Page 1183 – Christianity Today (2024)

This story has been altered from the October 2014 print version to make corrections and reflect further reporting. –The Editors.

Grand Canyon University (GCU) was an obscure Phoenix college on the verge of collapse when a fundraising consultant and entrepreneur named Michael Clifford discovered it in the early 2000s.

Founded by Southern Baptists in 1949, by 2003 the school was on the brink of closing and was $16 million in the red. The school cut faculty and staff pay for three years running. Clifford remembers walking around the campus. “It was a disaster. The swimming pool was filled in. No Internet access. And there was no air conditioning in the dorms in Arizona!”

Today GCU is the sole Christian, for-profit college traded on the stock market. It hosts NCAA Division I basketball, is rapidly building out its campus, and is adding majors for its roughly 60,000 students (52,000 online). It has a market capitalization of $2.1 billion.

Growth Surge

Around the same time Clifford and investors were rescuing GCU, Jerry Falwell Sr. and his team at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, were changing their strategy at then-struggling Liberty, which Falwell had founded in 1971.

In 2003-2004, Liberty’s distance education enrollment was growing by more than 20 percent a year to serve nearly 10,000 of the school’s 17,000 students. But few Liberty programs were delivered entirely over the Internet.

A five-year strategic plan for Liberty came out a year later, calling for more money for “experimental” ideas to market the school and recruit students that could supercharge enrollment and growth.

Fast-forward 10 years, and Liberty and GCU are, by enrollment numbers, the largest Christian universities on earth.

Liberty, by enrollment measures, is now the second-largest university in the United States, with more than 100,000 students, 90,000 of them online. (The largest is the University of Phoenix, with 263,000 students.) Liberty also hosts Division I football and is rapidly adding buildings and majors, including a faith-based medical school on its 7,000-acre campus.

“Grand Canyon and Liberty are using the same strategy, but one is for-profit and one is nonprofit,” Clifford says. In 10 short years, both have become the largest Christian colleges in the country—largely by anticipating the enormous demand for online college education.

Love it or hate it, call centers, million-dollar online advertising budgets, and online learning have become the elixir of growth for colleges—including Christian schools—over the past decade. But some critics wonder if schools can “do” Christian higher education in a formulaic manner, or if more hands-on care for students’ moral and spiritual well-being is needed.

Despite such misgivings, online higher education continues to grow. A 2013 report by the Online Learning Consortium found that in 2013, 7.1 million students, or roughly 30 percent of all students, were taking at least one online course. The percent of academic leaders rating learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to face-to-face instruction grew to 74 percent in 2013, up from 57 percent in 2003.

More Christian schools are following suit. Regent University, Indiana Wesleyan, and The King’s College (where I am a professor) offer individual classes and college degree programs either partially or entirely online.

But in less than a decade, Liberty and Grand Canyon became giants of the genre. Much of the recent success at the schools can be attributed to a disciplined dual strategy of aggressive online degree programs for some students and the traditional on-campus experience for other students.

Success and Controversy

Some credit (or blame) for the for-profit college boom (and bust) should go to Clifford, an enigmatic player who has changed the higher-education landscape. An unlikely innovator, Clifford skipped college to play brass in bands, the circus, and Broadway shows. During this time, he began using cocaine and other street drugs heavily. Then a piano tuner for Clifford’s band began reading the Bible to him.

“It changed my life,” he says. “I became a born-again Christian.” Clifford took on fundraising projects for several evangelical Christian leaders of the 1980s and early ’90s. Campus Crusade’s Bill Bright urged him to get into online education, predicting that education would be a “pretty hot stock on Wall Street,” says Clifford. He realized online education could reach the roughly 50 million working American adults who, like himself, hadn’t obtained a college degree.

The strategy also, he realized, could make himself and other investors wealthy, fulfilling his “dream of becoming a philanthropist,” he says.

Investing as CEO of Significant Federation in Rancho Santa Fe, California, Clifford helped to found or rescue six largely online universities—Bridgepoint Education Inc., Grand Canyon Education Inc., LA College International, Patten University, Chancellor University, and Victory University.

Grand Canyon went public in November 2008, proving a successful initial public offering (IPO) at the depths of the financial crisis. Bridgepoint Education completed its own IPO that April, both deals making Clifford a wealthy man, at least on paper. In 2009, his 6.5 percent stake in Grand Canyon was valued at $47.5 million.

But the for-profit college industry faced intense government scrutiny over its quality standards, recruiting techniques, and practices of taking government loan money. Four of the schools Clifford tried to rescue were closed or sold. But Grand Canyon and Bridgepoint remain behemoths in the for-profit college industry.

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report found enrollment in for-profit colleges had soared to 1.8 million in 2008, up from 365,000 a few years before. Some schools made about 90 percent of their revenues from federal student aid. Other for-profit schools, meanwhile, had 40 percent of student loan defaults. Several schools are fending off lawsuits alleging unethical recruiting, grade inflation, and fraudulently retaining students.

Clifford closed insolvent, for-profit schools, losing millions of dollars. “I went to the Lord. The clear message I got was to go back to my love, which is Christian education.” He is now a consultant for Christian schools, having signed contracts with three and expecting five more by year’s end. His goal is to tell more success stories like Grand Canyon’s.

Accessible, Affordable, Christian

A Christian worldview, affordability, and accessibility are three key reasons why online Christian higher education still appeals to tens of thousands of new students each year.

Early on, Grand Canyon’s leaders realized if the school could emphasize online education and use a for-profit model, they might achieve a rapid turnaround. The school was the first regionally accredited university to convert to for-profit. As the school prepared to go public, it recruited Brian Mueller, president at the University of Phoenix’s parent company, Apollo Group. During Mueller’s leadership as chief executive of the University of Phoenix Online, enrollment grew from 3,500 to 340,000.

Why did Mueller take the helm at Grand Canyon? “I’m a strong believer in Christian higher education,” he told CT. “We need to make it accessible to all social classes in a very affordable way.”

In 2008, Grand Canyon became a publicly traded company, selling 10.5 million shares for $12 each. The money it raised, Mueller says, has allowed the school to boost its advertising and marketing budgets to $90 million per year, enroll more students at reasonable tuition rates, and add more academic majors and buildings. Its stock price, now selling for about $45 per share, gives the company a market capitalization value of $2.1 billion.

This fall, Grand Canyon will have some 11,000 students on campus. The hope is to grow to 30,000 on campus by 2020. (Grand Canyon has 55,000 students online in a program for working adults.) The school has expanded its campus to 175 acres and will open a sister campus in Mesa, Arizona, by 2016.

Mueller says the average student on campus is age 18 and pays an average discount rate (after institutional scholarships) of $7,800. By contrast, the average online student is 33 years old, is pursuing a graduate degree, and pays an average discounted rate of $9,000.

By comparison, the 119-member schools in the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities averaged $24,355 per year of tuition in 2013–2014, $5,739 less than the average tuition cost at private four-year colleges, but substantially higher than both Grand Canyon and public four-year colleges. Grand Canyon loan default rates and dropout rates have improved, but it still lags many nonprofit schools in these categories.

The company, in October, said its board would consider getting off the stock market and returning to the nonprofit status it held from 1949 to 2004, partly to avoid financial problems for-profit colleges have faced and to improve its own reputation in the status-conscious world of higher education.

“Since 2010, 12 of the top 13 for-profit educational institutions in the country have had significant drops in enrollment and closed parts of their operations, Mueller said in a company press release.” The one exception, of course, has been Grand Canyon University.”

Besides its geographic locations and current taxpayer status, Mueller finds that the main difference between Grand Canyon and Liberty is the statement of faith. “We don’t have students sign a statement of faith,” he said. About 70 percent of students report seeking a Christian worldview, but the others come for a different reason. “We welcome them here,” he said. “Most of what we do is voluntary from a spiritual enrichment perspective.”

Trace Urdan, an investment analyst at Wells Fargo in San Francisco, follows the for-profit college industry. He says Grand Canyon is “for Christians but also for people who are not necessarily evangelicals.” Urdan says he was impressed by the school’s approach that encourages moral decision-making and discourages binge-drinking, drug abuse, and promiscuity. At the same time, he is glad the school does not require dress codes, signed statement of faiths, or mandatory chapel as do many evangelical colleges.

“I would never send my child to Oral Robert University,” says Urdan, an Episcopalian and Yale alum. “I could send my child to Grand Canyon.”

Big and Faith-Based

When Falwell Sr. started Liberty in 1971, his dream was to create a world-class university that evangelicals could be proud of—what Brigham Young University is to Mormons, or Notre Dame is to Catholics.

“My father was talking about playing those schools in football,” said Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty. He felt that “Christian young people should have the choice of a big college experience.”

Falwell Sr. always thought students should not have to choose between a small Christian college or a large state school that might be hostile to their values. “Why can’t there be both?” he used to ask, according to his son.

The growth of high-speed Internet in US homes was a key to realizing Falwell’s dream. “We were in a position to serve a much larger group of [working adults]—folks with jobs, mortgages, families. They could not uproot,” Falwell Jr. said. Liberty avoided the collapse of other online schools largely because it keeps resident tuition rates lower than competing schools and avoids aggressive recruitment. The 950 admissions counselors, it workers, operations and administration, and other Liberty Online staff work out of a 100,000-square-foot former Sears outlet.

Liberty aims to grow to 16,000 students on campus by 2020, up from 13,000 at present. It reinvests its budget surplus into its campus, faculty, and degree programs. It plans to grow its online enrollment to 90,000 by no more than 3 percent per year. Growing at a low, steady rate “brings in the students who really want to be here and really want a Christian education,” Falwell Jr. says.

He sees career training and job placement as increasingly important in higher education. “We instill Christian values in our students. [But] if you don’t have a job, you can’t pay your loan back no matter how good a Christian you are.”

The huge growth in Liberty Online has fueled the current building boom on the sprawling campus, which has added $500 million worth of Jeffersonian-style buildings in just four years.

“In the first few years I worked here, my job was to keep the creditors at bay and just to make payroll. It was survival mode all the time,” Falwell Jr. says. “We have reached a point where Liberty is on solid ground.”

Cloud-Based Future?

Some higher-education analysts believe the go-go days for online and for-profit higher education are over. One of the biggest players, Corinthian Colleges International Inc., plans to close, selling 85 of its school locations and closing 12 others.

But Clifford and Grand Canyon’s Mueller remain bullish about the future, and at least one education expert understands why. Kevin Kinser, who teaches education at the State University of New York at Albany, studies for-profit colleges. He says that for-profit colleges are struggling to find a sustainable business model. “That is what makes Grand Canyon so intriguing. They seem to have found a business model that works.”

Yet higher-education traditionalists argue that colleges should not be on the stock market because they cannot serve two masters—investors and students. Furthermore, Christian leaders reason that the ideal Christian college should focus solely on rigorous degree programs with a residential campus life that integrates faith and learning.

Clifford says he has a bigger idea. He thinks Christian colleges should use Internet cloud technology to put an entire university into an online network and offer degrees “anywhere, anytime, anyhow.”

“The only thing that is going to save Christian colleges is a robust online operation,” Clifford says. Similarly, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who coined the term “disruptive innovation,” has predicted that many American universities could go bankrupt by 2030 due to their inability to adapt to new online education technology.

Others are less pessimistic about traditional higher education. In 2013, an Institute for Public Policy Research report pointed to “distinctiveness” as a durable competitive advantage. “Salvation comes not so much from their position in the national rankings as from their position in the chosen peer group,” the report said.

That is a notion that leaders at both Liberty and Grand Canyon would applaud. Mueller thinks the enrollments at Christian colleges would double if they were more affordable. “There is just no end to the appetite in this country for private, Christian education that is affordable,” Mueller said. “People want their children in this kind of environment.”

Paul Glader is director of the Phillips Journalism Institute at The King’s College, New York.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake and Democrat Senator Martin Heinrich are teaming up with Discovery to show America that political parties should be intentional about working effectively with each other. Their approach: a reality TV show in which the two congressmen are stranded on a remote island together for one week. Variety has all the details about Rival Survival here.

This coming weekend brings a close to the Toronto International Film Festival. While one New York Times critic is making Oscar-related projections from the festival screenings, another hot topic is Reese Witherspoon’s role as the producer of her most recent films, Wild and The Good Lie. Read about how Witherspoon took control of her career here.

Speaking of actors taking on new roles: Katie Holmes is undertaking her first directorial project in the movie production of the Annie Weatherwax novel All We Had. Also, Tommy Lee Jones will direct and star in the movie adaption of The Homesman by Glendon Swarthout. Actors Hilary Swank, Meryl Streep, and John Lithgow will accompany his debut as a director.

Meanwhile, Variety reported Big Hero 6 as the number one trending movie online according to their Digital Audience Ratings (DAR). The film features the first Marvel character to appear in a Disney production. The DAR suggests that Big Hero 6 (scheduled to release on November 7) could be as popular as Frozen.

If you’ve enjoyed the recent trend in TV series sequels for shows like Boy Meets World and Full House, then you might be excited to hear that Sony is pondering a spinoff for Married . . . With Children. The A.V. Club gives the full details here.

Rebecca Calhoun is an intern with Christianity Today Movies and a student at The King’s College in New York City.

The biggest news in online streaming this week is Netflix’s announcement that the entirety of Gilmore Girls will be added this October. You can read Indiewire’s take on why that’s a big deal here. In the mean time, while waiting to binge all 154 episodes, Hulu subscribers can get their fill of girl time with Selfie, a comedy following shallow but uber-famous Eliza Dooley as she searches for meaning in a material world. You can take a look at Flavorwire’s hopeful review of the show here.

Fans of period drama can now watch Belle through video on demand services. Dido is the mixed-race daughter of an 18th century naval captain who must confront not just the inherent challenges of the English court but the added struggles of racism, sexism, and classism her background presents. Read CT’s assessment of the movie here before you watch.

The prodigal-daughter drama Grace Unplugged was released to both Amazon Prime and Netflix this week. A solid family movie, the story follows young Christian singer Grace on her journey through the faith-testing mainstream music world. CT’s review is here.

Netflix added the first seasons of The Blacklist this week, paying $2 million per episode for the popular crime drama, IGN reports here. Variety described the show as a genre sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, with James Spader playing what the reviewer dubbed a “Hannibal lite” character and Megan Boone as his pseudo-Clarice Starling foil. You can read Variety’s full review here.

Jessica Gibson is an intern with Christianity Today Movies and a student at The King’s College in New York City.

Two organizations that know megachurches well have released a new study they describe as “by far the biggest-scale, cross-denominational response anyone has ever collected about church finances.”

Leadership Network and Vanderbloemen Search Group surveyed 727 of America's largest churches regarding their finances earlier this year. Though the researchers acknowledge their examination of church financial trends is not "randomly based nor is it statistically accurate for all larger churches," they explain the findings "do indicate many general trends, and is likely the most comprehensive financial perspective available on large churches."

Of the 56 million Protestants who worship weekly in the United States, 13 million attend a church of 1,000 or more participants. In North America, 1,650 churches have 2,000 or more participants.

According to the 2014 edition of the Large Church Salary Report, the typical large American church (1,000 to 7,000 members) was founded in 1977, seats 800 worshipers, and offers five weekly services at two campuses. The church's 52-year-old senior pastor was hired in 2005, it employs 25 staff members, and attendance has been recently growing 7 percent per year.

Nearly 50 percent of large churches spend between 39 percent and 52 percent of their annual budget on staffing costs, translating to 1 full-time paid staff for every 51 to 90 attendees. The salary of the senior pastor comprises, on average, 3.4 percent of a church’s budget and at least 30 percent higher than the next highest-paid employee.

Pastor salaries are influenced mostly by church size (70 percent), with region the only other influential variable (20 percent). Race, age of the pastor, age of the church, and theology do not impact salaries. Southern pastors are among the highest paid, followed by the Northeast and then West and Midwest. Canadian pastors make less than all their American counterparts.

The top three metrics measured by the majority of large churches were total attendance and giving compared to budget. Less than half track adult baptisms/conversions, adults in small groups, or new members.

For the largest churches, those boasting attendance of 10,000 or more, nearly 50 percent report “not passing the plate.” In contrast, only 20 percent of other large churches indicate that they do not directly solicit tithes during services. Eighty-one percent of churches report offering the opportunity to donate online, which the study concluded led to higher giving rates than churches relying only on traditional means. [Infographic below]

The study also revealed that one-third of churches with 1,000 to 2,000 attendees have adopted the multisite model, as have half of churches with 2,000 to 3,000 attendees.

The full report, which studies a number of other financial categories, is offered as a free download here.

In research director Warren Bird’s Q&A with William Vanderbloemen at the conclusion of the study, the hiring expert suggests that churches should consider children’s ministry as a key strategy for growing their congregation. Vanderbloemen said:

The most strategic churches we work with are realizing that a premier children’s pastor/leader can become one of, if not the largest growth engines for the church. And such churches are paying accordingly. We are seeing an increasing trend of churches who pay the top person over children’s ministry more and more. In some cases, the children’s pastor is one of the top paid people on staff, higher than the student pastor, worship pastor or small groups pastor.

Of the top 12 highest-paid roles revealed in the study, children’s ministry is not listed. [Infographic below]

CT has previously reported on the financial health of megachurches, their pervasiveness throughout America, and how mystery shoppers perceive them.

Ed Stetzer has also analyzed megachurches’ finances, the size of their buildings, and common misconceptions they face.

Although everyone knows Pierce Brosnan as Remington Steele, or even more notably James Bond, he’s back as another spy, Peter Devereaux, in The November Man. This time Brosnan’s character is working for the Americans, but he’s just as bad—perhaps even worse—than the British suit-clad 007. PluggedIn’s Paul Asay reviewed The November Man and wasn’t impressed with the content. Devereaux is not only licensed to kill, but the film is far too gratuitous with its sexuality and violence. Asay says, “This obscene and oddly disjointed spy thriller is a mess from the get-go, slopping around in its blood-happy violence and completely extraneous (completely explicit) sex scenes.” Variety’s Andrew Barker agrees that the film is flop, saying the film “runs through spy-movie cliches with such dogged obligation that it often plays like a YouTube compilation of scenes from older, better thrillers, generating little overall tension and only occasionally approaching basic coherence.”

“In a summer of reboots and franchise films, originality often fails to show up at the box office,” which makes the originality of The Congress so impressive, according to Crosswalk’s Christian Hamaker. The animated political story captures audiences, but the top-billed actors don’t hurt either. Mad Men’s Jon Hamm is joined by Harvey Keitel and Paul Giamatti, but the true star, according to Hamaker is House of Card’s Robin Wright. “Viewers who are interested in Wright's development as an actress will value The Congress for giving Wright a role worthy of her talent,” says Hamaker. Variety’s Peter Debruge reviewed the film back when it was at Cannes and calls the film “a trippy cautionary tale about where society is headed” in which Wright plays “herself.” Debruge believes that movie goes will “appreciate a surreal double bill with this live-toon hybrid, ideal for midnight crowds and psychedelic enthusiasts.”

Larisa Kline is an intern with Christianity Today Movies and a student at The King’s College in New York City.

Let me explain the title: this movie was originally screened at last year's Toronto International Film Festival as two separate, full-length films: The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her, each of which showed the story from one of the characters’ perspectives. When Harvey Weinstein got interested in distributing the film, he had it cut into one movie—Them—and that's the version most people will probably see.

All three films are about a marriage gone sour, but not in a way that lends itself to being one partner’s “fault” so much as the fault of the universe or, for some people, God. It is a story of grief.

Eleanor Rigby—named after her parents failed to see the Beatles but met one another—leaves her husband, Conor (James McAvoy), after calmly leaping off a bridge into the East River. Returning home to live with her parents, Eleanor chafes against being observed by her family (and not surprisingly: her father is a college professor and a psychologist). Meanwhile, Conor is back in New York City, trying to save his marriage and his tiny, failing restaurant.

The film (this version anyhow) wants to be about identity, and what happens when the things that propped yours up get stripped away. Eleanor—who has spent her life explaining her name—enrolls in a class on identity theory at Cooper Union, taught by a tough, warm professor who becomes a friend (Viola Davis); Conor flees their apartment to move back in with his father temporarily and wonders if he wants to fill his shoes; Eleanor’s mother (Isabelle Huppert) tells her in so many words that Eleanor’s personal tragedies could function as an escape hatch, letting her avoid her mother’s life choices. At least twice, characters ask, “Do I seem like a different person to you?”

It plays like the slow, sad movement of a symphony, one preceded by a lighter theme and followed by the charged conclusion where all shall be renewed. And I could watch Chastain (for whom the adjective “luminous” seems to have been invented) and McAvoy do anything for hours, but especially play these characters. But if you watch and wonder why in the end it feels a little empty, the problem may lie in the idea implicit in the form shift.

I haven't seen Him and Her yet (though I'm itching together now), but from what I understand, the original films played on the fact that memory does not always match reality, or, more accurately, when we talk about reality in relationships all we really have is memory to go on. So we see both sides of the story, but the shared scenes differ slightly between the two films. Jessica Chastain explained to the New York Daily News that “it was like creating two different characters. In Her I play Eleanor Rigby, but in Him I play Conor’s perception of Eleanor Rigby.”

That’s intriguing, and also accurate. Partners' recollection of events don’t always match. Anyone who's been married or in an intimate long-term relationship of any kind knows that rarely, if ever, is a disagreement or conflict or fight one person's fault. You remember she said it one way; she remembers it another way. You have been accumulating a litany of slights; he doesn't recall committing any of them. He said. She said. You said. I said.

Rarely, actually, is it "they" said. Or “we” said.

The hard work of relationships is in growing to accept, first, that you will sometimes be misunderstood, and second, that your interpretations of others' actions is often a shade off the truth, and sometimes entirely wrong, and sometimes you don't even remember the actions correctly. It is a sobering thing to accept that your recollection—even if it is accurate—is not sufficient grounds for winning an argument or reasoning toward resolution.

The Him/Her version apparently acknowledges this (something Ken Morefield wrote about when he reported from TIFF), inserting those slightly different versions of shared events into both movies, though it leaves the audience to realize this without the characters discovering it. Ken wrote:

They pointed to emotional truth: we all see the world—including others' behavior—through the interpretive lens of our own experience. If the film had allowed the characters to realize that for themselves and learn how to deal with that reality instead of being trapped in it, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her easily could have found a way on my end-of-year top ten list.

In the Them version of the film, though, we get a movie which doesn't trust its viewers to get what's going on—or, perhaps reasonably, to devote time to watching both. The result is a film that steadfastly presents one version of events: these things happened, that person said those things. It happened this way.

In cinema, we're conditioned to believe that the camera gives us the unaltered version of the events of the story. Some filmmakers play on this, startling us by showing that the camera has been lying to us, giving us a character's mind's-eye rather than actual events—consider, for instance, A Beautiful Mind or Shutter Island.

In Them, then, that one version of events functions as the version of events, uncontradicted by the various viewpoints (and so one character comes out quite a bit worse than the other). That could be fine (it's certainly the basis for most movies on similar subjects), but the result is a serviceable, occasionally lovely film about sadness, grief, and marriage that doesn’t get to the bigger issue. So it is unrelentingly sad, but so unrelentingly that it winds up not selling its conclusion.

Given the film's stars, it was probably a wise business decision to cut together Them. It’s easier to show the shorter film and to get audiences to buy a ticket. But I'm disappointed, because the result is a movie that bypasses its original conceit—exploring the grey areas that rule, and sometimes destroy, most relationships—and that means what we have is a somewhat uneven but more conventional grief-stricken romance, and the performances here deserved better.

So, sure, if you're inclined, see Them. The exploration of grief will, as they say, make you "feel all the feels,” and it is never a chore to watch these actors. The movie is sad and, occasionally, devastating, but not without hope. But if you like it at all—and I did—then clamor for Her and Him (I plan to), because the real fruit lies in that question.

Caveat Spectator

The film is rated R for profanity and sexuality. There’s a fair amount of profanity of all sorts and some frank talk about sex. Characters have sex on different occasions (in a car, in a restaurant), though we don’t see nudity. Eleanor jumps off a bridge, attempting to kill herself. And (spoiler!) the thematic material is probably most important (SPOILER!!!!)—if you've lost a child, then you'll need to think about whether you want to put yourself through that grieving process on screen.

Alissa Wilkinson is CT’s chief film critic and writes the “Watch This Way” blog. She is also an assistant professor of English and humanities at The King’s College in New York City, and she tweets @alissamarie.

To say I don’t have kids is an understatement. I barely interact with children, save for brief conversations with friends and fellow churchgoers with offspring in tow.

I can’t remember the last time I changed a diaper, pushed a stroller, or let a kid win at board games. When a friend passed her newborn to me this spring, I admitted it had been years since I held a baby.

And in 2014, that’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s no longer a given in our society that every woman, or even every married woman, will have kids or want to have kids.

Absolutely, marriage and family remain a priority in Christian and evangelical circles. It may seem like a week doesn’t go by without another pregnancy announcement popping up on Facebook or another desperate plea to help with the full church nursery, but in general, Americans are having fewer kids. Actually, fewer kids than ever.

Among us childbirth-delaying millennials, it’s not uncommon for whole circles of friends—20-somethings and 30-somethings—to be childfree. We live in a society where we have fewer opportunities to interact with children because, in general, everybody—our brothers and sisters (if we have siblings—more of us are only children than ever), our classmates, our coworkers, our neighbors—are less likely to have them.

Here’s how TIME outlined the numbers in its “The Childfree Life” cover story:

The birthrate in the U.S. is the lowest in recorded American history, which includes the fertility crash of the Great Depression. From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which there’s data, the fertility rate declined 9%.

A 2010 Pew Research report showed that childlessness has risen across all racial and ethnic groups, adding up to about 1 in 5 American women who end their childbearing years maternity-free, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.

Even before the recession hit, in 2008, the proportion of women ages 40 to 44 who had never given birth had grown by 80%, from 10% to 18%, since 1976, when a new vanguard began to question the reproductive imperative.

For married women who don’t have kids, or simply don’t have kids yet, an increasingly childless culture can take the pressure off. There are still people who badger, “When are you going to have kids?,” but that question doesn’t come up as much when surrounded by kid-free friends.

And not only do some childless folks not want kids of their own, they also don’t want to be around other people’s kids. Our worst kid-hatred comes out during travel (leading to a new airline class “for the child-intolerant” in Asia), but also at restaurants, in movies, and on Facebook.

Some of the most unabashedly childfree won’t keep their preferences secret when faced with rambunctious offspring. They’ll tell you in a “no-offense,” joking tone: “That’s why I’m never having kids.” Or, “Aren’t you sick of them?” Deep down, they mean it.

Parents, of all people, are in on it too. Social media updates gripe about their kids of all ages, as if they’re a part of the anti-kid PR team: Pregnancy’s gross! Babies are a mess! Kids interfere with your plans! The whole thing is too expensive!

The most talked about parenting book of the year, Jennifer Senior’s New York Times bestseller, All Joy and No Fun, argued that happiness may be a misguided expectation for childrearing. “Senior scrupulously chronicles the lack of fun. The joy, she admits, is difficult to quantify,” writes one review.

Parents also gush about their kids—but the conversation about children can so quickly skew negative, with rarely any pushback for the child-averse. No one dares to question a person who “just doesn’t like kids.”

There are plenty of single people and childless people who love kids, but for a while, I was not one of them. Never struck with baby fever, I distanced myself from children and occasionally repeated smug lines about the perks and freedoms of childlessness.

That changed once my best friend revealed to me earlier this year that she was going to have a baby. I didn’t have to fake my excitement; I started crying right in the baby section of Target, where I happened to be shopping for a gift when she called. I knew this was not going to be some tiny human that I could nod approvingly toward and then ignore. This was my best friend’s baby, and both of them were going to be a part of my life for a long time.

I started paying more attention to the mothers I knew and to their kids—no matter how sad their fussy faces, how sticky their fingers, how nonsensical their questions. I willed myself to like them. I reminded myself that there were many topics that Jesus was silent on in Scripture, but how we should treat children was not one of them.

In Mark, Jesus takes a child into his arms and tells the disciples, “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, and whoever receives me, receives not me but him who sent me” (Mark 9:36-37, ESV). In Matthew, he says, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 19:14). The Savior of the world is not too busy or too holy for playtime. His call to care for children is as direct and straightforward as, “Love thy neighbor.” Even if your neighbor can’t quite talk or walk or read yet.

Little by little, my fear and dismissal of parenting has grown into downright awe. I still find kids to be annoying and needy and cringe at wailing babies and dripping toddler noses, but I’m trying. There are lessons to be learned from the mouths of babes.

People may have a range of reasons for not wanting or not liking children, but I realized that my kid-aversion had its roots in a familiar, dark place: my desire for control. As every parent will tell you, and has told me, kids don’t come with a foolproof guide. From the littlest moments (Why are you crying?) to the biggest questions (How will you turn out?), we won’t always be able to figure them out, to program them, to raise them perfectly. Even as a non-parent, that frustrates me and scares me.

The childless-inept, perhaps, can remember that Christ is with us in the nursery and at babysitting time too. It is God who qualifies us, who takes our obedient, open-hearted not enoughs and multiplies them to more than we expect.

I attended church twice a week growing up. I had no choice. It’s not that I disliked church. But like many children, I struggled to understand much of what went on. Easily growing bored, I found ways to entertain myself. I doodled on the bulletin and occasionally timed the pastor’s sermon. I counted the overhead lights, wall panels, and segments in the stained glass windows. While I occupied myself with trivial activities, two details caught my attention: the baptismal pool situated above the choir loft behind the pulpit, and the white table at the center-front of the sanctuary, etched with the words, do this in remembrance of me. Something about the white table got me thinking: Why do we eat bread and wine at the table every few months? And who can eat it?

My church celebrated the Lord’s Supper (also known as Communion or the Eucharist) four times a year. I remember asking why we celebrated it so infrequently. The answer I got never satisfied, and it still doesn’t: “If we do this very often, it will lose its meaning.” Precociously I thought, It doesn’t seem to mean much to us anyway, so why worry about it losing any more meaning? As I grew older, I discovered some churches took the meal weekly. I was then even more dissatisfied with the answer I had received.

Whether you’ve been a Christian since childhood or accepted Christ just recently, you likely have a story about the Lord’s Supper. Your story might include questions or frustrations, maybe even doubts. Our stories explain a great deal, not only about us as Christians but also about how important we think Communion is to our faith and practice.

Christians throughout history have traced their practice of the Lord’s Supper back to a story, one that took place on the eve of Jesus’ execution. That evening, Jesus gathered his disciples to share the Passover meal. Passover commemorated Israel’s liberation from Egypt, and the primary aim of the meal was to transmit the Exodus story to future generations.

No doubt the disciples around the table had the Israelites’ freedom from slavery in mind. But they didn’t grasp that Jesus was about to undergo a new exodus—one that would liberate all humanity from sin and death and inaugurate his reign as Lord and Savior. Jesus told them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God” (Luke 22:15–16).

The institution of the Lord’s Supper is recorded in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Jesus gave the disciples bread, saying, “This is my body” (Matt. 26:26). Then he gave them a cup, saying, “This is my blood of the covenant” (Matt. 26:28). Luke tells us Jesus instructed his disciples to follow the pattern he gave them: “Do this in remembrance of me” (22:19). Just as Passover was intended to commemorate God’s deliverance over and over again, so was the Lord’s Supper. Thus, the earliest Christians ate the meal regularly, to remember and celebrate their redemption in Christ (1 Cor. 11:24–26). Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has redeemed us and prepared us for eternity with him. But we so easily lose sight of this in our day-to-day lives. The meal reminds us that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.

With a few exceptions—Quakers and members of the Salvation Army, for example—Christians of all denominations and backgrounds have affirmed the importance of regularly sharing the meal. And virtually all agree on this: Christ instituted the meal as a memorial of his sacrificial death and resurrection; the New Testament commands us to celebrate it until Jesus returns; and we should do this together, in the unifying power of the Holy Spirit. Further, most Christians believe the meal should be given only to those who have been baptized.

While the meal is rooted in a singular event, it goes by several names. The simplest designation is “the Lord’s Supper” (1 Cor. 11:20). It is also called the “the Lord’s table” (1 Cor. 10:21) and “the breaking of bread” (Acts 2:42). By the second century, Christians began calling it Eucharist, a word expressing the most characteristic element of the meal: giving thanks (from the Greek eucharisteo; Matt. 26:27; 1 Cor. 11:24). It’s a meal of thanksgiving for what God has done for us in Christ.

One of the most commonly used terms is Communion (1 Cor. 10:16, KJV), from the Greek word koinonia, which means “a participation together.” Thus, many Christians believe that when we receive this meal, we actually participate in the presence of Christ through the witness and power of the Holy Spirit. And virtually all Christians affirm that the meal is to be taken in communion with others—that it’s a core sign of our unity in Christ.

So important was this meal in the early church that Luke listed it as one of the four marks of a Spirit-filled community (Acts 2:42). And a prayer in the Didache, a second-century teaching manual, asserts that unity is a chief goal of the meal: “As this broken bread was scattered over the hills and then, when gathered, became one mass, so may your church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom.” From the earliest days of the church, Christians have affirmed that the meal represents our union both with Christ and with each other. Not only that, many Christians have testified to having experienced profound unity with Christ and his people when they eat it.

A Meal That Divides

You don’t have to be in the church for long to realize that instead of uniting around the Lord’s Supper, many Christians have divided over it. One somewhat trivial example: Bible scholars agree that the New Testament alludes to it in places besides the references I mention above. But they disagree on where those allusions are and how to rightly understand them. (John 6:22–59 is one debated text.) More consequential debates focus on what the meal means, how often it should be taken, and who should partake in it.

It’s important to note that the words etched on Communion tables like the one in my childhood church say, do this, not debate this. When we move beyond Christ’s command and debate various theological nuances about the Supper, we move toward disunity.

For the first 1,500 years of church history, believers held a fairly common understanding of the Lord’s Supper. In the West, the Catholic Church believed the Lord’s Supper was a sacrament that conveyed grace to all who received it worthily. The Supper made Christ’s sacrifice on the cross truly present (though without being bloody). Through it, the forgiveness of sins could be obtained. Upon consecration, the bread and the wine change into the actual body and blood of Christ. This change is known as transubstantiation, a view officially adopted by the Western church in 1059, though the term wasn’t used until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.

The Eastern Church didn’t go as far as the Western to explain what happens in the Eucharist. Orthodox believers use the term mystery for the Lord’s Supper—the bread and wine mysteriously become the body and blood of Christ. They don’t try to explain how this change occurs. Neither do they teach the doctrine of transubstantiation, though they affirm the sacrificial nature of the Supper and Christ’s real presence in it.

The Reformation dramatically changed things in the West. The Reformers looked upon transubstantiation, and the doc­trines that had grown up around it, with suspicion, thus rejecting it. At least three views of the Lord’s Supper arose from various Protestant traditions.

Real Physical Presence. This view, following the teachings of Martin Luther, affirms that the bread and wine are spiritually the flesh and blood of Jesus yet remain bread and wine. Luther took Jesus’ words “this is my body . . . this is my blood” at face value. So his view describes Christ’s body and blood as being “in, with, and under” the bread and wine, though his body does not become the bread and wine. Luther said, “These prepositions were intended to affirm that the earthly elements were really Christ’s body and blood and not to explain how earthly and divine elements were spatially related.” Luther did not want to separate Christ’s humanity and divinity, so he didn’t want to imply that Christ was only spiritually present in the meal. For Luther, the elements are truly, substantially, and mysteriously Christ’s body and blood—that is, Christ is physically present in the meal.

Memorialism. This view, following the teachings of Ulrich Zwingli, denies any form of Christ’s physical or spiritual presence in the bread and wine. Zwingli believed Christ was physically present only in heaven, and that the bread and wine are signs that direct us to that heavenly presence. Zwingli believed these signs enable us to rise above this world of sense perception to spiritual reality. He connected Jesus’ words in John 6:63 (NRSV) to his understanding of the Supper: “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.”

Zwingli believed the idea of Christ’s physical presence was contrary to sense experience. So he took the word is in “this is my body” to be figurative. He believed the Lord’s Supper is only a memorial of Christ’s suffering, a visible reminder of his death and resurrection. Christ is spiritually present in the gathering of believers, not in the elements themselves.

Real Spiritual Presence. This view, following the teachings of John Calvin, is a middle way between Luther and Zwingli. It affirms Christ’s spiritual presence in the meal. Calvin rejected Zwingli’s memorialism and Luther’s “monstrous notion of ubiquity”—that Christ could be physically present everywhere, all the time. Calvin believed we actually receive Christ’s body and blood in the meal, but in a spiritual manner. While Christ’s physical body is in heaven, the Holy Spirit communicates the power of his body to us so that we really receive Christ in the Supper—so long as we consume the meal in faith.

The difference between Calvin and Luther centers on where Christ’s physical body is. Luther argued Christ’s physical body has to have the same omnipresence (in some sense) as his divine nature. Calvin believed that Christ’s physical body was located only in heaven, though his divine presence is everywhere. For Calvin, the Spirit makes Christ truly and really present spiritually.

United at the Table

While we debate the finer doctrinal points of the Lord’s Supper, we often forget and even violate one of the most important aspects of the meal: church unity.

In his 2013 book Subversive Meals, biblical scholar R. Alan Streett argues that in the first century, the Lord’s Supper promoted “an off-stage political act of nonviolent resistance,” one that “challenged Rome’s ‘great tradition’ and offered a Christian social vision in its place.” Celebrating the meal was a way for believers to resist overbearing human lords and to express their loyalty to Christ alone. For Streett, the meal gives us a new identity that’s wrapped up with God’s divine rescue project of the cosmos. At the Lord’s table, we come together as equals, as persons who are given the gift of God’s Spirit—unconditionally and impartially.

The social implications of the meal are illustrated radically in a story about the Duke of Wellington. After his defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, the British general attended a small church where he came forward and knelt down to receive Communion. An old man in tattered clothes knelt beside him. A deacon approached the old man, placed his hand on the man’s shoulder, and whispered for him to keep his distance from the duke. Overhearing this, the duke immediately clasped the old man’s hand and told him, “Don’t move—we’re all equal here.”

The Lord’s Supper is an invitation: to identify with Christ’s death and resurrection in the power of the Spirit. And we come to the table together, to have communion with Christ and with one another. The late Baptist theologian Stanley J. Grenz reinforced this in his book Theology for the Community of God. Grenz underscored three orientations of the Lord’s Supper that most Christians can agree on. Together, they can help us to more greatly honor the meal and to unite despite our different ways of observing and understanding it.

First, the Lord’s Supper directs our attention to Jesus’ crucifixion and the future fulfillment of his kingdom. Second, it expresses the unity of one body and constitutes the church as an eschatological community in which Christ is present. This is a communal meal, not a private act. Third, it reflects our personal identity in Christ, through participation in the church.

It seems younger Christians are discovering these truths in a profound way. I’ve had the joy of speaking in churches, colleges, and seminaries for more than 20 years, and I’ve witnessed among younger Christians a growing interest in the Lord’s Supper. My interdenominational experiences have led me to believe they are looking for intimate expressions of both Christian community and divine mystery. It helps them connect with each other and with the church historic. For those reasons, many of them desire to receive the meal more often. And some of them—as I did when I was younger—have started attending congregations that take Communion every week.

No doubt Christians will continue to hash out finer doctrinal points regarding the Lord’s Supper. But let us unite around what we all can agree on. The Lord’s Supper tangibly reminds us of what Christ has done for us: He has reconciled us to God and to one another. And that’s worth feasting over.

John H. Armstrong is president of ACT3 Network in the Chicago suburbs and editorof Understanding Four Views on the Lord’s Supper (Zondervan).

More Evangelicals Almost Everywhere

In nearly every country of the world, evangelicalism is growing whether or not the overall church is as well. In only 16 nations, total Christian growth outpaced the growth of evangelicalism from 2000 to 2010. And in only six nations, both declined. While evangelicalsremain a small minority in many countries, notes missions researcher Justin Long in crunching Operation World’s latest research, world Christianity is becoming more evangelical.

Zimbabwe: Africa’s bad boy bets on megachurch tourism

Officials in cash-strapped Zimbabwe are tapping a new source of revenue: megachurches. After watching tourists pour into Nigeria to visit pastor T. B. Joshua’s megachurch, Zimbabwe’s tourism minister, Walter Mzembi, has eliminated import taxes on church vehicles, offered incentives to hotels and restaurants that provide services to churches, and declared two churches to be “religious tourism destinations”—including 40,000-seat Zion Christian Church (left). “Basically we are designating temples as tourism centers, and philosophically this was done by King Solomon,” Mzembi told the Zimbabwe Independent. The South African nation has long suffered under President Robert Mugabe, who has been accused of rigging elections, wrecking the economy, and attempting to control churches. Mzembi expects religious tourism to raise $1 billion a year—a full 20 percent of Zimbabwe’s total tourism goal.

China: Christian ‘conscience of China’ free at last

Christian attorney and activist Gao Zhisheng was finally released after finishing his eight-year term in a Chinese prison. His family claims that torture left him in poor health, and according to Gao’s wife, police still visit his house daily to inquire about his actions. Meanwhile, authorities arrested a Canadian Christian couple who operated a coffee shop near China’s border with North Korea and led tours to the closed kingdom. The arrests appeared to be part of a larger sweep by the Chinese government to clear the border of Christians who may be helping North Koreans flee. American missionary Kenneth Bae, who led tours before North Korea sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor, is now the longest-imprisoned American there since the Korean War.

IRS relaxes rules on starting religious charities

In the wake of a scandal involving stalled applications from tea party groups, the IRS announced that a new three-page form will help ease its 66,000-application backlog of filings for 501(c)(3) status. Far shorter than the standard 26-page form, Form 1023-EZ will be available to groups with less than $50,000 in gross receipts and less than $250,000 in assets. The move will ease the burden of tax-status filing for many religious charities. Groups will not be pre-screened, thus lightening the IRS’s load by about 70 percent.

Europe: Human rights court affirms religious hiring

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has favored the employment rights of religious organizations over individuals. By a 9–8 vote, it upheld the firing of a Catholic priest whose contract teaching religion at a Spanish public high school was not renewed after he joined a rally against clerical celibacy. The decision echoed the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous 2012 Hosanna-Tabor ruling, which found that religious organizations are not subject to all federal antidiscrimination laws. But the ECHR’s Russian judge, Dimitry Dedov, provoked discussion with his dissent that celibacy “cannot be justified by any public interest or religious autonomy.” Religious freedom experts worry the narrow split doesn’t bode well for European religious groups being free to follow their own policies.

Suicide of pastor’s kid muzzles ‘watchdog’

After the suicide of Southern Baptist college president Ergun Caner’s teenage son, online Christian “watchdogs” said one of their own had gone too far. Montana pastor and radio host J. D. Hall, a frequent critic of the Brewton-Parker College president, criticized 15-year-old Braxton Caner’s behavior on Twitter.

The Wartburg Watch blog decided Hall had “overstepped the boundaries of decency, love, and good judgment,” while Fox News’s Todd Starnes labeled it “theological thuggery.” Hall announced he would “back away” from “fighting a war” for reform in the Southern Baptist Convention. “In my zeal, there has been a disconnect between my theology and my methodology,” he wrote, regretting he had been “adversarial rather than pastoral.” Prominent Caner critic James White called for a ceasefire “for a meaningful period of time” (it lasted two weeks after the funeral). Brewton-Parker spokesman Peter Lumpkins said, “It’s time to stop social media abuse.”

United Kingdom: Will churches boycott Vicky Beeching’s songs?

After British songwriter turned TV pundit Vicky Beeching told interviewers, “I feel I have given myself permission” to pursue a lesbian relationship, she said American churches told her they would boycott “Glory to God Forever” and her other worship songs. The week she identified in press reports as gay, her 2010 album, Eternity Invades, hit No. 10 on the UK’s Official Christian and Gospel Albums Chart; her 2007 album came in at No. 35.

The 35-year-old Anglican, who left Nashville’s CCM scene to comment on church news for the BBC, said she still makes much of her living from church royalties. “Why take a chance of a worshiper stumbling over any evident disparity [between] a song’s message and its writer?” World’s Warren Cole Smith told CT. But Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission president Russell Moore noted that he still sings the hymn “God of Grace and God of Glory” even though its writer, Harry Emerson Fosdick, denied core Christian doctrines.

Singapore: Pastor spent church funds on wife’s pop music career

More details have emerged in a court case deciding whether a prominent Singapore megachurch engaged in innovative evangelism or fraud. Prosecutors allege that City Harvest Church pastor Kong Hee was the “invisible” manager of his wife Ho Yeow Sun’s pop music career. They claim he diverted more than $50 million of church money to fund her albums and then cover his tracks when her career went bust. Kong asked church members to buy copies of Ho’s albums to boost ratings before her American debut, and the church itself purchased $500,000 in unsold albums. Since the church had voted to fund Ho as part of the church’s Crossover Project, aimed at reaching unchurched youth through Ho’s made-for-MTV songs, no harm was done, Kong’s attorney argued.

Christian college cuts ties after denomination investigates

The Kentucky Baptist Convention (KBC) ended its investigation of claims that Campbellsville University had fired a theology professor for “being too conservative,” concluding that conservative theology was welcome among faculty. Nevertheless, the school decided to remove itself from denominational oversight of trustees and phase out KBC funding ($1 million of its $57 million budget). In response, KBC president Chip Hutcheson accused Campbellsville of acting like a “husband who wants to divorce his wife but still offers to live with her.” The funding has ended, but the groups will work on a new partnership.

Lilly church claims Chase mismanaged millions

Christ Church Cathedral, the religious home of philanthropist Eli Lilly, has sued JPMorgan Chase, alleging the church lost $13 million due to the bank’s big fees and bad investments. Chase, which the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating for oversteering clients to the bank’s own products, headed two trusts that Lilly posthumously left for the Indianapolis church. The lawsuit claims Chase decided “to purchase over 177 different investment products, mostly from itself, using church funds because they produced the highest revenues to [Chase].” The Lilly Endowment, which seeks to strengthen American churches (and is unconnected to the dispute with Chase), has given more than $108 million to enable 2,421 pastors to take sabbaticals.* (Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the figures in the clergy renewal program.)

China: Churches support crackdown on cult

China sentenced 25 cult members to up to 8 years in prison after 5 members bludgeoned a woman to death in a McDonald’s restaurant for resisting their efforts to recruit her. The Chinese government is pointing to the widely publicized trial, and nearly 1,000 arrests since June, as evidence of its crackdown on Eastern Lightning—formally known as the Church of Almighty God. The cult believes Jesus was reincarnated in the form of a Chinese woman named Deng. Working to protect new Christians from such cults, house church leaders have cautiously partnered with government efforts and have increased efforts to teach solid theology and church history.

Philippines: Christian town wants out of new Muslim province

After 17 years of peace talks seeking to end decades of violence, the Philippines agreed this spring to let Islamist rebels create a local government based on Muslim principles. But inside the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s new autonomous region of Bangsamoro is Wao, the region’s only Christian-majority town (pop. 50,000). The town, on the archipelago’s southern island of Mindanao, wants out and has asked to be placed under the direct control of the Philippines central government. “We prefer to stay out of Bangsamoro, although we support the right to self-determination of local Muslims,“ Wao mayor Elvino Balicao told AsiaNews. “I hope Manila will listen to us before there are problems.”

Split Seekers

The New York Times analyzed a decade’s worth of Google searches in America’s hardest and easiest counties to live in. Among the top terms most correlated with poverty: the end times. With wealth: digital cameras.

Hid In (Half) Our Hearts

48% Self-identified Bible readers who memorized any verses in the last year.

64% Congregations that held Bible memorization events for children in the last year.

In 2008, writer/filmmaker Dan Merchant got a lot of people talking about the human condition, moral dilemmas, and deeper questions about meaning and purpose.

His thought-provoking documentary, Lord Save Us From Your Followers (our review), was part social commentary, part cultural observation, part psychological exploration, and part theological examination. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth it.

Today, Merchant is exploring pretty much the same types of questions, albeit from a slightly different perspective.

Zombies.

Yes, flesh-eating, brain-craving, wild-eyed zombies.

Merchant is one of the writers and producers behind Z Nation, a new series premiering tonight on SyFy (9/8c). It’s the latest attempt to feed America’s voracious appetite for all things zombie, with AMC’s hugely successful The Walking Dead as Exhibit A.

But while AMC’s hit is largely serious drama, all dark and depressing, Z Nation brings a bit of fun—and even some campy humor. (This is SyFy, after all, and Z Nation is produced by the same company that made the Sharknado movies. So, that.)

And yet Z Nation takes itself seriously enough to explore all of the above questions, and it’s surprisingly rich in spiritual undertones. The pilot episode alone features:

• a funereal scene with congregants singing “Shall We Gather at the River?”
• multiple references to giving and receiving mercy amidst the madness
• a character saying “I commit your soul to eternal peace” before another dies
• an exasperated protagonist saying, “God, I hate moral dilemmas!”

Merchant says the show’s writing team includes “an atheist, and agnostic, a Catholic, an ex-Catholic, a Lutheran, a Buddhist, and an apolitical evangelical—me.” That diversity, he says, makes the creative process all the more fun, especially when they’re exploring the human condition—the condition of pre-zombified living humans, that is.

We spoke with Merchant about Z Nation, and to find out what a nice Christian guy is doing in a place like this. Turns out to be a perfect place to explore big ideas.

As a Christian, what do you bring to the Z Nation creative process?

I bring what all of the creatives bring: a keen interest in how human beings operate, how we treat each other, and what we’re supposed to be doing on this planet together. As a Christian, I suppose I voice a sensitivity that some viewers may share. For example, I’m not a fan of taking the Lord’s name in vain, but it happens occasionally in the show.

Honestly, though, my take on hope, self-sacrifice, and compassion are not unique in our writers’ room. There are ranges of belief and nonbelief represented, but respect, kindness, and love are understood quite well by all at the writers’ table.

Why are zombies such a hot ticket in pop culture these days?

I think they’re some kind of a stand-in for something dark in our subconscious. Our country has, in essence, been involved in one war or another since 9/11, which has put us face to face with lots of death and fear. Perhaps the zombie genre helps some people to externalize that fear and process it.

In cinema history, we had a wave of antihero/vengeance/darkly real films in the wake of the Vietnam War (Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films), movies that brought a realistic, violence to the screen we hadn’t seen before. I don’t think that was a coincidence; this zombie trend isn’t either.

I also wonder if zombies are a substitute for “the other.” These soulless, dead-eyed beasts, hell-bent on eating our brains, deserve to be destroyed. We can kill zombies without contemplating the morality of our actions; it’s a necessity in order to survive. Having heard a few political stump speeches, such a position has a familiar ring to it. If I can’t do anything about the faceless enemy I’m told is threatening my family, at least I can relieve some tension by watching my hero pike a zombie.

What else does the zombie genre say about us?

I think it points back to man’s hubris. We joke that the inevitable zombie apocalypse will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Wrapped up in that is a suspicion about technology and the future, and it’s a tidy place to put all our fears of the unknown—which, of course, is that corner where all good horror stories live. It’s our way of processing and dealing with bigger fears by horsing around with make-believe fears.

Of course, as Christians we’re taught that God’s true love casts out all fear, but there are precious few who trust God that much. So maybe the zombie genre allows us to consider our fear, to try to understand its roots and deal with it.

Z Nation’s writers include an atheist, an agnostic, and people from a variety of faith backgrounds. How does that play out?

The most fascinating thing to me about our diversity is how similar we really are and how much fun it is to work together. We are all people who care about others, are basically kind, are generous as writers, and big fans of funny, shocking, moving entertainment.

How does that faith diversity manifest in the TV series?

A few episodes get pretty dark, where we’re exploring what humans are willing to do to one another in the name of self-interest. For example, one episode depicts a religious cult emerging from the ruins. The lead writer for that one carefully researched Bible verses that could be twisted to mean what this cult leader needs them to mean—and it wouldn’t be the first time this has happened in history. Let’s just say “The Church of the Resurrected” takes on a new meaning! (laughs)

There was a conversation about the religious iconography to be used by this cult. I objected to a cross being used, so we settled on an upside-down cross to represent this twisted, postapocalyptic spinoff of my faith. I really like this episode, because it examines people’s need to believe (sometimes in anything) and the hubris of religious leadership. And in this case, even after the apocalypse, this cult is looking forward to the “real” end of the world. That strikes me as a funny and valuable commentary for those who have a hard time believing the idea of “on earth as it is in heaven.”

How does Z Nation explore existential questions?

Z Nation is, ultimately, a show about how human beings operate. Put these survivors in an extreme, horrible environment and see what makes them tick. Sadly, there are many people in the real world—in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, and other places—who are dealing with situations that are not terribly different. Z Nation might prompt viewers to say, “That’s not much more terrible than what people in the Middle East are going through,” or ask, “What would I do in that situation?” The writers’ fascination with why we are on earth is translated via a wild, crazy, violent TV show to an audience that participates more fully in the world.

Isn’t that a lot to ask from a zombie show?

I suppose, but that’s in the background of the creative work we are doing together. Encouraging empathy is something you’ll see in the Z Nation. Our characters say “Give Mercy” when they put down a Z, honoring the person they once were. In fact, “Have Mercy” is the name of the theme song you’ll hear every week on the show.

How does Z Nation differ from The Walking Dead?

The Z Nation approach is fast, furious, scary fun and we’ll give you something to think about. The Walking Dead has been a great show. Its realistic approach was novel when it debuted—but please, the existential soap opera tone wore me out. All of us on Z Nation wanted to have a show that moved fast, was wild and energetic, displayed brotherhood and teamwork, and left you in an upbeat place. Cause, you know, the apocalypse doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom, does it?

What are your “zombie rules” when writing the show?

In the writers’ room, we’re all familiar with the minor variations on the zombie lore from Romero’s original Night of the Living Dead to 28 Days Later (fast zombies), Shaun of the Dead (fun with zombies), Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake (bleak, black comedy) and up through the realist approach of The Walking Dead.

In essence, we follow Romero’s Rules: the Zs are unthinking, and they crave brains/flesh for food. The zombie virus is airborne, everyone is infected. The most recently deceased (“fresh Zs”) are the fastest, most animated, most violent. The longer they are around, the more the Zs decay, the less of a threat they are and, eventually, they’ll starve to death.

Do your zombies have the ability to think or make moral choices?

Our zombies deliver the horror, but there’s more to the story and we have a few new wrinkles. But you’ll have to watch and see as the season evolves.

SyFy airs a lot of B movies and silly stuff, and Z Nation comes from the same company that brought us the Sharknado movies. Will this be more of the same?

First and foremost, Z Nation is a scary zombie show, heavy on action. The humor is more idiosyncratic, though there are some absurd moments. The characters are well drawn and relatable, and we don’t sacrifice anything for a cheap joke. But if such a joke is just sitting there, we’ll take it.

Mark Moring, a CT editor at large and a fan of campy horror movies, is a writer at Grizzard Communications in Atlanta.