The Kitchen Classroom

Is home schooling making the grade?

In 1983, when CHRISTIANITY TODAY first reported on home schooling (“Schooling at Mother’s Knee: Can It Compete?”; Sept. 2, 1983), it was a little-known practice. Now, five years later, questions about its value are being met by a growing body of research and observation, the findings of which are surprising many of home schooling’s earlier critics.CTasked researcher Brian Ray to review the current data and update readers on the state of “kitchen classrooms.”

Home schooling may be the fastest-growing form of education in America today. Though estimates of the number of children involved vary widely—from about 250,000, according to the Education Commission of the States, to as many as one million, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal—the numbers are clearly on the rise. In one state (Colorado), the number of state-approved home schoolers increased from 54 during the 1980–81 school year to 835 during the 1987–88 school year, a 15-fold increase. “This is not an improbable estimate of the growth of the home-schooling movement in the nation,” reports the Hewitt Research Foundation, which is a major home-school support organization.

But with the growth of the home-school movement have come questions: Does home education prepare students as well academically as traditional systems? What about the social development of home-schooled children? Now, more than five years after the movement began to attract widespread attention, the questions are beginning to be answered. Research reports are stacking up, and so far the results they describe are impressive.

Several studies that consider both the cognitive and affective aspects of home learning are now available. In a national report entitled Choices in Schools, Chronicle of Higher Education correspondent Jack McCurdy found that home-school children achieved “as well or better” than those in conventional schools. Selwyn Feinstein, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, found that home-school children in New York have been scoring above average on achievement tests.

Test Scores

In addition to these anecdotal reports, there is a growing amount of empirical data that is confirming general observations. In Tennessee, for example, home-school children in grades two, three, six, and eight must pass the same standardized tests that are required of public-school pupils. Test results show home schoolers outscored public schoolers in math and reading by 4 to 16 percentile points.

At the other end of the country, Oregon requires all home-school children to take standardized tests and report their scores once a year. There, too, home-school children have outperformed public-school students. Based on the scores reported by December 1986, 24 percent of the home-school children scored in the ninety-first to ninety-ninth percentile range, and 76 percent of them scored above the fiftieth percentile mark.

More elaborate studies have also been executed:

• The Washington State superintendent of public instruction evaluated the progress of children in Washington’s experimental home-schooling program. The scores on the Stanford Achievement Tests (SAT) were compared for children in a number of cities and communities across the state. The study concluded that the majority of children (kindergarten through eighth-grade level) in the “parent as tutor” program scored average or above average in reading, language, and math.

• Jon Wartes, head counselor at Bothell High School, a large public school near Seattle, has executed several extensive studies of hundreds of home-school youth in Washington. His findings, based on achievement-test scores, indicate once again that home-school children scored better than their peers across the nation. For example, 1987 SAT scores showed that home schoolers “scored at or above the 50th percentile” in 104 out of the 120 test cells. The median score for home schoolers was at the sixty-fifth percentile on national norms.

• The Alaska Department of Education administers to its far-flung population a Centralized Correspondence Study (CCS), a program that is essentially home schooling with supervision by state education personnel. From 1981 to 1985, fourth-and eighth-grade CCS reading and math scores on the Alaska Statewide Assessment test ranged from 5 percent to 16 percent higher than those of their Alaskan peers who were not home schooled. And in a comparison based on 1985 Science Research Associates (SRA) data, home-educated students in kindergarten through sixth grade scored at least 6 percentile points higher than conventionally schooled Alaskans in all academic areas of comparison; the majority of these were above the eightieth percentile of the SRA norm. Grades 7 to 11 CCS students were 2 to 27 percentiles higher than the norm in 17 areas and equal in 3 others; the majority of these were at or above the seventieth percentile of the SRA norm.

Though such data do indicate that the academic achievement of home schoolers is equal and in many cases superior to traditional students, questions about academic quality cannot yet be put to rest, however. The data available must be considered with caution for several reasons. So far, the majority of the achievement scores come from children under 12 years of age, who often develop skills and gain knowledge more quickly and easily than those of middle-school or high-school age. These studies also do not consider, for example, that some home-school children were at one time in conventional schools. Have their achievement scores improved or worsened since being home schooled? Comparative data are not yet widely available. Nonetheless, there is as yet no indication that children suffer academically in any way from home schooling.

Home School Revisited

Five years ago CHRISTIANITY TODAY visited the home school of Pete and Char Yarema (“A Morning in a Home School,” Sept. 2, 1983). The couple spoke enthusiastically about the academic and spiritual benefits their three grade-school children were experiencing. Today, as their oldest enters high school-level studies and their youngest enters adolescence, the Yaremas are even more enthusiastic about educating their own children.

They still get lots of questions about their kids: Do they really perform as well as other children academically? What about their social skills? Do they make friends? Or play sports? Or interact with people who hold different beliefs?

However, Pete and Char don’t mind the questions. After six years of home schooling, their children—Kathy, now 15, Molly, 14, and Jonathan, 11—defy many skeptics’ notions about home schoolers.

“The people who are now our greatest backers … were in many cases wary about home schooling—until they spent time around our kids,” says Char, who assumes most of the teaching responsibility. “They see the kids are very normal and mature for their age. My mother, brother, and uncles, none of whom is a Christian and all of whom are public school teachers, are now enthusiastic about what we’re doing. It’s people who really don’t know our children who still ask questions. You can’t argue with results.”

Friends and flexibility

Kathy, Molly, and Jonathan have all made friends in the neighborhood, in church youth groups, handbell choirs, community sports teams, and bike mechanics and craft classes. And though friends and relatives expressed initial concern that much of the children’s day-to-day contact would be with older people—grandparents, women whose children they baby-sit, piano and art teachers who supplement their education—the Yarema kids see their social life as well rounded.

“People often seem to think that since I’m 15, the only people I can socialize with are high schoolers,” says Kathy. “I find that limiting. I know 27-year-olds, and they don’t just socialize with people in their twenties. They socialize with everybody. Home schooling has given us the flexibility to spend time with younger and older people, and I think that has better prepared me for dealing with people of all ages after I graduate from high school.”

As the children have grown older, Char has been able to build more and more flexibility into their schedules. On Tuesdays, for example, the Yarema children take turns spending time with their grandparents—not to take care of them, but to learn from them. During the past two years, Grandpa and Grandma have taught them to speak Polish, shown them how to change the oil in a car, and taught them about World War II from firsthand experience. On Wednesdays the girls leave home to baby-sit a set of triplets they have watched grow from five months to two-and-a-half years old.

“The child-development course I took in college could not compare to the hands-on training they’ve gotten,” says Char. “At one point Kathy and Molly were even keeping diaries to monitor the changes the babies were going through.” The children’s increased flexibility has given Char more freedom, too. “The biggest difference between home schooling now and when I started is that, though the material we’re covering is harder, the teaching is less intensive on my part,” she says. “The children have taken more initiative in their studies as they’ve grown older.”

“It was far more difficult as a young mom teaching several kids at home,” Char remembers. “Five years ago Jonathan was just learning to read, Molly was still getting her basics down, and Kathy didn’t know how to write a complete sentence. More than once I burst into tears, thinking, ‘Why did we think God was leading us to do this?’ But he was. And it was never so difficult that I seriously considered quitting.”

Has Char or Pete worried that one of the children may want or need to take a course they don’t feel qualified to teach? “The books we use present material so well that I wouldn’t be afraid of teaching anything,” says Pete. Char adds: “I’ve learned that it’s okay to run along with the kids sometimes. No teacher is required to know everything. There are a lot of great books, a lot of great libraries, and a lot of people, like the kids’ art and music teachers, who know more about certain subjects than we do.”

“Satellite school”

The Yaremas are held strictly accountable to Christian Liberty Academy, a private school that provides curriculum for approximately 22,000 home schoolers in more than 60 countries. As a “satellite school” of Christian Liberty Academy, the Yaremas are sent midterms, final exams, and report cards. Course loads are demanding. Kathy’s, for example, includes math, literature, history, economics, speech, Spanish, Bible, English, and six book reports from a suggested reading list composed largely of classics. Grading scales are tough: To get all As and Bs (which she does), Kathy must maintain at least an 87 percent average. The academy also requires students to take the standardized Iowa Basic Skills Test each year, on which the Yaremas, like many home schoolers, perform at least one and up to three grades higher than the national average.

Watching the children’s academic and social progress over the years, Char has found it easier to relax in her role as teacher. “Sometimes, like when I think about teaching two high schoolers next year for the first time, I still get nervous. But the longer we home school, the more confidence we have that it’s the right thing, and that God will continue to give us the grace to do it. Though every year is different,” Char says, “most of our biggest adjustments—learning that we had to say no more often to church and community commitments, getting used to having the children home all day—were made during the first year. If we hadn’t established good patterns then, we would never have made it this far.”

In search of school spirit

For Kathy, Molly, and Jonathan, too, school is even more enjoyable now than five years ago, given their growing freedom to integrate a variety of experiences into their education. They cite one-on-one teaching, not having to stay up late doing homework, and flexibility to meet different people and participate in different activities as the biggest current advantages of home schooling.

Do they miss social activities or school spirit? Kathy proudly models her Christian Liberty Academy jacket and answers no. In fact, she says, she has made friends among students from other satellite schools who gathered for an eighth-grade graduation ceremony at Christian Liberty last year.

Molly alone could come up with an emerging disadvantage: “Getting involved in a community sports league is not quite the same as getting involved in a school setting. One thing I miss is not participating in a gymnastics program.”

The Yaremas acknowledge that, while their home-school experience has been good, it may not be best for everyone. And they admit there are indeed limits to what they can accomplish.

“We cannot offer our children everything the public schools provide,” Char says. “They don’t have all the extracurriculars. But they have many advantages that kids in public schools don’t have, too. They haven’t wasted a lot of time in school wondering whether they should follow their parents and church or their peers. And somehow they are coming out normal, well educated, and, most important of all, strong Christians who know who they are.”

By Robert M. Kachur.

Social Concerns

There are also a number of questions about the social development of home-school children that have been frequently raised. Are not these children isolated from normal social contact by being schooled at home? How will they learn to get along with others? How will they learn to deal with other view-points?

Again, the available empirical data stack up in favor of home education.

• Wartes, in his extensive poll of Washington home-school students, also surveyed socialization. He found that 52.8 percent of the home-school children spent from 20 to more than 30 hours per month in organized community activities; 40 percent spent more than 30 hours per month with age-group peers outside the family; 68 percent spent 20 to more than 30 hours per month with children of other ages outside the family (some of the categories and times overlapped). Wartes concluded that home-school youth are not being socially deprived.

• Educator John Wesley Taylor attempted to address concerns about socialization by analyzing the relationship between home schooling and self-concept of children in grades 4 through 12. Taylor used self-concept as a measure because it is “closely linked with values, social competence, and self-evaluation,” and because of the importance of positive self-concept to effective learning. Taylor found (using scores on the Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale) that the self-concept of home-school youth was significantly higher than that of conventional school youth. The home schoolers’ overall score was 34 percentile points higher than that of the conventional school youth. “Insofar as self-concept is a reflector of socialization,” Taylor wrote in conclusion, “the findings of this study would suggest that few home-schooling children are socially deprived.” And according to Taylor, his findings agree with the observations of others who have studied home-school families.

• Psychologist Mona Maarse Delahooke compared fairly equivalent groups of 32 private school and 28 home-school children of about nine years of age. She found no significant difference between the two groups in reading, arithmetic, or intelligence scores. Likewise, both groups scored in the “well adjusted” range of the Roberts Apperception Test for Children.

One difference, however, did surface in Delahooke’s study: Home-educated children appeared to be less peer oriented than those in schools. (Children from private schools exhibited a significantly greater focus on peers and nonfamily individuals.) This finding tends to confirm that home schooling may accomplish one additional purpose many Christian parents want it to; reduce the influence of peer pressure.

However, questions of socialization also have yet to be answered completely. Again, caution is in order when examining the results of these and other studies. Measuring social adjustment is far more difficult than judging academic achievement. Many argue about the validity of the types of psychological instruments used in the studies. And not all observers like what they see in home-school students.

“I hear consistently from our [Christian] school administrators that it is difficult to take in a home schooler,” says Paul Kienel, executive director of the Association of Christian Schools International. “He’s a misfit; he’s not in stride.”

Kienel suggests that home schools should consistently work with Christian schools on activities such as field trips and Christmas programs, in using curriculum materials, and by participating in achievement testing programs. Then, Kienel asserts, home-school youth will be better adjusted to the high school or college in which they may later enroll.

Unfair Comparison?

Based on almost all of the research findings to date, the report card on home schools reveals good marks in what may be the two most important single areas: academic achievement and socialization. But the overall grade is much harder to determine. Judging the effectiveness of home schooling by comparing its children with those in conventional education may be like mixing the proverbial apples and oranges.

Home-school parents, the large majority of whom appear to be evangelical Christians, obviously hold a special interest in their children’s development. They are willing to make great personal sacrifices for their children’s total growth and development—academic, social, and spiritual. Given the parental support and commitment they experience at home, it may be that these home-educated children would have done just as well, academically and socially, in conventional schools.

It may be that all of the measuring and evaluating of home-school achievement scores, self-concept ratings, and social adjustment categorizations is a moot exercise in terms of defending and promoting this mode of educating children. Perhaps what is needed, in addition to the other comparisons, is for researchers to question home-school parents carefully to find out more precisely what their objectives are for their children. They should then follow the youth over a long term to determine whether home schooling is actually effective in meeting the home schoolers’ goals.

Research data present only one or two aspects of Christian home schooling. The love, the complex parent-child and sibling relationships, and the subtleties of learning in a home environment are difficult to describe with numbers. Even qualitative researchers find it difficult to depict accurately the interaction in the home-school family. And when they do, they have only described a handful of the thousands of families partaking of it.

“I work with parents and children on things that can’t be measured clinically,” says Gregg Harris, author of The Christian Home School and a popular home-school seminar speaker. “We’re dealing with a sense of identity and destiny in God’s purpose. Whenever you hear the saying that ‘values are better caught than taught,’ you are considering the territory in which home schools excel.”

Nevertheless, critics want data. And data are rolling in. Of all the research to date, none casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of home schooling. Home-school youth are consistently doing as well as or better than their conventional school peers in both academic achievement and social development scores.

Brian Ray is assistant professor of eduction at Seattle Pacific University. He is the editor of the Home School Researcher, a quarterly journal.

Ideas

Remonking the Church

Would a Protestant form of monasticism help liberate evangelicalism from its cultural captivity?

John R. W. Stott, the elder statesman of British evangelicalism, has stated recently that if he were young and beginning his Christian discipleship over, he would establish a kind of evangelical monastic order. Joining it would be men vowed to celibacy, poverty, and peaceableness.

• Senate Chaplain Richard Halverson, speaking last April to the Anabaptist Hutterian Brethren, said something “cataclysmic” is in the air. Perhaps it is the return of Christ or, less dramatically, a “mighty visitation of God upon the Earth, upon the church.” When it happens, “people in the evangelical community will have to move a lot more in the direction you [the Hutterians] are, more toward the simplicity, away from the materialism that I believe now has really infected badly the whole evangelical community.”

• Fuller Seminary philosopher Richard Mouw, speaking a few months back at Wheaton College, suggested that the church, and its evangelical sector in particular, would benefit from “remonasticization”—the clear and radical witness of a smaller body within the church, calling the entire church to a clearer and more radical witness.

Talk of monasticism from three thoroughly Reformed Christians is striking, and perhaps only coincidental. But perhaps it is not so coincidental. North American evangelicals are now acutely awake to the fact that they live in a post-Christian culture. There is much talk against violence, sensuality, and materialism. Yet even the most casual observer can see that the evangelical church is “infected badly” by all three.

The faint but (we hope) growing call for remonasticization is provoked by the recognition that our situation will not change merely with continuing talk. American mass culture presents the church with a challenge unique to its history. It is a culture dominated by the mechanisms and mentality of consumerism, and facilitated by mass media that penetrate every nook and cranny of the country.

In this milieu individual Christians, and the church as a collective body, cannot easily maintain their distinctive identity as a people killed and raised with Christ (Rom. 6:4–10). The dominant ethos is all pervasive, able to assume milder, less offensive forms for those who will not embrace it with its mask off. So if the church dislikes coarse “worldly” celebrities, let it create its own celebrities. If it is cautious about the worldly mania for numbers (stocks sold on Wall Street), let it develop its own mania for numbers (souls saved by the megachurch).

Thus the church must not only recognize its plight, it must imagine new and truer ways to address that plight. It is in this context that we issue a formal call for remonasticization in the church.

Defining Remonasticization

The remonasticization we would support would not be as tightly defined as traditional monasticism. It would not, for example, mean the stereotypical cluster of people retiring to desert solitude. Rather, it would look to the biblical antecedents for a select group of holy persons set apart to call all persons to holiness, such as the Old Testament Nazirites, Israel’s witness as a light to all nations, and Jesus’ calling of disciples to train and teach with the goal of drawing all Israel to the same discipleship. And, of course, there is the church itself—which is supposed to be no more than it hopes the world will someday be. In this context, remonasticization might take several forms, all oriented toward service in and to the world.

For example, young, unmarried Christians might find a “mission field” within the United States (in this case), settling here with the long-term vision of living together simply, agreeing on the radical witness of life together lived nonviolently, in poverty and celibacy.

Adopting a less radical but still crucial form of witness, families might gradually buy up homes in the same neighborhood, enabling them to meet daily for common worship and mutual discipleship.

Given increased longevity, Christians at retirement might form their own communities, devoting themselves to intensive worship and study of the Scripture, and to service in the world.

The main objections to remonasticization are clear and serious, but, we believe, surmountable. One major objection is that, if taken too seriously, remonasticization will render the church ineffective in the world. It is irresistible to reply that if the church is effective now, ineffectiveness must be impossible to achieve. But a more sober response is that the objective is to be distinctive, not distant. The church has nothing to offer the world if it loses the distinctiveness bestowed on it by its genuine living under the gospel.

A second objection is that remonasticization will lead to spiritual pride and snobbery, to an obsession with personal purity at the expense of being responsible in the world. This, too, is a serious objection. But remonasticization as we understand it has as its aim witness to Christ rather than personal purity. “Remonks,” if you will, intend centrally to point beyond themselves, not draw attention to themselves.

What Remonks Will Do

What, then, will remonks do? We can only introduce the idea; it will take others to expand on it and make it live. But we would suggest two endeavors as central for evangelical remonks.

First, they must learn and then teach others how to live our world into line with that of the Bible. Evangelicals heartily agree with Erich Auerbach’s observation that, “Far from seeking, like Homer, merely to make us forget our own reality for a few hours, [biblical narrative] seeks to overcome our reality; we are to fit our own life into its world.…” Yet it is far easier to read our world and our ways into the Bible than to truly understand the Bible and gradually live our world into congruence with its world. A friend tells us of his experience, meeting regularly with the same small group of highly committed Christians to read Scripture and then work at living by what they had read. It took four years, he reports, before that group could even begin to agree on where the Bible was taking them. How much harder it is, then, for suburban Christians who often move to a new city—and so a new church—every two years. Increasingly divided doctrinally and in our social and political visions, we evangelicals desperately need some among us who will patiently and enduringly attend together to Scripture, then begin to show us ways to live more faithfully to its story.

Second, remonks must recover the life of prayer. The pace of our society, with its intense and demanding variety of endeavors and diversions, disallows a life patiently and steadily centered on the one thing that really matters—the worship of God. Quiet times and morning devotions are simply added items on overcrowded agendas. We suspect a life of prayer will mean radically abandoning the busyness and fragmentariness of contemporary life. Once again we need communities that will model and point the way to this bold abandonment. Given the deep importance of freneticism and variety to the current ethos, genuinely living into prayer may be the church’s most subversive act.

By Rodney Clapp.

No-Fault Addiction

Ever since the attorney general branded nicotine a substance as addictive as heroine and cocaine, tobacco companies, cigarette “junkies,” and legal middle men have been wrangling over just what this latest smoke-busting salvo means. The critical (and theological) question: Is anyone responsible? The equally perplexing (at least for our relativistic society) corollary: Are we really expected to live by our choices? If recent misadventures are any indication, the answers to both questions may prove elusive and lethal.

On the corporate level, for example, R. J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, et al., are scrambling in the wake of public relations that are going from bad to worse. And they are now coming under the scrutiny of the U.S. House for possibly misleading Congress on the true medical implications of cigarette smoking. “The tobacco interests have never worried too much about the truth,” says Stanlon Glantz, a professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. And there is little reason to doubt him: Even as tobacco companies plan stateside survival strategies, they are pushing their product hard in the Third World—where warning labels need not appear on cigarette packages.

Surely such a money ethic is devoid of any sense of responsibility and has cost millions of consumers their lives. But what Koop’s addiction label has also opened for questioning is smokers’ own responsibility in willfully sustaining this ethic. A true addiction model acknowledges the individual’s role in substance abuse. But our cultural ethos is such that “blame” is a tough thing to accept: “It’s not your fault” is the conscience freer of the eighties. It is little wonder, then, that an increasing number of cases is being brought to court on behalf of men and women who have suffered the consequences of their own choice. Already in one bellwether case decided in June, a widower saw partial blame assigned to a tobacco company for the death of his wife, who died of lung cancer after 40 years of smoking.

Sorting through the responsibility question—a theological carryover from the Garden (Adam and Eve both denied blame for sin)—should provide the media and the American people ample proof of just how frustrating and fruitless establishing consistent public policy and behavioral patterns can be without an ethic of responsibility. Already critics have noted the contradictory policies between such “legalized vices” as smoking and drinking. (For example, federal law requires warning labels on cigarettes but not on alcoholic beverages; and while about a third of the states require insurance carriers to cover alcohol and drug-treatment programs, few carriers offer coverage for smoking-cessation programs.)

In this regard, the “helpless victim” debate surrounding smokers themselves will likely garner the biggest headlines over the next few months. After all, admitting that we live with the consequences of our own actions is a tough truth to inhale.

By Harold B. Smith.

Breaking into the Bubble

The opening song of The Witness, a musical by Carol and Jimmy Owens, made thin echoes as it bounced off the high domed walls of the “Bubble” at Collins Correctional Facility in western New York. The inmates, dressed in dark green coveralls, leaned forward in the folding chairs and strained to make out the words.

The director, Tony Chiarilli, had warned his group of 55 singers not to stare out at the captive audience separated from them by an open space of guarded floor. “It’s been really tough for us to break into prison,” Tony warned. “Let’s not spoil our professional image by being rude.”

But Tony’s eyes strayed often to the attentive audience, whose members were surprisingly young. As the choir went to work, he remembered the beginnings of the singing group in the winter of 1984. At the suggestion of another parishioner who had seen a performance of The Witness, Tony, a high school English teacher, built a cast of members from his church (Immaculate Conception, of Eden, New York).

Immaculate Conception’s pastor and assistant pastor were active in prison ministries, as were some choir members. Jesus’ words, “I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:36), served to nudge the group further. Tony called a meeting to discuss performing the play in prison. Most of the singers were willing to carry out Jesus’ instructions to visit prisoners, but they also felt nervous about performing for a large group of criminals. Would the inmates boo? Throw food? Capture the children (young singers and dancers) and hold them for ransom? These wild fears had to be talked out before the group agreed that the Spirit meant for them to sing to the inmates.

The next hurdle was permission to perform in the prison. At first the state insisted that only 20 people could sing. But eventually the authorities relented and consented to allowing the entire choir of 55 people to perform.

Time seemed an enemy on the evening of the play. Tony stressed the importance of leaving no later than 5:30 so everyone would clear security and have time for prayer and a warm-up song. The play had to begin at 7:30, ready or not. Most group members skipped supper in order to dress in their home-designed costumes, put on full stage makeup, and catch the rented school bus before it left the church parking lot. The foyer of the church that hectic evening echoed with nervous doubts.

“Does everyone have proof of identity?” Tony worried, mopping his face with a wilted sash.

“I had to pin my license to my cloak. Will the pin clear the metal detector?” one woman asked.

“I put my library card in my shoe. Hope I don’t sweat my signature off!”

“Where can I put my car keys?” A general concern.

One lady turned back the edge of her tunic to reveal three throat lozenges taped to the material. Think they’ll keep me in jail if they find these?”

“You can always swallow the evidence,” someone else joked.

The nervous group left the church parking lot on time.

A soft rain fell as the bus turned in at the prison gate. Nervous performers waited on the bus as armed guards took groups of 10 to 15 through security. The metal detector went off as one choir member stumbled through the narrow doorway. The buckles on her sandles contained too much metal. She removed them and went through again with no problem.

After everyone cleared security, they were ushered in small groups down a fenced walkway, through several gates that clanged shut behind them, past huge rolls of sharp barbed wire, and on to the Bubble, an amphitheater enclosed by plastic walls and ceiling. A revolving door admitted them one at a time to the evening’s stage—a hall big enough to play football in. The music had already started.

As the singers milled around and tried to adjust themselves to the problems of a wide-open stage, a prison host warned everyone to keep a clear distance from the inmates. (The group learned later that, had they mingled with the prisoners, the inmates would have had to undergo a strip-search before returning to the dormitories.)

The Witness Group joined hands in a large circle and offered prayers for a meaningful performance. The correctional staff members were invited into the prayer circle, but they shook their heads and adjusted the weapons and walkie-talkies that hung from each belt.

Now, the inmates listened, the correctional officers patroled, and the choir sang with gusto. The play is based on Peter’s witness to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. During an early scene, Mary, sung by Kathleen Kopryanski, held the baby Jesus (actually a Cabbage Patch doll, since a real infant was not allowed in the prison). Later the dancers performed, most of them children 10 to 14 years old, and the prisoners watched with close attention. “Do they miss their children, their sisters, their nieces?” Tony wondered.

During the Hosanna scene, a reenactment of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the singers flung fresh flowers into the audience. At this moment, everyone in the group caught a glimpse of the meaning of prison. The inmates, heedless of warnings from the alarmed guards, captured the flowers with glad cries and held them up to their faces.

When the play ended, the prisoners stood, waved their flowers, and would not stop clapping and whistling.

But the group wondered later if the applause meant mere appreciation for a night’s diversion from prison boredom.

The following week, a letter arrived from Collins. Tony read it at the weekly song practice.

“Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“I was present at your play The Witness at Collins in the Bubble. I thank all persons involved in the production and actual participation of such a well-done performance.… I was very moved. You made me feel like a person again.… I sincerely thank everyone involved for bringing some joy and the word of God into my life.”

By Cecile Bauer, a free-lance writer now living in Sacramento, California.

Nothing Fails like Success

J. I. Packer

When I was young, British, and pagan, I thought the sky was the limit and nothing I wanted to do was beyond me. My dreams ranged from being a star cricketer to a top comedian, with much bizarre stuff in-between. Since I am a perfectionist who hates to do anything badly, my dreams were always of spectacular success in every undertaking, and every failure hurt because it punctured my conceit.

When I became a Christian at university, I had the simplistic zeal you expect of a convert; so when I read Charles Finney, I loved him (I still do), and absorbed uncritically his boundless optimism as to what God can do if only his people are willing. When Paul’s letter to the Romans, followed by the Puritans, got into my heart, I began to see it was not as simple as that; for years, however, I went on thinking that spectacular success in one’s work for God was the right thing to pray for, and the only sure sign that one was serving the Lord as one should.

When I came to North America, I found that most churches, pastors, seminaries, colleges, and parachurch agencies and agents were in the grip of this secular passion for successful expansion in a way I had not met in England. Church-growth theorists, evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and others all spoke as if: (1) numerical increase is what matters most, (2) numerical increase must come if our techniques and procedures are right, (3) numerical increase validates ministries as nothing else does, and (4) numerical increase must be everyone’s main goal.

Four unhappy features marked the situation. First, big and growing churches were viewed as far more significant than others. Second, parachurch specialists (evangelists, college and seminary teachers with platform skills, medicine men with traveling seminars, convention-circuit riders, top people in youth movements, full-time authors and such) were venerated, while hard-working pastors were treated as near-nonentities.

Third, lively laymen and clergy were constantly being creamed off, or creaming themselves off, from the churches to run parachurch ministries, in which quicker results could be expected and where accountability was less stringent. And fourth, many ministers of not-so-bouncy temperament were returning to secular employment in disillusionment and bitterness, having concluded that the pastoral life is a game not worth playing.

It is not that I do not value parachurch ministries. Amid the complex cultural pluralism of our age, local churches cannot stockpile all the skills needed to minister to all types in any effective way. But these supplementary forces with specialized abilities must be seen as giving to the churches, so strengthening them, rather than taking from the churches and, in effect, impoverishing them.

Nor is it that I am against churches growing numerically. I recognize that a megachurch with powerful preaching and an adequate infrastructure for pastoral care has its place; and when I see church growth that is qualitative as well as quantitative, I am thrilled. But when numerical growth is idolized, so that churches and their clergy get rated failure for not achieving enough of it, my heart sinks.

You will understand, then, why I got excited a few weeks ago when there came my way a new book titled Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome. The authors, Kent and Barbara Hughes, pastor and pastor’s wife in Wheaton, Illinois, tell how the quest for numerical success nearly broke them, and how they learned that faithfulness, godliness, and loving service are the divine measure of real success in ministry. What they say out of their own experience is exactly what needed to be said; thank God they said it!

So I shall use my column this time round to recommend that every pastor first read the Hugheses’ book privately, and then go over it with his lay leaders. Doing this will not be less than a milestone, and might well be a watershed. “How good is a timely word!” (Prov. 15:23). The sickness of worshiping growth more than God is rampant; here, however, is a cure.

J. I. PACKER

Letters

Need for Community

The editorial “Reckless Spending” [June 17] cited lotteries and “shop ‘til you drop” as evidence of our national fiscal irresponsibility. As I write this, the Illinois lottery jackpot has hit $35 million amid a buying frenzy, as if to underline your thesis. I hardly need to comment on the obvious immorality of taxation by lottery, but I’ve always wondered what caused otherwise sensible people to buy lottery tickets. Your editorial provides a fascinating explanation—the need for community.

I think psychologist Stollek, whom you quoted, may be on to something. If he is right—that many feel a need to be part of a community whose values give meaning to their lives—you are right that this constitutes an interesting challenge to the church. Imagine! The church competing with the lottery to give meaning to our lives! Mind-boggling, isn’t it? DAVID C. AYERS

Quincy, Ill.

Three imperatives

I appreciated “Swaggart’s Worst Enemy,” by Rodney Clapp [Editorial, June 17]. Yet I don’t feel that the tone of the article intended to convey the idea that “the well-known disciplinary confrontation recommended in Matthew 18 …” is really recommended. The word recommended conveys the idea of arbitrary and optional. Jesus used three imperative verbs in the Greek text of the passage to which Clapp refers. These indicate that the church’s responsibility to restore a brother is a command from the Lord. If the church is to be obedient to Jesus and also the “healing circle” described by Clapp, it has no option as to whether it will or will not practice restoration of the brother. Church discipline for the purpose of “winning the brother” is part of costly discipleship for all brothers involved. Thank you for your words. Next time, remember the imperatives! BILL REDMOND

Los Alamos, N.M.

It bothers me that the body of men who were to take care of this matter was swayed by public opinion rather than getting their guidance from God. Denominational tradition be hanged.

MARY M. BOYD

Detroit, Mich.

“… We Shall All Be Changed”

I consider myself something of a liberated man. For years I have supported women in their efforts to break out of their stereotyped roles. As far as I’m concerned, they can speak from the pulpit, or serve Communion, or even handle the collection plates.

But liberation cuts both ways, and now, to my surprise, I’ve been asked to break the ultimate gender barrier, to enter that final bastion of sexual segregation: They want me to serve in the nursery. Proud as I am to be a liberated man, I admit I would be much more happy than proud to be liberated from nursery duty.

It’s not that I don’t like babies. I love them: seeing them, holding them. I don’t even mind hearing them. It’s the olfactory sense that presents the problem. In general, I never enter a room that I can smell before I see.

I used to be able to convince people that I was all thumbs, that babies would pay the price in pin pricks. But disposable diapers destroyed that excuse.

I tried to explain to the nursery recruiter that not a single reference to a man serving in a nursery can be found in any of the 66 books of the Bible. (I was desperate.) But I finally had to admit that there’s nothing wrong with the concept. So the day of my church diapering debut was set.

Now, I guess I have no other choice. I’ll make the sacrifice. I’ll pay the cost of commitment, I’ll bear the burden. I’ll apply for missionary service in Africa.

EUTYCHUS

That “liberal” press

Quentin Schultze launched an unfounded tirade on the press, or the so-called liberal press [“And That’s the Way It Is,” June 17]. But why would a “liberal” press try to defame John and Robert Kennedy by trying to connect them to the mob? Why would a “liberal” press follow Gary Hart’s playmate when the whole world knew he was on his way to becoming President? All this points to a conservative bias in the press, not a liberal one.

GREG WYTHE

Houston, Tex.

Excellent article. When is the evangelical community going to wake up to the fact that the prime example of this [liberal bias] is South Africa?

CORLIE GREY

Miami, Fla.

Leadership and compromise

I disagree with Kenneth Kantzer’s column “Lead, Lead, Lead” [June 17].

While I find it important in Christian leadership to compromise for the common good of those I work with, I disagree with the premise that compromise is acceptable in the areas of true spiritual convictions. If we are talking of compromising on whether the new addition to the sanctuary should be built for 600, not 800, this is expedient.

Moderating our actions in carrying out our convictions is acceptable if we approach it with a step-by-step strategy. An important example of this is in the area of abortion. For years we tolerated the existence of abortion in America. Although abortions were carried out in back-door clinics and laws existed to punish those who performed them, actual convictions and sentencing for these crimes were few and far between. Suddenly, in the face of Roe v. Wade, we found ourselves faced with the acceptance of abortion as an alternative to unwanted pregnancy. We must continue to fight for the eradication of abortion in our society, but we must take it a step at a time. For too long we have tried to conquer the whole mountain in one step, and we have miserably failed.

REV. GREG BENTON

Bothell, Wash.

Kantzer’s column, wherein he instructs leaders to moderate their actions in order to increase their effectiveness, causes me grave concern insofar as he has applied it to pornography. Just when increasing numbers of evangelicals across America are beginning to take seriously the biblical exhortation to be salt and light, and thereby step forward to confront the evil of pornography, he advises them to limit the focus of their active opposition to that with which their fellow Americans “would gladly unite.” While I agree that might result in broader-based coalitions and more effective social and political action concerning other public issues, evangelicals should not, and for that matter, need not, moderate efforts to combat pornography by drawing the line at child pornography.

The war against pornography will be won largely by overcoming ignorance and apathy among evangelical leaders. Once properly educated and equipped, they can then “Lead! Lead! Lead!” their flocks toward overcoming not only child pornography, but also obscenity.

C. BRADLEY KEIRNES

Phoenix, Ariz.

Yancey: Right on target

Philip Yancey’s column of June 17, “The Problem of Pleasure,” struck a familiar note. Although at the age of 16 I had yet to read Chesterton, the thought hit me that there were too many wonderful things in life for it to be the product of a random evolutionary process; God had to be real. This was my spiritual turning point. A few weeks later at an evangelistic film, I committed my life to Christ. Now, 15 years later, I am on the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ and a graduate student in philosophy. As I have the opportunity to speak on the problem of evil on various campuses, I always bring up the problem of pleasure.

Yancey’s essay was right on target.

GREG GANSSLE

Campus Crusade for Christ

Pawtucket, R.I.

Yancey says he has never seen a book on the problem of pleasure. Perhaps he can add this book to his reading list: John H. Gerstner, The Problem of Pleasure: A Primer (Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1983). Although only 27 pages, Gerstner always has something worthwhile to say. DAVID WEGENER

Madison, Wis.

Restoration a poor example?

As I read your news report [about Gordon MacDonald], “Good News for a Fallen Leader” [June 17], at first I was glad. Then I was sad to realize that we are confusing the difference between restoration to fellowship in the body of Christ with restoration to leadership.

Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” Paul is speaking of service, not salvation. All of this error concerning restoration seems to be a result of leaders wrongly dividing the Word of Truth. All of this restoration to leadership after adultery is a very poor example to Christian youth. Where in the New Testament was any leader who fell ever restored to leadership? Today’s church is corrupt and without power just like the days before the Reformation. We restore the big shots and forget those who were hurt by them. Many who are involved in the work of the Lord seem to lose sight of the Lord of the work. I am deeply concerned.

JACK WYRTZEN

Word of Life Fellowship, Inc.

Schroon Lake, N.Y.

I was overjoyed to read “Good News for a Fallen Leader.” I commend Gordon MacDonald and his wife for their faithfulness to God’s Word and to those who stood with them during a very difficult time. After we’ve seen and heard so much of those who were, at least till now, unwilling to submit themselves to brothers in the Lord for restoration, your news article was a breath of fresh air. I’m only sorry it didn’t get a front-page spread. MacDonald’s restoration to the gospel ministry after submitting himself to church discipline for restoration shows the power of the grace of God in the sinner and in the church.

REV. DENNIS MADEIRA

New Life Community Church

Dallas, Pa.

Drugs not an issue?

My evening news tells me the number-one concern of Americans is the drug problem. I read your “CT Poll: What Do Christians Want from the Candidates?” [News, June 17]. I searched, but found not one word about drugs. Can’t we expect your magazine to deal with the most pressing issues?

ALICE M. BENSON

High Teens

Albuquerque, N.M.

Care for the body

With reference to Phillip Yancey’s article “Death Whispers” [May 13], I know some for whom a health club is not a “pagan temple.” Rather, it is a needed and disciplined way, first of all, to care for themselves. Indeed, their focus is on their body, but not for physical reasons. Their membership is to preserve only one part of themselves. Their sharpened and tuned body is necessary to be a better steward of their life and calling: their thinking can be clearer, their actions more zestful, and their prayers more intense. So, however you do it, care for your body is an important part of serving your Lord. It is one way to show your thankfulness for his gift of life.

DUANE E. VANDERBRUG

Your article “Death Whispers” meant a lot to me. At the ripe old age of 36, I’ve already lost two friends to cancer. Last week on my job as a home health aide, I was asked for the first time to sit with a man about to die. There was nothing I could do but sit, think, and occasionally pat his shoulder as he gasped for air. As I sat there, I remembered sitting with my sister through her labor. How similar the two seemed: heavy breathing; waiting, with little to do but comfort. On the other side of labor was great joy as a beautiful baby was brought forth. On the other side of death—for the believer—great joy as we slip into Jesus’ open arms!

MARY KLING

Sicklerville, N.J.

China’s church leadership

I read the news report of Billy Graham in China with interest [June 17]; Ed Plowman seems to suggest there are two major concerns facing the Chinese church: (1) lack of seminary-trained clergy, and (2) the graying of leadership.

The two are related, of course, because they both focus on leadership, a topic of extreme importance to the church. However, scripturally speaking, we ought to rejoice at the “graying of the church.” Church leaders were called elders for a very good reason—they were elders—gray beards.

The leadership crisis is not in China but in Western countries that try to make elders out of youngers, and who replace equipping people in the context of the caring Christian community with a graduate education that majors on minors. GARY R. SWEETEN

College Hill Presbyterian Church

Cincinnati, Ohio

In the Beginning, Editors …

The bold-faced headline on this month’s cover (“How It All Began”) refers, of course, to Creation—the focus of a lively Christianity Today Institute forum held last December in Chicago. However, the idea for making the mechanics of Creation a CT cover story began long before that day-long meeting.

At one of our early 1987 senior editors’ meetings, the afternoon’s discussion revolved around questions of origins and how they were leaving bitter feelings on Christian campuses across the country—not to mention some professors out of work. Did God create the heavens and Earth in six literal days? Were there two creations? And so forth.

While such questions have historically been the flashpoints of this controversy, we decided it was again time for ct to deal with that controversy in depth—carefully and cautiously. Our challenge was to find articulate spokespersons representing a variety of positions on the Creation—each speaking from a solid Christian perspective, yet coming to different conclusions regarding the relation of science to biblical interpretation.

This we did; and with the involvement of senior editor and institute dean Kenneth Kantzer, the give-and-take on that day was “no-holds-barred,” but cordial—the common bond of faith proving stronger than individual differences.

HAROLD B. SMITH, Managing Editor

A Remedy for Christian “Homophobia”: Coercive Enlightenment

Religious liberty has been under relentless assault in recent years. Cases have sought to banish the Ten Commandments from children’s classrooms, crèches from town greens, and Bible studies from both public schools and private homes. But now, I fear, a new line has been crossed: A District of Columbia court has ordered a Roman Catholic institution to pay the bill for homosexual dance mixers.

The case, which has aroused surprisingly little interest among evangelicals, began eight years ago. A student organization, the Gay People of Georgetown University (GPGU,) demanded recognition and funds from the university in order to sponsor gay social events and promote homosexual education. Georgetown refused, arguing diplomatically that “while it supports and cherishes the individual lives and rights of its students, it cannot subsidize this cause because it would be an inappropriate endorsement for a Catholic university.”

GPGU sued, alleging illegal discrimination. It turns out that, under the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act, no organization can legally deny benefits to anyone based on “sexual orientation discrimination”—a term it defines as “male or female homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality, by preference or practice.”

At the initial hearing, the D.C. Superior Court sided with Georgetown. The court agreed that the general constitutional guarantee of religious freedom took precedence over Washington’s Human Rights Act.

GPGU appealed. And last November, the D.C. Court of Appeals reversed the decision, concluding: “The District of Columbia’s compelling interest in the eradication of sexual orientation discrimination outweighs any burden imposed upon Georgetown’s exercise of religion by the forced equal provision of tangible benefits.”

Translated out of legalese, this means the court believes guaranteeing homosexual rights to be so central to government’s role that it outweighs the right of religious institutions to distribute their money according to their beliefs. Thus, a local, 13-member city council was able to pass a simple ordinance, arbitrarily determining Washington’s “compelling interest”—and, sweeping aside 200 years of established constitution protections, a local court enforced it.

This is frightening. After all, what government bureaucracy doesn’t think its own interest is “compelling”?

The court did affirm that Georgetown need not give formal university recognition to GPGU, acknowledging that it could not determine what the university should think about homosexuality (though there is the implication that they would if they could). But it did force the university to further the District’s vision of equality by requiring that it finance its gay student organization.

The attitude seems clear, if not stated baldly: “Though your doctrine—to which you are entitled—is backward and unenlightened, at least we can make you behave in a progressive and enlightened fashion.” But as constitutional scholar (and Georgetown professor) Walter Berns commented, “… what qualified an American court to pass judgment on the validity of a moral teaching?”

Though the decision applies only in the District, it raises disturbing implications.

First, if this type of judicial reasoning prevails, any religious institution will be subject to the same intrusions wherever there happens to be a local anti-discrimination law that includes provisions for homosexuals. If in Illinois, then Wheaton College. If in Virginia, then CBN University. If it becomes part of national civil rights legislation, this religion bashing could blanket the country.

Second, the decision raises the prospect that other state interests might be accorded similar treatment. The reasoning suggests that any “compelling” government interest outweighs religious interest, no matter what doctrines get trampled. What of the church that ordains no women pastors? Or the Jewish seminary that admits only Jews?

To follow the logic of the D.C. decision, religious freedom is reduced to choosing prayers or humming hymns rather than deciding whom the church can hire or what groups a religious institution can support or fund. Religious institutions can be required by law to reflect every so-called civil rights trend of the moment—at least when it comes to the provision of benefits.

With so much at stake, you would expect Georgetown to appeal to the Supreme Court. Astonishingly, it did not. The university, like a man boasting of the necktie used to hang him, proclaimed the decision a victory. Since the court required the university not to recognize the gay group, just fund it, Georgetown announced it had won an important point, and could therefore give up the fight and set about to heal and rebuild.

Besides, as Georgetown’s president wrote foggily in a 10-page letter to alumni, “The University’s presence in the delicate area of teaching is needed, but may well also appeal to those to whom it is directed both as an interference and a disputable one at that.” (Heaven forbid that the church might call sin “sin,” and thus “interfere” with anyone’s free choice.)

Maybe Georgetown just suffered from legal exhaustion; granted, it fought the case for eight years. But it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the school caved in to the pressure of “enlightened” opinion. No institution wants to risk appearing to the Washington community as a bastion of homophobia. That’s a disease as dreaded among the city’s media and political elites as AIDS.

But one thing is clear. Georgetown’s surrender in refusing to contest the court’s decision has allowed this intrusive legislation to stand for any religious institution in the nation’s capital. Landmark court decisions of this type, though not directly binding elsewhere, are often used to support legal arguments in similar cases. They provide a precedent, a model of sorts.

Georgetown contends that it stood its ground, that the court’s decision was a partial victory. A few more victories like this, and there will be precious little religious liberty left to defend.

The Transformation of Trash

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

—Genesis 2:8

Summerville, Georgia, tucked away in the northwest corner of the state, is an unlikely environment for an artist of national standing. It is, nonetheless, the home of the Reverend Howard Finster, a visionary, a prophet—and an artist of national, even international, reputation.

As it is with prophets, Finster was seen as an oddity by his community even after fame had found him in the New York and Chicago art worlds. He had turned his two-and-a-half-acre backyard into a mysterious land someone dubbed “Paradise Garden,” explaining his method thus: “I took the pieces you threw away and put them together by night and day washed by Rain dried by sun a million pieces all in one.”

He has spent years completing a five-level Folk Art Church next to the garden. He told this author that at one point he had it checked for safety by a group of architects from the University of Georgia. When they asked for his plans, it became clear the project was mapped out in Finster’s head, not on paper. It was, nonetheless, pronounced safe. Ann Oppenhimer reports (in “Sermons in Print”) that a neighbor told him his church looked like a wedding cake. Not to be bested, Finster told her that her house looked like a peanut-butter sandwich. It was only after he went to California to appear on the “Tonight Show” with Johnny Carson, and his name was in TV Guide, that his community accepted his celebrity status.

A “Second Noah”

As it is with prophets, Finster claims to see things others don’t: “I have visions of other worlds. I been out there I seen them out there I am here as a second Noah to point the people to the world beyond.”

He reports encounters with angels and superhuman figures, all fitting into a larger matrix of vision with one overriding message: “Repent.”

The art objects themselves have a power, charm, and an investigative visual sophistication that some would say places them beyond folk art and into mainstream American art. Using any available material and weather-resistant enamel paint, he transforms surfaces with words and patterns to make his images (from animals to angels, from hell to heaven, from Elvis to Jesus) and messages clear. The range of his output reflects his fertile mind: easel painting, boxes filled with layers of painted and decorated plexiglass and mirrors that tease the eyes, assemblages of casted cement.

No Art Without The Message

Finster was, however, reportedly dropped from one Washington, D.C., gallery that got tired of him calling them “infidels.” They wanted the art without the message—but that is not possible. As Peter Morrin of Atlanta’s High Museum has said, “His paintings and constructions are not reasoned depictions contrived with creative detachment, but representations of belief. Finster fashions neither illusions nor metaphors of experience, but pressing, urgent visual exhortations to a Christian life” (in “Howard Finster in Context”). “All people are on the road of eturnety no one can turn back Get ready to meet Jesus Christ face to face,” declaims a sign on the side of his studio.

Finster sees his studio as a great fountainhead from which his message and visions flow. And flow they do. The Talking Heads rock group collected his work for years, and they had him design an album cover. After it went gold, The Atlanta Journal/Constitution reports Howard as saying, “That’s 35 million messages.” As he wrote on The Great Wild Duck, a piece he did in 1984 (numbered as 3000 and 238 works of art), “Begening here in Georgia to the four winds of this earth from my last work of art to my craddle of birth. It will take a life time working day and night to reach the comers of this dark world with my little light.” As of August 1987, he had made “6000.775 work of our time,” and I have an eight-foot Jesus figure that is not numbered.

A Witness To Redemption

Howard Finster’s significance for Christian viewers (as well as for the larger community of mankind) is centered on Paradise Garden, the harbinger of his message of repentance. The thousands of objects he has scattered throughout the world can best be seen as fragments radiating from this essential core of his vision.

Walking past the ducks and chickens among the free-form concrete boulders and rusting piles of our industrial castaways, ordered and transformed by a visionary mind, one cannot help thinking of the garden eastward in Eden. To encounter oneself in the mirror fragments in a rickety shed is to be reminded how far we have fallen. Still, the transformation of trash, which is Paradise Garden, is witness to the possibility of redemption. As the trash can next to the church reminds us, “Jesus Saves.”

Despite his apparent craziness, Howard Finster proclaims a sane message: that we have come from somewhere, that we are going somewhere, and that we are not alone. Often he allows us to see these facts thorough the temporal use of space travel. He is an eternal child playing among the starts: “Through the scattered clouds I hear his voice, I know his wonderful call, when I reach the ceiling of gravity near the floor of space above, where every star is shinning bright, in the deep blue sky above … I can take a leap ten thousand miles and swing on the vines of grace, on my way to the City of Gold, skipping along through space …” (from Howard Finster’s Vision of 1982).

Howard Finster’s Paradise Garden is a signpost pointing the way to other worlds. It both looks back to the Garden of Eden and forward to a city and a garden promised by God: “To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7).

Now 71, Finster is slowing down—but only by his standards. He still works night and day. “My life has been a living sacrifice for you all I have no retirement,” he tells us. His compulsion continues to be fed by knowing “… some will close their curtains some will pull down shades some will hear my mesage and they will have it made.”

By Edward C. Knippers, Jr., an artist living in Arlington, Virginia.

The Words Always Come First

Author E. Margaret Clarkson has gathered nearly 70 years of her hymn texts into A Singing Heart (Hope Publishing Co.). These texts are used widely and include “We Come, O Christ, to Thee,” “The Battle Is the Lord’s,” and “So Send I You.” Her 1982 text “God of the Ages” placed first in a ct hymn contest and is included in many new hymnal editions.

In her writing, the Canadian Clarkson insists on simplicity. Having taught in grades 3–8 (with choirs to grade 10), she learned that a “teacher has to streamline and make it hum.” She wants her words to have impact “on the first bounce,” with “wide, deep, high, thoughts in simple language.” Her desire for simplicity goes so far as to “wonder why the Good Lord made the Scriptures so difficult.”

In a sense, it was simplicity that temporarily stopped Margaret Clarkson from writing: she ceased writing hymns in 1960 when “mindless ditties” became popular. Not until the generation of the sixties began “discovering great hymns” was she willing to resume her efforts. Now she feels her best hymns are those she has written since 1973—when she “realized hymn writing is a ministry.” Her personal favorites are “God of Creation, All-Powerful,” “The World Is Hushed in Wonder,” “Lord of Our Dawning,” “In Hope Our Hearts Rejoice,” and “Rejoicing in Hope We Wait for Our King.”

The Making Of Fine Hymns

A Singing Heart begins with a series of essays that reveal both the technique of this hymnodist and her insights on what makes a fine hymn.

Clarkson is one female writer who shuns “inclusivist” language—for its “irregular and distorting rhythms.… Certainly ‘humanity’ has rhymes—‘urbanity,’ ‘profanity,’ ‘insanity,’ and so on. Gilbert and Sullivan had a ball with such inanities—but they were not writing hymns,” she writes. Other essays reveal an equally personal and opinionated approach. Even Clarkson’s prose has a lilt and a bite!

The essays reveal a philosophy of work and a rationale for thoughtful (but simple) hymnody:

Write hymns that praise. Write doctrine. Avoid extraneous thoughts. Write a last stanza that cannot be omitted. If a writer needs inspiration, she suggests he or she should “cut down and split a tree by manual labor.”

The body of the book is the hymn collection. (There is no music included, but common tunes are suggested for many of the texts.) An interesting footnote follows a revised version of her hymn “So Send I You.” The early version, which was popularized by John W. Peterson’s setting, dwelt on the “difficulties and privations of the mission call.” In the new version the author has rejected that text in favor of one that is more biblical and positive, one that takes triumph and glory into account as well.

For Clarkson, words always come first. A tune should “illuminate the text”; too many “confuse it,” she insists. When asked about a complex hymn such as “Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise” (not one of hers), she said, “A good tune can make a hymn accessible even if it is fairly involved theologically.”

Clarkson prefers pre-existent tunes for her hymns. Is that a distraction? No: “The type of tune I choose transcends its text; my hymns transcend the tunes.” Indeed.

By Richard J. Stanislaw, professor of music and vice-president for academic affairs at Taylor University.

Book Briefs: July 15, 1988

The Medium Is The Problem

Unplugging the Plug-In Drug, by Marie Winn (Penguin Books, 206 pages; $7.95, paper). Reviewed by Quentin J. Schultze, professor of communication, Calvin College, and author of Television: Manna from Hollywood?

Karl Marx called religion the opiate of the people. Marie Winn credited television with the same dubious distinction in her first book on the subject, The Plug-In Drug, and now offers a cure for the habit in Unplugging the Plug-In Drug.

In her earlier book, Winn reviewed considerable evidence that showed television is addictive and makes people passive. The result is what novelist Jerzy Kosinski (Being There) called a “nation of videots.”

We are to thank Winn for shifting the focus of public discussion from the content of TV programs to the medium itself. The Christian community has frequently complained about sex and violence, while largely ignoring the impact of the medium on families, schools, and the nation.

As Winn argues, TV competes with other activities for our precious time. All of life is affected: play, sex, study, political participation. Although Winn does not address the issue, believers might also consider the impact of television viewing on our prayer life. Is there time for God in the average home where the set is on over seven hours a day? And what of the effect of TV on the quality of church fellowship?

National surveys are quite revealing. If Americans had more free time, they say they would most like to spend it with friends and relatives. How do they actually spend their available time? Watching the tube.

Tv “Turn-Offs”

Unplugging the Plug-In Drug is a handbook for schools and families that want to kick the TV habit. It’s a book so loaded with common sense that one wonders why anyone had to write it. The book is engaging and readable, thanks largely to the hundreds of excerpts from interviews with, and diaries of, people who have kicked the habit. Winn offers both advice and encouragement based on successful and unsuccessful “No TV Weeks” held in schools and homes around the country.

Winn cautions families about scheduling a Turn-Off during school vacations, high-stress periods, and special sports events, such as the World Series and the Super Bowl. She encourages families to load up on library books and other reading material before turning off the set. Winn also suggests that families decide in advance on a reward that they will share after a successful Turn-Off.

The book provides teachers and school administrators with helpful guidelines for organizing classroom TV Turn-Offs. Winn offers techniques for getting parents involved and motivating students. And she includes a list of classroom activities, such as interviewing people who grew up before the advent of television and charting family viewing habits.

Winn writes with evangelistic determination. She hopes to convict people of their TV sins and get them on the road to video sanctification. After reading pages of testimonies from happy converts, it is hard not to join her church.

Crash Diet

If Winn’s book has any major flaw, it is in the thesis that a “Turn-Off” is the best way to untangle TV from our lives. Dieters sometimes starve themselves for a few days, only to put on pounds later. Winn rightly admits that a “No-TV Week” is only a forum for increasing awareness of the problem and motivating people to do something about it. But her book lacks what humankind needs in a fallen world: a world view and lifestyle with the Creator at the center.

Winn offers few ideas about what to do when the set goes black. Reading is high on her agenda—it should be. But there are many more avenues to be explored. What about volunteer work and Christian service? What about worship and celebration? What about prayer and meditation?

In the TV age, even anti-TV campaigns can resemble the wrap-it-up-in-one-half-hour world of show business. Sanctification is a lifelong process. Revivals may get us on the right spiritual highway, but without ongoing support and encouragement the car will soon run out of gas.

Winn never suggests it, but I wonder if the church is not the ideal institution for fostering the balanced and edifying use of television. Or is TV viewing too “personal” for most local congregations to risk pronouncing the lordship of Jesus Christ over it? A courageous church will find Winn’s book an excellent place to begin.

Plymouth Rock Revisited

The New England Soul, by Harry Stout (Oxford University Press, 398 pp.; $32.50, cloth) and Worldly Saints, by Leland Ryken (Zondervan, 281 pp.; $18.95, cloth), reviewed by James Laney, pastor of New Life Church in Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

H. L. Mencken provided the modern definition of Puritans as people who have a deep, foreboding fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. Two books have appeared recently that go a long way toward revising that stereotype: The New England Soul by Harry Stout, a straightforward and readable account of the early American Puritans; and Worldly Saints by Leland Ryken, a highly informative survey of English and American Puritan ideals.

Stout, a professor of American religious history at Yale University, offers a thorough study of the interaction of the preacher, the preached word, and the larger society in Colonial New England. What emerges is a portrait of the American Puritans as intense and godly Christians, eclipsing their current reputation as killjoys best noted for their scarlet letters and witch hunts.

Stout, however, is not the pioneer of such a re-evaluation. In the 1930s and 1940s, Perry Miller of Harvard set forth a perception of the Puritans that diverged widely from the prevailing view. Miller, however, has not been widely read. With his book, Stout has built upon Miller’s foundation while fashioning a story more accessible to the general reader.

Miller discovered in the minds of the first Puritan settlers profound conceptions about their role as the “redeemer nation.” Moreover, it appeared that these conceptions were, over time, so deeply woven into the American mind that to this day they inform, often unconsciously, a national dream of messianic destiny.

Preacher As Power Broker

Stout’s book, subtitled Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England, introduces five generations of preachers who bear the burden of bringing this dream to fruition. In the beginning, these men were the pre-eminent power brokers of their day, wielding an influence even more pervasive than today’s modern media. They had come with a calling and a purpose in mind; they were intent on seeing it achieved. Passing the torch to the next generation was not easy and was never a complete success, but the original message and vision of a redeemer nation proved malleable and powerful through the rapidly changing circumstances leading to the Revolutionary generation.

Stout tells a good story. Besides presenting careful research, he has drawn on a good imagination to bring the past alive. As we follow the narrative from first landing to First Continental Congress, the roots of the nation begin to appear. Meanings for America emerge, ones that prevail to this day, though dressed in garments quite different from those of the first days of “a city set on a hill.” We see the impact of New England’s religious culture on the evolving American republic. We learn that for New Englanders the Revolution was “first and foremost a battle to preserve their historic identity and messianic destiny.” We watch the common people emerge from a world based on deference and fixed hierarchical relationships to become America’s most distinctive asset.

And we learn that, contrary to the current scholarly assessment, there was not a secular drift among the ministers from the first generation to the fifth. “However much social theories and political circumstances might change, the demands of the gospel remained fixed for fifth generation ministers.”

An Identity Of Destiny

In all, the Puritan history is a story of the interplay of power, piety, and liberty: how social roles changed and how these words took on new meanings. The story comes to light because Stout has taken the time to read thousands of the unpublished sermons of the period, as well as the published ones that until now formed the basis for interpreting the Puritan experiment on these shores. Such a story—and the need to understand it—is relevant today. The interplay of power, piety, and liberty is still an underlying dynamic of our American society.

If Miller, and now Stout, are correct, there is a sense of destiny for America. From the beginning, it has been woven into our national identity. Ignoring its roots leads us astray. Embracing its ideas without knowledge creates havoc. Proper understanding of the beginnings of our nation can only enhance the work of those in all walks of life who now labor to chart the future course of this nation.

Puritan Sampler

For a general introduction to Puritan thought, Worldly Saints: The Puritans as They Really Were provides an excellent starting point. Ryken, professor of English at Wheaton College, offers a sampling of Puritan ideals and aphorisms on a wide range of topics.

Ryken has pulled representative excerpts from the writings of the mainstream Puritans and gives the reader a balanced and honest presentation of what they stood for, including both strengths and weaknesses. More important, he also explores what their ideas can mean to a modern believer.

The layout of the book is well suited to its purposes. For the main part, it is organized by topics: how the Puritans perceived personal concerns such as work, marriage and sex, money, the family; religious concerns such as the church and worship, the Bible, and preaching; and social concerns such as education and social action.

Ryken makes it clear to the reader that this approach is merely a convenient way to gain a better understanding of the Puritan stance. In reality, the Puritans did not compartmentalize their lives. For them, Christ unified all aspects of living.

This unified view of Christian living is one of the hallmarks of Puritanism. Ryken seeks to resurrect it and set it in context so that today’s reader might partake of such a rich legacy, and perhaps incorporate it into his or her own daily living. Of equal importance are the failures of Puritanism, some of which Ryken enumerates as warnings to all sincere and zealous believers.

Each chapter ends with a brief summary and a list of suggested reading on the topic at hand. It is an unpretentious study, obviously grown out of Ryken’s deep love and admiration of the Puritans and what they represent.

That Ryken is an English professor and not a theologian or historian is evident. Although he handles historical and theological aspects of the Puritans quite well, it is his appreciation of language and the arts that enhances this work. The captions under the illustrations, for instance, are far more perceptive than what normally fills such space.

No Room For Critics

Anyone who reads this book will gain a proper introduction to, and, no doubt, a healthy appreciation of, the Puritans. It should be kept in mind, however, that as inspiring as the Puritans can be (witness J. I. Packer’s excellent foreword), there were some deeper weaknesses in their position than those highlighted in this book. The shortcomings of the Puritans that Ryken discusses are surface manifestations of their underlying failure to comprehend fully and experience the work of the Holy Spirit. There were those in their midst, on both sides of the Atlantic, who perceived this inadequacy and sought to address it. The mainline Puritans did not, however, receive their critics at all; rather, they harried them out of the congregation.

In retrospect we can understand, without excusing, such behavior. The Puritan divines had devoted ample space in their writings to discussions of grace and the Holy Spirit and felt they had afforded such doctrines a balanced place in their view of godly living. At the same time, however, these Puritans were, without knowing it, a transitional people seeking to keep alive the medieval world view of order and unity in the midst of an emerging modern outlook of tolerance and independence.

Their critics, on the other hand, were unwittingly tossing aside the medieval and embracing the modern as they sought to accelerate spiritual renewal. Ryken points out that holding apparent opposites in tension was a Puritan strength. And the Puritans succeeded in keeping a well-tensioned balance in many areas of their lives. But the historical shift from medieval to modern was simply too monumental and shattering for them to integrate successfully.

The nobility of these men and women is that they tried. The Puritan legacy is rich and instructive. Those now known as Congregationalists and Presbyterians can most directly trace their ancestry back to these godly forebears. And Quakers have their roots in the more radical wing of the Puritan movement. But with Worldly Saints, Christians of all persuasions have a tool that provides ready access to the vast treasures of Puritan thought.

Publicist Quits Film Project

entertainment

Christian marketing agent Tim Penland and Universal Pictures are at odds over whether or not a soon-to-be-released motion picture is blasphemous. A Martin Scorsese-directed film, The Last Temptation of Christ is based on the Nikos Kazantzakis novel of the same name. According to Penland, the script he reviewed includes scenes that portray Jesus fantasizing over Mary Magdalene and engaging in homosexual activity with one of his disciples.

Penland was initially contacted earlier this year by Universal to help promote the film in the Christian community. “My role in this from the beginning was to help Universal build a bridge with the Christian community,” says Penland, who performed a similar service for Warner Brothers’ The Mission. However, he knew from the beginning the film might be blasphemous. The first script he read included several objectionable parts. “I marked 80 of the 120 pages as being troublesome,” he says.

Still, Penland addressed the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) earlier this year and assured them Universal would deliver a film that affirmed Christian faith. “I knew the chances were high that I was being used, but I was hoping to develop genuine dialogue between Christians and Hollywood,” says Penland. At that time he also indicated he would resign if he learned the movie was blasphemous (CT, Mar. 4, 1988, p. 43).

Bailing Out

By June 12, Penland was convinced Universal was not keeping its end of the bargain. He resigned his consulting role with them, citing a “bootlegged manuscript” and Universal’s changing of a screening for Christian leaders. “I received a copy of a new script from Reverend Donald Wildmon of the National Federation for Decency and I could see my worst fears were being realized,” says Penland. “I told them the script would offend Christians and urged them to let a group of Christian leaders preview it. When they kept putting the screening off, I knew it was time to pull out.”

Simon Kornblitt, vice-president of marketing for Universal, denies Penland’s accusations and maintains the film, due for release at the end of the summer, will affirm Christian faith. “To our knowledge, the script released by Reverend Wildmon is an old script. We told Mr. Penland it was not the current script, but he has chosen to resign over this issue. As for the screening, we have simply had to postpone it because production of the film is behind schedule. We have scheduled a July 12 special screening for the Christian leaders Mr. Penland recommended, and even that date requires that we interrupt production.”

Penland had originally recommended five Christian leaders to preview the film: Bill Bright of Campus Crusade, California pastors Jack Hayford and Lloyd John Ogilvie, Wildmon, and popular author James Dobson.

According to Universal, they are proceeding with the same plan Penland recommended. “I find it surprising Mr. Penland would agree to work on a project that he initially found so awful, and then back out,” says Kornblitt, noting that Universal paid Penland “a significant amount” for his services.

Penland claims he has been used and regrets working on the project. “I was a babe in the woods, and I regret my role in recommending the project to the Christian community,” says Penland.

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