Three Counterintuitive Shifts to Move Your Church from Decline to Renewal

Kara Powell, Jake Mulder, and Raymond Chang

Ministry momentum doesn’t always come from working harder. Sometimes it starts with thinking differently.

jayk7 / Getty Images

Don’t let your church go the way of Blockbuster.

Two decades ago, Blockbuster’s physical stores dominated the movie rental business.

Along came a startup named Netflix. Blockbuster had every advantage—resources, reputation, reach—but they couldn’t adapt.

While Netflix leaned into new approaches, Blockbuster clung to the old.

Today, the former video rental giant is nearly out of business. Meanwhile, Netflix is a multibillion-dollar company.

It’s not that people stopped watching movies. They just changed how they were watching them.

And Blockbuster, once an industry giant, faded fast.

While your church may not be in freefall, many are struggling to gain altitude. The typical US church is shrinking in size, with median worship declining from 137 people in 2000 to 75 in 2023.

In the midst of this numerical decline, 53 percent of religious leaders seriously considered leaving pastoral ministry in 2023, up from an already astonishing 37 percent in 2020.

Perhaps you’ve felt it too.

As suggested in a 2021 Harvard Business Review article, your burnout may not be because of too much work. It might be because of too little impact.

Leaders like you need a better plan that offers practical hope. Maybe what you and your church need is a few months of fresh congregational momentum. Or perhaps, a more dramatic turnaround is required—either across the board or in a few key areas.

After all, turnaround is core to the good news of Jesus Christ. Two thousand years ago, when Jesus was crucified and sealed in a tomb, hope seemed dim. But in the most potent turnaround in all of history, Jesus was resurrected three days later and now offers us, and all of humankind, new life. As Christians, we are turnaround people.

Inspired by hard-working leaders like you, our Fuller Youth Institute team spent the past decade journeying with over 1,000 diverse churches who sought minor, moderate, and major changes. We also analyzed the top research on organizational change and studied noteworthy biblical leaders who successfully brought about transformation.

As a result, we’ve mapped how churches who successfully move into the future discern not just what needs to change, but how to bring about change. We call these Future-Focused Churches.These churches didn’t find revival by trying harder—but by trying differently. Here are three counterintuitive shifts they made:

Future-Focused Shift #1: Don’t start with why; start with who

We are fans of Simon Sinek’s work, and have often quoted his well-known “start with why” principle—the idea that organizations should begin by clearly identifying their purpose or mission. As we’ve spent time with churches who have successfully turned around, we agree: knowing your church’s mission is vital. It’s just not the first step.

You can’t really know your why if you don’t start with who. Knowing the gifts and passions of those who will accompany you helps you better discern why you’re on the journey in the first place.

Not only that, but you weren’t meant to lead change alone. People tend to support what they create, so you will have greater buy-in and momentum if your core team and congregation prayerfully discern your church’s future with you.

One large congregation in southern California who wanted to better love and serve young people felt stuck because of the age siloization typical in churches its size. Wanting to gather the right who, they assembled a diverse Transformation Team to help revive their struggling ministry with young adults. While they knew they needed a few young adults to help steer their journey, the bulk of the team were congregants over 30 who could help young adults intersect across the entire church.

As their pastor later reflected on what helped them become a Future-Focused Church, this Transformation Team enabled them to accomplish their goal of integrating young adults across the church and move from being program-driven to discipleship-driven.

Their story is a good reminder: Don’t just clarify your purpose—gather your people.

Future-Focused Shift #2: Don’t charge forward; first get your bearings

Once leaders gather the right who for the turnaround, they often default to quickly figuring out where they need to head and step on the gas pedal. While that might get some quick results, it doesn’t usually get the best results.

We agree with our Fuller Seminary colleague, Scott Cormode, that “leadership begins with listening.” When you are trying to bring new energy and direction to your community, it’s more important that people feel understood by you than that they understand you.

During our research on Future-Focused Churches, we studied a largely immigrant congregation with 100 members, only five of whom were children and teenagers. After assembling a Transformation Team to turn around their ministry with young people, that group next listened, both to God through prayer, and to congregants across the generations. A primary theme they heard from adults, especially their church board, was a lack of confidence that young people could truly lead or hold positions of real influence.

Empowered by new prospects opened by the Transformation Team, young people’s roles started small and then grew—sometimes unexpectedly. One adult leader, congratulating a teenager on great work as a church greeter, half-jokingly offered, “Maybe next you should preach a sermon.”

This adult wasn’t expecting the teen’s reply: “I’d love to do that!”

That adult had a choice—brush it off, or take the teen seriously. And in that moment, he leaned in. He approached the pastor and the teen’s parents, advocating for the young man to preach. He even offered to coach the teen himself.

It would’ve been easier to laugh it off. But he didn’t. He listened—and responded with belief.

That sermon—one of the shortest sermons in recent church memory—sparked something. It helped open the door for other young people to preach and lead churchwide, not just watch.

Five years later, not only has the church grown, they’ve raised up a new generation of leaders. They now have 40 children and teenagers who are active members shaping the life of the church. These young congregants aren’t just halfhearted attendees; they’re active contributors who lead prayer sessions, participate in worship services, guide multimedia, and even give input in board meetings. This isn’t just youth engagement—it’s youth ownership.

Future-Focused Shift #3: Don’t aim for massive changes in the middle; experiment on the edges

It’s tempting to assume turning around a church means seeking reform in the highest-profile ministries—like the worship service. Based on our research with Future-Focused Churches, we recommend resisting that temptation and instead pursuing “experiments from the edges,” meaning initial (often smaller) changes in less public areas to test what works and gain crucial momentum.

Keegan, a youth pastor with limited authority, wanted to make his church more intergenerational. He started where he could—the church’s beloved summer mission trip to Guatemala. Starting with this trip wouldn’t catalyze immediate widespread change, but generating energy at the edges of the church was better than no momentum.

Keegan and another pastor intentionally recruited a diverse blend of sixty participants—19 teenagers and 41 adults over 30. At every training meeting, Keegan explained why and how all generations were going to serve together, but few adults caught the vision.

In the third preparation meeting, Bill, a mission trip adult skeptical of working with teenagers, raised his hand and asked, “Keegan, how much time will I have to spend with teenagers before you stop bugging me about it?”

Everyone laughed, but the resistance was real. Keep in mind, he asked this in front of 19 teenagers!

Not a very promising sign.

By the time the group boarded planes for Guatemala, Keegan figured only five out of the 41 adults truly grasped why intergenerational relationships mattered. But even five was a start. As the trip unfolded, their enthusiasm became contagious.

By the end of the third service day, the leader at one of the building sites raised his hand to commend the teenagers. The teenagers had been so amazing that he wanted more of them assigned to his group.

That construction leader was Bill.

God used this enthusiasm from Bill and the rest of the adults on the Guatemala trip to catalyze intergenerational turnaround when they returned back home. An out-of-the-box idea became central to the fabric of the church as threads of the mission trip wove their way through the relationships, programs, and culture of the entire congregation.

You don’t have to overhaul everything at once. But you do have to take a step. Ask: Who are the right people to start this journey with? Where do we need to pause and listen? What small, faithful experiment could open up to a larger work of renewal?

These shifts aren’t easy. But they’re doable. And they’re worth it—because the church isn’t just surviving history. In Christ, we’re part of the greatest turnaround story the world has ever known.

Pastors, remember: The same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is alive in you and in your church (Rom. 8:11). You don’t lead in your own strength alone. The God who brings life out of tombs is still in the business of resurrection.

So take heart. Renewal isn’t just a strategy. It’s our story.

Your church doesn’t need to go the way of Blockbuster. Whatever the type and size of change your church needs, you hope in the God of all turnarounds. With God leading you forward, the best days of your church are still ahead.

Kara Powell is the chief of leadership formation at Fuller Theological Seminary, the executive director of the Fuller Youth Institute, and the founder of the TENx10 Collaboration.

Jake Mulder is the assistant chief of leadership formation at Fuller Seminary, executive director for the non-degreed online Christian leader training platform FULLER Equip, and senior adviser for the Fuller Youth Institute and TENx10 Collaboration.

Raymond Chang is the executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration (part of Fuller Seminary), which is a collaborative movement that is geared toward reaching ten million young people over ten years with the gospel.

This article is adapted for CT Pastors by the authors, from their book Future-Focused Church (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2025).

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News

Indian and Pakistani Christians Fear War, Not Each Other

Isabel Ong

South Asian believers prayed for peace as violence between their countries escalated.

The wreckage of an aircraft that crashed in Wuyan Pampore in Kashmir.

Basit Zargar / Getty

Last Thursday night around 3 a.m., a deafening explosion rocked the city of Gujranwala, Pakistan, a two-hour drive away from the Attari-Wagah border crossing.

As the entire city seemed to tremble, cries of confusion filled Sharaz Sharif Alam’s home. His four sons and his elderly parents felt shaken and wondered if they were safe. The city had been in a nationwide blackout for two days, and the streets lay eerily silent.

The family huddled together in a room lit only by battery-powered lights and held each other’s hands as they prayed. Alam started checking in with his church congregants to find out how they were doing.

“There was a strong sense of vulnerability and a quiet fear that something more serious might follow,” said Alam, the general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan.

“We prayed—not just for ourselves but for every child left sleepless, for every mother clutching her children, for every Muslim and Christian family across this wounded land longing for dawn.”

A two-hour drive from the same border crossing, in the city of Pathankot, India, Shiji Benjamin felt as if she was living in a war zone.

The government imposed a strict night curfew last Thursday, ordered shops to shut their doors by evening, and plunged the entire city into a blackout for four nights in a row—no streetlights, no lights at home, nothing.

At night, Benjamin saw bright flashes in the sky followed by loud, “heart-shaking” booms as the Indian military shot down incursive drones. Sometimes, debris from the drones crashed and burned nearby.

“Each sound, each rumble, made our hearts skip a beat,” said Benjamin, the national coordinator for women’s ministry at Indian Evangelical Team. “We didn’t know what would come next or if we would even wake up safe the next morning.” She kept praying with her family and neighbors for protection over their city and for peace to reign.

Fierce clashes between India and Pakistan broke out last week after gunmen from a little-known group, the Resistance Front, killed 26 people, mostly Indian tourists, and wounded a dozen others in India-controlled union territory Jammu and Kashmir on April 22.

India accused the Resistance Front of linkages to Pakistan-based terrorist groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, but Pakistan dismissed these claims.

In retaliation for the attack, India launched “Operation Sindoor,” a series of military strikes on targets across Pakistan’s Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing dozens of civilians and destroying infrastructure linked to Pakistani militants. Pakistan struck back with shelling and killed and injured dozens more Indian civilians.

Drone strikes from both countries rained down on homes and neighborhoods over the next few days as fighter jets scrambled in the air to intercept threats amid an increasing civilian casualty count.

Both countries agreed to a cease-fire brokered by the US last Saturday, with each claiming victory over the other. Several diplomatic measures, such as the suspension of a water-sharing treaty and the closure of airspace and certain border crossings, remain in effect.

The mountainous Kashmir region is at the center of this decades-long conflict between the countries—a conflict that began with Partition in 1947, when Britain divided its then colony into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.

An estimated 3 million people died from violence, hunger, suicide, and disease when Partition took place, with reports of communal massacres, forced conversions, arson, and sexual violence in Indian provinces like Punjab and Bengal.

Britain’s plan, however, did not specify which country Kashmir would belong to. Both newly independent nations laid claim to the disputed territory, and tensions escalated to an all-out war in 1949. Thereafter, the two countries arrived at a cease-fire, with India taking two-thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan taking the other third.

Christians in India and Pakistan have also experienced a tumultuous history because of Partition. Prior to this division, roughly half a million Christians lived in the Punjab region. American Presbyterian missionaries established high schools, colleges, and medical dispensaries there in the 19th century.

When Partition occurred, Christians had to choose which part of Punjab to live in: the west, mainly occupied by Muslims, or the east, dominated by Hindus and Sikhs. For Christians, “the decision to opt for either of the new provinces was certainly very daunting,” Pakistani historian Yaqoob Khan Bangash wrote.

In newly formed Pakistan, the government arrested hundreds of Christians on charges of espionage during the 1965 war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and the 1971 war that led to Bangladesh’s formation as a nation. Muslims in the country often treated Christians harshly, and Christians had to take on menial jobs like city sweeping, left vacant after the Hindu Dalits moved to India.

Christians in India endured similar adversities. Attacks against Christians, from the killing of leaders to the destruction of institutions like churches and schools, grew after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party came into power in 1998, persecuting Christians for their faith and forcing thousands to convert to Hinduism.

Altercations between the two countries have continued to flare up in Kashmir. The last major conflict occurred in 2019 when Pakistan-based extremist group Jaish-e-Mohammed bombed Indian-controlled Kashmir and killed 40 Indian soldiers.

But the small minority of Christians in the majority-Muslim region mostly existed “peaceably” with people of other faiths there, Indian apologist Jacob Daniel wrote in 2020. In the post-Partition era, for instance, author Angela Misri shared that her cousins living in Kashmir received lessons from Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, and Christian teachers.

Nevertheless, Christians in both countries continue to face persecution for their beliefs. Pakistan is ranked second, and India third, on this year’s World Watch List of 20 nations where violence against Christians is more severe.

Meanwhile, tensions between Christians arose in Kashmir a decade ago when foreign missionaries in Kashmir led local Muslims to Christianity, as the locals felt that these conversions were drawing unwanted attention from the government and putting their lives at risk. Rising Hindu nationalism has also prompted attacks against Christians in the region in recent years.

Ujala Hans, who lives in Lahore, Pakistan, has felt the effects of Partition firsthand, as her great-uncle still lives in India. Her parents also lived through the post-Partition years of political turmoil and instability as India and Pakistan grappled for control over Kashmir.

During last week’s conflict, Hans’s mother declared that if God had protected them from harm in the 1971 war between the two countries, he would also protect them this time. But Hans, a pastor, still warned her father not to answer any calls from her great-uncle across the border, fearing that the Pakistani government would think they were spying on behalf of India.

Despite these recent tensions, relationships between Pakistani and Indian Christians have not soured, say the believers CT interviewed.

Hans has cultivated friendships with Indian pastors through her international travels. “We cannot go and visit each other’s country, but when we go to other countries, we are like one family,” she said, citing a shared knowledge of the Urdu and Hindi languages as a way that Christians often establish common ground with one another.

“What I have seen is this: that the Indian church fervently pray[s] for the Pakistani church and they love the Pakistani Christians,” Hans said.

Recognizing their shared identity in Christ can help Pakistani and Indian Christians to “love beyond borders,” Benjamin said. “When the world sees enmity, we can choose to see shared suffering, shared faith, and shared humanity.”

A sense of solidarity between Indian and Pakistani Christians is not the only unexpected fruit arising from last week’s conflict. The battle has also brought people of different faiths together in Pakistan, Alam said.

Sharaz Sharif Alam

Sharaz Sharif Alam (fourth from left) walking shoulder to shoulder with fellow pastors and Muslim imams.

Although missiles had struck close to Gujranwala and the neighboring city of Muridke, Alam knew he couldn’t remain locked up at home in fear. The day after the explosion rocked his city, he joined an emergency meeting with Christian pastors, Muslim imams, and civil society leaders. They decided to hold an interfaith peace procession last Thursday.

The two-kilometer walk kicked off at 1:30 p.m. local time, beginning and ending at Swift Memorial First Presbyterian Church. Along the way, Alam and a 200-strong crowd shouted slogans like Hum aman chahte hain (“We want peace”) and Pak army zindabad (“Long live Pakistan Army”).

Alam walked shoulder to shoulder with fellow pastors and Muslim imams while Muslim and Christian youth toted large yellow banners bearing messages of interreligious solidarity. He shared Bible verses like Romans 12:18 (“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone”) and Jeremiah 29:7 (“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile”).

“It was a glimpse of the beloved community, a foretaste of God’s kingdom, where swords are beaten into plowshares and enemies become neighbors,” Alam said.

The day after both countries agreed to a cease-fire, Alam co-led another procession, this time proclaiming thanks to God for preserving Pakistan.

As approximately 200 people marched out from Ghakkar Mandi Presbyterian Church, Romella Robinson, Alam’s wife and an ordained Presbyterian pastor, prayed, “O Lord, let the nations not walk the path of destruction but the path of reconciliation. Teach us to seek peace and pursue it.

- More from Isabel Ong

Church Life

Anyone Can Bless the Food

Morgan Lee

Contributor

Sometimes the pastor needs to lead a prayer. But sometimes, ask the new convert or the shy student to talk to God in public.

Illustration by Abigail Erickson / Source images: Getty

The other night I attended a book-launch event for a buzzy new title. As I sat on a fold-down chair in the stands, I felt my mind wander as the president of the sponsoring organization introduced a dean at the university hosting the event, who in turn introduced yet another dignitary, who at last introduced the authors I’d paid $70 to squint at from 500 feet away.

I try to appreciate formal displays of gratitude, and I’ve come to expect pomp and circumstance at highfalutin events. Showing off your friends is a way to show off your influence.

But I’m troubled by how often I see this kind of thing transpire at Christian gatherings, specifically when it comes to public prayer—before services, Bible studies, congregational meetings, potlucks, missionary sendoffs, or blessings of new ministries.

It happens when leaders extend public invitations to pray. More often than not, the most “qualified” person in the room turns directly to the other most “qualified” person in the room.

Qualified can mean “most spiritual,” and the honor goes to other pastors, worship leaders, or small group heads (in that order). Other times, qualified is synonymous with “upstanding family men,” who are almost always both husbands and dads.

It’s rare, at least in my experience, for a leader to hand the microphone to someone without any title, seminary degree, or personal connection.

There might be good reason for that. Public prayer overlaps with public speaking. Whether by standing in front of a congregation or holding hands at a dinner table, talking to God out loud sets a tone and reiterates theological convictions. Pastors may not want to put someone on the spot—or they might be nervous about what that someone might say.

But when it’s clear that official leaders only trust official leaders to pray for a community, that runs the risk of communicating a value judgment: that the people whose prayers are worthy of being heard aloud must be carefully vetted and possess authority.

Unfortunately, our judgment of who’s worthy often tangles with God’s judgment. The prophet Samuel set his eyes on David’s seven brothers before he realized who God had selected as the future king.

This is not an appeal to relax character standards for Christian leaders. It’s a reminder of our own tendency to have a much narrower view than God does of who he can use. By being intentionally diverse—and thoughtfully “subversive”—in who we ask to pray in public, we help remind others to see people’s potential with God’s eyes.

This kind of inclusivity might make public prayer less of a pious performance, because “regular Christians” don’t have the same burden to prove their pastoral qualifications. Performing is a learned skill, but prayer is not. In one parable, Jesus extols the tax collector who notably would not look to heaven “but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” That tax collector—not the self-satisfied Pharisee praying at the temple—would go home justified (Luke 18:9–14).

More democratic prayer might also offer a window into the challenges and joys affecting a wider variety of individuals and communities—challenges and joys which may or may not match up with what leaders understand their congregants’ priorities to be.

Theological truths and the unchanging attributes of God resonate with each of us differently. Hearing more people proclaim the particular truths that are viscerally affecting them offers an opportunity for both familiar reminders and new insights.

I was reminded of this while reading a recent essay from a prison chaplain. She recounts inviting a man with burns so severe the guards snidely called him Deadpool to pray for his fellow inmates at the end of a service. The prisoner’s words stunned the room—and left him glowing.

Of course, many people in our congregations who we might ask to pray are shy, or uncertain, or don’t speak the dominant language fluently enough to be confident in their ability. A sporadic invitation to a “regular” Christian might just put pressure on them to master the Christianese of the credentialed believer.

The answer here is prewritten prayers: prayers penned by saints of yesteryear, prayers from contemporary theologians, prayers that are simply passages of Scripture.

I grew up with exclusively extemporaneous prayer, and I used to think written prayers were less genuine—that is, until I realized that written prayers often allow for the formation of a more focused, complete idea. (The Prayer of Saint Francis convicts me each time I read it.)

More importantly, when we need someone to pray over a child before dedication or a Christian before baptism, written prayers help fight the very tendencies that Jesus rebukes when he tells us to talk to God in our rooms, behind closed doors, rather than in synagogues and on street corners (Matthew 6:5–8). At its best, extemporaneous prayer allows a speaker to address the needs and emotions of particular people. But praying off-the-cuff also allows the speakers to make it more about themselves—droning on out of anxiety, quoting Scripture to show off their Bible fluency, raising their voices to heighten the drama and get a reaction.

Scripted prayers, meanwhile, decenter a speaker. They’re more accessible to new believers and second-language learners. They act as a safeguard, preventing any of us from blurting out erroneous theology. It’s all too easy to inadvertently preach the prosperity gospel: We know, God, that this church has been faithful, and because of our faithfulness, you’ve blessed us with a big tithe today and this great meal.

In every church, who prays in public should not depend on gender, title, position, length of time as a Christian, education level, or perceived spiritual depth—because prayer is open to anyone who wants to connect with God. Certainly, leaders pray. But so do the poor, the sinful, the helpless, and the broken.

And hearing even prewritten words in an unfamiliar voice—the shaky voice of a new convert, the surprising timbre from the person who always sits in the back, the oscillating pitch of a teenager—matters. It symbolizes that the church is a different kind of place, in which God uses “the foolish things of the world to shame the wise” (1 Cor. 1:27), establishing a kingdom that doesn’t abide by traditional hierarchies.

Public prayers are opportunities for us to hear the cries of the Christians we are in community with, to demonstrate a different way of doing things. Let’s not squander that.

Morgan Lee is the global managing editor at Christianity Today.

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Ideas

One Cheer for Donald Trump

Karl Zinsmeister

Reflections on the necessity of disruption—and rule of law—from a former White House domestic policy adviser.

Adam Gray / Stringer / Getty

Like many Americans, I was mortified by developments during the Obama and Biden administrations, when government became more controlling, more crusading, and more coercive than anything previously seen in the US. Throughout my career, I have strongly preferred governance that is as unintrusive on daily life as possible. But the recent radicalization of our culture, economy, and government made me much more open to the pugnacious actions of the Trump administration.

For the chaotic moment in which we find ourselves, Trump’s disruptive strategy feels necessary. Destructive cultural radicalism, strangled freedoms, economic decline, and overseas dangers left even many temperamentally conservative citizens like me ready for a dramatic break with the past. Anything to shake off societal sickness and give our body politic a chance to start over in fresh and healthy ways.

Trump is a highly unlikely savior, unanticipated by any of the solons running our country before he arrived, and a sharp break from all prior presidents. He embodies many of the personal qualities our mothers warned us against. But he seems the only contemporary figure capable of clearing blockages, cutting out tumors, and resetting our national health.

Yet burn-it-down approaches to governance are not sustainable over the long run. At some point the government needs to exercise authority in ways that are less jarring and disruptive, more temperate, more deferential to precedent and continuous rule of law. So when common-sense policies and more responsive institutions return in our nation’s capital, sensible Americans of all stripes will say a prayer of gratitude and then hope that our nation’s capital can become a much quieter and more boring place.

A reformed and restored America will need people who respect consensus. People averse to radical change, utopias, or life in armed camps. People who want the state to avoid encroaching on the organic community life of citizens and families. Then we can stop focusing on events in our capital and pour energy instead into our traditional projects of building enterprises and interacting with our neighbors with restraint and forgiveness and generosity.

Government “is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master,” as a quote widely attributed to George Washington puts it. Thomas Jefferson urged that federal rule should be deliberately mild: never high-handed, arrogant, or imperious; modest in scope; and light in its press upon people. “That government is best which governs least,” as the famous Jeffersonian line has it.

There are scads of cautionary examples from history warning that even the most noble and necessary crusades can swing too far into purity campaigns, personality cults, vengefulness, self-indulgence, and tyranny. The most welcome reformers can inadvertently create a terrible mirror image of the wrongs they arrived to overturn. The guillotines in Paris sliced many innocent necks. The Bolsheviks became far more abusive than the czars.

Disrupt and replace is the right mantra when pushing through reforms for which society is starved. But once beyond the national emergency, leaders must shift to more restrained, disciplined, and respectful ways of operating. If there isn’t eventually a transition of this sort, the Trump era could end in flaming hubris and overreach.

Many people are grateful to today’s disruptor in chief for jolting us away from a dangerous abyss. Next we must hope that he and his successors will evolve into more lasting leaders. Our presidents must avoid the arrogance that will eventually undo any leader in a representative republic.

Niccolo Machiavelli was a jaded political strategist in Renaissance Italy who prescribed manipulation, ruthlessness, and deceit to win political battles. He dismissed Christian ethics. His win-at-all-costs, might-makes-right philosophy has been attractive to strongmen like Henry VIII and Joseph Stalin.

Machiavelli has never been an American favorite. Every political leader, however, has to be more interested in results than theory, so I’m neither surprised nor troubled that there is a spurt of interest in Machiavellian strategy today in Washington. With sensible Americans losing over and over in the culture wars, you can see why rummaging through Italian utilitarianism to find ways of leveling the playing field might have some attraction. Yet I suggest the men and women who govern in America should never do more than dip occasionally and tactically into Machiavelli’s toolbox.

Administrators of our great representative government must mesh the practical imperatives of princes of power with the deep wisdoms of the Prince of Peace. That is excruciatingly hard. But the unremittingly bellicose have been humbled again and again by the opposing approach of the world’s most successful revolutionary creed: “Do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. … Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:27–28, 31). In a popularly ruled nation, that is the path to lasting trust and authority.

Karl Zinsmeister from 2006 to 2009 was George W. Bush’s chief domestic policy adviser. His new book, My West Wing, expands on these views of Washington resistance to reform.

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News

In the Continent with More Christians Than Any Other, China’s Influence Grows

Ray Mwareya

Zimbabwe women and rural workers snap up low-priced three-wheeler EVs.

A poultry farmer in Zimbabwe prepares to go to market on her renewable energy electrical tricycle.

Jekesai Njikizana / Contributor / Getty

Christianity and Islam are leading competitors for spiritual influence in Africa, and the US and China are leading competitors for diplomatic influence. The US’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program has been a humanitarian success in Africa, saving many lives, but it has also won friends for America. China is going about a different way of influencing people: surging ahead in the market for electric three-wheel vehicles. Here’s a report from Nyamapanda, Zimbabwe.

Marcy Gede sprints around in a cheap, Chinese-made, electric three-wheeler, providing rides to passengers or delivering everything from bottled gas to baby food. A dozen times each day, she loads passengers or goods into the tiny trailer hitched on the back, then cranks up the wheeler’s battery-powered engine. Gede’s trailer can carry one passenger at a time, bags included. Plumes of dust swirl behind her vehicle as she starts down the stony roads of Nyamapanda in rural northeast Zimbabwe. Like scores of other women in the region, this 44-year-old mother is shifting the makeup of Zimbabwe’s rural rideshare and delivery market.

“We are the female Ubers of rural Zimbabwe in a country without Uber,” she told Christianity Today with a laugh.

Chinese electric vehicles (EVs) have enabled a growing network of female riders in Zimbabwe to care for their families. They’ve also reached consumers long neglected by Western and Japanese used-car sellers. By popularizing these small, affordable EVs, Chinese traders have not only benefitted their own businesses and nation but also allowed more gig workers to stake a claim in Africa’s chaotic but growing ride-hail economy.

In 2023, around 803 million Africans lived in rural areas, representing about 55 percent of Africa’s population at the time. Car companies selling traditional gasoline-powered vehicles have long overlooked the needs of rural Africans due to their low purchasing power and dilapidated or nonexistent infrastructure.

While the relationship between Africans and Chinese residents has been complicated, Gede said, “They are our saviors.”

Chinese dealerships set low prices, making profits by selling large quantities of low-end electric three-wheelers. By doing so, they have gotten ahead of Western and Japanese companies that have “hardly thought of EV wheelers,” according to Carter Mavhiza, a leading auctioneer in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital.

“Rural women are saying, ‘Look; our communities can’t afford cars, EVs or gasoline ones. Cheap Chinese EV wheelers are our first breakthrough,’” he said.

The Chinese have seen a “massive opening across Africa,” Mavhiza added. He cites the 7.6 million motorcycle exports the US Department of Commerce says China shipped to Africa, Latin America, and Asia in 2022. China surpassed Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter in 2023.

Although few Africans value EVs for their green energy, environment expert Shamiso Mupara said, rural Africans will buy EVs if they provide reliable and affordable transportation.

Mahiza said the cheapest used American or Japanese car would cost around $4,000, and motorcycles $1,400. Chinese traders have priced their EV motorcycles and three-wheelers in the $500–$700 range. They also extend informal credit and offer peer-to-peer lending models, such as loan clubs for rural riders.

Unlike traditional car dealers in urban areas, Chinese dealers don’t demand paystubs, proof of employment, or car insurance from buyers. Instead, they ask rural African women to pool their finances and purchase three-wheeler EVs for each member of the pool, one or two members at a time, Gede explained.

“They can even take small grams [of] gold ore as payment,” she said.

The thousands of Chinese traders living among rural populations in Zimbabwe and Mozambique can see the roads filled with potholes and gullies—conditions that prevent conventional cars and buses from using rural highways. Chinese three-wheelers fill an acute need for transportation to the big cities, where most of the functional hospitals, banks, universities, and food and gas markets are located.

“The Chinese know that their EV wheelers don’t need gasoline to drive and can pass the most rotten roads even in flood times,” Mavhiza said.

The quality of the vehicles might be questionable, but for now, Gede said she is happy that “the money from EV wheelers is keeping my kids in school.”

- More from Ray Mwareya

Books

Review

How a Great Pro-Life Hope Disappointed His Allies

Daniel K. Williams

As surgeon general under Ronald Reagan, C. Everett Koop traveled in evangelical circles. But the partnership was always uneasy.

Bettmann / Contributor / Getty

Of the Christian conservatives whom Ronald Reagan appointed to high office after winning the presidency in 1980, none excited evangelicals like his pick for surgeon general, C. Everett Koop.

Koop, they were sure, was a true believer in the Lord and the pro-life cause. He was a ruling elder at a renowned evangelical church. He had spoken at Wheaton College. He had opposed abortion even in the early 1970s, before most evangelicals had joined the pro-life movement. He was a close friend of Francis Schaeffer and his family. He had even coproduced a pro-life documentary and book with Schaeffer titled Whatever Happened to the Human Race?

Given Koop’s evangelical and pro-life bona fides, his nomination to be surgeon general polarized members of Congress along predictable ideological lines. Pro-choice liberals strongly opposed him, while pro-life Christian conservatives relished the chance to see one of their own in a position of national influence. Amid congressional hearings on the nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy signaled his disdain by blowing cigar smoke in Koop’s face. Liberals like Kennedy stalled Koop’s progress for nine months.

But when Koop left office in 1989, it was liberals like Kennedy—not Christian conservatives—who praised him most effusively. To the dismay of some pro-life Christians, Koop did almost nothing to address abortion as surgeon general; in fact, it took prodding by the Reagan administration before he issued even a single report on it. Instead, Koop spent most of his political capital fighting smoking and AIDS. Koop’s approach to AIDS especially rankled some conservative culture warriors because his proposed solution was to encourage condom use rather than abstinence alone.

Koop spent the rest of his long life (he remained active until his death in 2013) cultivating alliances with liberals. Though he did not renounce his opposition to abortion, he grew estranged from the pro-life movement. He developed a friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton since he supported their universal health care plan. And he never fully patched up his strained relationship with conservative evangelicals who thought he had abandoned his principles.

Nigel M. de S. Cameron’s Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General attempts to make sense of Koop’s many complications and attempts at reinventing himself. Cameron is fascinated with Koop’s charisma and outsize ego, and he treats him as a man of genuinely deep faith—as well as a man with significant flaws and blind spots.

To the consternation of many evangelicals, Koop was never a culture warrior, even though they initially mistook him for one. In fact, he had a strong aversion to culture wars. And despite spending most of life traveling in evangelical circles, his brand of evangelicalism was really a conservative (and thoroughly irenic and pluralist) version of mainline Protestantism. He had a lifelong aversion to both fundamentalists and conservative political ideologues.

Koop did not grow up in a religiously devout household. During his childhood in Brooklyn, New York, his parents took him to Protestant church services, but faith was not a significant factor in their lives. Still less did it influence Koop’s own life when he became an adult. During his time in medical school and as a young surgeon in Philadelphia, he worked seven days a week—which meant spending every Sunday morning at the hospital. There was no time for God.

But Koop was curious about faith, so he decided to read through the entire New Testament one summer. He was so intrigued that he read through it again. At that point, one of the nurses at his hospital invited him to visit her church, Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian, where evangelical pulpit luminaries Donald Grey Barnhouse and James Montgomery Boice served as pastors. Koop and his wife were drawn to Barnhouse’s intellectually rich exposition of the New Testament, and one day in 1947, he realized that he did believe the gospel.

Even though it belonged at that time to a mainline denomination, Tenth Presbyterian was thoroughly evangelical. It made demands on Koop’s life that he sometimes found uncomfortable.

Koop never entirely acquiesced to these demands, and he certainly never became a fundamentalist. He was happy to adjust his schedule to accommodate church on Sunday mornings. But he could not resist the call of work for the rest of the Sabbath—Koop would regretfully describe himself as a workaholic father, and comments from his children suggest a feeling of distance, even in adulthood. He never seemed to learn the importance of Christian humility; colleagues would routinely mention his “large ego.”

And he refused to give up cocktails. Though most evangelical Presbyterians would eventually become comfortable with consuming alcohol in moderation, that was not the case in the late 1940s and early 1950s. But regardless of the church’s expectations, Koop loved martinis and saw no reason to forego them. For five years, he resisted invitations to join the church, preferring to remain a regular visitor if formal belonging entailed becoming a teetotaler or a Sabbatarian. Eventually, Barnhouse prevailed on Koop to take the membership leap, but Koop ultimately didn’t let it stop him from ordering what he wanted at cocktail parties.

Koop developed close relationships with leading evangelicals, but throughout his life he remained defiantly unwilling to toe the evangelical party line. When Tenth Presbyterian voted to leave the mainline United Presbyterian Church and join the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America, Koop opposed the move. And when evangelicals began linking their faith to the Christian right, Koop refused to follow.

His faith did, however, lead him to develop a deep concern for the poor, and after joining Tenth Presbyterian he began volunteering hours of his time each week to minister to Philadelphia’s homeless. He also developed a deep reverence for human life that guided his medical practice.

He fully embraced Presbyterian views of God’s sovereignty. The death of his young adult son, David, in a climbing accident shook him severely, but he found solace in the belief that all of this was part of God’s sovereign plan. “From the beginning of time,” wrote Koop and his wife, Betty, “God’s plan called for David to climb, to become expert at it; and to die in that particular, awful way.”

Koop’s strong anti-abortion convictions led some people to mistake him for a Christian culture warrior, but this judgment misread the makeup of the early pro-life movement. When Koop embraced the pro-life cause in 1970, its ranks were still overwhelmingly Catholic, with some proponents identifying as liberal Democrats. It had yet to become synonymous with political conservatism or culture-war politics. In fact, few evangelicals were interested in talking about abortion, and no evangelical denomination had yet passed a pro-life resolution.

Koop refused to be pegged as either a conservative or a liberal since he believed that science, not ideology, should guide his work in public health. And he said that he opposed abortion not because of the Bible or Christian theology but because of his duty as a doctor to save human life. At the time, he was surgeon in chief at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and he reasoned that saving children’s lives after they were born committed him to saving their lives before they were born as well.

As long as the pro-life movement kept its distance from conservative politics or the culture wars, Koop was comfortable giving public speeches against abortion and supporting pro-life organizations. But this distance was diminishing around the time of Reagan’s election and Koop’s appointment as surgeon general. At the very moment Koop ascended to a position of political power, he found himself out of step with the movement that had championed his ascent.

Koop was critical of advocacy for anti-abortion laws because he believed that pro-life campaigns should focus on public persuasion rather than legal coercion. And he also believed in following the scientific evidence wherever it led. When the Reagan administration commissioned him to produce a report on the physical and mental health of women who had abortions, Koop stuck to what he thought the data showed, denying any conclusive evidence of substantive effects on women’s well-being. Pro-lifers were dismayed, but Koop thought he was simply following the evidence.

Koop’s greatest contribution as surgeon general may have been his public-relations campaign against tobacco. Perhaps largely because of Koop’s efforts, the 1980s saw the greatest drop in smoking rates of any decade in American history. This was not because of any new awareness that cigarettes could cause lung cancer or other diseases; people in Koop’s position had been saying this since 1964. Instead, the shift occurred because Koop publicized new studies showing the dangers of secondhand smoke. Smokers, it turned out, were potentially harming other people’s health, not only their own. Armed with this new information, airlines, workplaces, and public venues began implementing smoking bans, and smoking rates plummeted.

The achievement made Koop a national celebrity. He earned greater name recognition and greater public trust than any previous surgeon general had earned.

But according to Cameron, Koop did not handle his fame well. He was blind to conflicts of interest. He was sometimes petulant and egotistical. After his moment in the national spotlight, he failed to adjust to life outside it. But his brash self-confidence occasionally opened doors. When he volunteered to campaign for the Clinton health care plan because of his belief that access to affordable health care would save lives, Bill and Hillary Clinton took him up on the offer. Thereafter, he developed a closer relationship with them than with any other president after Reagan.

Koop wanted to be remembered for saving lives, because it was the passion of his entire career. He saved the lives of children through his pioneering work in pediatric surgery, and he attempted to save unborn lives by speaking out against abortion. As surgeon general, he tried to save lives on a national scale by encouraging condom use and launching a public-relations campaign against smoking.

In some of those efforts, Koop had the support of his fellow evangelicals. In other cases, they diverged, especially when certain allies seemed more interested in saving the nation’s Christian identity through politics than in saving the lives of individual image bearers. Yet he persisted in following his own conscience, even when it differed with prevailing trends in evangelicalism. As he said near the end of his life, if history remembered him as the “man who saved more lives than anybody else in the United States,” that legacy that would make him “very happy.”

Daniel K. Williams teaches American history at Ashland University. His forthcoming book is Abortion and America’s Churches: A Religious History of Roe v. Wade.

Editor’s note: Parts of this review have been amended to clarify certain details about Koop’s views, his actions during and after his time as surgeon general, and his relationships with family members.

- More from Daniel K. Williams

Theology

How I Learned to Love the Apocalypse

Russell Moore

Columnist

Teaching through the Book of Revelation kept me sane in a crazy year.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe he re.

When times are dark, people often steady themselves with an escape into a book. Sometimes that means retreating into stories of simpler times or happier places. I recently learned there’s even a genre called “cozy mystery.”

With the bleakness of the news these days, I too found myself seeking refuge in the better, calmer world of a book. The weird thing is that the book is Revelation.

When I first considered teaching through Revelation at my church, I had some qualms. People everywhere are already on edge—reeling from a pandemic, divided by politics, staring down an artificial intelligence revolution that might upend everything—and Revelation is, well, apocalyptic.

Its symbology of beasts, dragons, horsemen, and seals can seem confusing and overwhelming to most people. Plus, the Book of Revelation can be terrifying. It opens with the resurrected Christ sternly rebuking churches, and then gets darker.

I love the book, but I wondered if teaching it in this current moment would feel like showing up to a Sex Addicts Anonymous retreat to lead a study on Song of Solomon.

Maybe I should wait for a less chaotic time, I said to myself. But I’m glad I resisted that temptation to quit before I started. Spending time each week in Revelation—meditating on it, preparing to teach it—has calmed me, steadied my nerves, and even made me happier. Here’s why.

Many treat Revelation as a cryptic message meant for someone else. Some think it was for first-century Christians under Roman persecution. Others, especially in the past century of American Christianity, believe it’s a roadmap for the end times: Wormwood is satellite technology, the mark of the Beast is a QR code, Gog and Magog are China and Russia, and so on.

But Revelation, like all Scripture, is Christ speaking to his church in every generation, in every kind of crisis. Those who have paid close attention to the book across history often identify two central themes: unveiling and overcoming. Both speak directly to my temptations toward cynicism and anxiety, and both offer surprising comfort.

Unveiling, the literal meaning of apocalypse, doesn’t mean vindication. In a time when truth is often defined by power or popularity—even by those who once warned against relativism—many measure truth by the “vibe” or the proximity to influence, whether that’s corporate hierarchies or tech algorithms. In this framework, truth becomes whatever wins in the moment.

Social media and entertainment culture have reinforced the illusion that truth is what goes viral. If a church is growing, it must be faithful. If a political movement polls well, it must be right. In personal conflicts, many assume there will eventually be a moment when the truth comes out and finally vindicates them. But that moment rarely arrives.

The unveiling in Revelation is different. It reveals a deeper reality than metrics. Jesus says to the churches, “I know.” “I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. … You did not deny my faith,” he tells one (2:13, ESV throughout). To another: “You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead” (3:1).

The Roman Empire appeared to be the apex of history, the ultimate civilization. Yet Revelation unmasks it. What looks like a god is a beast (ch. 13), and Babylon, which seems permanent, collapses in an hour (18:10).

The Christians pressured to conform seem like a scattered, feeble minority, but they are actually part of “a great multitude that no one could number” (7:9). The throne that crucifies them is occupied by a beast, but behind the veil sits a “Lamb who was slain” (5:12).

Overcoming, the other dominant theme, answers the question that haunts many of us: “Yes, but what can we do?” Revelation answers, again and again: Overcome. But not in the way we expect.

The overcomers are not the ones who conquer Rome or subvert Babylon. They are those who refuse to bow. They do not triumph by redirecting the same kind of power for “our side” but by resisting those categories for “winning” altogether. “They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death” (12:11).

In Revelation, the real threat to the church isn’t persecution—it’s assimilation. “Do not fear what you are about to suffer” (2:10), Jesus says to one church. The danger is not what the empire can do to Christians, but what Christians will become to avoid suffering.

Jesus downplays external threats, urging endurance. But he warns severely against internal compromise. To lose your life is bearable. To lose your lampstand is not. To be without a head is temporary. To be without Jesus is hell.

When we ask, “What can we do?” in the face of overwhelming evil, we often want a strategy. Sometimes that’s possible and necessary. But more often, the problems are too vast to solve by technique.

You can’t fix “the church.” You can’t save “the world.” But you can call cruelty what it is. You can see idolatry clearly. You can refuse to become a Beast yourself. And Revelation shows us that what stands against the Beast is not a bigger, stronger beast—but a Lamb that is slain.

The unveiling in Revelation is a call to wisdom. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (3:6). And the theme of overcoming in Revelation is a call to endurance. It is better to be beheaded than to become a beheader.

Yes, the times are perilous. They always are. Maybe there’s war, famine, or tyranny on the horizon. But behind the veil, the table is being set for a wedding feast. That should strengthen us to stand without fear or despair. It should remind us of the way back to the Tree of Life.

Apocalyptic questions demand apocalyptic answers: Stay awake. Strengthen what remains. Learn to say, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Overcome.

And when you feel anxious or afraid, read something calming and reassuring—like the Book of Revelation.

Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today and leads its Public Theology Project.

Ideas

The Fox Will Lie Down with the Hedgehog

Andrew Wilson

Columnist; Contributor

Isaiah Berlin’s intellectual metaphors shed light on church history—and my own theological trajectory.

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

Are you a hedgehog or a fox? In a famous essay, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin posed this question to identify one of the biggest dividing lines among writers and thinkers, and perhaps human beings more generally. He drew the idea from an ancient Greek poet, who had expressed it in the form of a proverb. “The fox knows many things,” wrote Archilochus, “but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

Some thinkers see the world through a single, overarching vision of reality which gives meaning and significance to all things, incorporating all knowledge and experience. In Berlin’s framing, these are the hedgehogs. Others pick up all sorts of ideas and insights from a wide variety of sources and contexts, moving wherever evidence (or fancy) takes them, often without integrating or even reconciling their ideas with each other. These are the foxes.

Hedgehogs are holists; foxes are pluralists. Hedgehogs have a satisfying explanation of everything, but they can tend toward the fanatical. Foxes see the complexity of the world, but they can be inconsistent and self-contradictory.

Berlin gives plenty of examples from history. Dante, a hedgehog, gave masterful expression to the all-encompassing, coherent worldview of high-medieval Catholicism. Shakespeare, the ultimate Renaissance man, was a fox, toggling between poetry and prose, tragedy and comedy, male and female, philosophy and banter. Plato was a hedgehog who knew one big thing, expressed in his well-known parable of the cave with its famous distinction between reality and mere shadows; Aristotle was a fox who knew many things, which is why his thought is so much harder to summarize.

It is not difficult to apply Berlin’s categories to leading figures of church history. Augustine of Hippo was a hedgehog, one of the greatest who ever lived; few people in history have expressed an overarching vision of reality as coherent as his masterwork, The City of God. Alcuin of York, who lived a few centuries later, was a fox: a mathematician, poet, theologian, and liturgist whose wide-ranging educational syllabus was used for centuries after his death. Desiderius Erasmus, a leading figure in the late-medieval Renaissance, was a fox: brilliant, inventive, polymath, and inconsistent. His near-contemporary Martin Luther, the 16th-century Reformer, was a fiery, zealous hedgehog: a hammer to whom everything looked like a nail.

This is not to say that the disagreements between these individuals should be reduced to matters of style, let alone personality type. The fault lines between Luther and Erasmus, or John Calvin and John Wesley, are far more substantial than that. At the same time, it is not surprising that a hedgehog like Luther would consider a fox like Erasmus to be evasive, slippery, woolly, and compromised. Nor is it surprising that Erasmus, in turn, would find Luther simplistic, doctrinaire, totalizing, and lacking in nuance.

More cautiously, we could reflect on different biblical authors in the same way. Isaiah is a hedgehog, who knows one big thing—that for salvation we need to trust the Lord alone, not armies, payoffs, or idols—and is not afraid to say so. Solomon is a fox, whose insights are wide-ranging and wise but hard to summarize or synthesize into one system. Paul is a hedgehog, whose one big thing—the grace of God in Christ—permeates every letter and virtually every paragraph he wrote. Luke reads more like a fox, whose broad research and distinctive interests (prayer, prophecy, women, the poor, the Spirit, forgiveness, Gentiles, innocence, and so forth) are ideally suited to his task as a historian.

One benefit of recognizing these distinctions is that they help us take authors on their own terms. If hedgehogs apply the tools they learned studying Isaiah or Paul’s letters across the whole of Scripture, they will unintentionally mangle books like Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, or James—just as a fox’s approach to wisdom literature might not translate seamlessly to works of prophecy or epistles.

Another benefit of thinking this way is that it can prompt us to broaden our influences. I am an instinctive hedgehog, drawn to clarity and coherence. So when I started to study theology, I naturally gravitated to fellow hedgehogs like N. T. Wright, John Piper, and Tim Keller. (Knowing one big thing does not mean agreeing on what that one big thing is!) In the last ten years I have spent more time learning from foxes like Peter Leithart, Fleming Rutledge, and Alan Jacobs, who each work with a wide range of ideas that I cannot quite synthesize. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next decade saw me swing back to hedgehogs again.

I like to think our awareness of hedgehog and fox tendencies has other benefits too, such as enhanced creativity and mutual understanding. But mostly, as Berlin himself said, it is an intellectual game, a fun way of thinking about important ideas and the people who came up with them. The focus of Berlin’s essay was the novelist Leo Tolstoy, who was “by nature a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog.” Ten years into writing this column for CT, perhaps the opposite is true of me.

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

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

- More from Andrew Wilson

Culture

Review

‘Sinners’ and the Panic-Praise Problem

Sho Baraka

Deciding whether to watch Ryan Coogler’s new film requires serpent-and-dove discernment.

Michael B. Jordan as Smoke in Sinners, a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

“Sinners have soul, too.” So goes the famous line spoken by blues singer Shug Avery in the 1985 film The Color Purple. At the time, my young mind didn’t quite understand what it meant.

But after becoming a Christian as an adult, after reading plenty of Zora Neale Hurston and listening to a deluge of John Mayer and Kanye West, after reintroducing myself to the Harlem Renaissance literature that was forced upon me as a child, I learned that non-Christian art can have soul—and it can also be redemptive. I came to understand the apologetic that’s happening between Shug and her minister father when she and her chorus of “sinners” disrupt his church service, bursting through the doors and joining in song.

Decades of film have taken as their subject the tension between the church and secular music in particular: The Color Purple and Footloose, Cabin in the Sky and Sister Act 2. You know the terse tropes: The church is rigid and judgmental. Secular music is the Devil’s playground.

Now we have Sinners—a thrilling, genre-bending new offering from writer and director Ryan Coogler—entering the age-old debate about what belongs to God and what belongs to Satan. The movie insists that while story and song can heal the soul, bringing love and fellowship, they can also be appropriated for evil.

The film essentially has two plots. First, it’s 1932, and the Moore brothers, Elijah and Elias, return to the Mississippi Delta for what is promised to be the most unforgettable night of blues and booze for the hardworking plantation folks of Clarksdale, Mississippi. The second plot: vampires.

That’s the plot, but it’s not the full story. Sinners thoughtfully explores the intricate commercial dynamics between Asian and Black communities, interrogates Jim Crow policies and the damaging tradition of sharecropping, and addresses the fraught realities of racial passing and colonialism with haste but narrative acuity.

I would be remiss not to mention the blood and the sex. This movie is rated R for a reason.

Its rating (and its themes) means some Christians will respond to Sinners with unnecessary panic. Others will respond with rash adulation.

I’ll advocate for a serpent-and-dove disposition. Viewers should pause at what darkens the soul—but also praise what gestures at grace, even in unexpected places. Even if you’re typically averse to horror films, you might want to watch this one for its social commentary and cinematic wizardry. Just be aware that the N-word flies just as much as the blood and bullets, and the bawdy themes will tutor you in practices that would make your marriage counselor blush.

But yes, pause, just as Paul advises his listeners in Romans 14:20–23. Hold to your convictions if a movie like Sinners will cause you to stumble. Don’t be like the Gentiles who’ve secretly watched the entirety of Game of Thrones but masquerade as if they haven’t.

I’m writing as one of the Christians who did see Sinners—and I enjoyed it. It wrestles honestly with whether we can keep “dancing with the Devil” without him “follow[ing] us home.” One of Michael B. Jordan’s characters, an ex-military bootlegger, encourages his younger cousin Sammie (Miles Caton) to stick to gospel music and avoid the “juke-joint life.” But singing, guitar-playing Sammie feels restricted by the same fetters that bound Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Sam Cooke, luminaries who had their start in the church but found fame outside it.

Can people who love God also love the blues? The two affections aren’t unrelated. In The Spirituals and the Blues, theologian James Cone argues that “the blues are ‘secular spirituals’ … in the sense that they confine their attention solely to the immediate. … They are spirituals because they are impelled by the same search for the truth of black experience.”

Yet for some, the “Devil’s music” is only to be avoided. Sammie’s father, a pastor, has his son read 1 Corinthians 10:13 and argues that “you will be tempted, but you will also be provided a way out.” Sammie, like Jesus to the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1–15), might ask himself, “Do you want to be healed?”

Generations of Black Christians have experienced the church’s sluggishness when it comes to new music. Thomas Dorsey, who’s said to have coined the musical term gospel, was demonized for blending the sound of the blues with hymns and spirituals. Even today, it’s a quotidian truth that Christian hip-hop is more likely to be patronized by white and multicultural congregations than by traditional Black churches. I’ve experienced this in my own career.

Of course, just as the bouncer Cornbread guards the door in Sinners, pastors and religious leaders are wise to be cautious about who they invite into their folds. It’s the shepherds’ duty to protect and feed their sheep. At their best, our leaders teach us when to resist the Devil head-on and when to flee temptation entirely.

But this kind of leadership can easily become repressive. Church leaders get afraid of new sounds and techniques, nervous about letting too much of “the world” through the church’s doors. Let us pray for discernment in this matter, the same kind of discernment required to decide whether to watch a movie like Sinners in the first place. We often operate as Protestant Essenes, isolationists afraid of the vampires in the night. But Christ prayed for protection, not isolation. Discernment, not distance, might be the mark of maturity.

Sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that “all art is propaganda and ever must be. … I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.” As a Christian, I tend to agree with him, at least insofar as stories are not agnostic.

Therefore, I’m pausing over some aspects of Sinners—over what could be observed as the heroic work of voodoo and the damning critique of Christianity (one character laments that the faith was forced upon Black folk). Movies are for entertainment, but their ideas have influence. That’s all the more true of Black films, which, because of cultural pride and scarcity of opportunity, more readily evolve into sociology, psychology, and theology. Although Sinners may be making not an intentional moral statement but rather a historical one about religion, viewers have the tendency to form doctrine based on what they see onscreen.

Sinners does speak frankly about the bloodsucking perversion of religion in the United States. But its critique of plantation faith is asymmetrical. Movies like Dogma, Us, Footloose,and The Golden Compass show only the devilish corruption of a Christianity pining for power and dominion—but we know of a gospel that fueled abolitionists and liberated enslaved peoples. The same plantation folks who suffered hypocrisy knew of a healer who gave joy and life abundantly in perilous times. That joy spawned spirituals, which gave birth to blues. We know of a gospel prevalent in Africa long before colonizers; some of the oldest Christian representation is found in the legacy of Rock-Hewn Churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia.

Scripture acknowledges that false gospels will always exist alongside what’s true. The Bible describes people casting lots, pouring libations (Gen. 35:14), and interacting with the dead, and witches speaking with authority (Acts 16:16–21). Don’t panic at practices that have a form of godliness but no power to “destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28). The body of Christ has the proper armor for the fight and light that shines in the darkness.

That said, we can’t always tell the two apart. In art and in life, we are prone to assign virtues where there are none; we are prone to withhold dignity where it is due. We struggle to see that the sinners aren’t solely the fall-down drunkards, the soul-snatching monsters, and the land-thieving colonialists but also are us, we who refuse to let go of the vices that prevent true liberation.

Don’t just beware of monsters and adult themes. Beware of the powers and principalities that present themselves as fellowship and love. Imperialists, appropriators, and musicians alike, we are all in danger of being intoxicated by the American dream. The question isn’t whether sinners have souls—but who has the power to judge us.

Sho Baraka is editorial director of Big Tent for Christianity Today.

Ideas

Q&A: Rand Paul on Trump’s Tariffs, Habeas Corpus, and His Faith

Interview by Bonnie Kristian

The Republican senator from Kentucky spoke with CT about his goals and motives in recent controversies in Washington and the import of the rule of law.

Tom Williams / Getty

Read about Senator Rand Paul’s work in Washington under the Trump administration, and you’ll see the same words over and over: lonely, longshot, quixotic. The Kentucky Republican has staked out an unusual place in contemporary politics, supporting President Donald Trump while vocally criticizing some of his policies. Paul spoke with CT by phone this week. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Let’s start with questions of executive power and constitutional constraints, which have been a through line in many of the concerns you’ve raised lately around tariffs and national emergencies, war powers—particularly with Yemen—and free speech. How would you characterize the underlying problem connecting this array of issues?

I think it’s a longstanding problem. It didn’t just start with Donald Trump. Some look back to Woodrow Wilson; some look even further back, with the president gaining more and more power, and more and more power being centralized in the hands of the president. Our founders thought it was pretty important to divide the power. Madison talks about it in The Federalist Papers, saying we’ll pit ambition against ambition. The ambition to take and accumulate power will be checked by other people who won’t want to have their own power taken away.

But we have a largely acquiescent Congress that isn’t very ambitious and has let that power flow away from them for a long time. On war making, on tariffs—you name it—the presidency has gotten more and more powerful, and the executive branch bigger and bigger. It also happens on the regulatory front, in that most regulations are written by the executive branch bureaucracy but not by Congress anymore.

When there was a Democrat president, I had a much larger coalition of people who believed that the emergency powers were being abused. In fact, we had probably a dozen or more people cosponsoring a couple of different bills to restrain emergency powers. Unfortunately, I’m the only one left right now, now that there’s a Republican president.

But I still think the battle is important. And even though we don’t win legislatively, presenting the economic arguments for why tariffs are bad is important—but also presenting the constitutional arguments, because I think there will be at least some people in the public who will say, Well, yeah, we ought to be consistent, whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat in office.

It would be wonderful if the public persuasion pays off and in the long term we elect officials who are more concerned about the Constitution. But in the meantime, I know you’ve introduced, for instance, Joint Resolution 49, which would have terminated the national emergency declaration President Trump used to levy the 10 percent tariffs across the board. As you mentioned, nearly every other Senate Republican voted against it. So where do you go from here in the short term with the officials we have now? Is there any other tactic to take as a lawmaker?

We’re looking at whether or not there’s a way to take another crack at it. The emergency powers legislation, when it was reformed in 1976, allowed for a privileged vote. And we look at privileged votes as a way to force the debate. Most of the time, if there were not these privileged votes, you would never hear about these things at all because they would never come to the floor of the Senate.

So we will look carefully at that. We look at it with regard to war powers too. The War Powers Act also allows a privileged vote, and we’ve become quite active in that space over the years. Some years, I’ve gotten 50 amendment votes in a year—more than probably the entire rest of the caucus combined—because I utilize these privileged votes.

We don’t often win—although I was remarking to somebody this morning that during the height of Saudi Arabia’s war with Yemen [in 2019], we did win a vote where we stopped arms sales to Saudi Arabia in the Senate and in the House, but then it was vetoed by President Trump.

I don’t think it was widely reported, but I think that’s the first time that Congress has ever attempted to stop arms sales or to stop a conflict by removing arms sales. Even at the height of the Vietnam War, I don’t think we ever defunded the war. So it was a big step forward even though it wasn’t successful.

And sometimes, like with the arguments right now over tariffs, a vote in Congress makes the argument broader. That brought it back into the press, and then the market responded by its downturn. And lo and behold, the Trump administration has backed away from their most extreme position on tariffs.

I remember that Yemen vote and being extremely disappointed by the veto. That was a remarkable thing in many ways. I wonder, did you see the recent comments from White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, where he was chatting casually with reporters and mentioned possibly suspending habeas corpus [the constitutional right to challenge any arrest or detention in court] to speed up deportations?

Yeah, I think that’s a horrible idea, and anybody who mentions that should probably go to a mandatory remedial constitutional class or something.

The idea of habeas corpus is old. They call it the ancient writ of habeas corpus. It dates to at least the Magna Carta in 1215. But likely even before that we had the idea that you had to present the body; you couldn’t just stow people away in a dungeon. Even kings were forced to bring people forward and say what you were charged with. It didn’t always work—sometimes the king just chopped their heads off anyway—but habeas corpus was one of the most civilizing rights in all of our history. So I’m disturbed that somebody would bring that up casually and talk about removing it.

Now a lot of people try to make this differentiation: We’re just going to remove it for foreigners. But the whole thing if you’re thrown in a dungeon is that we may not know who you are to begin with. You’ve had no process to present who you are or who you aren’t at that point.

I think we suspended habeas corpus under the war—the Civil War under President Lincoln. And there’s still many people in the libertarian side who criticize that. And I think I read somewhere that two other presidents did it, but I’m not sure who they were. Do you know who else suspended it?

I don’t know off the top of my head. [Editor’s note: Per the Constitution Center, Abraham Lincoln remains the only president to suspend habeas corpus on the national scale, but it was also suspended “in eleven South Carolina counties overrun by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction; in two provinces of the Philippines during a 1905 insurrection; and in Hawaii after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.”] I did see people online making fun of that Trump-critical group, the Lincoln Project, because it was rightly upset about the Miller comments. But, of course, it’s named for Lincoln.

These are the kinds of things that we try to do our best to vocally oppose. And there’s a real danger, at least on our side, because [of] people like Donald Trump—and I like him in many ways. I’ve played golf with him a dozen times. I’ve supported him and continue to support the administration. But there’s a danger to a lockstep mentality where we don’t question anything because we’re in favor of someone. I think there is that real danger.

There are also people who quietly oppose things like this but are afraid of a primary challenge, and so they’re not very vocal anymore. That’s particularly true on trade. There are fewer people for trade anymore in the Republican caucus, but there’s at least 15 or 20 who will privately whisper, out of earshot of the media, that they still do believe trade is good.

The farm-state senators in particular have been told this for 50 years now. All the farm bureaus are for trade, and the farmers export about 20 to 25 percent of their crops. So that support for trade still exists, but there’s a fear of being vocal about it, and there’s a fear of pushing back on it. But I think someone has to.

Our readers are always curious about the faith of the people we speak with, so I want to ask you what faith looks like for you as a senator, both in general and in these very interesting times.

I am a Christian, became a Christian as a teenager. My wife and I attend church regularly, and she’s Christian as well. We raised our kids that way.

I see war as a terrible thing to almost always want to be avoided and to only be done in self-defense really. And so I am horrified by the violence of war and think we should be working overtime to try to prevent it, not just gleefully sending arms everywhere and being involved in every conflict, promoting one side or the other. I take seriously my religious belief that killing is wrong and try to apply it to policy.

Something I routinely grapple with as a writer who is both publicly Christian and very opinionated about politics is that I really have to think about when I’m taking a position, Is it just a matter of prudence? Is it just that I think this is the most efficient or cost-effective or whatever, but it’s something reasonable people can agree to disagree about? Or is it really an ethical matter, a right, a matter of truth and justice where my faith is more directly influential? And I would also say particularly in matters of war and peace, my faith is really stirring me to say, I think this is right and that is wrong and This is a question of morality and of justice. How do you think about that line between matters of prudence and matters of morality?

I think there are always gray areas, but I would say, for the most part, war and engagement in war should be about defense. I think it’s wrong to murder people, but there is a point at which if you come into my house and try to get my family, then I’ll shoot you. And so I’m not a pacifist, but at the same time, I can see very little other justification for shooting somebody.

The same is true of war. People say, Well, it’s in our defense to somehow to bomb Tehran or something. And I think that’s not something that’s defensive and not something that’s justified. And the practical aspect of it also is that it’ll lead to more war, more devastation. The whole Iraq War led to making Iran stronger, frankly, and made Iraq the worst place to live. Hundreds of thousands of people died. People died from not having medication, not having food.

So I think my approach to war and peace is a moral position, a profound belief personally held, that I think is important. And I think more people should consider that moral aspect. I think a lot of times people see war as a geopolitical thing: Communism’s bad. Ayatollahs are bad. We’re good. Democracy is good. And all those things are right—but are they justification for killing those people or for war?

And is there an end? Is there a proportionality to war? Israel was attacked on October 7, and it was horrific. Hamas deserves every condemnation, and Israel deserves the right to defend themselves. But is there a point at which it goes too far?

I also believe, though, that what Israel does—I’m not big on sending them tons of money in arms anyway; I think they need to provide for themselves at this point. But at the same time, I’m not thinking it’s my job to tell them when to stop either. Should they stop at some point? Have they passed that point? In all likelihood. But also, you know, I don’t live there. It is different living there. They have to make this decision. But I engage with it when it intersects with us. For instance, I don’t know if you saw that we had a committee hearing recently on this antisemitism bill. Did you see that?

I did, yeah. I watched some of your comments, particularly about the uniqueness of the American free speech tradition, even compared to very historically and culturally similar countries like England.

That is one of the best debates we’ve had here. Bernie Sanders and I were on the same side at one point. I introduced the names of 479 Jewish American comedians whom I allege have made stereotypical comments and jokes about Jews—and that’s considered to be antisemitism under one of the definitions. [Editor’s note: The bill uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Working Definition of Antisemitism.]

And then we also pointed out that another part of the definition is that you can’t say that Jews killed Jesus. And it’s like, well, there are people who are antisemitic who say all Jews are responsible, but if you read the Bible, [that some Jews were involved is] actually what happened. Of course, Jesus is Jewish, and he was killed by a group of Jews. Are we going to ban that kind of historical discussion somehow as being antisemitic?

It’s a big mistake to limit speech.

With this and with so many of the things we’ve touched on here, it seems to come down to a lack of basic foresight. Maybe something sounds like a great idea to you right now—while you’re in power and you get to apply it to the people and the words that you don’t like—but in the near future, it can be applied in other ways. It can be applied to restrict, for instance, as you say, discussion of Christian history.

You have to think about your opposites applying and using the same rules. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to win the presidency and she uses emergency powers to say there’s a climate emergency and that we’re no longer going to drive gasoline-power cars, I think conservatives would not think that’s a great idea. But if you want to oppose her being able to do that unilaterally, you have to oppose the current president having that unilateral power as well.

- More from Bonnie Kristian

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Future-Focused Shift #1: Don’t start with why; start with who

Future-Focused Shift #2: Don’t charge forward; first get your bearings

Future-Focused Shift #3: Don’t aim for massive changes in the middle; experiment on the edges

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