Tithes and Temptations

Churches can forestall the “temptation to take” by adopting some wise financial policies.

Our office phone rang, and the voice sounded hurt, baffled, dismayed. It was a local Baptist pastor, and he had just discovered the church treasurer for some time had been helping himself to church funds, possibly as much as $20,000. The pastor wondered if the treasurer’s criminal conduct would affect the sale of church bonds.

Then a Pentecostal church called for help. Their treasurer of 30 years apparently had been falsifying records of designated gifts to missionaries and had been stealing from both the general and missionary funds. They also discovered that certificates of deposit had never been purchased, legacies from estates had been stolen, and church bank accounts and ledgers were missing.

The shock and sadness of discovering church theft is never easy to bear. It is small consolation that the problem of religious embezzlement is at least as old as Judas Iscariot, the keeper of the money bag for Jesus’ disciples, who helped himself to its contents (John 12:6). Even in today’s church, people are not immune to the temptation of taking what does not belong to them.

On the other hand, the need for trust and confidence within the church should never be underestimated. Trust is always an integral part of every healthy Christian community. The fact that theft and fraud within Christian churches is so minimal is strong testimony to the honesty and character of those who administer the funds within the body of Christ.

But the fact that people are tempted and embezzlement does occur suggests that the practice of “unmerited trust” should be questioned. By adopting a few wise financial policies, churches can maintain an atmosphere of trust while forestalling most temptations to dip into the till.

Preventive Medicine

The easiest place to take funds is from cash offerings—between the time offerings are taken and the time they are deposited in the bank. How do you reduce this temptation?

First, by having at least two people present whenever offerings are counted and recorded.

Second, by encouraging members to use church envelopes and keep records of their giving. Then, at least once a year, verify with each donor the amount contributed.

Many churches give little weight to the annual audit. While the services of a CPA may not be required in most cases, there is something pathetic, if not dangerous, in the casual approach that some church trustees take toward an audit. When church members Bill and Jean are assigned the audit and go to the home of “good ol’ Charley,” the church treasurer, to look at the books over coffeecake and tea, their work may be as misleading as the old-time law students who swore that they went over Blackstone—when the books of Blackstone were placed under the wheels of their passing carriage.

In addition, the internal audit should probably be supplemented every year or two with an outside independent audit by an accountant.

Sound Practices

At my church, the Three Village Church in East Setauket, New York, we have instituted the following procedures, which provide both freedom to function and financial integrity.

1. We separate the functions of the financial secretary and the church treasurer. That way, receiving and disbursing funds are handled by two different people.

2. Both officers are elected for one-year terms. Having them elected prevents suspicion of self-serving appointments. The one-year term prevents the possibility of continual embezzlement that goes on year after year.

3. The financial secretary counts each offering with a second person. Their accounts of cash and checks are entered in separate ledgers by their separate signatures.

4. The bank deposit is made by the financial secretary, who reports each deposit to the church treasurer.

5. The treasurer disburses funds by check. Cash transactions are held to a minimum. Some churches also require two signatures on checks larger than a certain amount, say $200.

6. A detailed breakdown of income and expenses is provided for each church member at the three business meetings each year.

Protection, Not Restriction

In the final analysis, no method of accounting is absolutely foolproof against theft. But these practices can minimize the threat.

As 1 Corinthians 10:13 points out, every temptation is “common to man,” but God also “will provide a way out.” The more thorough our procedures are, the less likely that those living with a temptation to steal will be prone to exercise it.

At the same time, our purpose is not only to prevent fraud but to protect the integrity of those handling church money. Every church treasurer and financial secretary wants his name to be beyond suspicion, and thus they often welcome these measures.

They agree with Paul, who knew the importance of good money management in the church: “Naturally we want to avoid the slightest breath of criticism in the distribution of their gifts, and to be absolutely above-board not only in the sight of God but in the eyes of men” (2 Cor. 8:20–21, Phillips).

Mr. Helfrich is an attorney and lives in Stony Brook, New York.

- More from John W. Helfrich

Theology

Tree Trunks and Other Trivial Pursuits

Philip Yancey

You cannot read very far in the Old Testament without encountering idols. Idolatry ranks as far and away the most common topic in the entire Bible. A nagging question haunts the pages of the Old Testament: Why did the Jews keep deserting the God who had delivered them from Egypt for the sake of carved tree trunks and bronze statues? What was the big attraction?

I gained insight into this issue on a visit to India, where idol worship flourishes. The four-star attractions in most Indian cities are temples erected to any of a thousand gods: monkey gods, elephant gods, erotic gods, snake gods—even a smallpox goddess. There, I observed that idolatry tends to produce two contradictory results: magic and triviality. For the devout, idolatry adds a dimension of magic to life. Hindus believe the gods control all events, including such natural disasters as monsoons, floods, diseases, and accidents. These powerful gods must be pleased at all costs. But what pleases a god depends on the god’s character, and gods can be fearsome and violent. Calcutta, India’s largest city, has adopted the murderous goddess Kali, who wears a garland of gruesome heads around her waist. Devotion to such gods can easily lead to a paralyzing fear and virtual slavery to the gods’ whims.

Other Hindus, less devout, take a different approach. They treat their gods as trivialities, almost like good-luck charms. A taxi driver mounts a tiny statue of a monkey god, draped with flowers, on the dashboard of his car. If you ask, he’ll say he prays to the god for safety—but you know about the traffic in India, he adds with a laugh.

Both these modern responses to idolatry illustrate what so alarmed the prophets of Israel. On the one hand, the taxi driver shows how idolatry can trivialize a god. Maybe the god will help you out, maybe not, but why not play along? Some Israelites took that spirit, drifting carelessly from god to god. No attitude could be further from that demanded by the true God. He had chosen the Jews as a kingdom of priests, a peculiar people set apart to him. He mocked the absurdity of carving a god out of a tree, the same tree used to cook a meal (Isa. 44:16–17). He is Lord of the Universe, not a good-luck charm.

Far too often, however, idols in the Middle East took a more sinister form, resembling the evil goddess of Calcutta. Followers worshiped Baal, for example, by having sex in the temple with prostitutes, or even by killing a human baby as a sacrifice. Worship of Baal could not possibly coexist with the worship of God.

Why did Baal and the other idols prove so appealing to the Jews? Like farm boys gawking at big-city life, the Israelites moved from 40 years of wilderness wanderings into a land of superior cultural achievement. When they settled down to a new occupation of farming, they looked to a Canaanite deity, Baal, for help in controlling the weather. In other words, they sought a short cut through magic. Similarly, when a mighty army threatened their borders, they smuggled in a few of that army’s favorite idols, hedging their bets in case their own religion did not bring them military success. Idols became a phantom source of power, an alternative place to invest faith and hope.

Worshiping graven images disappeared from Israel only after God dismantled the nation. But other, more subtle forms of idolatry persisted, and persist to this day. According to the New Testament, idolatry need not involve images of wood or stone. Anything that tempts us away from the true God may function as an idol. In a society dominated by appeals to image and status, idols abound. And, not surprisingly, idolatry produces the same results in us today that it did in the Israelites. Some gods—Mammon, beauty, success—appeal to our thirst for magic. On the human level, they work spectacularly. Success and money give us a kind of magical control over our lives. I worry more, however, about the false gods in my life that escape easy detection. In classical idolatry, a visible symbol expressed the change of loyalty that had gone on inside. Most of our idols today are invisible, not so clearly labeled. What modern idols make God seem trivial? What tends to reduce the surprise, the passion, the vitality of my relationship with God?

Most days, I am not so conscious of choosing between a god and God; the alternatives do not present themselves so clearly. Rather, I find God edged out by a series of small distractions. A car that needs repair, a coming trip, a leaky gutter, a friend’s wedding—these distractions, mere trivialities, may lead to a form of forgetfulness that resembles idolatry in its most dangerous form. The busyness of life, including all its religious busyness, can crowd out God. I confess that some days I meet people, work, make decisions, all without giving God a single thought. A friend of mine was stopped dead in her tracks by a skeptic. After listening to her explain her faith, he said this: “But you don’t act like you believe God is alive.” I try to turn his accusation into a question: Do I act as if God is alive? It is a good question, one that lies at the heart of all idolatry, and one that I must ask myself again every day.

- More from Philip Yancey

Books

Book Briefs: May 17, 1985

The church’s role in healing the alcoholic.

Dying for a Drink, by Anderson Spickard, Jr., and Barbara Thompson (Word Books, Inc., 1985, 192 pp.; $12.95). Reviewed by Terry Muck, editor of LEADERSHIP journal.

It was late Sunday morning and Paul Taylor dragged himself out of bed with a groan. He was sick to his stomach, his head hurt, and his hands were shaking. He wished he hadn’t had so much to drink the night before; and he was looking forward to a strong cup of coffee.

Walking downstairs, he was surprised to find his wife and children sitting in the living room with the family doctor and the vice-president of the insurance company where he was a salesman. The doctor explained to Paul that they were there to talk with him about his drinking problem.

It was Paul’s wife who spoke first, her voice noticeably shaking: “Paul, last Tuesday we went out to dinner for our anniversary, and you got drunk. You poured a bottle of champagne on yourself and made a lewd remark to a woman who passed our table. When the maître d’ asked us to leave, you took a swing at him, and then passed out on the floor. A busboy helped me put you in the car.”

Paul stared at his wife incredulously as she went on to describe in detail three other similarly embarrassing incidents of the past year. He could not imagine why she was saying such things in front of his boss and doctor—but he was too surprised to respond. When she had finished, Paul’s employer began to describe his slipping work habits.

Paul’s teenage son followed with stories of parental abuse. And Paul’s doctor explained in graphic detail what drinking was doing to his physical health.

Then came the horror stories from his 17-year-old daughter. And finally, in a relational coup de grâce, Paul’s shy, 5-year-old daughter haltingly confronted her father.

By the time they were all through, Paul was in tears—and the next morning was on his way to an alcoholic treatment center.

Drying Out

This, of course, was not a chance get-together. It represented one family’s only hope in breaking the vicious downward spiral that Paul’s alcoholism had become. The intervention followed specific rules and guidelines, and although not all such meetings end as happily as this one did, thousands have led to the eventual arresting of alcoholics’ self-destructive behavior. And this, according to Dr. Anderson Spickard, coauthor of Dying for a Drink, is the only chance most alcoholics have of breaking out of a disease that affects over 10 million people each year.

“I told the story of Paul in the book because he was a good example of what faces someone addicted to alcohol,” said Spickard in an interview with this reviewer. “Very few truly addicted alcoholics can hope to stop drinking by themselves—the best studies suggest that fewer than one out of ten can quit without professional medical help.”

Intervention begins that help. If successful, it starts a long recovery process led by medical professionals trained to deal with alcoholics. But, according to Spickard, it is the key to getting the alcoholic to admit he needs help, and to make it work it takes the coordinated effort of relatives, friends, employers, doctors, and—oh yes, minister and church. One of the key points of Dying for a Drink is that the church does play a role, even though at times it is most effective if it just stays out of the way.

“It’s a question of timing more than anything else,” said Spickard. “In many ways my book is a call for the church to see that too often it has become an ‘enabler’ rather than a positive force in the treatment of alcoholics. An enabler is anyone who helps an alcoholic continue his addiction. It may be a wife who covers up for the alcoholic in front of his employer and friends, or a child who cleans up Daddy’s vomit. Enablers allow alcoholics to avoid the most serious consequences of their addiction, and thus help them continue to self-destruct. They do it out of love, of course, but are actually hurting the alcoholic’s chances of recovery.

“The church becomes an enabler when it doesn’t recognize the medical severity of the alcoholic’s problem. The biggest mistake made by church counselors is failure to recognize the underlying problem as alcoholism. Drinking is too often seen as a minor symptom of sin rather than an uncontrollable habit that can kill. The result is that too few alcoholics are sent to medical professionals. They are continued in nonproductive counseling relationships where prayer and Scripture study are used in place of medical help.”

Finding Forgiveness

In the first half of the book, Spickard, the director of general internal medicine and professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, outlines the problems alcoholics have traditionally faced in getting help. He notes that society has institutions to deal with alchohol-induced behavior (federal, state, and local governments), the physical havoc alcohol wreaks on heavy drinkers (hospitals), and the theological inappropriateness of alcoholic abuse and addiction (churches). But it has few resources available to help alcoholics themselves.

To be sure, writes Spickard, each of these institutions does something to help. Through law, governments try to protect citizens from homicidal drunk drivers who kill one person every 22 minutes. But the government can only go so far with protective legislation before the laws create more problems than they solve.

Through drugs and surgery, hospitals can detoxify, tranquilize, and surgically repair human beings blitzed with alcohol-related disease. But doctors are quite candid about their relative helplessness in the face of patients who invariably deny they have a serious problem.

Through a sermon, Sunday school class, or home Bible study, churches can effectively hold up the ideal of sobriety. But alcoholics, swayed by our culture’s unmistakable sermonizing that drinking is cool and controllable, become quickly apologetic-proof. No group of people is more adept at rationalization and compartmentalization than alcoholics.

So what can be done? In his book, Spickard recommends intervention with a program specifically designed to help alcoholics. The intervention itself needs to be choreographed by a professional, who helps choose the five or six members of the intervention team and the appropriate time and place for the intervention. The professional also helps the interveners rehearse the data of the confrontation—three or four specific instances where they were personally threatened or embarrassed by the alcoholic’s inappropriate behavior.

Once treatment has been accomplished (either 30 days in an alcoholic treatment center or 90 straight days of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings), close follow-up is necessary to prevent relapse. This is the time, according to Spickard, when the church can become the focal point of the alcoholic’s recovery. Up until now the church has been a very important supporting actor in the process. Now it has a chance to reassume the role of leading man.

“People come out of alcoholic recovery groups with their spiritual antennae fully extended,” said Anderson. “They want to know forgiveness. They are never more ready to hear the gospel. This is where church support groups can make a difference by providing two things: fellowship and a clear voice of what the Scripture teaches about Christian love and peace.”

Dying for a Drink is a book about people who are dying both physically and spiritually. There is treatment for both problems. But two different kinds of medication must be provided, and they must be taken in the proper order. This book responsibly describes that process, and gives hope to both alcoholics and a church that seeks total health for the body.

“Let My People Go”

Exodus and Revolution, by Michael Walzer (Basic Books, 1985, 149 pp.; $15.95). Reviewed by Rodney Clapp, associate editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.

John Calvin prooftexted from it. The English Puritans expropriated it. Black slaves were sustained by it. And Karl Marx quoted it.

In fact, according to political philosopher Michael Walzer, the story (historical narrative, not fiction) of Israel’s exodus from Egypt has been something of a foundational model and source of encouragement for nearly all the most important radical political movements in Western history. And thus the primary purpose of his book: To look at the pervasiveness of “exodus” thinking in influencing the action of the downtrodden throughout history.

Exodus Applique

Exodus and Revolution is a scholarly historical survey, never stinting on documentation. Consider Walzer’s citations from the period of the English Puritans. “Israel’s experience [in the Exodus] is on record in Holy Writ for our encouragement,” an English Puritan preached in 1642. And Oliver Cromwell claimed Exodus was “the only parallel of God’s dealing with us that I know in the world.…” That the Exodus was widely discussed, and even used to measure the rightness of the Puritan revolution, is evidenced in a 1645 pamphlet that noted, “But some will say, that our bondage is not yet so bad as that of Egypt was,” and went ahead to argue that, for some English at least, the “popish” oppression was just as bad.

Closer to home, we are reminded of American colonists attacking the “British Pharaoh.” They thought of their venture as an “errand into the wilderness”; and Cotton Mather dubbed John Winthrop the “American Moses.” By the time of the Revolution, the new land was “God’s new Israel.” And it occurred to both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson that the Great Seal of the United States should feature the Exodus. Franklin proposed that it show Moses with rod lifted and the Egyptian army perishing in the sea; Jefferson suggested the column of Israelites proceeding through the wilderness behind pillars of cloud and fire.

These examples could be multiplied many times and not without a periodic tinge of irony. In Walzer’s words, “The Book of Exodus came alive in the hands of Boer nationalists fighting the British, and it is alive in the hands of black nationalists in South Africa today.” The oppressed have become the oppressors, and the very story that served well their ancestors now empowers their opponents.

Truth And Consequences

Having seen (through Walzer’s labor) the historical pervasiveness of the Exodus, it is important to note that Exodus and Revolution is not a wild-eyed polemic. Walzer, of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Studies, is neither writing a brief outlining God’s political handiwork nor addressing such crucial (and largely theological) questions as the appropriateness of employing Marxist analysis in a strategy for Christian social reform (liberation theology). He is, on the contrary, concerned with the recurrent manifestation of the Exodus story in Western politics, and not the correctness (or incorrectness) of each historical or contemporary application. There can be no improvement on his own eloquent statement of his thesis: “The Exodus is a story, a big story, one that became part of the cultural consciousness of the West—so that a range of political events … have been located and understood within the narrative frame that it provides. This story made it possible to tell other stories.”

The late Francis Schaeffer was fond of saying that ideas make a difference in the real world. Michael Walzer’s book serves to remind us that some of the most potent ideas come inextricably embedded in scriptural “stories” (whether society acknowledges the Source or not). Writes Walzer: “Though in attenuated form, Exodus thinking seems to have survived the secularization of political theory.” Stories—some special ones in particular—have consequences.

New Strategies to Evangelize Muslims Gain Effectiveness

Sharon E. Mumper

Christianity wins converts from Islam in spite of a growing Muslim revival.

If the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the pursuit of “jihad,” Islamic holy war, has shaken the citadels of international power, the movement has endured some shaking of its own from an unexpected force: evangelical Christianity.

In recent years, as Islam has ascended to power in several countries, Christians have been gearing up for a spiritual “counterrevolution.” Organizations such as the Samuel Zwemer Institute and the U.S. Center for World Mission have alerted the church to the magnitude of the Muslim challenge. The world’s Muslim population represents an unreached group of nearly 900 million people.

“If we don’t go to the Muslims with the gospel in love, God will bring them against us in judgment,” says J. Christy Wilson, Jr., a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a former missionary to Muslims. “Muslim eschatology teaches [that] they will conquer the earth. They consider themselves in a holy war to take over the whole world.”

Ironically, Wilson says, Muslims are more open to the gospel today than ever. “In the next 10 years I see a great influx of Muslims to Christ if Christians take the Great Commission seriously.”

As a group, Muslims have been the focus of little Christian missionary effort. Wilson says less than 2 percent of Protestant missionaries have committed themselves to Muslim evangelism. Don McCurry, executive director of the Samuel Zwemer Institute, estimates that for every one million Muslims, only one full-time Christian missionary is working in Muslim evangelism. He says, however, that the number may be growing. His figures do not include “tentmakers,” Christians who take secular jobs in foreign countries hoping to be involved in evangelistic outreach on the side.

Indeed, there is evidence of increased interest in reaching Muslims with the gospel. Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s triennial student missions conference at Urbana, Illinois, is a case in point. In 1981, only about 8 of the scores of workshops offered to Urbana’s 16,000 conferees concerned Muslim work or Muslim regions of the world. Last year, however, students crowded some 30 workshops on Muslims and Muslim evangelism.

Mission agencies that are committed primarily to evangelizing Muslims reported a phenomenal response from students at last year’s Urbana conference. Some 650 students inquired about the work of Frontiers, an agency dedicated to planting churches among Muslims. Frontiers president, Greg Livingstone, says that 2,000 young people have requested preliminary applications for missionary service since November.

Spurred by the ground swell of interest among missionary candidates, some established mission agencies have been forced to add Muslim evangelism to their ministries. Others have expanded their work among Muslims.

McCurry says that in the last three years, a dozen U.S. seminaries—including Fuller Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary—have added courses on Muslim evangelism. In addition, the Samuel Zwemer Institute has translated its seminar material into six languages.

During the last five years, three agencies were founded by converted Muslims to evangelize Muslims in the United States. One of those organizations, the Fellowship of Iranian Christians, based in California, has gone international to reach Iranians around the world.

Livingstone says he is encouraged by the potential of outreach to Muslims. “I think in the next two decades we are going to see tens of thousands of Muslims coming to Christ, because I think God is gearing up to do something. He is not prepared to write off one-fifth of humanity.” Livingstone says that during the last 4 years, more Muslims have become Christians than during the previous 20 years.

In Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, hundreds of thousands of Muslims have turned to Christ, says Gordon-Conwell’s Wilson. Growing numbers of Muslims in Bangladesh are gathering for Bible studies, and 7 out of 10 people baptized in Iran are converted Muslims. In fact, since Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini gained political control in 1979, Wilson says, more Bibles have been bought by Iranians than in the entire history of the country.

Evangelism among Muslims has been bolstered by new approaches that are increasingly being used by mission agencies.

“We are far more sensitive to cultural issues than we used to be in colonial days,” says McCurry of the Samuel Zwemer Institute. “We are willing to let the converts sit down with an open Bible and design their own structure in terms of organization, liturgy, and lifestyle response to the gospel, rather than imposing the Western modes on them. As a result, Muslims now feel free to plant churches that are congenial to their ethnic and cultural background without compromising the gospel.”

Referred to in missions circles as “contextualization,” the approach gives churches the freedom to adapt some Muslim practices and styles, infusing Christian meaning into the old forms. This effort has resulted in some small Muslim-convert house churches in which believers use some Muslim worship practices, such as taking off their shoes, sitting on the floor, separating men and women during worship, and praying with their foreheads to the floor. In some cases, converts have adapted some Muslim dietary laws and feasts.

The approach is not without its critics. “Some would say it is syncretism,” says Livingstone, of Frontiers. “[But] others would say it is love—not forcing ‘Gentiles’ to become ‘Jews.’ ”

Another trend is an emphasis on the part of missionaries to build deep friendships with Muslims. New methods, like the Language Acquisition Made Practical (LAMP) program, encourage missionaries to develop close relationships with host families. In the LAMP program, a missionary enters a host culture as a learner. Some missionaries live with a family and learn firsthand the language and culture.

As a result of the LAMP approach, Livingstone says, “our people are getting marvelous relationships and entrance into clans that I personally did not get in 12 years overseas.”

- More from Sharon E. Mumper

Evangelical Orthodox Church Seeks Official Recognition from Eastern Orthodoxy

Leslie R. Keylock

Later this month, the 19 bishops of the fledgling Evangelical Orthodox Church (EOC) will take a major step toward seeking recognition for the EOC as a member of the worldwide Eastern Orthodox communion. Under the leadership of EOC presiding bishop Peter E. Gillquist, the bishops will fly to Istanbul, Turkey, to present themselves to the Ecumenical Patriarch, the spiritual head of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The EOC bishops will be accompanied by Bishop Maximos of Pittsburgh, a representative of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States. Bishop Maximos is sponsoring the EOC’s candidacy for membership in the second-largest Christian body in the world, including about one-fourth of the world’s Christians. Although the EOC stresses the importance of continuity with the Orthodox faith, the denomination is not officially recognized by any Orthodox body.

In an unrelated application process, the EOC received word last month that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) had tabled the denomination’s request for membership. Arthur Gay, immediate past president of the NAE and chairman of the committee that investigated the EOC’s application, had recommended the church’s acceptance. But the organization’s executive committee felt that the time was not right for the denomination to be made an NAE member.

Gillquist said the EOC will continue to seek NAE membership. “We came to Christ through NAE groups, we subscribe to every syllable of the NAE statement of faith, and we have more affinity with the NAE than with the NCC-WCC [National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches].…

“Some of the greatest evangelical preachers, such as John Chrysostom, and some of the greatest missionaries, such as Cyril and Methodius, were Orthodox,” he said. “The EOC has not departed from its evangelical roots.

“If we’d been the [more established] Missouri Synod Lutherans,” Gillquist said, “I think the NAE would have accepted us.”

The roots of the EOC go back to 1973, when Gillquist and six other former Campus Crusade for Christ staff members formed the New Covenant Apostolic Order, a group of house churches scattered across the continent. They had become increasingly interested in the biblical and historical importance of the church and found themselves deeply impressed by the Eastern church fathers and the richness of their ecclesiology. The group was reorganized in 1979 as the EOC. Today the denomination consists of 2,500 members in 27 parishes in 10 states and in Canada.

In Istanbul, the EOC bishops will meet with several standing committees of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and finally with the Ecumenical Patriarch and his staff. The EOC representatives expect to be questioned about their denomination’s theology, ecclesiology, and worship. The denominational leaders say they hope to receive further guidance on how the EOC can be received as a fully recognized member of the Eastern Orthodox communion.

The EOC’s short history has been marked by controversy, especially over its efforts to implement what Gillquist calls biblical teachings regarding church discipline. In 1979, Bill Counts, a former Campus Crusade associate of the EOC’s founding bishops, wrote a paper for the Spiritual Counterfeits Project concerning the extent of authority the EOC bishops exercised over the church’s members.

Ron Zell talked to CHRISTIANITY TODAY as one who had been excommunicated from the EOC. “I feel they hurt people an awful lot by excommunicating a number of people who were struggling to have a relationship with the Lord,” he said. “The leaders set up a very disciplined hierarchical structure, but then they turned authority over to untrained lay ‘priests’ who abused it.”

Zell said he was excommunicated for objecting to the interference of a priest in his marriage. “They said I had made war on them,” he said, “but that was not my intent.” Since then, Gillquist and EOC cofounder Dick Ballew have apologized to Zell.

In a separate incident, former EOC bishop C. Ronald Roberson filed a $10 million lawsuit against the EOC for breach of trust. In the suit, he alleges that after he privately confessed to an adulterous relationship, EOC leaders spread the information to his wife and church before he had a chance to inform them.

David F. Wells, professor of historical and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, said evangelicals who are moving toward Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism “are reacting to a historical deficiency in evangelicalism. But I do not feel the solutions they propose are viable.

“Those who move toward Catholicism today are turning to a romantic, nineteenth-century Catholicism that no longer exists. Those who turn to [Eastern] Orthodoxy are retreating from modernity by escaping to another kind of romanticism, the aura, liturgy, and language” of the early church fathers.

DEATHS

Gordon H. Clark, 82, professor of philosophy and chairman of the philosophy department at Covenant College since 1975, taught at the University of Pennsylvania, at Wheaton (Ill.) College, and at Butler University, author of more than 20 books and commentaries; April 9, in Westcliffe, Colorado, of a liver condition.

Baker James Cauthen, 75, executive secretary and later executive director of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board from 1954 to 1979, former missionary to China, professor of missions at two Southern Baptist seminaries; April 15, in Richmond, Virginia, of an apparent stroke.

William Stringfellow, 56, author, lawyer, Episcopalian lay theologian active in the anti-war and civil rights movements, fought for the ordination of women as Episcopal priests; March 2, in Providence, Rhode Island.

Leila Irene Routh McKinney, 95, widow of gospel music composer and Southern Baptist music pioneer B. B. McKinney; March 1, in San Antonio, Texas, of natural causes.

Robert W. M. Cuthbert, 50, president of the Moravian Church in Jamaica, founder of Christian Action for Development in the Caribbean; February 24, in Kingston, Jamaica, after being shot by an unknown assailant.

Michal Stankiewicz, 61, president and former general secretary of the Baptist Union of Poland, editor of books for Polish Baptists; February 21, in Warsaw, Poland, of an apparent stroke.

- More from Leslie R. Keylock

Experts on Nontraditional Religions Try to Pin down the New Age Movement

Joseph M. Hopkins

What is the New Age movement, and how should the church respond to it? Some have identified it as a conspiracy that intends to introduce the Antichrist mentioned in Revelation. However, others say that the movement is merely a recent expression of age-old paganism.

A recent conference in Denver attracted experts on nontraditional religions and some 300 others to try to put the New Age movement in perspective. The gathering was sponsored by Evangelical Ministries to New Religions (EMNR).

A statement prepared by EMNR and distributed at the close of the conference found no basis for an organized conspiracy behind the New Age movement. The statement defines the movement as “a spiritual, social, and political movement to transform individuals and society through mystical enlightenment, hoping to bring about a utopian era, a ‘New Age’ of harmony and progress. While it has no central headquarters or agencies, it includes loosely affiliated individuals, activist groups, businesses, professional groups, and spiritual leaders and their followers. It produces countless books, magazines, and tapes reflecting a shared worldview and vision. How that worldview is expressed, what implications are drawn, and what applications are made differ from group to group.”

The statement listed basic assumptions of New Age philosophy, including:

• God is an impersonal undifferentiated oneness, not separate from creation.

• Humanity, like all creation, is an extension of this divine oneness and shares its essential being. Thus, humanity is divine.

• Transformation of humanity is brought about through techniques that can be applied to mind, body, and spirit. Examples of such techniques include meditation, yoga, chanting, creative visualization, hypnosis, and submission to a guru.

“New Age teachers often use a common terminology …,” the statement read. “However, merely using a term popular among New Agers [such as consciousness, holistic, or global] no more indicates acceptance of New Age philosophy than use of the term ‘evangelism’ indicates acceptance of Christianity.”

Douglas Groothius, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin and author of a forthcoming book on the New Age movement, said the sixties’ counterculture rejected materialism and turned inward—and eastward—to Hindu mysticism. The resulting New Age world view added the dimension of divine power to humanistic thought, he said, producing a type of cosmic humanism.

Groothius said the agenda of New Age politics includes the following:

• A form of androgeny, making no distinction between male and female. Males are held responsible for the evils of human history. The neopagan return to the Wicca concept of Mother-God, holding male and female in her womb, he said, is a hallmark of New Age religion and politics.

• A view of ecology in which nature and God are merged, and the transcendence of God is rejected.

• A world order that applies an “all is one” theology to nations, making national boundaries obsolete, and taking a global approach to the world’s problems.

Walter Marlin, director of the Christian Research Insitute, defined the New Age movement simply as “occultism.” How should Christians approach New Agers? The key is found in Acts 17, Martin said. Paul deplored idolatry in Athens, but used the altar “to the unknown god” as common ground for preaching the gospel. In a similar way, he said, Christians should approach adherents of the New Age movement with love and concern.

- More from Joseph M. Hopkins

Theology

Part III: Is Evangelical Faith Enough?

John D. Woodbridge

Church historian John D. Woodbridge evaluates Thomas Howard’s decision to become a Catholic.

Despite Thomas Howard’s conversion to Catholicism, his deep appreciation for his godly forbears and Protestant evangelicals in general remains. He lauds their commitment to many of the great tenets of the Christian faith, and he heartily commends their lifestyles and intrepid evangelism. Nonetheless, his analysis of the Christian faith encompasses an extensive critique of evangelical Protestant faith.

Howard faults evangelicalism on two fronts. First, he says, Protestantism does not have an infallible teaching office to guarantee an infallible understanding of the Christian faith. Second, he says, Protestantism is stricken by a poverty of authentic spirituality and meaningful worship.

It is true that many evangelicals sense a need for more meaningful worship in the life of their churches. Rather than clearing the mind’s eye to perceive more fully the resplendent glory of Almighty God, evangelical worship services on occasion can dim spiritual vision by focusing on displays of the trite, and even the tawdry.

Be that as it may, Howard misspeaks when he says “the soul can’t feed” on Reformation Protestantism. If comparisons must be made, the writings of many seventeenth-century Puritan divines reflect a profundity of spirituality that matches that of Catholic mystics of the same period. Many evangelicals have had their souls supremely well nourished by feasting on the Word of God. And the worship services in numerous evangelical churches throughout the world do not compare unfavorably for a sense of worship with services in Roman Catholic churches. The complaint that an overweening poverty of worship and spirituality has globally characterized Protestantism since the sixteenth century is not a judicious one.

Even though Howard faults evangelical worship, that criticism probably did not determine his decision to become a Catholic. He apparently was attracted by an almost-ethereal vision of the physical presence of the Catholic church evolving in time and yet remaining mysteriously constant.

He is particularly impressed by what he perceives to be the infallible doctrine that the pope and the teaching office of the church pronounce and defend. During an interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, he repeatedly indicated that his beliefs were in line with whatever the teaching office of the Roman Catholic Church ultimately affirmed. If he did not know how to answer a specific question or how to harmonize alleged descrepancies in Catholic tradition, he assured his questioner that somewhere a faithful Catholic teacher knew the correct response. Once attracted to the edifice of the church, he apparently could not envision how the claims of the church might ever be falsified. Whatever intellectual or spiritual objections might exist, in Howard’s thinking they yield before an important premise: essential church teaching is infallible. The question of how this premise is related to the obvious diversity of belief in contemporary Catholicism does not seem to trouble him.

Evangelicals should respect the sincerity of Howard’s convictions. But they undoubtedly will balk at his belief in the infallibility of the Catholic magisterium, based on apostolic authority passed through an unbroken physical continuity of papal ordinations. In the sixteenth century, a Catholic monk named Martin Luther balked at the magisterium, leading him to challenge the church’s teaching authority. Luther sought to have Scripture alone determine his beliefs, not the interpretations of the church fathers, the pope, or church traditions. For Luther, tradition was instructive but not determinative.

As Luther evaluated the Catholic church of his day, he could not square its teachings with its claim to represent authentic apostolic authority. If the church were genuinely apostolic, he reasoned, its teachings should have meshed more easily with those of the apostles as found in Holy Scripture. A notable student of the Bible, Luther began to draw up a list of items in Catholic doctrine and practice that he thought had no warrant in Holy Scripture. His list included the Catholic Mass as a re-enactment of the sacrifice of Christ’s death; the penitential system; purgatory; and the merits of the saints. He felt that the Catholic church had allowed many of its human, fallible traditions to supersede the teachings of God’s Word. Luther wanted to restore apostolic authority in the church by restoring true apostolic doctrine.

In contrast, by accepting the Catholic claim to infallible doctrine, Howard has been led to endorse a view of salvation mediated by the church’s priestly-sacramental system. Ironically, it was this teaching about salvation that grieved Luther, a fervent Catholic. Luther had been particularly troubled by the wrenching question of his own salvation. He tried to follow scrupulously what the Catholic church told him to do to find release from his sin and sense of guilt. He became a monk. He partook of the Eucharist regularly. He disciplined himself. But frustration greeted him at every turn. Some years later he found relief in Paul’s teaching about justification by faith alone.

Luther believed that many Catholic teachers of his day taught what amounted to a works-righteousness salvation. They did not sufficiently take into account the vitiating effects of sin upon man, disallowing his ability to earn his salvation. Luther struck out at the Catholic church as a mediating priestly-sacramental vehicle of salvation. According to widespread Catholic teaching, salvation depended not only on what God had done, but on how the faithful responded. They needed to dispose themselves to receive grace through the sacraments so that they could cooperate with God and earn their salvation through their faith and freely performed good works, including participation at the Mass.

Luther noted that in Romans and Galatians, Paul indicates that we are justified by faith through grace alone, not by our works. We are declared righteous because God sees us clothed in Christ’s righteousness. Good works will flow freely from our justification, but they are not an instrumental cause of our salvation.

If Christ’s righteousness has not been imputed to us, if we are not clothed in Christ’s righteousness alone, then we are left in our own righteousness, which the Bible describes as “filthy rags.” Sharp are the distinctions between a salvation teaching that extols the mediating role of the Catholic sacramental system and the teaching of evangelical Protestantism.

In lengthy dialogues between American Roman Catholic and Lutheran scholars ending in 1983, vigorous attempts have been made to overcome these differences. Luther’s insights regarding justification by faith alone received a sympathetic hearing from Catholic representatives. They acknowledged that much of his teaching does find warrant in Scripture. Differences did emerge, however, regarding how Christians appropriate justification by faith alone.

For some Protestants, the Catholic church’s capacity to accommodate even a Martin Luther may come as a surprise. But for Howard and other Roman Catholics, this capacity to expand its “infallible” traditions to encompass new thought without betraying old beliefs is another gift of the Holy Spirit to his church.

It is to be hoped that evangelical Protestants will not be viewed as churlish if they take serious exception with the Roman Catholic Church’s analysis of its own infallible developing tradition. Not only is it difficult to find convincing scriptural justification for Catholic doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception of Mary (1854), her bodily assumption into heaven (1950), and her redemptive role in our salvation, but it is difficult to track an unbroken tradition for these beliefs back to the apostolic generation. Moreover, in his careful study, Revolution in Rome (InterVarsity), David Wells demonstrates convincingly that several teachings of the Second Vatican Council, for example, were not merely adaptations of some previous beliefs of the church but outright doctrinal changes.

Is being an evangelical enough? When evangelical teaching reflects faithfully what the Bible teaches, then it is certainly enough. Does this mean that evangelicals have no regard for the communion of saints and the teachings of brothers and sisters in Christ who preceded them? Not at all. Many evangelicals find great instruction and spiritual solace in the writings of Luther, John Calvin, Menno Simons, John Wesley, and of several Catholic authors. But no thoughtful evangelical would want to elevate his or her own theology or tradition to the point where they are no longer fully subject to potential revision in accord with the teachings of God’s Word.

As evangelicals, we can understand several of Howard’s criticisms of worship practices and low levels of spirituality within our churches. These problems should be frankly acknowledged, and steps should be taken to remedy them. But they should not constitute grounds for an evangelical making the pilgrimage to Rome. The capacity to offer a feast of aesthetic and awe-inspiring delights through stately architecture or reverential worship services does not guarantee that a church has apostolic authority behind it, whether it be Catholic or Protestant. Instead, that characteristic is determined by another question: Are the church’s teachings in line with the teachings of the apostles? Once again, if evangelicals seek with the Holy Spirit’s help to make the gospel taught by the apostles their living faith, that is enough. They will warrant their name: “men and women of the gospel.”

NORTH AMERICAN SCENE

Three members of a family who were expelled from a Southern Baptist congregation have filed a $2.5 million lawsuit against the church and its pastor. Lloyd and Taye Ruth and their teenage daughter sued the First Baptist Church of Sunset, Louisiana, and its pastor, William M. Hill, Jr., for defamation, invasion of privacy, humiliation, and emotional distress. The Ruths claim that Hill knowingly made false accusations at a church meeting concerning their daughter’s character and sexual activities. Hill has said the suit questions “the right of a congregational church to discipline its members.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to review a North Carolina State University ban on religious solicitation in dormitories. The decision lets stand two lower federal court rulings that upheld the ban. In the suit, former student Scott Chapman claimed that his First Amendment rights had been violated, and that university officials had engaged in censorship.

The Lilly Endowment has given the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) a $250,000 grant to help the denomination make plans for a new headquarters building. The 1.2 million-member denomination, based in eastern Indianapolis, has considered moving to the city’s downtown area. The Lilly Endowment has not made any commitments to six other Protestant denominations that city officials are trying to attract to Indianapolis.

The Book, a paperback edition of The Living Bible paraphase, has sold more than one million copies since August. An additional one million copies will be printed by this summer. The Book is selling well in major bookstore chains as well as in truck stops and supermarkets. Published by Tyndale House Publishers, 30 million copies of The Living Bible have been sold since its introduction 14 years ago.

A federal district judge has sentenced two persons convicted of helping Salvadorians illegally enter the United States. Jack Elder, director of a shelter for Central Americans in San Benito, Texas, was sentenced to 150 days in a halfway house. Stacey Lynn Merkt, a volunteer at the shelter, was sentenced to 269 days in prison. Elder and Merkt are free pending an appeal of their convictions.

The Assemblies of God has grown by more than 1,500 congregations in the last decade, with nearly a church per day being added during the 1980s. The Gulf Latin American District has led the growth of the denomination, adding 118 new churches since 1980. The Assemblies of God reported 10,582 congregations in the United States at the end of 1984.

A federal district court judge has struck down a resolution that banned “First Amendment activities” at Los Angeles International Airport. Jews for Jesus successfully challenged a Board of Airport Commissioners resolution that prohibited religious speech—including the distribution of religious tracts—within the airport’s central terminal area. Judge Edward Rafeedie ruled that the airport terminal is a public forum that is open to First Amendment activities.

WORLD SCENE

The Dutch Reformed Mission Church of South Africa has exonerated Allan Boesak of the charge that he had an extramarital affair. Boesak, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, has resumed his official church duties. Allegations against the churchman were published in the Johannesburg Star earlier this year. Boesak is a leading opponent of apartheid, the South African government’s policy of racial separation.

The Chinese government has decided to allow overseas churches to send non-missionary teachers to China. Ten Christian teachers who are expected to arrive in China by September will teach English in state-run schools under the supervision of the Amity Foundation, an organization started by Chinese Christians. The American teachers are expected to enhance the church’s growing position of respectability in Chinese society.

An international human rights organization has identified 15 countries where religious believers face torture, imprisonment, and even death. Amnesty International cited Albania, Burundi, Bulgaria, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Rumania, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. The human rights organization says a number of the countries grant more rights to atheists than to religious believers.

A United Nations (UN) official says one-half to two-thirds of the UN’S $1.5 billion in targeted emergency aid for Africa has been met.UN relief coordinator F. Bradford Morse said he is confident that the immediate needs of drought-stricken African countries will be met. The U.S. government has donated $1 billion worth of food. The American public has contributed an additional $75 million.

Churches around the world will observe a Day of Prayer for World Evangelization on May 26. The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization proposed in 1977 that Pentecost Sunday of each year be a day of prayer. An increasing number of churches worldwide has adopted the proposal.

Critics Link A Fantasy Game To 29 Deaths

A fantasy game called Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), manufactured by TSR Hobbies in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, has had its share of critics since it was first marketed in 1973. In recent months some of those critics, including the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV), have linked the game to 29 suicides and murders since 1979.

Earlier this year NCTV petitioned the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Protection Agency to require TSR Hobbies to put warnings on game books stating that the game has been linked to several deaths, NCTV also asked the Federal Communications Commission to require similar warnings during the airing of a Saturday morning cartoon show based on the game.

All three federal agencies rejected the request, NCTV chairman Thomas Radecki, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois School of Medicine, said his organization has begun to ask members of Congress who oversee those agencies for “their cooperation in enforcing the laws” governing toy safety and fraudulent advertising.

Accompanying NCTV in this effort is an organization called Bothered About D & D (B.A.D.D.). The group was founded by Pat Pulling, the mother of a boy who played D&D at the time he killed himself. Pulling said D&D game manuals contain “detailed descriptions of killing, Satanic human sacrifice, assassination, sadism, premeditated murder, and curses of insanity.” She added that much of the material comes from “demonology, including witchcraft, the occult, and evil monsters.”

TSR estimates that as many as 4 million people, mostly teenagers and young adults, play D&D. Players rely on detailed game manuals and use their imaginations to create adventures under the direction of an experienced player known as the Dungeonmaster. The Dungeonmaster designs problems that other players will encounter and assigns to players strengths and weapons they can use to defeat enemies and achieve power and treasure.

“I don’t believe TSR … wants to do harm or promote violence,” Radecki said. “But this game is detrimental to millions of people.” A game can last for hours, weeks, even months. Radecki and other critics charge that for some players, intense involvement blurs the line between reality and fantasy. “A typical player may spend as much as 15 hours a week playing the game,” Radecki said. “An avid player will spend much more [time].”

TSR spokesman Dieter Sturm said 5,000 American teenagers commit suicide every year. “Maybe some of these people did play D&D,” he said, “but so do millions of others.”

NCTV and B.A.D.D. said that in at least 13 deaths linked to D&D, there is “very solid evidence”—including police reports, eyewitnesses, and documents left by the victims—that the game’s influence was a decisive factor. Sturm called such claims “misleading.” Subsequent investigations, he said, “found the game has nothing to do with the deaths.”

Personalia

John F. MacArthur, Jr., has been named president of The Master’s College, formerly Los Angeles Baptist College. The school previously was affiliated with the General Association of Regular Baptists. MacArthur will continue his ministries as senior pastor of Grace Community Church in California.

Gregg O. Lehman has resigned after four years as president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. “The presidency has placed a tremendous strain on me physically and emotionally,” he said, “and has caused strains on my family.” Lehman said he plans to study and write as an executive in residence at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Maxwell Meyers has succeeded Charles Bennett as president of Mission Aviation Fellowship. The evangelical agency coordinates some 300 pilots who provide flight services for missions and local churches in remote areas of the Third World.

George Erik Rupp, dean of the Harvard Divinity School, has been named president of Rice University in Houston. The Presbyterian clergyman is the first nonscientist to lead the university known for its science and engineering programs. Rupp succeeds Norman Hackerman, president of the school for 15 years.

The trustees of Fresno (Calif.) Pacific College have appointed Richard Kriegbaum as the school’s president. Kriegbaum has served as the college’s vice-president of administration. He formerly served as director of planning and marketing at Wheaton (Ill.) College. Kriegbaum will succeed college president Edmund Janzen in July.

Dennis M. Mulder has been named international director of the World Home Bible League. In his new position, Mulder will oversee the distribution of Scriptures in 73 countries. He succeeds William Ackerman, the organization’s director for 35 years.

The Christian Ministries Management Association, a professional association designed to assist managers of Christian organizations, has elected Lance Renault as president. Renault is director of administration for Compassion International.

Herbert H. Schiff has been named chairman of this year’s National Bible Week (Nov. 24 to Dec. 1). Schiff, chairman of SCOA Industries in Columbus, Ohio, was appointed by the interfaith Laymen’s National Bible Committee. National Bible Week is intended to remind Americans of the Bible’s importance and to encourage Bible reading and Bible study.

Planned Interfaith Cable Tv Network In Canada Faces Uncertain Fate

Canada’s evangelical denominations are taking an open-minded but cautious approach to plans for a religious cable television network.

Known as Canadian Interfaith Network (CIN), plans call for programming in two formats. One would feature programs produced by various religious groups. The other would include news, current affairs, and youth features based on broad, nonspecific religious values.

The proposal for CIN grew out of discussions begun three years ago between several religious groups and the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Crossroads Christian Communication, producer of the Christian talk show “100 Huntley Street,” initiated the discussions. The CRTC soon invited a broad cross section of religious groups to participate. Crossroads, headed by Pentecostal minister David Mainse, later pulled out of the negotiations, saying it was a production company and not a religious denomination. However, Crossroads said it would support CIN’s formal application if the CRTC holds hearings. The next meeting between CIN and the CRTC is tentatively set for next month.

Dan Block, of Mennonite Brethren Communications, said his agency is concerned that a cable network could create a ghetto effect, limiting the exposure of Christian programming. In addition, he said his agency is concerned about possible CIN strictures on specifically evangelistic programming, CIN wants denominations to use the network “to speak to their own people,” he said.

Keith Hobson, general secretary of the Canadian Baptist Federation (CBF), said CBF members have not “thrown out” the possibility of CIN involvement. But he said they are concerned about the high financial costs required.

In 1981, the CRTC surveyed television viewing habits. The commission found that a program called “Man Alive” attracted the largest audience, with 900,000 viewers. Produced by the publicly owned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), “Man Alive” is a public affairs program with light religious overtones. “Hymn Sing,” the CBC’s concession to the evangelical market, drew 400,000 viewers, about the same number as all Canadian evangelically produced programs combined. The survey indicated that Christian programs telecast from the United States attracted about 800,000 Canadian viewers.

In the past, the CRTC has been known to sidetrack evangelical attempts to make extensive use of the electronic media. Four years ago the commission gave a Christian group verbal permission to develop a family-oriented radio station in British Columbia. The CRTC later changed its mind after the media arm of Canada’s major Protestant denominations objected.

LLOYD MACKEY in Vancouver, British Columbia

- More from John D. Woodbridge

Part II: Why Did Thomas Howard Become a Roman Catholic?

The convert chronicles his pilgrimage to Rome.

Why would a well-known evangelical writer and English professor at Gordon College become a Roman Catholic? To answer that question, CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked John D. Woodbridge, professor of church history and the history of Christian thought at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, to interview Thomas Howard.

Howard possesses strong evangelical credentials. He is a graduate of Wheaton (Ill.) College; a son of Philip Howard, the late editor of the Sunday School Times; and a brother of David Howard and Elisabeth Elliot.

His conversion to Catholicism last month represented the final step in a spiritual pilgrimage that began years ago. In Christ the Tiger (Harold Shaw) and Evangelical Is Not Enough (Thomas Nelson), Howard chronicled his growing disenchantment with a perceived shallowness in evangelicalism. He seemed to find luminous descriptions of the spirituality that he sought in the writings of Anglicans and Roman Catholics like C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and G. K. Chesterton. He encountered the symbolism and worship practices he so esteemed in the Eucharistic liturgy and The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church—the church he joined before becoming a Catholic.

In the abridged interview that follows, Howard discusses the factors that led him to embrace the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

When did you decide to become a Roman Catholic?

My becoming a Catholic is the fruition of a 20-year pilgrimage. During these last 20 years of reading Scripture and theology and church history, I had never known that I was going to end up being a Roman Catholic. That certainly had not been my plan. However, some time during this last fall I became aware that the ground had shifted under me. I realized that I was looking at Protestantism from across the fence, that I was no longer a Protestant or even an Anglican.

What were the principal reasons you decided to convert to Catholicism?

The question of the unity between Christ and his church is the fundamental one. A close corollary to that, if not virtually synonymous with it, is the question of authority, which immediately turns into the question of the magisterium—the teaching authority of the Catholic church. There is no magisterium in Protestantism. Also important for me was the sacramental understanding of the nature of reality, the nature of God, the world, revelation, the gospel, and the Incarnation.

Which individuals were most influential in leading you to this decision?

They are all writers. John Henry Cardinal Newman, a nineteenth-century Catholic convert from Anglicanism; Msgr. Ronald Knox, another convert from Anglicanism; Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton; Romano Guardini, a German Catholic theologian; Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the head of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Karl Stern, an Austrian Jewish psychiatrist who became a Christian; Karl Adam, a German Catholic theologian; and Louis Bouyer, a French Catholic theologian. Towering above them all would be Saint Augustine (354–430).

Would you have become a Catholic if Julius II or Leo X, popes with unsavory reputations from Martin Luther’s day, had been in office rather than John Paul II?

I hope the answer is yes. The Catholic church does not stand or fall with the personality or adequacy of any given pope at any given time. I would want to say that my reasons for becoming a Catholic are because I became convinced that the claims of the ancient church are true.

Do you believe that evil deeds can disqualify popes as Christians?

God is the only one who knows who is a Christian and who is not. There were wicked popes, and there were saintly ones. No Catholic has any problem with the notion of popes being damned if they are unfaithful or if they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Have you ceased being an evangelical by becoming a Roman Catholic?

Quite the contrary. Evangelical and Catholic are, or ought to be, synonymous. I will never be anything but an evangelical.

But are you not now defining “evangelical” in a sense that would be different from what a Protestant evangelical deems that expression to mean?

I would say the burden of proof would be on the evangelical. As a Catholic, I can lay claim to the ancient connotation of the word “evangelical”—namely, a man of the gospel, referring to the gospel, the evangelical councils, and so on. If, however, by evangelical we mean the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movements in the Church of England, or the Free Church movement, or if we’re speaking specifically of the American revivalist phenomenon, then I might find myself outside the circle that these people might like to draw.

Do you believe that evangelicals are Christians?

No question! How could anyone doubt it?

If that is the case, why did you need to become a Roman Catholic?

It’s a question of what the fullness of the faith is. I owe my nurture to evangelicalism. The evangelical wins hands down in the history of the church when it comes to nurturing a biblically literate laity. When we think of evangelism, evangelicals are the most resourceful, the most intrepid, and the most creative. But evangelicals themselves would say that they have never come to grips with what the whole mystery of the church is. I don’t know whether I’ve ever met an evangelical who does not lament the desperate, barren, parched nature of evangelical worship. They’re frantic over the evangelical poverty when it comes to the deeper reaches of Christian spirituality and what the mystery of worship is all about.

How do you account for a period in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries when three men were vying for the office of pope?

I would refer you to a canon lawyer on that question.

What kind of Roman Catholic theology do you espouse? Do you see yourself as a Tridentine Catholic (accepting the teachings of the Council of Trent, 1545–63) or a Vatican II Catholic, or some other kind of Catholic?

I would try to be faithful to whatever definitions of doctrine the Roman Catholic Church has finally settled on. Certain things, of course, change. We saw huge changes at Vatican II (1962–65). Some of the emphases of the Council of Trent have at least been sequestered or sidelined, if not controverted. I would try to be faithful to what the magisterium is teaching. I would not understand the Vatican II documents as opening the door to perpetual and endless innovation—not only in discipline, but also in doctrine.

If I understood you correctly, you indicated that some doctrines of the Catholic church have been controverted?

I didn’t mean to say that doctrines had been controverted. What I was trying to say was that some of the emphases that marked the Council of Trent, if they have not been controverted, have at least been sidelined or deemphasized.

At the Second Vatican Council, the scope of the Bible’s inerrancy was limited especially to matters that deal with our salvation. That is a change from what those in the Augustinian tradition had argued earlier. The position of Vatican II appears to be more than a mere change of emphasis. It would seem to be an actual change in a doctrinal stance.

I would like to demur on highly specific questions about Vatican II. I am neither a canon lawyer nor a historical scholar. I can’t give you an answer about certain things because there are regions I simply haven’t traversed. These matters are not germane to the story of my conversion to Catholicism.

But several of these points are major stumbling blocks for Protestants when they consider the claims of Catholicism. If they were not stumbling blocks for you, is it because you did not encounter them or did not reflect upon them?

I think it would be somewhere in the middle. I have probably encountered and reflected on most of them. Secondly, if there is a Protestant who is seriously interested in those questions, he can find the answer when he finds what Rome teaches. Where there is an apparent discrepancy or contradiction, he can find out what the faithful Roman Catholic theologian says. Thirdly, in my mind, the titanic edifice which is the Roman Catholic Church in all of its radiance and superabundance really was the thing which I found inexorable.

What are the key doctrinal beliefs that distinguish an orthodox evangelical from yourself as a Catholic?

The taproot of the matter would be the nature of the union between Christ and his church—the sense in which the church embodies Christ to the world. Obviously, one can take a disembodied view of this, a totally spiritual view. But that does violence to the whole fabric of revelation, which has always been massively physical, material, embodied. A second issue would be the Eucharist. Somehow it drained off into the sand in the sixteenth century. Certainly nobody in the church preceding the Reformation had any notion of that happening.

How do you define the doctrine of justification by faith?

I would espouse the traditional Catholic view set forth at the Council of Trent, which loudly asserts justification by faith.

Some Catholics have acknowledged that Martin Luther was largely correct in his understanding of Romans and Galatians. But in Luther’s reading of Paul, we are justified by faith through grace alone. God declares us to be righteous, not because of our own righteousness, but because of Christ’s. But from the point of view of many Roman Catholics, justification is linked very closely to the grace received through the sacraments, through right living, through a cooperative effort with God. Nonetheless, Catholics claim that people are still saved by God’s grace alone.

Yes. There’s no question. A rigorous doctrine of imputation is not only limiting but ends up doing a disservice to the nature of grace and justification. It makes the transactions of the gospel basically juridical. In the Roman view, justification and sanctification are a seamless fabric. It is more than a question of God simply seeing us through a legal scrim of Christ’s righteousness. Righteousness actually begins to transform us.

Do not many Roman Catholics, at the popular level at least, assume that the acts that they perform constitute a sufficient way to gain salvation?

Yes. But the operative phrase in your question is the phrase “at the popular level.” If we’re going to speak of popular misconceptions, then we’re off and running.

But in his day, Luther was dealing not only with popular opinion, but with some Roman Catholic teachers who advocated what amounts to a works-righteousness salvation.

Yes. But the Council of Trent dealt with that. As you know, Luther is an extremely popular and influential theologian in Roman Catholic circles these days. I think the judicious Catholic response is that Luther fired off salvos which needed to be fired off because of the appalling and chaotic state of late medieval piety and pastoral practice. But what you ended up with was Protestantism. The soul can’t feed on that. If one reads what the Council of Trent says justification is, you get a very unabashedly biblical doctrine of justification by faith.

What is taking place at the sacrifice of the Mass?

The Roman Catholic Church—along with the Orthodox church and certain groups in the Anglican church—affirms that the Eucharist is simply the church entering into the sacrifice of Christ which is perpetually offered at the altar in heaven. Christ is not slain over and over again. The Catholic church is very insistent on teaching that there was never anything more than one priest, never anything more than one altar, never anything more than one sacrifice, once offered.

Catholic scholars generally acknowledge that in the New Testament, the directors or heads of the church are always noted in the plural as elders or as overseers, terms that are used almost synonymously. How does one move from this church order to a full-orbed papacy with the bishop of Rome being superior to the other bishops?

Simply by the developing understanding of the doctrine of the episcopacy. It’s clear historically why and how and when the doctrine of the papacy developed early on. The words of Christ to Peter were applicable then to the successor of Peter, and those successors turned out to be the bishops of Rome. It isn’t a mystery to anybody how the Roman Catholic understanding came into being.

What role did your family and your educational background play in leading you in the direction you have gone?

The Reformation is my nursing mother in the faith. My father and his fathers and my whole lineage are, to me, icons of true godliness. I have nothing but gratitude and indebtedness to my father and his fathers. So, of course, there’s a certain amount of anguish in having found myself a Roman Catholic. Insofar as my father and his fathers are conscious of my pilgrimage, I assume and hope that they’re applauding.

Part I: Well-Known Evangelical Author Thomas Howard Converts to Catholicism

Randy Frame

Friends and family say the result of his 20-year spiritual pilgrimage comes as no surprise.

Last month, on the night Catholics call Holy Saturday evening, Thomas Howard formally joined the Roman Catholic Church. A widely published evangelical author and professor of English at Gordon College in Wenham, Massachusetts, Howard grew up in a staunchly evangelical family. Of the six Howard children, one became a pastor and four others became missionaries.

Because it is rare for an evangelical of such stature to become a Catholic, CHRISTIANITY TODAY is publishing a three-part special report. In Part I, some of Howard’s friends, peers, and siblings respond to his conversion. In Part II, beginning on page 48, Howard explains his conversion in an interview with church historian John D. Woodbridge. In Part III, beginning on page 58, Woodbridge assesses Howard’s conversion in light of church history.

Two days after becoming a Catholic, Thomas Howard tendered his resignation from the faculty of Gordon College. The evangelical college did not ask for his resignation. However, it requires professors to sign a creedal statement that reflects Protestant Reformational doctrine.

“Many believe this statement is incongruous with traditional Catholic teaching,” said Judson Carlberg, Gordon’s dean of faculty. He emphasized that “everyone here [at Gordon College] greeted Tom’s announcement of his resignation with sadness.” Carlberg said an effort is under way to determine how Howard’s beliefs square with the college’s creedal statement. He did not rule out the possibility that Howard would someday return to teach at Gordon, perhaps as an adjunct professor.

Howard’s formal step into the Roman Catholic Church last month was the culmination of a spiritual pilgrimage lasting more than 20 years. Peers and two siblings contacted by CHRISTIANITY TODAY said his conversion came as no surprise.

Author and former missionary Elisabeth Elliot called her brother Thomas a “very honest, humble, and godly man.… [He was] fully aware of what this move might cost him and was prepared to pay the price.”

Said David Howard, general director of the World Evangelical Fellowship, about his brother Thomas, “For several years I could see it coming. I’m disappointed because I have some grave reservations about some fundamental teachings of the Catholic church.” However, David Howard said this would not affect his close relationship with his brother.

Thomas Howard first became interested in a liturgical style of worship as a student at Wheaton (Ill.) College in the late 1950s. During his college years, he says, he began attending an Episcopal church “and feeling guilty about it.”

Howard credits Catholic authors as tutors in his extensive reading of church history and spirituality over the last two decades. He outlines the progression of his thinking in his book Evangelical Is Not Enough (Thomas Nelson). In the book, he addresses some common criticisms of the Catholic church while paying tribute to his evangelical heritage.

In a telephone interview with CHRISTIANITY TODAY, Howard affirmed his belief in the Bible as the Word of God, stating, “I’m a fundamentalist when it comes to the Scriptures.” But he also said that the Catholic church is the “appointed guardian of the Scriptures.” He said he knows of other Christians on the verge of converting to Catholicism, including some people “well known to evangelicals.” However, he declined to name anyone.

Evangelical theologian J. I. Packer, who recently coauthored a book with Howard, said, “I don’t think becoming a Catholic is anything like the tragedy of a person becoming a [theological] liberal and losing touch with objective authority altogether.… Catholics are among the most loyal and [spiritually] virile brothers evangelicals can find these days.”

However, Packer distinguished between individual Catholics and the Roman Catholic Church, which he said “is simply wrong on some key issues,” including the belief that its teachings are infallible. “I believe the church of God is capable of error,” Packer said, “and sometimes needs reform.”

He said there is no scriptural support for the perception that the Catholic church is the one true church. He added that “the Vatican bureaucracy, … which has engaged in all kinds of skullduggery within Christendom, doesn’t even look like a reliable spiritual authority in all matters.”

Conservative theologian Harold O. J. Brown, a former Catholic, suggested that Howard is pursuing an “idealized version of Catholicism that never existed.” He noted that it was not until the Middle Ages that Catholics adopted the claim that the apostle Peter was the first pope. Brown dismissed the claim to papal infallibility, stating that “popes have contradicted each other and the Bible.”

While it is uncommon for evangelicals to convert to Catholicism, many are joining the Episcopal Church. Robert Webber, a theology professor at Wheaton College, examines this trend in the soon-to-be-published book Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail (Word). Webber, a graduate of Bob Jones University, was reared a fundamentalist, but today he is an Episcopalian. He says, however, that he never will become a Catholic, citing disagreement with several of the church’s teachings.

Nathan Hatch, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, said there is “clearly a trend in the last 10 years [among evangelicals] to take liturgy more seriously.” At the same time, he said, many Catholics are moving in a more evangelical direction. Catholics as a whole are moving away from the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility, Hatch said, and toward a more evangelical view on such crucial issues as salvation and the accessibility of Scripture.

- More from Randy Frame

Historic Peace Churches Seek a New Evangelistic Emphasis

Timothy K. Jones

Six Anabaptist denominations, known for their emphasis on peace and social justice, met last month to discuss evangelism. By the end of the four-day event, it was clear that traditional soul winning would have a higher profile in the historic peace churches.

The gathering, called “Alive … ’85,” drew more than 1,500 pastors, church executives, and laypersons to Denver. Represented were the Brethren Church, Brethren in Christ, Church of the Brethren, General Conference Mennonites, Mennonite Brethren, and the Mennonite Church. The denominations’ combined U.S. and Canadian membership approaches 400,000.

Conference speakers affirmed Anabaptist-Pietist distinctives. But conferees were urged to move beyond an emphasis on social compassion, nonviolence, believer’s baptism, and personal piety to proclaim the gospel unapologetically.

Keynote speaker Myron Augsburger, moderator of the Mennonite Church, told the gathering: “If you think you can be New Testament in peace and social concerns without being evangelistic, then you are mistaken.… You cannot preach the Cross fully without preaching about peace and reconciliation … without bringing people together.… The church needs to model before the powers of the world that various nations, races, and cultures can be one fellowship in Jesus Christ.”

Diversity was evident among the participating denominations. The Brethren in Christ, for example, is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals, while Robert Neff, general secretary of the Church of the Brethren, serves on the National Council of Churches’ governing council. General Conference Mennonites and Church of the Brethren representatives tended to press for a prophetic and social edge in evangelism. Other groups accented personal faith and conversion.

Some leaders acknowledged that their denominations have paid too little attention to traditional evangelism in recent years. Said Neff of the Church of the Brethren: “All of us, as a group, are experiencing a desire to reach out in ways I don’t think we’ve experienced in the last couple of decades.” Added Palmer Becker, a Mennonite: “By our gathering here, we recognize that we haven’t done as well in obeying the Great Commission as we might have.”

Paul Mundey, Church of the Brethren executive for evangelism and a conference planner, welcomed dialogue on the relationship between peace and evangelism. “Very important in the planning process has been the recognition that the prophetic dimensions of the gospel must develop a new linkage with what many call ‘traditional evangelism.’ The time has come to stop accentuating an artificial division between the personal and social dimensions of the gospel.”

Several workshops focused on themes such as “evangelism, peace, and justice in the congregation.” One workshop, led by a Denver Mennonite pastor, took 40 participants to the nearby Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. The group held a worship service on the plant’s perimeter and displayed placards advocating peace.

In addition to linking the gospel with peace issues, evangelism was discussed in the context of the traditional Anabaptist concern for community. The Church of the Brethren’s Neff underscored society’s need for relationships: “Church growth experts will tell you that the most effective force for evangelism is a healthy church which embodies the power and vitality of Jesus Christ.”

Workshops on “friendship evangelism” and “hospitality evangelism” stressed the communal dimensions of sharing the gospel. But the emphasis on community carefully avoided the isolationism of some early Anabaptist extremes. Also striking for the still largely rural denominations is their interest in urban evangelism. Workshops on cross-cultural evangelism, planting black churches, and ministering to ethnic groups confirmed growing urban activity among the churches. The leadership and presence of Native Americans, Hispanics, Chinese, and blacks indicated that new ground already has been broken.

- More from Timothy K. Jones

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