Dancing with European Nationalism: Israel’s Generation Truth Antisemitism Conference

by Binoy Kampmark / January 28th, 2026

Held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center and called Generation Truth, the second international conference on combating antisemitism was a picture of cracking contradictions. Organised by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, it featured speakers from various far-right groups, many European, and saw Australia’s former Prime Minister and Pentecostal believer, Scott Morrison, address attendees. (The man is obviously touting for gigs.)

The attendance list caused problems prior to last year’s inaugural conference, not least because it included speakers from parties with memberships boasting neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. If this was Chikli’s effort at humour, violating that injunction that Zionism and Nazism shall never be linked, few were laughing. Notable international figures such as the UK’s chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, and Germany’s antisemitism commissioner Felix Klein, cancelled their participation on realising the unsavoury lineup. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt also withdrew from the conference “in light of some of the recently announced participants.”

By 2026, Chikli had learned a few lessons sufficiently to see appearances by Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Jewish Federations of North America President and CEO Eric Fingerhut accede to appearing. Not that those lessons were deep ones. The minister still believed that far-right politicians, notably from Europe, had a role to play in combating antisemitism, much to the consternation of Jewish community leaders and advocates in the diaspora. “We just have a disagreement,” he put it dismissively in an interview with The Times of Israel.

This particular approach involves a calculus on how Islamophobic your counterparts are relative to antisemitism. A rash of antisemitism can well be tolerated as long as the Prophet remains the arch enemy. “The real threat to European Jewry is radical Islam, not the political right,” comes Chikli’s confirmation. The intention was to “form a broad camp to fight together the lethal antisemitism that is coming from within. That’s not to say we can ignore the far left or the far right, but this is the most lethal form of antisemitism that we face.”

Within what is not exactly clear, but presumably it’s the milieu that tolerates nuisance types who think Israeli policies towards Palestinian self-determination and suffering deserve condemnation, including the atrocities, dispossession and ethnic cleansing that has accompanied them. As the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs explained in a media release on January 22, this grievance was antisemitism in progressive guise, “which adopts the language of human rights while in practice working to delegitimize Israel, exclude Jews from the public sphere, and legitimize boycotts.”

These are the very policies that have been found to be genocidal by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory last September, and deemed such by Amnesty International in December 2024 and the International Association of Genocide Scholars in August 2025. Such claims, filed by South Africa, are currently being reviewed by the International Court of Justice.

It would be absurd to expect that indignant protests against such conduct would not follow, be it in the Palestinian diaspora and those sharing solidarity with its cause. But as such protests are seen to be antisemitic for attacking Israel, the argument comes full circle: those holding placards and crying through megaphones are the ones accused of encouraging acts of hatred to Jews in toto, not the diminishing stocks of Israel’s reputation before the mountainous pile of Gazan corpses. In hate, there are the pure and the soiled, with holy writ dispensing with the ambiguities.

The opening address further showed how muddled Chikli is. “This conference seeks to banish political correctness, call the child [antisemitism] by its true name, and mobilise all forces in the ideological and physical struggle against the heirs of the modern Nazis,” he stated in his welcome address. “This is not just the struggle of the Jewish people. This is the struggle of the free world against the imperialism and tyranny of radical Islam.”

Among the far-right figures in evidence was Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson. Willie Silberstein, as chair of Sweden’s Committee Against Anti-Semitism, told the BBC in 2022 when commenting on the rise of the SD that his committee had “a problem with parties that were founded by Nazis. That is not an opinion – that is a piece of fact.” The fact that Åkesson had thought it prudent to suspend the party’s entire youth wing in 2015 over its links to the far right gave Silberstein room to wonder: “If one party is so full of people that need to be excluded because they are Nazis – it says something about that party.”

There was Brazilian Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, father of former President Javier Bolsonaro and self-declared contender for the Brazilian presidency. Rather than acknowledging the throbbing authoritarian lineage through his father, he promoted the importance of removing his country’s current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a man who had likened Israel’s war in Gaza to the Holocaust. Bolsonaro was judicious in referring to the importance of “Judeo-Christian values” and calling Brazil a “Christian, Jewish country”. Were he to be elected, he would move Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem.

Sam van Rooy and Geert Wilders, parliamentarians from both Belgium and the Netherlands, were also there to bulk the show. Hungary’s representative, EU Affairs Minister János Bóka, attended in premier Viktor Orbán’s stead, a figure so finely illustrative of the dangerous nonsense that afflicts Israel’s courting of European nationalism that ran, and to a large extent still runs, on the intoxicating fumes of antisemitic mania. Orbán’s verbal lashings of the Hungarian Jewish financier George Soros, whom he accused of wishing to settle millions of “illegal immigrants” on Europe’s chaste, Christian soil, are hard to discount. The Soros-founded Central European University wasn’t spared either. By way of contrast, one of Hungary’s rather sketchy historical figures, Miklós Horthy, an important if erratic figure in sending Jews to extermination camps during the Second World War, has received praise and admiration for being a capital fellow, a true statesman.

Being in league with the Christers and blood-and-soil brigade is a confounding situation especially seeing how troubled they have been by Jewry. But when one considers that the likes of Chikli, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itama Ben-Gvir are themselves ethnonationalist and believers of the final war of Gog and Magog, those gathering for Armageddon in the Holy Land are going to be having a most interesting if confrontational encounter when the final reckoning is reached. Armageddon is intended to be a bigoted affair.

 

Scott Morrison in Israel

The Preaching Pentecostal

by Binoy Kampmark / January 29th, 2026

Australia’s former Prime Minister and faithful Pentecostational conference on combating antisemitism held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, ambitiously titled Generation Truth.

The December 14, 2025 attack by two ISIS-inspired gunmen on those attending a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach had supplied him with a hot script. Australia’s Albanese government had been previously barked at by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for going wobbly on Israel and soft on Palestinians. Morrison was in hearty agreement, claiming that the Labor government had “walked away from the Jewish state while antisemitism has taken root in Australia”, feeding the hate through unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood.

In keeping with various Christian groups of the right, Morrison is of the view that Israeli interests need to be protected, shielded and treasured against other, undesirable members of the Book. Christians and Jews can make a common alliance against their enemies, even if evangelical Christianity has a well-stocked reserve of antisemitic attitudes. As Prime Minister, Morrison recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite its contested status in international law, going so far as to open a Trade and Defence Office there in 2019. In 2021, his government officially adopted the definition of antisemitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), one that fudges criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism. Since losing office he has been further courting Israel’s favour by attacking the United Nations for being a forum for antisemitism garbed in the argot of human rights.

The January 27 address recapitulated these points, and more. He pointed to a five-fold rise in antisemitic incidents in Australia following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas. Context, such as Israel’s historical suppression of Palestinian autonomy and its ruthless campaign of pulverisation in Gaza, was absent. Regular protests in Sydney and Melbourne, including a Sydney Harbour Bridge march numbering 100,000 people, were all cut from the same cloth of antisemitism. Again, Israel’s conduct and policies deserved no mention, while slogans such as “from the river to the sea” and “globalising the intifada” could only be seen as antisemitic declarations.

With political illiteracy typical of the man, Morrison then linked the protests and a softer approach to Palestinian statehood directly to the Bondi attacks, his mind unblemished by any understanding about what ISIS is, and its hostility to Hamas. Shades, here, of the sham groupthink that marked Cold War analysis from Washington to Canberra on monolithic communism. Just as communism of the Chinese, Soviet and Vietnamese character was just communism, so can all forms of Islamism be considered identical.

The usual cod analysis of the “progressive Left”, with its “neo-Marxist identity frameworks” and the “radical Right”, with its “conspiratorial and ethno-nationalist forms”, are offered, both serving as the conduit for “grievance politics”. “When failure is moralised as systemic injustice, liberal norms collapse.” This is the golden apologia for Israel writ large: do not blame institutions and injustice as having any consequences, the spawn of their practices. Abandon grievance; it has no role.

This sets the scene for Morrison’s real concern, and in this, he was keeping to the theme pushed by Chikli from the outset. Whatever the issues on the Left and Right of politics, Islam posed the greatest antisemitic threat, with its “imported European conspiracy theories, recasting Jews as a hidden enemy responsible for global disorder.”

His solution to such malignancy in a Western secular context? More religion, not less. Morrison quotes Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks quoting Jonathan Swift: “we have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love.” But the faith in question had to be of the “good” sort, an inward individual consideration, rather than the “bad” variety that externalised the grievance and made people rush for placards, street rallies and arms.

That bilious right-wing figures demanding the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza have more than enough religion to go around (Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich come to mind) suggests this formula to be flawed. But Morrison singles out Islamic leaders and institutions within Australia as alone in lacking accountability. What was needed was “a recognised accreditation framework for imams, a national register for public-facing roles, clear training and conduct requirements, and disciplinary authority for governing councils.” Sermons should also be translated into English, and links to foreign Islamic groups policed and curbed.

In Australia, Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg spoke approvingly of the former PM’s tarnishing method, with Australian Muslims having to “take some responsibility” for terrorist acts. “Unfortunately,” he told ABC radio on January 28, “there has been a mutation of Islam in Australia and other Western countries where they have sought to kill citizens, not just Jewish people, but other citizens.”

The Australian National Imams Council (ANIC), the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils (AFIC) and the Islamic Council of Victoria were suitably unimpressed. Chief executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Zakaria Wahid, made the far from startling point that the Australian government did “not hold entire communities accountable for acts of violence committed by individuals, and the same standard must apply to Muslims.”

Morrison has shown that he can be a good Pentecostal when required, demonstrating the sort of charity that never leaves his home or the halls of the Hill Song Church. As a cabinet minister and prime minister in various conservative governments, he showed a glacial contempt for women, welfare recipients, refugees, asylum seekers, those warning about climate change and open government. As prime minister, he gave Australia AUKUS, a criminally exorbitant, foolishly negotiated security pact between Canberra, London and Washington that has turned his country into an American satellite and forward base against China. But his less than secular admiration for Israel has won him friends, a point Chikli has unreservedly acknowledged. No doubt some well remunerated consultancy work is in the bag.

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Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

How Christian Reconstructionism influences US politics: scholar

A Christian chruch service on July 8, 2024 (Paul Shuang/Shutterstock.com)

Art Jipson
The Conversation

January 12, 2026 

Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism that argues society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.

Taking shape in the late 1950s, Christian Reconstructionism developed into a more organized movement during the 1960s and 1970s.

It was born from the ideas of theologian R. J. Rushdoony, an influential Armenian-American Calvinist philosopher, theologian and author. In his 1973 book, “The Institutes of Biblical Law,” Rushdoony argued that Old Testament laws should still apply to modern society. He supported the death penalty not only for murder but also for offenses listed in the text such as adultery, blasphemy, homosexuality, witchcraft and idolatry.

As a scholar of political and religious extremism, I am familiar with this movement. Its following has been typically very small – never more than a few thousand committed adherents at its peak. But since the 1980s, its ideas have spread far beyond its limited numbers through books, churches and broader conservative Christian networks.

The movement helped knit together a network of theologians, activists and political thinkers who shared a belief that Christians are called to “take dominion” over society and exercise authority over civil society, law and culture.

These ideas continue to resonate across many areas of American religious and political life.
Origins of Christian Reconstructionism

Rushdoony’s ideas were born from a radical interpretation of Reformed Christianity – a branch of Protestant Christianity that follows the teachings of John Calvin and other reformers. It emphasizes God’s authority, the Bible as the ultimate guide and salvation through God’s grace rather than human effort.

Rushdoony’s ideas led him to found The Chalcedon Foundation in 1965, a think tank and publishing house promoting Christian Reconstructionism. It served as the movement’s main hub, producing books, position papers, articles and educational materials on applying biblical law to modern society.

It helped train Greg Bahnsen, an Orthodox Presbyterian theologian, and Gary North, a Christian reconstructionist writer and historian, both of whom went on to take key leadership roles in the movement.

At the heart of reconstructionism lies the conviction that politics, economics, education and culture are all arenas where divine authority should reign. Secular democracy, they argued, was inherently unstable, a system built on human opinion rather than divine truth.

These ideas were, and remain, deeply controversial. Many theologians, including conservatives within the Reformed tradition, rejected Rushdoony’s argument that ancient Israel’s civil laws should apply in modern states.
Christian dominionism and different networks

Nonetheless, reconstructionist ideas grew as people who more broadly believed in dominionism began to align with it. Dominionism is a broader ideology advocating Christian influence over culture and politics without requiring literal enforcement of biblical law.

Dominionism did not begin as a single, unified movement. Rather, it emerged in overlapping strands during the same period that Christian Reconstructionism was developing.

Between the 1960s and 1980s, Christian Reconstructionism helped turn dominionist beliefs into an explicit political project by grounding them in theology and outlining how biblical law should govern society. Religion historian Michael J. McVicar explains that Rushdoony’s work advocated applied biblical law as both a theological and political alternative to secular governance. This helped in influencing the trajectory of the Christian right.

At the same time, parallel streams – especially within charismatic and Pentecostal circles – advanced similar claims about Christian authority over society using different theological language.

The broad network of those who believe in Christian dominionism includes several approaches: Rushdoony’s reconstructionism, which provides the theological foundation, and charismatic kingdom theology.

Charismatic kingdom theology, which emerged in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, teaches that believers – empowered by the Holy Spirit – should shape politics, culture and society before Christ’s return.

Unlike reconstructionism, it emphasizes prophecy and spiritual authority rather than formal biblical law; it seeks influence over institutions such as government, education and culture.

What unites them is the idea that Christian faith should be the basis of the nation’s moral and political order.

Taken together, I argue that these strands have reinforced one another, creating a larger movement of thinkers and activists than any single approach could achieve alone.
From reconstructionism to the New Apostolic Reformation

Christian reconstructionist and dominionist ideas gained wider popularity through C. Peter Wagner, a leading charismatic theologian who helped shape the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, by adapting elements of Christian Reconstructionism. NAR is a charismatic movement that builds on dominionist ideas by emphasizing the use of spiritual gifts and apostolic leadership to shape society.

Wagner emphasized spiritual warfare, prophecy and modern apostles taking control of seven key areas – family, church, government, education, media, business and the arts – to reshape society under biblical authority. This is known as the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”

Both revisionist and dominionist movements share the belief that Christians should lead cultural institutions.

Wagner’s dominion theology, however, adapts Christian Reconstructionism to a charismatic context, transforming the goal of a Christian society into a spiritually driven movement aimed at influencing culture and governments worldwide.
Doug Wilson and homeschooling

Another key bridge between reconstructionism and contemporary dominionist thought is Doug Wilson, a pastor and author in Moscow, Idaho.

Though Wilson distances himself from some of reconstructionism’s harsher edges, he draws heavily from Rushdoony’s intellectual framework. Wilson’s influence can be seen in publications such as “Reforming Marriage,” where he argues for applying biblical principles to law, education and family life.

He has promoted Christian schools, traditional family roles and living out a “Christian worldview” in everyday life, bringing reconstructionist ideas into new areas of society.

Through his writings, teaching and leadership within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches – the CREC – network, Wilson encourages a vision of society shaped by Christian values, connecting reconstructionist thought to contemporary cultural engagement.

Wilson’s publishing house, Canon Press, and his classical school movement have brought these ideas into thousands of Christian homes and classrooms across the U.S. His local congregation – the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho – numbers around 1,300.

The Christian homeschooling movement offers parents a curriculum steeped in reformed theology and resistance to secular education.
Enduring influence

Some critics warn that the fusion of dominionist and reconstructionist theology with political action can weaken pluralism and democratic norms by pressuring laws and policies to reflect a single religious worldview. They argue that even moderated forms of these visions challenge the separation of church and state. They risk undermining the rights of religious minorities, nonreligious citizens and others who do not share the movement’s beliefs.

Supporters frame their mission as the renewal of a moral society, one in which divine authority provides the foundation for human flourishing.

Today, Christian Reconstructionism operates through small but influential networks of churches, Christian homeschool associations and media outlets. Its reach extends far beyond its original movement.

Even among those unfamiliar with Rushdoony, the political and theological patterns he helped shape remain visible in modern evangelical activism and the ongoing debates over religion’s place in American public life.

Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

MAGA claims of 'massive religious revival' meticulously debunked

CEO of Turning Point USA Erika Kirk reacts as she speaks during AmericaFest, the first Turning Point USA summit since the death of Charlie Kirk, in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. December 18, 2025. REUTERS/Cheney Orr

Alex Henderson

January 07, 2026

ALTERNET


Christian nationalist themes were alive and well at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest 2025 gathering at the Phoenix Convention Center, which found Vice President JD Vance declaring that the United States "always will be a Christian nation." But that claim was debunked by MS NOW's Steve Benen, who noted what the Founding Fathers had to say on the subject — for example, John Adams, in 1797, writing that "The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion," and Thomas Jefferson saying, in 1802, that the U.S. Constitution created "a wall of separation between church and state."

Another prominent Christian nationalist theme at AmericaFest 2025 is that the U.S. is seeing a widespread evangelical renaissance, which is also what the Moral Majority's Rev. Jerry Falwell Sr. claimed during the 1980s. But Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in an article published on January 7, counters that the U.S. is moving in a more "secular" direction — not converting to evangelical Christian fundamentalism in huge numbers.

"For decades now," Marcotte explains, "the Christian Right has been the most powerful and influential force in the GOP, and yet even by their standards, this marked a dramatic shift toward the theocratic impulse. From a purely rational perspective, this is bad politics. Only 23 percent of Americans identify as evangelicals. Trump was able to win in 2024 only by convincing large numbers of people outside of evangelical Christianity that he has a secular worldview. This was aided by the fact that he quite clearly doesn't believe all the Christian language, both coded and overt, his aides coax him to say."

The Salon journalist continues, "But none of that seems to register with MAGA leadership right now. They've convinced themselves — or at least are trying to persuade their donors and followers — that the U.S. is undergoing a massive religious revival. Right-wing media has been pushing the view that huge numbers of Americans, especially young Americans, are converting to fundamentalist Christianity."

Right-wing media, Marcotte observes, are claiming that the murder of Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk in September is fueling a "tidal wave of Americans, especially young Americans, discovering or returning to Christianity." But that "imaginary religious awakening," she stresses, isn't materializing.

"There is no evidence-based reason to believe there's a religious revival among the young that is about to create massive election windfalls for Republicans," Marcotte writes. "On the contrary, a December report from Pew Research found that, 'on average, young adults remain much less religious than older Americans. Today's young adults also are less religious than young people were a decade ago.'"

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

Can evangelical faith in Israel survive MAGA and the Gaza war? Israel is betting millions on it

(RNS) — Conservatives have long seen supporting Israel as an act of faith. Now, critics such as Tucker Carlson say Christian Zionism is a heresy, while more progressive Christian voices denounce Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

U.S. Christian pastors and influencers wave Israeli flags as they visit at Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Bob Smietana and Yonat Shimron
December 23, 2025
RNS


(RNS) — On Jan. 6, about 100 North Carolina pastors and their wives will travel to Israel on an all-expenses-paid trip. They will tour Galilee, where Jesus ministered, and go to Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified. On Jan. 11, they’ll have a private dinner with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.

The trip is organized by the American Renewal Project, a group dedicated to mobilizing evangelical pastors to run for office. An anonymous donor gave David Lane, a Texas political operative and evangelical Christian, $2 million for the effort.

“We believe in the Abrahamic covenant,” Lane said. “God said to Abraham, I give you my word that I’m going to give you the land. So the land is the Jews’, and because we’re evangelicals, we have been grafted in. And you know, the evangelicals are the best friends of Israel.”

But those beliefs are changing. Pro-Israel evangelicals, sometimes known as Christian Zionists, have found themselves under fire in recent months from their fellow conservatives — including podcasters and provocateurs Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens — and from Palestinian Christians and other U.S. activists who reject the idea that the modern state of Israel is the same construct as the ancient Israel of the Hebrew Bible.

Palestinian Christians at Chicago conference ask fellow believers to stand against Gaza war

In the wake of the devastating war in Gaza — in which more than 70,000 Palestinians (the majority of whom are reported to be women and children) have been killed — many younger Americans, including evangelicals, have become skeptical of Israel and of the billions of dollars in taxpayer-funded weapons the U.S. provides to it.

The latest University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll found a growing gap between younger and older evangelical Republicans. While 59% of older evangelical Republicans (age 35 and older) said Israeli actions in Gaza were justified, only 36% of younger evangelical Republicans (ages 18 to 34) said the same.

Mike Evans, left, founder of the Friends of Zion Heritage Center in Jerusalem, stands with freed hostages during a ceremony with U.S. Christian pastors and influencers at the site of the Nova music festival, where hundreds of revelers were killed and abducted by Hamas in 2023, near Kibbutz Reim, southern Israel, Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

That pushback blew up online earlier this month after a video of U.S. evangelical Mike Evans, speaking to a group of 1,000 evangelical pastors, went viral. The video showed the pastors on a mass trip to Israel, organized by the Christian Zionist group Evans founded, Friends of Zion.

Evans professed his love for Israel in the video, and critics on social media began to claim he had sold out America by promoting a foreign country. The trip was funded partially by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs “to secure religious and political support for Israel.”

“We’re going to train 100,000 Christian ambassadors to be ambassadors in their own country, for the state of Israel, to defend Israel’s brand and to combat antisemitism,” Evans said in a video clip.

Evans has also feuded with Carlson, especially after the latter criticized Christian Zionists during an interview with Nick Fuentes, who has espoused antisemitic views. Evans told The Jerusalem Post that Carlson made comments Evans thought were reminiscent of the Nazis.

In a recent interview with podcaster Theo Von, Carlson accused Israel of genocide and called it an insignificant country that the U.S. should abandon. He also denounced pastors such as Evans who refused to criticize the war in Gaza, saying they’d made “deals” with the Israeli government.

(Image by Tumisu/Pixabay/Creative Commons)

That uproar came on the heels of another controversy about a plan to target megachurches with pro-Israel messages. Earlier this year, a Christian marketing group called Show Faith by Works began work on a $3.2 million marketing project paid for by the Israeli government.

The Show Faith by Works project includes creating a traveling pro-Israel museum for display at churches, Christian colleges and Christian events, and a “geofencing” campaign targeting churchgoers with pro-Israel ads, according to the filing under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Geofencing is a form of digital marketing that promotes messages to consumers within specified physical locations.

The goal of the project is “encouraging Christians to have a more favorable view of the Nation of Israel, and to encourage Christians to visit Israel for tourism purposes,” according to the filing.

The geofencing campaign, which came under criticism from several Christian denominations that had churches targeted, including the United Methodist Church, has since stalled.

“We feel like the comments about geofencing were intentionally misleading by those who wanted to slander the project,” Chad Schnitger, a marketing professional for Show Faith by Works, said in an email. “Geofencing is a common marketing tool that has been used for over a decade and cannot be used to track people.”

Both controversies revealed that Christian Zionists are now facing political realities for which they were not prepared.

“It’s really become a multifront struggle for the traditional pro-Israel evangelical position — not just a one-front, left-right struggle,” said Daniel G. Hummel, author of the book “Covenant Brothers,” which looks at how Christian Zionism has shaped the relationship between the U.S. and Israel. “I’m not sure if there are really robust strategies yet on how to address it.”

Attendees watch monitors as Tucker Carlson speaks during Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest 2025, Dec. 18, 2025, in Phoenix. (RNS photo/Kathryn Post)

In podcasts, webcasts and vertical video platforms such as TikTok, conservative influencers including Carlson, Owens and Fuentes traffic in conspiracy theories and inflammatory comments that often veer into antisemitism. Owens has also been among those who have tied the assassination of Charlie Kirk to Israel, without evidence.

Criticism of Israel has also grown from centrist evangelicals.

“If you truly care about the people of Israel, you have to also care about their Palestinian neighbors, even for the sake of the security of Israel,” said Mae Elise Cannon, executive director of Churches for Middle East Peace, a coalition of 36 Christian denominations, mostly Protestant but also Orthodox and Catholic, that advocate for equality, human rights, security and justice in the Holy Land.

These U.S. churches are particularly concerned with the plight of Palestinian Christians, who have faced military occupation, forced displacement, discrimination and persecution at the hands of Israel. Yet concern for Palestinian Christians has been minimized by U.S. evangelicals or wholly ignored because of their unflagging support for Israel.

Recently, another collective, the Network of Evangelicals for the Middle East, has formed, advocating for peace, justice and engagement among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the region. One of its members, Randy Tomlinson, a Southern Baptist layman who lives in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, said he’s been hearing concerns from a lot from older pastors in the denomination.

“Twenty-six months into this war, more and more people are saying, ‘I look at what I’m seeing in the land and I’m not sure I can square that with my faith, and I don’t know what to do about it,’” Tomlinson said.

He doesn’t advocate abandoning Israel, but he does think evangelicals need to think more critically about Israel’s actions.

“I can ask God to bless the Jewish people but that doesn’t preclude me from loving the Palestinian people, from my heart breaking for the Palestinian church that’s dying,” he said. “We’re a generation or two away from not being the church in this place where the church started, and so, I think we need to get out of that zero-sum mindset, and get back to a point where it could be both.”

Evangelicals have long seen Israel’s rebirth in 1948 and the capture of the West Bank and Gaza during the 1967 Six-Day War as signs that biblical prophecy has been fulfilled. Beliefs about the end times and the second coming of Jesus are often tied to Israel — in large part because of the strain of theology known as dispensationalism, which has flourished over the last 200 years. That theology inspired the idea of the rapture, the popular “Left Behind” book series, and other apocalyptic tales.

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But that theology has started to fade, especially with the evangelical resurgence of Reformed theology based on the works of John Calvin. And if Christian Zionist groups can no longer count on a theological consensus among evangelicals about Israel, that’s a problem. “That’s where you’re basically turning it into a PR political conversation and Israel doesn’t look great in that conversation in recent years,” Hummel said.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry, aware its public profile has crashed, has allocated $150 million in its annual budget to rehabilitate its image, especially among evangelicals. Responsible Statecraft reported that that includes a $6 million contract with a firm called Clock Tower X, owned by former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale, to deliver “at least 100 core pieces of content per month” — including videos, audio, podcasts, graphics and text — and “5,000 derivative versions” monthly. The project will help game algorithms and manage artificial-intelligence frameworks with a positive message about Israel. The campaign messages will be distributed via Salem Media Network, a conservative Christian media group.


Israel’s foreign ministry also has a campaign with Bridges Partners, a Washington-based consulting firm, to create an influencer network called the Esther Project (of no relation to the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther). Influencers can earn as much as $7,000 per post.

The publicity produced for these campaigns not only portrays Israel in a good light, it also characterizes Palestinians chiefly through the prism of Hamas. It asserts that Palestinians are complicit in Hamas’ leadership, financing and military operations and accuses them of sheltering terrorists.

Many evangelical groups are still invested in helping Israel. Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project, is developing a new program called Generation Zion, aimed at training young evangelicals and young Jews as advocates for Israel. Moon, who said the Philos Project gets no funding from Israel, attended AmericaFest, an annual conservative event organized by Turning Point USA, this past week, hoping to recruit students and other younger Americans to support Israel.

Moon recently left the task force dedicated to fighting antisemitism within the conservative Heritage Foundation after its president, Kevin Roberts, defended Carlson’s podcast with Fuentes.

He believes a straightforward reading of the Bible shows that Israel should matter to Christians.

Along with the decline of dispensationalism and the rise of conservative critics, pro-Israel groups face more pragmatic challenges, Moon said.

Philos Project logo. Courtesy image

“We don’t have a good grasp on social media, on the pro-Israel side,” he said.

Hummel said some Christian Zionists have begun citing what he called “blessing theology” to promote the idea that Christians should support Israel. Some of those Christian Zionists are Pentecostal or charismatic Christians who see supporting Israel as part of the prosperity gospels. Others are Southern Baptists or evangelicals who say that the Bible commands them to support Israel.

Earlier this year, when Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist minister, visited the City of David — an archaeological site in Jerusalem — he quoted from a familiar passage of Genesis to justify U.S. support for Israel. “Those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed,” he said, quoting Genesis 12, according to his official remarks. “And I come here tonight because I’d rather have a blessing than a curse.”

Evans, of Friends of Zion, worries younger evangelicals and younger Americans generally will no longer support Israel. He blamed America’s universities for that, as well as online influencers such as Carlson, who have large audiences. Evans has seen the polling, and things don’t look good.

“The Israel haters have achieved an astonishing amount of damage to the young generation,” he said.

Evans said that while he loves Israel, he does not believe the nation always does the right thing, in the same way that the U.S. has flaws. For him, there’s a more fundamental connection to Israel that’s inspired pastors to support Israel.

“Their faith came out of this land,” he said. “Their Bible came out of this land. So that’s their connection. It’s not about politics or prophecy.”

And there are plenty of evangelical pastors who will still gladly travel to Israel, especially on a free trip.

Mike Burner, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Statesville, North Carolina, is one of them. He and his wife, Lobby, will be part of the group heading to Israel next month with the American Renewal Project.

“I’m in love with the Lord, and the Lord loves Israel,” Mike Burner said. “So, I’m going to love Israel. Do I think Israel is still the apple of his eye? I do. God said he is going to save Israel. I believe that. I believe that’s one of the promises he makes, and he keeps every one of his promises.”

Now other evangelicals are saying that uncritical support for Israel is un-Christian.

“That’s not Jesus’ way, that’s not peacemaking,” Tomlinson said. “That’s not caring for the other, that’s not praying for those who persecute you. I cannot hear Jesus saying that.”

AMERIKA

'There is no Christmas for separated families': Pastors tend to immigrant families in crisis

LOS ANGELES (RNS) — As Los Angeles pastors lead congregations and preach about the meaning of Christmas, they’re facing the emotional devastation of families struggling to cling to hope.

A Christmas Nativity scene portrayed as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center sits on display in front of the Oak Lawn United Methodist Church, in Dallas, Dec. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Aleja Hertzler-McCain
December 23, 2025
RNS


LOS ANGELES (RNS) — Nine days before Christmas, a group of clergy huddled around a young mother outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, praying for a Christmas miracle that a judge would set bond for her husband at a hearing the following day and release him from immigration detention.

Melanie, 21, who agreed to speak to RNS on the condition that only her first name be used, has been nursing a hope for months that her husband, an immigrant from Nicaragua, would be back home in time to celebrate their infant twins’ first Christmas.

In July, as her husband prepared for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-in at the federal building, Melanie was confident he would be spared detention because, she told him, “we’ve been doing things right.” Leaving nothing to chance, she decided the family would go to the check-in together. Surely, she thought, they wouldn’t detain him in front of his wife, a U.S. citizen, and three kids.

But after her husband had filled out forms and answered agents’ questions about his tattoos, he was taken into a separate room. After 15 minutes, “ all of a sudden, I hear him screaming my name,” Melanie recalled.

Running to him, she saw he had been handcuffed. “ I felt like the whole world just fell on top of me,” she said. With her kids watching, the agents “cornered” her, not letting her approach her husband or say goodbye, but she said, “ I could just tell in his face that he was scared.”

Within five minutes, she was escorted out into the hot July sun. Without their father, there weren’t enough hands to carry the twins’ car seats and her toddler daughter.

The Revs. Carlos and Amparo Rincón post a video to social media from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. (Video screen grab)

It was there, stranded on the sidewalk, that Melanie met the Revs. Amparo and Carlos Rincón, married Pentecostal pastors who belong to a network of Los Angeles faith leaders who are supporting families broken apart by the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies.

“She looked younger than my daughter,” said Carlos. His wife approached the crying mother, whose eldest was inconsolable after what she had witnessed. The Rincóns have since helped Melanie with diapers, baby formula and groceries, in addition to praying for her and offering to pay her 25-year-old husband’s bond through Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, colloquially known as CLUE.

Amparo and other women lead an interfaith group with CLUE that meets every Tuesday to march in prayer around the federal building, a center for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The group calls itself the Godmothers of the Disappeared.

Melanie’s family is just one of many the pastors have found on their weekly visits. Carlos Rincón said his church, which he asked not be named out of fear of retaliation, is supporting about 25 families. One woman, a wife separated from her detained husband, texted RNS in Spanish: “There is no Christmas for separated families.”

Carlos and another group of pastors with his organization Matthew 25, alongside CLUE, plan to break away from their other pastoral responsibilities on Christmas Eve to hold a vigil outside the downtown ICE center, preaching one of his central messages that “ God himself experienced what immigrants experience.”

Detainees at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Eloy Detention Facility in Eloy, AZ. (Photo by Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, File)

Even so, he acknowledges, “it is hard.” He said, “ there are too many needs and too many people in so many difficult situations.”

As Advent came and the Rincóns preached about the meaning of Christmas, they faced the emotional devastation of families struggling to cling to hope. It wasn’t until Dec. 1, when Olga, a worship team leader, learned her husband had been detained, that the detentions affected the church directly.

Since then, Olga wakes up too depressed to sing. She’s having trouble eating and sleeping. Despite that, she said in Spanish, “I try to go (to church) because I know God is the one who gives me the strength to continue. He is the one who is with me every day.”

But still, Olga said, “because of what we’re living through, I don’t have a head to think. It doesn’t feel like it’s Christmastime.”

The Revs. Melvin and Ada Valiente. (Courtesy photo)

The Rev. Ada Valiente, who supports at least 30 separated families with her husband, Melvin, through their We Care ministry, said that several mothers are suffering a mental health crisis. Struggling to make practical plans to address their immediate needs and unable to plan for their future, they have little time to think about celebrating Christmas.

The Valientes, who lead two American Baptist Churches USA congregations in Los Angeles County, hear about families in need of support from other pastors, other immigrants in the detention centers or sometimes the families themselves.

While the couple will offer advice and recommend reliable immigration attorneys to anyone who reaches out, they prioritize the people with the highest needs — detainees with no family, or whose family cannot visit them because they lack legal status themselves or lack resources. Holistic support provided may include prayer, financial assistance or visits to detained and separated family members.

Melanie and an immigrant mother under the Valientes’ care who requested anonymity because she lacks legal status both said they had been charged thousands of dollars by immigration attorneys who made no effort to help the detained men.

In the months since Melanie’s husband was detained, she has managed to finish his active construction contracts. She had to give up their first apartment and move back in with her mother, who helps with the kids. Melanie also followed the legal details of her husband’s case until she found a new attorney, who was willing to sleep in the detention center’s lobby in order to see her husband.

Melanie met her husband in 2022, when her Nicaraguan mother threw a birthday party for the newly arrived fellow Nicaraguan, who had crossed into the United States legally via the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app. He was granted parole while seeking political asylum.

She said her husband is requesting asylum based on his claim that he was wrongly incarcerated in Nicaragua for two years before being pardoned. “He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. He’d already applied to be a permanent U.S. resident before he was detained in LA.

‘We are the life of the church right now’: Bishop Chau talks Latino Catholics, inclusion

Several of the other women receiving help from the Rincóns and Valientes also fled the human rights crisis of Nicaragua, where co-Presidents Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, have decimated civil society, including religious institutions, and instituted authoritarian rule. One woman told RNS her detained husband had been arrested, beaten and threatened with worse after participating in a march. They fled Nicaragua, leaving their children behind with relatives. When her husband was detained in the U.S., he was still in need of medical care for injuries from his beating.

Another woman told RNS that she and her now-detained partner refused to join the Ortegas’ socialist Sandinista Party because of their Christian faith, despite threats of physical harm to them and their son. Unless they joined, they were told, they would not be protected by the police. Twice, her husband was detained without cause in Nicaragua, she said.

Both women asked for anonymity because they fear deportation.

Ada Valiente, whose brother was a political prisoner of Nicaragua’s conservative Somoza dictatorship, fled with her family to the U.S. when she was a child, arriving without legal documentation but later becoming a citizen. A bivocational social worker before she retired to work full time in ministry, she has long assisted migrants from Nicaragua and political asylum-seekers.

Valiente’s faith calls her “ to help the most vulnerable and those that don’t have a voice,” she said. Every other Thursday, her women’s group members go to the detention center, where they sometimes are a detained immigrant’s first visitors in six months. “We all cry with them,” she said.

While many detained immigrants find strength in each other or in Bible study, many of those she visits are on psychotropic medications because of depression, anxiety or an inability to sleep, said Valiente. They’ll have limited access to Christmas services because there is only one chaplain for three detention centers, and while pastors like the Valientes can visit, they cannot hold services.

In the weeks before Christmas, even as the Valientes’ congregations prepare for the holiday, Ada Valiente is trying to talk one detained and demoralized man out of signing his deportation papers, while meeting with his wife to make a plan. For a mother who has received an eviction notice since her husband has been detained, Valiente is trying to secure rental assistance. (The woman, Valiente said, may receive a deportation order herself any minute.)

Telling her congregation about the work a few weeks ago, Valiente couldn’t hold back tears. “As normal as it is, you get a little bit with the blues at Christmas,” she said.

Olga said her 10-year-old son, Kevin, a U.S. citizen, told her, “I don’t want to spend Christmas or New Year’s without my dad,” and she has had to tell him, “It’s not in my hands.” Kevin also worries about his mom. When she was late coming home one night, he was sobbing, thinking she too had been detained, Olga said.

One Nicaraguan woman who asked to remain anonymous said she struggles to afford the per-minute charges to talk with her husband on a detention phone. They limit themselves to brief exchanges a couple of times a day, when he asks whether she’s taken her medication or whether she’s eaten her lunch.

When she spoke with RNS in October, she was sleeping in their twin bed holding his pajamas and spending her days beside the giant teddy bear he bought her. In the months since then, she’s had to leave the apartment, sell many of their things and find a job.

On the night Melanie’s husband was detained, one of the twins spent the night with a fever because, she said, he had spent too much time on the sidewalk in the sun when his mother was stranded. She and another mother requesting anonymity said their small children had lost weight since their fathers were detained.

Melanie’s toddler also struggled to sleep, she said: “ The day they detained him, all they gave me was a little plastic bag with his necklace and his watch, so she would just carry it around the house and be like, ‘Papa, Papa.’”

Melanie’s tattoo reading “With pain comes strength.” (RNS photo/Aleja Hertzler-McCain)

Latino pastors look to refit preaching and pastoral care to trauma of mass deportations

All four women told RNS they lean on their faith, trusting in God to give them strength.

The Nicaraguan mother who fled with her kids said in Spanish that she told her son: “My love, if you want to be with your dad, we have to kneel down every day, because only God can help us. God can touch the heart of the president so that he stops doing these things.”

She added: “We pray for the president, we pray for the immigration officials to understand that what they’re doing is not right because they’re hurting our family.”

Just a week before Christmas Eve, or “Nochebuena” for Latino Christians, Olga’s Guatemalan husband folded to the pressure to sign his own deportation papers, despite Carlos Rincón’s warnings.

“He was putting on a lot of stress and he was threatened, saying that if you don’t sign, we will deport you anyway, and we’re gonna make it harder for you, or if you don’t sign, you will stay for years here, detained,” said the pastor.

And the same day, Melanie’s husband’s bond was denied, with no hearing in sight until April.

“That’s my job, I guess — right now, trying to be with people that are receiving very bad news,” Rincón said.

Churches deliver Christmas to immigrants detained, deported and in hiding

(RNS) — Clergy, churches and other religious organizations wrestle with how to mark one of the most important Christian holidays while also serving an immigrant population in crisis.

Bishop Brendan Cahill, bishop of the Diocese of Victoria in Texas, preaches to migrants during an Advent service at the Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries Casa del Migrante, Nov. 30, 2025, in Brownsville, Texas. (Photo courtesy of the Rev. Brian Strassburger)

Jack Jenkins and Aleja Hertzler-McCain
December 24, 2025
RNS


(RNS) — Earlier this month, the Rev. Pilar Pérez, a United Methodist minister in the denomination’s Western North Carolina Conference, called up a parishioner who hadn’t been to worship in a while. The pastor encouraged the congregant to attend Christmas services, even offering to give her a ride.

“I was begging her: ‘I’ll go and pick you up,’” Pérez said.

The parishioner could not be convinced. She told Pérez that come Christmas, her family planned to mark the Christian holiday the safest way they know how: by watching the service on Facebook Live.

Pérez understood. Like many immigrant families, the family members have barely left their home in recent weeks out of fear of encountering federal immigration agents. It’s a fear they believe is well founded, as immigration officers have detained and deported thousands across the country, including at least one person in North Carolina who was just outside a church.

The Rev. Pilar Pérez. (Photo courtesy of WNCCUMC)

“That’s where they are,” said Pérez, who has spent recent months delivering groceries and other necessities to such families.

Faith leaders are facing similar situations across the country this Christmas season, as clergy, churches and other religious organizations wrestle with how to mark one of the most important Christian holidays while also serving an immigrant population in crisis.

The Rev. Melvin Valiente, who pastors two Los Angeles County Baptist churches with his wife, Ada, said he is preaching a specific message to his congregations this holiday season: “Jesus knows what it is to be an immigrant, knows what it is to be persecuted.”

He also uses a system that sends out personalized texts with Bible verses, hoping Christmas messages of peace can connect with members who are too afraid to come to church.

Their church members will also be preparing bags of food for families outside their congregation who have a detained loved one or are too afraid to go out, both to fortify them with regular groceries and help them celebrate a special dinner for “Nochebuena,” or Christmas Eve. One church member plans to host lonely immigrants at her own Nochebuena dinner.

RELATED: ‘There is no Christmas for separated families’: Pastors tend to immigrant families in crisis

Back in North Carolina, attendance at Pérez’s majority-immigrant church has dropped as much as 40% since November, she said, when a surge of immigration agents deployed to her state for a week. In her congregation, 11 families essentially haven’t left their homes since.

The pastor compared the situation to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when churches avoided meeting in person and moved worship services online.

“Isolation is hurtful — it’s hurtful spiritually, emotionally and physically,” Pérez said.

In response, Pérez’s church has partnered with another nearby Methodist congregation to offer an additional layer of protection for churchgoers. Over the past few weeks, the pastor of a nearby partner congregation has come to the church and sat near the door during worship — and plans to do so during Christmas services as well. The idea, Pérez says, is for the partner pastor to be the first person immigration enforcement officers encounter should they ever approach the church.

People protest against federal immigration enforcement, Nov. 15, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/Erik Verduzco)

Pérez and others have also delivered weekly food boxes to congregants who are still staying home, an effort bolstered by an influx of donations: A local Christmas giving ministry shifted its efforts to the nearby immigrant population, with 80% of donations heading to Hispanic families.

The Rev. Luke Edwards oversees a separate fund set up by the Western North Carolina Conference after the Charlotte raids for the needs of immigrant congregations, such as legal costs and rent.

But even with the influx of resources, Edwards said, communities are struggling. He noted that many of the Hispanic churches he works with traditionally celebrate Las Posadas, reenactments of the Christmas story, in December.

But this year, “They’re either canceling those, scaling them back, rescheduling them or moving things onto Zoom,” he said. The federal government’s mass deportation effort, Edwards said, “is impacting our churches’ ability to worship.”

In Boston, Bishop Nicolas Homicil said his largely Haitian flagship church, Voice of the Gospel Tabernacle Church, still plans to have in-person worship on Christmas, but it’s expecting lighter attendance than the up-to-300 it typically draws.

The Trump administration is slated to revoke Temporary Protected Status for Haitians on Feb. 3.

“We don’t want to fool ourselves to say, ‘Yes, we expect the church to be full,’ because there are people who are still afraid to come out,” Homicil said. “People are even afraid to come to (the) food pantry.”

He added of other Boston churches: “Every church is suffering this crisis.”

Other clergy are seeking to bring the holidays to immigrants who have already been separated from their communities. The Rev. Brian Strassburger, a Jesuit priest who works along the U.S.-Mexico border as director of Del Camino Jesuit Border Ministries, said he plans to host a Posada event outside the airport in Harlingen, Texas.

“During that span of time, we anticipate that there will be one, two or even three flights coming in and out with detained migrants,” Strassburger said. He hopes the sight of Mary and Joseph seeking shelter will offer a “public witness there in that space” and be “a sign of hope.”

The priest said his group of three Jesuits is supporting migrants who are fighting “hopelessness and despair” during Christmas. They were unable to get permission to celebrate a Christmas Mass at Port Isabel Detention Center, but they were able to celebrate several Advent Masses there, as well as host more-typical Posadas with skits and piñatas for the children in two Reynosa, Mexico, migrant shelters.

The Rev. Brian Strassburger. (Courtesy photo)

They are also planning to celebrate 10 baptisms and two first Communions on Christmas Eve in a migrant shelter in Matamoros, Mexico. The immigrants living in those shelters are in many ways stuck, lacking the means to go elsewhere in Mexico or back home and no longer able to seek U.S. asylum after President Donald Trump suspended that program in January.

Strassburger described a recent experience of holding a 2-day-old baby in the shelter and being struck by the parallels in the Christmas story.

“Standing in a forgotten, underresourced migrant shelter along the U.S.-Mexico border on the wrong side of a political boundary is much like this stable in Bethlehem because there’s no room at the inn and that’s where Christ enters into the world,” he said.

With the arrival of Christmas — a gift-giving season — religious leaders have been trying to offer what support they can.

In Washington, D.C.’s Maryland suburbs, the English-speaking community at St. Camillus Catholic Church joined Latinos for their Las Posadas celebrations this month to show “we see us as one family” and make Latinos feel less afraid to participate, said Kathy, a coordinator of the parish’s migrant response team who asked to be identified by her first name to avoid harassment.

Since the fall, their parish has averaged more than one new family a week experiencing a detention, she said.

“To be honest, I wish that we had time and energy for some special Christmas gift programs, but the truth is we are running as fast as we can and using all of the resources we have just to kind of keep up with the day-to-day emergency needs,” Kathy said, including prayer, emergency counseling and food deliveries. They also try to have a supportive presence outside immigration court.

Federico, a Catholic leader in Chicago who asked to use his middle name because he lacks legal immigration status, said his parish is facing the same deluge. He is pleading for more wealthy congregations to step in because of the sheer scale of the needs.

In North Carolina, a Charlotte-area initiative called Operación Esperanza has emerged as a partnership between Transforming Nations Ford, a community development nonprofit, and Iglesia Tabernaculo de Gracia, a Hispanic Pentecostal church

The project has been distributing food and other items to impacted immigrant families, but according to Rosa Ramirez, who helps lead the effort, volunteers recently began asking families what their children would want for Christmas. The effort has been difficult — partly, she said, because asking for something “is, culturally, not comfortable for a lot of our families.”

But beyond that, “for a lot of our families, it’s not even about trying to figure out the holidays,” Ramirez said. “That’s just the last thing on their mind right now.”

Yet she said the holiday effort is an important part of their work — especially for families who may be celebrating Christmas alone or, in some cases, without family members who have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It’s super important that they have choice — that our children get to consider what they would want on their Christmas list, even if that’s not something that they’ve done before or that they thought they were going to be able to do this year,” Ramirez said.

And besides, Ramirez said, the shared faith of those involved in the effort — which includes an array of local churches — points them toward an unambiguous conclusion.

“As Christians, we’re called to love our neighbor and to treat the immigrant and the foreigner as our own,” she said. “I think I’ve really seen that lived out in a way that is really beautiful to see, even though it’s such a horrifying time.”

Yoga, meditation classes taught in Spanish offer healing to stressed communities

(RNS) — ‘Our community is definitely experiencing heightened levels of stress, insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety and fear,’ said Xiomara Arauz, a Denver-based yoga and meditation teacher. ‘If the class is in Spanish and everybody speaks Spanish, people feel more safe being in that environment, feeling like they’re understood or they're accepted here.’

People participate in a class at Yogiando NYC in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood in New York. (Photo courtesy of Rosana Rodriguez)

Richa Karmarkar
December 23, 2025

RNS


(RNS) — At the New York City yoga studios she frequented in the 2010s, Rosana Rodriguez sometimes found herself the only Latina in the room. “I felt really intimidated,” said the 58-year-old native New Yorker. Predominantly white studios and expensive monthly fees gave her and others in her community the impression that wellness spaces “weren’t for them.”

But the practice of yoga itself, Rodriguez said, saved her life. It was a consistent stress-reduction technique after an abusive relationship and losing her job.

During yoga nidra — or guided meditation in the Savasana posture, often at the end of class — Rodriguez caught herself translating what her teacher said into Spanish, sparking a “revelation.” “I wanted to bring this level of healing to my community,” she said.

Rodriguez soon founded Yogiando NYC, the first Spanish-English bilingual studio in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, which has a majority Hispanic population. Offering weekly $10 yin yoga classes at Yogiando, which is a made-up word to mean “doing yoga,” since 2017, Rodriguez said the space became a hub of solace where Spanish-speakers could share their anxieties about anything from immigration to family to their jobs with one another.

“One of the things that I have prided myself in creating for this community is a safe space,” she said. “The closing meditation is that I’m saying to them, ‘You are held and protected.’ I’m teaching them how to be aware, how to listen to their body, how to breathe. Many of these women have told me, ‘I do these breathing exercises every day, and they’ve helped me.’ They’ve told me how yoga has changed their life.”

As Yogiando NYC has done, increasing language accessibility in spiritual wellness spaces across the country has opened up meditation and yoga to more diverse American populations. For Spanish-speaking practitioners like Rodriguez, offering these kinds of classes is crucial to the spiritual-wellness movement in being able to respond to growing mental health concerns as anti-immigrant sentiments and federal actions surge in a country where Spanish is the second-most-spoken language.
RELATED: In new book, yoga teacher Harpinder Kaur Mann seeks to reclaim the practice’s spiritual roots

Xiomara Arauz, originally from Panama, teaches meditation and yoga in Spanish in Denver through the Art of Living, a global humanitarian organization founded by Indian guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Arauz and a handful of other instructors across the country have also taught online and in-person Spanish instruction of the Sudarshan Kriya, or SKY breathing technique, to hundreds since the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our community is definitely experiencing heightened levels of stress, insecurity, uncertainty, anxiety and fear,” Arauz told RNS. “If the class is in Spanish and everybody speaks Spanish, people feel more safe being in that environment, feeling like they’re understood or they’re accepted here. They feel a lot better when they leave through the doors of the yoga studio than when they came in.”

Particularly in meditative practices, Arauz said, it is “a different kind of comfort” to practice in one’s native tongue, as the work “is more internal, more subtle.” And her “warm and friendly” personality is able to “come alive” as an instructor in Spanish.

“There is a nuance that I think makes a difference when you are going into these deeper states of relaxation and your conscious mind is not trying to translate,” she said. “There is no resistance in the mind to be doing something else other than absorbing it. They’re able to relax a lot more, be more there, be more present.”

Rosana Rodriguez, left, and Marisol Alvarez. 

(Photo courtesy of Rosana Rodriguez)

Diana Winston, a mindfulness teacher and director of UCLA Mindful — an education and research center that provides science-backed mindfulness instruction to schools, hospitals and corporate offices — said the center’s Mindful App offers instruction in 19 languages, including a separate Spanish-only feature for California’s large non-English-speaking population. She said the organization is committed to “radical accessibility” to remove language, economic and religious barriers from mindfulness practices.

“It’s a very scary time for a lot of people in this country,” she said. “I’m very worried about the most vulnerable populations, for people who are in some ways being targeted. And I feel like anything that can help support their mental health and well-being, since that’s what mindfulness really does, that would be a fantastic thing to be able to offer.

“And my secret wish,” she added, “the people who could really use mindfulness, who are making these horrible decisions, might transform themselves, too. What if somebody moved from a place of being stuck in seeing people as other, and hatred and violence, and began to meditate and had more compassion in their heart? That would be incredible.”

Still, barriers exist to getting Spanish speakers to the studios, sometimes based on an idea that yoga and meditation conflict with their Christian faith, practitioners said. Though the last few decades have seen a seismic growth of these Indian practices in secular contexts, often far removed from their Hindu and Buddhist religious roots, some still feel reluctant, said Rodriguez, who refrains from using Sanskrit terms, or the meditative sound “Om,” in her classes.

Marisol Alvarez, a 60-year-old student at Yogiando from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, said she has been told that she shouldn’t be doing yoga, despite the physical, mental and even spiritual benefits she found in the practice.

“They said, ‘The priests don’t want you to practice, it’s not of God,'” she told RNS in Spanish. “But I’m healing. God wants me to heal. It’s very big how [yoga] has helped me with my faith, connecting with the universe, with the divine higher power.”

Alvarez has brought her daughter, her mother and people she meets on the street into yoga classes. And the studio’s community of women — who have now traveled and shared their dreams with each other — is “filled with so much love,” she said.

“There are times that I’ve arrived at the class feeling like I couldn’t breathe,” she said. “But I breathed.”