How I Learned to Love the Apocalypse

Columnist

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

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas

The Fox Will Lie Down with the Hedgehog

Andrew Wilson

Columnist; Contributor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- More from Andrew Wilson

Culture

Review

‘Sinners’ and the Panic-Praise Problem

Sho Baraka

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ideas

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

Interview by Bonnie Kristian

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

Tom Williams / Getty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s a big mistake to limit speech.

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

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

- More from Bonnie Kristian

Ideas

Get Up and Stop Sinning

Justin Giboney

Contributor

Social disadvantages are real. But both personally and corporately, we must honestly confront the ways in which we’ve injured ourselves.

Illustration by Mallory Rentsch Tlapek / Source Images: Unsplash, WikiMedia Commons

In Ray, the Academy Award–winning biopic about Ray Charles, the audience walks with the singer through the gut-wrenching realization that he’s going blind at the age of seven.

His mother breaks the news to him in a mix of tender love and matter-of-fact sternness. At one point, he trips, falls, and screams for her. Though standing nearby, she tearfully—but wisely—refuses to respond. She knows he’ll never discover his full capacity if he doesn’t learn to use his other senses to work through his predicament. She constantly reminds him that though he has a disability, he also has real choices and shouldn’t resort to self-pity. His mother’s words replay in his mind as the film follows his life: “Promise me you’ll never let nobody turn you into no cripple.”

The story isn’t a tribute to rugged individualism. Rather, Charles’s life becomes a parable about how resilience in the face of disadvantage and misfortune can introduce us to the heights of our capacities. Despite the many things we can’t control, God gives each of us agency, the power to make choices that impact our lives (Rom. 2:1, 6). This is coupled with the dignity of bearing his image (Gen. 1:26–28). And with God-given agency and dignity comes responsibility for our choices—not only as individuals but also as members of communities.

Our misfortunes and mistreatment can do drastic damage to our lives, but they’re rarely the whole of our problems. We must also deal with the effects of our own foolishness and sin. As an adult, Ray was forced to acknowledge that he’d broken his promise to his mother and made himself a cripple by his choice to use heroin. He found capacity even in blindness and lost capacity through addiction.

And our communities—including our churches—can suffer from problems of their own making too. It’s tempting for communities to avoid internal correction and to blame all their problems on external disadvantages. But both personally and corporately, we must honestly confront the ways in which we’ve injured ourselves.

Jesus had a way of caring about people’s social disadvantages while also making them face their own shortcomings. In John 5, he heals the lame man, then tells him to get up and stop sinning (vv. 8, 14).

Likewise, in the Old Testament, the Hebrews had gone through more than 400 years of oppression before being delivered into freedom by God’s hand (Ex. 12:40). Yet that didn’t absolve them from accountability for misused agency in the wilderness. God’s compassion and conviction extend grace for our afflictions—with external and internal causes alike—without relieving us of responsibility.

In the United States, the political right and left have long been in a heated debate about the impact of social disadvantages on community agency and outcomes. In true culture-war form, many have dumbed this down to an all-or-nothing proposition.

On the right, the characteristic error is to focus too much on agency, to the point of dismissing intractable effects of historical oppression or unjustly blaming people for their own mistreatment. Some conservatives discount the disadvantages caused by racism, sexism, and classism, insisting the solution to any individual or community problem is just to pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

Conversely, some progressives suggest that it’s oppressive to expect any responsibility from certain identity groups. This point of view might sound compassionate, but it’s ultimately disempowering. Telling people they have no responsibility for things they can influence robs them of dignity and agency. It fosters a hopeless and helpless paralysis that forgoes opportunities to take initiative. We’re not always in control of our lives, but we should find encouragement in identifying our spheres of influence and working to better our lives and the lives of others.

Both individually and communally, we must be as clear-eyed about our own wrongdoing—and our own agency—as we are about wrongs committed against us. We should be suspicious of anyone who breaks a man’s leg and then shames him for limping, as well as of the man who complains while refusing physical therapy to work on his limp.

No ethnic group or economic class or political party should be granted a comprehensive excuse for all its problems and pathologies. We cannot honestly blame everything on elites or oligarchs, progressives or MAGA, immigrants or racists. Whatever blame they’re due, to reject our own responsibility is to lean on a diamond-studded crutch. It must be cast away just like everything else that dishonors the agency and dignity God has given us.

For many of us, it will need to be cast away again and again. There will always be opportunists and deceivers ready to offer us fat, succulent scapegoats on whom we can lay all our problems. But whatever the scapegoat, such offers are not liberation. They’re an invitation to “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice” (Eph. 4:31).

I wonder if Americans’ single-minded focus on national politics makes it easier to refuse responsibility for ourselves and mercy for the oppressed. We’ll overlook the chaos on our front doorstep to obsess over faraway problems and the people we suppose are causing them.

In solidly red Tuscaloosa, we’re preoccupied with the wrongs of distant Democrats. From deep blue Los Angeles, we’re worked up about Republicans clear across the country. To some extent, this habit is a cop-out—an unwillingness to take responsibility for issues closer to home. National politics are important, of course, but can also serve as a convenient distraction from addressing what’s in our control and fixing what we have broken.

The pattern is particularly dangerous in leaders, as it can steer whole communities away from accountability. When Oakland mayor Sheng Thao was indicted in an FBI corruption investigation, she defiantly blamed “radical right-wing forces” for her predicament. (In California?) Likewise, the Trump administration blamed the media for its Signal security breach. And Christians sometimes blame the devil for our own immoral actions, overlooking dysfunction and bad theology in the church to hyperfocus on an external enemy.

Historical injustices can have stubborn effects. We may have canny political rivals. And certainly, as Christians, we have fierce opposition in the spiritual world. But to exaggerate the power of these external enemies is to impeach the power of God and undermine our own agency.

Even in the face of serious disadvantages, God has endowed each of us with the capacity to make meaningful choices for ourselves and our communities. We must not abdicate that duty, settle for scapegoating, or run from local responsibilities. Let us call one another to God-given dignity that confronts both external offenses and internal shortcomings with grace and power.

Justin Giboney is an ordained minister, an attorney, and the president of And Campaign, a Christian civic organization. He’s the author of the forthcoming book Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around: How the Black Church’s Public Witness Leads Us out of the Culture War.

- More from Justin Giboney

Ideas

We Should Not Be Silent This Time

Raymond Chang

Most churches did nothing as Japanese Americans faced mass incarceration during World War II. We must do better for immigrant communities today.

Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: WikiMedia Commons, Getty

In 2023, I helped lead a civil rights tour with the Asian American Christian Collaborative. Our trip took us to the Manzanar War Relocation Center—one of ten former incarceration sites for Japanese Americans during World War II.

Surrounded by the barren California desert and the stark remnants of the camp, our multigenerational group of 20 people was collectively stunned by how easily a nation can come to justify cruelty in the name of security.

The brutality on display at the historic site left some visitors incredulous. A high school student in our group overheard a middle-aged white couple walking out of the visitor center saying, “This can’t be true. The US would never do anything like this. This must be fake news.”

Sadly, it’s not. In early 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, around 120,000 people of Japanese descent were forcibly removed from their homes by executive order. Two-thirds of them were American citizens.

Given only a few days’ notice, families packed what they could of their belongings, sold their businesses at a loss, and boarded buses to government-run “relocation centers,” where they remained an average of two to three years in terrible living conditions. Upon leaving the camp, many suffered huge losses in livelihood and continued to face xenophobic and racist threats.

Photography by Abigail Erickson

AACC tour participants enter a building at the Manzanar War Relocation Center

The US government’s formal apology and reparations to Japanese Americans in 1988, although acknowledging that the internment was fueled by racial prejudice and wartime hysteria, did little to heal the wounds of generational trauma.

Around 80 years after the Japanese internment, we as Christians must ask what lessons we have yet to take to heart.

As I reflect on my visit to Manzanar, I am struck by the unsettling parallels to what immigrant communities are facing today. Even though the US is not currently at war, we are again witnessing the troubling and unchecked use of executive power that jeopardizes the rights and safety of individuals living in our country.

Since March, hundreds of migrants have been deported to El Salvador without due process, with officials completely disregarding a court order from US District Judge James Boasberg to halt the flights.

One of the most alarming cases is that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant with legal protections. He was mistakenly deported and sent to a megaprison designed to house 40,000 people accused of gang affiliations. Despite the Supreme Court ruling that his deportation was unlawful, the government has taken no steps to return him, and he remains imprisoned.

Some of those caught in the crosshairs are women and children. One mother was deported to Honduras without time to arrange care for her four-year-old son, a US citizen, who is battling late-stage cancer. In another case, a pregnant woman and her young daughters were deported despite one of the children being a US citizen, raising serious concerns that there had been no legal review.

Even the church is no longer a safe haven for worship. In January, a policy protecting schools and houses of worship from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was rescinded, opening sacred spaces to immigration agents. Just a month later, ICE officers arrested Honduran asylum seeker Wilson Rogelio Velásquez Cruz outside a Georgia church that he had helped plant.

Cases like these send a dangerous message. They imply that even those with legal protections—like the Japanese American citizens who were incarcerated—are not immune and that their rights can be disregarded without consequence.

Where is the church in the midst of all this? Considering that more than 75 percent of immigrants at risk of deportation from the US are Christians, what is our obligation to them as fellow believers?

During World War II, most of the American church remained quiet as Japanese Americans were carted off to places like Manzanar. Only a handful of individuals and groups, like the Quakers, actively opposed the incarceration. These responses seem similar to those of today.

Yes, there are political complexities. Yes, the issues surrounding immigration are layered. No, unrestricted open borders are not the solution. But the gospel does not allow us the luxury of remaining neutral or disengaged when it comes to the unjust treatment of those made in God’s image. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture tells a bigger story and calls us to a costly love for neighbor.

Throughout the Bible, God’s people intervene on behalf of the oppressed: Moses before Pharaoh; Esther before the king; the early church on behalf of the widowed, orphaned, and poor. Speaking up for the vulnerable is not partisan—it is prophetic, truthfully calling for repentance and justice. And our response to the current crisis, far from being merely a matter of politics, is a matter of obedience.

That’s because justice is central to who God is. He acts on behalf of the stranger, the outsider, and the oppressed, and he calls his people to likewise do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with him (Mic. 6:8).

Jesus himself was a refugee, driven from his home by political violence. He knew what it meant to be misunderstood, mistreated, and marginalized. When he began his ministry, he did so with a bold proclamation: He had come to bring good news to the poor, to free the captives, and to liberate the oppressed (Luke 4:18).

Jesus did not turn a blind eye to injustice. We too must take up our cross and follow him, even when it leads us to the lives of the most vulnerable.

If the church remains silent now, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. But if we act with courage and conviction, we can help write a different future, one that honors Christ by standing with those whom he calls beloved.

This is the moment for the church to rise—not with fear, but with faith. Not with silence, but with solidarity. And across the country, faith-based organizations are doing just that.

In January, five Quaker groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging the removal of protections that once safeguarded sensitive locations, such as houses of worship, from ICE raids.

In Newark, New Jersey, a coalition of Catholic, Protestant, and interfaith leaders gathered to publicly oppose mass deportations and affirm their support for immigrant families.

Faith-based organizations are hosting trainings offering legal guidance through “know your rights” workshops.

This is the legacy of faith in action, from the orphan-care movements of the early church to the Underground Railroad of the 19th century to the sanctuary movements of the 1980s and today. And all of us, as members of the body of Christ, are called to similarly take up the mantle in the ways we can.

We can support ministries that provide legal aid, language access, and holistic care to immigrant families. We can amplify and listen to the voices of immigrant leaders and stand in solidarity with them as fellow image bearers and believers.

We can create space for lament in our churches, pray for those affected, and open our doors as places of refuge and advocacy. And we can repent: of our silence, our indifference, and our complacency in the face of suffering.

If we believe the gospel is good news, then it must be good news for the immigrant, the asylum seeker, the undocumented child. It must be good news for those who are afraid.

The gospel was certainly the good news that the incarcerated Japanese American Christians clung to. In the face of immense hardship, they refused to let their faith be extinguished.

They gathered in makeshift chapels and worshiped in the camps, finding solace in the stories of exile in Scripture and trusting that God’s promises were greater than the fences that confined them. They called on the God of justice and mercy, and God met them there.

In this moment when history seems to be on the verge of repeating itself, let us remember the Japanese American Christians and the truth of what happened to them.

Let us remember our identity as the church: witnesses to a kingdom marked by compassion, righteousness, and reconciliation.

And let it be said that when the vulnerable cried out in 2025, the body of Christ did not look away. Instead, we stood up. We spoke up. We followed Jesus to the margins, and there we found him.

Raymond Chang is the president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, executive director of the TENx10 Collaboration (out of Fuller Theological Seminary), a pastor, and a writer.

- More from Raymond Chang

News

Ukrainians Mourn Evangelical Family Killed While Going to Church

Jill Nelson

Trump signals shifting sympathies as Russia repeatedly rejects cease-fire proposals.

Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images

American chaplain Karl Ahlgren had just finished speaking at a Ukrainian church in the eastern city of Kramatorsk on Palm Sunday when he heard the news. Two Russian ballistic missiles had torn through the northeastern city of Sumy in the deadliest attack this year.

The first strike demolished a university building where Ahlgren had prayed with 20 local pastors eight days earlier. He said it was a miracle that only three people were in the building and everyone survived. Close to 60 adults and children were scheduled to arrive an hour later.

But less than five minutes later, a second ballistic missile loaded with cluster munitions designed to increase casualties struck one of the city’s busiest streets.

This time, more than 100 people were injured, and 35 died, including Mykola and Natalia Martynenko and their 11-year-old son, Maksym, who were walking to New Generations Church three blocks away. Natalia served on the worship team, and Mykola helped with the church’s ministry to locals struggling with addiction.

“I just felt this calling to go back,” Ahlgren said. “Relationships matter, and as a Christian, it’s important that we are available when the Lord needs us to go.”

He packed his bags and made the 250-mile trip to Sumy the next day. Two days later, he spoke at the family’s funeral. He didn’t know the Martynenko family and had never delivered a message at a funeral. Still, he accepted the invitation to share words of encouragement to a community struggling to make sense of the tragedy.

One moment in particular stood out to Ahlgren. After the funeral, he approached the son’s best friend, who was standing next to the open casket with tears streaming down his face.

“I told him when I was his age, I had lost a close friend,” Ahlgren said. “He gave me the biggest hug. I mean, he didn’t let go.”

Russia has launched a series of deadly attacks against Ukrainian population centers in recent weeks—the worst in months. The assaults killed close to 400 civilians in March and April, according to the United Nations human rights office.

A Russian missile struck a playground and apartment buildings in Kryvyi Rih in early April, killing 20, including 9 children. An attack on Kyiv at the end of the month killed 12 people.

President Donald Trump called the attack on Sumy a “horrible thing” but suggested the Kremlin may not be targeting civilians. He claimed he “was told they made a mistake.”

He spoke more forcefully after the attack on Kyiv. “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing,” he posted on social media in a rare rebuke to Russia. “Vladimir, STOP!”

Vice President JD Vance echoed Trump’s frustration on Wednesday, saying the Russians are “asking for too much” in negotiations to end the war—a sign that Washington may begin shifting sympathies away from the Kremlin. Trump recently approved the transfer of a Patriot air-defense system from Israel to Ukraine, according to The New York Times.

Trump initiated talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin more than two months ago, but the Russian leader has repeatedly rejected calls for a 30-day ceasefire. Over the weekend, European leaders threatened sanctions unless the Kremlin accepted Trump’s proposal, but Putin ignored them and instead suggested direct talks in Turkey on Thursday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed and challenged the Russian leader to meet him there personally. Putin has refused to meet with the Ukrainian president since the full scale war began in 2022. Their only face-to-face meeting was in 2019.

Meanwhile, the attacks haven’t stopped.

Drone strikes hit Kyiv, killing a mother and son, and Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, injuring at least 47 people.

“There were not and could not be any military targets,” Zelensky posted after the strike on Kharkiv. “Russia is hitting residential buildings at the very time when Ukrainians are at home, when they are putting their children to bed. Only tyrants can give such orders and carry them out.”

Putin wanted a cease-fire—but on his own terms. He called for a three-day pause in fighting while Russians celebrated the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II with military parades from May 8 to 10.

Zelensky rejected the Kremlin’s proposal and told reporters in Kyiv the cease-fire was a “theatrical performance.” He said the 30-day cease-fire proposed by the United States was possible “even starting today” if the Kremlin would accept the terms.

Last week, Ukraine launched two overnight drone attacks on Moscow and initiated dozens of other strikes in regions across Russia, temporarily shutting down more than ten airports. Russia accused Ukraine of killing civilians in the attacks but did not provide evidence to support the claims.

The assaults created an atmosphere of nervousness as the Kremlin prepared to welcome international heads of state for Victory Day celebrations that doubled as a show of Russian force. Chinese and Russian soldiers marched alongside each other and the Kremlin paraded Iranian-made drones and its own weaponry together through the streets.

Sumy resident Anna Ulanovska worries Putin could use a temporary cease-fire as a way to rearm and recalibrate his offensive in Ukraine. “The common opinion is that nobody can trust him,” she said about Putin. “We should not be deceived. He wants the whole of Ukraine.”

She hears constant shelling in the morning and during the night and sometimes hears Ukrainian fighter jets.

“It’s scary to hear all this shelling,” said Ulanovska, a member of a Pentecostal church called Christ for Everyone. “Our region is under attack again.”

Her son is a first grader in a small Christian school that meets in the church basement, a common alternative to bomb shelters. Her 14-year-old daughter attends classes virtually like most of the children in Sumy since Ukraine’s Kursk operation last summer.

She knew the Martynenko family. Maksym had attended a local summer camp where she served as a volunteer.

“Nobody has a right to hit the city center on Palm Sunday,” she said. “Who could do this?”

Now the attacks seem relentless. A May 6 missile strike on a Sumy suburb less than 2 miles from Ulanovska’s home killed three people, including a child. Ulanovska said the beginning of the full-scale war in 2022 was a shock for many Christians. She could see the Russian tanks from her home.

She has theological questions about the loss of life, but as the attacks have increased again, she’s drawn encouragement from Scripture.

“I think that God in the Bible didn’t promise that everything would be smooth and perfect during our lifetime,” Ulanovska said. “He warned that we would have some troubles, trials, and tribulations.”

She didn’t fully understand this concept before the war, she said. But she notes God has since given her a peaceful sense of his protective hand even as she sees danger and death around her.

Ahlgren said he hopes Americans won’t forget Ukraine.

“I talked to frontline soldiers, and I talked to everyday citizens, and they are tired and feel betrayed, but they will never quit,” he said. “For the administration to continue to basically look the other way while Putin and his military are targeting civilians is really horrific.”

- More from Jill Nelson

News

Real Christianity Amid War

Ann Voskamp

A Romanian church opens up to refugees from Ukraine with donations by the truckload.

Dmitro Isaeiv

Photography by Esther Havens

He’d been simply and peacefully living his life in the Donbas region of Ukraine. Then Russia’s war machine invaded the wide-open fields neighboring his village in the early days of 2014.

We’re sitting at the end of Dmitro Isaiev’s kitchen table in Arad, Romania, on an early spring afternoon of 2025 when he tells us how the frontlines with Russia fell not three miles from his home back in the Ukraine region of the Donbas.

For nearly eight years from 2014 to 2022 as more than 2 million Ukranians fled the war-torn region, Dmitro lived on the edge of the war with his door wide open to offer shelter to fellow Ukrainian refugees displaced by unprovoked violence.

“One of the elderly women in our church, she’d started to prepare 150 portions of food every day, pelmeni dumplings, for the war refugees in our region. 85 years old. Making 150 servings of dumplings every day.” Dmitro passes down a plate of cookies to us. “That was her heart responding to the grief and loss of the people.”

Just before dawn on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-blown invasion and dozens of missiles struck cities throughout Ukraine, Dmitro himself sought a safe haven.

He found it here in the Christian community of Romania.

“If we as Ukranians fleeing the war had found Romanians closed to us, it would have been an anti-witness of Christ, or really a witness of Antichrist.” Dmitro sets down the pot of coffee in the center of the table in his small home on a quiet Romanian side street.

“The nature of Christ’s people is to be open.” Dmitro speaks quietly, humbly.

While Russia had been building a military presence for full-scale assault on the people of Ukraine, Romanians, including Harvest Church in Arad under the servant leadership of pastor Cristian Barbosu, had been building a compassionate welcome, preparing to be a refuge for fleeing Ukranians.

Sitting next to Dmitro at his table now in Arad are his new friends, Romanian members of Harvest Church, Delia and Nelu Vat, who have opened their lives and home to countless Ukranians since the Russian invasion.

Delia says, reaching for coffee, “Even if you don’t have what you think is enough or have the perfect home to receive people, all you have to do is open your heart.” Dmitro nods.

She continues, “If your heart is open, then you can open your home.” Her eyes find mine, and I’m not sure I’d ever heard it so succinctly: When your heart is open, you’ll open your doors. Whether doors are open or closed is more than the policy of a state—it’s ultimately reflective of the state of people’s hearts.

“Even before the refugees came to us, we started going to the refugees,” Barbosu says, leaning forward, hands animated, pointing to the window. “We were going to three major points right in Ukraine with help and aid and food and supplies.”

The trip from Arad to Ukraine takes over 14 hours, but Barbosu and his congregation at Harvest Church opened their own homes and partnered with various organizations to rent a hotel, where they also brought in dozens of fridges and gas stoves to create a huge kitchen.

They then welcomed Ukranians, offered them a doctor’s weekly services, created care teams to help find employment and secure necessary documents, and offered the warm community of church and the hope of Jesus.

Committed Christians from Harvest Church still, three years into the war, give up their weekends to drive into Ukraine a van and trailer—purchased by Harvest Church specifically to help Ukrainians—packed with donated clothes and food.

Delia’s husband, Nelu, reaches across the table to show me photos of an industrial generator they donated. Nelu and a team of volunteers from the church drove the generator into Ukraine to help a church become also a medical clinic and school.

In Suceava, near Romania’s northeastern border with Ukraine, Harvest Church partnered with Fight for Freedom ministry to refurbish an abandoned building into a care center for at-risk Ukrainian children.

“Russians were stealing the orphans. They stole hundreds of orphans—so we supported Fight for Freedom to move orphaned and at-risk children out of the war zone in Ukraine, into safety in Romania,” says Barbosu.

“We also sent people from our church to serve there, to help care for children at the life center, while we’ve also connected with La Seve, a French Christian association that has come with buses of volunteers from France to help care for these Ukrainian at-risk children who have lost families in the war with Russia.”

Dmitro offers his guests another cup of coffee and speaks softly: “When I came here, I had very bad teeth. A pastor here in Romania paid 3,000 euro for my dental work. It was a little bit uncomfortable for me, to take such huge help, because I understand that the pastor wasn’t at all rich to give such a big investment, but that’s what the Romanian pastor told me: ‘I did it only because of Christ. Because I love Christ, I love you. And you don’t owe me anything.’”

There’s a kind of Christian love that embodies cruciform generosity because the image of God is in all of humanity.

“And let’s be honest,” Dmitro flashes a beautiful smile as he looks toward his Romanian friends, Delia and Nelu, across the table. “Nelu doesn’t maybe need me to help him, but he called me to come work for him because he knew that I didn’t have work and I am trying to support my family. I tried to help Nelu how I was able to help, but I understand that Nelu really offers me work because of his heart and his kindness and because he loves God so much.”

Dmitro is still smiling. Nelu and Delia, moved, humbly try to brush off any praise. Dmitro leans forward: “One of the most important things in life is that no one should play at Christianity. You should actually live Christianity every day. Real Christians have God in their hearts.”

Dmitro’s voice hardly carries down the table, but we are all still, trying not to miss a word from the Ukrainian who has found Christ in the Romanian church: “Nominal Christians? They may go to church, they may even serve in the church. But the main difference between real Christians and nominal Christians is, if someone has issues, struggles, or grief in their life, the real Christian will immediately be ready to act, like immediately, because this is the nature of their new heart. They can’t not act.”

Dmitro looks down the table: “The nominal Christian—they kind of don’t care.”

- More from Ann Voskamp

News

G3 Ministries: Founder Used Fake Profiles to Slam Fellow Christians

Kate Shellnutt

Pastor Josh Buice has resigned, and the organization canceled its upcoming conference, after his church uncovered “sinful” and “deeply divisive” online behavior.

Josh Buice

G3 Ministries

Key Updates

May 17, 2025

Buice Apologizes for Remarks Against Voddie Baucham
May 12, 2025

Josh Buice Resigns and G3 Cancels 2025 Conference

May 17, 2025

Resigned G3 Ministries president Josh Buice apologized Friday for using fake accounts to spread “unsubstantiated and sinful remarks” against fellow Reformed Baptist leaders.

“I was deceived by the deceitfulness of sin and allowed myself to be led down a path that dishonored God and unjustly maligned faithful men and ministries through an unrighteous, critical spirit cloaked in anonymity,” Buice said in a post from G3. It’s the first public statement shared from Buice since the ministry announced his removal four days prior.

Buice brought up “unsubstantiated and sinful remarks” made against author and speaker Voddie Baucham and said that he had met privately with Baucham to apologize.

On Friday evening, The Roys Report wrote that it received a tip last year from an email address that Buice’s church has since confirmed as one of his fake accounts. According to the story, the email message questioned Baucham’s $1.1 million fundraiser to cover medical expenses from his 2021 heart failure and suggested his book Fault Lines contained plagiarism.

On X, G3 board member Tom Buck said Buice’s apology lacked “true repentance.” Buck said Buice hadn’t confessed to the email tip when he met with Baucham—The Roys Report story wasn’t out yet. Buice’s statement does not indicate what remarks he apologized for, but he did say they were “unfounded” and “false claims” that shouldn’t have been used against Baucham and his ministry partners Tom Ascol and Founders Ministries.

Founders acknowledged the reports of Buice’s anonymous online activity and stated that a “large percentage of his wicked words and actions” targeted Founders and Ascol. The ministry also pulled Buice’s content from its site this week.

May 12, 2025

The Reformed Baptist ministry G3 has called off its biennial conference after reporting that its president, Josh Buice, ran multiple anonymous online accounts to insult fellow Christian leaders.

Buice’s church, Pray’s Mill Baptist in Georgia, found “irrefutable evidence” that the pastor—who had over 59,000 followers on his personal X account—was secretly behind at least four other social media profiles as well as two email addresses and Substack accounts, according to an announcement on Monday.

“These accounts were used to publicly and anonymously slander numerous Christian leaders, including faithful pastors (some of whom have spoken at G3 conferences), several [church] elders, and others,” the church wrote. “These actions were not only sinful in nature but deeply divisive.”

Last week, Buice resigned from G3 and was put on indefinite leave from Pray’s Mill Baptist, where he served as pastor for 15 years. Church leaders said the suspicions around Buice’s ties to the anonymous accounts date back at least two years; Buice denied involvement until the end of an hourslong meeting with elders over a week ago.

Buice founded G3—named for gospel, grace, and glory—in 2013, growing the ministry into a biennial conference drawing over 8,000 attendees, as well as a church network and a publishing arm. The ministry involves several prominent Reformed leaders who are outspoken on X, including Scott Aniol as executive vice president and Tom Buck as a board member.

Buice was part of conservative Reformed circles where leaders debated and decried leftward drift within the evangelical church, including the Southern Baptist Convention. Citing concerns around critical race theory, social justice, women’s roles, and ecclesiology, Buice’s church left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2022.

But according to the church’s statement, his anonymous activity targeted those closer to his own conservative Reformed movement and even fellow elders in his own congregation. The church has not publicly identified Buice’s fake accounts, and his personal pages have been taken down from X and Instagram.

On Monday, Buice’s ministry partners and critics responded to the news. Some called out prominent pastors’ online platform-building and the role of anonymous accounts in stirring debate and dissent. Some applauded his church for taking action and explaining what happened.

The church said Buice continued to deny the accounts for two hours after being confronted by elders last Sunday, May 4. “Only after further evidence was presented and much pleading with him to walk in the light did Josh finally confess to his actions,” the statement read. “Since then, Josh has acknowledged his sin, expressed sorrow, and asked for forgiveness.”

G3 wrote that Buice resigned May 8 after board members privately encouraged him to do so. According to the ministry, no one working with Buice knew about his secret online activity. On Tuesday, G3 posted an update saying its leaders decided to remove Buice’s blog posts and teachings “due to the public and egregious nature” of his sin.

Tom Buck, a Texas pastor and G3 board member, said he was “deeply grieved.”

“For me personally, this is a great reminder of my own need to ‘keep a close watch’ on myself (1 Tim 4:16), to take heed lest I too fall (1 Cor 10:12), and to not deceive myself by thinking I am something (Gal 6:3),” he wrote on X.

More than a decade ago, Mark Driscoll apologized for comments he made on message boards under the pseudonym William Wallace II, and since then others have been subject to rebuke and church discipline for online behavior, anonymous or not. A 2024 survey of US evangelicals found that a majority use social media despite believing the negative effects on their faith outweigh the good.

“Twitter is part of your CV. It can disqualify you from ministry. It is a window into your soul. Your actions have actual impact outside the URL,” wrote Brandon Smith, cofounder of the Center for Baptist Renewal and a theology professor at Oklahoma Baptist University. “Twitter is indeed real life.”

The 2025 G3 Conference was slated to take place in the Atlanta area in September, featuring Buice along with Paul Washer, Phil Johnson, James White, and others. The ministry explained in its update on Tuesday that it canceled the gathering not because it couldn’t go on without Buice but because he had targeted several speakers on the lineup, and “we did not want to put these brothers in the difficult position of deciding whether to participate in an event so closely tied to someone who had maligned them.”

Though G3 said it will refund tickets, some attendees had already booked flights and hotels.

Buice and conference organizers faced pushback last month for marketing a $977 ticket option that included a meet-and-greet with plenary speakers; a couple weeks ago, after Buice responded to criticism on X, G3 apologized and eliminated the option.

The ministry also responded to controversy last year, taking down materials by Steve Lawson, a Dallas pastor and former dean of The Master’s Seminary, who was removed from ministry over sexual misconduct.

In his explanation, Buice wrote, “Moving forward from this tragedy, we take many lessons with us. First, we’re reminded never to lower our guard; temptations and worldly traps are ever-present. We also see that God’s sovereign plan to call His people out of darkness into His marvelous light continues. His plan doesn’t depend on the labor of any one person.”

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

- More from Kate Shellnutt

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Ikwueme Feared Condemnation for Her Pregnancy. Her Pastor Showed Her Grace.

Emiene Erameh

Nigerian churches decided how to respond to rising rates of unwed childbearing.

Stefan Heunis / Stringer / Getty

Christianity Today’s Africa project began last week and is showing its first fruits. Here’s the third story from CT’s new African cohort. The first two covered the gig economy in Togo and Nigerians displaced by Boko Haram.

Ogechukwu Ikwueme woke up to a bright morning in January at the peak of the dry season. The usual harmattan haze was missing, and so was something else.

“It hit me that I had missed my period,” she told Christianity Today. Ikwueme watched as two lines on her at-home pregnancy test slowly turned red for positive. This opened a floodgate of emotions, especially fear.

Ikwueme is single.

Nigeria only allows abortions when a pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, though women still seek illicit abortions for unexpected pregnancies. Forty-two-year-old Ikwueme decided to carry her child to term, but she worried about how she would cope alone.

How would she pay her bills and find emotional support? Her salary as the head of human resources at a law firm was hardly meeting her needs amid Nigeria’s rising inflation. Her body would change. She would have to ditch her weight-loss routine. She worried about facing her family, friends, fellow church members, and pastor.

In Nigeria’s traditional society, having a child outside wedlock comes with stigma. Nigerians often speak of “baby mamas” with condescension. Although Nigeria has laws on the books—such as the Child Rights Act and the Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) Act—aimed at establishing paternity and child support, these measures are poorly enforced, leaving unmarried women vulnerable.

While Nigerian churches often reinforce cultural disdain toward unmarried mothers, some pastors are shifting how churches respond—offering women a call to grace and repentance instead of condemnation.

That’s why Ikwueme was so surprised by her pastor’s reaction.

Many churches expect brides to take pregnancy, HIV, and genotype tests on the eve of their weddings. Though these practices are meant to discourage premarital sex and emphasize sexual purity among church members, they haven’t done much to reduce the prevalence of unplanned pregnancies.

Exact numbers of pregnancies among unwed women are hard to find, but a 2021 study estimated 42 percent of births in Nigeria occurred out of wedlock in 2018—likely due to an older average age of marriage.

Data from the Guttmacher Institute—Planned Parenthood’s research arm—estimates that 29 percent of pregnancies in Nigeria from 2015 to 2019 were unintended and that almost half of unintended pregnancies during that time ended in abortion. If trends have held steady, about 312,000 births may result yearly from unplanned pregnancies.

While Ikwueme decided to break the news to her pastor personally, she made up her mind to stop attending church afterward. She didn’t want to face condemnation or pity from members of her church. But rather than judge her, Ikwueme’s pastor offered support.

“He shocked me,” Ikwueme explained. The pastor told her that “God is still in the business of forgiving sins and [unwed pregnancy] was not enough reason to forsake attending fellowship.”

The pastor’s wife called her a few days later to check on her and to find out whether Ikwueme had registered for prenatal care. Whenever she missed services due to illness or fatigue, the pastor and his wife checked up on her.

“These people were determined to behave like Jesus would,” Ikwueme said. “I am very lucky with my choice of church.”

Ikwueme’s pastor is not alone. Babatunde Ojo, who pastors a branch of the World Evangelism Bible Church (WEBIC) in the suburbs of Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory, said that while denominational leadership discourages having children outside wedlock, his small congregation of 100 has never cast away an unmarried member who became pregnant. He would rather provide support and counseling.

“It is only God that forgives sins,” Ojo said, adding he doesn’t believe it’s his place to help God judge a sinner.

Other Christian leaders have not cared so well. The Zion Prayer Movement Outreach, a ministry with branches in Lagos and Imo, has gone viral this year for harsh sermons preaching against women like Ikwueme and discouraging prenatal care for all women. The ministry’s spiritual director Chukwuebuka “Ebuka” Anozie Obi alleged in a viral video on Facebook claimed that many pregnant women fornicate or commit adultery with doctors during prenatal visits.

Obi claimed at least eight women said doctors had slept with them during medical checkups. But by discouraging prenatal care and suggesting it encourages immorality, Obi’s comments put women at risk. Many women already shun hospitals, preferring to go to prayer houses to deliver their babies. In a country with a high mortality rate—about 1 of every 100 women die while giving birth, according to the World Bank Group—discouraging proper care during pregnancy endangers lives.

Unique Sisters Fellowship lead pastor Rita Erengwa disagrees with Obi’s approach, saying her ministry won’t turn away unwed mothers. She said her fellowship bases its position in part on Romans 3:23, which states, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

“Some churches make them sit at the back as a way of sanctioning them,” Erengwa said, but she calls this counterproductive, as it pushes some women away from the church.

“Only God can judge, because when somebody opens up to you and acknowledges that she has sinned, it is not the time to condemn.”

- More from Emiene Erameh

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