Six months after suing her ex-husband in an attempt to obtain full custody of their four children, Sandi Patty has initiated an out-of-court settlement for continued joint custody with John Helvering. According to court documents signed September 21, Helvering will actually have custody of the children one additional day per month during the school year.

Patty, one of the most visible artists in the contemporary Christian music industry, divorced Helvering in 1993. She married Don Peslis August 6. Patty recently acknowledged that she and Peslis had an affair while both were married to their previous spouses (CT, Sept. 11, 1995, p. 72). Patty also admitted to another adulterous relationship.

In the aftermath, Patty submitted her resignation September 6 as a spokesperson for World Vision, a relief-and-development agency in Seattle.

Word Records responded to Patty’s situation by postponing her new Christmas album, which was to be released last month. According to Word president Roland Lundy, Patty will still be under contract to the label, and her previous albums will remain on the market. Lundy says Patty divulged the affairs in July after he became aware of the pending CT story. Lundy had questioned Patty regarding reports of marital unfaithfulness, but she had previously denied the truthfulness of those reports.

“Although we at Word Records are deeply grieved by this sin and its consequences, we believe that the process of restoration in Sandi’s life with her pastor and her church is well under way,” Lundy said in a prepared statement. “As we would with any member of our family, we remain firm in our support of Sandi during her continued process of restoration.”

Patty had been scheduled to cohost the Young Messiah Tour between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but she has withdrawn in a mutual decision reached with tour producer Norman Miller.

By Doug Jolley.

ZIMBABWE

Ecumenical Group Assails Homosexuals

The Zimbabwe Council of Churches (ZCC) condemned homosexual activity in September, two months after President Robert Mugabe banned the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe from the Zimbabwe International Book Fair.

“The church of God finds no basis to support intimate relationships between persons of the same sex,” declared the ZCC, a group of 20 Protestant denominations. “Such relationships are viewed by the church as a violation of God’s ordinances.” The ZCC also asserted that homosexuality is “out of step with Zimbabwean tradition and culture.”

In July, the 71-year-old Mugabe, in office since 1988, called homosexual groups “immoral and repulsive.” He said “sodomists and sexual perverts” had no rights in the country. Granting rights to homosexuals, Mugabe said, would harm the moral fabric of Zimbabwe and lead to special rights for those who sought to engage in bestiality and drug addiction.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is seeking assurances from the Zimbabwean government that Mugabe’s remarks will not result in harassment of homosexual delegates to the WCC’s Eighth Assembly, scheduled in 1998 in Zimbabwe.

“It is important that we dispel the possibility of misunderstanding or conflict,” says Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the WCC.

ALGERIA

Two More Catholic Nuns Assassinated

Another pair of Roman Catholic nuns in Algeria were murdered last month, bringing to ten the number of Catholic clerics and religious workers killed in the North African country since May 1994.

Unknown assailants shot Sisters Bibiane, 65, and Angele-Marie, 62, in the head while the nuns walked home from vespers in the Algiers district of Belcourt September 3. Bibiane, born Denise Leclerc, was French, and Angele-Marie, born Jeanne Littlejohn, was Maltese. Both had worked in Algeria since 1964. The murders generated shock in Belcourt, where the nuns taught sewing and embroidery in a Catholic domestic center.

The religious order, which began work in Algeria at the end of the nineteenth century, still has 16 nuns in the violence-plagued nation.

“We will ask everyone to choose freely if she wants to stay or not,” says Marie-Jose Goepfert, French sister superior of the Missionaries of Our Lady of the Apostles. “Last year, I had already asked them, but none of them wished to go back home.”

Paolo Costantini, editor of the African News Bulletin in Brussels, says the murders “remind us that the Christian community is particularly targeted by armed groups which are carrying out a new form of religious cleansing.”

In May 1994, two French monks in Algiers were shot by Armed Islamic Group activists. In October 1994, two Spanish nuns were killed near a chapel in Bab el-Oued. On December 26, four White Fathers Catholic missionaries were slain.

In all, 30,000 people have been killed since Algeria’s military rulers canceled 1992 elections that militant Islamists were poised to win.

By Willy Fdutre, News Network International.

ARCHAEOLOGY

New Qumran Caves Dig Set to Start

Excavations are scheduled to begin in December at four newly discovered manmade caves near the Qumran ruins on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea.

The excavations will be directed by Hanan Eshel of Bar Ilan University and Magen Broshi of the Israel Museum. Broshi is curator emeritus of the Shrine of the Book, which holds the largest and most complete collection of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“We are quite hopeful that we will come back with a little written material,” Broshi says. Eshel discovered the new caves a year ago in this carefully studied area when he noticed four caved-in “anomalies.”

“Paths are preserved in the desert for thousands of years, and they stop at those anomalies,” Broshi says. The location is still a closely guarded secret, to prevent plundering.

“Caves have been used by Qumranites within a radius of a couple of miles,” Broshi says. “This [area] is even closer.”

Dead Sea Scroll documents and fragments were found in 11 caves in the Qumran area between 1947 and 1956, when it was under the control of Jordan. The area may soon be turned over to Palestinian control.

By Gordon Govier in Jerusalem.

News Briefs

♦ Churches in three northern Laotian provinces have closed as part of a government effort to coerce Christians to recant their faith. About 4,000 Christians in Xieng Khuang, Luang Prabang, and Sayabuly provinces have stopped meeting or have been gathering in secret. The government has been mounting an education campaign to reinforce communism.

♦ In September, San Antonio evangelist Sammy Tippit conducted the first major evangelistic meetings in Rwanda since last year’s conflict between Tutsi and Hutu peoples. Tippit, a Southern Baptist, preached three days in Butare and one day in the capital, Kigali. More than 17,000 attended the meetings, with 2,375 people making confessions of faith.

Among conservative Christians, a grassroots backlash against contemporary English-language Bibles has triggered a renewed interest in the famed King James Version with its word-for-word translation and its longstanding authority.

Commonly known as the “King James—only” movement, a small group of authors and other Christian leaders have been sharply critical of contemporary biblical translations for straying from the word-for-word approach. However, many modern scholars of Scripture say if Christians consider the King James Version as the most reliable translation, they will be turning their backs on nearly four centuries of important discoveries about sacred texts, ancient languages, and translation methods.

READERS CHOICE? Some of the momentum for the movement comes from the dizzying array of new biblical products on bookstore shelves today. These translations, paraphrases, and commentaries range across the theological spectrum. For example, the so-called PC Bible—The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version—from Oxford University Press replaces references to God as “Father” with “Father-Mother.” In addition, evangelical publishing houses have brought to market new study Bibles, new translations, and other Bible products, including the popular paraphrase The Message, author Eugene Peterson’s literary rendering of the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs.

Bible translations can be classified into three categories. First, word-for-word translations, such as the King James, focus on taking the original words and phrases and providing the most suitable literal translation. Second, in “dynamic equivalence” translations, such as the New International Version, scholars seek to translate the meaning and context of a scriptural passage. Virtually all translations use some measure of dynamic equivalence, including the King James Version.

Third, Bible paraphrases use everyday language and popular idioms to present a highly readable version of the text, such as the Living Bible.

Because these categories do not have hard lines of definition, and meaning of Scripture is at times elusive, Christians often find themselves consulting many translations to enhance their understanding. The origin of the King James—only movement can be traced in part to one such confusing encounter.

About ten years ago, a young student asked Gail Riplinger, then an architecture professor at Kent State University, whether Isaiah 14:12 refers to Lucifer or Jesus Christ. Riplinger compared their Bibles. What her King James translation rendered “Lucifer, son of the morning,” the student’s New American Standard Version rendered as “morning star,” which also occurs in the New Testament as a reference to Jesus Christ.

This puzzling situation led Riplinger on a personal quest. For six years, she collated word-for-word contrasts and comparisons between the King James and newer versions. “The new versions give a picture of the widening apostasy,” asserts Riplinger in her book New Age Bible Versions.

Riplinger’s book, which was published in 1993 and has 100,000 copies in circulation, has itself prompted vigorous rebuttal from many quarters. Christian apologist James R. White, in his book The King James Only Controversy, dismisses Riplinger’s work as “a plethora of out-of-context citations and edited quotations.” White says many new-translation opponents are unnecessarily disrupting churches around the country.

“King James—only advocates, due to the nature of their beliefs, are often disruptive of the fellowship in churches, feeling that their message of ‘God’s one true Bible’ needs to be heard by all,” White writes. “Distrust of others who use (or would even defend) those [other] translations often results in schisms within the fellowship.”

In the less sensational instances, Christian leaders have questioned translation methodology and ease of memorization between different versions.

“I don’t call it [the 1611 KJV] the inspired Word of God. I call it the preserved Word of God,” said Samuel Gipp, an evangelist, during a recent television appearance with John Ankerberg, a leading conservative religious broadcaster. Among hard-liners, even the New King James Version, published in 1979, is not an acceptable alternative. Some King James—only advocates contend God has preserved the KJV as his sole English translation choice.

TRANSLATION DISPUTES: Marketplace realities and consumer tastes have changed the landscape of Bible sales. In just 17 years, the New International Version has sold 100 million copies, making it the best-selling current version of the Bible. It took the KJV about 400 years to sell 350 million copies.

Kenneth Barker, executive director of the NIV translation center, told CHRISTIANITY TODAY that much of the resistance by King James advocates is because of the NIV success in the marketplace. After “almost 400 years a translation has dared to come along that actually outsells the King James,” Barker says.

Critics of new English translations cite hundreds of word-choice differences from the KJV that they allege soften church doctrine. For instance, “Lord Jesus Christ” sometimes is rendered simply “Lord”; “Holy Ghost” is presented as “Spirit”; “Jehovah” becomes “Lord”; Godhead in some places is interpreted “divine being.” Defenders of modern versions argue that these are simply more accurate translations of the Greek and Hebrew texts.

The King James New Testament was largely based on the Textus Receptus, a Greek text compiled and published by Erasmus in the 1500s. King James advocates have claimed that straying from Textus Receptus has led to watered-down passages and is contrary to God’s providential care of his “pure Word.” Others are critical of modern translations for allegedly favoring mysticism or Roman Catholic doctrine.

QUEST FOR CERTAINTY: Analysts of the King James-only movement suggest that its promoters are ultimately on an unachievable quest.

Gordon Fee, professor of New Testament at Regent College in Vancouver (B.C.) and one of the world’s leading textual critics, says the movement is a pursuit of certainty that “blows apart in light of the evidence.”

Fee notes that no two historical manuscripts in the Textus Receptus or beyond are precisely alike, defying claims that pure uniformity can be discovered. He says that King James-only advocates “want to believe something so badly that truth … is simply irrelevant.”

In addition, biblical historians have noted that:

• There were other English translations before the 1611 KJV, which itself was revised in 1769.

• The early, fifth-century Latin Vulgate was consulted by King James translators. And, until 1966, it was the basis for all official Roman Catholic translations.

• Scripture states God’s promise to keep his Word pure, which scholars believe applies to translations conducted by godly scholars in every age.

Daniel Wallace, assistant professor of New Testament at Dallas Theological Seminary, says the debate boils down to what constitutes an inspired, inerrant Bible.

“The original is what is inspired and inerrant. And insofar as a translation accurately represents that original, then we have an inspired, inerrant Bible,” Wallace said recently on an Ankerberg telecast.

Fee says King James advocates are mistaken in seeking a definite lineage of inspiration through the centuries that is nonexistent. “It’s the view of inspiration that credits to fallen human copyists the same degree of inspiration by way of preservation as was afforded to the inspiration of the authors themselves.”

Nevertheless, King James-only advocates see a grave danger in varying translations. Joseph Chambers, a Charlotte, North Carolina, pastor, said recently in his newspaper The End Times, “Are twentieth century Christians cast upon a sea with varying compasses each reflecting a different nuance of what the Scripture would instruct us?”

Wallace told CT, “There are no doctrinal problems with the manuscript basis behind the newer translations. There is no deviation from orthodoxy in translations such as the NIV.”

Wallace says he considers the King James to be a fine translation, but it should not be considered the only translation. He says he knows of 20 churches that have switched to using only the KJV after reading “conspiracy theories” promulgated by Riplinger.

“They seem to be more interested in the pursuit of certainty than the pursuit of truth,” Wallace says.

In coming years, new English Bibles are expected on the market, including the New Living Bible, an update of the well-known Living Bible from Tyndale.

By Joe Maxwell.

SEMINARY UPDATE

Carver School Set to Move to Samford

Samford University is poised to take control of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary’s controversial Carver School of Church Social Work at the start of the 1996–97 school year, pending a vote by Southern’s trustees this month.

Approval is expected because the proposal has been recommended by a five-member study committee at Southern, located in Louisville, Kentucky. “Relocation of the Carver School to Samford holds promise of strengthening the Christian social conscience of our university community,” Samford president Thomas Corts says. “It is crucial that Southern Baptists maintain an emphasis on the great social issues of our time.”

Last month, trustees at Samford, a Southern Baptist school in Birmingham with 4,630 students, approved the transfer, which would include acquisition of all Carver School library books, periodicals, and computer software.

“This is the most positive and constructive proposal that could have been achieved under these circumstances,” Southern president R. Albert Mohler, Jr., told CT. “It would not be feasible to keep Carver here.”

In March, Mohler fired Diana Garland as dean of the nation’s only accredited master’s program in social work operated by a seminary (CT, May 15, 1995, p. 54).

Garland had openly criticized Mohler for not hiring Gordon College social-work professor David Sherwood, who would not affirm a ban on women in ordained ministry.

Southern trustees supported the 35-year-old Mohler in the firing and approved his request to hire only conservative faculty who agree with the seminary’s administration.

Fall enrollment at Southern dropped 13.4 percent compared to a year ago. Enrollment at the campus is 1,241, a decrease of 197 students, although Mohler says a larger drop had been expected. The Carver School is not accepting new students, and enrollment has dipped to 77 from 115. Only two full-time faculty remain after two professors retired and another’s contract expired.

Representatives from three accrediting agencies, including the Association of Theological Schools, are scheduled to visit Southern next month to investigate the Garland firing. Now, however, Mohler says the transfer to Samford may “supersede other concerns.”

By John W. Kennedy.

NEW BOOK

Account of Hinn’s Healings Challenged

The Saint Louis-based organization Personal Freedom Outreach (PFO) says faith healer Benny Hinn’s version of mass healings at an Ontario hospital in 1976 is more fiction than fact. Hinn describes the healings in his new book, Welcome, Holy Spirit. G. Richard Fisher, writing in the summer issue of PFO’s The QuarterlyJournal, labels Hinn’s “wildly embellished account” a “tall tale.”

In the book, Hinn claims that he and other clergy began to anoint patients in a Catholic hospital with oil, and they “began to receive instant healing.” Hinn, pastor of the 10,000-member Orlando (Fla.) Christian Center and host of television’s This Is Your Day, adds, “One by one, they began to testify of miracles that were taking place.”

He writes that “you could feel God’s spirit all over the building. Within a few minutes the hospital looked almost like it had been hit by an earthquake. People were under the power of the Holy Spirit up and down the hallways as well as in the rooms.”

Fisher reports, however, that Lois C. Krause, director of community relations at General Hospital I in Sault Ste. Marie, challenges Hinn’s descriptions.

“No such events have ever occurred at General Hospital,” says a hospital statement reported by PFO. Hinn’s “pronouncement can neitherbe verified through the medical records nor by testimony from past or present personnel of this hospital. Mr. Hinn’s claims are outlandish and unwarranted.”

Hinn ministry spokesperson George Parson would not comment on the specifics in PFO’s article, but affirmed the accuracy of Hinn’s book.

By Randy Frame.

ADVENTISTS

Fired Official Files Lawsuit

A Seventh-day Adventist leader has filed a defamation suit against the denomination and a woman who has accused him of sexual abuse. In a recent affidavit, the woman identified only as Jane Doe has described a history of sexual abuse and activity at the hands of David Dennis, an auditor of the Seventh-day Adventist church. As a result of her disclosures, Dennis was terminated last December after nearly 20 years as director of internal auditing for the Silver Spring, Maryland-based General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists (GCSDA) for “conduct unbecoming an ordained minister and an elected leader of the General Conference.”

According to Dennis, however, “not one bit” of Doe’s affidavit about his conduct is true. “I have never touched this woman sexually,” he says. “I have been faithful to my wife. [Doe] is making this up.”

Dennis is suing Doe, the GCSDA, and several leaders of the church for defamation and breach of contract; he is seeking $1 million. In his filed complaint, Dennis claims that GCSDA president Robert Folkenberg has attempted to “divert and misuse assets and services” of the denomination “for his own personal benefit” and believes the real reason he lost his job was due to conflicts he had with the church leadership over the handling of financial issues.

Robert Nixon, general counsel for the GCSDA, says that while “the church has made mistakes in the past” with regard to finances, Dennis’s role as an auditor has nothing to do with his termination. “We believe he was properly terminated, as there was adequate evidence of a moral problem,” he said.

Dennis believes “that right will triumph and that the Lord will vindicate us.”

$67 MILLION PURCHASE

Nelson Acquires Greeting-Card Firm

Thomas Nelson, Inc., the largest commercial publisher of English-language Bible translations, the largest publisher of Christian books, and the nation’s largest producer of Christian music, last month signed a deal to buy C. R. Gibson in a cash transaction valued at $67 million. The Nashville-based Thomas Nelson offered $9 per share in an agreement approved unanimously by C. R. Gibson’s board of directors.

C. R. Gibson, headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, manufactures paper gift and stationery products, including a greeting card line. Last year Gibson reported net revenues of $67.5 million. Nelson has 1,400 employees. Gibson has 600.

Big takeovers are nothing new for Nelson. In 1992, the company bought competitor Word, Inc., from Capital Cities/ABC, for $72 million in cash. In August, Thomas Nelson announced a reorganization, joining the newly purchased Word Publishing into the company’s publishing unit. Forming of the Nelson/Word Publishing Group makes it one of the country’s top ten book publishers.

Revenues for the 197-year-old Thomas Nelson totaled $265 million in 1994, an increase of 17 percent from the previous year. The company’s stock value has risen 400 percent in the past five years.

Under the revamping, Byron Williamson will be the new president of Nelson/Word Publishing Group; Joseph Moore, executive vice president; and Sam Moore, chief executive officer. Sam Moore bought Nelson in 1972.

The company recently ventured into contemporary Christian and country music radio by launching the Morningstar network. Thomas Nelson also has been mulling the startup of a cable television network.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY

Unclaimed Funds to Build Homes

Habitat for Humanity has received an early Christmas gift: a $1.2 million windfall in unclaimed funds from an unrelated class-action lawsuit.

Stephen Seidel, executive director of the Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity office, says Habitat’s reputation aided Judge Donald Alsop in his decision to donate the excess money to the organization. The money will be used in part to build 200 homes in the Twin Cities in the next five years. “We are not squirreling the money away,” Seidel says. “We’re going to build more homes.”

The donation comes from the leftovers of a $6.5 million settlement in a lawsuit against loan company ITT Consumer Financial. More than 250,000 plaintiffs were to receive payments ranging from $ 14 to $28, but about a quarter of the recipients did not claim their money. The funds were given to Habitat, a ministry that builds and rehabilitates houses to allow low-income families to purchase them at a reduced cost.

Ten percent of the donation has been sent to the parent Habitat for Humanity International in Americus, Georgia, to finance housebuilding efforts overseas. The organization was founded in 1976 by Millard Fuller.

News Briefs

♦ E. Edward Jones, president of the eight million—member National Baptist Convention of America, has questioned the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) June apology for racism (CT, Aug. 14, 1995, p. 53). “The civil-rights struggle is still going on, and we need more than an apology,” Jones said at the black denomination’s annual convention last month. Jones speculated that the SBC is apologizing now in an effort to recruit members from his denomination. “I understand his skepticism,” SBC second vice president Gary Frost, an African American, said of Jones. “Our Southern Baptist Convention agrees this apology is late in coming, but I am convinced it is sincere and real.”

♦ Archbishop Geron lakovos, leader of the 2.5 million—member Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America since 1959, will retire next July 29 on his eighty-fifth birthday. He cited health and age as reasons in deciding to step down. lakovos has been a newsmaker throughout his administration. A year ago, he issued an interfaith marriage encyclical labeling Assemblies of God and Pentecostal adherents “not of the Christian tradition” (CT, Jan. 9, 1995, p. 42). In January, lakovos spearheaded a plan to unify ten branches of the Orthodox church in North America into an “administratively united” body (CT, Feb. 6, 1995, p. 45). Ecumenical Geron lakovos Patriarch Bartholomew, the faith’s worldwide leader, ordered lakovos to abandon the proposal.

♦ U.S. District Judge James Redden last month sentenced Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, 39, of Grants Pass, Oregon, to 20 years in federal prison after the defendant admitted firebombing six West Coast abortion facilities in 1992. Redden called her a “terrorist.” Shannon will serve the term after she finishes a nine-year term handed down last year for wounding Wichita, Kansas, abortionist George Tiller in 1993.

♦ After laying off staff and faculty during the summer due to the threat of financial insolvency (CT, Aug. 14, 1995, p. 59), Ontario Bible College (OBC) and Ontario Theological Seminary (OTS) are both back in session for the fall with the return of 90 percent of previous student enrollments. Brian Stiller continues to serve as interim president, but he will return to his post as executive director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada when the OBC/OTS situation has stabilized and a new president is selected. By mid-September, OBC/OTS had already raised a third of the $1.5 million in desired donations for the fiscal year.

♦ In its crusade to further expand its efforts, the conservative Christian Coalition is planning to launch a Catholic arm, the Catholic Alliance. The predominantly Protestant Virginia Beach-based coalition has long cooperated with Roman Catholic leaders, particularly in prolife matters, but it has had difficulty building grassroots support in predominantly Catholic regions of the country.

♦ Clarence C. Pope, Jr., who last year became the first Episcopal bishop in more than 140 years to convert to Roman Catholicism (CT, Dec. 12, 1994, p. 66), has changed his mind. The 65-year-old retired Fort Worth bishop has decided to return to the Episcopal church, in large measure because he could not agree to the Catholic church’s request that he be “reordained” as a priest.

Members of First Baptist Church (FBC) in Atlanta voted October I to retain Charles Stanley as pastor, despite a threatened divorce and recent resignations by several staff members, including his son, Andy. The 157-year-old congregation has historically refused to allow divorced men to be pastors or deacons.

In a members-only meeting behind locked doors, the elder Stanley told more than 3,000 people that it is not God’s will for him to leave. “If God tells me I’m finished at First Baptist, I’ll move,” Stanley said. “I’m not going to step down in disobedience to God.”

Stanley, 62, has risen to national prominence during his 23 years at FBC through his In Touch media ministry, best-selling books, and 1984–85 presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Criticism of Stanley has grown recently as efforts to reconcile his 40-year marriage have failed. Stanley has publicly taught that a divorced man is disqualified from serving as pastor. He told the congregation at a specially called meeting August 13 that he will step down as pastor if his divorce is finalized. However, he has made no statement about abandoning his preaching role on the $35-million-a-year In Touch radio and television ministry.

Stanley and his wife, Anna, have lived separately since 1992. Anna Stanley filed for divorce in 1993, agreed to a reconciliation attempt, and then refiled for divorce in March. “I have been dismayed at my husband’s refusal to accept the critical state of our marriage,” she said in an August 14 statement. “Instead he has made repeated announcements from the pulpit that progress was being made toward reconciliation, when in fact, the very opposite is true.” A jury trial is scheduled to start November 27.

Andy Stanley resigned in August as pastor of FBC’s suburban satellite church, established in 1988, saying, “I felt my father should step down as the leader of FBC.” Attendance at the suburban congregation averages 4,000, slightly higher than the downtown church.

The recommendation to keep Stanley as pastor, approved earlier by deacons 35 to 3, passed easily on a hand vote. During the August meeting, Stanley agreed to a deacon-approved plan to relinquish his administrative duties for an unspecified time. He made it clear to the congregation October 1 that he is still in charge. “Somebody has to give direction,” he said.

TROUBLING TREND: The rising problem of clergy divorce mirrors the rise of all divorces in America. From 1970 to 1990, there was a 65 percent increase in divorces nationwide, according to federal statistics.

Today, one-quarter of female and one-fifth of male, clergy have been divorced, according to a multidenominational survey conducted by Hartford (Conn.) Seminary. The findings, released in July, indicate that the highest percentage of divorced clergy are Unitarian-Universalists (47 percent of women and 44 percent of men) and Episcopalians (30 percent and 25 percent respectively).

The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists, had a divorce rate of 17 percent for female and 4 percent for male pastors. In all these denominations, many, particularly the women, were divorced before entering seminary or full-time ministry. Other studies by Focus on the Family and LEADERSHIP journal consistently document a troubling level of marital dissatisfaction within the typical parsonage.

“The church itself is part of the problem,” says syndicated religion columnist Mike McManus, author of Marriage Savers. “Too many congregations have a track record of not helping couples bond together through premarital counseling, not helping marriages at midterm to be strengthened, and not saving marriages at the end of the line.”

DENOMINATIONAL DILEMMA: Faltering clergy marriages have caused many church leaders to re-evaluate their standards on clergy divorce and remarriage.

Conservative bodies, such as the Assemblies of God, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Presbyterian Church in America, generally have upheld a no-divorced-pastors policy, but not without vigorous debate.

Many larger mainline denominations have significantly adjusted their standards or been unable to articulate what their standards are. For example, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) announced in August the denomination could reach no consensus on divorce and suspended efforts to issue a policy statement.

Regardless of whether the shift of standards has been small or great, almost every Bible college, seminary, denomination, and ministry to pastors is seeking ways to strengthen clergy marriages.

One recent development is the use of diagnostic tools by firms such as Minneapolis-based Prepare/Enrich, Inc., which can accurately predict if a couple’s marriage is headed for divorce.

David Ferguson, an SBC pastor with a doctorate in psychology, has formed the Center for Marriage and Family Intimacy, based in Austin, Texas, exclusively for pastoral couples. More than 3,000 couples, representing 17 denominations, have gone through its two-day seminar since 1993.

In September, the South Carolina Baptist Convention brought in several national leaders for a three-day “Shepherding the Shepherd” conference for pastors and spouses. The state convention is also in partnership with the Baptist Medical Center in ten different locations so that any SBC pastor and family can receive counseling from a certified specialist on a subsidized basis.

Clergy-divorce statistics show no clear-cut sign of turning around. The brightest hope comes from history. “One would prefer that clergy set an example rather than follow society’s lead,” says Dennis Borg, a licensed family counselor and professor at Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, New York. “Yet present reality, barring revival, is that if society remains steady or again affirms the value of intact marriages, so also might America’s clergy.”

By Warren Bird.

The September 22 release of the NC-17-rated Showgirls introduced what some call “legitimate” pornography to local malls and the Internet. Donald Wildmon, president of the Tupelo, Mississippi—based American Family Association (AFA), is urging Christians to boycott for one year cinemas that show the movie. “The widespread distribution of a film like Showgirls is going to change all society.”

Starring actress Elizabeth Berkley, best known for her tame role on the TV sitcom Saved by the Bell, the movie opened on 1,380 U.S. screens, making it by far the largest premiere for an NC-17 movie since the rating replaced the X designation five years ago.

While MGM/UA, the film’s distributors, and the Motion Picture Association of America, which rated the film, stress Showgirls is not for younger teens, writer Joe Eszterhas, who also teamed with producer/director Paul Verhoeven for the shocker Basic Instinct, urged young people under 17 to use fake identification to gain entrance to theaters. Showgirls follows Berkley’s character from a job that involves dancing and simulated sex acts with customers in a strip club to a premier spot in a “legitimate” hotel showroom.

According to Movieguide publisher Ted Baehr, Showgirls is essentially a porn flick with a bit more gloss. “There isn’t one ounce of real love, compassion, tenderness, or joy in the movie,” Baehr told CT. “The rating itself attracts teenagers to the material.”

So will its availability in bright suburban malls and multiplexes.

“When it’s in the red-light district, that’s one thing,” says Baehr of Atlanta. “When it’s in the next theater over from Disney’s The Big Green, that’s something else.” Baehr says releasing a “mainstream” NC-17 movie adds “fuel to the flame of culture wars.”

“What’s more disturbing,” AFA’s Wildmon told CT, “is not that pornography is going mainstream, but that the church of Christ is by and large ignoring this.”

The general public is not. Along with the commercial distribution, MGM/UA created an Internet “Web Site” for the film which carried a warning that explicit sexual material was on display. In one 24-hour period, more than one million “hits,” or electronic visits, were recorded.

By Mark A. Kellner.

It is dangerous to be on the knife edge of the school-choice movement.

Just ask Bob Smith, principal of Messmer High School in Milwaukee. As he finished back-to-school preparations in August, he expected Wisconsin’s newly expanded voucher program to finance most of the tuition for 30 of his 320 students at the Catholic school.

Smith had no intention of telling the 30 children they could no longer come to his school. “We’re going on faith here,” Smith said, as he covered the phones during lunch hour in the school’s utilitarian office. “We’re telling parents, ‘Your kid is guaranteed a place here.’ If the vouchers get hung up, we’ll rely on our alumni, businesses, and foundations to support us.”

Wisconsin’s five-year-old pilot voucher program, which promised to pay up to $3,600 toward tuition for low-income students, was to be expanded to a capacity of 7,000 students and more than 100 schools this fall, including Messmer, and then boosted again in 1997 to a ceiling of 15,000 students.

But just a few days before school opened August 30, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended the choice program because of its expansion to religious schools such as Messmer. The court decided to revert to last year’s rules governing vouchers—at least until jurists could reconsider the issue this month.

That meant that much of the tuition for hundreds of children who had been enrolled at dozens of newly voucher-eligible private schools, including Messmer, suddenly did not exist.

Private donors did, in fact, come through. The Bradley Foundation, a major choice backer nationwide, stepped up with a $1 million gift to Partners Advancing Values in Education (PAVE), the local, privately funded voucher program for poor children that launched an emergency tuition-covering drive. Wisconsin Energy Corporation, Trek Bicycle Corporation, and Marquette Electronics each also donated $100,000.

But that did not relieve the stress experienced by the poor children and their parents who abruptly—and unwittingly—found themselves in the middle of one of the biggest educational maelstroms in recent American history. With high-stakes national arguments over principle and politics rising in the background, they simply wanted the best education available.

Actually, Messmer, in the central city, has been ground zero of the American school-choice movement for some time. Three years ago, state education-department investigators searched for crucifixes, Bibles, and other evidence that the school indeed was a religious institution, even though it is no longer operated by the Catholic church. Armed with such proof, the state denied Messmer admission to the choice program because the program was not then open to sectarian or religious schools.

Nevertheless, in July, in Messmer’s gym, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson signed the bill expanding choice. “There are powerful forces that are going to be battling to sink our ship,” Smith cautioned at the rally.

Milwaukee’s voucher program has faced tough times from the start. Through last year, participation never climbed much above 800, far below the mandated ceiling of 1,500 children, because the six participating private schools did not have enough room. And there has been constant criticism because the voucher-supported students so far have not distinguished themselves academically.

But this city has gone further down the school-choice road than any other. And its participation illustrates what elements must come together anywhere for the voucher concept to have a chance.

First, there is bipartisan political support: While the GOP’s taking of the state assembly in last November’s elections was the electoral means to the choice expansion, the enthusiasm of Democratic Mayor John Norquist has also been key.

Second, there is firm support by leaders of the black community. They include the godmother of choice, Democratic Rep. Polly Williams, in whose district Messmer sits, and Howard Fuller, the former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, who resigned in the summer in disgust at the roadblocks to reform he encountered from the teachers’ union and bureaucratic inertia.

“For me at least, pushing choice isn’t ideological,” Fuller said. “It’s simply geared toward how this will be able to advantage more young people and their families.”

And third, there is support from the business community. Corporate executives are increasingly stepping into the battle. Several high-profile Milwaukee-area companies launched PAVE. Last year, the city’s chamber of commerce made a bold gambit by organizing a parental group for choice backers.

By Dale D. Buss in Milwaukee.

School choice remains a popular idea, but public-education activists see a grave threat.

Quentin Quade and Mark Weston are both staunch school-choice advocates. But from very similar vantage points, they express remarkably different perspectives on where their cause is headed.

Quade, a national networker for school choice at Marquette University in Wisconsin, sees the voucher movement building populist momentum despite legal setbacks. In the end, it will triumph, he believes.

Yet Weston, an official at the Education Commission of the States, sees the school-choice movement, though an important influence on public education, as being outgunned and outfinanced by existing special-interest groups, particularly teachers’ unions, which have successfully contested school-choice initiatives.

Nationally, lawyers, legislators, educators, and judges are responding to parental demands for taxpayer financed, parent-controlled school-voucher programs. Voucher programs are a critical component in the larger public-education reform movement, driven by decades of weakening test scores, high education costs, and the triple threat to children from drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and inner-city violence.

WORRIED PARENTS: About a year ago, school vouchers were given up for dead by many educational analysts. It is now one of the areas of greatest ferment within the school-reform movement. State and federal elections last year swept into power many officeholders who are sympathetic to parents worried about their lack of influence over their children’s education.

Among Christians, school-voucher activity has been focused on passing legislation to permit religious organizations to use public funds for education in a way that would withstand a court challenge. They have yet to succeed.

The battle over choice is now entering a decisive phase that will involve as many courtrooms as classrooms and is likely to climax with a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court within a few years.

With its reputation for being a “laboratory of reform” still intact, Wisconsin, especially its largest city of Milwaukee, has evolved into a hotbed of advocacy for school choice.

Though stayed for now by the state supreme court, Wisconsin’s trailblazing program for low-income students in Milwaukee has boosted its legislative maximum sevenfold and for the first time has made religious schools eligible.

Cleveland is gearing up to begin a similar program next year. And the Washington, D.C., school district may be given the green light to experiment with vouchers as part of a sweeping reform package that Congress wrapped up in the summer.

“This has been a breakthrough year,” says Clint Bolick, litigation director of the Institute for Justice, a Washington, D.C.—based organization that represents choice programs in legal challenges. “The more that we can force the opposition to fight on multiple fronts, the more battles we will win.”

SEE YOU IN COURT: Nevertheless, at least for the time being in this power struggle, voucher opponents have the upper hand. In late August, after thousands of children already were in school under Wisconsin’s expanded choice program, the state’s supreme court suspended the new law because it included religious schools. The court refused to reconsider the issue until this month. Parents were dazed, and private donors scrambled to fill the void left by the sudden absence of counted-upon state tuition vouchers (see “Court Halts Milwaukee Program,” p. 78).

In addition, voucher opponents are considering lodging a court challenge against the Ohio choice program over the church-state issue. “It’s headed nowhere but straight for the courts,” says Sheila Simmons, director of the National Education Association’s (NEA) Center for the Preservation of Public Education, an arm established by America’s largest teachers’ union two years ago.

“Choice proponents shouldn’t declare victory yet,” says Rob Boston, assistant director of communications for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has joined NEA affiliates, the American Civil Liberties Union, and other liberal organizations in legal challenges of school choice. “This will be a much longer and uglier battle than many of them think.”

PUBLIC EDUCATION THREAT: Although voucher programs have drawn the sharpest fire, there are other components to the concept of school choice.

Broadly defined, school choice encompasses many varieties of programs nationwide that allow parents to pick certain public-school programs for their children in their own or nearby school districts.

Charter schools and magnet schools are two established means of setting up educational alternatives. Also, there has been growth in the use of “released time” during the school day for children to receive religious instruction (see “Public Schools Get Religion—Legally,” CT, Nov. 14, 1994, p. 74).

Voucher programs have become lightning rods for criticism because of the threat they pose to existing government schools. Under a voucher system, much or all of the public financing that normally goes to public-school systems follows individual children to schools of their parents’ choice—public or private.

Parents and children are best served educationally by vouchers, the argument goes, and the competition eventually will force the nation’s public-school monopoly to improve or funds would dry up.

Though the Wisconsin program has been the only working model in recent years, support for vouchers has grown among parents and others dissatisfied with the performance of public schools.

Until now, choice opponents have managed to negate the appeal of vouchers by arguing that they actually will harm public education by diverting needed funds and by allowing private schools to discriminate against students with special needs, keeping those children—and their expensive problems—in public schools. Opponents also argue that vouchers are a ploy to subsidize schools for the well-to-do, while shortchanging the poor. When proponents have sought to include religious schools, choice foes have used church-state separation arguments to exclude them.

In recent years, ballot initiatives have been a popular means to force states to adopt school-choice legislation. Statewide initiatives in Oregon and Colorado went down in defeat early this decade. In bellwether California, on ballots in 1992 and again in 1993, opponents with the financial backing of teachers’ unions thwarted proposals to amend the state constitution to permit vouchers.

Meanwhile, charter-school efforts are making important headway. With charter schools, states suspend some regulations for individual institutions to give them more freedom to innovate. Around the nation, charter schools are already in operation and have broad support. Charter schools may be run publicly or privately and often focus on a “back to basics” curriculum with a steady diet of student discipline.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE: By the summer of 1994, the voucher movement seemed to have run out of steam. But the November elections offered a new sense of possibility. In many states, Republicans ended Democratic statehouse control that had long been a bulwark for choice opponents. Within months, choice proposals were being debated in capitols across the country.

This past spring, the Christian Coalition, calling the government-school system “a monopolistic system of mediocrity,” included school choice in its Contract with the American Family. That decision in part rallied the spirits of school-choice advocates.

In Wisconsin, Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, with the GOP having consolidated control over both legislative houses, engineered passage of a bill greatly expanding the choice program for this fall and, for the first time, making religious schools eligible.

In Ohio, Gov. George Voinovich pushed through a $5.25 million pilot voucher program in Cleveland that will begin in September 1996.

The Ohio program will provide up to three-fourths of the $2,500 voucher amount for as many as 2,000 students, which parents will be able to redeem at public or private schools, including religious institutions. Private sources would supply the remainder of the voucher funds, but low-income families will be able to receive all but $250 of the total voucher amount from the state.

Perhaps the most encouraging development for choice advocates is the potential of a high-stakes voucher debate in Congress. Last spring, Sen. Dan Coats (R.-Ind.) introduced a bill that would create 10 to 20 voucher test projects for low-income children.

During the summer, vouchers emerged as one measure proposed to jump-start the troubled education system of the District of Columbia. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) began talking about school choice as an important way to empower minorities. Washington Mayor Marion Barry, with Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s nonvoting representative in Congress, appeared ready to go along with Republican demands that choice be part of any reform of District schools. And the reform package that finally made it into the congressional hopper in September includes a partially federally funded voucher for 2,000 low-income students, although the school district wouldn’t lose any tax funds for kids from that group who chose a private school.

“It’s a good move to help low-income kids, but it’s not the kind of choice program that will have a serious impact on improving D.C. schools,” says Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform, a nonprofit group in D.C.

POWERFUL OPPOSITION: Voucher-program foes have stepped up their own activism, stalling voucher initiatives in Illinois, Texas, and Connecticut.

The power struggle between factions has been intense. In Pennsylvania, where newly elected Republican Gov. Tom Ridge pulled out all the stops to try to ensure passage of a voucher bill, wheeling and dealing for many lawmakers’ support, the measure failed by one vote.

In Arizona, the battle has been politically bruising. Early this year, both the re-elected governor, Fife Symington, and the newly elected state schools chief, Lisa Graham, favored a voucher program. Yet teachers’ unions managed to frustrate nine different voucher proposals, including one targeted only at the state’s poorest children.

“It’s tough for legislators when they oppose vouchers ever to change their position,” says Jeff Flake, executive director of the Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based group. “They’re in league with the unions.”

Given such mixed results so far, the future of choice is difficult to forecast. However, advocates are optimistic for many reasons.

The legislative assault by choice backers continues. “You’ll see even more aggressive choice legislation next session,” says Weston, director of state services for the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based bipartisan education-reform organization. “It takes awhile in each state for an issue to build critical mass.”

Jerry Hill, president of Landmark Legal Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri, which is helping defend the Wisconsin choice plan, says, “The [teachers’] unions are in a panic because they see that parents are not only demanding [reform] but now are influencing the legislative process.”

Also, polls on school choice show consistent majority support for the basic concept by the general public. A 1993 Empower America poll revealed that 62 percent of Americans favored choice among public schools.

School-choice support is broad-based. Because voucher architects so far have aimed programs only at low-income students, they also are capturing the support of more and more blacks and other ethnic minorities. An increasing number of business executives, concerned about the declining quality of the American workforce, are actively backing vouchers.

“Even where we’ve had bad legislation, choice still gets more than 50 percent support,” Weston says. “Now it’s just a question of increasing the coalition by another 5 percent to 10 percent.”

ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: Now that more students than ever will be covered by choice programs, “they have to prove they can make a difference” academically and socially, Weston says. He is confident they will.

“It needs to be driven home on an emotional level as well as intellectual, so that people can see the results,” says Allen. “But given that the education establishment usually asks us to wait ten years to see results from fads that have no basis, at least they could give us a couple of years with choice.”

There is little clear research that school choice in itself creates a better environment for learning. John Witte, a University of Wisconsin researcher, has conducted regular studies showing that the Milwaukee choice program, in its five years in operation, has not elevated the performance of participants above that of their peers in public schools. At the National Conference of State Legislatures convention in Milwaukee in July, Harvard University researchers reported the results of a two-year study of nine public and private choice plans. They found that vouchers had not increased academic performance or pressured public schools to reform.

Yet, the Harvard study also found that choice programs have made parents and children feel better about their schools and in more control about the education of the children.

CHURCH AND STATE: In June, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Virginia violated the free-speech rights of Christian students by refusing to allot money to their newspaper, while at the same time giving student-paid funds to a wide range of other organizations (CT, Aug. 14, 1995, p. 62).

The Institute for Justice’s Bolick says this ruling, Rosenberger v. the University of Virginia, is “the latest in an unbroken line of cases bolstering the support for educational options that include religious schools.” He says, “This was the first case to suggest that direct funding of religious activities is permissible so long as they’re included among a broad range of funded activities.”

“When you look at the First Amendment decisions coming out of this Court, I believe they’ll uphold voucher plans,” Hill says. “Most constitutional scholars now believe that.”

Yet opponents cite their own reasons for believing that the choice movement is not positioned as well as advocates believe.

In addition to the legal entanglement faced by Wisconsin’s program, choice foes note that the Puerto Rico Supreme Court last year declared a new voucher program implemented there unconstitutional (CT, April 25, 1994, p. 42). They assert that Rosenberger indicates a similar fate awaits state-choice laws in the U.S. Supreme Court.

Boston, of Americans United, says the Rosenberger decision contains clear language showing a majority of justices are very wary of using public money for religious purposes. He says different constitutional issues are involved because Rosenberger funds came from student activity fees, not tax revenues.

“Choice advocates think getting one plan approved by a court will be the end of it, but that actually will be only the beginning,” Boston predicts. “Then we’ll try to force private schools to accept every regulation that public schools do now: no religious preference, race, or gender requirements or academic skimming. And we’ll require hiring of teachers regardless of their religious background. Private schools won’t accept that.”

Hill, the choice legal advocate, concedes that entanglement is an unresolved issue, but it would not threaten the “unique religious character” of the institutions involved.

CONSENSUS ALTERNATIVE? Analysts on both sides also believe that, if charter schools continue to gain favor, they could become the consensus alternative to vouchers.

“Charter schools are a positive development,” says Kevin Teasley, vice president of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a Los Angeles—based conservative advocacy organization.

“But at the same time, they’re another way for the opposition to choice to stop the movement.”

Teachers’ unions are stressing reform more and more, and some analysts say that a truly new attitude also could take much of the steam out of the choice movement. “We’re moving to more dialogue and public engagement around these issues,” says the NEA’s Simmons. “Clearly we need to change the way we do things.”

But vouchers are one issue on which the educational establishment will not budge. As NEA president Keith Geiger said shortly after the defeat of California’s Proposition 174 in 1993, “We need to win everywhere, in every place, every time.”

“People simply haven’t wrapped their minds around the depth of the problem of social inertia,” says Quade. “That’s why I’ve always told people who want to sign up for choice that they have to be in it for the duration. We’ve just passed some small programs this year—after a 35-year try.”

Frederica Mathewes-Green directed the Real Choices research project and is currently director of communications for the National Women’s Coalition for Life. This article was adapted from her hook Real Choices: Offering Practical, Life-Affirming Alternatives to Abortion (Questar, ©1994).

Classic and contemporary excerpts

PRIDE’S OPPOSITE

Paul suggests something striking in his chapter on love: that the opposite of love is not hate, but pride.… Paul says two things that love is: patient and kind. Patience implies a hopeful contentment with the present rather than an agitated, proud indignation that I don’t yet have what I think I deserve. Kindness requires that I give of myself rather than expect something of others.

—John Boykin in The Gospel of Coincidence

THE VULNERABLE LEADER

The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her vulnerable self.

—Henri Nouwen in In the Name of Jesus

CIVILIZATION IN DECLINE

Two welfare mothers were charged with first degree murder in Miami. They left their children locked in a room and went out for a night on the town. The children got out and one of them drowned.… Bill Bennett tells the story of watching Oprah and seeing a single mother defend her active social life by saying that she needed a life. “In five minutes, I watched 5,000 years of civilization turned on its head.”

—Roberto Rivera in his “Daily News Summary” (Sept. 13, 1995)

SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE

God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own … by a corrupt church, a timid politician, and a fickle proletariat led by professional agitators.

—Dorothy L. Sayers in The Man Born to Be King

CHURCH SUPERSEDES INDIVIDUALISM

The elite culture is so wedded to individualism, choice, secularity and freedom from restraint that it cannot accept the fact that religions are communities that operate in and out of the political arena on shared moral beliefs.

As [Stephen] Carter writes, the churches are intermediate institutions (situated between the individual and the state) “to which citizens owe a separate allegiance.” Religion is a form of organized resistance to the state and culture. Its social and political function is to resist conventional wisdom on grounds of clear principle: “A religion is, at its heart, a way of denying the authority of the rest of the world.”

—John Leo, commenting on Stephen Carter’s The Culture of Disbelief, in U.S. News & World Report (Sept. 20, 1993)

ROOT OF ALL EVIL

Once the longing for money comes, the longing also comes for what money can give: superfluities, nice rooms, luxuries at table, more clothes, fans and so on. Our needs will increase, for one thing brings another, and the result will be endless dissatisfaction. This is how it comes.

—Mother Teresa in Jesus, the Word to Be Spoken

MIXED VALUES

For a little reward men make a long journey; for eternal life many will scarce lift a foot once from the ground.

—Thomas a Kempis in The Imitation of Christ

TRUE DEVOTION

He has not learned the nature of piety who thinks it too much to be pious in all his actions.

—William Law in A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life

GOD’S DEFENSE ATTORNEY

In my early years as a pastor I would have admitted there was much about God I didn’t know; in practice, though, I always felt I needed to have an answer when a grieving mother asked why God allowed a three-year-old to die, or an anguished student wanted to grasp the relationship between divine sovereignty and human freewill, or a teenager asked for an explanation of the Trinity. Too often this meant I assumed the role of God’s defense attorney, trying my best to bolster God’s public approval rating. Now I’m more likely to say, “I don’t know.” And I feel as though I’ve changed from a sway-back workhorse into a winged Pegasus; not having to carry the crushing weight of theological omniscience has been like the freedom of flight.

—Donald McCullough in The Trivialization of God

How To Fix A Mainline

Can the historic denominations be saved? Tony Campolo thinks so.

CAN MAINLINE DENOMINATIONS MAKE A COMEBACK?by Tony Campolo (Judson, 205 pp.; $15, paper). Reviewed by Robert W. Patterson, a minister of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and writer in Cincinnati. He formerly served on the staff of the National Association of Evangelicals.

Growing up in the Philadelphia area has disadvantages, evangelically speaking, when compared to Chicagoland or Southern California; but whatever the City of Brotherly Love lacks is compensated for by the indefatigable Tony Campolo, the quintessential evangelical personality, who has been a dominant presence in the region since the early 1970s. Like many youngsters raised in the Delaware Valley, I vividly remember Tony, as he is affectionately known, passionately stirring crowds of teenagers into following Christ at the Tabernacle in the former Methodist camp meeting, Ocean City, New Jersey—not to mention his more intimate moments as retreat speaker for my church youth group.

Campolo’s knack for reaching young people with his Don Rickies looks and humor has not dissipated over the years, but in becoming a national figure, he has played more the role of a prophet, warning Christians about the seductions of the American dream, turning their affections to the plight of the poor, and relentlessly smashing the shibboleths of the evangelical subculture—but also shooting frequently from the hip on matters theological and otherwise. That has not always endeared him to other evangelical leaders. His 1983 book, A Reasonable Faith (Word), led Bill Bright of Campus Crusade abruptly to cancel Tony’s appearance at a 1985 youth rally in Washington, D.C., and to his summoning before an ad hoc “heresy trial” arranged by the Christian Legal Society, at which he was acquitted of heresy but reproved for carelessness in his theological statements.

So leave it to Tony Campolo to tackle a subject that few others in academia, the ministry, or the media are willing to challenge: the conclusion, shared by conservatives and liberals alike and supported by volumes of sociological and demographic data, that the mainline Protestant denominations are on their deathbed. As a sociologist and minister, Tony is well aware of the mainline blues, but he answers his question Can Mainline Denominations Make a Comeback? with a resounding yes, believing that the historic church bodies are on the verge of a dramatic revitalization. Using his own denomination, the American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., as a case study, Tony concedes that a turnaround is not inevitable but suggests that if mainliners would just learn a few lessons from evangelicals, they could quickly return to the game as players in church and society.

By learning from evangelicals, Campolo does not mean adopting their message—especially not what he considers their conservative political baggage, with which the public, he alleges, is becoming increasingly disillusioned—but rather their method. He concedes that mainline churches for too long have ground a social ax at the expense of pastoral care and personal conversion. Unlike evangelicals, who have played the television age, the “culture of narcissism,” and the “culture wars” to their advantage, Campolo believes the mainline suffers from cultural lag, not being “structured to meet and relate to the kind of people whose consciousness and needs have been molded by social forces that have been playing themselves out since the beginning of the 1960s.”

The changes Campolo proposes are varied. He calls for downsizing of national denominational staffs, including the near elimination of programming bureaucracies; Christian education and youth ministry, he says, are far better served through the independent evangelical publishing houses and parachurch ministries like Young Life and InterVarsity. The sagging fortunes of denominational mission forces, he adds, might be revived through adopting the deputation system used by evangelical faith missions or a more selective earmarking of mission funds and causes at the local or regional level.

Some of his proposals appear to work against each other. Impressed with the lights shining on megachurches like Willow Creek Community Church in suburban Chicago, he calls for mainline leaders to follow suit, while simultaneously he calls for the development of house churches and discourages the construction of new church buildings. He urges his denomination to recruit the best and brightest for pastoral leadership, training them at one central megaseminary formed through a consolidation of several regional seminaries; yet, at the same time, he proposes lowering of ordination standards for minorities. To lessen tensions within pluralistic church bodies, he suggests a creative, although not altogether new, solution: a realignment of denominations where, for example, conservative American Baptist congregations would switch to Southern Baptist affiliation, and liberal Southern Baptists would switch to American Baptist, so that denominations would actually reflect shared commitments and values. At the same time, however, he seeks greater freedom and autonomy for congregations within denominations to deliberate on issues such as homosexuality and abortion.

Such unresolved contradictions may suggest that Campolo is just beginning to evaluate the issues, but they may also reflect the ambiguity that has haunted his thought over the years. Every bit as reflective of the Religious Left as Ralph Reed is of the Religious Right, Tony is a Mario Cuomo when it comes to what he calls the “hot issues.” Conceding that homosexuality is “contrary to what is normative in nature,” he then argues that churches have the right to receive homosexuals into full communion and even ordain them to the ministry. Whether he means repentant or proud homosexuals is not clear, either; when he refers to “the kind of homosexual acts that the Bible forbids,” does he intend to suggest there are some homosexual acts that the Bible does not forbid? The same evasiveness characterizes his discussion of abortion.

But the fatal flaw of Can Mainline Denominations Make a Comeback? is the author’s blind spot regarding the theological nature of the mainline problem. Because many individual American Baptist congregations have pastors who preach the Word faithfully to members who are solid evangelicals, Campolo assumes that the crisis in his denomination (and throughout the mainline) is not theological. Here he could have profited from the insights of another mainline minister, the Presbyterian John Leith, who identifies the root problem as “the loss of theological integrity and competence in the church’s witness,” or what he calls at a more basic level “a crisis of faith.” While Leith’s assessment does not apply to every mainline congregation, it clearly describes the systems that run the denominations and project their corporate witness.

Lacking this kind of theological analysis, Campolo ends up sounding like an influential Baptist of an earlier age, Harry Emerson Fosdick, who, relying heavily on sociology for guiding church life, called for greater tolerance and understanding between fundamentalists and liberals. While Fosdick had his way and the fundamentalists did not win, historians and theologians today are concluding that the Presbyterians’ failure to enforce theological commitments of church officers in the 1920s was the beginning of the end. Liberals ever since have loved talking out of both sides of their mouths. Now they are wondering why their denominations are turning into holding companies of historic buildings and half-filled sanctuaries.

Perhaps Campolo is too close to the problem to render objective judgment. Like a fossil from the 1960s, he clings to the liberal dream that has been discredited by the Reagan years, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Persian Gulf War, Richard John Neuhaus, Rush Limbaugh, Forrest Gump, and the 1994 elections. Consequently, he at times advances what First Things calls the Mainline Tale, interpreting declining numbers as a cost of “faithfulness.” Seemingly oblivious to the disasters of ecclesiastical gifts to the Communist party in the 1960s or feminist excesses in the 1990s, Campolo boldly proclaims “that history will attest to the fact that mainline churches did not ‘play chicken’ at a crucial time in American history.”

Despite his limitations, Tony Campolo deserves praise for seeking to influence a smaller community, like his own denomination, before influencing a larger community, like a nation. Not allowing declining memberships to obscure the strategic institutional, financial, and historical resources of the mainline churches, he has, unlike many evangelical leaders, directed his ministry and this book not simply to an abstract “evangelical community” but to a concrete reality, the structures and institutions of a national denomination. Notwithstanding the evangelical leaders who were unjustly thrown out of the mainline denominations, one wonders what would have happened had those who remained adopted, not a popular strategy of winning a nation, but a more focused, institutional strategy, as did conservative Southern Baptists in the 1980s. Maybe then Can Mainline Denominations Make a Comeback? would have enjoyed a wider hearing and seemed less like a rhetorical question.

Bonhoeffer In Love

Letters from 1943 to 1945 between the theologian and his fiancée reveal the other half of a costly discipleship

LOVE LETTERS FROM CELL 92,edited by Ruth-Alice von Bismarck and Ulrich Kabitz (Abingdon, 368 pp.; $24.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Wendy Murray Zoba.

Wait with me, I beg you! Let me embrace you long and tenderly, let me kiss you and love you and stroke the sorrow from your brow. No, this is not an excerpt from a Harlequin romance. These are the impassioned longings of the champion of radical discipleship himself, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as he wrote from a Nazi prison camp to his young fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer.

These sentiments—and more like them—written during his imprisonment from 1943 to 1945 present a new aspect of Bonhoeffer, showing him to be surprisingly amorous, but in a way altogether consistent with his theology of costly grace. Such love for Maria was “costly” because Bonhoeffer was forced to relinquish it; it was “grace,” because after 37 years of heady bachelorhood, he tasted of the wellspring of romantic possibility.

Maria von Wedemeyer has been duly acknowledged as the true love of the gifted German theologian. But never before have Bonhoeffer’s devotees been given such a glimpse of the force of this relationship and the passion this man felt, and sublimated, during his hard years in prison.

He loved her, longed for her, and she for him. And the tenderness and optimism behind this collection of letters is what drives the book. The reader languishes with them as week after week, unto months, unto years, the couple anticipates the time when they will sit together on the couch at Pätzig (Maria’s family estate) and hold hands. The reader also knows the tragic ending to this tale, while the writers themselves do not. A constant theme echoes throughout: “Don’t get tired and depressed, my dearest Dietrich, it won’t be much longer now.”

Maria entrusted this collection of letters to her sister, Ruth-Alice von Bismarck, just prior to her death in 1977. For years before that, Maria would not allow the letters to be published. Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s close friend and biographer, writes in the postscript: “I had resigned myself to never seeing this correspondence.”

It took the subsequent 15 years for von Bismarck to complete the task of sequentially collating the correspondence (and supplemental diary entries), with the aid of Ulrich Kabitz, who added the necessary footnotes and historical data. Consolidating such fragmented, at times incomplete, material into a coherent narrative was no simple task. But, overall, it works: the reader is pulled right into the drama and tedium that these two lovers experienced during their years of waiting and hoping.

One of the most refreshing dimensions of this book is the marvelous picture it paints of Maria, a personality quite distinct and in many ways contradictory to Bonhoeffer’s. She took great interest in the minutiae of bourgeois trivialities—“I hate sideboards, and really decent cupboards are quite unobtainable”—while church missionary meetings bored her to tears. For that matter, she had little patience for theology: “Theology strikes me as an incomprehensible discipline.… I always get the feeling that it’s seeking an intellectual explanation for what is quite simply a question of faith.” (She adds at the end of that letter: “you mustn’t think I disapprove of your work.”) One is tempted to wonder how the champion of single-minded obedience could have fallen for a woman whose priorities were so different from his own.

But the reader is stopped short. Woven into the narrative are glimpses of Maria that betray an extraordinary resolve, discipline, and effervescence. Within the course of only a few months in 1942, Maria lost both her father and her brother in the war. Still, she kept her spirits up for Bonhoeffer’s sake. For his first Christmas in prison, she brought a formidable Christmas tree for his cell, creating “great hilarity with the guards and Dietrich.” She tirelessly addressed Bonhoeffer’s every conceivable want or need: “In front of me, lit by your candles,” he wrote to her, “stands the little Madonna you gave me.… Behind it are the open texts with the ‘praying hands’ [you gave me] … on their right, your photos lying open in the case you made for me. Just above them hangs your Advent wreath, and behind me on the edge of the bed I’ve laid out the gloves you made for me, the books you chose for me.… On my wrist is the watch [your] Father was wearing when he died, which you gave me, brought me, and strapped on my wrist yourself. You’re all around me, Maria.”

Over time, their correspondence became more tortured. Hope faded. But a fellow prisoner recalled that Bonhoeffer “never tired of repeating that ‘no battle is lost until it has been given up for lost.’ ”

After his death, Maria moved to the United States, where she carved out a successful career in mathematics and computer technology. She also married and divorced, twice. One wonders what would have become of her marriage to Bonhoeffer.

But it is a moot point. This book is about a love that was never to be fulfilled, adding color and depth to our picture of Bonhoeffer. Maria’s hand, like everything else in his short life, remained just beyond his reach. Even so, he could write to her: “Above all let us be careful not to feel sorry for ourselves; to do so would truly be a blasphemy on God, who means us well. For all our difficulties, let us say with Isaiah: ‘Do not destroy it, for there is blessing in it.’ ”