It had broken into their weekend like a thief, stealing their love and leaving as quickly as it had come. Afterward, Charles cried. He knelt down on the floor beside Claire and sobbed, “I’m sorry. I lost control. It won’t happen again.” He took her in his arms and they sat together in silence. Charles gently touched Claire where she had been hit. It was as if he believed his touch now could undo the brutal blows he had unleashed moments before.

After a time Claire stood up, not saying a word, and went into the bathroom to wash away traces of the violence. She dressed so her bruises would not show, but the shock in her eyes could not be hidden. She hoped no one would notice.

Charles and Claire were in time for the Sunday morning worship service at church.

In the days to follow, Claire blamed herself. She assumed she was at fault, not he, that it was her failure as a wife and Christian that prompted the ugly incident. She berated herself for not having seen it coming, for not having been sensitive enough to the pressures Charles had been facing at work.

In the early morning over coffee, Claire would open her Bible to Ephesians and the passages on the submission of wives to husbands. It wasn’t that she needed to be reminded. Growing up, she had been taught what it meant to be a Christian woman and a godly wife. But somehow reading those passages again and again helped assuage her guilt. It was as if she were paying penance for her failure to be a successful wife.

Nothing more was said of the incident. No one had been told. Appearances were kept at church. Claire and Charles an attractive and popular couple, conducted their active social lives as before.

Then it happened again.

It was a Saturday morning. Charles had stormed in, swearing and yelling. The car would not start. Somewhere between the garage and the kitchen he lost I control. He grabbed Claire’s upper arm and swung her around, reeling her hard into the refrigerator. He bellied into her H there—all 200 pounds of him, and Claire felt the door handle jab into her back.

It lasted all of three minutes. To Claire it seemed an hour. Later Claire would remember it was the first minute or so that was violent. After that, it was eerily silent—just Claire crying, gulping for air, and Charles breathing short and fast.

As before, Charles returned, crying and begging forgiveness. Again they sat in silence until the beating was just a memory and a throb. Charles asked Claire not to tell anyone what had happened. Claire became very confused about what was going on, why she felt so guilty, and what it was she was supposed to do.

During 18 years of marriage, Claire was beaten by Charles hundreds of times. Only toward the end did she seek help.

Time magazine (Sept. 5, 1983) reported that six million women each year are abused by husbands or boyfriends. The FBI offers the chilling statistic that in 1979, 40 percent of women killed were murdered by their partners. While definitions of wife abuse vary (is a slap or a verbal insult considered abusive?), the evidence of extreme violence done to women renders any definition moot. Millions of women each year wind up in hospitals with injuries that could only come from beatings.

But what of Charles and Claire? Does wife abuse occur in Christian homes?

Claire’s story—and the testimony of many Christian counselors—offers evidence that wife abuse occurs in Christian homes, that Christian husbands beat Christian wives, and that sometimes the abusers are clergymen.

Maxine Hoffman, in an article in the Pentecostal Evangel (Oct. 12, 1980), writes: “Statistics indicate that one of two women, Christian or otherwise, is battered at some time during her life.” Her figures are no doubt based on the research of Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, which shows that women from all socio-economic and religious levels are abused at similar rates of occurrence. In fact, these researchers suggest in their book Behind Closed Doors (Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1980) that in some cases religious orientation actually aggravates the problem. This is usually true when the wife is a Christian but the husband is not. The husband feels threatened by his wife’s faith and seeks to eradicate it by force.

Lenore Walker found in her study of wife abuse (The Battered Woman, Harper Colophon, 1979) that some “women indicated they no longer practiced their religion, because giving it up eliminated a point of conflict with their batterer.”

Statistics describing the frequency of wife abuse among Christians just do not exist. Even if they did, they probably would not be accurate; neither husbands nor wives would be inclined to admit to it. We hear more about the problem of wife abuse in Christian homes from Christian counselors and pastors who find this problem occurring at an alarming rate. Stories like Claire’s are com-

Writer Terry Davidson relates her own story of growing up in a home in which her father beat her mother. Her father, a Christian minister, was a man of God at church. At home he was brutal, often exploding in a tirade of verbal and physical abuse before or after saying grace at the dinner table. Davidson’s story is not the only case of clergy abuse. Counselors who work with child- and spouse-abuse cases find that clergymen are guilty of battering their wives and children more often than we would like to believe.

Maxine Hoffman sums it up: “There is a great deal of battering happening in Christian marriages, even in our churches, right under our noses.”

Special Problems

Claire’s story forces us to think about the special problems abused Christian women face. Many Christian women have been raised in a church culture in which their responsibility to their spouse and family has been stressed from the pulpit again and again. They have traditional values and believe these values important to the fabric of the family as well as society. They hold a high and special view of marriage. And not least of all, they believe that Jesus Christ can and does change lives. For Christian women, wife abuse poses special problems that the non-Christian woman does not face.

Much of the secular advice about wife beating written in books and magazines has a decided feminist bias. Frankly, the subject of wife abuse is a persuasive argument for feminism; it testifies to the fact that abusive men do dominate and brutalize women. Claire’s story, although not intended as a defense of feminism, cannot help but bear witness to the power a husband can gain over his wife. It happens—and insofar as secular books and magazine articles make us aware of this, they are helpful. Also, these various publications agree on one important point: that women are significant persons. This is not only good advice for the battered woman, but sound biblical advice as well.

Wife Abuse And Feminist Literature

But ultimately wife-abuse literature written from a feminist perspective does not understand the Christian woman. It treats marriage as dispensable; the Christian woman does not. It tends to suggest that homemaking is an inferior role in life; the Christian woman, though she may have an out-of-home career, feels that raising a family and making a home is an equally valid and worthy calling. Wife-abuse literature often adopts a cynical, negative attitude toward Christianity, seeing it as the historical cause for the oppression of women. The Christian woman understands that throughout history this has sometimes been true, but that it is not in keeping with the teaching and example of Jesus Christ.

So the Christian woman may not find in the available published material on domestic violence any sympathy for her spiritual beliefs, and her special needs may not be adequately addressed.

The Problem Of Submission

The central dilemma for Christian women caught in marital abuse is how to fulfill the biblical teaching on submission. (This is a good example of how secular advice to the battered woman so often fails. Most of the books on wife beating treat submission briefly and condescendingly; they do not understand that submission is an important part of the way millions of women think about their families and homes.)

Of course, submission is a controversial subject in the Christian community. One look inside a Christian bookstore at all the books on marriage and submission testifies to how this debate rages. Not only has submission been argued pro and con, but endless varieties of submission teaching have been proposed. The argument has become sophisticated and complex.

Unfortunately, this complexity is not recognized by many Christians, and some churches emphasize submission to the extreme, proposing absurd hypothetical situations. At least one pastor has preached from the pulpit that if a husband asks his wife to submit to an act of prostitution, she should do so.

These teachings confuse even more the already distraught Christian woman suffering from abuse. Many who are abused acquiesce to these extreme views, even when their lives are in danger.

A rigid perspective on the subject of submission also contributes to a psycho-social syndrome called “learned helplessness” in which a battered woman accepts the violence done to her as part of the course of her life, believes she has no options available, and falls into a numb passiveness. Most battered women experience learned helplessness to a degree; it explains in part why so many abused women stay with their husbands for so long. It seems to be a major problem among Christian women.

What is lacking, of course, is a balance of teaching in our churches: We need to hear not only what the Bible says about submission, but also what the Bible says about the sanctity of life. We need to read not only Paul’s injuctions concerning the role of women in the church, but also Christ’s compassionate and radical treatment of women during his earthly ministry.

You Can Help A Battered Wife

Many people—pastors and professional counselors included—don’t know what to say to the battered woman. Some are insensitive; some male counselors or pastors who do not really recognize the extent and seriousness of the problem tend to treat the abused woman lightly or chauvinistically. But most of the time good counseling is hindered simply by the shock of learning that good friends are involved, that a marriage perceived as strong and successful may in fact be deeply troubled.

All abuse situations are different; consequently it is up to the counselor to discern individual, special needs. Here are some general suggestions culled from those who have counseled abused women.

1. Believe that she has been abused. Probably what the battered woman needs more than anything is someone to believe in her. The worst thing a counselor can do is to suggest that the woman in some way “asked for” the abuse or to imply that the abuse is her fault. She already is carrying around a hefty load of guilt, and she doesn’t need that kind of counsel.

2. Pray with her. Besides the fact that prayer is efficacious—it works!—there is a psychological value. Often a woman has already been praying—for a change in her husband, for help, for deliverance—but has not felt she has received a response to her prayer. Praying with someone else, knowing that another soul is going before God along with her, gives her renewed hope and faith.

3. Determine the frequency and severtiy of the abuse. Quite frankly, the abuse of women takes many forms, from verbal abuse to violent threats on a woman’s life. If a woman is in a life-threatening situation, she needs to be protected—and advised to leave the home.

4. Emphasize the woman’s responsibility to take action. What the counselor is combating is “learned helplessness,” the syndrome in which the abused woman finds herself that makes her feel there is nothing she can do to help herself.

It is at this point that it becomes important for the counselor to point out the woman’s options. (The abused woman needs to be reminded that there are choices available to her.) She may leave the home, she may go into counseling regularly, she may try to get her husband to join her in family therapy or marital counseling, or she may start by informing some select friends and relatives about what is going on.

5. Encourage her to see a doctor if the abuse has been physical. Many abusers have a method in their madness: they manage to strike a woman in areas where bruises and cuts won’t be noticed. Furthermore, some injuries may be internal, and might not show up anyway. A doctor needs to be consulted.

6. Remind the woman that God loves her and doesn’t want her to suffer abuse. Again, “learned helplessness” leads the abused woman to accept her situation easily, to reason that somehow this is what she deserves. Any such thinking should be addressed as nonsense. God does not want a Christian woman to suffer abuse, and he does not want women to put up with it.

7. Help her find a support community. Direct other friends, church members, relatives toward the woman who is hurting. Perhaps the abused woman has come to you condidentially, in which case you might direct others without specifically explaining the situation. “Mary is hurting; she needs you. Be close to her this week.”

KENNETH W. PETERSEN

One pastor, C. Donald Cole, has sought this very balance. In his Christian Perspectives on the News, a periodic radio newsletter issued from Moody Bible Institute, he writes, “Man’s lordship over women has been exploitive to the point of physical degradation and beyond.” He quotes 1 Peter 3:7, “Husbands … be considerate as you live with your wives.…” Cole concludes his newsletter by saying, “If we participate in the institutionalized abuse of women … how much is our religion worth?”

Christians cannot read the Gospels without sensing the value Jesus attributed to women, women who often found themselves in places of subservience and abuse. Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord … has sent me … to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). When Jesus spoke to the woman taken in adultery, he said, “Where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?… Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:10–11, KJV).

“In the life of Jesus of Nazareth, the character of God is revealed as one who sides with the oppressed, those unfairly treated in society, and whose judgment is on those who oppress, who misuse others for their own selfish ends,” Susan Thistlewaite writes in Christianity and Crisis (Nov. 16, 1981).

This is what abused Christian women desperately need to hear. Otherwise their religion and their church become more a prison than a refuge.

The Teaching On Divorce

A report in the St. Paul Dispatch by staff writer Wayne Christensen concerned one wife who had been battered by her husband for many years. She was a Christian and held strong convictions concerning the sanctity of marriage. But she could take just so much physical abuse. She went to her pastor for help. She said she did not believe in divorce, but that her life was in danger. She wanted to move out.

“But the minister didn’t understand that. He told her she married for better or for worse, that she should go home and pray and work it out, that she shouldn’t upset her husband, … that to have him arrested or kicked out of the house was morally wrong, … that the sanctity of the home is based in accepted religious values, that even if he’s kicking her in her pregnant abdomen her marriage is ‘a holy state of matrimony’ and she should endure her suffering and hold the family together.”

Many Christians believe, as did this minister and abused wife, that divorce is unacceptable for Christians. The biblical teaching about divorce is specific and authoritative, coming as it does straight from the lips of Christ. As happened in this case, some abused Christians who feel strongly about the divorce teaching may discourage themselves or be discouraged by well-meaning friends and professionals from leaving their husbands, getting out of the home, and seeking shelter.

Divorce is a significant doctrinal question, one in which there seems to be less variance than in the matter of submission. Certainly, Christians’ liberalized attitudes toward divorce are to be lamented. “Easy” divorce in Christian circles has yielded tragic results.

But there is something disturbing about the Christian pastor or counselor who, confronted by a woman who has been violently battered, immediately starts flipping the pages of Scripture, quoting the biblical texts on the subject of marriage and divorce. After all, do we really need chapter and verse to recognize the wrong, the horrendous evil, done to the woman? Or maybe a better question is, Haven’t the teachings of Scripture concerning God’s love, the sanctity of life, and the responsibilities of husbands to wives gotten past our heads and into our hearts?

The divorce teaching in regard to the issue of wife abuse is not really the point, yet it is often made to be. There are many options short of divorce open to the woman suffering from abuse. Leaving the home, protecting oneself, leads as often to real treatment of the problem—the psyche of the abuser—as it leads to separation or divorce.

The Salvation Syndrome

This may best be illustrated by Claire’s own story. As a teen-age girl she felt sorry for Charles. She felt she could help him find himself. She was a Christian; he was not. Chaire felt that with time and understanding Charles might come to Christ. She married him.

She was abused three times within the first two weeks of marriage.

Yet Claire stayed with Charles, hoping that he would come around, that maybe through her help he would trade in his nominal Christianity for the real thing.

That is the “salvation syndrome.” Many Christian wives possess this same spiritual sense of responsibility for their non-Christian husbands. A Christian woman may see herself as her non-Christian husband’s rescuer, enabler, perfecter, and ultimately even his savior. This last role—savior—may be the one the abused Christian woman emphasizes: she may feel, mistakenly, that if he becomes a Christian the abuse will stop and the problem will be solved.

One woman (call her Janet) was married to an abusive man for seven years. Finally, she could not take it any more. She divorced him. Within a year Janet found Christ, and her life was transformed. She wanted so much for her ex-husband to discover the new life she had discovered. They remarried. The abuse started again.

Constance Doran, director of Fuller Theological Seminary’s Domestic Violence Program, calls this the “rescuer syndrome.” She says that many women have “rescuer syndrome.” She says that many women have “rescuer fantasies,” in which they perceive themselves not as being helpless or masochistic, but morally strong, able to withstand their husbands’ violence. While the maternal instinct contributes to this, the church often reinforces it.

Lenore Walker says that women told her how their “religious advisers suggested they pray for guidance, become better women, and go home and help their husbands ‘become more spiritual and find the Lord.’ ”

Constance Duran is quoted in Family Life Today (December 1982), “[Abused women] feel that if they just hang in there long enough and turn the other cheek one more time, then he will change. And women are particularly encouraged to do this in the Christian community.”

Unfortunately, the abuser usually does not change without counseling. In fact, the wife’s “saintliness” can provoke the husband even more. An abused woman who feels she can be her husband’s rescuer and savior is not facing reality; she does not understand the antagonistic relationship she is in. The salvation syndrome is dangerous: it may be interpreted by the abuser as a threat and lead to further violence. As Lenore Walker points out, while the wife is waiting for her husband to find the Lord she may be beaten severely. But probably the biggest problem with this syndrome is that it presumes to do the work of God. In seeing herself as rescuer or savior, the woman may forget God’s omnipotence and infinite ability to change people and circumstances—with or without her help. If God can use other persons, the abused wife does not have to keep enduring beatings. In fact, it may be precisely her decision to leave her husband that God uses to move him toward healing, change, and ultimately salvation.

Sexism In The Christian Culture

What is hard to ignore in all this is that the abuse of Christian women is exacerbated by the attitudes of the culture toward women. Christian women are being oppressed partly because the evangelical culture is sexist. For all their talk about “mutual submission” or “equality in submission,” some evangelical Christians practice something quite different.

This is seen partly in the approach of some pastors to the problem. When Claire went to her minister (finally, after 18 years of abuse at the hands of Charles), the first thing he asked her was, “What did you do wrong?” Assuming it was her fault, the pastor sided with Charles, treated Claire like a child, and counseled her to go home to “work it out.”

Lucille Travis (Eternity, Nov. 1981) writes of one pastor “contacted by the husband of a woman from his church who had been at a [wife abuse] shelter for a couple of hours, called her and threatened excommunication if she were not at home by eight the next morning.”

Many pastors simply do not know how to deal with the problem of wife abuse and consequently handle these situations badly, or try to avoid them. But these claims of ignorance do not fully explain the patronizing tones, the sexist smirks, or the condescension by which abused Christian women (and often those not abused) are treated.

This sexism comprises more than just the attitudes of a few pastors or church leaders. It interlaces the entire culture, is part of our history, and is intrinsic to many of our doctrinal positions. R. Emerson Dobash and Russell Dobash suggest in Violence Against Wives (Free Press, 1979) that “the seeds of wife beating lie in the subordination of females and in their subjection to male authority and control.”

The evangelical church may then, by means of its treatment of and attitude toward women, contribute to the climate in which domestic violence is tolerated or even allowed to flourish. Susan Thistlewaite offers a hint of what needs to happen: “If the problem is cultural and partly religious, part of the churches’ task is to examine their own contribution to it.…”

What The Church Should Do

Terry Davidson (Conjugal Crime, Hawthorn, 1978) suggests that it is important that pastors speak out from the pulpit against wife abuse and domestic violence. Churches could consider the needs of abused women a kind of mission field, allotting part of their missionary budgets to the establishing of abuse shelters and homes. A creative approach for churches to pursue is the concept of “shepherding homes,” temporary sanctuary set up in a Christian family’s home to provide shelter for abused women.

But perhaps the most helpful thing a church can do is the simplest: offer its love to those who are hurting.

There are stories of churches’ positive action toward the abused women in their midst. One concerns a woman named Karen.

Although she was a Sunday school teacher, Karen felt aloof and distant from other church members. She felt incapable of telling anyone that her husband was abusing her. But one night her husband brutally attacked her. Karen sang in church the next day in spite of the pain. It was a classic communications gap: Karen could not tell about the abuse, and the congregation was not warm enough or close enough to her to suspect anything was wrong. “I desperately needed people to figure out why I was hurting,” Karen said later. “To me, the [reason] why abused women go on and on covering up is because no one is taking the time to get to know them.”

Later Karen’s husband left her and she needed her church’s support more than ever. She got it. Soon Karen was able to tell close friends what had happened. They responded beautifully, helping her, caring for her, and leading her through the process of healing.

It is difficult to do: church members may be reluctant to get involved in a marital problem—rightly so, for indiscreet “meddling” can be more a problem than a solution. Still, Christians should not be scared away from fulfilling their responsibility. The Living Bible says that we in the church “have been given freedom … to love and serve each other” (Gal. 5:13). And Christ’s statement in Matthew 25:45—“When you refused to help the least of these my brothers, you were refusing help to me”—hauntingly presents the church’s duty to care for those in need.

Perhaps to ameliorate a condition it has in part helped to create, perhaps to fulfill its biblical responsibility—whatever the reason—the Christian church has a responsibility. It needs to take seriously the problem of wife abuse, to seek its prevention, remedy, and healing, and to extend its arms to those abused women in its pews.

Healing by prayer and faith is a subject that arouses great controversy and interest in Christianity. In this issue, CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents a surgeon’s view of divine healing. In the next issue, we offer a different perspective gained in interviews with contemporary evangelical healing ministries.

For six years, author and speaker Joyce Landorf has endured an overwhelming and paralyzing kind of pain. It begins in her jaw and spreads across her face and head, its severity ultimately bringing on nausea and diarrhea. The medical diagnosis is TMJ, for temporomandibular joint dysfunction, and the affliction has caused her to curtail public appearances drastically.

The ailment persists despite the efforts of many specialists using all known methods of treatment. In talking about her situation, Landorf describes the physical pain and the feelings of failure and alienation that come as she must cancel engagements and withdraw from social settings. She also wrestles with God over the reasons behind a physical problem that disrupts her ministry. And yet as Joyce Landorf reflects on all aspects of her suffering, she mentions one source of pain more troubling than any other: judgment from fellow Christians.

A large and vocal branch of the church, it seems, holds that it is never “God’s will” for a person to suffer. Following that dictum, these Christians presume all suffering to derive from one of two flaws in the afflicted person. Either the sufferer is being punished for some sin, or remains unhealed because of a lack of faith. “Confess your sin!” they tell Landorf, and also “You simply must exercise more faith.” In truth, says Landorf, their haughty condemnation, coming at a time of such vulnerability, hurts worse than the physical pain itself.

In May of this year, the Chicago Tribuneran a story on a young father from North Manchester, Indiana. He had just agreed to talk to a Tribune reporter about an incident that happened in 1978. An accompanying photo of him shows a slim man in his early twenties, with neatly trimmed hair and a burgeoning moustache, standing in front of a building at Grace Theological Seminary, where he takes evening classes.

David Gilmore told about an illness of his 15-month old son, Dustin Graham Gilmore, that began in April of 1978. At first the child came down with flu-like symptoms. The Gilmores took him to their church and the pastor prayed for him. Members of that church believed that faith alone heals any disease and that to look elsewhere for help—for example, to medical doctors—demonstrates a lack of faith in God. Gilmore and his wife followed the church’s advice and simply prayed for their son. Over the next weeks they prayed faithfully as his temperature climbed, prayed when they noticed he no longer responded to sounds, and prayed harder when he went blind.

On the morning of May 15, 1978, the day after their pastor preached an especially rousing sermon about faith, the Gilmores went into their son’s room and found his body a blue color, and still. He was dead. Again they prayed, for their church also believed the power of prayer can raise the dead. But Dustin Graham Gilmore stayed dead. An autopsy revealed the infant died from a form of meningitis that could have been treated easily.

Gilmore decided to make his story public after five years of silence because he personally knew of 12 other children who had died in similar circumstances. Beneath the article on the Gilmores the Tribune printed a map of five states (Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky) where people connected to Gilmore’s former pastor now live. Superimposed on the map were tiny tombstones marking where people had died after refusing medical treatment in accordance with church teaching. The number of deaths in all five states totaled 52.

A few months later, ABC television’s “Nightline” program reported that followers of the church had spread to 19 states and five foreign countries. Their own study suggested that pregnant women who followed church teaching died in childbirth at a rate eight times the national average; their children were three times more likely to die.

These two stories, of Joyce Landorf and the Gilmores, typify the divisions within the church over divine healing. The issue of healing usually arises not in the mustiness of a seminary classroom or during calm moments of reflection; rather, it strikes at moments of great vulnerability and torment. I know of no other Christian doctrine that excites such fervor.

Whether of TMJ or meningitis or cancer or any of “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to,” divine healing offers, at last, a way out. The sufferer feels an urge to lunge toward the shimmering, mystical hope that God will somehow act counter to the prognosis and provide escape.

Those who espouse divine healing have grown far more vocal in recent years. Publishers and religious broadcasters parade people before the spotlight to testify of remission from cancer, a lengthened leg, or deliverance from arthritis. One of the largest TV ministries claims to have files bulging with 60,000 reported cases of divine healing.

As a committed Christian involved in the field of medicine for four decades, I view the upsurge of enthusiasm over healing with mixed emotions. Although I share the same goals as the faith healers I see on television, in technique and style we differ enormously. I believe in the divine component of healing. But my own contributions to patients come after years of study and the application of rigid scientific principles to the laws governing human physiology. When I treat a leprosy patient’s badly deformed hand, it may take two or three years of successive surgeries and gradual rehabilitation to free that hand from a frozen, useless state into something more usable. Not once have I seen a missing finger suddenly grow back. And yet, some faith healers seem to promise an entirely new kind of medicine, an instantaneous healing that defies the normal process of science.

(As I watched the more extreme “faith healers,” I have noticed they possess one remarkable advantage over traditional medical practitioners. When a patient fails to respond to a doctor’s treatment, he or she can always blame (and sue) the doctor for maltreatment or the drug company for inadequate testing. In contrast, the faith healer lays blame solely with the patient: “Your faith alone will determine the success of this treatment.” The healer’s reputation remains unspoiled whether the patient recovers or dies.)

I have thought long and hard about this issue, for if all that some television evangelists claim is true, then I am in the wrong business. Have I wasted my life doing slowly and painstakingly what could have been done in the twinkling of an eye?

A Time To Question

I believe the time has come to question the extreme faith-healing perspective with its bright promise that “confession brings possession.” Some of its medical claims seem dubious and even dangerous (as in the case of David Gilmore). But one aspect of the movement troubles me supremely: it seems to ask me to put absolute faith in something that ordinarily does not prove true in life. God neither protects Christians with a shield of health nor provides a quick, dependable solution to all suffering. Christians populate hospital wards, asylums, and cancer hospices in approximate proportion to the world at large. Many Christians who roll in wheelchairs, or awake each day to the scarred stumps of amputated limbs, or undergo the debility of spreading cancer have prayed for healing. Some have attended healing services, felt a sudden rush of hope, and kneeled for an anointing of oil; yet still they live unhealed. For them, divine healing is the cruelest joke of all. At the precise moment when they most need support from the church they receive instead a taunting accusation that in spiritual as well as physical health they do not measure up.

Often on television or the radio I hear speakers promise that healing is always available for all believers—a statement that approaches logical absurdity. If it were true, need any Christian wear glasses? Or die? Yet what godly person in recent memory has ever defied mortality by not succumbing to bodily malfunctin? Surely disease and lowered cellular efficiency is leading each of us—including every faith healer—toward death, and no amount of prayer and faith will reverse that process.

Most Christians, I think, sense the incongruity between what is promised by the faith healers and what works out in their own lives and their friends’ lives. They do not protest because an exhortation to more faith seems harmless enough. But as the examples of Joyce Landorf and David Gilmore amply illustrate, such beliefs are not so harmless. In fact, in my own observation, an undue emphasis on divine healing causes far more sorrow than joy.

Even worse, the habit of saying and praying what is unreal makes people begin to wonder if the whole of religion is unreal. If God does not “come through” in this matter of faith healing, when can he be counted on? Many people throw away their belief in a dependable God on account of their disillusionment over his lack of physical intervention.

If it is obvious from common observation that God does not always intervene in physical healing, other issues of healing are far less obvious. Does he ever intervene directly? If so, what brings on such a miracle? Why does he heal some and not others? If God is loving and compassionate, why doesn’t he use his power to relieve suffering more often?

To attempt a response to some of these questions, I find it necessary to break down healing into various components, speaking of its physical, mental-directed, and spiritual dimensions. I do so with great hesitance, for my life in medicine has taught me that the person is a holistic unity. These three levels cannot be separated, and each has influence on the other. In my personal observation, divine healings have occurred when the Holy Spirit acts through the channel of a person’s own spirit to affect both the mind and body. Considering each of the levels separately may, however, shed some light on the mechanisms involved. I must emphasize very strongly here that what follows is not focused on whether there is a divine component to healing—I assume that there is—but rather on the mechanisms through which that divine power operates.

Inbuilt Healing

I see evidence of physical healing in the human body every day. Ironically, most patients visit a doctor because of healing, not disease: the symptoms that cause patients alarm are usually spectacular demonstrations of the body’s healing mechanisms at work.

An infected wound is red and swollen with pus: the redness comes from an emergency blood supply rushing white cells and agents of repair to the scene and the pus, composed of lymph fluids and dead cells, gives stark and dramatic evidence of cellular warfare being fought. Similarly, a fever represents the body’s effort to circulate blood more quickly and also create a hostile environment for some bacteria. Vomiting coordinates scores of muscles in a dramatic reversal of their normal processes: designed to push food down through the intestine, they now regroup in order to violently expel the food along with toxins and unwelcome invaders that have accumulated in the stomach. All these irritations, which most of us view with alarm and even disgust, reveal the orderly progress of the healing body.

My profession of surgery depends entirely on the success of the body’s healing systems. When I set a fracture, I merely align two ends of bone properly; the body must lay down the calcium needed for them to rejoin or my work would prove futile. Similarly, I cannot cut through flesh and fat and mesentery and organ walls and sew them up again unless I count on the body to repair my intrusion with a seamless reweaving of the body’s cells.

I treated one patient, a young infant, who had the rare disorder of lacking the normal capability of cell healing. Before this problem had been diagnosed, I operated to remove an intestinal blockage. Sewing up her intestine was like sewing a rubber balloon. No matter how fine and tight I made the stitches, they would always leak. As I opened her up again and again, the wounds from my original cut fell loosely apart. I found no healthy scar tissue, no connective web of repairs. She was doomed to an early death.

When I speak of these natural healing processes of the body to some Christians, they want to brush the thought aside: “Oh, of course, but that’s just natural Providence. When I say healing, I mean miracle.” No one who has studied the mechanisms and worked with them every day, harnessing them, directing and aiding them, can brush aside the wonder of physical healing that God has built into each one of us. My wife, an ophthalmologist, calls these processes “the inbuilt miracle.”

We tend to focus on the exceptions, the small percentage of times that the body, for whatever reason, succumbs to disease. But for each breakdown there are hundreds of examples of microbes slaughtered before they could cause damage, of tuberculosis patches isolated in the lungs, and of breast cancers strangled by the body’s own defenses. In his book Miracles, C.S. Lewis depicts authentic miracles not as a contradiction of the normal laws of nature but as a speeding-up of everyday processes (e.g., changing water into wine speeds up the normal providential actions on the vine of soil, sunshine, rain, fermentation). Seen in this light, “miracles” of healing occur in my body every day, but in a slower, less sensational manner. I have become more and more convinced that God purposes ordinarily to allow the outworking of his own design and providential law at the physical level, and not to intervene at that level. He relies on mechanisms put in place with his original design of the DNA spiral.

Reasons For Breakdown

Admittedly, I am writing this article because of the exceptions, the times the body’s systems do not prevail. We are subject to abuse and to the injurious impact of circumstances, but these too follow regular patterns of natural law. Consider the example of genetic defect, surely one of the most traumatic instances of human suffering. We know and can often predict the physical factors that lead to the birth of a deformed child.

Thalidomide, for instance, is a drug designed by humans with a good purpose in mind; I prescribe it even now to prevent deformities in leprosy. But when thalidomide was first introduced, people did not know that in the first month of pregnancy it would interfere with the formation of limb buds in a fetus carried by a mother taking the drug. Thousands of babies entered the world with no arms or legs, or with only stumps. God did not select those mothers to take thalidomide; they chose to take it, in ignorance of its side effect. The same is true of Down’s syndrome. We can identify the exact point of failure in the chemical chain of development. The chances of having a Down’s baby increase as parents delay pregnancy until the woman is older. There is a clear statistical relationship in this and many other human afflictions.

In most instances of human suffering, if we look carefully enough we can trace the problem until we find a basic cause and effect. My suffering may result from something I do wrong, such as overeating, or something another does wrong, such as driving while drunk. Or, perhaps I sit too close to a person coming down with influenza and a germ flies into my mouth. To avoid influenza entirely I must shun all people or wear a mask (about every tenth person you see in commuter trains in Japan wears a mask either to prevent spreading a cold they have or to avoid catching a cold from someone else). All this, the entire cycle of disease and physical healing, works according to natural laws.

One question has always puzzled me: Why do Christians have a difficult time accepting the regularity of natural laws in health and medicine, while taking them for granted in other areas? We work up a high dudgeon against God for not intervening and countermanding his natural laws for the sake of our health (for example, by not changing air pressure differential every time an influenza germ wafts near my mouth), yet accept as a matter of course that he will not intervene in other areas. Now and then God has provided food miraculously (manna in the wilderness, multiplied loaves and fishes), yet who among us would refuse all “natural” sources of food in favor of faith in miraculous intervention? Such an attitude foolishly tempts God.

I have heard Christian ministers encourage people to pray and not seek medical treatment in the event of illness. But I have heard no Christian ministers recommend starting a farming project in the middle of the Sahara. We assume that God set in motion dependable patterns of weather. He worked out the way the sun would evaporate sea water and the winds would blow it over land and cool currents would make clouds and rain. If a person plants rice in the Sahara desert and prays for rain, he simply has a wrong view of the way God has ordered the world.

Theologically, I believe that God does have the power to intervene and create a low-pressure trough in the Sahara to direct rain to that field. At special times that sort of thing has happened, just as miraculous divine healing has occurred. Obviously, Jesus contradicted ordinary natural law in the raising of Lazurus from death. God has the power and freedom to do such exceptional acts today. But these exceptions are usually signs sent at unusual moments in God’s history, and are not the normal way in which God runs the world.

We would do well to examine more closely the characteristics of Jesus’ healing ministry during a time when God did intervene miraculously on a physical level. “Don’t tell anyone!” Jesus sternly ordered many who received healing from him (Matt. 8:4; 9:30; Mark 5:43; 7:24 & 36; 8:30; 9:9; Luke 5:14). On other occasions he seemed oddly reluctant to perform miracles, almost as if he shied away from intervening in the natural order. He seemed especially anxious that his onlookers not confuse general miracle hysteria with true faith. To him, asking for a sign just for the spectacle of it characterized a “wicked and adulterous generation” (Matt. 12:38–39).

(Jesus’ style contrasts sharply with that of modern healing exhibitions, well-advertised and conducted in dramatic settings, punctuated with the healer’s flamboyant gestures and appropriate background music. In manner—though not treatment—Christ more closely resembled a concerned physician than a faith healer, because he knew what afflicted each person who came to him and altered his treatment accordingly.)

I have no space to examine the various New Testament passages that apply to healing, nor have I followed up exhaustive case studies of people who attended mass faith healing services, so I cannot pass judgment on them. But from my own experience as a physician I must truthfully admit that, among the thousands of patients I have treated, I have never observed an unequivocal instance of intervention in the physical realm. Many were prayed for, many found healing, but not in ways that counteracted the laws governing physiology. No case I have personally treated would meet rigorous criteria for a supernatural miracle.

I have reached a personal conclusion that what most people think of when you say the word “divine healing”—a supernatural intervention that reverses natural laws governing our bodies—is extremely rare indeed. God does not normally interact directly at the organic level, and, in fact, it would not affect my faith in the least if he chose never to reverse those natural laws. However we present divine healing, let us not stir up false hopes so that a sufferer stakes all his or her faith on belief in miraculous healing at this level. We cannot build a water-tight theology promising physical healing, surely, for the most “miracle-ridden” Christian will die in the end, yielding to the natural processes of senescence.

We in medicine do, from time to time, come across unexplained phenomena that may appear to be spontaneous healings contravening natural laws. The disease of cancer particularly may manifest strange and even permanent remissions—Lewis Thomas of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center mentions knowledge of several hundred such cases.

(A book by the former president of the American College of Surgeons [Spontaneous Regression of Cancer/discusses 176 patients.)

But the remissions occur among Christians and non-Christians, with prayer and without prayer, and they represent a very small percentage of the people with cancer who have been prayed for.

George Bernard Shaw caustically commented that he found the healing shrine at Lourdes unconvincing because it had many crutches and wheelchairs on display, but not one wooden leg, glass eye or toupee. In his cynical way, he pointed out an important aspect of most cases claimed as “divine healing.” Once an organic fact has become incontrovertible—missing legs, eyes, or hair follicles—miracles rarely occur. Healing normally operates in the mental and spiritual realms that can in turn galvanize the body’s own healing processes.

Despite much prayer, the nerves controlling Joni Eareckson Tada’s legs have not spontaneously regenerated. And I have never yet heard an account of miraculous healing of pancreatic cancer (which has a 100 percent mortality rate) or of cystic fibrosis, or a major birth defect, or amputation. For more accurate understanding of divine healing we must move from the simple physical realm to the physical as influenced by mind and spirit.

Powers Of The Mind

Skeptical scientists and physicians use the word “psychosomatic” to explain away reports of supernatural healings, implying the particular ailment healed was due more to auto-suggestion than to any physical “miracle.” They point out that healings occur in certain groupings of diseases: neurasthenia, bursitis, arthritis, lameness, deafness, allergies, migraine headaches.

Although divine healing seems to work best among selective afflictions, it does attract enthusiastic testimonials. Thousands of people take the trouble to write national television programs claiming deliverance from suffering; we cannot simply dismiss their reports.

It does not diminish my respect for God’s power in the slightest to realize that he primarily works through faculties of the mind to summon up new resources of healing in a person’s body. The word “psychosomatic” carries no derogatory connotations for me. It derives from two Greek words, psyche and soma, which mean simply “mind” or “soul,” and “body.” Such diseases and their apparent cures demonstrate the incredible power of the mind in affecting the rest of the body.

Let me illustrate the mind’s power with a few examples recently documented by modern science:

• The mind can effectively control pain. This can be accomplished by simple mental discipline or by “flooding the gates” of the nervous system with distracting noises or additional sensations (e.g., accupuncture). I saw impressive evidence of pain control while in India, where Hindu fakirs would unflinchingly walk on coals, sleep on nails, and string themselves up on poles with ropes pulling on meat hooks through their backs.

• In the placebo effect, faith in simple sugar pills stimulates the mind to control pain and even heal some disorders. In some experiments among those with terminal cancer, morphine was an effective painkiller in two-thirds of patients, but placebos were equally effective in half of those! The placebo tricks the mind into believing relief has come, and the body responds accordingly. Placebos also show curative powers in areas other than in pain control; they can actually stimulate the fight against disease.

• Through biofeedback, people can train themselves to direct bodily processes that previously were thought involuntary. They can control blood pressure, heart rate, brain waves, and even vary the temperature in their hands by as much as 14 degrees.

• In primitive cultures, shamans use a technique called “boning.” The shaman points a “magical” bone at a person accused of some crime, and the person will contort and writhe in pain, and die in a few hours. The only physical “cause” of death is the power of suggestion.

• Under hypnosis, 20 percent of patients can be induced to lose consciousness of pain so completely that they can undergo surgery without anesthetics. Some patients have even cured their own warts under hypnosis. The hypnotist suggests the idea, and the body performs a remarkable feat of skin renovation and construction, involving the cooperation of thousands of cells in a mental-directed process not otherwise attainable.

• In a false pregnancy, a woman believes so strongly in her pregnant condition that her mind directs an extraordinary sequence of activities: it increases hormone flow, enlarges breasts, suspends menstruation, induces morning sickness, and even prompts labor contractions. All this occurs even though there is no “physical cause”—that is, no fertilization and growing fetus inside.

Brain researchers have recently received Nobel Prizes for discovering the mechanisms behind some of these mind-body connections. The brain produces an array of chemical neurotransmitters called endomorphins that can control pain and affect body systems, some of which are hundreds of times more potent than morphine.

Simultaneously, many researchers have explored how external factors, such as stress, can have profound effects on body systems. People who are unemployed or recently widowed have much higher susceptibility to disease. People who take quiet times during the day and force themselves to relax seem to develop a control of stress that brings them greater health. All of these findings, which are far too numerous and complex to explore in this article, point to the fact that the mind can be a powerful channel for directing physical healing, or its failure.

Is this mental-directed healing the mechanism that results in so many claims of healing from faith healing ministries? It seems very probable. The suffering person may well focus hope and faith and trust to such a degree that the physical body responds with true recovery. The mind is a powerful force, and God can use it for his good purposes.

(To be honest, I must also add that similar results are claimed by Mormons, Christian Science practitioners, and Hindus. These, too, write testimonials of supernatural healing, and offer documentation to prove their cases. Even a self-confessed humanist has access to mental-directed powers: Norman Cousins describes in detail in Anatomy of an Illness how he fought off a crippling disease with the health-restoring weapons of laughter and joy. The benefits of good nutrition, relaxation, a soul at peace, and the harmony of love are aspects of common grace available to all.)

A Channel For The Spirit

As a physician, I recognize the importance of a proper relationship between the mind and body for my patients to experience true health. Our minds have many ways of harming our bodies. It is our minds, after all, that make choices to abuse our bodies through poor nutrition or excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco. All these mental choices have drastic effects on our physical health. In addition, spiritual ills affect mental attitudes. Fear, loneliness, repressed anger, helplessness—these are all enemies of recovery that will affect my patients’ physical responses.

As a Christian, I recognize that the indwelling Holy Spirit can likewise use the extraordinary faculties of physical and mental-directed healing. My mind is an instrument for the Spirit. “Be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” said Paul, and I envision a person who allows the Spirit to take charge and orient his mental and physical life.

In the realm of the spirit, I feel on solid ground in claiming God’s direct interaction in human affairs. In fact, God seems to have designed the earth so that he primarily relates to humanity through the spiritual faculty, and least commonly through physical intervention. He created us in his image, which is spirit, and that spiritual faculty separates us from all other creation. We have the potential for direct contact with the Creator of the universe, and when the Spirit dwells in us that fact can have a dramatic impact on our overall health.

Without a doubt, I believe a properly focused individual has a better physiology than one riddled with stress, anxiety, and confusion. As an analogy, I think of iron filings scattered randomly on a sheet of paper. Suddenly a magnet is brought up under the paper; the scattered filings arrange themselves in an orderly fashion. Each one maintains its separateness, but lines of force bring a unity to former chaos. In a similar way, the Spirit can affect the actual cells of our body by bringing to them a powerful orienting force. When the mind is God-centered and the person is “walking in the Spirit,” cells receive a new direction, are enhanced, and the whole person functions best.

Scientists have verified that positive choices can have a salubrious effect on the physical body. A spirit of gratitude, inner peace, love, hope, happiness, support from friends, joy—these qualities can have far greater effect than an injection I could give. A body that is at peace and is surrounded by loving support quite literally heals better. In view of this fact, the Old Testament Levitical laws and the New Testament prescriptions for spiritual health also translate into an accurate formula for physical well-being.

The list of qualities mentioned above bears a striking parallel to the fruit of the Spirit outlined in Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Such characteristics of growth in the Spirit can have a powerful effect on healing by properly aligning the orientation of mind and body. I am convinced that the Creator designed the mind and body to flourish when under the control of the Spirit.

I do not in any way devalue the benefit of spiritual healing directed through mental faculties; it is not “inferior” to a direct intervention by God reversing physical laws. Rather, the Spirit uses the natural milieu—the mind, nerves, and hormonal systems that control all cells—to accomplish his work. A true faith healer works in concert with, not in opposition to, these inbuilt processes. The channels of the mind open up wonderful opportunities for Christians, for we can indeed assist the healing process in each other.

Those who pray for the sick and suffering should first praise God for the remarkable physical agents of healing he designed and then ask that God’s special grace will take hold of the person and give him or her the ability to use those resources to their fullest advantage. The church can then fulfill its role as Christ’s body by laying hands of healing on the one who needs faith and hope and love and comfort.

I have seen remarkable instances for true physical healing accomplished in this way. People of God have overcome the effects of disease in staggering, “un-natural” ways, all mediated through the instruments of body and mind under the control of the Spirit. Fellow Christians can offer real, tangible help in this process of setting into motion the intrinsic powers of healing in a person controlled by God. This quality of focused healing, attainable in no other way, does not contradict natural laws. Rather, it fully exploits the design features built into the human body.

When There Is No Miracle

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevski commented on God’s reticence to interfere in the physical realm: “Thou wouldst not enslave man by a miracle and didst crave faith given freely, not based on miracle.” It would be instructive indeed to read through the four Gospels, comparing Jesus’ attention to physical healing—less than two dozen recorded miracles—with the energy he devoted to a different category of diseases, those of the soul. Why aren’t seminars given, books written, and television ministries based on proper techniques for dealing with lust, pride, legalism, and hypocrisy? These four favorite themes of Jesus bear far more weight in the Gospels than does divine healing. Does an obsession with one and not the other reveal a dyslexia of values, an almost pagan obsession with the physical body?

My discussion of healing would be tragically incomplete if I neglected one last aspect of spiritual healing. What happens when health never returns, when a disease is terminal, or a paralysis, or a permanent burn scar? Is there any hope? To such a person, I would point to a different kind of spiritual healing, a healing of the soul. It was the kind of healing Jesus clearly concentrated on, and the form of healing available to us all—even to those whose bodies will never recover.

The Spirit can provide a remarkable healing of the person even when the healing of the body does not take place. I have seen this process beautifully at work in many of my leprosy patients. In India, many patients would come to me too late, after the disease had progressed untreated for many years. I could work to restore movement to fingers and could attempt some cosmetic surgery on the face, but I could never begin to replace the beauty and protean range of expression of a human hand or face. I could not conscientiously offer these people hope for complete physical or even mental-directed healing. Their fingers and toes would not grow back, their faces would never again have beauty. Yet, under the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I saw some of these patients emerge into spiritual giants. Freed from concerns about personal appearance and acceptance in society, they could devote themselves fully to spiritual goals of becoming disciples of Christ. Today, looking back, memories of those patients shine forth like beacons.

In this country the paraplegic Joni Eareckson Tada offers a sterling example of a person who found her physical abilities impaired and unhealed, but her spiritual potential released. Joni has had a profound spiritual impact on hundreds of thousands of people. She has motivated others with handicaps to believe that the same resources of faith, trust, and usefulness to God are available to all of us, with or without physical healing. I am sure that this kind of healing in the spirit has far more importance from the standpoint of eternity than whether or not a leg moves again.

Whenever I am asked to describe a miracle of divine healing, strangely enough, a scene of this kind of miracle comes to my mind, a miracle so great it made the unhealed sickness not matter. When I think of miracles, I think of one person: Mrs. Savararyan, wife of the general superintendent of our hospital at Vellore, India. She represents not a dramatic physical cure, but an awakening of personal spirit. I must tell her story.

Mrs. Savararyan influenced my life a great deal. She was a wonderful, saintly woman whose spiritual strength was absolutely incandescent. Although she had no specific profession other than being a great wife and mother, in the sight of those around her and, I am convinced, of God, she achieved the stature of a giant.

Mrs. Savararyan developed cancer of the breast, which quickly spread. Her breast was surgically removed and she began radiotherapy. As so often happens in cancer patients, hopes rose, then fell as the disease metastasized into her lungs and throughout her body. Her doctors presented the terminal prognosis to her very honestly and described the toxic effects of chemotherapy treatments, which would offer only palliative help. After listening to all their advice and reviewing the medical data, Mrs. Savararyan decided against prolonged treatment.

“Even if I have only a week or month to live, I want to live it awake and fully alive and conscious of the presence of God and his family,” she announced. She then informed those of us in the community that she had declined extensive treatment and planned to rely on our help and prayers and presence.

People would stream into her room: doctors and nurses and patients, some of whom also had great pain. In that room Mrs. Savararyan practiced the presence of Christ with a serenity and strength that defied belief. Those of us who visited said we did so to comfort her, but in truth we went to receive her overflowing comfort and strength. We left inspired to face our own problems in a new way. She had pain, yet refused drugs if they would spoil her consciousness of those who came to see her. Her peace and control were such that the pain receded into a minor place in her consciousness. As her pain increased, her spiritual strength also increased.

I last saw Mrs. Savararyan early in the morning on Good Friday. Each year we celebrate a three-hour service on that day, and various staff members would speak on the seven last statements of Christ. I had been assigned “Into thy hands I commend my spirit,” the last words Christ spoke before death. On the way to the church I stopped by her room for a visit. She was as peaceful and courageous and inspiring as ever, and gave me a message to take to the congregation.

Within an hour of my visit, Mrs. Savararyan died. I heard the news while sitting in my pew, when a messenger came up to me and whispered. I sat there, waiting my turn to speak, weeping silently, wondering how I could compose myself enough to speak.

I broke the news to the congregation from the pulpit. All in attendance knew and loved Mrs. Savararyan. The impact of her death, in that attitude of solemn meditation on Christ’s sacrifice, was electrifying. I could hardly control my own voice as I told the audience that I knew she had committed her spirit to the Lord many weeks before and that her final passing was but an instance in which she shook off her mortality.

Her spirit, I reflected aloud, had been in God’s hands long before death. He had sustained and strengthened her until all that had to happen at death was for her body to fall away like an insect’s cocoon. The same spirit that had already risen above pain and fear and all the problems that normally attend death had simply come to that moment when she said “Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.”

I am so thankful Mrs. Savararyan was not exposed to the suggestions of those who might have made her question her relationship to God because she remained unhealed. She was not healed, not in the sense of her disease disappearing. But every person in that audience, and most of all I, as the one who had brought the news, knew that we had seen a miracle of profound dimension. Strength, patience, courage, hope, love—these too are the stuff in which God fashions miracles of healing.

A Harried Gloria In Excelsis

It’s about time for conferences. Yes, the Christian church, once dedicated to pax in terram, has discovered that the season of the nativity ’tis the season for a conference. So in that very imminent season, on the third day of Christmas, and in the name of him who gave us peace, we will interrupt Epiphany to hurry off to the after-Christmas conferences. Oh well, you can’t hang around the Christmas tree playing with the electric train forever. Besides, the work of the kingdom must go on. For Dad, there’s a Conference for the Godly Man in Atlanta. Mom can go to the Praying Women Convention in Phoenix. For Junior, there is a Ski-Jesus Retreat in Banff, and for the collegian, there is Mission You in San Diego.

Of course, we know that Christmas is the only time we have when we could possibly squeeze another meeting onto the Christian calendar—so why not? Time together to enjoy each other is not nearly so important as the meeting that replaces it. When Jesus said, “Go ye into all the world,” it must have been just after Christmas. If you need other prooftexts, try these:

“So the wise men departed another way …”

No reason to leave their adoration of the infant unless there was a “Growing Wise” conference in Nineveh.

“Mary and Joseph took the child and departed into Egypt.”

Did they or did they not leave to attend the Infancy-to-Adolescence Conference in Cairo?

“There was no room in the inn.”

What could they expect? It was Christmas and time for the December Symposium on the Incarnation.

“Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude …”

They should have registered early.

The birth of Christ was a big event, but American believers are too big on meetings to stop for very long. Let’s all sing “O Come, Let Us Adore Him” so we can hurry up and go someplace.

EUTYCHUS

Help Or Hindrance?

It is a pity that such a fine group of Christian educators [News, Sept. 16] should join in the time-honored practice of praise of Marxist governments by church leaders. Armando Valladares, himself once a supporter of Castro and later imprisoned for over 20 years, said “every time a clergyman would write an article in support of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would reach us, and that was worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger” (Catholicism in Crisis, Sept. 1983). While in Nicaragua to film a CBS documentary this spring, William Urschel, Jr., took the time to talk to people away from the official tours. Although he once sided with the Sandinistas, Urschel concludes: “What has happened to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua reminds one of Cuba” (Princeton Alumni Weekly, Sept. 7, 1983). May God help Christian leaders to help our brothers in Christ in Marxist countries.

JOHN L. DOANE

Princeton Junction, N.J.

Christian Administration?

I was dismayed at seeing “Rating Reagan” [Oct. 7], Surely being Christian involves a concern for righteousness. And righteousness would seem to be contrary to so much that the Reagan administration has done. How people associated with this kind of administration can be called “Christian” defies understanding. They certainly can be referred to as those who say, “Lord, Lord.” But to call them “Christian” is to stretch that term so far that it ceases to mean anything. Far from making people more morally and religiously aware, I think the protestations of Christian commitment on the part of Reagan officials can serve only to cheapen the words through which Christian faith is proclaimed.

Christianity, as I understand it, stands for service to the poor and oppressed and against nationalistic idolatries. On both counts, I think the Christian has to regard the Reagan administration with profound skepticism.

WILMER MACNAIR

Lafayette, La.

Thank You!

Please convey to Elisabeth Elliot the sincere appreciation and heartfelt gratitude of one among countless numbers, I am sure, for retelling the life story of “Amma” in living and moving words of feeling of one who shared but is unable to articulate them [“The Person Who Influenced Me Most,” Oct. 7],

MAWII PUDAITE

Bibles for the World

Wheaton, Ill.

From Left To Right

Richard Lovelace’s article “Are There Winds of Change at the World Council?” [Sept. 16] seemed to indicate a step to the right by a group that has been in left field for some time. The WCC and the NCC have been under severe fire not only from conservatives, but even from the liberal secular press. Was this assembly in Vancouver reflective of a true change, even down to the day-to-day money spending agencies of the WCC, or did they carefully orchestrate a conservative show in order to “get the heat off” and prevent further deterioration of their sources of money?

FREDERIC M. COOPER

Garland, Tex.

It was one of the most exciting and inspiring articles I have ever read in your magazine.

REV. JOHN CALVIN RHOAD

Langley Presbyterian Church

Langley, B.C.

Breath Of Life!

Philip Yancey makes an excellent point: God is present in our lives, hence his guidance is also present, however subtle or invisible it may usually be [“Finding the Will of God,” Sept. 16].

God’s great longing is to give us wisdom and discernment for trials of faith. He does not promise wisdom for the “trials” we create in attempting to select the “best” choices from among the unparalleled number of amoral opportunities available to us (Jas. 1:2–11). As the Father’s intimacy permeates our living, his priority is on the blossoming forth of Jesus through us as we freely live. Our Father offers us not a “plan” for our life, but his very Breath, working creatively with us, within us.

PHILIP BITAR

Berkeley, Calif.

I could not help but feel a little uneasy at the end of Yancey’s article. In a close relationship we desire communication from the other person, and that is found in God’s Word. Why Yancey left this out I don’t know, especially since he discovered the very premise for his position in the Psalms.

LYNETTE J. MURRAY

Albuquerque, N.M.

Thanks for Philip Yancey’s article, refocusing the spotlight in decision making on the primacy of our relationship to God rather than on a set of techniques. In our “mega-trending” society, the tendency is to seek the “high tech” of innovation and technique rather than the “high touch” of God’s presence in a relationship of trusting dependence.

I have found that when I properly understand the place and limits of the rational resources that are available to me by God’s sovereign grace, only then do I recognize anew my dependency on the mysterious intimacy of my relationship with my Wonderful Counselor and Helper. This holistic balance is one Friesen’s book brings to the entire discussion of Decision Making and the Will of God and one that would further enhance Yancey’s otherwise helpful discussion.

STEPHEN T. HOKE

Seattle Pacific University

Seattle, Wash.

Wrong Title?

Curtis Mitchell has made many significant contributions to our understanding of prayer in the Scripture through his careful studies. His article, “Don’t Pray for the Unsaved!” [Sept. 16], is of the same quality and touches upon a sorely needed area of clarification. He is right on target when he says, “Prayer relating to evangelism has been more misunderstood and subject to ‘malpractice,’ I believe, than any other.”

If I were going to make any alteration of his article, I would do it in the title and phrase it, “Don’t Pray for the Unregenerate.” The term salvation in Scripture is broader than salvation from the penalty of sin. It includes salvation from the power of sin and salvation from the presence of sin as well. In the case of a regenerate person, he has been saved from the penalty of sin, he is to go on being saved from the power of sin, and he shall one day be saved from the presence of sin altogether.

If more regenerate people, who have been saved from the penalty of sin, would go on being saved from the power of sin, we might find that more of the lost, or unregenerate, would be saved from the penalty of sin.

EARL D. RADMACHER

Western Conservatives

Baptist Seminary

Portland, Oreg.

A Note Of Praise

Congratulations on the excellent article “Why Charles Colson’s Heart Is Still in Prison” [Sept. 16]. This dedicated man of God has been a tremendous encouragement to many, including those who minister in prisons with God’s Word.

I recall when the publishers of Mr. Colson’s first book sent to Prison Mission Association headquarters a gift package of 1,000 copies of his book Born Again. In so many ways we have been helped by the testimony we see in his work and the outreach of Prison Fellowship. We pray and thank God for the impact being felt in prisons and elsewhere, thanks to his stand for Christ.

REV. JOE B. MASON

Prison Mission Association

Riverside, Calif.

Simple Solution

I was impressed with your balanced article “Hitting Sour Notes: The Clash Over Music Copyright” [Sept. 16]. I have a simple suggestion [for music publishers]: Include with every published work, whether sheet music, recording, lyric sheet, or other medium a simple form to request permission to duplicate the work. Have on the form a complete price list, detailed enough to cover the most likely needs of the probable users of the work. Make prices fair, covering usual royalties and reasonable administrative costs, but recognize the fact that the users will be paying the high costs of physical media. By filling out the form and mailing it with the appropriate fee, a user may immediately make the copies he or she needs.

Those who knowingly steal will not be deterred, but there are many who will welcome the chance to pay for the music they use.

JOHN C. FLACK

Arlington, Va.

Thank you for your very informative article. The article made such an impression I Xeroxed a copy for my file.

ANONYMOUSLY [sic] YOURS

Confidence Affirmed

Regarding the recent news feature on Constance Cumbey [Sept. 2] and her gratuitous assaults on respected evangelical persons and agencies, including the Mustard Seed Conspiracy and its author, Tom Sine, I wish simply to affirm my complete confidence in author Sine and my hearty appreciation of the book. Guided attacks may have value. Misguided attacks are singularly graceless.

PAUL S. REES

Boca Raton, Fla.

Or do we adjust Scripture to fit our political convictions?

I find the current infatuation of evangelicals with Ronald Reagan intriguing.

Only a few years ago many of us had enthusiastically supported Jimmy Carter for President.

I remember the church in which I found Christ as a youth teaching that movie attendance was a consummate evil and that film stars led lives of unmitigated sin. In 1980, however, I saw many of those same brethren supporting for the presidency a veteran actor who had become “born again” and a “man of God”—without repudiating his Hollywood connection!

But was not the then-incumbent President also born again, and a Baptist to boot? In fact, as Wesley Pippert demonstrates in his thoughtful book The Spiritual Journey of Jimmy Carter, the Georgian had been a lifelong practitioner of a model evangelical faith. He had taught Sunday school, read the Bible and prayed regularly, witnessed to associates, remained married to one woman, and was more forthrightly devout and articulate in his personal religious beliefs than any other American president in this century.

On the other hand, critics during the presidential campaign insisted, Reagan has only a nominal relationship with the church, and his affirmations of Christian conviction are vaguer than those of former President Carter. As he wrote in a campaign piece, he believes “this nation must have a spiritual rebirth, a rededication to the moral precepts that guided us for so much of our past, and … very soon.” One could, of course, read almost anything into those words. Reagan did court the evangelical vote, as demonstrated by publication of a campaign biography by an evangelical publisher (Doug and Bill Wead, Reagan in Pursuit of the Presidency—1980), and by his appearance at the Roundtable’s National Affairs Briefing in Dallas. Though the President seemed to back away from these supporters after the election, in the last few months he has come out on the side of conservative religion in a series of forceful speeches. He once again is appealing to evangelicals by taking stands on public issues that coincide with the views of many of them.

On January 30, 1983, Reagan told the National Association of Religious Broadcasters that “the freest country on earth” should never “have permitted God to be expelled from its classrooms,” and the most awesome military machine in history is “no match for that one frail man-hero, strong yet tender, Prince of Peace.”

Then on March 8 in an address to the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in Orlando, Florida, he stated his opinions on school prayer, abortion, secularism, a nuclear freeze, and the need for a spiritual awakening.

The latter speech elicited the most vehement press criticism of presidential religious involvement since the Nixon era. Nevertheless, Robert Dugan, director of the NAE’S Office of Public Affairs, defended it as the expression of “sincere religious beliefs” and insisted that Reagan was not pandering to his evangelical audience for political purposes, as the critics had charged. Instead, the president really believed what he said and “is seeking to translate his deepest convictions into political positions, something we’ve been trying to get evangelicals to do.”

The problem is that many equally sincere evangelicals believe that in the 1980 campaign a Christian statesman such as former President Carter or former Congressman John B. Anderson (named NAE Layman of the Year in 1964) more accurately reflected their political beliefs. How could three presidential contenders and their supporters all claim to be born-again believers and hold such widely different stances on issues?

The answer may be found in the recent study of congressional religious beliefs by Peter Benson and Dorothy Williams, Religion on Capitol Hill. Their analysis reveals six different types of religion. Two of these, nontraditional and nominal religion, would not fit the evangelical mold. But a second group does. It includes legalistic, self-concerned, integrated, and people-concerned Christians. People in this group attend church with some regularity, speak favorably of the church’s role in society, acknowledge the personal importance of religion, and manifest an understanding of Christian doctrine.

When placed on a continuum, the four types vary significantly from one another and cut across denominational lines. The researchers conclude that people in each of them “share orthodox beliefs but differ dramatically in how they experience religion.” Biblical principles do not determine their religious views and actions nearly as much as do their basic religious predispositions.

This insight clarifies why we evangelicals diverge so in our political beliefs. It does not, however, resolve the question of how much we allow the Bible to guide our actions. Do we simply adjust Scripture to harmonize with our own preconceptions? Or do we truly live under the authority of the Word of God? When it comes to presidential voting, the former may be closer to the truth.

Dr. Pierard is professor of history at Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana.

I hace just finished reading In Season, Out of Season, a book in which Jacques Ellul responds to an interviewer’s questions about his life and thought. Ellul freely admits his thinking and actions have proceeded along two parallel tracks that have remained separate. He is known as a brilliant sociologist and critic of society. On one track he has pioneered as an activist in the French Resistance, in city government, and now in environmental causes. On another track he has pursued a Christian faith that has found expression in a warm devotional life and in personal service as a pastor and seminary professor.

Ellul admits he has never successfully tied together the two strands of his life. His experiences in the corridors of power, as a denominational leader and a politician, cause him to question whether change will ever come within institutions. He wonders if any structure can convey Christian love and compassion. Reading of his struggle started me thinking about the wide crevasse that separates power from love.

If we could somehow chart out the history of the Christian church in a graph as simple and revealing as a stock market report, we would see tremendous surges in the church’s power. First the Christian faith conquered the Near East, and then Rome, then all of Europe. Finally it spread to the New World and ultimately to Africa and Asia. Yet, strangely enough, the peaks of success and earthly power also mark the peaks of intolerance and religious cruelty, the stains of church history we are most ashamed of today. It is as if love cannot coexist with power, and success contains within it the guarantee of a crash to come.

For this reason, I worry about the recent surge of power in the evangelical movement. Once we were ignored and scorned. Now we are featured on the front page of the New York Times, courted by Presidents, interviewed on morning talk shows. Political movements have sprung up with a strongly evangelical scent to them.

Regardless of the merits of a given issue—whether a prolife lobby out of the Right or a nuclear freeze lobby out of the Left—all of these movements flirt with the danger of pulling on to themselves the cloak of power that smothers love. A movement by nature draws lines, makes distinctions, delivers judgment; in contrast, love erases lines, overcomes distinctions, and dispenses grace.

Most assuredly, I am not calling for an ostrich-like stance of hiding from the crucial issues that face the church in a secular society. They must be faced, and addressed, and legislated. But Paul’s words continue to haunt me. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, and have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing.

Somehow, unless our power is to corrode like that of the well-intentioned religious leaders who preceded us, somehow we must approach power with humility, and fear, and a consuming love for those we will exercise it over. Jesus did not say, “All men will know you are my disciples … if you just pass laws, quash immorality, and restore decency to family and government,” but rather “… if you love one another” (John 13:35).

Jesus made that statement, of course, the night before his death. Never have the contrasting styles of God’s power and human power been more openly displayed than that next evening. Human power was represented by the might of the Roman empire and the full force of Jewish religious authorities. God’s power expressed itself through the ultimate act of deliberate powerlessness. The religious leaders flung taunts, “He saved others, but he can’t save himself.”

As I look back on that dark night especially, and on other dark nights in history that have followed, I marvel at the restraint of power God has shown in the face of brutal evil. But as I meditate on God’s self-restraint, at last I begin to see the inherent flaw in any form of power. It can do everything but the most important thing. It cannot force love.

In a concentration camp, as so many have borne poignant witness, the guards can force anything. They can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your own son. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: love. They cannot force you to love them.

Love does not operate according to the rules of power, and it can never be forced. In that fact we can glimpse the thread of reason behind God’s use (or nonuse) of power. He is interested in only one thing from us: our love. That is why he created us. And no pyrotechnic displays of omnipotence will achieve that, only his ultimate emptying to join us and then die for us. Herein is love.

Every Sunday school child can quote the deepest theology: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” And, when it all boils down, that is what the Christian gospel is—not a demonstration of power, but a demonstration of love.

Righteousness

I am being clothed with the clothes of a king Who one long weekend long ago Undressed himself and climbed upon a Roman tree That he might, so naked, outfit me.

—TROY REEVES

Brainstorm

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists; directed by Douglas Trumbull

Like the diamond that shatters a ray of perfect light to create its beauty, Brainstorm violates acknowledged standards of aesthetic decorum. Yet through its irregular narrative prism, a lovely sense of spirituality emerges that transcends the film’s obvious flaws.

This is high-tech cinema, directed by special-effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull. Many of the movie’s startling images were filmed with the new Super Panavision process for greater image clarity. Unfortunately, Brainstorm fails to translate a like lucidity to its hopelessly muddled screenplay. The plot revolves around an elaborate device that can record, play back—and violate the sanctity of one’s thoughts and emotions. Questions of morality arise when government agents plot to use the machine for sinister purposes. The dedicated scientists fight for control, and lose; but not before they complete their incredible journey of self-discovery to the boundaries of death and beyond.

On this level alone. Brainstorm redeems itself despite Trumbull’s directorial errors. For all its complex hardware, this is still a film of the spirit. 1984 is upon us, and in living rooms everywhere computer terminals blink on like a third eye. But the message of this not-so-far-fetched fairy tale is that the ghost in the machine is us. We can miniaturize our microchips and cart around our minds like carry-on luggage, but when the button is pushed and the program is running we are merely playing back ourselves. Our machines only reflect our own capacity for good and evil.

Yet this dichotomy is the hope of humanity: we are more than our machines. We have an everlasting destination beyond some Silicon Valley scrap heap. When Dr. Brace (Christopher Walken) records loving moments of courtship and marriage as a gift for his estranged wife (the late Natalie Wood), the implication is clear: the human spirit cannot be erased like a floppy disc.

In Brainstorm’s finale, Brace experiences a colleague’s death, and we are treated to a glimpse of heaven. Clearly the scientist has soared beyond his own invention and taken us with him—and the light he approaches is the eternal source of mankind’s divine shadow.

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

It may be time to reform this part of the Reformation.

High above the sanctuary, sunlight filters through stained glass windows, splintering into flakes of fire that dance across the floor of an old cathedral. The windows, the mosaics, the marble sculptures—all testify to the richness of our Christian heritage, and bear witness to the magnificence of our Lord.

Many of our church buildings today pale in comparison. To be sure, true worship is not dependent on any building. Nevertheless, we can enrich our worship experience through our surroundings. Now is the time to restore the place of art in our churches.

Why are our modern sanctuaries barren of artwork? As we approach the five-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation, we are reminded of that era’s insistence on structural simplicity in church worship. The Reformation was, no doubt, one of the main forces that stripped our churches of their external beauty.

Objecting to the worship of relics that had crept into the church, the Reformers purged the cathedrals of everything they considered “external” to worship. With unrestrained fervor they burned organ pipes in bonfires, filled ditches with cart loads of stained glass, and used the ancient illuminated manuscripts as wrapping paper.

The leaders of the Reformation were not against art itself. Rather, they reacted against the idea that those images represented idols that people were worshiping. The Old Testament patriarchs, in a similar manner, cut down sacred groves of trees related to the worship of pagan gods. They did not hate the trees; they hated what the trees stood for.

This angry iconoclastic movement of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries took place out of obedience to a fundamental principle of the Reformers’ faith. The Reformers wanted to return to the example of the original church, using the Bible as their sole authority. They opposed the humanistic philosophy of the Renaissance, which elevated man to the center of all things. Because the art that filled the cathedrals often included things that people worshiped, they were destroyed.

Unfortunately, these “fanatical destroyers,” as they were sometimes called, left behind only battered fragments of much of that era’s finest works of art. Great tapestries of the time are practically extinct. Almost nothing remains of the wealth of metalwork that once filled the cathedrals. Only a few pieces of twelfth-and thirteenth-century stained glass survive.

While we can do nothing to regain the lost treasures of the past, we can alter the future. To restore art to its proper place in the church, we must first realize that symbolism must be subordinated to the truth(s) it seeks to express. Art should not attract attention to itself. If artwork in the church does not enhance and contribute to our worship, then it does not belong. There should be no room in our sanctuaries for cheap, tacky, unfinished work.

We must reconsider the prominent role symbols have played throughout the history of Christianity. Since the beginning of time God has used the language of signs and symbols to reveal the unseen realities of his nature. The Scriptures remind us that “… since the creation of the world His invisible attributes. His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made …” (Rom. 1:20, NASB; emphasis added).

In the Garden of Eden, God symbolized his authority with a flaming sword. The mark God placed on the doorposts of the Hebrews’ homes were other visible signs and symbols.

Biblical metaphors such as the Lamb of God and the Bread of Life translate the unseen into the visible, tangible, and glorious expression of who God is. The early Christians took verbal symbols and transformed them into visual symbols, which became the vocabulary of their faith. The fish scrawled on the doorway reminded them that Jesus Christ was God’s Son, the Savior. The lamb, carved in the damp walls of the catacombs, symbolized the atonement of Christ. Such painted images and small sculptures were used to instruct, encourage, and comfort.

The golden age of symbolism occured during the Middle Ages. The medieval churches were great picture books of Bible history. Everything in the cathedral—from the tiniest wooden pieces on the altar to the overall shape of the building—contained a symbolic meaning.

But, as time passed, people began to misuse the symbols. They began to believe that the symbols themselves contained mystical power. The symbols became substitutes for God, resulting in idolatry. For many people, the symbols represented immanence; they sought God in the images and forgot his transcendence.

While not allowing ourselves to worship the created rather than the Creator, we need to remember the emphasis God places on beauty. Apart from the wonders of his creation, we see specific instances where God ordained beauty and design as an essential part of worship. For instance, he demanded the finest materials and the most skilled craftsmen in the construction of the tabernacle of the Old Testament. Read Exodus 25–40 and try to imagine its exquisite beauty.

Perhaps with some knowledge of the craftsmanship of ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians we can begin to realize the beauty and magnitude of the furnishings of the tabernacle. We can examine the treasure of the ancient Egyptian king Tutankhamen, for example. The construction of the ark of the covenant is described in Exodus 25:10–22: “And they shall construct an ark of acacia wood … and you shall overlay it with pure gold, inside and out …” (NASB). This is easily visualized when we compare it to Tutankhamen’s small shrine made of wood covered with sheets of gold, hammered with bands of inscriptions and decorative friezes.

The Levitical priests’ sacred garments were to be made of fine woven cloth, with precious stones mounted in gold filigree settings (Exod. 28:4–14). From ancient Egypt we have preserved examples of woven robes heavily embroidered with intricate beaded patterns.

Isaiah’s (Isa. 6) and Ezekiel’s (Ezek. 1) visions of the glories surrounding the throne of God almost defy description. In the Revelation of John of the kingdom of God we read of streets of gold, gates of pearl, and a river flowing from the throne, its banks lined with trees bearing 12 kinds of fruit. What imagery!

Through a study of Scripture and the history of the church, we can see how artwork expresses the nature of the great Creator. Let us make use of the respectable language of Christian art. Let us worship God with beauty, color, and design. Let us restore a sense of celebration to our worship experience.

Perhaps the Reformation’s insistence on external simplicity still haunts us. Or perhaps it is the temptation to worship art that worries us. In that case, it is our hearts that need to be purged, not our churches. Give us back beauty in our churches—we worship the King!

MARGE and STEPHEN GIESER¹Mrs. Gieser, a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, creates seasonal banners, pulpit hangings, and altar cloths for churches. Her son Stephen was a writing intern with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources before enrolling as a medical student at the University of Illinois in Chicago.

Choosing A Hymnal

The congregation is the primary choir of the church, the hymnal its main resource for repertoire. Placed with the Bible in the pew, it is the book most frequently used in the service. Its selection is therefore a major decision. Here are some suggestions about how to choose the hymnal best suited to your congregation.

Take Time To Be Thorough

Choosing a hymnal wisely takes time. Investigate a candidate hymnal thoroughly. Those making the decision should live with it for a while; your congregation will live with it for several years.

Obtain samples of at least three good hymnals. Make a comparison chart of features, strengths, and weaknesses. Note what the new hymnal has that your present one lacks, and vice versa. The tradeoffs should be definitely in favor of making a change. The new songs should be sufficiently interesting and of adequate substance to make you want to teach them to your people, and to motivate your people to learn them and sing them frequently.

Do not choose a book simply because it comes in a color that coordinates with the sanctuary carpet! You sing the content of the book, not its cover. Nonetheless, its appearance should be sufficiently attractive to invite you into its treasures. Choose the best quality binding you can afford; you will prolong the value of your investment and preserve its appearance. Quality paper and printing produces notes and words that are clean and easy to read, encouraging usage.

There should be a significant number of important traditional hymns, plus a judicious selection of new ones. Every hymnal is a compromise. A new hymnal should provide material to help your congregation grow in its musical expression throughout the next decade. If you tire of it after three or four years, you have made an unwise investment.

Ask The Publisher For References

Contact people who use the book you are considering. Ask for a candid evaluation of the book’s strengths and weaknesses. Does their congregation feel enthusiastic about it, or do they politely tolerate it?

Study The Organization Of The Hymnal

Does it follow a sequence based on theological progression (God, church, Christian life, etc.), the liturgical year (starting with Advent hymns), a certain categorical distinction (e.g., psalms, hymns, spiritual songs), some type of topical order, or does it lack order altogether? Generally, hymns on a common subject should be grouped together.

Think through your needs for a full year. Envision how the book will be used. Make sure your hymnal has selections appropriate for your needs.

Scrutinize The Texts

Be sure each hymn has something significant to say, and says it well. A good hymnal will have many “winners” and relatively few “losers.” Are verses omitted, or new ones included? If the text has been altered or “updated,” the changes should be helpful and significant, not distracting and merely cosmetic.

New hymns should have substantive literary as well as theological integrity. Durable new songs are increasingly few. A selection hits a peak of popularity and quickly disappears. Few songs of ten years ago are still sung today, and even fewer from just two to three years ago. A book easily can be outdated by the time it comes off the press.

Sing All The Hymns

The melodies should be singable and the rhythms manageable. Rhythms of new songs often are too complicated for the congregation. There should be a wide variety of styles. Melodies should be set in a comfortable range but not so low that they inhibit energetic, bright singing. There is no reason a melody cannot go up to a D or E-flat at least.

Study The Supplementary Materials

Responsive readings should be ones you will find most appropriate in your church. The book should have the basic indexes: title and first line listed alphabetically, a metrical index, a listing of tune names, and an author-composer index. If a single source has contributed more than three or four selections, it should merit such frequency; the writer should be historically significant, or at least currently in fashion. An index of scriptural allusions in the hymns is helpful for finding the hymn most compatible with a certain message. One of the most frequently used indexes is the topical one. It should be extensive, with numerous categories and cross-referencing.

Compare Reactions

Note the responses of those who have looked over the hymnal. A congregation will arrive at a more judicious choice when it is based on several qualified opinions. Be sure those who make the decision are qualified to do so. Take time to really pray about the selection. Then recommend the book with enthusiasm.

When you have chosen a hymnal through which your people can effectively worship, be edified, and communicate their faith, use its potential. Too often, less than half the hymns in a hymnal are sung even once, and fewer than 100 with any frequency. Make an effort to explore yours as fully and frequently as possible. You will be rewarded with a vibrantly singing congregation.

A Review Of Three New Hymnals

Hymnal publishers face difficult times. Devastated by the practice of churches making up their own hymnals through unauthorized photocopies and overhead projections, they now are increasingly cautious about publishing new hymnals.

The practice in some churches of eliminating hymnals in favor of transparencies has only intensified the loss of the people’s musical birthright. Although there are notable exceptions, many of the materials easily learnable without printed music are textually and musically naÏve and repetitious, often sounding like variants of one another.

Since our last hymnal review (CT, May 9, 1975), three significant nondenominational hymnals have been published. In each instance, the editors have striven for quality in content, editing, and production.

Since its release in 1976, Hymns for the Family of God (Paragon Associates) has become the best-selling independent hymnal. It is innovative, and it is large, with 507 selections and 192 readings.

Fred Bock, the general editor, and his staff were responsive to the tastes of the average congregation. Not only are both traditional and contemporary repertoire well represented, but there are even some standard pieces from the choral literature that could be sung by the congregation, such as Stainer’s “God So Loved the World.” The Christmas section is excellent, and includes two of the Alfred Burt carols. There also is a rare, but welcome, emphasis on the relationship of believers to one another.

The hymnal is organized into four major sections—“God’s Love for Us,” “Our Love for God,” “Our Love for the Family of God,” and “Our Love for Others.” As is true of all three hymnals, the titles used for each hymn are the common ones. There is no attempt to systematize everything by first line, a device that may contribute to uniformity, but also often creates results that may be described as “interesting.” Alternate stanzas are numbered on each line and printed in italics, to help the singer keep track of which line to sing.

As one means of heightening the excitement of congregational singing, the editors have included 27 last-stanza reharmonizations. There also are several vocal and instrumental descants.

One wishes for more readings from Scripture. Readings are distributed throughout the book, which not only encourages meaningful congregational participation in worship, but enhances the usefulness of the book at home.

Hymns II (InterVarsity Press, 1976) was begun by editor Paul Beckwith. After his death. Hughes Huffman and Mark Hunt completed the project.

Although the book is not large—only 204 selections—it exudes quality. The editors have placed much emphasis on texts with substantive content. A strong British influence—including 25 selections from the 1973 hymnal, Psalm Praise—means that many selections are unfamiliar to the average American churchgoer, but they merit learning and using. Some, like Frank Houghton’s outstanding Christmas hymn, “Thou Who Wast Rich,” should be memorized as well. There is a separate section of psalm settings at the end of the book. There are very few gospel songs.

A unique editing procedure is the hyphenation of words according to how they are sung rather than how the dictionary divides the syllables. For example, “ev-’ry” becomes “e-v’ry,” and “prom-ised” becomes “pro-mised.”

Hymns II is well adapted to informal use, for it is relatively small in size, is available in a soft binding, and has guitar symbols. In fact, some selections have only melody lines and chord symbols.

Although there is no topical index, the hymns are arranged topically, and one can use the table of contents to locate the categories. There is the now-mandatory index to Scriptural references and allusions in the hymns.

The most recent of these hymnals is Praise! (Singspiration, 1979), compiled by John W. Peterson and Norman Johnson (see “Christian Music’s Unsung Hero,” CT, Sept. 2, 1983). Johnson’s expert editing and comprehensive knowledge of hymnology is apparent in every detail.

This, too, is a large book, containing 572 selections, with worship resources grouped separately. Responsive readings are taken from the New International Version. To encourage congregational use, service music is apportioned throughout the book, rather than collected at the end or printed on endpapers. Johnson’s solution to helping wayward congregational singers keep their place in multi-stanza hymns is to print a small arrowhead by the beginning of each line of the middle stanza.

The inclusion of a number of fine Scandinavian hymns reflects the Scandinavian backgrounds of Peterson and Johnson. Contemporary hymnody is well represented: 77 of the selections were composed in the 1970s. However, the compilers were careful to retain not only traditional hymnody, but well-loved gospel songs as well, from such old favorites as “I’ll Fly Away” to George Beverly Shea’s “I’d Rather Have Jesus” and Don Wyrtzen’s fine hymn of worship, “Worthy Is the Lamb.” Although it is not a true hymnal, we should mention The Electric Hymnal (Word, 1983). It consists of individual hymn kits, and is an innovative attempt to provide churches with good quality, legal overhead transparencies.

Publishers want to meet the hymnal needs of the congregation. The heritage is ours, and we need each other to preserve it. These three hymnals all make valid contributions to that effort.

Other major hymnals still in print: Hymns for the Living Church (Hope), Great Hymns of the Faith (Singspiration), Hymns of Truth and Praise (Gospel Perpetuating), Worship and Service Hymnal (Hope), Hymns of Faith (Tabernacle), and The New Church Hymnal (Lexicon).

RICHARD D. DINWIDDIE

The sexual conduct of two congressmen tells us what it is.

This tear’s dog days have summoned forth two splendid examples of human moral imperfection: Rep. Daniel Crane (R-Ill.) and Rep. Gerry Studds (D-Mass.). The world knows their story. Both were censured by the House for sexual misconduct, Crane for a 1980 relationship with a 17-year-old female page, Studds for a 1973 liaison with a 17-year-old male page. Since the legal age of consent in the District of Columbia is 16, neither Studds nor Crane was charged with a crime.

Being censured is the only thing Crane and Studds have in common. The nation got a glimmer of their philosophical differences when Crane admitted tearfully to his district, then to the full House, that he “broke the laws of God and man,” casting a vote for his own censure, facing the House as the Speaker announced the tally. That’s nineteenth-century style.

Studds, in contrast, acknowledged he was gay in a dramatic speech to the House, stated he had made a “very serious error in judgment,” but then defended the relationship with the page as “mutual and voluntary.” He noted that he had abided by the age of consent, and said the relationship didn’t warrant the “attention or action” of the House. Studds voted “present” on the censure and heard the verdict from the speaker with his back to the House.

That’s the essence of twentieth-century rationale.

Crane and Studds slipped back to relative obscurity after their humiliation; but such wide disparity begs that we examine their ideologies, which—on a national scale—are tearing America apart.

Crane’s is the old way. It says that regardless of secular law, there is an objective moral order to which human societies are in conscience bound to conform, and upon which personal, national, and international stability depends. This natural law is a rule of reason promulgated by God in man’s nature, whereby man can discern how he should act. Can discern: given the flaccid nature of man’s will, he may determine to do evil, which Crane did. Thus it’s possible to intellectually recognize virtue but do the opposite. Hypocrisy is the tribute that shamed vice pays to virtue; Crane was hypocritical when, before he was implicated, he denounced a bill lowering statutory consent in the District of Columbia because “it would legalize the seduction of children.”

Studds’s is the new way. It is called positivism. It says that the positive law is fixed by the state without reference to any higher standard. Moral judgments beyond the law are matters of private preference without relevance to the public life of the nation. It affirms, contrary to natural law, that one cannot know absolutely the essences of things; thus there is no objective rightness or wrongness that we can know beyond the secular law. So, by not recognizing the natural law, Studds need not support his own censure—and avoids taint of hypocrisy.

Surprisingly, the usually positivistic House decided to apply natural law standards to the Studds-Crane offense. Why? As with all things involving Congress, the controlling element is personal political survival. “There is no reason why,” said Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), “we should have to serve with someone who had a child entrusted to him who seduced that child.” That’s about as old-fashioned an appeal to natural law as one can make.

Crane and Studds, one a traditionalist, one a positivist, both having been censured under traditionalist law, are truly an incongruous congressional duo. Studds is a product of Yale, a former Foreign Service officer, a late-sixties critic of the Vietnam War, an opponent of military aid to Central America, and one who comingles these liberal views with shrewd casework pragmatism that extended New England fishing rights and won praise from his district’s powerful fisheries industry. That mixture has been popular in blue-collar New Bedford, where they toast him with schooners of beer for saving jobs, and on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, haven for well-educated, postindustrial, affluent society that idolizes the newest liberal trends.

Compared with Studds, Danville dentist Crane appears to be a clod, who, visceral traditionalism aside. gives the impression he knows not much more than the details of orthodontics, prosthodontics, pedodontics and porcelain inlays. His career apex has been his bills to repeal the 55 m.p.h. speed limit, to allow the gold standard to rival Federal Reserve notes, and to end the torture of dogs in the Philippines.

Do they both deserve equal censure? Of course. But, intriguingly, a $5,000,000-a-year Chicago TV comentator condemned only Crane, calling him a “bum.” What about Studds? Is he absolved because he owns no traditional moral code and hence could not have been unfaithful to it? Or was he spared because his sexual preference boasts a fast-growing group that has been strong enough to send politicians scurrying to its defense in major cities around the country, and to which perceptive perspective-writers defer to be popular? We cannot know.

All we know is that there are no liberation crusades for heterosexuals, no apologists for traditionalists who, betrayed by their weak wills, agonizingly still support the system by which they stand condemned.

But there’s one consolation for Crane. His natural-law philosophy teaches that there is one thing worse than sin. That is denial of sin, which makes forgiveness impossible.

THOMAS F. ROESER¹Dr. Roeser, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is president of the City Club of Chicago. The article is reprinted from the Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 22, 1983) and used by permission.

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