Finally, a Tech Book That Doesn’t Pull Punches

Brad East

Clare Morell’s The Tech Exit succeeds where so many volumes fail, never flinching at the digital crisis faced by families, schools, and churches today.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Pexels

Every day, it seems, there’s a new book about technology, and most of them are boring or bad.

Christian authors are unfortunately among the chief culprits, rehearsing the same truisms—God is the source of all creativity; God made us to be makers; any tool can be bent toward sin or gospel service; what we need are wisdom and virtue and good habits—without saying anything new or particularly interesting. Worst of all, tech authors tend to pull their punches. As Antón Barba-Kay notes, “After a few hundred pages of incisive criticism, such authors feel compelled to conclude on a note of contrived and desperate positivity.” It can’t be that bad, they seem to want to say. If it were, we’d be in real trouble.

I am here to tell you that Clare Morell’s new book, The Tech Exit: A Practical Guide to Freeing Kids and Teens from Smartphones, is the exception to this rule. Morell does not lack the courage of her convictions. She does not shy away from the problem. She does not flinch at the crisis faced by families, schools, and churches today. Her writing packs a punch.

Because I write and teach on this topic, I’m regularly asked to recommend books to students, pastors, and friends. These are not scholars looking for theory but ordinary folks looking for help. Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family, published in 2017, has always been the first work I mention. Since then, I’ve added Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism(2019) and Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation (2024) to the list. And now, with The Tech Exit, I can finally fill out my personal Mount Rushmore. That’s how good it is.

Morell is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and director of its Technology and Human Flourishing Project. She has worked on policy from within the government and reported on it from without. In addition to her Substack, called Preserving Our Humanity, in the last year alone she has coauthored essays in First Things, The New Atlantis, and National Affairs on the threat posed by digital technology to human flourishing. And although her book is not explicitly religious, Morell is a Christian; her husband is a pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC. Much of the book’s fire comes from her experience as a mother of three young children.

From fast to FEAST

Digital devices present a clear and present danger to children’s well-being: That is the premise, not the conclusion, of The Tech Exit. The book is written to parents who already understand the problem, not to skeptics who need to be persuaded it exists. So Morell starts with the solutions currently on offer, such as screen-time limits and parental controls. At best, she argues, these aren’t working. More often, they serve to soothe parents’ consciences while making the problem worse.

From here, Morell identifies a “major disconnect” between the scale of the challenge and the scale of our responses. “Screen-time parents,” as she calls them, accept “that screen-based technologies are an inevitable part of childhood.” The most such parents can do, therefore, is “harm reduction.” The question thus becomes how much harm to my children I’m willing to tolerate.

Morell thinks this question amounts to surrender without a fight. Her fundamental contention is that “digital technologies need not be an inevitable part of childhood” and that it’s “even possible to reverse course if you’ve already given your child a smartphone or social media and now regret it.”

Part of the book’s appeal is that Morell herself lives this life and populates the chapters with examples of families she visited or interviewed for her research. She is walking the walk—in Washington, DC! Her pitch is that you, right now, wherever you find yourself, can adopt this path today.

But how? By beginning with fasting and ending with feasting. First, recognize the futility of your attempts at harm reduction. Second, fast from your family’s digital entanglements. And third, adopt the Tech Exit approach to technology, which Morell captures in the acronym FEAST. (More on what it stands for in a moment.)

Morell’s vision of tech fasting is far more robust than screen-time limits and parental controls, which are unreliable and easily circumvented by even novice teen users. (Dear reader: Trust her on this one.) Limits of this type imply that “screens are like sugar”—“a treat to be enjoyed with abandon sometimes and consumed in moderation in an otherwise-balanced diet.” But what if that’s the wrong metaphor? She proposes an alternative: “Digital technologies are not like sugar. For the developing brains of children and teens, they are more like fentanyl.”

Morell piles up study after study to support this interpretation of digital ills for children and teenagers. I won’t regurgitate her evidence here except to say that it’s utterly compelling. This is how screen-time parents are put in the “untenable, exhausting” position of “constantly having to stand between a drug-dispensing machine and an underdeveloped brain.”

Just say no

So what’s the alternative? Morell means the “exit” in her title literally. The Tech Exit approach is “no smartphones, social media, tablets, or video games during childhood”—period. (She also thinks the TV should be chucked, but if you want to pull it out of the closet for family movie nights or sleepovers with friends, so be it.)

This might strike you as appealing in theory but impossible in practice, especially if, like me, you’ve never stepped foot in a household that lacked a television or (more recently) wireless internet and smartphones. For such readers, Morell suggests a digital detox: a 30-day removal of every screened device in your home. Try it and see how life works in your household over the next month.

Based on her own experience and the testimonies of dozens of families around the country, Morell suggests the experience will begin with pain. The children will complain. Boredom will menace. Your fingers will get twitchy.

At some point, though, you’ll notice the kids playing outside, unprompted. You’ll realize you haven’t had to broker a screen-time truce between warring siblings for days. You’ll feel a calm you’ve not felt in a while and realize the screen-time life was never actually inevitable.

Because fasting comes to an end, the heart of the book is about maintaining a digital-free household. This is where the acronym FEAST comes in. F stands for “Find Other Families,” because you can’t do this alone. E is for “Explain, Educate, and Exemplify,” because you need to be informed enough to teach and model for your children why you’re living this way. A is “Adopt Alternatives,” because you’ll need to navigate school, driving, and friendships without digital intermediaries. S is “Set Up Digital Accountability and Family Screen Rules,” because kids need clear expectations, especially if you do allow some screens in the home. Last, T stands for “Trade Screens for Real-Life Responsibilities and Pursuits,” because your household needs rich forms of leisure and service to fill the time you aren’t spending on screens.

Throughout the chapters unpacking these principles, Morell answers all the questions you’d expect: Will we be the weird ones? Will my kid miss out? Will he be picked on? Will she lose friends? What about GPS? What about safety? What about homework? Her answers are satisfying because they’re grounded in actual families’ experiences, because they’re far more easily mustered than we tend to think, and because Morell’s proposal is not actually that radical.

The proposal of The Tech Exit is not that we return to the 1800s or even the 1950s. Morell is asking us to go back to 2005—no iPad, no iPhone, no social media—or at most 1985, right before the first Nintendo console was released in the United States. In other words, Morell is not indulging in agrarian nostalgia. She’s not a reactionary. She wants you to live where you are, when you are, in a home that looks and feels like 2025 in every way—minus digital surfaces. These, for your sake and the sake of your children, you should expel from the home at once. Consider it an act of technological exorcism.

Schools, politics, and church

Most tech books end here, with the local and the personal, but Morell’s last two chapters are about public schools and public policy. She praises the encouraging development of schools across the country (in both red and blue states) adopting bell-to-bell, no-screen, zero-tolerance policies.

My own school district just approved such a plan, and I see it as the definition of a common-sense policy. But why stop at K–12? Why not extend it to college? That’s the way I run my classroom. What if the whole campus were screen-free?

Then there’s the question of what may be done through state and federal law. Morell wants Congress to protect children from Silicon Valley’s designs, arguing that we need a MADD—Mothers Against Drunk Driving—for the digital age. She shares parents’ stories to show how ordinary parents (especially mothers) are already taking the fight to Big Tech. Still, this fight cannot be won if it never moves beyond the local. Collective solutions are required, because the network effects of smartphones and social media mean they affect even those who abstain.

Here too Morell is not advocating an extreme position. We have laws protecting minors from alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling, and pornography, and we limit marriage, military service, tattoos, and legal contracts to people of a suitably mature age. Why not add smartphones and social media to the list? “Laws help set norms,” Morell notes, and can hold corporations liable for misbehavior.

To all this, as a reader and father of four, I reply, “Bravo! Amen! May your tribe increase!” As you can tell, there is much to celebrate and little to criticize in this book. But let me conclude with four observations.

First, I was worried Morell would hold out the Tech Exit life as all or nothing. Thankfully, she does not. She understands that some families will come to different conclusions and that some will be forced to deal with compromises and constraints. She honors families doing only what they believe they realistically can, but she does so without qualifying her claims about the superiority—and viability—of the full Tech Exit “feast.”

Second, Morell acknowledges the class component of digital habits: The tyranny of screens is hardest to bear for working single moms, divorced households, and poor families. Thus have we gone from seeing broadband access for the poor as a matter of justice to seeing affluent families opt out of digital life altogether. It’s telling that the same executives getting laptops into public schools send their own children to screen-free private schools. Even as more and more institutions and families recognize the dangers of digital devices and act accordingly, millions on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder are likely to be left behind.

Third, this book was one more reminder that many churches are part of the problem. The time is long past to commit to screen-free church. Pastors have a responsibility to act. Rid the sanctuary of screens. Keep all digital devices in the foyer or the car. Quit using social media for news and updates, and for God’s sake, don’t make youth group harder for teens without smartphones. Christians should be ashamed that the church is bringing up the rear—behind public schools!—on the ills of digital technology. We could have led. Unfortunately, that time has passed. The least we can do now is catch up to everyone else.

Fourth and finally, the only misstep in the entire book is the way Morell portrays parents. Like Abigail Shrier in Bad Therapy, Morell projects onto parents the right values, the right goals, the right hopes and dreams for their children. What they lack, on her view, is merely the empowerment to do what they already know to be best.

Unfortunately, as CT editor Bonnie Kristian has noted elsewhere, parents are part of the problem too. They’re the ones who say they want “a phone-based childhood,” often under the illusion that constant connection is a guarantee of safety. They’re the ones with the devices—and they love them. Nobody’s tricking them into handing on their digital habits.

Parents must learn to see both why digital screens are harmful to children and what a genuine alternative might be, and Morell helps with this double task mightily. More than this, though, parents have to unlearn their own love of the screen-mediated life. Mom can’t be hooked to Instagram or TikTok while forbidding her daughter to open an account; Dad can’t be a gamer or sports gambler (much less addicted to porn) while warning his son away from these enticements. We parents must be well to impart health to our children, and we must possess a vision of the good toward which we are moving as we make decisions and form habits—a good that is neither self-evident nor universally recognized.

The biggest mistake a parent might make in closing this book, having been persuaded by its arguments, is to treat technology the way some churches once approached sexual purity. Like sex, digital devices would become horrible, no good, and very bad—right up until the moment they’re not. Morell is right that “if you change the laws, you can change the culture.” But laws alone won’t do the job. Lasting change has to come from above (law and policy) and from below (parents and neighborhoods), the spirit reinforcing the letter, so to speak. If change comes only from above, then we’ll be doomed to a kind of digital Prohibition: laws on the books that everyone hates and no one obeys.

“First take the plank out of your own eye,” Jesus says, and then you will see clearly to help others (Matt 7:5). Transformation begins in the heart, “and what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart” (15:18, ESV). In the case of technology and children, words and deeds alike begin and end with parents. Clare Morell has offered us the right tools for the change our homes so desperately need. The question is whether we will use them—first of all on ourselves.

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.

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Ideas

The Country We Could Have Had

Marvin Olasky

Editor in Chief

An America without immigrants is a lesser America.

Immigrants on Ellis Island in 1911.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

June is National Immigration Heritage Month, a time to remember the millions who have come to America from a land far, far away.

Among those millions were four children from imperial Russia.

The first, Szmuel Wonsal, was born in 1887 and made it to Baltimore in 1889, one of 11 children of a shoe repairman. Drifting through odd jobs in Ohio in 1903, he happened to watch a 12-minute silent movie, The Great Train Robbery.

Next, Israel Beilin, born nine months after Wonsal, came to New York with his family in 1892. He dropped out of school and in 1903 was homeless, earning a few pennies by hanging out in saloons and singing to customers.

Third was David Schwirnofsky, born in 1883, who became a nine-year-old newspaper street hawker. At age 15, with his father downed by tuberculosis, he became an office boy at the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America.

And last, Reuben Grin, also born in 1883, disembarked in Boston 20 years later and peddled used straw mattresses, sometimes carrying four at a time on his back. He eventually moved up to a wagon drawn by a horse with three legs.

Many American church members during the 1890s were not sure how to react to new arrivals like these. In 1891, Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts Episcopalian, complained on the floor of the U.S. Congress and in the pages of the North American Review about the arrival of immigrants “far removed in thought and speech and blood from the men who have made this country what it is.”

Three years later, the influential Immigration Restriction League (IRL) resolved to “arouse public opinion to the necessity of a further exclusion of elements undesirable for citizenship or injurious to our national character.” That meant keeping out immigrants except those from northern and western Europe. (Immigrants from the Russian Empire would not make the cut.)Congress had already passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, and “by 1890 abhorrence of the new immigration was spreading to wider circles.”

Yet in the same decade, social gospel pastor Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps sold tens of thousands of copies with a subtitle that popularized the question What Would Jesus Do? Sheldon ended the novel with a description of immigrants in “the depth of winter” huddled in “the thin shells of tenements” until the Holy Spirit moved Christians “to relieve the needs of suffering humanity.”

Within that range of public opinion, IRL cofounder and Harvard grad Prescott Hall was at one extreme when he sent a letter to the Boston Herald: “Shall we permit these inferior races to dilute the thrifty, capable Yankee blood … of the earlier immigrants?” Hall was a poetic eugenicist: “Already is our land o’er run / With toiler, beggar, thief and scum.” But even more-mainstream restrictionists like Francis Amasa Walker, first president of the American Economic Association and former head of the U.S. Census Bureau, also wanted to keep out “vast masses of peasantry” from “every foul and stagnant pool of population in Europe.”

Lorenzo Danford, an Ohio Methodist who chaired the US House’s immigration committee in the 1890s, may have typified the broad middle. He was willing to admit some immigrants but wanted to keep out “a class of people who have been thrown on our shores … known as the Russian Jews.” When Danford died in 1900, one congressional colleague declared that he’d “lived a Christian life [of] enlightened judgment,” and another said he was “always ready to lend a helping hand.”

But not to Wonsal, Beilin, Schwirnofsky, or Grin: All four were Russian Jews. What if anti-immigration advocates had been successful?

Keep out Wonsal, who changed his name to Sam Warner, one of the Warner Brothers of film history? Okay, but erase films including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Casablanca, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Lord of the Rings. Keep out other Jewish refugees from Russia? Okay, but erase Gone with the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and High Noon.

Keep out Beilin, who changed his name to Irving Berlin? So be it, but erase songs ranging from “God Bless America” to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” and “White Christmas.” While you’re at it, erase George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and Porgy and Bess. Erase Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for the Common Man. Erase a huge chunk of Broadway history.

Keep out Schwirnofsky, who changed his name to David Sarnoff? Early radio was point-to-point, like an oral telegraph, but Sarnoff saw an opportunity for “mass communicating” and founded RCA, then NBC—and the rest was hysteria.

Keep out Grin, who changed his name to Robert Green, and not a lot of cultural history would be erased—but I would be: He was my grandfather. He came to Boston while Joe Lee, founder of the Massachusetts Civic League, feared that “all Europe” would soon be “drained of Jews—to its benefit no doubt but not to ours.”

Illustration by CT / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

From left to right: Irving Berlin, Sam Warner, and David Sarnoff

But immigration was to America’s benefit. The year 1903 was an important one not because my grandfather arrived in a new land but because Theodore Roosevelt did, at least experientially. Up to then he’d spoken much like his friend Henry Cabot Lodge and echoed the warning in Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s poem “Unguarded Gates” about new immigrants “bringing with them unknown gods and rites … Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!”

In September 1903, though, the New York Times headlined an extraordinary visit: “PRESIDENT STARTS ELLIS ISLAND INQUIRY Astonishes Officials by Naming a Special Commission. HE INSPECTS IMMIGRANTS Perilous Trip Through Blinding Storm.” A reporter told of how “wind increased to almost hurricane force and nearly threatened the craft. The seas ran high. … President Roosevelt was dripping wet when he dashed down the shaky gangplank of the tug and set foot on Ellis Island.”

The special commission was to scrutinize the actions of commissioner of immigration William Williams, who was in charge of the Ellis Island port of entry for immigrants. Williams wanted tough enforcement of all possible entry requirements, including turning away those immigrants with little money. Roosevelt’s traveling companions were two men sympathetic to immigrants: Legal Aid Society head Arthur von Briesen and Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives and an immigrant himself.

The Times reported a conversation among the four. Williams wanted to turn away a man who arrived with $12—the equivalent of $440 now—arguing that his authority entitled him to make this judgment call. Von Briesen said that such a decision would mean that “Jake Riis should have been sent back when he came over,” for as the Times reporter snickered, “It seems that Mr. Riis did not have as much as $12 when he arrived in America.”

An evangelical directed by his faith, Riis was a powerful influence on Roosevelt, and so were immigrants Roosevelt met during his five hours at Ellis: “A dark-haired woman tried to rush forward to the President, but was restrained, and then broke out into cries and sobs regarding the husband she might be blocked from meeting: ‘Don’t send me away from him forever! Oh, please, please let me go!’” Roosevelt “heard the woman’s sobs,” the Times reported, “and later in the day he summoned the family to the Commissioner’s private offices and held an investigation. … He thereupon made a special ruling and released the entire family.”

Whether through personal encounters or political reckoning, Roosevelt changed his immigration approachgoing forward. He quoted the Bible and told listeners, “We need to remember our duty to the stranger within our gates.” He stopped promoting literacy tests for immigrants, which would have been used to suppress entry to America just as they were used to keep Black Americans out of voting booths.

But once immigrants were admitted, what then? The Times reporter suggested an answer: Roosevelt at Ellis Island “met the missionaries who look after the spiritual and in many cases the material welfare of the immigrants.” The greeters were Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who combated anti-immigrant sentiment not only in words but also through acts of compassion. Israel Beilin and David Schwirnofsky probably received help from some of the tens of thousands of New Yorkers who volunteered at more than a thousand charitable institutions.

Their first port of call was likely Jewish organizations with names like the Hebrew Benevolent Fuel Society. But churches sponsored all-welcome medical clinics, tailor shops that provided work and produced garments for needy children, and free classes in English, dressmaking, embroidering, sewing, carpentry, printing, plumbing, and other skills.

In Baltimore, the young Warner brothers may have gained help from the Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor, which in 1891, according to my research, had some 2,000 volunteers who made 8,227 visits to 4,025 families. If any little Warners became desperately sick, the Presbyterian Eye, Ear and Throat Charity Hospital offered free beds. If the Warners were cold, the Thomas Wilson Fuel Saving Society could come to the rescue: In 1890 it helped 1,500 families buy 3,000 tons of coal at reduced rates and helped 400 families buy sewing machines.

In Boston, Christians animated by In His Steps volunteered at a new social program, Morgan Memorial. Young minister Edgar Helms “was appalled at the conditions faced by immigrants who found themselves in a new country without jobs and sometimes desperate for food, clothing and shelter.” He spoke about Jesus and quoted a command: “Go thou and do likewise.” Morgan Memorial turned into Goodwill Industries.

Political and social efforts like these helped keep the immigration doors open until 1924. That made it possible for Selman Abraham Waksman, born in the Russian empire in 1888 and survivor of the 1905 massacre in Odessa of 400 Jews, to get to America as soon as he could, in 1910.

It’s good he came here too. In 1952, Waksman won the Nobel Prize “for his discovery of Streptomycin, the first effective anti-biotic against tuberculosis.” Until then TB was the “Great White Plague” due to the pallid complexion of its sufferers. Tuberculosis caused “nearly half of the deaths of people ages 15–35 in the United States during the 19th century,” not including Civil War casualties.

Charles Dickens described tubercular death in Nicholas Nickleby: “The struggle between soul and body is so gradual, quiet, and solemn, and the result so sure, that day by day, and grain by grain, the mortal part wastes and withers away. … Death takes the glow and hue of life, and life the gaunt and grisly form of death.”

Dickens called it “a disease which medicine never cured, wealth never warded off. … Slow or quick, [it] is ever sure and certain.” Certain, that is, until Waksman and his team figured out in 1943 how to stop it. Waksman’s Nobel Prize lecture describes his process of discovery, which sounds like If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again. Waksman said, “The first true antibiotic derived from a culture of an actinomyces was isolated in our department in 1940.”

Eureka? No: “It proved to be extremely toxic to experimental animals.” Waksman’s 1952 lecture then has pages of refusal to give up, until a real breakthrough occurred: “The conquest of the ‘Great White Plague,’ undreamt of less than 10 years ago, is now virtually within sight.” The number of US deaths from tuberculosis went from 194 per 100,000 in 1900 to 9.4 per 100,000 in 1984, a 95 percent decrease.

Improved living conditions and other medical innovations made a difference. If Waksman hadn’t connected the dots, others probably would have done so—but perhaps years or even decades later. Erase his immigration from America and you may erase thousands of lives. And how much of his determination was that of an immigrant to keep going until the Statue of Liberty was in sight?

The contributions of other immigrants from the Russian empire alone—dean of US science fiction Isaac Asimov, Maidenform founder Ida Rosenthal (formerly Kaganovich), and so many more—would make a shelf of books. You’d need a whole library to read about the value added by immigrants from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and elsewhere in Europe.

In 2015, kicking off his first campaign for president, Donald Trump emphasized the negatives of immigration: “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume are good people.” Last year, he said of Haitian immigrants, “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets.”

That’s over the top, but Trump was right to think some immigrants will bring trouble. Some evil will emerge. We cannot predict the future.

But we can learn from the past.

A National Immigration Heritage Month booklist from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh lists 15 nonfiction works including Abdi Nor Iftin’s Call Me American: A Memoir. A reading list from the American Writers Museum has 11. Both lists include Angela’s Ashes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir by Frank McCourt.

Marvin Olasky is executive editor of news and global at Christianity Today.

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Books

The Author Who Pulled Me out of the Doomscroll

Haley Byrd Wilt

Fantasy novelist Guy Gavriel Kay, who helped compile Tolkien’s Silmarillion, grapples with the juxtaposition of love and suffering in Written on the Dark.

Nick Lachance / Contributor / Getty

When I had my first child, I spent a lot of time awake. My son was born five weeks early and wanted to snuggle around the clock, and adults really shouldn’t fall asleep while holding tiny babies. So my husband and I were very much not sleeping, all the time.

And while I was awake, day and night, I was usually on my phone. Journalists have a bad habit of living on social media, and even with a baby, it proved hard to kick that habit. After all, it was 2021. So many alarming, terrible events were happening, and I worried about it all.

Christians are called to mourn with those who mourn, but my scrolling didn’t encourage that in earnest. Instead, it pushed my anxiety into overdrive and distracted me from tangibly loving others. During one of the most joyful moments of my life, I found myself slipping into the most suffocating despair I’d ever felt.

Canadian novelist Guy Gavriel Kay—whose latest, Written on the Dark, published last week—helped me begin to climb out of that pit. On a whim, I picked up Kay’s 2010 book Under Heaven during a walk to the library with my baby, and in it I found an untamed, winding story about humanity’s history, the kind of story a medieval bard might have shared in a great hall before kings and peasants alike.

I’ve always loved reading, and I had tried other books in those months. But I was bone-weary and nearly hallucinating from sleep deprivation, and they never quite spoke to the fears and trials then dominating my life. Under Heaven did. It starts slowly and poetically, daring us as modern, distracted readers to put down our phones, lean in, and pay attention. The story is disarmingly warm and rich with historical detail, as Kay’s characters persevere through a once-in-a-lifetime political crisis based on real events during China’s Tang dynasty.

Reflecting on the past—dwelling on the wars and pain and joy and beauty that humankind has experienced through the ages—was grounding for me. It was the opposite of doomscrolling. (Hope-reading?)

I read one after another of Kay’s books, finding that theme of resilience across them all. His stories depict evil unflinchingly while holding tightly to the good. These books did more than pull me away from the doomscroll or pass the difficult hours of my early postpartum era; they rekindled my love for storytelling and gave me an appreciation for its power to defy the darkness of this fallen world.

Kay, who is Jewish but not personally religious, often explores themes that Christian readers will find compelling and beautiful, with an emphasis on friendship, love, and self-sacrifice—a father putting his life on the line to save his son, or a warrior setting aside nationalistic animosity to instead value the dignity of his neighbors. Beauty and virtue exist amid pain and evil, just as in our own lives.

“Terrible things can happen, but people can do good things for each other,” Kay told me during an interview in downtown Toronto this spring. “Tenderness can exist in the midst of danger and chaos.”

History is his preferred material for exploring that truth through fiction: The Last Light of the Sun is inspired by wars between Viking raiders and King Alfred the Great. The Sarantine Mosaic series draws from the Byzantine Empire under Justinian. Tigana is a tale of warring wizards and a small band of rebels inspired by Renaissance Italy, and A Song for Arbonne and The Lions of Al-Rassan both meditate on religious conflict, tolerance, and good governance.

“Every book I’ve ever written has been, in part, an attempt to look at how different the past is and how similar it is,” Kay said. “The people of the past are strange and alien and wildly different from us, but they also loved their children, loved their spouses, didn’t love their spouses, wanted security, wanted a roof, wanted a harvest.”

Their basic needs, hopes, and fears were the same as ours. Their sin, too, is the same as ours, which means Kay’s books are often violent. Those moments are sometimes detailed and distressing enough to make the books inappropriate for sensitive readers and children. His stories also sometimes include sexual scenes that, though typically brief and vague, will be beyond the pale for some Christian readers.

Yet for adults already grappling with suffering or evil, Kay’s work can be encouraging precisely because it can acknowledge the reality of evil without succumbing to it.

It helps that Kay, 70, has been writing successfully for decades. That means he doesn’t have to play by the more restrictive rules of modern publishing, he told me. Rules like: Don’t jump from the past tense to the present tense. Don’t hop between characters’ heads—just choose one perspective per chapter or, ideally, one perspective for the entire book. Don’t write long books. And definitely don’t write an entire chapter from the viewpoint of a grizzled medieval courier who is largely irrelevant to the plot.

Because of his freedom to experiment, Kay’s writing feels like a continuation of a storytelling tradition far older and deeper than most contemporary literary output. He’s not making a product carefully pruned to its most marketable form. He’s telling a tale—and telling a truth.

He also wants that kind of freedom for more of his fellow bards, telling me he’s distressed that publishers increasingly won’t let other writers break the rules like he does.

“If you’re a young writer, the pressure will be on you to fit the category that you’re writing towards, and those categories get more and more rigid,” he said. “‘Your market likes your dragons.’ ‘Your market likes your battle scenes.’ ‘You’ve got to give them battle scenes if you want to keep writing, otherwise you’re going to be doing freelance editing and workshops.’”

The root problem here is bigger than the publishing industry, he argued: “The state of publishing is a reflection of the state of society.”

Distracted, anxious, online scrolling habits like my own are changing the world—and the world of books—instead of the other way around.

Still, Kay has resisted.

“I trust my readers,” he said simply. “And at this stage, my readers—and I mean it when I say this is a gift—my readers let me get away with it.”

Kay’s characteristic “quarter turn to the fantastic,” exploring history but with twists of magic, also leaves room for the numinous and spirituality. There are no elaborate, concrete magic systems here; instead, the books are haunted by the other, the transcendent, and mystery. Characters sometimes face encounters or miracles they can’t explain but must reckon with nonetheless.

Kay himself has only experienced the inexplicable a few times, he said. Decades ago, before cell phones, he was backpacking through Europe with a friend when they decided to separate for a bit to explore individually. A month and a half later, he recalls, he was checking his mail in Rome when he had the overwhelming feeling that he should stay at the post office and wait for his friend, who he somehow knew would arrive shortly.

“I hadn’t seen him for six weeks. I had no idea where in Europe he was at that moment,” Kay recalled. But he sat on the floor and waited. Soon, his friend walked into the room.

It was a small thing, but inexplicable, even now.

“It sits as a complete anomaly in my life,” Kay said.

Though a ravenous reader from childhood, Kay cited his parents, his wife, and the experience of having his own children as more significant influences on his work than any one author. But he also pointed to William Shakespeare: “I read Julius Caesar when I was ten and was stamped for life, like a duckling or something,” he remembered. “That was it. I was done. Lost. Enraptured.”

He started writing and publishing poetry as a teenager, then got his start in fiction as a young adult. In 1974, he helped Christopher Tolkien compile The Silmarillion after the death of his father, J. R. R. Tolkien. That experience helped him get a feel for the demands of novel writing and how to craft worlds. He tried his own hand at it, with a stint in Greece to work on a first attempt at a novel. His work has been published in more than two dozen languages since then, and he was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2014 for “outstanding contributions to the field of speculative fiction.”

After decades’ more experience, writing remains, for Kay, an “endless, brutal effort to reduce the gap between what’s in my head and what I can get on the page.”

His new novel, Written on the Dark, is set in a world a lot like medieval France. It starts as a murder mystery before slipping into a sweeping story about averting civil war, interrogating “the idea that some people could be too powerful for justice,” he said, and that there’s “an immunity that comes from wealth and power.”

The theme is compelling and relevant. Longtime Kay readers will smile at some of his personal flourishes and callbacks to past writing, but the book is accessible to new readers too. It’s shorter than many of his other novels, though, leaving less space for the intimate character development and detailed storytelling style that makes Kay so much fun to read.

Written on the Dark is at its best when it focuses on the relationships of its protagonist, tavern poet Thierry Villar. He begins in love with his city and his lifestyle of freedom, and he ends more committed to the people around him with a newly selfless love.

This is a timeless arc but not a simple or painless one. In one scene, the same night Villar finds love, a side character in the story is killed. “He was dead in a tavern on a summer night,” Villar reflects. “The night my own life altered again and love came in, as through an open window. A gift. A blessing of the god. What are we to make of such things overlapping, coinciding, in our days?”

This is the very question that weighed heavily on me after my son’s birth, as I tried to absorb all the world’s suffering through my smartphone’s screen. And though Kay doesn’t pretend to have the answer, I’ve found I much prefer art that at least knows to ask.

My son is much better at sleeping now that he’s almost four years old. We still cuddle all the time, and I still have to make a conscious effort to put away my phone. (I hope to throw it into the sea one day.)

Reading books aloud with him has become my favorite part of each night. No Kay yet, but books with a similar sense of adventure and moral inquiry: stories set in wild jungles, deserts, and oceans; stories about time travel, pirates, ninjas, knights, and selfish kings; stories of ordinary people trying to live virtuously through it all.

My son likes to jump straight from those stories to playtime. He runs around the yard, pretending to be a Viking facing a long winter or a bold knight challenging a ferocious villain.

“Not you!” he shouts at his imagined foes, his favorite cry of defiance.

These stories aren’t the only way he’ll grow more creative, courageous, and resilient, of course. Those transformations will come with maturity, discipleship, and time. But as a reader, I know—and, I think, Kay knows as a writer—good storytelling can help prepare us to live our own stories with tenderness, love, and bravery, even as we walk through the dark.

Haley Byrd Wilt is a journalist whose work has been published in Foreign Policy, CNN, and The New York Times, among others. She reports on Congress for the nonprofit news publication NOTUS.

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Wire Story

Despite Burnout, Just 1% of Pastors Leave Each Year

Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

Most who step away from the pulpit end up in other ministry roles.

Philip Gould / Getty Images

Pastors face unique challenges in their role and often feel overwhelmed, but few decide to step away from the pulpit and pursue another career.

Only around 1 in 100 pastors leave the ministry each year, according to a Lifeway Research study of evangelical and Black Protestant pastors.

The percentage of pastors who leave for reasons other than retirement or death has remained statistically unchanged over the past decade: 1.3% in 2015, 1.5% in 2021 and 1.2% in 2025.

“The rate of pastors departing the pastorate is steady and quite low given the demands of the role,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research.

“Many of those leaving the pastorate feel they are moving at God’s direction to another role of ministry. However, it’s easy for those outside and those inside the church to fixate on those who leave because of conflict, burnout or moral failure. Speculation always overstates these cases, yet these are the outcomes churches can seek to prevent.”

The 2025 study, sponsored by Houston’s First Baptist Church and Richard Dockins, an occupational medicine physician concerned about pastoral attrition, surveyed more than 1,500 pastors serving in evangelical or Black Protestant churches. The median pastoral tenure at one church is eight years.

Around 3 in 5 pastors (58%) started their role at their church in the last 10 years. Only 15% say their ministry at their current church stretches back at least 25 years. Additionally, half of pastors (52%) are serving at their first church, while 48% have served a previous church in that role.

Among those churches that existed and had a pastor 10 years ago, 44% still have the same pastor today. Around 1 in 5 (21%) say the previous pastor retired, while 16% are pastoring another church and 7% died.

In the past decade, 7% of pastors left and began working in another ministry role other than pastor, 3% work in a non-ministry role and 2% are involved in something that is not ministry-related and are not retirement age. These groups that leave the pastorate before retirement reveal a current annual attrition rate of 1.2% among evangelical and Black Protestant pastors. This means that in any given year since 2015, slightly more than 1 in 100 pastors walked away from the pulpit.

When the current pastors were asked why the former pastor left the ministry, the most common reasons were a change in calling (37%), conflict in a church (23%) and burnout (22%). Others left because of a poor fit with a church (17%) or family issues (12%). Few were forced to step away because of an illness (5%) or personal finances (3%). Another 4% left because they weren’t prepared for the job. Of the 1.2% of pastors who leave the ministry each year, 7% are forced out due to moral or ethical issues.

“Today’s pastors don’t always know all the reasons their predecessors left their church, but the number of pastors describing the previous pastor at their church leaving because of burnout has doubled over the last 10 years (22% v. 10%),” said McConnell.

Pastoral changes

Among the current pastors who previously served at another church, most left their previous congregation of their own volition. Half (50%) say they left because they took the church as far as they could. Three in 10 (31%) felt their family needed a change. A quarter (25%) left due to conflict in the church, while 21% walked away because the church did not embrace their approach to ministry.

Fewer say they left their previous church because the congregation had unrealistic expectations of them (17%), they were not a good fit for the church (17%) or another reason like feeling God called them elsewhere or to a new opportunity (13%). For some, the decision to leave was made for them, as 13% were reassigned and 8% were asked to leave the church.

“A pastor and congregation must work together,” said McConnell. “Maintaining unity is a biblical mandate that is easy to ignore when someone places too much importance on their own opinion.”

Most pastors who previously led a different church had some conflict in the other congregation. More than a third say there was conflict over proposed changes (37%) or with lay leaders (35%). Similarly, 35% say they experienced a significant personal attack.

Around a quarter felt conflict over their leadership style (27%) or expectations about the pastor’s role (24%). Fewer clashed with their previous congregation over doctrinal differences (18%) or national or local politics (9%). Around a third (35%) say they didn’t experience any of these conflicts in their earlier church.

Most current pastors don’t foresee leaving the ministry behind for one of those reasons. Nine in 10 (91%) are sure they can stay at their church as long as they want. Still, that doesn’t mean pastors are naïve about potential future problems.

Coming conflict

Evangelical and Black Protestant pastors in the U.S. expect to face conflict in their current congregations, even though they are working to limit it. Three in 4 (74%) say they will need to confront conflict in their church in the future, while a quarter (24%) disagree. Additionally, 1 in 5 (19%) say their church experienced significant conflict last year.

But most pastors have received training to deal with such issues and are monitoring their churches for brewing trouble. Around 9 in 10 (88%) say they consistently listen for signs of conflict in their church. A similar percentage (90%) say they invest in processes and behaviors to prevent conflict.

Around 3 in 4 (73%) say their training prepared them for the people side of ministry. Unfortunately, the percentage of pastors who felt their seminary or ministry training prepared them has dropped from 80% in 2015 to 77% in 2021, before falling to 73% today.

That decline may be connected to the shrinking number of pastors participating in related classes. In 2015, 75% of pastors had taken courses on dealing with conflict, and 72% had taken courses on interpersonal skills. Now, those percentages have fallen to 66% and 63% respectively.

“Pastors’ awareness of conflict remains high, but fewer are preparing in a classroom setting to love and lead through various disagreements,” said McConnell.

If many of the preventative steps don’t work, most pastors say their church has steps to address more serious conflicts and issues. Three in 4 (75%) have a process for church discipline.

Ministry troubles

Pastors may not believe their problems are tied specifically to conflict in their congregations, but generally to their role. Two in 3 (67%) feel they must be “on-call” 24 hours a day. This feeling has declined steadily among pastors, however, from 84% in 2015 and 71% in 2021. Another 57% say their role is frequently overwhelming, up slightly from 54% in 2015 but down from 63% in 2021.

Around half (47%) of pastors often feel the demands of ministry are greater than they can handle. This has remained consistent for the past decade. A third (34%) feel isolated as a pastor, unchanged from 2015 but down from 38% in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. One in 5 (19%) say their church has unrealistic expectations of them. This is again consistent with 2015 (21%) but down from 2021 (23%).

“While a couple elements of panic may have eased since the pandemic, the role of being a pastor is still difficult,” said McConnell. “Pastors and their families genuinely need encouragement, people to share ministry tasks with and to discuss differences respectfully.”

Many congregations seek to avoid issues with their pastor by having a document that clearly communicates the church’s expectations of the pastor (72%). Still, around 1 in 5 pastors (21%) don’t believe their church accurately described the congregation before they arrived.

Despite any potential gaps in the perspectives of the pastor and the congregation, 85% of pastors feel free to say “no” when expectations of them are unrealistic. But this has dropped from 89% in 2015.

During their week, 78% of pastors say they “unplug” from ministerial work and have a day of rest at least once a week, but this is down from 85% in 2015. Some may get even more time away from their ministry work. A third (32%) of pastors say their church has a plan for the pastor to receive a sabbatical periodically, up from 29% in 2015.

Potential warning signs

As pastors seek to avoid problems within their congregations and stay faithful in ministry, they may also want to evaluate themselves. Many aren’t investing in their personal spiritual growth daily, and some may struggle with spiritual pride.

Around half of pastors (54%) say they get away to spend time alone with God at least seven times a week. Other pastors have fewer occasions during which they spend time in Bible study and prayer other than in their sermon or lesson preparation, including 9% who say they do so six times a week, 17% five times, 7% four times, 7% three times, 3% two times, 1% one times and 1% find no times.

Close to 1 in 6 (16%) say they frequently get irritated with people at their church, with only 2% strongly agreeing. Slightly more than half (55%) strongly disagree, so for a large percentage of pastors, irritation with churchgoers may be an issue.

Certain attitudes may not be problematic for some pastors but may be for others. Two in 5 (39%) believe their church would not have achieved the progress it has without them. Three in 4 (73%) say they deserve the respect of their people. More than 4 in 5 (84%) work hard to protect their image as a pastor.

“While pastors may be quick to point to God’s provision for their churches and the fact they have maintained their integrity, agreement with these statements may also suggest the presence of self-importance,” said McConnell. “Leading by example, winning trust and serving where God places you are necessary traits of a pastor that can easily become narcissistic when too focused on the importance of your role, your image or what you deserve.”

- More from Aaron Earls - Lifeway Research

CT’s Chinese Translations Are Filling A Gap

How CT’s Chinese coordinator, Yiting Tsai, is using translated articles to spark deeper discussions on theology, current events, and global missions in Taiwan and China.

Hannah Glad

Mani Xu

Yiting Tsai read her first Christianity Today article while she was in the United States, working on her master of divinity degree at Moody Theological Seminary. The article was about a church scandal. It shocked her. Not the scandal, but the way a Christian news outlet was reporting in depth on a scandal in the church.

Back home in Taiwan, church scandals might be acknowledged, but an investigation like that would be taboo. For Yiting, it was refreshing.

Not long after that, Sean Cheng, former CT Chinese managing editor, was asking friends who were pastors if they knew anyone who was interested in translation work. Jiang Shaolong, founder of Living Water Tea House, connected Cheng with Yiting, who started doing translations for CT in the summer of 2022 after she graduated. Yiting’s translations were so good that Cheng asked her to become CT’s Chinese coordinator to help proofread and edit translated articles.

On the process of translating Christianity Today articles from English to Chinese, she said, “It’s really not about how much you understand English. It’s about how good your Chinese is so you can write beautifully.” Yiting first translates in Traditional Chinese and then, with the help of the Traditional/Simplified Chinese Conversion feature in Word, she adjusts vocabulary as necessary for Simplified Chinese readers.

There are two reasons why Yiting says it’s necessary to provide both Traditional and Simplified Chinese translations: “First, people who are accustomed to reading Traditional Chinese often find it quite difficult to read Simplified Chinese, and vice versa. Secondly, there is a significant political factor involved—many readers who are used to Traditional Chinese may resist reading articles in Simplified Chinese, as they associate it with China as a nation. Traditional Chinese readers from Taiwan may identify themselves as Taiwanese rather than Chinese, and may view Simplified Chinese as being for ‘Chinese citizens of China.'”

As the Chinese coordinator, Yiting finds articles on CT’s website that she believes would resonate with the Chinese-speaking world and either translates them herself or assigns them to another translator. “This is like a dream job,” Yiting said. “I was so in love with all of CT’s articles, [this role] uses all the things I learned from school, and I get to share about CT with a lot more people.” And share she did.

About a year into this role, Yiting felt called to return to Taiwan. “I decided it was time for me to go back and just go home so I can serve the church in Taiwan,” she said. While at home, Yiting has been sharing CT articles with the students in the public theology class she teaches at Logos Evangelical Seminary, through her work with WE Initiative, a mission mobilization organization, and with the adults at her church when she teaches Sunday school.

Yiting uses CT’s articles in her seminary class because she sees a lack of important, nuanced content in Chinese Christian publications. CT’s translations fill that gap.

“I really need to use CT’s articles to start a conversation with my class each week,” Yiting said. “We have Christian magazines, and some magazines have good theological content about things around culture, but we don’t have a magazine that talks about a Christian perspective on current things in the world—the principles of Christians being in this world, loving your neighbor, being a good witness, and just being a church. We have zero resources about that kind of theology and perspective, and there are a lot of issues that Taiwanese or Chinese don’t ever talk about, like divorce and abuse in marriage. It feels like most Christian websites that talk about things like this are either too deep or too simple—there’s just no good theology.”

During her time in the States, Yiting learned about the blind spots of the American church, but her experience also helped her see a blind spot in the way Christians in Taiwan still embrace some of Confucius’s teachings. One of those teachings is respect for elders. While inherently that’s not a bad thing, Yiting said, “in Asian churches, whatever our pastor says, we agree with. We don’t think for ourselves.”

This also hinders reporting on spiritual abuse and church scandals related to pastors. “Asians really hate talking about church scandals. It’s such a taboo in our culture. If it’s something just happening inside a church, then it’s kind of fine, but if it’s from a pastor, then it’s no, it’s a total no.”

Also rooted in Confucianism, Yiting said, is a feeling of “We really like people to tell us what is right and wrong. There’s always definitely right and definitely wrong, there’s not something in between. So when they become Christians, the Bible is just about salvation. That’s it. If you don’t do this right, then you go to hell.”

Yiting uses content from CT’s articles to push back on her students’ black-and-white thinking, wanting them to reason for themselves and consider different perspectives. “Sometimes when I read CT articles, they say, ‘Hey, teacher, which [position] do you choose?’” And she tells them, “It doesn’t matter, because these things I show you, it’s not about definite right and wrong.”

In her class each week, Yiting says, “I have a topic I want to talk about, like two kingdoms, Augustinian, Reformation or liberation theology, and I will use CT’s related articles to make [my students] do their own critical thinking. CT’s articles also present all different kinds of voices. I would encourage my students that you don’t have to agree with the author, but give me a good argument. CT articles really make them think.”

Beyond that, the articles that Yiting shares with her students have impacted their own spiritual lives. “Some of my students will say, ‘Oh my gosh! This article changed my life, and I’m going to share this with everyone in my church.’”

One topic in particular drew her students’ interest, especially the ones joining her class virtually from China: the argument for divorce in abusive marriages. “My students said, ‘I never heard about that. I never learned about this kind of theology.’ In our churches, it’s always a no. It doesn’t matter what happened. Divorce is always a no.”

Yiting also shared an article with her students about Palestinian Christians and Messianic Jews coming together to learn how to disagree well. “I remember that article really touched their hearts,” she said. She felt like the tensions described in the piece applied to the tensions between Taiwan and China, where her students are from. “There’s hope in our conflict,” she said. “Yeah, our countries are enemies, but we are first of all Christians; we are secondly Taiwanese, secondly Chinese.”

Yiting’s students have noticed how the articles put to words things they might have already been thinking and feeling. “They feel something is off in the church, but they’re not sure how to counter that feeling,” she said. “They don’t know how to point it out. I think the articles help them to think through things.”

And because the articles often use biblical references, they can go look at those verses themselves and make connections. “The Bible is so relevant to our life. It’s not just about salvation and right and wrong,” she added.

So much of what has encouraged Yiting’s students has encouraged her also. Thinking back on the first article that she read, Yiting said she has appreciated the faithful investigations CT has done on church and ministry scandals. “It rebuilds my faith,” she explained.

Some of those reported scandals have included leaders like Ravi Zacharias and Mike Bickle. The one about Mike Bickle has consistently ranked among the top five most-read Chinese translations. “We are the only website with a Chinese translation or Chinese news reporting on this, so we got a ton of clicks about that. Current events about church scandals and spiritual abuse—we can’t find resources about that.”

Another type of content Yiting says is difficult to find is information on global missions, which is why she has started to share CT’s missions-related articles on WE Initiative’s Facebook page to inspire and equip the group’s followers with a heart for missions. “No organization in Asia has the resources to do reporting about missions—missions to us or from us,” she said. “CT Global really helps. … Sometimes my coworkers will say, ‘Wow! This article is amazing. How do they do that?’”

One of those articles was about a Kenyan man and woman who were called to minister to Chinese people in Kenya. Yiting recalled, “Sean’s friend told Sean about this, and Sean told CT, and CT literally sent a reporter to write about that. Those are the kinds of things we don’t have the resources for.”

CT has broadened Yiting’s knowledge of the world. “In general, [the coordinator position] is like learning about this world, because CT has so much reporting from all over the world.” And that’s likely also the case for CT’s Chinese audience. “All the firsthand Christian news in the Middle East—CT’s the only resource that has Chinese translation.”

When Yiting first started working at CT, the Chinese translation team were only doing two to three translations a week. Now, they do four or five. “And the number of clicks has also gone up a lot.”

Looking to the future of CT’s Chinese content, Yiting said, “I’m hoping to see more than five articles [translated a week]. I definitely wish we could have more articles, because there’s so much I want people to read. I also want more original authors [from the Chinese-speaking world]…I think CT has already found several really good authors, and my hope is they can have more, because culture-related, news-related articles get a lot of attention if we have more from our own place. More from East Asia would be really helpful.”

More content would mean more for Yiting to share and more opportunities for CT to make an impact on the Chinese-speaking world.

Ideas

We’re Asking the Wrong Tech Question

Mitchell East

The consideration is not “How can we use this technology redemptively?” but rather “Should we use this technology at all?”

Illustration by Simone Noronha

The age of artificial intelligence has arrived, and we were not ready for it. As AI infiltrates more and more of our digital tools and experiences, it is quickly becoming apparent that we aren’t quite sure how to approach this technology. Some are enamored with the wonders of its computing speed, unthinkingly eager for new conveniences and savings. Others engage with AI apparently forgetting that it’s a computer at all, responding with love or fear just as they might with another human.

And what about the church? What about evangelical pastors? We’ll see the same split there, with a few thoughtful resisters but, if I had to guess, more taking the path of eager adoption. Some will jump in with reckless abandon. Others might caution congregants about AI, but I worry that after raising the customary yield sign to a little-understood new technology, many will give AI the green light.

There are risks, they’ll say. But we have a responsibility to use this tech for good. Just as Paul tells the church to redeem the time (Eph. 5:16, KJV), I expect many Christian leaders will tell the church to “redeem the tech.”

Yet redemption does not mean hesitant engagement. It does not mean doing what everyone else does, only on a slight delay. With AI—and other as-yet-unknown technological revolutions—I want to challenge my fellow pastors and Christians more broadly to ask a more fundamental question. Not necessarily, or at least not at first, “How can we use it?” but rather, “Should we use this technology at all?”

In his encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” Pope Saint John Paul II argued that some actions are intrinsically evil, no matter the context. Protestants can and should agree. For example, there are no circumstances, cultures, or conditions that could permit a Christian to commit blasphemy, rape, or murder. He put it this way:

The negative moral precepts, those prohibiting certain concrete actions or kinds of behaviour as intrinsically evil, do not allow for any legitimate exception. They do not leave room, in any morally acceptable way, for the “creativity” of any contrary determination whatsoever. Once the moral species of an action prohibited by a universal rule is concretely recognized, the only morally good act is that of obeying the moral law and of refraining from the action which it forbids.

Just as we can identify inherently evil actions, we must recognize intrinsically evil technologies and inventions. Contrary to the popular notion that all technology is neutral and all that matters is how you use it, some technologies cannot be used for any moral purpose.

Sex robots are an easy and obvious example. The church would never speak of “redeeming” this tech. There is no way for a pastor to encourage folks in the pews to use sex robots with prudence. The intrinsic morality of other examples that come to mind for me—nuclear weapons, cocaine, euthanasia pods—are more widely debated. But that there is such a thing as irredeemable technology should not be a controversial idea for Christians of any stripe.

We should learn to ask the question “Is this inherently immoral?” about any new technologies because they will continue to appear at a rapid pace. Current debate about AI is not the end of this discussion but its continuation.

Consider future possibilities like babies grown in artificial wombs or even something like severance. We are repulsed by immoral technologies in science fiction, but will we shrug when the real thing arrives? I remember my revulsion when I watched the scene in The Matrix showing fields of babies grown in artificial wombs. Will Christians find that technology “redemptive” if it’s offered, with friendlier aesthetics, in this century or the next?

Without asking that question, many American Christians, including pastors, barrel forward, asserting that AI is merely “a tool that can be used for good or bad.” Already there’s a Christian AI app and pastors preaching that AI is an important career path for young Christians. And maybe that will prove true, but we can’t assume new technologies are neutral, inevitable, or worth exploring. If most Christians use a new technology without thinking about morality, the church should not celebrate but groan in prayer. We must ask if before we ask how.

In this we have a model in the Amish. The world has long rolled its eyes at these Christians, but they’re still here—growing, in fact. Maybe artificial intelligence will prompt a greater breadth of Christians to think about technology more like the Amish do, to see its adoption as a choice subject to real review by the tenets of our faith rather than an inevitability. Why not abstain from AI for a while rather than rush into uncharted territory? Many of us were early adopters of smartphones, and look where that got us.

A tech optimist may argue that using new tech is analogous to Israel “plundering the Egyptians.” This image from Exodus 12:36 was used by Augustine to justify the integration of Platonic philosophy into Christian theology. And yes, it’s true that the Israelites used some of the Egyptian gold to build the tabernacle. But they also used the same gold to make the golden calf, and God did not encourage the Israelites to engage with idolatry responsibly and prudently.

In other words, you can plunder gold from the Egyptians to build a sanctuary, but you can’t use it to make an idol—and idols are far easier to fabricate than we like to think.

My argument here is not that AI is intrinsically evil. I don’t and can’t know that at this stage. Moreover, any techno-pessimist worth his salt must admit that Christians can and do take up innovations from the world and redeem them for good. Sometimes we do build the tabernacle instead of the golden calf. Some technology is neutral or even better than neutral.

But other technology is bad for a Christian’s soul whenever she uses it, regardless of how cautious she is. The world would be better if some technologies had never been invented, and some technologies that are not quite intrinsically evil may yet be intrinsically dangerous and prone to create opportunities for temptation.

For the foreseeable future, these are categories Christians must have in mind, approaching each new technology with the understanding that it may well be good, useful, or at least redeemable—or it may be intrinsically evil or dangerous. In the latter case, redemption attempts are a category error, and redemption instead requires the stubborn refusal to use that tech at all. Pastoral green lights are mistakes we will come to regret.

Christ’s redeeming word in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery was “Go, and sin no more” (John 8:11, KJV). In the 21st century, we will sometimes have to say, “Go, and use this tech no more.”

Mitchell East is the adult education and small groups minister at Memorial Road Church of Christ in Edmond, Oklahoma. He writes about the Bible and theology at his Substack, East of Eden.

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Ideas

Come to Me, All You Networking Techies

Natalie Mead

Silicon Valley might be drawn to Jesus in the hopes of wealth and power. He can work with that.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source Images: Getty

It’s not easy to be a Christian in the Bay Area.

I’ve lived in San Francisco for 12 years. But it’s often impractical, even impossible, for Christians to put down roots here. Pastors and ministry workers have trouble keeping up with the skyrocketing cost of living; many churches can’t afford to buy permanent locations. Young Christian families that aren’t forced out by the affordability crisis are drawn to more faith-friendly school systems in other parts of the country, opportunities to be closer to family, and the ability to raise their kids in environments more aligned with their personal convictions.

Our political moment has only worsened the situation. Ever since Donald Trump’s first presidency and the prominence of his much-discussed evangelical voting bloc, telling people I’m a Christian in San Francisco has usually also involved telling them a long list of things I’m not. No, I’m not a racist. No, I’m not a xenophobe. No, I don’t hate gay people. (If I did, I would have left San Francisco a long time ago.) But even if I were to disown Trump’s entire political platform, the suspicions would remain. After all, am I not one of the Christians under the protection of the newly minted Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias?

And then there’s the tech industry. For six of my years here, I worked as a software engineer for the company now known as Meta, and found its ethos largely opposed to Christian belief. I know many techies whose faith didn’t survive the pressure to succeed, the money, and the cultural indoctrination. Mine did only by God’s grace.

So when a friend on the East Coast shared a recent New York Times story about a Christian “revival” occurring in Silicon Valley, I groaned—not because I’m against revival in the Bay Area! I was just skeptical of its supposed locus: the tech industry.

The Times story, published earlier this year, describes how Christianity is coming into vogue among tech executives, artificial intelligence evangelists, and venture capitalists. Thanks to a growing contingent of tech elites who have “come out” as Christians, plus recent political shifts, a religion once anathema to this secular region is now being not only promoted but also celebrated as the next big thing. The reporting focuses on swanky San Francisco events—featuring high-profile Christians and focusing on topics like how science relates to the Bible—that have an arguably evangelistic bent.

A few months later, Vanity Fair also reported on this development, calling it “business networking for the spiritually curious” and multiple times mentioning Peter Thiel, a prominent venture capitalist and Christian who publicly discusses his faith. The article also quoted an anonymous Christian entrepreneur: “I guarantee you, there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel.”

Hence my groaning. Bay Area Christianity barely exists as it is. I worried this affiliation with another ultrawealthy, controversial figure, even if overblown, wouldn’t do the faith any favors.

It’s no wonder that The Atlantic’s Christian staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig, reacting to events that simultaneously introduce people to Jesus (however indirectly) and offer opportunities for professional and economic success, thought of the story of the rich young ruler in Matthew 19.

I, however, found myself thinking about the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

Or more specifically, the day after the bread and fish multiplied, when the crowd that Jesus had miraculously fed found him on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. (Jesus had walked there, though not on land, during the night.) This was the same crowd that had listened to Jesus teach about the kingdom of God for hours, so it is somewhat surprising that Jesus told them, “You are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill” (John 6:26). In other words, these folks were coming to Christ for his material benefits, not for Christ himself.

Some of Jesus’ closest followers did the same thing. The disciples James and John once outright approached Jesus to ask if they could one day have positions of honor at his right and left hand. They were likewise seeking the Messiah in part for the earthly rewards they expected him to offer.

As I did.

For the past few years, I’ve been working on a memoir. At the time I first read the revival reporting, I just so happened to be writing about the moment I decided to go back to church. I was in college, and it was many years after I’d completely run away from my faith. The decision to return was motivated by my desperate situation: I was about to buckle beneath the academic hazing of my university’s computer science program, I had very few friends, and I was thousands of miles away from home. I needed some sort of divine assistance, and my childhood experiences in church made Christianity seem like a good place to start.

Back then, I was not interested in who Jesus actually is. I wanted a “cosmic vending machine” to meet my academic, social, and emotional needs. Just like the crowd that Jesus miraculously fed, I wasn’t coming to Jesus because I wanted Jesus. (Also like the crowd, I overvalued free food to the point that I would shamelessly help myself to anything left out in the computer science building.)

I’m sure that if I’d known what the take-up-your-cross-and-follow-me part of discipleship would mean for me personally—namely, becoming disabled and unable to hold my tech job at the age of 27, and not making use of that fancy degree ever since—I would have bailed on the whole Jesus thing.

But I didn’t bail. Not because I realized how selfish I was being but because Jesus humbled himself to my self-serving views for a season in an act of grace. Then he began to teach me—slowly, gently—that he is God and I am not.

It’s a lesson I’m still learning.

This is not to say that what I did, or what James and John did, or what the crowd did, was right or good. Jesus didn’t condone the impure motives of those who sought him for the wrong reasons. But neither did Jesus outright reject them for their selfish ambitions.

In the case of James and John, Jesus still allowed them to follow him all the way to the cross, then to the tomb, then into his resurrection life. He also announced his plans for them to suffer greatly for the sake of the gospel: “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with” (Mark 10:39). Clearly, at the moment they quibbled over their future job titles, they weren’t ready for that. But no matter. Jesus sanctified them in spite of themselves.

After rebuking the crowd for their selfish motives in coming to him for earthly instead of spiritual provision, Jesus extended an invitation to be similarly sanctified: “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27).

And this is similar to an invitation Jesus extended to the rich young ruler: “Go, sell your possessions … Then come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21).

In all these examples, Jesus had patience and grace for people who came to him for the wrong reasons. And not only that—he also opened to each of them a door to the kingdom of God, giving them opportunities to be transformed over time by his saving grace.

Do I have my reservations about mixing business networking with evangelism? Yes. Do I think everyone attending Christian events is genuinely seeking the Savior? No. Do I think of the Silicon Valley “revival” as an actual revival? Not yet. (Unless it has brought about much more conviction of sin and work of the Spirit than my outsider’s view of it has so far led me to believe.)

But do I think God can be glorified through all this? Yes. Yes, I do.

Even if all of the Bay Area acolytes are coming to Jesus with the wrong idea, wanting him only insofar as he enables them to obtain earthly treasures of money or fame that will spoil and fade, what Jesus said to the five thousand makes me think that coming to him for exactly the right reasons is not strictly required. Jesus can work with our selfishness and, eventually, work out our selfishness to his glory.

He certainly did with me. I pray he does the same for Silicon Valley.

Natalie Mead is currently pursuing an MFA while writing a memoir about chronic pain, relationships, and faith. Read more of her writing at nataliemead.com.

- More from Natalie Mead

Church Life

Phylicia Masonheimer on How Erotic Fiction Harms Women

Interview by Clarissa Moll

The author and theologian spoke with CT about women’s porn use and her path to freedom from addiction.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Pexels

Phylicia Masonheimer is an author, theologian, and the founder of Every Woman a Theologian. She recently sat down with The Bulletin podcast’s Clarissa Moll for a transparent conversation about the rise in women’s erotica and her path to freedom from addiction.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity. Listen to the full conversation here.

Most Americans don’t consider full or partial nudity as porn. Coming to this question as a woman, a mother, a wife, a theologian—what is porn?

I can see why people struggle a bit with definitions of pornography, because seeing partial nakedness or nudity isn’t always meant to cause sexual arousal. Examples of this might be Renaissance art or a picture in National Geographic. We know innately that these images are not designed to cause sexual arousal.

Pope John Paul II made a distinction between nudity, whose purpose is to cause sexual arousal, and nakedness without shame. Much of the sexually explicit writing and images we see in American culture has a goal, and that goal is sexual arousal or exploration. Or just that subtle attitude of something slightly naughty or bad about this.

The erotic audiobook market has exploded over the last few years. A common site for erotic audio had 5.4 million listeners in 2022. The New York Times has reported on the rise of romance bookstores. Why do you think women would rather hear or read porn than see it?

My husband and I both have a history of pornography addiction, mine in the form of erotica and his in the form of visual pornography. And both of us now work with people, men and women respectively, who are breaking free from those addictions.

In our experience, women tend to be drawn to pornographic content that allows them to imagine being the main character in the story. When the setting and the conversation and the relationship and the desire of a man toward a woman is being framed in story, it’s much easier to put yourself as the center. You can imagine it in your mind, and you can even customize what’s written to yourself.

It’s a difference in how desire is processed. Men are often going to pornography out of a childhood wound, and pornography helps them to take back a form of control. Oftentimes, men are not looking at pornography as the main character in a story. They’re looking at the woman’s face and feeling like this person desires me.

In both cases, it’s heartbreaking because men and women are both seeking to fill a wound or a void when they go to this material and they don’t even realize that’s what’s happening. Women want to feel loved and desired, and this storyline allows them to do that. Men want to feel loved and desired, and this visual allows them to do that.

Rebecca Yarros, the author of Onyx Storm and a number of other romantic novels, said that she liked to insert her husband into the story because this was a way of celebrating their relationship. But what I’m hearing is what she perceives as a celebration of her relationship can actually be meeting a place of deep longing and woundedness for women who desire that kind of attention or care or love.

Exactly. Oftentimes, women will push back and say, “Well, it’s not erotica, it’s romantic.”

In a traditional erotic book, like a Harlequin novel, the plot is weaker than you would get in a romance novel. It’s mainly just a vehicle for the sexual content. I had an erotica addiction for almost a decade, so I’ve read a lot of these books, and they stick with you.

Unfortunately, in these modern books—this “romance” that’s not labeled as erotica—the scenes are more extreme than what I was reading in Harlequin novels years ago. It’s the same kind of content but with a more appealing storyline.

Yarros, in the Fourth Wing series, has essentially built a Harry Potter world for dragon riders. Think about it. The primary market is millennial women who grew up reading Harry Potter and Twilight. It’s like the best of both worlds. It’s genius writing on her part in terms of the plot.

What’s unfortunate is that it’s appealing to these women and ushering them into what could be, and often is, the beginnings of an addiction. That’s the part of this that I think women need to be aware of—the impact that these scenes inevitably have on your view of yourself, your view of sexuality, your view of men, your view of marriage, and how your brain is processing the dopamine that is achieved from these scenes.

Talk to me a little bit about how your relationship with pornographic literature developed.

My exposure to erotic fiction was not in my home. It was not with my relatives. That is actually a very common path for many Christian women: Mothers, aunts, older sisters, and even pastors’ wives will recommend books to them. That’s their entry point into erotic addiction and then, later on, sometimes into visual pornography.

I was 12 years old, I was at a garage sale, and I found a book that didn’t have a cover. I thought it was a Boxcar Children book, you know, in my naiveté, my innocence. I started reading and was totally shocked. But what’s wild about these scenes is that there is a physical response. Your brain responds to what it’s reading. It also brought about a shame response, because again, the nakedness that’s being presented here is not without shame. And so I kept it a secret.

And when you keep things a secret, they fester, right? I started seeking out information. Where can I find more books like this? The culture in which I was growing up was not a culture where you could be vulnerable about failures or struggles in regard to sexuality, so that played a role too.

By the time I was in college, I was a believer and felt like I was living a double life. I knew this was affecting how I saw men. It was affecting my dating life, because the men in these books are often very aggressive, very dominant, kind of patriarchal; and the way it’s presented is as strength and virility. I was being drawn to men who were emotionally unavailable, who were avoidant attachment, who were sexually pushing boundaries, and I thought that was attractive because that’s what I had consumed for years.

When I met my husband, who is the most humble, kind, gentle, loving, and strong man, it was actually difficult for me at first to be drawn to him, because the way I perceived masculinity had been so twisted by this content. We don’t often talk about how it unconsciously, over time, impacts how we perceive our husbands or our dating lives. Are we being fair when we allow erotic novels to shape us if we wouldn’t want a man to be shaped by the content that he’s watching on a triple-X site?

Common Sense Media lists Rebecca Yarros’s books, and it was interesting to see how the reviews shook out. Children literally said there are page numbers to skip so you can read the story and avoid the porn, as though our kids are thinking you can eat the mac and cheese but pick the peas out if there’s something you don’t like.

In one sense, it sounds like good discernment. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves: Is putting these books in front of our children the wisest thing? Is their discernment muscle strong enough? This is a question that adults need to ask too.

Christians today often tend to look for the lowest common denominator. But the real question isn’t “How far can I go?” but “How holy can I be?” One of the signs that you have an addiction is if you get bored reading. When you pick up The Hobbit or a Brandon Sanderson novel and you find yourself checking out and getting bored, I guarantee you that you have become dependent on the dopamine from those sexual scenes.

Are you able to discern and skip over content? Probably some people can. Is it the wisest choice? Not always.

Fifty-six percent of women under the age of 25 seek out porn, and a third of them are regularly seeking it out every month. It’s everywhere: in hotels, in airport bookstores. It must be very hard for a person who says, “I want something different for my life.” What did those first steps toward freedom look like for you? I imagine it wasn’t easy.

No, it wasn’t. There will be people in your life who tell you that it’s not that big of a deal. Partially, perhaps, because they feel convicted by your recognition and your trying to find freedom from it. When I talk about this online, there are women who get very angry and defensive. “It’s just a book. People are doing worse,” they’ll say—which is never the measurement of what is good for us.

For me, it started with eliminating the areas that I knew were the greatest temptation. I stopped reading romance entirely. Part of the reason I didn’t just switch to “closed-door” romance was because, for me, the entire romantic plot line was creating discontent for me as a single woman. I was still finding myself searching in the plot line for those scenes while I was reading. My brain was actually hunting for them.

I switched to nonfiction and children’s literature, not young adult—kids’ chapter books, which isn’t for everybody!—theology and memoir, genres where I knew I was safe. I also stopped going to the movie theater because I couldn’t anticipate what scenes would be in a movie, and I knew I needed a period to detox.

Josh, my husband, works with a program for pornography recovery called Revive Your Life. They intensively detox the men from pornography, but also from the otherthings they go to for dopamine hits, like junk food or impulse shopping, because often you will transfer your addiction to something else. You have to rewire your brain by completely breaking from the thing that your brain has become dependent on.

It became months, and then years, where I was like, “I can’t read that. I can’t watch that.” Then slowly I was able to reintroduce clean romance, starting with old classical romance like Pride and Prejudice. The purpose of this is to get you to the point where you appreciate a good story for a good story without needing to have that edge to it, and then, once you are in that place, reintroducing fiction that honors what is true and good and beautiful. That helps you to continue on that path.

This is an aspect of the rise in women’s porn that is especially dehumanizing. It is escapist, but it’s also corrupting a genre of literature that can be so beautiful. C. S. Lewis says, “Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.” This genre in particular can be such a precious vehicle for good and true and beautiful words to be spoken and truths to be conveyed, so it feels like a particularly insidious way for untruth to worm its way into women’s hearts.

J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, they all said this: There is an innate desire in the human heart for that story arc of good and evil and the reconciliation of all things and of me being a part of that reconciliation, that desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

I think there’s a reason we’re drawn to stories like Fourth Wing—there’s adventure and teamwork and dragons, right? But then there’s this intertwining of good and evil—the subtle presentation of a worldview that is very gray. We don’t realize the effect it’s having on us when we’re sitting in a book club and women around us are saying, “This is our next book,” or “I think you’ll love it. It’s so good.”

This is a millstone around the necks of younger believers. If you saw the emails from the women I’ve worked with over a decade, you’d see the grief and the anguish and the agony of trying to find freedom from an addiction that began with a trusted woman in their life handing them a book when they were 13, 14, 15, 25—someone they trusted to be a spiritual adviser. Somebody they knew they could follow into spiritual maturity. This is where a lot of this is happening.

We think that shameful things need to remain in darkness, but this conversation is a reminder of the power that exists for us, that is available to us, when we bring things into the light. It’s both the power to reconcile relationships, as you’ve talked about, and the power to renew our minds as we interact with the very real longings that we have for intimacy and community.

- More from Clarissa Moll

News

As Nigeria Grapples with Crime, ‘One-Chance’ Robbers Grab Wallets and Phones

Emiene Erameh

How one Christian woman found peace after trauma.

Samuel Alabi / Contributor / Getty

Peculiar Chinedu thought October 10, 2024, would end like any other day—taking the bus home from her administrative job at a law firm in Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nigeria’s capital region. The skies darkened and threatened rain, people crowded the bus station, and Chinedu decided to take a taxi home.

A crowded taxi had one seat left, three of the four back seats taken by two women and a man. A few minutes later, Chinedu heard the male passenger shout, “Down!” She looked up from her phone and into the barrel of a gun. Chinedu remembers him bellowing, “Down!” again and forcing her head down as her stomach dropped with fear.

Chinedu had fallen victim to criminals called “one-chance robbers.”

One-chance robbers fill a vehicle with their own members, then lure in unsuspecting passengers. Robbers often leave one seat vacant and shout, “One chance, one chance,” at bus stops where passengers are too hurried to wait for a bus or licensed taxi. They then rob the passengers of phones and other valuables. Some gangs let passengers exit the car on their own. Others throw them out of the car, often causing injuries to the victims.

Criminal gangs use one-chance robbers to steal money from busy workers who need easy rides when the public transportation system fails. These robberies contribute to rampant crime that gives Nigeria the third-highest crime rate in Africa. Violent crimes, fatalities, and abductions in FCT rose in 2023 but began declining again in 2024.

Though Nigeria faces threats of violent extremism from Islamist groups such as Boko Haram, the European Union Agency for Asylum reports criminality as the primary source of violence. The agency also listed cult- and election-related violence, banditry, and kidnappings as security concerns for Nigerians. A 2023 study also identified Nigerian highways as high-risk zones for robbery and murder.

Many Nigerians do not own personal vehicles, leaving them open to one-chance robberies. Inadequate transportation and overwhelmed police forces—especially in urban areas—make preventing and prosecuting these crimes difficult. The prevalence of kidnappings and armed robberies in the cities is forcing the Nigerian government to address these complex security challenges. Still, robbers exploit gaps in transportation and policing.

In January 2024, the government launched a Special Intervention Squad to fight kidnapping and other criminal activities. In May, the Nigerian Police Trust Fund commissioned a new Divisional Police Headquarters to improve security. But research suggests that corruption, poor oversight, and inadequate training leave police under-resourced for the task.

A December 2024 survey by Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) claimed that more than one in five Nigerians had been victims of crime and that crime incidents between May 2023 and April 2024 totaled almost 52 million. The NBS removed the survey documentation from its website after the State Security Service questioned its CEO, Adeyemi Adeniran. The survey suggests a staggering increase in crimes from the nearly 135,000 cases reported by the same bureau in 2017.

For Chinedu and other FCT residents, a poor public transport system means they need to take rideshares to make it to work. One transportation company based in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja, has only 241 buses and taxis and 231 staffers to serve more than 3 million FCT residents. The shortage of taxis means many car owners use their own vehicles to provide rideshare services. This makes it hard to distinguish between legitimate rideshares and ones run by robbers.

While robbers shook down the rideshare passengers for valuables, Chinedu prayed silently for the robbers to spare her life and let her return home in one piece. The two other female passengers screamed, only for the robbers to retaliate.

“They kept hitting my head,” said Chisom Okere, one of the passengers who bore the brunt of the attack. “And it was after the whole incident I realized that one of the robbers was hitting my head with a gun.”

The robbers let Chinedu go about 20 minutes after the robbery began, returning her phone after finding no bank apps they could use to withdraw money from her account. They dropped off Okere and the third woman four hours later in a district on the outskirts of FCT—62 kilometers from their starting point. The women tried to flag down motorists but found most were reluctant to stop.

“My clothes were torn, and I looked like a madwoman,” Okere said. Eventually the women found strangers willing to help them.

“It could have been much worse,” Okere said. “What if they pushed me out of the car while it was in motion, like some of them do? Would I have survived?”

Chinedu said recovering from the trauma of the robbery took time. For months after the robbery, she scrutinized cars and people at bus stops. She feared some might be members of one-chance-robbery rings or kidnapping gangs.

She hesitated to enter private vehicles, though finding available public vehicles—such as buses with empty seats—proved difficult. Sometimes Chinedu’s search for reliable private transportation made her late for work, but an understanding boss overlooked her lateness. Her parents—pastors at a local church—provided counseling and prayers as she healed.

But looking back, Chinedu said her experience during the robbery helped reinforce her faith in God.

“My belief in God and knowing he would never abandon me helped me overcome my fear.”

- More from Emiene Erameh

Books

Excerpt

Bearing One Another’s Burdens Means More Than Therapy Referrals

Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells

An excerpt from When Hurting People Come to Church on how lay ministry can supplement and support professional mental health care.

Illustration by Elizabeth Kaye / Source Images: Getty, Unsplash

The 2023 warning from Thomas Insel, the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, was pretty stark:

Our nation is facing a new public health threat. … Feelings of anxiety and depression have grown to levels where virtually no one can ignore what is happening. … 90% of Americans feel we are in a mental health crisis.

They are right. The evidence from both clinical research and government assessment indicates a rapid increase in prevalence, need, and cost of mental health services in virtually every category (e.g., suicide, addiction, and trauma) and virtually every demographic and age group.

There are many reasons for this crisis, both within the church and in society at large. Countless studies have looked at factors as diverse as marital breakdown, the prevalence of racial injustice, and the use of smartphones at key stages of emotional development.

It’s likely that any number of factors may be contributing. But we propose that underneath all of that is a well-intended but ultimately harmful tendency to devalue the help the church can offer to many people in crisis.

Indeed, it is not too much to say that mental health care is the evangelism, church-growth, discipleship, and church-engagement method of the 21st century. Rather than funneling people out of the church, we can view mental health as an opportunity to draw people in.

For 50 years, society has created a professionalized mental health culture as the primary means of caring for those in distress. Initially, in order to access insurance coverage, the counseling profession began redefining most psychological needs as having a medical pathology. But over time, this resulted in licensed counseling becoming the standard of care for all life stressors.

Now, just to be clear: Much about the rise of skilled professionals has been extremely helpful. Sophisticated, empirically validated research has uncovered key ways to address mental health disorders and challenging life issues. Specialists apply precision and clarity to complex problems. And state licensing standards ensure that therapists have a high level of training, skill, and ethical adherence.

To speak directly to the clinician: You have made a significant difference in the lives of untold numbers because of your expertise and care.

The downside of this trend, however, is that vast numbers of people—those with diagnosable disorders and those with significant life pain—flood therapists’ offices. With therapy as the treatment path for all levels of pain, the capacity for care is overwhelmed.

Imagine the panic of a parent whose eighth grader deeply struggles with academic anxiety and needs a counselor but must wait three months for an appointment. Three months! By that time, the child may have failed the eighth grade and internalized the idea that nothing is ever going to change.

Meanwhile, in the church, we have become increasingly uncomfortable with addressing mental health concerns. Like their secular counterparts in medicine, business, and education, most church leaders see “referring out” as the thing to do.

We often hear the rhyme that one pastor used on our survey, “When in doubt, refer out.”

Thus, when help seekers come to the church, they may talk to a pastor, but much of the time they are also referred to a mental health professional. On our national survey, 67 percent of pastors and church leaders fully agreed with this statement: “If a person’s presenting issue is primarily psychological rather than spiritual, the church’s primary mental health service should be to refer to a mental health professional.” Only 12 percent disagreed with that statement.

It’s our perspective that referrals are indeed often needed. Yet there’s an unintended consequence to this overall pattern of referring out: People are being funneled out and away from the church at a time when people need the church most!

Of course, there are times when people need more help than a pastor or a ministry can provide. But in many cases, churches are letting professionals do what the church was intended to do. It is time to stop thinking of “mental health care” as essentially synonymous with “professional counseling,” and instead see it as just one more everyday example of Galatians 6:2: carrying each other’s burdens to fulfill the law of Christ.

Our book, When Hurting People Come to Church, explores in far greater detail than we can offer here what this looks like, practically speaking, for local congregations with varying size and resources. The key is that laypeople within the church can be trained to listen and walk alongside those with basic needs.

This is not therapy, but presence, and is important even when we also refer to clinicians. For example, a new mom with postpartum depression might be referred to a counselor and connected with a woman in the congregation who went through the same thing 20 years ago. They talk, pray, share experiences, and get together for regular lunches—something a licensed counselor is not permitted to do.

Imagine how this approach would shift the way we think of church outreach, human care, discipleship, and evangelism!

The church has a historic opportunity to reclaim its central role in attending to human suffering. Our vision is for the church to step into this original design: to be the primary place where the love of God, redemption through Jesus, and the power of the Holy Spirit are experienced by the culture.

Jesus’ metaphors of salt and light suggest that we are to bring life to the world. He entered into the culture by healing the leprous outcasts, giving sight to the blind, and restoring the woman at the well. In our day, we can bring comfort and healing to the isolated and lonely, help people see their great worth in God’s eyes, and support the transformation of those in recovery.

For years, we have tended to think of mental health ministry as only being about helping people with specific, defined, and diagnosed disorders such as depression, anxiety, and personality disorders. Let’s think bigger. Think of the church as the on-ramp through which people address their life pain.

After all, much of the culture already does. According to a 2020 British study, “In America, as many as 40% seek support from clergy for mental health concerns, with studies identifying that individuals with … mental health diagnoses were more likely to seek support from clergy alone, than psychiatrists and psychologists combined.”

Let’s pause with that for a moment: These researchers, seeking ways to improve mental health services in the United Kingdom, looked “across the pond” and noted that for many in the US, the first step to obtaining mental health services is through the church.

The church doesn’t need to become the center of the solution; it already is. We just haven’t always realized or accepted this role. So we have the need, we have a culture with a near-desperate cry for aid, and we have a church capable of delivering the needed care as part of the Great Commission.

We are in the midst of a massive human crisis—people are experiencing distress and isolation in proportions never seen. And Christians are uniquely positioned to address it: We have churches in every community, each composed of ordinary people who are willing to care for others, many of whom want to be taught how to come alongside someone in pain.

Mental health care is not only an option for the church. It is a duty to God and our neighbors in need.

Shaunti Feldhahn is a best-selling author, popular speaker, and social researcher whose work helps people flourish in life, faith, leadership, and relationships. Her books have sold more than 3 million copies in 25 languages.

James (Jim) N. Sells is the Hughes Endowed Chair of Christian Thought in Mental Health Practice, a licensed psychologist, an author, and a professor of counseling at Regent University, Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Adapted from When Hurting People Come to Church: How People of Faith Can Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis by Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells, releasing in September 2025.

- More from Shaunti Feldhahn and James N. Sells

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