What will make a difference are daily ethical patterns like those that caused some in the past to say, “I did what had to be done.”

In spite of all the publicity, evangelicals know little about the history of the Holocaust and its ramifications for the Christian community. Too often they view it only as something that happened to the Jewish people. It is not their problem, but a Jewish problem or a Nazi German problem or a radical liberal problem or a European problem. It is anything but an evangelical problem.

And yet, as this country enters a period of economic instability and we hear more and more reports of racial tension and violence, there are some nagging questions that keep plaguing some of us. How could some Christian people in Germany sit quietly by and without protest allow the extermination of six million Jews? Even more, how could “good, decent citizens” become even indirectly accomplices of such an unspeakable offense against humanity? Could it happen again? Could it happen here?

But there is one overriding question that must be faced above all others: What made the difference between the few who helped the Jewish people during their awesome persecution and the multitude who turned their backs on them? Why did a few put themselves, their families, their possessions, and their careers on the line for a persecuted people while most did not? What is there in evangelical theology that should make evangelicals react differently than do other people in the face of prejudice, scapegoating, caricature, oppression, and outright physical violence to a race or religious group different from their own?

This is a difficult question because, as one studies the Holocaust, it seems that only a few evangelicals, a few Protestants, a few Catholics, a few Orthodox, a few agnostics, and a few atheists helped the Jewish people during their persecution (and, not necessarily in that order). Evangelicals must face honestly the fact that being an evangelical was simply not enough. To make the problem worse, even those who risked their lives and the lives of their families to protect Jews often said they really don’t know exactly what factors led them to do what they did.

A recent book by Philip R. Hallie (Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, Harper & Row, 1979), however, gives us the clue to answer our question. Hallie went to France to find out why a diverse French Huguenot community put their lives on the line to save Jews during the Holocaust. As a philosopher and a human being, he wanted to know why “goodness” occurred in Le Chambon as the specter of evil surrounded it. While there is much more to the book, the real key to their response was the daily ethical patterns established within individuals of the community—patterns that made them say, “What do you mean ‘why did you do it?’ I did what was right and what I had to do. That is all!” Corrie Ten Boom tells us in The Hiding Place of her “crooked little Dutch house” where she and her beloved family risked their lives (and in some cases gave their lives) to snatch Jewish lives from worse than death. For them, too, it was no great decision. They simply did it because it had to be done.

What was there about those unheroic heroes that really made the difference? If you asked Corrie Ten Boom, she herself would no doubt reply (as she does in her book): Jesus helped me. God gave me and others the power to stand firm. I didn’t do it. I certainly didn’t have the strength to withstand the mad opposition.

And of course she was right. No doubt her particular belief in Jesus provided the spiritual and moral power to motivate her to act and to sustain her through the dark hours. But as you read The Hiding Place, it is evident that certain basic convictions, certain circumstances of experience, and especially certain deep-seated patterns of daily family life, structured their responses in crisis and prepared the way for heroic action.

Briefly, let me suggest three characteristics of the Ten Booms, of some Huguenots, and of some German evangelicals that worked to “make the difference.” No doubt additional factors worked in all these people, and in many more, who, for the sake of others, did not count their own lives dear. Yet in the case of these evangelicals, the following characteristics were important.

The first area of difference lay in their thinking. They believed in God, and because they did, they could also believe in man as being of infinite value, created in the divine image with an immortal soul. For them every Jew was a person—one worth dying for. Hadn’t Jesus died for every human being? They also believed in the truth, and they refused to allow their minds to be bent by caricature and stereotype. How one’s latent prejudice against any group can be nourished and cultivated is one of the most disturbing revelations of the Holocaust. Prejudice is a learned behavior and is bolstered and sustained by community attitudes and conduct.

The Holocaust built upon centuries of anti-Semitism and stereotyping of the Jewish people, and it gave the Nazi regime a firm foundation upon which to build and ultimately to dehumanize the Jewish people in the eyes of the world. Joseph Goebbels bragged that if one told a lie big enough and often enough the people would ultimately believe it; the Nazi minister of propaganda was able to convince many that the Jews were responsible for capitalism and communism—simultaneously. At any rate, the people as a whole became convinced that their economic and political frustrations were linked to the Jewish people. It seems when people’s pocketbooks are hit, a “suitable” scapegoat can easily be found. All of this the Ten Boom family forthrightly repudiated; but, unfortunately, many more did not.

In view of what led to the Holocaust, I do not believe 1 am overreacting when I find that ethnic and religious jokes ring hollow. Even “innocent” caricatures and stereotypes mold our attitudes and future behavior. It grieves me when I know how easily “good” people can be convinced that “all Jews are rich,” “Jews control the world,” and “blacks are mentally inferior to whites.” It grieves me how many evangelicals fall into this snare of latent prejudice, caricature, and stereotype. And many times, they are buttressed by their interaction with supposed “experts” on the particular ethnic or religious community.

For example, one well-meaning evangelical leader recently declared during a seminar on Jews: “Many of the key media people are Jewish”; and he added, “Anything that displeases the Jewish people is very likely to have an effect in the media, television, and newsprint.” Jewish control of the mass media has been an effective lie of anti-Semites for decades. It was used by the Nazis, and it is used by neo-Nazi groups today.

Prejudice infests us all, and the most dangerous attitude one can have is to think that he or she has no prejudice. The next danger is to believe that it cannot make you cold and indifferent. Caricature and stereotype can have awesome ramifications. The Polish people hated the Nazis, but Nazi propaganda nourished such hatred of Jews, even in Poland, so much so that even after the detested Nazis were defeated, some Poles pulled emaciated Jews who had survived the work camps off trains headed for safety and killed them themselves. For years their hatreds had been transferred to “the international culprit,” the Jew; they had to vent their frustrations in an “appropriate” manner. Evangelicals know all too well how they themselves have been stereotyped and ridiculed. Should not this foster some sensitivity as to where the pejorative comment can lead?

The second area in which the Ten Boom family countered anti-Semitism was by nourishing love through personal relationship. They not only believed Jews have “souls of infinite value,” they were acquainted with individual Jews that put the lie to Nazi propaganda. Evangelicals should cultivate personal acquaintances among not only Jews but among all minority peoples. This must be done in true friendliness, in an attitude of learning, humility, love, and sharing (rather than of “conquering”). Getting to know someone breeds sensitivity to that person’s true nature and inevitably breaks down stereotypes and prejudices. Many pastors today are concerned about their congregations living within Christian “ghettos,” and their concern is justified. Without individual relationships with those outside our immediate community, we become so ingrown that we begin to use an “us-them” jargon that can easily disintegrate into a “we-it” terminology. Eventually we stand by unmoved when the “thing” is destroyed.

The third area is closely akin to the first two. It is the area of daily patterns of life. The Ten Boom family practiced living for others; they lived daily for God and for others. They learned what it meant to consider others before themselves. In their daily lifestyle, they practiced sacrificing for others, so when crisis decisions arose, they faced no crises. There was a need; it had to be met, and they did it. Our lives, too, must exhibit such sensitivity in the “little” areas of ethical judgment that when the “big” decisions arrive, we have established a firm foundation from which to stand strong.

Right thinking about the worth of a human life with the determination to reject caricature and stereotypes of fellow human beings; right relationships nourished by personal acquaintance and friendships; and right patterns of sacrificial living for others: these, therefore, were the crucial factors that “made the difference” in the past. Those same ingredients of life will make the difference in the future. History can be a help to us, but we must dare to ask ourselves, “What would I have done if my life, the lives of my family, my career, were all on the line for an oppressed minority group?” How does my theology affect my reactions when the subtle prejudices of the public grow into hatred and the search for a scapegoat? What do I do when my peers tell me it is only right and safe to do nothing. Indifference and apathy, like sin, grow and solidify. Soon they encrust one to such an extent that they become the only “proper” way. Quickly—so very quickly—even to raise a question becomes unthinkable.

Finally, a healthy recognition of the biblical doctrine of original sin will keep us alert to the human potential for another Holocaust. We cannot rest upon any false sense of human decency that would make such a thing impossible. We are capable of another Holocaust; even evangelical Christians are capable of tolerating it. But by the grace of God it can be avoided. With his help evangelicals must battle daily against the seeds of incipient racism lest they sprout, take root, and bring forth the awful fruit of another Holocaust.

UPCUSA tenses for crucial May general assembly.

A church historian has called denominational splits the “favorite sport” of Presbyterianism. If that is so, the May meeting of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) general assembly could determine whether the “sport” becomes even more popular or less so. It depends on how the United Presbyterians settle the serious issues facing them at the assembly.

At least 46 congregations have left the denomination since last spring and, in the aftermath of an official decision to accept a pastoral candidate considered by some conservatives to be weak on the deity of Christ, many more are threatening separation. Three reasons are consistently given when the disgruntled congregations (mostly evangelical) list their grievances:

• The UPCUSA decision to mandate ordination of women and require that women elders be elected in each church.

• The probable passage of a measure to insure the denomination’s right to the church property of a separating congregation.

• The decision of the permanent judicial commission (the denomination’s “supreme court”) not to overturn a presbytery’s acceptance of ministerial candidate Mansfield Kaseman, who, in presbyterial examination, declared Jesus is not God, “God is God.”

Evangelicals in the UPCUSA are divided on the Kaseman case; the majority agree that, at most, the permanent judicial commission’s decision was a disciplinary error. This sector is represented by Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns and the Presbyterian Lay Committee, two evangelical renewal groups within the denomination.

Richard Lovelace, a Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary professor and prominent member of Presbyterians United for Biblical Concerns, has said the Kaseman testimony was too “ambiguous and ambivalent” to declare Kaseman unsound on Christ’s deity. He said the decision should not be interpreted as a change in the church’s doctrine.

Other evangelicals, who admit they are a minority, disagree. Former Pittsburgh Theological Seminary professor John Gerstner served as counsel in the case against Kaseman and said the Kaseman decision “constitutes apostasy.” As far as Gerstner is concerned, “The UPCUSA doesn’t exist as a Christian church anymore.”

“It won’t do for the denomination to say it affirms the deity of Christ and then to legitimatize someone who doesn’t,” Gerstner said. But he is advising disappointed congregations to stay in the denomination until May, when the general assembly gathers.

To rectify the Kaseman decision, Gerstner believes the only thing the assembly can do is repudiate the decision and reaffirm Christ’s deity. “This is a dreadful thing and we want to give the church every conceivable possibility to repent,” he said.

Robert Stevenson, UPCUSA associate stated clerk, said such a view is a misunderstanding of the Kaseman decision. Instead, he said, the permanent judicial commission sought to reaffirm the right of the local presbytery to accept or reject ministerial candidates. In its written opinion, the commission noted some of Kaseman’s answers “may appear to be weak, or less than wholly adequate,” but declared it was loath to substitute its judgment for that of the lower body.

The opinion also restated and reapproved the denomination’s belief in the Trinity, Christ as God’s Son and second person of the Trinity, the Atonement, and the Bible as the Word of God. Just the same, “There are some churches which are rumbling,” Stevenson said. The UPCUSA officer who has been charged with monitoring church separations said no “rash of exits” followed the Kaseman ruling.

If anything is causing churches to bolt hastily, it is the property issue. Known as Overture A, this measure would close a constitutional loophole that allowed congregations to leave the denomination and take their property with them.

Overture A was approved by the general assembly last spring. Under United Presbyterian polity, it is now being considered by the 152 presbyteries in the denomination. If the majority approves the measure, it will take effect after this May’s assembly.

Though UPCUSA headquarters will not divulge the tally on Overture A, observers believe its passage is assured. By the count of Charles Ecker, an official of the Presbyterian lay committee, the vote is “lopsidedly in favor of it.”

Because some churches consider the ratification of Overture A imminent, they are not waiting to see what happens at the May assembly. Ecker said congregations are frightened. “The property measure is a threat to the local congregation,” he said. “It is a potential club that could be very dangerously abused.”

It would definitely be more difficult to exit if the property had to be left to the UPCUSA, he noted. One pastor whose church has already left spoke for his congregation: “We don’t buy the idea that the denomination owns what our fathers and mothers worked to build.”

Finally, the women’s issue has been aggravated by the outcome of Kaseman. To persons like Stewart Rankin, who was a complainant against Kaseman, the UPCUSA has contradicted itself and exposed a prejudice against conservatives.

Rankin recalls the Wynn Kenyon case of 1974. A ministerial candidate, Kenyon did not believe in women’s ordination. He was accepted by his presbytery, but the ordination was challenged and referred to the permanent judicial commission. In that instance, the commission considered the circumstances “extraordinary” and overturned the decision of the presbytery.

“But when a man denies the deity of Christ, doubts his sinlessness, and doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection, to them that is not an ‘extraordinary’ case,” said Rankin. The minister said his Silver Spring, Maryland, congregation has had enough. “We’ve stayed in this as long as we possibly can.”

Meanwhile, others who are withdrawing are already pondering a new denomination. While those delegates were considering a denomination, UPCUSA was looking forward to its own general assembly. The denomination will meet May 19–28 concurrently with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Meeting in Houston, the churches will do their denominational business separately, but they will worship together and have some joint committees.

UPCUSA is hoping for a reunion with PCUS, the largest southern Presbyterian denomination, which split from what is now UPCUSA in 1837. PCUS has had separation problems of its own, with three churches currently threatening to leave.

Its withdrawal problem is not as severe as that of UPCUSA, said Flynn Long, associate stated clerk for the southern Presbyterians. He said PCUS’s crisis was in the early 1970s when several conservative churches exited and formed the Presbyterian Church in America.

On the plausibility of reunion with UPCUSA, Flynn is noncommittal. Right now, whether or not the reunion attempt will be successful represents a “pretty subjective judgment,” he said. However, according to Flynn, 14 PCUS presbyteries have already united with UPCUSA presbyteries. Those “joint presbyteries” constitute one-fourth of the 60 PCUS presbyteries.

The target date for total reunion is 1982. Even then, the issues of women officers and Christ’s deity may haunt UPCUSA. Observers say the more conservative PCUS is likely to balk at the required election of women elders and what some consider doctrinal lassitude.

United Presbyterians such as scholar Lovelace hope UPCUSA can solidify and invite reunion. He feels the “broad center” of the denomination is opening to “progressive” evangelicalism. “It is closing to the far left and people on the right who want to replay the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the 1920s,” Lovelace thinks. The question many evangelicals are raising is: How far can a church move before it ceases to be evangelical?

Turmoil’S Fallout Includes Birth Of New Denomination

To the alphabet soup of Presbyterian denominations (which already includes UPCUSA, PCUS, ARPC, PCA, OPC, RPCES, CPC, RPNA) one more may be added: EPC—the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The EPC was officially launched in a two-day convening convention last month, setting the dates of September 22 to 24 for its first general assembly.

Some 113 participants gathered in Saint Louis to consider the proposed Articles of Agreement, Book of Government, and Book of Worship of the EPC. After consideration of the documents, 43 ruling elders and ministers (representing 15 churches) signed a Covenant Book agreeing to lead their congregations into the fledgling denomination.

Organization of the EPC started in the fall of 1980 (CT, Oct. 10, 1980). Stung by developments in the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), ministers from Missouri, Colorado, Michigan, Illinois, and Maryland met to consider the feasibility of a new denomination. The ministers, most of whose churches had already withdrawn from the UPCUSA, were concerned about the denomination’s apparent doctrinal laxness on the deity of Christ, the required election of women elders, and claim that local church property belonged to the denomination. Those concerns were repeated at the convening convention.

Calvin Gray, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Trenton, Michigan, and moderator of the EPC, noted that “freedom issues” had brought diverse churches together. EPC leaders say the new denomination will avoid cumbersome bureaucracy and allow differences of conscience in several areas.

That freedom of conscience has attracted some churches that, for one reason or another, would be uncomfortable in the already existing Presbyterian bodies. One participant, a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, said his dispensational theology would be frowned on in other conservative Presbyterian groups. The EPC is open on that issue, as well as to questions of charismatic gifts and women’s ordination or election to church office. It also will not claim rights to congregational property.

Though leaders admitted the EPC was off to a modest start, there was talk of the denomination lasting hundreds of years—“if the Lord doesn’t return first.” Speakers also tended to emphasize that Lord’s deity. Hugh McClure, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Columbia, South Carolina, said Jesus was God and declared, “It makes all the difference in the world who this Person is.” Bartlett Hess, senior pastor of Ward Presbyterian Church in Livonia, Michigan, said, “If we don’t have a Savior who’s fully God and fully man and died on the cross so that we poor, lost sinners might have salvation, we might as well shut up the church doors. It’s all a fraud.”

L. Edward Davis, executive pastor in Hess’s church and clerk of the EPC, said the denomination does not consider itself in competition with other Presbyterians. The EPC, he said, will be “Reformed in doctrine, Presbyterian in polity, and evangelical in spirit.” Davis is optimistic: he expects the EPC to have up to 50 congregations by next year. That, he notes, compares well with many conservative Presbyterian denominations. “We just want to haul up the flag and let people know a fellowship of this nature really exists,” he said.

Guards Patrol Maryland Church Rent By Controversy

Lockouts, armed guards, threats to “knock the door down”—all these would seem to belong more in a western movie than a church feud. But those elements are part of the bitter fight of a local church belonging to the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) in Towson, Maryland, and they represent the larger struggle being waged on many fronts in the denomination.

Babcock Memorial Presbyterian Church, say various members, has been in ferment since 1974 when the issue of women pastors and elders first shook the UPCUSA. The ferment came to a head in late March, however, when Babcock’s session (church board) decided that the church should leave the denomination—and the presbytery disagreed.

Ruling elders Bruce Bums and James Pfeiffer said the session determined it would leave the UPCUSA in an orderly, peaceful fashion. By the session’s reading of Presbyterian governmental rules, that meant a meeting for congregational vote on the matter needed to be announced twice.

The first announcement was made smoothly; the second was to be made on Sunday, March 23. But before the March 23 worship service, presbytery officials met and took three actions: they removed Babcock’s pastors, Robert Louthan and Howard Hill, from that pulpit; they deposed the church’s session; and finally, they replaced the former session with a new one.

The deposed session, said ruling elder Bums, attempted to make the second announcement at the March 23 service, but its members were blocked from the pulpit by the newly appointed session. “The congregation was furious,” Bums said. “Some people were in tears.” The new session also announced that a scheduled Monday night meeting—which had been called by the old session for the express purpose of voting on secession—was canceled.

Reinforcing its announcement, the new session hired and posted armed guards at Babcock on Sunday evening. On Monday morning, members of the church were told to leave the premises. Richard Werely, chairman of a presbytery commission appointed to oversee the Babcock case, said the guards became necessary when church members began carrying typewriters and stationery out of the building.

Werely said dissidents in the congregation realized the building belonged to the presbytery and were taking materials in order to set up shop in another location. Mark Werner, Baltimore attorney hired to represent members wanting to leave the UPCUSA, said no church property was being carried out of the building. He claimed the choir director had returned to the building to get sheet music that belonged to him, but was prevented from taking it by the guards. A woman, he said, also went to the nursery to remove some personal belongings. She also was stopped.

By Monday afternoon, the new session had engaged a locksmith to change the locks on the building, since, said Werely, about 100 members had keys to the old locks. The group wishing to secede was therefore especially infuriated when it managed to gather on Monday evening.

Elder Bums said the meeting was held despite attempts of the new session to cancel it, and even to frighten members away from it. A vote was cast: 228 voted in favor of leaving the denomination, 6 against departing.

Both sides disagreed on the actual numbers involved. Those for and those against leaving both claim a majority of the congregation sympathizes with their viewpoint. Babcock was estimated by the now-deposed session to have 430 active members. Burns said a vote taken in early March disclosed 320 in favor of departing. He claims 184 of about 200 church teachers and officers were in favor of leaving, and that 13 of 15 ruling elders (on the now-deposed session) wanted to go.

Werely begins with an entirely different set of numbers. He said a 1980 report showed 684 on the roll, with 484 (not 430) active. He also said 311 (not 320) voted to leave in early March. He contends the members who did not show up for the embattled Monday night meeting agreed with the new session that that meeting was illegitimate, and thus did not show up to cast a vote. “[The vote of] 228 to 500 does not come up to 50 percent of the congregation,” Werely said. “More than 50 percent wish to remain United Presbyterian.”

A further complicating matter is the legal ownership of the church property, valued at $2 million. On March 14, the now-deposed session sensed the coming storm and, under the advice of attorney Werner, gave its property to Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church in Baltimore.

Presbytery official Werely said such a move was illegal—that any transfer of property had to have prior approval of the congregation and the presbytery. The antidenomination forces claim Presbyterian rules will not allow the leasing of property as transfer. They believed they found a loophole by giving away, not selling or leasing, the property.

Furthermore, Werely claims Merritt Boulevard Presbyterian Church is not a legitimate church. He said the church was incorporated by attorney Werner only to serve as a sort of holding church for refugee UPCUSA congregations. Werner admits he established the Merritt Church in April of 1980, together with his law partner and their wives. He denies it was constituted simply to serve as a legal loophole, and said the church has 12 members and regular Sunday night meetings, with about 60 to 75 people usually present.

Werely also contends the Merritt church ironically had ruling women elders. This would have been embarrassing in that the Babcock church would have deeded its property to a church with women elders (the wives of Werner and his fellow attorney). The Babcock congregation had wanted to leave, Werely said, because it was required to have women elders.

Attorney Werner said the women were on the session of the church but were never ruling elders: “They were never ordained, we never acknowledged them as elders.” Rather, he said, they served more as trustees to get the church started. Now, said Werely, a new session has been elected.

One Babcock member who is against leaving the UPCUSA, George Hatfield, said a majority of the congregation is agreed on one thing. “We are convinced there is considerable evil and heresy in the Presbyterian Church,” he stated. “We divide at what the proper action should be.”

Members like Hatfield, who has been a member 30 years and is a ruling elder, cite Matthew 13 and believe “the sorting of the tares should be left to the Master of the harvest.” He quotes D. L. Moody, who said heresy should simply be allowed to melt in the “warm glow of the full intensity of truth expressed in love.”

Hatfield believes 300 to 500 members favor staying in the denomination. Like parties on both sides, he laments the hostility of the situation. “A part of the bride of Christ is seeking a divorce,” he said, calling that “dreadful.” But Hatfield said “both sides have offended.”

Those wanting to leave the UPCUSA attempted to repossess the Babcock property on March 27. Attorney Werner presented the gift deed to police officials and requested the building be opened up. The police refused, however, deciding to leave the property in presbytery hands.

This decision was a “disappointment” to Werner, who argued the presbytery “has no way of showing it has any legal claim to the property” and that it has taken the law into its own hands by occupying the church.

Earlier this month Werner was gathering legal documents in order to seek a temporary injunction that would allow the church to regain the property. He anticipated the sticky problem would ultimately be resolved in civil court: “Unfortunately that is the direction we’re heading.” Werner criticizes the presbytery for using “raw power,” and wonders how that relates to Christian principles. While the presbytery would certainly give another story, he summarizes the problem by saying, “We have bent over backwards to accommodate the presbytery, and all they do is step on our hands.”

RODNEY CLAPP

Personalia

Quentin D. Nelson has been named vice-president for academic affairs and dean of North Park College of Chicago. He has been a professor of education and chairman of the social science division. Nelson spent 14 years in Africa as a missionary of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, with which North Park is affiliated.

Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair has gone into hiding during her hours away from work because she said she was tired of busloads of hymn-singing youngsters appearing on her front lawn to serenade her. Besides the singing, local Baptists kept showing up trying to convert her, and her mailbox has been flooded with “Praying Hands” post cards. Although she still shows up for work each day at her American Atheist Center in Austin, Texas, she said she is living under an assumed name in her new residence.

Thomas L. Phillips, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of Raytheon Company, has been named national chairman of the forty-first annual National Bible Week, a nondenominational event set for November 22 to 29. Phillips is a member of the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Wayland, Massachusetts.

S. Bruce Narramore has been named dean of the new School of Psychology at Biola College, starting in September. At that time the school’s graduate and undergraduate psychology programs will merge, along with the Rosemead Graduate School of Professional Psychology.

Gregg O. Lehman was elected president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. At 33, he is the youngest president in the school’s history. Lehman, who has been vice-president of business affairs and executive vice-president at Taylor, will succeed Milo Rediger, effective July 1.

North American Scene

A group of Texas Methodists has launched a national weekly religious newspaper, called the National Christian Reporter. Spurgeon Dunnam III, editor of the Texas Methodist/United Methodist Reporter, from which the new newspaper sprung, said it will take a theological position somewhere between Christian Century and CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

The Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination for homosexuals, has applied for membership in the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Both organizations had urged the church to join, said Adam DeBaugh of the church’s Department of Ecumenical Relations. It is expected that the church will have no difficulty being accepted into the two organizations.

Andover Newton Conference

Old-Line Churches Rally To Evangelism Banner Again

“This was a watershed, for Andover Newton at least, but probably for many churches as well.” That is how John Douhan, associate executive minister of the American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts, summed up the four-day conference, “The Church Reaches Out; Evangelism in the 80s,” held in March at Andover Newton Theological School (ANTS) near Boston.

“I left there three feet off the ground,” said Gordon MacDonald, pastor of Grace Chapel in Lexington, Massachusetts. From all indications, he was not alone. There were 600 registered conferees, but attendance swelled to nearly 2,400 for worship services with Charles Adams of Detroit and Oregon’s Sen. Mark Hatfield.

Sponsored by the United Church of Christ and the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., along with their state agencies and ANTS, the conference was held at area churches and on the campus. The focus of the program was congregation-level evangelism. What emerged was articulation of a new wholeness in witness for mainstream churches.

“A great new spirit is abroad in the church today. We rejoice in the gospel, and we affirm the evangelistic task in our day,” said conference director George Peck in his opening remarks. The spirit identified by Peck, ANTS dean and conference organizer, brought liberal and evangelical thinkers together in a major reexamination of the role of social concern, proclamation, and the lordship of Christ in the church.

Although the conference had been in the making for two years, the size of the turnout, especially by liberal pastors and lay leaders, was seen as a reflection of the new concern for evangelism among mainstream denominations.

Some perceived Peck negative explanations. “The reason why you have so many mainline church members talking about evangelism is the same reason the American Civil Liberties Union has been gaining so many members since Reagan’s election,” commented R. Alan Johnson, secretary for evangelism for the United Church Board of Homeland Ministries. “They have been shell-shocked by the success of the fundamentalists and they are wondering what they can do.”

Whether Johnson’s explanation is valid or not, positive results were evident. People with widely differing theological viewpoints became excited about learning from one another. “There was an air of mutual respect and affirmation. There was honesty and openness,” summarized MacDonald. “I have to say I’m extremely excited.”

The addresses and Bible study sessions were dominated by affirmation of the deity and lordship of Christ, and of co-equality in evangelism of proclamation and of the quest for a just and merciful community of faith. Traditional formulations and pronouncements, from both liberal and evangelical perspectives, were noticeably absent.

Each speaker, rather, began with an appraisal of a sphere of practice in church or society in America. The problems and failures identified drew each presentation back to examination of what role the affirmation of the deity of Christ and of the two dimensions of evangelism could have in restoring the health of the church and society.

Gabriel Fackre, Abbot professor of Christian theology at Andover Newton, and a United Church of Christ clergyman, stressed the content of evangelism in his address. He surveyed both the current state of evangelistic excitement and the gamut of Christian theologies in the church worldwide: elemental and propositional (fundamentalist and evangelical), relational, liberation, process, existential, secular, and others.

Fackre observed that Christians today have two things in common with the church at the end of the apostolic age—“on the one hand, a major mobilization for mission, and, on the other hand, a lack of clarity about the content of the gospel.” He then explored the creeds developed by the early church fathers to cope with their problems, and applied them to the church today.

“The Evangel is the Good News,” Fackre concluded. “He brings forgiveness for our sins, but more; he liberates from oppression, but more; he brings hope to the sick and suffering, but more; he brings knowledge and light to our night, but more; he conquers our last enemy, death … [It] is nothing less than to say He is Lord and Savior …

“Faithful evangelism requires a mind thoughtfully stretched as well as a heart strangely warmed. [For] … the fulness of the gospel is matched by the fulness of Christ himself. Particular perspectives on who he is and what he does must grow up into the fulness of Christ.”

The other speakers, Orlando Costas, dean Peck, Senator Hatfield, and ANTS president Gordon Torgersen echoed similar themes.

Elizabeth Achtemeier, professor of homiletics and biblical interpretation at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia and Bible teacher for the conference, emphasized the point in her final Bible study, saying, “This is a life-and-death matter. Jesus makes all the difference in the world. That is what we have forgotten. That is what the conference is all about.” She was greeted with standing applause.

JOHN RODMAN

Old document confirms Missouri faction’s position.

When the founder of the Mormon church, Joseph Smith, Jr., was assassinated in Illinois in 1844, a squabble erupted over who would succeed him. Brigham Young convinced a majority that the leadership should pass to the body known as the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. As head of that group, Young accepted the mantle of succession and led the party westward to Utah.

Dissenters, including Smith’s mother, widow, and brother, believed that Smith wanted his son, Joseph Smith III, to be the heir. The younger Smith’s followers remained behind, eventually settling in Independence, Missouri, under the name Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (only the church based in Utah uses the name “Mormon”).

A problem in the Missouri faction was that no one could prove the founder wanted his lineal descendents to succeed him. There were only reports of conversations about his wishes. It was an important discovery, therefore, when a young collector of Mormon artifacts recently came across the transcript of the blessing Joseph Smith pronounced upon his son five months before his death. The blessing contained this crucial wording: “… the anointing of the progenitor shall be upon the head of my son, and his seed after him, from generation to generation. For he shall be my successor to the presidency of the high priesthood, a seer and a revelator, and a prophet unto the church, which appointment belongeth to him by blessing and also by right.”

The document was dated January 17, 1844, and for the first time it pinpointed what the reorganized church in Missouri always believed: that their wing was in the line of succession ordained by Joseph Smith.

Although the document was an important historical find, neither branch of the church is making a big deal out of it. “We have no interest in pursuing old nineteenth-century battles,” said Richard Howard, historian of the reorganized church in Independence. “The Mormon church has settled the issue of descent to their satisfaction and we have settled it to ours.”

The Missouri church has been led by Smith’s descendents ever since his death (currently, the prophet is Wallace Smith, the great-grandson of the founder), but the church does not believe it is locked into the Smith family forever. More important considerations when a prophet chooses his successor are a sense of divine will and acceptance by the church members.

Besides that, there is some doubt that when Joseph Smith, Jr., blessed his son, he really intended the blessing to mark him as successor since the boy was only 11 years old at the time and did not understand the blessing to be a sign of succession. Although he led the Missouri church for 54 years (1860–1914), the son acknowledged that “It is not a birthright to be president of the church. [It is] by virtue of fitness and qualification, I may say, and good behavior and the choice of the people.”

What is most likely to happen is that the Missouri church, numbering 224,000, will continue to live in harmony with, and be out-numbered by, the Utah Mormons, who have some 2.6 million members (4.7 million worldwide). For one thing, the reorganized church in Missouri does not employ temple worship as do the Utah Mormons with their highly secretive and exclusive liturgy. And the two branches are far apart theologically. The Missouri church is far closer to orthodox Christianity in its views of Scripture and the Trinity than the decidedly unchristian brethren in Utah.

The IRS Alerts Its Agents

Courts Check Spread Of Phony Mail-Order Ministers

People have become mail-order ministers to evade the draft, avoid taxes, and even to keep a disco open after 2:00 A.M. as a “religious establishment.” All of this has the Internal Revenue Service agitated enough to issue instructions to tax agents that tell them how to spot phony ministers.

The mail-order ministers are so called because they are ordained through the mail, paying a small fee to companies willing to give them credentials. But the IRS suspects as many as 10,000 persons are now mail-order ministers so they can illegitimately enjoy the tax benefits of religious organizations.

Judges, sensitive about church-state separation, have upheld the right of mail-order churches to exist. But blatant abusers of tax exemptions for religious organizations are consistently losing in tax court.

The biggest problem, said a spokesman for the IRS, is the person who gets ordained and starts a church merely to funnel his normal living expenses through it. Then the typical offender claims deductions because he supposedly has given his income to a nonprofit entity. Early this year, the IRS took 10 Braniff International airline pilots to court, alleging the pilots’ Basic Bible Church was bogus as a church, but the real thing as a tax fraud.

Mail-order churches claim they fulfill many traditional church functions. California’s Mother Earth American Fellowship Church, for example, claims its ministers will conduct weddings and funerals.

One Mother Earth minister, Mark Hackman, admitted he presides over no regular meetings; neither does he even have a set meeting place. He, said applicants for ordination are not questioned about their motives, although Mother Earth Church does disapprove tax evasion. Some ministers may abuse their mail-order ordination, he said, but any freedom can be abused. “More people are benefitted by this service than are harmed.”

The president of Mother Earth Church, Ted Swenson, defends his operation and others like it in light of the First Amendment: “In this country, anyone can establish a religion, no matter how nuts.”

Americans like credentials, and Swenson’s service offers help for “people who just feel that they are not worthy because they don’t have a credential.” Having such documents may give some applicants a boost in morale, but Swenson said his church leaves spiritual growth and development to the individual.

The IRS stipulates that any agency claiming benefits as a religious organization must “actually be operated for religious purposes.” The organization also “cannot be operated to further the private interests of its founder or other individuals.”

In at least two cases last year, the tax court ruled against organizations it considered to be in violation of that stipulation. In Walker v. Commissioner, the court said it would not allow tax law to be “subverted by those who would twist it to their own private benefit—regardless of the scheme or artifice by which it is attempted.”

The ‘Jupiter Effect’

Scientist Retracts Theory But Believers Won’T Budge

A book published in 1974 has many people believing 1982 will be a year of earthquakes terrible enough to destroy Los Angeles. Some pastors are still preaching about the “Jupiter Effect,” even though one of the authors of the book that started it all has denounced his earlier claims. “If anyone tries to warn you about the Apocalypse coming in 1982, just tell him that the old theory has long since been disproved,” wrote scientist John Gribbin in the June 1980 issue of Omni magazine.

Gribbin and coauthor Stephen Plagemann wrote The Jupiter Effect, they said, to warn Californians that a unique alignment of the planets might result in catastrophic earthquakes in 1982. Gribbin and Plagemann surmised that the San Andreas Fault was due for collapse, and that the slightest nudge would aggravate the fault, shaking major cities to their foundations.

The authors, according to science fiction writer Isaac Asimov in a foreword to the book, went looking for the fatal nudge on a trail that took “them not only over all the earth, but to the Sun and through all the Solar System and even beyond.” The chase was, it turns out, a wild goose chase.

Astronomers never took The Jupiter Effect seriously. One called it “absurd and inaccurate.” Another, who said his California observatory still gets at least two calls a week on the Jupiter Effect, labeled it “nonsense.”

Finally, Gribbin himself lashed out at The Jupiter Effect in the June issue of Omni. “I have bad news for the doomsayers,” he wrote. “The book has now been proved wrong; the whole basis for the 1982 prediction is gone.”

Rumors, however, die hard. Some Christians are still looking to 1982 as a year of quakes that will echo the words of Christ about his Second Coming: “… and there will be famines and earthquakes.”

The Gospel Tract Society of Independence, Missouri, has printed two million copies of a tract that warns of “Strange Events Forecast for 1982.” The Southwest Radio Church, based in Oklahoma City, continues to expect the Jupiter Effect. Christian college astronomy professors report being consistently questioned about the seven-year-old book.

All this was enough to convince Kansas minister Donald Wells that the Jupiter Effect needed investigation. Spurred by his amateur interest in astronomy, Wells researched scientific journals, queried astronomers, and wrote “What Alignment of the Planets?”—a six-page paper debunking the rumor and chiding Christians for buying it.

Exactly what is the Jupiter Effect? Gribbin and Plagemann’s cosmic chase convinced them a complex chain of events would climax in 1982 with serious earthquakes. Their chain included these links:

• The contention that planets exert tidal forces on the sun (much the same way the moon does on earth) and that all planets would align on the same side of the sun in 1982, maximizing the tidal force.

• The tidal force would provoke an overabundance of sunspots, with more sunspots meaning the higher probability of eruptions on the sun. The eruptions would shoot solar particles into the earth’s upper atmosphere.

• The increased solar particles would cause unusual movements of large air masses in the earth’s upper atmosphere, slowing the rate of the earth’s rotation.

• The change in the rate of the earth’s rotation would shake geological faults (like San Andreas) and cause massive earthquakes.

This chain was called the Jupiter Effect since Jupiter’s size and proximity to the sun makes its gravitational pull the greatest in the solar system. Soon after the publication of the book, Edward Upton of Los Angeles’s Griffith Observatory said, “There is not one solid link in the entire Gribbin-Plagemann chain. The combined chain, as a basis for predicting earthquakes, has the same credibility as a reading of tea leaves.”

A special weakness of the theory was the idea that all planets aligned on the same side of the sun would maximize the tidal force. Not so, say astronomers. In reality, planets can create equally strong tidal forces when some are on opposite sides of the sun, forming an “anti-alignment.”

Christians who tied the Jupiter Effect into their expectations of the end times also read the alignment as being a “perfect” arrangement of the planets, all in a straight line from the sun. Gribbin and Plagemann did write of an “unusual alignment” where “every planet is in conjunction with every other planet.” They also spoke of a “superconjunction with all nine planets in line on the same side of the Sun.” But astronomers know the alignment, though it will be unusual, will hardly be perfect. The planets will actually be spread out around one-fourth of the solar system, not aligned one behind the other like soldiers on parade.

Still, tracts continue to circulate the warning that “fearful things are shaping up in our solar system!” David Buttram, manager of Gospel Tract Society, said his company will continue to print “Strange Events” until “we are determined it is not accurate.” He said he was trying to reach Gribbin on the subject.

David Webber, president of Southwest Radio Church, was aware of Gribbin’s retraction, but still circulates “Apocalyptic Signs in the Heavens,” with 30,000 copies in print. He is convinced that heavenly signs are accumulating. “They bring evidence to bear on these things which suggest we may be living in the end times,” he said.

“Apocalyptic Signs” says Gribbin’s retraction reflects his concern for scientific respectability: “In reading the [Omni] article carefully, it seems evident that Mr. Gribbin disavows his theory more for the sake of appeasing his fellow scientists than anything else. All he actually does is move the date for increasing earthquakes and other astraterrestial predictions in The Jupiter Effect up a few months,” the booklet reads.

Gribbin does admit in the Omni article that he was probably more rash than good science allows, but it is not accurate to say he merely “moves the date for increasing earthquakes … up a few months.” In fact, Gribbin moves the date up two years, noting that sunspot activity reached its peak in 1979 and 1980, and that Los Angeles would fall before the end of 1980 if at all.

“But if Los Angeles is still standing by the end of the year, the rest of our forecast will have been invalidated,” he wrote. 1980 has passed. Los Angeles has not.

Christians, such as those Gribbin calls “weirdos” and “cultists,” have been expecting Christ’s Second Coming a long while. But those like Baptist pastor Wells, who says he also looks forward to the Second Coming, lament Christian gullibility. “What I can’t understand is why Christians are flocking to this book. Is it that they don’t care?” Wells writes in his paper. “Or is it that Christians simply never bother to check the facts?” Unfortunately, he believes, “Either answer is a sad commentary on our faith.”

RODNEY CLAPP

Many Britons resistant to imported crusading approach.

When a boxer stops punching, that’s news. It is also noteworthy when a Jehovah’s Witness quits the Kingdom Hall after 14 years. If the boxing Jehovah’s Witness becomes pastor of an American-style Baptist church in England, that’s an ecclesiastical bombshell.

The preaching prizefighter is Bob Boulton-Lear, and he heads two small separatist congregations near Stoke-on-Trent in England’s industrial midlands. Boulton-Lear has two dozen American colleagues who pastor other fundamentalist fellowships, from Andover in Hampshire to Stirling in Scotland.

One of the Americans is Tom Wallace, a missionary with the Bible Baptists. Wallace gathered about 30 in a home meeting near Nuneaton, in the Birmingham area Mainly he drew children, who are always more ready to rally around foreigners. After four years, however, there were enough adults to erect a small chapel. A loan of $35,000 helped the project along.

A close colleague of Wallace is Don Rice, who leads a congregation of about 60 at the Lighthouse Baptist Church in Castle Bromwich, another Birmingham suburb. Rice represents another independent Baptist mission, Baptist International Missions Inc. (BIMI).

North of the Scottish border, the best established Baptist fundamentalist is James Whitted at Edinburgh. Representing the Bob Jones—related mission, Gospel Projects, Whitted came to Edinburgh in 1977. Across Scotland in Glasgow, Malcolm Edwards (BIMI) has settled in the working-class section of Pollock. There Edwards has a nucleus of 25 adults. His aim is to hand over the church to a Scottish pastor and move on to a new challenge.

In all, six separatist missions are at work in the United Kingdom. Most have arrived since 1972, and they concentrate mainly on the industrial centers of England and Scotland. Baptist Mid-Missions shares the task with Bible Baptist Fellowship International, BIMI, Maranatha Baptist Mission, Gospel Fellowship, and Gospel Projects. At their peak, the six societies fielded a force of 40 missionaries. About 25 now remain.

The Baptists keep in touch with each other through the bimonthly magazine, Bible Truth. Ferrell Kearney is the current publisher-editor of this Sword of the Lord look-alike, the bulk of which stems from Kearney or his predecessor, James Ray. The format is quaint, and the editorial content exhibits a remarkable lack of adaptation to British readership.

Bible Truth boasts a circulation of 2,000, and the editor is obviously a crusader. The masthead declares the issues: it is an “independent Christian periodical” which espouses verbal inspiration, the deity and imminent return of Christ for his church, and proclaims salvation for whosoever will (no Calvinism) by grace through faith. The paper declares war against modernism, worldliness, and formalism.

When the World Council of Churches donated $85,000 to guerrillas in Zimbabwe, Bible Truth lashed out. “No discerning Christian will give one pence [sic] to an organization that supports terror.” The slaughter of British Elim missionaries by the rebels gave the editor a convenient stick with which to beat the WCC.

The same vehemence was poured upon rock and roll. “What’s wrong with rock and roll?” the editor asked rhetorically. “It is all wrong and there is nothing about it that is right,” James Ray railed.

More recently Bible Truth has taken up the cudgel against Britain’s Reformed Baptists (CT, April 4, 1980). “Calvinism is a man-made doctrine, not a doctrine taught in the Bible,” according to editor Ray; sovereign grace limits the love of God. A cartoon continued the conflict. At the same time, the editor claimed Charles Haddon Spurgeon (himself a Calvinist) as an “independent Baptist.”

Predictably, Bible Truth readers did not take this lying down. From Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a Mr. B. Pratt fumed: “I find that certain things you propagate are of dubious nature and would lead many into a serious error of the premillennial return of Christ.” Eschatology is regarded by many Britons to be an American hobby horse.

Bible Truth retains its regular readers by battling against all the usual dragons. Many of these issues are relatively unknown in Britain; still, readers relish the combat between a transatlantic Saint George and the doctrinal reptiles.

Another innovation of the separatist Baptists is the introduction of Accelerated Christian Education into England. Under the leadership of John Pangle at the cathedral city of Coventry, an ACE school has been established. Eight further schools have been franchised: four are currently operating. Recently, 150 attended a conference sponsored by ACE at Coventry.

It is an unusual twist that ACE is spreading mainly among charismatics in England. Stanley Jebb, the charismatic pastor of West Street Baptist Church in Dunstable, set up an ACE school earlier this year, and 21 children are currently enrolled. Jebb expects “a big explosion of Christian schools in England.”

At Fleetwood, an ACE school has 70 pupils. Its headmaster is Michael Smith, a London University Ph.D. in theology. Smith is enthusiastic about the programmed educational aids, and has established the British headquarters at Fleetwood. When asked about the legal status of these schools, Smith replied knowledgeably: “The European Convention guarantees parents the right to have their children educated according to their religious principles. ACE schools provide the means of doing this.”

Needless to say, these sturdy independents have also faced resistance, often from the religious establishment. It is the independent churches, more than the schools, which have drawn fire. Tom Wallace reported that he has faced certain “closed doors because [he is] an American.” British reserve throws up the question: “What are Americans doing in England?” To combat this, a Bible college has been set up at Coventry to train British pastors. It is in its second year, with 15 students enrolled.

Don Rice has faced opposition from the Brethren. They called his church a sect, implying doctrinal aberration. To meet this objection the Baptists are actively involved in meeting other British evangelicals.

It is the separatist stand that causes problems for Bob Boulton-Lear. His insistence on “teetotalism” has alienated several members. They also resist other traditional American taboos, such as popular music and the cinema.

Boulton-Lear also faced official opposition when he was denied the right to purchase an unused Methodist chapel. Despite the generous offer made by the Baptists, the chapel was demolished rather than allowed to fall into their hands.

In Scotland, Malcolm Edwards met a chilly response from the Church of Scotland. Prevailing Calvinism predisposes many Scots against American evangelism. Whitted reported criticism in Edinburgh of his church minibus, which displays the prominently painted slogan, “Jesus Saves.” Whitted’s son-in-law, Derrell Gibbs, is located at Stirling, where he too tangled with the Church of Scotland. His assessment is bolder than the others: “The Church of Scotland is apostate.”

How much of this opposition is deserved can only be surmised. It may be too early to evaluate the impact of the American Baptists in Britain. Do they represent a much-needed life transfusion to ailing British nonconformity? Or are they fated to fade and fail?

No doubt the introduction of virile new concepts for Christian education will win ground in Britain. Modern state-run schools are large and often chaotic. Britain’s pluralistic society raises racial questions to which there are few adequate answers.

Perhaps the separatist Baptist churches contain the seeds of decline. First, by their own admission many pastors have returned to the United States discouraged by the lack of response in Britain. Second, the separatist stand conflicts with traditional British Christian ethics. Third, the churches often attract mainly children and young people: not a solid foundation for church growth.

If British nonconformity (as opposed to Anglicanism) continues its theological and numerical slide, the separatists with their distinctive doctrines and ethic may gain ground. On the other hand, Britons are still conservative enough to stay on the old ship, no matter how steep the list.

World Scene

Twenty-five thousand Costa Rican Roman Catholics met in the national stadium for a six-hour Charismatic Renewal Encounter in February. They listened to testimonies of new-found faith and of healing. Clues to concerns of the hierarchy surfaced in the messages. Monsignor Roman Arrieta, Costa Rica’s archbishop, made an almost frantic appeal to attenders for allegiance to their bishops “so that we may be enlightened by God’s truth.” Other speakers called for renewal experience to move from the purely individual dimension to responsible social concern, and stressed continued veneration of Mary.

A statement by a confederation of Colombian evangelical churches appeared in the national newspaper, El Tiempo, two days after the slaying of Chester Bitterman by urban guerrillas. The statement asserted that evangelicals in the country number more than 2.5 million. “A new Colombia will not be formed through terror and violence,” it declared, “but by knowing the gospel.… We, more than 1,600 pastors, are sure that when Christ permits us to give our lives we will do so in the same way.… For us, to die only because we have renounced … hating or persecuting here on earth, is to begin to live.… Beloved enemies, we love you as Christ loves you and hope that upon reading these lines you recognize that, like us, you are human beings and one day will have to give an account of your deeds to the Creator.”

The Unification Church has lost the longest and most expensive libel suit in English legal history and was ordered to pay costs estimated at more than $1.5 million. Dennis Orme, leader of Sun Myung Moon’s church in Britain, claimed damages against the London Daily Mail for a 1978 article that accused the church of brainwashing converts and breaking up families. The jury, after hearing evidence from more than 100 witnesses over six months, decided unanimously that the Daily Mail was justified in its accusations.

Irish Presbyterians have again elected a conservative as their next moderator. John Girvan, 63, of Lurgan, County Armagh, will assume his one-year term in June. His election dashed liberals’ hopes that their church might soon return to the World Council of Churches fold.

Anglicans are beginning to raise various “hard questions” on the outlook for some form of union with the Roman Catholic church. Delivering Lenten lectures at Westminster Abbey, Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie asked what range of diversity is compatible with unity. He noted that while separation from Rome was intolerable, so was absorption by Rome, considering “the Roman tendency toward an authoritarian centralization and uniformity.” He asked, “What relation would the Vatican have to the various synods of the Anglican Communion?” Also, in a clear reference to the dispute over birth control, Runcie mentioned “moral issues relating to particular interpretation of natural law and the Anglo-Saxon tradition of the informed Christian conscience.”

The German Theological Seminary will move to its own campus this summer. The Greater Europe Mission-supported school has, since its founding in 1974, shared facilities with the German Bible Institute in Seeheim. It will move to Giessen, where it will have a long-term student capacity of 100 students. Cleon Rogers is dean of the four-year school, which is known in Germany as the Free Evangelical Academy. It is called free because it is Germany’s only interdenominational seminary not sponsored by the state (Lutheran) church, and academy because it is not a faculty attached to a university.

The vice-president of the unregistered Baptist Council of Churches in the Soviet Union has been sentenced to five years in a labor camp. Pyotr Rumachik, 49, was tried on March 21, according to information received through the Friedensstimme Mission in West Germany, probably in Dnepropetrovsk, the Ukraine, where he was arrested in August 1980. According to Keston College, Rumachik has spent 12 of the last 20 years in prisons and labor camps. After release from his last three-year term in 1977, he lived with his family for only a year before being forced to go into hiding.

Uganda will again have a white Anglican bishop. The last one was expelled in 1977 during the Idi Amin regime. But now Ugandan Archbishop Silvanus Wani has asked Howell Davies from Surrey, England, to become bishop of Karamoja, the northern sector of the country plagued by famine and tribal conflict. Davies, a former worker with the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society in Africa, accepted, and said it was a privilege to serve a people who “have had the worst the world can hand to them.” He promised to work for reconciliation and regional development.

The Ethiopian government is considering compensating the Lutheran World Federation for its former radio station, nationalized in 1977. The LWF entered a claim in an amount of $8.3 million for its Radio Voice of the Gospel properties, confiscated in September 1977. Its claim was first confirmed in December 1980. Last month, Manfred Lundgren of Sweden, director of the station prior to its nationalization, returned from a five-week stay in Addis Ababa, where he had talks with authorities on the compensation question. Ethiopia’s compensation commission has recently settled compensation claims with a number of commercial enterprises in Ethiopia that also lost their installations.

South African Prime Minister Pieter W. Botha has promised to confiscate the passport of Desmond M. Tutu again on his return from a visit to the United States. Speaking at the United Nations last month, Tutu, a black Anglican bishop who is general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, said millions of blacks in his country are “voiceless” and live under “one of the most vicious systems since Nazism.” The diminutive Tutu speaks strongly both inside and outside South Africa; but election campaign season is on in South Africa, and Tutu is a popular target among Afrikaner audiences.

The mutilated body of a Bible teacher at the Lebanon Evangelical School for Boys was found last month after a 10-day search in the Muslim sector of West Beirut. Jamil Saffouri, 59, is believed to have been killed by Muslim militant extremists who may have resented what acquaintances called “his bold witness.” At his funeral service, a pastor said that Saffouri’s “testimony for his Lord” was not tempered by any “fear of man.” The autopsy report indicated that he had been killed by a gunpowder charge placed around his neck and detonated. A few days later, the custodian of a Baptist church in the same area was attacked by armed men as he took out trash from the church building. Although hospitalized, he refused to press charges, telling police, “I pray that God will forgive them.”

Controversial hydroelectric projects are slated to change the Middle East landscape. The Israeli cabinet has approved construction of a 67-mile canal from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea. The controversial aspect of this project is that it would pass through the four-mile-wide (occupied) Gaza strip. President Anwar Sadat has given the go-ahead for construction of a 35-mile canal from the Mediterranean to the Qattara Depression in Western Egypt—a below-sea-level area about the size of the state of Vermont. The controversial feature of this project centers on discussion about clearing the water course through the high land between the sea and the depression by means of atomic blasting.

Christians in Nagaland, India, are increasing their missionary outreach. The Baptist Council of Churches of one tribal grouping—the Angamis—met in February at Kohima. With 13,000 members, the Angami Baptists already support six evangelists outside Nagaland. At the conference, 19 more made commitments for missionary service. A recent reshuffling of executive posts in the denomination has provided leaders mainly in their twenties and early thirties, and should indicate increased missions vigor. The secretary of the newly formed missions department is Tezashito Terhuza, who is only this year graduating from Union Biblical Seminary at Yavatmal (Yevtmal).

The movie assumes that family disintegration is the natural result of Protestant values.

It is no accident that the family father’s name is Calvin in Ordinary People. Nor is it an accident that the movie’s first action scene finds the troubled adolescent in the church choir singing dignified Protestant hymns. The father’s name is a reminder of a founder of the Protestantism whose values underlie the successes of our society. The movie’s main characters are supposedly living embodiments of Calvinist values, caricatures designed to attack and destroy those values.

Ordinary People is the story of the Jarretts, an upper middle-class family in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest. They are highly attractive people—mother, father, and son—but they are in the process of disintegration. The older son is dead by drowning, and the younger son has just emerged from a four-month stay in a mental hospital following attempted suicide.

The Academy Award-winning movie has received high praise from the very beginning. A long, early New York Times review and interview with the film’s director, Robert Redford, clearly underscored the movie’s purposes. Redford goes to the heart of the issue when he says the movie “could be about people’s inability to deal with their feelings. About what we pretend to be, versus what we are. About the status quo, and whether it’s worth the trouble it takes to maintain” (NY Times, Sept. 21, 1980; emphasis added). Thus we are not just dealing with troubled individuals who could be found in any environment; a whole way of life is on trial.

Analyzing Ordinary People is not simple. In its 124 minutes it so subtly intermingles truth and falsity (and, we might add, with good acting) that one must go to great lengths to disengage the two.

The truth here is that mental distress abounds in our society; and it is skillfully portrayed in this work. In scene after scene we see a growing erosion of the sense of reality. The mother lives in a fantasy in the carefully preserved room of her dead son—and is startled when her living son enters. We are continually being made aware that these people move through life mouthing clichés (“Oh, let’s go to London for Christmas. It’ll be just like a Dickens novel.”)

In fact, the movie makers would have us believe that the Jarrett family’s disintegration is but the natural result of a culture founded on artificiality. The older son drowns because the boys do not take into account that they are humanly vulnerable and can perish in a storm. The younger son slashes his wrists because he cannot meet the artificial standards set for him (he is not the athlete his elder brother was). The mother’s sparkling façade breaks down because her withdrawal from the realities grows increasingly to greater depth. The father, who cannot relate to his wife as he once did, finally says to her: “You’re a beautiful lady, but I don’t know you,” a declaration that drives her to leave.

The Jewishness of the psychiatrist,` Berger, is no more accidental than is the Jarretts’ Protestantism. It is the doctor’s function to carry forward the writer’s opinions by standing outside of the so-called artificial culture and to challenge its values (and to misrepresent traditional Jewish values, too). When Conrad, the troubled son, goes to him for treatment, he learns that he must express his feelings even though they are bad form. Berger is explicit: when Conrad explains his reason for coming for treatment as a need for greater control in his life, Berger replies, “I’m not too strong on control.”

Vincent Canby, who wrote the 1980 New York Times review, is just as explicit when he refers to “the contemporary white Anglo-Saxon Protestant psyche when, by accident, such perfect order is destroyed.”

Two main falsities must be singled out. The first is that the mental illness displayed is fundamental to the Protestant heritage; the second is the definition of what constitutes mental illness.

The movie hammers away at a theme that describes this culture as one that denies both individuality and true emotional expression. Conrad’s attempted suicide supposedly is brought on by his inability to measure up to the performance expected of him. But has our traditional culture actually done this? Could American progress ever have taken place without appreciation of the constructive potential of individual differences? Any intelligent businessman must know that his business could not exist if it were not for the cooperation of diverse personalities—the outgoing salesman and the introverted bookkeeper.

This was true historically for none other than Benjamin Franklin. In his autobiography he tells how, as a young boy in the early eighteenth century, his father took him on visits to various craftsmen in order that he might find an occupation suited to his tastes and as a result work more successfully at it. Our modern American industry has made possible a wide range of choices in personal development.

Yet in this movie we have parents who are never heard to utter anything that would indicate any understanding of their son’s individuality. A father’s successful career in tax law and a mother’s community social life are both impossible without some sophisticated appreciation of individual differences.

The traditional culture is portrayed as squelching genuine emotional expression—an issue that is the psychiatrist’s main line of attack on Conrad’s difficulties. The troubled adolescent should cease being so proper. Yet the very church hymns we heard at the beginning prove this to be false. Here we find not repression of feeling, but feeling in even greater depth. It is a feeling that is better channeled—not expressed in destructive outbursts, but subordinated to creative purposes, greatly varied, and adding up to the building of a nation. When there is finally an emotional explosion at the movie’s end, it is an argument filled with obscenities, and it leads to the family breakup.

The movie depicts mental illness as flowing from traditional culture, when in actual life the mentally ill personality behaves in a manner that is destructive to all that the traditional culture cherishes: worldly success, home and family, individual growth. It creates fighting that diverts the family from constructive effort, and worldly success suffers as well.

Creators of movies portray family disintegration with some pretense of being concerned with these problems. But a genuine concern should emphasize portrayals of intelligent, constructive efforts, like the kind that must take place if one is to become a successful tax lawyer. Suspiciously, we see no such efforts. The parents of Ordinary People are passive, and they simply allow themselves to disintegrate.

The mother says: “We’d have been all right if there hadn’t been any mess.” Or in other words, the people in this cultural context are quite incapable of dealing with life’s difficulties, life’s realities. But if this were true, then such a family could not have made the prolonged effort necessary to achieve what they did.

We need always to be alert to those who use truth for the purpose of untruth.

BERNARD RIFKIN¹Bernard Rifkin is a pseudonym for a Jewish writer in New York who works with Christians on moral issues.

Older members are a reservoir of good will and experience and deserve consultant status in all areas of church life.

What makes some church leaders think negatively about the elderly? Years ago it was common to read uncomplimentary descriptions of older people. They were supposed to be slumping in energy, reaction time, and social participation. Generally withdrawn, they were said to lack flexibility and zest.

Some church leaders have psyched themselves into believing these generalities—which, of course, are not true. While older people do not always come up smelling like roses, and some may be set in their ways and a hindrance to progress, their traditional image needs to be tempered. To be sure, churches need to help meet social and physical needs of the elderly. But I want here to look at older Christians as assets, rather than liabilities. To tap the resources of older church members, we must view the older person as a reservoir of good will, a source of service, and a bank of experience.

The values that evangelical Christianity is struggling to maintain are the very ones with which older people, perhaps more than others, can identify. For at least two reasons older members tend to view their churches and their leaders with optimism. First, they have lived in the relationship longer, and so they have faced disappointment and found ways to resolve it. Most older members are well aware of their church’s limitations and shortcomings, but they love and respect it anyway. Second, older members have had a wider range of exposure to spiritual leaders. Some people have crossed denominational lines; many have been identified with more than one local church, and most have worked with many different pastors and lay leaders.

The church leader who has thought through the implications of these facts will discover that some of the least demanding, most sympathetic and supportive of his members are among older Christians. They understand the challenges pastors face in getting their job done and often can provide valuable assistance. Once the older member has been fully appreciated as a reservoir of good will, it is natural also to see him as a source of service.

In this regard, a prominent myth needs to be exploded: it is the widely held notion that older people receive more than they give.

The “getting” myth has been accepted for so long in our churches that we could be overlooking much of the potential of older members. I propose that senior members may be the only age group that has something to offer to every other age group. This has been demonstrated in my home church.

Think first of children. Many young families in southern California migrated from other parts of the country. They have children who go for months, even years, without regular contact with grandparents. Some parents who sense this void have appealed for a foster grandparent arrangement, and some older members have ministered in this way. Others serve as craft chairmen for Christian Service Brigade, and as guides or prayer pals in Pioneer Clubs.

Then there are youth. It has been said that youth need examples, not critics, and many young people today are aware of their need for role models. A 19-year-old boy in our church said, “I would like to see retired people involve themselves with the youths. How fantastic it would be to have an ‘old buck’ for a Sunday school teacher, sponsor, prayer partner, or foster grandparent. An elderly person with a love for Christ and others could have a tremendous impact.”

In formal service roles and in informal contacts, older people answer the need for a role model. Church leaders can bring the age groups together in meaningful ways. One possibility is to have young people sponsor a seminar on making marriage work, using a panel of elderly couples, or even widowed spouses, whose marriages have had credibility.

Young adults are another group that may be served by older members. Think of the many adjustments these young people must make in a relatively short time to career, marriage, and parenting. Older members of the church have made these adjustments, many successfully, and probably have children who are well into work and family.

Consider also the experience of the middle-aged adult. Those who have raised children face adjustment to the “empty nest.” Approaching retirement means more adjustments. Again, this member may be served by the older one who has wrestled with these problems. The church camp might be turned over to those 65 and over for a weekend, during which there could be vigorous interaction with those aged 45 to 60 about the major adjustments of later life.

The older member has been considered as a reservoir of good will and a source of service. But there is one final point: older members are an impressive “experience bank.” Life experience can be measured in a number of ways. One obvious index is years of experience. To calculate this, take your total membership. Let us say it is 1,000. The proportion of our country’s population 65 and over is approximately 10 percent. In your church, the proportion is apt to be somewhat higher, but to be conservative, leave it at that. So, you have 100 older members. Church members of this age have an average past membership duration of 37 years. Multiplying 100 persons times 37 years yields an experience bank of 3,700 years!

There is another way to appreciate the experience bank represented by older members. The proportion having had actual leadership experience is abnormally high among those 65 and over. This means the church has a pool of available consultants. One member of our church, an engineer in a well-known U.S. firm, told me, “Our company regularly is in touch with retired management personnel who function in an advisory capacity.” How many pastors follow a similar policy in managing the business of the church? In most churches there are people who have served many years with distinction as elders, deacons, trustees, teachers, committee members, or in other leadership positions. Are church leaders drawing on this experience bank? A prime way to maintain a meaningful spiritual role among older church members is to invite them to serve as advisory members of boards and committees.

Older church members are a valuable reservoir of good will, a promising source of ministry to every age group, and a useful experience bank. By tapping the potential of the church’s older members, pastors and leaders afford them a meaningful role, help others to benefit from their experience, and demonstrate them to be the asset they really are.

ALFRED S. FOX¹Mr. Fox, assistant professor of sociology at Biola College, La Mirada, California, directs research on age norms and role maintenance among the elderly in the religious community. He is also pastor to senior adults at Calvary Church of Santa Ana.

In the name of religion, Ian Paisley adds to the disquiet and confusion in Northern Ireland.

The farther away one is, the easier it is to explain the complexities of Northern Ireland. Said one Belfast citizen: “Anyone who isn’t confused here doesn’t really understand what is going on.” One gets thrown by finding humor amid devastation: beneath the standard slogan NO POPE HERE, someone has added LUCKY OLD POPE. You marvel at the resilience of ordinary decent folk caught up in a web spun yesterday and the day before. A sense of history can be a drawback where hard facts are no match for tradition.

In handling this subject, evangelical writers are in a dilemma, for the province’s best-known Protestant politician believes in the inerrancy of Scripture—and this can be a subtle invitation to blind-eye-turning to more questionable activities. Earlier this year, the Reverend Ian Paisley paraded in rural Antrim a 500-strong body of supporters who waved firearm certificates instead of guns before a few carefully selected journalists. The intention of the demonstration, which took army and police by surprise, was a warning against the setting up of an all-Ireland republic. Paisley insists that he acted within the law, and adds that the next development would “produce something more substantial.” Some dismissed the parade as a gimmick not unrelated to the upcoming local elections in May.

Ian Richard Kyle Paisley was born in 1926, and studied at South Wales Bible College and the Reformed Presbyterian College in Belfast. He was ordained at 20 by his Baptist pastor father, and subsequently ministered to a group that had broken from the Presbyterian church in Ireland. There emerged in 1951 a body known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, with Paisley as moderator—a position he still holds. In an age when most other churches were declining, Paisley’s denomination grew: 1,093 members in 1961, probably more than 10 times as many today—exceeding the total of Baptists and Congregationalists in the province.

Even that modest total is misleading, for Paisley’s influence extends far beyond his own church or political party. He is the voice of many inarticulate Protestants who fear and distrust the Roman Catholic church, and are suspicious of British politicians who deal with Dublin, capital of the Republic, which comprises 26 counties of Ireland (the six others are in Northern Ireland, which is part of Britain).

Paisley’s defense of his Protestant heritage led him to distribute Christian literature at the opening of Vactican Council II in 1962. The authorities remembered that clash with the police and barred him from Italy in 1966 when he flew there to protest the archbishop of Canterbury’s visit to Paul VI. In 1969 he led a party over to Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London, seeking to disrupt proceedings when a popish cardinal preached there. Often the center of violence, Paisley claims: “I have never threatened anyone in my life—not even the Pope.”

The august proceedings of the Kirk’s general assembly in Edinburgh were once interrupted by him, but when he returned to that city in 1976, Paisley found himself the target. Scottish Baptist Pastor Jack Glass, an erstwhile ally, mustered his people and placards outside a hall where Paisley was speaking. They complained that he had come “to shore up the popish freewill gospel of Bob Jones” (Bob Jones University had given Paisley a D.D.).

Twice convicted back home and imprisoned for unlawful assembly or similar offenses, Paisley professed to see a conspiracy against him by the government and the World Council of Churches. The civil-rights movement was dismissed as a hotbed of Communism and what he would call “the rest of the devil’s crew.”

I once heard him give a splendid rationale for his political involvement. Some fundamentalists, he declared, had been so occupied with the great battle in the churches that they had not found time for the battle in the state. Separation was not an end in itself, but served to establish righteousness in the nation. He pointed out how odd it was that it should be considered obligatory to confront evil at its lowest level, “but when evil climbs on to the throne I’ve no right to combat it.”

That involvement began in 1970 when he was elected first to the Northern Ireland Parliament (now suspended), then to the British Parliament as one of its 12 members from Northern Ireland. In 1979 he became also a member of the European Parliament, coming out on top of the poll in the province. All this time he has continued his ministry in Ravenhill Free Presbyterian Church, Belfast, where visiting journalists will not be accosted if they carry a Bible and leave notebook and tape recorder at home. Paisley has little love for the press. CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s representative was once described in Paisley’s Protestant Telegraph as “this hired lackey [who] spews forth a whole spate of lies.”

Toward Roman Catholics his attitude is ambivalent. About the efforts of a past prime minister to build bridges to the Catholic community, he is quoted as having responded: “A traitor and a bridge are very much alike, for they both go over to the other side.” Nonetheless, I have heard in Belfast that Catholic constituents who go to him as their elected representative find him helpful and impartial.

Paisley is now mustering support from Protestants to block current Anglo-Irish negotiations aimed at improving and simplifying relations between Britain and the Irish Republic. He is convinced that Mrs. Thatcher has made some long-term deal about Northern Ireland’s constitutional status. She denies it, but will give no specific details of the discussions. Paisley has issued a “declaration” to be signed by Loyalists, referring to “our time of threatened calamity,” and he asks signatories to help “in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to edge Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom.” He is cagey about spelling this out.

American evangelicals tend to regard their extreme right-wingers with a degree of affectionate indulgence. Paisley’s dual role, on the other hand, demands that he be taken very seriously indeed.

Who is he? A pastor who cares for his own large congregation as a faithful shepherd, whose words God has used to bring many to himself, and whose ministry in the homes of his people has brought blessing and comfort.

Who is he? A pied piper whose summons to rally round the Union Jack can promptly bring out many whose indignation is not notably righteous and whose language is not the language of Zion.

This unquiet province needs someone who will lead, not a popular political cause, but an unpopular religious cause that advocates doing justly, loving mercy, and walking humbly. Baptist Pastor Herbert Carson put it well some years ago: “The great tragedy of Northern Ireland is that Catholics see the gospel as a club raised.”

J. D. DOUGLAS¹Dr. Douglas is a writer living in Saint Andrews, Scotland, and editor at large for Christianity Today.

Traditional Roles Defended

Man and Woman in Christ, by Stephen E. Clark (Servant, 1980, 753 pp., $15.95), is reviewed by Donald G. Bloesch, professor of theology, University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa.

Stephen Clark, a Catholic layman, has given us a highly relevant and controversial treatise on past and present man-woman roles. Clark is a theologian of the Word of God community, a bold ecumenical venture in Christian living located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In opposition to current feminism, he strongly argues for the retention of male-female roles as outlined in Holy Scripture. He believes there is a biblical basis for the traditional patriarchal notion that the husband is intended to be ruler and provider-protector of the family, and the wife organizer and maintainer of the household.

This book brings together in a remarkable way sociological, theological, and biblical scholarship. Clark provides ample documentation from the social sciences to support his contention that men and women differ significantly in their emotional, intellectual, and social responses. He ably shows that much feminist exegesis of Scripture is strained and that the feminist attempt to deny the principle of subordination simply lacks biblical foundation. The ideal in Scripture, he points out, is neither domination nor independence, but community. His complaint that the feminist movement has provided much of the active support today for abortion, homosexuality, sexual freedom, and legislation destructive of family life may not be wholly justified. But it should be taken seriously by all sides in this controversy.

Clark is especially perceptive in describing the devastating consequences of the technological society on the modern family. Equally revealing is his treatment of the ideologies that both shape and are shaped by the technological society. He gives a timely warning of the temptation they pose to the Christian community today. Among those reviewed are classical liberalism, welfare liberalism, socialism, and feminism. He shows that much of the discussion today on equality and freedom is ideologically motivated, that the understanding of these terms in avant garde feminist circles is radically different from the biblical understanding.

Although Clark has given a convincing critique of modern egalitarianism, especially as this has surfaced in the feminist movement, what is missing is a comparable critique of patriarchalism. For example, it can be shown that patriarchalism, even of the kind that existed in biblical times, can be an obstacle to the spiritual unity of a family as well as to Christian liberty. Although acknowledging certain deficiencies in traditional patriarchy, particularly in the area of interaction between men and women, he does not develop this into a critique.

While he underlines the natural alliance between feminism and socialism, it also would have been helpful to explore the natural affinity of modern patriarchalism to fascism. He considers fascism an aberrant form of socialism and holds that the differences are not relevant to the question of men’s and women’s roles. Yet modern fascism has been manifestly profamily and blatantly patriarchal, whereas socialism is egalitarian.

Sometimes Clark too easily assumes that the biblical position is a variation of patriarchalism, but a case could be made that even though patriarchal imagery was used in the Bible in portraying God’s relationship to humanity and people’s relationships to one another, this imagery was radically transformed in the light of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ. The principle of headship is reinterpreted in the New Testament to mean servanthood, just as subordination is now seen as loving support rather than servile submission. Clark acknowledges that subordination in the biblical sense does not denote inferiority, but he does not sufficiently perceive that the whole idea of subordination is placed in a new context, especially in the New Testament where Christ’s love for his church is the paradigm of the man-woman relationship within marriage.

The author appeals to the church fathers to reinforce the view that women must be in subordinate roles in church and home. Yet he does not consider that the church fathers, heavily influenced by the patriarchal bias of both Hellenistic and Hebraic cultures, are not altogether reliable guides in this area.

This book is a welcome antidote to the barrage of propaganda from the egalitarian left that blurs the distinction between the sexes and denies the biblical teaching of hierarchy in the order of creation. Yet some of the author’s conclusions reflect an accommodation to traditional patriarchal thinking rather than a fresh reappropriation of the abiding insights of biblical revelation. The reader sometimes gets the impression that Clark places too much weight on cultural customs that belong to another era. At the same time, much of his scriptural exegesis is exceedingly helpful and is often (but not always) more persuasive than that of his feminist opponents.

This is one of the most significant books of the past year; not only evangelicals, but liberals and Catholics as well will find it worth pondering. Even though certain of Clark’s alternatives can be questioned by those who stand in a biblical or evangelical tradition, his analysis of modern movements is illuminating and refreshing. His sociological insights are, in my opinion, more substantial than his theological reflections, but we can still learn from him in both areas.

True Communication

God Still Speaks, a Biblical View of Christian Communication, by Robert E. Webber (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1980, 221 pp., $10.95), is reviewed by Charles Twombly, English teacher, Washington County High School, Sandersville, Georgia.

Here is a book that fills a real gap. Dozens of how-to books pour forth offering one technique or another for preaching or evangelism. But few really come to terms with the theological basis of communication. As a result, the focus of such books is frequently too narrow and the theological undergirding is all too often of secondary importance to the main thrust. Webber realizes that a theology of communication (or of anything else, for that matter) must first of all involve serious reflection on the classical dogmas of the faith.

Working within such a perspective, Webber comes naturally to the insight that communication is ultimately grounded in the Trinity (God’s own inner life) and in the Incarnation (the ultimate meeting point of God and man). He relates this understanding to the redemptive drama, beginning with Creation and moving through history from the Fall to the final consummation.

Much more than merely verbal proclamation is brought into view in this book. Webber offers a vision in which the whole of life, the entire created cosmos, is seen as both the medium through which God communicates to us and the object of ultimate redemption. God’s involvement in the world is far more than a model for us to copy; we are called to share in the divine life (2 Peter 1:4) through our union with Christ.

Splendid chapters covering such matters as symbolism, worship, nurture, and mission help to ground the insights of the earlier chapters in the concrete realities that make up our existence. Here, as in other books (Common Roots; The Secular Saint), Webber reveals the life-giving power of ancient doctrine when it is approached from an understanding in which theological reflection, the life of the church, and involvement in the world are seen as integrally related.

The Church’S Teaching Ministry

Teaching Today: The Church’s First Ministry, by Locke E. Bowman, Jr. (Westminster Press, 1980, 212 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Scott Hawkins, director of Christian education, Blacknall Memorial Presbyterian Church, Durham, North Carolina.

Dr. Locke Bowman, executive director of the National Teacher Education Project and publisher of Church Teachers magazine, has aided scores of Sunday school teachers and leaders (pastors, too) in becoming better teachers. He continues to do so in his latest book, Teaching Today. The title states his theme clearly: teaching should be the church’s “primary ministry worthy of our focused and unrelenting attention.”

To help the reader focus, the author has integrated three problem areas (shall we label them possibilities?) into a concise, at times a too-brief treatment, urging us to work for a renewal of church education. An investigation of these three areas—learning, teaching, education—reveals his perceptive and promising prescriptions for readers’ use in beginning to practice in their own congregational settings.

First, Bowman reviews learning theories from both behaviorists’ and humanists’ points of view. He ruefully observes that many adopt one or both theories in churches today, often without evaluation of their merits. On the other hand, Bowman suggests that we define learning as “creating”—the active making and building of something new and useful—a concept worthy of the Christian tradition. With this theme Bowman builds successive chapter discussions on the nature of learning, especially with relation to the important need for openness in church school settings. One can only agree with the author that to achieve quality teaching we need to throw ourselves into the training and making of teachers (activators, facilitators, fellow learners) more than we need attractively published materials. The latter are useful only as teachers can adapt them to their personal class settings.

The second section of the book is given to an examination of the “indefinable”: teaching. Here Bowman warms to his task. He helps us sort through our understandings of the teaching ministry and preaches its priority (“all Christians are in some degree teachers”). The concept of the teacher as activator of learning is well developed. Attention is given to vital concerns such as open classrooms, memorization, Bible translations, and teaching through conversation. A slightly technical though commendable chapter on the “generative” power of language to assist in Christian formation concludes this section.

One may not agree with all that Bowman argues. But certainly everyone can agree with the basic thrust of his book: to improve the quality of teaching in our church school settings; to develop a biblically based theory of learning and the teacher’s role in that process; to urge overt measurable student response; to appreciate and develop the possibilities for Christian nurture in worship gatherings; to evaluate use of language and foster special respect for the power of words.

I recommend Teaching Today for those who are serious about the church’s task of educating its young and old. Certainly Christian education committees can benefit from a study and discussion of carefully selected portions.

The Malaise Of The Modern World

Solzhenitsyn at Harvard: The Address, Twelve Early Responses, and Six Later Reflections, edited by Ronald Berman (Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, D.C., 1980, 143 pp., $9.50), is reviewed by Carl F. H. Henry, Arlington, Virginia, lecturer at large, World Vision International.

This symposium seeks mature perspective on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 commencement address at Harvard. That remarkable deliverance, which Michael Novak considers “the most important religious document of our time,” was applauded by the immediate audience, then praised, caricatured, and condemned by a wide band of public commentators. Readers will recall that Solzhenitsyn’s remarks particularly offended humanist intellectuals, since the author of The Gulag Archipeligo charged that the currently reigning intellectual elite lack moral courage to confront the crucial issues. Some promptly declared him a false prophet (as if humanism allows fixed true-false distinctions) or a Russian religionist (shades of national or cultural determinism?) who would reinstate religious despots to repress the noblest instincts of society. The New York Times called him an “enthusiast” (or fanatic) in contrast with the enlightened. Most religious journals hailed him as a modern prophet.

This volume translates the Harvard address, reprints the most pointed newspaper and magazine comments, and adds six brief, analytical essays. The essays are by Ronald Berman, Sidney Hook, Harold J. Berman, Richard Pipes, William H. McNeill, and Michael Novak.

Solzhenitsyn addresses “the malaise of the whole modern world” in an unsparing spiritual and moral critique, and pleads with Augustinian overtones for a new religious vision of life and society. He voices deep doubts about pluralistic political democracies—they are built on Renaissance misconceptions, he insists—and criticizes both capitalism and Marxism as part of the cultural spirit of modernity.

Most analysts agree that Solzhenitsyn voiced excessive criticisms of democratic processes and of a free press, and that he understated American benevolence. Yet they share Ronald Berman’s insistence that Solzhenitsyn’s emphasis on the preconditions of a truly free society must be heard. The reflective essays deal with truth, morality, freedom, salvation, and other themes by way of individual commentary rather than in a comprehensively organized way.

Sharpest dissent from Solzhenitsyn’s views comes from Hook and McNeill. Hook wishes to retain a morally valid challenge to the West but would wholly separate ethics from theology and connect it with an “enlightened” majority and with the intrinsic character and consequences of ethical claims. McNeill goes further. He considers Solzhenitsyn’s appraisal of society a caricature, rejects his vision of salvation, and believes that “sufficient unanimity can be achieved within the pluralistic framework of Western society to keep us strong enough to survive.” McNeill ridicules “the straightjacket of one Truth and one Duty to defend that truth” and holds that “Russian communists and Russian Orthodox Christians share this kind of logic”—as if McNeill himself has no single line that excludes contraries. It is views like those of McNeill and Hook that Solzhenitsyn considers part of the weakness of the West with its loss of a framework for assuredly accrediting the enduring good and true.

Harold Berman holds that Solzhenitsyn fails to emphasize a proper reverence for law, probably because Soviet legal institutions have so much repressed freedom and justice. Pipes contends that we must tolerate diverse conceptions, as does political pluralism, because moral growth is attainable only in an environment in which individuals are free to choose the right path. But surely such freedom can exist also in other political frameworks.

Novak offers concluding comments on “God and Man.” Although God gets only passing mention, a timely warning against the baneful consequences of moral relativism and indifference is sounded, and Novak notes that religious institutions themselves often obscure the very soteric message that could rescue civilization from self-destruction.

The volume’s value lies in pointed, pithy comments on the present cultural crisis, made from diverse viewpoints. On freedom, for example, the essayists note that liberty vanishes when it is unqualified, that it is grounded in spiritual and moral values, and that the isolated pursuit of political freedom soon defeats itself. The book is well worth the reading, even if it leaves aside the larger concern of identifying public policies that might set society on a more hopeful course of survival and does not face the question—obscure in Solzhenitsyn’s own address—of the relation between the church and the world.

Recent Books On Church Ministry, Part I

The minister’s task and the ministry of the church are becoming increasingly complex. This is evidenced by the numerous volumes being produced in these areas, slicing the categories ever thinnner. In most respects, this is a good thing, for we are now able to examine the subjects more carefully. Four such categories will be considered.

The Church. Books that take the church as their topic are found here. John Balchin looks at it comprehensively and doctrinally in What the Bible Teaches About the Church (Tyndale). Douglas John Hall asks, Has the Church a Future? (Westminster). His answer is, Yes, but in a very different shape than today—perhaps as a small group of believers. C. Norman Kraus says the church must be The Authentic Witness (Eerdmans), recapturing the dynamic of the early church. All in God’s Family (Brethren Press), by Fred W. Swartz, argues for the unity of the church and the place of the Brethren in it. Hans Küng’s theological meditation, The Church: Maintained in Truth (Seabury), makes interesting reading, containing as it does his postcensure statement, “Why I Remain a Catholic.”

Basic Ministry. A variety of answers were given to the question of what should be the church’s basic function. Ministry in America (Harper & Row), edited by David S. Schuller, Merton P. Strommen, and Milo L. Brekke, is perhaps the most exhaustive study of the ministry undertaken in this century. It discusses models of ministry, isolating some 64 categories people use to describe what they expect of the minister. It groups 47 denominations into 13 categories; each is analyzed by an expert in that area. David Hubbard looks at evangelical churches and Harold S. Songer at Southern Baptists, to name two. Some surprising results emerge; some could have been predicted. Any study of the ministry will certainly want to begin here. Michael Griffiths in Shaking the Sleeping Beauty (InterVarsity, 38 De Montfort St., Leicester LEI 7GP, England) strikes a nice balance between the personal and the social elements in a very perceptive book. The Christian Parish (Fides/Claretian), by Fr. William Bausch, makes the case that the local parish should reach out to the neighborhood injustice and mercy. The Festschrift for Charles W. Conn, president of Lee College, The Promise and the Power (Pathway Press), edited by Donald N. Bowdle, is essays on the motivations, developments, and prospects of the ministries of the Church of God. New Life in the Church, revised edition (Harper & Row), by Robert A. Raines, argues for the necessity of conversion for the church to fulfill its ministry. No Church Is an Island (Pilgrim Press), by David S. King, sees local outreach as a key to church vitality. Dial 911; Peaceful Christians and Urban Violence (Herald), by Dave Jackson, tells how one church, (Reba Place Fellowship in Evanston, Ill.) put its faith into practice in actual ministry. Roots of a Black Future (Westminster), by J. Deotis Roberts, is a look at the history, nature, and mission of the black family and the black church today. Towards a Church of the Poor (WCC), edited by Julio De Santa Ana, is a statement of how the World Council of Churches views the struggle of the church against unjust socioeconomic conditions and the path toward liberation of the poor.

Church Growth. A fully revised Understanding Church Growth (Eerdmans), by Donald McGavran, has appeared in an “Americanized” version so that growth strategies may be more easily applied at home. Other books dealing with this topic are: The Living Church: A Guide for Revitalization (Great Commission), by Donald J. MacNair; Organize to Evangelize: A Manual for Church Growth (Victor), by Larry L. Lewis; Secrets for Growing Churches (Harper & Row), by Charles Nylander, a book highly endorsed by Donald McGavran; and Missions, Evangelism, and Church Growth (Herald), edited by C. Norman Kraus.

Evangelism/Revivalism.Evangelism and Your Church (Presbyterian and Reformed), by C. John Miller, is a practical look at witnessing from a Reformed point of view. Richard G. Korthals discusses motives and methods in Agape Evangelism (Tyndale). Joy to the World (John Knox), by Robert T. Henderson, is an excellent theological treatment of kingdom evangelism that considers both the individual and the Christian community. How to Share Your Faith Without Being Offensive (Seabury), by Joyce Neville, accomplishes what the title implies. The Psychology of Witnessing (Word), by Jard DeVille, is a sensitive psychotherapist’s look at the process of sharing one’s faith and how it does or does not work. Revivalism is examined by John J. Hancock in a planning book for church revival meetings, The Joy of Revival (Beacon Hill of Kansas City), and by Stephen Olford in Lord, Open the Heavens (Harold Shaw), an exposition of the who, what, when, where, and how of revivals.

BRIEFLY NOTED

The general area of aesthetics is receiving increasing attention these days, perhaps under the influence of a holistic approach to life. Whatever the reason, the relation of Christianity to the arts is being seriously evaluated.

Art and the Christian.Symbol and Art (T & T Clark/Seabury), edited by Luis Maldonado and David Power, is a series of advanced essays primarily on contemporary problems. Nicholas Wolterstorff has written a brilliant Christian introduction to art theory in Art in Action (Eerdmans). Rainbows for the Fallen World (Toronto Tuppence Press), by Calvin Seerveld, is a penetrating study of the Christian and aesthetic experience. Art and Religion in Conflict (Fortress), by Samuel Laeuchli, is an attempt to resolve the conflict by working through the historical and conceptual difficulties. The Great Pendulum of Becoming (Christian University Press/Eerdmans), by Nelvin Vos, is a look at contemporary drama as expressive of an unsettled state of “becoming” rather than a settled state of “being.” Signs of Our Times (Eerdmans), by George S. Heyer, is a challenging set of theological essays on art in the twentieth century.

Literary Studies. Nancy M. Tischler takes a look at spiritual pilgrimage in Dorothy L. Sayers: A Pilgrim Soul (John Knox). Trevor H. Hall analyzes some specific topics in Dorothy L. Sayers: Nine Literary Essays (Archon); the essays are highly informative. George Hunt admirably handles John Updike and the Three Great Secret Things: Sex, Religion, and Art (Eerdmans). The Renaissance of Wonder (Harper & Row), by Marion Lochhead, is a refreshing look at fantasy worlds, particularly as seen in Tolkien, Lewis, MacDonald, and Nesbit.

As always, C. S. Lewis captures the imagination. The following all relate to him in one way or another: C. S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher (Zondervan), edited by Carolyn Keefe, now in paperback; The Achievement of C. S. Lewis (Shaw), by Thomas Howard—as always, absolutely first-rate; Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia (Eerdmans), by Peter J. Schakel, a reliable guide to the literary aspects of the chronicles; Companion to Narnia (Harper & Row), by Paul F. Ford, a complete, illustrated dictionary of the themes, characters, and events of Narnia; and C. S. Lewis; Spinner of Tales (Christian University Press/Eerdmans), by Evan K. Gibson, a study of Lewis as a fiction writer.

Music.The Songs of Zion (Crown and Covenant Publications, 800 Wood St., Pittsburgh, Pa.), by Michael Bushell, is a well-argued plea for exclusive psalmnody in our Christian worship; The Illustrated Family Hymn Book (Seabury), edited by Tony Jaspers, is a beautifully illustrated volume of Christian inspiration. American Hymns, Old and New (Columbia Univ. Press), Volume 1, edited by Albert Christ-Janer, Charles W. Hughes, and Carleton Spraghe Smith; Volume 2, by Charles W. Hughes, is a collection of over 800 representative American hymns, along with a companion volume of notes on the hymns and biographies of the authors and composers. It is certain to be a definitive work.

George MacDonald. Long out-of-print short stories by George MacDonald have been made available again by Eerdmans in four new paperback volumes: The Light Princess and Other Fantasy Stories; The Wise Man and Other Fantasy Stories; The Gray Wolf and Other Fantasy Stories; and The Golden Key and Other Fantasy Stories. They are nicely illustrated by Craig Yoe. Zondervan has new editions of two MacDonald favorites, delightfully illustrated by Peter Wane: The Princess and Curdie; and The Princess and the Goblin.

Original Works.Love’s Enduring Promise (Bethany Fellowship), by Janette Oke, is a home-spun pioneer adventure and sequel to Love Comes Softly. Unfinished Tales (Houghton Mifflin) by J. R. R. Tolkien will certainly delight fans of Middle-Earth, adding as it does to the saga. Ladder of Angels (Penguin), by Madeleine L’Engle, is scenes from the Bible illustrated by children of the world, with moving text by L’Engle. Feeding Fire: A Journey of the Heart (Morehouse-Barlow), by John B. Coburn, is a collection of intimate poems about life and God. Coburn’s well-received story of death, Ann and the Sand Dobbies (Seabury), is available now in paperback. Bethany Fellowship concludes the Canaan Trilogy with the fast-paced Jordan Intercept, by J. Alexander McKenzie. Joy Gems (Nortex Press), by L. Foster Bate, is a collection of simple spiritual poems aimed at the heart.

To Christian parents, few things in this world are quite so important as the education of their children. Most evangelical Christians still enroll their children in public schools. But increasingly, they find their children subject to religious and moral influences of almost overwhelming force. To their dismay, they discover that the public schools are no longer the mother of basic morality and traditional values. Too often they are instead the spawning ground of ethical relativism, and secular humanism becomes the “established” religion providing the philosophical framework for these new anti-Christian values. Many evangelicals are convinced that private schools are the only long-term answer.

But many other evangelicals have elected to remain within the public school system and fight back. To their surprise, they discover that teachers and school administrators are often on their side. Secular humanism is a minority religion in America. And we must not permit it, falsely in the name of freedom, to destroy our freedom by imposing its religion and education and philosophy upon our public schools. In this issue, three articles (by Christenson. Freeman, and Crater) and an editorial point out our dangerous plight and to a way out of this educational impasse. You won’t agree with all of them. But as an evangelical, you can’t afford to shut your eyes to the problem and do nothing.

It’ Easter, and no Easter issue would be complete without an article on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. J. I. Packer draws some insights from our Lord’s post-resurrection ministry that are badly needed by us all. Also in this issue. Francis Schaeffer, with characteristic honesty, confesses mistakes from the past as he discusses with great delicacy and sympathy an issue that still deeply troubles the church today. Finally. David Seamands. Wesleyan pastor of the Asbury College Church, refutes “perfectionism” in a way that will delight the heart of any Reformed theologian in the tradition of Luther and Calvin. In so doing, he remains loyal to his Wesleyan tradition, for the kind of “perfection” he opposes. Wesley himself would have abhorred.

It Is Not Every Question That Deserves An Answer

If there are questionnaires in heaven. I will demand in-and-out privileges.

Questionnaires frighten me. I panic when I see one, and I am a basket case by the time I am through filling it out. The people sitting around me all move away one by one. They do it in subtle ways, like going for a drink and never coming back, or throwing their pen across the room and retrieving it.

I can never remember my auto license number, and I haven’t a ghost of a chance when it comes to my social security number. I can remember the name of my third-grade art teacher, but not my mother’s maiden name. I get migraine headaches trying to recall my blood type.

Last week, I had to go to the dentist. You guessed it: his receptionist had me fill out a questionnaire. (No, in a dentist’s office, you fill in the questionnaire. Sorry about that.) Well, I remembered my name and address, and I had my social security number on the Blue Cross card in my wallet. So far, so good. The question that gave me apoplexy was: “Are you now pregnant?” Having been born male, I have never had to answer that question. I wrote: “I hope not, but I think my guppies are.” The receptionist didn’t think it was funny.

“What prompted you to come here?” stultified me. I replied: “I was driving past, saw your sign, and thought I’d stop.” What prompts anybody to go to a dentist? “My left lower wisdom tooth sent me.” I should have added: “This is the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.”

Of all types of questionnaires, ministerial questionnaires are the worst. They are sent out by pastoral search committees who are searching for pastors. The last one I received (who is suggesting my name?) had 10 pages to it, and half of the questions my own mother couldn’t answer. “Has anybody in your family ever been tried for heresy? Burned at the stake?” How about this one: “What do you wear when you preach?” (A smile? A black suit? A morning coat? A robe?) I became so desperate filling out one questionnaire that I wrote down any answer that came to my mind. “What is the title of your latest book?” Answer: Teach Yourself Embalming. In their acknowledgement letter, the committee enclosed a gift certificate to any local counseling center.

Are all these religious questions really necessary? I can just hear Jesus calling, “Fill out this questionnaire, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men!” After all, Paul’s quick spiritual survey had only two questions to it: “Who art thou. Lord? What wilt thou have me to do?” Now, that’s the kind of questionnaire that accomplishes something.

EUTYCHUS X

On Being An Imitator

Your comments on plagiarism (Eutychus. Feb. 6] were both enlightening and entertaining. Many of us have heard more of Spurgeon’s sermons than we’ll ever know.

Not wishing to be accused of the same crime, I’ll give credit and quote a beloved pastor of my teen-age days in Oklahoma. Rev. W. E. Lowe, who has been with the Lord for many years now, used to say, “It’s better to be an imitator than no ’tater a’tall.”

DALE CANNON

Tempe, Ariz.

“How Much Profit?”

I read with interest Cronkhite’s “Making the Gospel Free” [Feb. 6]. The crucial point is, as he says, “How much profit is too much?”

I appeal to CT to initiate exploration of this moral question on a broader front. It’s true, of course, that the issue of profit versus ministry is more clearly drawn in “Christian work.” But the basic notion of acceptable profit is one to which Christians should direct their attention; after all, all of the life of all Christians is to be “unto God.” The essential tenet of capitalism seems at times to be “whatever the market will bear.” We might well ask the extent to which Christians should be involved in the financial concerns of the oil companies, or the practice of law or medicine, all of which in our present society might be seen as having inordinately high rates of return in a monopolized market, and indeed for commodities which everyone in our society needs. Other such examples might be present too, of course.

It is said by some that greed is one of the driving forces behind the economic troubles facing our country. Perhaps Christians are not immune. I hope CT will face the question of whether it is a disease of the soul, or just “good business.”

DONALD A. BURQUEST

Cedar Hill. Tex.

Science And Biblical Truth

My problem with the editorial lies in the strategy of insisting that “scientific creationism” be included in a discussion of origins.

Whatever the validity of “scientific creationism” as science, the imposition of such a two-model system raises a number of questions. First, this approach asks the student to make a choice between two options, either or both of which may not be understood or equally well stated by the teacher. The result could be a case so weighted in one direction that the other is barely seen—a result all too evident in many Christian schools.

Second, is “scientific creationism” a good statement of what Christians believe about origins? It seems highly improbable that such a statement would find agreement among more than a narrow segment of evangelicals.

Third, is science the place to impose one’s Christian view on the public school system? I find the ideas expressed in the social sciences at the school my children attend far more destructive of their faith than those few points in science where Scripture and science are said to conflict. Is the two-model approach in biology to be followed by two-model legislation in psychology, history, art, physical education, and music?

I would suggest a different approach—one that would involve clerics and laity in a dynamic relation with the public schools. This would require Christian involvement in the schools at all levels. If one is willing to give time to working with children, school teachers and administrators are far more willing to invite people in to express alternative views on religiously sensitive topics—quiet infiltration rather than bombastic confrontation.

JOHN HAAS. JR

Gordon College

Wenham, Mass.

Women’S Role

Your lead line on the cover of the February 20 issue, “Women’s Role in Church and Family: Going Back to Scripture,” intrigued me. It is unfortunate the editorial that introduced the subject did not follow that high and proper strategy. In one interpretive leap, the editor jumped from the solid rock of Galatians 3:28 to a highly speculative and debatable conclusion, “the right to ordain women.”

If CT is going to take this position on the ordination of women, let us at least have the benefit of your own biblical scholarship in support of this conclusion. To do less is to jeopardize your credibility. How did you arrive at such a firm and sweeping conclusion after reading the articles pro and con? I could not.

REV. ROBERT C. FREDERICH

Galilee Baptist Church

Denver, Colo.

Frankly, I’m a bit dismayed that CT has taken a public stand in favor of the ordination of women. It seems to me that both you and Stouffer [“The Ordination of Women: Yes”] make the mistake of reading too much into Galatians 3:28. It is my firm conviction that Paul is not making a broad statement there to the effect that men and women are equal in all situations—in the home, church, and marketplace—as well as in the kingdom of God. To me, it seems obvious that the context of his argument in the whole epistle restricts his statement to the last sphere only. In Galatians, Paul refutes the idea that there were different classes of Christians, namely, those who have “merely” believed in Christ, and those who have both believed and been circumcised. Paul is at pains to insist that there is only one basis of acceptance by God, and that is the completed work of Christ. He does not deal with ecclesiastical or domestic order in this letter.

But Scripture does teach, on the grounds of Creation and Fall principles, that men and women have differing roles and functions in the domestic and ecclesiastical economies. To deny that men and women can be unequal in authority and role in the home or church while at the same time being equal (or “one”) in Christ must lead to denying that the Father could be “greater” than Christ (John 14:28) while at the same time being “one” with him (John 10:30). There is no more inconsistency on the human plane than there is on the divine.

LAWRENCE A. PILE

Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio

The writer of the editorial evidently believes that Paul forbade women speaking in the church because they were “untaught women.” He also says that in 1 Timothy 2:11–12 Paul had in mind “immature, ill-taught Christians.” This, I believe, is his own supposition.

What was not mentioned in the article was that the apostle Paul falls back upon what God had previously said about the role of women. “They are to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Cor. 14:34).

Today we hear it said that Paul based his teachings about women on the culture of the day, the unlearned condition of women in his day. But not once does Paul resort to such an argument. His argument is based on “as also saith the law.”

REV. WILLIAM G. KENNELL

Trinity Lutheran Church

Cantonment. Fla.

Stouffer seems bent upon equating submission with inferiority and authority with superiority. This is the position of the women’s liberation movement, but I am surprised to find it in the thinking of an evangelical pastor.

One thing he overlooked is the obvious fact that in the qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3, God requires the individual to be the husband of one wife. If ordination of women is taught in Scripture, why are there no qualifications for female elders?

It is strange indeed that women’s advocates such as Stouffer didn’t come along until the world began to put forth such antibiblical teachings. Where have such men been all these years? And how could they have overlooked such an important doctrine as women’s rights?

REV. JAMES R. OWEN

Baytown Community Church

Baytown, Tex.

Thank you for your excellent articles on “Women’s Role in Church and Family.” The picture is wonderful. Maybe that stiff breeze will help blow away some cobwebs!

About two years ago, I was asked to teach a young adult Sunday school class. I agreed to do so only if my husband would agree to teach with me—keeping me “under his umbrella.” Their questions regarding this thinking started my husband and me on a journey. We had to face the possibility that our position was more traditional than biblical. The ensuing process of in-depth study and prayer has been difficult, painful, and finally rewarding. Our position has been articulated by Pastor Stouffer.

NANCY L. LINDSLEY

Orinda. Calif.

The Mickelsens’ approach to the meaning of headship (kephale) was interesting [“The ‘Head’ of the Epistles”]. But is it not true that one of the major reasons why “traditional” churches are so ineffectual today is that they have ignored the leadership role (authority) of Jesus Christ? He is the originator, completer, and enabler of the church, to be sure. But he is also its Lord. He is the one from whom we in the church should receive marching orders. How many disappointments have arisen because we ask the Lord to support and nurture our own plans rather than his! The Mickelsens bring out a frequently neglected meaning of kephale, but at the same time they diminish the richness and fullness of the word in its 1 Corinthians 11:3 context.

CLAIR MERRITT

West Lafayette, Ind.

Simply because she is asked to submit to her husband (Paul’s overwhelming use of the word aner in man-woman texts), a woman is not thereby compelled to submit to every male in the congregation on the basis of 1 Timothy 2:12. And then there are lots of single and widowed women who are free of a husband’s special direction. In any case, all our women need to be functioning within the body appropriate to their abilities apart from sexual bias.

MERLIN SHORB

Silver Spring, Md.

I am too well aware of both sides of the argument. But perhaps we are concentrating on the wrong questions. Jesus never seemed to notice male or female, but was constantly aware of ministry! Is a conversion brought about by the power of God’s Holy Spirit through a female vessel worth less than if God had used a male? Balaam was “saved” by an ass! God will use who he wants and what he wants. (I find no Pauline theology covering the virtue of being an ass rather than a horse.)

Surely the tempter reads with relish our debates. As we draw line after line of jargon, who is minding the church? Certainly Jesus is the Lord of the church, but he has appointed, called, and commissioned earthly stewards. Clergy operate in ministry uniquely equipped with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Those gifts are asexual. There is no masculine list or feminine list. God uses our whole selves to express his truths, not the other way around. In my home, I am wife, mother, and woman. In my church, I am pastor, not woman pastor. I have joys and struggles in my parish—victories and problems. But none of them stem from my gender.

Brother Austin and Brother George. I appreciate your scholarship and attention to detail. But in the long run, I must ask the question, “Are you winning anybody?” Let’s put this part of the debate to rest and ask God’s questions about harvest instead.

REV. JAIME POTTER MILLER

Galloway United Methodist Church

Franklin, Pa.

Your recent issues covering a Christian’s response to war and the role of women in the church deserve special recognition. They do so not just for the quality of the articles, but also for placing detailed arguments for two different positions side by side. I want to thank you for this approach for two reasons. First, it exposes us to a wider range of knowledge than is normally allowed. Though you must exercise your conscience in stating editorial positions and your prerogative to convince others of their validity, you need not deny access to competing views. Any journal that cannot present in detail the logic of the “other side” never gives any credence to the reader’s intelligence and argues from the most repressive stance imaginable: “Believe me, because you’re ignorant of any other alternative.”

Second. I’m grateful because it points up weaknesses in our attempts to bring biblical wisdom to current issues. Two different people use the same Scriptures, the same Greek study, and the same exegetical guidelines to prove two entirely different positions. This should well remind us that our understanding of the Word cannot be totally entrusted to academic tools, valuable as they are, but to the cry of our hearts, “Father, teach us your ways, that we might walk in your paths.” In our own exegeses, we would be reminded that our defiant arrogance in our presently held positions is our greatest barrier to truth and growth. The prayer cannot be prayed alone, but must be the humble search of all of us together.

REV. WAYNE L. JACOBSEN

The Savior’s Community Church

Visalia. Calif.

Your description was quite accurate [“Does Your Husband Need Jesus?”]. The unequally yoked wife is not a full member, either in the home or in the church. This is, however, an angle that your article has not exposed. Any program that includes unsaved husbands should warn its participants that these husbands are carnal, tuned to the world, and therefore “brotherly” embraces and other familiarities that take place among Christians are not always in order.

KATHY LOYD

Washington, D. C.

How can you talk about “Women at the Helm” and not have any articles by women who are currently acting as ministers? The weight of the articles you printed did not take seriously the ability or the call of women to minister in the body of Christ. Out of five articles and two vignettes dealing with the role of women in their families and in the church, only one took seriously the responsibility of women to say “yes” when Christ calls them to minister to others in and for him. I am firmly convinced that when the church or individuals in it keep anyone, Jew. Greek, slave, free, male, or female from following the call of Christ to minister to his body, then that church or individual is in sin.

REV. LINDA J. BRINDLE

Salem Friends Meeting

Liberty, Ind.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry after reading Lillian Hitt’s “My Submission Brought Freedom and Fulfillment.” It brought to mind a recent tiling project my husband and I worked on. When the 10-inch squares coincidentally worked out perfectly in one corner of the floor on which we were laying them, we laughed, and tongue in cheek, pointed to it as an obvious sign from God that it was his will that we lay floor tile. I’m sure Mrs. Hitt is very happily married, but how sad that we Christians look for omens of God’s will and presence in the material parts of our lives like our coffee containers and floor tile. How much better it would be if, instead, we would look harder for him within ourselves.

CHERYL MOROSCO

La Habra, Calif.

Proselytizing Without Pressure

I am grateful that the barriers that have existed so long between Jewish religious thinkers and the Christian church are gradually being lowered and that meaningful discussion is taking place across the divide [News, Jan. 23]. I was rather perplexed, however, by the distinction that certain evangelical participants made between witnessing and proselytizing. It seems to me that the word “proselyte” is very much a Humpty Dumpty word. “ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is.’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things’ ” (Alice Through the Looking Glass).

Historically, the word meant a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and correctly used today, it means a convert from one religion to another, without any ominous overtones. The particular connotation given by the participants where they said it “includes coercion and propaganda techniques unworthy of the gospel” is a purely subjective definition with no lexicographical authority. I feel that when evangelicals refute proselytizing they unwittingly fall into a trap that effectively means denying the divine command to preach the good news to Jew and Gentile, and first to the Jew.

REV.MURDO A. MACLEOD

Kent, England