after their trial. If Pastor Pan Yongguang and his congregants are sent back to China, they will face retaliation, abuse, and prison time for speaking out about religious persecution, said Fu.

Members of Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, known as the “Mayflower church,” left China in 2019 due to religious restrictions and tried unsuccessfully to gain asylum in South Korea before coming to Thailand and applying for refugee status at Bangkok’s UN refugee office.

Fu said that the raid didn’t come as a surprise: Last week, the congregation noticed one member had been acting strangely. When confronted, he admitted to working with China’s state security and had been coerced into revealing the group’s location. Fu said church members last saw the man being escorted away by Chinese operatives, leaving behind his wife and daughter, and he hasn’t been seen since.

Pan and the group went into hiding for a few days, then returned to their hotel. At about 11 a.m. on Thursday, about 20 Thai immigration police showed up and asked to see their passports and visas, which had expired in October.

Brown of Freedom Seekers International, an NGO that helps persecuted Christians, had just arrived that morning to help the Mayflower church members when the police arrived, some taking photos and videos. Around 2 p.m., they transported the entire group to an immigration center 30 minutes away.

Officials interrogated Pan and other church members. As night fell, Brown said the officials debated bringing the group to the Bangkok detention center, but ultimately decided to bring them to a nearby police station instead.

Concerned about the women and children sleeping on the floor, Brown said officials agreed to let them return to their hotel as long as they signed a form and agreed to be fingerprinted. However the church members feared that signing the forms could send them back to China, so they ended up spending the night at the station.

“In the past, the Chinese government engaged transnational repression activities by abducting Chinese dissidents from Thailand,” said Abraham Cooper, vice chair of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, in a statement. “We urge the US government to use all feasible tools at its disposal to ensure Mayflower Church members’ safety.”

Fu noted that top US officials have been briefed on the Mayflower church’s situation and are deliberating what to do next, while lawmakers have been calling the Thai embassy telling them not to send the Christians back to China. ChinaAid and other groups have pushed the Biden administration to grant the 63 people immediate emergency asylum, as it has for fleeing Ukrainians and Afghans, as they face imminent danger from the long arm of China.

Since the church left China two years ago, it has drawn support from rights groups and American officials, including Rashad Hussain, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Freedom Seekers International and ChinaAid had already found six Texas churches that have agreed to support Mayflower church families for a full year after they arrive in the United States.

Led by Pan, the unregistered congregation held a vote and decided to leave China after facing increased monitoring and interrogations. Police insisted that Pan shut down both the church and the Christian school it ran, as well as ending contact with churches in the West. The congregation first flew to Jeju Island in South Korea in hopes of gaining asylum, only to find their appeals repeatedly rejected. (The Korean government typically rejects nearly all asylum claims from Chinese nationals.)

The group voted again to relocate to Thailand in hopes of gaining refugee status from the UN. Once in Bangkok, they found themselves tailed and harassed by CCP agents as they waited to go through the refugee approval process, which could take two more years.

“Pray that the right people in the US government see their plight and allow Americans to rescue them—just give us that opportunity,” Brown said early Friday morning from the Pattaya police station where she had spent the night with the Mayflower church members.

“Pray for the church: They are all stretched, they all have PTSD,” she said. “Pray that they would be encouraged and have hope. It gets hard hiding for such a long time.”

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

Theology

Jesus Christ Is Not a Superstar

Stefani McDade

Popular portrayals of the God-Man can draw admiring crowds, but they can’t create imitating disciples.

Photo from a production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Edits by Christianity Today / Source Image: WikiMedia Commons

In the past couple of weeks, people have been talking once again about Jesus Christ Superstar.

Not only did a recent Ted Lasso episode feature a song from the 1970s musical, but the original film is airing on BBC—prompting countless reactions, including many from first-time viewers. It is also celebrating a 50th anniversary tour in both the UK and the US.

Taking place during Holy Week and ending just before the Easter resurrection, the production “casts a skeptical, and at times flamboyantly irreverent, light on the story of Jesus.” It reflects society’s fascination with the Jesus movement of the ’70s, just as Jesus Revolution and The Chosen reveal a growing resurgence of interest in the person of Jesus.

As believers, it is satisfying to see Christ brought to the forefront of the public’s consciousness. And as author Luke Burgis explains, these popular portrayals of Jesus can make us want to conform our desires to his. But memorializing any version of Jesus that appeals to a mass audience, whether in church or in culture, also comes with the risk that we might do the exact opposite and model Christ after our own desires.

That is, we’re in danger of casting Christ as whatever kind of superstar or superhero we value at any given time—a temptation faced by even Jesus’ earliest first-century followers.

The script for Jesus Christ Superstar is told from the viewpoint of Judas, “who thinks highly of Jesus as a political revolutionary figure but is disturbed by the idea of Jesus’ divinity.” In the play, the Judas character sings the famous song lyric, “Jesus Christ, Superstar, do you think you’re what they say you are?”—referencing the scriptural passage in which Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” (Matt. 16:13).

Judas and the Zealots hoped Jesus would be an earthly messiah that freed the Jewish people from Roman rule. But there were others who thought Jesus was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the revered prophets reincarnated (Matt. 16:14).

After seeing Jesus feed the 5,000, the crowd thought he was the great Mosaic leader foretold in the Old Testament: “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). Some were so enamored by Jesus’ supernatural feat that they were going to “make him king by force” (v. 15), but he escaped their clutches.

When some of this same crowd find Jesus later that day, Jesus rebukes them for seeking him out merely for what he could do for them—and yet they still ask him to perform more signs (vv. 26, 30-31).

He responds with a sermon: “I am the bread of life” and “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (vv. 35, 53). This “hard teaching” offended his audience and caused a great deal of grumbling, even among his closest followers: For “from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (v. 66).

When Jesus asked the disciples if they wanted to leave too, Peter said, “To whom shall we go? You alone have the words of life.”

Here we see a divergence in Christ’s followers. Many were offended by his words, and some left while others stayed. Jesus knew that many in the crowd did not believe and that some would even betray him—yet his most devoted disciples stood by him.

It’s clear that Jesus seemed more interested in discipling the faithful few than in amassing large crowds. And while he never turned away those who were drawn to him, he didn’t shy away from testing their loyalty either.

His sermon clearly seemed to separate the wheat from the tares, but what set these two groups apart? The answer lies in the passage mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

After hearing how others view him, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” (Matt. 16:15). When Peter replies, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” Jesus tells him that only God the Father could have revealed this truth to him. He then declares it as the eternal and unshakable bedrock of his church. Those who hold fast to who Jesus says he is—rather than what the crowd says—belong to him, and those who don’t will fall away.

In the 1800s, Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard talks about the difference between admirers and imitators of Jesus: “An imitator is or strives to be what he admires, and an admirer keeps himself personally detached, consciously or unconsciously does not discover that what is admired involves a claim upon him.”

He points out that Judas was such an admirer, which is why he later became a traitor—for “the admirer is only spinelessly or selfishly infatuated with greatness; if there is any inconvenience or danger, he pulls back.”

Kierkegaard’s problem with Christendom was that it produced admirers but failed to create imitators of Jesus. Imitating Christ faithfully is still a struggle today, especially in cultural Christian contexts—because, as Kierkegaard says, “When everything is favorable to Christianity, it is all too easy to confuse an admirer with a follower.”

Just like those who wanted to crown Jesus as a prophetic king in the first century, we are still tempted to force Jesus to fit into our cultural, political, or religious molds. Some venerate a conquering Christ, like the gun-toting John Wayne, while others honor a gentle Jesus, like the kindly and inoffensive Mister Rogers.

And whether it’s Jesus Christ Superstar or the Super Bowl ad campaign “He Gets Us,” efforts to make Jesus more accessible to our generation have value, for sure. But they risk casting Christ as a cheap caricature who can draw an admiring crowd but can’t generate imitating disciples.

A. W. Tozer describes a Jesus who is “marvelously adaptable to whatever society He may find Himself in.” Such a figure is “patronized by pro tem celebrities and recommended by psychiatrists.” He can be “used as a means to almost any carnal end, but He is never acknowledged as Lord.”

The problem with a fashionable Jesus is in his followers, not in his fame.

Jesus was famous from the moment he was born. When a group of esteemed wise men told Herod of Jesus’ existence, Herod considered him a rival and enemy of the state. Herod was so afraid that he committed genocide to try and eradicate him.

But what I find fascinating is that the Magi followed a literal superstar to find Jesus. These cultured travelers expected to meet the next Judean king in line for the throne, but they arrived to find a baby, perhaps still lying in a cattle trough, born to a family of no consequence.

In that moment, they could have turned right back around, thinking they made a grave astrological miscalculation. But instead, they knelt down to worship this unexpected king of unconventional glory—honoring him with their gifts and returning home to share the Good News of his kingdom.

In other words, the Magi came for a royal Superstar, but they stayed for the lowly Savior.

Just like the supernova that hung over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, media and literature can point an unbelieving world toward the shining example of Jesus Christ. They can inspire our respect and admiration and even whet our thirst to seek him.

Superstars can guide us to the manger—but only the Spirit can lead us to eat the Bread of Life and drink the Living Water.

Stefani McDade is an associate editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Stefani McDade

News

NASA Astronaut Asks for Prayer for Moon Mission

Daniel Silliman

A Christian who wants to see God’s will done “on earth as it is in heaven” is piloting the first lunar flight in more than 50 years.

Astronaut Victor Glover stands in front of the Orion capsule that he will pilot around the moon as part of the Artemis 2 mission.

NASA / Kim Shiflett

Victor Glover will pray his way to the moon.

When the Artemis 2 takes off sometime late next year, four astronauts will strap into a gumdrop-shaped capsule atop a tower of rockets taller than the Statue of Liberty. Mission control will count down—10, 9, 8, …—and a controlled explosion with 8.8 million pounds of force will fire, throwing the four astronauts from the coast of Florida into high-earth orbit, where another engine, setting spark to a mixture of liquid hydrogen and oxygen, will thrust them beyond the bonds of Earth for the first time in more than half a century.

And Glover, the pilot of the spacecraft, will say a few words to God.

He told CT he will listen to God, too, attending to the quiet stillness in his mind where he can lay down his own personal interests and desires and truly say, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“I know that God can use us for his purposes,” Glover said. “When Jesus was teaching the disciples to pray, he used that very specific prayer that we all know, ‘Our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …’ So, listen, I am a messenger of his kingdom; his will be done.”

Glover was named Monday as one of the four people who will lead humanity’s return to the moon more than 50 years after we stopped going. The other members of the crew are Reid Wiseman, Jeremy Hansen, and Christina Koch, who will be the first woman to go to the moon.

Glover, 46, is a Navy captain who flew combat missions in Iraq before becoming a test pilot, a NASA astronaut, and a crew member of the International Space Station. He will become the first Black man to go to the moon, breaking a racial barrier the American space agency set up without explanation in the 1960s.

He is also a committed Christian, a member of a Church of Christ who occasionally teaches Sunday school. He packed prepackaged Communion cups and a physical Bible when he first went to space in 2020. He mentioned God at both the beginning and end of his statement at the press conference Monday when the Artemis 2 crew was introduced.

“I very intentionally put God at the front, in the very first comment, and at the end,” he told CT. “It’s the way I try to live my life as well. The beginning, the end, and all the way through.”

If this mission to the moon is successful, the Artemis 2 will be followed by Artemis 3, which will land on the moon and set up camp. More astronauts will follow, with plans to develop the infrastructure and further the science that could, soon, allow humans to launch from the moon to Mars.

Glover, speaking at the press conference, imagined the mission as a relay race, a baton of discovery passed generation to generation, crew to crew, deeper and deeper into space.

The Artemis 2 mission, however, doesn’t seem like an extension of Apollo 17 in 1972, the last mission to the moon, when astronauts explored the lunar surface with a rover and ran tests on the effects of cosmic rays on mice. It has more in common with Apollo 8, the first crewed spacecraft to leave low orbit. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders flew around the moon, proving all the equipment worked and surveying the surface for potential landing sites, and looking back at Earth for the first time from that vantage point.

Artemis 2 is also scheduled to do a flyby—traveling more than 200,000 miles to loop around the moon, going about 4,600 miles to the far side before gravity catches them, pulls them around, and points them back to Earth for the return journey.

One space journalist said, “Their job is to break in a new transportation system and come home to tell everyone all about it.” This is true, but “breaking it in” involves testing whether a craft that has never flown with people in it can sustain life. In the words of NASA, they have to “prove the … life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.”

Glover will specifically test how well the gumdrop-shaped capsule, the Orion, can maneuver in space under human control.

As he waited to hear whether he was going to be assigned to the Artemis 2, though, Glover found his prayers turning less toward what would happen in space and more toward what would happen on Earth. He worried that being Black would be divisive.

“I don’t want to be divisive,” he told CT. “I want to represent the American people.”

He tapped the American flag emblem sewn onto his left sleeve. “I wear this,” he said, “very intentionally. So I prayed a lot about that. More than whether I would be on the mission, I prayed about how to navigate that.”

Glover believes in the importance of diversity and says it’s essential for the future of NASA, which needs to represent all America and the aspirations of all humanity. But he wishes someone else had already broken the racial barrier. It could have been Ed Dwight, a Black astronaut candidate in the 1960s who wasn’t chosen for any of the Apollo missions. It could have been Guion Bluford, who became the first Black man in space in 1983, or Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in 1992, if only NASA had been going to the moon in those years. Instead, it’s the 21st century, and it’s him.

“I had a conversation with my boss,” Glover recalled. “I said, ‘I really hope NASA doesn’t say, “We’re going to send the first Black man to the moon.”’ I told them I might put my wings on the table. The reason is not because that’s not important. That is actually vital for today’s space agencies to consider. But the messaging could be divisive, and I don’t want to be divisive.”

When the announcement came, shortly after Joe Biden became president, the language was “first woman” and “first person of color.”

“That’s not exactly what I said, but it’s so close,” Glover said. “It’s like toes on the line.”

But he decided not to resign. As he prayed, he thought about how he could represent America and, he hoped, add esteem to the emblem of the American flag. He asked God to help him navigate the culture and politics.

Glover was still nervous about this when he stood on the stage at the NASA space station in Houston on Monday. The other astronaut candidates who could have been selected for the mission were in the room for the announcement. Would they begrudge him his spot on the Artemis 2? Diminish his years of training and experience—24 combat missions, 3,000 flight hours, three graduate degrees, four spacewalks—because of the color of his skin? Would their expressions say, ‘It should have been me’?

“That kind of worried me, the idea of standing on the stage and looking at my colleagues’ faces,” Glover said. “But looking at the love and support—I could see it in their faces. That, to me, was the most significant thing of the announcement. Getting through yesterday alleviated a lot of fear.”

Now, seven months before the scheduled launch, his thoughts can turn fully toward the mission and the moon.

The last time he was in space, Glover said, he really felt closer to God. Not because he was above the sky but because, as James 4:8 says, when you submit yourself to God and come near to God, God comes near to you.

Reading the Bible in space was a powerful experience. Glover remembers being in weightlessness in his quarters on the International Space Station and reading Philippians 4. Some of the words were so familiar to him, like verse 13, which says in his New King James Version, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” But there were other passages he felt like he was seeing for the first time. Like in verse 12, where Paul writes, “I have learned both to be full and to be hungry.”

Glover had never noticed that before. It expressed exactly how he felt about himself and his training and mission.

“My wife asked me if I was nervous before going on my first spacewalk. I said no, I have truly done everything I can to prepare, including praying and reading my Bible. I told her about that verse,” he recalled. “I am satisfied with my studying, my preparation. I can be calm. But I can also still be hungry for what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

Glover hopes to bring his physical Bible to space again, though he doesn’t know yet if that will be possible. He could also have the Scriptures on a tablet computer, to better meet weight requirements, but he prefers a real book.

He hopes to be both hungry and full again, when the time comes. There’s a lot still to be figured out for the mission. The challenges—the danger—are rising before him.

“We know the risks we’re talking about. This is the first flight of the vehicle,” he said. “My biggest fear—I may still be processing that.”

So he will say a few words of prayer when the Artemis 2’s rockets fire and the four astronauts lift off. He hopes that other Christians will pray too as they watch the launch, follow the mission, and read about the plans to return to the moon and push past it to explore Mars.

“Pray for our crew,” he said. “Pray for the hardware. Pray for the team all around the world that support this. And the hardest mission of all is the one our families are about to embark on. If you could pray for our families, that would be amazing.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

Culture

Seven-Hour Oratorio Sings the Gospel of Mark Word for Word

Interview by Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

If any man have ears to hear, let him hear: “The KJV actually sang quite well.”

Christopher Tyler Nickel

Courtesy of Christopher Tyler Nickel

When composer Christopher Tyler Nickel set out to create an oratorio of Mark’s gospel, he made an ambitious decision to set not just the narrative but the whole text to music, word for word.

The resulting work is an expansive, seven-hour musical. Nickel’s composition leads the listener through Mark’s account of Jesus’ ministry, sculpting and shading the story through the use of voices, timbre, theme, and meter.

As many Christians around the globe observe Holy Week, The Gospel According to Mark offers a musical addition to the canon of artistic meditations on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. The work will be released in its entirety on Good Friday by Avie Records, and excerpts are available in three EPs: Salvation, Prophecy, and Death and Resurrection.

Nickel’s composition contributes to a genre with historical roots dating back to the 17th century; Handel’s Messiah is one prominent example of a sacred oratorio, as is Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Besides its length, The Gospel According to Mark differs from these older works in its exclusive use of the gospel text, without poetic elaborations or additions.

Nickel’s work invites listeners to meditate on the gospel text and open themselves to the ways that the marriage of the music and Scripture might move their emotions.

The conclusion of the work, “The Ascension and Amen” (Mark 16:19–20, KJV), isn’t a glorious crescendo or grand chorus. The orchestra and voices weave together, swelling and retreating as the amen repeats over and over, accompanied by deliberate and steady open chords. The voices and instrumentation subtly, peacefully fade away.

The passage “leaves the listener with an unfinished story, with something that we must take with us, in our hearts, souls, and minds,” Nickel wrote in the album notes for The Gospel According to Mark.

For the Canadian Christian, the process of composing the oratorio was a personal, spiritual journey. Much of Nickel’s career has been concentrated in film and television; he created scores for Discovery, CBC, Lifetime, A&E, and Hallmark.

The Gospel According to Mark was a departure from commercial music and has reacquainted Nickel with his lifelong faith. The project inspired him to consider—and invite others to consider—the connection between music and prayer, as well as music’s ability to deepen our perception and experience of the divine.

What was the catalyst for The Gospel According to Mark?

I wanted to come back to music that serves something, serves a higher purpose. And for me, it’s been a way of reacquainting myself a little bit with elements of my faith. I understand the world through music, and this is sort of my way of giving something back from my viewpoint as a composer.

Initially my idea was to distill the text and do something closer to a Bach Passion. But it’s been done. Does it need to be done again by me? No, not really. But I like big challenges. I think the catalyst was just an exercise for myself to go back to the Gospels and dig a little bit deeper into them, musically at least.

I’ve noticed that there’s a bit of a gap between liturgical works of Bach, Monteverdi, Haydn, and even contemporaries like James MacMillan, and contemporary Christian music. There are two different audiences there. As a Protestant Christian, I feel like this kind of work just hasn’t been there. I wanted to create something that allows a certain taking in and understanding of the gospel in a way it hasn’t really been approached before.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/3C03g5siKXxIHa78Zk9cpz?si=EWBu5FPDQ9ebGvuN2LQ2Nw

Many Christians may not be familiar with the oratorio genre; if they are, it’s likely through very famous works like Handel’s Messiah or Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. What was it that drew you to participating in and contributing to this genre?

The historical side of this is daunting. Bach was a genius. As a composer, you almost have to say, “Bach lived; we’re done. Why write a note?” I’m never going to put myself in the league of these great composers. But you have to say, “Bach and Handel lived.” Their music isn’t irrelevant, but you have to put it out of your mind. It messes with your creative process.

My musical language is not the language of Handel or Bach. And I think there’s something more, something more contemporary that can be added.

Traditionally, an oratorio would include Scripture and some poetic texts or libretto added by the composer or another writer. Why set the gospel text in its entirety? I imagine it was limiting as well as challenging.

Limits help. Part of it is that I didn’t want to meddle with the text. I think it should exist as it exists; when you start excerpting it, you’re leaving things out and changing meaning essentially through the juxtaposition of different texts. I didn’t want to do that.

The King James Version sang really well, compared to other translations. On the practical side, the translation is public domain, so that helps. I didn’t have to license it. The copyright issue limits part of what you can use, but the KJV actually sang quite well.

It’s not uncommon for contemporary musicians to set Scripture in song—worship artists often turn to the Psalms, for example. Your work is in an entirely different genre. Do you think that an orchestral work uniquely illuminates the gospel text?

I think so. The musician side of me first goes to structure—it’s easier to create a longer-form structure writing in an orchestral idiom. I started by going through the text and highlighting it in different colors thematically, breaking down the verses by color, so I could see the overarching themes. There is a miracle theme, which is heard in the beginning and comes back. There is a theme for any reference to death, which in its reversal becomes a resurrection motif.

[The orchestra] also gives a lot of flexibility in how you’re going to use color and how you’re going to paint or not paint the text. Especially for a text that doesn’t sit in metrical units, if you actually started trying to break this text down into eight-bar phrases or four-bar phrases, it would drive you insane. I’m not bashing songs; it’s just, as a structure, [a song] is more limiting.

I’m biased because it’s the music I write and love. A huge chunk of my life is film and TV music, which is underscoring. Throughout history, most film and TV music has been played by an orchestra. Why is that? Because the color possibilities are endless. You can tell the story in so many subtle or not so subtle ways using the orchestra.

It saddens me that [the orchestra] is seen as a bit of a dinosaur. People don’t connect with it in the same way anymore. But it’s actually not that intimidating if you approach it asking “How is this emotionally affecting me?” rather than looking for a chunk of meaning quickly delivered.

Do you think a case can be made that there is spiritual value in expanding your musical diet to include music—orchestral music, for example—if you normally don’t listen to it?

I guess I can really only talk about my own experience, but there is so much beauty that can be created [in music]. It’s transcendent. I guess I would say, don’t worry about genre. Don’t worry about whether this is your thing or not, and just let it wash over you. Just pay attention to the emotional journey of it. If you can free yourself of any expectation and just let go a bit—in my mind, in that way it’s like prayer.

The musical moments of my life that made me go “I have to do this” are those moments where you just sit back and this music just washes over you in a way that nothing else does. It is an acoustic, organic creation that physically connects to us; we feel it.

You said earlier that the process of composing this work helped reacquaint you with elements of your faith. What do you mean by that?

I was raised in the United Church of Canada. I went to Sunday school, did all that. It’s always been there. It;s not that I ever didn’t believe, but life kind of gets in the way. You go to university, do all this other stuff, and it falls by the wayside.

I say I’m a frustrated particle physicist; that is actually where I would’ve gone in terms of career if music hadn’t bitten me and taken me in. Part of my journey has been reconciling things that appear disparate but really aren’t. It’s interesting talking to Christian physicists; I remember one of them saying something like “Every time we discover something, we’re seeing God’s genius. God’s fingerprint is in all of this.”

That’s why I say “reacquainting” rather than “returning to” [my faith]. I want this to play a more active role in my life. And I really would like it to play an active role in my music.

When I dig into it and try to articulate the emotional experience of it, I come away saying I’m humbled—humbled by the depth of God’s love, of his grace, of Jesus’ love for us, the sacrifice he made for us. It’s beyond imagination.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

Ideas

In Nashville, Death Hangs Over Our Doorways

Sandra McCracken

Columnist

But our community also feels covered by the shadow of God’s presence.

Edits by CT / Source Image: Getty

On March 27, I dropped my kids off at their schools in Nashville. My youngest, who goes to preschool three days a week at The Covenant School, was home with me that day. As I drove home in the spring sun, I turned on a morning prayer meditation and heard Jesus’ words over my car speakers: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).

As I listened, I pondered this paradox of light and dark and wondered how Christians are supposed to live into it during hard circumstances. Psalm 23 assures us that we can walk through the valley of the shadow without fear. Psalm 91:1 says we “rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Different parts of Scripture reference this unique contrast: We walk in the shadow of death, yet in Christ, we’re covered by God’s protective shadow. Even in darkness, the only shadow over us is his.

At 10:18 a.m. that morning as I was thinking about these ideas, I received a text from my husband at his office at Covenant Church saying, “Pray for Covenant right now.” In the 10 minutes that followed that message, the terrifying shooting at our church and school unfolded. Fear and uncertainty gripped me, and as I prayed, my morning meditations became immediately and stunningly personal to our community. The shadow of death invaded our hallways, ushering in chaos that we haven’t yet been able to make sense of.

Since those moments, I have found few words to pray. But I have looked to the Psalms for comfort: “Be merciful to me, O God … for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by” (Ps. 57:1).

When the shadow of death hovers near, we find refuge in the shadow of the Almighty. We take solace in the visual image of God’s tender presence like a mother bird protecting her young from danger. If God our Father cares for his children this way, then we can re-envision tragedy with the Lord’s wings spreading over us. We can see him standing between us and death’s shadow.

Those of us in the Covenant School community may take years to reckon with this divine mystery of what has come to pass and what we still do not understand. In our aching questions about these events, we can simply hold onto and be held by the weeping Christ. We can take comfort from his Word and confess that, whether in life or in death, those who belong to him are secure in his peace.

On the night of the shooting, the Covenant community gathered for a worship service at a sister church down the road. I stood in the back row singing “It Is Well With My Soul” and “In Christ Alone” through tears. At intervals, I had to let the people around me sing the words that I could not. I’m sure others did the same. In that communal space of grief, we came closer to understanding Christ’s tears at the tomb of Lazarus in John 10.

As we go through the aftershocks of the shooting, we feel like the fragile creatures we are. Huddled together, we find strength and solace beneath the shade of God’s covering. We don’t understand why these events happened, yet we see glimpses of God’s mercy gently pressing in upon us like those sheltering wings. We have to believe that in him alone, this story somehow holds together. As The Message articulates Paul’s words to the Colossians:

From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross. You yourselves are a case study of what he does. (Col 1:17–22, MSG)

I see this redemptive work going on right now. Nashville is a music hub—a harmony city. It has been thrown into dissonance, but God is weaving that dissonance back into harmony. Even as our hearts break, we can sing of his truth and beauty. We can sing in light of his death and resurrection. And we can grieve with hope.

Every Sunday, Christians at Covenant Church are sent out through two big wooden doors to love and serve the city and the world beyond it. We don’t know what awaits us at our jobs and schools. But we live into this paradox of light and dark. Although Jesus made it look easy, I find it more difficult than ever. And what he has accomplished is ours in faith.

As our community goes through loss, we grasp and groan. We each grieve differently. Healing is messy and slow-going. But love is patient. The Holy Spirit is our helper. And we rest on the character of God.

That means we don’t have to force our theology into words or pontificate on this tragedy, as if our best political or theological solutions might add something to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yes, we have to engage in restorative work. But we’re also called to simply rest in Jesus’ promise that death will not have the final word.

In this Easter season, my community is seeing the one who brings order out of chaos and new creation out of death. We praise God, who is our living hope while we wait (1 Pet. 1:3). We pray especially for the comfort and healing of families who’ve lost loved ones. As we pass through the valley of the shadow, God’s tender wings cover us with peace beyond our understanding, and the shadow that hovers over us most closely is his own presence.

Pending Resolution: Pending Resolution is an exploration of the tensions of living between God’s promises offered and his promises fulfilled, looking to Scripture for guidance.

- More from Sandra McCracken

Theology

In Times of Tragedy, I Find Solace in Scriptural Art

A. Trevor Sutton

As the world reels from yet another school shooting, we can find a refuge in the Bible on canvas.

Loïc Manegarium / Pexels / Edits by CT

As a pastor serving a local church near my alma mater, Michigan State, I was invited to stand at a listening post along with comfort dogs the day after last month’s shooting.

Campus was unnervingly empty as yellow barricade tape flapped in the breeze, restricting our access to the buildings. Clusters of candles marked where each of the three victims had died—while a lone undergraduate student ran back and forth with a lighter trying, hopelessly, to keep them all lit.

Although campus was devoid of students, it was thronging with media crews and reporters. Everyone who was usually on campus had gone home to mourn, while those from outside had come in to gaze at us through their camera lenses and television screens—inviting the public eye to witness private moments of pain and hurt in our community.

A similar spectacle is playing out right now at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee—as it has at schools in Uvalde, Texas; Oxford, Michigan; and MSU. And the same scene will play out at the next mass shooting, an occurrence that seems mercilessly inevitable.

There is something real and peculiar about the human fascination with looking at pain and hurt, crisis and tragedy. For centuries, people have made pilgrimages to the theater to watch Hamlet hold up a skull or to see the misfortunes that befell Desdemona, Emilia, Roderigo, and Othello. More commonly, the highway becomes a stage whenever traffic slows to stare at a car accident.

Tragedy is magnetizing. And yet, it can also be healing. In times of personal pain and hurt, I have found solace in religious art depicting tragedy. It has helped me contemplate the raw pain of human life.

WikiMedia Commons / Pexels / Edits by CT

The First Mourning by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

When my wife and I experienced multiple miscarriages, William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s painting The First Mourning became meaningful to me in the midst of crisis. The work of art depicts Adam clutching at his rib while his murdered son, Abel, is lifelessly sprawled across his lap. Eve, the boy’s mother, is unable to look as she hides in Adam’s embrace.

It is a visceral and arresting image, evoking a pain that the artist knew well—as four of Bouguereau’s five children had died before him. And today, the same root of sin that caused Cain to kill Abel continues to bring death to our children in school shootings.

Religious art can help us see in times of tragedy far better than the horror shows depicted by modern media—which, if we are not cautious, can leave us callous to pain and hurt.

In his book Only the Lover Sings, German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper suggests that we are blinded by the visual noise of contemporary life. When there is so much to see, our sight can become shallow or incapacitated. Pieper puts it like this: “We do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is.”

Because of modern technology, we can see more today than ever before. But, curiously and conversely, this can inhibit our ability to see beyond the surface. To borrow an image from Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows, we are like Jet Skiers bouncing across the water instead of deep-sea divers who patiently venture below into matters of substance.

Pieper warns that something is lost when all we do is glance but never gaze: “Going below a certain bottom line quite obviously will endanger the integrity of man as a spiritual being. It seems that nowadays we have arrived at this bottom line.” These words are even more prescient today than in Pieper’s time—before the age of social media, smartphones, and school shootings.

The antidote for living in a world of visual noise and occluded seeing is, according to Pieper, creating and viewing works of art. Artists as well as viewers of art linger over the intricacies of human life—including all of its pain and hurt. The unhurried gaze and leisurely lingering over a work of art provides room for reflection, insight, and healing.

Pieper suggests that viewing art fosters “a deeper and more receptive vision, a more intense awareness, a sharper and more discerning understanding, a more patient openness for all things quiet and inconspicuous, an eye for things previously overlooked.”

WikiMedia Commons / Pexels / Edits by CT

The Entombment of Christ by Caravaggio

Along with William-Adolphe Bouguereau, I often reflect on the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. The 19th-century art critic John Ruskin once described Caravaggio’s work as being marked by vulgarity and impiety. Ruskin said that Caravaggio’s paintings revealed “horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin.” While Ruskin meant that as a critique of Caravaggio, I think it is what makes his work so meaningful.

For example, Caravaggio’s The Entombment of Christ depicts the lifeless Jesus being carried by Nicodemus and John the Evangelist. Meanwhile, three women—Mary of Cleophas, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Jesus—mourn in their own particular ways. One looks at the dead body of Jesus, one cries, and one cries out to heaven.

Just as Ruskin said, this painting shows the full horror, ugliness, and filthiness of the sin that led to Jesus dying on the cross. It is also worth noting that Caravaggio scandalized people in his day by using human models from off the street for his paintings. The hurting people in this painting may very well have been students, laborers, mothers, or drifters.

Caravaggio’s painting of the entombment of Christ is in the chapel of the Pieta in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. In that very same space, Michelangelo’s Pietá sculpture depicts Mary (a very iconic figure in religious art) holding a lifeless Jesus sprawled across her lap. Jesus rests across the lap of Mary in the very same pose as Abel resting across the lap of Adam in Bouguereau’s The First Mourning.

These three works of art help us see a coherent narrative amid the incoherence of endless school shootings: the pain and hurt of sin finds a horizon of healing in Jesus and the empty tomb of Easter.

A. Trevor Sutton is a Lutheran pastor in Lansing, Michigan, and the author of two books: Redeeming Technology: A Christian Approach to Healthy Digital Habits and Clearly Christian: Following Jesus in This Age of Confusion.

- More from A. Trevor Sutton

News

Syria Has Six Months to Receive Your Earthquake Aid

Jayson Casper

US waiver temporarily allows for funds to bypass sanctions against the Assad government. Christian charities experience mixed results.

A convoy delivers aid in northwest Syria.

Rami Alsayed / NurPhoto via AP

Syria has been suffering for 12 years, plagued by civil war, jihadist violence, foreign occupation, and autocratic governance. Yet widening US economic sanctions have made it increasingly harder to help—until now.

A February waiver offers a 180-day window for earthquake relief.

“If God has put it on your heart to give to Syria, be generous,” said Nabil Costa, executive director of the Lebanese Society for Educational and Social Development (LSESD), also known as the Baptist Society. “Find trusted organizations, because it is not easy to get it to the right place.”

On March 10, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Catholic charity Caritas to detail the “chilling effect” sanctions have on the ability of faith-based and other NGOs to transfer money and goods to struggling Syrians. Most banks have deemed such transactions too risky to facilitate.

Therefore, unlike in neighboring Turkey, the February 6 earthquake was not followed by an immediate outpouring of international aid. Despite a death toll of 6,000 and an estimated 500,000 more displaced amid the rubble, United States and European Union policy—and distrust of the Bashar al-Assad government—prevented most nations and international humanitarian organizations from rushing to the scene.

A false step could result in a $1 million fine and 20 years in prison.

US sanctions against Syria began in 1979 with a declaration that it was a state sponsor of terrorism, and tightened in 2004 for its undermining of the war in Iraq. In 2011, Syria’s repression of civil protest resulted in additional sanctions, subsequently strengthened throughout its civil war—especially after the use of chemical weapons in 2017.

Two years later, after a whistleblower smuggled out alleged evidence of the torture of civilians, the Caesar Act implemented secondary sanctions against anyone conducting business with the Syrian government.

Legislation permitted humanitarian exemptions for food and medicine, and in 2022 allowance was made for unfettered aid into regions outside of government control. Turkey and various rebel entities occupy territory in northwest Syria, while a US military base supports Kurdish forces administering large swaths of the northeast.

The United Nations designated a number of humanitarian aid corridors from Turkey, but Russia and China vetoed all but one—in protest of their ally's dwindling sovereignty. Iran and Hezbollah have also backed Assad militarily, while Israel occupies the Golan Heights and regularly bombs the alleged transport of weapons near its frontier and before crossing into Lebanon.

Amid it all, Syria’s Christians help who they can.

Following the earthquake, Aleppo’s churches hosted hundreds of frantic neighbors fleeing their cracked and crumbling homes. But the WEA report, written prior to the tragedy, outlined how many faith-based organizations lacked the resources and legal expertise necessary to navigate the myriad regulations to apply for permitted exemptions. Costa said LSESD did not attempt it, relying instead on “existing channels” to get aid into Syria.

“Everything we do is transparent,” he said, “but not everything is advertised.”

Even large NGOs like Caritas have struggled.

“It should be like math, one plus one equals two,” said Karam Abi Yazbeck, Caritas’s regional coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. “But I can’t make sense of why certain documents are required sometimes, and others not.”

Organized as a confederation, Caritas affiliates in the US, Europe, and around the world interacted with American and EU authorities to obtain the necessary paperwork to facilitate aid. Abi Yazbeck said Caritas’s Syria office has been bolstered considerably since the war.

His office is based in Lebanon, where local banks and their intermediary partners have delayed transfer of funds amid snail-paced investigations. It is a very human problem, he said. Bank personnel themselves do not know the regulations and protect against institutional risk.

Thus the 180-day comprehensive waiver.

“I want to make very clear that US sanctions in Syria will not stand in the way of life-saving efforts for the Syrian people,” stated Wally Adeyemo, deputy secretary of the US Treasury Department. “Those providing assistance can [now] focus on what’s needed most: saving lives and rebuilding.”

The waiver, issued three days after the quake, preceded even Assad’s authorizing of two additional border crossings from Turkey. Within the first month, the US provided $50 million in humanitarian aid.

A Treasury Department Q&A outlined the new reality. Financial institutions are specifically authorized to process earthquake-related transactions, even if interacting directly with the Syrian government.

The impact was dramatic—for some.

“The process has not changed,” said Michel Abs, secretary general of the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC). “But donations, previously delayed, have now been processed quickly.”

Some transactions had taken up to nine months of investigation. One transfer of $800,000 was blocked completely, causing the donor to repurpose the aid. But working through a Lebanese bank with an affiliate entity in Syria, MECC’s aid money is now flowing far more easily.

In fact, donations can now be direct. Among many local partners, the WCC-affiliated ACT Alliance has been approved to transfer funds to the MECC office in Damascus. Its leaders there are training a team to carry out humanitarian oversight of relief distribution, working in tandem with the Ecumenical Joint Church Committee of Aleppo, formed by the regional body.

In addition to distributing food and hygiene kits to more than 1,500 households, MECC has partnered with church-linked engineers and local authorities to inspect over 500 buildings to date, with preparations made for 20 requiring the most substantial repair. Others are helped with educational, medical, and psychosocial needs.

The greatest benefit, Abs said, was Syria’s adjustment of monetary exchange. Keeping US currency out of local circulation, authorities required that every dollar brought into the country be traded at the official rate. But for earthquake-related transactions the government gives nearly one-third more, depending on fluctuations in the parallel market.

Edward Awabdeh is waiting to see if he can benefit.

When the president of the Christian Alliance Church in Syria and Lebanon tried first his Beirut bank, they told him the US waiver pertained only to goods, not funds. Then the manager revised the message to permit specifically designated earthquake aid. But with relative pennies currently in the account, Awabdeh doesn’t yet have enough money to test it.

Like LSESD, his denomination had also been using “existing channels” to support a network of 5,000 needy families prior to the earthquake. Amid a poverty rate of 90 percent, 4 million Syrians were already reliant on humanitarian aid, according to UN figures.

And then roughly 200 people in Aleppo suddenly found themselves housed in Alliance churches. Whatever donations come from sister churches in Lebanon, the US, and elsewhere, Awabdeh said, will be added to the comparative widow’s mite from Syria. With 50 neighbors still sleeping among the pews, local believers in Damascus—on a monthly salary of $30—gave $4,500 to support them.

“Sanctions hurt our people also,” said Awabdeh. “But whatever rationale used to justify them, God’s grace is sufficient, and his power made perfect in weakness.”

Not part of the Aleppo council, the Alliance church is cooperating with the area NGO network that ensures no one is left out. And even the government is facilitating Awabdeh’s wider work, permitting three trucks of relief supplies to cross from Lebanon to the affected area. Traditionally comfortable with the Orthodox and Catholic majority, authorities issued official permits for his evangelical body to help.

“God has been faithful as we have stewarded small things,” said Awabdeh. “Maybe now he is giving us the favor that can facilitate larger challenges.”

Not all have been as fortunate. Amnesty International reported that the government blocked 100 trucks of aid sent to Kurdish areas of Aleppo, while opposition militias barred 30 shipments to Turkish-occupied Afrin. Up to 40 percent of assistance coming from the Kurdish northeast is diverted to rebel families, and The New York Times reported that the local Red Crescent and Syria Trust charities, which have close ties to the government, deliver only a fraction of aid to earthquake victims.

Some say this is evidence for why sanctions should stay in place. If Assad cannot be trusted to work with international agencies during a natural disaster, the national tragedy will only metastasize if funds flow freely.

“The regime has inflicted thousands of times more damage on the country than the recent earthquake,” stated Wa’el Alzayat, the CEO of Emgage, a Muslim American advocacy organization, and a former Middle East policy expert at the US State Department. “If the sanctions are lifted today, the war will simply heat up again.”

Yet Syria’s churches have found multiple partners to advocate otherwise, on humanitarian grounds. Chief among them is Alena Douhan, UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures (UCM) on the enjoyment of human rights.

Another name for sanctions, UCMs are illegal under international law, she said. While Douhan welcomes the waiver, it does not “fully open the floodgates” for what is needed.

Take water as an example. The US announcement lists the liquid along with food and medicine as allowed relief, and also specifically states that critical infrastructure damaged during the earthquake can be repaired.

Does the water processing plant qualify? Douhan said that sanctions prevented the restoration of facilities damaged during the war. Notwithstanding the recent outbreak of cholera, presumably these are still off-limits.

But how to interpret water service in Aleppo?

“If any bank manager sees a request resembling reconstruction, it will be interpreted as risk,” said Douhan. “But he is not the one who should decide.”

The US has not responded to her official UN communication.

But the EU, which began sanctioning Syria in 2011, defended its policy, stating that it does not cause the severe suffering of targeted nations and that it has received positive feedback from advice given to querying nations and NGOs.

Issued in 2022, the EU response only mentioned “over 15” such questions.

Most, including the gatekeeping bankers, do not ask. So while Abi Yazbeck’s colleague in Damascus was contacted by the local bank, saying it could now process Caritas’ earthquake relief to Syria, it has been one month with four transactions still pending. The bank manager blames intermediaries.

“No one was willing to work with Syria after the Caesar Act,” Abi Yazbeck said. “Many, it seems, are still uncertain.”

For donors eager to try, LSESD provides advice.

First, be certain that aid is clearly labeled “for earthquake relief.”

Second, limit outside conditions for use. Aid agencies and churches alike are overwhelmed with the scope of need, are not competent in all areas, and need flexibility with discretionary funds.

Third, keep the medium and long terms in view. Beyond food and medicine, rent support will be necessary for a while, fuel for running generators is often overlooked, and local volunteers must be sustained through a viable income received for their services.

Fourth, ensure accountability. More money means more temptation.

In the meanwhile, sources encourage generosity. The waiver is temporary, and even if renewed on August 8, the suffering will continue. Syria will not be rebuilt soon.

“If you make it harder for me, that is your decision,” said Costa. “But no one can stop us from helping the people in need, and no one has yet. God has a plan, and it is moving forward.”

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Florida Pastors Worry Immigration Bill Would Criminalize Church Rides

David Roach

Evangelicals who minister to and among the undocumented call the state’s proposal “an assault to religious liberty.”

Migrants pray at a church in Hialeah, Florida.

Marta Lavandier / AP

Churches may face criminal penalties for giving undocumented immigrants rides to worship services and Bible studies if a bill before the Florida state legislature becomes law. A diverse coalition of church leaders in the Sunshine State is calling the bill a threat to religious freedom.

“It’s heartbreaking that this assault to religious liberty has been proposed,” said Myal Green, president and CEO of the evangelical humanitarian organization World Relief, “a proposal that would criminalize sharing the love of Jesus with some of the most vulnerable people in society.”

During a press conference hosted by World Relief and the Evangelical Immigration Table last Thursday, Florida church and ministry leaders detailed what they believe will be chilling effects on churches if Senate Bill 1718 is signed into law.

Not only could transportation to church events be in jeopardy, the seven local leaders said, but also churches’ ministries of transporting immigrants to hospitals, doctors’ appointments, attorneys’ offices, and schools. Churches with bus ministries could run particular risk.

With an estimated 700,000 undocumented immigrants in Florida, the legislation’s impact could be broad.

Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition and an Orlando Assemblies of God pastor, said he has contacted Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s office about SB 1718, and a group of Hispanic evangelicals delivered letters of concern to the governor’s office. So far, however, they have not received a response.

“I haven’t heard from them,” Salguero told CT. “I don’t even know if they have considered the impact of this possible legislation. I think in their attempts to address immigration concerns, they overlooked the religious liberty concerns of pastors like me.”

The measure, sponsored by Tampa-area Republican Blaise Ingoglia, is aimed a curbing illegal immigration on multiple fronts. It would increase penalties against businesses that hire undocumented workers; ban local governments from funding the production of identification cards for undocumented immigrants; and track how much money is spent on illegal immigrants in emergency rooms. It would also repeal a 2014 state law allowing undocumented immigrants to practice law in Florida.

The provisions raising concerns for their religious liberty implications target human smuggling. The bill makes it a third-degree felony if a person “transports into or within this state an individual whom the person knows, or reasonably should know, has illegally entered the United States.”

Each person transported constitutes a separate offense, the bill states. Five or more offenses during a single episode would constitute a second-degree felony, which can carry a penalty in Florida of up to 15 years in prison. Third-degree felonies can yield five years in prison.

The Senate Rules Committee approved the measure 15-5 along party lines in mid-March. Dozens of people spoke against the bill prior to the vote, according media reports. Among them was Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat from the Miami area.

“What we are about to vote on today is not only an economic nightmare, it is an education nightmare,” Jones said. “It is an operational nightmare. It is a criminal-justice nightmare and, most importantly, it is a human-rights nightmare.”

Federal law already addresses transportation of undocumented immigrants, but the proposed Florida legislation takes the matter a step further. Federal law criminalizes transporting undocumented persons when the transportation is “in furtherance of such violation of law,” according to an analysis by the staff of the Florida Senate Rules Committee. The Florida bill apparently would criminalize all transporting of undocumented immigrants, regardless of why the person was being transported.

Dale Schaeffer, a north and central Florida district superintendent with the Church of the Nazarene, said fixing the bill may be relatively simple.

“Courts have generally found that the federal law makes it illegal to enter the country unlawfully and to help [undocumented immigrants] evade immigration law enforcement,” he said, “but not incidental transportation of individuals who happen to be undocumented immigrants.” Without a “clarifying phrase, [Senate] Bill 1718 could very reasonably be interpreted to mean it could be illegal to drive an elderly neighbor to church. … It could be a felony for a youth pastor to pick up a teenager in a church van.”

Other church and ministry leaders say they are seeking to determine whether the bill can be fixed or whether it should be abandoned altogether. The public policy arm for Florida’s Southern Baptists says it is studying the bill.

“Our current position is on pause while we are studying the language in SB 1718 to determine the impact, if any, on the customary operations of a church ministry and if an amendment would be necessary to maintain the status quo of church ministry in Florida,” said Bill Bunkley, president of the Florida Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Ingoglia did not respond to CT’s requests for comment. He told a Senate panel in mid-March he is not “demonizing immigrants.” Rather, “we are demonizing illegal immigrants” and pressing the federal government to enact immigration reform.

“I feel for the immigrant community. I feel for the illegal immigrant community,” Ingoglia said. “This is the point we are at now. We have to fix this system, and [federal officials] continue to refuse to do it. They will only act when they have to and when an external force pushes back. Florida is that external force right now.”

Even if SB 1718 becomes law, some Christians say they will continue to minister to immigrants and face any penalties that come. Among those is Gary Shultz Jr., pastor of First Baptist Church in Tallahassee.

“We would have to communicate the possible legal ramifications of this bill,” Shultz said. “My hope is that we would continue to do what we’re doing to minister to all of those populations.”

David Roach

- More from David Roach

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