Mark Lowry, Did You Know Your Mary Song Would Be Controversial?

The success of “Mary Did You Know?” is a miracle to the songwriter, three decades later.

A manger scene with the focus on Mary and baby Jesus.

Ben White / Unsplash / Creative Commons

For Mark Lowry, almost every day is Christmas.

Whenever the storyteller and singer takes the stage for a concert, he always closes the show with the same song—“Mary Did You Know?”—no matter what time of year it is.

“When you have one hit, you better end with it,” Lowry said in a recent phone interview.

Lowry co-wrote “Mary Did You Know?” with Buddy Greene, a well-respected songwriter and instrumentalist, in 1991, while both were on tour with famed gospel singers Bill and Gloria Gaither. Recorded first by Christian singer Michael English, the song has become a modern Christmas staple—covered by some of the biggest names in the business: Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers and Wynonna Judd, Mary J. Blige, Clay Aiken, Carrie Underwood, and the a cappella vocal group Pentatonix.

The idea for the song dates back to conversations the 63-year-old had with his mother about Jesus and Mary. Most revolved around the question: What was it like to raise the son of God?

“Literally, what was it like teaching the Word of God to talk,” he said, referring to a title used for Jesus in the Gospel of John. “What was it like to give him a haircut? Did she ever walk into his room and say, ‘clean this mess up’?”

He added that most of the questions he had did not make their way into the song—only the ones that rhymed made it.

Mark Lowry, cowriter of “Mary Did You Know?”

Those conversations also touched on spiritual topics, like the mystery of the incarnation, said Lowry—the Christian belief that God became human in the person of Jesus. They eventually inspired a series of short monologues Lowry wrote in 1984 for a Christmas concert at Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, then led by Jerry Falwell. Those monologues were the glue that held the show together, serving as a transition from one Christmas song to another.

They stuck with Lowry, who thought they might work for a song if he could find the right music. Several musicians tried to come up with melodies, but none fit, said Lowry. Then, while on tour with the Gaithers, he showed the lyrics to Greene and asked him to have a go. Greene took them home and started working on some music. Lowry recalls that Greene, who could not be reached, had spent a day listening to Christmas carols written in minor keys, like “What Child is This?” and “We Three Kings” before composing the melody for “Mary Did You Know?”

“It was beautiful,” he said. “It was haunting, and it made the song work. It didn’t take away from the message—it elevated the message.”

While writing lyrics, Lowry said he imagined himself as an overly enthusiastic angel who showed up at the manger during the Christmas story and was filled with questions. He used the phrase, “Did you know” to express that enthusiasm—as if the angel was bubbling over with joy for what the birth of Jesus meant. The questions in the song are the questions Lowry would have asked if he had been there.

But that phrase has gotten Lowry in trouble in recent years—seen as a kind of theological mansplaining.

“Listeners have complained that, yes, Mary knew that she was going to bear the Messiah, the promised salvation of Israel, and that, therefore, the rhetorical question upon which the song rests is either redundant or condescending,” author Joy Clarkson, host of the “Speaking with Joy” podcast, wrote in a 2018 CT article entitled, “Yes, Mary Knew.”

That phrase has also inspired a series of sarcastic social media posts. “Mary did you know … that there’s a boy on his way to gift your newborn with a drum solo,” tweeted author and pastor Courtney Ellis. “Mary did you know we’ve been trying to reach you about your extended warranty,” tweeted Texas attorney Robert Callahan II. There’s even apparently a satire of the song, entitled “Mary Freaking Knew.”

Lowry is pretty good-natured about the criticism of the song. He’s quick to admit it has shortcomings—which he thinks are more evident to his fellow Christians who are more familiar with theology than the average person who hears the song. The last thing he wanted to do was to insult Mary or anger his fellow believers.

“I never meant for it to start a war or irritate people,” he said. “I definitely didn’t want that.”

That response fits Lowry's character. He’s long used humor to help his fellow evangelicals lighten up, preferring laughter to a fight any day.

“We’ve portrayed to the world that we’re superhuman beings, and we’re not,” he told Religion News Service in a 1999 interview. “We’re just sinners in need of a savior.”

Still, he’s grateful for what he called the “miracle of the song.” Lowry, who has never been married, views his songs as his children. None of them, he said, has grown and had a life of their own the way “Mary Did You Know?” has. Most of all, he hopes the song will point people to the story of the baby Jesus and what his arrival would mean.

“I hope the song makes people think about the baby Jesus,” he said. “I hope it sends them running to Luke 1 to find out what Mary knew.”

- More from Bob Smietana - Religion News Service

News

Wire Story

US Senate Confirms Rashad Hussain as First Muslim Religious Freedom Ambassador

CT and RNS

(UPDATE) Bipartisan vote of 85–5 installs Biden nominee championed by many Christian IRF advocates.

US Mission Geneva / Flickr

Rashad Hussain has become America’s new ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, after the US Senate voted 85–5 last night in favor of his historic nomination as the first Muslim to hold the position.

Previous IRF ambassador Sam Brownback praised the decision and its bipartisan majority. “Religious persecution is rampant around the world, and the international community looks to the United States for leadership that can make a difference,” he stated.

Knox Thames, a senior fellow for the Institute for Global Engagement who served as the US State Department’s special advisor for religious minorities during both the Obama and Trump administrations, also praised the “overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.”

“It’s good for the issue that partisan politics stayed out of international human rights advocacy,” he told CT. “And it’s good for the persecuted that the Senate confirmed American’s top diplomat promoting religious freedom before Christmas.”

The US Commission on International Religous Freedom (USCIRF) thanked Congress for prioritizing the appointment of Brownback’s successor. “The right to freedom of religion or belief is under sustained threat globally,” stated USCIRF chair Nadine Maenza. “With his years of knowledge and experience, Ambassador Hussain is well placed to advance the US government’s promotion of international religious freedom.”

C-Span screenshot

US Senate confirms Rashad Hussain as Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom on December 17, 2021.

“We are praying for his success and we are eager to work with him,” said Brent Leatherwood, acting president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC). “Religious freedom is under assault around the globe and his position is vital to confronting those who would undermine this fundamental right.”

Open Doors president and CEO David Curry said Hussain is “well-qualified” for the role. “His leadership will play a critical role in countering the global rise of religious persecution,” he stated. “We look forward to partnering together to speak up for people of faith everywhere.”

Open Doors, which Brownback joined as a senior fellow this year, urged for Hussain’s priorities to include “the extreme violence against Christians in Nigeria, the genocide against Uyghur Muslims in China, and the deterioration of religious freedoms in India, among others.”

USCIRF vice chair Nury Turkel urged the US government to support Hussain by “ensur[ing] that other key vacancies are swiftly filled, including the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, the Special Adviser for IRF on the National Security Council (NSC) staff, and Special Coordinator for Tibetan issues.”

Twelve Christian IRF advocates previously told CT why they supported Hussain’s nomination:

Original post (Oct. 27), “Religious Freedom Ambassador Nominee Goes Before Senate,” by Joseph Hammond for Religion News Service:

A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Tuesday considered the nomination of Rashad Hussain to be President Joe Biden’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Hussain’s confirmation would make him the first Muslim to hold the position.

Hussain held a number of roles in the Obama administration, serving on the National Security Council, as an associate White House counsel, and as special envoy for strategic counterterrorism communications and special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The OIC is an intergovernmental organization representing 57 member states, most of them with a Muslim majority.

The 42-year-old lawyer was one of five nominees who took part in the virtual confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

“(A)s a Muslim American, I have seen the impact of bigotry and guilt by association tactics used against minority communities, including the message it sends and dangers it poses to young people,” Hussain said during his prepared remarks to the committee.

Hussain, born in Wyoming to Indian parents and raised in Texas, is a Hafiz, or person who has memorized the entire Qur’an.

Hussain vowed to ensure that religious freedom issues would never be sacrificed in diplomatic or economic negotiations with China.

“China is one of the worst abusers of religious freedom in the world,” Hussain said in response to a question about America’s response to the Uyghur genocide. Hussain called for increased US pressure on China to alleviate the suffering of not only the Uyghurs but Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Christians, and members of the Falun Gong religious movement.

He suggested that America should encourage Muslim-majority nations to protest China’s treatment of its Muslim population, suggesting such a strategy would have a “significant chance” of making an impact and helping the lives of people in China.

As the OIC special envoy and in other roles, Hussain gained experience in interfaith diplomacy. He oversaw the Marrakech Declaration, an effort to ensure protections for Christians and other minority religious groups in OIC member states.

“A staggering 80 percent of people worldwide live in environments with high or severe restrictions on religious freedom,” Hussain told the Senate committee.

He also vowed to continue the work of his predecessor, Ambassador Sam Brownback, nominated by President Donald Trump, vowing to continue to build the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance. The intergovernmental arrangement involving 27 countries was the signature initiative of Brownback’s tenure in the office.

“In the history of this position, no ambassador has brought the breadth of policy knowledge that Hussain brings,” wrote Princeton University professor Robert P. George and former IRF ambassador Rabbi David Saperstein in an op-ed for RNS. They highlighted the support for his nomination from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and from the Baptist World Alliance, as well as from Jewish groups.

Christian leaders advocating for international religious freedom have applauded his nomination and encouraged the Senate to confirm him to the position.

“As the first Muslim to serve in this role, Hussain would send a strong signal rejecting despicable anti-Muslim discrimination, stereotyping and hatred that we have seen in America and abroad,” wrote Bob Roberts, a Texas pastor and multifaith ministry leader, and Chris Seiple, president emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement, in a column for the Dallas Morning-News last week.

“And, we should note, he is the perfect person to visibly and vocally defend the rights of religious minorities, especially Christians, in some Muslim-majority contexts that have struggled to promote religious freedom—as we have witnessed him do throughout his career.”

Additional reporting by CT.

- More from CT and RNS

News

It Takes a Campus: Pandemic Expands Mental Health Resources at Christian Colleges

Helen Huiskes

Counselors, students, chaplains, and professors alike are doing their part to help.

Fat Camera / Getty Images

Before the pandemic, Meghan Becker would meet with five to seven students in crisis a week. As the director of Baylor University’s CARE Team, it’s her job to connect them with the right professionals and resources to address a range of issues, such as suicidal thoughts, depression, stress, drug use, or other troubling behavior.

The number of students coming to her doubled, then tripled by fall 2021.

“I feel like a care and compassion machine,” said Becker, after a week this semester where she saw 19 students in a row.

Her team at the Waco, Texas, campus started taking two work-from-home days a week as a way to help protect their own mental health and workload while bearing the weight of students’ plights during the pandemic.

The dramatic spike in mental health challenges amid the spread of COVID-19 has overwhelmed counselors and chaplains at Christian colleges across the country. But this moment has also led to a deeper understanding of the burdens students carry and more resources on campuses to help.

A growing number of college students were feeling strained prior to March 2020, but once the coronavirus hit—bringing fear, stress, loneliness, and an unknown trajectory for the future—schools saw record-high requests for counseling support. Many added remote options, sometimes even 24/7 availability, to meet students’ needs.

A year and a half into the pandemic, campus staffs are managing the higher demand for counseling requests as more students returned in person this fall.

Baylor’s CARE Team experienced a 110 percent increase in counseling cases over the pandemic. Student counseling appointments were up 73 percent at Biola University in La Mirada, California.

In an informal survey of leaders from 32 schools belonging to the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), two-thirds said demand for mental health services increased during the pandemic, while even more (78%) saw signs of student distress such as struggles with classwork, participation, and attendance.

Rates of anxiety and depression among college students have been rising for several years. A 2019 briefing by psychologists from John Brown, Pepperdine, George Fox, Corban, and Taylor universities found “the number of students seeking counseling appointments grew by an average of 30 percent, five times the average rate of enrollment growth.”

The panel described how heightened anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation at small Christian colleges has had a noticeable effect campus-wide, not just on individual students but also on the friends, classmates, and professors around them.

“On residential campuses that celebrate the interconnectedness of the ‘community,’” they write, “the impact permeates virtually everything.”

So too did COVID-19 come as an outsized blow to these close-knit Christian campuses, which became separated in their suffering by social distancing and screens.

A survey by the National College Health Association showed students’ mental states have worsened as the pandemic has gone on, with 41 percent of students reporting moderate to serious levels of psychological distress in 2020 and 51 percent in 2021.

The increase in demand for mental health support on Christian campuses has corresponded with recent challenges to long-standing evangelical stigmas around mental health. The past few years have brought talk of depression, anxiety, and self-care to the forefront even more.

“Unfortunately, some churches have a perfectionism that makes this talk kind of threatening,” said Eric Johnson, a professor at the Gideon Institute of Christian Psychology and Counseling at Houston Baptist University. “They want people to always be positive, and trusting Jesus, and I think they unfortunately interpret that as meaning that you don’t have anxiety or depression.”

Johnson noted that he has seen some churches with whom he works becoming more open to the realities of mental health struggles as a result of COVID-19.

Professors at Christian colleges also have had more occasions to respond to students’ mental health concerns as they came up during the pandemic.

Attending class remotely, as some students did in 2020, had its own challenges. Now that they’re back in the classroom, academics can feel more stressful. The class of 2025—who started college this semester—haven’t had a COVID-19-free year of school since 10th grade. That reality has changed how they view education and the kinds of accommodations and interactions they’ve come to expect from their instructors.

“Student expectations will ultimately play a more significant role, and those expectations should inform how the learning elements we redesigned in response to COVID-19 become normalized in our colleges and universities,” one community college president wrote in an Inside Higher Ed piece about long-lasting changes to come out of the pandemic. “We must commit to listening more to our students and to better meeting them where they are.”

Becker at Baylor encouraged professors and staff to “pay attention to the student as a whole person, not just someone who is sitting in their chair” and recognize how they’re feeling.

“Just because they’re not showing up and not turning in their work doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re lazy,” she said. “Most likely it means that they’re depressed.”

The counseling center at Baylor, faced with higher demand, launched an online platform where students can connect with psychiatrists, dieticians, and health care professionals at any time.

Students may also be wary of seeking mental health support on a Christian campus if they fear their condition will be attributed to a lack of faith. Paige Hagy, a junior at The King’s College, had avoided the school’s resources due to earlier experiences with Christian therapists.

“When you go to a biblical counselor, a lot of what they’re going to be asking is, ‘How often do you read your Bible? What are your prayer habits?’” said Paige Hagy, a junior at The King’s College. She had avoided the school’s counseling resources due to earlier experiences with Christian therapists.

“How can we try to administer care to the physical side, and how can we also try to provide spiritual help and to hold both in tension?” asked Jess Weary, a student chaplain coordinator and senior at Wheaton College. “That is something that the church is slowly growing in our ability to do well, imperfectly, but striving to recognize the and instead of the which.”

Of course, spiritual support is important for students in crisis too. In the 2019 report by campus psychologists, alongside concerns about suicide spikes and understaffing, the panel lamented the “lack of faith integration” at Christian colleges and universities.

“There is a lack of Biblical literacy that inhibits some students from being able to recognize the One who reveals Himself as Creator, Redeemer, and Friend,” they wrote. “Tragically, our modern age has virtually no understanding of, or appreciation for, a theology of suffering. The loss of such a metanarrative leads to an existential crisis for many of our students. We must restore a theological vision for hope that recognizes God is in control and actively engaged in our lives, even in the midst of suffering.”

During the pandemic, Wheaton’s chaplain program wanted to make God’s presence known to students who were having a difficult time. The team focused on prayer and availability; during the 2020–2021 school year, they made their way through the residence halls four times, knocking on doors and offering prayer, tea, and cookies to students.

“A lot of students were dealing with the weight of isolation in different ways, whether it be in quarantine specifically or because of the nature of the year, of doing college in the middle of a pandemic,” said Blake Chaput, senior and student chaplain coordinator at Wheaton.

Students often have the best pulse on how they and their classmates are faring. Azusa Pacific University launched a peer educator program for undergrad students to promote mental wellness among their classmates for internship credit, counseling director Lori Lacy told CCCU.

At The King’s College, there was “no shortage” of students who wanted to see a counselor during the pandemic, according to Hagy. Undergrads formed a new organization this fall to discuss issues like anxiety, depression, stress, suicidal ideation, and eating disorders.

Third-year student Neidín Shelnutt, vice president of the new organization, called “The Mend,” said that her experience with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression motivated her to start the club to shed light on what students like her are going through.

Shelnutt’s mental health suffered ever since she was in a car accident her senior year in high school.

“People couldn’t really understand that [trauma], and it was an awkward thing to bring up,” she said. “But as soon as I was able to verbalize those things, people were so welcoming and kind, and that’s what I want King’s to be.”

Shelnutt and cofounder Aidan Kurth, the group’s president, plan to host monthly sessions, each focusing on a different mental health condition, where the group will present information and resources about the condition and open a discussion for students to share their own experiences with it.

The Mend gathered for the first time November 30, just a couple of weeks before fall semester finals. The session focused on generalized anxiety disorder and drew a handful of students.

“The awareness of mental health challenges has dramatically increased, as has the church’s understanding that we should and can be a safe place to talk about it.” said Kara Powell, chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary and executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute. “I want families and churches and Christian ministries to be the greenhouses where students can first talk about their problems and get the support that they need.”

Powell said leaders’ transparency about their own mental health struggles makes a difference. Professors and pastors cannot fill in for the professional help or medical care students may need, but they can have a positive effect by empathizing with student concerns and modeling their own willingness to seek help and practice self-care.

Lacy at Azusa Pacific made a similar point in remarks to CCCU’s magazine, referencing mental health training through human resources. “We give faculty language to use, like ‘I feel how hard this is for you. I’ve felt that way before. I’ve found that it’s helpful to go talk to someone about it.’”

Helen Huiskes is a freelance writer and editor in chief of the

Wheaton Record

- More from Helen Huiskes

Waiting for Jesus: Lessons from Simeon and Anna

Jeff Peabody

Advent’s elderly heroes waited decades for consolation. Here’s what they can teach us.

Simeon’s Song of Praise by Arent de Gelder

WikiMedia Commons

In a recent New York Times article, Jeremy Greene of John Hopkins University outlined the psychic impact of the past two tumultuous years on society. He said, “What we are living through now is a new cycle of collective dismay.”

Collective dismay. There is a universal ache for an end to our current distress (Rom. 8:22). The cry “How long, O Lord?” resonates as we navigate a second pandemic-shaped Advent.

Feeling chronically on hold has led me back to the biblical theme of consolation—comfort in the wake of loss or disappointment. In the birth narratives about Jesus, we meet Simeon and Anna, who were also “waiting for consolation” (Luke 2:25). They have much to speak into our context.

Consolation meets us in our powerlessness.

Two things stand out about these characters. First, they were both stellar people. Scripture describes Simeon as being righteous and devout (Luke 2:25). Luke assigns Anna a place among the prophets (v. 36), which simply means, as Dan Darling put it, “she was gifted and unafraid to declare the word of the Lord.”

A second, more mundane, observation is that they were both very old. Simeon knew he was near the end of his time on earth. Anna was 84, well beyond the era’s average life expectancy (v. 37).

While their age might seem incidental, in truth it highlights the limits of their stellar-ness. Despite being above reproach and worthy of admiration, they could not lengthen their own days. Both were aware of their own frailty and their inability to change it.

In other words, they were reaching the end of themselves, which is precisely when Christ shows up. Grace most often appears when we have no resources of our own to meet the need.

A global crisis has a way of highlighting human limits and lack of control. Like many others over the past two years, I have exhausted myself while attempting to “figure out” and strategize a way forward, all to minimal effect. Accepting the powerlessness of the moment has made more room to see God’s hand in it.

Consolation is more about welcome than change.

Luke introduces Simeon with a word that is normally translated as “waiting” (prosdechomenos). But it could also be rendered as “ready to receive to oneself.” The term expresses an eagerness to welcome.

That emphasis transforms the concept of waiting from excruciating endurance to active anticipation. Simeon counted the days until God revealed what he had promised to him personally.

As Simeon gazed into the brand-new eyes of the Ancient of Days, Christ for him went from being “God with us” to “God with me.”

Similarly, Anna had planted herself in God’s presence for decades, turning the grief of a young widow into a lifelong prayer. Waiting on the Lord became her daily practice. Ann Voskamp once wrote, “This waiting on God is the very real work of the people of God.”

My own waiting often feels like impatience and irritation. I grit my teeth and try to just hold on until I can move past whatever my current trial looks like. I want to get out, not welcome in.

What would it look like to shift into a mindset where we are ready to receive more than escape? Our hardships look different through the lenses of curiosity and welcome. We can adopt George MacDonald’s perspective and say, “Come, then, affliction, if my Father wills, and be my frowning friend.”

Simeon’s own name provides a clue how to go about that, because it comes from a word that means “to hear intelligently.” I have far more practice hearing fearfully. Or angrily. Or just half-heartedly. Simeon, on the other hand, is portrayed as deliberately listening to God’s Spirit. We are told that the Holy Spirit rested on him (v. 25), the Holy Spirit showed things to him (v. 26), and the Holy Spirit moved him (v. 27).

Intelligent listening meant that Simeon discerned the difference between his own impulses and the leading of God. It meant being willing to take in the difficult messages and not just what he wanted to hear. And it meant stepping out in obedience, acting on what he heard.

Consolation overturns our expectations.

The outcome of Simeon’s listening is one of the most tender scenes in Scripture: Simeon enters the temple to discover Mary and Joseph with their newborn. Then he picks up baby Jesus (v. 28). He has the distinction of being the only person in the Bible who we are explicitly told held the Christ child in his arms.

In that act, he provided a striking visual of not just meeting Jesus but receiving him unto himself. As Simeon gazed into the brand-new eyes of the Ancient of Days, Christ for him went from being “God with us” to “God with me.” Comfort has no real meaning until general truth takes on concrete, personal dimensions.

Nothing outwardly about Simeon’s life had changed, yet he told God he could die in peace (Luke 2:29). His inner disquiet had been calmed by Christ, and his soul was at rest. Simeon knew the consolation of Israel was not an event or a change, but a person.

Anna responded to Jesus much the same way as Simeon. His sheer existence was the only evidence she needed to recognize God’s redemptive hand. Christ—a baby who couldn’t even walk—became the focal point of her praise.

We pin our hopes on answers more than on the one who answers. We can pray with very specific, singular responses in mind that we’ll accept from God as adequate. When he doesn’t respond according to our narrow guidelines, we despair. Meanwhile, Christ arrives in our distress as wordlessly as a baby, bundled in a form we didn’t see coming.

The church I pastor met in a middle school before the pandemic arrived. Due to the lockdown, we suddenly found ourselves to be a homeless congregation. And we remained so for 18 months. Returning to in-person services this fall felt like starting over. Numbers are still low. Our capacities are reduced. Holiday traditions have been scaled back.

But we are learning how to be present to the smallness of it, ready to receive. And we are embracing vulnerability. With everything stripped away, Christ has made himself known in unforeseen ways through the very limitations we were striving to overcome. It turns out a baby isn’t just small—it’s also precious and wonderful.

Consolation grows in the sharing.

Anna made a point of talking about Jesus to all who were waiting for redemption (v. 38). Again, Luke returns to that word prosdechomenos. The countless crowds Anna tells about Jesus are marked by that same readiness to receive.

Anna didn’t view Jesus as a secret revelation exclusively for her. No possessive stinginess, no scarcity mentality. As in the feeding of the 5,000, the gospel always multiplies itself to fill the hungry crowds with more left to spare. God’s comfort is intended to reach ever outward.

Anna didn’t wait to see how Christ’s life unfolded before spreading the word. She didn’t need to see how things turned out first. And the sharing itself expanded her own joy.

We’re all part of Anna’s audience. Everyone is looking for rescue, for wrongs to be made right, for suffering to be over in these bewildering, beleaguering times. Anna joyfully points us all to the child and repeats her message: He is everything. He is our consolation. And there is no shortage in him, and as Isaiah 9:7 says, no end to the increasing peace he brings.

Jeff Peabody is a writer and lead pastor of New Day Church in Federal Way, Washington.

- More from Jeff Peabody

News

Free at Last: All 17 Missionaries Kidnapped in Haiti Have Been Released

Christianity Today and The Associated Press

“I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously,” states Christian Aid Ministries after release of American and Canadian hostages held by Haitian gang for months.

Unidentified people carry bags to a vehicle before departing to the airport from the Christian Aid Ministries headquarters at Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, December 16, 2021, after 12 hostage missionaries kidnapped two months ago were finally released.

Joseph Odelyn / AP Photo

Update (Dec. 20): The final 12 Haiti missionary hostages made a daring escape overnight, instead of a paid ransom securing their release, according to new details from Christian Aid Ministries. CAM says the missionaries forgive their kidnappers.

After months of fervent prayer and fasting by Anabaptists and other Christian supporters worldwide, every member of a group of American and Canadian missionaries held hostage in Haiti for months has now been released.

“We glorify God for answered prayer—the remaining twelve hostages are FREE!” stated Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) today in announcing the good news.

“Join us in praising God that all seventeen of our loved ones are now safe,” stated CAM. “Thank you for your fervent prayers throughout the past two months. We hope to provide more information as we are able.”

The Ohio-based group, one of the world’s largest Anabaptist parachurch organizations and active in scores of countries, cited Exodus 15: “I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.”

In Port-au-Prince, Haitian police spokesman Gary Desrosiers confirmed the release to The Associated Press (AP) but did not provide additional details. It remained unclear whether any ransom was paid or what efforts led to the hostages’ freedom.

Late Thursday afternoon, a convoy of at least a dozen vehicles, including US Embassy SUVs and Haitian National Police, brought the missionaries to the Port-au-Prince airport from the missionary group’s offices in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince.

Earlier, people at the CAM campus could be seen hugging each other and smiling.

People hug at the Christian Aid Ministries headquarters in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, December 16, 2021, after 12 hostage missionaries kidnapped two months ago were finally released.

The group of 12 adults and five children—including an 8-month-old—was kidnapped by a Haitian gang called 400 Mawozo in October after visiting an orphanage. The gang demanded $1 million ransoms and threatened to kill the CAM workers.

Two hostages were released on November 21 and three more were released on December 5.

Today marked two months since “our difficult journey began,” stated CAM:

As we stated one day after the crisis began—As an organization, we commit this situation to God and trust Him to see us through. May the Lord Jesus be magnified and many more people come to know His love and salvation. We again want to affirm our commitment to trust God to guide us.

A man takes a photo of missionaries at the Christian Aid Ministries headquarters at Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, December 16, 2021, after 12 hostage missionaries kidnapped two months ago were finally released.

News of the hostages’ release spread quickly in and around Berlin, Ohio, where CAM is headquartered.

“It’s an answer to prayer,” said Ruth Miller, who was working at the front desk of the town’s Amish and Mennonite Heritage Center.

Berlin is in Holmes County, Ohio’s Amish heartland, and many Amish and Mennonites volunteer in CAM ministries and donate to it. The organization’s roots date to the 1980s, when it began working in then-communist Romania. It has since expanded worldwide but has been particularly active in Haiti.

CAM’s work ranges from planting churches and providing food, school supplies, and other materials to those in need, to disaster relief and putting up billboards with evangelistic messages.

Unidentified people gather at the Christian Aid Ministries headquarters in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Thursday, December 16, 2021, after 12 hostage missionaries kidnapped two months ago were finally released.

Wes Kaufman, who attends a church where some CAM leaders also worship, said many congregations had heeded the mission group’s recent request to devote three days to fasting and praying over the situation.

“It’s amazing how God works,” Kaufman said as he dined with family in nearby Walnut Creek at Der Dutchman, a restaurant featuring traditional Amish and Mennonite fare.

“We’re feeling great,” said Ron Marks, minister at Hart Dunkard Brethren Church in Hart, Michigan, whose members included some of the hostages.

Carleton Horst, a member of the Hart congregation, told the AP that church members received a text message Thursday morning from “someone connected to the situation” that all of the hostages had been released.

A mother and her five children, two of them adults, who belong to the church were among the hostages. Horst, who is friends with the family, said the church is rejoicing and he’s “elated that that portion of things is finally over, just praise the Lord for that.”

In addition to Michigan, the hostages are from Wisconsin, Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Oregon, and Ontario, Canada, according to CAM.

Visitors are granted entry at Christian Aid Ministries in Berlin, Ohio on Thursday, December 16.

Luke Perkins, assistant to the president of Evangelical Theological Seminary of Port-au-Prince, was not surprised the group was released. “I would have been very surprised if they were hurt,” he told CT. “Haitians have always been so generous in their hospitality to us as Americans. It’s unfortunate that they were taken—that in and of itself is a departure from the norm.”

Christians in Haiti, both Haitian church leaders and other American missionaries, recently explained their concerns to CT about how the CAM workers could be released in ways that would embolden the gangs that have brought life in Haiti to a standstill.

Meanwhile, the consistently loving prayers of CAM supporters for the kidnappers themselves reveal three Anabaptist distinctives that other Christians should find both familiar and thought provoking, according to experts at the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

The release comes amid an ongoing spike in kidnappings in the capital of Port-au-Prince and elsewhere in Haiti, which is struggling to recover from the July 7 presidential assassination, a 7.2 magnitude deadly earthquake that struck in mid-August, and a severe fuel shortage.

“My earnest prayer is that [the missionaries’ release] forces change in Haiti—that something is done to address the impunity kidnappers have enjoyed,” said Perkins. “Haitians have been living under a cloud of fear for some time now—the kidnapping of these Americans made that worse.”

A caravan drives to the airport after departing from the Christian Aid Ministries headquarters at Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on December 16, 2021, after 12 hostage missionaries kidnapped two months ago were finally released.

Edner Jeanty, executive director of the Barnabas Christian Leadership Center in Port-au-Prince, celebrated the good news but expressed concern that the release “does not change much” in terms of the risks faced by Christians in Haiti.

“We do not know for sure whether money was given. But we do know that the gang 400 Mawozo is still alive and well,” he told CT. “If the American government had some weight in the release of the North Americans, it did not help the Haitian people in helping getting rid of the kidnappers.”

“As this kidnapping incident has come to some form of closure, it is important for Christians to continue to pray and support the former hostages as they have been traumatized and need healing,” he said. “… It is also important to remember that Haitian brothers and sisters are being kidnapped routinely. Help us pray for the peace of the country because our welfare depends on its peace (Jer. 27:4).”

He urges more investment in job creation for local youth, in order to “change the dynamics of fear, struggle, and hope in Haiti.”

“The Haitian people by and large are exhausted. They are tired of witnessing the continued downward spiral of their country,” said Perkins. “[But] when I’m in class with my students, I see such hope. There are so many in the emerging generation that are ready and eager to take the country in a different direction. … I can’t wait to see what the Lord uses them to do.”

CT’s Quick to Listen podcast recently explored how Haitian Christians persevere through crises and whether God really wants missionaries to risk their lives.

Reporting by The Associated Press’ Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince, Peter Smith in Berlin, Ohio, and Anna Nichols in Lansing, Michigan, as well as by CT’s Morgan Lee and Jeremy Weber.

- More from Christianity Today and The Associated Press

Theology

Always Festivus and Never Christmas

Russell Moore

This season calls for reconciliation, not rage and resentment.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Sean Locke / EyeEm / Getty

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

In my much younger years, I celebrated Festivus. This was not by choice. I was working at a place where every year, at a celebratory holiday party, we always knew there was one guy who would spend the entire time “airing grievances” at the rest of us. One of my coworkers would say, “Are you ready for Festivus this year?”

He was, of course, referencing the famous storyline on the old television comedy Seinfeld, in which George Costanza’s father Frank celebrated his own made-up holiday, complete with an aluminum pole, feats of strength, and of course, the airing of grievances. I would always laugh at my coworker’s joke, because, after all, Festivus was funny—the product of Jerry Seinfeld or some writer’s comedic imagination. Except that it wasn’t.

The Daily Beast recorded an episode of its podcast, Fever Dreams, in which former Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe explained the real-life origins of Festivus. (Beware of profanity in the episode.) He said the holiday was not fictional, at least not in his house growing up, and it was anything but funny. O’Keefe said his father, an editor at Reader’s Digest and “an undiagnosed bipolar, severe alcoholic,” invented Festivus. He did it with a clock in a bag hung on the wall. The famous aluminum pole wasn’t part of it, but the Airing of Grievances definitely was. “It was just a very formalized setting for yelling at us,” he told Fever Dreams. “Yeah, growing up, myself and my two brothers were in a form of child abuse that yet wasn’t recognized as such by the state of New York, included to perform seasonal rituals.”

O’Keefe talked about his childhood to some fellow writers, who told him that they along with Jerry Seinfeld wanted to adapt the Festivus ritual for Frank Costanza—minus the abusive behavior and the childhood trauma.

My first thought was, “That is dark.” Then I thought, “How did I never hear the story till now?” I wondered how many other of my favorite comedy moments had started this way. Was there a horror story behind the Dundie Awards or funerals for beloved mini horses? I didn’t want to know. But then I wondered whether Festivus is the holiday of this cultural moment.

Over a decade ago, James Davison Hunter warned that Christian cultural and political engagement had failed in part because of what Friedrich Nietzsche called “ressentiment.” This is more than resentment, Hunter argued, but includes “anger, envy, hate, rage, and revenge as the motive of political action.”

Ressentiment, Hunter wrote, is grounded “in a narrative of injury or, at least, perceived injury; a strong belief that one has been or is being wronged.” This is especially true, he contended, when the group holds a sense of entitlement—to greater respect, to greater power, to a place of majority status. This posture, he warned, is a political psychology that expresses itself with “the condemnation and denigration of enemies in the effort to subjugate and dominate those who are culpable.”

In Hunter’s explanation, the church—at least in its culture-war-activist form—did not withstand this pull but plunged in headlong. Thus, we end up with the language of “reclaiming” America or “taking back the culture.” Turns out, it all comes down to airing of grievances and feats of strength. Before we say, “There’s nothing wrong with that,” we should consider what it has done to us, not just as a country but, more importantly, as a church.

In Luke 4:20–30 (ESV throughout), we find that pivotal moment where Jesus announces his mission. To the rest of the world—to our own children—do we look more like the one announcing the good news of “the year of the Lord’s favor,” or like the crowds outraged by the suggestion that the kingdom is bigger than their ethnic and national boundaries? Do we look more like the mobs “filled with wrath” and seeking revenge at the edge of the cliff ,or like the one who, “passing through their midst,” calmly walked forward, face set like flint toward the cross?

Christ’s actions don’t make sense in a world where “feats of strength” are necessary to ward off threats. To a person who doesn’t believe in the living God, the Sermon on the Mount looks weak and the protection of Pharaoh looks strong (Isa. 30:1–2). If there is no Judgment seat, then the “airing of grievances”—accelerating in shrillness and theatricality—is the way to make sure that “Vengeance is mine, I will repay” (Rom. 12:19).

All we need do is redefine what “vengeance” means and who “I” means. Then we can avoid our calling as ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5:18–21) and embrace a different mission—one that feels better, intimidates more, raises more money, and mobilizes more crowds.

Sure, it ends in the way to death (Prov. 14:12), but death is a long time off.

Isn’t it?

And yet, here we are with Scriptures that make their way even into some of the Christmas carols playing in the grocery store or the mall. Herod is the one who “is troubled, and all Jerusalem with him” (Matt. 2:3). His rage and ressentiment isn’t a sign of strength but of how threatened he is, how scared, how angry, how pitiful. He, like the old spirit of Eden, marches forward with “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12). Old Herod still speaks—with just as much wrath and just as much fear and just as much hunger for power—and he still says, “Come, follow me.”

But we have something different. We have a word handed down to us that tells us, “Fear not, for behold, I bring to you good tidings of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). And the sign is in a feeding trough. The sign is at the pigeon table in the temple courts (vv. 22–35). The sign is a body present on an imperial execution stake, and a body absent from a borrowed tomb. The sign is what seems weak and foolish and “unrealistic.” That’s where the wisdom is, the power is, the reality is.

But that will require a different kind of power than Darwinian strength that gets us noticed by whatever Pharaoh or Caesar we want to protect us. It will require a different kind of belonging than the kind that comes by loathing those who the people in our circles tell us to hate. It will require us to be a people who really believe that what we carry is news, that it is good, and that it is for all people.

Feats of strength and airing of grievances are exhausting and demoralizing. Look at their fruits. Are we more connected or more lonely? Is the light of the gospel more visible or less? David Foster Wallace warned us about this: “Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.” Like Festivus, it all seems funny until you see the trauma underneath.

Maybe what we need is not a new holiday—real or metaphorical—for “the rest of us.” Maybe what need is rest, for us. Maybe what we long for is the kind of rest that need not prove itself by its self-protection and influence. Maybe what we need is a different witness, an older kind—one that really is good news in a world where it’s always Festivus and never Christmas.

Russell Moore leads the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today.

News

Trump or Netanyahu? American Evangelicals Support Israel, Yet Signs of Change

Jayson Casper

13 experts assess new survey conducted after Gaza conflict, which finds solidarity with the Jewish state but increasing preference for Palestinians among younger and non-white evangelicals.

View of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock from the Mount of Olives in Israel.

Frédéric Soltan / Corbis / Getty Images

In the public spat between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, who would American evangelicals support? A new survey suggests it might be the Israeli.

Polled shortly after the Gaza war last May, it also reveals a substantial generational gap in level of support for Israel and a lack of impact by pastors from their pulpits.

And it happens to release this week, following Trump’s explosive comments.

In excerpts from a recently released interview, the former president blasted the former prime minister for his statement of congratulations to Joe Biden after the 2020 election.

“Nobody did more for Bibi. And I liked Bibi. I still like Bibi,” stated Trump in an expletive-laced diatribe, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “But I also like loyalty … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake.”

Netanyahu responded with praise for Trump. But in noting a friendship with Joe Biden, he also honored the longstanding partnership between the US and Israel.

During his presidency, Trump moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, acknowledged Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and negotiated with five Muslim-majority nations to normalize relations with the Jewish state.

American evangelicals joined Netanyahu in appreciation. According to a new online poll surveying a multiethnic panel of approximately 1,000 self-identified evangelical and born-again Christians, 35 percent say they became more supportive of Israel because of Trump’s policies. Only 11 percent became more supportive of Palestinians, while 53 percent had no change.

And overall, 68 percent of American evangelicals believe the Jewish people today have the right to the land of Israel, by virtue of the covenant God made with Abraham which “remains intact today.” (About 23% say they don’t know.)

American evangelical support for Israel vs. Palestinians (July 2021)

The survey, conducted by professors Kirill Bumin and Motti Inbari from the University of North Carolina–Pembroke in conjunction with Barna Group, was released today but conducted in July, well before public knowledge of Trump’s falling out with Netanyahu.

The 15-year Israeli prime minister scored a 74 percent favorable rating, based on the share of evangelicals who gave him a score of 6 or greater on a 10-point scale. One in five (22%) gave him the top rating possible.

The survey did not include a direct comparison. But given the fact that it included evangelicals of all ethnicities (59% white, 24% Black, 11% Hispanic), researchers found that support for Biden and for Trump by vote share was almost identical (42% vs. 40%)—even though 49 percent of evangelicals believed a Biden presidency would hurt the US relationship with Israel. Conversely, 31 percent believed Biden would do no harm.

Similarly, 47 percent believed Netanyahu’s defeat as prime minister, to a coalition headed by Naftali Bennett, would hurt the Israeli relationship with US evangelicals. Only 16 percent believed it would do no harm.

Nearly 1 in 2 (47%) believed Netanyahu improved these relations, compared to only 16 percent who did not.

In terms of relations with Palestinians, American evangelicals largely recognized Israeli policy as “fair.” Asked about how Israel treats Palestinians in the Palestinian territories, 53 percent of respondents scored Israel’s treatment at 6 or greater on a 10-point scale. While only 14 percent said it was “completely fair,” only 19 percent scored Israel at 4 or lower.

Views of American evangelicals on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian territories (July 2021)

The 11-day conflict in May between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip did not significantly alter evangelical perceptions.

Protesting threatened evictions of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem over complex leases, Hamas launched missiles toward Israeli cities. Israel responded, stating its missiles were aimed at militant targets often located in civilian centers. According to the UN, 256 people, including 66 children and 40 women, were killed in Gaza, while 13 people were killed, including two children and six women, in Israel.

While 48 percent of American evangelicals reported no change in their overall opinion, 26 percent stated the conflict increased their support for Israel. Only 7 percent stated it increased their support for Palestinians.

A plurality (43%) blamed both sides equally. One in three (34%) blamed Palestinians primarily, while 17 percent blamed Israel primarily.

Overall, the report, sponsored by the Messianic Jewish organization Chosen People Ministries, notes that “only” 50 percent of American evangelicals support Israel (25% “very strongly”) in its dispute with Palestinians, whom 19 percent support. The remaining 31 percent support neither side.

American evangelical views of God’s covenant with Israel (July 2021)

A similar survey released earlier this month by Grey Matter Research identified 20 percent of American evangelical Protestants as “Israel loyalists,” who see the Jews as “God’s chosen people” today and put a high priority on supporting them via charity. (It did not poll specifically about Palestinians.)

Using the National Association of Evangelicals’ four-point definition of evangelicals by belief but not restricting its sample to white evangelicals as many surveys do, the Grey Matter study found a roughly even split between evangelicals who believe charitable support for Israel is a high vs. low priority, as well as an even split between evangelicals who believe the Jews are God’s chosen people today vs. who do not believe this.

These statistics align well with the UNC-Pembroke survey, which found that 52 percent of American evangelicals say their religious beliefs make them more supportive of Israel. Only 8 percent say it makes them more supportive of Palestinians, and 40 percent say it doesn’t impact their view of either side.

Notably, only a third of American evangelicals claim their knowledge of the conflict is “moderate” (23%) or “extensive” (13%). Half claim “limited” (26%) or “very limited” (26%) knowledge, and 13% claim “no knowledge at all.”

American evangelical self assessment of knowledge about Israel-Palestinian conflict (July 2021)

In terms of policy, 41 percent want the US to support Israel, while 10 percent want the US to support Palestinians. About 1 in 3 (36%) want the US to remain neutral.

Despite widespread criticism that Trump’s policies in office favored Israel, he consistently maintained that his efforts were a new strategy to resurrect a failing peace process.

The survey did not query evangelicals on who they blame primarily for the lack of peace. But like many, Trump initially put the onus on Palestinians.

He appears to have changed his mind.

“Bibi did not want to make peace. Never did,” Trump stated for a Hebrew book project on the normalization deals, released last weekend. “I [had] thought the Palestinians were impossible, and the Israelis would do anything to make peace and a deal. I found that not to be true.”

The reporting claims Netanyahu surprised the White House by announcing a controversial West Bank annexation during the rollout of Trump’s peace plan. Israel’s then-ambassador to the US denies the claim.

Is Trump’s shift similar to that of younger US evangelicals, which previous surveys have found are growing less attached to the nation of Israel? Those 65 years and older are four times more likely to express high levels of support for Israel than those under 30 years of age.

Overall, 29 percent of younger evangelicals support Israel while 45 percent support the Palestinians. And while 40 percent blamed Israel and Palestinians equally for the Gaza conflict, those faulting one side or the other balanced out. Three in 10 blamed Israel (29%) or Palestinians (27%) primarily.

Of US policy, 36 percent of evangelicals under 30 want America to remain neutral. Israel ranks slightly higher for US support at 31 percent, while 26 percent want the US to support Palestinians.

The younger generation is consistent with evangelicals at large in viewing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in their territories as fair: 53 percent gave a score of 6 or above on a 10-point scale. But more chose an “unfair” rating than evangelicals at large: 25 percent gave a score of 4 or below.

American evangelical support for Israel vs. Palestinians by age (July 2021)

Views of Americans evangelicals on how Israel treats Palestinian territories, by age (July 2021)

While age has the largest statistically significant impact, it is not the only corresponding factor.

Evangelicals who never attend church are 63 percent less likely to support Israel than those who attend at least once per week. Adherents of postmillennial and amillennial eschatologies (who comprise 22% and 33% of evangelicals, respectively) are 51 percent less likely to support Israel than premillennialists (who comprise 33%). And those with positive views of Muslims (34%) are 27 percent less likely to support Israel than those with negative views (19%). (A plurality of 34 percent of evangelicals are neutral.)

There is no relation between the frequency of pastoral statements of support for Israel to overall evangelical opinion. Neither is race or ethnicity or commitment to social justice a statistically significant factor.

However, researchers noted that African American evangelicals express the lowest levels of support for Israel (37%) and the highest levels of support for the Palestinians (31%). Among Hispanic evangelicals, 40 percent support Israel and 23 percent support the Palestinians. Among white, non-Hispanic evangelicals, 58 percent support Israel and 14 percent support the Palestinians.

American evangelicals on how often their pastor or fellow believers speak about supporting Israel (July 2021)

And while a quarter of American evangelicals say their pastor talks about “the importance of Israel to Christians” every week (27%) or once a month (24%), a plurality say “seldom” (37%), and 1 in 10 say “never” (13%).

Similarly, a plurality of American evangelicals say they “seldom” hear other evangelicals talk about “the importance of supporting Israel” (43%), compared to those hearing it every week (18%) or once a month (23%) vs. never (16%).

CT invited evangelical experts in the US and in Israel to react to the survey results:

Sidebar:

When it comes to personal actions by American evangelicals:

41% have prayed for Israel
22% have prayed for the Palestinian territories

17% have prayed with a Jewish person
12% have prayed with a Palestinian person

14% have given money to pro-Israel causes
7% have given money to pro-Palestinian causes

8% have traveled to Israel
5% have traveled to the Palestinian territories

5% have done missions work in Israel
6% have done missions work in Palestinian territories

10% have engaged Jewish people with the gospel
7% have engaged Palestinian people with the gospel

7% have demonstrated against antisemitism
8% have demonstrated against Israel and its policies toward Palestinians

8% have contacted their congressional rep to express support for US policies that favor Israel
6% have contacted their congressional rep to express support for US policies that favor Palestinians

38% had done none of the eight Israel-related actions listed.
57% had done none of the eight Palestinian-related actions listed.

Robert Nicholson, president of Philos Project:

Most young evangelicals still believe in biblical promises regarding the people and land of Israel, but have a hard time thinking about the State of Israel and why it’s necessary to defend that people on that land. They don’t realize that a Jewish-majority country makes the Near East more pluralistic, not less. Worst of all, they’ve bought into the silly idea that support for a Jewish state means opposition to Palestinians, Arabs, or Muslims—which of course isn’t true.

Young evangelicals, as opinionated as they are, don’t know much about Israelis or Palestinians. Their views are based on gut feelings, media impressions, slogans, and peer pressure. Few have spent any time in the region, and even fewer know anything about the Jewish people beyond Sunday school stories they grew up on.

It is wholesale ignorance of the Jews, and for that matter Palestinians, that produced these survey results. The answer is immersive education and personal encounter.

Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary, author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians:

Younger generations see social justice as central to their faith. Despite Israel’s consistent effort to shape the Palestinian narrative, when this survey is compared with parallel surveys just 20 years ago, evangelicals are increasingly neutral in their political views on Israel and Palestine, as younger generations realize that four million people held in military occupation by Israel is a moral issue.

But surveys such as this generally have two problems. First, “self-identified” evangelicals may today only represent those who have wed their faith to Republican politics, as many other younger evangelicals have left and are not represented here. Second, the survey leads with biblical language about God’s “covenant people,” which skews the following questions about justice. When a survey is commissioned by a pro-Israel organization (Chosen People Ministries), we are wise to question its results.

Danny Kopp, co-pastor of the Narkis Street Congregation in Jerusalem:

The very framing of this issue in this survey as binary is a tragic reflection of our inability as Christians to appreciate moral complexity in our lives and in the lives of nations. The Bible weaves a complex narrative of God’s unique calling of a particular people, the Jews, to demonstrate his universal love and impartial care for all peoples.

It is a merciful truism that throughout the biblical narrative every hero is flawed and no villain is beyond redemption. Yet, we as Christians, who should be the most adept at introspection and self-criticism, throw this principle out the window and are increasingly recognized as the most tribal in our unswervingly blind loyalties to political dogmas and personalities.

The Israelis have a right to live in their own national homeland at peace with their neighbors, while the Palestinians deserve support in their pursuit of a political accommodation that affords them equal rights in their national homeland. Maintaining a nuanced, sophisticated biblical perspective in no way means that we should ascribe moral equivalence to either side’s political blunders, but it means that we can never lose sight of God’s unique, particular, and equal calling upon both Israelis and Palestinians.

Munther Isaac, academic dean at Bethlehem Bible College and pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem:

What is troubling is that many evangelicals have very strong opinions about Palestine and Israel, while having limited knowledge about the reality on the ground. What is missing is a theology of justice and peacemaking, which should not depend on one’s view on eschatology, but on our call to bring God’s love to all peoples, as ambassadors of reconciliation.

Evangelicals, like all Christians, must take informed positions. Peacemaking involves listening to both sides of a conflict, taking risks, and standing on the side of justice. We must speak truth to power, even when it involves our own people, religion, or nation.

Trump and Netanyahu were not good for peace. Their approach was based on the logic of might and power, not truth and justice. America and Israel are political allies, basing their actions on what is best for their own political interests. Their policies did not reflect the biblical verse: “Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Michael Brown, Messianic Jewish radio host of The Line of Fire:

Given the way these evangelicals voted, I’m pleasantly surprised that the support for Israel is as high as it is. That being said, the poll confirms a growing and disturbing trend.

Why is this the case? First, the younger generation does not have a memory of the horrors of the Holocaust and the miraculous birth of the State of Israel. To them, Israel is the bully, intimidating and hurting the Palestinian population. And, since they have a heart for justice and for the underdog, they naturally side more with the Palestinians.

If they had a more accurate and fuller picture, they would realize that having a heart for justice means recognizing the agonizing history of the Jewish people, the degree to which Israel is surrounded by hostile, even deadly enemies, and Israel’s deep desire to live at peace with its Arab neighbors.

Second, as we know through church history, forms of replacement theology, also known as supersessionism, open the door to antisemitism.

The key for Christians of all ages is education: Let them be well grounded in the Scriptures, let them know church history, and let them get the full picture of the conflict. If they do, they will recognize God’s restoration of the Jewish people to the land; they will pursue justice for all; and they will love their Muslim neighbor just as they love their Jewish neighbor. And when Israel does wrong, as friends and supporters of Israel they will speak the truth in love.

Lisa Loden, co-chair of the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine:

Depending on current events and diverse theologies, evangelical support of Israel is continually in flux. Surveys are always a snapshot, never a cross-section, and this survey is no exception.

Evangelicals need to fully integrate the social aspect of the gospel with their theology, and especially their eschatology. Evangelical ignorance, polarization, and lack of active interest in the real-time effect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the local populations are lamentable.

White US evangelicals will likely continue to support Trump and Netanyahu, whose views are both solidly pro-Israel, regardless of the current discourse and their reduced national roles.

Salim Munayer, executive director of Musalaha and regional director for the World Evangelical Alliance’s Peace and Reconciliation Network:

From this survey—especially concerning the recent conflict in Gaza—we can see a trend that there is a growing gap between young and older evangelicals. One possible explanation is the multiple sources of information young people are exposed to on social media.

It is also amazing to see that despite their very strong feelings, American evangelicals claim to have limited knowledge of the conflict. Especially when only 10 percent have traveled to the region to know the reality on the ground.

It seems that their opinions are highly shaped by theology, their view on Islam, and participation in church life.

Gerald McDermott, author of Israel Matters, editor of The New Christian Zionism and Understanding Jewish Roots of Christianity:

The survey suggests what many of us have been noticing for several decades—that evangelicals are less biblically literate and less informed about what is going on in Israel today. More and more evangelicals are unaware, for example, of Paul’s belief in God’s ongoing covenant with the Jewish people (Rom. 11:28–29), his belief in the land promise (Acts 13:19), and Jesus’ promise that one day Jerusalem will welcome him (Matt. 23:39; Luke 13:35). Nor do they know that more than two million Israeli citizens are Palestinians who enjoy world-class education and health services and do not want to live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank or Gaza.

The survey also shows that support for Israel is down among those under 30, but there are surprises. While 45 percent offer strong support for Palestinians, only 29 percent say Israel is to blame for the recent Gaza fighting, and only 26 percent say the US should take the Palestinians’ side in the conflict. Further, a majority of those under 30 say Israel is “fair” to Palestinians who live in Palestinian territories.

The recent exchange between Trump and Netanyahu shows Trump as petty and Netanyahu as statesman-like. I think most evangelicals would agree.

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute:

This survey tracks polling we have done which shows that there is a significant shift in the attitudes of younger voters, including those who self-identify as “born again,” toward Israel/Palestine. We believe it is the result of access to expanded sources of information.

This generation is more tolerant, more accepting, and more inclusive, and I suggest that their thinking is more in tune with the vision of Jesus. They see situations like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as less black and white, and have more compassion for those they identify as victims of the hostilities. So this shift in attitudes among the young born-again Christians doesn’t surprise me at all.

That said, I am puzzled that race was not a significant factor in determining support for Israel. In our polls, the two main factors in shaping attitudes on Israel are age and race.

Jaime Cowen, former president of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations:

I believe the evangelical church’s support for Israel is part of a correction in rebuilding relationships between the church and the Jewish people. While it cannot undo the tremendous harm of historic Christian antisemitism, it has gone a long way towards breaking down walls between Christians and Jews, and paved a way for the rise of Messianic Judaism. So while evangelical views of Israel’s contemporary government and politics are incredibly naïve and often one-sided, it still is better than past injustices.

Sadly, the politicization of the gospel in the US has turned off many young people, including those in evangelical churches. It is strange and unfortunate how support for Israel is lumped in with opposition to abortion, LGBT issues, and critical race theory. Support for Israel becomes problematic, especially as the younger generations confront social injustices, which include Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. Unless Israel seriously tries to address the Palestinian question, support for Israel will likely continue to erode.

The support for Trump among evangelicals is the most shocking thing I have ever witnessed as a believer. He was popular among the majority of Israelis, but damaged US-Israel relations by offering American support for anything Israel did. As for Netanyahu, he did nothing about a problem that eventually must be addressed. While his efforts to reach agreements with other Arab nations is highly laudable, it doesn’t negate the elephant in the room.

Todd Deatherage, executive director of The Telos Group:

The shifting attitudes of younger evangelicals toward Israelis and Palestinians in their conflict is significant, but not surprising. We’ve been seeing movement within pockets of evangelicalism for years, as more Christians try to re-center their faith away from politicization and back around Jesus and his teachings. When Jesus is at the center, nationalistic forms of Christianity like Christian Zionism just don’t hold up.

These changing attitudes represent an opening for Christians to support mutual flourishing for Israelis and Palestinians, all of whom deserve equal measures of freedom, dignity, and security as image-bearers of God.

And I think these numbers are also connected to something else we’re seeing: the growing number of Christians who are pursuing justice and reconciliation in a variety of ways, as they live out the charge Jesus gives his followers to be peacemakers.

Botrus Mansour, lawyer, writer, and evangelical leader in Nazareth:

I regret that a large portion of American evangelicals’ knowledge of the conflict, by their own admission, is limited. But it has great impact on American policies on the ground. They had a large role in promoting the anti-Palestinian sentiment that informed the Netanyahu-Trump era, which was bad for peace in the Holy Land.

The young evangelicals’ view of the conflict is fairer. Palestinians are people created in God’s image and are entitled to human dignity. I would expect that more American evangelicals pray for them, and act as brokers for peace.

Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries and sponsor of the survey:

I am concerned about how evangelicals view Israel, as they are often Israel’s greatest supporters in the United States. Yet, often it seems as the reputation of Israel becomes tarnished, particularly among younger evangelicals, Israel is cast as the aggressor, rather than as the responder to aggression. Further education in Christian colleges, seminaries, and local churches needs to be developed. Videos, podcasts, and social media should be created to further inform these future leaders of the church.

Unfortunately, when we have a negative view of others, whether Palestinians or Jewish Israelis, often instead of love and mission there is enmity and a lack of passion for winning these Abrahamic cousins to Jesus.

I believe prophecy was fulfilled in the formation of the modern state of Israel in 1948, but Israel is not yet what Israel will become. One day my beloved Jewish people will turn to Yeshua the Messiah, as promised by the prophet Zechariah, and “they will look to Me whom they have pierced.”

Until then, I pray my fellow evangelicals will have a positive view of the Jewish people, and even come to the conclusion that by virtue of the Abrahamic Covenant, the land does belong to them.

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Orthodox Christians Yearn for Famous Seminary 50 Years After Turkey Closed It

David I. Klein in Istanbul - Religion News Service

The Halki Seminary, whose graduates include two saints, seven patriarchs, seven archbishops, and six metropolitans, has become an international bargaining chip.

Rooms upon rooms of books in the library of the Halki Orthodox Seminary on the Turkish island of Heybeliada.

David I. Klein

The classrooms and halls of the Halki Orthodox Seminary on the Turkish island of Heybeliada, in the Sea of Marmara south of Istanbul, look much as they did when Konstantinos Delikostantis was a student there more than 50 years ago.

Wooden chairs and black desks line the classrooms, some still bearing the graffiti (in both Turkish and Greek) of their past occupants. The chalkboards, which sit beneath portraits of Turkey’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, look as if they could use a good wash.

At 73, Delikostantis is among the youngest remaining alumni of the school, which counts among its 990 graduates at least two saints, seven patriarchs, seven archbishops, six metropolitans, and countless other clergymen, authors, and theologians who went on to serve as leaders of Orthodox Christianity around the world.

In its heyday, Halki Seminary was a place of intense study, deep introspection, and strong brotherhood, recalled Delikostantis, now an adviser to the spiritual leader of Eastern Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, a fellow graduate of Halki.

“Halki was the iron theological arm of the Ecumenical Patriarchate,” said Delikostantis, leaning back on a sofa in the office of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Istanbul’s Fener district.

The first monastery on the island, known in Greek as Halki, was founded in the ninth century by Patriarch Photius I. A second was established by Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos just a few decades before Constantinople was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453.

The school itself was founded in 1844 when then-Patriarch Germanus IV converted part of Photius’ monastery of the Holy Trinity into a high school and a seminary.

However, for 50 years no new students have been permitted to walk through its halls. In 1971, the Turkish government closed the school under a law nationalizing all institutions of higher learning. It was the last school to train priests in modern Turkey, a region that has been the center of the Orthodox church for more than 1,600 years.

An interior room of the Halki Orthodox Seminary on the island of Heybeliada in Turkey.

The school’s closure is just one chapter in the story of forced migration, pogroms, and other forms of persecution that saw the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey decline from nearly 2 million at the turn of the 20th century to barely 5,000 today.

But with the 50th anniversary of its closing, Orthodox leaders’ longstanding petition to allow the school to reopen has gained new life.

Many of the Orthodox Christians remaining in Turkey feel that they have been robbed of decades of spiritual leadership, while those in far-flung territories of Orthodox Christianity have had their ties to unique Constantinopolitan theological traditions all but severed.

“We lost two generations of priests and clergy and bishops of the church, who are not educated in the only school that the Ecumenical Patriarchate has in Istanbul,” Archbishop Elpidophoros of America, who serves under the purview of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, said in an interview marking the 50th anniversary of the school’s closing earlier this year.

In July, the US State Department issued a statement urging Turkey to allow the reopening of the school.

Turkish authorities fired back, arguing that it was in fact the patriarchate that was responsible for the school’s continued closure, as the patriarchate would not consent to Halki being administered by the state-run faculty of theology.

Ankara has repeatedly tried to use Halki’s possible reopening as a bargaining chip in Turkey’s tense relations with Greece.

During a 2019 visit by Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested he might allow the reopening of the school if Greece would open a mosque in Athens.

“Look, you want something from us, you want the Halki seminary. And I tell you [Greece], come, let’s open the Fethiye Mosque,” Erdogan said, referring to a 17th-century Ottoman mosque in Athens and Greece’s stalled promises to open a new house of worship for Muslim residents in the Greek capital.

Embroiling the seminary in the sparring between Athens and Ankara has left Istanbul’s remaining Greek Orthodox population frustrated, according to Laki Vingas, a former president of the community.

“It’s so sad to witness that Halki is no longer a matter of education or religious training, but it has assumed a political role and become a symbol of antagonism,” Vingas said. “For a 2-millennia-old church, this is very difficult.”

Halki Orthodox Seminary in Heybeliada, Turkey

As the years go on, the generation that remembers the place as anything other than a political bargaining chip is fading. A quick scroll through the school’s alumni Facebook page shows mostly death notices above pictures of graduates dressed in both the black robes of the priesthood and secular garb.

In the school’s absence, Turkey’s Orthodox community has had to send its ecclesiastically minded youth to Greece for training.

Delikostantis thinks the distance has had a significant effect. “It is not good for the Patriarchate that our theologians are studying in Thessaloniki or in Athens,” he said. “They lose something in the four or five years when they are there.”

It’s not that the Greek schools are lacking; during his time in seminary they largely had the same learning materials both in Turkey and Greece, he said. But what’s been lost is the “spirit of Halki.”

After a lifetime teaching throughout Europe, Delikostantis has returned to Fener to advise his old friend Patriarch Bartholomew I as an expert on the intersection between human rights and Orthodox theology.

Though the patriarch is just under a decade his senior, the two go back a long way. Both are natives of the Turkish island of Gökçeada—known in Greek as Imbros—and Delikostantis boasts that he was there when the future patriarch was first appointed a deacon in 1961.

Despite Delikostantis’ time at the seminary, he never ended up joining the priesthood like his old friend, instead going on to research the intersection of philosophy and theology. Today, Delikostantis looks as comfortable quoting the words of Immanuel Kant as those of the Nazarene.

Delikostantis says he was first set upon that path during his time at Halki.

“The main characteristic of our school was this combination of academic study and church life,” he explained. “During my seven years there I lived between the church, celebrating the liturgy, and the classroom and library.”

Halki’s students also thrived on the diverse environment of Istanbul. Despite the school’s isolated spot on Heybeliada, the environment of 1960s Istanbul required a measure of openness—not only openness to other sects of Christianity and other faiths, but an appreciation for scientific study and a necessary dialogue with modernity.

“It’s not easy to be faithful and to be open,” Delikostantis said, but it’s something the school inculcated in him and the current Patriarch. “This was, I think, the power of Halki, this combination between faith and science.”

What the future holds for the school remains unclear. Though there’s been little movement on the part of the Turkish government, the patriarchate remains hopeful, having even drawn up renovation plans for potential future use.

“For Turkey, it could be an ornament, you know, a school which produces open people,” Delikostantis said. “Open-minded, nonfundamentalist people of dialogue who accept diversity.”

That was the seminary he remembers.

- More from David I. Klein in Istanbul - Religion News Service

News

Missing Papyri Professor Must Return $7 Million to Hobby Lobby

Daniel Silliman

Dirk Obbink has lost a federal lawsuit over the fraudulent sale of Gospel fragments.

Screengrab YouTube / World Monuments Fund Britain

Dirk Obbink didn’t answer the door of his Oxford, England, houseboat docked in the Thames. He dodged the private investigators trying to serve him a legal summons in August and September and failed to answer the official letter notifying him that he was required to respond to allegations he had defrauded Hobby Lobby by selling the craft store $7 million worth of ancient papyri that he didn’t actually own.

A clerk of the United States federal court has certified a default judgment against the famed papyrologist, noting in late November that “defendant Dirk D. Obbink has not filed any answer or otherwise moved with respect to the complaint herein.”

The former Oxford University professor and visiting scholar at Baylor University, once heralded for his amazing discoveries of ancient texts, including early copies of the Gospels and unknown poems of Sappho, now owes Hobby Lobby a full refund.

The resolution of the civil lawsuit leaves a lot of questions unanswered, though. Chief among them: Where are the other 81 ancient fragments that went missing from the Egyptian Exploration Society (EES) library at Oxford at the same time that Obbink, then head of the library’s papyri digitization project, took 32 fragments and sold them to Hobby Lobby?

“I think many of us hoped that a trial might bring to light further information on the whereabouts of the roughly 80 Oxyrhynchus papyri that still seem to be missing,” wrote history of religions scholar Brent Nongbri on his blog.

According to the lawsuit, Obbink worked as a private antiquities dealer in addition to his academic work. He sold Hobby Lobby four lots of papyri between 2010 and 2013, as the Oklahoma-based company invested in an expansive collection that it would use to launch the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC, in 2017. The fragments were discovered in a rubbish heap near a vanished city in Egypt in the early 20th century.

A sales record shows that Obbink claimed four of them were first-century copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—which would have made them the oldest known pieces of the New Testament.

In 2017, Obbink contacted Hobby Lobby to say he had made a mistake and mixed up the EES fragments with his fragments he was selling as part of his antiquities business. He promised to pay the money back but asked for patience, as he had already spent it.

At the same time, Obbink told EES he had showed the New Testament fragments to some visitors associated with Hobby Lobby and owner Steve Green’s “Green Collection,” but claimed he never told them it was for sale.

“Professor Obbink insists that he never said the papyrus was for sale, and that while he did receive some payments from the Green Collection for advice on other matters, he did not accept any payment for or towards purchase of this text,” an official statement said. “The EES has never sought to sell this or any other papyrus.”

Hobby Lobby then sent a copy of its purchase agreement to EES, and the library launched a systematic check of its collection of more than 500,000 artifacts. More than 120 were missing, and someone had tampered with the card catalogues and photographic records to hide the fact they were gone.

Seven were recovered from an evangelical collector in California. More than 80 are unaccounted for.

According to the director of the EES, the items may have been sold for millions, but they are actually priceless.

Obbink, for his part, spoke of the fragments in the EES collection in rhapsodic terms.

“For me personally,” he once told a British audience, “working on these texts … was like being shipwrecked on a desert island with Marilyn Monroe.”

Obbink was arrested in 2020 and then sued in 2021. Shortly after that, court records show, he moved to a houseboat named the James Brindley and started hiding from the private investigators attempting to serve him summons.

A neighbor signed an affidavit that she saw Obbink on the boat a little before 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 11, and the summons had been removed from the houseboat door.

“The main cabin door was open,” the affidavit says. “Mr. Obbink would have had to remove the envelop to open the door.”

The British woman helpfully photographed Obbink for the investigators, who presented it to the US federal court as evidence and asked for a default judgment.

Obbink is also facing criminal charges in England. The investigation is ongoing.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Theology

Research: Religious Americans Less Likely to Divorce

Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox

Recent data suggests that faithful young adults can marry in their 20s without increasing the risk of separation.

Thanh Nguyen / Unsplash

According to the US Census, the average American couple gets married around the age of 30. Many young adults believe that forming unions closer to that age reduces their risk of divorce, and, indeed, there is research consistent with that belief. But we also have evidence suggesting that religious Americans are less likely to divorce, even as they are more likely to marry younger than 30.

This paradoxical pattern raises two questions worth exploring: Is the way religious Americans form their marriages different than the way their more secular peers do? And do religious unions formed by 20-somethings face different divorce odds than those formed by secular Americans in the same age group?

The answer to that last question is complicated by the role of cohabitation in contemporary family formation. Today, more than 70 percent of marriages are preceded by cohabitation, as Figure 1 indicates. Increased cohabitation is both a cause and a consequence of the rise in the average age of first marriage. But what most young adults do not know is that cohabiting before marriage, especially with someone other than your future spouse, is also associated with an increased risk of divorce, as a recent Stanford study reports.

One reason that religious marriages in America may be more stable is that they reduce young adults’ odds of cohabiting prior to marriage, even though they increase their likelihood of marrying at a relatively young age. With that in mind, we’ve explored the relationships between religion, cohabitation, age at marriage, and divorce by looking at data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG).

Does religion influence marriage and cohabitation?

To address this question and others, we merged data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) from 1995 to 2019, using responses from over 53,000 women ages 15–49. After controlling for a variety of background factors, women who grew up religious are about 20 percent less likely to begin a cohabiting union in any given year than their nonreligious peers. By age 35, about 65 percent of women with a nonreligious upbringing had cohabited at least once, versus under 50 percent of women with a religious upbringing.

Not only does religion reduce the odds that young adults cohabit, it also increases the odds of what we call direct marriages, or unions that didn’t include premarital cohabitation. The trends depicted below in Figure 3 show up in similar form for all marriages, but direct marriages are particularly important because they are a closer proxy for the “traditional” relationship pathways promoted by many religions.

In other words, religiosity is associated with a markedly higher likelihood of going directly from singleness to a married union without cohabiting ahead of time, and generally at younger ages.

On the whole, then, religion greatly influences the nature and age of relationship formation.

Does religion influence breakup and divorce?

Earlier marriage is a known risk factor for divorce. Premarital cohabitation is too. Since religiosity tends to motivate earlier marriage but less cohabitation, the effects on divorce are not easy to guess. What we really want to know is: Do religious people get divorced less?

The answer appears to be yes.

Without controls for age at marriage or an indicator for premarital cohabitation, women with a religious upbringing do have slightly lower likelihoods of divorce. As shown below in Figure 4, the annual divorce rate among married women with a nonreligious upbringing is around 5 percent. For religious women, it’s around 4.5 percent. The effect is clearest for Catholic and mainline Protestant women and less clear for evangelical Protestant women.

Overall, if we control for basic socioeconomic background and a woman’s educational career trajectory, the typical marriage of a woman with a religious upbringing is about 10 percent less likely to end in divorce within the first 15 years of marriage than the typical marriage of a woman with a nonreligious upbringing.

Adding controls for age at marriage yields about the same results, suggesting that even though religious people get married younger, their divorce rates are still a bit lower. But it may just be that religious people cohabit less, and that drives the reduction in divorce. (For additional details on this point, see the full research brief here.)

Figure 5 above makes it possible to answer three specific questions: What is the effect of premarital cohabitation? What is the effect of age at marriage? And what is the effect of religious upbringing?

Starting with premarital cohabitation, women with direct marriages tended to have lower divorce rates than women with the same religious background and the same age at marriage but who married after cohabiting. This was especially true for religious women who married before age 25.

For women marrying after age 30, the relationship seems to flip, though estimates are less reliable. But particularly for youthful marriages before age 20 or in the early 20s, cohabiting before marriage appears to be a major risk factor for divorce.

Age at marriage also matters, but in different ways for different groups. (Here again, see the research brief for full details.)

What are the takeaways, then?

Among some groups, it’s commonly believed that postponing marriage until the late 20s or early 30s reduces the odds of divorce, because greater maturity results in a wiser choice of partner. There’s some truth to this. However, the life orientations associated with delayed marriage are often also associated with (and even causal of) greater acceptance of premarital cohabitation, which is also linked to a higher risk of divorce.

The net result: Lifestyles that motivate earlier marriage—like religiosity—do not necessarily create the higher likelihoods of divorce usually associated with early marriage, because they discourage cohabitation.

Yes, very young marriage still has risks (as does very late marriage), but religious upbringings seem to partly compensate for those risks, especially among women marrying in their 20s.

Our results also suggest that religion fosters relationship stability by pushing young adults away from cohabitation, which is highly unstable, and toward marriage, which is much more stable.

Figure 6 provides a simple illustration of divorce or breakup risk by year, by union type.

The effect of cohabitation on marriage is indeed statistically significant, since premarital cohabitation increases divorce probabilities by about 15 percent. But the biggest effect of religion on union stability isn’t about what happens once a woman is married. It’s more about her relationship choices before marriage—the fact that she did get married, rather than start a series of cohabiting relationships.

What remains unclear is how religion may foster more stable marriages. There are three broad possibilities: Religion might induce people to “make lemons out of lemonade.” It might give people institutional or community support. Or it might positively alter the quality of romantic pairings.

The first explanation is simple, if pessimistic. The second possibility is that religion actually changes the experience of being married. Religious communities might provide institutional support to married couples, by way of peer support, community or pastoral interventions, and even material or financial support in times of hardship.

Finally, religion may change exactly who women marry in important ways.

First, women of faith may be able to access a larger and more marriage-friendly pool of potential spouses in church and related community settings.

Second, religion could alter the criteria that women have for selecting partners. Knowing that cohabitation is disfavored, and desiring the companionship of a committed union, religious women might more actively pursue “husband material” earlier in life than other women.

Third, religion might alter the dynamics between partners in important ways. Faithful women might look for spouses who share values, beliefs, or practices that are important for marital stability. Sharing these values might reduce the potential for conflict down the road.

It’s hard to say exactly which of these factors is at work. But one way or another, our research suggests that waiting to marry until you’re 30 does not always increase your odds of forging a stable marriage. Especially for religious men and women who avoid cohabitation, our analysis of the NSFG material indicates that they can marry in their 20s without increasing their risk of divorce.

The upshot of all this is that the religious model of marriage and family appears to boost the odds that young adults can marry before 30 without increasing their risk of landing in divorce court.

Lyman Stone is a research fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, chief information officer of the population research firm Demographic Intelligence, and an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

W. Bradford Wilcox is the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies.

The full research brief is available here.

- More from Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Consolation meets us in our powerlessness.

Consolation is more about welcome than change.

Consolation overturns our expectations.

Consolation grows in the sharing.

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Share

Robert Nicholson, president of Philos Project:

Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary, author of Whose Land? Whose Promise? What Christians Are Not Being Told About Israel and the Palestinians:

Danny Kopp, co-pastor of the Narkis Street Congregation in Jerusalem:

Munther Isaac, academic dean at Bethlehem Bible College and pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, Bethlehem:

Michael Brown, Messianic Jewish radio host of The Line of Fire:

Lisa Loden, co-chair of the Lausanne Initiative for Reconciliation in Israel-Palestine:

Salim Munayer, executive director of Musalaha and regional director for the World Evangelical Alliance’s Peace and Reconciliation Network:

Gerald McDermott, author of Israel Matters, editor of The New Christian Zionism and Understanding Jewish Roots of Christianity:

James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute:

Jaime Cowen, former president of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations:

Todd Deatherage, executive director of The Telos Group:

Botrus Mansour, lawyer, writer, and evangelical leader in Nazareth:

Mitch Glaser, president of Chosen People Ministries and sponsor of the survey:

Share

Share

Share

Share

In this series

Share

Share

Share