Philip Yancey: God Can Love ‘A Cynical Sneak Like Me’

An excerpt from the best-selling author’s memoir, “Where the Light Fell.”

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Courtesy of Philip Yancey / Jimmy Dozer / Wikimedia Commons / Somesh Kesarla Suresh / Unsplash

At a vulnerable time in my spiritual development, I found myself at a Bible college with a 66-page rule book and little emphasis on grace. Other students seemed quite content in the controlled environment. In me, however, the campus culture encouraged more cynicism than faith.

Where the Light Fell: A Memoir

Philip Yancey (Author)

Convergent Books

320 pages

My cynicism gradually softened over the course of my sophomore year. I found some relief in a new Christian Service assignment: “university work.” Four of us male students started visiting a nearby state university every Saturday night with the goal of engaging students in conversations about faith.

On our first visit I am dazzled by the plush dorms and student lounges, so different from the utilitarian buildings at the Bible college. Entranced, I study the bulletin boards covered with splashy posters announcing concerts, plays, and other student activities. I want to be one of these people more than I want to convert them.

Strolling through the campus, I notice a group of athletes sitting on a patio. “Where are you guys from?” I ask.

“We’re with the Yale baseball team. How about you?”

“Um, I attend a Bible college down the road, and we came over here to see if anyone wants to talk about spiritual things.” They exchange smirks. I continue, “You see, in God’s economy …”

“That’s funny,” one of the athletes interrupts. “I didn’t know God had an economy.” His teammates laugh, and blood rushes to my face. I head toward the student center to watch TV.

“Don’t worry, Philip,” my fellow students reassure me when I report on my botched attempt at witnessing. “At least you sowed the seed. God’s Word doesn’t return void.”

After that first attempt I spend nearly every Saturday night in the student center, catching up on sports and the news.

Class assignments force me to keep studying the Bible, which unexpectedly captures my interest. I read Ecclesiastes and recognize my own dreary cynicism. I read Psalms and Job and marvel that these sacred books would include such angry accusations against God. Such biblical outbursts are common, though the professors usually skip over them.

I realize I don’t know much about Jesus, apart from the stories I learned in Sunday school. As I study the four Gospels, I encounter more surprises. “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” Jesus promises, which strikes me as ironic on a campus that stifles freedom. I’m beginning to like this guy. When someone asks him a question, he never uses circular reasoning. He’s enigmatic, elusive, impossible to pin down. Most times, he tosses the question back to the person who asked it.

If Jesus showed up on campus, I wonder, what would the administration do with him? Would he, too, get shot down for questioning his teachers?

My brother, Marshall, has encouraged me to read books by C. S. Lewis. Reading him, I feel a gentle pull toward belief. The book that hooks me most deeply was published the year I entered high school: A Grief Observed. I read about Lewis’s struggle to survive the “mad midnight moments,” then I lift my head and confront the happy-faced students around me, and the oyster shell snaps shut.

Shockingly, the college has hired a sociologist with a degree from Harvard. He assigns Erving Goffman’s book Asylums, a landmark study of what the author calls “total institutions.” Goffman suggests that institutions such as prisons, military academies, convents, insane asylums—and Bible colleges?—progressively condition their subjects so that in time the insiders habituate to their controlled setting. The ability to make a bed so tight that coins bounce off doesn’t help a recruit on the battlefield. It does, however, reinforce a military command structure: “I am in charge, and you must do what I say.”

As if to confirm my suspicions, in one of our private meetings the dean of men admits to me that he retains some petty rules simply to teach students to obey. Which gives me an idea for my sociology project.

I distribute a printed survey form to every male freshman and senior, asking such unscientific questions as “Which rule bothered you most on entering this school?” and “Has your attitude of rebellion against the school declined since you enrolled?” True to my hunch, the seniors accept, and even defend, rules and policies that freshmen think ridiculous.

When the dean finds a copy of my mimeographed survey in a trash can, once again I land on the faculty’s watch list. “This is an insurrection!” says the college president. “He can’t survey freshmen. They don’t know us!”—which was my point, exactly.

The project helps me separate the school’s subculture from the body of faith it so jealously guards. Perhaps I am resisting not God but people who speak for God. I’ve already learned to distrust my childhood churches’ views on race and politics. What else should I reject? A much harder question: What should I keep?

One scene from the Gospels, in John 6, grabs me. I’ve pictured Jesus as the crucified Messiah, rejected by his own people. But John’s account gives a glimpse of his early popularity. Huge crowds follow him around, dazzled by his miracles and hanging on his every word, eager to crown him as their king. How does Jesus respond? By retreating to a mountain. Undeterred, the crowds pursue him. The next day, Jesus gives some of his harshest teaching, so alienating the crowd that all but his closest followers abandon him. When Jesus asks his 12 core disciples if they, too, want to leave, they answer, “Lord, to whom shall we go?”

I have always thought of God as an arm-twister, a cosmic bully who schemes to break anyone who dares resist. In this account, Jesus appears wistful, even forlorn, showing no interest in compelling belief. Jesus clearly did not use the techniques of Goffman’s total institutions.

From the Bible I am learning about a God who has a soft spot for rebels, who empowers such people as the adulterer David, the cheater Jacob, the whiner Jeremiah, the traitor Peter, and the human-rights abuser Saul of Tarsus. A God whose Son makes prodigals the heroes of his stories.

Could that God find a place for a cynical sneak like me?

Excerpted from Where the Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancey. Copyright © 2021 by Philip Yancey. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

- More from Philip Yancey

Why One of Christianity Today’s Longest Subscribers Is Still Reading

“I do not know of any other resource that is seeking to understand the world and the gospel in the ways CT is.”

Morgan Lee

Photo Courtesy of Darrell Johnson

Perhaps it’s fitting that for more than 20 years, Darrell Johnson has made Vancouver, British Columbia his home.

“I was born in Duluth, Minnesota—so I’m one of those Americans who from an early age knew Canada existed,” said Johnson, a long-time pastor and professor at Regent College.

Johnson’s ministry began in California, took him as far away as the Philippines, before ultimately landing his family in Vancouver. But it was his Swedish grandmother, who Johnson lived with at various points in his childhood, who started the whole thing.

“She spoke of Jesus in such a compelling way,” said Johnson. “She loved her Bible. Even when I was three years old, she read her Bible to me, with her broken Swedish accent.”

Later, the love of God that his grandmother had cultivated led Johnson to respond to an alter call as a 10-year-old. But after making his way down the church aisle, his mother appeared by his side to lead him away, spurred by his father’s fears of a predatory preacher. During most of his adolescence, Johnson kept up a quiet faith, attending church with his family, but keeping church life at arms length. Then, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. As the radio stations played King’s sermons through the night, Johnson knelt and prayed.

“I said, ‘Lord Jesus, I would love to be able to preach you in such a way that lives are changed,’” said Johnson. “That was the moment of surrendering to the call.”

After attending seminary and serving a Presbyterian Church (USA) pastor at several California congregations, Johnson moved across the Pacific Ocean to lead Union Church of Manila in what he now calls his “richest time of ministry.” He arrived in 1985, as the country was in the midst of toppling a dictatorship in what became known as the People Power Revolution.

“I saw 3 million Filipinos demonstrate that the Sermon on the Mount is the only way to live in this world. They took Jesus’ call to nonviolence seriously,” he said. “I saw how the kingdom of God does break into the world through humble, meek people.”

After several years at Union Church, a majority international congregation that served many diplomats, multinational corporation executives, and missionaries, Johnson returned to California for the next decade. Then, virtually out of the blue, Regent College invited him to join their faculty. He and his wife Sharon, and three of their four children moved into what was a very different place than they assumed. (The Johnson adopted their children from the US, South Korea, the Philippines, and Russia.)

“At the beginning, it took us a while just to get used to the fact that Canada is different than the United States, learning to understand the Canadian view of the world and the Canadian way of being Christian,” he said.

Johnson served nearly a decade at Regent before becoming a pastor at the historic First Baptist church in the downtown core of Vancouver. He stepped down after suffering a heart attack and today spends much of his time mentoring other pastors and writing, recently finishing a book on Ephesians and is currently in the midst of a new work on John.

Johnson became a CT subscriber as a seminary student, just several years after the publication celebrated its first decade of existence.

He was immediately captivated by its news section and by its biblical exposition pieces. Today he praises the Testimony section, the last page of the print magazine, where individuals share the specific story that led them to Christ. Johnson credits his longevity as a subscriber with CT’s thoughtfulness.

“I earned my undergraduate degree in physics in theoretical mathematics so I didn’t learn how to write well before going into ministry. I have learned so much from the way CT articles are carefully crafted and thought out,” he said.

Its global focus has also kept him captivated.

“I appreciate reading reports from Africa, Asia, Europe, including reporting from behind the Iron Curtain in the midst of the Cold War,” he said. “The church in the states, and, to some degree, the church in Canada can be inward focused so it’s important to broaden the vision and remind people that God is active and the church is growing all over the world.”

Several recent editorial highlights for Johnson:

Stephanie McDade’s How Could All the Prophets Be Wrong About Trump?

“That, to me, was one of the most disturbing dimensions of the last five years in the political realm. For CT to take that on and do so so carefully was a great blessing.

Mike Cosper’s The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill podcast, Kate Shellnutt’s Bethlehem Baptist Leaders Clash Over ‘Coddling’ and ‘Cancel Culture’, Daniel Silliman’s Ravi Zacharias coverage:

“An example of the capacity to face tough issues and deal with them. A model of how to talk about ‘the stuff’ that happens in the church, not by playing games or being condemning but by dealing with the truth. The courage to deal with the issues before us and to do that with grace and truth.”

CT CEO and President Tim Dalrymple’s recent piece on the Splintering of the Evangelical Soul:

“Tim articulated the nature of the divide without putting down anyone in the process. He wasn’t trying to be conciliatory; he was seeking to name the dynamics of the tension. I admire his capacity to name what we’re facing without a condemning or judgmental spirit. Timothy’s capacity to see the big picture and articulate it is marvelous. He’s such a careful thinker. He has an amazing gift with words.”

While CT is an American publication, Johnson believes it is deeply relevant for Canadian pastors and ministry leaders.

“When I first heard the phrase Beautiful Orthodoxy, I thought I might have gone with words like courageous or compassionate. But the more I’ve thought about beautiful, the more I’ve realized that it really works for Canada,” said Johnson. “The word evokes the worship orientation of the faith and has a more inviting posture towards the world. Who doesn’t want beauty? The search for beauty is all around us. At least in Canada, what will attract people to Jesus is something irresistibly good, lovely … beautiful.”

Johnson often encourages those he mentors to subscribe to CT.

“CT has always been in touch with what’s going on in the church in North America, but there’s a greater depth now. CT is there in the face of all that’s going on in society now,” said Johnson. “CT is an advocate of the truth and grace and wholeness that we have in Jesus.”

Johnson recently decided to support CT financially.

“Under Timothy’s leadership the ministry, which has always been deeply thoughtful, has moved to even deeper levels of insight to, and engagement with, what we are facing in discipleship and ministry today.”

For those who might also consider doing the same?

“I do not know of any other resource that is seeking to understand the world and the gospel in the ways CT is,” said Johnson.

Morgan Lee is global media manager at CT.

News

Good News for Iraq’s Christians: More Autonomy, Less Dhimmitude

Jayson Casper

As Erbil Christians finally get to govern themselves, Chaldean Catholic archbishop Bashar Warda explains to CT how ISIS freed Christians from the centuries-old understanding that they are second-class citizens.

Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda stands in front of the Catholic University of Erbil, located in the Iraqi Kurdistan capital city's Ankawa district.

Courtesy of Bashar Warda

This week, the Christian enclave of Ankawa in Erbil, the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, was designated by the autonomous region’s prime minister as an official district with administrative autonomy. Starting next week, Christians will directly elect their own mayor and be in charge of security, among other matters.

Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called Ankawa a home for “religious and social coexistence, and a place for peace.”

Archbishop Bashar Warda, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Erbil, called it an “important” and “strategic” decision.

“Our confidence in the future of Kurdistan makes us encourage Christians not only to stay,” he told Kurdistan 24, “but also to invest in this region.”

Ordained a priest in 1993, Warda was consecrated in his current position in 2010. With Iraq’s hemorrhaging of Christians since the 2003 US invasion, Warda’s bishopric in the autonomous Kurdish region soon became a providential band-aid.

Beginning in 2014, ISIS drove Christians from Mosul and their traditional homeland in the Nineveh Plains, and thousands took refuge in Erbil and other cities in the secure northeast. From 1.5 million Christians in 2003, the Chaldean Catholic church now estimates a population of fewer than 275,000 Christians.

Warda has long been investing to turn the tide.

In 2015, he established the Catholic University of Erbil, and has coordinated relief aid from governments and charities alike. The situation stabilized following ISIS’s defeat in 2017.

But freedom does not come from politics alone. Two years ago, Christians endorsed widespread popular uprisings against the political class. Violently suppressed, the movement’s main celebrated achievement was early elections under a new law designed to promote better local and small-party representation.

Polls open on October 10, and a quota gives Christians five of 329 seats in parliament. However, Warda’s Baghdad-based patriarch has called for a Christian boycott, fearing fraud.

Warda wants a Christian revival. Buoyed by the March visit of Pope Francis, he believes that ISIS broke the fundamental religious and cultural underpinnings of Islamic superiority. Christians no longer are seen as second-class citizens.

In an interview on the sidelines of the IRF Summit convened in Washington in July, Warda told CT about his welcome of missionaries, the Catholic way of witnessing to Muslims, and whether a revived Christian influence in Iraq will lead to future church growth.

Since the defeat of ISIS in Iraq, what challenge has been hardest for the church?

With all the displaced people, images of scattered tents immediately come to mind. But the hard part is not to provide them with food, sanitation, or medical supplies. This is not easy, but it is obvious.

The hard part is to restore their dignity. They understand that ISIS is a criminal gang. And they can bear the wounds of the innocent, knowing they had nothing to do with this dispute.

But their question is “Why?” yet also “What now?”

Men are the providers for the family. Sitting around doing nothing, they tell me, “Bishop, we don’t want money; we want a job. I want to deserve my food.”

Suppose there is aid sufficient to rebuild homes, churches, and schools and even to provide jobs. You have said that this is not enough. It does not establish the basis of citizenship and pluralism.

That is true. But without homes, churches, schools, and jobs, the people will leave the country. And then there are no citizens left.

With a rebuilt community, you can go to the government to speak about the constitution, defending the people’s full rights under the law. There is a link. First have the community; then talk about implementing ideals.

Before ISIS, when the community was stable, were you able to seek your rights?

For 1,400 years there was a sort of social contract: Islam is the religion of the nation, and you are the People of the Book. But know that Islam is the honorable religion of God, which means you are second.

In the Quran it says there is no equality between those who believe in Islam and those who do not. Yes, it says they should consult you. But we are the people who are to be “protected.” That means we are always under them and have to pay a social and financial price. There is no jizia [a tax paid to be a protected community under Islamic rule] anymore, but the social price remains and makes you a second-class citizen.

What does this mean in the modern era?

In Catholic marriages, sometimes there are problems. Rather than deal with the issues, some spouses take the easy way out, convert to Islam, and get an immediate divorce. They don’t believe in Islam, but the constitution gives them the right to take the children.

What about the mother? What if one of the children is not willing? No, no, no, we are told, Islam is the honorable religion.

It also means you cannot evangelize. If there is a Muslim coming to your church, asking about Christ, you must tell him, “No, go away; you are a Muslim. I’m not allowed.”

Now after ISIS, I tell Muslims, “No, you’ve broken the social contract.”

For anyone coming to the church asking about Christianity now, we are there. We communicate, provide literature. Of course, I leave the decision to them. But my duty is to inform them and give them a reason for the hope that is in us.

Has the rest of the Christian community in Iraq realized the contract is broken? Can they act accordingly?

It depends on where they are. In Baghdad and Basra, it is a different story. But in the governorates affected by ISIS, we can tell them, “We fulfilled our obligations as Christians. What about you?”

In your opinion, is the social contract broken in Baghdad and Basra?

No. But their lives and challenges are different. They live amid political disputes between parties. It leads to a certain chaos with security, and some act out against the weaker party. There was some direct violence against churches and priests because they were Christians, but in recent years it is more about criminality.

But the culture of Islamic superiority still exists?

Yes, of course. Everywhere. In the entire Middle East.

Do Muslims in Kurdistan accept that the old social contract is broken?

When I speak with imams, they say that ISIS does not represent Islam. Okay, but you haven’t written any apology letter to the victims. They say, “But we hosted you. We welcomed you.” Yes, but write it down: We are sorry for what they did in the name of Allah. This helps history avoid being repeated.

What would happen if they could accept your understanding of this new reality?

They would dig deep in their Islamic history books to discover where it speaks about the dignity of the human being, simply because he is created by God. And then it would change the way they speak. They would use the Quran to demonstrate mutual respect.

It would change religious discourse, but what about ordinary Muslims?

They would know us better.

When I asked authorities for Pope Francis’ mass to be in an outdoor setting, one reason was to get Muslims to see what Christians do in church. They would then realize [Christians] are not there to dance and drink wine. [Christians] are quiet; they celebrate; they chant beautiful music.

I asked the head of the choir to choose Muslim musicians. There were 10 of them. It is a way of approaching the other to say, “This is who I am. Listen to me. Watch me.” Then they can see our adoration and hear over and over that we believe in one God.

Did the visit of Pope Francis change their mentality?

Our young people prepared the stadium, working 16 hours a day for three weeks. When the event was over, the media showed pictures of the stadium and that it was clean. This was not part of our responsibility; trash collection belonged to the government. But the message with the picture said, “These people deserve our respect.”

This meant a lot.

As you try to live out the fact that the social contract is broken and to spread this idea among other Christians, will there be consequences?

We have to have the passion and the patience for dialogue.

I go to meet with extremist Muslims, people who would not expect me at the gates of their homes. I tell them, “Here I am. Are you willing to accept me?”

They haven’t had straightforward answers. They reply, “Islam is the honorable religion of God.” Okay, I respect that, but let’s talk about how to work together.

What are you doing to prepare the Christians in your bishopric to live in this new reality?

Our region receives displaced Christians because it is safe. This has helped me practice my faith freely, and Kurdistan is quite supportive. We are working alongside the government for sustainability of the Christian community.

We have four schools, a university, and a hospital. These provide 460 jobs. It is through education and healthcare that we can become influential. And I want to provide the best services in Iraq.

Phase one was to create the structures. Phase two is to work with universities in America to form an alliance. The Franciscan University of Steubenville has responded. So has the University of Dallas. We are also talking with Baylor University.

It is a long journey. But thank God, the response of Christians in America and around the world has been encouraging. They believe in what we are doing.

Do you welcome missionaries to your witness in the region?

Oh yes. As long as they respect that this is not a land of converting Christians to a new church.

Unfortunately, some come and tell us, “We will tell you about Christ because you don’t know Christ.” How can they say this? They should say, “We would like to share faith with you.”

Yes, [they] are welcome. We have some working as teachers and as professors in the university.

The church here is weak in terms of numbers. We don’t want to divide it further. There are nine churches, and over 15 evangelical groups have come to Iraq in the last three decades. It should be about cooperation and collaboration. Let me be enriched by your faith experience, and I by yours. Missionaries should help me maintain my faith, not weaken me.

If any of my people tell me, “Bishop, I am alive in this new community,” I say, “God bless you.” But let them say so openly. I am not their judge.

Some Western missionaries work among Muslims. How do you advise them to join you in your witness, to help and not to harm?

They must know that evangelization is not permitted. I’m concerned first about their safety. They must have wisdom. It was unfortunate for us to [once] find Bibles in the trash. It is not about distributing the Bible but about whom you offer it to. The Bible is a treasure.

You have said previously that with the social contract broken, Iraqi Christians now have a role of witness—to be missionaries in their society. How can the foreign missionary join with you well?

Come and be with the local church, ready to help.

You will be a teacher in one of our schools—with Muslims. Your example and dedication will draw them to know more about you and about your faith. When they ask you why you left America, you can tell them, “I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus Christ, my Savior. He pushed me to come and help you, even though you are not Christians.” These seeds will grow, and they will want to know more and more.

Come gently, as St. Paul did. Be faithful. Whenever there was a chance to speak about Christ, he would do so, with full respect.

What is the church doing now with Muslims who are interested in Christianity?

We have literature about who we are. I give this to them, they read it, and they come back with more questions.

Is it possible for them to join you and become a Christian?

No, we tell them, “This would endanger your life. You can’t do that.” Then they insist. We work with them for six months, maybe a year, and they still insist. Who are we to tell them no? So then, I baptize them.

I tell my priests, “If you have these cases, God bless you, go forward.”

But I am always clear with inquirers: This is not going to change your religious identity before the law, on your ID card. It may put you in trouble with your family and your tribe. But if you are ready to bear the consequences, God bless you.

Are they able to stay in Iraq?

Some of them stay secretly. Some have decided to leave.

Your colleague Bishop Bawai Soro has researched and found that since Islam came to Iraq, the number of Christians has never increased. Faith is not a competition, but is this something that can change? Might Christians not only recover from ISIS but also grow? Or is it simply your destiny to accept a shrinking community, where all you can do is slow the pace and aim for stability?

I will start with the last one. Stabilize, and lead to a good future. This is not just realistic but practical. I am not a man of wishing but of hope. Hope means that if we work hard together, we can make it. With God’s grace, I think we can preserve a good number of Christians and, among them, influential leaders.

There is hope in these words. But is there also a sense of sadness?

Let’s face it: Committed Christians are shrinking around the world.

We are the salt of the earth. Just be a candle. Christians are not destined to be the most powerful community, only the most influential. It is encouraging to live among a Christian majority, of course. But it also comes with challenges.

Let’s stay with the easier scenario God has given us here in Iraq.

- More from Jayson Casper

Don’t Let Religious Liberty Claims Mask Bad Faith Arguments

Daniel Bennett

Inconsistent and insincere appeals for exemptions to public health rules are undermining important freedoms.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: R. D. Smith / Atoms / Unsplash / Pixabay / Pexels / Jordan Parks Photography / Joci03 / Getty Images

If you believe in religious liberty only when it’s good for society, then you really don’t believe in it. A sincere commitment to religious liberty requires support for exemptions that allow people to do things you might disagree with, whether that’s Mennonites refusing to serve in the military, Catholics declining to work with same-sex foster parents, or Native Americans doing drugs.

So supporters of religious liberty and robust religious exemptions might feel conflicted about a court ruling in Pennsylvania that rejected religious exemptions to mask mandates in schools. On the one hand, the best information from public health experts says masks are a good, simple way to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. On the other, shouldn’t we support the rights of people we think are wrong?

Religious liberty is too important to let it get misused. It’s not a waiver to avoid all inconveniences in life or, worse, a tool to make political statements. For religious liberty to survive political and legal scrutiny in the future, we must safeguard exemptions against abuse. We can’t let appeals to shared faith or shared “enemies” mask bad faith arguments that undermine our religious liberty.

At the height of World War II, West Virginia schools required students to begin their day by saluting the flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. For Jehovah’s Witnesses these requirements amounted to idolatry, violating their deeply held convictions. They refused, at significant personal cost.

Eventually, the US Supreme Court ruled that these students should not be coerced to participate, famously declaring, “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

In the earliest days of the pandemic, state and local governments scrambled to find ways to slow the spread of COVID-19 and limit its impact on society. They enacted various regulations, including mask mandates and limitations on group gatherings. These usually applied to both public and private spaces, including government buildings, concert halls, businesses, and, yes, churches.

Some of these rules violated constitutional protections of religious liberty because they were not applied consistently across different contexts. Officials in the nation’s capital ignored limits on outdoor gatherings for protests but not for church services, and Nevada’s policies treated churches and casinos markedly differently in setting indoor attendance limits.

In these instances, some churches pushed back—and rightly so. They took their cases to court and won. But they were not asking for a special accommodation because the public health mandates were inconvenient. They demanded the policies be consistently applied.

Other objections, however, had the effect of seeking exemptions from generally applicable policies, where the government had a “compelling interest” in mandating safety measures.

In Colorado, Resurrection Christian School said it would not abide by local health ordinances mandating mask wearing and social distancing in the midst of ongoing outbreaks. And in Pennsylvania, a group of Christian parents with children enrolled in a public school said covering their children’s faces was a violation of their deeply held convictions.

There are problems with these claims, though. Resurrection Christian required students to wear masks last year in accordance with health rules. It was only over the summer that it changed course and adopted an opposing position, citing deference to parental authority. Likewise, the Pennsylvania court pointed out that parents had no objection to their children wearing masks when participating in sports and other activities. Halloween masks are fine, apparently, while masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 are not.

As the Pennsylvania court found, that’s a little hard to believe.

Being fed up with government policies, while certainly common, is not the same thing as sincere religious opposition. It’s not too much to ask for consistency. Those who want exemptions to do things that the majority of the country think are bad need to be able to demonstrate their sincerity.

Consider Christians claiming their faith should exempt them from new government mandates requiring vaccines for everything from eating in restaurants to working in certain industries. These requests can be difficult to assess. But one thing we can ask is whether people have been consistent. It’s sometimes hard to reconcile cases of people receiving other vaccines or taking common medicines who then argue the COVID-19 vaccine poses an unacceptable burden on their religious convictions.

In Vermont, children are required to get vaccines before they attend public school. Before 2016, just one out of every 200 kindergartners received a religious exemption. That year, the state decided that exemptions for personal, nonreligious reasons would no longer be allowed. Then one out of every 25 students’ parents claimed a religious objection to vaccinations.

It’s possible that Vermonters suddenly found religion, but the more likely explanation is that some parents’ religious opposition to vaccines was not entirely sincere. There’s no way to know what role Christians played in this instance, of course. Nevertheless, we must guard against the temptation to use our faith as a kind of hall pass to avoid the burdens of dealing with new and emerging cultural challenges.

Religious exemptions are important—to the United States and to Christians who believe that their faith will sometimes put them at odds with the dominant culture and require them to do things that the rest of society thinks are bad. If we want to preserve that right, we need to be careful not to claim exemptions whenever we don’t like a new rule.

This does not mean never claiming religious exemptions. It means that we should do so only after necessary prayer and discernment, not out of fear or a knee-jerk reaction to “own” our opponents.

As the first freedom listed in the First Amendment, religion is a privileged concept in America. Government must tread carefully when its actions burden people’s sincerely held beliefs. At the same time, Christians should be judicious about claiming religious exemptions to generally applicable rules. Romans 13:1 tells Christians to “be subject to the governing authorities,” and 1 Peter commands, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority” (2:13). And while this does not require blind obedience in the face of clear injustices, it’s surely not license to make an exception for ourselves every time we disagree with something the government does.

How Christians claim religious liberty will matter in the years ahead. We may find that we need more exemptions than we used to, as the country goes through a major shift in religious culture and demographics. The “rise of the nones” is well documented, as is the declining share of Americans who identify as Christians. For exemption claims to be seen as legitimate in the future, we must be consistent and honest when we make them today.

Daniel Bennett is associate professor of political science at John Brown University, where he is assistant director of the Center for Faith and Flourishing. He also serves as president of Christians in Political Science.

Speaking Out is Christianity Today’s guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the publication.

- More from Daniel Bennett

News

Wire Story

Archaeologists Uncover One of America’s Oldest Black Church Buildings

Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

The Virginia congregation, began by free and enslaved Blacks, dates back to 1776.

Courtesy of Colonial Williamsburg Foundation / Religion News Service

Archaeologists believe they have discovered the foundation of the original building of the First Baptist Church in Williamsburg, Virginia, one of the nation’s oldest Black churches.

The announcement, shared first with descendants of First Baptist Church members, was officially made on Thursday by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which runs the well-known outdoor living museum and historic district in Williamsburg.

“The early history of our congregation, beginning with enslaved and free Blacks gathering outdoors in secret in 1776, has always been a part of who we are as a community,” said the Rev. Reginald F. Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church, in a statement.

“To see it unearthed—to see the actual bricks of that original foundation and the outline of the place our ancestors worshipped—brings that history to life and makes that piece of our identity tangible.”

The discovery of the first permanent structure of the church—which is set to celebrate its 245th anniversary on the weekend of October 9-10—comes after a year of excavation at the site.

Archaeologists located a 16 X 20-foot brick foundation atop a layer of soil that has been dated to the early 1800s. It sits beside brick paving under which was found an 1817 coin.

Tax records have indicated that the congregation was worshipping on the site by 1818 in a building called the Baptist Meeting House, which was likely the congregation’s first permanent home.

Jack Gary, Colonial Williamsburg’s director of archaeology, said he considers these finds to be just the start of continuing research.

“We always hoped this is what we’d find,” he said in a statement. “Now we can move forward to better understand the footprint of the building. Is it the only structure on the site? What else was around it? What did it look like? How was it being used?”

During their search, which started in September 2020, archaeologists also have found evidence of at least 25 human burials at the location.

What remained of the church’s original structure had been covered up by the foundation of a brick church built in 1856 after the first structure was felled by a tornado. Later, it was paved over in the construction of a parking lot. Negotiations between the church and Colonial Williamsburg have brought the church’s history into the open in the last five years.

First Baptist relocated to Scotland Street in 1956. The excavation work at the former site near Nassau and Francis streets will continue as archaeologists seek to learn more about the first permanent structure, pinpoint burial sites and learn more about the spiritual practices of the early worshippers.

The church was started in 1776 by enslaved and free Blacks, defying laws forbidding African Americans to congregate. They started in a brush arbor—a clearing in the woods surrounded by posts and covered with branches—where they met secretly to pray and sing on a Williamsburg plantation. They relocated to a rural area outside Williamsburg before moving to the site where the recent discoveries were made.

Colonial Williamsburg acquired the land on South Nassau Street in 1956 from what became known as First Baptist Church. The foundation razed the building and paid for the construction and land costs for the congregation’s current building, which opened the next year.

“Colonial Williamsburg is committed to telling a more complete and inclusive story of the men and women who lived, worked and worshipped here during our country’s formative years,” said Cliff Fleet, president and CEO of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, in a statement.

- More from Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

Ideas

Why Church Shouldn’t Just Be on Facebook

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

The reasons worship services should be offline are all too human.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Dear / Unsplash / Thomas Miller / EyeEm / Getty Images

Every week, in the front lobby, the secretary of the church I attended in kindergarten updated the archive of sermon recordings. This was in the early 1990s, so the archive was a spice rack of cassette tapes, with maybe two or three copies for each sermon, in case multiple homebound church members wanted to listen simultaneously.

That sort of care for those who can’t make it to church on Sunday—whether occasionally or long-term, due to old age, chronic illness, or disability—is uncontroversial. Most churches have long since moved past cassettes to a podcast format or YouTube or CDs, but the basic idea of using technology to bring at least the sermon to those who can’t worship in person is here to stay, and so it should be. Though not a sufficient fulfilment of our duties on its own, it’s easily defensible as an outworking of the Christian responsibility to care for the sick (Matt. 25:36), “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2), and “look after orphans and widows in their distress” (James 1:27).

But what about conducting church—or, at least, its group worship and teaching—on Facebook? Many congregations tried this or something similar for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Facebook reported that the week of Easter 2020, when pandemic shutdowns were just becoming widespread was, “the biggest for group video calls on Messenger and the most popular week of Facebook Live broadcasts from spiritual Pages, ever.” People seemed to take quickly to its ways of connecting when separated by COVID-19.

On Facebook, churches can form “groups” or “pages.” They can host chats and post memes that members and followers will see and respond to. With a good enough internet connection and small enough congregations, they can do Facebook Live sessions, which are like video calls. They can plan events and recommend books, videos, and media.

And Facebook, more than other major social networks, is deliberately courting religious use. The site is testing a prayer request feature, which seems only to differ from regular posts in groups in that you can respond by clicking an “I prayed” button instead of “liking” it. Facebook is also working directly with some denominations and megachurches, hoping to make faith a steady new source of traffic and ad revenue.

Reading up on Facebook’s religious outreach, I was surprised by how positive pastors and other faith leaders were when interviewed about this integration of worship, congregational community, and social media. Some added caveats about misuse of technology or privacy concerns, but they largely welcomed it as a valuable tool for everyday church life. Some even seem to think, as televangelist Pat Robertson once said of television, that it “would be folly for the church not to get involved with the most formative force in America,” that “the message is the same, [and] the delivery can change.”

That thinking is misguided. For all its practical uses in extraordinary circumstances like the pandemic or as a means of including and ministering to those who physically cannot come to services, social media as a space for ordinary group worship will do us more harm than good.

Facebook—and other social media sites—are not simply the next evolution of the cassette ministry or a convenient online centralization of logistics and worship. Their formative power isn’t neutral.

The medium will meaningfully reframe or outright change the message—chiefly, I suspect, by trivializing it and pulling our attention away.

Culture critic Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death in 1985, when TV was the medium under scrutiny. Postman wasn’t a Christian, nor could he know about social media. Still, his chapter on televised church (containing the above quote from Pat Robertson) offers three prescient warnings Christians need as we consider a new medium for worship.

The first is the simplest: It is “gross technological naivete,” Postman wrote, to imagine the message of the church will be unchanged by television, because “not all forms of discourse can be converted from one medium to another.” We realize this in other contexts, recognizing, for example, that singing in your car alone is not the same as singing with a congregation.

This is also true of social media. The exact same worship service, if presented as a Facebook Live video, is substantively different than it would be if experienced in person. The words may be identical, but the message is transformed by its context. That brings me to the second warning:

Putting church services on social media is inherently disorienting, and we may forget that true worship of the triune God, maker of the universe, shouldn’t have to compete for our attention with the inane memes, political screeds, and endless scroll of frivolity we encounter at the same time and place on Facebook. We’d never decorate our sanctuaries with Amazon ads and crude cartoons, but that’s what worship services are surrounded with on Facebook.

If we proclaim “Jesus is Lord” on Facebook, rather than in person, the words won’t change, but the meaning will. The medium puts that declaration of faith on a level with “Vote for this candidate” and “Buy this shirt” and “Get likes for sharing this meme.”

None of that changes Jesus, of course. The difference has to do with us and how we process messages. Maintaining focus on Christ is already an enormous challenge of our time, both in the big sense of having undivided, ultimate loyalty to Jesus and also in the smaller sense of keeping our hands off our phones for two seconds to do something—anything—pertaining to God.

It’s not impossible, of course, for God to call people to himself through a deeply flawed medium, but neither is it wise to deliberately surround worship with distraction when we have more than enough distraction as it is.

“People will eat, talk, go to the bathroom, do push-ups or any of the things they are accustomed to doing in the presence of [a] screen,” Postman wrote of TV worship services. This rings embarrassingly true from my experience of pandemic-time Zoom church, which was better than nothing. But it was no substitute for meeting “face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 1:12).

Social media is designed for triviality and distraction, to help advertisers and platforms profit in the “attention economy,” and our behavior while consuming it reflects that fact.

My third warning is closely related to the freedom from good constraints that screen-bound worship brings: “The viewer is at all times aware that a flick of the switch will produce a different and secular event on the screen,” Postman noted. That constant choice is a powerful incentive for church to become less about what we need than what we want—whatever will keep us actively listening, whatever will prevent our scrolling onward.

I can slip away any time I like, unconstrained by even the mild awkwardness of walking out of the sanctuary while the preacher’s still speaking. The constraints we feel in person don’t negate our ability to choose what we do. But others’ presence can be a powerful pressure for our good. We need the peer pressure, frankly, to keep us engaged in worship.

I’m not saying that I think online church would be a perfect substitute for in-person church if someone were sitting quietly in a beautiful setting with the church service maximized and ad-free. Undoubtedly, we’ve all realized by now that a church service without face-to-face time or group singing isn’t enough. But we also need to hear about the medium of Facebook itself as a problem.

The temptations aren’t only for those watching, though. An online service tempts teachers to back off from take up your cross (Luke 9:23) and lean into “Please just keep Facebook open, and please don’t browse Twitter or email on your phone.” It makes Christianity less “demanding and serious,” Postman thought, and more “easy and amusing … another kind of religion altogether.”

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

- More from Bonnie Kristian

News

Wire Story

Hillsong Founder to Plead Not Guilty to Abuse Coverup

Associated Press in Sydney

Brian Houston will go to court in Sydney over alleged child abuse by his late father.

Mick Tsikas / AAP Image via AP

Hillsong Church founder Brian Houston will plead not guilty to illegally concealing alleged child abuse by his father, his lawyer told a court on Tuesday.

Houston did not appear at Sydney’s Downing Center Local Court when his charge was mentioned before a registrar for the first time. His lawyer told the court Houston would be pleading not guilty to the charge of concealing a serious indictable offense of another person, his late preacher father Frank Houston.

The case will next be before the court on November 23.

Police will allege that Frank Houston indecently assaulted a young male in 1970.

Court documents allege that Brian Houston believed his father had committed the crime. Police will allege that the younger Houston failed to disclose information to police that could help secure the prosecution of his father.

Since being charged, Houston has stepped down from the board of Hillsong, the church he founded with wife Bobbie in Sydney in 1983. Now a global empire, the church says 150,000 people in 30 countries attend its services and 50 million people sing its songs each week.

Houston, 64, was in the United States in August when detectives served his Sydney lawyers with a notice for him to appear in court.

He said in a statement at the time he welcomed the “opportunity to set the record straight.”

Houston returned to Sydney last month and was released from 14 days’ hotel quarantine last week.

An Australian government inquiry into institutional responses to allegations of child sex abuse found in 2015 that Houston did not tell police that his father was a child sex abuser.

The inquiry found that Houston became aware of allegations against his father in 1999 and allowed him to retire quietly rather report him to police. His father confessed to the abuse before he died in 2004 at age 82.

Hillsong Church has said repeatedly that it has not been involved in this matter, as Frank Houston never worked for the church, and has defended Brian Houston’s response.

“Upon being told of his father’s actions, Brian Houston confronted his father, reported the matter to the National Executive Assemblies of God in Australia, relayed the matter to the governing board of Sydney Christian Life Centre, and subsequently made a public announcement to the church. Brian sought to honor the victim’s multiple requests not to inform the police,” the church said in a statement in July.

“As a recent development, charges have officially been filed against Brian Houston,” the church said at the time. “We are disappointed that Pastor Brian has been charged, and ask that he be afforded the presumption of innocence and due process as is his right. He has advised us that he will defend this and looks forward to clearing his name.”

Hillsong, known for chart-topping worship music and megachurches across the globe, became its own denomination in 2018. Last year, Brian Houston announced an investigation of its New York City campus, where pastor Carl Lentz had stepped down over infidelity.

Additional reporting by CT.

- More from Associated Press in Sydney

News

Southern Baptists Agree to Open Up to Abuse Investigation

Kate Shellnutt

Executive Committee decision comes after weeks of heated debate and division.

Jared Wellman at the Executive Committee's September 21 meeting in Nashville.

Brandon Porter / Baptist Press

It took three weeks of scheduled meetings, at least three law firms, dozens of statements, hours of closed-door briefings, and extensive back-and-forth debates across boardrooms, social media, and Zoom calls for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee (EC) to agree to the terms of a third-party investigation into its response to abuse. But on Tuesday, it did.

The EC voted 44–31 in favor of waiving attorney-client privilege in the investigation, after a half dozen members resigned and several switched their position in favor of the waiver. For a moment, it felt like the conclusion of a long and heated process, though the decision is only the start of a long investigative process.

EC chairman Rolland Slade, who oversaw the proceedings, expressed his relief after the tally was announced. Then he remarked, “I want to express sorrow over the conduct we have displayed as Southern Baptists.”

For the EC—the denominational body tasked with Southern Baptist business outside the annual meeting—the debate pitted the desire to open fully to the investigation against concerns that such transparency would threaten its financial solvency, insurance coverage, and other fiduciary duties to protect the entity.

As the clash played out, Southern Baptist voices including seminary presidents, state convention leaders, and thousands of pastors spoke out to put pressure on the EC to comply with the requirement to waive attorney-client privilege, which had been approved when the denomination called for the investigation at its annual meeting in June.

“Taking steps towards honesty, transparency, repentance, those are great things. Those are worthy of celebration,” said Georgia pastor Griffin Gulledge, who hosted hundreds of SBC leaders and onlookers in Twitter discussions around the EC proceedings.

“It is huge to see this vote go from losing by a large margin … to ultimately passing by a large margin. But let’s recognize that the result of this is that the Southern Baptist Convention will never be the same.”

The recent vote authorizes a contract with Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm tasked with reviewing how EC staff and members responded to abuse allegations and victims over a 20-year span. Guidepost is slated to make its report public prior to the annual meeting in June 2022.

“It’s a baby step. There’s a long road ahead,” said Jules Woodson, who shared her story of clergy sexual abuse in the start of the #MeToo era and has rallied groups of SBC survivors. “I’m so glad people are finally paying attention. Nobody has listened for years.”

But survivors like Woodson also see how much work it took for the EC to agree to the terms of the investigation and worry the SBC is still divided over its responsibility to respond to the abused and vulnerable.

The motion to comply with the Guidepost investigation, which is being overseen by a sexual abuse task force appointed by SBC president Ed Litton, came from Texas pastor and EC member Jared Wellman, who has led the charge for the EC to open up and adopt the terms set by the messengers.

“The messengers have spoken very clearly that this is what they want, and we’ve exhausted every avenue trying not to do this,” said Wellman, whose motions failed in two previous meetings.

Outspoken Southern Baptist leaders believed that the EC’s refusal to comply with the terms of the investigation could disrupt denominational polity, where messengers at the annual meeting direct the actions of the committee, rather than it holding top-down governance.

Sarah E. Merkle, an attorney and professional parliamentarian, said the EC’s discussion over how or whether to follow the messengers’ directive offers a lesson for organizations in how “governing documents and motions matter.”

“An Executive Committee vote contrary to the will of the Messengers would have been a drastic reversal of the longstanding position that local churches and their messengers control the SBC, and that the Executive Committee’s powers are limited,” said Merkle, who serves as an advisor with CT’s ChurchLawAndTax.com. “Today’s vote communicates that a majority of the Executive Committee is willing to follow the established governance structure even when doing so may come at a cost.”

Opponents to waiving attorney-client privilege repeated their concerns in Tuesday’s gathering, which was held over Zoom. Joe Knott, EC member and former EC secretary, suggested the decision would “create chaos” rather than following God-given law and order. Mark Elliott said he’d be forced to resign if the EC waived privilege, since it’d be “the opposite of what our attorneys advised us to do.”

At Tuesday’s meeting, the EC brought in insurance recovery attorney Jim Murray of Blank Rome LLP to discuss possible insurance ramifications to waiving privilege in executive session. The EC also hired a pair of Dallas attorneys from Locke Lord, which came on in addition to the EC’s counsel.

Much of the previous debate had focused on finding a compromise option that would allow the EC to reduce liability and maintain some oversight while the investigation moved forward. But as EC member Dave Bryan stated, there wasn’t a good third option to be found.

“It’s hard to make a right decision when you don’t feel like you have good options,” the Oklahoma pastor told the group, announcing that he had switched to support the waiver. “As 1 Peter says, if we’re going to suffer, let’s suffer for doing the right thing.”

Both victims and advocates see the move to waive privilege as promising but also only a small step, especially as the SBC’s divides over the investigation and the denomination’s role in responding to abuse are put on full display. The investigation will require participation from current and former EC members and staff as well as victims in order to generate a substantial report.

https://twitter.com/ThigpenTiffany/status/1445486884839297024

EC president Ronnie Floyd, who had opposed the waiver of privilege, said in a statement, “I appreciate the statement of our Chairman Rolland Slade at the end of the meeting including his call to come together now to serve Southern Baptists. Now that the Executive Committee’s Board of Trustees have made their decision, the leadership and staff of the Executive Committee will provide support to Guidepost on implementing next steps to facilitate their investigation. We thank all of the Trustees for their diligence in addressing complex questions brought to bear by this process.”

Task force chairman Bruce Frank said, “the task force is pleased with the strong vote today by the Executive Committee to abide by the moral imperative as directed by the messengers, seminary presidents, state leaders, and many, many more” and that Guidepost will begin its work immediately. (In a previous vote, the EC had authorized the funding for the inquiry.)

Both sides in the debate over privilege claimed to have legal backing for their positions. Some EC members said they feared, based on their own expertise or legal counsel, that waiving privilege for the investigation could increase the EC’s liability and put the entity at risk; the sexual abuse task force’s attorneys said that declining to waive privilege could actually increase individual liability.

The privileged information sought for the investigation is limited to EC decisions related to abuse and victims during the 2000-2021 time period.

“Decisions like this one aren’t uncommon,” said Adam Plant, a Birmingham attorney who was not involved in the EC process but has represented clients in cases involving outside investigations. “Limited-scope privilege waivers can ensure individual wrongdoers are held responsible for their own misconduct, rather than the corporate entity being prosecuted for the misconduct of individual bad actors.”

The investigation follows years of concerns over the Southern Baptist Convention’s response to abuse brought up by victims, the media, and leaders within the denomination. The EC became the subject of the investigation following documents leaked earlier this year that suggested that its leaders downplayed abuse response efforts and intimidated victims.

Litton, who beat out former EC chairman Mike Stone to become president of the SBC, said he was grateful that a “full, transparent, and unimpeded investigation” could now begin.

He prayed to conclude Tuesday’s meeting. “We have all faced a very difficult and challenging time. May it not continue to divide and separate brothers and sisters,” he said. “We pray for your will to do be done, what needs to be exposed exposed, and healing begin for many.”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

News

How Prayer and Science Prepared Palm Beach Atlantic’s New President for the Pandemic

Adam MacInnis

After months of leading the school and holding Zoom calls with isolated students, Debra Schwinn will finally celebrate her inauguration.

Courtesy of Palm Beach Atlantic University

At 5 p.m. every day, students in quarantine at Palm Beach Atlantic (PBA) University get a Zoom call.

The face that pops up on the screen is their school’s new president, Debra Schwinn, checking in on them.

The calls, which ran the entire 2020–2021 school year and have continued this fall, last about 20 minutes. Schwinn chats with the students about how they are doing, prays with them, and offers bits of motherly advice.

For Tom St. Antoine, the faculty representative on the committee that chose Schwinn to be the new leader of the university back in January 2020, it’s a perfect example of the personal approach she has taken since becoming president at the start of the pandemic.

“That just sends such a statement for the president to take time to build relationships and to get to know those students one by one,” he said.

Schwinn’s inauguration was delayed by COVID-19. The ceremony will be held on October 8, but she’s already spent more than a year and a half demonstrating her leadership in trying times at the Florida university with about 2,100 traditional undergraduates, 400 masters students, 350 professional students, and 200 adult students who take evening classes.

Schwinn was not planning to be a pandemic president, but when she thinks about how everything happened, she can’t help but see God’s hand in bringing her to the school: “I think God’s timing was perfect.”

The call to Palm Beach came before COVID-19 was even being talked about.

Schwinn was working as the associate vice president for medical affairs and professor of anesthesiology, pharmacology and biochemistry at the University of Iowa when she got the job offer. She and her husband, Bob, went to a retreat center and isolated themselves in separate rooms and listened for how God would lead them. At the end of it, they came back together with the same answer: Go.

Schwinn accepted the offer and became the first female president of the Christian school founded in a Baptist church in 1968. Between the time she accepted the offer in January and the time she arrived at the Palm Beach campus in May, COVID-19 had become the single dominating question for the university.

When Schwinn showed up, she brought not only her faith and her pastoral commitment to care for students but also a long history in academic medicine.

“What better, in a time of pandemic, than to have someone of that background,” said St. Antoine. “There’s no way we could have known that, obviously, when we were making our selection. But it’s one of those things that’s let PBA stand out, and I think it’s helped parents, students, and faculty to be confident in our leadership.”

Schwinn’s first challenge, in May, was to put in place a plan to test and trace the spread of the coronavirus. Her medical background proved invaluable in weighing options and evaluating different plans.

In July, she faced another critical issue. Schwinn had to help the university decide whether to open in-person classes in the fall or move everything online, as so many schools and workplaces were choosing to do.

“The COVID rates were ticking so dramatically high in West Palm Beach and West Palm Beach County that we called a day of prayer, and for an entire day we listened,” she said.

In addition, she and other administrators at the school asked for the advice and prayers of alumni, students, families, churches, staff, and others. When they heard back, they felt like they had a clear answer.

“What we heard God say was that ‘there has never been a more important time in the history of this country than today for the kind of transformative education that you have at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Open. I’m not going to give you all the answers today, but open, have courage, and keep asking the questions,’” Schwinn said.

But Schwinn said she knew that God would want the school to be responsible too, so she and the staff developed an extensive safety plan, including masking requirements for large events and encouragement to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines at smaller gatherings. Desks were spread apart for social distancing, and professors’ podiums were equipped with Plexiglas shields.

Perhaps most importantly, the school instituted a testing regimen, checking all students for COVID-19 when they arrived in the fall, transparently reporting cases online, running contact traces to quickly catch exposure, and developing careful plans for quarantining students who became infected or were potentially exposed and waiting for test results in an old residence building.

“We opened with prayer, and we followed science,” Schwinn said. “It was definitely a combination.”

As a result, the percentage of cases on campus was lower than the surrounding community, Schwinn said.

This year, the percentage of tests that came back positive for COVID-19 at the start of the semester was a bit under 9 percent, and then dropped steadily from the end of August to September. Currently, Florida’s positivity rate is at about 9 percent. The university’s is just under 3 percent.

The isolated students were able to keep up with classes through a “HyFlex” system, which put almost every in-person class on Zoom simultaneously. Students in the old dorm—dubbed “COVID Camp”—were cared for by a health team.

Schwinn also started checking in on them every day.

Initially, the idea was to make sure the systems in place were working properly. Were they being cared for? Could they really participate in their classes? But Schwinn soon found her medical and mothering backgrounds kicking in.

“I found that I loved it, so I continued it after I knew our systems were working well,” she said. “I have a chance to kind of be a surrogate mother.”

She would also encourage them to take the time to draw closer to God. Prayer was a daily part of the 5 p.m. calls.

“Many students feel touched by God during their time alone,” Schwinn said.

Umberto Rosi, who came to PBA from Italy, contracted COVID last spring. Being thousands of miles away from family, he said it was a challenging time, so he was thankful for Schwinn’s caring calls. The mix of empathy and knowledge she brought to the conversations meant a lot to him and the other students.

“She doesn’t just see you as a student. She sees you as a person, and we love that,” he said.

While she never had to personally quarantine, PBA student body president Abbi Michaeli heard from many who loved the personal role Schwinn took.

“Students that are isolating can get lonely at times, so the fact that she does that means the world to them,” she said.

In general, Michaeli said Schwinn’s experience gave the entire student body confidence.

“Her background has made me and other students feel better about her decisions for the campus because she makes Christian and medical decisions that have the students’ best interest at heart.”

COVID-19 aside, St. Antoine is excited about the direction Schwinn is leading the university.

“I always think of PBA as the Christian college for the next century,” St. Antoine said. “We‘re urban. We’re young. We’re innovative. We have programs in health care and other areas that Christian colleges don’t always have. But, at the same time, we haven’t forgotten our emphasis in the liberal arts, character formation, spiritual formation, those kinds of things. In a lot of ways Dr. Schwinn embodies that.”

Schwinn, for her part, is excited to one day lead the university without having to deal with a pandemic, though she will miss the 5 p.m. Zoom calls.

- More from Adam MacInnis

News

Christians and Critical Race Theory

A webinar about the facts, falsehoods, and theological implications of critical race theory—and the way forward for the church.

With hysteria and misinformation swirling all around it, critical race theory has become nearly impossible to discuss without stirring up ideological fears and partisan divisions. Yet many believe its ideas must be responded to if the church is ever going to take seriously issues of diversity, justice, and racial reconciliation.

Join Christianity Today’s Russell Moore and a diverse panel of evangelical leaders as they explore the facts, falsehoods, and theological implications of critical race theory.

Our Panelists

Nathan Cartagena

Nathan is an assistant professor of philosophy at Wheaton College, where he teaches courses on race, justice, and political philosophy. Nathan also serves as scholar-in-residence for World Outspoken, an organization committed to equipping Latin@ churches for godly living. He is currently writing a book about critical race theory with IVP Academic. Read his writings at nathancartagena.com, and follow him on Twitter @ProfeNLC.

Oneya Fennell Okuwobi

Oneya is a sociologist and junior fellow at Rice University’s Religion and Public Life Program. Her research interrogates how diverse organizations impact racial inequality. She is an ordained Assemblies of God minister and serves as teaching pastor at 21st Century Church, a church plant in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is also coauthor of Multiethnic Conversations: An Eight-Week Journey Toward Unity in Your Church. Oneya is a graduate of the University of Virginia (BA, Economics), Regent University (MDiv, Practical Theology), and The Ohio State University (PhD Sociology). She and her husband, Dele Okuwobi, have one daughter, Cadence. Find Oneya on Twitter @Ookuwobi or at Oneyaokuwobi.com.

Jeff Liou

Jeff serves on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as director of theological formation. Jeff has also worked as a pastor, university chaplain, and adjunct professor. He earned his PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he studied the intersection of race and theology. Jeff has contributed chapters to books on Asian American Christianity, public theology, and ethics in pastoral ministry. He lives in Southern California with his wife, Lisa, and their two children. Follow him on Twitter @Jeff_Liou.

Russ Whitfield

Russ serves as pastor of Grace Mosaic, a cross-cultural church that he helped plant in Northeast Washington, DC. A minister of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), Russ is also the director of Cross-Cultural Advancement for Reformed University Fellowship and a guest lecturer in practical theology at Reformed Theological Seminary’s Washington, DC, campus. He has made written contributions to Heal Us, Emmanuel: A Call for Racial Reconciliation, Representation, and Unity in the Church; All Are Welcome: Toward a Multi-Everything Church; and 9Marks Journal. Russ and his wife, Vanessa, have four children. Follow him on Twitter @whitness7.

Russell Moore

Russell is public theologian at Christianity Today and director of CT’s Public Theology Project. Russell was president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2013 to 2021. Prior to that role, he served as provost and dean of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also taught theology and ethics. He is the author of several books, including The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul and Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel. He and his wife, Maria, have five sons. Find him at russellmoore.com and on Twitter @drmoore.

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Our Panelists

Nathan Cartagena

Oneya Fennell Okuwobi

Jeff Liou

Russ Whitfield

Russell Moore

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