A Kenyan Memorial Protest Led to More Deaths

Church leaders near the Parliament building tried to keep more alive.

A protester holds a placard during a remembrance march in Nairobi to commemorate one year since many lost their lives in anti-tax demonstrations.

SOPA Images / Contributor / Getty

Police circled Kenya’s Parliament in Nairobi with barbed wire on June 25 and prepared to defend it with live ammunition and water cannons. One-third of a mile away, All Saints’ Cathedral—an Anglican church and landmark in Nairobi’s central business district—became a place of both refuge and conflict as police chased protestors into the compound that afternoon.

Two weeks later, Kenyans are still reacting to demonstrations in Nairobi and around the country that led to 19 deaths, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.

June 25 was the one-year anniversary of turmoil that led to the reported deaths of 60 Kenyans. Some protesters planned to storm State House—the home of Kenya’s president—but police barricades surrounded it. Demonstrators taunted police and threw rocks and other projectiles at them. Police hurled tear gas canisters and shot at crowds.

About 500 young people ran into the All Saints’ compound, according to provost Evans Omollo, who led the church in opening its gates to anyone who needed shelter.

“We needed to open up space for people who would be harassed,” Omollo said. “We created an elaborate plan of how to receive them. We set out an emergency medical center in partnership with the Kenya Red Cross.”

The provost said police wanted to attack the young people but priests intervened.

“We managed to hold them back and push them back,” he told CT.

Paul Otieno, who escaped into the church compound, said priests provided a buffer between protestors and the police officers who were chasing them. Otieno described how the priests organized transportation to hospitals for the injured. Priests also confronted the police head-on several times, asking them to back down.

The scene mirrored the events of the 2024 demonstrations, when the church opened its gates to 3,000 mostly Gen Z protestors and police launched tear gas canisters into the compound.

Kenyans are wondering how the protest escalated. Benard Kahiga, who protested this year and last, claimed that “police dispersed the peaceful protestors” but shielded masked “goons” wearing hoodies and carrying hoes and sticks who smashed shop windows and robbed stores. Business owners accused police of standing by during looting.

Outside Nairobi, protests that began peacefully degenerated into violent confrontations. Several parts of the country saw vandalism against businesses and police buildings. Many killings were in Nairobi and its environs.

Interior Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen called the demonstrations part of a broader and deliberate effort to destabilize the country.

“This has nothing to do with protests, but an unconstitutional attempt to change the regime,” he said. “The police were able to foil an attempted coup.”

Kahiga disagreed, saying, “We want the cost of living to go down … and the government to cut down on public-sector expenditure by reducing the number of high-level appointments. … We will go back to the streets if things don’t add up.”

Kahiga, a father of two young children and a recent university graduate who said he is unemployed due to lack of opportunities, criticized high public debt and low governmental transparency and accountability. Kenya’s national treasury reported the ratio of public debt to gross domestic product: 63 percent production in 2025, 20 percent higher than in 2010.

Murkomen criticized churches’ response to the conflict: “No church member will speak about how the police were attacked and suffered immense pain. I also know no diplomat will defend our police, because it’s not in their interest for Kenya to be safe.”

But church leaders have spoken out against violence on both sides. The Evangelical Alliance of Kenya is calling for prayer, fasting, and “a hard stop to abductions, torture and killing of Kenyans by security agents or private individuals.”

While condemning the killings by police, Vincent Chahale, the International Justice Mission’s country director for Kenya, said, “Police need to follow guidelines laid down in law when dealing with members of the public.”

Chahale has met with government officials about ways to strengthen community policing and increase trust between police and citizens. His proposals include reforming police service and training police in trauma-informed care. He said all perpetrators of human rights violations should be brought to account.

Limited access to news has also caused tension. During the protests, the Communications Authority of Kenya ordered Kenyan media houses to cease live broadcasts of the protests. The agency switched off television signals for three media stations—NTV, KTN, and K24—and claimed they had violated the directive.

But three civil society organizations—Law Society of Kenya, Police Reforms Working Group, and Kenya Medical Association—replied, “The live broadcast of peaceful protests, and even those that may involve sporadic acts of violence by a few individuals, does not inherently constitute propaganda for war or incitement to violence.”

The organizations said the directive violated Article 33(2) of the Kenyan Constitution, which guarantees freedom of “conscience, religion, belief and opinion.” Kenya’s High Court issued an order suspending the directive later in the day.

Kevin Kung’u, a youth pastor with Renewal Church in Nairobi, participated in both the 2024 and the 2025 protests. He said churches responded much better this year than last, calling for prayer and fasting before and after the June 25 protests: “More churches made a stand. You can see churches whose heart is tuned towards their people.”

Kung’u emphasized the need for churches to stand up to the state in ways that are legal and honoring to God. “Look at the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King Jr. to really understand what our place should be.”

Back at All Saints’ Cathedral, Omollo reflected, “Like the prophets of the Old Testament, we see our role as watchdogs to political players, asking questions [such as] … ‘Why are the young people not able to have access to jobs?’ ‘Why can’t industries be created?’ ‘Why can’t resources being collected in the form of taxes be channeled to make education more affordable?’”

Omollo said he and others in his church are “saddened by the many deaths happening in the country, and we are calling upon the police service to undertake a retraining of police officers so that the mentality of our officers can change. We also call on the general public to refrain from attacking police officers.”

This latest wave of violence happened while Kenyans were still reeling from the killing of Albert Ojwang, a 31-year-old teacher who had criticized the government. Ojwang died in a police cell in Nairobi the day after his June 7 arrest. Boniface Kariuki, a street vendor shot by police ten days later during a protest over Ojwang’s death, died on June 30. Ojwang was buried on Friday, July 4.

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Theology

A Marxist and an Ayatollah Shaped Iran’s Islamic Republic

Jayson Casper

Both politicized the Shiite faith.

A mural on a street in Tehran depicting former head of state Ayatollah Khomeini.

Kaveh Kazemi / Contributor / Getty

(This is part four of a four-part series on Shiite Islam and the Iranian regime. Please click here to read parts one, two, and three.)

While the first three parts of the series explored the history of Shiite Islam and how the lack of an earthly imam formed Shiite political culture, today we look at modern Iran and the rise of the Islamic republic.

Although other Shiite sects exist, Iran adopted the Twelver faith—based on a line of 12 imams. The last of these disappeared, and in the centuries that followed, the sect waited for the Twelfth Imam to return as Mahdi, a messiah-type figure, and establish global Islamic governance. In his absence, Shiites submitted to political authority without admitting its ultimate legitimacy.

Something began to shift in mid-19th century Iran as Western influence seeped into the still-Shiite but increasingly secular monarchy. In 1890, the shah granted an English business monopoly over the local tobacco industry, and in response, the masses protested the blow to national sovereignty and their personal economic interests.

Sitting at home, a leading Twelver scholar then issued a fatwa (legal opinion) declaring that continuing to smoke represented a war against the Twelfth Imam himself. The wave of support for the fatwa drove the shah to reverse his policy, and clerics began to sense their secular influence. Five years later, some joined the push for a national constitution.

Most clerics stayed quiet, however, focusing on ordinary religious affairs. But decades later in the 1960s, frustration with an unpopular shah led Ali Shariati, a Paris-educated sociologist from a clerical family, to apply a Marxist reading to the story of Hussein, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad.

Hailed as “Lord of the Martyrs,” Hussein gathered a small contingent of faithful followers and set out from Medina, the city of Muhammad in today’s Saudi Arabia, to oppose the unjust caliph who ruled from Damascus, Syria. Along the way in Karbala, Iraq, the caliph’s army intercepted Hussein’s approach, and a siege ensued. After ten days of negotiation, the army killed Hussein and his supporters.

The standard Twelver narrative held that as an imam, Hussein had divine foreknowledge of the massacre yet went to his death anyway. Faithful Shiites treated it as a redemptive act compensating for the failure of their ancestors to follow the imam. A Shiite tradition quotes Muhammad as saying, “[Hussein] shall die for the sake of my people.”

By visiting Hussein’s shrine and lamenting during the yearly commemoration of Ashura, they seek fulfillment of another traditional saying: “A single tear shed for Hussein washes away a hundred sins.” Extreme Shiites will even whip themselves with ropes or chains to demonstrate their remorse.

Shariati pushed back on that interpretation, calling for a “Red Shiism” that returned the faith to an activist posture against oppression and away from the “Black Shiism” of mourning. Shariati said Hussein had died valiantly. Though he had failed, in imitation Shiites might yet succeed in taking down the unjust shah. Shariati popularized a new phrase to remember: Every day is Ashura. Every land is Karbala.

The clergy dismissed Shariati’s reinterpretation. But some criticized the passivity of religious scholars in the face of perceived unjust rule and developed a narrative that merged mourning with activism. This group included Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the first supreme leader of the Islamic republic.

Marxism held no appeal to Khomeini, who went on to suppress his socialist and liberal democratic allies in the Iranian Revolution. Yet as early as the 1940s, he demonstrated political tendencies, arguing publicly against the overthrow of the monarchy in favor of reform by a just ruler. When a quietist scholar became the leading marja (clerical source of emulation), Khomeini went quiet as well out of respect. But when the marja died, the ayatollah’s activism returned—and his religious philosophy developed. In 1970, Khomeini published Islamic Government, crafting the theory of wilayat al-faqih, the rule of sharia experts.

For Khomeini the logic was obvious: Government is necessary to defend and promote Islam, at home and abroad. The political ruler is necessarily less well-versed in spiritual matters and should therefore defer to the religious scholar concerning matters of faith. In many ways, this reflected the situation during the Buyid and Safavid dynasties, when clerics legislated on the rulers’ behalf.

Khomeini cut out the middleman. It follows from the above, he believed, that the ideal ruler is a religious scholar. But the imamate exists not only to guide an individual toward righteousness but also to establish Shiite justice in society. These roles were not suspended during occultation, the disappearance of the Twelfth Imam. Rather, the imam’s eventual role as the Mahdi is now administered by the clerics. Khomeini dismissed the long-standing Shiite idea that political power is illegitimate absent the imam.

Khomeini’s Islamic republic established an elected president and parliament. But these operate under the authority of the supreme guide—the senior cleric. Article 5 of the constitution declares that the leadership rights of the Hidden Imam “devolve upon” him. Per Article 111, the elected Assembly of (religious) Experts can dismiss him if they view him as unjust or impious. And the constitution’s preamble calls for progress toward “the establishment of a Divine order” and “the formation of a single world community.”

Yet it makes no mention of when this will happen, nor what the role of the Twelfth Imam is in bringing it to completion. The constitution includes the words Shiites repeat when speaking about the Hidden Imam, “May Allah hasten his reappearance.”

Shiite Muslims esteemed Khomeini as a marja, but there are many maraji. Some are in Qom, the preeminent center of learning in Iran. Others are in Najaf, its rival center in Iraq. From there, fellow Iranian Ayatollah Abolqasem al-Khoei opposed wilayat al-faqih as an innovation in Shiite doctrine. And today, the aged Ayatollah Sistani, also Iranian and widely reputed as the Shiites’ foremost scholar, does the same.

These three figures provide a template for Shiite politics. Khoei represents the traditional Shiite posture of waiting for the Twelfth Imam, in which the role of scholars is to issue religious rulings and to guide society by moral example.

Sistani, however, mediated the democratic transition in Iraq during US occupation by advising Shiites to vote and helping shape their political orientation. But he, much like the Buyid and Safavid dynasties, left governance to the politicians.

Khomeini also awaited the Twelfth Imam. But in the imam’s absence, he encouraged people to strive to create the ideal society envisioned by the 12 imams—including government. Once established, the rule of religious scholars would prevent the nation from veering from Islam.

Within any religion, scholars disagree all the time. But they tend to be united on the essentials—the foundational doctrines and practices of faith. Wilayat al-faqih does not qualify.

Is such rule by sharia scholars consistent with the core concerns of Shiite Islam? It runs counter to the principle of quietism long established by Twelver teaching. But it is an answer—within the development of rare political power—for how Shiites pursue leadership and justice during the Mahdi’s occultation.

Shiites must judge. Christians have a different standard in Jesus.

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Theology

Buddhism Imagines There’s No Heaven

Marvin Olasky

How the ancient faith teaches the transmigration of souls and nonattachment to everything.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

(For the previous article in this series, see here.)

The one Buddhist word many people know is karma. Some say it means good things happen to good people and bad to bad. Payback. Destiny. What goes around comes around. Maybe, but in Buddhism everyone is reincarnated. We are born, we die, we recycle into another life, and whatever we do in this life won’t come around until the next.

Most Buddhists note that we almost never have consciousness of what happened in our previous lives. We have no guarantee of being reborn as human, they say, and we probably won’t be. While Buddhism has many strands, in its classic form people can be reborn into six realms: The top three are gods, demigods, and humans, and the bottom three are ghosts, animals, and creatures in hell.

The bad news is that most people have negative emotions that lead to negative actions that lead to negative karma that can result in rebirth as fish, dogs, or cockroaches. But if we are reborn as humans, what then? Recycling ends only when a person attains nirvana, the extinction of individuality and entrance into the cosmic all.

The cycle may take millions of lives. Individuals progress by dropping all worldly attachments and emphasizing extensive meditation, strenuous physical exercises, and other means of turning off our egos. Buddhism wins support on those grounds from people tired of being consumed by consumerism, but it’s important to note that many Buddhists condemn not only attachment to houses and cars but also attachment to others. The Buddha himself named his son Rahula, which means “obstacle.”

Two Buddhist parables illustrate the sweeping nature of the nonattachment principle. One concerns a man fleeing a tiger. He comes to the edge of a cliff, finds a vine, and climbs down it. When almost down, he discovers that a second tiger awaits him at the bottom while mice chew the vine above him. Instead of trying to concoct a means of escape, he notices a wild strawberry growing on the face of the cliff and eats it. Then the vine breaks, and the tiger gobbles up the man. End of story.

Non-Buddhists might see this tale as one of horror or might wonder why the man didn’t desperately try to distract the tiger by tossing the strawberry to him. But the primary point is that as strawberry is to man, so man is to tiger: We should not be attached to our own lives. Furthermore, we are all part of the whole, and if we think rightly, we will not fear death.

The second Buddhist story concerns a monk, Kātyāyana, who walked through a forest; saw a man, a woman, and a baby joyfully eating lunch; and burst out laughing at the deluded family values of the diners. Kātyāyana told his disciples, “They’re eating a fish that they caught from the lake. That fish was the grandfather in a former life. The dog who is now barking and begging for the fish was the grandmother. The baby the mother is holding to her breast was the husband’s enemy, a man he had killed for assaulting his wife.”

At the core of Buddhism is a sense that our attachments are foolish and that if we get rid of them, we will control our emotions and avoid creating additional suffering for ourselves in this life and future ones. We can beat attachment through meditation. For example, a Buddhist monk told one of the students in my Journalism and Religion class to defeat attachment to a girlfriend’s appearance by looking past her skin and visualizing veins, organs, bacteria, and so on. As one Thai cleric stated, “Lust should be balanced by contemplation of loathsomeness. … Examine the body as a corpse and see the process of decay.”

That animosity toward the body is frequent in parts of Buddhism that depict the body as merely bones, flesh, and fluids in a bag of skin. That view doesn’t note that we are fearfully and wonderfully made; it misses trees and emphasizes gloom about the forest. Some Buddhists oppose spending time to enjoy beauty, since they see matter as illusion. Their standard goal is to concentrate on individual enlightenment and to break out of the cycle of transmigration that Buddhists call samsara—endless wandering.

Some Buddhists say those attached to someone or something should reflect on the impermanence of whatever they love. If Buddhists admire a bell, they should remember all the things that could go wrong with it: It could lose its sound, crack, be dropped and broken. Nonattachment may demand a distancing even from love for ideas.

In practice, it’s important to keep in mind that Buddhism is sometimes based more on tradition than on philosophy. Christians tend to think of religions in terms of doctrine, but Buddhism in Southeast Asia and elsewhere is powerfully shaped by history and culture.

Still, some fundamental things apply as time goes by. In Christian understanding, God changes us. In Buddhist understanding, we change ourselves. Buddhism is full of tips on how to do that through breathing exercises and other means. Many would-be Buddhists find such techniques do not work, but Buddhist leaders often emphasize perseverance and a refusal to be agitated.

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Ideas

Great Falls of Fire

Leah Payne

How Jimmy Swaggart’s legacy of scandal shaped the evangelical landscape.

Thomas S England / Contributor / Getty / Edits by CT

On July 13, Jimmy Swaggart, a prominent Pentecostal televangelist of the 1980s, will be laid to rest in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, leaving behind a legacy of scandal. His ministry was marked by two prostitution-related incidents—first in 1988, when he tearfully confessed on television, and again in 1991, when he defiantly told his congregation, “The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.” Swaggart’s denomination, the Assemblies of God, defrocked him, but his congregation proved to be remarkably forgiving. Although the televangelist’s work never reached its pre-1988 heights, Swaggart remained in the pulpit and on television until the day of his death at age 90.

Swaggart’s sex life was big news, especially in televangelist circles. Other Christian TV stars of the ’80s and ’90s, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, were using their media platforms to promote conservative political policies and rigorous personal standards of holiness when it came to human sexuality. But while Swaggart’s “fall from grace” was salacious, it was certainly not unique. He joined a long line of American celebrity preachers who lived and died (and then were often resuscitated) by the sword of American celebrity culture.

Swaggart’s distinct contribution to American Christianity and culture is interwoven with the legacy of his tight-knit Pentecostal family from Ferriday, a small Delta town in north-central Louisiana. In the 1950s, Ferriday would have seemed like an unlikely place to find figures who would shape mainstream American culture; the town was characterized by deep Pentecostal roots, entrenched poverty, limited educational access, and stark racial and economic divides that marginalized both working-class white people and African Americans.

Yet those seemingly inauspicious factors combined to change the trajectory of American popular culture when figures like Jimmy Swaggart’s cousin Jerry Lee Lewis brought the sights and sounds of Ferriday’s Pentecostal revivals to national audiences. Emerging from a wave of young Southern musicians in the 1950s, Jerry Lee embodied the ecstatic energy of Pentecostal and Holiness church services—both Black and white—and brought it to mainstream American airwaves.

Lewis and others introduced to the nation and then to the world a flamboyant performance style marked by driving rhythms, fervent vocals, and gyrating dance moves rooted in Southern Pentecostalism from places like Macon, Georgia; Tupelo, Mississippi; and Ferriday. As a son of Pentecostalism, Lewis caused a pop culture sensation—and quite a bit of public consternation—when he transformed the Pentecostal exclamation “great balls of fire,” used to describe encounters with the Holy Spirit from Acts 2 that led to the signature practice of speaking in tongues, into a provocative anthem with unmistakable sexual undertones.

Like Jerry Lee Lewis, Swaggart was an accomplished musician—but he was also among those who condemned rock as the “Devil’s music.” Conservative white Protestant critiques of rock-and-roll in the 1950s often reflected anti-Black racism, portraying the sounds of the genre, rooted in African American music forms like jazz and boogie-woogie, as especially distasteful, occult, and morally corrupting. And Pentecostals like Swaggart—both Black and white—were deeply frustrated that the sounds of their churches were used by “worldly” rock-and-rollers. Rock was, for them, a particular spiritual threat, mocking God and desecrating what was holy.

Jimmy Swaggart may have decried rock. But in the end, the same environment that helped birth the Devil’s music fostered the spiritual intensity, commercialism, celebrity, and populist appeal that would later define his Pentecostal preaching.

Like the equally infamous Assemblies of God televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Swaggart commodified Pentecostal culture by packaging its emotional fervor, miracle narratives, and apocalyptic urgency into polished, watchable television. As Christian television expanded globally, Swaggart translated the ecstatic worship of backwoods Southern revival tents into a mass-media empire that reached millions. His broadcasts featured fiery sermons, gospel music, altar calls, and plenty of opportunities to purchase merchandise.

In this way, both Swaggart and Lewis helped turn a once-marginal religious tradition into one of the largest, fastest-growing forms of Christianity in the United States and beyond. In fact, recent research funded by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) reveals that charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity is rapidly growing within the population of self-identified “born-again” or evangelical Christians, reshaping both the religious and the political landscape in the US.

Historically marginalized by evangelical leaders, charismatic practices that Swaggart promoted, such as speaking in tongues, prophecy, and divine healing, have gained broad acceptance, especially among younger generations. Gen Z and millennial Christians are more likely to attend charismatic or Pentecostal services, which suggests that the future of evangelicalism may be increasingly charismatic. As traditional evangelical denominations decline and nondenominational charismatic congregations ascend, the rise of charismatic Christianity may increasingly shape the future of Christian conservative activism in America.

Like Swaggart’s congregation in Louisiana, some charismatics and Pentecostals have shown a high tolerance for disgrace. Assemblies of God, the denomination that defrocked Swaggart, is now the denomination most supportive of President Donald Trump, a man with his own lengthy history of defying the traditional moral claims of conservative white Protestantism. In charismatic church circles, Swaggart’s return to Christian ministry after public embarrassment has been imitated by celebrity preachers like Ted Haggard, Carl Lentz, and many others who endure public embarrassment and find their way back to the spotlight, albeit often in diminished fashion.

Eventually, in spite of critiques from church gatekeepers, Pentecostals and charismatics found a way to create rock music that conservative white Protestants could enjoy and endorse. Evangelical media makers turned that music into a profitable market niche known as contemporary Christian music, which became the soundtrack for evangelical activism in the late 20th century. Through their knack for utilizing the power of media and the marketplace, Pentecostal and charismatic musicians now create a significant portion of new church music in America.

The story of Jimmy Swaggart, then, is not only the story of one famous Christian leader’s lasciviousness. It is also the story of how celebrity culture and mass media are shaping the American evangelical landscape. If evangelical voters had been of the Moral Majority ilk, for instance, Trump’s political career probably would have been quite short. But for communities shaped by Swaggart’s legacy, scandal does not have to be an end. It can also be a beginning.

Leah Payne is professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary and an affiliated scholar at the Public Religion Research Institute, as well as host of the podcast
Spirit and Power: Charismatics and Politics in American Life. Her book, God Gave Rock & Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music, won Christianity Today’s 2024 book award for history and biography.

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Ideas

Disdain, Dallas Willard, and Donald Trump

John Murdock

“Anger is the most fundamental problem in human life,” Willard taught. Last summer’s assassination attempt was a vivid illustration.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty

“Anger is the most fundamental problem in human life.” So said Dallas Willard. Yet despite my admiration for Willard, whose books I’ve dutifully kept on my shelves if not always before my eyes, this particular conclusion was one I long questioned. Perhaps that was because I could internally categorize my own anger as righteous, a trick I couldn’t manage with my lust and pride.

Last July, when a would-be assassin fired on Donald Trump in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania, Willard’s words sprang to mind again. I began to question my prior skepticism anew. At that moment, mismanaged anger certainly presented itself as a fundamental problem, and the sadly successful assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband this June has only amplified my concern.

After the Butler shooting, I reengaged with Willard’s sweeping classic work The Divine Conspiracy and sought to uncover the story of the man behind it. Willard’s biography involves an unlikely journey from undergoing family tragedy in rural Missouri to becoming a philosophy professor at the University of Southern California. There, he argued for the reality of reality in an academic milieu often content with declaring all to be a mere illusion.

But beyond any biographical detail, the true source of Willard’s declaration about the problematic primacy of anger was Jesus, whom Willard asserted was not just nice or good but smart—really smart. “My hope is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus,” Willard boldly wrote at the opening of his book, “especially among those who believe they already understand him.”

Willard argued that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was not just pulling marbles from a bag, presenting individual gems of wisdom that could be considered independently. Instead, the order of the presentation mattered greatly. “It is the elimination of anger and contempt,” he asserted, “that [Jesus] presents as the first and fundamental step toward the rightness of the kingdom heart.”

Conversely, today it is the systematic elevation of anger and contempt that is often rewarded across the political spectrum. One can argue whether Trump is a symptom, a cause, a catalyst, or a victim (or some combination of all those), but doubtless he is today’s central figure in America’s political culture of anger.

Trump’s famous fist-pumping response in Butler—plus a well-placed American flag and photographer—may have cemented his 2024 victory. His cry of “Fight! Fight! Fight!” would be emblazoned on the minds of millions and on the front of nearly as many T-shirts. In May, Trump replaced a White House portrait of former president Barack Obama with a canvas depicting the moment.

For me, though, the most-lasting memory from watching the events at Butler unfold on television was seeing a gray-haired man who, with his middle finger extended and cheeks flushed with rage, turned his face away from Trump, who was being loaded into an SUV behind him, and toward the cameras. From behind sunglasses, he yelled at the top of his lungs with words that matched his sign language. (You can catch a glimpse of him, in a red shirt and dark ball cap, on the right side of this video at the 2:15 mark.)

Were his curses directed toward the media, the would-be assassin, or just an amorphous them? Whatever his answer might be, from that moment, it seemed our national anger would only rise.

Though some of Trump’s supporters have declared him a changed man since the shooting, sadly he remains a contributor to that bitterness and mutual contempt, routinely calling people who pose obstacles to his agenda “fool,” “scum,” and “sleazebag.” These are not the words of a man who has absorbed the meaning of Jesus’ preaching on anger, where he taught that “anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell” (Matt. 5:22). Jesus was not prescribing a new, pick-your-insults-carefully legalism here, Willard explained, but “giving us a revelation of the preciousness of human beings.”

In fairness to Trump, this kind of contempt has been with us since the days of Cain. The president is far from alone in missing the enormity of the fact that every person on the planet is created in the image of God. As C. S. Lewis put it, “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”

Still, the Christian conviction is that the dignity of the imago Dei is universal and must be extended not only to those holding the levers of power but also to those on the lowest rungs of influence and respectability. The imago Dei must be extended to Trump himself, and it must be extended to people like Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man whose legal saga—a wrongful deportation to an El Salvador prison, followed by court battles, then weeks of administration foot-dragging, and finally a return to the US to face freshly minted criminal charges that reportedly led one prosecutor to resign—has come to symbolize a larger debate around due process and individual rights.

That dignity is not tied to any special merit Abrego Garcia may boast. Indeed, some enthusiasm for his cause waned as evidence emerged that Abrego Garcia may have beaten his wife and been involved in human trafficking. Members of the Trump administration and their allies have pointed to those allegations to speak of Abrego Garcia in angry, dehumanizing terms.

Harsh comments from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt and Attorney General Pam Bondi have been particularly striking to me, as both women prominently wear crosses around their necks. “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (James 3:9–10).

Willard described contempt as “a kind of studied degradation of another.” For those of us dismayed by that degradation in our politics, however, the task at hand is resisting the temptation to degrade the degraders. I’ve fallen prey to this myself in moments of anger at the president and his policies, and I have nothing good to show for it. “The delicious morsel of self-righteousness that anger cultivated always contains comes at a high price in the self-righteous reaction of those we cherish anger toward,” as Willard warned. “And the cycle is endless as long as anger has sway.”

Breaking that cycle is not easy, but it is essential for our personal and communal well-being. “To cut the root of anger,” Willard wrote, “is to wither the tree of human evil.” That is not a call to ignore injustice or, worse yet, to embrace evil under a cultish loyalty masquerading as love. Rather, according to Willard, “the answer is to right the wrong in persistent love.” We do so recognizing, as Willard also observed, that if you “find a person who has embraced anger, … you find a person with a wounded ego.”

This is the orientation that can produce a book title like I Love Idi Amin from the Anglican bishop Festo Kivengere, who in the 1970s opposed the Ugandan dictator without demonizing him. Kivengere expressed love and concern for one called “Africa’s Hitler”—and he is far from being the only model available to us. I have met the Nassar family of Bethlehem, Christians who, facing anger from every side, nevertheless live by the motto “We refuse to be enemies.”

Last summer, the assassination attempt in Butler reminded me of the great challenge of anger. I prayed then and still pray today that the experience will change Trump himself, helping him understand anger’s sheer destructiveness to those who wield it and those it targets. But at least for now, the cycle of anger continues in America. As individuals, we can’t quickly change that national dynamic. But we can take steps to address that cycle in our own hearts.

“Nothing can be done with anger that cannot be done better without it,” Willard concluded. We do not need bitterness and contempt to oppose evil well. Kivengere looked to Jesus forgiving his unrepentant executioners from the cross and realized what that example meant for his own thinking about the dictator who had killed his friends and forced him into exile. “As evil as Idi Amin was,” he asked, “how can I do less [than forgive] him?”

Christ called his disciples to “take up their cross” (Matt. 16:24–26), and Paul wrote of his desire to know “the fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10, NASB). In that vein, Willard taught, “Jesus did not die on the cross so that we wouldn’t have to die on the cross. He died on the cross so that we could join him in his death on the cross.” Willard called this the “meaning of the cross in spiritual growth.” And one way that we join with Jesus is by surrendering our will to God and rejecting the anger we coddle in our hearts.

John Murdock is an attorney who writes from Texas.

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Theology

Shiites Await a Savior. How Should They Govern Now?

Jayson Casper

Rule by the minority Muslim sect is rare in history, but two premodern dynasties help explain Iran.

Shiite Muslim devotees reach to receive a blessing from the tomb of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, at the Imam's shrine in the holy city of Karbala, Iraq.

HUSSEIN FALEH / Contributor / Getty

(This is part three of a four-part series on Shiite Islam and the Iranian regime. Please click here to read parts one and two.)

The previous articles centered on the origins of Shiite Islam and its political history to examine the Shiite basis for Iran’s vision of government, one that is based on the central concept of wilayat al-faqih, translated literally as “guardianship of the jurist,” meaning the rule of a sharia expert.

A brief recap: The two primary theological concerns of Shiism are Islamic justice and leadership, both represented in the figure of the imam. The large majority of Shiites, including most in Iran, are called Twelvers since they follow the line of 12 imams beginning with Ali, Muhammad’s cousin, whom they believe should have immediately inherited the prophet’s political position—but was wrongly denied.

Iran returned Shiites to power. Prior to the Islamic Republic, the ruling shah belonged to the sect but was a secular and modernizing leader. But does the restoration of religious government honor or betray the Shiite heritage? To evaluate, we will now examine the end of the lineage of imams and the two rare instances when Twelver dynasties ruled in Iran—without a rightful imam.

Ali did eventually lead the Islamic community as the fourth caliph, and Sunni Muslims agree his governance was just. Yet when civil war and assassination ended Ali’s rule, Sunnis controlled the empire and often persecuted Shiites as rival claimants to Muhammad’s mantle. The imams counseled patience to the Shiite community, knowing they were a vulnerable political minority. They focused on religion, guiding their followers in the right understanding of Islam.

But in AD 874, the Twelfth Imam, a five-year-old boy, disappeared.

This threw the Twelver community into confusion, and many drifted toward a rival Shiite sect called Ismailism, which had broken off from the Twelvers in AD 765 and ruled a powerful dynasty from Cairo. But Twelvers said that the child did not simply vanish but that Allah had preserved his life in occultation.

In astronomy, the term refers to one celestial body passing in front of another and blocking its view. Here Shiites said that Allah was hiding the imam from public view—especially from the Sunni authorities—until he could grow up and restore Shiites to Islamic political leadership. In the immediate aftermath, the treasurer of the deceased 11th imam continued to collect the Shiite tithe and answer believers’ questions, claiming to communicate with the child in secret.

After nearly 70 years passed without the imam’s reappearance, this “minor” (or short-term) occultation gave way to a “major” occultation that lasts to this day. Twelver scholars held that Allah has preserved the Twelfth Imam for centuries at the peak of his physical power. He is popularly believed to appear in dreams and visions to advise and encourage the community.

But one day, Shiites say, he will return in power as the Mahdi, the awaited one who would lead Muslims back to the just practice of their religion. Jesus, they believe, will appear at his side in assistance, and all the world will submit to Islam. The scholars counseled Shiites to endure patiently their place in the Sunni caliphate until then but not admit to its religious legitimacy.

In AD 934, however, a Shiite revolt led by Zaydis succeeded in the Caspian region of what was then Persia. Zaydis differed from Twelvers, as they believed the imam’s legitimacy rested less on his spiritual heritage and more on his commitment to confront injustice. They established the Buyid dynasty and switched religious orientation to adopt a Twelver position as their territory expanded to Baghdad, in modern-day Iraq. Some scholars say that once in power, Buyid leaders preferred subjects without a religious heritage of revolt.

Perhaps recognizing the limitations of regional geopolitics, they reached an accord with the Sunni Abbasid caliphate and sided with it against the rival Ismailis in Egypt. Tolerant toward their Sunni-majority population, the Buyids defended the religious legitimacy of their dynasty by supporting Shiite scholars. Otherwise, why should they be independent of the Sunni caliph?

Twelvers were confused. But also privileged. The Mahdi had not returned, yet Shiites held sway. Scholars deduced that ultimate political authority was still illegitimate absent the Twelfth Imam. Participation in government, however, no longer felt treasonous. Cooperation was possible as long as the authorities ruled consistently with Shiite conceptions of justice and protected their community.

In time, both the Buyid and the Ismaili dynasties collapsed, and Sunnis resumed control over the Arab and Persian worlds. But it was the Ottoman Turks who eventually rose in strength, creating a sultanate that absorbed the Sunni caliphate in 1517.

At the turn of the century, however, a different Turkish clan emerged from the Caucasus highlands to found the Safavid Empire in Iran. During the centuries in between, Shiites did not have a state of their own. Sometimes they faced persecution and had to hide their faith. Other times, if they did not rebel, the Sunni caliphs left them alone. The heritage of Ali, representing the family of Muhammad, protected them somewhat since it held great symbolic religious weight.

The Safavids also adopted a Twelver identity and, during their two-century rule, forcefully imposed it to create a Shiite majority. The shah—or king—defined his dynasty in opposition to Sunni powers and to minimize internal opposition.

But Shiism took hold. It appealed to Iranians as a national faith against the dominance of Arabs and Turks. The shah claimed to descend from Ali and to rule as the Hidden Imam’s representative. This accorded with the Iranian political culture that had viewed the leader as semi-divine since its origins in the ancient Zoroastrian religion. Iranians also cherished the tradition of a social contract that upholds the ruler’s legitimacy. The Safavids preached the example of Ali and brought prosperity to the nation. Constantly at odds with stronger Sunni powers, the people also resonated with the idea of a Mahdi who would lead them to eventual victory.

Both Buyids and Safavids faced the same problem, however: How should they legislate their state without an imam? The original 12 imams could directly interpret the Quran and Muslim traditions. In their absence, scholars now had to do the work—supported officially by the governing regime.

The leading experts ruled that multiple sharia scholars could produce different but equally valid verdicts. A system developed akin to peer review in Western academia. Seminaries trained the religiously inclined, who were licensed and rose in clerical rank as senior scholars recognized their aptitude. And in the late 18th century, Twelvers developed a position for the top Shiite scholar: the marja al-taqlid, meaning the source of emulation for other to follow.

The prestige of the marja al-taqlid is comparable to that of the Catholic pope. Islam, however, lacks an authoritative religious establishment, so the idea developed that individual Shiites could follow a legitimate sharia scholar of their choice. While the marja al-taqlid was undoubtedly a senior cleric, others felt inclined to follow other figures. Several maraji (the Arabic plural of marja) emerged as their students multiplied in number and esteem. Some lived in Sunni areas, others in Twelver domains. But all recognized that ultimate governance rested solely with the Mahdi.

Christians and Jews are no strangers to the idea of waiting for the return and ultimate rule of a Messiah and living in the tension of what is not yet here. The political nature of Islam complicates it further for Shiites. Is wilayat al-faqih the best solution? Part four of this series concludes with modern-day Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

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Ideas

God Is Jealous, but Never Envious

Andrew Wilson

Columnist; Contributor

We often treat these words as synonyms. In Scripture, they’re near opposites.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Wikimedia Commons

In Deuteronomy, as Moses addresses Israel on the eve of entering the Promised Land, he makes regular mention of God’s jealousy. This must be one of the least celebrated of God’s attributes. It is certainly one of the most misunderstood.

In our culture, jealousy is almost always portrayed as a bad thing. “O, beware, my lord, of jealousy,” says Iago to Othello in Shakespeare’s play. “It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock / The meat it feeds on.” Or think of the chorus of “Mr. Brightside”by The Killers, with its wails against “jealousy, / Turning saints into the sea, / Swimming through sick lullabies, / Choking on your alibis.” Many even use the word—wrongly, I think—to describe the seething resentment that rival siblings might feel over each other’s toys.

In this context, proclaiming God’s jealousy can feel like an embarrassing reminder of the overweening pettiness of Bronze Age religion. A jealous God? How primitive! This awkwardness leaves noticeable gaps in our worship services and our private spiritual lives. When was the last time you sang a song praising God for being jealous? When did you last hear a sermon on the subject? When did you last mention it in prayer?

Yet God’s jealousy is integral to the way Scripture describes him. It appears in the Ten Commandments: “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God” (Ex. 20:5). It is revealed as part of God’s name: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (34:14). It is repeated several times in Deuteronomy, and it undergirds the theology of Ezekiel, Nahum, and Zechariah in particular. There is no getting away from it.

Here is the problem. In modern English, most people do not distinguish between jealousy and envy. The two words sound identical. Yet in reality they are near opposites. Envy is a fierce desire for something that rightly belongs to someone else. In Scripture, we see it exposed as a disorder-sowing (James 3:16), bone-rotting (Prov. 14:30), Christ-killing (Matt. 27:18) work of the flesh. Jealousy, by contrast, is a fierce desire for something that rightly belongs to you. Envy is when you want to sleep with someone else’s husband or wife. Jealousy is when you don’t want anyone else to sleep with yours.

When we grasp that, we can see why a perfectly faithful lover would feel jealous when jilted by a loved one. In fact, no other response would be fitting. If I did not feel jealous about someone else having an affair with my wife or taking my children from me, I would only be showing how little I loved them.

The point is much sharper when we consider things from God’s perspective. Having taken the Israelites out of Egypt and carried them through the wilderness, how could he greet his people building idols and worshiping foreign gods with anything but fierce jealousy? That is how lovers react when they are betrayed—and the greater the love, the greater the betrayal and the greater the jealousy.

This is personal for Moses in Deuteronomy 4. He has experienced the consequences of God’s jealousy for Israel: “The Lord was angry with me because of you, and he solemnly swore that I would not cross the Jordan. … I will die in this land” (vv. 21–22). But he is not bitter. Rather, he urges the people to learn from his experience. “Be careful not to forget the covenant of the Lord your God that he made with you; do not make for yourselves an idol” (v. 23), because “the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (v. 24).

Happily, Moses’s sermon does not end there. Granted, it immediately mentions the possibility—later a reality—that Israel may provoke God’s jealousy by falling into idolatry after settling in the land (v. 25) and face destruction and exile as a result (vv. 26–27). But then comes hope. If, after all this has happened, Israel comes to its senses in the pigsty of exile and seeks the Lord, then “you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul” (v. 29).

This is a prophecy, not a mere possibility (v. 30). Because, besides being a jealous God, “the Lord your God is a merciful God” (v. 31). His jealousy brings judgment, but his mercy brings restoration. His jealousy will take his people into exile, and his mercy will bring them back again. And ultimately, the consuming fire of God’s jealousy and the overflowing waters of his mercy will meet at the cross.

Andrew Wilson is teaching pastor at King’s Church London and author of Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West.

Spirited Life: Spirited Life is a collision between biblical reflection and charismatic practice, aiming to make people happier in God.

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Theology

Today Is Dharma Day

Marvin Olasky

What you should know about the basics of Buddha’s life and teaching.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Unsplash

Buddhism benefits from a superb public image in America, judging by the comments students offered during the eight years I taught a class called Journalism and Religion at the University of Texas at Austin. They described Buddhism as “peace, love, and goodness. Very calm. Super chilled out. Centered. Nonviolent.”

CT’s foray into Jewish history last month looked at Orthodox Judaism, the oldest of the three main schools of American Judaism. To go deeper into Buddhism, we should examine the older of the two main schools, Theravada Buddhism, which has one of its major festivals today, July 10. Asalha Puja, known also as Dharma Day, commemorates the first sermon by Siddhartha Gautama, known as Buddha (“enlightened one”). He spoke to 5 people. Now Buddhists may number more than 1 billion.

Buddha’s sermon is a good place to start, because classic Buddhism, like Christianity, centers on the life of one person. Siddhartha Gautama, born near the border of present-day India and Nepal, lived sometime in the sixth and fifth centuries BC (his followers disagree on the dates). The standard story is that Siddhartha’s parents were the king and queen of the Shakya kingdom, one of many Indian principalities. (Others, though, say that the Shakyas had no king but were ruled by an oligarchic council of elders.)

According to legend, Siddhartha’s mother dreamed the night before his birth that an elephant carrying a lotus flower in its trunk entered her womb through the right side of her body, signifying that the child would be great. Soon after birth, the infant Siddhartha purportedly walked seven steps in each of the four directions. Lotus flowers sprouted where his feet touched the earth, and the baby announced, “No further births have I to endure, for this is my last body. Now shall I destroy and pluck out by the roots the sorrow that is caused by birth and death.”

The story is that Siddhartha lived in great luxury and wealth and that his father, King Śuddhodana, tried so hard to keep him from being upset that when Siddhartha went out for a walk, the king employed smiling people to fill the path. Buddha later said of his childhood, “I was delicately nurtured. … I had three palaces: one for winter, one for summer and one for the rainy season, [where] during the four months of the rains, entertained only by female musicians, I did not come down from the palace.”

When he was 29, though, sheltered Siddhartha saw “a sick man, suffering and very ill, fallen and weltering in his own excreta.” Agitated upon seeing a dead body, he viewed a wandering monk serene in the face of such misery. Siddhartha wanted to be like him and made the Great Renunciation: “Give up the princely life and become a wandering ascetic.”

He immediately left his wife and infant son and headed south to centers of spiritual discipline. Siddhartha hopped from teacher to teacher, unsatisfied, and almost starved himself over the next six years: “All my limbs became like some withered creepers with knotted joints … the skin of my belly came to be cleaving to my backbone.” He became so weak that he saw he could not gain enlightenment that way and started taking care of himself.

Within the traditional Buddhist story, then came a night when Siddhartha sat at the base of a tree and liberated his mind by realizing what he called the Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering. Suffering is caused by our attachments to the world and people around us. We end suffering by developing nonattachment to anything and anyone. We advance our consciousness by taking the Noble Eightfold Path.

That path includes a lot of “thou shalt nots.” No lies, abusive or divisive speech, idle chatter. No killing or injuring, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct. No trading in weapons, slaves, meat, liquor, poisons. It also includes “thou shalts”: Resolve to leave home and renounce worldliness. Avoid unwholesome environments and situations. Monitor your thoughts. Meditate.

Dharma Day celebrates the first time Buddha communicated those Four Noble Truths that together make up dharma, the ethical standard for Buddhists. His sermon is the Buddhist equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount—except that while Jesus spoke of those who are blessed, Buddha emphasized the bad news: “Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful.”

The only way out is “renunciation, relinquishment, release.” Buddha spent the next 45 years of his life traveling on foot through Northern India and preaching about avoiding fleshly delights. In that way, Buddhism is the opposite of Islam, which emphasizes the physical world. And yet we do have to eat to live, so part of celebrating Dharma Day is eating simple food—traditionally laba congee, porridge with rice.

Shortly before death, when asked who would succeed him as the authority concerning matters of doctrine, Buddha replied that each individual’s sense of dharma—the cosmic law underlying all existence—should rule. Buddhism thus became more a general philosophy than a fixed doctrine.

It’s hard to know in Buddhist teaching what authentically came from Buddha. He had many disciples and a large following, but his words were not written down until about 250 years later. And then the writing went on and on. The scriptures of one of the two main divisions of Buddhism, Theravada, are 11 times longer than the Bible. The scriptures of the other main division, Mahayana, are more numerous still, encompassing more than 5,000 volumes.

This means no one can carry all of Buddhist scripture to temple worship as many Christians carry the Bible to church. Sects typically emphasize favorite sutras (writings) and downplay others. Moreover, various Buddhist leaders quarrel about even the core teachings of their faith. Individual teachers have great latitude to shape their particular kinds of Buddhism. They sometimes become heated in criticizing other Buddhists.

But with all the battles, the appeal of Buddhism is strong for those who have tasted the world’s pleasures and found them wanting. Buddhism, born and developed in a culture of great poverty and suffering, opposes the greed, hatred, and ignorance that naturally envelop us. And it fits with the spirit of an age in which many think we humans can turn ourselves into wise beings without needing God.

- More from Marvin Olasky

Inkwell

Stop Dressing like a Transcendentalist

Carter Davis Johnson

Maybe relating our fashion choices to dead philosophers can keep us from disastrous consequences.

"The Spy" by Vasily Vasilevich Vereshchagin

The wake-up call came over the loudspeaker and sank into our barrack’s stone walls. It was still dark outside and cold. I shifted under my quilt and guessed the time. When Blake returned from the showers, there would be an eight-minute window to get up, break down our institute-issued mattresses and wooden bed frames, put on the correct uniform, and walk to formation.

Our heavy wooden door swung open. My mental timer started. I rolled out of bed and wordlessly began the day. I put on “winter class dyke,” our cold weather uniform: grey wool pants that were notoriously itchy until you wore them for a few days, and a long-sleeve black button-up with a corresponding black tie.

I tucked the tie between the shirt’s second and third button, a mid-century GI style that our superintendent preferred, then opened the door and listened. The Virginia Military Institute bustled in the darkness. Another muffled announcement: “Class Dyke. Rain cape. Rain cap cover.”

Naturally, we all tired of the strict regimen and sameness of our uniforms. When leaving post for an open weekend or furlough, we relished putting on normal clothes. It was always odd seeing friends in civilian attire; 90 percent of the time with them was spent in uniform. The oddness was also due to the wild divergences in style, until then undisclosed. There were Hawaiian shirts, cargo pants, hipster fits, tactical clothing brands, wild fluorescent colors, skater fits, tank tops, and other methods of asserting one’s individuality. The result: cacophony.

But somehow, outside of their uniforms, my friends seemed less like themselves.

Swathes of modern dressers, just like Virginia Military Institute cadets, are trying to assert their identity against the group, against that unnerving sameness that pervades modern style. Walk across a college campus or a shopping mall, and you will notice waves upon waves of athleisure wear and ubiquitous configurations of popular trends. In response to this homogeneity, many dressers are desperately trying to be unique. Bright colors. Bizarre mismatches. Ironic kitsch. Clothes that are sausage-link-skinny or grocery-bag-baggy.

As Ezra Pound and the Vorticist movement declared a century ago, the only rule is to make it new. Uniqueness has become the standard by which fashion is measured. Yet uniqueness is no longer measured in relation to the town or community; one must compete with a global network of new. Social media is a constant stream of trends and fads that leave the individual scrambling to find something exceptional.

The current proliferation of options means a further individualization of style. Clothes have largely abandoned utilitarian purposes. We no longer think about what we wear primarily in regard to a vocation. Although we have “work clothes,” these are only a fraction of our wardrobes.

Americans buy four times as many new articles of clothes as they did in 2000, even though one study found that we don’t wear 50 percent of the clothes we own. Even worse, every year, we prematurely throw out approximately 400 billion dollars’ worth of clothing. Of course, fast fashion accelerates our already extreme consumption and waste. Manufacturers are producing 100 billion new garments (globally) per year. This is more than ten times the number of people on earth.

This surplus, symptomatic of a broader affluenza that is both personally and ecologically harmful, has also changed how we see our clothes. They have become signals, more than ever, of how we conceive of ourselves. Today, it’s less about representing a group or a socioeconomic status and more about defining a personal ethos or, in modern parlance, a vibe.

When we conceptualize style as a project in order to assert the authentic self against the masses, we begin to dress like Transcendentalists. Transcendentalism was an early 19th-century literary and philosophical movement that sought to reestablish individual flourishing in the face of a rapidly industrializing economy, a default intellectual conformity, and a tumultuous political era, which would soon culminate in the American Civil War.

If we peel back our current anxiety about unique style, we find that this tradition of thought has helped define the American cultural imagination for 200 years. Understanding the dangers of Transcendentalism might help us reconceive how the individual can relate to society, revealing how our style can move past the reactionary and endless search for newness.

This tradition is not the only one to have contributed to the hyper-individualization we see in culture today. There are many major philosophers and thinkers who have described the relationship between the individual and society as antagonistic. There’s Nietzsche’s fictional character, Zarathustra, who heroically rejects the masses of “last men.” There’s Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, a bleak book in which the individual willingly accepts societal oppression in exchange for safety. And, moving out of the 19th century, there’s Camus and Sartre and their individualized brand of existentialism.

But in this essay, I’m interested in this widespread and pervasive movement (largely in the West) that has made the individual the arbiter of identity. The Transcendentalists, specifically Ralph Waldo Emerson, offer a clear presentation of the broad themes that these various philosophies uphold, making Transcendentalism an ideal representative.

In Emerson’s famous essay “Self-Reliance,” he writes, “Man is timid and apologetic. He is no longer upright. He dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage.” Emerson fears that true education and meaningful action are giving way to mimesis, where the individual merely parrots a sage or popular opinion, never daring to think for themselves.

Although this danger was more pressing in the early 19th century when tradition held an authoritative position in social and educational life, we still face the essential danger of groupthink, which has proliferated rapidly through digital communication.

Surveying his cultural moment, Emerson concluded that “society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” This persistent struggle between society and the individual forms the bedrock of his response. If society is a crushing force, the individual must respond with gritty independence.

Emerson counsels, “Insist on yourself; never imitate”—a mantra that ought to sound extremely familiar. It’s posted (in some version) every day on every social media platform. It’s behind the clerk at the DMV. It’s hanging in your dentist’s office. It’s proclaimed by influencers and politicians and your grumpy uncle. We don’t exaggerate when claiming that this insistence upon the self is a fundamental ethos of the American national identity.

I certainly don’t want to demonize Transcendentalism. It can offer a helpful and often necessary corrective. It startles us out of the dangerous lullaby of rote tradition. It asks us to take account, to face ourselves. It calls for heroism.

As another early 19th-century American, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, would write, “Be not like dumb driven cattle, be a hero in the strife.” In this heroic approach to the self, Transcendentalism urges us to embrace action and accountability for our lives. Thoreau’s famous opening to Walden, “I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” is one of my favorite passages in American literature. He earnestly desires to see for himself, to “cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner.”

Transcendentalism is a philosophy with a pumping, vital heart. Yet its adherents’ correction—as with so many other philosophies—overreaches, swinging us toward consequences that can be disastrous if left unchecked.

The first consequence of rampant Transcendentalism is that the individual becomes isolated from others and tradition. “It is only as man puts off from himself all external support and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail,” Emerson writes. “He is weaker by every recruit to his banner.”

The strong Transcendentalist is by necessity alone; Emerson calls for the removal of all external support. Solitude is not always lonely, but when all support is cut and every “recruit” turned away, the individual is dangerously isolated. When our actions and thoughts lose the barometer of community, they can careen wildly. Hermitage is almost always unhealthy.

Furthermore, if human community weakens the individual, then nonhuman community, like tradition and culture, present a similar danger to the Transcendentalist. Tradition is a form of communion, with Chesterton memorably describing it as the “democracy of the dead.” Transcendentalism, however, casts a disparaging eye on tradition. Recall Emerson’s lament about the “saint or sage,” admonishing readers to preference individual belief over inherited wisdom.

Second, Transcendental individualism is erratic and volatile, closely correlated with increased isolation. Because the individual is only accountable to himself, he achieves an odd infallibility. Listen to Emerson’s confidence: “Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? … Speak what you think to-day in words as hard as cannon-balls, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.”

The emphasis is not on truth or congruity; instead, the most important factor is that the words be spoken with resolute conviction, “as hard as cannon-balls.” Authenticity becomes the measurement of our speech, regardless of whether our “authenticities” vary from day to day.

Our search for a unique, individual style manifests both of these philosophical consequences. Our wardrobes are increasingly defined by isolation (you have to be “one in a million”) and volatility (the trends are wild and fast; see “sardine summer”). Because we have abandoned the judgment and taste of tradition, we are left with the avant-garde. And the avant-garde is constantly changing, constantly pushing further. A cursory review of the Met Gala displays this trajectory. There is nowhere to rest.

As long as we dress like Transcendentalists and set ourselves against society, we’ll be trapped between the dichotomy of dressing like the dull masses or breaking with all convention. While this binary is ultimately false, it does highlight a central dilemma: Can I express myself without being ostentatious? Can I imitate others without being dominated by tradition?

We can give an affirmative answer to both questions, but to do so, we need a different paradigm to capture the relationship between the individual and society. I’d like to offer one as an exemplar: the interpersonalism of Martin Buber.

In his famous book I and Thou, Buber explores two distinct modes of relating to the world: I-It and I-Thou. The first mode (I-It) relates to the world as a series of objects that can be used instrumentally and coordinated within our tasks. The second mode (I-Thou) relates to the world as a reciprocal encounter that transcends instrumental use. In an I-Thou encounter, we are influenced by the other as we influence them, and neither of us is coerced into a relationship of “use.” Buber extends these paradigms in a number of philosophical, sociological, and theological directions.

Crucially, beneath each of these extensions is a fundamental claim about the self: “Man becomes an I through a You.” Rather than positioning the individual contra others, Buber makes the relationship between others (and the Other, God) the central feature of our identities. We have no conception of a self without the other, through whom our self is constituted and contrasted.

Both ways of relating are necessary, but each way is dependent on context. In an I-Thou relationship, both parties mediate each other; imagine two children playing with a jump rope, shaking their respective handles. The waves sent from one side influence the other and vice versa.

In an I-It relationship, only one side mediates, attempting to control and use the other. In this case, only one of our players swings the rope. The other side is motionless and completely defined by the movement of the other. Obviously, this is appropriate in some cases (such as bringing my coffee mug to my lips) but harmful in other cases (such as trying to emotionally control my friend).

Importantly—don’t miss this—the silencing can happen in both directions. I can impose myself on others. Or society can impose itself on me. A true relationship is always a balance: “Relation is reciprocity.”

Buber’s interpersonal philosophy, like Transcendentalism, has important and far-reaching consequences. First, it resolves our central dilemma. Because the individual’s relationship with others is reciprocal (I-Thou), we can relate to society without silencing others or losing our voice. The rope can move on both ends.

Second, interpersonalism shifts the telos of style. Rather than establishing myself, the goal becomes relating positively to other people. We begin to dress for the other. This doesn’t mean pandering, seducing, or mimicking. It means that we understand our responsibility toward others; after all, we are helping to constitute their self as well. We are the Thou to their I. Each of us bears a responsibility to model to others what we value in the world.

We can feel this when talking around children. We realize that children soak up the speech and habits of adults, so we are especially careful with our words. We know our words have influence.

Your style has influence too. It’s a contribution to a collective conversation. For good reason, menswear writer Derek Guy has compared style to language. Stylish fashion is a dialogue with culture and society. As mentioned before, this dialogue must go in both directions. We have to guard ourselves from being swept up and defined by larger trends, while also recognizing that all of our choices emerge from past traditions and historical precedents.

Back at the Virginia Military Institute, our uniforms weakened our personal voice, quieting our end of the rope. In response, cadets shook the rope wildly when the opportunity arose, losing the balance in the opposite direction. But the uniforms also produced a sense of collective identity, both among ourselves and with past school traditions. Successful style needs balance and reciprocity. Can we achieve this tender tension today?

Thankfully, there’s a common (although underappreciated) custom that offers individual agency while tying us to a broader community: the dress code. Although dress codes have grown more and more niche (reflecting the hyper-individualism of fast fashion), they do offer a kind of practical solution for developing lasting and meaningful style. At their core, they are a set of conventions that can direct our choices. When I read “business casual” or “cocktail attire,” I am given constraints that encircle a wide range of individual possibilities. Both ends of the rope move.

Next time you’re wondering what you should wear to dinner, ask yourself: “What would Martin Buber do?” Maybe relating your fashion choices to dead philosophers is just what you need to make your style decisions for the evening.

Whatever you do, don’t be like Ralph. Keep him tucked away in the drawer. We don’t need to forfeit individual style, but we can make little choices that bring us closer to the world around us. Because it’s only in relationship with others, as in life, that style can blossom with balanced freedom.

Carter Davis Johnson is a writer and teacher whose work has been published in Road Not Taken, Flyover Country, Warkitchen, Rova, New Verse Review, and Front Porch Republic. He also writes a Substack publication called Dwelling: Embracing the non-identical in life and art.

- More from Carter Davis Johnson

News

7 Significant Changes in Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

Harvest Prude

Evangelical ministries and advocates respond to the legislation’s impacts on immigration enforcement, food aid, and abortion funding.

House Speaker Mike Johnson signs the one big beautiful bill act.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Does President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” come as good news to evangelical churches and ministries?

Trump signed the gargantuan spending and tax policy package on Friday after it narrowly passed in Congress. The budget reconciliation bill makes most of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent while spending more on the border, interior immigration enforcement and defense. It also cuts funding for health care programs like Medicaid and food benefits like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Christians were quick to weigh in on aspects of the package, with some praising it for pro-family changes to the tax code while others lamented the considerable cuts to social safety-net programs.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill adds $3.4 trillion to federal deficits over a ten-year period, predictions that the White House disputes.

Here are some relevant aspects of the new law:

Withholding Medicaid funds from abortion clinics

One provision in the bill bars clinics and healthcare providers that offer abortions from accepting federal funding through Medicaid.

Planned Parenthood, as per its 2022-2023 annual report, reported receiving $699 million in government grants, contracts and Medicaid reimbursements. That means federal money makes up a little over a third of its overall revenue.

Pro-life evangelicals celebrate the move as a step toward defunding Planned Parenthood.

“Today marks a new milestone for the pro-life movement,” said Brent Leatherwood, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who had called on Congress to defund abortion providers. “Defunding Planned Parenthood and big abortion have long been a priority for millions of Southern Baptists, Christians and pro-life activists. …These heinous organizations profit from death, and, all too often, it is taxpayers who have funded their work. That repugnant scheme is halted beginning with this law.”

The American Principles Project, a politically conservative advocacy group, also celebrated the legislation’s “significant pro-family wins, including defunding Planned Parenthood.”

“I applaud President Trump for his unwavering commitment to putting families first and building a brighter future for our country,” APP president Terry Schilling said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood is challenging the provision in court and currently has a 14-day injunction from a district court judge.

Increasing the Child Tax Credit

The bill makes numerous changes to the tax code, from removing taxes on tips for the first $25,000 of income for tipped workers to permanently increasing the estate tax exemption.

The bill increases the Child Tax Credit from its current $2,000 per child to $2,200 per child and indexes the amount for inflation, extending what was set to expire from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The bill also makes part of the adoption tax credit refundable, adjusted for inflation.

A variety of Christian groups supported the increase to the child tax credit, telling CT ahead of the vote that they hoped lawmakers would pass pro-family policies as part of the package.

The Christian Employers Alliance also celebrated individual tax cuts, which they previously stated would secure “relief for 95% of Christian-owned businesses.” The group voiced its support for other provisions in the bill, saying overall the bill would “unleash the economic power of Christian employers.”

Cutting food assistance through SNAP

The bill slashes SNAP by about 30% over the next decade, which will shift some costs to some states. Some estimates are that 15-25 percent of SNAP program costs and 25 percent of administrative costs will shift to the states. Millions are expected to be impacted, including, according to one liberal think tank, an estimated 2 million children.

SNAP feeds more than 42 million people each month, around 13 percent of the US population, according to the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. Children account for 40 percent of those who benefit from SNAP. Senior citizens (those 60 and older) make up 18 percent of SNAP participants.

Christian food banks and food pantries have expressed concerns that the reduced funding and higher requirements for SNAP eligibility under the new bill will create an even greater hunger gap to fill. There are also concerns that states may opt out of the program entirely if they’re unable to shoulder the cost of the program.

“We average anywhere from 150-200 plus families every Tuesday and Thursday,” Florida resident James Showen, a volunteer at a Florida food bank, the Epps Christian Center, told WEAR News. “Those numbers are increasing because the food stamps and other programs are cutting back completely.”

Bread for the World, a Christian advocacy organization focused on hunger, said in a statement the cuts would have harmful impacts: “We need to be clear eyed and honest – this bill’s passage will significantly increase hunger in the United States,” Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO, said. “Bread will not stop until Congress restores full funding for these vital programs.”

Jeremy Everett, executive director of The Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, said he was “grieved” and “stunned” by the bill’s significant cuts to food assistance programs like SNAP.

“The decision to gut SNAP, the most effective anti-hunger program in our nation’s history, is not simply misguided policy,” he said. “It is a compromise of values.”

Everett added that Christians are called to “speak plainly when justice is at stake.” He cited Matthew 25:45: “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

“When our leaders prioritize politics over people, especially the poor, they may win the day, but they lose the way,” Everett said. “Scripture does not allow us to turn a blind eye to suffering, and neither should our laws.”

Cutting Medicaid

The bill cuts more than $700 billion in federal Medicaid spending over the next decade. Other estimates place the cuts at $863 billion or $1 trillion. Children’s hospitals, rural hospitals and community health centers that serve less populated areas are expected to struggle in light of the cuts.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said in a statement that though the group supported an earlier version of the bill, the final version was a cause for lament.

Archbishop Timothy B. Proglio, president of the USCCB, said the cuts to healthcare and food assistance are “unconscionable.”

“The bill, as passed, will cause the greatest harm to those who are especially vulnerable in our society,” said Proglio. “As its provisions go into effect, people will lose access to healthcare and struggle to buy groceries, family members will be separated and vulnerable communities will be less prepared to cope with environmental impacts of pollution and extreme weather. More must be done to prevent these devastating effects.”

Funding immigration enforcement

The legislation gives more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction, $45 billion for detention facilities and $29.9 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It also puts a new $100 minimum fee for asylum seekers. Asylum applications were previously free. It also adds fees to other immigration applications, including $550 for work permits for asylum seekers and $500 for Temporary Protected Status applications, which were previously only $50.

Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization, had urged members of Congress to vote against the bill, decrying its “massive increase in immigrant detention and deportation funding” and the impact that would have on people fleeing humanitarian crises.

Advocates argued that the shifts stand to affect children in particular. More kids are at risk of family separation as caregivers get deported. Without assistance at the border, unaccompanied children become vulnerable to exploitation. And as Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, writes, the bill’s provisions “permit strip searches of minors at the border and in government care” and “fund the indefinite detention of families.”

Cutting federal student loans

The bill has several implications for higher education. It cuts around $350 billion from higher education programs over the next decade through measures like reducing Pell Grant eligibility, limiting federal aid and cutting a few loan programs. It also introduces a risk-sharing model that puts schools on the hook when students default on their loans by requiring colleges and universities to reimburse the federal government for students’ unpaid loans.

The government ties federal aid to graduate earnings. That means institutions will lose federal loans if undergraduate programs’ alumni earn less than the median salary of a high school graduate in their state.

The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU), which represents more than 170 Christian higher education institutions, said in a statement, “While we appreciate several of the bill’s positive elements and potential benefits, we are concerned that it ultimately falls short in supporting student access and success. The emphasis on earnings as a measure of value risks penalizing students who pursue lower-paying public service roles—many of whom do so out of a deep sense of faith and calling.”

Kevin Brown, President of Asbury University in Kentucky, argued for Deseret that faith-based institutions could be penalized if graduates prioritize calling over earning potential. “For CCCU schools, as well as other religiously oriented and mission-driven schools, there are better ways to think about value,” he wrote.

Offering federal funds for school vouchers

The bill also includes a national private school voucher program, the first time lawmakers have passed federal legislation to send tax money to private schools. It creates a nonrefundable tax credit that allows taxpayers to donate to scholarship granting organizations, such as private or religious schools, which in turn provide vouchers for students. The tax credit can also apply to homeschooling costs. States can opt out of participating, so it’s likely that the program will be unevenly available to families. The program becomes available January 2027.

Reactions were divided.

A number of Catholic groups celebrated the development, though others noted there were many unknowns about the way it would be implemented.

“There are no explicit protections for religious liberty, which is a problem for us,” John DeJak with the USCCB told the Catholic News Agency. But he noted Catholic Bishops’ longtime support for a similar program and concluded, “We are positive but cautious.”

James Cultrara, co-chairman of the New York State Coalition for Independent and Religious Schools, told the New York Times he hopes states will opt-in. “We are celebrating it, but we have work to do,” he said.

Other groups landed more firmly on the cautious side about the development. The Home School Legal Defense Association wrote earlier this year that it “opposes any kind of government funding for homeschooling” on the grounds that it would allow government officials “a reason to further regulate and oversee homeschooling.”

- More from Harvest Prude

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Withholding Medicaid funds from abortion clinics

Increasing the Child Tax Credit

Cutting food assistance through SNAP

Cutting Medicaid

Funding immigration enforcement

Cutting federal student loans

Offering federal funds for school vouchers

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