The radio host nodded as the “on the air” sign flashed, and the seventy-fifth interview of my book tour began. Outside the studio’s floor-to-ceiling windows the gleaming clusters of Dallas’s glass skyscrapers competed for attention, monuments of a proud and confident city.
This was one of Dallas’s most popular interview shows, and a great opportunity. I was primed to talk about the loss of spiritual values in American life and the need for Christian involvement in the public arena.
“We have with us Chuck Colson, author of Kingdoms in Conflict,” the interviewer began. “But first,” he chuckled, “let’s hear what ‘God’s little goofballs’ have for us today.” He flipped a switch and a prerecorded phone message from Jim and Tammy Bakker filled the airwaves. In the control room I could see sound technicians laughing and rolling their eyes. The message ended—mercifully—and my host turned toward me. “And now,” he smiled, “let’s hear what Mr. Colson has to say.”
His introduction wasn’t the shock it might have been. Most of my tour interviews had started with questions about Jim and Tammy or other well-publicized religious excesses. Christian bashing is in high fashion these days, and I was at first defensive. But soon I got angry, as I did this day.
“There have been some dreadful mistakes,” I said, “but why judge all Christians by the few who abuse their position? There are 350,000 churches across America where people’s spiritual needs are being met. Thousands of missionaries are living in conditions you or I couldn’t. Thousands of volunteers are working in prisons, soup kitchens, and rescue missions. That’s the church in action!” I was almost shouting into the microphone.
The interviewer smiled. Reason, after all, is no match for ridicule.
After finally digging out of the Bakker rubble, I was able to get into my material: the kingdom of God and how its citizens transform the kingdoms of man by living in obedience to Christ. But even as I spoke, I wondered if my words could even begin to alter the stereotypes they were up against. As critic Neil Postman has written in his insightful book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, we are fast moving from a word-oriented society to one that is image oriented.
Values are no longer formed by rational discourse; in fact, we have nearly discarded the vocabulary necessary to do so. Instead, an image is transmitted—the grinning faces or gushing voices of Jim and Tammy, for example—and the caricatured message is complete. Mascara and money manipulation become emblems for the church at large—and nothing more need be said.
By the time I had finished in that Dallas studio, the book tour had taken its toll. I’d squared off against scoffers, skeptics, and secularists until I was hoarse. But to what avail? Could anything really change the image of Christianity so entrenched in the public consciousness?
As it happened, only a few days after my dismaying encounter in Dallas I was scheduled to break ground for a prison chapel in Delaware and attend a Prison Fellowship dedication service.
Georgetown, Delaware, is a small town surrounded by chicken farms and corn fields. The closest thing to a skyscraper there is a grain-storage silo.
The town’s dignitaries and Delaware’s lieutenant governor were waiting inside the gates of the state prison when I arrived for the groundbreaking. The chaplain, an open-faced Baptist named Larry Lilly, introduced each of us for brief remarks. The most eloquent came from Jim, a heavyset inmate serving life without parole. He told how volunteers had ministered to him, what Jesus had come to mean to him, how he and his brothers were free, even in prison. Jim struggled to control his emotions as he thanked the local churches for supporting the project.
The 275-seat chapel, which is to be built by volunteers and inmates with local funds, will stand in the center of the prison yard, surrounded by drab cell blocks and razor wire. As we concluded the groundbreaking by turning over shovelfuls of black soil, I thought of the miracle before us: a church, planted in the middle of humanity’s hell on earth.
We adjourned to Grace United Methodist Church, where supper would be served before the evening service. It was to be a celebration concluding Prison Fellowship’s Community Service Project, a program in which five prisoners, furloughed to the care of Christian host families, had worked for two weeks restoring a senior citizens’ center and the home of an elderly retired couple.
Mennonite farm families, the women’s hair tucked neatly into white net caps, the men wearing suspenders over their plaid wool shirts, served steaming platters of roast turkey, bowls of crisp home-grown vegetables, hot baked buns, and homemade pumpkin ice cream. I’d been to White House state dinners that could not top this feast.
The sanctuary soon grew warm as we all crowded into the old oak pews for the evening service. In the last row sat Delaware’s commissioner of corrections, wide-eyed as his prisoners spoke movingly about their experience. Men who wouldn’t dare cry in prison choked up as they described how much it had meant to live with Christian families, to accomplish something useful for society, and to grow in their faith.
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As the service closed, the chaplain asked each of the host families to stand at the altar with “their” inmate. As they lined up before the congregation, one little blond girl—maybe six or seven—took the hand of the prisoner who had lived in her home, looking up into his eyes throughout the concluding prayer. His eyes were misty. So were mine.
I needed to be in Georgetown for that simple Sunday service; it put my book tour experiences into perspective. Yes, there is a wide gulf between Dallas and Delaware, between the image and the reality of Christianity. It is a gulf so wide, in fact, that maybe it can’t be closed. But does that really matter so much after all? The image may reign, but beyond the caricatures of television and radio stations, the reality lives on.
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