GUATEMALA

Street Ministry Threatened

About one year ago, a 13-year-old boy was kicked to death by four uniformed, on-duty policemen in downtown Guatemala City. Outraged, Bruce Harris, director of Casa Allanza (Covenant House), a 10-year-old ministry to street children in Guatemala City, undertook his own investigation of the incident. Ultimately, the four officers were convicted and sentenced. “This is only the second time in the history of Guatemala where police have been jailed for human-rights abuses,” says Harris.

Since then, Casa Allanza, a branch of New York City’s Covenant House, has become involved in 39 court cases alleging mistreatment of street children by local police and military, 16 of which involve murder charges. As a result, the ministry itself has suffered harassment by local military police. In one instance, plainclothes officers allegedly abducted two workers who were offering first aid to street children. After action by the U.S. ambassador and Amnesty International, the workers were released unharmed. Harris says he has received death threats.

ISRAEL

Christian Embassy Honored

The International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem has been awarded the Knesset Speaker’s Award, the first time a Christian institution in Israel has received the prestigious civic prize. The award, presented for the promotion of good will in Israel, was opposed by Orthodox Jewish activists, who accused the embassy of being a missionary front, the Religious News Service reported.

Embassy director Johann Luckoff said the organization would use the $7,500 prize money to help charter planes to transport Soviet Jews to Israel.

ANGOLA

Churches Cheer Cease-Fire

Church leaders in Angola welcomed the signing of an agreement to end 16 years of fighting between government and rebel forces. An official cease-fire went into effect May 31, signed by President José Eduardo dos Santos, who until recently espoused Marxism and was supported by the Soviet Union, and by Jonas Savimbi, leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which received U.S. and South African aid.

“The dreamed-of peace has arrived!” said Antonia Leonora van der Meer, international correspondent for the Association of Evangelicals of Angola. Church leaders called for an ecumenical service of thanksgiving and prayer for the future of the nation for June 2. With the U.S./Soviet-fashioned peace in place, Angolans turned their attention to rebuilding their country after the war, which claimed an estimated 300,000 lives. Free elections are scheduled for late 1992.

“Biblically, peace means much more than just absence of war,” van der Meer said. “Many took advantage of the period of war to indulge in all kinds of corruption. As a church, we hope to receive the grace to raise a prophetic voice to denounce this social disease, demonstrating a different standard.” Van der Meer said a “growing openness” now exists in the country for Christian witness. It is now possible to use public buildings for evangelistic meetings, he said, and the government has sought to improve relations with churches.

JORDAN

King Counters Islamic Power

Moves by Jordan’s King Hussein to revive the country’s multiparty system of government are seen by most Middle East observers as an attempt to counter the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalists in the country. The Muslim Brotherhood, which advocates strict Islamic laws, won the largest block of seats in Jordan’s parliamentary elections, held in November 1989 for the first time in 22 years.

Recently, government officials who are members of the Brotherhood have sought to remove women from key government positions. They have also tried to impose Islam-inspired constraints on society, such as a ban on coeducation and on fathers watching their daughters’ gymnastics and sports classes. Those actions have drawn strong criticism from the country’s more Westernized citizens.

Hussein’s new charter calls for the government to craft laws consistent with both democracy and Islamic tradition, and for greater freedoms for women and the press.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Formed: The Brazilian Evangelical Association. Its constitution opens membership to local churches, state conventions, missionary agencies, and pastors, and it establishes 15 commissions to study various issues. Evangelist Caio Fábio D’Araújo Filho was selected as president.

Cleared: A controversial measure to allow divorced and remarried people to be ordained in the Church of England. The law, approved for the state church last year by Parliament, was delayed by a lawsuit, which was rejected by the courts.

Established: The Qur’an as the supreme law in Pakistan. A measure passed by the country’s Parliament subjected all aspects of life to Islamic tenets, or shari‘a, though amendments to the bill secured Parliament’s authority and protected constitutional rights of women.

Dedicated: A memorial to Eric Liddell, the Scottish missionary and runner whose story inspired the movie Chariots of Fire. A stone marker was unveiled at the Second Middle School in Weifand City, the site of the prison camp in northern China where Liddell died as a prisoner of war in 1945.

W. Stanley Mooneyham, former president of World Vision, died June 3 of kidney failure at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 65. Mooneyham was president of World Vision from 1969 to 1982, during which time World Vision’s budget grew by about 600 percent and its staff tripled.

“Stan’s impact on World Vision was immeasurable,” World Vision President Robert Seiple said. “Much of our significant growth, especially through television, came under his leadership. Additionally, the energy he gave to the Vietnamese boat people through Operation Seasweep stands as one of the pillars of World Vision folklore.”

Prior to joining World Vision, Mooneyham was a special assistant to Billy Graham, coordinating major congresses on evangelism in Berlin in 1966 and Singapore in 1968. Mooneyham was ordained as a Free Will Baptist minister in 1949 and led the National Association of Free Will Baptists from 1962 to 1965. He held positions with the National Association of Evangelicals and the Evangelical Press Association. He wrote numerous books, including Dancing on the Strait and Narrow, published by Harper & Row in 1989.

At the time of his death, Mooneyham was minster at large for Palm Desert (Calif.) Community Presbyterian Church and chairman of the Global Aid Foundation, an organization providing relief to Kurdish refugees. He is survived by his wife, Nancy; former wife, LaVerda Mooneyham; two daughters, two sons, and one grandson.

Returning to Scotland some 36 years after his last campaign there, evangelist Billy Graham called on church leaders and young people alike to recapture the spiritual heritage of their country, home of John Knox, presbyterianism, and the King James Bible. More than 250,000 people attended the series of ten stadium meetings, held in three major cities during late May and early June. An average of 1,860 per night (just over 7 percent of the audience) came forward at Graham’s invitations. Unlike his usual calls to commitment to Jesus Christ, Graham’s invitations in Scotland included challenges for Christians to commit themselves publicly to full-time ministry.

“What we need in Scotland is young men and women to offer themselves as ministers, missionaries, and evangelists, people who have a gift from God,” Graham said.

The evangelist’s message came in response to comments by Church of Scotland leaders, who have seen the national church lose a third of its members over the past three decades.

“Many of today’s church leaders in Scotland trace their spiritual roots back to Mr. Graham’s historic meetings in Glasgow in 1955,” said David McNee, chairman of Mission Scotland 1991. “Perhaps this mission will provide an infrastructure of new leadership in the future.”

Indeed, young people did respond in large numbers to Graham’s messages. An average of over 60 percent of those responding each night were under 25 years of age, organizers said. They added that almost half the commitments were first-time decisions, many by individuals with no church background.

Graham began his crusade with an address to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a privilege offered only once since 1955—to the Queen of England—when Graham previously addressed the body. Video and satellite links carried crusade messages to remote locations in Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland; to oil rigs in the North Sea; and to units of Britain’s “Desert Rats” based in Germany following service in the Persian Gulf War.

Throughout Europe, other evangelists took advantage of new opportunities to preach in formerly communist lands:

• Despite cold, rainy weather, more than 125,000 people attended 11 stadium meetings conducted in Romania by Luis Palau. In all, 39,400 indicated commitments to Jesus Christ. The 31-percent response rate was the highest the evangelist has seen in his team’s 25 years of campaign ministry.

At the close of the final meeting, held June 4 in the Black Sea city of Constanţa, nearly 80 percent of the crowd of 10,500 indicated they had invited Christ into their lives. Responses throughout the campaign, arranged by the Evangelical Alliance of Romania, exhausted supplies of materials. Organizers were forced to ask other cities for any extra literature available to meet the demand.

Palau, who visited Romania about a year ago, was also interviewed on national television and met with top public officials. Local leaders said the campaign “earned respect for evangelicals in Romania” and that no matter what happens in the country’s political future, the Word of God had been “deeply planted in the hearts of the people.”

• A month-long crusade in Kiev by evangelist John Guest has resulted in several dozen new churches being formed in the Ukrainian city of 3 million. “As an American evangelist, it is relatively easy to draw crowds and ‘converts,’ ” Guest said. “But the real work is follow-up. Teaching for a month gives me the freedom to really disciple these new believers.” Guest spoke at various locations around the city from May 4 through June 4, teaching through the Gospel of John.

Leaders of the new home churches are being trained by Biblical Education by Extension, an arm of Eastern European Seminary. Plans call for more than 100 new churches to be established near campuses, housing developments, and suburban areas.

ACCREDITATION FIGHT

Westminster Wins

The pressure is off Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia to add a woman to its all-male board of directors. Middle States Association of Schools and Colleges, which has accredited the seminary since 1954, had threatened to remove its endorsement if the seminary did not name a woman to the board (CT, Oct. 22, 1990, p. 51). However, the accreditation agency reversed its course in late June, saying Westminster had satisfied the agency’s criteria by putting more women on board subcommittees.

Westminster is run by a board of clergy and ordained elders, which, in accordance with the seminary’s understanding of biblical church leadership, have been males only. Constitutional attorney William Bentley Ball, representing the school, said Middle States’s action represented “a distinct threat to religious liberty and an equally severe denial of academic freedom.” Westminster had filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education body that oversees Middle States, and the department had begun investigating Middle States’s newly developed criteria for cultural diversity. Education Secretary Lamar Alexander had deferred reauthorizing Middle States as an accrediting body until the issue was resolved.

Meanwhile, Westminster named Samuel Logan, formerly the school’s academic dean, as its new president.

IN COURT

Suit Names Swaggart

A federal bankruptcy judge has approved a $750,000 settlement that drops some defendants from defrocked preacher Marvin Gorman’s $90 million defamation suit against evangelist Jimmy Swaggart. Swaggart, his wife, and the Assemblies of God General Council, however, are still listed as prime defendants in the case, which is scheduled for court this month. Gorman’s personal bankruptcy case claims debts of $1 million, and his Louisiana-based ministry claims debts of $3 million.

CHURCH/STATE

Regent U. Challenged

Pat Robertson has become tangled in a squabble over whether his university can qualify for government tax-free bonds, much like the controversy faced earlier by Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University (CT, May 27, 1991, p. 57).

Robertson’s Regent University recently came under fire from the Washington, D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State for seeking nearly $10 million in tax-free industrial development bonds from the Virginia Beach, Virginia, city council. Americans United executive director Robert Maddox said his group would urge the city to vote down the bonds because Regent is primarily a religious institution.

“Pat Robertson is free to operate Regent University and other aspects of his religious ministry in any way he chooses,” Maddox said, “but he must not try to force citizens to support that ministry through government action.”

The Virginia Supreme Court recently ruled that Falwell’s Liberty University was primarily a religious institution and therefore did not qualify for similar development bonds, totaling about $60 million.

OPERATION RESCUE

Police Reverse Policy

The Los Angeles Police Department announced it will discontinue using nunchakus, a martial-arts device, when arresting antiabortion protesters. Operation Rescue (OR) had filed suit to force the department to quit using the instruments, two-foot-long sticks joined by several inches of cord, to haul rescuers from sit-in sites. The announcement came after three days of trial testimony in a U.S. District Court.

Operation Rescue leader Randall Terry called the announcement “a face-saving measure.” “We felt that the fact that they were willing to negotiate it before the judge ruled was really an admission of guilt,” Terry said.

An attorney for the police department said public outcry, over the beating of motorist Rodney King by police affected the decision to settle the case. The new policy deals only with treatment of antiabortion activists, according to the police department announcement.

In addition, assistant chief of police Robert Vernon (CT, Apr. 29, 1991, p. 42) has come under criticism from the Los Angeles homosexual community and a city council member for comments made in a series of messages he delivered several years ago at Grace Community Church. In the series, entitled “The True Masculine Role,” Vernon, a teaching elder at the church, allegedly condemns homosexuality and advocates women’s submission to men and corporal punishment of children.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Paroled: Richard Dortch, former aide to PTL leader Jim Bakker. Dortch’s parole was approved because of his declining health. He was originally sentenced to eight years in prison after pleading guilty to mail fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.

Delayed: The opening of New Heritage USA, due to lawsuits between its principal stockholders and business partner Morris Cerullo (CT, Apr. 29, 1991, p. 40). After purchasing the South Carolina theme park that once belonged to Jim Bakker, the new owners announced plans for a July 4 opening. No new date has been set.

Named: As chancellor of Asbury College, Dennis Kinlaw, who has served as president of the Wilmore, Kentucky, school for 18 years. Edwin Blue, former executive vice-president, was named president.

“Early one morning, after I had hung on in a coma for 44 days, the night nurse on the third floor came to check my vital signs and found no response to her probings. I had slipped from this life into the next. At five A.M. a doctor pronounced me clinically dead, pulled a sheet over my head, and left the room in darkness.”

Twenty-eight minutes later, says Betty Malz, the prayer of her father brought her back to life.

Malz recounts her experience in My Glimpse of Eternity and five other books published by Chosen Books. (The above quotation was taken from Angels Watching Over Me, 1986.) According to the publisher, My Glimpse has sold nearly 1 million copies and has been printed in 11 languages. The 62-year-old Assemblies of God member has conducted women’s retreats throughout the U.S. and Canada and has appeared frequently on Christian television shows, speaking of her “death” and out-of-body experience, which she says ushered her into heaven.

But a recent article in Christian Week magazine, published in Winnipeg, Manitoba, calls into question the truthfulness of the story on which Malz has built her ministry. Medical personnel involved in the case, quoted in the article, say Betty Malz did not die.

In response, Chosen Books says it stands by the integrity of its author, and claims that the hospital and doctors want to cover up their mishandling of Malz’s treatment.

Declared Dead

According to Malz, “Surgery revealed that I had suffered a ruptured appendix 11 days before, and that a mass of gangrene had coated all of my organs, causing them to disintegrate.” By her published account, “The doctor who had declared me dead was shocked. He validated that I had been dead for 28 minutes, and sent me home two days later with no discernible physical difficulties from my extraordinary experience.”

Malz writes that her experience took place July 31, 1959, at Terre Haute Union Hospital in Indiana. To research her article for Christian Week, free-lance writer Lorna Dueck traveled to Terre Haute to interview doctors, nurses, Malz’s relatives, and others involved in the case.

“This is almost a complete fabrication. I had a direct relationship with the patient,” said Dr. Henry Bopp, who twice performed surgery on Malz. “She did not die. She may have dreamt she did, but she did not die in the hospital,” he told Dueck.

Bopp’s brother, James, was the anesthetist for Malz’s surgery. “I challenge [the publishers] to produce the medical records and let independent doctors look at the records,” he said. “I’ll flat guarantee you this didn’t happen.” He is also adamant that the hospital has nothing to hide.

The primary-care physician for Malz (then 29-year-old Betty Upchurch) during her 1959 hospitalization was Dr. H. Clark Boyd, now 79 and long retired from practice. According to Dueck, he has for years expected a reporter to question him on the actions attributed to him. He said his patient was sick, but never in a coma or anywhere near septic shock or death.

“I had a very good relationship with her,” Boyd told Dueck. “That was until I wouldn’t believe her story, and she kept getting madder and madder. Then she didn’t come in anymore.”

“Unverifiable”

According to Dueck, two independent hospital sources confirmed Malz had two July 1959 admission and discharge dates at Terre Haute for a total stay of 29 days. Her final discharge date was the day of her “death.”

“The events related by the individuals are unverifiable,” Peggy Woodsmall, public-relations director at Union Hospital, told Dueck. “It’s not documerited in the record that she died.”

Because of patient confidentiality rules, hospital records on Malz may not be released to others. Chosen Books editor Jane Campbell said the publisher has no plans to ask Malz for the records.

Malz did not respond to requests for an interview from CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Campbell said Malz wished to put the Christian Week article and controversy behind her.

Lost Files

Leonard LeSourd, cofounder of Chosen Books, edited Glimpse of Eternity. He told CT that he traveled to Terre Haute in 1976 to check its accuracy, and there interviewed family members and others, including one doctor, whose name he does not recall. LeSourd says the files containing his research were lost several years ago when Chosen Books, now a subsidiary of Fleming H. Revell Company, was sold to Zondervan Publishing. Nevertheless, he says, “my memory is good on the facts surrounding the Betty Malz story.”

Now associate publisher of Chosen Books, LeSourd says the medical people he talked with denied there was a death. “Of course the doctors would say that. I expected them to be defensive for fear of medical malpractice [lawsuits],” he says.

“The [medical] records weren’t that important to me,” LeSourd says. “Her father said she had a sheet over her head. He was a pastor [of an Assemblies of God congregation in Terre Haute]. Why should he lie?”

LeSourd says he also relied on the research of his late wife, Catherine Marshall, which backed up Malz’s account. The well-known writer was the first to publish Malz’s story in Guideposts, in May 1976.

Vision Of Heaven

“Whether Betty was officially dead, or clinically dead, is not what the story is all about,” LeSourd insists. “Betty has a marvelous ministry. She has encouraged thousands with her vision of heaven.”

Chosen editor Campbell, like LeSourd, believes the doctors involved would never admit to Malz’s death for fear of malpractice claims. She, too, vouches for the author’s character and the fruit of her ministry, and is unconvinced that sufficient evidence has been presented to question Malz’s integrity. “If she were promoting a story that were not true … that would be deplorable,” Campbell says. “I don’t believe she’s doing that. If I did, I’d pull the book in a minute.”

By Ken Sidey.

With the virtual withdrawal of its moderate faction from national denominational politics, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) concluded its least contentious annual meeting in over a decade last month in Atlanta. In place of the political showdowns of recent years, the convention took on the flavor of a five-day “God and Country” rally, with a liberal dose of “Religious Right” politics mixed in for the estimated 20,000 participants.

Since 1979, control of the convention’s leadership has been held by conservatives, who view the Bible as “inerrant.” Moderates last year said they would no longer challenge the “fundamentalists” at the annual conventions. In May, a group of 6,000 dissenting moderates formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in an effort to bypass the Nashville-based SBC executive committee’s missions budget (CT, June 24, 1991, p. 60).

As a result, conservative pastor Morris Chapman of Waco, Texas, was re-elected without dissent to a second one-year term as president of the 15 million-member SBC.

Flexing their conservative muscle, SBC messengers (delegates) also voted 53 to 47 percent to cut off financial backing for the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs. The Washington-based agency, supported by ten denominations, including the American Baptists and the three main denominations of black Baptists, has long been a sore point for conservatives.

The meeting also gave final approval to a $140.7 million Cooperative Program budget that represents a 1.5 percent boost in spending by the SBC’s head office. An increase of 6.3 percent went to the Christian Life Commission, the SBC’s own “moral concerns agency,” which has lobbied the White House against federal funding of abortion and “obscene” arts projects.

Messengers also voted to praise U.S. policy in the Gulf War, to support parental choice in education, and to renew a call for chastity by declaring that any sex outside marriage violates the “biblical standard of sexuality.”

Challenge To Other Churches

In a year when church teaching on sexual conduct has had more public attention in the secular media than at any time since the 1960s, the SBC meeting challenged other denominations considering liberal teachings on sex to cleave to the biblical standard. A resolution passed overwhelmingly that urges “all Christians to uphold the biblical standard of sexuality,” which it says condemns “premarital sex, adultery, rape, incest, pornography, promiscuity, prostitution and homosexuality.”

Sponsors said the resolution was offered as a “challenge” to other churches considering liberalized standards for sexual teaching, such as the 2.9 million-member Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), whose annual assembly had just opened in Baltimore. The Presbyterians had before them the controversial report calling for the church to sanction sex outside marriage and permit ordination of practicing homosexuals, which was overwhelmingly rejected a few days later (see “Presbyterian Assembly Rejects Sexuality Report,” p. 37).

David Hankins, a pastor from Lake Charles, Louisiana, and chairman of the SBC’s resolutions committee, told reporters the Presbyterian report represented a “theology of paganism—not the religion of Christ.” He called the issues of human sexuality a “theological watershed,” and added that the liberal views of other churches on those issues would widen divisions in U.S. Christianity.

The SBC messengers also passed resolutions declaring “outrage” over a $25,000 grant by the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control to a national “lesbian and gay health conference” to promote “safe sex” and to prevent AIDS, and criticizing President Bush for not stopping federal grants to arts projects seen as “obscene” or “sacrilegious.” They specifically urged Bush to fire John Frohnmayer, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Other highlights of the week included a speech by former White House aide Oliver North (who was fired over his role in the Reagan administration’s Iran-contra scandal) to the conservative-run, preconvention Pastors’ Conference. North, a charismatic Episcopalian, was warmly applauded by the flag-waving crowd when he denounced Washington as a modern-day “Sodom and Gomorrah” and declared that his religious faith had sustained him in his battle to stay out of jail.

Richard Lee of Atlanta, head of the pastors’ group, described North as “an American hero … to the vast majority of us.” But a dozen pickets outside the Georgia World Congress Center dissented, some holding placards reading: “I’m a Southern Baptist and Ollie North Does Not Speak for Me.”

By Richard Leigh Walker in Atlanta.

While mainline denominations struggle this summer over homosexuality as a theological issue, Religious Right activists are increasingly addressing it as a public-policy matter. Consider the protest targets of religiously oriented conservative groups in this month alone:

• The Thirteenth National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference, scheduled for July 24–29 in New Orleans. The event received an undesignated $25,000 federal grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which the CDC says was to be used for AIDS-related workshops. Critics contend the money was used for other parts of the conference. According to a preliminary program released last month, topics at the conference include “Creating Mythologies and Rituals for Queer People,” “The Lesbian Erotic Dance,” “SEXCESSful Teen Outreach,” and “Eroticizing Safer Sex for Women.”

• A Public Broadcasting System showing of Tongues Untied, an explicit film about the trials faced by black homosexual men, which was scheduled for July 16. According to conservative groups, the movie received a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) production grant. It was originally shown at the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which also received an NEA grant, and is now receiving more tax support through publicly funded TV.

• Two gay-rights bills in the California state legislature. Rallies are being held across the state to oppose the bills that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing and employment and would allow homosexual couples to register as “domestic partners.”

The ‘Gay Nineties’

People for the American Way (PAW), the liberal lobby created to counter the Religious Right, charges that conservative Christians are making this the “Gay Nineties” in their “preoccupation” with the homosexuality issue. “Homosexuality has emerged as a central, unifying concern of the Religious Right,” said a recent PAW mailing.

For once, Concerned Women for America (CWA) president Beverly LaHaye agrees with a PAW assessment. “Everything we are doing right now is turning out to be a homosexual issue,” she says. “We are now being consumed by it.”

Much of the activity has taken place on state and local levels, where gay-rights legislation is being considered by city councils and state legislatures. LaHaye has been a frequent speaker at rallies opposing such legislation, and her CWA state affiliates have been active in the battles.

Focus on the Family has also been active on issues involving homosexuality, but vice-president of public policy Tom Minnery says their activities have been in “reaction against the onslaught of the gay-rights agenda.” Focus on the Family is particularly involved in school-related battles, such as fighting sex-education courses and textbooks that promote “the normalization of the gay lifestyle,” Minnery says.

Minnery emphasizes that his organization’s attention to the issue has been prompted by the many calls and letters they have been receiving from concerned supporters. “I don’t think anybody from the Religious Right sat around in a closed room and said, ‘Well, this is our strategy for this year, to pick fights with the gays,’ ” he says, “if it’s a rallying point, it’s because traditional values are being attacked, and people are rallying to defend them.”

However, in the view of Jim Smith, director of government relations for the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission (CLC), there has not yet been enough conservative action on the issue. “The average evangelical Christian doesn’t want to have to confront this debate,” he says. “That’s discouraging and disturbing, because it demonstrates a lack of understanding about just how serious the homosexual movement is in promoting its agenda.” The CLC has focused its efforts on the tax support that federal agencies have been providing for homosexual-related activities.

Hating The Sinner

Not surprisingly, PAW is sharply critical of this new attention to homosexual issues. Public policy chairman John Buchanan says he is especially disturbed by the tone of much of the debate. “When hate talk comes from the pulpit and from religious leaders, it’s not only wrong in terms of intolerance, it can also be dangerous,” he says, noting the rise in hate crimes against gays. “Many of the messages [come out] hating the sinner as well as the sin, assuming it to be a sin in the first place,” he says.

LaHaye acknowledges the need to be “sensitive to those who are really hurting and looking for answers.” “We minister to them,” she says. However, she is uncompromising in her opposition to “militant, radical” homosexuals who are out to “attack” the family. She says her speeches have been interrupted by gay activists shouting and blowing whistles, and she has received threats from some gay groups. She now travels with a security detail.

Both sides have won victories in the debate over homosexuality, but much has been left unresolved, both ecclesiastically and politically. And virtually all participants agree the battle is probably only just beginning.

Presbyterians usually don’t make front-page news—except when they talk about sex. Last month, headlines across the country told the story: “Presbyterians Hold to Traditional Norms, Reject Gay Ordination.” But if news is defined as something new or unusual, what happened in Baltimore last month at the 203rd general assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (PCUSA) was hardly news at all.

Going into the convention, the center of attention was Keeping Body and Soul Together: Sexuality, Spirituality, and Social Justice, a report released last February by a denominational task force on human sexuality. The 196-page report discarded traditional norms, including the idea that sex be confined to the institution of marriage.

Few believed the church’s general assembly, its highest policy-making body, would approve the controversial report. (At the assembly, 96 percent of the commissioners [representatives] voted to reject it.) The only questions revolved around how the report would be handled. In the end, it was treated with predictable ambivalence, to the dismay of Presbyterian liberals and conservatives alike, who are growing tired of the 2.9 million-member denomination’s refusal to take a more definitive stand on sexuality issues.

Mixed Signals

“The issue before us … is whether or not we want to continue to be family to each other,” said Gordon Stewart, whose 67-member general assembly committee was charged with addressing the sexuality report.

In fact, it is the general assembly’s pursuit of unity that has frustrated many in the denomination. Both sides in the sexuality debate have regularly pointed to perceived inconsistencies in the church’s stand. Homosexuals have asked why, if they are welcomed by the church, they cannot be ordained. Conservative forces argue that, if homosexual activity is sin, as official church position states, then self-avowed and practicing homosexuals should be subject to church discipline.

Neither side received clear signals at the Baltimore meeting. In rejecting the sexuality report, the general assembly affirmed the Scriptures as the “unique and authoritative word of God, superior to all other authorities,” and “the sanctity of the marital covenant between one man and one woman.” Yet commissioners declined to adopt language affirming marriage between a man and a woman as “the only God-ordained relationship for the expression of sexual intercourse.”

There were other mixed signals, as well. Commissioners elected Herbert Valentine of Baltimore, a backer of the controversial sexuality report, to a one-year term as church moderator. After the report was overwhelmingly rejected, Valentine exercised his personal privilege as moderator by inviting the assembly to participate in a procession on behalf of gays, lesbians, and their families and supporters. Several hundred participated, carrying a 12-foot wooden cross along with signs with messages such as “Silence No More.”

Bible Debate

Underlying the debate on sexuality issues is a more fundamental debate in the PCUSA related to the authority and interpretation of the Bible. Theologian Jack Rogers, a highly regarded Presbyterian seminary professor, believes the theological differences between the PCUSA’s ideological extremes are at heart quite simple. “The issue is whether we can find in Scripture a norm external to ourselves,” says Rogers, “a revelation that tells us what is right and wrong.”

He adds, “One side says ‘yes’ to this question. The other side tends to regard individual experience as normative and to interpret Scripture accordingly.”

“The bottom-line issue in this debate was not human sexuality,” said John Huffman, senior minister of Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. “It was and is biblical authority.”

Huffman was a candidate for moderator until a family illness caused him to withdraw. While commending the denomination’s willingness to tackle such a controversial issue, he said, “The rejected document was fatally flawed in the way in which it both implicitly and explicitly declared that what the Bible says is sin is no longer sin.”

James Anderson of Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, however, maintains the issue was not so simple as theological liberals versus conservatives. According to Anderson, people who hold to a high view of Scripture may understand its teaching on homosexuality differently.

Besides Sex

Although most of the commissioners’ attention was occupied by the sexuality debate, they did address other issues. The general assembly adopted a resolution petitioning the Cuban government for “a fuller respect of religious liberty” and requesting that Presbyterian delegations visiting Cuba express to Cuban officials their concern for religious liberty.

Two resolutions calling for “concrete help” for women in crisis pregnancies were adopted. The abortion issue also surfaced in discussion of pensions and benefits. Some Presbyterian pastors have risked losing their benefits by refusing to contribute to the church’s medical plan, which offers unrestricted coverage of abortion. The issue was referred to a special committee; in the meantime, those choosing not to participate in the plan do so without financial risk.

Commissioners also adopted two resolutions aimed at increasing diversity both in the makeup of denominational committees and in the viewpoints they express. “There seemed to be a mood [at the assembly] to re-examine the process by which we arrive at positions on controversial issues, to make that process more open and accountable,” said Allen Wisdom of Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom, adding that he was uncertain whether that mood will lead to substantive change.

By Randy Frame in Baltimore.

Sexuality Soundbites

“In rejecting the [majority report on sexuality] and affirming the current position on homosexuality, the general assembly was speaking the mind of the people.… If we accept homosexuals’ interpretation of Scripture, what prevents us from accepting the adulterer’s interpretation or from interpreting Scripture any way we want to?”

—Robert Campbell, Presbyterian

Lay Committee

“We struck a balance. We said we are going to remain true to our biblical heritage. But we’ve acknowledged we have a problem. We told the gay caucus, ‘You’re still welcome; we love you. But we cannot accept your theology.’ ”

—Allen Kemp, Presbyterians for Biblical Sexuality

“We don’t want to downplay what the general assembly did in standing for traditional, biblical morality. But we do see a fundamental weakness in its inability to go beyond what we’ve already said.”

—Ben Sheldon, Presbyterians Prolife

“It’s very clear that Presbyterians affirm and stand on the foundation of a classical Reformed interpretation of Scripture. While Presbyterians believe there are certain, clear-cut principles by which they will live, they remain truly compassionate to those who do not agree.”

—Betty Moore, Presbyterians for Renewal

“We are still on the cutting edge of real-life situations, offering a bold witness to the world. We affirm diversity and seek to find ways in which all of God’s people can work out their soul salvation in the context of the PCUSA.”

—Joan SalmonCampbell, former PCUSA moderator

“Every proposed action that would have represented progress to gay and lesbian people failed. But so did every proposed action that would have made us more fundamentalistic on sexuality.… Individuals will have access to this very important document. I think we can claim a victory in that.”

—Elisabet Hannon, Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns

Helping prisoners adjust to life on the outside offers hope for reducing America’s burgeoning prison population.

What country has more of its citizens per capita behind bars than any other nation in the world? The dubious distinction now belongs to the United States. For years the U.S. ran third in per-capita prison population, behind South Africa and the Soviet Union. But a study released earlier this year by The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., think tank, shows the U.S. now has an incarceration rate of 426 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, ahead of the proverbially oppressive South Africa (at 333) and the Soviet Union (at 268). In all, slightly over 1 million Americans are held in federal, state, and local facilities, and the number is growing.

Faced with such overwhelming numbers, correctional officials have grown desperate for any ideas that offer relief to the problems of crime and overcrowded prisons. Some government officials and Christian leaders agree that a growing trend toward community involvement in prison ministry offers new hope for lasting solutions.

Repeat Offenders

One of the most troubling aspects of America’s prison problem is the rate at which offenders return. Fifty-five percent of them commit another crime within the first week after their release. Eventually almost 8 out of 10 return to prison. And they return to a prison system that Federal Bureau of Prisons director J. Michael Quinlin admits is operating at 160 percent of its capacity and is jailing convicts faster than new prison cells can be built.

Money won’t solve the problem, nor will tougher and longer sentences, Quinlin admitted at the National Jail and Prison Ministries Conference, held last month at Wheaton College in Illinois. “The critical period is not the period that the prisoner is in the institution, though that is important,” says Quinlin. “The critical period is during the first six to nine months after release.… If there were a friend there to counsel and be supportive, I think we [could] make a significant difference.”

Quinlin says he came to that realization afters years of guilt and frustration over the frequent relapse of ex-convicts into crime and after hearing people tell him that his bureau “should rehabilitate them because we have them as a captive audience.” He now says there are three elements to successfully reforming a criminal: a well-run correctional facility, the criminal’s own will to change, and involvement by people in the local communities. Quinlin is calling for a force of 62,000 community volunteers, one for each prisoner in a federal prison. That still would not take care of the estimated 710,000 people in state prisons or the more than 300,000 in jails or detention facilities.

“We can never do it alone,” Quinlin says. “Until we are able to somehow get the community to take a degree of ownership for that prisoner, we will never be able to change human behavior.”

Community Problem

Christian prison reform leaders could not agree more with Quinlin. Prison reform needs to come from outside the jail, they say. After all, says John Perkins, founder of Mississippi’s Voice of Calvary Ministries and a Prison Fellowship board member, “If people only went to prison once, we would be solving the problem. What has compounded the problem is within four years, those prisoners come out, and then they go back [to prison]. So the question is, How do you get them resettled back into the community?”

Prison Fellowship’s Daniel Van Ness, who, with Charles Colson, has helped lead the push for prison reform through such books as Convicted: New Hope for Ending America’s Crime Crisis, says the growing interest among Christian prison workers in “aftercare” is one of the most obvious developments since the first prison-ministries conference was held five years ago. “First, more people are talking about justice” issues such as victim’s rights and reconciliation, says Van Ness. “Second, more people are talking about aftercare.”

For instance, Christian-based halfway houses, such as one being started in Seattle, provide one common means of community-based aftercare. A church in Norman, Oklahoma, buses offenders to worship services in the community to help pave the way for their re-entry into society. A privately endowed scholarship plan has helped five ex-offenders graduate from Wheaton College; ten more are currently attending.

Don Holt represents the aftercare approach working at its best. A repeat offender, he was eventually sentenced to 500 years in an Oklahoma prison for robbery. Nevertheless, this fall the 51-year-old Holt, paroled and pardoned, will be a junior at Wheaton College. “It makes me feel very blessed by God,” says Holt. “For some reason, God shed his grace on me.”

But God’s grace, he notes, was manifested through people. There was the minister who heard about Holt, visited him, and eventually led him to the Lord while in prison. There was a Christian brother, himself a former prisoner, who made sure Holt joined a Bible-study group once he was paroled. And there was Don Smarto, director of Wheaton College’s Institute for Prison Ministries, who has helped Holt adjust to the rigorous demands of college.

In California, Match-Two Prisoner Outreach is doing just what Quinlin has been wishing for—providing prisoners with “a friend … to counsel and be supportive” (see “A Friend on the Outside”). The state-funded organization is run by Christians and matches volunteers (about 90 percent of whom are Christians) one-to-one with prisoners. While the nation’s prisoner recidivism rate is about 8 out of 10, only 3 out of every 10 prisoners involved with Match-Two return to prison.

Why do aftercare programs work? Long-time prison evangelist and exconvict Frank Constantino, who operates a 300-bed halfway house in Florida, says people expect too much of prisoners, who for so long have been barred from society, as they come back into the community. Despite federal and even Christian-sponsored programs that teach prisoners a trade, life skills, or how to read, the fact is that most of them need someone to hold their hands as they re-enter society.

“We reduce the number of decisions that they make [while they are in prison],” says Constantino. “Then we keep them at that state for ten years. Then, after we have reduced [their capacity to make decisions], we send them back into the community.”

Out Of Sight

Clearly, time spent with prisoners to help them re-enter society pays off in fewer repeat offenders. But that message must overcome long-standing attitudes. Prison reformers say that among the general public, including Christians, the mindset toward offenders is still primarily “lock them up and throw away the key,” “out of sight, out of mind,” and “let the government take care of them.” While Christian groups are catching on, a 1989 survey by the Institute for Prison Ministries showed that only 12 percent of prison ministries were involved primarily with aftercare, compared to 50 percent that conducted primarily prison evangelism and 28 percent that conducted prison Bible studies. About one-third of all prison ministries were involved in any consistent aftercare. The institute’s Smarto says those numbers are improving, and ministries are embracing the necessity of aftercare.

Perhaps, say some prison ministers, correctional officials are finally ready to take a serious look at prison ministries as an effective solution to their problems. Quinlin says groups like Match-Two are just what he has been looking for. And such groups say they are hoping to expand their work. That combination has Van Ness and other ministry leaders excited about the potential for significant progress. Still, he looks to the future with some uncertainty: “Whether the church [at large] will respond, that is the question.”

By Joe Maxwell.

A Friend on the Outside

“When I was in prison, I saw the evangelists come through,” says Sam Huddleston. “I saw the choirs and all the rest—and they are needed. But what I saw work was when one person became involved in another human being’s life.”

Huddleston is now president of Match-Two Prisoner Outreach, a growing California organization started two decades ago that matches a prisoner with at least one year left on his sentence with a volunteer (preferably of the same sex), who becomes a friend and mentor.

The Christian-run program, which has reached 38,000 prisoners in 40 California institutions, has been so successful that more than 70 percent of its multi-million-dollar budget now comes from three California state agencies. Ronald Reagan and former California governor George Deukmejian have publicly endorsed the program. Huddleston says politicians understand one thing—statistics—and Match-Two’s numbers chart its success.

Huddleston, now an ordained minister, sees a trend in prison ministries toward caring for offenders as whole persons, not only when they are behind bars, but also when they leave prison.

“We’re starting to really get down to the nitty gritty to what ministry—period—is all about. It is not just trying to help a man get his soul saved to prepare him for heaven. Jesus wants him prepared for this earth, however long he is going to be here. The Bible says, ‘Occupy till I come,’ ” Huddleston says.

Ironically, Match-Two does not have a formal re-entry program. What happens, Huddleston says, is simply this: “When a man or woman gets involved in the life of another man or woman who is incarcerated, and they become friends—genuine friends—then they care. And when that person on the inside gets ready to come out, there’s someone on the outside who wants to help him be a success, because they’re friends.”

Wanted: Black Leadership

The January report by The Sentencing Project notes that of the more than 1 million Americans now in prison, an estimated 454,700 are black males. “If we continue to pursue the policies of the 1980s in the 1990s, we can expect that black males may truly become the ‘endangered species’ that many have predicted,” the report states. John Perkins, founder of Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi, and of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, California, says reviving the community is the way to lower the black-male prison population.

You have said we know the communities where crime will occur tonight.

Not only do we know where the crime is going to happen, we know the family and the household it’s going to happen in. We know all these facts and we could fix it, but still we are looking to the government.

The alternative is the church. What happened in the sixties and seventies and eighties with integration and open opportunity is that blacks with education and resources moved away from the ghetto areas and left people there without the skills to produce leadership. Now we assume that money and agents can do what people and character need to do.

What forces have led to such a large black-male prison population?

There is a shortage of indigenous black leadership. The welfare system now substitutes for the family. So no longer is a family [held] responsible for its children, the government is. And the government makes the assumption that there is no man there. We have a generation of young men who have grown up without their fathers and without the influence of other men in the community to stabilize the families.

America’s prison population is almost 50 percent black males, but only 15 or so of the 120 delegates to the National Jail and Prison Ministries Conference were black. What does that say?

The lack [of black involvement in prison ministry] is probably even more serious than that. Of the 15 or 20 blacks that are here, most of them work for organizations that are 100 percent supported by white organizations. So there are no blacks that really represent black, church-supported organizations. It shows the lack of direction of the leadership. And the black leaders who are not living in the community don’t really understand the problem. Our politicians have made this out to be somebody else’s problem. We think we can still pressure society to fix what we need to fix.

When you talk about prison reform, you don’t necessarily start with chaplains or prison evangelists. You keep coming back to the community.

That’s where [the prisoners] started from and that’s where they are coming back to. I see the prisons now as almost an opportunity, like the military is an opportunity. Those boys who make it in the military get the internal discipline that is necessary to make it in life, discipline that they can’t normally get in the community. Those men that come back from prison have learned some of the same discipline. They have what it takes to be a leader. If we can get to them in prison, and help them back, we actually can build leadership for the community from them.

False Assumptions

“All generalizations are false, including this one,” yet we keep making them. We create images—graven ones that can’t be changed; we dismiss or accept people, products, programs, and propaganda according to the labels they come under; we know a little about something, and we treat it as though we know everything.

—Elisabeth Elliot in All That Was Ever Ours

Right turn

The Infinite Goodness has such wide arms that it takes whatever turns to it.

—Dante in Purgatorio

The peril of compromise

The question is, do you compromise yourself slightly to gain more exposure for the gospel message? But, in doing so, have you then watered down the truth and made it half-truth—which makes it into a lie? That’s a real concern. Jesus asked his followers to choose the narrow way, but he added, “If you follow me, don’t be surprised if the world hates you.”

—Steve Camp, quoted by Bob Darden in Billboard (April 20, 1991)

Practice makes perfect

What was Christ doing in the carpenter’s shop? Practicing. Though perfect, we read that he learned obedience and grew in wisdom and in favor with God. Do not quarrel therefore with your lot in life. Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken around you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is your practice. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient and humble and generous and unselfish and kind and courteous.

—Henry Drummond, quoted in Riches for the Mind and Spirit

Better than tennis

In rearing their children, the [Luis] Palaus emphasized not only learning about life in other nations, but helping to make a difference. When possible, Pat and the children traveled with Luis on his evangelistic campaigns.

“Traveling with your children to the Third World is expensive, but it may be more important to them than tennis lessons,” she said.

—From a profile of Pat Palau in Compassion Update (March/April 1991)

Peace with God

Without justification it is impossible to have real peace. Conscience forbids it. Sin is a mountain between a man and God, and must be taken away. The sense of guilt lies heavy on the heart and must be removed. Unpardoned sin will murder peace. The true Christian knows all this well. His peace arises from a consciousness of his sins being forgiven, and his guilt being put away.… He has peace with God, because he is justified.

—J. C. Ryle in Foundations of Faith

Bad influences

When I was a little girl my mother would often say to me, “Edith, I know just who you’ve been playing with today.” She knew because I had become something like the other little girl, whichever one it was, enough like her that the girl could be identified by my changed accent, my mannerisms, and other telltale changes. Children often copy other children quite unconsciously. So do adults. We are affected by the people we spend time with, in one way or another. God makes clear to us that not only is it sin to bow down to idols and worship or serve them, but that there is an effect which follows very definitely. People who worship idols become like them.

—Edith Schaeffer in The Art of Life