Evangelical churches continue to grow across Spain.
The number of evangelical churches in Spain is now near the 5,000 mark.
Tuesday, January 06, 2026
Great News.
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Christians Killed in Sudan.
At least 11 Christians killed on their way to Christmas celebrations in Sudan, sources say.
A Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) drone strike on Dec. 25 killed at least 11 Christians on their way to Christmas celebrations in South Kordofan state, Sudan, sources said.
In addition to the 11 Christians killed, at least 18 other people were seriously wounded in the attack on congregation members making their way to the Episcopal Church of Sudan in Julud (Biyam Jald area) on Christmas morning, said an area Christian attorney.
“The church [building] was not hit, but a congregation who were marching in procession towards the church were targeted,” the attorney told Morning Star News, requesting anonymity.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-North), which has joined the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in its fight against the SAF, and the Foundation Alliance reported that 12 civilians were killed and 19 others injured in the SAF strike on the “Biyam Jald” area in South Kordofan state, according to the Sudan Tribune. The area is controlled by the SPLM-North.
“The drone targeted civilians who were celebrating Christmas,” the SPLM reported.
The attack follows a Nov. 29 drone attack by the SAF targeting a medical clinic center in the Kumi area of South Kordofan state that reportedly killed12 people and injured 19 others, including children and women.
Another drone strike on Dec. 5 targeted Ghadeer locality, Kalogi, South Kordofan, killing more than 10 children ages 5 to 7 inside a kindergarten, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Conditions in Sudan have worsened since the civil war that broke out between the RSF and the SAF in April 2023. Sudan registered increases in the number of Christians killed and sexually assaulted and Christian homes and businesses attacked, according to Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL) report.
“Christians of all backgrounds are trapped in the chaos, unable to flee. Churches are shelled, looted and occupied by the warring parties,” the report stated.
Both the RSF and the SAF are Islamist forces that have attacked displaced Christians on accusations of supporting the other’s combatants.
Sudan is 93% Muslim, with adherents of ethnic traditional religion 4.3% of the population, while Christians constitute 2.3%, according to Joshua Project.
The conflict between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 12 million people within and beyond Sudan’ borders, according to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March 2023 agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the next month, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.
Burhan sought to place the RSF — a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Bashir put down rebels — under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years.
Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.
Sudan was ranked No. 5 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL), down from No. 8 the prior year. Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in 2021.
Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021. After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.
With the Oct. 25, 2021, coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.
The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.
This article was originally published by Morning Star News.
Morning Star News is the only independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians. The nonprofit's mission is to provide complete, reliable, even-handed news in order to empower those in the free world to help persecuted Christians, and to encourage persecuted Christians by informing them that they are not alone in their suffering.
Yield To The Lord.
7 critical reasons you should receive Christ in 2026.
Have you ever noticed the dash on a gravestone — that small line between the date of birth and the date of death? That single mark represents everything a person ever was: every hope, every fear, every love, every wound, every decision, every moment of obedience or resistance to God. Entire lives, reduced to a line.
That dash is time.
Once time passes, it can never be reclaimed.
There are moments in history when time itself seems to lean forward, pressing upon the conscience. A new year always carries that weight. Not because the calendar possesses magic, but because human life does. Each passing year is a narrowing of opportunity - a holy window in which heaven calls for a response.
As 2026 opens before us, here are seven reasons why receiving Christ this year is not merely important — it is urgent.
1. Because additional time is not guaranteed
Most of us have witnessed it on a cold morning. Someone steps outside, exhales, and for just a moment their breath becomes visible — a small cloud suspended in the air. Then, almost before it can be noticed, it disappears.
That is the image Scripture chooses for human life:
“What is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away” (James 4:14).
Not a mountain.
Not a river.
But more like a breath on winter’s air.
Life does not fade slowly as we often imagine. It is here, it matters deeply, and then it is gone — often more suddenly than anyone expects.
Even now, with all our modern medicine and technology, the average human lifespan is still only about 78 or 79 years in the United States, and roughly 73 years worldwide. Measured against eternity, that is scarcely more than a breath.
Jesus once told a story about a man who had done very well for himself in life. His fields produced such an abundant harvest that his barns could no longer contain it. So, he made plans. He said within himself,
“This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry” (Luke 12:18–19).
But God said to him,
“Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee…” (Luke 12:20).
The man in the story was not condemned for being productive, nor even for being prosperous. He was blamed for believing that time belonged to him. He planned as though life were stable, controllable, and always long. He spoke to his own soul as though he were its owner. He assumed too much and failed to prepare for his appointment with God. He forgot the ageless truth that yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not promised. Thus, he went into eternity unprepared to meet God.
2. Because the heart does not always remain neutral
Scripture repeatedly warns that the human heart does not remain neutral. It is either being softened by obedience or hardened by resistance. There is no middle ground.
The writer of Hebrews sounds the alarm with solemn urgency:
“Wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith, Today if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts…”(Hebrews 3:7–8).
A few verses later, he presses the warning even further:
“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. But exhort one another daily … lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin”(Hebrews 3:12–13).
Zechariah describes the same slow tragedy of resistance:
“They refused to hearken … and made their hearts as an adamant stone” (Zechariah 7:11–12).
Each time a person says “no” to God, the heart does not merely pause — it calcifies. Delay trains the conscience. Resistance reshapes the soul. What feels like patience today becomes paralysis tomorrow.
When a heart hardens long enough … it may reach the most tragic condition of all: never choosing Christ.
To refuse Christ is not merely to postpone salvation. It is to move steadily toward a condition in which surrender itself becomes almost impossible - and to remain in that state is to perish forever spiritually.
3. Because the World is Increasingly Being Shaken
We are living in an hour of unusual and growing instability. The structures people once trusted – political, economic, social, and moral – now feel fragile and unreliable. The sense of unease is everywhere.
Nations stand in rising tension. Wars spread beyond borders, and old alliances fracture. Economies stagger under inflation, debt, and market volatility. Families and communities fracture as shared moral ground collapses, and even the meaning of truth and identity is fiercely contested. Technology races ahead of wisdom, creating new powers humanity barely understands. Extreme weather affects more people with greater force, reminding us how vulnerable modern life truly is. Spiritually, many have abandoned the historic Christian faith, yet the hunger for meaning and hope has never been greater.
This is not simply a difficult season of history. It is a profound shaking of the world. It feels unstable because it is unstable – and no human system is capable of restoring the kind of security the human heart longs for and needs.
History is not drifting. It is moving. The direction it is moving gives enormous weight to the decision every soul must make. In this age, the question of where a person stands with God is not abstract. It is exceedingly urgent. We desperately need to be in the right relationship with Him, so that He can steady us, show us by His Word and Spirit how to navigate these hazardous times faithfully, and enable us to face these troubles with wisdom, courage, and confidence in His guiding and benevolent hand.
4. Because no human solution can heal the human condition
The deepest problems of mankind are not political, economic, psychological, technological, or educational - they are spiritual. This means our most significant issues are not “out there.” They live within us.
The human condition is not merely that people are uninformed, under-resourced, or oppressed. It is that we are fallen and sinful creatures. The Bible teaches that every human being carries a malfunctioning spirit that no system, policy, or program can repair: a heart bent away from God, a conscience stained by guilt, and a soul alienated from its Maker.
This description is not theoretical. It is real. It is personal. It is your condition and mine.
We need more than improvement. We need renewal.
Christ alone addresses the problem at its root.
He does not merely instruct the mind; He regenerates the heart.
He does not merely forgive mistakes; He removes the guilt.
He does not merely reform behavior; He creates a person anew.
Through the Cross, Christ reconciles man to God. Through His resurrection, He conquers death. Through His Holy Spirit, He renews the inner life. Through His kingdom, He offers a future no earthly system can provide.
This is why Christ is not one option among many. He is the only solution for the human condition. He is the answer every soul was created for.
5. Because Christ is nearer than you may think
Christ is the Lord of history’s beginning and end. Scripture teaches that He will return and establish His kingdom. Some will enter that kingdom. Others will be shut out. This is not myth or metaphor — it is the sober warning of Christ Himself.
The Bible also teaches that as this moment in history approaches, certain conditions will appear together on a global scale. Jesus called them “birth pains” — wars and rumors of wars, deception, lawlessness, spiritual confusion, and moral collapse (Matthew 24). Paul warned that the last days would be perilous, marked by self-centeredness, hostility toward what is good, and love for pleasure more than love for God (2 Timothy 3).
What makes our era striking is not that these conditions exist – they always have – but that they now exist everywhere at once and with increasing intensity. For the first time in human history, the technological, political, and cultural structures described in biblical prophecy are not merely imaginable; they are visible and operating in real time.
We do not set dates. But Christ commanded us to read the signs. When the times themselves are sounding an alarm, His call to be ready becomes more urgent than ever: “Be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.” (Matthew 24:44)
The return of Christ is not a distant theological concept. It is an ever-approaching reality. From what we read in Biblical prophecy, it appears that Christ’s return is at hand and could happen any day.
But there is another way Christ is near.
He is near you. He is present and engaged with the life of every soul reading these words.
The Bible teaches that Christ came to bring God near to us. Yet from the beginning, human beings have tried to close that distance by their own efforts. We build religious systems, perform good works, observe rituals, repeat prayers, pursue moral improvement, and hope that somehow our sincerity will bridge the gap between ourselves and God. Every culture in history bears witness to this instinct.
But Scripture is unambiguous: that distance cannot be crossed by human effort. It is not merely a gap in behavior; it is a separation of nature. Sin has fractured our relationship with God, and no amount of knowledge, charity, or religious motion can repair it.
In Romans 10:8–10, the apostle Paul states with breathtaking clarity that Christ – and salvation – are near:
“The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
In other words, Christ is not far away.
He is not hiding.
He is not unreachable.
Salvation is not a pilgrimage across continents, nor an achievement earned through many good works. It is near – because the living and resurrected Christ is near. He is as near as the heart’s surrender to Him and the mouth’s confession of His Lordship.
6. Because delay is the devil’s most effective strategy
Hell is not filled with people who meant to reject Christ, but mostly with people who meant to decide later. But later is a fragile word. Later is the most dangerous place a soul can live.
There is a time-honored story I once used in a sermon that has stayed with me.
It tells of a meeting Satan supposedly called in Hell. He gathered his chief advisors and said, “We must develop a strategy for causing as much heartache and destruction as possible among the people of the earth. What shall we do?”
One advisor rose and said, “O great lord of evil, let us tell them there is no Heaven.”
“No,” replied the devil. “That trick is old and no longer very effective.”
Another suggested, “Then let us tell them there is no Hell.”
“That may confuse some,” the devil answered, “but it is still not strong enough.”
Finally, a third voice spoke: “O great lord of deception, let us tell them that there is no hurry. Tell them they have plenty of time.”
At that, the devil sprang to his feet. “That’s it,” he said. “A brilliant strategy. We will convince them there is no hurry — that the most important decisions in life can always be made later.”
That strategy has ruined more souls than open unbelief ever could.
We do not come to the Lord Jesus when we think we have everything in order. Christ calls us because everything about our lives is out of order, and only He can set it right. His call is always NOW — a call that demands response without hesitation or procrastination, lest the opportunity be lost.
7. Because 2026 may be the year God appointed for you
God does not deal with humanity only in eras and movements. He deals with people in specific moments. Scripture is filled with them — a day when Noah entered the ark, an hour when Zacchaeus climbed the tree, a night when Nicodemus came searching, a moment when the thief on the cross heard the words, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43).
Those were not general invitations. They were divine appointments.
The Bible says, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). This year, for reasons known only to God, may be the season in which He is pressing His claim upon your heart. Not for the nation. Not for the world. But for you.
Postponing that moment is to gamble on the most critical decision of your life.
In 1980, IBM — the most powerful company in the world at that time — came to Kildall with an offer that would have changed his life. They wanted him to provide the operating system for their new line of personal computers. But when IBM’s representatives arrived for their crucial meeting, Kildall snubbed them and didn’t show up. He decided instead to go joyriding on his new airplane.
The opportunity of a lifetime came — and he missed it.
IBM turned to a young man running a small software company named Microsoft. His name was Bill Gates. Fourteen years later, Gates was worth billions. Kildall, though widely respected as a brilliant mind, never recovered the ground he lost.
One writer later observed of him, “He was a smart man who did not realize how large the operating system market would become.”
In much the same way, many people fail to grasp how great God’s offer in Christ truly is. They do not understand how vast His kingdom will be one day.
The year 2026 will be filled with ambition, distraction, conflict, noise, and promise. It will pass more quickly than anyone expects. And when it does, only one decision will matter.
History is not drifting. It is moving toward a conclusion God has already written. Every human life is moving toward an encounter with its creator.
Christ is near. His invitation is genuine. His mercy is open. His call is nothing to procrastinate about.
Do not answer it later.
Do not assume tomorrow.
Do not trade eternity for delay.
Turn away from your sins. Receive Christ. In doing so, you will receive life more abundant, life eternal.
Rev. Mark H. Creech is Executive Director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc. He was a pastor for twenty years before taking this position, having served five different Southern Baptist churches in North Carolina and one Independent Baptist in upstate New York.
Monday, January 05, 2026
Vikings Tamed! - What A Super Place Lindisfarne Is To Visit!
The triumph of Christianity over the Viking raiders.
Lindisfarne was ravaged by the Vikings in 793. The ruins today continue to attract visitors from around the world. (Photo: Getty/iStock)
The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds Christians that they are surrounded by a great “cloud of witnesses.” (NRSVA) That “cloud” has continued to grow in size since then. In this monthly column we will be thinking about some of the people and events, over the past 2000 years, that have helped make up this “cloud.” People and events that have helped build the community of the Christian church as it exists today.
"From the fury of the Northmen deliver us, O Lord"
According to a popular tradition, this prayer – in the Latin form “A furore Normannorum libera nos, Domine” – was prayed in the churches and monasteries of Britain as Viking raids escalated in the 9th century. However, there is no evidence that this particular litany was in use at this time.
Despite this, there is evidence that on the continent – also on the receiving end of Viking raids – one particular antiphony contained the words “Summa pia gratia nostra conservando corpora et cutodita, de gente fera Normannica nos libera, quae nostra vastat, Deus, regna,” which translates as, “Our supreme and holy Grace, protecting us and ours, deliver us, God, from the savage race of Northmen which lays waste our realms.”
It conveys the same sentiments and speaks of fear and the destruction caused by Viking raids on Christian towns and religious communities.
The destruction caused by Viking raids in England
Every educated Anglo-Saxon – whether monk, nun or noble – would probably have later been able to recall where they were when they first heard the news that the monastery of Lindisfarne (Northumberland) had been sacked by Scandinavian Viking raiders in 793.
Situated at the end of a causeway, off the coast of the northern Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, Lindisfarne was a spiritual, cultural and intellectual powerhouse. It was famous for its saintly monk, Cuthbert, who became abbot of the monastery, a bishop, and the patron saint of Northumbria. It was also at this monastery that the literary and artistic treasure of the Lindisfarne Gospels was created in the early 8th century.
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Then, in 793, the place was trashed. It is often risky to draw parallels between events occurring in different periods of history. Values, ideas and outlooks do not always travel as easily as we sometimes make them do. But 793 was surely an Anglo-Saxon ‘9/11 moment’.
Far away, in Aachen (in what is now Germany), at the court of the powerful Frankish ruler Charlemagne, the Northumbrian Churchman, scholar and educationalist, Alcuin, provides us with the only significant contemporary account of the attack (since the equally famous account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was not penned until the 880s):
“It is nearly 350 years that we and our fathers have inhabited this most lovely land, and never before has such a terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought that such an inroad from the sea could be made. Behold, the church of St Cuthbert spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is given as a prey to pagan peoples.”
Contemporary Christians saw in this event the fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecy of Jeremiah 1:14: “Then the Lord said to me: Out of the north disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land.” This may have inspired Alcuin’s reminder – in the same letter – of a bloody rain which had fallen from a clear sky on the north side of the church at York. To Alcuin this suggested that “from the north there will come upon our nation retribution of blood.”
He considered it divine punishment for the sins of society. He identified sins as varied as hair fashion which imitated that of the northern pagans, luxurious clothing, and the impoverishment of the common people because of the wealth enjoyed by their leaders. Looking at it from a later age, it seems that Alcuin could not actually specify anything much more sinful about the society of the 790s than at any other period. But a divine punishment is how he interpreted it – in a manner well known from Christian history at times of disaster.
In a second letter, also written in 793, but this time to Higbald, Bishop of Lindisfarne, Alcuin wrestled with the same dilemma of explaining why “St Cuthbert, with so great a number of saints, defends not his own?” Again, Alcuin concluded that “it has not happened by chance, but is a sign that it was well merited by someone.” He strongly advised the bishop to consider what sins in himself and in his community might have caused this judgement to fall and to see they were remedied swiftly.
Although written in a later source of evidence (the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), the first appearance of the Vikings in England actually dates not from 793 and not from the North Sea coast, but from 789 and from Portland in Dorset. However, regardless of the date of the first raid on England, by 800 the British Isles (along with many communities in north-western Europe) were under escalating attacks. These raids are also recorded as far south as coastal settlements in Spain and Portugal and in the western Mediterranean.
Later Vikings – utilising the river systems of what are now Russia and Ukraine – raided Constantinople and settlements on the shores of the Caspian Sea. An Islamic intelligence report mentions their appearance in Baghdad – on camels! By the year 1000, Scandinavian explorers had reached North America. The impact of the Viking Age was widely felt.
In 865/6, the Chronicle records the landing in East Anglia of the “micel hæðen here” (great heathen army). Within a decade they had destroyed every independent Anglo-Saxon kingdom except Wessex (a Viking puppet-state was established in Mercia). New Viking mini-states were carved out for the newcomers in the East Midlands and Viking kingdoms were established at York and in East Anglia. Lower-class Scandinavian settlers moved into large areas of eastern England in the wake of these elite land seizures. In places such as the East Riding of Yorkshire, 48% of place-names were Scandinavian at the time of Domesday Book (1086), with Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire also showing similar trends.
In time, Wessex would fight back and – in the 10th century – would defeat and absorb the Viking communities that had been established in the 9th century, to become the dominant power in a united kingdom of England.
The early Viking raids had many causes: population increase in Scandinavia; kingdom building there which forced losers out; climatic change disrupting agriculture; changes in the Islamic Caliphate which disrupted flows of trade-silver and led to seizure of precious metals by raiding. In addition, the Frankish empire was expansionist in both its political and its religious policy. The threat of a Christian superpower on the border appears to have prompted aggressive defensive reactions from the still-pagan communities in Denmark.
We are used to explaining the attacks on western European monasteries as being motivated by the desire to seize portable wealth from undefended communities. However, the first century of raids may have had an extra ideological motive: an attack on the very ideology of the Franks and their Christian neighbours. This remains a very controversial suggestion but may mean that the many accounts of looted monasteries may not simply be due to monks doing the record-keeping. There may, in fact, have really been a religious conflict going on: a ‘clash of civilizations’ may have been occurring with treasure houses of Christian sacred art and literature looted and burnt.
Either way, the damage was enormous. Church records in East Anglia (highly populated in the medieval period) seem to have been destroyed and are missing from later collections. In 842, three major trading centres were raided according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: London and Rochester (Kent) in England and Quentovic on the continent. Many more attacks followed. Coastal towns and monasteries were particularly vulnerable, but Viking raids also penetrated inland, using rivers and captured horses to increase mobility. In the chaos, diocesan organisation in several areas of England appears to have collapsed.
In a remarkable document, written between 890 and 895, King Alfred of Wessex wrote his own preface to a translation of the Pastoral Care that he had overseen. In it he recounted the devastation caused by the Viking Wars and that he “remembered how, before everything was ravaged and burnt, the churches throughout all England stood filled with treasures and books…” A surviving letter to Alfred, from Fulk, Archbishop of Reims, written between 883 and 886 quotes from an earlier letter from Alfred which had described how the Anglo-Saxon Church had “fallen in ruins in many respects” and that this was in large part due to “the frequent invasion and attack of pagans.” Standards of Latin collapsed as educational centres and libraries were destroyed.
Complicating factors
As is so often the case in history, things were rather more complex than appears at first sight. The Viking Wars are full of historical surprises which test the critical skills of the historian.
For a start, Alcuin’s second outraged letter was written to the bishop and community of monks on Lindisfarne; so monastic life had clearly survived the assault of 793. A later, mid-10th-century source (the History of St Cuthbert) indicates that it was not until 830–45 that the relics of St Cuthbert were translated from Lindisfarne to Norham-on-Tweed. This seems to have been accompanied by a dismantling of much of the church building on Lindisfarne itself. However, this occurred two generations after the raid of 793 and, while it may have been prompted by escalating Viking activity in the ninth century, it may equally have been due to the monastic community gaining estates inland.
By 875 the community had returned to Lindisfarne as, in this year, it relocated yet again. This is a point often overlooked in modern retellings of the raid of 793. The monks wandered for seven years before they settled in Chester-le-Street. Their benefactor in their new location was a Viking Danish king who had converted to Christianity. This became the home of St Cuthbert’s bones until they were threatened again by the Vikings in 995. They eventually were moved to Ripon and then to Durham, where they are today.
Recent analysis of Viking raids in Ireland show that of the 113 attacks on monasteries between 795 and 820, only 26 were carried out by Vikings. In contrast, the rest were carried out by Irish kings on Irish monasteries or were even the work of monks from rival religious communities. We should not expect anything different for Anglo-Saxon England. Destruction of cultural treasures – including Christian ones – were not just the preserve of pagan Vikings. And the seizing of slaves was not restricted to Scandinavian raiders.
While our images of Viking raids usually (and understandably) imagine them as mindlessly violent, there was often calculation behind them. This does not minimise the impact on those on the receiving end, but it does remind us that actions were often considered. Alcuin promised English correspondents that he would try to use Frankish contacts to buy back monks seized. This hints at the existence of diplomatic back-channels and reminds us that Viking raids were seen as lucrative muscular free-enterprise by those carrying them out.
A magnificent Gospel book (the Stockholm Codex Aureus), produced in Kent and now in the Royal Library in Stockholm, Sweden, contains an inscription (written c.850) recording how the book was ransomed from Vikings (from “a heathen army”) for gold, by a man named Alfred (the ealdorman – local government official – of Surrey or Kent) and his wife Werburh. It was returned to Christian use by being presented to the high altar at Christ Church, Canterbury. This suggests that those who took it were aware of its monetary value and capitalised on this. In the same way, there is evidence that Christian centres were targeted at festival times, in order to maximise the opportunity for seizing people as slaves.
Some historians have argued that, for Christians, the key element in describing the violence of the Vikings was that it was ‘heathen violence,’ rather than its scale as such. A further twist was provided by the sea-borne nature of the attacks. Contemporary Anglo-Saxon society was geared to taking revenge, or compensation, against those who had killed members of their communities. This was straightforward with regard to the land-based Anglo-Saxon armies which conducted warfare in England. But sea-borne invaders upset the whole system. How could revenge or compensation be pursued against those whose bases could not be located? It was this sense that Vikings ‘played outside the rules’ – in addition to their pagan identity – which added to the horror and anxiety that their attacks caused.
The extent of the destruction may have been exaggerated by Churchmen who were motivated by a greater degree of sensitivity to pagan violence than to acts committed by Christian rulers and who, additionally, emphasised the scale of destruction as a method of persuading their fellow countrymen and women to repent of their moral failings.
Added to this, we might well argue that King Alfred had a strong incentive to magnify the scale of the disaster to more convincingly show the importance of his own achievements and to encourage Anglo-Saxons living outside Wessex to welcome the West Saxons as liberators, rather than as rivals.
Making sense of the evidence
We must not revise history too far. As one historian once remarked, concerning Erik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, he was not called that because he was good with the children! Land charters of this period often note that the land was granted for “as long as the Christian faith should last in Britain,” which suggests some thought its continuation was in doubt.
Church land holdings also reduced, with the Church at Domesday Book (1086) owning 20–33% of the land in the country as a whole, but consistently less than 10% in the north and eastern Midlands – the areas most affected by the Viking attacks as they spiralled out of control in the 860s and 870s.
In addition, there are very few surviving pre-Viking land charters, suggesting a great loss of Church libraries and records and therefore a consequent decline in the standards of literacy. Between 844 and 864, when a Kentish noblewoman promised regular provisions from her estate at Bradbourne (Kent) to the monks at St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury (Kent), she declared that the monks could have the entire estate if the promised supplies were unforthcoming for three successive years due to the “hæðen here” (heathen army). That such a clause was necessary is testimony to the extent of the Viking threat.
However, in Ireland, according to the records in the Irish annals, repeated attacks on the same six churches made up a quarter of all recorded 9th century Viking raids. Iona, in Scotland, was raided by Vikings at least four times between 795 and 825. The implication is clear: these communities survived acts of extreme violence to become targets of further raids. It seems that the situation was similar regarding a number of religious houses in England. Also, despite the desecration of monasteries, Christianity continued to thrive at the grassroots level and there is little evidence for a revival of paganism.
This last point is particularly important. Despite modern archaeological discoveries, there have been very few overtly pagan Viking burials found in England. This indicates both the vibrancy of native Christianity and the willingness of Scandinavian settlers to assimilate. Given the absence of organised Christian missionary activities, this must have been due to the life and witness of their Christian neighbours, alongside the attractive nature of Christian faith and entering a community of belief that united Western Europe.
This is rather different from the fire and the sword image of wanton pagan destruction of Christian communities. The comparative silence of the archaeological record makes a loud argument to the contrary. In the 890s, the grandchildren of the Vikings who martyred King Edmund of East Anglia, in 869, were minting coins celebrating ‘St Edmund’! In 941, Oda, the son of a member of the “micel hæðen here” (great heathen army), became a reforming Archbishop of Canterbury. Oda’s nephew, Oswald of Worcester, later became Archbishop of York.
In the north, Archbishops of York found ways of negotiating a future for the Christian community under rulers who were still pagan (or had adopted a rather mixed form of faith). There is even a tradition that, as early as the late 9th century, according to the anonymous History of St Cuthbert (which was itself written in the middle of the 10th century), the abbot of Carlisle was responsible for the selection and public proclamation of a new Viking king. This event, which appears to have occurred in the 880s, is clearly in the great tradition of saints’ lives, with St Cuthbert appearing in a vision to the abbot and claiming that the whole territory between the rivers Tyne and Wear were placed under the special authority of St Cuthbert. This seems to suggest that a pagan royal inauguration rite was made legitimate by the presence of the relics of St Cuthbert.
This legendary account gives an intriguing insight into the relationship between the Church and the Viking army which is a long way from the image of the latter solely as despoilers of churches and suggests that some fascinating political interaction occurred between the native Northumbrian Christians and pagan Scandinavian newcomers.
All of this reveals the ability of the Anglo-Saxon Church to negotiate a way forward in a context which, at one time, would have seemed disastrous. It also testifies to the influence of unnamed Christians on pagan incomers that occurred despite the absence of written sources recording their actions. Within two generations pagan immigrants had converted to Christianity. At first, the form this took was undoubtedly complex and often compromised but, in time, what finally emerged was a Christian Anglo-Norse community in England. The cross of Christ had triumphed over the hammer of Thor.
Martyn Whittock is a historian, commentator, columnist and a Licensed Lay Minister in the Church of England. CT.
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Marriage.
My fellow Evangelicals: We have to make marriage look worth choosing.
As of 2023, the overall percentage of participants who answered in the affirmative was 67% — a 13% decrease from 1993. Perhaps the most noteworthy piece of data from the study, though, was that while the percentage of boys who claimed to desire marriage has remained virtually unchanged over 30 years, the percentage of girls expressing the same desire has decreased by fully 22 percentage points.
As the study did not include qualitative data or open-ended questions, the findings do not provide us with reasons why students responded the way they did. We don’t get girls’ own reasoning — whether it’s fear of divorce, a drive for independence, disillusionment with what marriage looks like around them, or something else entirely. All we know is that across the board, fewer young people picture marriage in their future, and girls, once the most marriage-minded, are now the ones turning away in the greatest numbers.
Perhaps predictably, conservative pundits have rushed to point the finger at feminism. And to be fair, in a culture saturated with leftist and neo-feminist talking points, it’s not hard to see why. Girls are raised on a steady drip of “boss babe” empowerment that equates independence with isolation and tells them a man is, at best, optional décor. Pop-culture influencers cheer on the idea of freezing your eggs so you can live your “real life” first: travel hard, hook up freely, chase the wild oats before you even think about motherhood. Add in the growing normalization of throuples, polyamory, and every conceivable “alternative arrangement,” and you end up with a message that treats lifelong monogamy as archaic and marriage as a limiting, vaguely oppressive relic. When that’s the ambient noise of girlhood, it’s not exactly shocking that fewer young women imagine marriage as something worth wanting.
But we expect the left to war against traditional family. They’ve been doing it for decades, so it’s not entirely new or unsurprising when they do. And we can blame them if we want, but that strikes me as rather fatalistic, and it fails to contend with a more important question I think we’d mostly rather avoid: Why, in all the years the conservative right has tirelessly claimed to champion family, have we failed to actually make family life look compelling, joyful, or worth aspiring to? Why haven’t we built communities where marriage is strengthened, not strained, where men are formed into the kind of husbands women want to marry, and where women aren’t left carrying the emotional load alone? Why hasn’t our rhetoric translated into a lived reality that’s visibly better than the chaos offered elsewhere?
I’ve spent a whole lot of blog space these past few years punching right for the greater good. I’ve never hesitated to call out the blind spots in my own political and religious camps, especially the ones that alienate the very women we claim we’re trying to reach. I don’t enjoy being a leaky faucet in these conversations, but the data are drawing a giant X on the map right now, and I find myself praying we’d finally get strategic about our messaging instead of repeating the same tired mistakes.
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Because let’s be honest: there is no shortage of “Get married and pop out more babies than you can afford” rhetoric on the right. It’s everywhere, often wrapped in hollow praise of motherhood as the highest calling, usually delivered by men who openly belittle any woman whose life doesn’t fit their stay-at-home wife template.
Sure, I can think of countless left-coded narratives that discourage women from marrying. And of course, widespread porn addiction is warping relationships on a scale we haven’t even begun to reckon with. All of that is real. All of that matters.
But the right is the side preaching that marriage is noble, essential, and foundational. So it’s worth asking what women actually hear from that same side:
They hear men shouting, “repeal the 19th,” laughing off dehumanizing comments as “locker-room talk.”
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They watch influencers rank women’s “value” like livestock, dismiss anyone over 25 as used-up, and then watch allegedly Christian commentators hand platforms to misogynists like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, men who have nothing remotely moral, let alone Christlike, to offer.
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They hear their intelligence mocked as rebellion, their accomplishments dismissed as feminist pride, and their boundaries treated as evidence of being “difficult.”
They’re told to revere marriage — but only a version of marriage built on rigid obedience and rigid roles, with a thousand warnings about what happens to women who step out of line.
They watch conservative voices rush to empathize with violent men while interrogating battered women about their purity, their decisions, and their failure to submit enough.
So with messaging like this coming from the very people insisting marriage is the pinnacle of a woman’s life … is it any surprise so many young women are looking at the landscape and saying, “Why on earth would I sign up for that?”
And of course, we can’t dodge the deeper question: What have these young people actually seen marriage look like? Is it any better inside the Church than outside? Is there less abuse? Less porn addiction? More peace, reverence, love, and stability? Or have we simply wrapped the same dysfunction in religious language and hoped no one would notice?
We can preach marriage until we’re blue in the face, but if we truly want young people to choose it, the most powerful thing we can do is live out marriages that are healthy, joyful, and visibly good. That will always speak louder than demonizing those who have reservations.
You can write an entire epistle about the glory of apple pie — but until someone tastes it for themselves and finds it sweet, it’s just words on a page. Marriage is no different. The witness of a beautiful life will always out-preach the loudest sermon.
And just to be clear, modeling a healthy marriage does not mean curating a perfect tradwife Instagram aesthetic. It doesn’t look like staging your life into neat, tidy gender cages with perfect angel children sitting stiffly in a pew so the world can applaud your holiness. In fact, the more energy you spend trying to make a marriage look healthy, the more suspicious it becomes to a generation that can smell manufactured virtue and curated fakery from a mile away.
A genuinely healthy marriage isn’t a performance. It’s not a costume or a brand. It’s not matching outfits and Bible verses under perfect lighting. A genuinely healthy marriage is lived in the real world. It’s forgiveness after a hard conversation. It’s the shared load of dishes and bills, It’s tenderness that doesn’t need to be advertised to be true.
And today’s young women (and young men) need to see that marriage generates true joy. They need to see that marriage, at its best, is not a cage or a competition, but a refuge, something that strengthens you, steadies you, and makes the hard parts of life more bearable because you’re no longer carrying them alone.
The next generation is not demanding a flawless institution or a fantasy version of marriage that never existed in the first place. What they are asking for is evidence, real, lived evidence that marriage can still be something good. Something healing. Something worth the risk.
And if we want them to believe that, then the burden is on us, not them.
It’s on us to build marriages that are safer than the world outside. It’s on us to raise sons who honor women and daughters who know they deserve honor. It’s on us to create communities where commitment is nurtured instead of mocked, where vulnerability is met with compassion instead of control, where covenant actually means something.
If we want a generation to choose marriage, we have to make marriage look like a place worth choosing.
The future of marriage won’t be secured by lectures, shame campaigns, or partisan blame. It will be secured by people whose lives quietly and consistently testify, “This is good. This is possible. Come and see.” CP.
Originally published at Honest to Goodness.
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Great News.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8729962/Quango-bosses-double-their-pay.html Good work, 'Dave'!
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