‘Make the Truth Interesting to Hear, Even Enjoyable’

Interview by Divya Chirayath

Robert Clements doesn’t shy away from his Christian faith in his newspaper column. Yet Indian readers keep coming back for more.

Image courtesy of Bob Clements

In the past 30 years, Robert Clements’ daily column, Bob’s Banter, has appeared in more than 60 newspapers and magazines, most of them in India but also in countries like the UK, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates. His articles, which are translated into Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi, reach an estimated 6 million people.

In a country where only 2 percent of the population is Christian, Clements sees his work as a calling, as he uses his writing both to point people to God and to call out injustices against Christians in India. Using satire and humor to engage readers, Clements comments on everything from politics to relationships to faith.

Today, the 70-year-old Indian writer isn’t slowing down as he continues Bob’s Banter, teaches writing, gives motivational speeches, and writes books and musicals. Three of his books will be published soon.

Christianity Today spoke to Clements, who lives in Mumbai with his wife, about what it means to be a Christian writer in India, what his message is for aspiring writers, and how the everyday momentsinspire his columns. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How did you get into writing?

I’ve always been passionate about words. I wrote my first little novel when I was 12, and around that time I had the thrill of being published. Through my college years, I supported myself by writing and selling nearly 80 radio plays.

Later I started a successful business in civil contracting. It was good work, but writing never left me. With the encouragement of my wife, Lata—who is a doctor—I eventually stepped away from the business and moved into full-time writing more than 30 years ago.

The skills I had honed in business—persistence, negotiation, and learning not to take no for an answer—helped me navigate the publishing world and approach editors. My first column found a home in The Times of India, and from there, the journey gathered momentum. Looking back, I see now that this was more than just a career shift; it was a calling. God had given me a gift with words, and he opened doors for me to use them—not just to make a living but to speak truth, bring hope, and point people to him.

You grew up in a Christian home. At what point did your faith become real to you?

It happened not in a church pew but while facing the hard realities of business. After completing my master’s in English, I boarded a train from Chennai to Mumbai with only 500 rupees [$6 USD] in my pocket. I was young, ambitious, and determined to make a mark. But Mumbai, with its relentless pace and cutthroat competition, quickly stripped me of illusions. There were days when I wasn’t sure how I’d pay rent or even afford the next meal.

It was in those moments of uncertainty that I found God—not as a distant idea but as a living presence. In the loneliness of a rented room, in the worry of unpaid bills, I discovered a God who cared about me personally, who provided in ways I couldn’t explain, and who became more real than the challenges I faced.

My wife also had a childlike faith. Together we learned to bring everything—finances, decisions, family, work—before him in prayer. Time after time, we saw him answer in ways that left us humbled.

But Christianity is more than answered prayers—it is salvation itself. The simple but life-changing truth is that because Jesus died for my sins, I now have fellowship with God. I am his child, and he guides me. That is the message I carry in my writing and speaking: It isn’t complicated. It isn’t about rituals. It’s about accepting what Christ has already done and living in the reality of his presence.

What was your column, Bob’s Banter, like when you started it 1993?

Because of my initial experience writing plays, most of my earlier writing took on a conversational tone. To keep readers engaged, the columns consisted of banter between two characters. The name Bob’s Banter stuck, although my writing today includes spiritual or motivational articles as well as political satire. I try to see whether I can take the serious issues of politics, society, and faith and write about them with a smile. For instance, recently I read a newspaper headline about how Indians are treating AI chatbots as their personal doctor and turned it into a piece about how Indian politicians similarly prescribe ill-informed remedies for people’s problems.

To my joy, readers embraced it. Some said they laughed, then cried; others said they were offended but still couldn’t stop reading. That, I thought, was the perfect mix.

You’ve written more than 7,000 pieces over your writing career. How do you come up with fresh ideas for your columns and articles?

Everywhere. Imagination is a gift God has blessed me with, and it allows me to see columns in the most ordinary of moments. One day it may be a crying baby reaching out for a ball—that became one of my recent columns. Another day, it may be a politician stretching the truth. Sometimes the spark is a line from Scripture; other times it’s a conversation with my wife over morning coffee.

I often tell people that life writes my columns for me—I simply put them on paper. The world is full of stories waiting to be told, lessons waiting to be drawn out. A writer’s task is to notice them, to listen carefully to both the world and to God’s gentle whispers within it.

In the classes I teach for aspiring writers, I call this the “looking out of the window” technique. You look out of a window, take in whatever you see—whether it’s a tree, a bird, or a passing stranger—and train yourself to imagine a story around it. Over time, that practice sharpens not just creativity but also attentiveness to life itself.

One of my favorite examples came from watching a stray dog sleeping outside my gate. As I watched it, I began to reflect on loyalty, belonging, and the way society treats its weakest. By the time I finished writing the article, it had turned into a full-fledged column on compassion, which struck a chord with readers across the country.

And often humor sneaks in too. I’ve found that satire disarms people—it makes them laugh even as it makes them think. A baby grasping for a ball can become a lesson on perseverance; a politician’s “elastic truths” can become a joke that leaves readers both chuckling and pondering. That’s the joy of writing for me: to take the everyday and show that hidden inside is a story, sometimes serious, sometimes funny, but always pointing to something larger than itself.

How did you find your voice as a writer? Do you have any advice for aspiring writers on finding their voice?

My voice as a writer has evolved over the years. Initially I leaned heavily on satire—it was sharp, funny, and often biting. But with time I realized that writing is not only about pointing out what’s wrong but also about showing a way forward.

When I began writing with solutions in mind, my style became gentler, more persuasive. Satire still plays a central role in my columns, yet truth has been my guiding principle, and that conviction has kept me steady even when writing in difficult contexts.

For example, I’ve had a Sunday column running for more than 15 years in a newspaper based in Nagpur, the headquarters of India’s Hindu-nationalist group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or RSS. Many of those columns contain strong pro-Christian views. At times I’ve received hateful comments, but more often I get notes of appreciation. The fact that they’ve continued running my writing all these years tells me that truth, when expressed fairly, can find its way into even the hardest places.

My advice to aspiring writers is simple: Writing is a gift from God. With that gift comes a choice. Do you want to be popular, or do you want to be respected for telling the truth? If you choose truth, then learn to wield it with precision. Don’t bludgeon your opponents—cut carefully, like a surgeon, so that your words heal even as they correct. Be fair. Develop arguments that can win people over, not just rally those who already agree with you. And always write in a way that even those who don’t enjoy reading will still find themselves drawn in.

How do you incorporate your Christian faith into your writing?

I don’t force Scripture into my writing; I let it seep in. My faith is not a separate compartment of my life. It’s the lens through which I see everything: politics, society, family, even cricket. If God is central to my life, then naturally he will appear in my words.

It’s a little like seasoning food—you don’t always see the salt, but you taste it. In the same way, I believe Scripture should be used gently in writing. Don’t throw the Bible at readers, but weave it in so that they glimpse truth for themselves. That’s when it becomes an invitation rather than an argument.

I also believe Christians in India need to be intentional about mixing with people of other faiths. Too often we live in a “ghetto”—we know how to speak to our own, and then we use the same language when addressing others. But that isn’t the way it works. To communicate effectively, we must meet people where they are, respect their perspective, and share our experiences honestly.

At the same time, we should never be ashamed of speaking about our faith. In today’s India, where Christians face suspicion and attacks, it is important to explain to our fellow citizens that their fears are unfounded—that someone becoming a Christian does not mean they have changed their loyalty to another country. We remain fully Indian even as we worship differently.

What are the biggest hurdles you’ve faced as a Christian writer in India?

In India, writing openly about faith can invite ridicule, suspicion, or even censorship. There’s also the temptation to dilute your convictions, to make your words more “acceptable.” For me, the way through has been to write on different topics and in varying styles each day. I don’t aim for a knockout blow by quoting long passages of Scripture. Instead, I slip in a slice of truth—just enough for readers to taste it, recognize it, and perhaps hunger for more.

Ironically, some of the hardest hurdles I’ve faced have not come from editors of other faiths but from Christian editors themselves. I remember clearly two incidents—one in a major newspaper, another in a magazine—where my column was removed. Not debated, not questioned, but simply taken out. Why? I believe it was because those editors were embarrassed by their own faith. That was painful but also revealing.

But here’s the wonder of it: When that editor pulled my column, I submitted my writing to a bigger newspaper, and my writing reached an even greater audience. God was at work behind the scenes, opening bigger doors than I could have imagined. What looked like rejection became redirection. And that’s been the story of my journey as a Christian writer—hurdles are real, but they are never final. They are simply the backdrop against which God shows his hand more clearly.

What advice would you give an up-and-coming Christian writer, especially in India?

Be wise. Don’t assume that the words you use from the pulpit or to a Christian gathering will work the same way outside that space. Context matters. Don’t put down another religion. Instead, let your writing be so fair, truthful, bold, and courageous that people will want to know more about you—and ultimately about the God you believe in.

It’s a slow process, but in a land where truth is often wanting, your voice will eventually be heard. Practice not only through writing but also through speaking. When you learn to communicate effectively to an audience who may not share your faith, those same skills will make your writing more persuasive. Look at everyday situations and problems, and offer solutions grounded in biblical truth—but do it in a way that is not preachy. Make the truth interesting to hear, even enjoyable. Humor, when used well, can be a powerful bridge.

Discipline matters too. Write daily. Read widely. Observe keenly. And never underestimate the power of prayer—pray before you send your article to a publisher, asking that your words be used for God’s purpose. Don’t chase trends; chase truth. Don’t write to please; write to pierce.

And remember this: Writing is not about showing off your vocabulary. It’s about showing up with honesty. In a country like India, where truth is often muffled, your words can become a megaphone for justice, compassion, and hope. Use it well.

- More from Divya Chirayath

Theology

The Way We Debate Atonement Is a Mess

Brad East

Contributor

A case study in how Christians talk about theology, featuring a recent dustup over penal substitutionary atonement.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

This is an article about penal substitutionary atonement, or PSA. I’d like to attempt the herculean feat of discussing PSA without slander, rancor, or resort to a straw man. I leave it to you, dear reader, to judge whether I succeed.

Speaking of impossible tasks, I’m also going to avoid adjudicating the merits and demerits of PSA itself. I’ll discuss arguments for and against it, but I’m not going to tell you where you should land. Rather, I’m mostly going to talk about how we talk about PSA. Scholars call this “second-order discourse.” Normies call it “meta.” Either way, my concern is not the doctrine per se, but rather the way Christians discuss it with one another—or perhaps I should say, the ways we fail to do so.

With me so far? Good. Let’s get started.

Last month, there was a dustup online about a recent book that purports to be the final nail in the coffin of PSA. I have nothing to say about that book, because I haven’t read it. For my purposes, its publication was only the latest in a long line of confrontations between two groups.

One consists of those who believe that PSA is, at a minimum, a crucial component of the Christian gospel. For some of them, in fact, PSA is the heart of the gospel itself.

Let’s call folks in this first group pro-PSA. Typically, though not always, they are Reformed Protestants and evangelicals, a recognizable mix of academic, pastoral, and lay writers, speakers, and ordinary believers who care deeply about the integrity of Christian faith, doctrine, and preaching.

The second group I’ll call anti-PSA. Adherents in this case are united less by what they share than by what they reject. They include non-Reformed evangelicals, exvangelicals, mainline Protestants, biblical scholars, and members of high-liturgical traditions like Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Roman Catholicism.

Like their backgrounds, the reasons for this second group’s opposition to PSA are diverse. Some believe that it is unbiblical; others that it is a historical novelty; others still that it is specific to Calvinism, a departure from patristic and medieval doctrine, or just bad theology. Above all, they share the conviction—sometimes intellectual, just as often emotional, a visceral gut feeling—that PSA is bad for people to believe.

Why might it be bad to believe? There are two main answers, one vertical and one horizontal. On the vertical side, some say PSA proposes a distorted picture of God. The argument is that the doctrine presents God as a vindictive and bloodthirsty monarch who cannot forgive—whose anger cannot be mollified—until retributive violence is enacted. Such a deity, in effect, hates us until his wrath is satisfied (and maybe still hates us then), the blood sacrifice of an innocent victim converting his wrath into love.

When anti-PSA rhetoric is turned up to 11, people designate this “divine child abuse.” In this telling, the Father must vent his anger upon his own Son, raining down unspeakable cosmic punishment until every last drop of blood is paid for sin. Only then do grace and mercy become available to the guilty.

On the horizontal side, some say PSA is bad because it distorts human relationships. Whether in the family, the city, or the church, justice becomes retributive and punitive all the way down. Transgressors get what’s coming to them, justice is indistinguishable from vengeance, and the forces of law and order imitate Almighty God by forswearing mercy and executing punishment to the last farthing. Parental and church discipline become unsparing. Guilt, shame, and public punishment are integrated within and inseparable from every level of society, informing responses to everything from childish errors to grave evils.

Now, before we ask what the pro-PSA have to say for themselves, it’s worth pausing to make two observations. First, whatever the merits of the anti-PSA case, it is very rarely marked by making a steel man of the opposing position—or even truly engaging it. That is to say, anti-PSA advocates often are not talking to their pro-PSA brothers and sisters in Christ. They are talking about and at them. Too often what they are pointing to, mocking, and shouting at is a straw man.

In short, sophisticated theological supporters of PSA are highly unlikely to agree with an anti-PSA summary of their views (high school encounters with Jonathan Edwards notwithstanding). In any debate, Christians talking past one another like this is a problem.

Second, much is made in anti-PSA arguments of the doctrine’s perceived impact. Often—not always—the reasons proposed for rejecting it are consequentialist, which means they are not so much about whether it is true or rooted in biblical teaching as whether its purported downstream effects are desirable.

This is always the weakest way to argue over Christian doctrine. Why? Because the truths of the gospel can always be abused. As the ancient maxim has it, abusus non tollit usum: Abuse does not invalidate proper use. The fact, for example, that some pastors use the faith to benefit themselves financially does not render the faith false; it just means that anything, no matter how good, can be twisted to evil ends.

We should not doubt that PSA may be and sometimes has been put to bad ends, leading to misshapen views of God or shame-filled faith. Yet this does not and cannot obviate the experience of those for whom PSA has produced just the opposite. Nor can we decide the matter by simply weighing positive and negative experiences against each other. That’s just not how Christian theology works. The matter is the thing itself, and the question is whether it’s true. That question, in turn, is answered by turning to Holy Scripture.

So consider now what the pro-PSA would say in reply to their opponents—not the straw man but the genuine article.

First, the Son who suffers divine wrath is himself God in the flesh. There is no division or separation between Father and Son, for together with the Spirit they are one God: one nature, one essence, one will. It is, according to PSA, the one will of the one triune God for the eternal Son of the heavenly Father to assume human nature in order to suffer the justice due sinners, that they might receive his perfect righteousness as a pure, unmerited gift.

Second, the mission of the incarnate Son is not a last-ditch effort to divert the unloving rage of a God who otherwise eternally wishes to smite us. The Father sends the Son in the power of the Spirit precisely in order to save us—and to save us, in Paul’s words, “while we were yet sinners” and “enemies” of God (Rom. 5:8, 10, RSV throughout). Which is to say, to save us when we did not deserve it. The Son does not transform the Father’s disposition from malice to mercy. Jesus’ very presence among us is a revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’s united, sovereign, and invincible mercy toward sinners from everlasting to everlasting.

Third, PSA is a particular combination of elements in the biblical witness that no one can deny. These elements include justice, wrath, transgression, guilt, debt, punishment, and exchange. At their best, advocates of PSA believe the doctrine integrates these biblical elements into a single vision of God’s saving work in Christ that complements, rather than excludes, other orthodox descriptions of the atonement. PSA thus seeks to comprehend God’s multiple roles in relation to us: not only father, brother, and friend but also creator, king, and judge.

The upshot: As lawbreakers, fallen humanity merits punishment in the divine law court. This punishment is God’s own wrath against sin, which is the failure to render God the obedience and worship he is due as Creator. But precisely because he loves us and “desires all people to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4, ESV), God provides what he demands before we could even think to ask for it. In a word, he provides himself.

The Lord puts himself in our stead, living the fully human life we failed to live. What is due us he takes upon himself: wrath, curse, punishment, and death. What is due him he gives to us: life, freedom, sonship, and righteousness. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

This is the “substitution” in PSA, or what Martin Luther liked to call “this fortunate exchange” whereby Christ “took upon Himself our sinful person and granted us His innocent and victorious Person.” Before Luther a similar understanding was proposed by Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury in the late 11th century, who used the language of “satisfaction” to describe what Christ, as the God-man, does in our place, for our sake. He assumed all that we are in order to give us all that he is. In doing so he satisfied the perfect justice of God once for all—a marvelous substitution and unspeakable gift.

Now, having done my best to represent PSA according to its best lights, it seems only fair to do the same for its critics—to continue on in order to model the mode of theological debate I’m aiming to promote. Because while my sketch of anti-PSA objections above is accurate, it remains incomplete. Let me bolster the case with additional criticisms without letting go of the commitment to fraternal charity.

First, consider the difference between the subtleties of academic theology and the practicalities of the pulpit. Far too often the way pastors preach and speak about PSA resembles the straw man I outlined earlier. God sounds vindictive; Father and Son appear opposed; wrath overshadows love; mercy seems secondary rather than primary. PSA may not be wrong, but some pro-PSA pastors are on the hook for sloppy preaching.

Second, anti-PSA Christians are right to object to the way some in the pro-PSA camp treat the doctrine as synonymous with the gospel. This is both unhelpful and outlandish. At its worst, it calls into question the very salvation of any believer who doubts or even downplays PSA.

It also brings us to the third and most significant observation, which is that PSA really is a historical and doctrinal innovation. By “innovation” I do not mean that it has no precedent in Christian history before the Reformation, nor do I mean that its newness means it’s wrong. What I mean is that any honest study of church history must admit that the particular formulation of penal substitutionary atonement that came to birth with Luther and Calvin is genuinely new. So is the doctrinal centrality accorded it by the traditions these Reformers founded.

The theological mainstream of patristic and medieval writing on the atonement differs from PSA in important respects. It is an uncodified mix of (1) Christus Victor, whereby Christ destroys death by his own perfectly faithful death and resurrection from the grave; (2) a miraculous exchange of natures, so that the sheer fact of the Incarnation heals our sin-sick selves through the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus; and (3) deification or theosis, which proclaims that God became human that we might become divine.

To be sure, there are bits and pieces of language and concepts in these older works that resemble or intersect with PSA. But these are largely the flotsam and jetsam of other, far more popular and influential theological formulations of the atonement. Moreover, pro-PSA folks tend to oversell the obviousness of doctrine, claiming it to be Paul’s own direct teaching, the “clear” message of the New Testament.

Neither of these claims is necessary for PSA to be true, any more than the apostles had to recite the Nicene Creed for it to be faithful to their teaching. The formulation and articulation of doctrine takes time, and there is no reason to suppose the atonement is simpler to understand than the Trinity, which likewise took centuries to develop into the form we now take for granted.

The Bible speaks in many ways about God’s saving work in Christ, and PSA is one fitting, venerable, and spiritually powerful way of putting the scriptural pieces together. It is, in other words, a perfectly reasonable proposal for how to understand biblical teaching—even if one isn’t persuaded by it. After all, Luther and Calvin were razor-sharp exegetes. Perhaps they saw, for almost the first time, something no one else before them had quite seen. “When the Spirit of truth comes,” Jesus taught, “he will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13).

At the same time, the fact that for centuries almost no Christians taught what we now recognize as PSA makes it implausible that this is the one clear atonement teaching of the New Testament. And this brings me back to my larger interest in talking about how we talk about PSA.

Theology is an ongoing conversation about how best to speak the gospel. It is, therefore, a perpetual debate until the Lord’s return. The problem is not disagreement. The problem is Christian critics and advocates talking past each other. The problem, in a word, is rhetorical points counting more than fairness, clarity, or mutual respect between groups of fellow believers.

When we debate theology, we are speaking of and with sisters and brothers who understand and explain our common Lord’s life, death, and resurrection in modestly different ways than we do. We can differ with respect. Even better, we can differ with mutual understanding. When we argue, we can do it as disciples of Christ—even if we walk away agreeing to disagree.

Brad East is an associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University. He is the author of four books, including The Church: A Guide to the People of God and Letters to a Future Saint.

- More from Brad East

Books

Review

Jesus Uses Money to Diagnose Our Spiritual Bankruptcy

Michael J. Rhodes

A new book immerses us in the strange, subversive logic of his financial parables.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Baker Academic

When students in my Old Testament courses contrast the allegedly messy world of the first testament with the allegedly simple, straightforward teachings of Jesus, I know for sure they haven’t read the New Testament lately. When we read the Gospels, not least Jesus’ parables, we discover him saying all sorts of bizarre, borderline offensive things.

Keith Bodner is here to help relieve our confusion. His new book, Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus: The Economy of Grace and the Generosity of God, gives a tour of God’s “economy of grace” by focusing on “parables with a financial edge.” Indeed, Bodner suggests these parables provide “an excellent point of entry into the larger biblical story.”

Along the way, as Bodner invites us to learn from the parables, he also offers guidance on immersing ourselves in them as readers. The book thus inspires readers to engage a genre of biblical literature Bodner playfully dubs the “TikTok of the New Testament,” while equipping them with tools to engage it well.

Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus is both extremely accessible and delightful to read. Bodner, a religious studies professor at Crandall University in New Brunswick, Canada, displays a winning passion for good illustrations.

At various points, he likens the plot twists in parables to the endings of M. Night Shyamalan films, reframes the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–13) as the story of “an Oil Baron and an Embezzler,” and describes the Pharisee’s proud prayer—“God, I thank you that I am not like other people” (18:11)—as an instance of “virtue signaling.” Employing both wit and remarkable clarity, Bodner achieves his goal of writing a book that will captivate readers interested in the Bible but unfamiliar with the prevailing jargon in academic biblical studies.

At the same time, his simple presentations offer a sophisticated literary approach to the parables. Bodner slows us down, allowing us to feel the power of a story as it unfolds and consider the questions it raises along the way. For instance, Bodner’s interpretation of the parable of the vineyard workers (Matt. 20:1–16) pauses to ask why the owner keeps coming to the market where the unhired workers are throughout the day. Surely he doesn’t really need more workers once the evening rolls around. As the end of the parable confirms, the owner’s actions flow from his lavish generosity rather than any economic calculus.

Bodner’s story-sensitive approach also involves reading these parables alongside one another and with close attention to their immediate context. Doing so reveals hidden depths. Consider, for instance, the way Bodner reads the praying tax collector (Luke 18:9–14) alongside the story of the Prodigal Son. His reflections on the prodigal’s painful journey back to the father become a window for imagining what it costs a despised tax collector to take his own journey to the temple. Perhaps that journey to the temple, too, is a journey of repentance.

In addition, Bodner points out that the picture of a tax collector pleading for mercy in the temple raises questions about what happens next. “Should such a figure decide to start following Jesus,” he writes, “an immediate shift in priorities would need to take place. … At the end of the parable, the unlikely figure goes home justified but nonetheless has more work to do” on the road to “becoming a shareholder in the kingdom of God (or using the imagery in Luke 9:23, a “cross carrier).”

Such attention to the story allows the parables to become genuinely subversive. “Perhaps,” Bodner notes, “we’re all spiritually bankrupt, and, like the tax collector, we’ve sold out to the empire in various ways.” That means there’s more work for us to do as well.

The most surprising—and, for someone in my line of work, delightful—aspect of the book was how often Bodner pointed out rich allusions to the Old Testament in the parables. Reading the parable of the unjust steward alongside the story of the wicked King Ahab’s (faithful) steward Obadiah helps us see how both stories nudge us to costly acts of creative discipleship in response to God’s reign. And we learn something about the Bible’s expansive conception of neighbor relations, says Bodner, when we read the Good Samaritan parable as a “deliberate echo” of 2 Chronicles 28, another story about unexpected kindness extended across unlikely boundaries.

In line with his book’s subtitle, Bodner regularly reminds us that all these parables invite us to enter God’s “economy of grace.” His study attends to patterns of these parables “immersing” us in the “experience of forgiveness.” That is one of the primary gifts of the book; Bodner demonstrates that parables drawn from economic life invite us to reflect more deeply on God’s economy of salvation.

But I confess that, at times, I thought the economic and material aspects of that economy of grace deserved more emphasis.

For instance, when Bodner analyzes the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:13–21), he suggests that Jesus’ words about being “rich toward God” refer to building up “relational capital.” That’s not all wrong, but I worry that readers prone to overspiritualizing Jesus’ teachings may miss his relentless emphasis on economic practices within the life of discipleship. When Jesus presents the kind of wealth many modern readers take for granted as a danger to genuine faithfulness, we shouldn’t downplay the plain meaning of his warnings.

To take another example: While Bodner’s treatment of the parable of the unjust steward is outstanding, I wish he had given more attention to Jesus’ admonition to “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (16:9) That line seems to suggest something beyond an invitation, in Bodner’s words, to “live with wisdom and operate according to the economy of grace.” Perhaps Jesus is calling us, more specifically, to invest money in building a new kind of community.

This is not to say that Bodner ignores the financial implications of parable-shaped discipleship. Far from it! He acknowledges, for instance, that the Samaritan’s costly care for the injured man is a “tangible sign of the economy of grace,” because he undertakes it “with no chance of any return.” But again, I thought such themes merited more attention, given the emphasis on economic ethics in the Gospels.

In a similar vein, I suspect Bodner could have strengthened the book with more sustained reflection on the economic world of Jesus and his audience. In my experience, many Americans read the Gospels from a largely middle-class perspective. A great many people in Jesus’ day were barely scraping by, if not already slowly dying due to desperate poverty. By reminding readers of that background fact, Bodner might add more depth to his discussion of economic themes.

Consider, for instance, the way predatory debt wreaked havoc in the lives of Jesus’ listeners. Highlighting this dynamic would only enhance Bodner’s treatment of the parables about debt forgiveness. It might also underscore the connection between forgiveness of sins and the countercultural call upon disciples to give freely, without expectation of return.

At the same time, that background might also require further discussion of how Jesus’ audience would hear stories about, for instance, the “master” in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14–30). Bodner’s depiction of that master is fairly rosy; others have suggested that, to Jesus’ average listener, he would have sounded like the consummate exploiter. Even if Bodner disagrees with that line of thought, acknowledging the underlying complexity would strengthen his argument.

Nevertheless, part of the power of the book lies in the simple way it welcomes readers into the strange, subversive world of Jesus’ parables, and Bodner makes no claim to offer a comprehensive treatment of the parables he tackles. Exploring the Financial Parables of Jesus offers preachers, teachers, small-group leaders, and everyday Bible readers an outstanding window into this world, and the hope of being transformed by their journeys there. May the Lord use Bodner’s book to welcome all who read it into the everlasting riches of God’s glorious “economy of grace.”

Michael J. Rhodes is a lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College in New Zealand. He is the author of Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World.

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News

Excerpt

From Dialogue to Devastating Murder

Russell Moore and Mike Cosper discuss Charlie Kirk’s alternative to civil war.

Mourners gather outside the Turning Point USA headquarters in Phoenix.

Eric Thayer / Getty Images

Here are edited excerpts of a conversation between Russell Moore and Mike Cosper on CT’s The Bulletin podcast.

Mike Cosper: Look, his murder has really bothered me. If you’re a dad—I don’t care how you feel about Charlie Kirk—look back on the days of your life, the days of your marriage, when your kids were little. There’s something so beautiful in those years, and they not only robbed that from him; they robbed that from his kids. They robbed that from those kids’ grandparents, from his wife. I’m gutted by this regardless of how I feel about Kirk’s politics. This is gutting.

Looking at Kirk’s videos that his most ardent fans liked the most—the ones that have the most views, the most likes—it’s not necessarily the “Charlie Kirk Destroys Progressive” or “Charlie Kirk Destroys Trans Activist” or anything like that. A lot of those videos are Charlie responding to people and preaching the gospel. He articulates a very straightforward and compelling understanding of the gospel.

Another video I watched was one where a college student comes to him and says, “One of my parents is very liberal. One of my parents is very MAGA. I don’t find myself agreeing with either one of them. How am I supposed to navigate this?” He basically says, “Love your parents. Show up. Stop talking about politics. Don’t let politics drive a wedge between you and your parents.”

I found that admirable when I immersed myself in it. I could delineate plenty of differences in political rhetoric and ideology between myself and Kirk. I just don’t feel this is the day for that. It’s worthy to celebrate the ways where we were arguing for the same things and advocating for the same things, whether it was the importance of marriage, the importance of gender, the importance of the gospel.

I’m emotionally moved by this because, on the left and right, Kirk’s death is already being leveraged for political ends in ways that are incredibly gross.

Russell Moore: What makes that all the more striking are places where there’s an exception to that. Last night I was watching a couple of very young, very progressive mirror images of Charlie Kirk—Dean Withers and Parkergetajob. These people are doing similar things to what Kirk was doing. Both had debated Charlie Kirk quite a bit, and both were openly weeping in a way that was genuine.

What I heard in that was what we’ve been talking about here. This is a human being, and there is a sense of shock and outrage at what could happen to a human being’s life. And fear for the country when you have a situation that seems to be unraveling and people start to see murder as a response to political rhetoric.

That entire world is built on “Here’s a video of me humiliating someone”: Fill in the blank, so-and-so gets “owned.” It’s easy to start to see people as YouTube avatars.

Both of these young guys were shaken by the fact that this isn’t a game: There’s a human being here. Even as angry and upset as I am, it was a little glimmer of hope that people can see sometimes what really matters and what doesn’t.

Mike Cosper: One thing I genuinely respected and admired about Kirk—and on lots of things he and I differed—was his willingness to sit across the table on a small scale, on a large scale, on camera, in real life and everything else. He was willing to engage people who thought his ideas were retrograde and evil.

There’s this wonderful clip of an encounter where he shows up at a college campus and puts up a sign that says something like “Tell me where I’m wrong” or “Debate me.” The mother of a student comes to the table and basically says, “What are you doing? What is this?”

He explains, “Look, I do this for a couple of reasons. One is that I think there’s a lot of people who think like I do, and they’re afraid to share their ideas because they get shouted down when they do. I also do this because if we can’t maintain the capacity to talk to one another, the only alternative is civil war and violence. And so I think it’s an important exercise for us and for civility to just show up and say, ‘Let’s have a conversation. Let’s build a relationship.’”

Kirk did that as imperfectly as any human being would do in terms of showing civility to the people he debated, but it was a value he articulated and aspired to. More often than not, he’s showing respect to the people he’s arguing with.

Russell Moore: One thing that fuels political violence is the sense that—once and for all—“I’m definitively going to deal with my opponents.” Then they’re gone, and we move on. That is not only immoral and satanic but an insane and irrational way of thinking.

We have to pay attention to what Jesus said to Peter: Those who live by the sword will die by the sword. What he means by that is that these cycles of revenge just continue to feed off of each other unless the revenge cycle is broken.

What ends up happening is not only the harming of whoever one’s enemies are but the harming of oneself, because it’s the deadening of a soul to the point of thinking, The way I’m going to respond is murder. That is itself a kind of self-harm.

We must have a sense of the value and dignity of human life apart and beyond from somebody’s gifts and somebody’s set of beliefs—and that there is a different way to be from retaliation and revenge: the Sermon on the Mount. Those ways of shaping our consciences are going to be necessary.

Mike Cosper: Modernity, especially since the French Revolution, has had this idea that violence was somehow going to purge society of its evils and heal it, that it would come out the other side because we killed all the right people.

Whether the purges in the French Revolution or the Bolsheviks, the starvation of the kulaks, or the Nazis’ attempt to eradicate Jews from Europe, there was this belief that efforts would bring us much closer to utopia.

Obviously this is a sin. Every human being is made in the image of God, and every murder is asin against the image of God. But the other reality that history should show us in all this is that all those attempts at violence, all those violent revolutions, resulted in more violence.

Russell Moore: Usually we’re talking into our own ecosystems. We’re trying to get the cheers of whoever we’re already with, rather than thinking we could persuade someone. A few figures tried to persuade. Charlie Kirk was one of them.

The Bulletin closing: Our hearts are heavy today for the family of Charlie Kirk. We mourn his death. We grieve for his wife, Erika, and their two precious little children. It is our prayer here that this deep loss will become a catalyst for new and lasting change in our country’s political life for the common good.

Listen to the full episode, which released Friday, September 12.

Church Life

Come to Office Hours, Be Humble, and Go to Church

Alan Noble

Contributor

As a professor, I know you’re under pressure. Let me share what I’ve learned in 20 years in the classroom.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

College comes with many pressures: pressure to perform. Pressure to fit in. Pressure to find your people, to graduate on time, to choose the right major and career (and sometimes spouse).

But beneath all these pressures is what I believe to be the purpose of higher education: to grow in wisdom, knowledge, and skills so you can glorify God, love your neighbor, and delight in God’s creation. That purpose is hard to remember with these pressures tugging at your sleeve—telling you to worry about grades or about why someone hasn’t texted you back already—and your task as a student is to discipline yourself to remember it anyway. Set aside your distractions and focus on the calling God has laid before you today.

So how do you develop this discipline? What can you do practically as you go or go back to college this fall? My experience teaching college students for 20 years has taught me the key is humility.

All wisdom begins with humility. We see this in Scripture: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 9:10), and fearing God requires a posture of humility. Learning wisdom—or knowledge, skills, or anything else—requires it too. You must open yourself up, become vulnerable to the opportunity to grow. This means admitting ignorance, admitting that when you enter a classroom, however confident you are in the subject, you have something to learn.

Allow your professors to guide your journey toward wisdom in their subjects. Trust them in humility. Trust that their years of study and discipline have made them experts in their fields. It’s not that they aren’t human and capable of mistakes. They are. But trust that they have something precious to share with you.

When students become prideful, they become unteachable. There is no wisdom a teacher can impart to a prideful student, because a prideful student sits cross-armed and confident. A wall has gone up.

I understand that sometimes students have to take classes they believe they should be able to skip. This is frustrating, but each class is nevertheless an opportunity to grow in wisdom—even if that growth is less in factual knowledge than in attention, patience, and humility. I can tell you from experience that these virtues will serve you well in life and are in short supply in the contemporary world.

I also understand that some students are skeptical of trusting professors because there are so many stories of professors who take advantage of their positions to promote ideological views irrelevant to their subjects. I understand this concern: I once had a professor at a secular university who taught grammar by criticizing President George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and creation science. But despite his ideological bent, I did learn grammar from him—and discerningly ignored the ideology.

All this talk about students being humble may sound a bit patronizing. What about professors? Is it only students who have to be humble?

You’ll be glad to know that we professors require humility just as much as students do. We need it if we’re to continue to grow in wisdom and be effective teachers. In humility, we professors must open ourselves up to the advice and admonition of our colleagues, our administrators, and other scholars in our fields. And in humility, we must read books that challenge us and our assumptions. Everyone who wants to grow in wisdom remains humble. Any professor who is not humble inevitably becomes a fool.

But what about those pesky pressures? Let’s say you get to college with your heart set on walking into class with humility and an openness to learn for the glory of God. Won’t you still be distracted by grades and that person who left your text message on “read” for an hour?

Maybe, but not necessarily. If you truly understand education as pursuit of wisdom, you’ll be better able to accept poor grades or high grades for what they are—and move on.

Grades aren’t measures of your personhood. They don’t prove you are a failure (or a success). They may show you need to study more for a particular class. And if so, fine. You can accept that with humility. Or if you receive high grades, also fine. In humility, you can accept them without inflating your pride.

Other pressures can’t be so directly addressed by humility (though even there I think a humble heart is part of the solution). Pressures to fit in, find the right career path, and snag a spouse can be overwhelming.

My advice is this: Wherever you are and whatever kind of school you attend, find a local congregation and get plugged in—immediately. I know it can be difficult being the one young adult in a room full of parents or older adults. I know it can be hard to coordinate rides on Sunday morning. But you must do it.

Take the initiative. Show up on Sundays. Join a small group or a college ministry. Find some kind of Christian support.

The college years can be very challenging for young people. This is a period of enormous change, of scrutinizing your childhood, of making major decisions with long-term ramifications—all while you are taking tests. You need a Christian community to ground you. And I suppose that does take a lot of humility to accept and practice. It certainly takes vulnerability and courage.

If you are attending a Christian college or university, then I highly recommend using your professors’ office hours (in addition to your church or ministry community) whenever you have questions about faith, life, and challenges in class.

Giving you this support is exactly why your professors are there. Indeed, one of the great benefits of teaching at a Christian liberal arts university is that I have time to meet with students and mentor them. I always try to approach these meetings with humility myself, knowing it is an honor to have someone come seeking counsel. Your visits are never an imposition.

And even if you don’t attend a Christian school, having the humility and courage to visit your professor during office hours will only benefit you. Being willing to raise questions about a course and its material is a strong indicator of academic success.

In this school year—and the next, and all your years after graduation too—the decision to pursue wisdom, knowledge, and skill is up to you. We like to hedge and say some people are just born intelligent, but Proverbs makes clear that wisdom is open to anyone who truly desires it. Whatever our innate abilities, we can all seek a posture of humility before God.

The pressures won’t go away. Various distractions will continue to come. But your duty is to glorify God, love your neighbor, and delight in God’s creation by submitting yourself to the work of questing for wisdom, knowledge, and skill. With a community of believers to support you, professors to encourage you, and a God who loves you and wants you to know him, you can learn well.

O. Alan Noble is associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of four books: To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, On Getting Out of Bed, You Are Not Your Own, and Disruptive Witness.

- More from Alan Noble

News

Brazilian Evangelicals Call for Reconciliation After Bolsonaro Convicted of Coup Plot

Franco Iacomini

The former president received a 27-year prison sentence for orchestrating an uprising to take over the government after his defeat.

Supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro participate in a protest in his support on August 3, 2025.

Anadolu / Contributor / Getty

On Friday, the Brazilian supreme court sentenced former president Jair Bolsonaro to more than 27 years in prison for plotting an attempted coup after losing the 2022 election. The landmark ruling marks the first time the country has tried and convicted a person for trying to overthrow an elected government.

For days ahead of the verdict, Bolsonaro’s evangelical supporters took to the streets in demonstrations and held vigil praying outside of the politician’s condo in Brasília.

The court found Bolsonaro guilty of leading a group of high-ranking officials involved in a January 8, 2028 uprising and plotting the assassinations of his political opponents. Calling the election rigged and declaring incoming president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva illegitimate, protestors occupied and vandalized congressional headquarters, the supreme court building, and Planalto Palace, which contains the president’s offices.

Bolsonaro denies the charges, claiming that he was not even in Brazil on January 8—he boarded a Brazilian Air Force plane bound for Orlando, Florida, on December 30, 2022, two days before the handover, and remained there until March 30, 2023. He told the court that those who took to the streets calling for a military coup were crazy.

Evangelicals participated in the riots, with at least four pastors among the 1,400 people arrested, and they continued to back him as he and others faced charges for their involvement.

Pastor Silas Malafaia, leader of Vitória em Cristo, part of the Brazilian Assemblies of God, organized street demonstrations and advocated for amnesty for all arrested protesters. Last month, he was targeted by police and charged with obstruction of justice.

Malafaia, in turn, has called for the arrest of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is in charge of the Supreme Court’s investigation of Bolsonaro.

“This almost indiscriminate support that evangelicals gave to Bolsonarism is one of the clearest fingerprints of the coup movement,” said political scientist Carla Ribeiro Sales, who belongs to a Baptist church in Recife. “I confess that I am ashamed—not of the gospel, but of this mess we have gotten ourselves into.”

Clashes over Bolsonaro have polarized Brazilian churches, echoing America’s splits around President Donald Trump.

“It’s terrible to see people hurt, families divided, churches sick because of this polarization,” said Cynthia Muniz, pastor of Igreja Anglicana Porto in São Paulo. “There were entire families who left churches because they thought their leader should take a stand in favor of one candidate or another.”

Brazil elected Bolsonaro in 2019, backed by 69 percent of the country’s evangelical minority, but that support slipped. He lost reelection in 2022 by a margin of 2.1 million voters, or 1.8 percent of the electorate.

“Bolsonaro certainly would have no relevance at all if it weren’t for evangelicals,” said theologian Jacira Monteiro.

Some evangelical leaders hope the former president’s conviction might spur a reckoning among evangelicals. Theologian Valdir Steuernagel points to the challenge for the church to recover the ministry of reconciliation, as described in 2 Corinthians 5.

“We have been so captured by political polarization that we have lost the ability to listen to the Scriptures, which call us to encounter, not to distance ourselves,” he told CT. “Our calling is to reconcile.”

It won’t be an easy task. Some Brazilian evangelicals remain loyal to Bolsonaro and have joined public demonstrations, such as the demonstration held on September 7th (Brazil’s Independence Day) in São Paulo. The protesters called for amnesty for all those accused of a coup d’état, including Bolsonaro.

One of the most strident spokespersons is Malafaia. “The constitution, the laws, and the justice system were thrown into the trash by those who should be the greatest example of upholding the law: the Supreme Court,” he said in a video released after the conviction.

Ed René Kivitz, pastor at Igreja Batista da Água Branca in São Paulo, said that churches have three challenges: to defend democracy and the secular state, to promote peace and reconciliation among all people, and to multiply signs of justice and solidarity.

“We need to prevent the hijacking of the thinking of evangelical communities by political ideologies, whether on the right or the left,” he said.

Bolsonaro’s trial, though criticized by the former president’s supporters, has been seen as exemplary in its aim to curb anti-democratic initiatives in Western nations.

“Our concern as pastors is not to allow this to happen again,” said Muniz, who also emphasizes the superiority of biblical ethics over ideologies and the polarization that arises from them.

She uses Jesus’ words to Pontius Pilate in John 18:36 as a reference for addressing political polarization: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

For Muniz, the kingdom has a real impact on the world, bringing justice, goodness, and hope. “God cannot be reduced or co-opted by political parties or figures,” she said.

The former president remains under house arrest, now convicted of coup d’état, violent abolition of the rule of law, armed criminal organization, aggravated damage to public property, and deterioration of a listed building.

He and his former aides may be in prison soon—Brazilian law allows them to stay free while they appeal the sentence. The supreme court is expected to rule on all appeals by the end of the year.

- More from Franco Iacomini

Ideas

Charlie Kirk Is Not a Scapegoat

Stefani McDade

Contributor

When we instrumentalize violence, we side with the accuser rather than with Christ.

Rebecca Noble / Stringer / Getty

French Catholic sociologist René Girard argued that ever since the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, violence has been robbed of its sacred legitimacy and ancient power—but you wouldn’t know that by scanning some corners of the internet today.

Over the past few days, a slew of violent events has erupted in our nation, including the senseless stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, another school shooting in Colorado, and Wednesday’s brutal assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk. News of Kirk’s death exploded not only due to his celebrity-like status but also because it appeared to be a clear act of political violence, which experts have long warned would result from the increasing polarization on both sides of the political divide.

For instance, a 2023 study found that 40 percent of both Biden and Trump supporters “at least somewhat believed the other side had become so extreme that it is acceptable to use violence to prevent them from achieving their goals.”

But what should be equally concerning to us is how our nation responds to violent incidents like these. Most Americans are in shock, grieving, and rightly concerned for the future of our nation. Yet there are outliers on both ends of the ideological spectrum who seem inclined to assign a deeper meaning to Kirk’s murder—one that instrumentalizes it to galvanize further support for their respective camps and causes.

On the far left, some talk as if Kirk deserved what happened to him for his past comments on subjects like race, sexuality, guns, and even empathy, which critics have deemed deeply dehumanizing. Kirk is someone who died on the hill he chose and whose death can thus be weaponized against his own rhetoric and ideology. By contrast, some on the far right speak of Kirk’s death as advancing a holy cause in enemy territory. Kirk is a slain saint and hero whose murder is a rallying cry and call to arms for conservatives and Christians like him. In short, in a mutual display of selective outrage and empathy, the far left blames Kirk’s death on the right and the far right blames his death on the left.

Ironically, these impulses draw from the same source and therefore cause the same effect by casting Kirk as a scapegoat. In each case, Kirk’s murder is assigned a kind of sacred significance that unites each faction around their respective ideologies—in such a way that his death becomes ammunition for further partisan violence.

Societies use scapegoats to avoid their deeper problems, which, Girard says, stem from “mimetic contagion”—an escalating rivalry that spreads as people imitate one another’s desires. Instead of embracing true concern for victims “from the standpoint of the Christian faith,” which leads “the way into God’s new community of love and nonviolence,” Girard observed that pagan forms of “victimism” use victims to “gain political or economic or spiritual power.”

More to the point, by resorting to scapegoating, we wind up affirming that violence actually works as it is intended—a reality that Girard says stopped being true the moment Jesus gained victory over the power of death.

According to Girard’s anthropology, Jesus was the scapegoat to end all scapegoats—an innocent victim whom the political and religious establishment of the first century viewed as the culprit of their communal crisis, leading them to believe that killing him would restore the status quo. Yet because Jesus embodied true innocence—the only perfectly innocent person to walk this earth—he exposed the scapegoating mechanism for what it was, thereby defeating the devil and defanging death.

In Girard’s thinking, “the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8) disarmed violence itself, uncovering a hidden mystery which “none of the rulers of this age understood, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8).

Ever since Jesus, violence lost the cohesive force it once exerted to unite communities around the deaths of their victims and thus relieve their tensions. Now, any positive effects that result from acts of violence—like the national unity after 9/11—will always be temporary and ultimately self-defeating. This also explains why, according to Girard, violence has grown increasingly chaotic in its nature, decentralized in its manifestation, and ineffectual in its aims.

In short, to instrumentalize Kirk’s murder, whether by painting him as a martyr or a miscreant, sanctions his status as a scapegoat and so affirms the essential function of violence—which in turn denies the reality that Jesus conquered death’s demonic power.

The scapegoating mechanism, which is at work in all forms of brutality, plays right into the hands of the enemy of both God and humanity. That is because, Girard argued, it is the primary operating system of Satan himself. As the accuser, Satan supplies the core impulse behind scapegoating, which is assigning blame. Thus, whenever we blame each other for the violence of our times, we end up aligning ourselves with the accuser (Rev. 12:10).

Christians across the political spectrum should be disturbed by the increasing violence that seems to be taking over our country. Yet as followers of Jesus, we also have a unique opportunity to direct our anger in the right direction—for only then can ours be a righteous rage. When we target and attack one another as the enemy, it distracts us from our real enemies: sin, death, and the devil.

In Scripture, Satan is called “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44) and the one who “holds the power of death” (Heb. 2:14). While Jesus broke the power of death by defeating the devil, the reality of death still exists and is thus “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor. 15:26).

Too often, Christians aren’t mad enough at death, as my colleague Kate Shellnutt has pointed out. Perhaps that’s because we’re far too busy getting mad at one another. We forget the words of the apostle Paul, who writes that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12).

As Christians, we are uniquely poised to combat the lie that violence still has its uses in our world. In fact, the more inevitable and inescapable violence seems to become in our culture, French theologian Jacques Ellul argued, the more important it is for Christ’s followers to prove otherwise: “The role of the Christian in society … is to shatter fatalities and necessities. And he cannot fulfill this role by using violent means.”

Not only is violence unnecessary, but it is also counterproductive—it creates a literal death loop that does nothing more than reinforce itself. This is why Girard said that the kingdom of darkness is a house divided against itself, for eradicating violence with violence is like Satan casting out Satan (Matt. 12:25).

Instead, the Good News of the gospel is that Jesus now holds power over death, binding the work of the enemy and causing Satan to fall like lightning (Luke 10:18, John 12:31). As Christians, we have access to that same supernatural power through Christ’s sacrifice—who conquered not by being death’s instrument but by being its willing recipient for the sake of the world. That is, we overcome Satan’s schemes “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of [our] testimony” (Rev. 12:11).

As citizens of Christ’s now-and-coming kingdom, we must refuse to sacralize murder and thus return to death its scepter. Now is the time for every Christian, regardless of our political affiliation, to beat our swords into plowshares and do the hard work of uprooting the false necessity of violence in our nation. We must demonstrate that the new operating principle of Christ’s kingdom is a divine love that is even stronger than death (Song 8:6).

Christ’s “resurrection is the guarantee that God can cure every wrong and every hurt,” writes Catholic priest Jacques Philippe. “Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil.”

Now is the time to prove to the world that death has, in fact, lost its sting—and that only the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ prevails against the violent forces of hell.

Stefani McDade is the theology editor at Christianity Today.

- More from Stefani McDade

News

Wire Story

Charlie Kirk Rallied Young Christians into a Political Movement

Kathryn Post - Religion News Service

College students remember the TPUSA leader’s campus outreach.

Charlie Kirk speaks at the University of Arizona in 2024.

Olivier Touron / AFP via Getty Images

Hundreds of students filled the lawn of evangelical Grand Canyon University near downtown Phoenix Wednesday evening, grieving the murder of Charlie Kirk.

One by one, they spoke into a mic, many praying for Kirk’s wife and two children and sharing stories about his impact. Less than a year ago, many of these same students were sporting grins and red MAGA hats as Kirk, founder of the campus organization Turning Point USA, visited Grand Canyon on his “You’re Being Brainwashed” tour.

“His impact was astronomical,” said Gwyn Andrews, 22, who founded a TPUSA chapter at the University of West Georgia. “Every single person that is in my generation knows his name.”

Launched in 2012 when Kirk was just 18, Turning Point USA began as a way of educating students about fiscal responsibility and capitalism, but grew into a conservative powerhouse with more than 800 chapters on college and high school campuses. His success came because as a speaker and debater he faced off against conservative Christian kids’ “woke” counterparts, tirelessly representing conservative, and, increasingly, Trumpian viewpoints.

“Turning Point realized the importance of explaining and debating and championing conservative ideals to people under the age of 30,” said Isaac Willour, a conservative journalist and commentator. Kirk’s approachability and self-confidence touched something in the teens and 20-somethings he set out to lead, as did TPUSA’s cheeky merchandise and celebrity-studded events answering the kind of glam that accompanied liberal visitors to campus.

Students’ first encounters with Kirk were often social media videos and podcasts. But on his college tours and at his annual, convention-sized AmericaFest conference in Phoenix, Kirk cultivated personal connections. Several students told RNS they admired Kirk in part because he wasn’t a politician. Barely in his 30s when he died, Kirk came off not as an idol, but as a “like-minded believer” who shook students’ hands, liked their social media posts and took them seriously, said Andrews.

Leading by example, Kirk gave permission for conservative students to speak their minds and equipped them with the skills to discuss conservative ideas about abortion, gun rights, race, gender and sexuality with their liberal peers, students said.

“So many students like myself at one point were so afraid to speak up, because they’re afraid of either getting rejected by different friend groups or their professors or people in their community,” said Claire Gorlich, 22, who started a TPUSA chapter at St. Mary’s Notre Dame, a Catholic college in Notre Dame, Indiana. “He really was the person that just made it, honestly, very cool to be conservative and made people feel confident.”

Many of his young followers aspired to debate like Kirk, said Matthew Boedy, a professor of religious rhetoric at the University of North Georgia and author of a forthcoming book on Kirk called The Seven Mountains Mandate. TPUSA encouraged that impulse, preparing students to defend conservative positions, an approach that distinguishes TPUSA from other conservative college organizations.

Kirk’s insistence on the legitimacy of conservative viewpoints resonated particularly with men in Generation Z. JJ Glaneman, a 20-year-old junior at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh who started an unofficial chapter of TPUSA after the school’s student government blocked an official one, told RNS that society has pushed the narrative that men are not entitled to an opinion on abortion. Kirk never hesitated to express his own staunch opposition.

“He taught this generation of men that it’s not only all right to be masculine, it’s great to be masculine,” said Glaneman.

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After TPUSA launched its faith initiative in 2021, partnering with churches to host religious conferences, Kirk’s emphasis on his evangelical faith became a more central message and his rhetoric about “reclaiming the country for Christ” grew bolder. “If the church does not rise up at this moment, if the church does not take its proper role, then the country and the republic will be gone as we know it,” he said at a May 2021 TPUSA Faith event at Dream City Church in Phoenix.

TPUSA, which had begun at secular schools, focused more on Christian colleges in recent years. Between 2020 and 2024, TPUSA chapters appeared at more than 45 Christian colleges or universities. (As of last year, however, only 21 chapters were active.)

Boedy said Kirk became the “go-to” person for conservative college students looking to translate faith into action.

“He talked about moral topics. He talked about God. He tweeted about that. I think that more and more Christian students were attracted to him because of that,” said Boedy. “There were some Christian colleges that didn’t want Turning Point chapters for various reasons, but the more conservative ones certainly did. And I think that they were part of the choir that he was preaching to.”

Naming his values as not just political, but biblical, resonated with many young people seeking clarity, direction and meaning. As a husband with two young children, Kirk exemplified to many young conservative Christians what their futures could look like. He gave young people the sense that conservative values about family, stability, sexuality and gender were tied to a deep sense of purpose. Gathered in arenas and standing shoulder to shoulder with other conservative youth from across the country, they heard fervent speeches about the promise of their generation.

“They put so much effort into the aesthetics and to making sure that everybody’s excited,” said Sarah Stock, 21, founder of the TPUSA chapter at Vanguard University in Orange County, California. “They have flames coming up on stage. They have the president come to speak at their events, and everyone’s excited to see their favorite speakers.”

Stock added that TPUSA ensured that local chapters had the funds to host their own enticing events and pay for students to participate in national events. (Tax filings from June 2023 showed that TPUSA took in $81.7 million, up from $2.05 million in 2015.) After signing up to be president of her TPUSA chapter in 2023, Stock was flown out to West Palm Beach, Florida, to join a TPUSA Chapter Leadership Summit for other chapter presidents. TPUSA covered the flight and accommodations.

“As a young person who just encountered politics online, the real-life events are what really makes you want to actually get involved,” said Stock.

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A post shared by Vanguard University TPUSA🇺🇸 (@tpusa_vanguard)

Kirk’s more controversial takes, especially demeaning comments about Black and LGBTQ Americans—he was virulently against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, called George Floyd a “scumbag” and said a Bible verse about stoning gay people to death was “God’s perfect law”—are out of sync with the social justice sensibility of many young adults.

But some conservative Christian students told RNS that Kirk’s comments about race and LGBTQ issues had been taken out of context. Others simply agreed with Kirk.

“It sounds like all of those are valid points,” said Stock about Kirk’s views on race. She said while Floyd did not deserve to die, she did question his character. She added that affirmative action makes it difficult to always know about an individual’s qualifications.

But they universally denied characterizations of Kirk as racist. “He felt like the left was treating people differently based on skin color, and he would stand there and say, ‘No, this person is Black, this person is white. It doesn’t matter. We should all be treated the same.’ And people would take that and interpret it as racism,” said Gorlich.

In the wake of Kirk’s killing, students, while grieving the loss of a person many felt personally connected to, are concerned about the appalling rise in political violence. The near-assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024 already proved that right-wing politicians could be targets. Now, students say, any person with right-wing or conservative beliefs could be at risk.

“We realize that, if they think that Charlie deserves to die for his views,” said Stock, “they think that we deserve that as well.”

- More from Kathryn Post - Religion News Service

Books

Review

The Flickering Flame of Intelligent Design

Edward J. Larson

A new study asks why the ID movement hasn’t left a more enduring mark on scientific or religious thought.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, NYU Press

Like a brightly burning candle in the wind: That’s how C. W. Howell depicts the brief history of the American intelligent design movement in his new book, Designer Science.

Howell, a researcher based at Duke University, seeks to show where intelligent design (“ID”) fits alongside more established frameworks for relating the Bible’s account of Creation with the findings of modern evolutionary science. Young-earth creationism, he suggests, has gained a popular following and left its stamp on 21st-century Christian thought. So too, he observes, has its chief philosophical rival, theistic evolution (or its newer cousin, evolutionary creationism).

By contrast, Howell presents ID as more a brief flicker than a lasting force. In his telling, it emerged on the national stage with the 1996 Mere Creation Conference at Biola University and largely faded from view after the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, which ended with a federal judge ruling that teaching ID in public schools amounts to promoting a religious belief.

When Howell and others refer to “ID,” they do not mean age-old arguments for God rooted in the evidence of intricate, purposeful design in nature. Nor are they invoking the narrower natural theology of late 18th-century English cleric William Paley, best known for proposing that an ordered universe presupposed a “divine watchmaker” who set it into motion.

Instead, the term ID encompasses specific ideas first advanced in the 1990s by American law professor Phillip Johnson, philosopher William Dembski, biologist Michael Behe, and others associated with the Discovery Institute think tank. ID theorists coalesced around the philosophical position that science should not arbitrarily exclude supernatural explanations for physical phenomena. Over time, they added arguments suggesting that “irreducible complexity” in biology—systems too intricately arranged to be broken into separately evolved parts—points toward intelligent design in nature.

As such, Howell writes, ID became “a broad, ideologically diverse, and theologically accommodating approach to anti-evolution” that at first drew an array of intellectual theists under its “big tent.” According to Howell, however, the movement’s initial strength proved its ultimate weakness. As he suggests, the thin gruel of its “ideological minimalism” could not sustain the allegiance of partisans for whom ideas carried deep meaning.

Whenever ID theorists sought to add meat to the broth, they alienated some faction. Without a robust scientific component, ID remained an ideological critique of evolutionary science that blurred methodological with philosophical naturalism to make its case that Darwinism went hand in hand with atheism.

Regarding questions of human origins, survey data from recent years suggests that American Christians fall into two camps of roughly equal size. Each takes faith seriously and posits a divinely majestic Creator crafting the physical universe.

Young-earth creationists look for evidence in nature supporting a literal reading of the early chapters of Genesis. Shaped by the mid-20th century work of Baptist engineer Henry Morris and apologetics organizations like Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, they emphasize a six-day creation occurring less than 10,000 years ago, a theologically significant fall from grace, and a worldwide flood. Theistic evolutionists (and evolutionary creationists) see a preexisting God creating non-mechanistic laws of nature and superintending them to shape the course of creation. Their views draw from earlier efforts by Christian thinkers to address 19th-century developments in science—efforts now carried on by the BioLogos Foundation, figures like Francis Collins (its founder), and various Catholic scholars working in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas.

Both groups eventually turned against ID, Howell writes. Young-earth creationists objected to ID because it failed to support their theological presuppositions. Meanwhile, theistic evolutionists and evolutionary creationists despaired of ID’s embrace of “a highly mechanical and modernist conception of reality” that partakes of “the very reductionism it claims to be resisting” and postulates “a modern conception of divine action in the world.” In short, young-earth creationists regarded ID as insufficiently creationist, while religious evolutionists regarded it as overly naturalistic.

Perhaps because Howell places himself in the latter camp, Designer Science is especially insightful in presenting the theistic-evolutionist and evolutionary-creationist critique of ID. In a notable moment of candor appended to the book’s introduction, Howell states that he “grew up in a young-Earth creationist setting” and became “interested in ID as a high school and college student” before migrating to theistic evolution and becoming an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Designer Science is based on his PhD dissertation in religion from Duke.

Given Howell’s religious background and his book’s academic origins, it is not surprising that Designer Science is a dense exposition of intellectual ideas with lots of citations. It draws mostly on published writings by thought leaders in the three camps, with an occasional nod to atheistic adversaries like Richard Dawkins. But it makes little mention of either the biologists who greeted ID with withering rebuttals or the tepid response from Christians generally.

However, Howell does note the appeal of ID to political conservatives, who carried it into the culture wars of the 1990s and early 2000s after the Supreme Court’s 1987 ruling against teaching creation science in public schools. They offered ID as a nonsectarian critique of evolution that could pass muster under the establishment clause. Indeed, Howell suggests that young-earth creationist leaders initially warmed to ID precisely for this strategic reason even as they questioned its heft as an evangelistic tool.

After ID concepts began appearing in state and local public-education policies, culture-war dynamics led to the showdown at Dover. Local young-earth creationists and Discovery Institute officials pushed the Dover school board to adopt ID-friendly policies in 2004. Local citizens, many of them churchgoers, brought suit against those policies.

Howell presents theistic evolutionists as leading the opposition. “At Dover,” he writes, “ID was roped into a conflict by the creationist wing of its big tent, and it wilted under the spotlight—because it could not offer a positive scientific alternative but also because it could not cleanly separate itself from its creationist allies.” After the federal court ruled that teaching ID in public schools also violated the establishment clause, Howell reports, leading young-earth creationists saw less reason to promote ID than before.

After the Dover decision, public and academic interest in ID began waning. Howell depicts embattled ID theorists “doubling down” on “the same general arguments that had failed to win the day in court” but with “a far more conspiratorial tone and air of grievance.” Along with a “sense of persecution,” he writes, came a growing “hostility toward the scientific world.”

Such an anti-expert attitude had been there from the beginning, Howell notes, “but it came to the forefront after 2005.” ID theorists increasingly questioned “the prevailing scientific wisdom about vaccines, climate change, astrophysics, and AIDS.” Within the ID movement, Howell writes, distrust of the scientific establishment became “the basis for a worldview deeply skeptical of scientific progress and knowledge.”

If ID began as an “ecumenical anti-evolutionary movement,” Howell concludes, it eventually became “just one of many highly skeptical attacks on contemporary science.” He views this as ID’s lasting legacy. “Even though it did fail to achieve its goal of remaking contemporary science,” he writes, “intelligent design both planted the seeds and nurtured the growth of extreme skepticism in the world of US conservatism.”

But this assessment likely overstates ID’s role in furthering these trends. It fails to consider other strong forces seeding and nurturing suspicion of scientific expertise, such as political polarization over issues involving science, the effects of COVID-19-era restrictions on public trust, and the explosion of anti-expertise conspiracy theories on the internet.

A question remains after reading Howell’s book. Was ID ever more than an attack on science that blurred methodological naturalism with philosophical naturalism to make its case against evolutionary biology? Both young-earth creationism and theistic evolution are rooted in deep religious sentiments that are intrinsic to their lasting appeal. They continue to influence modern American Christianity. Howell’s book is insightful in suggesting reasons why intelligent design hasn’t attained a similar stature.

Edward J. Larson is a historian and legal scholar teaching at Pepperdine University. He is the author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion.

- More from Edward J. Larson

News

Died: Charlie Kirk, Activist Who Championed ‘MAGA Doctrine’

Daniel Silliman

With a debate style honed for college campuses and social media, the Turning Point USA founder sought to renew America.

Nordin Catic / Getty / Edits by CT

Conservative political activist Charlie Kirk died on Wednesday after he was shot at a public event at a college campus in Utah. He was 31.

Kirk built a massive political movement with viral video clips of sharp comebacks and quick counterarguments in all-comers debates. He described himself as a disruptor and argued disruption was the only way to make America great again. Adopting Donald Trump’s signature political slogan, Kirk called it “the MAGA doctrine, which is a doctrine of American renewal, revival … that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.”

Promising to “play offense against the secular left,” he launched hundreds of chapters of his youth organization, Turning Point USA, and taught a generation of grassroots activists to court controversy. The groups invited him to their schools, where he would engage crowds with entertaining, argumentative melees.

Clips of his “dunks” and “owns” reached, by some counts, billions of people. Kirk became, in the process, a leading proponent of the confrontational style of political engagement that he and others believed was necessary to bring about a conservative reclamation of American culture.

“Directly confronting the left, and promising to fight their illiberal ideology with state power when necessary, is the key to winning everyday Americans,” he said in 2021.

Kirk became a trusted adviser in the Trump administration. Many, including Trump himself, credited him with rallying youth support for Trump’s reelection in 2024.

The president broke the news of Kirk’s death on social media.

“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead,” Trump wrote. “No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us.”

The governor of Utah called Kirk’s death a political assassination. Some Christian leaders, including the former pastor of the Chicago-area megachurch that Kirk attended in high school, said the political activist should be seen as a martyr.

“So grieved /shocked for the world to lose our dear friend Charlie Kirk,” James MacDonald wrote on X. “He is a martyr, of the cause to take America back from the evil one. … Charlie exhausted himself for righteous causes and was unashamed of his saving faith in Jesus Christ.”

The senior pastor of the Phoenix-area megachurch that Kirk regularly attended as an adult added that Kirk was killed because of his biblical views of truth.

“What the enemy has tried to do today is silence the people of God, silence the men and women of God,” Luke Barnett explained in his Wednesday-night sermon. “Well, you just unleashed the dragon.”

Charles James Kirk was born on October 14, 1993. His mother, Kimberly, was a mental health counselor, and his father, Robert, was an architect.

Kirk grew up in the suburbs north of Chicago. He first got interested in politics listening to conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh on the radio. As a teenager, he tuned in to debates about President Barack Obama’s plan to reform health care and discussions about the Tea Party movement’s efforts to oppose elected Democrats more effectively than the Republican Party was doing.

“I was like, This guy is unbelievable!” Kirk told The New York Times. “I would never forget: on my lunch break, from like 12:17 to 12:55, I’d listen. Just me. I went all in on Rush.”

In 2010, at 16, he volunteered for the Republican campaign to fill Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat, knocking on doors and passing out fliers for a fiscally conservative, socially liberal candidate.

Kirk got his first taste of running his own political campaign the following year, when he rallied fellow students to protest the high school cafeteria’s hike of the price of cookies. He started a Facebook group and challenged Prospect Heights, Illinois, teenagers to “show the establishment the power of our generation.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, it was “more of a prank than serious political action,” but just because Kirk was having fun, that didn’t mean he wasn’t also serious.

“I never say anything I don’t mean,” he told the paper. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it.”

In 2012, Kirk made a critical political connection that changed his life. He spoke at a Youth Government Day event at a Catholic University and used his time to argue against the Occupy Wall Street movement. He said the left-wing protesters were divisive and, besides, had terrible ideas. What America needed, according to Kirk, was fiscal responsibility and limited government.

Kirk captured the attention of the students in the room and retired restaurateur Bill Montgomery. They listened to him and seemed compelled to engage his arguments. Montgomery, who was 72 at the time, approached Kirk after and urged him not to go to college.

“You’ve gotta get involved in politics,” Montgomery said.

Kirk had hoped to go to the US Military Academy in West Point, New York, but hadn’t gotten in. He was looking at Baylor University, but activism seemed more exciting and important.

With Montgomery’s help and financial backing, Kirk launched Turning Point USA. The incorporation papers said, “Turning Point USA believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.”

Kirk soon found he had a gift at connecting with donors. Older conservative men found him charismatic and compelling and were eager to give him financial support.

“He’s phenomenal,” evangelical businessman Peter Huizenga said. “At his age, he is one of the most accomplished, one of the most mature, and one of the most organized and intelligent guys that I have ever met. You just don’t meet guys like this.”

At the Republican National Convention in 2012, Kirk bumped into conservative evangelical megadonor Foster Friess. He’d never met him before but decided to pitch Friess on his vision for Turning Point. A few days later, a check from Friess for $10,000 arrived in the mailbox of his parents’ home.

Kirk also proved remarkably adept at connecting with college students. Turning Point added dozens of chapters every year and soon rivaled or even surpassed older, more established conservative groups on many college campuses, including the Young Republicans, Young Americans for Freedom, and Young Americans for Liberty.

Young people were not always interested in the economic arguments Turning Point was launched to advocate, but Kirk was quick to find issues that would pull students into the movement.

He frequently set up “Tell Me I’m Wrong” tables at campus events, inviting students to debate him. He homed in on the hottest topics. He found debates over free speech and censorship were particularly effective. Conservative students regularly clashed with left-leaning instructors and often felt their professors were trying to indoctrinate them. Turning Point launched a watch list, stirring controversy that raised the group’s profile.

Kirk connected with the Trump campaign in 2016, working closely with Donald Trump Jr. and acting as a youth director. Kirk continued to offer advice after the election, frequently going to meetings at the White House. He became a regular fixture of the right-wing media ecosystem and had a high profile on social media, where he often stoked controversy.

Kirk’s political activism became more overtly religious in 2019. He and Liberty University’s president at the time, Jerry Falwell Jr., cofounded a think tank they called the Falkirk Center. Kirk said the center would “explain the link between the gospel of Jesus Christ and American founding freedom” and help mobilize conservative evangelicals in the upcoming election.

He became more convinced during the COVID-19 pandemic that political battles and spiritual battles were deeply intertwined. In lockdown he read The Founders’ Key by Hillsdale College president Larry P. Arnn, Dominion by British historian Tom Holland, and The Age of Entitlement by conservative author Christopher Caldwell. The three titles taught him that all the political clashes and cultural conflict were really one big fight between opposed worldviews.

“I saw the wokies appealing to a moral order that they said was true and good,” he told The New York Times. “And I said, Well, we think ours is.”

When churches temporarily shut down to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Kirk became alarmed that Christians would surrender to government mandates without protest. This, he thought, could easily be the first step toward authoritarianism—and he wanted Christians to fight.

“While we’ve been doing budgets and baptisms and bigger buildings,” he said, “the secular humanists, they’ve been taking terrain. … This is the time for us to rise and stand. And the Bible says very clearly to ‘occupy till I come’” (Luke 19:13, KJV).

Rob McCoy, a Calvary Chapel pastor who clashed with California governor Gavin Newsom over pandemic mandates, mentored Kirk, who began to call McCoy his pastor. The two of them started Turning Point Faith together in 2021, holding events in church, working to organize pastors and mobilize conservative Christians.

“I realized that there is a desire for revival in this country, that there is a yearning for a different type of Christianity,” Kirk said. “It is about preaching a hot gospel and bringing a nation to repentance, which will then lead to revival.”

Kirk described the 2020 election as a spiritual battle and in one speech declared that the Democrats “stand for everything God hates,” before leading the crowd in a chant of “Christ is King! Christ is King!”

Kirk mobilized church and college groups for Trump in 2024, spending a year and a half focused on the election. When Trump won a surprising number of young voters, Kirk took credit.

“We registered tens of thousands of new voters and delivered the youth vote in record numbers,” he said. “The youth vote won Trump the White House.”

Despite his success, Kirk showed no desire to rest on his laurels or even slow down. His appearance at Utah Valley University was meant to be the first stop in a new campus tour, dubbed the “American Comeback Tour.”

The fatal bullet struck Kirk as he and a student were debating.

Kirk is survived by his wife, Erika Frantzve Kirk, and their two children, ages 1 and 3.

- More from Daniel Silliman

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