Disillusioned at the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius

CT helped readers make sense of wild cultural changes in 1969.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, CT Archives

American astronauts walked on the moon in 1969. CT celebrated the amazing achievement, while noting with disappointment that God received little mention.

Buoyed by the prayers, hopes, and determination of millions around the world, two American astronauts with Christian upbringing landed safely on the moon’s Sea of Tranquility.

It was possibly the most prayed-for event in human history, and the intercession continued as the astronauts headed back to earth.

From a Christian perspective, the absence of explicitly spiritual acknowledgements disappointed many. The late President [John F.] Kennedy had publicly asked God’s blessing on the American effort to reach the moon. God did bless the venture, but there was no immediate recognition of that fact or any utterance of thanksgiving for it, either from the astronauts on the moon or from President [Richard] Nixon in his earth-to-moon telephone call. …

Armstrong grew up in an Ohio Evangelical Reformed church which is now part of the United Church of Christ. But he has shunned churches in his adult life. … Edwin Aldrin, the second lunar pedestrian, showed that he takes his faith seriously. He carried along in the Columbia-Eagle spacecraft a morsel of communion bread which he ate while on the moon. Aldrin is an active United Presbyterian churchman.

Back on earth, evangelicals worried about sexual immorality. CT reported that, according to new social scientific research, “adultery has become almost the rule rather than the exception.”

Paul Gebhard, head of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, which was founded by the late Alfred Kinsey, estimates that 60 per cent of married men and 35 to 40 per cent of married women have extramarital affairs. Both figures are up 10 per cent from the Kinsey reports of two decades ago. …

Increasingly, men seem to consider God’s prohibitions against adultery and other sexual deviations as relative matters that society is free to adjust when convenient. God did not prohibit adultery, however, simply because of some arbitrary whim or because adultery was harmful to Hebrew tribal life. He who gave us sex in the first place knows the bounds in which its fullest enjoyment can be realized.

CT editors noticed in 1969 that marriage vows also seemed to be changing. The bride’s traditional promise to love, honor, and obey her husband was seen as old-fashioned, and many were dropping “obey.”

The Christian woman considering marriage has a serious decision to make. Shall she insist on maintaining a separate independent identity by remaining single, or shall she find her fulfillment as a woman by becoming one flesh with a man, functioning as his helper as did Eve?

If this is indeed the biblical basis for Christian marriage, then it would seem that the marriage ceremony ought to reflect the uniqueness of Christian marriage. Historically this uniqueness was found in the marriage vows of the bride and the groom. While the man vowed to love and honor his wife, the woman was asked to vow that she would love, honor, and obey her husband. Inclusion of the vow to obey, if it is to be meaningful, must be preceded by adequate instruction. The bride must understand that the vow is not ceremonial. In premarital counseling sessions she must be taught the submissive role of the Christian wife. The minister has an excellent opportunity in the wedding ceremony itself to instruct the guests in the uniqueness of Christian marriage.

Public schools dramatically expanded sex education in the 1960s, sparking controversy across the country. CT reported that fundamentalist and ultra-conservative organizations stoked the furor—but said concerns were nonetheless legitimate. The magazine advised a moderate approach:

Certainly Christians should be keenly concerned about this important issue, and there are certain things about the approach of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) that they must question. But there is no excuse for irresponsible name-calling and accusation; such actions are foreign to the spirit of Christ. If criticism is to be constructive and effective, it must be informed. One cannot assume a charge is true solely because it was voiced by his favorite radio preacher.

Those who take the trouble to inform themselves discover that public-school sex education isn’t all bad. Investigation makes it downright difficult to believe that “Commies” are behind the whole thing, and the “pornography” often turns out to be some very un-titillating charts and diagrams. Furthermore, kids are getting sex education anyway, and sometimes what they get is pretty bad. Too often parents and churches have failed to face the problem. Perhaps the schools can be of great service in meeting a need in the lives of many young people. …

But the current programs of sex education are not free of major problems for the Christian parent.

Many young people rejected traditional morality, embracing ideas of “flower power” and “free love.” CT reported the aspirations and spiritual longings at a massive music festival in Woodstock, New York.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the festival was not so much the constant beat offered up by a number of outstanding rock artists, or the casual display of nudity, or even the free-wheeling use of illegal drugs. Rather it was the overwhelming sense of community experienced by the more than 400,000 young people jammed on the 600-acre farm for the weekend. They came in search of peace, of love, of oneness, of community, of a sense of belonging. And, in some measure at least, many claim to have found what they were looking for. …

We can express our dismay and disapproval at the tremendous traffic in drugs allowed to flourish at Woodstock. We can register our displeasure at the almost amoral attitude evidenced in the nonchalant indulgence in nudity and sex. … But the most effective ministry to the youth of our world will be a demonstration that in Jesus Christ they can find that which they seek.

CT also alerted readers to the surge of interest in astrology. The magazine pointed to the opening number of the new rock musical, Hair, hailing the “dawning of the age of Aquarius.”

Let no one think that to its cult the motif of the Aquarian Age is merely whimsical or eccentric. There is solid evidence that many among the architects of our pop culture take with extreme seriousness the division of history into segments ruled over by zodiacal signs. The philosophy of history projected here is about as follows: The 2,000-year period ending with the opening of the Christian era was the Age of Aries, symbolized by a ram, thought to suggest God the Creator. The following 2,000 years, symbolized by the fish and called the Age of Pisces, are considered a sorrowful age, represented by the death of Christ and marked by dissolution, water (tears) being its solvent.

Now, so the theory goes, we are at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, which has been variously estimated to have begun in 1904 or 1933 or more recently … and is held to be a sort of new spiritual beginning, marked by promise of universal brotherhood, wide learning, and the shedding of hurtful inhibitions. …

Part of the current “cultic occultism” stems from a growing distrust of the rational in our time. Thus, we are seeing here a part of a larger revolt against reason that surfaces also in the rigid and unstructured demands of “far out” groups. … Time for March 21, 1969, estimates that there are some 10,000 full-time astrologers in the United States.

As the war in Vietnam continued, the US instituted a lottery-based draft of fighting-age men. CT urged Christians not to give up on American patriotism.

Christians ought to be the best citizens and the finest patriots. Certainly they have a prior allegiance to God Almighty. But this can only make them better Americans. They need not gloss over the nation’s defects or sweep its failures under the rug. They need not claim that their country is always right. When it is right, they will support it; and when it is wrong, they will love it and work to correct it. Even as the Apostle Paul could speak proudly of his Roman citizenship, so should every American Christian speak proudly of his. The day that patriotism ceases, that day we will have ceased to be a people. …

Let us rally behind our flag; let us love our country with all its faults; let us work to improve it with all our strength; let us defend it with all our resources; let us hand it on to generations unborn better than it was when we received it; let us instill in our children the hope of our forefathers for the ultimate fulfillment of their dreams. But above all, let us tell them that the greatness of America lies not simply in the achievement of the ideal but in the unrelenting pursuit of it.

News of specific ways the nation had fallen short of its ideals in the Vietnam War left many Americans disillusioned. Journalist Seymour Hersh uncovered reports detailing how American soldiers murdered more than 300 unarmed women, children, and old men in a hamlet. For Christians, what was the “Lesson of Pinkville”?

We’re the good guys, and good guys just don’t do that kind of thing.

This kind of killing can in no way be excused or condoned, even though we may understand how the hell of war—and especially the kind of war being fought in Viet Nam—brings out the worst in men. We can remind ourselves that the enemy’s atrocities have been much worse, but somehow that doesn’t hide the appalling reality that American soldiers have been accused of gunning down helpless women and children. The facts must be brought out into the open. The offenders—if they can ever be accurately identified—must be brought to trial and punished, and every possible precaution should be taken to prevent a recurrence of such a horrible deed.

But even after punishment has been meted out, the fact remains: Americans acted like bad guys. It isn’t the first time that it’s happened, but the horror of this particular incident has confronted the whole nation with the fact that evil is not confined to the “commies” or the “fascists.” It lurks in the heart of every human being.

Theologian Karl Barth died in 1969. Though CT had often clashed with him, the magazine nonetheless called Barth “the man history will probably adjudge the twentieth century’s most important theologian.” An editorial careful considered the good and bad parts of his legacy, praising the good:

Barth … made perhaps his greatest immediate impact on theology with his Epistle to the Romans at the close of the First World War. In many ways this work was a turning-point. … This significant work helped to bring into fashion again, not merely the Scriptures in terms of content rather than historical circumstance, but the Reformers and many other thinkers whose writings had been neglected or disparaged in the age of liberal ascendancy. … Barth introduced a new vocabulary, new concepts, and a new bibliography as he engaged in a first and tentative effort at theological reconstruction. …

Although Barth never did fully return to the views of the Reformers on Scripture and at times seemed to open the door to universalism, yet we are grateful that he came back as far as he did.

The second great contribution of Barth was to provide a theological rejoinder to totalitarianism. This he did in the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which became the charter of the Confessing Church and an indictment of every form of ecclesiastical appeasement.

The controversial, liberal, “nonconformist” Episcopal bishop James Pike also died that year. CT reported on the strange circumstances:

Pike’s body was found on a rocky ledge two miles from the Dead Sea. … Prepared for the scorching desert with only a couple of bottles of Coca Cola and a map, [Pike and his third wife, Diane] set off shortly after noon September 1 in a rented car to “get the feel” of the wilderness where the Gospels say Jesus went to pray and where he was tempted by Satan. Their car became stuck on some rocks, and, after failing to free it, the pair struck off on foot. Several hours later, Pike, exhausted, lay down, and his wife left him in search of help.

CT also reported the strange story of a famous figure who didn’t die: Beatle Paul McCartney.

Fans have found buried in record grooves and on album covers … cryptic evidence that McCartney did indeed die, despite his recent disclaimers. Affirms the president of the “Is Paul McCartney Dead Society” at Hofstra University, “It’s all right there”—dozens of death symbols, like the picture of Paul sitting under a sign stating, “I was,” and the moaning (on one of the usually empty tracks between songs) that, reversed, sounds like John Lennon’s voice saying, “Paul is dead. Miss him.”

The current Beatle mystery is selling the group’s records and putting their pictures in American magazines, newspapers, and on newscasts. But some Beatle devotees claim McCartney will be resurrected. However disillusioned Americans might be, there was still hope people could find true hope in resurrection.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Ideas

AI Romance Is Perverse

A. Trevor Sutton

Chatbots are making objectophilia commonplace. Christians have a moral duty to oppose these “relationships.”

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty

Thirty-five years ago, Berliners rejoiced over the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Yet Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer could not bear seeing it destroyed. That is because she had married the Berlin Wall.

Objectophilia, also known as objectum-sexuality, occurs when a person has romantic or sexual attraction to specific objects. When Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer married the wall in 1979—and legally changed her last name as a nod to the Berlin Wall—no one had heard of objectophilia. Emotional or sexual attraction to nonliving things wasn’t prevalent.

It is now. Chatbots are making objectophilia an ordinary occurrence. Research from the Center for Democracy and Technology found that one in five high school students or their friends have used a bot for a romantic relationship. Newsweek reported that in a study of 1,000 US adults, approximately 28 percent of respondents disclosed having at least one intimate relationship with an artificial intelligence system. And, like Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer, Yurina Noguchi from Japan recently married a fictional character, Klaus, created by a chatbot. Marrying the Berlin Wall no longer seems so strange.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, recently expressed his surprise over the growing interest in AI relationships. Speaking with Alex Kantrowitz on the Big Technology Podcast, Altman explained his vision for the future of human-bot relationships: “There’s some version of this which can be super healthy, and I think adult users should get a lot of choice in where on this spectrum they want to be. There are definitely versions of it that seem to me unhealthy, although I’m sure a lot of people will choose to do that.”

Altman suggested that “super healthy” human-bot interactions involve a chatbot that is personable, warm, and supportive. It is not clear, however, what exactly Altman had in mind when he referred to “unhealthy” human-bot relationships.

Altman concluded that users will need to sort out AI objectophilia for themselves. “Like lots of other technologies, we will run the experiment,” Altman said. “We will find that there’s unknown unknowns, good and bad about it. And society will over time figure out how to think about where people should set that dial.”

As a pastor and scholar of technology, I am concerned about this “figure it out after it is let out” approach. Altman is either naive or indifferent about the consequences of prolonged human-bot relationships. Imagine if drug companies released new medications saying, “There are unknown unknowns, good and bad about it. We will figure it out over time.” Companies must figure out new drugs before letting them out.

With one in five people already exploring romantic relationships with bots, the time to figure this out is now. Parents cannot wait until their children go through nasty breakups with chatbots to sort this out. Children cannot wait until elderly parents lose touch with reality as a result of bot relationships. Pastors cannot wait until married couples are sitting in their office contemplating divorce over affairs with AI tools. We must think through these complex issues before technology is put out. Insights from philosophers and Christian theologians can help us.

Large language models have allowed for rapid and previously unimaginable advances in generative AI. Built on massive amounts of human language data, this technology mirrors human speech. Chatbots are artificially intelligent robots capable of conversation—chatting—as though they were human. It’s no surprise that a program trained on romance novels, flirty social media posts, and romantic comedies can sweep us off our feet. It’s not shocking that a technology trained on millions of hours of pornographic videos can excel in seduction. Chatbot capability is no surprise—our penchant for personifying objects is.

Martin Buber is well known for his “I and Thou” philosophical concept. According to Buber, a genuine encounter with another person cannot occur when we approach someone as an object for our use. Buber helps us understand what it means to relate to one another as persons, not objects. When we think of another person as a means to an end, we turn him or her into an object. Buber argues that the “I” must encounter another as a “thou,” not an “it.”

Chatbots invite us to treat objects as persons. Each chatbot relationship turns an “it” into a “thou.” This technology tricks us into personifying objects. And it habituates us to objectifying persons. Chatbot boyfriends and girlfriends give us endless affirmation and allow us to manipulate them around our desires.

We look for the same conversations we curated with bots in real life. AI-generated porn conditions people to treat each other as objects for use—for sex, yes, but also for other kinds of gratification—and to dispose of each other at will. Prolonged chatbot relationships teach “I and it” instead of the mutual “thou” of love between persons. When we love objects, we objectify love. Loving objects leads to objectifying love.

Romantic and sexual relationships with objects incline us toward an objectifying love. This inclination, in turn, weakens our ability to love real people. AI porn and chatbot relationships weaken essential relationship skills and abilities.

According to philosopher Albert Borgmann, a device makes no demand of skill, practice, or commitment. Instead, a device—toaster and thermostat, smartphone and speaker—provides simple consumption without any effort. Turn it on and consume something from it.

Borgmann contrasted devices with what he calls “focal things” that give us meaning, requiring skill, practice, and social engagement. A conversation with another person demands communication and curiosity, focus and empathy. Going on a blind date—and leaving that date when it stinks—takes practice. Companionship, as the origin of the word suggests, invites us to learn how to break bread with one another. A lifetime of marriage requires both persons to engage in body and soul, heart and mind.

Seeking love from devices atrophies our relationship skills. Turning to devices for relationships and sexual satisfaction weakens our capacity to have any kind of intimacy in unmediated ways. The ease of AI porn and amorous relationships with chatbots makes it harder for us to commit to relationships with other humans.

Yet commodifying love and relationships through devices did not begin with chatbots. Dating apps like Tinder have encouraged this trend for a long time. There is no skill in viewing an image of a person and swiping left or right. Technologies like this have already weakened our relationship skills, making easy connections with bots very attractive.

However, objectification and weakened relationship skills may be the least of our concerns. A far more existential threat is at stake here: Loving an object makes someone less of a person. The concept of personhood appears to be obvious—of course we all know what it means to be human—but personhood is actually deep, mysterious, and inherently theological.

John Zizioulas, in Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, depicts how Christianity formed our understanding of personhood and existence. Early church theologians shaped the concept of personhood as they articulated Trinitarian theology: “Although the person and ‘personal identity’ are widely discussed nowadays as a supreme ideal, nobody seems to recognize that historically as well as existentially the concept of the person is indissolubly bound up with theology.”

By stating that God exists in three persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—theologians asserted that there is no being prior to relationship. In Trinitarian terms, God’s essence (ousia) is inseparable from his personhood (hypostasis). God did not first exist as one person and then exist in relation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Rather, God’s being is in relationship as three divine persons—known as perichoresis. Our personhood, too, requires relationship.

As Zizioulas puts it, “A human being left to himself cannot be a person.” Anything that inhibits our relationships makes us less human. Isolating technologies separate us from other persons and alienate us from the triune God.

Scripture warns of how alienation from God makes us less human:

Their idols are silver and gold, made by human hands.They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see. They have ears, but cannot hear, noses, but cannot smell.They have hands, but cannot feel, feet, but cannot walk, nor can they utter a sound with their throats. Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them. (Ps. 115:4–8, emphasis added)

Sam Altman wants to figure out AI porn and chatbot relationships by letting them out into schools, bedrooms, and daily life. Some champion these technologies as a step in a positive direction for society, as it may mitigate exploitation of human-based pornography (or even child pornography, as Christine Emba has pointed out). The deleterious effects of AI pornography, however, far outweigh the possibility of any short-term benefits.

But even if chatbot relationships do not become pornographic, there is still danger in objectophilia. Loving objects leads to objectifying love and a diminished ability to engage in human relationships. When we’re isolated, alienation from God and others will follow.

The risk of figuring this out in real time is too great. Technology this powerful must be thought out before being allowed to shape our relationships and marriages, hearts and souls.

A. Trevor Sutton is a pastor, professor, speaker, and author of several books, including Redeeming Technology: A Christian Approach to Healthy Digital Habits and Irreplaceable: Humanity, Vocation, and the Limits of Technology (Forthcoming in 2026, Baker Books).

- More from A. Trevor Sutton

Books

Finding God in the Wilderness

Elizabeth Woodson

Three devotional books to read this month.

Illustration by Christianity Today

This piece was adapted from CT’s books newsletter. Subscribe here.

Donna Barber, Enough for Today: Forty Reflections for Surviving the Wilderness (InterVarsity Press, 2025)

Wilderness seasons tend to expose the truth about where we are finding our strength, revealing whether it is in God or ourselves. I experienced this a few years ago during a challenging season in vocational ministry. I had let busyness crowd out my time with God, making my to-do list a higher priority than my time in Scripture and prayer. Eventually, I grew distant from God and spiritually weary, tired from carrying my burdens all by myself. But in order to find spiritual relief, I knew I needed a guide, a spiritual companion who had survived life in the wilderness and could help me reconnect with God.

Donna Barber’s book offers this kind of spiritual companionship, written with the honesty and vulnerability of someone who knows the wilderness intimately. Each devotional pairs a moment of Israel’s story with a related moment in her season of hardship and weariness. What stood out to me the most was her resilience, a steadfast commitment to remain present enough to continually encounter God—even in the silence.

“I have met God again and again … when I have made room and come to him with hopeful expectation,” she writes. “When my heart is clear, and my mind is at rest, he has met me in the depth and mystery of silence.”

Organized by the route we all take through the wilderness, Barber’s book invites us to meditate on our experience of discovering God, hearing his call, facing our fears, and eventually finding our renewed selves, freshly refined by fire.

My favorite devotionals give voice to the complex emotions that arise in the valley, emotions we fear are evidence of a weak or inauthentic faith but are actually evidence of our humanity in a broken world. Through her eyes, readers gain a new vision of the wilderness, seeing it as a place where God meets us in unexpected ways, showing us aspects of his character we couldn’t see otherwise.

Tara Beth Leach, The GREAT Morning Revolution: Daily Spiritual Practices for Meaningful Moments with God (Zondervan, 2025)

If Barber helps us find God in the wilderness, Tara Beth Leach provides structure for our journey with him. Drawing on a method she developed during her own wilderness season, she presents a morning prayer practice that will transform not only our day but also our entire being.

Leach’s simple format—gratitude, reflection, exaltation, asking, and trusting—helps readers center their morning on God and begin to see the whole day differently. For Leach, “the morning is only the beginning … these practices set the tone for a life that remains open and available to God’s movement throughout the day.”

A key strength in her book is its focus on grace. Instead of pushing a “just try harder” mindset, she roots the practice of the morning routine in God’s unconditional love and our desire for communion with him. “It’s about returning to God, not getting it right,” Leach writes. “God delights in your presence, not your performance.”

Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (HarperCollins, 1992)

Richard J. Foster’s book completes this triad of spiritual companioning by addressing the intimacy with God that prayer develops. From the beginning, he makes it clear that his book is not designed to define prayer but is rather an exploration of our “enduring, continuing, growing love relationship with the great God of the universe.” For Foster, this love demands a response, and prayer is that response.

He organizes the book as a progressive journey of connection with each person of the Trinity, starting with inward transformation from communion with the Son, moving to intimacy with the Father, and culminating in missional life empowered by the Spirit.

Each chapter is a mix of Scripture, personal stories, and the wisdom of saints such as Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila. Foster uses this unique combination to stir the reader’s imagination. As he unpacks each prayer type, he leaves space for us to reflect on the contours of our divine conversations and the personal formation they cultivate in our lives. Additionally, with each compounding reflection, the reader is drawn to see how prayer, even in the wilderness, ultimately leads to greater love for God.

For lost and weary souls, these books serve as a much-needed spiritual guide, helping reveal the beauty of the wilderness. For when traversed with intentional spiritual practices in hand, seasons of desolation can become bridges to deep, life-changing transformation and intimacy with God.

Elizabeth Woodson is a Bible teacher, theologian, author, and the Founder of The Woodson Institute, an organization that equips believers to understand and grow in their Christian faith.

- More from Elizabeth Woodson

News

Died: Christian Publishing Executive Robert Wolgemuth

Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

As author, agent, and former Thomas Nelson president, Wolgemuth shaped the Christian book world for decades.

During the final five years of his life, Robert Wolgemuth published two books about living with purpose in one’s later years. The title of his 2021 book, Gun Lap: Staying in the Race with Purpose, refers to the last minutes of a race, when a gun sounds to signal that the lead runner has started the final lap. Wolgemuth found the gun lap to be a powerful metaphor for how he wanted to approach the end of his life—moving forward with intensity and purpose. In his book, he encouraged other men to do the same.

“You’ve experienced all kinds of things. Don’t go retire to someplace where shuffleboard and square dancing is on the menu,” Wolgemuth said in a 2021 interview while promoting Gun Lap. “You have a lot of mileage left in your tires, to change the metaphor.”

One of the most influential men in evangelical publishing, Wolgemuth was a literary agent who represented writers like Albert Mohler, Kevin DeYoung, Nancy Leigh DeMoss (now his wife), and Joni Eareckson Tada. He collaborated with James Dobson, Max Lucado, Randy Alcorn, and R. C. Sproul and was the author of Lies Men Believe and She Calls Me Daddy. After the loss of his first wife in 2014 and after his own battles with cancer, Wolgemuth began to write and speak about making peace with age and death while still pursuing one’s calling.

Over the course of his decades-long career in Christian publishing, Wolgemuth held powerful positions at Campus Life magazine,Word Publishing, and Thomas Nelson before forming his own publishing company and literary agency (now Wolgemuth & Wilson).

Robert Wolgemuth died on January 10 of complications from pneumonia.

Andrew Wolgemuth, Robert’s nephew and now a partner at Wolgemuth & Wilson, told CT that his uncle “brought kindness to his interactions with everyone he worked with” and continued working creatively and bringing fresh ideas to the publishing process until the end of his career.

“He was consistently on the edge of his seat,” said Andrew Wolgemuth. “He was excited about the work he got to do. Over the course of his career, he sat in every seat around the table. He was a marketer, a publisher, an author, and an agent. He brought a 360-degree perspective to every project.”

Warren Cole Smith, editor in chief of MinistryWatch, told CT that Robert Wolgemuth was “one of the most important and influential men in evangelicalism you’ve never heard of.”

Wolgemuth was born in 1948 in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. He attended Taylor University, graduating in 1969 with a degree in biblical literature. After graduating, he spent several years on staff with Youth for Christ.

From 1976 to 1979, Wolgemuth was the business manager for Campus Life magazine, the print publication of Youth for Christ. He became vice president of sales and marketing for Word Publishing in 1979, a position he held for five years.

In 1984, Wolgemuth was hired as the president of flagship Christian publisher Thomas Nelson. Two years later, he and former Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt formed a publishing company, Wolgemuth & Hyatt Publishers, which they sold in 1992 before forming their literary agency, now Wolgemuth & Wilson.

Over the course of his career, Wolgemuth served two terms as the chairman of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Taylor University. He wrote or cowrote over 20 books; his coauthors included John MacArthur, R. C. Sproul, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and Joni Eareckson Tada.

Wolgemuth sought to address what he saw as biblical illiteracy among Christian men. He was the general editor of the Men’s Daily Bible (Christian Standard Bible), published by Lifeway. He also wrote the notes for the NIV Dad’s Devotional Bible, published by Zondervan. His devotionals, study Bibles, and books have sold over 2 million copies.

Wolgemuth married Nancy Leigh DeMoss, founder of the ministry Revive Our Hearts and author of the best-selling book Lies Women Believe, in 2015. Writer Hannah Anderson referred to the partnership as “the closest thing evangelicalism has to a royal wedding.” Wolgemuth had been DeMoss’s literary agent prior to their romantic involvement, and he continued collaborating with her in publishing and Revive Our Hearts throughout their marriage.

In 2015, when DeMoss announced their engagement, she made it clear that their partnership was both marital and missional. She wrote, “I love this man dearly and look forward to becoming Mrs. Robert Wolgemuth. But my life mission has not changed. It will now be our life mission to magnify the Lord together.” For ten years, Robert and Nancy Wolgemuth ran Revive Our Hearts as a married couple, appearing together on radio broadcasts and podcasts and coauthoring books, including You Can Trust God to Write Your Story.

Following the announcement of Wolgemuth’s death, Hyatt celebrated Wolgemuth in a post on social media as “a man of quiet humility, gentle strength, and unwavering integrity.” Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship and author of Jesus Revolution, paid tribute to Wolgemuth as well, calling him “a legend in Christian publishing.”

Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, described Wolgemuth as “one of the greatest encouragers in ministry and writing I have ever known.” Wolgemuth’s longtime friend and client Tada memorialized him as a “skilled and seasoned leader” who “excels in character and kindness.”

“He was consistent,” said Andrew Wolgemuth. “Robert was committed to his friends and neighbors, his local church. He was the same person in the office and out of the office.”

Robert Wolgemuth is survived by his wife, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth; his two daughters; five grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

- More from Kelsey Kramer McGinnis

News

This Year, Protections for the Unborn Won’t Come from Washington

Daniel K. Williams

Contributor

The White House and Congress seem uninterested in new pro-life measures. But crisis pregnancy centers will continue their mission, one life at a time.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

For nearly 50 years, the annual route for the March for Life in Washington, DC, ended at the Supreme Court in a gesture of protest against Roe v. Wade. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, the March for Life selected a different route that took the marchers past the Capitol, where they hoped Congress would enact legislation protecting unborn life.

But this year, pro-lifers are not likely to get any new protections for the unborn from Congress or the Supreme Court, even though both are under the control of conservatives.

The pro-life movement’s ultimate goal has always been nationwide legal protection for human life from conception. From 1973 to the early 1980s, pro-lifers lobbied for a constitutional amendment, which never came close to getting out of Congress. In the mid-1980s, the movement pivoted to a short-term strategy of overturning Roe through the Supreme Court, but its ultimate goal was always securing constitutional protection for the unborn, not merely reversing Roe and returning the issue to the states.

Pro-lifers therefore resumed campaigning for national protections for the unborn as soon as Roe was reversed. A constitutional amendment is out of the question in the current polarized political climate. But some pro-life conservatives such as Robert P. George have said Congress could pass a statute declaring that the 14th Amendment already protects the unborn.

In both 2023 and 2024, several dozen conservative Republicans in the House attempted to do this with the Life at Conception Act, which declares that human beings have constitutional protection from the moment a human egg is fertilized. But even though the House is under Republican control—and even though the Judiciary Committee is chaired by conservative pro-life Republican Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)—the Judiciary Committee has no interest in considering this measure.

That’s partly because a measure declaring that human life begins at conception would likely restrict in vitro fertilization (IVF), which President Donald Trump and many Republicans support. In 2024, when a Life at Conception Act had 125 Republican cosponsors in the House, some of the Republicans who initially expressed support for the measure quickly backtracked when asked whether they endorsed a measure that could potentially be used to restrict IVF. The next year, the Life at Conception Act had only 68 Republican cosponsors—barely more than half the previous number. (Since then, latecomers have nudged that number to 93.)

And even though the Supreme Court has a solid conservative majority, it has not shown much interest in restricting abortion since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022. Instead, it has punted in abortion cases by issuing rulings that preserve abortion access on narrow procedural grounds while avoiding larger constitutional issues. In June 2024, for instance, the Supreme Court preserved access to the abortion drug mifepristone when it ruled that medical groups challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of the drug lacked standing to sue.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the Trump administration has not shown much interest in restricting mifepristone either. On the contrary, the FDA approved a second generic version of mifepristone on October 1.

Today nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States are induced through medication, and most of those involve the use of mifepristone. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute says the widespread availability of chemical abortions is one reason the annual number of abortions in the United States increased by 10 percent between 2020 and 2023, despite new restrictions on abortion in many conservative states. The FDA’s approval of a new version of mifepristone could lead to even more abortions.

With the Trump administration and the Republican Congress uninterested in restricting mifepristone or implementing new legal protections for unborn human life, there is no reason to expect a politically induced reduction in the number of abortions.

Furthermore, Trump outraged many supporters of the pro-life cause when he suggested that Republicans needed to be “flexible” on the Hyde Amendment when negotiating with Democrats about extending subsidies for Obamacare. The idea that a Republican president and some congressional Republicans would consider accepting federally funded insurance coverage for abortion has already prompted several pro-life and conservative pro-family groups to threaten to withhold donations to Republican congressional candidates who are “soft” on abortion.

Nor will the Supreme Court be much help, because this year, it does not have any cases on the docket that could result in restrictions to abortion access. Instead, the most that the conservative Supreme Court will likely give the pro-life movement this year is protection for crisis pregnancy centers, shielding them from state attorneys who issue subpoenas against them for allegedly purveying misinformation.

This is not the same as protections for the unborn, but it might be the best pro-lifers can get from conservatives in Washington. And if that’s the case, pro-lifers can use the protections to expand their work in the one place where they might have the greatest opportunity to save unborn lives.

That place isn’t in Congress. It’s not at the Supreme Court. Instead, it’s in crisis pregnancy centers and other local venues where pro-lifers can continue their mission, one life at a time.

Daniel K. Williams is an associate professor of history at Ashland University and the author of Abortion and America’s Churches.

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Ideas

It’s Not ‘Christian Nationalism.’ It’s Conservative Identity Politics.

George Yancey

Academics and pundits critiquing evangelical voters have misdiagnosed their behavior.

Donald Trump speaks at the Faith & Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Policy Conference in Washington, DC on June 22, 2024.

Samuel Corum / Stringer / Getty

Nearly a decade ago, many of us watched in shock as Donald Trump was elected president of the United States. Until that point, it was easy to write off his presidential run as an egotistical attempt to gain fame and power, with circumstances aligned to allow him to win the Republican nomination. But his victory meant that there was a real audience not disturbed by his bravado, sexism, and race-baiting. Academics like me were eager to understand what happened to the country.

Into this breach came the concept of Christian nationalism. Given that an estimated 81 percent of white conservative Christians voted for Trump, it was easy to envision them as the main culprits behind his rise. Several academics (notably Sam Perry, Andrew Whitehead, Philip Gorski, Paul A. Djupe, and Joseph Baker) wrote articles and books on this subject, and as media attention followed, the notion of Christian nationalism quickly caught on among the public.

Our national conversation focused on white Christian nationalism, as the concept may mean something entirely different for minorities. Before long, Christian nationalism was offered as an explanation of both why white conservative Christians voted for Trump and what was wrong with their political activity. But from nearly the very beginning, there have been reasons to suspect it was not a particularly effective way of understanding them or their politics.

The first issue is how the term has been defined. The basic definition of Christian nationalism is that it is “an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.” Yet academics do not all share the same definition, and they emphasize distinct elements, which makes it challenging to figure out what exactly falls into this bucket. Some theories, for example, emphasize social identities while others focus on symbols.

Many other definitions of Christian nationalism have been published in online articles over time. They include assertions that Christianity defines America, an ideology that Christians should rule, and the notion that the United States is by and for only Christians. Before we can confidently use it to diagnose political movements however, we need to settle on what it is.

Second, there are reasons not to trust the analytical tools often used by academics to assess Christian nationalism, such as a popular scale developed to capture similarities between religious and secular institutions. Several academics have questioned the statistical soundness of these scales, and conservative Christians have rightly argued that agreement with some statements used in the measurements (“The success of the United States is part of God’s plan” or “The federal government should allow prayer in public schools”) does not necessarily make one a Christian nationalist. If the people being described reject that description, caution is warranted when using it to assess their motivations.

That said, conservative Christians have become politically active in ways that are concerning. Some, particularly activists, prioritize political salvation over spiritual salvation and view electoral victories as a key needed to remake society. There is value in finding a term that captures this activism and help us understand politically active conservative Christians and what motivates them. In my work as a sociologist, I have come to believe the concept that best describes the current phenomenon is conservative identity politics.

To understand my view, we must go to the roots of identity politics. Liberal political organizer L.A. Kauffman defines the concept as “the belief that identity itself—its elaboration, expression, or affirmation—is and should be a fundamental focus of political work.”

In the United States, our modern notion of identity politics emerged on the left in response to the backlash against Marxism in the 20th century. As writer and academic Yascha Mounk noted in his book The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time, Marxism had been a major organizing principle for progressive social movements. But support for it was collapsing during the 1960s and ’70s, particularly as the abuses in Communist societies became more apparent. Thus, identity politics became a useful tool for the political left.

Identity politics, to be clear, is different from the Civil Rights Movement, which organized around universal and theological values of equality to push back against the rampant racism and other challenges faced by African-Americans. But over time, identity politics—as defined by Kauffman—did infiltrate civil rights causes, leading many activists to focus on narratives of oppression where concerns of only marginalized groups can be recognized.

Identity politics originally focused on racial minorities, women, sexual minorities, and the poor. In contemporary society, it has expanded to include oppressions, as deemed by activists, based on sexual expression, disabilities, body types, and other criteria. With the rise of the Trump-fueled conservative identity politics, we have now also seen it develop on the right.

I differentiate modern conservative identity politics from early white supremacy because supremacy was based on maintaining power for the majority group rather than defending a marginalized group, which is how many conservatives—including evangelicals—currently see themselves. A large chunk of Trump supporters, for example, believe white people and Christians are themselves oppressed groups in need of protection. Their critics may recoil at that idea, but whether detractors are convinced oppression exists is irrelevant. A lot of conservatives believe it does, which fosters identity politics.

In my forthcoming book, Identity Politics in the United States, I lay out three pitfalls that comes with engaging the world mostly—or only—through the lens of identity. First, it leads people to use language that dehumanizes those they see as oppressors (such as men, white people, Christians, or the “woke”). Second, it creates a strong tendency to compel agreement and constantly police boundaries among those who want to be in good standing with the group. Third, it leads people to dismiss their own previous moral standards and intellectual commitments to maintain fidelity to a cause.

Personally, I have concluded identity politics, whether on the left or the right, is not an effective way to engage in open discourse or critical thinking. It ushers in ethnocentrism that feeds the polarization damaging our society. It also incentivizes us to seek out solutions for groups we like and ignore the concerns of others when we, as Christians, should seek out solutions that serve everyone—even in a society where oppression creates different concerns for different social or ethnic groups.

When I was doing research for my book, I tested out my theory on conservative identity politics. I designed an empirical online survey and presented it to 38 conservative Christians who are highly supportive of Trump. My goal was to see if they saw their own politics through the lens of Christian nationalism or identity politics. For Christian nationalism, I used language from two sociologists who argue white Christian nationalists think that:

America was founded as a Christian nation by (white) men who were “traditional” Christians, who based the nation’s founding documents on “Christian principles.” The United States is blessed by God, which is why it has been so successful; and the nation has a special role to play in God’s plan for humanity. But these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from “un-American” influences both inside and outside our borders.

In contrast, I created my own definition of identity politics for the respondents. This was:

Conservative Christians who are active in politics have a vision of restoring traditional moral and sexual values. Those values oppose the humanist values held by progressives who control the media, academia, and the entertainment industry. Thus, culturally, conservative Christians envision themselves as maligned by the larger culture. Those who control the culture have a power that conservative Christians do not possess and use that power to marginalize Christians. That marginalization can come in the form of legal consequences such as Christian bakers who refuse to serve same-sex marriages, or social consequences such as suffering the effects of “cancel culture.” Thus the vision conservative Christians have is that they are a group fighting to improve the larger society but face a powerful deadly enemy who will crush them in order to maintain their culture power.

A little more than half of respondents (21) told me the Christian nationalism statement either absolutely or probably described how they think. But nearly all the respondents (36) said the same about the statement informed by the concept of identity politics. This was a single survey and doesn’t scientifically represent the larger Christian population, but I have done other analysis that has reaffirmed this finding. This means that, among politically active Christians who support Trump, more are driven by elements of identity politics than of Christian nationalism.

I say all of this because those of us concerned about conservative Christians who seem to prioritize politics over the gospel need to be aware of their true motivations. Honest assessments allow for real conversations. Blanket accusations of racism and authoritarianism are often thrown around by academics and pundits in discussions about Christian nationalism. I am not saying these aren’t real concerns – racism and authoritarianism do exist. But making sweeping charges won’t alter the attitudes of activists if they don’t see those things as the driving factors in their political choices.

The conversation around Christian nationalism pathologizes conservative Christians. By the media and many on the left, they are envisioned as uniquely authoritarian and possessing fear and hostility toward outgroups. Since other groups have not undergone the depth of academic assessment that conservative Christians have, we do not have concrete evidence that shows they are different from everyone else.

However, identity politics is featured on the left and the right, and the problems it creates for conservative Christians are not unique to them. My caution is just as relevant for believers supporting progressive causes as it is for conservatives. Instead of falling into the trap of identity politics, both groups need to engage in the public square without surrendering biblical principles and the gospel, which is our ultimate priority.

For conservatives, concerns about anti-Christian discrimination may allow us to have better conversations because, frankly, the current approach is not working. As I look at many of the writings criticizing Christian nationalism, they fall short in accomplishing what they should, in theory, be trying to do: convincing Christians to rethink how they engage politics. Instead, they seem to be more preoccupied with attaching stigma to politically conservative Christians than with finding what exactly makes Trump’s political movement appealing to them, and tackling it head on.

Research indicates that conservatives are not more politically active than other religious groups. Yet since Trump’s election, their activism has grown. The emergence of the late Charlie Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA, provided a venue that mixed Christian belief with Republican politics. It is appropriate to be concerned with how this type of activism dilutes the gospel. But to truly challenge the movement, we need to do a better job of understanding it.

George Yancey is a professor of sociology at Baylor University and author of the forthcoming book, Identity Politics in the United States: An Exploration of Identity in Red, White, and Blue. He also vlogs on YouTube.

- More from George Yancey

Theology

How to Know If You’re Growing in Patience—or Just Giving Up

Russell Moore

Columnist

The right kind of waiting can save us. The wrong kind will destroy us.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

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

Whenever some terrible atrocity comes to light in the news cycle these days (in other words, about every 15 minutes), I hear the question “But what can we do?” I usually urge prayer and patience. The first part I have no doubts about, but I’m starting to realize the second one needs more context. That’s because, just like faith or hope or love or grace, the word patience often stands in for a cheap imitation. The right kind of patience can save us; the wrong kind will destroy us.

Last year, Leon Wieseltier wrote in his journal Liberties a kind of jeremiad against patience. It is, he wrote, the virtue those of us who believe in democracy often commend against all kinds of revolutionaries and enthusiasts, and rightly so. Still, Wieseltier wrote, patience can also be paralyzing when we don’t know where the line is between wise acceptance and unwise resignation. As he put it, “Sometimes patience has the lamentable effect of turning a player into an umpire, and umpires have no sides.”

Those words made me wince because they called to mind Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to the “white moderate” pastors who told him they agreed with his goals but he should wait patiently for justice. Noting his own consistent commitment to nonviolence and persuasive witness, King wrote, “I have tried to make clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or perhaps even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.”

King wrote and spoke very differently when addressing a different audience than those who remained silent “behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.” Many, after all, concluded King’s movement was too patient, too slow. Some decided his patience just wasn’t working. We can see why someone would come to that conclusion a full decade after the Supreme Court’s desegregation decision with Jim Crow still in effect all across the South. To those, King counseled patience. This difference wasn’t inconsistency.

If someone thinks he or she has sinned too much to be forgiven, I am not going to say “Obey God” and walk away—not because obedience is unimportant but because what that person will hear, with an already-faulty view of obedience, is “Work harder.” But if another friend tells me he’s been caught embezzling money but it really wasn’t that much, and if the company wanted him not to do it, they should have paid him more, I am not going to say simply, “Rest in God’s grace.” Again, that’s not because he shouldn’t rest in God’s grace but because he has a wrong definition of grace.

Patience is indeed what’s called for in this time and in all times. Patience is worked in us by the Spirit. But the efficacy of this virtue requires that we know what it is and isn’t. Let’s look at some common views of patience.

First, think about cynical patience. This is what King called out in the Birmingham pastors. This kind of patience says, “You’ve got to be realistic” or “Idealism is for losers.” It acts as a moral sedative against doing what is right and accepts the Devil’s account of reality—that force is ultimate, that cruelty is power.

Second is demoralized patience. Those with this kind of patience wait not because they trust but because they have given up. Demoralized patience is waiting without hope. Over time, it loses the ability even to imagine a different kind of future.

In reality, the first kind of fake patience feeds on the second. Most people aren’t calculating and opportunistic. But for those who are—the cynics—nothing is more of an obstacle than people who actually hope—who aspire to something better. The cynics often tell people to be patient when what they really want is for the demoralized to shrug and say, “Well, it is what it is.”

Sometimes what feels realistic or reasonable or mature is just a way of saying to oneself, “Nothing meaningful is coming. Adjust yourself accordingly.”

In the days of the prophet Ezekiel, the problem was not just with exiles who feared God had forgotten them but also with those who were left behind in their homeland. They concluded that injustice and violence would continue: “The Lord has forsaken the land, and the Lord does not see” (Ezek. 9:9, ESV throughout).

This pattern of thinking ends with the cynics leading the demoralized to hopelessness—right where the cynics want it. And God denounced the cynics, who had “disheartened the righteous falsely, although I have not grieved him, and you have encouraged the wicked, that he should not turn from his evil way to save his life” (13:22).

But neither of these false views is what the Bible means by patience. Paul wrote of endurance, a patient bearing-up under suffering, this way: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame” (Rom. 5:3–5). He then wrote that “if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (8:25).

This is hopeful patience. It recognizes delayed outcomes but does not decay expectations.

In fact, Paul wrote that waiting with hope is not passive but active, even when we don’t know what to do. The Spirit prompts us, after all, to “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved” (vv. 23–24). That’s full of lament but not despair.

If what we define as patience makes us less able to determine what is wrong, it is not patience of the Spirit. Patience instead lets go of the need to control timetables or to have hopes that are immediately measurable.

Hopeful patience does not refuse to bear witness. Often this kind of patience cannot see the next steps to take, but not because it no longer believes there’s a way forward. Sometimes hopeful patience doesn’t know how to achieve justice, but not because it has concluded that injustice is inevitable or that good and evil are the same.

Impatience, on the other hand, leads first to frenzy and then compliance. When we expect everything to be immediately made right, we become frantic when it is not. For some people, that then means forcing change to happen—even if it mimics the ways and means of the unjust. If Martin Luther King Jr. had decided to fight Bull Connor with fire hoses and attack dogs of his own, he would have lost regardless of who won—it would just create a contest to find which Bull Connor was bigger.

Even for those who retain moral integrity and authority, a waiting that isn’t energized by both hope and lament will lose heart—and give up. Eventually, the impatient look around for what does seem to work, and often they find the same thing the cynical propose and the demoralized accept.

The patience of the Spirit is different because it conforms us to the patience of God himself. If we misunderstand that, we miss it all. In The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic, author Karl Bell explores how the chaos of the oceans led to the genre of “cosmic horror” by such writers as H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu and other monsters are terrifying because they are, in a sense, patient. They slumber in waiting because they do not care about human beings at all. They represent a meaningless, unfeeling universe. But that is not the patience of the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

The impatient look at the injustice and suffering of the world, and they conclude, as do the cynical and demoralized patient, that everything will be this way forever (2 Pet. 3:4). They cannot see that the patience of God is active: “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (v. 9). Patience with hope keeps checking in, even if that means asking, “How long, O Lord?” or sighing in utterance too deep for words.

Patience is not Zen-like detachment. That’s why some of the most patient people I know feel as if they’re impatient. And some of the people who think they are patient are just procrastinating or scared or numb. If you are anguished and unsure of what to do, pray—stop and just say that in the presence of God. You will find that you are either appealing for God to intervene or praying for him to bring to mind what he is calling you to do.

Patience endures suffering, but it doesn’t cause it. Patience endures evil, but it doesn’t endorse it. Let’s wait, but not as those who have no hope.

Russell Moore is editor at large and columnist at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

News

Christians Provide Food, Medicine, and Spiritual Hope at Venezuela’s Border

Hernán Restrepo in Cúcuta, Colombia

After Maduro’s ouster, ministries in Cúcuta, Colombia, don’t know if Venezuelan migrants will return home or if more will flee.

The Simón Bolívar International Bridge on the Colombia-Venezuela border.

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

On a sweltering Sunday in Cúcuta, Colombia, the worship team at Casa Sobre la Roca prepared onstage in the cool, air-conditioned sanctuary as parishioners, many from the city’s upper-class neighborhood, mingle before the first service.

Unnoticed, a grey-haired man with deep wrinkles etched in his face and a trash bag in his hand limped to a seat in the last row. Minutes later, a younger man with a trimmed goatee holding his own plastic bag slid into the seat next to him. Their shoes were worn from days of traveling from their home in Valencia, Venezuela, to the Colombian border town of Cúcuta.

Jonathan Coche-Vásquez and his uncle Frank González left Venezuela on January 2 and first heard about the US military capture of President Nicolás Maduro on the radio a day later, when they were already in Colombia.

The news brought them new hope for their country. But as the days passed, that elation dissipated as Venezuela’s Chavista leadership remained in power. They were encouraged to hear that officials with the US State Department had arrived at the embassy in Caracas to assess reestablishing diplomatic ties, as well as that opposition leader María Corina Machado would meet with President Donald Trump, which ended up happening on January 15.

“We know things are going to change. We hope it will be for the better, but no one knows how long it will take,” González said. “We decided to leave the country because the hunger and poverty we experienced in our city, Valencia, couldn’t wait. We want to get to [Colombia’s capital of] Bogotá to find work in gardening or construction.”

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

Jonathan Coche-Vásquez and his uncle Frank González.

The night before, the two had slept in the Colón Park, a popular spot for Venezuelan migrants and displaced Colombians due to its enormous trees that offer respite from the relentless heat. But as they slept, robbers stole their backpacks and the little money they had. All they had left were a few changes of clothes that they hauled in their garbage bags. On Sunday, they stepped into Casa Sobre la Roca after a church member invited them to the service.

The pastor preached about the meaning of truth, interspersing his sermon with political commentary about Colombia’s upcoming elections. Despite struggling with fatigue, González and Coche-Vásquez listened attentively, shedding tears at the final moment of reflection on Jesus’ words in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life.”

Like González and Coche-Vásquez, two in three Venezuelans who have left the country would not want to return without security guarantees and a reinstatement of rule of law, as they fear state repression, poor quality of public services, and increased insecurity. Cúcuta, the main city along the porous 1,370-mile border separating Colombia and Venezuela, is often the first stop for Venezuelan migrants escaping poverty and violence.

As a result, in the past decade, Christians—many of them Venezuelan refugees themselves—have opened shelters, soup kitchens, medical clinics, and churches to aid the new arrivals. More than 215,000 Venezuelans now call Cúcuta home, along with 37,000 in the nearby city of Villa del Rosario.

Uncertainty remains after the US military strike on Caracas. Ministry workers don’t know whether they’ll see an influx of Venezuelans coming into Colombia or an exodus of refugees returning home. Either way, they are eager to help in whatever way they can.

One of them, Ediober González (no relation to Frank), has helped distribute food for migrants through organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse since 2018. A Venezuelan Baptist pastor, he and his family decided to flee the country in 2015 after seeing his children’s school teach a propagandistic history of the Cuban Revolution.

“I understand that [people] are fleeing not only poverty but also the lack of freedom in our country,” he said.

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

Ediober González

Maduro had led Venezuela since Hugo Chávez’s death in 2013, and under his authoritarian rule, 8 million people left the country due to hyperinflation, political repression, gang violence, and a shortage of food and medicine.

Since arriving in Colombia, Ediober González noted that Cúcuta had received two major waves of Venezuelan migrants—the first following the country’s economic collapse between 2016 and 2018, and the second during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021 as inflation increased dramatically.

He recalls that during the two previous waves, rivers of people could be seen waiting to cross the Simón Bolívar Bridge, the main border crossing between Colombia and Venezuela, every day. Thousands more crossed through informal paths, taking advantage of the shallow waters of the Táchira River.

Today, the bridge is much emptier. A week after Maduro’s ouster, only a few migrants could be seen walking into Colombia carrying heavy backpacks. TV news reporters from around the world gathered by the border to interview migrants and immigration officials. Meanwhile, traders carrying bundles of clothes, toys, and medicines crossed the bridge to sell their wares in Venezuela.

Seeing the migrants resting on the sidewalk after crossing the bridge reminds Ediober González of Philippians 4:12—“I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want”—a verse that has helped him through difficult times in Colombia.

Despite having studied literature at a top Venezuelan university, Ediober González worked odd jobs upon arriving in Colombia: painting houses, selling bread, and making cakes. Up until four months ago, he worked for the Italian nonprofit Terres des Hommes, delivering food baskets to families at risk of malnutrition. But with the shutdown of USAID, the organization had to close its operations in the city.

Without that aid, more migrants are begging for money to pay for bus tickets to other cities in Colombia where they can find work and food. While Ediober González found the work of secular nonprofits meaningful, it also presented challenges to his Christian faith. In the past, he has disagreed with the content of their workshops on gender and sexual health. In one case, he turned down a job that would have made him recommend abortions to pregnant migrants.

Currently Ediober González is looking for work while making a little money on the side by giving rides in his car. As the deacon of his Venezuelan church in Cúcuta, he also takes on preaching responsibilities. His wife is a schoolteacher in the city.

After crossing the Simón Bolívar Bridge, many migrants head to the city of Villa del Rosario outside the southern edge of Cúcuta. Here the rent is cheaper, and the hillsides are dotted with unpainted brick houses with tin roofs.

In 2021, the Venezuelan National Baptist Convention, with the help of resources from the International Mission Board, opened a migrant shelter called Casa de la Misión in the city. The three-story building includes showers, laundry stations, and a doctor’s office, as well as two dormitories that can accommodate six men and six women.

The shelter’s doctor, Bruno Mendive, is originally from Caracas. Frustrated by continuous power outages and the lack of medicine, which made his work nearly impossible, he packed up his belongings, strapped them to the back of his bicycle, and rode to Colombia.

In 2020, he put his medical skills to work to treat the migrants who arrive at Casa de la Misión with heat exhaustion, dehydration, and blisters on their feet, as well as respiratory and gastrointestinal problems.

“The Venezuelan migrants I care for are glad to realize that a fellow countryman is helping them; they feel more at ease,” Mendive said. These days, he sees an average of 50 people a day. During the height of the previous migration waves back in 2021, the shelter received as many as 600 visitors a day.

Mendive said he feels grateful to God for the opportunity to help not only his fellow Venezuelans but also Colombians displaced by violence. In 2025, more than 100,000 people fled the Catatumbo region, north of Cúcuta, due to clashes between National Liberation Army guerrillas and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s 33rd Front, a ccording to the Ombudsman’s Office.

Mendive recently accompanied humanitarian missions to nearby towns like Tibú and El Tarra, providing medical care, especially to children.

“More than advice, migrants need to talk,” said Venezuelan pastor Boanerges de Armas, director of Casa de la Misión and pastor of Global Missionary Baptist Church, which meets in the shelter. “Here, we give them food, clothing, and medicine. But we also listen to them and then pray for them before they continue on their journey.”

De Armas knows the pressures they face and the worries they have about family back home. He is cautious when he speaks about current events with his daughter, who still lives in Anzoátegui, Venezuela. She told him that the government sends “social fighters” to inspect citizens’ phones. If they find any anti-regime photo, meme, or WhatsApp conversation, they can detain the offenders, accusing them of attempting to undermine the peace of Venezuela.

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

Boanerges de Armas

He noted the shelter also serves as a missionary training center, using a three-year curriculum created by the Venezuelan Baptist Convention. So far, hundreds of young Venezuelans have come through the program to learn not only theory but also the practical skills of being a missionary and helping the community they are in. Through the program, 70 students have gone on to plant their own churches.

William Lacle graduated from the same program while living in Venezuela, before moving to Colombia in 2020 to become a missionary. During the pandemic, he and his wife would go to the Simón Bolívar Bridge and pass out food to fellow Venezuelan migrants, at times giving out 1,000 bowls of soup a day, he recalled.

“God has placed in my wife and me a great love for migrants,” he said. “Then God placed in our hearts the desire to establish a church and a soup kitchen. When we were looking for a place to do it, and we visited this hill [in Villa del Rosario] for the first time, I began to cry inexplicably, and I knew it was here.”

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

William Lacle

Today, Lacle pastors Missionary Baptist Church Mi Alto Refugio, a small brick church just two miles away from the shelter. He’s constructing a second floor to the building to expand the capacity of their community dining hall, which currently provides hallacas (Venezuelan tamales) for breakfast and rice with sausage for lunch to hundreds of children, thanks to donations from the Christian nonprofits Blooms and Root and Semilla de Trigo Association.

On Sunday, 20 people filled the pews of his church, a mix of Venezuelan migrants and Colombians displaced by guerilla fighting. Lacle stood at the pulpit to preach about Romans 8:6—“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” A little more than a week after Maduro’s capture, he said that “the only way to have peace in this changing world is by believing the Word of the one who never changes.”

De Armas and Lacle believe that change will only come to Venezuela if the entire Chavista power structure—not just Maduro—is arrested. That includes Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, who is now Venezuela’s interim leader; her brother Jorge Rodríguez, president of the National Assembly of Venezuela; minister of the interior Diosdado Cabello; and minister of defense Vladimir Padrino.

“Maduro was like their puppet,” Lacle said. “Until they also leave power, Venezuela will not change completely. A tree may give you shade, but what gives it stability are all its roots. If you don’t cut the roots, the tree will remain standing. That’s what’s happening in Venezuela.”

Until that happens, the Venezuela migrants in Colombia won’t be able to return, he said. Lacle recognizes the strategy of Chavismo—the socialist political movement that brought Hugo Chávez to power—in the face of this new power vacuum.

“Socialists are experts at stretching out the process,” Lacle said. “Just like guerrilla groups in Colombia, they always say, ‘Let’s have a dialogue’; they buy time, rebuild their strength, wait for the waters to calm, and then stay in power doing whatever they want.”

The local Colombian churches in the border region also minister to the migrants and the displaced. For instance, Casa Sobre la Roca runs a home for orphaned girls in Cúcuta, providing them with food, clothing, and education until they graduate from university. Currently, it houses 34 girls. The church also operates similar shelters in eight cities across the country.

At the church’s Sunday service, Jesús Alberto Monsalve Cardozo was easy to spot sitting in the front row with the other church leaders in the congregation of 450 people. He is over six feet tall with white hair.

The leader of the marriage and prayer ministry, Cardozo was once a colonel of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces of Venezuela, where he was so well known for his faith among the military that many referred to him as “the Pastor.”

He decided to leave the military in 2021, months before his promotion to the rank of general. He said he felt God call him to full-time ministry and convict him to step down, as accepting the new position would force him to participate in publicly known alliances with drug traffickers.

Afterward, he left for Colombia. Since then, he has held different jobs: a librarian, a pet medicine salesman, and the operations director for a security company. Despite the difficulties of adjusting to his new life in Colombia, none of it compared to his sadness in learning about the ever-deteriorating situation in his home country.

In his daily conversations with his mother, who is still in Venezuela, he hears the struggles she and other elderly Venezuelans have getting the medical care they need.

Image courtesy of Hernán Restrepo

Jesús Mansalve Cardoso

When news of Maduro’s ouster reached him, Cardozo’s first thought went to his family in Caracas. Yet he also felt relief, believing that God’s justice had finally arrived. He noted that a violent disruption is often needed to change the status quo in long-standing dictatorships.

“Nothing will change until a disruptive element begins. In Venezuela, that disruption began with Maduro’s capture,” Cardozo said. “What I see Trump really seeking is to first introduce a disruptive element so that there can be a transition, without the country falling into total anarchy.”

He noted that he and his wife would be open to returning to Venezuela if things change; however, it’s currently too dangerous for them. “But I’m very excited about the idea of returning, not only to continue my ministry as a preacher in the Armed Forces but also to contribute with my knowledge to the reconstruction of Venezuela,” he said.

At the end of Casa Sobre la Roca’s service, the pastor invited those attending the church for the first time to receive Jesus into their hearts. Frank González, the Venezuelan migrant, stepped forward with tears in his eyes. Jonathan Coche-Vásquez remained seated. His feet hurt too much for him to stand up. But both said they prayed the prayer of faith.

Would they return to Venezuela if things turn out well? “Of course,” González replied as he and Coche-Vásquez lifted their garbage bags and resumed their journey toward Bogotá. “That’s where our home is. That’s where our family is.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article named the wrong nonprofit that Ediober González said recommended abortions to migrants.

Culture

Guerilla Art For Grit City

J.D. Peabody

Two friends are taking Tacoma by storm with paper and ink.

Lance Kagey (L) and Tom Llewellyn (R) standing in front of a display of their hand-printed posters.

Image courtesy of Sierra Hartman

Paper was once a far more precious resource. Sometimes, our ancestors would scrape markings from parchment, clean it, and start anew. Historians call these documents, inscribed with layers of text, palimpsest. Often, visible traces of past writing remain underneath the new words. I couldn’t help but think of that age-old practice as I stepped into the basement of Lance Kagey’s home last month.

Palimpsest is a good word for it. The bottom level of Kagey’s historic house in Tacoma, Washington, is a study in bygone eras adapted ingeniously for reuse. Old wooden cabinets line the perimeter, holding trays upon trays of vintage letterpress wood type. Artwork and artifacts from decades gone by fill the remaining wall space.

In the middle of it all stands an industrial relic that’s been given a new reason for life: a cylinder letterpress, complete with a manual crank. Rows of freshly inked pages often float above the machine, hung to dry with clothespins like laundry.

What the printing press churns out could also be called palimpsest, with layers of color, words, and meaning. This art is part of a creative endeavor known as Beautiful Angle, the brainchild of Kagey and his equally creative friend, Tom Llewellyn. Roughly once a month, the two men develop a new poster design and then print a short run of about 100 copies. Using wheat paste and staples, they hang their completed work all around Tacoma.

This effort to engage with their city, crafting physical art in a world gone digital, has now been unfolding for more than two decades, generating a substantial body of work and an enthusiastic fan base. The artwork is compelling, the messages provocative, and their reach surprising.

I had the chance to sit down with Kagey and Llewellyn in that basement studio to hear more about their work, their fierce loyalty to their locale, and the role faith plays in this unique undertaking.

Image used with permission.

How did this whole thing start?

Kagey: I had taken some letterpress classes and fell in love with the old-school process of printing.

You mean the kind that Gutenberg invented, with the movable type?

Kagey: Exactly. It’s the printing method where you press one color of ink onto one page at a time. We found this 1952 Challenge proof press on eBay for $50. But it was in Ohio, so it cost me six times that much to have it shipped here.

Wait. You’re saying you invested in a press before knowing what you wanted to do with it?

Kagey: That’s right. Well, we knew we wanted to make art.

Llewellyn: We came up with the poster project very quickly once the press was here. We’re both big fans of street art.

Street art being public art that’s not officially authorized by anyone.

Llewellyn: Right. The beauty of street art is that you’re not waiting on an editor or publisher or mediator between you and your audience. If you don’t care about getting paid, you can create whatever you want. And that’s worth a lot.

Kagey: Street art posters have a long history. We decided, “What if we just made one poster a month?”

Llewellyn: We wanted a schedule that would be sustainable over the long haul. Now here we are, 23 years later, still going.

Why did you choose posters as your art form?

Kagey: Art that goes up unofficially can come down unofficially. We’re making art that is meant for people to peel off the walls or telephone poles and take home for themselves.

Llewellyn: A poster is a very specific medium with three levels of impact. You have the drive-by impact where something cool turns your head. Then there’s the impact of stopping to read the words. And then if you take it home and hang on your wall, it has an ongoing impact.

Image used with permission.

For the uninitiated, why bother going old school with the printing? Couldn’t you do the same thing more quickly and cheaply with Photoshop and a color printer?

Kagey: The process is a key part of the end product. I don’t see this press through a nostalgic lens. It’s a tool that we are pushing to use in innovative ways.

Llewellyn: Every single print that comes off of the press is unique. Each has slightly different flaws or levels of ink. Sometimes there are imperfections in the wood blocks themselves that add character you wouldn’t get from a digital copy.

Kagey: The limitations of analog make the design better. We had one poster concept where I knew I wouldn’t have enough letters in one particular wood type for all the text. If I don’t have enough E’s in one font, I have to choose a different typeface for certain words. That creates design choices in real time.

The Christian artists I know are constantly wrestling with how to express the truth about themselves (which includes their beliefs) without their art becoming simplistic propaganda. How have you navigated that tension?

Llewellyn: This isn’t an evangelistic project. We both grew up soaked in church, so biblical language shows up regularly in our work. We talk about our faith all the time, but we talk about lots of other things, too. There’s no hidden agenda.

Kagey: I’ve been reading Makoto Fujimura’s Art and Faith. Part of his thesis is that we are creators made by the Creator. It is in our nature to make. The making itself is the thing.

Llewellyn: Sometimes in Christian circles there’s almost a mentality that as long as art is faith-based, quality doesn’t really matter. To me, that’s verging on taking the Lord’s name in vain. The opposite should be true. Art made by people of faith needs to be astonishingly good and honest.

The thing about work of the caliber you two are doing is that it gains widespread attention and accolades. That raises the question: Why limit yourselves to Tacoma? Why keep this goodness local?

Kagey: The simplest answer is that Tacoma needs our love. When we started, the city still had that “ugly stepsister syndrome.” People always focused on Seattle. No one ever talked about Tacoma.

Llewellyn: There’s something compelling about a city that needs you. It’s like that quote from G. K. Chesterton: “Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her.”

Kagey: We’re not just cheerleaders for Tacoma, though. We talk about its flaws, too.

Llewellyn: We refer to Tacoma as the “holy city,” picking up on the biblical idea. We want this community to see its own sacredness in the midst of its ordinariness.

Image used with permission.

It makes me think of Jeremiah 29, where the Lord instructs the exiles to seek the prosperity of the city where he sent them. What is it you hope your work is doing for Tacoma?

Kagey: When we first started, we were just putting the posters out there, expressing ourselves. But our art has become much more of a community event. And we realized part of our goal was to have people connect around a common activity and build relationships.

Llewellyn: Now often, there will now be 50 people gathered before we even arrive to hang posters. And while they’re there, they’re interacting, asking each other which posters they have, comparing tools they’re using to take down posters. It’s become a community rhythm.

Kagey: The repetition has been key. The only way to get into the cultural consciousness of a place is to keep showing up in the same place and not spread out too much.

Llewellyn: We have to keep the focus on one little area and go deep rather than broad.

Over two decades in, is it still fun?

Llewellyn: Definitely. We’ve been friends for so long. We’re just relaxed with each other. Even after all this time, there’s something very Willy Wonka-ish about putting blank paper in one end of the press, turning the crank, and watching that first poster come out the other side. It’s still pretty magical.

J. D. Peabody is the author of the fantasy trilogyThe Inkwell Chronicles as well as Perfectly Suited: The Armor of God for the Anxious Mind. His website is www.jdpeabody.com.

- More from J.D. Peabody

Ideas

Protesting in Church Is Wrong. So Is Immigration Theater.

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

Demonstrators should not disrupt worship services. ICE should be competent, cool-headed, and constrained by the Constitution.

Source Images: Don Lemon, Youtube

This past Sunday in Minnesota, a group of protesters barged into a Southern Baptist church in Saint Paul during the worship service. Chanting “justice for Renee Good” and “hands up, don’t shoot,” they spread out in the aisles and refused to leave.

🚨BREAKING: William Kelly and a mob of anti-ICE extremists stormed a Cities Church in Minneapolis, disrupting a worship service and hurling baseless accusations that one of the church’s lead pastors is an ICE agent. pic.twitter.com/QYl7q9gkwz
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) January 18, 2026

Alerted ahead of time by the organizers, former CNN host Don Lemon showed up too. Though he said on camera that he wasn’t there as an activist, Lemon described the disruption in a transparently approving tone, endorsed a “traumatic” experience for kids at church as “what protesting is about,” and later accused the targeted congregation of an “entitlement [that] comes from a supremacy, a white supremacy.”

Amid the demonstration, Lemon inanely insisted to the preaching pastor at Cities Church, Jonathan Parnell, that the whole thing was merely an exercise in free speech that the congregation should tolerate—or even welcome—in their sanctuary during their worship.

This is bunk. Protesters should not disrupt worship services, and anyone with the scantest constitutional knowledge knows that what these demonstrators did is not the free speech our First Amendment protects from suppression by the state.

Demonstrators should stay out of church services for many reasons. One is a matter of federal law, which explicitly prohibits attempts to “interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.” They should also stay out because of property rights. For though a church is generally open to all comers, it is still private property with all the privileges that entails, including the right to exclude unwanted speech and assembly.

But most of all, protestors should stay out because disrupting worship is wrong, regardless of the demonstrators’ cause or the worshipers’ religion. It is wrong because it is a disordered assertion that your politics matter more than their devotion to God.

It is wrong because it is an announcement that no inch of space, no moment of time, no seriousness of purpose may be exempt from our volatile national discord—that there is no such thing as sanctuary.

It is wrong because it is not what you would want done to you.

Now, I don’t say this because I’m opposed to these protestors’ cause. I’m not confident in my interpretation of the videos of Good’s death, but I lean toward believing the shooting is unjustified. I hope she does get whatever insufficient, temporal justice we can muster on this side of eternity.

More broadly, I’m long since on-the-record as favoring pretty open immigration laws. This isn’t a view I hold lightly or ignorantly. I understand why so many are reflexively bothered or angered by scenes of chaos at the border. I don’t want chaos either, and I easily agree with the 8 in 10 Americans who want to deport people who are here illegally and have been convicted of violent crimes. I also understand how rapid, high-volume immigration strains red-state border communities flooded by migrants on account of their location—and deep blue cities flooded by migrants on account of their foolishly expansive welfare guarantees.

Even so, my preference is something far more akin to the relative simplicity of the Ellis Island system than anything we’ve seen in my lifetime, with particular welcome for people oppressed by Communist and other totalitarian regimes. Much of what ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is doing in Minnesota strikes me as inefficient, theatrical, harsh, and deliberately disruptive.

Moreover, the Twin Cities were my home for eight years, the bulk of my adult life, and I’m sad to see them in turmoil once again. I just watched a video on Reddit that appears to show door-to-door raids in my old neighborhood. I’ve run past those very doors time and again. I’ve walked our dogs and strolled our babies there. It’s not right.

This is an immigrant-heavy neighborhood, but the immigrants, many of whom arrived as refugees after helping the US in the Vietnam War, are not a problem. On the contrary, their arrival helped transform that neighborhood from a notorious stretch of porn theaters and prostitution to one of the best concentrations of Southeast Asian restaurants in America. It’s certainly not perfect—we lived near a crime-ridden nuisance bar, and one time I watched a man flee the cops through my next-door neighbor’s yard, handgun still in hand. But immigrant families weren’t the people patronizing that bar, and that man was an American.

The immigrants on my block were quiet. A multigenerational Hmong family grew vegetables in their flower beds and had family cookouts with a 20-gallon soup pot in their garage. They were good neighbors. Is someone pounding on their door without a warrant, shouting for their papers? And if they’re churchgoing—as they may well be, for there are many Hmong congregations in Saint Paul—will ICE barge into their services, as the Trump administration has expressly allowed? It is a deeply American instinct that drives me to say: Leave them alone.

After each fresh outrage, many well-meaning people develop a common tick. X is wrong, of course, they say, and I’d never endorse it. But when you consider how bad Y is, well …

I want to be very clear that I do not suffer from that tick. The conjunction I am using here is not but. It’s and: Demonstrators should not disrupt worship services. And immigration enforcement should be competent, cool-headed, and constrained by the Constitution.

One of Lemon’s interviewees, a congregant at Cities Church, got it exactly right.

“I don’t necessarily agree with everything that’s going on in the Twin Cities right now,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s good to fight fire with fire. I think it’s good to speak up. I think it’s good to protest, but I think it’s better to do it in a peaceful way. [This] is trespassing. … This is a house of God.” Next week, may he and his church worship in peace.

Bonnie Kristian is deputy editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

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