At least the ancients longed for the highest truth and beauty.

Ancient mythology possessed much that was beautiful. It was an illusion, but it prepared many people for that beauty which is no illusion. One great authority on classical literature, a man converted in midlife, Gerhard Nebel (1903–74), put it thus: “The encounter in Christ that was granted me in these years made it necessary for me to rethink … the myth and the beautiful from the perspective of the crucified and risen Lord” (from the Foreword, Das Ereiginis de Schönen, 1953). Nebel states repeatedly and in many ways that the concepts of beauty and strength, truth and virtue, that he found in the myths, did not and could not bring even true satisfaction (not to speak of salvation), but that they did create an empty stage, brushing aside the trivial concerns of banal daily living, and creating an expectancy that only the gospel could fill.

Nebel was also convinced that the ancient myths cannot be revived. Their beauty, even with its flaws, is lost as a real force in human lives (although we can still admire it at a distance, like statues in a museum of ancient art). The gospel is real, and proved far too strong for the gods and heroes of mythology. We can no longer believe in them, nor should we—even though we may learn something from them. But when the gospel is lost, when the true truth, real virtue, and absolute beauty that the gospel represents are forgotten and banished from our “post-Christian culture,” then we are worse off than ancient man with his imperfect but beautiful mythology.

To borrow Nebel’s imagery, we no longer have an empty stage, from which great tragic drama has swept false hopes, leaving us ready to hear the true hope of the gospel, but we have a pit, a sordid abyss filled with the wretched residue of culture.

Is it possible for a drunken man to understand the gospel? No doubt it is not impossible, but most of us would prefer trying to explain it to him when he is sober. His drunkenness may point out to others the misery of his condition, but it usually deprives the man himself of the ability to recognize it, or even if he does recognize it, to do something constructive about it. Ancient philosophy and literature did not have answers to the human predicament, but often left men with a sense of longing and expectancy that made them receptive to the gospel when it was proclaimed. Modern “culture,” in many of its forms, is more like drunkenness. To those observing it from the outside, its misery, futility, and despair seem to cry out for transformation, for salvation. But to those within it, that which looks disgusting to the outsider seems like that which is most desirable. One is not likely to look for a way out, and even less likely to find it.

Paul speaks of the “eager expectation” or “anxious longing” of the whole creation for the revelation of God (Rom. 8:19). Ancient culture, despite its often high, always flawed ideals, could not satisfy this longing, but it did share it and often increased it. Modern culture seems to have lost its myths, debased its heroes, and preserved only its demons.

Jesus said, “Seek, and you shall find” (Matt. 7:7). The cardboard heroes (at best) and the larger-than-life villains and demons of modern “culture” are creating such a disillusioned society that fewer and fewer people have the courage or even the curiosity to “seek the things above” (Col. 3:1).

It would be comforting to think that our popular culture might be renewed, and thus once again offer a kind of preparation for the gospel. In fact, however, the culture cannot renew itself. It lacks the power, the insight, the motivation. As Wilhelm Roepke wrote years ago, successful capitalist culture consumes itself, and rots from within. It needs to be renewed by something coming from outside itself. The only thing that is really and truly from outside culture is the Word of God.

Ancient myths had fascinating and attractive elements of beauty. But as the gospel was heard around the world, it superseded them and revealed their hollowness. During the Age of Reason—the eighteenth century, when the United States came into being—many people, including the majority of America’s Founding Fathers, thought that they could replace the narrow dogmatism of “sectarianism” (i.e., of Christianity) with the broader virtues and ideals of a renewed classical civilization. This hope is reflected in the monuments and ideas of the early days of the United States, which are so frequently drawn from the Roman republic. But such “republican” virtues, which were not as strong as the gospel, have no power in a world that thinks it has made the gospel obsolete.

In America today, two trends are in conflict: the sense of unbelief, which leads to the culture of corruption. In the most degenerate days of ancient Rome, there was a deep sense of self-disgust throughout society. Before society destroyed itself, the gospel was proclaimed, and there was social and cultural renewal as well as new spiritual life. Can such a thing happen once again in Western, “Christian” society? Indeed, it can, but it will require a consistent proclamation and living out of the Word of God with patience and perseverance, despite the fact that the senses of society seem to have become too gross to comprehend it.

Harold O. J. Brown is currently serving as interim pastor in the Evangelical Reformed Church of Klosters, Switzerland. He is on leave of absence from his post as professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois. Professor Brown’s latest book is Heresies (Doubleday, 1984).

Shusaku Endo’s strange and wonderful novel asks some uncomfortable questions.

In silence, Shusaku Endo’s unsettling novel about martyrdom, the means of betrayal was the symbol of hope: the fumie, an image of Christ placed at the Judas’s feet. To trample on the sacred visage meant life—but at the renouncement of faith.

This is the novel’s spiritual backdrop. Set into motion by the apostasy in 1633 of an experienced and highly respected Jesuit missionary, Christovao Ferreira, the book becomes a spiritual odyssey of a former student of Ferreira’s, Sebastian Rodrigues, who goes to Japan as a missionary “to find out the truth about our teacher.” Once there, however, Rodrigues quickly begins to unravel the truth about himself, about his relationship to Christ, and about his relationship to those to whom he is sent. That he loves Christ above all else is certain from the beginning, but that he will somehow betray that love also becomes agonizingly clear.

When three hostages are to be taken from a Japanese village suspected of containing Christians, one asks Rodrigues: “ ‘Father, if we are ordered to trample on the fumie.…’ Mokichi, head hanging, mumbled the words as though he was talking to himself. ‘It’s not only a matter that concerns us. If we don’t trample, everyone in the village will be cross-examined. What are we to do?’ ”

Rodrigues, in his great pity for these men, would have them trample the face of Christ to save their lives just as later, after his capture, he would have his fellow priest, Garrpe, apostatize (he does not) in order to save the lives of three Japanese Christians.

“ ‘Trample! Trample!’ I shouted. But immediately I realized that I had uttered words that should never have been on my lips.”

Mokichi and the second hostage, Ichizo, do not apostatize and die cruel deaths; but the third hostage, Kichijiro, does and even betrays Father Rodrigues.

“ ‘Father, forgive me!’ Still kneeling on the bare ground Kichijiro cried out in a voice choked with tears. ‘I am weak. I am not a strong person like Mokichi and Ichizo.’ ”

Silence is about Father Rodrigues’s own weakness and his strength, his awful pride in presuming to identify himself with Christ during his early captivity, and the awful suffering he endures when finally he must place his own foot on the fumie.

Silence is also about Father Rodrigues’s achievement of the true nature of Christ, manifested in his capacity to love and forgive the unlovely, Judas-like Kichijiro. The means for that achievement occurs when Rodrigues comes before the fumie in order to save three Japanese who are suffering because of his refusal. The narrator shifts to the present tense: “The fumie is now at his feet.”

“This face is deeply ingrained in my soul—the most beautiful, the most precious thing in the world has been living in my heart. And now with this foot I am going to trample on it.”

Ferreira, his old teacher, encourages him; the Japanese interpreter urges him on: “It is only a formality. What do formalities matter?… Only go through with the exterior form of trampling.” Rodrigues acts: “The priest raises his foot. In it he feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he has considered the most beautiful thing in his life, on what he has believed most pure, on what is filled with the ideals and the dreams of man. How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks: … ‘Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross.’

“The priest placed his foot on the fumie. Dawn broke. And far in the distance the cock crew.”

God’s silence is broken. In the last analysis Rodrigues tramples because Christ commands him to. His betrayal is thus an act of submission and obedience to Christ, a real act of love as well. Nevertheless, because of his act of public betrayal he can no longer identify himself with Christ, as he has done in his pride throughout his imprisonment and suffering. He must now identify himself with Kichijiro, and thus learn the real extent of Christ’s love, which understands and embraces even Judas.

“ ‘Lord, I resented your silence.’

“ ‘I was not silent. I suffered beside you.

“ ‘But you told Judas to go away: What thou doest do quickly. What happened to Judas?’

“ ‘I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.’ ”

One of the many virtues of Endo’s novel for Christian readers is that we too have a stake in the action, in the betrayals. We live our “blessed lives of faith,” as Rodrigues reflects before his capture, because we were not born in an age of persecution. Yet the “letters” written by Rodrigues and used to tell his story are addressed to us, his fellow seminarians, as it were. He is our brother in Christ, and what happens to him happens also to us. We too are brought before the fumie (thus the narrator shifts to the present tense); we too in our comfortable, easy lives must make that terrible choice.

And we choose, I think, like Kichijiro, like our brother Rodrigues. We too are betrayers of Christ, like the disciples in Endo’s interpretation, always striking a deal with the ruling powers. Yet betrayal is not the end, for once we see that weakness, that heart of darkness, that treachery in ourselves, then we are finally capable of comprehending the maternal love of Christ that embraces us in spite of our treachery, that embraces us in our anguish. Then we too can love and forgive as Christ does.

Shusaku Endo was born into a culture antithetical to Christianity, yet, when he was 11, his mother, who had become “a fervent, strict-observing Catholic,” had him baptized (Schuchert’s “Translators Preface” to A Life of Jesus). The tension between the Christian faith and Japanese culture in his own life makes his voice unique within the Christian community. He finds the love of Jesus in His compassion for the poor, the lonely, the sick and suffering, the weak, the guilty. The depth of that love reveals itself fully as the dying Jesus forgives from the cross, all the disciples who Endo believes have betrayed Jesus to save their own lives.

His many novels are available in good English translations. Encountering in Silence his vision of Christ as the one who came to be trampled ought to be a powerful and unsettling experience for any Christian.

“ ‘Father, I betrayed you. I trampled on the picture of Christ,’ said Kichijiro with tears. ‘In this world are the strong and the weak. The strong never yield to torture, and they go to Paradise; but what about those, like myself, who are born weak, those who, when tortured and ordered to trample on the sacred image.…’ ”

Rodrigues’s answer to Kichijiro is indicative of the depth of Rodrigues’s own understanding of Christ:

“ ‘There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?’ ” Rodrigues hears Kichijiro’s confession for the final time, though he is formally an apostate priest, gives absolution, and sends him away in peace.

“No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. ‘Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him.’ ”

Dr. Startzman is associate professor of English at Berea College, Berea, Kentucky.

To their elders, teenagers form a secretive society. They do not hang out in our company, they talk their own lingo, they rarely confide. Teenagers Themselves (compiled by the Glenbard East Echo, advised by Howard Spanogle; Adama Books, New York, 1984, $16.95) is a large, unlovely book designed to let us inside their world. The newspaper staff of Glenbard East (Ill.) High School compiled and organized uncensored quotes from nearly 9,000 teenagers in every state in America. They talk about sex, drugs, parents, money, education, drinking, capital punishment, and practically everything else you can think of. Reading this book is like listening to conversations secretly taped in a high school locker room. While not particularly pleasant or edifying, the experience is educational. Their language is sometimes ugly, but kids talk that way, and the purpose of the book is to let us hear them talk.

Predictably, no neat conclusions are reached or encouraged. The book reminds us that teenagers are a fabulously varied group. You get everything from farm kids who love God and America, to suburban kids who confess they are obsessed with sex and designer clothes.

Reading, I couldn’t help feeling sucked down into the adolescent maelstrom of conflicting opinions and emotions. These teenagers do not seem to believe anything terribly different from what their elders believe; they simply believe it while floating untied to anything outside their high school world. No one refers to an adult authority (except, sometimes, a parent), to a book, a magazine article, a TV news show. Even the Christian kids seem to refer to the Bible only as an afterthought. Not only do they lack perspective, they have no idea they lack it. Their only authority is experience. As Harold Spanogle, the faculty adviser who oversaw the book’s production, told CAMPUS LIFE magazine, “An overwhelming characteristic of self-centeredness pervaded many of the responses.… A predominant attitude seemed to be, ‘We can’t have a nuclear war. I haven’t had a chance to live my life yet.’ ”

That’s adolescence, and has been for a long time. Pastors and parents of teenagers could get a great deal from letting Teenagers Themselves carry them back to 16, to remember how they themselves felt and thought and acted. Much is unchanged. Parents and their rules, school and its drudgery still form major complaints. Boys are after only one thing; the double standard endures. It is better (more popular) to have a body than a brain. Everybody, except an occasional rebellious boy, wants to fall in love and get married. When you have trouble, your best friend can tell you what to do (though the influence of parents also remains apparently as strongly felt as ever). This, and much more, is familiar ground.

Much more, though, is not. For instance, from a 17-year-old girl on how she spends her free time: “On school nights my boyfriend comes over, and we play with our little girl.” Or from a 16-year-old from California: “My family is very close. Well, they used to be very close. My mother, my uncle, and my aunt have all been divorced once and started new families.… Both my mother and father have been living with someone else.…” To hear kids talk as casually and knowledgeably as they do about sex and drugs and abortion and divorce will shock some people, and frighten anybody. Teenagers have long felt temptation in these areas, but what they experience today seems beyond temptation: only the unusual person emerges from high school without experiencing one of these modern American plagues. We know these facts from reading the newspaper, but hearing kids talk about them helps us understand better how these facts seem to kids who have known nothing else.

God? Some students gave a clear, unapologetic Christian testimony, but for the others, Christianity and church seem to have made little impression. If these kids mirror society, we have a very secularized society. They sound terribly lost, not in the narrow religious sense alone. You can hear them laboring very seriously through decisions that will form their lives, but nobody—except occasionally their parents—seems to exist in their universe except other equally lost kids. There are no teachers, no pastors, no older adult friends, no books, no Bibles to ask for wisdom. Parents who have lost human contact with their kids usually hope that school or church or Boy Scouts will fill out what they miss, but Teenagers Themselves does not encourage such thoughts. I got the feeling that Christians are missing most of this generation: teenagers do not hear what Christians are saying about a personal God who loves them. Teens talk freely of God as a philosophical option, but their experience does not make them come to terms with him personally.

While Teenagers Themselves seeks to explain the teenage world, Parents and Teenagers (Jay Kesler, general editor, with Ronald A. Beers; Victor Books, Wheaton, Illinois, 1984) means to offer therapy for it. Produced by Jay Kesler and the Youth for Christ/USA organization, it is a fat, miscellaneous compilation of the wisdom of more than 50 Christian youth workers, counselors, and pastors. Like Teenagers Themselves, it covers every topic relating to teens and their parents you can think of. The articles are short, chatty, and directive. Contributors include Anthony Campolo, Howard Hendricks, Charles Swindoll, James Dobson, Joyce Landorf, Warren Wiersbe, John Perkins, Bruce Lockerbie, Kenneth Gangel, Gordon MacDonald, Josh McDowell, Larry Christenson, and H. Norman Wright, among others. Such a large all-star cast suggests the impression the book makes: that it is something of a hodgepodge of evangelical family advice. It also suggests that this is the best that evangelicals have to offer, which I think is true. I don’t know of a better book to put into the hands of offer, which I think is true. I don’t know of a better book to put into the hands of the parents of teenagers.

Parents and Teenagers emphasizes that a good marriage is the best gift you can give your kids. It teaches you how to communicate with them. It encourages you to encourage, counsel, guide, and love teenagers even when they seem to be far off track. It suggests how to respond when your kids swear, come home late, or want to go on a date at 14. Most of this advice could as easily have been written twenty years ago. It acknowledges that kids today are heavily involved with sex and drugs, that they live in a different world than we did, but it seems weak in specific ideas on what to do about it. It addresses the problems of broken families, but as an antidote falls heavily on the time-worn remedies of love and patience.

I would not quarrel with such good advice, but after bathing in the lostness of Teenagers Themselves I found it hard to envisage this Mom-and-Pop-know-best stuff having power to change any but the “good” kids. The best medicine is preventive, no doubt, and if all parents were as wise and patient and loving as Parents and Teenagers teaches them to be, no doubt our kids would be better too.

My impression, though, is that these 50 Christian contributors haven’t fully come to grips with the reality that most kids, male and female, graduate from high school accepting drugs as an ordinary form of recreation, having had sexual intercourse (or feeling ashamed that they haven’t), and believing that their happiness is the axis on which their world ought to turn. That must include a great many kids in our church youth groups, our camps, and our own families. These kids know things and assume things we don’t: but they don’t tell us about it, and they don’t look to us for advice. They look to each other.

That was my first reaction, fresh from the teenage maelstrom. Upon reflection, though, I realize that the advice in Parents and Teenagers remains, twenty years or one hundred years after it was formulated, the most helpful thing we can offer. Adolescence is a furnace which no one can go through for anyone else: you simply cannot reach into it and straighten things out. Kids do not want to listen to reason or common sense. The best witness from the adult world remains a life lived well, with love and reverence for God and neighbor. That must make an impact, sooner or later. Parents and Teenagers should be a substantial encouragement to Christian parents, suggesting to them that the strains which their teenagers put on family life are common, that others have lived through them and seen their kids grow into healthy, adult Christians, and that the best thing a Christian parent can do is hang in there, lovingly. It will also help them feel their way through innumerable specific problems.

What about the millions of teenagers who don’t happen to have Christian parents? Neither of these books is designed to address that problem, but they do leave me wondering: Is there a way for the gospel to penetrate broadly into the lostness of secularized adolescence? If not, then I think evangelicals will eventually withdraw their children into Christian schools. Either that, or we will spend our time and energy in a defensive war, trying to keep the darkness at bay in our own kids.

Red Dawn

MGM, directed by John Milius; PG-13

Fascism in 1984 is a label fashionably applied to anyone opposed to the nuclear arms freeze and its attendant ideologies. It is no surprise then that critics have branded Red Dawn “fascist.” In creating this parable of World War III, John Milius dared to slight popular scenarios for the “fate of the Earth.” When the film didn’t live up to many critics’ apocalyptic expectations, epithets sailed like the multiple warheads of an MX missile.

Accusations of social irresponsibility were common: Red Dawn bypasses our assumptions of modern atomic warfare. Instead, Milius prophesies a conventional war fought by high school students-turned-partisans when the U.S. is invaded by Soviet and Cuban troops. Based in the Colorado mountains, the children respond with brutal efficiency and timeless reasoning: “We live here!” one shouts. Time magazine called the film a “fascist fantasy.” Exactly why patriotism and freedom fighting equal fascism is never fully explained. A National Public Radio critic huffed that she missed the anarchy and rebellion of the 1960s—as if drug abuse and irrational protest were superior to self-sacrifice and duty. Most revealing (and ludicrous) was the assertion in the Los Angeles Times that the film “could have been as important” as Testament or The Day After—films notable only for their lack of production values and lukewarm public response.

Lost in all this rethoric, however, is the fact that Red Dawn seems to represent a growing trend in Hollywood toward old-fashioned flag waving. With the success of ABC’s Call to Glory and the premiere of Topeka, Kansas—USSR, a TV movie about the aftermath of a Russian invasion of America(!), the entertainment media and their target audience seem to be moving away from post-Vietnam guilt into an era of renewed self-confidence and national pride.

Red Dawn is not unblemished. Character development is sacrificed for action, and the story often lurches forward disjointedly. But Red Dawn is a sign of the times. Americans are clearly sore from a decade of self-flagellation, and this film encourages a nobility of spirit foreign to the fascist fantasies some critics find only in paranoid dreams.

Reviewed by Harry Cheney, a writer living in Southern California.

Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God (WCG) seems to thrive on adverse publicity.

In 1980, the sect gained in membership and income after it emerged from state-imposed receivership resulting from charges of financial irregularities. The following year, sweeping personnel changes and further allegations of misconduct still failed to deter the church’s growth.

This year, after losing a defamation suit and seeing its leader divorce his wife, the WCG is bigger and wealthier than ever. Thousands have defected, but their numbers have been more than offset by new converts. Membership, pegged at 70,680 in 1982, has climbed to 75,000. Income rose 9.3 percent to an all-time high of more than $132 million last year.

The WCG lost a defamation suit in late August when a jury awarded $1.26 million to Leona McNair, former wife of WCG executive Raymond McNair, WCG attorney Allan Browne said he intends to file for a retrial or an appeal.

Raymond McNair divorced Leona in 1976, two years after she withdrew from the sect. He later remarried. In 1979, some 1,000 persons—mostly WCG ministers and their wives—heard Roderick Meredith, WCG director of pastoral affairs, defend Raymond McNair. Meredith’s comments were repeated in the Pastor’s Report newsletter six months later. He said Leona had cursed and spat on her former husband. “She departed so far from the teachings of the church that she is a major enemy of God’s church in Southern California,” Meredith said. In the Pastor’s Report he added, “She refused to sleep with her husband or cook for [him]. She turned the children against him.”

Antony Stuart, Leona McNair’s attorney, said church officials had spread the rumor that she had been “caught in bed with Ernest Martin,” a former WCG executive whose Foundation for Biblical Research holds wide influence among former Armstrong disciples.

The jury awarded Leona McNair $10,000 for medical expenses, $250,000 for emotional trauma and alienation of family and friends, and $1 million in punitive and exemplary damages. Explained jury foreman Ignacio Garcias: “We wanted to send a message to other churches that you can’t do this to people—ruin their lives just because you are a church or big organization.… The award was not the issue. We wanted to vindicate Mrs. McNair.”

Three months earlier, WCG leader Armstrong settled another legal action, his divorce. An out-of-court settlement ended the seven-year marriage of the WCG founder, 92, to Ramona Martin, 45 (CT, Aug. 6, 1982, p. 48). The litigation reportedly cost the church more than $5 million in legal fees. Although Armstrong’s attorneys blocked a potentially damaging jury trial, transcripts of courtroom proceedings gave the news media controversial insights into Armstrong’s private life.

Allegations of sexual misconduct, docmented previously in John Trechak’s Ambassador Report newsletter and in David Robinson’s book Herbert Armstrong’s Tangled Web, were summarized by the Los Angeles Times:

“Lawrence Deckter, Mrs. Armstrong’s lawyer, said the testimony would explain an ‘understanding’ the couple reached about Armstrong’s ‘prior incestuous conduct with his daughter for many years.’ ”

According to the Ambassador Report newsletter, “Ramona has admitted to friends that she and Herbert maintained a sexual relationship for three full years prior to their marriage.” However, Armstrong imposes on his followers a moral code that condemns the type of behavior he allegedly has practiced. Efforts to contact WCG officials for a response were unsuccessful.

Ironically, Garner Ted Armstrong, the WCG leader’s son who was banished from the sect in 1978, attributed the rift between himself and his father to his “stolid resistance” to Ramona Martin. After his dismissal from the WCG, Garner Ted Armstrong formed the Church of God International (CGI), based in Tyler, Texas. Broadcasting his modified version of the Armstrong gospel over two cable television networks, he will soon gain access to an additional 19 million households via WGN, a Chicago television station.

Still, the younger Armstrong’s following is far behind that of the WCG, which lists 391 television and 111 radio outlets worldwide for its broadcasts.

A Diverse Group Hammers Out Guidelines For Implementing The Equal Access Act

While “equal access” legislation was debated in Congress, evangelicals who favored the bill and civil libertarians who opposed it had little to say to one another. Once it became law, however, a surprisingly diverse group convened under the leadership of attorney John Baker of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, and developed guidelines explaining what the Equal Access Act means for public school officials.

The law guarantees the right of high school students to meet for prayer and Bible study—or any other sort of discussion—when other extracurricular clubs are allowed to meet. This right has been challenged in courts across the country and is likely to be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court in its current term.

The bill generated widespread support among Christian organizations but raised fears among Jewish groups and secular civil liberties groups. Its opponents believed it would open public schools to religious cults, proselytizing, and polarization among students of differing religious beliefs.

The compromise version of the bill that passed both houses of Congress in August (CT, Sept. 7, 1984, p. 77) provides safeguards against potential abuses. The guidelines drawn up by Baker’s committee explain those safeguards in detail.

The committee included Forest Montgomery of the National Association of Evangelicals, and Samuel Ericsson of the Christian Legal Society, two staunch supporters of the bill. In addition, the bill’s most vocal opponents attended the drafting sessions. Included among the opponents were representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), and the National Education Association (NEA). Joel Packer, NEA legislative specialist, said the guidelines will appear in a monthly newsletter distributed to his organization’s 1.7 million members, most of whom are public school teachers.

The guidelines explain that Congress intended to strike a balance between the Constitution’s prohibition against state-sponsored religion and its guarantee of the right to practice religion. The Equal Access Act leaves intact earlier court decisions that outlawed organized classroom prayer, but it protects voluntary, student-initiated and student-run religious meetings. In addition, it preserves the school’s authority to exercise control over extracurricular activities.

“Our unanimity gives school principals some degree of assurance about what they can and cannot do,” Baker said. Members of his committee developed an unexpected sense of camaraderie as well as seven pages of guidelines. Mitchell Edelstein, of ADA, said he was “very pleased—even surprised—at how well it came off. It definitely was a strange-bedfellows situation.” Packer, of the NEA, said his group will monitor how religious clubs operate under the auspices of the Equal Access Act. If abuses are spotted, further court battles are a possibility.

San Diego Okays Plans For Campus Crusade University

In a 5-to-4 vote, the San Diego city council last month approved plans for a 5,000-acre development managed by Campus Crusade for Christ. Called La Jolla Valley, the development will include the 1,000-acre campus of the International Christian Graduate University (ICGU), a 750-acre high-technology industrial park, and several thousand acres of residential housing (CT, Feb. 3, 1984, p. 66).

The project faced heavy local opposition and had twice been recommended for rejection by city planners. Mayor Roger Hedgecock had charged that the development violated the city’s growth management plan. To make the project more palatable to opponents, planners deferred the residential section of the development until 1995. Campus Crusade president and founder William Bright plans to structure the residential and industrial development to “perpetually endow” the university. Plans for ICGU include schools of law, business, education, and communication.

During the last five years, Campus Crusade spent more than $1 million for engineering tests, land-use attorneys, and public relations firms to justify and promote the project.

The La Jolla Valley area lies between two affluent San Diego suburbs. Campus Crusade purchased the land in 1979 for approximately $25 million, and subsequently bought out the interest of Signal Landmark Corporation, a developer and early partner in the venture.

ICGU provost Ed Pauley, fomerly of Biola University, said construction probably won’t begin until 1986. Currently, ICGU is a school of theology at Campus Crusade headquarters in Arrowhead Springs, California, with satellite campuses in Kenya and the Philippines. The school is used primarily to train Campus Crusade staff members.

A Lutheran Missionary Will Head Lausanne Committee

Carl J. Johansson, a Lutheran Church in America pastor and missionary, has been named executive director of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE).

Meeting in Stuttgart, West Germany, the LCWE appointed Johansson to succeed Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a Ghanian-born Baptist pastor who has held the post for nine years. Johansson, who has spent 35 years as a pastor in the United States and as a missionary in East Africa and Nepal, will set up an office in the United States. Support offices are planned for cities in other countries.

The 75 LCWE participants from 39 countries voted to hold a second International Congress for World Evangelization in 1989, probably in a Third World city. The committee will encourage the formation of regional and national conferences to provide input for the 1989 meeting.

LCWE grew out of the 1974 International Congress for World Evangelization held in Lausanne, Switzerland. The committee was formed by Christians from more than 150 nations.

Correction

CHRISTIANITY TODAY credited the wrong photographer for photos published on pages 56 and 57 of its September 21 issue. Frank Fenlon should have been credited.

The 7-Eleven convenience store chain has been hit by another boycott. And later this month the retail chain will be picketed by citizens who are tired of seeing pornographic magazines on the stores’ shelves.

Meeting last month in Cincinnati, more than 350 Christian leaders voted to boycott all 7-Eleven stores that continue to sell pornographic magazines. The leaders called for a nationwide picket of 7-Eleven and other stores on October 27. The National Federation for Decency (NFD) has called 7-Eleven the nation’s largest retailer of pornographic magazines (CT, Sept. 7, 1984, p. 72).

The Consultation on Pornography, Obscenity and Indecency was organized by Citizens Concerned for Community Values (CCCV), a group founded by Jerry Kirk, pastor of Cincinnati’s College Hill Presbyterian Church.

In addition to the 7-Eleven picket and boycott, participants voted to urge President Reagan to instruct the U.S. Justice Department to enforce federal obscenity laws. They also voted to work toward establishing federal and state laws to regulate cable television programming.

Some of the meeting’s speakers documented pornography’s growing depravity. Movies such as Ravaged Music Teacher and books such as How to Molest a Child can be found at many of the 480 pornographic movie houses and 18,000 “adult” bookstores that contribute to the $6 billion to $8 billion pornogaphy industry. NFD executive director Donald Wildmon showed portions of porn movies and displayed obscene magazines and books. Wildmon says Christians “don’t even know what we’re talking about when we say ‘porno.’ … We’re not just fighting dirty pictures and dirty words.”

Other speakers described the success of antipornography efforts in several cities around the country. The city of Cincinnati enacted a “display law” that ensures that retail stores selling pornographic magazines keep them covered and out of the hands of minors.

In Fort Wayne, Indiana, a chapter of Citizens for Decency through Law organized pickets to protest massage parlors and adult bookstores. In one demonstration, pickets walked four abreast in a parade that stretched seven blocks long. The group’s ongoing protests paid off. Massage parlors and adult bookstores were closed, and offenders were prosecuted.

“It’s the citizens who define what pornography is and the quality of life they will have,” said Fort Wayne Mayor Win Moses. “Public officials are often shackled by public acceptance.”

An Indianapolis study showed that crime increased and property values dropped in areas surrounding adult entertainment businesses. As a result, Mayor William Hudnut, a former Presbyterian clergyman, sought zoning ordinances to control the spread of such businesses.

In addition, the Indianapolis city council in April adopted an ordinance that enables women to file civil suits against businesses that sell or display violent and dehumanizing pornography. The law gives women the right to claim that such material is a violation of their civil rights. The measure was challenged in court within hours of being signed into law, but Hudnut vows he will fight “all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.”

The church, as well, is taking a more active role in the fight against pornography. The general assembly of the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana, in June adopted a three-page proposal for churchwide involvement. Paul Tanner, executive secretary of the church’s executive council, said the denomination’s autonomous form of government allows its congregations to “implement it creatively in ways that are appropriate.… I can’t tell you 2,300 [Church of God] churches will picket 7-Elevens. They won’t. But some of them will.”

Morton A. Hill, a Catholic priest who founded Morality in Media, said the Roman Catholic church is becoming more aware of the pornography problem. A pastoral letter on obscenity was read last month to the 2.25 million Catholics in Los Angeles, urging them to seek the enforcement of obscenity laws.

The antipornography movement is gaining momentum. Kirk is leading the search for a full-time executive director for CCCV. The organization also plans to set up offices outside the walls of College Hill Presbyterian Church.

STEVE RABEYin Cincinnati

North American Scene

Four Protestant denominations and the National Association of Evangelicals have joined a lawsuit challenging U.S. diplomatic recognition of the Vatican. The suit is being spearheaded by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Churches joining the suit include the Presbyterian Church (USA), the American Baptist Churches, Church of the Brethren, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention. The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, representing nine Baptist denominations, plans to support the suit by filing a friend-of-the-court brief.

Former President Jimmy Carter says he doesn’t feel “compatible” with the dominance of conservative leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). He told Baptist Press that conservatives have hurt the denomination’s missions emphasis, and that they are tied to a philosophy exemplified by Moral Majority. Carter said it would be inappropriate for him “to try to organize or lead a movement of moderates to recapture the Southern Baptist Convention.” The former President is a deacon at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia.

The Reformed Ecumenical Synod has declared that any theological defense of apartheid should be regarded as heresy. Apartheid is South Africa’s policy of racial segregation. The synod also asked its largest affiliate, the South African Dutch Reformed Church, and the smaller Reformed Church in South Africa to report within two years “what each has done to reevaluate its position” on apartheid. The synod claims 5.5 million members in more than 30 affiliated denominations around the world.

A judge has ruled that New York Mayor Ed Koch cannot forbid discrimination against homosexuals by private groups that do business with the city.

Judge Alvin Klein ruled that Koch does not have the right to “create new social policy absent a proper legislative basis.” The mayor’s Executive Order 50 was challenged in the state supreme court by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Salvation Army, and Agudath Israel of America, whose service contracts with the city are worth millions of dollars. The city plans to appeal the decision.

World Scene

Romania has released an Orthodox priest from prison after five years of his 10-year sentence. Gheorghe Calciu was arrested in 1979 on unsubstantiated charges of being a Fascist. Before his arrest, he inspired the formation of a believers’ rights group and a trade union. Calciu previously had spent 16 years in prison because of his religious activities. The government gave no reason for the priest’s release.

The government of Taiwan has limited the number of missionaries who can work in the country. The government told mission agencies they must restrict their personnel to April 1984 levels. Calling the limit a temporary measure, officials gave no explanation for the move. Some observers speculate that the government is alarmed by the number of young people brought into Taiwan by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon).

The Episcopal Church of Brazil has voted to ordain women as priests. The move makes the Brazilian church the latest province of the worldwide Anglican communion to vote in favor of women’s ordination. In Mexico and Puerto Rico, women recently were ordained as Episcopal priests in jurisdictions linked to the Episcopal church in the United States. The U.S. branch of the Anglican communion voted to ordain women in 1976.

The government of Zimbabwe has released United Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa after detaining him for nearly a year. The government had accused the bishop of conspiring with the South African government against Zimbabwe. Muzorewa said the Zimbabwe government detained him in an attempt to intimidate the opposition political party he heads.