Grave Excavation Begins at One of the Oldest Black Churches in the US

Founded by an enslaved minister in 1776, the historic Baptist site had been covered by a museum parking lot.

Archaeologist Jack Gary explains the excavation process to descendants of a historic Black Baptist church.

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

It’s different when you get down to the bone.

Jack Gary, director of archaeology at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, can get excited talking about the excavation of old post holes and brick foundations. He’s thrilled when his team finds bits of bottles, old coins, and the porcelain foot of a long-lost baby doll, giving them a glimpse of what life was like at a historic Baptist church where enslaved Black people lifted their voices to God.

But the buried remains of these faithful Christians—once covered over by a parking lot—reveal their full humanity.

“It doesn’t hit you until you see a bone you recognize: That’s a piece of a person. You are touching another human,” Gary told CT.

The Colonial Williamsburg archaeologist and his team started excavating the 40 or 41 graves at the church on Monday, slowly and carefully removing about a foot of soil from the first three sites. They believe it is one of the oldest Black congregations in America, founded at the time of the Declaration of Independence by an enslaved man named Gowan Pamphlet, who was given a special allowance for ordination by the woman who owned him.

The building that housed the congregation was demolished in the 1950s as part of the ongoing reconstruction and restoration of the former capital of colonial Virginia. No one in authority at the time appears to have thought the church was an important enough part of that history to preserve, continuing the generations-long practice of diminishing or even erasing Black people from the American story.

Connie Matthews Harshaw, a descendent of the Christians who worshiped there, started pushing and organizing for the recovery of the church in 2019. She convinced Cliff Fleet, the new president of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, to approve the excavation and eventual restoration of the church, which will become part of the living history museum.

Shortly after the second phase of work started in January 2020, the archaeologists detected bodies buried at the church. There was no written record of the graves, but some older members of First Baptist recalled family stories of ancestors buried there.

“When your grandmother tells you something, normally you can count on it,” Harshaw told the Associated Press.

On Monday, Harshaw and other Black Baptist descendants of the church gathered to say a blessing over the graves before they were opened and the bodies disinterred. Roosevelt Taylor, a deacon from St. John’s Baptist Church, read Scripture. Valerie Matthews, pastor at Zion Baptist Church, said a prayer. Sylvia Tabb Lee, from New Zion Baptist Church, sang “Amazing Grace.” And Reginald Davis, pastor of First Baptist, said the ancestral blessing “in honor of those whose names are known only to God.”

Davis said the excavation project is “a rediscovery of the humanity of a people” that will help “erase the historical and social amnesia that has afflicted this country for so many years.”

According to Gary, the archaeologists are very aware that every little detail they discover in these graves is important—the way they were buried, their proximity to each other, and whether anything was buried with them.

“Who knows what stories these people had,” he said. “But this is it. For most of them, this will be all we know.”

The excavation is a careful, painstaking process, starting with the slow removal of soil that is then sifted for any historic objects. Archaeologists don’t know how deep the bodies are buried, so they go very slowly, removing a little earth at a time. As they dig, they watch for a layer of rotted wood from the decayed coffin, but they can’t count on that, because the deceased may have been buried with a simple shroud.

When they do discover bodies, the team will stop and go put on Tyvek suits and sterilize their equipment so they can recover an uncorrupted sample of DNA. They will look for the petrous—a hard bone right behind the ear—to send to the University of Connecticut for DNA analysis. If they can’t find the petrous, the other pieces most likely to carry good samples of genetic information are molars, fingers, and toes.

The DNA tests may help connect the remains to living descendants and also provide some basic demographic data. The lab may be able to determine eye color and skin tone, as well as biological traits.

Then the archaeologists will fully uncover the bodies and document their burials with photography, 3D renderings, and hand-drawn sketches. According to Gary, the multiple modes of documentation provide “redundant data,” ensuring they don’t miss any important details. Photography and 3D renderings can capture what a human eye won’t see, while drawings often preserve contextual clues missed by mechanical renderings.

After the graves are fully documented, the bodies will be carefully packed and shipped to the Institute for Historical Biology at the College of William and Mary. The scientists there will get one year to examine skeletons, learning as much as they can from the physiology and morphology about the social conditions and the lives of the Black Christians buried at the Williamsburg church.

The institute has agreed to return the bodies after a year, out of respect to the dead, and they will then be reinterred in their original resting places. The descendants will work with Colonial Williamsburg to memorialize them, and include the graveyard in the restoration of the church, which will become part of the living history museum.

The reenactors who portray Gowan Pamphlet will talk about what it was like to be a Black Baptist in the days after the American Revolution, believing in the equality of all before God in a society that proclaimed “All men are created equal” and yet perpetuated slavery.

The interpretive site will also recount the history of Christians who persevered in their faith through the Civil War, the emergence of laws that applied only to Black people, the legislation of segregation, and, in the middle of the civil rights movement, the erasure of the testimony of the historic church with a parking lot.

Before that can happen, though, the archaeologists have a lot of work ahead of them. On Tuesday, they removed a second foot of soil from three graves, taking them incrementally closer to the human remains.

“Things quiet down as we get closer and our tools become much smaller,” Gary said. “You almost hold your breath. The next turn of the trowel could reveal bone.”

- More from Daniel Silliman

Saving Local Media Outlets Is a Way to Love Your Neighbor

Angela Lu Fulton

As Good News people, these Christians are fighting to revive community-centered journalism.

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Envato / Jon Tyson / Unsplash

In 2015, as local newspapers were folding right and left, a community paper in Pflugerville, Texas, made the surprising announcement that it planned to construct a 36,000-square-foot facility with a new printing press.

At the time, Community Impact Newspaper, a hyperlocal monthly newspaper founded by John Garrett, had 20 editions covering communities in Austin, Houston, and Dallas. Printing and production costs for the papers, delivered free to each home in the community, totaled nearly $5 million a year, so he began scheming about owning his own printing presses.

Garrett flew to New York to look at a new Goss press, which would be a $10 million investment, not including constructing the facility, hiring workers, and purchasing the other equipment needed.

“It was the biggest, craziest thing I could imagine,” Garrett said. “I’m just praying, ‘God, I need you to show up in a way that only you can. … I need you to do your thing, because this is too big.’”

The day he flew home, he heard that the Austin-American Statesman would stop its press and outsource its printing. To Garrett, that confirmed God’s timing: The Statesman was one of the few operators in the Southwest that could print Garrett’s newspaper. It was a wakeup call that he couldn’t rely on other printing presses; his company needed its own. He signed the paperwork for the new press.

Then came a second sign: Garrett received a call from the Statesman asking to hire their press operators. The machines required specialized skills that few still possessed. The pressmen’s six-month severance pay ended exactly when Community Impact’s presses would be up and running.

“Everyone is running away from this business as fast as they can, and we’re running toward it,” Garrett said. Today, Community Impact has 35 editions that reach 2.5 million people through daily newsletters, monthly print newspapers, and corresponding news websites.

Garrett and Community Impact are an outlier in the nationwide downward trend of local media. Since 2005, about 2,200 local papers have shuttered as traditional media struggled to transition to digital and lost lucrative advertising dollars to Google and Facebook. Corporate buyouts left local newspapers with a skeletal staff unable to adequately cover regional news.

Organizations, politicians, and local citizens are starting to see the consequences of the demise of local media: a less-informed public, less accountability for local officials, less civic engagement, and a weakening sense of community. Groups like Report for America and the American Journalism Project are trying to rectify the problem by pouring money and talent into local newsrooms.

And Christians have joined the fight.

Garrett argues believers should care about the survival of local news because God is the author of truth and shining a light on wrongdoing, highlighting the good work of everyday people, and informing voters help a community thrive. Local news can also help Christians love their neighbors better as they learn about who those neighbors are and the struggles they face, said Mike Orren of The Dallas Morning News. He pointed to the times when readers have rallied to help individuals down on their luck after their stories were featured in the news.

Personally, I first gained journalism experience as a college student interning at a local newspaper in Bremerton, Washington, where I did a ride-along with a singing bus driver and attended a weekly dance for people with disabilities. Not groundbreaking material, but it was rewarding to hear the driver’s giddy excitement when he told me his wife’s friends all commented on seeing him in the paper and to learn that the NGO putting on the dance received an influx of donations. To ensure these stories continue being told, I’m helping to organize the Reforming Journalism Project, a five-day intensive course to train Christians interested in starting local news sites.

Evangelicals in local media, though, find themselves working to save local news while combating the growing distrust of the industry among fellow believers. Three Christians in local media—Garrett, Orren, and Rob Vaughn of the Allentown, Pennsylvania, station WFMZ-TV—talked to CT about how their faith makes them even greater proponents of the news.

Finding the courage

Garrett was the advertising director at the Austin Business Journal when he and his wife, Jennifer, dreamed up the idea of starting a publication that served not just business insiders in central Austin but also everyday citizens living in the suburbs. The paper would inform residents and businesses of issues that directly impacted their lives: local development projects, new business openings, and city council meetings.

He sketched out a business plan but wasn’t ready to quit his secure job and leap into the unknown.

Then one day in 2005, his boss told him she had received a call from corporate: Someone complained that Garrett was sharing his faith at work; his boss warned that if he did it again, he could be fired. The news shocked Garrett: “I’ve always been pretty outspoken about my faith, but I’m not awkward. I’ve always been very relational.” Other Christians in the company felt Garrett had been unfairly targeted, while the corporate leadership feared they would have an HR nightmare on their hands if Garrett sued the company.

Yet Garrett felt at peace. He believed God was giving him this opportunity to quit his job and take a step of faith: He took out a $39,000 credit card loan to start the community newspaper. Friends were baffled when he said he wanted to start a free monthly newspaper while everyone else was pushing digital. “I might as well be selling typewriters,” Garrett remembers.

In September, the paper sent out its first issue to 60,000 homes and businesses in Pflugerville and Round Rock (northern suburbs of Austin). A story about a new toll road headlined the paper and included a large satellite map plotting the entrance and exit ramps for the road.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cf9226eB8X0/

The paper was a hit. In the second month, it sold out advertising space in 15 days. “It was a calculated risk. … I think God blinded me to a lot of the reality so that I could do it,” Garrett said. “I think if I knew then what would happen even in those first few months of production, I don't know if I would have had the courage to do it.”

Community Impact continued to expand into other metros, even as local papers laid off journalists around the country. In five years, the newspaper added 60 employees and launched 10 community newspapers. The key to the paper’s business model is that it allows local advertisers to target a very specific audience by gathering data on its distribution area. Ads are specific to mail-carrier routes, so a local restaurant can pay for ads only in the newspapers delivered to homes near their venue.

Yet Community Impact’s complete reliance on advertising also meant that the COVID-19 pandemic hit them hard. With businesses shut down, Community Impact let its advertisers out of their contracts, thinking the shutdown would last only six weeks. The paper lost 40 percent of its revenue and for the first time had to lay off staff. The government’s Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses helped keep the papers going.

Other challenges Garrett has faced include a controller stealing money from the company, issues with paper supply, and the deterioration of the local newspaper industry, which impacts Community Impact’s credibility among advertisers. But Garrett keeps going by remembering God’s incredible provision and faithfulness to him and his family, as well as how his work honors God.

“If God loves truth and God wants us to connect to each other and to our communities, then local news can play an amazing role in helping make all that happen,” Garrett said.

Championing local news

While Garrett may have stepped back in time by purchasing a printing press, Orren is stepping into the future by pushing the boundaries of what digital local news sites can become. The chief product officer at The Dallas Morning News, Orren describes himself as a “mad scientist” concocting new ways to ensure the 137-year-old newspaper survives in the digital age.

For instance, his team is building a database platform with interlinked people, places, and events so that based on the stories readers choose to view, an algorithm can find related content to keep them engaged. They’re also focusing on the features readers can’t find elsewhere: Each Friday night the paper sends 70 stringers to football games around the city so they can type up live play-by-plays. Orren said that helps sell tons of digital subscriptions to football-crazed Texans. For areas the paper doesn’t have the manpower to cover, they’re looking into using AI to write up reports on city council meetings (based on meeting minutes) and residential real estate.

While he’s optimistic about The Dallas Morning News’s future, he’s very pessimistic about local journalism in general. For the past 30 years, he’s been shouting from the mountaintops that “the print train is coming to the station, and we better figure it out.”

At this point, he doesn’t think most local newspapers will be here in their current form in 10 years. And that hurts communities, he said: Studies have found that areas without strong local newspapers have reduced civic engagement and increased government corruption as the cities lack watchdogs to keep them in check.

Orren spent his career in this intersection of local journalism and new tech: Working at Dallas’s D Magazine in the ‘90s, he created the nation’s first city-magazine website. Then in 2004, he founded the hyperlocal Pegasus News, which pioneered now-common functions such as user customization, comments, and content partnerships. While the startup was professionally successful, personally Orren said the process wrecked his life, destroying his marriage, friendships, and finances.

The dark time brought Orren back to the Christian faith and changed his outlook on life. Instead of chasing fame or money, he became a “better, happier local news crusader.” He remembered why he wanted to work in local journalism in the first place.

“You can tangibly see the positive impacts that informing people locally has, whether that is being able to vote smarter in an election or protest their property taxes or figure out where to eat tonight,” Orren said. “What happens on your school board impacts your life a thousand times more than what happens in Washington.”

Orren worries Christians are too busy demonizing the media to see the pivotal moment local journalism is in and why it should be supported. Local news helps Christians love their neighbors by telling stories about the people around them and the needs in the city, he said. It shares about events so people can get out to support local theaters or businesses and get to know their neighbors. “How can you love your neighbor if you don’t know them or what they’re going through?”

Pushing back on distrust

According to a 2021 Pew Research Center poll, Americans trust local media more than national media (75% versus 58%). Rob Vaughn, an anchor at WFMZ, an independently owned station covering the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania, points to several factors: Often local news is focused less on culture wars and more on fires, traffic accidents, or local events. Residents also get to see local reporters in the community and feel more connected to them—viewers frequently tell Vaughn they feel like he’s part of their families.

https://www.facebook.com/RobVaughn69/posts/pfbid0T2GQCd5zmm4zFS3WPjLuyPttTVVyNeWWvYJjWDWPCLit44uAhS9gQpZsGvnG673il

Still, Vaughn feels that in the 35 years he’s worked at the station, he’s never seen as much distrust for the media as he has in the last six years, especially among other Christians.

He recalls a woman he met at a church picnic who rolled her eyes when he mentioned he previously worked for the Associated Press. Some church friends shoot puzzled looks and ask, “How are you in the media?” Others comment that he’s different from the other dishonest journalists.

While he knows his friends mean it as a compliment, it bothers him how all journalists have been painted in such a negative light that they see him as the exception rather than the rule. At the same time, viewers who don’t know him personally send him nasty emails about his coverage, including one viewer who claimed he was reading off scripts dictated by the Democratic National Committee.

When talking with fellow believers, Vaughn will often push back by asking them where they get their news. “They’re kind of cloistered in a world that gives you only one perspective on things, and at the very least I try to get them to broaden their news appetite,” he said. He’s found that many Christians have split journalists and media personalities between those they can trust and those they can write off.

When friends complain to Vaughn that journalists are often politically liberal, Vaughn agrees but argues that it doesn’t mean they don’t tell the truth or they don’t have something worth listening to. He’s concerned that as Christians push away mainstream media, they become more susceptible to disinformation.

In his experience, the journalists he’s worked with are curious people who want to understand the different sides to the story and report fairly on a topic even if they personally disagree with where Christians stand.

Vaughn grew up in a news family, as his father, brother, and cousin all worked in broadcast. He got involved in radio while in college, then worked at various news stations before attending Biblical Seminary (now called Missio Seminary) in the ‘80s. After graduating, Vaughn was contemplating his next steps when he received a call from the general manager of WFMZ, who was also a Christian. While the GM usually didn’t get involved in hiring, this time he felt called to pray for the right person to fill their main news anchor position and happened to hear of Vaughn. After an audition, Vaughn got the job.

Initially, Vaughn planned to stay only for a few years to gain broadcast TV experience so that he could start a broadcast ministry. Yet he enjoyed the job, and the Christian management allowed him to do ministry on the side: He spoke at churches, helped start a church, and wrote “lightly Christian-flavored op-eds” for the station. Today, 35 years later, he is still at WFMZ, where his son is now also an anchor.

Vaughn believes local news plays a role in helping Christians “make the most of the times we’re in.”

“If we are to be good citizens and we want to be salt and light in our communities, we need to have some idea of what’s going on. So local news is important that way. It behooves us to really all get involved.”

Angela Lu Fulton is a reporter, editor, and organizer of the Reforming Journalism Project, a training for Christians interested in local journalism. Her love of local news extends around the globe; Fulton is also CT’s incoming Southeast Asia editor.

- More from Angela Lu Fulton

News

Survey: Most Pastors Don’t See Deconstruction in the Pews

Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

“It may be easier to find people in the midst of deconstructing their faith on social media than within churches.”

Athena Grace / Lightstock

A Lifeway Research study of US Protestant pastors finds almost 3 in 4 are familiar with the concept of deconstruction, and more than a quarter of those say people in their churches have deconstructed their faith.

When asked how familiar they are with “the concept of an individual deconstructing their faith in which they systematically dissect and often reject Christian beliefs they grew up with,” 25 percent of pastors say they are very familiar, 21 percent say familiar and 27 percent say somewhat familiar. While 12 percent say they’re not that familiar with the concept, 14 percent say they haven’t heard the term before, and 1 percent aren’t sure.

“In recent years, many Americans have stopped associating themselves with Christian churches,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. “While surveys have shown that many who don’t attend or claim to belong to a church still maintain many Christian beliefs, for a noticeable minority, the journey away from the Christian church begins with a change in beliefs.”

Age and education are key indicators of how knowledgeable a pastor may be about the concept. Younger pastors, those 18–44, are the most likely to say they’re very familiar with deconstruction (36%), while pastors 65 and older are the least likely to possess that same level of familiarity (12%). Pastors with doctoral degrees are the education level most likely to be very familiar (43%), and those with no college degree are the least likely (8%). Pastors without a college degree are also the most likely to say they’ve never heard the term before (27%).

Additionally, African American pastors (24%) are more likely than white pastors (13%) to say they’ve never heard of deconstruction before. Female pastors are twice as likely as male pastors (22 % vs. 11%) to say they’re completely unfamiliar with the concept. Pastors in the West (20%) are more likely than those in the Midwest (11%) to say they’re completely unaware of deconstruction.

Deconstruction zone in the pews

Among pastors who are familiar with the concept of deconstruction, around a quarter say they’ve recently seen the effects in their congregations.

More than 1 in 4 (27%) US Protestant pastors who have heard the term before say they’ve had attendees of their church who have methodically deconstructed their faith in the past two years. Close to 7 in 10 (68%) say that hasn’t been the case for them. Another 5 percent aren’t sure.

“The use of the term ‘deconstruction’ emerged in the last few years and has been used both by those questioning their own beliefs and those desiring to help them find the truth,” said McConnell. “Despite the growing awareness among pastors, it may be easier to find people in the midst of deconstructing their faith on social media than within churches.”

Although much of the conversation surrounding deconstruction centers on experiences within evangelical churches, evangelical pastors who are familiar with the term are not likely to be familiar with it in their pews.

Evangelical pastors who have heard of deconstruction are more likely than their mainline counterparts to say they haven’t had churchgoers deconstruct their faith in the past two years (72% vs. 62%).

Denominationally, Baptist pastors (75%) are also more likely than those who are Presbyterian/Reformed (64%), Methodist (63%), or Restorationist Movement (55%) to say they haven’t seen deconstruction among attendees at their churches.

The deconstructionist trend is also less likely to be happening at smaller churches, at least according to their pastors who have heard of the term. Those at churches with worship service attendance of fewer than 50 are the least likely (16%) to say this has happened to one of their churchgoers in the past two years.

“In Matthew 11, Jesus tells the parable of the sower who sowed seeds to illustrate that people who hear the word about his kingdom react in different ways,” said McConnell. “Some go on to produce fruit, others abandon it immediately and others embrace it for a time before the seed is scorched or choked out. While the number who react in each way may change over time, each response to the message of Jesus’ kingdom persists today.”

Based on a phone survey of 1,000 Protestant pastors conducted September 1–29, 2021. The sample provides 95 percent confidence the sampling error does not exceed plus or minus 3.2 percent. Margins of error are higher in subgroups.

- More from Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

News

Cupboards Not Quite Bare as Food Pantries Struggle Against Inflation

Adam MacInnis

Record price increases put pressure on churches trying to meet rising need.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Grant Hasty sees the impact of inflation in the increasing requests for food at Crossroads Community Baptist Church in Stearns, Kentucky. And he feels it every time he fills up the truck the ministry uses.

“It’s about double what it was a year ago just for the fuel to pick up the food to give away,” the pastor told CT.

According to a July 13 report from the United States government, inflation has gone up more in the last year than any time since 1981. The cost of cereal has increased about 14 percent in the last 12 months, and fruits and vegetables are up more than 8 percent. The cost of butter and margarine increased by 26 percent.

Gasoline prices have increased more than they have at any time since 1980, going up nearly 60 percent from June 2021 to June 2022.

In Stearns, Kentucky, that means a lot more people are asking for help. The church has seen people from all age demographics hit hard, but particularly those on fixed income.

“Their fixed income hasn’t risen the way the cost of everything else has,” Hasty said.

Yet it isn’t only individuals struggling with inflation. Ministries have been hit hard too. Church food pantries and soup kitchens across the country are trying to meet the increasing need, while at the same time they are also forced to pay more and more for food, gas, electricity, and other operational expenses.

Northside Food Pantry, at a Presbyterian church in Indianapolis, told CT it was spending about $6,500 per month on food in the spring of 2021. The ministry spent another $1,000 on household and hygiene items to give away to people in need.

This spring, the ministry spent an average of $12,000 per month—a spike driven by both need and increased costs.

“We’ve seen a dramatic rise in people coming to us,” said coordinator Lisa Enright. “There’s also a shortage for us on our end. There are things we can’t get and we can’t provide.”

In Taos, New Mexico, food pantry director David Hines noted the cost of meat is particularly high. When he talked to people who came to St. James Episcopal Church for help, he said they also talked about gas prices and the cost of heating and cooling their homes.

“Everything gets more expensive, and people have to start making decisions,” Hines said. “There are a lot of heartbreaking stories.”

During the worst of the pandemic, the Taos church served as many as 400 families a week. When things started getting back to normal, that number dropped down to around 250. Since May, however, inflation has driven it back up to about 325 families per week. Hines said he’s also noticed that more of the people in need have children in tow.

“If it does go unchecked, I fully anticipate especially this fall seeing more people coming to our lines,” Hines said.

With the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine causing further disruptions to fertilizer and grain supplies, Heather Taylor, managing director of Bread for the World, doesn’t think things are going to get better soon.

“It all has a compound effect,” she said. “As inflation and food prices continue to rise, so in turn are the lines that are expanding at local food pantries.”

Churches alone, Taylor said, cannot meet the need caused by rapidly rising inflation. Currently, in the US, federal nutrition programs provide about 10 times as much food assistance as churches and charities combined. Bread for the World hopes that as Christian communities increase their efforts to help people get through this difficult time, they will also lobby their congressional representatives to do more.

“Churches and congregations have a role here as well—to really elevate their collective voice to advocate and to make sure that our nation’s leaders are doing the right thing,” Taylor said.

Recently, Bread for the World pushed Congress to extend the COVID-19 school meal waiver that allowed public schools more flexibility with what they could serve, where they could serve it, and to how many children. The waivers were set to sunset on June 30. Bread for the World and other organizations lobbied for an extension, and days before it expired, Congress passed bipartisan legislation extending the program by three months.

While happy with that small victory, Bread for the World would like to see the waivers continue through 2023.

Taylor said these programs are essential to many people and are especially important to those in rural aand urban areas without grocery stores. Waiting until 2023 to revert to prepandemic rules would allow time for the economy to strengthen and inflation to stabilize.

Christians can help advocate for that support by bearing witness to the need. Bread for the World has encouraged a letter-writing campaign.

“Churches really are on the frontlines,” she said. “Often they hear the stories firsthand. We have the ability to bring stories to the forefront and state what we must do in this nation to have an impact.”

Bread for the World is also advocating for the Global Malnutrition Prevention and Treatment Act. It passed in the House in April and now awaits Senate approval. There’s no money associated with the act. Instead, it will work to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of US Agency for International Development programs and partnerships.

Eugene Cho, an evangelical pastor and president/CEO of Bread for the World, wrote in support of the legislation in April and urged Congress to increase global nutrition funding by $300 million.

“Increasing global nutrition funding will save the lives of tens of thousands of young children and improve the futures of millions more,” Cho wrote. “When we are faced with challenges that will affect so many lives, I often think of this verse from the Bible: ‘Do not withhold good from those whom it is due when it is within our power to act’ (Proverbs 3:27).”

At the Episcopal church in Taos, Hines also points to the Bible.

“A lot of times it’s easy to take solace and comfort in words written in a book that sound good, without actually going out and putting them into practice,” he said.

Food pantries and charities can only do so much in the face of a pandemic, disruptions caused by war, and the worst inflation in 40 years. But they can help. And many believe, despite the pinch they themselves are feeling from rapidly rising prices, that it’s their responsibility to do something.

“I think it goes back to Scripture,” said Hasty, in Kentucky. “We can’t just say, ‘Be warm and fed’ without at least attempting to help feed.”

- More from Adam MacInnis

Theology

Blame David, Not Bathsheba. The Prophet Nathan Did.

Carmen Joy Imes

In the Book of Samuel, three key voices say he’s the guilty one, not her.

Edits by Christianity Today / Source Image: WikiMedia Commons

The story of David and Bathsheba has a lot of gaps. It's a brilliantly told narrative that requires us to draw conclusions based on what we already know. The downside to this sophisticated mode of storytelling is that readers will make unjustified assumptions to fill in the gaps.

As Sara Koenig notes in Bathsheba Survives, the history of this passage’s interpretation makes a fascinating case study of how each generation thinks about sexuality.

Today is no exception.

In the age of #metoo and #churchtoo, the conversation is trending again on Twitter. (As far as I can tell, #sbctoo sparked this latest round.) Once again, various personalities are arguing that David committed adultery, not rape, or vice versa.

Those arguing that David committed adultery often try to pin blame on Bathsheba for bathing in public, thereby seducing David, while those arguing that David raped her point to the uneven power dynamics between them.

But here’s the problem: We think of “adultery” as consensual by definition, while the Bible defines it as the responsibility of the male head of the household to keep his hands off his neighbor’s wife (Ex. 20:14).

That doesn’t mean a woman can’t sin sexually. However, the Ten Commandments are addressed to men by default. They were called to restrain their strength for the sake of community.

It’s hard to think of another Old Testament story that fits the bill more precisely. Bathsheba is literally David’s neighbor’s wife, which means she’s totally off limits to him.

She’s also off limits because of David’s warfare practices.

We learn in 1 Samuel 21:4–5 that he prohibited sexual relations during battles or “missions” from the king. The rule was meant to maintain ritual purity so that soldiers could carry out the divine will.

In those days, battles were considered religious. That’s why Uriah refuses to go to his wife when he answers David’s summons. He shows more restraint when drunk than David does when sober—for the sake of the men’s mission, and to show solidarity with them.

By contrast, David fails to take the mission seriously. He doesn’t lead the troops in battle. Instead, he stays home and preys on the “war widow” next door. He violates Uriah’s marriage covenant, which the narrator reminds us of by repeatedly calling her “the wife of Uriah.”

The incident could be called adultery only in the sense that both David and Bathsheba were married, not in the modern sense of consent. The one difference between this case and Amnon’s violation of his half-sister Tamar (described a few chapters later) is that neither of the latter two was married.

Otherwise, the stories are parallel: He saw; he wanted; he took. But still, some will ask, “Didn’t Bathsheba seduce him?”

The first thing to note is that she is not bathing on the roof (2 Sam. 11:2). It’s David who is on the roof—a normal place to be in the cool of the evening. He ought to be at war with his men, but nevertheless, there he is, bored.

Why is she bathing where he can see her? In David’s day, the city had no indoor plumbing. Bathing normally happened in public.

If Bathsheba is bathing in a public pool, then, she can hardly be implicated for immodesty. And if she’s bathing in the courtyard of her own home, her bath is more private than normal. In fact, the text never says that she was naked.

Isn’t nakedness an obvious inference? Not necessarily. We lived for two years in the Philippines and regularly visited a crowded Muslim neighborhood with no indoor plumbing. Despite rather strict notions of modesty, men and women found ways to scrub clean under adequate cover (usually generous tube skirts for both men and women).

A public approach to hygiene may be foreign to many of us, but it’s quite common in some areas of the world.

This was no ordinary bath, either. She was purifying herself ritually following menstruation (2 Sam. 11:4). This practice indicates that she was a pious keeper of Israelite purity law (and also that she was not already pregnant, which is important to the question of parentage). David’s sexualization of her religious hygiene should raise an eyebrow or two.

David summons her. Does she have a choice? Her husband and her father are both soldiers under his command. No one can refuse the king.

Bathsheba’s only words in the entire story are “I’m pregnant.” David has put her in a predicament: If her husband returns and finds her pregnant, she could be stoned for adultery. But the situation is not her fault, and David knows it.

David’s Plan A is to bring Uriah home from the front to make love to his own wife. It’s still early in her pregnancy, so Uriah may later think it’s his own child. When he piously refuses to come, David has him killed and takes Bathsheba into his harem.

For me, the clincher is this: The narrator is unequivocal in blaming David (2 Sam. 11:27). The prophet Nathan is unequivocal in blaming David (2 Sam. 12:1–12). And Bathsheba is never chastised.

Yes, she loses her son, but that loss is never characterized as her punishment. She suffers for David’s sin, as subjects always do when their leader is recalcitrant.

Pinning the blame equally on Bathsheba ignores how God assesses the story through Nathan. It ignores the culture of the city of David. And it ignores the clear exegetical signals throughout the chapter.

For David, as for every Israelite, the neighbor’s wife is like a daughter to be protected, not an experience to be collected. David knows Bathsheba is unavailable. But this doesn’t deter him in the least. Like a predator, he summons her. He’s come to believe that because he has power, he can have whatever he wants when he wants it.

To me, the most shocking part of the story comes after the murder of Uriah, when David tells his commander, Let this matter not be evil in your eyes (2 Sam. 11:25). David attempts to redefine his own behavior as acceptable.

If David had been king of any other ancient Near Eastern kingdom, his actions would have been unremarkable. Kings could do whatever they wanted. But this wasn’t any other kingdom; it was Israel. And David’s power was not absolute, nor did he make the rules. Yahweh did.

Nathan the prophet makes absolutely clear that the king had done evil in God’s sight (2 Sam. 12:9). His rebuke lands squarely on David. And David knows he’s in the wrong.

David’s response is simply I have sinned against YHWH (v. 13). Standing at a crossroads, he offers no defense, no equivocation, no excuses. He’s been caught in the act. He takes sole responsibility, repents, and chooses a better path forward.

In other words, he too affirms that he’s the guilty one.

When I reflect on the narrative, I often wonder whether it’s fair to call it “the story of David and Bathsheba.” Naming her implies cooperation where the text claims nothing of the sort. At the very least, we should call it “David and the Wife of Uriah”—or “David and Uriah,” since the showdown is clearly between these two men.

The ongoing debate about this story shows the importance of returning to a text again and again, attending to its details, and remaining open to the possibility that we have missed or misconstrued something.

Reading with others is essential to that process. We all miss things, because we’re all embedded in communities that have shaped what we notice and what we don’t. Sometimes our failure to realize this impairs our ability to see what’s right in front of us.

In this case, Bathsheba deserves another look.

Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Biola University and the author of Bearing God’s Name: Why Sinai Still Matters (InterVarsity Press).

- More from Carmen Joy Imes

News

South Carolina Protects Doctors Who Decline Procedures on Religious Grounds

Markus Miller

It’s the third state to give medical professionals legal backing for refusing to perform treatments such as gender transition.

Daniel Sun / Lightstock

Christian doctors in three states now have legal protections if they choose not to participate in certain medical procedures based on their religious conscience.

Most recently, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law last month a bill protecting medical practitioners from lawsuits or job loss for declining to perform various medical procedures that go against their religious or moral views. The law does not protect against emergency procedures.

Religious conscience protection laws for health care providers passed in Arkansas and Ohio in 2021. Another went before the legislature in Florida earlier this year.

“We had a number of instances of individuals and doctors being pressured and coerced to participate in medical procedures that violated their conscience,” said Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, which lobbied for the Ohio law.

Some common practices that these laws have affected include various procedures undergone for the sake of gender transition, end-of-life care, contraception, and abortion.

The Ohio version of the law[TM1] went into effect last September. Under the provision, “a medical practitioner, health care institution, or health care payer has the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs or principles held by the practitioner, institution, or payer.”

The Center for Christian Virtue helped draft the clause and built off a preexisting policy from the Ohio State University providing similar protections that the statewide policy brings to their employees. South Carolina’s version of the law, the Medical Ethics and Diversity Act, was drafted earlier this year on the heels of Ohio and Arkansas

A similar rule was unveiled by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 2019, as the Trump administration aimed to expand a policy to allow religious health care workers to refuse providing care on the grounds that it violated their personal beliefs. (Some conscience protections were already in place; under the 1973 Church Amendments, institutions and individuals receiving federal funds in health care have not been required to provide abortions.)

However, this rule was blocked by federal courts after a number of lawsuits, and then the Biden administration announced plans to pull the proposed HHS policy.

In a story from NPR, Alex Duvall, a Christian family physician who practices in South Carolina, said he couldn’t condone treatments including giving hormone therapy to transgender patients, and he’s relieved that he can no longer be sued or fired by abiding by his religious beliefs in his work.

It’s a battle of conscience, Duvall told NPR. “It doesn’t mean you don't care about patients and love patients or want to do your best for them.”

As gender transition and transgender patient care have become more common, some Christian medical professionals have expressed concern that they will be penalized if they do not provide such procedures.

“Our fear, as an organization, is we had a temporary reprieve under the Trump administration,” said Dr. Jeffrey Barrows, the Christian Medical and Dental Associations’ senior vice president of bioethics and public policy, in a 2021 CT article. “We are very concerned and expect that we’ll have an increase in lawsuits and threats against our members and other Christian health care professionals if they do not perform some of these surgeries, prescribe cross-sex hormones, or prescribe puberty blockers.”

The HHS issued guidance in March that explains that attempts to restrict access to gender-affirming care could violate section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The guidance comes after the HHS announced in 2021 that the antidiscrimination protections within section 1557 also apply to sexual orientation and gender identity. Two lawsuits, one in Texas and one in North Dakota, have opposed the policy on behalf of Christian hospitals and doctors.

Those opposed to the state laws have argued that they provide grounds for doctors to deny LGBT patients necessary care. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of South Carolina said the state’s bill would “legalize discrimination.” A group of 50 medical practitioners also asked the governor to veto the bill.

Baer says that the Ohio law received widespread support both inside and outside the evangelical community.

“It’s been a year now that this bill has been on the books, and no one has been denied medical services that they need,” Baer said. “But what this does is ensure doctors can’t be forced to do something that violates their beliefs.”

- More from Markus Miller

Church Life

More Cremations Mean Fewer Chances to Grieve Together

Melissa Morgan Kelley

With church funerals and burials no longer the norm, pastors hope to restore occasions to gather and remember.

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source image: Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels

Surging cremation rates are upending traditional practices around death, as more people opt out of traditional church funerals and some skip communal experiences of grief altogether.

Randy Anderson, who has worked in funeral homes in Alabama for over 30 years, tells the story of a widow who chose to forgo a funeral for her husband, instead cremating his remains and keeping the ashes at home. Then every few months, she’d bump into acquaintances who would ask how he was doing.

Frustrated by awkward conversations reopening her grief, the wife called a local funeral home to plan a funeral service three years later. More than 300 people attended the ceremony.

If trends hold, more than half of Americans who die this year will be cremated, compared to just 4 percent in 1960. The proportion is expected to reach nearly 80 percent by 2040, according to the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA).

Families who chose cremation are less likely to gather together with others: 38 percent do not host a service, compared to 35 percent who offer a memorial service and 27 percent who provide a casket and viewing prior to cremation.

“There is a myth that if you have no service and move along, the grief will go away,” said Anderson, who serves as president of the NFDA.

But like the widow with the delayed funeral, people need to grapple with death alongside fellow mourners. “Grief shared is grief diminished,” he said.

Many choose cremation for economic reasons: An average funeral with burial and viewing is $7,848 compared to a direct cremation at $2,300. It’s also more convenient, as geographically dispersed families need flexibility to delay the service or to gather in a different location. The COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated trends toward cremation and eliminating funeral services.

And just as fewer Americans marry in churches, fewer are choosing to be buried in church graveyards. Cremation continues to grow in popularity as America becomes increasingly secular.

These changing demographics are impacting the traditional role of the funeral for Christians, as a rite of passage to mourn the dead and to place individual lives within a larger, hope-filled narrative: Christ has died; Christ has risen; Christ will come again.

Shifting views on cremation

Christians have historically resisted cremation because of a high view of the body as God’s creation and because of the doctrine of the Resurrection.

David Jones, professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote that burial “most visibly depicts the gospel message, most clearly communicates the hope of future bodily resurrection, and most plainly expresses the promise of an eternal physical existence.”

But a growing number of Christians are widening their views on the disposition of earthly remains while acknowledging the rich symbolism of burial and resurrection.

“There is not a lot of New Testament evidence to negate cremation as a practice,” said Brian Croft. “God made Adam from dust, so it’s not true that God can’t recreate people from cremation.”

Croft, a Southern Baptist pastor in Kentucky, began a ministry called Practical Shepherding after doing 200 funerals in 15 years.

As Christians’ views on cremation are evolving, so are cultural views around death. Previous generations were surrounded by death in ways that modern generations are not. They lived before antibiotics and open-heart surgeries, saw high rates of childhood mortality, and observed the cycle of life firsthand on farms. These were the generations that washed and prepared their dead, laid them out at home for a wake, and later carried them to the church for a funeral and burial.

But in recent decades we have found a way to keep death at arm’s length, according to Tim Perry, a theologian in the Wesleyan Church who authored the book Funerals: For the Care of Souls.

“In the past humans learned to deal with grief by dealing with the body,” he said. “But since the 1950s, we have figured out ingenious ways to not deal with the body, and as a result we are not good at dealing with grief.”

He sees no theological barrier to cremation but advocates that churches and pastors grow in their understanding of death and grief to help shepherd their members through the process.

If a member merely “makes a phone call and two hours later picks up ashes in a box, that practice is pastorally suspect,” said Perry, who has worked in funeral homes in addition to roles in ministry.

He believes there are theological and psychological benefits to viewing bodies as our ancestors did, whenever possible. There are ways to accomplish this, like an open-casket viewing, that still allow for cremation to follow.

In fact, he points to the United Kingdom as a model. Because of space constraints, UK churches have fully accepted cremation and have woven it into funeral services. Mourners assemble at the crematorium chapel as the casket is brought in. And after the service ends and mourners have paid their final respects, the cremation begins.

Telling the truth about death

In 2016, Perry uprooted his family to move back to Shawville, Quebec, as his father lived out a terminal cancer diagnosis. The process of walking with his father through the end of his life revealed the power of supportive church family, according to Perry.

“I was not alone, my dad was not alone, and he was among people where his suffering made sense,” he said.

This connection to the church held true after his father’s death as well, as Perry relied on liturgy to plan his father’s funeral service.

“Liturgy gives us words so we are not left alone, having to make things up for ourselves,” said Perry. “Liturgy gives us the grammar to tell the truth about ourselves and humanity—a person has died, and we commit them to God’s mercy and judgment, before we return to the land of the living.”

As an example, he shares a prayer for funerals from the Anglican Church of Canada: “Father of all, we pray to you for those we love but see no longer. Grant them your peace; let light perpetual shine upon them; and in your loving wisdom and almighty power, work in them the good purpose of your perfect will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Perry advocates that churches incorporate the reality of death into worship and life more regularly. This could include teaching a biblical theology of death in Sunday school, hosting an All Souls’ Day service where congregants who died in the past year are honored, or inviting a funeral director to talk about funeral planning.

“We should make this universal experience a part of our common life so it’s not the thing we are surprised by,” said Perry.

Leaving a legacy

One challenge cremation presents is how to create a permanent marker of remembrance for the departed. Though urn gardens, columbaria, and burial are options, many forego creating a permanent resting place for cremated remains.

This can be a missed opportunity, according to Steve Bezner, senior pastor of Houston Northwest Church in Texas. “In Scripture, tombs are significant markers that say, ‘This was an important place in the life of this person.’”

Though churches and cemeteries are historically intertwined, it is now more common for cemeteries to exist apart from churches. “The divorce of the cemetery from the church building proper has precipitated this change [of minimizing permanent markers],” said Bezner. “When they are connected, it tells you that your death, if you are a believer, is inseparably tied to your faith.”

As a 50-year-old church without a cemetery, Houston Northwest Church is now beginning to consider how to accommodate aging founding members.

“They want to tie their earthly legacy to this place,” said Bezner. “It says to their children and grandchildren, ‘This person invested their life for the gospel in this particular place.”

Located in a developed area without land for a cemetery, Houston Northwest Church is considering installing an urn garden. “I think that would be a beautiful thing,” said Bezner.

Pastors are called to help congregants at all stages of life and death. For Brian Croft, attending a spate of poorly preached funerals led him to start his Practical Shepherding ministry, which equips pastors in areas ranging from leadership to bereavement. The ministry was birthed out of his conviction that too few pastors are equipped to comfort the grieving and the sick.

“The two most important places to do ministry are the hospital room and the funeral home,” said Croft. “That’s where people are confronted with their humanity and mortality, the things we spend most of our lives pretending don’t exist.”

It is there that pastors are able to engage their members and reach people beyond the church’s doors, a necessary task within a culture that shrinks at the thought of death. Whether grieving families choose cremation or burial, pastors offer the same hope–that Christ has defeated death.

“Though death is our common enemy and our common destiny, it is God who writes the first and last word over our lives,” says Perry. “This is the good news of the gospel.”

- More from Melissa Morgan Kelley

Ideas

The Struggle for Sri Lanka’s Second Birth

Ivor Poobalan

Christians have served well as our society fell apart amid economic crisis. But we still have work to do.

Sri Lankan protesters wave flags and chant slogans after taking control of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office compound amid the ongoing economic crisis on July 13, 2022 in Colombo.

Abhishek Chinnappa / Getty Images

Chaotic scenes unfolded before an incredulous world last weekend in an Indian Ocean island the size of West Virginia yet with a population ten times larger. Since July 9, global media outlets have been running lead stories on the dramatic social ferment in Sri Lanka.

A massive citizen mobilization pushed President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the most powerful Sri Lankan leader since the days of the country’s ancient kings, to unceremoniously leave by a back door to escape the wrath of hundreds of thousands of protesters that came calling at his presidential palace this past Saturday. He fled Wednesday out to deep sea aboard a naval vessel, to the Maldives on board a military jet, then to Singapore on a commercial airline. From there he sent his belated resignation Thursday, which enabled some closure so that the nation could look to rebuild from here.

Lonely Planet listed this middle-income country and tropical tourist hotspot as the world’s best nation to visit in 2019. Later that year, Rajapaksa became president by a landslide. He used his military background to great effect to coerce the masses haunted by still-fresh memories of the horrific Easter attacks of April 2019. In less than three years, though, he succeeded in presiding over a catastrophic economic collapse that defies belief.

Experts call it a man-made humanitarian disaster caused by a deadly cocktail of ego, corruption, and reckless government policies in the face of the pandemic. By January, Sri Lanka ran out of foreign reserves and became incapable of sustaining essential imports or servicing its international debt obligations. By April, the Central Bank officially announced that the second-strongest Asian economy of 1948 was effectively bankrupt.

By June, the official inflation rate was reported to be 54.6 percent, but on the ground the situation is much worse. A loaf of bread that cost 60 rupees a year ago is now sold at 190 rupees. Rice, the country’s staple, has gone up by 140 percent, and wheat flour prices by 400 percent. I just returned from talking to someone who felt fortunate to have obtained three liters of petrol for his motorbike after staying in a fuel line for over 72 hours day and night. For millions of farmers, traders, factory owners, and artisans, the lack of fuel has leveled a deathblow to their means of income. It has also kept schools and universities closed for months and has badly hit essential services like transport and health care.

Doctors at the largest children’s hospital have reported that they are seeing alarming numbers of undernourished pregnant women, and several hospitals have suspended routine surgeries due to the unavailability of essential drugs.

The aragalaya or “political struggle” began on March 1, when a handful of conscientious and determined citizens decided to stand each evening at the street corner a few meters from our seminary, holding candles and placards in silent protest. They were calling out President Rajapaksa and the government he had staffed with family members to resign on account of the immense suffering being inflicted on millions of Sri Lankans. He responded with a televised address in which he admitted that many of his policy decisions had been fatally flawed but held on to a bizarre logic that he could not possibly leave office as a “failed president.”

Soon similar protests sprang up all over the country, leading to the first massive march on the president’s private residence on April 1. When the police and military were ordered to violently crack down on the peaceful protesters and arrest dozens, hundreds of members of the Bar Association showed up pro bono to represent those arrested and to secure their release on bail. It was clear that wider civil society was being inspired and galvanized to get behind the movement. The protesters then moved to set up a semipermanent site downtown at Galle Face. The name they playfully called it—Gota Go Gama (Gota Go Village)—is now world renowned.

One characteristic of the struggle has been its remarkable egalitarianism. Sri Lanka is a country of rich diversity, whose post-independence history has sadly been marred by class, ethnic, and religious conflicts and an unyielding majoritarianism. Despite being the oldest democracy in Asia, we are not used to a social space where everyone—young and old, poor and rich, people of faith and no faith, Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, and Burghers—can have an equal voice and share a common aspiration for a better future.

Paradoxically, however, the misery of our circumstances has had a soul-cleansing effect on our national consciousness. We are now more aware of our relatedness and interdependence, and are ready to celebrate our diversity. This is what makes me hopeful that now we may have our second chance at independence.

A church of the soil

Where is the church in all this? How does Christian discipleship play out in the public square?

Christianity has had a long history in Sri Lanka. The oldest Christian traditions that survive to the present—Roman Catholic, Dutch Reformed, and other Protestants—go back to successive waves of European colonization under the Portuguese, Dutch, and the British, beginning in A.D. 1505. Yet historical sources attest to the presence of viable Christian communities on the island from as early as the fourth century A.D. The clearest evidence of this early Christian presence is in the sixth-century Christian Topography by world traveler Cosmas Indicopleustes, who wrote, “In the Island of Taprobane (Ceylon), there is a church of the Christians, and clerks and faithful.”

Sadly we hear nothing more of this sixth-century “church of the Christians.” Unlike other ancient Christian communities that thrived in South Asia, the church in Sri Lanka slips quietly out of existence. And 20th-century Sri Lanka witnessed the only instance of church numbers declining in a non-Muslim nation in the global south. The total Christian population declined from 10 percent in 1911 to 7.6 percent in 1981. While reverse conversions and large-scale migration by traditional Christian families may provide pragmatic explanations, this unfortunate trend of church decline was the inevitable result of theological liberalism and Christian complacency that had set in from the end of the 19th century.

But the early 1980s marked a major turning point in the prospects of the Sri Lankan church. The 1981 national census records the bottom of Christian decline. Between 1953 and 1981, the Sri Lankan population grew by 83 percent from 8 million to almost 15 million. During the same period, the Christian community grew only by 56 percent. However between 1981 and 2012, when the overall population grew by 37 percent (from nearly 15 million to more than 20 million), the Christian numbers kept up, growing by 37 percent also.

What factors account for the changed pattern of the Christian demographic?

Two significant trends were set in motion from the early 1970s: a recovery of confidence in the authority of Scripture, and a renewal of passion for the proclamation of the gospel.

Pentecostal and charismatic church movements lent great strength to a renewed conviction that the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ must be made known to everyone. Indigenous movements led by pioneer workers from local churches shared the life-transforming message of Christ with people who had previously been ignored. They were supported by organizations such as Campus Crusade and its Jesus Film teams. The faithful words of these trailblazers backed by a simple lifestyle, spiritual gifts, and prayer gradually resulted in significant numbers coming to faith.

This was accompanied by a renewed confidence in the authority of Scripture. Ministries like Youth for Christ equipped hundreds of young people to become diligent students of the Bible and encouraged them to become loyal members in the local church. Bible camps and conferences and evangelical seminary education soon became standard fare for a community that was rediscovering the excitement of a living faith. These vital ingredients prepared the Sri Lankan church to be proactive and responsive in the face of some of the gravest challenges that would unfold over the next four decades.

One was the devastating civil war between the government and the Tamil separatist movement. Having started in 1983, the longest-running civil war in Asia ended 26 years later in 2009. During these decades, evangelical Christians were forced to grapple with how faith related to the constant reality of violence, insecurity, displacement, human rights abuses, deprivation, and every form of human need. It was possible to see how the proclamation of the good news and the practices that flowed out of a life shaped by the gospel were complementary Christian actions.

A major spinoff of the civil war was the launching of Sri Lanka Unites (SLU) to promote reconciliation among young people of all ethnic and religious communities. Founded by a dynamic young Christian, SLU has influenced thousands of high school youth from all backgrounds and from every part of the country to think in terms of diversity, equality, and peace—with such extraordinary success that the movement has now been replicated in a dozen countries from Sierra Leone to the US. It cannot be a coincidence that the language celebrating diversity used at SLU programs over the years has been echoed by so many in the aragalaya movement.

A second major challenge faced by the church was unprecedented persecution that began in the early 1990s. Fueled by extreme ethnoreligious Buddhist movements, it picked up momentum so that initial discriminatory sentiments against Christians quickly escalated to allegations of unethical conversion, full-on confrontations, attacks on pastors and believers, arsons of church properties, and even a couple of incidents of martyrdom.

Again, this situation became an opportunity for the maturing of the Sri Lankan church, this time bringing about a unity and collaboration not seen before. It was the experience of persecution that opened the church to a new sense of interdependence, including a committee—formed with Catholic and Anglican bishops together with charismatic and Pentecostal pastors—working diligently to stave off some of the graver dangers of rising persecution.

Thus upon reflection, we can see how God’s purpose of Christian maturity has graciously played out through the travails of the church in Sri Lanka. “You know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete” (James 1:3–4).

Signs of Christian maturity

How, then, has the church showed a biblically mature response in the context of Sri Lanka’s most recent crisis?

1. By speaking truth to power: Denominational leaders and Christian politicians, journalists, lawyers, and academics have been prominent among the vocal critics of corrupt officials and their ill-advised policies. The Roman Catholic Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith is today one of the most trusted voices in the country on account of his bold and sustained condemnation of the injustices by the Rajapaksa regime.

2. By participating in solidarity with the struggle: Throughout the agitations that led to the resignation of the Rajapaksa family from the high posts they held in government, the church played a prominent role: whether by standing with the protesters in Gota Go Gama or by organizing its own silent protests, conducting prayer meetings, and being part of important interreligious forums.

3. By serving the needs of those most affected: Millions in Sri Lanka have entered a long period of economic hardship. Increasing numbers are facing shortages of food and medicine. It is heartening to see how Christian families and churches are spontaneously responding to the emergency. For example, my local Methodist church has been giving out weekly cooked lunches for several weeks and it doesn’t take more than a few minutes for the hundred or so lunches to be gratefully received. Another team in the church runs a Community Cupboard, collecting dry rations from church members, sorting them, and distributing them to the poor in the community. People line up as early as 5 a.m. to make sure they will be within the 200 beneficiaries given some help that week.

4) By contributing to governance and nation building: It is most important to note that in recent years—and certainly during this crisis—Christian voices have been disproportionately prominent in crucial dialogues within the legislature, with foreign governments, and with international news agencies. Abraham Sumanthiran and Eran Wickramaratne are two influential legislators who left lucrative careers (as a senior lawyer and a CEO of a major bank, respectively) to enter parliament out of a clear Christian commitment to work for social justice. They are today among the most trusted parliamentarians for their integrity and credibility.

Transformations still pending

As much as the church’s witness at this time of crisis has been largely positive and encouraging, there are still some key areas that Sri Lankan Christians will do well to address.

1. The sacred-secular divide that is still alive and well: Many are familiar with this global anomaly where Christians learn to live by an invisible line of partition between some aspects of God’s world and others. In this way of thinking, matters like church attendance, Bible study, and prayer are “sacred” and mandatory for believers. But one’s choice of a job, social justice activity, engagement in society, and concern for the environment are viewed as “secular” and unsuitable for Christians. This unbiblical dualism has stunted the discipleship of many passionate believers and kept them from following the call of Christ to be in the world even as they are not of it.

2. The distortion of prosperity teachings and celebrity-style Christian leaders:This too is a global phenomenon that has imperceptibly spread among urban communities and into the places where pioneer missionaries had established first-generation church communities. Lacking solid biblical teaching, enthusiastic Christians are drawn by the promise of divine blessing if they pledge an uncritical loyalty to an “anointed” man or woman of God. In a country now rocked by economic woes, the contradiction posed by these false teachers’ distortions of the gospel cannot be overstated.

3. A receiving orientation rather than a giving mindset: I like to call this a fixation on the plea of the Macedonian man in Paul’s vision: “Come over … and help us” (Acts 16:9). Sri Lanka has for centuries been a missionary-receiving church. Many Christians here struggle to see how taking care of our own affairs is our responsibility. Sending Sri Lankans as missionaries to bless other nations is a concept conspicuous by its absence in the church here. We would do well to remember another plea by the Macedonian churches: not to ask for help for themselves but to entreat Paul that they might sacrificially give toward the churches in Judea (2 Cor. 8:1–5).

Many around the world look at Sri Lanka today and are understandably appalled. But on July 9, I saw a battered people set out with an unimaginable resolve, their deep pain and frustrations tempered by their commitment to the endgame. As I joined that heaving mass of humanity all the way to the gates of the President’s House, I remembered I was there as an ambassador of Christ. And it wasn’t just me. Here and there, I recognized the clergy of various churches in their clerical garb and the Catholic nuns scattered in the melee: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

Like the years that led to independence from Britain in 1948, this too may get worse before it gets better. A new Sri Lanka is struggling to be born. The struggle this time is for independence from ethnoreligious majoritarianism, divisive politics, and crippling corruption. The process that leads to a safe delivery is fraught with danger and may be painful and messy. Yet it’s a joy to see the church with her sleeves rolled up and ready to assist.

Ivor Poobalan, PhD, is prinicipal of Colombo Theological Seminary in Sri Lanka.

- More from Ivor Poobalan

Ideas

Blessed Are the Political Peacemakers

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

Experts warn political violence is coming. Christians can look to Scripture, not the American Revolution, for guidance.

The seventh hearing of the congressional committee investigating the sedition at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was much about violence: who did it, who encouraged it, who knew it was coming yet did not intervene.

“The crucial thing is the next step: What this committee, what all of us, will do to fortify our democracy against coups, political violence,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) toward the end of the hearing. Political violence, he said, is “the problem of the whole country now.”

Raskin is far from alone in raising alarm about the possibility of political violence—seeking political ends through violent means instead of normal, peaceful processes like voting, running for office, lobbying, or protest.

“We know from other countries that have descended into really serious political violence that this is a trajectory, and we’re on it,” researcher Rachel Kleinfeld warned in a Washington Post article Monday. “We’re actually pretty far advanced on it.”

Kleinfeld said we could see rising right-wing militia violence as well as violence from a “disaffected left.” She ominously projected that the “percentages of Americans endorsing violence are approaching Northern Ireland’s Troubles at their height in 1973.”

(The scale of this kind of political violence can vary widely, from an individual’s attack to a revolution, but the Troubles are a good example of what many anticipate happening in the US—“episodes of violence were largely localized, and in the background” yet normal life continued though “everyone was more fearful and depressed.”)

There’s reason to be skeptical of the survey results she’s likely referencing; for example, some who may tell a pollster “violence against the other party [is] at least a little okay” may also be far from willing to commit such violence themselves.

But “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of” (Luke 6:45). There’s no denying Kleinfeld’s point that Americans’ political rhetoric and animosity has worsened in recent years. Maybe Kleinfeld is right that we “need to realize that paramilitary groups could become a normal part of our political life.” Maybe political violence is on the way. Christians should have nothing to do with it.

You might believe that goes without saying, but there are two reasons I think it needs to be explicitly stated.

One is due to the current reputation of American evangelicals in much of mainstream media. Pundits and experts warning about the risk of right-wing political violence often include a mention of Christianity, Christian nationalism, and/or white evangelicals. Kleinfeld, for instance, argued that Russia is giving “a White, Christian, traditional hierarchy, very masculine, led by a strongman” model of politics, which is attractive to some on the antidemocratic US right.

This association makes sense to many Americans because of the proliferation of Christian symbolism among the crowd that stormed the Capitol, the record-high support former President Donald Trump consistently received from self-described evangelicals, and the Christian nationalist rhetoric from Republican figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. If this is not how we want our compatriots to think of us, unequivocally rejecting political violence is a good place to start.

The second reason is that I worry American Christians’ conception of acceptable political violence is too much shaped by our history and beliefs as Americans—particularly our understanding of the American Revolution as a laudable example of political violence—and not enough shaped by what Jesus taught about violence while living in a society with a far more brutal government than our own.

With Fourth of July festivities wound down, consider what we’re celebrating in the Revolution. There are serious complaints in the Declaration of Independence, but taxation was a prominent concern—without representation, yes, but also at declining rates we would now find laughably low. Is that a good enough reason for Christians to kill Christians?

That’s a lot of what the Revolution was, after all: Christians killing Christians over political issues. And maybe with hindsight of more than two centuries we judge it a positive outcome. Or maybe—examining the ability of other ex-British colonies to gain independence without war, or even the history of England’s abolition of slavery compared to our own—we don’t.

I could talk myself in circles on the subject, but I can’t come around to saying it was right for Christians to kill other Christians over tax rates. I can’t come around to it because I can’t square it with what Jesus said about violence, especially in the Sermon on the Mount:

I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. … You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. (Matt. 5:38–41, 43–45)

Christians have debated the implications of these verses and others like them (John 18:36; Rom. 12:17–21; Eph. 6:12) for millennia, and I know my conviction that Jesus here is calling us to nonviolence isn’t universally shared among faithful followers of Christ.

For a long time, I didn’t share it either. I believed the pacifist interpretation to be too strange and hard and impractical. Eventually, however, I concluded Jesus had already spoken plainly; it was simply a command I did not want to hear. And an important realization, as I changed my thinking, was that Jesus was speaking in a violent political context.

We use “turn the other cheek” and “go the extra mile” metaphorically to describe interpersonal strife. Jesus used them literally, speaking to an audience at real risk of physical abuse by an occupying power—in fact, a government that did not offer them any of the outlets for peaceful political expression we have available to us.

There’s a lot wrong with our government and politics, but by global and historical standards, we enjoy remarkably free, functional, and democratic governance. If Jesus told his original hearers to eschew violence in favor of peaceful, surprising, and potentially self-sacrificial behavior, how much more should that command apply to us?

In that light, even if you interpret these verses differently than I do, perhaps you can see the gap between what the American Revolution says about political violence and what Jesus says about it. And if we can’t see that gap, or if we find ourselves spinning scenarios in which we’d be justified doing violence over politics—harming our neighbors and hating our enemies because we did not get the president or policy we wanted—perhaps our minds have been conformed to the Revolution more than the mind of Christ (Rom. 12:2; 1 Cor. 2:14–16).

Perhaps political violence is indeed coming to America, but it should not be by Christian hands.

The Lesser Kingdom: A prophetic, eclectic, and humble take on current issues, public policy, and political events with thoughts on faithful engagement.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Ideas

Indian Christian Day Uses Martyrdom of Apostle Thomas to Unite the Diaspora

Sam George

One in five Indian Americans is now Christian. But they remain divided by language, doctrine, and generation.

Indian Christian Day celebration in New York on July 3, 2022.

Courtesy of FIACONA

July 3 has long been observed as Saint Thomas Day, commemorating the death of the apostle considered by many to be the patron saint of India.

Now it is also celebrated as Indian Christian Day (Yeshu Bhakti Divas), an annual opportunity for Jesus followers of Asian Indian origin to preserve their distinctive identity and their global presence by uniting across their many languages, denominations, regions, customs, and creeds.

This month, ICD celebrations were carried out in cities across India, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru, as well as Indian diaspora locations around the world, including New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, London, Durban, and Singapore. This Saturday (July 16), Indian Christians in the Chicago region will gather for an evening of ethnic worship and prayer at Wheaton College, led by Indian worship leader Vijay Benedict from Mumbai.

Last year, the grassroots organizers chose the martyrdom of Thomas, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, to celebrate the ancient heritage and rich legacy of Christianity in India because the ancient Syrian Christian community of India traces its origin to the apostle. And it’s not just Catholics that revere Thomas. So does my own reformed evangelical denomination, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church.

According to reliable traditions and well-known Christian historians, Thomas came to the Malabar Coast in Kerala in A.D. 52 and was martyred near Chennai in Tamil Nadu in A.D. 72. Thus, this month marks the 1,950th anniversary of his martyrdom in southern India.

Followers of Jesus Christ have lived in the Indian subcontinent for nearly 2,000 years. They have lived in peace and harmony with their diverse religious neighbors and have played a significant role in the making of modern India—especially their contributions in the fields of education, healthcare, literacy, social development, and women empowerment.

Courtesy of FIACONA

Expand to view slideshow of Indian Christian Day celebration in New York.

The ICD celebrations, coordinated in the US by the Federation of Indian American Christians in North America (FIACONA), are designed to display the enormous diversity of Indian Christians—ranging from languages to doctrines, denominations, and generations—while also serving as a uniting force across their differences.

Also, Indian Christian Day stresses the fact that Christianity reached India before Europe and North America, counteracting the false narrative that Christianity is a Western religion as propagated by some Hindutva fanatics. ICD events express solidarity through acts of worship, love, and service, including a series of charity projects to serve India’s poor and marginalized.

Since US immigration reforms in 1965, Indian Christians have been a steady stream of new immigrants coming to American shores. Currently, nearly 1 in 5 of the nation’s 5.1 million Indian Americans is Christian, amounting to a million fellow believers. More than 1,500 Indian immigrant churches have been established in North America. The Global Diaspora Institute of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center is currently conducting research to better understand this stream of American Christianity, which is the most educated and wealthiest immigrant group in the US and brought with it one of the oldest Christian traditions in the world.

However, Indian American churches are established along the lines of language and denomination and often do not interact with each other. Most churches remain generational, since most second-generation Indian American Christians leave the churches they grew up in. It is of the utmost importance to bring all these groups together to realize their collective strength and to unleash their missional potentials to serve their adopted homeland, ancestral lands, and all peoples everywhere.

The Chicagoland event alone will gather together Malayali Anglicans, Tamil Pentecostals, Telugu Baptists, Hindi-speaking Mennonites, Goan Catholics, Gujarati Methodists, second-generation evangelicals, and more.

Courtesy of FIACONA

Indian Christian Day celebration in New York

ICD events have generated a remarkable sense of unity among Indian Christians of diverse backgrounds by celebrating the truth of the history and heritage of the Christian faith in India. Since last year when ICD was launched, more churches are collaborating and open to learning from each other of their common immigrant church issues. Seeing their leaders share a common stage, brushing aside differences in languages and doctrines, ignites a greater spirit of togetherness among Indian diaspora Christians.

It’s also a potent reminder that American Christianity is diasporic at its core. Christianity is not native to this continent; it was brought here by immigrants. Wave after wave of migrants from different shores of the world have brought their distinctive culturalized Christianity, and over many decades and generations their interaction with each other and their regions of heritage have remade American Christianity continually. The more global we are and the more globally connected we are, the more globally relevant our faith will be.

One could even argue that Christianity is more native to India than to the United States!

Sam George, PhD, is director of the Global Diaspora Institute at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center and a Lausanne Movement catalyst for diasporas. Of Asian Indian St. Thomas Christian heritage, he has authored or edited a dozen books, including a three-volume series on Asian Diaspora Christianity (Fortress Press 2021).

- More from Sam George

Share

Share

Share

Finding the courage

Pushing back on distrust

Share

Share

Deconstruction zone in the pews

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Shifting views on cremation

Telling the truth about death

Leaving a legacy

Share

Share

A church of the soil

Signs of Christian maturity

Transformations still pending

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share