The Back Page | Philip Yancey: Replenishing the Inner Pastor

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Churches should take greater interest in their shepherds’ spiritual health

A few months ago, I participated in a National Pastors’ Conference cosponsored by Christianity Today‘s parent company. Organizers, who had hoped optimistically for 800 registrants, instead had to scramble to accommodate 1,700, which may indicate our pastors’ hunger for companionship and nourishment.

Is there a profession that demands more and rewards less? A pastor spends up to 20 hours a week preparing a sermon and then hears at best on Sunday morning a polite “Good job, Reverend” from a few parishioners at the door—that is, as long as he or she stays within the 22 minutes allotted for preaching. When time for a formal job evaluation rolls around, pastors find themselves rated by plumbers, salesmen, and engineers, many of whom know little about ministry. This same hodgepodge of lay people votes on salary and housing allowances behind closed doors as the pastor sits like a schoolchild in another room.

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us,” said the apostle Paul about the ministry. God does indeed make his appeal through human instruments, and after my conversations with pastors, I came away with renewed appreciation for the hazards of that endeavor. They devote hours to the premarital counseling of dreamy young lovers, then years later counsel these same couples, now embittered antagonists, through divorce procedures. They comfort the sick and pray boldly for healing, then somehow must find the strength to stand before weeping relatives at their funerals.

We push our pastors to function as psychotherapists, orators, priests, and chief executive officers. Meanwhile, we place on them a unique burden of isolation and loneliness. The pastor or priest loses any private life. Henri Nouwen used to say, “Being friendly to everybody, he very often has no friends for himself. … The paradox is that he who has been taught to love everyone, in reality finds himself without any friends; that he who trained himself in mental prayer often is not able to be alone with himself. Having opened himself to every outsider, there is no room left for the insider.”

Called to Be “Another Christ”

During a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I once had dinner in an Amish home, where I heard about their unusual procedure for choosing a pastor. In that part of the country, few Amish acquire education beyond the 8th grade, and almost none have theological training. The entire congregation votes for any men (in this denomination only males need apply) who show pastoral potential, and those who receive at least three votes move forward to sit at a table. Each has a hymnbook in front of him, and inside his randomly chosen hymn book one of the men finds a card designating him as the new pastor for the next year.

“What if the person selected doesn’t feel qualified?” I asked my Amish friend. He looked puzzled, then replied, “If he did feel qualified, we wouldn’t want him.”

I don’t recommend the Amish method of pastoral call (though it does have intriguing parallels with the Old Testament system of casting lots), but his last comment got me thinking. Thomas Merton once said that most of what we expect pastors and priests to do—teach and advise others, console them, pray for them—should in fact be the responsibility of the rest of the congregation. The pastor’s distinctive vocation is to be a person of God, one who “is called to be another Christ in a far more particular and intimate sense than the ordinary Christian or the monk.”

The pastor stands as a kind of intermediary between the mercy of God, which it is the minister’s job to convey, and the dreadfulness of sin. The pastor knows the latter better than any of us, thanks to his role as a spiritual counselor. The former—well, that is what concerns me.

In our modern fixation with job descriptions and career competency, do we neglect the most important qualification of a pastor, the need to know God? Mahatma Gandhi, leader of half a billion people, refused to compromise his principle of observing every Monday as a day of silence—even in the heat of negotiations over India’s independence from Britain. He believed failure to honor that day of spiritual nourishment would make him less effective throughout the other six days.

I wonder how much more effective our spiritual leaders would be if we encouraged them to take one day a week as a time of silence for reflection, meditation, and personal study. I wonder how much more effective our churches would be if we made the pastor’s spiritual health—not the pastor’s efficiency—our number one priority.

Related Elsewhere

Leadership Journal, a quarterly publication for pastors and church leaders, offers many articles on maintaining spiritual health, including a list of resources of where pastors can go when they’re hurting, broken, or just plain tired. Gift subscriptions to the journal are currently offered at a two-for-one rate.

The Church Leader’s Newsletter examined how the pastor’s task has expanded from shepherd to manager and missionary.

Christian Reader, another Christianity Today sister publication, published an article in its September/October 1999 issue titled, “8 Ways to Encourage Your Pastor | Simple acts that feed a shepherd.”

The National Pastors’ Convention site has information from and about the 2001 meeting in San Diego.

TheOoze.com and Decision Today offer reports on the National Pastors’ Convention.

Yancey’s columns for Christianity Today include:

Beyond Flesh and Blood | I used to disdain biblical talk of “invisible spirits.” No more. (Mar. 27, 2001)

God at Large | A look around the globe reveals a God as big as we want him to be. (Jan. 31, 2001)

Humility’s Many Faces | Everyone I’ve looked up to has shared one trait. (Dec. 4, 2000)

Getting a Life | The most fully alive persons are those who give their lives away. (Oct. 16, 2000)

To Rise, It Stoops | How parenting mirrors the character of God. (Aug. 29, 2000)

Lessons From Rock Bottom | The church can learn about grace from the recovery movement. (July 11, 2000)

Chess Master | God brings victory even from our bad moves. (May 15, 2000)

My To-Be List | What I learned from a 50-year spiritual checkup. (Apr. 3, 2000)

Would Jesus Worship Here? | Across the world, God moves in mysterious ways. (Feb. 7, 2000)

Doctor’s Orders | Why should I care if my doctor is unhappy? I’m not his psychiatrist. (Dec. 2, 1999)

Getting to Know Me | In most ways important to God, I had failed miserably. (Oct. 25,1999)

The Encyclopedia of Theological Ignorance | In view of the mess we have made of crystal-clear commands, I tremble to think how we might act if some doctrines were less ambiguous. (Sept. 6, 1999)

Writing the Trinity | Robert Farrar Capon rightly mocks Christians who conceive of the persons of the Trinity as players on the sidelines taking turns at substitution. (July 12, 1999)

Can Good Come Out of This Evil? | “I am so angry with you! I too am an outcast, but I didn’t kill anyone. I would have been your friend.” (June 14, 1999)

The Last Deist | We need more than a just watchmaker who winds up the universe and lets it tick. (Apr. 5, 1999)

Why I Can Feel Your Pain | The “politically correct” movement often positions itself as an enemy of Christianity. Ironically, the gospel contributed the underpinnings that make the movement possible. (Feb. 8, 1999)

What The Prince of Egypt Won’t Tell You | The Old Testament should come with a warning: Don’t read Exodus without also reading Deuteronomy. (Dec. 7, 1998)

Philip Yancey: A Philip Yancey column that ran from 1985 to 2009

- More from Philip Yancey

Armed Services: Navy Bias Charged

Ken Walker

“We’re not on the same ground as the high church group or the Catholics, say evangelicals”

The allegation that the U.S. Navy discriminates against some evangelical chaplains is gathering momentum. In the first case, filed in October 1999, then-Lt. Patrick Sturm claimed discrimination after being passed over twice for a promotion. There are now a total of four lawsuits, involving 27 plaintiffs, in the federal court system.

Although the Navy moved Sturm, a Pentecostal minister, up a rank to lieutenant commander several months after he filed his suit, U.S. District Judge Thomas Whelan ruled that such administrative relief did not render his case moot.

“If it’s a stacked system, [Sturm] is going to face problems again,” said attorney Dean Broyles, who filed Sturm’s lawsuit. “So will other nonliturgical evangelicals.”

Naval Reserve chaplain Furniss Harkness, a Disciples of Christ pastor in Memphis, Tennessee, told Christianity Today: “The complaint all of us have is essentially the same thing: We’re not on the same ground as the high church group or the Catholics.”

The plaintiffs allege the discrimination takes several forms: They receive fewer chaplaincy appointments; when they are hired as chaplains they receive fewer promotions to higher rank; and Navy superiors squelch some evangelical practices, such as praying in Jesus’ name.

The Navy denies any wrongdoing. In a motion to dismiss the suits, the U.S. Justice Department argues that meeting the faith needs of Navy personnel entails more than simply mirroring the variety of faiths within the Navy. Concerning the complaint by evangelicals that their distinctive worship practices are being squelched, the Justice Department said attempts to promote a general Protestant service on some Navy bases is not discrimination but an effort to augment limited resources. The Justice Department said the plaintiffs are asking for court action that would be inflexible and would tie the hands of Naval officers.

Who’s in Control?The Navy allocated chaplains among faith groups on objective criteria until the 1980s, according to one plaintiff’s suit. The system broadly reflected the relative percentage represented within the total American population, the suit said.

The suit alleges that the Navy now allocates chaplains by thirds: Roman Catholic; Protestant liturgical, such as Lutherans and Episcopalians; and “nonliturgical,” such as Baptists and Pentecostals, but also including Jews and Muslims. The suit claims that the practice also applies to promotions.

The suit charges these practices have the discriminatory effect of allowing liturgical Protestant and Catholic chaplains to keep control of the chaplain corps. The lawsuit asks the court to declare these practices unconstitutional and prohibit the Navy from further discrimination against nonliturgical chaplains in hiring and promotion.

Art Schulcz, an attorney who represents parties in three of the suits, told Baptist Press that the Navy’s discrimination has the effect of infringing on the free exercise of religion among enlisted personnel. He said there is one Navy chaplain for every 140 Protestant liturgical members, but only one chaplain for every 494 members of nonliturgical traditions.

“You’ll see twice as many Baptist Navy personnel as liturgical [personnel], yet they don’t have twice as many chaplains,” Schulcz said. “The ultimate victim in all this is the seaman or Marine who doesn’t get the right to express his First Amendment rights.”

The suits detail many examples of alleged discrimination. For instance, active duty chaplain David Wilder of Hubert, North Carolina, was passed over twice for a commander’s position in the past two years because of discrimination, one suit says. Wilder, a Southern Baptist, led a general Protestant service in Okinawa early in the 1990s that averaged 250 to 275 in weekly attendance.

An incoming Marine chaplain suggested changing it to an Episcopal service. Wilder refused and was dismissed as pastor of the service. After the other chaplain converted it to into an Episcopal Eucharist, turnouts dwindled to 12. When Wilder started Baptist worship in the base theater, which quickly outgrew the Eucharist, the other chaplain accused him of sabotage and tried to close the Baptist service.

Court hearings are expected to occur late this year, but no trial has been scheduled.

Related Elsewhere

See our earlier coverage of the suit, “Evangelicals File Bias Suit Against Navy” (May 22, 2000), and a lengthier version of the Religion News Service article adapted for the magazine.

The Washington Post also covered the lawsuit when it was filed in April 2000.

The Navy Chaplain Corps operates several Web sites, including those for the Navy Chief of Chaplains, the Chaplain Resource Branch, and Chaplain Education.

Other Christianity Today articles about religion in the military include:

The Just-Chaplain Theory | The church need not divorce the military to remain a godly counterculture.(July 27, 2000)

Irreconcilable Differences | The church should divorce the military. (March 6, 2000)

Wiccans Practice on U. S. Bases | Court okays pagan ceremonies. (July 12, 1999)

Military Chaplains Win Speech Case | Military personnel can speak against partial-birth abortion (June 6, 1997)

Military Chaplains Sue Over ‘Project Life’ Ban | Chaplains ordered to “actively avoid” political comment. (December 9, 1999)

- More from Ken Walker

Black Methodists Criticize Race Overture

United Methodist News Service

“United Methodist caucus claims delegates reach out to outside black denominations, but not to blacks inside the church”

The national caucus of black United Methodists criticized the church’s 2000 General Conference for a service of repentance for racism, saying the delegates extended an olive branch to historically black Methodist denominations but failed to engage black people who stayed in the mother church.

At their annual April 4-7 meeting in Houston, more than 500 members of national Black Methodists for Church Renewal (BMCR) voted to ask the United Methodist Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns to “include the voices of black United Methodists” in any further resources and events aimed at making amends for historic racism that has split the Methodist family.

At the 2000 General Conference, the denomination’s highest legislative body, delegates atoned for racism in Methodist history that led to the creation of the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, and Christian Methodist Episcopal churches.

Bishops and other representatives from those three churches expressed hope, caution, and appreciation for the initial step toward healing. Some black United Methodists, however, were concerned that an expression of regret for racism’s blot on the church had not begun closer to home.

“We need to clean our own house before we start reaching out to other folks,” said McCallister Hollins, pastor of Ben Hill United Methodist Church in Atlanta.

Related Elsewhere

Read the full United Methodist News Service article at the UMNS site.

- More from United Methodist News Service

Ministry: New England Evangelicals Innovate and Grow

Jeffrey MacDonald

Churches planted in area take root despite rocky soil

After many years of frustration with New England’s rocky spiritual soil, evangelicals in the region have launched more than 100 new churches in the past five years. They have had a little help from a campaign to remake their old-fashioned, sometimes negative image.

Gone are the cramped, rented headquarters in downtown Boston and the 109-year-old name, Evangelistic Association of New England. The organization now boasts 14,000 square feet of new space in the suburbs, complementing its new name: Vision New England.

At this point, leaders say, the carefully orchestrated makeover is bearing fruit as a handful of newcomer denominations to the region watch their churches grow.

“It’s been incredible how the name change has overcome [an] old stigma,” said Steve Macchia, president of Vision New England.

In a region known for its many quaint church buildings and rich religious history, it might seem that new churches hardly answer a pressing need. But Kim Richardson, a Nazarene pastor and coordinator of the church-planting network, disagrees. “The church culture that has been established here simply isn’t reaching certain people,” she says, adding that new churches are better than established ones at reaching the unchurched.

Starting a new church calls for smart marketing. Vision New England has adopted the region’s beloved, indigenous lighthouse image for its logo. New churches, such as Harbor of Hope Christian Church in Lowell, Massachusetts, have tried to tap the same vein of local culture.

Like many New England church-planters, Harbor of Hope pastor Brent Storms is a newcomer to the region. He studied several Massachusetts communities in depth. Gradually, with the help of dozens of newspaper advertisements and 50,000 direct-mail postcards, his church has attracted 120 to worship at a public school auditorium.

For Alanna Davis, an Oklahoma native and a lay church-planter for Southern Baptists in Newton, Massachusetts, the goal is simply to reach people with the gospel. She doesn’t trumpet the name evangelical.

“When you say [evangelical], they don’t know what you’re talking about,” Davis said. “It’s a term that has no reference point in their everyday life.”

The new surge in church plants includes all six New England states, Richardson said. Yet for all the progress, planters say cultural barriers still make the soil rocky.

“This is not the easiest place in the world to do evangelism,” Davis said. “There is a sense of privacy here, so people do not readily talk about their faith and their relationship with the Lord. I’ve got to put in time to earn a hearing, and in New England, that amount of time just tends to be longer than in other parts of the country.”

Related Elsewhere

Vision New England‘s Web site offers more information and news about the association, as well as other resources.

The News-Times of Danbury, Connecticut, profiled the growing evangelical movement in New England in its July 16, 2000, edition.

Last week, Christianity Today profiled New England’s controversial marriage laws.

- More from Jeffrey MacDonald

“Pornography: Libraries, ACLU Resist Internet Filtering”

Mark A. Kellner

“Law, which requires filters at libraries and schools receiving federal Internet funds, takes effect tomorrow”

A legal skirmish is shaping up over the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which passed the United States Senate 95-3 last December. Sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), CIPA requires libraries receiving federally subsidized Internet access to use filtering technology to block potentially offensive Web sites from underage viewers.

On March 20, the American Library Association (ALA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) each filed U.S. District Court lawsuits to prevent implementation of the measure, which takes effect on April 20.

The bill mandates the technology for public libraries that seek Universal Service discounts (also known as the “E-rate”) for Internet access or that seek Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funds for Internet-related expenses. According to the ALA, over $190 million has been given to more than 5,000 public libraries through the federal E-rate program.

“Mandated filters don’t necessarily protect kids,” said Candace Morgan, a librarian in Vancouver, Washington, and president of the ALA’s Freedom to Read Foundation, which is a plaintiff in the suit.

“You can’t rely on them to protect kids,” she added, because “filters assume all kids are the same and all families have the same concerns. The best way is for libraries to work with parents and the communities to develop what fits in that community.”

“The government is choking off the free flow of information on the Internet to the library patrons who need it the most,” said Ann Beeson, a member of the ACLU legal team that filed its challenge at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.

The measure, McCain said in a statement, “does not dictate any specific actions be taken by communities or apply a federal standard, it simply requires them to have some technology in place to protect children if [libraries] are using federal funds for Internet access.”

Christian groups have been among those blasting the anti-CIPA lawsuits. According to the Family Research Council’s publication, Dangerous Access 2000 Edition: Uncovering Internet Pornography in America’s Libraries, the group has documented 539 incidents in public libraries of children being exposed to pornography and inappropriate material; 106 incidents of adults exposing children to pornography; 41 incidents of child porn being accessed; and 5 incidents of attempted molestation while viewing pornography via the Internet.

Jan LaRue, senior director of legal studies for the FRC, said the ALA is operating under an “absolutist view” of the First Amendment and the Internet that it does not apply to printed materials. “They admit both orally and in writing that librarians tap people on the shoulder when [a patron is] looking at an inappropriate site,” LaRue said. “Tell me why they think that’s constitutional, but a filter isn’t?”

Another group, the New York City-based Center for the Community Interest, has published an online handbook, Making Public Libraries Safe for Children, providing legal precedents for using filtering software on library-based Internet terminals. The group says it will provide free legal representation to libraries willing to “take a stand” by using such filters.

Related Elsewhere

In February, Christianity Today editorialized on the law: “Good Idea, Fallible Filters | Why even free-speechers liked the Children’s Internet Protection Act. (Feb. 20, 2001)

Previous Christianity Today stories about filter laws include:

Internet Pornography Use Common in many Libraries, Report Says | Librarian-researcher claims American Library Association thwarted study (March 20, 2000)

Child Online Protection Act Challenged | (Dec. 17, 1998)

Christian Leaders Target Cyberporn | (Jan. 6, 1997)

The Children’s Internet Protection Act (of 2000) should not be confused with the Children’s Online Protection Act (of 1998), which required the distributors of objectionable material to restrict minors’ access to such material over the Web.

A 1997 study by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) found that some Internet filters mistakenly registered 98 percent of the information at sites like the American Red Cross, the United Way and the NAACP as “objectionable.”

Last year a library in Michigan rejected the use of filters for adults, saying filters severely limited the search capabilities of users. Read the Associated Press story here.

Other news articles and opinion pieces on the Children’s Internet Protection Act include:

FCC Issues Rules for Filtering Access to Internet Sites — Education Week (Apr. 18, 2001)

Don’t Rely On Porn Filters — Editorial, The Hartford Courant (Apr. 11, 2001)

U.S. Ties Web Filters to Cash for Schools, Libraries — NewsFactor.com (Apr. 9, 2001)

Libraries join battle on ‘Net censorship — The Cincinnati Post (Apr. 6, 2001)

Kid Porn Act Gets Buffed Up — Wired News (Apr. 4, 2001)

A battle to block the filters — The Hartford Courant (Apr. 1, 2001)

Filters don’t censor, they protect our kids | Foes of Internet filter law don’t understand the dangers of online porn — Donna Rice Hughes, MSNBC (May 27, 2001)

In the name of the children | Anti-porn crusaders hide behind our kids — Brock N. Meeks, MSNBC (May 27, 2001)

Keep censors out of libraries | When Internet filters replace human guidance, trouble ensues — Judith Krug, MSNBC (May 27, 2001)

A legal challenge bound to fail | Why an Internet filter law will withstand liberal assaults — Jay Sekulow, MSNBC (May 27, 2001)

Library association plans suit over filtering — IDG/CNN (Jan. 19, 2001)

Filtering software raises ire — The Seattle Times (Jan. 15, 2001)

Internet blocking for blockheads — Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune (Jan. 1, 2001)

Congress quietly censors the Web — Editorial, Chicago Tribune (Dec. 23, 2000)

Filtering Law Sparks Fight | ACLU Opposes Mandatory Software Filters in Libraries — Associated Press/ABCNews.com (Dec. 20, 2000)

ACLJ Promises Legal Defense for New Federal Law Requiring Public Libraries to Use Porn-Blocking Software — Press Release (Dec. 20, 2000)

Congress passes Net filtering bill — AP/USA Today (Dec. 19, 2000)

- More from Mark A. Kellner

Briefs: North America

A. L. Barry, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS), died in an Orlando hospital March 23 at the age of 69, apparently from kidney and liver failure. Barry, the conservative denomination’s 11th president, served in the office since 1992. The LCMS has 2.6 million members in 6,100 congregations worldwide. The denomination’s first vice president, Robert T. Kuhn, will step in until a new president is elected in July.

Robert Boyd Munger died in Pasadena on February 16, at the age of 90. Munger wrote the classic InterVarsity booklet, My Heart—Christ’s Home. Munger was a Presbyterian pastor and a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.

The board of Exodus International North America, a ministry to former homosexuals, reinstated John Paulk, its former chairman, to the board. Paulk, who is manager of Focus on the Family’s Homosexuality and Gender Department, entered a gay bar in Washington, D.C., last October.

Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Fort Worth, Texas) is launching a master’s program in ministry to Muslims, which the school says is one of only three such programs in the United States. Southwestern has also signed an agreement with Arab Baptist Theological Seminary in Beirut to carry out faculty and student exchanges and to share library resources.

Pioneering radio broadcaster Mel Johnson died March 16 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was 83. Johnson launched Children’s Bible Hour in 1942. It is heard on more than 700 stations today. Johnson was chairman of Northwestern College’s board of trustees from 1978 until 1997.

“Investing: $158,000 Assessment Stirs Pastor’s Wrath”

Stephen Hunt

Twin Cities suburb wants church to pay for road improvements

The city of Roseville, Minnesota, notified Advent Lutheran Church five months ago that it would require the 300-member church to pay $158,000 for road improvements.

Officials of this Twin Cities suburb of 34,000, with seven shopping malls and an unemployment rate of 1.9 percent, called the assessment a routine charge for the project to improve Josephine Road, which runs alongside church property. But Thomas Basich, the senior pastor and founder of the church, calls the assessment “government-sponsored terrorism.”

Church leaders complain that the city is unfairly assessing a nonprofit religious organization for a public-works project that will benefit the entire town.

“It’s not so much an amount but whether there should be a tax at all,” Basich told Christianity Today. “An assessment is a tax. We have to draw a line somewhere, and the line is zero.”

Special assessments on churches have occurred before, says Jordan Lorence, an attorney with the Northstar Legal Center, a conservative organization in Fairfax, Virginia, that defends religious freedom. But Lorence fears that revenue-hungry cities may be getting bolder: “Cities can use special assessments as a weapon against churches.”

Attorney Lynn Basich, Thomas Basich’s daughter, is representing Advent. She says the proposed assessment infringes on the church’s right to free exercise of its religion. “Here you have a local government interfering with … the exercise of our religion,” she said. “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”

The total cost for the proposed Josephine Road reconstruction—including the street, sewer improvements, a new sidewalk, and landscaping—is $967,114. The state has provided $817,267. Advent Lutheran’s proposed assessment is $158,000, while the city has asked 33 property owners along the road to pay a total of $139,282. The city is paying nothing.

Josephine Road is a busy side street. The portion in dispute handles 2,400 vehicles daily. The 33 residential properties will pay for sidewalk and storm-sewer improvements—but not for street reconstruction. Advent, however, is being charged for 100 percent of the street-reconstruction cost—$94,176.

“Churches are charged more than residential rates because they generate more traffic, so they are assessed as a [private] school or business would be assessed,” said Karl Keel, Roseville’s former public works director.

Roseville Mayor John Kysylyczyn has taken issue with his own city’s assessment practices. “I have a problem with the assessment policy, because in some cases we have unequal taxation,” Kysylyczyn said.

He is encouraging Advent to wait for fall elections, when new council members will be elected and the assessment policy can be reexamined. Advent seems in no mood to wait, however.

The city has sometimes lowered such assessments through negotiations. Galilee Lutheran Church negotiated an initial assessment of $43,203 down to $11,300 in 1998.

Thomas Basich says he does not object to paying fees for city services as long as there is a direct benefit to the church and the church is not being singled out. Roseville officials have offered to soften the impact by agreeing to a 15-year payment plan, but the resulting interest would balloon the total payments to $255,000.

Furthermore, Basich claims that the large assessment is ultimately a ploy by Roseville officials to strong-arm Advent into selling parcels of its 11-acre wooded property to the city for additional parking space. He has obtained city documents and maps displaying possible scenarios for the church acreage.

In February, Advent filed a notice of intent to appeal to Ramsey County District Court. Advent is exploring other legal options in case the appeal fails. Thomas Basich hopes to have the assessment dismissed, but the church has no legal precedents on which it can rely.

“If we surrender, we will be nullifying our tax-exempt status and the city will continue to impose taxes [that] are unconstitutional,” Basich says.

Basich has waged legal war before. Formerly a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), Basich secured an out-of-court settlement with the ELCA over the right to receive accumulated pension money.

Related Elsewhere

Both Christianity Today and The Lutheran covered Advent Lutheran’s earlier battles. The St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press has covered its battle over the assessment.

- More from Stephen Hunt

Taxes Financial Warfare Club Under Legal Cloud

Chuck Fager

Maryland attorney general issues cease and desist order against company aimed at African-American Christians

Teresa Hodge and Marcus D. Dukes of Prince Georges County, Maryland, have been touring the nation selling memberships for as much as $2,250 in their Financial Warfare Club (FWC) to “create wealth” among African-American Christians.

Now they face a legal battle, as Maryland’s attorney general issued a cease and desist order on March 9.

FWC, based in a suburb of Washington, D.C., describes itself as “a financial literacy education company focusing on the African-American Christian community.” Its stated goal is to “empower this community to become more actively involved in the wealth creation of the capital markets.”

In a February Webcast, Dukes asserted that “as the African-American church, we create over $4 trillion of wealth [on] Wall Street. Financial warfare is a way to get this wealth back into the community.” Individuals were drawn into the club expecting to make huge returns on their investments after FWC startup corporations sold common shares in the financial markets.

The background of the two promoters is sketchy. Dukes, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, claims to have been in business during the 1990s. Hodge describes herself as “assisting the church community with strategic partnering” and “marketing Financial Warfare Club to the church community exclusively, traveling the country professing the good news of Jesus Christ.”

The club has an office in Camp Springs, Maryland, which it shares with the Victorious Church of Jesus Christ. Financial Warfare also runs an elaborate Web site, FinancialWarfare.com.

Moving Quickly

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. charges that Dukes and Hodge were selling unregistered securities and acting as unregistered securities brokers, which are violations of state law.

“We had to bring a case quickly to stop Financial Warfare from continuing to solicit investor funds,” Curran said. “We are very concerned that Financial Warfare is making misleading representations to potential investors.”

Lucy Cardwell, an attorney in the Maryland Securities Division, told CT that Curran’s order would also seek fines. Financial Warfare can challenge the attorney general’s order in court.

Financial Warfare memberships were supposed to provide courses in “financial literacy” and shares in several Internet startup companies, including GlobalCom InterNetworks Inc. (GCI). According to a September 2000 “corporate overview” posted on the Web site, gci was to be the “first media convergence company with the knowledge, skills, access, and ability to successfully target the minority (African-American, Hispanic, and Asian) populations of the United States.”

Besides Internet access, the document said, gci planned to launch a network of “community tv stations” in “the top 50 minority markets” in the country. This Internet and television network was to be backed by “community-based newspapers and magazines” in these same markets. Money from advertising sales would make the network a profitable “mini-USA Today” for minority communities. Financial Warfare also claimed to be starting a bank and a marketing company.

Black churches and their members were to provide the startup capital for these ventures. Curran’s order asserts that Financial Warfare has not offered the promised financial literacy courses, has yet to distribute any shares, has no business activity, and has failed to disclose these facts to potential investors. Dukes and Hodge did not return phone calls seeking comment.

They have plenty to say, however, in several hours worth of talk-show audio on their Web site. Joined by Sam Hairston, pastor of the Victorious Church of Jesus Christ, the trio preaches an African-American version of the familiar prosperity gospel.

The FWC Web site features a statement by Ramona Edelin, executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in Washington, D.C., endorsing another Dukes venture, International Business Group (IBG). “I wholeheartedly support the vision, mission, and aspirations of IBG,” Edelin says, “as it pursues the uncharted territory of integrating an entire community in the wealth creation channels of the American economic infrastructure.”

Cooperating with Regulators

Edelin was out of the country at press time. The foundation’s administrator, Ethel Mitchell, told CT that neither Edelin nor the foundation would have endorsed anything fraudulent.

Dukes and Hodge had until the end of March to respond to the cease and desist order. But in mid-April, the attorney general’s office told CT that it had granted an extension to Financial Warfare.

Meanwhile, Financial Warfare has added a pop-up disclaimer to its Web site, saying it is “for information purposes only” and is “not a solicitation to buy or sell any security.” The note adds that the organization sells only memberships, not stocks. Several links to sales documents on the site have also been broken, although the documents remain on the site.

Financial Warfare is “cooperating with state regulators to resolve the matter,” said Kwame Anthony, FWC’s attorney, in a faxed statement. The statement added that “while Financial Warfare Club “does not admit to any wrongdoing,” it would offer to return money to any Maryland resident who had previously purchased memberships.

Neither FWC nor Maryland officials would say how much money or how many people are involved in the membership program.

Related Elsewhere

Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr.’s press release, “Curran moves to shut down church-based investment program,” is available at his office’s Web site.

Maryland’s business and legal news daily newspaper, The Daily Record, also has a news story: “Attorney general issues cease-and-desist order in alleged ‘affinity scam’“

FinancialWarfare.comhas now posted a disclaimer on its Internet site, saying, “Please note that our Website has changed significantly. We are offering eduactional [sic] membership only.” A new policy statement is available in Adobe Acrobat format.

See Chuck Fager’s other articlesfor Christianity Today on similar cases of financial irregularities.

- More from Chuck Fager

Law: Fetal Harm Bill Moves to Senate

Sheryl Henderson Blunt

Legislation is first of several bills backed by prolife groups

Advocates for abortion rights are urging members of the Senate to defeat a bill that would provide legal protection to the unborn who are hurt or killed during the commission of a federal crime.

On April 26 the House passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (HR503) by a vote of 252-172.

Under the bill, people who commit federal crimes of violence against pregnant women could be charged with second offenses on behalf of unborn children.

Unborn children are not recognized as victims of crimes under current federal statutes, and an assailant who kills or injures them receives no additional punishment. The law would apply regardless of a baby’s stage of development and regardless of whether the attacker was aware of the pregnancy. The bill specifically excludes abortions.

The 1999 adoption of a similar law in Arkansas allowed the state to prosecute Erik Bullock, who was charged with ordering the death of his ex-girlfriend’s unborn child. Shiwona Pace was nine months pregnant when three men, allegedly hired by Bullock, attacked her in order to kill the baby.

While being beaten, kicked, and choked, Pace pleaded for her child’s life, according to the Associated Press. One of the attackers cursed at her and said, “Your baby is dying tonight.”

Pace survived, but her baby girl, whom she named Heaven, died in the womb shortly after the attack.

Bullock—now serving a life sentence for capital murder—and his three accomplices were the first to be charged under Arkansas’s Fetal Protection Law. The law criminalizes harming a fetus more than 12 weeks old, with exceptions for abortions.

Protecting “Fertilized Cells”

Currently 24 states have similar laws protecting the unborn. HR503 applies to existing federal statues and would not supersede or affect any state laws.

Abortion-rights supporters vigorously oppose the bill, which they say is designed to undermine Roe v. Wade by bestowing rights on “fertilized cells.”

Juley Fulcher of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence said during a hearing that identifying an unborn fetus as a crime victim “would set a dangerous precedent which could easily lead to statutory changes that could hurt battered women.”

Fulcher is concerned that the legislation will divert attention from battered women and might inadvertently cause a battered woman to conceal the cause of a miscarriage.

Unlike the Arkansas law, HR503 applies to unborn children at “any stage of development”—language abortion-rights advocates find particularly objectionable. According to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), the legislation would be the first federal law to recognize a zygote [fertilized egg] “as a person who can be an independent victim of a crime.”

In March NARAL announced a $40 million, four-year campaign to defeat prolife initiatives and elect abortion-rights supporters to all levels of government. This year President George W. Bush reimposed a ban on federal funds for certain international family-planning groups that perform or promote abortions. The Department of Health and Human Services is also expected to launch a safety review of the abortion pill RU-486.

First Test

HR503 is considered the first big vote among several bills backed by prolife groups. These include:

The Child Custody Protection Act, which would make it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion.

The Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would establish that an infant who is born alive at any stage of development is a person for purposes of federal law.

The RU-486 Patient Protection Act, which would impose restrictions on doctors prescribing the abortion drug Mifepristone.

Prolife groups are also trying to reintroduce a bill banning partial-birth abortion, despite a Supreme Court ruling last June striking down a similar Nebraska ban. Last month the conservative American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) began delivering more than 300,000 signatures in support of the ban to members of Congress. ACLJ chief council Jay Sekulow said he hopes the effort will bring prolife issues to the top of the legislative agenda.

The House passed the measure after defeating a substitute bill, backed by abortion-rights groups, that would have increased penalties for assaults on pregnant women but would not have established a separate crime on behalf of unborn children.

A Senate leadership aide says that heavy prochoice lobbying of self-described moderates will make passage much more difficult in the Senate.

During the last Congress, the measure passed the House 254-172 but died in the Senate after President Bill Clinton threatened a veto.

Related Elsewhere

Check out the summary and status of HR503, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act of 2001, at the Library of Congress’ Thomas search engine. You can also see how your representative voted.

Other media coverage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act includes:

Bush backs law against harming unborn babies — The Daily Telegraph (Apr. 29, 2001)

House backs penalty for fetal injury in assault — USA Today (Apr 27, 2001)

House Approves Bill Criminalizing Violence to Fetus — The New York Times (Apr. 27, 2001)

House OKs Bill to Give Fetuses Separate Status — Los Angeles Times (Apr 27, 2001)

Unborn Victims Act Wins In House — The Washington Post (Apr 27, 2001)

House OKs bill on fetus as a victim — Chicago Tribune (Apr 27, 2001)

House OKs bill banning harm to fetus — The Dallas Morning News (Apr. 27, 2001)

House votes to outlaw fetal assault — The Boston Globe (Apr 27, 2001)

House OKs bill to make assault on fetus a crime — San Francisco Chronicle (Apr 27, 2001)

House bill aims to protect fetus — The Philadelphia Inquirer (Apr 27, 2001)

House backs measure making it a crime to harm a fetus — The Miami Herald (Apr 27, 2001)

Abortion foes claim House win — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Apr. 27, 2001)

US House reopens abortion debate — BBC (Apr 27, 2001)

House Passes Fetus Harm Bill — Associated Press (Apr 26, 2001)

- More from Sheryl Henderson Blunt

Mexico: A Peacemaker in Power

Deann Alford

Evangelical governor sparks fresh hopes for lasting peace in troubled Chiapas

In the southern Mexican province of Chiapas, the site of chronic ethnic, religious, and political strife, the unimaginable has happened: An openly evangelical politician has been elected governor.

Pablo Salazar, a 46-year-old Nazarene, won election as the candidate of a six-party alliance and took office in December as governor. Salazar’s image as a man of the people and foe of corruption made him a popular Chiapas senator who frequently clashed with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), Mexico’s ruling party until last year. Those clashes led him to break from the PRI, to which he belonged when elected senator in the mid-1990s.

Both right-wing PRI supporters and left-wing Zapatistas seem to favor Salazar, in part because of his reputation for fairness to all sides. The Zapatista National Liberation Army is a leftist insurgency in negotiations with the national government over conditions in southern Mexico, the poorest part of the country.

Many evangelical rightists are moving to the political center as they put their confidence in Salazar’s government. “All the evangelical brothers voted for him because he’d bring change and would pay heed to their needs,” said José Manuel Díaz Díaz, assistant counsel for the State Evangelical Defense Committee of Chiapas (CEDECH) based in San Cristobal de Las Casas. “They have faith that Pablo can listen to their needs and support them.”

Chiapan evangelicals want the state’s help to stop widespread harassment and violence by traditionalist Catholics and local bosses, which has included expelling evangelicals from their communities. They also want an end to politically motivated Zapatista violence.

One of Their Own Evangelicals see Salazar as one of their own who, unlike other Chiapans who have risen to power, hasn’t forgotten his roots. He was born to poor peasants in Soyaló, a Chiapan village on the edge of tribal lands for the Tzotzil (Mayan Indians). His parents converted through the ministry of Bible translators when he was a toddler. Salazar came to faith in Christ as a teenager. After he completed law school, Salazar became the first lawyer to defend indigenous Chiapan evangelicals expelled from their communities.

Salazar is “a person of trust and integrity,” said Richard Luna of Open Doors, which ministers to the persecuted church around the world. “Here’s a guy who’s been a fighter for evangelicals. We know he knows the issues.”

“I’m the first non-Catholic governor in Mexico’s history,” Salazar said at a press conference in Austin, Texas. “I know very well the social processes that have brought intolerance problems.

“I have the capacity and am ready to sit down at the table with evangelical pastors and Catholic bishops, who are my friends. I’m very confident we’ll be able to resolve through dialogue those problems that still remain.”

He believes the government deserves some blame for allowing the marginalization of Chiapas. “I’m a man of peace who worked four years in dialogue with the Zapatistas in Chiapas,” he adds. “I’m not anti-Zapatista. Neither am I Zapatista. If the war came from the hands of the government, I’m very optimistic that peace will come from the hands of that same government.”

Reformed Church in America missionary Vern Sterk describes Salazar, his best friend for 30 years, as the best thing to happen to Chiapas in a long time. Sterk says Salazar has kept his promises during his first 100 days in office.

Salazar met with evangelical and traditionalist Catholic leaders to help mediate a peaceful resolution to the expulsion issue. Visiting Justo Sierra—from which traditionalists had violently expelled 25 evangelical families—Salazar brought food, promised help for rebuilding homes, and assured evangelicals that the law would be enforced.

Salazar’s planned anti-poverty program aims to bring microindustry to Indians in rural Chiapas to reduce their dependence on agriculture. He wants to increase educational options for peasants and develop sports programs to keep children away from drugs. But, Sterk says, the programs can’t get off the ground because Chiapas’s PRI-controlled legislature refuses to approve his budget.

Zapatista Agenda Although Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatisa leader, is pressing the nation’s congress for indigenous rights, evangelicals in Chiapas say the rebels often bring conflict to their tribal villages. Díaz Díaz, a Tzotzil and a Presbyterian from Huixtán County in Chiapas, says trouble began there soon after the Zapatistas rose to prominence in 1994.

“The Zapatistas took over lands in the village areas” in the Huixtán towns of Adolfo López Mateos and San Gregorio, says Díaz Díaz. “Anybody who didn’t want to join either left or was forced out.”

Zapatistas and their sympathizers expelled many evangelicals, who relocated in squatter communities outside San Cristobal, about 12 miles west of Huixtán. Díaz Díaz says this happened in many other towns around Mexico’s embattled southernmost state. “Zapatistas invaded people’s lands and still have them,” he said.

That’s one reason why Díaz Díaz is wary of Marcos and his much-publicized “Zapatour,” the two-week caravan of two dozen Zapatista leaders and hundreds of national and foreign supporters through 12 Mexican states. The caravan ended March 12 in Mexico City’s main plaza. Marcos and the Zapatistas are lobbying Mexico’s congress to pass an Indian-rights bill that would help them preserve indigenous cultures, languages, and lands for the 9 million Indians of Chiapas.

Marcos, who is not an Indian, invoked Indian rights seven years ago as he led his band of leftist rebels in an armed uprising. The rebels briefly took control of San Cristobal before retreating to their mountain base. Some 150 people were killed during the 12-day uprising.

Since then, the rebels have sought followers among the indigenous people of Chiapas, as well as among foreigners who sympathize with the cause. Many Indian communities have divided over Zapatista doctrine.

Landmark changes in Mexican politics have already stolen much of Marcos’s thunder. PRI lost Mexico’s presidency in 2000 after 71 years in power. Denouncing PRI was central to the Marcos platform. He rallied support by playing on discontent with the long-governing party that had marginalized and refused to give voice and vote to indigenous Chiapans.

In contrast to former President Ernesto Zedillo of PRI, President Vicente Fox of the rightist National Action Party has made special efforts to win over the rebels. He has released jailed Zapatistas, closed four of seven military bases near Zapatista communities, and is pushing Congress to pass the rights bill.

Although more than 30 percent of indigenous Chiapans are evangelicals, CEDECH lawyer Sergio Natarén says the Zapatista platform doesn’t mention the issue most important to indigenous evangelicals: religious persecution.

“First we have to stop the expulsions by Catholic traditionalists of our evangelical brothers,” Natarén said. “These [Zapatista] petitions could benefit the brothers, but only if equality exists among the indigenous people.”

Related Elsewhere

Earlier Christianity Today articles about Chiapas include:

Healing the Violence | Presbyterians, Catholics try to reconcile as expulsions persist in Chiapas. (July 25, 2000)

Words Against Weapons | Evangelicals, Catholics dialogue to help bring peace to violent Chiapas (Mar. 2, 1998)

Mexico: Out of the Salt Shaker | The evangelical church is steadily becoming a visible presence in Mexican society. (Nov. 16, 1998)

Other recent media coverage of the Chiapas conflict includes:

8 Farmers Slain, 3 Wounded In Chiapas — Chicago Tribune (Apr. 22, 2001)

Closing of 2 army bases paves way for Chiapas peace talks — The Miami Herald (Apr. 21, 2001)

Mexican Army Completes Its Pullback From Chiapas — Reuters (Apr. 20, 2001)

Mexico a Priority to US Politicians — Associated Press (Apr. 19, 2001)

Mexico Zapatistas Bring Peace Hopes Home to Chiapas — Reuters (Apr. 2, 2001)

- More from Deann Alford

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Called to Be “Another Christ”

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Moving Quickly

Cooperating with Regulators

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Protecting “Fertilized Cells”

First Test

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