Author: Chris Boyd

Eight writers daydream about passion projects they will (realistically) never pursue.

Writers, in one sense, can write whatever they please. They can follow their creativity and curiosity wherever it carries them. They can ponder mysteries, investigate unknowns, and build narrative worlds, with possibilities as limitless as an empty page.

Real life, of course, imposes limits. Adult responsibilities pile up—kids to raise, bills to pay, chores to complete. Age, illness, and misfortune slow the mind and the pen.

And that’s before factoring in the dynamics of book publishing, which often funnel writers into familiar grooves rather than unleashing them to chase unpredictable muses. Some authors become experts in one thing, diminishing their bandwidth for writing about other things. Some gain a following among fans of one genre, who expect more of the same. And don’t forget the nontrifling matter of the reading public, who has to possess some appetite for what the world’s wordsmiths might wish to serve up.

Therefore, in the spirit of honoring dreams deferred though not forgotten—and also because we couldn’t help being a little nosy—CT asked eight authors, all with several books to their name, to outline writing projects that, for one reason or another, they’re unlikely to commit to print.

Philip Yancey

The Parkinson’s Perspective: An Uncertain Journey Through My Stages of Unhealth

When I wrote a memoir, Where the Light Fell, I chose an “emerging person” style. As much as possible, I wanted to reflect my perspectives and sensibilities during the time periods I was writing about. Readers encounter me as a timid, fearful kid who related more to dogs than to people. Then a smarty-pants in elementary school vying for the teachers’ attention. Then a do-gooder …

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Two businessmen’s unusual conversion in 1700s South Carolina led them to liberate the people they put in bondage.

At first glance, William Turpin and his business partner, Thomas Wadsworth, appeared to be like most other prestigious and powerful white men in late 18th-century South Carolina. They were successful Charleston merchants, had business interests across the state, got involved in state politics, and enslaved numerous human beings. Nothing about them seemed out of the ordinary.

But, quietly, these two men changed their minds about slavery. They became committed abolitionists and worked to free dozens of enslaved people across South Carolina. When most wealthy, white Carolinians were increasingly committed to slavery and defending it as a Christian institution, Turpin and Wadsworth were compelled by their convictions to break the shackles they had placed on dozens of men and women.

In an era when the Bible was edited so that enslaved people wouldn’t get the idea that God cared about their freedom, Turpin left a secret record of emancipation in a copy of the Scriptures, which is now in the South Carolina State Museum.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that this story of faith and freedom is mostly unknown. The two men were, after all, working not to attract attention.

Neither had deep roots in Charleston or close familial ties to its storied white “planter” dynasties. Turpin’s family was originally from Rhode Island, and Wadsworth was a native of Massachusetts who moved to South Carolina only shortly after the American Revolution. Both had public careers and served in the South Carolina Legislature, but their political profiles were not particularly high. Neither of them appeared to give any of their legislative colleagues the sense that they were developing strong, countercultural opinions on one of the most …

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A decade later, I became a Christian.

My upbringing and education were secular, with no serious consideration of religion. Although my family was nominally Anglican and my parents felt obliged to take us to Sunday school and have us christened, my mother told us she did not believe in God’s existence. Stories about arks and miracles seemed like fables for children.

As a teenager with a minimal understanding of Scripture, I decided that Christianity was a superstitious and limited worldview, and that a miracle-working god-man could only be nonsense. (It is easy to reject teachings when you know them only at a trivial, superficial level.)

As a young adult, I became interested in philosophies like existentialism, Stoicism, and nihilism, viewing them as possible avenues of finding meaning in life. I was driven to answer the fundamental question of whether our lives have meaning, as opposed to being merely random events that end in death. And for roughly 10 years, I searched for answers in the findings of modern science as well as in a wide range of humankind’s belief systems, both philosophical and religious. Both paths would ultimately converge, leading me to an unlikely faith in Christ.

My study of religious traditions brought me into contact with Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, forms of mysticism and meditation, and various Eastern gurus. Each system offered glimmers of insight, but none felt intellectually satisfying. I wondered whether I would ever find one unified truth about life and the cosmos.

At various points in my research, I encountered references to the “cosmic Christ.” And I decided that a truly objective study would involve familiarizing myself with Christian Scripture, just as I’d done with texts like the Quran. While …

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The major biblical archaeology stories of 2023 contain a lot of doom, destruction, and disappointment. They also contain mysteries that may be resolved by future excavations—and perhaps, in one case, the resolution of an ongoing controversy that has dogged New Testament scholars for the past decade.

The truly important discoveries of 2023, of course, may not be known for years, as it takes time for archaeologists to carefully study the results of their research and then publish their findings in scientific journals. But these are some of the stories that generated headlines for biblical archaeology in 2023.

10. Lost graves in Gaza

Near the end of September, archaeologists in Gaza announced the discovery of graves in a Roman-era cemetery. Crews working under French archaeologist René Elter uncovered important information about the lives of inhabitants along this coastal trade route 2,000 years ago. They found two extremely rare lead coffins—one decorated with ornate grape leaves, the other with images of dolphins—suggesting social elites had been buried there.

“An inconspicuous construction lot—surrounded by a grove of nondescript apartment buildings—has become a gold mine for archaeologists,” the Associated Press reported.

Two weeks later, Hamas militants from Gaza attacked Israel, precipitating a costly war that has probably leveled those nondescript apartment buildings, displacing and perhaps killing their inhabitants. The fate of those working on the site and the site itself is currently unknown. Elter responded to a query about his safety but did not elaborate on the excavation.

The war, of course, disrupted the work of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) across Israel. Some …

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Forgiveness, photography, and funeral feasts: these nuanced and lesser-known stories are worth a read.

One of my favorite aspects of my role as CT’s senior editor of audience engagement is that I get to read every article we publish. One impact of that reading is that I know when a story doesn’t get the attention it deserves. Perhaps that’s because it’s explaining a complex theological concept, offering a nuanced cultural or historical argument, or reporting on a little-known reality in the global church—all of which can be hard to distill in a headline, a social media post, or a line in our daily newsletter.

As you read and reflect at the close of 2023, I offer this list of stories you may have missed this year in our print and digital pages.

Check out the rest of our 2023 year-end lists here.

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This year’s favorite print articles chosen by the editorial team.

In 2023, we published nearly 100 articles in our nine print issues, including 51 feature-length essays. It’s hard to choose, since they’re all of our favorites, but we attempted to narrow down 10 pieces that we felt everyone should read. Here are our print editors’ feature picks for 2023:

Check out the rest of our 2023 year-end lists here.

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The year brought news of revival and tragedy, with ongoing coverage of denominational divides and allegations of abuse in ministry.

This past year may be defined for some evangelicals by the bits of duct tape put over the word United on so many United Methodist Church signs. Or the 152 bullets fired at a Christian school in Nashville, killing six people. Or by the hymns that Tim Keller chose to have sung at his funeral.

There were moments of grace amid a lot of darkness. There was also a lot of darkness. There were tragedies, prayers, votes, big decisions, and little decisions made with great determination, contributing to the ongoing, unfolding shifts in evangelicalism.

As 2023 draws to a close, here are 10 stories that stood out to us as pivotal.

10. New York City Christian College Closures

A number of evangelical colleges saw record enrollment in fall 2023, but Christian higher education still suffered from long-term trends. This year New York City watched the closing of its only two evangelical colleges, The King’s College and Alliance University (formerly Nyack College). Nyack in particular was a historic loss; the Christian and Missionary Alliance school was 140 years old.

9. Mass Shooting at Nashville Christian School

The Covenant School in Nashville was targeted in the most high-profile attack on a Christian school in US history, with a shooter killing three students and three staff during an attack in March. The tragedy led some Covenant families to call for stricter “red flag” laws to prevent gun violence.

8. Church of England’s Same-Sex Blessings

In a long-awaited and long-debated compromise, Anglicans approved on a trial basis special services to bless same-sex couples. Evangelicals feared the decision could split the Church of England, and conservatives from the Global …

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Our most-read stories from around the world, from Brazil to Cambodia to Germany.

Read 20 of Christianity Today’s most popular international stories of 2023. For regions where the church suffered significant disaster or violence, we’ve added additional context from our wider coverage:

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As the war in Ukraine hit the one-year mark, only a tiny minority of Russian Christian leaders had voiced complaint publicly. The response from authorities has been uneven: Minor church figures were fined or jailed, while others continue to use their names on social media.

Others decided to flee after denouncing the conflict. In August, authorities filed charges against Yuri Sipko for publicly disseminating “knowingly false information” against the Russian military. They raided his home and temporarily detained his son. The 71-year-old former president of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists escaped to Germany the week after.

Above, read the story of Mikhail Manzurin, a mid-20-something pastor who broke from his longtime spiritual mentor over the war.

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More than five dozen members of Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church made a permanent move to America earlier this year after failing to find long-term asylum in South Korea and Thailand, having collectively escaped from China in 2019. These “Mayflower” Christians arrived as thousands of migrants from the mainland are trying to enter the United States through various countries in Latin America, deeply disillusioned and dissatisfied with the political and economic realities of today’s China.

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Here is the content readers were most engaged with this year.

Amid wars, political chaos, and church controversies, Christianity Today’s readers came to our site in 2023 for faithful reflections and trustworthy reporting.

In both its topic and reception, our most-read article of the year is a reminder of how God is still at work: Tom McCall’s report from the revival at Asbury University was translated into six additional languages and read by over 470,000 people. And beyond revival coverage, CT readers were particularly interested in church splits, Tim Keller’s legacy, and war in the Holy Land.

Our 10 most-read stories of the year are listed below in descending order. You can find these and other top CT stories of the year here, many of which are also offered in CT Global translations.

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Check out the rest of our 2023 year-end lists here.

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Through Nativity art, the Word takes on flesh across diverse Eastern cultures.

Jesus was born in Asia. He was Asian. Yet the preponderance of Christian art that shows him at home in Europe has meant that he is embedded deeply in the popular imagination as Western.

The artists in this photo essay bring him back to Asia—but not to ancient Israel. They make the birth a local event, translating the story into their own cultural contexts. And so we see Jesus wearing, for example, the bone necklace of an Igorot chief (the Indigenous people of northern Luzon, Philippines) or greeted by water buffalo at a roadside pavilion in Thailand.

Some may object to depicting Jesus as anything other than a brown male born into a Jewish family in Bethlehem of Judea in the first century, believing that doing so undermines his historicity. But Christian artists who tackle the subject of the Incarnation are often aiming not at historical realism but at theological meaning.

By representing Jesus as Japanese, Indonesian, or Indian, they convey a sense of God’s immanence, his “with-us–ness,” for their own communities—and for everyone else, the universality of Christ’s birth.

However, it should be noted that not all Asians prefer Asian-specific representations of Christ. In fact, Christians in Asia tend to prefer the traditional European-style art with which many were introduced to the faith; they consider it the most authentically Christian. Part of this preference has to do with how closely tied certain Asian art styles and forms are to other religions, which most Christian converts want to distance themselves from.

That means that the Asian Christian artist who feels called to depict biblical themes, and to do so in an indigenized way, often does not find widespread support in their own …

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