Dave Ramsey’s Bestseller Slips from Top 10 List

Sales of “The Total Money Makeover” suffer after reports of abusive workplace.

Dave Ramsey’s perennial bestseller, The Total Money Makeover, has dropped off evangelical publishers’ top 10 list for the first time since the book’s fourth edition was published in 2013.

Sales have fallen steadily since January, when Religion News Service (RNS) reported allegations of controlling leadership and a “cultlike” environment at Ramsey Solutions, which have resulted in a string of lawsuits against the company.

The book dropped from third to fourth on the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (ECPA) bestsellers list in February, then to seventh in March, and then out of the top 10 at the end of April. It is currently ranked No. 11.

Ramsey Solutions, a for-profit company that offers financial advice through books, radio programs, and church workshops across the country, had been labeled one of the best places to work in America. But some of its roughly 1,000 employees didn’t want to return to the Nashville office during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a whistleblower told the federal government about health and safety violations at the Nashville-area workplace.

“I will fire you instantaneously for your lack of loyalty, your lack of class, and the fact that you are a moron and you snuck through our hiring process,” Ramsey told his staff, according to a recording obtained by RNS. “I’m so tired of being falsely accused of being a jerk when all I’m doing is trying to help people stay in line.”

Ramsey pushed back against the dissent, and his company contests the facts of the RNS reporting.

The Total Money Makeover was the No. 3 book on the ECPA list in January. The book was the fourth highest bestseller in 2020, the fourth in 2019, and in the top 10 every year since its re-publication.

The only other authors to compete with Ramsey’s long-running success in the past decade are Gary Chapman, who wrote The 5 Love Languages, and Sarah Young, who wrote Jesus Calling.

The top seller on the ECPA list typically sells about 50,000 books per month, according to NPD BookScan reports. The NPD BookScan collects data from more than 50 major retailers, including Amazon, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Lifeway, as well as several hundred independent stores. Sales from DaveRamsey.com are included. The No. 10 book on the ECPA list typically sells between 12,000 and 15,000 copies in a month, though the number varies.

When Thomas Nelson first released The Total Money Makeover in 2003, the evangelical publisher supported the book with a 31-city tour and extensive promotion. There were even total money makeover contests in some markets, with cash prizes encouraging struggling families to try to implement Ramsey’s financial principles.

Since then, Ramsey’s book has sold an average of about 30,000 copies per month, according to public statements from Thomas Nelson. It has been republished in 2007, 2009, and 2013. Sales passed the 5 million mark in 2017.

“That is a testament to the strength of our relationship with Dave and his company, and to the timeless principles in the book,” Thomas Nelson senior vice president Brian Hampton said at the time.

The Total Money Makeover gives people “baby steps” to personal financial well-being, starting with saving $1,000 for emergencies and then paying off credit card debt.

According to Publishers Weekly, Ramsey “is less a financial analyst and more of a preacher, which explains both his popularity and the appeal of this book.”

Ramsey’s advice focuses more on practical ways to escape financial difficulty than on changing the economic system that contributes to it, but many readers appreciate what feels like tough talk about personal responsiblity.

The Total Money Makeover has been rated more than 75,000 times on Goodreads, with 80 percent giving the book four or five stars.

“This book is just common sense in a big way!” wrote an Idaho woman in her 40s. “There is so much peace in being in control of our money and our marriage is so much better because we have GOALS that we plan together.”

Not everyone who buys the book likes it, though. A small percentage have written scathing reviews on Goodreads.

“He fails to understand that many people grow up in poverty and are always just barely keeping up with their bills,” one woman wrote. “People face unfair lawsuits, unemployment, death, and other tragedies in life. His self-righteous response is that you should have had your emergency fund in place before these things happened.”

The reviewer suggested Christians in need of financial advice look for other options. At the start of 2021, some apparently did.

- More from Daniel Silliman

Ideas

John Stott Would Want Us to Stop, Study, and Struggle

John W. Yates III

As his study assistant, I saw how the steadfast suffering of careful thinking resulted in balanced biblical Christianity.

John Stott at the Hookses, Wales, circa 1999.

John W. Yates III

It was a bitterly cold January afternoon and rain was pinging sideways off the windows when John Stott emerged from his study. It was teatime, and a large pot was brewing on the small counter of the kitchenette of The Hermitage, Uncle John’s cozy living quarters in one of the old farm buildings at the Hookses, his rural retreat in Wales.

“Oh JY,” John said to me, wearily, rubbing his temples, “I have a terrible case of PIM.” His acronym stood for pain in the mind. It was his way of describing what it felt like to wrestle over a difficult writing project or a seemingly intractable problem, and it was a phrase I knew well after 18 months working as John’s study assistant.

Between 1977 and 2007, 14 young men—mostly Americans—served Uncle John (as we called him) in this capacity. Our work was as wide-ranging as John’s own life, which was delightfully multifaceted.

During my years as his study assistant, I completed research for several books; ran errands; and served as bodyguard, driver, and traveling companion, in addition to cooking, cleaning, and waiting on tables. Working hand in hand with Frances Whitehead, his incomparable secretary, John referred to us as “the happy triumvirate.”

Frances was in London on that cold January afternoon when John and I were at Hookses. John had spent the day working through revisions for a new edition of his well-known book, Issues Facing Christians Today. Apart from a short break for lunch and his regular afternoon nap, he had been at his desk since 5:30 that morning. After a 15-minute tea break, he would return to his desk until 7 p.m. No wonder he was weary.

Over tea, we discussed the progress he had made that day and the state of my research on the chapter he would tackle the following day. We also indulged in shortbread cookies (which were known to be an effective treatment for PIM). As he rose to return to work, he patted down the white tufts of hair he had disturbed at his temples and said:

“JY, there are certain tasks which cannot be done without acute pain in the mind. They are rarely fun, but always worthwhile.”

As we celebrate the centenary of John’s birth this week, I have been thinking about pain in the mind. John was an undeniably brilliant communicator, known for the clarity and conciseness of his thought. But his natural gifts did not relieve him of the struggle of careful study and the strain required for understanding God’s Word and applying it in the modern world.

Another favorite acronym of John’s was BBC. He took delight in explaining that this did not stand for the British Broadcasting Corporation, but rather for balanced biblical Christianity. John was not afraid of taking an unpopular stance if Scripture required it. But he never rushed into an opinion. In his quest for a balanced and biblical Christianity, he worked tirelessly to understand every perspective on a topic before coming to a carefully considered judgment rooted in Scripture.

In an age of sound bites and Twitter feeds, many Christian leaders are so busy trying to keep up with current events that few of us take time to stop, to study, and to struggle for the sake of teaching God’s people. All too often, we take a side and stick to it without the discipline of listening or questioning our instincts. The thin veneer of our discipleship is showing cracks as a result.

In this complex and constantly changing world, we do not need more commentary. We need more pain in the mind. John was willing to endure this pain, not just in the quiet of his study, but also in the company of others. He understood that the work of preaching and teaching requires the steadfast suffering of careful thinking.

***

The living room in the small home outside of Nairobi, Kenya, was crowded with an eclectic assortment of people. An archbishop, an ornithologist, a seminary professor, young students, and a few old friends had gathered for morning coffee and conversation with Uncle John.

For most of the morning, John was peppered with questions on topics ranging from bird watching to biblical interpretation. Throughout the ebb and flow, however, John engaged each person individually, drawing them out and getting to know those he was meeting for the first time. The study assistant’s job during these gatherings was to listen, learn every name, and take careful notes.

That evening, before bed, John and I met in his room to review the day and to pray. We went over my notes from that morning, making a careful list of books that he had promised to send, a letter of reference he had agreed to write, a question he needed to ponder for a friend, and a pair of specialty pliers (used in banding birds) that he had volunteered to track down in England and ship to Kenya. During that three-week trip to East Africa, there were countless gatherings like this, many of which resulted in personal commitments from John.

After a late-night return to London a week afterwards, John was up early the next morning dictating. When Frances arrived at the office, she had 15 letters to type, and I had a long list of books to package and specialty items to shop for. Those bird-banding pliers took me all over London.

John was a shy and emotionally guarded Englishman, but he was extremely generous in friendship. He had a special concern for the under-resourced and under-privileged, and an abiding affection for young Christians. He would engage in a months-long correspondence with an undergraduate from Burundi just as quickly as he would with the archbishop of Kenya.

And he would persist in these friendships over the years, delighting as they spilled over to the next generation. Such was the story of my own relationship with John, whom I first came to know when I was a young boy and he a frequent visiting preacher at my father’s church.

John’s capacity for leadership was extraordinary. The impact of his work is felt around the world today and will continue to be felt for many decades to come. His influence, however, extends far beyond the institutions he founded and the movements that he shaped. It is seen most powerfully in the relationships he fostered.

During this long season of isolation and separation caused by the pandemic, I have often thought of Uncle John’s capacity for personal relationships and his unstinting commitment to all kinds of people regardless of social, cultural, or racial barriers. By virtue of his generosity and steadfastness in friendship, he created a thick community around himself of astonishingly different people rooted in the grace of Christ. It’s a marvelous image of what the church can be for a world plagued by division and indifference.

***

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students conference in Marburg, Germany, drew students from every corner of Europe and the former Soviet Union. John was the principal Bible teacher for the four-day gathering, speaking each morning for nearly an hour, with simultaneous translation offered through headphones in over a dozen different languages.

The translators were all volunteers, students with little experience who had courageously stepped forward to help. Recognizing what a challenge it would be for them to translate on the fly, John volunteered to meet with these students each afternoon in order to go over his talk for the following day.

These afternoon sessions became the highlight of the week for students and teacher. The eager translators asked for definitions and clarification, laughing often at John’s idiomatic English and occasionally indecipherable upper-class accent. John marveled at their energy and dedication and happily wore himself out making sure they were just as prepared as he was. When he spoke each morning, he slowed his cadence and paused after difficult sentences, allowing time for his new disciples to catch up.

Every evening, the other principal speaker, a noted evangelist, inspired the large crowd of students with amazing stories and incredible energy. English speakers were transfixed. The translators, however, were left behind and wrung dry, leaving non-English-speakers confused and playing catch-up. The talks were a tour de force understood by less than half of those in attendance.

While many leaders are known for their egos, John is rightly remembered for his humility. One of the hallmarks of that humility was his deep sensitivity to the needs of others and his tireless commitment to caring for those needs. Undistracted by concern for himself, he had the mental and emotional energy to attend to those around him.

While some leaders search for glimpses of themselves in the eyes of others, John looked into others’ eyes as windows instead of mirrors, seeking to catch sight of their hearts and minds.

On the final morning of that Easter conference, John insisted that the young translators come out of their soundproof booths and join him on stage in order to be thanked by their peers. It was the loudest cheer of the week, during which John slipped quietly out of the spotlight.

On this centenary of his birth, I pray that God would give the church more leaders like John Stott: leaders who understand the value of pain in the mind, who are generous in personal friendship, and who are humble enough not just to share the spotlight but to step out of its warm glow entirely in order to pass on the legacy of godly leadership to the next generation.

John Yates is the rector of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in Raleigh, North Carolina. He served as John Stott’s study assistant from 1996 to 1999.

CT offers a special collection of articles by and about John Stott.

- More from John W. Yates III

News

Biden’s Armenian Genocide Stance Pleases Christians, Angers Turkey

The Associated Press and CT

(UPDATED) Armenian evangelicals praise first US president to formally use word to describe 1915 massacre by Ottoman Turks.

The Armenian Genocide memorial complex in Yerevan, Armenia.

Maja Hitij / Getty Images

The systematic killing and deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 20th century was “genocide,” the United States formally declared on Saturday, as President Joe Biden used that precise word after the White House had avoided it for decades for fear of alienating ally Turkey.

Turkey reacted with furor, with the foreign minister saying his country “will not be given lessons on our history from anyone.” A grateful Armenia said it appreciated Biden’s “principled position” as a step toward “the restoration of truth and historical justice.”

Biden was following through on a campaign promise he made a year ago Saturday—the annual commemoration of Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day—to recognize that the events that began in 1915 were a deliberate effort to wipe out Armenians.

While previous presidents have offered somber reflections of the dark moment in history, they have studiously avoided using the term genocide out of concern that it would complicate relations with Turkey, a NATO ally and important power in the Middle East.

But Biden campaigned on a promise to make human rights a central guidepost of his foreign policy. He argued last year that failing to call the atrocities against the Armenian people a genocide would pave the way for future mass atrocities. An estimated 2 million Armenians were deported and 1.5 million were killed in the events known as Metz Yeghern.

“The American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today,” Biden said in a statement. “We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.”

Rene Leonian, president of the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in Eurasia, told CT he “salutes the courage” of the US president.

“Biden will open a new page for the American nation. This new page will also allow other countries to follow his example,” he said. “I deeply hope that in the future, the Turkish State will do an in-depth work collectively with its own people, to acknowledge the guilt of the Turkish authorities of 1915.”

“In a Christian spirit, reconciliation is possible when the culprit recognizes his fault, regrets, and asks for forgiveness,” Leonian told CT. “What is impossible for men is possible for God! I believe that through prayer, patience, and perseverance, we will get there.”

Paul Haidostian, president of evangelical Haigazian University in Beirut, Lebanon, told CT he found Biden’s word choice to be “gratifying.”

“Late recognition is naturally better than no recognition. However, for me the use of the term genocide in a statement is not a simple sound bite,” he said. “It is a commitment to justice, and those who have recognized genocide as a historical fact must know that this is not a posthumous medal on a coffin; rather, a commitment for pursuing the matter in various ways, academic, political, curricular, economic, etc.”

Haidostian described how he has expected a US pronouncement every year of his adult life, as has the wider Armenian diaspora.

“Having to wait year after year for 106 years for presidents or parliaments of countries of the world to remember and call the atrocities in the proper way has been painful and has represented the defeat of a sense of justice in the face of political strategy,” he told CT.

“Armenian advocacy is not a political act or maneuver. It is the voice of the Armenian heart that has ached for so long.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a letter to Biden that recognition of the genocide “is important not only in terms of respecting the memory of 1.5 million innocent victims, but also in preventing the repetition of such crimes.”

Turkish officials struck back immediately.

“We reject and denounce in the strongest terms the statement of the President of the US regarding the events of 1915 made under the pressure of radical Armenian circles and anti-Turkey groups,” stated the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tweeted that “words cannot change history or rewrite it” and Turkey “completely rejected” Biden’s statement.

In the past, Turkey has acknowledged the deaths and displacement of Armenians as a tragedy. Yet the admission is often couched within a context of international meddling and Armenian agitation, during a time of Ottoman weakness.

This stance is offensive to Harout Nercessian, the Armenian Missionary Association of America representative in Armenia.

“Euphemizing a genocide into wartime collateral damages is a lie,” he told CT. “It is sinful and immoral.”

Getting Turkish recognition of the genocide is the ultimate goal, said Nercessian. This would involve an official apology, and then “amends and reparations.”

But minutes before Biden’s announcement, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent a message to the Armenian community and patriarch of the Armenian church calling for not allowing “the culture of coexistence of Turks and Armenians … to be forgotten.” He said the issue has been “politicized by third parties and turned into a tool of intervention against our country.”

The answer, said Garo Paylan, an Armenian member of Turkey’s parliament, is to preempt them.

Confronting this history would “remove the significance of what any other parliament says,” he stated. “The Armenian Genocide happened on these lands, and justice for the Armenian Genocide can only be achieved on these lands, in Turkey.”

During a telephone call Friday, Biden had informed Erdoğan of his plan to issue the statement, said a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to publicly discuss the private conversation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The US and Turkish governments, in separate statements following Biden and Erdoğan’s call, made no mention of the American plan to recognize the Armenian genocide. But the White House said Biden told Erdoğan he wants to improve the two countries’ relationship and find “effective management of disagreements.” The two also agreed to hold a bilateral meeting at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.

Further progress will depend on more than US recognition, Nercessian said. But Biden showed moral leadership.

“God is the God of the weak and expects the strong to stand up for the rights of the defenseless,” he told CT. “America stood up for justice, and that is pleasing to God.”

In Armenia on Saturday, people streamed to the hilltop complex in Yerevan, the capital, that memorializes the victims. Many laid flowers around the eternal flame, creating a wall of blooms seven feet high.

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Avet Adonts, speaking at the memorial before Biden issued his statement, said a US president using the term genocide would “serve as an example for the rest of the civilized world.”

Hrayr Jebejian, the Armenian director of the Bible Society of the Gulf, told CT he was “happy” and “encouraged” because he had expected Biden to dodge such a pronouncement at the last minute, as other US presidents have done before.

“The timing of this endorsement is very important because of the geopolitical situation,” he said, citing the recent 44 days of conflict in Artsakh—the Armenian name for Nagorno-Karabakh—that resulted in Azerbaijan regaining control of much of the disputed territory.

“We were so demoralized, we were seeing the whole world as black,” said Jebejian of the Armenian nation. “At this juncture of our history, [Biden’s statement] boosts our morale and paves new opportunity for our cause.”

He hopes that Armenian activists can capitalize on the opportunity and push for more justice via international tribunals. But he doesn’t expect any progress on reconciliation.

“You need two hands to clap,” Jebejian told CT. “If Turkey continues in denial, we cannot do much more [on reconciliation]. But as Christians we need to push for justice.”

Lawmakers and Armenian American activists had lobbied Biden to make the genocide announcement on or before remembrance day. The closest that a US president had come to recognizing the World War 1-era atrocities as genocide was in 1981 when Ronald Reagan uttered the words “Armenian genocide” during a Holocaust Remembrance Day event. But he did not make it US policy.

California is home to large concentrations of Armenian Americans.

Salpi Ghazarian, director of the University of Southern California’s Institute of Armenian Studies, said the recognition of genocide would resonate beyond Armenia and underscore Biden seriousness about respect for human rights as a central principle in his foreign policy.

“Within the United States and outside the United States, the American commitment to basic human values has been questioned now for decades,” she said. “It is very important for people in the world to continue to have the hope and the faith that America’s aspirational values are still relevant, and that we can in fact do several things at once. We can in fact carry on trade and other relations with countries while also calling out the fact that a government cannot get away with murdering its own citizens.”

Haidostian doesn’t expect Biden’s recognition to impact efforts at reconciliation between Armenians and Turks, as Turkey would first need to change how it teaches the history of that time period.

“My focus has always been the fact that as faithful Christians, we have to rise from the ashes and from the graves of history,” he told CT. “Our faith is based on the resurrection of Christ, his work for us.

“Being people of this new life, however, is not a utopic unreal life. Working for justice, working for peace, has to have a base, also on this earth,” said Haidostian. “Being healed is not an emotional state. It has be based on fairness in all aspects.”

Reporting for the Associated Press by Aamer Madhani, Matthew Lee from Washington, and Zeynep Bilginsoy from Istanbul, with writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan contributing. Additional reporting for CT by Jayson Casper from Beirut.

- More from The Associated Press and CT

News

How Evangelicals Pushed Back on Biden’s Refugee Reversal

Stefani McDade

Advocates united to hold the president to his campaign promise, combat administration’s misinformation.

James MacPherson / AP Images

Update: President Joe Biden officially raised the refugee ceiling on May 3, though not in time to reach the new level of 62,500 by the end of the fiscal year in September. Evangelicals celebrated the move.

Evangelical advocates played a crucial role in holding President Joe Biden accountable to a promise to raise the limits for refugees coming to America. Publicly and privately, they pushed back on the administration’s explanation for continuing Trump-era limits for another six months, framed the change as a betrayal of a promise, and reiterated the moral argument for accepting refugees.

Within a few hours of a presidential memo on April 16 telling the State Department to keep the number of refugee admissions at 15,000 instead of raising it to the promised 62,500, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki stated there had been “some confusion,” and the administration started to reverse course. That evening, a deputy national security advisor held an emergency conference call with advocacy groups, including World Relief, to offer assurances that the administration would welcome more refugees with haste.

“It was one of the busiest workdays I’ve ever had,” Jenny Yang, senior vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, wrote on Facebook. “At the end of the day, the President heard the voice of the people and changed course, stating that he is planning to raise the #refugee ceiling next month. Thanks for raising your voice. Keep it up!”

Evangelical groups helped set up the moral conflict just after noon on April 16, when the Evangelical Immigration Table, a coalition of nine prominent evangelical organizations, released a statement urging Biden to raise the ceiling on refugee resettlement immediately. Expressing “dismay and disappointment,” the letter pointed out the US was on track to accept the fewest refugees in the history of the resettlement program, which began in 1980.

The statement included quotes from the leaders of World Relief, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), Bethany Christian Services, and the National Latino Evangelical Coalition urging action.

“As we approach the end of the first 100 days of the new administration, policies that harm the most vulnerable remain in place. This delay is a travesty,” wrote Chris Palusky, president and CEO of Bethany. “Christian churches and nonprofits that resettle refugees and reunify families are ready to answer this biblical call, but we can’t live out our mission until the administration follows through on their commitment.”

Minutes after the statement was released, news broke that Biden had sent the State Department instructions to keep the cap at the all-time low of 15,000.

In their initial explanation, White House spokespeople pointed to various limiting factors. They said, for example, that more time was needed to rebuild the resettlement infrastructure that had been gutted by the Trump Administration’s decisions and that the Office of Refugee Resettlement was overburdened by migrants claiming asylum at the US-Mexico border.

While such claims seem plausible to the general public, who are mostly unaware of how the refugee program works, evangelical advocates and others who have worked on resettlement scrambled to explain these were not valid reasons to keep the cap on refugees.

“I talked to nearly every major national news outlet,” Yang said, “sharing stories, correcting data, responding to the White House’s statements.”

According to Yang and others, the processes for asylum seekers at the border and refugee resettlement are completely separate, with different staff and funding. Accepting more refugees could also alleviate stress at the border. Resettlement agencies are ready to work and raising the refugee ceiling is the first step in rebuilding the infrastructure necessary to welcome people in need to the land of the free and home of the brave.

Within a few hours, evangelical organizations including World Relief, the ERLC, and the NAE were invited to join other religious advocacy groups and refugee agencies in a last-minute virtual press call to hear directly from White House officials.

The call was arranged by the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a Bush-era initiative revived by Biden, giving faith communities access to decision makers across federal agencies in the executive branch of the government. Other religious groups involved in the discussion included Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the Jewish-American non-profit HIAS, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

On the call, officials backtracked, blamed confusion, and announced a vague but promising update about a higher ceiling that would be set soon, perhaps in May. A follow-up meeting was arranged with representatives from the nine refugee resettlement agencies, including World Relief.

“[We] will always stand with refugees, regardless of who is president, whether he keeps his promises, or how the US government decides to respond,” said Scott Arbeiter, president of World Relief. “And we’ll always seek to convene a Christian conscience on behalf of the marginalized.”

Discouraged by Biden’s change

The US has not yet started accepting more refugees, though, so advocates will watch to see what happens in May. Despite the political victory, evangelical leaders are discouraged to see Biden flip-flop on the issue.

“I genuinely thought this was a personal, deep conviction that would guide him, beyond whether it became politically convenient,” said Matthew Soerens, the US director of church mobilization for World Relief, which shut eight offices under Trump.

As a senator, Biden was one of the original cosponsors of the Refugee Act, which was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980. As a candidate, Biden broadcast his commitment to rebuilding the program. When speaking to Christian audiences, Biden pointed to his Catholic convictions in pledging to reclaim the country’s “proud legacy” by raising the number of new arrivals to 125,000, higher than the national average of 95,000.

His rhetoric was embraced by a number of faith leaders and advocacy groups who had vocally criticized Trump’s opposition to accepting refugees, accusing him of abandoning America’s moral duty to provide a safe haven for the persecuted. When Biden prioritized immigration on day one in office, refugee ministries praised his initiative.

In his first month in office, it did seem like Biden was going to follow through. He proposed accepting more refugees immediately, not waiting until October when the next year’s ceiling is set. Biden said in the next six months the US could take about 62,500 people. The number was approved by the State Department and Homeland Security and defended in Congress without significant disagreement.

Then the State Department began booking hundreds of flights for refugees who were slated to arrive after years-long processes of extensive vetting, screening, and waiting. Biden, however, didn’t sign off on the plan, which had already been set in motion, and as the delay got inexplicably longer, the State Department had to start canceling flights.

In three months of stalling, more than 700 refugees’ flights were canceled.

“I am confounded by his betrayal of a key promise to those of us who voted him into office,” Sheila Joiner, advocacy coordinator for We Welcome Refugees, told CT. “There has been a groundswell of support from the resettlement agencies that welcome refugees, the faith communities and local organizations that partner with them, and individual advocates. We are ready to put action to our words; we just need President Biden to keep his promise.”

Last month, their team began circulating a petition, which has collected close to 5,000 signatures. World Relief started another this week, which is already approaching 2,000.

Maintaining a consistent witness

According to some political reporting, Biden and his advisers were concerned about mounting attacks from conservatives accusing the Democrats of throwing open US borders and creating chaos with an apparent open invitation to come to America. Though immigration is handled separately from asylum seekers and asylum seekers are separate from the refugee program, the political professionals were reportedly less concerned about the technical issues of administration and more about the optics.

Soerens noted that the order not to increase the number of refugees accepted to the US came a week after a poll found that refugee resettlement was less popular than everything else on Biden’s immediate agenda. For decades, support for refugee resettlement was mostly bipartisan and received especially strong support from evangelicals. In recent years, the topic has become more politically divisive, and many conservatives reject the idea that America should welcome any foreigners, even those fleeing oppression.

A 2018 poll showed only a quarter of white evangelicals believe the US has a responsibility to resettle refugees. That minority of evangelicals is well organized, though, and willing to speak up loudly.

“We have to maintain a consistent witness for what's right and for human dignity—which means it really doesn’t matter where any herd of politicians goes,” ERLC president Russell Moore told CT. “We have to be the people reminding ourselves and the outside world of the image of God in human beings, whether people want to hear that or not. That applies to unborn children and to Somali refugees. It applies to elderly people and the disabled. It applies to everybody.”

Evangelical advocates for refugees also see the US program as a way to help the persecuted church around the world. World Relief noted that under Trump, the number of Christian refugees who came to the US from the 50 countries on Open Doors USA’s World Watch List dropped from more than 18,000 in 2015 to fewer than 1,000 in 2020.

https://twitter.com/MatthewSoerens/status/1385389691080425472

“A sensible immigration policy must start with those groups which are targeted and whose lives are in danger because they are a religious minority within their home country,” said David Curry, CEO of Open Doors USA. “Prioritizing the most endangered communities within immigration policy should be common sense, but has too often been overlooked.”

US Commission on International Religious Freedom vice chair Tony Perkins said that accepting refugees from religious persecution is one way the nation demonstrates its commitment to religious freedom. The US, he said in a statement, should be a safe haven for persecuted people from all over the world.

Biden’s flip-flop on refugees, however discouraging to advocates, did create an opportunity for Christians to speak up for human dignity. While leaders wait to see if Biden will follow through with his promise in May, they say last week’s temporary victory was still important.

“It feels like we're in a consequential moment,” said Walter Kim, president of the NAE, “which is challenging, but it's also a beautiful opportunity that, if the church could step into it, will really speak to the vitality of the gospel and what Jesus offers to this next generation in the decades to come.”

- More from Stefani McDade

News

Anticipating Biden on Genocide, Armenians Fear Cultural One in Azerbaijan

Jayson Casper

Vanishing church in Nagorno-Karabakh highlights feared erasure of Christian heritage, but also countercharge of destructive occupation.

Azerbaijan President Ilhan Aliyev visits St. Astvatsatsin Church in newly controlled Nagorno-Karabakh with his wife and daughter in March 2021.

Press Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan

Update (April 24): President Joe Biden has officially declared the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 to be a “genocide.”

Armenian fears of a new genocide were put on hold following the fall of Shusha, the crown jewel of Nagorno-Karabakh, high in the Caucasus Mountains. Last November, Azerbaijani forces captured the city—known to Armenians as Shushi—after which a cease-fire ended the military hostilities.

But not the cultural ones.

Last month, satellite imagery allegedly revealed the destruction of Shusha’s Armenian Genocide Memorial, constructed in 2009. Its desecration leaves a bitter taste during this year’s April 24 remembrance of the 1.5 million lives lost when Turks expelled Armenians from their homes a century ago.

President Joe Biden may recognize the atrocity by stating the word genocide in his commemorative speech.

But the horrors witnessed in Turkey reached also to Shusha, where Azerbaijanis massacred the local Armenian population.

“As in 1915, the Turco-Azeris are committing not only a human genocide against the Armenians but also a cultural genocide,” said Rene Leonian, president of the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in Eurasia. “Unfortunately, nations and international organizations are too passive to firmly condemn these abuses.”

They can now add the case of a vanishing church building to the list.

Following the war, video footage emerged of an Azerbaijani soldier shouting “Allahu Akbar” from the rooftop of the Holy Mother of God Church in the town of Jabrayil. Later, in searching for the simple stone-built chapel, the BBC discovered no trace whatsoever.

The escorting policeman first said it was destroyed in the war. He then changed his story, saying the Armenians dismantled it before they left.

Presidential advisor Hikmet Hajiyev told the BBC the matter would be investigated but then shifted the discussion to the nearly 30-year Armenian occupation.

The shift was not wholly inappropriate.

The church in question was built on a military base, after Armenia seized the disputed Caucasus enclave during the first Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1993. Jabrayil became a ghost town, as Azerbaijani residents fled. The area was later looted and left in ruins.

Nagorno-Karabakh means “mountainous black garden,” in a combination of Russian, Turkish, and Persian names. Armenians call the region “Artsakh,” as it was named in their fifth-century kingdom. It changed hands throughout the centuries, and in 1923 then commissar of nationalities Joseph Stalin had the Soviet Union designate the region as Azerbaijani territory, despite its majority Armenian population.

But beyond the disappearing outpost for worship, Azerbaijani actions—and rhetoric—threaten historic churches also.

The Ghazanchetsots (Holy Savior) Cathedral in Shusha, built in 1888, was struck twice by missiles early in last year’s war.

Following the cease-fire, Shusha’s Kanach Zham (Green Chapel) of St. John the Baptist, built in 1818, had its towers removed. And last month, aerial footage showed the entire structure destroyed.

Azerbaijan stated the church originally belonged to the Russian Orthodox, saying it was subject to “Armenification.” It plans to return the church to its former shape—and owners.

But such actions are “cultural genocide,” said Davit Babayan, foreign minister of Artsakh. He and many Armenians believe Azerbaijan is pursuing a systematic campaign to erase their heritage from the region.

Cited as precedent is the destruction of more than 2,000 khachkars—ornately carved headstones from a Christian graveyard—in Nakhchivan, a non-congruous Azerbaijani enclave. A 2005 video depicts earlier efforts to wipe out historical evidence of Armenian populations there.

A January 2021 report from the office of the Human Rights Ombudsman of the Republic of Artsakh states that at least 1,456 Armenian historical, cultural, and religious sites are now under the control of Azerbaijan.

It lists khachkars, gravesites, and fortresses, and includes 161 monasteries and churches.

But for many of these, the Armenification accusation goes further. Many belong to the ancient Caucasian Albanian people, says Azerbaijan. Unrelated to the modern nation of Albania in the Balkans, this ancient Christian people are said to be the original inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh, before Armenians altered the region and laid claim to their heritage.

Today Caucasian Albanians are known as Udi, and Azerbaijan wants them to get their heritage back.

St. Astvatsatsin Church in Nagorno-Karabakh during March 2021 visit by Azerbaijan President Ilhan Aliyev.

Last month, Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev visited the Hadrut region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Filming for national television, he entered the 12th-century St. Astvatsatsin Church in the village of Tsakuri, highlighting the graffiti and general state of disrepair.

The Armenian inscriptions are “fake,” he said.

“If it was truly Armenian, would they be using it as [a] rubbish dump?” asked Aliyev. “This is our ancient history. This is our Udi friends’ church.”

He later visited a graveyard, accusing Armenians of falsifying tombstones.

Similar tombstones have since been vandalized, stated the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Since 2013, USCIRF has listed Azerbaijan as a Tier 2 nation—now called the Special Watch List—for its practice or tolerance of violations of religious freedom.

Two soldiers have been arrested by Azerbaijan for the vandalization.

But video footage has also captured the toppling of a khachkar in Hadrut.

And video released by the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense was stated to reveal the removal of medieval Armenian inscriptions in the famous 13th-century Dadivank Monastery. An Udi priest had previously been dispatched to conduct services there.

“Azerbaijan is trying to make Albania of equal value to Armenia,” said Ara Sanjian, associate professor of history at the University of Michigan–Dearborn and director of its Armenian Research Center, “and project today’s rivalry back into the past.

“I want to see evidence,” he said. “I can’t say it didn’t happen, but the onus is on the Azerbaijanis to prove otherwise.”

International academics find it difficult to examine all the historical sources. But Thomas de Waal, author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, stated the Albanian theory has “little currency outside of Azerbaijan,” calling it “bizarre.”

Such disputes are typically settled through UNESCO, the United Nation’s cultural body. But working only through recognized states, the institution had no jurisdiction to chronicle religious heritage during Armenian occupation.

And since the war ended, UNESCO stated in December that Azerbaijan was not cooperating. In January, Aliyev threatened to revise relations with UNESCO, claiming it was acting with bias toward Armenia, failing to investigate damage during the occupation.

Last month, presidential advisor Hajiyev said Azerbaijan was ready to accept a mission. But as of publication, UNESCO told CT it was still in the process of discussion “in a spirit of consensus and strict impartiality.”

International organizations, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the World Council of Churches, have called for preservation.

Johnnie Moore, a USCIRF commissioner, agreed, but put the onus on Armenia.

“The religious freedom community should also do a report on the desecration of Islamic sites during the years Armenia controlled the area,” he said.

“Christians cannot expect the world to stand against destruction of their religious heritage when we don’t stand against what others have suffered.”

In addition to hundreds of cultural sites damaged, Azerbaijan said more than 60 mosques had been destroyed. Another was turned into a pigsty. One in Shusha has been preserved, but labeled “Persian” after Iranian help in its reconstruction.

“They even tried to steal our mosque,” said Mushfig Bayramov, an Azeri convert to Christianity. “It is incredible how these people hate us.”

Armenia stated Azerbaijan targeted this mosque during the war, narrowly missing.

Reciprocal accusations between the sides continue. Azerbaijan stated Armenia illegally removed 40,000 museum exhibits. Armenia stated Azerbaijan refused to return 1,500 art objects from Shusha.

Sensitive to the suffering of both sides, Rima Nasrallah, assistant professor of practical theology at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, has paid special attention to the monastery of Dadivank.

The threats reminded her of not only the destruction of Armenian heritage in Turkey, but also the losses of Arab Christians in the Middle East.

In conjunction with scholars and theologians from Germany, she signed a statement rejecting the destruction of cultural heritage and its “ideological reinterpretation,” especially in service of a political agenda.

“Where monuments have been destroyed or changed, part of our Christian story was lost,” Nasrallah said.

“These are not just random halls for weddings and baptisms; they are sacred spaces where people have met God and felt his presence.”

Aliyev has pledged to protect these churches—and give them to the Christians of Azerbaijan. Though Udis appear to be the beneficiaries, Aliyev stated that Armenians are free to remain in what he now calls “Karabakh,” dropping the “mountainous” descriptor that signaled Armenian-populated areas.

Nonetheless, the dehumanization continues.

Azerbaijan issued postage stamps that appear as if an exterminator is spraying the region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

And a Military Trophies Park was opened in Baku, the nation’s capital, in which Aliyev walked through an exhibit of helmets taken from slain Armenian soldiers.

While these images and violations have received abundant coverage in Armenian media, mainstream publications have been more cautious. Though USCIRF and the BBC are starting to notice, Armenians simply grow more frustrated.

Many put their hope in God.

“As the civilized world continues to turn a blind eye, Azerbaijan’s greatest strength is in denial,” said Leonian, who directed the Artsakh ministry of the Armenian Missionary Association of America for 17 years.

“But God’s patience is limited, and one day the nations will open their eyes.”

- More from Jayson Casper

News

Bibles Get American Pastor Tangled Up in Turkish Politics

Jayson Casper

In Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus, another Andrew Brunson-style case is brewing.

Turkish Cypriot police stand before a portrait of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on November 15, 2020 in the disputed coastal quarter of Varosha in Famagusta, during his state visit to the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of North Cyprus.

Alexis Mitas / Getty Images

Will the Turks create another Andrew Brunson?

On the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, they claim to have found his disciple.

Three months ago, American pastor Ryan Keating was detained for 11 hours by the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a state unrecognized by every nation except Turkey. Its police raided the café and wine shop that housed his church, and then proceeded to his home.

They confiscated dozens of Arabic and Farsi language Bibles.

Keating, 44, was released on nearly $20,000 bail, after local friends bonded deeds to their property, vehicles, and even a tractor.

Last month, Keating was charged with illegally importing Christian materials. His passport has been confiscated while he awaits trial. A fine has been assessed of at least $60,000—ten times the value of the Bibles, which he said is “wildly inflated” to begin with.

The raid, however, was based on the accusation that he did not have a permit to make wine. Yet Keating showed CT his 2018 license to operate the café, his 2019 license for winemaking from the municipality, and the additional requested paperwork from 2020, when his permit renewal was delayed by the customs department.

The interrogation focused only on his ministry.

“This country, its government, and our neighbors have been friendly to us,” he said. “But there are not insignificant pockets of hostile nationalism.”

Keating linked his arrest to the changing political environment. Last October, the pro-Turkey prime minister defeated the incumbent president to assume the territory’s top office.

“My case is an example of localized opposition,” Keating said. “But now, Turkish-style politics is being enforced in Cyprus.”

He was the victim of such politics once before.

Pastor Ryan Keating and his family

Resident on the island since 2017, Keating previously lived 10 years with his wife and four children in Turkey. Operating a coffee shop, the Yale University graduate was also pursuing doctoral studies at Ankara University while heading a refugee ministry sponsored by a Protestant church.

In 2016, following the arrest of Andrew Brunson, Keating was deported on the grounds of “national security” and banned for life.

Since then, the Turkish Association of Protestant Churches has documented at least 35 examples of other foreign workers barred from Turkey. Most try to keep out of the media in hope of legally reversing the rulings against them.

So far in Cyprus, Keating faces only a fine. But a prominent Turkish-language newspaper conveyed the same conspiracy-focused accusations he said he faced during interrogation.

It called him a “disciple” of Brunson.

Keating told CT he did not work with the American pastor. But he did tweet on Brunson’s behalf and defended him in an interview with the BBC.

George Ioannides, an elder in the Greek Evangelical Church in Nicosia, a divided city and capital of the Republic of Cyprus, agreed that Keating was likely the victim of shifting politics in the occupied north.

“Ryan is sensitive to the culture, knows the language, and makes himself available to serve, wherever there is a need,” Ioannides said. “But his history in Turkey likely triggered his arrest.”

The birthplace of Barnabas, the biblical “son of encouragement,” Cyprus has been divided since a 1974 coup attempt by Greek Cypriots prompted an invasion by Turkey. Overall, it has a population of roughly 1.3 million.

The Republic of Cyprus and its 840,000 people are 89 percent Greek Orthodox, with a 2 percent Muslim minority. The occupied north is 97 percent Muslim, divided between original Turkish Cypriots and Turkish settlers—violating Geneva Convention restrictions on population transfer.

A United Nations peace process, which established a religious track in 2011, collapsed in 2017. But it helped achieve a 2013 agreement for Greek Orthodox and Muslim leaders to freely cross the 110-mile Green Line that divides the island. And there has been a recent uptick in northern facilitation of access to Christian sites, guaranteed by the 1975 Vienna Agreement.

But the preservation of religious heritage remains a point of strong contention.

“Some churches have become mosques, others are used as stables or for military purposes, while some of them are totally destroyed in the effort to obliterate any sign of the traditional Christian identity of the land,” stated Metropolitan Vasilios, head of the diocese of Constantia–Ammochostos. “After all, this has been the tactic of Turkey throughout its whole history with regard to the lands [it] conquered.”

According to the New York–based Orthodox Order of St. Andrew, more than 500 churches and chapels have been desecrated or destroyed in the occupied territory, with over 60,000 artifacts illegally transferred abroad.

The interfaith Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process (RTCYPP), now under the Swedish embassy in Nicosia, has noted violations. It has urged the authorities to restore the churches of St. James and St. George in the Nicosia buffer zone—repeating a call first issued in 2014.

In the south, the RTCYPP condemned vandalism last year against the Köprülü Mosque in Limassol, where anti-Muslim and anti-refugee graffiti was scribbled on the wall.

In the north, it recently condemned a Muslim charity’s use of St. Michael Church as a bazaar, as well as a techno party held in the 11th-century Armenian monastery of St. Magar. The latter is in dire need of repair.

A Protestant church has also been violated. Turkish Cypriots turned the Armenian Evangelical Church in occupied Nicosia into a factory and defaced its cornerstone inscription of a Bible verse. The building is now left derelict, overgrown with weeds.

Hrayr Jebejian, head of the Bible Society of the Gulf and an Armenian Cypriot citizen, is “saddened” to see the state of the churches. The Bible Society of Cyprus is attached to Greece and does not have any official presence in the north. He said doing so would recognize the entity.

A source in the Bible Society said that the Cyprus office can provide whatever materials are needed, but that it cannot deliver everywhere. It would be the customer’s responsibility to carry the materials onward.

Turkish Bibles were not seized in the raid on Keating’s church, though some were taken from his home. The Arabic and Farsi materials were dropped off by a friend who no longer had use of them. But it was the box’s mailing label from the south, he said, which likely caught the attention of the police.

Keating said Bibles are not available for sale anywhere north of the Green Line.

But other Christian resources were mailed directly to his church, he said, passing through Turkish customs without any assessment of fees. He is convinced the charges against him are just a pretext by a minority of officials offended at Christian witness.

Keating’s church hosts two services, one in English and the other in Turkish. The diversity is evident in both, with people from Cyprus, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Europe attending—which demonstrates the need for Arabic and Farsi Bibles.

Before COVID-19, the Turkish language service hosted up to 40 people weekly, including a handful of Turkish Cypriots. The English service has about 70 members.

While the Republic of Cyprus calculates there are 314 Greek Orthodox and 69 Maronites resident in the occupied territory, the Cyprus Evangelical Alliance (CEA) lists two affiliated churches in divided Nicosia and nearby Kerynia.

These are pastored by Kemal Basharan, a 69-year-old Turkish Cypriot. In 2014, he established the Turkish Protestant Association after a 10-year legal battle with the authorities. He counts 300 believing families in the Turkish area, though many are fearful to publicly identify with the church.

Basharan has received death threats, but maintains his witness. Amid the local controversy of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s strong support for Quran courses in schools—which the Turkish Cypriot Supreme Court ruled was unconstitutional—Basharan wrote an article in the newspaper to ask if Bible courses could then be permitted.

“If I get locked up somewhere, who will know about it?” he said, describing his affiliation with the CEA. “I wanted to join something good, and it was an open window to the outside world.”

While the northern administration is officially secular, it recognizes only Islam as an official religion. And though it does not regulate the worship of other faith groups, it requires such groups to register with the police as associations in order to open bank accounts and engage in civic activity.

Basharan believes the authorities are treating Keating “like a drug dealer,” yet he makes certain to import his own Christian materials through Turkey—and pay an approximate 10 percent customs fee.

Though he has faced interrogation for doing so, Basharan said there is even greater opposition to Christianity since the presidential elections.

Keating is not the only one targeted. A Turkish Christian and his American wife were fined at the airport for bringing in religious materials. They moved to Cyprus after the wife was denied her residency permit after 10 years of living in Turkey. Two months later, Turkish Cypriot authorities gave them five days to leave the country.

Previously, Christian activity received only aggressive surveillance.

“They didn’t like it, but they had to allow it,” said Basharan. “Now with Erdogan and the new government, the swords are out.”

By contrast, the Republic of Cyprus recognizes Maronite Catholics, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholics as official churches in addition to the Greek Orthodox and Muslim faiths. Others must register as associations or foundations. The CEA represents 36 congregations before the government.

“There is freedom; we can worship God without any trouble,” said Ioannides. “But for Ryan all we can do is pray, as our word does not register in the north.”

Yiannos Pitsillides, president of the CEA, told CT that evangelicals face “subtle yet strong” social discrimination, especially from the older generation. But the number of member churches has more than doubled in the past two years, as leaders have come to value greater relational unity.

And though the alliance recognizes the sensitivity involved in having relations also with Turkish Cypriots, they respectfully pursue it as a Christian calling.

“We believe that the love of Christ surpasses race, ethnicity, and any other humanly imposed barriers,” said Pitsillides. “We hope to be an example of reconciliation among Greek and Turkish Cypriots.”

Cyprus, meanwhile, finds itself increasingly contested in Mediterranean politics. Allied with Israel, Greece, Egypt, France, and the United Arab Emirates, it has negotiated natural gas rights in its offshore areas. Meanwhile, Turkey has forged a cooperative maritime zone with Libya.

And Erdogan has bucked the UN peace process in Cyprus by calling for a two-state solution. The defeated Turkish Cypriot president favored a federal compromise and has accused Turkey of interfering in the election.

Is Keating, like Brunson, a casualty of geopolitics or the victim of localized bias? Either way, he expresses optimism in the objectivity of the court system, through which he hopes Cyprus can avoid the fate of Turkey.

“I have had much freedom here,” he said.

“But I am going public with my story because I don’t want it to become a precedent.”

- More from Jayson Casper

Books

Review

From Monks and Bells to Apps and Notifications

Chris Nye

The church used to keep the tempo of life. Now Silicon Valley is pushing the pace—and pulling the church along with it.

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Benoitb / Getty / Envato

Despite the ways in which the coronavirus pandemic has confused our concept of time and curtailed a host of plans and activities, nearly all of us—and this is certainly true of pastors—feel as if we cannot keep up with the constant motion of the modern world. Life is fast. Maybe you don’t have to “go” to work, but now you can replace that commute time with more work—at your house! And maybe you don’t need to take your kids to school, but you can replace that time with writing emails—while your kids ask you for food! Life is fast, and even a pandemic can’t seem to slow it down.

The Congregation in a Secular Age (Ministry in a Secular Age Book #3): Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life

Andrew Root (Author)

Baker Academic

288 pages

Pastoral responses to the quickened pace of modern life have often been overly simplistic and covertly pharisaical. “Take a Sabbath,” we say. Or, “Create rhythms of self-care.” Or, “Make sure your calendar has margin.” There is wisdom, of course, in such advice, but it’s important to pay attention to how and why we pursue it, not just whether. Sabbath and self-care can quickly become utilitarian. Heeding the wisdom of Scripture for selfish gain, innovative productivity, and schedule optimization will only lead us back to where we started: exhausted and confused about where the time went.

Andrew Root achieves something quite remarkable, then, in his latest volume, The Congregation in a Secular Age. Root, a ministry professor at Luther Seminary, places two issues—speed and secularism—at the center of our current cultural weariness. But the solutions he offers are anything but simplistic. Nowhere, for instance, does he encourage pastors to “rest” or “take Sabbath seriously” or cultivate “soul-forming habits.”

What Root recognizes, on a profound level, is that measures meant to un-hurry your life often exacerbate the pressures of speed, since they spring from the same secular impulse to optimize your calendar or create “sustainable” habits. Productivity, not genuine rest, remains the goal. Root calls the church to beware spiritual disciplines cloaked in utilitarian language.

Exchanging our timekeepers

This book is the third and final volume in Root’s Ministry in a Secular Age series, all of which draw on themes from the work of Charles Taylor, a philosopher best known for his landmark book A Secular Age. (Volumes 1 and 2 explore faith formation and the pastor, respectively). Turning to the subject of congregational life, Root asks: How has the pace of the modern world sapped the energy of so many church communities? We pastors feel this: How come no one is signing up for classes? Why is it so difficult to find just one night each week that “works” for a ministry event? Why are the leaders of our family and youth ministries always so tired and busy?

The Congregation in a Secular Age zeroes in on the effects of a cultural shift in our dominant mode of marking time. As Root puts it, we have exchanged our “timekeepers.” Comparing ancient church calendars in a place like Avignon, France (think monks and bells), with the apps, devices, and communication platforms of Silicon Valley, Root argues that our new timekeeper has burdened the church with abnormal forms of anxiety.

In Avignon, the church kept the time. In other words, the life of a village or town orbited around a religious calendar, rather than the secular calendars we rely upon today. Each day, the sounds of bells ringing from church towers marked either times of prayer or the beginning and end of various services.

Today, however, our experience of time has shifted from the bells of Avignon to the push notifications of Silicon Valley, which has sped up our experience of reality. The rhythms of the church calendar have given way to the imperatives of innovation and change. “Innovate or die” is the new mantra of our disruption economy, and the church feels increasingly obliged to operate on the same logic. Now that technological advancement allows us to get more done in less time, we put greater pressure on individuals, families, and congregations to accelerate “impact,” even when we aren’t sure what impact means or looks like.

In this new order of secular time, Root argues, the church is tempted to mimic Silicon Valley, pushing itself to become innovative, practical, fast, nimble, disruptive, and far-reaching. Congregations are applauded for “accelerating the impact of the gospel” and “advancing the kingdom” (not Root’s words, but words I hear a lot as a pastor). These churches have used Silicon Valley’s business model and philosophy of time to “build up” a church—but what, Root asks, does Facebook have in common with a local congregation? Is Google like the Good Shepherd?

A demanding timekeeper like Silicon Valley pushes both families and congregations to focus primarily on resources. Money, buildings, time, staff, content, attendance, and data-driven analytics become central in determining whether a congregation is “doing well” or “healthy,” to use contemporary church-growth language. This leads the church to adopt what German sociologist Hartmut Rosa (the scholar Root quotes most often) calls the “Triple-A” approach to the good life: prioritizing availability, accessibility, and attainability. In other words, churches living out this philosophy aspire to be available to do anything, to have access to all opportunities, and to attain the goals they have set.

As Root sees it, a congregation chasing after the “Triple-A” ideal threatens its own capacity to experience the present; its leaders and members will grow alienated from one another and from God’s activity in the world. The speed of modern life constantly compels pastors to “cast vision,” which lifts the eyes of the congregation from what God is doing now to what might be done (maybe) in the future.

Within this mindset, writes Root, “the present is for harvesting as many resources as you can, so that you can live your personal dream in each ever-coming future.” When a church operates within a time horizon set by Silicon Valley, he argues, it becomes just another site for resource accumulation here on earth. To use Charles Taylor’s distinctive language, it is “disenchanted,” with no imagination of heaven, eternity, or eschatology.

But this only raises the question of just how disenchanted Silicon Valley’s timekeeping really is. As someone who actually lives there—who experiences this place as something more than a mystical force or a cultural construct—I see a more complicated reality. I pastor a congregation 15 minutes from the Googleplex. To me, my community is only somewhat “secular.” Yes, we are obsessed with earthly innovation; and yes, we live life at an accelerated pace. But the actual Silicon Valley is anything but disenchanted.

The tech titans here are true believers; they see market projections, company evaluations, and stock-option packages as imbued with spiritual meaning. Nearly everyone here believes their work is sacred and their assets have divine attributes. Business leadership books, startup websites, and venture-capital firms are saturated with religious language.

Root’s commitment to Taylor’s philosophical portrait of a “secular age” often prevents him from noticing these decidedly nonsecular tendencies. He could have gone further, for instance, in reckoning with what scholar Eugene McCarraher calls “the enchantments of mammon”—or the worship and awe of business acumen, leadership jargon, and other capitalistic values. The gods of Silicon Valley are obvious here, but they are somewhat absent from Root’s analysis.

Resonant relationships

How, then, can a pastor shepherd a congregation stuck in a time famine, where all scraps of time must be given over to the goals of dynamic growth? Root displays his greatest strengths as a theologian and writer in addressing this question as he expounds upon one key word he adopts from Hartmut Rosa’s work: resonance.

Resonance, in Root’s telling, is our balm for the speed of modern life. He argues for practices that go beyond slowing down or resting, for relationships based on something other than innovation or growth in our lives and institutions. Resonant relationships are about a community experiencing the action of God together. Church small groups do not exist merely to help us achieve personal goals or aid our own spiritual quests; they exist, instead, as a space of resonance where our activity is second to the activity of Jesus Christ.

Taking inspiration from both Rosa and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Root shows how the church has created “instrumentalized relationships,” or relationships motivated mainly by what they can do for me. This happens primarily through the adoption of consumeristic language and values by church leaders: We offer affinity groups or community events that are perfectly tailored to one’s season of life or personal preferences. In doing so, the modern churchgoer now feels entitled to relationships that are inextricably linked to his or her lifestyle desires. Relationships exist, then, not for the purpose of learning to love but for achieving our own goals.

So long as this pattern persists, Root argues, alienation and fatigue will remain our constant companions. We can carve out Sabbath rest and “create margin” all we want, but there will be no resonance—and therefore no respite from the pace of modern life. As Root explains, “The church loses community when its relationships become instruments. When it loses community, it loses the resonance of revelation itself. It is no longer a living community … but is alienated from the world and therefore from the living God.”

The Congregation in a Secular Age invites us to ask whether we, as the church, are playing the same games as Silicon Valley. Competition and speed are necessary for capitalism but are deadly for churches. Why compete in a game of speed that we were never meant to play—and which we are destined to lose? Root’s book is essential for pastors like me, stuck in an accelerated culture. Perhaps it is not enough to “un-hurry” or “slow down”; maybe it’s time to get off the ride for good.

Chris Nye is a pastor at Awakening Church in San Jose, California. He is the author of Less of More: Pursuing Spiritual Abundance in a World of Never Enough.

- More from Chris Nye

Ideas

The Scales of Justice Teeter in Human Hands

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

Human justice may achieve accountability, and perhaps even recompense, but rarely real restoration.

Elijah Nouvelage / Getty Images

The verdict was not what I expected. I didn’t think former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin would be convicted on all three charges for the death of George Floyd. I wasn’t sure his actions would be legally labeled “murder,” both because of the details of Minnesota law and because we’ve seen the same scenario so many times before without this outcome. Any charges—let alone murder charges, let alone murder convictions—are incredibly rare when police officers kill.

But here we are, with Chauvin found guilty on all counts after just 10 hours of jury deliberation. The Twin Cities were largely quiet Tuesday night. No helicopters hovering overhead, no need for the plywood that reappeared on business windows in recent weeks. There were celebrations in Minneapolis, by the courthouse and at the intersection where Floyd died, and triumphant honks sounded on the main road near my house the moment the verdict was read. Everyone, it seems, heaved a sigh of relief.

The Derek Chauvin decision is a pale sort of justice, with all the shortcomings temporal justice tends to have.

Yet George Floyd is still dead. Some or all of Chauvin’s convictions could be overturned on appeal, and even if they aren’t, this verdict alone won’t transform American policing and our criminal justice system. Tuesday’s decision is a pale sort of justice, with all the shortcomings temporal justice tends to have. It should remind us that, in Christ, we look forward to the bright light of true justice. And it should spur us to action too—to partnering with God in moving toward that true justice to come, knowing our “labor in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58), no matter how endless or futile it may feel or what the final fate of this case is.

That the Chauvin case reached this point is remarkable in the narrow legal context of Minnesota’s murder statutes and the Minneapolis Police Department’s use-of-force policy. I anticipated writing this column to explain, in part, why a second-degree murder conviction didn’t happen, and I remain a bit stunned that it did.

The specific charge is that Chauvin “cause[d] the death of a human being, without intent to effect the death of any person, while committing or attempting to commit a felony offense.” It’s that final clause I thought could be a sticking point: The offense of which Chauvin was accused is felony assault, but the assault in question was a restraint technique prescribed by the police department handbook until it was revised last year. (Indeed, Chauvin himself had used similar restraints repeatedly in the past, and he was never formally reprimanded for it.) This verdict says what Chauvin did was a felony despite its apparent consistency with his police training. It says “just following orders” is not an excuse.

The cautious part of me is hesitant to think that bold statement will survive if appealed. If it does, however, it could point to a significant shift in how our society thinks about police use of force, especially deadly force, and the rule of law over law enforcement officers. That tantalizing possibility brings me to another remarkable thing about this verdict: that it happened in such an “already/not yet” moment of American criminal justice reform.

On the balance for “already”: This case didn’t end like the 2014 police killing of Eric Garner, to which it was so eerily similar. What Chauvin did was legally given its moral name: “murder.” The past year has produced a long list of policing reforms associated with this case. Americans now overwhelmingly support policies including prohibition of police chokeholds, a national database of police with a record of misconduct (at present, fired officers are often simply rehired by another department), mandatory police body cameras, elimination of mandatory minimum sentencing, and an end to qualified immunity (a Supreme Court–created legal doctrine that makes it difficult to hold police and other government officials accountable for civil rights violations).

On the balance for “not yet”: That this murder happened at all. That police in a suburb of Minneapolis killed Daunte Wright, another unarmed black man, before the Chauvin trial was even complete. That despite public support as high as 91 percent for the reforms I just listed, only a few have happened, patchwork, in some parts of the country, and some are not implemented at all. That there’s no guarantee the next police murder will be handled as this one was. That there is still so much to be done, so much to make our justice system more trustworthy, humane, and fair, particularly for black Americans.

This is the inadequacy of human justice, in which we may achieve accountability and perhaps even recompense but not real restoration. “I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy” (Ps. 140:12), but we so often do not. “If you see the poor oppressed in a district, and justice and rights denied, do not be surprised at such things,” says the oft-cynical teacher of Ecclesiastes (5:8), and who—having spent a single day reading headlines—could argue? This is the way of our world while its redemption is not complete, while it is still “subjected to frustration” (Rom. 8:20), while the end has not yet come, while we have not yet seen the final “victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:24–28, 57). Until then, there is always so much more to be done.

The enormity of the task presents a dual temptation of pessimism or pietism, as Esau McCaulley, a Wheaton College professor of New Testament and author of Reading While Black, wrote in The New York Times shortly after the Chauvin verdict was announced. The pessimism despairs of progress, he said, while the pietism “assumes our only hope is the sweet by and by, in which God swoops in at the end of all things to solve our problems.” Rejecting both embittered striving and passivity, McCaulley counsels “a third way, rooted in the idea that a just God governs the universe” and invites us to join him in his good work.

In this sense, hope is reasonable. Not a naïve hope, imagining the American justice system is magically fixed because one police officer was convicted. Not a fragile hope, floundering whenever “justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us” (Isa. 59:9). Ours should be a resilient hope: joyful, prayerful, “always striv[ing] to do what is good for each other and for everyone else” (1 Thess. 5:15). It should be a hope learned following a God who will deliver us from every injustice, from our own wrongdoing, and finally from death itself. It is the hope of Easter—that Christ not only has died and is risen but will come again.

Bonnie Kristian is a columnist at Christianity Today.

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

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Prisons Reopen to Ministry with Recent Visits from Lecrae and Justin Bieber

Emily McFarlan Miller, Maina Mwaura, Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

Prison Fellowship’s “Second Chance Month” corresponds with easing of pandemic restrictions at many facilities.

Lecrae performs a Hope Events concert on Good Friday.

Courtesy of Prison Fellowship

In early April, Christian hip-hop artist Lecrae visited a South Carolina prison, performed six songs and testified about his faith.

Fifteen months ago, the event would have been almost unremarkable, but since then, COVID-19 restrictions have prevented Lecrae from “hanging out” with prisoners, as he had previously done with less social distance after a performance hosted by Prison Fellowship.

“We sometimes do it outside the security fence line and maintain that separation with the men or women on the inside,” said Prison Fellowship President James Ackerman, describing a “Hope Event” the ministry held at a correctional facility in Alabama in September.

Lecrae’s visit this month was a sign that some prisons have begun permitting more in-person religious activities.

“As conditions have improved state by state, some correctional facilities and prisons are opening back up for visitors and ministry purposes,” Jim Forbes, communications director of Prison Fellowship, said in a statement to Religion News Service.

That comes as Prison Fellowship—the largest US nonprofit serving incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people and their families—celebrates Second Chance Month, aimed at raising awareness of the difficulties faced by people with a criminal record.

The virus has spread through correctional facilities, where social distancing is often not an option, infecting prisoners at a rate three times that of Americans outside prison walls, according to a recent report by The New York Times.

Over the past year, nearly all state-run facilities temporarily have halted outside visitors to help slow that spread, according to Prison Fellowship’s website.

But as vaccines become more widely available and states begin to loosen those restrictions, high-profile Christians like Lecrae, Justin Bieber, and Churchome pastor Judah Smith have been among the first to resume their visits.

Second Chance Month was first recognized by President Donald Trump in 2017. President Joe Biden issued a similar declaration this year, recognizing April as Second Chance Month.

“By focusing on prevention, reentry, and social support, rather than incarceration, we can ensure that America is a land of second chances and opportunity for all people,” Biden’s declaration reads.

Prison Fellowship is celebrating with a number of virtual events, including a prayer service last Saturday and a rebroadcast the following day of its Second Chance Sunday worship service featuring music by musicians from the New York megachurch Hillsong East Coast and a sermon by Pastor Jon Kelly of Chicago West Bible Church. It has also created resources to help churches across the country host their own Second Chance services.

Lecrae is joining the organization for a number of events. Among them is a virtual gala on April 29, where Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of Just Mercy, also is scheduled to speak.

Lecrae, whose father, he has said, was in and out of jail, first got involved with Prison Fellowship in 2019 and has performed at several prisons since then, including the April 2 event in South Carolina.

In a recent interview with Religion News Service, Lecrae said, “Knowing that they’re still human, knowing that they have dignity, worth, that God made them, fearlessly and wonderfully made them” drew him to prison ministry.

Bieber, whose latest album is titled “Justice,” reportedly stopped by a California prison in late March at the invitation of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, in the company of his wife, Hailey Baldwin, and Smith. While there, they reportedly spoke with members of the Urban Ministry Institute, a prison seminary program, and Bieber announced that he plans to charter buses so inmates’ family members who have been kept away by COVID-19 could come to visit them.

“It was a life-changing experience that I will never forget,” the pop star said in a statement to ABC News Radio. “It was such an honor listening to their stories and seeing how strong their faith is.”

Evangelical Christians took up prison reform as a cause in the past few decades under the influence of Charles Colson, a former aide to President Nixon, who came to faith while serving seven months in Alabama’s Maxwell Prison for Watergate-related crimes.

Colson founded Prison Fellowship in 1976, and the organization has worked with every administration since President Jimmy Carter. It played an instrumental role in crafting the First Step Act, legislation passed in 2018 that focused on reducing recidivism, the number of people who leave prison only to land back in confinement.

More recently Prison Fellowship has supported the proposed Equal Act, which would reduce disparities in cocaine sentences that punish Black Americans more harshly than white Americans.

- More from Emily McFarlan Miller, Maina Mwaura, Adelle M. Banks - Religion News Service

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3 Fewer Hot Spots for Trump-Biden Handover on Religious Freedom

Jayson Casper

USCIRF chair Gayle Manchin explains why 22nd annual report by US watchdog agency reduces tally of offending nations, yet too many on black list still “don’t seem to care.”

Cover of the 2021 annual report by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

USCIRF

As a new administration takes over leadership of America’s commitment to religious freedom worldwide, Gayle Manchin believes President Joe Biden is “very aware” of its importance.

But given global developments, the watchdog work of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which she chairs, sometimes feels like “treading water.”

Others agree. For example, an 800-page study released this week by Aid to the Church in Need concludes that 1 in 3 nations of the world do not respect religious freedom.

And in 95 percent of these, the situation is growing worse.

USCIRF, created to provide recommendations to the US government, released its 22nd annual report today. Its analysis identifies significant problems in 26 countries, down from 29 last year. It also marked a surge in worldwide antisemitism.

Following the commission’s advice, last December then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the designation of Burma [Myanmar], China, Eritrea, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC).

USCIRF’s 2021 report recommends that new Secretary of State Anthony Blinken add India, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.

And where the US State Department under the Trump administration added Cuba and Nicaragua to a Special Watch List (SWL), this year USCIRF recommends also including Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile, the commission recommends that three nations finally come off the watch list: Bahrain, the Central African Republic, and Sudan.

Shielded from US foreign policy concerns, USCIRF says its mandate allows it to “unflinchingly criticize the records of US allies and adversaries alike” on religious freedom. This is meant as oversight and advice for the State Department, which is not required to accept the commission’s recommendations.

Created as an independent, bipartisan federal commission by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), USCIRF evaluates the degree to which nations engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, and egregious” violations of religious freedom.

CPC status requires meeting all three descriptors, while SWL status requires two.

Today’s report notes, however, that even when the State Department designates a nation as a CPC, there is regular violation of the IRFA requirement to compel presidential action. Often a simple national security waiver is applied to exempt allied or strategic nations.

USCIRF “urges” the federal government to stop this practice, and to take concrete action.

Following four commission field visits (limited due to COVID-19), seven hearings, and 33 published reports, USCIRF’S 2021 report calls attention to religious freedom violations against all faiths, including:

1 to 3 million Turkic Muslims in Chinese concentration camps
130,000 Muslims in government-run internment camps in Burma
50,000 Christians held in North Korean prison camps
2,500 Yazidi girls and women missing in Iraq
2,000 religious prisoners in Uzbekistan
477 raids conducted against homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia
240 religious prisoners released on bail in Eritrea
15 houses of worship attacked by non-state actors in Nigeria
9 Yazidi shrines destroyed by Turkish-backed militias in northern Syria
5 targeted killings of Ahmadi Muslims in Pakistan

This year’s report includes a new section highlighting key USCIRF recommendations that the US government has implemented, including: 14 religious freedom violators have been sanctioned under the Global Magnitsky Act; key religious freedom staff positions have been filled at the State Department and the National Security Council; and China’s abuse of its Uighur population has been designated as a genocide.

But it also notes positive developments, including the three nations removed from SWL status:

Bahrain, a Sunni Muslim kingdom, took steps to improve treatment of its majority Shiite population, allowing commemoration of the Ashura holiday.
The Central African Republic, a Christian-majority nation, successfully implemented a peace agreement that curbed sectarian violence targeting both Christians and Muslims for their religious identities.
And Sudan, a Muslim nation emerging from an Islamist dictatorship, passed several laws to improve religious freedom conditions.

Gains are also noted in Egypt, where 388 churches were approved for registration, and in Eritrea, where 240 religious prisoners were released on bail.

USCIRF additionally commended the 32 national members of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, as well as the 7 countries that adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s “Working Definition of Antisemitism.”

CT spoke with Manchin about USCIRF’s most controversial discussions, how violating nations can improve their standing, and whether the Biden administration will continue the religious freedom emphasis given by former President Donald Trump:

Last year, Nigeria was added as a CPC by the State Department. How did USCIRF’s work contribute to the decision?

USCIRF has a unique ability to focus on religious freedom, while the State Department looks at the relationship with a country in balance. But they take our work very seriously, and know the research and credibility behind it. They watch, and when the information is overwhelming—and when they are comfortable—they will join us in a recommendation.

But I never question when they don’t. There may be details going on that we are not aware of.

So how do you interpret the State Department additions of Cuba and Nicaragua to the SWL? Maybe they are not the most egregious violators of religious freedom, compared to others on the USCIRF list?

Both of these countries are continuing to trend worse. When we are able to travel again, these are nations we will reach out to for a visit, to get a clearer picture of what is going on. There is always a political aspect, from the government’s perspective.

But now that Cuba is without a Castro for the first time, there are things happening that may change. Of course, it could also be toward the negative, so we will continue to monitor.

What nations generated the most controversy and discussion among USCIRF commissioners?

India, which has trended poorly this year. Our discussions are not so much of disagreement, only of understanding. Last year, when we put India on the CPC list, there was controversy within our commission, because some of us believed it did not belong there.

This year, there was total agreement.

China [has] so many areas of discussion. We have to have a very clear understanding of exactly what is happening, that we can verify and validate. It is not only so egregious, but they [Chinese officials] are trying to spread among other nations that what they are doing is okay.

With China’s overall goal of global power, it is very frightening.

The only controversy in our discussions was how far we can move our discussions from the religious issue, to ask corporations to not do business with products made in that Xinjiang region. But it all ties back to the Uighurs and their forced labor camps.

Tell us more about your discussions about Azerbaijan, especially in light of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Azerbaijan has been one of those countries that has approached a border line of not being on the SWL. But there were some unfortunate trendings this past year, [where] we sensed a hesitancy. There was disagreement. There were some commissioners who thought it was ready to be taken off the list.

But my personal opinion is that when we remove a country from the CPC or SWL, there is a fear that the first reaction will be, “Great, everything’s fine.”

But everything is not fine. Azerbaijan has not proven that it is headed in the right direction, nor that it will continue to raise the level of becoming better. The majority of the group felt this way.

The positive thing is that they [Azerbaijani officials] continue to work with us, and want to dialogue.

Three countries were removed by USCIRF from the watch list. How did they demonstrate that they had crossed the border line?

Bahrain has worked with us every year. They [Bahraini officials] read our report word for word, and come back with a report that attempts to answer every question and issue we raise. But they also realized what they needed to do. We felt that their progress needed to be expounded upon, so we removed them from the SWL.

But we told them: We will continue to monitor. We don’t want you backsliding.

Many of these countries don’t have nice neighbors. They feel threatened every day, so power is very important to them. So the steps they take are very brave. What we impress upon them is that allowing freedom of religion builds a stronger country, with people more loyal and steadfast to support them.

There are two thought processes. Does a government tolerate what is going on, or is the government the perpetrator? At USCIRF, we denounce a nation that tolerates it. The State Department focuses more on if the government itself is doing it.

In the Central African Republic, we see that the government is not tolerating what these groups have done to harass minorities. That is very good, we want to showcase and applaud when a government stands up to rebel groups that burn down churches and harass villages.

They [CAR officials] also have worked with us to know what they must do to get off the list.

And Sudan—what a major example of a total turnaround in their government. You just have to applaud what they are doing, in the part of the world where they exist.

The 2021 report notes a positive development in Eritrea, a major violator of religious freedom for a long time. Are Eritrean officials starting to listen?

Our inability to travel because of COVID has complicated the work and the thought process. But Eritrea is one of the countries that do nothing to make things better, and in fact, everything they [Eritrean officials] do makes them trend more poorly—and they don’t seem to care who’s watching.

This is a problem with all our CPCs.

We are asking countries to release prisoners of conscience because of COVID-19, and that did happen in a few cases. The release in Eritrea is a good thing, but you have to look to see what the motive was. It may have been lifesaving for them.

The countries that care reach out to us—via Zoom this year—to keep us informed and show the information they give us is valid. But these types of nations, who don’t want you to visit, see a time when you can’t visit as a better way to spread misinformation.

How do you view the commitment of the Biden administration? Secretary Blinken has stated there was an “unbalanced” emphasis on religious freedom under President Trump.

I believe that President Biden is very aware of religious freedom as a basic human right, and that he supports it. He has had a lot of issues on his plate since the beginning of his administration, and the situation at the border is hampering him on the refugee numbers, to bring them up.

But I believe he will. I believe he will appoint an ambassador for religious freedom. He will have people in the State Department who will work very closely on the issue, with USCIRF and the countries we deal with.

I think Secretary Blinken’s comment was that the United States is a great believer in all human rights, in the international understanding. But he was not so much bringing down religious freedom, but that we will uplift all human rights, for all people. Religious freedom will still be one of the very basic ones we support—but there will be others.

You and Sam Brownback, former Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, will be hosting a religious freedom summit in Washington this summer, even as the official ministerial meetings moved to Poland last year and to Brazil this year. Do you fear there will be a loss of momentum without direct government involvement?

We are hopeful. We have had bipartisan sponsorship from both the House and the Senate. This has been a crazy time for the president, trying to get settled. But having said that, I think there will be participation from the Biden administration.

The importance of this summit was to keep it going, especially as COVID-19 kept it virtual last year. Where we have had countries coming together to support religious freedom, we want to hang on to it. This summer will have a virtual component, but also in person.

It is a transition between the administrations, holding things together, so that next year the Biden administration can take a stronger role.

Last year as chair, Tony Perkins said it was a time of “tremendous progress” for international religious freedom. How do you describe the current moment, one year later?

The elevation of USCIRF and our work has raised the level of awareness both in America and globally. Yes, I agree with Tony, that with this has come progress.

There are also countries that don’t care. But we have made it a bigger issue.

So it is critical that USCIRF and the State Department remain committed. It will make a difference to people around the world.

Awareness has increased, but this almost sounds more like “treading water.” Is that too negative?

There is always “Did you see this, or that, in this country.” So yes, many times it does feel like you are treading water. The global surge in antisemitism has been horrific—we have to focus on it more. But it has to be balanced with what we are doing.

In many ways, this world is not trending in the way we want it to, for religious freedom.

And yet, you were able to take three countries off the recommendations list.

Yes [smiling]. And we are very happy about this.

We say: We are not Big Brother, watching over you. We are working with you, to maintain and continue to improve religious freedom in your countries.

- More from Jayson Casper

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Maintaining a consistent witness

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Exchanging our timekeepers

Resonant relationships

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