Page 5542 – Christianity Today (2024)

A new openness in New Testament studies allows for both God’s transcendence and church tradition.

At the first World Council of Churches General Assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, Karl Barth shrewdly observed: “I have often had the impression that the line of separation within the Ecumenical Council is not a denominational one, but one that crosses through all the confessions. Is not the real division in the ‘Churches’ that between a biblical system of thought and a non-biblical humanistic system?”

Father Jérome Hamer, the Dominican scholar who quoted these lines in his tome on Barth, toward the end of his book showed confidence that after World War II Protestants were now engaged in a move from humanism to the Bible, “which is accepted as an exterior norm for the mind of man, as God’s order to humanity and not as a prolongation of a psychological experience.” Father Hamer, however, was not sure whether this meant a permanent attainment or merely an interlude in the extended reign of man-centered Protestant liberalism.

After another 30 years it seems that “interlude” is the right description. Father Hamer had hardly published his remarks when there appeared the first signs of the rise to dominance of the theology of Rudolf Bultmann. During the past three decades theology witnessed the ascendancy of another “humanistic system” with its philosophical presuppositions and through-going man-centeredness.

In its wake followed the departure of other theological disciplines from the biblical perspective, and their degeneration into “sciences of man,” psychology of religion, sociology of religion, history of religion—in short, religious anthropology.

Naturally, under the strong influence of the Bultmannian school, New Testament studies gave a lead in this development and paid the heaviest toll. After Bultmann had put all emphasis on man’s new self-understanding, reducing the Gospels to the provision of a mere “that” of Christ’s coming, the school found itself struggling with an ever smaller residue of objective historical content. Like Noah’s dove, faith had nothing to rest its foot on.

It is from this situation of despair that we perceive a grumble of discontent and the distinct cry for a new beginning. In 1975 Peter Stuhlmacher, professor of New Testament studies at the University of Tübingen, West Germany, published a major essay on “Historical Criticism and Theological Interpretation of Scripture” (English translation by Roy A. Harrisville, Fortress Press, 1977). In it he surveyed the course of the discipline through history and ended with a number of strong statements about its present condition. Himself a product of the Bultmann school, Stuhlmacher bluntly declares the “collapse” of Bultmann’s system. He feels that historical criticism has gone to extremes where it has reduced itself to irrelevance for the church, which it ought to serve. The inherited position has become “untenable.”

Reasons given are the estrangement of New Testament studies from the Old Testament—a necessary consequence of the Bultmann approach; its almost programmatic historical skepticism, dividing faith from history; and the dissolution, through a radical application of form criticism, of the New Testament message into innumerable isolated strands of religious contention. All this results in an overall “distancing effect” for modern man vis-à-vis Scripture. And finally, as Stuhlmacher observes, the historical and dogmatic vacuum thus created is quickly being filled again by a new dogmatism and all kinds of philosophical and political substitutes.

In terms of a recovery of the situation, the German scholar proposes a new “hermeneutic of consent,” meaning an openness on the part of the exegete, both for transcendence, i.e., God’s activity in history, and for tradition, i.e., the creed of the church as well as the theological interpretation of Scripture in the past.

This stringent analysis has most recently been backed up by New Testament scholar Otto Betz, Stuhlmacher’s immediate colleague at Tübingen University. In a major lecture on New Testament Christology, delivered at the (Evangelical and Lutheran) “Convention of Confessing Movements” of West Germany earlier this year, Betz addressed the present loss of a unified view of the person and work of Christ. He chastised historical skepticism and the wild conjecture making noticeable in the discipline, and particularly deplored ignorance of the Old Testament that often created the problems New Testament students then found difficult to solve. Betz stressed that the historical and theological assertions of the Gospels, denied for too long, deserved the trust of the researcher.

This stand finds the full support of a recent study, “Are the Gospels Historically Trustworthy?” by Helmut Burkhardt, an evangelical scholar of the younger generation who also gives the credit to the contributions of Scandinavian scholars such as H. Riesenfeld and B. Gerhardsson.

So, perhaps, there is hope that New Testament studies are breaking out of a period where they lay ice-bound by philosophical presuppositions.

All this is good news. However, a case for caution remains. At least in the case of Peter Stuhlmacher—now one of the leading minds in New Testament studies worldwide—there seem to be inconsistencies in the signals received. For example, how can we require “openness for transcendence” and at the same time continue to abide by the law of traditional historical criticism: that all events in history must be analogous and correlated to each other, and that miracles must be rejected?

Further, how does the assertion that all theological interpretation of Scripture must take place in the context of a lived faith fit with the claim that a nonbeliever could also exercise that interpretation? Does not all theological work presuppose continued prayer? And finally, how will historical criticism of Scripture be used merely as a method, in a functional manner, as Stuhlmacher suggests, when it admittedly has its own system of values, due to the source from which it comes? As such, it would continue to induce the passing of value judgments upon Scripture, at a time when we are being encouraged to learn to see, listen, and make mere statements of fact.

No doubt there are a number of things that still need sorting out. We are watching an attempt that has not yet risen beyond compromise. New Testament scholarship will have to advance boldly to a new stand or retreat to the old attitudes. Nevertheless, a start has been made.

Even if a new day should be dawning for New Testament studies, there is a long way to go in the reconstruction of those other theological disciplines which need to find their way back not only to an “openness for transcendence” but also to true God-centeredness and biblical perspective.

As it stands, Stuhlmacher’s endeavors, praiseworthy and relevant as they are. do not provide sufficient reason to squelch evangelical concern over the present state of theology and of New Testament studies in particular.

Klaus Bockmühl is professor of theology and ethics, Regent College, Vancouver, Canada.

Over the last year some 350,000 Kampucheans (Cambodians) have fled the hunger and fighting in their tormented homeland. Of these, some 130,000 crossed the western border into Thailand; even more traveled east into Vietnam, and the rest moved north into Laos.

Now, in inquiry sessions conducted by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) with Thai government observers present, as many as 70 percent of those in Thailand have said they want to return. (The majority do not qualify for emigrating to other countries, in any case.) Even higher proportions want to leave Vietnam and Laos. The Vietnamese-dominated Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh that now effectively controls most of Kampuchea says it is willing to take them back.

Assisting with the resettlement of these “returnees” allows at least one evangelical relief agency the opportunity to turn over a new leaf in relations with the Heng Samrin regime. And many of the Khmer people who entered Thailand as nominal Buddhists will return to their home villages as believers in Jesus christ.

Why is the human tide beginning to turn?

• Thanks to concerted relief efforts, says the UNHCR’s Robert Jackson, starvation in Kampuchea is no longer an imminent danger, even though aid is still focused on “life preservation.” Kani Wagner, representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, reports that about 81 percent of the country’s rice farmland has been planted for the coming rainy season harvest. Refugees in border holding areas now believe they can survive after they are back home.

• Fear of a resurgence of the draconian Pol Pot regime is subsiding. Pol Pot loyalists are bottled up in a mountainous region of southwest Kampuchea and their grip on the surrounding countryside gradually is being pried loose.

• The Khmer are finding the Vietnamese, their ancient enemies, less harsh than they had feared. Although hardly operating a democracy, the new rulers have restored a degree of order and predictability. No one knows how much of the Heng Samrin government’s growing reasonableness in dealing with international organizations is aimed at influencing the upcoming vote in the UN over whether to seat its own representatives or those of Pol Pot. (The regime is as hostile to the church as its predecessor. Six of seven congregations meeting in Phnom Penh are reported to have been shut down—three at gun point.)

• The Heng Samrin government has agreed to receive its displaced citizens back to their home areas without “reeducation.” The UN agencies have developed a working relationship with the regime that will allow it to facilitate resettlement; and Thailand, in particular, is anxious to move out the displaced persons.

Until recently, relief supplies distribution has been in some respects a no-win situation for the relief agencies. Some, such as World Vision, shipped supplies at high cost by sea and air to the Kampuchean capital and its port. Mostly confined to a Phnom Penh hotel, agency officials were frustrated by major docking and transport bottlenecks and were not allowed to verify that supplies reached their intended civilian recipients.

Other agencies, such as the National Association of Evangelicals’ World Relief and the Mennonite Central Committee, distributed across the Thai border “land-bridge” at much lower cost. But because the distribution points were adjacent to Pol Pot-dominated areas, the Heng Samrin regime considered their distribution an unfriendly act. This dilemma led a liaison official for one agency to remark facetiously that the best way to get supplies to the intended recipients would be to “drop the rice on a tree stump and run.”

Now the Kampuchean government is allowing agencies that have followed both approaches to deliver supplies inside Kampuchea and to monitor the distribution. They will be working in tandem with others such as Russian-supervised stevedores and Polish medical teams.

The agencies have been asked by UNHCR to begin with resettling 18,000 families by the end of the year, at a projected cost of $13 million. The eventual numbers resettled may reach as many as 300,000. UN agencies and the Red Cross have been given food, educational, and medical responsibilities. World Relief has been delegated the task of providing $2 million worth of garden seed, agricultural tools, and basic household utensils and tools for subsistence.

The voluntary repatriation will more deeply permeate Kampuchean society with a Christian witness than ever before. The intense evangelism engaged in by Kampuchean believers in the Thai border holding areas has brought this about.

The outstanding example is the Khao I Dang holding center, housing between 120,000 and 140,000 displaced Kampucheans. As many as 600 there were Protestant Christians, but there were never more than five trained Christian workers. The witness outreach began last November 30 when Christian and Missionary Alliance Pastor Chan Hom and 248 of his congregation crossed the border together. Pastor Ngem Sokun was among later border-crossing believers (Sokus weighed 51 pounds on his February arrival, his wife only 33 pounds).

The believers were aggressive in witness and discipleship. They held small group Bible studies and children’s meetings. Converts were immediately given Bible training and encouraged to participate in continuing the evangelism. By last month there were 75 congregations in the sprawling camp. At least 26,000 had expressed some form of Christian decision, a full 8,000 were regarded as having become firmly established in Christian discipleship, and 2,600 adults had been baptized. In less than a year the original 600 professing Christian faith, assisted by only a handful of C&MA and Overseas Missionary Fellowship missionaries, had doubled their numbers more than five times.

These figures are especially impressive when contrasted with the number of Protestant Christians in all of Kampuchea before the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975: less than 6,000.

What accounts for this remarkable increase? H. Robert Cowles, editor of the C&MA organ Alliance Witness, discussed that question in a September editorial: “First, the Spirit of God is evidently moving g among the refugees.… Second, the Kampucheans at Khao I Dang’s have been … deprived of homeland and all material resources. Their gods have failed them. Hardly a person among them has not despaired of life itself.… People in extremities like that tend to be cordial to the message of God.

But Cowles went on to list the diligent witness of the believers as the third and perhaps decisive factor and held it up as an unrivaled model for world evangelization in this generation.

Evangelism

Wichita Crusade Offers More than an Evangelist

The last time churches in Wichita, Kansas, jointly supported a major, citywide crusade was in 1912. Then, boisterous evangelist Billy Sunday called attenders to “walk the sawdust trail” in a sweating, stomping, old-style revival.

Evangelist Leighton Ford led a different kind of evangelism campaign during the past year in Wichita. His “Wichita Reachout,” which culminated last month with a week of preaching meetings, may indicate that evangelism—and particularly the traditional crusade—is adjusting to a new era. One evangelism strategist said Ford is the only major American evangelist now using the kind of comprehensive approach evidenced in Wichita.

Ford’s goal, like Sunday’s, was new converts. But after eight days, and a total attendance of 30,900, some 350 inquired about making Christian commitments. This 1 percent response rate somewhat disappointed the campaign organizers. However, they cited added Christian decisions coming in the previous events. They also believed that the campaign’s value lay in what will come after: new cooperation is expected between the pastors and the churches, who have a history of going their separate ways.

About 150 of the city’s 300 churches took an active part in organizing the September 21–28 campaign, which, in fact, was not called a crusade. The executive planning committee preferred calling it “reachout,” since “there’s greater sympathy among secular people for that term,” said local chairman and First Baptist Church pastor Roger Fredrikson.

The “reachout” budget topped $180,000 because of its multifaceted program, Fredrikson said.

Ford’s team and local organizers formed a comprehensive strategy with linking events that lasted over the course of a year. Whereas in Sunday’s era crusade meetings revolved entirely around the evangelist and had an impact only as long as the meetings lasted. Ford’s “reachout” was designed to have a broader impact.

“A lot of people tend to view a crusade as a climax to a period of intensive effort,” said Preston Parrish, who moved his family to Wichita 13 months ago to begin coordinating efforts for the Ford team. “We’ve been talking about the crusade here in Wichita as a catalyst to ongoing evangelism at the congregational level.”

Local pastors tossed around the idea of a Leighton Ford crusade about 10 years ago. However, serious plans began less than three years ago under Fredrikson’s leadership. The American Baptist pastor said events were planned in order to involve all churchmen—not just an evangelist or the pastors—in the evangelization process.

One event built upon another; in chronological order these were:

• A one-day seminar on congregational evangelism, led by United Methodist church evangelism officer George Hunter, and attended by more than 180 key pastors and laity.

• A small-groups discussion series. About 90 churches and 6,000 people participated in a seven-week study series, “In the Spirit of Love,” which was designed to deepen congregational life, Fredrikson said. This was followed by a four-week personal evangelism series, based on Ford’s book, Good News Is for Sharing.

• A banquet on May 13. This was designed to challenge Christian families to build relationships with their neighbors. Ford gave an address, and the executive committee showed a locally produced, 35-minute videotaped presentation of ideas for ways Christians could open their homes and make friends with unsaved neighbors. About 550 family units committed themselves to making contact with a neighbor sometime during the spring or summer. (The committee had hoped for the participation of 2,000 to 3,000 Christian families, but Fredrikson suspected the idea “was such a new thing” that many didn’t take part.) One example was Wichita Mayor Bob Knight, who was an early organizer of the Ford meetings. He arranged for a block party attended by some 60 to 70 of his neighbors.

• Lay witness forums. In late August, about 60 couples, representing a variety of working and social backgrounds, spent a week in Wichita. Their areas of expertise provided local Christians with evangelism opportunities. For instance, Christian Legal Society executive director Lynn Buzzard spoke at a seminar, attended by local lawyers and judges, on Christian conciliation. Former steel company executive Wayne Alderson of Pittsburgh led one of his Value of the Person seminars for about 450 local labor union and management leaders.

• A locally produced TV special aired September 13—the final event prior to Ford’s preaching meetings. Those Christians who had been forming relationships with their neighbors all summer were asked to invite those neighbors to their homes to watch the program.

The special was “deliberately planned to be provocative,” said Fredrikson, with the idea that it would spark conversations about spiritual things. Some Christians reported the Christian conversions of neighbors as a result, said Fredrikson.

Called “On This BB Spinning,” the program got its name from a local man’s opening comment, “Man, if all we’re doing is sitting on this BB spinning, then suicide is a reasonable alternative.” Parrish said the TV special carried interviews with Wichita residents who asked four questions pollster George Gallup has found Americans are asking: How can I cope with life’s problems? How can I find meaning in life? What’s Christ got to do with all of this? In an on-the-air interview with Fredrikson, evangelist Ford discussed God’s answers to those questions. The two men sat outdoors, within view of the convention center where the meetings would begin the following Sunday.

Ford’s “reachout process” has evolved though trial and error, Parrish said, and emphasizes five principles that help congregations “discover and experience evangelism.”

These principles are: (1) establishing specific objectives; (2) identifying people’s needs; (3) equipping the laity; (4) reaching out and discipling; and (5) celebrating and evaluating. The Ford team has been developing these principles since a crusade several years ago in Vancouver, British Columbia. For those meetings, the team drew upon the help of audience research specialist James Engel, communications department chairman of Wheaton College (Ill.) Graduate School.

Engel is a leader in the use of mass media and other strategies in presenting the gospel to an audience whose needs have been determined by surveys or other research. He said Ford is the only major evangelist in North America using the kinds of techniques and strategies in evidence in Wichita. Parrish said the Ford team will present some of its materials and videotaped programs in seminars.

Reachout organizers ran into some problems with their congregational approach. Parrish said organizers found many Christians lacked any contact with secular friends: “We [Christians] have become so ingrained, so ingrown, that most Christians lack meaningful relationships with unreached people.” The Ford team tries to erase Christians’ fears of discussing their faith with the unsaved by “helping them see that evangelism is really making friends for God,” Parrish said.

A second problem is getting all churchmen involved in evangelism—not just “the motivated 10 percent,” Parrish said. He believed this problem was at least partly overcome in Wichita, since a number of Wichita churches reported an increased involvement in small group programs even after Ford’s campaign ended.

England

A Giant in Hiding

Eighteen percent of England’s adult population in 1979 belonged to a church, but only 11 percent attended. So states a newly published survey of the British and Foreign Bible Society, sponsored by the Nationwide Initiative in Evangelism.

The survey, Prospects for the Eighties, draws its data from a 1979 census of England’s 40,000 churches. It claims to offer “a unique collection of information.” since all the main Christian groups in England cooperated for the first time in a joint statistical project. The survey covers the 46 administrative areas in England (excluding Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) and gives figures for each.

Mainstream Protestant churches are still losing members, but the loss in attendance is not correspondingly as high; Baptists show an actual 1.3 percent annual increase in attendance since 1975. Roman Catholics reflect an opposite trend: a fractional increase in membership but a 2 percent drop in attendance since 1975.

Three groups of churches show the most encouraging figures: the Pentecostal/Holiness grouping shows an annual growth of 2.3 percent (3 percent in attendance), the Independent figure is 5.4 percent (5.4), and the African/West Indian figure is 5.5 percent (4.7).

In a chapter assessing changing trends, Gavin Reid writes: “The churches are the sleeping giant in England. Were they to organize themselves to press for any agreed end, it is hard to see how they could be resisted, but … the giant is not only sleeping, it is in hiding.”

J. D. DOUGLAS

World Scene

The number of Protestant believers has doubled or tripled within the last decade in Central American nations, according to recent figures compiled by the Institute of In-Depth Evangelization. The San Jose, Costa Rica-based agency, which in seminars emphasizes “holistic church growth” and the discipling and mobilization of the laity, cites the influence of the charismatic movement, religious freedom, and political unrest and natural disasters, as promoting new religious awareness and ultimately the evangelical cause.

Television and radio made the greatest impact during evangelist Luis Palau’s recent two-week crusade in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The nation’s largest television network, “Telecentro,” broadcast Palau’s live question-and-answer program for 12 nights, and radio station HCJB in Quito transmitted Palau’s crusade messages into at least 10 countries in Central and South America. The crusade, held in a 10,000-seat stadium, averaged nightly attendance in the 6,000 range, with 2,850 making Christian commitments. Organizers report new evangelistic inroads to the nation’s professional and middle-class people.

Evangelicals in the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden should form their own segment of the church. That was the call issued by 400 participants in the Uppsala meetings of the Fellowship for Church Renewal in Sweden. They agreed with proponent Bishop Bertil Gärtner of Göteborg that a “Swedish Confessional Synod” should be formed, so that those among the 8-million-member church who believed that membership involved “obedience to Jesus” should not be dominated by the majority in a politicized social institution. Voluntary associations, such as the Swedish Evangelical Missionary Society, already exist within the church, but Archbishop Olof Sundby said he feared that the proposed synod would help cement and institutionalize opposing attitudes—over ordination of women, for instance.

The people of western Crete got the bishop of their choice and, in the process, dealt a setback to the authority of the Greek Orthodox church hierarchy. After supporters “kidnapped” and held for two weeks the popular Metropolitan Eirinaios Galanakis of Germany (Oct. 10 issue, p. 77), the ecumenical patriarchate gave in. It found a vacant diocese and elected to it Metropolitan Naktarios Hadjimichalis, clearing the way for Eirinaios to return to the diocese he formerly served.

Lev Regelson was given a five-year suspended sentence by Soviet authorities last month. Regelson, a Russian Orthodox layman, was a leader of the Christian Seminar (a discussion group of young Orthodox intellectuals) and author of The Tragedy of the Russian Church, 1917–45, which documents accommodation of the church to the Soviet regime under Metropolitan Sergi. Tass news agency reported that during the trial Regelson, imprisoned since his arrest last December 24, expressed repentance for his activities and asked forgiveness.

Zimbabwean President Canaan Banana has called for a “radical transformation” in the nation’s church groups. The ordained Methodist minister said last month that some of them turned a blind eye to oppression and injustice when the white minority was in power. He did not single out any denomination. His comments came at a gathering of Anglican churchmen, (who have been criticized at other times by the new government).

Nearly a thousand Christians who consider themselves Zionists gathered in Jerusalem last month in a festival of support for Israel’s existence. The event was organized by Dutch preacher Jan Willem van der Hoeven, who has lived in Israel for more than a decade. The New York Times quoted van der Hoeven as saying, “There are many millions of Bible-believing Christians who feel they are not represented anymore by their governments. They would like to say to Israel, ‘We are with you.’”

Revival is sweeping through the Kachin tribal area of northern Burma. Kachin Baptists are in the final year of a three-year thrust to commemorate the centennial of their beginnings. The call for a “Gideon’s band” of 300 young Kachins to give three years without remuneration to evangelism and renewal efforts resulted in more than 600 volunteers. The selected 300 were trained, formed into teams, and sent throughout the mountain region, singing, telling Bible stories, sharing testimonies, and distributing medical and other supplies. A resulting marked increase in baptisms brings the denomination’s membership to over 90,000. The Assemblies of God reports parallel renewal and growth among Pentecostal believers, with their members now estimated at 50,000.

Several Christian relief agencies have urged that the United States vote against seating the Pol Pot regime in the United Nations. They advocate instead a vacant seat for Kampuchea (Cambodia). This, they assert, would allow the U.S. to oppose both human rights violations and aggression “with greater integrity.” Issuers of the statement included the Mennonite Central Committee, Food for the Hungry, and Church World Service.

Religious organizations with branch offices in Indonesia will be required to channel contributions through the Indonesian government and not to those branches directly. That is the expectation after President Suharto spelled out a new approach to missions in a speech to Indonesia’s National Council of Churches last summer. He pledged that religious freedom would be maintained, but said national interests must guide policy concerning “the relationships between Indonesian religious bodies and their overseas counterparts.” This regulation, he said, was “not meant to build walls of restriction.”

At age 33, Americans United for Separation of Church and State has come down with a bad case of perplexity.

At this year’s annual AU-sponsored National Conference on Church and State, held last month in suburban Washington, D.C., it was clear that some 120 participants were anything but united on several important issues, including the role of religious groups in politics. They did seem agreed that religion-and-government issues are no longer as simple as they were back in 1947. AU was founded that year by a group of Protestant church leaders to fight government aid to Roman Catholic schools and to prevent the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Much of the platform and corridor talk during the two-day event centered on the activity of the so-called evangelical right in the 1980 election campaign. Speaker after speaker condemned the organized evangelical political activity led by such groups as television preacher Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Richard Zone’s Christian Voice, and Ed McAteer’s Roundtable organization. The movement makes a Christian’s position on certain political and social issues virtually a litmus test of faith, alleged several speakers.

Such organized political activity “cheapens the church, and it cheapens grace,” declared Southern Baptist R. G. Puckett, AU’s executive director.

“Churches have a responsibility to lobby to correct wrongs when the government oversteps its borders, but they shouldn’t get involved beyond that,” commented panelist H. Dickenson Rathbun, manager of the powerful Christian Science lobbying office in Washington.

Another panelist, James Dunn, social concerns executive of Southern Baptist churches in Texas, said it is okay for religious individuals to become involved in the political process, but not organized movements. The leaders of the evangelical right, he alleged, are uninformed and unrealistic about the issues, unfaithful to their own highest ideals, uncaring, unbrotherly, and untruthful.

Dunn referred to Falwell’s much-publicized account of a conversation he supposedly had with Jimmy Carter about hom*osexuality, a conversation that did not take place. (Falwell first tried to explain that his account, given to an Alaska audience last spring, was intended to be taken as a parable, but he later expressed regret for having made the misstatement.)

Two other Southern Baptist leaders also took the religious right to task: William L. Self, pastor of Wieuca Road Baptist Church in Atlanta and chairman of the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Board, and Jimmy R. Allen, who heads up Southern Baptist radio and television work.

Self accused the religious right of “trying to stampede the American voter and turn back the clock on the issue of separation of church and state,” an action he says will eventually result in loss of religious liberty.

Allen, a former president of AU, said that as the anti-Catholicism in AU’s past is “not to our credit,” neither is the crusading spirit of the present-day religious right a credit to the church. The movement, he alleged, is driven by a “desperation mentality.”

Younger participants in the AU meeting, however, disagreed with the speakers during floor discussion. United Methodist seminarians said they had been raised in a church that taught them they must change the system if they are going to help society—and this means getting organized and active politically. They indicated that they oppose the religious right, not for being involved politically, but for being on the wrong side of issues. The priority, they said, is to become mobilized themselves. Older members of AU raised their eyebrows at such talk.

Several other participants said that the conservative evangelicals are to be commended at least for recognizing and dealing with some moral problems in society that liberal church people have declined to face.

The most important current church-and-state issue is prayer in public schools, commented Puckett. Lutheran lobbyist Charles Bergstrom, who classifies himself as an evangelical theologically, said he wonders why any evangelical would want government-mandated prayer in the schools. “Whose prayer will be used?” he asked, suggesting that evangelicals might not be pleased with the outcome.

One session dealt with the issues of scientific creationism and secular humanism in public schools. Mormon law professor Paul Toscano of Brigham Young University said that the government ought to permit churches to use tax money to set up alternative schools because the government, through the courts, has established “the religion of secular humanism” in the public schools.

Julius B. Poppinga, a New Jersey attorney who is president of the evangelical Christian Legal Society, replied that he agreed with Toscano on some points, but that parochiaid, tax credits, and dual school systems are not the answer. Government and educators must recognize the pluralism that exists in the public schools and adapt their methods accordingly, he said. For example, he suggested, creationism should be taught along with evolution in science classes, and both should be equally regarded as theories.

Panelists in still another session explored the current disputes between Christian schools and the federal Department of Labor. The government has been classifying employees of Christian schools as non-church employees in order to require payment of unemployment compensation taxes, but in the process the government has applied a limited definition of church. Panelists agreed that the problem is a sticky one, and that long litigation is ahead. The main issue: if the government can apply a definition to a church that the church itself does not accept, is not the government violating religious liberty?

Both Dunn and Puckett acknowledged in interviews that AU may be entering a new phase in its struggle to keep the wall of separation between church and state in place. In the past, they indicated, AU has been concerned primarily with making sure that religious groups stay on their side of the wall. A greater danger may now exist from government attempts to breach the wall, they said, and AU will have to pay more attention to that threat.

To patrol the wall, AU has a staff of 27, a budget of $1 million for its three components (a research division, a legal arm, and a parent administrative body), a mailing list of 100,000 (there is no formal membership), and a 70,000-circulation magazine—Church and State—with considerable influence in the field.

p*rnography

Roman Orgy on Film Makes First-run Theaters

“The most degrading film ever made,” charged attorney Paul McGeady of Morality in Media. “The most outrageous and savage attempt to exploit the macabre nature of man in order to suck money from his pockets,” asserted author and Church of Christ pastor Neil Gallagher.

The movie Caligula, produced by Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, won’t win any awards from antip*rnography activists. In fact, they want the movie banned.

Filmed in Rome, the two-and-one-half hour movie is filled with explicit sex and graphic violence. Obscenity foes are particularly concerned about stopping Caligula because it is showing in first-run movie theaters where it has greater visibility and would seem more respectable than if it were shown in X-rated movie houses.

Antip*rnography watchdog groups are convinced the movie is legally obscene, according to the benchmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Miller v. California. This ruling established three tests for defining what is obscene: (1) when the work, as a whole, appeals to the prurient (lustful) interest; (2) depicts or describes sexual conduct in a “patently offensive way,” and (3) “lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

The Cleveland, Ohio—based Citizens for Decency Through Law and the New York City—based Morality in Media both have sharply criticized U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti for not challenging the film. (In a letter to CDL founder Charles H. Keating, Jr., Civiletti said U.S. District Court and Department of Justice officials had viewed the film and agreed that the Supreme Court’s standards provided insufficient basis to exclude the film legally.)

In February, Morality in Media lost a court bid to have the film confiscated and destroyed. MM president Morton Hill, a Jesuit priest and former member of Lyndon Johnson’s Presidential Commission on Obscenity and p*rnography, and Hinson McAuliffe, Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor, a Baptist layman who in 1978 filed charges against Guccione for selling the sex-oriented Penthouse magazine in his jurisdiction, were coplaintiffs.

U.S. District Court Judge Vincent Broderick in New York rejected the suit, saying “there was no injury in fact to any of the plaintiffs.” He did not rule on the question of whether the material was obscene. A subsequent appeal to the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also failed. Morality in Media since then has fought the film by asking district attorneys around the country to send investigators to view the film to see whether it violates obscenity laws.

Only one local judge so far has ruled on the illegal obscenity issue. Chief Justice Harry Elam of the Boston Municipal Court in August found the movie not legally obscene. Elam believed the film has a “serious political theme.” He said it was important that Americans be reminded of “degrading periods” of history to prevent their repetition. (Guccione flew in and paid expert witnesses, who testified to the merits of the movie.) To this, Massachusetts MM vice-president Joseph W. Chevarley was quoted as arguing in rebuttal, “One of the best ways to repeat historical degradation is to sanction the vilest exhibition of that degradation for the public entertainment.”

Both Morality in Media and the CDL, nonsectarian groups, have individual Christians and, in some cases, churches as members. From the Christian community, there has been no organized opposition to the movie.

Gallagher, an East Providence, Rhode Island, pastor, and president of his state’s NDL chapter, has filed a complaint against the movie with Rhode Island Attorney General Dennis Roberts.

He sees Caligula as a watershed. If Christians and the general public don’t challenge the movie, he said, “We will have shown the truth of what Francis Schaeffer writes about [Whatever Happened to the Human Race?]: the only thing Americans are concerned about is their own personal peace and affluence.”

Ironically, the film begins with a Bible verse etched across a blank screen: Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” What followed was anything but biblical, although Gallagher in a telephone interview judged that it showed “the truth of Romans, chapter one … what men will do when they are really cut off from God.”

Correction

The Baptist Federation of Canada, or “Federation Baptists,” is not a member of Interchurch Communications, an ecumenical group that opposed government licensing of the evangelical Canadian Family Radio in Vancouver, British Columbia (Sept. 5 issue, p. 78). In fact, the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec—one of the four member bodies within the Baptist Federation, and a member of the ICC—officially supported the licensing and disassociated itself from the ICC’s stand.

The brief reign of Rome’s fourth emperor, Caligula Caesar (A.D.37–41) is depicted with explicit sex scenes: oral and anal sex, hom*osexuality, incest, masturbation, necrophilia, rape, and often with lingering close-ups. The writhing bodies are paired with graphic violence: Caligula cuts off a dead man’s penis and feeds it to dogs; a small girl’s head is smashed against a stone wall; there are decapitations, torture, and mutilations.

The movie’s sex and violence made it “a $17 million trough of rotten swill,” in the eyes of movie critic Rex Reed.

The film’s cast and budget would seem to give it greater respectability than other “adults only” fare. It has played in first-run, not X-rated theaters: in 108 theaters in 83 cities as of September 25, said Penthouse Films official Leslie Jay. It cost $17.5 million to produce, and features name British actors: five-time Oscar nominee Peter O’Toole (best known for his role as Lawrence of Arabia) cast as Tiberius Caesar, Malcolm McDowell as Caligula, Shakespearean actress Helen Mirren, and Sir John Gielgud. Art director Danilo Donati is a three-time Academy Award winner. “This film is really special,” said Jay. “It depicts pagan Rome as it really was.” In some cities, Penthouse has leased movie theaters where it sets the adults-only admission price of from $5.00 to $7.50.

In the future, p*rnography is expected to spread further among the general public. p*rnography on cable television will be the big moneymaker of the 1980s, said Hill of Morality in Media. One TV industry magazine has estimated that two-thirds of the more than $120 million worth of prerecorded videotapes sold this year will be X-rated.

p*rnography is growing because of public apathy, not because of weak laws against it, say antiobscenity activists. Morality in Media’s president Hill says the p*rnography traffic could be wiped out in 18 months if the U.S. Attorney General’s office initiated nationwide investigation and prosecution.

The U.S. Supreme Court seems to have given local governments the power of deciding for themselves what is obscene. Groups such as MM and the CDL quickly rebut arguments that p*rnography is protected by the First Amendment, according to a CDL newsletter. State and local obscenity laws generally are the same, but local law is preempted when that is not the case, said lawyer McGeady of MM.

(Formed in 1962 by three clergymen concerned about p*rnography’s effects on children and the family, Morality in Media has dual aims of educating Americans to the dangers of p*rnography, and encouraging community efforts against it. MM runs a National Obscenity Law Center in New York City, which is a clearing-house for information to aid in court prosecution of p*rnography cases.)

Gallagher himself has used most of the methods for fighting p*rnography that are described in his book, How to Fight the p*rno Plague (Bethany Fellowship. 1977).

Existing laws and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling generally allow for persons to “get a prosecution,” Gallagher said. His antip*rnography philosophy has been: “You can prosecute this film or this magazine if you want to. You just don’t take no for an answer. You take the attitude that Caligula or whatever it is, is leaving the city, or I’m leaving. Christians should be like the importunate widow in Scripture.”

There are just so many Christians who don’t know the problem of sex abuse, and “how it directly leads to sex crimes as well as desensitizes Americans,” he said. He advises Christians to inspect exactly what is being sold and distributed in their communities; they will be alarmed, but able to knowledgeably fight p*rnography, he said.

In fact, the central issue is whether p*rnography is harmful. Its supporters argue that p*rnography is a subjective matter that can’t be legislated. p*rnography and civil rights advocates have cited an individual’s right to read what he wants. Opponents argue that p*rnography rarely is a private matter, since anything that is sold or distributed is a public concern.

JOHN MAUST

Lutherans

Missouri Synod’s Preus Declines a Fourth Term

Jacob A.O. Preus looked like a shoo-in for reelection next summer as president of the 2.7-million-member Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). Most Lutherans, therefore, voiced surprise when Preus, 60, announced in a statement in the October issue of his denomination’s official publication, The Lutheran Witness, that he would not seek reelection.

Preus, who is completing his third four-year term, has guided the church through its most turbulent years. He entered office with a mandate to halt the church’s alleged drift toward theological liberalism. Most observers agree he accomplished that goal.

By contrast with the period during which he became president in 1969, “the trend toward more liberal doctrinal positions [in the LCMS] has almost totally stopped,” Preus said in a telephone interview. He believes there is greater emphasis in the LCMS today on evangelism and strengthening the local church. The new president should pursue these and other emphases, he said.

Those comments explain Preus’s published statement: “… after 12 years and three terms in the office I believe the Synod needs a change in leadership, a new face, new directions, and new interests. Many pastors stay in a parish too long, and I believe a change in synodical leadership will be beneficial.”

Some observers said Preus just needed a rest. He rode out a rocky, often controversial, tenure in office. He expects to take his first-ever sabbatical and perhaps do some teaching when his term officially expires next September.

Conservatives backed Preus’s election in 1969, and wanted him to stop theological liberalism, allegedly typified by teachings at the denomination’s leading seminary, Concordia in Saint Louis. Preus, president of the synod’s Concordia Seminary in Springfield, Illinois, before his synodical election, began promoting doctrinal orthodoxy at the Missouri school. He also launched an investigation of the teachings of its faculty.

This ultimately led to the suspension of Concordia president John Tietjen, and, in turn, a student-faculty walkout. They formed a “Concordia Seminary in Exile,” since renamed Christ Seminary-Seminex. It has 200 students currently and Tietjen is president. The school is in partnership with the 112,000-member Association of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, organized in 1976 by so-called moderates opposed to the turn toward the right.

Soon after, Preus stated his intention of moving “more into the middle” in the dispute between theological liberals and conservatives. His action angered groups at both extremes. The denomination experienced political maneuvering, and this is expected to continue (if not build) before the election of Preus’s successor at the July 1981 convention.

Preus, who won’t endorse anyone, asks only that the new president be “doctrinally sound,” and not “the creature or possession of any faction or clique in the Synod.” Asked if he would have done anything differently as LCMS president, Preus said he would have tried to be “more patient … as kind and as loving to everyone as I could.” He noted this had been difficult in those early turbulent years “because of all the mud flying.”

Spiritual Control

The Teacher: A Wolfe in Sheep’s Clothing?

On Sunday, September 14, Myrna Wolfe returned to her New Castle, Pennsylvania, apartment after a six-day absence to find the bodies of her two roommates and religious devotees, Jean Barr, 43, and Marina Olsen, 52, sprawled on the floor.

Olsen, a Virginia Beach, Virginia, divorcée, apparently succumbed on September 10, the thirtieth day of a 40-day fast. Barr, recently separated from her husband over religious differences, expired two days later. In both cases, the coroner ruled death by natural causes. Until the final days of their fast the women had abstained from water as well as food and each had wasted away to a mere 60 pounds.

Before they began periodic rigorous fasts a year ago, Olsen weighed 150 pounds and Barr “at least 160,” according to family members. Both were described as “born-again charismatic Christians.” Three years ago they forsook denominational churches (Mrs. Barr was a Presbyterian, Mrs. Olsen a Catholic) to follow Wolfe, 46—a self-appointed minister, prophet, and healer known to her handful of local disciples as “The Teacher.” Relatives allege that Wolfe completely dominated the two women, reducing them to “mindless robots,” and charge her with ordaining the fast. Wolfe denies the accusation, the three women moved into the sparsely furnished New Castle apartment last June, but their “teacher” made frequent trips alone to attend to her “ministry” and to visit her husband and daughter in Pittsburgh.

Wolfe told police she was a chain-smoking alcoholic, blinded by glaucoma and diabetes and contemplating suicide, until a miraculous healing eight years ago following her conversion during a Billy Graham telecast. She became involved in charismatic groups in Virginia Beach and western Pennsylvania, but withdrew to form an independent “transient” ministry. “We prayed her out,” one Pennsylvania charismatic leader informed this reporter, “because she always tried to dominate everyone.”

A Virginia Beach couple related that they “quit their jobs, flushed their jewelry down the toilet, threw away their wedding crystal, and even sold their two Fiat cars for $30—“the first sum a stranger offered”—when assured by Wolfe and Olsen that God would provide for all their needs. Wolfe admitted having accompanied Barr and Olsen on multi-thousand dollar shopping sprees. Only a few days before the deaths she accepted $1,500 in “love gifts” from Jean Barr. Asked why she didn’t try to dissuade the women, Myrna Wolfe retorted, “that would be witchcraft, … control.”

She added that she failed to report the emaciated condition of her roommates when she last saw them alive, six days before the bodies were discovered, because “it was not my business. I knew they had to stand on their own convictions.” At press time no charges had been filed and police were continuing the investigation.

JOSEPH M. HOPKINS

Personalia

After eight years of brushing up against the law, things recently got sticky for professional “deprogrammer” Ted Patrick. He was convicted of felony kidnapping in San Diego for planning the abduction of a 25-year-old Phoenix woman from what her family believes is a cult. Patrick was sentenced to a year in jail and is free on appeal. Until now, he has been tried 13 times and convicted only twice, both times for misdemeanors.

Michael M. Zembrzuski, a Pauline priest whose efforts to build a large shrine near Philadelphia led to a church investigation of the project’s mismanagement, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Gannett News Service. Gannett’s lengthy exposé of the project won it a Pulitzer Prize. Zembrzuzki’s libel suit asks $10 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages.

George Bush’s pastor would like to make one thing perfectly clear: Bush is one political candidate who is not born again. Thomas Bagby, pastor of Saint Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, said, “While the charismatics and the reborn Christians are concerned about themselves, George and I are concerned about our religion being the impetus, motivation, or causation for other people. Let’s put it another way: We don’t belong to the Me Generation.”

Phillip Potter, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, will be on a leave of absence from his duties until next April 20. Konrad Raiser will step in as acting general secretary until Potter returns. Potter is a native of Dominica in the Caribbean. His wife Doreen died in June following a year-long illness.

Publishing

Fiscal Millenium Dawns for Tribulation Touter

Author and financial consultant Jim McKeever is spending advertising money as if the Tribulation, about which he writes, were tomorrow. McKeever’s Omega Publishing Company in Medford, Oregon, budgeted $500,000 for a two-month advertising blitz—mostly in Christian magazines—for three of its books, said Omega president Bob Turnbull.

Two of the books are McKeever’s and the third is by author Dave MacPherson: each says Christians will go through the prophesied seven-year Tribulation, and McKeever tells how to prepare for that experience.

McKeever’s Christians Will Go Through the Tribulation, for instance, has chapters on preparing to survive nuclear war, famine, and earthquakes. He tells where to buy water purifiers and dehydrated food, which are the safest areas of the U.S. in case of nuclear attack, how to build a fallout shelter, and the advantages of moving to a self-sufficient farm. He includes detailed diagrams and lists of resource materials.

McKeever also has a section on how to prepare spiritually for the turbulent end times. For those Christians who believe it is wrong to make physical preparations for the Tribulation, he writes, “This is okay. However, we do have an obligation to take care of our families.”

Where did all the advertising money come from? Turnbull, whose previous 10-year ministry in Hawaii earned him the unofficial title, “Waikiki Beach Chaplain,” said the funds came from McKeever’s nonprofit Ministries of Vision organization. Besides Omega Publishing, the organization has two newsletters, conducts seminars, and sells cassette tapes. A former IBM executive, and computer and financial consultant, McKeever decided a number of years ago to place any personal profits above living expenses into Ministries of Vision, said Turnbull. In August, the organization bought charismatic businessman George Otis’s Bible Voice publishing firm, and the two merged—McKeever’s Alpha Omega Publishing becoming simply Omega Publishing.

Controversies

Smith Rouses Clamor over Whether God Listens

Bailey Smith, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, stood his ground last month in the furor over his remark at a Dallas political affairs rally in August, to the effect that God doesn’t hear the prayers of Jews. Many fellow Southern Baptists and U.S. Jewish leaders scolded him publicly for it.

“I have a deep, deep love for the Jewish people, but as a Christian minister I must proclaim the distinct message of Jesus Christ,” he said in a Christianity Today interview. If he were to repeat the remark, knowing it would be pulled out of the context of his speech, he said he would specify that God hears no one who rejects Christ as Messiah and Savior. Among Scriptures he offers as evidence are Luke 10:16 and 1 John 3:22–23.

Smith said his mail, more than 300 letters, was running heavily in his favor, and he has tracked down the opinions of numerous Southern Baptist thinkers, past and present, who agree with him.

What about Cornelius in Acts 10, the Roman soldier whose prayers definitely were heard by God? “That’s easy,” Smith said. “Anyone gets his prayers heard who is ultimately willing to be led to Jesus Christ.”

North American Scene

Some Southern Baptist Convention executives recently formed a convention-wide videotape network. This ad hoc committee (which has no official SBC sanction or authority) will promote the use of videocassettes as a teaching and training tool in local churches. With funds it hopes to raise from state conventions, the committee plans to produce from 200 to 500 video programs during the next three years. These would be made available to local churches on a loan or service fee basis. The committee has arranged for SBC churches to buy the expensive video players at discount prices.

Some U.S. Mennonite Brethren delegates challenged their church’s historic peace position during its recent triennial conference. However, delegates avoided serious conflict by approving a compromise statement. They affirmed the church’s peace stance—preferring alternative service to the military draft—but also recognized there are differences of opinion among churchmen and Mennonite Brethren themselves. To these persons, the statement read, “we commit ourselves to loving and accepting relationships.”

A suburban Portland, Oregon, church is closing its six-month-old refugee resettlement station near Condon. An $850,000 abandoned air force radar station was purchased by the charismatic Easthill Church in Gresham, where it taught Laotian Hmong refugees survival language and job skills there (June 6 issue, p. 48). However, church officials say the camp was too isolated for the refugees, many of whom had families, friends, and cultural ties back in Portland. “They need to be in touch with their community, and that’s something we just flat out didn’t anticipate,” pastor Jerry Cook told a reporter. He said the program would continue, but in the church’s activity center and not as a live-in operation.

Membership in the Evangelical Church of North America grew by 3.4 percent last year. One of the youngest but fastest growing denominations in the U.S., the ECNA numbers about 12,500 members spread across 140 member churches. It was organized in 1968 in Portland, Oregon, when 46 former Evangelical United Brethren church congregations chose not to take part in the merger with the Methodist church. The withdrawing congregations (including more than half of the EUB congregations in the Pacific Northwest) feared liberalism in the Methodist body. Churches in the ECNA strongholds of Oregon and Washington have continued growing, while United Methodist churches in the two states have lost more than 25,000 members (15 percent of their membership) since 1968.

Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship’s multimedia division, Twentyonehundred, won recognition from secular peers. Its production, Habakkuk, which presents the prophet’s words against a modern backdrop, received a gold medal at the International Multi-image Festival in Vail, Colorado. The 55-minute production, used on college campuses as an evangelistic tool, projects images from two dozen projectors onto a 50-foot screen and has a three-channel soundtrack (see Refiner’s Fire, April 18 issue). This was the first time the 10-year-old Twentyonehundred entered one of its programs in a competition.

Books On And For Women

Books on and for Women are reviewed by Nancy M. Tischler, professor of English and humanities, Pennsylvania State University, Middletown, Pennsylvania.

The time is ripe for books about women. They are rolling off the presses at a rate that forces the reader to grow increasingly discriminating. No longer is there a single market and a common reader; women are interested in theology, administration, psychology, physiology, biography, history, Scripture studies, and poetry.

Some of the new books are aimed at young women whose highest goal is marriage and childbearing. For them, Julia “Mom” Taylor provides “God’s Answers for Women in Today’s Upside Down World” in Last, Least and Lowest (New Leaf Press). She offers practical, traditional, motherly advice to teen-agers to be good girls; modest, chaste, clean—not bad advice. “Mom” sees the new wave of women’s liberation as Satanic, and recommends the wisdom of the Proverbs.

Such wisdom is also the core of other chatty little books aimed at middle-class housewives weary of children and chores. For a large number of American women, obedience remains a part of the marriage vows to which they firmly subscribe. Mildred Cooper and Martha Fanning, in What Every Woman Still Knows (Bantam), are anecdotal and breezy in their presentation of traditional views; Iverna Tompkins, in The Worth of a Woman (Logos), is more pedantic and organized; Virginia Kirley Leih, in Portrait of a Fulfilled Woman (Tyndale), is the most perceptive and biblical. Her book is a personal and thoughtful series of insights into Proverbs 31. For those especially downcast about their homemaking role, Miriam Neff in Discover Your Worth (Victor) offers a “how-to” book for self-discovery. One especially thoughtful book for harried housewives is A Piece of Me Is Missing, by Marilyn Cram Donahue (Tyndale). She suggests ideas for creative, joyful Christian living, including having a coffee-break with God—actually talking to him over coffee each day. Cameos (Harvest House), by Helen Kooiman Hosier, is a series of biographical sketches of women who have lived by their faith while facing the various problems of raising their families.

After reading these books about allotment of time for children, committees, and husband, one is shocked by the cultural and emotional ghetto outlined in such books as Stopping Wife Abuse (Anchor), by Jennifer Baker Fleming. The hidden anguish of women’s lives, the brutal treatment, the isolation are frightening reminders that all is not well or tidy in our world. This book would be useful for pastors who deal with cases of domestic tragedy and need to know the legal ramifications of their advice. Not all abuse is physical, as the studies of women and psychological distress suggest. Helen de Rossis, in Women and Anxiety (Delacorte Press), provides a useful self-help book that curiously ignores the possibilities of a religious solution to problems of stress.

Other books, like Please, Lord, Don’t Put Me on Hold (Concordia), by Jane Graver, reminds us that a large number of women in modern society do not go home to husband and children at the end of the day. Working women share the same tensions as working men, and have their own peculiar needs for strength and support. These meditations are witty and prayerful, and at the same time, very personal and realistic.

But the real avant-garde in women’s studies is not in these practical, gentle, scriptural books. The new women poets and theologians are following a divergent path that bears comment. Mary Daly, an associate professor of theology at Boston College, is the most radical and articulate of these, though her love of words catches her in a trap of enjoying word games rather than seeking to communicate. Her earlier books, Beyond God the Father and The Church and the Second Sex, have now been followed by the logical sequel, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Beacon), Having transcended the “anti-male” stance, she asserts that she is now “Furiously and Finally Female” in her attack on the Christian “myth,” charging that Mary was raped and used as a sales gimmick by a patriarchal system. Some of Daly’s ideas find more scholarly and dispassionate support in the recent study by Elaine Pagels on The Gnostic Gospels (Random), in which she argues that certain Scriptures were suppressed by the patriarchal church, notably the Gospel according to Mary Magdalene. Susan Griffin echoes Daly’s ideas in a more poetic, stream-of-consciousness meditation in Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her (Harper & Row), asserting that man has exploited, spoiled, and mechanized both nature and woman.

The most forthright and readable of these feminist theological works is by Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the Gods: Feminism and the End of Traditional Feminism (Beacon). We can clearly see the new wave here and in Womanspirit Rising: The Feminist Reader in Religion, edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow (Harper & Row), which is a good cross section of feminist thinkers. (Christ also wrote the literary study on women writers published this year by Beacon Press: Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest.) The attack that we see in these books is on the patriarchal nature of God as interpreted by the Judeo-Christian tradition. The warfare leads its participants to a renunciation of both the Scripture and the religion, ending in a return to the worship of the goddess and to the practice of witchcraft. This is absolute radicalism, an attack on the very roots of Judaism and Christianity.

In contrast with such iconoclasts, the evangelical women in Our Struggle to Serve (Word), edited by Virginia Hearn, appear very traditional and gentle. These 15 women—all bright, talented, and unable to swallow the simplistic answers of Total Woman—describe their anguish in striving to remain in the fellowship of churches that refuse to hear their cries. They feel like pretty (or sometimes ugly) children who are seen but not heard by a church that expects them to be happy slaves, knowing and rejoicing in their “place.” They argue that God has given them talents they cannot use for him so long as they remain “modest, meek and silent.” They are all from traditional faiths, all educated, and all struggling to be true to themselves, and to their God, their church, their families, their callings, and to Scripture. Most are part of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus and publish regularly in Daughters of Sarah. Their struggles, so different from those of women who are content to cut their lives to the traditional patterns or from those who are delighted to shred the faith and the church, deserve our sympathetic attention. They are a part of us, an exceptionally talented part.

Conflict Stories In The Synoptics

Jesus and His Adversaries: The Form and Function of the Conflict Stories in the Synoptic Tradition, by Arland J. Hultgren (Augsburg Publishing House, 1979, 223 pp., $6.50), is reviewed by David E. Aune, professor of religion, Saint Xavier College, Chicago, Illinois

Professor Arland Hultgren of Luther-Northwestern Seminaries in Saint Paul has produced a first-rate analysis of one oral form found 18 times in the synoptic Gospels, the “conflict story.” This is the first such study since Martin Albertz’s 1921 monograph, Die synoptischen Streitgespräche (The Synoptic Controversy Dialogues).

Hultgren finds that the “conflict story” consists of three elements: (1) introductory narrative; (2) the opponent’s question or attack; and (3) the dominical saying with which the form usually concludes. He distinguishes between “unitary” conflict stories (in which the saying is inseparable from the first two elements), and “nonunitary” conflict stories (in which the saying probably circulated independently of its present narrative framework). In comparing these conflict stories with suggested parallels in both rabbinic and Greco-Roman literature, Hultgren finds they are unique. Though all conflict stories were formulated by the post-Easter church, the earlier ones originated in a Palestinian setting in which they functioned to defend early Christians from Jewish criticism (e.g., Mark 2:1–12, 15–17, 18–20, 23–28), while later ones originated in a Hellenistic church setting where they had a largely catechetical funtion (e.g., Mark 7:1–8; 10:2–9; 12:18–27).

While Hultgren’s book is an important contribution to form criticism of the Gospels—a subject which has suffered benign neglect in recent NT scholarship—no review is complete without some criticism. First, the author ignores H. Schürmann’s recent suggestion that the ministry of Jesus may have served as the original setting for the generation of oral forms. Second, Hultgren’s confident judgments that one feature or another of a synoptic conflict story belongs to a Palestinian or Hellenistic cultural setting are based on caricatures of the two cultures. Recent studies have underlined the degree to which Palestinian Judaism was permeated by Hellenism. Third, his insistence on the “uniqueness” of the conflict story is based on an ignorance of recent work done on rabbinic and Greco-Roman literary forms. Fourth, his assessment of the Sitze im Leben (settings in life), or the conflict stories, is problematic since he does not deal with the oscillation between oral and written forms and the necessarily different settings presupposed by both.

But such observations notwithstanding. Professor Hultgren has provided us with a stimulating and provocative discussion of the synoptic conflict stories.

An Excellent Evangelical Biblical Introduction

The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Volume 1; Introductory Articles (Zondervan,1979, 734 pp., $19.95) is reviewed by Robert H. Mounce, dean of arts and humanities, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Volume 1 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Introductory Articles on the Bible) is a large and important work. It could serve by itself as a university-or seminary-level introduction to biblical literature. Everyone who recognizes the major evangelical authors of the day will feel he is with old friends as he scans the table of contents. The list reads like the platform personnel at a banquet of evangelicals in honor of all those committed to the scholarly pursuit of a divinely inspired and completely trustworthy Bible.

It would be impossible to begin to cover each of the 35 articles that make up this volume (9 general, 11 OT, and 15 NT). Thus I shall list a few titles which are representative of the kinds of topics dealt with and make some general comments about the larger evangelical movement in biblical studies of which this volume is an excellent example.

The reader obviously will want to know something about “The Authority and Inspiration of the Bible,” and Carl Henry supplies the lead article on this crucial issue. Then we find ourselves investigating “The Transmission and Translation of the Bible” (Bruce) and its geographical setting (Houston).

Old Testament studies involve its language (Young), history (Motyer), theology (Kaiser), chronology (Archer), and canon (Fisher).

The New Testament section is equally rewarding. Greenlee writes on “The Language of the New Testament,” Julius Scott on “The Synoptic Gospels,” Cole on “The Life and Ministry of Paul,” and Walls on “The Canon of the New Testament.” You will discover the other writers and subjects when you buy the book—and you should buy it. It is well worth the money.

Most readers will know that The Expositor’s Commentary will be published in 12 volumes, and a careful reading of the introductory volume will convince the neutral observer that evangelical scholarship has come of age. The authors are fully abreast of the latest developments in their fields. While the bibliographies that follow each article are necessarily short they show an awareness of the larger theological world in which the evangelical works.

Most of the articles have a sort of text-bookish style that makes them less exciting to read than one could hope for; but, alas, that seems to be necessary in scholarly writing. However, the student with a genuine desire to learn will plow through almost anything—even the most pedantic prose—if he is rewarded with solid information and an occasional insight of lasting value.

Following the last article there is a 13-page index of persons, a 21-page subject index, and 21 more pages of scriptural references. This added feature helps to bind the work together. The subject index, in particular, makes the volume more usable as a reference work. The quality of this product speaks for itself and the evangelical church will benefit greatly from the forthcoming Expositor’s Commentary. Volume 1 has set a high standard.

Dreams And The Christian

The Gift of Dreams: A Christian View, by Kathryn Lindskoog (Harper & Row, 1979, 202 pp., $8.95); Working With Dreams, by Montague Ullman and Nan Zimmerman (Delacorte Press, 1979, 335 pp., $10.00), are reviewed by Shirley Nelson, novelist, Albany, New York.

“Dreams don’t mean anything!” scoffed a character in one of Kathryn Lindskoog’s dreams. “Speak for yourself!” she answered, and woke up. “That was the end of him,” she writes, in The Gift of Dreams. “A truly perfect squelch.”

But Lindskoog knows that our dream people frequently represent parts of ourselves. And while reading this disarming book, we are always aware of the presence of a sensible writer. Though Lindskoog takes dreams seriously, she does not take herself too seriously, and so we trust her as she leads us on what seems to be a fantastic journey.

Our dreams, of course, are fantastic—and very real. In fact, they are apt to be more real and more honest about what is going on inside us than our waking consciousness is able to be. Lindskoog tells us that, as does Montague Ullman in his valuable book, Working With Dreams. Ullman is a noted psychiatrist. Lindskoog is not: she is a writer and critic. Yet there are profound similarities in the dream discoveries of both.

Ullman, founder of the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in New York, writes out of years of experience in clinical research. Sharing authorship with Nan Zimmerman, a lay individual, he makes psychological theory available to the average reader, though the book is a professional treatise.

Lindskoog, on the other hand, talks informally about understanding dreams, her own, her children’s, her friends’—ours. We come in the back door and sit in her kitchen. The risk of this light-mannered style is that it tends almost to belittle her meticulous research, yet I have never read a more cogent explanation of what happens during sleep, or been so enlightened regarding the function of dreams in emotional health. Says Ullman, “The paradox … is that the dream, the product of our most private … being, can best be brought to fullest realization through being shared.” He states this in recommending group therapy; Lindskoog has demonstrated it on an even more public scale, within a specifically Christian context.

Neither Freudian nor Jungian, both books stress the necessity of discovering one’s own emotional language in dreams, one’s own metaphors. We live our waking lives in prose, says Lindskoog, but we dream in poetry. Claimed C. S. Lewis: “Such information as poetic language has to give can be received only if you are ready to meet it half-way.”

A Rich Commentary On Leviticus

The Book of Leviticus. “The New International Commentary on the Old Testament,” by Gordon J. Wenham (Eerdmans, 1979, 362 pp., $9.95), is reviewed by Gerhard F. Hasel, professor of Old Testament and biblical theology and assistant dean and director of the Th.D. program, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

This is a highly informed commentary on one of the neglected books of the Old Testament. Professor Wenham of the Queen’s University of Northern Ireland, Belfast, seeks to combine “the plain original meaning of the text” with “its abiding theological value,” namely, “what the sacred text has to teach the church today.” In his attempt to achieve the first goal, Wenham has integrated into exegesis the comparative, socioanthropological, and new literary-critical approaches. The “enduring theological message” is found at the end of each chapter or at some other appropriate place, and discusses the relationship of the exegeted section to the NT and the NT use of ideas, words, or rituals drawn from Leviticus. This two-step procedure, that is, the movement from what the text meant to what it means, reveals once again the difficulty of conceiving a commentary.

The author’s discussion of law suggests that instead of dividing the Hebrew legislation into moral, civil, and ceremonial law it would be better to say that “some injunctions are broad and generally applicable to most societies [moral law], while others [civil law] are more specific and directed at the particular social problems of ancient Israel” (p. 35). This position leads to the assertion that the principles underlying the OT are valid and authoritative for the Christian while the particular applications found in the OT may not be. The situation with the “ceremonial law” is different. It is obsolete for the Christian, because all its enshrined ideals are fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ.

Several highlights may be listed as follows: (1) A postexilic date for Leviticus is difficult to maintain and a much earlier date is required. How much earlier is not indicated. (2) The motto of Leviticus is holiness. In Hebrew thinking everything was either “holy” or “common,” “clean” or “unclean.” Holiness is a state of grace; cleanness is the natural state of most creatures; uncleanness is a condition to which men descend through bodily processes and sin. (3) Israelite sacrifice was concerned with restoring relationships between God and Israel and between members of the covenant community. Sacrifice can undo the effects of sin and human infirmity; sacrificial blood is necessary to cleanse and sanctify the offerer. (4) The Day of Atonement rites were designed to cleanse and sanctify the sanctuary and altars from the uncleanness of the Israelites. (5) The meaning of kippēr, “to make atonement,” means either (a) “to wipe clean” or (b) “to pay a ransom,” but not “to cover” as many scholars once suggested. (6) The laws of clean and unclean animals in Leviticus 11 are symbolic in nature, reminding Israel of its special status as God’s holy people (following Mary Douglas). (7) Blood is “at once the most effective ritual cleanser (‘the blood makes atonement,’ 17:11) and the most polluting substance …” (p. 188). This list indicates something of the depth and breadth of this commentary.

I was surprised to note that the complex problem of laying on of hands, substitution, and substitutionary sacrifice never entered into the discussion. This is a painful lacuna in an otherwise most refreshing, stimulating, and rich commentary that will make excellent reading for both scholars and laymen.

The Present Power Of Jesus

The Positive Power of Jesus Christ, by Norman Vincent Peale (Tyndale House, 1980, 266 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Lewis W. Kisenwether, Jr., pastor, First Baptist Church, Matawan, New Jersey.

Norman Vincent Peale’s twenty-fifth book, The Positive Power of Jesus Christ is, to my mind, his best and perhaps most significant. It answers the question, “What can Jesus Christ do in the lives of people?” and affirms what Christians have known through the years. When Jesus Christ enters human life he saves it, changes it, makes it new, heals broken hearts and relationships.

Peale begins with his own personal testimony of the power of Jesus Christ. He speaks of faith and victory over personal problems and gives the credit to Jesus Christ. He then goes on to relate stories of real people who have encountered Jesus and seen the power of God work wonders. The average pastor will find a great deal of effective pulpit material in this new volume. The people Peale uses to show forth the power of Christ are the very sort who sit in church pews every Sunday or seek consolation in the bars of our cities. Their problems are those of everyday people all over the country.

While The Positive Power of Jesus Christ is by no means a theological work, it provides insight into Peale’s theological foundation. Constantly we see him not as the pulpit master or radio speaker, but as a Christian coming in contact with needy people, using personal witness as his tool of evangelism. It is the basis upon which he approaches spiritual life. In one incident, which he calls “one of the strangest interviews of my ministry,” he is asked by a church official who has lost zest for life: “How do you go about being converted and finding the peace and joy you refer to?” Peale’s reply: “I said that the requirements were the confession of sin, an expression of belief in the power of Christ to heal the lesions of the mind and soul, acceptance of Christ as Lord and Savior, a humble request for forgiveness, and the willingness to turn oneself completely over to God.”

Briefly Noted

Inspiration/Authority of Scripture. Current controversy concerning the nature of the Bible has drawn strong defenses of its God-given truthfulness. Inerrancy and Common Sense (Baker), edited by Roger Nicole and J. Ramsey Michaels, is a collection of well-written essays, as is Inerrancy (Zondervan), edited by Norman Geisler. John F. MacArthur defends the reliability of God’s Word in Why Believe the Bible (Gospel Light), also available under the title Take God’s Word for It. InterVarsity Press offers J. I. Packer’s God Has Spoken, affirming the full authority of Scripture.

Paul J. Achtemeier takes a different tack in The Inspiration of Scripture: Problems and Proposals (Westminster). He argues that inspiration is to be located in the tradition, situation, and respondent in Scripture, and can become the Word of God for us by pointing us to Christ.

Worship/Preaching: James F. White has written a thoughtful survey in Introduction to Christian Worship (Abingdon). It is particularly good in explaining terminology. Peter Brunner’s Worship in the Name of Jesus (Concordia) is a full-scale, definitive work by a Lutheran theologian. O Come, Let Us Worship: Corporate Worship in the Evangelical Church (Baker), by Robert G. Rayburn, is a popular and practical plea to make worship more meaningful for churches today, with a series of helpful suggestions. Sickened by male-dominated worship, Thomas and Sharon Neuter Emswiler in Wholeness in Worship (Harper & Row) offer a comprehensive manual for nonsexist services.

A second edition of Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed (Oxford University Press), edited by R. C. D. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, contains the most comprehensive collection of basic material in print. Marty E. Marty offers sensitive, personal reflections in The Lord’s Supper (Fortress). In Spirit and in Truth (Dorrance), by Calvin H. Chambers, is an attempt to integrate charismatic worship into the Reformed tradition.

Baker Book House has reprinted P. T. Forsyth’s classic Lyman Beecher Lectures of 1907, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind. One can compare them with The Preaching Event (Word), by John R. Claypool, which are the Beecher Lectures of 1979. Minister’s Saturday Night (Pilgrim), by Robert L. Eddy, is a collection of topically arranged sermon helps (illustrations) taken from everywhere—from Jesus to Charlie Chan.

Too many church leaders have allowed the creative juices to be blocked.

I believe all of us subconsciously want to be creative.… The trouble is that for most of us imagination has been suppressed to the point where we have stopped using it. We need to stop and daydream once in a while. We need to let our imaginations roam and give them a chance to breathe. It’s never really too late for anyone to start thinking more creatively (J. B. Dubois).

Churches are often stereotyped as being lethargic, change-resistant organizations. A frequent attitude is that if you want to see a dead, traditionalistic bureaucracy, simply look at the nearest church. Unfortunately, we all know that to some extent the stereotype is true. Many churches are dead in the water, without power, and drifting from crisis to boredom. Part of the reason, I believe, is a lack of creativity in leadership. Not, mind you, a lack of talent, or spirituality, or money (although too often these are to blame), but a lack of creativity.

Creativity involves imagination, originality, ingenuity, innovativeness. But although it includes these characteristics and others, it transcends them all. Creativity is not, in my opinion, a spiritual gift, although the Holy Spirit is the ultimate expression of the creative power of God. It is certainly not mere faddishness—the ability to sell the church board the latest Miracle Program from a publisher or parachurch organization. (The miracle of some cure-alls is that they can be sold at all!) For a definition, let’s say that creativity is the fragile ability to synthesize accumulated knowledge and past experiences with present reality in order to bring into being something new. The new thing brought into being is not totally new—nothing is—but it is new to those to whom it applies.

I deliberately emphasize creativity as a “fragile” ability. Few people lack creativeness; but far too many, especially those in church leadership, have allowed the ducts through which the creative juices flow to be blocked. The following obstructions to creativity must be identified:

Cynicism. “I had a creative idea once. But then I suggested it to be board and …” Few pastors would make such a statement, but the experience of having a creative idea summarily shot down in a committee meeting is common. The leader who allows these experiences to lead to a cynical, pessimistic attitude is choosing to languish in self-pity and tedious routine. First tries are seldom successful. Perhaps only two out of ten creative ideas will blossom into workable programs. But all ten ideas, including the two that would have worked, may be stifled by cynicism.

Intolerance of error. This also carries a two-out-of-ten rule: you may have eight losers before the first winner. You can forget about being creative if you can’t stand to make a mistake. Any organization must develop a high tolerance for failure, for failures are the necessary price we pay for good, successful, creative ideas.

Excuses. The commonest excuse for being uncreative may be, “I just don’t have a creative personality.” I do not believe one’s personality is irrevocably formed by age five; you can change your personality for the better. You may not win a Nobel Prize, but you can be more creative if you work at it.

Laziness. Nothing kills creativity more than laziness. Unless you were born some kind of genius, creativity will require more effort than uncreative colleagues are willing to exert. You must discipline yourself so you can take extra time to think about where you want yourself and your organization to be in the future. It is in such thoughts that the imaginative moment arrives—the moment you are able to synthesize what you know and what you’ve done and relate these to your current situation. Strict discipline and hard thinking are prerequisites for this.

Overexposure. Another obstruction to creativity is overexposure, for no one has an unlimited reservoir of creativity. The reservoir can dry up if it is tapped too often. Pastors who must create three or more public speeches or presentations weekly face this danger. The creative edge is easily dulled through overuse—too many sermons, Bible studies, Sunday school lessons, “devotional” talks, and so on. Without realizing it, many pastors are dissipating their creative energy through overexposure.

Another dimension of the fragility of creativity not to be overlooked is its spontaneity: you can’t force it. Sometimes I have a week or a few days when I have many creative ideas. There are other times when I have none at all. I have the same experience in memorizing Scripture—some periods are more productive than others. Creative thoughts often come when you least expect them. I once had a brainstorm for a new Sunday school promotional program while shaving in a cabin in northern Minnesota on my vacation. Creative ideas come to a friend at night in bed. He always keeps a pencil and note pad ready by the side of his bed. Good ideas must be caught as they appear or they tend to disappear quickly; they may never return.

Once the main obstacles are identified there still is the most potent factor of creativity to deal with: your own attitude. In his book, The Making of a Christian Leader, Ted Engstrom points out that the key to creativity lies within the leader’s own personality. The constituent parts of attitude—a healthy view of yourself, your relationship with God and others, and your belief in the work God has called you to do—combine to make you capable of creative thinking.

Here are a few practical suggestions you can use in the process of increasing your creativity:

Make time. Creativity takes time, especially quiet, think time. Time management expert Alan Lakein emphasizes the need to achieve a balance between quiet time and activity time. Many pastors are so overwhelmed by the demands of people and programs that their quiet time either disappears or is totally taken up with sermon preparation. Create more quiet time by having your secretary intercept all incoming calls and visitors. If you have no secretary, dial your own number and leave the phone off the hook for a half-hour. Better yet, spend an hour or two back in the stacks of the nearest library. But put limits on your creative quiet time as well—lest you be all thinking and no doing.

Read. Take time to read, and not just religious books. If there is more creativity in the secular world than in the church—and I think there is—then it stands to reason that you should read some secular books if you want to increase your creativity. Read whatever you find to be interesting and challenging: and read especially in the fields of management and social commentary.

Keep a file. Every good preacher keeps a file of “back-burner” sermon ideas. Why not do the same for program and promotion brainstorms? Write down your ideas as soon as they occur. More creative ideas are lost because they were forgotten than are lost to any to the obstacles named.

If you work at it, you, too, can become a creative person exercising a truly creative ministry.

Michael J. Hostetler is senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Mahomet, Illinois.

The soft sins of suburbia are hardened into a Christian cosmology of heaven and earth and hell.

Over the long summer, everyone anticipating the fall television season longed to know “Who shot J. R.?” Although our curiosity was not immediately appeased, we might think about why J. R., the eldest Ewing brother on the TV show Dallas, has become, as they say, “a legend in his own time.” For once, this cliché has been applied to a figure who actually participates in the original meaning of “legend.”

His legendary forebears go back at least to the Middle Ages where “J. R.” appeared as the figure of Vice in morality plays. In these allegories, Vice stood for the essence of evil and behaved strictly in accordance with his nature; he tried to cause as much havoc and destruction as possible. In the plays of Shakespeare, Vice took on a more naturalistic appearance; nevertheless, he stood behind such characters as the eponym of Richard III, Goneril and Regan in Lear, and most especially Iago in Othello (see Shakespeare and the Allegory of Evil by Bernard Spivack, Columbia Univ. Press, 1958). In Restoration theater he became the cad or seducer—a character who played a major role in the Victorian novel as well.

J. R., like his literary ancestors, is evil: unmitigated, unabashed, pure evil. He, as they, often wears the disguise of virtue, but the audience can always count on the dramatic irony of his corrupt intentions; we know he’s out to pervert and destroy everybody. The more his villainy suggests the diabolical, the more mysterious he becomes. And mystery is in short supply on television—real mystery, not merely suspense.

He is so very attractive because he makes the fictional cosmos of Dallas multidimensional; by his presence he lends the show the structure of Christian cosmology: heaven and earth and hell. And this is what makes the show so unusual (at least before its offspring were born) and so likeable. The cosmology of most television shows consists of a humanist suburb where the characters have been abandoned by heaven and hell to their psychotherapists. In these cramped dwellings of the human spirit Good and Evil have been replaced by Self-esteem and Desire; the language of holiness and damnation has been vanquished by psychological catch phrases.

Think about the old show, Family. Reviewers praised it for its sensitive character portrayals. But the show was not popular because it was well acted, although it was at times, or because the scripts sometimes broached problems common to family life. It was popular because the dedicated viewer of Family could rely on one or more of the TV family’s members stumbling into a discreditable love affair each week. The plots became increasingly uniform after the show had been on the air for a time, until the writers had to figure out only two things: (1) Who beds whom this week? and (2) How do we get the lovebirds out of each other’s arms so that the principal character can go on to other nests?

This formula reached its apotheosis when Willy, the son, found himself in a hotel room with another man’s wife: he took an extravagant amount of time to unloosen his shoestrings, and she, a much less self-conscious girl, sat on the bed in her slip. But there could be no direct appeal to morality: Willy could not simply say, “This is wrong. I’ll drive you home.” After all, in their humanistic world these people were just two organisms with the natural chemicals of Desire racing through their bloodstreams; they had no recourse to words like “sanctity” and “honor,” for those words most definitely belong to the old cosmology. Still, the viewer knew Willy would not go through with this affair, for Family generally backed traditional values. No, Willy’s problem, the writers’ problem, was to find a humanistic way out of this dilemma. Willy resorted to the other pole of humanism, Self-esteem. He said something like, “Honey, this is all we could ever have, just these brief encounters. It’s too sad.” The young woman’s chemicals were racing and she was not convinced. Neither, in terms of the story’s logic, was I.

Indeed, in terms of the cosmology of television, why shouldn’t they have gone to bed together? Perhaps the young woman’s self-esteem was shattered by Willy getting cold feet—what about her self-esteem?

There are two possible answers, neither of them encouraging. The first is merely the matter of censorship, in which case the show becomes an elaborate striptease, a seduction with the “saving grace” of a G-string ending. More likely, however, the producers and the writers of Family had a kind of nostalgia for the old values and sought ways of establishing links between the catchwords of psychology and what the ancients said; they wanted demythologized ethical standards.

It is true that cop and detective shows still operate in part in fictional worlds that depend on the old cosmology: the forces of good versus those of evil. But the tone of these shows generally reflects the prevailing ethos of skepticism. No show typified this more than Baretta. Tony Baretta worked to arrest those responsible for the trade in heavy drugs, the power brokers of organized crime who lived in opulent surroundings even as their patrons overdosed in back alleys. He also worked contrary to the wishes of his fractious boss who stood for a law enforcement system nearly as corrupt as the criminals. Baretta adopted an existentialist stance: he made his own rules. He was an archetypal modern hero forever unsuccessfully harrowing an inescapable hell.

But, see: the presence of J. R. in Dallas makes that show work as it never would without him. Bobby and Pam, the younger brother and his wife, are typical members of a TV family; they are nicer than nice, diabetically sweet—junk food characters. But as foils to J. R.’s malevolent machinations they miraculously become not nice but good. Virtuous. They are no longer “organisms with needs and desires” but human beings struggling to defeat the forces of evil and maintain a kind of Mercedes SL 450 rightousness. Even so, given the limits of television’s usual humanist cosmology, this battle of good and evil is a treat.

At the end of Othello the Moor realizes how his whole life has been subverted by his ancient. He determines to kill Iago and says: “I look down toward his feet—but that’s a fable. If that thou be’st a devil, I cannot kill thee.” (V, ii, 286–87) Well, Othello can’t spot a cloven hoof, but he can’t kill the blackguard either. And while Iago is dragged off at the end to be tortured, he does escape alive from a stage littered with corpses.

Iago’s torture has involved long periods of internment in hell, but he has been resurrected often on many stages, and now he has surfaced once again on TV. In Dallas, in the character of J. R., Iago wears a Stetson and disguises his cloven feet with spurs. He is as fascinating as ever.

The old cosmology brings with it those images that have nourished the imagination of Western civilization. Even television, the electronic warlord of the barbarian, has begun to learn that old lesson.

Harold Fickett, author of Mrs. Sunday’s Problem and Other Stories (Revell, 1979), teaches at Wheaton College, Illinois.

Soviet militarism and revived draft registration have opened up old, unresolved debates with some new twists.

Christian attitudestoward war have undergone some changes in the last 40 years. Though the larger denominations have traditionally supported American military actions, many of their members refused to fight in Vietnam. And though the “peace churches” have traditionally combined nonresistance with social isolation, many Mennonites and Brethren now are deeply involved in social action, and some of their ministers have served in the army or navy.

Clearly, once-established ideas are again in ferment. Russian militarism in Afghanistan and revival of draft registration in the U.S. have now created further discussion on whether a Christian should employ military force to restrain evil.

To explore current thinking, CHRISTIANITY TODAY’s next issue will carry two articles, one saying yes, one no. But even the most innovative and striking ideas have their roots in the past, so by way of introduction to these ideas, the following article takes a neutral look at the positions and arguments for nonresistence in various periods of church history, as seen against the alternatives.

Christian attitudes toward government have been fairly uniform across the centuries. The magistrate has usually found the devout to be obedient to the law’s demand. Christians have not, however, uniformly carried cooperation so far as to help Caesar wield the sword. Best known of today’s “peace churches” holding such reservations are Mennonites and Hutterites, Brethren (Dunkers), and Friends (Quakers).

Behind them stands a long—if not continuous—record of what has come to be called conscientious objection, on biblical Christian grounds. In fact, Christian resistance to military service cropped up in the earliest times, though the term “pacifist” does not fit, if it calls to mind current political movements and theories that employ nonviolent force to coerce desired change (for example, to drive the British out of India). Ancient Christians (and modern “peace churches”) supported an idea of political withdrawal, not political action.

The second and third centuries of church history reveal slight, though increasing, involvement of Christians in the armies of Rome. Yale church historian Roland Bainton writes: “From the end of the New Testament period to the decade 170–180 there is no evidence whatever of Christians in the army.” Guy Franklin Herschberger adds, “It is quite clear that prior to about A.D. 174 it is impossible to speak of Christian soldiers.” About this time the famous heretic, Celsus, reproached Christians for failing to help defend the Empire, charging, “If all men were to do the same as you, there would be nothing to prevent the king from being left in utter solitude and desertion and the forces of the Empire would fall into the hands of the wildest and most lawless barbarians.” No single leader of Christianity in the early pre-Constantinian era approved a military career as right for a believer in Jesus Christ. Extant writings are not plain in every respect, but their tenor is clearly against fighting in the Roman armies, if not technically pacifist. Convincing passages can be cited, for example, from such representative “fathers” of the church as the author(s) of the Didache, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, and Athenagoras.

For the period 180 to 313 (the year Christianity became legal) historians almost universally acknowledge: (1) “All of the East and West repudiated participation in warfare for Christians” (Bainton). (2) Military service came to be regarded by some (the Canons of Hypollytus are cited) as admissible if bearing of arms not be part of the service (firemen, teamsters, postal clerks, ordinance officials, secretaries, some orders of police), though Tertullian disagreed with this looser view. (3) When in 312–313 the Emperor, Constantine, made Christianity a legal religion and official persecution ostensibly ceased, Christian objections to taking part in military defense of the Empire declined quickly until objections came to be regarded as treasonous.

From that day to this most Christian writers who have treated the subject of the Christian and civil government have regarded the protection of free worship of Christians as the God-given duty of their civil governors. Accordingly, the church has provided an honorable position in its assemblies to pious judges, military officers, and uniformed police. Since the days of Constantine only a small minority have objected to Christian participation in the state either as magistrates, or policemen, or front-line soldiers.

Scholars have searched the literature to find out what reasons the early Christians of the first three centuries gave for their near uniform rejection of military service. Actually the specific reasons vary greatly from one Christian writer to another, but they may be reduced to six.

1. Some believed participation in war to be completely incompatible with the commands of Christ and his example. Tertullian asked, “If we are enjoined to love our enemies, whom are we to hate? If injured, we are forbidden to retaliate. Who then can suffer injury at our hands?” Clement of Alexandria and Cyprian are frequently quoted to similar effect. This argument has proved to be the most important and the most enduring reason for the position labeled “biblical pacifism,” whether in the first centuries or in modern times.

2. Origen stated another reason: Christians by their prayers and disciplined lives are of more use to kings than soldiers are. In time of war, he said, Christians contribute more to the common weal by continuing peaceful pursuits than they would by going to war.

3. Before the persecutions ceased, Christians could remind themselves that they suffered at the emperor’s hand whether they joined his armies or not. Why should they fight to defend a government that entertained the populus by throwing Christians to the beasts in the Colosseum? Rome might be their only worldly protection against thieves and wanton criminals, but Rome was also their enemy. In this strange world some of the most upright pagans conceived their moral duty to be the suppression or extermination of religious dissent. This was true of some of Rome’s least corrupt emperors and territorial administrators.

4. Near the end of the pre-Constantinian period the Christians became numerous enough that they might possibly have defended themselves successfully against their persecutors, but did not do so because they expected vindication in the world to come. “All Christians placed their citizenship in heaven. On earth they were but pilgrims and strangers” (Bainton). This was easier for them to understand than for modern people, for at the first very few residents of the Empire were full citizens. So the early Christian was often not a citizen of two realms; his only citizenship was in heaven.

5. Any government office involved some compromise with idolatry. The privilege of citizenship theoretically required participation in the state religion. Indeed, mere residence made accommodation to idolatrous rites obligatory if local magistrates were vigorous in enforcing Roman laws. Exposure to danger from this quarter was even worse in the army, where worshiping images and offering incense to the god or emperor were part of the regular regimen. Many died martyrs’ deaths whenever idol worship was enforced. For the man who refused to burn incense to the emperor, noncombatant service was hardly less dangerous than regular military duty. “The cult of the deified emperor was particularly prevalent in the camps. Officers were called upon to sacrifice; privates participated at least by their attendance. Origen listed idolatry and robbery as sins common in the army” (Bainton).

6. It has been asserted, perhaps with some justification, that all Christians in the earliest years, and the more primitive sects in the years shortly before Constantine, refused military service because they thought the coming of the Lord was near. Then the Lord would destroy the very Empire they were called upon to defend if they entered military service.

From Constantine to the Reformation

From the time of Constantine (early 300s) military duty quickly became accepted as a legitimate though regretted occupation of the responsible Christian. Unlike some modern forms of pacifism, the earlier Christian attitude had been based on a radical view of the wickedness of man and a withdrawal from a society considered hopeless. The later church, without giving up its doctrine of human depravity, became convinced that evil can be restrained. It felt that governments were divinely instituted for this purpose, and that it was therefore the duty of the Christian citizen to support the state even by bearing the sword.

Augustine (early 400s) created the first great synthesis of Christian faith and the practice of war. Drawing heavily from the ancient pre-Christian philosophers, he argued for the necessity of just wars. With rare exceptions Augustine’s defense of war became the standard position of all major branches of the church from that day to this.

He argued that any justifiable war must have peace as its goal. Its purpose must be to secure justice, including ordinarily the preservation of the state. It must be waged in love. The decision must be made not by private citizens but by rulers responsible for the conduct of government, and the war itself must be conducted with a minimum of cruelty.

With the breakdown of the ancient Roman world, war became nearly the natural state of affairs in the desperate effort to protect one’s life and property. The church worked with only moderate success to regulate the petty wars, to restrict the practice of war, and to eliminate the worst atrocities. Even so, the medieval apologists, from Thomas Aquinas (c. 1250) on, never consciously departed from a basic defense of just war as the one war permissible for the Christian in an evil world.

Very rarely a separatist sect like the Waldensians espoused pacifism. The Bohemian Brethren, a century before Luther, attempted a similar stance but gave it up. We do not know much about these sects.

The Reformers

As might be expected, the Reformation brought to the church a burst of new ideas regarding the relationship between a citizen and the state. It is doubtful if a new idea regarding war, peace, and nonresistance has arisen since Reformation times. Legitimacy of coercive power by civil government, including the sword, was assumed almost universally.

Catholicism found authority for both church and magistrates in Jesus’ saying about the two swords in Luke 22:38—one a secular sword (civil government), the other sacred (church). Biblical arguments buttressed rational grounding found in natural law and the doctrine of creation. The Roman church thought it had a divine duty to declare truth to government; government was not only to be guided by the church in matters of faith and morals but to enforce church rules and edicts, by war if necessary.

Protestants found scriptural guidance for a somewhat different doctrine of civil government and authority in Romans 13:1–7 and similar texts. They found practical and rational necessity for civil government in the biblical doctrine of sin: man is sinner and therefore violent and lawless; his violence and lawlessness must be restrained. This is why civil government is necessary.

However, discerning men of all sides, including all the Reformation leaders, saw great evil in the war-like spirit of the times. Many humanist scholars, influenced not only by classical ideals (e.g., the Stoic doctrine of the harmony of the cosmos) but also by the Christian ideals of brotherhood under Christ and of common humanity under God as Creator, wrote against the wars of the Reformation era. Without rejecting traditional just war formulas, these men, most notably Erasmus of Amsterdam, hoped to reform Europe peacefully through education. Erasmus wrote a tract, which has been reprinted frequently since, that makes a moving appeal for Christians to treat all fellow believers as brothers and, recognizing even the Turk as a fellow man, to live at peace also with him. Hence all wars should cease.

Yet almost everyone of the Reformation age appears to have recognized, in a world under the condition of sin, the legitimacy of civil government with power of coercion and legitimate use of the sword—police, death penalty for certain crimes, war as a last resort in national defense, and other just causes. The Christian church as a whole has not materially changed its view to the present time. The views of the first three centuries are hardly recognizable anywhere in the modern epoch—certainly not within the major groups of Christians.

Within the general consensus, however, there were some differences among the leaders of the evangelical Reformation, even before the nonresistant wing of the Anabaptists entered the discussion with something of a consistent voice in the second generation, and quite apart from them. These differences, however, are not as great as sometimes made out.

Luther, Zwingli, Calvin

It is perhaps correct to say, as certain scholars do, that Luther was apolitical. He believed in coercion as a divinely ordained means to maintain the temporal order, but not as a means to promote the church or the Christian life. Luther deplored the apparent necessity for protection of the Reformers by German princes. He was known to say to his best supporters among the princes that they needed his protection more than he theirs. He acknowledged that public justice was imperfect by reason of imperfect magistrates. Though he deplored war, he reminded the emperor that it was his duty to defend his realm against the Turks rather than to persecute the evangelicals in it. At the same time, he supported the emperor and the princes against the peasants in the early social wars. Luther’s views partake of a “paradoxical” outlook which, without wishing simply to be pragmatic, must nevertheless be practical. The ethic of suffering as a ministry to man and service to God is as plain in Luther’s writings as in Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, or the latest writings of Christian pacifism.

Zwingli, the Reformation leader of Zurich, Switzerland, and contemporary of Luther, has been called real-political. That does not seem fair, for it is not demonstrable that the moral relativism implied in realpolitik applies to this ethically sensitive man. Unlike any overt affirmation of Luther’s, Zwingli felt that it was not wrong to use civil power of the sword to achieve spiritual goals, even to promote ecclesiastical goals. At first reluctant to resort to war, in the last crisis of his career he accompanied Zurich’s troops to battle and died on the field as a chaplain-combatant. He did so as chief pastor of the Grosmuenster Church of his City-State.

Calvin, a generation later, was very reluctant to approve of war as a means for Reformed evangelical Christians to compel Europe to tolerate the Reformed faith. This was true even when the Inquisition was regularly making martyrs of Reformed Christians in France. He taught the legitimacy of every form of civil government. Unlike some later Calvinists he did not advocate violent overthrow of tyrants. He kept in close touch with the thousands of persecuted Reformed people of France (Huguenots), who were severely suffering under the kings of France and their papal advisers. Even in face of the martyrdom of hundreds he counseled submission, flight where possible, and nonresistant suffering. He taught his disciples to set their affection on heaven, not on things on the earth. Williston Walker notes, “To his thinking, war was a poor means of advancing the gospel.” When Calvin learned of the early peace terms he counseled “that arms be laid aside and that we all perish rather than enter again on the confusion that we have witnessed.” He provided no rationale or doctrinal solution to the perennial problem of persecution by unjust government.

Calvin believed in the free sovereignty of the church under God. Though he also believed in the freedom of civil government from dictation by church or prelates, he insisted that magistrates should support and enforce public morality. Wherever Calvinism in anything like its primitive form has penetrated, it has sought actively to purify society in harmony with the ethics of Christianity. The power of the sword (police, courts) has been employed more than once in this manner. It is no accident that many Calvinist heroes are military men.

Anabaptists

A large minority in the Reformation who refused any alliance with the various territorial governments of Europe are called Anabaptists. They endorsed baptism of believers only (not infants) and the related principle that a church (local) is a body of believers gathered voluntarily out of a local community (i.e., not a territorial parish). The name Anabaptist was at first bestowed upon them by their enemies. They called themselves simply Brethren or, sometimes, Baptists. Before long, however, they accepted the name Anabaptists.

Anabaptists of the first generation did not have a uniform doctrine of the sword—though they certainly tended to favor nonresistance rather than military force. It has been convincingly shown by recent scholarship that through the first generation after 1517 they had wide diversity in many doctrines. Being true independents, without status, and mainly led by lay people, they were free to teach and live as they and their assemblies believed—provided they were willing to accept the consequences in an intolerant age. So several views of “the sword” flourished among first-generation Anabaptists. Some were willing to use the sword to establish the kingdom of God on earth. But most expected small support from civil governments, for they shared Luther’s skepticism about the righteousness of most princes and other magistrates. They were, however, unwilling to follow the leading Reformers’ endorsem*nt of the coercive power of the sword to preserve public order and to protect the evangelical church. Luther’s prince gave him protective custody at Wartburg while he translated Scripture. But there were no Anabaptist Wartburgs.

Recent scholarship has attempted to sort out the strands of the Anabaptist movement during the Reformation era. Walter Klassen notes in Mennonite Quarterly Review, “The main criticism of Mennonite classifications is that they are the result of efforts to push aside everything that does not agree with the somewhat arbitrary norm of ‘evangelical Anabaptism.’ One has the disturbing feeling that by ‘evangelical Anabaptism’ is meant Anabaptism as it ought to have been, seeing through the spectacles of twentieth-century wishful thinking, rather than as it actually was.”

At any rate, the “pacifist” elements of Anabaptism were about all that was left after the shattering developments at Münster in northwest Germany had come to a head. There radical Anabaptists took charge of government. Their leading prophet predicted Christ’s return in 1533 and establishment of New Jerusalem at Strassburg. After a terrible siege, the bishop overlord captured the city (1535) and executed the leaders of the rebellion. Descendants of the continental Anabaptists who survived the persecutions are mainly Mennonites (most numerous), Amish, and Hutterites. They are numerous today only in the New World, mainly the United States and Canada. All teach some form of nonresistance and cultivate the practice among members. Dunkers (Brethren, Church of the Brethren) arose out of pietistical movements in the Reformed part of Germany, coming to organized existence in 1708. They also migrated to America.

In their peace doctrine all conform fairly closely to the Swiss Brethren at Zurich. The leaders of the Swiss Brethren articulated their views in the early 1520s. Their best-known statement is the Schleitheim Confession of 1527, which states that Christians must lay down “weapons of force, such as sword, armor and the like, together with all their use, whether for the protection of friends or against personal enemies.” These Brethren did not deny the state the use of the sword but insisted that they themselves as true Christians must not use it. They wanted to be obedient and cooperative, but not as part of the civil community. They were not only ethical and religious separatists but wished to be social and political separatists also.

Present-day active involvement of these groups in specific social reforms, in spite of sympathy with abolition, “temperance,” and other movements, does not seem to be a genuine feature of their heritage. It is a recent development. They have been accused of lack of any social mission at all, historically, though representatives deny this. Since World War II, and especially in its immediate aftermath, their “Service Committees” have done some heroic and wonderful works of reconstruction.

Conservative evangelical representatives of these groups reject the political pacifism of our time, as both G. F. Herschberger and Herman Hoyt note. They rejoice, as all Christians do, in every political effort to create peace, but since they believe that man has a fallen nature they have no perfectionist expectations.

The Quakers are much more optimistic. An offshoot of the seventeenth-century Puritan movement of England, they stood apart from the civil turmoil of the time. Like Erasmus of the preceding century, they believed that war is a resort to a sub-Christian ethic. They felt that Christians therefore should have nothing to do with it. Like Erasmus but unlike the Anabaptists they saw great hope for the future in having Christian rulers. As for political activity, they would join gently in that fray to promote peace. Quaker William Penn and Pennsylvania (a Quaker state for several decades) are witness to their practical political activity. They felt that by suffering like Christ and for his sake, by example, by teaching, by legislation, and by public reform, civil life could be improved and causes of war removed.

The reforming temper of Quakerism was coupled with an optimistic view of human nature (the “inner light”) which, given a chance, might bring about peace among men. Though not adopting the separatist stance of the Anabaptists, the Quakers have employed many Anabaptist and Brethren arguments they believe to be grounded in Christ’s example and teaching. Unfortunately, a section of Quakerism became Unitarian in theology long ago and more recently others in the movement have moved away from a basically orthodox Christian view. Hence, today much pacifist Quakerism appears to move in the same channels of thought and practice as liberal Christianity.

Traditional Peace Church Arguments

Brethren and Mennonites base their view on direct appeal to what are deemed the plain word of Scripture and unmistakable example of Christ. This is no less true of their latest statements than sixteenth-, seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century confessions and other publications. For example, a Dunker General Conference (U.S.A.) of 1845 resolved, “In regard to our being altogether defenceless; ‘not to withstand evil, but to overcome evil with good’ (Rom. 12), the Brethren consider that the nearer we follow the bright example of the Lamb of God, who willingly suffered the cross, and prayed for his enemies … the more we shall fulfill our high calling and obtain grace to deny ourselves for Christ and his Gospel’s sake, even to the loss of our property, our liberty and our lives.”

A Dunker tract of about 1900 presents “in support of the principles of nonresistance the following scriptural facts: Christ is the ‘Prince of Peace’ (Isa. 9:6). His kingdom is ‘not of this world’ (John 18:36). His ‘servants do not fight’ (John 18:36). ‘The weapons of our warfare are not carnal’ (2 Cor. 10:4). We are to ‘love our enemies’ (Matt. 5:43). We are to ‘overcome evil with good’ (Rom. 12:21). We are to ‘pray for them which despitefully use us and persecute us’ (Matt. 5:44).” The tract also cites Matthew 5:39; Luke 9:55–56; Matthew 26:52.

After quoting the familiar words of Paul in Romans 13 regarding the services of government and Christian duty to obey government, the tract adds the principle of separation to the principle of nonresistance, as follows: “The disciple of Christ … is subject to the higher powers, though he is not a subject of them. The kingdom of Christ is not of this world. The government is, or should be, in the hands of the moralist [not far from the Lutheran view that natural law and common sense should prevail in civil matters]. He stands between the righteous and the wicked, ‘the minister of God to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.’ But when the moralist would join the kingdom of Christ, he must relinquish the sword.” The Christian is therefore not a citizen of his country in this world and of heaven, but only of heaven.

Recent Problems

This conviction has created the social isolation of members of peace churches of continental origin. It is the root of the earnest struggles of their posterity for some kind of integration with modern society—a society now inextricably interdependent in many ways. In days past some of these groups have tended to form socially isolated groups even to the extent of a special plain costume for all members. Their dilemma is evident. If they remain small, the intellectual and social problems of political nonparticipation and social separation are manageable. They can safely leave to others the policing of society. When numerous enough to affect community political power centers, however, nonparticipation becomes hard to maintain. The Unity of the Brethren (Hussite), for example, laid aside these principles when nobility came into the movement; and Mennonites in the Netherlands became just another evangelical element in a hom*ogeneous society—a deacon of the congregation at The Hague was the minister of the Dutch Navy, and Martin G. Brumbaugh, a Dunker, was wartime governor of Pennsylvania. Questions about the proper relation to society at large and correct interpretation of Scripture on the use of force have brought uncertainty into peace churches.

In the years between the two World Wars, there arose among Protestants a near-pervasive pacifism of sorts, based not on the orthodox biblical view of sin but on an optimistic attitude toward human nature. “The Christian Century” idea could even accept World War I by idealistically calling it “the War to end War.”

But this optimism was shattered by a series of blows: the teaching of Karl Barth, the aggression of Adolph Hitler, the depression of the thirties, and that preview of World War II that was provided by the Spanish civil war. Even the traditional peace churches were shaken in their pacifism. Somehow it seemed so right to fight against Hitler.

Recent Responses

The Brethren denomination I know best is not atypical as far as conservative evangelicals of the “peace” churches are concerned. In the midst of World War II (1942) the National Fellowship of Brethren Churches—an energetically evangelical group of latter-day Dunkers—acknowledged officially: “Some of our Brethren young men have already entered combatant military service. While this type of service is not in accord with the historic teaching of the Brethren Church, its acceptance is not made a test of membership nor a cause of discipline, because the church does not wish to coerce the consciences of men in such matters” (The Brethren Annual of 1943, Winona Lake, Ind.: Brethren Missionary Herald Co., Dec. 26, 1942). Ministers in the group are sometimes former army and navy men.

In the aftermath of Hiroshima a new factor has appeared. The Christian church has always required of a just war that it must envisage a good end of peace and greater justice, and that its ravages fall upon the guilty, not the innocent. Atomic warfare, on the contrary, destroys primarily the innocent civilian population. Neither can it bring a good end of peace by greater justice, because it destroys all. So to some, the older defense of the just war theory has been undercut. It is equally difficult, however, to maintain that even modern atomic warfare introduces a difference in principle from the destruction of Jericho recorded in the Bible. Or for that matter, it is difficult to argue that the Christian ought no longer to be willing to fight for the right because human suffering will be greater than in the past.

Alongside the conservative evangelical wing of traditional “peace” churches a new breed of “peace” scholarship has appeared. Instead of near universal denial that Jesus announced a political program, these thinkers strenuously affirm that he did announce one. John Howard Yoder holds that the program is not found in “remodeling the total society”; it is in “the political novelty which God brings into the world … a community of those who serve.… This new Christian community is not only a vehicle of the gospel or fruit of the gospel; it is the good news.” A high claim, indeed! Justification is, in Yoder’s words, “a social phenomenon.” The peace doctrine of this particular pacifist has apparently become his gospel.

This form of pacifism varies greatly from the separation-withdrawal type found among the traditional Mennonites and the Brethren or, for that matter, in the early church. Among those from the traditional peace churches who have clung generally to the doctrines and practices of their heritage, the influence of this new type of peace doctrine is not great, but it has won to its position a large number of people from many other Protestant groups.

With the perspective of this brief survey of pacifism in the church, we can appreciate the biblical and circ*mstantial factors that have played a part in molding today’s varying opinions. This may help us to approach the present-day discussion of a Christian’s involvement in war with a substantial respect for those of differing positions.

Editor’s Note: In the November 7 issue Dr. Culver will present a defense of just war, and Mennonite author John Drescher will defend nonresistance.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

The Gallup Poll establishes Bible reading as the single most discernible factor shaping moral social behavior.

The CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll study reveals striking factors about the way Christian beliefs translate into action.

1976 was widely heralded as the “year of the evangelical” in America. The 1976 presidential campaign injected the name of Jesus and the concept of being born again into politics in a totally new way. Yet as one astute Washington observer, antiabortion lawyer John P. Mackey, correctly predicted before the election, it would be “politics as usual” after the voting. Events have borne him out. In 1980, both major party candidates for the presidency and independent candidate Congressman John B. Anderson are professing, evangelicals. Nevertheless, it appears that as far as national politics are concerned, this remarkable religious fact has changed things very little.

During the social and political ferment of the 1960s, sociologist Peter Berger observed that most religiously identifiable people—ranging from Unitarian-Universalists to separatistic fundamentalists—tended to vote along identifiable social and class lines, rather than according to their professed beliefs. Southern fundamentalists used religious arguments to bolster segregation, while northern fundamentalists attacked it. Since the 1960s, the lines have shifted and blended, but Berger’s question still remains: What difference does one’s religious belief make in the way one acts?

The CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll has revealed some striking things about the relationship between the professed beliefs of Christians and their personal and social ethics. Some things are rather alarming, and suggest that a person’s religious profession may have rather less influence on his conduct than we might expect. Others give reason to hope that evangelicals are learning to put faith and practice together better than we used to be able to do—especially evangelicals who are regular in their reading and study of the Bible.

Perplexing data have emerged—such as the fact that a strong stand for biblical orthodoxy and even a personal conversion experience do not necessarily mean that a Christian, especially a young adult, will hold firmly to traditional Christian values in the area of sexual morality. These data are not self-interpreting. One might conclude from them that younger Christians are being influenced by the youth culture to be permissive, even indulgent, with respect to personal moral values. On the other hand, theologian Alan F. Johnson suggests that these data may instead show the way in which experience over a period of years—rather than mere old-fogeyism—enables older and more mature Christians to see the vital connection between individual moral standards and the totality of one’s life and ministry.

Methodological questions arise with any opinion survey, no matter how carefully structured. It is a well-known fact that surveys can be drawn up in such a way as virtually to answer themselves. Even when a conscientious effort is made to avoid any built-in tilt, as in the CHRISTIANITY TODAY—Gallup Poll, some uncertainties remain. In questions dealing with personal moral conduct, such as abortion, some responses were so broad that respondents with substantially different convictions may well be grouped together in a misleading way under the same response.

For example, only 19 percent of the general public (by contrast with 74 percent of Catholics, 35 percent of Baptists, and more than 30 percent of evangelicals) appear to find abortion “unacceptable under all circ*mstances.” But. as James P. McFadden, editor of Human Life Review, pointed out, the vast majority of most Protestants (including most evangelicals) would allow it only in rare cases such as when the mother’s life is at stake. This placed their responses—together with all but the most militant proabortionists—among those who find abortion “acceptable under certain circ*mstances.” The fact that only 19 percent of respondents oppose it under all circ*mstances does not thus indicate that the antiabortion side is numerically weak, but rather, that there is a substantial number of Americans whose opposition to abortion is not quite absolute and thus differs from that of many orthodox Protestant and Roman Catholic antiabortion spokesmen, even though they are in essential agreement with them.

Before moving to such specific ethical questions as abortion, the poll asked more general questions concerning the priorities of Christians. One in four members of the general public thought that world evangelism should be the Christian’s top priority. Those exhibiting characteristics of serious evangelical Christians—such as a personal conversion experience, regular Bible reading, church attendance, and tithing—were substantially more concerned for world evangelism. At least three-fifths of this latter group made helping to win the world for Christ either top or second priority, although, as might be expected; personal and family spiritual growth ranked high among all the groups.

The community and social concern of evangelicals came as a surprise. All groups, including all categories of Christians—denominationally affiliated, converted, frequent Bible readers, regular churchgoers, tithers, and even general public—agreed that it is important or very important for religious organizations to take public stands on ethical and moral matters. Seventy percent of the evangelicals, however, voted such action to be very important (as over against 36 percent for the general public, 31 percent for Catholics, 41 percent for Protestants as a whole, 27 percent for Methodists, and 30 percent for Lutherans). Even on political and social issues evangelicals favored public pronouncement by the church and religious organizations. Although the percentages were lower than for religious, spiritual, or moral issues, the ratios for the various groups remained about the same with evangelicals doubling the general public and most denominations. Interestingly enough, the scores of evangelicals ran very close to all clergy, with no significant difference on the issue between theologically conservative and theologically liberal clergymen.

This differs radically from the stereotype of evangelicals and of conservative Christian organizations. Apparently lay evangelicals, evangelical clergy, and evangelical leaders are not lagging behind in their zeal to provide moral and spiritual guidance and to exert their public influence on ethical and political matters.

The abortion issue reveals the surprising fact that only 13 percent of the general public and less than 10 percent of conservative Christians agree with the current state of American law on abortion, despite the fact that the public is usually reported as evenly divided on this issue or even as favoring abortion. This gross discrepancy results from the difficulty of interpreting questions that are not sufficiently explicit or detailed fully to cover the situation created by Roe v. Wade, and the 1973 Supreme Court decision. It probably reflects the fact that most Americans do not yet fully understand what that decision actually means. The recent decision of the Southern Baptist Convention to endorse a human life amendment shows that awareness is growing and indicates that the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll, thoughtfully analyzed, is on target.

Attitudes on hom*osexuality appear surprisingly permissive among the general population, for although a majority opposes it, a large minority accepts it or expresses no opinion. Evangelical Christians are noticeably more consistent than the general public in holding that hom*osexual relations are wrong. Among conservatives, the factor that most strongly molds conviction on this issue is frequent Bible reading. Age seems to make a difference in opposition to hom*osexual conduct; it is possible to interpret the younger respondents’ greater acceptance of hom*osexual conduct, as already suggested, in terms of lack of personal experience with its long-range consequences, rather than as indicating a weakening commitment to biblical absolutes. Only 15 percent of regular Bible readers fail to condemn hom*osexual relations (6 percent approve; 9 percent have no opinion). In a way, the fact that 15 percent do fail to condemn, despite the Bible’s very explicit teaching on the subject, may indicate that even regular Bible readers are not immune to the pervasive influences of the surrounding culture.

On the other hand, an equal or even larger number of regular Bible readers (6 percent) condemn premarital sexual relations, which are increasingly tolerated by the general public as well as by many denominational groups queried. On this issue, Catholics (49 percent) and Methodists (48 percent) were most tolerant whereas most Protestants condemned premarital relationships (59 percent; Southern Baptists, 65 percent; evangelicals, 80 percent; and frequent Bible readers, 86 percent).

Adultery is perceived by all groups as the worst of the sexual offenses discussed. Here the general public, various denominational groups, and converted Bible-reading Christians are united in condemning extra-marital relationships—much more so than in condemning hom*osexuality. Among the frequent Bible readers, condemnation of extramarital sex is even more unanimous (95 percent) than condemnation of hom*osexuality; thus all groups agree, by a larger or smaller margin, in seeing marital infidelity as wrong. It may be that hom*osexuality continues to be perceived, even in some Christian circles, more as an illness than as a vice—and hence less subject to moral condemnation than the more obvious offense of marital infidelity.

If Bible-reading Christians have retained a strong commitment to traditional Christian values in most areas of sexual morality, in the area of divorce and remarriage they show considerable deflection from older norms. Here too there is an “undistributed mean,” where one response includes a variety of different cases and may group relatively strict and relatively permissive attitudes under the same heading. The most widely chosen response, that divorce should be “avoided in all but extreme situations” might seem to some to be necessary for providing for adultery, desertion, and physical abuse, and to others broad enough to allow divorce for something as flexible as “extreme” incompatibility. Here again, converted Christians and frequent Bible readers were more hostile to divorce than the general public, but then, rather surprisingly, proved slightly more tolerant of remarriage after divorce. Perhaps this is a result of the serious Christian’s emphasis on the reality of forgiveness, renewal, and a fresh start even after the most serious transgression.

Responses to all questions in the realm of sexual ethics clearly indicate that one factor surpasses all others in molding Christians’ convictions and shaping their character. Paul Feinberg, professor of theology and ethics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, observes, “Knowledge of the Scriptures and daily meditation on them is clearly the most important force in building the kind of Christian character that can remain faithful to traditional Christian values—more important than any other formative influence identified in the survey.” Dr. Feinberg also drew attention to recently published data indicating that regular Bible reading and meditation is associated with a generally stable emotional life and the ability to ride out shocks of various kinds, reaffirming once again the long-standing Reformation and evangelical emphasis on the ability of the Scriptures to “make wise unto salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).

In addition to the evident, strong impact of regular Bible reading on personal moral values, it is apparent from other survey questions that those who read the Scripture frequently are more likely than others to be concerned about social ethics, and are more likely to have done something personally to alleviate the distress of individuals or groups. In fact, frequent Bible readers stand out in startling fashion from the mass of statistics produced by the poll. On matters of doctrine and ethics, their percentage was uniformly highest—far above any denominational groups or groupings by other activities (such as churchgoers, financial contributors to religious organizations, age, sex, optimists, pessimists, followers of religious broadcasts, age groups, educational groups, geographical groups, and all other groups polled). This was true in the doctrinal area: for belief in God (100 percent); consolation and help derived from belief about God; experience of conversion (but equally divided between those for whom this was sudden [Methodists] and those for whom it was gradual [Lutherans]); those for whom this experience was still important; belief in the inerrancy of the Bible; commitment to the full deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ; acknowledgment that the Devil is a personal evil being; an original creation of Adam and Eve; church attendance; witnessing to others about their faith; testing their religious beliefs by the Bible; reckoning the Ten Commandments as morally binding on their consciences; holding that their top priority is to win the world for Jesus Christ; least worried about their own financial security; and most concerned about their closeness to God.

Even more significant is that the regular Bible readers also surpassed all other groups in ethical concerns: volunteering to counsel others in need; visiting the sick or elderly; giving 10 percent or more of their income to the church and other religious organizations; holding it to be their duty personally and directly to help the poor; actually doing something to minister to the poor in their own community; reckoning it to be very important for religious organizations to make public pronouncements on ethical and moral issues, or spiritual and religious matters, and even on political legislation for good ends; opposition to abortions, hom*osexual practice, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and divorce; trying actively to deal with the energy shortage (Lutherans 1 percentage point higher); least likely to use alcohol or to drink more than they should.

From this poll it is possible to draw the conclusion that evangelicals are a highly moral people, more concerned about God and more concerned about the welfare of their fellow human beings than any other group polled. It is also apparent that the growing interest of evangelicals in social concerns is not necessarily a move in the direction of liberalism and the old “social gospel,” but simply a natural consequence of the ability of the Word of God, when faithfully read and digested, to transform the Christian by the renewing of the mind (Rom. 12:2) in every area of interest and concern. This means that the proliferation of independent and church-related serious Bible study in recent years is by no means to be seen as a sort of escapism, a turning inward away from the world and its conflicts and needs, but rather as a vitally necessary means of equipping the saints to do God’s work in a fallen and rebellious world.

Readers of the survey were divided as to how to interpret the large number of responses that expressed a high degree of concern for personal and family development and fulfillment and for community improvement. To this category belong those responses that indicate that most people, in cases of personal need or serious problems of most kinds, turn more readily to a family member than to any professional, including a clergyman (except for problems of a religious nature, where a clergyman naturally is the first choice). Government agencies are very far down the list of helping organizations and individuals to which people willingly turn. Although many—including this writer—felt that the responses indicate what Robert Nisbet called “the quest for commitment” and bode well for the continuing development of Christian community, both within and alongside of local congregational structures, Alan Johnson saw in them a troublesome reflection of the modern trend toward self-fulfillment in a narcissistic sense, to the exclusion of concern for the outside world and for abiding ethical values. If this is true, the poll certainly indicates that biblically oriented Christians are a significant exception to this rule.

Many readers at first found the survey troubling in its apparent suggestion that many Christians, including believers who stress conversion, Bible reading, and many aspects of a daily Christian walk, are weakening in their commitment to traditional principles of Christian morality. On reflection, however, it appears that where there is such a weakening, it can generally be identified as associated with a failure to read the Scripture, to practice regular worship and fellowship with other Christians, and to demonstrate the kind of personal discipline that ought naturally to accompany a clear Christian commitment. Where such disciplines are present, on the other hand, they seem to build Christian character and godly concern in every area of Christian life—not merely in the area of traditional “do’s and don’ts.” Inasmuch as serious Bible reading and Bible study is flourishing among both younger and older Christians today, the survey seems to contain in itself both the prescription for and the hope of cure for the maladies it exposes. Particularly interesting is the fact that there is no apparent dichotomy between concern for holy living and concern for a just and compassionate social order. It may not be apparent that mere personal conversion changes men and women sufficiently to produce a significant transformation of society. But it is evident that continuing Christian discipleship, and particularly serious attention to the Bible and its message on a regular basis, does motivate Christians across the board of personal and social concerns, and may well be the lever to reverse the trend of a society that apparently is becoming more Christian in religious persuasion and less just in social and personal practice.

As a preliminary balance, the CHRISTIANITY TODAY-Gallup Poll shows a Christian minority that is less perplexed and befuddled about its priorities than we may have feared, and indicates that the church of Jesus Christ still has access to the essential resource for the guidance and health of its members and for a beneficial impact on society and culture. We may sum up this resource with the famous maxim of Johann Albrecht Bengel: “Apply thy whole self to the text; apply the whole text to thyself.”

Untitled

However named Gentle,

your violence, Lord

opens more worlds than closes:

we are clay and undefined;

circle, round, mould,

give us lines.

we are stones, sons of black rock;

crush the veins, grind,

hew, hone.

Free the waiting diamond.

we are surf, urgent, denied,

restless in tongue of moon;

dredge us deeply, stir,

settle us like sand.

we are steel;

straighten, stretch, fire;

melt us, shape, thin us

like strong wires.

we are seed, dry, dessicated;

rain us, green us as once we were:

The harvest remembers not

the cut.

ED INGEBRETSEN, S.J.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Their involvement may become as misguided as was the earlier activism of liberal Christianity.

Evangelical Christians are swarming back into the public arena. After a generation of withdrawal from public concerns in the wake of the modernist social gospel, they are “going public” and getting socially involved on a grand scale.

Resurgent evangelical interest in politics is to be welcomed and commended. Yet some observers fear—and with good reason—that this involvement may eventually become as politically misguided as was the activism of liberal Christianity earlier in this century. Some even consider 1980 the fateful year of evangelical ingress into politics, a year of decisive long-term consequences both for the United States and for the future of evangelical churches.

During the present political campaign evangelical spokesmen have been more involved in political affairs, directly or indirectly, than for many decades. A colorful “Washington for Jesus” rally, which its sponsors at first hoped would draw a million participants, rallied less than half that number, but the throng nonetheless notably outnumbered the multitudes who welcomed Pope John Paul II to the national capital. Leaders in the electronic church, a euphemism for television religion, have formulated specific questions that churchgoers are expected to address to their congressmen on political positions ranging from abortion and a balanced budget to the Panama Canal treaty and SALT II. This has been deplored as a spiritual litmus test that suspends the Christian authenticity of congressmen on particular political commitments. But the nonevangelical ecumenists who have long lobbied Congress for their own approved specifics were hardly in the best position to complain.

As the presidential election draws near, some churchmen are again probing the possibility of rival “Clergy for Carter,” or “Clergy for Reagan,” or “Clergy for Anderson” committees. On the ground that this was not the proper role of the clergy, I myself frustrated a “Clergy for Nixon” initiative at a 1972 pre-election White House briefing, when a prominent New England pastor asked invited churchmen publicly to endorse Nixon’s candidacy. In some local races Protestant ministers—usually fundamentalists and political conservatives—are running for office. Pope John Paul dampened the political aspirations of Catholic clergy recently on the ground that ordination vows commit them not to unraveling earthly political affairs but to elucidating the spiritual and moral principles of the transcendent kingdom of God. Some evangelicals advocate that only “born-again” candidates be elected to office. Most Christians would probably protest if Jews were to vote only for Zionists or Catholics only for those who believe in papal infallibility. The notion that a born-again president will solve all the nation’s problems has run upon hard times since Jimmy Carter has occupied the White House. Spiritual rebirth bestows no special competence for resolving political specifics, although it should assure a high level of moral integrity. By remarkable coincidence, all three presidential candidates claim to be evangelical Christians. Yet each declares the others politically inadequate to the presidency. Politics, as Bismarck observed, is no exact science. Evangelical or nonevangelical candidates alike might add confusion to inexactitude, but the grassroots multitudes are calling for leaders of godly character and commitment in national affairs, and for an end to the erosion of biblical values.

Complicating the present election debate is the emergence of several evangelical groups professing to provide scriptural guidance for the evangelical community. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority promotes corporate prayer in public schools, as does Leadership Foundation, whereas the Baptist Joint Public Affairs Committee along with the National Council of Churches resists it. Coalition for Christian Action, Christian Voice, Christian Embassy, and lesser known groups all actively support politically conservative candidates. Heartened by the impact of prolife forces and the Supreme Court’s decision against welfare funding of abortions, evangelical groups hope to expand their campaign against liberal misperceptions of the good.

Does this evangelical surge into the political realm indicate that evangelical revival has crested to the level of significant social awakening? The great evangelistic crusades of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England struck so deeply into history that they elicited the designation “evangelical awakening.” Their notable impact upon public conscience and legislation precipitated a wave of prison reform and led to outlawing of slavery and of child labor, and to other political changes. Even nonbelievers more and more judged community attitudes and commitments by biblical principles: social conviction and sensitivity consequently underwent public transformation.

When Time magazine designated 1976 “the year of the evangelical” many of the movement’s spokesmen hurriedly and prematurely spoke of “evangelical awakening.” But the present expansive political thrust does not of itself mean that contemporary American evangelicals are as politically aware as were earlier evangelicals. The current evangelical return to the political arena involves no comprehensive political philosophy or program; it has a notably attenuated range of specifics. The evangelical agenda in public affairs is conspicuously narrow when set alongside ecumenical Protestant, Roman Catholic, or even Reform Jewish projections. The ecumenical reach extends comprehensively to almost all political concerns, even if it almost predictably signals a liberal or radical direction in politico-economic affairs, and notably neglects such issues as Communist oppression, inflation, and crime. Evangelical political activity in the main counters this socialistic trend and promotes a revival of voluntarism. But its social vision is fragmentary, often lacks substance and strategy, and focuses mainly on a one-issue or single-candidate approach. One troubled evangelical observer has already suggested that on the morning after election day some leading Christian magazine should carry a major article analyzing “Where the Evangelicals Went Wrong.”

What troubles some observers is that many evangelical leaders leap presumptuously from prayer breakfasts or from individual spiritual rebirth to assuredly authentic and predictable public policy consequences. This expectation does great disservice, since it detours evangelicals around intellectual scrutiny of political options and from informed decisions on them. One need not disapprove of national or state prayer breakfasts to note that because they gather leaders holding divergent political (and often religious) views they can hardly be expected to yield specific public policy consequences. Discussion of political particularities would likely be considered spiritually divisive. The “Washington for Jesus” rally finally abandoned any agenda of political specifics in order merely to register the conviction by a massive throng of godly citizens that America is doomed unless it heeds the will of God in national life. Some observers remarked that for the $1 million cost of staging the rally, evangelicals could have given much sharper focus to specific changes they desire in the political arena.

Evangelical leaders themselves are asking some unflattering questions about those among them who are aggressively organizing and mobilizing evangelical political opinion and action, but who are Johnny-come-lately to political concerns. Personal prominence, patriotic image, institutional mailing lists are all involved. Moral Majority’s newsletter reaches 250,000 persons, including 70,000 conservative pastors. The deeper question is whether evangelicals are getting adequate guidance as they move into the 1980 political context.

Evangelical social action is in some respects a whirlpool of contemporary confusion with spokesmen divergently aligned on all sides while professing to speak the evangelical view. These leaders sometimes seem to speak past or at each other, more than to the public scene, without clarifying differences of principle.

The magazine Sojourners, whose point of view reflects a minority of the evangelical constituency, gives the impression of much wider representation through skillful use of symbols that encourage public media coverage. It almost never speaks on abortion, promotes military disarmament, and tends to blame America for the ills of the world much in the mood of ecumenical sociopolitical analysis. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, the establishment evangelical voice, on the other hand, in its recent Gallup Poll of evangelical social attitudes, did not even probe the two questions—military disarmament and nuclear power—that an international ecumenical conference of scientists and churchmen meeting last year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology addressed with most conviction. Eternity magazine has tried to rise above evangelical divergence by a series of panel discussions that reflect evangelical conflicts and reach for greater understanding, but with qualified success.

Many evangelicals are intellectually unprepared for energetic social engagements. They do not discern the connections between theology and ethical theory and strategy. They wish to go beyond mere negative criticism of controversial ecumenical commitments, yet are largely cast on nonevangelical initiatives. A program whose theological basis is unsure, and whose content and strategy are debatable, provides no effective alternative either to costly social indifference or to a pernicious social ethic. Encouraged by ecumenical activists, some evangelicals are even prone to revise modernist social gospel assumptions in the realm of public policy, while others fall prey to Marxist-oriented liberation theology. The former approach assumes that socialist legislation will rectify the ills of society, and the latter view does not exclude violence as a means of advancing it.

Pull The Lever Knowing Why

CARL F. H. HENRY

1. Don’t substitute good intentions for inaction. Merely daydream about voting, and you’ll forfeit your vote in an age when political liberty has a fragile survival. In Communist lands people can vote only for the party in power. Failure to vote where political alternatives are present is to do a disservice to political freedom.

2. Don’t stay away from the polls even if you can’t support any of the nominees. A write-in vote is better than no vote at all, since it says something to the existing national parties. The ballot will always contain some names and some issues deserving of your vote: support for them will encourage future meritorious candidates.

3. Don’t make up your mind on the basis of television commercials projected by mass media experts to manipulate viewer response, but make up your mind before you reach the polling booth. Don’t decide on the basis of glamorous personality, patriotic rhetoric, or pragmatic flexibility. Which candidate or team of leaders can most reasonably be counted on to do what they promise and to weather all crises desirably? Vote in good conscience for the best-qualified candidates and for better laws. No candidate will be perfect, no law will be beyond future improvement. But the nation can nonetheless be put on the road to higher things through political resolution of conflicting claims if citizens truly seek to advance the will of the living God through their preferred options.

4. Don’t allow a candidate’s religious faith to be finally decisive. To be sure, a declared atheist or relativist holding no fixed moral principles can hardly be counted on for permanent commitments. But this year the religious issue will count for less even among evangelicals since all three presidential candidates claim evangelical links. Jimmy Carter’s Southern Baptist ties are said to be good for 2 million votes; among independent evangelicals Ronald Reagan has greater appeal. John Anderson has minimized evangelical commitments as an independent candidate, but nonetheless has a noteworthy following. Truly Christian loyalties should mean that a candidate’s character is predictable under pressure, but it does not of itself guarantee political acumen.

5. A candidate’s personal integrity, moral example, readiness to esteem national interest above either personal advantage or considerations of image, his experience and competence in public affairs, record for fulfilling political promises, formulation of constructive long-range and short-range solutions, and the national and international consequences of his leadership are all relevant considerations. Worth reading and analysis are position papers on major issues that every serious candidate prepares. Public political debates often cast further light on specific interests; in the absence of this, direct correspondence with candidates will clarify some points.

6. Is the candidate sensitive to the needs of the poor and of disadvantaged minorities, without discouraging their need to work hard and to contribute to the public good, or without neglecting the plight of the elderly and of workers whose taxes and dwindling resources discourage work and thrift? No less important than care about the impoverished is concern over a debased currency. What economic policy will encourage able-bodied citizens to earn a just wage that provides food, clothing, and shelter?

7. Say a prayer as you enter the polling booth. A skeptic about the whole process once called modern politics a conflict of private interests masquerading as a contest of principles, and he distinguished politicians from statesmen by affirming that all the latter are dead. But in The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce remarks that the vote is “the instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.” The Bible exhorts us to pray for rulers and to support the good. Pray for whoever in God’s providence will be responsible for leading the world’s most powerful nation in its most difficult hour. Ask God to help that leader to do the right, and to help you promote justice and godliness in the life of the nation.

8. Then open your eyes wide as you pull the lever.

A group of Washington-area churchmen recently identified the overall social issues that most concern evangelicals as government funding of abortion, hom*osexuality, church-state issues centering in IRS policy—impositions on private schools, economic concern for a balanced budget (through bureaucratic retrenchment without weakening defense commitments in resisting Communist expansionism). Concern for the poor has been expressed mainly through private agencies.

There is growing pressure to expand this agenda in order to focus on the impact of television on public attitudes and morals, the issue of secular humanism in the public schools, the assault on the family as the basic unit of society, and international concern for religious liberty. But it will be no comprehensive gain if evangelicals broaden their agenda in the absence of an overall social vision, political philosophy, and public strategy.

This does not mean that evangelical Christianity must speak with a monolithic voice in public affairs, far less that some self-appointed clerical hierarchy needs to tell evangelicals for whom to vote. Biblical revelation does not speak directly to the particularities of politics. Scripture leaves translation of revealed principles into viable political decisions to the conscience and will of mankind, and equally devout individuals may disagree over the best program for achieving common goals.

A particular issue or particular candidate may indeed at times be of paramount political importance. But if evangelicals participate only in one-issue or one-candidate politics and do not address the broader principles and party platforms, they may unwittingly eliminate competent office holders whose cumulative experience, strategic committee posts, and stance on other issues not currently in debate, ought not to be ignored. If they settle only for single-issue or fragmentary involvement, evangelicals will treat public concerns as but a marginal appendage to evangelism, and remain highly vulnerable to the more comprehensive political strategies of nonevangelical groups. A complete program of social involvement that aims to affect and mold the course of events will ask not only what issues need to be addressed, but at what stage they are most effectively addressed, and how. More important, ideal social engagement will spur evangelicals to pursue not only a protective special interest in the public arena, but those concerns also that transcend self-interest and coincide with universal human rights and duties.

Evangelicals need positive guidance at a time when many agencies solicit their support for this or that special cause. More sources of helpful information are available than most churchgoers recognize. A recent essay titled “Can My Vote Be Biblical?” (see Sept. 19 issue, p. 14), issued by a number of evangelical cosigners, calls attention to the paperback Almanac of American Politics that presents profiles of the voting record of congressmen, evaluations by private organizations such as the League of Women Voters, and reports identifying financial contributions to candidates, which are available for a small fee from the Federal Election Commission. Competent analysis of numerous public issues has also been done by the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, whose director, Ernest W. Lefever, sees a merely one-issue approach as the end of a responsible political ethic.

In moving more fully into public affairs, evangelicals need to be alert to three great overarching considerations.

1. The Bible is our guide in political affairs as well as in other areas. But the Old Testament does not superimpose its blueprint for the Hebrew theocracy on the pluralistic pattern of civil government in the New Testament. Yet God stipulates the rule of justice by which all nations will be and are now being measured and which provides the only basis for enduring world order and peace. The New Testament teaches that, although presently unrecognized by the world, the risen Christ is even now Lord of the cosmos. His people extend his lordship by promoting in public life the justice that God stipulates and sanctions. Christian clergy and educators must therefore inculcate the biblically revealed principles of social ethics.

2. The Bible leaves to the people of God the application of revealed principles to concrete situations that call for specific laws. We are to weigh all particular options in the light of biblical principles. The Bible gives few rules, although it does give some (e.g., “pay your taxes,” “pay just wages”). Specific applications are left to public determination, and those specifics, although answerable to transcendent norms, may well differ from place to place and from time to time. But Christians are to work for just laws and to protest injustice in the public realm.

3. Among biblical concerns specially relevant today are the primacy of the family as a lifelong monogamous union, the dignity and worth of fetal life, the plight of the poor and oppressed, the right and need to work, the pursuit of world peace and order, the just use of power to contain the expansionist policies of aggressor nations, and the preservation of natural resources.

From the governing principles contained in the Bible many inferences can be drawn. Legislation should benefit family structures, not penalize them. It should preserve the civil rights of all, including hom*osexuals, but not approve and advance immoral lifestyles. Government-subsidized extinction of fetal life on the basis of cost-benefit analysis is wicked, the more so when government also finances experiments to bring new forms of life into being. Something is seriously wrong when a hospital cannot sew up an injured teen-ager’s body wounds without notifying her parents, while that same teen-ager can have an abortion without parents even knowing about it, and as easily as having her ears pierced.

Massive and annually escalating military expenditures should not be heralded as unmitigated good news, but as a tragic necessity, one that arises not by divine determination but through the shameful aggression of predator powers that invade weak neighbor nations and through an exaggerated human trust in the saving power of missiles. One of the bitter ironies of a world torn by international struggle is that we in America—arms exporter to the world—find these very same arms sometimes arrayed in battle against us after our forces abandon them or when friendly nations fall to hostile powers.

The earth is the Lord’s and we are responsible stewards in our use of its treasures. Implicit in the biblical view is a mandate to preserve earth’s limited resources. No nation, no century, no generation is to consume greedily or destroy what is useful to all mankind.

Yet the Bible does not directly address many specific issues being debated today—whether to develop nuclear power, whether to develop nuclear missiles, how and when to ration gasoline, and so on. But no just answers to such questions can be achieved unless biblical principles are honored. Citizens motivated by a concern for justice may make divergent inferences and different applications, but some options are clearly ruled out. None will be perfect, and most will be subject to revision. But a society that pursues justice in its commitments and acts out of a desire to honor the will of God in public affairs has the assurance of God’s blessing. To receive a divine benediction upon its public engagement no less than upon its evangelistic and missionary effort should be the evangelical goal in the modern world.

“Rejected”

St. Mark XII:1–12

Left alone, he put together the Man

from out-at-the-elbow, out-of-style, cast-off

stuff of several generations. He did it:

used the rejections to make an affirmation,

a Yes, converting the noisy, self-serving

No’s to a quiet, working, cornerstone Amen.

EUGENE H. PETERSON

Indwelling

If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,

Like to a shell dishabited,

Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,

And say, “This is not dead,”

And fill thee with Himself instead;

But thou art all replete with very thou,

And hast such shrewd activity,

That, when He comes, He says, “This is enow

Unto itself—’Twere better let it be:

It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”

T. E. BROWN (1830–1897)

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.

His death at the stake was the necessary result of his love affair with Scripture.

Among famous words spoken by dying men, perhaps few are so vividly remembered as those uttered by Hugh Latimer at Oxford 425 years ago. October 16 marks that anniversary, and it seems fitting to think again of that scene. Latimer and Nicholas Ridley stand back to back at a common stake, a chain about their waists. As the flames leap up, Latimer’s voice rings out, “Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man. We shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

That candle still burns, the last in a long line of candles lit by Hugh Latimer in the darkness of sixteenth-century England. His ministry extended over some 30 years. No one has ever challenged his distinctive position as the preacher of the English Reformation. Ridley called him “Apostle to the English.” Others said. “Moses, Jeremiah, and Elias did never declare the true message of God to their rulers and people with a more sincere spirit, faithful mind, and godly zeal than Latimer.” Sir John Cheke used to say, “I have an ear for other preachers, but I have a heart for Latimer.” He left it to those better fitted to plumb theological depths, to frame doctrines, to draw up creeds and liturgies. His devotion was to the preaching of the Word of God. He did it with powerful effect.

Latimer was thoroughly an Englishman. Born of sturdy yeoman stock, he related easily to the common man. Yet he preached with equal facility before kings and courtiers, scholars and clergymen, in Latin or in English, adapting his message and language to the condition and need of his audience. His life brought him into a variety of situations. At Cambridge he was chosen one of 12 university preachers, licensed to preach anywhere in the realm. He served as curate of the small parish of West Kington. As Bishop of Worcester he was spiritual overseer of one of the largest dioceses in England. He preached often at court before both Henry VIII and Edward VI. In his years of retirement from public life he continued to preach regularly. Always the same tone of authority came through, the same assurance of one called by God to proclaim the Word without fear or wavering. He was widely received, greatly loved, always in demand.

Two fundamental truths produce the still-unbridged chasm between the Reformed church and the church of Rome. The first is justification by faith. The other is the New Testament doctrine of Holy Communion as opposed to the later invention of transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the Mass. The first of these Latimer laid hold of at his conversion. He spent the next 24 years in a slow but inevitable journey toward the other. His death at the stake was the necessary result of his having reached that destination, necessary because of Mary’s accession to the throne.

Viewing Latimer at the time of his conversion makes one think of Saul of Tarsus. He had been for some years a faithful priest of the church, holding to every rubric of the missal, fulfilling each day of his position with greatest scrupulousness, preaching unceasingly against the heretical teachings then drifting across from the Continent. Yet within his soul was a darkness that no diligence in works would dispel, and a fear that always told him he had fallen short of attaining the salvation for which he strove. The Scriptures he had never studied, though he possessed a good knowledge of the patristic writings. His delight was in the medieval schoolmen where his studies centered.

On the occasion of his impassioned oration against Philip Melancthon, at least one listener perceived “zeal without knowledge.” Thomas Bilney, chief among the Reformers at Cambridge, felt the time was ripe to approach Latimer. He followed him home and begged him to hear his confession. That “confession” proved to be Latimer’s undoing. His conversion followed.

He procured a copy of the Scriptures and began to read. Heaven’s light flooded in as he found the Word plainly declaring that on the cross Christ had made full atonement for his sins and obtained for him lasting peace with God. He saw that nothing he could ever do could add to the finished work of Christ. With relief he realized that the laborious system of penance, intercession of saints, invocation of the Virgin, and such ceremonies were entirely unnecessary to obtain salvation.

He joined Bilney and the others behind locked doors at the White Horse Inn, where amazing discussions took place. An entirely new picture of the true Christian life soon filled his view. Christ became his example and the New Testament writings showed him the path. He began to accompany Bilney on his visits to the sick, the poor, the neglected, the prisoner, ministering to the needs of those for whom none cared. They taught the ignorant and sought to lead men to repentance. His hours filled with these new activities, Latimer found “voluntary works,” as he began to call them, slipping into a far less important place. True holiness lay in following Christ and being obedient to his commands rather than in such things as creeping to the cross on Good Friday, decorating images, or offering candles at the shrines of saints.

At this point he had no thought of separation from the communion and teachings of the church. He felt no need for a new creed or different form of worship. He officiated at the altar as before. But his primary emphasis shifted. “God’s instrument of salvation,” he said, “is preaching,” and he quoted Romans 10:14 frequently. “Every one of us must have a special faith,” he said. “I must believe for myself that his blood was shed for me.” Preaching became the passion of his life.

Always he preached the simple message that had been used to open his own eyes: Salvation is by faith alone. Yet he never had any conception of a faith that actually stood alone. “Faith is a noble duch*ess,” he would say. “She hath ever her gentleman-usher before her—the confessing of sins; she hath a train after—the fruits of good works, the walking in the commandments of God.” He had more concern for sin than for error and considered the Christian life more important than dead orthodoxy. Yet rightness of belief he deemed necessary. And true orthodoxy should without fail issue in right living, while repentance and turning from sin were both a prerequisite and a continuing necessity of both.

He early felt the importance of making the Scriptures freely available in the English language. He dared speak on behalf of this when to do so was dangerous, though not actually heretical. After 10 years of preaching on the subject, along with persuasion from Archbishop of Canterbury Cranmer and pressure from Thomas Cromwell, the desired end came about: the king agreed for the Bible in English to be freely and openly used.

Latimer was exasperatingly slow in changing his theological views. He clung tightly to each doctrine and practice of the Roman church until thoroughly convinced from Scripture of its error. Yet as soon as he made any small change in the direction of the Reformation, his opponents forced him to defend his position. In so doing he was driven again to the Scriptures when he began to find one thing after another on which he must release his hold.

At first he preached only against the abuse of certain practices. Remedy the abuse and give the people the Bible, and all would be well. Praying to saints he permitted, but their worship he forbade. He warned that it was the saints, and not the images, to whom they might pray. Veneration of the Virgin he would allow, but he was incensed over a hymn sung at Bristol wherein she was extolled as salvatrix ac redemptrix. Purgatory existed, but the money spent on masses for the dead might be put to better use in serving the living. But slowly he began to find to be wrong things he had considered allowable but not essential.

Why was he so slow to change? We can only see it as God’s wisdom. In 1531 Bilney perished in the flames as a relapsed heretic. Early the next year Bishop Stokesley made a determined effort to convict Latimer of heresy. He would not have escaped with his life had his convictions led him to deny the truth of matters such as those mentioned. He was not yet ready categorically to deny any of them, but he was no longer accepting them in the generally understood way. Bainham died at this time, partly for his denial of purgatory. These deaths deeply affected Latimer and sent him back to his Bible with a renewed determination to know the truth.

By the time he became bishop of Worcester he realized that much more was involved than abolishing abuses. Too widespread among the clergy was the practice of preying upon the fears and superstitions of the people. Enormous amounts of money poured in at the shrines to which people were urged to go on pilgrimage. Latimer learned of the deceit involved in mechanically driven images that the priest in charge operated, making the image seem to nod her head, weep tears, frown, or appear to speak. He joined in the exposure of such practices and in destroying many such images. He took part in the exposure of the “Blood of Hales,” a vial purporting to contain the blood of Jesus. Merely to look upon it was supposed to guarantee eternal salvation. It proved to be honey, with coloring added to give it the appearance of blood. Thus vanished Latimer’s toleration of prayers to saints. By the time he was preaching before Edward VI he spoke freely of “purgatory pick-purse” in derisive terms. He now declared that, once a person died, he went to heaven or hell. He found no scriptural intimation of any intermediate place.

He spoke against “unpreaching prelates” who were seldom in their dioceses, but spent their time in secular pursuits and luxurious living. Naturally such an example gave no incentive to the parish priest to do his proper work. He referred to pulpits without preachers as bells without clappers. Many a priest spent his time in bead telling, prayers, and processions, with never a sermon.

Latimer denounced moral, social, and judicial ills. But he always preached from the authority of Scripture rather than from his own opinion. His condemnation fell upon bribery and the selling of benefices and public offices. Gambling, prostitution, and drunkenness caught his fury as well. He preached against rent raising and the growing enclosure of common lands, which worked a hardship on those who gained their living from the soil. The misuse of funds and properties from the dissolution of the monasteries grieved him. He felt it wrong to divert property designated for religious purposes to feed the extravagance of the court. He wanted to see a few of these houses in each county cleansed of abuses and endowed to sacred uses of piety and hospitality and for the religious education of youth.

At the time of the Six Articles in 1539 Latimer displeased Henry VIII by resigning his bishopric. The king silenced him for the last eight years of his reign, and even imprisoned him for part of that time. The years were not wasted, but Latimer must have chafed at the restraint. He was again free to preach when Edward VI became king and his voice rang out as before. Yet a new depth and richness marked his preaching.

Doubtless he gave much time to studying the Scriptures during those silent years. He must have pondered deeply the question of the Mass. He seemed now more ready to listen and to discuss the matter. Cranmer had invited several Reformers over from the Continent, and Latimer spent long hours in conversation with them. In 1548 he took the final step and reached the end of his long journey. He was sure of his ground and ready to proclaim clearly his understanding of the New Testament teaching on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. This was the doctrine for which he would die.

Nearly five years of fruitful ministry passed before the death of the young king and the accession of Mary to the throne in 1553. He must have known what would follow. Within two months he was in the Tower. Plans for the trials to take place at Oxford brought about his transfer there.

Ill health and old age, added to the months of isolation and hardship of prison, weakened him physically. Even his memory began to fail him. Yet his faith stood firm, evidenced by his words in answer to the questions at the trial:

As to the doctrine of the real presence: “I do not deny, my lord, that in the sacrament by spirit and grace, is the very body and blood of Christ; because that every man, by receiving bodily that bread and wine, spiritually receiveth the body and blood of Christ, and is made partaker thereby of the merits of Christ’s passion. But I deny that the body and blood of Christ is in such sort in the sacrament as you would have it.”

Concerning transubstantiation: “There is, my lord, a change in the bread and wine, and such a change as no power but omnipotency of God can make, in that that which before was bread should now have the dignity to exhibit Christ’s body; and yet the bread is still bread, and the wine still wine. For the change is not in the nature but in the dignity; because now that which was common bread hath the dignity to exhibit Christ’s body; for whereas it was common bread, it is now no more common bread, neither ought it to be so taken, but as holy bread sanctified by God’s Word.”

On the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass: “No, no, my lord: Christ made one perfect sacrifice for all the whole world; neither can any man offer him again, neither can the priest offer up Christ again for the sins of men, which he took away by offering himself once for all, as Saint Paul saith, upon the cross; neither is there propitiation for our sins, saving his cross only.”

There was never any doubt as to the outcome. He was condemned as a heretic, ordered to be degraded of all ecclesiastical orders, declared no member of the church, excommunicated with the great excommunication, and committed to the secular powers to receive his punishment.

We burn no heretics today. Instead of too many guidelines there often seem to be none. Spiritual darkness is as deep now as then. Social and moral evils grow even worse in our permissive age. The things for which Latimer stood could be relevant still. Today’s preachers may find light from the candles he lit over four centuries ago:

• The candle of devotion to the Scriptures, by which every belief and practice is tested.

• The candle of certainty that justification is by faith in Christ and his finished work on the cross.

• The candle of insistence on holiness of life, accepting no compromise with sin.

• The candle of faithfulness in preaching the Word as primary responsibility.

• The candle of compassion for one’s fellow men and the willingness to labor in their behalf.

• The candle of fearlessness in speaking out against the evils of the day, wherever found, in places high and low.

• The candle of an exemplary personal life, against which the sternest critics can find little to speak.

• The candle of courage in standing for the truth, at whatever cost, be it opposition, imprisonment, or death.

Carl F. H. Henry, first editor of Christianity Today, is lecturer at large for World Vision International. An author of many books, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.