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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

After nearly three years in the civil-court system, disagreements between Focus on the Family and the ministry’s former senior vice-president Gilbert Alexander-Moegerle will once again be the subject of private reconciliation efforts. Last month, Alexander-Moegerle’s lawsuit against the ministry came to an end when Pomona, California, Superior Court Judge Theodore Piatt granted the Focus motion for nonsuit, and Alexander-Moegerle instructed his attorney not to oppose the motion.

For two weeks prior to the dismissal, Alexander-Moegerle had presented to the jury his allegations that Focus and its founder and president, James Dobson, had invaded his privacy, interfered with his business opportunities, and inflicted emotional distress upon him and his family. Included in the plaintiff’s case was testimony by Alexander-Moegerle; his wife, Carolyn; and Dobson.

Before presenting its defense, Focus requested the motion for nonsuit, arguing the plaintiff had not presented enough evidence to substantiate the allegations. When Alexander-Moegerle’s attorney did not offer arguments to the contrary, Judge Piatt dismissed the case.

As a result of private negotiations between the attorneys, Alexander-Moegerle and his wife have agreed to pursue no further litigation against Focus. In exchange, Focus has agreed to pay most of the court costs and legal expenses of the trial.

From the outset, Focus maintained the lawsuit was “baseless.” A statement released after the dismissal said the “ministry is grateful and appreciative of the vindication of its position inherent in the court’s ruling.”

In Alexander-Moegerle’s view, his charges of invasion of privacy and business interference were still “very much alive” when his attorney did not oppose Focus’s motion. He said he took his action after “an agreement was reached between the parties to meet privately for the purpose of resolving the conflict.”

Parting Ways

The legal dispute arose in November 1988, when both Gilbert and Carolyn Alexander-Moegerle filed lawsuits against Focus charging wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, infliction of emotional distress, and interference with economic advantage (CT, Feb. 3, 1989, p. 42). At root in the conflict was Alexander-Moegerle’s divorce from his first wife in January 1987 and his subsequent remarriage to Carolyn, also a Focus employee.

“Theologically, and in other ways, that [remarriage] crossed the line for our board, and they asked for their resignations,” Dobson told CHRISTIANITY TODAY in 1989. Gilbert had been at Focus since the ministry’s beginning and was cohost with Dobson of its popular radio talk show from 1978 to 1985. Focus said the resignations were “voluntary” and that the two left on “amiable” terms with the ministry. However, the Alexander-Moegerles said they submitted their resignations under protest.

Among other charges in their lawsuits, they claimed that Dobson intervened on behalf of Alexander-Moegerle’s first wife during the divorce proceedings, falsely implied Gilbert and Carolyn had committed adultery, and interfered with several business opportunities with other religious broadcasters.

In a September 1990 preliminary ruling, Judge Piatt threw out the wrongful termination charge of Gilbert’s suit, noting that “the services of our courts may not be invoked to resolve clearly ecclesiastical differences or conformity to standards of morality.” Carolyn’s entire suit was dismissed.

Last month, as the case went to trial, Piatt extended his earlier ruling to the remaining charges and said that Alexander-Moegerle could only introduce evidence that occurred after he left employment at Focus. Acknowledging that “this is a complex case in terms of the subjective nature of clerical versus secular,” Piatt ruled that because Focus is a religious organization, its employment practices are covered by the First Amendment’s protection of religious exercise.

Alexander-Moegerle said his counsel estimated the ruling left him with only about 15 percent of his original case.

Focus believes “a combination of legal rulings and lack of evidence” led Alexander-Moegerle not to oppose the nonsuit motion. However, Alexander-Moegerle said the decision was based largely on his perception that there was a new “openness and responsiveness” from Focus for private efforts to reconcile.

Focus maintains there was no change from its original desire to settle the matter privately. From the beginning, each side has claimed to be willing to participate in a conciliation effort while the other side was not.

Last month, Dobson said the only private effort Focus would not accept was binding arbitration because their attorney had advised him the process would not allow them to appeal a decision and to claim First Amendment protections and other legal arguments. “We just weren’t willing to abrogate our rights in that way,” he said.

Emotional Cost

At this point, no structured private reconciliation process has been developed. “We’re a little unsure at this stage how to get past some of the pain of the suit and the charges that were made against us, and yet we have a strong desire to do that,” Dobson told CT.

Alexander-Moegerle said he is hopeful the situation can now be worked out “in the context of the local church.”

Neither side disclosed a specific figure on the financial costs of the dispute. Dobson said he expects Focus insurance will cover about half of the expenses, and designated gifts from donors will cover the balance of the bill. “Essentially, it is our hope that ultimately it will cost the ministry nothing,” Dobson said.

Alexander-Moegerle said that while Focus will assume most of his court and legal expenses, no money will go directly to his family or for his lawyer’s professional fees. He said he fears the legal battle may have ruined his potential to get another job within religious broadcasting.

Nevertheless, Alexander-Moegerle says he and his wife stand by their decision to take their grievances into the courts. “To the extent that we believed that it was right to confront alleged wrongdoing for the sake of protecting ourselves and future employees, … we still think we did the right thing,” he said.

Both sides agree the dispute has cost the most in emotional pain. However, Dobson said the prevailing attitude now is: “It is over. Let’s get on with our lives, and let the Lord do his marvelous healing work.”

By Kim A. Lawton, with reporting by Kathleen Bowling in Pomona.

Toxic Faith: Understanding and Overcoming Religious Addiction, by Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton (Oliver-Nelson, 316 pp.; $17.95, hardcover);A Hunger for Healing: The Twelve Steps as a Classic Model for Christian Spiritual Growth, by J. Keith Miller (HarperSan-Francisco, 262 pp.; $15.95, hardcover);Growing Up Holy Versus Growing Up Wholly: Understanding and Hope for Adult Children of Evangelicals, by Donald Sloat (Wolgemuth and Hyatt, 261 pp.; $9.95, paper). Reviewed by Jim Alsdurf, a forensic psychologist, and coauthor, with his wife, Phyllis, of Battered into Submission (InterVarsity).

Three recent releases within the “addiction” genre conclude that religious faith—evangelical style—can be pathological. This is a serious charge, which each book develops in its own way.

Expanding on our culture’s seeming addiction to addictions, authors Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton attempt to show in their book Toxic Faith how religious beliefs can lead to a “defective faith” in which religion and not the relationship with God controls a person’s life.

This “religious addiction” emanates from certain “toxic beliefs,” the authors suggest, as a way to avoid responsibility and distort the true life and health of faith. This avoidance manifests itself in everything from codependency to churchaholism to sexual perversion. In short, religious addiction is a faith system that has lost “its true object … the true presence of God.”

Arterburn and Felton contend that religious addiction leads to emotional imbalance, interpersonal isolation, and a stagelike progression that ends in despair, erratic behavior, deep depression, searching for another fix, family deterioration, and other experiences before the addict hits bottom.

The authors identify 21 “toxic beliefs” that may lead to religious addiction; among them are the following: as representatives of God, all ministers can be trusted; problems in life result from some particular sin; one must always submit to authority; one must not stop meeting others’ needs. These toxic beliefs poison our faith and lead to distortions in our beliefs about God.

In identifying the “dysfunctional system that breeds toxic faith,” the various roles of toxic faith—the persecutor, the coconspirator, the enabler, the victim, and the outcast—are explicated and the “ten rules of a toxic faith system” outlined. A treatment and recovery chapter describes how addicts can break through their denial and ultimately come to a new faith, “pure and free of the poison of addiction.” In the appendixes the authors also provide both a self-scoring questionnaire to assess whether the reader has toxic faith and 12 Steps for overcoming religious addiction.

God’S Codependents

In A Hunger for Healing, author Keith Miller attempts to show how the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous can lead “sufferers to a close living relationship with God.” If directly linking the 12 Steps to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ may seem like a large claim, Miller substantiates his view by systematically examining each step, relating his own story to the “spiritual discipline” of the 12 Steps, illustrating their “biblical roots,” and exposing the “deep self-centered disease—selfishness,” which manifests itself in alcoholism and other addictions.

Miller asserts that the 12 Steps are a vital means of “getting well spiritually,” as well as doing God’s will. Because there is only “one Sin … putting ourselves in the center of our lives,” he says the task of spiritual growth is to remove the “character defects that stand between God and us.”

Accepting one’s powerlessness is the entry point for spiritual growth, and Miller relates a “biblical experience” (i.e., Bible verse) to each step and challenges the reader to apply that step to his or her relationship with others as well as with God. Miller writes with conviction and provides examples of his own struggles, which many will find engaging and hopeful.

A third book in this category is Growing Up Holy Versus Growing Up Wholly, by psychologist Donald Sloat. Extrapolating from the adult children of alcoholics model, Sloat asserts that many of these concepts fit dysfunctional Christian families, whose most consistent trait is the “lack of emotional safety” for their members. Adult children of evangelicals (ACEs) tend to exhibit a unique “syndrome or collection of behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and feelings,” Sloat says. These vary from oversensitivity and frequent sadness to depression and a fear of God, rather than a sense of being loved by him. Sloat lists 20 characteristics of ACEs, describes their “personality style,” and exposes the “evangelical rules” (don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel, and don’t want) that lead to an “internal split.” This split causes a false sense of holiness and thereby precludes “wholeness as an integrated person.”

Toxic Waste Dump

While each of these books will no doubt help open the eyes of the church to legitimate pathology and imbalance in its midst, the question inevitably arises as to how one distinguishes pathological from authentic faith. Are there guidelines for separating the “committed” from the “addicted”?

While the authors try to come up with standards, they all fall short of what would be of help to clinicians and other professionals. Their guidelines are so amorphous that all will be able to see themselves described. Just as everyone reads him- or herself into the many best-selling codependency books (whose authors even sometimes admit that they are targeting 95 percent of all adults), so too churches, Sunday-school classes, conferences, and more books will help people to see themselves as religious addicts or ACEs.

Furthermore, there is a risk in evaluating religious behavior according to current pop psychological models. The criterion for what is healthy behavior is subject to change and tends to over-pathologize normal human struggles. What used to be considered a product of immaturity, sin, or even an inherent part of the human condition is now redefined as an illness, something that needs specialized care in a therapeutic setting. One wonders if the apostle Paul, for instance, who for the sake of the gospel was stoned, shipwrecked, beaten, and at one point abandoned by a close friend, might not be labeled a religious addict by these models.

The task of distinguishing earnest faith from “toxic faith” is much more complicated than Arterburn and Felton in particular imply. While admitting there may be true pathology behind what they are calling “religious addiction,” for it to be a clearly definable disorder, useful in clinical and pastoral settings, a much more stringent definition is needed than when “your focus has gotten off God.” By failing to provide any reliable data that demonstrate the breadth of this problem, these authors are forced to rely on anecdotal information. That seems a shaky foundation for a charge that would lead one to conclude that the evangelical church is at times nothing more than a toxic waste dump.

The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics, by Christopher Lasch (Norton, 576 pp.; $25.00, hardcover). Reviewed by Reed Jolley, pastor of Santa Barbara (Calif.) Community Church.

One need not have an advanced degree in political science to realize that the political Left is in disarray. Martin Luther King, Jr., became the definitive hero of the sixties with his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington, D.C. In the eighties, Donald Trump took center stage with his implicit boast, “I have a yacht.” George Bush easily entered the White House in 1988 on the tails of Ronald Reagan and is considered such a “slam dunk” for 1992 that the Democratic party is being advised not to “waste” a good candidate during the coming election. What happened? Why is right-wing populism so popular and the revolt against liberalism ubiquitous?

In The True and Only Heaven, culture-watcher Christopher Lasch provides a comprehensive—perhaps too comprehensive—analysis of the demise of liberalism during the past 15 years. The University of Rochester historian examines the philosophical roots of liberalism from the Enlightenment to the present. His intellectual inquisition finds rival traditions that have always challenged the liberal world view, but ours is the era that will bury liberal doctrines once and for all. Lasch writes, “Old political ideologies have exhausted their capacity to either explain events or inspire men and women to constructive action.”

The core of liberalism’s apple is the idea of progress, “the promise of steady improvement with no foreseeable ending at all.” Progressive ideologies that believed in the perfectibility of human nature died with World War I, but twentieth-century liberalism has clung to a watered-down version of progress, one that believes the steady increase in our desires will be met with a general increase in our standard of living. Lasch, who believes that the very idea of progress is pure myth, points to the vanishing middle class in America and to the decrease in our standard of living to support his contention that things are not getting better.

Heaven takes the reader on a ponderous and sometimes tedious journey through the history of ideas that shaped the last two centuries. Familiar thinkers like Adam Smith, Jonathan Edwards, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are surveyed along with less familiar names, such as Orestes Brownson, Van Wyck Brooks, and Georges Sorel. The reader will undoubtedly feel as if he or she is being exposed to every book Lasch has read since he published The Culture of Narcissism in 1979.

In spite of his prolixity, Lasch’s essay deserves a careful reading by those interested in the contemporary political landscape. The True and Only Heavenwill probably be to 1991 what Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind was to 1987: an iconoclastic essay that stirs slumbering intellectuals to a season of protest before they settle back into their usual activities.

Lasch proclaims the liberal era to be over, but he has not become a flag bearer for the Right. Capitalism is insidious, he claims, in that it promotes an ethic of hedonism, while liberalism is naïve in that it is unable to deliver on its promise. After over 500 pages of analysis, the author makes his recommendations for the future in a few paragraphs: “If progressive ideologies have dwindled down to a wistful hope against hope that things will somehow work out for the best, we need to recover a more vigorous form of hope, which trusts life without denying its tragic character or attempting to explain away tragedy as ‘cultural lag.’ ”

So Lasch, when all is said and done, wants to replace “wistful hope” with “vigorous hope.” “Limits and hope: these words sum up the two lines of argument I have tried to weave together.” Christian readers will be far from satisfied with such a paltry solution to the problems of our world. They will undoubtedly remember Abraham, who “against all hope, in hope believed.” Christians all along have placed their hope not in progress but in Providence. Our help and our hope comes not from ourselves, our ideas, our technologies, or our politics. Our hope comes from a person who will one day rule on Earth as he already does in heaven.

A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (HarperCollins, xxii + 579 pp.; $32.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Kevin A. Miller, editor of Christian History magazine.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War II. No doubt television will commemorate the event with countless specials. As Christians wrestling with the meaning of that global cataclysm, we would do well to turn off the set and sit instead at the feet of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor and theologian who joined the resistance against Hitler and was executed at Flossenburg concentration camp in April 1945.

Arriving just in time is A Testament to Freedom, a masterful collection of, as the subtitle puts it, his “essential writings.” Bonhoeffer is well-known for writings such as The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison. This collection, though including excerpts from those works, moves beyond them to reveal Bonhoeffer in all phases of his adult life: as student, pastor, ecumenist, activist, and prisoner.

Editors Geffrey Kelly (LaSalle University) and F. Burton Nelson (North Park Theological Seminary) have selected sermons, letters, poems, declarations, and excerpts from lesser-read works such as Christ the Center and Act and Being. They have arranged these in a logical and largely historical order, so readers can follow the development of Bonhoeffer’s tantalizing theology and radical call to Christian commitment.

Many writings included here have never before appeared in English. Readers can now enjoy, for example, two letters from the young Bonhoeffer in 1933, the year Hitler became chancellor of Germany and moved to control the churches. Writing from London, Bonhoeffer urged colleague Martin Niemöller that “we must especially now be radical on every point … and not shy away from any unpleasant consequences to ourselves.” His words were chillingly prophetic.

Bonhoeffer took a lonely stand against the nazification of the churches and the oppression of the Jews. He had asked the questions, “What did Jesus mean to say to us? What is his will for us today?”

Bonhoeffer’s conclusion, sealed with his blood, was that Jesus is the “Man for others” and thus “the church is the church only when it exists for others,” for “the outcast, the suspect, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short, … those who suffer.”

Kelly and Nelson’s careful introductory notes avoid the hasty interpretations that often have clouded Bonhoeffer research. As Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s closest friend and biographer, comments in the foreword, “Forty years of bold popularizations of Bonhoeffer and shortcutting theories of interpreting his theology … whet our appetite for such a book.”

A Testament to Freedom is not the “complete works” of Bonhoeffer (which will become available in 1993). Neither will this volume replace Bethge’s classic biography. Nor will it substitute for the individual volumes of Bonhoeffer’s best-known works.

But as a single-volume collection of Bonhoeffer’s writings, however, there is none better. The 43-page editors’ introduction itself clearly and forcefully introduces Bonhoeffer’s life and thought. And a chronology, glossary, bibliography, and index add to the collection’s value.

A Testament to Freedom knowledgeably guides readers to a life that still rings with Christian authenticity.