The End Of Theology?

No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?by David F. Wells (Eerdmans, 315 pp.; $24.99, hardcover). Reviewed by Roger E. Olson, professor of theology, Bethel College, (St. Paul), and coauthor of 20th-Century Theology (IVP).

With No Place for Truth, Gordon-Conwell seminary professor David Wells joins the swelling ranks of theological seismologists attempting to measure the great evangelical megashift. Or, to switch metaphors, he joins the ranks of pathologists analyzing the various illnesses of American evangelicalism.

There is a strong and noble tradition of leaders calling the evangelical church to account. While these Jeremiahs may not always get all the nuances right, they do focus the church’s light on important areas of concern. In the midseventies, Harold Lindsell diagnosed the evangelical movement as dying the death of a thousand inerrancy qualifications. Then Francis Schaeffer predicted its slide into disaster, and Sojourners’ Jim Wallis called it to conversion. Most recently, Charles Colson has declared its body almost lifeless due to subversion by cultural viruses such as individualism and consumerism. Now David Wells prepares evangelicalism’s obituary. His diagnosis? Evangelicalism has by and large succumbed to the disease of modernity.

Throughout the book, Wells develops and defends two theses. The first is about the nature of “Our Time,” which he labels “modernity,” the chief characteristic of which is the disappearance of belief in truth. What he means is that modernity rejects what Francis Schaeffer called “true Truth,” absolute, objective truth that transcends relative beliefs and values.

This disappearance of truth is the root of all modern evils, Wells argues. Out of it arise alienation, anomie (lawlessness), relativism, anti-intellectualism, and materialism. Into this vacuum left by the loss of truth has swept the incredible inflation of the self that so typifies our culture of narcissism. Since the heavens are empty of any absolute and objective meaning, the only standard and value is the self and its psychological health and well-being.

Wells declares that he does not believe in modernity at all. “Most evangelicals, however, are mild, closet believers, and to the extent that this is true, their internal life will tend to tilt away from belief in God and his truth and toward modernity.” This is the heart of his second and main thesis: that in our time, American evangelicalism has adapted to this modern denial of absolute truth and has substituted for it a psychologized, pragmatic, and subjective view of truth. We have exchanged truth for technique. The question for most evangelicals today is not “What is true?” but “What works?”

Nowhere is this accommodation to modernity more evident, according to Wells, than in the growing bias against theology (and intellectual endeavor in general) in popular evangelical faith.

So strong is this bias becoming that it is being elevated to the level of a virtue. To quote one leading popular evangelical writer and speaker, “Happy is the Christian who has never met a theologian!” The reason for this disdain for theology, Wells argues, is not because modern theology often leads to heresy, but because evangelicals have by and large accepted the modern notion that the self is the final arbiter of truth.

Therefore, the spiritual well-being of the self becomes the evangelical version of modernity’s obsession with self. In contrast, theology rejects self-absorption and points the self toward a higher standard of truth. The consequence of evangelicalism’s Faustian deal with modernity is that theology gets reduced to autobiography; preaching, to therapy; and the Christian message loses its public significance.

So who are the culprits in this evangelical disaster? According to Wells, they are (among others) CHRISTIANITY TODAY and LEADERSHIP, seminaries, pietists, charismatics, relational theology, and church-growth theorists.

Cursing the darkness

Wells’s book is designed to be controversial. Unfortunately, many readers and reviewers are likely to chalk his message up to the disillusionment and crankiness of a theologian who feels his discipline being marginalized. Many will agree with his incisive critique of modernity. Many of his pithy statements—such as, “[In Our Time] evil is boredom, and that is remedied with far greater ease than sin. It is remedied not by Christ but by a cable hookup”—will surely find their way into sermons.

But many will question Wells’s elevation of theology to the status of being central to Christian faith itself: “Without theology,” he argues, “there is no faith, no believing, no Christian hope.”

Throughout the book, Wells treats “modernity” as the archenemy of vital, historic evangelicalism. But he has named the wrong beast. Scholars of modern culture usually define modernity as European-American culture from the late Renaissance up until sometime in this century. Its hallmark was not rejection of absolute truth but the search for objective truth through human reason. Modernity prized reason, harmony, and progress.

The demon Wells is really describing is postmodernity. Sometime in this century modernity has given way to postmodernity with its dethroning of these Enlightenment ideals. Postmodernism, at least in some of its manifestations, revels in subjectivity, irrationalism, chaos, and relativism. The very idea of objective truth is the icon being smashed in this postmodern age. Could it be that Wells would find an ally, however imperfect, in the modern age’s optimistic trust in truth and reason?

Several questions also need to be raised in response to Wells’s diagnosis of evangelicalism. Is the state of theology in evangelicalism really as bad as he believes? Or is it the loss of a particular kind of theology that he fears? What about the explosion of systematic theologies and monographs on theological subjects being published by evangelicals these days? I suspect what Wells wants is not just a return to theology but a restoration of the reign of an old-style Puritan, Calvinist theology among evangelicals.

Wells repeatedly compares “modern” evangelical theology with liberal Protestant theology. He argues that both revise the doctrine of God around immanence: “Evangelicals turned from focusing on God’s transcendence to focusing on his immanence—and then they took the further step of interpreting his immanence as friendliness with modernity.” To which evangelical theologians is Wells referring? He names Harry Emerson Fosdick as the prime example of a liberal Protestant theologian but fails to name the evangelical counterparts. This is typical of the kind of sweeping accusations and critical assertions that abound in Wells’s book. His often insightful analysis is flawed by questionable generalizations and marred by overstatement.

Wells is right, however, in his claim that evangelicalism, if not evangelical theology, is flirting with abandoning objective truth through benign neglect. Many evangelicals are theologically illiterate. What can be done to restore health to evangelicalism? Who will champion the cause of restoring belief in objective truth and how? Wells fails to point a way forward.

At the very least, Wells’s book can serve as a catalyst for evangelical self-examination. If we need a gadfly like this to sting us out of complacency, then let us be stung! At the same time, we have a right to ask the curser of darkness to light a candle and lead the way out of this present darkness.

No Shortcuts To Godliness

Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life,by Donald S. Whitney (NavPress, 254 pp.; $16, hardcover). Reviewed by John R. Throop, vicar of Saint Francis Episcopal Church in Chillicothe, Illinois.

There are no shortcuts to spiritual growth, says Donald Whitney, pastor of Glenfield Baptist Church, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. In this warm, challenging, and practical book, Whitney examines ten spiritual disciplines that all Christians can cultivate: Bible intake, prayer, worship, evangelism, serving, stewardship, fasting, silence, journaling, and learning. According to the author, spiritual disciplines “are the God-given means by which busy believers become like Christ.” They enable believers to receive God’s grace for living, and to become more and more like him.

Still, the most iron-willed self-discipline will not make one more holy, says Whitney, for holiness is a gift of God. But we need to have a receptive attitude, to make time and room for God. Whitney observes, “Christians are called to make themselves do something they would not naturally do—pursue the Spiritual Disciplines—in order to become what they’ve always wanted to be, that is, like Jesus Christ.”

All of the church-growth programs and well-planned worship services cannot substitute for a sound spiritual life. Only the daily progress of the saints in holiness will enable the church to minister effectively into the new century—and for help in that enterprise we can thank Donald Whitney.

Separate But Friendly

Positive Neutrality: Letting Religious Freedom Ring,by Stephen V. Monsma (Greenwood Press, 277 pp.; $49.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Beyond Good Intentions: A Biblical View of Politics (Crossway).

Religious freedom was a cornerstone of the new American republic, but today many political figures seem more interested in freedom from religion. First Amendment clauses that were supposed to be mutually reinforcing are now treated as conflicting. And the mere mention of religion in the public sphere is enough to set off bitter legal and political battles.

In Positive Neutrality, Stephen Monsma takes aim at how we got into the present mess and how we can get out. A political science professor at Pepperdine University, Monsma first assesses the theory and practice of church/state relations. The courts have, for instance, always accorded a higher degree of protection to beliefs than practices, which, Monsma rightly warns, dramatically narrows the constitutional guarantees for religious believers.

Even worse is the disappointing line of cases interpreting the “no establishment” clause. Among the more bizarre results of the courts’ rulings is the secularization of religion, where religious practices are allowed because they are considered to be only of cultural importance.

Equally valuable is Monsma’s look at the cycles through which church/state relations in the U.S. have traveled. What he terms the “first disestablishment” occurred in the eighteenth century, as two very different movements, the secular Enlightenment and the revivalist Great Awakening, combined to separate the institutions of church and state. In the following century, Protestantism became a de facto national religion. The push for public schools was part of this movement, as Protestants moved to minimize the role of Catholic institutions.

However, argues Monsma, Protestants “never effectively challenged” Enlightenment theories of church/state relations, which “denied the very legitimacy of what they were doing. In the twentieth century the consequences of their neglect came home to roost,” with the second disestablishment.

Monsma’s analysis of this convoluted subject is unusually clear-headed, but of even greater value is his proposal for a philosophy of “positive neutrality” to govern church/state relations in a pluralistic society.

“The key point of pluralism,” in his view, “is that associations and communities are a natural, integral, necessary part of any society, and have positive, valuable roles to play.” What is critical, then, is for the government to recognize the important roles those communities fulfill and not to discriminate against religious organizations.

But Monsma wants such neutrality to be “positive”—that is, “to take certain positive steps if it is to be truly neutral in the sense of assuring equal freedoms and equal opportunities for all religious persons and groups.” Such a standard is hard to implement. Monsma gives the example of a military cemetery, where the authorities could either ban all religious symbols on gravestones or allow families to place any religious or secular symbol that they desired. The latter demonstrates “positive neutrality.”

Monsma goes on to deal with some of today’s most controversial issues, such as the role of religion in the public schools. He makes no pretense of having simple answers where “the issues are complex and deeply rooted in longstanding assumptions and patterns of thought and action,” but his book may help provide a new starting point for discussions of the relationship between church and state.

Testing The Spirit Of Psychotherapy

Taking the Word to Heart: Self and Other in an Age of Therapy,by Robert C. Roberts (Eerdmans, 315 pp.; $16.99, paper). Reviewed by Rodney Clapp, the author of Families at the Crossroads: Beyond Traditional and Modern Options (forthcoming from IVP).

Philosopher Bob Roberts here invades the counselor’s office that has made its home in our popular culture and, indeed, in our churches. He declares that psychotherapies are alternative spiritualities. They present various “ways of conceptualizing what it is to be a person, along with sets of disciplines by which to arrive at better ‘health’—that is, to grow toward true personhood.”

Roberts devotes the first part of his book to gentle but incisive critiques of several therapies: Carl Rogers’s client-centered therapy, Albert Ellis’s rational emotive therapy (RET), assertiveness training, family therapy, Carl Jung’s variation on psychoanalysis, and Heinz Kohut’s quest for “healthy narcissism.” His critiques convincingly demonstrate that each therapy does define an ideal person and drives clients or popular adherents toward achieving that model of personhood. For instance, someone truly successful at RET would end up a “logically consistent empiricist and a pragmatic, enlightened hedonist.” Roberts’s aim, however, is not simply to tip over the psychologists’ couches and herd them out of the church. He remembers that Christianity “has always dealt in practical psychology” and strives to demonstrate that the “Christian tradition has a psychology … deeper and more adequate to our humanity than any of the modern non-Christian alternatives.” So he spends the larger part of his book on the constructive task of showing how Christian practical psychology works itself out in such everyday matters as envy, forgiveness, marriage, and friendship.

Along the way, he finds pieces of modern psychologists’ furniture that, with appropriate reupholstering, can and should remain in the church. That is particularly the case with Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy’s family therapy. Nagy’s psychology, unlike most other modern therapies, imagines the fully healthy person as one who has learned to live within community. Roberts sees this as formally compatible with the Christian understanding of salvation as membership in the kingdom of God.

A number of other Christian writers have criticized secular psychologies. Few have Roberts’s philosophical adeptness at making the crucial distinction—as in, “What is pernicious about judgmentalism is not the judgment that is being made but the contempt that alienates one human being from another.” Fewer still possess his gift for the wryly expressed insight. Though it sometimes suffers from being a too loosely bound and nonsystematic collection of formerly published essays, this book is surely one of the best in a growing and important genre.

The U.S. Supreme Court concluded its 1992–93 term last month by taking action on several key religion cases that will provide new guidance in the sometimes rocky relationship between church and state.

In perhaps the most significant religion case of the term, a deeply divided Court opened the door a little wider between public money and private religious schools. In Zobrest v. Catalina Foothills School District, the Court ruled that a sign-language interpreter paid with tax dollars may assist a deaf student who attends a Catholic school. The 5-to-4 decision said that the interpreter was “a neutral service” of the government and was “in no way skewed towards religion.”

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said the interpreter did not violate the Establishment Clause, because she was present at the religious school “only as a result of the private decision of individual parents” and not because of any state action. Justice Harry Blackmun issued a sharp dissent: “Until now, the Court never has authorized a public employee to participate directly in religious indoctrination.”

William Bentley Ball, who argued the case, called the ruling “a wonderful statement … [about] the right of parents to choose religious education and not be excluded from public benefits in doing so.” He said the decision “points in the direction of saying … we don’t carry the separation of church and state to the absolutist extremes that it has been carried before.”

Strict church/state separationists, however, agreed with Blackmun. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, “For the first time in American history, tax dollars will be used to subsidize a student’s participation in worship services and religious training.”

The Court did not use Zobrest to overturn the Lemon test, the controversial three-pronged standard it has employed since 1971 to determine when a government action violates the Establishment Clause (CT, April 5, 1993, p. 71). However, the divisions among the justices over the Lemon test were evident in another case this term, Lamb’s Chapel v. Center Moriches School District.

The justices were unanimous in ruling that a public school must allow churches to rent the facilities after hours on the same basis as other community groups. But there was intense disagreement about Establishment Clause issues. Six of the justices said that for Lamb’s Chapel to rent the school to show a James Dobson film series would not violate the Lemon test. Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the application of Lemon: “Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave … after being repeatedly killed or buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening little children and school attorneys.”

Responded Justice Byron White: “While we are somewhat diverted by Justice Scalia’s evening at the cinema, … Lemon, however frightening to some, has not been overruled.”

In a third case involving religion and schools, Jones v. Clear Creek, the high court declined to hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of student-led graduation prayers. The justices, without comment, let stand a lower court ruling that said student-initiated, student-led prayers are permissible. Public schools across the country have been battling the issue in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that struck down clergy-led prayers at a Rhode Island graduation (CT, June 21, 1993, p. 45).

In the Free Exercise Clause arena, the justices unanimously struck down a Hialeah, Florida, ordinance that prevented the Santeria religion from sacrificing small animals in religious ceremonies. The Court said the city inappropriately singled out the religion for discrimination. In Hialeah, animals could be killed for food, for recreation, or for pest control, but not for religious ritual. “Legislators may not devise mechanisms, overt or disguised, designed to persecute or oppress a religion or its practices,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy.

A diverse coalition of religious groups supported the Santeria religion in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah. They were disappointed that the Court did not use this case to overturn its highly criticized 1990 Employment Division v. Smith decision, which virtually all religious groups believe gutted the Free Exercise Clause.

Oliver Thomas, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee, said, “This decision only means that religion cannot be discriminated against, that we can’t be singled out for special burdens, but it does not mean that free exercise of religion has been restored.”

As the Court continues to wrestle with church/state issues in the future, the impact of Justice White’s retirement remains to be seen. President Clinton’s nominee, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is expected to be an advocate of strong Free Exercise rights. While on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, she defended a military officer’s right to wear a yarmulke.

Major ramifications are expected on abortion. Ginsburg has criticized the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion because of the standard the Court used, not its final outcome. Ginsburg would base the right to abortion on a gender-equality standard, not the right to privacy. Ginsburg could get an early opportunity to express her abortion views. The justices announced last month they will hear oral arguments this fall about whether federal racketeering laws can be applied to prolife protesters who blockade abortion facilities.

By Kim A. Lawton in Washington, D.C.

Presbyterians first addressed the issue of ordination of practicing homosexuals in the late 1970s. But in 1993, the end of the debate seems nowhere in sight.

Last month in Orlando, the issue dominated the 205th annual meeting of the Presbyterian Church USA’s (PCUSA) General Assembly, the 2.8 million-member denomination’s highest lawmaking body. Despite passionate appeals from both sides to settle the issue once and for all, representatives ultimately approved a plan for three years of study on ordaining active homosexuals.

“Presbyterians congenitally cannot resist studying something,” quipped Thomas Gillespie, president of Princeton Theological Seminary and an outspoken opponent of homosexual ordination.

The action taken by commissioners, however, put the weight of the general assembly behind the church’s current stand by affirming the ban on homosexual ordination as an “authoritative interpretation” of the church’s constitution. Prior to the vote, newly elected moderator David Lee Dobler claimed “personal privilege” in granting proponents of homosexual ordination time to address commissioners. In the wee hours of the morning following the vote, homosexual advocates took over the stage, interrupting the assembly with taunts and singing.

“To be told that we are sinful and immoral is not only painful, but also violent to us,” said Jane Spahr at a news conference later in the day. Spahr is a lesbian whose call to copastor a church in Rochester, New York, was overturned last year by the denomination’s Permanent Judicial Commission.

An impromptu group, The Coalition, drafted a pastoral letter to the PCUSA. Signed by 200 of those in attendance at this year’s meeting, the letter affirms the denomination’s ban on homosexual ordination.

At least one congregation already has taken matters into its own hands. The 27 ruling session members of Saint Andrew’s Presbyterian Church of Newport Beach, California, in April voted unanimously to withhold all general mission support funds ($250,000 annually) from the Synod of Southern California and Hawaii until all ties with the Lazarus Project are severed. Senior pastor John A. Huffman says the Lazarus Project is a prohomosexual organization. Church authorities are now reconsidering support for the Lazarus Project and are in dialogue with Huffman.

In other actions taken in Orlando:

• Commissioners passed a major restructuring plan in response to the denomination’s financial problems. The plan reduces the church’s ministry structure from nine units to three divisions. In addition, the PCUSA national staff has been reduced by 25 percent. PCUSA has also cut its budget by $5 million this year. Yet, there is a projected deficit of $7 million for 1994.

• The prolife caucus in the church failed in its effort to stop official denominational support for the Religious Coalition on Abortion Rights. In fact, commissioners passed a resolution supporting the Freedom of Choice Act.

By Randy Frame in Orlando.

The Southern Baptist wars may be over, but all the troops have yet to lay down their arms. More than half of the resolutions proposed at the 1993 Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in Houston took critical aim at fellow Southern Baptist Bill Clinton, or his policies.

“If you saw what we didn’t say, we’d be getting pats on the back,” said James Merritt, head of the resolutions committee, after the SBC adopted a consensus resolution critical of President Clinton’s policies on abortion and homosexuals, yet free of personal attacks on the President as suggested by some Clinton critics. After voting, Edwin Young, newly re-elected as SBC president, led the 17,814 “messengers,” or voting delegates, in prayer for Clinton.

The convention took several actions, which further clarified who is and who is not in good standing with the SBC.

There are an estimated 500,000 Southern Baptists who are Masons, the secretive, international fraternal organization. A yearlong study of Freemasonry by the SBC resulted in a compromise resolution, stating that “membership in a Masonic Order [should] be a matter of personal conscience.” The resolution passed following a brief but sharp debate on the convention floor.

The role of spiritual gifts in public worship came before Southern Baptists through the Foreign Mission Board’s (FMB) election of Jerry Rankin, who has acknowledged “praying in the Spirit.” Rankin has publicly maintained he is not an advocate for charismatic expression and was able to gain the two-thirds vote needed for election as FMB president.

The convention affirmed the 1992 amendment to its constitution, which now will bar any SBC church that acts “to affirm, approve or endorse homosexual behavior.” With the amendment’s approval for the second year, it will go into effect.

An attempt to unseat the messengers from Little Rock’s Immanuel Baptist Church, Clinton’s home congregation in Arkansas, was thrown out by the SBC credentials committee for technical reasons. The motion by a Florida pastor stated that members of Clinton’s church “by their silence [are supporting] Bill Clinton’s endorsement of the homosexual lifestyle.” Immanuel’s pastor, Rex Horne, said he has met with Clinton and has openly expressed his opposition to the President’s policies on abortion and homosexuality.

The atmosphere of harmony at the three-day session was markedly changed from the recent years of struggle between conservatives and moderates.

“The civil war is over. This is ‘reconstruction,’ “said Timothy George, a member of the denomination’s Theological Study Committee. “The SBC is … returning to its evangelical roots.”

However, the dispute had a brief reprise at the convention when an unpublished paper, “Understanding the Controversy,” by Paige Patterson, a leading conservative, was distributed without Patterson’s authorization. The paper outlines which top institutions and prominent individuals are associated with orthodox, neo-orthodox, or liberal Christian beliefs. The document was pulled quickly from distribution, and Patterson apologized.

SBC President Young, during his convention address, sternly urged Southern Baptists to turn their attentions from the “side streets” of political involvement and other issues and refocus on “the main thing”—missions and evangelism.

He said, “We have compromised [where] Jesus himself refused to compromise.” Young said of the 38,433 SBC churches, 7,771 did not baptize anyone in 1992. He said renewal in the church comes from an attitude of desperation. “The church has to be before the church can do. And that comes out of desperation.… When the main thing, evangelism, becomes the main thing again, the Southern Baptist Convention will no longer be on side streets.”

By Timothy C. Morgan in Houston.

EVANGELISM

First Crusade Held in Mongolia

The evangelism window of opportunity in Mongolia (CT, May 17, 1993, p. 90) may be shutting faster than expected.

The country, which had an estimated half-dozen Christians three years ago, now has nearly 2,000, thanks in large part to missionary groups being allowed inside for the first time.

San Antonio evangelist Sammy Tippit of God’s Love in Action Ministries led the country’s first outdoor crusade June 16–24. Tippit decided to go, even though he learned beforehand that two of the four buildings housing churches in the capital city of Ulan Bator had been closed because of Buddhist pressure on the government.

Tippit told CT from Mongolia that the two churches have temporarily relocated to new meeting places.

Political tensions and division within the Christian community led to a lower than expected turnout at the crusade, according to Tippit. Around 600 people attended nightly, with total commitments to Christ numbering 300.

“It’s an infant church, just like in the Book of Acts,” Tippit says. “There are tensions, but the church is growing.”

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Briefly Noted

The Messianic Times, based in Toronto, has become the first Christian newspaper to be distributed in Russia in 70 years. Zev Isaacs, 27-year-old publisher of the three-year-old quarterly tabloid, helped distribute 25,000 Russian-language copies of the newspaper in a May visit to St. Petersburg. Isaacs has an agreement with a translator in Moscow to publish a Russian version of the Messianic Times.

• Church leaders from 10 nations and 15 denominations met recently to form the International Reformed Fellowship, a conservative alternative to the Reformed Ecumenical Council and World Council of Churches. Coleaders of the group are John E. Kim of California, Luder Whitlock, Jr., of Mississippi, and Sam Sung Lee of Korea.

• Bramwell H. Tillsley, 61, succeeded Eva Burrows on July 9 as general of the Salvation Army. Tillsley is originally from Ontario, Canada, and he has been chief of staff at international headquarters in London for the past two years.

• South Korean pastor Lee Jang-rim, who predicted that the world would end on October 28, 1992 (CT, Jan. 11, 1993, p. 54), was ordered on May 20 by Seoul Appellate Court to serve a one-year prison sentence and pay a $26,000 fine. Lee, pastor of the 10,000-member Mission for the Coming Days Church, had convinced many followers to sell their homes, abandon their families, and turn over $1.3 million in assets to his church.

JERUSALEMZOO

The Cow Mooeth, the Lion Roareth

Even though the animals were not collected two by two, the residents of the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo do share an important tie to their ancestors. Most of the 600 animals in the zoo are mentioned in the Bible, and exhibition-area signs cite the appropriate biblical passages.

In its selection of tigers, monkeys, birds, and other animals, the zoo has sought animals that fit into the region’s biblical history. For example, though many types of lions exist in the world, zoo spokesman Itcha Gur says, “We tried to take a lion that was from this region—the Bible region.”

The brown bear, long extinct in Israel, is also represented at the zoo. Unlike the situation described in Isaiah 11:7, however, the cow and the bear are not grazing together at this park, nor are their children lying down together.

The Jerusalem Biblical Zoo, established more than 45 years ago, has just moved from northern Jerusalem to a new $18 million home in the southwest part of the city.

According to Gur, visitors are attracted by the “modern, open-area” design of the site. Some visitors have another important reason to show up. For “the extremely religious Jews, this zoo is one of the only places they can go,” says Gur. “They are not going to movies and not watching TV; the zoo is someplace they can visit.”

CHINESE CHRISTIANS

Persecution Is Price of Faith

Charges of harassment, imprisonment, torture, and even murder of Christians have highlighted the Chinese government’s determination to prevent religion-inspired democratic rebellion, according to human-rights organizations.

The Rutherford Institute reports that in March a meeting of Christians in Taoyuan Village was broken up by local police who stripped, beat, and imprisoned 5 of the 30 worshipers. One man died from wounds.

The Puebla Institute recently issued a report, Continued Persecution of Christians in China, which lists 104 Catholic and Protestant leaders who are being deprived of liberties for religious reasons. At least four religious prisoners died from torture or ill-treatment in the past 18 months, according to the report.

Despite Chinese government claims of relaxed restrictions, the Puebla Institute and another rights group, Asia Watch, say the religious repression has increased in the past year.

Guatemala’s first elected evangelical president is out of office and in exile after he assumed extraordinary powers, which he claimed were necessary to solve serious problems in his country. His ouster has raised anew reservations about the role of evangelicals in the Guatemalan government.

Jorge Serrano Elias announced on May 25 that he had dissolved the Congress, fired the Supreme Court, and would rule by decree. He also called for immediate elections for a Constituent Assembly to reform Guatemala’s 1985 Constitution. He said he would not remain in power beyond his term, due to end in January 1995, but that this was the only way to end corruption.

In a speech on radio and television, Serrano accused the Congress and court system of blocking his attempts to root out corruption and fight mushrooming drug traffic. Serrano said he had been subjected to “political blackmail” by some of the members of Congress, and he accused the Supreme Court of “selective application of justice,” which protected criminals.

Serrano hoped to take a leaf out of Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori’s book, but when the military withdrew its support in the face of national and international protests, he was forced to resign. During several days of confusion, the army first backed Vice-president Gustavo Espina, also an evangelical, then put pressure on the reinstated Congress to elect national human-rights advocate Ramiro de Leon Carpio to complete Serrano’s term.

Facing criminal charges of abuse of power, Serrano opted to accept political asylum in Panama. Espina, accused of complicity with Serrano, fled to Costa Rica.

Considered a prophet

An engineer by training and a businessman and politician by profession, Serrano first came to national attention as president of the advisory Council of State. He had been appointed by Gen. Efrain Ríos Montt, also a self-proclaimed evangelical Christian, when he came to power in 1982 following a military coup. At that time, Serrano was a prominent member of the Elim Church, a large, Pentecostal congregation, where he was considered a prophet.

Serrano ran for president in 1985 as the candidate of the cooperative movement party. He finished third in a field of nine, but the evangelical vote he had counted on did not materialize. Many of his fellow believers voted along traditional party lines, and many had reservations about the question of Christian involvement in politics.

The campaign and defeat created a rift with the Elim Church, which “the prophet” left shortly afterwards. He eventually joined with the fast-growing, charismatic El Shaddai Church, one of several new groups successfully penetrating resistant upper-middle and upper classes.

Rally from nowhere

Serrano also founded his own political party, the Solidarity Action Movement, and began preparing for another run at the presidency. Although trailing badly early in the 1990 campaign, he gained ground as other contenders battered each other.

When Ríos Montt—the obvious frontrunner despite constitutional questions about his candidacy—was ruled off the ballot at the last minute, Serrano picked up enough of his supporters to squeak into second place.

He won the ensuing run-off for the presidency with more than 60 percent of the vote and assumed power with a popular mandate but a weak political base. His party held only 18 seats in the 116-member Congress, and only one ministry in the initial cabinet.

“It was not an evangelical government,” says Christian lawyer Hugo Morales. The president did meet occasionally with church leaders, but, said one layman who was present at an encounter a few months ago, “It was obvious he was more interested in telling us what he wanted than in listening to us.”

Political fallout

Morales believes these recent events will not have any real negative effect on Guatemala’s fast-growing evangelical churches, but they may cause the public to think twice about voting for an evangelical in the future. “If, in the future, an evangelical wants to run for the presidency, people could say we’ve had two Protestant presidents [Serrano and Ríos Montt] and look what happened.”

The media speculated that the churches, as well as “divine revelation,” were behind Serrano’s actions. But Manuel Conde, who headed the government’s negotiations with the guerrillas after serving as the president’s chief of staff, says “This was a decision that Jorge alone made.… It had become impossible for him to govern.”

One positive result has been public pressure for change in the Congress and Supreme Court, discredited by widespread allegations of corruption.

Human rights has been a principal issue in Guatemala, and the selection of de Leon Carpio as president has been widely applauded. But it remains to be seen what he can do to improve things. “He’s finding out that it’s much easier to criticize from the outside than to make changes from the inside,” says evangelical Congress member Marco Aurelio Reyes. He sees little hope of changing the conditions that apparently drove Serrano to desperation.

By Stephen R. Sywulka.