Died: John MacArthur, Who Explained the Bible to Millions

The Southern California preacher wanted to illuminate Scripture with Scripture and separate real Christians from false.

Grace to You

Expository preacher John F. MacArthur Jr., who taught Scripture to millions through taped sermons, radio broadcasts, Bible commentaries, and a best-selling study Bible, died Monday at the age of 86.

MacArthur said the most important mark of his ministry was that he explained the Bible with the Bible, not cluttering up sermons with personal stories, commentary on current events, or appeals to emotion, but teaching timeless truth. The longtime pastor of Grace Community Church said a good sermon should still be good 50 years after it is preached.

“It isn’t time-stamped by any kind of cultural events or personal events,” MacArthur said. “It’s not about me. And it transcends not only time, but it transcends culture.”

He published the MacArthur Study Bible in 1997, with 20,000 notes on specific verses, as well as an index of important doctrines, introductions to each book of the Bible, and suggested Bible-reading plans. It sold 2 million copies in 22 years.

His New Testament commentary—a series that Moody Publishers put out in 34 volumes over 31 years—also sold more than 1 million copies.

“He was the dean of expository preachers,” Left Behind author and former Moody editor Jerry Jenkins, who first proposed the idea of a MacArthur commentary, told Christianity Today. “A brilliant expositor. He preached 40-minute sermons, and they always seemed like they were 10 minutes.”

MacArthur also regularly sparked controversy, clashing with evangelicals who disagreed with him about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, biblical gender roles, and what is necessary to be saved.

He sometimes acknowledged these conflicts could have been handled with more humility. “I might have come in a little more like a lamb instead of a lion,” he said of one sermon. But MacArthur also believed the condemnation of Christians who are not real Christians was essential—and the second key mark of his ministry.

MacArthur’s most devoted followers were inspired by his fierceness. The satirical news site Babylon Bee frequently celebrated MacArthur as a warrior triumphing in ludicrous conflicts. Christian journalist Megan Basham praised his courage.

“MacArthur … has consistently refused to join the latest relevance-chasing fads. And it is this very refusal that has given his ministry enduring relevance for new generations,” she wrote on the social media platform X. “Forever grateful for the impact his teaching has had on my life.”

MacArthur was born to Irene Dockendorf MacArthur and John F. MacArthur Sr. on June 19, 1939. He was the son, grandson, great-grandson, and great-great grandson of evangelical preachers, going back to Canada and Scotland.

His father was a Baptist pastor and traveling evangelist who launched a ministry to movie stars, including actors Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, in Southern California in the early 1940s. The elder MacArthur also had a radio ministry called Voice of Calvary, which was influential in the conversion of John M. Perkins, who went on to become a prominent evangelical advocate of racial reconciliation.

The younger MacArthur recalled that he began to imitate his father at age five or six, standing on a box in the backyard to preach to neighborhood friends and his three younger sisters, Jeanette, Julie, and Jane.

“I don’t ever remember a time when I didn’t believe the gospel,” MacArthur said. “I was one of those kids that never rebelled and always believed. And so, when God did his saving work in my heart, it was not discernible to me.”

As he grew older, MacArthur was more interested in sports than preaching. He wanted to play football in college, but his father insisted he go to Bob Jones University, which did not have an intercollegiate team at the time. Instead of playing football, MacArthur was put on a street-preaching team.

He “chafed a little” at Bob Jones, as he later recalled. A car accident convinced him he needed to submit to God completely.

As he told and retold the story in sermons for years after, he was driving cross-country on a preaching tour with five other young people after his freshman year of college. The driver tried to pass someone on an Alabama highway and lost control. The two-door Ford Fairlane went into a spin and then flipped and rolled at 65, 70, or 75 miles an hour, landing on its roof.

MacArthur was thrown from the vehicle, skidding down the road on his back.

“My back literally was raw down to the bone,” he recalled. “I stood up, and I realized I was alive.”

In the hospital on his stomach for several months, he decided to return to Bob Jones for a second year. He thought he discerned a call to ministry and felt he needed to commit everything to God.

“Lord,” he prayed, “I can see now that my life really is in your hands and you have absolute control of not only my eternal destiny but my time here in this world.”

MacArthur got another chance to play football a year later, though, and took it, transferring to Los Angeles Pacific College. He would later claim he was recruited by numerous professional teams, including the Washington Redskins and the Cleveland Browns, but school records show he wasn’t a standout player at the California college. One year, he had only five tackles and three rushing yards.

MacArthur decided in 1961 that he didn’t want to give his life to football anyway. He would rather follow his father into ministry.

His first job after seminary was associate pastor under his father at a church named for his grandfather: Harry MacArthur Memorial Bible Church. After a few years, he decided to go out on his own and accepted a call at Grace Community Church, an independent, nondenominational congregation in the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. Two pastors in a row had died, leaving the congregation of about 400 eager to find someone young.

MacArthur, 29, was not impressed with the church. Grace’s motto was “in essentials unity, in non-essentials charity,” which he dismissed as silly and sentimental. The church had no real doctrine, according to MacArthur, and many of the longtime members and even leaders in the congregation were not real Christians.

“There were unsaved elders on that board, and unsaved people in leadership in the church,” MacArthur said. “But there were enough good people that knew what they wanted and knew that they needed to be taught the Word of God.”

MacArthur preached his first sermon in 1969 on Matthew 7:21, which says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

After that he started preaching through the New Testament one book at a time, beginning with the Gospel of John and then moving to Peter’s first and second epistles. MacArthur spent 30 hours a week preparing sermons and delegated almost all other pastoral responsibilities to the church’s elders and lay leaders.

The church grew rapidly. Grace built a new building that could seat 1,000 in 1971 and expanded again in 1977, tripling in size. It became the largest Protestant church in Los Angeles by the end of the decade.

The demand for recordings of MacArthur’s sermons also exploded. Church members sent out 5,000 tapes every week, then 15,000, then 30,000. By the end of the ’70s, more than 100,000 Christians around the country were receiving MacArthur’s recorded sermons every week. The church also launched a separate ministry, Grace to You, to broadcast MacArthur’s messages on Christian radio.

“John’s ministry proves how timeless preaching can be when it is merely sound, clear biblical exposition,” Phil Johnson, executive director of Grace to You, said in 2011. “If the aim of preaching is the awakening of spiritually dead souls and the cleansing and transformation of lives spoiled by sin, then all that really counts is that the preacher be faithful in proclaiming the Word of God with clarity, accuracy, and candor.”

That preaching, however, was not without controversy. In 1979, MacArthur taught on Titus 2 and the apostle Paul’s instructions that women “be busy at home” and “subject to their husbands” (v. 5). He said that women should not work outside the home and families should not require two incomes.

The leaders of the church decided the staff, not just the leadership, needed to be all male. The announcement caused an uproar in the church and the surrounding community. A number of people left Grace, accusing MacArthur of “Christian male chauvinism.”

The following year, the family of a man who had attended Grace sued for clergy malpractice—a first in the United States, according to the Los Angeles Times. Ministers at the church had counseled a suicidal young man named Kenneth Nally, telling him he should pray more, read the Bible, and listen to tapes of MacArthur’s sermons. When Nally took his own life, his parents hired a lawyer. They claimed ministers who provided counseling should be held to the same legal standard as psychologists. A California court ultimately dismissed the suit on First Amendment grounds.

Perhaps the most defining controversy came in the late 1980s, after MacArthur published The Gospel According to Jesus. He argued in the book that it wasn’t enough for sinners to accept Christ as Savior; true Christians must also recognize Jesus as Lord.

According to MacArthur, American evangelicals had led millions of people astray with the “damning false assurance” of “insidious easy-believism.” And many professing followers of Christ with testimonies of being born again were, in fact, “seriously wrong about the most basic of Christian truths.”

Critics, including a number of conservative evangelicals at Dallas Theological Seminary, accused MacArthur of mixing faith and works and denying justification by faith. Theologian Charles C. Ryrie wrote that MacArthur diluted and polluted the grace of God. New Testament professor Zane Hodges went further, calling MacArthur’s teaching “Satanic at its core.”

Other prominent evangelicals rallied to MacArthur’s defense. They argued he was only articulating traditional Christian ideas about repentance and discipleship.

Theologian J. I. Packer, for example, identified MacArthur’s position with the Reformed teaching that faith “is a whole-souled reality with an affectional and volitional aspect as well as an intellectual one.” Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Albert Mohler called The Gospel According to Jesus “a much-needed corrective to dangerous misunderstandings.”

Some observers said the two sides had just misunderstood each other.

“There is often a difference in what MacArthur says and what he apparently means,” wrote New Testament professor Darrell L. Bock. “Certain ambiguities in MacArthur’s style make it difficult to determine what his real position is.”

No one accused MacArthur of ambiguity in his attacks on charismatics. He said the Christians who believed they were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit were teaching a counterfeit, “aberrant” Christianity. He called them “harebrained people … prompted by Satan” and decried the charismatic movement’s widespread presence in Christian media.

“It has done a takeover, and it has redefined Christianity in people’s minds, and it’s an aberrant form of Christianity,” MacArthur said. “Its theology is bad, it is unbiblical, it is aberrant, it is destructive.”

MacArthur was also clear about Christians who believe that women can be called to teach the Bible, accusing them of ignoring unambiguous, universal commands in Scripture and engaging in “open rebellion” against the Word of God. Women should not ever speak in church, according to MacArthur, or hold positions of authority in church or in secular life.

MacArthur specifically attacked popular women’s Bible teacher Beth Moore, saying she had the natural ability to sell jewelry on TV but shouldn’t confuse that for a call to preach. He told her to “go home.”

There was another controversy in the 2020s, when a woman named Eileen Gray came forward to accuse him of shaming her publicly for leaving her abusive husband. David Gray, a children’s minister at Grace, confessed to hitting his daughter “way too harshly—brutally” on her legs, feet, hands, and head and dragging his two other children as a form of discipline. Gray said she had been instructed by Grace ministers to forgive him even if he didn’t repent and to show her children how to “suffer like Jesus.” When she instead took her children and moved out, MacArthur condemned her from the pulpit and instructed the congregation to shun her, suggesting she was not really a Christian.

David Gray was later sent to prison for physical and sexual child abuse.

Hohn Cho, an elder at the church, looked into the decision to disfellowship Eileen Gray in 2022 and concluded she had been treated unjustly. He urged leaders to make things right with her, at least privately. The elder told Christianity Today that MacArthur said to “forget it.”

Cho instead stepped down, only to discover at least eight other women at Grace with stories about being counseled to stay with abusive husbands, even when they feared for their own safety and the safety of their children.

Church leadership declined to respond to specific accusations but released a statement defending the church’s counseling as biblical and called the CT report “lies.”

MacArthur, on another occasion, said he struggled to deal with public criticism and accusation but was especially wounded by what he called “mutiny.”

“It’s happened several times,” he said. “And it’s a shock. You know, your own familiar friend has lifted up his heel against you, the one with whom you broke bread. You know? Like Scripture says about Judas.”

The waves of controversy, decade after decade, did not notably limit MacArthur’s influence.

Grace’s 3,500-seat sanctuary still filled multiple times per weekend in 2025. MacArthur’s sermons were broadcast on more than 1,000 radio stations across America and distributed by Grace to You. More than 700 men were enrolled at The Master’s Seminary, where MacArthur served as chancellor, and around 5,000 attended an annual conference for church leaders.

The MacArthur Study Bible continues to sell and is currently available with the New King James Version, the New International Version, the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, and the Legacy Standard Bible translations. The MacArthur Daily Bible smartphone app has been downloaded more than 5 million times.

Publishing veteran Chip Brown said people turn to MacArthur because they trust him as a pastor and because he “is just unpacking what the text says and how that fits into our lives.”

MacArthur, for his part, said he hoped he would be remembered for teaching the Bible.

“I just really want to be known as someone who was a servant of the Lord,” he said, “faithful to the teaching of the Word of God and to the unfolding of the mysteries of the gospel of the New Testament.”

MacArthur is survived by his wife, Patricia Smith MacArthur; their children Matt, Mark, Marcy, and Melinda; 15 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.

- More from Daniel Silliman

News

Kentucky Church Shooter Killed Pastor’s Wife and Daughter

Kate Shellnutt

Domestic violence and family disputes remain a top cause for violence on church property.

Police assess the scene after a shooting at Richmond Road Baptist Church on July 13, 2025 in Lexington, Kentucky.

Michael Swensen / Getty Images

A Kentucky man looking for the mother of his children shot a state trooper, stole a car, drove to a small Baptist church, and opened fire on her relatives as they prepared lunch after the service on Sunday.

The suspect fatally shot the pastor’s wife and adult daughter—the sister of the woman he was looking for—in the church’s basement kitchen and injured the pastor and the woman’s brother-in-law outside before being killed by police, her sisters recounted in local news reports.

The incident took place in Lexington at Richmond Road Baptist Church, led by longtime pastor Jerry Gumm, who remains hospitalized. Gumm’s wife and mother of eight, Beverly Gumm, died on the scene along with her daughter Christina Combs.

“This church was a small church, and the majority of the individuals there are biologically related in some way or another. If not, they’ve been friends for many, many years,” said Fayette County coroner Gary Ginn. “They’re a very tight-knit group of people.”

The coroner’s office identified the suspect as 47-year-old Guy House. Police say he shot a Kentucky state trooper who tried to pull him over, then he fled the scene, carjacked a vehicle, and proceeded to the church. On Sunday, police indicated preliminary evidence pointed to a connection between the suspect and individuals at the church.

Officials have not identified a motive for the shooting, but Beverly Gumm’s daughter, Star Rutherford, said House came in the back door asking for one of her sisters.

When they told him the sister wasn’t there, he responded, “Well, someone is gonna have to die, then,” and shot at them, according to Rutherford’s account.

“Guy House wanted to hurt my sister or someone she loved,” Rutherford said in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

A county clerk stated that House, who had a criminal history involving theft and drug use, had been scheduled to appear in court for a domestic violence hearing on Monday but that the hearing did not involve the woman he was looking for at Richmond Road Baptist.

The shooting marks another deadly incident on church property—and another example of familial conflict spilling over into church life.

Around 14 percent of violent incidents involving deadly force at houses of worship stem from domestic conflicts, with the Faith Based Security Network tracking 269 such cases between 1999 and 2020.

“Year after year, domestic abuse spillover—when a fight at home comes to church—is one of the three most common killers at faith-based organizations,” the network’s founder and church security expert Carl Chinn said.

The other top causes for violence on church grounds are robbery and personal conflict; it’s much rarer for perpetrators to be religiously motivated. Most of the time (62%), deadly attacks occur during off-hours when no events are taking place, the network survey found.

Domestic violence also remains a key factor in gun deaths overall. Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund reports that nearly half (46%) of shootings killing four or more people involve a perpetrator going after an intimate partner or family member.

The 2017 attack at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas—which remains the deadliest shooting at a US house of worship—stemmed from the shooter targeting the small congregation where his estranged wife attended with her family. The shooter’s wife’s grandmother was among his 26 victims.

“In a smaller church, the boundaries between family and church are thin and blurry, so family problems spill over,” Texas pastor Bart Barber wrote for CT after the 2017 shooting. “Working on the front lines of these sensitive issues, churches can become targets when things go wrong.”

- More from Kate Shellnutt

News

‘Georgia’s George Bailey’ Accused of $140 Million Fraud

Daniel Silliman

The investment opportunity widely promoted on conservative Christian politics podcasts was a Ponzi scheme, according to the SEC.

Youtube screengrab

Federal authorities are accusing a prominent Christian conservative of running a $140 million Ponzi scheme.

Edwin Brant Frost IV, a businessman who once ran televangelist Pat Robertson’s presidential campaign in Georgia, allegedly took money from investors and used it to pay other investors and to buy himself and his family nice things. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) claims Frost spent $335,000 on rare coins, $230,000 on family vacations in Maine, and $160,000 on jewelry.

He also made more than $570,000 political donations and spent $2.4 million on credit cards, according to the SEC.

First Liberty Building and Loan promised investors that their money would go to bridge loans for small businesses, reaping returns of up to 18 percent.

Frost’s son, state Republican Party official Edwin Brant Frost V, told potential investors this was a way to “grow the patriot economy.” He said the suburban Atlanta company helped retired teachers and ministers “as well as doctors, lawyers, and everyone else you can imagine.”

The investment opportunity was heavily promoted on political podcasts and radio programs and endorsed by conservative Christian commentators. Erick Erickson praised the Frosts as “a good Christian family” and said he knew them personally and they were “wonderful people.” Hugh Hewitt called the elder Frost “Georgia’s George Bailey,” comparing him to the hero in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life.

First Liberty was neither chartered nor insured as a bank, however. It did not accept deposits, only investments, starting at $25,000.

Some of the money did go to small businesses, many of which struggled to pay back what they owed, according to the SEC. Federal investigators also found increasing sums went to payments to old investors, who were encouraged to invest more and keep the whole thing going.

In a little more than a decade, the company got about 300 people involved the Ponzi scheme, according to the SEC investigation.

The Newnan Times-Herald identified one of them as John Vander Wiele, the owner of a recycling company with about 40 employees. When he sold a piece of property, he decided to put $25,000 into the financial opportunity he had heard about on conservative Christian podcasts.

Vander Wiele liked the fact that First Liberty was led by, as it said on the website, “authentic followers of Christ.” The Brants emphasized this when they met him in person too.

“They told me they were Sunday school teachers and churchgoers,” Vander Wiele told the Georgia newspaper. “It was like lending money to your neighbor. You feel good about it because you know where he lives.”

Joe Hubbard, a retiree, said he and his wife put their life savings into First Liberty investments. They also heard about the plan to “grow the patriot economy” on a political talk show. They met the Brants in person before investing and talked about church, Sunday school, and their shared conservative values.

The Hubbards don’t yet know whether they will ever see any of their money again.

“We’re out of our minds,” Hubbard said to The Newnan Times-Herald. “We can’t eat or sleep. We don’t know where to turn.”

One of the last things investors received from First Liberty before the company shut down was an email about more investment opportunities. The younger Frost said there was “very strong loan demand” and the investments were “helping local small businesses become great businesses!”

First Liberty always claimed it was lending money to people who were going to get loans from the Small Business Administration or commercial banks, allowing the small businesses to quickly pay off the borrowed bridge funding, earning investors between 8 and 18 percent interest.

The promised amount should have been a red flag, according to Justin C. Jeffries, an SEC associate director in Atlanta.

“We’ve seen this movie before—bad actors luring investors with promises of seemingly over-generous returns,” Jeffries said, “and it does not end well.”

Actual loan repayments did not earn enough to pay investors, according to the SEC investigation. Yet First Liberty kept recruiting more.

Many of the borrowers defaulted, the SEC found. But First Liberty allegedly withheld that information from investors and told people who were interested in investing that defaults were exceedingly rare.

According to the SEC, the company “knowingly, intentionally, and/or recklessly … made untrue statements of material facts and omitted to state material facts, and engaged in fraudulent acts, practices and courses of business.”

A statement on the company’s shuttered website says First Liberty is now “cooperating with federal authorities as part of an effort to accomplish an orderly wind-up of the business.”

The federal court froze Frost family assets on Friday and ordered First Liberty to repay the money it had taken, plus interest.

The elder Frost agreed to the financial terms requested by the SEC without admitting any guilt or specific facts.

“I take full responsibility for my actions and am resolved to spend the rest of my life trying to repay as much as I can to the many people I misled and let down,” he said in a statement put out by his lawyer. “I would like to apologize personally to those I have harmed, but I am under restrictions which prevent me from doing so.”

Federal prosecutors have declined to say whether they will seek criminal charges. State authorities are also investigating.

The Associated Press reported that First Liberty’s collapse “rocked” conservative Christian networks in Georgia. The company had made generous donations to multiple congressional campaigns, state legislative campaigns, and Republican Party organizations, as well as political action committees promising to fight conspiracies to steal elections from Republicans.

The elder Frost came to prominence in Georgia politics in 1987 with aggressive, insurgent tactics meant to disrupt the Republican establishment and hand power to those he saw as true conservatives. He went on to organize for Pat Buchanan, who pledged to “make America first again,” and Alan Keyes, who warned about the moral crisis facing the country.

Frost had a copy of the December 25, 2000, issue of Time magazine, when George W. Bush was named person of the year, framed in his office. He said that God “clearly raised up Donald Trump for such a time as this” and that the 2025 inauguration would spark “a new and amazing awakening to our land.”

In an interview with historians documenting the modern conservative movement in Georgia, Frost said he became a born-again Christian in 1980 at a multilevel marketing business event.

- More from Daniel Silliman

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News

Christians Question Suspicious Death of South Indian Preacher

Vikram Mukka

Praveen Pagadala’s passing comes amid an increase in violence against Christians in a region long tolerant of the faith.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Facebook

Last March, local residents found well-known Christian apologist Praveen Pagadala dead on the roadside near Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh. The 45-year-old was on his way to a gospel convention on his motorcycle.

Police claimed he had been driving drunk, which led to the fatal accident. Yet the Christian community questioned the account. Pagadala had previously received numerous death threats for criticizing the caste system and crediting Christianity with liberating India’s marginalized people.

Kaveti International Law Firm, which has taken up the case pro bono, questioned why footage from the scene showed no visible injuries except on his face, why his helmet remained intact, and why there were no skid marks or damages to his bike. The inconsistencies lead “to speculation that his death was not accidental but a targeted attack,” according to Kaveti Srinivas Rao, the lawyer on the case.

Thousands of people attended the apologist’s funeral procession in Secunderabad on March 27. In the weeks that followed, Christians in the two Telugu-speaking states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana held protests, with hundreds calling for a reinvestigation into Pagadala’s death.

Police warned Christians against questioning their official determination in the case, claiming that such comments disturb communal harmony in the state. In April, police in Hyderabad arrested a pastor for spreading “propaganda” about Pagadala’s death. Two Christians filed a petition in June to Andhra Pradesh High Court asking the Central Bureau of Investigation to reopen the case.

The controversy around Pagadala’s death brings to light the concerning increase of violence against Christians in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana—states once considered relatively tolerant toward the Christian community. Yet now, the nationwide rise of Hindu nationalism has spread to this part of the country.

“Every week, there’s a new incident,” said Oliver Rayi, the chairman of the Andhra Pradesh Christian Leaders Forum. “What we have been seeing in northern India since 2014—coordinated attacks against religious minorities—is now being replicated in Andhra.”

Born to a Catholic mother and a Muslim father in the city of Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh, Pagadala often attended his mother’s church to learn to play the guitar, according to testimonies Pagadala shared online. Yet as a teen, he started drinking, smoking, and doing drugs. Police arrested him after he and his friends beat up a boy from a rival gang and threw him into the bushes.

His family was able to keep his record clean through a relative who worked in the police department, and around the age of 20, they sent him to live in Hyderabad. There, one of his friends invited him to church, which he started attending reluctantly. During one meeting, God convicted him of his sins, and he gave his life to the Lord.

In 2000, Pagadala said he had a vision to move to Indore in Madhya Pradesh state to preach the gospel. Although he didn’t speak Hindi, he quickly picked up the language and began evangelizing to locals. An older Christian couple took him in, and he later married their daughter Jessica. The Pagadalas had two daughters and adopted 12 orphaned girls, as India’s cultural preference for boys has led to orphanages filled with girls. Pagadala often said he was a “proud father” to 14 daughters.

Part of a homegrown apologetics network called Sakshi Apologetics, Pagadala often focused on the freedom and equality found in the kingdom of God, contrasting it with the caste system and the subjugation of women in the Hindu worldview. He grew in popularity as he debated Hindus and Muslims on television. With a deep understanding of the Quran and Hindu religious texts, he reeled out verses to passionately defend Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

His debates drew him a large audience among Telugu Christians, who shared clips of his arguments widely on social media. Pagadala often credits Christian missionaries in India for the progress Dalits and other marginalized communities have made in society. He also petitioned the Supreme Court to declare the anti-conversion laws in 12 Indian states unconstitutional, arguing that they violated the freedom of religion guaranteed in the Indian constitution.

His outspokenness also gained him enemies. The evangelist received death threats from both Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. After Pagadala’s death, Christians wondered if his critiques had gotten him in trouble.

Their concerns are not ungrounded, as Christian persecution has been growing in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the past few years. Historically, the Telugu-speaking region has tolerated Christianity as Dalits converted to the faith en masse in the 19th and 20th centuries. The anti-caste movement in the area viewed Christianity and missionaries as allies, unlike in other states where they faced Brahmanical backlash.

Missionaries in Telugu regions learned the language, translated the Bible, and promoted the local culture. They also built schools, colleges, and hospitals. Christianity became embedded in Telugu cultural identity, making it more accepted than in Hindi-speaking states, where less Dalits converted to Christianity.

Hindu nationalist groups had limited presence in the region until 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, won a majority of parliamentary seats. Unlike elsewhere, caste, not religion, is a primary marker of identity in Telugu states. Mainstream political parties in Telugu states speak out about Christian issues.

Yet lately the number of incidents against Christians has increased. In Andhra Pradesh, where the BJP is part of the ruling coalition, Christian leaders say fundamentalist Hindu groups have grown emboldened.

Data from the United Christian Forum (UCF) supports the claim. In Andhra Pradesh, UCF documented 37 incidents in 2024, up from single digits in 2014. The neighbouring Telugu state of Telangana reported 25 such incidents in 2024, up from 17 in 2014. Leaders say the real figures could be much higher, as most incidents go unreported due to fear of retribution.

In March, mobs attacked three churches in Andhra Pradesh. At the same time, the government issued a controversial order asking authorities to crack down on “illegal” churches. The directive was withdrawn 23 days later.

One case from Kajuluru village near Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh reveals the worsening plight of Andhra Christians.

In December 2023, a group of villagers, instigated by a Hindu nationalist group, stormed a church inauguration, beat up believers and pastors, and vandalized the building. The mob accused the congregants of demeaning Hinduism and building the church illegally. In the end, the police filed a case against the Christians.

“We have all the permissions, proper land titles, everything. But they are painting us as criminals,” said a church elder who asked to remain anonymous as he fears reprisals from authorities and Hindu groups. “To them, Christianity is a foreign religion. They want to erase us.”

The church is now locked, forcing congregants to worship inside of homes.

The situation is equally grim in Telangana, where church buildings have been vandalized, churchgoers and pastors have been assaulted, and Bibles have been burned.

According to a Christian rights activist from Telangana (CT agreed to keep him anonymous as he fears being targeted by Hindu nationalists), the incidents can no longer be seen as “one-off incidents.”

“The Hindu fundamentalist outfits have a well-coordinated approach,” he said. “They instigate locals to launch these attacks on churches in their neighborhoods on the pretext of nuisance, sound pollution, and permissions.”

The hostility on the ground is amplified by anti-Christian propaganda online. Telugu social media is rife with trolls and hate speech portraying Christians as “conversion mafias” funded by “foreign donations.” Widely circulated videos by Hindu fanatic groups demean pastors as “perverts” and “beggars” and call the Bible a “book of lies.” Some of these videos carry the disclaimer: “Conversion mafias pose grave danger to the country.”

“Christians have to become shrewd and discerning in a hostile world, as God instructs us in Matthew 10:16,” said Chittem Vijaya Kumari, a Christian leader in Hyderabad and president of Dalit Women Forum. “Besides fasting and praying, the community needs to launch a united fight against online hate. It is no longer an individual case and individual fight.”

- More from Vikram Mukka

Theology

How Buddhism Gained Popularity

Marvin Olasky

Evangelicals who discuss theology need to understand the branches.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

(For previous articles in this series, see here and here.)

Theravada Buddhism, the original variety, can be high-pressure: Become an arhat, a spiritually enlightened person who has replaced all desire. No emotion: Become indifferent to everything. One percent of Americans are Buddhist, and one-third of those are Theravada. Like Orthodox Jews, Theravada Buddhists don’t go with the flow of standard American life.

Given how hard it is to be indifferent, it’s not surprising that Buddhist expansion 2,000 years ago ran into a wall. Many people did not want nonattachment if it meant a farewell to love. In practice, even Buddhist monks often found they made little progress toward eliminating desire. Ordinary people could make even less. This faith had limited appeal.

Religions compete for adherents, so it’s not surprising that innovative Buddhists developed the concept of bodhisattvas, enlightened beings who could have attained nirvana but purposefully chose to put it off to help others reach it more quickly than they otherwise would. The origin of this belief—that faith in a self-sacrificing bodhisattva is essential—is lost in the mists of time, but speculation abounds.

For example, British scholar Alan Bouquet, describing “Christian Influences on Early Buddhism,” wrote that from AD 50 to 200 some Buddhists learned about Christianity and introduced into Buddhism a new ideal of serving others, not just concentrating on their own spiritual progress: “The bodhisattva must sacrifice his or her possible attainment of release into identity with the Absolute, for the sake of others.”

The new Buddhism, called Mahayana (“great way”), developed many variants over the years. For example, in the 12th and 13th centuries, some Japanese Mahayana Buddhists gravitated to zazen (meditation). These became known as Zen Buddhists, who taught that the faithful should pay no attention to rational thought processes. They came up with famous Zen questions such as “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

The goal is to force thinkers to conclude that rational thought is inadequate. One famous Christian medieval question—“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”—was an attempt to produce the opposite of mysticism. Students were to think through the problem and conclude that an infinite number could fit since angels are incorporeal spirits.

Theravada Buddhists like to point out Mahayana contradictions. In a karmic system, grace should play no part, and individual “merit” is all, so does it make sense to believe in bodhisattvas who can give great amounts of their accumulated merit to others who can then move up? Many Theravadas still try to achieve nirvana through ascetic self-effort based on monastic vows that both men and women can take. Ritual chanting and worship of relics may help in this process.

But Mahayana Buddhism has become more popular by developing a social orientation. Adherents should strive to have the capacity to become bodhisattvas, postponing entry into nirvana so they can help others by transferring their extra karmic merit to those they wish.

One popular Mahayana branch, called Pure Land (jodo in Japanese) tells the story of a monk who promised to create a Pure Land paradise in the West if he became a Buddha. Adherents of Jodo Shinshu say he succeeded, so in this Pure Land, evil does not exist. Those with faith in this Buddha get to go after death to the Pure Land, where conditions for liberation are excellent and the reincarnation process can be shortened. Mahayana is the dominant form of Buddhism in Japan and in many other countries, and the Pure Land approach is popular. Theravada Buddhism is dominant in Southeast Asia.

Some Buddhists repeat mantras that, when repeated thousands of times, will purportedly help the mind to overcome any surroundings. One school of thought teaches that constant invocation of the name Amitabha Buddha will transport the meditator to the Pure Land. A 17th-century Buddhist, Suzuki Shōsan, adapted Buddhism to the business world by instructing a merchant to “throw yourself headlong into worldly activity. …Your activity is an ascetic exercise that will cleanse you of all impurities. Challenge your mind and body by crossing mountain ranges. Purify your heart by fording rivers.”

Indicative of Buddhism’s diversity is the way Suzuki, often called the founding thinker of Japanese capitalism, developed a prosperity gospel: “If you understand that this life is but a trip through an evanescent world, and if you cast aside all attachments and desires and work hard, Heaven will protect you, the gods will bestow their favor, and your profits will be exceptional.” Another priest praised merchants’ nonattachment: “They go out early in the morning and return late at night. They do not avoid the elements nor do they dislike hardship and misery. They cover their bodies with cotton clothing and fill their mouths with vegetable food. They do not dare to throw away a piece of thread or a scrap of paper.”

Is Buddhism a laid-back way of developing great work-life balance? One 17th-century book, Shimin Nichiyo, answered questions such as this one from an artisan: “I am busy every minute of the day in an effort to earn my livelihood. How can I become a Buddha?” The answer: “Do not neglect diligent activity morning and evening. Work hard at the family occupation. Do not gamble. Rather than take a lot, take a little.”

Many Americans on the cultural left have gravitated to Buddhism, particularly in its Zen variety, as an opponent of materialism. But some Mahayana believers view selling as spiritual. Bodhisattvas show nonattachment to nirvana by sacrificing their own welfare, so “the business of merchants and of artisans is the profiting of others. By profiting others they receive the right to profit themselves. … The spirit of profiting others is the bodhisattva spirit.”

For more about four major religions, please see Marvin Olasky’s The Religions Next Door: What we need to know about Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam—and what reporters are missing.

- More from Marvin Olasky

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Traffickers Scam Nigerians with Promises of Better Jobs

Emiene Erameh

How one Christian woman escaped forced labor and found her way home again.

A woman from Africa who was labor trafficked.

Stringer / Getty

Joyce Vincent had a job with a microfinance bank in Nigeria earning 150,000 naira (about $98 USD) monthly when her friend told her of a job offer in Egypt. When she heard the job paid over 1,000,000 million naira (about $654) monthly, Vincent jumped at the offer.

“Who wouldn’t?” she asked.

In the spring of 2019, Vincent sold everything she owned. After all, if she immigrated, she would have no need for her pots, pans, gas cooker, and television set. Vincent put the money toward her travel expenses and borrowed some money to make up the difference.

On May 27, 2019, she started the journey by air through Ethiopia to Sudan. Then, she said, “the deadly journey began by road.”

Nigeria is experiencing what locals call the japa syndrome—a slang Yoruba term describing the desire to leave the country in search of better opportunities. The country’s national minimum wage of only 70,000 naira (about $46 USD) monthly makes higher international salaries more attractive. But overseas jobs don’t always offer a better life; scammers and labor traffickers may trick Nigerians into menial jobs with false promises of good salaries.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Nigeria “remains a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking, with 65% of the cases happening internally and 35% externally.” The UNODC listed poverty and greed as driving forces behind trafficking.

Along the road to Egypt, Vincent saw unburied corpses. When she reached Egypt, Vincent said, her passport was taken away. Her employers told her she would have to work for three years to pay back the money used to transport her to Egypt.

Vincent offered to pay them back with what remained from her loan and the sale of her belongings, but her employers refused. They sent her to work as a housekeeper for a family Vincent described as “very wicked.” Unable to speak Arabic and lacking any connections in Egypt, Vincent had no choice but to comply.

“I was required to work almost 24 hours without any rest and with very little food,” she recalled.

When she realized she was being trafficked for labor, Vincent said, she started looking for a way to escape and return home. Without her passport or knowledge of the area, this took time. The family rarely allowed her to go out. After four months, Vincent found her way to the Nigerian Embassy in Egypt.

At first, Vincent said, embassy staff turned her away because it was a public holiday. With nowhere to go, Vincent returned to her traffickers. During that time, one of the couriers who had smuggled her into the country sexually assaulted her.

Two years after her arrival in Egypt, Vincent got help from the embassy to go home.

According to the US State Department, the Nigerian government initiated investigations of 698 trafficking cases in 2024, a decrease from 1,242 cases in 2023. Corruption and officials complicit in trafficking crimes remain a significant concern in Nigeria.

The UNODC reported that Nigeria detected the highest number of trafficking victims of any country in Africa—but also initiated the highest number of prosecutions. Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) claims to have rescued 24,000 trafficking survivors.

According to the UNODC, an increasing number of North and West African migrants are being smuggled from Africa to Europe annually, especially across the central Mediterranean. But the number of Nigerians trafficked through this route has decreased.

Jeremiah Adelu—the director of Voice of Migrant Association and also a trafficking survivor—said the government needs to do more to spread awareness about the dangers of irregular migration.

Adelu had set up a dry-cleaning business after graduating from school and failing to find a job. He was trafficked by a customer who always gave him generous tips.

“He asked how much I earn, and when I told him, he said he could help me migrate to Germany, where I could earn a higher income,” Adelu said. “The only catch is he said I had to pay 300,000 naira to help facilitate the journey.”

Like Vincent, Adelu sold off all his valuables to raise the money. Adelu began the journey to Germany but, unlike Vincent, did not have the luxury of traveling by air. His courier directed him through a land route that included crossing the desert to Libya.

Adelu recalled “seeing people dead, like skulls, like people just dropped dead” along the way and getting so thirsty that “the only option we had was to drink a urine. Somebody had to urinate for you to drink, because [of] the way the desert was very hot. Your throat gets dry easily.”

When he arrived in Libya, human smugglers took him to a place called Ali Ghetto,where they told him to pay a ransom of 3,000 Libyan dinar (about $555 USD). Because he did not have any money left, they asked him to call a family member who could raise the money.

“You are given 59 seconds to call who you want to call,” he said. “After the 59 seconds, they start flogging you.”

Adelu called his sister, who raised the money after three days.

After he was freed, Adelu decided to proceed to Germany across the Mediterranean Sea. He gave up after he lost some friends who died attempting to make the dangerous crossing.

Now back in Nigeria, Adelu runs Voice of Migrant Association, where he works with trafficked victims who have returned to Nigeria. Adelu also raises awareness about the dangers of irregular migration.

While acknowledging NAPTIP’s work to raise awareness about human trafficking—which includes creating policies and running ads on the radio, television, and social media—Adelu told CT it’s not enough. He said the message needs to reach the more vulnerable people in rural areas who may never see a NAPTIP campaign.

“When the traffickers come, they don’t stay in the city anymore,” Adelu explained. “They go to the rural environment where campaigns are not going on, education is not going on, their town hall is not going on. They don’t even know anything about trafficking.”

Adelu also said churches can use their influence with congregants more wisely.

“Because when a minister or a pastor tells a member, ‘I see your destiny is not in Nigeria. Your destiny is in UK; Your destiny is in Canada,’ that member will try to relocate by every means possible,” he said. This can make church members more vulnerable to human traffickers and scammers.

While many anti-trafficking initiatives in Nigeria are secular, some faith-based organizations do exist. One Lutheran-affiliated organization, Symbols of Hope, has run outreach initiatives to schools, churches, and traditional rulers in northeast Nigeria to warn of the dangers of illegal or irregular migration. Some Catholic nuns have also run awareness campaigns or set up recovery homes for survivors.

Reflecting on her experience, Vincent agreed that churches in Nigeria can do better, especially when helping survivors get their lives back together. She said she’s been disappointed by the lack of local support.

Vincent still struggles to make ends meet but said, “My help will come from God, not man.”

- More from Emiene Erameh

News

When ICE Raided Their Community, These Churches Were Ready

Emily Belz in Los Angeles

Decades-long relationships helped Pasadena churches respond to wildfires—and now immigration arrests.

Federal immigration agents near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.

Carlin Steihl/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

In the gym at Pasadena Covenant Church, local congregations met on a Saturday morning to discuss the spike of immigration arrests in their tight-knit community east of downtown Los Angeles.

Pink conchas, a Mexican sweet bread, piled up on a side table for snacks and coffee as an immigration lawyer from a Christian legal-services nonprofit answered questions from the room of about 120 people.

Attendees had seen masked immigration agents on the streets in Pasadena, California, arresting young people, older people, parents with children. So their questions were urgent and practical: If you’re in the car with your kids and you’re detained, how can you make sure your kids are cared for?

Federal authorities reported arresting more than 1,600 people in the LA area from June 6 to June 22, with some sent to a crowded basement detention facility in downtown LA. In several incidents, they made arrests on church grounds. The majority of people Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested in Southern California do not have a criminal history. Some had pending asylum cases or were US citizens, according to interviews with CT.

During the Saturday meeting, pastors’ phones lit up with texts from a neighbor: A few blocks away, ICE agents had just arrested a Latina woman on a walk with her two sons, one a teenager and one 20 years old.

Video footage showed plainclothes agents attempting to put her in an unmarked Honda Accord; her sons, startled, tried to block the arrest. She was later identified as Rosalina Luna Vargas, an employee at a local assisted-living facility.

The church gym was full of people who had prepared for a moment like this.

Pastor Mayra Macedo-Nolan interrupted the summit and shared what had happened. Pastor Marcos Canales, leader of La Fuente Ministries, a bilingual Nazarene church, prayed aloud.

“No mas,” he pleaded in Spanish. Then in English he said, “In the name of Jesus, who was executed without any just process, in that name we pray. Amen.”

Pasadena Covenant pastor Andrew Mark double-checked that the church’s security was in place. Macedo-Nolan began confirming details of what had happened and learned the woman was the family’s breadwinner. People began arranging carpools for anyone who felt scared to leave on their own with ICE in the neighborhood.

This rapid response is not unusual. Pasadena pastors have been showing up to sites of ICE arrests often within an hour. Alongside a local day-laborers organization called the Pasadena Community Job Center, they quickly assess who was arrested, what family members they leave behind, and what their needs might be—maybe food or an immigration lawyer.

They come together through the Clergy Community Coalition (CCC), a network of local churches established 20 years ago by Pastor Jean Burch. The coalition started small but now includes about 100 churches and nonprofits, ranging from Pentecostal to mainline.

Pasadena and nearby Altadena are places of close connection; chain stores are rare, and people recognize each other on the streets. Pasadena is also the home of Fuller Theological Seminary, and locals say the city has the highest number of nonprofits per capita in the country.

“It has a sense of place,” said John Jay Alvaro, pastor of First Baptist Church in Pasadena. “There’s also in Pasadena and Altadena a high trust for clergy.”

The pastors in the coalition, in turn, lean on Macedo-Nolan, a friendly but no-nonsense woman who knows everyone and knows how to navigate church politics and police departments. “When Mayra says to show up somewhere, we show up somewhere,” said Alvaro.

Macedo-Nolan, head of the CCC, was previously the board chair of the Christian Community Development Association and a pastor at Lake Avenue Church, an evangelical church in Pasadena.

Her phone is constantly buzzing; it’s been buzzing since the fires.

But right now, all the buzzing is about immigration. She said she wants local Christians to see what is happening and ask themselves, “Did I allow some reformation in my heart when this was happening in my community? Was I open to what God’s Spirit wanted to do in me?”

The churches have some deep theological differences, but their readiness to band together in the face of raids came from 20 years of relationships in the community.

Pasadena mayor Victor Gordo came to the church summit in the gym, and the CCC has long met with the local police chief and sheriffs. But closeness also emerged from recent hardships.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Macedo-Nolan from the CCC knew the job center had funding to distribute food but needed a commercial kitchen. Pasadena Covenant, right across the street from the day-laborer organization, has its own kitchen. She connected them, and they’ve been hosting a weekly food bank together ever since.

Pasadena Covenant holds the view of asset-based community development, which emphasizes looking for existing resources in the community for help.

“A local church should never think it is the net. It is part of the net,” said Steve Wong, the church’s senior pastor.

The relationship between churches and the job center deepened this year in the aftermath of the Eaton fire, which destroyed thousands of structures in Pasadena and nearby Altadena in January.

Need for food intensified after the fires, with thousands showing up to the job center food bank. Many in the immigrant community lost their homes, then they also lost jobs cleaning homes or tending to yards. Among the CCC, 8 church buildings burned down, along with 12 pastors’ homes, according to Canales. Eleven families at Pasadena Covenant lost their homes.

The fires exposed the community’s most desperate economic needs. When Pasadena Covenant received donations for wildfire recovery, it gave tens of thousands of dollars to families connected to the day laborers’ group.

The job center exists to connect residents and small businesses with reliable day laborers—bricklayers, roofers, cleaners—and ensures the workers are treated fairly. Many of the day laborers began going out in brigades to do fire cleanup, and the CCC fundraised for more protective gear to help them deal with toxic hazards in the debris.

And the job center began inviting pastors from the CCC to pray for the laborers each morning. Eventually they were doing daily “send out” prayers, said Wong. Canales did radio devotionals on the day laborers’ radio station in Spanish.

Several Black pastors also consistently came to the job center to pray workers out, including Anthony McFarland, who lost his home in the wildfires. He estimates the fires displaced 20 percent of his congregation.

“ICE is something you cannot control. Fire is something you cannot control,” McFarland said. “It hurts when you can’t make a significant difference. You can’t call the president and say, ‘It’s ruining families.’”

The fire cleanup meant “grief galvanized our relationship,” said Mark.

Mark grew up a missionary kid in Mexico City and switches in and out of English and Spanish. He’s been one of the clergy members leading packed vigils at the site of ICE arrests with the day-laborers group.

One recent afternoon on the porch at his home next to the church, he got a call from an unknown number: It was a family member of someone who had been detained. Mark talked through the situation in Spanish, and the caller asked him for a character reference letter for the court case.

Mark and fellow pastors from the coalition get such calls and texts constantly now. Hispanic Christians feel targeted, and they’re afraid to go to work or the grocery store. In June, six workers were arrested outside a local donut shop. Locals say the arrests are halting the fire cleanup.

Only 15 percent of Americans support deporting undocumented immigrants who have jobs, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

“The fear and intimidation are definitely working,” Mark said.

On Friday, a federal judge found evidence of racial profiling in the arrests of people from car washes and at Home Depots—stemming from a case involving three men arrested at a bus stop in Pasadena.

In a statement last month, ICE said agents in LA “are on the streets every day, prioritizing public safety by locating, arresting, and removing criminal alien offenders and immigration violators from our neighborhoods.”

Pastors see their role as ministering to families of the arrested, going to vigils, but also as deescalating tensions over immigration enforcement.

At protests, they line up between demonstrators and police. And at the summit in the church gym, they helped train congregants for tense situations. They want parishioners to know how to react to an arrest, and they want them to remember that ICE agents might not be prepared to deescalate these scenarios either.

Mark Chase, associate rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, was standing nearby when an apparent ICE agent drove up in an unmarked vehicle and pulled a gun on a young man who was taking a photo of the car’s license plate (one way some in the community tried to identify ICE vehicles).

“We said, ‘No, no, no, don’t shoot!’” Chase recounted to CT. “He got out of his vehicle with such anger and vitriol. I thought he was going to shoot. He swept [the gun] around indiscriminately.”

The tension in the community has gotten to the clergy. Mark started feeling depressed. Macedo-Nolan has had trouble sleeping. Mid-interview with her at a church in Pasadena, a siren nearby blared and zoomed past. She stopped talking to wonder aloud if it was an ambulance, police, or ICE.

“Even though it seems like things are not okay, we’re working to make things okay,” said Mark. “But the days like yesterday, I start to question it. How long before things are okay?”

For those not directly affected by the ICE threats, it’s tempting to disconnect from what is happening.

“Honestly it makes me want to hide,” said Wong, the senior pastor of Pasadena Covenant. Then he thinks of his 100-year-old church’s own immigrant history: Swedish migrants fled repression or famine or just came for a new life. He himself is Chinese American and immigrated to Singapore before returning to the US.

Two days after the ICE arrest of the woman with teenage sons, Mark and other pastors showed up for a vigil at the intersection where she had been arrested.

The day-laborer group brought instruments and played upbeat music. About 200 neighbors showed up, including her family, in tears. The woman’s two sons spoke briefly. The pastors prayed in English and Spanish.

“I’m so grateful the faith-based community is here,” said Pablo Alvarado, one of the leaders of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network—of which the Pasadena Community Job Center is a part.

The next day, La Fuente Ministries had its bilingual Sunday service. The congregation sang loudly: “May his truth have power over lies. / May our hope have power over fear.”

Alvarado, the co-executive director of the job center, attended the service and stood up to share his story with the congregation. After growing up during the Salvadoran civil war, he came to the United States and began to advocate for day laborers.

Speaking in Spanish with Canales translating into English, Alvarado said that thanks to the church leaders like Macedo-Nolan and Canales, “Pasadena has given an example of what that looks like to be entangled.” Alvarado brought up the mother who had been arrested the day before. “Because we are entangled, we are going to continue the process of helping them.”

- More from Emily Belz

News

Fears of a Christian Exodus after Syria’s Deadly Church Bombing

Jill Nelson

“We’ve experienced war, but not threats specifically against Christians.”

Relatives cry during the funeral of the victims killed in the Saint Elias Greek Orthodox Church attack in Syria.

Mohamad Daboul / Getty

Karam Abadi, a tour guide who works for Come Taste and See Syria, didn’t notice anything unusual when he arrived at Saint Elias Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus on the morning of Sunday, June 22.

Two of his clients spent the night at the church’s monastery, a comfortable and affordable option for travelers, he noted. That morning, Abadi met the women and walked with them to their next destination, a hotel several blocks away.

At around 6:30 p.m., Abadi was attending an evening service at a Nazarene church with his clients when he heard an explosion. He soon learned the details. A terrorist had opened fire during mass at Saint Elias Church, then detonated his explosive vest, killing 25 people and injuring at least 60 others.

Syrian authorities blamed the Islamic State for the attack, but a less prominent jihadist group, Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah, claimed responsibility days later.

Abadi said he was shocked when he heard the group targeted a church. “We’ve experienced war, but not threats specifically against Christians,” Abadi said. Christianity Today agreed not to use his real name due to the heightened risks.

The bombing was the first deadly attack targeting Christians since Islamist-led forces seized power in December from Bashar al-Assad, whose family ruled Syria for more than five decades.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa promised to protect religious minority groups, but a string of deadly attacks has cast doubt on his ability to control the country’s loose network of terrorist organizations and rebel fighters. A March attack on Syria’s Alawite communities left hundreds of people dead. In April, dozens of people, including 10 civilians, died from clashes between armed rebels and the minority Druze population.

Christians were concerned they would be next. Abadi and his wife have seen signs of Islamist groups seeking influence over social norms and society in the past six months. Salafists, members of a fundamentalist revival movement within Sunni Islam, have been proselytizing in the streets of Damascus, including in the Christian quarter. Abadi has seen videos of the street preachers calling people on loudspeakers to convert to Islam, and his wife witnessed one of their recent visits.

Abadi said the men’s long beards and robes distinguish them from their more moderate Muslim neighbors, including many who asked the men to leave their neighborhood. According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Syrian government banned unauthorized proselytizing after Salafists targeted an area in front of Saint Elias Church in late March, perhaps explaining why jihadists bombed that particular church.

Meanwhile, the government is enforcing a stricter dress code than what existed when Assad was in power. In June, Damascus announced new guidelines requiring full-body swimwear for women at public beaches. Abadi has heard reports of authorities beating men wearing shorts in public. The new laws apply to both Muslims and religious minority groups, he added.

Several acts of violence have heightened the concerns. During the past seven months, armed individuals set a Christmas tree on fire, fired bullets at a church, and damaged a cross at an Orthodox church in Homs. “All the church leaders were like, ‘You should do something,’” Abadi said. “They started talking to authorities and security people and said, ‘Why don’t you act and try to do your part?’”

Sharaa was once a member of al-Qaeda and spent time in US detention facilities in Iraq for his involvement in local insurgencies. After his release, Sharaa created Jabhat al-Nusra as an al-Qaeda affiliate in 2011. The group later merged into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, and under Sharaa, toppled Assad’s regime late last year.

Since gaining power, Sharaa has projected a more moderate image, including appointing Hind Kabawat, a Christian woman, to his transitional cabinet. Following the bombing, Kabawat visited Saint Elias Church and met with priests and parishioners, calling the attack a “heinous crime.”

“This attack was not only against Christians, but against all Syrians,” Kabawat told the Greek newspaper Kathimerini. “Our Christian community is an essential part of Syria’s social and cultural fabric.”

Many Christians are concerned that the authorities aren’t taking the threats against them seriously. “Many people have said, ‘They don’t want us here. We should just leave,’” Abadi explained. “So there’s concerns … about a Christian exodus, which would be unfortunate.”

The Syrian Christian population has dwindled significantly in recent years, from more than a million people before the 2011 civil war to approximately 300,000 today.

Since the church bombing, some Christians have been afraid to meet for church. A group of Kurdish Christians who are currently living in Aleppo have paused their church services, according to Majeed Kurdi, a US-based Iraqi Kurdish pastor working with Freedom Seekers International to provide aid to that group.

“The pastor told me that they are really frustrated and very scared,” he said. “You know, most of the churches, they don’t dare to gather together.” He said women and children rarely attended even before the church attack due to security concerns. Now, the men only gather in small groups and without public notice.

From the northern town of Afrin, the group was originally composed of around 500 Kurdish Christians who are part of the nondenominational Good Shepherd Church. More Kurds have joined the group each time it evacuated a town or refugee camp. Currently they number around 1,200 people, including some non-Christians.

Kurdi said they have not been able to return to Afrin because the government has failed to protect them from terrorist groups ruling over their city. They are living in unfinished houses in Aleppo and facing a food shortage.

In Damascus, churches are still holding services “despite the threats and all the messages radicals are communicating,” Abadi said. The day after the bombing, Christians from different denominations gathered at Saint Elias Church and prayed together, chanting “Jesus is risen.”

This week, the Trump administration revoked sanctions on Syria and removed the foreign terrorist designation for HTS. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the decision “recognizes the positive actions taken by the new Syrian government under President Ahmed al-Sharaa.”

Abadi said Syrians long for better relations with the West and want sanctions to be lifted but wonder whether or not the West will put pressure on Damascus to protect minority groups. “We hope and pray for positive results and impact, but I think it’s also a cautious hope,” Abadi said.

- More from Jill Nelson

Culture

Review

Pixar’s ‘Elio’ Weeps with Those Who Weep

Mia Staub

The new animated movie flopped at the box office. But it understands something important about grief.

Whenever I’m grieving, I find myself attached to something unrelated: a movie, a song, a walking route through my neighborhood. As fires burned through Los Angeles earlier this year, only miles from where I live, I turned to baking. (By the end of the news cycle, I had made multiple loaves of bread, two pavlovas, and at least one cake.) Getting over a breakup, I watched the movie RRR too many times to share without embarrassment. Reeling after an unexpected move that forced me to reestablish my entire community, I walked an average of five miles a day. When I lost my grandfather last year, I started crocheting. I only knew one pattern—but I made that crochet tulip bookmark again and again as if my life depended on it.

I always feel as if these hyperfixations will solve something for me. When my emotions feel uncontrollable, I grasp for control via unrelated activities—through perfecting my bread dough’s proofing time or interlocked rows of stitches.

For Elio (Yonas Kibreab), the eponymous lead in Pixar’s latest animated film, grief manifests in wanting, desperately, to be abducted by aliens. Grief makes Elio feel isolated, as if he doesn’t belong on earth. So he puts his hope in space.

Elio is classic Pixar; I was crying within 15 minutes and regretted not bringing tissues to the theater. The production design is stunning; characters done in the same cutesy animation style (known as bean mouth) as Turning Red, Bao, and Win or Lose turn what could otherwise be scary or grotesque into charming comedy. With writing that’s genuinely entertaining for children and adults, the story gives dignity to children’s inner lives in a manner similar to last year’s The Wild Robot.

After all this praise, a caveat: Elio did poorly in the box office. But as you can tell, I came out of the theater an Elio evangelist.

At the beginning of the film, Olga (Zoe Saldaña), Elio’s aunt and recently appointed legal guardian, struggles to get Elio to eat or talk. He hides under a table, then sneaks away into a closed exhibit about the Voyager spacecraft. A voiceover explains that the spacecraft’s mission is to discover whether humans are truly alone. As Elio lies on the floor, his tears imply that he too is questioning his aloneness.

Elio, it turns out, has recently lost his parents, and his life has been flipped upside down by the tragedy. So has Olga’s; she’s had to put aside her aspirations of being an astronaut to take care of Elio. Multiple coworkers ask why she is not taking advantage of career opportunities—and while Elio never acknowledges these comments, we can infer by his actions that he sees himself as the reason Olga’s life has been put on pause. At one point in the film, she sighs and says, “I didn’t ask for this,” a comment that comes from not bitterness but helplessness.

Elio, an imaginative and inquisitive boy, struggles to communicate his emotions about his loss. Instead, in his grief, he develops a love of space and focuses his energy on getting abducted by aliens. While his obsession seems outlandish at first, we come to understand it. He admits that his home is gone now that his parents are no longer with him, and he interprets Olga’s frustration and misunderstandings as her not wanting or loving him. He struggles to make friends and assumes that his only hope for a community that understands him is somewhere other than earth.

The movie follows Elio as he gets what he wants: Assumed to be the leader of earth, he is tasked with saving the universe from a galactic war. He makes a new friend who helps him feel less alone. In his desire for belonging, he lies to get his new friend’s approval—and he ends up back where he started, stuck on earth.

At last, in the most poignant moment of the film, Elio and Olga learn to grieve together.

Grief is inherently isolating. Others may have experienced a big move or a bad breakup, but their circumstances (not to mention their brain chemistry) can never be identical to yours. Even another friend or relative mourning the same person’s death had a different relationship with the departed person.

Yet while grief is always particular and individual, as Christians, we are also called to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). Sometimes, in spite of the incongruities of our losses, we need others to listen, to sit with us, to share their own stories. That’s what Elio needs from Olga.

Specifically, Elio narrates grief from the perspective of a child, one of the “least of these” (Matt. 25:40) without the words or context to communicate complicated emotions. It’s only when Olga admits her grief that Elio can share his own. Her vulnerability gives him the space to know he can be vulnerable too—and maybe stay earth-side.

Grief isn’t a problem to be solved—not by homemade bread, not by good movies. Long walks and favorite music might be welcome distractions, bringing temporary comfort or control. But our ultimate comfort is Christ, the one who knows exactly each of our particularities and circumstances, the one who can fully empathize with us. As Christ cried out on the cross (Matt. 27:46), we too cry out that the cup of sorrow may pass from us.

Although Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, is the only one who can understand the entirety of our grief, we can find comfort and solace as we see his face in those around us, the people who offer their presence and reassurance. Elio is an example of this solidarity—of learning to weep with those who weep so that ultimately and eventually we can rejoice with those who rejoice.

Mia Staub is editorial project manager at Christianity Today.

- More from Mia Staub

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