Dead Authors Society

Columnist

We’re no longer interested in tasting death but only little morsels of cheer.

In search of some Lenten devotional reading, my friend Bill Haley wandered into his local Christian store.

"Do you have Henri Nouwen's Show Me the Way?" he asked, referring to the late Catholic writer's collection of Lenten meditations.

"Oh no, dear," answered the clerk at the cash register. "He's dead. We don't carry books by dead authors."

Surprised, Bill pointed to a couple of books on a nearby shelf, squeezed in among dozens of titles on building a strong marriage and talking to your teenager. "What about C. S. Lewis? He's dead, and you carry his books."

"Well, that's true, but that's just because our marketing people say that C. S. Lewis sells well in this area. Most of our stores don't carry him either."

A policy against dead authors is reasonable enough. Dead people are unable to carry out what has become the most important responsibility of a contemporary author—to embark on the book tour, a whirlwind of personal appearances, radio interviews, and conferences, all designed to win readers and build the author's "brand." (Brand originally referred to painfully imposed identifying marks on cattle, which is about what authors feel like at the end of a book tour.)

The book tour is necessary because books, even by living authors, are something of an endangered species. The same Christian store that carries no dead authors, along with the rest of its corporate siblings, recently shortened its name from bookstore to store. The majority of its revenue comes from the sale of trinkets, gifts, and depictions of a pastel-hued fairyland of horse-drawn carriages and lanterns at dusk that could be described as an America that is itself dead, except that it never existed.

In this ruthlessly competitive ecosystem, books occupy a perilously small niche. The only way to survive—aside from the freak occasions when an author's "brand" manages to eke out an existence like an exotic species on some isolated archipelago—is to convince the Christian shopper that this is more than a book; it is a lifestyle enhancement. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in the one part of the Christian store that clearly violates the "no dead authors" dictum: the Bible section. To be sure, the hundreds of lifestyle-oriented Bibles do include the original text, but too often the tedious, dead-author part of the Bible is in the smallest, least appealing type, while the easy-to-read study notes, helpful hints, and contemporary stories offer their assistance with lively type and colorful graphics.

The owners of Christian stores understand a little-appreciated fact: Life in the American middle class is hard. Like the princess on the pea, we've been tossing and turning all night, trying to get comfortable. We are busy, we are stressed out, and we're feeling old. When we walk into our neighborhood Christian store, we are looking for some chicken soup for our soul. The sentimental paintings make few demands. The prominently displayed books by youthful, good-looking authors offer little morsels of relevant cheer, the literary equivalent of bite-size Oreos.

In this haven from the heartless world, a dead author—especially a recently dead author—is indeed an embarrassment. He reminds us of our own mortality, and he refuses to court us with eager declarations of his relevance to our needs.

On my bedside table this Lent has been a slim book by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, the former archbishop of Chicago who is, yes, dead. It is a book about the Stations of the Cross, the mode of devotion that urges on us the continuing relevance of suffering and death for the Christian life. Though recent Catholic theologians, including Pope John Paul II, have urged that a station of the empty tomb be added to the stations that trace Jesus' journey to the Cross, that still leaves 14 of 15 stations that fix our gaze on the sequence of events that Jesus' enemies expected would make him permanently, irretrievably irrelevant.

His book tour, which began with such promise, had been a failure. He was branded, all right—with the whip marks and thorn prints that proclaimed Rome's judgment on all competitors. He had no form or comeliness that we should desire him—a man of sorrows, a suffering servant, acquainted with more than just the aches and pains of the comfortable.

What would our Christian stores look like if we looked more like him?

Related Elsewhere

Earlier Christianity Today articles that have addressed the state of the Christian book industry include:

Books & Culture Corner: The Culture of Euphemism | A dispatch from the Christian Booksellers Association convention. (July 17, 2000)

Behold the Power of Cheese | A dispatch from the Christian Booksellers Association (July 12, 2000)

Don't Blame the Publishers! | Publishers are not forcing shallow books on an unwilling community. (Feb. 9, 1998)

Articles about books by living and dead authors are available in our books area. Our sister publications Books & Culture and Christian History may also be of interest.

The Christian Booksellers Association Web site mainly offers information about the CBA, though it also has bestseller lists and the text of CBA Marketplace magazine. For more on Christian books, music, and products, see Christian Retailing magazine.

World magazine also criticized "how bumper stickers, stuffed animals, and retail kitsch are squeezing the books out of Christian bookstores" in its July 1, 2000 issue. But it's not as harsh as its July 12, 1997 cover story, "Whatever Happened to Christian Publishing?" (which was itself scrutinized in Books & Culture [print only]).

Modern Reformation also published a critical "dispatch" from CBA in January 1999.

Andy Crouch's past columns for CT are available at our site, as is "The Antimoderns | Six postmodern Christians discuss the possibilities and limits of postmodernism", an article featuring Crouch and some of his colleagues.

Andy Crouch is editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly. Many of his other writings are available at his and his wife's Web site.

Always in Parables: Andy Crouch is an editor at large for Christianity Today. Before working for CT, Crouch was chief of re:generation quarterly, a magazine which won the Utne Reader’s Alternative Press Award for spiritual coverage in 1999. He was formerly a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. His column, “Always in Parables,” ran from 2001 to 2006.

Ideas

Civil Reactions | Stephen L. Carter: Vouching for Parents

Stephen L. Carter

Columnist

Vouchers are not an attack on public schools but a vote of trust in families.

Now that President Bush has proposed an education package that includes school vouchers for some children, a horde of critics has emerged to label the plan unconstitutional and destructive to public schools. A decade ago, I was a voucher opponent too and would have made similar arguments. Now I am a supporter, though not for the usual reasons.

The constitutional argument against school vouchers is receding—as it should, for it was never terribly convincing. Voucher opponents insist that granting public money to students seeking religious educations violates a core constitutional principle. But at the time of the framing of the Constitution, and throughout the 19th century, public money flowed freely to religious schools. The nation “discovered” the constitutional ban only toward the end of that century, when Catholic schools began seeking support. Only anti-Catholic prejudice can really explain the abrupt shift in national practice.

What’s more, it is hard to find a rule based on the Constitution that would allow us to distinguish between a federal grant that helps a poor freshman attend a religious college and one that helps a poor 12th-grader attend a religious high school. But we do the first without murmur of complaint from strict separationists.

The more interesting antivoucher argument is the two-pronged public-policy concern. The first prong is the suggestion that vouchers would skim off the most talented or educationally ambitious students. This may be true. But those students can leave right now, if their parents can find the money. So what voucher opponents really seem to envision is a system in which the most talented wealthy can leave but the most talented poor students must stay. The fairness of this escapes me.

The second prong hinges on whether poor students who exit public schools get better educations. Statisticians run countless regression analyses to find out, but of course, what they are really measuring is the ability of students to take standardized tests. Certainly there are parents for whom high test scores are the principal goal of education, but that is a narrow, even vulgar, vision of what schools are for.

I support vouchers because I support parents. We should both applaud and assist the efforts of parents who try to shelter their children from the frequently wrongheaded behavioral pressures of American culture. Just over 75 years ago, the Supreme Court decreed that parents possess a fundamental right to make educational decisions for their children. For many parents, the exercise of that right has meant leaving the public schools—even if their dissatisfaction is moral rather than educational. There is no good reason that this fundamental right should be available only to wealthy parents.

One of the many virtues of religious freedom is that children nurtured in differing religious traditions will bring true diversity to our democracy, keeping it healthy through a constant infusion of fresh ideas and the kind of tension that leads to helpful dialogue. Parents may reasonably decide that they can raise their children to be different only by shielding them from the public schools.

This is no knock against public schools. I am a proud alumnus of public education. But poor children should not be fated to follow a narrow educational path. A just nation would make available to them as broad a range of educational alternatives as wealthier children see.

On the other hand, if the Bush program passes, religious schools should not be hasty in accepting federal dollars. There are obvious risks. Looming largest among them is the danger that a school could become dependent on the money, only to discover later that troubling strings are attached. Money can be a drug, and every addict is at the mercy of his supplier. But that is not an argument against vouchers. It simply means that a religious school should be prayerful and discerning about taking federal money, in the same way that faith-based organizations should be cautious about feeding at the public trough through the mechanism of “charitable choice.”

Let us give the program a serious try. Most of the world’s industrialized countries offer some form of support to private religious schools, and nowhere have they replaced their public counterparts. It is unlikely that our experience here would be any different. In much of Europe, support for religious education is viewed as part of a package of profamily policies. (The same profamily sentiment explains European support for family-leave policies that are so controversial here.) We Americans should show as much faith in parents as do other parts of the world.

Related Elsewhere

Yahoo’s full coverage area has regularly updated news articles and opinion pieces about tuition vouchers and other school choice issues.

Christianity Today‘s past articles on vouchers include:

Weblog: Appeals Court Says Vouchers Violate Church-State Separation (Dec. 13, 2000)

Religious Right Loses Power | A few victories, but more losses for conservatives. (Dec. 18, 2000)

School Choice Measures in Tight Races | Recent surveys show much opposition to voucher initiatives in California and Michigan. (Sept. 27, 2000)

Florida School Voucher Plan Struck Down by State Judge | Church-state issues not addressed in ruling. (March 24, 2000)

Judge Freezes Voucher Enrollments | (Oct. 4, 1999)

Editorial: Religious Schools Make the Grade | Give Wisconsin an A for saying no to secularist nonsense. (Aug. 10, 1999)

Voucher Plan Draws Mixed Reviews (July 12, 1999)

Voucher Victory | School-choice advocates win in Wisconsin, but can the movement gain momentum? (Sept. 7, 1998)

Judge Stalls Voucher Expansion (March 3, 1997)

Voucher Opponents Vow to Gut Cleveland Program (Oct. 28, 1996)

See Stephen L. Carter‘s earlier column, “The Courage to Lose | In elections, and in life, there is something more important than winning.” (Feb. 6, 2001)

Civil Reactions: Stephen Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Yale University. He is the author of “The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln” (2012), “The Violence of Peace, The Emperor of Ocean Park”, and many other books. His column, “Civil Reactions,” ran from 2001 until 2007.

- More from Stephen L. Carter

Decoding Generations

Wendy Murray Zoba

Two books are optimistic about the coming generations but for different, and sometimes contradictory, reasons.

Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation
Neil Howe and William Strauss
Vintage, 304 pages, $14

In Search of Authentic Faith: How Emerging Generations Are Transforming the Church
Steve Rabey
Waterbrook, 218 pages, $11.95

Millennials Rising, the fourth collaboration by Neil Howe and William Strauss, is a comprehensive demographic analysis that (they say) points to generational trends. Their work is groundbreaking insofar as it has set the terms for the larger discussion, and their names appear in just about every book coming out on youth these days. As long as you take their research for what it is, hypothesis based on perceived trends, it helps sketch out the broader issues at work on a given group coming of age at a given time.

Howe and Strauss have traced a notable difference between the up-and-coming peer groups known as Generation X and their younger counterparts, whom they tag the Millennials. But even Howe and Strauss, who have more or less set the terms of the discussion, have fiddled with the boundaries for identifying these generations. In their earlier book, Generations (1991), they locate Gen Xers as those born between 1965 and 1976 and Millennials between 1977 and 1994. In Millennials Rising, these have changed to 1961-81 and 1982-2002. This kind of imprecision is the bane of generational studies; boundaries are flexible. These shifting definitions complicate an already confusing picture.

The authors assert that the younger of these, the Millennials, are coming of age with a collective can-do ebullience, in no small measure due to their “hav[ing] been regarded as special since birth and. … more obsessed-over at every age than Xers.” They cite the trend in “kinderpolitics” (politicians’ championing issues relating to children) to bear this out. “[S]ocial programs for kids remain the one area of government that attracts interest and zeal,” they write, suggesting this means Millennial children receive better care. The authors miss the irony, however, that government programs remain part of the problem with the state of childhood since they replace the role of the stay-at-home parent.

In any case, Howe and Strauss are to be credited for their daring assertion that the Millennials will become the next civic generation cut from the cloth of the heroes of World War II. By the 2020s, they say, Millennials “may well have matured into the same kind of results-oriented young adults those four ancestral generations produced on the eve of the gravest tests of this nation’s history.” Some demographic trends bear this out: teen pregnancy is down, voluntarism is up.

But what, beyond generational ebb and flow, compels them to say so? Their answer: “[Millennials] will be empowered by their specialness, familiarity with uniforms, used to meeting and beating high standards, respectful of adults, responsive to command.” It’s a start. But when young people that I have observed have acted heroically, they did not appear driven by a sense of generational specialness or a familiarity with uniforms. This is a spiritually animated cohort, an aspect of their demographic that is sorely underreported by Howe and Strauss.

Christian Stuff

Christian trend-watchers and researchers have made strides describing this spiritual animation. But here, as elsewhere, the terrain can be confusing. Evangelical pollster George Barna monitors the heartbeat of this cohort, and every six months or so he comes out with data that at first glance may seem contradictory. In a survey done last fall of about 600 teens, he concluded that 86 percent identified themselves as Christian, but only one-third of those considered themselves “born again.” Sixty percent said a person could gain salvation through good works. Other Barna studies have shown that there is a marked interest in God, Jesus, and spiritual issues generally, but there is also a downturn among youths’ interest in church.

In his book In Search of Authentic Faith, Steve Rabey describes innovative worship models that are reaching Generations X and Y, suggesting that these approaches are heralding “a new reformation of ecclesiology and methodology.” He concludes, “The emerging generations of young people. … feel that most traditional and contemporary churches fail to touch them.”

Here again, the evidence is contradictory. Part of the problem rests with Rabey not making a clear distinction between Generation X and the Millennials. The statement would apply, generally, to Gen Xers. But it contradicts my (and others’) research about the Millennials. In the course of writing two books on teen issues and in researching a third, I have found that many are being drawn to traditional forms of worship, particularly its tactile expressions in ritual and liturgy.

A good example can be found in the work being done by Mark Yaconelli at San Francisco Theological Seminary, through the Youth Ministry and Spirituality Project. Highlighted in national print and broadcast media, his program follows “spiritual formation” as the model for youth ministry and has met with success. At a retreat sponsored by the project, The Wall Street Journal (Dec. 18, 1998) notes, “The teens [enter] the dark sanctuary, where they perform rituals and learn to pray as the ancients did. Sometimes they write their sins on paper and burn them in a candle flame.” Yaconelli said the teens “went crazy” (that’s good) and the mailing list grew from 35 to 200 in two years.

Barna’s research concludes that there is a distaste for “church” among this cohort. But as I have seen it expressed, this has less to do with the institution itself than with perceived failures on the part of some models of leadership. I interviewed a young man who (with his band) launched a Friday-night worship service during the summer of 2000, and by the summer’s end, it was drawing over 300. He said he felt that many area churches had domesticated the definition of the Christian life to mean “Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Do your devotions. Respect your parents. Don’t offend anybody—like living the Christian life means sitting at home watching wholesome videos.” Whether he criticizes the church for real or perceived faults, his attempt to (as he puts it) “see [Jonathan] Edwards, [John] Calvin, and some of the other Reformers’ view of God brought back into the church” does not reflect a rejection of tradition so much as a dissatisfaction with the status quo.

In any case, Rabey’s book helpfully points to innovative ministries that defy standard worship protocol and successfully capture the heartbeat of “the emerging generations of young people.”

I am looking over these and other mountains of books written by experts on youth spirituality when my 17-year-old son interrupts. He is leading a small-group study for about 20 freshmen and sophomores, and he tells me he needs to order the books. I ask him what books he needs to order. The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he says. “We’re especially interested in studying the section on the Sermon on the Mount.” Paul’s words came to mind: “God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise.”

Wendy Murray Zoba is a senior writer for CT.

Related Elsewhere

Millennials Rising and In Search of Authentic Faith are available from Amazon.com and other book retailers.

Other Christianity Today articles on youth the coming generations include:

The Homeless VIPs | ‘Third-Culture Kids’ may be one of the most neglected, and most influential, unreached people groups. (Mar. 7, 2001)

‘Youth has Special Powers’ | If their rising interest in mission trips is any indication, the Millennials may be a generation uniquely wired to stand—and sweat—for God. (Feb. 8, 2001)

Kingdom Prodigy | How an 8-year-old girl from Georgia began a community program that has fed thousands. (Dec. 7, 2000)

Grunge, Boomers in Concert | Teens and parents fast and pray together for “massive youth revolution.” (Sept. 7, 2000)

World Youth Day Hailed as “Popestock” | Two million young people turn up for Mass in Rome with Pope John Paul. (Aug. 22, 2000)

Losing Our Promiscuity | The church has an unprecedented chance to reach a generation burned by commitment-free sex. (July 7, 2000)

Potlatch Gospel | Alaskan churches debate whether they should reach at-risk youth by using their culture’s pre-Christian traditions. (June 15, 2000)

Columbine’s Tortuous Road to Healing | One year later, survivors’ recovery is filled with painful twists and turns. (Apr. 14, 2000)

Videos of Hate | Columbine killers harbored anti-Christian prejudice. (Jan. 26, 2000)

Elegy for a Jesus Freak | “These are the ultimate Jesus Freaks—the people who are willing to die for their faith.” —Toby McKeehen of dc Talk (Dec. 9, 1999)

Retailers Marketing Martyrdom to Teens | Littleton massacre now merchandising opportunity. (Nov. 12, 1999)

Cassie Said Yes, They Said No | The mainstream press unquestioningly accepted Salon.com’s flimsy “debunking” of the Columbine confession. (Nov. 1, 1999)

Church Shooting Creates New Martyrs (Oct. 25, 1999)

Gen-X Apologetics | Passing on the faith to those raised on Star Wars spirituality. (Apr. 26, 1999)

“Do You Believe in God?” | Columbine and the stirring of America’s soul. (Oct. 4, 1999)

Youth Like Pope; Question Teachings (Mar. 3, 1999)

The Class of ’00 | These “millennial” teenagers are forcing the church to rethink youth ministry. (Feb. 3, 1997)

A Generation of Debtors | A Gen-Xer reflects on the deficits bequeathed to his generation and on its fear of redemption. (Nov. 11, 1996)

Up and Comers | Fifty evangelical leaders 40 and under. (Nov. 11, 1996)

Pastor X | In sneakers and jeans, Southern Baptist Chris Seay is getting his generation to go to church—at least we think it’s a church. (Nov. 11,1996)

- More from Wendy Murray Zoba

A Reluctant Hero

Douglas LeBlanc

A PBS Film subtly depicts a catholic priest’s persistant urban ministry

Diary of a City Priest
Directed by Eugene Martin
Independent Television Service/PBS

The latest project by independent director Eugene Martin continues a noble legacy of understated films on PBS (check local listings for broadcasts in April) that show church leaders in a sympathetic light. (Others include Jonathan Demme’s Cousin Bobby in 1992 and Joel Oliansky’s The Silence at Bethany in 1998.)

Diary of a City Priest draws some of its narrative structure from Diary of a Country Priest (1950) by the late French director Robert Bresson. While Bresson’s film draws on the acclaimed novel by Georges Bernanos, Diary of a City Priest is based on the nonfiction book by John McNamee, who has served at St. Malachy’s Catholic Church in Philadelphia for 32 years.

Inspired by Daniel Berrigan, the Catholic priest best known for his protests of the Vietnam War, McNamee asked to be assigned to an urban parish in the late 1960s, and he has been at St. Malachy’s ever since. Unlike Berrigan, however, the McNamee depicted here is a quiet and even weary figure.

With doleful eyes and a deadpan face, McNamee (played by David Morse) empties the rectory’s cupboard as poor people approach him for help. The way Martin lights the faces of the poor and frames them in the rectory’s back doorway, it’s easy to understand Mother Teresa’s reference to seeing the face of Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.

Strangely, though, McNamee keeps his interaction with these night visitors to a minimum. He barely speaks to them, and makes them wait outside while he fills grocery bags with canned goods. Some moments of Diary of a City Priest leave the impression that, while McNamee is generous with groceries, bail money, or arranging scholarships for promising students, he offers little spiritual life to his urban neighbors. Working with the poor has an inherent worth, but McNamee sometimes looks merely like a social worker who happens to wear a clerical collar.

Morse tells ct the film had to allude to McNamee’s more engaged ministry because of time constraints. As made for PBS, the film is a mere 60 minutes.

“When you read his book, he’s much more engaged with the people on the street, going into their homes, and he has become friends with a lot of them,” Morse said.

Diary of a City Priest depicts a tough period in McNamee’s ministry, when he is wracked by doubts about the value of his ministry. “I’m terrible at this, a failure,” the priest says in a voiceover narrative as he helps another needy person. “I go on, miserably: in one hand and out the other.”

But what rescues the film from becoming a grim meditation on an empty social gospel are playful cameo appearances by St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Avila, and the namesake of McNamee’s parish, who was an Irish bishop in the 12th century. The saints appear suddenly, offering McNamee words of encouragement and (in the case of Francis) some much-needed structural repairs in the rectory. Think of it as an Irish Catholic version of magical realism.

Martin also provides glimpses into McNamee’s interior life as he celebrates Mass and presides at a wedding. The look in McNamee’s eyes at these moments suggests that, regardless of this priest’s struggles, he will regain his spiritual center.

“That’s what he loves, and you see it when you take part in one of his services,” Morse says about McNamee’s celebration of the church’s sacraments. “There are a lot of ex-priests and ex-nuns who travel long distances to attend his services, because in him they find something they did not experience in the more suburban expressions of the Roman Catholic Church.”

Related Elsewhere

Diary of a City Priest was also an entry in this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The Sundance site offers stills and information about the film, as well as a biographical sketch of director Eugene Martin.

- More from Douglas LeBlanc

Holy Desolation

Sara Pearsaul

Rick Harden’s bleak landscapes reveal our moral vulnerability

Artist richard harden follows an odd prophetic call. Since his youth, he has traveled to scenes of decay and destruction to chronicle our condition as fallen humans in a battered world. His inspiration is what he calls “our fragile brokenness.” His tools are charcoal crayons and a lithographer’s stone.

“My work is a type of proto- evangel,” Harden says. “It is like a diagnosis. Jesus in his kindness told people the truth about their real spiritual condition, and they were drawn to him for healing.”

Still, some have questioned what could be considered Christian about the horror he depicts. “Some people have a definition of Christianity as ‘pretty,’ ” Harden says. “My work is not intended to be part of the fairy-tale voice.” Indeed, Harden and his artwork go a long way from Pleasant Valley, Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and six children.

Long fascinated with people in totalitarian states, Harden began his travels after high school with a visit in 1974 to the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. He returned to Eastern Europe and Poland several times during the 1980s, when the Solidarity labor movement was on the rise. The experiences inspired the bleak but powerful landscapes that characterize his work. “I always recognized the palpable decay in industrial landscapes, which says a lot about our own mortality,” Harden says. “That gave way to working with images that describe the life that people live there.”

Since 1999, Harden has seen the ravages of war firsthand during numerous trips to Albania and Kosovo, where he has visited refugee camps and village battlegrounds. “I really believe that artists need to be out there, to confront the realities of life and then to react quickly,” Harden says. Although conditions were harsh as he visited Kosovar refugee camps in Albania, “I knew I could carry a sketchbook and that something would come out of this.”

He sketched portraits and encouraged children in the camps to draw their own pictures with art supplies he provided. He collected nearly 200 drawings from refugees, mostly of war scenes. The children found the process cathartic, he observes. “Picture-making is a potent way of trying to understand and process extreme experiences and emotions. They physically hung on me and clung to me, so that at times I was unable to move my arms to draw with them.”

The end result was a record of his sojourn in the form of artifacts, drawings, notes, and travel ephemera. He put many of these elements together with the help of a computer artist to create a series of digital collages of his portraits, photographs and the artwork of Kosovar children.

Three thousand visitors saw this work when it was displayed in Kosovo at the Gallery of Art in Prishtina and the Palace of Culture in Gjakova. He was encouraged by the comments of people who appreciated “that someone knew what they had suffered. … and that the world would know.”

Making a Difference

Art and compassion go hand in hand for Harden. Working among refugees compelled him to assist in the efforts to rebuild Kosovo. He founded the Kosovo Relief Project in 2000 to equip a scarred elementary school he had visited in Llapushnik, Kosovo. Harden considers the project a natural extension of his life’s work in art. Calling on friends and colleagues, the artist collected $95,000 in cash and $30,000 in supplies, equipment, and services from some 300 donors. Harden has filled Hasan Prishtina Elementary School with desks, chairs, books, and computers, and refurbished the kitchen, plumbing, and septic systems.

He notes that people hurt by oppression understand the message of the gospel—that “somebody came and suffered with them”—but they have more difficulty with the concept that forgiveness is needed on both sides.

“Ultimately, all of these warlike acts are self-destruction,” he says. “The Kosovars view themselves as victims and the Serbians as animals. They could not understand how the line of good and evil runs through the human heart, that we are all capable of this warlike behavior. We are all the same in our fallenness. That’s where our solidarity really lies.”

In America, Harden says, “Our affluence has defined a different gospel. We aren’t as aware of just how much we need forgiveness.” Harden believes that his artwork speaks most clearly to nonbelievers, as a “beginning place” to understand sin and evil.

Harden’s works can be seen in private, public, and corporate art collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City, the Vatican Collection, and Syracuse University, as well as an exhibit on Solidarity in Warsaw, Poland. His large-scale paintings are particularly embraced on American college campuses, where Harden enjoys the challenge of lengthy, enthusiastic conversations with students, who seem to relate naturally to the isolation and desolation in his imagery.

This year, Harden is organizing schedules for the U.S. and Eastern Europe for a new exhibit, “In a Field of Poppies,” which will include large, complex paintings animated by poetry, sound, and video projection. He is planning to tour all the major cities in the Balkans in 2002-03. He believes that art can cross borders as a messenger of truth.

An excerpt from his master’s thesis sounds strangely like an altar call. “My hope is that by viscerally revealing the true spiritual condition and displaying our moral vulnerability, the ultimate appeal will be generated: ‘What must I do to be saved?’ “

Sara Pearsaul is a freelance writer based in Chicago who traveled to Croatia as a volunteer with World Relief in 1994 to work with refugees from the Yugoslav War. For more information on the Kosovo Relief Project, call 860.379.6665 or write to Harden (rharden8@juno.com).

Related Elsewhere

Some of Harden’s works can be seen at the Web site of Christians in the Visual Arts.

For more information about the Kosovo Relief Project, e-mail Harden.

- More from Sara Pearsaul

Ideas

The Back Page | Philip Yancey: Beyond Flesh and Blood

Philip Yancey

Columnist

I used to disdain biblical talk of invisible spirits. No more

Thoreau once remarked that the ancients—with their gorgons, unicorns, and sphinxes—imagined more than existed, whereas moderns cannot even imagine so much as exists. I confess that as a child of a reductionist age, I used to explain away biblical talk about supernatural "powers." I would read accounts of demon possession in the Gospels and instead see signs of mental illness or epilepsy. I could not stomach the notion of a world ruled by invisible spirits. I have changed, however, for the simple reason that my reductionist instincts failed to explain the world around me.

I saw one powerful force at work in downtown Chicago, where I attended a church full of diversity. Homeless people would sit on the pews next to M.B.A.s from Northwestern and the University of Chicago. Some of the M.B.A.s attended a class I taught, and I knew them as reserved, sophisticated seekers after truth. Yet during the week, from a visitors' balcony above the Chicago Board of Trade, I could watch these mild-mannered friends run around the floor, waving their arms in the air and screaming at the top of their lungs. They would later explain to me that the price of futures in pork bellies had been fluctuating wildly, and they were acting like madmen in order to lock in speculative shares of the price of hog innards for their clients. Money exerts a most potent force on human behavior.

When Jesus encountered this same force, which drove people to build beautiful palaces on the shores of the Sea of Galilee while some in Palestine lived as slaves, he recognized it as a spiritual power and gave it the name of the god Mammon.

Worse Than Beasts

I had a conversation with Bob Seiple, then president of World Vision, shortly after he had returned from Rwanda following the 1994 massacres there. Standing on a bridge, he had watched thousands of bodies float beneath him on a river scarlet with their blood. Hutu tribesmen had hacked to death with machetes almost a million Tutsis—their neighbors, their fellow parishioners, their school classmates—for reasons no one could begin to explain. Seiple seemed badly shaken.

"It was a crisis of faith for me," he said. "I had to ask myself whether the Spirit that is in me is truly greater than the prince of this world. There are no categories to express such horror. Someone used the word bestiality—no, that dishonors the beasts. Animals kill for food, not for pleasure. They kill one or two prey at a time, not a million for no reason at all." As I listened to Seiple, I too could think of no force in nature to explain what was happening in Rwanda, only a malevolent force from supernature.

In his book The Powers That Be, theologian Walter Wink makes clear that the powers and authorities are not "some kind of invisible demonic beings flapping around in the sky, occasionally targeting some luckless mortal with their invisible payload of disease, lust, possession, or death." Yet Wink insists that the biblical language about powers and authorities speaks to actual realities that cannot be described in the reductionist language of sociology, politics, and depth psychology.

Try to explain on rational grounds the mass insanity that seized Germany in Hitler's day. Explain the logic behind the Cold War arms race, in which both sides accepted the appropriately named policy of mad (Mutual Assured Destruction). Explain the rationale behind a Nasdaq crash, or the sudden collapse of economies in Asia and Latin America. What keeps a wealthy nation like the United States from finding shelter for its homeless population? What keeps the world from feeding the 30,000 people who die malnourished each day? The experts have no answer but "forces beyond our control." New Testament writers agree and do not hesitate to name those powers.

In view of all the evil, exploitation, and violence in the world, perhaps the Dutch novelist Harry Mulisch has it right: You can only believe in God if you believe in the devil as well.

I did not change my belief in the powers because I learned anything new about this world. I simply learned to recast what I already knew in the language of the Bible, especially Ephesians, where Paul says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood." Paul admonishes that if we do not recognize the unseen forces acting on the visible world we live in, and arm ourselves accordingly, we will find ourselves woefully unprepared.

Related Elsewhere

Christianity Today answered "Do Demons Have Zip Codes?" in 1998, "Is Satan Omnipresent?" in September 2000, and "How should Christians react to all this talk about exorcism?" in November.

Christian Reader offers a first person account of battling demons in modern Japan.

Yancey's columns for Christianity Today include:

God at Large (Jan. 31, 2001)

Humility's Many Faces (Dec. 4, 2000)

Getting a Life (Oct. 16, 2000)

To Rise, It Stoops (Aug. 29, 2000)

Chess Master (May 15, 2000)

Would Jesus Worship Here? (Feb.7, 2000)

Doctor's Orders (Dec. 2, 1999)

Getting to Know Me (Oct. 25,1999)

The Encyclopedia of Theological Ignorance (Sept. 6, 1999)

Writing the Trinity (July 12, 1999)

Can Good Come Out of This Evil? (June 14, 1999)

The Last Deist (Apr. 5, 1999)

Why I Can Feel Your Pain (Feb. 8, 1999)

What The Prince of Egypt Won't Tell You (Dec. 7, 1998)

What's a Heaven For? (Oct. 26,1998)

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

- More from Philip Yancey

Health Plan Accused

Chuck Fager

Ohio seeks $16 million in damages against Christian Brotherhood Newsletter.

Was an Ohio-based nationwide “biblical medical plan” used as a slush fund to enrich the founder and his family members? Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery says that’s what happened to “hundreds of thousands of dollars” belonging to the Christian Brotherhood Newsletter, and she filed suit in December to get the money back.

Charging numerous instances of fraud and conversion of ministry funds and property to private use, the lawsuit demands return of property and cash valued at more than $2.4 million, and alleges that Hawthorn took larger sums without leaving a paper trail. Montgomery demands $16.3 million in punitive damages, all to go back to Christian Brotherhood, under new leadership.

Bruce Hawthorn, 59, founded Christian Brotherhood Newsletter in 1982 after successfully appealing to fellow Christians to help with his medical bills following a near-fatal car crash. Hawthorn, the son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, was then operating a rescue mission for alcoholics in Barberton, Ohio.

Christian Brotherhood, billed as “a proven and biblical method for Christians to share one another’s medical bills without using insurance of any kind, “grew rapidly and now operates in all 50 states. It publishes subscribers’ medical expenses as “needs,” which are paid by regular contributions from other subscribers. The organization handles millions of dollars worth of medical bills per month for its estimated 40,000 subscribers. Similar programs have sprung up in its wake (CT, Oct. 2, 2000, p. 24).

Dancer Paid $41,000Along the way, however, Hawthorn allegedly raided approximately $728,200 from Christian Brotherhood’s accounts for cars, a motor home, real estate, an airplane, and cash to benefit himself and family members. The lawsuit also asserts that, beginning in 1996, “defendant Hawthorn engaged in a relationship with Tabitha Ball, then a 21-year-old employee of an exotic dance club.” Ball, briefly on the ministry payroll, was also provided free rent, a car, and credit-card payments totaling over $41,000 during the next two years.

The suit contends that this and other such unauthorized spending hampered Christian Brotherhood’s ability to keep up with subscribers’ medical bills. Recent delays in payment ranged up to 18 months, and as much as $34 million in unpaid needs accumulated.

Among former employees who cooperated with the Ohio investigators were Fe Hawthorn and Judith Bolois. Fe Hawthorn, who is Bruce Hawthorn’s stepmother, worked for a decade in Christian Brotherhood’s accounting and needs-processing departments. She provided detailed information about millions of dollars “wrongfully transferred” to Bruce Hawthorn and other insiders. Hawthorn said they were skimming $75,000 per month from Christian Brotherhood member claim funds, in addition to numerous irregular “loans” and other payments.

Judith Bolois worked in the subscriber office and, with her family, subscribed to Christian Brotherhood until last spring. “For many years, until the late 1990s, the Christian Brotherhood Newsletter program operated successfully, meeting subscribers’ medical needs as they were incurred,” she testified.

But then, she said, unpaid claims piled up because of insiders abusing Christian Brotherhood funds. Subscribers complained “about being sent to collection agencies, about having liens placed against their homes, and about the breach of trust that [Christian Brotherhood] had caused,” Bolois said.

Hawthorn’s office did not return Christianity Today‘s calls seeking comment.

The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that Christian Brotherhood board members were mostly Hawthorn family members, began investigating. Christian Brotherhood elected five new board members in November 1999, including Richard Lupton of Troutville, Virginia, and Howard Russell, a Knoxville, Tennessee, pastor. Russell, an old friend of Hawthorn’s and a veteran of many nonprofit boards, was elected board chairman.

“There was a learning curve, but it didn’t take long to see that there were certain irregularities occurring,” Russell told CT. Russell called an emergency board meeting in April 2000. “I figured then it was just an error in judgment and they’d straighten things out.”

But the same thing happened the next month, and “instead of an apology, the board heard a defense of why things were that way and should be.” Russell said he often heard the statement that “God gave this ministry to Bruce Hawthorn.”

“But,” Russell added, “we’re expected to be stewards and to do what’s right.”

Legal Maneuvers The board placed Hawthorn on a six-month leave last May. “We were still hoping that he would come to understand how things need to work, and the policies that needed to be adhered to,” Russell said.

The board also brought in a new management team to reduce the backlog of unpaid needs. The Ohio attorney general’s filing says the unpaid total was reduced from $34 million to $20 million “over a relatively short period of time.”

“We were seeing significant success,” Russell says, “with solid numbers.”

Hawthorn and his allies resisted these changes, Russell says, and last November the board voted to extend Hawthorn’s leave indefinitely.

Hawthorn responded on December 4, attempting to hold a rump board meeting to oust Russell and Lupton. Russell and other excluded members arrived in time to thwart this move, at least temporarily, despite what Russell and the lawsuit refer to as “threats of violence ” against them.

But two days later, according to the complaint, Hawthorn unilaterally advised Russell that he and Lupton were suspended from the board. Hawthorn then changed the locks on the Christian Brotherhood offices and dismissed the new management team, the complaint says.

Russell and Lupton turned to the Ohio attorney general’s office, which filed a lawsuit seeking the multimillion-dollar damage award and an injunction to stop their ouster. A second action, filed on December 22, asks an Ohio court of appeals to remove Hawthorn and his associates from the board, to restore Russell and the other independent board members, or to put the ministry in receivership.

The Christian Brotherhood Newsletter is still operating, though numerous subscribers have reportedly dropped out. Hawthorn is using ministry funds to pay his attorney, E. Marie Wheeler of Akron.

Wheeler could not be reached for comment. But Akron’s Beacon Journal quoted Wheeler saying in a court motion, “This lawsuit is just another negotiating tool being used by Russell and Lupton to take control of the mission. … This lawsuit is intended to harass the defendants and to be a fishing expedition by the Ohio attorney general.”

Summit County Prosecutor Michael Callahan was reportedly investigating possible criminal violations involved in Christian Brotherhood operations, but Callahan lost his bid for reelection in November. The staff of the new prosecutor, Sherri Bevan Walsh, would not say whether the probe was continuing.

Russell is not optimistic about the ministry’s future: “I believe it will require the hand of God to restore this ministry to integrity and righteousness.”

Related Elsewhere

The Christian Brotherhood Newsletter site only addresses the controversy in passing.

See our earlier coverage of Christian Brotherhood, “Bearing (some but not all) Burdens | Clean-living Christians create an unusual way to share medical expenses.”

See more coverage from Cleveland television station WEWS, “Fraud alleged at faith-based organization | Charity unable to make payments to subscribers.”

- More from Chuck Fager

Reform Jewish Leaders Urge Boy Scout Ban

Kevin Eckstrom

Policy banning gay troop leaders called incompatible with belief that people are created in the image of God.

The American Reform Jewish movement has called on Jewish families and synagogues to sever all ties with the Boy Scouts.

This is the strongest reaction by a U.S. religious group to the Supreme Court’s ruling allowing the Boy Scouts to ban homosexuals from leadership posts. In a memo to congregations, the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism called the Scouts’ policy “incompatible with our consistent belief that every individual—regardless of his or her sexual orientation—is created in the image of God and deserving of equal treatment.”

The policy would amount to blatant discrimination if applied to blacks or Jews instead of to homosexuals, said Rabbi Dan Polish, director of the commission. “This policy is at clear odds with the values that the Reform movement has embraced,” he said.

Religious communities have been divided since the court’s 5-4 decision last June. There are 3 million Boy Scouts in the United States, an estimated 7,100 of whom have been sponsored by Jewish congregations.

Gregg Shields, a Boy Scouts spokesman, said his organization continues to enjoy tremendous support from other religious groups who have chartered scout troops, including Orthodox Jewish congregations. “Although we regret this decision, our doors remain open to all units that would like to continue chartering troops and dens,” Shields said.

Related Elsewhere

Earlier Christianity Today coverage of the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexual leaders includes:

Scouts in a Jam—or Jamboree? | The courts protect rights. The media-savvy win hearts and minds. (Oct. 23, 2000)

Scouts Defend Homosexuality Policy (Apr. 3, 2000)

Scout’s Dishonor | The judge told the Scouts just what their oath meant—and didn’t mean. (Nov. 15, 1999)

Courts Divided on Scouting (Apr. 27, 1998)

More coverage of this and other developments in the brouhaha over scouting and homosexuality includes:

Local Scouting Board, Calling Gay Ban ‘Stupid,’ Urges End to National Policy — The New York Times (Feb. 27, 2001)

Scouts sent packing | National group expels some in Ill. due to gay policy — Associated Press (Feb. 26, 2001)

Scout troop: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ — The Denver Post (Feb. 8, 2001)

Central Florida United Way reaches compromise with Boy Scouts — The Orlando Sentinel (Feb. 8, 2001)

Girl Scouts’ gay policy attacked by family group | But defenders say organization avoids lifestyle issues — Scripps Howard News Service (Feb. 7, 2001)

Court ruling didn’t end scout debate | Towns, schools facing questions of inclusion — Chicago Tribune (Feb. 2, 2001)

Scouts Expel Troops Whose Leaders Oppose Gay Ban — The Washington Post (Jan. 27, 2001)

Reform Jewish group targets Scouts | Union Of Temples opposes policy banning gay troop leaders — Chicago Tribune (Jan. 12, 2001)

Jewish Group Splits With Scouts Over Gay Ban — Fox News (Jan. 11, 2001)

Synagogue Breaks Off 49-Year-Old Tie With Boy Scouts | Scouts Policy On Gays At Heart Of Issue — Associated Press/WPLG (Jan. 11, 2001)

Jewish Group Recommends Cutting Ties to Boy Scouts — The New York Times (Jan. 10, 2001)

Scout Issue Stirs Revolt by a Board Chancellor Attacked for Limiting Access — The New York Times (Dec. 6, 2000)

- More from Kevin Eckstrom

In Memoriam: Megachurch Pastor Jack Hyles Dead at 74

Corrie Cutrer

Fundamental Baptist congregation is one of country’s largest

Jack Hyles, innovative pastor of one of the country’s largest congregations, First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, died February 6 from complications following heart surgery. He was 74.

A Fundamental Baptist, Hyles became the church’s pastor in 1959. Attendance at the congregation in Hammond, a community in northwestern Indiana just south of Chicago, grew from a few hundred to 20,000 today as Hyles sent hundreds of buses to neighboring areas to bring people to the church each week.

“He probably did more for Sunday school in the late ’60s and early ’70s than any other man,” said Elmer Towns, dean of the school of religion at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. “He will be remembered for the greatness of his bus ministry and having built one of the greatest superchurches in America.”

Towns wrote about Hyles and his ministry in the book World’s Largest Sunday School (1974). “At the time, he was the hottest thing going,” Towns said. “There are thousands of men who have been called to ministry under him.”

Aside from recruiting souls on Sunday morning, Hyles also founded six Hammond Baptist Schools; Hyles-Anderson College, which has grown from 300 to 1,800 students during the last 30 years; and the Hyles Publications religious press. The pastor wrote 49 self-published treatises on theology, with a combined circulation of more than 14 million copies.

Born in Italy, Texas (near Dallas), Hyles attended East Texas Baptist College and preached at a number of Texas churches, including Miller Road Baptist in Garland, before moving to Hammond. Under his leadership, Miller Road grew from fewer than 50 members to 4,000.

Hyles was affiliated first with Southern Baptists and later with the American Baptist Conference. He left both groups over theological differences and became a leader in the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. There are over 300 Independent Fundamental Baptist churches nationwide.

Hyles is survived by his wife, Beverly; their four children; a sister; 11 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Related Elsewhere

The Times of Munster, Indiana, has several articles on Hyles, including an obituary, an editorial, a chronology, and an article on what’s next for First Baptist.

See also the Associated Press’s brief obituary.

More on Hyles is available from JackHyles.net, The Jack Hyles Home Page, and First Baptist‘s Web site.

The Christianity Today Weblog noted Hyles death in its Feb. 8 edition.

- More from Corrie Cutrer

Briefs: North America

Rousas John Rushdoony, founder of the Chalcedon Institute and a key figure in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, died on February 8 at the age of 84. Rushdoony is regarded as a founder of the Christian homeschooling movement and an intellectual catalyst of the Christian Right. His most influential book is The Institutes of Biblical Law.

James Crawford, 49, has pleaded guilty to burning crosses on the grounds of Goodwill Presbyterian Church in Sumter, South Carolina, on April 1, 2000. Two coconspirators admitted to related charges in U.S. District Court in Columbia. Crawford, a resident of Sumter and member of the Ku Klux Klan, was indicted under the federal hate-crimes statute.

After an investigation, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) has concluded that Ferdinand Mahfood, founder of Food for the Poor (FFTP), improperly redirected donor money. The board of FFTP, based in Deerfield Beach, Florida, and an ECFA member since October 1998, has cooperated with the investigation.

Bill Waldrop, 71, a senior adviser and consultant for Mission America, died December 11 in Colorado Springs of a pulmonary embolism. Waldrop served as president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta-based Advancing Churches in Missions Commitment for seven years. He flew more than 200 combat missions in Vietnam and was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross and eight Air Medals.

Lilly Endowment Inc. has given the Duke University Divinity School a $10 million grant to develop pastoral leadership. The Learned Clergy Initiative will provide 60 three-year fellowships in the next five years; sponsor a series of forums involving lay leaders, clergy, faculty, and students; and focus on “developing the moral and theological imagination required for strong congregational leadership,” according to the divinity school.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA (IVCF) has named Alexander D. Hill to succeed Stephen A. Hayner as president, starting on July 1. Hill, 47, has been dean of Seattle Pacific University’s School of Business and Economics since 1995. Hayner, 52, IVCF’s eighth president, served for 13 years.

Bethany Fellowship International in Bloomington, Minnesota, has named David Hicks as president and CEO. Hicks was North American area coordinator for Operation Mobilization.

Kenneth Lee Pike, 88, president emeritus of Dallas-based SIL International, died December 31 in Dallas. Pike, an internationally renowned linguist and Bible translator, died of septicemia, a toxic blood condition. Pike, president of SIL from 1942 until 1979, received ten honorary doctorates and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 15 times because of his work with tribal groups.

Smart Money magazine has named Samaritan’s Purse the nation’s most efficient religious charity. The international relief agency—based in Boone, North Carolina, and headed by Franklin Graham—had revenues of $109.7 million in 1999. Samaritan’s Purse allocates 88.8 percent of its budget to program activities.

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