It’s important to note that many of these worries may prove unfounded. President-elect Donald Trump is notoriously unpredictable. True, he has declared his interest in doing a lot of terrible things, and some genuinely terrible things happened during his first term, like the dismantlement of refugee resettlement in the US. But many of his ambitions will likely be about as successful as building the wall and making Mexico pay for it.

That said, whatever happens with Trump, the task before Christians making these statements remains the same: Take your concern on behalf of vulnerable people and turn it toward genuine solidarity and care. 

Few vulnerable people are interested in what you post about them on the internet, and fewer still have any stake in the personal relationships you might cut off on their behalf. Almost all are more interested in tangible love, just like the rest of us. As James wrote, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (2:15–16).

Vigorous policy debates are good and necessary, yet for most of us, most of the time, our opinions matter much less than our love, put to work (1 Cor. 13:1). It is hardly a virtue to have opinions that are stronger than relationships, but the hard work of loving others is always before us.

So if the election’s result made you feel crushed on behalf of vulnerable people, the most important questions to ask yourself are these: What could you have been doing for vulnerable people before November 5? Has the election changed that? What can you do now that will be a blessing to others regardless of what happens in Washington over the next four years? How can you, to borrow the words of W. H. Auden, “love your crooked neighbor / With your crooked heart”?

When it comes to immigration, many worry that aggressive deportations of those without legal status, as Trump has promised, will lead to traumatic family separations and perhaps the accidental deportation of legal migrants or even citizens. The government already deports several thousand people every month, of course, and Trump’s much-larger-scale plan faces massive legal and logistical hurdles.

Whatever happens, there are many ways that you can be a blessing to vulnerable migrants. If there are local organizations that help to resettle refugees or provide services to immigrants, contact them and ask how you can volunteer. Signing up to open your home and provide foster care is also an incredibly valuable service, as children (whether they are American citizens or otherwise) often require a home if their parents’ legal status is in jeopardy. Helping to care for foster children will always be one of the best ways to do good, irrespective of Oval Office hijinks.

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As for women with unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, here too the future is unclear. Trump has forced the Republican Party to accept a “state’s rights” framing of abortion law since the overturn of 1973’s Roe v. Wade several years ago, and Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is extremely pro-choice. Pro-lifers lost more state referendums than we won this year, and some “victories” were hardly decisive (such as Florida’s Amendment 4, in which only 43 percent of the vote was pro-life.)

With little hope that there will be federal action to prevent abortions, our focus as believers should be on building communities of character where women who are considering abortions—now fully legal in more than half of states—can meet Christians who are able to help them care for their children both before birth and beyond. If we are worried about vulnerable women, we can offer them practical help. And as with immigration, foster care will always be relevant, no matter who’s in power.

I don’t make these recommendations in the abstract. My family and I moved to Africa years ago to provide medical care to people in need while equipping African health professionals to become missionaries themselves. Some of my African friends and colleagues have become refugees after their homes were destroyed and their families killed, and I fear that the Trump administration will (among other possibilities) make it harder for them to start a new life in America.

But beyond calling my congressman and senator every now and then, there’s little I can do about the federal politics responsible for my worries. What I can do is keep going with the work that God called me to do—and keep praying that the Lord who “has brought down rulers from their thrones” and “lifted up the humble” (Luke 1:52) will keep doing good to those who fear him.

Matthew Loftus lives with his family in Kenya, where he teaches and practices family medicine. You can learn more about his work and writing at MatthewAndMaggie.org.

The post The Work of Love Is Always Before Us  appeared first on Christianity Today.

They’re “trying on new identities, many of them ugly, all gesturing toward a desire to belong,” writes Christine Emba in an incisive essay for The Washington Post. “It felt like a widespread identity crisis—as if they didn’t know how to be.”

What’s the cause of all this trouble? Some argue for a purely materialist explanation by looking at the decline of manufacturing jobs that used to provide a steady income for men without college degrees. Others suggest that men are merely entitled brats—so accustomed to patriarchy that now “equality feels like oppression.” Still others, like Richard Reeves in The Atlantic, point to problems with our education systems.

The sheer scope of the problem has led to “manosphere” influencers who offer a vision of masculinity and the steps to achieve it.

In Search of Non-Toxic Male Sexuality

Zachary Wagner

Aaron Renn has been a persistent critic of the church’s overfeminization, accusing both liberal and conservative Christians of “vicious negativity towards men and excessive pedestalization of women” that “repels men.” The popular psychologist Jordan Peterson has shaped these conversations for years. On the far right, Andrew Tate, the former champion kickboxer indicted on charges of sex trafficking, has a massive social media presence built from vulgar hedonism and brazen materialism.

If their collective followings are any indication, it’s clear that many young men are attracted to a vision of masculinity that draws more from Nietzsche than Jesus Christ. American Reformer contributor John Ehrett calls it vitalism.

Some commentators are warning that the post-Christian Right will seduce aimless young men grasping for a sense of self. They urge the church to embrace a “masculine Christianity” that emphasizes dominion, male leadership in the home and the church, and physical fitness to keep men from being drawn into the vile world that sees women as sex objects and pushes Nazi propaganda about superior races.

I won’t argue against positive role models and physical health. But here’s where these critics go wrong: Christianity can never compete with vitalism on vitalism’s terms, just like a church service will always be less exciting than a rock concert on a rock concert’s terms.

If a young man wants an ideology that allows him to treat women with contempt and consider himself Nietzsche’s Übermensch, social media gurus will always win out over Scripture. You can have a men’s conference with fireworks and a working military tank, but the Bible will still show us that the greatest man who ever lived submitted himself to a humiliating death and told us the meek are truly blessed.

The masculinity crisis has major consequences for the church. It feels harder than ever for young Christian women who want to get married and have children to find young men who make decent husbands and fathers. More broadly, congregations are suffering as young men that could be blessing the church are instead wasting their lives away in front of screens.

How should Christians respond?

The church has always struggled with gender imbalance, as Lyman Stone notes. As far back as the Roman era, more women than men have flocked to sanctuaries, and finding marriageable Christian men has never been easy.

Making Your Church Manlier Won’t Make It Bigger

Lyman Stone

Furthermore, every church is different. On the extremes, some still operate according to a more rigid gender hierarchy while others ignore the idea of God-given gender differences.

As a missionary in East Africa, I can tell you that a culture where gender differences are still respected doesn’t draw more men to church. Women still outnumber men here too. And the cultural commitment to traditional sexual ethics brings lots of problems, including much higher rates of violence against women.

The simplest fix might be to erase any gender distinctives and encourage each young man to simply be “a good person” rather than “a good man.” There’s some truth to this, as church is the place where men call themselves a bride and women can say they’re more than conquerors. The fruit of the Spirit are the same for both sexes.

However, as Emba puts it in a follow-up essay, “young men and boys are telling us, often literally, that they desperately need and desire direction, norms, and a concrete rubric for how to be a man.”

In theological terms, we are created in the image of God, male and female, and that distinction has consequences for how we think about ourselves. When one set of cultural currents is trying to erase those distinctions altogether by telling men their manhood isn’t real or meaningful, many of them will simply be discouraged from even trying to be good people.

In The Toxic War on Masculinity, Nancy Pearcey calls for a greater ministry focus on boys without fathers, and she’s absolutely right. Rather than compete with manosphere influencers who think expensive cars and sexual conquests define masculinity, we need Christian families to invite young men into their lives and homes. There, they can learn about the virtues of masculinity by observation rather than didactic (and often harmful) instruction.

Single people, elderly couples, and families with children can all participate. Helping care for others’ kids, sharing life together, and talking about something other than social media will do far more for young men than any blogs or podcasts. (Pro tip for young men who want to find a Christian wife: Do the dishes after dinner. Trust me on this one.)

The crisis of masculinity is real, and the church has a role to play. Rather than complaining about feminism or “beta male” pastors, we need to participate in mentoring and building relationships with young men. Military hardware and empty admonitions to “be a man” can’t substitute for genuine connections between people. The church has a calling to celebrate the goodness and beauty of God’s choice to create us in his image, male and female, and those distinct identities emerge best in community.

As we attend to the masculinity crisis, opening our doors and making space at our tables is something we can all do to keep lost boys from going astray.

Matthew Loftus lives with his family in Kenya, where he teaches and practices family medicine. You can learn more about his work and writing at matthewandmaggie.org.

The post Young Men Need a Model Not an ‘Übermensch’ appeared first on Christianity Today.

The Spirit of Our Politics: Spiritual Formation and the Renovation of Public Life

Michael R. Wear (Author)

256 pages

$13.74

It’s an intriguing message from a political consultant who now runs The Center for Christianity and Public Life, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing more robust Christian presence and resources to political life in America. After all, politics has defined Wear’s career, beginning when he somehow managed to finish his undergraduate degree while working for President Barack Obama (first as an intern on his presidential campaign, then in the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships).

You might expect, in an election year, to hear calls to whip ourselves into a greater fervor because the stakes are so high. But Wear has written a book that urges the exact opposite. If there’s ever a conflict between political victory and moral faithfulness, he argues, we ought to choose faithfulness every time.

Rejecting silence and subservience

Indeed, the central contention of The Spirit of Our Politics is that undisciplined political fervor and a desire to defeat our political enemies is poisonous for our spiritual health. We must first seek the kingdom of God before aspiring to participate in political action.

Wear is deeply concerned that the toxicity and rancor of American politics are seeping into American churches, leading to the use and abuse of Christianity as a blunt instrument in political discourse and furthering a mass epidemic of shallow faith defined less by trust in God and more in political affiliation. At the same time, there is a strong countercurrent of opinion that wants to dismiss the role of Christian teaching and faith in politics, denying Christians a political voice as Christians.

The theme that unites these dangerous developments is the idea that politics is a realm in which Christian discipleship and personal moral development do not apply. Wear describes this as “a fatal choice between a Christian silence in politics and a Christian subservience to political programs, ideologies, and aspirations.”

Some Christians argue that politics is a rough-and-tumble world of brute force and power plays, so trying to apply the principles of the Sermon on the Mount is like trying to enforce tea party etiquette during a rugby match. Other Christians, like many non-Christians, see the moral strictures of Christianity as irrelevant to politics because faith is merely a personal choice akin to one’s opinion on the color of the carpet on the Senate floor.

Both perspectives entail divorcing spiritual formation from political life; Wear’s argument is that good spiritual formation will make us better participants in political life and that America’s political life needs well-formed Christians more than ever.

Wear draws heavily from the work of Dallas Willard, author of many books on spiritual formation and philosophy, to make these intertwined arguments. Willard wrote about what he calls “the disappearance of moral knowledge,” that is, the cultural transformation of moral truths into a set of personalized beliefs that have no grounding beyond the faith of the individual who asserts them. This has made politics an arena in which Christian teaching is felt to be irrelevant or even harmful.

Politicians nowadays make statements about separating their “personal beliefs” from their political actions, as if there is some neutral, impersonal body of knowledge that will guide them apart from religious commitments. Life without moral knowledge is impossible, though, and Wear sees a natural hunger for moral knowledge experiencing the kind of resurgence that opens new avenues for Christian influence.

Willard was also highly critical of what he called “the gospel of sin management,” which leads Christians to think of their faith as merely a set of beliefs that get them out of hell and into heaven. In this view, Jesus is a “fixer” who deals with our “sin problem,” a point of view that tends to produce a weak sense of discipleship.

While Willard certainly seems accurate in this assessment, Wear’s attempt at bringing it into politics seems a bit muddled and hard to follow. He argues that Christians often look at Christian faith and politics with a “fixer” mentality, but his primary examples are Christians who absolutize political principles as tests for Christian faithfulness.

I struggled to see the connection between these two points, but the examples were disturbing enough on their own. Take, for instance, a progressive preacher leading his congregation to shout, “Filibuster is a sin!” Or a conservative minister telling his followers that if “they do not vote, or they vote wrongly, they are unfaithful.”

Both admonitions struck me as simultaneously absurd and disheartening. Wear describes this approach as spiritually corrupting, claiming that it is “a form of blasphemy to flippantly ascribe to our preferred policy instruments and political judgments the weight of religious dogma.” What Wear recommends instead is making political commitments informed by our faith rather than allowing our faith to be driven by political commitments.

A good chunk of the book is spent simply on biblical reflections about developing the kind of character we want, which is, of course, relevant to much more than politics. Drawing on Willard’s The Allure of Gentleness to describe an ideal of loving service and an emphasis on “vision, intention, and means” as the pathway to achieving our spiritual vision, Wear wants us to see that a healthy relationship to politics in a Christian’s life should naturally result from a strong relationship with God.

If we think that God’s moral commands apply in all arenas of life, we won’t treat politics as a place where those commands can be waived off in favor of fear, anger, vulgarity, and false confidence. If we’re confident in God’s power to bring about the kingdom he has promised us, then we won’t treat every election as an apocalyptic spectacle. If we’re grounded in a theological conviction about the nature of our relationship with God, we won’t anathematize our fellow believers over voting choices.

Besides the more obvious habits of prayer, reading Scripture, fasting, and worship that should characterize every believer’s life (and, let’s face it, these are probably some of the first things we neglect when we instinctively reach for our phones each morning), Wear suggests other spiritual disciplines that are key to political engagement.

He recommends service to others rather than “othering” people, relating a story about a pastor who changed his political views after spending time ministering to people he had only known through news reports and op-eds. He advises us to critique those we support and affirm those we oppose, practices that keep our minds from being warped by polarization.

He asks a critical question about solitude and silence: “Different noises make us feel fun, productive, in control, alive. What do we hear in the silence? Who are we there?”

Something worth saying

Wear concludes with a word to parents and pastors, who in many ways have borne the brunt of political polarization. He gives pastors permission to ignore political concerns in just about every aspect of their church’s liturgy except for prayer, and he exhorts them to use any political topics that do come up to connect congregants with the love of God for them and for all people. As important as politics may be, what comes first is leading people to worship God and letting any political applications flow out of that.

For parents, Wear wants them to make sure their faith and their political judgments avoid hypocrisy. And he encourages parents who are concerned about their kids’ political development to get them involved in some kind of real-life activism rather than leaving them to merely absorb information through a screen.

Wear’s first book, Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House About the Future of Faith in America, was an honest look at what politics can and cannot accomplish, informed by his successes and failures at the White House. In many ways, his new book offers a natural continuation of those stories by describing politics as an important part of life but not as the primary or most critical means of effecting change.

If you or someone you love has gotten locked into a world that thinks only in terms of political activism, even to the point of destroying relationships, this book is a helpful antidote. I suspect, however, that some have gone so far down that path that they will dismiss what Wear has to say. Still, for people who have been turned off by politics in recent years, Wear’s vision of a political life grounded in Christian discipleship can give valuable hope and a compelling reason to engage in a process that seems hopelessly corrupt.

Even though we won’t be casting our final votes for nearly a year to come, I’m already seeing friends on social media venting their anxieties and hatreds. The Spirit of Our Politics isn’t just a much-needed corrective to those tendencies; it’s a strong argument for a much healthier way of life.

Dallas Willard’s work is worth revisiting these days, even if Wear’s reading of Willard doesn’t always map well onto what he wants to say about politics. Honestly, it’s refreshing just to read a book about politics and faith that only mentions Donald Trump in passing, doesn’t play on vague tropes about “the common good” or “moral values,” and isn’t obsessed with Christian nationalism (while still speaking to the questions it raises).

Wear wants Christians to have a closer walk with Jesus so that when we engage in politics, we’ll have something worth saying. In 2024, we need to practice what he’s preaching more than ever.

Matthew Loftus lives with his family in Kenya, where he teaches and practices family medicine. You can learn more about his work and writing at matthewandmaggie.org.

The post One Underrated Way to Enrich Your Christian Political Witness: Be a Better Christian appeared first on Christianity Today.

No, not Halloween—Reformation Day, when Protestants remember Martin Luther’s courageous choice to post his 95 Theses critiquing the Catholic church and launching the Reformation. Jake is reenacting that old story by tramping through the Colorado snow from mainline church to mainline church—60 in total—to post his own theses on their doors.

The lists, tailored to the seven American mainline denominations, critique their drift from orthodoxy into theological liberalism, challenging them to reaffirm the Resurrection, the divinity of Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and much more besides.

And Jake was not alone. A group of 1,000 Gen Z mainliners committed to their historic denominations—part of a grassroots group called Operation Reconquista—were working across the country to do the exact same thing. By the end of Reformation Day, they claim, they’d mailed, emailed, or physically posted their 95 theses to every mainline church in the United States, all without funding or a full-time organizer.

When I first heard about this operation, I admit I was both intrigued and worried. On the one hand, the past year has seen a surprising number of Gen Z–led spiritual renewals, most famously the Asbury revival. Maybe this was a similarly hopeful development?

On the other hand, their branding use of sordid military history was reminiscent of the “manosphere,” a highly online movement capturing the imagination of many young conservative men. (“Reconquista” is a nod to the Christian reconquest of the Iberian peninsula from Muslim kingdoms, whom Christian Europeans commonly called Moors, and the group’s website uses martial language and imagery.) Like many manosphere influencers, Reconquista first got traction online, largely through a YouTube channel run by a young man who goes by the digital pseudonym Redeemed Zoomer, as well as a Discord server.

Redeemed Zoomer creates lo-fi explainer videos—with Comic Sans font and what he describes as “derpy” graphics—about Christian theology and denominations, some of which have racked up millions of views. When he’s not explaining history or ideas, he’s talking about mainline institutional renewal as he creates cathedral-centered cities in the world-building video game Minecraft.

Gen Z Wants to Talk about Faith

Daniel Silliman

Despite these superficial similarities between Reconquista and the manosphere, the substance is radically different. Redeemed Zoomer and his fellow activists aren’t interested in “going their own way,” accelerationist politics, or “trad LARPers”—as Zoomer put it in an interview on my podcast—who spend more time burning institutions down than rebuilding them.

Their interest is institutional renewal in the mainline church, and their method—as detailed in a video explaining their Reformation Day activism—is calling young, theologically conservative Christians to reform and revive the denominations that their Christian forebears sweat and bled to build. Beyond the Reformation Day event, this primarily looks like mapping theologically conservative mainline congregations and encouraging Gen Z peers to join and serve in those communities.

To that end, Zoomer continually reminds his audience that their enemies aren’t people; they’re the principalities and powers of darkness (Eph. 6:12). Even when he’s critical of progressive Christians, he’s never crass or vitriolic. In fact, he explicitly asks those watching his channel not to harass or attack the people he’s critiquing.

When I asked Zoomer if allusions to violent conquests might lead the group astray, he noted that the Bible, too, uses military metaphors for the life of faith (e.g., Eph. 6, Phil. 2:25, 2 Tim. 2:3). He hopes Reconquista will channel youthful energy, which may otherwise be spent on vacuous or outright noxious pugilism, toward noble ends.

As a safeguard, the group has invited older mainline pastors to join Reconquista, and members are encouraged to rise above the fistic fray, season their speech with love, and challenge each other when they fail to meet these goals. Reconquista wants to be characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, Redeemed Zoomer told me, not by the belligerent neo-pagan Twitter dunking of Andrew Tate wannabes.

Reconquista also rejects the racialized ugliness common in the manosphere and very online corners of the political Right. While their 95 theses to the Presbyterian Church (USA) state that “theology should not be done through a critical theory lens”—a sentiment I share, with some nuance—they also clearly anathematize racism and emphasize the importance of listening to the Global South. “The Mainline Church globally claims to want to elevate non-white voices,” one thesis says, “yet ignores the cries of repentance for theological liberalism coming from Church bodies in Africa and Asia, as is happening in the Anglican and Methodist communions.”

Young Men Need a Model Not an ‘Übermensch’

Matthew Loftus

By contrasting Reconquista with the manosphere, I don’t mean to imply that it’s entirely male. The Episcopalian wing, which Redeemed Zoomer reports has seen the most success, is led by a young woman. But the group’s members are mostly young men, and Zoomer argues this is an asset in a time when—as is increasingly recognized even outside the church—young men are adrift in a predominantly progressive culture with no positive vision for masculinity and desperate to be connected to a mission that gives their lives purpose.

Progressive mainliners love to argue that progressive theology is the only way to make Christianity that mission for a young and progressive generation, Redeemed Zoomer says. But, speaking from experience, he disagrees, arguing that churches that liberalize to the point of abandoning orthodoxy have nothing distinctive to offer Gen Z.

Unchurched Gen Zers don’t need to go to a stodgy sanctuary to learn how to fly the rainbow flag. They can get that anywhere—without giving up Sunday mornings. To attract young people, and especially young men, the church must point Gen Z toward a divinely inspired, ancient purpose the secular world can’t offer: living for Jesus.

This is exactly what Zoomer experienced at age 14. Until his conversion, he says, he was a “secular leftist,” but at a small music camp led by a PCUSA professor, he encountered the beauty of Jesus through friendship, service to the poor, hymnody, and beautiful church architecture. The aesthetics of traditional churches weren’t merely a vibe for him—they became a window into the truth, goodness, and glory of the gospel.

Returning to his home in New York City, he found life by rooting himself in the Presbyterian tradition, singing hymns, studying the confessions, and taking the sacraments. This is the best way to integrate Gen Z men, like himself, into church life, he contends: engaging them in institutional construction.

He’s right. Gen X was cynical about institutions. Millennials, my own generation, deconstructed them. Gen Z may be the first generation to turn the tide, to renew, reform, and recover what past generations built.

The Church Needs Reformation, Not Deconstruction

Tish Harrison Warren

Churches who build their congregation on critique—by perpetually deconstructing and disavowing the past or endlessly dunking on institutional leaders for not being “based” enough—will not survive and flourish long-term. Reformers like Luther did not only criticize; they also built.

If we want to see Gen Z—the most unchurched, secular generation in American history—join in the life of the church, we must actively involve them in institution building. We must invite and integrate them into a community of belonging rooted in history, orthodoxy, and tradition. This is especially the case if we want young conservative men to do more than ape Tate, as Matthew Loftus recently argued at CT.

Of course, there will be legitimate critiques of movements like Reconquista. Is its militaristic branding a strength or a hindrance? Is it driven by theology and liturgy, or merely an aesthetic vibe? Why not break away from heretical institutions that have already proven immune to reformation, as Luther himself did? Is this simply nostalgia for a golden age that never existed?

While these are important questions—and members of Reconquista have addressed many of them—they risk missing the lede: God’s Spirit is at work in Gen Z in surprising, beautiful, and encouraging ways.

They deserve our encouragement in turn. Left- and right-wing deconstructors will do their worst to distract these young builders from the labor at hand. My hope is that they will take up Nehemiah’s cry: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down” (Neh. 6:3).

Don’t come down, Gen Z. Build something that will last.

Patrick Miller is a pastor at The Crossing in Columbia, Missouri. He’s also the co-author of Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant, and the co-host of the cultural commentary podcast Truth Over Tribe.

Mainline Protestants Are Still Declining, But That’s Not Good News for Evangelicals

Ryan P. Burge

An Unsung Inspiration for the Protestant Reformation: the Ethiopian Church

Jennifer Powell McNutt

The post Meet the Zoomers’ Martin Luther appeared first on Christianity Today.

In the hopes of Barrett’s supporters—and the fears of her critics—her addition to the court will dramatically alter its jurisprudence on social issues, particularly abortion. However, the reality of a 6-3 conservative court will probably be more mundane for a number of reasons, including that the most common SCOTUS voting pattern is 9-0, that Chief Justice John Roberts has adopted a strategic balancing role, and that a GOP-appointed court majority is no guarantee of conservative triumphs.

Moreover, if the rulings of the past five years are any indication, religious liberty far more than abortion is the social issue for which SCOTUS composition presently matters. But religious liberty advocates are deluding ourselves if we think the court is what matters most. Far more important is the fact that a chasm of incomprehension is widening between practicing Christians and other devoutly religious Americans on the one hand and the nominally religious and irreligious on the other. This cultural misunderstanding is politically dangerous, and adding Barrett to the Supreme Court will do nothing to halt its expansion.

Writing in his email newsletter about Christianity and masculinity in 2017, CT contributor Aaron Renn posited a three-part framework for thinking about the place of Christianity in American society. Before around 1994, he argued, we lived in a “Positive World,” where Christianity enhanced a person’s social status and breaking traditional Christian behavioral norms harmed it. Between 1994 and 2014, Renn said, we had a “Neutral World,” in which Christianity was no longer culturally dominant but religiosity was not a social disadvantage. Since 2014, however, Renn believes we’ve moved into a “Negative World,” where “being a Christian is a social negative, especially in high-status positions.”

I think this framework is too tidy in its history and too narrow in its consideration of American Christian experiences. (As another CT contributor, Matthew Loftus, has queried, “If you asked African-American Christians to assign dates for a Negative World, a Neutral World, and a Positive World, where do you think they’d put 1965?”) But I also think Renn’s scheme communicates something more substantive than the now-familiar statistics on the rapid decline of American Christianity and concurrent rise of the religiously unaffiliated .

The political result of the shift we’re experiencing can’t be grasped through a simple numbers game, where we check which demographics support which party and anticipate policy accordingly. It’s about a fundamentally different view of what religion is, and its area of greatest policy import is religious liberty.

For Christians, our faith is (or should be) the core determinant of our lives—in Christ “we live and move and have our being,” as Paul said in Athens (Acts 17:28). We ask God to “fill [us] with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that [we] may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9–10). Following Jesus is supposed to be all-consuming.

For many Americans, faith is a hobby and church a social club. And, given that view, a robust version of religious liberty doesn’t make sense.

But for many Americans, faith is a hobby and church a social club. And, given that view, a robust version of religious liberty doesn’t make sense. We don’t have “chess club liberty” or “soccer team liberty” or “wine mom liberty.” To elevate your hobby to competition with others’ human rights is indefensible and immoral, and doing so in the name of adherence to a religion centered on an act of self-sacrificial love comes off as hypocrisy, a selfish refusal to play by your hobby’s own rules.

A side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is its revelation of exactly how far these two understandings of faith have diverged. In June, when debate over some cities’ suspension of pandemic assembly bans for the George Floyd protests reached a fever pitch, The Washington Post published an article quoting a Harvard epidemiologist named Ranu S. Dhillon. “Protesting against systemic injustice that is contributing directly to this pandemic is essential,” Dhillon told the Post. “The right to live, the right to breathe, the right to walk down the street without police coming at you for no reason … that’s different than me wanting to go to my place of worship on the weekend, me wanting to take my kid on a roller coaster, me wanting to go to brunch with my friends.”

For Christians, one of those three activities is very unlike the others. That’s not to say churches shouldn’t take pandemic precautions—I’ve written at CT that they should—but that’s not because church is merely a hobbyists’ meeting. The “striking point here is the blasé assumption that the decision to worship on the weekend is simply a consumeristic choice among a menu of options including theme parks and brunch dates,” wrote Brad Littlejohn at Breaking Ground. “[I]f the blood of Christ and a brunch mimosa are on par, then why shouldn’t we stop these particular consumers from engaging in pandemic-prone practices?”

I doubt most Americans would consciously equate church and brunch, but that’s no longer an outlier perspective (and service attendance habits may contravene stated opinions). New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio made similar remarks to a reporter from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish publication who asked why protests were permitted when gathering more than 10 people to worship was not. Dhillon’s comment is where the median of public opinion is heading, whether the “Negative World” label is fair or not.

The Supreme Court’s task is interpreting the Constitution, not culture, but for both good and ill, culture obviously influences its rulings. This past summer’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County is a timely example: The textualist ruling said a 1964 employment law bans discrimination against LGBTQ workers, though no one imagines the legislation’s authors had that in mind. The cultural consensus has moved, and SCOTUS moved with it.

If the cultural shift away from faith in America continues, it will do so with or without a Justice Barrett. The Supreme Court can only do so much—and will only be willing to do so much—if the public conception of religion withers, because the value our society places on religious liberty meaningfully depends on that conception. If Christians and other religious people—Barrett during her hearings included—cannot better communicate to our fellow citizens the significance of faith in our lives, our governance will increasingly reflect the assumption that it is not very significant at all.

Bonnie Kristian is a columnist at Christianity Today.

The post The Supreme Court Isn’t All Powerful appeared first on Christianity Today.

When my malaria recurred, and it seemed impossible for Father to go about his business of finding suitable land for the Mission, John proved himself invaluable. Father was able to leave me in his care. He was kind and infinitely patient, making beef-tea and broths for me, trying to tempt my appetite and give me strength. He could not more gently have tried to comfort me, and help me to be unafraid, if he had been my big brother.

The days were very long with Father away. I was weak and sometimes half delirious. Late one afternoon—it has, somehow, stayed clearly in my memory—I woke up and found that Father had not returned. Unreasoning panic possessed me. I got out of bed and went out-of-doors in my nightgown. I started to run down the path, calling for Father. My strength gave out and I fell in a heap. John, who had tried to restrain, came and gently picked me up. He carried me in his arms and laid me down on my cot. ‘You no cry, Miss Dot,’ he said, ‘your father come back soon.’ I must have slipped off to sleep for a brief time, and when I woke up again in restless longing for Father, John was sitting on a packing-box beside my camp cot. His soothing voice said, ‘I no leave you, Miss Dot. I stay till your father come.’ I was comforted and at peace. Gradually, I came out of my malaria. Gradually, with John’s help, Father and I were able to feel the Mandala hut was something of a home.

Twenty-three years later, Chilembwe would be dead after leading an uprising against the colonial authorities and Booth would be exiled from what is now Malawi. Yet today, Chilembwe’s face is emblazoned on Malawi’s currency and a holiday is celebrated in his honor every January. How did this gentle man become a revolutionary firebrand? How did his service to Booth, a pacifist, set him on a course to lead an armed uprising?

Colonial Powers

As various European powers tried to secure colonies for themselves in what was known as “the Scramble for Africa” in the late 19th century, numerous African peoples long used to independent existence and a degree of self-determination found themselves under the rule of faraway kings and queens. In Central and Southern Africa, tribal leaders facing slave raids from Arabs and tribes in Portuguese territories to the north and east were encouraged by missionaries and the missionary-instituted African Lakes Company to petition the English Queen Victoria to create a protectorate. First known as British Central Africa in 1891 when the protectorate was established, it was officially named Nyasaland in 1907.

Mission work and colonial enterprise weren’t always closely linked (as in East Africa, where missionaries preceded colonial authorities by as much as a century). But by the late 1800s, the two were inseparable. David Livingstone had set out on his journeys through Central Africa decades earlier with a vision for combating the slave trade and bringing the gospel to thousands of Africans via “Christianity, commerce, and civilization” as a means of indigenous development, but now mission work, business, and education took place firmly under the aegis of the British Empire in many places.

Missionaries at the time, despite their advocacy for British protection, were also expressing doubts about whether Africans would get a fair deal under the Protectorate (particularly in regards to land). Their fears were confirmed when many white settlers were granted large tracts of land and then, under a system called thangata, extracted rent in the form of labor from the people already living on the land that the protectorate had granted to the settlers. These abuses led to a great deal of resentment among the indigenous peoples of the land.

Servant, Preacher, and Student

Very little is known of John Chilembwe’s early life. He was reportedly educated at a Church of Scotland mission school in Blantyre (itself named after David Livingstone’s birthplace) and likely grew up in the tumultuous Chiradzulu district where both intertribal warfare and European land-grabbing were common. In 1892 he'd been hired as a house servant for Joseph Booth, a Baptist missionary who had left the church of Scotland because of the bigotry he’d experienced. Chilembwe quickly became Booth’s interpreter and began his own career as a pastor and evangelist over the next five years.

Booth was different from many other missionaries; he came to Africa without the support of a sending organization and held very strong views about pacifism and African independence. He ended up going to America in 1895 to raise support and made connections there with a number of African American churches, who he thought would be crucial in helping Africans gain self-sufficiency and self-rule. These connections did not bring in as much financial support as he hoped, but the relationships he formed would be crucial later. In 1897, he published a book entitled Africa for the African, criticizing “the ungenerous and often criminal treatment” Africans had received at the hands of their European colonizers. Booth had grand visions for partnership between African Americans (who at that time were experiencing the very worst of Jim Crow) and Africans to spread the gospel in Africa and flourish unhindered by white domination.

Chilembwe, it seems, was a part of that vision. On a return visit in 1897, Booth took Chilembwe with him, visiting black churches that he had met on his previous tour. The two were frequently harassed by white mobs for walking or sitting together; here Chilembwe saw firsthand American injustices while he was reading American history (including the famous story of John Brown and the violent insurrection he led). Chilembwe found much greater success in meeting with black churches and raising support from them than Booth ever had. Booth wanted to return to Africa, but Chilembwe’s growing relationship with the black churches in America made him want to stay. Both men decided that it was time for each to go his own way. Booth returned to missionary work while Chilembwe remained in America to study at Virginia Theological Seminary and College, an African American institution.

Leader and Revolutionary

In 1900, Chilembwe returned to the Protectorate with funds raised from the black churches in the US that he had become involved with during his time in America; he was also joined by several short-term black missionaries. Inspired by Booth’s work (and, arguably, the ideas of Booker T. Washington that were being actively discussed in America during the time that he studied there), he founded the Providence Industrial Mission not far from the city of Blantyre so that people could be educated, hear the gospel, and learn trades. He built an impressive cathedral-like church and a school there and became a pastor to many people working and living within his mission and without.

His concern for his people also led him toward social and political activism—a tense field at a time when apocalyptically minded preachers were inspiring rebellions in neighboring regions. In 1909, Chilembwe founded the Natives Industrial Union to advocate for the rights of his fellow Africans in commerce and law. However, droughts and the mission’s growth led to both funding and administrative difficulties at the same time that Chilembwe’s health began to decline. He felt forced to neglect his preaching duties to go on ivory hunts to keep his mission afloat financially.

It was at this time that conflict flared between Chilembwe’s followers who worked on nearby white estates and the owners of these estates, who required rent from their tenants in the form of labor. One of the most notorious managers was named William Jervis Livingstone (he claimed to be related to the famous explorer David Livingstone, but historians doubt this is true), who was known for beating his workers. Livingstone was also responsible for burning several of the tenants’ churches, which the plantation owners viewed as illegal constructions. Simply speaking up in defense of his disciples made Chilembwe gain a reputation as a troublemaker in his calls for justice—which seemed to fall on deaf ears.

It seems that the final straw for Chilembwe came in 1914 when the British government sent Nyasaland natives to fight Africans from the German East Africa colony to the north in a conflict that was part of World War I. Chilembwe protested this action vigorously with a letter dated to November 1914 sent to the Nyasaland Times, articulating his frustrations with the colonial government conscripting Africans for war on behalf of colonizers who seemed to care nothing about the concerns of the people they expected to fight and die for them:

We understand that we have been invited to shed our innocent blood in this world’s war which is now in progress throughout the wide world. On the commencement of the war we understood it was said indirectly that Africa had nothing to do with the civilised war. But now we find that the poor African has already been plunged into the great war. […]

We ask the Honourable government of our country which is known as Nyasaland, Will there be any good prospects for the natives after the end of the war? Shall we be recognised as anybody in the best interests of civilisation and Christianity after the great struggle is ended? Because we are imposed upon more than any other nationality under the sun. Any true gentleman who will read this without the eye of prejudice will agree and recognise the fact that the natives have been loyal since the commencement of this Government, and that in all departments of Nyasaland their welfare has been incomplete without us. And no time have we been ever known to betray any trust, national or otherwise, confided to us. Everybody knows that the natives have been loyal to all Nyasaland interests and Nyasaland institutions. […] But in time of peace the Government failed to help the underdog. In time of peace everything for Europeans only. And instead of honour we suffer humiliation with names contemptible.

Despite this impassioned plea, wartime censorship prevented the publication of Chilembwe's letter and further placed Chilembwe under suspicion by the British ruling authorities.

After years of calling for justice and fair treatment, Chilembwe determined that words were no longer enough, more decisive action was needed. He organized a militia over the months of December and early January and the group finally struck on January 23, 1915, and succeeded in killing W. J. Livingstone and two other white men. Chilembwe gave strict orders that women and children not be harmed, which were strictly obeyed by his followers. A simultaneous raid on a nearby arms cache (inspired by John Brown) failed to succeed. Some reports claim that Chilembwe preached a sermon the following Sunday standing beside Livingstone’s severed head on the altar. An eyewitness account, however, maintained that Chilembwe preached a sermon of resignation and sent the captured women and children back to their home.

While Chilembwe's own raid had been successful, the uprisings he’d hoped would occur simultaneously in other nearby provinces largely did not materialize. Fearing retribution, Chilembwe fled toward Mozambique but was caught and killed on February 3 by fellow Africans, who were employed by the protectorate. While the colonial government blamed Livingstone for the revolt, it refused to restrict his estates and cracked down hard on the local population in retaliation for the militia raid, closing many village schools in the area, kicking out any missionaries rumored to be sympathetic to the cause, and even burning down Chilembwe’s cathedral.

Independent African

Growing up at a time when European powers were mostly interested in missions as a tool for colonial domination, Chilembwe was an independent African preacher and a shepherd who built a ministry committed to meeting Africans’ spiritual and physical needs. Decades before most African nations became independent, he called for a self-governing “Africa for Africans.” He was both ahead of his times and committed to the original vision of missionary pioneers like David Livingstone, insistent on the idea that his countrymen could be educated and equipped to preach the gospel and participate in the global economy.

Chilembwe’s life demonstrates that he saw an inseparable connection between advocacy for justice and pastoral ministry. Chilembwe refused to stay in his pulpit and simply preach while churches were being burned and his fellow Africans were being sent to die in a European war. Unlike his mentor, Joseph Booth, Chilembwe determined that pacifism was not sufficient to address the injustices he saw around him or to care for his flock. In his mind, British colonial oppression was actively preventing his people from attending African-led churches and living out the gospel, and he was willing to actively revolt to ensure they could. Unfortunately, his rebellion was ill-timed and poorly planned. His tragic end is a warning to those who might consider that their cause is just enough to invoke force: Simply because we feel like we have exhausted all diplomatic means of resistance does not mean that violence is the best course of action, nor that it is going to succeed.

At the same time, ignoring nonviolent protests may push those protesting into feeling like violence is the only solution when justice delayed becomes justice denied. If, as Christians, we don’t want violence to erupt, we have to lend an ear to those around us and push to ensure that our brothers and sisters’ concerns are heard. Chilembwe’s complex legacy is a testament to the need to listen to the concerns of the oppressed and ensure that everyone is free to hear and live out the gospel in their lives.

Matthew Loftus is a family doctor who teaches and practices in Baltimore and East Africa. You can learn more about his work and writing at www. MatthewAndMaggie.org.

The post Why a Compassionate Baptist Pastor Led a Revolution appeared first on Christianity Today.

Finding Grace in the Face of Dementia

John Dunlop MD MD (Author)

Crossway

208 pages

$11.13

Dementia is especially fearsome in a culture like ours, one that treats autonomy as essential to human flourishing. Losing the ability to think and make rational decisions is always a profound loss, but it is especially terrifying for people who value independence so highly. Thankfully, Finding Grace in the Face of Dementia by physician John Dunlop is an excellent companion in thinking through the questions that dementia raises.

The first half of the book covers some basic theological precepts about sin, illness, and the body, as well as medical and scientific details about dementia. Dunlop then describes the daily experience of those who suffer from dementia and the people who care for them. Plenty of books and resources contain this sort of information, but this book remains immensely useful for anyone—pastors, family members, or even people in the early stages of dementia themselves—seeking basic facts about the disease and subjects like in-home care or nursing homes. Having spent many years caring for demented people at every possible stage, Dunlop helps readers step into the non-slip socks of a person with dementia and understand his or her frustrations and sorrows.

For the rest of the book, Dunlop asks whether we can find any grace in dementia. To do this, he first confronts the assumption that makes people queasy when they interact with someone who has dementia (or consider the possibility of developing it themselves): that human beings who have lost their intellectual capacity are aren’t quite fully human anymore. People might say, “He’s not there anymore” or “His soul is gone, but his body is still hanging on.”

Dunlop regards such sentiments as unbiblical. The human body and soul are always intertwined, he argues, even in the grip of the most horrific illness. Our surrounding culture (and, sadly, most popular medical ethics) treats rational thought and autonomous decision making as lynchpins of human dignity. But a Christian view of the body wholeheartedly affirms our intrinsic moral worth in the face of dementia. To fully respect and honor God’s fellow image bearers, we have to teach and preach that human dignity survives when the mind goes into decline.

Having emphatically rejected the possibility of euthanasia, it may seem curious that Dunlop argues against using feeding tubes for people with dementia who no longer eat. However, if dementia is a terminal disease and people too affected to eat or drink have reached its final stages, then withholding feeding tubes becomes a gesture of compassion. As Dunlop explains, “people in advanced stages of dementia stop eating because they are dying; they don’t die because they stop eating.” His perspective is similar on other end-of-life interventions: For people in the later stages of dementia, aggressive measures are often harmful.

Dunlop sees a strong role for the church in serving people with dementia. We can sing hymns and memorize Scripture that people will remember even when they have forgotten everything else. We can teach important truths about our bodies and souls that animate compassion for fellow human beings whose rational capacities are diminished. We can provide practical help to families overwhelmed by the physical needs of caring for someone with dementia. Dunlop expects that people with dementia and their families can grow in faith through the disease by God’s grace, but he also expects the church to come to their aid with theological and practical resources.

Is there grace to be found in dementia—in losing control of bowel movements or forgetting the names of children? Dunlop gives an emphatic yes. To find this grace, though, churches must form the sorts of people who will honor the dignity of brothers and sisters whose minds are lost. This book serves that preparation well, giving advice for some of the most practical problems while also wrestling some of the most serious spiritual issues. At the very end of the book, Dunlop quotes Philippians 3:21 (ESV), looking forward to the hope we have in Christ as the animating force behind our compassion for those with dementia: “[He] will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

Matthew Loftus is a family physician who has practiced in West Baltimore and East Africa. You can learn more about his work at matthewandmaggie.org.

Do you agree? Is this missing something? Share your feedback here.

The post The Beginning of Dementia Isn’t the End of Grace appeared first on Christianity Today.

The church today finds itself in a precarious position, as an ethical shift pushes public opinion in favor of stances that Christians have traditionally sided against. Meanwhile, Americans from all political and theological stripes have their own reasons to be concerned over moral decline.

In a recent poll, Gallup found a widening embrace for more than a dozen moral issues, including record-high acceptance for gay relationships, divorce, pornography, polygamy, and physician-assisted suicide.

Of the 19 issues queried about, Americans have become more liberal on 13 of them (with 10 hitting record highs) and stayed consistent on 6—most notably abortion, which 43 percent of Americans and 34 percent of Protestants deem morally acceptable.

Americans have not shifted more conservative on any of the 19 moral issues measured.

“There was a time that basic Christian morality was at least something people were afraid to violate—at least in an answer on a public survey,” said Dan Darling, vice president of communications for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in response. “I am not so sure this is reflective of a moral slide, but of greater honesty.”

In May, both Gallup and LifeWay Research released polls showing about 4 in 5 Americans are worried about the moral state of the country. This year, 77 percent say the country’s values are getting worse, the highest level since Gallup started tracking this topic 16 years ago.

Historically, social conservatives, including evangelicals and other people of faith, have been the most negative about American morality. They raise concerns about the liberal shift on issues involving family, sexuality, and the sanctity of life. This year is the first that social moderates outrank conservatives.

In last year’s US presidential election, both parties employed a sense of moral superiority and moral tribalism to vilify the opposing candidates. Following President Donald Trump’s victory, the numbers of moderates and liberals who believe American morality is getting worse shot up by more than 10 percentage points, to 86 percent and 71 percent, respectively. Social conservatives dropped by about the same amount to 77 percent.

But despite the overall pessimism, these groups don’t necessarily have common concerns. Gallup notes that people often have more subjective measures of morality in mind than specific policies:

Americans are not necessarily thinking about moral values in terms of abortion, gay marriage, or other social issues that produce legislation and Supreme Court rulings. Polls in 2010 and 2012 that asked respondents to cite the most important problem with moral values found that the reason most often cited was lack of respect or tolerance for others, with poor parenting also frequently mentioned.

As discussed in last month’s CT editorial, recent research indicates that liberals are relying on moral arguments in the same way conservatives long have—only not for the same positions.

“It isn’t that conservatives and liberals have shrugged off transcendent ideas of right and wrong. Rather, they each appeal to a different transcendent moral foundation. We are not in an era of moral relativism but moral pluralism,” Ted Olsen wrote. “That’s not necessarily good news: It’s hard to build a unified society when we hold radically different moral visions. It’s even hard to have a conversation when we view each other as immoral.”

Given the political aims and concerns around American morality—the conservative stances on social issues and the moral critique opponents have levied against Trump—one might assume that the government sets the tone for the country’s moral state. Yet, a majority of Americans (63%) say that implementing laws is not an effective way to develop moral behavior, according to LifeWay.

Earlier this month on Mere Orthodoxy, Matthew Loftus addressed some concerns about “legislating morality,” positing that every law promulgates some sort of underlying value, whether derived from religion or from secular principles “like autonomy and preventing harm.” (In the LifeWay survey, 1 in 5 Americans said whether someone gets hurt is the most important factor guiding their moral decisions.)

“Virtually all of the more ‘liberal’ changes measured by Gallup are about maximizing autonomy and self-determination,” noted Loftus, a Christian writer and physician, by email.

The acceptance of gay and lesbian relations jumped by 23 percentage points over the past 16 years, to 63 percent. The acceptability of sex outside marriage went up by 16 points to 69 percent, divorce by 14 points to 73 percent, polygamy by 10 points to 17 percent, and assisted suicide by 8 points to 57 percent.

Loftus said:

When I look at these figures showing that our moral views are getting more liberal, I think about how dangerous it is to build our social order on autonomy and freedom and how only a biblical sense of obligation to one another can pull us back from the brink.

When we talk about "liberalism" in the West, we often conflate progressivism and classical liberalism. Most modern-day "conservatism" is just as classically liberal as progressivism because it centers around autonomy and freedom, and most political debates assume that human beings ought to have the freedom to be independent of obligations or expectations put upon them …. Christian moral values will always be fighting a losing battle in a culture that sacramentalizes individual autonomy.

Half of Americans believe right and wrong never change, according to the LifeWay survey. While Christians obviously look to God’s Word for moral standards, Darling—and ERLC colleague Andrew T. Walker—have made the case that they should advocate for those outside the church to follow those principles as well.

“In a society where the ethical demands of the gospel sound increasingly strange, we offer the gospel up as an alternative story to the story people are telling themselves,” Darling said. “The church should always, as in every age, tell a better story about God's creational designs for human sexuality, connection, and intimacy and about Jesus' restoration of our broken humanity in his own death, burial and resurrection. The church should also be willing to stand against the pervasive utilitarianism and Darwinism that informs practices like euthanasia and abortion and racism, especially as used against the most vulnerable in society.”

The post Moral Outrage in America Is Now for Everybody appeared first on Christianity Today.

As a family doctor, I love practicing obstetrics. There is a deep sense of gratitude and fulfillment in seeing a child take his or her first breath, especially in cases where medical complications require judicious use of my medical knowledge or surgical skill. Sadly, practicing obstetrics also entails dealing with cases where things go wrong, and there is a different sensation when one extracts a dead child from his or her mother. There is a visceral sorrow and disappointment at life that could have been—or, in the cases of severely malformed children, a life that was genetically incapable of life in the world.

Alien: Covenant is about what happens when we choose to reverse those situations and seek fulfillment by trying to perfect human bodies.

In the nearly four decades since the Alien franchise’s inception, each of its entries has taken a different tack. The original Alien was a slow burn horror masterpiece, while the first sequel, Aliens, was a sci-fi action film with compelling characters. Alien 3 was a confused mess, and Alien: Resurrection was a heavy-handed, gore-laden warning against the military-industrial complex. The series’ most recent entry, Prometheus, tried to inject more explicit philosophical reflection but never quite got anywhere with it.

Alien: Covenant, which is set after Prometheus but before the original Alien, is in many ways is a pastiche of all these previous films, succeeding where some of the others failed and failing where previous entries succeeded. The plot is a mixture drawn from its forerunners: A spaceship full of colonists in “hypersleep” and frozen embryos is headed to a distant planet in order to start a human colony. The rest of the crew are all married couples except for an android named Walter (played by Michael Fassbender). They stumble upon a planet that appears remarkably hospitable to life, so they choose to explore it—which, as is customary in Alien movies, is a prelude to aliens infesting and then bursting out of the unsuspecting crew members on the ground.

The crew is rescued by android David (one of the few survivors of the Prometheus expedition from the previous film, again played by Michael Fassbender), who leads them to the ruins of a city once populated by the “Engineers” who created humanity. David and Walter are both robots played by the same actor—but the similarity ends there. Walter, the newer model, reveals that he is programmed to be less “human” than David, as David’s line of androids expressed too much emotion and were found to be unsettling.

In a masterful performance by Fassbender, David proves their creators right by demonstrating a disquieting degree of humanity as he explains that his creative inclinations led him to massacre the Engineers, experiment on his human crewmate from the Prometheus, and then spend his years alone on the planet trying to create a “perfect creature.” He infects a crew member with the fruit of his labor—the titular alien—which hunts and kills many crew members before the last two humans manage to escape with Walter back into space on their ship.

Alissa Wilkinson has noted the numerous literary and biblical allusions in the film; unfortunately, though, as she notes, none of them manage to hold together by the end. David considers himself something of a Nietzschean Übermensch—but somehow he is also Milton’s Satan? It doesn’t make much sense. Instead, he’s far more effective as an incarnation of human technological ambition, more along the lines of one of the New Gods from Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Indeed, the Alien movies work best at their most understated (think of Ripley discovering her ship’s hidden mission, or Newt just before she is snatched away). It’s not so much about human interactions with the devil as it is the movie’s themes about science, power, and what happens when we choose to pervert our God-given creativity—themes that reach that perfect level of “show don’t tell” storytelling, causing it to bubble in our subconscious long after we walk away.

Bodies, Blood, and Bioethics

In the West today, scientific progress marches on, providing us with even more creative options for manipulating human life. At best, lawmakers can only hope to slow down the pace at which we gain new powers over human bodies, and current political conflicts have created a faction that celebrates “science” and rationality in their ambiguous glory. Most “pro-science” voices can articulate some sort of ethical framework, but their agitation on behalf of science at best takes this framework for granted, and at worst erodes the possibility of non-utilitarian ethics constraining scientific progress. The goal of perfecting the human body is also taken for granted, as opposed to the view of Christian bioethicists who describe the trajectory or arc of human life, with a beginning, middle, and end.

Nowhere are these tensions more obvious than in the world of sex and childbearing, which the Alien franchise loves to explore. Oliver O’Donovan puts it this way: “The primary characteristic of a technological society is not the things it may do with the aid of machines, but the way it thinks of everything it does as a kind of mechanical production. Once begetting is acknowledged to be under the laws of time and motion efficiency, then its absorption into the world of productive technique is complete.” Even our language reflects this: The theological language of “procreation” reflects our status as image-bearers of God, while “reproduction” speaks to an industrial process of control.

In Alien: Covenant, the industrial process of control is taken to an appropriately violent and dark conclusion. David, who rejects all limits on his exercise of power over the human body, adds insult to injury by favoring the genetically modified perversity that should have been rejected by its human host. Rather than accepting the human body’s limits, David decides that human bodies are only as valuable as they are perfectible—which, to him, means eliminating humanity by creating a series of monsters.

There is a moment in the film of natural procreation as a married couple kiss in the shower. Before the husband can penetrate his wife, however, he himself is violently penetrated by the alien creature. The usual horror-movie trope punishes teenagers with a gory death for premarital sex, but here the good of marital sex is eviscerated by a biomechanical monster. Indeed, the Alien franchise has long explored themes of sexuality (including rape), and a key moment in Prometheus also included a perversion of procreation. This time, though, the product of industrial reproduction does not merely exist as an option side-by-side with natural procreation—it is a violent force that tears apart human covenants and the sexual love that strengthens them.

Fighting to Escape Our Unkind Humanity

Unmoored from rigorous ethics that understands the arc of human life, the dignity of the human body, and the role of procreation within it, scientific progress will go bad. David's megalomania and indifference to human life is obviously deranged, but these qualities are reflections of his nature as a technological being. He is an avatar of human ambition and an incarnation of human rationality. David was clearly intended for good by his human creator, but two moments in the film show how hollow half-measures of goodness are.

In the first of these moments, after luring a crew member into his experimental chamber, David’s delight is unmistakable as his creation bursts from his victim’s chest. The scene is shocking with its gore, but this disgust underscores the ultimate destination when man’s scientific and creative power is divorced from his God-ordained purposes and human bodies are a means, not an end. Other gross-out moments in the film are failed attempts to recreate the shock of the original Alien’s iconic dinner table scene, but David’s perverse joy at the birth of his “perfect creature” is visceral horror at its best. It should caution us against destroying living human bodies for any purpose—but especially for the sake of perfecting the human body.

There is a moment at the end of Alien: Covenant, though, that is even more horrifying. After having finally expelled the creature from the ship, the remaining crew members are being put back into hypersleep to continue their colonization mission. One of the survivors, Daniels (Katherine Waterston), asks her android companion what he thinks life will be like when they colonize this other planet. He responds: “I think if we are kind, it will be a kind world.” It's the sort of sentiment that undergirds a lot of “pro-science” talk we hear today: All that it takes for human endeavors to be good is for us to be kind to one another. Good intentions will redeem and guide the power of science.

Moments later, though, Daniels realizes that it is the wicked David who followed them onto the ship, impersonating the servile Walter. David smiles as he puts a screaming Daniels into hypersleep, setting us up for a sequel in which he undoubtedly continues his awful experiments on her and the rest of the ship. David's line about being kind puts the lie to the neutrality of science’s power: As we exercise human power, we must acknowledge that certain endeavors are bent by their nature towards unkindness, and human beings are bent towards unkindness.

The terror of the first Alien film was that a destructive, evil being could live inside of your body and burst out when you least expect it. There, the rare moment of bloody violence punctuated long stretches of fear of invasion from the outside in. The gore of Alien: Covenant is more pronounced and frequent, forcing us to confront the ugliness of destroying human life for some higher purpose. Here, we see that the destructive evil has always lived inside our own hearts—and will follow us relentlessly, even to the deepest reaches of space.

Matthew Loftus teaches and practices family medicine in East Africa and Baltimore. You can learn more about his work and writing at MatthewAndMaggie.org.

The post In ‘Alien: Covenant,’ the March of Progress Ends in Death appeared first on Christianity Today.

Amazing cover art by @iamfujimura on the latest @CTmagazine. Thankful for this vision of beautiful orthodoxy!

@chrismschutte

Mark Galli’s wonderful cover story for Christianity Today, “Beautiful Orthodoxy,” offers a definition of orthodoxy that, when lived out, is remarkably similar to the experience of law and gospel—always falling back into God’s mercy.

C. J. Green Mockingbird magazine

Inspired by @CTmagazine piece “Beautiful Orthodoxy.” Indeed, it’s what the world and the church need today.

@TomLinNow

This was one of the more well-written articles I have read in CT to date. I too am wrestling with law versus grace issues, and Galli did a good job of explaining the friction that exists in our lives.

We generally “lean” one way or the other, and I have to admit I generally lean in a law direction. Having said that, I found it interesting that in his example of the woman caught in adultery, he chose to end his example with Jesus’ words “then neither do I condemn you,” showing the wonderful grace of Jesus. But there were additional words that Jesus said that Galli chose not to include: “Go and leave your life of sin.”

That seems to be the issue for us Christians. Do we finish with “I do not condemn” or with “leave your life of sin”?

Charles Wetesnik San Antonio, TX

Editor’s Note:

Good catch. Actually, in the book-length version, this phrase is given its proper due!

—Mark Galli​

Awareness Is Good. Attention Is Better. p. 31

I don’t see Matthew Loftus get as much praise as he should. His columns are consistently engaging and insightful, elaborating on a too-often neglected combination of topics: spirituality and the social determinants of health. As a sociologist of religion and health, I applaud him.

Blake V. Kent Waco, TX

No Clear Choice p. 52

Buying several subscriptions to @ CTmagazine out of gratefulness and appreciation for that publication’s brave election coverage.

@whatkathyrnsaid

There are paragraphs in this piece by Sho Baraka that make my heart sing.

@JohnPiper

If I say that one of the candidates is a fascist, I expose myself to the charge of being a hyperbolic partisan. If, on the other hand, I document that that candidate’s core narrative refers to the nation as besieged by disastrous crisis that only a strong leader can rectify (“Make America Great Again”; “I alone can fix it”), then I am being empirically accurate. If I also document that candidate’s authoritarian rhetoric of racism, xenophobia, misogyny, scapegoating, conspiratorial thinking, celebration of violence/torture, and demagogic appeal to base emotions, then I am again being empirically accurate. I am also providing a concise, empirically accurate definition of fascism. So there is a “clear choice”: for or against fascism.

I respect the legal constraints on endorsements raised by your not-for-profit status. I also recognize that the moral challenge facing you, as it faces all voices of Christian opinion, is much greater.

Rev. Dr. Gordon G. Scoville Broadus, MT

Trump is the only choice for thinking Christians. How could I support a candidate like Hillary, who is pro-abortion, and represents so many values opposite to my faith?

Dean Haas Jr.

It has not escaped my notice that the evangelical leaders who support Trump are known mostly through popular media. They rely on marketing. They have brands. They are brands. Trump himself is a brand and has made most of his money in recent decades from simply selling his name and appearing on TV. Call me old-school, but I am not a fan of branded, consumer Christianity.

Pat Hunt Staunton, VA

Thank you, CT, for being balanced. I will not be voting Trump, but I appreciate that you are sharing ideas from both sides of the aisle.

Danny Palmquist

I can’t speak to the moral adequacy or, let’s be frank, the moral inadequacy of this election cycle’s candidates. But thank you, Christianity Today, for showing all three sides to this and having a well-written article for each.

Mitch Tate

You Are the Manure of the Earth p. 72

I got such a kick out of your article “You Are the Manure of the Earth,” which reflects on Jesus’ words that we are “the salt of the earth.” I am an engineer at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and my work involves the use of underground salt formations to store things such as oil, natural gas, and radioactive waste. My work has concentrated primarily on the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and on research into using salt for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste. It is fair to say I am one of the world’s most knowledgeable people on the mechanical behavior of salt.

Thank you for using your science background for insight into understanding Scripture. A ridiculous myth has developed in recent years that science and faith are mutually exclusive; I believe this sentiment is absolutely false, and I think there are hundreds of years of history to prove that. Therefore, I try to use scientific analogies and subjects whenever I can when I talk about my faith with someone, in an effort to tear down that wall. I encourage you to do the same whenever possible. Thank you again for an educational and entertaining article!

Steve Sobolik Albuquerque, NM

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