J. I. Packer
J. I. Packer reviews “The Cross of Christ,” by John Stott
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Also reviewed in this section:
The AIDS Cover-up? The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS
, by Gene Antonio
Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus
, by Paul Fowler, and
A Time for Compassion: A Call to Cherish and Protect Life
, by Ron Lee Davis with James D. Denney
Television: Manna from Hollywood?
by Quentin Schultze
Need: The New Religion
, by Tony Walter
Tending the Garden
, edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson
Your Money or Your Life
, by John Alexander
Counting the Cost
, by Robin Kendrick Klay
The Cross of Christ, by John Stott (InterVarsity, 383 pp.; $14.95, cloth). Reviewed by J. I. Packer, professor of historical and systematic theology at Regent College.
John Stott has been heard to insist that he is not a theologian, but this book refutes any such idea. Written for the golden jubilee of British Inter-Varsity Press, it may fairly be called Stott’s magnum opus. In it he stands revealed as a first-class biblical theologian with an unusually systematic mind, great power of analysis, great clarity of expression, a superb command of his material, and a preacher’s passion to proclaim truth that will change lives. Weightier than Griffith Thomas, though less massive than B. B. Warfield and less metaphysical than Jonathan Edwards, his logical thoroughness, verbal precision, mastery of arrangement, and persistent biblicism put one in mind of all three.
Any fool, they say, can make simple things complicated, but it takes a wise man to make complicated things simple; well, Stott has this wisdom in full measure. Yet his style is free of technicalities, and his easy lucidity hides his learning. He is, in truth, one of the aristocrats of modern Christian exposition.
Arresting and Challenging
This book is something of a milestone, both for Stott and his readers. In one sense, it is unadventurous, for the author is firmly anchored in the conservative evangelical mainstream. In another sense, however, it is highly adventurous, for it ranges over the ethical implications of the Cross for Christians today in a more arresting and challenging way than any I have met so far. As an exposition of all that Scripture says about the Cross, it is more than a treatise on the Atonement. Its four parts deal with the centrality of Christ’s Cross in Christianity, its theological meaning, the achievement of salvation, revelation, victory through it, and the life controlled by the Cross. It is a virtual compendium of Christianity, full of brilliant encapsulations of biblical teaching and searching shafts of application to modern Western Christians. The book is offered as a setting forth not merely of evangelical Christanity but of Christianity itself; for, argues Stott, “the cross … lies at the center of the historic, biblical faith, and the fact that this is not always everywhere acknowledged is itself a sufficient justification for preserving a distinctive evangelical testimony.” (Hear, hear!)
Stott is concerned about the meaning of the Cross. (See the excerpt “No Bargain with the Devil” for both the substance and the flavor.) The theological words satisfaction and substitution, he believes, need to be carefully defined and safeguarded.
Stott sees substitution as explaining the “images” and “metaphors” of propitiation, redemption, justification, and reconciliation, and concludes, most properly, by declaring: “Substitution is not ‘a theory of the atonement.’ Nor is it even an additional image to take its place as an option alongside the others. It is rather the essence of each image and the heart of the atonement itself.” Well said! Though many biblical theologians overlook or dispute this, there is exegetically no room for doubt that Stott here expresses Paul’s true meaning.
Unsatisfied
At two points (yes, only two!) I was left unsatisfied. First, something needed to be said about the particularity (which is bound up with the effectiveness) of Christ’s atoning Cross. For one strand of New Testament witness is that the Cross has secured the salvation, present and future, of particular chosen people. This thought of eternal effectiveness is in fact present whenever Christ is said to have died “for” any, so that knowledge of one’s own particular redemption becomes a basis of assurance—another theme on which Stott might have said more.
Rightly does Stott highlight substitution as the basic category of atonement, and rightly does he define a substitute as “one who acts in place of another in such a way as to render the other’s action unnecessary”; in other words, one who sustains a specific, effective relationship with any whose place he takes. Stott is not, then, an Arminian in the modern sense, making the achievement of the Cross null and void apart from the independent faith of man (except in one strange paragraph where, confessedly lapsing into natural theology—O brother, never do that!—he says that love in God as in man is marked by “risk-taking with no certainty of success” and “in giving his Son to die for sinners, God made himself vulnerable to the possibility that they would snub him and turn away.”) Nor is Stott a modern universalist, seeing the Cross as having actually saved unbelievers no less than those who have faith. The “us” for whom Stott constantly says that Christ died is clearly the “us” of the New Testament letters—believers who know themselves to be individually chosen in and redeemed by Christ. Stott’s thought-mold is plainly particularistic, and I wish he had been explicit about it. I miss the clear declaration that God in sovereign love saves, through a bona fide offer of Christ to all mankind, those for whom, specifically and effectively, Christ substituted himself on the cross.
Second, I query Stott’s thesis of God’s solidarity, through the suffering of Christ, with all human suffering everywhere. That God did and does will to suffer pain for and with his people, and that believers find in Jesus a Savior whose sympathy with them when in trouble is total, are fixed points. But Stott justifies his belief that Christ’s sympathy “is not limited to his suffering with his covenant people” by asking: “Did Jesus not say that in ministering to the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner, we would be ministering to him, indicating that he identified himself with all needy and suffering people?”—and the answer to that question has to be no. Jesus speaks there of what is done to “brothers of mine” (Matt. 25:40), and suffering does not of itself turn unbelievers into children of God. Stott’s exegesis, though conventional, is impossible. Fortunately, the rest of his theodicy, being based on the certainty that God in Christ has shared human suffering up to the limit, does not depend on it.
Apart from these flyspecks, however, I find this a smashing book, theologically, devotionally, and morally. No other treatment of this supreme subject says so much so truly and so well. Sell your shirt to buy it, straight-away.
No Bargain With The Devil
“The cross was not a commercial bargain with the devil, let alone one which tricked and trapped him; nor an exact equivalent, a
quid pro quo
to satisfy a code of honor or technical point of law; nor a compulsory submission by God to some moral authority above him from which he could not otherwise escape; nor a punishment of a meek Christ by a harsh and punitive Father; nor an action of the Father which bypassed the Son as Mediator. Instead, the righteous, loving Father humbled himself to become in and through his only Son flesh, sin and a curse for us, in order to redeem us without compromising his own character. The theological words
satisfaction
and
substitution
need to be carefully defined and safeguarded, but they cannot in any circumstances be given up. The biblical gospel of atonement is of God satisfying himself by substituting himself for us.”
—
From
The Cross of Christ
* * *
A Campaign Of Disinformation
The AIDS Cover-Up? The Real and Alarming Facts About AIDS, by Gene Antonio (Ignatius, 256 pp.; $9.95, paper). Reviewed by Wendell W. Hoffman, M.D., a consultant in infectious diseases in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine.
Aids has dominated the news this past year, and efforts to educate the public have increased greatly. Many of these efforts are welcome. Some, like The AIDS Cover-Up?, by social commentator Gene Antonio, are not.
Recently Mr. Antonio made statements on a national Christian radio program that have greatly intensified the generalized fear of AIDS among believers. Because the role of the church in responding to AIDS is crucial, Antonio’s book must be carefully evaluated.
Unfortunately, neither Mr. Antonio nor his publisher’s alarmist cover copy tell us anything about his qualifications to write on AIDS. What little information is given in the publisher’s catalog hardly justifies his attempt at interpreting the literature on a subject so liable to misunderstanding and hysteria. In spite of his lack of training, however, Antonio does quote medical literature; and this is sometimes misleading, as he unwittingly, I presume, quotes old and speculative information and raises alarmist suppositions.
Paranoia
Paranoia—a blend of suspicion, the instinct for self-preservation, and homophobia—characterizes this book.
Antonio is suspicious, asserting that a concerted “campaign of disinformation about the AIDS virus” has occurred and that key facts about the nature of AIDS have been withheld from the public by both the news media and public health officials. Yet from the beginning, there has been a consistent, rapid presentation of the facts to the medical community by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The conclusions drawn by the CDC’S experts have been carefully thought through in order to establish sound policies for fighting the epidemic. There has hardly been a plot to deceive.
Casual Contamination
Antonio is driven by the instinct for self-preservation, aroused by irrational fears of contagion by casual contact. In chapter 4, the author suggests that the virus may be transmitted via nonsexual household contact, insects, saliva, tears, food preparation, and aerosolization. He then offers this disclaimer: “This chapter does not prove that casual transmission of the AIDS virus is occuring.” Unfortunately, by then the damage has been done through the use of innuendo and the misuse of “facts.”
Actually, the epidemiology of the AIDS virus shows that its mode of transmission has remained very stable—sexual contact, exposure to blood products (largely through contaminated needles), and transplacental contagion during pregnancy. There is no evidence that the virus can be acquired through kissing, coughing, food, doorknobs, or toilet seats.
Even the information regarding medical personnel shows that the AIDS virus is difficult to transmit. With over 1,000 needle-stick exposures reported, only four people have developed an antibody to the virus, making the transmission risk a very low 0.4 percent. Although the virus has been isolated in body fluids other than blood and semen, it must be pointed out, for instance, that only 1 percent of patients with AIDS have the virus recovered from saliva.
Although the author quotes two articles suggesting that the virus is more hardy than originally thought, these studies used concentrations of the virus much higher than those actually carried in the body. The studies to date on nonsexual household contacts of AIDS patients have clearly shown that common use of toiletries and eating utensils does not place people at high risk. The virus itself is very susceptible to a variety of disinfectants (including household bleach). Thus Antonio’s case for casual transmission is extremely weak.
A Promiscuity Problem
Last, Antonio is homophobic. His book goes into graphic and unnecessary detail about the sexual practices of the homosexual. He portrays the homosexual community as “militant,” “sexual terrorists,” plotting to report lies about AIDS transmission. This broad-brush picure will only contribute to fear, anger, prejudice, and despising of homosexuals.
From a world-wide perspective, the AIDS problem is more heterosexual than homosexual. In Africa, five to ten million people are infected—and 50 percent of them are women. AIDS is a problem of sexual promiscuity, and homosexual promiscuity is only one part of the problem. When we lay the blame at the feet of only one group, political and social backlash can only result.
The AIDS Cover-Up? does not contribute to the real issue that faces the church: how to reach out to a growing number of desperate people. Christians will be unlikely to reach out to those they fear, and Antonio has done an excellent job of cultivating fear. He casually mentions compassion, but his inflammatory text destroys that possibility in his readers. AIDS patients are very open to discussing life-and-death issues, as well as where they will spend eternity. What an incredible opportunity Christians have. But we must act on facts—rightly interpreted.
The Issues Of Life
Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus, by Paul Fowler (Multnomah, 225 pp.; $11.95, hardcover), and A Time for Compassion: A Call to Cherish and Protect Life, by Ron Lee Davis with James D. Denney (Revell, 224 pp.; $13.95, hardcover). Reviewed by Michael J. Gorman, author of Abortion and the Early Church (InterVarsity).
Both of these books appear in series devoted to contemporary issues. The series are evidence of not only the increasing concern about social issues among evangelical Christians, but the desire for biblically informed action. Yet the books address this twofold concern in very different ways.
Fowler’s Abortion: Toward an Evangelical Consensus is the work of a professor of New Testament at Columbia Graduate School of Bible and Missions. He is also a member of the board of advisers of the Christian Action Council. Fowler’s goal is to summon evangelicals to the antiabortion consensus that prevailed in the Christian church from its inception until the 1960s. The basis for this summons is Fowler’s well-argued thesis that the beliefs and values underlying every prochoice or proabortion position are antithetical to central themes of Scripture. Fowler also contends that since many evangelicals who say they basically oppose abortion have unknowingly embraced erroneous proabortion beliefs and values, evangelicalism as a whole has been unable to come to the consensus that Scripture mandates: that abortion is always the violent murder of an innocent person.
With clarity Fowler points his readers to the heart of the abortion issue—whether or not the fetus is a “person.” He quotes key passages from influential philosophers and theologians who propose criteria of “personhood” (minimal intelligence, or self-awareness, for example) and then maintain that the fetus, lacking these to any significant degree, is not a “person” with the right to protection from destruction.
Many readers will be startled by the passages Fowler quotes, which either implicitly or explicitly claim, for example, that apes are more like persons than are unborn, newborn, mentally retarded, and senile human beings. Fowler briefly but perceptively points out the serious problems inherent in these attempts to establish criteria for personhood in order to dehumanize the fetus, and he is no less critical of Christians who define the “image of God” in terms similar to these definitions of personhood. When people understand the image of God primarily to mean rationality or conscious relationship to God, they define the fetus at best as a “potential” person, thus opening the door not only to abortion in the hard cases but virtually on demand.
In contrast to both secular and Christian misunderstandings of the status of the fetus and of the taking of its life, Fowler expounds central biblical themes and key texts that indicate that abortion must be considered to be the murder of innocents: God’s concern to protect the weak and defenseless; God’s active involvement in creating and relating personally to people in the womb; the unity of body and soul; and the absolute indefensibility of taking innocent human life. These biblical themes stand in stark contrast to the violence of abortion, and Fowler therefore calls Christians both to oppose abortion and to act compassionately on behalf of its victims—children and women.
This book will be of immense help to people wishing to understand clearly and respond biblically to the key issues in the abortion debate. Its approach to Scripture is responsible, generally emphasizing themes and whole passages rather than proof texts, and its overall thesis is convincing. It is unfortunate, however, that portions of the early chapters contain stylistic and logical flaws that detract from the readability and impact of those chapters. In some places these same chapters appear to be more critical of Christian people and institutions than of their ideas. Therefore, the tone of these passages may not contribute to the consensus the author desires. Furthermore, in a book on consensus among evangelicals, especially by an author who has an obvious concern for the poor and for all life, the author should have discussed the growing Christian movement toward a broader prolife perspective that includes opposition to all forms of violence (for example, nuclear arms and hunger).
Aborting Humanity
The book by Davis and Denney, A Time for Compassion, represents this broader prolife perspective. Although the authors concentrate on abortion, they emphasize that being prolife means much more than being antiabortion. Affirming the sanctity of human life, they contend, affects our attitude not only toward the traditional prolife concerns (abortion, infanticide, and euthansia) but also toward hunger, the arms race, the death penalty, and other social issues. Because every life is sacred, Christians must work to protect and improve life in every way possible.
Davis and Denney portray abortion in our culture not only as the killing of unborn children but also as the aborting of innocence (by making uninformed women both its partners and its victims), the denigrating of life (by denying the unborn’s personhood and promoting death), the aborting of truth (through the prevalence of deceit, propaganda, and euphemism), the aborting of love (by leading to infanticide, child abuse, and euthansia), and, finally, the aborting of humanity itself.
A Time for Compassion is a well-written book, rhetorically and substantially powerful. Although at times repetitive and loosely structured, these features do not detract from, but add to, the weight of the book. The authors weave together stories of women and their decisions, the findings of medicine and the social sciences, penetrating social analysis, and challenging theological reflection. In addition, they to evidence pastoral sensitivity, which makes their observations and arguments all the more compelling. In many ways, this is a classic prolife statement, one of the best now in print.
The authors of both books clearly embody in their own lives the conviction, compassion, and action to which they summon the Christian community. Each book, however, is persuasive. Fowler speaks primarily to the mind, Davis and Denney to the heart; but both speak ultimately to the will. For those seeking a biblical perspective on abortion per se, Fowler’s work is recommended. For those desiring a larger pastoral, theological, and ethical framework within which to understand and act upon the abortion issue, Davis and Denney’s work is mandatory reading. We still await, however, a fully developed, biblically based, consistent prolife book to guide our thinking and living.
Love And Mouthwash
Television: Manna from Hollywood? by Quentin Schultze (Zondervan, 160 pp.; $6.95, paper).
For Calvin College professor Quentin Schultze, television is the major storyteller of our time, reflecting and shaping our visions, values, and world views. “The Cosby Show” and “Dallas” are the Iliad and Odyssey of this century. Even commercials “spin triumphal tales of lonely hearts who have found love apparently by using the right mouthwash or toothpaste.” Stories, whether light or serious, provide legitimate pleasure. They may be an escape from pain, but often we find them pointing us back into our world with new ideas and viewpoints. Public storytelling reaffirms a world view, much as the stories of Passover and other biblical feasts recalled the truths of redemptive history. By expressing views common to the masses, television functions in a way similar to the Bible (and therefore threatens to replace it). Among the beliefs often reaffirmed: Good guys will win, bad guys will come to justice, and human goodness will be displayed.
Schultze explores various TV genres—children’s television, soaps, sitcoms, action shows, westerns, detective stories, rock videos—and examines the world view clash in each between the Christian perspective and the basic beliefs of society. He gives his readers a method for judgment rather than a set of answers about particular shows.
Some of Schultze’s detailed judgments are already out of date, but viewers can still use his methods for their own evaluation of this ever-changing medium.
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John W. Yates II
One person’s influence showed me we never outgrow our need for role models.
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Well, what do you think Alf would say?” At that, my clergy associates around the kitchen table were silent. We had been discussing a particularly knotty problem with little success, when suddenly its answer seemed clear to all of us who had known Alf.
In your case, “Alf” could be anyone who has been an effective role model. In our case, Alf is Alfred Stanway, a retired Anglican bishop who came to the United States from Australia in the 1970s to establish a new Episcopal seminary. When he arrived, there was no school, property, faculty, curriculum, student body, or library—nothing, in fact, apart from an idea with considerable support. Today the school is a thriving, evangelically oriented institution in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, known as Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.
For four years my wife, Susan, and I lived across the street from Alf and Marjory Stanway. They were just good friends then, but we realize now that they exerted a tremendous influence upon us and others. Alf was gifted with enormous leadership abilities. But it was not his extraordinary leadership that left its mark on us. It was, rather, the daily example of his life. Abrupt and plain spoken, Alf’s pithy sayings on preaching still come to mind whenever I prepare a sermon: “If you don’t strike oil in the first five minutes … stop boring.” Or, “Start slow, speak slow. Rise higher, catch fire.” Other aphorisms continue to provide reminders to my family: “Prayer, care, and you’re there,” and “A little faith, and a great God, is enough.”
At a personal level, Alf and Marjory’s relationship as husband and wife taught us more about marriage than all the books on the subject ever could. Their disciplined walk with God provided us with a model of true piety and taught us about the hazards of taking ourselves too seriously. By their example, the Stanways challenged us to develop a bigger vision of God. They demonstrated remarkable simplicity in prayer, and they taught us the value of establishing regular habits.
Alf and Marjory are back in Australia now. But their influence convinced me that we never outgrow the need for role models—people who set an example that, in turn, enables us to live life and serve God more effectively and wisely.
Remember Your Leaders
Modeling is not new; it is one way in which God has always worked to provide specific guidance. Examples of modeling abound in Scripture. Joshua looked up to Moses; Elisha had Elijah; Samuel had Eli—a negative model, both as a priest and a parent. In the New Testament, Mary had Elizabeth as a role model, and Timothy had Paul.
Over and over, the Bible tells us to remember good examples and forget poor ones. “Be imitators of me just as I also am of Christ,” Paul told the Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:1). Older women should be models to younger women, according to Titus 2:3–5. “A pupil … will be like his teacher,” Jesus said, in Luke 6:40. Hebrews 13:7 tells believers to “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.”
Models are not the only means God uses to speak to us, however, and they can be fallible. They do not replace the leading of God in our lives, but they help inform and direct our response to him. Recently my church faced a major decision about purchasing property and beginning a building program. Another senior pastor, one of my models, had dealt with a similar situation, and so I spent an afternoon with him seeking his counsel. He offered direct and firm advice—but in this instance, it was direct and firm advice I could not accept. We continually must sort out and test how God is guiding us.
Becoming A Model
Most of us are shaped and directed more than we realize by the models God has given us. Likewise, we need to be aware of ways in which we serve as models for others. There are people around me all the time who size me up as a Christian man, father, husband, pastor, teacher, and neighbor. My character is on display.
My wife and I receive calls and letters regularly from friends we have influenced, wanting to bounce ideas off us or just asking our advice. Often, these are people we have simply befriended, as Alf and Marjory befriended us. We did not set out to “disciple” them. But we became models to them nonetheless, and shaped their approach to ministry. When modeling becomes deliberate, and the role model takes on a closer relationship with a younger brother or sister in Christ, it becomes a more purposeful ministry of discipling. Training may be deliberate, but modeling is simply setting an example, consciously or unconsciously.
What would Alf say about this? Not much, I imagine. It is likely that he would simply point out the need for each of us to take time to be with the people whom God brings into our lives and for whom we sense a special affection. Alf made a special effort to do this for me by inviting me over for tea every Friday afternoon. One of the things he modeled best was how to be a model. He lived the words Paul wrote to Timothy (2 Tim 2:2): “And the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to reliable men who will be qualified to teach others.”
John W. Yates II has been the rector of The Falls Church (Episcopal) in Falls Church, Virginia, since 1979. He is the author of For the Life of the Family (Morehouse-Barlow, 1987).
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Carl F. H. Henry looks at the future of the Religious Right.
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Just before the 1980 elections, the Religious Right burst onto the American political scene. The momentum of Ronald Reagan’s victory, and his endorsement of this conservative effort of fundamentalists, Catholics, and Mormons, carried the movement forward. Some were appointed to government offices; others began concentrating on grassroots activism and voter-registration drives.
In 1986, however, the Religious Right slowed perceptibly. Largely identified with the Republican party, its leaders watched in dismay as Democrats regained majority status in the U.S. Senate. And the present disarray among television evangelists—some of whom lead Religious Right movements—as well as the Iran/contra controversy, appears to have stopped conservatives dead in their tracks.
As the nation begins selecting candidates for 1988, what role will the Religious Right and its secular counterpart, the New Right, play? Washington editor Beth Spring asked noted theologian, author, and educator Carl F. H. Henry to consider the future of the Religious Right. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY for its first 12years, lectures worldwide. He has written over 40 books, including the six-volume God, Revelation and Authority.
The momentum of the New Right appears to have slowed considerably, following its success and visibility from 1980 to 1986. What are the primary reasons for this?
The New Right emerged with an intellectual vigor, literary skill, and cultural excitement that had been lost by the Left. Today it has articulate think tanks and publications, affirms Judeo-Christian values, criticizes ecumenical funding of revolutionary causes, and is alert to religious-liberty concerns. Its leaders are at home in political debate; and they produce competent essays read by the “movers and shakers” in American society. They champion freedom, consider Marxist bureaucracy unbenevolent, oppose Marxist-Leninist expansionism, and espouse limited government and the free market system.
Diminished visibility is due in part to the fact that the New Right is no longer a media curiosity. In addition, its reputation has suffered because of the more sensational features of the Religious Right—not to be confused with the New Right—with its limelight propensities.
What sets the Religious Right apart from the New Right?
Although the Religious Right shares many New Right commitments, it lacks cognitive force to counter the dominant liberal ideology, and it relies more on aggressive political activism and public confrontation to achieve its objectives. The neoconservative Right emphasizes democratic dialogue and sets its sights on political philosophy, whereas the Religious Right is more prone to invoke biblical sanction for its public positions, has a more detailed public agenda, and ventures into direct lobbying on pending legislation.
What are the Religious Right’s main strengths and weaknesses?
To its credit, the Religious Right manifests a socially concerned faith, a regard for the rule of law in society, and a determination not to let secular humanism restructure American culture to the disadvantage of Judeo-Christian values. At the same time, none of the Religious Right’s numerous aggressive leaders speaks for the whole phenomenon or holds together its divergent interests. And it has suffered some credibility loss because of exaggerated constituency claims.
Further, some of the Religious Right’s leaders suffer from colossal self-esteem. Some extremists, like their counterparts on the Left, seem always primed for a fight; confrontation rather than conversation is their middle name. They seem happy only if they harbor a grievance. Some seem at times more party-aligned than issue-oriented, and more issue-oriented than policy-oriented. Worse yet is the occasional lapse into the battle cry, “We’ve got the votes and we can take over.” This elevates political power above the redemptive gospel as the main means of changing society.
How do you distinguish the evangelical movement from the Religious Right?
In several ways. The Religious Right can include not only orthodox Christians, but Jews and Mormons, as did the Moral Majority. If we consider the National Association of Evangelicals normative for the movement, the NAE has been far less preoccupied with political specifics conducive to fund raising than with long-term concerns that affect the fortunes of the churches. The NAE does not do extensive lobbying, and is less one-sidedly identified with the Republican party. But quite apart from NAE there is in the evangelical community a growing resentment of major movements that rally believers to a specific political program, that pressure Christians to line up for or against a particular political agenda as a test of orthodoxy, that oblige them to choose for or against particular candidates for office as a matter of religious preference. This exasperation is increasingly evident now, because some leaders have committed their movements to specific presidential candidates. They gain media visibility by doing this, but they preempt the voluntary expression of their constituencies.
How has the Religious Right affected the old fundamentalist doctrine of separation? As coalitions become broader and political engagement becomes more sophisticated, do you expect Christians to continue collaborating with groups such as Mormons and Unificationists?
A failure to make proper distinctions results in all kinds of reactionary responses. There is no biblical reason why, in a pluralistic society, a fundamentalist Christian—even one devoted to second-degree separation in ecclesiastical relationships—may not in good conscience unite with citizens of other faiths in promoting good laws and decency in the public arena, and in condemning injustice. The Christian’s activity in the public sphere should not be considered an alternative to evangelism and missions. God wills some ends through civil government and legislation, and some ends through the church and proclamation. Neither realm should be neglected. Christianity proclaims the God of justice and of justification. But a church that aspires to government power to change society soon loses spiritual and moral power, even as Christians who opt out of their public duty soon lose civic integrity.
How do you assess the Religious Right’s defense of religious freedom?
Belatedly, the Religious Right has taken up the cause of freedom, and it even sounds the note that religious freedom is the root of all freedom. It gives firm support to the necessary protest against religious persecution and discrimination in communist-sphere countries and elsewhere. But the Religious Right often fails the freedom test on two scores.
For one thing, it tends to be interested primarily in Christian freedom, necessary though Christian freedom is in the present secular climate. It is much less interested in religious freedom “across the board.” It little realizes that evangelical Christianity blossoms in a context of universal religious freedom and that where a state church (or mosque or synagogue) prevails, there the gospel is stifled or stifles itself.
Also, the Religious Right—and it is not alone in this regard—does not carefully distinguish between the theological view of freedom and the secular or naturalistic view. The Enlightenment perversion of freedom rests on the mistaken premise of human autonomy, and it betrays its champions into servitude under spurious lords. The Christian view protects man’s duties and rights under God, and knows that the service of God is true freedom.
How effective is the Religious Right politically?
Some of its spokesmen are naïve about the political process. They have made almost no legislative gains, despite attracting vast sums of money, because they do not recognize that legislation is not a matter of divine absolutes but of compromise that reaches toward the ideal in a fallen society. The Right could have carried the antiabortion cause if it had gone for 98 percent of its objective (even if only as an intermediary position) instead of insisting on the whole.
The Right has legitimate concerns about religious freedom, public education, and the Constitution as a document of fixed principles not to be sociologically reinterpreted. Yet on the one hand some are prone to treat the Constitution as if it were a supplementary source of divine revelation, while on the other hand some would alter the Constitution to define all fetal abortion as murder and to require a balanced budget. And the Right’s attacks on secular humanism in public education, while well taken, sometimes are so broad that they seem to reflect adversely on liberal-arts learning as such.
To what extent will the Religious Right identify with President Reagan during his last two years in office?
The Right has no choice but to go with Reagan or to opt out of the fray, even though Reagan leans toward moderation to get his tardy program through a Democratic Congress. The nation needs an agenda, a cause, a master plan. If the Republicans are to inspire national enthusiasm, the President must detail an overall game plan and indicate clear guidelines.
The mere passage of time will not guarantee a better future. The colossal budget deficits are nothing less than immoral, and they embarrass claims of a reversal of big government spending. Some right-wing critics complain that Reagan has given little more than lip service to their concerns of abortion, school prayer, and South African sanctions. Yet the disposition to see these concerns as more important than, say, the Iran arms/hostage crisis, has embarrassed them, since the President’s basic competence as a leader suddenly became a central issue.
How much impact do you expect the Religious Right to have in the 1988 presidential race?
The force of the Religious Right has been fractured by lack of consensus on which presidential aspirant to support. If Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson should derail George Bush—who, by the way, puts more distance between himself and the Religious Right—only to be themselves eliminated, the Religious Right may have to close ranks with the moderates or opt out of its messianic political mission of “saving America from communism, liberalism, and humanism.”
What are the pros and cons of Pat Robertson’s anticipated campaign for the presidency?
Many of Pat Robertson’s followers are unconvinced that he should have personally entered the political arena. Many evangelicals deplore a political test of the genuineness of their Christian commitment. They chafe at suggestions that “every real Christian will support Robertson” and that only Christian candidates “are worthy to hold office,” or that a Robertson candidacy is “the Christian opportunity of the twentieth century.” At the same time, Robertson is doubtless intellectually the best qualified of the electronic evangelists to serve in public office; his legal training is a high asset, although not every legally trained president has served the nation well.
What do you see as the future role of the Religious Right?
As long as utilitarianism and experimentalism run riot in the public arena, a political force is needed that stresses fixed principles, overall policy statement, and a comprehensive agenda. Remember that the Religious Right was provoked into existence by governmental intrusion into the area of religious values by the legalizing of abortion and the exclusion of prayer from the public schools.
Yet the Religious Right itself drifts closer and closer to “gut” issues and political utilitarianism. In the absence of a clear-cut political philosophy, it risks growing pragmatic and problemoriented. The Left has done that for so long that there hardly exists a need for more of the same.
If another election confirms the Religious Right’s limited impact on the national scene, its energies will then likely be focused locally on school board and regional elections. In those contests, the Religious Right may well learn some of the prudential skills it has too much neglected as a national movement.
What impact has the PTL scandal had on the larger evangelical movement? What implications do you see for the public-policy debate?
In a few short months, American evangelicals in 1987 have lost in public and news-media perception most of what Newsweek’s cover story on “The Year of the Evangelical” gained for them a decade ago. All too much of the movement is currently viewed in Elmer Gantry context. In a world that elevates sex and silver to center stage, six or seven prominent renegades can blur the image of 50 million “born-again” believers. But the real issue is Jesus Christ, not Jimmy, Tammy, or Oral. It is Jesus’ holy judgment alone with which all the rest of us flawed humans must sooner or later come to terms.
Public-policy debate had better keep in the forefront the issues of truth and godliness and justice. We had best shy away from flag wavers eager to lead the parade, but prone to follow drummers who know where the most dollar support lies.
You have criticized evangelicals for failing to stand together on certain issues, yet their diversity keeps them from becoming beholden to any one political point of view. How do we reconcile the diversity we see among Christians with the need to bring a Christian witness to bear on pressing societal issues?
The task is not the manufacturing of Republicans or Democrats but the clarification of social principles derived from Judeo-Christian revelation. From these enduring principles must follow platforms, policies, and programs. As we move from the biblical record to particular options we run the risk of fallible inferences. But there is so much on which regenerate Christians agree that we could have a shaping influence upon society and government. However, we must be propelled to action by our commonalities rather than view as enemies those who differ on secondary issues.
The bold public proclamation of the Bible in the churches and through the media, the call for civic righteousness, the exemplary community stance of believers, the integrity of Christian office holders, the mutual probing of legislative options, and a willingness to go for the better in the absence of the best when the best is not a live political prospect, form a starting point. It will not do to vote for a Christian candidate and to elect him if uncertainty clouds all the cognitive underpinnings of evangelical public involvement. Without conscious commitment to a common enterprise in the public sphere and to resolute reflection in quest of political prudence, evangelical engagement will not count for much in the long run.
Stefan Ulstein
Young people must slow down and think if they are to become more than efficient producers.
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A teaching colleague once gave me some bad advice. I had complained that my high-school English students did not really reflect on the books I assigned. Their essays were mere restatements of key passages and summaries of my lectures.
He replied, “That’s because they know that English classes are not about reflecting on the truths in a book; they’re about what the teacher says a book is about. Your busy students are looking for a time-efficient way to give you what you want, so you can give them what they want—a good grade.”
My colleague suggested I give them time to read in class, cut down on quizzes, and lead stimulating discussions. Then, he assured me, they would focus on understanding rather than on simply getting a grade.
I tried it. It was a disaster. As soon as my students figured out there would not be a chapter quiz, they pulled out the math homework that was due next period—or asked if they could join the cheerleaders in the gym to make posters. They still did not spend quality time reading and reflecting. I threatened to reduce their grades if they did not just sit there and read and think.
Empty Success
This may sound like a typical “education is going to the dogs” story, but it is not. I teach in a private Christian school where over 90 percent of the graduates go on to college—and they score well on the SAT. The students are highly motivated, turning out for sports, holding afternoon jobs, and organizing church youth activities. The problem is that they are too busy with the immediate to reflect on the eternal. And sometimes we adults inadvertantly push them further in this direction, making it more difficult for them to gain intellectual depth and deeply held biblical values.
On the surface, a generation of highly motivated, success-oriented young people sounds pretty appealing. Now that the Protestant Work Ethic is being blown out of the water by the Japanese Work Obsession, many Americans are getting edgy about the future of the nation. But there is more to success than building a better VCR. Christians are called to be a light unto the world, and that mandate carries with it a command to be discerning. Task-oriented, fast-track culture can overshadow reflection and discernment. Like worker bees, kids are expected to produce, produce, produce—so that they can enter college and the workplace and produce some more.
A Japanese educator commented on the problem in his country. He noted that the Japanese educational system, which is rigorously geared toward rote learning and skill mastery, produces a highly motivated, technically precise work force. He went on to lament, however, that there are few Japanese Nobel laureates and that traditional Japanese family values are disintegrating. A Japanese industrialist echoed: “All new ideas seem to come from America. We seem able only to perfect what has already been created.”
The Technician Trap
As Americans struggle to catch up with the Japanese in industry, it will be important to avoid falling into the trap of turning out technicians, managers, and factory workers to the exclusion of thinkers and dreamers. That, combined with the replacement of the Protestant Work Ethic by the Hedonist Work Ethic (work hard so you can afford to play hard), could lead to spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy.
We must give young people more time to think and reflect if they are to be something more than efficient producers. Ethics, for instance, come from reflection and understanding—not from taking the fastest short cut to a stated objective. In the recent rash of insider trading on Wall Street, highly motivated, successful stockbrokers forgot their real task—investing capital in the economy—and looked for short cuts to wealth. Lawyers, hired by one company to launch hostile takeovers of other companies, show little regard for people or ethics. This investment-as-Viking-raid style of business can only undercut the goals of good business.
Critical thinking and spiritual reflection are harder to teach than mere tasks. But there are no short cuts that can substitute for careful reading and probing discussion. It is easier to teach a Sunday school lesson where kids just fill in the blanks than it is to nurture inquiring minds and questioning spirits. It is easier to look at the letter grades on a report card than it is to find out what a young person is really learning. But we reap what we sow. If we give our teenagers the message, “Work hard and enjoy the symbols of your success,” we will raise a generation of high achievers who are spiritually and intellectually numb, and our society and Christ’s church will suffer for it.
Stefan Ulstein teaches English at Bellevue (Wash.) Christian School. He is a regular contributor to Christianity Today’s Arts column.
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Paul F. Parsons
Are Christian schools simply mirroring a nostalgic past, or producing leaders for tomorrow?
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Five-year-old Travis stands, with shoulders straight and hands in pockets, and begins the school day reciting:
“A—All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:23.
“B—Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Acts 16:31.
“C—Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Ephesians 6:1.”
Travis and his kindergarten classmates at this Christian school not only learn their ABCs, the backbone of education, but they memorize over two dozen Scripture verses in the process.
An alphabet tied to Bible verses is not typical of American schooling. But then, Christian schools operate on a different standard from public schools. Christian schools can require students to memorize Scripture. They can begin classes with prayer. They can teach the Creation account in Genesis. And they not only can teach the three Rs but can emphasize the fourth R as well: religion.
Quiet Revolution
The mere mention of religious schools once brought a vision of nuns in traditional habits. No more. Many Protestant parents, who a decade ago looked down on private schools as luxuries for the rich or the Roman Catholic, have reversed their attitudes. Now, parents who barely meet their mortgage payments view Christian academies as educational necessities.
The growing number of Christian schools outside the traditional parochial school systems represents a quiet revolution in this nation’s educational structure. While public school enrollment declined and Catholic school enrollment plummeted during the past two decades, thousands of new schools started with little fanfare, many in church buildings that used to sit empty between Sundays. More than one million schoolchildren in the United States attend Christian schools, by far the fastest-growing segment in public or private education today. Roughly 15,000 of these schools exist nationwide.
Of course, schools with a religious emphasis have existed for a long time. Besides the Catholic schools established more than a century ago, denominations such as Lutheran, Seventh-day Adventist, Episcopalian, and Christian Reformed also have long-established schools. And prep schools like the Stony Brook School in New York (see “What the Kids Are Up To,” p. 26), Hampden DuBose Academy in Florida, and Wheaton Christian High School in Illinois have long served the evangelical community.
But these new schools established over the past 20 years that bear the name “Christian” are dramatically different. Largely independent, serving a local church and its communities rather than a denomination or national constituency, these schools were established in response to the secularist drift in public education. Many of them proudly call themselves “fundamentalist.” Others do not embrace the fundamentalist label (for instance, schools operated by charismatic churches), yet their theological orientation is similar. And still others that go by the name “Christian” are evangelical in nature but not at all fundamentalist in theological perspective.
But the new Christian schools are diverse in more than their theologies. Some are sprawling complexes with 2,000 students; others are one-room schoolhouses with a dozen or so pupils scattered across 12 grades. Some are elite academies with big tuition price tags; others keep the cost of education low by depending on volunteer mothers to help run the classrooms. Some are operated by parent groups that avoid doctrinal instruction; others are church-operated and specific in doctrine. But whatever their differences, the new Christian schools do have much in common.
Educating Souls
Religious instruction is a common denominator in America’s Christian schools. Walk into a first-grade class at Riverdale Baptist School in Maryland and you will hear the pupils reciting in unison from the Gospel of John. Sit in the twelfth-grade Bible class at Barrington Christian Academy in Rhode Island and you will gain an overview of religious cults in America. Visit the weekly chapel service at the Paw Creek Christian Academy in Charlotte, North Carolina, and you will hear the pastor’s dispensationalist view of the end of time. Step inside a history class at Christian High in El Cajon, California, and you will hear teenagers begin class with prayer for the President.
The intent of Christian schooling is not just to develop the minds, but to influence the very souls of its students. The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), an umbrella group representing 2,500 schools over a broad doctrinal spectrum, reported in 1986 that 30,000 of the 420,000 students at its member schools had been converted during the preceding academic year.
At many Christian schools academic subjects are bathed in Scripture. No dividing line exists between academics and religion because these schools consider the two inseparably linked. As one California principal puts it: “When we teach algebra, we don’t teach God all the time. But we do teach that God is a God of order. 2 + 2 = 4. That’s an absolute. Just as a number system has order, God has order. In history, we say nothing happens without God’s permission. History is dictated by God.”
Even the sports field is awash in religious significance. After every home game against a public school, players at a Christian academy in West Virginia hand out spiritual tracts to members of the opposing team. In Tennessee, a Christian school team prays with its opponent after every game. At Jerry Falwell’s Christian Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia, a school official said: “We tell our kids to play to represent the Lord. If you are losing your temper and complaining about the referees and then go after the game and try to witness to an opposing player, he’ll say, ‘Hey, what’s this?’ Sports is an opportunity to show our lifestyle.”
As the ACSI said in its newsletter: “Evangelism should be a normal part of the everyday curriculum in ‘God’s school system.’ ”
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Another common denominator in Christian schools is a stress on discipline and traditional values. Hair and dress codes abound, paddlings are common, and respect for adults is shown through standard yes ma’ams and no sirs. At some schools, students must stand whenever an adult enters the room. For many parents, just as important as the four Rs is the belief that their children will graduate as responsible, well-behaved kids who can get good jobs or into good colleges. As a Christian school principal in Texas noted: “To be successful in college, advanced calculus isn’t as critical as teaching perseverance and reading skills and not doing drugs in order to finish your report on time.”
Of course, all schools public and private stress positive character traits. But Christian schools have more latitude in rewarding (or punishing) while seeking to develop such traits as these:
• Respect for authority. When an increasingly rebellious teenage girl talked disrespectfully to a teacher, the Christian school principal sent the girl to an isolation room. “We put her in the room by herself, gave her a Bible, and told her to read Proverbs,” the principal says. “She didn’t read any that morning because she was so mad. But before the day was over, she decided she’d rather read than just sit there. She read the Book of Proverbs and really broke. The Spirit of God really dealt with her that day.”
• Honesty. Student lockers don’t have locks at Pensacola Christian School in Florida. “Stealing is wrong. It’s a sin. God condemns it. We tell the student if he is caught stealing, he will be expelled,” a school official says.
• Punctuality. A teacher stands at the doorway holding a stopwatch, after ringing a bell to mark the end of recess at a Christian academy in Oklahoma. The students have 90 seconds to be inside and seated. “We teach them that time is important,” the teacher says.
• Character qualities. At the Southern Baptist Educational Complex in Memphis, “character quality report cards” are sent home to parents along with regular report cards. Pupils are evaluated in such areas as contentment, truthfulness, and humility.
Textbook Cases
In their drive for separation from all trappings of secular education, many fundamentalist schools, in particular, shun the state-adopted textbooks, using books published expressly for them. In these books, history is the tracing of the fingerprints of God through time. Science books attack evolution. Even math books have an evangelistic thrust: “Ace and his friend went soul-winning on five streets. There were nine houses on each street. To how many houses did they go?”
These books make no pretense of religious or philosophical neutrality. They are written from a fundamentalist perspective, with every subject bathed in scriptural interpretation and political conservatism. An American history textbook says of Franklin D. Roosevelt: “President Roosevelt himself lacked political convictions and principles.… The New Deal lengthened the Depression.” A science workbook bluntly says:
“Most ecologists do not believe in God as the Creator and Sustainer of the world.” Another textbook calls the United Nations “a clear illustration of man’s failure.”
There is even a Christian Student Dictionary on the market. “Some people wonder about the need for a Christian dictionary,” a representative of the publisher says. “But our current dictionaries are written by liberals. It shows up in word selections and in role reversals in the examples, like the woman going off to work and the man staying home with the children.”
Nonfundamentalist Christian schools do not necessarily subscribe to the political conservatism and theological orientation of the fundamentalist Christian textbook publishers, so these moderate Christian schools often use the same books found in public schools. But the vast majority of Christian schools carry their separation from public education that extra step, using only books wedded to their philosophy.
As One With Authority
Fundamentalist and nonfundamentalist schools differ most substantially in their emphases on authority. Nonfundamentalist Christian schools try to apply the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer to students. As the principal of a Christian school in Massachusetts says: “We major on the majors and don’t delve into doctrine. The end result, hopefully, will be the development of a thoughtful person who will be able to seek his own revelation from God.”
Fundamentalist schools, however, often emphasize the transfer of revelation rather than the pursuit of it. This is based on the belief that not only does an absolute Truth exist, but that every detail of lifestyle should reflect that Truth.
So fundamentalist schools authoritatively teach a lifestyle. Boys are taught to be the head of the household, and girls are taught to be helpmates. Some schools routinely pay male teachers more than their female counterparts by giving the men a head-of-household bonus. These schools may even regulate students’ out-of-school environment, prohibiting movie going, limiting dating, or mandating church attendance.
There is no undercurrent of tension at these schools. Students are uniformly accepting of the school’s norms. A boy may complain about having to get a haircut, or a girl may complain about having to wear a dress. But these are incidentals. When it comes to the spiritual atmosphere and the values taught amid academic lessons, the schools and students are in agreement.
The vast majority of students in Christian schools are there by choice. This is a byproduct of the enrollment process at these schools. Some churches operate schools only for the children of their own members. Others view Christian schools as evangelistic ministries, but interview students and parents beforehand to make sure each student has a willing attitude. Rebels are not invited.
The Christian school is frequently compared to a hothouse. “You have to realize the purpose of a hothouse,” says Paul Kienel, executive director of ACSI. “A hothouse is designed to protect young, tender plants during their growing years so they can be transplanted in the real world later on and be ahead of plants that didn’t have the opportunity.
“I grew up in Oregon,” Kienel continues, “and we had a hothouse nearby to grow tomatoes during the winter months. Outside the door were scrawny, gnarled plants that didn’t make it inside the hothouse. They were handicapped. Inside, the tomatoes were healthy and strong. The Christian school movement performs that function. It gets some basic character established before the child does battle with the world.”
A special bond exists between teachers and students in these schools. Teachers seem genuinely concerned about students’ academic progress and moral development. Teachers often view their work as a ministry instead of just a job. They get low salaries, but say they are compensated spiritually. An Iowa principal comments: “If I can train children to walk in the ways of the Lord, heaven is where I’ll get my big salary.”
And students appreciate the teachers’ sacrifices. They tell of teachers coming to their homes for free evening tutoring sessions. One student says: “I know the teachers aren’t here for the money. That makes me respect them even more.”
The Public-School Blues
To those within the Christian school movement, the roll call of public schools’ woes is as familiar as the ABCs. Besides standardized-test score declines and other external factors, those active in the movement are convinced that public schools do not teach values like they used to, do not discipline like they used to, and do not instill old-fashioned morality like they used to. The portrait they paint of public schools is unrelenting: chaos in the classroom, loss of authority, lack of learning, and an absence of standards.
“It’s ludicrous to think that our children are going to be change agents,” said Gerald Carlson of the American Association of Christian Schools, another umbrella organization that represents 1,200 fundamentalist, church-sponsored schools enrolling 170,000 students. “I think it’s an ignorance that people have of what the public schools have become. They are no longer these benign educational institutions. Public education has been in the hands of people who have sought to amend, and have been very effective in causing, social change in America.”
Christian-school advocates argue that public schools are as absolute in their teaching of relativism as Christian schools are absolute in their teaching of a singular Truth. Many Christians believe that, in the push to have a public school system free of religious entanglement, the nation has created, at best, a school system that has no values orientation and, at worst, one in which biblical values are scorned. The saying “Public schools teach how to make a living; we teach how to live” is often heard in Christian schools.
A “product” comparison with the public schools is difficult to make. Quantitative measurements routinely show Christian school pupils a grade level or two above national norms, and a number of Christian school graduates pursue higher education. But the comparison may be misleading because the public school is a melting pot, teaching all who come, while the Christian school is a selective hothouse.
White Fright?
This selectivity has led to a widespread perception that the new Christian schools are racist. After all, what once was a Southern phenomenon of the 1960s—segregationist academies quickly formed in the name of God—has spread nationwide. To some, “white-flight schools” and “Christian schools” are synonyms.
A secretary at a Christian school in North Carolina received a phone call from a woman, who asked in an urgent whisper, “Do you let them in?” The puzzled secretary responded, “Who do you mean, ma’am?” Caller: “The niggers, of course.” Secretary: “Why, ma’am, of course we do. We’re a Christian school.” The caller slammed the phone. At this particular school, one in eight students is black. In fact, many Christian schools now are integrated. But it is indicative of the public perception that a mother, in search of a place that does not allow blacks, would think of calling her local Christian school.
Still, Christian schooling is an overwhelmingly white phenomenon. Blacks are few and, like their white counterparts, may have been screened before admittance. But it is simplistic to conclude automatically that Christian schools are racially motivated. Christian schools reflect the structural segregation of parent churches, and the financial burdens of private schooling tend to be more difficult for minorities.
Christian-school educators also justify the low minority enrollment by pointing out that their schools appeal to a specific religious population just as Jewish schools serve a narrow Jewish population. Since schools are based on religious adherence, they contend they cannot recruit mathematical quotas of students equivalent to the larger community. Former Harvard researcher Peter Skerry wrote: “At least since the late 1960s, social and religious conservatism has been on the march. To reduce this conservatism and the Christian schools that have emerged from it to racism is simply to ignore two decades of social and cultural upheaval.”
Indisputably, racial prejudice served as a motive in the establishment of many “Christian” schools, especially in the South. But leaders of today’s Christian-school movement contend the true Christian schools have never been racist. Ronald E. Johnson, vice-president of Accelerated Christian Education Inc., says: “In the Deep South in the ’60s, there was a racist movement among private schools, and many called themselves Christian schools. They took on a Christian name, but they were not Christian schools in the sense that they deliberately taught Christian principles, ethics, and Scripture. The Christian-school movement today has them memorizing Scripture and reading from Christian textbooks. It’s a total church immersion. There’s a big difference between what those old white-flight schools were in the Deep South and what Christian schools are today.”
No More Pluralism
Besides the race issue, Christian schools have gained public attention through clashes with state agencies over school licensing and teacher certification. In 1982, a judge ordered the padlocking of Faith Baptist Church in Louisville, Nebraska, because it was operating a school in defiance of a law requiring all schools to be state-licensed and all teachers to be state-certified. The church contended that education is the prerogative of the parents, not the state, and that licensing the school would be akin to licensing the church itself. The church lost in court, but eventually won a legislative victory that freed religious schools from state regulation.
The new Christian schools as a whole represent a vehement rejection of state-sponsored education. The intent of Christian schooling is separation, not the melting-pot pluralism of years gone by. That is because the meaning of pluralism has undergone a radical redefinition in the past two decades.
In earlier years, pluralism meant merging various nationalities, religions, and languages into one “American way.” Those who did not acculturate were left out. Our public schools were designed to fulfill this historic acculturation process. We standardized the education process to “Americanize” the nation. Since society was then dominated by Protestant values and concepts, this acculturation process was firmly rooted in cultural Protestantism. Jews and Catholics were tolerated as components in the country’s notion of religious freedom. In this form of religious pluralism, differences were discussed within the context of the reigning Protestant culture.
Today, pluralism means the right to be American without acculturation. Frankly, no one expected cultural Protestantism ever to be challenged as the symbolic model of America. But the redefinition of pluralism after World War II changed all of this. The prevailing hegemony came unglued, and there was suddenly no longer one dominant set of cultural values. Church attendance dropped precipitously. By 1960, Americans no longer had to have a Protestant president. The Supreme Court refused to let the public schools continue two of the outward symbols of cultural Protestantism—prayer and Bible reading. Quite suddenly, Protestantism no longer served as this nation’s undisputed defining authority.
In turn, the educational establishment responded by formulating “value-free” education, another name for secularism. Instead of espousing particular values, the public schools espoused the value of the search for values. Maybe that was all they could do legitimately. But this transformation to a secular educational system led those still adhering to the values of cultural Protestantism to rebel. Many Christians chose to build an alternative community rather than acculturate to a society they believed had gone bad.
A Refuge For Dissent
Similarities exist in the creation of the Catholic schools a century ago and the rise of the new Protestant schools. In both instances, private schooling served as a refuge for dissenters from the value system explicitly or implicitly adopted by the public schools. As Patricia Lines, former director of the Law and Education Center for the Education Commission of the States, wrote: “When public school values were Protestant, a vigorous Roman Catholic school system emerged. Now that public school values are secular, a strong Protestant private school movement has emerged. In fact, taking the sharp decline of Catholic school enrollment under consideration, it may be that many Catholics now regard the public schools as safe for their children, while an increasing number of Protestants do not.”
In part, the move to establish new Christian schools embodies a nostalgia for the security of the past. It yearns for a return to “old-time religion” and “old-fashioned virtues.” It looks back wistfully to a golden era, a simpler time. Those in the forefront of Christian schooling idealize the public schools of yesteryear for stressing the three Rs, for having textbooks portraying the traditional family, for paddling children who disobeyed, for serving their own homogeneous communities, and for beginning the school day with a Bible verse and prayer. Many of today’s Christian school educators want to mirror the public schools as they remember them from their day. Others have gone even further back, to the era of the one-room schoolhouse and to workbooks that resemble the moralizing McGuffey Readers of a century ago.
In 1987, Christian school educators forge ahead in their mission to provide a by-the-Book education to a growing body of the nation’s youth. Just as important as reading and riting is the teaching of right and rong. “I want to produce young people who can stand up to their peers and say, ‘No, that’s not right,’ without being obnoxious,” one Christian-school teacher said. “If we can make Christian schools strong enough academically but not too narrow, it may very well produce the leaven to reproduce Christian values in our society.”
Paul F. Parsons is R. M. Seaton Associate Professor of Journalism, Kansas State University. In 1983 he received a religious studies fellowship from the University of North Carolina, which allowed him to visit about 100 Christian schools in 60 cities. His book on Christian schools will be released by Mercer University Press early in the spring of 1988.
Ace Virtueson Meets Pastor Alltruth
The classroom is quiet. No teacher’s voice booms out an explanation of nouns and verbs. No teacher’s chalk scratches the blackboard during a multiplication exercise. No teacher’s ruler touches a map in a discussion on European alliances during World War II. In fact, there are no teachers at all in this school.
This is an Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) school—one of 4,800 “teacherless” schools educating about half a million children nationwide. Roughly a third of all Christian schools in the United States operate with the ACE curriculum.
These schools operate the same, be they in Alabama or Arizona, Ohio or Oregon. They use the same books, have the same operational procedures, and are run by male supervisors who undergo identical training at ACE headquarters in Lewisville, Texas. The supervisor, almost never state-certified, may be the only paid employee in the school; he is typically assisted by volunteer mothers.
Students in individual cubicles work silently at their own pace, mastering workbooks that stitch Bible verses into lessons on, for example, nouns and verbs, multiplication problems, and European history. The adults are present to motivate, discipline, and answer questions. But the teaching comes from a series of workbooks—disposable paperbacks, roughly 40 pages each—that contain topical essays interspersed with multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and other questions.
A pupil goes through about 60 workbooks a year in math, science, English, social studies, and word building. On the secondary level, a Bible course and a variety of electives are offered. The workbooks carry colorful cartoons featuring clean-cut, happy children with such names as Ace Virtueson, Christi Lovejoy, and Reginald Upright. Ace, Christi, and friends mature into responsible, soul-winning teenagers in the advanced workbooks. The adult role models in the workbooks go by the names of Pastor Alltruth, Mr. Friendson, and Miss Content.
The day at an ACE school starts with an assembly, featuring singing, pledges of allegiance, Scripture memorization, and a motivational word from those in charge. The morning is devoted to exclusively academic pursuits. Students spend about one hour at a time in the workbooks. They have breaks ranging from five minutes on up, depending on whether the student met previous work goals.
The afternoons at an ACE school are devoted to more workbook exercises, along with activities and devotionals. Wednesdays are special chapel days that feature an hour-long religious service, no workbooks, and an early dismissal. Fridays often include a field trip.
The ACE program is credited with much of the boom in fundamentalist Christian schooling. Dr. Donald R. Howard started ACE in 1970 to provide parents an inexpensive alternative to public education. For $5,000 or less, ACE can transform any pastor into the principal of his own Christian school in a matter of weeks. ACE supplies the workbooks and tests and, for additional costs, even red-white-and-blue uniforms for children.
The central tenet of ACE is the belief that teaching is not important in the learning process, ACE believes children learn more effectively by working out of a book at their own pace than by listening to a teacher who, by necessity, must keep the class at a common plateau.
“It’s a false premise that, because a body with a degree stands in front of a room and speaks words, learning is taking place,” said ACE vice-president Ronald E. Johnson, who is himself a former public-school principal in Arizona. “It’s a false assumption to believe that every child in that room is at the same level of understanding,” he said. “There is no classroom of 25 children in which they are all at the same academic or maturity level.”
Thus graduation from ACE schools is based solely on workbook progression, not chronological age.
By Paul F. Parsons.
What Living Word School Doesn’t Have
The school day at Living Word Christian School in Manhattan, Kansas, does not begin with math or phonics or social studies. It begins with prayer and Bible verses. Teachers report to work an hour early for a collective prayer time. When school starts, pupils begin the day with sentence prayers of their own.
Classrooms have a familiar look, with pupils at their desks and teachers at the blackboard. Using the A Beka Book curriculum designed for Christian schools, teachers rely on the lecture method. In a junior-high classroom, the lesson centers on dependent and independent clauses. “Just as you are dependent on your parents, the dependent clause in a sentence is dependent on the subordinating conjunction,” the teacher tells the teenagers. It is a basic grammar lesson, but the example reinforces the parents’ role.
Third and fourth graders have a science lesson on skin. They talk about cuts, and the teacher says, “God made your body where it can heal.” They talk about nerve endings in fingers, and the teacher says, “God put inside of you something called a reflex. Your body will move away from pain.” They make their fingerprints with an ink pad. “No one has a pattern like anybody else,” the teacher says. “God has made every person unique.” The academic lesson deals with the properties of skin. But the word God is part of the conversation throughout. A merger has occurred between the educational and the religious. This is common, and desired, in Christian schools.
Living Word Christian School is part of a rapidly growing charismatic church started in 1981 through home Bible studies. Church membership mushroomed from 50 to 275 in three years, and the church and school now occupy a former roller-skating rink. The school started in 1984 with 28 students. It has grown to 50 pupils in grades K-10. The school is adding one grade each year until it is a 12-grade school.
As a charismatic body, Living Word emphasizes healing powers. A boy comes to a teacher’s desk and says a tooth hurts. The teacher is sympathetic and asks the boy if his tooth has to hurt. The boy says no. “Can God get rid of the pain?” the teacher asks. The boy says yes and closes his eyes while standing next to the teacher’s desk and prays: “Please help my tooth to not hurt and help it to feel better.” The teacher says amen, and the boy returns to his chair. School principal Cecilia Myers says the boy would be encouraged to see a dentist if the tooth continued to hurt. “We believe God can heal, either through doctors or through prayer,” she says.
All but one of the school’s five full-time teachers are state-certified, and several are former public-school teachers. Beth Uphoff is one of them: “I had such a negative attitude toward Christian schools. It was an escapist trend. I thought that kids wouldn’t be able to deal with reality once they got out of the hothouse. I felt like I should be in the public schools, witnessing to them there. But the Lord changed my heart. I saw a vision for Christian education.”
Because the school is small, it lacks a lot of standard features. The children bring sack lunches each day, and recess is held on the church’s asphalt parking lot. Talking to a group of parents, Pastor Gary Ward, a former public-school biology teacher, says: “There’s a lot we don’t have. We don’t have a football team. We don’t have a marching band. We don’t have enough typewriters. We don’t have a lunchroom.”
Then, without breaking stride, Pastor Ward shifts the emphasis. “We don’t have a drug problem. We don’t have an alcohol problem, or classes that teach about contraceptives. We don’t have a lot of things.”
The school also doesn’t have tuition. It requires a tax-deductible “donation” to the church of roughly $80 a month per child. “This isn’t a private school operated as a business on the side,” Ward says. “It’s a ministry of the church.”
By Paul F. Parsons.
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Ideas
Americans put more trust in the military than in the church.
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Should we change our country’s motto from “In God We Trust” to “In the Military We Trust”? A 1986 Gallup poll asked a random sample of Americans to rate their levels of confidence in United States institutions. Sixty-three percent of the respondents said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military, compared with only 57 percent who had confidence in the church. For the first time in over a decade, the church failed to rank as our most-trusted institution, raising renewed fears of creeping militarism.
Misplaced institutional confidence is not the only sign of growing militarism. Toy manufacturers report a 600 percent increase in sales of plastic rifles, G. I. Joe action figures, and miniature war vehicles between 1982 and 1986. Applications to West Point, the Air Force Academy, and Annapolis are not only at their highest level ever, but the academies are attracting the very best students, “the cream of the cream of the cream of the crop,” according to Lt. Col. Dan Hancock, head of cadet selection for the air force. Participation in ROTC on college campuses has increased 50 percent since 1975.
Several disquieting factors make this apparent trend toward militarism (a belief that the military is the principal answer to life’s problems) ominous for the church. The rapid growth reflects an intensity usually associated with major social changes. Further, because toys and television are imprinting their violent messages on our youngest children, we must seriously consider them as possible mental time bombs set to explode unpredictably for generations to come. Finally, because the military has supplanted the church as our most-trusted American institution, we are faced with the troubling question of why.
The Reasons
In one sense, the answer to that question lies not so much in the failures of the church as in the publicity given the military. The current administration’s emphasis on strengthening the military has contributed to an increasing public consciousness and even pride in the armed forces. Congressional battles over budgets, Star Wars debates, sorties into Grenada and Libya, and recent events in the Persian Gulf have all helped put the military on the front pages of our minds. Even though the Vietnam War seriously eroded public confidence in our military capacity and judgment, many Americans want to be assured that we are doing something about restoring the “big stick.”
Second, the world is being armed and fought over at an alarming rate. Nuclear weapons are no longer limited to the superpowers. The tiniest Third World countries have sophisticated airplanes and tanks donated by influence-seeking superpowers. Over 20 wars of (depending on your political view) communist expansion, democratic liberation, or religious crusade are being fought around the globe. And in terrorism we have realized the ultimate twentieth-century nightmare, the one-man war. In a world wracked with such conflict, military preparedness makes very good sense.
Although less easy to prove empirically, culture watchers suggest that a third reason for our tip toward militarism lies in current socio-economic conditions. Historically, militarism has arisen in countries where the economic fortunes of the more privileged classes, particularly the middle class, begin to slip. A. Vagt, in his massive History of Militarism, notes that middle-class Prussians of the nineteenth century first defined militarism this way. Under such conditions, the officer corps becomes an acceptable career path for middle-class young people formerly drawn to other professions. In addition, values held dear by upper-middle and middle classes—such as loyalty, obedience, and hard work—find their fullest expression in the military setting.
In an increasingly chaotic and ill-defined social system, the military, with its emphasis on order and efficiency, shines like a beacon in the dark night of frightening confusion. Inevitably, countries that find themselves undergoing these changes rely more and more on the military leaders as their primary decision makers.
All three of these conditions—a slipping middle class, a relativizing of traditional values, and reliance on military answer men (this administration has placed more military officers in nonmilitary positions than any other in the postwar period)—are evident today.
The Church And The Military
All of which makes it imperative that we note some differences between the church and the military, and the relationship between them. Scripture never denounces the military as such; it does, however, clearly consider it an institution of limited, pragmatic purpose, especially when set over against the ultimate, enduring value of the church.
The Old Testament, for example, shows God as caring very little for the size and strength of Israel’s army. He frequently commanded them to use extraordinary force to further his purposes. But the size and strength of the Israelite force was not a reliable indicator of the success or failure of a mission. Superior forces sometimes lost battles (Josh. 7:1–5) and inferior forces frequently won them (Judg. 7). The determining factor was obedient use rather than superior firepower. The implication for the modern church, perhaps, is that our role should not be one of lobbying for technological weaponry advances as much as constantly calling into question the appropriate and inappropriate uses of those weapons.
The New Testament reinforces the obedient use principle by insisting that love and peace (values that fuel the engines of the church) are superior to the military values of loyalty, courage, and power. This elevation of love and peace does not negate the military values. It does relegate them to “second class” status, at least when placed against the Great Commandment to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The church models love and peace, and seasons and salts necessary military realities with them whenever possible.
The church has not always done this. The Crusades are an example of a time when the church adopted the military ethos as its own, declaring war on the Muslim infidels and setting out to recapture Jerusalem. The results betrayed the seriousness of the error. The lesson to be duly noted by us moderns is that it is best if the Christian church remembers its role. Fortunately, that role is the most important one. The church cannot and must not administer, participate in, or be the military. But the church can support the military in ways congruent with its nature—the chaplaincy, for example.
More important, the church must make its voice clearly heard as the conscience of the military. When armies on the march inevitably jettison the heavy niceties of morality and ethics, only the church can pick them up and reshoulder them for our secular society.
By Terry Muck.
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Have you seen the condom advertisements on television? In one ad, a handsome 26-year-old man says he only dates nice women but wants to be “safe.” The camera dissolves to the condom package. In another ad, an attractive young woman says she wants to love but is not willing to die for it.
The networks were initially hesitant. They spoke of “bad taste,” saying the public was “not ready.” Their critics said this reflects “an appalling indifference” to public-health needs, AIDS is spreading rapidly.
Indeed it is, but advertising condoms on television is the wrong way to fight this alarming epidemic. Two arguments against the ads come to mind: (1) the rationale for the ads contains a significant inconsistency; and (2) a crucial assumption of the rationale is false.
Promoting The Cause Of Aids
The rationale for advertising condoms sounds noble enough. One way to slow the spread of AIDS is to inform the public how condoms can prevent this disease. But who needs to be informed about condoms and about the dangers of extramarital intercourse and homosexual activity? Novices do! Mainly, that means adolescent youngsters who are just beginning to discover their sexuality. At a time when they are forming attitudes about their new-found desires, along comes a direct message from the most powerful medium of our culture: “As long as you use a condom you’ll be safe.” To provide further motivation, the ads picture handsome, articulate men or women who talk about condoms without looking stupid or embarrassed. But by glamorizing the use of condoms, the ads inevitably glamorize the act in which they are used. They make it appear that sex is just another recreational activity, no different than tennis or skiing.
So here is the inconsistency: In an effort to promote safe sex, condom ads indirectly condone and promote behavior that makes AIDS spread: sexual promiscuity.
The Myth Of Safe Sex
But there is another problem with the condom ads. The basic assumption of “safe sex” contradicts both biblical teaching and the moral judgment of centuries of Western culture. It is naïve to consider an act safe just because there is only a remote possibility it will make you sick. Human personhood is much deeper and more significant than what is merely physical. Only a superficial view of human life says a person will be safe if he avoids a physical disease while pursuing acts that civilization has overwhelmingly called immoral and that the Bible indicts as dishonoring our Creator.
Perhaps without knowing it, the proponents of condom ads have expressed the theological conviction that God, if he exists, is at best affirming, and at worst indifferent, toward sexual promiscuity. This conviction flies in the face of biblical teaching that says extramarital sexual intercourse and homosexual activity are not only immoral, but are also destructive to personhood. It violates the beautiful purpose of God for sexual relations, which is to deepen and gladden the union of man and woman in marriage.
Treating Humans With Respect
Suppose teenagers suddenly turned to “electric dancing” as a form of new-wave recreation. Kids scramble over barbed-wire fences in order to climb on high-powered transformers and do their thing. Then imagine a handsome young man or woman appearing on a television ad urging the kids to wear rubber gloves and Hushpuppies so they will not get electrocuted. Is this really different from advertising condoms to promote “irresponsible” sexual promiscuity?
How can Christians endorse advertising that treats people like jellyfish carried helplessly along on the tide of their sexual drives? Should we not cultivate nobler principles to govern our appetites and channel our desires in appropriate relationships of commitment and loyalty, trust and permanence?
Ironically, the national networks have used this same approach with another social problem. Antidrug campaigns appeal to youngsters as morally accountable human beings who can choose to say no to self-destruction. Why not take this higher view of personhood and apply it to the case of condom ads? Why not start a nationwide campaign urging people to say no to sexual promiscuity and making plain the penalties for saying yes?
And the penalties are worse than the ad makers realize. The young woman says she wants to love but is not willing to die for it. Really? Then let the ads also show not only the penalties that nature is beginning to exact for immorality in this life, but also the penalties that God will impose in the age to come (1 Cor. 6:9).
By John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
SPEAKING OUToffers responsible Christians a forum. It does not necessarily reflect the views of CHRISTIANITY TODAY.
Kenneth S. Kantzer
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When I graduated from seminary I had no philosophy of leadership whatsoever. I had never read a book or taken a course on the subject. Nor had I given the qualities of effective leadership a second thought—save for the time I led a neighborhood “gang” of five boys. (Then my authority was based on having a bigger stick rather than practicing airtight management principles.)
Later on, when buzz words like “management by objectives” filled the administrative air, I dutifully spent the waning moments of each day jotting down my goals for the morrow in hopes of being better organized (more efficient). The habit became so deeply ingrained that I still discover myself spelling out my objectives for the next day—even when I am on vacation (to my wife’s and my amusement).
Eventually, however, watching others in leadership led me to the realization that the best leaders were those who won the support of others by persuading them to work together toward a common goal. In other words, the good leader did not bulldoze his or her followers against their will. Instead, he or she became a facilitator for a “team” where each member would work toward (and indeed would claim as their own) a singular objective.
I discovered the Bible had a great deal to say about this effective style of leadership. The apostle Paul, identifying himself as a servant of Jesus Christ, extolled the servant leadership of his Master as the relational example for all Christians to follow.
Thus (and counter to what some consultants might have you think) servant leadership is not a new discovery at all, but a “style” as old as mankind. It fits the biblical view of man being made in God’s image. And it respects the integrity of other people: we are not to use them for our own private advantage.
People are not expendable. Leaders, to borrow a phrase from Gary Collins, are to be people helpers.
I have experienced the privilege (and periodic pain) of leadership for well over half my life, and have learned that servant leadership—as ideal as it is—faces its own unique challenges. The most obvious stems from our own responsibility to make our lives count for the kingdom of God in ways that are obedient to him. As a committed Christian, for example, how can I serve my fellow man by helping him attain his goals when I know those goals are no good?
The solution, when faced with such a situation, is to persuade others to adopt the right goals and make them their own. This way each person functions at his or her highest and best. Servant leadership only works when there is agreement as to goals.
Of course, we are not always able to persuade. And in a world of sloth, ignorance, and selfishness, even ideal servant leadership breaks down from time to time. Only a few—very few—tasks must be pushed through on the basis of imposing the leader’s will upon unwilling followers.
Such bald appeal to sheer authority always erodes in some degree the quality and effectiveness of a servant leader, and should only be used as a last resort. The wisest and best leaders, however, are those who know when and how to persuade.
Christians are primarily servants and only secondarily leaders. My highest goal in life is to worship and serve God. Consequently, the style of leadership for which I strive at home, at the office, and in my church ideally is servant leadership, serving others and sharing with them in the accomplishment of common goals—their goals as well as mine. I must, however, never lose sight of the fact that these objectives must be formulated in the light of the Word of God, not drawn empirically from an observation of what people wish.
Whether in a business setting or the board of deacons, happy is the leader who shares with his followers goals common to both.
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God’s Gift of Humor
Thank you for your wonderful sense of humor as exhibited by the Doug Marlette cartoon on the July 10 cover. Humor is as surely one of the gifts of God as any other we could list. When we take ourselves so seriously that we cannot laugh at ourselves, we are boxed in by our own self-imposed fences.
DAVID A. RASH
Accomac, Va.
I heartily protest the use of Marlette’s cartoon. He has filled many editions of the Charlotte Observer with anti-Christian, anti-God cartoons. I feel strongly that Christians everywhere should present a united front when dealing with such nonbelievers as the media. We should not assist them in any way—including using any of their nonoffensive material.
REV. B. W. KERRICK
Kingsport, Tenn.
A tax on stupidity?
I appreciated Charles Colson’s comments about lotteries in the July 10 issue. As he said, far from being as harmless as proponents claim, a lottery really is insidious. It puts the state in the business of promoting gambling, creating a whole new clientele of gamblers or “suckers.” I understand Texas Monthly called the lottery “a tax on stupidity.” Last year on “60 Minutes,” Andy Rooney said the news media likes to publicize the winners of various state lotteries. But then he said he thought it would be a good idea if they also had to print the names of all the losers. As he said, it would be a long list.
REV. TOM WILBANKS
First Presbyterian Church
Mesquite, Tex.
Humbled by failure
I was distressed by the report of Gordon MacDonald’s adulterous affair and subsequent resignation from IVCF [News, July 10]. What he did was wrong; he admits it and we all know it. And yet, what he did in bed with a woman who was not his wife, I do in my mind when I read Playboy or watch a sensuous video. Who will listen to my temptations? Who will hear my confessions? Who will help me overcome?
I feel terrific about the times I’ve succeeded in resisting temptation; I’m humbled by my failures. I want to fear God and do what’s right, but I’m exactly where Gordon was: weary, alone, and not in a relationship of accountability with anyone.
REV. SANDY WILLIAMS
First Baptist Church of Freeport
Freeport, Maine
Might the Lord have permitted Gordon MacDonald’s fall to contrast his response with that of Jim Bakker? MacDonald seems convincingly sincere in his repentance, and clearly says he wants to minister again, but recognizes that restoration is of the Lord and involves applying biblical discipline to the offender. On the other hand, Bakker’s actions have clouded his claim of repentance, and his overriding concern appears to be the regaining of his former ministry without the inconvenience of any applied discipline.
REV. GARY BERNARD PHAUP
The Congregational Christian Church
Albermarle, N.C.
Gordon MacDonald has ministered to me and to others, and I am sure I am not alone in sharing the pain this experience has brought him and his family. I have experienced the same temptation and know how seductive it can be, even to a man who deeply loves his wife. I am concerned about the message his resignation transmits. If, having sinned, one must resign from a position of Christian leadership, the church must seek her leadership among the perfect or the dishonest: those who deny their own sin. Or, there is a hierarchy of sin, and pride or avarice or gluttony or selfishness or … are acceptable in Christian leaders, but sexual sin is a disqualifier.
God has gifted Gordon MacDonald, and Satan wants his gifts out of commission. Right now, he has what he wants.
LEW FLAGG
Milford, Mass.
MacDonald’s writings have lifted and blessed me in times when I sorely needed the voice of God, which came to me through this brother. Nothing can change this fact, and I do not plan to discard any of his works from my library and files.
ROGER HEIDELBERG
Memphis, Tenn.
On the decline
Alas, it is not so. We are with the mainline denominations in continuing membership decline. Your July 10 News report [North American Scene] lists the Reformed Church in America with those denominations experiencing membership increases. Our continuing problem is yearly decreases.
REV. TOM STARK
University Reformed Church
East Lansing, Mich.
Look Out, Enquirer
While standing in a grocery store line recently, a bold tabloid headline caught my attention: PREDICTIONS FOR 1988. I eagerly turned to the inside, only to find some zany prognostications about Martian invasions and John F. Kennedy’s ghost.
I decided it was time for a Christian to provide sound, reliable predictions for the coming year.
Since no one else was stepping forth, I figured I was the man. So here’s my list of sure bets for the next several months:
- Chuck Swindoll will author a best-selling book.
- Significant church-state issues will be debated in the nation’s courts.
- The head of a major parachurch group will name a family member to succeed him.
- A leading television evangelist will appeal for money.
- A new, “finally accessible” version of the Bible will be published.
- A presidential candidate will try to curry favor among Christians.
Clip and save this column. By the end of next year it will be my mug on the front of those supermarket tabloids. And I’m not telling you how I did it.
EUTYCHUS
Reviving elder rule
Your report on the recent Consultation on Congregationalism is encouraging [News, July 10]. A serious study of the trend to establish “ruling elders” in churches with congregational polity is greatly needed. There probably always will be various opinions concerning the biblical model for local church leadership. “Ruling elders” seem, however, to be out of place in churches that cherish religious freedom and the priesthood of all believers. Hopefully, the Consultation on Congregationalism can lead to a new appreciation (among Baptists particularly) for the biblical support, as well as practical necessity, for congregational government with servant-leaders who are chosen by—and responsible to—the people of the congregation.
REV. WILLIAM P. HAMREN
First Baptist Church
Cincinnati, Ohio
I think elder rule is taught as the norm for the church; however, there is such a thing in the New Testament as a church without elders. The latter is to be viewed as a temporary condition in a young church until more mature believers arise to pastor the church.
I was surprised no reference was made to Alexander Strauch’s recent book Biblical Eldership. It is the only complete exposition of the concept of eldership and related items I know of.
THOMAS C. SORENSEN
Aurora, Colo.
Why caricature?
You are to be commended for reviewing the books of three very able scholars writing on capitalism: Michael Novak, Peter Berger, and Ronald Nash [Books, July 10]. The books are well argued, and for those who disagree, they are important books that are well worth arguing with.
But what in the world is a picture of Lee Iacocca standing next to his “racy Lamborghini” doing right in the middle of the review of Novak’s book? And what does the picture of Mary Kay Ashe in front of her Cadillac have to do with the arguments contained in the books by Peter Berger and Ronald Nash? It would have been better if you had provided us with negative reviews of their books than to caricature their ideas.
MIKE CROMARTIE
Ethics and Public Policy Center
Washington, D.C.
I hope the picture and caption of Lee Iacocca was intended as a joke or satire. It’s hard to defend capitalism with a New Testament perspective if the model for freed-up initiative and inventiveness is the creation of outrageously priced toys for the wealthy elite. If there is a creative Christian angle to the economic debate, shouldn’t it be about who can be most creative in meeting the needs of the poor? If the critics of liberation theology want integrity, shouldn’t they be as critical of the greedy and selfish excesses of capitalism?
EDGAR METZLER
Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries
Elkhart, Ind.
I found both Clark H. Pinnock’s review and Michael Novak’s Will It Liberate? to be marred by a basic misunderstanding. There is a glaring lack of consensus among Latin American theologians about what specific form a “liberating” economy might assume; while many are certain some form of socialism will develop to fill the voids left by North American neocolonialist capitalism, others seem to lean toward some blend of capitalistic and socialistic elements. The primary point of a liberating economy (from the Latin American perspective) is to reduce the dependency of the poor upon the paternalistic handouts of those who control the power within the capitalist system. Additionally, no liberation theologian I have ever read has been willing to assume that an already existing, prepackaged economic system can be imposed upon a nation or a people. Hence, I find the assumption of both Novak and Pinnock that Latin American theologians “opt for some form of socialism that does not in reality lift up the poor and make them prosper” to be insidious.
WAYNE W. URFFER
Philadelphia, Pa.
Novak speaks of two experiments in Latin America and North America: Aristocracy there, democracy here—apparently due to Roman Catholicism there and Protestantism here. It is my opinion that church polity had more to do with the character of these two experiments than did theology proper. The North American experiment succeeded because congregational—democratic—polity allows room for plurality. It remains to be seen whether communism will ever allow this much latitude.
JOHN BRISTOL
Flint, Mich.
Speaking the truth in love
Byron Spradlin’s “We Can Love Israel Too Much” [Speaking Out, July 10] raised a red flag, demanding a critical reading. However, I found myself nodding in agreement as he expressed the concern that many evangelicals seem eager to win acceptance among Israelis by not speaking of Messiah Jesus.
My only criticism is of the title. It is not love that keeps us from sharing our faith with our Jewish friends. What Israel does not need, however, is an influx of insensitive evangelists who rub salt in the wounds of Christian-Jewish relations, still raw from centuries of unloving actions. “Speaking the truth in love” will go a long way toward building bridges of understanding with the people God uniquely calls his own.
WESLEY N. TABER
American Messianic Fellowship
Lansing, Ill.
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Journalists are known as the “digging” type, and Paul Parsons is no exception. So when it came to reporting on the Christian school movement, the Kansas State University journalism professor dutifully visited Christian schools in 60 cities, observing administrators, teachers, and students engaged in the business of education. What he found—and didn’t find—makes up the cover story entitled “The Fourth ‘R’.”
Digging has also been characteristic of Washington Editor Beth Spring since she joined CHRISTIANITY TODAY full-time in 1984. For example, her investigation into the Unification Church’s efforts to enlist evangelical pastors in its fight against communism was recognized as the top news story of 1985 by the Evangelical Press Association. And her consistently strong reporting helped CT News garner two consecutive EPA awards for outstanding feature.
Beth’s latest contribution is the interview with theologian and former CT editor, Carl F. H. Henry, on the New Right (p. 30). The article is also one of Beth’s last as Washington Editor. After patiently digging through mountains of paperwork, Beth and husband, Jeff, will soon be the proud parents of Korean-born Jonathan Lee, who is expected to arrive from Seoul sometime in the next month. All that digging has paid off in another winner.
Harold Smith, MANAGING EDITOR