UPDATE

Many people were surprised when a $115 million bid to purchase Heritage Ministries (formerly PTL) by Canadian businessman and Orthodox Jew Stephen Mernick was accepted for consideration by PTL’s bankruptcy trustee, W. C. Benton.

But Mernick himself appears to be more surprised at the media hoopla that surrounded his offer.

“He keeps asking me, ‘Why is this deal so important?’,” Tom Reid, recently appointed to handle public relations for Mernick, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

Mernick, who reports control of land and investment holdings totaling $700 million (Canadian), is currently involved in a suit against a former business associate for breaching a partnership made in 1985, according to articles in the Toronto Star. Benton says he had not heard about Mernick’s ongoing suit in New York, but added that if Mernick has the $115 million, his purchase bid qualifies for consideration.

The multimillionaire made an initial down payment of $100,000 for the Christian retreat and network (all figures for the PTL deal are U.S.). If approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Rufus Reynolds on November 16, he would add $400,000 to that amount. Mernick would owe another $50 million by December 31, spreading the remaining payments over a five-year period.

Friends describe the 34-year-old real estate magnate as “100 percent entrepreneur” and a deeply committed Jew who attended rabbinical school.

In a prepared statement, Mernick stressed that his motivation for bidding on the ministry was “strictly business,” and until the deal is sealed December 31, he will not consider any plans to change the present administration or Christian emphasis of the defunct Bakker empire.

“I have a great deal of respect for the depth of the religious feeling of the many thousands of Christians who have supported the Heritage Ministries over the years,” Mernick said in a statement issued earlier at a Charlotte, South Carolina, press conference.

However, in his only public appearance over the issue, on October 7, he announced plans for a “major, major” shopping and office complex on the former PTL site.

Reid emphasized that Mernick keeps his public, business ventures separate from his very private religious beliefs. And Memick’s philosophical or religious intents “had nothing to do with” considering his offer to buy PTL, according to Benton.

“He hasn’t indicated to me what he intends to do with the property … maybe a good part of it would still be developed as a Christian retreat. Some of it may be used as a nursing home or retirement home,” said Benton.

Benton also stressed that the many promises made earlier by the Bakkers to shareholders are waived by the bankruptcy proceedings. “It wipes out all obligations,” he said. “They will have nothing to say about the use of the property.”

By Joe Maxwell.

RELIGIOUS BROADCASTING

Canada’s first multifaith religious television network began broadcasting in September to generally positive reaction from viewers and the media.

“Right from the beginning, we’ve had to fight negative stereotypes about religious broadcasting,” says Vision TV president Ron Kearst, a veteran Canadian broadcaster. “But once people found out we weren’t going to be wall-to-wall American TV evangelists, there’s been a terrific response.”

Vision TV, not affiliated with VISN, the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network in the United States that also debuted in September (CT, Nov. 4, 1988), is entering a highly competitive media marketplace. Viewers in Toronto, for example, can choose from among 36 different channels.

However, until now only the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association has had the resources to buy nationwide prime-time programming on commercial stations. Other religious broadcasters have generally been relegated to the “religious ghetto” of weekday and Sunday mornings. With Vision TV, faith groups now have low-cost access to four million households (via satellite) during the prime-time evening hours. The nonprofit network’s revenue comes from selling air time and a limited number of commercials. Fund raising is limited to 90 seconds per half-hour.

Vision, previously known as the Canadian Interfaith Network, has been trying to get on the air for over five years. But Canada’s broadcasting regulatory body had refused to grant broadcasting licenses to any religious organization that would represent only one viewpoint.

Vision now meets that requirement, with programming generated by groups ranging from minority non-Christian traditions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Baha’i, to the largest mainline Protestant denomination, the United Church of Canada. Other denominations include Evangelical Lutheran, Christian Reformed, Seventh-day Adventist, and General Conference Mennonites.

“Like others in the evangelical community, I was a little hesitant, wondering what a potpourri of world religions would be like,” said popular Christian broadcaster Terry Winter. “But I agree that availability to all faith groups is fair, and I’m pleased with the type of programming Vision is providing.” Winter, whose program has the largest audience of any Christian broadcaster on commercial television, has added a Sunday evening time slot on Vision to his broadcast schedule, as has John Wesley White, Canadian associate evangelist of Billy Graham.

By Wendy Elaine Nelles in Toronto

CONTROVERSY

Fans of the late Christian author C. S. Lewis were thrilled in 1977 at the publication of The Dark Tower and Other Stories. According to the book’s introduction, Lewis, who died in 1963, intended The Dark Tower to be another in his popular series of science fiction novels.

But many Lewis scholars and enthusiasts were disappointed in the book, believing generally that The Dark Tower did not represent what they had come to expect from Lewis. Now a book scheduled for publication later this month offers a reason: Lewis may not have written it.

In The C.S. Lewis Hoax (Multnomah Press), Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog maintains several writings published since Lewis’s death and attributed to him (most notably The Dark Tower) may actually be products of a hoax. The man behind the hoax, she believes, is Walter Hooper, who has controlled the Lewis literary estate for more than two decades.

In addition to implied allegations of forgery, the book contains evidence that Hooper has overstated the extent of his association with both C. S. Lewis and Warren Lewis, the author’s brother, who died in 1973.

At the core of Lindskoog’s case is her challenge to Hooper’s story of how he came to possess The Dark Tower and two trunkloads (Hooper’s claim) of additional C. S. Lewis writings. In the introduction to The Dark Tower, Hooper tells of a three-day bonfire not long after Lewis’s death, in which Warren Lewis, on a house-cleaning binge, burned many of his brother’s papers.

As Hooper tells it, the gardener who oversaw the fire urged Warren Lewis to save some of the materials. The gardener, Fred Paxford, then turned them over to Hooper, who, on impulse, had visited Warren Lewis on the last day of the fire. Hooper waited until after Warren Lewis died to reveal the story, he says, in order to save Warren embarrassment.

Before Paxford died, however, Lindskoog received a letter from him stating that the bonfire described by Hooper seemed “phoney.” Lindskoog also maintains that Warren Lewis, despite personal problems (including alcoholism), would never have destroyed any of his brother’s writings.

Hooper told CHRISTIANITY TODAY he still had a clear recollection of the bonfire, adding, “It took place exactly as I have described.” Hooper noted that Paxford was not asked about the bonfire until several years later and may simply not have remembered it.

Mixed Reviews

Opinions of Lewis scholars about Lindskoog’s book (a review of which will appear in the Dec. 9 issue of CT) appear divided. Paul Ford, founding director of the Southern California C.S. Lewis Society, said he has not read the book. But he noted that many of the questions raised by Lindskoog are several years old.

Ford said he is convinced there was a bonfire, though he allowed it may not have happened exactly as Hooper has told it. “If there’s nothing new in [Lindskoog’s] book,” said Ford, “my view won’t change.” Ford said that, given Warren Lewis’s problems, it would not have been beyond him to burn important papers.

Lewis scholar Joe Christopher, however, maintains the book “springs from serious scholarship.” In the foreword to The C. S. Lewis Hoax, he writes, “If even half of the argued conjectures in [the book] are correct—and I suspect that more than half of them are—there will have to be major revisions in the background of our understanding of Lewis.” Christopher notes that major works published during Lewis’s lifetime are not affected.

Ford said he respected Christopher’s call to take the book seriously. But he added that, had he been consulted, he would have advised Multnomah (as he did other publishers) against publishing it. Ford said he is convinced C. S. Lewis wrote The Dark Tower, but called nevertheless for a forensic study of the original manuscript to determine its authenticity. “Now that Kate’s laid down the gauntlet,” he said, “it’s got to be done.” According to Hooper, the manuscript in question is available for such inspection at the Bodleian Library in England.

Ford said he regretted the controversy, adding that he had great respect for both Lindskoog and Hooper. He credited Lindskoog with asking “questions that needed to be asked” to establish the truth of Hooper’s association with the Lewis brothers.

“These are two people who derive a great sense of self-worth from their connection to C. S. Lewis,” Ford said. “A lot of us see [the controversy] as a struggle to determine who was more important to Lewis.… The same weakness that causes Walter to exaggerate his personal closeness to Lewis causes Kate to see a conspiracy in what Walter has done.”

Lindskoog said she did not enjoy writing the book, but felt constrained to do so. “C. S. Lewis is the mentor of my life,” she said. “I think he would be very happy to have this straightened out.”

Hooper expressed regret that the controversy has surfaced. “It’s a curious way to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Lewis’s death,” he said. “I’ve been looking forward to celebrating his great legacy. Our attention should be on him, not me.”

URBAN MINISTRY

As homeless men and women attract national attention, urban missions look for help.

Earlier this fall, members of a panel appointed by the National Academy of Sciences to study homelessness called the plight of Americans without shelter “an inexcusable disgrace.” Estimates put the number of homeless Americans anywhere from 500,000 to three million (at least 100,000 of those are children). And up to two million people will be homeless one night or more this year.

Many of those without a place to spend the night will seek shelter in urban rescue missions. “We are the ones who do the most with the homeless, because our missions have always been located in the areas where the problem is the worst,” said Stephen E. Burger, director of Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission and president of the International Union of Gospel Missions (IUGM).

According to Burger, the profile of the typical homeless person is changing. “Twenty years ago, missions worked with older male alcoholics,” Burger said, “but today, the average age of clients served by rescue missions is 31. Seventy-five percent of all who come in are under 40, and 40 percent are women.” Burger also noted that a majority of the homeless visiting shelters are local, as opposed to the transients that frequented shelters in previous years.

Increasingly, said Burger, families are seeking help at shelters. In fact, a study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors found that one-third of all homeless were families with young children. Moreover, the fastest-growing group of homeless are children under six years of age. “A plant closes in the Midwest, so the family packs up with a couple of thousand dollars and heads west. Within a few weeks, the money is gone, they’re evicted from the apartment, the kids are hungry, and they show up at our mission.”

Lonely Ministry

In spite of increased media attention to homelessness, many evangelical rescue mission leaders say they receive minimal support from churches. “The church is running to the suburbs,” said Burger. “It is becoming more affluent and more removed.” In Denver, where Del Maxfield runs the Denver Rescue Mission, only 40 churches on his 890-church mailing list give more than $100 annually. And at the Olive Branch Mission, a Free Methodist Church-affiliated ministry in Chicago, lack of funds is a perennial problem.

But Larry Davis, director of the Olive Branch Mission, says churches are not as insensitive to the needs of the homeless as their lack of financial support implies. “Most evangelicals do not really understand this is a reality,” said Davis. “It is possible to live one block away and never be confronted with the magnitude of the problem. But once a church visits our mission, they generally become enthusiastic supporters.”

Maxfield agrees. “It’s not a case of churches not wanting to help,” he said. “In spite of the national attention, they just don’t see it as being much of a problem.”

Davis also blames the very nature of urban ministry for the lack of response from churches: “You can’t validate this kind of ministry on the basis of results, because our success stories are so few. While we indeed see lives being changed, we see a lot of our people returning to their problems. It’s not the kind of ministry people get excited about.”

Building Bridges

Given the level of funding from churches, most rescue missions require government assistance in order to provide services to the homeless. For example, at the Olive Branch Mission, government aid accounts for half the cost of their emergency services. “But the government can’t solve the problem,” said Davis. He would like to see more partnerships with area churches because he feels Christians would better understand the spiritual nature of urban ministry.

In Denver, Maxfield is trying to match projects with the interests of individual churches. He discovered some churches are more likely to be interested in senior citizens, so he began a food program for older people virtually trapped in low-income, urban high rises. “Once they are willing to do this, they are more likely to help us with other urban problems like homelessness,” Maxfield said.

Earlier this year, Gifford Claiborne, a vice-president of the Russ Reid advertising agency, met with IUGM’s Burger to plan a national media campaign soliciting donations to 32 missions. Using direct mail and display advertising in major newspapers, they hope to increase the donor lists of the participating missions. The program was piloted at the Los Angeles Mission where the annual budget grew from $125,000 to $8 million in six years.

With winter weather approaching, however, mission workers say the source of funds takes a back seat to ministry concerns. “For Christians, working with the homeless is more than merely providing a meal and a warm place to sleep,” says Davis. “We try to see Jesus in the faces of our clients. That makes it easier to help them catch a vision for what they can become.”

By Lyn Cryderman.

LEGISLATION

The 100th session of the U.S. Congress came to a close last month amid a flurry of last-minute activity. While several important pieces of legislation were passed, many key issues were left to the next session of Congress, which will convene in January.

The last order of business for this session was enactment of a $2.8 billion Omnibus Drug Bill, which authorizes new education, treatment, and rehabilitation efforts and puts into place tough new penalties for drug users and traffickers. Included in the package is the death penalty for drug traffickers who kill civilians or law enforcement officers. A move by Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Oreg.) to substitute a mandatory life prison sentence for the death penalty was overwhelmingly voted down.

Antipomography Measure

Due to eleventh-hour lobbying efforts by conservative profamily activists, the drug bill also includes stiff anti-child pornography and obscenity provisions. The provisions were originally part of the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act introduced in 1987. That bill became stalled in the committee process, but in a last-ditch maneuver, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) proposed that the entire act be attached as an amendment to the drug bill.

The obscenity provisions of the act generated strong opposition by the Democratic House leadership. However, a compromise settlement kept many of the provisions—including a ban on the buying or selling of minors to produce child pornography—and a measure against the use of computers for network trafficking of child pornography. Also, the bill expands federal power to prosecute traffickers of child pornography, to confiscate child pornography and the profits of its sale, and to restrict the production and distribution of obscenity.

The National Association of Evangelicals, Moral Majority, Evangelicals for Social Action, and the American Family Association were among the groups supporting the act.

Child Care And Churches

Two family-oriented measures, the Act for Better Child Care (ABC) and the Parental Leave Act, were effectively killed when Congress put them aside to work on other legislation in the final days of the session. Both had been controversial within the business and religious communities.

The ABC bill, which would have established a comprehensive federal child-care policy, had strong support from mainline religious groups. However, because of complicated regulations for church-run day-care centers, the bill was opposed by conservative religious groups and groups advocating strict separation between church and state (CT, May 13, 1988, p. 46).

Likewise, a parental-leave bill that would have required federal and private employers to grant workers unpaid parental and medical leave related to the birth or serious illness of their children fell victim to election-year controversies. Business groups argued against the measure, saying it would be too costly for many companies. And conservative profamily activists said it would benefit “yuppie parents” rather than poor families who could not afford to take unpaid leaves. Both issues will likely be taken up again during the 101st session of Congress.

Many religious groups were disappointed when Congress, at the last minute, dropped a measure that would have exempted religious schools not operated by churches from state unemployment tax laws. Currently, church-controlled schools have such an exemption.

Looking Back

During the past two years, the 100th Congress addressed many issues of interest to churches and religious groups, including:

• Abortion. Congress reaffirmed the Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortions except to save the life of the mother, and the Mexico City Policy, which refuses to fund international organizations promoting abortion. Congress also prohibited the District of Columbia from using federal or local funds for abortions, and stopped several efforts to expand federal funding of abortions.

• AIDS. The first comprehensive Congressional AIDS package was passed to provide $1 billion for research, education, and treatment of the disease. The measure was passed without all of the testing confidentiality provisions sought by gay-rights groups.

• Arms control. The Senate ratified the Reagan/Gorbachev Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty eliminating ground-based missiles with ranges of 300 to 3,400 miles.

• Civil rights. Congress passed the Civil Rights Restoration Act, or Grove City Bill, which expanded the scope of federal antidiscrimination coverage. While the measure included an exception for institutions “controlled” by a religious entity, it did not provide for institutions affiliated with, but not controlled by, religious bodies (CT, April 22, 1988, p. 42).

• Health Care. The Catastrophic Health Care Bill was approved to provide the elderly with protection from massive hospital, doctor, and prescription bills. The measure guarantees Medicare benefits after a $564 deductible, and expands Medicare coverage for low-income women and children.

• The homeless. More than $ 1.3 billion was authorized over a two-year period for shelter, health, food, and other care programs for the homeless.

• Welfare. Congress passed the welfare reforming Family Support Act of 1988, which requires job training and education for welfare recipients, expands child-support enforcement, and offers child-care and medical benefits for a year to low-income families that have worked themselves off the welfare system.

By Kim A. Lawton.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

One of the defining characteristics of evangelical Christianity is the conviction that the Bible is not merely a good book, but that it is the authoritative Word of God. This conviction has led evangelicals to wide-ranging agreement on issues of theology and personal morality.

In the foreign policy arena, however, a high view of the Bible has led many of the same Christians to widely divergent fundamental postures, resulting in disagreement on such specific issues as divestment in South Africa and military aid to insurgents in Nicaragua. And political positions taken by mainline Prostestant denominations have caused division and contributed significantly, many believe, to membership decline in recent years.

Some 200 people met in Seattle last month in part to test the extent to which genuine spiritual unity can coexist in the evangelical community with fervent political diversity.

Competing Loyalties

The conference was cosponsored by Seattle Pacific University and the Portland, Oregon-based Institute for Christian Leadership. Plenary speakers, by design, set forth competing theological frameworks through which to interpret foreign policy issues.

Duane Friesen, professor of Bible and religion at Bethel College (Kan.) and a pacifist, advanced a view of the church as the “primary locus where the reality of peacemaking must, first of all, find expression.” Friesen emphasized following the example of Christ, regardless of the consequences.

In contrast, Alberto Coll, professor of strategy and international law at the U.S. Naval War College, outlined a philosophy of Christian realism, which entails the “thoughtful weighing of competing goods and lesser evils.” Said Coll, “Sometimes, less than morally good means may be used to accomplish worthwhile ends.”

Despite general agreement in the essential goodness of democratic ideals, a fundamental point of tension surfaced throughout the conference. It revolved around the question of competing loyalties: to the United States and to the kingdom of God. While some emphasized the degree to which U.S. policies have hurt the international body of Christ, others stressed that the U.S., despite its faults, is nevertheless the world’s most successful democratic experiment.

Richard John Neuhaus, director of the Rockford Institute Center on Religion and Society, said that the church “ought not to be subject to polarizations and divisions,” but, bonded by the power of the Holy Spirit and the gospel of Jesus Christ, should “exemplify the possibility of maintaining community in our differences.”

Getting Together

It was in the spirit of Neuhaus’s remarks that author Tom Sine, a board member of Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), invited representatives of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to participate with ESA on a day-long retreat. “I think it would be a good thing if we just got to know each other,” said Sine. NAE and IRD are often at odds with ESA over issues of U.S. foreign policy.

The two-day event produced no reports of radical transformation in anyone’s political views. But conference moderator Robert Pickus, founder and president of the World Without War Council, said he measured the conference’s success not in terms of agreement on political issues, but in terms of the discussion itself.

Pickus, a Jewish pacifist, said evangelicals could make an important contribution to the foreign policy debate. He noted that, unlike other religious communities, “evangelicals have not been highly politicized,” and therefore might provide a perspective independent of brash ideology. Said Pickus, “Evangelicals have a strong sense of the lordship of God, but also of loyalty to America.”

By Randy Frame in Seattle.

NEWS

MINISTRY

Proud warriors from another era gathered in Chicago to celebrate their worldwide movement.

Last month’s Youth for Christ International (YFCI) Celebration of Hope reunion featured plenty of gray hair and bulging waistlines. But a common concern flavored the exuberance and nostalgia of the four-day event: passing the fervor of one of this century’s most dynamic youth movements to a new generation of Christian leaders.

Delegates came from 47 states and 37 countries—whole contingents from such places as South Korea, India, Africa, and Australia, as well as from the Caribbean and the Americas.

Officially, nearly 800 were registered at the hotel where most sessions took place, though at times attendance there surged to 1,100. And there were easily as many stories as individuals at the gathering. “Everywhere I go I see the product of Youth for Christ,” said Ted Engstrom, president emeritus of World Vision and a former YFCI president.

A Friday night dinner addressed by founding president Torrey Johnson drew 1,500, and Billy Graham, YFC’s first full-time staff member, spoke at an “old-fashioned” Saturday-night rally at Chicago’s Moody Church. The rally was a bath in nostalgia: Cliff Barrows led a popular World War II chorus, “God Bless Our Boys,” Merrill Dunlop played the organ, George Beverly Shea sang “I’d Rather Have Jesus,” the choir rendered popular rally songs of the forties and fifties, and musicians Jan Sanborn, Kurt Kaiser, Hilding Halverson, Helen McAlarney Barth, and Bill Pearce and Dick Anthony all participated as well.

Why Yfc Worked

The desire to “pass the torch” to a new generation often included conjecture on the reasons for YFC’s success. Frequently, prayer was mentioned. According to Johnson, “We understood that prayer is the way God works, so we tried to work according to God’s formula.”

A second factor often acknowledged was the First Congress on World Evangelism, held in Beatenberg, Switzerland, in 1948, the place many American Christians received an international vision. In fact, the organizations born of the vision initially inspired at the Beatenberg congress comprise a long list of well-known, far-reaching ministries—World Vision, Overseas Crusades, Greater Europe Mission, International Students, TransWorld Radio, and Gospel Films, to name a few.

But ultimately, credit for YFC’s success went to God. As founding president Torrey Johnson put it, “You can’t define the dynamic behind Youth for Christ in human terms. It was God, you see. We were like the Los Angeles Dodgers: We had no right to win, but we did! We didn’t know that we couldn’t win; we didn’t know it wasn’t possible. It never occurred to us. We were swept along on the tide, and the tide was God.”

An Urgent Time

That tide began to swell in 1945, when rallies were already going strong in several major U.S. cities. Recognizing the advantages of a unified effort, 42 delegates met at Winona Lake, Indiana, for a founding convention and elected Johnson president. Pastor of Midwest Bible Church in Chicago at the time, he moved quickly to solidify the fledgling movement, opening an office, and hiring another young pastor, Billy Graham, as a YFC evangelist and spokesman. Graham criss-crossed the country in meetings, while Johnson coordinated details and traveled extensively himself.

Because most YFC leaders were unabashedly unsophisticated and lacking in broad knowledge of the world they lived in, many of the early years are recalled with a chuckle. Graham remembers being billed on programs with an infamous “talking horse.” Johnson remembers sending Graham on a preaching mission to Canada before either man understood the geography of a country whose land area is greater than that of the 48 contiguous United States. As Johnson recalled, a frustrated Graham soon phoned him, asking if he had ever been to Canada. “No,” said Johnson, whereupon Graham informed him he had cancelled half the meetings since “even the Lord himself couldn’t keep these dates.”

By the time of the Beatenberg congress, YFC had a global vision. Graham and Johnson led the first team to England. Later, Graham returned to Britain, while Johnson went to Berlin, and other teams fanned out across Europe and the Far East. And a world was beginning to take notice. William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper chain regularly reported on YFC activities, and a Christian Hearst reporter, Wesley Hartzell, was sent with the first team Graham and Johnson took to England.

An All-Pervasive Movement

It is virtually impossible to scratch the surface of any evangelical parachurch ministry today without finding staff personnel whose roots are imbedded in the YFC movement. Jay Kesler, for example, president of Taylor University and himself a former YFC president, was converted in a high school club. Warren Wiersbe, who now heads the “Back to the Bible” broadcast ministry, came to Christ at a rally addressed by Graham. And Gregorio Tingson, one of 48 commissioners called by President Corazón Aquino to rewrite the Philippine constitution, began his ministry of evangelism with Youth for Christ.

There were, however, some faces missing at the reunion. YFC has had its share of disaffected staff members over the years, many of whom still nurse bitter memories of bad management decisions and soured personal relationships. Several well-known figures were conspicuous by their absence.

A Two-Way Message

As former leaders sought ways to communicate something of the dynamism of the early days to a younger generation, current YFC leaders tried to explain what the organization is doing today.

Jim Groen, international president of Youth for Christ, described programs being conducted under the aegis of YFC in virtually every corner of the world.

• In Holland, YFC has 147 coffee houses where young people gather on the weekends.

• In Germany, there are Teen Mobiles: double-decker buses with a coffee bar and seats downstairs, and a counseling room on the upper deck. Buses like these are also used in Spain and Austria and in other parts of Europe.

• In Great Britain, a conference called Spring Harvest, sponsored by Buzz magazine and the Evangelical Alliance, is drawing over 60,000 young people annually for a week of evangelism, discipleship, and missions.

• In Indonesia, a Muslim country, the constitution requires religion to be taught in the schools. Because of the success of a pilot program, the head of the schools for Djakarta—1,000 middle schools and high schools—has asked YFC to teach a Christian class in every high school in the city, and will pay each teacher a stipend for transportation.

• In Africa, rallies are still popular, and YFC has recently been started in Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta). There were 5,000 people at the first rally one year ago. A second rally last February drew 12,000, with about 10 percent of the audience responding for salvation at both meetings. A training center is now being built on four acres given by the government.

Dick Wynn, president of YFC-USA, described the American culture as a deteriorating society. And as it deteriorates, he said, needs appear earlier in terms of age groups. For that reason, YFC today is working in junior high and middle schools through a relatively new junior varsity club program. Youth guidance programs reaching delinquents are increasing; in fact, only YFC ministers inside juvenile detention centers, though there are more than 300 organizations working within the adult prison system.

A New Vision?

Despite the reminiscing and optimism, concern for the future was apparent. The announcement of formation of the Youth for Christ Foundation, a new entity aimed at encouraging contributions to finance evangelism and discipleship programs across the U.S. and in over 100 countries, addresses a major YFC shortcoming. Beleaguered by financial shortages for years, the organization hopes the foundation will provide means for keeping the vision for youth alive. Businessman Jack Sonneveldt, long-time YFC activist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been named president of the Colorado-based fund.

And while many things have changed in the 40-plus years since the movement burst on the scene, some things are essentially the same. Today’s strategy, says Wynn, is to mobilize the Christian community to reach youth wherever they are found, and by all possible means.

Whether this will be done with the fervor and effectiveness of the past remains to be seen.

By Carol R. Thiessen.

Classic and contemporary excerpts

“Just charge it, silly.”

A recent experience showed me just how powerful the trend is toward materialism. My three-year-old daughter and I were leaving the record store when I noticed she was carrying an unopened, unpurchased Sesame Street video cassette. In a firm voice I said, “Jessica, let’s put that back where we found it.”

“But I want it, Daddy.” Ever wise, I said truthfully, “But Daddy doesn’t have enough money to buy it.” Pleased with my loving management of another parental crisis, I was shocked by her reply. She gave me that patronizing look known to all parents of three-year-olds and said, “Daddy, just charge it, silly.”

… My little girl is picking up the values of the consumer age in which she lives.

—Dick Staub in World Christian (March/April 1988)

So little place for thanksgiving

It is probable that in most of us the spiritual life is impoverished and stunted because we give so little place to gratitude. It is more important to thank God for blessings received than to pray for them beforehand. For that forward-looking prayer, though right as an expression of dependence upon God, is still self-centered in part, at least, of its interest; there is something we hope to gain by our prayer. But the backward-looking act of thanksgiving is quite free from this. In itself it is quite selfless. Thus it is akin to love. All our love to God is in response to his love for us; it never starts on our side. “We love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).

—William Temple, from 3000 Quotations on Christian Themes

The wrong measuring stick

A little boy once told his mother that he was six feet tall. When she doubted the statement, he assured her that he had just measured himself. His calculations were right, but his ruler was not; it was only about six inches long. This is the sort of rule by which many Christians measure themselves.

—A. B. Simpson in A Larger Christian Life

Learning the hard way

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed to me.

—John Wesley, quoted in New Beginnings, by Evelyn Bence

Upwardly mobile

If you think you should be loved just because you are you, you missed your vocation. You should have been God.

—Benedict J. Groeschel in The Courage to Be Chaste

Basic responsibility

Renew your hope; love your family. Raise your children, don’t abandon them. Cats raise kittens. Dogs raise puppies. Eagles raise their eaglets. Surely man can raise his babies.

You have not earned the right not to raise your children! You have not earned the right to do less than your best! Though your knees may buckle sometimes, you never earn the right to surrender!

—Jesse Jackson, quoted by columnist Roger Simon (Los Angeles Times Syndicate, June 5, 1988)

Everything good is from God

Some people are appreciative by nature, but some are not; and it is these latter people who especially need God’s power to express thanksgiving. We should remember that every good gift comes from God and that He is (as the theologians put it) “the Source, Support, and End of all things.” The very breath in our mouths is the free gift of God.

Thankfulness is the opposite of selfishness. The selfish person says, “I deserve what comes to me! Other people ought to make me happy.” But the mature Christian realizes that life is a gift from God, and that the blessings of life come only from His bountiful hand.

—Warren W. Wiersbe in A Time to Be Renewed

The fall harvest of books is in. The fruits of many talented writers and illustrators are stacked on the shelves, just in time for Christmas giving. Here are a few of the most interesting offerings: they range from novels and family sagas to poems and illustrations and songs.

Memories And Mercies

• Images of grace sprinkle the compact story line of Remembering, a novel by Wendell Berry (North Point, $14.95). The action is simple: Andy Catlett, a Kentucky farmer caught up in the frenzied world of agribusiness, comes home from San Francisco. But this is no routine return from a business trip; it is the final return of a prodigal from a long journey. It is the culmination of several stages of return, of repeated memories of a father’s call and touch.

Berry uses water as a particularly striking symbol. For example, during a punishingly hot day of chopping corn, two of Andy’s forebears sink themselves in the cool creek whenever they get too hot. “It was there all the time,” one of the characters muses. “Redemption, a little flowing stream.” This and other family memories draw Andy back to the land. Later, he walks about a farm he intends to buy until he finds a cool, clear spring; he drinks deeply of the water and feels the hurry of his busy life flow out of him.

The motions of grace in this story occur in ordinary life. Reconciliation is both a believable and startling mercy, coming with jet-plane swiftness.

• In Born Brothers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18.95), author Larry Woiwode extends the crisis of grace over the whole of another young prodigal’s life. Woiwode’s complex plot and writing style portray a different conversion: in one sense, it is all so simple, like “Jesus Loves Me”; yet it is as complex and as confusing as Job or Ecclesiastes.

• The Old Testament characters of Jacob and Laban sometimes seem like two real estate tycoons on the make, swindling each other at every turn. Yet in Madeleine L’Engle’s poem, “Leah”—wife, daughter, and pawn in Jacob and Laban’s game—finds grace even in the family pattern of deceit in which she and Rachel have joined: “… yet, from our deceit / and from our love / we gave to Jacob/twelve sons, twelve nations / and, in the end, / one God.”

“Leah” is one of 70 poems by L’Engle drawn from biblical characters and events and collected in Cry Like a Bell (Shaw, $8.95). The title piece celebrates the birth of Jesus: “The Child’s first cry came like a bell: / God’s word aloud, God’s Word in deed.”

• Mining from the rich lode of Celtic lore, Stephen Lawhead has written Merlin (Crossway, $10.95), a richly textured reimagining of the Arthurian legends of ancient Britain, set during the time of Roman emperors Gratian and Theodosius (367–95).

The tensions between the old Druid religion and the claims of Jesus are a recurring theme during the life of the young Merlin, who later becomes the wizard of Arthur’s court. It is a picture of grace in the days when Western civilization was just emerging from paganism; it is one that may help us in these days of resurgent paganism.

Through The Generations

• Artist Rien Poortvliet has in the past given us Gnomes; He Was One of Us: The Life of Jesus of Nazareth; and Noah’s Ark. His latest effort, In My Grandfather’s House (Abrams, $39.95), stems from a boyhood visit to his uncle’s house on an island in the south of Holland. It takes us back through ten generations to 1610, but concentrates on the decades around the turn of the twentieth century.

Although the text is fascinating, the paintings and drawings make this a superior book. Working in a variety of media, Poortvliet shows the people, the buildings, the animals, and the countryside of his homeland in their many seasons and moods. Daily work patterns, the font where generations were christened, hymns composed by Valerius, the efforts of church elders to discipline one of his forebears, childhood games and toys, gossiping old men on the square, and the incursions of Napoleon and other invaders are all woven into the family chronicle.

Influenced by Dutch genre and landscape traditions, particularly Rembrandt and Ruisdael, Poortvliet treats us to sharp, clear memories. Color, light, and line combine and move beyond mere illustration to express joy, pain, contentment, and struggle. One smells the odors, feels the wind, and hears the old folks singing psalms.

• If you have not read the story of the Wesley brothers, A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley, by Arnold A. Dallimore (Crossway, $13.95), is a good place to start. Born into a large family, seeking to be saved by works and then discovering grace, John and Charles Wesley eventually had great impact on England and America. Their ministry and the development of early Methodism are chronicled in clear prose.

• The Wesley Hymns, by John Lawson (Zondervan, $14.95), provides annotation for about 140 of Charles and John Wesley’s hymns. After a brief introduction that places the Wesleys in the history of Christian worship, the hymns are grouped under 53 topics covering the whole of theology. Commentary includes a summary of each doctrine, Scripture references for every line of the printed hymn texts, and a complete Scripture index.

Sight And Sound

• Some themes can be visited many times without tiring. Such is the case with Noah and the Ark, with the biblical text illustrated by Pauline Baynes (Henry Holt, $14.95). Created mainly for those ages 6–10, it provides any adult with new insights and joy.

Baynes, who illustrated Lewis’s Narnia series and Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham, echoes the flattened perspective and delicacy of Oriental prints and medieval illuminated manuscripts. A comparison of the hurried entrance of the animals into the ark with their joyful, pell-mell exit shows that she has captured both the urgency and the celebration of God’s redemption.

• Can a hymnbook be more than words and music? Songs of Praise, collected and arranged by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by Kathryn Hewitt (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, $16.95), offers 15 favorite hymns that are illuminated as a devotional book suitable for all ages.

Following the tradition of a medieval Book of the Hours, the border art moves from spring through winter. Rural peasant scenes provide an apt setting for “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” (by Charles Wesley), “Amazing Grace,” “O God Our Help in Ages Past” (Watts’s version of Psalm 90), and “We Gather Together” (tune from Valerius’s Collection).

By Larry Sibley, who teaches practical theology at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. He is the author of Matthew: People of the Kingdom (Harold Shaw).

Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion, and Simone Weil: A Modern Pilgrimage, by Robert Coles (Addison-Wesley, 182 pp., $17.95, hardcover; 179 pp., $17.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Deborah Easter, who teaches journalism at Seattle Pacific University.

Cut into the stone facing above Harvard University’s Emerson Hall is a biblical question that is vaguely unsettling amidst these self-assured and secular groves: “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” One Harvard professor who has heard the psalmist’s cry to God is Robert Coles, the Pulitzer prize-winning psychiatrist (CT, “The Crayon Man,” Feb. 6, 1987, p. 14). Like the subjects of his two recent biographies, Dorothy Day and Simone Weil, Coles believes that God put us here to ask and to choose. This awareness suffuses these books with a moral immediacy that is unusual for biography.

Coles wrote these books as “spiritual companions”: thematic portraits in which he explores certain “central concerns, if not passions or obsessions,” of each woman (political life, idolatry and intellectualism, spiritual hunger, conversion, the church). The Day volume has the advantage of drawing upon taped conversations that began some 35 years ago when Coles, in an attempt to counter the abstract pressures he faced in medical school, met Day while he was doing volunteer work in one of her New York City soup kitchens.

As modern pilgrims, Weil and Day have a broad appeal, in part because their lives straddled the religious and the secular in unusually intense ways. They both tried a number of the substitute gratifications of this century—Marx; sensualism (Day); urbane talk, in the cafés of Greenwich Village for Day, and those of Paris for Weil; Freud and other permutations of the therapeutic—before passionately devoting their lives to Christ at about age 30.

Also Reviewed In This Section:

The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard

The Psycho-Social Aspects of Stress Following Abortion, by Anne Speckhard

Aborted Women: Silent No More, by David Reardon

Remembering, by Wendell Berry

Born Brothers, by Larry Woiwode

Merlin, by Stephen Lawhead

Cry Like a Bell, by Madeleine L’Engle

In My Grandfather’s House, by Rien Poortvliet

A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley, by Arnold A. Dallimore

The Wesley Hymns, by John Lawson

Noah and the Ark, by Pauline Baynes

Songs of Praise, by Kathleen Krull and Kathryn Hewitt

Seekers On Separate Paths

Though the similarities between the two lives are intriguing, the differences are perhaps more instructive. Weil (1909–43), born of secular Jewish parents in France, exhibited an analytic and imaginative brilliance early on, scoring highest on the entrance exam to the prestigious Ećole Normale Supérieure (Simone de Beauvoir holds second place). In her twenties, Weil was an austere moralist and writer with Marxist inclinations—nicknamed “the Red Virgin”—and allied herself with the French working class, including a stint as a laborer in an electronics factory.

Weil gradually came to believe that political ideology led to false idols, and shortly after she experienced “a visitation of Christ’s love” and converted to the Catholic faith, though she rejected baptism in the church. She died at the age of 34 of tuberculosis in a London sanitarium, a death made certain by self-starvation. Most of this estranged seeker’s social and religious writings found their way into print after her death and startled critics with their radiant originality and depth.

Day (1897–1980), a daughter of middle-class Chicago, also had a turbulent early adulthood, which in her case combined Left-leaning journalism, prison stays connected with women’s suffrage and the Wobblies (an early labor movement), and a common-law marriage that broke up soon after the birth of her daughter and her conversion to Catholicism.

Unlike Weil, who feared the church would stand between her and Christ, Day decided to marry Christ and the church—but with her eyes wide open. Day often felt that priests were “more like Cain than Abel,” but spent her life praying and fighting for the institution’s true spirit. She took her spirituality to the streets and founded the Catholic Worker movement and her Houses of Hospitality for the vulnerable.

Day once told Coles that “what the Lord wants from us is as many steps as we can manage.” It is this arduous, inchlike process that one senses when reading about the fully human complexities of these two lives.

Both women grappled with pride. Weil was given to occasional self-dramatization (pleading with French authorities to parachute her into the war zone so she could aid French resistance fighters) and a willful blindness and hostility to her Jewish heritage.

Day, whose life was embodied (and balanced) in religious community and service, knew well the underbelly of charitable action (the thoughts that say, “You’re God’s gift to humanity”). Yet her wry self-scrutiny did not turn to self-hatred, though she felt the grip of the latter when young. She once became “obsessed” with destroying every copy of her early novel The Eleventh Virgin because it spelled out her youthful hedonism. Her priest reminded her that God does the forgiving.

Living With Reverent Attention

In the conclusion to the final volume of Coles’s award-winning psychological study, Children in Crisis, he describes an eight-year-old girl who lives in a mansion in New Orleans’s Garden District. To her parents’ discomfort, she has begun gazing out her bedroom window at an above-ground cemetery across the street. The tombs cast late afternoon shadows, and the child asks repeatedly about “who those people, who the departed were.”

The family’s black maid, troubled by the mother’s unwillingness to hear her child’s questions, tells Coles: “I’m poor, but at least I know that I should ask myself everyday: where’s your destination, and are you going there, or are you getting sidetracked?”

Coles gives the maid the last word in his five-volume study. He observes that, like the child, she knows how to wonder, how to take notice, how to think about “the end of things,” and how to pray all the while.

What stays with one after reading Coles’s searching reflections on these two lives is this: his deep respect for the individual ways in which each of these women struggled to live with reverent attention.

Where Do The Disciplines Fit?

The Spirit of the Disciplines, by Dallas Willard (Harper & Row, 224 pp.; $14.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Larry Burtoft, pastor of Valley Vista Christian Community, Sepulveda, California.

The past decade has witnessed the stirring of a renaissance of interest in spiritual disciplines. Beginning in 1978 with Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, an increasing number of books, periodicals, and even radio programs have urged the recovery of such practices as fasting, prayer, solitude, silence, meditation, and study as a means to a more vital spiritual life.

Unfortunately, this movement has remained peripheral to the primary activities of most churches. Few, if any, have programs structured around a concept of discipleship that focuses on spiritual disciplines. Perhaps one reason is that few Christian leaders are convinced of the essential importance of such exercises for the life of the church. Such discipline may be highly recommended, to be sure, but not essential.

What has been needed is a powerful apologetic, grounded in the biblical witness, which demonstrates the necessity of spiritual disciplines. In this respect, Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines is a tour de force. Willard, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, has written a significant book that deserves a serious and wide reading.

Willard believes that a major problem facing contemporary Christianity “is one of misunderstanding how our experiences and actions enable us to receive the grace of God.” There is confusion regarding the content of salvation, the nature of the spiritual life, the place of the human body in salvation, and the part we are to play in our redemption. In this confusion, it is not clear where, if at all, the spiritual disciplines fit.

Questions abound: If the disciplines are so important, why are we only lately becoming aware of them? Aren’t they a form of ascetic works righteousness refuted by Luther and the Reformation? Did Jesus or Paul or anyone else in the New Testament practice them? Aren’t we saved by grace through faith alone?

Essentials For The “Easy Yoke”

With penetrating and enlightening analysis, Willard clarifies the central issues involved and builds a most impressive argument for “the absolute necessity of the spiritual disciplines for our faith.” Rather than curious historical artifacts or optional exercises for super-Christians, he says, the disciplines are shown to be the essential activities that allow individuals to experience the “easy yoke” of Christ and to follow him in concrete ways into the gospel’s kingdom.

Although Willard’s argument is strengthened by drawing from a wide spectrum of authors and disciplines, the convincing power of the book lies in his handling of the scriptural evidence. The New Testament’s conception of salvation is shown to be far more than forgiveness, including substantial and progressive transformation of the individual’s moral character, and an increasing power to do good and resist evil.

Chapter 6, dealing with the significance of the human body as it is involved in the process of salvation, will be enlightening for many, as will chapter 7, an analysis of Paul’s understanding of the psychological dynamics of redemption.

While the book is expressly not a practical guide, it includes a helpful chapter describing the most common and time-tested disciplines, presented under two basic headings: “Disciplines of Abstinence,” including solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice, and “Disciplines of Engagement,” including study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission.

In what may be the most controversial chapter in the book, “Is Poverty Spiritual?” Willard attacks what he sees as “one of the most dangerous illusions of Christians in the contemporary world … the idealization of poverty.” This and the final chapter on “The Disciplines and the Power Structures of This World” are must reading for socially conscious Christians seeking to integrate the inner and outer journeys of discipleship.

A thoughtful reading of this book provides a theologically and psychologically sound understanding of the way into vital, life-changing contact with the living Christ and his kingdom. If Willard’s plea for placing the disciplines front and center on the church’s agenda were instituted, the results just might be revolutionary.

The Women Of Abortion Speak Out

The Psycho-Social Aspects of Stress Following Abortion, by Anne Speckhard (Sheed and Ward, viii + 134 pp.; $7.95, paper), and Aborted Women: Silent No More, by David O. Reardon (Loyola, xxvi + 373 pp.; $9.95, paper; $15.95, hardcover). Reviewed by James T. Burtchaell, professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, and author of Rachel Weeping: The Case Against Abortion (Harper & Row).

Anne Speckhard writes as a social scientist who is critical of traditional abortion studies in her discipline. These studies commonly inquire into the psychic turbulence women incur by using abortion to deal with what they felt were overwhelming problems. But such studies tend to look at abortion only as a coping device and ignore the possibility that it may also be a new source of stress in its own right.

Speckhard finds their accounts too individualistic. By examining only the emotional aftermath wrought by abortion in the mothers themselves, scholars have been too ready to ignore how it may have estranged these women from their crucially important natural support communities.

Speckhard conducted extensive interviews with 30 women for whom abortion had been a highly stressful memory. The typical woman had become pregnant while in a longstanding sexual partnership, which then unraveled; she was 15 to 24 years old at the time of the abortion, and still in the process of achieving independence from her family; and she was knowledgeable about birth control but did not use it.

The women reported emotional reactions already well described in earlier literature: intense guilt, anger (primarily at the abortion providers), depression, fear of discovery, loss of ability to experience emotions, and painful reactions when encountering pregnant women or small children.

More original is Speckhard’s report of behavioral aftereffects not well noticed in other studies: eating disorders, extreme weight loss or gain, drug or alcohol abuse and addiction, sexual promiscuity, a prompt repeat (or “compensatory”) pregnancy, flashbacks, nightmares, hallucinations, and “visitations” by the aborted child.

Attitudes also had changed. At the time of their abortions, 35 percent of these women considered abortion as their right, while another 27 percent had not even regarded it as a moral issue. But in the aftermath, 96 percent now regarded it as wrong.

Facing Crisis In Isolation

Speckhard’s most valuable finding, however, is that abortion compounded the stress of those women by estranging them from their most important loyalties. Fearful that their sexual activity and pregnancy would strain their parents’ loyalties beyond the breaking point, they confided neither in them nor in any friends they thought might tell their families. Thus these women underwent both the crisis and its aftermath isolated from their closest natural supports.

They did find emotional companionship in other friends who supported their choice of abortion, but that support went bad later. “Many subjects reported that friends who had been enthusiastic supporters of the abortion decision were unwilling to listen to any accounts of the stress produced by the abortion. It appeared to be a protective strategy on the part of friendship systems to avoid having to deal with the pain of abortion.”

The decision to abort meant they were refusing to make a commitment to their sexual partners or their children, and the decision to do it furtively hid them from their original families. Their isolation from family was therefore stark and complete.

Abortion was also religiously alienating. The typical subject, religiously inactive, had thought of God as punitive and vengeful. “Such a perception led to a great deal of fear and anxiety, as it was not uncommon for these subjects to report a fear that God would punish them for the abortion by denying them future fertility.”

These women were to find eventual peace in surprising company: not with their families or their friends, but in prolife groups or in ardent religious communities. “In these social systems subjects found members who allowed them to discuss freely their feelings of grief, guilt, loneliness, anger, and despair. They also found that members of these systems were not adverse [sic] to discussing the details of the abortion experience, particularly with reference to concerns over pain that the fetus may have experienced and damage that may have occurred to the subjects’ reproductive organs. In other social systems these concerns had not been validated.”

The women found religious reintegration by accepting the church’s negative appraisal of extramarital sex and abortion, by embracing a greatly modified view of God (as cherishing rather than punishing), and by discovering the possibility of forgiveness as a final resolution for their fault and the stress that had followed.

Speckhard’s findings seem to confirm this reviewer’s earlier observation that women at risk for irresponsible pregnancy and abortion have tended to be too weak either to confront their sexual partners or to reveal themselves in crisis to their dissenting families and friends. They have tended to be acquiescent and passive, victimized by families that turned a blind eye towards what was going on, and victimized by partners who wanted sex but not commitment.

The Most Exploited

Aborted Women: Silent No More is built on a survey David Reardon conducted of 252 women who have had abortions and who are members of a national support group known as Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA). Typical in most respects of all women reported as aborters in America, they stand out in one way: They all have come to deplore their action.

The accounts of their experiences are remarkably parallel to what Speckhard found in her interviews. Most of the women had been familiar with contraception but had not been using it when they became pregnant. The decision to abort had been made quickly—often within hours of detecting pregnancy. Most women felt they had been “forced” to abort by pressure from others, and 90 percent claimed they had been given incomplete information by the abortion providers. They remembered the abortion not as an act of emancipation, but as a yielding to the preferences of others. The aftermath effects include what Speckhard discovered: “atonement” pregnancies, eating disorders, alienation from family and from God.

Of first-hand value are 20 extensive and well-written profiles, edited from extensive interviews. The women represented here narrate some of the most complex situations: they are victims of coerced abortions, women who chose to be weak and others who made abortion a take-charge moment, women who had therapeutic abortions or illegal ones, those who aborted after rape and incest, women who were hustled into abortion because of economic or racial disadvantage.

The hard cases are chronicled here in the women’s own words. They are angry now, not weak. And they are articulately persuasive that abortion had been a way for women to be used, not an occasion of self-governance.

Courses Of Destruction

Of what significance are these studies for a Christian moral understanding? Those in the community of faith should appreciate that one of the primary gifts of the Spirit is insight into what various courses of moral behavior do to people. One of the primary sources of moral teaching is our communal insight into how certain actions tend to destroy us personally: those who lie, or embezzle, or seduce, wither. They are enfeebled in their characters, their persons.

These recollections by women who destroyed their children and were later transformed are a valuable source for reflection by those who believe we have nothing better to do with our lives than to make room for the most helpless. This is not merely social science research. It offers us insight into one of the ways that those who kill, themselves die—and can be raised to new life.