Read Your Bible Through a Kaleidoscope

Columnist

Multicolored scholarship expands biblical interpretation beyond traditional Eurocentric perspectives.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: Duy Hoang / Armando Arauz / Luis Quintero / Unsplash

Are evangelical theology and practice of biblical interpretation captive to overly Eurocentric traditions? Increasing numbers of female and nonwhite biblical interpreters continue to reject what they see as patriarchal and sexist understandings of Scripture that reinforce historically white cultural assumptions.

“Objective” biblical interpretation?

In my essay on hermeneutics and exegesis, I point to the development of approaches to Scripture that complement and sometimes contradict historical-critical methods that gained prominence through European scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The historical-critical approach emphasizes the study of language, cultural setting, and literary form. Scholars trained with such an approach sometimes conclude that there is only one way to understand a passage and that their understanding is what the original author intended. Yet the pursuit of a pure, objective, unbiased understanding of biblical authors can itself be a reflection of the interpreter’s own presuppositions.

Greg Carey observes that white male scholars have enjoyed the privilege of their questions, assumptions, and perspectives on a biblical passage being received as the right (and perhaps only) viewpoints. The privilege that accompanies whiteness relates intimately with the traditional norm of biblical scholarship. Carey writes,

‘exegesis.’ … The classic notion of exegesis assumes a fixed, rational, and universal process of interpretation. It also promotes a certain kind of detachment, as if the interpreter were a disembodied mind, free from the constraints of context and daily life.

Everyone brings their biases to the Bible. While we might strive to discern how the first listeners of Scripture understood what they heard, we do well to remember that our reading is influenced by who we are, along with where we’re from and how we experience life.

“Colonized” Biblical Interpretation

In his book, Twelve Lies That Hold America Captive: And the Truth That Sets Us Free, Pastor Jonathan Walton describes a kind of Christianity distorted by colonialism. Walton asserts,

Colonialism created a counter-faith I call White American Folk Religion (WAFR). It’s a set of beliefs and practices grounded in a race, class, gender, and ideological hierarchy that segregates and ranks all people under a light-skinned, thin-lipped, blond-haired Christ.

Issues of “colonized” Christianity run deeper than popular faith practices. As an African American man, seminary professor, and pastor, I’ve experienced firsthand the way colonized Christianity can affect misunderstandings about God, humanity, salvation, and countless other theological convictions. Colonized Christianity has fueled oppression, slavery, racism, sexism and other egregious evils throughout history.

Consider the example of Jesus’ encounter at a well with a Samaritan woman (John 4:1–42). On the one hand are interpreters who see the woman as promiscuous and evasive. She’d had five husbands and was currently “shacking up” (a term many preachers used throughout my lifetime) with a man to whom she wasn’t married. She fetched her water at midday (vv. 6–7) to avoid respectable women who drew water during cooler times. When Jesus acknowledged her many husbands, she changed the subject to the division between Jews and Samaritans over worship (vv. 17–20). During my seminary years, I was taught that the woman was changing the subject because her shameful lifestyle had been exposed. Traditional interpretations, especially since the Protestant Reformation, typically view the woman as more vixen than victim, sexually immoral rather than trapped in circumstances of society.

Female scholars view the encounter in a different light. Frances Gench observes the Samaritan woman as “the first character in John to engage Jesus in serious theological conversation.” Jesus engages the Samaritan woman over an offer of eternal life (v. 14) in the context of the feud between Jews and Samaritans. He follows with the inquiry of her worldly situation, inviting her to recognize him as a prophet and eventually the Messiah (v. 26). The woman enters into serious theological conversation with Jesus over true worship, the Spirit and truth, which then leads to effective witness about Jesus to her people.

As for drawing water at midday, there are countless reasons why a woman may have needed to draw water at noon without assuming anything negative about her character or motives. Mitzi Smith notes that noon “may have been an unusual time of day to draw water … but people do what they have to do and when they have to do it.” Scholars go on to point out the woman’s relatively powerless position in society, particularly with regard to marriage given that marriage was a main source of security for women.

Having learned the traditional view in seminary, I would assume while sharing the gospel that people were hiding their sin, as I was taught the Samaritan woman had been. I expected people to be evasive in conversation with me, so I minimized their theological questions. Over time, however, I became increasingly comfortable questioning what I had been taught about the Samaritan woman, as well as interpretations of other Scripture passages. I began listening better to those I engaged in conversation about Jesus, striving to know them and hear their circumstances rather than assume the worst.

Kaleidoscopic reading

Biblical interpretation happens best in multifaceted community: ancient as well as modern, global, and increasingly diverse. Interpretation should be kaleidoscopic, acknowledging and even celebrating the many colors and cultures that play a part to influence interpretation. Kaleidoscopic interpretation sometimes challenges more conservative and traditional scholarship for the sake of decolonization, but it does so only by mostly using the same hermeneutical tools of study, mining history, language, and culture in search of greater understanding.

Our lenses—our perspectives born from our place in the world—influence our interpretation.

Nevertheless, our lenses—our perspectives born from our place in the world—influence our interpretation. These lenses impact the questions we ask of the text and affect the theological perspectives we glean from Scripture. Increasing numbers of women and nonwhite authors are helping all of us to read the Bible with greater awareness of the world behind the text, which can only broaden and deepen our theological understanding.

Kaleidoscopic reading invites us to be humble, charitable, and patient, as well as inquisitive. We aren’t reading to discern who is “in” and who is “out” or prove who is “right” and who is “wrong.” Instead, we are reading to grow increasingly aware of who God is, who we are, and what it means to be more like Christ. Remember: The point is transformation more than merely information. We must learn to be more collaborative in our study, finding increasing numbers of ways to read and heed the voices of Christians outside the United States as well as from marginalized people within our country.

Kaleidoscopes yield a multicolored view, but they can feel disorienting. Images shift and become complex. Rather than rejecting the disorientation, we do well to embrace it and, as with a kaleidoscope, discover the beauty of light shining though the many reflections of color. Any potential discomfort serves to remind us that we are not the first or only people to read the Bible. Discomfort is part of the journey toward maturity. As we read Scripture as part of a global community of Christ followers, we learn to love God and our neighbors more wholeheartedly.

Dennis R. Edwards is a columnist at Christianity Today.

Seasoned Salt: An experienced perspective on the church, theology, the Bible, and the world it inhabits from a well-traveled and compassionate pastor, scholar, and champion of justice.

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News

And Campaign to Add 13 New Chapters During Pandemic

Jacqueline J. Holness

Political tensions and growing racial awareness have fueled interest in its message of social justice and biblical morality.

Brett Tighe / Courtesy of And Campaign Charleston

The And Campaign—the organization rallying urban Christians to “faithful civic engagement”—is on track to quadruple its size in the span of a year, with chapters launching in three Southern cities in 2020 and scheduled to launch in another 10 cities in the first half of 2021.

Last year’s convergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and political and racial unrest in the United States catapulted organizations like the And Campaign, which were already addressing these complex issues, to a new level of prominence.

“The pandemic had a huge impact on our growth,” said attorney and political strategist Justin Giboney, who cofounded the And Campaign with pastor Angel Maldonado and hip-hop artist Sho Baraka in Atlanta in 2015.

In May, the group’s Statement on Racialized Violence went viral after the death of George Floyd, tripling its social media following.

“When that racialized violence happened, and everyone had their full attention on it because there was nothing else to pay attention to, our executive committee got together and said, ‘Hey, we need to speak into this,’” said Giboney, referencing the killings of Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery.

“So many Christians are trying to find a way to process exactly what is going on in biblical terms. Some are ignoring it because their ideology is too far right. Some are getting too caught up in the moment and kind of changing their convictions because they have gotten too caught up on the left. I said we need to speak into this in a real way, and so we created a biblical statement on racialized violence.”

The statement addressed racism and criminal justice reform—one of the core political issues for the And Campaign, which promotes both social justice and moral order as priorities for Christians.

With established chapters in Atlanta, Dallas, Brooklyn, and Chicago, the And Campaign added chapters in Charleston, South Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Birmingham, Alabama, last summer and fall.

“There was so much conversation about racial reconciliation and injustice, but there were very few on-ramps for Christian action in Charleston,” said Philip Pinckney, pastor of Radiant Church in Charleston, who founded its chapter after connecting with Giboney at a local multiethnic ministry conference called 1Charleston. “In the city where the Civil War was started, that is still reeling from the murder at Emanuel and that probably has more churches per square mile than any other place in the country, we had to mobilize.”

The Charleston chapter held its first event, a Prayer & Action Rally, at Pinckney’s church on Juneteenth. Though the event received local news coverage and drew attention online, Pinckney suspects the pandemic hurt turnout. The chapter continued to engage in issues leading up to the 2020 election. It created its own 17-page guide to local races and interviewed some of the candidates.

The founder of the Birmingham chapter, Danny Brister Jr., also heard Giboney speak at a conference—Just Gospel, put on in Atlanta by The Front Porch. Brister, a former pastor and church planter, said he was “bothered by politicking around the pandemic” and looking for a way to be politically engaged from a Christian perspective following the death of George Floyd.

He established the chapter in October 2020. Its six leaders are split between black and white, men and women, and span progressive and conservative political perspectives. Pandemic permitting, Brister hopes to host a public launch event in the spring. In Birmingham, 2021 is an important election year, with seats for school board, city council, and mayor up for election.

Brister, a community liaison for a local charter school and former employee of the City of Birmingham Mayor’s Office, has engaged Christians who plan to run for local offices in the near future with And Campaign materials. “They really want to talk about how they do this faithfully and if they win, how can they honor God and not capitulate their Christianity,” he said.

Sometimes privacy is sin against the body.

“Pastor, I want to tell you something. But keep it confidential—we don’t want anyone else to know this.”

“Sure, Pete, you know I’ll keep whatever you tell me strictly between us.”

“Well, Pastor, our son is an alcoholic. And he’s only 18. He’s getting treatment and is dried out right now, but you would not believe the agony we’ve been through.”

“Keep it confidential!” That pastor just agreed to keep secret something his entire congregation should know about. He allowed himself to be cornered into keeping private a matter that belongs not to a few individuals, but to the whole body of which they are part.
This is no isolated experience. It is more common than rare. Church members withhold from their fellow members the hurts, fears, burdens—and also the joys and victories—of their private lives.
It may jar some to have this privacy challenged. Since it is such a typical part of parish life, the practice goes on like other sacred traditions. But closer reflection should lead us to question seriously the appropriateness of many confidences in the Christian church.
A body has no privacy from its various parts. The toe cannot keep its pain confidential, secret, from the rest of the body. In fact, the toe’s pain is not its own. It belongs to and is felt by the whole organism. The communication system is very effective. The news gets around very fast in the otherwise healthy body.
Pete’s pain over his son is not his private property if he holds membership in the body of Christ. While Pete is the father, the alcoholic son belongs to the whole congregation, the entire covenant community. At his baptism, Pete’s son was incorporated into that community with promises spoken or implied that he was now the object of their concern. They pledged to take care of him. He was their son, too. But communication to the rest of the body is being thwarted. Both Pete and his pastor are preventing the necessary transfer of information to the other parts.
In the physical body, if the infected toe is not felt by the rest of the body it is likely to go untreated and get worse. Leprosy is like that, for if the diseased part, dead and unfeeling, goes untreated, serious complications usually result. But if the pain is felt through the whole system, all resources can be martialed to help heal it.
Every day pastors and parishioners are innocently conspiring to prevent the body from taking care of its ailing parts. They do it by requesting and agreeing to keeping secret the hurts, concerns, worries, ills, and tragedies that are occurring in various parts of Christ’s body.
John is having conflict with his employer.
Mary is pregnant but unmarried.
Harry left his wife.
Frank and Betty’s baby seems retarded, but too young to tell for sure.
Ann is in the hospital for a hysterectomy.
Jerry is in a psychiatric hospital.
Earl and Kay’s son has run away again.
Gordon may have cancer.
The list could be lengthened with further instances of the kind of information kept secret from the other members of the church. Often the pastor joins in to keep it secret. Sometimes even he is left out.
Privacy of this sort violates the very essence of the church. At the heart of Christian living is membership in a body, a caring community exhorted and pledged to bear each other’s burdens, to weep with those who weep, and to rejoice with those who rejoice. Keeping one’s pain secret short-circuits this spirit and prevents healthy body life. How can others support, challenge, pray for, weep with, give help to, advise, and confront with an aim toward healing if they do not know what is happening?
Fear of the effects of gossip fuels the fires of privacy. It works as a powerful inhibitor to openness. But nothing can take the punch out of gossip like being open about one’s troubles. Gossip feeds on secrecy and dies when the news is published. Secrecy thrives on fear of gossip, but actually produces gossip because people are more likely to spread secrets than common knowledge.
There may be other, even valid, reasons for not wanting everyone to know something. But most are born of fear, habit, tradition, and middle-class independence. Pete’s thinking went something like this: “I do want the help of other people, but I don’t want to bother them with everything that happens. When I really need help, I’m able to ask for it and I will.”
The point against too much privacy is not that Pete cannot handle his load by himself. He can and he will. But if he spread it around to others, he would find it not quite as heavy.
But beyond what Pete himself would get out of it, there is another value: the body is reassured by being in on Pete’s problem. Like white blood cells congregating to fight an infection, members of the church body draw together in caring for a troubled part. Seeing this communicates to each member a new awareness of this caring community as an encouraging bulwark in their lives. They, too, are strengthened while focusing on Pete’s pain. So we also distribute our personal problems because the whole body is built up by knowing about it and helping with it.
The fact remains, however, that Pete will be helped if others know. One man told me how he shared with his fellow church members some problems he was having with his employer. While asking for prayer and support, and receiving it, he also was given valuable advice from experienced business men of the congregation. A group of people have a wide array of additional resources that can also help others in crises.
In one church, a special time is set aside in the worship service for “joys and concerns.” People are given an opportunity and sometimes coaxed to say aloud what is going on in their lives. Right now it is only scratching the surface; but it’s a start. Strangely, it is not easy for people or pastor to accept this use of time as being as important as singing a hymn, taking the offering, or reciting a creed.
For the most part, only the socially acceptable common illnesses receive publicity in church. Anything with the slightest stigma is hushed up or only alluded to in vague generalities like “those struggling with marriage problems, the unemployed, those in prison, those with emotional problems.” Seldom is a problem more specific—unless it’s gall bladder or open heart surgery. Announcements, spoken or in the bulletin, veil most problems with a cryptic note that so-and-so is in such-and-such hospital. They leave the congregation guessing about what it’s all about. The covenant community deserves and needs to know details in order for them to respond appropriately.
JIM KOKMr. Kok is chairman of the Department of Pastoral Services at Pine Rest Christian Hospital, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Even before national attention turned to racial justice issues, the And Campaign took the lead helping churches in low-income locations during the pandemic. Together with ministry partners, the Churches Helping Churches Challenge raised over $1.3 million and will continue to offer $5,000 grants to continue projects in their communities.

The And Campaign also saw growing interest around its political philosophy ahead of the 2020 presidential election, connecting with believers who felt “politically homeless” in the major parties.

“We articulated that there is this false dichotomy that politics forces you to go all the way to the left or forces you to go all the way to the right,” Giboney said. “A lot of Christians say, ‘That’s me. I care about poverty, I care about voter rights, and I care about the pro-life cause.’”

At a recent Zoom meeting for the And Campaign’s Atlanta chapter, they discussed the Georgia Senate runoffs, which put their city in the spotlight of American politics, as well as the Capitol insurrection, President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 response plan, and Senator Mitt Romney’s Family Security Act.

On a local level, the chapter is planning on advocating for juvenile probation reform—which leaders believe can be a bipartisan issue for Atlanta Christians—and reaching out to Christian state legislators, urging them to apply their principles to their work.

“There’s this idea that in order to be educated in politics, you have to be educated by the world first and then be educated by your faith, but that is backward,” said Abrm McQuarters, an Atlanta chapter leader.

Leaders across the country are looking forward to resuming in-person meetings and events once COVID-19 risks have died down, especially to build on the momentum in the new chapters preparing to launch in 10 cities this year: Akron, Ohio; Houston; Asheville, North Carolina; Richmond, Virginia; Detroit; Denver; Kansas City, Missouri; Austin, Texas; Pittsburgh; and San Diego.

- More from Jacqueline J. Holness

Books

Excerpt

Charles Spurgeon Knew It Was Possible to Be Faithful and Depressed

Diana Gruver

How his example can encourage believers who “walk in darkness, and see no light.”

Ilbusca / Getty Images / Edits by Mallory Rentsch

For Charles Spurgeon, the celebrated 19th-century preacher, depression was more than just circumstantial. When he spoke of it in his sermons and lectures, his examples, which were often rooted in his own experience, included a significant form of depression: the kind that comes without cause. In one sermon, he said,

Companions in the Darkness: Seven Saints Who Struggled with Depression and Doubt

Diana Gruver (Author), Chuck DeGroat (Foreword)

IVP

192 pages

You may be surrounded with all the comforts of life and yet be in wretchedness more gloomy than death if the spirits are depressed. You may have no outward cause whatever for sorrow and yet if the mind is dejected, the brightest sunshine will not relieve your gloom. … There are times when all our evidences get clouded and all our joys are fled. Though we may still cling to the Cross, yet it is with a desperate grasp.

Spurgeon understood that depression isn’t always logical and its cause is not always clear. There are times, he said, when our spirits betray us, and we sink into darkness. We slip into the “bottomless pits” where our souls “can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” There is no reasoning, and a remedy is hard to find. As he put it once in a lecture to students:

As well fight with the mist as with this shapeless, undefinable, yet, all-beclouding hopelessness. One affords himself no pity when in this case, because it seems to be unreasonable, and even sinful to be troubled without manifest cause; and yet troubled the man is, even in the very depths of his spirit … [it] needs a heavenly hand to push it back … but nothing short of this will chase away the nightmare of the soul.

I am so thankful for quotes like this from Spurgeon because you can hear his understanding. I remember how helpless I have felt in my own depression, how it seemed I was powerless to do anything to escape from it. Some people expected there to be a quick fix, a logical solution, or some sort of spiritual willpower that could defeat it, but light and joy were evasive.

Spurgeon clearly knew this helplessness and how poorly people can react to it. He spoke directly to harsh and insensitive “helpers” from the pulpit—those who were quick to cast blame, quick to tell depressed people to just pull themselves out of it, and slow to show compassion. He also would not tolerate the accusation that “good Christians” do not get depressed. “God’s people,” he preached, “sometimes walk in darkness, and see no light. There are times when the best and brightest of saints have no joy.”

He was clear that depression isn’t a guaranteed sign of whether or not someone is a Christian; nor is it a sign you aren’t growing in your faith. It is possible to be faithful and depressed: “Depression of spirit is no index of declining Grace—the very loss of joy and the absence of assurance may be accompanied by the greatest advancement in the spiritual life.” Oh for more pastors to preach this way!

Your Usefulness Is Not Over

Perhaps you know the feeling of your spirits being so low that you can do nothing, contribute nothing. You are overwhelmed and paralyzed by sadness. Your brain is foggy, your temper sharp. All is dark. Then the questions come: What if this endures? What if I can never do anything of lasting value again?

Spurgeon knew this feeling. Perhaps this is why, in a lecture to his students on depression, he told them, “Think not that all is over with your usefulness.” He was laid low many times both physically and emotionally, but it didn’t stop his ministry. He wrote thousands of sermons and countless letters, read prolifically, met with people, prayed with people, organized ministries, and taught at the Pastor’s College. His suffering did not exclude him from usefulness. If anything, the fruit of it made him more useful. His experience with depression enabled him to encourage and support others who suffered from it as well.

For example, Spurgeon warned his students to be aware of situations in which they may be more susceptible to depression. The list he gave them runs like an autobiographical catalog:

when you have prolonged illness or physical problems
when you do intense mental or “heart” work
when you’re lonely or isolated
when your lifestyle is sedentary and you overwork your brain
after success
before success
after one heavy blow
through the slow pile of trouble and discouragement
in exhaustion and overworking

Or it could simply come without cause, without reason, without justification, which he considered the most painful circumstance of all.

Spurgeon offered compassionate and practical advice to his parishioners as well, preaching to them about such things as the need for rest: “The spirit needs to be fed and the body needs feeding also. Do not forget these matters! It may seem to some people that I ought not to mention such small things as food and rest, but these may be the very first elements in really helping a poor depressed servant of God.” Self-care is not merely a modern notion. Spurgeon understood from his own experience that taking proper care of our bodies is an important part of fighting depression, and he freely shared his hard-earned wisdom.

Because of his own suffering, he could also better sympathize with and comfort others. People would come from miles around to seek his advice and consolation, and those who couldn’t come physically would write letters. He was a “wounded healer”—someone who used his own sorrow to bring others comfort:

It is a great gift to have learned by experience how to sympathize. “Ah!” I say to them, “I have been where you are!” They look at me and their eyes say, “No, surely you never felt as we do.” I therefore go further, and say, “If you feel worse than I did, I pity you, indeed, for I could say with Job, ‘My soul chooses strangling rather than life.’ I could readily enough have laid violent hands upon myself to escape from my misery of spirit.”

There is a profound comfort in realizing someone else understands— at least in part—your suffering. They can offer comfort in a way others cannot. Surviving painful experiences like depression puts us in a unique position and bestows on us a unique responsibility to offer this comfort and camaraderie to others. Spurgeon encourages us not to forget this: “He who has been in the dark dungeon knows the way to the bread and the water. If you have passed through depression, and the Lord has appeared to your comfort, lay yourself out to help others who are where you used to be.”

Your usefulness is not over, Spurgeon tells us. You, too, can be a companion to one in the dark.

Sing in the Darkness

When I think of the word Spurgeon speaks to us from the inheritance of his own struggles, it brings to mind a boisterous hymn I remember singing in my childhood church:

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,

When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,

By the living Word of God I shall prevail,

Standing on the promises of God.

In the lowest points of Spurgeon’s life, it was the promises of God in Scripture that lifted him from despair. In the early years, when he was depressed and distraught over the harsh criticism flung at him, he took comfort from looking at a Bible verse written in his wife Susannah’s script: “Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you” (Matt. 5:11, KJV). As the years went by, another verse replaced it, again in his wife’s hand: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isa. 48:10, KJV). After the Surrey Gardens Music Hall disaster, when seven were trampled to death and many others injured after a false alarm during Spurgeon’s prayer at a crowded service, consolation from Scripture pulled him from the brink of collapse.

And repeatedly in his sermons, the words of Scripture and the lives of biblical characters encouraged him. They reminded him of truth. They kept him singing. They kept him alive. It was here, where the promises of God collided with his own sorrow, that he found hope.

In his introduction of the Chequebook of the Bank of Faith, a devotional book he wrote in the midst of the Downgrade Controversy (when he was embroiled in a dispute over compromised doctrine within the pastorate), Spurgeon says this: “I believe all the promises of God, but many of them I have personally tried and proved. … I would say to [fellow Christians] in their trials—My brethren, God is good. He will not forsake you: He will bear you through. … Everything else will fail, but His word never will.”

“Ah, yes, Spurgeon,” we might say, “but this is so difficult.” He knew this. He felt this struggle, the struggle for belief, for faith, the struggle to hold on to the hope of the promises. He knew the temptations of doubt. He knew how depression made them even more difficult to withstand, how much easier it was to question God’s goodness, his faithfulness, his abiding presence: “That perpetual assaulting, that perpetual stabbing, and cutting, and hacking at one’s faith, is not so easy to endure.” But endure we must. And it is precisely “by enduring that we learn to endure.” Our trials make these promises richer and make our faith in them even stronger as we see again and again that they are robust enough to sustain us. They teach us humble dependence on a faithful God.

Spurgeon was not saying that the solution to suffering and depression lies in the mantra many depressed Christians have repeatedly heard: Just read the Bible, just pray more, just have faith. There is no depression cure-all, no quick spiritual fix. But when we are in the darkness, the promises of Scripture are strong enough to keep us tethered. Knowing that we belong to Christ is an anchor. When we are flailing about, when we don’t know if we can go on, when we feel lost, when the darkness consumes us, we cling to God’s promises, even when we hardly have the strength to believe them. They are sure, regardless of our feelings, regardless of our outward state.

When we see people from the Bible like Elijah, who wanted to die, and the psalmists, who wrestled with depression and feelings of abandonment by God, and “we find ourselves in similar places,” Spurgeon preached, “we are relieved by discovering that we are walking along a path which others have traversed before us.” We see these saints cast into darkness. We see God’s faithfulness. We see his promises that are strong enough to hold them—and us as well. Don’t be dismayed, their stories remind us. This is a trial many have had to endure. You are still his. The Christ who bought you will not abandon you in the dark.

Spurgeon once said, “In the night of sorrow … believers [are] like nightingales, and they sing in the darkness. There is no real night to a man of a nightingale spirit.” It reminds me of a note I received once from a friend: “You are brave. You stand in the darkness, whispering Truth back to yourself.” I felt anything but brave at the time. It had been a hard year. It had been a year of tears and questions and fitful nights. And here was my closest friend calling me brave. I couldn’t believe it. I wasn’t brave—I was desperate. What else could I do in that dark place but keep whispering Truth? It was all I could do to keep the darkness at bay, to keep it from suffocating me.

This is what Spurgeon offers to us. A reminder to sing God’s promises. Sing of his faithfulness. Even if you can’t see it yet, even if you don’t feel it—whisper the Truth to yourself. Sing in the darkness.

- More from Diana Gruver

The Common Values That Increase Trust Between Science and Faith

Interview by Chris Reese

Elaine Howard Ecklund examines curiosity, shalom and other virtues that scientists and Christians share.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons / Alex Kondratiev / James PT / Unsplash

In the midst of a global pandemic, some Christian approaches to science have received attention for their mistrust of COVID-19 vaccines or opposition to mask wearing. The struggle isn’t new. Over the years, national surveys have tracked a more pronounced mistrust of science among Christians on human-caused global warming, evolution, and other issues, often leading to public attention on conflict areas. Yet many Christians have not only found a harmony of faith and science but also followed a calling that lives in that tension.

Seeking to address the need for more cooperation and collaboration between scientific and faith communities, Rice University sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund wants to highlight the commonalities, instead of the conflicts, as a way forward.

Ecklund has spent more than a decade reporting on what scientists believe about religion and what religious people—especially Christians—believe about science. Despite the fact that nearly 50 percent of scientists consider themselves religious, much distrust remains between Christians and scientists, with each side often viewing the other as a threat.

In her most recent book, Why Science and Faith Need Each Other: Eight Shared Values That Move Us Beyond Fear, Ecklund proposes that Christians and scientists can find common ground around eight virtues that play a vital role in both faith and the practice of science: curiosity, doubt, humility, creativity, healing, awe, shalom, and gratitude.

Christopher Reese spoke with Ecklund about the book and some of the challenging issues surrounding the relationship between Christianity and science.

Why is it important for Christianity and science to find common ground?

Research shows that the views people hold about the relationship between religion and science have important implications. As we found in my book, they can influence whom people vote for and, by extension, public financial support for scientific research. Views on the relationship between religion and science can also influence whether an individual goes to church and whether young people stay in church. Research finds that many youth are leaving the church because they perceive irreconcilable conflict between Christianity and science.

Why does mistrust continue to persist between Christians and scientists?

There are lots of reasons that fears and mistrust continue. In the churches I have visited, I have met Christians who keep their children out of certain science classes, afraid that scientific education will lead them to doubt and ultimately reject their faith. There are Christian parents who worry about what scientists will say about faith when helping their children choose colleges and universities.

Christians from minority communities, in particular black and Hispanic Christians, worry about being a part of science and technology fields where not only their race or ethnicity is underrepresented but also their faith. Christian women and girls who want to pursue scientific careers wonder if they will be marginalized in their Christian communities for their scientific aspirations and marginalized in the scientific community for both their gender and faith.

Some Christians worry about certain medical technologies and research, whether they are ethical and whether they take into account the uniqueness of the human being and what it means to be made in the image of God. I have met many Christians who are afraid of how science will impact their faith and how scientists will influence religion and its place in society.

Should churches encourage the pursuit of science? If so, what are some ways they can do this?

Absolutely! Churches often—if they address science at all—tend to address the hot-button issues like evolution, climate change, and human reproductive genetic technologies, to name a few. But to encourage the pursuit of science, youth—and everyone in congregations really—need to hear scientists who are Christians (and even those who are not) talking about their scientific work and the joy they find in doing science, the beauty in science. Churches could spend more time talking about what the scientific and faith communities have in common.

When I started writing this book, I searched my house for a notebook from a class I took more than 20 years ago as an undergraduate at Cornell University. In that class, taught by Norman Kretzmann on the philosopher Thomas Aquinas, I began to think deeply about the Christian virtues and values, which Aquinas saw as practices or habits that tend toward the good.

In studying, interviewing, and working with both Christians and scientists, it struck me that they seemed to share many of the same virtues. I found the core virtues that guide the practice and habits of science and religion are more similar than we thought, yet there are also some key differences. I have a new approach to discussing the relationship between science and faith. I see science and faith not just as sets of ideas but as groups of people, and I am convinced that scientists and Christians share common virtues that if brought to light will lead to common ground. I am also convinced that by recognizing the common virtues between our faith and science, and where our values differ, we Christians can begin to develop a more effective and meaningful relationship with science and scientists.

You mentioned some key differences between the practice and habits of science and religion. Can you elaborate on those?

Obviously scientists—whether or not they are people of faith—are asking questions about the natural and biological world, things that we can test and see. Most scientists say their work provides less insight into things outside the natural world.

What would your advice be to young Christians who believe they have to choose between science and their Christian faith?

In short, they don’t have to choose. There are wonderful examples of scientists who are Christians and find ways of not only integrating faith and science identities but actually find these identities to be generative of one another. What we need is even more numerous examples, Christians from different backgrounds, ethnic groups, genders, to help us see that a variety of Christians can be scientists.

Of the eight virtues that you describe that Christianity shares in common with science, which do you find the most compelling?

Shalom. In my interviews with Christian scientists, I have found that many of them draw on the concepts of shalom and stewardship. Shalom is a Hebrew word that comes from a root that means “completeness” and “perfection,” and it is the peace, harmony, well-being, and prosperity that result from the flourishing of all creation. Shalom can mean to get involved in the messiness of the world, to try to mix it up with structures that are not just, to make them more just.

Stewardship, or caring for the world, in the form of environmental protection, is often thought of as a scientific virtue, but it is a deeply Christian virtue as well, a practice that brings us closer to shalom. Christian stewardship encompasses the idea of unique humanness, that we were created by God and thus have a responsibility to care for and look after the rest of God’s creation.

And some of the Christian scientists I interviewed explicitly discussed increasing representation and equality in science as one of their goals and one of the ways they enter into shalom through their work as scientists. Some of these scientists specifically connect their faith to their efforts to increase opportunities for those who are underrepresented in science.

Studying and increasing diversity in science is an area about which I am particularly passionate as a sociologist who is a Christian. Some of those I have interviewed for my studies join me in this. One biologist, for example, spoke about being on the committee within her guild that works to promote and represent diversity in her scientific field and how fighting for diversity in science is very much a piece of one’s faith, not only for her but for some of the others on the committee.

If a nonbelieving scientist expresses to her Christian friend her awe at the complexity of the universe and the Christian expresses his awe at God’s creative power, can that kind of interaction lead to common ground?

I do think it can at times, if done so thoughtfully. Many scientists (both those who have faith and those who do not) talk about how seeing the beauty of the natural world through their work fills them with a sense of wonder and awe, which they hold in high value. Dissecting, examining, and understanding the natural world—even its smallest, most intricate parts—only increases their feelings of astonishment, amazement, and appreciation.

Are there organizations or institutions today where you see Christians and scientists engaging in fruitful dialogue?

There are some fantastic organizations out there. BioLogos, founded by Francis Collins, is one of the most prominent programs working to help Christians “see the harmony between science and biblical faith.” And Science for the Church I think is also very strong. There are also organizations that are not specifically aimed at Christians but where Christians can find helpful tools, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion. And I think of the programs run through Science for Seminaries, like the one at Howard University. There is a lot to be encouraged about in the science and faith space right now.

Christopher Reese is the managing editor of The Worldview Bulletin, cofounder of the Christian Apologetics Alliance, and a general editor of Three Views on Christianity and Science (Zondervan, 2021).

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Black Church Group Offers Its Best Shot at Closing Vaccine Gap

Rebecca Randall

To reach the most vulnerable, leaders say vaccine sites have to set up in hard-hit neighborhoods and let churches spread the word.

St. Johns Missionary Baptist Church in Tampa hosts a vaccine clinic as part of Florida Department of Health efforts to reach African American and Latino residents.

Octavio Jones / Getty Images

As the nation passed 500,000 coronavirus deaths this week, government data revealed that the life expectancy for African American men dropped three years—triple the decline among Americans overall during the first half of 2020.

In an effort to help reach minority communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 but less likely to get the shot, a coalition of 150,000 churches recently announced its plan for vaccinating over 100 million black and Latino churchgoers.

The National Black Church Initiative (NBCI), which represents historic black denominations and partners with Latino leaders, has been lobbying the federal government for a more comprehensive plan to address disparities in COVID-19 vaccine uptake. NBCI president Anthony Evans wants to see the government more deliberately use churches’ built-in trust and familiarity to make the vaccine more accessible for minority populations.

Evans said at a press conference at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Washington, DC, last week that he supports Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations for who should become vaccinated first but worries that African Americans and Latinos who qualify because of their age or underlying medical conditions aren’t getting the vaccine.

A representative from Health and Human Services (HHS) has not responded for comment on the NBCI plan, though the CDC distribution plan intends to address health inequities and “remove unfair, unjust, and avoidable barriers to COVID-19 vaccination.”

While black churches across the country have already opened their doors to help states and hospitals distribute the vaccine, Evans’s large network could add 300 church-based vaccination sites in the hardest-hit neighborhoods nationwide—a more coordinated, larger-scale effort to vaccinate minority groups than has been attempted so far.

The NCBI plan aspires to be “the largest, faith-based mobilization of African American and Latino Protestant denominations in the country to achieve a single health goal.”

In partnership with the National Hispanic Medical Association, the National Medical Association (the professional organization for black doctors founded amid the Jim Crow era), and corresponding nursing groups, the network organized response teams by zip code.

“We will send the response teams out to every single neighborhood that looks like them and speaks like them, both on the black and Latino side,” said Evans. In many cases, these areas lack robust medical systems to begin with, a result of Jim Crow segregation and decades of inequality.

So far, vaccine distribution sites are more likely to be located in white neighborhoods and require online registration, even though black and Hispanic families and the elderly—the groups most vulnerable to COVID-19—are less likely to have broadband internet access.

In some cities, white Americans have even traveled to receive vaccines in predominantly minority communities, such as a Latino neighborhood in New York and a private health center in an African American neighborhood in Los Angeles.

“When you went to the site, most of the people there were whites, and barely any African Americans were there,” said Peter Watts, pastor of The Rock Church in Los Angeles. He explained that it wasn’t well advertised in the community but was listed online.

Co-op City Baptist Church in the Bronx is already serving as a vaccine site, but the community is still underserved due to the state’s appointment system, said Carrie Mobley, a retired church member who advocates for seniors. She receives calls from residents struggling to navigate the website or waiting on hold for a long time to get through. “The governor’s office has made this process hard for a normal senior citizen to work through,” she said.

Barbara Felker, an associate pastor at Highbridge Community Church in the Bronx, also serves as a healthcare executive and arranges pop-up clinics at churches. Her company, Northwell Health, adjusted the process for distributing vaccines among minority communities by shifting from advertising on public websites about vaccination events to emailing pastors a private link to share in their neighborhood.

“The faith-based partnership is critical to access to care and distribution,” said Felker, Northwell’s vice president of strategic community partnerships. “Pastors are in the community, and they know how to do outreach to the community.”

The private link still requires some demographic information for patients to fill in to schedule the appointment, but churches can include their phone numbers to call and provide volunteers to step into the digital divide, answering phones and filing electronic forms.

The targeted approach seems to be increasing the vaccination numbers not only of church members but also of the minority populations whose numbers have been lagging, said Felker.

California tried a similar approach with special access codes meant for hard-hit communities of color, but the wealthier are still snagging vaccine appointments instead.

DC’s Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church hosts a COVID-19 vaccine clinic outside its sanctuary.

So far, the CDC has demographic data from only 34 states on about 55 percent of the vaccinations given nationally. Kaiser Family Foundation, looking at data through February 16, reported how blacks and Latinos are receiving fewer doses but carrying a bigger burden of COVID-19 cases. In Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis already committed to distributing vaccines through seven black churches in January, 6 percent of those who received a shot were blacks, though they make up 16 percent of the population and 16 percent of COVID-19 deaths.

In Mississippi, only 22 percent of vaccine recipients were blacks, while they make up 40 percent of coronavirus deaths. In Texas, data on Hispanics is similar: 20 percent of vaccinations and 47 percent of deaths from the virus.

Evans feels confident that black churches also have the trust needed to educate communities where there is hesitation to take the shot. To further persuade the undecided, the NBCI’s committee of five African American and four Latino doctors independently reviewed the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines and confirmed their safety last week.

Watts, who leads The Rock Church, a Reformed Church in America congregation in Los Angeles, noticed historically black churches holding educational events to “dispel the myths that are out there,” he said. “People in the community trust the church and whatever information the church is putting out in regards to safety.”

His church sent out a list of neighborhood vaccination sites, which he used to find a location to take his mother to get her first dose.

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Ideas

Are Christian Schools Training Christians or Americans?

Bonnie Kristian

Staff Editor

Jesus made clear that we pledge allegiance only to God. But some Christian education pledges allegiance to the world too.

Illustration by Rick Szuecs / Source images: Darryl Estrine / Getty / RawF8 / Envato / Library of Congress

How do we rightly understand the people who stormed the Capitol last month? MSNBC analyst Mehdi Hasan, soon after the riot, wrote that we must ask, Where were they radicalized?

Hasan’s answer was right-wing news and social media, a frantic feed of Fox and Facebook. But in a column for Religion Dispatches, Chrissy Stroop pointed to Christian education as well. Citing a Huffington Post report that connects rhetoric from former President Donald Trump with lessons in widely used Christian textbooks produced by Abeka Publishing and Bob Jones University Press, Stroop argued “conservative Christian” schools are “sources of radicalization” with a “toxic influence” that contributed to the seditious violence in Washington on January 6.

On the one hand, if Stroop’s broad verdict is right, I should have joined the Capitol mob. I am a product of Christian primary education—even used Abeka books. Still, I can’t argue with Stroop’s basic contention that the mushrooming visibility of Christian nationalism in American evangelical circles requires new scrutiny of Christian schooling. The question I keep returning to is this: Are our schools training Christians or Americans?

If education is the chief project of childhood, then it should be a project infused with Jesus Christ.

Our reflexive answer would be “Christians, of course.” After all, this is why parents like my mom seek Christian education, sometimes despite great financial strain. If education is the chief project of childhood, then it should be a project infused with Jesus Christ. Three hours a week at church can’t compete with 35 hours a week in the classroom. Education shapes what sociologists call the “imaginary”—an expansive, all-encompassing, and intuitively held perspective on life. Christian schools offer parents the tantalizing prospect of children educated into a thoroughly Christian imaginary, a way to “bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). And research shows Christian education has measurable, lifelong effects.

But thinking back on my own Christian education, mere Christianity was not all I learned. I moved around a lot growing up, attending four Christian schools and spending one year in American public school, one year in Chinese public school, and one year homeschooled. The four Christian schools I attended varied theologically and culturally: One was affiliated with a fundamentalist Baptist church; another hired a Democrat to teach civics the year former President George W. Bush was reelected with overwhelming evangelical support. At all of them we said our pledges, sometimes daily or as a standard feature of a weekly chapel. The order of pledging allegiance, to my recollection, started with the American flag, then the Christian flag, and, lastly, the Bible.

That routine—placing national loyalty first—implies a devotion to nation before Jesus, the very essence of Christian nationalism, not faith in Christ. To pledge ourselves to any state is not appropriate for Christians. Martyrs of the early church died for this conviction. Their declaration that “Jesus is Lord” carried an implicit repudiation of the Caesars’ claim to be their lord.

“When the early Christians chose to say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’” explains CT contributing editor Ed Stetzer, “they were literally choosing to align everything with Jesus, even their own lives. Their words were not trite statements. They were downright treasonous. They echoed a subversive rebellion against the establishment that clearly resonated their allegiances and alliances.” Yet 19 or so centuries later, my Christian schools had me pledging—whether I understood it or not—first to the flag of Caesar and only secondarily to Jesus by way of a flag with colors deliberately suggesting a link between Christianity and American patriotism. (This flag, by the way, was carried by a rioter on the Senate floor last month.) That portion of my schooling wasn’t Christian discipleship. It was good American training—or, more bluntly, it was Christian nationalism.

My twins are still a few years out from kindergarten, but as my husband and I consider our school options, this weighs heavily on my mind. My inclination after my unusually broad educational experience is to send my kids to Christian school, ideally a large one with elements of classical education and de-emphasized technology use.

But the possibility that the flow of their education will have an undercurrent of Christian nationalism troubles me. I don’t want my children to be expected to pledge themselves to the United States of America, because I believe saying the Pledge of Allegiance is a direct violation of Jesus’ instruction to give ourselves only to God (Matt. 22:15–22). Nor do I want them, especially while they’re too young to be able to explain their parents’ theological reasoning, to be the “weird” ones opting out of a school-wide ritual. I want them to be trained in our faith, not in idolatrous American civil religion.

But public schools also lean toward nationalism, only without the “Christian.”

“Ah,” I can imagine some readers saying, “so send them to public schools instead.” But public schools also lean toward nationalism, only without the “Christian.” Not that public school teachers and administrators can’t be Christians or conscientious public servants; plenty are. Yet at an institutional level, American public education as we know it was built on models developed in 18th- and 19th-century Europe (chiefly Prussia), models designed to turn out loyal citizens with a strong sense of “national spirit.”

This design was well intended. One immediate impetus was to overcome deep (and sometimes violent) religious and ethnic divisions by teaching children to think of themselves as Prussians or Americans first and Catholics or Protestants second. The idea, in the words of philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was to “establish deeply and indelibly in the hearts of all, by means of education, the true and all-powerful love of fatherland, the conception of our people as an eternal people and as the security for our own eternity.”

However good the intent, that’s a clear usurpation of roles that, for Christians, belong to Christ and his church. While this theory of education is certainly not the only influence in the American public school system, it’s indefensible enough for my family to decide we’ll steer clear. Opting for public school wouldn’t free my kids of an expectation to say the Pledge of Allegiance, for example—in fact, they might be asked say it even more often in a public setting, depending on the district.

So that brings me back to Christian schools. They played a powerful and positive formative role in my life and now stand accused, not entirely without basis, of inculcating the Christian nationalism on display at the Capitol insurrection. The best I can do is plead with Christian educators: If it is lurking in your school, root out the nationalist weed. Burn it away like the dross it is (Isa. 1:25–26). Train Christians, not Americans. Graduate students who have never pledged to a flag but know they belong to Christ. I hope my children will be among them.

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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Iraq’s Struggling Christians Hope for Boost from Pope Francis Visit

Mariam Fam - The Associated Press

Landmark trip will include Qaraqosh, where most families fled ISIS yet some are now trying to restore the Christian heartland of the Nineveh Plains.

Iraqi Christians place a cross on a church in Qaraqosh on February 22 in advance of Pope Francis' visit to Iraq next month.

Hadi Mizban / AP Photo

Nasser Banyameen speaks about his hometown of Qaraqosh in the historical heartland of Iraqi Christianity with nostalgia. Before Islamic State group fighters swept through the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq. Before the militants shattered his sense of peace. Before panicked relatives and neighbors fled, some never to return.

Iraq’s Christian communities in the area were dealt a severe blow when they were scattered by the ISIS onslaught in 2014, further shrinking the country’s already dwindling Christian population. Many hope their struggle to endure will get a boost from a historic visit by Pope Francis planned in March.

Among the places on his itinerary is Qaraqosh, where this week Vatican and Iraqi flags fluttered from light poles, some adorned with the pope’s image.

Francis’ visit, his first foreign trip since the coronavirus pandemic and the first ever by a pope to Iraq, is a sign that “You’re not alone,” said Monsignor Segundo Tejado Muñoz, the undersecretary of the Vatican’s development office. “There’s someone who is thinking of you, who is with you. And these signs are so important. So important.”

The ISIS juggernaut and the long war to drive the militants out left ransacked homes and charred or pulverized buildings around the north. But the biggest loss perhaps has been the people. Traditionally Christian towns across the Nineveh Plains virtually emptied out and, by some of the widely varying estimates, fewer than half of the Christians who fled have returned.

The Vatican and the pope have frequently insisted on the need to preserve Iraq’s ancient Christian communities and create the security, economic, and social conditions for those who have left to return.

Iraqi security forces in Qaraqosh pass by the flags of Iraq and the Vatican and posters announcing the upcoming visit of Pope Francis on February 22.

To do that, the Vatican for years has helped coordinate a network of Catholic non-governmental organizations providing help in the field in Iraq and other countries, including in education, health care, and reconstruction. The aid is non-denominational—Muslims are helped as well as Christians—and the overall hope is that the delicate interfaith balance can be preserved and strengthened. The pope’s March 5–8 visit will also have a strong interfaith component.

“People want to look for a better future for their families, so you can’t stop them if they have the intention of going somewhere else,” Tejado said. “But at least we try to create the conditions they might return.”

That could be difficult.

Many Christians who fled the ISIS advance have either stayed in Iraq’s Kurdistan region or started new lives abroad. While those who have returned have been rebuilding fractured but vibrant communities with resolve, some still feel vulnerable and eye better lives elsewhere.

Banyameen returned in 2019 from the Kurdish region to his house in Qaraqosh, also known as Bakhdida. But many family members who fled like him ended up in Australia and Germany. ISIS sleeper cells still carry out attacks in parts of Iraq, so he worries about the specter of a militant resurgence, the future of his three children, and Iraq’s economic and security woes.

“The homeland is the family, not the house … I feel very homesick,” he said. “When something is broken, it doesn’t go back to the way it used to be.”

Their home has been repaired, but the sight of empty or damaged ones on their street reminds his wife, Ban Saeed, of the ISIS reign of terror. After she gave birth to the couple’s third child in December, she wondered if it would have been better for their daughter to have been born abroad.

“If we left, I am sure their future would be better abroad, not like here,” she said. “There would be safety and I wouldn’t be scared for them when they come and go.”

Iraqi Christians attend a mass in a church in Qaraqosh, Iraq, on February 22.

In nearby Bartella, Sargon Issa said he felt the town’s spirit dim with so many familiar faces gone.

“Walking down a street, I used to salute so many people, friends, and neighbors. Now, there’s hardly any of that,” said Issa. “Life is not like before. There’s no flavor to it. … Even those Christians who have returned to Bartella say they want to leave to find stability.”

He, too, would like to leave if he could; his mother tells him she wants to die in Iraq.

“I try to change her mind and tell her, ‘Let’s travel and live without worry or fear … somewhere where we wouldn’t be driven out of our homes,’” he said. “She tells me we should stay, and that God is with us.”

The numerical decline and waning clout of Iraqi Christians started before the Islamic State’s persecution of religious minorities like theirs. Christians were among groups targeted by militants amid the breakdown in security after the 2003 US-led invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein.

The Chaldean Catholic Patriarch, Cardinal Louis Raphael Sako, estimated that 1 million Christians have left Iraq since 2003 and about 500,000 remained. But there are no official figures, and estimates vary: Some put the number left at fewer than 250,000.

Without faith the government can provide security from potential violence, legal protections, and economic opportunities, many Christians are wary of returning.

William Warda, co-founder of Hammurabi Human Rights Organization in Baghdad, said the Christian presence is under threat. “To this day, they don’t feel safe and secure … because the state is weak, and the rule of law is weak.”

Some Christians lament broken trust with some Muslims in neighboring villages who they believe sympathized with ISIS or helped pillage their homes. They are also wary of the ascension of largely Shiite militias and fearful of what they say are unfavorable demographic changes in some traditionally Christian areas.

A priest watches workers fix a street destroyed during clashes against Islamic State militants in Qaraqosh, Iraq, on February 23.

Etched in the minds of many are the memories of the flight to escape ISIS, the indignities of displacement, and the scenes of devastation that awaited those who returned, including burnt out churches and desecrated tombs.

As he left under cover of darkness shortly before the militants entered his town of Karamlis in 2014, Thabet Habeb felt pain for all that he was leaving behind. The priest took little besides some manuscripts, including a Bible.

“It was as if we had been expelled forever from the lands of our grandfathers.”

More than two years would pass before Habeb could set foot in the town. The smell of smoke from burnt out structures still hung in the air. In November 2016, he held prayers at the St. Adday church, the sound of broken glass crunching beneath the feet of worshipers stunned by the damage around them. Decapitated statues of Jesus and Virgin Mary stood in the scarred church that day; one woman wept bitterly.

Much reconstruction has taken place since. But so far, only about 345 of about 820 Christian families in pre-2014 Karamlis have returned, Habeb said.

“We need to restore our numbers to support the Christian presence and identity in the town,” he said.

People fix a street destroyed during clashes against Islamic State militants in Qaraqosh, Iraq, on February 23.

Those who did come back make sure an ancient heritage and a way of life endure.

At St. Paul’s House for Church Services in Qaraqosh, religious paintings and musical instruments were burned and a statue of Jesus hurled to the ground, said Duraid Barber, the former manager.

But the house’s activities, which include religious classes and teaching the Syriac language, have been revived and even expanded.

“We decided to return and serve this wounded and pained country to the last drop of our blood,” said the priest. “As Christians, we believe that we are like the salt that adds flavor to food.”

Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield in Rome, Hadi Mizban in Qaraqosh, and Samya Kullab in Baghdad contributed.

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Died: Celebrate Recovery Founder John Baker, Who Shifted Evangelicals’ Approach to Addiction

Kate Shellnutt

The Saddleback Church pastor developed the popular Christ-centered 12-step program for “hurts, habits, and hang-ups.”

Courtesy of Saddleback Church / Edits by Christianity Today

Celebrate Recovery founder John Baker, who turned his testimony recovering from alcoholism into a biblical 12-step program used by more than 7 million people, died unexpectedly on Tuesday at age 72.

Baker’s ministry began in 1991 at Saddleback Church in California and has spread to 35,000 churches nationwide over the decades. Celebrate Recovery is credited with helping destigmatize addiction among evangelicals and opening the church up as a safer place for recovery.

“Thirty years ago John Baker turned the ruins of his life over to Jesus Christ and God transformed him from a driven businessman with an addiction to alcohol, a failing marriage, and alienated children to a Christ-follower with a passion to help others with their ‘hurts, habits, and hang-ups’ through the principles of recovery,” wrote Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church and a mental health advocate. “There is simply no way to put into words how I love John and will miss this kind, creative, brilliant and faithful man.”

Evangelical leader Johnnie Moore, whose family previously belonged to Saddleback Church when living in California, remembered Baker’s commitment to “saving the lives of the people whom God loves.”

“He became a doctor of hope for those whose lives were caught in vicious cycles of guilt, shame, and failure. With God’s help, he showed again and again that those cycles can be broken,” he said. “Pastor John was never content just to save souls. He wanted to also save lives, now. It isn’t just the impact he had on individual lives but on all of those who loved those who decided to walk into a Celebrate Recovery meeting.”

Baker was raised in Collinsville, Illinois. He shares in his testimony that he grew up a believer in a Baptist church but struggled with feelings of unworthiness. He partied in college at the University of Missouri and as an officer in the air force, and his drinking habit grew as his career in business took off in his 30s.

Eventually Baker considered himself a “functioning alcoholic,” turning his back on God and separating from his wife. When he hit his bottom, he began attending daily AA meetings, working through the steps, and finding hope in a God who loved him unconditionally.

His efforts to make amends to his wife, Cheryl, as part of the 12 steps led to him attending Saddleback Church with her, hearing Rick Warren preach, and renewing their marriage vows in a span of months.

Baker immediately saw the need to connect the gospel with the recovery program he had gone through. “In my men’s small group I couldn’t talk about my struggle, and at AA, I couldn’t talk about my Savior,” since the program speaks in more secular terms about a Higher Power, he told CT in 2016.

He wrote out a vision for what would become Celebrate Recovery’s own version of the 12 steps, each one paired with a teaching from Scripture, and shared it with Rick Warren back in 1991. As the story goes, Warren replied, “Great, John—go do it!” and the program soon launched at Saddleback.

https://www.facebook.com/saddlebackchurch/posts/10159027614243544

Baker went on to study at Golden Gate Baptist Seminary and serve at Saddleback as volunteer, staff member, pastor, and elder as Celebrate Recovery grew across denominations and ministry networks.

At Saddleback, it became the top outreach ministry, with 70 percent of participants coming from outside the church.

“John touched more people with the healing power and grace of Jesus Christ than anyone else that I have ever known personally and one of those lives was mine,” wrote Celebrate Recovery’s national director and national training coach Mac and Mary Owen.

Celebrate Recovery roots the 12 steps in biblical principles, and its final step charges participants to use their recovery to spread the good news.

“This program is not something that you complete and then all of sudden, ‘Hey, I’m better. See ya,’” Baker said. “They’re always there to help somebody if they’re struggling. They know that it worked for them, and that’s the greatest story they have.”

The ministry has also expanded to serve the incarcerated, as the program became adopted by state prison systems in New Mexico, California, and beyond. Prison Fellowship president James J. Ackerman collaborated with Baker to add Celebrate Recovery Inside to its curricula.

“John was a great leader, and he will be greatly missed, but the impact of his faithful obedience will go on for generations,” Ackerman wrote in tribute. “I take comfort in the thought that as John enters the presence of his Lord, he will hear the words, ‘Great, John—you did it!’”

Baker is survived by his wife and Celebrate Recovery cofounder, Cheryl; children Johnny and Jeni Baker and Laura and Brian Gibney; and their grandchildren.

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Most ‘Nones’ Still Keep the Faith

Ryan Burge

When research looks beyond affiliation, the move away from religious institutions becomes more nuanced.

Prixel Creative / Lightstock

I pastor an American Baptist church in a small town in rural Illinois. When the current building was dedicated in 1968, there were more than 300 members. By the last 1990s, there were about a hundred. When I became the pastor in 2006, just 50. Now, on a good Sunday I can look out from the pulpit and see 20 souls in the seats.

Where did they all go? I became a social scientist, in part, to try to figure that out. In my forthcoming book, The Nones: Where They Came From, Who They Are, And Where They Are Going, I document in detail how and why so many Americans are now counted among the ranks of religiously unaffiliated in the United States.

What I discovered was that while many people have walked away from a religious affiliation, they haven’t left all aspects of religion and spirituality behind. So, while growing numbers of Americans may not readily identify as Christian any longer, they still show up to a worship service a few times a year or maintain their belief in God.

The reality is that many of the nones are really “somes.”

Nones by Belonging

Religious disaffiliation is at an all-time high—claimed by nearly a quarter of the population—when measured through surveys on religious belonging. The General Social Survey, for example, asks a common version of the question: “What is your religious preference?” Respondents can choose from a long list of options, including “no religion.”

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eCHv9

In 1972, just 1 in 20 Americans had no religious affiliation. That share inched up only marginally for the next two decades, before beginning its climb in the 1990s. The unaffiliated jumped about 4 percentage points between 1993 and 1996, up to nearly 1 in 6 (nearly 15%) by the new millennium.

The number of respondents indicating they had “no religion” continued to grow, reaching 1 in 5 in 2012 (19.6%) and close to 1 in 4 (23.7%) in the most recent wave of the survey available.

There’s ample evidence emerging that the GSS undercounts the share of Americans who have no religious belonging because some survey respondents may be more reluctant to indicate to a live interviewer that they are religiously unaffiliated. Still, all surveys agree on this point—those without a religious tradition are growing every year, the so-called rise of the nones.

In my book, I note how the only other religious tradition to change in size in a significant way are mainline Protestants (such as United Methodists and Episcopalians). The data indicates that many nones are people who were raised in one of these traditions, but walked away from it as adults.

Nones by Behavior

While belonging is the most popular way to measure religiosity, there are other dimensions of religious life. If we believe “actions speak louder than words,” we may look to whether religious behavior has shifted as dramatically.

A good place to look is church attendance. Social science knows that communal worship gatherings are crucial for generating social capital, providing theological education, and encouraging the faithful to remain devoted to the tenets of their faith tradition.

Like religious affiliation, religious attendance in the US has been declining since the 1970s, but incrementally.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/9umpF

In the 1970s, about 3 in 10 Americans indicated that they attended worship services at least once a week. At the other end of the spectrum, about 2 in 10 said that they never or rarely attended church services. The percentage of Americans who fell into this lowest category of church attendance stayed stable through the 1980s then incrementally increased from that point forward. By the 2010s, nearly a third of all Americans said that they never attended church or attended less than once a year.

At the same time, the share of Americans who were weekly attenders has decreased slowly. Between the 1990s and the 2010s, the share in this top category dropped about 2.5 percentage points. Currently, about a quarter attend weekly or more, and two-thirds attend a worship service at least once a year.

What is driving this drop in attendance? For decades, social scientists believed that young people would drift away from religion in early adulthood, but then come back to church when they got married, had children, and settled down. That was true for Baby Boomers, but now the data indicates that among younger age cohorts, that’s not occurring as much. More young people stop attending church in their 20s and never return.

Nones by Belief

The final dimension of religiosity is religious belief. These questions are notoriously difficult to ask on surveys, but the GSS began to explore the topic in 1988.

Respondents can select among six options to the question “Which statement comes the closest to expressing what you believe about God?” They range from “I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it,” to an atheist option, “I don’t believe in God,” and one that would describe an agnostic belief, “I don’t know whether there is a God, and I don’t believe there is any way to find out.” It’s reasonable to assume that those who chose either the atheist or agnostic options would be counted as a “none” when it comes to religious belief.

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In 1988, just 5.1 percent of Americans chose the atheist or agnostic option on the survey. Twenty years later, that had increased to 8 percent, with 3 percent choosing the atheist option. From that point forward, the share who held to these beliefs has drifted up to about 11 percent in the last two waves of the survey.

Combining the Three Bs

A majority of Americans across faiths (60%) can’t be classified as a none by any measure—belonging, behavior, or belief. But among 40 percent who have disaffiliated in at least one of the three, few can be categorized as nones across the board.

The Venn diagram illustrates how the remaining 40 percent of the population is situated around these three dimensions of religion. Note that behavior—not attending church—is the most common reason why someone would fall into the notes.

Forty percent of the nones overall don’t attend church but still identify with a religious affiliation and believe in God at some level. Another quarter of the nones neither go to church nor indicate an affiliation with any religious group (the intersection of the green and yellow circles), but still have a belief in God. Those two groups represent two-thirds of the nones.

No wonder research has shown that the unaffiliated in America are just as likely to return to church and reclaim a Christian identity as they are to become self-identified atheists and agnostics. In my book I write that nearly 20 percent of people who identified as “nothing in particular” had changed their affiliation to Christian just four years later. And this “nothing in particular” category represents nearly 1 in 5 Americans. The harvest is plentiful!

For the remaining two factors, it’s clear that belonging is the next to fall by the wayside, followed by religious belief. Only a quarter of all nones indicate an atheist or agnostic view of God (all those represented by the red circle).

The center of the Venn diagram indicates that just 15.3 percent of the population that are nones on one dimension are nones on all dimensions. That amounts to just about 6 percent of the general public who don’t belong to a religious tradition and don’t attend church and hold to an atheist or agnostic worldview.

As Ed Stetzer wrote last year, “It would be a mistake to dismiss 25 percent of the population as unreachable or act as though they were all atheists. It would also be a mistake to think church as usual will appeal to the nones.”

He told church leaders: “The unaffiliated aren’t the unreachable.” But for leaders to engage this growing segment of the population, in their communities and hopefully in their churches, they must get an accurate picture of the range of religious unaffiliation in the US.

Understanding the composition and trajectory of this group is crucial, but it’s incredibly easy to overgeneralize about a group based on what it is not rather than what it holds in common. I wish I could give churches a simple checklist of things pastors can do to bring the nones back into their congregations, but there are at least 60 million adult nones in the United States and 60 million reasons why they left organized religion.

Trying to understand this group from a sociological perspective is a good start, but Christians need to be willing to listen to the nones themselves. Conversing with the nones—in a non-judgmental way that seeks to understand their concerns and baggage—is the best approach that the church can take to address this significant shift in the American religious landscape.

Ryan P. Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.

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News

Southern Baptists Expel Two More Churches Over Abuse

Kate Shellnutt

Top leaders address divides in the denomination at the first in-person Executive Committee meeting in a year.

Mark Humphrey / AP

At its first in-person meeting since the pandemic took off a year ago, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Executive Committee decided to cut ties with two churches whose pastors had been convicted of sexual offenses as well as two LGBT-affirming churches. But it was leaders’ concerns over ongoing tensions within the denomination that stirred Southern Baptists during the two-day gathering at its Nashville headquarters.

“Southern Baptists in large part are ready to walk into the future. But we are spending a lot of time tolerating those who would rip us apart,” said SBC president and Executive Committee member J. D. Greear during remarks Monday night. “Brothers, let’s just call it: These things are demonic.”

During his presidency, Greear led the charge to stand by abuse victims in the wake of a watershed 2019 Houston Chronicle investigation, but some advocates are still disappointed that the denomination has not been more proactive in disaffiliating with pastors who mishandle abuse allegations or compiling a database of abusive leaders.

Though the disfellowshipped congregations represent a tiny proportion of a denomination with over 47,000 churches, it’s the biggest batch to be considered “no longer in friendly cooperation” with the SBC since it launched new efforts to improve its response to abuse.

This is the second year that the denomination’s repurposed credentials committee has been tasked with making recommendations about churches’ status in the SBC. In 2020, the committee recommended one church lose its place in the convention due to past abuse by its pastor. This year, the committee recommended four. The SBC does not make public how many churches were reported to the committee for inquiry.

Antioch Baptist Church in Sevierville, Tennessee, “knowingly employs as pastor a man convicted of statutory rape,” and West Side Baptist Church in Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, “knowingly employs as pastor a registered sex offender,” the committee found. Both were disfellowshipped for violating SBC beliefs on sexual abuse.

West Side Baptist’s website, which identifies the congregation as an “independent Baptist Church,” hints at its pastor’s past.

“Over 29 years ago Pastor David lived as a great sinner and rebel,” the site says. “But Christ Jesus is a great Savior! Today Pastor David has gone from disgrace to amazing grace and now has served the Lord Jesus Christ at West Side for 18 years.”

David Pearson is listed on Florida’s sex-offender registry as having been convicted of sexual assault of a child in Texas in 1993.

Towne View Baptist Church in Kennesaw, Georgia, and St. Matthews Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, were disfellowshipped for holding “membership and leadership standards [that] affirm homosexual behavior.”

Because SBC churches are autonomous, the move to disfellowship means they lose their place in the convention—they can no longer send messengers to the annual meeting to participate in denominational business—but churches can continue to operate, maintain their leadership, and keep their buildings either independently or under other denominational networks. Towne View Baptist plans to affiliate with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Over the past year, in the midst of the pandemic and the political tension around the presidential election, SBC divides around racial and cultural issues have been put on display and overshadowed ongoing efforts to improve abuse responses.

The denomination publicly debated whether critical race theory (CRT) is taking hold at its seminaries and entities, with a robust condemnation of the theory by top leaders resulting in some black pastors’ exit. A network of conservative leaders is gaining momentum and calling out what they see as a liberal shift among certain entity heads.

A recent report called out the work of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and its president, Russell Moore, a critic of President Trump, as “a significant distraction.” The Executive Committee heard the report on Tuesday but opted not to take any action on the recommendations for further ERLC oversight.

Outgoing president Greear, speaking to the 86-member group Monday night, offered a full-throated sermon suggesting their fighting over secondary issues and their failure to adequately address racism were hurting their gospel mission.

“The reality is that if we in the SBC had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that racism and discrimination has left in our country as we have passion to decry CRT, we probably wouldn’t be in this mess,” said Greear, who is completing a third year as president after the 2020 elections weren’t held due to COVID-19.

“Every lie weakens our resolve in getting the gospel to the nations,” he said, “and every moment I engage in a silly argument or spend time debunking untruths is a moment I am not focused on the Great Commission.”

Executive Committee president Ronnie Floyd likewise referenced concerns over “this sound of war in the camp of Southern Baptists,” saying, “While we hear and see how the American culture is so out of control, my friends, our own culture within the Southern Baptist family is also out of control.”

After the two speeches, the Executive Committee unanimously adopted an expansion plan called Vision 2025. It would increase full-time Southern Baptist international missionaries from 3,700 to 4,200, boost the number of congregations by 5,000, and seek to reverse the decline in baptisms among teens.

While the denomination has seen growth outside its Bible Belt strongholds, including new church plants led by non-Anglo pastors, its membership decline continues to accelerate.

The SBC is slated to hold its annual meeting in June in Nashville.

With reporting by the Associated Press.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

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