NO Educational choice made headlines like never before when Polly Williams, a black Wisconsin state legislator from Milwaukee’s inner city, sponsored a bill in the spring of 1990 that would allow one thousand low-income children to attend one of eight private, nonsectarian schools. The state would provide $2,500 in tuition per child, the amount normally granted the Milwaukee public-school system for each child. After the plan was ruled constitutional by a circuit court that August, 391 students switched from public schools to the eight private schools.

Milwaukee is seldom a trend setter. But when its parental-choice plan was passed by the state legislature, the bill made national and international news. The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and the Economist all published articles on the controversial plan that allowed parents to choose. So extensive was reader interest that the Wall Street Journal published over two-dozen articles and several opinion pieces on parental choice.

Legal challenges, however, did not rest. The Wisconsin Education Association and others appealed the lower court’s decision, and in early November of last year the Fourth District State Appeals Court ruled unanimously that the Milwaukee program was unconstitutional on a technicality. The court did not specifically rule on the merit or legality of choice itself, however. Program supporters have appealed to the state supreme court to overturn the appeals court’s decision.

Whatever the fate of Milwaukee’s plan, President Bush’s recently unveiled education proposal will guarantee that the issue stays alive in public debate. His proposal committed both the federal government’s money and moral support to the idea that parents should be able to use tax dollars to send their children to the public, private, or parochial school of their choice.

For all the seeming promise of the Milwaukee experiment and Bush’s new educational plan, evangelicals must face up to the serious problems parental choice can create. Educational choice measures are not sound—not practically, not theoretically.

The economist Milton Friedman first introduced the “free market” concept of education in 1953 through a seminal article, “The Role of Government in Education.” Friedman suggested that parents receive vouchers that would permit them to select the school best suited for their children.

Friedman’s use of terms like voucher and choice may have sounded new, but parental choice has long roots in the history of American education. Before Horace Mann led the Common School movement of the midnineteenth century, “private venture” schools dotted the landscape. And America’s middle-class families have always exercised a form of choice by having the economic means to move to areas with good schools.

Choice options also appeal to people concerned about moral values. Evangelicals generally support choice, believing it consonant with individual initiative and free-market thinking, values with roots in our Puritan heritage.

Therefore, many evangelicals reason, if public schools are failing to educate—as they surely are, particularly in our large cities—why not try parental choice? There are a number of sound reasons why school choice is not good educational policy and will not improve public education.

First, proponents have given relatively little thought to the planning necessary for choice plans to succeed. Take facilities. Of the estimated 46 million students enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in the fall of 1989, about 12 percent were in private schools. The cost of building and equipping high-quality private schools for the remainder would be enormous. If the $4,000 to $5,000 now granted to local school districts for the education of a student were given to private schools, it would be insufficient to construct facilities.

Nor would the inadequate funds allow for smooth transition, which is the second problem. The chaos and instability that would result during a transition period could produce serious psychological and social problems for children.

A third problem has to do with the unwarranted claims for the values of competition. In their recent book, Politics, Markets, and America’s Schools, John Chubb and Terry Moe of the Brookings Institution conclude that competition would improve education as it has improved the quality of consumer goods of other types. But is education a commodity to be sold like detergent, shoes, or cars?

The best schools will enroll the most students and make the most money, the argument runs. With added resources, these competitive schools will generate all the funds they need. The result, say choice advocates, is that public schools will have to improve.

But this kind of economic thinking fails to take into account the type of student who studies to become a teacher. I have found that students going into teaching today have lost much of the idealism of 20 years ago. They are much less tolerant of minorities; this is especially true of students from blue-collar backgrounds who feel they miss out on the breaks and educational funding received by racial minorities. Although education students have rarely thought through the implications of their beliefs, they generally hold to a relativism that downplays commitment to moral and religious values.

The free-market approach to education is based on the notion that competition will make schools better, that in the heat of the race for higher salaries and better positions, teaching will improve. But what the advocates of choice fail to understand is that teachers are not really motivated by money, or at least the kind of money that can be made in the private economic sector. About half of the students in my Introduction to Teaching classes are dropouts—from schools of business or jobs in business. They tell me the reason for leaving business is because they dislike the competitive environment. Clearly, these are not people who will make educational competition work.

Furthermore, current education classes often leave future teachers with a distaste for academic testing and tracking. They train students to teach with what is called “cooperative learning.” Education professors who do not know much about John Dewey’s philosophy still follow Dewey’s stress on cooperation rather than competition.

Perhaps choice advocates have another source from which to get teachers for “market-driven” schools, but they have not told us where these teachers will come from. Bright, young people motivated by money alone will not last long in teaching. The task demands hard work, especially in tough, inner-city schools.

A fourth problem concerns the needs of ethnic minorities. Will parental-choice schools help black children? These children need teachers of their own race as role models, yet there is an acute shortage of black teachers, a shortage that will only get worse. In 1990, the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduated, out of a class of 149, one black male student and two black females. More blacks went into teaching 15 years ago. The situation in Milwaukee is by no means unique; it exists across the country. If anything, private schools tend to show less interest in the needs of minorities, not more.

Fifth, school-choice advocates have failed to address what they intend to do with children and youth who are difficult to teach. They seem to forget that private-school teachers and administrators evidence little interest in the aggressive black-male student, the cocaine, AIDS, or handicapped child, or children from troubled homes. Choice schools will want to admit the best and the brightest, the outstanding athletes—the kind of students that will make these schools successful. Although the advocates of choice will never admit it, choice has an air of Social Darwinism about it.

Choice as an educational alternative will have run its course—as most innovations in American education do—in a decade or so. American public education in the early decades of the twenty-first century will be forced to take firm action to improve the system. Whether as a nation we can arrive at a consensus on how to save our schools remains to be seen, especially in a society so enamored with “diversity” and “multiculturalism.” Interestingly, it was Milton Friedman’s fear in the early 1950s that vouchers might create schools so diverse that some of them might not teach a common set of values so essential in a democracy.

But I have always been impressed with the great educators of the past who resisted the temptation to put skill development and the acquisition of knowledge first, as we do today. John Locke said that “right living,” “wisdom,” and “civility” all must come before “book learning.” For American society to survive, there must come a renewed societal commitment to the importance of character development and time-tested values in our public schools. That can happen only if we make public schools a high priority.

Recently, juries have found “artistic value” in pornographic museum art exhibits and obscene rap music protected by the First Amendment. This is deeply disturbing to many evangelicals. As important as it is to oppose what is clearly degrading, the principal battleground is still in the nation’s public schools, where the struggle goes on for the minds and hearts of Americans.

Christians are the salt and light of the world (Matt. 5:12–14). Their arena of witness must include the halls of public education. Evangelicals should stop chasing choice. We should instead use every means possible to influence public education in a direction that is in the best interest of all Americans.

YES It was Measure 11 on the Oregon ballot. If passed, it would have removed barriers between school districts, giving parents access to schools unavailable to them. It would have provided a $2,500 tax credit to parents who felt their children’s needs could best be met by a private school. The educational innovators behind the measure believed that introducing competition and diversity would allow parents of all income levels access to different schools and approaches to learning. Oregon’s Educational Choice Initiative was a simple idea—even a revolutionary idea—and it was defeated at the polls.

While Oregon’s initiative was defeated, support for educational choice is spreading across the nation and crossing traditional ideological lines. Support ranges from the Brookings Institution (a liberal think tank) to William Bennett (a conservative and former U.S. secretary of education), to say nothing of President Bush.

Parents, many of them poor and from minority groups, are attracted to the plan. They are tired of high dropout rates, widely varying achievement scores between schools or school districts, and poor showings when American students are compared to those from other developed countries.

Others see school choice offering new possibilities for dealing with cultural diversity. Every year we ask our public schools to do more. We expect them to recognize each child’s unique learning style, identify individual strengths and weaknesses, be sensitive to each child’s cultural heritage and ethnic background, provide instruction that meets these needs, and simultaneously build the child’s self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

Schools also feel increasing pressure to shape our children in socially “correct” ways, and better represent America’s diverse ethnic backgrounds. Current efforts to better represent minority groups in our history and social studies classes are understandable—but as we teach more of these classes, it also means that we must teach less of something else. The addition of gun education, sex education, AIDS education, and drug education means less of something else. Less math? Less spelling? Less science?

Educational choice is a realistic solution to the problem of schools trying to be all things to all children. While educational choice will not solve all problems, it has the potential to address many of them, and it brings the following benefits.

1. It returns control of education to parents. This may be at the heart of the parental-choice movement. Parents are not just dissatisfied with the content and outcome of public education, they are also frustrated at their inability to affect the educational establishment. Policy is made by state agencies strongly influenced by professional administrators and teachers’ unions. And the quality of public education has taken a back seat to job security for many professional educators. Choice once again makes public education responsive to the people who are paying for it. Good teachers, good administrators, and good schools will thrive under a choice system.

2. Educational choice recognizes cultural diversity. This fall, Milwaukee adds an additional offering to its public-school options: Two schools will be devoted to educating black males. The schools will immerse their male students in black culture in an attempt to build self-esteem and promote responsible behavior. They will target the specific needs of black males who are not succeeding in traditional schools. Fewer than 20 percent of black-male students in Milwaukee public schools have a C average or better, and black males account for 50 percent of all school suspensions. Other students will not be excluded from the school, and may choose to attend the schools if they wish; but the curriculum will be designed to make school more relevant to black males. It may or may not work, but it is an effort that must be applauded. Meeting the needs of all our students is what educational choice is all about.

3. Educational choice respects value differences. Christians have long been sensitive to the beliefs and values conveyed through public education. Concern about the way schools handle Creation and evolution, abortion, sex education, and secular values leads some Christian parents to place their children in private schools, even though they must shoulder the financial burden. And value conflicts are not limited to Christian parents. Educational choice supports the right of all parents to pass their values on to their children.

4. Educational choice takes the pressure off of schools to be all things to all people. Principals and other administrators spend much time dealing with parents and community organizations unhappy with the content of the curriculum. Why the theory of evolution and not Creation? Why are certain books in the school library? A choice approach that makes private schools more feasible options takes the pressure off of the public schools; parents who have concerns find it financially acceptable to make the move to a private school. The schools become less of an ideological battleground.

5. Educational choice is cost-effective. Choice programs are typically described as “draining the resources of the public-school system.” But the figures do not bear that out. Oregon, for example, spends over $4,700 on each public-school pupil (making the state thirteenth in the nation). An elementary school enrolling 500 students would receive over $2.3 million. If 10 percent of the students at the school took advantage of a $2,500 tax credit to attend a private school, the school would lose $125,000. But each departing student would leave behind $2,200. That money could then be used to improve the education of the students remaining in the public schools.

Only in the event of wholesale flight from the public schools would a choice plan significantly drain the schools’ resources. Such flight is unlikely, however, and, if it did occur, would that not tell us something? If students flock to certain schools, could we not learn from those schools?

6. Educational choice actually lowers the cost of education. The Oregon system would have allowed a $2,500 tax credit to parents who chose to send their child to a private school. The Milwaukee plan would send a $2,500 voucher with a student to a private school. Wisconsin spends about the same as Oregon does per pupil for education. If the states can purchase an education that is comparable or better for their children at half the cost, why not? Many states, including Oregon, have been doing the same thing at the college level for years.

7. Educational choice could improve the quality of education. One reason poor and minority parents are becoming interested in educational choice is dissatisfaction with the education their children receive. Private schools generally have more academic success than public schools. A voucher system makes these schooling options more accessible to families from all income levels and encourages public schools to improve.

School choice promises to return control of children’s education to the parents, a prospect attractive to many.

8. Voucher systems allow parents to fit the school to the learning style of their child. All schools cannot be all things to all children. Some children are reflective, contemplative, and develop best in a slower-paced atmosphere. Other children flourish in a fast-paced program. An educational-choice system has the potential to allow both types of children to have their specific needs met.

Similarly, parents differ in their preferences for their children. Some parents prefer a structured environment where there are clear rules and expectations and the children learn self-control and discipline. Other parents prefer an atmosphere where children are free to express themselves and develop their creativity. Educational choice allows the parents to match their parenting style with the school atmosphere of their choice.

But don’t choice options favor the well-to-do? Milwaukee addressed the concern by limiting the voucher option to those making less than $22,180 per year. Concern that the $2,500 would not be sufficient to cover the tuition, thereby leaving out poor parents, was addressed by specifying that the private school could not charge more than that amount (six private schools signed up to participate). The concern that choice schools would be elitist and select only the best and the brightest was addressed by requiring random selection when space was available. The Milwaukee plan was supported by the poor and urban minorities, yet the opposition continues to fight such plans.

The make-up of the opposition to the Milwaukee plan illustrates the first obstacle to educational choice. It includes the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the Wisconsin Federation of Teachers (the state’s largest teachers’ union), the Administrators and Supervisors Council of Milwaukee, and the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators. A large segment of our society is invested in the public-school system. They make their living from it, and their interests are inseparable from the interests of public education. When you tamper with public education you are tampering with people’s lifestyles.

A second major obstacle to educational choice comes from those who want to use schools for social engineering. To many, the schools, as well as the courts, are seen as arenas in which to pursue their ideological goals. For example, the Portland Rainbow Coalition wrote in the Oregon voters’ pamphlet of the need to “heal society in multi-cultural public schools.” Groups with social or political agendas tend to see the schools for what they can do for society rather than what they can do for the children. Educational choice could reduce the access of social engineers to children.

Educational choice is no cure-all for the ills of the public education system, but it has untested potential. If we can overcome the inertia of the educational bureaucracy and put our children’s needs ahead of our own, we may yet be able to test that potential fully.

Boring! It’s the final condemnation, the complete put-down. Parents hear it after a concert or on a family vacation or in church. Actually, it’s pronounced, “Boooriing!” and it seems to emerge from the depths of disgust. It should be a four-letter word. The epithet never loses its power to terrify. Children, with blunt honesty, hurl the accusation like a hand grenade toward anything they consider undeserving of their presence, but adults, though perhaps more politely circumspect, fear it and feel it and flee it just as much.

In 1958 the American writer Barnaby Conrad was badly gored in a bullfight in Spain. Eva Gabor and Noel Coward were overheard talking about the incident in a New York restaurant. “Noel, dahling,” said Eva, “have you heard the news about poor Bahnaby? He vas terribly gored in Spain.”

“He was what?” asked Coward in alarm.

“He vas gored!”

“Thank heavens. I thought you said he was bored.”

The Boredom We Are Given

Since we all experience boredom, it’s worth thinking about. Like the gender of those who suffer it, boredom comes in two basic kinds—the boredom we choose and the boredom we are given.

What can you say about a person who is bored standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon, or bored in the presence of close friends, or bored listening to the music of Bach or Ellington, or bored watching Joe Montana complete a 30-yard pass? I suppose few would be interested in all these things. But if nothing penetrates the wall of indifference, something has died deep within. One can slumber through life without ever really waking up. Through lazy neglect, the ground of the soul can get too hardened to receive the common showers of blessings that fill a good and marvelous creation.

Such boredom results from turning our backs on what life has to offer; it is the ultimate lewd gesture of contempt. The church has called this one of the “seven deadly sins”—the sin of acedia, the sin Frederick Buechner describes as “a form of suicide.” It is a choice for death, a willing separation from the joys of life.

But another boredom afflicts us, and the church has rarely acknowledged it: the sort inherent in life itself. We do not choose it. It comes from being made for something more than we now experience. If the first type of boredom has to do with an inner dullness to worldly joys, this second type has to do with an inner glory that can never find fulfillment within worldly limitations.

We were made in God’s image, and this means we were made for something more than an existence torn apart by self-centeredness and limited by death. We were made for the Promised Land, we could say, but we’re not there yet and the wilderness can be pretty boring. This boredom isn’t sin. In fact, it’s a witness to our greatness. Being bored with a five-bedroom house at the beach, for example, may reveal a need for nothing less than the spaciousness and splendor of the kingdom of God. Being bored with a loved one may show hunger for an ecstasy for love that can be satisfied only through intimate communion with God.

Whatever the cause, boredom is not pleasant. It is like coming home from the dentist with a mouth deadened by anesthetic: You don’t feel anything, but the very lack of feeling hurts. You cannot wait for the numbness to wear off. So boredom cries out for relief.

There are two possible ways of escape: sin or holiness.

Bertrand Russell said that “boredom is a vital problem of the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.” I’m not sure how we could verify this, but I think he was accurate. A woman does not wake up in the morning and say, “Oh, it’s a perfect day to commit adultery.” No, she wakes up to another day where nothing much seems to be happening in her marriage and she finds relief from the wilderness in the oasis of another man’s attention; taking one little step after another, she eventually finds herself in a situation she could never before have imagined. Or a man does not set out to be greedy. But to relieve the boredom of business-as-usual at the office, he enters the game, struggles for tangible victories, and before long he is imprisoned in a pattern of grasping for more and more to prove his worth.

I imagine boredom was the chief reason the prodigal son left home. Life on the farm has its dreary routines; there are chores to do, day in and day out. And that insufferable brother—boring beyond belief! No wonder he ran off to the far country to squander his substance in riotous living.

Diana Humphries, a pretty 16-year-old from Houston, Texas, felt the routine of life was getting too monotonous. So to “escape from the boredom,” she ambushed and killed her 14-year-old brother Robert with a .22 rifle. Why? “Because nothing ever happens around here,” she sobbed.

Her problems went far beyond boredom. But don’t we have to admit that when we have given in to temptations, when we have done what we know we should not do, it has often been because “nothing much ever happens around here,” because we want some surge of adrenaline to energize us? Is it simply coincidence that Jesus, at the start of his ministry, was tempted in the wilderness? When gray washes over us, covering feeling and perceptions, we are far more likely to try things that promise some color.

Noticing What Really Happens

And yet there is another way. The only lasting relief from boredom comes not from sin but from holiness.

I know: The word conjures up images of dull, pale piety with all lifeblood drained out of it. But I am referring to authentic holiness, not the caricature. The term holy refers to God, to the Wholly Other One who infinitely transcends this world in perfection, in beauty and joy, the One the Bible defines as love. Holiness, therefore, has the glory of God about it, the dimension of eternity. It makes all earthly joys pale by comparison.

Why did the people follow Jesus with such interest? Why would thousands listen to his teaching, putting off as long as possible their journey home? What did they see in this carpenter from Nazareth? Whatever it was, it is safe to say it was not dull. There was something provocative about him; people could not be neutral about him. Whether they knew it or not, they encountered holiness, the presence of God.

The advent of Jesus, the babe of Bethlehem, was the great intrusion of holiness into this world’s inevitable boredom. Christmas celebrates the appearing of the Promised Land in the midst of the wilderness, the coming to us of that One who alone can set our restless hearts at peace.

But not everyone sees this. The desperate attempt to escape boredom can keep us so busy that we overlook the relief when it is standing in front of us.

From our earliest years in Sunday school we have heard how there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the Bethlehem inn and how Jesus was born in a stable. But did you ever think about the others at the inn, the ones who got there early enough to stake out a bed and a place at the bar? While the Son of God came into the world, they carried on with their usual pursuits—the innkeeper darting about to keep his guests happy as they knocked back drinks, played games, told stories, took their pleasure, and rested in beds.

But some noticed what really happened that evening. The gospel stories tell us the shepherds were the first to know the good news. They were what we would call blue-collar workers. Their culture did not respect them; it despised them. No court of law would accept their testimony as fact. You would not have run into them at the Bethlehem Country Club—unless it was to find them cleaning restrooms during their off-hours.

Why would God send angels announcing the birth of the Christ to such as these? Diogenes Allen, in a fine book called Temptation, has suggested that because they were close to the harsh realities of life they might have been more receptive to the news. Herding sheep was not especially difficult, but the hours were long and the tedium great. Their boredom must have made them ready for something more.

The shepherds were not unique in their boredom. Even the most exciting pursuits cannot protect from it. Doctors grow weary of complaining patients; attorneys get tired of arguing; professors wonder what good will come from the writing of one more book. But perhaps the shepherds, cut off from the ordinary means of escape, were in a boredom so unrelenting that they were able to see what others cannot see.

Angels And Misspelled Words

The most promising strategy for dealing with boredom is to accept it as an inevitable consequence of being made for more than this life has to offer. Rather than running from it and seeking relief in all sorts of diversions, we ought to embrace it, open ourselves to it. The pursuit of distracting pleasures can leave precious little time for the inner quietness necessary to hear the whispering of God in the ordinary.

Moses spent many years out in the desert tending sheep before God appeared in the burning bush. Perhaps it took that much tedium to prepare him for the encounter. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote a poem about Moses, raising the issue of human sensitivity:

Earth is crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

A woman attends my church who has learned to quiet herself before God in unusual ways. I can see it in her face during worship services. She seems present but not present, somewhere else. Or maybe she is more intensely present. One thing certain is that she sees things no one else sees: angels, doorways opening into regions of intense light, stairways coming down from heaven.

My natural instincts make me think she needs psychiatric counseling, but there is nothing at all about her to confirm that. Between Sundays she is a competent professional, “normal” in every other way. She maintains that angels are always present, surrounding everyone, if only people would open their eyes to them.

Well, I don’t know. But I do know that while she is utterly open, quiet before God, I am worried about the misspelled word in the Order of Worship, the perversities of the sound system, the crying baby in the third row, and how well my sermon will be received. She is noticing the flame in the bush, and I am busy picking blackberries.

When we grow tired of the blackberries, we just might be ready to see the consuming fire that burns in the common things around us. That, I think, is boredom’s great gift to us. It forces us to see the ultimate emptiness of life in this world; it enables us to let go of diversions that distract us from being attentive to the presence of the Holy. “Vanity of vanity,” said the Old Testament apostle of boredom, “all is vanities.” Yes, and thus we pray, not as an empty ritual but as the cry of our hearts, “Thy kindgom come!”

On a September afternoon in 1988, something extraordinary began to unfold in a faculty lounge on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. A group of 20 professors gathered to respond to an 83-page critique of Darwinism by their colleague in the School of Law, Phillip E. Johnson.

Professor Johnson’s paper attacked the problem of the evolution controversy along a broad front; it included a sophisticated analysis of scientific evidence and probed philosophical and legal issues as well. Yet these lines of argument converged on a central thesis: Darwinian evolution is grounded not on scientific fact, but on a philosophical doctrine called naturalism.

Says Johnson, “My argument was that, although most people believe that an enormous amount of empirical evidence supports the general theory of evolution, this is in fact an illusion.” On the contrary, Johnson continues, many kinds of hostile scientific evidence have accumulated; but Darwinists do not question their doctrine of common ancestry since it is a “deductive certainty” derived from their philosophical system, not a conclusion they were driven to by the weight of evidence. In short, Johnson was claiming that Darwinism is as much the product of religious bias as is “creation science.”

Since one does not often hear Darwinian evolution labeled an “illusion” in polite meetings of Berkeley faculty members, it is not surprising that Johnson’s thesis seized the attention not only of his campus, but also of ever-widening circles of American academia over the past three years. In the course of Johnson’s many lectures around the country, and in meetings with distinguished scientists, theologians, and legal scholars, it has become clear that Johnson is creating something new, giving a fresh insight on the interplay of science, philosophy, and religion as they confront the question of origins. Anticipation has been steadily building for the appearance of the “Johnson critique” in book form so that the public can enter the dialogue.

Now, at last, we have Darwin on Trial (copublished by Regnery Gateway and InterVarsity Press). It is a lean volume, with 154 pages of text, followed by 33 pages of research notes. Michael Denton, the most prominent nonreligious skeptic of Darwinism of the 1980s, calls Johnson’s book “unquestionably the best critique of Darwinism I have ever read.”

In fact, it was Johnson’s reading of Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis while on sabbatical in England in 1987 that helped spark the whole project. Johnson discovered and read simultaneously both Denton’s critique of evolution and Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker, a best seller that vigorously defended Darwinian evolution. Johnson found Dawkins’s book “a brilliantly written polemic, and notable for the absence of supporting evidence,” and he was fascinated with Denton’s more skeptical outlook.

Darwin on Trial defies the comfortable stereotypes about creationism and evolutionism. For example, despite his deep surgery on Darwinism, Johnson has made it clear that he is not defending the teaching of “creation science” in schools, if the label is defined in legal terms as including such concepts as the recent, sudden creation of the universe and life, and Noah’s flood as the explanation for fossils.

This issue arose in the Berkeley faculty meeting. Some questioned Johnson’s purpose in critiquing Darwinism. Was there a hidden agenda—perhaps renewed legal challenges to suppress the teaching of evolution in schools or to include creationist material?

Johnson has responded by clearly identifying his own bias. He calls himself a “Christian and a creationist” but “not a Biblical literalist.” He defines creationist broadly as “anyone who believes in a God who creates.” Thus he is open to the possibility that evidence would show that God performed that work gradually over billions of years. To Johnson, the issue of the timing and speed of Creation are “side issues,” to which he pays little or no attention.

In The Dock

The title, Darwin on Trial, is perhaps inevitable, given Johnson’s vocation. As a professor of law, Johnson feels that he brings special tools of analysis to Darwin’s theory. He specializes in analyzing the logic that is used in arguments and in identifying the hidden assumptions that lie behind those arguments. Those tools have been honed in a distinguished law career.

Yet the title is a bit misleading, since Johnson spends little time discussing Charles Darwin himself. His target is Darwinism, the vast system of modern thought that has evolved since the Darwinian revolution of the 1800s. Darwinism is defined as “fully naturalistic evolution—meaning evolution that is not directed or controlled by any purposeful intelligence.”

Having identified the target, Johnson attacks it first from a scientific angle, with seven chapters surveying the alleged confirming evidence for the claims of Darwinism. Here, Johnson takes direct and deadly aim on the apologetics of Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould, who has repeatedly argued that evolution (“common ancestry”) is a fact, while Darwin’s theory about how that happens (“natural selection”) is open to discussion. Gould’s three chief evidences for evolution (microevolution, imperfections, and key fossil transitions) are evaluated rigorously, and his arguments are found to be seriously flawed.

After concluding that scientific evidence offers no convincing basis for Darwinian claims, Johnson turns to the overlapping areas of philosophy, education, religion, and law. He lays bare the evasive word games that Darwinists often play, such as changing the meaning of the word evolution frequently to serve their purposes. He also outlines the rich paradox of Darwinist religion, showing how readily Darwinists will integrate religious ideas with Darwinist principles—as long as the religion in question does not include a “pre-existing intelligence” that could act meaningfully to create.

Perhaps the most important chapter is the last one, which takes the reader on an exhilarating tour of the thought of the late philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper. Popper’s “falsification” principle is clearly explained and ruthlessly applied to Darwin’s theory. Johnson challenges the scientific community truly to test the common-ancestry hypothesis, which he feels has not yet had its day in “court.”

Biological Thought Police

It remains to be seen whether that “falsification program” will be initiated by the scientific community—especially by those biologists who make their living teaching and studying evolution. Dissidents within science who support Johnson’s critique have described a system of “thought control” under which it is professional suicide to question the basic assumptions under which evolutionary science operates. Those who dominate this area of science see themselves as besieged by religious fundamentalists, a category that, to these scientists, seems to include anyone who believes in a God who takes an active role in the world.

The public got a rare glimpse into how this system operates when science writer Forrest Mims III lost a position with Scientific American magazine after admitting he does not believe Darwin’s theory (CT, Nov. 19, 1990, p. 56). The editor explained that, even if Mims’s admittedly impeccable science writing dealt entirely with other subjects, the magazine could not afford to offend its readers by employing a creationist.

The Mims incident helps explain why a critique of the basic Darwinist assumptions could only be written by a nonscientist, someone not dependent on research grants and peer approval and who has academic tenure protecting his job. Johnson regards the personal attacks he has received from critics as only to be expected, considering what is at stake.

“Darwinist scientists have claimed that they know how biological creation occurred,” Johnson commented recently, “and that it was a mindless, purposeless process. If they have to defend that claim in a public debate on fair terms, they are going to be seriously embarrassed.”

Ultimately, Johnson’s goal is to place the reconsideration of Darwinism on the table at the highest intellectual levels of academia. For that to happen, there must be a concerted effort to “arouse from dogmatic slumber” those who control the terms of public intellectual discourse. Darwin on Trial may be the first wake-up call.

In his opening chapter, Johnson emphasizes the importance of defining terms and using them correctly. He affirms that his primary concern is not Darwin but Darwinism, and yet, unaccountably, he fails to define the latter, which is the single most-important word in his argument. Examination of the context and usage of Darwinism in chapter 1 shows that the first three occurrences refer to the scientific theory of Darwinian evolution. Three more represent the philosophical belief of naturalistic evolutionism. Several other references to Darwinism do not indicate which of the two meanings is meant. In the following chapters, both often occur (without identification) on the same page and at times even in the same paragraph.

Johnson successfully prosecutes philosophical Darwinism for misusing a scientific theory to support its claims. He also concludes that there is little if any evidence to support the theory of macroevolution (the belief that all living forms have arisen from a single source, which itself came from an inorganic form), and which he consistently tars with the brush of naturalistic Darwinism (better termed evolutionism), as if the two necessarily stand or fall together. An argument that attempts to kill two semantic birds with one stone often finds itself to be one of the birds, crippling communication.

Johnson also does an injustice to hundreds of evangelical Christian scholars in the life sciences who accept macroevolution as a working scientific theory to correlate current data and guide future research. Unfortunately, he deprecates the leadership of the 2,200-member American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) as “theistic evolutionists” who, he charges, embrace a “compatibilism” to accommodate the Darwinist establishment. In fact, ASA members uncompromisingly affirm both a thoroughly biblical theology and modern scientific explanation as complementary perspectives on the natural world.

Any attempt to wed a scientific theory to a specific philosophy (or theology) for either mutual support or rejection reverses the scientific revolution of Galileo and Newton, who freed science from such partnerships.

By Charles E. Hummel, author of The Galileo Connection (InterVarsity) and past president of the American Scientific Affiliation executive council.

Phillip Johnson’s credentials as a professor of law at Berkeley are doubly important. First, he is a recognized scholar at a prestigious institution who, clothed and in his right mind, does not think Darwinism is true. No one will confuse Berkeley with Bob Jones West, and his case cannot be dismissed by caricaturing the writer. Second, he teaches law, not science, and this is an advantage. Thinkers from literary critic C. S. Lewis to philosopher Thomas Kuhn have taught us that people outside a discipline can have the vantage point necessary to criticize a field’s dominant paradigm.

Johnson’s main thesis is this: Darwinism (which includes gradualism and punctuated equilibrium theory) is an untestable expression of dogmatic naturalism, not a real scientific hypothesis. Scientists have forced the facts to fit this Procrustean bed by using ad hoc hypotheses, circular arguments, and the like. But these practices have made evolutionary theory unfalsifiable. If Darwinism were a scientific hypothesis based on a fair assessment of the evidence, it would have been abandoned long ago.

Johnson’s concern is to get a fair hearing for “creationism” understood as the belief “that a supernatural Creator not only initiated this process but in some meaningful sense controls it in furtherance of a purpose.” He also criticizes the complementary view (science tells what happened and how; theology tells who did it and why), correctly in my view, because it inadvertently contributes to scientism and leaves no clear room for God to be involved in the process of creation.

This is an important book with a crucial message clearly unpopular in polite academic circles.

By J. P. Moreland, professor of philosophy of religion, Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California, and author of Christianity and the Nature of Science (Baker).

Darwin on Trial may be the most important book on the evolution debate in decades. Johnson goes straight to the core of the problem. By accepting the philosophical assumptions of “scientific naturalism,” scholars have been forced to view the shaping of the biological world in only one way, where nature is seen as “a closed system of material cause and effect.”

Such assumptions about reality shape our ability to see patterns in the data, pass judgment on the acceptability of theories, and turn some explanation into logical necessities. Since evolutionary theorizing has been done in the “warm bath” of such assumptions, its conclusions must be questioned at every level. Johnson proceeds to peel “evolutionary” thought like an onion, showing how one level after another reflects the assumption that nature is independent.

He first questions the “fact” that all forms of life are descended with modification from common ancestors. Is the acceptance of this due to material evidence, or is it simply viewed as the only conceivable independent material possibility? If common descent with modification has been demonstrated, is the Neo-Darwinian mechanism (the selection of random mutations) adequate to produce that modification (especially more complex sets of genetic instructions) without guidance? Johnson thinks it has been accepted only by default, not by proof.

In the next layer, even if mutation-selection is adequate to produce new complexity, that would not prove that it had really done so. Indeed, Johnson points out, the pattern of changing biological forms seen in the fossil record is almost the opposite of that predicted by naturalistic Darwinian theory.

And on to the core: If relationship, mechanism, and historical change could all be demonstrated, would “scientific naturalists” be justified in concluding that the system as a whole was a random concourse of atoms rather than a carefully constructed clock? Of course not, says Johnson. Since the absence of God from natural processes was their basic assumption, it cannot be drawn as a conclusion from their investigation.

For a century and a half, scientific naturalism has functioned as a comprehensive philosophy for all of reality—indeed, as a religion. In biologist E. O. Wilson’s words, “The final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material phenomena.” In the face of such a deliberate challenge, we must take care to withstand the whole attack, to avoid being swallowed up by their assumptions or sidetracked into fighting on their terms. Phillip Johnson calls us to a complete and truly scriptural alternative to scientific naturalism.

By David L. Wilcox, chairman of the Creation Commission for the American Scientific Affiliation and professor of science at Eastern College, Saint Davids, Pennsylvania.

Good doubt

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

—René Descartes in Principles of Philosophy

A meaningless gospel

The gospel is too readily heard and taken for granted, as though it contained no unsettling news and no unwelcome threat.… It is a truth that has been flattened, trivialized, and rendered inane.

—Walter Brueggemann in Finally Comes the Prophet

Anxiety and faith are incompatible

The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.

—George Müller in Signs of the Times

World of new thrills

People get from books the idea that if you have married the right person you may expect to go on “being in love” for ever. As a result when they find they are not, they think this proves they have made a mistake and are entitled to a change—not realizing that, when they have changed, the glamour will presently go out of the new love just as it went out of the old one. In this department of life, as in every other, thrills come at the beginning and do not last.…

Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time.

—C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity

Good soldier

He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish and prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian.

—John Milton in Areopagitica

Real reward

I once heard a story about a father who inquired of his son when he planned to purchase a much-needed automobile. “When God sends my one hundred fold,” the son replied. Then he explained, “Recently I gave a gift of $50. When God sends my reward I’ll have $5000 and can buy my car.” When he realized his son was serious, the father responded, “God is already sending you your reward. It comes every two weeks, and it is called salary.”

It is time we Christians stop and assess what we really believe about prosperity. A life lived for the glory of God is its own reward.

—Virginia Law Shell in Good News (Jan./Feb. 1991)

Kingdom flight

I am learning that God intends salvation to be more than a ticket to heaven, and that his chief purpose in providing the church is not to transport us there with as little inconvenience as possible.

—Don Ratzlaff in Christian Leader (April 23, 1991)

An attractive spirit

You’ve got to save your own soul first, and then the souls of your neighbors if they will let you; and for that reason you must cultivate, not a spirit of criticism, but the talents that attract people to the hearing of the Word.

—George Macdonald in The Marquis of Lossie

From miracle to mundane

[C. S.] Lewis may have become the chief Christian tutor to the twentieth century because he refuses the perennial temptation to turn the wine back into water.

—Ralph C. Wood in a review of Lewis biographies in Books & Religion (Spring 1991)

Identity crisis

The problem with Christians in America is not that Christians aren’t where they should be; the problem is that they’re not what they should be right where they are.

—Os Guinness in Radix (vol. 20, No. 1)

Black church leaders swap ministry strategies and address public-policy issues to strengthen troubled African-American families.

Without a doubt, American families are facing tough times. According to a newly released report from the National Commission on Children, one child in four is raised in a single-parent home; one of every five children lives in poverty; and more than a million babies each year are born out of wedlock.

Due to a complex set of sociological factors—not the least of which are economic disadvantage and continued racial discrimination—the crisis has hit minority families, particularly those in urban areas, hard. More than 50 percent of all black families are headed by single women, while “problems of teen pregnancy, crime, substance abuse, illiteracy, family dissolution, and unemployment are at all-time highs,” says the Detroit-based Institute for Black Family Development.

The real situation of African-American families, however, is much different from the negative images often portrayed in the media, says institute president Matthew Parker. “Solutions to the crisis of the black family are being generated by the black community itself, especially the church,” says Parker, who formed the institute in 1987 to equip pastors, youth workers, and churches to meet the spiritual needs of African-American families.

Today black churches are beginning to trade ideas and take an increasingly aggressive role in addressing a burgeoning set of educational, social, and economic problems.

Church Relevance

“The black church has always been actively involved in the educational and social development of black people,” writes Michigan State University professor Bonita Pope Curry in the new book The Black Family: Past, Present and Future (Zondervan). In the days just after slavery was abolished, it was the black church that took primary responsibility for educating former slaves who had been barred from formal education. After the Reconstruction era, it was the black denominations that took the lead in establishing institutions of higher education for black students banned from colleges and universities.

Yet while the black church has long emphasized social and family values, in many ways it “got a back seat” in addressing community problems in the past 25 years, says Parker. After the gains of the civil-rights era, “there was a segment of our community that said [to the church], ‘You’re not relevant anymore.’ … I think what you’re seeing now is that many of those same individuals … have come full circle and are recognizing that, indeed, the one institution that is constant and never changes in our community is the church.”

DeForest “Buster” Soaries, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens, New Jersey, says the black church is finding its new relevance after a time of great change. “For the past 400 years, the role of the black preacher has been to protect black people against brutal slavery and segregation,” he says. “This is the first generation of black Americans who have lived outside of segregation, and it takes some time to modify your means and to restrategize and regroup in light of your present predicament.” Now, Soaries adds, African-American pastors are “beginning to understand their significance beyond their local parish.”

Walter Tucker III, mayor of Compton, California, and himself a pastor, believes many black pastors are catching a new vision for themselves. He says, “It has taken these types of devastating circumstances to get us to look squarely in the mirror and realize there is a mandate on us to rise up and be part of the solution to turn this thing around.”

Culture Of Character

Two conferences held this summer may serve as cornerstones for defining black church involvement in family issues for the nineties. In late June, 350 pastors, youth workers, and Christian leaders gathered for Chicago ’91: National Conference on the Family, sponsored by the Institute for Black Family Development.

Keynote speaker for the conference was Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan, who encouraged the black church to join with the government and other community groups to help develop a “culture of character” among the nation’s youth. “We are concerned, we do care, and we do want to reverse the trends that are harming our children, our families, and our neighborhoods,” Sullivan said. “By becoming personally involved and assuming personal responsibility, we can strengthen our families and those institutions and community organizations—like our schools and our churches—which help to instill and reinforce values.”

Much of the Chicago conference centered on seven demonstration projects in several cities, out of which effective solutions to deal with specific concerns of black families are being developed. Leaders also networked and shared curriculum materials, books, tapes, and other family resources. “People came away with the sense that this was the beginning of something that could have an impact in terms of us as a people,” Parker says.

Public Policy

During the same week as the Chicago conference, about 150 African-American pastors came to Washington, D.C., for a briefing on the Restoration of the Black Family, sponsored by the California-based Traditional Values Coalition. While Chicago ’91 was ministry-oriented, the briefing focused on the role of the black church in influencing public policy that affects families. Speakers included Sullivan, President Bush, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, members of Congress, and representatives of special-interest groups that concentrate on the family. Among the key issues addressed were abortion, homosexuality, school choice, and reform of the welfare and tax codes.

Many pastors pledged to mobilize their churches to become more involved politically, especially on “traditional values” and profamily issues. “If the black church would start understanding its stock in this, then we could really start seeing the dividends by becoming power brokers in the politics of the nineties,” said Compton’s Mayor Tucker.

Billy Ingram, pastor of Maranatha Community Church in Los Angeles, was involved with both conferences and says he believes there is a new “movement of God” at work within black churches. “God has thrust us out to main stage, basically saying, your time has come,” he says. “This will only be the beginning of the commitment we have made to see that our communities are resurrected from the confusion, the animosity, the turmoil, and the poor and shameful image that a few have given to all of us.… And I believe what God is going to do will reach far beyond the black community.”

By Kim A. Lawton, with reporting by Tammy Blackard in Chicago.

Integrating the Religious Right?

In the decade since the birth of conservative religious politics, the Religious Right has by and large been a white movement. However, Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), believes that is changing. “The untold story of America is the black, traditional values-minded pastor and congregational constituent,” Sheldon told CHRISTIANITY TODAY. TVC is an evangelical public-policy group that focuses on a conservative agenda that includes opposition to abortion, homosexuality, and pornography.

At a TVC-sponsored briefing on the Restoration of the Black Family, several African-American pastors aligned themselves with Sheldon, the conservative movement, and the Republican party.

“We do not want to be recognized on the same line as Jesse Jackson,” said Phillip Goudeaux, pastor of Calvary Christian Center in Sacramento, California. “We don’t believe in abortion or a prohomosexual agenda, or some of the other liberal stands that Jesse has made … he is not speaking for the black race.”

“We have found [conservative] leaders in the Capitol and in the White House that believe in the principles of God, and we’re going to link ourselves with those people,” echoed Sherwood Carthin, pastor of the Church of the Living God, also in Sacramento. “Whoever wants to get legislation passed is going to have to deal with us. The black family is back.”

Still, the extent to which African-American Christians may join the Religious Right remains to be seen. Exit polls from the last presidential election found that 90 percent of blacks voted for Michael Dukakis. According to Robert Woodson, president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, “The conservative label can be disturbing to many blacks” because of its historical association with opposition to civil rights and affirmative action. Yet, he says, “While most black Americans won’t identify themselves with the word conservative, when it gets down to defining the activities that define a conservative, they will agree.”

Matthew Parker, president of the Institute for Black Family Development, emphasizes that there has always been diversity within the African-American community. “We really have not changed,” he says.

Nearly 5,000 pastors, lay preachers, and other church workers came from across the 11 time zones of the Soviet Union to attend a Billy Graham School of Evangelism conducted last month in Moscow. It was the largest such school the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) has ever sponsored. And for the Soviets, according to local denominational leaders, it was the most representative gathering of Soviet Christians ever held. The five-day conference brought together Baptists, Pentecostals, Seventh-day Adventists, Methodists, and members of other denominations, “registered” (government sanctioned) and “unregistered” alike. Symbolic of ongoing religious tensions, however, the Russian Orthodox Church declined to participate formally in the school, though several Orthodox Christians did attend as individuals. In scores of interviews with the Protestant leaders, reporters were able to piece together a picture of what is happening at the grassroots of Soviet religion. Among the gleanings:

• The current evangelistic wave began building in 1988, the year the Russian Orthodox Church observed the millennium of Christianity in the Soviet Union and when many Protestant leaders finally concluded that Mikhail Gorbachev was serious about religious freedom. The vast majority of new converts are young people under age 30. Some come from Orthodox roots but are attracted by the Bible teaching and study groups in the Protestant churches. A surprising number of the new Christians are public-school teachers and other professionals with higher educations, forming a potential base of new leadership for Soviet Protestant churches, whose pastors and members were denied educational opportunities for generations.

• Many congregations, from the Polish border on the west to the far reaches of Siberia in the east, have doubled or tripled in size since 1988. Denominational leaders say growth has been so rapid, and communication so difficult, that it is impossible to arrive at accurate statistics.

• A large number of churches and new mission groups are involved in “compassion” ministries to people in homes for the elderly and for children, hospitals, prison camps, and other institutions. The outreach to prison camps is catching on: in several cases, camp commanders have requested such ministry. Hundreds of prisoners have been baptized in outdoor services with fellow inmates looking on. Hundreds of others await completion of discipleship programs before they can be baptized.

• A thaw has come to attitudes of many in the formerly unregistered groups toward those in the registered church bodies. In the new era of freedom, their formerly illegal separation from the state no longer has meaning as a badge of purity, in contrast to what they saw as compromise on the part of those who had yielded to government control as registered churches.

At the same time, Baptists and Pentecostals, long cool toward each other, are discovering their common understanding of essential Christian doctrine. The result is a degree of unity, strength, and evangelistic purpose that has not existed since the early 1960s, possibly not ever, Soviet Protestant leaders say.

Bridging The Gap

The invited participants in the school paid their own transportation (as low as $1 for an 18-hour train trip from Estonia). They were housed and fed at BGEA expense at Moscow University, just across the Moscow River from the sports arena where the school was held. In a departure from the school’s schedule, many participants formed teams after hours and went into the streets around the urban campus, witnessing to passersby.

At the request of local leaders, Graham offered counsel on bridging the cultural and educational gap between the generation of new converts and the Protestant churches, which tend to reflect the same kind of social conservatism that marked American fundamentalism in the 1930s. The evangelist also warned the assembly to watch out for false teachers and exploiters from the West who would split churches and exaggerate their visits to raise money for their own use back home. (Some Soviet church leaders cited the “invasion” of parachurch groups from the West as one of the top three problems they face.) Church leaders invited Graham to return next year to preach in massive Lenin stadium. The evangelist said he is praying about the invitation.

Graham’s fifth visit to Moscow also included a 40-minute meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Most of the conversation was behind closed doors and covered various topics, “including moral and spiritual concerns,” Graham said, declining to divulge details.

At the conclusion of his School of Evangelism, Graham also met with Boris Yeltsin. Meeting with the evangelist was one of Yeltsin’s first official appointments following his inauguration as president of the Russian republic. Graham described the meeting as one of the best he has ever had with any political leader. Their conversation dealt almost entirely with spiritual topics, he said.

By Edward E. Plowman in Moscow.

When a 25-year-old Albanian man spotted a Dutch missionary on the streets of Tirana, he tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said, “Could you tell me about God?”

That kind of spiritual curiosity is characteristic of many Albanians, emerging from their nation’s nearly 25 years of official atheism (CT, May 27, 1991, p. 52). The missionary that the young Albanian approached was one of more than 100 missionaries from a dozen evangelical agencies and churches that pooled their resources to hold the first major Albanian evangelistic campaign in at least 50 years.

The Albanian Encouragement Project, as the campaign was called, held nightly meetings, July 1–5, at Tirana’s main soccer stadium. Speakers included Bible-smuggler Brother Andrew.

Missionaries from 17 nations also held informal morning sessions, where seekers huddled around missionaries teaching from John’s gospel. Some 25,000 copies of the Gospel in the Albanian language were distributed throughout the week, along with over 10,000 New Testaments.

In addition, the event was covered by Albanian television and radio and several newspapers, including the former Communist party organ, Zeri i Popullit. The crusade was opened by the minister of culture, and at least five government ministers attended evening meetings.

More than a hundred people indicated decisions for Christ during the campaign; two churches, with a total of 175 people, were founded. The new congregations virtually equal the size of Albania’s evangelical movement when it was last counted in 1940, the same year American missionaries were forced to leave the country.

Missionaries did find a remnant of Albanian believers. One man in his early twenties said he encountered Christianity through the writings of Tolstoy and later inadvertently tuned in Trans World Radio’s Albanian-language program, to which he and five friends have regularly listened.

Such informal gatherings may have been the extent of Albania’s evangelical activity for years, but no longer. Shortly after the crusade ended, about 175 Albanians met in a park to establish an evangelical church. The next Sunday they divided into two local churches, led by new Albanian-speaking missionaries.

Many Albanians saw hope in the message of the evangelistic campaign. Said one young man: “We have been living in hell, but now we have a week in paradise.”

By Art Moore in Tirana, Albania.