What can an eighth-century monk teach us about Christian witness in a suspicious and antagonistic culture? More than you’d think. 

Brandon Cooper writes this week about the “unusual missionary strategy” of Boniface (675–754). When the monk arrived in Hesse, he found the Saxons’ sacred forest where they set up an altar to Jesus alongside altars to their ancestral gods. At the heart of the forest was Thor’s Tree, a great oak casting shade on Christ’s altar. Boniface knew it had to go. So, before the jeering Saxons, he took his axe to the idol, cut it down, and used its timber to construct a new church building. 

With this prophetic act, Boniface modeled the power of faith over fear and showed us how to love our neighbors while exposing their gods. “We need not fear our culture’s gods any more than Boniface feared Thor’s retribution,” writes Cooper. Instead, we subvert the idols of status, illicit sex, and power by refusing to offer ourselves to them. 

What does this look like practically? Cooper says we can build God’s church from the timbers of our culture’s idols by embracing quiet service, the beauty of marital faithfulness, and the loving “weakness” of the cross. True faith, writes Cooper, doesn’t lead us to “build a fortress against the world” but a church where “even sinners and enemies find welcome.” Let’s all pursue that kind of bold witness together. Though we live in a skeptical age, I’m confident God will bless it.

Choosing faith over fear,