Author: Shalem John

On the streets of Memphis, dozens of small stores advertise “the cash you need, fast,” in big letters, “free money” painted onto the windows in neon colors, or “flexible payment options” plastered onto the front door.  These payday loan stores lend several hundred dollars to people who often can’t afford to repay them. What the shops market as flexible payment options can turn into debt at an annual percentage rate as high as 600 percent.  “Memphis is known as the payday loan capital of the world,” said Travis Moody, founder and CEO of Forward Memphis, a Christian nonprofit helping borrowers…

Thirty years ago, pastor Richards Akonam invited an 11-year-old girl, Esther, to join him for morning prayer in a village he visited in southeastern Nigeria. One of the participants warned him, “She’s somebody’s wife.” Akonam, learning Esther was married to an 86-year-old man who was opposed to Christianity, recalled villagers telling him “not to even ask questions.”  But he did ask questions at his church in the south Nigerian state of Cross River. Over the years, he encountered other victims, such as Grace, whose father sold her to a 36-year-old man for 30,000 naira (around $220 USD then) when she was…

Zhu Desheng and Wang Pei, who live in a third-tier city in southern China, sacrificed a lot to ensure their son, Peter, received a Christian education. They decided not to place him into the school system, where he would be exposed to atheistic and Marxist propaganda. Instead, they homeschooled Peter using a mix of curricula from Chinese public schools and homeschool material from the American Christian curriculum publisher Abeka. Neighbors reported Peter for not going to school, so he started staying inside his family’s apartment during the day. Without peers, he felt isolated and lonely. So the family decided to…