The UK Christian Handbook, published by MARC Europe, reports that the number of active Christians in the United Kingdom had declined from 7.5 million to 7 million since 1980. The report forecasts a further decline of one-half million active Christians by 1992.

Since 1980, the number of active Muslims grew from 600,000 to 852,000—more than the membership of Britain’s Methodist and Baptist churches combined. In 1960, four mosques were open in the United Kingdom; today they number 314. Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains also showed increases, and the number of Satanists more than doubled to 15,000. However, the number of active Jews dropped by 1,000, to 109,000.

In a separate development, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced the audience for its religious radio programs grew by 28 percent during the past year. The increase represents 2 million additional listeners.

David Winter, head of religious radio programming for the BBC, said a series on the Bible, called “The Good Book,” last year doubled and at times quadrupled its previous audience. The radio series also evoked a flood of letters. Said Winter: “Obviously the Bible is still capable of stirring a few passions.”

Police have arrested Benjamin Morris, a 32-year-old Liberian seminary graduate, whom authorities said confessed to the murder of Southern Baptist missionary Libby Tarlton Senter and her 10-year-old daughter, Rachel. The two were found stabbed to death in their home in Yekepa, Liberia.

Before Morris’s confession, Mrs. Senter’s husband, George, told the suspect he forgave him. “Looking face-to-face in Ben Morris’s eyes, George expressed his forgiveness and asked Ben to make a confession,” said Bradley Brown, administrator of the 67 Southern Baptist missionaries assigned to Liberia. George Senter and his son were away from their home at the time of the murders.

Brown said Morris had been doing odd jobs for George Senter and another missionary. “There obviously was some resentment that he [Morris] wasn’t able to come in and … be assistant pastor or something of this sort,” I Brown said.

Morris, who is not ordained, had taught at Ricks Institute, a Baptist school run by Liberians. He is a graduate of the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary.

Romanian authorities, at least temporarily, have reversed a decision requiring the Second Baptist Church in Oradea to vacate its property, according to George Hancock-Stefan, executive director of the Romanian Missionary Society. The government also reinstated electricity, water, and sewer services to the church, the largest Baptist congregation in Europe (CT, Dec. 12, 1986, p. 30).

The church’s building problems date to 1984, when the congregation received official notice that its facility would be demolished. The notification provided no guarantee of alternative facilities, even though in the previous year local authorities had issued a written assurance that the church would not be affected by redevelopment plans.

Argentina’s highest court has declared unconstitutional a law that allowed couples to separate legally but not to obtain a divorce.

In a 3-to-2 ruling, the Argentina Supreme Court struck down a provision in the country’s marriage laws that barred Argentines from remarrying while their original spouses were alive. The court said the law violated the constitution’s equal-rights provisions by relegating people who are separated from their original spouse to the second-class status of “concubinage.” Divorce had been banned in Argentina since colonial times, except for a brief period in 1955 when it was legalized under former President Juan Peron.

In a dissenting opinion, two Supreme Court justices said any action to be taken on the divorce law belonged in the country’s legislature, not in the courts. In August, Argentina’s House of Deputies passed a bill that would legalize divorce. The measure is pending before the nation’s Senate.

Argentina’s Roman Catholic hierarchy voiced opposition to the court ruling and the divorce legislation. Prior to the House of Deputies vote, the church hierarchy organized profamily rallies around the country. After the vote, the Permanent Commission of the Episcopate suggested priests refuse Communion to deputies who voted for the measure.

Although 90 percent of the country’s population is Catholic, recent opinion polls indicate that 70 percent of Argentines favor legalized divorce.

More than 30 historians, theologians, scientists, philosophers, and clergy from around the world gathered in Dallas to respond to the latest scholarly efforts to disprove the biblical claim that Jesus of Nazareth was both divine and human.

The conference, called “Jesus Christ: God and Man,” set out to correct the impression that the best in modern scholarship conflicts with the fundamental tenets of the Christian faith. The event was cosponsored by Dallas Baptist University and Truth, an interdisciplinary journal of Christian thought.

“The study of history is a buttress of faith,” said historian Paul Johnson. He added that recent historical and archeological evidence confirms the Gospels as “authentic documents describing actual events.… The late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century notion that the New Testament was a collection of late and highly imaginative records can no longer be seriously held.”

Jesus Of History

According to the conference brochure, efforts to demythologize Scripture have produced “confusion in the theological world … [in which] many theologians intimate that the deity of Christ is a premedieval idea which more enlightened Christians can shed and still remain Christians.” To counter such a skeptical bias, conference participants cited the rediscovery of the Jesus of history, the confirmation of the authenticity of biblical accounts, and the dating of New Testament documents closer to the events they describe.

Participants stressed that scholars must “see with the eyes of faith”—the faith of a people responding to actual, extraordinary events—in order to more accurately interpret Scripture. “It is in the irresistible impact of Jesus himself that we must find the origin of Christology,” explained New Testament scholar R. T. France. The doctrine of the Incarnation, he said, developed not because pagan ideas of divinity were added to, and therefore changed, the original understanding of Jesus. Instead, he argued, the source of “high Christology” is discovered “in the impact Jesus made on those who saw and heard him.”

François Dreyfus, of Jerusalem’s Ecole Biblique, underscored the need to grasp the historical experience of faith. A Jewish convert to Christianity, Dreyfus said modern scholars “minimize the stumbling block” that Jesus of Nazareth presented to first-century Jews. He said those who came to believe in Jesus as the Son of God soon after the Resurrection were compelled by the clearest evidence.

James Dunn, regarded as one of the most influential New Testament scholars in England, said the perspective of history has brought a “renewed phase” of biblical criticism, one in which a scholar must understand with the “heart and mind” of the people of faith. “I want to get as far as possible into the heads of the people for whom Matthew was writing, Mark was writing, and so on, so I can hear with their ears and begin to understand. I want to be the bridge-man between the first century and the twentieth century.”

Faith And History

Disagreements arose over the interdependence of faith and history, with some scholars arguing that theology is more important than the historical events on which it is based.

While the writings of Saint John, for example, are rooted in history, Dunn said, “to insist that he can only feed our faith if we understand him as saying everything in a straight historical way may be misunderstanding him and impoverishing the faith.” However, John Alsup, author of The Post-Resurrection Appearances of the Gospel Tradition, cautioned the other scholars: “[It is] dangerous to separate theology and history.”

In general, biblical scholars at the Dallas meeting agreed that Christians have history, as well as faith, on their side. There was a sense that this renewed cooperation between scholarship and faith may establish the basis of a new theology that would replace the skeptical outlook of recent times.

“Scholarship is now, quite objectively, on the side of Christianity,” said historian Paul Johnson. He added that scholarship “cannot establish the truth of Christianity. All it can do, and what it does now, is remove obstacles to faith.”

By William A. Durbin, Jr., in Dallas.

PEOPLE AND EVENTS

Banned: By a federal judge, a prayer room in the Illinois state capitol. U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Aspen ruled that legislation authorizing the conversion of a capitol hearing room into a prayer and meditation room violated the First Amendment provision that government shall “make no law respecting the establishment of religion.”

Changed: The name of HIS Magazine, published by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Effective with this month’s issue, the magazine will be renamed U. The new name, an abbreviation for university, is “upbeat, unique, universal, and unthreatening,” said editor Verne Becker. He said the magazine’s previous name, HIS, proved to be a barrier to gaining new subscribers. “Either people didn’t know what the name meant, or they assumed it was some kind of men’s magazine.”

Supported: Acts of civil disobedience by employees and members of the 1.7 million-member United Church of Christ. The denomination’s Office for Church in Society adopted a resolution saying civil disobedience is appropriate when a government “violates fundamental Christian principles, requires adherence to systemically unjust laws or government policies, or endangers the welfare of the human community.” The denomination’s United Church Board for World Ministries passed a similar resolution in 1985.

Upheld: By a federal appeals court, the right of picketers to protest in front of the home of a doctor who performs abortions. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled unconstitutional a Brookfield, Wisconsin, ordinance that prohibited such picketing. The court said the ordinance violated picketers’ First Amendment right to free speech.

By a federal appeals court, a $200,000 award won by Jerry Falwell in a suit against Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt. Falwell filed a libel suit after Hustler published a parody that portrayed him as an incestuous drunkard. In 1984, a federal court rejected Falwell’s libel claim but awarded him $200,000 for emotional distress. In a 6-to-5 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, refused to reconsider the $200,000 judgment, allowing it to stand.

A survey conducted by Forbes magazine indicates that top corporate executives are more religious than the American population at large.

Forbes asked the heads of the nation’s 100 largest corporations to list their religious preference and to indicate how “observant” they are of their religion. Of those responding, 65 percent said they and their families “regularly attend church or synagogue.” The corresponding figure for the population at large is about 40 percent.

Presbyterians and Episcopalians constitute a much larger percentage among corporate heads than they do nationally. Presbyterians, representing 2 percent of the U.S. population, make up 25 percent of the survey respondents. Episcopalians, 3 percent of the U.S. population, make up 19 percent of the corporate leaders.

The proportion of Methodists, Roman Catholics, and Jews in CEO offices roughly equal their percentages in the general population. Catholics, 28 percent of the U.S. population, made up 29 percent of the survey respondents. Methodists, 9 percent of the population, are found in nearly 8 percent of the CEO offices. Jews represent less than 2 percent of the population and the same percentage of the chief executives.

However, Baptists are much more scarce among the CEOS polled. Representing 20 percent of the U.S. population, Baptists make up only 6 percent of the Forbes survey respondents.

Robert A. Seiple, president of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist Seminary in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, has been named president of World Vision, a Christian relief, development, and evangelism agency.

Seiple will succeed Ted W. Engstrom in July. Engstrom, who came to World Vision in 1963, will continue to serve as president emeritus.

“Bob Seiple will bring to World Vision the dynamic leadership strength, vision, and wholistic Christian commitment that have been a hallmark of his accomplishments at Eastern,” Engstrom said. Seiple has been president of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist Seminary for four years.

“There is a natural linkage between Eastern and World Vision,” Seiple said. “I am tremendously indebted to Eastern and its motto, ‘the whole gospel for the world.’ I feel World Vision provides the ultimate opportunity to implement that concept.”

Most Americans favor teaching about religion and using the Bible in public school classes, according to a recent Gallup poll. The survey also found that most Americans approve of student religious groups being allowed to use school facilities.

According to the poll, 75 percent of adult Americans do not object to using the Bible in literature, history, and social studies classes and offering Bible study courses; 79 percent do not object to teaching about the world’s major religions; and 74 percent favor making school facilities available during nonclass hours for use by student religious organizations.

The survey also found that one-third of adult Americans read the Bible at least once a week, with one in nine reading it daily. The results of the survey, based on in-person interviews with 1,559 adults, are virtually unchanged from similar Gallup polls conducted in 1978 and 1982.

In another poll, involving telephone interviews with 504 teenagers ages 13 to 17, the Gallup Youth Survey found that 58 percent of American teens read the Bible at least monthly. Ten percent read it daily, and 30 percent read it at least once a week. Twenty percent of the teenagers surveyed said they rarely or never read the Bible.

The long-running legal battle over the teaching of creation science in Louisiana’s public schools returned to the courtroom last month. The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case involving the 1981 Louisiana law that mandates balanced treatment for creation science and evolution science in public school lectures, textbooks, and library materials.

Louisiana has waged a dogged defense of the law over the last five years as four federal court decisions ruled it unconstitutional without holding a trial. The Supreme Court represents the state’s last chance to save the statute.

Favoring Creation Science

Wendell R. Bird, a creationist legal scholar who served as a special counsel for the state of Louisiana, denied that creation science is a religious doctrine. He stressed that the law sanctions only the teaching of scientific material.

“Creation science means the scientific evidence for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences,” Bird told the justices. “… The teaching of the Bible as part of the implications of the statute would be unconstitutional.”

Inquiring into the religious nature of the law, Justice Antonin Scalia asked if it “requires teaching of a personal God.” Citing the big-bang theory as an example, Bird told the Court, “the term creation is often used without any concept of a creator.”

Bird said lower courts simply determined “out of thin air” that creationism is exclusively a religious concept and, based on that assumption, voided the Louisiana statute for having the unconstitutional legislative purpose of promoting religion. He asked the Supreme Court to send the case back to be tried in a lower court, where experts could show creation science is scientific.

Under close questioning from several high court justices, Bird noted that lawmakers probably had a variety of reasons for enacting the law. He conceded that “undoubtedly some legislators had a desire to teach religious doctrine in the classroom.” But he argued that the statute’s predominant legislative purpose is promoting fairness and academic freedom by including an alternative scientific view in public school curriculum.

The Other Side

Jay Topkis, a New York attorney associated with the American Civil Liberties Union, argued against the creation-science statute. He quoted a dictionary definition of the word “creation” as an “act of creation or fact of being created … by divine power or its equivalent.” Creation requires a creator, Topkis argued, and creationist teaching involves religious doctrines that are inappropriate for public-school education.

Scalia repeatedly interrupted Topkis to ask whether creation must involve a creator. The justice cited the Aristotelian theory of “a first cause, an unmoved mover,” as well as evidence that some scientists claim creationism is nonreligious. After Topkis agreed that Aristotelianism is not religious, Scalia asked, “Then you could believe in a creation without a creator?”

Topkis asserted that creation science means “basically the fundamentalist point of view.” And he criticized Bird for creating nonreligious meanings for the term.

Under further questioning by several justices, Topkis admitted that religion can constitutionally be taught in public schools if it is done in a neutral fashion for scholarly reasons. He also acknowledged that parents may properly insist that subjects be taught accurately. The Louisiana statute fails, Topkis argued, because it mandates teaching religion for a religious reason. Dismissing creation science as “Christian apologetics,” he asserted, “There is nothing in the legislative history that speaks of a secular purpose.”

After the hearing, Topkis told reporters, “If Louisiana wins this case, it will give a tremendous impetus to fundamentalists throughout the country who are pondering such legislation.”

Toward A Ruling

In addition to last month’s oral arguments, the high court will consider numerous written briefs. They include briefs filed against the statute by 72 Nobel scientists, the National Academy of Science, the National Council of Churches, the American Jewish Congress, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Groups filing briefs in support of the law include the National Association of Evangelicals, Concerned Women for America, the Free Methodist Church, and the Christian Legal Society (CLS).

Said CLS lead attorney Michael J. Woodruff: “I was encouraged by the level of respect for this issue showed by the Court.” He predicted, however, that the high court will rule against the statute, with “a majority of justices saying creation science is not science.” A ruling is expected this spring.

By Ed Larson.