What Do We Want from Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

Laura M. Fabrycky

A former tour guide at Bonhoeffer’s historic house wrestles with the implications of mythologizing his story for our own ends.

Illustration by Peter Oumanski

One autumn morning in 2016, during a season shot through with loneliness, I learned that my family and I lived only a 10-minute drive from the Bonhoeffer-Haus, the memorialized home of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

We had just moved from the Washington, DC, area to Berlin for my husband’s work, spending those summer months awkwardly trying to settle ourselves in a new country. I was homesick, but not just for home—for another time altogether. From across the Atlantic, I was disillusioned by the rancorous partisan discourse unfolding in American public life and felt especially grieved that there was coarse disrespect even among those who claimed to follow Jesus. These ruptures left me feeling raw, alone, and fearful.

A visit to Bonhoeffer’s house would do us good, I figured. He was a hero lauded for the faith and theology that animated his opposition to Nazism—a Christian good guy in a time of Nazi bad guys. We could be inspired, I thought, hopeful again that maybe good people like him would rise to the occasion in our present messy world.

So we packed our three kids into the car for the house’s Saturday morning English-language tour. Upon arrival, I took in the black-and-white photographs hanging on the walls of the conference room where we gathered. Some were of Bonhoeffer. A few, like those of Karl Barth, were familiar—but most of the images featured people I didn’t know at all. Sometime during the guide’s talk, in that room full of strangers’ photographs, I realized I was not getting the story I’d expected or even wanted to hear.

Rather than training a bright spotlight on the lone hero Dietrich, the guide gave a careful historical overview of the house and the many people connected to it. The context was harder to follow than my good-guy-versus-bad-guys framing and demanded a different form of attention than I expected. It involved a wider group of characters, dates, places, and complicating elements about the Confessing Church (which rose in opposition to the pro-Nazi German Protestant church) and about Bonhoeffer’s role in a 1944 military conspiracy—far more nuanced than the American retellings I had previously encountered.

At the end of the talk, the guide invited us to visit Bonhoeffer’s upstairs bedroom, ringed with bookshelves, and to sit at his desk, with its signature teal lamp and a small cigarette burn on the matching velvet blotter. It was in that room that the Gestapo arrested him in 1943; he was executed two years later at the age of 39 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

I too was 39 that morning in his room, and I found my attention turning to a tangle of existential questions. What would I have done? Was I doing anything significant now with my life like he did? What had I really wanted from this tour of Bonhoeffer’s house?

Following that first visit, I scheduled another tour for myself, and then another, intrigued and terrified by the silent witness of that ordinary house. It held the mingled memories of joyful family times and gatherings with neighbors but also conspiratorial conversations and jagged emotions of fear, anxiety, and immense grief. Behind its doors was a world of people—a few recognized, many now forgotten—who struggled to make sense of the time and its demands as best they could.

Rather than being superhuman, as I had secretly hoped, the Bonhoeffers and their friends were ordinary people who had no desire to be heroes, much less Christian ones. They were an elite Prussian family with a strong sense of civic obligation, prizing sound thinking and moral courage at a time when such things were in scant and diminishing supply.

From my historical vantage point, the house and its people appeared disadvantaged against the noisy bombast of the Nazis and the social pressure to comply. Yet the Bonhoeffers and their friends still sought to live responsibly, decently, and faithfully. That witness terrified me but also compelled me to learn more. As I listened, their lives issued a quiet, persistent call—not to their world but to my own.

After making more visits over the next six months, I became a volunteer guide myself, warmly issued a key for the door as if I were a trusted neighbor. But nearly nine years since that first visit, as Bonhoeffer’s story continues to be cited, celebrated, and sometimes misconstrued by the American church, we need to ask ourselves: What are we doing with Bonhoeffer, and why?

“Laura! The bed is IKEA!”

The comment, typed in the margin of my book draft, made me laugh and cringe. As painful as it was, I had grown accustomed to having my romanticized notions about Bonhoeffer punctured by Gottfried Brezger, a retired pastor and longtime Haus guide.

My two years as a guide had grown into a book, in which I distilled lessons I learned from my time at Bonhoeffer’s house. The memoir was in its infant stages then, and Brezger was direct in his feedback, repeatedly melting away my propensity to wax imaginative. In the case of the bed, I had written with pathos about the objects in Bonhoeffer’s room—his books, his desk, his clavichord—and then added some treacly foolishness about “the human-sized bed that once held a sleeping moral giant.” Nonsense. The desk was Bonhoeffer’s, Brezger averred, but the bed was a Hemnes.

Par for the course. In my interactions with Brezger, I routinely experienced the difference between my American and his German view of Bonhoeffer. I veered toward a mythologized picture of the man, while Brezger saw him firmly embedded in the rich fabric of history.

Our interpretations and interactions mirror our larger cultures. In the aftermath of World War II, American Christians hungered for stories of moral heroes and exemplary Christians. That appetite was first satisfied in the eulogies that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and bishop George Bell gave of Bonhoeffer shortly after his death (even if his theology and prison writings later complicated the picture they initially painted).

More recently, Americans have repeatedly encountered the phrase “Bonhoeffer moment,” which fashions an abstract ethical principle out of the actual person. The phrase has come to mean that a tipping point has been reached in society and that violent action is now permissible. But those who use it this way fail to understand that Bonhoeffer never claimed his decision to support the plotters was morally justified or insisted others were ethically bound to follow him in it. Invoking his name and image like this may be an effective marketing technique, but it is not a serious engagement with his life or times.

I’ve observed Germans show respect for Bonhoeffer, but it is always tempered with caution toward any thinking that revolves too much around a charismatic figure, which is understandable given their country’s history with the Führer. Unlike in the United States, Bonhoeffer isn’t treated as a brand name or a celebrity. Instead, he is honored for the complex humanity of his life: for being a brilliant, evocative thinker and writer who lived life fully, intensely, and creatively, even in prison. As one of my former Bonhoeffer-Haus colleagues noted, some in Germany even refer to him as “the man with the song”; his beloved poem “By Gentle Powers” (“Von guten Mächten”) has been set to music by a variety of composers. But this creative, joyful person is rarely the Bonhoeffer we in the US hear about.

During my time as a guide, it was important for my American imagination as much as my Christian one to reframe how I told Bonhoeffer’s story. My fellow volunteers’ personally distinct tours were helpful in this respect, presenting a fuller picture of life in that era.

Martin focused on the house itself, pointing out that its location at the end of a dead-end street was more secluded and thus perfect for conspiring. He also explained recent historiography about women in the Confessing Church movement and Nazi resistance, including those largely forgotten, such as Elisabeth Schmitz and Gertrud Staewen.

High school teacher Martina drilled deep into the history of former students who died in Nazi resistance efforts—students who once attended the school where she herself teaches.

Other guides, like Brezger, concentrated on Bonhoeffer’s theology and its continued relevance. To this day, all of the guides invite visitors into conversation about these and other subjects, careful not to tend to a cult of Bonhoeffer but to remember him and others in their historical context.

While learning from these volunteers, I had to shed my desire—in my guiding and writing—to tell a merely inspiring story about his life that might satisfy visitors’ or readers’ appetites. Mimicking my fellow guides, I reminded people that his upstairs bedroom was often blue with cigarette smoke.

While giving a tour one day, I found myself flooded with pity and compassion for Bonhoeffer: Despite his intellectual gifts and credentials, he had a potholed timeline of halting life experiences. As the only adult Bonhoeffer child who still had a room upstairs, he leaned on his parents financially. Even when he lived elsewhere, he mailed his dirty laundry home to be washed, biographer Charles Marsh notes. At times, during my guiding years, I wondered whether I would have even liked Bonhoeffer if I had met him.

But these insights were a severe mercy for me and for him. I was starting to see that God loves and is served by real human beings: faulty, frail, fearful, and dependent, infinitely more varied than the successful leaders I was tempted to look to and lift up.

Increasingly, I came to see that my tangled emotional attachments to Bonhoeffer’s narrative were fed, in part, by restlessness in my own life. I was complicit in a larger Christian culture that cultivates a sincere but problematic, even sentimental, attachment to him—and to other Christian celebrity figures—as a kind of holy warrior. Their humanity cannot stand under the weight of deification we are tempted to load upon them.

The Bonhoeffer I’d wanted to hear about was an idealized figure who led a resistance movement with clarity and self-confidence, a bold operator in a bewildering world who I could follow in the dark. My neighbor Bonhoeffer, however, was as human as I was.

The danger of sentimentalizing our heroes is that such mythmaking can be exploited for our own ends. We cannot afford to be naïve about this. Portraying Bonhoeffer as an assassin, with a gun clutched in his hand, fails to demonstrate even a basic understanding of his life or thought. In a culture primed for violence through contemptuous polarization and radicalizing isolation, the temptation lurks to invoke Bonhoeffer’s name as justification for the moral worthiness of one’s cause and tactics, no matter how different they may be from his own.

This kind of causal instrumentalization hurts real people, including his living relatives. Tobias Korenke, a great-nephew of Bonhoeffer, told me by email that he and his family have been “deeply hurt by the abuse committed against Dietrich” for nationalist ends and political purposes—causes that Bonhoeffer would not have supported and against which he issued strong dissent.

But I came to realize that it’s not only Bonhoeffer’s life we sentimentalize. It’s also the Confessing Church he was a part of. To understand this better, I turned to my mentor Victoria Barnett, one of the general editors of the 17-volume works of Bonhoeffer in English and a theologically trained historian specializing in the German Confessing Church movement.

In the 1980s, Barnett conducted 60 interviews with surviving Confessing Church members, including Bonhoeffer’s sister-in-law, Emmi Delbruck Bonhoeffer. Her husband, Klaus, was one of Dietrich’s older brothers and was executed by the Nazis for his role in the 1944 military conspiracy, along with Dietrich’s brothers-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi and Rüdiger Schleicher. In her book For the Soul of the People, Barnett’s interviews unveil the depth of moral murkiness and the complicated circumstances that individuals in the Confessing Church faced.

Barnett also points out that the German Confessing Church cannot be understood as a resistance organization to the Nazis. The Confessing Church emerged in opposition to attempts by the Deutsche Christen, or German Christians, to Nazify the church. But as a movement, it sought primarily to preserve the church, not to resist or overthrow the Nazis. In fact, some in the Confessing Church were even members of Hitler’s party.

Here and there, a few individuals in the Confessing Church sought to help those who found themselves crushed by Nazi propaganda and increasing levels of state-sanctioned terror aimed at genocide. But in terms of offering resistance, I realized I was not free to imagine the movement as one that primarily helped Jews or other persecuted groups. As Barnett said to me recently, “The Confessing Church’s leadership record is pretty poor in that regard.”

German society writ large hardly fared better. There was no national effort to resist National Socialism—only individuals and small groups from various sectors: artists and intellectuals, the workers movement and labor unions, and individual Christians. To varying degrees, as the German Resistance Memorial Center puts it, each of these “made use of what freedom of action they had” in defiance of the Nazi regime.

Amid the tensions of myth and history, there remains the man. As Barnett writes in The Christian Century, Bonhoeffer was “one decent human being who understood better than any of us that in evil times, we must remain faithful—if only for the sake of future generations.”

That is the harder task for us all. It is easier to turn to mythologized heroes than to begin to follow in their uneven steps of obedience to Christ. It is easier to write off faithfulness as extraordinary than to shoulder responsibility for our times. It is easier to let someone else speak up for our suffering and fearful neighbors than to do it ourselves.

WikiMedia Commons

A handwritten copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s poem “Who Am I?” written in 1944, during his time in prison.

Whether in my pocket or my purse, the key to the Bonhoeffer family’s house jangled next to my own keys during those Berlin days.

My efforts to master the basic facts of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life—as critical as these were—gave way to the gift of seeing him as a fellow human being. He was no longer a lone superhero but a member of a family, inextricably bound within larger communities and relationships.

To better see Bonhoeffer, I had to learn the names of the other people in the photographs on the wall. And I did this not by myself but with Brezger and Barnett, Martin and Martina, and all those who tended to the loving task of remembrance at the Bonhoeffer-Haus. To this day, I am still learning new names from that era.

During his time in prison, Bonhoeffer wrote a poem that peels back the mythical man’s mask to show the genuine human, trembling at the questions, fears, and longings within himself. In “Who Am I?” we see him struggle to know how to answer:

Am I really what others say of me?
Or am I only what I know of myself?
Restless, yearning, sick, like a caged bird …
starving for colors, for flowers, for birdsong,
thirsting for kind words, human closeness,
shaking with rage at power lust and pettiest insult,
tossed about, waiting for great things to happen,
helplessly fearing for friends so far away,
too tired and empty to pray, to think, to work,
weary and ready to take my leave of it all? …

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, thou knowest me; O God, I am thine!

This human Bonhoeffer remains an important figure of respect—not because he was perfect in his thoughts or actions or because he was singularly heroic, but precisely because he was not. He was on the losing side of the war, geographically, in a movement that also lost. But all the while, he dared to do the good, to keep wrestling for the gift of ordinary human life even as his world seemed bent on reveling in gross indifference and inhumanity.

As fear and complicity grew and morally preferable options narrowed, he continued to press into the bewildering pain of life’s questions before God. He was careful not to insist that others imitate him on the path he felt responsible to take. The arc of his life witnesses to the costly reality that even in failure, “God can and will let good come out of everything,” as he wrote in 1942. His life can nourish future generations’ moral imagining. In that respect, I think it is right to call him a saint—living history evidence of what God can do in a person’s life.

Bonhoeffer’s poetic questions might also illuminate traces of answers to life’s questions for us. They certainly gestured toward my own trembling questions on that first visit in 2016. To find the answers, I needed a sheltering place and hearts capable of housing my uncertainties and doubts. I found both at the Bonhoeffer-Haus, where slowly, answers began to emerge, tuned to my own life.

These answers touched on the basics of civic housekeeping as well as wholehearted obedience to Jesus: Feed the hungry; house the homeless. Give fellowship to the lonely and justice to the disposed, for, in Bonhoeffer’s words, “what is nearest to God is precisely the need of one’s neighbor.”

Knowing this, seek reconciliation with someone from whom you have grown alienated. Pray for a real enemy to the risen Christ who calls us to love, and use the Psalms to help you do it. Look at the lilies, listen for the voices of birds, and consider—as Jesus said we should.

Muddled desires, fear, anxiety, and myth-based emotional attachments had sent me to search mindlessly for a great man of history, a hero of the Christian faith at a time when heroes were nearly absent.

I did not find what I was looking for at the Bonhoeffer-Haus. What I found instead was a human being among other human beings—a man who, above all, belonged to God. And that remains, even now, a good and difficult gift.

Laura M. Fabrycky is the author of Keys to Bonhoeffer’s Haus: Exploring the World and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Our Man in Berlin Is Not Ours".

- More from Laura M. Fabrycky

Church Life

Should I Talk to My Kids’ School About the Pledge of Allegiance?

Beth Moore, Kevin Antlitz, and Kiara John-Charles

CT advice columnists also weigh in on cultivating lifelong friendships and ending a dating relationship in a godly way.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Got a question for CT’s advice columnists? Email advice@christianitytoday.com. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: As a newlywed, I’m eager to cultivate deep, lasting friendships with other couples, but that feels like it’s complicated by living in a very transient city in an increasingly low-commitment culture. Long-term friendship seems like it requires a dance between intentional commitment and genuine enjoyment. Should we just be frank with new friends about the commitment we want? Will it scare them off? —Wondering in Washington, DC

Beth Moore: Lasting, life-giving friendships make life so much richer, but boy, do we have to fight for them in this culture. It sounds like you’re willing to try, and that alone makes a real difference.

Good friendships develop organically, but they require opportunity and availability to grow. If opportunities come, take them! Make yourself available even if it takes extra effort. Think companionship over convenience, but also think about how to make it easier to routinely see each other. Do you live close, share a commute, or participate in the same small group?

If not, think about whether that could change. If organic opportunities don’t come, might God want you to facilitate some? Your friends (or even prospective friends) might have the same desire for a long-term commitment, but perhaps they’re nervous to mention it. Whatever the situation, you can always pray for good friends, put yourselves out there, and stay open to the unexpected.

And sometimes friendship can be very unexpected. When my husband, Keith, and I attended our first newlyweds’ class at church, I was appalled to see a woman there who’d made fun of me in high school. But 46 years later, she and her husband are our best friends. God can work wonders with proximity and an open heart.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Beth Moore and her husband, Keith, reside outside Houston. She has two daughters and an armful of grandchildren. Beth leads Living Proof Ministries, helping women know and love Jesus through Scripture.

Q: My kids go to a Christian school where students routinely say the Pledge of Allegiance. I don’t like the practice from a theological perspective, but it doesn’t outweigh all the good things about this school. One of my children doesn’t like to say the Pledge, and I’ve told him he has my permission to be respectfully silent. My question: Should I proactively tell the school administration or just explain if they happen to notice? —Parenting in Pennsylvania

Kevin Antlitz: In first grade, I had a friend whose parents forbade him to recite the Pledge. I asked why and vaguely recall him saying it was for “religious reasons.” At six years old, not coming from a devout family, I had no idea what that could possibly mean and didn’t think to ask.

Reconsidering it now, I can see why a serious Christian—or a committed atheist, for that matter—would have qualms about the Pledge. The idea of pledging alliance to “one nation under God” could be problematic for both, albeit for very different reasons.

For some Christians, pledging allegiance to any person or thing other than God alone may be scandalous. I can understand why someone would hold to that conviction, drawing on verses like Matthew 5:34, Luke 16:13, or John 18:36, which is why I think this is one of those things reasonable Christians should be able to agree to disagree about graciously, including in this school setting.

In your case, I do think it’s worth taking the initiative to speak with the school. It’s not unusual for leaders of institutions to continue to do things simply because they’ve always done them that way. Perhaps a conversation will lead administrators to reconsider the liturgy of the Pledge.

Or perhaps not. Either way, this would offer a great educational opportunity for your child to think seriously about the import of his words and how to hold to his convictions in a gracious way.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Kevin Antlitz is an Anglican priest at a Pittsburgh church positively overflowing with kids. He and his wife have three young children who they pray will never know a day apart from Jesus.

Q: I’ve decided to end my eight-month-long dating relationship for a variety of reasons, and a lot of people in my life support this decision. But how do I end the relationship in a godly way? I don’t want to cause unnecessary hurt or anxiety, and we will likely see each other around our university campus. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but I’ve seen a lot of breakups go very poorly and I want to do better. —Rattled in Rhode Island

Kiara John-Charles: Ending a relationship isn’t easy. Hurt feelings may be inevitable, yet seeking to handle it in a godly way shows you’re on the right path.

Our culture gives plenty of attention to recognizing red flags early in a relationship, but there’s less focus on how to end things well. Ghosting and “situationships” are increasingly common, but being honest and direct will help you set clear boundaries and avoid unnecessary hurt.

When communicating your decision, I encourage you to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). While the Bible doesn’t provide specific instructions on how to end a dating relationship, it does offer guidance on honoring others with our words. Verses like Ephesians 4:25 call us to “put off falsehood,” and Colossians 4:6 reminds us to let our speech be gracious.

Before having the conversation, take time to pray, ensuring that your desire to be loving outweighs any hurt feelings you may have. Arrange to meet in person. Be mindful of the other person’s feelings, and remember that while honesty is important, it’s also essential to be kind.

You don’t need to be brutally honest—sometimes less is more. Keep your words simple and clear, and give the other person space to process, with or without you present. Last, trust the Holy Spirit to guide your words toward love, even though you’re no longer in love.

Illustration by Jack Richardson

Kiara John-Charles is an LA native with Caribbean roots and a love for travel and food. She works as a pediatric occupational therapist and serves at her local church in Long Beach, California.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Qualms & Proverbs".

Qualms & Proverbs: Got a question for CT’s advice columnists? Email advice@christianitytoday.com. Queries may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Ideas

A Splintered Generation

Skyler R. Flowers and Michael Graham

Evangelicalism’s fracturing is chronic, but not terminal. Here’s how we can move forward.

Art by Derek Brahney

One day in the middle of the pandemic, I was working a typical pastoral day patching some drywall at our Orlando, Florida, church building, when a church member dropped by to catch up. The week before, we’d had a conversation about joy. I had asked him, “What is stealing your joy right now?” He thought long and hard about that question and wanted to follow up.

“Hey, Mike, your question about joy the other day was really hard, but I had an epiphany,” he said. “I realized that having Fox News on 24/7 at home was the number one thing stealing my joy and making me angry. So this week I decided to turn it off, and it has really made a difference.”

I told him that I was proud of him for his honesty and for taking a significant action step to safeguard his joy in Christ. But then he added, “Except for Tucker Carlson. I watch him every night.”

I’ve heard similar stories from the other side of the political aisle. Our current reality is no different from this story. What are pastors to do when their church members consume narratives throughout the week tenfold more than their Sunday sermons? What do we do when members who helped found our churches now threaten to leave due to these narratives? What do we do when evangelicalism feels irrevocably fractured?

The evangelical movement has long been a tapestry of diverse convictions and traditions, united by shared doctrinal and cultural factors rather than formal structures. The term evangelical implies an overarching unity that allows and accounts for diversity without imposing uniformity. This both gives the movement its force and makes it hard to discern its exact contours.

Today, that visage has grown even less clear. Four years ago, we observed in an essay for Mere Orthodoxy that evangelicalism had fractured. The response to American political events that drove media attention and cultural conversation revealed an underlying rending of the evangelical fabric.

As we saw it, the fracturing of evangelicalism revealed that the historic bonds holding the movement together were less intellectual than they appeared but were rather socioeconomic, political, and cultural. Dividing lines lurked beneath the surface for some time, but in the wake of a series of flash points, the comfortable order of allegiances was disrupted, fractured by unspoken yet deeply held commitments. We categorized the splintering into what we saw as six groups (and added one more borrowing from Mere Orthodoxy editor in chief Jake Meador’s observations):

0 – Right-Leaning Exvangelicals have left the church but identify as Christian or promote the merit of Christianity for the preservation of conservative cultural values and institutions.

1 – Neo-Fundamentalists focus on biblical fidelity and conservative values. This group is deeply concerned about liberalism and growing cultural hostility toward Christianity.

2 – Mainstream Evangelicals prioritize the Great Commission, so while they are concerned by extreme fundamentalism, they are more worried about the secular left’s influence.

3 – Neo-Evangelicals emphasize the global nature of the movement and the need to engage with the culture. This group critiques conservative political allegiances and failures on social issues while addressing liberal Christianity’s theological compromises.

4 – Post-Evangelicals center on justice and accountability. They challenge hypocrisy and abuses in the church while distancing themselves from evangelical identity, though they hold to core doctrinal beliefs.

5 – Left-Leaning Exvangelicals have dechurched due to disenfranchisement with evangelicalism’s failures but retain some orthodox Christian beliefs.

6 – Dechurched have left both the church and Christian faith entirely, abandoning all vestiges of belief.

Four years ago, we predicted a number of possible scenarios and futures for evangelicalism in the wake of such a fracturing. Most importantly, we recognized that the fracturing was likely irrevocable. This has proven to be true; we are no longer in the era of fracturing. We have transitioned into a new era within a fractured evangelicalism.

But this need not lead to discouragement or despair; rather, the fractures of evangelicalism have given way to a certain clarity that allows Christian churches to reconceive and renew their commitment to the gospel. A fractured evangelicalism is not a terminal diagnosis. This is not the movement’s first fracturing, and as historical precedent shows, such a moment can give way to new faithfulness for individuals, movements, and institutions that fall under the “evangelical” label. There is a way forward for the movement that remains committed to evangelical distinctives and the spread of the gospel internally and externally, locally and globally.

Through the early years of the fracturing (circa 2014–2019), the average American evangelical church might have been largely populated by people with differing cultural sensitivities. A church might see a combination of groups 1–4 sharing a pew in worship, serving in the children’s ministry, and communing in small groups. In fact, proximity is what gave rise to the seemingly ever-present tension of those years.

But as the cultural waves crashed over these communities and receded, they exposed that, often, the individuals gathered in these churches had many things in common—such as core theological beliefs, preferences in preaching and worship styles, aesthetics, and more—but related to the cultural climate in radically different ways.

Plus, social media offered us more of people’s live, unfiltered reactions to events. A Facebook post by a neo-evangelical small group leader could leave the neo-fundamentalist evangelical church member stunned at the former’s opinion of presidential politics. A post-evangelical might feel that their pastor, who is a mainstream evangelical, is not engaging culture or calling for societal change in a way that is sensitive or helpful.

These dynamics initially led to the fractured groupings, but over time a new reality formed. People began to reconsider their ecclesial affiliation based on these cultural factors. No longer could a neo-fundamentalist sit comfortably with a neo-evangelical. Nor could a post-evangelical serve next to a mainstream evangelical. Suspicion, anxiety, and frustration sent people scattering for new group solidarity and prompted movement into like-minded churches. The power of wedge issues created enough tension to ensure that some evangelicals could no longer attend the same church as each other. This was largely solidified by two factors: positions (doctrine) and posture.

Two evangelical Christians might agree on the sanctity of life, the biblical sexual ethic, and the sinfulness of racism. Likewise, these two evangelicals might have voted similarly in previous presidential elections. However, as the social media age matured, these two Christians began to diverge in their responses. The one person might carry an abrasive, “truth-telling” posture in face-to-face conversations and digital interactions. The other might attempt to carry a nuanced, “winsome” posture.

These two people hold identical positions but have differing postures. Positions are the fundamental ideas that we hold. Posture is the affect with which we hold those positions. How one arrives at belief will determine how one embodies the belief. Thus, though theological differences may prevail in a church, the sorting between churches occurred as differing paths to beliefs led to different postures. The net effect is a significant impact on overall comfort in a church and a space.

As the fracturing settled, it became obvious that new solidarities were not based strictly on ideological grounds. In part, this is because the way that we arrive at a doctrinal position often determines solidarity more than the position itself. Humans are not hermetically sealed brains that arrive at propositions through pure, brute-force reading of the Bible. Cultural, emotional, behavioral, psychological, relational, and experiential factors often pave the way to our doctrinal destinations. Even those in denominations with antiseptic doctrinal statements have struggled to find solidarity in a fractured evangelicalism because they came to their convictions through different pathways.

The explosion of social media, videos, and podcasts serves as one of the most powerful factors in doctrinal and cultural discipleship and significantly shapes how individuals come to positions.

But our newfound solidarity within these church types is driven by shared posture rather than shared positions. If you were to move to a new city and visit all the churches in town, you might find the ways they self-describe and self-identify loaded with all sorts of subtleties that communicate what types of churches they are. The term Baptist, Presbyterian, or Methodist would no longer be the defining difference between a church and its neighbor church down the street. Instead of denominational labels, you may be looking for the ways they discuss politics—and their political enemies.

The question “What voices do you most trust in evangelicalism today?” once might have turned up a wide array of answers in any given church. This is less likely now and reveals a more settled fracturing. Position matters, but posture is how you find your tribe.

Today, it is more likely people have found themselves in spaces with compatible postures, prioritizing these over doctrinal compatibility. Many Christians in everyday experience choose a church based on “vibes.” Gone are solidarities forged in the debates over the charismatic movement, worship wars, and the emergent church. One need only look at Southern Baptist presidential politics to see men who once questioned others’ Baptist credentials over Calvinism today nominating those same people for leadership positions. It is common, too, for non-Christians to speak at Christian conferences if they share the same posture on specific issues. This is part of the new world of settled fracturing within evangelicalism.

So what is the personality of evangelicalism today? We see three main characteristics that define today’s fractured evangelicalism: church centers, new movements, and the gender divide.

Mid-20th-century missiologist Paul Hiebert borrowed terms from set theory in mathematics—bounded set and center set—to describe ways of thinking. According to Hiebert, bounded sets have essential characteristics, have clear boundaries, are uniform in essential characteristics, and are static. Center sets have a defined center, and people judge things by the distance from their location to that center.

Some have created a metaphor for this of two livestock ranchers. The bounded-set rancher builds a fence to keep sheep within the field so they don’t stray. The center-set rancher builds a well, knowing the sheep won’t stray far from their source of nourishment. Churches today often define their centers and boundaries through primary theological commitments, secondary theological commitments, and cultural matters.

We see three new types of churches emerging from the fracturing, all of whom define their boundaries differently.

The first type is a combination of neo-fundamentalists and mainstream evangelicals. These churches see the culture as the problem facing the church and posture themselves in opposition to it while promoting a vision of a renewed Christian society. They tend to place fence posts around primary theology, secondary theology, and cultural matters. While a positive vision of biblical faithfulness is usually at the center, these churches often define their identity by who is in and who is out. Gospel proclamation is the hope of moving people from without to within while condemning churches and individuals who are squarely outside their boundaries.

Another group of churches, a combination of mainstream evangelicals and neo-evangelicals, is more likely to see the world’s fallenness inside and outside the church as the problem and to see themselves as salt and light in the world. They tend to be bounded set on primary theological commitments and a mixture of bounded and center set on secondary and cultural issues.

While there is certainly an idea of orthodoxy that defines the boundary, their pursuit of the center rises higher, often within discussions of the Great Commission and the kingdom of God.

Finally, churches composed of a combination of neo-evangelicals and post-evangelicals see Christian hypocrisy and sin inside the church as the most pressing issue. They tend to be center set on primary and secondary theology but draw firm boundaries on cultural matters. Only those who agree with a certain ethical vision in the modern world are within the boundary to pursue that vision with them.

No church is boundaryless or purely center-driven. Furthermore, postures are often the unstated embodiment of a church’s boundaries and centers and are extremely revealing. Ironically, the first and third groups of churches often end up being like photo negatives of each other on issues such as gender, sexuality, politics, and race. As cultural flash points occur, boundaries intensify and can lead to flared tempers and anxiety.

Art by Derek Brahney

The middle group of churches does not minimize cultural issues, but due to its center focus, the heat in these moments is turned down. The focal point rises higher in terms of importance. Nevertheless, these churches and peoples are not separated from the world and will often feel the intense tug of war on any given issue pulling toward the churches on their left and right.

In the past two years, the defining cultural values for evangelicals have cooled due to a larger shared agreement around the tragic events in Israel on October 7, 2023; flash points around gender; and renewed cultural conversations around the benefits of Christianity for self and society. Still, these boundaries and centers exist and will fluctuate.

Much of the fracturing we’ve beheld itself derives from a mistrust of the institutions that have defined the shared life of evangelicalism. Our publications, seminaries, denominations, pastors, and churches that once were viewed as the banners of the movement are now under suspicion. The net effect leaves institutions still standing but not necessarily thriving. In a setting of such chaos, two notable movements have arisen that are not obviously associated but do derive from this context.

The first movement might be called New Pietism, the school of thought commonly known as “Rule of Life” or “Comerism,” after the popular writer and pastor John Mark Comer. This movement emphasizes the cultivation of one’s spiritual life, with a heavy focus on spiritual practices that inspire the individual to holistic commitment to Jesus Christ.

While there are many factors in this movement’s explosion in the past decade, it is notable that its mainstream attention grew most significantly as the fracturing settled. It might be said that New Pietism arose out of a desire to leave behind the chaos and clamor that defined the fracturing period. As with its spiritual predecessor in the 17th century that reacted against institutional failure in its time, the emphasis of New Pietism largely rests on the individual, though it is not in opposition to communal cultivation of piety. With historically reliable institutions under suspicion, the turn inward serves as a great call to take account for oneself.

This movement will likely transcend the fracturing through an otherworldly pursuit. Its development doctrinally and communally will define its contours.

The second movement is what we call New Transformationalism. If New Pietism is the extreme inward, individual response to the fracturing, hoping to rise above it, New Transformationalism is the extreme outward, communal response. This movement desires to engage culture and society in the hopes of bringing them into alignment with Christian principles. It is incumbent on the Christian community, then, to take up the task of cultural transformation.

Christian nationalism is the form of this movement that has dominated the popular conversation on both sides of the spectrum. But opposite it, other groups want to see American society and the church reckon with failures to uphold biblical justice. Both turn outward to the world in hopes of Christian renewal.

The New Transformationalists differ from those who emphasize cultural renewal, because they believe the institutions that have structured American society and evangelicalism are complicit in the miscarriage of justice—the specifics depending on how one defines that. These institutions must be dismantled finally and totally, in their view, so that new institutions may arise to resurrect the movement upon a better foundation. This is the calling of the Christian community in today’s age. Those who bear the name “Christian” and do not join in this vision are complicit with these failed institutions.

Both New Pietism and New Transformationalism look at the turbulence of fracturing and long to move forward in faithfulness. The former seeks faithfulness internally and individually. The latter seeks faithfulness externally through the community.

But as the fracturing settles and institutions remain weary, we can expect these movements to grow and appeal to many across the fracturing spectrum. We may also expect that many, notably mainstream evangelicals, will feel threated by these movements that they see as distractions to the Great Commission.

Perhaps the most culturally significant reaction during the period of the fracturing is the gender divide. Large numbers of women are moving out of the church, and men are moving in (or at least are leaving at slower rates). In 2008, 34 percent of college-graduated men and 36 percent of college-graduated women in the US attended church at least once a week. By 2023, men had dropped off by 2 percent (down to 32%) and women by 9 percent (down to 27%). The results are similar over the same time period for those who have only some college education.

Notably, for the first time since religious data has been recorded, there are now more younger men than younger women in church. And there are now more women over the age of 32 who never attend church versus their male counterparts. In my (Michael’s) book, The Great Dechurching, I found that 65 percent of dechurched exvangelicals are women. Men and women are entering this new era of evangelicalism in very different ways.

It is perhaps too early to answer why the fracturing has been received in such vastly different ways by men and women from otherwise similar racial, socioeconomic, and geographic backgrounds. While there are many possible reasons, we see social media, Western civilization, and the last three election cycles as major influences.

With the atomization of media, men and women are often not listening to the same voices and perspectives. This does not necessarily mean that women are more likely to engage with personas pushing them out of the church, but it does in part explain the radical divergence in cultural attitudes and engagement.

Some have also had concerns over the health and well-being of Western civilization. From newly converted Christians (such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali) to avowed atheists (such as Richard Dawkins), there seems to be a large, influential sect of cultural conversation promoting Christianity as foundational to a thriving society. But this conversation tends to code more male than female, such as apologist Wesley Huff’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, a show with an overwhelmingly male audience.

And of course, men and women have responded to the presidencies of Donald Trump in divergent ways. His popularity since his first campaign has grown, and his strength with evangelical men solidified, while many women are still wary. These varied reactions might offer insight into women’s faster rate of disillusionment with evangelicalism than men’s.

Regardless of the underlying causes, the widening gaps between young men and young women in politics, religious belief, and religious attendance will play a significant role in the contours of the fracturing of evangelicalism.

Life within a fractured evangelicalism is still taking shape. But there is a way forward. What should we do? The church needs to prioritize the goodness of the gospel, holistic discipleship, and prayer for institutional revival.

First, given that cultural flash points will continually change but never subside, evangelical churches must commit to firm doctrinal boundaries and champion the center. To use the rancher analogy, churches must draw people to drink from the well of life. Boundaries must be established by upholding the standard of historic, biblical orthodoxy. This is no cold, dead orthodoxy but one that speaks powerfully and compellingly to and in the language of the world today. Firm boundaries should always point to the center.

At that center must be the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the expansive hope it offers for the transformation of all people. Applying and proclaiming the gospel to the world has always been the defining feature of evangelicalism. With this gospel at the center, all cultural and theological matters will relate to it organically and be set in their proper relationship to one another. The evangelical church should never be ashamed of its boundaries but rather should stand on them as the foundations from which we invite the world into the gospel’s glories at our center.

Second, churches can pursue holistic discipleship. Discipleship cannot be thought of as an information transfer from one brain to another, as if only positions matter, but as the shaping of doctrine and postures along paths established by the gospel. Competing allegiances and compelling alternatives continue to strip the church of millions of disillusioned individuals.

For the church to recover its effectiveness in passing on the faith, it must embrace the whole gospel within the whole church for the whole person through discipleship of children, integration of faith and work, cultural apologetics, and more.

Third, we also believe there can and must be institutional revival. Evangelicalism has been blessed by an abundance of resources devoted to and developed by institutions sharing the Great Commission. Embracing the spirit of Nehemiah, we should devote ourselves to building and rebuilding the institutions that have defined the movement.

This call is not in the spirit of a baptized nostalgia saying, “Make evangelicalism great again.” The call is to recognize the unique stewardship of gifts and resources that institutions offer when they serve the local church. The movement needs Christian media, missions organizations, seminaries, and others to coordinate, train, resource, and commission men and women to bring the gospel to their neighbors, coworkers, foreign powers, remote tribes, and the ends of the earth. Coupled with this, the movement needs multidirectional leaders—who embody the fruit of the Spirit rather than grasping for personal glory—guiding these institutions. These will strengthen the church—God’s primary plan for caring for his flock and reaching the lost.

Fourth, churches can solidify a geographical commitment. In the pre-fracturing world, like-minded churches could pull from a wide range of sources to support church planting, ministerial training, mercy ministries, and more. But the past decade of fracturing has doomed many such national and global networks.

Now, many evangelicals have started to recognize the power of geographical commitment from a diverse web of churches within a local area. A friend of ours in rural Texas recently described a theological library, church plants, and pastoral fellowships that have developed across denominational and cultural lines through this sort of commitment. While diverse in theology and posture, they share a passion to see the gospel flourish in one region. As others have noted, large churches are especially equipped to serve this vision if they steward their resources for the benefit of local ministries, organizations, and other churches rather than brand multiplication.

Cultural clashes between Christians will continue in the post-fracturing era—but so will concern for one’s locale. Partnership on this foundation will serve as a steadying force for the movement.

In many ways, all that we have described here is the application of “evangelical catholicity.” It is an idea, first raised by Kevin Vanhoozer, that the evangelical movement and its individual churches are united to the whole church of Jesus Christ across space and time and embrace all human life and experience. The subsequent ethic entails constructive service through a united and diverse church.

A fractured evangelicalism is not a wholly negative proposition. As we have seen, some of the churches that experienced the most painful ruptures have also experienced the most hopeful reforms in their wake. The fracturing and sorting was a period of pain, but from the pain came new life.

The church where we both worked in Orlando felt like a constant war zone for the better part of a decade. Today it feels vibrant, exploding with zeal and love for one another and the mission. Our renewed life arose not from some new program or method devised to rehabilitate a past vigor. Rather, it was built slowly as our church committed itself to allowing God’s Word to shape us holistically in our lives and our relationship to the city, institutions, and other churches.

This is not only our story but also the story of many churches that, in the wake of a visceral fracturing, returned to the life-giving power of God’s Word. Pastors who previously felt isolated and under siege are now passionately connecting with others in their areas to seek the good of their given cities. This is evangelical catholicity flowering out of the fracture in the lives of churches.

For the evangelical movement to remain a movement motivated by the spread of the gospel and the glory of God, it must embrace an evangelical catholicity. We must center the gospel and hold to orthodoxy, equip the saints for pious living and societal engagement, build institutions, and invest locally with new and surprising partners. If we embrace this life, the church will be prepared to enter faithfully into an unpredictable future, a rapidly changing world, and the fracturing that defines our present.

Skyler R. Flowers is an associate pastor at Grace Bible Church in Oxford, Mississippi, and associate program director at The Keller Center.

Michael Graham is coauthor of The Great Dechurching and program director at The Keller Center.

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Church Life

How the Nicene Creed Became Cool Again

Interviews by Daniel Silliman

More and more churches are turning to ancient words of faith to anchor modern worship.

Getty Images / Edits by CT

Seventeen hundred years ago, a Roman emperor ordered Christians to work out their differences and put an end to a theological controversy about the nature of Christ that was roiling churches in the Middle East.

So a group of bishops gathered in the town of Nicaea (located in modern-day Turkey) and crafted a document that one recent scholar called “the first credal statement to claim universal, unconditional assent” from followers of Jesus—the Nicene Creed.

Protestants have a complicated relationship with this statement that talks about the Trinity, the Incarnation, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” Evangelicals, who insist on the final authority of Scripture and have often had concerns about anything coming between people and the Word of God, have been especially wary of it.

But recently, more of them have been using the creed in worship. CT talked to more than a dozen evangelical pastors, authors, and theologians to find out why.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.

Glenn Packiam, author of What’s a Christian, Anyway?

The power of the Nicene Creed is it reminds us of a bigger church, an older church, worldwide and historic.

It became important to me in 2009 when I was at a church in Colorado Springs—New Life Church. That was the church where Ted Haggard was the pastor. Haggard had his scandal in 2006 and then there was a shooting in 2007. I was ministering to the young people, and there was a lot of disillusionment, you know? They weren’t ready to quit and walk away from faith, but they were like, “I don’t want to just buy it because someone who’s clever on this platform is selling it.” So I began to introduce the creed, and we recited it.

I saw people latch on and go, “Okay, my faith isn’t something Ted Haggard came up with. Billions and billions of followers of Jesus have said these words.”

I would encourage people to consider a sermon series and consider saying the creed in your worship service. Do it once. Do it twice. Do it for a month and see what happens.

Matthew Barrett, author of Simply Trinity

When we say the creed, we’re linking arms with the church catholic—the church universal—to confess the same faith. And there’s a solidarity there that is missing a lot of times in evangelical churches. Are we just standing on our own two feet, on our own authority, by ourselves on an island? Or are we connected to Christians down through the ages who confess this triune God?

I am seeing more Baptist churches recite the creed, and that’s encouraging. Pastors feel like it’s important and people are hungry for it.

Charley Hames Jr., Christian Methodist Episcopal bishop

I think the interest in tradition might be generational. There’s a return to tradition and an increased appreciation for some of those older elements as a Christian witness and a statement about where we stand in the culture.

In our churches, the Gen Zers are more apt to embrace something like that than my friend who is Gen X.

Ronni Kurtz, coauthor of Proclaiming the Triune God

At the church I planted in Kansas City, a Baptist church, we did a series on the Trinity, and as a part of that series, we began reciting the Nicene Creed as a church. After the series ended, the practice continued.

One of the things I could see happening was the church learned to talk about the Trinity and articulate its theology. They could use phrases like “begotten, not created” and grab hold of a deeper theology. Regular Christians—moms and dads, brothers and sisters—talked about the Trinity.

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This German woodcut from the 1400s illustrates the doctrine from the Nicene Creed that God shall come again to judge the living and the dead.

Suzanne Nicholson, professor at Asbury University

The Trinity is hard to understand! But the beauty of God is revealed in the Trinity. Why would I want to know less of that? I want to know more of God. We know more of God so we can glorify God more fully.

If we’re not teaching good theology on a regular basis, then our church is in trouble. If someone says Jesus was just a good teacher, we want the phrases from the creed ready to hand: We believe he is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.” This is basic to our understanding of who Jesus is, and it’s why we think we’re really worshiping God when we are worshiping Jesus.

Phillip Cary, author of The Nicene Creed: An Introduction

Don’t worry too much about the philosophy stuff—says me, a philosophy professor. The beauty will see you through. It is so darn beautiful! The Father has never been without a Son he loves. He has always given all of his divine essence to the Son. That’s gorgeous, and it’s also really important for Christian faith.

In my youth, in the evangelical churches I attended, we didn’t recite the Nicene Creed. Nowadays, I’m in the Anglican tradition. We recite the Nicene Creed every week, and that’s one of the reasons I’m Anglican.

Simon Chan, author of Liturgical Theology

The Nicene Creed emphasizes corporate formation. I compare this to the way a nation sings its national anthem. Just as the singing of the national anthem serves to forge a national identity, the Nicene Creed helps to forge an ecclesial identity. We are shaped into this Trinitarian faith.

I think many evangelicals were concerned about real problems but basically threw the baby out with the bathwater when they stopped using the creed. I’m a minister in the Assemblies of God in Singapore, and unfortunately we are nonliturgical.

Dale M. Coulter, professor at Pentecostal Theological Seminary

I have seen it recited in some Pentecostal churches recently—in a couple of places, on the edges of Pentecostalism. The churches doing this see it as part of spiritual formation and also as a counter to a lot of the craziness that can happen when private revelation and the prophetic and all of that become paramount. It’s an anchor. The Nicene Creed is a lens on biblical interpretation.

Behnan Konutgan, translator of the New Turkish Bible

Nicaea is really biblical! It is like the shortest summary of the Bible. It’s also our history. This was the time the church came together—an international church—to say Jesus was born but was not created, he’s equal with the Father, and they announced him as God.

In Turkey, we Christians love the creed, and we use it to evangelize.

Jerome Van Kuiken, author of The Creed We Need

The creed nicely distills some key aspects of Scripture and specifically points out where Christians are liable to go astray if they don’t carefully think through how all the biblical material fits together, especially the doctrine of God and who Jesus is.

You know the old saying “If we don’t learn from the past, we’re doomed to repeat it.” That has a real tendency to happen within biblicist circles that just focus on Scripture without consulting the historic church.

Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

I don’t think that the Nicene Creed is above the heads of average Christian believers. I don’t expect them to be able to memorize Greek terms in order to see the difference between homoousios and homoiousios—by the way, the difference is a diphthong—but congregations are fascinated to know that the difference between orthodoxy and heresy can hang on a syllable.

The believing church has used these words to express biblical truth and to distinguish between truth and error. It becomes part of the confession of faith, and we’re part of this Nicene tradition.

Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary

I have a very strong sense when I say it that the Nicene Creed connects me to Christians from all times and places. It’s this thing that no one in the room came up with. It reminds me that the Christian faith is this bigger room that I can step into, whatever my emotions are, whether I feel ardent and full of faith and God seems super real, or whether God seems distant.

Modern culture tells everyone to construct their own identity, but it gives them nothing to hold onto. It’s liquid, right? We talk about “liquid modernity.” Lots of evangelicalism can be like that too.

People are drawn back to the liturgy, and drawn back to the great creeds, because it roots them in a much bigger story of God’s work. It decenters our Americanness. It decenters our moment in history. It decenters our politics and our divisions. It centers the story of Jesus as told for thousands of years in the church.

Russell Moore, editor in chief of Christianity Today

Our church in Nashville recites Nicaea once or twice a year. You’re either intentionally or unintentionally creedal, and the Nicene Creed is a good teaching tool.

I think this anniversary is a good opportunity for a church that has never done any creedal recitation to do it a few times. A pastor can do some teaching and explain, “Look, it’s 1,700 years since the church wrote this really important document, and we’re going to say it together.”

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Dusting Off the Nicene Creed".

- More from Daniel Silliman

Culture

Setting Our Scopes on Things Above

S. Joshua Swamidass

A century after the infamous trial, evangelicals can unbundle faith from culture wars and recover a wiser witness.

Clarence Darrow makes a speech at the Scopes Trial.

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In the sweltering summer of 1925, crowds flocked to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee. Hundreds of journalists documented a weeklong courtroom melodrama. The trial centered on a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, who was charged with violating the Butler Act, a law passed earlier that year prohibiting public schools from teaching human evolution.

This year marks the centennial anniversary of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial, which was culturally significant in American history as it cemented the rift between modernists and fundamentalists in both church and society. Much like today, Christians back then were working through an identity crisis closely tied to political shifts and deep theological disagreements.

In the years since the Scopes Trial, anti-evolutionism became tightly linked, or “bundled,” with orthodox Christianity in the American church. That is, until the evangelical movement began disentangling questions of science from the essential gospel truths to allow for more thoughtful and faithful engagement with both.

Although political verdicts on hot-button issues matter, the Scopes Trial reminds us that the way theological crises are handled can shape generations as much as their outcomes can.

On the surface, the Scopes Trial was about human origins, evolution, and the Bible. Its mythic allure emerged from the dramatic public showdown between two titanic figures—William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow.

Bryan, the star prosecutor, was a charismatic and eloquent politician. Thrice a presidential candidate, Bryan opposed human evolution and advocated for the Butler Act. Darrow, a famed defense attorney and militantly anti-Christian agnostic, teamed up with the nascent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to defend Mr. Scopes.

The Butler Act specifically prohibited “[teaching] any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The ACLU’s initial strategy was to argue that Scopes was not violating the law because evolution was, in fact, compatible with Genesis—an interesting defense given Darrow’s intensely anti-Christian stance. The judge, however, dismissed this out of hand.

Bryan could also cross-examine the ACLU’s experts, all of whom were theological modernists who denied Jesus’ bodily resurrection—an opening Bryan would have seized to discredit them as unorthodox. So instead, the exasperated defense pivoted to ask for a swift guilty verdict that they could appeal. The trial seemed to be ending as quickly as it had started.

But on the last day of the trial, Darrow made a stunning move. He called Bryan himself to the stand as a witness. Prosecutors never testify at their own trials. Yet Bryan agreed.

The day was so hot that proceedings were moved to a stage outside the courtroom. To the cheers of a growing crowd, the two legal champions sparred in a debate that had little to do with Scopes himself. Darrow’s incisive inquiry was wide-ranging, including a memorable question about where Cain got his wife. He aimed to expose Bryan—and his fundamentalist literalism—as inconsistent, ignorant, and bigoted. Bryan, undeterred, seized the opportunity to proudly confess his belief in literalism and Christianity.

The crowds were captivated by the grandstanding, but the judge was not amused. Abruptly, he ended the trial with a guilty verdict. Bryan and Darrow continued their feud in print, but just a week later, Bryan died in his sleep, cementing the trial’s legendary legacy and significance.

To some, the Scopes Trial and Bryan’s untimely death seemed like the last gasp of religious fundamentalism. But to others, Bryan died a hero, defending true Christianity in an ever-evolving culture war, the shadow of which we live in today.

Although the Scopes Trial was entertaining, the larger fundamentalist-modernist controversy was not a friendly debate. It began among Presbyterians and spread to nearly every American denomination, most of which eventually split as a result. It became part of a larger rift in society at the time—when, to echo Willa Cather, “the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts.”

The tensions, and even the cultural panic, that we see today between progressive and conservative Christians are much like the rancor that steadily developed between modernists and fundamentalist Christians beginning in the late 1800s.

As the modernist school of theology made its way from Europe to leading seminaries in the US at the time, the controversy first began playing out in academic journals, with back-and-forth exchanges between theologians like B. B. Warfield and Charles Augustus Briggs.

The modernists called themselves Christians, but they rejected the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the Virgin Birth, and all other miracles. They saw the Bible as authoritative but also riddled with errors. According to Briggs, Warfield’s notion of biblical inerrancy was “a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten children.” The Christian faith, in their view, needed to modernize and forsake these backward beliefs.

This debate soon spilled into church polity. In 1909, three seminarians sought ordination in the Presbyterian Church though they were unwilling to affirm the Virgin Birth. After intense debate, the three were eventually ordained, shocking many.

This controversy led to the formation of the fundamentalist movement, dedicated to preserving historical Christianity. Against the doctrinal drift of modernists, the group emphasized five “fundamental” doctrines: (1) the inerrancy of Scripture, (2) the Virgin Birth, (3) the atonement for sin by the death of Jesus, (4) the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and (5) the historical reality of Jesus’ miracles.

At first, fundamentalism was not bound so tightly to the rejection of evolution. Biola University published about 90 essays from 1910 to 1915 known as The Fundamentals, which defined the movement’s identity. These essays were full of evangelical diversity. There were a few anti-evolution arguments, but many also expressed cautious openness to the theory, were the science to pan out.

But when Bryan came on the scene in the early 1920s, fresh from advocating for women’s suffrage and temperance, he entered the origins debate in full force. He became convinced that the pernicious idea of evolution was the root cause of the modernist slide away from historical Christian faith.

This makes sense, since in Bryan’s context, every Christian that affirmed human evolution at the time was a modernist who had departed substantially from many important doctrinal claims of historical Christianity. In many cases, modernists appealed to evolutionary science to justify the controversial theological positions they preferred, including a way to understand creation without the miracles they had eschewed.

Bryan had no theological objections, in principle, to an ancient earth or evolution among animals and plants. But human evolution was altogether different in his mind. The idea that humans shared ancestry with monkeys and apes was, according to his interpretation of Scripture, in direct conflict with Genesis.

In many ways, Bryan’s advocacy, so widely disseminated at the Scopes Trial, caused rejection of evolution to become bundled together with fundamentalism, much as evolution was bundled together with modernism. So in some sense, the bundling of anti-evolutionism with orthodox Christianity is almost a historical accident. If not for Bryan and the Scopes Trial, it might not have happened quite this way.

While Bryan did not realize it at the time, there are ways to affirm human evolution that align with orthodox theology. In fact, a growing number of evangelicals today have shown that evolution is entirely compatible with even a very literalistic reading of Genesis—including a historical Adam and Eve from whom we all descend, in a literal garden, created directly by God without parents of their own.

The Scopes Trial was a key battle in the historic war between fundamentalists and modernists—but its legacy offers us much to learn from a century later.

One lesson might be that we can often overreact to new ideas, particularly in times of great cultural change. In our response, we can bind reactionary politics and ideologies to our Christian practice. This path, it seems, is all the more likely in times when we are struggling to define our theological identity, as is certainly the case right now for evangelicals.

A similar pattern played out with social action and the gospel. As modernists abandoned belief in the resurrection of Jesus, they increasingly emphasized the importance of compassionate justice instead—embracing what became known as the “social” gospel. Fundamentalists rightly rejected this theological error. But they also overreacted, growing suspicious of the Christian duty to do good and seek justice in society.

It wasn’t until the rise of global evangelicalism in the 1960s and ’70s that Christians began unpacking some of the bundles created by the modernist-fundamentalist divide. Leaders like John Stott, Billy Graham, Carl Henry, and Francis Schaeffer emphasized the gospel of Jesus dying and rising for our sins, but they also reclaimed a strong emphasis on social action as a necessary outworking of the gospel.

Another lesson is that political and legal victories can be pyrrhic and even disastrous in the long run. In Tennessee, Bryan and the anti-evolutionists won politically. They passed the Butler Act. They won the Scopes Trial in Dayton. They celebrated their champion too; Bryan died a hero.

But the fallout from these proceedings were far worse than they anticipated. For many important onlookers, like renowned journalist H. L. Mencken, Darrow had entirely exposed Bryan—and his fundamentalism—as backwards, ignorant, and bigoted. This image stuck and became entrenched for decades.

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John Scopes, left, sits with Dudley Field Malone listening to the jury’s verdict.

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William Jennings Bryan makes his first speech during the Scopes trial.

The Scopes victory, moreover, did nothing to prevent modernists from taking over most denominations and seminaries in the country. Even Princeton Theological Seminary, where Warfield and others had argued effectively against modernism, became solidly modernist by the 1930s.

Theologians who aligned with orthodox, historical Christianity either retreated or were expelled from most institutions. And as they withdrew, they formed their own publishing houses, universities, and seminaries.

The fundamentalists eventually became so sequestered from broader society that many thought they had died off. This isolation only further cemented the prevailing narrative of Darrow’s portrayal of Bryan and fundamentalism—especially as the story of Scopes was told and retold through popular movies and plays like Inherit the Wind.

On paper, the Scopes Trial was a victory for Bible-believing Christians. But it also marked the beginning of Christian cultural isolationism—which eventually cost us our voice of influence in contributing to moral and ethical discourse in the public square.

Decades later, evangelicalism encouraged Christians to emerge from the shadows, offering them a better way to engage with secular society. As Stott wrote then, “A Christian mind should respond to contemporary culture neither with a blanket rejection nor with an equally indiscriminate acquiescence, but with discernment.”

In some ways, the spirit of the modernist-fundamentalist debate is still with us today. It is present, for instance, in the political tensions between believers on issues like critical race theory; diversity, equity, and inclusion; sexuality and gender; abortion; and immigration.

And while some Christians are celebrating various legal and political wins for biblical principles in the public square, these victories may be costing us our compelling witness and the chance for lasting cultural change.

American society is oriented toward public advocacy. Yet the political and court systems are rarely, if ever, the best way to think through nuanced realities and complicated concepts. Political and legal activism may be important at times, but we need other ways to understand and work through our differences as citizens—and especially as Christians.

WikiMedia Commons

“The Descent of the Modernists,” by E. J. Pace, published alongside William Jennings Bryan’s Questions in Dispute series in The Sunday School Times (1924).

The roots of our divides are often fundamentally theological, and our disagreements matter—we need to work through them in light of Scripture. But good thinking takes time. Moving too quickly can ossify reactionary errors, with real consequences that ripple for generations. For this reason, how we respond to the current cultural moment matters. Our actions today will shape the sort of church we leave behind for our children.

Perhaps the final lesson of Scopes is more hopeful: Just as bad “bundles” can be wrapped together in times of turmoil, they can also be disentangled.

We are in a time of great societal change, as many old coalitions and approaches are being dissembled and reconstituted in surprising ways. Both in the US and globally, it is not clear what the future holds for Christian faith and practice. And although we see some indications, we do not yet know what the new ideological bundles will be.

This provides the church with the unique opportunity to witness to the gospel apart from political outcomes. Right now, our values and identity are being reexamined and renegotiated, causing real anxiety and discomfort. But instead of overreacting and making new mistakes to correct old ones, we can resist the drumbeat of outrage and panic and steady the pendulum swing.

Once upon a time, the evangelical movement charted a path for the church to wisely navigate the divides of its day. Can we do the same?

S. Joshua Swamidass is a physician-scientist, associate professor of laboratory and genomic medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, founder of Peaceful Science, and author of The Genealogical Adam and Eve.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Reframing Scopes".

- More from S. Joshua Swamidass

Culture

Plein Air Prayer

Jocelyn O’Leary

An artist wrestles with anxieties and faith in young adulthood.

Art by Jocelyn O'Leary

Art by Jocelyn O’Leary

Jocelyn O’Leary is a writer and artist working in Michigan.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Prone to Wander".

- More from Jocelyn O’Leary

Ideas

The Christian Schools That Cried Wolf

Bonnie Kristian

Critics of religious academies compare modern parental concerns over sexual ethics to mid-century racism. But the echo they hear is not about education.

Illustration by Owen Gent

As our twin boys played with their little sister across the classroom, they did not know what we knew: that this admissions interview could help set the course not only for their formative years but for life. Their future first-grade teacher asked why we wanted to enroll our children at her school.

Well, we said, so many reasons. Some are prosaic: The campus is one walkable mile from our house, and the schedule is convenient. Others are about pedagogy: Younger grades get up to four recesses a day, and there is no homework until middle school. Then there’s the classical education they’ll receive: Our children will study Latin and Greek. They’ll read the great works of literature I self-assigned in high school and college in a belated scramble to learn the cultural canon all my favorite writers seemed to know.

We didn’t bother to mention that we are interested because it is a Christian school. We didn’t bother because of course that’s part of it. We knew it; the teacher knew it; our boys knew it. Mentioning it would’ve felt like telling a real estate agent, “We’re interested in this property because the house has walls.” We want our children to have a deliberately Christian education because in school they will learn more than math and reading. They will learn about who they are and what God expects of them.

It’s not of course for everyone, I realize, including many faithful Christian families who choose public school or homeschooling out of a sense of calling or simply because there’s no other good option. For us, though, this choice is in some ways very simple. Of course we’re enrolling because it’s a Christian school.

But the project of Christian education in America is not as simple as that. It’s a project that, in much of the country in the fairly recent past, was wrapped up in rank and shameless racism defended by my fellow white evangelicals on biblical grounds.

As journalist Paul F. Parsons wrote in a CT cover story in 1987, there was “a widespread perception that [evangelical] Christian schools are racist. After all, what once was a Southern phenomenon of the 1960s—segregationist academies quickly formed in the name of God—has spread nationwide. To some, ‘white-flight schools’ and ‘Christian schools’ are synonyms.”

That history echoes in our schooling debates. It pops up in conversations about today’s Christian—and especially white evangelical—parents’ attraction to private education because of ethical and theological concerns that the Trump administration’s robust executive orders on sex and gender may only temporarily allay. Our leaving public schools over curricula and policy on LGBTQ issues is reliably compared to Christians leaving public schools 60 years ago over race.

In a 2021 New York Times story, for example, religion reporter Ruth Graham made the connection explicit. The current moment is “the second Great Awakening in Christian education in the United States since the 1960s and ’70s,” a source told her. Given the specified timeline, Graham noted that the “previous ‘Great Awakening’ was spurred by a number of factors, starting when white Southern parents founded ‘segregation academies’ as a backlash to racial integration created by the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.”

Interrogating this comparison—this historical echo—is my chief interest here. It’s partly an intellectual interest. I think there’s a theological difference between these two waves of evangelical attraction to private schools.

I don’t have space to do all the theology here, but say for the sake of argument that contemporary evangelicals are right to believe that racism is an indefensible evil and the traditional Christian sexual ethic is correct. Assume with me that the former runs violently afoul of the God who is revealed in Christ and speaks in Scripture while the latter comports with God’s good will for human righteousness and flourishing.

In an important sense, for Christians, this distinction—that holding fast on sexual ethics is very different from embracing racism—answers the school choice comparison. For many, it may be enough to quiet the echo.

But I have to confess I’m not quite content to leave it there, because I can hear that echo too. I don’t make that comparison, but I understand why others do. Too many Christian parents cried wolf about the supposed dangers of integrated schooling. The cries were loud and long and sinful. Thus the rest of the village, rightly disgusted, is hesitant to listen this time around.

I have to confess too that I have a second reason for my interest. My kids were accepted to that Christian school for first grade this fall. They will receive a private, faith-based education, as I largely did. And my first school, the one that taught me to do sums and write cursive and devour chapter books, began as a segregation academy. Is there an echo not only in evangelical culture but in my own life?

I haven’t been able to dig up my yearbooks from that school, and its board declined to participate in this story. But from fuzzy childhood memories, I’m fairly certain the place had desegregated by the time I attended in the early 1990s.

My mom told me she wasn’t aware of the school’s history when she enrolled me; however, not being from the South, perhaps she simply didn’t recognize the clues.

Many Christian schools south of the Mason-Dixon Line began as my school did. Once integration became “inevitable, white segregationists throughout the South began to focus their energies on the establishment of separate schools,” explains historian Ansley L. Quiros in God with Us, a theological history of the civil rights struggle in a small Georgia town.

These segregation academies “would resist integration rulings and promote a particular theological vision for education.”

Often, the racism was overt. An enrollment application from Mississippi for the 1975–76 school year, for example, dispensed with all subtlety:

It is the belief of the Board of Directors of Council School Foundation that forced congregation of persons in social situations solely because they are of different races is a moral wrong. . . . Council School Foundation was founded upon and is operated in accordance with this fundamental ethical and educational concept. . . . The curriculum of Council School Foundation is designed solely for the educational responses of white children.

Others affected innocence. “We have had some blacks apply from the area,” a Christian school headmaster said in an Associated Press report in 1972, “but the pathetic situation is that they cannot make the preliminary testing.”

It may be tempting to brush this history away, to say, “Oh, but they weren’t really Christians.” Alas, they often were. As God with Us documents, they believed they were defending orthodoxy and Scripture itself against real threats to the faith.

“Christian theology contributed both to the moral power of the civil rights movement and to the staunch opposition it encountered,” Quiros wrote. Segregationists “felt they were acting out of the same impulses that motivated them to sing hymns, entreat the Almighty, and worship. They were upholding the sanctity of the Bible and the fundamentals of Christianity against Northern liberals.”

They were Christians, and they were wrong, and they left a stain on Christian education in America that has only partly faded.

Though there are many thoroughly integrated and even predominantly Black Christian schools in our country today—schools like the online Living Water School, Chicago’s Field School, or Imago Dei Neighborhood School in Richmond, Virginia—Christian schools’ student bodies, on average, remain whiter than the school-age population as a whole.

An ongoing reporting series on education and segregation by ProPublica has documented that it is not unheard of (particularly in the South’s Black Belt) for private schools to be more than 75 percentage points whiter than their communities. Numbers like that don’t happen by chance.

And while many Christian schools now publish racial nondiscrimination statements, it can be difficult to untangle the history and intent behind those pronouncements. Some were first issued defensively after the infamous Bob Jones University case of 1983, in which the Supreme Court held that the “government has a fundamental overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education.”

Today, 47 percent of schoolchildren in America are white, and public schools nearly mirror the general public. Private schools are whiter (65%), and those the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) labels “Conservative Christian” are slightly whiter still (68% as of 2021). Christian schools seeking to diversify their student bodies often find that task easier said than done, though that’s not to suggest nothing has changed over the years. NCES data shows private schools are slowly but meaningfully diversifying, and conservative Christian schools don’t lag behind their secular and Catholic peers.

That’s true of my first school. In fact, that school has gone above and beyond the standard procedure of posting an affirmation of racial equality. Its statement is also confession, a frank recognition and repudiation of the circumstances surrounding the institution’s founding.

The websites I’ve browsed of other former segregation academies tend to paper over past sins with pictures of smiling Black students in monogrammed polos. To my school’s credit, it laments and repents.

My former school has a second statement on its website, bringing me back to the inevitable comparison. This statement is about sexuality and gender. It avows long-standing Christian understandings of marriage and biological sex in language buttressed by biblical references.

For many parents exploring private education, theology is one factor in a complex and often fraught decision-making process. Over the past half decade, pandemic policies and their aftershocks, reading instruction methods, and curricula on race and US history have all come to the fore alongside LGBTQ issues as widespread parental worries.

So why the particular attention to matters of sex and gender in the national conversation? Why is that the frequent comparison with the segregation era?

From the perspective of secular critics, I think it’s because, unlike other school-choice criteria, these two issues are understood as matters of unalterable identity. But on the evangelical side of the equation, I’ve come to think that the echo detectable here is not about repeated theological or political error. It’s not even about private education per se.

It’s about fear.

A characteristic expression of the anxiety in question comes from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who in 2022 coauthored Battle for the American Mind. It makes a candidly fearful case for Christian education.

“For many years, my fear was higher education,” Hegseth wrote, but he came to believe that “the real problem is high school, middle school, and now elementary school. The battlefield for the hearts and minds of our kids is the 16,000 hours they spend inside American classrooms from kindergarten to twelfth grade . . . it’s the 16,000-hour war.” And don’t think church is sufficient defense, Hegseth cautioned: “One hour on Sunday morning and one hour on Wednesday night at church is not enough.”

That last line made me chuckle, for I’ve approvingly quoted pastors making the exact same point. I wouldn’t argue for Christian schools with Hegseth’s Fox News–style bombast, but his desire for more intensive discipleship for his children is familiar.

It’s familiar to Christian educators too. University of Virginia sociologist Angel Adams Parham wrote at Comment in 2024,

As I have visited classical schools across the country, I have heard from heads of school who express concern that growing numbers of parents are coming to them not so much because they crave the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty that lies at the core of classical education at its best, but because they are beleaguered outcasts seeking shelter for themselves and their children from the ravages of critical race theory, “wokeism,” DEI [diversity, equality, and inclusion] initiatives, and more.

Fears of all kinds and levels of veracity get bundled together. And as Quiros observed in an interview with me, reinforcing all of them is the predilection to panic that defines much of America’s secular parenting culture today.

We live in enviable safety and prosperity, but we’re too scared to let nine-year-olds play in their own front yards. In that context, when the decision concerns things as important as education and sexual ethics, is it any wonder parents freak?

For the average Christian parent considering Christian education, then, I don’t think honing slam-dunk arguments about the sex-and-segregation comparison is the task at hand. Rather, it’s checking our motives for the distinction Parham drew: Do we want to enroll our kids in a Christian school for the good it offers? Or are we doing it because we’re scared?

The trick is being able to accurately parse the inclinations of our hearts. One useful indicator is how we think about insularity, which was brought to my attention by Tia Gaines, executive director of UnifiEd, a nonprofit supporting Christian schools. She also sits on the board of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), a primary accreditor of US evangelical schools.

In one report from ACSI, Gaines told me, more than 400 Christian schools were assessed for 35 community characteristics. One of these “that had the biggest need for improvement was insularity,” Gaines said, which was defined as protecting students from the world’s brokenness, remaining aloof from the broader community, and/or lacking diversity in the student body.

“It was really interesting to see how Christian schools responded to that feedback,” Gaines said. “Some of them were surprised, and some were eager to address it. But some were like, ‘Well, yes, of course we have an insular culture. That’s the point. We want to shield our students and create a safe space for them, and that’s what our parents want.’ ”

That’s fear. But fearful pursuit of insularity doesn’t foster spiritual and intellectual maturity. It doesn’t leave room for iron to sharpen iron. It won’t teach our children, as the apostle Paul knew, that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). It won’t prepare them to be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16) in a world both wicked and wonderful.

Getty

Bob Jones University Supreme Court case in 1983.

Christian schools do not have to be insular to be orthodox. Christian education does not have to be undergirded by fear or stuck on the sins of our fathers (Ezek. 18:20). We can follow the peculiar ethic of Jesus without withdrawing from the world. We can cry not “wolf” but “welcome.”

In the classroom, eschewing fearful insularity will mean examining what we teach and to whom we teach it. For classical schools, it will mean broadening the classics, as Parham argued in The Wall Street Journal, to include a wider array of time-tested ideas and voices, ancient and American alike. For all Christian schools, it will mean taking more seriously our own claims about loving the truth and learning to share it with the courage and cleverness of Paul on Mars Hill (Acts 17).

It will mean cultivating critical thinking alongside sound doctrine, and it’ll mean checking textbooks. This parental responsibility will look different than it would at a public school, but scrutiny is necessary still. Even Christian schools are run by sinners prone to wander from the truth.

For older students, Christian education shouldn’t play it safe. It should require encounters with hard history and perspectives from outside our cultures and the church itself, all under the guidance of faithful teachers.

“The truth sets us free,” said Anika Prather, the founder and administrator of a classical Christian school and the coauthor, with Parham, of The Black Intellectual Tradition. When Christ returns, she warned, “he’s not going to ask how many woke people you canceled. When we stand before the Lord, he’s going to say, ‘How many people did you reach for my gospel? And did you meet people where they were, or did you dehumanize them and not let them tell their story as a way of finding redemption and reconciliation?’ ”

Prather doesn’t shelter her students from secular thinkers or troubling history, she said. “I’m teaching my students, ‘Let’s bring this truth back to the Lord and figure out, “Lord, with this knowledge, how would you have me as a Christian navigate the world?” ’ This is what we teach our students,” she told me, “how we reach the next generation.”

And we should be aiming for everyone. “From Genesis to Revelation,” Prather said, God “has called the church to be a welcoming place for all ethnic backgrounds.” This call equally applies to schools that claim the name of Christ.

So where do these schools find their students? If they’re recruiting in local churches, which congregations make the cut? Black church traditions in America tend to be closely aligned with white evangelicals on core theology. If they’re not sending students to Christian schools, we should ask why. If the answer is tuition—for race and income are still correlated in this country—we should work to remove that barrier (Matt. 6:19–21). While many Black families remain skeptical of private schools, some would seize the opportunity for their children to have the good of Christian education.

“The manner in which most of us became Christian,” wrote theologians Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon in their classic book Resident Aliens, “was by looking over someone else’s shoulder, emulating some admired older Christian, saying yes to and taking up a way of life that was made real and accessible through the witness of someone else.” We need those examples because the church and its ethics are indeed alien in a fallen world and because ethics, like language, are picked up through community immersion.

I moved around a lot as a child and consequently went through four Christian schools, one public school in America and one in China, and two years of homeschooling. Looking back, there’s much I could say in critique of my Christian schools. But I also recognize their many goods, not least their extension of the faithful examples in my home and church life.

As I make education decisions for my children, I want that faithful, communal immersion for them. Not because I’m afraid but because, for all its complications and all the work yet to be done, Christian schooling is a real good—a good I want for my kids and for my neighbors’ kids too. Of course we’re enrolling because it’s a Christian school.

Bonnie Kristian is the editorial director of ideas and books at Christianity Today.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "The Schools That Cried Wolf".

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Culture

Former VP Mike Pence’s Conversation with Russell Moore

Mike Pence and Russell Moore

They discussed global tensions, prayer for those in authority, and Mrs. Pence’s frosty reception of President Trump.

Illustration by Ronan Lynam

Former vice president Mike Pence appeared on The Russell Moore Show four years after the January 6, 2021, US Capitol rioters threatened not only his life but also the lives of his wife and daughter. He discussed former second lady Karen Pence’s frosty reception of President Donald Trump, the importance of praying for government leaders, and the potential for a third world war.

Illustration by Ronan Lynam

Mike Pence and Russell Moore

Russell Moore: We’re four years out from January 6, on which you and your family were in great jeopardy because the president at the time called a mob to the Capitol and didn’t call it off. Was it painful to see President Trump again [at former president Jimmy Carter’s funeral]?

Mike Pence: It was the first time we had been in the same place since we left the White House four years ago. We pray for the president often, as believers are admonished to do for all those in positions of authority.

January 6 was a tragic day. I’ll always believe that I did my duty and kept my oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States and ceded the peaceful transfer of power that day. The next morning, before President Trump would denounce the rioters and say they would pay, he committed to a peaceful transfer.

About a week later, he asked for a meeting, and I readily accepted. We sat down after those tumultuous events, and we talked all the way through it. I sensed the president was genuinely saddened about what had happened that day.

The first thing he asked was about Karen and my daughter. He said, “Are they okay?” And I said, “They’re fine.” And he said, “I just found out they were with you the whole time.” And I said, “They wouldn’t leave, Mr. President.”

On January 6, I was determined to stay at my post and finish my work. But what a lot of people don’t know is that my wife and daughter had come to observe the proceedings for a short period of time. When we told them that their motorcade could take them back to the vice president’s residence, my wife refused. They were both there till four in the morning, until the gavel fell [to confirm the electoral votes].

I was with the president in the waning weeks of our administration. I looked at him as we were wrapping up a conversation about official duties and said, “I just want you to know I’m praying for you.” His shoulders sank, and he said, “Don’t bother.”

When we wrapped up the meeting, I walked out and stopped in the doorway. I said, “There’s probably two things that we’re never going to agree on. We’re probably never going to agree on what my duty was under the Constitution on January 6. And I’m never going to stop praying for you.”

He looked up at me and said, “That’s right, Mike. Don’t ever change.” We have prayed for him often in the months and years that have followed.

RM: There’s an internet meme going around of Mrs. Pence at Carter’s funeral. She did not seem very enthusiastic to see President Trump. Many of us can relate to having a spouse who feels things very deeply for the person they love.

MP: You’ll have to ask my wife about her posture, but we’ve been married 44 years… She loves her husband, and her husband respects her deeply.

RM: On January 6, did you ever consider saying, “There are some questions about these votes. I’m just going to turn them back to the states.” Did you ever consider not going in that day and leaving the certification of the vote to the president pro tempore in the Senate?

If you had, you might still be vice president or maybe even president right now. Was that a temptation that you had to fight?

MP: When I put my left hand on Ronald Reagan’s Bible in January 2017 and raised my right hand, I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

It ends with a prayer: “So help me God.” That means it’s not only a promise that I made to you and to the American people, but it was a promise I made to Almighty God. As a student of American history, there is perhaps no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose which Electoral College votes to count. No vice president in American history has ever asserted that authority, nor should they.

The presidency belongs to the American people, and where disputes arise, they are to be resolved by the elected representatives of the American people. My duty that day was very clear to me, but it didn’t make it any less painful. President Trump was not only my president; he was my friend. He had been persuaded by some outside voices that I had authority that no vice president in history had ever asserted. Some vice presidents in the past recused themselves from those proceedings. Hubert Humphrey in 1969 did not preside over the count. He had just lost the election in 1968.

But as the father of a United States Marine and the father-in-law of a Navy lieutenant, one of the things I reflected on during the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021, was that my son and my son-in-law—and every member of the armed services and every law enforcement officer in the country—take the same oath. And when our boys get an assignment, they don’t get to say, “That doesn’t really work for me.”

RM: You have a son who’s a Marine. I have a son who’s an Airman. There are a lot of people who are worried right now when they look at Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Hamas, Iran, Taiwan, China. Are we headed into World War III?

MP: Peace comes through strength. When I was running for president, some people said my support for Ukraine was going to lead us to World War III. I think a more careful study of the 20th century would prove the opposite is true. Weakness arouses evil. Because the West and the United States largely ignored the aggression of the authoritarian regime in Germany, we ultimately had to send American troops to fight and to win back a free Europe and to fight back in the Pacific during World War II.

One of the hopeful things about President Trump’s return to the White House and Republican majorities in the House and the Senate is that we’re going to make an increased investment in our national defense. We’re at about 3 percent of gross domestic product today. I strongly support moving us to 5 percent in a fairly short period of time. We can send no better message to our adversaries and those who could become our adversaries than by redoubling our commitment to be the arsenal of democracy.

I think President Trump understands and believes in peace through strength. The only asterisk to that is that some of the voices around him are advocating for a new American isolationism. They’re saying we should cut off all funding to Ukraine as they fight for their survival against an unprovoked Russian invasion. There are even voices that call for cutting off all aid to Israel.

I’m hopeful that my old running mate will return to that “peace through strength” strategy that resulted in four years where Russia never crossed a border, where we were able to unleash our military to take down the ISIS caliphate. We used force against Syria twice. And in a very real sense, we made it clear to our allies in the Asia-Pacific that we were with them and we’d stay with them as China’s provocations continued there.

RM: You’re not concerned about the belligerent rhetoric toward Canada, Denmark, Greenland, and the Panama Canal zone?

MP: I do think Jimmy Carter was wrong to turn over the Panama Canal. I think the fact that Chinese companies are operating multiple locks in the Panama Canal is antithetical to America’s interests. China is not our enemy today. We hope for better in the future. But if they ever become an adversary, it’ll be important for us to have a clear understanding with our allies in Panama about the vital importance of that waterway to our national security.

Mike Pence served as vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.

Russell Moore is Christianity Today’s editor in chief and the director of the Public Theology Project.

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Guest Appearances".

Stories from the ‘Sandwich Generation’

Kate Lucky

Readers relate to Jen Wilkin’s article from January/February about the seasons of life.

Edits by Christianity Today.

About a quarter of US adults are part of the “sandwich generation,” according to Pew Research data, defined as those who “have a parent age 65 or older and are either raising at least one child younger than 18 or providing financial support to an adult child.” On a daily basis, many of these adults confront the vulnerabilities of the beginning and end of life alike, feeding and bathing and soothing both the young and the old.

Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that many readers appreciated Jen Wilkin’s essay “At My Mother’s Deathbed, I Discovered the Symmetry of a Long Life,” calling it “thoughtful” and “beautifully expressed.” The Bible scholar reflected on accompanying her mother through her final days and the symmetry of a human life, from dependence to caregiving and back again.

Claire Jerry in Washington, DC, wrote in response, “I was privileged to be with my mother, mother-in-law, and father-in-law in their final days. As I try to discern my purpose in what are surely the last years of my own life, I cherish a verse that echoed through this article: ‘like a tree … that bringeth forth its fruit in its season’ (Ps. 1:3, ASV). It comforts and challenges me to realize there is still fruit to be borne, even in this season.” Another reader, Angela Langer-Heltzel of Joplin, Missouri, read the essay after her mother’s passing. “Being in the same stage of life” as Wilkin, she said, “I found comfort in her words and even more comfort in the Lord’s design.”

Kate Lucky, senior editor, engagement and culture

The False Gospel of Our Inner Critic

This Enneagram One is listening … definitely understand “the inner critic.”

@simplykristylynn (Instagram)

The Bestseller that Made Church Cool—and Optional

I was one of those intrigued by the edginess and grittiness of Donald Miller’s book. But as Ashley Hales rightly points out, the alternative offered was really no alternative at all. It’s also important to note that the emergent church movement never really went away. It just morphed into today’s progressive Christianity led by such figures as Peter Enns, Richard Rohr, and Brad Jersak.

John Appleton, West Chicago, IL

I have seen the corruption of believers who turned away from everything that was church to a Christless spirituality. I reject mysticism; I recognize the gospel is a mystery, not receivable by the natural mind. We rely on the Spirit of revelation to reveal Christ in and through us. So while I have learned not to condemn, Miller’s encouragement of his contemporaries does not bode well.

Mark Sankey, Frederick, MD

This is a good article, very much on target. I’m really surprised, though, that the author said that as early as 2003, “Gone were the lights, smoke machines, and conservative politics of megachurch practice”—because those things are still very prominent in the world I inhabit today in 2025. Most churches where I live are either dying traditional churches (with hymns and organs) or growing contemporary churches that are megachurches or want to be, and they still use lights, contemporary music, and sometimes even smoke machines. And they are conservative. Blue Like Jazz introduced emergent Christianity to a wide audience. It’s like that movement was trying to make irreverence cool among bored or disaffected evangelicals. A lot of emergent Christianity has left evangelicalism altogether to become today’s progressive Christianity.

Morgan Trotter (Facebook)

I think those who continue to absolve themselves of the church are more a sign of something happening than a symptom of reading the book. I was very frustrated with Miller for the way he later denied the church, but I am still grateful for the book and think he deserves more credit for encouraging lifelong believers than the article revealed. I don’t agree with your conclusion. I 100 percent get why you landed there, though. In the end, Blue Like Jazz helped many of us to separate unhealthy church habits from the church.

Dale Huntington, San Diego, CA

You have to keep in mind that Blue Like Jazz was a memoir. [Miller] wasn’t intentionally trying to offer a solution, but his state of mind and experiences resonated with many. It changed my outlook, which I’ve applied to what I focus on (authenticity, real acts of service, etc.) while still traditionally filling a pew each Sunday.

Jared Throneberry (Facebook)

Living Like a Monk in the Age of Fast Living

Amen to Evan B. Howard’s article on monasticism. Fundamentalism assumes that the most important judgments in life are between good and evil. Monasticism reveals that the most important decisions are between attention and distraction. Paul said he could eat meat offered to idols and it wouldn’t be sin; but if eating meat pulled his brother back into ancestral idolatry, he wouldn’t eat meat (1 Cor. 8). When Christians shape their response to modernity and technology in such a way that the weak brother won’t be pulled back into pornography, we’ll know we have matured from and not just reacted to fundamentalism.

Anthony Hess, Wilder, ID

How NYC Churches Guard Endangered Languages

I have a friend who is from southern Mexico and speaks a pre-Hispanic language called Chinantec. She told me that her tiny church in her village back home was started by American missionaries who translated the entire Bible into their native language, thus preserving the language in writing. I am proud to have such a heritage as a Christian!

@emma.jane.craig (Instagram)

Something Holy Shines

Poetry is one of the primary theological disciplines in Ethiopia, and fresh poetry is often featured in their liturgy.

Hayden Joseph Noble (Facebook)

This article appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of Christianity Today as "Responses to Our January/February Issue".

- More from Kate Lucky

Corresponding Issue

Christianity Today

May/June 2025

Ideas

When a Revolution Is Revolting

Marvin Olasky

Editor in Chief

Responsible, achievable, biblically inspired policy is not just morally better than extremist political tactics. It’s also a strategic advantage.

Spencer Platt / Getty

The advantage of being both a historian and an old guy is that I’ve studied many violent revolutions and experienced a political one up close, the “Republican revolution” of 1994. Both kinds are relevant to the current immigration debate and the choice before MAGA Christians now.

Many revolutions become so vicious that the old regimes—or at least the old abuses—make a comeback. The idealism of French revolutionaries turned, just a few years later, into murder by guillotine in Paris and mass murder in the area southwest of it known as the Vendée. Five years after that, Napoleon engineered a coup and became dictator.

The experience was similar, with varying timetables, in Russia, China, and dozens of other postrevolutionary countries: from czar to Stalin to Putin, from emperor to Mao to Xi, from rages to revolution to rags.

The exception has been the United States, where revolution was very deliberately followed by moderation. The rule of law led to incremental rather than catastrophic change. Maybe extremism in the defense of liberty, to use former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s phrase, is no vice in principle, but it’s certainly bad in practice. Moderation, less thrilling, tends to be sustainable.

One indication of such sustainability in recent American history is the dog that is not barking: welfare reform. In the 1980s, rhetoric about “welfare queens” was rampant, and by the 1990s, welfare was an issue as massive as immigration is now. Bill Clinton in 1992 ran as the person who would change “welfare as we know it.” Many Americans knew that billions of dollars in federal spending helped some but did not give others what they most needed: personal help, spiritual challenge, and the incentive to work.

In the 1994 midterm elections, after the social services bureaucracy weighed in and Clinton backed off from his welfare reform pledge, the GOP won a smashing success, taking control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years in what was called the Republican revolution. Some fire-breathers exulted: This is the moment to annihilate welfare.

Happily, evangelicals took the lead in a congressional education project. Part of the moderation of 1995 and 1996 emerged from political reality: The US still had a Democratic president, so Republican aspirations had to be tempered by what he would sign. But part was also biblical teaching. Jesus in chapter 5 of John’s gospel neither turned his back on an invalid nor helped him to get quickly into the pool of water thought to provide a miracle cure. Instead, Jesus said, “Take up your bed and walk” (ESV, v. 5).

I saw firsthand the effect of biblical teaching, combined with political calculation, three decades ago. Newt Gingrich, in January 1995 the new speaker of the House, loved a book I had written, The Tragedy of American Compassion, and made it mandated reading for the new GOP members of Congress. (Many foisted it on their abused staff members). I met with many of them, some one-on-one, and had my most fulfilling tutelage ever.

My message with Republican pols was this: Moderation. Work incentives. Time limits. Allow for exceptions. Look at individuals, not masses. Don’t make the work of Democratic opponents easy by creating poster children. I talked back to Newt at times, but he was reasonable, usually unconsumed by irrational exuberance, and always aware that Bill Clinton was not someone he could push around.

I’ll break one of my rules and quote a little from my own book, because Republicans quoted me on how previous generations “refused to settle for the feed-and-forget principle or its equally depersonalizing but harsher opposite, the forget-and-don’t-feed standard.” The emphasis was on treating all among the poor as human beings rather than “zoo animals at feeding time—some as carnivores who need cuts of meat thrown into their cages, and some as cute-looking pandas who feed on bamboo shoots.”

It sounds obvious, but it often wasn’t before 1984: Republicans largely orated about wasted money. The problem, though, was that welfare programs needed to be changed “not because they are too expensive … but because they are inevitably stingy in what is really important, treating people as persons and not animals.” As CPR can revive an otherwise-dying person, so CPS—challenging, personal, and spiritual help—makes a difference among the poor.

Sometimes informed by the Bible and often recognizing political reality, congressional welfare reformers in 1996 did not slash and burn but instead instituted work requirements—“Take up your bed and walk”—with exceptions for moms with young children. They set up time limits for receiving benefits. They increased the Earned Income Tax Credit, which had been around in stingier form since 1975, and made it a powerful incentive.

The political result is that welfare has been off the table for almost 30 years. Does it work well? No. Does it work better? Yes, and one indication is that the agitation of the 1990s is gone. Since politics abhors a vacuum and Congress now adores polarization, immigration has taken the controversial seat in which welfare reform long sat. Two decades of denial have increased exasperation to the point that in 2024 Something Had to Be Done.

But while rhetoric on welfare generally improved in the late 20th century, my sense is that rhetoric on immigration has gone the other way in the 21st. “At its core, immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation,” then-president George W. Bush said in 2006. “It says something about our country that people around the world are willing to leave their homes and leave their families and risk everything to come to America. Their talent and hard work and love of freedom have helped make America the leader of the world.” He welcomed refugees and asylum seekers, sought to keep out criminals, and called for “reasonable legislative solutions.” That didn’t happen.

Ten years ago, Donald Trump launched his campaign for the presidency with generalizations about they, they, and they: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing their problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people.” Good to know that last part, but at rallies Trump orated about “sons and daughters, husbands and wives … viciously killed by illegal immigrants.”

Ten years of hearing that almost all immigrants are bad has made crowd forcing—mass arrests rather than case-by-case examination—acceptable to some. Cruelty in 2025 has similarities with what could have happened with welfare reform had a megalomaniac been unchecked and surrounded by sycophants and had many Americans seen welfare recipients as subhuman rather than merely below the poverty line.

Many, happily, saw those on welfare as a great crowd of witnesses to either compassion or callousness. And despite all the discouraging rhetoric, many see immigrants the same way. A Gallup poll that probed hearts regarding immigration found 78 percent of Americans remain “sympathetic … toward people from other countries who travel to the U.S. border” in a search for safety and opportunity.

A Pew Research Center poll showed only 15 percent of Americans support deporting immigrants living in the US illegally if they have a job. Only 14 percent favor exile for those who are parents of children born in the US. Americans complain about government moving with the speed of a brontosaurus, but most do not want it to react like a raptor, tearing at the flesh of anything in its way.

I lived through a decade of diatribes about “welfare queens” and believe GOP political success was the result of changed perspectives. My pragmatic sense is that Trumpist overreach, unless checked, will lead to a decade of Democratic domination beginning in 2026—and although I voted for Republican presidential candidates every time from 1976 to 2012, I’d agree with many others that voting in defense of autocracy is no virtue.

Realistic Republicans should see that Make America Great Again extremism will Make America Democratic Again. I’d prefer a reliance on biblical principle, but after seeing hardworking fathers seized from their families, I hope that, one way or the other, Americans will see El Salvador prisons as a dumping ground too far.

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

- More from Marvin Olasky

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