PORNOGRAPHY

When the Religious Alliance Against Pornography (RAAP) sponsored its first convention two years ago, the agenda included a viewing of pornography. At this year’s convention, no such pictures were shown, and that, according to many observers, is significant.

“We are maturing as an organization,” said Paul Maurer, a spokesman for RAAP. “We have learned there’s a fine line between educating people about pornography and offending them.” Maurer also explained that the antipornography movement fully understands the dangers of exposing people to pornography. “There is a perverse attraction to it, even for those who oppose it,” said Maurer.

It is that attraction that RAAP is seeking to counter by eliminating obscene materials from the marketplace. “We are against censorship, but we are also against obscenity which is not protected by the Constitution,” said Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, vice-chairman of RAAP, and Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago. Bernardin described pornography as “morally evil because it undermines human dignity.”

Currently, more than 40 denominations or religious organizations representing 100 million members belong to RAAP. Chairman Jerry R. Kirk, who is also president of the National Coalition Against Pornography, said the organization is trying to mobilize its members to join the fight through their own religious groups. “We would like every denomination to appoint a person in their national office to work specifically against pornography,” he said.

Kirk believes the war is winnable, pointing to a recent increase in child pornography and obscenity convictions. According to William Weld, assistant attorney general in charge of criminal prosecution, child pornography prosecutions jumped from only 3 in 1983 to 224 in 1987.

Yet others say the $7 to $10 billion industry continues to grow almost unchecked. “Only 40 of the 93 U.S. attorneys have any prosecutions,” said newspaper columnist Michael McManus, who has researched the problem extensively. “The fact is, we are winning a few battles, but the pornoggraphers are winning the war.”

Part of the problem in fighting pornography is the addictive nature of the material, according to Victor Cline, professor of psychology at the University of Utah. Cline, who has done extensive research on the harms of pornography, said it is extremely difficult for a person to stop a pornography habit. “Most people relapse after therapy,” Cline said. “The best therapy is an ongoing program similar to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

Cline’s research has established a correlation between pornography and sexually deviant behavior. “We have found that addiction is followed by a desensitizing effect, then an escalation of desire, and finally, the acting out of what one views or reads in pornography.” He called television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s much-publicized fall from grace a classic example of how pornography captivates its victims. And he said the program of rehabilitation initially proposed for Swaggart “won’t work unless he gets more sophisticated therapy.”

In addition to enlisting the support of denominations, RAAP officials say they would like to see Congress pass the Child Pornography and Obscenity Enforcement Act that is before them. “This bill would close current loopholes that allow pornographers to operate, and it would update obscenity laws to cover new technologies,” said RAAP’S Maurer.

For example, he said, pedophiles use computers to transmit child pornography over telephone lines, and this is not illegal under the current laws. Maurer also said it is not illegal for parents to receive payment for allowing their children to be used in pornography, and that the proposed legislation would change that.

“Currently, the bill has good support in both the House and Senate, but the respective committees have not called for hearings on them,” said Maurer. “Our fear is that this important bill will not be decided until the next session of Congress.”

By Lyn Cryderman in Washington D.C.

ECONOMICS

While incomes for the average American family rose between 1970 and 1986, they fell during the same period for young families and low-income families with children, according to a new report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). And profamily advocates say they are deeply concerned.

Gains And Losses

The study found that the median income of the American family has risen 20 percent since 1970. However, in families with children where the parent or guardian is under 25 years of age, the median income was 43 percent lower than for similar families in 1970. Low-income families with children were 12 percent lower in 1986 than in 1970.

Other findings in the report, Trends in Family Income: 1970–1986, included:

• In 1986, more than 20 percent of young families (parent or guardian under 25) with children lived on incomes below half of the poverty line, as did one-fifth of all families headed by a single, female parent. (Half of the poverty line for a family of three was $4,369 in 1986.)

• Low-income families with children where the family head was aged 25–34 in 1986 also had lower incomes, with the median income falling 18 percent for the two-fifths with the lowest incomes.

• The median income for elderly families rose more than 50 percent from 1970 to 1986.

• The poorest family group is young families with children headed by a single female. In 1986, nearly one-fifth of these families had incomes below one-quarter of the poverty line ($2,184 for a family of three), and about two-fifths fell below half the poverty line.

A Widening Gap

The report also found the “income gap widened between the wealthy and those who are less affluent.” The median income for the wealthiest two-fifths of American families with children rose 27 percent during the period, while it fell 12 percent for the poorest two-fifths of families with children. Many families were “markedly better off in 1986,” the report concludes. However, “at the same time the group of families with children that is at the bottom of the income distribution is markedly worse off now than the corresponding group was 16 years earlier.”

According to the report, the main reason for income gains in the average family was not higher earnings by the typical family worker, but more workers per family. “In many families, both parents now must work to maintain the standard of living, which results in increased costs as well as increased income, such as child care and commuting,” Miller said.

Unlike other income studies, the CBO study adjusted the actual income levels to reflect reductions in average family size since 1970. The office also used an inflation index that rose more slowly than the Consumer Price Index (CPI), saying that the CPI “overstated inflation before 1983.”

Concerns

Rep. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Republican leader of the Children, Youth, and Family Committee, described the report as “disturbing.” And the Family Research Council (frc) in Washington, D.C., agreed, FRC Director of Public Policy William R. Mattox, Jr., said, “We are very discouraged by the statistics because they show that some families with children, particularly young families and those with only one wage earner, are not gaining ground but losing ground.”

Mattox said he was particularly troubled that family-income gains were largely due to a second spouse working rather than increased wages. “Whether you consider having a second spouse in the work force good news or bad news, you’ve got to recognize that there are limitations to that as a solution because … there are only so many hours a man and his wife can work to maintain a standard of living.”

According to Mattox, several social factors have played into the deteriorating situation for families with children. First, Mattox said, such families have become victims of “vicious cycles.” Said Mattox, “The recent influx of baby boomers and the influx of more women into the work force created a glut of workers, which then depressed wages, which then made the need for a second spouse working, which then depressed the wages that much further.”

Second, Mattox said U.S. tax policy over the last 15 years has been a major problem for families. “Families with children have been forced to shoulder an increasing tax burden while the tax liability of childless couples and singles and the elderly has by and large remained constant,” he said, adding that the FRC would like to see the federal government offer families with children even more tax relief than the recent Tax Reform Act provided.

Representative Coats is calling for more congressional examination of the situation. “This evidence of a declining commitment to children in an economic sense raises questions about how government policies may have aggravated trends that impact the family,” he said.

ABORTION

When Canada’s supreme court legalized nonmedical abortions earlier this year, many abortionists and prochoice groups thought their battle was won. But antiabortion forces say they will use various methods to restrict the number of abortions performed in Canada.

Under the old law, abortions had been restricted to accredited hospitals and could only be performed by a qualified physician. Further, the abortion could be performed only after a therapeutic abortion committee had certified that there indeed was a danger to the “life or health” of the mother. The supreme court decision now makes abortion in Canada a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Wrote Chief Justice Brian Dickson: “Forcing a woman by threat of criminal sanction to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations is a profound interference with a woman’s body.”

Though evangelicals in Canada oppose the ruling, Brian Stiller, executive director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC), says it might ultimately be beneficial for two reasons. First, says Stiller, whose organization represents 24 denominations and more than 600 churches, the ruling has settled the women’s rights issue. “Now, we can get down to the fundamental issue. And that is the definition of human life.”

Stiller also points out that the setting of rules governing abortions must be done by Parliament. “So today, parliamentarians are not able to avoid the tough choices by saying we already have a bill, or by saying the court makes the decision. My hope is that it will bring us out of our spiritual entrenchment and move us out onto the real battlefield.”

That is where the church can be most effective, say Canadian church leaders. David Mainse, for example, host of the popular “100 Huntley Street” television program, urged the estimated 250,000 people in his viewing audience to “stand up and be counted,” says Doug Burke, director of communications at Crossroads Christian Communications in Toronto. Mainse encouraged both viewers and staff to write and send telegrams to the government about the abortion issue, Burke said.

Other organizations, like Focus on the Family/Canada, have also encouraged their people to get involved in letter-writing campaigns. James A. Sclater, assistant to the president at Focus on the Family in Vancouver, says that their president, Geoffrey Still, has written constituents about getting involved in this issue.

The social concern committee of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, on the other hand, is taking a slightly different route. “Our strategy,” says Hudson T. Hilsden, coordinator of the committee,” is to ask the government to bring in emergency legislation and even to bring in legislation re-enacting a form of the previous law as a temporary measure until a new law can be adopted.” But until then, says Hilsden, his denomination will be urging their people to write their MPs and government officials about the issue.

All this activity has not escaped the attention of Canada’s prochoice advocates. The Canadian Abortion Rights League in Toronto and The Issue Is Choice organization, for example, placed ads in at least one major English language newspaper—just 11 days after the decision. It read: “We need funds to continue the fight against the vociferous anti-choice lobby. And we still must mount legal challenges against those reactionary provincial governments who would defy the Supreme Court of Canada judgment.…”

Yet the Canadian government has recently said it is considering a new abortion law that would prohibit abortions after the first 18 weeks of pregnancy—a move that is sure to keep both sides arguing well into the forseeable future.

By John Stanhope.

North American Scene

HOMOSEXUALITY

Lutherans Affirm Gay Policy

When three gay seminarians were certified for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the newly formed denomination began receiving questions about its position on homosexuality. However, because the ELCA began operating on January 1, 1988, it has not had time to develop that position.

According to Bishop Herbert W. Chilstrom, the practice of the ELCA regarding the ordination of homosexuals is the same as that of its predecessor churches. Both the American Lutheran Church and the Lutheran Church in America had statements indicating homosexual behavior and not orientation | rendered a candidate ineligible for ordination.

“Those [pastors] who are gay or lesbian in their sexual orientation, whether acknowledged or kept confidential, will be expected to be celibate,” said Chilstrom.

The students in question attend Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California.

DAY CARE

Sexual Abuse Lower

Child sexual abuse is less likely to occur in a day-care center than in the child’s home, a new study reported. Compiled for the federal government by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, the study estimated that an average of 5.5 children are sexually abused for every 10,000 enrolled in day-care centers. But at home, an average of 8.9 children are abused out of every 10,000, the study found.

The study also found that although men make up only 5 percent of day-care staff, they account for 60 percent of the abuse. Sexual abuse was less likely to occur at centers where parents had ready access to children, the study reported.

Preventive measures recommended by the study included teaching children the difference between “good touching” and “bad touching,” and telling children they should not keep secrets at day care that cannot be shared with their parents.

HEALTH

Airline Bans Smoking

Northwest Orient Airlines surprised analysts and announced passengers will not be allowed to smoke on any of its domestic flights except those to and from Hawaii. The ban by the nation’s fifth-largest carrier goes beyond federal regulations that go into effect this month prohibiting smoking on domestic flights lasting two hours or less.

According to Northwest spokesman A. B. “Sky” Magary, the prohibition is a response to passengers’ and employees’ requests. He cited a Northwest study showing that 90 percent of their passengers prefer to sit in the nonsmoking section of a plane. The study also found that about 30 percent of smokers expressed a desire for smoke-free flights. “We believe more nonsmokers will switch to Northwest than smokers will leave,” said Magary.

Northwest’s ban, which goes into effect this week, drew praise from officials of the American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, and the U.S. surgeon general’s office.

PUBLISHING

U Finds A Home

After 47 years of publication, U magazine (formerly His) will merge with World Christian magazine. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, publishers of U, and the publishers of World Christian said the two publications will merge later this spring.

The announcement ended speculation regarding the status of U, which had recorded significant financial losses due, in part, to a longstanding policy of not allowing His to sell advertising. And while most observers were surprised at the proposed merger, Linda Doll, director of InterVarsity Press, believes the two magazines “are unified in our view of God’s call to world mission.”

Gordon Aeschliman, editor of World Christian, says U will continue to address specific needs of college students. It will appear as a special section in World Christian.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

Named: As coordinator of Mission to the World, the overseas missionary arm of the Presbyterian Church in America, John E. Kyle. Most recently, Kyle served with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship-USA as missions director and director of the Urbana Student Missions Conventions.

Died: Paul Ramsey, 74, one of the nation’s leading scholars of Christian ethics and a professor of religion at Princeton University for nearly 40 years. He was referred to in the New York Times as “the principal opponent of ‘situation ethics’ among Protestant thinkers.”

Gerhard Claas, 59, general secretary of the Baptist World Alliance, from injuries sustained in a traffic accident near Lodi, California. Claas had been chief administrative officer of the 35 million-member organization since 1980. A citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany, he once pastored the historic Johann-Gerhard Oncken Memorial Baptist Church in Hamburg.

Audrey Ockenga, 78, wife of the late Harold J. Ockenga, founding president of Fuller Theological Seminary, pastor of historic Park Street Church in Boston, and long-time chairman of the board of Christianity Today, Inc.

Resigned: Gordon D. Loux, as president and chief executive officer of Prison Fellowship Ministries, citing “differences in management philosophy, style, and role expectations.” Loux helped Charles Colson found Prison Fellowship in 1976.

PUBLIC POLICY

Despite strong opposition from the Reagan administration and several conservative religious groups, the Civil Rights Restoration Act became law last month.

The legislation, which had generated controversy since it was first introduced, provoked intensive lobbying efforts, with religious groups lining up on both sides of the issue. Indeed, before the final congressional vote, mainline religious leaders were accusing the Moral Majority of employing “scare tactics” in its efforts against the bill.

The act, strongly pushed by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), broadens the scope of federal antidiscrimination coverage that was limited by the 1984 Supreme Court decision, Grove City v. Bell. Under that ruling, specific “program or activity” receiving federal funds would be covered by antidiscrimination laws and not an entire institution. With the new law, if one college student receives even one dollar of federal tuition aid, the entire college must prove it complies with antidiscrimination laws—even if the college refuses direct federal aid.

The law also contains a provision stating that nothing in the language either prohibits or requires any institution or individual “to perform or pay for any benefit or service, including the use of facilities, related to abortion.” The abortion issue had been a major stumbling block to passage of the legislation (CT, Mar. 4, 1988, p. 40).

However, questions about the law’s potential effect on religious institutions were not resolved. The act says that “an entity which is controlled by a religious organization” may apply for an exemption if the application of the law “would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.” Yet, it makes no specific provisions for religious groups that are affiliated with, but not controlled by, a church or religious beliefs. Amendments to clarify that provision were voted down in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Pressure From The Right

Prior to its passage, the proposed act faced stiff opposition from conservatives. In a “Special Memorandum to Pastors,” Moral Majority leaders Jerry Falwell and Jerry Nims called the measure “the Civil Rights Sodom and Gomorrah Act” and said it could mean that “our churches and religious leaders could be forced to hire a practicing active homosexual drug addict with AIDS to be a teacher or youth pastor.”

The memo warned that the legislation, interpreted in light of recent court cases, would grant protection to “homosexuals, transvestites, alcoholics and drug addicts.”

Other conservative religious groups also worked against the bill. James Dobson devoted three nationally broadcast “Focus on the Family” radio programs to the subject, and opponents also included the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), Concerned Women for America, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Not all of the opponents agreed with the Moral Majority’s characterization of the measure, however. The NAE agreed that drug addicts, alcoholics, and persons with contagious diseases would be considered handicapped, thus protected by the new law. But they objected to the claims that homosexuals would be offered protection. In fact, NAE counsel Curran Tiffany said Falwell’s “hyperbole” had a “negative effect on the outcome.” Some Washington insiders speculate that the overstatements may have angered some Republican senators who otherwise would have been persuaded to sustain the President’s veto.

Many mainline religious groups supporting the bill angrily denounced the Moral Majority’s claims. At a Washington press conference, several denominational leaders accused the group of “spreading hysteria” through “distortions” and “irresponsible misrepresentations.” The National Council of Churches, the American Baptist Church, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America all supported the act.

Regulating Churches?

Now that the bill has become law, some opponents are attempting to put things into perspective. “Our preference would be that the bill as written had not passed,” said Samuel Ericsson, executive director of the Christian Legal Society. “But will this mean the federal regulation of all churches? No.”

The NAE emphasized that most local churches will not be affected, because they do not receive federal aid in any programs. An NAE statement suggested that churches and groups that receive federal aid to provide certain social services should contact an attorney to determine how they may be subject to federal regulation.

In the meantime, Tiffany said, religious groups not controlled by a church can apply for exemption from the law and hope the Reagan administration will conduct a “benign practice” of “fudging” over the technicalities. The only other option, Tiffany said, is to refuse any form of federal aid, or in the case of religious schools, refuse students who receive federal tuition assistance.

SUPREME COURT

As the Supreme Court moves through its spring term, many Court observers say this will be a crucial time, especially in the church-state arena. And while the issues before the justices are not headline grabbers like the recent creationism, school prayer, and textbook cases, experts agree this term could have a far-reaching impact on the direction the Court will be taking with regard to religious issues.

New Shakedown?

A key factor in any new direction will be recently confirmed Justice Anthony Kennedy. During his confirmation hearings, Kennedy did not reveal his views on such church-state issues as the free-exercise and establishment clauses of the Constitution, and he did not address such cases during his time as a federal appeals judge.

Consequently, many observers see him as something of a critical “wild card.” In recent years, the Court has become divided over church-state issues, with many cases being decided on a 5-to-4 vote. Justice Lewis Powell, whose spot Kennedy filled, was often considered the “swing vote” who determined which way a case would be decided.

“I think we may see a new shake-down, a new picture presented on both establishment and free-exercise [cases],” said constitutional attorney William Bentley Ball, “and I’m not venturing to predict whether that will be good or bad.”

Federal Funds For Church Groups

One of the most important church-state cases currently before the Court, Bowen v. Kendrick, involves the constitutionality of allowing religious groups to accept federal funds for programs that promote abstinence for teenagers.

Clarke Forsythe, staff counsel for Americans United for Life (AUL), said a lower court ruled that the religious mission of the organization is related to its program of promoting abstinence. “So on that premise, no religious program could participate in any social-welfare program because every social-welfare program would relate to a group’s religious mission,” Forsythe said. He fears churches and religious groups that accept federal grants for soup kitchens, homeless services, immigration counseling, drug-abuse programs, and services to help teenage runaways could be affected.

At issue in the Kendrick case is the Adolescent Family Life Act, passed by Congress in 1981, which allowed nonprofit groups, including religious groups, to receive federal grants to promote chastity and alternatives to abortion. The act specifically forbids the religious groups to use the federal grants to promote religion.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the law, saying it allowed “federal funds to subsidize religious indoctrination as a means of opposing premarital sex.…” A federal district court ruled last year that providing those funds for religious groups under the act would create an “excessive entanglement between government and religion” in violation of the establishment clause.

Samuel Ericsson, executive director of the Christian Legal Society (CLS), acknowleged that there is a potential for some grant recipients to violate the contract and use federal money to promote religion. However, he added, “You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Not all religious groups agree such funding is appropriate. Oliver Thomas, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC), filed a brief on behalf of his group and the American Jewish Committee in opposition to providing funds. While commending the “outstanding job” that many of the religious groups were doing in trying to combat teen pregnancy, Thomas said the government should not be subsidizing that kind of activity. “We think that it’s impossible for religious organizations to teach sexual morality without consciously or unconsciously promoting religion,” Thomas said.

Thomas believes churches will be better off not receiving federal funds for any programs. “When we accept government funds, then we’re going to be held accountable to certain standards, and it’s going to be a secular mentality that’s imposed on the churches,” he said. “Strings follow government money.”

Both sides agree the Court may use this case as an opportunity to re-examine the traditional criteria for determining whether a particular government action violates the Constitution’s prohibition against government establishment of religion (the Lemon test). Recently, several of the justices have indicated dissatisfaction with that test.

Fishing Expeditions

A second case the Court has taken up looks at who has the right to challenge the tax-exempt status of churches and other religious groups. U.S. Catholic Conference v. Abortion Rights Mobilization (arm) began when several prochoice groups and individuals, led by arm, sued the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the treasury department for not revoking the Catholic Church’s tax-exempt status because of the church’s prolife activities, arm charged that the tax exemption gave the Catholic Church an unfair subsidy for “partisan political activity” in the abortion debate.

In the legal process, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Catholic Conference refused to release some 20,000 subpoenaed internal documents, including sermons, pastoral plans, newsletters, and other sensitive information. The lower court found the two groups in contempt of court and ordered them to pay fines of $100,000 per day until they complied with the subpoena. Those fines have been temporarily suspended pending the appeal.

The root issue in this case is whether churches have the right to speak out on moral issues in the political realm without endangering their tax-exempt status. However, the issues the Supreme Court will address at the present time are procedural ones: Do arm and the other prochoice individuals have enough direct interest—or legal standing—to sue the government on this? And second, can the church be forced to hand over sensitive documents without having the right first to challenge the underlying lawsuit?

Legal observers agree the procedural-issues case could have broad implications for religious groups. A brief filed by the Rutherford Institute, a legal group that deals with religious-liberty issues, argued that if the Court rules arm does have the standing to bring this lawsuit, any group or individual that disagrees with a church’s beliefs could go on “fishing expeditions” by threatening its tax status and demanding confidential documents.

The Baptist Joint Commission’s Oliver Thomas said he fears that if the case is allowed to stand, a “strategy of intimidation” will be used against churches and other religious groups speaking out on moral issues. He added he fears this will have a “chilling effect” upon religious moral advocacy. “Many churches may be inclined to sit silently on the sidelines while these important political battles are being waged,” Thomas said.

Other Cases

The Court has been considering several other issues of interest this spring:

• In a case from Wisconsin, the justices are looking at some procedural questions surrounding a battle between prolife picketers and the town of Brookfield. The town has passed a municipal ban against residential picketing, apparently in an effort to stop prolife activists from picketing on public property in front of an abortionist’s home.

• In a free-exercise case, the Court was asked to hear arguments on whether persons employed by a church can be required to pay taxes for a government welfare program they oppose on religious grounds. The case, which involves Bethel Baptist Church in Pennsylvania, also asks the Court to consider whether the First Amendment bars the taxation of the religious activity of churches.

• Earlier this spring, the Court ruled that a Hustler magazine parody of Jerry Falwell as an incestuous drunk was not libelous. According to CLS’S Ericsson, the ruling said, in effect, that even “outrageous” speech is protected by the First Amendment—some good news for religious groups. “There is a lot of stuff that’s done in the name of religion that the world may perceive as outrageous … and the principle [in the decision] can be used as a very strong statement that would protect all First Amendment conduct, … including religious conduct,” Ericsson said.

By Kim A. Lawton.

NEWS

NICARAGUA

Issues that divide the contras and Sandinistas have also caused division among Christians.

In spite of last month’s truce between Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and the contra rebels, disagreements continue. And the same issues that divide Nicaraguans have polarized American evangelicals. Some view the agreement as a defeat for U.S. policy, a concession to Marxism-Leninism. Others believe it could lead to a peace acceptable to Western democracies.

CHRISTIANITY TODAY interviewed five Christians with informed but varying perspectives on Nicaragua: Richard Millett, Michael Cromartie, Steve Wykstra, Ervin Duggan, and Vernon Jantzi.

Millett, professor of history at Southern Illinois University, has testified before Congress 16 times on issues related to Central America. He is senior adviser for Central American affairs to the International Peace Academy. Cromartie is research associate for Protestant studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Wykstra is professor of philosophy at Calvin College. Duggan, who served in the state department during the Carter administration, is on the executive board of Presbyterians for Democracy and Religious Freedom. Jantzi, currently on a sabbatical leave from Eastern Mennonite College in Virginia, has served since 1964 in various missionary capacities in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

Their comments on specific aspects of the Nicaragua debate are summarized below.

Pursuit Of Democracy

Those interviewed agree that democracy, as defined by the Arias peace plan (see sidebar on p. 36) is best for any country, and that Marxism is ultimately incompatible with democracy. “Societies that favor liberty over equality do a better job providing both liberty and equality than societies that favor equality over liberty,” said Cromartie. “It’s right for Christians to be for democracy.”

Millett pointed out, however, that Nicaragua has no tradition of democracy and that “most U.S. politicians didn’t care about democracy in Nicaragua until the Sandinistas showed up.” Millett said, “For 40 years, we defined Nicaragua under Somoza as an acceptable democracy.”

Jantzi added that in evaluating Nicaragua, “we sometimes incorrectly assume that democracy exists elsewhere in the region. If democracy is understood to mean people having a real say over what happens to them and the resources of their society, then there is no democracy in Central America, except possibly Costa Rica.”

Soviet Influence

“No one would dispute that Nicaragua is more friendly with the Soviet Union than other Central American countries are,” said Jantzi. Wykstra pointed out that in their literature before and after the 1979 revolution, “the Sandinistas held a very positive view of the ‘Soviet experiment.’ ” He added, “Marxism appeals to people because it offers a solution to their problems. Christians need to understand this in order to succeed at influencing people not to embrace Marxism’s ideological conclusions.”

Millett believes that it is a mistake to view the Nicaraguan conflict primarily as an East-West struggle. He said pluralism in Nicaragua, though limited, is greater than in most Soviet client states.

Duggan noted that “Soviet military assistance to Nicaragua since 1979 has been estimated by most experts at more than $2 billion.” Millett said it is difficult to put a dollar amount “on used weapons.”

“The Soviets have been very clear in their limits of commitment to this area,” Millett said. He added, however, that had the U.S. not displayed an interest in the region, Cuban and Soviet presence would have been accelerated.

Duggan observed that “naïve Christians of my acquaintance argue that the Sandinistas were ‘driven into the arms’ of the Soviets by a hostile United States.” Duggan was a member of the state department policy-planning staff during the Carter years. He said the U.S. gave Nicaragua more than $100 million in aid “to encourage [the Sandinistas] to embrace Western-style democracy. It was to no avail.”

Sandinista Motivation

The 1979 revolution to overthrow the Somoza government was in some ways atypical. It did not include, for example, overt antireligious campaigns that have characterized other Marxist revolutions. Those interviewed agree that at its highest level, the Sandinista leadership would like to establish a one-party, Marxist-Leninist state. “These people are not closet democrats,” said Millett.

Respondents disagree, however, on whether a true Soviet-style state is possible in Nicaragua. Millett observed that not everyone in the government is committed to totalitarianism. And he said Nicaraguan nationalism competes with Marxist ideology among the Sandinistas.

Jantzi maintains that economic factors eventually win out over ideology. “Their [Sandinista] economic policies simply do not work,” he said. “Economic realities will force them to be open to more diverse political influence.” Duggan, however, said that had it not been for U.S. intervention, “the Sandinistas would have extinguished all the remaining embers of democracy by now.”

Millett said an understanding of the Sandinistas is not complete without the “bottom line” of what it means to be a Sandinista: “More important than Marxism-Leninism, the bottom line is is to never publicly bow down to U.S. pressure.”

Religion And The Sandinistas

Duggan said that religion and Marxist ideology are as compatible as “Christian marriage and group sex.” He said churches in Nicaragua that support the government enjoy greater privileges than churches that remain independent.

Jantzi said, however, that governments, by their nature, demand ultimate authority. “I know people [in America] who are constantly harassed because they don’t pay the military portion of their taxes. Nonregistrants for the draft are imprisoned. Repression of church people who dissent is not limited to Marxist societies.”

Cromartie believes that because religion is so deeply rooted in Central America, the “Sandinista strategy is to co-opt the church.” Millett, however, compares the church in Nicaragua to the church in Poland: “How much luck have the Polish Communists had in co-opting that church in the last 43 years?”

Wykstra warned that Marxist-Leninist governments are not alone in trying to use the church: “There are well-documented incidents in which the Central Intelligence Agency has not only recruited missionaries for intelligence gathering, but has also exploited religious conviction to destabilize governments. Christians cannot afford to be naïve and uncritical about this.”

Another aspect of the religion debate is the role of sincere Nicaraguan Christians who have been criticized for supporting the government. Wykstra notes that these people had to make hard choices. “Like the revolutionaries,” he said, “they opposed a cruel dictator. They could either leave the country or try to mold the revolution.” Cromartie expressed the concern that “the leaven doesn’t influence the ideology; the ideology uses the leaven.”

Contra Support

Cromartie said “the resistance supplied by the freedom fighters has prevented a totalitarian state until now.” Wykstra said while that may be true, he nevertheless believes U.S. military support for the contras was morally wrong. He says his case rests on factual evidence of moral reprehensibility on the part of the contras.

“This is a moral nonnegotiable,” said Wykstra. “I believe as a Christian that it is wrong to sponsor a group that commits moral atrocities as routine policy, even if one calculates that this will prevent a greater moral evil.”

Cromartie said the question of the moral nature of the contras is still unsettled for him. Regardless, he said, “not to choose the lesser of two evils is to allow the greater evil to triumph.”

Millett maintains the U.S. supported “the wrong people, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons.” Labeling the contras “thugs,” he said the U.S. should not have used military force as long as it could be reasonably argued there was a peaceful solution: “By supporting the contras, we gave the Sandinistas an excuse for everything they’ve done since.”

Millett added, however, that “just because you can demonstrate a policy is dumb doesn’t mean you can solve it by pulling the plug on the contras. That would have sent the wrong message to the world.” Millett believes the best approach is to provide only humanitrarian aid to the contras. He faults the U.S. for not exercising its moral force to cut down on contra-sponsored terrorism.

Recent History

July 1979

The Sandinistas take over Managua two days after the fall of dictator Anastasio Somoza.

August 1980

The Sandinistas postpone national elections.

August 1981

The contra efforts are launched.

November 1984

Opposition groups boycott national elections.

July 1985

Contras begin to make military gains.

October 1986

U.S. Congress approves $ 100 million in contra aid.

August 1987

Five Central American countries agree on a peace plan devised by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. It calls for freedom of the press, open access to political power, and full respect for human rights.

December 1987

Contras launch a major military offensive, and Arias receives Nobel Prize for Peace.

February 1988

U.S. House of Representatives rejects $36 million contra aid package.

March 1988

U.S. combat troops arrive in Honduras for military exercises.

March 1988

Contras and Sandinistas reach a cease-fire agreement.

Conclusions

Christians on both sides of the debate have maintained that the other side is motivated by ideology. “In the ESA [Evangelicals for Social Action] newsletter, I’ve never seen a negative word on the Sandinistas,” said Cromartie. “I would like to see Sojourners magazine catch up with the New York Times in finding something wrong with Nicaragua’s government.”

Wykstra, however, maintains that organizations on the opposite side, such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), have failed to reckon seriously with contra atrocities and U.S. duplicity.

“We need the IRD to inform us about how religion is processed in Soviet-style countries,” said Wykstra. “We also need Sojourners to remind us that Marxism is not the only ideological force that can co-opt religion. On specific factual disputes, such as the nature of the contras or the Sandinistas, each side tends to ignore the other’s evidence. We need more cross-examination.”

Views on the recent peace plan are mixed. Duggan said the contras have “capitulated in a barely disguised surrender” and that “Soviet and Cuban military progress in Nicaragua can now proceed in full public view, without the inconvenience of domestic opposition.”

Duggan called on U.S. Christians to “end our fixation on what the U.S. government is doing and focus on what our churches are doing.” He said, “I find it tragic that churches in America are acting as apologists for governments like Nicaragua’s,” adding that Christians “should pray for the victims of Marxist tyranny in Nicaragua. And we should prepare to open our homes and churches for the stream of refugees as communist ‘justice’ and death spread across Central America in the next few years.”

Cromartie is likewise skeptical that the recent agreement will produce peace. “More people have been killed in the twentieth century by their own leftist totalitarian governments than have died in wars,” he said. “Unfortunately, Joe McCarthy has made it difficult for us to say this. But I would think that in the 1980s it should be a badge of Christian honor to be anticommunist.”

In contrast, Jantzi is optimistic. “Permanent resolution will be brought about only by internal forces,” he said. “We should spend our energies making sure the surrounding countries make democracy work. The Sandinistas won’t be able to spread an ideology those countries don’t want. Revolution is not exported, it is imported. If there’s a demand, the supply will fill it.”

Millett believes the truce has a “better than 50–50 chance” of succeeding. He said the church should play as big a role as possible in monitoring Sandinista progress toward democracy, and he urged Christians never to sanctify the use of force by any side.

“All policies are going to be sinfully flawed,” Millett said. “They are enacted by sinful men, living in sinful societies, out of sinful motives. So there are no easy solutions, there is no cheap grace. To me, sin is the inability to predict or control the results of our actions.”

By Randy Frame.

Classic and contemporary excerpts.

When busy is too busy

We need to scrutinize the rush of our activities, because even venerable exertions may be keeping us from becoming and doing what God wants. A packed schedule may be detrimental not only to ourselves, but to those we seek to help.

A few years ago our neighbors were drawn to us, but when we talked to them about the Lord, their response was, “We couldn’t be Christians; we couldn’t live at your pace.” They had been attracted to Christ, but the busyness of our lives had scared them from a commitment.

—Jean Fleming, “How Busy Is Too Busy?” in Decision (March 1988)

Divine partnership

If God did not bless, not one hair, not a solitary wisp of straw, would grow; but there would be an end of everything. At the same time God wants me to take this stand: I would have nothing whatever if I did not plow and sow. God does not want to have success come without work, and yet I am not to achieve it by my work. He does not want me to sit at home, to loaf, to commit matters to God, and to wait till a fried chicken flies into my mouth. That would be tempting God.

—Martin Luther, quoted in

What Luther Says

Limits Of Evil

Evildoing has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evil-doing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our help. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result of either their own extreme degree or the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.

—Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn in

The Gulag Archipelago

Gumming up the works

We live out interesting paradoxes. We announce blatantly to the world that we have answers to the human sickness. Then we press for lifestyle conformity and doctrinal orthodoxy codified into stale axioms that stifle the very ideas we pronounce as divine. The creative Christian life and thought scares the jee-willingers out of Bible college deans and popes alike. Kenneth Scott Latourette says that once Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire the faithful got doctrinal, conformist, and creedal and sent the Church into 1,000 years of uncertainty.… Martin Luther got the movement unstuck when he rediscovered grace. Then conservatives codified God and liberals deified humans and gummed it up again.

—Lloyd H. Alhem in The Covenant Companion

(Aug. 1986)

Living in heavenly places

If you are a child of God and there is some part of your circumstances which is tearing you, if you are living in the heavenly places you will thank God for the tearing things; if you are not in the heavenly places you cry to God over and over again—“O Lord, remove this thing from me. If only I could live in golden streets and be surrounded with angels, and have the Spirit of God consciously indwelling me all the time and have everything wonderfully sweet, then I think I might be a Christian.” That is not being a Christian.

—Oswald Chambers in

The Love of God

Commodity traders

Jesus, in many ways, has been robbed of his glory and divinity by those who hawk him as if he were a commodity, with Jesus T-shirts and bumper stickers which proclaim such profound theology as “honk twice if you love Jesus.”

—Harry E. Farra, “The Closing of the Christian Mind” in Eternity (Jan. 1988)

Traditional values can form the basis for making common cause with unbelievers.

A non-Christian schoolteacher looks at her neighbor over a cup of coffee. Tears of frustration are in her eyes. “You’re a Christian. Help me understand what these Christian parents want,” she says, referring to a heated meeting over curriculum the previous evening.

The leader of a men’s Bible study asks for volunteers to campaign for “Christian” school board candidates. He speaks with fervor: “We have let secular humanists run our schools and our government too long. It’s time for Christians to get into politics and fight back. America needs to become a Christian country again, before it goes down the tubes.” After an angry campaign, the “Christian” slate wins a majority on the school board and curriculum review is on the agenda.

Christian political involvement is not happening in a comer. Newspapers report that in Washington State the “Religious Right” has taken over the Republican party apparatus. People Weekly, the barometer of celebrity, runs a feature on the big-time TV evangelists. The Reverend Pat Robertson is seriously running for President, and after the Iowa caucuses, nobody is laughing.

In the midst of all this, some Christians are becoming uneasy with this “thundering prophet” confrontational political style. Even Falwell has reassessed his political involvement. But how do individual Christians find their way? As Christians and citizens, it is easy to feel caught in the middle, without good criteria for making choices.

From some of our fellow Christians comes the suggestion that real Christians will always vote for Christian candidates. On the other hand, many non-Christians, like our distraught school teacher, are loving, compassionate, upright, and moral. And one is sometimes left cold by an impression of harshness, lack of humility, and naïveté in many politically active Christians.

Here are some insights we have found useful in this election year.

Traditional Values

There is little in political history or Scripture to support the idea that Christianity has a corner on the moral and social values that will sustain a great nation.

It is not hard to understand how people link loss of Christian influence to loss of national moral fiber, if they take their perspective from watching the evening news over the last three decades. Since the fifties, there has indeed been a decline in the observance of “traditional values” in the United States. We also sense our prosperity and our favored position in the world slipping away. And over this same period, there has been an active and generally successful effort by some to excise religion (by which is nearly always meant the Christian religion) from public life, public education, and public discourse.

Because many Christians believe the decline in Christian influence in public life caused the decline in traditional moral standards and national influence (and prosperity), they conclude that to reverse these trends Christianity must be aggressively re-established in government.

But these people may not appreciate that the traditional values held by Christians are not very different from the values held by our “secular humanist” schoolteacher. Some would chalk it up to the lingering influence of Christian culture on her upbringing. That may be partly true, but it runs deeper.

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis points out that the “traditional morality” that has been held by all ancient and modern civilizations, East or West, has virtually the same content. Despite some incongruities and exceptions, nearly all widely held religions define what makes a person good and what makes something evil in ways that are remarkably similar to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Lewis calls this commonly held traditional morality the “Tao,” which means the “Way” in Chinese. In Lewis’s day the term had the advantage of avoiding sectarian prejudices that might be elicited by phrases such as “biblical morality,” “God’s law,” or “general revelation.” And presumably this word also helped his readers stop thinking that traditional morality begins and ends with the Christian tradition. Since Lewis’s time, the importation of Eastern religions into North America makes the word less useful. So we shall use phrases like “the shared moral tradition” or “common morality” to mean the same thing.

Lewis’s examples of the moral precepts that existed in other and ancient cultures strike us with their familiarity. We discover that not only do all cultures have moral strictures against murder, but that familiar notions like the following crop up repeatedly in moral codes: “I have not brought misery upon my fellows. I have not made the beginning of every day laborious in the sight of him who worked for me” (ancient Egyptian). “Slander not” (Babylonian). “Utter not a word by which anyone could be wounded” (Hindu). “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you” (Chinese).

The familiar moral and ethical concerns continue: “What good man regards any misfortune as no concern of his?” (Roman). “Love thy wife studiously. Gladden her heart all thy life long” (ancient Egyptian). “To care for parents” (Greek list of duties). “Has he approached his neighbor’s wife?” (Babylonian list of sins). “Nature and reason command that nothing uncomely … and nothing lascivious be done or thought” (Roman).

For those steeped in Scripture, the biblical forms of these admonitions will immediately come to mind. Many similar statements could be quoted, covering integrity, chastity, marital fidelity, the unique value of individual human life, charity, the value of work, and love of country. No wonder non-Christians get so upset when Christians assume that only a Christian can be a good moral steward of government.

A Christian View Of Government

Non-Christians have a right to be upset. In fact, Scripture is on their side. Consider the function of government that is stated in Scripture. In particular, consider government’s relationship to promoting moral values.

Jesus clearly said that he did not come to set up an earthly kingdom. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” implies a division of responsibility or function between church and state. In the desert temptations, and then as his followers urged him to set up an earthly kingdom, Jesus insisted that his kingdom was not of this world.

What then is God’s view of government? Paul, in Romans 13, told the early Christians: “Submit … to the governing authorities.… The authorities that exist have been established by God.… For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.… He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience” (vv. 1, 3–6, NIV).

Paul was talking about Roman, non-Christian government. But he presumes that government will generally do right; that it is in fact God’s servant to check evil. He also assumes some congruence between what the Roman authority prohibits and encourages, and the conscience of the believer.

How can a Roman government promoting pagan worship be God’s servant? How does God ensure that it or any government does right? How can we confidently form alliances with unbelievers in the moral arena?

The answers to these questions are found in the first two chapters of Romans. Paul points out that God’s “eternal power and divine nature … have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Later, Paul says that those who ignored the evidence “know God’s righteous decree.…”

Human beings, based on what they see in the created world, come to know right and wrong. Paul says, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the [Jewish] law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves … since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness.” Paul is asserting that all human beings know certain fundamental aspects of the law. This is the source of the shared morality, part of God’s common grace to individuals and the human community (i.e., the Tao in Lewis’s terms). As such, it inevitably finds its way into the foundation of all effective and humane social structures. Without it the world would be chaos. It is not propositionally revealed law; it is less than that. But it is sufficient for government. Effective government based on this shared moral wisdom provides an environment within which God’s people and his church are allowed to exercise their earthly mission.

Church And State, Religion And State

The Constitution of the United States started with two simple principles of church-state relations. One was nonestablishment: there would not be a state church. The other was free exercise: the government would not prohibit or interfere with religious belief.

In 1835, when Alexis de Tocqueville published his prescient book Democracy in America, he observed that the success of democratic government in the United States depended on both the specific “separation of church and state” and on government facilitation of religion. The first part of this observation we all recognize, but the second sounds surprising today. He observed in this connection that “despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot. Religion [is needed] in democratic republics most of all,” because when political controls are loosened (as in a democracy), society will not escape destruction, unless internal moral controls are strengthened. Religion provides this strength.

This does not mean that the government promotes any particular sect. While it is important to individuals whether or not their religions are true, it is not important for government that all citizens profess true religion—only that they should profess some religion that reflects stable and shared values.

There is a difference, of course, between Tocqueville’s America and our own. In his time, the influential people of the nation were largely theistic. In addition, those who did not believe in a theistic explanation of the universe or a revealed morality tacitly recognized that it would not be good for the country to attack the religious impulse of the majority. Tocqueville observed that the nontheists recognized religion as the guarantor of the freedoms they themselves enjoyed.

In our time, the situation is more complex. There is pressure from some, whom Tocqueville and his contemporaries would have defined as “nonreligious,” to make the government “neutral” in the matter of religion. But as their activities look more and more like a coherent program based on a defined set of beliefs, it is beginning to feel like religion to some of the rest of us. The government “neutrality” they seek is not really neutrality but establishment. Metaphysics teaches us that to be “neutral toward religion” is to have adopted a religious stance.

The Christian cannot respond to this trend by entering into a competition for establishment. Tocqueville warns that apart from “influence proper to itself,” religion can be seduced to rely on the artificial strength of laws and governments. But when a religion makes such an alliance, “it sacrifices the future for the present, and by gaining a power to which it has no claim, it risks its legitimate authority … by allying itself with any political power, religion increases its strength over some but forfeits the hope of reigning over all.”

In fact, history teaches us that when the church moves too close to the mechanisms of the state and lives on the basis of state power, sooner or later tyranny rears its head. Examples include the atrocities of the Inquisition and the social and religious intolerance of Calvin’s Geneva.

The Four Rings Of Morality

We have suggested, first, that concepts drawn from the shared morality are the key issues for politics and government; second, that these concepts are not the sole possession of the Christian faith; and third, that there is danger in seeking religious establishment. What does this suggest for Christian action in the political arena? How should Christians act as voters and politicians? How should the state act in relation to morality and religion?

Consider a graphic way to organize the various issues: The values and traditions that make up our moral and religious lives can be considered to reside somewhere within four concentric circles (see figure below).

• The Codified Common Morality. The innermost ring contains generally accepted moral and ethical beliefs that can be defined in reasonable rules and laws, which, therefore, the government ought rightly to articulate in its body of laws. This includes laws related to murder, theft, rape, aspects of personal responsibility such as traffic laws, and certain base-line standards regulating such things as marriage, education, and minimum wages.

Considerable discussion has taken place regarding which “sins” should be made “crimes.” We do not suggest a specific answer to this problem. Nor do we mean that all existing laws are an adequate expression of the moral tradition, only that some part of that tradition is and should be prescribed in law.

• The Common Civil Morality. The second circle includes aspects of the shared moral tradition that cannot be defined in statutes and regulations, but that should be promoted by government communication and action. Examples of such official persuasiveness are presidential and other official speeches regarding the nation’s values and priorities; tax advantages for giving to charitable and religious organizations; broad-based educational programs for the prevention of disease or drug abuse; recognition of individual merit and achievement; and provision of opportunity for advancement through higher education. Thus, ring two represents areas of moral consensus sufficient to support government in taking positions as to what is good to do and what “noncrimes” should be strongly discouraged.

Since the primary social structure that defines and maintains the shared moral tradition is religion, government (particularly democratic governments) ought, within ring two, to promote and facilitate religion in a broad, pluralistic, nonsectarian way. Our social structure is harmed by fastidious, ACLU-style opposition to religious expression, a pickiness that has been encouraged by our judiciary. In this connection, we might agree with Norman Podesta, president of People for the American Way (a group founded to “counteract” the influence of the Moral Majority). He wrote recently in connection with public education; “Let the textbooks describe the marvelous diversity of religious beliefs that Americans brought to these shores … the extraordinary contributions that religious leaders, religious institutions, and religious people have made—and are making today. But there is no need for the textbooks to promote any one religion.”

Democratic government is an embodiment of shared traditional values. It is in its survival interest to foster and nurture the root source of those values.

• The Common Social Morality. This third circle is the area of public debate. It involves issues upon which moral and well-meaning people disagree and that therefore do not yet command sufficient general agreement on the question of its legal implementation to be moved into the inner two rings.

Ring three is an area of important activity for individual Christians and the church. Christians play out part of their social responsibility in public discussion. They must enter the debate on social issues to enrich and enlighten the consensus of ring two and the laws of ring one by a clear statement of values Christians share with the moral traditions of most cultures.

Historically, particular values have moved in and out of the third ring, the church often playing a key role in these social movements. Slavery in the early 1800s was an important third-ring issue that engendered sufficient public debate and that a civil war caused to be moved into ring one. The commercial manufacture and sale of alcohol is an issue that moved into, and then back out of, ring one. While Prohibition has been repealed, in our day public drunkenness and alcoholism remain within rings one and two, respectively.

As a means of testing and creating consensus as a foundation for social, political, and legal change, the government has the responsibility to encourage discussion of important social issues on the basis of the common moral tradition. For this to happen, there need to be two awakenings: First, the government must realize that it should not a priori rule out religious participation in these discussions. Currently, religion is often ruled out on the basis of a blind application of the principle of separation of church and state. In fact, no one’s participation in any important policy discussion is free of “religion,” that is, values based on some world view held by faith and not by proof.

Second, the church must learn to frame its viewpoints in categories that are meaningful and compelling to non-Christians. For example, the public debate over prohibition of abortion is at present a third-ring discussion. Framing this question in absolutist biblical terms will not win sufficient support for political consensus and action. The question could, however, be conceived in terms of shared values: “Under what circumstances does abortion represent a violation of the ancient and widely held values of the sanctity of human life, maintenance of the strong family unit, protection of the weak, and the preference of long-run benefits of the group over short-term convenience of the individual?” Here sufficient common agreement might be found for political action.

Similarly, Christians could address current social concern over sexual promiscuity in four different ways: (1) conclusory biblical arguments against fornication, adultery, and homosexuality; (2) general biblical principle—“As a Christian I believe that each individual has infinite worth and is therefore not to be used or abused as merely an object of another’s gratification”; (3) the argument from the shared moral tradition—“The collective wisdom of culture, tradition, and nearly all religions considers sexual activity uniquely the province of marriage”; and (4) utilitarian arguments—“Society as a whole pays a price for individual promiscuity in the form of the cost of abortion, treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, child support, and welfare.”

Use of arguments of the second, third, and fourth types are compelling to Christians and non-Christians alike and have the potential of winning social consensus. This approach also shifts the burden of proof to those who seek to change consensus and law away from traditional values. They must demonstrate why such change is good for society in the long run. But arguments of the first type tend to be resolved on the basis of individual rights in which the final answer will be, “America is a free country. You have a right to do your thing. I have a right to do my thing. Therefore government should do nothing.”

• The Common Morality Plus. The fourth circle is where we live out our religious faith. “Religious faith,” as used here, ought to include the “religion” of the avid atheist and the “secular humanist,” as well as the full range of theistic religions.

Much of the ethical refinement that sustains great cultures and institutions is located in ring four. For the Christian, the high calling to Christlike servanthood is expressed here. Ring four encompasses the other three rings. It is peripheral only in that this discussion is about effective activity in earthly kingdoms. Ring four is where the church must be the church and where our personal witness to God’s redemptive acts in our lives must be proclaimed. It is the realm of person-to-person discussions of values, ideas, commitment, and beliefs. In fact, a godly life is as likely to change people’s attitudes about third-ring debates as all the political discussion and activism you can muster.

Suggestions For Christian Action

How, then, can Christian citizens be effective in the world of politics? Let us offer some suggestions:

1. Form alliances with all who firmly hold to the shared moral tradition, regardless of their other sectarian (fourth-ring) positions. Diversity of support is compelling to legislators as well as to other potential allies.

2. Participate in third-ring debates, attempting to demonstrate how specific issues violate traditional values held by Christians and non-Christians alike. Put the burden of proof on those who hold positions that have not withstood the test of time.

3. Do not frame issues in ways meaningful only to other Christians. If you do, you may alienate some who would otherwise agree with you and who are working to promote the same values.

The principle here is the same one Paul applies in 1 Corinthians 14, “Unless you speak intelligible words … how will anyone know what you are saying?” None of this means you have to hide your Christian commitment.

4. Do not spend all your time talking only to other Christians about the problem. This leads to frustration and anger, but not effectiveness.

5. Be careful not to support any political action that would give narrow fourth-ring values the force of law. God gave us choice and a moral field within which to move. To force narrow moral rules on individuals by law is to do more than God was willing to do.

6. At a time when the world is spiritually and physically poverty stricken, consider whether it is good stewardship to give scarce dollars to ministries that promote the idea that to be moral one must be Christian. And recognize there is a real danger that those who are not ready to accept a Christian world view will oppose the moral issue because they oppose this kind of ministry. They will shoot the message because of the messenger.

Finally, for Christians, whether private or public, action must be accompanied by appropriate attitudes. These include humility that gives credit to the values of those who do not accept the Christian faith.

A nation’s activity encompasses more than rings one or two. If we are careful in the way we seek change, even though our ring-three efforts do not necessarily result in a ring-one or two change, we may win hearts and minds. The American people, acting voluntarily, may establish in personal behavior what we could not compel through law and government. We must take seriously our call as Christians to be salt, light, and peacemakers. We are always forced to consider this question: “Is our goal only to win, or do we want also to serve?”

Warren S. Brown is professor of psychology at the Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Pasadena, California. He is a member of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA. Dennis Vogt, a lawyer, is president of Watchcare Corporation, Seattle, Washington. He specializes in management strategy for service organizations where fear of litigation is reducing quality.

Positive thinking can help us achieve more, hut we’ve got to stay in touch with reality.

If you think in negative terms you will get negative results. If you think in positive terms you will get positive results. That is the simple fact … of an astonishing law of prosperity and success.

—Norman Vincent Peale

Christianity has traditionally (and rightly) emphasized an under-appreciated truth: the potent and corrupting power of self-serving pride. But, as Pascal taught, no single truth is ever sufficient, because the world is not simple. Any truth separated from its complementary truth is a half-truth.

It is true that pride leads to self-sufficient individualism, the taking of credit and displacement of blame, and an intolerance of those considered “inferior.” However, let us not forget the complementary truth about the benefits of positive self-esteem and positive thinking.

Jesus called us to self-denial—“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”—but not to self-rejection. Far from devaluing our individual lives, he proclaimed their value. Being created in the image of God, we are more valuable than “the birds of the air” and the other animals for whom God cares. As one young victim of prejudice insisted, “I’m me and I’m good ‘cause God don’t make junk.”

Indeed, our worth is more than we appreciate—worth enough to motivate Jesus’ kindness and respect toward those dishonored in his time—women and children, Samaritans and Gentiles, leprosy victims and prostitutes, the poor and the tax collectors. Recognizing that our worth is what we are worth to God—an agonizing but redemptive execution on a cross—therefore draws us to a self-affirmation that is rooted in divine love.

Without doubt, such feelings of self-worth pay dividends. People who feel good about themselves, who express a positive self-esteem, are generally less depressed, freer of certain ailments and drug abuse, more independent of peer pressure, and more persistent when facing tough tasks. Many clinicians report that underneath much of the human despair and disorder with which they deal is an impoverished self-acceptance, a sense that “I am junk.”

The Positive Side Of Positive Thinking

Perhaps miserable experiences cause feelings of worthlessness rather than the other way around. But experiments indicate that a lowered self-image can indeed have negative consequences.

Imagine yourself being temporarily deflated by the news that you scored poorly on an intelligence test or that some people you met earlier thought you were unappealing and unattractive. Might you react as experimental subjects often have—by disparaging others or even exhibiting racial prejudice as a way to restore your feelings of self-worth? The defensive, self-righteous pride that feeds contemptuous attitudes can itself be fed by the inner turmoil of self-doubt.

People who are made to feel insecure and who therefore have a need to impress others are more likely to make scathing assessments of others’ work than are those who feel secure and comfortable with themselves. Mockery says as much about the mocker as the one mocked.

Positive thinking about one’s potential also pays dividends. The positive-thinking preachers Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller would be pleased but not surprised at the breadth of psychological research that confirms the power of faith in one’s possibilities. For example:

Those who believe they can control their own destiny, who have what researchers in more than a thousand studies have called internal locus of control, achieve more, make more money, and are better able to cope with problems. Believe that things are beyond your control and they probably will be. Believe that you can do it, and maybe, just maybe, you will.

Jesse Jackson has carried this hopeful, take-control-of-your-future attitude to black youth, an attitude conveyed by his speech to the 1983 civil rights march on Washington: “If my mind can conceive it and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it.”

Additional studies indicate that when people undertake challenging tasks and succeed, their feelings of self-efficacy are strengthened. For example, people who are helped to conquer an animal phobia may subsequently become less timid and more self-directed and venturesome in other areas of their lives. Albert Bandura, a recent president of the American Psychological Association, theorizes that the key to self-efficacy is not merely positive self-talk (“I think I can, I think I can”), but actual mastery experience—tackling realistic goals and achieving them.

Additional studies put the mainstream of recent psychological research squarely behind conceptions of human freedom, dignity, and self-control. The moral of all this research is that people benefit from experiences of freedom and from being able to view themselves as free creatures rather than as pawns of external forces.

The Perils Of Positive Thinking

But this truth also has a complementary truth: the perils of positive thinking. One such peril is the guilt, shame, and dejection that may accompany shattered expectations. If a 1982 Fortune magazine ad was right in proclaiming that you can “make it on your own,” on “your own drive, your own guts, your own energy, your own ambition,” then whose fault is it if you don’t make it on your own?

If writers Barbara Smallwood and Steve Kilborn are right to say that “what you believe yourself to be, you are.… Believing is magic. You can always better your best,” then whose fault is it if you don’t progress upward from highs to higher highs? Whose fault is it if Amway President Richard DeVos was correct in explaining why so many Amway distributors fail? “Those who really want to succeed, succeed; the others didn’t try hard enough.” What do we conclude when our marriages are less than ideal, our children are flawed, our vocations less successful than we dreamed?

In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller suggested that by trying too hard to win, one ultimately loses when the dream collapses. Limitless expectations breed endless frustrations. “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed,” counseled poet Alexander Pope in a 1727 letter. Life’s greatest disappointments, as well as its highest achievements, are born of the most positive expectations.

A second peril of positive thinking is that one begins to live in the future rather than the present. C. S. Lewis’s devilish Screwtape advised Wormwood to “fix men’s affections on the Future,” where nearly all vices are rooted: “Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.”

By so doing, Screwtape hoped to counter his enemy’s ideal of the person “who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him.” Pascal, too, saw the perils of endless ambition: “The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means—the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live—and as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.”

The third peril of positive thinking is an excessive optimism that leads to complacency about evil. In the face of a worldwide arms race, exploding population, and assaults on the environment, positive thinkers are inclined not to worry. “The pessimists have often been wrong in the past,” they say, “so let’s not trouble ourselves with their negative thinking.”

It was an optimistic we-can-do-it attitude that emboldened Lyndon Johnson to invest our weapons and soldiers in the effort to salvage democracy in South Vietnam. It was positive thinking that gave Jimmy Carter the courage to attempt the rescue of American hostages in Iran. It was possibility thinking that enabled a resolute Ronald Reagan to send troops to Lebanon in hopes of restoring peace, to support the contras’ guerrilla warfare in Nicaragua, to assume that selling weapons of death to Iran would promote moderation and reduce the number of American hostages in Lebanon.

By contrast, experiments indicate that one type of negative thinking—anxiety over contemplated failure—can motivate high achievement. (Think of the students who, fearing they are going to bomb their coming exam, proceed to study furiously and, not surprisingly, get A’s.) To be sure, hopeless despair breeds as much apathy as does naïve optimism. What we therefore need is neither negative nor positive thinking, but realistic thinking—thinking characterized by enough pessimism to trigger concern, enough optimism to provide hope.

In Search Of True Humility

How then can we realize self-denial without self-rejection? Self-affirmation without vain self-love? And what is a genuine Christian humility?

First, we must remember that humility is not self-contempt. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, humility does not consist in handsome people trying to believe they are ugly and clever people trying to believe they are fools. Ivan Lendl and Martina Navratilova can acknowledge their greatness at tennis without violating the spirit of humility. False modesty regarding one’s gifts can actually lead to pride—pride in one’s better-than-average humility.

Screwtape recognized this possibility in advising Wormwood to catch his prey “at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, ‘By jove! I’m being humble,’ and almost immediately pride—pride at his own humility—will appear.”

True humility also is not found by straddling the fence between egotistical vanity and self-hatred. Humility is more like self-forgetfulness. It is flowing with life with minimal self-consciousness, as when we become totally absorbed in a challenging task, an exciting game, or even a life mission. Dancers, athletes, chess players, surgeons, and writers often experience this kind of absorption. With it comes a satisfaction that accompanies the relinquishment of the self-conscious pursuit of happiness.

Dennis Voskuil, a Reformed thinker who has written thoughtfully about Robert Schuller’s positive thinking, states the phenomenon in Christian terms: The refreshing gospel promise is “not that we have been freed by Christ to love ourselves, but that we are free from self-obsession. Not that the cross frees us for the ego trip but that the cross frees us from the ego trip.” This leaves us free to esteem our special talents and, with equal honesty, to esteem our neighbor’s. Both the neighbor’s talents and our own talents are recognized as gifts that, like our height, demand neither vanity nor self-deprecation.

Obviously, true humility is a state not easily attained. C. S. Lewis offered, “If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too.” The way to take this first step, continued Lewis, is to glimpse the greatness of God and see oneself in light of it. “He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with him you will, in fact, be humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of [the pretensions that have] made you restless and unhappy all your life.” To be self-affirming yet self-forgetful, positive yet realistic, grace-filled and unpretentious—that is the Christian vision of abundant life.

David G. Myers is the John Dirk Werkman Professor of Psychology at Hope College, Holland, Michigan. He has been awarded the Gordon Allport Prize for social psychological research and written for more than two dozen journals and magazines. Cognitive neuroscientist Malcolm A. Jeeves is Foundation Professor of Psychology at the University of Saint Andrews, Scotland. He has written several dozen scientific articles and books on the issues of science and faith. The above article is adapted from Myers’s and Jeeves’s recent book, Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith (Harper & Row).

What do we mean When we call for “peace” or “justice”?

As a pastor in good standing in the United Methodist Church, I recently received a packet of materials from the National Council of Churches, The packet was intended to help us celebrate “Peace With Justice Week.” Included was a poster, on which was pictured a globe: a world, held aloft by a half-dozen different-colored hands. It seemed to say that if we can just get white, brown, black hands together, we can uphold the world for peace with justice. The Greeks had Atlas, the Arabs had a turtle, we have the multicolored hands of the NCC. We’ve got the whole world in our hands.

A person who parks her car near mine, a person who speaks much of “justice issues,” and doing “justice ministry,” recently placarded her Volvo with IF YOU WANT PEACE, WORK FOR JUSTICE. Each day I ruminated upon her bumper sticker. Then, on the day I was thinking not about peace with justice, but rather about my next sermon, I read the lectionary text for that day, the song of that old daddy-to-be, Zechariah:

“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people, … that we, being delivered from our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness … the day shall dawn upon us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:68, 73–75, 78–79).

I realized that the NCC poster and the peace-with-justice bumper sticker were wrong, dead wrong. Zechariah believed that peace is something God makes—a gift of God, not of our enlightened social policy. What needed doing for those oppressed first-century Jews was so great, so utterly beyond these bounds of human imagination or initiative, that only a visit by God could do it.

According to Luke 1:67–79, peace is not the fruit of our work for justice. Ironically, violence is usually the result of our efforts to make peace. Much violence, and more than a little war, occurs precisely at that moment when we tire of waiting for God to come and at last set out to put things right.

The Supreme Moral Action

Liberation theologians taught me this. Gustavo Gutiérrez notes how conciliatory work is often palliative. What we need, he says, is struggle, confrontation, and partisan engagement. We should take sides for justice. Gutiérrez calls upon his fellow Christians to inseminate liberation movements with a biblical view of peacemaking. But, of course, once one takes sides, once the enemy is clearly identified and injustice is named, it becomes difficult to tell the peacemakers from the war-makers.

Words like “peace,” “justice,” “liberation,” words used with equal dexterity by the established to maintain their power or by the disestablished to get power, are beloved because we can make them mean whatever we want. One reason why contemporary Christians must attach “justice” to “peace” is that we discovered that the mere pronouncement of “peace” was inadequate. Impassioned calls for peace, we learned, can be another means of the powerful protecting the status quo to their own advantage. So by joining “justice” to peace, we are preserved from the charge that we Christians want peace at any cost, peace at the expense of someone else’s justice.

This helps explain why pacifists are accused of being immoral. Pacifists talk about wanting peace, but they don’t seem to be working for justice (i.e., they refuse to be violent or to support those who are). They sit back on the high moral ground and refuse to roll up their sleeves and work for justice. Long before the liberation theologians, Paul Ramsey argued that war can be justice because it has as its ultimate end the creation of that order that will help the state fulfill its sacred obligation to protect the weak and the innocent.

If peace is the fruit of justice and if justice has become the result of violence, we are right to be uneasy about our use of language. “Peace with Justice” has become a popular slogan for us, not because Christians have at last become aware that Jesus really means for us to embody his vision through specific political actions. Rather, IF You WANT PEACE, WORK FOR JUSTICEreflects Christian accommodation to the agenda of ideologies that are not Christian.

It enables us to join in struggles for justice, wherever and whenever we label them as such, without having to qualify our actions by specifically Christian criteria. Our slogan enables us to avoid the worst of all possible contemporary political fates: having Christians relegated to the fringes of society, losing our influence upon the formation of social policy and national strategy, being deemed politically irrelevant by the powers that be.

Long ago, the Hebrew prophets noted that it was not enough to cry, “Peace, peace.” New prophets must tell our generation that it is also inadequate to cry, “Justice, justice.” Contrary to notions prevalent in today’s heavily politicized church, our task is not to be useful within the present scheme of things, but to be faithful. Modern people value power above all else, power to change the world, joining our hands to set things right. But setting things right, in itself, is not the supreme moral action. The supreme moral action, from a peculiarly Christian perspective, is to live and die as Christ.

We are to find our definitions of big words like “peace” and “justice,” not within the boundaries of what is deemed “effective,” nor even from the mouths of those whom we privilege with the name “oppressed.” Our words, our lives, are best defined by the life and death of Jesus. His peculiar story defines the content of “peace” and “justice,” not the other way around.

The Centrality Of The Church

All moral motivations are secondary to the motivation to act the way God acts. In refusing to define peace by current definitions of order or justice by the power arrangements of the majority, followers of Jesus are not being romantic or idealistic, but hard-headedly realistic: This is the way God is, the way God’s world is. We have no idea whether the world will regard our behavior as effective, nor whether our efforts will satisfy the aspirations of the oppressed, nor whether Caesar will approve.

The moral imperatives only make sense within the context of the story of a God who forgives, a God who suffers, a God who blurs our distinctions between friend and foe, oppressed and oppressor; a God who cares for and comes to poor, helpless people like young Mary and old Zechariah. In discussions with liberators, conversations with the establishment, and with the disestablished who would be established, Christians can be expected to see rather peculiar meanings in popular words to which everyone else has definitions. The people who killed both the son of Zechariah and the son of Mary did so for the cause of peace with justice in Judea.

To the extent that we allow secular ideologies, Marxist or any other, to determine the content of our convictions and the shape of our political vision, we forfeit our ability to see the world as it really is—namely, a place where the principalities and powers insist on the freedom to define people, where Caesar co-opts movements for his own purposes, and where Satan masquerades as an angel of light. What if Gutiérrez’s notion of human history as a process of human se/f-liberation is in opposition to the Christian claim that we become free, not by ourselves and our earnest efforts, but only by dealing with the world as Christ dealt with us?

It all sounds well and good that Christians should work with others, even those who do not share our Christian convictions, in the struggle for justice. But “justice” awaits definition. It is no universally understood or defined word. We do the story of Jesus an injustice when we act as if it were nothing peculiar, as if the vision and witness of Jesus could be encapsulated as a struggle for justice. What do we mean when we call for “peace” or “justice”? There is no way to know what Christians mean without reference to a particular Scripture.

To the extent that God’s church allows its imagination to be captured by conventional accounts of peace and justice, we have forfeited our ability to help the oppressed. In our efforts to be politically relevant we have lost our ability to stand against the limits of the present order. We offer the oppressed not justice, but the palliative of utopian dreams, violence, class struggle; and we doom them to the continued resentment of not being as ruthlessly savvy as Caesar in getting what he wants. In lieu of salvation, feed them slogans.

The place to begin a Christian struggle for justice is in telling our stories and singing our songs. These question whether the world even knows what it is talking about when it talks of peace and justice. Rather than get our foot in Caesar’s door by speaking enough like the powerful to be invited to sit on the cabinet, our energies might be better used in the creation of a visible alternative to Caesar’s community. That visible alternative is the church—God’s attempt to create a place of peace and justice where we might be saved from the disasters of our efforts to take matters into our hands.

Here is the advent of that peace “which passeth all understanding”; now is the time for singing of the one who came to us because we could not get together and come to him, the one who comes, “through the tender mercy of our God, … to give light to those who sit in darkness … to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

William H. Willimon is chaplain at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. His many books include The Service of God: How Worship and Ethics Are Related (Abingdon, 1983) and Preaching About Conflict in the Local Church (Westminster, 1987).