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CHRISTIANITY TODAY graciously offered me an opportunity to respond to John Woodbridge's lead article in the March 6 issue, entitled "Culture War Casualties: How Warfare Rhetoric Is Hurting the Work of the Church." Despite considerable disagreement with the author, my first reaction was to decline. I didn't have time to reply, and furthermore, I dislike public debates with a fellow believer who has spent a lifetime in service to the Lord. But when I saw the prominence given to Woodbridge's article and the flaws in his logic, I felt I had to reply. I do so now in a spirit of charity, despite the differing perspective from which I come.

The thesis of "Culture War Casualties" was best portrayed by the photograph chosen to illustrate the article. A portrait of Jesus, looking sad and wounded, was depicted in a frame with broken glass. It appeared that someone had either taken a shot at the picture or hit it with a brick. Who would do such a thing to a portrait of our Lord? It didn't take long for Woodbridge to tell us "who done it."

The offenders, he asserted, are people such as myself who employ the language of warfare to describe the cultural upheaval we are currently enduring. Use of such terms as "battlefields" and the "civil war of values" (which Gary Bauer and I described in our book "Children at Risk") is destructive to the cause of Christ. We and other intemperate authors have cracked the glass of Christendom and inflicted regrettable harm on the church.

Hoping not to be defensive, let me offer a counterargument to the charges made by Dr. Woodbridge.

First, he may have forgotten that today's defenders of righteousness did not invent the analogy to warfare. I grew up in the church singing "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war" and "Stand up, stand up for Jesus, ye soldiers of the cross." We sang about "Victory in Jesus" and were stirred by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Some readers may also remember a popular old hymn called "Faith Is the Victory." The first verse reads, "Encamped along the hills of light, ye Christian soldiers, rise. / And press the battle ere the night shall veil the glowing skies. / Against the foe in vales below let all our strength be hurled; / Faith is the victory, we know, that overcomes the world." That sounds very much like the language of war to me.

Were our forebears who wrote and spoke in these terms using unbiblical analogies? Is the Salvation Army with its military uniforms, "generals," and brass bands operating in contradiction to the Word of God? I think not. The concept of spiritual warfare is deeply rooted in Scripture itself.

How could the writer have overlooked dozens of biblical references to the ancient battle between good and evil? For someone who has spent his professional life studying and teaching biblical history, this oversight is strange indeed. Let's look at just a few of the passages that Christians have quoted and understood for centuries:

* "The Lord is a warrior; the Lord is his name" (Exod. 15:3; all Bible quotations are taken from the NIV).

* "Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle" (Ps. 144:1).

* "Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations, as he fights in the day of battle" (Zech. 14:3).

* "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds" (2 Cor. 10:4).

* "Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight" (1 Tim. 1:18).

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June 19 1995, Vol. 39, No. 7