Asking Ourselves Questions
I read with interest the thought-provoking article “Can Evangelicalism Survive Its Success?” [Oct. 5]. Did not [Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista] Vico state that history is cyclic? If so, could not the monasteries founded in the Middle Ages and their later spiritual decline—due, by and large, to their becoming wealthy—serve as lessons for the evangelical community? Will not achieving the “good life” and its too-often being equated with being “Godlike” be the spiritual downfall of American-style evangelicalism? Should not history be didactic? Many are these kinds of questions which the evangelical community must ask itself.
George R. Stotts
Irving, Tex.
When I saw the cover, asking “Can Evangelicalism Survive Its Success?” [Oct. 5], I mentally snorted, “What success?” I discovered the article described the success of emerging parachurch ministries and Christian entertainment endeavors compared to what was available in the 1940s and 1950s. I appreciated the article because it painted broad, insightful strokes of where we evangelicals have been and where we are today.
I did think the authors slighted the increasing hostility of society toward biblical mores. In the fifties there was not a fraction of the unbiblical sex and violence on TV, no gay-rights agenda, no attempts to bully Christians out of public influence by misinterpretation and misapplication of the Establishment Clause. I doubt that “back then” young female students would have been manhandled and escorted to police cars for praying on public school grounds.
Lynn Dell
Kettering, Ohio
Columbus no hero of the faith
While I understand Harold O. J. Brown’s concern that Columbus is being used to foment anti-Christian bias [“The Importance of Being Western,” Oct. 5], the solution is apparent: don’t elevate him as the hero and bulwark of our faith.
This Genoan weaver’s son was not an especially evil man, but rather a representative of an age deluded by the spirit of Mammon, obsessed with the glory of conquest and worldly riches. This spirit continues in our own age, where an industry is striving to make fast money selling his image. Our task, I believe, is quite different. It is to “set apart Christ as Lord,” and to cleanse all of the idols from our temple, including the tragic figure of Christopher Columbus.
Erich N. Brough
Tallahassee, Fla.
Checking Out The Church Library
Our pastor recently asked me to join a “Committee to Revitalize the Library,” which is in the room also known as the junior high Sunday-school room. And also known each October as the storage room for the women’s annual rummage sale.
I smelled an oxymoron in the phrase “Committee to Revitalize.”
At the first meeting, the committee members were, one by one, immediately electrified by a single idea: to fix the electrical short in the light switch! We were also soon convinced to give ourselves unreservedly to the task of getting the congregation excited about Christian reading, to do whatever it takes—no matter the personal sacrifice—to tackle the problem with energy and imagination.
So we asked the pastor to preach on it.
Unfortunately, the pastor’s sermon, which was titled, “If Judas Had Only Read More Christian Books,” greatly upset the committee. The elders called a congregational meeting, and our committee was given a mandate:
“The church library should be a symbol of our commitment to the discipleship of the mind. Fine Christian books should line the shelves. The room should be spacious with adequate lighting and comfortable chairs. The atmosphere should exude an excellence worthy of our Lord, the great Teacher. And our library should not be overshadowed by Second Baptist’s!”
The meeting adjourned, but without discussion of how we would pay for the project.
EUTYCHUS
Is it humility Hillary lacks?
I’m afraid LaVonne Neff’s article “Why Pick on Hillary?” [Speaking Out, Oct. 5] missed the real point of her unpopularity. The negative reaction Hillary elicits has nothing to do with her business success, education, or politics. People dislike her for the same reason Canadians despised Pierre Trudeau. While they admired his intellect and obvious political ability, they found him arrogant and smug in his dealings with others. In Hillary, we sense the same lack of humility, the same independence from anything greater than herself.
Jeanne Hedrick
Ottawa, Ont., Canada
Neff equates the faith and world view of Barbara Bush, Hillary Clinton, Marilyn Quayle, and Tipper Gore. About Mrs. Clinton, Neff writes that “[she] once traveled from church to church in Arkansas giving talks on what it means to be a Methodist.”
The question is not what label one wears but whether a person has been born again—which is necessary not only to enter the kingdom of heaven, but also to understand what it means to be a child of God and to comprehend his Word. The question is also what difference a person’s faith makes in her public life and approach to those issues which are clearly taught in Scripture.
Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore see no role for government in protecting the unborn. They also favor much, if not all, of the gay-rights agenda. Barbara Bush is wishy-washy, at best, on these issues. Marilyn Quayle is unapologetically Christian.
To suggest there is no difference in the faith and world view among these women and their husbands is not only incorrect, but misleading. Uninformed and politically unsophisticated Christians are wrongfully led to believe it doesn’t matter who is elected to public office. Believe me, it matters a great deal.
Cal Thomas
Washington, D.C.
Neff oversimplifies, diverts, and discounts the criticism of Hillary Clinton as merely superficial uneasiness of a woman’s success “in a man’s world”—a slap in the face to Americans’ intelligence, Christianity, and women.
John Steven Seica
Long Beach, Calif.
Christian women are and should be threatened by Hillary’s philosophy regarding families and [her] prochoice [stance]. Her ideas and ideals could be devastating to our daughters and granddaughters should they become reality.
Linda Littlefield
Stoneham, Colo.
As a Christian, native Arkansan, and unpaid lobbyist at the Arkansas State Legislature, I have worked with other Christian women to try to stop some of the programs and liberal agenda of Ms. Rodham and Mr. Clinton. (Rodham signed her 1991 tax statement Ms. Hillary Rodham, not Hillary Rodham Clinton or Hillary Clinton.) Some of those programs—all attacks on the family and parental authority—were: school-based sex clinics with abortion referral; 3-year-olds mandated in kindergarten (a growing phenomenon in our state is the home-school movement, for obvious reasons). During Mr. Clinton’s tenure as governor, we have dropped from twentieth to twenty-fifth of the 28 states taking the same tests.
I could write a book about the battles we have had to fight at the state capitol because of philosophies held by the Clintons. She is far more politically ambitious than her husband.
Carole Baker
Little Rock, Ark.
Jumping To Conclusions?
I enjoyed J. I. Packer’s [Senior Editor’s column] in the October 5 issue. I particularly appreciated his comments about God’s pleasure in variety. Remembering that helps me understand the different pursuits many friends take in their occupations and leisures.
Only when I had completed the article did I notice the curious juxtaposition of Packer’s piece with the advertisement for Regent College. The headlines alone suggest interesting theories for the parallelism (Packer: “Bungee-Jumping Anyone?” vis a vis Regent College: “Go Ahead. Jump”). Maybe there is a “regentian” manuscript that Packer borrowed for his version. One might be led to postulate a pre-Regent oral source, a “Q” from which Regent and later writers copied their material. Of course, the only way this could be discovered is through redaction criticism. There is likely a Ph.D. candidate out there looking for an original study.
Pastor Craig L. Loving
Mountain View Lutheran Church
Thornton, Colo.
Who’S To Blame For Rape?
“The Wounds of Rape” [Sept. 14] pointed out the tragedy of the church blaming the rape victim. I and many other National Baptist ministers who were incensed when the president of our convention defended Mike Tyson know how pervasive such wrong thinking is. Yet in Deuteronomy 22:23–29, the whole blame for rape lies with the assailant, and (in the case of the woman in the field who might have cried out) an alleged victim is presumed innocent if there is no proof to the contrary. Christians who punish the innocent invite God’s judgment in turn (Exod. 23:7).
Craig S. Keener
Hood Theological Seminary
Salisbury, N.C.
You let a biased feminist write this article without regard that there are other humans in this world who are not female. I was sexually abused as a child and I survived. I was raped—by a woman. This article further describes what church women can do in ministry to victims of rape. Nothing is said about what the church can do to help a man who has been raped.
John W. Hoover, Jr.
Culver, Ind.
Gore Solutions Dangerous
I appreciate Sen. Albert Gore’s concern for the environment and applaud his belief that Christians must be good stewards of the world we live in [Sept. 14]. However, one might assume from reading your interview that concerned Christians should reach similar conclusions about environmental dangers and appropriate responses. Allow me to point out several potential areas of disagreement.
In his book, Gore accepts the worst-case scenario of the environmental crises he discusses, even when the preponderance of scientific evidence is against him. He also fails to acknowledge areas of substantial disagreement among scientists about the seriousness of certain problems.
Gore’s solutions would be extremely costly and could even exacerbate environmental problems. He makes passing reference to government bureaucracies as the cause of many environmental problems, but his “Marshall plan” for dealing with the environment ignores that fact. His proposal of a Strategic Environment Initiative to approve and subsidize appropriate new technologies and to phase out inappropriate ones would require massive concentrations of power and information in some centralized, bureaucratic agency. It is clear from the enormous pollution problems of Eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet Union that bureaucracy and central planning are not the answer to our environmental problems. Unfortunately, Gore’s proposals clearly move us in that direction.
P. J. Hill
Wheaton College
Wheaton, Ill.
African-Americans not new to world evangelization
Women and minorities have made substantial but often largely ignored contributions to the development of the church, both at home and abroad, as Ruth Tucker points out [July 20], An example of this oversight occurs in your article on Destiny ’92 [Sept. 14], which refers to Destiny ‘87 as “the first such convention called to mobilize the evangelical African-American community to global missions.”
The importance of African-Americans to the evangelization of Africa was recognized during the nineteenth century. For example, in 1893, Bishop Henry McNeal Turner of the AME church organized a conference, called the “World Congress on Africa,” encouraging African-Americans to evangelize Africa. Two years later, the Stewart Missionary Foundation hosted a major conference in Atlanta with the same theme, called “Africa and the American Negro.”
While African-American missionaries were often actively excluded from work in Africa by white colonial governments, the need for African-American missionaries was recognized in the last century.
Dan W. Blumhagen, M.D.
U.S. Agency for In’l Development
Judy M. Blumhagen
American Embassy
Accra, Ghana
Corrections
• A sidebar article “Two Cheers for Christian Capitalism” in our October 5 issue reported that at press time Zondervan Publishers was for sale. According to Zondervan president James Buick, the company has not been for sale since 1988, when Harper & Row Publishers (now HarperCollins Publishers) bought it. Earlier this year, Zondervan leadership explored the possibility of a friendly management-led buyout from HarperCollins, but that effort has now been shelved.
• Inside CT (Oct. 5) contrasted Charles E. Fuller’s broadcasts on “secular stations” with James C. Dobson’s programs in “the Christian radio ghetto.” According to statistics provided by Focus on the Family, that organization’s programs are now on 1,000 secular radio facilities in the United States. While the number of Focus’s religious radio outlets still outnumbers its secular outlets in the U.S., their broadcasts clearly are not locked into the “Christian radio ghetto.” Worldwide, Focus on the Family broadcasts are heard on more secular radio facilities than religious ones.
• The October 5 news article “Same Old Benny Hinn, Critics Say,” reported that Hinn credited Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible as the source of his statement “that God originally designed women to give birth out of their sides.” According to a spokesperson at Dake’s Bible Sales, Inc., there is no such teaching in the Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible.
CT regrets the errors.
