The press, as much as anybody, has been guilty of mishandling the statistics.
On Christmas Eve, 1906, wireless radio operators on ships sailing near Brant Rock, Massachusetts, heard voices. In fact, they heard a woman reading from the Gospel of Luke, and another singing Handel’s “Largo.” They heard the first wireless voice broadcast ever transmitted to the public. It was a Christian radio program.
Christian broadcasting (now called the electronic church) has come a long way since 1906. Religious television grew steadily through the 1950s and 1960s, then exploded in the first half of the 1970s. In 1970, Arbitron rating service monitored 38 syndicated Christian television programs. By 1975, when the growth leveled off, the number had reached 65.
In 1972, Pat Robertson was operating the only religious TV station in the United States. Today there are 65 religious stations. Moreover, that growth has been lopsided. About half of the syndicated programs were evangelical in 1972, but today 92 percent are.
In the last year, however, one question has sprung into prominence: Is the electronic church shorting out? A spate of newspaper and magazine articles has loudly announced declining audiences for controversial television preachers like Jerry Falwell and Oral Roberts. Triggered by a sociologist’s study that alleges that TV preachers boasted of inflated audiences from the start, some reporters have decided religious broadcasting is a fad beginning to pass.
Actually, the industry is still prospering. What the commentators have overlooked is the total audience of the electronic church, as opposed to the separate audiences of individual big-name broadcasters. Christian broadcasting as a whole faces the predicament of too much prosperity. The electronic church is not shorting out, but so many competitors are jamming its circuits that it is in danger of an overload.
It is now widely admitted that early estimates for the size of the electronic church were exaggerated, in large measure by a press alarmed at the specter of right-wing preachers heaven-bent on taking over the government. It is true that Jerry Falwell boasted in 1980 that 25 million people watched his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” every week, an estimate that is larger than the audience for all religious programs combined.
But even though Falwell lamely retreated behind the euphemisim that he was speaking “ministerially,” magazines like Penthouse and Playboy were guessing his audience was even bigger. Penthouse feared Falwell could have as many as 60 million viewers. Playboy placed it at around 30 million.
Actually, though Falwell has received most of the media attention, his program has never had the biggest audience. Oral Roberts, Rex Humbard, and Robert Schuller are the big three in the electronic church. Roberts and Humbard, beginning TV programs in 1954 and 1953 respectively, have long been at the top in audience attraction. Their audiences and Schuller’s now each just top 2 million each week, according to the Arbitron rating service.
Both religious broadcasters and secular journalists have been guilty of mishandling the statistics. Jeffrey Hadden and Charles Swann, authors of Prime Time Preachers, note that some electronic church ministries have arrived at an audience of 40 or 50 million by counting the same viewer more than once. The single viewer who watches Humbard and Roberts, for example, gets counted as two viewers.
Some journalists have done the reverse: noted a decline in a few TV preachers’ audiences, then added those losses into a total and said that that number of viewers has been lost to the electronic church. But that estimate does not take into account the possibility that viewers who have stopped watching Oral Roberts have started watching Robert Schuller or some other TV minister.
Just how big is the entire religious TV audience? Ratings services such as Arbitron don’t help much because, while they can determine the size audience for a particular program, they can’t sort out overlapping audiences. National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) executive Ben Armstrong puts the audience at around 14 million. Armstrong’s estimate does not count more than once the single viewer who watches more than one religious program. William Martin, a Rice University sociologist who has long written on the electronic church, estimates the same audience at a higher total of between 20 and 22 million. William Fore of the National Council of Churches has put the audience at 10 million.
An exact total, then, is impossible to arrive at. The most exact estimate that can be made is that the electronic church audience is between 10 and 20 million people. (TV is in 98 percent of all homes in the U.S., which has a population of 226 million.) Of course, there are far more viewers on occasion than that: Martin believes as much as half the nation sporadically watches a religious special such as a Billy Graham crusade.
A better count of the audience may come late next year. It is then that the first definitive study of the electronic church is scheduled for completion, according to NRB’S Armstrong. NRB is sponsoring a cooperative survey to be undertaken by the Gallup organization and the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School of Communications.
The $200,000 study is being financed by diverse sources: Jerry Falwell has contributed, as well as the National Council of Churches; Rex Humbard as well as the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
It was Prime Time Preachers, the study by Hadden and Swann, that generated headlines about the electronic church shrinking. A careful reading of the book indicates that the authors were more cautious in that suggestion than the headlines interpreting their book were. Although Hadden and Swann noted that Arbitron ratings show a decline in viewers since 1978, they added that the decline was small enough and recent enough that it “is too early to call it a trend.”
Oral Roberts has, in fact, lost viewers—more than 40 percent of the audience he had in 1977. The other old pro, Humbard, has also suffered losses. Gary Taylor is the former general manager of the Rex Humbard Ministry and his judgment is respected in the industry. Taylor is worried about the “fragmented audiences of the major religious [broadcast] ministries.”
Veteran broadcasters such as Humbard and Roberts, Taylor notes, once had the field largely to themselves. Now dozens of other programs have moved in to share the same audience, an audience Taylor believes is “already at the point of saturation.” Jerry Rose, second vice-president of the NRB, concurs that the audience is “considerably fragmented.”
Rose, also the manager of a Christian TV station in Chicago, believes religious programmers will have to be more imaginative to hold audiences. It is not only rivalry within the family that faces religous broadcasters.
CBS has succeeded with its Sunday morning news program and has expanded it to 90 minutes. NBC is considering its own Sunday morning entry.
Cable, usually regarded as a boon for religious broadcasters, presents its own problems. Pay movie services now offer first-run feature films on Sunday morning as well as the rest of the week. What all the high-powered competition means is that Sunday morning religious programs will have fewer “drop-in” or casual viewers who could find nothing else to watch. “Cable is a threat to religious ministries because it further fragments the opportunity to reach broader based audiences,” Taylor thinks.
Finally, religious broadcasters are deeply concerned about a bill now in the House of Representatives. Until now, cable operators have been required by the Federal Communications Commision to carry local stations. Bill HR 5949 would allow cable operators not to carry stations that pull less than 1 percent of the total market share of viewers.
NRB officials say such a rule would endanger many religious stations; they believe the change is being pressed because cable operators suddenly have the opportunity to reap huge profits by leasing channels to purveyors of movies. The NRB therefore favors a proposed amendment to the bill, made by James Collins, a Texas Republican. Collins’s amendment would exempt religious programming from the audience share requirement.
Meanwhile, the surging airwaves broadcasters have been riding appear to be cresting. “The impact of the major ministries has probably peaked,” says Taylor. He expects a very gradual decline in the next 10 years.
If Taylor’s prediction holds, religious broadcasters will face a life that will definitely be harder in the 1980s than it was in the booming 1970s.
Japanese Are Responding To Tv Evangelism
Long resistant to traditional methods of evangelism, many Japanese have now willingly opened their living rooms to the gospel. A weekly series of animated Bible stories on prime-time television and a special edition of the Living Bible are making an unprecedented impact on the Japanese public. Cosponsors of this evangelistic blitz are Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Living Bibles International (LBI).
“Japan is seeing a modern miracle,” said David Clark of CBN, commenting on the breakthrough to prime-time TV. “It is a significant development in children’s TV.” It is estimated that more than 3.8 million people in Tokyo alone watch “Family Theater.” The program is so well received that the original projection of 26 weekly shows has been increased to 104. It is being produced by a Japanese company under CBN supervision to ensure that “Family Theater” conforms to local culture as well as Scripture and also appeals to the audience. Its production cost is $4 million.
Each 30-minute animated program portrays a boy hero and his friends going into a time tunnel. The first series of 26 shows, aired last October through March on 22 stations, presented the Bible as “Superbook,” the subtitle of the first segment. Currently on the air is the second series of 26. Of the 104 shows, 49 are based on the Old Testament and 55 on the New Testament. Only Old Testament stories have been aired so far.
A Japanese magazine, The Gospel for Millions, said that until now, TV evangelism was just a dream because of cost and TV stations’ refusals to slot Christian programs on prime time since they drew a low percentage of viewers.
It is, moreover, an opportune time. The magazine said, “This is the time of economically low growth, so not everybody is busy, and many people are spending their lives watching TV with a feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction.” A survey conducted a few years ago revealed that most Japanese watched TV three hours and 25 minutes a day, while housewives averaged five hours. It also revealed that 98.2 percent of households in Japan have color TV—the highest percentage in the world.
The Bible For Your Tomorrow, designed by Living Bibles International for this joint evangelistic effort, is a 400-page book comprising key chapters from the Old and New Testaments, including the entire Gospel of Matthew and five complete epistles.
Each “Family Theater” program has three 30-second advertisements, which say that its programs are based on stories in The Bible For Your Tomorrow.
About 1,500 pastors are cooperating in this project. Earl Weirich of CBN said the network hopes to raise that number to 3,500.
This CBN-LBI liaison is expected to continue in another four Asian countries. “Family Theater” will be dubbed into other languages, and new special editions of the Living Bible will make their way into Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand later this year.
CBN also has contracted for or is negotiating the introduction of “Superbook” to a wider audience. These countries include Spain, France, Denmark, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Italy, Nigeria, South Africa, the Philippines, New Zealand, and Canada.
“We are also getting ready to negotiate with Christian publishing companies to write a curriculum that could be used as a teaching tool with the TV series,” said Weirich. It will be designed for use in Europe, Canada, and the United States. Japan, as such, will soon be exporting another of its products to the U.S.: “Family Theater.”
LAWSON LAU
Despite Scandals, Armstrong’S Church Is Growing
Despite recurring scandals and defections, the Worldwide Church of God (WCG) and its fiery founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, are stronger than ever. Membership is growing at the rate of more than 1,000 new members a year and as of May 3, 1982, stood at 70,680. Ninety-five new congregations have been added in the past two-and-a-half years. Income has soared from $90.3 million in 1980 to $108.4 million in 1981. (WCG press secretary Ellis La-Ravia states that the previously announced figure of $66.4 million for 1979 represented U.S. income only, while the recent amounts are worldwide totals.)
Circulation of Armstrong’s magazine, Plain Truth, has zoomed to 4.3 million; subscriptions have doubled to nearly 2.5 million, and giveaways (at newsstands, supermarkets, etc.) have tripled to almost 1.9 million since late 1979. Nonmember contributors are holding steady at 144,000 after a 25,000 drop from 1976 to 1979, but “new people” are flooding the mail processing center in Pasadena, California, at the rate of 100,000 per month. This upsurge may be explained in large part by the WCG’S dramatic expansion of media coverage. Since January 1981, “The World Tomorrow” broadcast in the U.S. has more than doubled to 100 radio stations and 144 television stations. The program, featuring monologues by Armstrong, is transmitted worldwide by a total of 168 radio and 192 television stations, including 108 outlets in Canada, 61 in Australia, and 35 in the Philippines. It is beamed to the British Isles via Radio Luxembourg. Armstrong, peripatetic “ambassador without portfolio,” continues his excursions to world capitals. Over the past years, his travels have taken him to Europe, the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. In Cairo, Egypt, he was received by Anwar Sadat’s successor, President Hosni Mubarak. Armstrong’s colleges—both named Ambassador—at Pasadena and Big Sandy, Texas (a junior college), enrolled 500 and 200 students respectively for the 1981–82 academic year.
Armstrong recently filed to end his five-year marriage with the former Ramona Martin, who is 46 years his junior. Armstrong, who will be 90 on July 31, returned last summer to his Pasadena residence from the couple’s home in Tucson. He charges that Ramona has refused to join him there. “God hates divorce. So do I,” he recently wrote constituents, but justified his action from 1 Corinthians 7:12–15, in which Paul declares that upon the departure of an “unbelieving” mate, “a brother or sister is not under bondage.” Ironically, Armstrong’s adamant opposition to divorce resulted in the dissolution of hundreds of WCG marriages involving a divorced partner until the rigidly enforced “D and R” (divorce and remarriage) regulation was modified a year before Armstrong married Ramona, a divorcee, in 1977. His first marriage had ended ten years earlier when his wife of nearly fifty years, Loma, died.
In an article in the May 1982 issue of the Plain Truth (“God Hates Divorce—Yet He Divorced His Own Wife! Why?”) Armstrong likens his defunct marriage to that of God with Israel: “It’s a case of an aged personage who loved a beautiful young woman and proposed marriage. He offered her a considerably increased lifestyle and many advantages—even to make her the “first lady” of all the earth—for this aged personage was God.… But his wife was unfaithful and refused to live with him in peace.” Accordingly, God pronounced judgment upon his faithless bride and “divorced” her.
Ramona could not be reached for comment. An informed source contends that she does not want the divorce and is frustrated by her husband’s refusal to support her and her son (by a previous marriage) and to continue mortgage payments on the Tucson residence. The source believes the real reason behind Armstrong’s action is his fear that Ramona, in league with other “conspirators,” will attempt to have him declared mentally incompetent and removed from the church’s leadership. When Stanley R. Rader, 52, long considered the de facto power behind the Armstrong throne, was relieved of his responsibilities a year ago, it was rumored that the dismissal was triggered by the disclosure of a plot to depose Armstrong. Rader, contacted by telephone, denied the rumor.
Rader denied he had been “fired,” declaring that his intention to “return to a more private life” after resolution of the church’s legal battle with the state of California had been announced long before his resignation. (The state imposed a receivership on the church in January 1979 pending investigation of alleged financial irregularities.) Rader insisted that he has never aspired to succeed Armstrong as the spiritual leader. Armstrong conferred upon Rader, who was his treasurer, legal counsel, and constant traveling companion on missions to heads of state around the world, a bonus of $750,000 ($250,000 after taxes) in appreciation for his services. Rader has resumed his law practice, but stated that he is available to serve as “adviser” if called upon, and he continues on the church’s payroll, although his salary (which he says exceeds $200,000), originally guaranteed through 2003, reportedly has been cut back.
Since his removal, a number of “Rader men” in the Armstrong organization likewise have been dismissed, including Henry Cornwall and Sherwin McMichael, whose suit against David Robinson for alleged libelous accusations in his book Herbert Armstrongs Tangled Web subsequently was dropped. Also banished were aides Joe Kotura, Jack Bicket, John Kineston, and Jack Kessler. Kotura and Bicket recently were restored after they reportedly reaffirmed loyalty to Armstrong. Kessler, 32, attorney and accountant who audited WCG financial records and prepared Armstrong’s personal income tax during the seventies, was disfellowshipped in September 1981. Members of the church, including his father and brother-in-law (both pastors) and presumably his wife, were forbidden to communicate with him. On December 30, Kessler wrote the 16-member governing board a 14-page letter urging correction of “continuing, persistent financial abuses” within the church.
(Armstrong’s theology is unorthodox in many respects. He denies the existence of the Trinity, the soul, hell, and the existence of the Holy Spirit as a person. One of his teachings is “British Israelism”—that Anglo-Saxons are the true Israel; the British being the tribe of Ephraim and the United States the tribe of Manasseh.)
Meanwhile, the Church of God, International, run by Armstrong’s estranged son, Garner Ted is slipping slightly financially. Weekly income has dipped to $20,442 from $21,000 eighteen months ago, and membership has fallen from 3,000 to 1,800 during that interval. Garner Ted currently broadcasts from a new headquarters building in Tyler, Texas, over 8 television and “less than 35” radio stations—compared with 300 radio and 165 TV stations during the heyday of WCG broadcasting in the early seventies. He has virtually ruled out any possibility of his return to the WCG. He stated that his father has repeatedly spumed overtures of filial concern, even refusing to accept a letter hand-delivered by a friend. However, close observers believe Garner Ted would welcome an invitation back to the WCG, but only on his terms: total power and free reign to make sweeping reforms and personnel changes.
What will happen when at last the elder Armstrong passes from the scene? Young ex-members who publish Ambassador Report (an anti-WCG newsletter) believe Roderick Meredith, a former top-ranking executive, has the inside track. Another highly placed source sees Meredith as the leader of a reactionary wing within the WCG, but believes the present directors will seek to protect their $60,000 to $100,000 salaries by establishing “rule by committee.” None of the contenders seems to possess the public speaking ability and charisma of either Armstrong. Like Jehovah’s Witnesses of the post-Russell-Rutherford-Knorr era, future leadership will probably be assumed by a hierarchy of less talented executives who have somehow managed to survive the rapidly spinning revolving door at Pasadena headquarters. Even Herbert, while exclaiming, “God will keep me alive and on the job as long as he needs me,” has bowed to the inevitable and empowered his council of elders to appoint a successor “to the physical and spiritual offices in the church” in the event of his death or incapacity.
JOSEPH M. HOPKINS
North American Scene
The basketball team Athletes in Action has been cut from its sponsorship by Campus Crusade for Christ. The team, considered one of the top amateur squads in the world, has been touring for 15 years. Campus Crusade decided to redirect funds to overseas evangelistic projects. The Athletes in Action team will continue if funding can be raised from other sources.
The General Association of Regular Baptists (GARB) lined up squarely against what it sees as the excesses of American society at its recent annual meeting. In colorfully worded statements, GARB attacked “bribe-taking lawmakers” and a California sperm bank “that seeks to populate the world with supersmart sinners.” Alcoholism, drug trafficking, homosexuality, and crime were all denounced as part of the “moral degeneracy” that “runs like a rampaging river through the land.” The 74,000-member denomination was urged to “pray as we have never prayed before.”
Liturgical and social dancing—except disco—has been approved for the 214,000 members of the Christian Reformed Church. Delegates at that denomination’s annual synod warned against the “negative potential” of some social dancing but said it can be legitimate recreation when “genuine Christian maturity” is exercised. The synod also vetoed ecclesiastical fellowship with South Africa’s (white) Dutch Reformed Church.
World Scene
There is now one Third World missionary for every three North American missionaries. Even more significant, according to a recently completed study, is that “non-Western missionary recruitment for full-time cross-cultural endeavor appears to be growing at least five times as fast as recruitment for missions in North America.” A year of survey work by Lawrence Keyes, based in Saõ Paulo, Brazil, uncovered 368 non-Western mission agencies from at least 57 different countries. They are probably fielding over 15,000 missionaries, almost triple the number just eight years ago. Keyes, an O.C. Ministries missionary, is coordinator of the Unit of Research and Information established recently by the Missions Commission of the World Evangelical Fellowship.
A group of Christian Indians from North America has made an urgent appeal to help the predominantly Christian Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. A Mohawk evangelist, Tom Claus, along with other well-known Indian leaders, announced recently in Los Angeles the launching of an appeal for $400,000 to assist the Miskitos. Claus, president of Christian Hope Indian Eskimo Fellowship (CHIEF), said that the money is needed to help feed the 250 Miskito prisoners, provide 500 homes for refugees who fled to Honduras, and provide blankets and agricultural help. More than 50 American Indian tribal chiefs have been enlisted to help raise money and create public awareness of the plight of the Miskitos.
There is a religious angle to the controversial Siberia-Europe natural gas pipeline. About one-tenth of the 100,000 people working on construction of the pipeline are forced laborers. Among the criminals and political prisoners are those incarcerated for their religious activities—believers such as Baptist preachers Vladimir Marmus and Alexander Ussatjuk. According to the International Association for Human Rights (IGFM) in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, the forced laborers are housed in “inadequate trucks that offer no protection” against temperatures of 30 to 40 below zero in winter. Many are reported to have fallen ill already.
Ethiopian evangelicals are winning respect from their country’s Marxist government. One hundred families who were resettled in 1977 from overcrowded highland areas have now become self sufficient. As a result, authorities are asking the Kale Heywat Development Program, the relief arm of the SIM-related Word of Life church, to rehabilitate a second 100 families in southern Ethiopia. In the highlands, erosion and over-farming impoverished the soil. In the lowland resettlement area, SIM supplies oxen for plowing, vaccination against trypanosomiasis carried by the tsetse fly, farm tools, food subsidy for children, and antimalarial medication.
Soviet Christians are duplicating a 24-cassette version of the New Testament in Russian, the first produced in their language. The Slavic Gospel Association and Messianic Life, a Jewish-Christian organization, launched the project.
A New Life campaign in the Zurich area of Switzerland was jointly sponsored by the Reformed, Roman Catholic, and free churches. This unprecedented cooperation, with some 10,000 Christians participating during April and May, resulted in the formation of about 1,300 new Bible study groups. Also, a free evangelistic paperback book, prepared for the campaign by Campus Crusade for Christ, was distributed to some 140,000 persons who responded to newspaper and billboard advertisements.
Evangelicals Study The Link Between Social Action And Gospel
Meeting for six days at the end of June at Reformed Bible College, Grand Rapids, Michigan, over 50 evangelical theologians from 26 countries considered the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility. The event was sponsored by the World Evangelical Fellowship and the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. At the opening service, Leighton Ford of the Lausanne Committee spoke of the apprehensions which surrounded the topic. The meeting, he made clear, had been called to clarify, but not rewrite, the statement in the Lausanne Covenant concerning the responsibility of Christians to engage in social and political action.
The event was a response to a decade of growing demand for guidance from evangelical Christians from around the world. The realities of world hunger, exploitation, and the desitution of some 800 million people are pressing in on the consciousness of evangelicals in a new way. Many, particularly in Asia and North and South America, want to understand better the balance between these elements of the church’s mission. Which should have priority? How may the church of Jesus Christ minister to the spiritual and physical needs of a troubled world? How does the evangelical evaluate the insistent demands of the liberation theologians that Christians join in the struggle for social justice?
Consultation participants considered eight major papers and case studies from different cultural settings, which were designed to increase understanding of key issues from both theological and practical perspectives. The papers considered ways in which Christians through the centuries have viewed the balance between evangelism and social action, the manner in which eschatological views may influence social action, and whether salvation language may be used to describe social or political liberation.
A consultation report was drafted by John Stott of England and David Wells of Gordon-Conwell Seminary near Boston. This drew extensively on views expressed in the small group and plenary sessions, and at the end of the consultation, participants considered its draft form line by line. Long hours of patient listening and seeking to understand new viewpoints clarified and resolved some—but by no means all—of the issues.
Conscious of the anxieties of many evangelicals who remember the decline of the liberal social gospel movement, the report stoutly affirms the priority of evangelism. It states: “Evangelism has a logical priority.… If social action is a consequence and aim of evangelism (as we have asserted) then evangelism must precede it. In addition, social progress is being hindered in some countries by the prevailing religious culture; only evangelism can change this.”
The report continues: “Seldom if ever should we have to choose between satisfying physical hunger and spiritual hunger, or between healing bodies and saving souls, since an authentic love for our neighbor will lead us to serve him or her as a whole person. Nevertheless, if we must choose, then we have to say that the supreme and ultimate need of all mankind is the saving grace of Jesus Christ and therefore a person’s eternal, spiritual salvation is of greater importance than his or her temporal and material well-being.”
The report does, however, consider a range of circumstances in which social responsibility and evangelism may be separated. It recognizes that some people have gifts as evangelists while others are called to service and acts of mercy, both of which should be used for the common good (Rom. 12:8). It also identifies at least three relationships that it describes as “equally valid.” These are: social concern as a consequence of evangelism; social concern as a bridge to evangelism; and social concern as a partner of evangelism. It points to the ministry of Jesus Christ as a clear illustration of the partnership between the two; in his earthly ministry, proclamation (kerygma) and service (diaconia) went hand in hand, with his words explaining his works and his works dramatizing his words. Both words and works were expressions of his compassion for people.
The report continues: “… although social action should not be called evangelism nor identified with it (since central to evangelism is the verbal proclamation of the gospel), nevertheless it has an evangelistic dimension in the sense that good works of love, done in the name of Christ, are a silent but visible demonstration of the gospel.”
On the vexed question of social justice, a range of views was aired by participants. It was recognized that some social change necessitates political action and that this is feared by many evangelicals on the grounds that it may lead to civil strife and even revolution. The report recommends that the sociopolitical involvement of which the Lausanne Covenant speaks should be pursued through the democratic process in states where this form of government prevails. Appropriate forms of action for Christians in non-democratic societies are also discussed.
A major section of the report addressed the work of the local church. Is there such a thing as local church social responsibility? Should local churches become involved in political action? This topic is discussed in the contexts of political and religious freedom and situations of oppression. Its guidelines suggest ways in which local churches and their leaders may respond to social issues in their communities. It discusses a range of options, including the need for responsible leadership to inform church members about contemporary social and ethical issues and to discuss these in light of the moral demands of the kingdom. “We are also agreed … that the church has a prophetic ministry, should seek to be the conscience of the nation, and has a duty to help the congregation develop a Christian mind so that the people may learn to think Christianly even about controversial questions.”
Guidelines for churches in conditions where Christians are suffering harassment or active persecution, “living at the margins of society,” were drawn up by consultation members who have lived in Uganda and Eastern Europe. In such situations, it is suggested, the local church must first be consistent to itself, establishing and maintaining the credibility of its witness. It can function as a living model of a community of love, bearing testimony by deeds of love and by being a model of “just structures, harmonious relationships, and contented lifestyles.” It must witness to the gospel by personal evangelism, love, and service to those in deep human need. Its members must stand together and, speaking on local issues, witness to the principles of Christ. The report identifies in the Bible a “noble succession of men … such as Elijah, Nathan, Daniel, and John the Baptist, who risked their lives by courageously defying human authority in the name of the God of justice.”
ARTHUR WILLIAMSON
Canadian Bill Threatens Christian School
The government of the Canadian province of Ontario has reintroduced a piece of legislation that threatens the existence of a small but respected Christian liberal arts graduate school. Ostensibly aimed at curbing “degree mills,” which are surfacing in the province, the original legislation, proposed in 1980, was opposed as too encompassing by evangelical Bible schools and seminaries and by the Institute for Christian Studies (ICS).
The revised legislation makes provision for valid and recognized vocational “religious degrees”—such as M.Div., B.Th., or B.R.E.—but it prohibits the granting of “nonreligious degrees,” such as B.A., M.A., M.Phil., or Ph.D., except by the 15 government-established universities. In addition, the province has served notice that it has no intention of recognizing more colleges, regardless of their academic credentials.
The Institute for Christian Studies sees the bill as a devastating blow. Founded in 1967, the Christian Reformed Church-related graduate school offers the master of philosophy degree and, through a joint program with Amsterdam’s Free University, makes it possible for qualified students to earn doctoral degrees from the Dutch university.
The institute, with eight faculty members (all with Ph.D. degrees) and 48 graduate students, is highly respected by the general academic community. A number of professors from provincially recognized universities have written to the government to express their high estimate of the graduate school’s program.
Dr. Bernard Zylstra, ICS principal, in a letter to the province’s premier, expressed hearty support of the government’s attempts to stamp out “degree mills.”
Since the institute has an eminently qualified faculty and has granted only 19 M.Phil. degrees since 1975, its supporters point out that it can hardly be designated a “degree mill.”
Zylstra and others have rejected the suggestion that they offer “religious degrees.” To do that, he said, in an open letter to the premier, would be “to deny what we are doing, handicap our students as they move on elsewhere, and, ultimately, threaten our existence.”
Passage of the legislation, contend ICS supporters, would be a grave injustice, which could be a body blow to the institution.
LESLIE K. TARR
Supreme Court Rules Against Child Porn
Last month’s Supreme Court ruling on child pornography means it does not have to be proven obscene before it can be banned. The decision placed it in the category of “speech” that is not deserving of First Amendment protection, along with libel, language that incites to violence, and obscenity.
The nine justices made their important ruling by unanimously upholding the constitutionality of a New York law that bars the use of children (under the age of 16) in sexually explicit films, photographs, or performances.
In so doing, they reversed the judgment of the New York Court of Appeals, which last year ruled the law unconstitutional since it did not require establishment of obscenity under the Miller formula. (In the 1973 Miller v. California case, the Supreme Court defined as obscene those works “which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”)
Associate Justice Byron R. White wrote in the court opinion that an obscenity test such as Miller “bears no connection to the issue of whether a child has been physically or psychologically harmed in the production of the work.” He added that a pornographic work that could pass the Miller obscenity test “may nevertheless embody the hardest core of child pornography.”
The court defended removal of child pornography from First Amendment protection because “the prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse of children constitutes a government objective of surpassing importance.” It noted that “virtually all of the states and the United States have passed legislation proscribing the production or otherwise combating ‘child pornography.’ ” This legislation, White’s opinion stated, is in line with expert advice that “the use of children as subjects is harmful to the physiological, emotional, and mental health of the child.”
For those concerned that child pornography laws might stifle legitimate free speech interests, court opinions argued that they do not limit discussion of child sexuality or even illustration that does not utilize or photograph children. Depictions of serious social value—Justice White mentioned “medical textbooks” and “pictorials in National Geographic”—do not “amount to more than a tiny fraction of the materials within the statute’s reach.” The opinions implied that it would be “impermissible” to apply child pornography laws in such exceptional cases.
The practical result of the ruling is to uphold not only the constitutionality of the New York law, but also those of 19 other states that prohibit child pornography regardless of whether the material is legally obscene.
The 17 states whose child pornography statutes only prohibit obscene material, and those without legislation in this area, are now likely to pass laws on the New York model (with perhaps stiffer penalties for material prosecuted as obscene). Thus the legal door should soon swing shut on this vilest of pornographic activity.
This could be a hollow victory, however, according to Bruce Taylor, general counsel for Citizens for Decency through Law. He said there is a trend for enforcement officials to not assign personnel to police pornography (the Customs Department, for instance, has now ceased checking imported materials for obscenity). And many, he notes, who deplore child pornography casually tolerate the adult pornography enterprise that fathered it.
