elections

In this election year, voters trying to decide which candidates best uphold Christian values will have plenty of help from the JustLife Education Fund and the Association for Public Justice (APJ).

The JustLife political action committee was launched in 1986 to support candidates who uphold what the group calls a “consistent life ethic.” Last month, its education fund released JustLife/88.

This election guide gives each U.S. senator and congressman a percentage rating, based on his or her voting record on 15 legislative measures. The rating is highest for those who oppose abortion and the nuclear arms race, and who advocate what JustLife calls “economic justice.”

Thus, legislators who in 1986 supported an increase of $211 million for a job-training and placement program for welfare recipients increased their JustLife rating. That was not the case for those who in 1985 favored the allocation of $1.5 billion for MX missiles.

Generally, those who were strong in the areas of the arms race and economic justice, in JustLife’s view, were weak on abortion. There were, however, 55 who received a rating of at least 80 percent, including 12—all of them Democrats—with perfect ratings of 100.

In his introduction to the election guide, Ron Sider, executive director of the JustLife Education Fund, acknowledged that votes “are often interwoven with other issues.” He said JustLife consulted with experts in trying to “concentrate on votes whose primary focus was not clouded by … extraneous considerations.” He urged voters to contact their representatives “for a deeper understanding of their perspective.”

White House Focus

The Washington, D.C.-based APJ has also made an effort to provide biblically based guidance to voters, focusing on the presidential elections. Last month Zondervan published 1988 Candidate Profiles: A Look at the Leading Presidential Contenders. The pocket-sized voter guide is based on APJ profiles first published in the organization’s Public Justice Report. (Some of those profiled have since dropped out of the race.)

The essays present biographical background of the candidates, including information on their religious faith. They describe each man’s political style and philosophy, including stands on specific issues. Analysis of the candidates revolves around APJ’s perspectives on domestic and international justice.

Though the essays include evaluation, the purpose is not to favor a particular candidate, but to help voters understand “what [the office of the presidency] demands of its holder,” in the words of APJ executive director Jim Skillen, who wrote the introduction.

Skillen observes that while some believe America has been on the mend under President Reagan, others think the country now faces “moral, social, and economic crises of unexpected proportions.” Skillen writes that the next President must lead in part by “coming to grips with the real structure of our diverse society and seeking to discover the true calling of government.” Skillen urges the selection of a person “who accepts the mandate to seek justice for the Republic.”

The APJ’s effort has been endorsed by various social critics, including JustLife’s Sider and conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas.

PUBLIC POLICY

By the mid-1990s, an estimated two-thirds of all preschool-age children will need some type of nonparental child care, due to the increased number of working mothers and single-parent families. Two bills addressing this situation—and commanding attention from conservatives—are working their way through Congress.

The measure receiving the most attention so far has been the Act for Better Child Care, or the ABC bill. Introduced last fall by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), the bill is designed to establish a comprehensive federal child-care policy.

Observers say the bill appears to favor middle-class families. For example, under the proposed legislation, most of the allocated federal funds would go toward child care for families making up to 115 percent of their state’s median income. (The median income in Mississippi is $29,573, and in Alaska it is $49,102.)

In addition, states would receive federal grants and loans to expand child-care services, train child-care workers, and develop resource and referral programs.

The bill would establish the first set of national quality standards for day care, including maximum staff-to-child ratios, a cap on the number of children one adult (nonparent) could care for at home, training requirements, and health-and-safety regulations. It would also provide strict regulations for any religious groups desiring federal funds. For example, all religious symbols in day-care centers would have to be covered or removed from the premises, no money would be allowed for “sectarian purposes or activities,” and all grantees would have to comply with federal hiring rules and state and local licensing laws. Because of this provision, many conservatives say the bill is antireligious.

Such a bill would not be cheap, ABC calls for a start-up cost of $2.5 billion for fiscal 1989 and “such sums thereafter.”

A major proponent of the ABC bill has been the nonprofit Children’s Defense Fund (CDF,) which regards child care as one of the most crucial issues on its agenda. “We are going to sacrifice a whole generation of children if we wait much longer [to address the child-care issue],” a CDF statement said.

The Washington-based Family Research Council (FRC,) however, says the ABC bill does not give families “full freedom of choice” because it offers assistance to parents only “if they choose certain options.” An FRC memo says that under ABC, no funds would go to a mother who chooses to stay home or to a grandmother or other relative who provides child care but has not been trained and licensed in a government-approved program. The memo asks, “Why should families which do not benefit from ABC subsidize [via taxes] the child care costs of others—especially when you consider the fact that the median income for a two-parent, single-income family … is considerably less than the median income for two-income families?”

A Republican alternative to the ABC bill was introduced earlier this spring by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep. Nancy Johnson (R-Conn.). Called the Child Care Services Improvement Act, the measure would provide some $300 million annually to expand child-care programs, give tax credits to employers that establish on-site child-care centers, and lower the liability costs for child-care providers. Like ABC, the Hatch-Johnson bill would establish national standards, but it does not have an income limit or strict regulations for religious child-care providers.

This bill has also drawn considerable criticism from some conservatives and profamily groups who fear that any federally subsidized day-care centers will have an unfair advantage over private centers, especially religious ones that voluntarily refuse government money.

Some critics charge that both bills would ultimately increase the overall cost of child care and favor middle-income families rather than the poor. And the FRC points out that the alternative, like the ABC bill, offers no help to “the woman who might prefer to stay at home and raise her own children.” Religious groups, often considered a primary provider of child care, are divided over the issue. The National Council of Churches has taken a strong stance in support of the ABC bill, while the National Association of Evangelicals and the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights oppose it as currently written. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod has not taken any official positions on the issue, but a spokesperson said the denomination has “real concerns” about ABC’s implications for religious day-care programs.

For its part, the FRC is advocating a third approach: reforming the current tax code so that the child-care tax credit is available to all parents, including stay-at-home mothers and families that have a relative providing child care. Rep. Clyde Holloway (R-La.) has proposed such a bill.

By Kim A. Lawton.

World Scene

mexico

Palau Weathers Media

Evangelist Luis Palau has proclaimed his recent “Festival of the Family” crusades in Mexico successful despite hostile local press coverage. According to the Palau team, the Argentine-born evangelist preached to some 94,000 people and saw more than 6,000 public commitments to Jesus Christ during his nine days of crusade events.

Prior to the crusades, Palau was the target of much media opposition, including press reports that he is financed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). At press conferences in Mexico, Palau dismissed allegations that he has any CIA connections, quipping that if that were the case he could stop spending time on fund raising.

Palau said the negative coverage actually backfired on the media. “The viciousness of the attacks and the saturation that was achieved as a result of the opposition gave us a sweet victory for the gospel of life in Jesus Christ,” he said.

Palau will return to Mexico next month for the Congress ‘88 evangelism conference, cosponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and an organization called Conedes.

WORLDWIDE

Religious Intolerance

A report to the United Nations (UN) on religious liberty has found “infringement of freedom of religion or belief being committed in various forms and in practically all regions of the world …”

The second major report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance specifically cited instances of religious persecution in seven countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Burundi, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, and the Soviet Union. The report also endorsed the formation of an international convention on religious intolerance.

THE VATICAN

Abortion Policy Protested

The Vatican has gone on record criticizing the Italian courts for allowing a married woman to have an abortion without her husband’s knowledge or approval.

According to an editorial in L’Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, “A child which has already been conceived has the right not to be left to the whims of a single parent.” The editorial said, “The weakness of a solitary and unilateral decision is an inadmissible offense to the integrity of the person to be born.”

The editorial was apparently prompted by a recent case in northern Italy where a man sued his wife after she had an abortion without his knowledge.

Pope John Paul II, a staunch supporter of prolife efforts, has long been critical of Italy’s liberal abortion laws. The L’Osservatore Romano echoed his stand, proclaiming that the legislature “does not have the right to claim for the woman a presumed precedence in the decision as to whether or not to bring a child into the world.”

ISRAEL

Children Show The Way

Amidst growing tensions in the Israeli-occupied West Bank (see p. 34), children from a Palestinian Christian school in the region have collected money to help a nearby Muslim village under military curfew.

According to teachers with the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC,) students from the Latin Patriarch School in Zababden collected $1,500 by going door to door for donations.

The money was used to buy rice, sugar, powdered-milk biscuits, and other food. The MCC workers said the food was sent to Muslim families along with the message, “With love, from the children of Zababden to a child in Qabatiyeh.”

SOUTH AFRICA

Confronting Apartheid

Christians in South Africa are increasingly being drawn into their nation’s political battles over apartheid. Last month, a group of more than 40 theologians told President P. W. Botha that churches have a biblical basis for protesting apartheid.

In an open letter published in a Cape Town newspaper, the theologians said that for too long the pleas of the church on behalf of victims of apartheid have gone unheeded, hence the need to “put words into action,” the letter said.

The letter appeared after Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu drew criticism from Botha for attempting to organize a march protesting the banning of 17 antiapartheid groups.

The South African president asked Tutu to be a messenger of “the true Christian religion and not of Marxism and Atheism.”

The Dutch Reformed Church, which condemned apartheid in 1986, has joined Botha in criticizing the attempted march and the “political preaching” of some “activist clergymen.”

Meanwhile, earlier this spring some 200 Christians participated in an exchange in which black families stayed with whites in the suburbs of Pretoria and white families stayed with blacks in the black township of Mamelodi. The week-long exchange was sponsored by the interdenominational group Koinonia Southern Africa.

NIGERIA

Muslim attacks on Christians have been a fact of Nigerian life for decades, especially during the past 20 years of rapid church growth. The Evangelical Churches of West Africa (ECWA), which grew out of SIM International, was formed in 1956 with 5,500 members. Today, its 2,300 churches have one million members, with twice that number attending Sunday worship. The denomination is a member of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), which presents a united front to the government on issues concerning Christians.

Just over a year ago, 11 ECWA-affiliated churches were among the 100 destroyed in northern Nigeria in bloody Muslim-Christian riots that saw 25 killed, 61 injured, and 600 arrested. Nigeria’s president, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, himself a moderate Muslim, declared the riots were masking a coup conspiracy spawned by Muslim fanatics.

But five months later, Nigeria’s military government appointed a 24-member religious advisory council, evenly composed of Christians and Muslims. One of those council members is North American-educated ECWA President Nathaniel Olutimayin. His appointment makes him a logical spokesman for Nigeria’s rapidly growing evangelical movement.

Olutimayin draws on a lifetime of experience in Nigerian evangelical work. Converted through the influence of his uncle, he grew up in a pastor’s home. After studies at Central Baptist and Gordon-Conwell seminaries in Toronto and Boston, respectively, he earned a doctorate at Dallas Theological Seminary. Returning to Nigeria, he was viceprincipal, then principal, at ECWA’s Igbaja Seminary. He was elected ECWA president in the early 1980s.

The council, according to government dictum, “will provide a permanent forum for mutual interaction among the various religious groups as a means of fostering harmony.” Christians and moderate Muslims welcome such a council, but are concerned that tensions will remain. Many can members believe extremist Muslims are engaged in a holy war, in the Islamic jihad tradition. Noting that his government wants to bring harmony to Nigeria’s 100 million people, Olutimayin says “Evangelicals want to play their part in that process.”

By Lloyd Mackey.

CELEBRATION

It was in 1969 when Matthew Parker attended his first convention of the National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA). “It was the first time I realized there were other black Christians who called themselves evangelicals,” says Parker, who today serves as associate vice-president of urban academic affairs at William Tyndale College outside Detroit.

To Parker and countless other black Christians, the NBEA has been home when there was no other home to be found. The organization was launched 25 years ago in Pasadena in part because black evangelicals did not feel welcome in white Christian circles (a feeling many say they still have). Neither were they comfortable in traditional black churches, partly because many had been trained in institutions of the white cultural majority.

Last month the NBEA returned to Pasadena to celebrate its history. The organization, through its yearly conventions and other activities, has served as an arena for encouragement and for the exchange of ideas: the seeds of many black Christian ministries were planted and watered in NBEA soil.

The NBEA has also sought to build bridges with Christians in traditional black denominations. Said Ruth Bentley, first vice-president of the NBEA, “There are many blacks who are evangelical, but who don’t use the title.”

“Run, Jesse”

Jesse Jackson’s critics are surfacing as he moves closer to the Oval Office. Some are raising questions about whether Jackson, who has never held public office, would be able to translate his charisma into programs that work. Others have challenged the accuracy of his factual statements and questioned his integrity, given his claim to have cradled a dying Martin Luther King, Jr., a story widely disputed.

Those attending the twenty-fifth annual convention of the National Black Evangelical Association, however, had few reservations about Jackson. There was some talk of an official endorsement, but that did not materialize, NBEA board chairman Clarence Hilliard did write an article titled, “Run, Jesse, Run On!” for the official convention booklet.

The article states that the “hope Jesse represents for all the oppressed is being increasingly validated in primaries all over this land.” Hilliard writes, “It seems that anyone sensitive to God would be aware that He is doing something wonderful through Jesse.”

Black theologian Anthony Evans said at the NBEA meeting that he is bothered that “many black people feel that a black face in an executive political position can change the order of this world.” He stressed that the church, according to the Bible, is “the prime mover in the changing of society.”

“Black evangelicals are in a dilemma,” Evans said. “We are sociologically Democratic, but morally Republican. In my opinion, a vote for Jesse Jackson is a vote for a very immoral platform. But to vote Republican is to vote for a sociologically insensitive platform.”

Evans said that for blacks, Jackson’s candidacy represents “the opportunity of a lifetime. There’s a cultural excitement—it’s there for me, too—about somebody from my race, a race that has been suppressed, running for President.”

Evans said, however, that such feelings must be subservient to biblical revelation. And he cautioned Christians not to allow “politics to divide the body of Christ.”

Despite its positive activities, however, in Pasadena there were indications aplenty that not all is well with the NBEA. In recent years, attendance at annual conventions has dropped well below highs of over 700 in the late 1970s. Those attending the conference spoke of “growth pains,” of past disagreements over what NBEA ought to be: whether, for example, it should be more ambitious in adopting resolutions on social issues. Some, including NBEA President Eddie Lane, spoke of the need for fresh ideas and for young black evangelicals to replace an aging NBEA leadership.

In his candid presidential address, Lane said it was hard for some to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary because “there are too many feelings that have never been forgiven.” He continued, “We hug each other like Judas hugged Jesus. We talk formally, but never personally.” Lane urged a more open expression and discussion of differences.

Lane, assistant dean of student services for minority students at Dallas Theological Seminary, spoke also of a continuing need to address the problem of white racism, including in the church. He described incidents in which he has experienced discrimination, stating, “I still can’t go to a white church and speak, unless it’s some kind of special day.”

Black Theology

One highlight of the NBEA’s silver anniversary was the introduction of the Institute on Black Evangelical Thought and Action. Its purpose is to develop an evangelical theology in the context of the black American experience. Plans call for institute seminars to be held in six U.S. cities over the next year.

Theologian William H. Bentley, who has served as chairman of the NBEA’S theology commission, prepared a paper in which he offers a rationale for the institute. In arguing for a black theology, Bentley contends that Western theology, perhaps without always realizing it, has wrongly equated cultural values with biblical values.

Bentley says this has resulted in Western man’s inability “to recognize the right … of other cultures … to receive the gospel as unfettered as possible.” Bentley asserts additionally that Western theology has not successfully dealt with “the monumental perversion of the biblical doctrine of universal humanity.”

In introducing the institute, NBEA board chairman Clarence Hilliard said, “All theologies come out of a cultural context, although not all theologies admit it.” Hilliard said black theology is characterized by a commitment to the “victimized and the marginalized,” a commitment based on a commitment to Jesus Christ.

Lane emphasized that the use of the word black is not intended to be divisive to the body of Christ. “This is not about being racist against racists,” he explained. “We are simply saying there is a legitimate view of Scripture that has grown out of the context in which our ancestors lived, even though they were unable to articulate it, except in songs.”

By Randy Frame in Pasadena.

ETHICS

The Reagan administration has forbidden researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to experiment with tissue from aborted fetuses to treat certain diseases, at least until the ethical and legal issues can be studied by a special committee.

In a letter to NIH Director James Wyngaarden, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert Windom said the practice of fetal-tissue experiments “raises a number of questions—primarily ethical and legal—that have not been satisfactorily addressed, either within the Public Health Service or within society.”

Windom directed Wyngaarden to create a committee to study the controversies surrounding the use of tissue from aborted fetuses—as well as from miscarriages and stillbirths—in medical experiments.

Windom’s action apparently came in response to an NIH proposal to transplant fetal tissue into the brains of patients with Parkinson’s disease. This kind of procedure was done in Mexico last year, expanding the debate over the experimental use of fetal tissue as treatment for a variety of diseases, including diabetes and leukemia (CT, March 18, 1988, p. 52).

Researchers have long speculated that fetal tissue could be of use in treating many diseases; it grows faster and would likely cause less potential for rejection than adult tissue. Several scientists immediately denounced the administration’s move, charging it will inhibit research that could save thousands of lives.

Prolife Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.), however, called the decision “morally right, ethically sound, and about time.” Earlier this year, Humphrey had written to Wyngaarden opposing the NIH proposal to use fetal tissue from aborted babies for treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Most opponents of fetal-tissue research and transplants believe their battle is just beginning. “The fact that NIH’S work has been knocked out is fine, but the next step, and the important thing, is to make sure that this can’t be commercially exploited,” said social activist Jeremy Rifkin. Rifkin has filed a petition with HHS asking that all fetal tissues and organs be placed under the Organ Transplant Act, which forbids the sale of certain body parts for transplantation.

A group of 24 members of Congress, including Humphrey, has written to HHS Secretary Otis Bowen supporting Rifkin’s petition, HHS has not yet responded to that request.

North American Scene

POLITICS

Falwell: “Free Ollie”

Jerry Falwell has launched a national petition drive to see Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North pardoned for his role in the Iran-contra affair.

North, former National Security Adviser John Poindexter, former Air Force Major Gen. Richard Secord, and businessman Albert Hakim were indicted on criminal charges that included conspiracy, fraud, and theft.

Falwell has urged voting-age viewers of his “Old-Time Gospel Hour” television program to become part of the drive; his goal is five million participants. A toll-free telephone number allows viewers to call in to give permission for their names to be included on the petition. Falwell said President Reagan will receive the petitions, which call for “an immediate and unconditional pardon” for North. “[North] is a true national hero who has put his life on the line over and over again,” Falwell said.

CHURCH AND STATE

Religious Liberty Debated

A vigorous debate about the First Amendment, religious liberty, and the role of religion in American public life was the subject of a national symposium last month at the University of Virginia. Nearly 100 participants with widely diverging views on the relationship between religion and government discussed applications of the religion clauses of the Constitution.

Representatives of Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and humanist groups, public-policy organizations, and the academic world participated in the discussions. Program chairman James Davison Hunter, from the University of Virginia, said the conference was “successful,” not because any minds were changed, but because people with different—and often adversarial—points of view came together, listened, and left with a better understanding of one another.

The symposium was a project of the Williamsburg Charter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonsectarian group concerned with the religion clauses of the First Amendment. Next month, the foundation, which is recognized by the Commission on the Bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution, will sponsor a “celebration summit” in Williamsburg at which American dignitaries will sign a document reaffirming “freedom of conscience for people of all faiths and no faiths” (CT, March 4, 1988).

BUSINESS

Cigarette Maker Fights Back

RJR Nabisco Inc., a major producer of tobacco products, has fired its advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi DFS Compton, apparently as a result of the agency’s no-smoking commercial for Northwest Airlines. Industry observers estimate the agency will lose $70 million to $80 million in annual billings to RJR Nabisco.

Last month, Northwest Airlines banned smoking on all domestic flights (CT, April 22, 1988, p. 40). It aired a television commercial prepared by Saatchi & Saatchi DFS Compton featuring passengers applauding the airline’s decision to become smoke free.

PUBLISHING

Word Spreads

The Christian book and record publishing giant Word, Inc., has decided to move about one-third of its employees, including most of its top executives and its world headquarters, from the small, central Texas city of Waco to the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Company executives said they wanted to be closer to the far-reaching Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. They also said they wanted to take advantage of the burgeoning job market in the Metroplex and to have easier access to the area’s rapidly improving printing and record manufacturing systems. “We felt we needed to leave Waco if we were to continue to grow over the next five to ten years,” said Word president Gary Ingersoll.

Word accounts for between 15 and 20 percent of the market share of Christian books and audio and video cassettes. It accounts for some 60 percent of the market share of record and music products sold through Christian bookstores.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Ousted: By elders at the Community Chapel and Bible Training Center in suburban Seattle, Donald Barnett, the church’s controversial pastor (CT, Aug. 8, 1986, p. 32). Barnett was voted out for alleged repeated sexual contact with female church members. A court, however, restored his control of the congregation. In late March, elders countered by petitioning the King County Superior Court in Washington to dissolve their corporation.

Named: As the first black Catholic archbishop in the United States, Eugene Antonio Marino, the new archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta.

As the new president of African Enterprise (AE,) David Montague, who has spent more than a decade as a missionary to Africa, including a period among Kenya’s Massai people, AE is an interdenominational ministry with field offices in seven African nations. Montague will head AE’S U.S. office, located in Pasadena.

As president of Dallas Baptist University, Gary Cook, formerly an administrator at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He replaces W. Marvin Watson, a former U.S. postmaster general, who resigned last fall.

Appointed: As the first executive director of the lay renewal group Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom (PDRF,) scholar-clergyman Paul Scotchmer, most recently an adviser to the Seattle-based World Without War Council. Since PDRF was recognized by the Presbyterian Church (USA) in June of 1986, its list of members and supporters has grown from 200 to over 4,000.

TELEVANGELISM

The denomination decides two million members and integrity are more important than one man.

As he stood sobbing on the platform in his rose-carpeted Family Worship Center, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart was most apologetic towards the Assemblies of God.

“To its thousands and thousands of pastors that are godly … its evangelists … its missionaries … I’ve sinned against you and I’ve brought disgrace, humiliation, and embarrassment upon you,” he said. “I beg your forgiveness.”

Once again the hapless Assemblies of God found itself caught in an unhappy wrangle involving one of its leading evangelists. Tarred for the second time with the brush of a steamy sex scandal, its reputation as a conservative, missions-minded denomination of high integrity has been tarnished in everything from Newsweek to “Nightline.”

Charges Of Favoritism

It was to maintain that integrity that the Assemblies summoned the troops to a Springfield, Missouri, meeting March 28–29. As much as Swaggart’s career, the Assemblies’ credibility was at stake for this important meeting of the general presbytery—the Assemblies’ national board governing its 2.1 million American members.

“It was a quiet, somber meeting, and I don’t think anyone was eager to judge anybody,” said a Houston pastor who was there, South Texas presbyter Earl J. Banning.

He was one of 250 presbyters called in to back up an earlier decision by the 13-member executive presbytery, the top policy-making council of the Assemblies of God. The executive presbytery had ruled that Swaggart deserved a stricter punishment than the three-month silencing period mandated by Swaggart’s immediate superiors in the Louisiana District of the Assemblies of God.

Louisiana assistant superintendent Don Logan of Shreveport, whose decision to side with the executive presbytery’s stance was a minority position on the 19-man Louisiana district board, said it was nigh impossible for Swaggart’s Louisiana brethren to discipline him.

“We’ve been so closely identified with Jimmy Swaggart throughout the years and we’ve felt in some way that we’re part of his ministry,” he said.

Not all Assemblies members were so forgiving, however. Once they heard news reports that Swaggart’s silencing might last a mere three months, hundreds of church members from across the country swamped headquarters with calls, complaining of favoritism.

“Many people have also accused the church of being unforgiving,” says Assemblies spokesperson Juleen Turnage, “but this is not an issue of forgiveness. This is an issue of an organization, a denomination that has high standards of conduct for its ministers.… There’s a difference between forgiveness and restoration to leadership.”

In order to keep their credentials, all Assemblies pastors must sign an annual agreement binding them to the standards and constitution of the denomination. This includes submitting to their terms of discipline, which in the case of sexual sin is a two-year suspension from the ministry and at least an additional one year away from the pulpit, weekly counseling by persons chosen by the denomination, and reports filed monthly with the district and twice yearly with national headquarters.

So it was not surprising the general presbytery dismissed Swaggart from the denomination on April 8 for refusing to bow to the Assemblies’ terms of discipline. (Ordained Assemblies ministers who work for Swaggart’s college or television ministry must either resign or lose their credentials, according to the denomination’s rules.) Swaggart says he will return to the pulpit May 22, Pentecost Sunday, the original deadline set by the Louisiana District.

Prone To Scandal?

The denomination has yet to resolve why its two brightest stars fell into disgrace. Whereas Jim Bakker’s Christian Disneyland-style image was a far departure from the conservative AG mold, Swaggart was vintage Assemblies. A dynamic preacher of preachers, a major contributor ($12 million yearly) to the Assemblies’ foreign missions budget, Swaggart championed the Pentecostal experience. He was a self-appointed reformer in the denomination, taking stands against other Assemblies of God pastors whom he judged guilty of doctrinal deviations or moral indiscretions.

In the first days of the scandal, one popular item at AG headquarters was an article, “Sin in the Church,” written by Swaggart in the August 1987 issue of The Evangelist magazine, a Swaggart ministries publication. The text was sheer irony: Swaggart righteously describing just how fallen pastors should be disciplined, with the provision that fallen clergymen must be removed from their positions of spiritual leadership for at least two years.

That the incident should happen to the Assemblies of God is also ironic: of all evangelical denominations, the Assemblies have one of the most aggressive policies for restoring fallen brethren. In 1987, 75 out of 30,000 U.S. AG clergy went through the denomination’s rehabilitation program, which has been in effect only since 1973, said Turnage. Nevertheless, the sight of two famous AG pastors falling off their pedestals has had an unnerving effect. Pastors around the country found themselves reassuring congregants that all was not lost.

Yet in spite of the brave public front, plenty of soul searching has gone on behind the scenes, says Fuller Theological Seminary professor Russell Spittler, an ordained AG minister and director of the school’s David duPlessis Center for Christian Spirituality. “I’m sorry the Assemblies of God has become famous in this way,” said Spittler. “But I’ve been pleased with the response of the church. This has made us realize there’s more to being a Christian than ‘being saved.’ We’ve been good at conversion and less successful in building a firm character.”

A Sad Situation

Reaction from outside the denomination has been kind. Catholics, a group much maligned by Swaggart, view it as “a sad situation,” said Bob Furlow, director of communications for the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge. His bishop, Stanley J. Ott, met with Swaggart after a 1983 article in The Evangelist urged Catholics to leave their church. “We tried to be open with our faith with Jimmy Swaggart,” Furlow said. “I’d hope we’d not only pray for the Rev. Swaggart, but also have compassion for the woman he was with.”

Speaking to one of the country’s largest Southern Baptist congregations, John Bisagno, pastor of Houston’s 20,000-member First Baptist Church, said in February the televangelist scandals did not reflect on the Assemblies of God.

“[That such an incident should happen to] this evangelistic godly missionary denomination, that probably has more missionaries on the foreign field than any group in the world, including Southern Baptists, … does not for a minute suggest that there is anything wrong with the Assemblies of God people,” Bisagno said. “I don’t believe that incidents of immorality or sin among their pastors or their people are any higher than in any denomination in the world.”

Turnage says it is too soon to know how the televangelist fallout will affect church membership.

“The events of the past year are having a purging, cleansing effect on the Assemblies of God,” she said, “with Christians examining themselves and their own lives to see if there are areas where they’re not living up to standards of holiness. The Assemblies of God is a strong denomination and it is much bigger than one or two ministers.”

By Julia Duin.

NEWS

MIDDLE EAST

Palestinian Christians are hopeful that recent confrontations will bring an end to Israeli domination.

Since December, conflict between Israelis and Palestinians has escalated into a grim stalemate with few signs of resolution. The violence has highlighted concerns among Palestinian Christians, many of whom feel that U.S. Christians wrongly support Israel uncritically.

Last month a Christian Zionist Congress convened in Jerusalem, calling on Christians to “come together to honor the Jewish state and pledge their ongoing support for her.” Meanwhile, the Middle East Council of Churches issued a statement designed to help Western Christians realize how Arab believers view their circumstances.

The council statement read in part: “The indigenous churches of the Middle East are keenly aware of the human rights violations presently inflicted on the unarmed Arab population of the occupied territories and Gaza, and they refuse to make God the author of such treatment.”

For Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, the recent unrest signals a fundamental change in tactics and self-understanding. Despite nearly 200 fatalities in the past six months, Palestinians report their morale remains high.

Prominent Palestinian lawyer Jonathan Kuttab, a Christian, recently completed a speaking tour of the United States and Canada during which he described the effect of the uprising on his people. Kuttab challenged church groups and human-rights advocates to monitor what is happening.

Meanwhile, the American Alliance for Palestinian Human Rights has been organized in Washington, D.C., to coordinate the efforts of the many organizations working on behalf of human rights and Arab-Israeli peace. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has announced it will send field observers to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to “monitor and report on Israeli activities.”

No Longer Helpless

In an area the size of New Jersey, Israel maintains tense relations with Arabs, both inside its official borders and in Israeli-occupied lands of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. About a million Palestinians inhabit the West Bank and Gaza, some 60,000 of them in refugee camps.

For decades, many of these Arabs have wanted to return to the villages they fled during the 1948 Israeli war of independence and the Six-Day War of 1967. Leadership for the recent uprising has emerged mainly from a network of committees in the refugee camps and in predominantly Arab cities such as Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Speaking last month in Washington, D.C., Kuttab observed, “The forces that have been unleashed in this uprising were there all along.” What is new, he said, is that Palestinians no longer view themselves as helpless victims. “On the eve of the uprising, the common wisdom was that there was nothing the Palestinians could do,” said Kuttab. “Their leadership was divided and in exile.… They had no military option. Their allies, so called, in the Arab world were worse than their enemies,” he said, adding that Palestinians became consigned to waiting out the occupation.

The change in attitude came from an unexpected source: children. What began as isolated incidents of children throwing stones at Israeli army vehicles escalated into a full-fledged uprising. Kuttab said the children “simply decided that we are a people, we want to be free now, and we’re going to do something about it.”

Adults caught the spirit of resistance, Kuttab said, adding that Palestinians are now attempting to conduct a careful, thoroughgoing campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience. Their efforts include boycotting Israeli goods, holding partial and full labor strikes, and encouraging Arab tax collectors, police officers, and other civil servants who work with and for Israelis to resign en masse.

In response, the Israeli army has increasingly cracked down on Arabs; soldiers have broken up demonstrations with bullets and clubs. Electricity and water to Arab villages and refugee camps have been cut off, and telephone service has been disrupted.

A Plea For Help

Between 10 and 15 percent of Palestinians are Christians, with church affiliations that include Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Mennonite, and Anglican. One Palestinian evangelical, Bishara Awad, worked at a Mennonite school for orphaned boys after receiving a U.S. education. He realized there are few opportunities for Arab Christian young people to obtain theological training without leaving the country, so he founded Bethlehem Bible College (CT, April 18, 1986, p. 16).

Awad says recent unrest is affecting students and former students at the Bible College. He has distributed an account written by one of his graduates of an experience she had in February while visiting her brothers in the town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem.

Israeli soldiers marched through the town, rounding up young people. They fired bullets through the windows of the home the young woman was visiting. Then the soldiers entered the house and dragged the girl’s brothers, aged 26 and 30, into the street, covering their heads before beating them with sticks and putting out cigarettes on their bodies.

When the men were released, the woman writes, “They could not stand, collapsing like rags on the ground.” She claims her brothers have never been involved in political demonstrations.

In a letter accompanying this account, Awad urgently requested the prayers of U.S. Christians, writing, “God has called us to a ministry of reconciliation and peace in this land. Hatred can easily breed in situations of oppression, but the Bible College tries to further dialogue between Jews and Arabs. We are here to bear witness of Jesus Christ and his redemptive power and love. But our hope in Christ does not make us insensitive to injustice and suffering in our community.”

Awad requested prayer for an end to “the bloodshed, brutality, and oppression” and for “a just solution that will lead to reconciliation and peace for both peoples of this troubled land.”

Kuttab believes the current conflict presents a new opportunity for a two-state solution based on compromise. He observed, “In strategic terms, this uprising is a real watershed not only for us but also for Israelis. They can choose to reach a compromise … or, if they choose, the war will continue.”

By Beth Spring

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

Losing touch

What is largely missing in American life today is a sense of context, of saying or doing anything that is intended or even expected to live beyond the moment. There is no culture in the world that is so obsessed as ours with immediacy. In our journalism, the trivial displaces the momentous because we tend to measure the importance of events by how recently they happened. We have become so obsessed with facts that we have lost all touch with truth.

—Ted Koppel in a speech to the International Radio and Television Society, quoted in Harper’s (Jan. 1986)

The Bible: Force or farce?

I remain unpersuaded that any theological movement can dramatically affect the course of the world while its own leaders undermine the integrity of its charter documents, or while its spokespersons domestically exhaust all their energies in internal defense of those documents. The Bible stands impressively unshaken by the fury of destructive critics, while the nonbelieving world, itself marked for destruction, urgently needs to hear its singular message of salvation.

—Carl F. H. Henry in The Christian Century (Nov. 1980)

Hell: Heat plus humidity

I want to say that the humidity factor has never to my knowledge been taken into account in descriptions of Hell. Your talking eternal fire without no humidity, a Mississippian is gonna think you mean Heaven or Southern California.

—Jack Butler in Jujitsu for Christ: A Novel

Talking too much

Would-be theologians … must be on their guard lest by beginning too soon to preach they rather chatter themselves into Christianity than live themselves into it and find themselves at home there.

—Søren Kierkegaard as recorded in his Journal (July 11, 1838)

Misplaced redwoods

I suppose that the worst thing we can do with our lives is actively pursue wickedness: oppression, rape, hatred—they are hideous. But doing things that don’t matter is nearly as bad. God created us as wonderful beings, capable of loving, caring, growing. And what do we do most of the time? Nothing.

We’re intended to grow into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” We’re meant to be like trees planted by rivers of water, like redwoods. We’re intended to treat others as we’d like to be treated ourselves.

But instead we go about our daily routines, rarely asking whether what we’re doing matters. Most of the time, we’re redwoods transplanting ourselves to the desert.

—John Alexander in The Other Side (May 1987)

Out of the rabbit holes

Many believers are “rabbit hole” Christians. In the morning they pop out of their safe Christian homes, hold their breath at work, scurry home to their families and then off to their Bible studies, and finally end the day praying for the unbelievers they safely avoided all day.

—Jan Johnson in Moody Monthly (Nov. 1987)

Work never done

The trouble with doing good works is that one can never be said to have done one’s share because some works always need doing and there are never enough people to do them.

—Barbara Pym in An Academic Question

Distracted fans

We’ve lost ourselves in the cult of personality. We seem to have become “fans,” passive spectators of the passing scene. The stars whom we either admire or despise serve as a distraction from the things we should be thinking about, such as our own lives.

—Maureen Howard, interviewed in Sunday (Chicago Tribune magazine, Sept. 7, 1986)

More than hardware

The visionaries of the electronic age have tended to only look at what it is possible for the new Age of Information to bring us, not what the probable outcome will be in a larger social or moral sense … we should remember that technology is not just “hardware.” It cannot be removed from its social context or consequences.

—Stewart Hoover, quoted in Media&Values (Summer/Fall 1987)

Has heroism become a trivial pursuit?

Nowadays heroes come and go with alarming frequency. Oliver North is a goat one day, a hero the next. And so it is with Gary Hart, Jim and Tammy Bakker, and hordes of other politicians, Christian figures, athletes, and entertainers. Have we reached Andy Warhol’s society of the future when everyone will be famous—but only for 15 minutes?

Americans have always taken heroes seriously, and rightly so. Heroes, whether we are aware of it or not, focus the human imagination and thereby shape the lives and personalities of their admirers. Public heroes also provide coherence at a deep level to the society of which they are a part. This is what makes our present confusion about heroes particularly troubling. How can they exert this influence if they rise and fall, inflate and deflate like soap bubbles on the wind? It is no small thing when the heroes of a society are in disarray, because heroism touches the human spirit deeply at so many levels—the psychological, the sociological, and the theological.

You can see the psychological importance of heroism early in a child’s life. Think of the hats a child puts on—those of the nurse, the fire chief, the soldier. Long before a child is aware of abstract moral rules, he or she has a fertile imagination and wants to be like certain kinds of people and unlike others.

Even as we grow older, we are motivated not just by rules and laws, but by stories, by images of flesh-and-blood people who have lived in a way we find admirable and attractive.

On a social level, we do not need to look far to see the significance that people like Elizabeth I, Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, and Gandhi had for their respective countries. (Of course, on the dark side of heroism, there was Hitler, who was probably the most skilled architect of a hero system in our century.)

In reading theology, I often find Christians speaking as if having heroes is pardonable up through early adolescence, but after that heroism is a negative force, tied inevitably to pride. Not only is this the fruit of a low view of the power of the imagination, but it also shows a theological thinness. The God of the Bible is the God of glory, and we are called to reflect something of this glory in our relationship to him through Christ. Glory and honor are not the featherweight conceptions that our society has made them, but are heavy and solid, rooted in the unchanging character of God for all eternity.

The desire for heroism, properly understood, comes from the need to interact with and reflect the glory of God himself. In this is found true human greatness and excellence, which is focused ultimately in the imitation of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). At its worst, the heroic harnesses the full force of human vanity, self-deception, and cruelty to become a scourge on the planet. But at its redeemed best, the longing to reach toward heroism is the burning desire to honor God, forgetful of self.

Heroism is not dead in our society, but it has been besieged by two powerful forces: cynicism and trivialization. Together they bring about a crisis of the imagination that has deeply affected our society.

Heroes And Cynics

We are living at a time when the very word hero has come to carry cynical connotations. Many loud and learned voices are claiming there is no such thing as human greatness at all, and there never was. There has been a widespread loss of confidence that meaning for human life can ever be expressed in words. This is obviously devastating, because heroes must be heroic in terms of meanings, values, or standards—without which their heroism would be indistinguishable from villainy or random behavior. If the foundation for meaning is cut away, the human need for heroism will shrivel up in boredom and alienation. Or it will hang in midair, waiting to attach itself to the fragmented, arbitrary, and sometimes fanatical meanings that either individuals will create for themselves, or charismatic leaders will prefabricate for them.

The existentialist Ernest Becker has given an incisive thumbnail sketch of the history of meaning. He points out that for all of known civilization, people have believed in two worlds: one that you could see, and one that was invisible. They lived in the visible world, but they believed in the unseen world, in which lived spirits, hobgoblins, gods, goddesses, and God. The invisible world provided the basis for meaning and value, and hence, for what was heroic. It was the source of cohesion for their society. However, about the middle of the last century, people began to be told that there was no invisible world. It did not exist and never had. They were living a lie.

Becker then looks at what happened to heroism as a result. Once the door to the invisible world was closed and barred, we had to derive a sense of the heroic from the visible, tangible, material world.

He writes in The Birth and Death of Meaning: “People no longer drew their power from the invisible dimension, but from intensive manipulation of very visible Ferraris and other material gadgets. They try to find their whole fulfillment in a sex partner or an endless succession of partners, or in their children.”

Suddenly the theater of heroism has shrunk. There is nothing beyond ourselves to which we correspond except the vast impersonal. Lost is God and the moral and heroic absolutes that made sense under his reign, and with it the idea of distinctive human dignity. The British philosopher C. E. M. Joad put it well: “Although there was scientific basis for saying that man was the highest primate, there was none for placing him outside the animal kingdom in the matter of unique rights; he was only the star performer in the zoo. Suppose, then, someone put him in a cage or made a slave of him; was there any biological or sociological law which said this could not be done?”

Admittedly, we do different tricks than the other animals in the zoo. But unless there is a God in whose image we are made, all our higher ideals for justice, goodness, and beauty are just pretensions, mirages in the consciousness of the human animal. At the philosophical level, there is therefore little confidence in human distinctiveness, let alone heroism.

Freud Confronts Da Vinci

The human sciences have also made a major contribution to cynicism about human greatness, especially as they treat the subjects of motivation and freedom. We are told that human choice is not what it appears to be. If we accept the sophistications of some views of psychology, we know that what appears to be heroic—for example, a man or woman’s act of courage in saving another’s life—is, in fact, a desperate attempt to win the approval of a long-dead parent who had withheld love in the childhood years. What, then, has become of the hero? He or she is transformed in our minds into a neurotic, and with a slight turn of the mind, admiration is changed to pity and condescension.

Psychoanalysis has always been a great equalizer of people. This, of course, puts it at loggerheads with heroism, which by definition gives attention to what is extraordinary. The influence of Freud, although great in psychology and psychiatry, may have been even more pervasive in literature, history, and the arts in general. He set a pattern in his early study of Leonardo da Vinci when he explained that da Vinci’s extraordinary creativity could be accounted for by his repressed homosexual desires. As an “in-closet” homosexual, such psychic energy was built up inside him that it was sublimated into his artistic and engineering accomplishments.

By this psychoanalytic method, any heroic act can be seen to have self-serving, even sordid roots. We are left with our attention fixed on the internal crippling of a person, and we are thoroughly uninspired by that person’s genius.

Space does not allow a survey of the debunking strands in psychology, sociology, history, anthropology, sociobiology, and economics. Despite the many helpful contributions these fields have made, there has been a tendency to see individuals as only products of intrapsychic, socioeconomic, or biological forces beyond their control. These factors eclipse the drama of life—stories with unfolding narratives of agonizing choice and action. In the name of science and under the aura of its authority and sophistication, some of the work in these disciplines simply obscures those things most important and most admirable in human existence.

The Trivialization Of Charles Lindbergh

The second great force besieging heroism today is trivialization. While the acid of cynicism dissolves the very idea of the heroic, the force of trivialization at first seems to be blowing the horn for the heroic. On closer observation, however, we discover trivialization dilutes heroism. It contributes just as much as cynicism to the loss of the heroic. The media are prime culprits. In his landmark work, The Image, Daniel Boorstin complains that we have exchanged heroes for celebrities. While a hero is someone who has done something great or honorable and therefore commands respect, a celebrity is “known for his well-knownness” and is envied for it. He is the “human pseudo-event.”

Trivialization takes two forms. First, true heroes are trivialized. Second, trivial people are inflated to heroic status.

Charles Lindbergh was one of the first heroes to be trivialized by the news media’s power. His flight was extraordinary, but relatively uncomplicated—insufficient to satisfy the public’s hunger for information about him. Therefore, his rise to fame itself became the focus of the news, with all the complications and tragedy that it brought to his life. What the press had made of him was more newsworthy than what he actually did, and hero became celebrity.

More recently, Lenny Skutnik, the man who rescued a woman from the icy Potomac River after the Air Florida plane crash, observed the same thing. After he had appeared on television beside Nancy Reagan at the State of the Union address, he reported that when people would come to him they no longer asked, “Hey, aren’t you the guy who jumped in the river and saved the lady?” but instead, “Hey, aren’t you the guy who was on the State of the Union?”

The second form of trivialization—inflating superficial people to heroic status—is more destructive. It provides us with a new cast of fascinating people each week, and with fame as the central virtue. The National Enquirer is always ready to feed our inquiring minds, and People Weekly magazine to keep us abreast of the most recent divorces and indictments among celebrities. In a recent study of the top ten American heroes, seven were in show business, and most were considered not so much for who they were but for their stage or celluloid images. Much of what is admired actually does not exist except in the form of image. Like the dehydrated desert wanderer, we are navigating by mirages.

This is very serious. Today’s heroism is one of style, not of character, where the important points are driving a Mercedes or BMW, and wearing Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren fashions. Even in the “serious” world of politics, what seems to matter is physical appearance, an attractive family, and a quotable quip on every current issue. (Of course, for someone who wants to be a celebrity badly enough, that is always possible. All one needs to do is to shoot a famous person.)

Not only are certain individuals trivialized, but heroism itself has become superficial. As long ago as 1959, Earl Blackwell and Cleveland Amory compiled the voluminous Celebrity Register. In it the television comedienne Dagmar was listed beside the Dalai Lama, Anita Ekberg beside Dwight Eisenhower, and Jane Russell beside Bertrand Russell.

As long as fame is the highest value, we cannot make important distinctions between celebrities and true heroes. Could it be that some of our televangelists have pulled God himself into the triviality of America’s consumer culture, where faith is a commodity and theology is lite—all for your entertainment pleasure?

Eating Indiana Jones’S Cake

Although the forces of cynicism and trivialization seem to start off in opposite directions, they in fact feed each other. The more cynical one is, the more life seems to be trivial. The more life seems trivial, the more cynicism is justified. There is a symbiotic relationship between the two, the result of which makes it very difficult to develop a healthy sense of heroism.

The heroism that survives the acid of cynicism and the inflation-deflation cycles of trivialization is apt to be a heroism out of reach of the vast majority of people. This is because there is no modern transcendent source of meaning. As long as heroism is linked to moral character, it can provide a focus of aspiration for common people, for the possibility of moral choice is available to any of us. But much of what passes for high-visibility heroism today is morally neutral. Society can no longer distinguish between right and wrong. Instead, we exalt heroes of beauty, sports, music, and film—those with money and possessions.

If we follow the heroics of Clint Eastwood or James Bond, we will end up dead or in jail. What if (like the vast majority of us) our physical endowments are such that the heroism of beauty or professional sports is simply not an option? Or how many of us can be rock music stars? Wealth and its accouterments may be a little more accessible, but they are still unavailable to most people.

What we have is a heroism that has a different function than it used to have. The hero was once a focal point for aspiration, but this is no longer realistically the case. After initial short-lived aspiration, the modern hero is apt to produce two responses—daydreaming and self-hatred. We daydream about what life would be like if we walked in the shoes of the hero, but we detest ourselves for falling so far short.

Watching a 90-yard touchdown run is inspiring, but for most observers, it inspires only a trip to the kitchen for another can of beer. Likewise, the adoring fans of the rock guitarist are inspired to invest fortunes in records, tapes, posters, and correct clothing, but few get beyond “air guitar” in their own musical accomplishments. As Christopher Lasch has noted, there is a loss of will to emulate another—it takes too much effort. The highest aspiration is to live a hassle-free life, to minimize frustration and maximize stimulation and comfort.

Admiration without aspiration ends ultimately in frustration. My life seems so dull compared to Clint Eastwood’s roles. This turns easily to compensatory heroism: using a hero not to aspire to, but, by a vicarious voyage of identity, to silence the need for aspiration. The compensatory hero does not fire our ideals; he compensates for our lack of ideals. He or she reduces us to obedient little people, because we are without any imaginative moral vision that could call us to break with conformity. This, not true religion, is the opiate of the masses, leaving us easy victims to the seductions of the consumer culture.

As columnist Russell Baker said of Raiders of the Lost Ark, “you want to make sure nobody in the audience thinks you’re an outdated sap who really believes in swashbuckling. So you keep winking at the audience by making the whole thing so preposterous that they’ll know you’re only kidding.” Heroes like Indiana Jones are often held up as proof that true heroism remains. In fact, they are only attempts to have one’s cake and eat it too—to get an imaginative charge out of a story, but still preserve a basic cynicism.

True heroes challenge the excuseladen mediocrity of our lives and open us to new possibilities of what we might be. As such, they are uncomfortable to live with and are often unwanted. If we can debunk or trivialize them, we give ourselves a reprieve from their challenge and from the shame of our shortfall. This reprieve is one of the payoffs of the cynic or, in biblical language, the scoffer. However, there are great losses involved that we are only now beginning to see. C. S. Lewis wrote that “in trying to extirpate shame we have broken down one of the ramparts of the human spirit, madly exulting in the work as the Trojans exulted when they broke their walls and pulled the horse into Troy.”

In a world without heroes, there is no shame, but neither is there glory and honor or a positive moral imagination. Time will tell whether the Trojan horse is already in the city or not. Last year’s Fourth of July edition of Newsweek celebrated everyday heroes from each of the 50 states. It was moving in that they were selected because they were unknown, and they cared in imaginative and costly ways—usually about other people less fortunate than themselves. It is gratifying that these are Newsweek’s heroes, but it is less encouraging when we realize that there are other “heroic virtues” that have left larger footprints on the American imagination. The advertisements within that same magazine predictably show that it is in fact beauty, talent, money, and power that are considered to be the real motivating levers to human action.

Christians have a possibility of pointing to a new way, to a redemption of the imagination. But before we become triumphant, we must concede that our track record in recent times has not been good. Ernest Becker, in Escape from Evil, pointed out that the world, looking for the Christian ideal of heroic sainthood, too often sees a church that “openly subscribes to a commercial-industrial hero system” rather than the excellence of God. The challenge is to show something better in the integrity of our lives, before one another and before God, as we imitate his Son.

Dick Keyes is director of L’Abri Fellowship in South-borough, Massachusetts. Now at work on a book about heroism, he is the author of Beyond Identity (Servant, 1984).