What my patients have taught me about dealth—and life—by permitting me to be with them at the end.

Mrs. Anna Velosian’s daughter calls me to say that the cancer on her mother’s neck is bleeding heavily. I leave my office to make a house call on the 88-year-old Armenian woman. Her daughter meets me in the kitchen, and her mother is sitting on the sofa. Mrs. Velosian stands to greet me; she is four feet eight inches and now weighs 85 pounds. Ten years ago, she decided that she didn’t want us to treat the slow-growing cancer on her thyroid. But Mrs. Velosian’s cancer has recently grown into a tumor the size of a billiard ball. I remove the bandage and see that the white, glistening tumor has grown right through the skin. There is a red, open patch the size of a quarter. There are no visible bleeding vessels.

Mrs. Velosian’s daughter shows me the bedroom. Blood stains the pillows, the sheets, even the mattress. I return to Mrs. Velosian. She gives me a big smile. “How are you?” I ask. She is hard of hearing, but she knows what to say. She always says the same thing to her doctor. “Fine,” she says. “Fine.” And I see the cross on her wall and I remember her life story and I think, yes, you will be fine. You are fine now and you will be finer. And I call the home hospice nurse, and I tell the daughter to call relatives, because it will not be long before Mrs. Anna Velosian will be going home to be with Jesus.

In many ways, my patient’s stories are more interesting than my own—more poignant, more dangerous. Their stories have been full of lessons for me.

Seeing Mrs. Velosian reminds me that life has a tenacious dignity. Despite the cynicism with which we doctors guard ourselves, this dignity often takes us aback. The Down’s syndrome child, the patient with Alzheimer’s, the elderly person, and, if we look at the ultrasound, the unborn baby, all have dignity. Dignity is intertwined with life itself.

I also realize, however, that it is ultimately God who gives dignity to Mrs. Velosian and the patients I see. In Isaiah, the prophet speaks for God: “Listen to me … all you who remain of the house of Israel, you whom I have upheld since you were conceived, and have carried since your birth. Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he … who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you” (46:3–5, NIV).

A Navajo man, Mr. Albert Tsosie, is dying of diabetic kidney disease. He has been on dialysis, but he has developed an abdominal infection. His heart is failing. His wife and sister are at his bedside. I am writing notes in the nurses’ station of the small hospital on the Navajo reservation. I will return to his room in a few minutes, I think, and find him dead.

But I am wrong. I enter the room just as he is taking his last breath. I am there to witness it. He has been declining for days, his serum chemistries rising, his vital signs slipping. Now as I stand in the doorway to his room I think death has moved in just ahead of me, sliding past me through the door.

The Navajo man’s eyes are turned away. The room is still. Death pulls him away, and I turn toward his family. I begin to speak of his disease and his death. But even as I try to talk to Mr. Tsosie’s wife and sister, I see an amazing thing. At the moment they perceive his death, they physically turn away from him in horror and fear. And they will not speak of him again. For the traditional Navajo, death is the ultimate void.

What I see points me to a second lesson: We are not thankful or grateful enough for life, and we do not fear death enough.

God has given life dignity, but death is just a breath away. We can learn from the traditional Navajos, who recognize that without the hope of an afterlife, death is greatly to be feared. The Navajo knows enough to turn away from the dead in horror, even from a family member like Mr. Tsosie. Why? Because life is good and death is bad.

When I treat a patient who gets better, when the patient’s heart disease or hypertension or cancer responds, I am happy. But I am never flippant. Death will beat me. Death beats every doctor, and it drives us wild, makes us crazy. Death is always going into Mr. Tsosie’s room just ahead of me, always stealing the victory from me. So be it. The Scriptures tell us that Christ, not the doctor, has conquered death.

Mrs. Iona Christiansen suffered brain damage from a lack of oxygen caused by cardiac arrest. She was being taken care of by her husband at home. A dutiful caregiver, he washed, turned, and fed her. He did have home health aides coming to assist him daily, but the brunt of the care fell on him.

Mr. Christiansen felt good about his role as a caregiver, reasoning that during his working life his wife had cared for their children with little help from him, and now he was returning the favor. He had been taking care of her for about a year when I began making house calls.

The house calls were clinically indicated because he had to call an ambulance for transport and because, although Mrs. Christiansen could follow you with her eyes, she was unable to communicate. She did not require tube feeding, but her meals were long and laborious. Sometimes Mr. Christiansen or the aide would take over an hour to feed her. A year passed. Feeding became more difficult. It became clear that Mrs. Christiansen was dying.

One morning she began to have irregular respirations. Mr. Christiansen sounded frightened on the phone. I left the clinic, went over to the house, and spent some time there. Nothing more could be done for his wife; she was not in pain, and she was dying peacefully. I gave Mr. Christiansen a hug. His wife died three hours later.

Sitting in a pew at her funeral, I hear testimony of her love for God and for life before she was stricken. And I realize anew that Christians are not promised eternal life in our earthly, biological sphere—my third lesson.

This means that even though we value life we are not obligated to prolong human life endlessly here on earth. Mrs. Velosian refused aggressive treatment for her cancer, and she lived many trouble-free years before it began to grow wildly. The cancer took her life, but she was able to die at home. Mrs. Christiansen received aggressive supportive care at home, but died despite all the loving ministrations of her husband. The Christian is not obligated to go to heaven after two weeks on the respirator in the hospital.

Honoring life does not mean we must insist on all forms of treatment for all people at all times. That is honoring technology. That is the technological imperative. But God is sovereign. He determines the span of our lives. When doctors write down a phone number on a patient’s chart it is not just to communicate lab results or bug the forgetful about missed appointments. Sometimes we have to use the phone number to call with bad news. God is the only one who can really give eternal life.

And because we are not promised eternal life on earth, we have no right to procrastinate in the living of our lives. We do not own them.

We are like the man whose doctor called him and said, “I have bad news for you.”

“What’s the news?”

“Well, you have 24 hours to live.”

“That is bad news,” the man said.

“I have even worse news,” the doctor says.

“What could be worse than that?”

“Well, I tried to call you yesterday.”

This story is something of a retelling of Jesus’ parable about the rich man who was going to ignore God and build bigger barns before God called him and said, I have bad news.

This is also the message implicit in Ecclesiastes 12:1–6, with its counsel to “remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come.” Because life is dignified, we prepare for its passing. And when life ends, we marvel at its passing, and we look up to God, who gave it so miraculously, and receives it back so mysteriously. But in the meantime, we honor God today; we do not shrink from choosing that which has ultimate, lasting value.

At the end of Mrs. Christensen’s funeral, I stir at the back of the church. I think of all the lessons I have learned from my patients over the years. They have taught me much about death—and life—just by permitting me to be with them at the end. I think I will slip out quietly now, finished with my funeral charting, my musing, my elegy of life. I expect to find the shadow of death outside, but again I am wrong. God has gone on ahead of me, as he goes on ahead of each of us, if we will. And when I step through the door, the sun shines brightly. The air moves with a fresh wind. The day is full of promise.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Historian of the ancient world Edwin Yamauchi examines the power struggles, guerrilla publishing, and bizarre interpretations of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are making headlines once again. Publications as diverse as Time, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times have run major articles on these ancient texts. Even a supermarket tabloid printed claims that the scrolls forecast a modern “nuclear disaster [that] will leave millions dead or homeless” and include “eye-popping predictions for top celebrities like Kevin Costner and Madonna.”

It is not the first time the scrolls have captured the attention of the world. After they were discovered in a cave by a Bedouin shepherd boy in 1946 and publicized in 1947, renowned archaeologist William Foxwell Albright called the scrolls “the greatest manuscript discovery in modern times.”

Scholars found other caves in the Qumran area near the Dead Sea that would eventually yield thousands of scrolls or fragments. The richest repository was Cave IV with some 15,000 fragments representing over 500 texts. Not only was every book of the Old Testament except Esther represented in the scrolls, scores of other documents shed light on the religious crosscurrents of Palestine in Jesus’ day. Strange new theories linking Jesus to the Essenes, the apocalyptic Jewish sect believed by most to have gathered the scrolls, also caught the notice of many.

Now, decades later, the scrolls still spark controversy in scholarly circles and whet the curiosity of Christians (CT, Jan. 13, 1992, p. 36). To learn more about the significance for today of these millenniaold documents, CT turned to Edwin Yamauchi, CT senior editor and professor of history at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Harper’s World of the New Testament, and coeditor of the forthcoming Peoples of the Old Testament World (Baker).

Why have the popular media shown such intense interest in the scrolls?

Much of the intrigue has centered on clashes between scholars. The wrangling has been fueled largely by the long delay in publishing some of the scrolls. These are strong, colorful personalities who have scholarly reputations at stake. Those in the inner circle—the so-called official committee—have been at odds with those who have been excluded until recently from examining many of the scrolls. The monopoly on the Cave IV fragments maintained by the official committee—and the publication delay of over 30 years—has long frustrated scholars. The media sensed a story there. Then, late in 1990, John Strugnell, a Catholic scrolls scholar at Harvard, was dismissed as the head of the international translation team for alcoholism and anti-Semitic remarks.

How has the control of the official committee been challenged?

The monopoly was recently broken through several separate, but not entirely unrelated, events. First was the culmination of a crusade to release unpublished texts launched in 1983 by Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review and organizer of the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS). In September 1991, BAS published A Preliminary Edition of the Unpublished Dead Sea Scrolls, reconstituted by Ben-Zion Wacholder of Hebrew Union College and his graduate student Martin Abegg. They used a handwritten concordance of the unpublished scrolls and a Macintosh computer to reconstruct the documents. The result of this remarkable feat was denounced as a “bootlegged” publication by the official scrolls committee.

Then, after a dispute between a wealthy patron, Elizabeth Bechtel, and the librarian at Claremont, California’s Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, Bechtel deposited a second set of scroll photos at the Huntington Library in San Marino near Pasadena. In September 1991, Huntington’s new librarian, William Moffet, made these photos available to all scholars. This was highly controversial.

Finally, in December 1991, BAS published another set of 1,787 photos, whose source remains mysterious, in a two-volume facsimile edition, edited by Robert Eisenman and James Robinson. Elisha Qimron, a professor at Ben Gurion University in Israel, sued Hershel Shanks and others involved for publishing without permission his reconstruction of one of the important texts.

This series of events coming rapidly in the fall of 1991 aroused a fever pitch of interest, not only among scholars, but in the broader media.

Some publications have alleged that intrigue and secrecy surround the scrolls.

Some writers have even suggested conspiracies. These theories are bizarre. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh argue in The Dead Sea Scrolls Deception that there was a Roman Catholic conspiracy to suppress the scrolls because many of the early scholars were Catholic. The idea is that the Vatican is guarding revelations that would challenge traditional views of early Christianity. That is quite nonsensical. They also erroneously claimed that 75 percent (rather than 20 percent) of the texts were unpublished. It is true that the closely guarded monopoly, the secrecy, and the limited access to the Cave IV scrolls and fragments aroused resentment and chagrin among excluded scholars. But conspiracy theories don’t stand up.

At any rate, we’re at a second stage now. The question of who should and shouldn’t have access to the texts has become moot. People may disagree whether it was a good or bad thing, but now the scrolls are available, and there’s no turning back the clock.

What do you think of the bizarre theories about Jesus that have grown out of the Qumran discoveries?

The most notorious example comes from Great Britain’s John Marco Allegro. He was chosen in 1953 to serve on the first international committee entrusted with the Cave IV materials. He had originally studied for the Methodist ministry, but soon abandoned any pretensions of faith and in numerous books did his best to overthrow Christianity. In 1970 Allegro left the University of Manchester and published a bizarre book, The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. He claimed that the name Jesus meant “Semen, which saves” and that Peter’s name meant “mushroom,” thus revealing that Christianity was originally a disguised fertility cult centered on a hallucinogenic mushroom. Allegro’s fullest book on the subject of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Christianity was a work that was released posthumously in 1992, The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.

Then there’s Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992), by Barbara Thiering, a professor at Sydney University in Australia. Thiering concludes that since the Qumran literature and the New Testament emanated from different wings of a single community, the latter should be read as a highly symbolic code.

According to Thiering, Jesus was born near Qumran, and the Magi were diaspora Essenes. She also argues that when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he was releasing Simon Magus from Cave IV at Qumran. Jesus was crucified along with Simon Magus and Judas at Qumran, after Jesus was given snake poison that rendered him unconscious. Simon Magus administered aloe and myrrh, which purged Jesus of the poison. Jesus married Mary Magdalene, who bore a daughter and two sons. After a divorce, Jesus later married Lydia of Philippi, a female bishop. Jesus accompanied Paul, the author of the Qumran’s Habakkuk Commentary, when he traveled to Rome. It was there that Jesus died of old age.

Scholars like Thiering have abandoned orthodox Christianity as a viable option, so they seize on new evidence, which they develop into an idiosyncratic, revisionist theory. They have a peculiar conceit that they alone have the truth about the origins and nature of primitive Christianity, truth that evaded all other generations.

What do we know about the keepers of the scrolls?

Most scholars associate the scrolls and the Qumran settlement with the sect of the Essenes described by Philo, Josephus, and Pliny the Elder. There are some 50 parallels and only six discrepancies between their descriptions of the Essenes and what we find in the Qumran Scrolls. The Essenes, who were more separatist than the Pharisees, had two related groups—married Essenes who lived in the towns and celibate males who lived in a “monastery” by the Dead Sea.

The community probably originated in the second century B.C. There’s a clear date for the destruction of the community in A.D. 68, when the Romans destroyed the site of Qumran. Some of the scrolls predate the community. A text of Exodus, for example, has been dated to 250 B.C.

Why are the scrolls important to Christians?

Prior to the Qumran discovery, our oldest Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament came from the Middle Ages. While we had thousands of papyri from ancient Egypt and a half-million cuneiform tablets and inscriptions from Mesopotamia, we had nothing comparable from Palestine. Now we have thousands of fragments representing many manuscripts, especially Old Testament manuscripts. There could always have been some question of how accurately the biblical manuscripts were copied. But because one of the Dead Sea Scrolls is a complete book of Isaiah from about 100 B.C., just to give one example, it is clear that the medieval manuscript of Isaiah and its predecessors were copied with exceptional care. On the basis of the Qumran Isaiah scroll, the Revised Standard Version (1952) team made only 13 minor changes in Isaiah.

The scrolls have also opened a flood of light on the background of Jesus and his disciples. Here is an example: Liberal New Testament scholarship once argued that the unmodified New Testament use of the phrase Lord for Jesus was a Hellenistic intrusion not native to Palestine. And New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann argued that it was unthinkable for Jews to have used such a phrase for God, further undercutting the Jewishness of belief in the divinity of Christ. The scrolls prove that Jews around Jesus’ time used such terms in both Hebrew and Aramaic, and that Paul’s use of the phrase Lord Jesus goes back to an early Palestinian Jewish confession. John’s gospel, once considered by critics to be late and Hellenistic because of its dualism between light and darkness, is now shown by the Qumran parallels to be the most Jewish of the Gospels.

What would you say to those who fear “bombshells” in future scroll research that might discredit conservative Christian belief?

There is a story about John Allegro, originator of the “mushroom” theory. Upon learning of John Strugnell’s interest in a career in theology, Allegro wrote, “By the time I’ve finished, there won’t be any church left for you to join.”

Time has proven such claims ludicrous. Noted scroll authority James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary has said, “None of the fragments known to me and others who work on them can be judged in any way to disprove the essential claims of the Christian faith.”

The scrolls actually help us to better understand and appreciate Jesus. First, they point us to the Jewishness of Jesus, to things he had in common with other Jews of his time, including the Jews at Qumran. Second, they underline his uniqueness. When we study the Qumran community and their quasimessianic figure, the Teacher of Righteousness, we discover that there are many more contrasts than similarities between Jesus and that figure (see CT, May 13, 1966, pp. 12–14).

Contrasts between Jesus and the Essenes abound. The Qumran community emphasized hatred of outsiders, while Jesus preached love even for one’s enemies. The Qumran community excluded those who were lame, blind, or blemished, because the Essenes were concerned about ritual purity and Qumranites considered themselves all to be priests. (Jewish law specified temple priests must have no deformities.) Jesus, on the other hand, welcomed those who were infirm and healed them. When it came to the Sabbath and other laws, the Qumran community placed an extreme emphasis on purity, exceeding even that of the Pharisees. Christ, however, broke with legalistic interpretations of the law and stressed instead the spiritual intention, which is purity within.

The Essenes expected two messiahs and a final battle between the agents of good and of evil. Unlike Christianity, however, when this community was destroyed in A.D. 68, we hear absolutely nothing further about the group. That is in striking contrast to the Christian church. Christianity was involved in the same political, economic, and social circumstances, but managed nonetheless not only to survive, but to grow and to expand.

One major difference, of course, was that Christians believed fervently and firmly that their Messiah had risen from the dead and was coming back again. In spite of the controversies and bizarre interpretations of recent decades, nothing in the scrolls need lead us to question that.

Loren Wilkinson is the writer/editor of Earthkeeping in the ’90s (Eerdmans) and the coauthor, with his wife, Mary Ruth Wilkinson, of Caring for Creation in Your Own Backyard (Servant). He teaches at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

As L.A. and other urban areas simmer with racial tension, many Christians ask, “What does the church have to offer?” The past two decades have seen countless multiracial prayer breakfasts, pulpit exchanges, and formal declarations of reconciliation. Evangelical Christians can point to many places where blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians are worshiping and ministering in harmony and as equals.

Despite these attempts, however, Christians remain as racially separated as the rest of society. It is still true that 11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. It is a costly separation. When African Americans speak frankly to their white counterparts, they express deep hostility and frustration. They feel angry, hurt, and betrayed by what they see as society’s and the church’s failure.

Many white Christians are bewildered by these strong feelings. They wonder what nonwhites want. Many white evangelicals do not feel they are racist, and they say they very much want for all colors to be united in their faith. Writes Jay Kesler in his foreword to William Pannell’s book The Coming Race Wars?, “Frankly, I thought we were doing better.”

Yet black anger is an undeniable reality. So are the economic facts of life for African Americans. While many middle-class blacks have improved their situation, their experience is not the norm. As a group, African Americans are, by some economic measures, worse off now than at the height of the civil-rights movement. For instance, the unemployment rate for blacks in the late sixties averaged 7 percent, but in 1990 it was 11 percent (comparable figures for whites are 3 percent and 4 percent). Today, nearly one in four black men between 20 and 29 years old is in prison, paroled, or on probation; 9 percent of whites and 32 percent of blacks are poor; the infant mortality rate for blacks is twice that of whites; whites live, on average, six years longer than blacks.

Clearly, the racial divide is a grievous problem for America—and for the church (whose reputation is tarnished by a history of racial splits within its institutions).

The frustration goes beyond statistics. African Americans describe daily humiliations in the most mundane situations.

One black executive within a mostly white evangelical organization tells how she recently was told her teenage son can’t date a white colleague’s daughter. A black evangelical family recounts moving into a new house in DeKalb County outside Atlanta. Within a week their white neighbors on either side put up their homes for sale. For every positive statement about race by church leaders, there are countless painful incidents on buses, in classrooms, hallways, board-rooms, and churches.

Black leaders warn that we could be at a point of no return. Writes Spencer Perkins in More Than Equals: “A new phenomenon is growing among blacks who are frustrated with the reality of integration: a call for black separation.” Pannell writes in The Coming Race Wars?, “Ultimately, the [nonwhite] church in the city will have to go it alone.”

If this were to happen—if black and white Christians were to grow permanently, angrily separated—what would God’s people have to offer to a racially torn world?

Racial complexity

Only to look at black-white problems is, of course, too simple. Richard Rodriguez, a leading California essayist, says, “The Kerner Commission Report’s conclusion in 1968 that there were two nations in the U.S., one black, one white, separate and unequal, simply does not fit today.” With the explosion of the Latino population, who by the year 2010 will outnumber blacks, and the great influx of Asian immigrants, America’s racial situation has become much more complex—and more urgent. Both whites and blacks face new, bewildering ethnic diversity that they cannot avoid.

It is also true that nonwhites have their own racist attitudes to work out. Koreans and Latinos have well-documented racist attitudes toward African Americans. Blacks carry negative stereotypes of Koreans (as witnessed in last year’s L.A. riots) and are participating in black flight from communities turning increasingly brown or yellow in cities such as L.A. and Chicago. Their response parallels that of whites who fled neighborhoods when blacks began to move in.

In this CT Institute, however, we have deliberately focused on white-black relations. These groups have the longest and most complex history in the U.S. church. Unless they can resolve their differences, there is little hope for reconciling ethnic groups that have less shared experience.

Hearing voices

We asked 41 African-American Christian leaders—most of them evangelicals—to address the white evangelical community. We asked them, “What do you want your white evangelical brothers and sisters to hear right now?” A selection of those responses are excerpted below. We also collected selections from recent books by black church leaders for narratives and insights to illustrate why African-American Christians feel such anger and frustration.

White readers, we suspect, may be tempted to find reasons to discount these statements. The words are personal and emotional, strong and shocking. Some are hopeful, but most are angry.

The dynamics between blacks and whites are in many ways similar to those of an estranged couple. Often the problem is not some single tension-causing incident but lies with a pattern of behavior. If one of the parties consistently feels rejected or ignored, then something is certainly wrong. Rebutting the angry emotions may not help. Sometimes, as in marriage counseling, it is necessary first simply to listen long and hard—and not to interrupt with objections. Then, after the message is heard, we can go on to ask, “What can I do to make this better?” In this institute we invite our readers to listen.

Andrés Tapia is a senior news writer for Christianity Today. Research for this project was partially funded by a grant from Religion News Service.

Something Is Wrong at the Root

John Perkins, founder of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development, and publisher of Urban Family magazine.

Something is wrong at the root of American evangelicalism. I believe we have lost the focus of the gospel—God’s reconciling power, which is unique to Christianity—and have substituted church growth. We have learned to reproduce the church without the message. It is no longer a message that transforms.

It reminds me of the white Christian sailor in Roots who went on a slave cargo ship to earn enough money to get married. The church-growth philosophy of homogeneity is a heresy that, like that young sailor, has sacrificed principle for expediency. That approach has encouraged the separation of the church rather than reconciliation with God, each other, and the world—which is the church’s mission. There is no biblical basis for a black, white, Hispanic, or Asian church.

I wish the church could come to grips with its mission: to repent and turn to the poor. Jeremiah proclaimed this message through tears. We need some living examples to stand up and be willing to accept the persecution that goes with preaching this message. But I know that as with Jeremiah, those receiving the message will want to brand the messenger “angry” so they don’t have to hear what he or she says.

Separate Vacations

Kay Coles James, executive vice-president of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., and the author of Never Forget (Zondervan).

I became involved in a women’s Bible study that met once a week at a white church. One of the highlights of the year was a trip to Myrtle Beach with the families of the women in our study. All year long references to the annual family beach trip were dropped into conversation. I had heard so many stories about the fun times they had together that I was really looking forward to going. But we were never invited. As summer drew near, I overheard women making arrangements for shared beach houses, but the conversation would die down whenever I came near. The group left for the beach without us, and I was crushed. I’d never felt so betrayed and rejected.

Eventually embarassment and hurt died down enough for me to ask one day in Bible study why Charles and I weren’t included in the beach trip. An uncomfortable silence fell upon the room. “Well, Kay, we just felt that—well, you know that there aren’t very many black people at Myrtle Beach … and we just thought you would be uncomfortable.” They were concerned about us? Didn’t they see the irony? It took all my courage to read our Scripture verse out loud before the group, but I wanted to say something else. I did. “I guess I thought that if we wouldn’t be accepted at a certain vacation spot, that you would choose another one rather than leave us out.” Nothing more was ever said about it.

Silent Whites, Dying Blacks

Hycel Taylor, senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Evanston, Illinois.

For us, as an African-American people, we have to ask some serious questions. What’s going wrong with us? Not so much in relationship to white people, but in relation to ourselves. What’s so stigmatic in our minds that we have now turned on ourselves and begun to kill each other, where now we become our own lynch mobs? We’re looking at genocide so insidious that if we quantified the dying of African Americans just for 24 hours across this nation, we’d need to call for a state of national emergency. We’re dying of AIDS; we’re dying of hypertension; we’re dying as stillborn babies; we’re dying from drugs.

What’s happening to white America? How can it be that a David Duke would rise to any semblance of power in this country today? As Martin Luther King quoted, “All you need for evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing.” Will the white church be silent as these things occur?

Is it possible for the races to rise above their differences and yet not ignore the diversity? Yes, we can. And we can do it because Christ is in our lives, and Christ rises above all of us.

The Issue Is Sin

Robert Suggs, academic vice-president at Grand Rapids Baptist College.

When I pastored an urban black church in Rochester, I frequently got a particular kind of call from the white pastors in the area. They would say, “We have the name of a family you might be interested in.”

Invariably, when I followed up on the referral, it was a black family that had visited the white church. The white pastors who called me often assumed the black family had come to their church by accident, or that they would not feel comfortable there. But these families often told me they had gone to the church because it was in their neighborhood and that they had not requested a referral to a black church.

It’s distressing that white evangelicals seem unable to see the reason for the troubled relationship with their African-American counterparts. Why is there an estranged relationship between these two groups that agree with each other in the fundamentals of Scripture and basic lifestyle issues? It is, quite frankly, sin.

It is clear to many African-American evangelicals that their white counterparts are operating under a redefinition of sin. It’s a redefinition that does not see as sin that few African-American students and educators can be found at our nation’s approximately one hundred Christian colleges and Bible schools; that does not see as sin congregations leaving their urban neighborhoods and their unsaved residents in an effort to pursue homogenous groupings; that does not see as sin the persistent reality of 11 o’clock Sunday morning being the most segregated hour in America. The evangelical church has never repented of these historical, social, and personal sins of racism. To a large degree, it continues the practices, but now more subtly and in many situations, not at a conscious level. It is time to put the past behind us and to repent of the sins of all of our fathers and for the indulgences and insensitivities of our own lives.

You Can’t Dismiss Martin Luther King

Dale Jones, executive director of Quest Atlanta ’96, a multiracial ministry serving the community and visitors for the 1994 Super Bowl and the 1996 Olympic Games.

Martin Luther King, Jr., continues to be suspect among white evangelicals because of his education in liberal seminaries. What many whites don’t realize is that conservative Christian colleges barred blacks from attending their schools for decades, leaving African Americans who felt a calling into the ministry with few options. The liberal seminaries were the ones that opened the doors to them. Martin Luther King spoke prophetically about America and gave his life up to seek a Christian ethic in this land. If African Americans who love Christ honor King, then for whites to dismiss him is to disrespectfully dismiss the judgment of a whole group within evangelicalism.

Needed: An At-risk Gospel

Cecil “Chip” Murray, senior pastor, First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles. Murray’s 10,000-member church was the focal point of relief efforts during last year’s L.A. riots and was named one of President Bush’s Points of Light.

White evangelicals need an at-risk gospel for at-risk people in an at-risk society. Calling sinners to repentance means also calling societies and structures to repentance—economic, social, educational, corporate, political, religious structures. Why is the neighborhood church not doing nightly patrols of its own neighborhood, where illicit drugs are sold? Why are we not housing the homeless whose sleeping forms we step over to gain admittance to our churches? Where are our prison ministries, our substance abuse or mentoring or ethnic crossover or counseling ministries? Why are we not more at risk?

Personal salvation is never divorced from social salvation because personal sin is never divorced from social sin. The gospel at once works with the individual and the individual’s society: to change one, we of necessity must change the other. Even as the individual makes bad decisions, so do their decisions result in part from decisions made by a bad society.

Hitting Bottom

Dolphus Weary, director of Mendenhall Ministries in Mississippi and the author of I Ain’t Coming Back (Renaissance), from which this was adapted.

Things hit bottom one day when somebody at the mostly white Christian college I was attending came up and told me, “Martin Luther King got shot!”

“What?” I cried. “You’re kidding!” I ran to my room and flipped on the radio. The newscasters were talking about it. I was devastated.

As I sat there on my bed, I overheard voices down the hall, talking about it—talking about how glad they were that Martin Luther King had been shot! What am I hearing? I wondered, incredulously. What is this? I thought this was a Christian school, and here are these kids talking about how glad they are that Martin Luther King has been shot!

This went on for a while. My first impulse was to rush out and confront them. These kids were sick! Furthermore, I believed that by laughing at Martin Luther King, they were laughing at me, and at all the other millions of black people that Martin Luther King spoke of. But I resisted that. I needed to get control. I felt nauseated. I was hurt, disillusioned, and angry.

Then the report came: “Martin Luther King has died in a Memphis hospital.” A cheer erupted from the group down the hall.

I’m Pessimistic

Glandion Camey, associate director of the missions department of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

I am very pessimistic. So much has been written on this topic, but when are we going to come together and not argue the issue and simply do what the Bible says, to do what is right regarding the issue of racial prejudice?

I’m tired of questions about this. I see no outcome, no real dealing with the issues, or doing what has been decided needs to be done. There has been very little fruit from the pledges of racial reconciliation made by evangelical groups, such as the National Association of Evangelicals and other major Christian Carney agencies. These organizations continue to be white in their structure and avoid issues that concern the cities.

Nothing has come from our great words. We seem always to fall short of being able to walk together as brothers and sisters. I am not hopeful, even though I want to be.

No Substitute for Love

Morris E. Jones, Sr., church planter and pastor of Immanuel Evangelical Baptist Church, Indianapolis, Indiana.

I believe many white evangelicals have an intellectual understanding of agape love, but lack heart knowledge of it. There seems to be right theology and the right religious works, but they do not understand that there is no substitute for love. Love must be practiced! Matthew 5:14 says: “You are the light of the world,” referring to believers. White evangelicals have done little or nothing to help America heal the wound of racism. A dying world needs to see this light instead of seeing Christians just doing what is best for their own race.

Integration Versus Reconciliation

Spencer Perkins, editor-in-chief of Urban Family magazine. He lives in an intentional biracial Christian community in Jackson, Mississippi.

I fear that many whites assume that racial reconciliation is something blacks want from whites. It may surprise most white evangelicals to learn that black Christians are no more interested in working toward racial reconciliation than white Christians. Blacks are interested in eliminating racial injustice, in confronting racism, and in ensuring that the playing field is level, but going out of our way to build the cross-cultural relationships necessary for racial reconciliation does not evoke those same passions.

Whites also should not confuse racial reconciliation with integration. Integration was a political pursuit that could only be taken so far. You can’t make someone accept you as a brother or sister. All you can do legally is make it against the law for them to discriminate against you. Reconciliation, on the other hand, is spiritual and must be approached as such. Somewhere we’ve got this notion that reconciliation is optional—that it is okay for us to witness to the unbelieving world a gospel that is too weak to bridge racial barriers.

The evidence of our love for God is in our love for our neighbor. It then becomes very important to consider the answer that Jesus gave to the question “And who is my neighbor?” He didn’t just say the people of your neighborhood or the people who look like you. He told the story of the Good Samaritan.

In choosing a Samaritan, Jesus was saying that our neighbors are especially those people whom we have the most difficulty loving. It does not take much practical application to determine who Jesus would use as “neighbor” if he were talking to blacks and whites in the U.S.

For centuries, we have announced proudly to the rest of the world that Jesus (and our Christianity) is the answer for the world. Maybe we should add a disclaimer that says, “with the exception of race and culture.”

We Have Nothing to Show the World

Cheryl J. Sanders, associate professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and associate pastor for leadership development, Third Street Church of God, Washington, D.C.

The moral ineffectiveness of the evangelical churches on the issue of race is because many of these churches openly practice discrimination against blacks and women, especially in leadership and in determining ministry priorities. Exempt from the civil rights of the land, American churches have become a stronghold of resistance to the principles of justice and equality rather than the source of it.

We evangelicals must practice what we preach. Otherwise we’re hypocrites. We cannot despise persons who are different while we are trying to minister to them. Further, we do not have a positive Christian witness for racial justice if we have no models, no programs, no examples within our ranks to offer the world. If we were practicing reconciliation, affirmative action, and level playing fields in our churches, it would challenge our society’s dominant racist values and would give Christians something to preach to others.

Racism is a lie, and its structures and effects require the continued cover-up and double talk of some of today’s evangelical leadership.

Calling All Christians

Robin McDonald, executive director of the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center, Washington, D.C.

God has called all Christians to the ministry of reconciliation—first, to be reconciled to him, and then to one another. Sadly, few heed the latter half of our calling. Racial reconciliation demands that we stretch ourselves past our comfort zones. Too often these attempts are casually dismissed by the white church, breeding disappointment and mistrust. Unless Christians stand together, our church and our nation will remain divided.

Whites Are Not Taken Seriously

William Pannell, professor of preaching and practical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and the author of The Coming Race Wars? (Zondervan).

We’re going to have to take some rather courageous and extraordinary steps to avoid a race war. The first step is sincere repentance of racism by white evangelicals. Until something like that happens, I don’t envision black evangelicals taking their white counterparts seriously.

Why Are We a Threat?

Peggy L. Jones, senior pastor of the multiracial Macedonia Assembly of God Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and chief executive officer of a consulting firm that conducts training for Fortune 500 businesses and churches wanting to deal with multicultural diversity.

I am African American. I am female. I am bicultural. I was raised Baptist and have been evangelical for the past 16 years. Why did God call me out of a fairly comfortable homogeneous religious environment into a different racial and religious environment? Because he truly is an Ephesians 2:14 God who is tearing down walls of hostility between groups of people.

Sixteen years later my heart still cries out to God. When will my people no longer be seen by white evangelicals as a threat? As less than? When will we be allowed to be equal with you and not oppressed by you? It is expected that the secular world continues to oppress, but not the body of Christ.

Didn’t Jesus come to set the captives free? Isn’t the evangelical heritage one of social reform and speaking out against injustices as well as leading lost souls to Christ? Where are the Jonathan Blanchards today? the Charles Finneys? the Theodore Welds? the Antoinette Browns and Amanda Smiths? the Catherine and William Booths? These were men and women who could not idly sit by when black Americans were being treated unjustly. When did the heartbeat of many white evangelicals change?

We Will Be Held Accountable

Tony Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and founder of the Urban Alternative. His daily radio program is heard on 245 stations nationwide. He is the author of many books, including Are Blacks Spiritually Inferior to Whites? (Renaissance).

Unity is very expensive. Just as a husband and wife must give up a lot to gain the oneness that marriage offers, so also must races be willing to pay the price to experience biblical unity. One of the losses both sides must be willing to experience is the rejection of friends and relatives, whether Christians or non-Christians, who are not willing to accept the thesis that spiritual family relationships transcend physical, cultural, and racial relationships. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50).

The cost is particularly expensive to local churches who begin opening their doors to people who are viewed by many as socially unacceptable, even though they have been made acceptable to the Father by the blood of Christ.

There must be the willingness to hold people accountable for refusing to cooperate with the bridge-building efforts of the church. Racism cannot be allowed to fester without public and personal condemnation. It should be clear what the church will and will not allow. What should not be allowed is the subjection of brothers and sisters who are different to racial slurs and public rejection in the church. There is no more time for us to sit by and wait for people to change. People must be led into change, and that cannot be done without the knowledge that we will be held accountable for how we treat the other members of God’s family.

Only if all sides are willing to take this stand will the effort be worth the risk. For one side to pay the price without equal commitment from the other is to create only more mistrust and division. However, when both sides take a strong biblical stand, the support systems will be there to withstand the opposition that will naturally come from taking a stand for righteousness.

Greatest Thing Whites Can Do

Edith Jones, city director of CityLine, a ministry of World Vision in Washington, D.C.

The greatest thing whites can do is ask, “What can I do?” This bestows honor and respect on us as fruitful and accomplished people. Let us tell you. Come as humble servants. One of the greatest hurts within our community is seeing caring whites come in and write about us rather than letting us tell who we are. This is usurping and castrating.

Qualified Minorities

Billy Ingram, senior pastor of Maranatha Community Church and founder and leader of the Southern California Coalition of Religious Leaders, a multiracial organization dedicated to pursuing racial reconciliation in the greater Los Angeles area.

It is an insult when whites say they would like to hire a minority person but don’t know of anyone who is qualified. Within the black community there are plenty of talented, skilled, and educated people. We have great expositors, professionals, and leaders. The problem is that whites have not networked with minorities. They have not gotten to know us. You learn more about a person sitting around a table eating their food than by watching the media.

Black Rage

Spencer Perkins is coauthor with Chris Rice of More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (InterVarsity), from which this has been adapted.

Most black people are angry—angry about our violent history, angry for the hassle that it is to grow up black in America, angry that we can never assume that we won’t be prejudged by our color, angry that we will carry this stigma everywhere we go (it is hardly ever a positive asset), angry that black always seems to get the short end of the stick. And most of all, angry that white America doesn’t understand the reasons for our anger.

This anger can be a very destructive force, as proved by the rioting in South Central Los Angeles after the police who beat Rodney King were acquitted. Backed up against the wall, most blacks will concede that the violence and looting were wrong. But deep in the recesses of most black minds was a tiny voice whispering, If this is the only way we can make them understand how we feel, then so be it.

As I sat in church the Sunday after the riots, a black friend passed me a note that read, “I’m kinda glad they are rioting in L.A.” My friend would never have made this statement in public.

Regardless of what you think about anger, it is present in nearly all American blacks—even in Christians like me—and must be reckoned with. If blacks and whites are to achieve long-term, intimate relationships, blacks must learn to channel their anger and reserve it to fight injustice rather than directing it at [those] whites who are sincerely trying to reach out. Whites, on the other hand, need not make it their mission to convince blacks that there is no justifiable reason for their anger. Instead, whites must seek to understand the reasons behind this anger and then learn not to fear it.

Black anger must be defused with sincere love, not negotiated like a minefield. And since the intended target of black anger is white arrogance and apathy, one of the best first steps toward healing is to build meaningful, nonpatronizing peer relationships with the targets of our anger—white brothers and sisters. It is easy to remain angry with a faceless white race. It is much harder to direct that anger at a particular white brother or sister who has a name and a face.

Learn from Us

Tony Warner, Georgia area director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

The problem is simple. For the most part, white leadership has not been able to overcome the twin evils of dominance and arrogance that have historically marred hopes for biblical relationships across racial lines. For example, whites want blacks to come to their churches or organizations and learn from them, but there is very little inclination for whites to learn from African Americans in a significant way.

Only when whites are prepared to repent of dominance and arrogance in racial matters can a constructive start be made. While I do not limit the power of God, nothing in the track record gives me hope that this will happen on a broad basis. White evangelicals are more willing to pursue a white conservative political agenda than to be reconciled with their African-American brothers and sisters. It raises a fundamental question of their belief and commitment to the biblical gospel.

We Need Each Other

Samuel G. Hines, senior pastor of Third Street Church of God, Washington, D.C.

We need each other. Because of the interdependence of community, we all hold the key to other people’s freedom. White people can’t free themselves of their guilt, fears, and prejudices. Black people can’t free themselves of the oppression and injustices that have been meted out to them for generations. Racial divisions are robbing both sides. Whites not only have to be willing to help, but to be helped by the insights of a suffering people.

Whites can’t help until they have heard the cry of blacks. We’ve got to work with the anger that blacks feel, not around it. It is the church’s responsibility to take culture, race, and ethnicity seriously and teach people to appreciate differences rather than let them scare us. As we do this we’ll understand why the anger is there. And this builds trust.

Black Christians Love the Bible

J. Deotis Roberts, distinguished professor of philosophical theology at Eastern Baptist Seminary, Philadelphia, and president of the American Theological Society.

The word evangelical is a turnoff for most African-American Christians. In this country, it usually refers to a one-dimensional view of Christianity—a spiritual, privatized, vertical view. The term usually carries with it the idea that race relations are expected to be based on a sentimental love without real consideration for social justice.

Black Christians love the Bible, but it is their interpretation that differs from white evangelicals. African Americans know the Bible as a means of oppression as well as a source of liberation. We cannot assume that all Christians get the same message from reading the Bible. Only a liberating, holistic view of Scripture has an appeal for African-American Christians. There can be no genuine reconcilation without liberation and social transformation.

According to the National Weather Service, there is no record of a tornado named Tillie. The meteorologists obviously have never been to Arlington, Texas. Since 1986, there have been daily sightings around Arlington of a whirlwind of ministry, led by Tillie Burgin, former schoolteacher and Korean missionary. What she is doing for her hometown, as an insurance agent might put it, is an act of God.

Tillie leads Mission Arlington, which provides food, clothing, medical care, and the good news about Jesus to needy people across the sprawling city. Headquartered in a former drive-up bank, she and her 600 volunteers reach out to the city’s be neighborhoods containing thousands of people who probably would never enter a traditional church.

A smelly start

The mission got started when Tillie and her husband were forced to return home to Arlington from Korea due to family illness. First Baptist Church put her to work as minister of home missions.

But, she recalls, her first day on the job “was the loneliest and longest Friday of my life, in a closetlike office, wondering what church staff people did all day.”

Late in the afternoon, the custodian stopped by with a piece of paper. “There’s nobody else here,” he said to Tillie, “and this person says she needs help. Here’s her name and address.” it was a part of town that Tillie had never ventured into before. But climbing the steps of the run-down apartment building deeply touched the heart of this Texan.

Tillie knocked on the door. A woman answered, and before Tillie could greet her, the woman said: “I need my electricity paid.” Replied Tillie, “I’ll get back to you.”

Halfway back to First Baptist, Tillie realized she had not even invited the woman to church. Then, even worse, she suddenly realized that this woman probably would not fit in at all if she did come. So she decided to try an invitation to a more casual, Sunday-night service.

With confidence building, Tillie made a second trip back up the stairs. The woman was gone, but her 20-year-old son, Ken, answered the door. “Would you go to church with me on Sunday night?” Tillie blurted.

“Yeah.”

“You will?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll come get you at 6:45.”

Two nights later, Tillie found Ken waiting “with big cowboy hat, big boots, holes in his jeans, and smelling bad,” but with genuine excitement about going to church. So Tillie rolled down the windows, and off they drove.

“It was clear to me no one wanted to sit by us, so I found a place in the back. Before I knew it, Ken was responding to an evangelistic message and was walking to the front.”

Needed: A new language

Ken sought Tillie’s help to start his own Bible study. Now, more than 140 Bible-study groups later, the Bible-study network keeps growing.

They have met in motels, apartments, and shelters for battered women and the homeless. Until recently, the “Westwood Village Church” met in the clubhouse area of the Westwood Apartments. This summer the fast-growing congregation moved into the main ministry’s warehouse.

In the front room of another apartment in a different part of Arlington, four Hispanic adults with Bibles open get comfortable on sagging couches. A Mission Arlington volunteer herds ten children into another room for their Sunday-school lesson.

A larger group meets regularly at the Peach Street Community Church next to a sports bar. On Sunday mornings, the bright and spacious Christian store-front area sees all the action.

As Tillie explains, most of the people involved with these groups are survivors of the same inner-city conditions. “When we say ‘testimony’ to these folks, most of them think we’re going to court. We have to learn a new language.”

Always willing to find new sources of volunteers, Tillie is beefing up her volunteer staff with 200 prisoners on probation or parole. They can count the hours given to Mission Arlington as community service. The police laud Tillie’s efforts most of the time.

“I did report our van stolen one day,” she says. “One of our paroled volunteers had taken off with it.” The policeman gently chided her for reporting a van stolen when she gave the person the keys. But that’s how much trust Tillie puts in her workers. A quick prayer and a few tips later, her group found the missing vehicle before the police did.

Signs of Life

The OK Motel in Arlington is not listed in tourist books. Most people want to check out of the weary, ranch-style building rather than check in. Yet, there are signs of life. Children’s voices, singing loudly, are coming from a small, shedlike structure. The service is under way at the OK Chapel.

Following a guitar’s lead, a crowd of mostly children becomes more animated with each gospel chorus. A painted mural, a heavenly scene with Jesus, a dove, and three crosses, covers one wall.

“This used to be a place where transients had nothing to look forward to except the stench of poverty,” Tillie says. “Now, not only do we have our separate chapel, but most of these people have turned their lives around because they met Jesus. They’ve gotten off food stamps; they’ve gotten jobs.”

Police records show that where one of Tillies Bible studies moves in, crime moves out. That is dramatically demonstrated at the Kensington Motor Lodge. The tan buildings are expressionless, like the OK Motel. Everyone knows that the surrounding area has a reputation for street crime. It was not a place John Dowdy, a lawyer, really wanted to spend time every week.

“She twisted my arm,” Dowdy says. Now you couldn’t keep Dowdy away as he shares the faith in an apartment overlooking the cracked, waterless swimming pool. “It’s hard to believe that I’m doing this. I had offered to do free legal work for Tillie, not realizing how involved I was going to get.”

Back at mission central in downtown Arlington, there are jobs for all volunteers: clothes need to be sorted; the health clinic is looking for helping hands; the dental clinic cannot keep up with all the patients; the counseling center is keeping 60 therapists busy; stacks of bread and fruit pies must be replenished in the food pantry. With all the work, one would think discouragement would slow them down.

“We don’t have time to be discouraged,” says Tillie. “God energizes us.” The founder of Mission Arlington hopes to establish 3,000 individual Bible-study groups if she can. And despite several civic citations and honors displayed on her office wall, Tillie considers herself an ordinary person who prayed for God to let her love people.

But realistically, how ordinary can a tornado be?

By Bonne Steffen, editor of THE CHRISTIAN READER.

Understanding God as Father

I agree completely with the conclusions that Elizabeth Achtemeier reaches in her article “Why God Is Not Mother” [Aug. 16], but not with the route she travels to get there. She argues that “if the creation has issued forth from the body of the deity [as some feminist theologians argue], it shares in the deity’s substance.… Therefore everything is divine.”

Non sequitur! Arguing this way, Achtemeier is going to “prove” the very thing she wants to disprove. Not knowing about the biological union of sperm with ovum, our ancient forebears thought a mother merely provided the incubator in which the father’s seed was gestated. Hence, in Jesus’ geneology in Matthew 1, it is only the fathers who do the begetting. Achtemeier’s specious line of reasoning would point to the concept of God as Father [rather than Mother] as promoting a view in which God is identified with his creation.

We had best leave the reason why God is Father instead of Mother in the sovereign mind of God who so chose to reveal himself, rather than try to conceive of humanly devised reasons why he did so.

Rev. Burrell Pennings

Zeeland, Mich.

One point seldom mentioned when discussing this issue is the Bible’s description of the church. The same writers who described God in masculine terms, described the church in a feminine term, that is, the bride of Christ. It is interesting how these so-called sexist writers chose to identify themselves (and every Christian man) with a clearly feminine term.

Craig A. Clark

Minneapolis, Minn.

Hinn’s “medicine”

Thank you for keeping the Christian public informed on Benny Hinn [News, Aug. 16]. Benny is so crass that he claimed in Philadelphia (a meeting I attended and taped in Feb. 1993) that if you bought and read his book on healing you would be healed by reading it! For $15.99 you could buy a miracle. He needs to “repent” of practicing medicine without a license.

Rev. G. R. Fisher

Laurelton Park Baptist Church

Bricktown, NJ.

Unbiblical “demand feeding”?

Regarding Gary and Anne Marie Ezzos’ Preparation for Parenting [Aug. 16]: So what’s unbiblical about the “primitive” system of “demand” feeding for infants? In all likelihood, Abraham’s, Moses’, and Jesus’ mothers used this system. A newborn can’t possibly understand law and discipline but can respond to God’s love and care, modeled by parents who are attentive to their child’s need for food and comfort.

Paula F. Cardoza

Speedway, Ind.

Did Satan cause Cowper’s mania?

Virginia Stem Owens lists possible causes of William Cowper’s suicidal depression in her great article “The Dark Side of Grace” [July 19]. One more should be added to the list: satanic attack. Known as “the father of lies” and “the accuser of the brethren,” Satan could certainly have been the originator of Cowper’s mania and melancholia, attempting to prevent him from writing hymns that would endure in successive generations.

Cowper endured the worst kind of spiritual warfare. In some traditions he would have been exorcised in the name of Jesus.

Marilyn Fanning

Lynchburg, Va.

I take exception to Owens’s characterization of Cowper as heretical because of his claim to be a “special case to which scriptural assurances could not apply.” Admittedly, this was “bad theology”; but to say that this was a “perverse will” I think is most unfair.

Only one who has passed through the horror of a deep depression can appreciate the bizarre conclusions reached by those in such a state—even dedicated Christians. Cowper’s attempts at suicide failed. Tragically, however, other depressed believers have succeeded in their self-destruction, mistakenly thinking God had abandoned them or that they were beyond hope. I can’t believe Owens would label these sick individuals perverse or heretical.

Pastor Charles F. Kiloski

First Baptist Church

Altoona, Pa.

The Jurassic Church Comes Of Age?

The Jurassic Park craze has given our pastor some new ideas on how to boost church attendance. He wants to display our own living dinosaurs in prominent places for public viewing. His plan won’t involve genetically engineered prehistoric animals. No messy gene splicing or complicated dinosaur DNA cloning here. He’s talking about our church board.

“We’re turning our seeker services into seeker safaris!” he says. “It will be just like the fictionalized theme park.”

I suggested to our pastor that he include himself as the original “thunder lizard.” I thought he’d be a great tyrannosaurus rector. The list of displays is impressive p nonetheless.

The announcer will say, “Welcome to Jurassic Church. You are now entering the lost world of the prehistoric past. Our tour begins in the church library. Here we notice two rare species. First, the board member always pushing for more exegetical sermons from the Old Testament, the bron-Torah-saurus. Next to him you can see this creature’s rival, the board member who likes lighter sermons, the triceratopical.

“On your right you can see the board member who loves to study the end times, velocirapture.

“Next, we proceed to the church kitchen. Here we find a board member who loves grazing at potlucks, socials, and outdoor picnics, the barbequesaurus.”

It is doubtful whether our pastor will be able to sell this attendance-boosting concept to the board. What church board would like to be considered cold-blooded?

The question is asked, “How could William Cowper write hymns extolling the goodness of God while on the edge of suicide?” Apparently he was able to cling to the objective truth of God apart from his devastating “feelings.” Elizabeth Barrett Browning has given us insight into this enigma in her masterful poem “Cowper’s Grave”:

O poets, from a maniac’s tongue was poured the deathless singing!

O Christians, at your cross of hope a hopeless hand was clinging!

O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,

Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling! (v. 2)

I thought of The Wounded Healer, the biography of J. B. Phillips written by his widow and close friend. It reveals “the private turmoil that Phillips endured, even while he was guiding others through the dark places of doubt and loss of faith.” It is gratifying to realize that both Cowper and Phillips are in glory, fully aware that their being there didn’t depend one iota on themselves!

Mrs. Robert W. Teague

York, Pa.

U.S. not marching to Zion

Hurray for Philip Yancey’s column “Why Clinton Is Not Antichrist” [Aug. 16]. With all of the confusion over pluralism in America, Yancey touches an important point. The promises made to Israel (especially the one concerning the land and blessing in 2 Chron.) is not extended to believers here, today. America is not the New Israel. As a nation, we are not marching to Zion. The future of the church is much more glorious. Until then, the challenge is, as Yancey states, to strive to be Christ’s church in an increasingly hostile world.

Terry Tolleson

Independence, Kan.

Trendy anti-intellectualism

The same issue that reviewed David Wells’s prophetic No Place for Truth [Books, July 19] also supplied a sad confirmation of his thesis regarding the trendy anti-intellectualism of much of evangelicalism: We read of Thomas Nelson’s comic-book series, of which Pilgrim’s Progress is the first. Instead of dumbing down and selling out in comic-book form, what about promoting the reading—that vanishing intellectual art—of Christian classics like Pilgrim’s Progress? Are we incorrigibly helpless before a page of written words?

Doug Groothuis

Denver Seminary

Denver, Colo.

The inability to receive critique will contribute to evangelicalism’s demise. Wells’s analyses of CT and LEADERSHIP should jolt their editors from slumber. Theology is food for the soul, not the self, and evangelicals are starving to death. Please feed us.

Jana Brazeal

Arnold, Mo.

God’s loving design for humans

Many thanks to Stanton L. Jones for placing the issue of homosexuality in the larger context of biblical truth [“The Loving Opposition,” July 19]. I have found it antagonizing and unprofitable to discuss homosexuality on the basis of arbitrary scriptural commands alone. Taking in the greater perspective of divine grace and God’s purposes for human sexuality lowers defenses and allows a glimpse of our Father’s loving design for mankind. How much more winsome and convincing that is to those sinking in the morass of acute sexual crisis.

Pastor Melvin Johnson

Glad Tidings Temple

San Francisco, Calif.

Jones’s statement that “evidence suggests that genetic factors, possibly operative through brain differences, may give some push in the direction of homosexual preference” overinterprets the findings of two studies that have made national media headlines in recent months.

First, these two studies have not been verified. Second, no human behavior ever has been totally linked to a genetic trait or gene. Third, twin studies have shown that the occurrence of homosexuality in identical twins is only about 50 percent. Fourth, even if science someday verifies that homosexuals are hereditarily predisposed in their sexual desires, it is important to remember that sexual desires are powerful, but not uncontrollable, determinants of behavior.

Larry and Joyce Armstrong

Chaplin, Conn.

What gives Jones the right to pick and choose among the Bible’s clear commands? Leviticus not only calls homosexual acts an abomination but also condemns the wearing of blended fabrics, not to mention the well-known list of non-Kosher foods. Only seven verses form the explanation of sex causing a married couple to become “one flesh,” on which Jones bases his ethical system; Ephesians endorses slavery. Perhaps Jones is closer than he thinks to the gay Christians and their “misrepresentation” of the Bible.

Bert Thompson

Chicago, Ill.

Jones wrote in his opening paragraph that when he thinks of homosexuals, he thinks of a friend who seduces teenage boys. By so doing, he lent credence to an ugly and untrue stereotype and fanned the flames of homophobia. Jones knows better than to do something like this, and CT should know better than to print it.

Anthony Campolo, Ph.D.

Eastern College

St. Davids, Pa.

Many of us who believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God also believe that both the sexual identities and the committed relationships of our homosexual sisters and brothers are cause for celebration, rather than either regret or condemnation. I am grateful to Stanton Jones for stating the basis of what we believe so clearly. He points out that what the Bible condemns is the “isolated act” of people of the same gender having sex with each other. Homosexuality, as a fundamental element of personal identity, is not what the Bible condemns.

Peggy Campolo

St. Davids, Pa.

Kay Mueller, who attends the mostly white First Baptist Church of Evanston, Illinois, was talking to her friend, who attends the mostly black Second Baptist. Her friend told of Second Baptist’s annual homecoming service where they celebrate and remember the founding of the church. What Kay found surprising was that Second Baptist’s history involved her own church. In 1870, tired of being relegated to the balcony, several black members of First Baptist walked out and formed their own congregation.

But what is remembered as an empowering moment at Second Baptist was hidden history at First Baptist—that is, until Mueller took the facts to her board. Consequently, First Baptist drafted a “Resolution of Reconciliation,” confessing its sin and offering an apology, which was formally read and presented to Second Baptist in 1990. Since then, the churches regularly exchange pulpits and choirs.

During one exchange, Second Baptist’s pastor, Hycel Taylor (the subject of our cover photograph), preached on the sinful state of today’s race relations, an excerpt of which appears in our institute “The Myth of Racial Progress” (beginning on p. 16). Coordinating the institute was another Second Baptist parishioner, and also our newest senior news writer (though a long-time CT contributor), Andres Tapia. Knowing of Andres’s long interest in interracial concerns, we asked him to put together a forum of African-American church leaders to tell us what they want white Christians to know. We think the results are impressive, culminating in an issue that will be talked about for years to come.

What more could one ask from a senior news writer?

MICHAEL G. MAUDLIN, Managing Editor