The Sexual Revolution
The Gay Church, by Ronald M. Enroth and Gerald E. Jamison (Eerdmans, 1974, 144 pp., $4.95), and The Sexual Revolution, by J. Rinzema (Eerdmans, 1974, 107 pages, $2.45 pb), are reviewed by Jon R. Kennedy, director, Kuyper Institute, Stanford, California.
Together these books, which were released simultaneously, give the evangelical church and academy valuable new information on what Rinzema calls “the sexual revolution,” the rapidly changing attitudes in Western civilization toward sexual practices and topics that for centuries had been considered taboo. Enroth and Jamison write as a sociological research team based at Westmont College in California, an evangelical liberal arts institution, and Rinzema as a pastor-theologian and ethicist in the Reformed Church of the Netherlands.
Enroth and Jamison tell the fascinating and often surprising story of the Metropolitan Community Church, a denomination of forty congregations (at the time of their writing) that came into existence six years ago primarily to provide a worship community for homosexuals who professed Christianity in greater Los Angeles. The “mother church” there today claims to be the third largest church in that city, and other congregations dot the map from San Diego to Seattle and across the country to Boston.
The most surprising thing about the MCC is that on virtually every doctrine but sexual behavior, it is as fundamental as any evangelical church. The doctrines of the way of salvation, infallibility of the Bible, person and work of Christ, and evangelism its pastors espouse are all in line with the Pentecostal teachings on which the church’s founder, the Reverend Troy Perry, was educated. Some congregations even claim divine healing of physical infirmities, and they are active in street evangelism, prison witness, alcoholic rehabilitation, care for the elderly, and counseling for sadomasochists, a subgroup in the gay (homosexual) community who are considered pathological by MCC pastors, the authors say.
Their book is especially helpful in sorting out the “gay theology” devised by MCC spokesmen and analyzing the interpretation gays have placed on each passage of Scripture condemning homosexual activity. Although the authors admit to being out of their field in discussing theology, they do a creditable job of showing the inconsistencies in MCC hermeneutics and doctrine. This is a book every Christian in leadership should read. The question of what to do with the homosexual who claims to be a Christian but won’t or can’t—at least in his perception—abandon homosexual practices is one that every church should be prepared to face, unless it wishes to make it plain that anyone with problems of sexual identity is unwelcome there.
Pastor Rinzema faces it in his slender volume, but his conclusion is one that most evangelicals, including Enroth and Jamison, will not accept. He sees the rising tide of homosexuality as one of a half-dozen areas on which the Church must reconsider its “moral rules.” He admits that “one cannot locate a soft spot anywhere in the Bible for the practicing homosexual.” But he says that the reason for this is that the homosexual acts mentioned in the Bible are being practiced by heterosexuals, rather than “confirmed homosexuals,” and that the Bible didn’t distinguish between heterosexuals practicing homosexual acts and homosexuals following what is natural to them because “the confirmed homosexual was not recognized until roughly 1890.”
Herein lies the flaw in Rinzema’s doctrine of revelation, which unfortunately weakens his entire effort at reformulating evangelical morals on the basis of biblical principles. Using the reform principle articulated by Abraham Kuyper and popularized recently by Francis Schaeffer and the Toronto school of social reconstruction—that we must strip away the centuries-deep crust of Greek philosophical influence on Christian thought and see the world as wholly under God’s rule rather than divided between God’s domain and Satan’s—Rinzema rightly calls for seeing sexuality as the Bible sees it, rather than on the basis of moralistic, manmade contempt for the body, which the Bible never displays. But his weakness is in viewing the Bible itself as in error on such matters as this one.
Despite its flaws, however, the book has many suggestions that evangelicals can consider seriously. Rinzema thinks that Christians must continue witnessing to the highest principles of God’s teaching in the area of sex—namely, preservation of the family and human dignity—and his work is helpful in an apologetic sense, enabling readers to get the basic concepts straight and thereby argue reasonably and humanly for conservation of moral norms.
On War And Peace
A Strategy For Peace, by Frank Epp (Eerdmans, 1973, 128 pp., $2.45), Render Unto God, by Thomas A. Shannon (Paulist, 1974, 180 pp., $4.50), and King Jesus’ Manual of Arms For the Armless, by Vernard Eller (Abingdon, 1973, 205 pp., $4.75), are reviewed by Sterling Mehring, Bethesda, Maryland.
These three books about the Christian’s relation to his government, especially in the matter of war, are alike in their call for individual responsibility but dissimilar in nearly all other respects.
Of the three, Frank Epp’s A Strategy For Peace is the least useful. Reflecting traditional Mennonite pacificism, Epp engages in a kind of inhouse rambling on the peace movement, appropriately subtitled “Reflections of a Christian Pacifist.” The book lacks any sustained argument or constructive “strategy for peace.” The thesis that unifies these assorted essays and speeches is that the “foremost requirement for renewal [of the Church] is not smoother strategy, but purer, more righteous theology. A Theology of Peace.” Unfortunately, in attempting to avoid smooth strategy the author neglects to define and expand adequately on this theology.
Epp asserts that being more committed to Christ will ultimately mean being more pacifistic and more committed to non-violence. The rest of the book simply reinforces this assertion without elaboration and without any attempt at tough-minded thinking about its basis.
With Thomas Shannon and Render Unto God we move from the radical Reformation position to that of the traditional Roman Catholic, and from loose rhetoric to a well conceived and documented argument. Shannon is concerned with the problem of obedience faced by the Catholic citizen as a member of two institutions with differing values that sometimes conflict. Under what circumstances should these conflicts prompt the Catholic to disobey the state?
Shannon begins with a useful study on the background of church-government relations that surveys scriptural, theological, and papal teaching. He finds the dominant theory to be one that assumes the duty of the Church and the individual Catholic to obey secular authority a priori because it reflects the authority of God. This reasoning is based on a hierarchically ordered universe. But against this historically dominant position stands the subordinate but valid tradition of disobedience to the state. Shannon re-examines elements of this tradition and establishes a theory of selective obedience, one that he feels is compatible with the Roman Catholic tradition, especially in light of Vatican II. His examination of the political obligations in a democratic society and his ensuing definition of the sources of these obligations provide the framework for his theory of selective obedience.
Render Unto God will be as useful to inquiring Protestants as to thoughtful Catholics because it takes seriously the biblical teaching enjoining obedience to secular authority but does not opt for an easy or irresponsible submission. Evangelicals will find much of the discussion applicable in light of the recent emphasis on absolute submission in popular teaching. Particularly thought-provoking are Shannon’s sections on the movement from principle to practice, especially as found in the Roman Catholic Church. This serves as an instructive example of the tragedy of uncontemplated obedience. In this context he deals specifically with selective conscientious objection.
Vernard Eller at the outset warns the reader that “our book is going to be more than slightly goofy.” And so it is. King Jesus’ Manual of Arms For the Armless is easily the most entertaining as well as the most consistent attempt to arrive at a biblical understanding of war and peace.
In an informal, highly conversational, and sometimes humorous style, Eller lets “the Bible speak for itself.” In so doing he comes up with an alternative that transcends militarist/pacifist options. He feels the unified position that the Bible presents could be called the “Holy War.” It is a war fought by God to the end that “His Kingdom be established, and victory will come when all resistance to God ceases and His control is complete.” The enemy is not man but in man.
The fatal error, according to Eller’s interpretation, is not that man engages in violent conflict but that he engages in the wrong conflict. Man’s wars fought with carnal weapons, directed against other men and always for self-serving motives, will never bring about God’s ends. Such wars of hatred, whether they are fought by militarists or more subtly by anti-war activists, are all destined to be self-destructive and futile. Fighting God’s war God’s way means radical discipleship, following God much as a dancer responds to the leading of her partner. The essential weapon, Eller finds, is a faith that manifests itself in sacrificial love. The model of this “battle plan” is Christ the Suffering Servant. The reader is not encouraged to believe that this method will “work,” i.e., be successful, but it is God’s technique for subduing evil in the world.
This is a very provocative volume. Some questions may be raised concerning a certain crucial and unusual assumption that Eller makes in biblical interpretation, especially in the Old Testament, and that allows him to arrive at his conclusion. Nonetheless, what he says is well worth serious consideration.
BRIEFLY NOTED
I Pledge Allegiance, by Paul Minear (Westminster, 142 pp., $2.65 pb), Politics and Ethics, by Francis Winters (Paulist, 121 pp., $1.65), The Nation Yet to Be, by James Armstrong (Friendship, 128 pp., $2.25 pb), and The Patriot’s Bible, edited by John Eagleson and Philip Scharper (Orbis, 196 pp., $3.95 pb). Four of the many books anticipating the nation’s Bicentennial. Not strictly evangelical but suggestive of questions that all Christians should face. Suited for group discussions. Minear deals with topics like civil disobedience, amnesty, and national security. Winters briefly develops his ethical theory and then applies it to political situations, asserting that Watergate and Viet Nam involvement could have been avoided if the concepts of partnership and mutual dependence had been properly used. Armstrong criticizes American religion, stressing his definition of a truly Christian patriot. Eagleson and Scharper have arranged quotations from a variety of sources, including the Bible, under the key themes of the preambles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
Rolling Thunder, by Doug Boyd (Random House. 274 pp., $8.95), and What About Us Who Are Not Healed?, by Carmen Benson (Logos, 162 pp., $2.95 pb). Two unusual treatments of healing. Boyd, a researcher with the Menninger Foundation, writes about the healing art practiced by an American Indian. Benson grapples with the important questions that healers and the would-be-healed must face. Her answers are more helpful than the usual superficial responses found in many other books on this topic.
How in the World Can I Be Holy?, by Erwin Lutzer (Moody, 192 pp., $1.25 pb), The Call to Holiness, by Martin Parsons (Eerdmans, 96 pp., $1.64 pb), and Transformed Christians, by Milton Agnew (Beacon Hill, 208 pp., $2.95 pb). Three books on holiness from an evangelical point of view. Lutzer examines various areas of life such as relationships, giving, and entertainment and defines worldliness and holiness. Parsons tackles the motives, the experience, and the results of holiness. Agnew, a retired Salvation Army officer, presents twenty short messages from the New Testament on holiness.
No King But Caesar?, by William Durland (Herald Press, 184 pp., $5.95). The author, a Catholic attorney, argues that the New Testament teaches non-violence and that the Church must return to that ethic to be truly Christian.
Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period, by Richard Longenecker (Eerdmans, 248 pp., $4.95 pb). A leading evangelical scholar compares first-century Jewish and Christian writings on, and procedures for interpreting, the Scriptures.
Newness of Life, by Richard Howard (Beacon Hill, 266 pp., $5.95), and Paul and Jesus, by F. F. Bruce (Baker, 92 pp., $2.50 pb). Two evangelical studies on the thought of the Apostle Paul. Howard concentrates on Paul’s message, holding that the “indicative of grace and the imperative to holiness” constitute the essential message. Bruce’s study is basically a refutation of the liberal proposition that Paul’s teaching of the Gospel deviates from that taught by Jesus.
Toward a Biblical View of Civil Government, by Robert Culver (Moody, 308 pp., $6.95). A major first-rate exegetical study by a theology professor at Trinity seminary.
The Man Who Was Thursday, by G. K. Chesterton (Sheed and Ward, 199 pp., $7.95). Originally published in 1908, Thursday is the first of a fourteen-book series, The Permanent Chesterton, that the publisher plans to issue over the next five years. Johns Hopkins professor and journalist Garry Wills is editing the series. The first volume is one of Chesterton’s best known but hardest to find books. The well-written story reads like a suspense or spy novel. The mystery is not hard to figure out, but the book’s disarming simplicity, part of its charm, is the bait with which Chesterton hooks the reader to think about more serious matters, particularly Christianity.
Tyndale Bulletin 25, edited by A. R. Millard (Tyndale Press [39 Bedford Sq., London WC1B 3EY, England], 120 pp., £3 pb). Five essays by leading evangelical scholars, including “The Logic of Penal Substitution,” and “Old Testament Textual Criticism.”
Helping Your Handicapped Child, by George Paterson (Augsburg, 104 pp., $2.95 pb). This brief, informative book is excellent for parents of handicapped children, but there are good insights for everyone. Deals with the kinds of handicaps, how to face them, and how to help the child live as a whole person. A key chapter is “Finding Help Through Your Faith.” Good bibliography.
The Lausanne Covenant, by John Stott (World Wide, 62 pp., $.95 pb). An exposition of the covenant adopted at the last summer’s International Congress on World Evangelization. Each chapter ends with thoughtful study questions. The author was head of the drafting committee of the covenant.
First Century Judaism in Crisis, by Jacob Neusner (Abingdon, 204 pp., $4.50 pb), Introduction to the Intertestamental Period, by Raymond Surburg (Concordia, 200 pp., $8.95), and The Rebel King, by Henry Marsh (Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 222 pp., $7.95). Books on three different subjects, but all fill in some background to New Testament times. Neusner uses the story of a Pharisee rabbi to show what happened to Judaism in the first century and particularly what happened to Jews who did not become Christians. Surbury discusses the history, religion, and literature of the Jews from intertestamental times through the first Christian century. Marsh places the life of Jesus in the context of the whole picture of the Roman Empire of the time. All three books are a good aid to understanding Jesus’ life on earth.
Say Hello to Yourself, by Walter Wilson (Broadman, 140 pp., $1.95 pb). An explanation of Transactional Analysis for young people. Intended for group discussion in a Christian context.
Northern Ireland: Crisis and Conflict, by John Magee (Routledge, 196 pp., $10.95). A well-researched, historical approach to the present conflict. Magee explains and illuminates rather than taking sides.
T. S. Eliot: Out Of Step With The Times
Great Tom: Notes Toward the Definition of T. S. Eliot, by T. S. Matthews (Harper & Row, 1974, 219 pp., $8.95), is reviewed by Haven B. Gow, graduate student, Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts.
T. S. Matthews has furnished us with nothing new or instructive regarding T. S. Eliot’s poetry. In this widely promoted book, he is too much given to an inordinate preoccupation with the sexual details of Eliot’s life.
Thus, for example, Matthews contends that for Eliot “sex and sin were the same thing.… He … never altogether shook this reductio ad absurdum.” Why did Eliot have such a view of sex? The author, a former editor of Time, believes he has the answer: “Because his mothers and sisters were ladylike women, terrified of sex and disgusted by it, and ashamed of their female bodies. By precept and example, they encouraged his own shame.”
Matthews argues that Eliot suffered from an agonizing sense of guilt that was centered on “two peculiar obsessions which he stated as general truths: that every man wants to murder a girl; that sex is sin is death.” From a limited and distorting Freudian perspective, Matthews strongly suggests that Eliot sublimated his sexual passions into other activities—most notably, the writing of poetry.
True, Eliot did suffer from a horrendous first marriage; and it may be true that Eliot had a “puritanical” view of sex. Yet it would be a mistake to view Eliot as a sexually repressed man who wrote poetry, plays, and literary criticism to compensate for his alleged sexual inadequacies. It is far more accurate, it seems to me, to view him as a man of moral and intellectual courage who refused to surrender to the spirit of his age.
T. S. Eliot, it seems, was always out of step with the times. At a time when Charles Eliot’s “free elective” system at Harvard was gaining popularity, Eliot was fighting for the study of the classics. At a time when totalitarian societies were on the rise, he was arguing for “the idea of a Christian society,” one permeated with the spirit of religion and the spirit of the gentleman. And at a time when hollow men were seeking redemption through secular liberalism and self-worship, Eliot was insisting that men needed to renew religious faith and commitment.
What the times demanded, claimed Eliot, was “not a religion of vague idealism, of sentimental humanitarianism, of aimless liberalism, not a religion which had become a cloak for romantic nature worship, man worship, self worship.” All that, he insisted, is merely “the hair of the dog that bit you.”
Instead, Eliot maintained that we must accept and act upon the Christian world view, for “the Christian scheme seemed the only possible scheme which found a place for values which I must maintain or perish … the belief, for instance, in holy living and holy dying, in sanctity, chastity, humility, austerity.”
According to Matthews, Eliot’s journey from his own private “waste land” to a commitment to Christianity was inevitable. For there was in Eliot, he contends, a “craving for authority” that revealed itself in “the unquestioning obedience he rendered to the hierarchy that lorded it over his world: his mother, his father, his teachers, God. It was a trait that was to stay with him all his life.”
Yet this “craving for authority” does not necessarily lead—as Matthews suggests it does—to a commitment to Christianity or, for that matter, to any supernatural religion. The “craving for authority” also may lead to faith in totalitarian movements and leaders. Why was it that Eliot sought to satisfy his “craving for authority” through an allegiance to Christianity?
Eliot’s rediscovery of Christianity, it seems, resulted from his desire for what the Greeks so aptly termed “order in the soul.” There is “order in the soul” when one lives a life of virtue, when one’s thoughts and deeds assuage the intense demands of one’s higher nature. There is order in the soul when one’s thoughts and actions contribute to the perfection of one’s nature and lead one to the Author of one’s nature: that is, God.
Matthews suggests that Eliot’s quest for spiritual order and harmony motivated his decision to become a member of the Anglican Church at the age of thirty-eight. “The acts of exorcism he performed in his poetry were not enough in themselves to rid his swept and garnished house of the evil spirits that threatened to dispose him,” the author contends. For that, he continues, Eliot believed that “he had to have the assistance of superhuman power. No distant, deist, Unitarian God could have sustained him.” The God whom Eliot was seeking, and who is seeking us, is the “God who had become man, an infinitely gentle, infinitely suffering incarnate thing, recognizably human, unknowably divine.” For Eliot, then, Christ, the Church, and the sacraments furnished the necessary means to the attainment of order in his soul and—most importantly of all—his redemption.
