UPDATE

On one side of the street, Atlanta police stand in line to fortify a barricade intended to protect the entrance to the Feminist Women’s Health Center, where on a typical day between 30 and 40 abortions are performed. On the other side, prolife demonstrators sing, pray, and read from the Bible.

After about half an hour, small groups begin to make their way toward the barricade. When confronted by police, they lie down in the street. Traffic is rerouted. One by one, the demonstrators, who belong to the movement Operation Rescue, are informed they are under arrest for obstructing traffic and other minor offenses. Most of them refuse to walk and are dragged or carried to a police bus that will take them to a detention center.

A Test Of Will

Previous demonstrations by Operation Rescue in New York City and Philadelphia were staged with the full knowledge of the police, who carried out their duties cordially, in keeping with the essentially symbolic nature of the protests. But what began in Atlanta during the Democratic National Convention in July has developed into a test of tactical skill and will power between Atlanta authorities and the movement they are trying to control.

By press time, more than 700 people had been arrested, many of them from out of state, some of them pastors representing various denominations. When the demonstrations began, getting arrested was virtually painless: A signature secured release from police custody. But authorities have upped the stakes and now require the posting of bond. Some activists have responded by pledging to spend 100 days in jail.

To Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, Atlanta has become a test of his movement’s strength. According to Terry, Atlanta police are making preparations to jail as many as 3,000 protesters; he hopes to persuade at least that many to go. His strategy is to solicit support from area pastors. “The best thing for this country and for the prolife movement,” he recently told a group of about 50 interested clergy, “would be to have 3,000 of God’s people sitting in jail.”

Undergirding Operation Rescue’s strategy is the conviction that the prolife movement’s actions, to this point, have failed to match its rhetoric. Announcing his intention to be arrested, Southern Baptist pastor Jim Wood said, “If saving a life is radical, it’s time for us to do something radical.” But leaders emphasize that radical does not mean violent, including the use of “verbal violence,” such as ridiculing police officers or calling women who enter abortion clinics “murderers.”

Terry said Operation Rescue is trying to make Atlanta “safe for women and children.” According to Wood, one Atlanta prolife crisis pregnancy center has received up to three times its usual number of calls since the demonstrations began. Another goal of the movement here is to tie up the legal system in an effort to force reconsideration of the abortion issue.

Growing Support

Moral Majority President Jerry Nims spoke from the steps of Atlanta’s City Hall at an August 25 press conference that announced the formation of an Atlanta branch of Operation Rescue. Nims said it was likely he would be arrested before the furor in Atlanta ends.

Prolife critics of Operation Rescue believe its tactics will turn public opinion against the prolife movement and delay legislative victory (CT, Aug. 12, p. 48). Yet it appears that support for Operation Rescue is on the rise. The movement has been endorsed by several well-known Christians including James Dobson, D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson, and Jerry Falwell, who indicated recently that he may soon be among those arrested.

Terry has sought the backing of Atlanta-based pastor and television minister Charles Stanley, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention. But a spokesperson for Stanley said his only comment on the demonstration as of now is “no comment.”

The movement, which is almost exclusively white, has also had trouble rallying black supporters. “Black Christians are solidly opposed to abortion,” said Lem Tucker, of Voice of Calvary Ministries in Jackson, Mississippi. “But black folk wonder where prolifers are when it comes to their being unemployed or not having enough food to make it from day to day. Blacks have learned, by experience, to be suspicious of a white agenda.”

Black evangelist Crawford Loritts said white Christian activists ought to be “comprehensive in their denunciation of sin.” He said Christians must “stand for righteousness, whether the issue is filling out an income-tax form, equal-job opportunity, or legalized slavery in South Africa.”

However, Loritts, who was one of four black leaders to meet privately with Terry, said he supports the movement and is considering becoming involved. He credited Terry with “raising the inescapable issue of the stark contrast between what is objectively right and wrong.” Loritts said Terry is “forcing the establishment—doctors, the press, and others—to deal with their personal, moral responsibility. If nothing else comes of this movement but that, it’s worth it all.”

Some, including black Christian physician and minister Ray Hammond, question the practical wisdom of Operation Rescue’s approach. “Demonstrators must come to grips with the magnitude of what they’re asking a pregnant woman to do,” he said, “namely, bear a child. I’m not sure this is best dealt with in the context of a confrontation in the street.” Hammond advocates such activities as making pre and postnatal medical care and counseling available to women at little or no cost.

Message Of Repentance

Terry makes no apologies for his advocacy of civil disobedience, though he realizes it puts him at odds with many conservative Christians. “Jesus said, ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,’ ” he said. “These babies are not Caesar’s, they’re God’s.” Speaking to the Atlanta pastors, Terry railed against what he called an “Americanized Christianity” that has “lost sight of what it means to suffer for Christ.” He proclaimed, “When police move us away, they’re less guilty than we are because, unlike us, they aren’t called to be salt and light. If we would have done our job 15 years ago, the police wouldn’t be between the rock and hard place they are now.”

By Randy Frame in Atlanta.

North American Scene

CRUSADE EVANGELISM

Graham Targets New York

Evangelist Billy Graham’s Buffalo, New York, crusade enjoyed unprecedented support from mainstream Protestant churches and attracted near capacity attendance.

Prior to the crusade, Graham spokesman Larry Ross had said the predominantly Roman Catholic population of western New York made this series of meetings especially significant. “Cooperation here has been broader than in past crusades,” said Ross, noting that mainline denominations were “carrying the ball” on preparations.

Local media, however, focused on isolated criticism of Graham’s message that being baptized and being confirmed was “not enough.” Says area pastor David Gifford, “The reporter apparently went out looking for a couple of people who had something negative to say about the crusade. While the newspaper failed to mention how warmly Dr. Graham was received here, the television stations did a superb job of covering the meetings.”

Ross says the Buffalo crusade was one of the most united efforts in decades, involving more than 56 denominations. Graham’s swing through New York includes crusades in Rochester and Syracuse.

TRENDS

Clergy Burnout Challenged

Contrary to conventional wisdom, pastors are not overstressed or overworked, says Duke University minister William Willimon. His new book. Clergy and Laity Burnout (Abingdon), suggests clergy burnout is more likely to come from depression and cynicism than stress.

“Ministers need to be honest and acknowledge that society doesn’t place a great deal of value on what we do,” says Willimon, who has served in a number of ministerial settings. He also says low salaries contribute to clergy burnout.

Willimon recommends counseling, but suggests pastors need to take a closer look at their initial reasons for entering the ministry. “We need to look inside ourselves and to the joy of our work so we can continue to believe God wants us to be doing the stuff we’re doing.”

INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS

The Boss Is A Lady

Greenville College, a Free Methodist-affiliated school in central Illinois, has quietly built a reputation for leadership in athletic administration. Vice-president Robert Smith is president of the International Baseball Association, and former athletic director John Strahl climbed to the presidency of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) a decade ago. This year, the new NAIA president is Greenville’s women’s basketball coach, Phyllis Holmes, the first woman to head a major U.S. coeducational sports body. Holmes played basketball for Greenville in the late 1950s, where she saw her first woman coach. She has been women’s athletic director there since 1976 and was inducted into the NAIA Hall of Fame last year—the fifth person from her school to earn the honor.

The new NAIA chief hopes to use her position to open the door for more women in sports leadership. The NAIA has nearly 500 member schools, but only 15 have a woman who serves as athletic director of both a men’s and women’s sports program.

ABORTION

Letting Parents Know

If a young girl wants an abortion, does she need to tell her parents? That issue is even more uncertain after federal appeals courts came to opposite conclusions last month.

In Minnesota, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a 1981 state law requiring a minor girl to notify both her parents 48 hours before she can get an abortion. During the four years that law was in effect, teen pregnancy, child birth, and abortion rates dropped significantly.

But in Ohio, a 1986 parental-notice law was struck down by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. The law was similar to the Minnesota statute, except it had a 24-hour, rather than a 48-hour, waiting period.

Appeals to the Supreme Court are likely in both cases, though abortion advocates are uncertain about their chances. They fear the addition of Justice Kennedy tilts the Court against abortion.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Named: As president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ian M. Chapman, pastor of the Third Baptist Church in St. Louis, Missouri. Because of Third Baptist’s dual alignment with the American and Southern Baptists, Chapman has held key positions in both denominations.

Walter C. Wright, Jr., as president of Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, succeeding Carl E. Armerding, who will resume teaching at the college. Regent is one of five theological colleges located on the campus of the University of British Columbia.

Announced: By Lutheran Hour speaker Oswald Hoffmann, his intention to retire at the end of the year after 33 years with the popular broadcast. Hoffmann’s last broadcast is scheduled for Christmas from mainland China.

Celebrated: The one-hundredth birthday of the United Methodist deaconess movement, initially the only church office to which women in that denomination could be commissioned. Today, nearly 200 deaconesses (including home missionaries) are under assignment by the United Methodist Church.

CONTROVERSY

James Dobson, president of Focus on the Family publications, has threatened to pull his publications out of the 315-member Evangelical Press Association (EPA) because of a controversial article in the association’s March–April newsletter, Liaison. The lengthy piece, written by EPA executive director Gary Warner, consisted mainly of an attack on Republican political views. Warner calls the past eight years in this country an “unmitigated political disaster.”

Dobson, noting his own activities in the fight against pornography, told Evangelical Press (EP) News Service that he took some of Warner’s remarks as a personal affront. Warner called antipornography campaigns “the latest religious cottage industry in a culture of one-issue-at-a-time concentration,” and said that picketing convenience stores to have Playboy removed is “a waste of time.”

In the article, Warner also implied that evangelicals subscribe to too narrow a definition of “family.” He urged caution about “giving blanket approval to individuals and groups that spout ‘pro-family’ slogans.” Dobson told EP that this comment “seemed rather specific to our situation as well.”

Warner denied that his editorial was “aimed at any organization or individual.” He said Christians “raise money and establish ministries on the basis of a lot of catch slogans and catch phrases, and I simply wanted to lift our thinking beyond that level.”

Tom Minnery, senior editorial director of Dobson’s publications, raised the issue at EPA’S annual convention in May. The association responded with a new policy calling for the executive director’s articles to be reviewed by the association president. Also, opinion articles in Liaison must be labeled as such.

In the July–August Liaison, EPA President John Stapert expressed the hope that the new policy would lay the controversy “permanently to rest.” But according to Focus on the Family’s Minnery, Dobson is waiting to see if stronger actions will be taken at the EPA board meeting next month before deciding whether to pull out.

Warner said he doubted there would be a significant change in the policy since it was approved overwhelmingly by the EPA membership in May. He said it was likely a few publications would pull out, but that it would have virtually no effect on the association.

EVANGELISM

Three years years ago, black evangelical leaders were disappointed that the nation’s black community was not included at the Houston ‘85 National Convocation on Evangelizing Ethnic America, sponsored by the North American Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization. Expressing their disappointment at that time to Lausanne representatives, they decided to take matters into their own hands.

The eventual result was the Atlanta ‘88 Congress on Evangelizing Black America, which drew about 1,000 people to Atlanta last month. Conference chairman Matt Parker said the gathering represented the “most diverse body of black Christian leaders to come together for an event” and the “largest meeting of black Christians to discuss evangelism.”

But perhaps the most historic aspect of Atlanta ‘88 is related to a phone call Parker received on the final day of the conference from a representative of the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelization. About a year ago, Parker received a letter of apology from Lausanne over Houston ‘85. But the call was a request for his help in finding 40 American black delegates to next year’s Lausanne Conference on World Evangelization in Manila. “I think it says something about growth,” said Parker, who was among those in attendance at that tense meeting in Houston three years ago.

A History Of Exodus

Black leaders generally maintain that Houston ‘85 exemplified a historical neglect of the black community on the part of predominantly white Christian institutions. In a major address at Atlanta ‘88, Tom Skinnner traced the gradual exodus of white Christianity to the suburbs. He credited white Christians with successfully reaching their own culture, and called for black Christians “to rise up and take their rightful place in the body of Christ.”

Skinner, whose New York City-based ministry specializes in black leadership development, said that black preaching, for all its power and majesty, has been weak at the point of its “inability to throw the net out and call people home to the person of Jesus Christ.” Skinner observed that in the historical black church, “the gift of the evangelist was not widely known.”

Thus the purpose of Atlanta ‘88 was to train and equip Christians to take the gospel to black America. For many registrants, Parker said, the conference provided unprecedented exposure to the storehouse of preaching and teaching within America’s black evangelical community.

Attendees spent one afternoon of the conference traveling to prisons, businesses, and street corners to practice sharing their faith. The conference included workshops on specialized ministries, including to youth, children, professionals, and street people. Others addressed problems facing the black community, such as drug abuse and abortion.

Kay James, president of the prolife organization Black Americans for Life, said that had economic considerations informed her parents’ decision on whether to choose abortion, she would not be alive today. James said that to advocate abortion because of difficult life circumstances betrays a lack of trust in God’s power and faithfulness.

Boston-based youth minister Bruce Wall described his background as a drug addict and car thief. He said he was living proof “that a life can change when Jesus steps in and gives meaning and purpose.”

Skinner, however, emphasized that people are not sinners because they’re drug addicts or alcoholics. “There are some people curing people of alcoholism better than us Christians,” said Skinner, who defined sin as “the failure to put one’s absolute trust in the lordship and authority of Jesus.”

In a similar vein, Buster Soaries called black America to a “spiritual movement that has a social relevance and not a social movement that has a spiritual ring to it.”

Conference chairman Parker said the organizing committee would dissolve following the five-day event, but announced the formation of the Institute for Evangelism, whose purpose will be to promote evangelism worldwide. The new organization will be advised by an international committee with representatives from nine countries or geographical regions.

ANNIVERSARY

Two thousand marchers gathered July 31 to celebrate “Habitat for Humanity Day” in Washington, D.C. The event was the midway point of “House Raising Walk 88,” a fund-raising effort sponsored by Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical housing ministry.

The walk, which began in Portland, Maine, will end in Atlanta later this month where the ministry will celebrate its 12 years of providing housing for the homeless. In the past dozen years, Habitat supporters have built nearly 3,000 houses for the needy, and they hope to build an estimated 2,000 more by the end of this year. Currently, the ministry is building homes in 280 cities in North America and at 59 sites in 25 countries overseas.

Executive director Millard Fuller hopes the walk will attract attention to the problem of homelessness. “And in that process we hope to take a giant step forward in making shelter a matter of conscience, which will help us eliminate poverty housing and homelessness,” Fuller said. He expects 5,000 people from 30 countries at the Atlanta celebration.

Also attending that event will be former President Jimmy Carter. Handy with a hammer and saw, Carter has led four work projects for Habitat for Humanity, including two this summer in Philadelphia and Atlanta. About his experiences with Habitat, Carter says, “I’ve learned more about the needy than I ever did as a governor or as a candidate or as a president.”

By Ron Smith.

ENTERTAINMENT

Christians protesting The Last Temptation of Christ may have lost a battle when the controversial film went into national release in mid-August, but some leaders in the protest movement vow that “the war on Universal Studios has just begun.”

Initially, concerned Christians jammed the telephone lines at Universal’s Los Angeles headquarters in early July. The grassroots campaign was ignited by a nationwide broadcast by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, alerting listeners to the impending release of the film. A coalition of Christian leaders then called on Universal to voluntarily shelve the film out of respect for the Christian community. One member of that coalition—Campus Crusade for Christ’s Bill Bright—offered to raise $10 million to reimburse Universal if it would relinquish all copies of the film.

However, since the film’s release—which portrays Jesus as a vacillating Savior who has sex with Mary Magdalene during a dream—the protest has taken on an antagonistic tone.

Jerry Falwell, in a paid television appeal that began airing across the country in late August, launched what he called “an all-out effort to cripple Hollywood and make it regret ever releasing this piece of garbage.” In the appeal, Falwell offered to send donors a “Battle Plan Kit.” Falwell is urging a boycott of undetermined length, not only of future Universal films, but of all the business interests of MCA, Inc., Universal’s parent company.

Similarly, Donald E. Wildmon, executive director of the American Family Association, told 25,000 demonstrators at a Los Angeles rally the day before the film’s scheduled release of his plans to send out 2.5 million direct-mail appeals, at a cost of $1 million, in an effort to ignite the theater boycott. Wildmon’s letter includes a copy of portions of an early version of the film’s script. Christian leaders who have since viewed the film say that some of the offensive scenes in that version have been edited out. Neither Falwell nor Wildmon has viewed the film.

Writing Home

Screenwriter Paul Schrader adapted the novel The Last Temptation of Christ for Universal Studios.” He talked with CHRISTIANITY TODAY about his Calvinist upbringing and public reaction to the film.

How do you respond to those people who have been offended by this film and feel it should never have been released?

I’m sorry they have this view. All I was trying to do was provoke discussion about Christ. When I was growing up, I used to listen to my parents and relatives discuss theology around the dinner table. And when I was at Calvin College, we were encouraged to discuss views of Christ that didn’t necessarily match our own … because we felt it was important to have something to measure truth against. When I first read the book [The Last Temptation of Christ], it struck me as a view of Christ that should be part of the debate.

Can you understand why the conservative Christian community has reacted so strongly?

I don’t doubt the sincerity of the protestors for a second, but I don’t think some of them are terribly representative of Christianity, or the things Christ stood for. I think a few uninformed leaders have mobilized a segment of Christians who might have preferred to judge for themselves.

Where has your own spiritual pilgrimage taken you?

I’m the product of a Calvinist home and religious schools all the way through college. When I finished school at Calvin, I left Grand Rapids and, for a long time, didn’t look back. But as I got older and had a family, I started feeling the need to return to those values … at least some of them. About four years ago, we began attending an Episcopal church in New York. I would say I’ve experienced a reaffirmation of my faith in recent years.

Do you feel this movie blasphemes Christ?

This movie may err on the side of Christ’s humanity, but it certainly doesn’t make up for centuries in which Christ’s humanity has been glossed over in art and literature. How can we relate to a Christ who didn’t feel the hungers we feel?

Disagreement On Boycott

Although conservative Christians universally oppose the film, they do not all agree on the boycott. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), for instance, withheld comment on the film until first screening it.

In an official statement to its member denominations on August 11, following a special screening of the film in Washington, D.C., the organization called the film “insensitive, offensive” and full of “flawed theology.” It urged “evangelical Christians not to patronize” the film, but also recognized the “right of Universal Pictures to make and distribute” it. The statement went on to say that “some have alleged that the motives for making this movie are anti-Christian. We ascribe no motive.”

“We didn’t address a further boycott because we didn’t feel it was our right to tell others outside the evangelical community not to see the film,” said Richard Cizik, an NAE spokesperson. “By urging theaters not to show the film, we would have, in effect, been telling others they couldn’t see the film. We didn’t feel that was appropriate.”

Jess Moody, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys, California, and spiritual leader to many in the entertainment industry, also refused to prejudge the film. But after seeing it, he agreed it ought to be boycotted, though he stopped short of declaring war on Hollywood. “No film has ever captured the miracles and crucifixion of Jesus more beautifully than this one. But no film has ever been so full of bologna about Jesus in history,” Moody said.

Although box office receipts indicated healthy attendance in the film’s first few weeks of release, Universal appeared to be stepping lightly with the general public by keeping it limited to a small number of theaters. Additionally, five theater chains, including two of the nation’s largest—MGM/UA Entertainment Company and General Cinema Corporation—announced a decision not to screen the movie in any of their theaters. MGM/UA, however, announced later that it would carry the film in some of its specialty art theaters.

By Brian Bird in Hollywood.

INTERVIEW

When it became clear that Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis would gain their parties’ nominations for President, CHRISTIANITY TODAY requested interviews with both candidates. Thus far, only Vice President Bush has consented.

You have spoken about your Episcopal beliefs. What does being a Christian mean to you?

I have been asked: “Is there a spiritual side to George Bush?” Of course there is. But I do not find it easy to discuss it publicly since my faith has been very personal to me. My upbringing was conventional Christianity. We had prayer at home, and attended church regularly. There was never any doubt that Jesus Christ was my Savior and Lord. To this day, I have total conviction on this point.

Barbara and I have had many personal moments with God. For example, when doctors told us our three-year-old daughter, Robin, would die of leukemia within weeks, there was no one for us to turn to but God. We lost Robin, but we never lost the faith and spiritual insight from that experience.

The pain taught us just how dependent on God we really are, and how important our faith is.

Do you believe there is a relationship between a President’s private morality/personal life and his or her public duties?

Yes. Those of us in leadership positions in government must be an example of ethical behavior. I am disturbed when those in privileged positions fail to uphold the trust that is placed in them. Public service has been hurt by individuals who lacked the judgment or character to put the public’s business above their own self-interest.

We need a revival of traditional ethical standards. Despite our national prosperity, many Americans are troubled over the fact that we have strayed from our fundamental values. But we cannot legislate ethical behavior. We must lead by example.

Would your administration handle poverty issues differently than the Reagan administration has? If so, how?

I am very proud of our recovery, proud that the majority are prospering as never before and such a large number of the poor have been able to break out of the poverty cycle. Nonetheless, as long as there are people hurting, our recovery is not complete. I firmly believe we can never be a truly prosperous nation until all within it prosper.

The surest way to win the war against poverty is to win the battle against ignorance. Even though we spend more on education than any other nation on Earth, we just don’t measure up. People who earn high school diplomas are only one-third as likely to be poor as those who drop out.

The challenge of the future is not just to make education more available, but to make it more worthwhile, with more choices for parents and students in the public-school system. For example, there should be schools for excellent, exceptional students in science and math, as well as wide choices for those disadvantaged with learning disabilities or deprived of intellectual nurture at home. Head Start Programs and remediation should be expanded so all who have need can have these. There should be economic access for higher education, with a savings plan that is possible for all parents and families, rich or poor, long before children will be ready for postsecondary education and training.

What is government responsibility in terms of family?

We should provide welfare benefits that keep families together, not split them apart. The current system is a disgrace. Further, we should enforce the responsibility of fathers for the families they create. It is a mockery of justice that fathers can avoid making child-support payments ordered by the courts. We must go after them hard.

We have engaged in a wide range of social experimentation over the past 25 years. Marriage as a lifelong commitment was marked as passé and old-fashioned, permissiveness moved on into promiscuity, open classrooms to open marriage. It just has not worked. But even worse, it has destroyed our family structure.

I am pleased that we are now moving into a resurgence of traditional values I that derive from our broad Judeo-Christian heritage, not overtly religious, but rather “common sense.”

What is your position on abortion? What specific steps would your administration take on that issue?

I believe abortion is wrong. We should work to change Roe v. Wade. Abortion on demand should not be legal. And it won’t be—but only if we persevere. I believe we need a human life amendment. I favor exceptions for rape, incest, and those cases in which the life of the mother is in danger. I know that not all of us agree on those exceptions. But we do agree on the principle. Our Constitution is and should be designed to protect human life.

What do you see as contributions that Christianity and other people of faith can make to this nation?

The private sector, including the Christian community with its very large constituencies, has a vital role to play in the service of this nation. When we went to Sudan, for example, we visited Jerry Falwell’s hospital, a private-sector undertaking—individual Christians reaching out to deprived Muslims. I took Pat Robertson along on that trip, since his organization was also involved. Dan O’Neill and Mercy Corps International were there, as well as Ted Engstrom’s World Vision organization. In other words, the evangelicals did not wait for government to get involved; they saw people dying and they jumped in to help.

I don’t get upset when I hear leaders of my own denomination speaking out through the National Council of Churches even when they are 180 degrees off the mark. I consider it Reverend William Sloane Coffin’s right to advocate very liberal political positions, or for the very liberal Father Robert Drinan to serve in Congress—although I wish we had defeated him.

Are you satisfied with the current relationship between church and state? If not, what specific problems would you address?

It is important that we all respect the separation of church and state, just as we are meticulous in defending the right of all people, including evangelicals, to participate in the process without intimidation or ridicule.

Separation of church and state? Yes. One nation under God? Yes, transcending even political party lines. Evangelicals, as all other Americans, have the right, and even a responsibility, to participate in the process, advocating their values. I support them. I think their involvement is healthy for America.

NEWS

NATIONAL ELECTIONS

A conservative platform may help George Bush hold on to Democrats who helped elect his boss.

With the conventions behind them, Michael Dukakis and George Bush have cranked up their campaigns another notch as they head for their November showdown. The Democrats will try to recruit the so-called Reagan Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 (CT, Sept. 2, 1988, pp. 38–10). Conversely, Republicans hope to hold on to the coalition that gave them the White House for the past eight years.

Polls show that an important part of that coalition was the evangelical community, which in recent years has turned from its traditionally Democratic leanings to vote Republican in the presidential elections. By November, it should be clear whether it was the person of Ronald Reagan or the priniciples of the Grand Old Party (GOP) that has attracted such a large percentage of the evangelical community.

Family, Faith, And Freedom

The Republicans claim it was their principles that attracted conservative Democrats; and indeed, the 1988 party platform has won high marks from conservative Christian groups. GOP leaders speak proudly of their 105-page document, which is nearly ten times the size of the Democratic platform. Claiming the Republicans were not ashamed of what they believe in, Platform Committee Chair Kay Orr of Nebraska said “family values, patriotism, and the belief in God” are an “integral part of the platform.”

Among the principles articulated in the document:

• Opposition to abortion and abortion funding; opposition to the withholding of care and medical treatment on the basis of age, infirmity, or handicap; support for the appointment of judges that “respect traditional family values and the sanctity of innocent human life.”

• Defense of religious freedom, including support for voluntary school prayer, equal access to school facilities for student religious groups, and the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools; condemnation of the American Civil Liberties Union’s attacks on the tax status of the Catholic church and other religious institutions.

• Support for the emphasis that “abstinence from drug abuse and sexual activity outside of marriage is the safest way” to avoid contracting AIDS.

• Pledges to fight drug abuse, pornography, homelessness, and crime.

• Support for the family in all government policies, particularly in economic areas such as tax benefits and opportunity for self-help.

The 1988 platform echoes previous Republican platforms in advocating the Strategic Defense Initiative and a “peace through strength” philosophy, but it breaks with the past in devoting more attention than ever before to environmental and poverty issues.

God’S Own Party?

Many observers say the conservative nature of the platform is due partly to the Christian influence within the party—an influence that was especially unmistakable during the convention. Estimates that as many as a third of the delegates were born-again Christians gave a deeper meaning to Reagan’s joke that he always knew when he got to the “home of the Saints, they’d all be Republicans.”

From the delegates to the speakers, evangelicals played a prominent role in the convention. On one night alone, evangelicals Sandi Patti, E. V. Hill, Kay James, William Armstrong, Elizabeth Dole, Jack Kemp, and Billy Graham were all on the program.

The lingering influence of Pat Robertson and his supporters was also present at the convention, but is likely to be a bigger factor in the days to come. Robertson has given his full support to Bush and is promising to campaign actively for the Republican ticket. In the interests of party unity, a tentative peace has been declared in many of the bitter struggles waged at the state level over recent months between Bush and Robertson factions of the GOP.

At a joint press conference, Robertson and the Vice President’s son George W. Bush declared a truce in the “Civil War II” that had been going on for two years over the delegate selection process in Michigan. “We had a tough fight in Michigan,” Robertson said, “but we’re no longer in a position to fight Republicans. We have to fight Democrats.”

Yet, tensions remain in many states between party regulars and the new Robertson activists. Robertson supporters have taken control of “party machinery” in Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, and Nevada and have a significant influence in several other states. Robertson delegate David Paco, a former Democrat from Hawaii, acknowledges there are still tensions in his state, but he is hopeful things can be resolved. “I think there is an attempt to build together,” he said. “It’s just a matter of time, because the wounds are still so fresh.”

Contrary to much early speculation, both Robertson and his supporters appear to be in Republican politics for the long haul. Many Robertson activists are throwing their hats into local political races.

But Robertson supporters do not represent the only evangelical presence in the GOP. Many Christians began active involvement in party politics in 1980, with the help of Reagan and a number of grassroots groups like the Moral Majority. Many of those more experienced Christian activists supported candidates other than Robertson.

Arkansas State Rep. Tim Hutchinson, general manager of a Christian radio station, is one such Bush delegate. Hutchinson said he believed Bush was the “strongest standard bearer for the fall.” According to Hutchinson, the Robertson campaign will have a significant impact on the entire party structure in his overwhelmingly Democratic state by bringing many new people into the process.

Hutchinson called the intraparty tensions “inevitable” because of the altering of the state-level GOP power structure. Also, he noted that some of the new Christians “are very much political novices and sometimes go about things in less-than-diplomatic ways.” Yet, he said, “the establishment wing of the party needs evangelicals and vice versa, so the coalition has to stay together.”

Reaching Out

Republicans are hoping their efforts will keep conservative Christians—including the evangelical Reagan Democrats—in the coalition. The Bush campaign has formed a Family Issues Coalition to reach out to people who advocate traditional family values. Doug Wead, director of the coalition, has been acting as the campaign’s liaison to the evangelical community and says evangelicals will be involved in all aspects of the campaign.

Bush may further endear himself to evangelicals with his recent statements about his faith in God (see interview, p. 40). And the choice of Sen. Dan Quayle—a Presbyterian—as a running mate also pleased conservative Christians.

Christian leaders in the party assert the GOP has much to offer evangelicals. Ohio Congressman Bob McEwen believes the Republicans can retain the votes of the Reagan Democrats even though Reagan is not on the ballot. “It’s not the person, but the values of the platform and the principles that will be implemented that are at risk,” he said. Colorado Sen. William Armstrong agrees. “The contrast between where Mr. Bush stands and Mr. Dukakis stands on issues that are absolutely fundamental—particularly on things evangelicals stand for—is very, very direct,” he said.

By Kim A. Lawton in New Orleans.

Friendly Confines

Media coverage of last month’s Republican convention left some stories untold:

Cabinet preacher. Interior Secretary Donald Hodel invited delegates attending an ecumenical prayer breakfast to give their lives to Christ. He and his wife, Barbara, began by relating how the suicide of their 17-year-old son led them to trade their “cultural Christianity” for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. “If you have never asked Christ into your life, I’d like to close with an opportunity for you to pray that prayer,” Hodel said.

Mutual fans. Vice President George Bush and contemporary Christian singer Sandi Patti are apparently big fans of one another. Bush requested that Patti sing the National Anthem at the convention after he heard her performance during the Statue of Liberty Celebration in New York. According to a campaign spokesman, Bush “loves her music” and often “pops her cassettes into the player.” For her part, Patti says she is a “big Bush supporter.”

Nonpartisan praying. Evangelist Billy Graham, who reminded reporters he is a registered Democrat, stayed in New Orleans for the entire convention. President Reagan had asked Graham to give the invocation the night he addressed the convention, and the Bushes asked their long-time friend to be with the family the night the Vice President accepted the nomination. Careful to remain nonpartisan, Graham was also at the Democratic convention in July, and he prayed a similar prayer at both events.

Family ties. In keeping with convention themes of faith and family, the Bush campaign sponsored a week-long “Salute to the Family” and gave special awards to individuals promoting “traditional family values.” Among the honorees: Teen Challenge’s Snow Peabody, Angie Holroyd of Clean Teens USA, Jean Johnson, wife of Assemblies of God General Chairman Don Johnson, Ruby Lee Piester of the National Committee for Adoption, and the Robert Schuller and Jerry Falwell families.

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Called to entertain?

It’s hard to imagine:

—Paul having the gift of entertainment.

—Barnabas being the minister of entertainment, rather than the minister of encouragement.

—Jesus selling tickets to the feeding of the 5,000.

—James begging money for “tickle the ear and emotion programs” of people in his church who had developed wrong expectations.

—Peter peddling his “Feed My Sheep” seminars.

Far too often, we’ve tried to bring ministry, music, and entertainment together, and in so doing, we’ve lost the integrity and true meaning of the music of the church. No one can honestly say they’ve been “called by God to entertain.”

—Glenn W. Harrell in Creator (April 1988)

Forget the “competition”

It is too bad that anything so obvious should need to be said at this late date, but from all appearances, we Christians have about forgotten the lesson so carefully taught by Paul: God’s servants are not to be competitors, but co-workers.

—A. W. Tozer in The Next Chapter After the Last

God never made birdcages

The Spirit of God is always the spirit of liberty; the spirit that is not of God is the spirit of bondage, the spirit of oppression and depression. The Spirit of God convicts vividly and tensely, but He is always the Spirit of liberty. God who made the birds never made birdcages; it is men who make birdcages, and after a while we become cramped and can do nothing but chirp and stand on one leg. When we get out into God’s great free life, we discover that that is the way God means us to live “the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

—Oswald Chambers in The Moral Foundations of Life

“Just good business”?

The phrase “It’s just good business” is often used to excuse an act or practice that, when examined critically, could scarcely be called Christian. The companion phrase “Sorry, it’s just not good business” is also used by businessmen as a valid reason for refusing to act in a Christian manner to their suppliers, customers, competitors, or employees.… In such matters, the Church continues to look in upon itself and not out upon the world. A large percentage of its members, when they enter its portals, check an important part of their lives in the cloakroom.

—Pierre Berton in The Comfortable Pew

The wrong kind of pity

Pity is one of the noblest emotions available to human beings; self-pity is possibly the most ignoble. Pity is the capacity to enter into the pain of another in order to do something about it; self-pity is an incapacity, a crippling emotional disease that severely distorts our perception of reality. Pity discovers the need in others for love and healing and then fashions speech and action that bring strength; self-pity reduces the universe to a personal wound that is displayed as proof of significance. Pity is adrenalin for acts of mercy; self-pity is a narcotic that leaves its addicts wasted and derelict.

—Eugene H. Peterson in Earth and Altar

The Father’s son

A child is not likely to find a father in God unless he finds something of God in his father.

—Austin L. Sorensen in These Times (June 1979)

The big picture

Looking through a peephole is no way to stay motivated when you’re moving toward a goal.

The big view is important. It takes big dreams—big goals—big rewards—big faith—to keep us moving through obstacles and fatigue and discouragement. To maintain momentum requires constantly reminding ourselves what we are working toward.

—Charles Paul Conn in Making It Happen

Scripture encourages us to seek this gift yet today.

One key difference between many evangelicals and charismatic believers is their attitude toward the gift of prophecy. In charismatic worship, it is not unusual for one or more persons to deliver “a word from the Lord.” Some evangelicals believe Scripture has ruled out that possibility. Others feel uneasy or just plain skeptical when face to face with someone who claims to speak on God’s behalf.

In the following essay, condensed from the forthcoming CT book Tough Questions Christians Ask, exegete Wayne Grudem examines what the New Testament says about the gift of prophecy and offers biblical counsel for its use in both charismatic and noncharismatic churches.

Can evangelical Christians use the gift of prophecy in their churches today? What is this spiritual gift, and how does it function? And if we do allow for its use, how can we guard against abuse and preserve the unique authority of Scripture in our lives?

An examination of the New Testament teaching on this gift will show that it should be defined not as “predicting the future,” or “proclaiming a word from the Lord,” or “powerful preaching”—but rather as “telling something that God has spontaneously brought to mind.” Once we understand prophecy this way, we can allow our churches room to enjoy one of the Holy Spirit’s most edifying gifts.

Less Authority Then Scripture

How did the New Testament church regard the gift of prophecy? Did it have more or less authority than Scripture or apostolic teaching? Let us compare what the two testaments say about prophecy.

Old Testament prophets had an amazing responsibility—to speak and write words that had absolute divine authority. They could say, “Thus says the Lord,” and what followed were the very words of God. They wrote their words as God’s words in Scripture for all time (see Deut. 18:18–20; Jer. 1:9; Num. 22:38; Ezek. 2:7). Therefore, to disbelieve or disobey a prophet’s words was to disbelieve or disobey God (Deut. 18:19; 1 Sam. 8:7; 1 Kings 20:36).

In the New Testament there were also people who could speak and write God’s very words and record them as Scripture. However, Jesus no longer called them “prophets,” but used a new term, “apostles.” The apostles are the New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament prophets (see, for example, Gal. 1:8–9, 11–12; 1 Cor. 2:13; 14:37; 2 Cor. 13:3; 1 Thess. 2:13; 4:8, 15; 2 Pet. 3:2). It is the apostles, not the prophets, who have authority to write the words of New Testament Scripture. And when the apostles want to establish their unique authority, they never appeal to the title prophet, but rather call themselves “apostles” (Rom. 1:1; 1 Peter 1:1).

Is Prophecy Too Subjective?

The “gift of prophecy” requires waiting on the Lord, listening for his prompting in our hearts. Christians who are completely evangelical, doctrinally sound, intellectual, and “objective,” probably need most the balancing influence of a vital “subjective” relationship with the Lord. And these people are also those who have the least likelihood of being led into error, for they already place great emphasis on solid grounding in the Word of God.

Yet there is an opposite danger of excessive reliance on subjective impressions for guidance, and we must clearly guard against that. People who continually seek subjective messages from God to guide their lives must be cautioned that subjective personal guidance is not the main function of New Testament prophecy. They need to place more emphasis on seeking God’s sure wisdom written in Scripture.

Many charismatic writers would agree with this caution from Anglican charismatic pastor Michael Harper: “Prophecies which tell other people what they are to do—are to be regarded with great suspicion.”

And Donald Gee of the Assemblies of God says, “Many of our errors where spiritual gifts are concerned arise when we want the extraordinary and exceptional to be made the frequent and habitual. Let all who develop excessive desire for ‘messages’ through the gifts take warning from the wreckage of past generations as well as of contemporaries.… The Holy Scriptures are a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.”

By Wayne A. Grudem.

Why did Jesus use this new term? It was probably because the Greek word prophētēs at the time of the New Testament had a very broad range of meanings. It generally did not have the sense of “one who speaks God’s very words,” but rather “one who speaks on the basis of some external influence” (often a spiritual influence of some kind).

Titus 1:12 uses the word this way, where Paul quotes a pagan poet: “One of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons’ ” (NIV). The soldiers who mock Jesus also seem to use the word prophesy this way, when they blindfold Jesus and demand, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” (Luke 22:64). They do not mean, “Speak words of absolute divine authority,” but “Tell us something that has been revealed to you.”

Many writings outside the Bible use the Greek word prophētēs in this way, without signifying any divine authority in the words of the “prophet.” In fact, by the time of the New Testament, the term prophet in everyday use often simply meant “one who has supernatural knowledge” or “one who predicts the future”—or even just “spokesman” (without any connotation of divine authority).

Of course, the words prophet and prophecy could sometimes be used of the apostles when the context emphasized an external spiritual influence (from the Holy Spirit) under which they spoke (see Rev. 1:3; 22:7; Eph. 2:20; 3:5), but this was not the ordinary terminology used for the apostles, nor did the terms prophet and prophecy in themselves imply divine authority for their speech or writing.

Much more commonly, prophet and prophecy were used of ordinary Christians who spoke not with absolute divine authority, but simply to report something God had laid on their hearts or brought to their minds. There are many indications in the New Testament that this ordinary gift of prophecy had authority less than that of the Bible, and even less than that of recognized Bible teaching in the early church.

Testing The Prophecies

There are clear indications that New Testament prophets did not speak with divine authority. For example, in Acts 21:4, we read of the disciples at Tyre: “Through the Spirit they told Paul not to go on to Jerusalem.” This seems to be a reference to prophecy directed towards Paul, but Paul disobeyed it. He never would have done this if this prophecy contained God’s very words.

Then in Acts 21:10–11, Agabus prophesied that the Jews at Jerusalem would “bind Paul and deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles,” a prediction that was only nearly correct—the Romans, not the Jews, bound Paul (v. 33), and the Jews did not deliver him voluntarily, but tried to kill him, and Paul had to be taken from them by force. Such inaccuracies in detail would have called into question the validity of any Old Testament prophet.

Paul tells the Thessalonians, “Do not despise prophesying, but test everything, hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:20–21). If prophecy had equalled God’s word in authority, he would never have had to tell them not to despise it, for they had “received” and “accepted” God’s word “with joy from the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:6; 2:13; cf. 4:15). But when Paul tells them to “test everything,” it must include the prophecies mentioned in the previous phrase. He implies that prophecies contain some things that are good and some that are not when he encourages them to “hold fast to that which is good.” This could never have been said of the words of an Old Testament prophet, or the authoritative teachings of a New Testament apostle.

Moreover, in Acts 21:9, we read that Philip had “four unmarried daughters who prophesied.” Whatever we may think about the appropriateness of Bible teaching by women today, this prophesying would be difficult to reconcile with prohibitions against authoritative teaching by women (see 1 Tim. 2:12) if prophecy had absolute divine authority, or even authority greater than or equal to Bible teaching. Similar reasoning applies to 1 Corinthians 11:5 where Paul allows women to prophesy in church even though he later apparently forbids them to speak up publicly during the evaluation or judging of prophecies (1 Cor. 14:34–35).

Sifting Prophecies In Corinth

Let us look more closely at 1 Corinthians 14, where extensive evidence on New Testament prophecy can be found. When Paul says, “Let two or three prophets speak and let the others weigh what is said” (v. 29), he suggests that they should listen carefully and sift the good from the bad. We cannot imagine that an Old Testament prophet like Isaiah would have said, “Listen to what I say and weigh what is said—sort the good from the bad, what you accept from what you should not accept”! If prophecy had absolute divine authority, this would have been sin. But here Paul commands that it be done.

In verse 30, Paul allows one prophet to interrupt another one: “If a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one.” If prophets had been speaking God’s very words, it is hard to imagine that Paul would say they should be interrupted and not allowed to finish their message.

Paul suggests that no one at Corinth, a church that had much prophecy, was able to speak God’s very words. He says in verse 36, “What! Did the word of God come forth from you, or are you the only ones it has reached?”

All these passages indicate that the common idea that prophets spoke “words of the Lord” when the apostles were not present in the early churches is simply incorrect.

There is one other type of evidence that New Testament congregational prophets spoke with less authority than the apostles or Scripture: The apostles did not solve the problem of who would speak for God when they were gone by encouraging Christians to listen to “prophets,” but by pointing to Scripture.

So Paul, at the end of his life, emphasizes “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), and the “God-breathed” character of Scripture “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). Jude urges his readers to “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). Peter, at the end of his life, encourages his readers to “pay attention” to Scripture, which is like “a lamp shining in a dark place” (2 Pet. 1:19–20), and reminds them of the teaching of the apostle Paul “in all his letters” (2 Pet. 3:16). In no case do we read exhortations to “give heed to the prophets in your churches” or to “obey the words of the Lord through your prophets.”

There certainly were prophets in local congregations after the death of the apostles. But it seems they did not have authority equal to the apostles—and the authors of Scripture knew that.

Not “The Words Of God” For Today

If the New Testament authors considered congregational prophecies to be sometimes flawed and definitely less authoritative than either Scripture or apostolic teaching, we in the church today should consider prophecy to be merely human words, not God’s words, and not equal to God’s words in authority. But does this conclusion conflict with current charismatic teaching or practice? I think it conflicts with much charismatic practice, but not with most charismatic teaching.

Most charismatic teachers today would agree that contemporary prophecy is not equal to Scripture in authority. Though some speak of prophecy as being the “word of God” for today, there is almost uniform testimony from all segments of the charismatic movement that prophecy is imperfect and impure, and will contain elements that are not to be obeyed or trusted.

For example, Bruce Yocum, author of a charismatic book on prophecy, writes, “Prophecy can be impure—our own thoughts or ideas can get mixed into the message we receive—whether we receive the words directly or only receive a sense of the message.… (Paul says that all our prophecy is imperfect.)”

But it must be said that in actual practice much confusion results from the habit of prefacing prophecies with the Old Testament phrase “Thus says the Lord” (a phrase not used by any recorded prophets in New Testament churches). This is unfortunate, because it gives the impression that the words that follow are God’s very words, whereas most responsible charismatic spokesmen would not want to claim it for every part of their prophecies anyway. There would be much gain and no loss if that phrase were dropped.

If someone really does think God is bringing something to mind that should be reported in the congregation, there is nothing wrong with saying, “I think the Lord is putting on my mind that …” or some similar expression. Of course, that does not sound as forceful as “Thus says the Lord,” but if it is really from God, the Holy Spirit will cause it to speak with great power to the hearts of those who need to hear.

If prophecy does not contain God’s very words, then in what sense is it a gift from God?

Paul indicates that God could bring something spontaneously to mind so that the person prophesying would report it in his or her own words. Paul calls this a “revelation”: “If a revelation is made to another sitting by, let the first be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged” (1 Cor. 14:30–31).

Paul is simply referring to something that God may bring to mind or impress on someone’s heart in such a way that the person has a sense that it is from God. It may be that the thought is surprisingly distinct from the person’s own train of thought, or accompanied by a sense of urgency or persistence.

Thus, if a stranger comes in and all prophesy, “the secrets of his heart are disclosed; and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you” (1 Cor. 14:25). I heard a report of this happening in a clearly noncharismatic Baptist church in America: A missionary speaker paused in the middle of his message and said something like this: “I didn’t plan to say this, but it seems the Lord is indicating that someone in this church has just walked out on his wife and family. If that is so, let me tell you that God wants you to return to them and learn to follow God’s pattern for family life.” The missionary did not know it, but in the unlit balcony sat a man who had entered the church for the first time just moments before. The description fit him exactly, and he made himself known, acknowledged his sin, and began to seek after God.

Prophecy And Teaching: What’S The Difference?

New Testament prophecy was based on spontaneous promptings from the Holy Spirit (compare Acts 11:28; 21:4, 10–11; and note also the ideas of prophecy that are represented in Luke 7:39; 22:63–64; John 4:19; 11:51).

By contrast, no human speech that is called “teaching” is ever said to be based on a revelation in the New Testament. Rather, teaching is often simply an explanation or application of Scripture (Acts 15:35; 11:12, 26; Rom. 2:21; 15:4; Col. 3:16; Heb. 5:12) or a repetition and explanation of apostolic instructions (Rom. 16:17; 2 Tim. 2:2; 3:10). It is what we would call “Bible teaching” or “preaching” today.

Although a few people have claimed that the prophets in New Testament churches gave “charismatically inspired” interpretations of Scripture, it is hard to find any convincing examples in the New Testament where the “prophet” word group is used to refer to someone interpreting Scripture.

Prophecy has less authority than teaching, and prophecies in the church are always to be subject to the authoritative teaching of Scripture. The Thessalonians were not told to hold firm to the traditions that were “prophesied” to them but to the traditions they were “taught” by Paul (2 Thess. 2:15). It was teachers, not prophets, who gave leadership and direction to the early churches.

Among the elders, therefore, were “those who labor in the word and teaching” (1 Tim. 5:17), and an elder was to be “an apt teacher” (1 Tim. 3:2; cf. Titus 1:9). But nothing is said about any elders whose work was prophesying. In his leadership, Timothy was to take heed to himself and to his “teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16), but he was never told to take heed to his prophesying. James warned that those who teach, not those who prophesy, will be judged with greater strictness (Jas. 3:1).

The distinction is clear: If a message is the result of conscious reflection on the text of Scripture, containing interpretation and application to life, then it is teaching. But if a message is the report of something God brings suddenly to mind, then it is a prophecy. Of course, even prepared teachings can be interrupted by unplanned additional material the teacher suddenly feels God is bringing to his mind. This would be a teaching with prophecy mixed in.

By Wayne A. Grudem.

In this way, prophecy serves as a “sign” for believers (1 Cor. 14:22)—a clear demonstration that God is at work in their midst. And since it will work for the conversion of unbelievers as well, Paul encourages this gift to be used when “unbelievers or outsiders enter” (1 Cor. 14:23).

Many of us have experienced or heard of similar events: For example, an unplanned but urgent request may have been given to pray for certain missionaries. Much later those who prayed discovered that just at that time the missionaries had been in an auto accident or at a point of intense spiritual conflict, and had needed those prayers. Paul would call the intuition of those things a “revelation,” and the report to the assembled church of that prompting from God, a “prophecy.” It may have elements of the speaker’s own understanding in it, and it certainly needs to be tested; yet it is of value in the church.

The Benefits Of Prophecy

Prophecy in the New Testament is not merely “predicting the future.” There were some predictions (Acts 11:28; 21:11), but there was also the disclosure of sins (1 Cor. 14:25). In fact, anything that edified could have been included, for Paul says, “He who prophesies speaks to men for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Cor. 14:3). Here is another indication of the value of prophecy: It could speak to the needs of people’s hearts in a spontaneous, direct way.

At two significant points in our marriage, my wife, Margaret, and I visited and prayed with Christian friends in another part of the United States. On both occasions, during our time of prayer, the husband of the family paused and spoke a sentence directly to Margaret. On both occasions, the messages hit home and brought the Lord’s comfort regarding deep concerns we had not mentioned at all. Here is the value of prophecy for “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation.”

There is another great benefit of prophecy: It provides opportunity for everyone in the congregation to participate, not just those who are skilled speakers or who have gifts of teaching. Paul says he wants all the Corinthians to prophesy (1 Cor. 14:5). And he says, “You can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged” (v. 31). Greater openness to the gift of prophecy could help cure the malaise in our churches where many are mere spectators. Perhaps we contribute to the problem of spectator Christianity by quenching the work of the Spirit in this area.

Until The Lord Conies

Many evangelicals claim that gifts such as prophecy were given to the church for the apostolic age only. The apostle Paul, on the other hand, expected prophecy to continue until the Lord returns.

Paul says, “Our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away” (1 Cor. 13:9–10). So he says that prophecy will pass away at a certain time, namely, “when the perfect comes.” But when is that? It has to be when the Lord returns, because it has to be the same time indicated by the word then in verse 12: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” Face to face is an Old Testament phrase for seeing God personally (see Gen. 32:30; Exod. 33:11; Deut. 5:4; 34:10; Judg. 6:22; Ezek. 20:35—the only Old Testament occurrences of this phrase, and they all refer to seeing God). The time when I shall know “as I have been known” also must refer to the Lord’s return.

Some have argued that “when the perfect comes” refers to the time when the New Testament canon is complete. (Revelation, the last book to be written, was composed at the latest about 35 years after 1 Corinthians.) But would the Corinthians ever have understood that from what Paul wrote? Is there any mention of a collection of New Testament books anywhere in the context of 1 Corinthians 13? Such an idea is foreign to the context. Moreover, such a statement would not fit Paul’s purpose. Would it be persuasive to argue as follows: “We can be sure that love will never end, for we know that it will last more than 35 years!”? This would hardly be convincing. The context requires rather that Paul be contrasting this age with the age to come, and saying that love will endure into eternity.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones observes that the view that makes “when the perfect comes” equal the time of the completion of the New Testament encounters another difficulty: “It means that you and I, who have the Scriptures open before us, know much more than the apostle Paul of God’s truth.… It means that we are altogether superior … even to the apostles themselves, including the apostle Paul! It means that we are now in a position in which … ‘we know, even as also we are known’ by God.… Indeed, there is only one word to describe such a view, it is nonsense.”

The conclusion is that in 1 Corinthians 13:10 Paul says that prophecy will continue in the church until Christ returns.

Paul valued this gift so highly that he told the Corinthians, “Make love your aim, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy” (1 Cor. 14:1). Then, at the end of his discussion of spiritual gifts, he said again, “So, my brethren, earnestly desire to prophesy” (1 Cor. 14:39). And he said, “He who prophesies edifies the church” (1 Cor. 14:4).

If Paul was eager for the gift of prophecy to function at Corinth, troubled as the church was by immaturity, selfishness, and divisions, then should we not also actively seek this valuable gift in our congregations today? We evangelicals who profess to believe and obey all that Scripture says, should we not also believe and obey this? And might a greater openness to the gift of prophecy perhaps help to correct a dangerous imbalance in our church lives, lives that are too often exclusively intellectual, objective, and narrowly doctrinal?

A Cautious Approach

All Christians who desire to use the gift of prophecy in their churches, but especially pastors and others who have teaching responsibilities, would be wise to take several steps:

• Pray seriously for the Lord’s wisdom on how and when to approach this subject in the church.

• Teach on this subject, if you have teaching responsibilities, in the regular Bible teaching times that the church already provides.

• Be patient and proceed slowly—church leaders should not be “domineering” (1 Pet. 5:3), and a patient approach will avoid frightening people or alienating them unnecessarily.

• Recognize and encourage the gift of prophecy in ways it has already been functioning—at church prayer meetings, for example, when someone has felt unusually led by the Spirit to pray for something, or when it has seemed that the Spirit was bringing to mind a hymn or Scripture passage, or giving a common sense of the focus of a time of group worship.

Even Christians in churches not open to prophecy can be sensitive to promptings from the Holy Spirit regarding what to pray for in church prayer meetings, and can then express those promptings in the form of a prayer.

• If the first four steps have been followed, and if the congregation and its leadership will accept it, make opportunities for the gift of prophecy in the less formal worship services of the church, such as Sunday evenings, Wednesday prayer meetings, or smaller house groups. If this is allowed, those who prophesy should be kept within Scriptural guidelines (1 Cor. 14:29–36), should genuinely seek the edification of the church and not their own prestige (1 Cor. 14:12, 26), and should not dominate the meeting or be overly dramatic in their speech (and thus attract attention to themselves rather than to the Lord). Prophecies should be evaluated according to the teachings of Scripture.

• If the gift of prophecy begins to be used in your church, place even more emphasis on the vastly superior value of Scripture as the place where Christians can always go to hear the voice of the living God. Prophecy is a valuable gift, but it is in Scripture that God speaks to us his very words today. Rather than hoping at every worship service that the highlight will be some word of prophecy, those who use the gift of prophecy need to be reminded that we should focus our expectation of hearing from God toward the Bible, and we should delight in God himself as he speaks through the Bible. And rather than seeking frequent guidance through prophecy, we should emphasize that it is in Scripture that we are to find guidance for our lives.

Wayne A. Grudem is associate professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author of The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Crossway) and 1 Peter in the Tyndale New Testament Commentary (Eerdmans).

The answer begins with a better understanding of the church and its role as First Family.

A few weeks after we learned that my wife, Sandy, was pregnant with our first child, we spent a summer weekend with a friend at his parents’ lakeside home. On Saturday night all of us, except Sandy, stayed up late. Tired by sailing and swimming, she retired early.

Around midnight I decided to join her, but when I opened the door into the bedroom, I saw Sandy sitting straight up in bed. She looked shocked, as if she were in extreme pain. I asked her what was wrong, and before she could answer I had crossed the room and was sitting next to her, pressing urgently on her abdomen. “It’s my allergies,” she said. “My throat is burning up.”

It was hard not to display my relief. Sandy was no less distressed, but the baby was in no danger, and that had been my immediate, visceral fear.

Looking back on the moment, I was intrigued by the intensity of my protective feelings. I had heard plenty of fathers talk about how much their children meant to them, but still I was surprised when the feelings overwhelmed me, unbidden, and certainly uncultivated during the four or five years I had debated whether or not I truly wanted children.

Of course, starting a family “changes your life”—if I ever had a question about that, it dissolved with Sandy’s pregnancy. But certain Scriptures made me wonder: Does it automatically change your life for the better in Christian terms? Does it make you more likely and better equipped to serve God and others?

These seemed to be important questions, considering the enormous emotional, spiritual, physical, and financial investment that children entail. So while Sandy’s waistline expanded, my library did as well. I was on a search: reading, praying, consulting those wiser than me to appreciate better two of the most important questions one could ever ask: Why do Christians have children? What is the purpose of family?

Are The Gospels Profamily?

There is good reason to doubt the Gospels are as profamily as we often pretend they are. After all, in their accounts Jesus is unmarried, and his 12 disciples are either single or leave families as decisively as they drop their fishing nets. Even as a boy, Jesus exhibits a startling detachment from his biological family. Luke records anxious parents returning to the Jerusalem temple, asking their son why he has been so inconsiderate of their feelings. His bemused reply signaled his own priority: “Did you not know I was bound to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49; all references, NEB).

Later in the Gospels, the adult Jesus forthrightly proclaims a kingdom that will—he makes no bones about it—divide and destroy families. Brother will betray brother to death; parents and children will turn on one another (Matt. 10:21). “I have come,” Jesus says, “to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law …” (Matt. 10:35).

To one who wishes to bury his father before initiating his own discipleship, Jesus bluntly demands, “Leave the dead to bury their dead; you must go and announce the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:60). He suggests a recent marriage is an inadequate reason to delay answering the call of the kingdom (Luke 14:18–20). And, echoing his childhood words in the temple, he deems that his true mother, brothers, and sisters are not his biological kin, but those who do the will of God are (Mark 3:35). “No man is worthy of me who cares more for father or mother than for me; no man is worthy of me who cares more for son or daughter; no man is worthy of me who does not take up his cross and walk in my footsteps” (Matt. 10:37–38).

As hard as these words are to hear today, they must have been even more difficult to their original audience. In Jesus’ day the family was integrally linked to economic survival. More than that, the Hebrew tradition promised personal survival after death mainly through the memory of one’s children. (This fact largely accounts for the anguish of Old Testament men and women who were unable to produce heirs.)

In Jesus’ eyes, however good family may be, it is not sacred. Family—like possessions, reputation, and religion itself—is clearly subordinated to the mission of the kingdom of God.

In Need Of Redemption

The Gospels make me look harder at family, forcing me to stop merely applauding family as it is and to ask what it should be in the light of Christ. In subordinating the natural family to the kingdom, Jesus was apparently indicating that it, too, stands in need of redemption.

My own family life has been decidedly positive, but the experience of some friends has taught me how destructive it can be. Some tell of huddling in childhood bedrooms, listening to their parents fight and damn one another. Others remember extramarital affairs, dictatorial stepfathers, and weakened mothers who expected their children to stabilize a capsizing world. Today these friends struggle with their own relationships, with an inability to trust, with a lurking suspicion of the universe in general and God in particular. Apparently there are few wounds that sear deeper, or last longer, than those inflicted by family.

But the message of the gospel is that family needs to be, and can be, redeemed. In their own way, the ancient Hebrews looked ahead to this hope in God. They were sometimes caught up in the fatalism of believing they could never escape the repetition and effects of the sins of their fathers. This fatalism is reflected in a proverb repeated twice in the Old Testament: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”

But the proverb is refuted in both of the instances it is cited (Jer. 31:29–30 and Ezek. 18:2–3). God offers a new beginning, and will consequently call each to account only for his or her own sins.

Hope for a new beginning, for a breaking of the cycle of pain, is exactly what my friends from unfortunate families need. If they had nothing to look to beyond family, if that was the only place they could go for love and meaning, they would be locked in despair. But since family is not sacred, since there is a gracious God above and beyond it, they can transcend the ugly limitations put on them by their natural families. In fact, so may we all, since—no matter how idyllic our families—we are all wounded to some degree.

Bourgeois Or Biblical?

Any current search for the purpose of family encounters the many Christian appeals made today on behalf of the “traditional family.” Is this family according to God’s purposes?

In Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, sociologist James Davison Hunter and coauthor Helen V. L. Stehlin draw from the avalanche of evangelical literature on the family and conclude that evangelicals have adopted a nineteenth-century bourgeois (that is, a middle-class) understanding of family. This view concentrates on family as a place of peace and familiarity, a refuge from the hard world of commerce and politics. For evangelicals, Hunter and Stehlin believe, “The utopian qualities of the notion of family and home as Edenic retreat cannot be overemphasized.”

They cite several evangelical family books:

• “In such times as these … the Christian home should be a holy refuge. A place of peace. An enclave of loving authority and Godly grievances and truth.”

• “Our earthly family should be the ones to whom we want to run, cry, telephone, telegraph—when we feel overwhelmed by failure! An earthly family is meant to be a shelter, a solid, dependable ‘ear’ that will hear and understand, as well as a place to run.”

• “[The home is] an island of serenity and support and in a hectic, plastic, often avaricious world. A Christian oasis far from the maddening throng and godless currents and pressures.”

Surely there are valuable and biblically valid features inherent in the bourgeois family. But just as clearly, there are problems with adopting this as the traditional family, the model for families today.

The meaning and purposes of the family have, in fact, changed through the ages. From the late Middle Ages into the eighteenth century, the family served as an economic unit (with the entire household, including children, working to fill the family table) and a vehicle for the transmission of property from generation to generation. Medieval family life, unlike today’s evangelical ideal, was hardly a private refuge or shelter.

With the Industrial Revolution, work was separated from home, and urbanization developed, dividing nuclear families from a hamlet hub of relatives and placing them in cities with thousands of strangers. Eventually, the middle classes no longer needed to concentrate on mere economic survival. And only then, within the past two centuries, was the stage set for a family whose raison d’être was the cultivation of intimacy. On a simple historical basis, then, we cannot identify this “traditional” family with biblical family.

Other aspects of the bourgeois family clash with family submitted to the redemptive and transforming gospel. Bourgeois family is exclusivistic, emphasizing its privacy over the good of others. It leaves the public life of commerce and industry untouched by the ideals of the kingdom, while maintaining its private comfort and order. Bourgeois family is flawed to the degree that it helped us so long neglect the social implications of the kingdom. It is flawed to the degree that it encourages blithe individualism and erodes a sense of the common good.

One other shortcoming of the bourgeois family needs mentioning. In its aim to be a private haven, this version of family often displaces the church. For years it has been popular among evangelicals to list three lifetime priorities, in this order: God, family, and church. More blatantly, one evangelical family expert has written that “family—next to God—is the most important and influential agent on earth.” In these popular rankings, family usurps the place the New Testament assigns to the church. It is “through the church,” according to Ephesians 3:10, that “the wisdom of God in all its varied forms” is made known to the powers and principalities. It is the church, according to 1 Peter 2:9, that is called to “proclaim the triumphs of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” And we are, above all—according to 1 Corinthians 14—to seek and cultivate gifts that “build up the church.”

First Family, Second Family

I found myself led to reconsider, then, the family’s relation to the church. And in the strange seventh chapter of 1 Corinthians, I found a handle on the matter. I say “strange” because here Paul’s statements run hard against our modern grain.

Biblical scholars tell us we can shed some light on this enigmatic chapter only if we realize that here Paul is presenting the kingdom’s most radical implications for family life. He is telling the Corinthians how to understand and live their intimate lives in light of the fact that the Messiah has come and, with him, the beginning of the world’s end (v. 29). As New Testament scholar Gordon Fee comments, this means “that the future, which was set in motion by the event of Christ and the Spirit, has been ‘shortened’ so that it is now in plain view.”

Seeing how the story will come out shapes how we live in the present. And in Christ, Paul reminds the Corinthians, we know the end of the world’s story. Christ will vanquish sin and death. “Paul’s concern, therefore, is not with the amount of time [the Corinthians] have left, but with the radical new perspective the ‘foreshortened future’ gives one with regard to the present age,” Fee writes. “Those who have a definite future and see it with clarity live in the present with radically altered values as to what counts and what does not. In that sense it calls for those who want to get married to rethink what that may mean.…”

Here, then, is Paul’s clear call to reenvision family and singleness as they encounter the kingdom come. They are transcended and limited by the “shortening” of the present age. Family (and celibacy, too) belong to the frame of things passing away (v. 31). Accordingly, in Fee’s words, we are beckoned to live “totally free from its control,” no longer determined or entrapped by it.

Paul is not at all condemning marriage or family. (As do neither Jesus nor Scripture in general: Consider Gen. 2–3, the Decalogue, Song of Solomon, Prov. 30:10–31; Mark 10:6–9; John 2:1–11; Eph. 5:21–33; 1 Tim. 5:14; Heb. 13:4, and 1 Peter 3:1–7.) He is careful only to instruct the Corinthians that they are now free to live in the world without living by its values.

In the words of theologian Stanley Hauerwas, no longer was one’s future “guaranteed by the family, but by the church. The church, that harbinger of the kingdom of God, is now the source of our primary loyalty.” And the church is itself a family. Jesus tells his disciples they may lose families, but will receive new ones a hundredfold (Mark 10:29–30). He invites them to recognize and pray to a new Father, “who art in heaven” (Matt. 6:9). Christians are adopted, out of slavery, into God’s family (Rom. 8:14–16; Gal. 4:5–7). The church is a “household of faith” (Gal. 6:10).

For the Christian, church is First Family. The biological family, though still valuable and esteemed, is Second Family. Husbands, wives, sons, and daughters are brothers and sisters in the church first and most importantly—secondly they are spouses, parents, or siblings to one another.

And exactly as family is how the New Testament church behaves: opening homes to the Christian community (Acts 2:46; 1 Cor. 16:15), extending hospitality to a wide network of Christians, including missionaries and even those on business trips (2 Cor. 8:23). It is no accident that the church’s central sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, symbolizes a basic domestic activity.

Tamed For The Kingdom

If, then, family is itself in need of reformation, what might that reformed family look like? What alterations in our vision of family do Jesus and Paul introduce in fidelity to the kingdom?

We cannot ignore the fact that they assert the value of singleness. To be single is not to be a second-class member of the church, nor simply to be in a holding pattern until one can land in the higher state of marriage. The single man or woman, far from being spiritually crippled, is especially free and unencumbered for mission (1 Cor. 7:32–34). The faithful single, moreover, is a living sign that all Christians’ ultimate trust and approval comes from God, not posterity. Singles and marrieds share the First Family of the church, and should complement one another in that family, each bringing special gifts and resources to the service of the kingdom.

Marriage, in light of the biblical vision, channels sexuality to the service of the kingdom. Sexuality can be shaped and used for different ends. For instance, as C. S. Lewis observed, “There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales resistance.” This is sexuality in service of Mammon, sexuality trivialized and rendered manipulative.

Sexuality in service of the kingdom, on the other hand, is substantially free of its destructive possibilities. It is freed from service to compulsive promiscuity, dissolution, or trivial hedonism, and instead binds one person to another in love and continuing commitment. On one level, married sexuality is simply an enjoyment of God’s gracious creation, male and female. But on another level, it is the base for a stable home from which to minister to the wider Christian community.

If Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 almost seems to present singleness as a higher station in the kingdom, we do well to remember that in other contexts he is effusive in his praise for married couples whose homes are apparently the hub of the church in several cities (Rom. 16:5, 23; 1 Cor. 16:15, 19; Col. 4:15; Philemon 2). Singles have the missionary advantage of mobility, but marrieds have the missionary advantage of hospitality.

It is impossible to read Scripture and not notice that hospitality is a crucial Christian virtue. Unlike the bourgeois family, Christian family is haven not only for the members of the nuclear family. Christians are called to open their homes to others, and particularly other Christians: “Never cease to love your fellow-Christians. Remember to show hospitality. There are some who, by so doing, have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb. 13:1–2).

Hospitality, I discovered, may be the key to answering the difficult question, Why do Christians have children? The kingdom beckons us to the arduous task of loving other people, with all their concrete faults.

Children, seen in this light, are precious gifts given to us so that—among other things—we might learn how to love others. Parents cannot deny that their children are different persons from themselves. Yet to see through their eyes is to see the world afresh.

As Jesus suggested in his embrace of children, their free dependency and openness ushers them into the kingdom of God (Mark 10:13–16). Thus, children teach that others bring newness and change that is sometimes unimaginably better than what we had formerly accepted as unalterable. When we learn how to love a child, we are acquiring a transferrable skill—the skill of loving others.

It is children and others who kindle our imaginations in new and unexpected ways, enabling us to become the sort of people we could never have been without them. So openness to children also signifies openness to the future, to the belief that there is a future. What, after all, could be a more profound signal of one’s despair for the future than the refusal to have children?

The Christian family, then, bears children to bear witness. It bears witness to the Christian trust that there is more to this world than sorrowfully meets the eye. It signifies that everything is not up to us bedraggled men and women who live in the present; that we need no longer be slaves to the tyrannical illusion of self-sufficiency. Children are sign gifts of the love of a God of gracious surprises, to whom we dare entrust not only our own future, but also that of our children.

In Everyday Terms

In general, then, family tamed for the kingdom is both a base of hospitality within the church and a training ground for learning how to live hospitably. But can this make any practical difference? The kingdom-centered family can indeed affect several pressing contemporary issues:

• Making divorces fewer. Historian Edward Shorter has observed that marriages were once held together by the indispensable purpose of economic production. Today, sexual intimacy is practically the only thing cementing the marriage relationship. And sexual attachment, while it is a gracious gift of God, is notoriously explosive and unstable. Marriages based on it too easily come apart.

Marriage for the kingdom is different. While rejoicing in sexuality, it tames and harnesses sexuality to serve the needs of mission. Those couples who see their marriage as a station for evangelism and hospitality will not find it as easily shaken by the tremors of an over-eroticized society.

• Making us free to love kin. Psychologists tell us that those seeking counsel often are so enmeshed in familial relationships that they can gain no perspective on them. They often feel suffocated, at the mercy of forces beyond their control. For such persons, seeing biological family as Second Family and the church as First Family is potentially freeing and therapeutic.

Adopted into God’s family, our identity is no longer utterly dependent on parental approval. And family idolatry, which fosters a destructive and constricting counterfeit of love, is revealed for what it is. We can begin to build a relationship that is holier and healthier.

• Making hope for infertile couples. For a variety of factors, more and more couples find themselves physiologically unable to bear children. This will, understandably, remain a source of tremendous pain to couples so afflicted. Yet the family tamed for the kingdom can alleviate some of this grief.

When family’s purposes include hospitality and mission, the couple faced with childlessness is not at a dead end. They have other opportunities for fulfilling service to God, whether those be adopting needy children or intensively devoting themselves to a mobile or dangerous ministry few families with children could undertake. Infertility remains a grievous tragedy, but not an unmitigated one.

• Making celibacy a credible option for homosexuals. Evangelicals strenuously assert that we do not condemn homosexual orientation, but only homosexual practice. Logically enough, we then counsel homosexuals to embark on lives of sexual abstinence.

But in the context of our unqualified glorification of marriage (and married sexuality), this counsel strikes many homosexuals as glib and inconsiderate. The picture might change if we honored those in our midst (whatever their sexual orientation) who live singly with integrity. What is needed to make our counsel credible is our affirmation, in word and deed, that singles can lead fulfilling and challenging lives—in no sense second best.

• Making chastity plausible for teenagers. As philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre writes, “Any conception of chastity as a virtue … in a world unformed by either Aristotelian or biblical values will make very little sense to adherents of the dominant culture.” Conservative Christians simply have to face the fact that chastity no longer makes sense to the dominant culture. But it does make sense within a community still shaped by biblical values, namely the church. Nuclear families tightly knitted within the fabric of their First Family will, when facing the stormy adolescent years, find support for both parents and teenagers.

• Making parenthood manageable again. Parents in days gone by could look to members of the extended family for counsel and encouragement in child rearing. Today new parents, such as Sandy and I, find themselves separated from their parents by hundreds of miles. Parenting manuals are a poor substitute for the embodied presence and wisdom of one’s own parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.

It would take massive social and economic changes to restore the extended family to its bygone vitality. But once again, if the church is seen as the central community in the Christian’s life, there is hope. Novice parents can turn to fellow believers for unintimidating, personal counsel and readily available support.

Here I might also mention the plight of the single parent (usually the mother), who faces an overwhelming burden in our individualistic society, juggling work and the nurture of children, usually forced to abandon her own, legitimate needs in the process. If the church were understood as First Family, the single parent would more easily find assistance with child-care, household chores, and meal preparation. And the children of single parents would be provided, at least to a degree, with needed role models of both sexes.

The Family Tree

Recently I was jogging with a friend, Jeff, who is a high school teacher. As we trotted along a wooded path, we reviewed the week. It had been a difficult one for him. Parent-teacher conferences had left him more aware than ever of the distance between contemporary children and their parents.

Almost daily, it seemed, Jeff counseled students whose grades were falling, who were in the middle of a family breakup, who were experimenting with drugs, or pregnant, or even considering suicide.

We slowed to a walk. It was all so oppressing, Jeff admitted, that he wondered how he would ever summon the courage to father children. As we talked further, the stillness of the evening was broken by a loud crack, and a tree limb dropped to the ground in a flurry of twigs and branches.

I assume the limb fell of its own accord. And looking back, its demise seems symbolic. We speak of family trees; and like the hardwood in the park that evening, the family, facing the strains of our changing world, can crack and give way.

More than ever, the family tree needs rich, fresh soil to grow stronger and deeper roots. As new parents, Sandy and I need a courage and a sustenance grounded in something greater than ourselves and our meager personal resources. And if the parents and potential parents we know are not atypical, so do we all.